Chapter IV: Preface (2)

At length, in 1617, Sir Francis Bacon attained the end of the ambition of his life, he became Lord Keeper of the Seals, with the functions, though not the title, of Lord High Chancellor of England. His promotion to this dignity gave general satisfaction; his own university, Cambridge, congratulated him; Oxford imitated the example; the world expected a perfect judge, formed from his own model in his Essay of Judicature. He took his seat in the Court of Chancery with the utmost pomp and parade.

The Lord Keeper now endeavored to “feed fat the ancient grudge” he bore Coke. He deprived him of the office of Chief Justice, and erased his name from the list of privy councillors. Coke imagined a plan of raising his falling fortunes; he projected a marriage between his daughter by his second wife, a very rich heiress, and Sir John Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, the King’s favorite. Bacon was alarmed, wrote to the King, and used expressions of disparagement towards the favorite, his new patron, to whom he was indebted for the Seals he held. The King and his minion were equally indignant; and they did not conceal from him their resentment. On the return of the court, Bacon hastened to the residence of Buckingham; being denied admittance, he waited two whole days in the ante-chamber with the Great Seal of England in his hand. When at length he obtained access, the Lord Keeper threw himself and the Great Seal on the ground, kissed the favorite’s feet, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven! It must after this have been difficult indeed for him to rise again in the world’s esteem or his own.

Bacon was made to purchase at a dear price his reinstatement in the good graces of Buckingham. The favorite constantly wrote to the judge in behalf of one of the parties, and in the end, says Lord Campbell, intimated that he was to dictate the decree. Nor did Bacon once remonstrate against this unwarrantable interference on the part of the man to whom he had himself recommended “by no means to interpose himself, either by word or letter in any cause depending on any court of justice.” The Lord Keeper received soon after, in 1618, the reward of his “many faithful services” by the higher title of Lord High Chancellor of England, and by the peerage with the name of Baron of Verulam.

The new Minister of Justice lent himself with his wonted complaisance to a most outrageous act of injustice, which Macaulay stigmatizes as a “dastardly murder,” that of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, under a sentence pronounced sixteen years before; Sir Walter having been in the interval invested with the high command of Admiral of the fleet. Such an act it was the imperative duty of the first magistrate of the realm not to promote, but to resist to the full extent of his power; and the Chancellor alone could issue the warrant for the execution!

In 1620, he published what is usually considered his greatest work, his _Novum Organum_ (New Instrument or Method), which forms the second part of the _Instauratio Magna_ (Great Restoration of the Sciences). This work had occupied Bacon’s leisure for nearly thirty years. Such was the care he bestowed on it, that Rawley, his chaplain and biographer, states that he had seen about twelve autograph copies of it, corrected and improved until it assumed the shape in which it appeared. Previous to the publication of the _Novum Organum_, says the illustrious Sir John Herschel, “natural philosophy, in any legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could hardly be said to exist.”[14]

It cannot be expected that a work destined completely to change the state of science, we had almost said of nature, should not be assailed by that prejudice which is ever ready to raise its loud but unmeaning voice against whatever is new, how great or good soever it may be. Bacon’s doctrine was accused of being calculated to produce “dangerous revolutions,” to “subvert governments and the authority of religion.” Some called on the present age and posterity to rise high in their resentment against “the Bacon-faced generation,” for so were the experimentalists termed. The old cry of irreligion, nay, even of atheism, was raised against the man who had said: “I would rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.”[15] But Bacon had to encounter the prejudices even of the learned. Cuffe, the Earl of Essex’s secretary, a man celebrated for his attainments, said of the _Instauratio Magna_, “a fool could not have written such a book, and a wise man would not.” King James said, it was “like the peace of God, that surpasseth all understanding.” And even Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, said to Aubrey: “Bacon is no great philosopher; he writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor.” Rawley, his secretary and his biographer, laments, some years after his friend’s death, that “his fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence: A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house.” Bacon was for some time without honor “in his own country and in his own house.” But truth on this, as on all other occasions, triumphs in the end. Bacon’s assailants are forgotten; Bacon will be remembered with gratitude and veneration forever.

He was again, in 1621, promoted in the peerage to be Viscount Saint-Albans; his patent particularly celebrating his “integrity in the administration of justice.”

