A good sherries sack has a twofold operation in it. It ascends me in the brain; dries me all the foolish and dull crudy vapours .. makes it apprehensive, quick, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes. . . . Skill is nothing . . . without sack... and learning is a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till wine sets it on. (Hen. IV. iv. 3.)

...

(See All's Well, ii. 5, 25. See No. 582.)

778. To knytt a rope of sand. (¿§ äμμov oxowíov TNÉKEIV.-Columella, 10 praef. § 4 fin.)

Resolution like a twist of rotten silk. (Cor. v. 6.)

His speech was like a tangled chain,

Nothing impaired, but all disordered. (M. N. D. v. 1.)
(Compare No. 1162.)

779. Pedum visa est via.-Eras. Ad. 742. (A way for the feet has been seen: when a thing has been tried and seems feasible.)

Thou show'st the naked pathway to thy life. (R. II. i. 3.)

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will.

(Rom. Jul. i. 2.

and I have found the

(A fit, a panic.)

The power (Pan) had of striking terrors contains a very sensible doctrine . . all things, if we could see their insides, would appear full of panic terrors. (Wisd. Ant. Pan.)

(Compare with the Essay on Pan or Nature, Jul. Cæs. i. 3, 1-80.) It may be these apparent prodigies,

The unaccustomed terrors of this night.

May hold him from the Capitol to-day. (Jul. Cæs. ii. 1.)

781. Penelopes webb. (Penelopes telam retexere.--Eras. Ad. 156.)

You would be another Penclope; yet they say all the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca with moths.

(Cor. i. 3.)

782. To strive for an asses shade (De asini umbra, Eras. Ad. 116; Sophocles); i.e. for what is worthless,

These are the youths that . . . fight for bitten apples.

(Compare the following to No. 788.)

783. Σκιαμαχειν.—Eras. Ad. 964. shadows.)

He will fence with his owu shadow.
Course his own shadow for a traitor.
To fustian with one's own shadow.

(Hen. V. v. 3.)

(To fight with

(Mer. Ven. i. 2.)

(Lear, iii. 2.)

(Oth. ii. 3.)

784. Laborem serere.-Eras. Ad. 618. (To sow labour ; but reap nothing from it.)

Sowed cockle reaped no corn. (L. L. L. iv. 2.)

I

reap

the harvest which that rascal sowed. (1 Hen. VI. iv. 1.) In soothing them, we nourished against our state the cockle rebellion, which we have ploughed for, sowed, and scattered.

(Cor. iii. 1.)

785. Hylam inclamas.-Eras. Ad. 151. (In vain thou callest for Hylas.)

786. Oεoμaxεiv.-Eras. Ad. 819. (To fight against God.) God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute,

His deputy anointed in his sight,

Hath caused his death; the which, if wrongfully,

Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift

An angry arm against his minister. (R. II. i. 2.)

I come . . . . to prove him a traitor to my God ..
And as I truly fight, defend me heaven.

(Ib. i. 3, and see 1. 39.)

787. To plowe the wynds. (Ventos colis.-Eras. Ad. 149.) Of those who use fruitless labour.)

Thou losest labour:

As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress. (Mach. v. 7.)

Slander may hit the woundless air. (Ham. iv. 1.)

You fools! I and my fellows

Are ministers of fate: the elements,

Of whom your swords are tempered, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemocked stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

One dowle that 's in my plume. (Temp. iii. 3.)
Where's the king?

Contending with the fretful element? (Lear, iii. 1.)
Thou plough'st the foam. (Tim. Ath. iv. 1.)

788. Actum agere.-Eras. Ad. 151. (Derived from the law-courts, where a cause that had been pleaded and settled could not be reopened.)

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent.

(See the whole Sonnet lxxvi.)

K. John. Here once again we sit, once again crown'd. Pem. This 'once again,' but that your highness pleas'd, Was once superfluous; you were crown'd before.

(John, iv. 2, 1-20.)

789. Versuram soluere. To evade by a greater mischief. (To pay by borrowing-i.e. to get out of one difficulty by getting into another.)

(Compare No. 666.)

790. Bulbos quærit (of those that look down. (He is searching for onions.-Eras. Ad. 716.)

(Alluded to somewhere in Bacon's letters (?) à propos to a Spanish ambassador who gazed intently upon the ground. Reference lost.)

Why are thine eyes fixed to the sullen earth,
Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight?
What seest thou there? (2 Hen. VI. i. 2.)

791. Between the mouth and the morsell. (Inter manum et mentum.'-Er. Ad. 999. 'Twixt hand and chin.)

Time, whose million accidents

Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings.

(Son. cxv.)

There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More
pangs and fears than wars or women have.

(Hen. VIII. iii. 2.)

792. A buskin that will serve both legges. (Cothurno versatilior.-Eras. Ad. 56. More versatile than a buskin. Said of an inconstant, slippery man, who was now on this side, now on that.)

A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly The wrong side may be turned out. (Tw. N. iii. 1.)

This woman's an easy glove, my lord,

She goes on and off at pleasure. (All's W. v. 3.)

793. Not an indifferent man but a double suretye.

A man who with a double suretye binds his fellows.

Folio 100.

(2 Hen. IV. i. 1.)

794. Chameleon, Proteus, Euripus. (Chameleon, Eras. Ad. 418, 709; Proteus, 413, 709; Euripus, 312.)

I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

(3 Hen. VI. iii. 2.)

(See also the chameleon love' illustrated in Proteus. (Tw. G. Ver. iii. 1.)

795. Multa novit vulpes sed Echinus unum magnum.— Eras. Ad. 163. (The fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one great one-i.e. of rolling himself into a ball when he fears attack.)

Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,

And after bite me, and then like hedgehogs which

Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount their pricks
At my footfall. (Temp. ii. 2.)

796. Semper Africa aliquum (sic) monstrj parit (in two forms). Eras. Ad. 781. (Africa is always producing some new monster.)

I spake of

. . portance in my travels' history,

. . . Of the cannibals that each other eat,

The anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. (Oth. i. 3.)

Not Afric owns a serpent that I abhor more than thy fame and envy. (Cor. i. 8.)

797. Ex eodem ore calidum et frigidum.-Eras. Ad. 270. (Out of the same mouth hot and cold.)

Very tragical mirth! . . . Merry and tragical,
Hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

I was too hot to do somebody good;

(M. N. D. v.

1.)

That is too cold in thinking of it now. (R. III. i. 3.)

Were I not a little pot and soon hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to the roof of my mouth. (Tam. Sh. iv. 1.)

Cleo. Was he sad or merry?

Alex. Like to the time o' year between the extremes

Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.

Cleo. O well divided disposition! (Ant. Cl. i. v.)

Mac. Such welcome and unwelcome thing at once

"Tis hard to reconcile. (Macb. iv. 3.)

O perilous mouths!

That bear in their one and the self-same tongue

Either of condemnation or approof. (M. M. iii. 1.)

797a. Ex se finxit velut araneus.'- Eras. Ad. 918. (He fabricated out of himself like a spider.)

The wit and mind of man if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of the thread, but of no substance or profit. (Advt. of L. i.; Spedding, iii. 295.)

Said, in the original, of falsehoods, &c. Bacon, however, does not thus apply it, neither is it so applied in all cases in the plays.