FRANCIS BACON, BARON VERULAM
(1561-1626)
13. Eſſaies. | Religious Me- | ditations. | Places of perſwaſion | and diſſwaſion. | Seene and allowed. | London | Printed for Humfrey Hooper | and are to bee ſolde at the blacke Beare in Chaun- | cery lane. 1598. [Colophon] Imprinted at London by John Windet for Humfrey Hooper. 1598.
This edition is thought by some to be rarer than the first, which was published by Hooper, in octavo, in the previous year. Some differences occur in the spelling, the table of contents here precedes "The Epistle Dedicatorie," the Meditationes Sacræ are done into English, and the ornaments used are quite different. Only ten Essays were included in these two issues, whereas the edition of 1612 has thirty-eight, and that of 1625, fifty-eight.
Hooper, of whose publications there are very few examples existing, is thought by Roberts to have been a young publisher whom Bacon wished to help. John Windet was the successor to John Wolfe as printer to the City of London; many books came from his press, but few of them of note.
Perhaps the most interesting peculiarity of the book is the word essay, in the sense of a composition of moderate length on a particular subject. With this work, the word makes its first appearance on the title-page of an English book. The first two books of Montaigne's Essais had appeared in 1580, and Bacon was no doubt familiar with them as a new style of writing, since his brother, to whom he addressed this volume, was a friend of Montaigne. He says in his volume of Essays dedicated to Prince Henry: "For Senacaes Epistles ... are but Essaies—that is dispersed Meditations ... Essays. The word is late, but the thing is auncient."
Lord Bacon's reasons for printing his book, expressed in the signed preface which accompanied both editions, is interesting as showing that he was alive to the piracies of the book-sellers, and that he knew how to meet the difficulty in a sensible manner.
"To M. Anthony Bacon his deare brother.