Special Collections
Book of the Month, February 2009
Francisci Baconi … De Sapientia Veterum
Francis Bacon
London: R. Barker, 1609
[D.-L.L.] (XVII) Bc [Bacon - De Sapientia Veterum - 1609] SR
The year 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the first publication of De Sapientia Veterum (‘Wisdom of the Ancients’), by Sir Francis Bacon. This short Latin work of 140 duodecimo pages is a collection of thirty-one myths and fables from antiquity, together with Bacon’s interpretation of them. The work is both literary and philosophical. In its time, De Sapientia Veterum was nearly as popular as Bacon’s Essays. Nine independent Latin editions were published between 1609 and 1696; two editions of an English translation appeared in 1619, with further separate editions in 1622, 1658 and 1681, not to mention editions incorporated within the Essays, and the work was translated into French, Dutch, German and Italian.
The picture is from an English version edited by Peter Shaw (1694-1763), a fashionable medical practitioner, and published by Thomas Tegg in 1813. Both it and the first edition featured are from the library of the Baconian protagonist Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence (1837-1914), who considered Bacon to be one of England’s six greatest men and collected numerous editions of his works.
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