Lecture the Seventeenth.

SIR FRANCIS BACON-RICHARD GRAFTON-JOHN STOW-RAPHAEL HOLINSHEDJOHN HOOKER-FRANCIS BOTEVILLE-WILLIAM HARRISON-RICHARD HAKLUYT -SAMUEL PURCHAS-JOHN DAVIS-GEORGE SANDYS-WILLIAM LITHGOW.

UR remarks in the last lecture embraced a sketch and illustrations of

four very eminent and distinguished men among the early prose wri our very ters of the age of Elizabeth. But great as they unquestionably were, they were immeasurably surpassed by the transcendant genius of Bacon, successively made Lord High Chancellor of England, Baron Verulam, and Viscount St. Albans.

FRANCIS BACON was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the great seal, and was born in London on the twenty-second of January 1561. In his childhood he had, from his father's position, free access to the court, and he there displayed such vivacity of intellect, and sedateness of conduct, that Queen Elizabeth was accustomed to call him her young lord-keeper. At the age of thirteen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where the rapidity and solidity of his literary and scientific attainments, more than realized the brilliant promise of his childhood. Before he was sixteen years of age he became disgusted with the Aristotelian philosophy, which at that time held unquestioned sway in the great English schools of learning. This dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle, Bacon, as he himself declares, 'fell into not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man.'

After having passed about four years at Cambridge, and when not yet seventeen years of age, Bacon's father called him from the university to attend, into France, the queen's ambassador, Sir Amyas Pawlet. The esteem and confidence of this minister he so thoroughly gained, that he soon after charged him with a mission to the queen, which he executed with the entire approbation of both parties, and then returned again to France to finish his travels. The result of his observation abroad afterward appeared in a work

entitled, Of the State of Europe, and which was, perhaps, his first literary performance.

The sudden death of his father, which occurred in 1579, compelled Bacon to return hastily to England, and engage in some secular employment. After in vain soliciting his uncle, lord Burleigh, to procure for him such a provision from government as would allow him to devote his time to literature and philosophy, he entered Gray's Inn, where he spent several years in the study of the law. While engaged in practice as a barrister, however, he did not forget philosophy; as it appears that he sketched, at an early period of life, his great work called The Instauration of the Sciences. In 1590, Bacon obtained the post of Counsel Extraordinary to the queen; and three years after sat in Parliament for the county of Middlesex. As an orator he is spoken of by Ben Jonson, and other contemporaries in terms of the highest praise. In one of his speeches, he distinguished himself by taking the popular side in a question respecting some large subsidies demanded by the court; but finding that he had given great offence to her majesty, he at once altered his tone, and condescended to apologize with that servility which unhappily appeared in too many of his subsequent actions. To lord Burleigh and his son Robert Cecil, Bacon continued to crouch in the hope of advancement, till at length, finding himself disappointed in that quarter, he attached himself to Burleigh's rival, Essex, who, with the utmost ardor of a generous friendship, endeavored to procure for him, in 1594, the office of attorney general, which was then vacant. In this attempt he was, however, defeated through the influence of the Cecils, who were jealous of both him and his friends; but he, in some degree, soothed Bacon's disappointment by presenting to him an estate at Twickenham, with two thousand pounds. It is painful to relate the manner in which Bacon repaid such benefits. When Essex was brought to trial for a conspiracy against the queen, the friend whom he had so largely obliged, and in whom he had entirely confided, not only deserted him in the hour of need, but unnecessarily appeared as counsel against him, and by every art and distorting ingenuity of a pleader, endeavored to magnify his crimes. He complied, moreover, after the Earl's execution with the queen's request that he would write A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert, Earl of Essex; which was published by authority. Into such conduct, which indicates a lamentable want of high moral principle, courage and self-respect, Bacon was, in some measure, led by pecuniary difficulties, into which his improvident and ostentatious habits, coupled with the relative inadequacy of his revenues, had plunged him. By maintaining himself in the good graces of the court, he hoped to secure that professional advancement which would not only fill his empty coffers, but gratify those ambitious longings that had arisen in his mind. But temptations of this sort, though they may palliate, can never excuse such immoralities as those which Bacon, on this, and on several future occasions, showed himself capable.

On the accession of James the First to the crown of England, the fortunes

of Bacon began to improve. He was knighted in the first year of that monarch's reign, and, in subsequent years, obtained successively the offices of king's counsel, solicitor-general, judge of the Marshalsea court, and attorney general, the last of which was bestowed upon him in 1613. In the execution of his duties, he did not scruple to lend himself to the most arbitrary measures of the court, and even assisted in an attempt to extort from an aged clergyman named Peacham, a confession of treason, by torturing him on a rack. In 1619, Bacon reached the summit of his ambition, by being created Lord High Chancellor of England, Baron Verulam, and in the following year, Viscount St. Albans. As Chancellor, it can not be concealed that, both in his political and judicial capacities, he grossly deserted his duty. He not only suffered the king's favorite, Villiers, to interfere with his decisions as a judge, but by accepting numerous presents or bribes from suitors, gave occasion, in 1621, to a parliamentary inquiry, which resulted in his condemnation and disgrace. He fully confessed all the articles of corruption laid to his charge-twenty-three in number; and when waited upon by a committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire whether the confession was subscribed by himself, he remarked, 'It is my act, my hand, my heart: I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.'

