# The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Life of Bacon Part II

PART II.
from the death of elizabeth to the death of bacon.
CHAPTER I.
from the accession of james till the publication of the wisdom of the ancients.
1603 to 1610.
Upon the death of the queen, Bacon had every thing to expect from the disposition of her successor, who was a lover of letters, was desirous to be considered the patron of learning and learned men, was well acquainted with the attainments of Bacon, and his reputation both at home and abroad, and was greatly prepossessed in his favour by his brother Anthony, who was much esteemed by the king.
But neither the consciousness of his own powers or of the king's discernment rendered Bacon inert or passive. He used all his influence, both in England and in Scotland, to insure the protection of James. He wrote to the Earl of Northumberland, and to Lord Southampton, who was imprisoned and tried with Essex, using these remarkable words, "I may safely be that to you now, which I was truly before."
Upon the approach of the king he addressed his majesty in a letter written in the style of the times: and he submitted to the Earl of Northumberland, for the king's consideration, a proclamation, recommending "the union of England and Scotland; attention to the sufferings of unhappy Ireland; freedom of trade and the suppression of bribery and corruption; with the assurance, that every place and service that was fit for the honour or good of the commonwealth should be filled, and no man's virtue left idle, unemployed, or unrewarded, and every good ordinance and constitution, for the amendment of the estate and times, be revived and put in execution."
Soon after the arrival of James, which was on the 7th of May, Bacon having had an audience, and a promise of private access, thus describes the king to the Earl of Northumberland: "Your lordship shall find a prince the farthest from vain glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the full dialect of his country; in speech of business, short; in speech of discourse, large. He affecteth popularity by gracing such as he hath heard to be popular, and not by any fashions of his own. He is thought somewhat general in his favours; and his virtue of access is rather, because he is much abroad and in press, than that he giveth easy audience. He hasteneth to a mixture of both kingdoms and occasions, faster perhaps than policy will well bear. I told your lordship once before, that methought his majesty rather asked counsel of the time past, than of the time to come; but it is yet early to ground any settled opinion."
The title of knighthood had hitherto been considered an especial mark of royal favour; but the king, who perceived that the English gentry were willing to barter their gold for an empty honour, was no less ready to barter his honours for their gold. A general summons was, therefore, issued for all persons possessing £40 a year in land either to accept this title, or to compound with the king's commissioners; and on the 23d, the day of his coronation, not less than three hundred gentlemen received the honour of knighthood, amongst whom was Sir Francis Bacon, who thought that the title might gratify the daughter of Alderman Barnham, whom he soon after married.
In the opening of the year 1604, (Æt. 44,) it was publicly announced that a parliament would be assembled early in the spring; and never could any parliament meet for the consideration of more eventful questions than at that moment agitated the public mind. It did not require Bacon's sagacity to perceive this, or, looking forward, to foresee the approaching storm. Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only. Political disturbances happen not without their warning harbingers. Murmurs, not loud but portentous, ever precede these convulsions of the moral world: murmurs which were heard by Bacon not the less audibly from the apparent tranquillity with which James ascended the throne. "Tempests of state," he says, "are commonly greatest when things grow to equality; as natural tempests are greatest about the equinox: and as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states:
"——————Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus Sæpe monet, fraudesque et operta tumescere bella."
These secret swellings and hollow blasts, which arise from the conflicts between power, tenacious in retaining its authority, and knowledge, advancing to resist it, are materials certain to explode, unless judiciously dispersed. Of this Bacon constantly warned the community, by recommending the admission of gradual reform. "In your innovations," he said, "follow the example of time, which innovateth greatly, but quietly." The advances of nature are all gradual; scarce discernible in their motions, but only visible in their issue. The grass grows and the shadow moves upon the dial unperceived, until we reflect upon their progress.
These admonitions have always been disregarded or resisted by governments, and, wanting this safety-valve, states have been periodically exposed ​to convulsion. In England this appeared at Runymede in the reign of John, and in the subversion of the pope's authority in the reign of Henry the Eighth.
When the spirit of reform has once been raised, its progress is not easily stayed. Through the ruins of Catholic superstition various defects were discovered in other parts of the fabric: and the people, having been spirit-broken during the reign of Henry, and lulled during the reign of Elizabeth, reform now burst with accumulated impetuosity. So true is the doctrine of Bacon, that, "when any of the four pillars of government are mainly shaken, or weakened, which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure, men had need to pray for fair weather."
The state of Bacon's mind at this period may be easily conceived. The love of order and the love of improvement, apparently not really opposed to each other, were his ruling passions: and his mode of improvement was the same in all science, natural or human, by experiment, and only by experiment; by proceeding with the greatest caution, and by remembering that, after the most careful research, we may be in the greatest error: "for who will take upon him, when the particulars which a man knows, and which he hath mentioned, appear only on one side, there may not lurk some particular which is altogether repugnant: as if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse which were brought before him in the house, and should not have sought David, who was absent in the field." He never presumed to act until he had tried all things; never used one of Briareus's hundred hands, until he had opened all Argus's hundred eyes. He acted through life upon his father's favourite maxim, "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner."
This was his general mode of proceeding, which, when the experiment was attended with difficulty, generated more caution; and he well knew that, of all experiments, state alterations are the most difficult, the most fraught with danger.
Zealous as he was for all improvement; believing, as he did, in the omnipotence of knowledge, that "the spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the inwardness of all secrets;" and branding the idolaters of old times as a scandal to the new, he says, "It is good not to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident: and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not desire of change that pretendeth the reformation: that novelty, though it be not rejected, yet be always suspected; and, as the Scripture saith, 'that we make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us, and discover what is the straight and right way, and so to walk in it;' always remembering that there is a difference in innovations, between arts and civil affairs. In civil affairs, a change, even for the better, is to be suspected, through fear of disturbance; because they depend upon authority, consent, reputation, and opinion, and not upon demonstration; but arts and sciences should be like mines, resounding on all sides with new works and further progress."
Such was the state of his mind upon entering into public life at the commencement of the parliament, which assembled on the 19th of March, 1604, when, having already made some progress in the king's affections, he was returned both for St. Albans and for Ipswich, which borough he elected to represent; and, at this early period, so great a favourite was he with the House, that some of the members proposed him as speaker.
On the 22d of March, the king first addressed the parliament, recommending to their consideration the union of the two kingdoms; the termination of religious discontents; and the improvement of the law.
Upon the return of the Commons to the Lower House, the storm commenced. Prayers had scarcely been ended, and the House settled, when one member proposed the immediate consideration of the general abuse and grievance of purveyors; – the burden and servitude to the subjects of the kingdom, attendant upon the wardship of children; – the oppression of monopolies; – the abuses of the Exchequer, and the dispensation of penal statutes. After this proposal, received by an expressive silence, another member called the attention of the House to what he termed three main grievances: the burden, charge, and vexation of the commissaries courts; – the suspension of learned and grave ministers for preaching against popish doctrine; – and depopulations by enclosure.
To consider these weighty subjects a select committee of the House was appointed, including Bacon as one of the members. This committee immediately entered upon their inquiries, and, so ready were the parties with their evidence, and so active the members in their proceedings, that on the 26th Bacon made his report to the House of the result of their investigations.
The political discontent, thus first manifested, increased yearly under the reign of James, and having brought his son to the scaffold, continued till the combustible matter was dispersed. "Cromwell," it was said, "became Protector, because the people of England were tired of kings, and Charles was restored because they were weary of Protectors." Such are the consequences of neglecting gradual reform.
During the whole of the conflicts in the commencement of this stormy session, Bacon's exertlions were unremitting. He spoke in every debate. He sat upon twenty-nine committees, many of them appointed for the consideration of the important questions agitated at that eventful time. He ​was selected to attend the conferences of the privy council; to report the result; and to prepare various remonstrances and addresses; was nominated as a mediator between the Commons and the Lords; and chosen by the Commons to present to the king a petition touching purveyors.
To his address, clothed in language the most respectful, yet distinctly pointing out what was expected by the people, the king listened with the patience due from a sovereign to his suffering and oppressed subjects; and instead of the displeasure felt by Elizabeth at his firm and honest boldness, he received it kindly, and replied to it graciously.
Many of his speeches are fortunately preserved: they are all distinguished for their fitness for the hearers and the occasion, their knowledge of affairs, and their pithy, weighty eloquence.
The king had hitherto continued to employ Bacon, in the same manner in which he had served the late queen; but he now thought fit to show him higher marks of favour than he had received from her majesty; and, accordingly, on the 25th of August, 1604, constituted him by patent his counsel learned in the law, with a fee of forty pounds a year, which is said to have been a "grace scarce known before;" and he granted him the same day, by another patent under the great seal, a pension of sixty pounds a year, for special services received from his brother Anthony Bacon and himself.
It must not be supposed that either political altercations or legal promotions diverted his attention from the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge. He knew well the relative worth of politics and philosophy.
His love of knowledge was never checked, perhaps it was increased by his occupations in active life. "We judge" he says, "that mankind may conceive some hopes from our example, which we offer, not by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful. If any one therefore should despair, let him consider a man as much employed in civil affairs as any other of his age, a man of no great share of health, who must therefore have lost much time, and yet, in this undertaking he is the first that leads the way, unassisted by any mortal, and steadfastly entering the true path, that was absolutely untrod before, and submitting his mind to things, may somewhat have advanced the design." Politics employed, but the love of knowledge occupied his mind. It advanced like the river, which is said to flow without mingling her streams with the waters of the lake through which it passes.
During the vacation of this year, he escaped from exertions respecting the Union, to Eton, where he conversed on the subject of education with his friend, Sir Henry Saville, then provost of the college; to whom, upon his return, he wrote the following letter:
To Sir Henry Saville.
Coming back from your invitation at Eton, where I had refreshed myself with company, which I loved; I fell into a consideration of that part of policy whereof philosophy speaketh too much, and laws too little; and that is, of education of youth. Whereupon fixing my mind a while, I found straightways, and noted, even in the discourses of philosophers, which are so large in this argument, a strange silence concerning one principal part of that subject. For as touching the framing and seasoning of youth to moral virtues, (as tolerance of labours, continency from pleasures, obedience, honour, and the like.) they handle it; but touching the improvement and helping of the intellectual powers, as of conceit, memory, and judgment, they say nothing, whether it were, that they thought it to be a matter wherein nature only prevailed, or that they intended it, as referred to the several and proper arts, which teach the use of reason and speech.
But for the former of these two reasons, howsoever it pleaseth them to distinguish of habits and powers; the experience is manifest enough, that the motions and faculties of the wit and memory may be not only governed and guided, but also confirmed and enlarged, by customs and exercise daily applied: as if a man exercise shooting, he shall not only shoot nearer the mark, but also draw a stronger bow. And as for the latter, of comprehending these precepts within arts of logic and rhetoric: if it be rightly considered, their office is distinct altogether from this point; for it is no part of the doctrine of the use or handling of an instrument, to teach how to whet or grind the instrument, to give it a sharp edge, or how to quench it, or otherwise, whereby to give it a stronger temper.
Wherefore, finding this part of knowledge not broken, I have, but "tanquam aliud agens," entered into it, and salute you with it; dedicating it, after the ancient manner, first as to a dear friend, and then as to an apt person; for as much as you have both place to practise it, and judgment and leisure to look deeper into it than I have done. Herein you must call to mind, Αριςον μέν ύδώρ. Though the argument be not of great height and dignity, nevertheless it is of great and universal use. And yet I do not see why, to consider it rightly, that should not be a learning of height which teacheth to raise the highest and worthiest part of the mind. But howsoever that be, if the world take any light and use by this writing, I will the gratulation be to the good friendship and acquaintance between us two. And so recommend you to God's divine protection.
​From these suggestions, the germ of his opinions upon the same subject in the Advancement of Learning, it appears that he considered the object of education to be knowledge and improvement of the body and of the mind.
How far society has, after the lapse of two centuries, concurred with him in these opinions and, if he is not in error, how far we have acted upon his suggestions, may deserve a moment's consideration.
Bacon arranges knowledge respecting the body into
| | i. Health. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. The preservation. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | i. Health. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 2. The cure of diseases. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | i. Health. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 3. The prolongation of life. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | ii. Strength. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. Athletic. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | ii. Strength. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 2. Gymnastics |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | iii. Beauty. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | iv. Pleasure. |
These subjects, considered of importance by Bacon, by the ancients, and by all physiologists, do not form any part of our university education. The formation of bodily habits, upon which our happiness and utility must be founded, are left to chance, to the customs of our parents, or the practices of our first college associates. All nature strives for life and for health. The smallest moss cannot be moved without disturbing myriads of living beings. If any part of the animal frame is injured, the whole system is active in restoring it: but man is daily cut off or withered in his prime; and, at the age of fifty, we stand amidst the tombs of our early friends.
At some future time the admonition of Bacon, that "although the world, to a Christian travelling to the land of promise, be as it were a wilderness, yet that our shoes and vestments be less worn away while we sojourn in this wilderness, is to be esteemed a gift coming from divine goodness," may, perhaps, be considered deserving attention.
Bacon arranges knowledge respecting the mind into.
| | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. Invention. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 2. Judgment. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 3. Memory. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | i. The understanding. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 4. Tradition. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | ii. The will. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. The image of good. | 1. The image of good. | 1. The image of good. |
| 2. The culture of the mind. |||
In the English universities there is not, except by a few lectures, some meager explanations of logic, and some indirect instruction by mathematics upon mental fixedness, any information imparted upon the nature or conduct of the understanding, and Locke might now repeat what he said more than a century ago: "Although it is of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the mind, to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, and in the judgments it makes: yet the last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding. A few rules of logic are thought sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the highest improvement: and it is easy to preceive that men are guilty of a great many faults in the exercise and improvement of this faculty of the mind, which hinder them in their progress, and keep them in ignorance and error all their lives."
At some future period our youth will, perhaps, be instructed in the different properties of our minds, understanding, reason, imagination, memory, will, and be taught the nature and extent of our powers for the discovery of truth;–our different motives for the exercise of our powers;–the various obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge,–and the art of invention, by which our reason will be "rightly guided, and directed to the place where the star appears, and point to the very house where the babe lies."
In the English universities there are not any lectures upon the passions; but this subject, deemed important by all philosophy, human and divine, is disregarded, except by such indirect information as may be obtained from the poets and historians; by whom the love of our country is taught–perhaps, if only one mode is adopted, best taught–in the midst of Troy's flames: and friendship by Nisus eagerly sacrificing his own life to save his beloved Euryalus: and with such slight information we are suffered to embark upon our voyage, without any direct instruction as to the tempests by which we may be agitated; by which so many, believing they are led by light from heaven, are wrecked and lost; and so few reach the true haven of a well ordered mind; "that temple of God which he graceth with his perfection and blesseth with his peace, not suffering it to be removed, although the earth be removed, and although the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."
