less correct. The work was early translated into French, through the means of the Marquis Fiat, ambassador from the King of France at the English court; but in this translation "there are," according to Tenison, "many things wholly omitted, many things perfectly mistaken, and some things (especially such as relate to religion) wilfully perverted." There is also a modern French translation, filling the first three volumes of the 'Oeuvres de François Bacon, traduites par Lasalle, avec des notes Critiques, Historiques, et Littéraires,' 6 tomes, 8vo. ; à Dijon, 1800. It has been reprinted, but without the notes, in a volume of the 'Panthéon Littéraire,' entitled Oeuvres Philosophiques, Morales, et Politiques, de François Bacon; avec une notice biographique par J. A. C. Buchon,' 8vo.; Paris, 1836. There are two English translations. One, by Gilbert Wats, was printed in folio at Oxford in 1640, and again at London in 1674. The other makes part of The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, by Peter Shaw, M.D.;' first printed at London in 3 vols. 4to., in 1733; again, in the same form, in 1737; and a third time in 12 vols. 8vo., in 1807.

Mr. Hallam has stated, in his Introduction to the History of the Literature of Europe,' that more than two-thirds of the De Augmentis are a version, with slight interpolation or omission, from the Advancement of Learning, and that consequently less than one third of the former treatise consists of new matter. This is, we apprehend, an under statement of the extent of the additions. The First Book of the De Augmentis is nearly a translation of the Advancement; something is omitted, but hardly any thing added. The Second Book of the Advancement, however, which is nearly three times as long as the first, is more than doubled in the remaining eight Books of the De Augmentis. The new matter, therefore, instead of making less than a third, makes more than three-sevenths, or not much less than half of the whole work; while it makes more than the half of that portion of the work to which the additions are chiefly confined.

The Advancement of Learning sets out with the

following panegyrical address to King James, which is retained, with very slight abridgment, in the De Augmentis:

There were, under the law, excellent king, both daily sacrifices, and freewill offerings; the one proceeding upon ordinary observance, the other upon a devout cheerfulness: in like manner there belongeth to kings from their servants both tribute of duty and presents of affection. In the former of these I hope I shall not live to be wanting, according to my most humble duty, and the good pleasure of your majesty's employments: for the latter, I thought it more respective to make choice of some oblation, which might rather refer to the proprietory and excellence of your individual person, than to the business of your crown and state.

Wherefore, representing your majesty many times unto my mind, and beholding you not with the inquisitive eye of presumption, to discover that which the Scripture telleth me is inscrutable, but with the observant eye of duty and admiration; leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched, yea, and possessed with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution: and I have often thought, that of all the persons living that I have known, your majesty were the best instance to make a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge is but remembrance, and that the mind of man by nature knoweth all things, and hath but her own native and original notions (which by the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle of the body are sequestered) again revived and restored: such a light of nature I have observed in your majesty, and such a readiness to take flame and blaze from the least occasion presented, or the least spark of another's knowledge delivered. And as the Scripture saith of the wisest king, "That his heart was as the sands of the sea;" which though it be one of the largest bodies, yet it consisteth of the smallest and finest portions; so hath God given your majesty a composition of understanding admirable, being able to compass and comprehend the greatest matters, and nevertheless to touch and apprehend the least; whereas it should seem an impossibility in nature, for the same instrument to make itself fit for great and small works. And for your gift of speech, I call to mind what Cornelius Tacitus saith of Au

