208 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 

 for some other purpose. For of the one it is well said, 

 Saepe latet vitium proximitate boni, 



and therefore whatsoever want a man hath, he must 

 see that he pretend the virtue that shadoweth it ; as 

 if he be dull, he must affect gravity ; if a coward, mild 

 ness ; and so the rest. For the second, a man must 

 frame some probable cause why he should not do his 

 best, and why he should dissemble his abilities ; and 

 for that purpose must use to dissemble those abilities 

 which are notorious in him, to give colour that his true 

 wants are but industries and dissimulations. For con 

 fidence, it is the last but the surest remedy ; namely, 

 to depress and seem to despise whatsoever a man cannot 

 attain ; observing the good principle of the mer 

 chants, who endeavour to raise the price of their own 

 commodities, and to beat down the price of others. 

 But there is a confidence that passeth this other ; which 

 is to face out a man s own defects, in seeming to con 

 ceive that he is best in those things wherein he is failing ; 

 and, to help that again, to seem on the other side that 

 he hath 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, That that line cost them more labour 

 than any of the rest ; and presently 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 dismantled and exposed to scorn and injury, 

 by too much dulceness, 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 sometimes 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 endea four to frame the mind to be pliant and 