In this same year the Parliament assembled. The House of Commons first voted the subsidies demanded by the Crown, and next proceeded, as was usual in those times, to the redress of grievances. A committee of the House was appointed to inquire into “the abuses of Courts of Justice.” A report of this committee charged the Lord Chancellor with corruption, and specified two cases; in the first of which Aubrey, a suitor in his court, stated that he had presented the Lord Chancellor with a hundred pounds; and Egerton, another suitor in his court, with four hundred pounds in addition to a former piece of plate of the value of fifty pounds; in both cases decisions had been given against the parties whose presents had been received. (Lord Campbell asserts that in the case of Egerton both parties had made the Chancellor presents.)[16] His enemies, it is said, estimated his illicit gains at a hundred thousand pounds; a statement which, it is more than probable, is greatly exaggerated.[17] “I never had,” said Bacon in his defence, “bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced sentence or order.” This is an acknowledgment of the fact, and perhaps an aggravation of the offence. He then addressed “an humble submission” to the House, a kind of general admission, in which he invoked as a plea of excuse _vitia temporis_.

How widely different from this is his own language! It is fair justice to appeal from the judge to the tribunal of the philosopher and moralist; it is appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; unhappily it is likewise

to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar.

He says, in his Essay of Great Place: “For corruption: do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servant’s hands from taking, but bind the hands of suitors from offering. For integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion.”[18] He says again, in the same Essay: “Set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow them.”

But the allegation that it was a custom of the times requires examination. It was a custom of the times in reality to make presents to superiors. Queen Elizabeth received them as New Year’s gifts from functionaries of all ranks, from her prime minister down to Charles Smith, the dust-man (see note 1, page 7), and this custom probably continued under her successor, and may have been applied to other high functionaries, but it does not appear to have been in legitimate use in the courts of judicature. Coke, himself Chief Justice, was Bacon’s principal accuser; and, although an enemy, he has been said to have conducted himself with moderation and propriety on this occasion only. Lord Campbell, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, and author of the _Lives of the Chancellors and Chief Justices of England_, repels the plea, as inadmissible. It cannot be denied that if Bacon extended the practice to the courts of justice, he has heaped coals of fire on his head; for applied to his own case personally it would be sufficiently odious; but what odium would not that man deserve who should systematize, nay, legitimize a practice that must inevitably poison the stream of justice at its fountain-head! What execration could be too great, if that man were the most intelligent, the wisest of his century, one of the most dignified in rank in the land, clad in spotless ermine, the emblem of purity, in short, the Minister of Justice!

The Lords resolved that Bacon should be called upon to put in a particular answer to each of the special charges preferred against him. The formal articles with proofs in support were communicated to him. The House received the “confession and humble submission of me, the Lord Chancellor.” In this document, Bacon acknowledges himself to be guilty of corruption; and in reply to each special charge admits in every instance the receipt of money or valuable things from the suitors in his court; but alleging in some cases that it was after judgment, or as New Year’s gifts, a custom of the times, or for prior services. A committee of nine temporal and three spiritual lords was appointed to ascertain whether it was he who had subscribed this document. The committee repaired to his residence, were received in the hall where he had been accustomed to sit as judge, and merely asked him if the signature affixed to the paper they exhibited to him was his. He passionately exclaimed: “My lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” The committee withdrew, overwhelmed with grief at the sight of such greatness so fallen.

Four commissioners dispatched by the King demanded the Great Seal of the Chancellor, confined to his bed by sickness and sorrow and want of sustenance; for he refused to take any food. He hid his face in his hand, and delivered up that Great Seal for the attainment of which he “had sullied his integrity, had resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with judges, had tortured prisoners, had plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men.”[19]

All this he did to be Lord High Chancellor of England; and, had he not been the unworthy minister of James, he might have been, to use the beautiful language of Hallam, “the high-priest of nature.”

On the 3d of May, he was unanimously declared to be guilty, and he was sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure, to be incapable of holding any public office, and of sitting in Parliament or of coming within the verge of the court.[20] Such was the sentence pronounced on the man whom three months before the King _delighted to honor_ for “his integrity in the administration of justice.”

The fatal verdict affected his health so materially that the judgment could not receive immediate execution; he could not be conveyed to the Tower until the 31st of May; the following day he was liberated. He repaired to the house of Sir John Vaughan, who held a situation in the prince’s household.[21] He wished to retire to his own residence at York House; but this was refused. He was ordered to proceed to his seat at Gorhambury, whence he was not to remove, and where he remained, though very reluctantly, till the ensuing spring.

The heavy fine was remitted. But as he had lived in great pomp, he had economized naught from his legitimate or ill-gotten gains. As he was now insolvent, a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was bestowed on him; from his estate and other revenues he derived thirteen hundred pounds per annum more. On the 17th of October, his remaining penalties were remitted. It cannot but strike the reader as a most remarkable circumstance that, within eighteen months of the condemnation, all the penalties were successively remitted. Would this induce the belief that he was but the scape-goat of the court, that the condemnation was purely political? It is, we believe, to be explained ostensibly by the advanced age of Bacon, but really by the circumstance that the King’s favorite, Buckingham, was an accomplice.

