since I must needs be dead, I require it may not be done before mine enemies, that I be not stript before I be cold; but before my friends. The night was even now; but that name is lost; it is not now late, but early. Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch, and compound with this fleshly weakness for a time of perpetual rest; and I shall presently be as happy for a few hours, as I had died the first hour I was born.

DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM.

PREFACE.

THE treatise De Sapientia Veterum was first published in 1609, in a small duodecimo volume, carefully and beautifully printed in the elegant italic type then in use. It appears to have become speedily popular, and was once or twice reprinted during Bacon's life, and translated both into English and Italian. In 1623, he introduced three of the fables, revised and considerably enlarged, into the De Augmentis Scientiarum, as a specimen of one of the Desiderata. Two others he had designed for the foundation of an elaborate discussion of the philosophy of Democritus, Parmenides, and Telesius; of which a considerable fragment has been preserved. See Preface to De Principiis atque Originibus. A year or two before his death he designed to include the whole volume among the Opera Moralia et Civilia, of which he was then preparing a collection, and in which it was afterwards published by Dr. Rawley, along with the Latin translations of the History of Henry VII., the Essays, the New Atlantis, and the Dialogue of a Holy War. There can be no doubt therefore that it was a work which he thought well of, and meant to live.

Of the history of it all I know further is, that four of the fables, namely, Metis sive Consilium, Soror Gigantum sive Fama, Calum sive Origines, and Proteus sive Materia, are found in the same form in the frag