to set it even. The first, that simulation and dissimulation commonly carry with them a shew of fearfulness, which in any business doth spoil the feathers of round[1] flying up to the mark. The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits[2] of many, that perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him; and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends. The third and greatest, is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action; which is trust and belief. The best composition and temperature[3] is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.
VII. Of Parents and Children.
The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor
- ↑ Round. Direct.
- ↑ Conceit. Conception, idea, thought, notion.
"Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That from her working all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit?"
Shakspere. Hamlet. ii. 2.
- ↑ Temperature. Temperament, constitution. Bacon uses the word 'temperature,' as also 'temper,' in the essay Of Empire, in the old physiological sense. A person's 'temperature' or 'temperament' was his 'mixture,' or, to put the idea in another way, his 'complexion' was his 'combination,' that is, of the four liquids or humors.
