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LORD BACON 
 
 LORD MACAULAY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1873 
 
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 LONDON ; PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTI8WOODB AND CO., NEW-STREET 8QT7AKS 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STHBBT 
 
 Univ. of 
 FEB 3 
 
LOUD BACON, 
 
 (July, 1837.) 
 
 The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England. A new 
 Edition. By Basil Montagu, Esq. 16 vols. 8vo. London: 
 1825—1834. 
 
 We return our hearty thanks to Mr. Montagu for this truly 
 valuable work. From the opinions which he expresses as a 
 biographer we often dissent. But about his merit as a collector 
 of the materials out of which opinions are formed, there can be 
 no dispute ; and we readily acknowledge that we are in a great 
 measure indebted to his minute-and accurate researches for the 
 means of refuting what we cannot but consider as his errors. 
 
 The labour which has been bestowed on this volume has been 
 a labour of love. The writer is evidently enamoured of the 
 subject. It fills his heart. It constantly overflows from his lips 
 and his pen. Those who are acquainted with the Courts in 
 which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success 
 well know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law 
 by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, 
 from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum. The Life 
 before us doubtless owes much of its value to the honest and 
 generous enthusiasm of the writer. This feeling has stimulated 
 his activity, has sustained his perseverance, has called forth all 
 his ingenuity and eloquence : but, on the other hand, we must 
 frankly say that it has, to a great extent, perverted his judg- 
 ment. 
 
 A 2 
 
4 LORD BACON. 
 
 We are by no means without sympathy for Mr. Montagu 
 even in what we consider as his weakness. There is scarcely any 
 delusion which has a better claim to be indulgently treated than 
 that under the influence of which a man ascribes every moral 
 excellence to those who have left imperishable monuments of 
 their genius. The causes of this error lie deep in the inmost 
 recesses of human nature. We are all inclined to judge of others 
 as we find them. Our estimate of a character always depends 
 much on the manner in which that character affects our interests 
 and passions. We find it difficult to think well of those by 
 whom we are thwarted or depressed ; and we are ready to admit 
 every excuse for the vices of those who are useful or agreeable 
 to us. This is, we believe, one of those illusions to which the 
 whole human race is subject, and which experience and reflection 
 can only partially remove. It is, in the phraseology of Bacon, 
 one of the idola tribus. Hence it is that the moral character of 
 a man eminent in letters or in the fine arts is treated, often 
 by contemporaries, almost always by posterity, with extraordi- 
 nary tenderness. The world derives pleasure and advantage 
 from the performances of such a man. The number of those 
 who suffer by his personal vices is small, even in his own time, 
 when compared with the number of those to whom his talents 
 are a source of gratification. In a few years all those whom he 
 has injured disappear. But his works remain, and are a source 
 of delight to millions. The genius of Sallust is still with us- 
 But the Numidians whom he plundered, and the unfortunate 
 husbands who caught him in their houses at unseasonable hours, 
 are forgotten. We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the 
 keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty 
 of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the 
 historian. Falstaff and Tom Jones have survived the game- 
 keepers whom Shakspeare cudgelled and the landladies whom 
 Fielding bilked. A great writer is the friend and benefactor of 
 his readers ; and they cannot but judge of him under the delud- 
 
LORD BACON. 5 
 
 ing influence of friendship and gratitude. We all know how 
 unwilling we are to admit the truth of any disgraceful story 
 about a person whose society we like, and from whom we have 
 received favours ; how long we struggle against evidence, how 
 fondly, when the facts cannot be disputed, we cling to the hope 
 that there may be some explanation or some extenuating circum 
 stance with which we are unacquainted. Just such is the feeling 
 which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards 
 the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to 
 them is incalculable. They have guided him to truth. They 
 have filled his mind with noble and graceful images. They have 
 stood by him in all vicissitudes, comforters in sorrow, nurses in 
 sickness, companions in solitude. These friendships are exposed 
 to no danger from the occurrences by which other attachments 
 are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on ; fortune is incon- 
 stant ; tempers are soured ; bonds which seemed indissoluble 
 are daily sundered by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. 
 But no such cause can affect the silent converse which we hold 
 with the highest of human intellects. That placid intercourse 
 is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These are the 
 old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the 
 same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With 
 the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. 
 Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demo- 
 sthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long* 
 No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No 
 heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet. 
 
 Nothing, then, can be more natural than that a person endowed 
 with sensibility and imagination should entertain a respectful 
 and affectionate feeling towards those great men with whose 
 minds he holds daily communion. Yet nothing can be more 
 certain than that such men have not always deserved to be 
 regarded with respect or affection. Some writers, whose works 
 
 will continue to instruct and delight mankind to the remotest 
 a :5 
 
6 LORD BACON. 
 
 ages, have been placed in such situations that their actions and 
 motives are as well known to us as the actions and motives of 
 one human being can be known to another ; and unhappily their 
 conduct has not always been such as an impartial judge can con- 
 template with approbation. But the fanaticism of the devout 
 worshipper of genius is proof against all evidence and all argu- 
 ment. The character of his idol is matter of faith ; and the 
 province of faith is not to be invaded by reason. He maintains 
 his superstition with a credulity as boundless, and a zeal as un- 
 scrupulous, as can be found in the most ardent partisans of 
 religious or political factions. The most decisive proofs are 
 rejected ; the plainest rules of morality are explained away ; 
 extensive and important portions of history are completely dis- 
 torted. The enthusiast misrepresents facts with all the effrontery 
 of an advocate, and confounds right and wrong with all the 
 dexterity of a Jesuit ; and all this only in order that some man 
 who has been in his grave during many ages may have a fairer 
 character than he deserves. 
 
 Middleton's Life of Cicero is a striking instance of the in- 
 fluence of this sort of partiality. Never was there a character 
 which it was easier to read than that of Cicero. Never was 
 there a mind keener or more critical than that of Middleton. 
 Had the biographer brought to the examination of his favourite 
 statesman's conduct but a very small part of the acuteness and 
 severity which he displayed when he was engaged in investigat- 
 ing the high pretensions of Epiphanius and Justin Martyr, he 
 could not have failed to produce a most valuable history of a 
 most interesting portion of time. But this most ingenious and 
 learned man, though 
 
 " So wary held and wise 
 That, as 'twas said, he scarce received 
 For gospel what the church believed," 
 
 had a superstition of his own. The great Iconoclast was himself 
 
LOED BACON. 7 
 
 aa idolater. The great Avvocato del Diavolo, while he dis- 
 puted, with no small ability, the claims of Cyprian and 
 Athanasius to a place in the Calendar, was himself composing a 
 lying legend in honour of St. Tully. He was holding up as a 
 model of every virtue a man whose talents and acquirements, 
 indeed, can never be too highly extolled, and who was by no 
 means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was 
 under the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions 
 for which Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advo- 
 cates, could contrive no excuse, actions which in his confidential 
 correspondence he mentioned with remorse and shame, are re- 
 presented by his biographer as wise, virtuous, heroic. The 
 whole history of that great revolution which overthrew the 
 Roman aristocracy, the whole state of parties, the character of 
 every public man, is elaborately misrepresented, in order to 
 make out something which may look like a defence of one most 
 eloquent and accomplished trimmer. 
 
 The volume before us reminds us now and then of the Lite 
 of Cicero. But there is this marked diiference. Dr. Middleton 
 evidently had an uneasy consciousness of the weakness of his 
 cause, and therefore resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to 
 unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts. Mr. Mon- 
 tagu's faith is sincere and implicit. He practises no trickery. 
 He conceals nothing. He puts the facts before us in the full 
 confidence that they will produce on our minds the effect which 
 they have produced on his own. It is not till he comes to 
 reason from facts to motives that his partiality shows itself; and 
 then he leaves Middleton himself far behind. His work pro- 
 ceeds on the assumption that Bacon was an eminently virtuous 
 man. From the tree Mr. Montagu judges of the fruit. He is 
 forced to relate many actions which, if any man but Bacon had 
 committed them, nobody would have dreamed of defending, 
 actions which are readily and completely explained by supposing 
 Bacon to have been a man whose principles were not strict, and 
 
8 LORD BACON. 
 
 whose spirit was not high, actions which can be explained in 
 no other way without resorting to some grotesque hypothesis 
 for which there is not a tittle of evidence. But any hypothesis 
 is, in Mr. Montagu's opinion, more probable than that his hero 
 should ever have done any thing very wrong. 
 
 This mode of defending Bacon seems to us by no means 
 Baconian. To take a man's character for granted, and ther 
 from his character to infer the moral quality of all his actions, 
 is surely a process the very reverse of that which is recom- 
 mended in the Novum Organum. Nothing, we are sure, could 
 have led Mr. Montagu to depart so far from his master's pre- 
 cepts, except zeal for his master's honour. We shall follow a 
 different course. We shall attempt, with the valuable assistance 
 which Mr. Montagu has afforded us, to frame such an account 
 of Bacon's life as may enable our readers correctly to estimate 
 his character. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that Francis Bacon was the son 
 of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who held the great seal of England 
 during the first twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth. The 
 fame of the father has been thrown into shade by that of the 
 son. But Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man. He belonged 
 to a set of men whom it is easier to describe collectively than 
 separately, whose minds were formed by one system of disci- 
 pline, who belonged to one rank in society, to one university, 
 to one party, to one sect, to one administration, and who re- 
 sembled each other so much in talents, in opinions, in habits, in 
 fortunes, that one character, we had almost said one life, may, 
 to a considerable extent, serve for them all. 
 
 They were the first generation of statesmen by profession 
 that England produced. Before their time the division of 
 labour had, in this respect, been very imperfect. Those who 
 had directed public affairs had been, with few exceptions 
 warriors or priests, warriors whose rude courage was neither 
 guided by science nor softened by humanity, priests whose 
 
LORD BACON. » 
 
 learning and abilities were habitually devoted to the defence of 
 tyranny and imposture. The Hotspurs, the Nevilles, the 
 Cliffords, rough, illiterate, and unreflecting, brought to the 
 council-board the fierce and imperious disposition which they 
 had acquired amidst the tumult of predatory war, or in the 
 gloomy repose of the garrison and moated castle. On the 
 other side was the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all that 
 was then considered as learning, trained in the Schools to 
 manage words, and in the confessional to manage hearts, seldom 
 superstitious, but skilful in practising on the supsrstition of 
 others, false, as it was natural that a man should be whose pro- 
 fession imposed on all who were not saints the necessity of 
 being hypocrites, selfish, as it was natural that a man should be 
 who could form no domestic ties, and cherish no hope of legi- 
 timate posterity, more attached to his order than to his country, 
 and guiding the politics of England with a constant side-glance 
 at Rome. 
 
 But the increase of wealth, the progress of knowledge, and 
 the reformation of religion produced a great change. The 
 nobles ceased to be military chieftains ; the priests ceased to 
 possess a monopoly of learning ; and a new and remarkable 
 species of politicians appeared. 
 
 These men came from neither of the classes which had, till 
 then, almost exclusively furnished the ministers of state. They 
 were all laymen ; yet they were all men of learning ; and they 
 were all men of peace. They were not members of the aris- 
 tocracy. They inherited no titles, no large domains, no armies 
 of retainers, no fortified castles. Yet they were not low men, 
 such as those whom princes, jealous of the power of a nobility, 
 have sometimes raised from forges and cobblers' stalls to the 
 highest situations. They were all gentlemen by birth. They 
 had all received a liberal education. It is a remarkable fact 
 that they were all members of the same university. The two 
 great national seats of learning had even then acquired the 
 
10 LORD BACON. 
 
 characters which they still retain. In intellectual activity, and 
 in readiness to admit improvements, the superiority was then, 
 as it has ever since been, on the side of the less ancient and 
 splendid institution. Cambridge had the honour of educating 
 those celebrated Protestant Bishops whom Oxford had the 
 honour of burning ; and at Cambridge were formed the minds 
 of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the 
 secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of 
 Europe. 
 
 The statesmen of whom we speak passed their youth sur- 
 rounded by the incessant din of theological controversy. 
 Opinions were still in a state of chaotic anarchy, intermingling, 
 separating, advancing, receding. Sometimes the stubborn 
 bigotry of the Conservatives seemed likely to prevail. Then 
 the impetuous onset of the Reformers for a moment carried all 
 before it. Then again the resisting mass made a desperate 
 stand, arrested the movement, and forced it slowly back. The 
 vacillation which at that time appeared in English legislation, 
 and which it has been the fashion to attribute to the caprice 
 and to the power of one or two individuals was truly a national 
 vacillation. It was not only in the mind of Henry that the 
 new theology obtained the ascendant one day, and the lessons 
 of the nurse and of the priest regained their influence on the 
 morrow. It was not only in the House of Tudor that the hus- 
 band was exasperated by the opposition of the wife, that the 
 son dissented from the opinions of the father, that the brother 
 persecuted the sister, that one sister persecuted another. The 
 principles of Conservation and Reform carried on their warfare 
 in every part of society, in every congregation, in every school 
 of learning, round the hearth of every private family, in the 
 recesses of every reflecting mind. 
 
 It was in the midst of this ferment that the minds of the per- 
 sons whom we are describing were developed. They were born 
 Reformers. They belonged by nature to that order of men who 
 
LORD BACON. 11 
 
 always form the front ranks in the great intellectual progress. 
 They were therefore, one and all, Protestants. In religious mat- 
 ters, however, though there is no reason to doubt that they were 
 sincere, they were by no means zealous. None of them chose to 
 run the smallest personal risk during the reign of Mary. None 
 of them favoured the unhappy attempt of Northumberland in 
 favour of his daughter-in-law. None of them shared in the des- 
 perate councils of Wyatt. They contrived to have business on 
 the Continent ; or, if they staid in Enghind, they heard mass 
 and kept Lent with great decorum. When those dark and 
 perilous years had gone by, and when the crown had descended 
 to a new sovereign, they took the lead in the reformation of 
 the Church. But they proceeded, not with the impetuosity of 
 theologians, but with the calm determination of statesmen. 
 They acted, not like men who considered the Romish worship as 
 a system too offensive to God, and too destructive of souls to be 
 tolerated for an hour, but like men who regarded the points in 
 dispute among Christians as in themselves unimportant, and 
 who were not restrained by any scruple of conscience from pro- 
 fessing, as they had before professed, the Catholic faith of Mary, 
 the Protestant faith of Edward, or any of the numerous inter- 
 mediate combinations which the caprice of Henry and the servile 
 policy of Cranmer had formed out of the doctines of both the 
 hostile parties. They took a deliberate view of the state of their 
 own country and of the Continent : they satisfied themselves as 
 to the leaning of the public mind ; and they chose their side. 
 They placed themselves at the head of the Protestants of Europe, 
 and staked all their fame and fortunes on the success of their 
 party. 
 
 It is needless to relate how dexterously, how resolutely, how 
 gloriously they directed the politics of England during the 
 eventful years which followed, how they succeeded in uniting 
 their friends and separating their enemies, how they humbled 
 the pride of Philip, how they backed the unconquerable spirit 
 
12 LORD BACON. 
 
 of Coligni, how they rescued Holland from tyranny, how they 
 founded the maritime greatness of their country, how they out- 
 witted the artful politicians of Italy, and tamed the ferocious 
 chieftains of Scotland. It is impossible to deny that they com- 
 mitted many acts which would justly bring on a statesman of 
 our time censures of the most serious kind. But, when we con- 
 sider the state of morality in their age, and the unscrupulous 
 character of the adversaries against whom they had to contend, 
 we are forced to admit that it is not without reason that their 
 names are still held in veneration by their countrymen. 
 
 There were, doubtless, many diversities in their intellectual 
 and moral character. But there was a strong family likeness. 
 The constitution of their minds was remarkably sound. No 
 particular faculty was preeminently developed ; but manly 
 health and vigour were equally diffused through the whole. 
 They were men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by 
 exercise well fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by 
 circumstances, rather than by any strong bias of inclination, 
 that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. In 
 active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from 
 the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No men observed 
 more accurately the signs of the times. No men had a greater 
 practical acquaintance with human nature. Their policy was 
 generally characterized rather by vigilance, by moderation, and 
 by firmness, than by invention, or by the spirit of enterprise. 
 
 They spoke and wrote in a manner worthy of their excellent 
 sense. Their eloquence was less copious and less ingenious, but 
 far purer and more manly than that of the succeeding gene- 
 ration. It was the eloquence of men who had lived with the 
 first translators of the Bible, and with the authors of the Book 
 of Common Prayer. It was luminous, dignified, solid, and very 
 slightly tainted with that affectation which deformed the style 
 of the ablest men of the next age. If, as sometimes chanced, 
 these politicians were under the necessity of taking a part in 
 
LORD BACON. 13 
 
 the theological controversies on which the dearest interests of 
 kingdoms were then staked, they acquitted themselves as if 
 their whole lives had been passed in the Schools and the Con- 
 vocation. 
 
 There was something in the temper of these celebrated men 
 which secured them against the proverbial inconstancy both of 
 the court and of the multitude. No intrigue, no combinations 
 of rivals, could deprive them of the confidence of their 
 Sovereign. No parliament attacked their influence. No mob 
 coupled their names with any odious grievance. Their power 
 ended only with their lives. In this respect, their fate presents 
 a most remarkable contrast to that of the enterprising and 
 brilliant politicians of the preceding and of the succeeding gene- 
 ration. Burleigh was minister during forty years. Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon held the great seal more than twenty years. Sir Walter 
 Mildmay was Chancellor of the Exchequer twenty-three years. 
 Sir Thomas Smith was Secretary of State eighteen years ; Sir 
 Francis Walsingham about as long. They all died in office, and 
 in the enjoyment of public respect and royal favour. Far dif- 
 ferent had been the fate of Wolsey, Cromwell, Norfolk, 
 Somerset, and Northumberland. Far different also was the fate 
 of Essex, of Raleigh, and of the still more illustrious man whose 
 life we propose to consider. 
 
 The explanation of this circumstance is perhaps contained in 
 the motto which Sir Nicholas Bacon inscribed over the entrance 
 of his hall at Gorhambury, Mediocria firma. This maxim was 
 constantly borne in mind by himself and his colleagues. They 
 were more solicitous to lay the foundations of their power deep 
 than to raise the structure to a conspicuous but insecure height. 
 None of them aspired to be sole Minister. None of them pro- 
 voked envy by an ostentatious display of wealth and influence. 
 None of them affected to outshine the ancient aristocracy of the 
 kingdom. They were free from that childish love of titles 
 which characterized the successful courtiers of the generation 
 
14 LORD BACON. 
 
 which preceded them, and of that which followed them. Only 
 one of those whom we have named was made a peer ; and he 
 was content with the lowest degree of the peerage. As to 
 money, none of them could, in that age, justly be considered as 
 rapacious. Some of them would, even in our time, deserve the 
 praise of eminent disinterestedness. Their fidelity to the State 
 was incorruptible. Their private morals were without stain. 
 Their households were sober and well-governed. 
 
 Among these statesmen Sir Nicholas Bacon was generally 
 considered as ranking next to Burleigh. He was called by 
 Camden " Sacris conciliis alterum columen ;" and by George 
 Buchanan, 
 
 " diu Britannici 
 Kegni secundum columen." 
 
 The second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Francis Bacon 
 was Anne, one of the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a man 
 of distinguished learning who had been tutor to Edward the 
 Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid considerable attention to the 
 education of his daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly 
 and happily married. Their classical acquirements made them 
 conspicuous even among the women of fashion of that age. 
 Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin Hexameters 
 and Pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musce 
 Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described 
 by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young 
 women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, 
 the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both as a lin- 
 guist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with 
 Bishop Jewel, and translated his Apologia from the Latin, so 
 correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest 
 a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on 
 fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This 
 fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small 
 and audacious band of Italian reformers, anathematized alike by 
 
LORD BACON. 15 
 
 Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which 
 the Socinian sect deduces its origin. 
 
 Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind 
 after the fashion of her age. But we must not suffer ourselves 
 to be deluded into the belief that she and her sisters were more 
 accomplished women than many who are now living. On this 
 subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have 
 often heard men who wish, as almost all men of sense wish, that 
 women should be highly educated, speak with rapture of the 
 English ladies of the sixteenth century, and lament that they 
 can find no modern damsel resembling those fair pupils of 
 Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the 
 styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were 
 sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel, with 
 eyes rivetted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and 
 bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup 
 from his weeping gaoler. But surely these complaints have 
 very little foundation. We would by no means disparage the 
 ladies of the sixteenth century or their pursuits. But we con- 
 ceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women 
 of our time forget one very obvious and very important circum- 
 stance. In the time of Henry the Eighth and Edward the 
 Sixth, a person who did not read Greek and Latin could read 
 nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern 
 language which possessed any thing that could be called a litera- 
 ture. All the valuable books extant in ail the vernacular dialects 
 of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. England did 
 not yet possess Shakspeare's plays and the Fairy Queen, nor 
 France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In looking 
 round a well-furnished library, how many English or French 
 books can we find which were extant when Lady Jane Grey and 
 Queen Elizabeth received their education ? Chaucer, Gower, 
 Froissart, Comines, Rabelais, nearly complete the list. It was 
 therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be unedu- 
 
16 LORD BACON. 
 
 rated or classically educated. Indeed, without a knowledge of 
 one of the ancient languages no person could then have any 
 clear notion of what was passing in the political, the literary, 
 or the religious world. The Latin was in the sixteenth century 
 all and more than all that the French was in the eighteenth. It 
 was the language of courts as well as of the schools. It was the 
 language of diplomacy ; it was the language of theological and 
 political controversy. Being a fixed language, while the living 
 languages were in a state of fluctuation, and being universally 
 known to the learned and the polite, it was employed by almost 
 every writer who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. A 
 person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance, 
 not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not merely with heavy 
 treatises on canon-law and school-divinity, but with the most 
 interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own 
 time, nay even with the most admired poetry and the most po- 
 pular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, 
 with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, 
 with Hutten's epistles. 
 
 This is no longer the case. All political and religious contro- 
 versy is now conducted in the modern languages. The ancient 
 tongues are used only in comments on the ancient writers. The 
 great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed 
 still what they were. But though their positive value is un- 
 changed, their relative value, when compared with the whole 
 mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been con- 
 stantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. 
 They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could 
 Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have 
 smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library ? 
 A modern reader can make shift without OEdipus and Medea, 
 while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of 
 Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and 
 Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the de- 
 
LORD BACON. 17 
 
 licious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of 
 Pascal. If he is shut out from Nephelococcygia, he may take 
 refuge in Lilliput. We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence 
 towards those great nations to which the human race owes art, 
 science, taste, civil and intellectual freedom, when we say that 
 the stock bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully im- 
 proved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal. 
 We believe that the books which have been written in the 
 languages of western Europe, during the last two hundred and 
 fifty years, — translations from the ancient languages of course 
 included, — are of greater value than all the books which at 
 the beginning of that period were extant in the world. With 
 the modern languages of Europe English women are at least 
 as well acquainted as English men. When, therefore, we com- 
 pare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey with those of an 
 accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesita- 
 tion in awarding the superiority to the latter. We hope that 
 our readers will pardon this digression. It is long ; but it can 
 hardly be called unseasonable, if it t^nds to convince them that 
 they are mistaken in thinking that the great-great-grandmothers 
 of their great-great-grandmothers were superior women to their 
 sisters and their wives. 
 
 Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas, was born at 
 York House, his father's residence in the Strand, on the twenty- 
 second of January, 1561. The health of Francis was very 
 delicate ; and to this circumstance may be partly attributed that 
 gravity of carriage, and that love of sedentary pursuits, which 
 distinguished him from other boys. Every body knows how 
 much his premature readiness of wit and sobriety of deportment 
 amused the Queen, and how she used to call him her young 
 Lord Keeper. We are told that, while still a mere child, he 
 stole away from his playfellows to a vault in St. James's Fields, 
 for the purpose of investigating the cause of a singular echo 
 which he had observed there. It is certain that, at only twelve, 
 
18 LORD BACON. 
 
 he busied himself with very ingenious speculations on the art of 
 legerdemain ; a subject which, as Professor Dugald Stewart 
 has most justly observed, merits much more attention from 
 philosophers than it has ever received. These are trifles. But 
 the eminence which Bacon afterwards attained makes them in- 
 teresting. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of his age he was entered at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge. That celebrated school of learning enjoyed 
 the peculiar favour of the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Keeper, 
 and acknowledged the advantages which it derived from their 
 patronage in a public letter which bears date just a month after 
 the admission of Francis Bacon. The master was Whitgift, 
 afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, a narrow-minded, mean, 
 and tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adula- 
 tion, and employed it in persecuting both those who agreed with 
 Calvin about Church Government, and those who differed from 
 Calvin touching the doctrine of Reprobation. He was now in. 
 a chrysalis state, putting off the worm and putting on the dra- 
 gon-fly, a kind of intermediate grub between sycophant and 
 oppressor. He was indemnifying himself for the court which 
 he found it expedient to pay to the Ministers by exercising 
 much petty tyranny within his own college. It would be unjust, 
 however, to deny him the praise of having rendered about this 
 time one important service to letters. He stood up manfully 
 against those who wished to make Trinity College a mere 
 appendage to Westminster School ; and by this act, the only 
 good act, as far as we remember, of his long public life, he saved 
 the noblest place of education in England from the degrading 
 fate of King's College and New College. 
 
 It has often been said that Bacon, while still at college, planned 
 that great intellectual revolution with which his name is inse- 
 parably connected. The evidence on this subject, however, is 
 hardly sufficient to prove what is in itself so improbable as that 
 any definite scheme of that kind should have been so early 
 
LORD BACON. 19 
 
 formed, even by so powerful and active a mind. But it is cer- 
 tain that, after a residence of three years at Cambridge, Bacon 
 departed, carrying with him a profound contempt for the course 
 of study pursued there, a fixed conviction that the system of 
 academic education in England was radically vicious, a just scorn 
 for the trifles on which the followers of Aristotle had wasted 
 their powers, and no great reverence for Aristotle himself. 
 
 In his sixteentli year he visited Paris, and resided there for 
 some time, under the care of Sir Amias Paulet, Elizabeth's 
 minister at the French court, and one of the ablest and most 
 upright of the many valuable servants whom she employed. 
 France was at that time in a deplorable state of agitation. The 
 Huguenots and the Catholics were mustering all their force for 
 the fiercest and most protracted of their many struggles ; while 
 the prince, whose duty it was to protect and to restrain both, 
 had by his vices and follies degraded himself so deeply that he 
 had no authority over either. Bacon, however, made a tour 
 through several provinces, and appears to have passed some 
 time at Poitiers. We have abundant proof that during his stay 
 on the Continent he did not neglect literary and scientific 
 pursuits. But his attention seems to have been chiefly directed 
 to statistics and diplomacy. It was at this time that he wrote 
 those Notes on the State of Europe which are printed in his 
 works. He studied the principles of the art of deciphering with 
 great interest, and invented one cipher so ingenious that, many 
 years later, he thought it deserving of a place in the De 
 Augmentis. In February, 1580, while engaged in these pur- 
 suits, he received intelligence of the almost sudden death of his 
 father, and instantly returned to England. 
 
 His prospects were greatly overcast by this event. He was 
 most desirous to obtain a provision which might enable him to 
 devote himself to literature and politics. He applied to the 
 Government ; and it seems strange that he should have applied 
 in vain. His wishes were moderate. His hereditary claims on 
 
 B 2 
 
20 LORD BACON. 
 
 the administration were great. He bad himself been favourably 
 noticed by tbe Queen. His uncle was Prime Minister. Hia 
 own talents were such as any minister might have been eager 
 to enlist in the public service. But his solicitations were un- 
 successful. The truth is that the Cecils disliked him, and did 
 all that they could decently do to keep him down. It has 
 never been alleged that Bacon had done anything to merit this 
 dislike ; nor is it at all probable that a man whose temper was 
 naturally mild, whose manners were courteous, who, through 
 life, nursed his fortunes with the utmost care, and who was 
 fearful even to a fault of offending the powerful, would have 
 given any just cause of displeasure to a kinsman who had the 
 means of rendering him essential service and of doing him 
 irreparable injury. The real explanation, we believe, is this. 
 Robert Cecil, the Treasurer's second son, was younger by a few 
 months than Bacon. He had been educated with the utmost 
 care, had been initiated, while still a boy, in the mysteries of 
 diplomacy and court-intrigue, and was just at this time about 
 to be produced on the stage of public life. The wish nearest to 
 Burleigh's heart was th%t his own greatness might descend to 
 this favourite child. But even Burleigh's fatherly partiality 
 could hardly prevent him from perceiving that Robert, with all 
 his abilities and acquirements, was no match for his cousin 
 Francis. This seems to us the only rational explanation of the 
 Treasurer's conduct. Mr. Montagu is more charitable. He 
 supposes that Burleigh was influenced merely by affection for 
 his nephew, and wa3 " little disposed to encourage him to rely 
 on others rather than on himself, and to venture on the quick- 
 sands of politics, instead of the certain profession of the law." 
 If such were Burleigh's feelings, it seems strange that he should 
 have suffered his son to venture on those quicksands from 
 which he so carefully preserved his nephew. But the truth is 
 that, if Burleigh had been so disposed, he might easily have 
 secured to Bacon a comfortable provision which should have 
 
LORD BACON. 21 
 
 been exposed to no risk. And it is certain that he showed as 
 little disposition to enable his nephew to live by a profession as 
 to enable him to live without a profession. That Bacon himself 
 attributed the conduct of his relatives to jealousy of his superior 
 talents, we have not the smallest doubt. In a letter written 
 many years later to Villiers, he expresses himself thus ; " Coun- 
 tenance, encourage, and advance able men in all kinds, degrees, 
 and professions. For in the time of the Cecils, the father and 
 the son, able men were by design and of purpose suppressed." 
 
