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To Mr. ANTHONY BACON, his dear Brother.

Loving and beloved Brother,

I DO now, like some that have an orchard ill neighboured, that gather their fruit before it is ripe, to prevent stealing. These fragments of my conceits were going to print; to labour the stay of them had been troublesome, and subject to interpretation; to let them pass had been to adventure the wrong they might receive by untrue copies, or by some garnishment which it might please any that should set them forth to bestow upon them. Therefore I held it best discretion to publish them myself, as they passed long ago from my pen, without any further disgrace than the weakness of the author. And as I did ever hold, there might be as great a vanity in retiring and withdrawing mens conceits, except they be of some nature, from the world, as in obtruding them: so in these particulars I have played myself the inquisitor, and find nothing to my understanding in them contrary or infectious to the state of religion, or manners, but rather, as I suppose, medicinable. Only I disliked now to put them out, because they will be like the late new half-pence, which though the silver were good, yet the pieces were small. But since they would not stay with their master, but would needs travel abroad, I have preferred them to you that are next myself; dedicating them, such as they are, to our love, in the depth whereof, I assure you, I some times wish your infirmities translated upon myself, that her majesty might have the service of so active and able a mind; and I might be with excuse confined to these contemplations and studies, for which I am fittest: so commend I you to the preservation of the divine Majesty.

From my chamber at Gray's-Inn, this 30th of January, 1597.

Your intire loving Brother,

FRAN. BACON.

Tomy loving Brother, Sir JOHN CONSTABLE, Knight. My last Essays I dedicated to my dear brother, Mr. Anthony Bacon, who is with God. Looking amongst my papers this vacation, I found others of the same nature: which if I myself shall not suffer to be lost, it seemeth the world will not, by the often printing of the former. Missing my brother, I found you next; in respect of bond both of near alliance, and of strait friendship and society, and particularly of communication in studies: wherein I must acknowledge myself beholden to you. For as my business found rest in my contemplations, so my contemplations ever found rest in your loving conference and judgment. So wishing you all good, I remain

1612.

Your loving brother and friend,
FRAN. BACON.

To the right honourable my very good lord the duke of BUCKINGHAM, his grace, lord high admiral of England.

Excellent Lord,

SOLOMON 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 mens 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 increase which God gives to my pen and labours I could yield. God lead your grace by the hand.

1625.

Your grace's most obliged and faithful servant,
FRAN, ST. ALBAN.

ESSAYS CIVIL AND MORAL.

I. OF TRUTH.

WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon mens thoughts; that doth bring lyes in favour: but a natural though corrupt love of the lye itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lyes; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lye's sake. But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth not shew the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day: but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lye doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of mens minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like; but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things; full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing

to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy, vinum dæmonum; because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lye. But it is not the lye that passeth through the mind, but the lye that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in mens depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and "to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand "in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and "the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is "comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and "where the air is always clear and serene: and to see "the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below :" so always, that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

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To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature; and that mixture of falshood is like allay in coin of gold and silver; which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked

courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montagne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lye should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lyeth, is as much as to say, "that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards

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men. For a lye faces God, and shrinks from man.” Surely the wickedness of falshood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when Christ cometh he shall not find faith upon the earth.

II. OF DEATH.

MEN fear death, as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb: for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher, and natural man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa. Groans, and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, shew death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death: and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants

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