, such a power of
money! But money is mere dross. I should always hold it so, if it
possessed not two qualities: that of making men treat us reverently,
and that of enabling us to help the needy.

_Hooker._ The respect, I think, of those who respect us for what a
fool can give and a rogue can take away, may easily be dispensed with;
but it is indeed a high prerogative to help the needy; and when it
pleases the Almighty to deprive us of it, let us believe that He
foreknoweth our inclination to negligence in the charge entrusted to
us, and that in His mercy He hath removed from us a most fearful
responsibility.

_Bacon._ I know a number of poor gentlemen to whom I could have
rendered aid.

_Hooker._ Have you examined and sifted their worthiness?

_Bacon._ Well and deeply.

_Hooker._ Then must you have known them long before your adversity,
and while the means of succouring them were in your hands.

_Bacon._ You have circumvented and entrapped me, Master Hooker. Faith!
I am mortified: you the schoolman, I the schoolboy!

_Hooker._ Say not so, my lord. Your years, indeed, are fewer than
mine, by seven or thereabout; but your knowledge is far higher, your
experience richer. Our wits are not always in blossom upon us. When
the roses are overcharged and languid, up springs a spike of rue.
Mortified on such an occasion? God forfend it! But again to the
business. I should never be over-penitent for my neglect of needy
gentlemen who have neglected themselves much worse. They have chosen
their profession with its chances and contingencies. If they had
protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their
studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning
and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look
upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell,
scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and
without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit to use.

_Bacon._ Methinks it beginneth to rain, Master Richard. What if we
comfort our bodies with a small cup of wine, against the ill-temper of
the air. Wherefore, in God's name, are you affrightened?

_Hooker._ Not so, my lord; not so.

_Bacon._ What then affects you?

_Hooker._ Why, indeed, since your lordship interrogates me--I looked,
idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I saw, unless the
haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the
worse for last