Of this extraordinary work various editions and translations have been since published.1 1 Different editions of the treatise De Augmentis. 1. The first edition is thus described by Tenison: "The fairest and most correct edition of this book in Latin is that in folio, printed at London, 1623; and whoever would understand the Lord Bacon's cypher, let him consult that accurate edition: for, in some other editions which I have perused, the form of the letters of the alphabet, in which much of the mystery consisteth, is not observed, but the roman and italic shapes of them are confounded." The following is a copy of the title page: "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Vervlamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri IX. Ad Regem svvm. Londini, in Officina Joannis Haviland, MDCXXIII." There is a copy at Cambridge and in the British Museum, and I have a copy. | Copies were presented to the king, to whom it was dedicated, the Prince, the Duke of Bucking Is it not rather extraordinary that not an edition has been published in either of the universities of England Translations. In the year 1640 a translation into English was published at Oxford, with a portrait of the philosopher writing his Instauratio, and the following inscriptions prefixed and subjoined: "Tertius a Platone philosophiæ princeps. Quod feliciter vortat reip. literariæ V. C. Fran. de Verulamio philosoph. libertates assertor avdax, scientiaru' reparator felix mundi mentisq. magnus arbiter inclytis max. terrarum orbis Acad. Oxon. Contab. Q. hanc suam Instavr. voto suscepto vivus decernebat obiit v. non. April, 11. D. N. Caroli I. Pp. Aug. c1ɔ ɔc XXVI"-Appended is another engraving of two spheres, the one of the visible, the other of the intellectual world, and supported by two fixed pillars, the one Oxford and the other Cambridge, with a vessel sailing between them, with the following inscription: "Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning, or the Partitions of Sciences, Ix Bookes. Written in Latin by the most illustrious and famous Lord 3. In 1638 an edition was published by Dr. Rawley, in a Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Vicont St. Alban, Counfolio entitled, "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Vervlamio Vice-silour of Estate and Lord Chancellor of England. Interpreted Comitis Sancti Albani tractatus de Dignitate et Augmentis by Gilbert Wats. Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia. Scientiarum qui est Instaurationis magne pars prima. Ad | Oxford, printed by Leon. Lichfield, printer to the University regem svvm. Londini, typis Ioh. Haviland. Prostant ad for Rob. Young, and Ed. Forrest. CICIOC XL." insignia Regia in Cœmeterio D. Pauli, apud Iocosam Norton et Richardum Whitakerum. 1638." 2. The work had scarcely appeared in England, when an edition was published in France: it appeared in 1624. The following is a copy of the title page: Francisci Baronis de Vervlamio Vicecomitis Sancti Albani, de Dignitate et Augmentis Scienciarum. Libri ix. Ad Regem svvm. Iuxta exemplar Londini impressum. Parisiis, typis Petri Metayer, typographi Regij. M.DC XXIV." I have a copy. 4. In the year 1645 an edition in 12mo. was published in Holland. The following is the title page: Francisci Biconis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri IX. Ad Regem suum. Editio nova, cum Indice rerum et verborum locupletissimo. Lugd. Batav. apud Franciscum Moyardum et Adrianum Wijngaerde. Anno 1645."-The title page of this Dutch edition is adorned with an engraving, not undeserving the attention of our students in England: it is of a youth aspiring to the attainment of knowledge. 5. In 1652 another edition in 12mo. was published in Holland: the engraving prefixed to the edition of 1645 is also prefixed to this edition; but the descriptive title is omitted, and the address to the reader is at the back of the engraving. The following is the title page: "Fr. Baconis de Vervlam Anglia Cancellarii de Avgmentis Scientiarvin. Lib. IX. Lvgd. Batavorvin, ex officina Adriani Wijngaerden. Anno 1652." 6. In 1662 another edition was published in 12mo. in Holland. The following is a copy of the title page: "Fr. Baconis de Vervlam Angliæ Cancellarii de Avgmentis Scientiarum. Lib. IX. Amstelodami, sumptibus Joannis Ravesteinij. 1662." At the back of which, as in the edition of 1652, there is the address to the reader: "Amice Lector. Hoc opus de Augmentis Scientiarum, novo ejusdem autoris organo si præ. mittatur, non modo necessarium ei lucem præbet; sed et partitiones continet scientiarum quæ primam Instaurationis magnæ partem constituunt quas id circo auctor in ipso organi limine retractare noluit. Hæc te scire volebam." In the year 1674 another edition of the translation by Wats was published in London, but instead of the engravings which were prefixed to the edition of 1640, there is prefixed to the annexed title page only a portrait of Lord Bacon. The following is the title page: "Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning: or the Partitions of Sciences. Nine Books. Written in Latin by the most eminent, illustrious and famous Lord Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Counsellor of Estate, and Lord Chancellor of England. Interpreted by Gilbert Wats. London, printed for Thomas Williams, at the Golden Ball in Osier lane, 1674." Of these translations Archbishop Tenison thus speaks in the Baconiana: "The whole of this book was rendered into English by Dr. Gilbert Wats, of Oxford, and the translation has been well received by many: but some there were, who wished that a translation had been set forth, in which the genius and spirit of the Lord Bacon had more appeared. And I have seen a letter