“I assure you, I sometimes wish your infirmities translated upon myself, that her Majesty might have the service of so active and able a mind; and I might be, with excuse, confined to these contemplations and studies, for which I am the fittest." Mr. Anthony Bacon, who was a person of great ability and accomplishment, was most of his life so afflicted with gout as to incapacitate him for walking, and died in 1601 or 1602. When the Essays were republished in 1612, increased to four times their original number and extent, but without the Meditations and the Colours of Good and Evil, the former of which had been now mostly turned into Essays, while the latter tract was reserved to be incorporated in the De Augmentis Scientiarum, Bacon dedicated them to Sir John Constable, who was married to a sister of Lady Bacon's. He says, 66 My last Essays I dedicated to my dear brother, Mr. Anthony Bacon, who is with God. Looking amongst my papers this vacation, I found others of the same nature; which if I myself shall not suffer to be lost, it seemeth the world will not, by the often printing of the former." These last words may lead us to suspect that Jaggard's edition of 1606 (supposed to be pirated) had not been the only re-impression of the former Essays after their first appearance in 1597 or 1598, although no other intermediate edition is now known.

It appears from a letter first published in Stephens's Second Collection ('Letters and Remains,' 4to., Lond. 1734), that Bacon had originally designed to dedicate this 1612 edition to Henry Prince of Wales, who died on the 6th of November in that year. The book, therefore, we may infer did not come out till towards the end of the year, or perhaps not till after the beginning of 1613. The letter is in fact the intended Dedication to the Prince. Having," Bacon begins, "divided my life into the contemplative and active part, I am desirous to give his Majesty and your Highness of the fruits of both, simple though they be." The Essays he goes on to describe as only "brief notes, set down rather significantly than anxiously." "The word," he continues,

66

"is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but Essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of Epistles." As for the present compositions, he adds, he has "endeavoured to make them not vulgar, but of a nature whereof a man shall find much in experience and little in books; so as they are neither repetitions nor fancies."

It was Bacon's practice to improve and make additions to the Essays throughout his life. In the letter to Bishop Andrews prefixed to his tract entitled An Advertisement touching an Holy War,' which was written in 1622, he says, after speaking of his other writings :— "As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations 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 to my name than those other which I have in hand." From what has been stated it will be seen that the successive forms which the work assumed as published by the author are to be found in the three editions of 1597 (or 1598), of 1612 (the regular edition of that date), and of 1625. The last-mentioned edition is dedicated to the potent royal favourite, Villiers Duke of Buckingham, between whom and Bacon the most intimate alliance had subsisted from the first appearance of the former at court. Having dedicated his Instauration to the King, and his History of Henry the Seventh, as also his portions of Natural History (meaning certain tracts in what is called the Third Part of the Instauratio Magna) to the Prince (that is Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I.), Bacon informs his grace that he now dedicates the Essays to him; "being," he says, "of the best fruits that, by the good increase which God gives to my pen and labours, I could yield." Of all his other works, he observes, they have been the most current; "for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms." And he has enlarged them, he states, "both in number and weight; so that they are indeed a new work." "I thought it there

fore," he adds, "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." He takes care to intimate that he has now also translated his Henry the Seventh' into Latin:* the Instauration and the Natural History were originally published and written in that language. But the Latin version of the Essays, of which he here speaks, was not printed till some years after his death; it and the translation of the History of Henry the Seventh, along with other pieces, were first published by Dr. Rawley, in a folio volume, at London, in 1638. The Latin title, which was given to the Essays by Bacon himself, is Sermones Fideles, sive Interiora Rerum.' Mr. Montagu seems to consider the translation as being Bacon's own throughout-quoting, oddly enough, as the description of them given by Rawley, 'Sermones Fideles, ab ipso Honoratissimo Auctore, praeterquam in paucis, Latinitate donatus.' We need not say that the learned chaplain was incapable of writing anything like this. What his title-page (for it is from that that the words are extracted) describes as for the most part turned into Latin by Bacon himself is not the Sermones, but the entire volume, the general title of which is Moralium et Civilium Tomus. As it contains the voluminous De Augmentis Scientiarum, and other long treatises, and the Sermones form a very small part of it, they may be among the few things of which the author himself was not the translator. In his Life of Bacon, it is true, both in the English and in the Latin, Rawley seems to enumerate the Latin translation of the Essays among Bacon's own performances. But, on the other hand, we find Bacon himself, in a letter to his friend Mr. Toby Matthew, without date, but apparently written in 1622

* The expression in the Latin is quite explicit :-"Quam etiam in Latinum verti.”

