FSSsl Y S CIVIL AND MORAL. 89 



when men are ingenious in picking out circumstances of :ontempt, 

 they do kindle their anger much. Lastly, opinion of the touch of a 

 man s reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger. Wherein the 

 remedy is, that a man should have, as Consalvo was wont to say, 

 &quot; telam honoris crassiorem.&quot; But in all refrainings of anger, it is the 

 best remedy to win time ; and to make a man s self believe, that the 

 opportunity of his revenge is not yet come: but that he foresees a 

 time for it, and so to still himself in the mean time, and reserve it. 



To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, 

 there be two things whereof you must have special caution. The one, 

 of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate and pro 

 per ; for communici male dicta are nothing so much : and again, that 

 in anger a man reveal no secrets ; for that makes them not lit for 

 society. The other, that you do not peremptorily break off, in any 

 business, in a fit of anger : but howsoever you show bitterness, do not 

 act anything that is not revocable. 



For raising and appeasing anger in another ; it is done chiefly by 

 choosing of times. When men are frowardest and worst disposed, to 

 incense them. Again, by gathering, as was touched before, all that 

 you can find out to aggravate the contempt : and the two remedies are 

 by the contraries. The former, to take good times, when first to relate 

 to a man an angry business ; for the first impression is much. And 

 the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury, 

 from the point of contempt : imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, 

 passion, or what you will 



LV1II. OF VICISSITUDE OF THINGS 



Solomon saith, &quot; There is no new thing upon the earth : &quot; so that 

 as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance ; 

 so Solomon giveth his sentence, &quot;that all novelty is but oblivion. 

 Whereby you may see, the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground 

 as below. There is an abstruse astrologer, that saith, if it were not 

 for two things that are constant (the one is, th.it the fixed stars ever 

 stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer 

 together, nor go farther asunder : the other, that the diurnal motion 

 perpetually keepcth time) no individual would last one moment. 

 Certain it is, that the matter is in a continual flux, and never at a stay. 

 The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two : 

 deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations, and great droughts, 

 they do merely dispeople and destroy. Phaeton s car went but a day. 

 And the three years drought in the time of Elias, was particular, 

 and left people alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which 

 are often in the West Indies, they are but narrow. Hut in the other 

 two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is farther to be noted, 

 that the remnant of people which hap to be reserved, are commonly 

 ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the 

 time past : so that the oblivion is all one, as if none had been left. If 

 you consider well of the people of the West Indies, it is very probable 



