Preface.

Bacon's collection of Apophthegms, though a sick man's task, ought not to be regarded as a work merely of amusement; still less as a jest-book. It was meant for a contribution, though a slight one, towards the supply of what he had long considered as a desideratum in literature. In the Advancement of Learning he had mentioned Apophthegms with respect, along with Orations and Letters, as one of the appendices to Civil History; regretting the loss of Cæsar's collection; “for as for those which are collected by others (he said) either I have no taste in such matters, or their choice hath not been happy”. This was in 1605. In revising and enlarging that treatise in 1623, he had spoken of their use and worth rather more fully. “They serve (he said) not for pleasure only and ornament, but also for action and business; being, as one called them, mucrones verborum, —speeches with a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and severed. And as former occasions are continually recurring, that which served once will often serve again, either produced as a man's own or cited as of ancient authority. Nor can there be any doubt of the utility in business of a thing which Cæsar the Dictator thought worthy of his own labour; whose collection I wish had been preserved; for as for any others that we have in this kind, but little judgment has in myopinion been used in the selection ¹ .” Of this serious use of apophthegms Bacon himself had had long experience, having been all his life a great citer of them; and in the autumn of 1624, when he was recovering from a severe illness, he employed himself in dictating from memory a number that occurred to him as worth setting down.