Bacon discovered, alas! when it was too late, that the talent God had given him he had “misspent in things for which he was least fit;” or as Thomson has beautifully expressed it:[22]—

Hapless in his choice,
Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,
And through the smooth barbarity of courts,
With firm, but pliant virtue, forward still
To urge his course; him for the studious shade
Kind Nature form’d; deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,
Plato, the Stagyrite and Tully join’d.
The great deliverer he!

It is gratifying to turn from the melancholy scenes exhibited by the political life of Bacon, to behold him in his study in the deep search of truth; no contrast is more striking than that between the chancellor and the philosopher, or, as Macaulay has well termed it, “Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals—Bacon in speculation, and Bacon in action.” From amidst clouds and darkness we emerge into the full blaze and splendor of midday light.

We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which nature adapted him, and from which no extent of occupation could entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption.

Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair.

Here the writer yielded not to _vitia temporis_; but combated them with might and main, with heart and soul.

In 1623, he published the _Life of Henry VII._ In a letter addressed to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: “’Time was I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor.” But his honor without leisure had precipitated him into “bottomless perdition;” his leisure without honor retrieved his name, and raised him again to an unattainable height.

In the following year, he printed his Latin translation of the _Advancement of Learning_, under the title of _De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_.

This was not, however, a mere translation; for he made in it omissions and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter; in short, he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted in France in 1624, one year after its appearance in England. It was immediately translated into French and Italian, and was published in Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 1645, 1650, and 1662.

In 1624, he solicited of the King a remission of the sentence, to the end, says he, “that blot of ignominy may be removed from me and from my memory with posterity.” The King granted him a full pardon. But he never more took his seat in the House of Lords. When the new Parliament met, after the accession of Charles the First, age, infirmity, and tardy wisdom had extinguished the ambition of Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. When the writ of summons to the Parliament reached him, he exclaimed: “I have done with such vanities!”

But the philosopher pursued his labor of love. He published new editions of his writings, and translated them into Latin, from the mistaken notion that in that language alone could they be rescued from oblivion. His crabbed latinity is now read but by few, or even may be said to be nearly forgotten; while his noble, majestic English is read over the whole British empire, on which the sun never sets, is studied and admired throughout the old world and the new, and it will be so by generations still unborn; it will descend to posterity in company with his contemporary, Shakspeare (whose name he never mentions), and will endure as long as the great and glorious language itself; indeed, as he foretold of his Essays, it “will live as long as books last.”

In the translation of his works into Latin, he was assisted by Rawley, his future biographer, and his two friends, Ben Jonson, the poet, and Hobbes, the philosopher.

He wrote for his “own recreation,” amongst very serious studies, a _Collection of Apophthegms, New and Old_, said to have been dictated in one rainy day, but probably the result of several “rainy days.” This contains many excellent jocular anecdotes, and has been, perhaps, with too much indulgence, pronounced by Macaulay to be the best jest-book in the world.

He commenced a _Digest of the Laws of England_, but he soon discontinued it, because it was “a work of assistance, and that which he could not master by his own forces and pen.” James the First had not sufficient elevation of mind to afford him the means of securing the assistance he required.

He wrote his will with his own hand on the 19th of December, 1625. He directs that he shall be interred in St. Michael’s Church, near St. Albans: “There was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house at Gorhambury.... For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.” This supreme act of filial piety towards his gifted mother is affecting. Let no “uncharitable” word be uttered over his last solemn behest; foreign nations and all ages will not refuse a tribute of homage to his genius! Gassendi presents an analysis of his labors, and pays a tribute of admiration to their author; Descartes has mentioned him with encomium; Malebranche quotes him as an authority; Puffendorff expressed admiration of him; the University of Oxford presented to him, after his fall, an address, in which he is termed “a mighty Hercules, who had by his own hand greatly advanced those pillars in the learned world which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable.” Leibnitz ascribed to him the revival of true philosophy; Newton had studied him so closely that he adopted even his phraseology; Voltaire and D’Alembert have rendered him popular in France. The modern philosophers of all Europe regard him reverentially as the father of experimental philosophy.

He attempted at this late period of his life a metrical translation into English of the Psalms of David; although his prose is full of poetry, his verse has but little of the divine art.

