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hastily. Dr. Playfer, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, who had expressed the good liking he had conceived of the book, was applied to by Bacon to translate it into Latin, but the specimen of his version was too ornate for Bacon’s taste, and it was never completed. The two parts, in English only, were published together in quarto some time about the end of October, and then not by Richard Ockould but by Henry Tomes, with the following title: ‘The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduauncement of Learning, diuine and humane. To the King. At London, Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605.’ In a letter from Chamberlain to Carleton on the 7th of November, the appearance of Sir Francis Bacon’s new work on Learning is duly chronicled^[1]. Any attention it might otherwise have attracted was no doubt greatly diminished by the event which then filled men’s minds, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In the investigations which followed this discovery, Bacon was only slightly concerned. A prospect of a vacancy occurs in the Solicitorship in March, 1606-7, and Bacon urges Cecil to press his claims. But he had again to wait.

In the hurry and business of this session, the gossip of Carleton gives us a glimpse of Bacon, the statesman and philosopher, in a new aspect. On the 11th of May, 1606, he writes to Chamberlain, ‘Sir Francis Bacon was married yesterday to his young wench in Maribone Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion. The dinner was kept at his father-in-law Sir John Packington’s lodging over against