A History of English Literature

dividing the supernatural truths of biblical revelation from the truths of nature.
After the Advancement of Learning he proposed in his Latin Novum Organum (1620)
a ‘new instrument’ for human understanding: ‘not of a sect or doctrine, but of
human utility and power’, words which strikingly define the priorities of the modern
world. But King James did not invest in research, nor found a College of Science, as
further proposed in The New Atlantis (1627).
For all the repute of his other works, only Bacon’s Essays have been much read
since. The spectator who liked Hamlet but had not realized it was so full of quotations
stumbled on a clue to much Renaissance writing: its love of nuggets. Its favourite
book was Erasmus’s Adagia (1500), a collection of classical sayings with witty
commentary. Adages and proverbs, decorations on the sponge-cakes of the 1580s,
stuff the plum-puddings of the 1590s, the decade of gists, piths and aphorisms.

THE STUART CENTURY 147

Charles the Martyr, from Eikon Basilike

Basilike: The Pourctraicture of his Sacred

Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings

(1649). The text was put together from the

king’s notes. Having put off the earthly

crown, he takes the crown of thorns, looking

up to the heavenly crown which awaits him.

Latin labels explain the emblems. The book

reads ‘My Hope is in Thy Word.’

Prose to 1642

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester

(1555–1626) XCVI Sermons(1629).

Sir Francis Bacon(1561–1626) Essays

(1597, 1612, 1625), Advancement of

Learning(1605), Novum Organum(1620),

History of Henry VII(1622), De Augmentis

Scientiarum(1623), The New Atlantis

(1627).

Robert Burton(1577–1640) The Anatomy

of Melancholy(1621, revd 1624, 1628,

1632, 1638, 1651).

Sir Thomas Browne(1605–1682) Religio

Medici(c.1635; pub. 1642), Pseudodoxia

Epidemica: or, Enquiries into Very Many

Received Tenents, and Commonly Presumed

Truths(1646, revd 1650, 1658, 1672);

Hydriotaphia, Urne Buriall(1658).