Today I am spending quality time with a nice copy of Sylva Sylvarum: Or a Natural Historie In Ten Centuries by Sir Francis Bacon. This is the 1631 edition bound in creepiest old vellum. This book is fucking rad. It is dedicated to Charles I, the second Stuart King ("May it please your most excellent Majesty"). Eighteen years later, on a cold, gray winter day in 1649, Charles would have his head lopped off by Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads. On the title page there are a few past owner signatures inked with the utmost in quill pen flourish. "William Hutchinson 1702". Turning the heavy rag pages, and reading Bacon's entries, one can't help but daydream about all the history and all the hands through which this book has passed since the distant day these sentences were set.