[158] “Mother Earth, exasperated at the wrath of the Deities, produced her, as they tell, a last birth, a sister to the giants Cœus, and Enceladus.”—Virg. Æn. iv. 179.
[159] “Great public odium once excited, his deeds, whether good or whether bad, cause his downfall.” Bacon has here quoted incorrectly, probably from memory. The words of Tacitus are (Hist. B. i. C. 7): “Inviso semel principe, seu bene, seu male, facta premunt,”—“The ruler once detested, his actions, whether good or whether bad, cause his downfall.”
[160] “They attended to their duties; but still, as preferring rather to discuss the commands of their rulers, than to obey them.”—Tac. Hist. ii. 39.
[161] He alludes to the bad policy of Henry the Third of France, who espoused the part of “The League,” which was formed by the Duke of Guise and other Catholics for the extirpation of the Protestant faith. When too late he discovered his error, and finding his own authority entirely superseded, he caused the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal De Lorraine, his brother, to be assassinated.
[162] “The primary motive power.” He alludes to an imaginary centre of gravitation, or central body, which was supposed to set all the other heavenly bodies in motion.
[163] “Too freely to remember their own rulers.”
[164] “I will unloose the girdles of kings.” He probably alludes here to the first verse of the 45th chapter of Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates.”
[165] “Hence devouring usury, and interest accumulating in lapse of time; hence shaken credit, and warfare, profitable to the many.”—Lucan. Phars. i. 181.
[166] “Warfare profitable to the many.”
[167] “To grief there is a limit, not so to fear.”