name of magnificent and immortal lustre—­the name of Francis Bacon.  Bacon’s essays are the unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life, applied to the scattered occasions of men’s existence.  The Essays are known to all the world; but there is another and perhaps a weightier performance of Bacon’s which is less known, or not known at all, except to students here and there.  I mean the second chapter of the eighth book of his famous treatise, De Augmentis.  It has been translated into pithy English, and is to be found in the fifth volume of the great edition of Bacon, by Spedding and Ellis.

In this chapter, among other things, he composes comments on between thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of a theological character, “not a few excellent civil precepts and cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending to much variety of occasions.”  I know not where else to find more of the salt of common sense in an uncommon degree than in Bacon’s terse comments on the Wise King’s terse sentences, and in the keen, sagacious, shrewd wisdom of the world, lighted up by such brilliance of wit and affluence of illustration, in the pages that come after them.

This sort of wisdom was in the taste of the time; witness Ralegh’s Instructions to his Son, and that curious collection “of political and polemical aphorisms grounded on authority and experience,” which he called by the name of the Cabinet Council.  Harrington’s Political Aphorisms, which came a generation later, are not moral sentences; they are a string of propositions in political theory, breathing a noble spirit of liberty, though too abstract for practical guidance through the troubles of the day.  But Bacon’s admonitions have a depth and copiousness that are all his own.  He says that the knowledge of advancement in life, though abundantly practised, had not been sufficiently handled in books, and so he here lays down the precepts for what he calls the Architecture of Fortune.  They constitute the description of a man who is politic for his own fortune, and show how he may best shape a character that will attain the ends of fortune.

First, A man should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and value of all things as they conduce to his fortune and ends.

Second, Not to undertake things beyond his strength, nor to row against the stream.

Third, Not to wait for occasions always, but sometimes to challenge and induce them, according to that saying of Demosthenes:  “In the same manner as it is a received principle that the general should lead the army, so should wise men lead affairs,” causing things to be done which they think good, and not themselves waiting upon events.

Fourth, Not to take up anything which of necessity forestalls a great quantity of time, but to have this sound ever ringing in our ears:  “Time is flying—­time that can never be retrieved.”