Topic One ~ Solomon's Proverbs

A favourite and frequently quoted saying of Bacon’s, is the line from “Solomon’s Proverbs” (xxv. 2): “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings to search for matter.” But Bacon alters the wording and addresses the proverb in a passage directly to King James, when he says “The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the King is to find it out.” Thus in The Advancement of Learning. In the Latin edition of that work, however, in De Augmentis Scientiarum, the proverb undergoes a still greater change in the same place, having assumed this form: Gloria Dei est celare verbum, et gloria Regis investigare sermonem, [The glory of God is to conceal a word (or a name, for verbum also means that, and the glory of the King is to investigate speech; King is to investigate speech.]

In his work De SapientiaVeterum [The Wisdom of the Ancients] Bacon seeks to fathom the deepest meaning of the Greek primitive fables, to solve their mystery. The old French edition of the seventeenth century shows right on the title of the book the version la Sagesse mysterieuse des Anciens. In order, however, to show clearly how much mystery attaches to Bacon’s works and to everything he did and said, let us briefly examine one of his books, the complete edition of the Essays (1625). There are few works of the kind, in which men of thought, poets and proverbs are so frequently quoted. Here we find quotations from Aristophanes, Virgil, Horace, Lucrece, Seneca, Rabelais, Montaigne, Machiavelli, from Solomon and other biblical authors, we are indeed afforded a rich selection from Grecian, Roman, French, Italian and Hebrew writings. But we do not find one single quotation from the whole of our English literature. In fact, the only English book mentioned in the Essays, is Bacon’s own History of King Henry the Seventh of England. It would seem as though for Bacon, the essayist, the man versed in the literature of every civilised nation, there had never existed such a man as Shakespeare, or Ben Jonson, and their great predecessors; and yet in those very years the first Shakespeare Folio Edition had appeared, and Ben Jonson, the dramatist, had lived with Bacon for five years.