This Bacon states in his Latin Letter to Father Fulgentio, written probably in 1624.

or 1623,* expressing himself in a way which implies at least that he did not then intend to be his own translator. "It is true," he says, my labours are now most set to have those works which I had formerly published, as that of Advancement of Learning, that of Henry Seventh, 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 bankrupts with books, and, since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity." And Archbishop Tenison says expressly, speaking of the Essays, "The Latin translation of them was a work performed by divers hands; by those of Dr. Hacket (late Bishop of Lichfield), Mr. Benjamin Johnson (the learned and judicious poet), and some others, whose names I once heard from Dr. Rawley; but I cannot now recall them. To this Latin edition he gave the name of Sermones Fideles, after the manner of the Jews, who called the words, adagies, or observations of the wise, Faithful Sayings; that is, credible propositions, worthy of firm assent and every acceptance. And, as I think, he alluded more particularly in this title to a passage in Ecclesiastes (xii. 10, 11), where the preacher saith that he sought to find out Verba Delectabilia (as Tremellius rendereth the Hebrew), pleasant words (that is, perhaps, his Book of Canticles), and Verba Fidelia (as the same Tremellius), faithful sayings (meaning, it may be, his collection of Proverbs). In the next verse he calls them Words of the Wise, and so many goads and nails given ab eodem pastore, from the same shepherd (of the flock of Israel)." Bacon himself, in his letter to Father Fulgentio, intimates that he preferred the title Sermones

*The letter is placed by Birch, in whose collection it was first published, under the year 1623; but, as it seems to speak of the Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning,' which was published in that year, as only in progress, perhaps may have been written in 1622.

it

+ Introduction to Baconiana,' 1679, p. 61.

Fideles, as weightier than that of Saggi Morali which had been given to the Essays in the Italian translations ;* “Verum illi libro nomen gravius impono."

It is a curious fact that at one time Bacon's Essays appear to have been generally known and read only in an English translation from the Latin. Thus, the writer of the Life of Bacon in the first edition of the Biographia Britannica, published about the middle of the last century, tells us that it is from the Latin translation we have the Essays in Bacon's Works, referring to what is called Mallet's edition, which appeared in 1753. Hume, it may be remarked, has described Bacon's prose as barbarous. And, what is still more surprising, Dugald Stewart, in his Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopædia Britannica, written and published within the last thirty years, expresses his astonishment that Bacon's English style should have been preferred by Bishop Burnet to that of Sprat! If, indeed, his wonder had been that so just a judgment should have proceeded from Burnet, it would be more intelligible; but, on the contrary, Burnet is strangely enough brought forward as "no contemptible judge of style ;" and it is declared to be difficult to conceive on what grounds he proceeded "in hazarding so extraordinary an opinion." The passage occurs in a note at p. 40 (last edition); and is followed up by an exclamation about the inferiority," in all the higher qualities and graces of style," of the prose compositions of Swift to those of Pope and Addison. We need not say that an editor of Bacon's Essays would now be thought out of his senses who should give them in any other English than Bacon's own.

As the Essays stand in Bacon's last and most com*Two Italian translations bearing this title had already appeared, one in 1618 (by Mr. Toby Matthew), the other in 1621. A French translation had also been published at London in 1619, under the title of Essays Moraux.' This was the work of Sir Arthur Gorges, the common friend of Bacon and Spenser, and also the English translator of Bacon's treatise 'De Sapientia Veterum.' Mr. Montagu everywhere gives the name Georges, we do not know upon what authority.