FRANCIS BACON.

BORN

Matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge

Admitted at Gray's Inn .

First sat in the House of Commons as Member for

22 Jan. 1560-61

10 June 1573

21 Nov. 1576

1584

23 July 1603

25 Aug. 1604

25 June 1607

27 Oct. 1613

9 June 1616

3 March 1616-17

4 Jan. 1618-19

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION.

IT

T is remarkable that as "the golden meditations which Lord Bacon called Essays" were the earliest of his publications, so the revision and augmentation of them was his latest literary labor. The first edition was printed early in 1597; the last which Bacon gave to the world was published in 1625, the year before his death.1

Among the innumerable editions of the Essays that have been published, there are only four which, as authorities for the text, have any original or independent value; namely those published by Lord Bacon himself in 1597, in 1612, and in 1625; and the Latin version published by Dr. Rawley in 1638. The rest are merely reprints of one or other of these.

The edition of 1597 contained ten Essays, together with the "Meditationes Sacræ," and the "Colours of Good and Evil." That of 1612, a small volume in

1 The first edition published in this country was printed by William Bradford in 1688, and was the earliest volume issued from his press. See the elegant Address of Mr. John William Wallace before the New-York Historical Society, May 20, 1863, pp. 34-37.

octavo, contained Essays only; but the number was increased to thirty-eight, of which twenty-nine were quite new, and all the rest more or less corrected and enlarged. That of 1625, a quarto, contained fifty-eight Essays, of which twenty were new, and the rest were enriched with a thousand exquisite touches.1

"It is by the Essays," said Lord Macaulay, "that Bacon is best known to the multitude. The Novum Organum' and the 'De Augmentis' are much talked of, but little read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on the opinions of mankind; but they have produced it through the operation of intermediate agents. They have moved the intellects which have moved the world. It is in the Essays alone that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric school, and talks to plain men, in language which everybody understands, about things in which everybody is interested. He has thus enabled those who must otherwise

1 As is the case with most books of that time, different copies of the same edition may be found to vary here and there; perhaps, however, in a single letter only. This remark is true of the famous Shakespearian Folio of 1623. It is probable that no one copy exactly corresponds with any other. Mr. Wright, in the Preface to his edition of the Essays, mentions that he has collated ten copies of the edition of 1625, "which, though bearing the same date, are all different from each other in points of no great importance." And in the Appendix to the Notes he adds; "The cause of these differences it is not difficult to conjecture. Corrections were made while the sheets were being printed off, and the corrected and uncorrected sheets were bound up indiscriminately. In this way the number of different copies might be multiplied to any extent. Instances occur in which a sheet appears in three different stages: one with two errata on one page, a second with one of the errata corrected, and a third with both corrected." See also Mr. Spedding's note, Bacon's Works, VI. 517.

have taken his merits on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such consummate ability questions with which they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school."1

In 1849 Archbishop Whately wrote: "I am oldfashioned enough to admire Bacon, whose remarks are taken in and assented to by persons of ordinary capacity, and seem nothing very profound; but when a man comes to reflect and observe, and his faculties enlarge, he then sees more in them than he did at first, and more still as he advances further; his admiration of Bacon's profundity increasing as he himself grows intellectually. Bacon's wisdom is like the seven-league boots, which would fit the giant or the dwarf, except only that the dwarf cannot take the same stride in them."

Bacon was not mistaken in his own estimation of the Essays. In his Dedication of the edition of 1625, he says, "I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current. For that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms. I have enlarged them both in number and weight; so

1 "His books will ever survive; in the reading whereof modest men commend him in what they do, condemn themselves in what they do not under stand, as believing the fault in their own eyes, and not in the object."- FULLER Church History (1656) V. 493, ed. Oxford 1845.

2 Life and Correspondence (London 1866) II. 154.

that they are indeed a new work. I thought it therefore agreeable to my affection and obligation to your Grace, to prefix your name before them, both in English and in Latin. For I do conceive that the Latin volume of them (being in the universal language) may last as long as books last."

The letter to Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, dedicatory to "An Advertisement touching an Holy War" (1622) contains the fullest account of Bacon's designs as a writer which we have from his own pen. He writes: "As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreation of my other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation unto my name than those other which I have in hand. But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not go along with him."

6

Of the translation of the Essays into Latin, Bacon thus speaks in a letter to Mr. Toby Matthew, written apparently about the end of June 1623: "It is true my labours are now most set to have those Works which I have formerly published, as that of Advancement of Learning,' that of Henry VII.,' that of the Essays,' being retractate and made more perfect, well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens which forsake me not. For these modern languages will, at one time or other, play the bankrupt with books;