The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Hooker: The respect, I think, of those who respect us for what a fool can give and a rogue can take away, may easily be dispensed with; but it is indeed a high prerogative to help the needy, and when it pleases the Almighty to deprive us of it, he hath removed a most fearful responsibility.

Bacon: Methinks it beginneth to rain, Master Richard. What if we comfort our bodies with a small cup of wine, against the ill-temper of the air. Pledge me; hither comes our wine.(To the servant) Dolt! Is not this the beverage I reserve for myself?

Bear with me, good Master Hooker, but verily I have little of this wine, and I keep it as a medicine for my many and growing infirmities. You are healthy at present: God, in His infinite mercy, long maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome for you. But this Malmsey, this Malmsey, flies from centre to circumference, and makes youthful blood boil.

Hooker: Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but sparse. My lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet, containing some strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from his table when I dined by sufferance with his chaplains, and, although a most discreet, prudent man, as befitteth his high station, was not so chary of my health as your lordship. Wine is little to be trifled with; physic less. The Cretans, the brewers of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful herbs among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows that dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps may give activity to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I would not touch it knowingly; an unregarded leaf dropped into it above the ordinary might add such puissance to the concoction as almost to break the buckles in my shoes.

Bacon: When I read of such things I doubt them: but if I could procure a plant of dittany I would persuade my apothecary and my gamekeeper to make experiments.

Hooker: I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared in matters beyond my knowledge.

Bacon: Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your reasonings, and they are admirably well sustained. Yet forgive me, in God's name my worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of wonder at your simplicity. You would define to a hair's breadth the qualities, states, and dependencies of principalities, dominations, and powers; you would be unerring about the apostles and the churches, and 'tis marvellous how you wander about a pot-herb!

Hooker: I know my poor, weak intellects, most noble lord, and how scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly, but in choosing and in following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness and true glory.

Bacon: I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies; those who are rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all keep them better out of sight. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of choice and abstruse knowledge. One subject, however, hath almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble.

Hooker: Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may it be?

Bacon: Francis Bacon.