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My lord treasurer about five years past was greatly pressed by the great vaunt of a sudden start-up glorious stranger, that would needs cure him of the gout by boast; ' But,' quoth my lord, have you cured any? Let me know and see them.' 6 Nay,' saith the fellow, but I am sure I can.' Well,' concluded my lord, and said, Go, go and cure first, and then come again, or else not. I would you had so done. But I pray God to bless it to you, aud pray heartily to God for your good recovery and sound."

six years of age. For ten years he had been | from the same letters-the sickliness of the a Bencher of Gray's Inn, and for twelve years brothers, who bought a coach because Anhe had sat in Parliament. When his friend thony was too lame to walk to court, and Sir Thomas Egerton, the attorney-general tried to cure themselves by a "prescribed was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1593, diet" and "new-in-hand physic," of which he became a suitor for the vacant office. But Lady Anne heard, and wrote,it was given to Edward Coke, in whose place Mr. Sergeant Fleming was made solicitorgeneral. The queen knew that Francis Bacon was witty, eloquent, and possessed of much good learning, but in law she rather thought that he could "make show to the uttermost of his knowledge" than that he was deep. His uncle, Lord Burleigh, and cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, the newly appointed secretary of State, had a grudge against him as one of the ablest of the adherents of Essex, and were perhaps jealous of his fame But A second edition of the essays was pub he was from year to year admitted to more lished in the year 1612. In 1598 the first frequent and familiar intercourse with the edition had been reprinted by Humfrey queen, and his loyalty to her was neither Hooper, with the "Religious Meditations" affected by the refusal of his suit, nor lessened in English and the "Colours of Good and after her death by his desire to please a king Evil," and a pirated edition had been pubwho delighted to disparage the acts and dis-lished in 1606 by John Jaggard. grace the servants of his predecessor. By the The edition of 1612 is a small octavo volgood fortune or by the art of Elizabeth, the ume, entitled "The Essaies of Sir Francis odium of such disappointments as those ex-Bacon, Knight, the Kings Solliciter Geneperienced by Francis Bacon fell chiefly upon rall." The "Religious Meditations" and her counsellors, and thus she retained un- "Places of Persuasion and Dissuasion " are abated the devotion of the courtiers; a devo- omitted. The book contains thirty-eight es tion all the more remarkable because rendered says, which are printed in a large, clear type, by those who to one another were proud, in- each page having a ruled margin. The table solent, and overbearing; a devotion the ful- of contents names forty essays; but the ness and constancy of which are quite inex- thirty-ninth and fortieth," Of the Publike” plicable on any other supposition than that it and "Of Warre and Peace," were never was a voluntary homage to her mental and printed. Of the ten original essays, the moral excellence. eighth, that of "Honor and Reputation," was omitted in this edition; the rest were more or less altered and enlarged. Twentynine new essays were added.

It is not improbable that the essay "Of Sutors" may have been composed in the year 1594, perhaps in the park at Twickenham, where Francis Bacon went in the autumn of The alterations made by the author, though that year, to be alone, and whence he wrote in many cases important, were in some into his brother Anthony that "solitariness stances exceedingly minute; being such as collecteth the mind as shutting the eyes doth the insertion or change of a particle, the subthe sight." Two other essays, "Of Ex-stitution for one word of another entirely or pence" and "Of Regiment of Health," nearly synonymous, or the addition of a word were probably written about the same time. for the purpose of rendering a sentence The first reminds us of the letters of Lady clearer or more forcible. Such alterations in Anne Lacon, the careful, anxious mother, to new editions, and even in reprints of the same her sons Anthony and Francis, chiding them edition, were far more common in the sixfor their wastefulness and extravagance, and | teenth and seventeenth centuries than at warning them of the deceitfulness of their present. The printing of a book, having be servants, who would "all seek to abuse" come more common, is now more lightly retheir want of experience." The second garded; and the prospect of a wide present affords further evidence of what we learn circulation and a speedy oblivion has ren

essays, including that one which had been omitted in the second edition, with the twentynine added in 1612, and nineteen new essays. All those which had been previously published were more or less altered, to many of them great additions were made, and two which had been first printed in the second edition, those "Of Religion (now entitled "Of Unitie in Religion") and "Of Friendshippe," were entirely rewritten. To the former were added many passages from the " Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England." The latter seems to have been revised at the request of Mr. Tobie Matthew, who, notwithstanding his perversion to the Church of Rome, had been for upwards of twenty years the intimate friend of Sir Francis Bacon, and as such had edited the Italian translation of the essays published in London in 1618, and was frequently consulted by him about his writings.

