A Finding List: Part I.

Bacon’s Words and Phrases of the English then of the Latin

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W-X-Y-Z

D (English)

Death Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; delivery from ignominy chooseth it. (Bacon, Essays: II).
The same man that was envied while he lived, shall be loved when he is gone. (Bacon, Essays: II).
I shall be loved when I am gone. (Shakespeare). 1
Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. (Bacon, Essays: II).
I know many wise men fear to die; for the change is bitter, and flesh would refuse to prove it: besides, the expectation bringeth terror, and that exceeds the evil. But I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death. (Bacon, Post. Essay: Of Death).
So much of our life as we have discovered is already dead; and all those hours which we share, even from (birth to death) are part of our dying days, whereof this is one, and those that succeed are of the like nature, for we die daily, and I am older since I affirmed it. (Bacon, Post. Essay: Of Death).

December 11 A little old man kept himself very dirty; whereupon one said he was like the 11th of December, meaning the shortest day. (Anonymiana, 1818).

Deformity Deformed persons are generally even with Nature; for as Nature hath done ill by them, so do they by Nature, being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) void of natural affection, and so they have their revenge of Nature. (Bacon, Essay: Of Deformity).
If deformed persons be of spirit (they will) seek to free themselves from scorn, which must be either by virtue or malice. Whosoever hath anything fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a erpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn. Therefore, all deformed persons be extreme bold. (Ibid).
Deformed persons seek to rescue themselves from scorn by malice. (Bacon, De Aug., 1622).

Deafness To cure deafness is difficult. (Bacon, Promus 1594–96).
Nothing is so hard to cure as the ear. (Bacon, De Aug., 1622).

Death-bed Diomedes, having wounded Venus in battle, was put to death for impiety, and his followers were changed into swans, “a bird,” says Bacon, “which at the approach of its own death utters a sweet and plaintive sound.”

Death the bail He should be close enough [in prison], and Death should be his bail. (Bacon, Charge against Somerset, 1616). Here is the same legal imagery used in different ways for different purposes. Overbury was arrested and imprisoned under such conditions that death was his only bail; the author of the Sonnet 74 anticipates his own arrest by death without bail.

Deer-stealing I will insert a letter of Queen Elizabeth, written to him [Peregrine Bertie] with her own hand: “Reader, deal in matters of this nature as when venison is set before thee, eat the one, and read the other, never asking whence either came.” (Fuller, Worthies, Line. p. 102). Deer-stealing was in great vogue in Dr. Fuller’s time, and to that custom, the author here alludes. [Also see Part II: Southampton Henry, third Earl.] It was felony punishable in the Star Chamber, for which Bacon (practically the Public Prosecutor until he became Chancellor) prosecuted two men separately as late as 1614. Shaksper, the actor of Stratford, in 1587, forsaking the trade of butcher’s apprentice, wife, and children, flees on foot to London to escape prosecution for stealing deer and rabbits. Reaching London, a rude peasant speaking the “patois” of Warwickshire, says Phillipps, he finds employment in Burbage’s stable. Hamlet, an anonymous play then on the stage, the same play that the best critics now admit is in the canon. That hence, if an information was laid, it was in Bacon’s power to have dealt similarly with Shaksper’s deer-stealing any time between the date of the offence in 1587 and the 1614 afores that if Bacon did not so prosecute, but rather protected him, there must have been good (Baconian) reason for it. (Thorpe). 2

Delated From deferre, to waft away. A strict Latinism, used here for the first time in the language. Bacon and Shakespeare use the substantive delation in the same sense in which the adjective is here used.

And the delated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribb’d ice. (Shakespeare) 3

In delation of sounds the enclosure of them preserveth them and causeth them to be heard further. (Bacon, Syl. Sylv).
It is certain that the delation of light is in an instant. (Ibid).

Delay The vices of authority are four: Delays, Corruption, &c. For delays, give easy access; keep times appointed; go through with that which is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. (Bacon, Essay: Of Delays).

Deliverer He that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such form as may be soonest believed, and not as may be easiliest examined. (Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature).

Delusions Even now, if any one wish to let new light on any subject into men’s minds, and that without offence or harshness, he must still go the same way [as that of the ancient poets] and call in the aid of similitudes. (Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients).

Dentize To change the teeth. They tell a tale of the old countess of Desmond, who lived until she was seven score years old; that she did dentize twice or thrice, casting her old teeth, and others coming in their place. (Bacon, Natural History, C. VIII, Sect, 755).

Desiring Humbly praying. (Bacon, Apo).

Despacho universal The counter-sign and the conduct of the diplomatic correspondence and the royal commands. (Bacon).

