Lord chandos brief biography of benjamin

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

 

The Letter of Lord Chandos

 

THIS is the letter Philip, Lord Chandos, younger son of the Earl of Bath, wrote to Francis Bacon, later Baron Verulam, Viscount St.

Albans, apologizing for his complete abandonment of literary ac­tivity.

 

IT IS kind of you, my esteemed friend, to condone my two years of silence and to write to me thus.

It is

more than kind of you to give to your solicitude about me, to your perplexity at what appears to you as mental stagnation, the expression of lightness and jest which only great men, convinced of the perilousness of life yet not dis­couraged by it, can master.

 

You conclude with the aphorism of Hippocrates, "Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores non sentiunt, us mens aegro­tat" (Those who do not perceive that they are wasted by seri­ous illness are sick in mind), and suggest that I am in need of medicine not only to conquer my malady, but even more, to sharpen my senses for th