PREFACE, XXXIX 



The paradoxes contain two of Lord Bacon s ex 

 pressions; the one in the beginning of the 26th 

 Paradox, &quot; He is often tossed and shaken, yet is as 

 Mount Sion : he is a serpent and a dove.&quot;(w) The 

 other in the I Oth Paradox. &quot; He lends and gives 

 most freely, and yet he is the greatest usurer.&quot;(rt) 

 3rd. That although the Paradoxes do not contain any 

 patent internal evidence of their authenticity, yet 

 there is latent evidence from the dissimilarity of the 

 style, as Lord Bacon, knowing how to discover the 



or ornament than Lord Bacon. A plain, unadorned style in 

 aphorisms, in which the Novum Organum is written, is, he inva 

 riably states, the proper style for philosophy. In the midst of 

 his own arrangement, in the Advancement of Learning, he says : 

 &quot; The worst and most absurd sort of triflers are those who have 

 pent the whole art into strict methods and narrow systems 

 which men commonly cry up for the sake of their regularity and 

 style.&quot; Then see Advancement of Learning, vol. ii. p. 203. 



(M) This union of the serpent and the dove is a favourite 

 image of Lord Bacon s. See the Advancement of Learning, 

 vol. ii. p. 237 : &quot; It is not possible to join serpentine wisdom 

 with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the 

 conditions of the serpent ; his baseness and going upon his 

 belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the 

 rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, 

 virtue lieth open and unfenced.&quot; See also vol. i. p. 205, in the 

 Meditationes Sacrse, &quot; of the innocency of the dove, and the 

 wisdom of the serpent.&quot; 



(a) See Apophthegm 148, in vol. i. p. 381, it is as follows : 



** They would say of the duke of Guise, Henry, that had 



sold and oppignerated all his patrimony, to suffice the great 



donatives that he had made ; that he was the greatest usurer of 



France, because all his state was in obligations.&quot; 