Despair Here must I distinguish between discontentment and despair: for it is sufficient to weaken the discontented, but there is no way but to kill the desperate; which were as hard and difficult as impious and ungodly. And, therefore, though they may be discontented, I would not have them desperate: for among many desperate men, it is like someone will bring forth a desperate attempt. (Bacon, Letters of Advice to the Queen).

Despatch On the other side, despatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wars; and business is bought at a dear hand where there is no despatch. (Bacon, Essay: Of Despatch).
Long and curious speeches are as fit for dispatch as a robe or mantle with a long train is for a race. (Ibid).

Detractor The slanderer carries the devil in his tongue. (Bacon, Promus 164).
That which is uttered in the name of praise (or adulation) is good. That which is said as detraction is bad. (Bacon, Promus 1248 of the Latin).

Devil’s wine [Vinum dœmonum]; fills the imagination. (Bacon, Essays: I).

Devise plots In Courts and Commonwealths the best promoters of their own fortune are those who have no public duty to discharge, and make their own rising their only business. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Differences The difference is not between you and me but between your profit and my trust. (Bacon, Promus, fol. 84).

Diplomatis [διπλομάτης]; diplomat; diploma; charter. (Bacon, Nov. Org., Aphorismorum XLIX).

Dirge Bacon apparently derives it from dirigé: a mournful ditty; a song of lamentation. (Bacon).

Disappointment (I am), as I told you, like a child following a bird; which, when he is nearest flieth away, and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infinitum I am weary of it. (Bacon, Letter to Greville).

Discontent For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent. Severity breedeth fear, but roughness hate. (Bacon, Essay: Of Delays).
The causes and motive of sedition are taxes, alteration of laws, general oppression. (Bacon, Essay: Of Sedition).

Discourse Conversation as it ought not to be over-affected, much less should it be slighted. On the other side, a devotion to urbanity and external elegance terminates in an awkward and disagreeable affectation. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. VIII).
To use too many circumstances ere one come to the matter is wearisome, to use none at all is blunt. (Bacon, Essay: Of Discourse).
Men ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need to be afraid of other’s memory. (Ibid).

Discoursing wits There remain certain discoursing wits; which affect (to think belief a bondage). (Bacon, Essay: Of Truth).

Disgraces Acts of unkindness. The interchange continually of favours and disgraces. (Bacon, Essay: 36).

Distinction He who makes not distinction in small things, makes error in great things. (Bacon, Promus 186).

Distorting of the face Caused by a contention, first to bear and resist, and then to expel; which maketh the parts knit first, and afterwards open. (Bacon, Syl. Sylv).

Dissimulation Is but a faint kind of policy or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore, it is the weaker sort of politics that are the great dissemblers. (Bacon, Essay: Of Simulation).
If you dissemble, sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not. (Bacon, Essay: Of Discourse).
The third degree, which is simulation and false profession, is more culpable, and less politic, except it be in great and rare matters. A general custom of simulation is a vice, rising either of a natural falseness or of a mind that hath some main faults, which, because a man must disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of ure. (Bacon, Essay: Of Dissimulation).
If a man would cross a business that he doubts some other would handsomely and effectually move, let him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself, in such a way as may foil it. (Ibid).
Dissimulation followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity; so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree; for men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or, if he do not, they will gather as much from his silence as by his speech. (Ibid).

Diversities of the parts They inquire of the parts of the human body in general, but not of the diversities of the parts in different bodies; of simple, but not of comparative anatomy. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Divination By natural divination we mean that the mind has of its own essential power some pre-notion of things to come. This appears mostly (1) in sleep; (2) in ecstasies; (3) near death; (4) more rarely, in waking apprehensions; and (5) from the foreknowledge of God and the spirits. (Bacon, De Aug., 1622).

Diving bell According to Beckmann, the first distinct mention of the diving bell is to be found in Fainsius, as quoted by Schott. Fainsius gives an account of some Greeks who exhibited a diving bell at Toledo, before Charles the Fifth and his Court in 1538. (Bacon, Nov. Org., Aphorismorum XLIX).

Divinity Says: Seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you, for although this foundation laid by human hands is sometimes placed upon the sand yet the same foundation is ever by the divine hand fixed upon a rock. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. VIII).

Division Order and distribution, and singling out of parts, is the life of dispatch; so as the distribution be not too subtle: for he that doth not divide will never enter well into business; and he that divideth too much will never come out of it clearly. (Bacon, Essay: Of Dispatch).

Doctrine Concerning the intellect. The doctrine concerning the will of man, are as it were twins by birth. For purity of illumination and freedom of will began and fell together; and nowhere in the universal nature of things is there so intimate a sympathy as between truth and goodness. The more should learned men be ashamed, if in knowledge they be as the winged angels, but in their desires as crawling serpents; carrying about with them minds like a mirror indeed, but a mirror polluted and false. (Bacon, De Aug).