 Whatever Burleigh's motives might be, his purpose was 
 unalterable. The supplications which Francis addressed to his 
 uncle and aunt were earnest, humble, and almost servile. He 
 was the most promising and accomplished young man of his 
 time. His father had been the brother-in-law, the most use- 
 ful colleague, the nearest friend of the Minister. But all this 
 availed poor Francis nothing. He was forced, much against 
 his will, to betake himself to the study of the law. He was 
 admitted at Gray's Inn ; and, during some years, he laboured 
 there in obscurity. 
 
 What the extent of his legal attainments may have been it is 
 difficult to say. It was not hard for a man of his powers to 
 acquire that very moderate portion of technical knowledge 
 which, when joined to quickness, tact, wit, ingenuity, eloquence, 
 and knowledge of the world, is sufficient to raise an advocate to 
 the highest professional eminence. The general opinion ap- 
 pears to have been that which was on one occasion expressed 
 by Elizabeth. " Bacon," said she, " hath a great wit and much 
 learning ; but in law showeth to the uttermost of his know- 
 ledge, and is not deep." The Cecils, we suspect, did their best 
 to spread this opinion by whispers and insinuations. Coke 
 openly proclaimed it with that rancorous insolence which was 
 habitual to him. No reports are more readily believed than 
 those which disparage genius, and soothe the envy of conscious 
 mediocrity. It must have been inexpressibly consoling to a 
 
22 LORD BACON. 
 
 stupid sergeant, the forerunner of him who, a hundred and 
 fifty years later, " shook his head at Murray as a wit," to know 
 that the most profound thinker and the most accomplished 
 orator of the age was very imperfectly acquainted with the law 
 touching bastard eigne and mulier puisne, and confounded the 
 right of free fishery with that of common of piscary. 
 
 It is certain that no man in that age, or indeed during the 
 century and a half which followed, was better acquainted than 
 Bacon with the philosophy of law. His technical knowledge 
 was quite sufficient, with the help of his admirable talents and 
 of his insinuating address, to procure clients. He rose very 
 rapidly into business, and soon entertained hopes of being called 
 within the bar. He applied to Lord Burleigh for that purpose, 
 but received a testy refusal. Of the grounds of that refusal we 
 can, in some measure, judge by Bacon's answer, which is still 
 extant. It seems that the old Lord, whose temper age and gout 
 had by no means altered for the better, and who loved to mark 
 his dislike of the showy, quickwitted young men of the rising 
 generation, took this opportunity to read Francis a very sharp 
 lecture on his vanity and want of respect for his betters. 
 Francis returned a most submissive reply, thanked the Trea- 
 surer for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. Strangers 
 meanwhile were less unjust to the young barrister than his 
 nearest kinsman had been. In his twenty-sixth year he became 
 a bencher of his Inn ; and two years later he was appointed 
 Lent reader. At length, in 1590, he obtained for the first time 
 some show of favour from the Court. He was sworn in Queen's 
 Counsel extraordinary. But this mark of honour was not 
 accompanied by any pecuniary emolument. He continued, 
 therefore, to solicit his powerful relatives for some provision 
 which might enable him to live without drudging at his 
 profession. He bore, with a patience and serenity which, we 
 fear, bordered on meanness, the morose humours of his uncle, 
 and the sneering reflections which his cousin cast on speculative 
 
LORD BACON. 23 
 
 men, lost in philosophical dreams, and too wise to be capable of 
 transacting public business. At length the Cecils were gene 
 rous enough to procure for him the reversion of the Registrar 
 ship of the Star Chamber. This was a lucrative place ; but, as 
 many years elapsed before it fell in, he was still under the ne- 
 cessity of labouring for his daily bread. 
 
 In the Parliament which was called in 1593 he sat as member 
 for the county of Middlesex, and soon attained eminence as a 
 debater. It is easy to perceive from the scanty remains of his 
 oratory that the same compactness of expression and richness of 
 fancy which appear in his writings characterized his speeches ; 
 and that his extensive acquaintance with literature and history 
 enabled him to entertain his audience with a vast variety of 
 illustrations and allusions which were generally happy and appo- 
 site, but which were probably not least pleasing to the taste of 
 that age when they were such as would now be thought childish 
 or pedantic. It is evident also that he was, as indeed might have 
 been expected, perfectly free from those faults which are gene- 
 rally found in an advocate who, after having risen to eminence 
 at the bar, enters the House of Commons ; that it was his habit 
 to deal with every great question, not in small detached portions, 
 but as a whole ; that he refined little, and that his reasonings 
 were those of a capacious rather than a subtle mind. Ben 
 Jonson, a most unexceptionable judge, has described Bacon's 
 eloquence in words, which, though often quoted, will bear to be 
 quoted again. " There happened in my time one noble speaker 
 who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where 
 he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man 
 ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered 
 less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of 
 his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could 
 not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded 
 where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his 
 devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The 
 
 B 4 
 
24 LORD BACON. 
 
 fear of every man that beard him was lest he should make aii 
 end.'' From the mention which is made of judges, it would 
 seem that Jonson had heard Bacon only at the Bar. Indeed 
 we imagine that the House of Commons was then almost inacces- 
 sible to strangers. It is not probable that a man of Bacon's 
 nice observation would speak in Parliament exactly as he spoke 
 in the Court of Queen's Bench. But the graces of manner and 
 language must, to a great extent, have been common between 
 the Queen's Counsel and the Knight of the Shire. 
 
 Bacon tried to play a very difficult game in politics. He 
 wished to be at once a favourite at Court and popular with the 
 multitude. If any man could have succeeded in this attempt, a 
 man of talents so rare, of judgment so prematurely ripe, of tem- 
 per so calm, and of manners so plausible, might have been 
 expected to succeed. Nor indeed did he wholly fail. Once, 
 however, he indulged in a burst of patriotism which cost him a 
 long and bitter remorse, and which he never ventured to repeat 
 The Court asked for large subsidies and for speedy payment. 
 The remains of Bacon's speech breathe all the spirit of the Long 
 Parliament. " The gentlemen," said he, "must sell their plate, 
 and the farmers their brass pots ere this will be paid ; and for us, 
 we are here to search the wounds of the realm, and not to skim 
 them over. The dangers are these. First, we shall breed dis- 
 content and endanger her Majesty's safety, which must consist 
 more in the love of the people than their wealth. Secondly, 
 this being granted in this sort, other princes hereafter will look 
 for the like ; so that we shall put an evil precedent on ourselves 
 and our posterity ; and in histories, it is to be observed, of all 
 nations the English are not to be subject, base, or taxable." 
 The Queen and her ministers resented this outbreak of public 
 spirit in the highest manner. Indeed, many an honest member 
 of the House of Commons had, for a much smaller matter, been 
 sent to the Tower by the proud and hot-blooded Tudors. The 
 young patriot condescended to make the most abject apologies. 
 
LORD BACON. 25 
 
 He adjured the Lord Treasurer to show some favour to his poor 
 servant and ally. He bemoaned himself to the Lord Keeper, in 
 a letter which may keep in countenance the most unmanly of 
 the epistles which Cicero wrote during his banishment. The 
 lesson was not thrown away. Bacon never offended in the same 
 manner again. 
 
 He was now satisfied that he had little to hope from the pa- 
 tronage of those powerful kinsmen whom he had solicited during 
 twelve years with such meek pertinacity; and he began to look 
 towards a different quarter. Among the courtiers of Elizabeth 
 had lately appeared a new favourite, young, noble, wealthy, ac- 
 complished, eloquent, brave, generous, aspiring ; a favourite who 
 had obtained from the grey-headed queen such marks of regard 
 as she had scarce vouchsafed to Leicester in the season of the 
 passions ; who was at once the ornament of the palace and the 
 idol of the city ; who was the common patron of men of letters 
 and of men of the sword ; who was the common refuge of the 
 persecuted Catholic and of the persecuted Puritan. The calm 
 prudence which had enabled Burleigh to shape his course through 
 so many dangers, and the vast experience which he had acquired 
 in dealing with two generations of colleagues and rivals, seemed 
 scarcely sufficient to support him in this new competition ; and 
 Robert Cecil sickened with fear and envy as he contemplated 
 the rising fame and influence of Essex. 
 
 The history of the factions which, towards the close of the 
 reign of Elizabeth, divided her court and her council, though 
 pregnant with instruction, is by no means interesting or pleasing. 
 Both parties employed the means which are familiar to unscru- 
 pulous statesmen ; and neither had, or even pretended to have, 
 any important end in view. The public mind was then reposing 
 from one great effort, and collecting strength for another. That 
 impetuous and appalling rush with which the human intellect 
 had moved forward in the career of truth and liberty, during 
 the fifty years which followed the separation of Luther from the 
 
26 LORD BACON. 
 
 communion of the Church of Rome, was now over. The bound- 
 ary between Protestantism and Popery had been fixed very 
 nearly where it still remains. England, Scotland, the Northern 
 kingdoms were on one side ; Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, on 
 the other. The line of demarcation ran, as it still runs, through 
 the midst of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Switzerland, 
 dividing province from province, electorate from electorate, and 
 canton from canton. France might be considered as a debatable 
 land, in which the contest was still undecided. Since that time 
 the two religions have done little more than maintain their 
 ground. A few occasional incursions have been made. But 
 the general frontier remains the same. During two hundred 
 and fifty years no great society has risen up like one man, and 
 emancipated itself by one mighty effort from the superstition of 
 ages. This spectacle was common in the sixteenth century. 
 Why has it ceased to be so ? Why has so violent a movement 
 been followed by so long a repose ? The doctrines of the Re- 
 formers are not less agreeable to reason or to revelation now than 
 formerly. The public mind is assuredly not less enlightened 
 now than formerly. Why is it that Protestantism, after carrying 
 everything before it in a time of comparatively little knowledge 
 and little freedom, should make no perceptible progress in v 
 reasoning and tolerant age ; that the Luthers, the Calvins, the 
 Knoxes, the Zwingles, should have left no successors ; that 
 during two centuries and a half fewer converts should have been 
 brought over from the Church of Rome than at the time of the 
 Reformation were sometimes gained in a year ? This has always 
 appeared to us one of the most curious and interesting problems 
 in history. On some future occasion we may perhaps attempt 
 to solve it. At present it is enough to say that, at the close of 
 Elizabeth's reign, the Protestant party, to borrow the language 
 of the Apocalypse, had left its first love and had ceased to do 
 its first works. 
 
 The great struggle of the sixteenth century was over. The 
 
LORD BACON. 27 
 
 great struggle of the seventeenth century had not commenced. 
 The confessors of Mary's reign were dead. The members of the 
 Long Parliament were still in their cradles. The Papists had 
 been deprived of all power in the state. The Puritans had not 
 yet attained any formidable extent of power. True it is that a 
 student, well acquainted with the history of the next generation, 
 can easily discern in the proceedings of the last Parliaments of 
 Elizabeth the germ of great and ever memorable events. But 
 to the eye of a contemporary nothing of this appeared. The 
 two sections of ambitious men who were struggling for power 
 differed from each other on no important public question. Both 
 belonged to the Established Church. Both professed boundless 
 loyalty to the Queen. Both approved the war with Spain. 
 There is not, as far as we are aware, any reason to believe that 
 they entertained different views concerning the succession to the 
 Crown. Certainly neither faction had any great measure of 
 reform in view. Neither attempted to redress any public grie- 
 vance. The most odious and pernicious grievance under which 
 the nation then suffered was a source of profit to both, and was 
 defended by both with equal zeal. Raleigh held a monopoly of 
 cards, Essex a monopoly of sweet wines. In fact, the only 
 ground of quarrel between the parties was that they could not 
 agree as to their respective shares of power and patronage. 
 
 Nothing in the political conduct of Essex entitles him to 
 esteem ; and the pity with which we regard his early and 
 terrible end is diminished by the consideration, that he put to 
 hazard the lives and fortunes of his most attached friends, and 
 endeavoured to throw the whole country into confusion, for 
 objects purely personal. Still, it is impossible not to be deeply 
 interested for a man so brave, high-spirited, and generous ; for 
 a man who, while he conducted himself towards his sovereign 
 with a boldness such as was then found in no other subject, 
 conducted himself towards his dependents with a delicacy 
 such as has rarely been found in any other patron. Unlike the 
 
28 LORD BACON. 
 
 vulgar herd of benefactors, he desired to inspire, not gratitude, 
 but affection. He tried to make those whom he befriended feel 
 towards him as towards an equal. His mind, ardent, sus- 
 ceptible, naturally disposed to admiration of all that is great 
 and beautiful, was fascinated by the genius and the accomplish- 
 ments of Bacon. A close friendship was soon formed between 
 them, a friendship destined to have a dark, a mournful, a 
 shameful end. 
 
 In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant, and 
 Bacon hoped to obtain it. Essex made his friend's cause his 
 own, sued, expostulated, promised, threatened, but all in vain. 
 It is probable that the dislike felt by the Cecils for Bacon had 
 been increased by the connection which he had lately formed 
 with the Earl. Robert was then on the point of being made 
 Secretary of State. He happened one day to be in the same 
 coach with Essex, and a remarkable conversation took place be- 
 tween them. " My Lord," said Sir Robert, " the Queen has de- 
 termined to appoint an Attorney-General without more delay. 
 I pray your Lordship to let me know whom you will favour." 
 " I wonder at your question," replied the Earl. " You cannot 
 but know that resolutely, against all the world, I stand for 
 your cousin, Francis Bacon." " Good Lord !" cried Cecil, unable 
 to bridle his temper, " I wonder your Lordship should spend 
 your strength on so unlikely a matter. Can you name one pre- 
 cedent of so raw a youth promoted to so great a place ? " This 
 objection came with a singularly bad grace from a man who, 
 though younger than Bacon, was in daily expectation of being- 
 made Secretary of State. The blot was too obvious to be missed 
 by Essex, who seldom forbore to speak his mind. " I have, 
 made no search," said he, " for precedents of young men who 
 have filled the office of Attorney-General. But I could name 
 to you, Sir Robert, a man younger than Francis, less learned 
 and equally inexperienced, who is suing and striving with all 
 his might for an office of far greater weight." Sir Robert had 
 
LORD BACON. 29 
 
 nothing to say but that he thought his own abilities equal to 
 the place which he hoped to obtain, and that his father's long 
 services deserved such a mark of gratitude from the Queen ; as 
 if his abilities were comparable to his cousin's, or as if Sir 
 Nicholas Bacon had done no service to the State. Cecil then 
 hinted that, if Bacon would be satisfied with the Solicitorship, 
 that might be of easier digestion to the Queen. " Digest me 
 no digestions," said the generous and ardent Earl. " The At- 
 torneyship for Francis is that I must have ; and in that I will 
 spend all my power, might, authority, and amity ; and with tooth 
 and nail procure the same for him against whomsoever ; and 
 whosoever getteth this office out of my hands for any other, 
 before he have it, it shall cost him the coming by. And this be 
 you assured of, Sir Robert, for now I fully declare myself ; and 
 for my own part, Sir Robert, I think strange both of my Lord 
 Treasurer and you, that can have the mind to seek the pre- 
 ference of a stranger before so near a kinsman ; for if you weigh 
 in a balance the parts every way of his competitor and him, 
 only excepting five poor years of admitting to a house of court 
 before Francis, you shall find in all other respects whatsoever 
 no comparison between them." 
 
 When the office of Attorney-General was filled up, the Earl 
 pressed the Queen to make Bacon Solicitor- General, and, on 
 this occasion, the old Lord Treasurer professed himself not un- 
 favourable to his nephew's pretensions. But, after a contest 
 which lasted more than a year and a half, and in which Essex, 
 to use his own words, " spent all his power, might, authority, 
 and amity," the place was given to another. Essex felt this 
 disappointment keenly, but found consolation in the most mu- 
 nificent and delicate liberality. He presented Bacon with an 
 estate worth near two thousand pounds, situated at Twickenham ; 
 and this, as Bacon owned many years after, " with so kind and 
 noble circumstances as the manner was worth more than the 
 matter." 
 
30 LORD BACON. 
 
 It was soon after these events that Bacon first appeared before 
 the public as a writer. Early in 1597 he published a small 
 volume of Essays, which was afterwards enlarged by successive 
 additions to many times its original bulk. This little work was, 
 as it well deserved to be, exceedingly popular. It was reprinted 
 in a few months; it was 1 translated into Latin, French, and 
 Italian ; and it seems to have at once established the literary 
 reputation of its author. But, though Bacon's reputation rose, 
 his fortunes were still depressed. He was in great pecuniary 
 difficulties ; and, on one occasion, was arrested in the street 
 at the suit of a goldsmith for a debt of three hundred pounds, 
 and was carried to a spunging-house in Coleman Street. 
 
 The kindness of Essex was in the mean time indefatigable. 
 In 1596 he sailed on his memorable expedition to the coast 
 of Spain. At the very moment of his embarkation, he wrote to 
 several of his friends, commending to them, during his own 
 absence, the interests of Bacon. He returned, after performing 
 the most brilliant military exploit that was achieved on the 
 Continent by English arms during the long interval which 
 elapsed between the battle of Agincuurt and that of Blenheim. 
 His valour, his talents, his humane and generous disposition, 
 had made him the idol of his countrymen and had extorted 
 praise from the enemies whom he had conquered.* He had 
 always been proud and headstrong; and his splendid success 
 seems to have rendered his faults more offensive than ever. 
 But to his friend Francis he was still the same. Bacon had 
 some thoughts of making his fortune by marriage, and had 
 begun to pay court to a widow of the name of Hatton. The 
 eccentric manners and violent temper of this woman made her 
 a disgrace and a torment to her connections. But Bacon was 
 not aware of her faults, or was disposed to overlook them for 
 the sake of her ample fortune. Essex pleaded his friend's 
 
 * See Cervantes's Novela de la Espanola Inglesa. 
 
LORD BACON. 31 
 
 cause with his usual ardour. The letters which the Earl 
 addressed to Lady Hatton and to her mother are still extant, 
 and are highly honourable to him. " If," he wrote, " she were 
 my sister or my daughter, I protest I would as confidently 
 resolve to further it as I now persuade you : " and again, " If 
 my faith be any thing, I protest, if I had one as near me as she 
 is to you, I had rather match her with him, than with men of 
 far greater titles." The suit, happily for Bacon, was unsuc- 
 cessful. The lady indeed was kind to him in more ways than 
 one. She rejected him ; and she accepted his enemy. She 
 married that narrow-minded, bad-hearted pedant, Sir Edward 
 Coke, and did her best to make him as miserable as he deserved 
 to be. 
 
 The fortunes of Essex had now reached their height and 
 began to decline. He possessed indeed all the qualities which 
 raise men to greatness rapidly. But he had neither the virtues 
 nor the vices which enable men to retain greatness long. His 
 frankness, his keen sensibility to insult and injustice, were by no 
 means agreeable to a sovereign naturally impatient of opposition, 
 and accustomed, during forty years, to the most extravagant 
 flattery, and the most abject submission. The daring and con- 
 temptuous manner in which he bade defiance to his enemies 
 excited their deadly hatred. His administration in Ireland was 
 unfortunate, and in many respects highly blamable. Though 
 his brilliant courage and his impetuous activity fitted him ad- 
 mirably for such enterprises as that of Cadiz, he did not possess 
 the caution, patience, and resolution necessary for the conduct 
 of a protracted war, in which difficulties were to be gradually 
 surmounted, in which much discomfort was to be endured, and 
 in which few splendid exploits could be achieved. For the 
 civil duties of his high place he was still less qualified. Though 
 eloquent and accomplished, he was in no sense a statesman. 
 The multitude indeed still continued to regard even his faults 
 with fondness. But the Court had ceased to give him credit, 
 
32 LORD BACON. 
 
 even for the merit which he really possessed. The person on 
 whom, during the decline of his influence, he chiefly depended, 
 to whom he confided his perplexities, whose advice he solicited, 
 whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. The 
 lamentable truth must be told. This friend, so loved, so trusted, 
 bore a principal part in ruining the Earl's fortunes, in shedding 
 his blood, and in blackening his memory. 
 
 But let us be just to Bacon. We believe that, to the last, ho 
 had no wish to injure Essex. Nay, we believe that he sin- 
 cerely exerted himself to serve Essex, as long as he thought that 
 he could serve Essex without injuring himself. The advice 
 which he gave to his noble benefactor was generally most 
 judicious. He did all in his power to dissuade the Earl from 
 accepting the Government of Ireland. " For," says he, " I did 
 as plainly see his overthrow chained as it were by destiny to 
 that journey, as it is possible for a man to ground a judgment 
 upon future contingents." The prediction was accomplished. 
 Essex returned in disgrace. Bacon attempted to mediate be- 
 tween his friend and the Queen ; and, we believe, honestly em- 
 ployed all his address for that purpose. But the task which he 
 had undertaken was too difficult, delicate, and perilous, even for 
 so wary and dexterous an agent. He had to manage two spirits 
 equally proud, resentful, and ungovernable. At Essex House, 
 he had to calm the rage of a young hero incensed by multiplied 
 wrongs and humiliations, and then to pass to Whitehall for the 
 purpose of soothing the peevishness of a sovereign, whose 
 temper, never very gentle, had been rendered morbidly irritable 
 by age, by declining health, and by the long habit of listening 
 to flattery and exacting implicit obedience. It is hard to serve 
 two masters. Situated as Bacon was, it was scarcely possible 
 for him to shape his course so as not to give one or both of his 
 employers reason to complain. For a time he acted as fairly as, 
 in circumstances so embarrassing, could reasonably be expected. 
 At length he found that, while he was trying to prop the 
 
LORD BACON. 33 
 
 fortunes of another, lie was in danger of shaking his own. He 
 had disobliged both the parties whom he wished to reconcile. 
 Essex thought him wanting in zeal as a friend : Elizabeth 
 thought him wanting in duty as a subject. The Earl looked on 
 him as a spy of the Queen ; the Queen as a creature of the Earl 
 The reconciliation which he had laboured to effect appeared 
 utterly hopeless. A thousand signs, legible to eyes far less keen 
 than his, announced that the fall of his patron was at hand. He 
 shaped his course accordingly. When Essex was brought 
 before the council to answer for his conduct in Ireland, Bacon, 
 after a faint attempt to excuse himself from taking part against 
 his friend, submitted himself to the Queen's pleasure, and 
 appeared at the bar in support of the charges. But a darker 
 scene was behind. The unhappy young nobleman, made reck- 
 less by despair, ventured on a rash and criminal enterprise, 
 which rendered him liable to the highest penalties of the law. 
 What course was Bacon to take ? This was one of those con- 
 junctures which show what men are. To a high-minded man, 
 wealth, power, court-favour, even personal safety, would have 
 appeared of no account, when opposed to friendship, gratitude, 
 and honour. Such a man would have stood by the side of Essex 
 at the trial, would have " spent all his power, might, authority, 
 and amity," in soliciting a mitigation of the sentence, would' 
 have been a daily visitor at the cell, would have received the last 
 injunctions and the last embrace on the scaffold, would have 
 employed all the powers of his intellect to guard from insult the 
 fame of his generous though erring friend. An ordinary man 
 would neither have incurred the danger of succouring Essex, 
 nor the disgrace of assailing him. Bacon did not even preserve 
 neutrality. He appeared as counsel for the prosecution. In 
 that situation, he did not confine himself to what would have been 
 amply sufficient to procure a verdict. He employed all his wit, 
 his rhetoric, and his learning, not to insure a conviction, — for 
 the circumstances were such that a conviction was inevitable, — 
 c 
 
34 LORD BACON. 
 
 but to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those excuses which, 
 though legally of no value, yet tended to diminish the moral 
 guilt of the crime, and which, therefore, though they could not 
 justify the peers in pronouncing an acquital, might incline the 
 Queen to grant a pardon. The Earl urged as a palliation of his 
 frantic acts that he was surrounded by powerful and inveterate 
 enemies, that they had ruined his fortunes, that they sought 
 his life, and that their persecutions had driven him to despair. 
 This was true ; and Bacon well knew it to be true. But he 
 affected to treat it as an idle pretence. He compared Essex to 
 Pisistratus who, by pretending, to be in imminent danger of 
 assassination, and by exhibiting self-inflicted wounds, succeeded 
 in establishing tyranny at Athens. This was too much for the 
 prisoner to bear. He interrupted his ungrateful friend by 
 calling on him to quit the part of an advocate, to come forward 
 as a witness, and to tell the lords whether, in old times, he, 
 Francis Bacon, had not, under his own hand, repeatedly asserted 
 the truth of what he now represented as idle pretexts. It is 
 painful to go on with this lamentable story. Bacon returned a 
 shuffling answer to the Earl's question, and, as if the allusion to 
 Pisistratus were not sufficiently offensive, made another allusion 
 still more unjustifiable. He compared Essex to Henry Duke of 
 Guise, and the rash attempt in the city to the day of the barri- 
 cades at Paris. Why Bacon had recourse to such a topic it is 
 difficult to say. It was quite unnecessary for the purpose of ob- 
 taining a verdict. It was certain to produce a strong impression 
 on the mind of the haughty and jealous princess on whose 
 pleasure the Earl's fate depended. The faintest allusion to the 
 degrading tutelage in which the last Valois had been held by the 
 House of Lorraine was sufficient to harden her heart against a 
 man who in rank, in military reputation, in popularity among 
 the citizens of the capital, bore some resemblance to the Captain 
 of the League. 
 
 Essex was convicted. Bacon made no effort to save him, 
 though the Queen's feelings were such that he might have 
 
LORD BACON. 35 
 
 pleaded his benefactor's cause, possibly with success, certainly 
 without any serious danger to himself. The unhappy nobleman 
 was executed. His fate excited strong, perhaps unreasonable 
 feelings of compassion and indignation. The Queen was re- 
 ceived by the citizens of London with gloomy looks and faint 
 acclamations. She thought it expedient to publish a vindication 
 of her late proceedings. The faithless friend who had assisted 
 in taking the Earl's life was now employed to murder the Earl's 
 fame. The Queen had seen some of Bacon's writings and had 
 been pleased with them. He was accordingly selected to write 
 " A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and 
 committed by Robert Earl of Essex," which was printed by 
 authority. In the succeeding reign, Bacon had not a word to 
 say in defence of this performance, a performance abounding in 
 expressions which no generous enemy would have employed 
 respecting a man who had so dearly expiated his offences. His 
 only excuse was, that he wrote it by command, that he con- 
 sidered himself as a mere secretary, that he had particular 
 instructions as to the way in which he was to treat every part 
 of the subject, and that, in fact, he had furnished only the ar- 
 rangement and the style. 
 
 We regret to say that the whole conduct of Bacon through 
 the course of these transactions appears to Mr. Montagu not 
 merely excusable, but deserving of high admiration. The in- 
 tegrity and benevolence of this gentleman are so well known 
 that our readers will probably be at a loss to conceive by what 
 steps he can have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion : and 
 we are half afraid that they will suspect us of practising some 
 artifice upon them when we report the principal arguments 
 which he employs. 
 
 In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu 
 attempts to show that Bacon lay under greater obligations to 
 the Queen than to Essex. "What these obligations were it is not 
 easy to discover. The situation of Queen's Counsel, and a re- 
 
36 LORD BACON. 
 
 mote reversion, were surely favours very far below Bacon's per- 
 sonal and heriditary claims. They were favours which had not 
 cost the Queen a groat, nor had they put a groat into Bacon's 
 purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's claims to gratitude 
 on some other ground ; and this Mr. Montagu felt. " What perhaps 
 was her greatest kindness," says he, " instead of having hastily 
 advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, 
 made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obliga- 
 tions to Elizabeth." Such indeed they were. Being the son of 
 one of her oldest and most faithful ministers, being himself the 
 ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had 
 been condemned by her to drudgery, to obscurity, to poverty. 
 She had depreciated his acquirements. She had checked him 
 in the most imperious manner, when in Parliament he ventured 
 to act an independent part. She had refused to him the pro- 
 fessional advancement to which he had a just claim. To her it 
 was owing that, while younger men, not superior to him in ex- 
 traction, and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, 
 were filling the highest offices of the state, adding manor to 
 manor, rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a spunging- 
 house for a debt of three hundred pounds. Assuredly if Bacon 
 owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed none to Essex. If the 
 Queen really was his best friend, the Earl was his worst enemy. 
 We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a 
 little further. He might have maintained that Bacon was excus- 
 able in revenging himself on a man who had attempted to rescue 
 his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by the Queen, 
 who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with 
 attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had 
 been so cruel as to present him with a landed estate. 
 
