There happened in my time one noble speaker [Sir Francis Bacon] who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. The fear of every man that heard him was, lest he should make an end.