He again declined to take his seat as a peer in Charles’s second Parliament; but the last stage of his life displayed more dignity and real greatness than the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” of his high offices and honors. The public of England and of “foreign nations” forgot the necessity of “charitable speeches” and anticipated “the next ages.” The most distinguished foreigners repaired to Gray’s Inn to pay their respects to him. The Marquis d’Effiat, who brought over to England the Princess Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles the First, went to see him. Bacon, confined to his bed, but unwilling to decline the visit, received him with the curtains drawn. “You resemble the angels,” said the French minister to him, “we hear those beings continually talked of; we believe them superior to mankind; and we never have the consolation to see them.”

But in ill health and infirmity he continued his studies and experiments; as it occurred to him that snow might preserve animal substances from putrefaction as well as salt, he tried the experiment, and stuffed a fowl with snow with his own hands. “The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to become its martyr;” he took cold. From his bed he dictated a letter to the Earl of Arundel, to whose house he had been conveyed. “I was likely to have had the fortune of Caïus Plinius the Elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mount Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well.” He had, indeed, the fortune of Pliny the Elder; for he never recovered from the effects of his cold, which brought on fever and a complaint of the chest; and he expired on the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Thus died, a victim to his devotion to science, Francis Bacon, whose noble death is an expiation of the errors of his life, and who was, as has been justly observed, notwithstanding all his faults, one of the greatest ornaments and benefactors of the human race.

No account has been preserved of his funeral; but probably it was private. Sir Thomas Meautys, his faithful secretary, erected at his own expense a monument to Bacon’s memory. Bacon is represented sitting, reclining on his hand, and absorbed in meditation. The effigy bears the inscription: _sic sedebat_.

The singular fact ought not to be omitted, that notwithstanding the immense sums that had been received by him, legitimately or otherwise, he died insolvent. The fault of his life had been that he never adapted his expenses to his income; perhaps even he never calculated them. To what irretrievable ruin did not this lead him? To disgrace and dishonor, in the midst of his career; to insolvency at its end. His love of worldly grandeur was uncontrollable, or at least uncontrolled. “The virtue of prosperity is temperance,” says he himself; but this virtue he did not possess. His stately bark rode proudly over the waves, unmindful of the rocks; on one of these, alas! it split and foundered.

Bacon was very prepossessing in his person; he was in stature above the middle size; his forehead was broad and high, of an intellectual appearance; his eye was lively and expressive; and his countenance bore early the marks of deep thought.

It might be mentioned here with instruction to the reader, that few men were more impressed than Bacon with the value of time, the most precious element of life. He assiduously employed the smallest portions of it; considering justly that the days, the hours, nay minutes of existence require the greatest care at our hands; the weeks, months, and years have been wisely said to take care of themselves. His chaplain, Rawley, remarks: “_Nullum momentum aut temporis segmentum perire et intercidere passus est_,” he suffered no moment nor fragment of time to pass away unprofitably. It is this circumstance that explains to us the great things he accomplished even in the most busy part of his life.

The whole of Bacon’s biography has been admirably recapitulated by Lord Campbell[23] in the following paragraph:—

