TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

EXCELLENT Lord,

I send your grace for a parabien, a book of mine, written first and dedicated to his majesty in English, and now translated into Latin, and enriched. After his majesty and his highness, your grace is ever to have the third turn with me. Vouchsafe, of your wonted favour, to present also the king's book to his majesty. The prince's I have sent to Mr. Endimion Porter. I hope your grace (because you are wont to disable your Latin) will not send your book to the Conde d'Olivares, because he was a deacon, for I understand by one, (that your grace may guess whom I mean,) that the Conde is not rational, and I hold this book to be very rational. Your grace will pardon me to be merry, however, the world goeth with me. I ever rest

Your grace's most faithful

and obliged servant,

TO THE LORD ST. ALBAN.

MY LORD, I have moved his majesty in your suit, and find him very gracious inclined to grant it; but he desireth first to know from my lord treasurer his opinion and the value of it, to whom I have written to that purpose this enclosed letter, and would wish your lordship to speak with him yourself for his favour and furtherance therein, and for my part I will omit nothing that appertaineth to

Your lordship's faithful friend and servant, G. BUCKINGHAM.

Newmarket, 28th of January, 1623.

TO THE LORD ST. ALBAN.'

MY LORD, I give your lordship many thanks for the parabien you have sent me; which is so welcome unto me, both for the author's sake and

for the worth of itself, that I cannot spare a work of so much pains to your lordship and value to me, unto a man of so little reason and less art; who if his skill in languages be no greater than I found it in argument, may, perhaps, have as much need of an interpreter (for all his deaconry) as myself; and whatsoever mine ignorance is in the tongue, yet this much I understand in the book, that it is a noble monument of your love, which I will entail to my posterity, who, I hope, will both reap the fruit of the work, and honour the memory of the author. The other book I delivered to his majesty, who is tied here by the feet longer than he purposed to stay.

For the business your lordship wrote of in your other letters, I am sorry I can do you no service, having engaged myself to Sir William Becher before my going to Spain, so that I cannot free myself, unless there were means to give him

satisfaction. But I will ever continue

Your lordship's assured friend and servant, G. BUCKINGHAM. Пinchenbrook, Oct. 27th, 1623.

TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

EXCELLENT LORD,

I send Mr. Parker to have ready, according to the speech I had with your grace, my two suits

TO THE LORD ST. ALBAN.

RIGHT HONOURABLE AND MY very noble Lord, Mr. Doctor Rawley, by his modest choice, hath much obliged me to be careful of him, when God shall send any opportunity. And if his majesty shall remove me from this see, before any such occasion be offered, not to change my intentions with my bishopric.

It true that those ancients, Cicero, Demosthenes,

and Plinius Secundus, have preserved their orations (the heads and effects of them at least) and their epistles; and I have ever been of opinion, that those two pieces, are the principal pieces of our antiquities: those orations discovering the form of administering justice, and the letters the carriage of the affairs in those times. For our histories (or rather lives of men) borrow as much from the affections and phantasies of the writers, as from the truth itself, and are for the most of them built together upon unwritten relations and

traditions. But letters written è re nata, and bearing a synchronism or equality of time cum rebus gestis, have no other fault, than that which was imputed unto Virgil, nihil peccat nisi, quod nihil peccet, they speak the truth too plainly, and cast too glaring a light for that age, wherein they were, or are written.

Your lordship doth most worthily, therefore, in preserving those two pieces, amongst the rest of those matchless monuments you shall leave be

hind you; considering that, as one age hath not bred your experience, so is it not fit it should be confined to one age, and not imparted to the times to come. For my part therein, I do embrace the honour with all thankfulness, and the trust imposed upon me, with all religion and devotion. For those two lectures in natural philosophy, and the sciences woven and involved with the same; it is a great and a noble foundation, both for the use and the salary, and a foot that will teach the age to come, to guess in part at the greatness of that herculean mind which give them their existence. Only your lordship may be advised for the seats of this foundation. The two universities are the two eyes of this land, and fittest to contemplate the lustre of this bounty; these two lectures are as the two apples of these eyes. An apple when it is single is an ornament, when double a pearl, or a blemish in the eye.

