man's office or profession, he may do it with good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity. The Cardinals of Rome, which are theologues,[1] and friars, and schoolmen, have a phrase of notable contempt and scorn towards civil business: for they call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judicature, and other employments, sbirrerie, which is under-sheriffries; as if they were but matters for under-sheriffs and catchpoles:[2] though many times those under-sheriffries do more good than their high speculations. St. Paul, when he boasts of himself, he doth oft interlace, I speak like a fool;[3] but speaking of his calling, he saith, magnificabo apostolatum meum.[4]
LIV. Of Vain-Glory.
It was prettily devised of Æsop: the fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot wheel, and said, What a dust do I raise![5] So are there some vain persons, that
- ↑ Theologues. Theologians.
- ↑ Catchpole, or catchpoll. A bailiff's assistant; a sergeant (of police).
- ↑ "Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft." II. Corinthians xi. 23.
- ↑ "For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office." Romans xi. 13.
- ↑ Fable CCLXX. A Fly upon a Wheel. The Fables of Abstemius, etc., in Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflexions. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. The third edition. 1669, p. 244. Laurentius Abstemius is the Latinized name of the Italian fabulist, Lorenzo Bevilaqua, who published a book of fables entitled, Hecathomythium seu centum Fabulae. (Venetiis. 1499. 4to.). This charming fable Abstemius called, De Musca Quae Quadrigis Insidens, puluerem se excitasse dicebat. Bacon may have read it and associated it with Aesop, in a little