“We have seen him taught his alphabet by his mother; patted
on the head by Queen Elizabeth; mocking the worshippers of
Aristotle at Cambridge; catching the first glimpses of his great
discoveries, and yet uncertain whether the light was from heaven;
associating with the learned and the gay at the court of France;
devoting himself to Bracton[24] and the Year Books in Gray’s
Inn; throwing aside the musty folios of the law to write a moral
Essay, to make an experiment in natural philosophy, or to detect
the fallacies which had hitherto obstructed the progress of
useful truth; contented for a time with taking “all knowledge for
his province;” roused from these speculations by the stings of
vulgar ambition; plying all the arts of flattery to gain official
advancement by royal and courtly favor; entering the House of
Commons, and displaying powers of oratory of which he had been
unconscious; being seduced by the love of popular applause, for
a brief space becoming a patriot; making amends, by defending
all the worst excesses of prerogative; publishing to the world
lucubrations on morals, which show the nicest perception of what
is honorable and beautiful as well as prudent, in the conduct
of life; yet the son of a Lord Keeper, the nephew of the prime
minister, a Queen’s counsel, with the first practice at the
bar, arrested for debt, and languishing in a spunging-house;
tired with vain solicitations to his own kindred for promotion,
joining the party of their opponent, and after experiencing the
most generous kindness from the young and chivalrous head of
it, assisting to bring him to the scaffold, and to blacken his
memory; seeking, by a mercenary marriage to repair his broken
fortunes; on the accession of a new sovereign offering up the
most servile adulation to a pedant whom he utterly despised;
infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down, with three
hundred others, to receive the honor of knighthood; truckling
to a worthless favorite with the most slavish subserviency that
he might be appointed a law-officer of the Crown; then giving
the most admirable advice for the compilation and emendation
of the laws of England, and helping to inflict torture on a
poor parson whom he wished to hang as a traitor for writing an
unpublished and unpreached sermon; attracting the notice of all
Europe by his philosophical works, which established a new era
in the mode of investigating the phenomena both of matter and
mind; basely intriguing in the meanwhile for further promotion,
and writing secret letters to his sovereign to disparage his
rivals; riding proudly between the Lord High Treasurer and Lord
Privy Seal, preceded by his mace-bearer and purse-bearer, and
followed by a long line of nobles and judges, to be installed
in the office of Lord High Chancellor; by and by, settling with
his servants the account of the bribes they had received for
him; a little embarrassed by being obliged, out of decency, the
case being so clear, to decide against the party whose money
he had pocketed, but stifling the misgivings of conscience by
the splendor and flattery which he now commanded; struck to the
earth by the discovery of his corruption; taking to his bed,
and refusing sustenance; confessing the truth of the charges
brought against him, and abjectly imploring mercy; nobly rallying
from his disgrace, and engaging in new literary undertakings,
which have added to the splendor of his name; still exhibiting
a touch of his ancient vanity, and, in the midst of pecuniary
embarrassment, refusing to ‘be stripped of his feathers;’[25]
inspired, nevertheless, with all his youthful zeal for science,
in conducting his last experiment of ‘stuffing a fowl with snow
to preserve it,’ which succeeded ‘excellently well,’ but brought
him to his grave; and, as the closing act of a life so checkered,
making his will, whereby, conscious of the shame he had incurred
among his contemporaries, but impressed with a swelling
conviction of what he had achieved for mankind, he bequeathed
his ‘name and memory to men’s charitable speeches, to foreign
nations, and the next ages.’”

After this brilliant recapitulation of the principal facts of Bacon’s eventful life, there remains the difficult task of examining his character as a writer and philosopher; and then of presenting some observations on his principal works. As these subjects have occupied the attention of the master minds and most elegant writers of England, we shall unhesitatingly present the reader with the opinions of these, the most competent judges in each special department.

But first, let the philosopher speak for himself.

The end and aim of the writings of Bacon are best described by himself, as these descriptions may be gleaned from his various works. He taught, to use his own language, the means, not of the “amplification of the power of one man over his country, nor of the amplification of the power of that country over other nations; but the amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over the world.”[26] “A restitution of man to the sovereignty of nature.”[27] “The enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.”[28] From the enlargement of reason, he did not separate the growth of virtue; for he thought that “truth and goodness were one, differing but as the seal and the print, for truth prints goodness.”[29]

The art which Bacon taught, has been well said to be “the art of inventing arts.”

The great qualities of his mind, as they are exhibited in his works, have been well portrayed by the pen of Sir James Mackintosh. We subjoin the opinion of this elegant writer in his own words:

“It is easy to describe his transcendent merit in general terms
of commendation: for some of his great qualities lie on the
surface of his writings. But that in which he most excelled all
other men, was in the range and compass of his intellectual
view—the power of contemplating many and distant objects
together, without indistinctness or confusion—which he himself
has called the discursive or comprehensive understanding. This
wide-ranging intellect was illuminated by the brightest Fancy
that ever contented itself with the office of only ministering
to Reason: and from this singular relation of the two grand
faculties of man, it has resulted, that his philosophy, though
illustrated still more than adorned by the utmost splendor of
imagery, continues still subject to the undivided supremacy of
intellect. In the midst of all the prodigality of an imagination
which, had it been independent, would have been poetical, his
opinions remained severely rational.

“It is not so easy to conceive, or at least to describe, other
equally essential elements of his greatness, and conditions of
his success. He is probably a single instance of a mind which,
in philosophizing, always reaches the point of elevation whence
the whole prospect is commanded, without ever rising to such
a distance as to lose a distinct perception of every part of
it.”[30]

Mr. Macaulay speaks of the following peculiarity of Bacon’s understanding:[31]—

“With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude
of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to
any other human being. The small fine mind of La Bruyère had
not a more delicate tact than the large intellect of Bacon.
The “Essays” contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of
character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden,
or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind
was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. His
understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave
to prince Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of the
lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose
beneath its shade.

“In keenness of observation he has been equalled, though,
perhaps, never surpassed. But the largeness of his mind was all
his own. The glance with which he surveyed the intellectual
universe, resembled that which the archangel, from the golden
threshold of heaven, darted down into the new creation.

“Round he surveyed and well might, where he stood
So high above the circling canopy
Of night’s extended shade—from eastern point
Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon.”