At some future time it may be deemed worthy of consideration, whether inquiry ought not to be made of the nature of each passion, and the harmony which results from the exact and regular movement of the whole.
In the fall of the year, Bacon expressed to the lord chancellor an inclination to write a history of Great Britain; and he prepared a work, inscribed to the king, upon its true greatness.
"Fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint."
In this work, in which, he says, he has not any purpose vainly to represent this greatness, as in water, which shows things bigger than they are, but rather, as by an instrument of art, helping the sense to take a true magnitude and dimension, he intended an investigation of the general truths upon which the prosperity of states depends, with a particular application of them to this island. ​He has, however, only drawn the outline, and filled up two or three detached parts, reserving the minute investigation of the whole subject for other works.
According to his usual method, he commences the tract by clearing the way, in the removal of some erroneous opinions, on the dependence of government upon extent of territory; – upon wealth; – upon fruitfulness of soil; – and upon fortified towns. Each of these subjects it was his intention to have separately considered, but he has in this fragment completed only the two first sections.
To expose the error, that the strength of a kingdom depends upon the extent of territory, "Look," he says, "at the kingdom of Persia, which extended from Egypt to Bactria and the borders of the East, and yet was overthrown and conquered by a nation not much bigger than the isle of Britain. Look, too, at the state of Rome, which, when too extensive, became no better than a carcass, whereupon all the vultures and birds of prey of the world did seize and ravine for many ages; as a perpetual monument of the essential differences between the scale of miles and the scale of forces: and that the natural arms of each province, or the protecting arms of the principal state, may, when the territory is too extensive, be unable to counteract the two dangers incident to every government, foreign invasion and inward rebellion."
Having thus generally refuted this erroneous opinion, he beautifully explains that the power of territory, as to extent, consists in compactness, – with the heart sufficient to support the extremities; – the arms, or martial virtues, answerable to the greatness of dominion; – and every part of the state profitable to the whole. Each of these sections is explained with his usual extensive and minute investigation, and his usual felicity of familiar illustration.
With respect to compactness, he says, "Remember the tortoise, which, when any part is put forth from the shell, is endangered."
With respect to the heart being sufficient to sustain the extremities, "Remember," he says, "that the state of Rome, when it grew great, was compelled to naturalize the Latins, because the Roman stem could not bear the provinces and Italy both as branches; and the like they were contented after to do to most of the Gauls: and Sparta, when it embraced a larger empire, was compared to a river, which, after it had run a great way, and taken other rivers and streams into it, ran strong and mighty, but about the head and fountain was shallow and weak."
With respect to martial valour, "Look," he says, "at every conquered state, at Persia and at Rome, which, while they flourished in arms, the largeness of territory was a strength to them, and added forces, added treasure, added reputation: but when they decayed in arms, then greatness became a burden; like as great stature in a natural body is some advantage in youth, but is a burden in age; so it is with great territory, which when a state beginneth to decline, doth make it stoop and buckle so much the faster."
And with respect to each part being profitable to the whole, he says, in allusion to the fable in Æsop, by which Agrippa appeased the tumult, that health of body and of state is promoted by the due action of all its parts, "Some provinces are more wealthy, some more populous, and some more warlike; some situate aptly for the excluding or expulsing of foreigners, and some for the annoying and bridling of suspected and tumultuous subjects: some are profitable in present, and some may be converted and improved to profit by plantations and good policy."
He proceeds with the same minuteness to expose the error, that the power of government consists in riches, by explaining that the real power of wealth depends upon mediocrity, joined with martial valour and intelligence.
The importance of martial valour and high chivalric spirit he avails himself of every opportunity to enforce. "Well," he says, "did Solon, who was no contemplative man, say to Crœsus, upon his showing him his great treasures, 'When another comes with iron he will be master of all your gold:' so Machiavel justly derideth the adage that money is the sinews of war, by saying, 'There are no sinews of war but the sinews and muscles of men's arms.'"
So impressed was he with the importance of elevating the national character, that, three years before his death, he spoke with still greater energy upon this subject, in his treatise upon the Greatness of States. "Above all things," he says, "cultivate a stout and warlike disposition of the people; for walled towns, stored arsenals, goodly races of horses, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the like, all this is but sheep in a lion's skin, unless the breeding and disposition of the people be warlike;" and, "as to the illusion that wealth may buy assistance, let the state which trusts to mercenary forces ever remember, that, by these purchases, if it spread its feathers for a time beyond the compass of its nest, it will mew them soon after;" and, in this spirit, he records various maxims to counteract the debasement of character attendant upon the worship of gold: and, above all, the evil of sedentary and within-door mechanical arts, requiring rather the finger than the arm: which in Sparta, Athens, and Rome, was left to slaves, and amongst Christians should be the employment of aliens, and not of the natives, who should be tillers of the ground, free servants, and labourers in strong and manly arts.
Such were the opinions of Bacon. How far they will meet with the approbation of political ​economists in these enlightened times, it is not necessary in this analysis of his sentiments, to inquire. If he is in error, he may, in the infancy of the science of government, be pardoned for supposing that the national character would not be elevated by making sentient man a machine, or by those processes, by which bones and sinews, life and all that adorns life, is transmuted into gold. The bell by which the labourers are summoned to these many-windowed fabrics in our manufacturing towns, sweeter to the lovers of gain than holy bell that tolls to parish church, would have sounded upon Bacon's ear with harsher import than the Norman curfew. He may be pardoned, though he should warn us that in these temples, not of liberty, the national character will not be elevated by the employment of children, not in the temper of Him who took them in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them, but in never-ceasing labour, with their morals sapped and undermined, their characters lowered and debased. It is possible that if he had witnessed the cowering looks and creeping gait, or shameless mirth of these little slaves, he might have thought of Thebes, or Tyre, or Palmyra, and of the instability of all human governments, whatever their present riches or grandeur may be, unless the people are elevated by virtue.
Such, however, were his sentiments; and, even if they are erroneous, it cannot but be lamented that the only parts of this work which are completed and applied to Great Britain, are those which relate to extent and wealth. The remaining errors of fruitfulness of the soil, and fortified towns, are not investigated.
Having thus cleared the way by showing in what the strength of government does not consist, he intended to explain in what it did consist:
1. In a fit situation, to which his observations are confined.
2. In the population and breed of men.
3. In the valour and military disposition of the people.
4. In the fitness of every man to be a soldier.
4. In the temper of the government to elevate the national character; and,
5. In command of the sea: the dowry of Great Britain.
During the next terms and the next sessions of parliament, (1605, Æt. 45,) his legal and political exertions continued without intermission. Committees were appointed for the consideration of subsidies; of articles for religion; purveyors; recusants; restoring deposed ministers; abuses of the Marshalsea court, and for the better execution of penal laws in ecclesiastical causes. He was a member of them all; and, mindful of the mode in which, during the late session, he had discharged his duties as representative of the House, he was elected to deliver to the king the charge of the Commons respecting ecclesiastical grievances.
In every debate in this session he was the powerful advocate, in speeches which now exist, for the union of the kingdoms and the union of the laws; during which he availed himself according to his usual mode, when opportunity offered, to recommend as the first reform, the reform of the law, saying, "The mode of uniting the laws seemeth to me no less excellent than the work itself; for if both laws shall be united, it is of necessity for preparation and inducement thereunto, that our own laws be reviewed and recompiled; than the which, I think, there cannot be a work that his majesty can undertake in these his times of peace, more politic, more honourable, nor more beneficial to his subjects, for all ages."
In the midst of these laborious occupations he published his celebrated work upon "the Advancement of Learning," which professes to be a survey of the then existing knowledge, with a designation of the parts of science which were unexplored; the cultivated parts of the intellectual world, and the deserts; a finished picture, with an outline of what was untouched.
Within the outline is included the whole of science. After having examined the objections to learning; – the advantages of learning; – the places of learning, or universities; – the books of learning, or libraries, "the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed;" after having thus cleared the way, and, as it were, "made silence, to have the true nature of learning better heard and understood," he investigates all knowledge:
1st. Relating to the Memory, or History.
2d. Relating to the Imagination, or Poetry.
3d. Relating to the Understanding, or Philosophy.
Such is the outline: within it the work is minutely arranged, abounds with great felicity of expression, and nervous language: but not contenting himself, by such arrangement, with the mere exhibition of truth, he adorned it with familiar, simple, and splendid imagery.
When speaking of the, error of common minds retiring from active life, he says, "Pythagoras, being asked what he was, answered, that if Hiero were ever at the Olympic games, he knew the manner, that some came as merchants to utter their commodities, and some came to make good cheer, and some came to look on, and that he was one of them that came to look on; but men must know, that in this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on." So, when explaining the danger to which intellect is exposed of running out into sensuality on its retirement from active life, he says, in another work, "When I was chancellor I told Gondomar, the ​Spanish ambassador, that I would willingly forbear the honour to get rid of the burden; that I had always a desire to lead a private life. Gondomar answered, that he would tell me a tale; 'My lord, there was once an old rat that would needs leave the world: he acquainted the young rats that he would retire into his hole, and spend his days in solitude, and commanded them to respect his philosophical seclusion. They forbore two or three days: at last one, hardier than his fellows, ventured in to see how he did; he entered, and found him sitting in the midst of a rich Parmesan cheese."
In such familiar explanations did he indulge himself: it being his object not to inflate trifles into marvels, but to reduce marvels to plain things. Of these simple modes of illustrating truth it appears, from a volume of Apothegms, published in the decline of his life, and a recommendation of them, in this treatise, as a useful appendage to history, that he had formed a collection.
When the subject required it, he, without departing from simplicity, selected images of a higher nature; as, when explaining how the body acts upon the mind, and anticipating the common senseless observation, that such investigations are injurious to religion, "Do not," he says, "imagine that inquiries of this nature question the immortality of the soul, or derogate from its sovereignty over the body. The infant in its mother's womb partakes of the accidents of its mother, but is separable in due season." So, too, when explaining that the body is decomposed by the depredation of innate spirit and of ambient air, and that if the action of these causes can be prevented, the body will defy decomposition; "Have you never," he says, "seen a fly in amber, more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian monarch?" and, when speaking of the resemblance in the different parts of nature, and calling upon his readers to observe that truths are general, he says, "Is not the delight of the quavering upon a stop in music the same with the playing of light upon the water,
"'Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus?'"
Such are his beautiful and playful modes of familiarizing abstruse subjects: but to such instances he did not confine himself. He was too well acquainted with our nature, merely to explain truth, without occasionally raising the mind by noble and lofty images to love it.
It must not be supposed that, because he illustrated his thoughts, he was misled by imagination, which never had precedence, but always followed in the train of his reason: or, because he had recourse to arrangement, that he was enslaved by method, which he always disliked, as impeding the progress of knowledge. It is, therefore, his constant admonition, that a plain, unadorned style, in aphorisms, is the proper style for philosophy; and in aphorisms, the Novum Organum and his tract on Universal Justice are composed. But, although this was his general opinion; although he was too well acquainted with what he terms the idols of the mind, to be diverted from truth by the love of order: yet, knowing the charms of theory and system, and the necessity of adopting them to insure a favourable reception for abstruse works, he did not reject these garlands, at once the ornament and fetters of science. They may now, perhaps, be laid aside, and the noble temple which he raised may be destroyed; but its gorgeous magnificence will never be forgotten, and amidst the ruins a noble statue will be seen by every true worshipper of beauty and of knowledge.
To form a correct judgment of the merits of this treatise, it is but justice to the author to remember both the time when it was written and the persons for whom it was composed; "length and ornament of speech being fit for persuasion of multitudes, although not for information of kings."
The work is divided into two books: the first consisting of his dedication to the king: – of his statement of the objections to learning, by divines, by politicians, and from the errors of learned men; – and of some of the advantages of knowledge.
​If his work had been addressed to the philosophy of the country, instead of having confined his professional objections to divines and politicians, he would have explained that, as our opinions always constitute our intellectual and often our worldly wealth, prejudice is common to us all, and is particularly conspicuous amongst all professional men, with respect to the sciences which they profess.
His objections to learning from the errors of learned men, contain his observations upon the study of words; upon useless knowledge; and upon falsehood, called by him delicate learning; contentious learning; and fantastical learning; all of them erroneously considered objections to learning; as the study of words is merely the selection of one species of knowledge; and contentious learning is only the conflict of opinion which ever exists when any science is in progress, and the way from sense to the understanding is not sufficiently cleared; and falsehood is one of the consequences attendant upon inquiry, as our opinions, being formed not only by impressions upon our senses, but by confidence in the communication of others and our own reasonings, unavoidably teem with error, which can by time alone be corrected.
As it is Bacon's doctrine that knowledge consists in understanding the properties of creatures and the names by which they are called, "the occupation of Adam in Paradise," it may seem extraordinary that he should not have formed a higher estimate than he appears to have formed of the study of words. Words assist thought; they teach us correctness; they enable us to acquire the knowledge and character of other nations; and the study of ancient literature in particular, if it is not an exercise of the intellect, is a discipline of humanity; if it do not strengthen the understanding, it softens and refines the taste; it gives us liberal views; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own sake; to prefer glory to riches, and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe that there is really some thing great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks and accidents and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear, which bows only to present power and up start authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill which cannot be hid; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time:
"Still green with bays each ancient altar stands."
But, notwithstanding these advantages, Bacon says, "the studying words and not matter is a distemper of learning, of which Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem; for words are but images of matter, and to fall in love with them in all one as to fall in love with a picture."
These different subjects are classed under the quaint expression of "Distempers of Learning," to which, that the metaphor may be preserved, he has appended various other defects, under the more quaint term of "Peccant Humours of Learning."
His observations upon the advantages of learning, although encumbered by fanciful and minute analysis, abound with beauty; for, not contenting himself with the simple position with which philosophy would be satisfied, that knowledge teaches us how to select what is beneficial, and avoid what's injurious, he enumerates various modes, divine and human, by which the happiness resulting from knowledge ever has been and ever will be manifested.
After having stated what he terms divine proofs of the advantages of knowledge, he says, the human proofs are:
1. Learning diminishes afflictions from nature.
2. Learning diminishes evils from man to man.
3. There is a union between learning and military virtue.
4. Learning improves private virtues.
1. It takes away the barbarism of men's minds.
2. It takes away levity, temerity, and insolency.
3. It takes away vain admiration,
4. It takes away, or mitigates fear.
5. It disposes the constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in its defects, but to be susceptible of growth and reformation.