Doubts That use of wit and knowledge is to be allowed, which laboureth to make doubtful things certain, and not those which labour to make certain things doubtful. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Dramatic Poesy Which has the theatre for its world, would be of excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable of no small influence both of disciple and of corruption. Now of corruptions in this kind we have enough; but the discipline has in our times been plainly neglected. And though in modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when it is too satirical and biting; yet among the ancients it was used as a means of educating men’s minds to virtue. Nay, it has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician’s bow by which men’s mind say be played upon. And certainly it is most true, and one of the great secrets of nature, that the minds of men are more open to impressions and affections when many are gathered together than when they are alone. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. II).
It is a curious fact that these remarks on the character of the modern drama were probably written, and were certainly first published, in the same year which saw the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays; of which, they had been filling the theatre for the last thirty years. How little notice they attracted in those days as works of literary pretension, may be inferred from the extreme difficulty, which modern editors have found in ascertaining the dates, or even the order, of their production. Though numbers of contemporary newsletters, filled with literary and fashionable intelligence, have been preserved, it is only in the Stationer’s Register and the accounts kept by the Master of the Revels that we find any notices of the publication or acting of Shakespeare’s plays. In the long series of letters from John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, scattered over the whole period from 1598 to 1623, we look in vain for the name of Shakespeare or of any one of his plays. And yet during that period Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, Measure for Measure, the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Lear, The Tempest, Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, and several more, must have appeared as novelties. And indeed that very letter without which we should hardly know that Shakespeare was personally known to anyone in the great world as a distinguished dramatic writer, 4 proves at the same time, if it be not a forgery, as it is now said to be, how little was known about him by people of that quality. [Also see Part III: Ireland, William-Henry.]

Drugs I now come to inquire into the second way of condensing the spirits, namely, by cold; and it is done without any malignity or unfriendly quality. The root of the operation I place in nitre, as a thing specially created for this purpose. The principal subordinates of nitre are borage, bugloss, langue de boeuf, burnet, strawberry plants, strawberries, raspberries, raw cucumbers, raw apples, vine leaves, vine buds, and violets. Next to these come balm, green citrons, green oranges, distilled rose-water, roasted pears, and pale, red, and musk roses. Opium and other strong narcotics congeal the spirits and deprive them of motion. So much for the condensation of spirits by cold. (Bacon, History of Life and Death, 1623).
Bacon made a special study of narcotics, and of numerous plants and fruits that are narcotic in their nature. He even speaks of the efficacy of such potions in inducing what he called “voluntary or procured trances.” He went into the subject so thoroughly, publishing the results of his researches in two different books, the fruits of a lifetime of study, that we may well refuse to find the source of any part of his knowledge of it in a Shakespearean play.
Here is the deficience which I find, that physicians have not, partly out of their own practice, partly out of the constant probations reported in books, and partly out of the traditions of empirics, set down and delivered over certain experimental medicines for the cure of particular diseases. (Bacon, Adv., 1603–05).

Drunken men Are taken with a plain defect or destitution in voluntary motion, they reel; they tremble; they cannot stand, nor speak strongly. (Bacon, Syl. Sylv).
The cause is for that the spirits of the wine oppress the spirits animal, and occupate part of the place where they are; and so make them weak to move. Besides they rob the spirits animal of their matter, whereby they are nourished; for the spirits of the wine prey upon it as well as they: and so they make the spirits less supple and apt to move. (Bacon, Natural History).

Dry cupping Acts simply by partially removing the pressure of the atmosphere, the heat applied to the vessel has no other effect than that of rarefying the air it contains. [Also see Fracastorii.]

Duty The good of communion, which respects and beholds society, we may term Duty, because the term duty is proper to a mind well framed and disposed towards others, as the term of Virtue is applied to a mind well formed and composed in itself. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. VII).

D (Latin)

Dæalus This Dædalus was persecuted with great severity and diligence and inquisition by Minos; yet he always found means of escape and places of refuge. Last of all, he taught his son Icarus how to fly; who, being a novice and ostentatious of his art, fell from the sky into the water. (Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients, 1609).

Dæmonologie The black art of communicating with the devil, a work written by King James I., in three books consisting of dialogues between Philomathes and Epistemon, the latter of whom represents the King’s opinions on witchcraft. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. II). [Also see Part II: James VI., of Scotland and I., of England.]

Da fidei quæ fidei sunt. Give unto faith that which is faith’s. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

De exemplis et usu eorum. The principle on which the English Courts have proceeded, that a decision on a point not previously decided on, is to be accepted merely as a declaration of an already existing law virtually contained in the written corpus juris entitled the Common Law and of giving nearly equal weight to all cases decided by a competent tribunal. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. VIII).

