NOTJi XOV. 



persons of quality : above all, Sir George Jeffries, newly made Lord Chief 

 Justice of England, with Mr. Justice \\ithings, danced with the bride, and 

 were exceeding merry. These great men spent the rest of the afternoon, till 

 eleven at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath 

 the gravity of judges, that had but a day or two before condemed Mr. Algernon 

 Sidney.&quot; 



Mr. C. Butler, in his Essay on the Life of Chancellor de 1 Hopital, says, 

 &quot; When a magistrate, after the sittings of the court, returned to his family, he 

 had little temptation to stir again from home. His library was necessarily his 

 sole resource ; his books, his only company. Speaking generally, he had 

 studied hard at college, and had acquired there a taste for literature, which 

 never forsook him. To this austere and retired life, we owe the Chancellor de 

 1 Hopital, the President de Thou, Pasquier, Loisel, the Pithous, and many 

 other ornaments of the magistracy. These days are passed.&quot; 



Of loss of time by useless inquiry. 



As the inclination to affection is imprinted deeply in our nature, insomuch 

 that, if it issue not towards our fellow creatures, it will fix upon other creatures ; 

 so the love of truth, if it be not rightly directed, will waste itself in idle inquiry. 

 Inquiry cannot, strictly speaking, ever be said to be wholly useless: for it is, 

 indeed, some consolation to reflect that, however we may err and stray in the 

 pursuit of knowledge, our labours are seldom, if ever, wholly lost. Some 

 wheat will spring up amidst the tares. The waters of science cannot be 

 troubled without exerting their virtue. 



Bacon, in his Novum Organum, when speaking of instances of power, says, 

 &quot; Neither are superstitions, and those commonly called magical matters, to be 

 quite excluded : for, although things of this kind lie strangely buried, and deep 

 involved in falsehood and fable ; yet some regard should be had to discover 

 whether no natural operation is concealed in the heap ; for example : in fasci 

 nation 1. The power of imagination. 2. The sympathy or consent of distant 

 things. 3. The communication of impressions, from spirit to spirit, as well as 

 from body to body,&quot; &c. 



The pursuit of alchemy is at an end. Yet surely to alchemy this right is 

 due, that it may truly be compared to the husbandman, whereof /Esop makes 

 the fable, that, when he died, told his sons he had. left unto them a great mass 

 of gold buried under ground in his vineyard, but did not remember the particular 

 piace where it was hidden ; who, when they had with spades turned up all the 

 vineyard, gold indeed they found none, but by reason of their stirring and 

 digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the 

 year following : so the painful search and stir of alchemists to make gold hath 

 brought to light a great number of good and fruitful experiments, as well for 

 the disclosing of nature, as the use of man s life. 



fl. Avoiding idle curiosity. 

 The modes of preventing useless J 2. Knowledge of existing inventions. 



inquiry are by | 3. Contracting the inquiry within narrow 



^ limits. 



Idle curiosity. 



We spend our days in unprofitable questions and disputations, intricate 

 subtleties, de lana cuprinu, about moonshine in the water. 



Truths, that the learn d pursue with eager thought, 

 Are not important always as dear bought, 

 Proving at last, though told in pompous strains, 

 A childish waste of philosophic pains ; 

 But truths, on which depends our main concern, 

 That tis our shame and misery not to learn, 

 Shine by the side of every path we tread, 

 With such a lustre, he that runs may read. 



