regarded by him as a fortunate accident. And as we know that the pacific policy of James and his preference of embassies to armies was at the time unpopular, it may well be conceived that a policy aiming apparently and avowedly at the aggrandisement of Great Britain among the nations (the second in dignity, according to Bacon's own estimate, Nov. Org. i. 129., among the ambitions of man) would, if commenced in 1608, have carried popular sympathy with it and entirely altered the relation between Crown and people. Bacon had seen a few years before, in the Parliament which met after the Gunpowder Plot, how rapidly disputes and discontents could be forgotten under the excitement of a common passion; and the same thing was seen not less conspicuously a few years after, when upon the determination to raise an army for the recovery of the Palatinate, a Benevolence was levied, without parliamentary authority and with universal applause; and a double subsidy was voted with unusual alacrity, without delays questions or conditions, by the Parliament which met immediately after.

This then I take to have been the "policy" with a view to which he proposed in the summer of 1608 to go on with the treatise of the Greatness of Britain, which it seems he had then begun. How much further he proceeded with it, it is impossible to know for the manuscript which has been preserved is in a disjointed state, and any number of leaves may have been lost either from the middle or the end without leaving evidence of the fact. I suppose however that he never finished it; finding that the courses taken by the government, then chiefly guided by the Earl of Salisbury, were directly at variance and incompatible with it, and so the chance gone. And he afterwards turned it into a general treatise on the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates; the Latin version of which is given in the De Augmentis Scientiarum (vol. i. p. 793.) as a specimen of a treatise De proferendis finibus imperii, and the English will be found (vol. vi. p. 444.) among the Essays.

This fragment was first published by Stephens (second collection, 1634, p. 193.) from a manuscript then belonging to Lord Oxford, now in the British Museum: Harl. MSS. 7021. fo. 25.; -the only copy I have met with or heard of. It is a transcript in two different hands, which seem to have been at work at the same time,—if one may infer as much from the fact that

though the first leaves off in the middle of the page the second begins at the top of a fresh sheet. All of it however, except a few leaves at the end, has been revised and corrected by Bacon himself; and on the blank page of what has once been the last sheet of the bundle, is written "Compositions," in Bacon's hand. There can be no doubt therefore as to the genuineness of it; and indeed it is one of the best and most careful of his writings, as far as it goes.

OF THE

TRUE GREATNESS

OF

THE KINGDOM OF BRITAIN.

FORTUNATOS NIMIUM, SUA SI BONA NORINT.

OF THE

TRUE GREATNESS

OF

THE KINGDOM OF BRITAIN.

TO KING JAMES.

THE greatness of kingdoms and dominions in bulk and territory doth fall under measure and demonstration that cannot err: but the just measure and estimate of the forces and power of an estate is a matter than the which there is nothing among civil affairs more subject to error, nor that error more subject to perilous consequence. For hence may proceed many inconsiderate attempts and insolent provocations in states that have too high an imagination of their own forces: and hence may proceed, on the other side, a toleration of many grievances and indignities, and a loss of many fair opportunities, in states that are not sensible enough of their own strength. Therefore, that it may the better appear what greatness your majesty hath obtained of God, and what greatness this island hath obtained by you, and what greatness it is, that by the gracious pleasure of Almighty God you shall leave and transmit to your children and generations as the first founder; I have thought good, as far as I can comprehend, to make a true survey and representation of the greatness of this your kingdom of Britain; being for mine own part persuaded, that the supposed prediction, Video solem orientem in occidente, may be no less true a vision applied to Britain, than to any other kingdom of Europe; and being out of doubt that none of the great monarchies which in the memory of times have risen in the habitable world, had so fair seeds and beginnings as hath this your estate and kingdom;