should seek the uncertain warrant of men; or whether it be an instinct instamped in man, to dislike them; it is certain, no man can endure the puffs of a swelling mind. Nay, though the vaunts be true, they do but awaken scoffs; and instead of a clapping hand, they find a check with scorn. When a soldier bragged too much of a great scar in his forehead, he was asked by Augustus, if he did not get it when he looked back, as he fled. Certainly, when I hear a vaunting man, I shall think him like a piece that is charged but with powder, which, near hand, gives a greater report than that which hath a bullet in it. If I have done any thing well, I will never think the world is worth the telling of it. There is nothing added to essential virtue by the hoarse clamor of the blundering rabble. If I have done ill, to boast the contrary, I will think, is like painting an old face, to make it so much more ugly. If it be of any thing past, the world will talk of it though I be silent. If not, it is more noble to neglect fame, than seem to beg it. If it be of aught to come, I am foolish for speaking of that which I am not sure to perform. We disgrace the work of virtue, when we go about any way to seduce voices for her approbation.

OF OPINION.

NoT any earthly pleasure is so essentially full in itself, but that even bare conceit may return it much distasteful. The world is wholly set upon the gad and waving. Mere opin

ion is the genius, and, as it were, the foundation of all temporal happiness. How often do we see men pleased with contraries, as if they parted the fights and frays of nature, every one maintaining the faction which he liketh? One delighteth in mirth and the friskings of an airy soul; another findeth something amiable in the saddest look of melancholy. This man loves the free and open-handed; that, the grasped fist and frugal sparing. I go to the market, and see one buying, another selling; both are exercised in things different, yet either pleased with his own; when I, standing by, think it my happiness that I do neither of these. And in all these, nothing frames content so much as imagination. Opinion is the shop of pleasures, where all human felicities are forged and receive their birth. Nor is their end unlike their beginning; for, as they are begot out of an airy phantasm, so they die in a fume, and disperse into nothing. Even those things, which in them carry a show of reason, and

wherein, if truth be judge, we may discern solidity, are made placid or disgustful, as fond opinion catches them.

Opinion guides all our passions and affections, or, at least, begets them. It makes us love and hate and hope and fear and vary; for every thing we light upon, is as we apprehend it. And though we know it be nothing but an uncertain prejudgment of the mind, misinformed by the outward senses, yet we see it can work wonders. It hath untongued some on the sudden, and from some hath snatched their natural abilities. Like lightnings, it can strike the child in the womb, and kill it ere it is worlded; when the mother shall remain unhurt. It can cast a man into speedy diseases, and can as soon recure him. I have known some, but conceiting they have taken a potion, have found the operation as if they had taken it indeed. If we believe Pliny, it can change the sex, who reports himself to have seen it; and the running Montaigne speaks of such another. Nor is it only thus powerful, when the object of the mind is at home in ourselves, but also when it lights on things abroad and apart. Opinion makes women fair, and men lovely; opinion makes men wise, valiant, rich, nay, any thing. And whatsoever it can do, on one side, to

please and flatter us, it can do the same, on the other side, to molest and grieve us; as if every man had a several seeming truth in his soul, which, if he follows, can for a time render him either happy or miserable. Here lies all the difference; if we light on things but seeming, our felicity fades; if on things certain and eternal, it continues.

It is sure, we should bring all opinions to reason and true judgment, there to receive their doom of admittance or ejection; but even that, by the former, is often seduced, and the grounds that we follow are erroneous and false. I will never, therefore, wonder much at any man, that I see swayed with particular affections to things sublunary. There are not more objects of the mind, than dispositions. Many things I may love, that I can yield no reason for; or, if I do, perhaps opinion makes me coin that for a reason, which another will not assent unto. How vain then are those, that, assuming a liberty to themselves, would yet tie all men to their tenets; conjuring all men to the trace of their steps, when it may be, what is truth to them, is error to another as wise. I like not men that will be gods, and have their judgments absolute. If I have liberty to hold things as my mind informs me, let me never desire to take away the like from anoth

er.

If fair arguments may persuade, I shall with quiet show what grounds do lead me. If those cannot satisfy, I think I may wish any man to satisfy his own conscience; for that, I suppose, will bear him out in the things that it justly approves. Why should any man be violent for that, which is more diverse than the wandering judgments of the hurrying vulgar, more changing than the love of inconstant women, more multifarious than the sports and plays of nature, which are every minute fluctuous, and returning in their new varieties? The best guide that I would choose, is the reason of an honest man, which I take to be a right-informed conscience; and as for books, which many rely on, they shall be to me as discourses but of private men, that must be judged by religion and reason; so not to tie me, unless these and my conscience join in the consent with them.

OF ASSIMILATION.

THROUGH the whole world this holds in general, and is the end of all, that every thing labors to make the thing it meets with like itself. Fire converts all to fire. Air exsiccates