ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 267 



impudent than this, by which a man brazens out his own de- 

 fects, and forces them upon others for excellencies ; and the bet- 

 ter to secure this end, he will feign a distrust of himself in those 

 things wherein he really excels : like poets, who, if you except 

 to any particular verse in their composition, will presently tell 

 you that single line cost them more pains than all the rest ; and 

 then produce you another, as suspected by themselves, for your 

 opinion ; whilst, of all the number, they know it to be the best 

 and least reliable to exception. But above all, nothing con- 

 duces more to the well-representing a man's self, and securing 

 his own right, than not to disarm one's self by too much sweet- 

 ness and good-nature, which exposes a man to injuries and re- 

 proaches; but rather, in all cases, at times, to dart out some 

 sparks of a free and generous mind, that have no less of the 

 sting than the honey. This guarded behavior, attended with a 

 ready disposition to vindicate themselves, some men have from 

 accident and necessity, by means of somewhat inherent in their 

 person or fortune, as we find in the deformed, illegitimate, and 

 disgraced ; who, if they do not want virtue, generally prove for- 

 tunate. 



The expressing or declaring of a man's self is a very different 

 thing from the showing himself, as not relating to virtue, but 

 to the particular actions of life. And here nothing is more 

 politic than to preserve a prudent or sound moderation or me- 

 dium in disclosing or concealing one's mind as to particular ac- 

 tions. For though profound silence, the hiding of counsels, 

 and managing all things by blind and deaf artifice, is a useful 

 and extraordinary thing; yet it often happens that dissimula- 

 tion produces errors which prove snares. And we see that the 

 men of greatest repute for politics, scruple not openly and gen- 

 erously to declare their ends without dissimulation : thus Sylla 

 openly declared, " He wished all mortals happy or unhappy, as 

 they were his friends or enemies.''^ So Caesar, upon his first 

 expedition into Gaul, professed " he had rather be the first man 

 in an obscure village, than the second at Rome.'V And when 

 the war was begun, he proved no dissembler, if Cicero says 

 truly of him, " That he did not refuse, but in a manner required 

 to be called tyrant, as he was."<* So we find, in an epistle of 

 Cicero to Atticus, how little of a dissembler Augustus was, 

 who, at his first entrance upon affairs, whilst he remained the 

 delight of the senate, used to swear in this form when he har- 



