by a warrant which stated that, "calling to mind the former good services of the Lord St. Albans, and how well and profitably he hath spent his time since his trouble, we are pleased to remove from him that blot of ignominy which yet remaineth upon him, of incapacity and disablement; and to remit to him all penalties whatsoever inflicted by that sentence. Having therefore formerly pardoned his fine, and released his confinement, these are to will and require you to prepare, for our signature, a bill containing a pardon of the whole sentence." (a)

house for judicature is established. There can be no farther use of my misery; perhaps some little may be of my service; for, I hope, I shall be found a man humbled as a Christian, though not dejected as a worldling. I have great opinion of your lordship's power, and great hope, for many reasons, of your favour, which if I may obtain, I can say no more, but nobleness is ever requited in itself; and God, whose special favour in my afflictions I have manifestly found to my comfort, will, I trust, be my paymaster of that, which cannot be requited by

Your Lordship's affectionate humble servant, &c.

Sir Francis Bacon to the King, about the Pardon of the Parliament's Sentence.

Most gracious and dread Sovereign,-I desire not from your majesty means, nor place, nor employment, but only, after so long a time of expiation, a complete and total remission of the sentence of the upper house, to the end that blot of ignominy may be removed from me, and from my memory with posterity, that I die not a condemned man, but may be to your majesty, as I am to God, "nova creatura."

(a) To our trusty and well beloved Thomas Coventry, our Attorney General.

Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well: Whereas our right trusty and right well beloved cousin, the Viscount of St. Alban, upon a sentence given in the upper house of parliament full three years since, and more, hath endured loss of his place, imprisonment, and confinement also for a great time, which may suffice for the satisfaction of justice and example to others: we being always graciously inclined to temper mercy with justice, and calling to mind his former good services, and how well and profitably he hath spent his time since his trouble, are pleased to remove from him that blot of ignominy which yet remaineth upon him, of incapacity and

A. D. 1625.

Æt. 65.

This was one of the last of the King's acts, who thus faithfully performed, to the extent of his ability, all his promises. He died at Theobalds, on the 27th of March, Death of 1625. (a)

His lordship was summoned to parliament in the succeeding reign, but was prevented, by his infirmities, from again taking his seat as a peer.

James.

his health.

Though Lord Bacon's constitution had never been strong, Decline of his temperance and management of his health seemed to promise old age, which his unbounded knowledge and leisure for speculation could not fail to render useful to the world and glorious to himself. The retirement, which in all the distractions of politics refreshed and consoled him, was once more his own, and nature, whom he worshipped, spread her vast untrodden fields before him, where with science as his handmaid he might wander at his will; but the expectations of the learned world and the hopes of his devoted friends were all blighted by a perceptible decay of his health and strength in the beginning of the sickly year of 1625.

During this year his publications were limited to a new Apoedition of his Essays, (b) a small volume of Apothegms, (c)

disablement; and to remit to him all penalties whatsoever inflicted by that sentence. Having therefore formerly pardoned his fine, and released his confinement, these are to will and require you to prepare, for our signature, a bill containing a pardon, in due form of law, of the whole sentence; for which this shall be your sufficient warrant.

(a) See an interesting account of his death in Hacket's Life of Williams. (b) The particulars of this edition have been already explained.-See note 3 I.

(c) Bacon's Apothegms are either, 1st. In this his own publication. 2ndly. A few in the Baconiana. 3rdly. A few in Aubrey. Of the Apophthegms published in 1625 the following is the preface by Lord Bacon:"Julius Cæsar did write a collection of apophthems, as appears in an epistle of Cicero. I need say no more for the worth of a writing of that nature. It is pity his book is lost; for I imagine they were collected with

thegms.

the production, as a recreation in sickness, of a morning's dictation, and a translation of a few of the Psalms of

judgment and choice, whereas that of Plutarch and Stobaeus, and much more the modern ones, draw much of the dregs. Certainly they are of excellent use: they are Mucrones Verborum, pointed speeches. Cicero prettily calls them salinas, salt pits, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle it where you will. They serve to be interlaced in continued speech they serve to be recited upon occasion of themselves: they serve, you take out the kernel of them, and make them your own. I have for my recreation in my sickness fanned the old; not omitting any because they are vulgar (for many vulgar ones are excellent good), nor for the meanness of the person, but because they are dull and flat, and added many new that otherwise would have died."

if

:

In his tract on history in the Advancement of Learning, Bacon says, “There are appendices of history conversant about the words of men, as history itself about the deeds: the partitions thereof into Orations, Letters, and Apophthegms."

Archbishop Tennison, in his Baconiana, page 47, says, "The Apophthegms (of which the first is the best edition) were (what he saith also of his Essays) but as the recreations of his other studies. They were dictated one morning out of his memory; and if they seem to any a birth too inconsiderable for the brain of so great a man, they may think with themselves how little a time he went with it, and from thence make some allowance." He occasionally made great use of these Apothegms, as may be seen by comparing Apophthegms 251, page 403, with the same anecdote as incorporated in the Advancement of Learning, vol. ii. page 224.

The different editions are:- -1st edition. The title page "Apophthegmes, New and Old, collated by the Right Honorable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban. London, printed for Hanna Barret and Richard Whittaker, and are to be sold at the King's Head in Paul's Church, 1625." 12mo. 307 pages, and 280 Apothegms. This Tennison, in the Baconiana, p. 47, says is the best edition.

