PREFACE. IX 



she would help me away with my warts : whereupon she got 

 a piece of lard, with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all 

 over with the fat side ; and amongst the rest, that wart which 

 I had had from my childhood : then she nailed the piece of 

 lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber 

 window, which was to the south. The success was, that 

 within five weeks space all the warts went quite away : and 

 that wart which I had so long endured, for company. (Sylva 

 Sylvarum, cent. x. 997.) The questions of sounds and mys 

 terious sympathies did not, however, occupy the whole of his 

 active mind. It was while at Paris learning diplomacy that 

 he invented the cypher which he describes at the end of the 

 sixth book of the De Augmentis, and here too he probably 

 saw that strange visionary, Guillaume Postell, in his retreat 

 at the monastery of St. Martin des Champs. In the summer 

 of 1577, the French Court was at Poitiers. Sir Amias Paulet, 

 with Bacon probably in his suite, remained there from the end 

 of July to the latter end of October. That Bacon was at 

 Poitiers at some time during his residence in France we 

 know from his own account of a conversation with a cynical 

 young Frenchman, perhaps a student, who afterwards became 

 a man of considerable distinction. (Hist. Vitae et Mortis, 

 Works, ii. 211.) There is no evidence however that he him 

 self studied at the University there. 



But now an event occurred which changed the whole cur 

 rent of his life. On the 2oth of February, 1578-95 Sir Nicholas 

 Bacon died, after an illness of only a few days. His death, by 

 a strange coincidence, was foreshadowed by a dream, which 

 his son upon after reflection appears to have regarded almost 

 as a sign of the coming disaster. I myself remember, he 

 says, that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, 

 two or three days before my father s death I had a dream, 

 which I told to divers English gentlemen, that my father s 

 house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar. 

 (Sylva, cent. x. 986.) A month later, on the 2oth of March, 

 ! 578-9, Bacon left Paris, bearing with him a despatch and 

 commendations from Sir Amias Paulet to the Queen. His 



