Stately, leastwise nodd (?) crafty.  They have made him believe that he is wondrous wise.”  And, finally, he draws up a paper of counsels and rules for his own conduct—­“Custumae aptae ad Individuum”—­which might supply an outline for an essay on the arts of behaviour proper for a rising official, a sequel to the biting irony of the essays on Cunning and Wisdom for a Man’s Self.

     “To furnish my L. of S. with ornaments for public speeches.  To make
     him think how he should be reverenced by a Lord Chancellor, if I
     were; Princelike.

     “To prepare him for matters to be handled in Council or before the
     King aforehand, and to show him and yield him the fruits of my
     care.

“To take notes in tables, when I attend the Council, and sometimes to move out of a memorial shewed and seen.  To have particular occasions, fit and graceful and continual, to maintain private speech with every the great persons, and sometimes drawing more than one together. Ex imitatione Att. This specially in public places, and without care or affectation.  At Council table to make good my L. of Salisb. motions and speeches, and for the rest sometimes one sometimes another; chiefly his, that is most earnest and in affection.

“To suppress at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice.  Not to fall upon the main too sudden, but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion.  To use at once upon entrance given of speech, though abrupt, to compose and draw in myself.  To free myself at once from payt. (?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness, pride, and rudeness.”

     (And then follows a long list of matters of business to be attended
     to.)

These arts of a court were not new; it was not new for men to observe them in their neighbours and rivals.  What was new was the writing them down, with deliberate candour, among a man’s private memoranda, as things to be done and with the intention of practising them.  This of itself, it has been suggested, shows that they were unfamiliar and uncongenial to Bacon; for a man reminds himself of what he is apt to forget.  But a man reminds himself also of what seems to him, at the moment, most important, and what he lays most stress upon.  And it is clear that these are the rules, rhetorical and ethical, which Bacon laid down for himself in pursuing the second great object of his life—­his official advancement; and that, whatever we think of them, they were the means which he deliberately approved.