en la bonne grace de nostre tres-excellente Royne, et m'en faire recevoir quelque gracieuse demonstration. Vostre Excce prendra auxi, s'il vous plaist, quelque occasion de prescher un peu à mon advantage en l'oreille du Duc de Buckingham en general. Dieu vous ayt en sa saincte garde.

Vostre tres-affectionné &

tres-humble serviteur,

Jun. 18, 1625.

FR. ST. ALBAN.

Among the entries in Stephens's catalogue there is one of a letter addressed to Buckingham on the 3rd of July, 1625, beginning “I am loath to complain," and described as "finding fault with the Lord Treasurer." This must have been the Lord Treasurer Ley, to whom the next letter is addressed, - probably on the same subject.

My Lord,

TO THE LORD TREASURER LEA.1

I humbly intreat your Lordship, and (if I may use the word) advise your Lordship to make me a better answer. Your Lordship is interessed in honour, in the opinion of all that hear how I am dealt with. If your Lordship malice me for Long's 2 cause, surely it was one of the justest businesses that ever was in Chancery. I will avouch it; and how deeply I was tempted therein, your Lordship knoweth best. Your Lordship may do well to think of your grave as I do of mine; and to beware of hardness of heart. And as for fair words, it is a wind by which neither your Lordship nor any man else can sail long. Howsoever, I am the man that shall give all due respects and reverence to your great place.

20 June, 1625.4

TO SIR ROBERT PYE,5

Good Sir Robert Pye,

FR. ST. ALBAN.

Let me intreat you to dispatch that warrant of a petty sum, that it may help to bear my charge of coming up to London.

1 Add. MSS. 5503. 2 In Matthew's copy. "for such a cause."

3 In Matthew's copy "may do well in this great age of yours."

4 No date in Matthew's copy.

5 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 206. Copy. Docketed, "To Sir Robert Pye. Gor. 1625."

1625.]

INTERFERENCE ON BEHALF OF A SUITOR.

529

The Duke you know loveth me, and my Lord Treasurer standeth now towards me in very good affection and respect.' You, that are the third person in these businesses, I assure myself, will not be wanting; for you have professed and shewed, ever since I lost the seal, your good will towards me. I rest

Your affectionate and assured friend.

The letter to the Earl of Dorset 2 which follows is noticeable chiefly as being a letter from Bacon on behalf of a suitor. Being written without either preface or postscript of apology, it may be presumed to be the sort of letter which a neighbour or a friend. would in those days naturally write in such a case; and it will be seen how much it resembles one of Buckingham's letters to himself on like occasions. I suppose nobody will suspect that it was written with any intention to dictate decrees or interfere with justice.

TO THE EARL OF DORSET.3

My very good Lord,

This gentleman, the bearer hereof (Mr. Colles by name) is my neighbour. He is a civil young man. 4 I think he wanteth no mettle, but he is peaceable. It was his hap to fall out with Mr. Matthew Francis, sergeant at arms, about a toy; the one affirming that a hare was fair killed, and the other foul. Words multiplied, and some blows passed on either side. But since the first falling out the sergeant hath used towards him divers threats and affronts, and which is a point of danger, sent to him a letter of challenge: but Mr. Colles, doubting the contents of the letter, refused to receive it. Motions have been made also of reconcilement or of reference to some gentlemen of the country not partial but the sergeant hath refused all, and now at last sueth him in the Earl Marshal's court. The gentleman saith he distrusteth not his cause upon the hearing, but would be glad to avoid restraint or long and chargeable attendance. Let me therefore pray your good Lordship to move the noble Earl in

:

1 If the change was due to Bacon's letter of complaint to Buckingham (the missing letter), this must have been written after the 3rd of July, 1625.

2 Sir Edward Sackville became Earl of Dorset on the 28th of March, 1624, by the death of his brother.

3 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 207. Copy, hastily written. No fly-leaf. Indorsed, "To E. Dorset. Gor. 1625."

4 First written "He is commended for," but a line is drawn through the two last words. 5 The Earl of Arundel, then Earl Marshal.

VOL. VII.

2 M

that kind to carry a favourable hand towards him, such as may stand with justice and the orders of that court. I ever rest Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant.

4.

The Plague had been raging in London all this summer, and Bacon himself (who appears to have remained at Gorhambury) had been visited at the same time with a "dangerous and tedious sickness." If this was the "gravissimus morbus" of which he speaks in the next letter as one from which he has not yet recovered (and the expression suits it well, though sicknesses were now too frequent with him to serve for dates) we may suppose it to have been written in the autumn of 1625, and place it here without much risk of error. It was first printed by Rawley among the Opuscula (1658), and is our principal authority for the condition of the Instauratio at this time, and for his plans and hopes regarding it and his other writings.

It is some consolation in this dreary time to know that his belief in the value and virtue and final success of that enterprise was never shaken. His earthly comforts were growing colder and colder. The hopes which he had indulged, first of a comfortable provision for a life of study, then of help to overcome his debts, and lastly of bare means "to live out of want and die out of ignominy," had one by one fallen away and left him desolate. But that the "mine of truth" which he was opening would keep its promise, and that Man would thereby in some future generation be the master of Nature and her forces, was a hope which continued with him to the end, and so refreshed and sustained his spirit that if the compositions of his last years are distinguishable at all from those of his prime, it is rather by their greater conciseness, solidity, and rapidity of style than by any signs of exhaustion or decay; and how far he was from feeling any abatement of mental power and activity we may gather from the quantity and nature of the work still lying before him which he speaks of as intending and expecting to get it done. For though he leaves the sixth and concluding part of the 'Instauration '-the Philosophia Secunda-to Posterity, as a thing which must wait for the third, the collection of Natural History; and though he commends the third to Kings, Popes, or Colleges, as beyond the industry and endeavour of a private man; yet the remainder of the second part, which was to complete the description of the Novum Organum, or

1 It may have been the "sharp sickness of some weeks" from which he had "newly recovered" on the 8th of September, 1624. See above p. 520.