5. It is power.
6. It advances fortune.
7. It is our greatest source of delight.
8. It insures immortality.
These positions are proved by all the force of his reason, and adorned by all the beauty of his imagination. When speaking of the power of knowledge to repress the inconveniences which arise from man to man, he says, "In Orpheus's theatre all beasts and birds assembled, and, for getting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp; the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge; which, as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or sedition and tumult make ​them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."
So when explaining, amidst the advantages of knowledge, its excellency in diffusing happiness through succeeding ages, he says, "Let us con clude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire; which is, immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and families; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and, in effect, the strength of all other human desires. We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For, have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and destroyed? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life and truth: but the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?"
After having thus explained some of the blessings attendant upon knowledge, he concludes the first book with lamenting that these blessings are not more generally preferred.
The second book, after various preliminary observations, and particularly upon the defects of universities, of which, from the supposition that they are formed rather for the discovery of new knowledge than for diffusing the knowledge of our predecessors, he, through life, seems to have formed too high an estimate, he arranges and adorns every species of history, which he includes within the province of memory, – and every species of poetry, by which imagination can "elevate the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying its own divine essence:" – and, passing from poetry, by saying, "but it is not good to stop too long in the theatre: let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention," he proceeds to the investigation of every species of philosophy, divine, natural, and human, of which, from his analysis of human philosophy, or the science of man, some conception may be formed of the extent and perfection of the different parts of the work.
These different subjects, exhibited with this perspicuity, are adorned with beautiful illustration and imagery: as, when explaining the doctrine of the will, divided into the image of good, or the exhibition of truth, and the culture or Georgics of the mind, which is its husbandry or tillage, so as to love the truth which it sees, he says, "The neglecting these Georgics seemeth to me no better than to exhibit a fair image or statue, beautiful to behold, but without life or motion."
Having thus made a small globe of the intellectual world, he, looking at the work he had made, and hoping that it was good, thus concludes: "And being now at some pause, looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, 'si nunquam fallit imago,' (as far as a man can judge of his own work,) not much better than the noise or sound which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments, which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play that have better hands. And surely, when I set before me the condition of these times, in which learning hath made her third visitation or circuit in all the qualities thereof: as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age; the noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers; the art of printing, which communicateth book to men of all fortunes; the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history; the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so generally in civil business as the states of Græcia did, in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome, in respect of the greatness of their monarchy; the present disposition of these times at this instant to peace; the consumption of all that ever can be said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted men from other sciences; and the inseparable property of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth, – I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learning; only if men will know their own strength, and their own weakness both; and take, one from the other, light of invention, and not fire of contradiction; and esteem of the inquisition of truth as of an enterprise, and not as of a quality or ornament; and employ wit and magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things vulgar and of popular estimation."
Of this work he presented copies to the king ​and to different statesmen, and, to secure its perpetuity, he exerted himself with his friends to procure a translation of it into Latin, which, in the decline of his life, he accomplished.
As a philosopher, Bacon, who beheld all things from a cliff, thus viewed the intellectual globe, dilating his sight to survey the whole of science, and contracting it so that the minutest object could not escape him.
Sweet as such speculations were to such a mind: pleasing as the labour must have been in surmounting the steeps: delightful to tarry upon them, and painful to quit them, he did not suffer contemplation to absorb his mind; but, as a statesman, he was ever in action, ever advancing the welfare of his country. These opposite exertions were the necessary result of his peculiar mind; for, as knowledge takes away vain admiration; as no man marvels at the play of puppets who has been behind the curtain, Bacon could not have been misled by the baubles by which common minds are delighted; and, as he had examined the nature of all pleasures, and felt that knowledge and benevolence, which is ever in its train, surpassed them all; the chief source of his happiness, wherever situated, must have consisted in diminishing evil and in promoting good.
With his delicate health and intense love of knowledge, he ought in prudence to have shunned the broad way and the green, and retreated to contemplation; but it was his favourite opinion that, "in this theatre of man's life, God and angels only should be lookers-on; that contemplation and action ought ever to be united, a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest, and Jupiter, the planet of action."
He could not, thus thinking, but engage in active life; and, so engaged, he could not but act in obedience to the passion by which he was alone animated; by exerting himself and endeavouring to excite others to promote the public good. We find him, therefore, labouring as a statesman and a patriot to improve the condition of Ireland; to promote the union of England and Scotland; to correct the errors which had crept into our religious establishments, and to assist in the amendment of the law; and, not content with the fruits of his own exertions, calling upon all classes of society to co-operate in reform.
To professional men he says, "I hold that every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they to endeavour themselves by way of amends, to be a help and ornament." And he admonishes the king, that, "as a duty to himself, to the people, and to the King of kings, he ought to erect temples, tombs, palaces, theatres, bridges, make noble roads, cut canals, grant multitude of charters and liberties for comfort of decayed companies and corporations; found colleges and lectures for learning and the education of youth; institute orders and fraternities for nobility, enterprise, and obedience; but, above all, establish good laws for the regulation of the kingdom, and as an example to the world."
On the first day of the ensuing year he thus presented, as a new year's gift, to the king, a discourse touching the plantation of Ireland: "I know not better how to express my good wishes of a new year to your majesty, than by this little book, which in all humbleness I send you. The style is a style of business, rather than curious or elaborate. And herein I was encouraged by my experience of your majesty's former grace, in accepting of the like poor field-fruits touching the union. And certainly I reckon this action as a second brother to the union. For I assure myself that England, Scotland, and Ireland, well united, is such a trefoil as no prince except yourself, who are the worthiest, weareth in his crown."
In this discourse, his knowledge of the miseries of Ireland, that still neglected country, and of the mode of preventing them, with his heartfelt anxiety for her welfare, appears in all his ardent endeavours, by all the power he possessed, to insure the king's exertions for "this desolate and neglected country, blessed with almost all the dowries of nature, with rivers, havens, woods, quarries, good soil, temperate climate, and a race and generation of men, valiant, hard and active, as it is not easy to find such confluence of commodities, if the hand of man did join with the hand of nature; but they are severed, – the harp of Ireland is not strung or attuned to concord. This work, therefore, of all others most memorable and honourable, your majesty hath now in hand; specially, if your majesty join the harp of David, in casting out the evil spirit of superstition, with the harp of Orpheus, in casting out desolation and barbarism."
His exertions respecting the union of England and Scotland were, both in and out of parliament, strenuous and unremitted. He spoke whenever the subject was agitated. He was a member of every committee that was formed to carry it into effect: he prepared the certificate of the commissioners appointed to treat of the union: and he was selected to report the result of a conference with the Lords; until, exhausted by fatigue, he was compelled to intercede with the House that he might be assisted by the co-operation of other members in the discharge of these arduous duties; and, it having been decided by all the judges, after an able argument of Bacon's, that all persons born in Scotland after the king's commission were natural born subjects, he laboured in parliament to extend these privileges to all Scotland, that the rights enjoyed by the children should not be withheld from their parents.
The journals of the Commons contain an outline of many of his speeches, of which one upon the ​union of laws, and another upon the general naturalization of the Scottish nation were completed, and have been preserved; and are powerful evidence of his zeal and ability in this good cause, exerted at the risk of the popularity, which, by his independent conduct in parliament, he had justly acquired. But he did not confine his activity to the bar or to the House of Commons. In his hours of recreation he wrote three works for the use of the king: "A Discourse upon the happy Union;" "Considerations on the same;" and a preparation towards "the union of these two mighty and warlike nations under one sovereign and monarchy, and between whom there are no mountains or races of hills, no seas or great rivers, no diversity of tongue or language, that hath created or provoked this ancient and too long continued divorce."
His anxiety to assist in the improvement of the church appears in his exertions in parliament, and in his publications in his times of recreation. When assisting in the improvement of our civil establishment, he was ever mindful that our country ought to be treated as our parents, with mildness and persuasion, and not with contestations; and, in his suggestions for the improvement of our religious establishments, his thoughts have a glory around them, from the reverence with which he always approaches this sacred subject, and particularly on the eve of times, which he foresaw, when voices in religion were to be numbered and not weighed, and when his daily prayer was, "Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee; remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies: I have mourned for the division of the church: I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine, which thy right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might stretch her branches to the seas and the floods."
His publications are two: the one entitled, "An Advertisement, touching the Controversies of the Church of England;" the other, "Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England." These tracts abound with thought; and, according to his usual mode, consist of an extensive survey of the whole of our religious establishment, and the most minute observations of all its parts, even to the surplice of the minister, that simple pastoral garment, which, with the crook to guide, and to draw back the erring flock, beautiful emblems of the good shepherd, are still retained by the established church.
His tract upon church controversies contains an outline of all religious disputes, and abounds with observations well worthy the consideration of ecclesiastical controversialists; who will, perchance, submit to be admonished by Bacon that, as Christians, they should contend, not as the brier with the thistle, which is most unprofitable, but as the vine with the olive, which bears best fruit.
The considerations touching the pacification of the church, are dedicated to the king; and, after apologizing for his interposition as a layman with ecclesiastical matters, and describing the nature of the various reformers, and the objections to the reform of the church, he examines with great accuracy the government of bishops, – the liturgy, – the ceremonies, and subscription, – a preaching ministry, – the abuse of excommunications, – the provision for sufficient maintenance in the church, and non-residents, and pluralities, of which he says: "For non-residence, except it be in case of necessary absence, it seemeth an abuse, drawn out of covetousness and sloth; for that men should live of the flock that they do not feed, or of the altar at which they do not serve, is a thing that can hardly receive just defence; and to exercise the office of a pastor, in matter of the word and doctrine, by deputies, is a thing not warranted." And he thus concludes: "Thus have I, in all humbleness and sincerity of heart, to the best of my understanding, given your majesty tribute of my cares and cogitations in this holy business, so highly tending to God's glory, your majesty's honour, and the peace and welfare of your states; insomuch as I am persuaded, that the papists themselves should not need so much the severity of penal laws, if the sword of the spirit were better edged, by strengthening the authority, and suppressing the abuses in the church."
Early in this year, (1607, Æt. 47,) an event occurred of considerable importance to his worldly prospects and professional tranquillity, by the promotion of Sir Edward Coke from the office of attorney-general to the chief justiceship of the common pleas, occasioning a vacancy in the office of solicitor-general, which Bacon strenuously exerted himself to obtain, under the delusion, that, by increasing his practice, he should be enabled sooner to retire into contemplative life. He applied to Lord Salisbury, to the lord chancellor, and to the king, by whom, on the 25th day of June, 1607, he was appointed solicitor, to the great satisfaction of his profession, the prospect of worldly emolument, and the hope of professional tranquillity, by a removal from conflict with the coarse mind and acrid humour of Sir Edward Coke, rude to his equals and insolent to the unfortunate.
Who can forget his treatment of Bacon? who, when reviled, reviled not again, but in due season thus expostulated with him:
Mr. Attorney, – I thought best, once for all, to let you know in plainness what I find of you, and what you shall find of me. You take to yourself a liberty to disgrace and disable my law, my experience, my discretion. What it pleaseth you I ​pray think of me; I am one that knows both mine own wants and other men's: and it may be, perchance, that mine mend, others stand at a stay. And surely, I may not endure in public place to be wronged, without repelling the same to my best advantage to right myself. You are great, and therefore have the more enviers, which would be glad to have you paid at another's cost. Since the time I missed the solicitor's place, the rather, I think, by your means, I cannot expect that you and I shall ever serve as attorney and solicitor together, but either to serve with another, upon your remove, or to step into some other course; so as I am more free than ever I was from any occasion of unworthy conforming myself to you more than general good manners, or your particular good usage shall provoke: and, if you had not been short-sighted in your own fortune, as I think, you might have had more use of me; but that tide is passed. I write not this, to show my friends what a brave letter I have written to Mr. Attorney; I have none of those humours, but that I have written is to a good end: that is, to the more decent carriage of my master's service, and to our particular better understanding one of another. This letter, if it shall be answered by you in deed and not in word, I suppose it will not be worse for us both; else it is but a few lines lost, which for a much smaller matter I would have adventured. So this being to yourself, I for my part rest, &c.
Of Coke's bitter spirit there are so many painful instances, that unless Bacon had to complain of unfairness in other matters, the acrimony which overflowed upbn all, could not be considered altogether the effect of personal rivalry. It would have been well had his morbid feelings been confined to his professional opponents; but, unmindful of the old maxim, "Let him take heed how he strikes, who strikes with a dead hand," his rancorous abuse extended to prisoners on trials for their lives, for which he was severely censured by Bacon, who told him that in his pleadings he was ever wont to insult over misery.
Who can forget Coke's treatment of Raleigh, entitled as he was by station and attainments to the civil observances of a gentleman, and, by long imprisonment and subsequent misfortunes, to the commiseration of all men. It is true that there were some persons present at this trial, who remembered that Raleigh and Cobham had stood only a few years before, with an open satisfaction, to witness the death of Essex, against whom they had secretly conspired; but even the sense of retributive justice, though it might deaden their pity, could not lessen their disgust at the cruel and vulgar invectives of Coke, whose knowledge neither expanded his intellect, nor civilized his manners. Fierce with dark keeping, his mind resembled some of those gloomy structures where records and muniments are piled to the exclusion of all higher or nobler matters. For genius he had no love: with philosophy he had no sympathy.
Upon the trial of Raleigh, Coke, after denouncing him as an atheist and a traitor, reproached him, with the usual antipathy of a contracted mind to superior intellect, for being a genius and man of wit.
When Bacon presented him with a copy of his Novum Organum, he wrote with his own hand, at the top of the title-page, Edw. C. ex dono auctoris.
Auctori Consilium.
Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum:
Instaura Leges Justitiamq; prius.
And over the device of the ship passing between Hercules's pillars, he wrote the two following verses:
"It deserveth not to be read in schools,
But to be freighted in the Ship of Fooles."
From professional altercations with this contracted mind, Bacon was rescued by his promotion.
Another and more important advantage attendant upon his appointment was the opportunity which it afforded him to assist in the encouragement of merit and in legal reform. Detur digniori was his constant maxim and constant practice. He knew and taught that power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; and when appointed solicitor, he acted in obedience to his doctrines, encouraging merit, and endeavouring to discharge the duty which he owed to his profession by exertions and works for the improvement of the law.
In the midst of arduous affairs of state and professional duties, he went right onward with his great work, conferring with various scholars and philosophers, from whose communications there was any probability of his deriving advantage.