Your lordship may therefore inform yourself if one Sidley, of Kent, hath not already founded in Oxford a lecture of this nature and condition. Bu if Oxford in this kind be an Argus, I am sure poor Cambridge is a right Polyphemus, it hath but one eye, and that not so steadily or artificially placed, but bonum est facile sui diffusivum; your lordship being so full of goodness, will quickly find an object to pour it on. That which made me say thus much I will say in verse, that your lordship may remember it the better,

Sola ruinosis stat Cantabrigia pannis Atque inopi linguâ disertas invocat Artes, I will conclude with this vow: Deus, qui animum istum tibi, animoisti tempus quam longissimum tribuat. It is the most affectionate prayer of Your lordship's most humble servant, Jo. LINCOLN.

Buckden, last of December, 1625.

HIM A SERVICE.

SIR,-The report of this act, which I hope will prove the last of this business, will probably, by the weight it carries, fall, and seize on me. And, therefore, not now at will, but upon necessity it will become me to call to mind what passed; and (my head being then wholly employed about invention) I may the worse put things upon the account of mine own memory. I shall take

cere; or where I do indulgere genio; or where, in fine, I give any manner of disadvantage to myself. This, super totam materiam, you must not fail to note, besides all such words and phrases as you cannot like; for you know in how high account I have your judgment.

THE LIKE SUBJECT; WITH AN ADDITION OF CONDOLING THE DEATH OF A FRIEND.

SIR FRANCIS BACON TO A FRIEND, ABOUT READ

INGS

SIR, Because you shall not lose your labour this afternoon, which now I must needs spend with my Lord Chancellor, I send my desire to you in this letter, that you will take care not to leave the writing which I left with you last with any man so long as that he may be able to take a copy of it; because, first, it must be censured by you, and then considered again by me. The thing which I expect most from you is, that you would read it carefully over by yourself, and to nake some little in writing, where you think (to

former contents,) the death of your good friend and mine, A. B.; to whom, because I used to send my letters for conveyance to you, it made me so much the more unready in the despatch of them. In the mean time, I think myself (howsoever it hath pleased God otherwise to bless me) a most unfor tunate man, to be deprived of two (a great number in true friendship) of those friends whom I ac counted as no stage friends, but private friends, (and such as with whom I might both freely and safely communicate;) him by death, and you by absence. As for the memorial of the late deceased

queen, I will not question whether you be to pass for a disinterested man or no; I freely confess myself am not, so I leave it. As for my other writings, you make me very glad of your approbation; the rather because you add a concurrence in opinion with others; for else I might have conceived that affection would, perhaps, have prevailed with you, beyond that which (if your judgment had been neat and free) you could have esteemed. And as for your caution touching the dignity of ecclesiastical persons, I shall not have cause to meet with them, any otherwise than in that some schoolmen have, with excess, advanced the authority of Aristotle. Other occasion I shall have none. But now I have sent you that only part of the whole writing which may perhaps have a little harshness and provocation in it, although I may almost secure myself that if the preface passed so well this will not irritate more; being, indeed, to the preface but as palma ad pugnum. Your own love expressed to me I heartily embrace; and hope that there will never be occasion of other than entireness between us, which nothing but majores charitates shall ever be able to break off.

SIR FRANCIS BACON TO A FRIEND, IN REFLECTION UPON SOME ASTROLOGERS IN ITALY.

SIR, I write to you chiefly now to the end that, by the continuance of my acquaintance with you, by letters, you may perceive how much I desire, and how much I do not despair of the recontinuance of our acquaintance by conversation. In the mean time, I wish you would desire the astronomers of Italy to amuse us less than they do with their fabulous and foolish traditions, and come nearer to the experiments of sense; and tell us that when all the planets, except the moon, are beyond the line in the other hemisphere for six months together, we must needs have a cold winter, as we saw it was the last year. For, understanding that this was general over all these parts of the world, and finding that it was cold weather with all winds, and namely west wind, I imagined there was some higher cause of this effect; though yet, I confess, I thought not that ever I should have found that cause so palpable a one as it proved: which yet, when I came quickly afterwards to observe, I found also very clearly, that the summer must needs be cold too; though, yet, it were generally thought that the year would make a shift to pay itself; and that we should be sure to have heats for our cold. You see that though I be full of business, yet I can be glad rather to lay it all aside than to say nothing to you. But I long much more to be speaking often with you, and I hope I shall not long want my wish

THE LORD OF ST. ALBANS, BACON, TO AN HIUM

BLE SERVANT, MY LORD BELIEVING HIS OWN DANGER TO BE MUCH LESS THAN HE FOUND IT

SIR, I say to you, upon the occasion which you give me in your last, modicæ fixi quare dubitasti? I would not have my friends (though I know it to be out of love) too apprehensive, either of me, or for me. For I thank God, my ways are sound and good, and I hope God will bless me in them. When once my master, and afterwards myself, were both of us in extremity of sickness, (which was no time to dissemble,) I never had so great pledges and certainties of his love and favour: and that which I knew then, such as took a little poor advantage of these latter times, know since. As for the nobleman who passed that way by you, I think he is fallen out with me for his pleasure, or else, perhaps, to make good some of his own mistakings: for he cannot in his heart but think worthily of my affection and well deserving towards him; and as for me, I am very sure that I love his nature and parts.