 Again, we can hardly think Mr. Montagu serious when he 
 tells us that Bacon was bound for the sake of the public not to 
 destroy his own hopes of advancement, and that he took part 
 against Essex from a wish to obtain power which might enable 
 him to be useful to his country. We really do not know how 
 
LORD BACON. 37 
 
 to refute such arguments except by stating them. Nothing is 
 impossible which does not involve a contradiction. It is barely 
 possible that Bacon's motives for acting as he did on this 
 occasion may have been gratitude to the Queen for keeping him 
 poor, and a desire to benefit his fellow-creatures in some high 
 situation. And there is a possibility that Bonner may have 
 been a good Protestant who, being convinced that the blood of 
 martyrs is the seed of the church, heroically went through all 
 the drudgery and infamy of persecution, in order that he might 
 inspire the English people with an intense and lasting hatred 
 of Popery. There is a possibility that Jeffreys may have been 
 ardent lover of liberty, and that he may have beheaded 
 Algernon Sydney, and burned Elizabeth Gaunt, only in order 
 to produce a reaction which might lead to the limitation of the 
 prerogative. There is a possibility that Thurtell may have 
 killed Weare only in order to give the youth of England an 
 impressive warning against gaming and bad company. There 
 is a possibility that Fauntleroy may have forged powers of 
 attorney, only in order that his fate might turn the attention of 
 the public to the defects of the penal law. These things, we 
 say, are possible. But they are so extravagantly improbable 
 that a man who should act on such suppositions would be fit 
 only for St. Luke's. And we do not see why suppositions 
 on which no rational man would act in ordinary life should be 
 admitted into history. 
 
 Mr. Montagu's notion that Bacon desired power only in 
 order to do good to mankind appears somewhat strange to us, 
 when we consider how Bacon afterwards used power, and how 
 he lost it. Surely the service which he rendered to mankind 
 by taking Lady Wharton's broad pieces and Sir John Kennedy's 
 cabinet was not of such vast importance as to sanctify all the 
 means which might conduce to that end. If the case were 
 fairly stated, it would, we much fear, stand thus : Bacon was a 
 servile advocate, that he might be a corrupt judge. 
 
38 LORD BACON. 
 
 Mr. Montagu maintains that none but the ignorant and 
 unreflecting can think Bacon censurable for any thing that he 
 did as counsel for the Crown, and that no advocate can 
 justifiably use any discretion as to the party for whom he 
 appears. We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine 
 which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not 
 agreeable to reason and morality ; whether it be right that a 
 man should, with a wig on his head, and a band round his neck, 
 do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would 
 think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire ; whether it 
 be right that, not merely believing but knowing a statement to 
 be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by 
 rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, 
 by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest 
 witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that 
 statement false. It is not necessary on the present occasion to 
 decide these questions. The professional rules, be they good 
 or bad, are rules to which many wise and virtuous men have 
 conformed, and are daily conforming. If, therefore, Bacon did 
 no more than these rules required of him, we shall readily 
 admit that he was blameless, or, at least, excusable. But we 
 conceive that his conduct was not justifiable according to any 
 professional rules that now exist, or that ever existed in 
 England. It has always been held that, in criminal cases in 
 which the prisoner was denied the help of counsel, and, above 
 all, in capital cases, advocates were both entitled and bound to 
 exercise a discretion. It is true, that, after the Revolution, 
 when the Parliament began to make inquisition for the innocent 
 blood which had been shed by the last Stuarts, a feeble attempt 
 was made to defend the lawyers who had been accomplices in 
 the murder of Sir Thomas Armstrong, on the ground that they 
 had only acted professionally. The wretched sophism was 
 silenced by the execrations of the House of Commons. "Things 
 will never be well done," said Mr. Foley, " till some of that 
 
LORD BACON. 39 
 
 profession be made examples." " We have a new sort of mon- 
 sters in the world," said the younger Hampden, "haranguing a 
 man to death. These I call bloodhounds. Sawyer is very 
 criminal and guilty of this murder." " I speak to discharge my 
 conscience," said Mr. Garroway. " I will not have the blood 
 of this man at my door. Sawyer demanded judgment against 
 him and execution. I believe him guilty of the death of this 
 man. Do what you will with him." "If the profession of the 
 law," said the elder Hampden, "gives a man authority to 
 murder at this rate, it is the interest of all men to rise and ex- 
 terminate that profession." Nor was this language held only 
 by unlearned country gentlemen. Sir William Williams, one 
 of the ablest and most unscrupulous lawyers of the age, took 
 the same view of the case. He had not hesitated, he said, to 
 take part in the prosecution of the Bishops, because they were 
 allowed counsel. But he maintained that, where the prisoner 
 was not allowed counsel, the Counsel for the Crown was bound 
 to exercise a discretion, and that every lawyer who neglected 
 this distinction was a betrayer of the law. But it is unnecessary 
 to cite authority. It is known to every body who has ever 
 looked into a court of quarter-sessions that lawyers do exercise 
 a discretion in criminal cases ; and it is plain to every man of 
 common sense that, if they did not exercise such a discretion, 
 they would be a more hateful body of men than those bravoes 
 who used to hire out their stilettoes in Italy. 
 
 Bacon appeared against a man who was indeed guilty of a 
 great offence, but who had been his benefactor and friend. He 
 did more than this. Nay, he did more than a person who had 
 never seen Essex would have been justified in doing. He 
 employed all the art of an advocate in order to make the 
 prisoner's conduct appear more inexcusable and more dangerous 
 to the state than it really had been. All that professional duty 
 could, in any case, have required of him would have been to 
 conduct the cause so as to insure a conviction. But from the 
 c 4 
 
40 LORD BACON. 
 
 nature of the circumstances there could not be the smallest 
 doubt that the Earl would be found guilty. The character of 
 the crime was unequivocal. It had been committed recently, 
 in broad daylight, in the streets of the capital, in the presence 
 of thousands. If ever there was an occasion on which an 
 advocate had no temptation to resort to extraneous topics, for 
 the purpose of blinding the judgment and inflaming the passions 
 of a tribunal, this was that occasion. Why then resort to 
 arguments which, while they could add nothing to the strength 
 of the case, considered in a legal point of view, tended to aggra- 
 vate the moral guilt of the fatal enterprise, and to excite fear 
 and resentment in that quarter from which alone the Earl could 
 now expect mercy ? Why remind the audience of the arts of 
 the ancient tyrants ? Why deny, what every body knew to be 
 the truth, that a powerful faction at court had long sought to 
 effect the ruin of the prisoner ? Why, above all, institute a 
 parallel between the unhappy culprit and the most wicked and 
 most successful rebel of the age ? Was it absolutely impossible 
 to do all that professional duty required without reminding a 
 jealous sovereign of the League, of the barricades, and of all 
 the humiliations which a too powerful subject had heaped on 
 Henry the Third ? 
 
 But if we admit the plea which Mr. Montagu urges in defence 
 of what Bacon did as an advocate, what shall we say of the 
 " Declaration of the Treasons of Robert Earl of Essex ? " Here 
 at least there was no pretence of professional obligation. Even 
 those who may think it the duty of a lawyer to hang, draw, and 
 quarter his benefactors, for a proper consideration, will hardly 
 say that it is his duty to write abusive pamphlets against them, 
 after they are in their graves. Bacon excused himself by 
 saying that he was not answerable for the matter of the book, 
 and that he furnished only the language. But why did he 
 endow such purposes with words ? Could no hack writer, 
 without virtue or shame, be found to exaggerate the errors, 
 
LORD BACON. 41 
 
 already so dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit ? Every 
 age produces those links between the man and the baboon. 
 Every age is fertile of Oldmixons, of Kenricks, and of Antony 
 Pasquins. But was it for Bacon so to prostitute his intellect ? 
 Could he not feel that, while he rounded and pointed some 
 period dictated by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form 
 to some slander invented by the dastardly malignity of Cobham, 
 he was not sinning merely against his friend's honour and his 
 own ? Could he not feel that letters, eloquence, philosophy, 
 were all degraded in his degradation ? 
 
 The real explanation of all this is perfectly obvious ; and 
 nothing but a partiality amounting to a ruling passion could 
 cause any body to miss it. The moral qualities of Bacon were 
 not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. 
 He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness 
 his high civil honours, and the far higher honours gained by 
 his intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into 
 treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man 
 more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten 
 the right. No man was more expert at the soft answer which 
 turneth away wrath. He was never charged, by any accuser 
 entitled to the smallest credit, with licentious habits. His even 
 temper, his flowing courtesy, the general respectability of his 
 demeanour, made a favourable impression on those who saw 
 him in situations which do not severely try the principles. His 
 faults were — we write it with pain — coldness of heart, and 
 meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of feeling 
 strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great sacri- 
 fices. His desires were set on things below. Wealth, prece- 
 dence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large 
 houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of plate, gay 
 hangings, curious cabinets, had as great attractions for him as 
 for any of the courtiers who dropped on their knees in the dirt 
 when Elizabeth passed by, and then hastened home to write to 
 
42 LORD BACON. 
 
 the King of Scots that her Grace seemed to be breaking fast. 
 For these objects he had stooped to every thing, and endured 
 every thing. For these he had sued in the humblest manner, 
 and, when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, had thanked 
 those who had repulsed him, and had begun to sue again. For 
 these objects, as soon as he found that the smallest show of 
 independence in Parliament was offensive to the Queen, he had 
 abased himself to the dust before her, and implored forgivenese 
 in terms better suited to a convicted thief than to a knight of 
 the shire. For these he joined, and for these he forsook, Lord 
 Essex. He continued to plead his patron's cause with the 
 Queen as long as he thought that by pleading that cause he 
 might serve himself. Nay, he went further ; for his feelings, 
 though not warm, were kind ; he pleaded that cause as long as 
 he thought that he could plead it without injury to himself. 
 But when it became evident that Essex was going headlong to 
 his ruin, Bacon began to tremble for his own fortunes. What 
 he had to fear would not indeed have been very alarming to a 
 man of lofty character. It was not death. It was not im- 
 prisonment. It was the loss of court favour. It was the being 
 left behind by others in the career of ambition. It was the 
 having leisure to finish the Instauratio Magna. The Queen 
 looked coldly on him. The courtiers began to consider him as 
 a marked man. He determined to change his line of conduct, 
 and to proceed in a new course with so much vigour as to make 
 up for lost time. When once he had determined to act against 
 his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted with more 
 zeal than would have been necessary or justifiable if he had 
 been employed against a stranger. He exerted his professional 
 talents to shed the Earl's blood, and his literary talents to 
 blacken the Earl's memory. 
 
 It is certain that his conduct excited at the time great and 
 general disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this 
 disapprobation, though deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. 
 
LOUD BACON. 43 
 
 But a great change was at hand. The health of the Queen had 
 long been decaying ; and the operation of age and disease was 
 now assisted by acute mental suffering. The pitiable melan- 
 choly of her last days has generally been ascribed to her fond 
 regret for Essex. But we are disposed to attribute her dejec- 
 tion partly to physical causes, and partly to the conduct of her 
 courtiers and ministers. They did all in their power to conceal 
 from her the intrigues which they were carrying on at the 
 Court of Scotland. But her keen sagacity was not to be so 
 deceived. She did not know the whole. But she knew that 
 she was surrounded by men who were impatient for that new 
 world which was to begin at her death, who had never been 
 attached to her by affection, and who were now but very 
 slightly attached to her by interest. Prostration and flattery 
 could not conceal from her the cruel truth, that those whom 
 she had trusted and promoted had never loved her, and were 
 fast ceasing to fear her. Unable to avenge herself, and too 
 proud too complain, she suffered sorrow and resentment to prey 
 on her heart, till, after a long career of power, prosperity, and 
 glory, she died sick and weary of the world. 
 
 James mounted the throne : and Bacon employed all his 
 address to obtain for himself a share of the favour of his new 
 master. This was no difficult task. The faults of James, both 
 as a man and as a prince, were numerous ; but insensibility to 
 the claims of genius and learning was not among them. He 
 was indeed made up of two men, a witty, well-read scholar, who 
 wrote, disputed, and harangued, and a nervous,' drivelling idiot, 
 who acted. If he had been a Canon of Christ Church, or a 
 Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would 
 have left a highly respectable name to posterity ; that he would 
 have distinguished himself among the translators of the Bible, 
 and among the Divines who attended the Synod of Dort ; and 
 that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no 
 contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon. But fortune 
 
44 LORD BACON. 
 
 placed him in a situation in which his weaknesses covered him 
 with disgrace, and in which his accomplishments brought him 
 no honour. In a college, much eccentricity and childishness 
 would Lave been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all 
 that learning could do for him on the throne was to make people 
 think him a pedant as well as a fool. 
 
 Bacon was favourably received at Court ; and soon found 
 that his chance of promotion was not diminished by the death 
 of the Queen. He was solicitous to be knighted, for two reasons 
 which are somewhat amusing. The King had already dubbed 
 half London, and Bacon found himself the only untitled person 
 in his mess at Gray's Inn. This was not very agreeable to him. 
 He had also, to quote his own words, " found an Alderman's 
 daughter, a handsome maiden, to his liking." On both these 
 grounds, he begged his cousin Robert Cecil, " if it might please 
 his good Lordship," to use his interest in his behalf. The ap- 
 plication was successful. Bacon was one of three hundred 
 gentlemen who, on the coronation-day, received the honour, if 
 it is to be so called, of knighthood. The handsome maiden, a 
 daughter of Alderman Barnham, soon after consented to become 
 Sir Francis's lady. 
 
 The death of Elizabeth, though on the whole it improved 
 Bacon's prospects, was in one respect an unfortunate event for 
 him. The new King had always felt kindly towards Lord 
 Essex, and as soon as he came to the throne, began to show 
 favour to the House of Devereux, and to those who had stood 
 by that house in its adversity. Every body was now at liberty 
 to speak out respecting those lamentable events in which Bacon 
 had borne so large a share. Elizabeth was scarcely cold when 
 the public feeling began to manifest itself by marks of respect 
 towards Lord Southampton. That accomplished nobleman, who 
 will be remembered to the latest ages as the generous and dis- 
 cerning patron of Shakspeare, was held in honour by his con- 
 temporaries chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he 
 
LORD BACOtf. 45 
 
 had borne to Essex. He had been tried and convicted together 
 with his friend ; but the Queen had spared his life, and, at the 
 time of her death, he was still a prisoner. A crowd of visitors 
 hastened to the Tower to congratulate him on his approaching 
 deliverance. With that crowd Bacon could not venture to 
 mingle. The multitude loudly condemned him ; and his con- 
 science told him that the multitude had but too much reason. 
 He excused himself to Southampton by letter, in terms which, 
 if he had, as Mr. Montagu conceives, done only what as a sub- 
 ject and an advocate he was bound to do, must be considered as 
 shamefully servile. He owns his fear that his attendance would 
 give offence, and that his professions of regard would obtain no 
 credit. " Yet," says he, " it is as true as a thing that God 
 knoweth, that this great change hath wrought in me no other 
 change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be 
 that to you now, which I was truly before." 
 
 How Southampton received these apologies we are not in- 
 formed. But it is certain that the general opinion was pro- 
 nounced against Bacon in a manner not to be misunderstood. 
 Soon after his marriage he put forth a defence of his conduct, in 
 the form of a Letter to the Earl of Devon. This tract seems to 
 us to prove only the exceeding badness of a cause for which 
 such talents could do so little. 
 
 It is not probable that Bacon's Defence had much effect on 
 his contemporaries. But the unfavourable impression which his 
 conduct had made appears to have been gradually effaced. In- 
 deed it must be some very peculiar cause that can make a man 
 like him long unpopular. His talents secured him from con- 
 tempt, his temper and his manners from hatred. There is 
 scarcely any story so black that it may not be got over by a 
 man of great abilities, whose abilities are united with caution, 
 good-humour, patience, and affability, who pays daily sacrifice 
 to Nemesis, who is a delightful companion, a serviceable though 
 not an ardent friend, and a dangerous yet a placable enemy. 
 
46 LORD BACON. 
 
 Waller ia the next generation was an eminent instance of this. 
 Indeed Waller had much more than may at first sight appear in 
 common with Bacon. To the higher intellectual qualities of the 
 great English philosopher, to the genius which has made an 
 immortal epoch in the history of science, Waller had indeed no 
 pretensions. But the mind of Waller, as far as it extended, 
 coincided with that of Bacon, and might, so to speak, have been 
 cut out of that of Bacon. In the qualities which make a man 
 an object of interest and veneration to posterity, they cannot be 
 compared together. But in the qualities by which chiefly a 
 man is known to his contemporaries there was a striking simi- 
 larity between them. Considered as men of the world, as 
 courtiers, as politicians, as associates, as allies, as enemies, they 
 had nearly the same merits and the same defects. They were 
 not malignant. They were not tyrannical. But they wanted 
 warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment. There were 
 many things which they loved better than virtue, and which 
 they feared more than guilt. Yet, even after they had stooped 
 to acts of which it is impossible to read the account in the most 
 partial narratives without strong disapprobation and contempt,, 
 the public still continued to regard them with a feeling not 
 easily to be distinguished from esteem. The hyperbole of Juliet 
 seemed to be verified with respect to them. " Upon their brows 
 shame was ashamed to sit." Every body seemed as desirous to 
 throw a veil over their misconduct as if it had been his own. 
 Clarendon, who felt, and who had reason to feel, strong personal 
 dislike towards Waller, speaks of him thus : " There needs no 
 more to be said to extol the excellence and power of his wit 
 and pleasantness of his conversation, than it was of magnitude 
 enough to cover a world of very great faults, that is, so to cover 
 them that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz. a 
 narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree, an abjectness 
 and want of courage to support him in any virtuous under- 
 taking, an insinuation and servile flattery to the height the 
 
LORD BACON. 47 
 
 vainest and most imperious nature could be contented with. 
 .... It had power to reconcile him to those whom he had most' 
 offended and provoked, and continued to his age with that rare 
 felicity, that his company was acceptable Avhere his spirit was 
 odious, and he was at least pitied where he was most detested." 
 Much of this, with some softening, might, we fear, be applied 
 to Bacon. The influence of Waller's talents, manners, and ac- 
 complishments died with him ; and the world has pronounced 
 an unbiassed sentence on his character. A few flowing lines are 
 not bribe sufficient to pervert the judgment of posterity. But 
 the influence of Bacon is felt and will long be felt over the 
 whole civilised world. Leniently as he was treated by his con- 
 temporaries, posterity has treated him more leniently still. 
 Turn where we may, the trophies of that mighty intellect are 
 full in view. We are judging Manlius in sight of the Capitol. 
 
 Under the reign of James, Bacon grew rapidly in fortune and 
 favour. In 1604 he was appointed King's Counsel, with a fee 
 of forty pounds a year ; and a pension of sixty pounds a year 
 was settled upon him. In 1607 he became Solicitor-General, 
 in 1612 Attorney-General. He continued to distinguish himsell 
 in Parliament, particularly by his exertions in favour of one 
 excellent measure on which the King's heart was set, the union 
 of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an intel- 
 lect to discover many irresistible arguments in favour of such a 
 scheme. He conducted the great case of the Post Nati in the 
 Exchequer Chamber ; and the decision of the judges, a decision 
 the legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect 
 of which must be acknowledged, was in a great measure attri- 
 buted to his dexterous management. While actively engaged 
 in the House of Commons and in the courts of law, he still 
 found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble treatise on 
 the "Advancement of Learning," which at a later period was 
 expanded into the De Augmentis, appeared in 1605. The 
 ' Wisdom of the Ancients," a work which, if it had proceeded 
 
48 LORD BACON. 
 
 from any other writer, would have been considered as a master- 
 piece of wit and learning, but which adds little to the fame of 
 Bacon, was printed in 1609. In the mean time the Novum 
 Organum was slowly proceeding. Several distinguished men 
 of learning had been permitted to see sketches or detached por- 
 tions of that extraordinary book ; and, though they were not gene- 
 rally disposed to admit the soundness of the author's views, they 
 spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius. Sir Thomas 
 Bodley, the founder of one of the most magnificent of English 
 libraries, was among those stubborn Conservatives who consi- 
 dered the hopes with which Bacon looked forward to the future 
 destinies of the human race as utterly chimerical, and who re- 
 garded with distrust and aversion the" innovating spirit of the 
 new schismatics in philosophy. Yet even Bodley, after perusing 
 the Cogitata et Visa, one of the most precious of those scattered 
 leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterwards 
 made up, acknowledged that in " those very points, and in all 
 proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master- 
 workman;" and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the trea- 
 tise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of 
 learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to pro- 
 cure it." In 1612a new edition of the " Essays" appeared, with 
 additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and 
 quality. Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from 
 a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful 
 that even his mighty powers could have achieved, " the reducing 
 and recompiling," to use his own phrase, " of the laws of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Unhappily he was at that very time employed in perverting 
 those laws to the vilest purposes of tyranny. When Oliver St. 
 John was brought before the Star Chamber for maintaining that 
 the King had no right to levy Benevolences, and was for his 
 manly and constitutional conduct sentenced to imprisonment 
 during the royal pleasure and to a fine of 5000/., Bacon appeared 
 
LORD BACON. 49 
 
 as counsel for the prosecution. About the same time he was 
 deeply engaged in a still more disgraceful transaction. An aged 
 clergyman, of the name of Peacham, was accused of treason on 
 account of some passages of a sermon which was found in his 
 study. The sermon, whether written by him or not, had never 
 been preached. It did not appear that he had any intention of 
 preaching it. The most servile lawyers of those servile times 
 were forced to admit that there were great difficulties both as 
 to the facts and as to the law. Bacon was employed to remove 
 those difficulties. He was employed to settle the question of 
 law by tampering with the judges, and the question of fact by 
 torturing the prisoner. 
 
 Three judges of the Court of King's Bench were tractable. 
 But Coke was made of different stuff. Pedant, bigot, and brute 
 as he was, he had qualities which bore a strong, though a very 
 disagreeable resemblance to some of the highest virtues which a 
 public man can possess. He was an exception to a maxim 
 which we believe to be generally true, that those who trample on 
 the helpless are disposed to cringe to the powerful. He behaved 
 with gross rudeness to his juniors at the bar, and with execrable 
 cruelty to prisoners on trial for their lives. But he stood up 
 manfully against the King and the King's favourites. No man 
 of that age appeared to so little advantage when he was opposed 
 to an inferior, and was in the wrong. But, on the other hand, 
 it is but fair to admit that no man of that age made so creditable 
 a figure when he was opposed to a superior, and happened to be 
 in the right. On such occasions, his half-suppressed insolence 
 and his impracticable obstinacy had a respectable and interesting 
 appearance, when compared with the abject servility of the bar 
 and of the bench. On the present occasion he was stubborn 
 and surly. He declared that it was a new and highly improper 
 practice in the judges to confer with a law-officer of the Crown 
 about capital cases which they were afterwards to try ; and for 
 some time he resolutely kept aloof. But Bacon was equally 
 
 D 
 
50 LORD BACON. 
 
 artful and persevering. " I am not wholly out of hope," said he 
 in a letter to the King, " that my Lord Coke himself, when I 
 have in some dark manner put him in doubt that he shall be 
 left alone, will not be singular." After some time Bacon's dex- 
 terity was successful ; and Coke, sullenly and reluctantly, fol- 
 lowed the example of his brethren. But in order to convict 
 Peacham it was necessary to find facts as well as law. Accord- 
 ingly, this wretched old man was put to the rack, and, while 
 undergoing the horrible infliction, was examined by Bacon, but 
 in vain. No confession could be wrung out of him ; and Bacon 
 wrote to the King, complaining that Peacham had a dumb devil. 
 At length the trial came on. A conviction was obtained ; but 
 the charges were so obviously futile, that the government could 
 not, for very shame, carry the sentence into execution ; and 
 Peacham was suffered to languish away the short remainder of 
 his life in a prison. 
 
 All this frightful story Mr. Montagu relates fairly. He nei- 
 ther conceals nor distorts any material fact. But he can see 
 nothing deserving of condemnation in Bacon's conduct. He 
 tells us most truly that we ought not to try the men of one age 
 by the standard of another ; that Sir Matthew Hale is not to be 
 pronounced a bad man because he left a woman to be executed 
 for witchcraft ; that posterity will not be justified in censuring 
 judges of our time, for selling offices in their courts, according 
 to the established practice, bad as that practice was ; and that 
 Bacon is entitled to similar indulgence. " To persecute the 
 lover of truth," says Mr. Montagu, " for opposing established 
 customs, and to censure him in after ages for not having been 
 more strenuous in opposition, are errors which will never cease 
 until the pleasure of self-elevation from the depression of supe- 
 riority is no more." 
 
 We have no dispute with Mr. Montagu about the general pro- 
 position. We assent to every word of it. But does it apply to 
 the present case ? - Is it true that in the time of James the First 
 
LORD BACON. 51 
 
 it was the established practice for the law-officers of the Crown, 
 to hold private consultations with the judges, touching capital 
 cases which those judges were afterwards to try ? Certainly not. 
 In the very page in which Mr. Montagu asserts that "the 
 influencing a judge out of court seems at that period scarcely 
 to have been considered as improper," he gives the very words 
 of Sir Edward Coke on the subject. " I will not thus declare 
 what may be my judgment by these auricular confessions of 
 new and pernicious tendency, and not according to the customs 
 of the realm." Is it possible to imagine that Coke, who had 
 himself been Attorney-General during thirteen years, who had 
 conducted a far greater number of important state-prosecutions 
 than any other lawyer named in English history, and who had 
 passed with scarcely any interval from the Attorney-Generalship 
 to the first seat in the first criminal court in the realm, could 
 have been startled at an invitation to confer with the Crown- 
 lawyers, and could have pronounced the practice new, if it had 
 really been an established usage ? We well know that where 
 property only was at stake, it was then a common though a 
 most culpable practice, in the judges, to listen to private solici- 
 tation. But the practice of tampering with judges in order to 
 procure capital convictions we believe to have been new, first, 
 because Coke, who understood those matters better than any 
 man of his time, asserted it to be new ; and secondly, because 
 neither Bacon nor Mr. Montagu has shown a single precedent. 
 
 How then stands the case ? Even thus : Bacon was not con- 
 forming to an usage then generally admitted to be proper. He 
 was not even the last lingering adherent of an old abuse. It 
 would have been sufficiently disgraceful to such a man to be in 
 this last situation. Yet this last situation would have been 
 honourable compared with that in which he stood. He was 
 guilty of attempting to introduce into the courts of law an odious 
 abuse for which no precedent could be found. Intellectually, he 
 was better fitted than any man that England has ever produced 
 r> 2 
 
52 LORD BACON. 
 
 for the work of improving her institutions. But, unhappily, we 
 see that he did not scruple to exert his great powers for the 
 purpose of introducing into those institutions new corruptions 
 of the foulest kind. 
 
 The same, or nearly the same, may be said of the torturing 
 of Peacham. If it be true that in the time of James the First, 
 the propriety of torturing prisoners was generally allowed, we 
 should admit this as an excuse, though we should admit it less 
 readily in the case of such a man as Bacon than in the case of 
 an ordinary lawyer or politician. But the fact is, that the prac- 
 tice of torturing prisoners was then generally acknowledged by 
 lawyers to be illegal, and was execrated by the public as bar- 
 barous. More than thirty years before Peacham's trial, that 
 practice was so loudly condemned by the voice of the nation, that 
 Lord Burleigh found it necessary to publish an apology for 
 having occasionally resorted to it. But, though the dangers 
 which then threatened the government were of a very different 
 kind from those which were to be apprehended from any thing 
 that Peacham could write, though the life of the Queen and the 
 dearest interests of the state were in jeopardy, though the cir- 
 cumstances were such that all ordinary laws might seem to be 
 superseded by that highest law, the public safety, the apology 
 did not satisfy the country : and the Queen found it expedient 
 to issue an order positively forbidding the torturing of state- 
 prisoners on any pretence whatever. From that time, the 
 practice of torturing, which had always been unpopular, which 
 had always been illegal, had also been unusual. It is well 
 known that in 1628, only fourteen years after the time when 
 Bacon went to the Tower to listen to the yells of Peacham, 
 the judges decided that Felton, a criminal who neither deserved 
 nor was likely to obtain any extraordinary indulgence, could 
 not lawfully be put to the question. We therefore say that 
 Bacon stands in a very different situation from that in which 
 Mr. Montagu tries to place him. Bacon was her-e distinctly 
 behind his age. He was one of the last of the tools of power 
 
LORD BACON. 53 
 
 who persisted in a practice the most barbarous and the most 
 absurd that has ever disgraced jurisprudence, in a practice of 
 which, in the preceding generation, Elizabeth and her ministers 
 had been ashamed, in a practice which, a few years later, no 
 sycophant in all the Inns of Court had the heart or the forehead 
 to defend.* 
 
 Bacon far behind his age ! Bacon far behind Sir Edward 
 Coke ! Bacon clinging to exploded abuses ! Bacon withstanding 
 the progress of improvement ! Bacon struggling to push back 
 the human mind ! The words seem strange. They sound like 
 a contradiction in terms. Yet the fact is even so : and the ex- 
 planation may be readily found by any person who is not blinded 
 by prejudice. Mr. Montagu cannot believe that so extraordinary 
 a man as Bacon could be guilty of a bad action ; as if history 
 were not made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men, as 
 if all the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all 
 the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions, had 
 not been extraordinary men, as if nine tenths of the calamities 
 which have befallen the human race had any other origin than 
 the union of high intelligence with low desires. 
 
