To the young Galba, who came once with other boys to pay his respects to Augustus, the emperor, pinching his cheek, said in Greek, "And thou, child, too, shalt taste our empire."-SUETONIUS: Life of Galba. Athenodorus, the philosopher, begged leave that he might retire from court on account of his old age; his petition being granted, he said on taking leave, "Remember, Cæsar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the fourand-twenty letters of the alphabet to yourself." Whereupon Augustus grasped his hand, saying, "I have need of your presence still the reward of silence is a sure reward;" an expression which Horace put into verse, "Est et fideli tuta silentio Merces." Odes, III. 2, 25. In endeavoring to pacify some young men who showed an imperious temper, and gave but little heed to him, he said, "Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."- PLUTARCH: Apothegms. Upon the day of his death, he asked the friends who were admitted to his room the question used by actors to solicit applause as they left the stage, "Do you think that I have acted my part on the stage of life well?" adding two lines of a Greek poet, — "If all be right, with joy your voices raise, SUETONIUS: Life. Among the last words attributed to Rabelais without sufficient reason, was an expression used by Demonax, the cynic philosopher of Athens, A.D. 150, "Draw the curtain, the farce is ended" (in French, Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée). LORD BACON. [Francis Bacon, created Baron Verulam, and Viscount St. Albans, but commonly called Lord Bacon; born 1561; solicitor-general, 1607; attorney-general, 1613; lord keeper, 1617; lord chancellor, 1618; published the "Novum Organum," 1620; impeached for corrupt practices, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, 1621; imprisoned but two days, and the fine remitted; died 1626.] Just two years younger than your majesty's happy reign. When asked by Queen Elizabeth how old he was, on her visit to his father in 1572. He was then eleven, and his ready answer caused the queen to call him her "little lord keeper," from the office his father then held. He replied later in life to Elizabeth, who asked his opinion of enclosures in a case which had been referred to the judges, "Madam, my mind is known: I am against all enclosures, and especially against enclosed justice." He said in introducing a bill into Parliament in 1597, "against enclosures and the depopulation of towns," "I should be sorry to see within this kingdom that piece of Ovid's verse prove true, 'jam seges ubi Troja fuit;' in England nought but green fields, a shepherd, and a dog." He protested on one occasion to the queen, that he spoke from a sense of duty: "I am not so simple but I know the common beaten way to please." When a change was proposed in the Church of England which Bacon thought fatal, he said, "The subject we talk of is the eye of England: if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavor to take them off; he would be a strange oculist, who should pull out the eye." He remarked of the increase of windows in houses in 1567, "You shall have sometime your house so full of glass that we cannot tell where to come to be out of the sun or the cold." Sir Henry Montague said he hoped to bring the staff from Newmarket where King James was, meaning that he wished to be made lord treasurer. "Take heed," said Bacon, "what you do, my lord: wood is dearer at Newmarket than at any other place in England." The office, with the title of Mandeville, cost him, says Dixon, twenty thousand pounds. — Life of Bacon. Mr. Attorney, I respect you, I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it. To Coke, who presumed on his superior position as attorneygeneral, to say in court, "Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth against me pluck it out, for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good." He wrote to Coke, "Rich soils are often to be weeded; meaning that the latter, who had a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labor what to speak, as to find what to leave unspoken. Pope declares it to be as necessary in poetry as in oratory:— "E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, Epistles, I., II., 280. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed. Acknowledging the charge of corruption for which he was impeached. He said to James I. after his fall, "I would live to study, and not study to live; yet I am prepared for date obolum Belisario, and I that had borne a bag (that containing the great seal) can bear a wallet." Belisarius, a Byzantine general of great ability, was born in Illyria about 505 A.D. He was appointed by Justinian generalin-chief of the army of the East, was employed against the Ostrogoths, and recovered Rome from their possession, but was recalled, 540. Having been accused of a conspiracy against the life of Justinian, his fortune was sequestered; but that he was deprived of sight, and reduced to beggary, sitting at the gate of the city and addressing the passers-by with the words quoted by Lord Bacon, "Give a penny to Belisarius," is, says Gibbon, “a fiction of later times, which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strong example of the vicissitudes of fortune."