2nd. In 1658 an edition was published. Here are 184 Apothegms of Bacon: it is a 12mo. This seems to have been reprinted in 1669. I have never seen a copy; but the following is from the Baconiana, where Tennison says, "His lordship hath received much injury by late editions, of which some have much enlarged, but not at all enriched the collection; stuffing it with tales and sayings, too infacetious for a ploughman's chimney corner. And particularly, in the collection not long since published, and called the Apothegms of King James, King Charles, the Marquess of Worcester, the Lord Bacon, and Sir Thomas Moor; his lordship is dealt with very rudely. For besides the addition of insipid

David into English verse, (a) which he dedicated to a Psalms. divine and poet, his friend, the learned and religious George Herbert. (b) This was the last exercise, in the

tales, there are some put in which are beastly and immoral: such as were fitter to have been joined to Aretine, or Aloysia, than to have polluted the chaste labours of the Baron of Verulam."

3rd. In 1661 an edition of the Apothegms was published in the 2nd edition of the Resuscitatio. It consists only of 249 Apothegms, the edition published by Lord Bacon in 1625 consisting of 280. As this edition of the Rescuscitation was published during the life of Dr. Rawley, and as Lord Bacon says in his preface, "I have collated some few of them, therein fanning the old," it seems that Dr. Rawley may have seen the MSS. and that these additions are genuine. It will be observed that they are fewer in number; and, although some are the same, there are many which are not contained in the first edition.-See Stephens's preface to the Memoirs, published in 1734.

4th. In the 3rd edition of the Resuscitatio, published in 1671, there is another edition of the Apothegms, being 308 in number. Dr. Rawley died in 1667.

The 5th edition is a 12mo. It contains, as in the 4th edition, 308 Apothegms.

In this edition of the works of Bacon I separated the Apothegms which were in the edition of 1625, being 280 in number, from the additional Apothegms in the Resuscitatio, such additional Apothegms being 28 in number.

(a) Published in 8vo. 1628, and in the Resuscitation, and in vol. vii. of this edition, p. 98.

(b) TO HIS VERY good friend,

MR. GEORGE HERBERT.

The pains that it pleased you to take about some of my writings I cannot forget, which did put me in mind to dedicate to you this poor exercise of my sickness. Besides, it being my manner for dedications, to choose those that I hold most fit for the argument, I thought, that in respect of divinity and poesy met, whereof the one is the matter, the other the style of this little writing, I could not make better choice: so, with signification of my love and acknowledgment, I ever rest your affectionate friend, FR. ST. ALBAN.

Confession

of Faith.

time of his illness, of his pious mind; and a more pious mind never existed. (a)

There is scarcely a line of his works in which a deep, awful, religious feeling is not manifested. It is, perhaps, most conspicuous in his Confession of Faith, (b) of which

Of these, the 107th seems to be the best. Vol. vii. p. 100. But Q. Has there ever been a version approaching to the excellence of the original prose translation?

(a) Preface to vol. vii. Archbishop Tennison says, "His writings upon pious subjects were only these: his Confession of Faith, written by himself in English, and turned into Latin by Dr. Rawley, the questions about an Holy War, and the Prayers, in these remains, and a translation of certain of David's Psalms into English verse. With this last pious exercise he diverted himself in the time of his sickness, in the year twenty-five. When he sent it abroad into the world, he made a dedication of it to his good friend, Mr. George Herbert, for he judged the argument to be suitable to him, in his double quality of a divine and a poet.”

(b) See vol. vii. p. 10. Of the authenticity of this essay no doubt can be entertained: it was published in a separate tract in 1641. The following is an exact transcript of the title page: "The Confession of Faith," written by Sir Francis Bacon, printed in the year 1641. In the title page there is a wood engraving of Sir Francis Bacon, it is a thin 4to. of twelve pages, without any printer's name. Mr. D'Israeli kindly lent me a copy. It is similar, but not the same as the present copy. It was also published by Dr. Rawley, in the Resuscitatio, 1657, by whom it was translated into Latin, and published in the Opuscula varia posthuma. Londini, ex officina, R. Danielis, 1658. In his life he says, "Supererat tandem scriptum illud Confessionis Fidei; quod auctor ipse, plurimis ante obitum annis, idiomate Anglicano concepit: operæ pretium mihi visum est Romana civitate donare; quo non minus exteris, quam popularibus suis, palam fiat, qua fide imbutus, et quibus mediis fretus, illustrissimus heros, animam Deo reddiderit; et quod theologicis studiis, æque ac philosophicis et civilibus, cum commodum esset, vacaverit. Fruere his operibus, et scientiarum antistitis olim Verulamii ne obliviscaris. Vale."

Of the Confession of Faith there are various MSS. in the British Museum; Sloane's 23, 2 copies; Harleian, vol. 2, 314; vol. 3, 61; Hargraves, p. 62; the MSS. Burch, 4263, is, I suspect, in Lord Bacon's own writing, with his signature. It is stated in one of the MSS. to have been written before or when Sir Francis Bacon was Solicitor General, and in the Remains it is entitled, "Confession of Faith, written by Sir