2o8 BACON 



appointed, but prudently changed. For, as Cicero well re- 

 marks, " Faults, as well as faculties, are generally exercised in 

 exercises" ; whence a bad habit is sometimes acquired and in- 

 sinuated together with a good one. It is therefore safer that 

 exercises should be intermitted, and now and then repeated, 

 than always continued and followed. These things, indeed, may 

 at first sight appear light and trivial, yet they are highly effectual 

 and advantageous. For as the great increase of the Roman 

 empire has been justly attributed to the virtue and prudence of 

 those six rulers, who had, as it were, the tuition of it in its youth, 

 so proper discipline, in tender years, has such a power, though 

 latent and unobserved, as neither time nor future labor can any 

 way subdue in our riper age. It also deserves to be remarked, 

 that even ordinary talents in great men, used on great occa- 

 sions, may sometimes produce remarkable effects. And of this 

 we will give an eminent instance, the rather because the Jesuits 

 judiciously retain the discipline among them. And though the 

 thing itself be disreputable in the profession of it, yet it is excel- 

 lent as a discipline ; we mean the action of the theatre, which 

 strengthens the memory, regulates the tone of the voice and the 

 efiicacy of pronunciation ; gracefully composes the counte- 

 nance and the gesture ; procures a becoming degree of assur- 

 ance ; and lastly, accustoms youth to the eye of men. The ex- 

 ample we borrow from Tacitus, of one Vibulenus, once a player, 

 but afterwards a soldier in the Pannonian army. This fellow, 

 upon the death of Augustus, raised a mutiny ; so that Blesus, 

 the lieutenant, committed some of the mutineers ; but the sol- 

 diers broke open the prison and released them. Upon which, 

 Vibulenus thus harangued the army : " You," says he, " have 

 restored light and life to these poor innocents ; but who gives 

 back life to my brother, or my brother to me? He was sent 

 to you from the German army for a common good, and that 

 man murdered him last night, by the hands of his gladiators, 

 whom he keeps about him to murder the soldiers. Answer, 

 Blesus, where hast thou thrown his corpse ? Even enemies 

 refuse not the right of burial. When I shall, with tears and em- 

 braces, have performed my duty to him, command me also to 

 death ; but let our fellow-soldiers bury us, who are murdered 

 only for our love to the legions/' b With which words, he 

 raised such a storm of consternation and revenge in the army, 

 that unless the thing had presently appeared to be all a fiction, 



