artificially his weaknesses, defects, misfortunes, and disgraces;
dwelling upon the former and turning them to the light, sliding
from the latter or explaining them away by apt interpretations and
the like. Tacitus says of Mucianus, the wisest and most active
politician of his time, 'That he had a certain art of setting
forth to advantage everything he said or did.' And it requires
indeed some art, lest it become wearisome and contemptible; but
yet it is true that ostentation, though carried to the first
degree of vanity, is rather a vice in morals than in policy. For
as it is said of calumny, 'Calumniate boldly, for some of it
will stick,' so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a
ridiculous degree of deformity), 'Boldly sound your own praises,
and some of them will stick.' 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