of the question, for it chaseth away many a frivo lous speech as it is coming forth. Long and curious speeches are as fit for dispatch as a robe or mantle. with a long train is for race. Prefaces, and passages," 5 and excusations, and other speeches of reference to the person, are great wastes of time; and though they seem to proceed of modesty, they are bravery." Yet beware of being too material when there is any impediment or obstruction in men's wills; for pre10 occupation of mind ever requireth preface of speech, like a fomentation to make the unguent enter.

Above all things, order, and distribution, and singling out of parts, is the life of dispatch, so as the distribution be not too subtle; for he that doth 15 not divide will never enter well into business, and he that divideth too much will never come out of it clearly. To choose time is to save time, and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business: the preparation, the debate 20 or examination, and the perfection. Whereof, if you look for dispatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few. The proceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing doth for the most part facilitate dispatch; for though 25 it should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more pregnant of direction° than an indefinite, as ashes are more generative than dust.

XXVI. OF SEEMING WISE

For as

IT hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are. But howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man. the Apostle saith of godliness, "having a show of 5 godliness, but denying the power thereof," so certainly there are in point of wisdom and sufficiency that do nothing or little very solemnly, "magno° conatu nugas. It is a ridiculous thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment, to see what 10 shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives to make superficies to seem body that hath depth and bulk.

Some are so close and reserved as they will not show their wares but by a dark light, and seem 15 always to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves with countenance and gesture, and are 20 wise by signs, as Cicero saith of Piso, that when he answered him he fetched one of his brows up to his forehead and bent the other down to his chin: "Respondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad mentum depresso supercilio, crudelitatem 25 tibi non placere.' Some think to bear it by speaking a great word and being peremptory,

and go on and take by admittance that which they cannot make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise or make light of it as impertinent or curious; and so would have their 5 ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without a difference, and commonly, by amusing men with a subtilty, blanch° the matter; of whom A. Gellius saith, "Hominem° delirum, qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera." Of which kind also Plato° 10 in his "Protagoras " bringeth in Prodicus in scorn, and maketh him make a speech that consisteth of distinctions from the beginning to the end.

Generally such men in all deliberations find ease to be of the negative side, and affect a credit to object 15 and foretell difficulties. For when propositions are denied, there is an end of them; but if they be allowed, it requireth a new work: which false point of wisdom. is the bane of business.

To conclude, there is no decaying merchant, or 20 inward beggar, hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their wealth, as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion, but let no man choose them for employment: for certainly you 25 were better take for business a man somewhat absurd than over-formal.

XXVII. OF FRIENDSHIP

IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech, "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God. For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and 5 aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester° 16 a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Numa° the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the 15 ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkiing cymbal, where there is no love. 20 The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, "Magna civitas, magna solitudo;" because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most 25 truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to I want true friends, without which the world is but

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a wilderness. And even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. 5 A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not 10 much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, 15 suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of 20 friendship whereof we speak; so great as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit except, 25 to make themselves capable thereof, they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to° inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites or privadoes,° 30 as if it were matter of grace or conversation; but the