 Bacon knew this well. He has told us that there are persons 
 " scientia tanquam angeli alati, cupiditatibus vero tanquam ser- 
 pentes qui humi reptantf ;" and it did not require his admirable 
 
 * Since this Review was written, Mr. Jardine has published a very 
 learned and ingenious Reading on the use of torture in England. It has 
 not however been thought necessary to make any change in the observations 
 on Peacham's case. 
 
 It is impossible to discuss, within the limits of a note, the extensive ques- 
 tion raised by Mr. Jardine. It is sufficient here to say that every argument 
 by which he attempts to show that the use of the rack was anciently a lawful 
 exertion of royal prerogative may be urged with equal force, nay with far 
 greater force, to prove the lawfulness of benevolences, of ship-money, of 
 Mompesson's patent, of Eliot's imprisonment, of every abuse, without excep- 
 tion, which is condemned by the Petition of Right and the Declaration of 
 Right. 
 
 f De Augmentis, Lib. v. Cap. 1. 
 
 D 3 
 
54 LORD BACON. 
 
 sagacity and his extensive converse with mankind to make the 
 discovery. Indeed, be had only to look within. The difference 
 between the soaring angel and the creeping snake was but a 
 type of the difference between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon 
 the Attorney-General, Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon 
 seeking for the Seals. Those who survey only one half of his 
 character may speak of him with unmixed admiration, or 
 with unmixed contempt. But those only judge of him correctly 
 who take in at one view Bacon in speculation and Bacon in 
 action. They will have no difficulty in comprehending how 
 one and the same man should have been far before his age and 
 far behind it, in one line the boldest and most useful of inno- 
 vators, in another line the most obstinate champion of the foulest 
 abuses. In his library, all his rare powers were under the 
 guidance of an honest ambition, of an enlarged philanthropy, of 
 a sincere love of truth. There, no temptation drew him away 
 from the right course. Thomas Aquinas could pay no fees. 
 Duns Scotus could confer no peerages. The Master of the 
 Sentences had no rich reversions in his gift. Far different was 
 the situation of the great philosopher when he came forth from 
 his study and his laboratory to mingle with the crowd which 
 filled the galleries of Whitehall. In all that crowd there was 
 no man equally qualified to render great and lasting services to 
 mankind. But in all that crowd there was not a heart more set 
 on things which no man ought to suffer to be necessary to his 
 happiness, on things which can often be obtained only by the 
 sacrifice of integrity and honour. To be the leader of the human 
 race in the career of improvement, to found on the ruins of 
 ancient intellectual dynasties a more prosperous and a more 
 enduring empire, to be revered by the latest generations as 
 the most illustrious among the benefactors of mankind, all this 
 was within his reach. But all this availed him nothing while 
 some quibbling special pleader was promoted before him to the 
 bench, while some heavy country gentleman took precedence 
 
L.ORD BACON. 55 
 
 of him by virtue of a purchased coronet, while some pandar, 
 happy in a fair wife, could obtain a more cordial salute from 
 Buckingham, while some buffoon, versed in all the latest scandal 
 of the court, could draw a louder laugh from James. 
 
 During a long course of years, Bacon's unworthy ambition 
 was crowned with success. His sagacity early enabled him to 
 perceive who was likely to become the most powerful man in 
 the kingdom. He probably knew the King's mind before it 
 was known to the King himself, and attached himself to 
 Villiers, while the less discerning crowd of courtiers still con- 
 tinued to fawn on Somerset. The influence of the younger 
 favourite became greater daily. The contest between the rivals 
 might, however, have lasted long, but for that frightful crime 
 which, in spite of all that could be effected by the research and 
 ingenuity of historians, is still covered with so mysterious an 
 obscurity. The descent of Somerset had been a gradual and 
 almost imperceptible lapse. It now became a headlong fall ; 
 and Villiers, left without a competitor, rapidly rose to a height 
 of power such as no subject since Wolsey had attained. 
 
 There were many points of resemblance between the two 
 celebrated courtiers who, at different times, extended their 
 patronage to Bacon. It is difficult to say whether Essex or 
 Villiers was more eminently distinguished by those graces of 
 person and manner which have always been rated in courts at 
 much more than their real value. Both were constitutionally 
 brave ; and both, like most men who are constitutionally brave, 
 were open and unreserved. Both were rash and headstrong. 
 Both were destitute of the abilities and of the information which 
 are necessary to statesmen. Yet both, trusting to the accom- 
 plishments which had made them conspicuous in tilt-yards and 
 ball-rooms, aspired to rule the state. Both owed their elevation 
 to the personal attachment of the sovereign ; and in both cases 
 this attachment was of so eccentric a kind, that it perplexed 
 observers, that it still continues to perplex historians, and that 
 d 4 
 
56 LORD BACON. 
 
 it gave rise to much scandal which we are inclined to think 
 unfounded. Each of them treated the sovereign whose favour 
 he enjoyed with a rudeness which approached to insolence. 
 This petulance ruined Essex, who had to deal with a spirit 
 naturally as proud as his own, and accustomed, during near 
 half a century, to the most respectful observance. But there 
 was a wide difference between the haughty daughter of Henry 
 and her successor. James was timid from the cradle. His 
 nerves, naturally weak, had not been fortified by reflection or 
 by habit. His life, till he came to England, had been a series 
 of mortifications and humiliations. With all his high notions 
 of the origin and extent of his prerogatives, he was never his 
 own master for a day. In spite of his kingly title, in spite of 
 his despotic theories, he was to the last a slave at heart. Vil- 
 liers treated him like one ; and this course, though adopted, we 
 believe, merely from temper, succeeded as well as if it had been 
 a system of policy formed after mature deliberation. 
 
 In generosity, in sensibility, in capacity for friendship, Essex 
 far surpassed Buckingham. Indeed, Buckingham can scarcely 
 be said to have had any friend, with the exception of the two 
 princes over whom successively he exercised so wonderful an 
 influence. Essex was to the last adored by the people. Buck- 
 ingham was always a most unpopular man, except perhaps for a 
 very short time after his return from the childish visit to Spain. 
 Essex fell a victim to the rigour of the government amidst the 
 lamentations of the people. Buckingham, execrated by the 
 people, and solemnly declared a public enemy by the representa- 
 tives of the people, fell by the hand of one of the people, and 
 was lamented by none but his master. 
 
 The way in which the two favourites acted towards Bacon 
 was highly chai'acteristic, and may serve to illustrate the old 
 and true saying, that a man is generally more inclined to feel 
 kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favours than 
 towards one from whom he has received them. Essex loaded 
 
LOED BACON. 57 
 
 Bacon with benefits, and never thought that he had done enough. 
 It seems never to have crossed the mind of the powerful and 
 wealthy noble that the poor barrister whom he treated with 
 such munificent kindness was not his equal. It was, we have 
 no doubt, with perfect sincerity that the Earl declared that he 
 would willingly give his sister or daughter in marriage to his 
 friend. He was in general more than sufficiently sensible of 
 his own merits ; but he did not seem to know that he had ever 
 deserved well of Bacon. On that cruel day when they saw 
 each other for the last time at the bar of the Lords, Essex taxed 
 his perfidious friend with unkindness and insincerity, but never 
 with ingratitude. Even in such a moment, more bitter than 
 the bitterness of death, that noble heart was too great to vent 
 itself in such a reproach. 
 
 Villi ers, on the other hand, owed much to Bacon. When 
 their acquaintance began, Sir Francis was a man of mature age, 
 of high station, and of established fame as a politician, an advo- 
 cate, and a writer. Villiers was little more than a boy, a 
 younger son of a house then of no great note. He was but just 
 entering on the career of court favour ; and none but the most 
 discerning observers could as yet perceive that lie was likely to 
 distance all his competitors. The countenance and advice of a 
 man so highly distinguished as the Attorney-General must have 
 been an object of the highest importance to the young adven- 
 turer. But though Villiers was the obliged party, he was far 
 less warmly attached to Bacon, and far less delicate in his con- 
 duct towards Bacon, than Essex had been. 
 
 To do the new favourite justice, he early exerted his influence 
 in behalf of his illustrious friend. In 1616 Sir Francis was 
 sworn of the Privy Council, and in March, 1617, on the retire- 
 ment of Lord Brackley, was appointed Keeper of the Great 
 Seal. 
 
 On the seventh of May, the first day of term, he rode in state 
 to Westminster Hall, with the Lord Treasurer on his risht 
 
58 LORD 1UCON. 
 
 hand, the Lord Privy Seal on his left, a long procession of 
 students and ushers before him, and a crowd of peers, privy- 
 councillors, and judges following in his train. Having entered 
 his court, he addressed the splendid auditory in a grave and 
 dignified speech, which proves how well he understood those 
 judicial duties which he afterwards performed so ill. Even at 
 that moment, the proudest moment of his life in the estimation 
 of the vulgar, and, it may be, even in his own, he cast back a 
 look of lingering affection towards those noble pursuits from 
 which, as it seemed, he was about to be estranged. " The depth 
 of the three long vacations," said he, " I would reserve in some 
 measure free from business of estate, and for studies, arts, and 
 sciences, to which of my own nature I am most inclined." 
 
 The years during which Bacon held the Great Seal were 
 among the darkest and most shameful in English history. Every 
 thing at home and abroad was mismanaged. First came the 
 execution of Raleigh, an act which, if done in a proper manner, 
 might have been defensible, but which, under all the circum 
 stances, must be considered as a dastardly murder. Worse was 
 behind, the war of Bohemia, the successes of Tilly and Spinola, 
 the Palatinate conquered, the King's son-in-law an exile, the 
 house of Austria dominant on the Continent, the Protestant 
 religion and the liberties of the Germanic body trodden under 
 foot. Meanwhile, the wavering and cowardly policy of England 
 furnished matter of ridicule to all the nations of Europe. The 
 love of peace which James professed would, even when in- 
 dulged to an impolitic excess, have been respectable, if it had 
 proceeded from tenderness for his people. But the truth is 
 that, while he had nothing to spare for the defence of the natural 
 allies of England, he resorted without scruple to the most illegal 
 and oppressive devices, for the purpose of enabling Buckingham 
 and Buckingham's relations to outshine the ancient aristocracy 
 of the realm. Benevolences were exacted. Patents of mono- 
 poly were multiplied. All the resources which could have been 
 
LORD BACON. 59 
 
 employed to replenish a beggared Exchequer, at the close of a 
 ruinous war, were put in motion during this season of ignomi- 
 nious peace. 
 
 The vices of the administration must be chiefly ascribed to 
 the weakness of the King and to the levity and violence of the 
 favourite. But it is impossible to acquit the Lord Keeper of 
 all share in the guilt. For those odious patents, in particular, 
 which passed the Great Seal while it was in his charge, he 
 must be held answerable. In the speech which he made on 
 first taking his seat in his court, he had pledged himself to 
 discharge this important part of his functions with the greatest 
 caution and impartiality. He had declared that he " would 
 walk in the light," " that men should see that no particular turn 
 or end led him, but a general rule." Mr. Montagu would have 
 us believe that Bacon acted up to these professions, and says 
 that " the power of the favourite did not deter the Lord Keeper 
 from staying grants and patents when his public duty demanded 
 this interposition." Does Mr. Montagu consider patents of 
 monopoly as good things ? Or does he mean to say that Bacon 
 staid every patent of monopoly that came before him ? Of all 
 patents in our history, the most disgraceful was that which was 
 granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, supposed to be the original of 
 Massinger's Overreach, and to Sir Francis Michell, from whom 
 Justice Greedy is supposed to have been drawn, for the exclu- 
 sive manufacturing of gold and silver lace. The effect of this 
 monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manu- 
 facture was adulterated to the great loss of the public. But 
 this was a trifle. The patentees were armed with powers as 
 great as have ever been given to farmers of the revenue in the 
 worst governed countries. They were authorised to search 
 houses and to arrest interlopers ; and these formidable powers 
 were used for purposes viler than even those for which they 
 were given, for the wreaking of old grudges, and lor the 
 corrupting of female chastity. Was not this a case in which 
 
60 LORD BACON. 
 
 public duty demanded the interposition of the Lord Keeper? 
 And did the Lord Keeper interpose ? He did. He wrote to 
 inform the King that he " had considered of the fitness and 
 conveniency of the gold and silver thread business," " that it 
 was convenient that it should be settled," that he " did conceive 
 apparent likelihood that it would redound much to his Majesty'.', 
 profit," that, therefore, " it were good it were settled with all 
 convenient speed." The meaning of all this was, that certain 
 of the house of Villiers were to go shares with Overreach and 
 Greedy in the plunder of the public. This was the way in 
 which, when the favourite pressed for patents, lucrative to his 
 relations and to his creatures, ruinous and vexatious to the 
 body of the people, the chief guardian of the laws interposed. 
 Having assisted the patentees to obtain this monopoly, Bacon 
 assisted them also in the steps which they took for the purpose 
 of guarding it. He committed several people to close confine- 
 ment for disobeying his tyrannical edict. It is needless to say 
 more. Our readers are now able to judge whether, in the 
 matter of patents, Bacon acted conformably to his professions, 
 or deserved the praise which his biographer has bestowed on him. 
 In his judicial capacity his conduct was not less reprehensible. 
 He suffered Buckingham to dictate many of his decisions. 
 Bacon knew as well as any man that a judge who listens to 
 private solicitations is a disgrace to his post. He had himself, 
 before he was raised to the woolsack, represented this strongly 
 to Villiers, then just entering on his career. "By no means," 
 said Sir Francis, in a letter of advice addressed to the young 
 courtier, " by no means be you persuaded to interpose yourself, 
 either by word or letter, in any cause depending in any court 
 of justice, nor suffer any great man to do it where you can 
 hinder it. If it should prevail, it perverts justice ; but, if the 
 judge be so just and of such courage as he ought to be, as not 
 to be inclined thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicion 
 behind it." Yet he had not been Lord Keeper a month when 
 
LOED BACON. 61 
 
 Buckingham began to interfere in Chancery suits ; and Buck- 
 ingham's interference was, as might have been expected, suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 Mr. Montagu's reflections on the excellent passage which we 
 have quoted above are exceedingly amusing. " No man," says 
 he, " more deeply felt the evils which then existed of the inter- 
 ference of the Crown and of statesmen to influence judges. 
 How beautifully did he admonish Buckingham, regardless as he 
 proved of all admonition ! " We should be glad to know how 
 it can be expected that admonition will be regarded by him 
 who receives it, when it is altogether neglected by him who 
 gives it. We do not defend Buckingham : but what was his 
 guilt to Bacon's ? Buckingham was young, ignorant, thought- 
 less, dizzy with the rapidity of his ascent and the height of his 
 position. That he should be eager to serve his relations, his 
 flatterers, his mistresses, that he should not fully apprehend the 
 immense importance of a pure administration of justice, that he 
 should think more about those who were bound to him by 
 private ties than about the public interest, all this was perfectly 
 natural, and not altogether unpardonable. Those who intrust 
 a petulant, hot-blooded, ill-informed lad with power, are more 
 to blame than he for the mischief which he may do with it. 
 How could it be expected of a lively page, raised by a wild 
 freak of fortune to the first influence in the empire, that he 
 should have bestowed any serious thought on the principles 
 which ought to guide judicial decisions ? Bacon was the ablest 
 public man then living in Europe. He was near sixty years 
 old. He had thought much, and to good purpose, on the 
 general principles of law. He had for many years borne a part 
 daily in the administration of justice. It was impossible that a 
 man with a tithe of his sagacity and experience should not have 
 known that a judge who suffers friends or patrons to dictate his 
 decrees violates the plainest rules of duty. In fact, as we have 
 seen, he knew this well : he expressed it admirably. Neither 
 
62 LORD BACON. 
 
 on this occasion nor on any other could his bad actions be 
 attributed to any defect of the head. They sprang from quite 
 a different cause. 
 
 A man who stooped to render such services to others was not 
 likely to be scrupulous as to the means by which he enriched 
 himself. He and his dependents accepted large presents from 
 persons who were engaged in Chancery suits. The amount of 
 the plunder which he collected in this way it is impossible to 
 estimate. There can be no doubt that he received very much 
 more than was proved on his trial, though, it may be, less than 
 was suspected by the public. His enemies stated his illicit 
 gains at a hundred thousand pounds. But this was probably 
 an exaggeration. 
 
 It was long before the day of reckoning arrived. During 
 the interval between the second and third parliaments of James, 
 the nation was absolutely governed by the Crown. The pros- 
 pects of the Lord Keeper were bright and serene. His great 
 place rendered the splendour of his talents even more con- 
 spicuous, and gave an additional charm to the serenity of his 
 temper, the courtesy of his manners, and the eloquence of his 
 conversation. The pillaged suitor might mutter. The austei'e 
 Puritan patriot might, in his retreat, grieve that one on whom 
 God had bestowed without measure all the abilities which 
 qualify men to take the lead in great reforms should be found 
 among the adherents of the worst abuses. But the murmurs of 
 the suitor and the lamentations of the patriot had scarcely any 
 avenue to the ears of the powerful. The King, and the minis- 
 ter who was the King's master, smiled on their illustrious 
 flatterer. The whole crowd of courtiers and nobles sought his 
 favour with emulous eagerness. Men of wit and learning 
 hailed with delight the elevation of one who had so signally 
 shown that a man of profound learning and of brilliant wit 
 might understand, far better than any plodding dunce, the art 
 of thriving in the world 
 
LORD BACON. 63 
 
 Once, and but once, this course of prosperity was for a mo 
 ment interrupted. It should seem that even Bacon's brain was 
 not strong enough to bear without some discomposure the in- 
 ebriating effect of so much good fortune. For some time after 
 his elevation, he showed himself a little wanting in that wari- 
 ness and self-command to which, more than even to his tran- 
 scendent talents, his elevation was to be ascribed. He was by 
 no means a good hater. The temperature of his revenge, like 
 that of his gratitude, was scarcely ever more than lukewarm. 
 But there was one person whom he had long regarded with an 
 animosity which, though studiously suppressed, was perhaps 
 the stronger for the suppression. The insults and injuries 
 which, when a young man struggling into note and professional 
 practice, he had received from Sir Edward Coke, were such as 
 might move the most placable nature to resentment. About 
 the time at which Bacon received the Seals, Coke had, on 
 account of his contumacious resistance to the royal pleasure, 
 been deprived of his seat in the Court of King's Bench, and had 
 ever since languished in retirement. But Coke's opposition to 
 the Court, we fear, was the effect not of good principles, but of 
 a bad temper. Perverse and testy as he was, he wanted true 
 fortitude and dignity of character. His obstinacy, unsupported 
 by virtuous motives, was not proof against disgrace. He 
 solicited a reconciliation with the favourite, and his solicitations 
 were successful. Sir John Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, 
 was looking out for a rich wife. Coke had a large fortune and 
 an unmarried daughter. A bargain was struck. But Lady 
 Coke, the lady whom twenty years before Essex had wooed on 
 behalf of Bacon, would not hear of the match. A violent and 
 scandalous family quarrel followed. The mother carried the 
 girl away by stealth. The father pursued them, and regained 
 possession of his daughter by force. The King was then in 
 Scotland, and Buckingham had attended him thither. Bacon 
 was, during their absence, at the head of affairs in England. 
 
64 LORD BACON. 
 
 He felt towards Cuke as much malevolence as it was in his 
 nature to feel towards any body. His wisdom had been laid to 
 sleep by prosperity. In an evil hour he determined to interfere 
 in the disputes which agitated his enemy's household. He 
 declared for the wife, countenanced the Attorney- General in 
 filing an information in the Star Chamber against the husband, 
 and wrote letters to the King and the favourite against the 
 proposed marriage. The strong language which he used in 
 those letters shows that, sagacious as he was, he did not quite 
 know his place, and that he was not fully acquainted with the 
 extent either of Buckingham's power, or of the change which 
 the possession of that power had produced in Buckingham's 
 character. He soon had a lesson which he never forgot. The 
 favourite received the news of the Lord Keeper's interference 
 with feelings of the most violent resentment, and made the King 
 even more angry than himself. Bacon's eyes were at once 
 opened to his error, and to all its possible consequences. He 
 had been elated, if not intoxicated, by greatness. The shock 
 sobered him in an instant. He was all himself again. He 
 apologized submissively for his interference. He directed the 
 Attorney-General to stop the proceedings against Coke. He 
 sent to tell Lady Coke that he could do nothing for her. He 
 announced to both the families that he was desirous to promote 
 the connection. Having given these proofs of contrition, he 
 ventured to present himself before Buckingham. But the 
 young upstart did not think that he had yet sufficiently humbled 
 an old man who had been his friend and his benefactor, who 
 was the highest civil functionary in the realm, and the most 
 eminent man of letters in the world. It is said that on two 
 successive days Bacon repaired to Buckingham's house, that on 
 two successive days he was suffered to remain in an ante-cham- 
 ber among foot-boys, seated on an old wooden box, with the 
 Great Seal of England at his side, and that when at length he 
 was admitted, he flung himself on the floor, kissed the favourite's 
 feet, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven. Sir Anthony 
 
LORD BACON. 65 
 
 Weldon, on whose authority this story rests, is likely enough to 
 have exaggerated the meanness of Bacon and the insolence of 
 Buckingham. But it is difficult to imagine that so circum- 
 stantial a narrative, written by a person who avers that he was 
 present on the occasion, can be wholly without foundation ; and, 
 unhappily, there is little in the character either of the favourite 
 or of the Lord Keeper to make the narrative improbable. It is 
 certain that a reconciliation took place on terms humiliating to 
 Bacon, who never more ventured to cross any purpose of any 
 body who bore the name of Villiers. He put a strong curb on 
 those angry passions which had for the first time in his life 
 mastered his prudence. He went through the forms of a re- 
 conciliation with Coke, and did his best, by seeking opportunities 
 of paying little civilities, and by avoiding all that could produce 
 collision, to tame the untameable ferocity of his old enemy. 
 
 In the main, however, Bacon's life, while he held the Great 
 Seal, was, in outward appearance, most enviable. In London he 
 lived with great dignity at York House, the venerable mansion 
 of his father. Here it was, that, in January, 1620, he celebrated 
 his entrance into his sixtieth year amidst a splendid circle of 
 friends. He had then exchanged the appellation of Keeper for 
 the higher title of Chancellor. Ben Jonson was one of the 
 party, and wrote on the occasion some of the happiest of his 
 rugged rhymes. All things, he tells us, seemed to smile about 
 the old house, " the fire, the wine, the men." The spectacle of 
 the accomplished host, after a life marked by no great disaster, 
 entering on a green old age, in the enjoyment of riches, power, 
 high honours, undiminished mental activity, and vast literary 
 reputation, made a strong impression on the poet, if we may 
 judge from those well-known lines : 
 
 " England's high Chancellor, the destined heir, 
 In his soft cradle, to his father's chair, 
 Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full 
 Out of their choicest and their whitest wooL * 
 B 
 
t>6 LORD BACON. 
 
 In the intervals of rest which Bacon's political and judicial 
 functions afforded, he was in the habit of retiring to Gorham- 
 bury. At that place his business was literature, and his fa- 
 vourite amusement gardening, which in one of his most inter- 
 esting Essa} r s he calls " the purest of human pleasures." In his 
 magnificent grounds he erected, at a cost of ten thousand pounds, 
 a retreat to which he repaired when he wished to avoid all 
 visiters, and to devote himself wholly to study. On such oc- 
 casions, a few young men of distinguished talents were some- 
 times the companions of his retirement ; and among them his 
 quick eye soon discerned the superior abilities of Thomas 
 Hobbes. It is not probable, however, that he fully appreciated 
 the powers of his disciple, or foresaw the vast influence, both 
 for good and for evil, which that most vigorous and acute of 
 human intellects was destined to exercise on the two succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 In January, 1621, Bacon had reached the zenith of his for- 
 tunes. He had just- published the Novum Organum ; and that 
 extraordinary book had drawn forth the warmest expressions of 
 admiration from the ablest men in Europe. He had obtained 
 honours of a widely different kind, but perhaps not less valued 
 by him. He had been created Baron Verulam. He had sub- 
 sequently been raised to the higher dignity of Viscount St. 
 Albans. His patent was drawn in the most flattering terms, 
 and the Prince of Wales signed it as a witness. The ceremony 
 of investiture was performed with great state at Theobalds, and 
 Buckingham condescended to be one of the chief actors. Pos- 
 terity has felt that the greatest of English philosophers could 
 derive no accession of dignity from any title which James could 
 bestow, and, in defiance of the royal letters patent, has ob- 
 stinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Viscount St. 
 Albans. 
 
 In a few weeks was signally brought to the test the value of 
 those objects for which Bacon had sullied his integrity, had 
 
LORD BACON. 67 
 
 resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obli- 
 gations 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 in- 
 tellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of 
 men. A sudden and tei'rible reverse was at hand. A Parlia- 
 ment had been summoned. After six years of silence the voice 
 of the nation was again to be heard. Only three days after the 
 pageant which was performed at Theobalds in honour of Bacon, 
 the Houses met. 
 
 Want of money had, as usual, induced the King to convoke 
 his Parliament. It may be doubted, however, whether, if he or 
 his ministers had been at all aware of the state of public feeling, 
 they would not have tried any expedient, or borne with any 
 inconvenience, rather than have ventured to face the deputies 
 of a justly exasperated nation. But they did not discern those 
 times. Indeed almost all the political blunders of James, and 
 of his more unfortunate son, arose from one great error. During 
 the fifty years which preceded the Long Parliament a great and 
 progressive change was taking place in the public mind. The 
 nature and extent of this change was not in the least understood 
 by either of the first two Kings of the House of Stuart, or by 
 any of their advisers. That the nation became more and more 
 discontented every year, that every House of Commons was 
 more unmanageable than that which had preceded it, were facts 
 which it was impossible not to perceive. But the Court could 
 not understand why these things were so. The Court could not 
 see that the English people and the English Government, though 
 they might once have been well suited to each other, were suited 
 to each other no longer ; that the nation had outgrown its old 
 institutions, was every day more uneasy under them, was 
 pressing against them, and would soon burst through them. 
 The alarming phagnomena, the existence of which no sycophant 
 
68 LORD BACON. 
 
 could deny, were ascribed to every cause except the true one. 
 " In my first Parliament," said James, " I was a novice. In my 
 next, there was a kind of beasts called undertakers," and so 
 forth. In the third Parliament he could hardly be called a 
 novice, and those beasts, the undertakers, did not exist. Yet 
 his third Parliament gave him more trouble than either the first 
 or the second. 
 
 The Parliament had no sooner met than the House of Com- 
 mons proceeded, in a temperate and respectful, but most deter- 
 mined manner, to discuss the public grievances. Their first 
 attacks were directed against those odious patents, under cover 
 of which Buckingham and his creatures had pillaged and op- 
 pressed the nation. The vigour with which these proceedings 
 were conducted spread dismay through the Court. Bucking- 
 ham thought himself in danger, and, in his alarm, had recourse 
 to an adviser who had lately acquired considerable influence 
 over him, Williams, Dean of Westminster. This person had 
 already been of great use to the favourite in a very delicate 
 matter. Buckingham had set his heart on marrying Lady 
 Catherine Manners, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Rut- 
 land. But the difficulties were great. The Earl was haughty 
 and impracticable, and the young lady was a Catholic. Williams 
 soothed the pride of the father, and found arguments which, for 
 a time at least, quieted the conscience of the daughter. For 
 these services he had been rewarded with considerable prefer- 
 ment in the Church ; and he was now rapidly rising to the 
 same place in the regard of Buckingham which had formerly 
 been occupied by Bacon. 
 
 Williams was one of those who are wiser for others than for 
 themselves. His own public life was unfortunate, and was 
 made unfortunate by his strange want of judgment and self- 
 command at several important conjunctures. But the counsel 
 which he gave on this occasion showed no want of worldly 
 wisdom. He advised the favourite to abandon all thoughts of 
 
LORD BACON. 69 
 
 defending the monopolies, to find some foreign embassy for his 
 brother Sir Edward, who was deeply implicated in the villanies 
 of Mompesson, and to leave the other offenders to the justice of 
 Parliament. Buckingham received this advice with the warmest 
 expressions of gratitude, and declared that a load had been 
 lifted from his heart. He then repaired with Williams to the 
 royal presence. They found the King engaged in earnest con- 
 sultation with Prince Charles. The plan of operations proposed 
 by the Dean was fully discussed, and approved in all its parts. 
 