gustus Cæsar: " Augusto profluens, et quæ principem deceret, eloquentia fuit."* For, if we note it well, speech that is uttered with labour and difficulty, or speech that savoureth of the affectation of art and precepts, or speech that is framed after the imitation of some pattern of eloquence, though never so excellent, all this has somewhat servile, and holding of the subject. But your majesty's manner of speech is indeed princelike, flowing as from a fountain, and yet streaming and branching itself into nature's order, full of facility and felicity, imitating none, and inimitable by any. And as in your civil estate there appeareth to be an emulation and contention of your majesty's virtue with your fortune; a virtuous disposition with a fortunate regiment; a virtuous expectation, when time was, of your greater fortune, with a prosperous possession thereof in the due time; a virtuous observation of the laws of marriage, with most blessed and happy fruit of marriage; a virtuous and most Christian desire of peace, with a fortunate inclination in your neighbour princes thereunto: so likewise, in these intellectual matters, there seemeth to be no less contention between the excellency of your majesty's gifts of nature, and the universality and perfection of your learning. For I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is that there hath not been since Christ's time any king or temporal monarch which has been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession of the emperors of Rome; of which Cæsar the dictator, who lived some years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus, were the best learned; and so descend to the emperors of Græcia, or of the West; and then to the lines of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king, if by the compendious extractions of other men's wits and labours, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments and shows of learning; or if he countenance and prefer learning and learned men but to drink indeed of the true fountains of learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king, and in a king born, is almost a miracle. And the more, be

* Augustus had a fluent delivery, such as becomes a prince. (The translations at the foot of the page of Latin passages and phrases in the Advancement of Learning are for the most part the same with those of Dr. W. C. Taylor's edition of that work, 8vo., Lond., 1840.)

1

cause there is met in your majesty a rare conjunction, as well of divine and sacred literature, as of profane and human; so as your majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes; the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher. This propriety, inherent and individual attribute in your majesty, deserveth to be expressed not only in the fame and admiration of the present time nor in the history or tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument, bearing a character or signature both of the power of a king, and the difference and perfection of súch a king.

Therefore I did conclude with myself, that I could not make unto your majesty a better oblation than of some treatise tending to that end, whereof the sum will consist of these two parts; the former, concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof: the latter, what the particular acts and works are, which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning; and again, what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts: to the end, that though I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your majesty or propound unto you framed particulars; yet I may excite your princely cogitations to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence to extract particulars for this purpose, agreeable to your magnanimity and wisdom.

First, in vindicating the excellence of learning, "to clear the way, and, as it were, to make silence," in order that the true testimonies concerning its dignity may be the better heard, "without the interruption of tacit objections," the author thinks "good to deliver it from the discredit and disgraces which it hath received, all from ignorance, but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines, sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politicians, and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves." Bacon is never more ingenious or more eloquent than in handling a theological topic; and we will quote, as a specimen of the present argument, his answer to the objections of the divines, who, he observes, are wont to say that the aspiring to know

ledge was the original temptation and cause of the fall; and, among other disparagements, that many learned men have been arch-heretics; that learned times have been inclined to atheism; and that the contemplation of second causes, which is philosophy, withdraws the mind from dependence upon God, the first cause, which is religion. Partly from his early reading and the natural bent of his genius, partly in accommodation to the spirit of his age, which required that every subject should be viewed with some reference to theology, Bacon has introduced his theological notions into almost all his writings. He is fond, also, of repeating his new and peculiar thoughts of all kinds, and several of those which repeatedly occur elsewhere figure in the following passage:

To discover then the ignorance and error of this opinion, and the misunderstanding in the grounds thereof, it may well appear these men do not observe or consider, that it was not the pure knowledge of nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought before him, according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall; but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself, and to depend no more upon God's commandments, which was the form of the temptation. Neither is it any quantity of knowledge, how great soever, that can make the mind of man to swell; for nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and the contemplation of God; and therefore Solomon, speaking of the two principal senses of inquisition, the eye and the ear, affirmeth that the eye is never satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing; and if there be no fulness, then is "the continent greater than the content:"* so of knowledge itself, and the mind of man, whereto the senses are but reporters, he defineth likewise in these words, placed after that calendar or ephemerides, which he maketh of the diversities of times and seasons for all actions and purposes; and concludeth thus: "God hath made all things beautiful, or decent, in the true return of their seasons: also he hath placed the world in man's heart, yet cannot man find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end :" declaring,

*The thing containing greater than the thing contained.