In the progress of the Novum Organum he had, at different periods, even from his youth, arranged his thoughts upon detached parts of the work, and collected them under different titles: "Temporis partus maximus," "Filum Labyrinthi," "Cogitata et Visa, &c.
He now sent to the Bishop of Ely the "Cogitata et Visa." He communicated also on the subject with his friend, Mr. Mathew, who, having cautioned him that he might excite the prejudices of the churchmen, spoke freely, yet with approbation of the work. He also sent the tract to Sir Thomas Bodley, who received it with all the attachment of a collegian to Aristotle, and the schoolmen and university studies, and, with the freedom of a friend, respectfully imparted to Bacon that his plan was visionary.
In the year 1609, as a relaxation from abstruse speculations, he published in Latin his interesting little work, "De Sapientia Veterum," of which he sent a copy to his friend, Mr. Mathew, saying ​"My great worlk goeth forward, and after my manner I alter ever when I add."
This treatise is a species of parabolical poetry, explained in the Advancement of Learning, and expanded by an insertion in the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum of three of the Fables. "One use of parabolical poesy consists," he says, "in withdrawing from common sight those things the dignity whereof deserves to be retired, as the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy, which are therefore veiled and invested in fables and parables, and, next to sacred writ, are the most ancient of all writings; for adopted, not excogitated by the reciters, they seem to be like a thin rarefied air, which, from the traditions of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the Grecians."
This tract seems, in former times, to have been much valued, for the same reason, perhaps, which Bacon assigns for the currency of the Essays; "because they are like the late new halfpence, where the pieces are small, but the silver is good."
The fables, abounding with a union of deep thought and poetic beauty, are thirty-one in number, of which a part of "The Sirens, or Pleasures," may be selected as a specimen.
In this fable he explains the common but erroneous supposition, that knowledge and the conformity of the will, knowing and acting, are convertible terms. Of this error he, in his essay of "Custom and Education," admonishes his readers, by saying, "Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions, but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed. Æsop's damsel, transformed from a cat to a woman, sat very demurely at the board-end till a mouse ran before her." In the fable of the Sirens he exhibits the same truth, saying, "The habitation of the Sirens was in certain pleasant islands, from whence, as soon as out of their watch-tower they discovered any ships approaching, with their sweet tunes they would first entice and stay them, and, having them in their power, would destroy them; and, so great were the mischiefs they did, that these isles of the Sirens, even as far off as man can ken them, appeared all over white with the bones of unburied carcasses: by which it is signified that albeit the examples of afflictions be manifest and eminent, yet they do not sufficiently deter us from the wicked enticements of pleasure."
CHAPTER II.
from the publication of the wisdom of the ancients to the publication of the novum organum.
In consequence of the limitation, in the court of King's Bench, of the jurisdiction of the Marshalsea court to the officers of the king's house hold, a new court of record was erected by letters patent, styled "Curia virgi palatii summi Regis," to extend the jurisdiction; and the judges nominated by the letters patent were Sir Francis Bacon, solicitor-general, and Sir James Vavasour, then marshal of the household. In this office he delivered a learned and methodical charge to a jury upon a commission of oyer and terminer, in which he availed himself of an opportunity to protest against the abuse of capital punishment. "For life," he says, "I must say unto you, in general, that it is grown too cheap in these times; it is set at the price of words, and every petty scorn and disgrace can have no other reparation; nay, so many men's lives are taken away with impunity, that the very life of the law, the execution, is almost taken away."
When solicitor he argued in the case of Sutton's Hospital, or the Charter-House, against the legality of the foundation, and, fortunately for the advancement of charity and of knowledge, he argued without success, as its validity was confirmed; and in 1611 this noble institution was opened, to the honour of its munificent founder, who preferred the consciousness of doing good to the empty honours which were offered to divert him from his course. It seems, however, that Bacon's objections to the charity were not confined to his argument at the bar, but were the expression of his judgment, as he afterwards addressed a letter of advice to the king, pointing out many imaginary or real defects of the project, in which he says, "I wish Mr. Sutton's intentions were exalted a degree; and that which he meant for teachers of children, your majesty should make for teachers of men; wherein it hath been my ancient opinion and observation, that in the universities of this realm, which I take to be of the best endowed universities of Europe, there is nothing more wanting towards the flourishing state of learning than the honourable and plentiful salaries of readers in arts and professions; for, if you will have sciences flourish, you must observe David's military law, which was, that those which stayed with the carriage should have equal part with those that were in the action."
In the year 1612, he published a new edition of his Essays, enlarged and enlivened by illustrations and imagery, which, upon the sudden death of Prince Henry, to whom it was intended to be dedicated, he inscribed to his brother.
In this year he, as solicitor-general, appeared on behalf of the crown, upon the prosecution of the Lord Sanquhar, a Scottish nobleman, for murder; and his speech, which has been preserved, is a specimen of the mildness ever attendant upon knowledge. After having clearly stated the case, he thus concludes; "I will conclude toward you, my lord, that though your offence hath been great, yet your confession hath been free, and ​your behaviour and speech full of discretion; and this shows, that though you could not resist the tempter, yet you bear a Christian and generous mind, answerable to the noble family of which you are descended."
During the time he was solicitor he composed, as it seems, his "Confession of Faith."
Bacon as solicitor naturally looked forward to the office of attorney-general, to which he succeeded on the 27th of October, upon the promotion of Sir Henry Hobart to the chief justiceship of the common pleas. Never was man more qualified for the office of attorney-general than Bacon. With great general knowledge, ever tending to humanize and generate a love of improvement; with great insight into the principles of politics and of universal justice, and such worldly experience as to enable him to apply his knowledge to the times in which he lived. "Non in republica Platonis; sed tanquam in fæce Romuli;" with long unwearied professional exertion in the law of England, publications upon existing parts of the law, and efforts to improve it, he entered upon the duties of his office with the well-founded hope in the profession, that he would be an honour to his name and his country, and without any fear that he would be injured by the dangerous authority with which he was intrusted. Although power has, upon ordinary minds, a tendency to shape and deprave the possessor, upon intelligence it tends more to humble than to elevate. When Cromwell, indignant that Sir Matthew Hale had dismissed a jury because he was convinced that it had been partially selected, said to this venerable magistrate, "You are not fit to be a judge," Sir Matthew answered, "It is very true." When Alexander received letters out of Greece of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage or a fort, or some walled town at the most, he said, "It seemed to him, that he was advertised of the battle of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of; so certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, the divineness of souls except, will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where as some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust."
With the duties of the office he was well acquainted. As a politician he never omitted an opportunity to ameliorate the condition of society, and exerted himself in all the usual House of Commons questions: thus dilating and contracting his sight, and too readily giving up to party what was meant for mankind. As public prosecutor, he did not suffer the arm of justice to be weakened either by improper lenity or severity at variance with public feeling. Knowing that the efficacy of criminal legislation consists in duly poising the powers of law, religion, and morals; and being aware of the common erroneous suposition, that, by an increase in the quantity of any agent, its beneficial effects are also increased, he warned the community that the acerbity of a law ever deadened the execution, by associating compassion with guilt, and confounding the gradation of crime; and that the sentiment of justice in the public mind is as much or more injured by a law which outrages public feeling, as by a aw which falls short or disappoints the just indignation of the community.
But, not confining his professional exertions to the discharge of the common duties of a public prosecutor, he availed himself of his situation to advance justice and humanity, and composed a work for compiling and amending the laws of England, which he dedicated to the king. "Your majesty," he says, "of your favour having made me privy councillor, and continuing me in the place of your attorney-general, I take it to be my duty not only to speed your commandments and the business of my place, but to meditate and to excogitate of myself, wherein I may best, by my travails, derive your virtues to the good of your people, and return their thanks and increase of love to you again. And after I had thought of many things, I could find, in my judgment, none more proper for your majesty as a master, nor for me as a workman, than the reducing and recompiling the laws of England."
In this tract, having traced the exertions of different legislators from Moses to Augustus, he says, "Cæsar si ab eo quærereter quid egisset in togâ, leges se respondisset multas et præclarus tulisse;" and his nephew Augustus did tread the same steps but with deeper print, because of his long reign in peace, whereof one of the poets of the time saith,
"Pace dat terris animum ad civilia vertit
Jura suum, legesque tulit justissimus auctor."
From July, 1610, until this period, there had not been any parliament sitting; and the king, unable to procure the usual supplies, had recourse, by the advice of Lord Salisbury, to modes injurious to himself, and not warranted by the constitution. Bacon, foreseeing the evils which must result from these expedients, implored the king to discontinue them, and to summon a parliament.
A parliament was accordingly summoned, and met in April, 1614, when the question whether the attorney-general was eligible to sit in the House was immediately agitated; and, after debate, and search of precedents, it was resolved, that, by reason of his office, he ought not to sit in the House of Commons, as he was an attendant on the lords: but it was resolved that the present attorney-general shall for this parliament remain in the House, although this privilege shall not extend to any future attorney-general.
Upon his entrance on the discharge of his legal ​duties, an opportunity to eradicate error accidentally presented itself. Amongst the criminal informations filed in the Star Chamber by his predecessor, he found a charge against two obscure persons for the crime of duelling. Of this opportunity he instantly availed himself, to expose the nature of these false imaginations of honour, by which, in defiance of virtue, disregard of the law, and contempt of religion, vice and ignorance raise themselves in the world upon the reputation of courage; and high-minded youth, full of towardness and hope, such as the poets call "auroræ filii," sons of the morning, are deluded by this fond disguise and puppetry of honour.
The king's great object in summoning a parliament was the hope to obtain supplies; a hope which was totally defeated by a rumour that several persons, attached to the king, had entered into a confederacy, and had undertaken to secure a majority to enable him to control the house. To pacify the heat, Bacon made a powerful speech, in which he ridicules the supposition that any man can have embarked in such a wild undertaking as to control the Commons of England: to make a policy of insurance as to what ship shall come safe home into the harbour in these troubled seas; to find a new passage for the king's business, by a new and unknown point of the compass: to build forts to intimidate the house, unmindful that the only forts by which the king of England can command, is the fort of affection moving the hearts, and of reason the understandings of his people. He then implores the house not to listen to these idle rumours, existing only in the imagination of some deluded enthusiast, who, like the fly upon the chariot wheel, says, "What a dust do I raise! and, being without foundation or any avowed author, are like the birds of paradise, without feet, and never lighting upon any place, but carried away by the wind whither it listeth. Let us then," he adds, "instead of yielding to these senseless reports, deliberate upon the perilous situation in which the government is placed: and, remembering the parable of Jotham, in the case of the trees of the forest, that when question was, whether the vine should reign over them? that might not be; – and whether the olive should reign over them? that might not be, let us consider whether we have not accepted the bramble to reign over us. For it seems that the good vine of the king's graces, that is not so much in esteem: and the good oil, whereby we should relieve the wants of the estate and crown, is laid aside; and this bramble of contention and emulation, this must reign and rule amongst us."
Having examined and exposed all the arguments, he concluded by saying; "Thus I have told you my opinion. I know it had been more safe and politic to have been silent; but it is more honest and loving to speak. When a man speaketh, he may be wounded by others; but as he holds his peace from good things, he wounds himself."
The exertions of Bacon and of the king's friends being, however, of no avail, the king, seeing no hope of assistance, in anger dissolved the parliament, and committed several of the members who had spoken freely of his measures.
This violence, instead of allaying, increased the ferment in the nation; (June, 1634;) and, unable to obtain a supply from parliament, and being extremely distressed for money, several of the nobility and clergy in and about London, made presents to the king; and letters were written to the sheriffs and justices in the different counties, and to magistrates of several corporations, informing them what had been done in the metropolis, and how acceptable and seasonable similar bounty would be from the country.
Amongst others, a letter was sent to the mayor of Marlborough in Wiltshire, where Mr. Oliver St. John, a gentleman of an ancient family, was then residing, who wrote to the mayor on the 11th of October, 1614, representing to him that this benevolence was against law, reason, and religion, and insinuating that the king, by promoting it, had violated his coronation oath, and that, by such means as these, King Richard the Second had given an opportunity to Henry the Fourth to deprive him of his crown; desiring, if he thought fit, that his sentiments should be communicated to the justices who were to meet respecting the benevolence.
For this letter, Mr. St. John was tried in the Star Chamber on the 15th of April, 1615; when, the attorney-general appearing, of course, as counsel for the crown, the defendant was fined £5000, imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and ordered to make submission in writing.
So deeply were the judges impressed with the enormity of this offence, that some of the court thought the crime of a higher nature than a contempt; but they all agreed that the benevolence was not restrained by any statute; and the lord chancellor, who was then, as he supposed, on his death-bed, more than once expressed his anxiety that his passing sentence upon Mr. St. John might be his last act of judicial duty.
Such was the state of the law and of the opinion of justice which at that time prevailed!
The dissatisfaction which existed in the community, at the state of the government, now manifested itself in various modes, and was, according to the usual efforts of power, attempted to be repressed by criminal prosecutions. Amongst others, the attorney-general was employed in the prosecution for high treason of a Mr. Peacham, a clergyman between sixty and seventy years of age; of Mr. Owen, of Godstow in Oxfordshire, a gentleman of property and respectability; and of William Talbot, an Irish barrister, for maintaining, in different modes, that, if the king were ​excommunicated and deprived by the pope, it was lawtul for any person to kill him.
The prosecution against Peacham was for several treasonable passages in a sermon, found in his study, but never preached, and never intended to be preached.
Doubts being entertained both of the fact with respect to the intention to preach, and of the law, supposing the intention to have existed, recourse was had to expedients from which, in these enlightened times, we recoil with horror.
To discover the fact, this old clergyman was put upon the rack, and was examined "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture," but no confession was extorted, which was instantly communicated by Bacon to the king.
To be certain of the law, the king resolved to obtain the opinions of the judges before the prosecution was commenced. For this purpose, the attorney-general was employed to confer with Sir Edward Coke, Mr. Sergeant Montague to speak with Justice Crooke, Mr. Sergeant Crew with Justice Houghton, and Mr. Solicitor with Justice Dodderidge, who were instructed by Bacon that they should presently speak with the three judges, before he could see Coke; and that they should not in any case make any doubt to the judges, as if they mistrusted they would not deliver any opinion apart, but speak resolutely to them, and only make their coming to be, to know what time they would appoint to be attended with the papers. The three judges very readily gave their opinions; but with Sir Edward Coke the task was not easy: for his high and independent spirit refused to submit to these private conferences, contrary, as he said, to the custom of the realm, which requires the judges not to give opinion by fractions, but entirely and upon conference; and that this auricular taking of opinions, single and apart, was new and dangerous.