 The first victims whom the Court abandoned to the ven- 
 geance of the Commons were Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir 
 Francis Michell. It was some time before Bacon began to 
 entertain any apprehensions. His talents and his address gave 
 him great influence in the house of which he had lately become 
 a member, as indeed they must have done in any assembly. 
 In the House of Commons he had many personal friends and 
 many warm admirers. But at length, about six weeks after the 
 meeting of Parliament, the storm burst. 
 
 A committee of the lower House had been appointed to in- 
 quire into the state of the Courts of Justice. On the fifteenth 
 of March the chairman of that committee, Sir Robert Philips, 
 member for Bath, reported that great abuses had been disco- 
 vered. " The person," said he, " against whom these things are 
 alleged is no less than the Lord Chancellor, a man so endued 
 with all parts, both of nature and art, as that I will say no 
 more of him, being not able to say enough." Sir Robert then 
 proceeded to state, in the most temperate manner, the nature of 
 the charges. A person of the name of Aubrey had a case 
 depending in Chancery. He had been almost ruined by law- 
 expenses, and his patience had been exhausted by the delays of 
 the court. He received a hint from some of the hangers-on of 
 the Chancellor that a present of one hundred pounds would 
 expedite matters. The poor man had not the sum required. 
 However, having found out an usurer who accommodated him 
 e 3 
 
70 LORD BACON. 
 
 with it at high interest, he carried it to York House. The 
 Chancellor took the money, and his dependents assured the 
 suitor that all would go right, Aubrey was, however, disap- 
 pointed ; for, after considerable delay, " a killing decree" was 
 pronounced against him. Another suitor of the name of Egerton 
 complained that he had been induced by two of the Chancellor's 
 jackals to make his Lordship a present of four hundred pounds, 
 and that, nevertheless, he had not been able to obtain a decree 
 in his favour. The evidence to these facts was overwhelming. 
 Bacon's friends could only entreat the House to suspend its 
 judgment, and to send up the case to the Lords, in a form less 
 offensive than an impeachment. 
 
 On the nineteenth of March the King sent a message to the 
 Commons, expressing his deep regret that so eminent a person 
 as the Chancellor should be suspected of misconduct. His 
 Majesty declared that he had no wish to screen the guilty from 
 justice, and proposed to appoint a new kind of tribunal, con- 
 sisting of eighteen commissioners, who might be chosen from 
 among the members of the two Houses, to investigate the 
 matter. The Commons were not disposed to depart from their 
 regular course of proceeding. On the same day they held a 
 conference with the Lords, and delivered in the heads of the 
 accusation against the Chancellor. At this conference Bacon 
 was not present. Overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and 
 abandoned by all those in whom he had weakly put his trust, he 
 had shut himself up in his chamber from the eyes of men. The 
 dejection of his mind soon disordered his body. Buckingham, 
 who visited him by the King's order, " found his Lordship very 
 sick and heavy." It appears from a pathetic letter which the 
 unhappy man addressed to the Peers on the day of the confer- 
 ence, that he neither expected nor wished to survive his dis- 
 grace. During several days he remained in his bed, refusing 
 to see any human being. He passionately told his attendants 
 to leave him, to forget him, never again to name his name, never 
 
LORD EACON. 71 
 
 to remember that there had been such a man in the world. In 
 the mean time fresh instances of corruption were every day 
 brought to the knowledge of Ids accusers. The number of 
 charges rapidly increased from two to twenty-three. The Lords 
 entered on the investigation of the case with laudable alacrity. 
 Some witnesses were examined at the bar of the House. A 
 select committee was appointed to take the depositions of others ; 
 and the inquiry was rapidly proceeding, when, on the twenty- 
 sixth of March, the King adjourned the Parliament for three 
 weeks. 
 
 This measure revived Bacon's hopes. He made the most of 
 his short respite. He attempted to work on the feeble mind of 
 the King. He appealed to all the strongest feelings of James, 
 to his fears, to his vanity, to his high notions of prerogative. 
 Would the Solomon of the age commit so gross an error as to 
 encourage the encroaching spirit of Parliaments ? Would God's 
 anointed, accountable to God alone, pay homage to the clamo- 
 rous multitude ? " Those," exclaimed Bacon, " who now strike 
 at the Chancellor will soon strike at the Crown. I am the first 
 sacrifice. I wish I may be the last." But all his eloquence and 
 address were employed in vain. Indeed, whatever Mr. Mon- 
 tagu may say, we are firmly convinced that it was not in the 
 King's power to save Bacon, without having recourse to mea- 
 sures which would have convulsed the realm. The Crown had 
 not sufficient influence over the Parliament to procure an 
 acquittal in so clear a case of guilt. And to dissolve a Parlia- 
 ment which is universally allowed to have been one of the best 
 Parliaments that ever sat, which had acted liberally and re- 
 spectfully towards the Sovereign, and which enjoyed in the 
 highest degree the favour of the people, only in order to stop a 
 grave, temperate, and constitutional inquiry into the personal 
 integrity of the first judge in the kingdom, would have been a 
 measure more scandalous and absurd than any of those which 
 were the ruin of the House of Stuart. Such a measure, while 
 
72 LORD BACON. 
 
 it would have been as fatal to the Chancellor'? honour as a con- 
 viction, would have endangered the very existence of the mo- 
 narchy. The King, acting by the advice of Williams, very 
 properly refused to engage in a dangerous struggle with his 
 people, for the purpose of saving from legal condemnation a 
 minister whom it was impossible to save from dishonour. He 
 advised Bacon to plead guilty, and promised to do all in his 
 power to mitigate the punishment. Mr. Montagu is exceed- 
 ingly angry with James on this account. But though we are, in 
 general, very little inclined to admire that Prince's conduct, we 
 really think that his advice was, under all the circumstances, 
 the best advice that could have been given. 
 
 On the seventeenth of April the Houses reassembled, and the 
 Lords resumed their inquiries into the abuses of the Court of 
 Chancery. On the twenty-second, Bacon addressed to the Peers 
 a letter, which the Prince of Wales condescended to deliver. 
 In this artful and pathetic composition, the Chancellor acknow- 
 ledged his guilt in guarded and general terms, and, while acknow- 
 ledging, endeavoured to palliate it. This, however, was not 
 thought sufficient by his judges. They required a more particu- 
 lar confession, and sent him a copy of the charges. On the 
 thirtieth, he delivered a paper in which he admitted, with few 
 and unimportant reservations, the truth of the accusations 
 brought against him, and threw himself entirely on the mercy 
 of his peers. " Upon advised consideration of the charges," said 
 he, " descending into my own conscience, and calling my me- 
 mory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and inge- 
 nuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce 
 all defence." 
 
 The Lords came to a resolution that the Chancellor's confession 
 appeared to be full and ingenuous, and sent a committee to inquire 
 of him whether it was really subscribed by himself. The de- 
 puties, among whom was Southampton, the common friend, 
 many years before, of Bacon and Essex, performed their duty 
 
LORD BACON. 73 
 
 with great delicacy. Indeed the agonies of such a mind and 
 the degradation of such a name might well have softened the 
 most obdurate natures. " My Lords," said Bacon, " it is my act, 
 my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to 
 a broken reed." They withdrew ; and he again retired to his 
 chamber in the deepest dejection. The next day, the sergeant- 
 at-arms and the usher of the House of Lords came to conduct 
 him to Westminster Hall, where sentence was to be pronounced. 
 But they found him so unwell that he could not leave his bed ; 
 and this excuse for his absence was readily accepted. In no 
 quarter does there appear to have been the smallest desire to add 
 to his humiliation. 
 
 The sentence was, however, severe, the more severe, no doubt, 
 because the Lords knew that it would not be executed, and that 
 they had an excellent opportunity of exhibiting, at small cost, 
 the inflexibility of their justice, and their abhorrence of corrup- 
 tion. Bacon was condemned to pay a fine of forty thousand 
 pounds, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's 
 pleasure. He was declared incapable of holding any office in 
 the State or of sitting in Parliament ; and he was banished for 
 life from the verge of the Court. In such misery and shame 
 ended that long career of worldly wisdom and worldly prosperity. 
 
 Even at this pass Mr. Montagu does not desert his hero. He 
 seems indeed to think that the attachment of an editor ought 
 to be as devoted as that of Mr. Moore's lovers ; and cannot 
 conceive what biography was made for, 
 
 " if 'tis not the same 
 Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame." 1 
 
 He assures us that Bacon was innocent, that he had the means 
 of making a perfectly satisfactory defence, that when he 
 "plainly and ingenuously confessed that he was guilty of 
 corruption," and when he afterwards solemnly affirmed that his 
 confession was " his act, bis hand, his heart." he was telling a 
 
74 LORD BACON. 
 
 great lie, and that he refrained from bringing forward proofs of 
 his innocence because he durst not disobey the King and the 
 favourite, who, for their own selfish objects, pressed him to plead 
 guilty. 
 
 Now, in the first place, there is not the smallest reason to be- 
 lieve that, if James and Buckingham had thought that Bacon 
 had a good defence, they would have prevented him from 
 making it. What conceivable motive had they for doing so? 
 Mr. Montagu perpetually repeats that it was their interest to 
 sacrifice Bacon. But he overlooks an obvious distinction. It 
 was their interest to sacrifice Bacon on the supposition of his 
 guilt, but not on the supposition of his innocence. James was 
 very properly unwilling to run the risk of pi'otecting his Chan- 
 cellor against the Parliament. But if the Chancellor had been 
 able, by force of argument, to obtain an acquittal from the 
 Parliament, we have no doubt that both the King and Villiers 
 would have heartily rejoiced. They would have rejoiced, not 
 merely on account of their friendship for Bacon, which seems, 
 however, to have been as sincere as most friendships of that 
 sort, but on selfish grounds. Nothing could have strengthened 
 the government more than such a victory. The King and the 
 favourite abandoned the Chancellor because they were unable 
 to avert his disgrace, and unwilling to share it. Mr. Montagu 
 mistakes effect for cause. He thinks that Bacon did not prove 
 his innocence because he was not supported by the Court. The 
 truth evidently is that the Court did not venture to support 
 Bacon, because he could not prove his innocence. 
 
 Again, it seems strange that Mr. Montagu should not perceive 
 that, while attempting to vindicate Bacon's reputation, he is 
 really casting on it the foulest of all aspersions. He imputes to 
 his idol a degree of meanness and depravity more loathsome 
 than judicial corruption itself. A corrupt judge may have many 
 good qualities. But a man who, to please a powerful patron, 
 solemnly declares himself guilty of corruption when he knows 
 himself to be innocent, must be a monster of servility and im- 
 
LOUD BACON. ?5 
 
 pudence. Bacon was, to say nothing of his highest claims to 
 respect, a gentleman, a nobleman, a scholar, a statesman, a man 
 of the first consideration in society, a man far advanced in 
 years. Is it possible to believe that such a man would, to gra- 
 tify any human being, irreparably ruin his own character by his 
 own act ? Imagine a grey-headed judge, full of years and 
 honours, owning with tears, with pathetic assurances of his peni- 
 tence and of his sincerity, that he has been guilty of shameful 
 mal-practices, repeatedly asseverating the truth of his con- 
 fession, subscribing it with his own hand, submitting to convic- 
 tion, receiving a humiliating sentence and acknowledging its 
 justice, and all this when he has it in his power to show that his 
 conduct has been irreproachable! The thing is incredible. But 
 if we admit it to be true, what must we think of such a man, if 
 indeed he deserves the name of man, who thinks any thing that 
 kings and minions can bestow more precious than honour, or 
 any thing that they can inflict more terrible than infamy. 
 
 Of this most disgraceful imputation we fully acquit Bacon. 
 He had no defence ; and Mr. Montagu's affectionate attempt to 
 make a defence for him has altogether failed. 
 
 The grounds on which Mr. Montagu rests the case are two ; 
 the first, that the taking of presents was usual, and, what he 
 seems to consider as the same thing, not discreditable ; the 
 second, that these presents were not taken as bribes. 
 
 Mr. Montagu brings forward many facts in support of his 
 first proposition. He is not content with showing that many 
 English judges formerly received gifts from suitors, but collects 
 similar instances from foreign nations and ancient times. He 
 goes back to the commonwealths of Greece, and attempts to 
 press into his service a line of Homer and a sentence of Plu- 
 tarch, which, we fear, will hardly serve his turn. The gold of 
 which Homer speaks was not intended to fee the judges, but was 
 paid into court for the benefit of the successful litigant ; and 
 the gratuities which Pericles, as Plutarch states, distributed 
 
76 LORD BACON. 
 
 among the members of the Athenian tribunals, were legal wages 
 paid out of the public revenue. We can supply Mr. Montagu 
 with passages much more in point. Hesiod, who, like poor 
 Aubrey, had a " killing decree " made against him in the Chan- 
 cery of Ascra, forgot decorum so far that he ventured to desig- 
 nate the learned persons who presided in that court, as fiaaiXfjac 
 c u poty ay ovq. Plutarch and Diodorus have handed down to 
 the latest ages the respectable name of Anytus, the son of An- 
 themion, the first defendant who, eluding all the safeguards which 
 the ingenuity of Solon could devise, succeeded in corrupting a 
 bench of Athenian judges. We are indeed so far from grudging 
 Mr. Montagu the aid of Greece, that we will give him Rome 
 into the bargain. We acknowledge that the honourable senators 
 who tried Verres received presents which were worth more than 
 the fee-simple of York House and Gorhambury together, and 
 that the no less honourable senators and knights who professed 
 to believe in the alibi of Clodius obtained marks still more 
 extraordinary of the esteem and gratitude of the defendant. la 
 short, we are ready to admit that, before Bacon's time, and in 
 Bacon's time, judges were in the habit of receiving gifts from 
 suitors. 
 
 But is this a defence ? We think not. The robberies of 
 Cacus and Barabbas are no apology for those of Turpin. The 
 conduct of the two men of Belial who swore away the life of 
 Naboth has never been cited as an excuse for the perjuries of 
 Oates and Dangerfield. Mr. Montagu has confounded two 
 things which it is necessary carefully to distinguish from each 
 other, if we wish to form a correct judgment of the characters 
 of men of other countries and other times. That an immoral 
 action is, in a particular society, generally considered as innocent, 
 is a good plea for an individual who, being one of that society, 
 and having adopted the notions which prevail among his neigh- 
 bours, commits that action. But the circumstance that a great 
 many people are in the habit of committing immoral actions is 
 
LORD BACON. 77 
 
 no plea at all. We should think it unjust to call St. Louis a 
 wicked man, because, in an age in which toleration was generally 
 regarded as a sin, he persecuted heretics. We should think it 
 unjust to call Cowper's friend, John Newton, a hypocrite and a 
 monster, because, at a time when the slave-trade was commonly 
 considered by the most respectable people as an innocent and 
 beneficial traffic, he went, largely provided with hymn-books and 
 hand-cuffs, on a Guinea voyage. But the circumstance that there 
 are twenty thousand thieves in London is no excuse for a fellow 
 who is caught breaking into a shop. No man is to be blamed 
 for not making discoveries in morality, for not finding out that 
 something which every body else thinks to be good is really bad. 
 But, if a man does that which he and all around him know to 
 be bad, it is no excuse for him that many others have done the 
 same. We should be ashamed of spending so much time in 
 pointing out so clear a distinction, but that Mr. Montagu seems 
 altogether to overlook it. 
 
 Now, to apply these principles to the case before us ; let Mr. 
 Montagu prove that, in Bacon's age, the practices for which 
 Bacon was punished were generally considered as innocent ; and 
 we admit that he has made out his point. But this we defy him 
 to do. That these practices were common we admit. But they 
 were common just as all wickedness to which there is strong 
 temptation always was and always will be common. They were 
 common just as theft, cheating, perjury, adultery have always 
 been common. They were common, not because people did 
 not know what was right, but because people liked to do what 
 was wrong. They were common, though prohibited by lav,-. 
 They were common, though condemned by public opinion. 
 They were common, because in that age law and public opinion 
 united had not sufficient force to restrain the greediness of 
 powerful and unprincipled magistrates. They were common, 
 as every crime will be common when the gain to which it leads 
 is great, and the chance of punishment small. But, though 
 
78 LORD BACON. 
 
 common, they were universally allowed to be altogether unjusti- 
 fiable ; they were in the highest degree odious ; and, though 
 many were guilty of them, none had the audacity publicly to 
 avow and defend them. 
 
 We could give a thousand proofs that the opinion then enter- 
 tained concerning these practices was such as we have described. 
 But we will content ourselves with calling a single witness, 
 honest Hugh Latimer. His sermons, preached more than 
 seventy years before the inquiry into Bacon's conduct, abound 
 with the sharpest invectives against those very practices of which 
 Bacon was guilty, and which, as Mr, Montagu seems to think, 
 nobody ever considered as blamable till Bacon was punished for 
 them. "We could easily fill twenty pages with the homely, but 
 just and forcible rhetoric of the brave old bishop. We shall 
 select a few passages as fair specimens, and no more than fair 
 specimens, of the rest. "Omnes diligunt munera. They all 
 love bribes. Bribery is a princely kind of thieving. They will 
 be waged by the rich, either to give sentence against the poor, 
 or to put off the poor man's cause. This is the noble theft of 
 princes and magistrates. They are bribe-takers. Nowadays 
 they call them gentle rewards. Let them leave their colouring, 
 and call them by their Christian name — bribes." And again ; 
 " Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is. 
 He had many lord deputies, lord presidents, and lieutenants 
 under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. 
 It chanced he had under him in one of his dominions a briber, 
 a gift- taker, a gratifier of rich men ; he followed gifts as fast as he 
 that followed the pudding, a handmaker in his office to make his 
 son a great man, as the old saying is : Happy is the child whose 
 father goeth to the devil. The cry of the poor widow came to 
 the emperor's ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and 
 laid his skin in the chair of judgment, that all judges that should 
 give judgment afterwards should sit in the same skin. Surely 
 it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's 
 
LORD BACON. . 79 
 
 skin. I pray God we may once see the skin in England." " I 
 am sure/' says lie in another sermon, "this is scala itiferni, 
 the right way to hell, to be covetous, to take bribes, and pervert 
 justice. If a judge should ask me the way to hell, I would show 
 him this way. First, let him be a covetous man ; let his heart 
 be poisoned with covetousness. Then let him go a little further 
 and take bribes; and, lastly, pervert judgment. Lo, here is the 
 mother, and the daughter, and the daughter's daughter. Avarice 
 is the mother: she brings forth bribe-taking, and bribe-taking 
 perverting of judgment. There lacks a fourth thing to make up 
 the mess, which, so help me God, if I were a judge, should be 
 hangum tunm, a Tyburn tippet to take with him; an it weie 
 the judge of the King's Bench, my Lord Chief Judge of Eng- 
 land, yea, an it were my Lord Chancellor himself, to Tyburn 
 with him." We will quote but one more passage. " He that 
 took the silver basin and ewer for a bribe, thinketh that it will 
 never come out. But he may now know that I know it, and I 
 know it not alone ; there be more beside me that know it. Oh, 
 briber and bribery! He was never a good man that will so 
 take bribes. Nor can I believe that he that is a briber will 
 be a good justice. It will never be merry in England till we 
 have the skins of such. For what needeth bribing where men. 
 do their things uprightly 55 " 
 
 This was not the language of a great philosopher who had 
 made new discoveries in moral and political science. It was the 
 plain talk of a plain man, who sprang from the body of the 
 people, who sympathised strongly with their wants and their 
 feelings, and who boldly uttered their opinions. It was on 
 account of the fearless way in which stout-hearted old Hugh 
 exposed the misdeeds of men in ermine tippets and gold collars, 
 that the Londoners cheered him, as he walked down the Strand 
 to preach at Whitehall, struggled for a touch of his gown,, and 
 bawled " Have at them, Father Latimer." It is plain, from 
 the passages which we have quoted, and from fifty others which 
 
80 LORD BACON. 
 
 we might quote, that, long before Bacon was born, the accepting 
 of presents by a judge was known to be a wicked and shameful 
 act, that the fine words under which it was the fashion to veil 
 such corrupt practices were even then seen through by the 
 common people, that the distinction on which Mr. Montagu in- 
 sists between compliments and bribes was even then laughed at 
 as mere colouring. There may be some oratorical exaggeration 
 in what Latimer says about the Tyburn tippet and the sign of 
 the judge's skin ; but the fact that he ventured to use such ex- 
 pressions is amply sufficient to prove that the gift-taking judges, 
 the receivers of silver basins and ewers, were regarded as such 
 pests of the commonwealth that a venerable divine might, 
 without any breach of Christian charit}^, publicly pray to God 
 for their detection and their condign punishment. 
 
 Mr. Montagu tells us, most justly, that we ought not to 
 transfer the opinions of our age to a former age. But he has him- 
 self committed a greater error than that against which he has 
 cautioned his readers. Without any evidence, nay, in the face 
 of the strongest evidence, he ascribes to the people of a former 
 age a set of opinions which no people ever held. But any hy- 
 pothesis is in his view more probable than that Bacon should 
 have been a dishonest man. We firmly believe that, if papers 
 were to be discovered which should irresistibly prove that Bacon 
 was concerned in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, Mr. 
 Montagu would tell us that, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, it was not thought improper in a man to put arsenic 
 into the broth of his friends, and that we ought to blame, not 
 Bacon, but the age in which he lived. 
 
 But why should we have recourse to any other evidence, when 
 the proceeding against Lord Bacon is itself the best evidence on 
 the subject ? When Mr. Montagu tells us that we ought not to 
 transfer the opinions of our age to Bacon's age, he appears alto- 
 gether to forget that it was by men of Bacon's own age that 
 Bacon was prosecuted, tried, convicted, and sentenced. Did 
 
LOED BACON. 81 
 
 not they know what their own opinions were ? Did not they 
 know whether they thought the taking of gifts by a judge a 
 crime or not ? Mr. Montagu complains bitterly that Bacon was 
 induced to abstain from making a defence. But, if Bacon's 
 defence resembled that which is made for him in the volume 
 before us, it would have been unnecessary to trouble the Houses 
 with it. The Lords and Commons did not want Bacon to tell 
 them the thoughts of their own hearts, to inform them that they 
 did not consider such practices as those in which they had de- 
 tected him as at all culpable. Mr. Montagu's proposition may 
 indeed be fairly stated thus : — It was very hard that Bacon's 
 contemporaries should think it wrong in him to do what they 
 did not think it wrong in him to do. Hard indeed ; and withal 
 somewhat improbable. Will any person say that the Commons 
 who impeached Bacon for taking presents, and the Lords who 
 sentenced him to fine, imprisonment, and degradation for taking 
 presents, did not know that the taking of presents was a crime? 
 Or will any person say that Bacon did not know what the whole 
 House of Commons and the whole House of Lords knew ? 
 Nobody who is not prepared to maintain one of these absurd 
 propositions can deny that Bacon committed what he knew to 
 be a crime. 
 
 It cannot be pretended that the Houses were seeking occasion 
 to ruin Bacon, and that they therefore brought him to punish- 
 ment on charges which they themselves knew to be frivolous. 
 In no quarter was there the faintest indication of a disposition 
 to treat him harshly. Through the whole proceeding there was 
 no symptom of personal animosity or of factious violence in either 
 House. Indeed, we will venture to say that no State-Trial in 
 our history is more creditable to all who took part in it, either 
 as prosecutors or judges. The decency, the gravity, the public 
 spirit, the justice moderated but not unnerved by compassion, 
 which appeared in every part of the transaction, would do honour 
 to the most respectable public men of our own times. The 
 
 F 
 
82 LORD BACON. 
 
 accusers, while they discharged their duty to their constituents 
 by bringing the misdeeds of the Chancellor to light, spoke with 
 admiration of his many eminent qualities. The Lords, while 
 condemning him, complimented him on the ingenuousness of 
 his confession, and spared him the humiliation of a public 
 appearance at their bar. So strong was the contagion of good 
 feeling that even Sir Edward Coke, for the first time in his 
 life, behaved like a gentleman. No criminal ever had more tem- 
 perate prosecutors than Bacon. No criminal ever had more 
 favourable judges. If he was convicted, it was because it was 
 impossible to acquit him without offering the grossest outrage 
 to justice and common sense. 
 
 Mr. Montagu's other argument, namely, that Bacon, though 
 he took gifts, did not take bribes, seems to us as futile as that 
 which we have considered. Indeed, we might be content to 
 leave it to be answered by the plainest man among our readers. 
 Demosthenes noticed it with contempt more than two thousand 
 years ago. Latimer, we have seen, treated this sophistry with 
 similar disdain. "Leave colouring," said he, "and call these 
 things by their Christian name, — bribes." Mr. Montagu at- 
 tempts, somewhat unfairly, we must say, to represent the pre- 
 sents which Bacon received as similar to the perquisites which 
 suitors paid to the members of the Parliaments of France. The 
 French magistrate had a legal right to his fee ; and the amount 
 of the fee was regulated by law. Whether this be a good mode 
 of remunerating judges is not the question. But what analogy 
 is there between payments of this sort and the presents which 
 Bacon received, presents which were not sanctioned by the law, 
 which were not made under- the public eye, and of which the 
 amount was regulated only by private bargain between the 
 magistrate and the suitor ? 
 
 Again, it is mere trifling to say that Bacon could not have 
 meant to act corruptly, because he employed the agency of men 
 of rank, of bishops, privy councillors, and members of Parlia- 
 
LORD BACON. 83 
 
 ment ; as if the whole history of that generation was not full of 
 the low actions of high people ; as if it was not notorious that 
 men, as exalted in rank as any of the decoys that Bacon 
 employed, had pimped for Somerset and poisoned Overbury. 
 
 But, says Mr. Montagu, these presents "were made openly 
 and with the greatest publicity." This would indeed be a strong 
 argument in favour of Bacon. But we deny the fact. In one, 
 and one only, of the cases in which Bacon was accused of cor- 
 ruptly receiving gifts, does he appear to have received a gift 
 publicly. This was in a matter depending between the Company 
 of Apothecaries and the Company of Grocers. Bacon, in his 
 Confession, insisted strongly on the circumstance that he had 
 on this occasion taken a present publicly, as a proof that he 
 had not taken it corruptly. Is it not clear that, if he had taken 
 the presents mentioned in the other charges in the same public 
 manner, he would have dwelt on this point in his answer to 
 those charges ! The fact that he insists so strongly on the 
 publicity of one particular present is of itself sufficient to prove 
 that the other presents were not publicly taken. Why he took 
 this present publicly and the rest secretly, is evident. He on 
 that occasion acted openly, because he was acting honestly. 
 He was not on that occasion sitting judicial^. He was called 
 in to effect an amicable arrangement between two parties. Both 
 were satisfied with his decision. Both joined in making him ;l 
 present in return for his trouble. Whether it was quite delicate 
 in a man of his rank to accept a present under such circum- 
 stances, maybe questioned. But there is no ground in this easy 
 for accusing him of corruption. 
 
 Unhappily, the very circumstances which prove him to have 
 been innocent in this case prove him to have been guilty on the 
 other charges. Once, and once only, he alleges that he received 
 a present publicly. The natural inference is that in all the 
 other cases mentioned in the articles against him he received 
 presents seci-etly. When we examine the single case in which 
 
 F 2 
 
84 LORD BACON. 
 
 he alleges that he received a present publicly, we find that it 
 is also the single case in which there was no gross impropriety 
 in his receiving a present. Is it then possible to doubt that his 
 reason for not receiving other presents in as public a manner 
 was that he knew that it was wrong to receive them ? 
 
 One argument still remains, plausible in appearance, but ad- 
 mitting of easy and complete refutation. The two chief com- 
 plainants, Aubrey and Egerton, had both made presents to the 
 Chancellor. But he had decided against them both. Therefore 
 he had not received those presents as bribes. " The complaints 
 of his accusers were," says Mr. Montagu, "not that the gra- 
 tuities had, but that they had not influenced Bacon's judgment, 
 as he had decided against them." 
 
 The truth is, that it is precisely in this way that an extensive 
 system of corruption is generally detected. A person who, by 
 a bribe, has procured a decree in his favour, is by no means 
 likely to come forward of his own accord as an accuser. He is 
 content. He has his quid pro quo. He is not impelled either 
 by interested or by vindictive motives to bring the transaction 
 before the public. On the contrary, he has almost as strong 
 motives for holding his tongue as the judge himself can have. 
 But when a judge practises corruption, as we fear that Bacon 
 practised it, on a large scale, and has many agents looking out 
 in different quarters for prey, it will sometimes happen that he 
 will be bribed on both sides. It will sometimes happen that he 
 will receive money from suitors who are so obviously in the 
 wrong that he cannot with decency do any thing to serve them. 
 Thus he will now and then be forced to pronounce against 
 a person from whom he has received a present ; and he makes 
 that person a deadly enemy. The hundreds who have got what 
 they paid for remain quiet. It is the two or three who have 
 paid, and have nothing to show for their money, who are noisy. 
 
