_The Second | Part Of The | Faerie Queene. | Containing | The Fourth, | Fifth, | And Sixth Bookes. | By Ed. Spenſer | [Printer's mark] Imprented at London for VVilliam | Ponſonby._ 1596. was licensed January 20, 1595-6, and was published with a second edition of the first part, which it was meant to accompany. The remaining six books never appeared.
The device on the title-page of the second volume is that of Thomas Vautrollier, a foreigner settled in London, whose stock passed, at his death, to his son-in-law, Richard Field. It seems clear that Field printed the volume (Vautrollier did no work after 1588), although Herbert ascribes it to the master-printer Thomas Creed.
In some early copies of the first volume there are blank spaces on page 332, which had been left by the printer to be filled later with Welsh words and then forgotten. Other copies have this omission corrected.
13. Eſſaies. | Religious Me- | ditations. | Places of perſwaſion | and diſſwaſion. | Seene and allowed. | London | Printed for Humfrey Hooper | and are to bee ſolde at the blacke Beare in Chaun- | cery lane. 1598. [Colophon] Imprinted at London by John Windet for Humfrey Hooper. 1598.
This edition is thought by some to be rarer than the first, which was published by Hooper, in octavo, in the previous year. Some differences occur in the spelling, the table of contents here precedes "The Epistle Dedicatorie," the _Meditationes Sacræ_ are done into English, and the ornaments used are quite different. Only ten Essays were included in these two issues, whereas the edition of 1612 has thirty-eight, and that of 1625, fifty-eight.
Hooper, of whose publications there are very few examples existing, is thought by Roberts to have been a young publisher whom Bacon wished to help. John Windet was the successor to John Wolfe as printer to the City of London; many books came from his press, but few of them of note.
Perhaps the most interesting peculiarity of the book is the word _essay_, in the sense of a composition of moderate length on a particular subject. With this work, the word makes its first appearance on the title-page of an English book. The first two books of Montaigne's _Essais_ had appeared in 1580, and Bacon was no doubt familiar with them as a new style of writing, since his brother, to whom he addressed this volume, was a friend of Montaigne. He says in his volume of _Essays_ dedicated to Prince Henry: "For Senacaes Epistles ... are but Essaies--that is dispersed Meditations ... Essays. The word is late, but the thing is auncient."
