3. Of the advantages of exercise; as to dance with heavy shoes, to march with heavy armour and carriage; and the contrary advantage (in natures very dull and unapt) of working alacrity by framing an exercise with some delight and affection; veluti pueris dant crustula blandi Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima. 4. Of the cautions of exercise; as to beware lest by evil doing, as all beginners do weakly, a man grow and be inveterate in an ill habit; and so take not the advantage of custom in perfection, but in confirming ill. Slubbering on the lute. 5. The marshalling and sequel of sciences and practices: Logic and Rhetoric should be used to be read after Poesy, History, and Philosophy. First exercise to do things well and clean; after, promptly and readily. 1 I. The exercises in the universities and schools are of memory and invention; either to speak by heart that which is set down verbatim, or to speak ex tempore; whereas there is little use in action of either of both: but most things which we utter are neither verbally premeditate, nor merely extemporal. Therefore exercise would be framed to take a little breathing; and to consider of heads; and then to form and fit the speech ex tempore. This would be done in two manners, both with writing and tables, and without: for in most actions it is permitted and passable to use the note; whereunto if a man be not accustomed, it will put him out. There is no use of a Narrative Memory in academies, viz. with circumstances of times, persons, and places, and with names; and it is one art to discourse, and another to relate and describe; and herein use and action is most conversant. Also to sum up and contract is a thing in action of very general use. PREFACE. THESE notes were first printed first so far as I know in the Remains (1648): a book of no authority when unsupported by better. No one however who has read Bacon's Essay on Discourse will doubt that they are his; and they contain one or two observations not to be found elsewhere. Mr. Montagu says there is a manuscript of them in the British Museum ; but he gives a wrong reference; and I regret to say that I cannot supply the right one: for though I feel confident that I have seen them in some manuscript. collection, I cannot find it again. In the absence of better authority, I have printed this little piece as I find it in Birch's edition of Bacon's works: who seems to have had some better copy than that in the Remains; though I suspect it to be still far from cor rect. |