written by certain gentlemen to Dr. Raw. ley, wherein they thus importune him for a more accurate version, by his own hand. It is our humble suit to you, and we do earnestly solicit you to give yourself the trouble to correct the too much defective translation of De Augmentis Scientiarum, which Dr. Wats hath set forth. It is a thousand pities that so worthy a piece should lose its grace and credit by an ill expositor; since those persons who read that translation, taking it for genuine, and upon that presumption not regarding the Latin edition, are thereby robbed of that benefit which, if you would please to undertake the business, they might receive. This tendeth to the dishonour of that noble lord, and the Advancement of Learning.'" Of the correctness or incorrectness of these observations, some estimate may be formed from the following specimens ; The Instauratio Magna thus begins: "Franciscus de Veru 7. In 1765 an edition in 8vo. was published at Venice. The following is the title page: "Francisci Baronis de Verulamio, Angliæ Cancellarii de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.lamio sic cogitavit.”—Translation by Wats: "Francis Lord Pars prima. Lugani, MDCCLXIII. Expensis Gasparis Girardi, Bibliopola Veneti." I have a copy. 8. In 1779 an edition was published on the continent. The following is the title page: "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Tomus 1. Wirceburgi, apud Jo. Jac. Stahel. 1779." 9. In 1829 another edition was published on the continent, in two vols., of which the following is the title page: "Francisci Baconis de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri IX. Ad fidem optimarum editionum edidit vitamque auctoris adjecit Philippus Mayer, Philosophie Doctor et Gymnasii Norimbergensis Collega. Norimbergae, sumptibus Riegelii et Wiessneri. MDCCCXXIX." Such are the different editions of which I have any know ledge. I understand that editions have been published in Germany, for which I have sent, and hope to be able to pro cure Verulam consulted thus." Another specimen: Advancement of Learning.-"We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used their verdure departeth; which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures, and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious men turn melancholy; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable, and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply, without fallacy or accident." Wats's Translation.-"In all other pleasures there is a finite variety, and after they grow a little stale, their flower and verdure fades and departs; whereby we are instructed that they were not indeed pure and sincere pleasures, but shadows and deceits of pleasures, and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality; wherefore voluptuous men often turn friars, and the declining age of ambitious Fifty years after its publication it was included at Rome in the list "Librorum Prohibitorum," in which list it is now included in Spain. The vanity of these attempts to resist the progress of knowledge might, it should seem, by this time be understood even at the Vatican. How beautifully are the consequences of this intolerance thus stated by Fuller: "Hitherto the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till ham, Trinity College, Cambridge, the University his body was reduced to bones and his bones al of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford.- most to dust. For though the earth in the chan The present was gratefully acknowledged by the cel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he different patrons to whom it was presented, and was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with by all the learning of England. the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of the council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory as dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution,-if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people) be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off from any | Christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterprinces is commonly more sad and besieged with melan-worth, sent his officers, vultures with a quick sight choly; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but vicissitude, scent at a dead carcass, to ungrave him. Accordperpetually and interchangeably returning of fruition and appetite; so that the good of this delight must needs be simpler, ingly to Lutterworth they come; summer, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, In the year 1632 a translation into French was published in and their servants, so that the remnant of the Paris. The following is a copy of the title page: "Neve Livres de la Dignité et de l'Accroissement des Sciences, com- body would not hold out a bone amongst so many posez par Francois Bacon, Baron de Verulam et Vicomte de hands, take what was left out of the grave, and Saint Aubain, et traduits de Latin en Francois par le Sieur burnt them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a de Golefer, Conseiller et Historiographe du Roy. A Paris, chez Jaques Dugast, rue Sainct Jean de Beauvais, a l'Olivier neighbouring brook running hard by. Thus de Robert Estienne et en sa boutique au bas de la rue de la this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Harpe. M.DC.XXXII. avec privilege du Roy."