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.

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.

SHORT NOTES

FOR

CIVIL CONVERSATION.

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 correct.