io BACON'S ESSAYS 



seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making 

 the party repent. But base and crafty cowards are like the 

 arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, 

 had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting 

 friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable ; c You shall 

 read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our 

 enemies ; but you never read that we are commanded to 

 forgive our friends/ But yet the spirit of Job was in a 

 better tune : ' Shall we (saith he) take good at God's 

 hands, and not be content to take evil also ? ' And so of 

 friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that 

 studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which other- 

 wise would heal and do well. Public revenges are for the 

 most part fortunate ; as that for the death of Caesar ; for 

 the death of Pertinax ; for the death of Henry the Third 

 of France; and many more. But in private revenges it 

 is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life 

 of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they 

 infortunate. 



OF ADVERSITY 



IT was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the 

 Stoics), 'that the good things which belong to prosperity 

 are to be wished ; but the good things that belong to 

 adversity are to be admired/ Eona rerum secundarum 

 optabilia ; adversarum mirabilia. Certainly if miracles be 

 the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. 

 It is yet a higher speech of his than the other (much too 

 high for a heathen), c It is true greatness to have in one 

 the frailty of a man, and the security of a God/ Vere 

 magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei. This 

 would have done better in poesy, where transcendences 

 are more allowed. And the poets indeed have been busy 

 v/ith it ; for it is in effect the thing which is figured in that 

 strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be 

 without mystery ; nay, and to have some approach to the 



