f sheer sincerity.
Here, too, is an admirable short tractate on Style which exemplifies what
it preaches; and a large number of other excellent things. Some, it is
true, are set down in a shorthand fashion as if (which doubtless they were)
they were commonplace-book notes for working up in due season. But others
and perhaps the majority (they all Baconian-wise have Latin titles, though
only one or two have the text in Latin) are written with complete attention
to literary presentment; seldom though sometimes relapsing into loose
construction of sentences and paragraphs, the besetting sin of the day, and
often presenting, as in the following, a model of sententious but not dry
form:--

"We should not protect our sloth with the patronage of
difficulty. It is a false quarrel against nature that she helps
understanding but in a few, when the most part of mankind are
inclined by her thither, if they would take the pains; no less
than birds to fly, horses to run, etc., which if they lose it is
through their own sluggishness, and by that means become her
prodigies, not her children. I confess nature in children is more
patient of labour in study than in age; for the sense of the
pain, the judgment of the labour is absent, they do not measure
what they have done. And it is the thought and consideration that
affects us more than the weariness itself. Plato was not content
with the learning that Athens could give him, but sailed into
Italy, for Pythagoras' knowledge: and yet not thinking himself
sufficiently informed, went into Egypt, to the priests, and
learned their mysteries. He laboured, so must we. Many things may
be learned together and performed in one point of time; as
musicians exercise their memory, their voice, their fingers, and
sometimes their head and feet at once. And so a preacher, in the
invention of matter, election of words, composition of gesture,
look, pronunciation, motion, useth all these faculties at once:
and if we can express this variety together, why should not
divers studies, at divers hours, delight, when the variety is
able alone to refresh and repair us? As when a man is weary of
writing, to read; and then again of reading, to write. Wherein,
howsoever we do many things, yet are we (in a sort) still fresh
to what we begin; we are recreated with change as the stomach is