Advancement of Learning 1 97 



he is best in those things wherein he is failing; and, to 

 help that again, to seem on the other side that he hath 

 least opinion of himself in those things wherein he is best : 

 like as we shall see it commonly in poets, that if they show 

 their verses, and you except to any, they will say, that that 

 line cost them more labour than any of the rest ; and presently 

 will seem to disable and suspect rather some other line, 

 which they know well enough to be the best in the number. 

 But above all, in this righting and helping of a man s self 

 in his own carriage, he must take heed he show not himself 

 dismantled, and exposed to scorn and injury, by too much 

 dulceness, goodness, and facility of nature ; but show some 

 sparkles of liberty, spirit, and edge. Which kind of forti 

 fied carriage, with a ready rescuing of a man s self from 

 scorns, is sometimes of necessity imposed upon men by 

 somewhat in their person or fortune ; but it ever succeedeth 

 with good felicity. 



Another precept of this knowledge is, by all possible 

 endeavour to frame the mind to be pliant and obedient to 

 occasion ; for nothing hindereth men s fortunes so much as 

 this: Idem manebat, neque idem decebat, 1 men are where 

 they were, when occasions turn: and therefore to Cato, 

 whom Livy maketh such an architect of fortune, he addeth, 

 that he had versatile ingenium. 2 And thereof it cometh that 

 these grave solemn wits, which must be like themselves, and 

 cannot make departures, have more dignity than felicity. 

 But in some it is nature to be somewhat viscous and in- 

 wrapped, and not easy to turn ; in some it is a conceit, that 

 is almost a nature, which is, that men can hardly make 

 themselves believe that they ought to change their course, 

 when they have found good by it in former experience. 

 For Machiavel noted wisely, how Fabius Maximus would 

 have been temporizing still, according to his old bias, when 

 the nature of the war was altered and required hot pursuit. 3 

 In some other it is want of point and penetration in their 

 judgment, that they do not discern when things have a 

 period, but come in too late after the occasion ; as Demos 

 thenes 4 compareth the people of Athens to country fellows, 

 when they play in a fence school, that if they have a blow, 

 then they remove their weapon to that ward, and not before. 



1 Cic. Brut. 95 (327). 2 Livy, xxxix. 40. 



3 Mach. Discorsi sojpra Livio, iii. 9. * Demosth. Phil. 1.51. 



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