56 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 75BACON, Francis. The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall… Newly enlarged. London, 1625. Octavo, 20th-century full crushed red morocco gilt rebacked with original spine laid down, custom slipcase. $15,000 “The Distillation Of A Lifetime’s Wisdom By The Wisest Man Of His Day” First complete edition (and the last edition to appear during Bacon’s lifetime), extremely scarce first issue, containing 58 essays, a splendid copy bound in full morocco gilt by Riviere. “The first in time, and, we may justly say, the first in excellence, of English writings on moral prudence, are the Essays of Bacon… They are deeper and more discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later, work in the English language” (Allibone, 90). “’I have taken all knowledge to be my province,’ Bacon declared, not at 65 on his deathbed, but at 31… Bacon’s day was, perhaps, the last moment in history when anything like omniscience was within the limits of human attainment; even in his day, Bacon’s was, perhaps, the only mind which could achieve it. At least his was the only mind that ever did… The essays were simply the distillation of a lifetime’s wisdom by the wisest man of his day” (Winterich). “The present edition ranks in importance with the [extraordinarily rare] first of 1597 and the recension published by John Beale in 1612. In the dedication Bacon says: ‘I doe now publish my Essayes... I have enlarged them, both in Number, and Weight; So that they are indeed a New Worke” (Pforzheimer 30). PMM 119. Interior clean and fresh, morocco binding handsome. HISTORY & CULTURE
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