But the
literature of aphorism contains one English name of magnificent and
immortal lustre--the name of Francis Bacon. Bacon's essays are the
unique masterpiece in our literature of this oracular wisdom of life,
applied to the scattered occasions of men's existence. The Essays are
known to all the world; but there is another and perhaps a weightier
performance of Bacon's which is less known, or not known at all,
except to students here and there. I mean the second chapter of the
eighth book of his famous treatise, _De Augmentis_. It has been
translated into pithy English, and is to be found in the fifth volume
of the great edition of Bacon, by Spedding and Ellis.

In this chapter, among other things, he composes comments on between
thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of
Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of
a theological character, "not a few excellent civil precepts and
cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending
to much variety of occasions." I know not where else to find more of
the salt of common sense in an uncommon degree than in Bacon's terse
comments on the Wise King's terse sentences, and in the keen,
sagacious, shrewd wisdom of the world, lighted up by such brilliance
of wit and affluence of illustration, in the pages that come after
them.

This sort of wisdom was in the taste of the time; witness Ralegh's
_Instructions to his Son_, and that curious collection "of political
and polemical aphorisms grounded on authority and experience,"
which he called by the name of the _Cabinet Council_. Harrington's
_Political Aphorisms_, which came a generation later, are not moral
sentences; they are a string of propositions in political theory,
breathing a noble spirit of liberty, though too abstract for practical
guidance through the troubles of the day. But Bacon's admonitions
have a depth and copiousness that are all his own. He says that the
knowledge of advancement in life, though abundantly practised, had
not been sufficiently handled in books, and so he here lays down
the precepts for what he calls the _Architecture of Fortune_. They
constitute the description of a man who is politic for his own
fortune, and show how he may best shape a character that will attain
the ends of fortune.

_First_, A man should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and
value of all things as they conduce to his fortune and ends.

_Second_, Not t