dered authors in these times less painstaking | Honorable my very good Lord the Duke of and scrupulously accurate than were those Buckingham, his Grace, Lord High Admiral who wrote for readers more critical, though of England." This edition, published in fewer in number. In the year 1605, Sir Fran- | March, 1624-5, contained the ten original cis Bacon had published the "Twoo Bookes of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane," in which was foreshadowed, and that not dimly, the plan of the Great Instauration of the Sciences." Many thoughts and illustrations taken from these two books were incorporated in the second edition of the essays. The use of the same ideas and quotations in different compositions is eminently characteristic of the works of Bacon; and he gathered from his other writings" the best fruit" of his mind, that he might bestow it upon the revised and enlarged editions of the essays which were published in 1612 and 1625. The circle of intelligent readers of his philosophical works was then very narrow, and would always be comparatively small; the depth of the learning displayed in his law tracts, and the skill with which it was applied, could be appreciated only by a few; the interest excited by his political and ecclesiastical pamphlets must be transient; but his essays of all his other works were "most current," for they came home "to men's business and bosoms." Through them, therefore, he hoped that the The sentence passed upon him by the lords spirit of his new philosophy might pass into had, in fact, never been executed. His imthe minds of many who would never hear of prisonment in the Tower had lasted but a few the "idola mentis" and "prærogativæ in- hours; the fine imposed had been vested in stantiarum" of the "Novum Organum ;' "trustees for his benefit; he had received a full and in them, accordingly, he applied to the passions, duties, and pleasures of common life, ideas and illustrations borrowed from his more recondite works. In the second book of the "Advancement of Learning" he had noted that “the writing of speculative men of active matter, for the most part doth seem to men of experience as Phormio's argument of the wars seemed to Hannibal, to be but dreams and dotage; " and that "generally it were to be wished, as that which would make learning indeed solid and fruitful, that active men would or could become writers." Mindful of this in the composition of his essays, he endeavored to make them not vulgar, but of a nature whereof a man shall find much in experience, little in books.”

At the time of the publication of this last edition, Lord St. Alban had been living for nearly four years in retirement at Gorhambury and at his house in Gray's Inn.

pardon under the Great Seal, and was summoned to attend the Parliament which met on the accession of Charles I. But he did not return to an active life. He had told King James, in November, 1622, that thenceforth he "would live to study, and not study to live.” "I have done with such vanities," was his answer to those who brought him the writ of summons to the Parliament.

During the last five years of his life, he occupied himself in revising some of the books which he had already published; in directing the translation into Latin of the essays, and of his philosophical and historical writings, a work in which Thomas Hobbes, George Herbert, and Ben Jonson are said to have taken part; and in composing many new works, of which fifteen are mentioned in the Latin memoir written by his chaplain and secretary, Dr. Rawley. The most important of these are the "History of the Reign of Henry VII.,”

the "Historia Ventorum," and "Historia | and most of those which were originally Latin Vitæ et Mortis," the "New Atlantis," and are taken not directly from that language, theSylva Sylvarum." But Dr. Rawley but at second-hand and through the French. does not include in his list the "Apophthegms," printed in 1624, and said to be a collection made from memory," without consulting any book." Lord Macaulay calls this "the best collection of jests in the world." But it was not so highly rated at the time of its publication. In a letter from Chamberlain to Carleton, dated the 18th December, 1624, it is mentioned that Lord St. Alban's Apophthegms were "newly come out, though with little applause." D'Israeli quotes, in the "Curiosities of Literature," some verses said to have been written about the same time by "a Dr. Andrews" (who must be "the ever-memorable and learned Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester," of Walton's Life of Herbert), which com

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This was the natural result of the intimate relationship which, in amity or war, had from the days of Edward the Confessor subsisted between France and England. Norman-French was the common speech of the nobles till the reign of Henry II.; it continued long after to be the language of the Court; and when it had ceased to be spoken by the courtiers, it was still in daily use in the pleadings of the lawyers. Nor did the French language influence our own through the upper classes only; for the yeomen who fought at Cressy, the pedlers who travelled through Normandy to the fair at Antwerp, and the farmers and miners who carried wool and tin to the staple at Calais, picked up many words and phrases which afterwards became current among their neighbors at home. But before the middle of the sixteenth century the intercourse between this country and France had become less frequent and intimate; while the invention of printing, and its application at first chiefly to the publication of the Latin classics, opened a new source of gain to the English language, which now borrowed from the Latin by the eye as it had previously borrowed from the French by the ear.