1625.]

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION.

531

new logical machinery,-as well as the whole of the fourth, which was to contain examples of its correct use and application, and the whole of the fifth which was to consist of his own provisional speculations—“ anticipations," as he called them-in natural philosophy,―could be supplied by no hand but his own: and of these he shows no signs of despairing. Life and health and leisure being allowed, he does not seem to have apprehended any want of faculty or spirit or courage.

EPISTOLA AD FULGENTIUM.1

Reverendissime P. Fulgenti,

Fateor me literarum tibi debitorem esse: suberat excusatio justa nimis; implicatus enim fueram gravissimo morbo, a quo necdum liberatus sum. Volo Reverentiæ tuæ nota esse consilia mea de scriptis meis, quæ meditor et molior: non perficiendi spe, sed desiderio experiundi; et quia posteritati (sæcula enim ista requirunt) inservio. Optimum autem putavi ea omnia, in Latinam linguam traducta, in tomos dividere. Primus tomus constat ex libris 'De Augmentis Scientiarum :' qui tamen, ut nosti, jam perfectus et editus est, et partitiones scientiarum complectitur; quæ est Instaurationis' meæ pars prima. Debuerat sequi Novum Organum;' interposui tamen scripta mea moralia et politica, quia magis erant in promptu. Hæc sunt: primo, Historia regni Henrici septimi Regis Angliæ;' deinde sequetur libellus ille, quem vestra lingua 'Saggi Morali' appellastis. Verum illi libro nomen gravius impono, scilicet ut inscribatur,Sermones fideles, sive Interiora rerum.' Erunt autem sermones isti et numero aucti et tractatu multum amplificati. Item continebit tomus iste libellum 'De Sapientia Veterum: atque hic tomus (ut diximus) interjectus est, et non. ex ordine Instaurationis.' Tum demum sequetur Organum Novum ;' cui secunda pars adhuc adjicienda est; quam tamen animo jam complexus et metitus sum. Atque hoc modo secunda . pars Instaurationis absolvetur. Quod ad tertiam partem Instaurationis attinet, Historiam scilicet Naturalem, opus illud est plane regium aut papale, aut alicujus collegii aut ordinis; neque privata industria pro merito perfici potest. At portiones

1 'Opuscula,' p. 172. Father Fulgentio, according to Tenison (Baconiana, p. 101) was "a divine of the republic of Venice, and the same who wrote the life of his colleague the excellent Father Paul."

illæ quas jam in lucem edidi, 'De Ventis,' 'De Vita et Morte,' non sunt historia pura, propter axiomata et observationes majores interpositas; sed genus scripti commistum ex historia naturali et machina intellectus rudi et imperfecta; quæ est Instaurationis pars quarta. Itaque succedet illa ipsa quarta pars, et multa exempla machinæ continebit magis exacta, et ad inductivas regulas magis applicata. Quinto sequetur iste liber, quem Prodromum philosophiæ secundæ inscripsimus; qui inventa nostra circa nova axiomata ab experimentis ipsis excitata continebit; ut tanquam columnæ jacentes sustollantur: quem posuimus Instaurationis partem quintam. Postremo, superest Philosophia ipsa Secunda, quæ est Instaurationis pars sexta; de qua spem omnino abjecimus: sed a sæculis et posteritate fortasse pullulabit. Attamen in Prodromis (iis dico tantum, quæ ad universalia naturæ fere pertingunt) non levia jacta erunt hujus rei fundamenta. Conamur (ut vides) tenues grandia: in eo tantum spem ponentes, quod videntur ista a Dei providentia et immensa bonitate profecta. Primo, propter ardorem et constantiam mentis nostræ, quæ in hoc instituto non consenuit, nec tanto temporis spatio refrixit. Equidem memini me, quadraginta abhinc annis, juvenile opusculum circa has res confecisse, quod magna prorsus fiducia et magnifico titulo 'Temporis Partum Maximum'inscripsi. Secundo, quod propter infinitam utilitatem Dei Opt. Max. auctoramento gaudere videatur.

Commendatum, rogo, me habeat Reverentia vestra illustrissimo viro Domino Molines, cujus suavissimis et prudentissimis literis quam primum, si Deus volet, rescribam. Vale, P. reverendissime.

Reverentiæ tuæ amicus addictissimus,

FR. ST. ALBAN.

1 This was probably the work of which Henry Cuffe (the great Oxford scholar who was executed in 1601 as one of the chief accomplices in the Earl of Essex's treason) was speaking, when he said that "a fool could not have written it and a wise man would not.' Bacon's intimacy with Essex had begun about 35 years before this letter was written.

2 "Most reverend Father Fulgentio,

"I confess that I owe you a letter; but I had too good an excuse: for I was suffering under a very severe illness, from which I have not yet recovered. I wish to make known to your Reverence my intentions with regard to the writings which I meditate and have in hand; not hoping to perfect them, but desiring to try; and because I work for posterity; these things requiring ages for their accomplishment. I have thought it best, then, to have all of them translated into Latin and divided into volumes. The first volume consists of the books concerning the 'Advancement of Learning;' and this, as you know, is already finished and