Baconiana (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN INTERESTING LETTER TO YOUNG FRANCIS BACON. THE following letter, written by Sir Thomas Bodley to Francis Bacon whilst the latter was travelling in France, is No. ccxxxii. of " Reliquiae Bodleianae." It is not mentioned by Mallet, Montague, Dixon, Spedding, or any of Bacon's biographers. Yet it is of great interest, for it shows that young Bacon was ill-provided with funds, and the curious may wonder how it came about that his cousin, Sir Thomas Bodley, was supplying his needs. According to Spedding, Sir Amias Paulet landed at Calais on the 25th of September, 1576, and Bacon was in Paris in February, 1578-9, and left for England on the 20th of March in that year. So Bacon was at Orleans on the 19th October, 1577, and the letter was addressed to him in France after the following 18th of December. My Dear Cousin, ?According to your request in your letter (dated the i9th October at Orleans, I received here the 18th of December), I have sent you by your merchant 30 (the thirty is written thus 301) sterling for your present supply, and had sent you a greater sum, but that my extraordinary charge this year hath utterly unfurnished me. And now, cousin, though I will be no severe exacto of the account, either of your money or time, yet for the love I bear you, I am very desirous, both to satisfy myself, and your friends how you prosper in your travels, and how you find yourself bettered thereby, either in knowledge of God, or of the world; the rather, because the Days you have already spent abroad, are now both sufficient to give you Light, how to fix yourself and end with counsel, and accordingly to shape your course constantly unto it. Besides, it is a vulgar scandal unto the travellers, that few return more religious (narrow, editor) than they went forth; wherein both my Hop...