Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 177
celled, and the collection by Howell, entitled HoraEliancs, which
seem as if they had been written with a further purpose than
that of mere correspondence between friend and friend. The
vast chasm, in point of dictiou, between these and the letters
written by ordinary persons of good breeding and education in
Bacon's time, may be well gauged by a comparison with them of
the sixteen folio volumes of Anthony Bacon's correspondence at
the library belonging to Lambeth Palace, or the letters in the
Cottouian and Hatton Finch collections at the British Museum.
Next, Baccn commends the collecting of apophthegms or witty
sayings. " The loss of that book of Caesar's" is, he thinks, a
misfortune, since no subsequent collection has been happy in the
choice. His own collection, with the supplementary anecdotes,
which are sometimes ranked as " spurious," still remain to us;
the former, we think, possessing a double value, inasmuch as it
seems probable that, in one edition at least, it forms a kind of
cipher or key to the meaning of other works.
As to the heathen antiquities of the world, " it is in vain to
note them as deficient, " for, although they undoubtedly are so,
consisting mostly of fables and fragments,
" the deficiency cannot
be holpen; for antiquity is like fame — caput inter nubile
condit— her head is muffled from our sight." 1 He does not
allude to his own Wisdom of the Ancients, or to other kindred
works, which, although they seem to have b