Id., The Tempest, I. i. 232.
Page 180. To Sr Henry Wotton.
The occasion of this letter was apparently (see my article, Bacon's Poem, The World: Its Date And Relation to Certain Other Poems: Mod. Lang. Rev., April, 1911) a literary débat among some of the wits of Essex's circle. The subject of the débat was 'Which kind of life is best, that of Court, Country, or City?' and the suggestion came from the two epigrams in the Greek Anthology attributed to Posidippus and Metrodorus respectively. In the first (Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμῃ τρίβον;) each kind of life in turn is condemned; in the second each is defended. These epigrams were paraphrased in Tottel's Miscellany (1557) by Nicholas Grimald, and again in the Arte of English Poesie (1589), attributed to George Puttenham. Stimulated perhaps by the latter version, in which the Court first appears as one of the principal spheres of life, or by Ronsard's French version in which also the 'cours des Roys', unknown to the Greek poet, are introduced, Bacon wrote his well-known paraphrase:
The world's a bubble: and the life of man
Less than a span.
It is just possible too that he wrote a paraphrase, similar in verse, of the second epigram, which I have printed in the article referred to. A copy of The World was found among Wotton's papers and was printed in the Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651) signed 'Fra. Lord Bacon'. It had already been published by Thomas Farnaby in his Florilegium Epigrammatum Graecorum &c. (1629). Bacon probably gave Wotton a copy and he appears to have shown it to his friends. Among these was Thomas Bastard, who, to judge by the numerous epigrams he addressed to Essex, belonged to the same circle as Bacon, Donne, and Wotton,—if we may so describe it, but probably every young man of letters looked to Essex for patronage. Bastard's poem runs:
Ad Henricum Wottonum.
Wotton, the country, and the country swayne,
How can they yeeld a Poet any sense?
How can they stirre him up or heat his vaine?