- 55
Bacon, Sir Francis
Estimate
2,500 - 4,000 USD
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Description
- Manuscript copy of his poem commencing "The World's a bubble"
- paper
Divided into four eight-line stanzas and subscribed "Made by Sir Francis Bacon Kt baron Verulam Viscount St Albans & Late Lord Chancelor of England," together with other poems including a fragment from Plutarch's Moralia translated by Philemon Holland, in a single italic hand, apparently that of one Thomas Everard, with the name "Sarah Amler" also written on a top left corner, altogether two pages on a single folio leaf (340 x 225 mm) removed from a volume, c.1620s or 1630s; significant fraying at edges with slight loss of text, staining. Red morocco-backed folder
Provenance
Sotheby's, 21 July 1992, lot 9. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch
Literature
CELM BaF 49.5
Catalogue Note
"...Who then to fraile mortality shall trust
but lymmes the water or but writes in dust..."
but lymmes the water or but writes in dust..."
Bacon's bleak poetic dismissal of the world was enormously popular in the first half of the seventeenth century and survives in more than 50 manuscript copies.