A Manuscript of Sir Francis Bacon's
State Papers and Letters
 

KENNETH A, LOHF
 

The bequest of MoUie Harris Samuels ensured that the
distinguished library of English literature formed by her
son. Jack Harris Samuels, would come to the Rare Book
and Manuscript Library as a memorial to his life as a dedicated
bookman. Mrs. Samuels strengthened her bequest by establishing a
fund, the income from which would allow for the acquisition of
important books and manuscripts in the coUeaing fields that her son
designated by his own taste and imagination as the special province of
his library.

During a visit to a well-known London bookseller late last spring in
search of possible acquisitions for the collections, I was shown the
proofs ofthe firm's forthcoming catalogue. When I read the detailed
description of a seventeenth-century manuscript, believed to have
been in the library of SirThomas PhUlips, of Sir Francis Bacon's state
papers and letters, I knew that this rarity would be eminently
appropriate as the first acquisition on the Samuels Fund.

Scribal transcripts are the form in which state letters of this nature
came to be known to Bacon's contemporaries, and they were
collected as models of their kind to be used as precedents for
conducting state business. Few of Bacon's letters survive in the
originals, so early sets of transcripts, of which several are known in
addition to the present manuscript, are of crucial importance to any
editor or historian seeking to establish definitive texts of the
philosopher's letters. They are also evidence that Bacon, in his own
time, was recognized as one of the truly great minds of his age.

The twenty-six letters by Bacon in the manuscript of some ninety-
five pages, dating from 1595 to 1621, are addressed to James I,
Robert Cecil, Lords Northumberland and Southhampton, Sir
Thomas Egerton, and many others. As member of Parliament, as
 

30