displayed great military genius, and owed his success partly to his novel manoeuvers and combinations. . . . He left a pure and exalted reputation as a patriot, statesman, and sage, and is universally admitted to have been one of the greatest captains of antiquity. Cicero expressed the opinion that Epaminondas was the greatest man that Greece produced. Up to his fortieth year he passed his time in retirement and study, and exhibited great diligence in acquiring the culture of his age.

11 24. Xenophon. Cf. 65 35 ff.

11 25.

11 26.

11 28.

11 30.

A greater. The 'a' from the edition of 1640.

Rome. Cf. 17 9 ff.

12 3. Strength of the body and mind. According to Aristotle (Rhet. 2. 14. 4), the body is strongest from thirty to thirty-five, the mind at forty-nine.

12 10. Hurt than enable. Unfit than qualify.

12 12. Empiric physicians. Such as draw their rules of practice entirely from experience, to the exclusion of philosophical theory; hence, quacks. Cf. Essay 12: So are there mountebanks for the politic body-men that undertake great cures and perhaps have been lucky in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out.'

12 13. Pleasing. To themselves. Receipts. Prescriptions. 12 15. Complexions.

symptoms.

Constitutions.

Accidents.

12 19. Falleth out besides. Occurs outside of.

Unfavorable

12 23. Men grounded in learning. This, if intended as a compliment to King James, was not wholly applicable. Selby quotes from Lingard, History of England, 7. 139: 'James, though an able man, was a weak monarch. His quickness of apprehension and soundness of judgment were marred by his credulity and partialities, his childish fears and habit of vacillation. Eminently qualified to advise as a counselor, he wanted the spirit and resolution to act as His discourse teemed with maxims of political wisdom; his conduct frequently bore the impress of political imbecility.' 12 27. Ordinary. Customary. Extenuate. Depreciate. 12 28. Disable. Disparage.

a sovran.

12 31. Infinite disadvantage. Cf. Eccl. 10. 16;

2 Chron. 13. 7; Shak. Rich. III. 2. 3. II.

12 33. Traduce. Decry.

13 1. Magnified. Extolled.

Isa. 3. 4;

13 2. In the hands of Seneca. Cf. Tacitus, Annals 13. 2: And now they had proceeded to further murders but for the opposition of Afranius Burrus and Annæus Seneca. These two men guided the emperor's youth with a unity of purpose seldom found where authority is shared, and, though their accomplishments were wholly different, they had equal influence. Burrus, with his soldier's discipline and severe manners, Seneca, with lessons of eloquence and a dignified courtesy, strove alike to confine the frailty of the prince's youth, should he loathe virtue, within allowable indulgence. They had both alike to struggle against the domineering spirit of Agrippina, who, inflamed with all the passions of an evil ascendency, had Pallas on her side.' Pedant. From the It. pedante, which appears not to have been quite naturalized' (Wright). The old editions here have pedanti.

13 4. Gordianus. He ascended the imperial throne in A.D. 238, when he was about fourteen years of age. Gibbon says (Decline and Fall, chap. 7): 'Immediately after his accession he fell into the hands of his mother's eunuchs, that pernicious vermin of the East, who, since the days of Elagabalus, had infested the Roman palace. By the artful conspiracy of these wretches an impenetrable veil was drawn between an innocent prince and his oppressed subjects, the virtuous disposition of Gordian was deceived, and the honors of the empire sold without his knowledge, though in a very public manner, to the most worthless of mankind. We are ignorant by what fortunate accident the emperor escaped from this ignominious slavery, and devolved his confidence on a minister whose wise counsels had no object except the glory of the sovereign and the happiness of the people. It should seem that love and learning introduced Misitheus to the favor of Gordian. The young prince married the daughter of his master of rhetoric, and promoted his father-in-law to the first offices of the empire. Two admirable letters that passed between them are still extant.

The life

of Misitheus had been spent in the profession of letters, not of arms; yet such was the versatile genius of that great man that, when he was appointed prætorian prefect, he discharged the military duties of his place with vigor and ability.'

13 5. sitheus.

Contentation. Satisfaction. Misitheus. Properly, Time

13 6. Alexander Severus. 'In the room of Elagabalus, his cousin Alexander was raised to the throne by the prætorian guards [probably in March, 222]. But, as Alexander was a modest and dutiful youth of only seventeen years of age, the reins of government were in the hands of two women, of his mother Mamæa, and of Mæsa, his grandmother. After the death of the latter, who survived but a short time the elevation of Alexander, Mamæa remained the sole regent of her son and of the empire. With the approbation of the senate, she chose sixteen of the wisest and most virtuous senators as a perpetual council of state, before whom every public business of moment was debated and determined. The celebrated Ulpian, equally distinguished by his knowledge of, and his respect for, the laws of Rome, was at their head; and the prudent firmness of this aristocracy restored order and authority to the government. As soon as they had purged the city from foreign superstition and luxury, the remains of the capricious tyranny of Elagabalus, they applied themselves to remove his worthless creatures from every department of public administration, and to supply their places with men of virtue and ability. Learning and the love of justice became the only recommendations for civil offices, valor and the love of discipline the only qualifications for military employments. But the most important care of Mamaa and her wise counselors was to form the character of the young emperor, on whose personal qualities the happiness or misery of the Roman world must ultimately depend. . . . An excellent understanding soon convinced Alexander of the advantages of virtue, the pleasure of knowledge, and the necessity of labor. . His unalterable regard for his mother, and his esteem for the wise Ulpian, guarded his unexperienced youth from the poison of flattery' (Gibbon, chap. 6).