-Of this edition Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow Archbishop Tenison says, "This work hath been also translated into French, upon the motion of the Marquis Fiat; but seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the in it there are many things wholly omitted, many things per- ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his fectly mistaken, and some things, especially such as relate to religion, wilfully perverted. Insomuch that, in one place, he doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world without accident or fallacy." makes his lordship to magnify the Legend: a book sure of little credit with him, when he thus began one of his essays, 'I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and over." If Bacon had completed his intended work the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame upon "Sympathy and Antipathy," the constant is without a mind." " I have a copy of this edition. antipathy of ignorance to intellect, criginating sometimes in the painful feeling of inferiority, A letter of the Lord Bacon's, in French, to the Marquess Fiat, sometimes in the fear of worldly injury, but relating to his Essays. Monsieur l'Ambassadeur mon File,-Voyant que vostre excellence faict et trait mariages, non seulement entre les princes d'Angletere et de France, mais aussi entre les langues (puis que faictes traduire non liure de l'Advancement des Sciences en Francois) i' ai bien voulu vous envoyer, &c. There is a translation into French in the edition of Lord Bacon's works, published in the eighth year of the French Republic. The following is the title page of this edition "Euvres de François Bacon, Chancelier d'Angletaire; traduites par Ant. La Salle; avec des notes critiques, historiTome premier. A Dijon, de l'Imprimerie de L. N. Frantin, an 8 de la Republique Française." ques et litteraires. DE AUGMENTIS-Latin. always in the influence of some passion more powerful than the love of truth, would not have escaped his notice. In this year he also published his History of Life and Death, which, of all his works, is one of the most extraordinary, both for the extent of his views, and the minute accuracy with which each part is investigated. It is addressed, not, to use his own expression, "to the Adonises of literature, but to Hercules's followers; that is, the more severe and laborious inquirers into truth." Upon his entrance, in the Advancement of Learning, on the science of human nature, he says, "The knowledge of man, although only a portion of knowledge in the continent of nature, is to man the end of all knowledge:" and, in furtherance of this opinion, he explains that the 1779... 8vo.... Stahel...... Wirceburgi. 8th. 2 vols. object of education ought to be knowledge and 1829.... 1640.... 1674 1632.. 8th year Rep.. Riegelii. Nuremberg. 9th. 2 vols. improvement of the body and the mind. Of the importance of knowledge of the body, that, "while sojourning in this wilderness, and travelling to the land of promise, our vestments should be preserved," he is incessant in his ob. servations. He divides the subject into Of consumption he says there are two causes: the depredation of vital spirit and the depredation of ambient air; and if the action of either of these agents can be destroyed, the decomposition is more or less retarded, as in bodies enclosed in wax or coffins, where the action of the external air is excluded: and when the action of both these causes can be prevented, the body defies decomposition, as in bricks and burnt bodies, where the vital air is expelled by exposure of the clay to the ambient air, and afterwards by fire; or as a fly in amber, more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian monarch. In making the agents less predatory, and the patients less depredable, the science of the retardation of consumption consequently consists. He proceeds, therefore, with his usual accuracy, to consider how these objects are to be attained; and, having considered them, he proceeds to the doctrine of reparation, both of the whole frame and the decayed parts. His History of Life and Death contains his favourite doctrine of vital spirit, or excitability, or life, which he notices in various parts of his works. In this place more cannot be attempted than, as a specimen of the whole of this important subject, to explain one or two of the positions. In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone Excursion, book 9. As another specimen, the mode of explaining the condensation of spirit by flight may be selected. The spirit, he says, is condensed by flight,cold,-appeasing, and quelling. The condensation by flight is when there is an antipathy between the spirit and the body upon which it acts; as, in opium, which is so exceedingly powerful in condensing the spirit, that a grain will tranquillize the nerves, and by a few grains they may be so compressed as to be irrecoverable. The touched spirit may retreat into its shell for a time or forever: or it may, when fainting, be recalled, by the application of a stimulant, as surprise from a sudden impulse; a blow, or a glass of water thrown on the face; or the prick of a pin, or the action of mind on mind. "I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand Any exploit worthy the name of honour." As another specimen, his sentiments upon death, the decomposition of compounds, may be selected. tical motion is that by which the parts of the body In his doctrine of motion, he says, "The poliare restrained, from their own immediate appetites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may preserve the existence of the whole body. Thus, all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes, the spirit, which exists in all living bodies, keeps the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite— when the spirit which held the parts together esas metals rust, fluids turn sour; and, in animals, capes, all things are dissolved, and return to their own natures or principles: the oily parts to themThe foundation position