It will stick with the more ignorant and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a few....  And surely no small number of those who are of a solid nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and lose dignity by their moderation.”

Nobody need go to such writings as these for moral dignity or moral energy.  They have no place in that nobler literature, from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius downwards, which lights up the young soul with generous aims, and fires it with the love of all excellence.  Yet the most heroic cannot do without a dose of circumspection.  The counsels of old Polonius to Laertes are less sublime than Hamlet’s soliloquy, but they have their place.  Bacon’s chapters are a manual of circumspection, whether we choose to give to circumspection a high or a low rank in the list of virtues.  Bacon knew of the famous city which had three gates, and on the first the horseman read inscribed, “Be bold”; and on the second gate yet again, “Be bold, and evermore be bold”; and on the third it was written, “Be not too bold.”

This cautious tone had been brought about by the circumstances of the time.  Government was strict; dissent from current opinions was dangerous; there was no indifference and hardly any tolerance; authority was suspicious and it was vindictive.  When the splendid genius of Burke rose like a new sun into the sky, the times were happier, and nowhere in our literature does a noble prudence wear statelier robes than in the majestic compositions of Burke.

Those who are curious to follow the literature of aphorism into Germany, will, with the mighty exceptions of Goethe and Schiller, find but a parched and scanty harvest.  The Germans too often justify the unfriendly definition of an aphorism as a form of speech, that wraps up something quite plain in words that turn it into something very obscure.  As old Fuller says, the writers have a hair hanging to the nib of their pen.  Their shortness does not prevent them from being tiresome.  They recall the French wit to whom a friend showed a distich:  “Excellent,” he said; “but isn’t it rather spun out?”

Lichtenberg, a professor of physics, who was also a considerable hand at satire a hundred years ago, composed a collection of sayings, not without some wheat amid much chaff.  A later German writer, of whom I will speak in a moment or two, Schopenhauer, has some excellent remarks on Self-reflection, and on the difference between those who think for themselves and those who think for other people; between genuine Philosophers, who look at things first hand for their own sake, and Sophists, who look at words and books for the sake of making an appearance before the world, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get from others:  he takes Herder for an example of the Sophist, and Lichtenberg for the true Philosopher.  It is true that we hear the voice of the Self-thinker, and not the mere Book-philosopher, if we may use for once those uncouth compounds, in such sayings as these:—­