but you may stand in need of in one kind, or at some time or another; good words make friends, bad words make enemies: it is the best prudence in the world to make as many friends as honestly you can, especially when it may be done at so easy rate as a good word, and it is the greatest folly that can be, to make an enemy by ill words, which do not at all any good to the party that useth them. SIR MATTHEW HALE. IF there be occasion for you to speak in any company, always be careful, if you speak at all, to speak latest, especially if strangers are in company, for by this means you will have the advantage of knowing the sense, judgment, temper, and relations of others, which may be a great help to you in ordering your speech, and you will better know the inclination of the company, and speak with more advantage and acceptation, and with more security against giving offence. IBID. NEVER use any profane speeches, nor make jests of Scripture expressions: when you use the name of God, or of Christ, or any passages or words of the Holy Scripture, use them with reverence and seriousness, and not lightly, vainly, or scurrilously, for it is a taking of the name of God in vain. G IBID. COUNSEL. Be well advised, and wary counsel make, RANDOLPH. THE greatest trust between man and man, is the trust of giving counsel; for, in other confidences, men commit the parts of life, their lands, their goods, their children, their credit; some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellers, they commit the whole. The wisest princes need not think it any diminution to their greatness, or derogation to their sufficiency, to rely upon counsel. God himself is not without, but hath made it one of the greatest names of his blessed Son, "the Counseller." Solomon hath pronounced, that "in "counsel is stability." Things will have their first or second agitation: if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune, and be full of inconstancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling of a drunken man. LORD BACON. THERE is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth him self, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self, as is the liberty of a friend. LORD BACON. IN advice given to young people, it fares with them, as it doth with young children that are taught to read, or young school-boys that learn their grammar rules; that learn their letters, and then they learn to spell a syllable, and then they learn to put together several syllables to make up a word; or they learn to decline a noun, or to form a verb, and all this while they understand not to what end all this trouble is, nor what it means. But when they come to be able to read English, or to make a piece of Latin, or to construe a Latin author, then they find all these rudiments were very necessary and to good purpose; for by this means they come to understand what others have written, and to know what they knew and wrote, and thereby improve their own knowledge and understanding. Just so it is with young people, in respect of counsel and instruction, when the father, or the minister, or some wise and understanding man, doth sometimes admonish, sometimes chide and reprove, sometimes instruct, they are apt to wonder why so much ado, and what they mean, and it is troublesome and tedious, and seems impertinent, and they are ready to say within themselves, that the time were better spent in riding, or hunting, or merriment, or gaming; but when they come to riper years, then they begin to find that those instructions of the ancients are of excellent use to manage the conversation, and to direct the actions, and to avoid inconveniences, and mischiefs, and miscarriages to which they are subject without the help of these counsels. SIR MATTHEW HALE. DEATH. Take thou no care how to defer thy death, Strive to live well, tread in the upright ways, And rather count thy actions than thy days: Then thou hast liv'd enough amongst us here, For every day well spent I count a year. But he that outlives Nestor, and appears To have past the date of grey Methusalem's years, Of death and judgment, heav'n and hell, RANDOLPH. SIR WALTER RALEON: MEN fear death as children fear to go in the dark, and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin and passage to another world, is holy and religious, but the fear of it, as a tribute due to nature, is weak. It is as natural to die as to be born,* and to a little infant, perhaps the one is as painful as the other. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy. LORD BACON. I HAVE often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils. All that which is past is as a dream, and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking. So much of our life as we have discovered, is already dead; and all those hours which we share, even from the breasts of our mothers, until we return to our grandmother, the earth, are part of our dying days, whereof even this is one, and those that succeed are of the same nature, for we die daily; and, as others have given place to us, so we must in the end give way to others. IBID. I CONFESS that it is a great comfort to our friends, to have it said that we ended well, for we * Death is not dreadful to a mind resolv'd; It seems as natural as to be born. LEE's Lucius Junius Brutus. |