LORD BACON'S WORKS
ESSAYS OR COUNSELS,
CIVIL AND MORAL.
to the right honorable my very good lo. the duke of buckingham his grace, lo. high admirall of england.
Excellent Lo.
Salomon saies; A good name is as a precious oyntment; and I assure myselfe, such wil your Grace's name bee, with posteritie. For your fortune, and merit both, haue beene eminent. And you haue planted things, that are like to last. I doe now publish my Essayes; which, of all other workes, have beene most currant: For that, as it seemes, they come home, to mens businesse, and bosomes. I haue 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 Latine. For I doe conceiue, that the Latine Volume of them (being in the Vniuersal Language) may last, as long as Bookes last. My Instauration, I dedicated to the King: My Historie of Henry the Seventh, (which I haue now translated into Latine) and my Portions of Naturall History, to the Prince: And these I dedicate to your Grace: Being of the best Fruits, that by the good encrease, which God gives to my Pen and Labours, I could yeeld. God leade your Grace by the Hand. Your Graces most Obliged and Faithful Seruant,
EDITORS PREFACE
TO
1. The Essays.
2. Meditationes Sacræ.
3. The Colours of Good and Evil.
4. Miscellaneous Tracts upon Human Philosophy.
1. In Praise of Knowledge.
2. Valerius Terminus, or the Interpretation of Nature.
3. Filum Labyrinthi.
4. Sequela Chartarum.
5. Miscellaneous Tracts.
1. Apophtegmes.
2. Ornamenta Rationalia.
3. Sentences.
4. Notes for Conversation.
5. An Essay on Death.
§ 1.
THE ESSAYS.
The first edition of the Essays was published in the year 1597. It is entitled[1]
"Essayes.
Religious Meditations.
Places of perswasion
and disswasion.
Seene and allowed.
At London,
Printed for Humfrey Hooper, and are
to be sold at the blacke Beare
in Chauncery Lane.
1597."
- ↑ There is a copy of this edition at Cambridge, and in the Bodleian.
