made straight, thus made acquainted with his own imperfections that he
may be perfect. Supposing this to be the time of your affliction, that
which I have propounded to myself is, by taking the seasonable
advantage, like a true friend (though far unworthy to be counted so)
to show your shape in a glass.... Yet of this resolve yourself, it
proceedeth from love and a true desire to do you good, that you,
knowing what the general opinion is may not altogether neglect or
contemn it, but mend what you may find amiss in yourself.... First,
therefore, behold your Errors: In discourse you delight to speak too
much.... Your affections are entangled with a love of your own
arguments, though they be the weaker.... Secondly, you cloy your
auditory: when you would be observed, speech must either be sweet, or
short. Thirdly, you converse with Books, not Men ... who are the best
Books. For a man of action & employment you seldom converse, & then
but with underlings; not freely but as a schoolmaster with his
scholars, ever to teach, never to learn.... You should know many of
these tales you tell to be but ordinary, & many other things, which
you repeat, & serve in for novelties to be but stale.... Your too much
love of the world is too much seen, when having the living" [income]
"of £10,000, you relieve few or none: the hand that hath taken so
much, can it give so little? Herein you show no bowels of
compassion.... We desire you to amend this & let your poor Tenants in
Norfolk find some comfort, where nothing of your Estate is spent
towards their relief, but all brought up hither, to the impoverishing
of your country.... When we will not mind ourselves, God (if we belong
to him) takes us in hand, & because he seeth that we have unbridled
stomachs, therefore he sends outward crosses." And Bacon ends by
commending poor Coke "to God's Holy Spirit ... beseeching Him to send
you a good issue out of all these troubles, & from henceforth to work
a reformation in all that is amiss, & a resolute perseverance,