is, that "All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser which necessarily ensues that odour, that unctuoselves, the aqueous to themselves, &c., upon body. There is no known body, in the upper sity, that confusion of parts, observable in putreparts of the earth, without its spirit, whether it faction." So true is it, that in nature all is be generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise; for beauty; that, notwithstanding our partial views the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum, but and distressing associations, the forms of death, either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the sub-misshapen as we suppose them, are but the tenIdencies to union in similar natures. stance; and this not a vis, an energy, or a fiction, but a real, subtile, and invisible, and, therefore, neglected body, circumscribed by place and diinension." This doctrine is thus stated in the Excursion: To every form of being is assigned of the utmost importance to our well-being:—that The knowledge of this science Bacon considers the action of the spirit is the cause of consumption and dissolution;-is the agent which produces all bodily and mental effects;-influences the will in the production of all animal motions, as in the whale and the elephant;-and is the cause of all our cheerfulness or melancholy :-that the perfec tion of our being consists in the proper portion of this spirit properly animated, or the proper portion of excitability properly excited; that its presence is life, its absence death. This subject, deemed of such importance by Bacon, has been much neglected, and occasionally been supposed to be a mere creature of the imagination. Although the History of Life and Death is apparently a separate tract, it is the last portion of the third of the six books into which the third part of the Instauration is divided, which are the histories of 1st. The Winds. 2d. Density and Rarity. 3d. Heavy and Light. 4th. Sympathy and Antipathy. His reason for the publication of this tract, he thus states: "Although I had ranked the History of Life and Death as the last among my six monthly designations; yet I have thought fit, in respect of the prime use thereof, in which the least loss of time ought to be esteemed precious, to invert that order." The History, which was published in Latin, is inscribed "To the present age and posterity, in the hope and wish that it may conduce to a common good, and that the nobler sort of physicians will advance their thoughts, and not employ their times wholly in the sordidness of cures, neither be honoured for necessity only, but that they will become coadjutors and instruments of the divine omnipotence and clemency in prolonging and renewing the life of man, by safe, and convenient, and civil ways, though hitherto unassayed." This was the last of his philosophical publications during his life; but they were only a small portion of his labours, which are thus recorded by Dr. Rawley: "The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil affairs and from an active life, he employed wholly in contemplation and studies: a thing whereof his lordship would often speak during his active life, as if he affected to die in the shadow, and not in the light. During this time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin, which I will enumerate, as near as I can, in the just order wherein they were written. A preface to a Digest of the Laws of England. De Augmentis Scientiarum: or the Advance- verse. The translation into Latin of the History of His revising of his book De Sapientia Veterum. Topica Inquisitionis; de Luce, et Lumine. "He also designed, upon the motion and invitation of his late majesty, to have written the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; but that work perished in the designation merely, God not lending him life to proceed further upon it than only in one morning's work: whereof there is extant an Ex Ungue Leonem." Such were his works during the short period, when, between sixty and seventy years of age, he, fortunately for himself and society, was thrown from active into contemplative life; into that philosophical seclusion, where he might turn from calumny, from the slanders of his enemies, to the admiration of all civilized Europe; from political rancour and threats of assassination, to the peaceful safety of sequestered life; from the hollow compacts which politicians call union, formed by expediency and dissolved at the first touch of inte rest, to the enduring joys of intellectual and virtu ous friendship, and the consolations of piety. These blessings he now enjoyed. Eminent foreigners crossed the seas on purpose to see and discourse with him. Gondomar, who was in Spain, wrote to express his regard and respect, with lamentations that his public duties prevented his immediate attendance upon him in England. When the Marquis d'Effiat accompanied the Princess Henrietta-Maria, wife to Charles the First, to England, he visited Lord Bacon; who, The History of the Reign of King Henry the being then sick in bed, received him with the Seventh. curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," Abecedarium Naturæ; or a Metaphysical Piece. said that minister to him: "we hear those beings Historia Ventorum. Historia Vitæ et Mortis. Historia Densi, et Rari. Historia Gravis et Levis. A discourse of a war with Spain. continually talked of, we believe them superio to mankind, and we never have the consolation to see them." "Your kindness," he answered, "may compare me to an angel, but my infirmities tell me that I am a man." In this interview a friendship originated which continued during their lives, and is recorded in his will where, (K) |