Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/60

Rh occupied himself with literary pursuits. During the first summer of his enforced retirement to private life, he composed his Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh. In 1623, he published the Latin version of the Advancement of Learning, now issued in nine books with the title De Augmentis Scientiarum. The poet George Herbert is said to have helped him with the translation. His Apophthegmes New and Old, 1624, can only be said to have been the occupation of a morning in the sense that he may have arranged the order of the stories in one morning. The last three years of Bacon's life were spent in writing his Sylva Sylvarum: or A Natural History, and in editing the third and final edition of the Essays. This edition, published in March, 1625, contains the fifty-eight essays of all subsequent editions, and was entitled Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall. The book was dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham. To us who have received the great inheritance of the English language, it seems very curious that Bacon should write in the dedication, nine years after the death of Shakspere,—"For I do conceive that the Latin volume of them (being in the universal language) may last as long as books last." The Latin translation of Bacon's Essays was first published in 1638 by his chaplain, Dr. William Rawley, among the Opera Moralia et Civilia, and with the title Sermones Fideles sive Interiora Rerum. It is inferred that Bacon at least supervised the Latin translation, from the fact that he left this opinion as to its value, but it is now impossible to ascertain Rh