364 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



commonly in poets, that if they shew their verses, and you 

 except to any, they will say that that line cost them more 

 labour than any of the rest ; and presently will seem to 

 disable and suspect rather some other line, which they know 

 well enough to be the best in the number. But above all, 

 in this righting and helping of a man's self in his own 

 carriage, he must take heed he shew not himself dismantled 

 and exposed to scorn and injury, by too much dulceness, 

 goodness, and facility of nature, but shew some sparkles of 

 liberty, spirit, and edge : which kind of fortified carriage, 

 with a ready rescuing of a man's self from scorns, is some- 

 times of necessity imposed upon men by somewhat in their 

 person or fortune ; but it ever succeedeth with good 

 felicity. 



Another precept of this knowledge is, by all possible 

 endeavour to frame the mind to be pliant and obedient 

 to occasion ; for nothing hindereth men's fortunes so much 

 as this Idem manebat neque idem decebat^ men are where 

 they were, when occasions turn : and therefore to Cato, 

 whom Livy maketh such an architect of fortune, he addeth 

 that he had versatile ingenium. And thereof it cometh 

 that these grave solemn wits, which must be like them- 

 selves and cannot make departures, have more dignity 

 than felicity. But in some it is nature to be somewhat 

 viscous and inwrapped, and not easy to turn. In some 

 it is a conceit that is almost a nature, which is, that men 

 can hardly make themselves believe that they ought to 

 change their course, when they have found good by it 

 in former experience. For Machiavel noteth wisely, how 

 Fabius Maximus would have been temporizing still, accord- 

 ing to his old bias, when the nature of the war was altered 

 and required hot pursuit. In some other it is want of 

 point and penetration in their judgment, that they do not 

 discern when things have a period, but come in too late 

 after the occasion ; as Demosthenes compareth the people 

 of Athens to country fellows when they play in a fence 

 school, that if they have a blow, then they remove their 

 weapon to that ward, and not before. In some other it is 

 a lothness to leese labours passed, and a conceit that they 



