Bacon's Paradoxes

                

I believe because it is hard of belief - - Francis Bacon

 

Grosart’s little book probably was of the main interest and value to prove that the memorials were extrinsic, as enabling finally to determine the non-Baconian authorship of The Paradoxes, which for upwards of three centuries have been ascribed to Francis Bacon. The facts are of importance and worthy a space in this book.

Fact 1: Among the Thomason Tracts in the British Museum, there is an edition of The Paradoxes, printed for Richard Wodenothe, at the Star, under Peter’s Church in Cornhill (1645).

It is a small 8vo, and, including title-page, makes 12 pages. On the title, with his usual exactness, Thomason has written “July 24,” which denotes the day of publication. It does not appear who prepared and published this anonymous version.

In the Epistle, there is claim that it was unauthorised to be printed by the author: “I meant thee somewhat more: but whilst (in the midst of many employments) I was getting it ready, a strange hand was like to have robbed me of the greatest part of this, by putting to the Press (unknown to me) an imperfect copy of The Paradoxes. This made me hasten to tender a true one, and to content myself for the present with the addition of the other lesser pieces which here accompany them.”

This Epistle is signed “Thine and the Churches servant together, Herbert Palmer,” and is prefixed to Part II., of the Memorials this second part being added to a new edition of Part I., which had been originally published in 1644, on 13 December.

The “true copy” mentioned in the Epistle is arranged with the aphorisms under eighty-five heads.

All the editions of the completed Memorials, from first to last, bore the name of Herbert Palmer on the title page, as well as the above separate note of The Paradoxes, as forming a portion of the volume.

Fact 2: Spedding noted that there had been an edition published in 1643, and bearing Bacon’s name on the title page: 1 “The Character of a Believing Christian in Paradoxes and Seeming Contradictions, is said to have appeared first in 1643 as a separate pamphlet, under Bacon’s name.” Spedding’s authority is Rémusat. But on turning to Rémusat 2 it is found that Spedding has misread the date, overlooked a statement about the “three years” that elapsed between the pamphlet of 1645 and The Remains of 1648, and erred in supposing that Rémusat described the tractate of 1645 as bearing Bacon’s name.

The “imperfect copy” of July 24, 1645, therefore, was the first edition of The Paradoxes, and it is anonymous. The first “true copy” is Palmer’s own in Part II., of his Memorials, published on July 25, 1645. No edition whatever bore the name of Bacon, until in 1648 The Paradoxes were included in his  Remains.

How The Paradoxes came to be thus included in The Remains of Bacon a volume “to which,” observes Spedding, “nobody stands sponsor,” 3 is impossible to say.

Whatever the explanation, it is plain that The Paradoxes were not Bacon’s; and that the author, Herbert Palmer, did not claim his own when they appeared in Bacon’s Remains is accounted for by Palmer’s death in the previous year, 1647.
Spedding remarks, “Rawley says nothing of it: and as he can hardly be supposed to have overlooked it in the collection, his silence must be understood as equivalent to a statement that it was one of the many “pamphlets put forth under his Lordship’s name, which are not to be owned for his.” 4 Tenison says nothing about it. No traces of it, or of any part of it, or of anything at all resembling it, are to be found among the innumerable Baconian manuscripts, fair and foul, fragments, rough notes, discarded beginnings, loose leaves, which may still be seen at Lambeth, in the British Museum, and other repositories.” 5

After Bacon’s Remains of 1648 the first edition of the Works of Bacon which included The Paradoxes was Blackburn’s, 1730; from a note in which it would appear that Archbishop Sancroft revised, or, as Blackburn puts it, gave them a careful review; the meaning of which is explained to be, that he had compared it with the other copy, printed Lond. anno 1645; and by which again must be understood the anonymous edition described earlier.

Ever since Blackburn’s edition of the Works, The Paradoxes have been included therein, with less or more of suspicion.