Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/250

 forth into her privy-chamber, and admitted her ladies to have access unto her, and amongst the rest my Lady Paget presented herself, and came to her with a smiling countenance. The queen bent her brows, and seemed to be highly displeased, and said to her, "Madam, you are not ignorant of my extreme grief, and do you come to me with a countenance of joy?" My Lady Paget answered, "Alas, and it please your majesty, it is impossible for me to be absent from you three weeks, but that when I see you, I must look cheerfully." "No, no," said the queen, not forgetting her former averseness to the match, "you have some other conceit in it, tell me plainly." My lady answered, "I must obey you: it is this, I was thinking how happy your majesty was, in that you married not Monsieur; for seeing you take such thought for his death, being but your friend; if he had been your husband, sure it would have cost you your life."

262. Sir Edward Dyer, a grave and wise gentleman, did much believe in Kelly the alchemist, that he did indeed the work, and made gold: insomuch that he went into Germany, where Kelly then was, to inform himself fully thereof. After his return, he dined with my lord of Canterbury, where at that time was at the table Dr. Brown the physician. They fell in talk of Kelly. Sir Edward Dyer, turning to the archbishop said, "I do assure your grace, that that I shall tell you is truth, I am an eyewitness thereof; and if I had not seen it, I should not have believed it. I saw Master Kelly put of the base metal into the crucible; and after it was set a little upon the fire, and a very small quantity of the medicine put in, and stirred with a stick of wood, it came forth in great proportion, perfect gold; to the touch, to the hammer, to the test." My lord archbishop said, "You had need take heed what you say, Sir Edward Dyer, for here is an infidel at the board." Sir Edward Dyer said again pleasantly, "I would have looked for an infidel sooner in any place than at your grace's table." "What say you, Dr. Brown?" saith the bishop. Dr. Brown answered, after his blunt and huddling manner, "The gentle man hath spoken enough for me." "Why," saith the bishop, "what hath he said?" "Marry," saith Dr. Brown, "he said, he would not have believed it, except he had seen it, and no more will I."

263. Democritus said, "That truth did lie in profound pits, and when it was got, it needed much refining."

264. Doctor Johnson said that in sickness there were three things that were material; the physician, the disease, and the patient: and if any two of these joined, then they have the victory; for, "Ne Hercules quidem contra duos." If the physician and the patient join, then down goes the disease, for the patient recovers: if the physician and the disease join, then down goes the patient, that is where the physician mistakes the case: if the patient and the disease join, then down goes the physician, for he is discredited.

265. Alexander visited Diogenes in his tub, and when he asked him what he would desire of him? Diogenes answered, "That you would stand a little aside, that the sun may come to me."

266. Diogenes said of a young man that danced daintily, and was much commended, "The better, the worse."

267. Diogenes called an ill musician, Cock. "Why"?" saith he. Diogenes answered; "Because when you crow, men use to rise."

268. Heraclitus the Obscure said; "The dry light was the best soul:" meaning, when the faculties intellectual are in vigour, not wet, nor, as it were, blooded by the affections.

269. There was in Oxford a cowardly fellow that was a very good archer; he was abused grossly by another, and moaned himself to Walter Raleigh, then a scholar, and asked his advice what he should do to repair the wrong had been offered him; Raleigh answered, "Why, challenge him at a match of shooting."

270. Whitehead, a grave divine, was much esteemed by Queen Elizabeth, but not preferred, because he was against the government of bishops. He was of a blunt stoical nature: he came one day to the queen, and the queen happened to say to him, "I like thee the better, Whitehead, because thou livest unmarried." He answered again, "In troth, madam, I like you the worse for the same cause."

271. There was a nobleman that was lean of visage, but immediately after his marriage he grew pretty plump and fat. One said to him, "Your lordship doth contrary to other married men; for they at the first wax lean, and you wax fat." Sir Walter Raleigh stood by, and said, "Why, there is no beast, that if you take him from the common, and put him into the several, but he will wax fat."

272. Diogenes seeing one, that was a bastard, casting stones among the people, bade him take heed he hit not his father.

273. Dr. Laud said, "that some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads like bulrushes, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets."

273. It was said among some of the grave prelates of the council of Trent, in which the school-divines bore the sway; that the schoolmen were like the astronomers, who, to save the phænomena, framed to their conceit eccentrics and epicycles, and a wonderful engine of orbs, though no