 The memorable case of the Goezmans is an example of this. 
 Beaumarchais had an important suit depending before the 
 
LORD BACON. 85 
 
 Parliament of Paris. M. Goezman was the judge on whom 
 chiefly the decision depended. It was hinted to Beaumarchais 
 that Madame Goezman might be propitiated by a present. 
 He accordingly offered a purse of gold to the lady, who 
 received it graciously. There can be no doubt that, if the 
 decision of the court had been favourable to him, these things 
 would never have been known to the world. But he lost his 
 cause. Almost the whole sum which he had expended in 
 bribery was immediately refunded ; and those who had dis- 
 appointed him probably thought that he would not, for the 
 mere gratification of his malevolence, make public a transaction 
 which was discreditable to himself as well as to them. They 
 knew little of him. He soon taught them to curse the day in 
 which they had dared to trifle with a man of so revengeful and 
 turbulent a spirit, of such dauntless effrontery, and of such 
 eminent talents for controversy and satire. He compelled the 
 Parliament to put a degrading stigma on M. Goezman. He 
 drove Madame Goezman to a convent. Till it was too late to 
 pause, his excited passions did not suffer him to remember that 
 he could effect their ruin only by disclosures ruinous to himself. 
 We could give other instances. But it is needless. No person 
 well acquainted with human nature can fail to perceive that, if 
 the doctrine for which Mr. Montagu contends were admitted, 
 society would be deprived of almost the only chance which it 
 has of detecting the corrupt practices of judges. 
 
 We return to our narrative. The sentence of Bacon had 
 scarcely been pronounced when it was mitigated. He was 
 indeed sent to the Tower. But this was merely a form. In 
 two days he was set at liberty, and soon after he retired to 
 Gorhambury. His fine was speedily released by the Crown. 
 He was next suffered to present himself at Court ; and at length, 
 in 1624, the rest of his punishment was remitted. He was 
 now at liberty to resume his seat in the House of Lords, and he 
 was actually summoned to the next Parliament. But age, 
 
86 LORD BACON. 
 
 infirmity, and perhaps shame, prevented him from attending. 
 The Government allowed him a pension of twelve hundred 
 pounds a year ; and his whole annual income is estimated by 
 Mr. Montagu at two thousand five hundred pounds, a sum which 
 was probably above the average income of a nobleman of that 
 generation, and which was certainly sufficient for comfort and 
 even for splendour. Unhappily, Bacon was fond of display, and 
 unused to pay minute attention to domestic aifairs. He was 
 not easily persuaded to give up any part of the magnificence to 
 which he had been accustomed in the time of his power and 
 prosperity. No pressure of distress could induce him to part 
 with the woods of Gorhambury. " I will not," he said, " be 
 stripped of my feathers." He travelled with so splendid an 
 equipage and so large a retinue that Prince Charles, who once 
 fell in with him on the road, exclaimed with surprise, " Well ; 
 do what we can, this man scorns to go out in snuff." This 
 carelessness and ostentation reduced Bacon to frequent distress. 
 He was under the necessity of parting with York House, and of 
 taking up his residence, during his visits to London, at his old 
 chambers in Gray's Inn. He had other vexations, the exact 
 nature of which is unknown. It is evident from his will that 
 some part of his wife's conduct had greatly disturbed and 
 irritated him. 
 
 But, whatever might be his pecuniary difficulties or his 
 conjugal discomforts, the powers of his intellect still remained 
 undiminished. Those noble studies for which he had found 
 leisure in the midst of professional drudgery and of courtly 
 intrigues gave to this last sad stage of his life a dignity beyond 
 what power or titles could bestow. Impeached, convicted, 
 sentenced, driven with ignominy from the presence of his 
 Sovereign, shut out from the deliberations of his fellow nobles, 
 loaded with debt, branded with dishonour, sinking under the 
 weight of years, sorrows, and diseases, Bacon was Bacon still. 
 ' : My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson very finely, 
 
LORD BACON. 87 
 
 " was never increased towards him by his place or honours ; but 
 I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only 
 proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, 
 one of the greatest men and most worthy of admiration, that 
 had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that 
 God would give him strength; for greatness he could not 
 want." 
 
 The services which Bacon rendered to letters during the last 
 five years of his life, amidst ten thousand distractions and 
 vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the 
 many years which he had wasted, to use the words of Sir 
 Thomas Bodley, " on such study as was not worthy of such a 
 student." He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England, a 
 History of England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, 
 a body of Natural History, a Philosophical Romance. He made, 
 extensive and valuable additions to his Essays. He published 
 the inestimable Treatise De Augmentis Scientiarnm. The 
 very trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and 
 languor bore the mark of his mind. The best collection of jests 
 in the world is that which he dictated from memorj'-, without 
 referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered 
 him incapable of serious study. 
 
 The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to 
 be its martyr. It had occurred to him that snow might be used 
 with advantage for the purpose of preventing animal substances 
 from putrefying. On a very cold day, early in the spring of the 
 year 1626, he alighted from his coach near Highgate, in order 
 to try the experiment. He went into a cottage, bought a fowl, 
 and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. While thus 
 engaged he felt a sudden chill, and was soon so much indisposed 
 that it was impossible for him to return to Gray's Inn. The 
 Earl of Arundel, with whom he was well acquainted, had 
 a house at Highgate. To that house Bacon was carried. The 
 Earl was absent ; but the servants who were in charge of the 
 
 F 4 
 
88 LORD BACON. 
 
 place showed great respect and attention to the illustrious 
 guest. Here, after an illness of about a week, he expired early 
 on the morning of Easter-day, 1626. His mind appears to 
 have retained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did 
 not forget the fowl which had caused his death. In the last 
 letter that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could 
 not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention that the 
 experiment of the snow had succeeded " excellently well." 
 
 Our opinion of the moral character of this great man has 
 already been sufficiently explained. Had his life been passed 
 in literary retirement, he would, in all probability, have deserved 
 to be considered, not only as a great philosopher, but as a worthy 
 and good-natured member of society. But neither his principles 
 nor his spirit were such as could be trusted, * when strong 
 temptations were to be resisted and serious dangers to be 
 braved. 
 
 In his will he expressed with singular brevity, energy, 
 dignity, and pathos, a mournful consciousness that his actions 
 had not been such as to entitle him to the esteem of those under 
 whose observation his life had been passed, and, at the same 
 time, a proud confidence that his writings had secured for him 
 a high and permanent place among the benefactors of mankind. 
 So at least we understand those striking words which have been 
 often quoted, but which we must quote once more ; " For my 
 name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and 
 to foreign nations, and to the next age." 
 
 His confidence was just. From the day of his death his fame 
 has been constantly and steadily progressive ; and we have no 
 doubt that his name will be named with reverence to the latest 
 ages, and to the remotest ends of the civilised world. 
 
 The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to 
 have been this, that it aimed at things altogether different from 
 those which his predecessors had proposed to themselves. This 
 was his own opinion. " Finis scientiarum," says he, " a nemine 
 
LORD BACON. 89 
 
 adhuo bene positus est."* And again, "Omnium gravissimus 
 error in dcviatione ab ultimo doctrinarum fine consistit."f 
 " Nee ipsa meta/' says he elsewhere, " adhuc ulli, quod sciarn, 
 mortalium posita est et defixa."| The more carefully his works 
 are examined, the more cleai'ly, we think, it will appear that 
 this is the real clue to his whole system, and that he used means 
 different from those used by other philosophers, because he 
 wished to arrive at an end altogether different from theirs. 
 
 What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself? 
 It was, to use his own emphatic expression, " fruit." It was 
 the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of 
 human sufferings. It was " the relief of man's estate." § It was 
 " commodis humanis inservire." |] It was " efficaciter operari ad 
 sublevanda vita3 humanos incommoda."^" It was " dotare vitam 
 humanam novis inventis et copiis."*'* It was " genus humanum 
 novis operibus et potestatibus continuo dotare." ff This was 
 the object of all his speculations in every department of science, 
 in natural philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals. 
 
 Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility 
 and Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, 
 and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories 
 of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never 
 could be more than theories ; in attempts to solve insoluble 
 enigmas ; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable 
 frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office 
 of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools 
 contemned that office as degrading ; some censured it as im- 
 moral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the 
 age of Cicero and Caasar, so far forgot himself as to enumerate, 
 among the humbler blessings which mankind owed to philo- 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 81. f De Augmentis, Lib. 1. 
 
 % Cogitata et visa. § Advancement of Learning, Book 1 
 
 || Be Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 1. ^ lb., Lib. 2. Cap. 2. 
 
 ** Novum Organum, Lib. 1 . Aph. 81. ff Cogitata et visa. 
 
90 LOKD BACON. 
 
 sophy, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the intro- 
 duction of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as 
 an affront, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca 
 vehemently disclaims these insulting compliments.* Philosophy, 
 according to him, has nothing to do with teaching men to rear 
 arched roofs over their heads. The true philosopher does not 
 care whether he has an arched roof or any roof. Philosophy 
 has nothing to do with teaching men the uses of metals. She 
 teaches us to be independent of all material substances, of all 
 mechanical contrivances. The wise man lives according to 
 nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physical comforts 
 of his species, he regrets that his lot was not cast in that golden 
 age when the human race had no protection against the cold 
 but the skins of wild beasts, no screen from the sun but a 
 cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention 
 or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill, is an insult. 
 " In my own time," says Seneca, " there have been inventions 
 of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth 
 equally through all parts of a building, short-hand, which has 
 been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace 
 with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things 
 is drudgery for the lowest slaves ; philosophy lies deeper. It is 
 not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object 
 of her lessons is to form the soul. Non est, inquam, instrumen- 
 torum ad usus necessarios opifex." If the non were left out 
 this last sentence would be no bad description of the Baconian 
 philosophy, and would, indeed, very much resemble several ex- 
 pressions in the Novum Organum. " We shall next be told," 
 exclaims Seneca, " that the first shoemaker was a philosopher." 
 For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between 
 the first shoemaker, and the author of the three books On 
 Anger, we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to 
 be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from 
 * Seneca, Epist. 90. 
 
LORD BACON. 91 
 
 being wet ; and we doubt wbether Seneca ever kept any body 
 from being angry. 
 
 It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess 
 that any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to any 
 thing that could possibly promote what vulgar people would 
 consider as the well-being of mankind. He labours to clear 
 Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made th<? 
 first arch, and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived 
 the potter's wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might 
 happen ; and it may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher 
 may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philo- 
 sopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. No, 
 to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in 
 praise of poverty with two millions sterling out at usury, to 
 meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury, in 
 gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns, to rant about 
 liberty, while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedmen 
 of a tyrant, to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the 
 same pen which had just before written a defence of the murder 
 of a mother by a son. 
 
 From the cant of this philosophy, a philosophy meanly proud 
 of its own unprofitableness, it is delightful to turn to the lessons 
 of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the 
 faults of Bacon's life when we read that singularly graceful and 
 dignified passage: "Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est, 
 loquar, et in iis quae nunc edo, et in iis quae in posterum 
 meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, saepius 
 sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam ; 
 quique architectus fortasse in philosophia et scientiis esse 
 debeam, etiam operarius, et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio, cum 
 haud pauca quae omnino fieri necesse sit, alii autem ob innatam 
 superbiam subterfugiant, ipse sustineam et exsequar."* This 
 philanthropia, which, as he said in one of his most remarkable 
 * De Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 1. 
 
92 LORD BACOK. 
 
 of his early letters, " was so fixed in his mind, as it could not 
 be removed," this majestic humility, this persuasion that nothing 
 can he too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which is 
 not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the meanest, is 
 the great characteristic distinction, the essential spirit of the 
 Baconian philosophy. We trace it in all that Bacon has written 
 on Physics, on Laws, on Morals. And we conceive that from 
 this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of this system directly 
 and almost necessarily sprang. 
 
 The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which 
 we have referred tainted the whole body of the ancient philo- 
 sophy from the time of Socrates downwards, and took possession 
 of intellects with which that of Seneca cannot for a moment be 
 compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be 
 distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. 
 Bacon has dropped hints from which it may be inferred that, in 
 his opinion, the prevalence of this feeling was in a great 
 measure to be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our 
 great countryman evidently did not consider the revolution 
 which Socrates effected in philosophy as a happy event, and 
 constantly maintained that the earlier Greek speculators, De- 
 mocritus in particular, were, on the whole, superior to their 
 more celebrated successors.* 
 
 Assuredly if the tree which Socrates planted and Plato 
 watered is to be judged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the 
 noblest of trees. But if we take the homely test of Bacon, if 
 we judge of the tree by its fruits, our opinion of it may perhaps 
 be less favourable. When we sum up all the useful truths 
 which we owe to that philosophy, to what do they amount ? 
 We find, indeed, abundant proofs that some of those who culti- 
 vated it were men of the first order of intellect. We find 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 71. 79. De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. 
 De principiis, atque originibus. Cogitata et visa. Redargutio philoso 
 phiarum. 
 
LORD BACON. 93 
 
 among their writings incomparable specimens both of dialectical 
 and rhetorical art. We have no doubt that the ancient con- 
 troversies were of use, in so far as they served to exercise the 
 faculties of the disputants ; for there is no controversy so idle 
 that it may not be of use in this way. But, when we look for 
 something more, for something which adds to the comforts or 
 alleviates the calamities of the human race, we are forced to 
 own ourselves disappointed. We are forced to say with Bacon 
 that this celebrated philosophy ended in nothing but dispu- 
 tation, that it was neither a vineyard nor an olive-ground, but 
 an intricate wood of briers and thistles, from which those who 
 lost themselves in it brought back many scratches and no food.* 
 We readily acknowledge that some of the teachers of this 
 unfruitful wisdom were among the greatest men that the world 
 has ever seen. If we admit the justice of Bacon's censure, we 
 admit it with regret, similar to that which Dante felt when he 
 learned the fate of those illustrious heathens who were doomed 
 to the first circle of Hell. 
 
 " Gran duol mi prese al cuor quando lo 'ntesi, 
 Perocche gente di molto valore 
 Conobbi che 'n quel limbo eran sospesi." 
 
 But in truth the very admiration which we feel for the eminent 
 philosophers of antiquity forces us to adopt the opinion that 
 their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else 
 could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind ? 
 A pedestrian may show as much muscular vigour on a treadmill 
 as on the highway road. But on the road his vigour will 
 assuredly carry him forward ; and on the treadmill, he will not 
 advance an inch. The ancient philosophy was a treadmill, not 
 a path. It was made up of revolving questions, of controversies 
 which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for 
 having much exertion and no progress. We must acknowledge 
 that more than once, while contemplating the doctrines of the 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 73. 
 
94 LORD BACON. 
 
 Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transpa- 
 rent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been 
 tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, " Cur 
 quis non prandeat, hoc est?" "What is the highest good, whe 
 ther pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can 
 be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are 
 certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether 
 all departures from right be equally reprehensible, these, and 
 other questions of the same sort, occupied the brains, the tongues, 
 and the pens of the ablest men in the civilised world during 
 several centuries. This sort of philosophy, it is evident, could 
 not be progressive. It might indeed sharpen and invigorate 
 the minds of those who devoted themselves to it ; and so might 
 the disputes of the orthodox Lilliputians and the heretical 
 Blefuscudians about the big ends and the little ends of eggs. 
 But such disputes could add nothing to the stock of knowledge. 
 The human mind accordingly, instead of marching, merely 
 marked time. It took as much trouble as would have sufficed 
 to carry it forward ; and yet remained on the same spot. There 
 was no accumulation of truth, no heritage of truth acquired by 
 the labour of one generation and bequeathed to another, to be 
 again transmitted with large additions to a third. Where this 
 philosophy was in the time of Cicero, there it continued to be 
 in the time of Seneca, and there it continued to be in the time 
 of Favorinus. The same sects were still battling, with the same 
 unsatisfactory arguments, about the same interminable ques- 
 tions. There had been no want of ingenuity, of zeal, of in- 
 dustry. Every trace of intellectual cultivation was there, 
 except a harvest. There had been plenty of ploughing, har- 
 rowing, reaping, threshing. But the garners contained only 
 smut and stubble. 
 
 The ancient philosophers did not neglect natural science ; 
 but they did not cultivate it for the purpose of increasing the 
 power and ameliorating the condition of man. The taint of 
 
LORD BACON. 95 
 
 barrenness had spread from ethical to physical speculations. 
 Seneca wrote largely on natural philosophy, and magnified the 
 importance of that study. But why ? Not because it tended 
 to assuage suffering, to multiply the conveniences of life, to ex- 
 tend the empire of man over the material world ; but solely 
 because it tended to raise the mind above low cares, to separate 
 it from the body, to exercise its subtilty in the solution of very 
 obscure questions."* Thus natural philosophy was considered 
 in the light merely of a mental exercise. It was made sub- 
 sidiary to the art of disputation; and it consequently proved 
 altogether barren of useful discoveries. 
 
 There was one sect which, however absurd and pernicious 
 some of its doctrines may have been, ought, it should seem, to 
 have merited an exception from the general censure which 
 Bacon has pronounced on the ancient schools of wisdom. The 
 Epicurean, who referred all happiness to bodily pleasure, and 
 all evil to bodily pain, might have been expected to exert him- 
 self for the purpose of bettering his own physical condition and 
 that of his neighbours. But the thought seems never to have 
 occurred to any member of that school. Indeed their notion, 
 as reported by their great poet, was, that no more improvements 
 were to be expected in the arts which conduce to the comfort 
 of life. 
 
 " Ad victum qua; flagitat usus 
 Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata." 
 
 This contented despondency, this disposition to admire what 
 has been done, and to expect that nothing more will be done, 
 is strongly characteristic of all the schools which preceded the 
 school of Fruit and Progress. Widely as the Epicurean and 
 the Stoic differed on most points, they seem to have quite agreed 
 in their attempt for pursuits so vulgar as to be useful. The 
 philosophy of both was a garrulous, declaiming, canting, wrang- 
 
 * Seneca, Nat. Quasi, prcef. Lib. 3 
 
96 LORD BACON. 
 
 ling philosophy. Century after century they continued to 
 repeat their hostile war-cries, Virtue and Pleasure ; and in the 
 end it appeared that the Epicurean had added as little to the 
 quantity of pleasure as the Stoic to the quantity of virtue. It 
 is on the pedestal of Bacon, not on that of Epicurus, that those 
 noble lines ought to be inscribed : 
 
 " O tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen 
 Qui primus potuisti, illustrans commoda vitas." 
 
 In the fifth century Christianity had conquered Paganism, 
 and Paganism had infected Christianity. The Church was now 
 victorious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had passed 
 into her worship, the subtilties of the Academy into her creed. 
 In an evil day, though with great pomp and solemnity, — we 
 quote the language of Bacon, — was the ill-starred alliance 
 stricken between the old philosophy and the new faith.* Ques- 
 tions widely different from those which had employed the inge- 
 nuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as subtle, just as inter- 
 minable, and just as unprofitable, exercised the minds of the 
 lively and voluble Greeks. When learning began to revive in 
 the West, similar trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous intel- 
 lects of the Schoolmen. There was another sowing of the wind, 
 and another reaping of the whirlwind. The great work of im- 
 proving the condition of the human race was still considered as 
 unworthy of a man of learning. Those who undertook that 
 task, if what they effected could be readily comprehended, were 
 despised as mechanics ; if not, they were in danger of being 
 burned as conjurors. 
 
 There cannot be a stronger proof of the degree in which the 
 human mind had been misdirected than the history of the two 
 greatest events which took place during the middle ages. We 
 speak of the invention of Gunpowder and of the invention of 
 Printing. The dates of both are unknown. The authors of 
 both are unknown. Nor was this because men were too rude 
 * Cogitata et visa. 
 
LOUD BACON. 97 
 
 and ignorant to value intellectual superiority. The inventor of 
 gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with Petrarch 
 and Boccaccio. The inventor of printing was certainly con- 
 temporary with Nicholas the Fifth, with Cosmo de' Medici, 
 and with a crowd of distinguished scholars. But the human 
 mind still retained that fatal bent which it had received two 
 thousand years earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsilio 
 Ficino would not easily have been brought to believe that the 
 inventor of the printing-press had done more for mankind than 
 themselves, or than those ancient writers of whom they were 
 the enthusiastic votaries. 
 
 At length the time arrived when the barren philosophy 
 which had, during so many ages, employed the faculties of the 
 ablest of men, was destined to fall. It had worn many shapes. 
 It had mingled itself with many creeds. It had survived revo- 
 lutions in which empires, religions, languages, races, had pe- 
 rished. Driven from its ancient haunts, it had taken sanctuary 
 in that Church which it had persecuted, and had, like the daring 
 fiends of the poet, placed its seat 
 
 " next the seat of God, 
 And with its darkness dared affront his light." 
 
 Words, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all 
 the fruit of all the toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty 
 generations. But the days of this sterile exuberance were 
 numbered. 
 
 Many causes predisposed the public mind to a change. The 
 study of a great variety of ancient writers, though it did not 
 give a right direction to philosophical research, did much to- 
 wards destroying that blind reverence for authority which had 
 prevailed when Aristotle ruled alone. The rise of the Floren- 
 tine sect of Platonists, a sect to which belonged some of the 
 finest minds of the fifteenth century, was not an unimportant 
 event. The mere substitution of the Academic for the Peripa- 
 
 G 
 
98 LORD BACON. 
 
 tetic philosophy would indeed have done little good. But any 
 thing was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It 
 was something to have a choice of tyrants. " A spark of free- 
 dom," as Gibbon has justly remarked, "was produced by this 
 collision of adverse servitude." 
 
 Other, causes might be mentioned. But it is chiefly to the 
 great reformation of religion that we owe the great reformation 
 of philosophy. The alliance between the Schools and the 
 Vatican had for ages been so close that those who threw off the 
 dominion of the Vatican could not continue to recognise the 
 authority of the Schools. Most of the chiefs of the schism 
 treated the Peripatetic philosophy with contempt, and spoke of 
 Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for all the dogmas 
 of Thomas Aquinas. " Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam 
 esse in pretio," was a reproach which the defenders of the 
 Church of Rome loudly repeated, and which many of the Pro- 
 testant leaders considered as a compliment. Scarcely any text 
 was more frequently cited by the reformers than that in which 
 St. Paul cautions the Colossians not to let any man spoil them 
 by philosophy. Luther, almost at the outset of his career, went 
 so far as to declare that no man could be at once a proficient in 
 the school of Aristotle and in that of Christ. Zwingle, Bucer, 
 Peter Martyr, Calvin, held similar language. In some of the 
 Scotch universities, the Aristotelian system was discarded for 
 that of Ramus. Thus, before the birth of Bacon, the empire of 
 the scholastic philosophy had been shaken to its foundations 
 There was in the intellectual world an anarchy resembling that 
 which in the political world often follows the overthrow of an 
 old and deeply rooted government. Antiquity, prescription, 
 the sound of great names, had ceased to awe mankind. The 
 dynasty which had reigned for ages was at an end ; and the 
 vacant throne was left to be struggled for by pretenders. 
 
 The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon most 
 
LORD BACON. 99 
 
 justly observed*, to give for a time an undue importance to the 
 mere graces of style. The new breed of scholars, the Aschams 
 and Buchanans, nourished with the finest compositions of the 
 Augustan age, regarded with loathing the dry, crabbed, and 
 barbarous diction of respondents and opponents. They were 
 far less studious about the matter of their writing than about 
 the manner. They succeeded in reforming Latinity ; but they 
 never even aspired to effect a reform in philosophy. 
 
 At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to 
 say, as has often been said, that he was the first man who rose 
 up against the Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of its 
 power. The authority of that philosophy had, as we have 
 shown, received a fatal blow long before he was born. Several 
 speculators, among whom Ramus is the best known, had re- 
 cently attempted to form new sects. Bacon's own expressions 
 about the state of public opinion in the time of Luther are clear 
 and strong : " Accedebat," says he, " odium et contemptus, illis 
 ipsis temporibus ortus erga Scholasticos." And again, " Scho- 
 lasticorum doctrina despectui prorsus haberi ccepit tanquam 
 aspera et barbara."t The part which Bacon played in this 
 great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bona- 
 parte. The ancient order of things had been subverted. Some 
 bigots still cherished with devoted loyalty the remembrance of 
 the fallen monarchy, and exerted themselves to effect a restora- 
 tion. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not 
 knowing how to use their freedom, they pursued no determinate 
 course, and had found no leader capable of conducting them. 
 
 That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught 
 was essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated 
 ancient teachers, not merely in method, but also in object. Its 
 object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass 
 of mankind always have understood and always will understand 
 
 * De Augmentis, Lib. 1. 
 
 t Both these passages are in the first book of the De Augmentis. 
 G 2 
 
100 LORD BACON. 
 
 the word good. " Meditor," said Bacon, " instaurationem phi 
 losophias ejusmodi quae nihil inanis aut abstracti habeat, quaeque 
 vita? humanas conditiones in melius provehat."* 
 
 The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of 
 his predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by 
 comparing his views on some important subjects with those of 
 Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive that he did more 
 than any other person towards giving to the minds of speculative 
 men that bent which they retained till they received from 
 Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction. 
 
 It is curious to observe how differently these great men esti- 
 mated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic 
 for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience 
 of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions 
 of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important 
 advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells 
 us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and 
 raises us above the material universe. He would have his dis- 
 ciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able 
 to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shop- 
 keepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to 
 withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this 
 visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable 
 essences of things.f 
 
 Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge, 
 only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and 
 tangible world which Plato so much despised. He speaks with 
 scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, and 
 laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters 
 of curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for 
 purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to 
 leave these trifles, and to employ themselves in framing conve- 
 nient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches.^ 
 
 * Redargutio Phihsophiarum. f Plato's Republic. Book 7. 
 
 % De Augmenlis, Lib. 3. Cap. 6. 
 
LORD BACON. 101 
 
 The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study 
 of arithmetic led him to recommend also the study of mathe- 
 matics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not 
 understand him. They have practice always in view. They 
 do not know that the real use of the science is to lead men to 
 the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth.* Indeed, if 
 we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far 
 that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to 
 any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed 
 machines of extraordinary power on mathematical principles.^ 
 Plato remonstrated with his friend, and declared that this was 
 to degrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit 
 only for carpenters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, 
 he said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base 
 wants of the body. His interference was successful ; and from 
 that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was 
 considered as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher. 
 
 Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. 
 But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion 
 that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce any 
 thing useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to 
 stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of 
 those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and 
 always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as trifles 
 in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind 
 after intense application to the higher parts of his science. 
 
 The opinion of Ba-jon on this subject was diametrically 
 opposed to that of the ancient philosophers. He valued geo- 
 metry chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses, which to 
 Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkable that the longer 
 
 * Plato's Republic, Book 7. 
 
 f Plutarch, Sympos. viii. and Life of Marcellus. The machines of Ar- 
 chytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius. 
 
 o a 
 
102 LORD BACON. 
 
 Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became. When in 1605 
 he wrote the two books on the Advancement of Learning, he 
 dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed 
 mathematics ; but he at the same time admitted that the bene- 
 ficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, 
 though a collateral advantage, was " no less worthy than that 
 which was principal and intended." But it is evident that his 
 views underwent a change. When, near twenty years later, he 
 published the De Augmentis, which is the Treatise on the 
 Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully 
 corrected, he made important alterations in the part which 
 related to mathematics. He condemned with severity the high 
 pretensions of the mathematicians, " delicias et fastum inathe- 
 maticorum." Assuming the well-being of the human race to 
 be the end of knowledge *, he pronounced that mathematical 
 science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage 
 or an auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he 
 says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy ; she ought to 
 demean herself as such ; and he declares that he cannot conceive 
 by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim 
 precedence over her mistress. He predicts — a prediction 
 which would have made Plato shudder — that as more and 
 more discoveries are made in physics, there will be more and 
 more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advan- 
 tage the value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, 
 he says not one word. This omission cannot have been the 
 effect of mere inadvertence. His own treatise was before him. 
 From that treatise he deliberately expunged whatever was 
 favourable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted 
 several keen reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. 
 This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. 
 Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve 
 the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits 
 * Usui et commodis hominum consulimus. 
 
LORD BACON. 103 
 
 merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, 
 become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression 
 which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to 
 employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the specu- 
 lator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the 
 empire of man over matter.* If Bacon erred here, we must 
 acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite 
 error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, 
 like those Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to 
 preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being 
 homely. 
 
 Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences 
 which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons 
 far removed from common habits of thinking. " Shall we 
 set down astronomy," says Socrates, "among the subjects of 
 study ? " f "I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon : 
 "to know something about the seasons, the months, and the 
 years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture 
 and navigation." " It amuses me," says Socrates, " to see how 
 afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse 
 you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds, in 
 that pure and magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter 
 would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain, that the use of 
 astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to 
 assist in raising the mind to the contemplation of things which 
 are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The know- 
 ledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates 
 considers as of little value. The appearances which make the 
 sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, likes the figures which a 
 geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to 
 feeble minds. We must get beyond them ; we must neglect 
 
 * Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the Second Book of 
 the Advancement of Learning, with the De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 6. 
 f Plato's Republic, Book 7. 
 
