XXXV111 LIFi: OF BACON. 



antithesis and false glitter to which truth and justness of 

 thought is frequently sacrificed by the writers of maxims. 



Another edition, with a translation of the Meditationes 

 Sacrse, was published in the next year; and a third in 

 1612, when he was solicitor-general; and a fourth in 1625, 

 the year before his death. 



The Essays in the subsequent editions are much aug 

 mented, according to his own words : &quot; I always alter when 

 I add, so that nothing is finished till all is finished,&quot; and 

 they are adorned by happy and familiar illustration, as in 

 the essay of &quot; Wisdom for a Man s self,&quot; which concludes 

 in the edition of 1625 with the following extract, not to be 

 found in the previous edition : &quot; Wisdom for a man s self 

 is in many branches thereof a depraved thing. It is the 

 wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat 

 before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts 

 out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is 

 the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would 

 devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that 

 those which, as Cicero says of Pompey, are sui amantes 

 sine rivali, are many times unfortunate. And whereas they 

 have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become 

 in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of for 

 tune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to 

 have pinioned.&quot; 



So in the essay upon Adversity, on which he had deeply 

 reflected, before the edition of 1625, when it first appeared, 

 he says : &quot; The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the 



f Some bookes are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 

 to be chewed and digested. That is, some bookes are to be read only in 

 partes ; others to be read but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly 

 and with diligence and attention. 



If Histories make men wise, poets wittie, the mathematicks subtle, 

 natural philosophic deepe, moral, grave; logicke and rhetoricke able to 

 contend. 



