His meals were refections of the ear as well as of the stomach, like the Noctes Attica, or Convivia Deipnosophistarum, wherein a man might be refreshed in his mind and understanding no less than in his body. And I have known some, of no mean parts, that have professed to make use of their note-books when they have risen from his table. In which conversations, and otherwise, he was no dashing man, as some men are, but ever a countenancer and fosterer of another man's parts. Neither was he one that would appropriate the speech wholly to himself, or delight to outvie others, but leave a liberty to the co-assessors to take their turns. Wherein he would draw a man on, and allure him to speak upon such a subject as wherein he was peculiarly skilful and would delight to speak. And for himself, he contemned no man's observations, but would light his torch at every man's candle.

His opinions and assertions were for the most part binding, and not contradicted by any - rather like oracles than discourses; which may be imputed either to the well weighing of his sentence by the scales of truth and reason, or else to the reverence and estimation wherein he was commonly had, that no man would contest with him; so that there was no argumentation, or pro and con (as they term it), at his table; or if there chanced to be any, it was carried with much submission and moderation.

I have often observed, and so have other men of great account, that if he had occasion to repeat another man's words after him, he had a use and faculty to dress them in better vestments and apparel than they had before, so that the author should find his own speech much amended, and yet the substance of it still retained; as if it had been natural to him to use good forms, as Ovid spake of his faculty of versifying :

Et quod tentabam scribere, versus erat.

When his office called him, as he was of the King's Counsel Learned, to charge any offenders, either in criminals or capitals, he was never of an insulting and domineering nature over them, but always tender-hearted, and carrying himself decently towards the parties (though it was his duty to charge them home), but yet as one that looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion. And in civil business, as he was Counselor of Estate, he had the best way of advising-not engaging his master in any precipitate or grievous courses, but in moderate and fair proceedings: the King whom he served giving him this testimony, That he ever dealt in business suavibus modis, which was the way that was most according to his own heart.

Neither was he in his time less gracious with the subject than with his sovereign. He was ever acceptable to the House of Commons when he was a member thereof. Being the King's Attorney, and chosen to a place in Parliament, he was allowed and dispensed with to sit in the House, which was not permitted to other Attorneys.

And as he was a good servant to his master, being never in nineteen years' service (as himself averred) rebuked by the King for anything relating to His Majesty, so he was a good master to his servants, and rewarded their long attendance with good places freely when they fell into his power; which was the cause that so many young gentlemen of blood and quality sought to list themselves in his retinue. And if he were abused by any of them in their places, it was only the error of the goodness of his nature, but the badges of their indiscretions and intemperances.

This lord was (religious; for though the world be apt to suspect and prejudge great wits and politics to have somewhat of the atheist, yet he was conversant with God, as appeareth by several passages throughout the whole

current of his writings. Otherwise he should have crossed his own principles, which were, That a little philosophy maketh men apt to forget God, as attributing too much to second causes; but depth of philosophy bringeth a man back to God again. Now I am sure there is no man that will deny him, or account otherwise of him, but to have been a deep philosopher. And not only so, but he was able to render a reason of the hope which was in him, which that writing of his of the Confession of the Faith doth abundantly testify. He repaired frequently, when his health would permit him, to the service of the church, to hear sermons, to the administration of the sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ; and died in the true faith, established in the church of England.

This is most true-he was free from malice, which (as he said himself) he never bred nor fed. He was no revenger of injuries; which if he had minded, he had both opportunity and place high enough to have done it. He was no heaver of men out of their places, as delighting in their ruin and undoing. He was no defamer of any man to his prince. One day, when a great statesman was newly dead that had not been his friend, the King asked him, What he thought of that lord which was gone? he answered, That he would never have made His Majesty's estate better, but he was sure he would have kept it from being worse; which was the worst he would say of him: which I reckon not among his moral, but his Christian virtues.

His fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. Concerning which I will give you a taste only, out of a letter written from Italy (the storehouse of refined wits) to the late Earl of Devonshire, then the Lord Ca[ve]ndish: I will expect the new essays of my Lord Chancellor Bacon, as also his History,

with a great deal of desire, and whatsoever else he shall compose: but, in particular, of his History I promise myself a thing perfect and singular, especially in Henry the Seventh, where he may exercise the talent of his divine understanding. This lord is more and more known, and his books here more and more delighted in; and those men that have more than ordinary knowledge in human affairs esteem him one of the most capable spirits of his age; and he is truly such. Now his fame doth not decrease with days since, but rather increase. Divers of his works have been anciently, and yet lately, translated into other tongues, both learned and modern, by foreign pens. Several persons of quality, during his lordship's life, crossed the seas on purpose to gain an opportunity of seeing him and discoursing with him; whereof one carried his lordship's picture from head to foot over with him into France, as a thing which he foresaw would be much desired there, that so they might enjoy the image of his person as well as the images of his brain, his books. Amongst the rest, Marquis Fiat, a French nobleman who came Ambassador into England in the beginning of Queen Mary, wife to King Charles, was taken with an extraordinary desire of seeing him, for which he made way by a friend; and when he came to him, being then through weakness confined to his bed, the Marquis saluted him with this high expression, That his lordship had been ever to him like the angels; of whom he had often heard, and read much of them in books, but he never saw them. After which they contracted an intimate acquaintance, and the Marquis did so much revere him that, besides his frequent visits, they wrote letters one to the other under the titles and appellations of father and As for his many salutations by letters from foreign worthies devoted to learning, I forbear to mention them, because that is a thing common to other men of learning or note, together with him.

son.

But yet in this matter of his fame I speak in the comparative only, and not in the exclusive. For his reputation is great in his own nation also, especially amongst those that are of a more acute and sharper judgment; which I will exemplify but with two testimonies, and no more. The former, when his History of King Henry the Seventh was to come forth, it was delivered to the old Lord Brooke,1 to be perused by him; who, when he had dispatched it, returned it to the author with this eulogy: Commend me to my lord, and bid him take care to get good paper and ink, for the work is incomparable. The other shall be that of Doctor Samuel Collins, late Provost of King's College in Cambridge, a man of no vulgar wit, who affirmed unto me That when he had read the book of the Advancement of Learning, he found himself in a case to begin his studies anew, and that he had lost all the time of his studying before.

It hath been desired that something should be signified touching his diet, and the regiment of his health, of which, in regard of his universal insight into nature, he may perhaps be to some an example. For his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, as his stomach would bear it, than a restrained; which he also commended in his book In his younger years

of the History of Life and Death. he was much given to the finer and lighter sort of meats, as of fowls, and such like; but afterward, when he grew more judicious, he preferred the stronger meats, such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable; upon which he would often make his meal, though he had other meats upon the table. You may be sure he would not neglect that himself which he so much extolled in his writings, and that was the use of nitre;

1 Fulke Greville, the friend of Sidney (1554-1628).