'■ THE SECOND BOOK 211 



affairs, when he was a darling of the senate, yet in his 

 harangues to the people would swear, ' Ita parentis 

 honores consequi liceat ' (which was no less than the 

 tyranny), save that, to help it, he would stretch forth 

 his hand towards a statua of Caesar's that was erected 

 in the place : and men laughed, and wondered, and 

 said, Is it possible ? or. Did you ever hear the like ? 

 and yet thought he meant no hurt ; he did it so hand- 

 somely and ingenuously. And all these were prosperous : 

 whereas Pompey, who tended to the same ends, but in 

 a more dark and dissembling manner, as Tacitus saith 

 of him, ' Occultior non melior,' wherein Sallust con- 

 curreth, ' Ore probo, animo inverecundo,' made it his 

 design, by infinite secret engines, to cast the state into 

 an absolute anarchy and confusion, that the state 

 mought cast itself into his arms for necessity and pro- 

 tection, and so the sovereign power be put upon him, 

 and he never seen in it : and when he had brought it 

 {as he thought) to that point, when he was chosen consul 

 alone, as never any was, yet he could make no great 

 matter of it, because men understood him not ; but 

 was fain in the end to go the beaten track of getting 

 arms into his hands, by colour of the doubt of Caesar's 

 designs : so tedious, casual, and unfortunate are these 

 deep dissimulations : whereof it seemeth Tacitus made 

 this judgement, that they were a cunning of an inferior 

 form in regard of true policy ; attributing the one to 

 Augustus, the other to Tiberius ; where, speaking of 

 Livia, he saith, ' Et cum artibus mariti simulatione 

 filii bene composita ' : for surely the continual habit of 

 dissimulation is but a weak and sluggish cunning, and 

 not greatly poUtic. 



37. Another precept of this architecture of fortune 

 is to accustom oxn minds to judge of the proportion or 

 value of things, as they conduce and are material to 

 our particular ends : and that to do substantially, and 

 not superficially. For we shall find the logical part 

 (as I may term it) of some men's minds good, but the 

 mathematical part erroneous ; that is, they can well 

 judge of consequences, but not of proportions and com- 

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