Bacon’s philosophy is, to use an expression of his own, “the servant and interpreter of nature;” he cultivated it in the leisure left him by the assiduous study and practice of the law and by the willing duties of a courtier; it was rather the recreation than the business of his life; “my business,” said he, “found rest in my contemplations;” but his very recreations rendered him, according to Leibnitz, the father of experimental philosophy, and, according to all, the originator of all its results, of all later discoveries in chemistry and the arts, in short, of all modern science and its applications.

Mr. Macaulay is of opinion that the two leading principles of his philosophy are _utility_ and _progress_; that the ethics of his inductive method are to do good, to do more and more good, to mankind.

Lord Campbell believes that a most perfect body of ethics might be made out from the writings of Bacon.

The origin of his philosophy was the conviction with which he was impressed of the insufficiency of that of the ancients, or rather of that of Aristotle, which reigned with almost undisputed sway throughout Europe. He reverenced antiquity for its great works, its great men; but not because of its ancientness; he deemed its decrees worthy of reverential consideration, but did not think they admitted of no appeal; he was not a bigot to antiquity or a contemner of modern times. He happily combated that undue and blind submission to the authority of ancient times for the mere reason that they are older than our own, alleging truly that “ANTIQUITAS SECULI JUVENTUS MUNDI, that our times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient, _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation backward from ourselves.”[32]

Throwing off, then, all allegiance to antiquity, he appealed directly from Aristotle to nature, from reasoning to experiment.

But let us invoke the testimony of an eminent philosopher, Sir John Herschel:—

“By the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the
errors of the Aristotelian philosophy were effectually overturned
on a plain appeal to the facts of nature; but it remained to
show, on broad and general principles, how and why Aristotle
was in the wrong; to set in evidence the peculiar weakness of
his method of philosophizing, and to substitute in its place a
stronger and better. This important task was executed by Francis
Bacon, Lord Verulam, who will therefore justly be looked upon in
all future ages as the great reformer of philosophy, though his
own actual contributions to the stock of physical truths were
small, and his ideas of particular points strongly tinctured with
mistakes and errors, which were the fault rather of the general
want of physical information of the age than of any narrowness
of view on his own part; of this he was fully aware. It has been
attempted by some to lessen the merit of this great achievement,
by showing that the inductive method had been practised in many
instances, both ancient and modern, by the mere instinct of
mankind; but it is not the introduction of inductive reasoning,
as a new and hitherto untried process, which characterizes the
Baconian philosophy, but his keen perception, and his broad
and spirit-stirring, almost enthusiastic, announcement of its
paramount importance, as the alpha and omega of science, as the
grand and only chain for the linking together of physical truths,
and the eventual key to every discovery and every application.
Those who would deny him his just glory on such grounds would
refuse to Jenner or to Howard their civic crowns, because a
few farmers in a remote province had, time out of mind, been
acquainted with vaccination, or philanthropists, in all ages, had
occasionally visited the prisoner in his dungeon.”

“It is to our immortal countryman Bacon,” says he, again,
“that we owe the broad announcement of this grand and fertile
principle; and the development of the idea, that the whole of
natural philosophy consists entirely of a series of inductive
generalizations, commencing with the most circumstantially
stated particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or axioms,
which comprehend in their statements every subordinate degree of
generality and of a corresponding series of inverted reasoning
from generals to particulars, by which these axioms are traced
back into their remotest consequences, and all particular
propositions deduced from them, as well those by whose immediate
consideration we rose to their discovery, as those of which we
had no previous knowledge....

“It would seem that a union of two qualities almost opposite
to each other—a going forth of the thoughts in two directions,
and a sudden transfer of ideas from a remote station in one to
an equally distant one in the other—is required to start the
first idea of _applying science_. Among the Greeks, this point
was attained by Archimedes, but attained too late, on the eve
of that great eclipse of science which was destined to continue
for nearly eighteen centuries, till Galileo in Italy, and Bacon
in England, at once dispelled the darkness; the one, by his
inventions and discoveries; the other, by the irresistible force
of his arguments and eloquence.”[33]

His style is copious, comprehensive, and smooth; it does not flow with the softness of the purling rill, but rather with the strength, fulness, and swelling of a majestic river, and the rude harmony of the mountain stream. His images are replete with poetry and thought; they always illustrate his subject. Hallam is of opinion that the modern writer that comes nearest to him is Burke. “He had,” said Addison, “the sound, distinct, comprehensive knowledge of Aristotle, with all the beautiful lights, graces, and embellishments of Cicero. One does not know which to admire most in his writings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of imagination.”[34]

