In the nineteenth century, a waste book entitled The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies was discovered containing 1,655 hand written proverbs, metaphors, aphorisms, salutations and other miscellany. Although some entries appear original, many have been drawn from the Latin and Greek writers Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Ovid; John Heywood’s Proverbs (1562); Marcel de Montaigne’s Essays (1575), and various other French, Italian and Spanish sources.

Apart from a section at the end, Sir Edward Maunde-Thompson declared the writing to be in Bacon’s hand, and in fact his signature appears on folio 115 verso. Only two folios of the waste book were dated, the third sheet (December 5, 1594), and the thirty-second sheet (January 27, 1595–96). Many of these entries also occur in Shakespeare’s First Folio. The name Promus is derived from the Latin for offices, that is, larder. The word offices in Sonnet 77 have always seemed a strange word. Its significance appears to have been overlooked. The German translations omit it.