Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

Wnen such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook, Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture
took :

The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each
heavenly close.

Nature, that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region
thrilling,

Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last
fulfilling ;

She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heav'n and earth in happier

union.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed;

The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

And let the base of heav'n's deep

organ blow;

And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full consort to th' angelic
symphony.

For, if such holy song
Inwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age
of gold,

And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;

And hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the
peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,

Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories
wearing,

Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds
down steering:

And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high
palace hall.

But wisest Fate says No,

This must not yet be so,

The babe yet lies, in smiling infancy,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings That on the bitter cross

display'd,

Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes to heaven's

new-born Heir.

Such music (as 'tis said)

Before was never made,

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify;

Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder
through the deep;

With such a horrid clang

But when of old the sons of morning As on Mount Sinai rang,

sung,

While the Creator great

His constellations set,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out brake:

The aged earth, aghast

And the well-balanced world on hinges With terror of that blast,

Runs thro' the arched roof in words Nor is Osiris seen

A voice of weeping heard and loud He feels from Juda's land

The parting genius is with sighing Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

The Lars and Lemures moan with So when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale

Affrights the Flamens at their service Troop to th' infernal jail,

351.-ERRORS OF LEARNING.

LORD BACON. THERE be chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem vain, which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth, or no use; and those persons we esteem vain, which are either credulous or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words : so that in reason, as well as in experience, there fall out to be these three distempers, as I may term them, of learning; the first, fantastical learning; the second, contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations.

Thus have I gone over these three diseases of learning; besides the which, there are some other, rather peccant humours than formed diseases; which, nevertheless, are not so secret and intrinsic, but that they fall under a popular observation and traducement, and, therefore, are not to be passed over.

The first of these is the extreme affecting of two extremities; the one antiquity, the other novelty; wherein it seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and malice of the father. For as he devoureth his children, so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress the other; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to add but it must deface: surely, the advice of the prophet is the true direction in this matter, "State super vias antiquas, et videte quænam sit via recta et bona, et ambulate in ea.' Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, Antiquitas cæculi juventus mundi." + These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient "ordine retrogrado," by a computation backward from ourselves.

66

Another error, induced by the former, is a distrust that any thing should be now to be found out, which the world should have missed and passed over so long time; as if the same objection were to be made to time that Lucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen gods; of which he wondereth that they begot so many children in old time, and begot none in his time; and asketh whether they were become septuagenary, or whether the law Papia, made against old men's marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt lest time is become past children and generation; wherein, contrariwise, we see commonly the levity and inconstancy of men's judgments, which, till a matter be done, wonder that it can be done; and, as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done : as we see in the expedition of Alexander into Asia, which, at first, was prejudged as a vast and impossible enterprise: and yet, afterwards, it pleaseth Livy to make

* Stand fast in the old ways, and see what is righteous and good, and walk therein. + Antiquity of time is the childhood of the world.

In a retrograde order.

4TH QUARTER.

N

no more of it than this; "Nil aliud quàm bene ausus vana contemnere :"* and the same happened to Columbus in the western navigation. But in intellectual matters it is much more common; as may be seen in most of the propositions of Euclid which, till they be demonstrate, they seem strange to our assent; but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak), as if we had known them before.

Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, is a conceit that of former opinions or sects, after variety and examination, the best hath still prevailed, and suppressed the rest; so as, if a man should begin the labour of a new search, he were but like to light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by rejection brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest for the multitude's sake, were not ready to give passage rather to that which is popular and superficial, than to that which is substantial and profound; for the truth is, that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and solid.

Another error, of a diverse nature from all the former, is the over early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods; from which time commonly sciences receive small or no augmentation. But as young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further stature; so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth: but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be further polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance. Another error which doth succeed that which we last mentioned, is, that after the distribution of particular arts and sciences, men have abandoned universality, or "philosophia prima :"+ which cannot but cease and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery can be made upon a flat or a level: neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.

Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence and a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means whereof, men have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature, and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and conceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are, notwithstanding, commonly taken for the most sublime and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying, "Men sought truth in their own little worlds, and not in the great and common world ;” for they disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read, in the volume of God's works: and contrariwise, by continual meditation, and agitation of wit, do urge and, as it were, invocate their own spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, whereby they are deservedly deluded.

Another error that hath some connection with this latter, is, that men have used to infect their meditations, opinions, and doctrines, with some conceits which they have most admired, or some sciences which they have most applied; and giving all things else a tincture according to them, utterly untrue and improper. So hath Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with logic; and the second school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics. For these were the arts which had a kind of primogeniture with them severally. So have the alchemists made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace; and Gilbertus, our countryman, hath made a philosophy out of the observations of a loadstone. So Cicero, when, reciting the several opinions of the nature of the soul, *He did nothing more than persevere in his noble and well-conceived enterprise, despite of idle remonstrances.

+ Elementary philosophy.

he found a musician that held the soul was but a harmony, saith pleasantly, "Hic ab arte sua non recessit,"* &c. But of these conceits Aristotle speaketh seriously and wisely, when he saith, "Qui respiciunt ad pauca de facili pronunciant.”+

Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion, without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after awhile fair and even so it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but, if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Another error is in the manner of the tradition and delivery of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not ingenuous and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest believed, and not easiliest examined. It is true that, in compendious treatises for practice that form is not to be disallowed; but, in the true handling of knowledge, men ought not to fall, either, on the one side, into the vein of Velleius the Epicurean: "Nil tam metuens, quàm ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur :"‡ nor, on the other side, into Socrates' ironical doubting of all things; but to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as they stand in a man's own judgment proved more or less.

Other errors there are in the scope that men propound to themselves, whereunto they bend their endeavours; for whereas the more constant and devoted kind of professors of any science ought to propound to themselves to make some additions to their science, they convert their labours to aspire to certain second prizes: as to be a profound interpreter or commentor, to be a sharp champion or defender, to be a methodical compounder or abridger, and so the patrimony of knowledge cometh to be sometimes improved, but seldom augmented.

But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge; for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity, and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch, whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate. But this is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straightly conjoined and united together than they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civi society and action: howbeit I do not mean, when I speak of use and action, that end before mentioned of the applying of knowledge to lucre and profession; for I am not ignorant how much that diverteth and interrupteth the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take up, the race is hindered;

"Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit." §

Neither is my meaning, as was spoken of Socrates, to call philosophy down from *He did not step out of his profession.

+ Those who attend to few matters can easily give an opinion.

Fearing nothing so much as lest he should seem to doubt of any thing,

§ Turns from the course, to grasp the rolling gold.