Bacon improved so much the melody, elegance, and force of English prose, that we may apply to him what was said of Augustus with regard to Rome: _lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit_; he found it brick, and he left it marble. Mr. Hallam’s opinion differs somewhat from this; it is as follows:—

“The style of Bacon has an idiosyncrasy which we might expect
from his genius. It can rarely indeed happen, and only in men
of secondary talents, that the language they use is not, by
its very choice and collocation, as well as its meaning, the
representative of an individuality that distinguishes their
turn of thought. Bacon is elaborate, sententious, often witty,
often metaphorical; nothing could be spared; his analogies are
generally striking and novel; his style is clear, precise,
forcible; yet there is some degree of stiffness about it, and in
mere language he is inferior to Raleigh.”[35]

It is a most remarkable characteristic of Bacon, and one in which Burke resembled him, that his imagination grew stronger with his increasing years, and his style richer and softer. “The fruit came first,” says Mr. Macaulay, “and remained till the last; the blossoms did not appear till late. In eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration, his later writings are far superior to those of his youth.” His earliest Essays have as much truth and cogent reasoning as his latest; but these are far superior in grace and beauty. A most striking illustration of this is afforded by one of the last Essays, added a year before Bacon’s death, that of _Adversity_ (Essay V.), than which naught can be more graceful and beautiful.

The account of Bacon’s works will necessarily be very succinct, and, we fear, imperfect. We shall, however, for each of them, call in the aid of the most competent judges, whose award public opinion will not reverse.

ESSAYS.

Bacon published his _Essays_ in 1597. They were, in the estimation of Mr. Hallam, the first in time and in excellence of English writings on moral prudence. Of the fifty-eight Essays, of which the work is now composed, ten only appeared in the first edition. But to these were added _Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, Seene and allowed_; many of which were afterwards embodied in the Essays. These Essays were: 1. Of Studie; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Sutors; 6. Of Expence; 7. Of Regiment of Health; 8. Of Honor and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of Negociating. In the edition of 1612, “The Essaies of S^r Francis Bacon Knight, the King’s Atturny Generall,” were increased to forty-one.

The new Essays added are: 1. Of Religion; 2. Of Death; 3. Of Goodnesse, and Goodnesse of Nature; 4. Of Cunning; 5. Of Marriage and Single Life; 6. Of Parents and Children; 7. Of Nobility; 8. Of Great Place; 9. Of Empire; 10. Of Counsell; 11. Of Dispatch; 12. Of Love; 13. Of Friendship; 14. Of Atheism; 15. Of Superstition; 16. Of Wisedome for a Man’s selfe; 20. Of seeming wise; 21. Of Riches; 22. Of Ambition; 23. Of Young Men and Age; 24. Of Beauty; 25. Of Deformity; 26. Of Nature in Men; 27. Of Custom and Education; 28. Of Fortune; 35. Of Praise; 36. Of Judicature; 37. of Vaine-Glory; 38. Of Greatnesse of Kingdomes; 39. Of the Publique; 40. Of Warre and Peace.

These forty-one Essays were afterwards again augmented to fifty-eight, with the new title of _The Essaies or Covnsels, Civill and Morall_; they were likewise improved by corrections, additions, and illustrations. By the peculiarity of Bacon, already noticed, the later Essays rise in beauty and interest.

Bacon considered his Essays but as “the recreations of his other studies.” He has entitled them, in the Latin translation, _Sermones fideles, sive Interiora rerum_. The idea of them, as has been already mentioned, was suggested by those of Montaigne; but there is but little resemblance between the two productions. Montaigne is natural, ingenuous, sportive. Bacon’s “_Essays or Counsels, civil and moral_,” “the fragments of his conceits,” as he styles them, are all study, art, and gravity; but the reflections in them are true and profound. Montaigne confessedly painted himself, declared that he was the matter of his own book,[36] while with Bacon the man was merged in the author and the philosopher, who propounded like Seneca, and somewhat in Seneca’s style, the maxims of practical wisdom, that, to use Bacon’s own language, “come home to men’s business and bosoms,” and clothed them in a garb, new, elegant, and rich, hitherto unknown in England. But our author, if we may judge by the matter and even manner of his Essays, may have had in view, not so much Montaigne’s _Essais_ as Seneca’s _Letters to Lucilius_. The Essay of _Death_ is obviously founded on Seneca’s Epistles on this subject. That he was well acquainted with Seneca’s _Letters_, is incontrovertible. He alludes to them thus in the dedication to Prince Henry, in 1612: “The word (Essays),” says he, “is late, but the thing is ancient; for Seneca’s Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but Essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles.” Bacon justly foretold of his Essays that they “would live as long as books last.”

