than this, and scarce any that are like to retain it longer, for in this performance Sir Francis Bacon gave a singular proof of his capacity to please all parties in literature, as in his political conduct he stood fair with all the parties in the nation. The admirers of antiquity were charmed with this discourse, which seems expressly calculated to justify their admiration; and, on the other hand, their opposites were no less pleased with a piece from which they thought they could demonstrate that the sagacity of a modern genius had found out much better meanings for the ancients than ever were meant by them.”
And Mallet, in his Life of Bacon, says:—
“In 1610 he published another treatise, entitled, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. This work bears the same stamp of an original and inventive genius with his other performances. Resolving not to tread in the steps of those who had gone before him, men, according to his own expression, not learned beyond certain commonplaces, he strikes out a new tract for himself, and enters into the most secret recesses of this wild and shadowy region, so as to appear new on a known and beaten subject. Upon the whole, if we cannot bring ourselves readily to believe that there is all the physical, moral, and political meaning veiled under those fables of antiquity, which he has discovered in them, we must own that it required no common penetration to be mistaken with so great an appearance of probability on his side. Though it still remains doubtful whether the ancients were so knowing as he attempts to show they were, the variety and depth of his own knowledge are, in that very attempt, unquestionable.”
In the year 1619 this tract was translated by Sir Arthur Gorges. Prefixed to the work are two letters; the one to the Earl of Salisbury, the other to the University of Cambridge, which Gorges omits, and dedicates his translation to the high and illustrious princess the Lady Elizabeth of Great Britain, Duchess of Baviare, Countess Palatine of Rheine, and chief electress of the empire.
This translation, it should be noted, was published during the life of Lord Bacon by a great admirer of his works.
The editions of this work with which I am acquainted are:—
| Year. | Language. | Printer. | Place. | Size. |
| 1609 | Latin, | R. Barker, | London, | 12mo. |
| 1617 | ” | J. Bill, | ” | ” |
| 1618 | Italian, | G. Bill, | ” | ” |
| 1619 | English, | J. Bill, | ” | ” |
| 1620 | ” | ” | ” | ” |
| 1633 | Latin, | F. Maire, | Lug. Bat., | ” |
| 1634 | ” | F. Kingston, | London, | ” |
| 1638 | ” | E. Griffin, | ” | Folio. |
| 1691 | ” | H. Wetstein, | Amsterdam, | 12mo. |
| 1804 | French, | H. Frantin, | Dijon, | 8vo. |
NOTICE
OF
FRANCIS BACON.
Francis Bacon, the subject of the following memoir, was the youngest son of highly remarkable parents. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was an eminent lawyer, and for twenty years Keeper of the Seals and Privy Counsellor to Queen Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas was styled by Camden sacris conciliis alterum columen; he was the author of some unpublished discourses on law and politics, and of a commentary on the minor prophets. He discharged the duties of his high office with exemplary propriety and wisdom; he preserved through life the integrity of a good man, and the moderation and simplicity of a great one. He had inscribed over the entrance of his hall, at Gorhambury, the motto, mediocria firma; and when the Queen, in a progress, paid him a visit there, she remarked to him that his house was too small for him. “Madam,” answered the Lord Keeper, “my house is well, but it is you that have made me too great for my house.” This anecdote has been preserved by his son,3 who, had he as carefully retained the lesson of practical wisdom it contained, might have avoided the misfortunes and sorrows of his checkered life.
Bacon’s mother, Anne Cooke, was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward the Sixth; like the young ladies of her time, like Lady Jane Grey, like Queen Elizabeth, she received an excellent classical education; her sister, Lady Burleigh, was pronounced by Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s preceptor, to be, with the exception of Lady Jane Grey, the best Greek scholar among the young women of England.4 Anne Cooke, the future Lady Bacon, corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and translated from the Latin this divine’s Apologia; a task which she performed so well that it is said the good prelate could not discover an inaccuracy or suggest an alteration. She also translated from the Italian a volume of sermons on fate and freewill, written by Bernardo Ochino, an Italian reformer. Francis Bacon, the youngest of five sons, inherited the classical learning and taste of both his parents.
He was born at York House, in the Strand, London, on the 22d of January, 1560–61. His health, when he was a boy, was delicate; a circumstance which may perhaps account for his early love of sedentary pursuits, and probably the early gravity of his demeanor. Queen Elizabeth, he tells us, took particular delight in “trying him with questions,” when he was quite a child, and was so much pleased with the sense and manliness of his answers that she used jocularly to call him “her young Lord Keeper of the Seals.” Bacon himself relates that while he was a boy, the Queen once asked him his age; the precocious courtier readily replied that he “was just two years younger than her happy reign.” He is said, also, when very young, to have stolen away from his playfellows in order to investigate the cause of a singular echo in St. James’s Fields, which attracted his attention.
Until the age of thirteen he remained under the tuition of his accomplished mother, aided by a private tutor only; under their care he attained the elements of the classics, that education preliminary to the studies of the University. At thirteen he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his father had been educated. Here he studied diligently the great models of antiquity,
