232 Bacon 



UNDERVALUE, 3, the verb is common enough, the substantive is 

 not now in use. Bacon takes it in the sense of deficiency in worth : 

 &quot; what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts.&quot; 



UNPERFECT, 7 3,= imperfect. 



UNPROPER, 3 3,= improper. 



URE, 124, 141, (if this reading be allowed, instead of use). There 

 are two derivations suggested usura, which is improbable; 

 and ceuvre, as manure from main, ceuvre. The meaning is much 

 the same as that of use. Chaucer, Complaint of the Black Knight, 

 uses it thus: 



&quot; he so piteously gan cry 

 On his fortune and on ure also.&quot; 



i.e. fortune chance, and ure labour, not of chance. So Milton, 

 Paradise Lost, uses the verb inure (or enure] not as derived from 

 ure, but (as above) from ceuvre. 



VASTNESS, 98 (vastitudo), a waste or desert following the deriva 

 tion of the word. (Richardson gives no example of this usage of 

 the term.) 



VENTOSITY, 77, I95,=wmdiness, or lightness, as of air. 



VERDOR, 39, said by Mr. Spedding to be a different word from 

 verdure, but this seems to be very doubtful. 



VERMICULATE, 26. Bacon is drawing a comparison between the 

 corruption of some solid substances into worms, and the tendency 

 of sound knowledge to putrify into idle and unwholesome &quot; and, 

 as I may term them, vermiculate questions; &quot; where the word 

 clearly signifies questions that are corruptions of knowledge, 

 though some notion of entanglement and intricacy may possibly 

 also enter in. 



VOLLIES OF WITS, 2o8, = flights (as of birds] of men of learning and 

 wisdom. This sense is rare, if not peculiar to Bacon. The 

 ordinary meaning of discharges of flying shot is at the bottom of 

 all the passages mentioned by Richardson. 



VOLUBLE, 198, volubility, 165 (volubilis), apt or easy to roll 

 &quot; voluble with the wheels of Fortune.&quot; Volubility is used by 

 Bacon as an epithet of the serpent. Now used chiefly, if not 

 entirely, of speech, and that too in rather a disparaging sense. 



WHIFFLER, 12 5,= piper connected with whiff, a slight breath of 

 wind; also perhaps with waft such a current of air as may be 

 made by the waving of a fan (Richardson). Mr. Markby, very 

 appositely to the passage in Bacon, quotes Shakespere, King 

 Henry V. v. (chorus) 



&quot; The deep-mouthed sea, 

 Which, like a mighty whiffler before the king, 

 Seems to prepare his way. * 