The following is the opinion of Dugald Stewart, himself an eminent philosopher and elegant writer:

“His _Essays_ are the best known and most popular of all his
works. It is also one of those where the superiority of his
genius appears to the greatest advantage; the novelty and depth
of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from triteness
of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few
hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails
to remark in it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is a
characteristic of all Bacon’s writings, and only to be accounted
for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own
thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid
faculties.”[37]

The reader will, perhaps, be rather gratified than wearied with another appreciation of this valuable production of our young moralist of twenty-six. It is of no incompetent judge,—Mr. Hallam.

“The transcendent strength of Bacon’s mind is visible in the
whole tenor of these Essays, unequal as they must be from the
very nature of such compositions. They are deeper and more
discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later work in the
English language, full of recondite observation, long matured and
carefully sifted. It is true that we might wish for more vivacity
and ease; Bacon, who had much wit, had little gayety; his Essays
are consequently stiff and grave where the subject might have
been touched with a lively hand; thus it is in those on Gardens
and on Building. The sentences have sometimes too apophthegmatic
a form and want coherence; the historical instances, though far
less frequent than with Montaigne, have a little the look of
pedantry to our eyes. But it is from this condensation, from this
gravity, that the work derives its peculiar impressiveness.
Few books are more quoted, and what is not always the case
with such books, we may add that few are more generally read.
In this respect they lead the van of our prose literature; for
no gentleman is ashamed of owning that he has not read the
Elizabethan writers; but it would be somewhat derogatory to a man
of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted
with the Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to
read this or any other book for reputation sake; but very few in
our language so well repay the pains, or afford more nourishment
to the thoughts. They might be judiciously introduced, with a
small number more, into a sound method of education, one that
should make wisdom, rather than mere knowledge, its object, and
might become a text-book of examination in our schools.”[38]

ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.

The _Advancement of Learning_ was published in 1605. It has usually been considered that the whole of Bacon’s philosophy is contained in this work, excepting, however, the second book of the _Novum Organum_. Of the _Advancement of Learning_ he made a Latin translation, under the title of _De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_, which, however, contains about one third of new matter and some slight interpolations; a few omissions have been remarked in it.

The _Advancement of Learning_ is, as it were, to use his own language, “a small globe of the intellectual world, as truly and faithfully as I could discover with a note and description of those facts which seem to me not constantly occupate or not well converted by the labor of man. In which, if I have in any point receded from that which is commonly received, it hath been with a purpose of proceeding _in melius_ and not _in aliud_, a mind of amendment and proficience, and not of change and difference. For I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others, but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me.”

The _Advancement of Learning_ is divided into two parts; the former of which is intended to remove prejudices against the search after truth, by pointing out the causes which obstruct it; in the second, learning is divided into history, poetry, and philosophy, according to the faculties of the mind from which they emanate—memory, imagination, and reason. Our author states the deficiencies he observes in each.

All the peculiar qualities of his style are fully developed in this noble monument of genius, one of the finest in English, or perhaps any other language; it is full of deep thought, keen observation, rich imagery, Attic wit, and apt illustration. Dugald Stewart and Hallam have both expressed their just admiration of the short paragraph on poesy; but, with all due deference, we must consider that the beautiful passage on the dignity and excellency of knowledge is surpassed by none. Can aught excel the noble comparison of the ship? The reader shall judge for himself.

“If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which
carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and
consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their
fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which,
as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages
so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and
inventions, the one of the other?”

DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM.

The _Wisdom of the Ancients_, or rather, _De sapientia veterum_ (for it was written in Latin), is a short treatise on the mythology of the ancients, by which Bacon endeavors to discover and to show the physical, moral, and political meanings it concealed. If the reader is not convinced that the ancients understood by these fables all that Bacon discovers in them, he must at least admit the probability of it, and be impressed with the penetration of the author and the variety and depth of his knowledge.

INSTAURATIO MAGNA.

The _Instauratio Magna_ was published in 1620, while Bacon was still chancellor.

In his dedication of it to James the First, in 1620, in which he says he has been engaged in it nearly thirty years, he pathetically remarks: “The reason why I have published it now, specially being imperfect, is, to speak plainly, because I number my days, and would have it saved.” His country and the world participate in the opinion of the philosopher, and would have deemed its loss one of the greatest to mankind.

Such was the care with which it was composed, that Bacon transcribed it twelve times with his own hand.

It is divided into six parts. The first entitled _Partitiones Scientiarum_, or the divisions of knowledge possessed by mankind, in which the author has noted the deficiencies and imperfections of each. This he had already accomplished by his _Advancement of Learning_.