Dublin.
"_What is Truth?_"--Bacon begins his "Essay of Truth" (which is dated 1625)
with these words:
"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage
to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking, as well as in acting."
There is a similar passage in Bishop Andrews's sermon _Of the
Resurrection_, preached in 1613:
"Pilate asked, _Quid est veritas?_ And then some other matter took him
in the head, and so up he rose, and went his way, before he had his
answer; he deserved never to find what truth was. And such is our
seeking mostwhat, seldom or never seriously, but some question that
comes cross our brain for the present, some _quid est veritas_? So
sought as if that we sought were as good lost as found. Yet this we
would fain have so for seeking, but it will not be."
Perhaps Bacon heard the bishop preach (the sermon was at Whitehall); and if
so, the passage in Andrews will explain the word "jesting" to mean, not
scoffing, but asking without serious purpose of acquiring information.