Languages & literature > Bacon's essays, and Goldsmith's essays

80 bacon’s essays.
own alley: turn them to new men, and they have
lost their aim; so as the old rule to know a fool from
a wise man, ‘ Mitte ambos nudos et ignotos, et vide-
bis,’ doth scarce hold for them; and, because these
cunning men are like haberdashers of small wares, it
is not amiss to set forth their shop.
It is a point of cunning to wait upon him with
whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it
in precept; for there be many wise men that have
secret hearts and transparent countenances : yet this
would be done with a demure abasing of your eye
sometimes, as the Jesuists also do use.
Another is, that when you have any thing to ob¬
tain of present dispatch, you entertain and amuse the
party with whom you deal with some other discourse,
that he be not too much awake to make objections. I
knew a counsellor and secretary, that never came to
Queen Elizabeth of England with bills to sign, but
he would always first put her into some discourse of
state, that she might the less mind the bills.
. The like surprise may be made by moving things
when the party is in haste, and cannot stay to consider
advisedly of what is moved.
If a man would cross a business that he doubts
some other would handsomely and effectively move,
let him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself
in such sort as may soil it.
The breaking oft' in the midst of that one was
about to say, as if he took himself up, breeds a greater
appetite in him, with whom you confer, to know
more.
And because it works better when any thing seem-
eth to be gotten from you by question, than if you
offer it of yourself, you may lay a bait for a question
by showing another visage and countenance than you
are wont; to the end, to give occasion for the party
to ask what the matter is of the change, as Nehemiah