The greater diffusion of classical literature, and the increase in the number of writers, together with the stimulus given to the English poets of the time by travel in Italy and acquaintance with the works of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, soon resulted in an effort to ascertain and adhere to certain canons of style and in the choice of words. The first issue of this effort were many affectations, of which one of the most notable was the euphuism which was so popular during the latter part of the sixteenth century. It took its name from Lyly's romance of

The dates of the publication of the first and third editions of the essays, 1597 and 1625, conveniently mark two signal epochs in the history of the English language. During the interval there was impressed upon it the character and form which it has retained, with very little variation, to the present time. Ben Jonson, writing between the years 1630 and 1637, of the Lord St. Alban, says, "Within his view, and about his times, were all the wits born, that could honor a language, or help study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downward, and eloquence grows backward:" Euphues," the first part of which, "Euso that he may be named, and stand as the mark and aкμŋ of our language."

Until the middle of the sixteenth century the English language borrowed little directly from the Latin. In general a much larger proportion of Saxon words was used by those who wrote before than by those who have written since that time. Of the words of foreign derivation employed by the earlier writers, by far the greater number are French,

phues, the Anatomy of Wit," was published in 1580; and the characteristics of the style

antithesis, alliteration, and repetition of the same sound-will be best shown by one or two quotations from this book. The address" to the Gentlemen Readers” begins, "I was driven into a quandarie, Gentlemen, whether I might send this my Pamphlet to the Printer or to the Pedler: I thought it too bad for the press, and too good for the

upon their style was still more manifest. | as these reveal the true value and importance of the history of language; and the knowledge of them should make us very careful even in our daily speech; since not only do we, by the words we utter, affect our own destiny, but by the manner in which we use them, by the very tone with which we speak them, we help to mould their meaning, and thus influence the minds of future generations of Englishmen.

The simple, direct sentences used by earlier writers have been exchanged for longer and more complicated ones by the first revivers of classical learning in England. But Bacon and Hooker introduced periods rivalling those of Cicero in the intricacy of their structure and the well-balancing of their members. In their writings clauses are constantly inserted, in imitation of the Latin construction, between the nominative and the verb; the verb is placed at the end of the sentence, and the sense suspended till it be reached; the adjective is placed after the substantive, as in the phrases, “a benefit inestimable," "a kingdom very opulent" (Bacon's " Observations on a Libel," 1592), " agents natural," and Bacon. Their works are still referred to spirits immaterial and intellectual" ("Eccles. Polity"); and the natural or logical order of the words in the sentence is inverted or transposed.

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A change, which has taken place since the time of Francis Bacon, in the meaning of many words, has given to his writings, and to those of his contemporaries, a semblance of an imitation of the Latin which was not intended by their authors. The word plausible,' ," for instance, is used in the essays in the sense of deserving praise, which it has since exchanged for that of seeming to deserve praise. "Apparent," as employed in the fortieth essay, has the meaning of manifestly or openly appearing: it has since come to denote that there is no reality in the appearance. In the forty-eighth essay the word "officious" is used in a good senseready to serve and it was so used as late as the middle of the last century; but if we now hear that a person is officious, we understand that he impertinently obtrudes services which are not desired. "Vulgar" is employed in the essays in the sense of common: it has since acquired its present meaning of reprobation. The reader can scarcely fail to notice that the change from the original or Latin meaning of all these words (and other like instances might be given) has been a degradation, implying in the first three cases the growth of a conviction, arising from experience, that no trust can be placed in the show of things, and that what promises to be fair is often in the end found to be most foul; and, in the last case, that among men good is not the rule but the exception, and that whatever is common must therefore be presumed to be bad. Such facts

Notwithstanding some alterations in the meaning and form of words, and the change or disuse of some few grammatical constructions, the written English language now remains in very nearly the same state as that in which it was left by Hooker, Shakspeare,

as the standards by which we measure the lesser efforts of modern writers. But they themselves seem not to have anticipated any such permanency for the language, or for their own writings. Francis Bacon originally composed in Latin, or procured the translation into that language of all his most important works; and this he did not only because the Latin language was then in all Christian countries read and understood, being the mean of universal communication, but also because he distrusted the permanency of his mother-tongue. In a letter to Mr. Matthew, about the translation of the essays and "History of Henry VII.," he writes "These modern languages will, at one time or other, "play the bankrupts with books; and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity." Thirty or forty years later the same distrust was expressed by Waller in the following verses :—

"Who can hope his lines should long Last in a daily changing tongue? Poets that lasting marble seek Must carve in Latin or in Greek: We write on sand, our language grows, And, like the tide, our work o'erflows." Probably the chief causes of whatever alterations or modifications have taken place in our language during the last two centuries and a half, have been the development of the art of conversation and the increase of letterwriting. It would be interesting and not unprofitable carefully to consider what have been and what may be the effects of these upon our language. At present we can only allude to one effect, which is obvious; namely