pare for the messengers of death, sickness and affliction, and not wait long, or be attempted by the violence of pain.

Herein I do not profess myself a Stoic, to hold grief no evil, but opinion, and a thing indifferent.

But I consent with Cæsar, that the suddenest passage is easiest, and there is nothing more awakens our resolve and readiness to die, than the quieted conscience, strengthened with opinion that we shall be well spoken of upon earth by those that are just, and of the family of virtue; the opposite whereof is a fury to man, and makes even life unsweet.

Therefore, what is more heavy than evil fame deserved? Or, likewise, who can see worse days, than he that yet living doth follow at the funerals of his own reputation?

I have laid up many hopes, that I am privileged from that kind of mourning, and could wish the like peace to all those with whom I wage love.

I might say much of the commodities that death can sell a man; but briefly, death is a friend of ours, and he that is not ready to entertain him, is not at home. Whilst I am, my ambition is not to fore-flow the tide; I have but so to make my interest of it, as I may account for it; I would wish nothing but what might better my days, nor desire any greater place than the front of good opinion. I make not love to the continuance of days, but to the goodness of them; nor wish to die, but refer myself to my hour, which the great dispenser of all things hath appointed me; yet as I am frail, and suffered for the first fault, were it given me to choose, I should not be earnest to see the evening of my age; that extremity of itself being a disease, and a mere return into infancy: so that if perpetuity of life might be given me, I should think what the Greek poet said, Such an age is a mortal evil. And since I must needs be dead, I require it may not be done before mine enemies, that I be not stript before I be cold; but before my friends. The night was even now; but that name is lost; it is not now late, but early. Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch, and compound with this fleshly weakness for a time of perpetual rest; and I shall presently be as happy for a few hours, as I had died the first hour I was born.

DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM.

PREFACE.

THE treatise De Sapientia Veterum was first published in 1609, in a small duodecimo volume, carefully and beautifully printed in the elegant italic type then in use. It appears to have become speedily popular, and was once or twice reprinted during Bacon's life, and translated both into English and Italian. In 1623, he introduced three of the fables, revised and considerably enlarged, into the De Augmentis Scientiarum, as a specimen of one of the Desiderata. Two others he had designed for the foundation of an elaborate discussion of the philosophy of Democritus, Parmenides, and Telesius; of which a considerable fragment has been preserved. See Vol. III. p. 65. A year or two before his death he designed to include the whole volume among the Opera Moralia et Civilia, of which he was then preparing a collection, and in which it was afterwards published by Dr. Rawley, along with the Latin translations of the History of Henry VII., the Essays, the New Atlantis, and the Dialogue of a Holy War. There can be no doubt therefore that it was a work which he thought well of, and meant to live.

Of the history of it all I know further is, that four of the fables, namely, Metis sive Consilium, Soror Gigantum sive Fama, Calum sive Origines, and Proteus sive Materia,- are found in the same form in the fragment which I have entitled Cogitationes de Scientiâ Humanâ, and which I suppose to have been written before 1605. See Vol. III. p. 171.

The object of the work was probably to obtain a more favourable hearing for certain philosophical doctrines of Bacon's own; for it seems certain that the fables themselves could never have suggested the ideas, however a man to whom the ideas had suggested themselves might find or fancy he found them in the fables. But the theory on which his interpretation

now.

rests, namely that a period of high intellectual cultivation had existed upon the earth and passed out of memory long before the days of Homer, was, I suppose, seriously entertained by him; nor was it a thing so difficult to believe then as it seems When a new continent was first discovered, in which the savage inhabitants were found laden with golden ornaments, it was easy to believe in the rumours of El Dorado; and when the buried fragments of Greek and Roman civilisation were first brought up for the examination of a new age, they might easily suggest to the imagination a world of wonders still unrecovered. But when voyage after voyage returned from America, bringing no confirmation of the first rumours, they ceased to be credible; and now that men have been employed for centuries in diligently collecting and discussing the monuments of antiquity, and yet no further evidence of that period of primeval wisdom has been discovere l, the balance of probability turns against the speculation. Comparative philology, coupled with comparative mythology, teaches us to seek for an explanation of the ancient mythes in a new direction; and from these sciences Bacon, though I think he would have accepted them as the best guides in the inquiry, could have no help; for they could hardly be said to exist at all in his time. Regarded therefore as attempts to explain the true historical origin of these fables, his interpretations, however elegant and ingenious, may be set aside, as having lost their serious interest for us. And though they would furnish an editor possessed of the requisite learning, and so minded, with an opportunity of displaying a vast deal of erudition, it would, I think, be wasted in this place. In so far as the question could be settled by the light of common sense with such knowledge as Bacon had, little could be added probably on either side to what he has himself said in his prefatory disquisition. In so far as it depends upon the knowledge which has since been acquired concerning the ancient languages and literature of the East, it should be discussed without reference to Bacon, who had no such knowledge, and would in all probability, if it had been revealed to him, have given up his own conjecture as untenable.

The interest which the book still possesses for us (and it has always been a great favourite with me) is of quite another kind; nor has either change of times or increase of knowledge at all abated its freshness. It is an interest precisely of the same