104 LOED BACON. 
 
 them ; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent 
 of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the 
 lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very 
 nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to 
 the ox of Prometheus *, a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with 
 rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He 
 complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been se- 
 parated from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the 
 noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. 
 The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, 
 of a living astronomy |, of an astronomy which should set forth 
 the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly 
 bodies, as they really are.| 
 
 On the greatest and most useful of all human inventions, the 
 invention of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much 
 complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters 
 had operated on the human mind as the use of the go-cart in 
 learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to 
 operate on the human body. It was a support which, in his 
 opinion, soon became indispensable to those who used it, which 
 made vigorous exertion first unnecessary, and then impossible. 
 The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been 
 more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would 
 have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the 
 memory, and, by deep and assiduous meditation, to make truth 
 thoroughly their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowledge 
 is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul. A man is 
 certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when 
 he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. 
 
 * De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. 
 f Astronomia viva. 
 
 % " Qitee substantiam et motum et influxum coelestium, prout re vera sunt, 
 proponat." Compare this language with Plato's, " ra 5' iv rep ovpavu idao- 
 
LORD BACON. 105 
 
 Such a man cannot in strictness be said to know any thing. 
 He has the show without the reality of wisdom. These opinions 
 Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt.* 
 But it is evident from the context that they were his own ; and 
 so they were understood to be by Quinctilian.f Indeed they 
 are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system. 
 
 Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely dif- 
 ferent.| The powers of the memory, he observes, without the 
 help of writing, can do little towards the advancement of any 
 useful science. He acknowledges that the memory may be dis- 
 ciplined to such a point as to be able to perform very extraor- 
 dinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The 
 habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed 
 to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of 
 no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achieve- 
 ments of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of 
 rope-dancers and tumblers. " The two performances," he says, 
 " are of much the same sort. The one is an abuse of the 
 powers of the body ; the other is an abuse of the powers of the 
 mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder ; but neither is 
 entitled to our respect." 
 
 To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very dis- 
 putable advantage.§ He did not indeed object to quick cures 
 for acute disorders, or For injuries produced by accidents. But 
 the art which resists the slow sap of a chronic disease, which 
 repairs frames enervated by lust, swollen by gluttony, or in- 
 flamed by wine, which encourages sensuality by mitigating the 
 natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs existence 
 when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no 
 share of his esteem. A life protracted by medical skill he pro- 
 nounced to be a long death. The exercise of the art of medi- 
 cine ought, he said, to be tolerated, so far as that art may serve 
 
 * Plato's Phcedrus. f Quinctilian, XI. 
 
 J De Augmentis, Lib. 5. Cap. 5. § Plato's Republic, Book 3. 
 
106 LORD BACON. 
 
 to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions 
 are good. As to those who have bad constitutions, let them 
 die ; and the sooner the better. Such men are unfit for war, 
 for magistracy, for the management of their domestic affairs, 
 for severe study and speculation. If they engage in any vigor- 
 ous mental exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and ful- 
 ness of the head, all which they lay to the account of philosophy. 
 The best thing that can happen to such wretches is to have 
 done with life at once. He quotes mythical authority in sup- 
 port of this doctrine : and reminds his disciples that the prac- 
 tice of the sons of iEsculapius, as described by Homer, ex- 
 tended only to the cure of external injuries. 
 
 Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the 
 sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest 
 interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be 
 tolerated in a well regulated community. To make men perfect 
 was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make 
 imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy 
 resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun 
 rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just 
 and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philo- 
 sophy : in Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man ; it 
 was a means to an end ; and that end was to increase the 
 pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and 
 cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great 
 pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his 
 boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed 
 a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be 
 treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the 
 Timasus without a headache, was a notion which the humane 
 spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected. 
 Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a 
 philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a 
 valetudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines 
 
LORD BACON. 10? 
 
 more palatable, to invent repasts which he might enjoy, and 
 pillows on which he might sleep soundly ; and this though there 
 might not be the smallest hope that the mind of the poor 
 invalid would ever rise to the contemplation of the ideal beau- 
 tiful and the ideal good. As Plato had cited the religious 
 legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the more recondite 
 parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that 
 art by appealing to the example of Christ, and reminded men 
 that the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also 
 the physician of the body.* 
 
 When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legis- 
 lation, we find the same difference between the systems of these 
 two great men. Plato, at the commencement of the Dialogue 
 on Laws, lays it down as a fundamental principle that the end 
 of legislation is to make men virtuous. It is unnecessary to 
 point out the extravagant conclusions to which such a propo- 
 sition leads. Bacon well knew to how great an extent the 
 happiness of every society must depend on the virtue of its 
 members ; and he also knew what legislators can and what they 
 cannot do for the purpose of promoting virtue. The view 
 which he has given of the end of legislation, and of the prin- 
 cipal means for the attainment of that end, has always seemed 
 to us eminently happy, even among the many very happy pas- 
 sages of the same kind with which his works abound. " Finis 
 et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quern jussiones et sanc- 
 tiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam ut cives feliciter 
 degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus 
 honesti, armis adversus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio 
 adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et ma- 
 gistratibus obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes 
 fuerint."f The end is the well-being of the people. The 
 means are the imparting of moral and religious education ; the 
 
 * De Augmentis, Lib. 4. Cap. 2. 
 
 f De Augmentis, Lib. 8. Cap. 3. Aph. 5. 
 
108 LORD BACON. 
 
 providing of every thing necessary for defence against foreign 
 enemies ; the maintaining of internal order ; the establishing 
 of a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under which 
 wealth may he rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed. 
 
 Even with respect to the form in which laws ought to be 
 drawn, there is a remarkable difference of opinion between the 
 Greek and the Englishman. Plato thought a preamble es- 
 sential ; Bacon though it mischievous. Each was consistent 
 with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of the 
 people as the end of legislation, justly inferred that a law which 
 commanded and threatened, but which neither convinced the 
 reason, nor touched the heart, must be a most imperfect law. 
 He was not content with deterring from theft a man who still 
 continued to be a thief at heart, with restraining a son who 
 hated his mother from beating his mother. The only obedience 
 on which he set much value was the obedience which an en- 
 lightened understanding yields to reason, and which a virtuous 
 disposition yields to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have 
 believed that, by prefixing to every law an eloquent and pathetic 
 exhortation, he should, to a great extent, render penal enact- 
 ments superfluous. Bacon entertained no such romantic hopes ; 
 and he well knew the practical inconveniences of the course 
 which Plato recommended. " Neque nobis," says he, " prologi 
 legum qui inepti olim habiti sunt, et leges introducunt dispu- 
 tantes non jubentes, utique placerent, si priscos mores ferre 
 possemus. . . . Quantum fieri potest prologi evitentur, et lex 
 incipiat a jussione."* 
 
 Each of the great men whom we have compared intended to 
 illustrate his system by a philosophical romance ; and each left 
 his romance imperfect. Had Plato lived to finish the Critias, a 
 comparison between that noble fiction and the New Atlantis 
 would probably have furnished us with still more striking 
 instances than any which we have given. It is amusing to 
 
 * Be Augmentis, Lib. 8, Cap. 3. Aph. 69. 
 
LOKD BACON. 109 
 
 think with what horror he would have seen such an institution 
 as Solomon's House rising in his republic: with what vehe- 
 mence he would have ordered the brewhouses, the perfume - 
 houses, and the dispensatories to be pulled down ; and with 
 what inexorable rigour he would have driven beyond the 
 frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merchants of Light and 
 Depredators, Lamps and Pioneers. 
 
 To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the 
 Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of 
 the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he 
 requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic 
 philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of 
 the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The 
 former aim was noble ; but the latter was attainable. Plato 
 drew a good bow ; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the 
 stars ; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or 
 skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed fol- 
 lowed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing. 
 
 " Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo, 
 Signavitque viam flammis, tenuesque recessit 
 Consumta in ■ 
 
 Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, 
 and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy 
 of Plato began in words and ended in words, noble words 
 indeed, words such as were to be expected from the finest of 
 human intellects exercising boundless dominion over the finest 
 of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in 
 observations and ended in arts. 
 
 The boast of the ancient philosophers was that their doctrine 
 formed the minds of men to a high degree of wisdom and 
 virtue. This was indeed the only practical good which the 
 most celebrated of those teachers even pretended to effect ; and 
 undoubtedly, if they had effected this, they would have deserved 
 far higher praise than if they had discovered the most salutary 
 
110 LOED BACON. 
 
 medicines or constructed the most powerful machines. But 
 the truth is that, in those very matters in which alone they 
 professed to do any good to mankind, in those very matters 
 for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests 
 of mankind, they did nothing, or worse than nothing. They 
 promised what was impracticable ; they despised what was 
 practicable ; they filled the world with long words and long 
 beards ; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they 
 found it. 
 
 An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. 
 The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent 
 promises of impossibilities. The wise man of the Stoics would, 
 no doubt, be a grander object than a steam-engine. But there 
 are steam-engines. And the wise man of the Stoics is yet 
 to be born. A philosophy which should enable a man to feel 
 perfectly happy while in agonies of pain would be better than 
 a philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that there 
 are remedies which will assuage pain ; and we know that 
 the ancient sages liked the toothache just as little as their 
 neighbours. A philosophy which should extinguish cupidity 
 would be better than a philosophy which should devise laws 
 for the security of property. But it is possible to make laws 
 which shall, to a very great extent, secure property. And we 
 do not understand how any motives which the ancient philo- 
 sophy furnished could extinguish cupidity. We know indeed 
 that the philosophers were no better than other men. From 
 the testimony of friends as well as of foes, from the confessions 
 of Epictetus and Seneca, as well as from the sneers of Lucian 
 and the fierce invectives of Juvenal, it is plain that these 
 teachers of virtue had all the vices of their neighbours, with 
 the additional vice of hypocrisy. Some people may think the 
 object of the Baconian philosophy a low object, but they 
 cannot deny that, high or low, it has been attained. They 
 cannot deny that every year makes an addition to what Bacon 
 
LORD BACON. Ill 
 
 called " fruit." They cannot deny that mankind have made,, 
 and are making, great and constant progress in the road which 
 he pointed out to them. Was there any such progressive 
 movement among the ancient philosophers? After they had 
 been declaiming eight hundred years, had they made the world 
 better than when they began ? Our belief is that, among the 
 philosophers themselves, instead of a progressive improvement 
 there was a progressive degeneracy. An abject superstition 
 which Democritus or Anaxagoras would have rejected with 
 scorn added the last disgrace to- the long dotage of the Stoic 
 and Platonic schools. Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate 
 which are so delightful and interesting in a child shock and 
 disgust us in an aged paralytic ; and in the same way, those 
 wild and mythological fictions which charm us, when we hear 
 them lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed 
 sensation of pity and loathing, when mumbled by Greek 
 philosophy in its old age. We know that guns, cutlery, spy- 
 glasses, clocks, are better in our time than they were in the 
 time of our fathers, and were better in the time of our fathers 
 than they were in the time of our grandfathers. We might, 
 therefore, be inclined to think that, when a philosophy which 
 boasted that its object was the elevation and purification of 
 the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office 
 of ministering to the comforts of the body, had flourished in 
 the highest honour during many hundreds of years, a vast 
 moral amelioration must have taken place. Was it so ? Look 
 at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the Christian 
 era and four centuries after that era. Compare the men 
 whom those schools formed at those two periods. Compare 
 Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericles and Julian. This 
 philosophy confessed, nay boasted, that for every end but one 
 it was useless. Had it attained that one end ? 
 
 Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of 
 Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the 
 
112 LORD BACON. 
 
 Portico, and lingered round the ancient, plane-trees, to show 
 their title to public veneration : suppose that he had said ; 
 " A thousand years have elapsed since, in this famous city, 
 Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias ; during those thousand 
 years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation 
 has been employed in constant efforts to bring to perfection 
 the philosophy which you teach ; that philosophy has been 
 munificently patronised by the powerful ; its professors have 
 been held in the highest esteem by the public ; it has drawn to 
 itself almost all the sap and vigour of the human intellect : 
 and what has it effected ? What profitable truth has it taught 
 us which we should not equally have known without it ? 
 What has it enabled us to do which we should not have been 
 equally able to do without it?'' Such questions, we suspect, 
 would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower 
 of Bacon what the new philosophy, as it was called in the 
 time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and 
 his answer is ready ; " It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated 
 pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility 
 of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; it has 
 furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers 
 and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it 
 has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; 
 it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day ; it 
 has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied 
 the power of the human muscles : it has accelerated motion ; it 
 has annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, corre- 
 spondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has 
 enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into 
 the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the 
 earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without 
 horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour 
 against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of 
 its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests. 
 
LOED BACON. 113 
 
 which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is 
 progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal 
 to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow." 
 
 Great and various as the powers of Bacon were, he owes 
 his wide and durable fame chiefly to this, that all those powers 
 received their direction from common sense. His love of the 
 vulgar useful, his strong sympathy with the popular notions of 
 good and evil, and the openness with which he avowed that sym- 
 pathy, are the secret of his influence. There was in his system 
 no cant, no illusion. He had no anointing for broken bones, no 
 fine theories de Jinibus, no arguments to persuade men out of 
 their senses. He knew that men, and philosophers as well as 
 other men, do actually love life, health, comfort, honour, security, 
 the society of friends, and do actually dislike death, sickness, 
 pain, poverty, disgrace, danger, separation from those to whom 
 they are attached. He knew that religion, though it often re- 
 gulates and moderates these feelings, seldom eradicates them ; 
 nor did he think it desirable for mankind that they should be 
 eradicated. The plan of eradicating them by conceits like those 
 of Seneca, or syllogisms like those of Chrysippus, was too pre- 
 posterous to be for a moment entertained by a mind like his. 
 He did not understand what wisdom there could be in changing 
 names where it was impossible to change things ; in denying 
 that blindness, hunger, the gout, the rack, were evils, and calling 
 them dTrowporiyfisva ; in refusing to acknowledge that health, 
 safety, plenty, were good things, and dubbing them by the name 
 of ddta.<popa. In his opinions on all these subjects, he was not 
 a Stoic, nor an Epicurean, nor an Academic, but what would 
 have been called by Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics a mere 
 Idiwrrfc, a mere common man. And it was precisely because he 
 was so that his name makes so great an era in the history of the 
 world. It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile 
 high. It was because, in order to lay his foundations, he went 
 down into those parts of human nature which lie low, but which 
 
114 LORD BACON. 
 
 are not liable to change, that the fabric which he reared has 
 risen to so stately an elevation, and stands with such immov- 
 able strength. 
 
 We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might 
 be written, in which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of 
 Bacon should be introduced as fellow travellers. They come 
 to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage, and 
 find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, 
 mothers weeping in terror over their children. The Stoic as- 
 sures the dismayed population that there is nothing bad in the 
 small-pox, and that to a wise man disease, deformity, death, the 
 loss of friends are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet 
 and begins to vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great 
 dismay. An explosion of noisome vapours has just killed many 
 of those who were at work ; and the survivors are afraid to ven- 
 ture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an acci- 
 dent is nothing but a mere dwoTrporiyiJ-tvoy. The Baconian, who 
 has no such fine word at his command, contents himself with 
 devising a safety-lamp. They find a shipwrecked merchant 
 wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable 
 cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from 
 opulence to beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happi- 
 ness in things which lie without himself, and repeats the whole 
 chapter of Epictetus 7rpoe tovq t)]v inroplav hehoiKoraQ. The 
 Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns 
 ■with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be 
 easy to multiply illustrations of the difference between the phi- 
 losophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruit, the philosophy of 
 words and the philosophy of works. 
 
 Bacon has been accused of overrating the importance of those 
 sciences which minister to the physical well-being of man, and 
 of underrating the importance of moral philosophy ; and it can- 
 not be denied that persons who read the Novum Organum and 
 the De Augmentis, without adverting to the circumstances under 
 which those works were written, will find much that may seem 
 
LORD BACON. 115 
 
 vo countenance the accusation. It is certain, however, that, 
 though in practice he often went very wrong, and though, as 
 his historical work and his essays prove, he did not hold, even 
 in theory, very strict opinions on points of political morality, he 
 was far too wise a man not to know how much our well-being 
 depends on the regulation of our minds. The world for which 
 he wished was not, as some people seem to imagine, a world 
 of water-wheels, power-looms, steam-carriages, sensualists, and 
 knaves. He would have been as ready as Zeno himself to main- 
 tain that no bodily comforts which could be devised by the skill 
 and labour of a hundred generations would give happiness to a 
 man whose mind was under the tyranny of licentious appetite, 
 of envy, of hatred, or of fear. If he sometimes appeared to 
 ascribe importance too exclusively to the arts which increase 
 the outward comforts of our species, the reason is plain. Those 
 arts had been most unduly depreciated. They had been repre- 
 sented as unworthy of the attention of a man of liberal educa- 
 tion. " Cogitavit," says Bacon of himself, " earn esse opinionem 
 sive asstimationem humidam et damnosam, minui nempe majes- 
 tatem mentis humanas, si in experiments et rebus particularibus, 
 sensui subjectis, et in materia terminatis, diu ac multum ver- 
 setur : prassertiru cum hujusmodi res ad inquirendum laboriosas, 
 ad meditandum ignobiles, ad discendum asperse, ad practicam 
 illiberales, numero infmitae, et subtilitate pusillre videri soleant, 
 et ob hujusmodi conditiones, gloria? artium minus sint accom- 
 modataa."* This opinion seemed to him "omnia in familia 
 humana turbasse." It had undoubtedly caused many arts which 
 were of the greatest utility, and which were susceptible of the 
 greatest improvements, to be neglected by speculators, and aban- 
 doned to joiners, masons, smiths, weavers, apothecaries. It was 
 
 * Cogitata et visa. The expression opiiiio humida may surprise a reader not 
 accustomed to Bacon's style. The allusion is to the maxim of Heraclitus the 
 obscure ; " Dry light is the best." By dry light, Bacon understood the light 
 of the intellect, no: obscured by the mists of passion, interest, or prejudice. 
 
116 LORD BACON. 
 
 necessary to assert the dignity of those arts, to bring them pro- 
 minently forward, to proclaim that, as they have a most serious 
 effect on human happiness, they are not unworthy of the atten- 
 tion of the highest human intellects. Again, it was by illustra- 
 tions drawn from these arts that Bacon could most easily illus- 
 trate his principles. It was by improvements effected in these 
 arts that the soundness of his principles could be most speedily 
 and decisively brought to the test, and made manifest to common 
 understandings. He acted like a wise commander who thins 
 every other part of his line to strengthen a point where the 
 enemy is attacking with peculiar fury, and on the fate of which 
 the event of the battle seems likely to depend. In the Novum 
 Organum, however, he distinctly and most truly declares that 
 his philosophy is no less a Moral than a Natural Philosophy, 
 that, though his illustrations are drawn from physical science, 
 the principles which those illustrations are intended to explain 
 are just as applicable to ethical and political inquiries as to 
 inquiries into the nature of heat and vegetation.* 
 
 He frequently treated of moral subjects ; and he brought to 
 those subjects that spirit which was the essence of his whole 
 system. He has left us many admirable practical observations 
 on what he somewhat quaintly called the Georgics of the mind, 
 on the mental cultui-e which tends to produce good dispositions. 
 Some persons, he said, might accuse him of spending labour on 
 a matter so simple that his predecessors had passed it by with 
 contempt. He desired such persons to remember that he had 
 from the first announced the objects of his search to be not the 
 splendid and the surprising, but the useful and the true, not 
 the deluding dreams which go forth through the shining portal 
 of ivory, but the humbler realities of the gate of horn.f 
 
 True to this principle, he indulged in no rants about the fit- 
 ness of things, the all-sufficiency of virtue, and the dignity of 
 human nature. He dealt not at all in resounding nothings, 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 127. f De Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 3. 
 
LORD BACON. 117 
 
 such as those with which Bolingbroke pretended to comfort 
 himself in exile, and in which Cicero vainly sought consolation 
 after the loss of Tullia. The casuistical subtilties which occu 
 pied the attention of the keenest spirits of his age had, it should 
 seem, no attractions for him. The doctors whom Escobar after- 
 wards compared to the four beasts and the four-and-twenty 
 elders in the Apocalypse Bacon dismissed with most contemp- 
 tuous brevity. ' ; Inanes plerumque evadunt et futiles."* Nor 
 did he ever meddle with those enigmas which have puzzled 
 hundreds of generations, and will puzzle hundreds more. He 
 said nothing about the grounds of moral obligation, or the free- 
 dom of the human will. He had no inclination to employ him- 
 self in labours resembling those of the damned in the Grecian 
 Tartarus, to spin for ever on the same wheel round the same 
 pivot, to gape for ever after the same deluding clusters, to pour 
 water for ever into the same bottomless buckets, to pace for ever 
 to and fro on the same wearisome path after the same recoiling 
 stone. He exhorted his disciples to prosecute researches of a 
 very different description, to consider moral science as a prac- 
 tical science, a science of which the object was to cure the dis- 
 eases and perturbations of the mind, and which could be improved 
 only by a method analogous to that which has improved medi- 
 cine and surgery. Moral philosophers ought, he said, to set 
 themselves vigorously to work for the purpose of discovering 
 what are the actual effects produced on the human character by 
 particular modes of education, by the indulgence of particular 
 habits, by the study of particular books, by society, by emula- 
 tion, by imitation. Then we might hope to find out what mode 
 of training was most likely to preserve and restore moral health.f 
 What he was as a natural philosopher and a moral philosopher, 
 that he was also as a theologian. He was, we are convinced, a 
 sincere believer in the divine authority of the Christian revela- 
 
 8 * Be Augmcntis, Lib. 7. Cap. 2. f lb., Lib. 7. Cap. 3. 
 
 h S 
 
118 LORD BACON 
 
 tion. Nothing can be found in his writings, or in any other 
 writings, more eloquent and pathetic than some passages which 
 were apparently written under the influence of strong devotional 
 feeling. He loved to dwell on the power of the Christian reli- 
 gion to effect, much that the ancient philosophers could only 
 promise. He loved to consider that religion as the bond of 
 charity, the curb of evil passions, the consolation of the wretched, 
 the support of the timid, the hope of the dying. But contro- 
 versies on speculative points of theology seem to have engaged 
 scarcely any portion of his attention. In what he wrote on 
 Church Government he showed, as far as he dared, a tolerant 
 and charitable spirit. He troubled himself not at all about Ho- 
 moousians and Komoiousians, Monothelites and Nestorians. 
 He lived in an age in which disputes on the most subtle points 
 of divinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe, and 
 nowhere more than in England. He was placed in the very 
 thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod 
 of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with 
 talk about election, reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet 
 we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be 
 inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. "While 
 the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious philo- 
 sophy and a disputatious theology, the Baconian school, like 
 Alworthy seated between Square and Thwackum, preserved a 
 calm neutrality, half scornful, half benevolent, and, content with 
 adding to the sum of practical good, left the war of words to 
 those who liked it. 
 
 We have dwelt long on the end of the Baconian philosophy, 
 because from this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of that 
 philosophy necessarily arose. Indeed, scarcely any person who 
 proposed to himself the same end with Bacon could fail to hit 
 upon the same means. 
 
 The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this, that he 
 invented a new method of arriving at truth, which method is 
 
LORD BACON. 119 
 
 called Induction, and that he detected some fallacy in the syllo- 
 gistic reasoning which had been in vogue before his time. This 
 notion is about as well-founded as that of the people who, in the 
 middle ages, imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many 
 who are far too well informed to talk such extravagant nonsense 
 entertain what we think incorrect notions as to what Bacon 
 really effected in this matter. 
 
 The inductive method has been practised ever since the be- 
 ginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly 
 practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless 
 schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads 
 the clown to the conclusion that if he sows barley he shall not 
 reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns that a cloudy 
 day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, 
 is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and 
 none from his father. 
 
 Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive 
 method ; but it is not true that he was the first person who 
 correctly analysed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle 
 had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that 
 syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery 
 of any new principle, had shown that such discoveries must 
 be made by induction, and by induction alone, and had given 
 the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with 
 great perspicuity and precision. 
 
 Again, we are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to 
 that analysis of the inductive method which Bacon has given in 
 the second book of the Novum Organum. It is indeed an elabo- 
 rate and correct analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we 
 are all doing from morning to night, and which we continue to do 
 even in our dreams. A plain man finds his stomach out of order. 
 He never heard Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds in the 
 strictest conformity with the rules laid down in the second book 
 of the Novum Organum,, and satisfies himself that minced pies 
 
120 LORD BACON. 
 
 have done the mischief. " I ate minced pies on Monday and 
 Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night." 
 This is the comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum convenien- 
 tium. " I did not eat any on Tuesday and Friday, and I was 
 quite well." This is the comparentia instantiarum in proximo 
 quae natura data privantur. " I ate very sparingly of them on 
 Sunday, and was very slightly indisposed in the evening. But 
 on Christmas day I almost dined on them, and was so ill that I 
 was in great danger." This is the comparentia, instantiarum 
 secundum magis et minus. " It cannot have been the brandy 
 which I took with them. For I have drunk brandy daily for 
 years without being the worse for it." This is the rejectio na- 
 turarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by 
 Bacon the Vindemiatio, and pronounces that minced pies do not 
 agree with him. 
 
 We repeat that we dispute neither the ingenuity nor the ac- 
 curacy of the theory contained in the second book of the Novum 
 Organum; but we think that Bacon greatly overrated its utility. 
 We conceive that the inductive process, like many other pro- 
 cesses, is not likely to be better performed merely because men 
 know how they perform it. William Tell would not have been 
 one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that 
 his arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the 
 attraction of the earth. Captain Barclay would not have been 
 more likely to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, if he 
 had known the place and name of every muscle in his legs. 
 Monsieur Jourdain probably did not produce D and F more 
 correctly after he had been apprised that D is pronounced by 
 touching the teeth with the end of the tongue ; and F by putting 
 the upper teeth on the lower lip. We cannot perceive that the 
 study of Grammar makes the smallest difference in the speech of 
 people who have always lived in good society. Not one Londoner 
 in ten thousand can lay down the rules for the proper use of 
 will and shall. Yet not one Londoner in a million ever mis- 
 
LORD BACON. 121 
 
 places his will and shall. Doctor Robertson could, undoubtedly, 
 have written a luminous dissertation on the use of those words. 
 Yet, even in his latest work, he sometimes misplaced them ludi- 
 crously. No man uses figures of speech with more propriety 
 because he knows that one figure is called a- metonymy and 
 another a synecdoche. A drayman in a passion calls out, 
 " You are a pretty fellow," without suspecting that he is utter- 
 ing irony, and that irony is one of the four primary tropes. 
 The old systems of rhetoric were never regarded by the most 
 experienced and discerning judges as of any use for the purpose, 
 of forming an orator. "Ego banc vim intelligo," said Cicero, 
 "esse in prreceptis omnibus, non ut ea secuti oratores eloquen- 
 tiae laudem sint adepti, sed qua? sua sponte homines eloquentes 
 facerent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse ; sic esse non 
 eloquentiam ex artificio, sed artificium ex eloquentia natum." 
 "We must own that we entertain the same opinion concerning 
 the study of Logic which Cicero entertained concerning the 
 study of Rhetoric. A man of sense syllogizes in celarent and 
 cesare all day long without suspecting it ; and, though he may 
 not know what an ignoratio elenchi is, has no difficulty in ex- 
 posing it whenever he falls in with it ; which is likely to be as 
 often as he falls in with a Reverend Master of Arts nourished 
 on mode and figure in the cloisters of Oxford. Considered 
 merely as an intellectual feat, the Organum of Aristotle can 
 scarcely be admired too highly. But the more we compare in- 
 dividual with individual, school with school, nation with nation, 
 generation with generation, the more do we lean to the opinion 
 that the knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency 
 whatever to make men good reasoners. 
 
 What Aristotle did for the syllogistic process Bacon has, in 
 the second book of the Novum Organum, done for the inductive 
 process ; that is to say, he has analysed it well. His rules are 
 quite proper; but we do not need them, because they are drawn 
 from our own constant practice. 
 
122 LORD BACON. 
 
 But, though every body is constantly performing the process 
 described in the second book of the Novum Organum, some 
 men perform it well, and some perform it ill. Some are led by 
 it to truth, and some to error. It led Franklin to discover the 
 nature of lighting. It led thousands, who had less brains than 
 Franklin, to believe in animal magnetism. But this was not 
 because Franklin went through the process described by Bacon, 
 and the dupes of Mesmer through a different process. The 
 comparentia: and rejectiones of which we have given examples 
 will be found in the most unsound inductions. We have heard 
 that an eminent judge of the last generation was in the habit of 
 jocosely propounding after dinner a theory, that the cause of 
 the prevalence of Jacobinism was the practice of bearing three 
 names. He quoted on the one side Charles James Fox, Richard 
 Brinsley Sheridan, John Home Tooke, John Philpot Curran, 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Theobald Wolfe Tone. These were 
 instantioe conv ententes. He then proceeded to cite instances 
 absentia in proximo, William Pitt, John Scott, William Wind- 
 ham, Samuel Horsley, Henry Dundas, Edmund Burke. He 
 might have gone on to instances secundum magis et minus. 
 The practice of giving children three names has been for some 
 time a growing practice, and Jacobinism has also been growing. 
 The practice of giving children three names is more common in 
 America than in England. In England we still have a King 
 and a House of Lords ; but the Americans are republicans. 
 The rejectiones are obvious. Burke and Theobald Wolfe Tone 
 are both Irishmen ; therefore the being an Irishman is not the 
 cause of Jacobinism. Horsley and Home Tooke are both 
 clergymen ; therefore being a clergyman is not the cause of Jacob- 
 inism. Fox and Windham were both educated at Oxford ; there- 
 fore the being educated at Oxford is not the cause of Jacobinism. 
 Pitt and Home Tooke were both educated at Cambridge; there- 
 fore the being educated at Cambridge is not the cause of Jacob- 
 inism. In this way, our inductive philosopher arrives at what 
 
LOKD BACON. 123 
 
 Bacon calls the Vintage, and pronounces that the having three 
 names is the cause of Jacobinism. 
 
