Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/320

 though the height or fulness of them may refer to some one age. This is a work which I find deficient; but is to be done with wisdom, sobriety, and reverence, or not at all.

The third, which is History of Providence, containeth that excellent correspondence which is between God's revealed will and his secret will: which though it be so obscure, as for the most part it is not legible to the natural man; no, nor many times to those that behold it from the tabernacle; yet at some times it pleaseth God, for our better establishment and the confuting of those which are as without God in the world, to write it in such text and capital letters, that as the prophet saith, "he that runneth by may read it;" that is, mere sensual persons, which hasten by God's judgments and never bend or fix their cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged to discern it. Such are the notable events and examples of God's judgments, chastisements, deliverances, and blessings: and this is a work which hath passed through the labours of many, and therefore I cannot present as omitted.

There are also other parts of learning which are Appendices to history: for all the exterior proceedings of man consist of words and deeds; whereof history doth properly receive and retain in memory the deeds; and if words, yet but as inducements and passages to deeds: so are there other books and writings, which are appropriate to the custody and receipt of words only; which likewise are of three sorts; Orations, Letters, and brief Speeches or Sayings. Orations are pleadings, speeches of counsel, laudatives, invectives, apologies, reprehensions, orations of formality or ceremony, and the like. Letters are according to all the variety of occasions, advertisements, advices, directions, propositions, petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory; of compliment of pleasure, of discourse, and all other passages of action. And such as are written from wise men, are of all the words of man, in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural than oration and public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches. So again letters of affairs from such as manage them, or are privy to them, are of all others the best instructions for history, and to a diligent reader the hest histories in themselves. For Apophthegms, it is a great loss of that book of Cæsar's; for as his history, and those few letters of his which we have, and those apophthegms which were of his own, excel all men's else, so I suppose would his collection of apophthegms have done; for as for those which are collected by others, either I have no taste in such matters, or else their choice hath not been happy. But upon these three kinds of writings, I do not insist, because I have no deficiencies to propound concerning them.

Thus much therefore concerning history; which is that part of learning which answereth to one of the cells, domiciles, or offices of the mind of man; which is that of the Memory.

is a part of learning in measure of words for the most part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the imagination; which, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined; and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things; "Pictoribus atque poetis, &c." It is taken in two senses, in respect of words, or matter: in the first sense it is but a character of style, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the present: in the latter, it is, as hath been said, one of the principal portions of learning, and is nothing else but feigned history, which may be styled as well in prose as in verse.

The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. And we see, that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.

The division of poesy which is aptest in the propriety thereof, (besides those divisions which are common unto it with history, as feigned chronicles, feigned lives, and the appendices of history, as feigned epistles, feigned orations, and the rest,) is into Poesy, Narrative, Representative, and Allusive.

The Narrative is a mere imitation of history, with the excesses before remembered; choosing