〃 To the Lord St. Alban. My Honourable Lord, I have delivered your lordship's letter and your book to his majesty, who hath promised to read it over: I wish I could promise as much for that which you sent me, that my understanding of that language might make me capable of those good fruits, which I assure myself, by an implicit faith, proceed from your pen; but I will tell you in good English, with my thanks for your book, that I ever rest Your Lordship's faithful Friend and Servant, G. BUCKINGHAM. Hinchenbrook, October 29th, 1623. 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, this 22d October, 1623. I have added a begging postscript in the King's letter; for, as I writ before, my cables are worn out, my hope of tackling is by your lordship's means. For me and mine, I pray command. My Lord, To the Lord St. Alban. 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 into 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, Hinchenbrook, 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 his majesty, the one for a full pardon, that I may die out of a cloud; the other for the translation of my honours after my decease. I hope his majesty will have compassion on me, as he promised me he would. My heart telleth me that no man hath loved his majesty and his service more entirely, and love is the law and the prophets. I ever rest Your Grace's most obliged and faithful Servant, November 25th, 1623. My Lord, To the Lord St. Alban. 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 inclosed 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, Newmarket, 28th of January, 1623. 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 bishoprick. It is 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 behind 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 gave 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. But 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, Buckden, the last of December, 1625. Jo. LINCOLN. LETTERS FROM MATHEWS, NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED. Sir Francis Bacon, desiring a Friend to do 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 physic to-day, upon this change of weather, and vantage of leisure; and I pray you not to allow yourself so much business, but that you may have time to bring me your friendly aid before night, &c. Sir Francis Bacon to a Friend, about Reading and giving Judgment upon his Writings. 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 make some little note in writing, where you think (to speak like a critic) that I do perhaps indormiscere; 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. Sir Francis Bacon to the same Person upon the like Subject; with an Addition of condoling the Death of a Friend. Sir, The reason of so much time taken before my answer to yours of the fourth of August, was chiefly my accompanying my letter with the paper which here I send you; and again, now lately (not to hold from you till the end of a letter, that which by grief may, for a time, efface all the 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 unfortunate man, to be deprived of two (a great number in true friendship) of those friends whom I accounted 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 for a disinterested man or no; I be to pass you freely confess myself am not, and 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 |