Discoveries and Some Poems | Page 7

sees clearlier and sharper the vices in a speaker, than the virtues. And
there are many, that with more ease will find fault with what is spoken
foolishly than can give allowance to that wherein you are wise silently.
The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic poet;
{33c} and it appears not in anything more than in that nation, whereof
one, when he had got the inheritance of an unlucky old grange, would
needs sell it; {33d} and to draw buyers proclaimed the virtues of it.
Nothing ever thrived on it, saith he. No owner of it ever died in his bed;
some hung, some drowned themselves; some were banished, some
starved; the trees were all blasted; the swine died of the measles, the
cattle of the murrain, the sheep of the rot; they that stood were ragged,
bare, and bald as your hand; nothing was ever reared there, not a
duckling, or a goose. Hospitium fuerat calamitatis. {34a} Was not this
man like to sell it?
Vulgi expectatio.--Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn and held
with newness than goodness; we see it in fencers, in players, in poets,
in preachers, in all where fame promiseth anything; so it be new,

though never so naught and depraved, they run to it, and are taken.
Which shews, that the only decay or hurt of the best men's reputation
with the people is, their wits have out-lived the people's palates. They
have been too much or too long a feast.
Claritas patriae.--Greatness of name in the father oft-times helps not
forth, but overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The
shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come
more and oftener to be heir of the first, than doth the second: he dies
between; the possession is the third's.
Eloquentia.--Eloquence is a great and diverse thing: nor did she yet
ever favour any man so much as to become wholly his. He is happy
that can arrive to any degree of her grace. Yet there are who prove
themselves masters of her, and absolute lords; but I believe they may
mistake their evidence: for it is one thing to be eloquent in the schools,
or in the hall; another at the bar, or in the pulpit. There is a difference
between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting. To make
arguments in my study, and confute them, is easy; where I answer
myself, not an adversary. So I can see whole volumes dispatched by the
umbratical doctors on all sides: but draw these forth into the just lists:
let them appear sub dio, and they are changed with the place, like
bodies bred in the shade; they cannot suffer the sun or a shower, nor
bear the open air; they scarce can find themselves, that they were wont
to domineer so among their auditors: but indeed I would no more
choose a rhetorician for reigning in a school, than I would a pilot for
rowing in a pond.
Amor et odium.--Love that is ignorant, and hatred, have almost the
same ends: many foolish lovers wish the same to their friends, which
their enemies would: as to wish a friend banished, that they might
accompany him in exile; or some great want, that they might relieve
him; or a disease, that they might sit by him. They make a causeway to
their country by injury, as if it were not honester to do nothing than to
seek a way to do good by a mischief.
Injuria.--Injuries do not extinguish courtesies: they only suffer them not
to appear fair. For a man that doth me an injury after a courtesy, takes
not away that courtesy, but defaces it: as he that writes other verses
upon my verses, takes not away the first letters, but hides them.
Beneficia.--Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that

friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our
boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats, that
they be nourishing. For these are what they are necessarily. Horses
carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not. It is true, some men may
receive a courtesy and not know it; but never any man received it from
him that knew it not. Many men have been cured of diseases by
accidents; but they were not remedies. I myself have known one helped
of an ague by falling into a water; another whipped out of a fever; but
no man would ever use these for medicines. It is the mind, and not the
event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong. My adversary may
offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win my