MY LORD OF ST. ALBANS, BACON, TO THE SAME HUMBLE SERVANT, EMPLOYING HIM TO DO A GOOD OFFICE WITH ANOTHER GREAT MAN.

SIR, I have received your letter, wherein you mention some passages at large concerning the lord you know of. You touched also that point in a letter which you wrote upon my lord's going over, which I answered; and am a little doubtful whether mine ever came to your hands. It is true that I wrote a little sullenly therein; how I conceived that my lord was a wise man in his own way, and perhaps thought it fit for him to be out with me; for, at least, I found no cause thereof in myself. As for the latter of these points, I am of the same judgment still; but for the former, I perceive, by what you write, that it is merely some misunderstanding of his. And I do a little marvel, at the instance which had relation to that other crabbed man; for I conceived that both in passing that book, and (as I remember) two more, immediately after my lord's going over, I had showed more readiness than many times I use in like cases. But, to conclude, no man hath thought better of my lord than I have done. I know his virtues, and, namely, that he hath much greatness of mind, which is a thing almost lost amongst men; nor can anybody be more sensible and remembering than I am of his former favours, so that I shall be most glad of his friendship; neither are the past occasions, in my opinion, such as need either reparation or declaration, but may well go under the title of nothing. Now, I had rather you dealt between us than anybody else, because you are no way drenched in any man's humour. Of other things at another time; but

SIR,-It is not for nothing that I have deferred my Essay de Amicitia, whereby it hath expected the proof of your great friendship towards me. Whatsoever the event be, (wherein I depend upon God, who ordains the effect, the instrument, all,) yet your incessant thinking of me, without loss of a moment of time, or a hint of occasion, or a circumstance of endeavour, or the stroke of a pulse in demonstration of your affection to me, doth infinitely tie me to you. Commend my service to my friend. The rest to-morrow, for I hope to lodge at London this night, &c.

Secrecy I need not recommend, otherwise than that you may recommend it over to our friend; both because it prevents opposition, and because it is both the king's and my lord marquis's nature to love to do things unexpected.

I am dealt with. If your lordship malice me for such a cause, surely it was one of the justest businesses that ever was in Chancery. I will avouch it; and how deeply I was tempted therein, your lordship knows best. Your lordship may do well, in this great age of yours, to think of your grave, as I do of mine, and to beware of hardness of heart. And as for fair words, it is a wind, by which neither your lordship nor any man else can sail long. Howsoever, I am the man who will give all due respects and reverence to your great place, &c.

A LETTER OF SIR FRANCIS BACON TO A SERVANT OF HIS, IN EXPRESSION OF GREAT ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND KINDNESS.

SIR, I have been too long a debtor to you for a letter, and especially for such a letter, the words whereof were delivered by your hand, as if it had been in old gold; for it was not possible for entire affection to be more generously and effectually expressed. I can but return thanks to you: or rather, indeed, such an answer as may better be of thoughts than words. As for that which may concern myself, I hope God hath ordained me some small time whereby I may redeem the

MARLBOROUGH, EXPOSTULATING ABOUT HIS UNKINDNESS, AND INJUSTICE.

MY LORD, I humbly entreat your lordship, and (if I may use the word) advise you to make me a better answer. Your lordship is interested in

tentment to me, and your absence of grief; but now it is of grief upon grief. I beseech you, therefore, make haste hither, where you shall meet with as good a welcome as your own heart can wish.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS.

In part of my acknowledgment to your highness, I have endeavoured to do honour to the memory of the last King of England, that was ancestor to the king, your father, and yourself, and was that king to whom both unions may in a sort refer, that of the roses being in him consummate, and that of the kingdoms by him begun besides, his times deserve it, for he was

Third edition of Resuscitatio.

some are more up hill and down hill, and some are more flat and plain, and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer. I have not flattered him, but took him to life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light; it is true your highness hath a living pattern, incomparable, of the king your father; but it is not amiss for you also to see it in one of these ancient pieces. God preserve your highness Your highness's most humble

and devoted servant, FRANCIS ST. ALBAN