 Here is an induction corresponding with Bacon's analysis, 
 and ending in a monstrous absurdity. In what then does this 
 induction differ from the induction which leads us to the con- 
 clusion that the presence of the sun is the cause of our having 
 more light by day than by night ? The difference evidently is 
 not in the kind of instances, but in the number of instances ; 
 that is to say, the difference is not in that part of the process 
 for which Bacon has give precise rules, but in a circumstance 
 for which no precise rule can possibly be given. If the learned 
 author of the theory about Jacobinism had enlarged either oi 
 his tables a little, his system would have been destroyed. The 
 names of Tom Paine and "William Wyndham Grenvilk would 
 have been sufficient to do the work. 
 
 It appears to us, then, that the difference between a sound 
 and unsound induction does not lie in this, that the author of 
 the sound induction goes through the process analysed in the 
 second book of the Novum Organum, and the author of the 
 unsound induction through a different process. They both per- 
 form the same process. But one performs it foolishly or care- 
 lessly ; the other performs it with patience, attention, sagacity, 
 and judgment. Now precepts can do little towards making 
 men patient and attentive, and still less towards making them 
 sagacious and judicious. It is very well to tell men to be on 
 their guard against prejudices, not to believe facts on slight evi- 
 dence, not to be content with a scanty collection of facts, to put 
 out of their minds the idola which Bacon has so finely described. 
 But these rules are too general to be of much practical use. 
 The question is, "What is a prejudice ? How long does the in- 
 credulity with which I hear a new theory propounded continue 
 to be a wise and salutary incredulity ? When does it become 
 an idolum specus, the unreasonable pertinacity of a too sceptical 
 mind ? "What is slight evidence ? "What collection of facts is 
 
124 LORD BACON. 
 
 scanty ? Will ten instances do, or fifty, or a hundred ? In 
 how many months would the first human beings who settled on 
 the shores of the ocean have been justified in believing that the 
 moon had an influence on the tides? After how many experi- 
 ments would Jenner have been justified in believing that he 
 had discovered a safeguard against the small-pox ? These are 
 questions to which it would be most desirable to have a precise 
 answer ; but, unhappily, they are questions to which no precise 
 answer can be returned. 
 
 We think then that it is possible to lay down accurate rules, 
 as Bacon has done, for the performing of that part of the induc- 
 tive process which all men perform alike ; but that these rules, 
 though accurate, are not wanted, because in truth they only tell 
 us to do what we are all doing. We think that it is impossible 
 to lay down any precise rule for the performing of that part of 
 the inductive process which a great experimental philosopher 
 performs in one way, and a superstitious old woman in another. 
 
 On this subject, we think, Bacon was in an errors He cer- 
 tainly attributed to his rules a value which did not belong to 
 them. He went so far as to say, that, if his method of making 
 discoveries were adopted, little would depend on the degree of 
 force or acuteness of any intellect ; that all minds would be re- 
 duced to one level ; that his philosophy resembled a compass or 
 a rule which equalises all hands, and enables the most unprac- 
 tised person to draw a more correct circle or line than the best 
 draftsmen can produce without such aid.* This really seems to 
 us as extravagant as it would have been in Lindley Murray to 
 announce that every body who should learn his Grammar would 
 write as good English as Dryden, or in that very able writer, the- 
 Archbishop of Dublin, to promise that all the readers of his 
 Logic would reason like Chillingworth, and that all the readers 
 of his Bhetoric would speak like Burke. That Bacon was al- 
 
 * Novum Organum, Prasf. and Lib. 1. Aph. 122. 
 
LORD BACON. 125 
 
 together mistaken as to this point will now hardly be disputed. 
 His philosophy has flourished during two hundred years, and 
 has produced none of this levelling. The interval between a 
 man of talents and a dunce is as wide as ever; and is never 
 more clearly discernible than when they engage in researches 
 which require the constant use of induction. 
 
 It will be seen that we do not consider Bacon's ingenious 
 analysis of the inductive method as a very useful performance. 
 Bacon was not, as we have already said, the inventor of the 
 inductive method. He was not even the person who first 
 analysed the inductive method correctly, though he undoubtedly 
 analysed it more minutely than any who preceded him. He 
 was not the person who first showed that by the inductive 
 method alone new truth could be discovered. But he was the 
 person who first turned the minds of speculative men, long 
 occupied in verbal disputes, to the discovery of new and useful 
 truth; and, by doing so, he at once gave to the inductive 
 method an importance and dignity which had never before 
 belonged to it. He was not the maker of that road ; he waa 
 not the discoverer of that road ; he was not the person who first 
 surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who 
 first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine oi 
 wealth, which had been utterly neglected, and which was 
 accessible by that road alone. By doing so he caused that road, 
 which had previously been trodden only by peasants and 
 higglers, to be frequented by a higher class of travellers. 
 
 That which was eminently his own in his system was the end 
 which he proposed to himself. The end being given, the means, 
 as it appears to us, could not well be mistaken. If others had 
 aimed at the same object with Bacon, we hold it to be certain 
 that they would have employed the same method with Bacon. 
 It would have been hard to convince Seneca that the inventing 
 of a safety-lamp was an employment worthy of a philosopher. 
 It would have been hard to persuade Thomas Aquinas to descend 
 
126 LORD BACON. 
 
 from the making of syllogisms to the making of gunpowder. 
 But Seneca would never have doubted for a moment that it was 
 only by means of a series of experiments that a safety-lamp 
 could be invented. Thomas Aquinas would never have thought 
 that his barbara and baralipton would enable him to ascertain 
 the proportion which charcoal ought to bear to saltpetre in 
 a pound of gunpowder. Neither common sense nor Aristotle 
 would have suffered him to fall into such an absurdity. 
 
 By stimulating men to the discovery of new truth, Bacon 
 stimulated them to employ the inductive method, the only 
 method, even the ancient philosophers and the schoolmen 
 themselves being judges, by which new truth can be discovered. 
 By stimulating men to the discovery of useful truth, he furnished 
 them with a motive to perform the inductive process well and 
 carefully. His predecessors had been, in his phrase, not in- 
 terpreters, but anticipators of nature. They had been content 
 with the first principles at which they had arrived by the most 
 scanty and slovenly induction. And why was this ? It was, 
 we conceive, because their philosophy proposed to itself no 
 practical end, because it was merely an exercise of the mind. 
 A man who wants to contrive a new machine or a new medicine 
 has a strong motive to observe accurately and patiently, and to 
 try experiment after experiment. But a man who merely wants 
 a theme for disputation or declamation has no such motive. He 
 is therefore content with premises grounded on assumption, or 
 on the most scanty and hasty induction. Thus, we conceive, 
 the schoolmen acted. On their foolish premises they often 
 argued with great ability; and as their object was " assensum 
 subjugare, non res/'* to be victorious in controversy, not to be 
 victorious over nature, they were consistent. For just as much 
 logical skill could be shown in reasoning on false as on true 
 premises. But the followers of the new philosophy, proposing 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 29. 
 
LORD BACON, 127 
 
 to themselves the. discovery of useful truth as their object, must 
 have altogether failed of attaining that object if they had been 
 content to build theories on superficial .induction. 
 
 Bacon has remarked* that, in ages when philosophy was 
 stationary, the mechanical arts went on improving. Why was 
 this ? Evidently because the mechanic was not content with so 
 careless a mode of induction as served the purpose of the 
 philosopher. And why was the philosopher more easily satisfied 
 than the mechanic? Evidently because the object of the 
 mechanic was to mould things, whilst the object of the 
 philosopher was only to mould words. Careful induction is not 
 at all necessary to the making of a good syllogism. But it is 
 indispensable to the making of a good shoe. Mechanics. 
 therefore, have always been, as far as the range of their humble 
 but useful callings extended, not anticipators but interpi-eters of 
 nature. And when a philosophy arose, the object of which 
 was to do on a large scale what the mechanic does on a small 
 scale, to extend the power and to supply the wants of man, the 
 truth of the premises, which logically is a matter altogether un- 
 important, became a matter of the highest importance ; and the 
 careless induction with which men of learning had previously 
 been satisfied gave place, of necessity, to an induction far more 
 accurate and satisfactory. 
 
 What Bacon did for inductive philosophy may, we think, be 
 fairly stated thus. The objects of preceding speculators were 
 objects which could be attained without careful induction. 
 Those speculators, therefore, did not perform the inductive 
 process carefully. Bacon stirred up men to pursue an object 
 which could be attained only by induction, and by induction 
 carefully performed ; and consequently induction was more 
 carefully performed. We do not think that the importance of 
 what Bacon did for inductive philosophy has ever been over- 
 rated. But we think that the nature of his services is often 
 * De Augmentis, Lib. 1 . 
 
128 LORD BACON. 
 
 mistaken, and was not fully understood even by himself. It 
 was not by furnishing philosophers with rules for performing 
 the inductive process well, but by furnishing them with a 
 motive for performing it well, that he conferred so vast a 
 benefit on society. 
 
 To give to the human mind a direction which it shall retain 
 for ages is the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits. It 
 cannot, therefore, be uninteresting to inquire what was the 
 moral and intellectual constitution which enabled Bacon to 
 exercise so vast an influence on the world. 
 
 In the temper of Bacon, — we speak of Bacon the philosopher, 
 not of Bacon the lawyer and politician, — there was a singular 
 union of audacity and sobriety. The promises which he made 
 to mankind might, to a superficial reader, seem to resemble 
 the rants which -a great dramatist has put into the mouth of an 
 Oriental conqueror half-crazed by good fortune and by violent 
 passions. 
 
 " He shall have chariots easier than air, 
 Which I will have invented ; and thyself 
 That art the messenger shall ride before him, 
 On a horse cut out of an entire diamond, 
 That shall be made to go with golden wheels, 
 I know not how yet." 
 
 But Bacon performed what he promised. In truth, Fletcher 
 would not have dared to make Arbaces promise, in his wildest 
 fits of excitement, the tithe of what the Baconian philosophy 
 has performed. 
 
 The true philosophical temperament may, we think, be 
 described in four words, much hope, little faith ; a disposition 
 to believe that any thing, however extraordinary, may be done ; 
 an indisposition to believe that any thing extraordinary has 
 been done. In these points the constitution of Bacon's mind 
 seems to us to have been absolutely perfect. He was at once 
 the Mammon and the Surly of his friend Ben. Sir Epicure did 
 
■LOUD BACON. 129 
 
 not indulge in visions more magnificent and gigantic. Surly 
 did not sift evidence with keener and more sagacious incredulity. 
 
 Closely connected with this peculiarity of Bacon's temper 
 was a striking peculiarity of his understanding. With great 
 minuteness of observation, he had an amplitude of comprehen- 
 sion such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other 
 human being. The small fine mind of Labruyere 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 a 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." 
 
 His knowledge differed from that of other men, as a terres- 
 trial globe differs from an Atlas which contains a different 
 country on every leaf. The towns and roads of England, France, 
 and Germany are better laid down in the Atlas than in the globe. 
 But while we are looking at England we see nothing of France ; 
 and while we are looking at France we see nothing of Germany 
 i 
 
130 LOED BACON. 
 
 We may go to the Atlas to learn the bearings and distances of 
 York and Bristol, or of Dresden and Prague. But it is useless 
 if we want to know the bearings and distances of France and 
 Martinique, or of England and Canada. On the globe we shall 
 not find all the market towns in our own neighbourhood ; but 
 we shall learn from it the comparative extent and the relative 
 position of all the kingdoms of the earth. " I have taken," said 
 Bacon, in a letter written when he was only thirty-one to his 
 uncle Lord Burleigh, " I have taken all knowledge to be my 
 province." In any other young man, indeed in any other man, 
 this would have been a ridiculous flight of presumption. There 
 have been thousands of better mathematicians, astronomers, 
 chemists, physicians, botanists, mineralogists, than Bacon. No 
 man would go to Bacon's works to learn any particular science 
 or art, any more than he would go to a twelve-inch globe in 
 order to find his way from Kennington turnpike to Clapham 
 Common. The art which Bacon taught was the art of invent- 
 ing arts. The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men 
 was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments ot 
 knowledge. 
 
 The mode in which he communicated his thoughts was 
 peculiar to him. He had no touch of that disputatious temper 
 which he often censured in his predecessors. He effected a 
 vast intellectual revolution in opposition to a vast mass of 
 prejudices ; yet he never engaged in any controversy : nay, we 
 cannot at present recollect, in all his philosophical works, a 
 single passage of a controversial character. All those works 
 might with propriety have been put into the form which he 
 adopted in the work entitled Cogitata et visa: "Franciscus 
 Baconus sic cogitavit." These are thoughts which have occurred 
 to me : weigh them well : and take them or leave them. 
 
 Borgia said of the famous expedition of Charles the Eighth, 
 that the French had conquered Italy not with steel, but with 
 chalk ; for that the only exploit which they had found necessary 
 
LORD BACON. 131 
 
 for the purpose of taking military occupation of any place had 
 been to mark the doors of the houses where they meant to 
 quarter. Bacon often quoted this saying, and loved to apply it 
 to the victories of his own intellect.* His philosophy, he said, 
 came as a guest, not as an enemy. She found no difficulty in 
 gaining admittance, without a contest, into every understanding 
 fitted, by its structure and by its capacity, to receive her. In all 
 this we think that he acted most judiciously ; first, because, as 
 he has himself remarked, the difference between his school and 
 other schools was a difference so fundamental that there was 
 hardly any common ground on which a controversial battle could 
 be fought ; and, secondly, because his mind, eminently obser 
 vant, preeminently discursive and capacious, was, we conceive, 
 neither formed by nature nor disciplined by habit for dialectical 
 combat. 
 
 Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons 
 of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decora- 
 tions of rhetoric. His eloquence, though not untainted with the 
 vicious taste of his age, would alone have entitled him to a 
 high rank in literature. He had a wonderful talent for pack- 
 ing thought close, and rendering it portable. In wit, if by wit 
 be meant the power of perceiving analogies between things 
 which appear to have nothing in common, he never had an 
 equal, not even Cowley, not even the author of Hudibras. 
 Indeed, he possessed this faculty, or rather this faculty pos- 
 sessed him, to a morbid degree. When he abandoned himself 
 to it without reserve, as he did in the Sapientia Veterum, 
 and at the end of the second book of the De Augmentis, the 
 feats which he performed were not merely admirable, but por- 
 tentous, and almost shocking. On those occasions we marvel 
 at him as clowns on a fair-day marvel at a juggler, and can 
 hardly help thinking that the devil must be in him. 
 
 These, hewever, were freaks in which his ingenuity now and 
 
 * Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 35. and elsewhere, 
 i 2 
 
132 LORD BACON. 
 
 then wantoned, with scarcely any other object than to astonish 
 find amuse. But it occasionally happened that, when he was 
 engaged in grave and profound investigations, his wit ob- 
 tained the mastery over all his other faculties, and led him 
 into absurdities into which no dull man could possibly have 
 fallen. We will give the most striking instance which at present 
 occurs to us. In the third book of the De Augmentis he 
 tells us that there are some principles which are not peculiar 
 to one science, but are common to several. That part of 
 philosophy which concerns itself with these principles is, in his 
 nomenclature, designated as philosophia prima. He then pro- 
 ceeds to mention some of the principles with which this phi- 
 losophia prima is conversant. One of them is this. An infec- 
 tious disease is more likely to be communicated while it is in 
 progress than when it has reached its height. This, says he, is 
 true in medicine. It is also true in morals ; for we see that the 
 example of very abandoned men injures public morality less 
 than the example of men in whom vice has not yet extinguished 
 all good qualities. Again, he tells us that in music a discord 
 ending in a concord is agreeable, and that the same thing may 
 be noted in the affections. Once more, he tells us that in physics 
 the energy with which a principle acts is often increased by 
 the antiperistasis of its opposite ; and that it is the same in the 
 contests of factions. If the making of ingenious and sparkling 
 similitudes like these be indeed the philosophia prima, we are 
 quite sure that the greatest philosophical work of the nineteenth 
 century is Mr. Moore's Lalla Rookh. The similitudes which 
 we have cited are very happy similitudes. But that a man 
 like Bacon should have taken them for more, that he should 
 have thought the discovery of such resemblances as these an 
 important part of philosophy, has always appeared to us one of 
 the most singular facts in the history of letters. 
 
 The truth is that his mind was wonderfully quick in perceiv- 
 ing analogies of all sorts. But, like several eminent men whom 
 
LORD BACON. 133 
 
 we could name, both living and dead, he sometimes appeared 
 strangely deficient in the power of distinguishing rational from 
 fanciful analogies, analogies which are arguments from analogies 
 which are mere illustrations, analogies like that which Bishop 
 Butler so ably pointed out, between natural and revealed religion, 
 from analogies like that which Addison discovered, between the 
 series of Grecian gods carved by Phidias and the series of English 
 kings painted by Kneller. This want of discrimination has led to 
 many strange political speculations. Sir "William Temple deduced 
 a theory of government from the properties of the pyramid. Mr. 
 Southey's whole system of finance is grounded on the phenomena 
 of evaporation and rain. In theology, this perverted ingenuity 
 has made still wilder work. From the time of Irenseus and Origen 
 down to the present day, there has not been a single generation 
 in which great divines have not been led into the most absurd 
 expositions of Scripture, by mere incapacity to distinguish ana- 
 logies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from analogies meta- 
 phorical.* It is curious that Bacon has himself mentioned this 
 very kind of delusion among the idola specus ; and has men- 
 tioned it in language which, we are inclined to think, shows that 
 he knew himself to be subject to it. It is the vice, he tells us, 
 of subtle minds to attach too much importance to slight distinc- 
 tions ; it is the vice, on the other hand, of high and discursive 
 intellects to attach too much importance to slight resemblances; 
 and he adds that, when this last propensity is indulged to excess, 
 it leads men to catch at shadows instead of substances.f 
 
 Yet we cannot wish that Bacon's wit had been less luxuriant. 
 For, to say nothing of the pleasure which it affords, it was in 
 the vast majority of cases employed for the purpose of making 
 obscure truth plain, of making repulsive truth attractive, of 
 
 * See some interesting remarks on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's Minute 
 Philosopher, Dialogue IV. 
 
 f Novum Organum, Lib. 1 Aph. 55. 
 I 3 
 
134 LORD BACON. 
 
 fixing in the mind for ever truth which might otherwise have 
 left but a transient impression. 
 
 The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind, but not, 
 like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of 
 his reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man. No imagin- 
 ation was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. 
 It never stirred but at a signal from good sense. It stopped at 
 the first check from good sense. Yet, though disciplined to such 
 obedience, it gave noble proofs of its vigour. In truth, much 
 of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, amidst things as 
 strange as any that are described in the Arabian Tales, or in 
 those romances on which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's 
 village performed so cruel an auto defe, amidst buildings more 
 sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonder- 
 ful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid 
 than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable 
 than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the 
 balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there 
 was nothing wild, nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. 
 He knew that all the secrets feigned by poets to have been 
 written in the books of enchanters are worthless when compared 
 with the mighty secrets which are really written in the book 
 of nature, and which, with time and patience, will be read there. 
 He knew that all the wonders wrought by all the talismans in 
 fable were trifles compared to the wonders which might reason- 
 ably be expected from the philosophy of fruit, and that, if his 
 words sank deep into the minds of men, they would produce 
 effects such as superstition had never ascribed to the incanta- 
 tions of Merlin and Michael Scot. It was here that he loved to 
 let his imagination loose. He loved to picture to himself the 
 world as it would be when his philosophy should, in his own 
 noble phrase, " have enlarged the bounds of human empire." * 
 We might refer to many instances. But we will content our- 
 * New Atlantis. 
 
LOKD BACON. 135 
 
 selves with the strongest, the description of the House of Solo- 
 mon in the New Atlantis. By most of Bacon's contemporaries, 
 and by some people of our time, this remarkable passage would, 
 we doubt not, be considered as an ingenious rodomontade, a 
 counterpart to the adventures of Sinbad or Baron Munchausen. 
 The truth is that there is not to be found in any human com- 
 position a passage more eminently distinguished by profound and 
 serene wisdom. The boldness and originality of the fiction is 
 far less wonderful than the nice discernment which carefully 
 excluded from that long list of prodigies every thing that can be 
 pronounced impossible, every thing that can be proved to lie 
 beyond the mighty magic of induction and of time. Already 
 some parts, and not the least startling parts, of this glorious pro- 
 phecy have been accomplished, even according to the letter ; and 
 the whole, construed according to the spirit, is daily accomplish- 
 ing all around us. 
 
 One of the most remarkable circumstances in the history 
 of Bacon's mind is the order in which its powers expanded 
 themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained to 
 the last ; the blossoms did not appear till late. In general, 
 the development of the fancy is to the development of the judg- 
 ment what the growth of a girl is to the growth of a boy. The 
 fancy attains at an earlier period to the perfection of its 
 beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness ; and, as it is first to 
 ripen, it is also first to fade. It has generally lost something 
 of its bloom and freshness before the sterner faculties have 
 reached maturity ; and is commonly withered and barren while 
 those faculties still retain all their energy. It rarely happens 
 that the fancy and the judgment grow together. It happens 
 still more rarely that the judgment grows faster than the fancy. 
 This seems, however, to have been the case with Bacon. His 
 boyhood and youth appear to have been singularly sedate. His 
 gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is said by some writers 
 to have been planned before he was fifteen, and was undoubtedly 
 
136 LORD BACON. 
 
 planned while he was still young. He observed as vigilantly, 
 meditated as deeply, and judged as temperately when he gave 
 his first work to the world as at the close of his long career. 
 But in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in 
 richness of illustration, his latter writings are far superior to 
 those of his youth. In this respect the history of his mind bears 
 some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The 
 treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, though written on a sub- 
 ject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without 
 being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most un- 
 adorned of all Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty- 
 five or twenty-six. When, at forty, he wrote the Thoughts on 
 the Causes of the existing Discontents, his reason and his judg- 
 ment had reached their full maturity ; but his eloquence was 
 still in its splendid dawn. At fifty, his rhetoric was quite as 
 rich as good taste would permit ; and when he died, at almost 
 seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he 
 wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades, by 
 the master-pieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and 
 necks of beautiful women, in the style of a parliamentary report. 
 In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid 
 and brilliant language of romance. It is strange that the Essay 
 on the Sublime and Beautiful, and the Letter to a Noble Lord, 
 should be the productions of one man. But it is far more 
 strange that the Essay should have been a production of his 
 youth, and the Letter of his old age. 
 
 We will give very short specimens of Bacon's two styles. In 
 1597, he wrote thus: "Crafty men contemn studies; simple 
 men admire them ; and wise men use them ; for they teach not 
 their own use : that is a wisdom Avithout them, and won by ob- 
 servation. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh 
 and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swal- 
 lowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading 
 maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact 
 
LORD BACON. 137 
 
 man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have 
 a great memory ; if he confer little, have a present wit ; and if 
 he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth 
 not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics 
 subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric 
 able to contend." It will hardly be disputed that this is a pas- 
 sage to be " chewed and digested." We do not believe that 
 Thucydides himself has any where compressed so much thought 
 into so small a space. 
 
 In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the Essays 
 there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have 
 quoted. But his style was constantly becoming richer and softer. 
 The following passage, first published in 1625, will show the 
 extent of the change : " Prosperity is the blessing of the Old 
 Testament ; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth 
 the greater benediction and the clearer evidence of God's favour. 
 Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp 
 you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols ; and the pencil 
 of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflic- 
 tions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not 
 without many fears and distastes. ; and adversity is not without 
 comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries 
 it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn 
 ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a light- 
 some ground. Judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart 
 by the pleasure of the eye. ^Certainly virtue is like precious 
 odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed ; for 
 prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best 
 discover virtue." 
 
 It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude. 
 The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much talked 
 of. but little read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on 
 the opinions of mankind ; but they have produced it through 
 the operation of intermediate agents. They have moved the in- 
 
138 LORD BACON. 
 
 tellects which have moved the world. It is in the Essays alone 
 that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with 
 the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric 
 school and talks to plain men, in language which every body un- 
 derstands, about things in which every body is interested. He 
 has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits 
 on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers 
 have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who 
 has treated with such consummate ability questions with which 
 they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise 
 bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school. 
 
 Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De 
 Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest 
 performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the 
 peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the 
 highest perfection. Many of the aphorisms, but particularly 
 those in which he gives examples of the influence of the idola, 
 show a nicety of observation that has never been surpassed. 
 Every part of the book blazes with wit, but with wit which is 
 employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever 
 made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew 
 so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. Yet no 
 book was ever written in a less contentious spirit. It truly 
 conquers with chalk and not with steel. Proposition after pro- 
 position enters into the mind, is received not as an invader, but 
 as a welcome friend, and, though previously unknown, becomes 
 at once domesticated. But what we most admire is the vast 
 capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once 
 all the domains of science, all the past, the present, and the 
 future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging 
 signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming 
 age. Cowley, who was among the most ardent, and not among 
 the least discerning followers of the new philosophy, has, in one 
 
LORD BACON. 139 
 
 of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount 
 Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book 
 of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with pe- 
 culiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round 
 from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse ; behind him a 
 wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive 
 generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, 
 reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city ; before him 
 a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and 
 honey. While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile 
 desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every 
 side by a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mi- 
 rage, he was gazing from a far higher stand on a far lovelier 
 country, following with his eye the long course of fertilising 
 rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great 
 capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens, and por- 
 tioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba. 
 
 It is painful to turn back from contemplating Bacon's philoso- 
 phy to contemplate his life. Yet without so turning back it is 
 impossible fairly to estimate his powers. He left the University 
 at an earlier age than that at which most people repair thither. 
 While yet a boy he was plunged into the midst of diplomatic 
 business. Thence he passed to the study of a vast technical 
 system of law, and worked his way up through a succession of 
 laborious offices to the highest post in his profession. In the 
 mean time he took an active part in every parliament ; he was 
 an adviser of the Crown : he paid court with the greatest 
 assiduity and address to all whose favour was likely to be of use 
 to him ; he lived much in society ; he noted the slightest pecu- 
 liarities of character and the slightest changes of fashion. 
 Scarcely any man has led a more stirring life than that which 
 Bacon led from sixteen to sixty. Scarcely any man has been 
 better entitled to be called a thorough man of the world. The 
 
140 LORD BACON. 
 
 founding of a new philosophy, the imparting of a new direction 
 to the minds of speculators, this was the amusement of his leisure, 
 the work of hours occasionally stolen from the Woolsack and the 
 Council Board. This consideration, while it increases the 
 admiration with which we regard his intellect, increases also our 
 regret that such an intellect should so often have been unwor- 
 thily employed. He well knew the better course, and had, at 
 one time, resolved to pursue it. {t I confess," said he in a letter 
 written when he was still young, " that I have as vast contem- 
 plative ends as I have moderate civil ends." Had his civil ends 
 continued to be moderate, he would have been, not only the 
 Moses, but the Joshua of philosophy. He would have fulfilled 
 a large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have- 
 led his followers, not only to the verge, but into the heart of the 
 promised land. He would not merely have pointed out, but 
 would have divided the spoil. Above all, he would have left, 
 not only a great, but a spotless name. Mankind would then 
 have been able to esteem their illutitiious benefactor. "We should 
 not then be compelled to regard his character with mingled con- 
 tempt and admiration, with mingled aversion and gratitude. 
 We should not then regret that there should be so many proofs 
 of the narrowness and selfishness of a heart, the benevolence of 
 which was yet large enough to take in all races and all ages. 
 We should not then have to blush for the disingenuousness 
 of the most devoted worshipper of speculative truth, for the 
 servility of the boldest champion of intellectual freedom. We 
 should not then have seen the same man at one time far in the 
 van, and at another time far in the rear of his generation. We 
 should not then be forced to own that he who first treated legis- 
 lation as a science was among the last Englishmen who used the 
 rack, that he who first summoned philosophers to the great work 
 of interpreting nature was among the last Englishmen who sold 
 justice. And v^e should conclude our survey of a life placidly, 
 
LORD BACON. 141 
 
 honourably, beneficently passed, " in industrious observations, 
 grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and disco- 
 veries," * with feelings very different from those with which 
 we, now turn away from the checkered spectacle of so much 
 glory and so much shame. 
 
 * From a letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh. 
 
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