PREFACE. XXIX 



hastily. Dr. Pluyfer, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cam 

 bridge, who had expressed the good liking he had conceived 

 of the book, was applied to by Bacon to translate it into 

 Latin, but the specimen of his version was too ornate for 

 Bacon s taste, and it was never completed. The two parts, 

 in English only, were published together in quarto some time 

 about the end of October, and then not by Richard Ockould 

 but by Henry Tomes, with the following title : * The Twoo 

 Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduaunce- 

 ment of Learning, diuine and humane. To the King. At 

 London, Printed for Eenrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his 

 shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605. In a letter from 

 Chamberlain to Carleton on the ;th of November, the appear 

 ance of Sir Francis Bacon s new work on Learning is duly 

 chronicled . Any attention it might otherwise have attracted 

 was no doubt greatly diminished by the event which then 

 filled men s minds, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In 

 the investigations which followed this discovery, Bacon was 

 only slightly concerned. A prospect of a vacancy occurs in 

 the Solicitorship in March, 1606-7, and Bacon urges Cecil to 

 press his claims. But he had again to wait. 



In the hurry and business of this session, the gossip of 

 Carleton gives us a glimpse of Bacon, the statesman and 

 philosopher, in a new aspect. On the nth of May, 1606, 

 he writes to Chamberlain, Sir Francis Bacon was married 

 yesterday to his young wench in Maribone Chapel. He was 

 clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his 

 wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold 

 that it draws deep into her portion. The dinner was kept at 

 his father-in-law Sir John Packington s lodging over against 



c In the present edition the text has been taken from that of 1605, 

 corrected where necessary by the Errata and by the subsequent editions 

 of 1629 and 1633. The spelling has been modernized throughout. In 

 tracing the quotations I have been materially assisted by Wats trans 

 lation of the De Augmentis, and the recent editions of the Advancement 

 by Mr. Markby and Mr. Kitchin. 



