THE MASTERPIECES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. In a Series of Volumes, small 8vo, from 3s. 6d. each. CHAUCER. BY JOHN SAUNDERS. SPENSER. BY PROFESSOR CRAIK. BACON. BY PROFESSOR CRAIK. PALEY'S NATURAL THEOLOGY. EDITED BY LORD BROUGHAM AND SIR CHARLES BELL. GEORGE L. CRAIK LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST Tenth Thousand LONDON GRIFFIN BOHN AND CO. STATIONERS' HALL COURT ADVERTISEMENT...... THIS little work was originally published in 1846-7. It made no pretensions to be more than such a compendious account as might serve for an introduction to the study of the writings of Bacon, or might suffice for ordinary readers who should desire not to remain altogether unacquainted with what bears so illustrious a name, -inducing some of them also, perhaps, to seek a more thorough knowledge for themselves who might not otherwise have thought of doing so. In the present edition a few typographical errata have been corrected; but the substance of the book has not been altered. Nothing, accordingly, has been drawn from any one of the three remarkable additions to the library of Baconian literature which have been made within the last few years in Germany, France, and our own country, by Dr. Kuno Fischer's Francis Bacon of Verulam (translated by Mr. Oxenford, London, 1857); M. Rémusat's Life and Times of Bacon, Paris, 1857; and, by far most important of all, the new London edition of the Works of Francis Bacon, by Mr. Spedding, Mr. Heath, and the late lamented Mr. Ellis, of which seven volumes have already appeared, and which when completed will raise Bacon from having been the worse edited, if he can be said to have ever before been, properly speaking, edited at all, of our |