have, as Consalvo was wont to say, 'a thicker ESSAY LVII. covering for his honour.' But in all re- Of Anger.

frainings 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 meantime, 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 proper; for 'ordinary abuse' is nothing so much; and again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets; for that makes him not fit 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

ESSAY LVII. find out to aggravate the contempt: and the Of Anger.

ESSAY LVIII. Of Vicissitude of Things.

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.

Solomon saith, 'there is no new thing upon the earth'; so that as Plato had an imagination that all knowledge was but remembrance, so Solomon giveth his sentence, 'that all novelty is but oblivion'; whereby you may see that 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, that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time, no individual would last one moment': certain it is that the matter is in a perpetual flux and never at a stay. The great winding

sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are ESSAY LVIII. two; deluges and earthquakes. As for con- Of Vicissitude of Things. flagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople, but destroy. Phaeton's car went but a day; and the three years' drought in the time of Elias was but particular, and left people alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which are often in the West Indies, they are but narrow; but in the other two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is further to be noted that the remnant of people which happen 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 that they are a newer or a younger people than the people of the old world; and it is much more likely that the destruction, that hath heretofore been there, was not by earthquakes, as the Egyptian priest told Solon, concerning the island of Atlantis, 'that it was swallowed by an earthquake'; but rather that it was

ESSAY LVIII. desolated by a particular deluge; for earthOf Vicissitude quakes are seldom in those parts. But on of Things. the other side, they have such pouring rivers

as the rivers of Asia, and Africa, and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their Andes, likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us; whereby it seems, that the remnants of generation of men were in such a particular deluge saved. As for the observation that Machiavel hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much extinguish the memory of things; traducing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities; I do not find that those zeals do any great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, who did revive the former antiquities.

The vicissitude, or mutations, in the superior globe are no fit matter for this present argument. It may be, Plato's great year, if the world should last so long, would have some effect, not in renewing the state of like individuals, for that is the fume of those that conceive the celestial bodies have more accurate influences upon these things below,

than indeed they have, but in gross. Comets, ESSAY LVIII. out of question, have likewise power and of Vicissitude of Things. effect over the gross and mass of things; but they are rather gazed and waited upon in their journey, than wisely observed in their effects; specially in their respective effects; that is, what kind of comet for magnitude, colour, version of the beams, placing in the region of heaven, or lasting, produceth what kind of effects.

There is a toy which I have heard, and I would not have it given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries, I know not in what part, that every five and thirty years the same kind and sequence of years and weathers comes about again; as great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like; and they call it the prime; it is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found

some concurrence.

But to leave these points of nature, and to come to men. The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of