obstruction in men’s wills; for preoccupation of mind246 ever requireth preface of speech, like a fomentation to make the unguent enter.
Above all things, order and distribution, and singling out of parts, is the life of dispatch, so as the distribution be not too subtile; 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.
To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air.
There be three parts of business,—the preparation; the debate, or examination; and the perfection. Whereof, if you look for dispatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few.
The proceeding, upon somewhat conceived in writing, doth for the most part facilitate dispatch; for though it should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more pregnant of direction than an indefinite, as ashes are more generative than dust.
XXVI.—OF SEEMING WISE.
It hath been an opinion, that the French are