NOTE CCC. 



2ts. Neither doth it move us that these matters are left commonly to school- 

 ays and grammarians, and so are embased, that we should therefore make a 

 slight judgment upon them : but contrariwise because it is clear that the wri 

 tings which recite those fables, of all the writings of men, next to sacred writ, 

 are the most ancient ; and that the fables themselves are far more ancient than 

 they (being they are alleged by those writers, not as excogitated by them, but 

 as credited and recepted before) seem to be, like a thin rarefied air, which from 

 &quot; u ie traditions of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the Grecians.&quot; 



This tract seems, in former times, to have been much valued, for the same 

 reason, perhaps, which Bacon assigns for the currency of the Essays; &quot; be 

 cause they are like the late new halfpence, which, though the silver is good, yet 

 the pieces are small.&quot; Of this tract, Archbishop Tenison in his Baconiana, 

 says, &quot; In the seventh place, I may reckon his book De Sapientia Veterum, 

 written by him in Latin, and set forth a second time with enlargement;* and 

 translated into English by Sir Arthur Georges : a book in which the sages of 

 former times are rendered more wise than it may be they were by so dextrous an 

 interpreter of their fables. It is this book which Mr. Sandys means, in those 

 words which he hath put before his notes, on the Metamorphosis of Ovid. 

 Of modern writers, 1 have received the greatest light from Geraldus, Pon- 

 tanus, Ficinus, Vives, Comes, Scaliger, Sabinus, Pierius, and the crown of 

 the latter, the Viscount of St. Albans. 



&quot; It is true, the design of this book was instruction in natural and civil 

 matters, either couched by the ancients under those fictions, or rather made to 

 seem to be so by his lordship s wit, in the opening and applying of them. But 

 because the first ground of it is poetical story, therefore let it have this place 

 till a fitter be found for it.&quot; 



The author of Bacon s Life, in the Biographia Britannica, says, &quot; that he 

 might relieve himself a little from the severity of these studies, and as it were 

 amuse himself with erecting a magnificent pavilion, while his great palace of 

 philosophy was building, he composed and sent abroad in 1610, his celebrated 

 treatise Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, in which he showed that none had 

 studied them more closely, was better acquainted with their beauties, or had 

 pierced deeper into their meaning. There have been very few books published, 

 either in this or in any other nation, which either deserved or met with more 

 general applause than this, and scarce any that are like to retain it longer, 

 for in this performance Sir Francis Bacon gave a singular proof of his capacity 

 to please all parties in literature, as in his political conduct he stood fair with 

 all the parties in the nation. The admirers of antiquity were charmed with 

 this discourse, which seems expressly calculated to justify their admiration ; 

 and, on the other hand, their opposites were no less pleased with a piece, 

 from which they thought they could demonstrate that the sagacity of a modern 

 genius had found out much better meanings for the ancients than ever were 

 meant by them.&quot; 



^ And Mallet, in his Life of Bacon, says, &quot; In 1610 he published another 

 treatise, entitled Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. This work bears the same 

 stamp of an original and inventive genius with his other performances. Re 

 solving not to tread in the steps of those who had gone before him, men, 

 according to his own expression, not learned beyond certain common places, he 

 strikes out a new tract for himself, and enters into the most secret recesses of 

 this wild and shadowy region, so as to appear new on a known and beaten 

 subject. Upon the whole, if we cannot bring ourselves readily to believe that 

 there is all the physical, moral, and political meaning veiled under those fables 

 of antiquity, which he has discovered in them, we must own that it required no 

 common penetration to be mistaken with so great an appearance of probability 

 on his side. Though it still remains doubtful whether the ancients were so 

 knowing as he attempts to shew they were, the variety and depth of his own 

 knowledge are, in that very attempt, unquestionable.&quot; 



* In the year 1617, in Latin. It was published in Italian in 1618 ; in 

 French, in 1619. 



