172 THE ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. 



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, &quot; That that 

 line cost them more labour than any of the rest;&quot; and pre 

 sently 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 dis 

 mantled and exposed to scorn and injury, by too much dulce- 

 ness, goodness, and facility of nature ; but show some sparkles 

 of liberty, spirit, and edge. Which kind of fortified carriage, 

 with a ready rescussing of a man s self from scorns, is some 

 times of necessity imposed upon men by somewhat in their 

 person or fortune; but it ever succeedeth with good 

 felicity. 



(33) 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 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. 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 vicious and enwrapped, 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 temporising still, according to his 

 old bias, when the nature of the war was altered and required 

 hot pursuit. In some other it is want of point and penetra 

 tion in their judgment, that they do not discern when things 

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

 Demosthenes 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. In some other it is a lothness to lose labours passed, 

 and a conceit that they can bring about occasions to their 

 ply ; and yet in the end, when they see no other remedy, then 

 they come to it with disadvantage ; as Tarquinius, that gave 

 for the third part of Sibylla s books the treble price, when he 

 might at first have had all three for the simple. But from 

 whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceedeth, 

 it is a thing most prejudicial ; and nothing is more politic than 



