32 BACON 



have accepted, which he made between his two chief friends, 

 Hephaestion and Craterus, saying : " That the one loved Alex- 

 ander, and the other the king." Also observe how he rebuked 

 the error ordinary with counsellors of princes, which leads them 

 to give advice according to the necessity of their own interest 

 and fortune, and not of their master's. When Darius had made 

 certain proposals to Alexander, Parmenio said : " I would 

 accept these conditions if I were Alexander." Alexander re- 

 plied : " So surely would I were I Parmenio." Lastly, con- 

 sider his reply to his friends, who asked him what he would 

 reserve for himself, since he lavished so many valuable gifts 

 upon others. " Hope," said Alexander, who well knew that, 

 all accounts being cleared " hope is the true inheritance of all 

 that resolve upon great enterprises." This was Julius Caesar's 

 portion when he went into Gaul, all his estate being exhausted 

 by profuse largess. And it was also the portion of that noble 

 prince, howsoever transported with ambition, Henry, duke of 

 Guise ; for he was pronounced the greatest usurer in all France, 

 because all his wealth was in names, and he had turned his 

 whole estate into obligations. But perhaps the admiration of 

 this prince in the light, not of a great king, but as Aristotle's 

 scholar, has carried me too far. 



As regards Julius Caesar, his learning is not only evinced in 

 his education, company, and speeches, but in a greater degree 

 shines forth in such of his works as have descended to us. In 

 the Commentary, that excellent history which he has left us, of 

 his own wars, succeeding ages have admired the solidity of the 

 matter, the vivid passages and the lively images of actions and 

 persons, expressed in the greatest propriety of diction and 

 perspicuity of narration. That this excellence of style was not 

 the effect of undisciplined talent, but also of learning and pre- 

 cept, is evident from that work of his, entitled " De Analogia,"*' 

 in which he propounds the principles of grammatical philoso- 

 phy, and endeavors to fashion mere conventional forms to con- 

 gruity of expression, taking, as it were, the picture of words 

 from the life of reason. We also perceive another monument 

 of his genius and learning in the reformation of the Calendar, 

 in accomplishing which he is reported to have said that he es- 

 teemed it as great a glory to himself to observe and know the 

 law of the heavens, as to give laws to men upon earth. In his 

 Anti-Cato,> he contended as much for the palm of wit as he 



