Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/15



this edition of Bacon's Essays, I have used the text of James Spedding, The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. XII, 1857—1874. Mr. Spedding edited the Essays with the Latin translation before him, and the large majority of his footnotes explain the English text by giving, untranslated, the corresponding Latin translation. In order to simplify the page, all the Latin footnotes have been omitted. Further, I have omitted all of Mr. Spedding's English notes but seventeen, which are distinguished from my own notes by the signature 'S.' The seventeen notes that I have retained bear wholly upon matters of text on which Mr. Spedding is the final authority. For example, in the essay, Of Unity in Religion, I have kept the note calling attention to Bacon's use of the double negative. In the essay, Of Empire, Mr. Spedding's note, from his fellow editor, Mr. Robert Leslie Ellis, is historically interesting, because it shows Bacon following the old physiology. If Bacon had lived two years longer than he did, to hear of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, he would undoubtedly have revised his metaphor of "the gate-vein, which disperseth the blood" out of both Essays and The Historie of the Raigne of King