BACON DEFENDS DRAKE AND ATTACKS THE SPANISH: A VERY RARE ITALIAN TRANSLATION. 4to. [20 x 14.5 cm]. (8) including half-title and engraved title-page, 49 pp, (1). Margins of engr. title-page neatly folded to fit text-block; lacking terminal blank. Bound in later blue card covers. A clean and fresh copy. Extremely rare sole edition of this contemporary Italian translation of Francis Bacon’s Considerations touching a warre with Spaine (London, 1629). Originally prepared for King James in 1624 as a justification for war, Bacon (1561-1626) here defends the idea that armed struggle could be waged merely in anticipation of a wrong, and could be based solely on perceived malicious intentions. The first English edition of 1629 was curiously issued without an imprint, suggesting its tone may not have been welcomed politically. Having been at peace with Spain for two decades, James I refused to heed calls for war in 1624, but his successor Charles I proved more sympathetic in 1625. By 1629, Spain and England had successfully negotiated a peace treaty. Bacon’s rallying cry to arms against the Spanish thus may well have been seen as a subversive text; it attracted interest on the continent, where a French translation appeared in 1634 (Considerations politiques pour entreprendre la guerre contre l’Espagne). Tutuccio dedicates his own translation of Bacon’s anti-Spanish tract to Federigo della Tremoglia, an exiled pretender to the Neapolitan throne, expressing his hope that the evil Spanish Habsburgs (who had been ruling Naples for centuries) will one day be extirpated from all of Italy. “Thus, alongside Florence and Venice, another Italian city, Turin, became the seat of a Baconian press and the center for the diffusion of its anti-Habsburg political thought. Analogous political operations using the works of Bacon were carried out during these years both in his homeland, and in France and Italy...” (trans. De Mas, Sovranità politica e unità cristiana nel Seicento anglo-veneto, p. 196). Bacon also highlights various Anglo-Spanish conflicts of recent memory, including Sir Francis Drakes’ misadventures as a privateer in the Spanish Caribbean (found here on pp. 39-40). OCLC shows just one copy in US libraries, at the Huntington. ICCU shows just four copies in Italian libraries. * ICCU BVEE\035162; Gibson, Francis Bacon, #188; cf also De Mas, Scritti politici giuridici e storici di F. Bacone (Torino, 1971).