Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/87

Rh admirably, and his judgment was sound. But his conduct did not tally with his speech; being by nature proud and curt, he was swayed sometimes by ambition, but oftener by avarice, in a manner unbecoming to a well-bred and modest man." Bacon was proud, but not curt, nor was he avaricious, though the love of what money can buy was strong in him. Otherwise, Varchi's character of Guicciardini might do for Bacon set down in Italy. Like Bacon, Guicciardini was keenly observant, he had the habit of recording his impressions of men and things, and it was his mental turn to record them in the form of aphorisms. But Guicciardini's view was narrow, as Montaigne says, and he had not the ability to relate and combine facts on broad general principles; his history is therefore rather the memoranda and maxims of a statesman, scientifically arranged, than a philosophical summing up of human affairs. Nor had Guicciardini a literary style. He is more of a thinker than an author.

In the essay Of Superstition Bacon quotes from the Historia del Concilio Tridentino, by the Venetian, Fra Paolo Sarpi, probably from the contemporary translation of Sir Nathaniel Brent, but the Italian whom Bacon knew best was Machiavelli. Though the great Florentine is quoted but four times, three times only by name, yet many of the Essays should be read in connection with Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra La Prima Deca di T. Livio. The last essay, Of Vicissitude of Things, was clearly suggested by Book II, Chapter 5, Rh