Banished by this act from public life, Bacon had now ample leisure to attend to his philosophical aud literary pursuits; though these, even while he was engaged in business, had by no means been neglected. In 1597, he published the first edition of his 'Essays,' which were afterward greatly enlarged. These, as he himself says of them, 'come home to men's business and bosoms; and like the late new half-pence, the pieces are small, and the silver is good.' From the interesting nature of the subjects of these Essays,' and the excellence of their style, the work immediately acquired great popularity, and to the present day continues the most generally read of all the author's productions. 'It is also,' to use the language of Dugald Stewart, 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 the triteness of his subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours, and, yet after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark something in it overlooked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties.'

In 1605, Bacon published another work, which still continues to be extensively perused, under the title, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human. This volume constitutes the first part of his great work, called 'The Instauration of the Sciences.' The second part, entitled Novum Organum, is that upon which, chiefly, his high reputation, as a philosopher, is based, and on the composition of which he bestowed most labor. It was not published until 1620. The concluding part of the volume relates, exclusively, to revealed religion. In the first part of the Ad

vancement of Learning, after considering the excellencies of knowledge, and the means of disseminating it, together with what had already been done for its advancement, and what omitted, Bacon proceeds to divide the subject into the three branches of history, poetry, and philosophy; these having reference to what he considers the three parts of man's understanding—memory, imagination, and reasoning.' The second, and most important part of the work, consists of aphorisms, the first of which furnishes a key to the author's leading doctrines. It is as follows:-' 'Man, who is the servant and interpreter of nature, can act and understand no farther than he has, either in operation or in contemplation, observed of the method and order of nature.' This new method of employing the understanding in adding to human knowledge was designed to effect an entire reformation in the intellectual operations.

The third part of 'The Instauration of the Sciences,' entitled the History of Nature, is devoted to the facts and phenomena of natural science, including original observations made by Bacon himself, which, though sometimes incorrect, are useful in exemplifying the inductive method of searching for truth. The fourth, is called Scala Intellectus, because it points out a succession of steps by which the understanding may ascend in such investigations. The author projected two other parts to the same general work, but did not live to execute them. He also produced another celebrated work entitled, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, the object of which was to discover secret meanings in the mythological fables of antiquity. He wrote also Felicities of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, a History of King Henry the Eighth, a philosophical romance called the New Atlantis, and several minor productions.

Though ignominiously driven from public life, Bacon devoted himself still with untiring assiduity to philosophical investigations; and one of his ex periments was the immediate cause of his death. While travelling in his carriage at a time when there was snow upon the ground, he began to consider whether flesh might not be preserved by snow as well as by salt. In order to make the experiment, he alighted at a cottage near Highgate, bought a hen, and stuffed it with snow. This so chilled him that he was unable to return home, but went to the Earl of Arundel's house, in the neighborhood, where his illness was so much increased by the dampness of the bed into which he was put, that his death soon followed--an event that occurred on the ninth of April, 1626, and in the sixty-third year of his age. Thus died Sir Francis Bacon, who, had the virtues of his heart been equal to his genius, would have been one of the greatest men that any age or country ever produced. His will contains the following strikingly prophetic passage :—' My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country after some time has passed over.'

Bacon, like Sidney, was 'a warbler of poetic prose.' No English writer has surpassed him in fervor and brilliancy of style, in force of expression, or in richness and magnificence of imagery. Keen in discovering analogies where no resemblance is apparent to common eyes, he has sometimes in

dulged, to excess, in the exercise of this talent. But in general his comparisons are not less clear and apposite than full of imagination and meaning. He has treated of philosophy with all the splendor, yet none of the vagueness, of poetry. Sometimes, too, his style possesses a degree of conciseness very rarely to be found in the compositions of the Elizabethan age. In the subjoined extracts we are aware that we present but a faint view of the genius of this wonderful writer:

UNIVERSITIES.

As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the industry of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools, which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and necessity; so knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed, as universities, colleges, and schools, for the receipt and comforting the

same.

*

USES OF KNOWLEDGE.

Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds though a little of it doth rather work a contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first of fers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of nothing but [what is] examined and tried. It taketh away all vain admiration of any thing, which is the root of all weakness: for all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great. * If a man meditate upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls excepted) will not seem more than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest, impediments of virtue, and imperfection of manners. * * Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears together. It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind-sometimes purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping the digestion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and ulcerations thereof, and the like; and I will therefore conclude with the chief reason of all, which is, that it disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of reforma tion. For the unlearned man knoweth not what it is to descend into himself, and call himself to account; nor the pleasure of that most pleasant life, which consists in our daily feeling ourselves become better. The good parts he hath, he will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them: the faults he hath, he will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much to amend them; like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Whercas, with the learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use and employment thereof.

1 This expression is given in the original in Latin.