102 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [PAGE 



woman that he had made. At his request Venus endowed the 

 statue with life. To admire a frivolous book is like falling in 

 love with lifeless stone. Cf. ' In all speech, words and sense are 

 as the body and the soul. The sense is as the life and soul of 

 language, without which all words are dead.' Ben Jonson. 

 Page 28, 1. 1. it, i.e., the clothing and adorning, etc. 



1. 3. sensible, striking the senses, plausible, such as attracts 

 the admiration of readers. The literal meaning of the word is 

 to attract or deserve applause : and it is frequently used in this 

 sense by Bacon. 



1. 7. inquisition, cf. p. 5, 1. 29. 



1. 10. period, conclusion. Attractiveness of style must not 

 blind us to the necessity of strict proof. The meaning of the 

 word satisfactory is explained by the following passage from 

 Bacon's Of the Interpretation of Nature, ' In the inquiring of 

 causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as 

 will satisfy the mind of man and quiet objections than such causes 

 as will direct him,' etc. Cf. Bk. 2: 'He that receiveth know 

 ledge, desireth rather present satisfaction, than expectant in 

 quiry ; and so rather not to doubt, than not to err.' if a man 

 be to have, etc., i.e., if a man have occasion to make use of his 

 knowledge. 



1. 11. civil, p. 18, 1. 25. 



1. 16. Adonis, a beautiful youth beloved by Venus. 



1. 17. Hercules, the strong man of Grecian mythology. Hence 

 scholars who shrink from no labour in study are called 'Her 

 cules' followers in learning.' Burke talks of 'a man with an 

 herculean robustness of mind, and nerves not to be broken with 

 labour. ' 



1. 21. distemper of learning, In the Latin translation Bacon 

 adds ' There is also another kind of style a little better than the 

 former, and commonly following it in point of time, which aims 

 at having the words pointed, the sentences concise, and the 

 language rather forced than flowing. By a trick of this kind 

 everything seems more ingenious than it really is. Such a style 

 is found conspicuously in Seneca, and to a less extent in Tacitus 

 and Plinius Secundus, and for some little time it has been pleasing 

 to the ears of our own time. It is true that it is generally pleasing 

 to men of ordinary understanding, so that it brings some dignity 

 to literature : but it is justly despised by more polished judg 

 ments, and may be considered as one of the diseases of learn 

 ing, because it is a kind of hunting after words and their 

 charm.' 



1. 22. The second, Supply ' distemper of learning. ' In order 

 to understand this section the student should bear in mind that 