The answer to this resistance, Bacon thus relates in a letter to the king: "I replied in civil and plain terms, that I wished his lordship, in my love to him, to think better of it; for that this, that his lordship was pleased to put into great words, seemed to me and my fellows, when we spake of it amongst ourselves, a reasonable and familiar matter, for a king to consult with his judges, either assembled or selected, or one by one. I added, that judges sometimes might make a suit to be spared for their opinion till they had spoken with their brethren; but if the king upon his own princely judgment, for reason of estate, should think it fit to have it otherwise, and should so demand it, there was no declining; nay, that it touched upon a violation of their oath, which was to counsel the king without distinction, whether it were jointly or severally.
Thereupon I put him the case of the privy council, as if your majesty should be pleased to command any of them to deliver their opinion apart and in private; whether it were a good answer to deny it, otherwise than if it were propounded at the table. To this he said, that the cases were not alike, because this concerned life. To which I replied, that questions of estate might concern thousands of lives; and many things more precious than the life of a particular; as war and peace, and the like."
By this reasoning Coke's scruples were, after a struggle, removed, and he concurred with his brethren in obedience to the commands of the king.
From the progress which knowledge has made, during the last two centuries, in the science of justice and its administration, mitigating severity, abolishing injurious restraints upon commerce, and upon civil and religious liberty, and preserving the judicial mind free, almost, from the possibility of influence, we may, without caution, feel disposed to censure the profession of the law at that day for practices so different from our own. Passing out of darkness into light, we may for a moment be dazzled, and forget the ignorance from which we have emerged; an evil attendant upon the progress of learning, which did not escape the observation of Bacon, by whom we are admonished, that "if knowledge, as it advances, is taken without its true corrective, it ever hath some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity; of which the apostle saith, If I spake with the tongues of men and angels, and had not charity, it were but as a tinkling cymbal."
For having thus acted in obedience to the king's commands, by a compliance with error sanctioned by the practice of the profession, Bacon has, without due consideration, been censured by a most upright, intelligent judge of modern times, who has thus indirectly accused the bar as venal, and the bench as perjured.
To this excellent man posterity has been more just; we do not brand Judge Foster with the imputation of cruelty, for having passed the barbarous and disgraceful sentence upon persons convicted of high treason, which was not abolished till the reign of George the Fourth; nor do we censure the judges in and before the time of Elizabeth for not having resisted the infliction of torture, sanctioned by the law, which was founded upon the erroneous principle that men will speak truth, when under the influence of a passion more powerful than the love of truth; nor shall we be censured, in future times, for refusing, in excessive obedience to this principle, to admit the evidence of the richest peer ot the realm, if he have the interest of sixpence in the cause; nor has Sir Matthew Hale been visited with the sin of having condemned and suffered to be executed, a mother and her daughter of eleven years of age for witchcraft, under the quaint advice of Sir ​Thomas Brown, one of the first physicians and philosophers of his, or, indeed, of any time, who was devoting his life to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors! nor will the judges of England hereafter be considered culpable for having at one session condemned and left for execution six young men and women under the age of twenty, for uttering forged one pound notes; or for having, so late as the year 1820, publicly sold for large sums the places of the officers of their courts.
To persecute the lover of truth 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 superiority is no more. "These things must continue as they have been; so too will that also continue, whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: justificata est sapientia a filiis suis."
Bacon, unmoved by the prejudice, by which during his life he was resisted, or the scurrilous libels by which he was assailed, went right onward in the advancement of knowledge, the only effectual mode of decomposing error. Where he saw that truth was likely to be received, he presented her in all her divine loveliness. When he could not directly attack error, when the light was too strong for weak eyes, he never omitted an opportunity to expose it. Truth is often silent as fearing her judge, never as suspecting her cause.
In his letter to the king, stating that Peacham had been put to the torture, he says, "Though we are driven to make our way through questions, which I wish were otherwise, yet I hope the end will be good:" and, unable at that period to counteract the then common custom of importuning the judges, he warned Villiers of the evil. "By no means," he says, "be you persuaded to interpose yourself, either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to be. depending in any court of justice, nor suffer any other great man to do it where you can hinder it, and by all means dissuade the king himself from it, upon the importunity of any for themselves or their friends; 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: judges must be as chaste as Cæsar's wife, neither to be, nor to be suspected to be unjust; and, sir, the honour of the judges in their judicature is the king's honour, whose person they represent."
The trial of Peacham took place at Taunton on the 7th of August, 1615, before the chief baron and Sir Henry Montagu. Bacon did not attend, but the prosecution was conducted by the king's sergeant and solicitor, when the old clergyman, who defended himself "very simply, although obstinately and doggedly enough," was convicted, but, some of the judges doubting whether it was treason, he was not executed.
The same course of private consultation with the judges would have been adopted in the case of Owen, had not the attorney-general been so clear in his opinion of the treason, as to induce him to think it inexpedient to imply that any doubt could be entertained.
His speeches against Owen and Talbot, which are preserved, are in the usual style of speeches of this nature, with some of the scurrility by which the eloquence of the bar was at that time polluted.
When speaking of the king's clemency, he says, "The king has had too many causes of irritation: he has been irritated by the Powder Treason, when, in the chair of majesty, his vine and olive branches about him, attended by his nobles and third estate in parliament, he was, in the twinkling of an eye, as if it had been a particular doomsday, to have been brought to ashes, and dispersed to the four winds. He hath been irritated by wicked and monstrous libels, and by the violence of demagogues who have at all times infested, and in times of disturbance, when the scum is uppermost, ever will infest society; confident and daring persons, Nihil tam verens, quam ne dubitare aliquâ de re, videretur, priding themselves in pulling down magistrates, and chanting the psalm, 'Let us bind the kings in chains, and the nobles in fetters of iron.'"
During this year an event occurred, which materially affected the immediate pursuits and future fate of Sir Francis Bacon,–the king's selection of a new favourite.
George Villiers, a younger son of Sir George Villiers and Mary Beaumont, on each side well descended, was born in 1592. Having early lost his father, his education was conducted by Lady Villiers, and, though he was naturally intelligent and of quick parts, more attention was paid to the graces of manner and the lighter accomplishments which ornament a gentleman, than the solid learning and virtuous precepts which form a great and good man. At the age of eighteen he travelled to France, and, having passed three years in the completion of his studies, he returned to the seat of his forefathers, in Leicestershire, where he conceived an intention of settling himself in marriage; but, having journeyed to London, and consulted Sir Thomas Gresham, that gentleman, charmed by his personal beauty and graceful deportment, advised him to relinquish his intention, and try his fortune at court. Shrewd advice, which he, without a sigh, obeyed. He sacrificed his affections at the first temptation of ambition.
The king had gradually withdrawn his favour from Somerset, equally displeased by the haughtiness of his manners, and by an increasing gloom, that obscured all those lighter qualities which had formerly contributed to his amusement, a gloom ​soon after fatally explained. Although powerfully attracted by the elegance and gayety of Villiers, yet James had been so harassed by complaints of favouritism, that he would not bestow any appointment upon him, until solicited by the queen and some of the gravest of his councillors. In 1613 Villiers was taken into the king's household, and rose rapidly to the highest honours. He was nominated cupbearer, received several lucrative appointments; the successive honours of knighthood, of a barony, an earldom, a marquisate, and was finally created Duke of Buckingham.
From the paternal character of Bacon's protection of the new favourite, it is probable that he had early sought his assistance and advice; as a friendship was formed between them, which continued with scarcely any interruption till the death, and, indeed, after the death of Bacon: a friendship which was always marked by a series of the wisest and best counsels, and was never checked by the increased power and elevation of Villiers.
This intimacy between an experienced statesman and a rising favourite was naturally looked upon with some jealousy, but it ought to have been remembered that there was never any intimacy between Bacon and Somerset. In the whole of his voluminous correspondence, there is not one letter of solicitation or compliment to that powerful favourite, or any vain attempt to divert him from his own gratifications to the advancement of the public good; but in Villiers he thought he saw a better nature, capable of such culture, as to be fruitful in good works. Whatever the motives were in which this union originated, the records extant of the spirit by which it was cemented are honourable to both. In the courtesy and docility of Villiers, Bacon did not foresee the rapacity that was to end in his own disgrace, and in the violent death of the favourite.
About this period, Sir George Villiers, personally and by letter, importuned his friend to communicate his sentiments respecting the conduct which, thus favoured by the king, it would be proper for him to observe; and, considering these requests as commands, Bacon wrote a letter of advice to Villiers, such as is not usually given in courts, but of a strain equally free and friendly calculated to make the person to whom it was addressed both good and great, and equally honourable to the giver and the receiver: advice which contributed not a little to his prosperity in life. It is an essay on the following subjects:
1. Matters that concern religion, and the church and churchmen.
2. Matters concerning justice, and the laws and the professors thereof.
3. Councillors, and the council table, and the offices and officers of the kingdom.
4. Foreign negotiations and embassies.
5. Peace and war, both foreign and civil, and in that the navy and forts, and what belongs to them.
6. Trade at home and abroad.
7. Colonies, or foreign plantations.
8. The court and curiality.
Each of these subjects he explains, with a minuteness scarcely to be conceived, except by the admirers of his works, who well know his extensive and minute survey of every subject to which he directed his attention.
In the beginning of the year 1613, Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in the Tower by one Weston, of which crime he was convicted, received sentence of death, and was executed. In the progress of the trial suspicions having been excited against the Earl and Countess of Somerset, as having been deeply concerned in this barbarous act; their injudicious friends, by endeavouring to circulate a report that these suspicions were but an artifice to ruin that nobleman, the King commanded the attorney-general to prosecute in the Star Chamber Mr. Lumsden, a gentleman of good family in Scotland, Sir John Hollis, afterwards Earl of Clare, and Sir John Wentworth, who were convicted and severely punished. The speech of Bacon upon this trial is fortunately preserved.
Shortly after this investigation, so many circumstances transpired, all tending to implicate the Earl and Countess of Somerset, and so great an excitement prevailed through the whole country, that the king determined to bring these great offenders to trial; a resolution which he could not have formed without the most painful struggle between his duty to the public and his anxiety to protect his fallen favourite. His sense of duty as the dispenser of justice prevailed. Previous to the trial, which took place May, 1616, the same course of private consultation with the judges was pursued, and the king caused it to be privately intimated to Somerset, that it would be his own fault if favour was not extended to him: favour which was encouraged by Bacon, in a letter to the king, in which he says, "The great downfall of so great persons carrieth in itself a heavy judgment, and a kind of civil death, although their lives should not be taken. All which may satisfy honour for sparing their lives."
In his speech upon the trial, Bacon gave a clear and circumstantial account of the whole conspiracy against Overbury, describing the various practices against his life; but though he fully and fairly executed his duty as attorney-general, it was without malice or harshness, availing him self of an opportunity, of which he never lost sight, to recommend mercy; and though the friends of the new favourite were supposed to have ​been deeply interested in the downfall of Somerset, and accused of secretly working his ruin, Bacon gained great honour in the opinions of all men, by his impartial yet merciful treatment of a man whom in his prosperity he had shunned and despised.
Early in this year, (1615, Æt. 55,) a dispute which occasioned considerable agitation, arose between the Court of Chancery and the Court of King's Bench, respecting the jurisdiction of the chancellor after judgment given in courts of law. Upon this dispute, heightened by the warmth and haughtiness of Sir Edward Coke, and the dangerous illness of the chancellor at the time when Coke promoted the inquiry, the king and Villiers conferred with Bacon, to whom and other eminent members of the profession, the matter was referred, and upon their report, the king in person pronounced judgment in favour of the lord chancellor, with some strong observations upon the conduct of Coke.
Pending this investigation, (1616, Æt. 56,) Villiers, it seems, communicated to Bacon the king's intention either to admit him a member of the privy council, or, upon the death or resignation of the chancellor, to intrust him with the great seal, a trust to which he was certain of the chancellor's recommendation.
Having thus discharged the duties of solicitor and attorney-general, with much credit to himself and advantage to the community, he, early in the year 1615–16, expressed to Villiers his wish to be admitted a member of the privy council, from the hope that he might be of service "in times which did never more require a king's attorney to be well armed, and to wear a gauntlet and not a glove." In consequence of this communication, the king, on the 3d of June, gave him the option either to be made privy councillor, or the assurance of succeeding the chancellor. Bacon, for reasons which he has thus expressed in a letter to Villiers, preferred being sworn privy councillor:
"Sir, the king giveth me a noble choice, and you are the man my heart ever told me you were. Ambition would draw me to the latter part of the choice; but in respect of my hearty wishes that my lord chancellor may live long, and the small hopes I have that I shall live long myself, and, above all, because I see his majesty's service daily and instantly bleedeth; towards which I persuade myself (vainly, perhaps, but yet in mine own thoughts firmly and constantly) that I shall give, when I am of the table, some effectual furtherance, (as a poor thread of the labyrinth, which hath no other virtue but a united continuance, without interruption or distraction,) I do accept of the tormer, to be councillor for the present, and to give over pleading at the bar; let the other matter rest upon my proof and his majesty s pleasure, and the accidents of time. For, to speak plainly, I would be loath that my lord chancellor, to whom I owe most after the king and yourself, should be locked to his successor for any advancement or gracing of me. So I ever remain your true and most devoted and obliged servant. —3d June, 1616."
He was accordingly sworn of the privy council, and took his seat at the board on the 9th of June; it having been previously agreed that, though in general he should cease to plead as an advocate, his permission to give counsel in causes should continue, and that if any urgent and weighty matter should arise, that he might, with the king's permission, be allowed to plead. Upon this unusual honour he was immediately congratulated by the university of Cambridge.
Such were the occupations of this philosopher, who, during the three years in which period he was attorney-general, conducted himself with such prudent moderation in so many perplexed and difficult cases, and with such evenness and integrity, that his conduct has never been questioned, nor has malice dared to utter of him the least calumny.
He now approached his last act as attorney-general, which was of the same nature as the first, his prosecution of Mr. Markham in the Star Chamber, for sending a challenge to Lord Darcy.
On the 3d of March, 1616–17, Lord Brackley, then lord chancellor, being worn out with age and infirmities, resigned the great seal, and escaped, for a short interval, from the troubles of the Court of Chancery, over which he had presided for thirteen years, amidst the disputes between this high tribunal and the courts of common law, and the pressure of business, which had so increased as to have been beyond the power of any individual to control.
