NOTE 3 I. 



the Meditationes Sacrae. The following is a copy of the title-page : Of the 

 Coulers of Good and Euill, a Fragment. 1597. In the Advancement of 

 Learning, under the head of Rhetoric, there are one or two specimens of these 

 colours : and, under the same head in the treatise De Augmentis, they are 

 much enlarged. 



Second Edition, 1598. 



Essaies. Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene 

 and allowed. London, printed for Humfrey Hooper, and are to bee solde at the 

 Blacke Beare in Chauncery Lane, 1598. This is a 12mo. of forty-nine pages. 

 It is nearly a transcript of the first edition, except that the Meditationes Sacrae 

 are translated into English, and the separation into aphorisms is discontinued ; 

 the paging continues through the whole work ; but, at the end of the Medita 

 tions, there is the following title-page : Of the Colours of Good and Evill, a 

 Fragment, 1598. 



In the Lansdown manuscripts in the British Museum there is a manuscript, 

 in antient writing, of this or the first edition of the Essays. It is in vol. ii. 

 p. 173. It cannot, I think, be the original MS. as there are not titles to the 

 different essays, but they are written, and not by the same hand, in the margin. 

 There is also in the Harleian MSS. 6797, a MS. of two Essays, of Faction 

 and of Negotiating, with cross lines drawn through them. At the conclusion of 

 the volume there is, &quot; Imprinted at London by John Windet for Humphrey 

 Hooper, 1598.&quot; As the printers and publishers are the same in this edition and 

 in the edition of 1597, it seems probable that this edition was sanctioned by 

 Lord Bacon. 



Third Edition, 1606. 



Essaies. Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene 

 and allowed. Printed at London for lohn laggard, dwelling in Fleete Streete, 

 at the Hand and Starre, neere Temple Barre, 1606. This is in 12mo. and is not 

 paged. It is a transcript of the previous editions, but was I suspect pirated. 



1st, It is not published by Lord Bacon s publisher ; and it will be seen, in 

 the progress of his Essays, that when an edition was published by Bacon, it 

 was regularly followed by an edition published by Jaggard. 



2nd. The dedication in 1597 is to M. Anthony Bacon, and in this edition in 

 1606 it is to Maister Anthony Bacon. 

 3dly. The signature in 1597 is Fran. Bacon, in this of 1606 is Francis Bacon. 



Fourth Edition, 1612. 



The next edition was in 1612. It is entitled, The Essaies of Sr Francis 

 Bacon, Knight, the King s Solliciter Generall. Imprinted at London by lohn 

 Beale, 1612. It was the intention of Sir Francis to have dedicated this edition 

 to Henry Prince of Wales, but he was prevented by the death of the prince on 

 the 6th of November in that year. This appears by the following letter : 

 To the most high and excellent prince, Henry, Prince of Wales, Duke of Corn 

 wall, and Earl of Chester. 



It may please your Highness, Having divided my life into the contemplative 

 and active part, I am desirous to give his majesty and your highness of the 

 fruits of both, simple though they be. To write just treatises, requireth leisure 

 in the writer, and leisure in the reader, and therefore are not so fit, neither in 

 regard of your highness s princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service; 

 which is the cause that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set 

 down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The 

 word is late, but the thing is ancient ; for Seneca s epistles to Lucilius, if you 

 mark them well, are but essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed 

 in the form of epistles. These labours of mine, I know, cannot be worthy of 

 your highness, for what can be worthy of you ? But my hope is, they may be 

 as grains of salt, that will rather give you an appetite than offend you with 

 satiety. And although they handle those things wherein both men s lives and 

 their persons are most conversant ; yet what I have attained I know not ; but I 

 have endeavoured to make them not vulgar, but of a nature, whereof a man 

 shall find much in experience, and little in books ; so as they are neither repe- 



