lished till twelve years after his death, we cannot be sure that it was all finished before he died. Several hands are said to have been employed in the work, and in the absence of all specific information, it is not improbable that there are parts of it which he did not live to see completed. Taken with this caution however, the Latin translation must be accepted as a work of authority, and in one respect of superior authority to the original, because of later date. I have therefore treated it in the same way as the translation of the history of Henry the Seventh; see above, p. 7.

I am not aware that any such value belongs to any of the translations into modern languages. An Italian translation of the Essays and the De Sapientia Veterum published in London in 1618, with a dedicatory letter from Tobie Matthew to Cosmo de' Medici, may be presumed to have been made with Bacon's sanction; both because Matthew was so intimate a friend, and because it includes one essay which had not then been published', as well as a large extract from the letter to Prince Henry which Bacon had intended to prefix to the edition of 1612, but was prevented by his death. But there is no reason to suppose that Bacon had anything more to do with it. It is true that Andrea Cioli, who by Cosmo's direction brought out a new and revised edition of this volume at Florence in 1619, seems at first sight to speak of the translation as if it were Bacon's own composition—(ma non hò già voluto alterare alcuna di quelle parole, che forse nella lingua nostra non appariscono interamente proprie del senso, à che sono state in detta Opera destinate, per non torre all' Autore la gloria, che merita di havere cosi ben saputo esprimere i suoi Concetti in Idioma altretanto diverso dal suo, quanto è lontana da questa nostra la sua Regione ;)-but the supposition is hardly reconcilable with the words of Matthew's dedicatory letter (non può mancar la scusa à chi s' è ingegnato tradur li concetti di questo Autore, &c.); and in the absence of all other evidence is too improbable to be believed. Nor do Cioli's words necessarily imply more than that the translator was an Englishman. That the translation was not the work of an Italian,-and therefore not (according to Mr. Singer's conjecture) by Father Fulgentio, -they afford evidence which may be considered conclusive.

1 Mr. Singer says two: but one of those he quotes, the Essay "Of Honour and Reputation," will be found in the edition of 1597.

THE

ESSAYES OR COUNSELS,

CIVILL AND MORALL,

OF

FRANCIS LO. VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST. ALBAN.

NEWLY ENLARGED.

LONDON:

Printed by JOHN HAVILAND, for HANNA BARRETT and RICHARD WHITAKER, And are to be sold at the sign of the King's Head, in

Paul's Churchyard.

1625.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

To the Right Honourable my very good Lo. the DUKE of BUCKINGHAM his Grace, Lo. High Admiral of England.

EXCELLENT Lo.

SALOMON says, A good name is as a precious ointment; and I assure myself, such will your Grace's name be with posterity. For your fortune and merit both have been eminent. And you have planted things that are like to last. 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 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. My Instauration I dedicated to the King; my History of Henry the Seventh (which I have now also translated into Latin), and my portions of Natural History, to the Prince; and these I dedicate to your Grace; being of the best fruits that by the good encrease which God gives to my pen and labours I could yield. God lead your Grace by the hand.

Your Grace's most obliged and

faithful seruant,

FR. ST. ALBAN.

Tam in editione Anglicâ, quam in Latinâ.