On the 7th of the same month, the seals were delivered by the king to Sir Francis Bacon, with four admonitions: First, To contain the jurisdiction of the court within its true and due limits, without swelling or excess. Secondly, Not to put the great seal to letters patent, as a matter of course to follow after precedent warrants. Thirdly, To retrench all unnecessary delays, that the subject might find that he did enjoy the same remedy against the fainting of the soul and the consumption of the estate, which was speedy justice. "Bis dat, qui cito dat." Fourthly, That justice might pass with as easy charge as might be; and that those same brambles, that grow about justice, of needless charge and expense, and all manner of exactions, might be rooted out so far as might be.
Thus was Francis Bacon, then in the fifty-seventh year of his age, created Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England.
​My dearest Lord,—It is both in cares and kindness, that small ones float up to the tongue and great ones sink down into the heart in silence. Therefore I could speak little to your lordship to-day, neither had I fit time. But I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living,
Fr. Bacon, C.S.
March 7, 1616–17.
Such is the nature of human delight; such the nature of human foresight!
As he must have known, what he has so beautifully taught, that a man of genius can seldom be permanently influenced by worldly distinction; as he well knew that his own happiness and utility consisted not in action but in contemplation; as he had published his opinion that "men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their person, nor in their actions, nor in their times," it is probable that he was urged to this and to every other step on the road to aggrandizement, either by the importunities of his family, or by his favourite opinion, that knowledge is never so dignified and exalted as when contemplation and action are nearly and strongly conjoined together: a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action."
It has been said by some of the ancient magicians, that they could see clearly all which was to befall others, but that of their own future life they could discern nothing. It might be a curious speculation for any admirer of the works of this great man, to collect the oracles he would have delivered to warn any other philosopher of the probable danger and certain infelicity of accepting such an office in such times.
To the hope of wealth he would have said, "it diverts and interrupts the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which, while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take it up, the race is hindered.
"Declinat cursus aurumq. volubile tollit."
To the importunities of friends he would have answered by his favourite maxim, "You do not duly estimate the value of pleasures; for if you observe well, you shall find the logical part of some men's minds good, but the mathematical part nothing worth: that is, they can judge well of the mode of attaining the end, but ill of the value of the end itself."
He would have warned ambition that "the seeled dove mounts and mounts because he is unable to look about him."
To the supposition "that worldly power is the means to do good," he would have said, "A man who spends his life in an impartial search after truth, is a better friend to mankind than any states man or hero, whose merits are commonly confined within the circle of an age or a nation, and are not unlike seasonable and favouring showers, which, though they be profitable and desirable, yet serve for that season only wherein they fall, and for a latitude of ground which they water; but the benefices of the philosopher, like the influences of the sun and the heavenly bodies, are for time permanent, for place universal: those again are commonly mixed with strife and perturbation; but these have the true character of divine presence, and come in aura lent without noise or agitation."
The flattering illusion of good to result from the union of contemplation and action, would have been dissipated by the admonition, that the life and faculties of man are so short and limited that this union has always failed, and must be injurious both to the politician and to the philosopher. To the politician, as, from variety of speculation, he would neither be prompt in action nor consistent in general conduct; and as, from meditating upon the universal frame of nature, he would have little disposition to confine his views to the circle where his usefulness might be most beneficial. To the philosopher, as powers intended to enlarge the province of knowledge, and enlighten distant ages, would be wasted upon subjects of mere temporary interest, debates in courts of justice, and the mechanism of state business. That Bacon should have been doomed to such occupations, that he, who stood the lofty beacon of science, evermore guiding the exploring scholar in voyages of discovery to improve and bless mankind, should voluntarily have descended to the shifting quicksands of politics, is a theme for wonder and pity. He could have pointed out to another the shoals, the sunken rocks, and the treacherous nature of the current; but he adventured,—and little minds can now point out where he was lost, and where the waters went over his soul.
Much as it is to be lamented that he should have accepted this office, the loss to science seems, in some sort, to have been compensated by his entire devotion to his professional and political duties: duties for which he possessed unrivalled powers.
It has been truly said by the biographer of Bacon's successor, that "the chancellorship of England is not a chariot for every scholar to get ​up and ride in. Saving this one, perhaps it would take a long day to find another. Our laws are the wisdom of many ages, consisting of a world of customs, maxims, intricate decisions, which are responsa prudentum. Tully could never have boasted, if he had lived amongst us, Si mihi vehementer occupato stomachum moverint, triduo me jurisconsultum profitebor. He is altogether deceived, that thinks he is fit for the exercise of our judicature, because he is a great rabbi in some academical authors; for this hath little or no copulation with our encyclopedia of arts and sciences. Quintilian might judge right upon the branches of oratory and philosophy, Omnes disciplinas inter se conjunciionem rerum, et communionem habere. But our law is a plant that grew alone, and is not entwined into the hedge of other professions; yet the small insight that some have into deep matters, cause them to think that it is no insuperable task for an unexpert man to be the chief arbiter in a court of equity. Bring reason and conscience with you, the good stock of nature, and the thing is done. Æquitas optimo cuique notissima est, is a trivial saying, a very good man cannot be ignorant of equity; and who knows not that extreme right is extreme injury? But they that look no further than so, are short-sighted: for there is no strain of wisdom more sublime, than upon all complaints to measure the just distance between law and equity; because in this high place, it is not equity at lust and pleasure that is moved for, but equity according to decrees and precedents foregoing, as the dew-beaters have trod the way for those that come after them."
Of Bacon's fitness for this office, some estimate may be formed by a consideration of the four principal qualifications of a chancellor, as
A Lawyer,
A Judge,
A Statesman,
And the Patron of Preferment.
As a Lawyer he had for a series of years been engaged in professional life. He had been solicitor and attorney-general; had published upon different parts of the law; had deeply meditated upon the principles of equity, and had availed himself of every opportunity to assist in improvement of the law, in obedience to his favourite maxim, "that every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament."
As a Judge, he, from his infancy, had seen the different modes in which judicial duties were discharged, had meditated deeply and published his opinions upon the perfection of these duties "to the suitors, to the advocates, to the officers of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or state above them:" and in his addresses to the judges upon their appointment or promotion, he availed himself of every opportunity to explain them.
As a Statesman, we have seen that he was cradled in politics; that his works abound with notices of his political exertions; that his advice to Sir George Villiers is an essay upon all the various duties of a statesman, with respect to religion, justice, the council table, foreign negotiations, peace and war, trade, the colonies, and the court; and of his parliamentary eloquence his friend Ben Jonson says, "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 spake 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 fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."
As a Patron, he considered preferment a sacred trust, to preserve and promote high feeling, encourage merit, and counteract the tendency of learning to dispose men to leisure and privateness.
In his advice to Villiers, as to the patrimony of the church, he says, "You will be often solicited, and perhaps importuned to prefer scholars to church livings; you may further your friends in that way, 'cæteris paribus'; otherwise remember, I pray, that these are not places merely of favour; the charge of souls lies upon them, the greatest account whereof will be required at their own hands; but they will share deeply in their faults who are the instruments of their preferment."
A few weeks after he was appointed lord keeper, he thus writes to a clergyman of Trinity College, Cambridge: "After my hearty commendations, I have heard of you, as a man well deserving, and of able gifts to become profitable in the church; and there being fallen within my gift the rectory of Frome St. Quintin, with the chapel of Evershot, in Dorsetshire, which seems to be a thing of good value, eighteen pounds in the king's books, and in a good country, I have thought good to make offer of it to you: the rather for that you are of Trinity College, whereof myself was some time: and my purpose is to make choice of men rather by care and inquiry, than by their own suits and commendatory letters. So I bid you farewell.
From your loving friend,
Fr. Bacon, C. S."
​Upon sending to Buckingham his patent for creating him a viscount, he says, "I recommend unto you principally, that which I think was never done since I was born, and which, because it is not done, hath bred almost a wilderness and solitude in the king's service; which is, that you countenance, and 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; and though of late choice goeth better, both in church and commonwealth, yet money and time-serving, and cunning canvasses and importunity prevaileth too much. And in places of moment, rather make able and honest men yours, than advance those that are otherwise, because they are yours."
And in his appointment of judges, it will be seen that he was influenced only by an anxiety to select the greatest ability and integrity, "science and conscience," for these important trusts.
In the exercise of this virtue there was not any merit peculiar to Bacon. It was the common sympathy for intellect, which, from consciousness of the imbecility and wretchedness attendant upon ignorance, uses power to promote merit and relieve wrongs. It passes by the particular infirmities of those who contribute any thing to the advancement of general learning, judging it fitter that men of abilities should jointly engage against ignorance and barbarism. This had many years before his promotion been stated by Bacon: "Neither can this point otherwise be; for learning endueth men's minds with a true sense of the frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the dignity of their soul and vocation: so that it is impossible for them to esteem that any greatness of their own fortune can be a true or worthy end of their being and ordainment; whereas the corrupter sort of mere politicians, that have not their thoughts established by learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor ever look abroad into universality, do refer all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes; never caring, in all tempests, what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune."
This truth, necessarily attendant upon all knowledge, is not excluded from judicial knowledge. It has influenced all intelligent judges: Sir Thomas More; the Chancellor de l'Hopital; Lord Somers, to whom he has been compared; D'Aguesseau; Sir Edward Coke, and Sir Matthew Hale. Bacon's favourite maxim therefore was, "Detur digniori: qui beneficium digno dat omnes obligat;" and in his prayer, worthy of a chancellor, he daily said, "This vine, which my right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods."
Whatever were Sir Francis's gratifications, attendant upon the dignity of this promotion, in direct pecuniary profit he sustained great loss: as he relinquished his office of attorney-general, worth at least £6000 a year, his chancellorship to the prince, and his post of Registrar of the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year, whilst the direct profits of the great seal were only £918, 15s. Of the amount of the indirect profits from fees and presents it is, of course, impossible to form a correct estimate. It must, however, have been considerable, as, according to the oriental customs of the times, statesmen were then seldom approached by a suitor without some acceptable offering.
The new year's gifts, regularly presented to the king, were of immense value, and were given by the great officers of state, peers and peeresses, the bishops, knights, and their ladies, gentlemen and gentlewomen, and even from the tradesmen, and all the officers of the household. These presents were chiefly in money, but sometimes varied by the taste of the donors. As a matter of curiosity, it may be noticed, that Sir Francis Bacon gave to the queen "one pettycoat of white sattin, embrodered all over like feathers and billets, with three broad borders, fair embrodered with snakes and fruitage, 'emblems of wisdom and bounty;'" exhibiting, even at that day, a fancy delighting in splendour and allegory; and so general was the practice, that when Bacon applied to the queen to be appointed solicitor-general, his application was accompanied by the present of a jewel.
This custom of making presents to persons in power was not confined to the reigning monarch, but extended to statesmen. They were made, as of course, to Lord Salisbury, to Lord Burleigh, and to all persons in office, and made by the most virtuous members of the community. The same custom extended to the chancellor, and to the judges. In the time of Henry the Sixth the practice existed. In the time of Sir Thomas More, when the custom seems to have been waning, presents were, without any offence, offered to that righteous man; and it is mentioned by the biographer of Sir Augustine Nicholls, one of the judges in the time of James the First, as an instance of his virtue, that " he had exemplary integrity, even to the rejection of gratuities after judgment given, and a charge to his followers that they came to their places clear-handed, and that they should not meddle with any motions to him, that he might be secured from all appearance of corruption."
This custom, which, more or less, seems to have prevailed at all times in nations approaching civilization, was, about the year 1560, partially ​abolished in France by the exertions of l'Hopital, which abolition is thus stated by Mr. Butler, in his life of the chancellor:
"Another reformation in the administration of justice, which l'Hopital wished to effect, was the abolition of the epices, or presents made, on some occasions, by the parties in a cause to the judges by whom it was tried.
"A passage in Homer, where he describes a compartment in the shield of Achilles, in which two talents of gold were placed between two judges, as the reward of the best speaker, is generally cited to prove that, even in the earliest times, the judges were paid for their administration of justice.
"Plutarch mentions, that, under the administration of Pericles, the Athenian magistrates were first authorized to require a remuneration from the suitors of their courts. In ancient Rome, the magistrates were wholly paid by the public; but Justinian allowed some magistrates of an inferior description to receive presents, which he limited to a certain amount, from the suitors before them.
"Montesquieu observes, that, 'in the early ages of the feudal law, when legal proceedings were short and simple, the lord defrayed the whole expense of the administration of justice in his court. In proportion as society became refined, a more complex administration of justice became necessary; and it was considered that not only the party who was cast should, on account of his having instituted a bad cause, but that the successful party should, on account of the benefit which he had derived from the proceedings of the court, contribute, in some degree, to the expenses attending them; and that the public, on account of the general benefit which it derived from the administration of justice, should make up the deficiency.'
"To secure to the judges the proportion which the suitors were to contribute towards the expenses of justice, it was provided, by an ordonnance of St. Louis, that, at the commencement of a suit, each party should deposit in court the amount of one-tenth part of the property in dispute: that the tenth deposited by the unsuccessful party should be paid over to the judges on their passing sentence; and that the tenth of the successful party should then be returned to him. This was varied by subsequent ordonnances. Insensibly it became a custom for the successful party to wait on the judges, after sentence was passed, and, as an acknowledgment of their attention to the cause, to present them with a box of sweet meats, which was then called épices, or spices. By degrees, this custom became a legal perquisite of the judges; and it was converted into a present of money, and required by the judges before the cause came to hearing: Non deliberetur donec solventur species, say some of the ancient registes of the parliaments of France. That practice was afterwards abolished; the amount of the épices was regulated; and, in many cases, the taking of them was absolutely forbidden. Speaking generally, they were not payable till final judgment; and if the matter were not heard in court, but referred to a judge for him to hear, and report to the court upon it, he was entitled to a proportion only of the epices, and the other judges were entitled to no part of them. Those among the magistrates who were most punctual and diligent in their attendance in court, and the discharge of their duty, had most causes referred to them, and were therefore richest in épices; but the superior amount of them, however it might prove their superior exertions, added little to their fortune, as it did not often exceed £50, and never £100 a year. The judges had some other perquisites, and also some remuneration from government; but the whole of the perquisites and remuneration of any judge, except those of the presidents, amounted to little more than the épices. The presidents of the parliament had a higher remuneration; but the price which they paid for their offices was proportionably higher, and the whole amount received by a judge for his epices, perquisites, and other remunerations, fell short of the interest of the money which he paid for the charge; so that it is generally true, that the French judges administered justice not only without salary, but even with some pecuniary loss. Their real remuneration was the rank and consideration which their office gave them in society, and the respect and regard of their fellow-citizens. How well does this illustrate Montesquieu's aphorism, that the principle of the French monarchy was honour! It may be truly said, that the world has not produced a more learned, enlightened, or honourable order in society, than the French magistracy.