...

13 8. Teachers and preceptors. These seem scarcely the terms by which to characterize the members of his council of state. 13 10. Bishops of Rome. Popes. As by name. For instance. 13 11. Pius Quintus and Sextus Quintus. Pius the Fifth was a Dominican, Sixtus the Fifth a Franciscan friar. Pius was Pope from 1565-1572. The most remarkable event of his pontificate was the defeat of the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, in which his fleet was engaged in conjunction with those of Venice and Spain.

Sixtus was Pope from 1585-1590. His vigorous, though cruel, administration is described by Gibbon, ch. 70' (Selby). Sixtus V was the founder of the Vatican library. Of him the Encyclopædia Britannica says: 'Ardent, despotic, indefatigable, he did everything by himself, rarely invited advice and still more rarely followed it, and manifested in all his actions a capacious and highly original genius, in most respects eminently practical, but swayed in some things towards the visionary and fantastic by the inevitable effects of a monastic training. His first great aim was to purge the papal dominions of the robbers who had overrun them under the weak administration of his predecessor. This salutary undertaking was effectually accomplished. . . . Sixtus V left the reputation.. of a great sovereign in an age of great sovereigns, of a man always aiming at the highest things, and whose great faults were but the exaggeration of great virtues.' Cf. Ranke, History of the Popes, Chaps. 3 and 4.

13 13.

13 15.

13 18.

13 19.

To seek. Deficient, wanting.

Reasons of state. Political considerations.

examples in the conduct of our own affairs?

13 21.

Have we any

Inventions against religion. 'Catena, Vita di Pio V, p. 31 (ed. 1586), reports a saying of the Pope, something to this effect, with reference to the maxim of Louis XI of France, "Chi non sà simulare non sà regnare [He who knows not how to dissimulate knows not how to reign]. See also Gabutius, Vita Pii V, lib. vi. c. 7 (Acta Sanctorum, 5 Maii, ed. 1866), and lib. ii. c. 3' (Wright).

13 22. Recompense. Compensate for.

Resembleth, etc. Known now to science as 'atavism.'
Sort. Agree.

13 30.

13 32.

13 33.

14 1.

Immediate. Present.

Countervail. Outweigh.

14 2. Hold way. Keep pace. Selby compares a sentence from Burke: We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.' 14 3. Those particular seducements. Bacon has been arguing from analogy (12 11-24) and appealing to history (12 24-13 27),

alleging the insufficiency of personal experience (13 27-33), and contrasting the resources of the individual with the accumulated riches of humanity (13 33-14 2). He now recurs to the specifications of 10 11 ff.

14 7. Ministereth. Provides. Every. Each.

14 10. Irresolute. Cf. 10 11. By plain precept. It has wellrecognized principles and grounds of judgment.

14 12. Resolve. Decide.

14 13. Prejudice. Harm, perhaps also with some notion of a tendency to prejudgment.

14 14. Positive and regular. The Latin, pertinaces et difficiles, suggests the stubbornness of the confirmed idealist. Bacon's answer is, in effect, that a truly learned man will be pertinacious only when he is sure of the principle involved, and has duly taken account of circumstances which may modify its application.

14 17. Latitude. Extent to which they apply. Disproportion or dissimilitude. Cf. 10 13 ff.

14 19. The errors of comparisons. Probably the false conclusions to which one may be led in assuming that a given historical condition is exactly reproduced in one's own time.

14 24. Examples. Such as Bacon has already made use of. It might be well to collect the instances where his argument is really nothing but an appeal to history. Clement the Seventh. One of the Medici, nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent and cousin of Pope Leo X, Pope from 1523-1534. During his pontificate occurred the sack of Rome by the Constable Bourbon (1527). The student of English history remembers his refusal to sanction the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon, a refusal due wholly to his fear of offending the Emperor Charles V. 'His administration affords a proof that at eventful crises of the world's history mediocrity of character is more disastrous than mediocrity of talent.'

14 25. Lively. Vividly. Guicciardine. Properly, Guicciardini (1482-1541). His History of Italy (1561-4) has been called 'the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the modern era,' and 'the most solid monument of the Italian reason in the sixteenth century.' Ellis quotes from his account of Clement VII: 'Both in deliberation and in the execution of what he had deliberated about, every fresh little consideration which might occur to him, every trifling impediment which he might encounter,