CCCCXXX LIFE OF BACON. 



time of his illness, of his pious mind ; and a more pious 

 mind never existed, (a) 



Confession There is scarcely a line of his works in which a deep, 

 awful, religious feeling is not manifested. It is, perhaps, 

 most conspicuous in his Confession of Faith, (b) of which 



Of these, the 107th seems to be the best. Vol. vii. p. 100. But Q. 

 Has there ever been a version approaching to the excellence of the original 

 prose translation ? 



(a) Preface to vol. vii. Archbishop Tennison says, &quot;His writings upon 

 pious subjects were only these : his Confession of Faith, written by himself 

 in English, and turned into Latin by Dr. Rawley, the questions about an 

 Holy War, and the Prayers, in these remains, and a translation of certain of 

 David s Psalms into English verse. With this last pious exercise he 

 diverted himself in the time of his sickness, in the year twenty-five. When 

 he sent it abroad into the world, he made a dedication of it to his good 

 friend, Mr. George Herbert, for he judged the argument to be suitable to 

 him, in his double quality of a divine and a poet.&quot; 



(6) See vol. vii. p. 10. Of the authenticity of this essay no doubt can 

 be entertained: it was published in a separate tract in 1641. The 

 following is an exact transcript of the title page : &quot; The Confession of 

 Faith,&quot; written by Sir Francis Bacon, printed in the year 1641. In the 

 title page there is a wood engraving of Sir Francis Bacon , it is a thin 4to. 

 of twelve pages, without any printer s name. Mr. D Israeli kindly lent me 

 a copy. It is similar, but not the same as the present copy. It was also 

 published by Dr. Rawley, in the Resuscitatio, 1657, by whom it was 

 translated into Latin, and published in the Opuscula varia posthuma. 

 Londini, ex officina, It. Danielis, 1658. In his life he says, &quot; Supererat 

 tandem scriptum illud Confessionis Fidei ; quod auctor ipse, plurimis ante 

 obitum annis, idiomate Anglicano concepit : operae pretium mihi visum 

 est Romana civitate donare; quo non minus exteris, quam popularibus 

 suis, palam fiat, qua fide imbutus, et quibus mediis fretus, illustrissimus 

 heros, animam Deo reddiderit ; et quod theologicis studiis, aeque ac philo- 

 sophicis et civilibus, cum commodum esset, vacaverit. Fruere his operibus, 

 et scientiarum antistitis olim Verulamii ne obliviscaris. Vale.&quot; 



Of the Confession of Faith there are various MSS. in the British 

 Museum; Sloane s 23, 2 copies; Harleian, vol. 2, 314; vol. 3, 61; 

 Hargraves, p. 62 ; the MSS. Burch, 4263, is, I suspect, in Lord Bacon s 

 own writing, with his signature. It is stated in one of the MSS. to have 

 been written before or when Sir Francis Bacon was Solicitor General, 

 and in the Remains it is entitled, Confession of Faith, written by Sir 