"Englishmen are much scandalized, when they are informed that the French judges were personally solicited by the suitors in court, their families and protectors, and by any other person whom the suitors thought likely to influence the decision of the causes in their favour. But it all amounted to nothing:—to all these solicitations the judges listened with equal external reverence and internal indifference; and they availed themselves of the first moment when it could be done with decency, to bow the parties respectfully out of the room: it was a corvee on their time which they most bitterly lamented."
Bacon had scarcely been an hour appointed lord keeper, when these presents of gold and of furniture, and of other costly articles, were showered upon him by various persons, and, amongst others, by the suitors of the court.
Immediately after his appointment as lord keeper, he waited upon the late lord chancellor, to acquit himself of the debt of personal gratitude which he owed to that worthy person, and to acquaint him with his master's gracious intentions ​to confer upon him the title of an earl, with a pension for life; an honour which, as he died on the 15th of the month, before the completion of the arrangements, was transferred to his son, who was created Earl of Bridgewater by the first patent to which the new lord keeper affixed the seal.
On the 14th of March the king quitted England, to visit his native country; and Sir Francis had scarcely been a week raised to the office of lord keeper, when he was placed at the head of the council, and intrusted with the management of all public affairs.
The king was accompanied by Buckingham, who, in his double capacity of prime minister, and master of the revels, assisted with equal readiness at the discussions which were to direct the nation, and the pastimes contrived to amuse the king. Graceful in all exercises, and a fine dancer, Buckingham brought that diversion into great request, while his associates willingly lent themselves to the devices which his better taste disdained; for James is said to have loved such representations and disguises as were witty and sudden, the more ridiculous the more pleasant.
The policy of the favourite seems to be clear. He had endeavoured to prevent the king's visit; and, in surrounding his royal master with these buffooneries, he well knew that he should disgust the better part of the Scottish nobility, and keep aloof all those grave and wise councillors, who could not recognise, under the disguise of a masquer, the learned pupil of Buchanan, and the ruler of two kingdoms.
Through the whole of this progress a constant communication was maintained between Buckingham and the lord keeper.
On the 7th of May, being the first day of term, the lord keeper went in great state to Westminster, in the following order:
1. Clerks and inferior officers in chancery.
2. Students in law.
3. Gentlemen servants to the keeper, sergeants-at-arms, and the seal-bearer, all on foot.
4. Himself, on horseback, in a gown of purple satin, between the treasurer and the keeper of the privy seal.
5. Earls, barons, and privy councillors.
6. Noblemen of all ranks.
7. Judges, to whom the next place to the privy councillors was assigned.
In this pomp he entered the hall. How different from the mode in which his successor took his seat!
Upon the lord keeper's entrance, he, in the presence of so many honourable witnesses, addressed the bar, stating the nature of the charge which had been given to him by the king, when he was intrusted with the great seal, and the modes by which, under the protection of God, it was his intention to obey what he was pleased to call his majesty's righteous commandments.
With respect to the excess of jurisdiction, or tumour of the court, which was the first admonition, the lord keeper dilated upon all the causes of excess, and concluded with an assurance of his temperate use of authority, and his conviction that the health of a court as well as of a body consisted in temperance.
With respect to the cautious sealing of patents, which was the second admonition, the lord keeper having stated six principal cases in which this caution was peculiarly requisite, and to which he declared that his attention should be directed, thus concluded: "And your lordships see in this matter of the seal, and his majesty's royal commandment concerning the same, I mean to walk in the light, so that men may know where to find me; and this publishing thereof plainly, I hope will save the king from a great deal of abuse, and me from a great deal of envy; when men shall see that no particular turn or end leads me, but a general rule.
With respect to speedy justice, which was the third admonition, and upon which, in his essays on "Delay and Despatch," it appears that he had maturely deliberated, he explained the nature of true and affected despatch; and, having divided delays, into the delays of the judge and of the suitor, he said, "For myself, I am resolved that my decree shall come speedily, if not instantly after the hearing, and my signed decree speedily upon my decree pronounced. For fresh justice is the sweetest; and to the end that there be no delay of justice, nor any other means-making or labouring, but the labouring of the counsel at the bar.
"Again, because justice is a sacred thing, and the end for which I am called to this place, and therefore is my way to heaven; and if it be shorter, it is never a whit the worse, I shall, by the grace of God, as far as God will give me strength, add the afternoon to the forenoon, and some fourth night of the vacation to the term, for the expediting and clearing of the causes of the court; only the depth of the three long vacations would reserve in some measure free from business of estate, and for studies, arts, and sciences, to which in my own nature I am most inclined.
"There is another point of true expedition, which resteth much in myself, and that is in my manner of giving orders. For I have seen an affectation of despatch turn utterly to delay at length: for the manner of it is to take the tale of of the counsellor at the bar his mouth, and to give a cursory order, nothing tending or conducing to the end of the business. It makes me remember what I heard one say of a judge that sat in chancery; that he would make forty orders in a morning out of the way, and it was out of the way indeed; for it was nothing to the end of the ​business; and this is that which makes sixty, eighty, a hundred orders in a cause, to and fro, begetting one another; and, like Penelope's web, doing and undoing. But I mean not to purchase the praise of expeditive in that kind; but as one that have a feeling of my duty, and of the case of others. My endeavour shall be to hear patiently, and to cast my order into such a mould as may soonest bring the subject to the end of his journey."
And as to the delays of the suitor, he thus concluded: "By the grace of God, I will make injunctions but a hard pillow to sleepers; for if I find that he prosecutes not with effect, he may, perhaps, when he is awake, find not only his injunction dissolved, but his cause dismissed."
With respect to the last admonition, that justice should not be obstructed by unnecessary expense, he expressed his determination to diminish all expense, saying in substance what he had said in his essay on Judicature: "The place of justice is a hallowed place; and therefore not only the bench, but the foot-pace, and precincts, and purprise thereof ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption; for, certainly, grapes (as the Scripture saith) will not be gathered of thorns or thistles; neither can justice yield her fruit with sweetness amongst the briers and brambles of catching and polling clerks and ministers; which justifies the common resemblance of the courts of justice to the bush, whereunto, while the sheep flies for defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece."
He concludes his address with some observations upon projected improvements in the practice of the court, and his intention to frame ordinances for its better regulation. "My lords," he added, "I have no more to say, but now I will go on to business."
Upon his retirement from the court he communicated to Buckingham, then at Edinburgh, an account of the day's proceedings, in a letter, saying, "Yesterday I took my place in chancery, which I hold only from the king's grace and favour, and your constant friendship. There was much ado, and a great deal of world. But this matter of pomp, which is heaven to some men, is hell to me, or purgatory at least. It is true I was glad to see that the king's choice was so generally approved, and that I had so much interest in men's good wills and good opinions, because it maketh me the fitter instrument to do my master service, and my friend also.
"After I was set in chancery, I published his majesty's charge, which he gave me when he gave me the seal,and what rules and resolutions I had taken for the fulfilling his commandments. I send your lordship a copy of that I said. Men tell me, it hath done the king a great deal of honour; insomuch that some of my friends, that are wise men and no vain ones, did not stick to say to me, that there was not these seven years such a preparation for a parliament; which was a commendation, I confess, pleased me well. I pray take some fit time to show it his majesty, because, if I misunderstood him in any thing, I may amend it, because I know his judgment is higher and deeper than mine."
The approbation of the king was immediately communicated by Buckingham.
Before the king's departure for Scotland he had appointed commissioners for managing the treaty of marriage between the prince his son and the Infanta of Spain. The lord keeper, who had too much wisdom not to perceive the misfortunes which would result from this union, prudently and honestly advised the king not to proceed with the treaty, stating the difficulties which had already occurred from a disunited council; but the king fell into the snare which the politic Gondomar had prepared for him, and persisted to negotiate an alliance, in opposition to his own interests, the advice of his ablest councillors, and the universal voice of his people. A more unequal game could not be played, than between the childish cunning of this blundering, obstinate, good-humoured king, and the diplomacy of the smooth, intellectual, determined Gondomar, graceful, supple, and fatal as a serpent.
Bacon, who was fully aware of the envy which pursued his advancement, was careful to transmit an exact account of his proceedings, and, in despatches which appeared only to contain a narrative of passing events, conveyed to the king and his favourite many sound maxims of state policy. His royal master, who was not insensible of his services, greatly commended him, and Buckingham expressed his own admiration of the wisdom and prudence of his counsels.
This sunshine was, however, soon after clouded by a circumstance, which is worth noting only as it shows the temper of the times, and the miserable subjection in which the favourite held all persons, however eminent in talent or station. Sir Edward Coke, who had been disgraced the year before, unable to bear retirement, aggravated, as it was, by the success of his rival, applied, during the king's absence, to Secretary Winwood, submissively desiring to be restored to favour; and he, who, in support of the law, had resisted the king to his face, and had rejected with scorn the proposal of an alliance with the family of Buckingham, now offered "to do any thing that was required of him," and to promote, upon their own terms, the marriage of his daughter with Sir John Villiers. Winwood, who, for party purposes, was supposed to enter officiously into this business, readily undertook the negotiation. It was not attended with much difficulty: the young lady, beautiful and opulent, was instantly accepted.
Bacon, for many cogent reasons, which he fairly expressed both to the king and to Buckingham, strongly opposed this match, displeasing to ​the political friends of Buckingham, and fraught with bitterness from the opposition of Lady Hatton, the young lady's mother, upon whom her fortune mainly depended. Bacon's dislike to Coke, and the possible consequences to himself from this alliance, were supposed by Buckingham to have influenced this unwise interference; which he resented, first by a cold silence, and afterwards by several haughty and bitter letters: and so effectually excited the king's displeasure, that, on his return, he sharply reprimanded in the privy council those persons who had interfered in this business. Buckingham, who could show his power, as well in allaying as in raising a storm, was soon ashamed of the king's violence, and, seeing the ridicule that must arise from his inflating a family quarrel into a national grievance, interceded "on his knees" for Bacon. A reconciliation, of course, took place, but not without disgrace to all the parties concerned; exhibiting on the one part unbecoming violence, and on the other the most abject servility. The marriage, which had occasioned so much strife, was solemnized at the close of the month of September; and Sir Edward Coke was recalled to the council table, where, after the death of Winwood, he did not long keep his seat.
This storm having subsided, the lord keeper turned his attention to the subject of finance, and endeavoured to bring the government expenses, now called the civil list, within the compass of the ordinary revenue; a measure more necessary, since there had never been any disposition in parliament to be as liberal to James as to his illustrious predecessor.
The difficulties which the council met in the projected retrenchments, from the officers of state whose interests were affected, confirmed the remark of Cardinal Richelieu, "that the reformation of a king's household is a thing more fit to be done than successfully attempted." This did not discourage the lord keeper, who went manfully to the work, and wrote freely to Buckingham and to the king himself, upon the necessity both of striking at the root, and lopping off the branches; of considering whether Ireland, instead of being a burden to England, ought not, in a great measure, to support itself; and of diminishing household expenses, and abridging pensions and gratuities.
Notwithstanding these efforts to retrench all unnecessary expenditure in the household, the pecuniary distresses of the king were so great, that expedients, from which he ought to have been protected by the Commons, were adopted, and the grant of patents and infliction of fines was made a profitable source of revenue: although Bacon had, upon the death of Salisbury, earnestly prayed the king "not to descend to any means, or degree of means, which cometh not of a symmetry with his majesty and greatness.
While these exactions disclosed to the people the king's poverty, they could daily observe his profuse expenditure and lavish bounty to his favourite; recourse, therefore, was had to Buckingham by all suitors; but neither the distresses of the king, nor the power of the favourite, deterred the lord keeper from staying grants and patents, when his public duty demanded this interposition: an interference which, if Buckingham really resented, he concealed his displeasure; as, so far from expressing himself with his usual haughtiness, he thanked his friend, telling him that he "desired nothing should pass the seal except what was just or convenient."
On the 4th of January, 1618, the lord keeper was created Lord High Chancellor of England, and, in July, Baron of Verulam, to which, as stated in the preamble to the patent of nobility, witnessed by the Prince of Wales, Duke of Lenox, and many of the first nobility, the king was "moved by the grateful sense he had of the many faithful services rendered him by this worthy person." In the beginning of the same year the Karl of Buckingham was raised to the degree of marquis.
In August, 1618, the lord keeper, with a due sense of the laudable intentions of the founder, stayed a patent for the foundation of Dulwich College, from the conviction that education was the best charity, and would be best promoted by the foundation of lectures in the university. This, his favourite opinion, which he, when solicitor-general, had expressed in his tract upon Sutton's Hospital, and renewed in his will, was immediately communicated to Buckingham, to whom he suggested that part of the founder's bounty ought to be appropriated to the advancement of learning.
Firm, however, as Bacon was with respect to patents, his wishes, as a politician, to relieve the distresses of the king, seem to have had some tendency to influence his mind as a judge. In one of his letters he expresses his anxiety to accellerate the prosecution, saying, "it might, if wind and weather permit, come to hearing in the term;" and in another he says, "the evidence went well, and I will not say I sometimes helped it as far as was fit for a judge."
So true is it, as Bacon himself had taught, that a judge ought to be of a retired nature, and unconnected with politics. So certain is the injury to the administration of justice, from the attempt to blend the irreconcileable characters of judge and politician: the judge unbending as the oak, the politician pliant as the osier: the judge firm and constant, the same to all men; the politician, ever varying,
"Orpheus in sylvis, inter delphinas Arion."
It was, about this time, discovered that several Dutch merchants of great opulence had exported gold and silver to the amount, of some millions. ​There are various letters extant upon this subject, exhibiting the king's pecuniary distresses, his rash facility in making promises, and the discontent felt by the people at his improvidence, and partiality for his own countrymen.
Though evidently rejoicing at this windfall for his royal master, Bacon, regardless of the importunities of the attorney-general, refused to issue writes of ne exeat against the merchants till he had obtained evidence to warrant his interposition, and cautioned his majesty against granting the forfeitures accruing from this discovery. He entreated that a commission might be formed, impowering Sir E. Coke, the chancellor of the exchequer, the lord chief justice, and himself, to investigate this matter. These observations were well received, and immediately adopted by the king; and although informations were filed against a hundred and eighty, only twenty of the principal merchants were tried and convicted. They were fined to the amount of £100,000, which, by the intercession of Buckingham, was afterwards remitted to about £30,000. The rest of the prosecutions were stayed at his instance, intercession having been made to him by letters from the States-General, and probably by the merchants themselves, in the way in which he was usually approached by applicants.