- Decline and Fall, IV. 286, note. In a private letter to James I., accompanying the "Novum Organum," Bacon said, "I am persuaded that the work will gain upon men's minds in ages." He had this in view when he wrote in his last will and testament: "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages." SIR NICHOLAS BACON. [Father of Lord Bacon; born 1510; appointed lord keeper of the great seal by Queen Elizabeth, which he held twenty years; died Your highness has made me too great for my house. To Queen Elizabeth, who remarked during her visit to him in 1572, that his house was too small, but (referring to his corpulence) that his soul lodged well. When asked by the queen his opinion of the monopoly license, he replied by quoting, "Licentiâ omnes deteriores sumus (We are all the worse for licenses). A convicted criminal, named Hog, implored mercy on the ground of kindred. "But you and I," said the lord keeper, "cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged." The Earl of Leicester asked his opinion of two persons the queen thought well of. "By my troth, my lord," was his reply, "the one is a grave counsellor; the other is a proper young man, and he will be as long as he lives." JEAN BAILLY. [A French astronomer and philosopher, born 1736; member of the French Academy; deputy to the States-General, 1789, of which he was president; mayor of Paris the same year; condemned to death by the Jacobins, and executed, Nov. 12, 1793.] It is only from cold. "The When told, on the way to execution, that he trembled. populace," says Carlyle, "would not have him executed in the Champ de Mars, but by the river-side. The guillotine is taken down, is carried to the river-side; is there set up again, with slow numbness; pulse after pulse counting itself out in the old man's weary heart. For hours long, amid curses and bitter frostrain. Bailly, thou tremblest,' said one. 'Mon ami, c'est de froid.' Crueller end had no mortal.” — French Revolution. An almost identical answer is put by Shakespeare into the mouth of Lord Say, who is brought up for sentence before Jack Cade, 6 Dick. Why dost thou quiver, man?. Say. The palsy, and not fear, provoketh me. 2 Henry VI., IV. 7. Charles I., of England, put on two shirts the morning of his execution, saying, "If I tremble with cold, my enemies will say it was from fear: I will not expose myself to such reproaches." - LINGARD: History of England, X., chap. 5. Bailly handed, as mayor, the keys of Paris to Louis XVI., after the ratification of the constitution in the Champ de Mars, saying, "I bring your majesty the same keys which were presented to Henry IV. He reconquered his people: here the people have reconquered their king." When told that his election to the States-General was secure, he replied in the same words used of candidature for office by Thomas Jefferson, "That honor ought neither to be solicited nor refused." When some regretted that by his election his studies would be suspended, he made the patriotic answer, "I am a Frenchman; and if I can co-operate in the enactment of a good law, that is preferable to a hundred astronomical calculations." CHARLES JEAN BARBAROUX. [A French revolutionist, the friend of Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland, who said that artists would not have despised his head for the model of an Antinous; born 1767; deputy from Marseilles to the Legislative Assembly, 1791; voted for the death of Louis XVI., but with an appeal to the people; having been condemned with the Girondists, he was discovered near Bordeaux, and shot himself, 1794. "Over whose black doom," says Carlyle, "there shall flit, nevertheless, a certain ruddy fervor."] Send me six hundred men who know how to die (qui savent mourir). His message to the municipality of Marseilles, June, 1792, when an invasion of France by the Duke of Brunswick seemed imminent. It was for this band of revolutionists that Rouget de Lisle wrote the "Marseillaise," called by Carlyle "the luckiest musical composition ever promulgated." Antoine Baudin, a member of the Corps Legislatif, was shot while resisting the coup d'état of 1851. To some workmen who refused to assist him in erecting barricades, saying, "Do you think that we wish to be killed, that you may retain your twenty-five francs a day?" (the salary of members), he replied, "You will see how one dies for twenty-five francs a day" (Vous allez |