28 ADVAKCEMENT OF LT:A11NING. (BOOK L 



body. In no person so much as yonr Majesty does tliis 

 opinid appear more fully confirmed, your soul being apt to 

 kindle at the intrusion of the slightest object; and even at 

 the spark of a thought foreign to the purpose to burst into 

 flame. As the Scripture says of the wisest king, " That hisi 

 heart was as the sands of the sea,"*' which, though one of 

 the largest bodies, contains the finest and smallest particles 

 of matter. In like manner God has endowed your Majesty 

 with a mind capable of grasping the largest subjects and 

 comprehending the least, though such an instrument seems 

 an impossibility in nature. As regards yonr readiness of 

 speech, I am reminded of that saying of Tacitus concerning 

 Augustus Csesar, " Augusto profluensut quae principem virum 

 deceret, eloquentia fuit."^ For all eloquence which is affected 

 or overlaboured, or merely imitative, though otherwise ex- 

 cellent, carries with it an air of servirity, nor is it free to 

 follow its own impulses. But your Majesty's elocpience is 

 indeed royal, streaming and branching out in nature's fashion 

 as from a fountain, copious and elegant, original and inimit- 

 able. And as in those things which concern your crown and 

 family, virtue seems to contend with fortune — your Majesty 

 being possessed of a virtuous disposition and a prosperous 

 government, a vu^tuous observance of the duties of the con- 

 jugal state with most blessed and happy fruit of marriage, a 

 virtuous and most Christian desire of peace at a time when 

 contemporary princes seem no less inclined to harmony, — so 

 likewise in intellectual gifts there appears as great a con- 

 tention between your Majesty's natural talents and the 

 universality and perfection of your learning. Nor indeed 

 would it be easy to find any monarch since the Christian 

 era who could bear any comparison with your Majesty in 

 the variety and depth of your erudition. Let any one run 

 over the whole line of kin^fs, and he will agree with me. It 

 indeed seems a great thing in a monarch, if he can find 

 time to digest a compendium or imbibe the simple elements 

 of science, or love and countenance learning; but that a 

 king, and he a king born, should have drunk at the true 

 fountain of knowledge, yea, rather, should have a fountain of 



« 3 Kings iv. 29. We may observe that Bacon invariably quotef 

 from the Vulgate, to which our references point. 

 * Tacitus, Annales, xiii. 8. 



