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CHARACTER OF AUGUSTUS CÆSAR.

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AUGUSTUS CESAR was endued, if ever man was, with a greatness of mind, calm, serene, and wellordered: witness the exceeding great actions which he conducted in his early youth. For men of impetuous and unsettled dispositions commonly pass their youth in various errors; and it is not till middle age that they show what they are. But those whose nature is composed and placid may flourish even in their first years. And whereas the gifts of the mind, like those of the body, are contained and completed in three things, health, beauty, and strength, he was certainly in strength of mind inferior to his uncle Julius, but in beauty and health of mind superior. For Julius being of a restless and unsettled disposition, though for the compassing of his ends he made his arrangements with consummate judgment, yet had not his ends themselves arranged in any good order; but was carried on and on with an impulse that knew no bounds, aiming at things beyond the reach of mortality. Whereas Augustus, as a man sober and mindful of his mortal condition, seems to have had his ends likewise laid out from the first in admirable order and truly weighed. For first he made it his aim to be at

the head of affairs: then to become the position and be esteemed worthy of it; next he considered it fit for him, as a man, to enjoy that height of fortune; and lastly, he thought to apply himself to some real work, and so transmit to the next ages the impression of the image and the effects of the virtue of his government. In the first period of his life therefore he made Power his object; in the middle period, Dignity; in his declining years, Pleasures; and in his old age, Memory and Posterity.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

INSERTED BY BACON IN A MANUSCRIPT COPY OF CAMDEN'S ANNALS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

(COTT. FAUST. F. VIII. IX.)

PREFACE.

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THE three first books of Camden's Annals of Queen Elizabeth, extending from the beginning of her reign to the end of the year 1589, were published by order of James I. in 1615. The rest he completed soon after, and lodged a copy of it in the hands of his friend Petrus Puteanus; to be preserved, but not published till after his death. He died in November 1623; and the fourth book (printed, if I understand the story right, from Puteanus's copy) appeared in 1627. It appears however that a better copy was in existence; that after the three first books were published, and the fourth copied, Camden had revised and corrected the whole; that a fair copy of the three first (described as "the first part of Mr. Camden's Elizabetha enlarged for the next impression ") passed through the representatives of Sir Robert Cotton into the hands of Dr. Thomas Smith; and a corrected copy of the fourth, through what channel we are not informed, into the hands of Dr. Rawlinson; and that

1 Both these copies are in the Bodleian Library. The first (Smith MS. No. 2.) is a printed copy of the original folio, with the alterations and additions inserted in Camden's own hand. The second (8vo. Rawlinson, 707.) has the following note on the blank leaf at the beginning:-"This book belongs to my honoured and learned friend Thos. Rawlinson, Esq. Tho. Hearne, Aug. 25th, 1716." It is a copy of the Elzevir edition, Lugd. Batav. MDCXXXIX, containing many alterations and additions inserted between the lines or leaves, in manuscript. They are very clearly written n a small, firm, regular hand; whose, I could not learn.

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