44 LETTERS FROM MATHEWS. 



yourself, and to make some little note in writing, where 

 you think (to speak like a critic) that I do perhaps indor- 

 miscere ; or where I do indulgere genio ; or where, in fine, 

 I give any manner of disadvantage to myself. This, super 

 totam materiam, you must not fail to note, besides all such 

 words and phrases as you cannot like ; for you know in 

 how high account I have your judgment. 



Sir Francis Bacon to the same Person upon the like 

 Subject ; with an Addition of condoling the Death 

 of a Friend. 



Sir, 



The reason of so much time taken before my answer to 

 yours of the fourth of August, was chiefly my accom 

 panying my letter with the paper which here I send you ; 

 and again, now lately (not to hold from you till the end of 

 a letter, that which by grief may, for a time, efface all 

 the former contents), the death of your good friend and 

 mine, A. B.; to whom, because I used to send my letters 

 for conveyance to you, it made me so much the more 

 unready in the despatch of them. In the mean time, I 

 think myself (howsoever it hath pleased God otherwise to 

 bless me) a most unfortunate man, to be deprived of two 

 (a great number in true friendship) of those friends whom 

 I accounted as no stage friends, but private friends (and 

 such as with whom I might both freely and safely com 

 municate) ; him by death, and you by absence. As for the 

 memorial of the late deceased Queen, I will not question 

 whether you be to pass for a disinterested man or no ; I 

 freely confess myself am not, and so I leave it. As for 

 my other writings you make me very glad of your appro 

 bation ; the rather because you add a concurrence in opi 

 nion with others; for else I might have conceived that 

 affection would, perhaps, have prevailed with you, beyond 

 that which (if your judgment had been neat and free) you 

 could have esteemed. And as for your caution touching the 

 dignity of ecclesiastical persons, I shall not have cause to 

 meet with them, any otherwise than in that some schoolmen 

 have, with excess, advanced the authority of Aristotle. 

 Other occasion I shall have none. But now I have sent 

 you that only part of the whole writing which may perhaps 

 have a little harshness and provocation in it, although I 

 may almost secure myself that if the Preface passed so 