De partibus vitæ quisque deliberat, de summâ nemo. Every man takes thought about the parts of his life, no man about the whole. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Designatio To discover. (Bacon).

De societate magistrorum Ancients. On June 27, 1575, Bacon and his brother Anthony were admitted of Gray’s Inn, “de societate magistrorum a privilege to which they were entitled as the sons of a judge: Ad hanc pentionem admissi stint Antionius Bacon; Franciscus Bacon; Willielmus Bowes; Thomas Balgey, et Rogerus Wilbraham, et predicti Anthonius Bacon, Franciscus Bacon, et Willus Bowes admissi sunt de societate magistrorum. Et ceteri de mense clericorum.”
The difference corresponded more or less to that which existed between the ordinary pensioners at a college and the sizars. Students admitted as “masters” paid a higher fee, and fared better in Hall than those admitted as “clerks.” The later, moreover, waited on the “masters”. 5 In the following term, an order was made admitting the brothers of Francis to their father’s chamber: “It is farther ordered that all his [the Lord Keeper’s] sons now admitted of the house viz.: Nicholas, Nathaniel, Edward, Anthony and Francis shall be of the ground company (they were to sit at the Ancients’ Senior Barristers’ table in the Hall and became eligible for the office of Reader and so for the dignity of the Bench) and not to be bound to any vacations.” On May 13, 1580, an order was made that: “Mr. Francis Bacon in respect of his health is allowed to have the benefit of a special admittance with all benefits and privileges to a special admittance belonging for the fine of xls.” This enabled him to send to the buttery for his commons and take his meals in his chamber instead of coming into the Hall. On June 27, 1582, occurs the entry: “Mr. Francis Bacon, Mr. Edward Morison, Mr. Roger Wilbraham and Mr. Laurence Washington utter barristers [A student was anciently known as an inner barrister] at this petition.” Less than four years later February l0, 1586, we have record of an exceptional favour: “At this penćon it is allowed that Mr. Francis Bacon may have place with the Readers at the Readers table but not to have any voice in penćon nor to win ancientie of any that is his ancient or shall read before him.”
The above account of Bacon’s stay at Gray’s Inn may answer the notement, that there is a strange gap in the recorded life of Bacon between September 25, 1576 and the middle of 1582, nearly six years. That this important period between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two in the life of a very precocious intellect should be well-nigh a blank, as far as any record remains of it, this is passing strange.

De vero ad populum True and popular. (Bacon).

De versa Concerning truths. (Bacon).

Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone I have spent ten years in reading Cicero. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. I).

Defectus lunæ A change of the moon. (Bacon).

Demissus est per portam He was let out by the gate. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Demissus est per sportam He was let down in a basket. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Deus dedit, culpa abstulit God gives, blame takes away. (Bacon).

Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientæ shun: Profane novelties of terms and oppositions of science falsely so called. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. I).

Di mentira y sacaras verdad Tell a lie and find a truth. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Dicit piger, leo est in via The slothful man saith there is a lion in the path. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Dictamnum genetrix cretæa carpit ab Ida, puberibus caulem foliis et flore comantem purpureo: non illa feris incognita capris gramina, cum tergo volucres hæsere sagittæ: A sprig of dittany his mother brought, gathered by Cretan Ide; a stalk it is of woolly leaf, crested with purple flower; which well the wild goat knows when in his side sticks the winged shaft. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Didici quod omnia opera quæ fecit Deus perseverent in perpetuum; non possumus eis quicquam addere nec auferre: I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Difficile non aliquem, ingratum quenquam præterire It were hard to remember all, and yet ungracious to forget any. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Dition Government, Lordship.

Distillationes Distillation was known to the ancients.

Dives inaccessos ubi Solis filia lucos Now by the shelves of Circe’s coast they run. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Divitiæ si affluent, nolite cor apponere If riches increase set not your heart upon them. (Bacon, Adv., Bk. II).

Dolendi modus, timendi non item Suffering has its limits, but fears are endless. (Bacon, Essays: XV).

Domini similes Like his master. (Bacon).

Dracones The word Draco is mostly used with reference to the moon’s orbit, and denotes the two zones included between it and the ecliptic; the nodes being respectively the Caput and Cauda Draconis. The symbols, which are, still used both for the nodes of the moon’s orbit and for those of other orbits, seem derived from this use of the word Draco. (Bacon, De Aug., Bk. II).

Draconibus In old astronomy denoting the great circle which is approximately the projection on the sphere of the moon’s orbit. [Also see Dracones].

Dum memor ipse mei As long as he is mindful of me. (Bacon).