Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/95

Rh of a pair of sharp scissors. If Caesar did not utter this one, it is worthy of him. Bacon thought so, too, and recorded Caesar's witticism among his Apophthegmes New and Old, with the regret expressed in the preface,—"It is a pitie his Booke is lost: for I imagine they were collected, with Judgement and Choice."

All his life Bacon was a collector of pointed sayings, not only apothegms but proverbs. In part this was a personal inclination towards the simplest and clearest expression of thought, in part it was the Elizabethans cultivating brevity as the soul of wit. Numerous books of "prittie conceites" and many strings of proverbs attest their fondness for short, pithy sayings, grave and gay. "I hold the entry of commonplaces to be a matter of great use and essence in studying," says Bacon. The habit of jotting down ideas on all sorts of subjects, and in the fewest possible words, explains in some measure how Bacon came by that characteristic of his style which makes so many of his sentences represent the compressed essence of things. Sometimes the thought is so packed that the language may fairly be said to give way, the sentence, like an ill-constructed building, being unable to bear the pressure put upon it; for example, "but if the force of custom, simple and separate, be great, the force of custom, copulate and conjoined and collegiate, is far greater," Of Custom and Education. A similar expression, packed to the point of clumsiness, is "but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, Rh