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good perfume or incense before the King's coming in. For being excellently written, and having nothing of affectation, it did not only satisfy better than particular reports touching the King's disposition; but far exceeded any formal or curious edict or declaration which could have been devised of that nature, wherewith Princes at the beginning of their reigns do use to grace themselves, or at least express themselves gracious, in the eyes of their people. And this was, for the general, the state and constitution of men's minds upon this change. The actions themselves passed in this manner, etc.

[The rest is wanting.]

IN

FELICEM MEMORIAM

ELIZABETHÆ.

PREFACE.

THE earliest notice of the following piece which I have met with is in a letter from Mr. John Chamberlain to Mr. Dudley Carleton, dated December 16, 1608. "I come even now," ," he says, "from reading a short discourse of Queen Elizabeth's life, written in Latin by Sir Francis Bacon. If you have not seen nor heard of it, it is worth your enquiry; and yet methinks he doth languescere towards the end, and falls from his first pitch neither dare I warrant that his Latin will abide test or touch." ... 1

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About the same time, or not long after, Bacon himself sent a copy of it to Sir George Carew, then ambassador in France, with a letter which, though undated, enables us to fix the composition of it with tolerable certainty in the summer of 1608. "This last summer vacation (he says), by occasion of a factious book that endeavoured to verify Misera Fœmina (the addition of the Pope's Bull) upon Queen Elizabeth, I did write a few lines in her memorial; which I thought you would be well pleased to read, both for the argument and because you were wont to bear affection to my pen. Verum ut aliud ex alio, if it came handsomely to pass, I would be glad the President De Thou. (who hath written a history, as you know, of that fame and diligence) saw it; chiefly because I know not whether it may not serve him for some use in his story; wherein I would be glad he did right to the truth and to the memory of that Lady, as I perceive by that he hath already written he is well inclined to do."

In answering a letter from Tobie Matthew dated February 10 [1608-9], Bacon sent him also a copy of this tract; with the following remarks. "I send you also a memorial of Queen

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