While this cause was pending, the Earl of Suffolk, lord treasurer, was prosecuted, with his lady, in the Star Chamber, for trafficking with the public money to the amount of £50,000; and they were sentenced to imprisonment and fine, not, according to the judgment of Sir Edward Coke, of £100,000, but of £30,000. Bacon commended Coke to the king, as having done his part excellently, but pursued his own constant course, activity in detecting the offence, and moderation in punishing the offender. After a short confinement they were released at the intercession of Buckingham, and the fine reduced to £7,000.
The motives by which Buckingham was influenced in this and similar remissions, may possibly be collected from his conduct in the advancement of Lord Chief Justice Montagu, who, for a sum of £20,000, was appointed to the treasurership, vacated by the removal of Lord Suffolk, and was created a peer; for which offence this dispenser of the king's favours was, in the reign of Charles the First, impeached by the Commons; but he, after the death of Bacon and of the king, solemnly denied the accusation, by protesting "that the sum was a voluntary loan to the king by the lord treasurer, after his promotion, and not an advance to obtain the appointment."
Such were the occupations to which this philosopher was doomed; occupations which, even as chancellor, he regretted, saying, most truly, "I know these things do not pertain to me; for any pait is to acquit the king's office towards God, in the maintenance of the prerogative, and to oblige the hearts of the people to him by the administration of justice."
From these political expedients he turned to his more interesting judicial duties. How strenuously he exerted himself in the discharge of them may be seen in his honest exultation to Buckingham, and may be easily conceived by those who know how indefatigable genius is in any business in which it is interested: how ardent and strenuous it is in encountering and subduing all difficulties to which it is opposed.
In a letter to Buckingham, of the 8th of June, 1617, he says, "This day I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice; not one cause unheard; the lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make; not one petition unanswered. And this, I think, could not be said in our age before. This I speak, not out of ostentation, but out of gladness, when I have done my duty. I know men think I cannot continue if I should thus oppress myself with business: but that account is made. The duties of life are more than life; and if I die now, I shall die before the world be weary of me, which in our times is somewhat rare." And in two other letters he, from the same cause, expresses the same joy.
These exertions did not secure him from the interference of Buckingham, or protect him, as they have never protected judge, from misrepresentation and calumny; but, unmoved by friendship or by slander, he went right onward in his course. He acted as he taught, from the conviction, that "a popular judge is a deformed thing: and plaudits are fitter for players than magistrates. Do good to the people, love them, and give them justice, but let it be 'nihil inde expectantes;' looking for nothing, neither praise nor profit."
Notwithstanding Bacon's warning to Buckingham, that he ought not, as a statesman, to interfere, either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to be depending in any court of justice, the temptations to Buckingham were, it seems, too powerful to induce him to attend to this admonition, in resistance of a custom so long established and so deeply seated, that the applications were, as a matter of course, made to statesmen and to judges, by the most respectable members of the community, and by the two universities.
Early in March, Sir Francis was appointed lord keeper, and, on the 4th of April, Buckingham thus wrote: "My honourable lord:—Whereas the late lord chancellor thought it fit to dismiss out of the chancery a cause touching Henry Skipwith to the common law, where he desireth it should be decided; these are to entreat your lordship in the gentleman's favour, that if the adverse party shall attempt to bring it now back ​again into your lordship's court, you would not retain it there, but let it rest in the place where now it is, that without more vexation unto him in posting him from one to another, he may have a final hearing and determination thereof. And so I rest your lordship's ever at command,
"G. Buckingham.
"My lord, this is a business wherein I spake to my lord chancellor, whereupon he dismissed the suit."
Scarcely a week passed without a repetition of these solicitations.
When Sir Francis was first intrusted with the great seal, he found a cause entitled Fisher v. Wraynham, which had been in the court from the year 1606. He immediately examined the proceedings, and, having ordered the attendance of the parties, and heard the arguments of counsel, he terminated this tedious suit, by decreeing against the defendant Wraynham, who was a man described as holding a smooth pen and a fine speech, but a fiery spirit. He immediately published a libel against the chancellor and the late master of the rolls: for which he was prosecuted in the Star Chamber.
Sir Henry Yelverton, in stating the case, said, "I was of counsel with Mr. Wraynham, and pressed his cause as far as equity would suffer. But this gentleman being of an unquiet spirit, after a secret murmuring, breaks out in a complaint to his majesty, and not staying his return out of Scotland, but fancying to himself, as if he saw some cloud arising over my lord, compiled his undigested thoughts into a libel, and fastens it on the king. And his most princely majesty finding it stuffed with most bitter reviling speeches against so great and worthy a judge, hath of himself commanded me this day to set forth and manifest his fault unto your lordships, that so he might receive deserved punishment. In this pamphlet Mr. Wraynham saith, he had two decrees in the first lord chancellor's time, and yet are both cancelled by this lord chancellor in a preposterous manner: without cause; without matter; without any legal proceedings; without precedent, upon the party's bare suggestions, and without calling Mr. Wraynham to answer: to reward Fisher's fraud and perjuries; to palliate his unjust proceedings; and to confound Wraynham's estate: and that my lord was therein led by the rule of his own fancy. But he stayeth not here. Not content to scandalize the living, he vilifies the dead, the master of the rolls, a man of great understanding, great pains, great experience, great dexterity, and of great integrity; yet, because he followed not this man's humour in the report thereof, he brands him with aspersions."
And Mr. Sergeant Crowe, who was also counsel for the prosecution, said, "Mr. Wraynham, thus to traduce my lord, is a foul offence; you cannot traduce him of corruption, for, thanks be to God, he hath always despised riches, and set honour and justice before his eyes. My lords, I was of counsel with Fisher, and I knew the merits of the cause, for my lord chancellor seeing what recompense Fisher ought in justice to have received, and finding a disability in Wraynham to perform it, was enforced to take the land from Wraynham to give it to Fisher, which is hardly of value to satisfy Fisher's true debt and damages."
Wraynham was convicted by the unanimous opinion of the court; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in delivering his judgment, said, "The fountain of wisdom hath set this glorious work of the world in the order and beauty wherein it stands, and hath appointed princes, magistrates, and judges, to hear the causes of the people. It is fitting, therefore, to protect them from the slanders of wicked men, that shall speak evil of magistrates and men in authority, blaspheming them. And therefore, since Wraynham hath blasphemed and spoken evil, and slandered a chief magistrate, it remaineth, that in honour to God, and in duty to the king and kingdom, he should receive severe punishment."
According to the custom of the times, a suit of hangings for furniture, worth about £160, was presented to the lord chancellor, on behalf of Fisher, by Mr. Shute, who, with Sir Henry Yelverton, was one of his counsel in the cause.
This present was not peculiar to the cause Wraynham and Fisher, but presents on behalf of the respective suitors were publicly made by the counsel in the cause, and were offered by the most virtuous members of the community, without their having, or being supposed to have any influence upon the judgment of the court.
In the cause of Rowland Egerton and Edward Egerton, £400 was presented before the award was made, on behalf of Edward, by the counsel in the cause, Sir Richard Young and Sir George Hastings, who was also a member of the house of commons, but the lord keeper decided against him: and £300 was presented on behalf of Rowland, after the award was made in his fkvour by the chancellor and Lord Hobart; and in the cause of Awbrey and Bronker, £100 was presented on behalf of Awbrey, before the decree, by his counsel, Sir George Hastings, and a severe decree was made against Awbrey.
In a reference between the company of grocers and apothecaries, the grocers presented £200, and the apothecaries a taster of gold, and a present of ambergris.
In the cause of Hody and Hody, which was for a great inheritance, a present of gold buttons, worth about £50, was given by Sir Thomas Perrot, one of the counsel in the cause, after the suit was ended.
This slander of Wraynham's was not the only evil to which he was exposed.
On the 12th of November, 1616, John Bertram, ​a suitor in chancery, being displeased with a report made hy Sir John Tindal, one of the masters of the court, shot him dead as he was alighting from his carriage, and, upon his committal to prison, he destroyed himself. An account of this murder was published under the superintendence of Sir Francis, to counteract the erroneous opinions which had been circulated through the country and the false commiseration which the misery of this wretched offender had excited, in times when the community was alive to hear any slander against the administration of justice.
When the morbid feeling of insane minds is awakened, there is always some chance of a repetition of its outrages. Towards the end of the year the lord keeper was in danger of sharing the fate of Sir John Tindal, from the vindictive temper of Lord Clifton, against whom a decree had been made, who declared publicly that "he was sorry he had not stabbed the lord keeper in his chair the moment he pronounced judgment." As soon as this misguided suitor, who afterwards destroyed himself, was committed to the tower, Bacon wrote to Buckingham, saying, "I pray your lordship in humbleness to let his majesty know that I little tear the Lord Clifton, but I much fear the example, that it will animate ruffians and rodomonti extremely against the seats of justice, which are his majesty's own seats, yea, and against all authority and greatness, if this pass without public censure and example, it having gone already so far as that the person of a baron hath been committed to the Tower. The punishment it may please his majesty to remit, and I shall, not formally but heartily, intercede for him, but an example, setting myself aside, I wish for terror of persons that may be more dangerous than he, towards the first judge of the kingdom."
Not content with discharging the common duties of a judge, he laboured, whenever an opportunity offered, to improve the administration of justice.
He carried into effect the proposal, which, when attorney-general, he had submitted to the king, that two legal reporters, with an annual stipend to each of £100, should be appointed. He realized the intention, which he expressed upon taking his seat, by issuing ordinances for the better administration of justice in the chancery, upon which the practice of the court at this day is founded. Before the circuits he assembled the judges, and explained his views of their duties, when they, as the planets of the kingdom, were representing their sovereign, in the administration of law and justice;—to advance kind feeling and familiar intercourse, he introduced a mode, at that time not usual, of inviting the judges to runner; thus manifesting, as he says in a letter to Lord Burleigh, that it is ever a part of wisdom not to exclude inferior matters of access amongst the care of great: and, upon the promotion of any judge, he availed himself of the opportunity to explain the nature of judicial virtues, of which an extensive outline may be seen in his works.
"The judge is a man of ability, drawing his learning out of his books, and not out of his brain; rather learned than ingenious; more plausible than witty; more reverend than plausible. He is a man of gravity; of a retired nature, and unconnected with politics: his virtues are inlaid, not embossed.—He is more advised than confident.—He has a right understanding of justice, depending not so much on reading other men's writings, as upon the goodness of his own natural reason and meditation.—He is of sound judgment; not diverted from the truth by the strength of immediate impression.—He is a man of integrity:—of well regulated passions; beyond the influence either of anger, by which he may be incapable of judging, or of hope, either of money or of worldly advancement, by which he may decide unjustly; or of fear, either of the censure of others, which is cowardice, or of giving pain when it ought to be given, which is improper compassion.—He is just both in private and in public.—He without solicitation accepts the office, with a sense of public duty.—He is patient in hearing, in inquiry, and in insult; quick in apprehension, slow in anger.—His determination to censure is always painful to him, like Cæsar, when he threatened Metellus with instant death, 'Adolescens, durius est mihi hoc dicere quam facere.'—He does not affect the reputation of despatch, nor forget that an over-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal.—He is diligent in discovering the merits of the cause: by his own exertions; from the witness, and the advocates.—He is cautious in his judgment; not forming a hasty opinion: not tenacious in retaining an opinion when formed: 'never ashamed of being wiser to-day than he was yesterday:' never wandering from the substance of the matter in judgment into useless subtilty and refinement.—He does not delay justice.—He is impartial; never suffering any passion to interfere with the love of truth.—He hears what is spoken, not who speaks: whether it be the sovereign, or a pauper; a friend, or a foe; a favourite advocate, or an intelligent judge.—He decides according to law; 'jus dicere: non jus dare,' is his maxim.—He delivers his judgment in public, 'palam atque astante corona.'
"He discharges his duty to all persons.—To the suitors, by doing justice, and by endeavouring to satisfy them that justice is done:—to the witnesses, by patience, kindness, and by encouragement;—to the jurors, by being a light to lead them to justice:—to the advocates, by hearing them patiently; correcting their defects, not sufering justice to be perverted by their ingenuity, and encouraging their merits:—to the inferior ​officers, by rewarding the virtuous; skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and understanding in the business of the court; and discountenancing the vicious, sowers of suits, disturbers of jurisdiction, impeders, by tricks and shifts, of the plain and direct course of justice, and bringing it into oblique lines and labyrinths: and the poller and exacter of fees, who justifies the common resemblance of the courts to the bush, whereunto, while the sheep flies for defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece:—to himself, by counteracting the tendency of his situation to warp his character, and by proper use of times of recreation:—to his profession, by preserving the privileges of his office, and by improvement of the law:—and to society, by advancing justice and good feeling, in the suppression of force and detection of fraud; in readiness to hear the complaints of the distressed; in looking with pity upon those who have erred and strayed; in courtesy; in discountenancing contentious suits; in attending to appearances, esse et videri; in encouraging respect for the office; and by resigning in due time."
In his youth he had exerted himself to improve the gardens of Gray's Inn: in gardens he always delighted, thinking them conducive to the purest of human pleasures, and he now, as chancellor, had the satisfaction to sign the patent for converting Lincoln's Inn Fields into walks, extending almost to the wall where his faithful friend Ben Jonson had, when a boy, worked as a brick layer.
For relaxation from his arduous occupations he was accustomed to retire to his magnificent and beautiful residence at Gorhambury, the dwelling-place of his ancestors, where, "when his lordship arrived, St. Albans seemed as if the court had been there, so nobly did he live. His servants had liveries with his crest: his watermen were more employed than even the king's."
About half a mile from this noble mansion, of which the ruins yet remain, and within the bounds of Old Verulam, the lord chancellor built, at the expense of about £10,000, a most ingeniously contrived house, where, in the society of his philosophical friends, he escaped from the splendour of chancellor, to study and meditation. "Here," says Aubrey, "his lordship much meditated, his servant, Mr. Bushell, attending him with his pen and inkhorn, to set down his present notions Mr. Thomas Hobbes told me that his lordship would employ him often in this service, whilst he was there, and was better pleased with his minutes, or notes, set down by him, than by others who did not well understand his lordship. He told me that he was employed in translating part of the Essays, viz. three of them, one whereof was that of Greatness of Cities, the other two I have now forgot."
Such was the gorgeous splendour, such the union of action and contemplation in which he lived.
About this period the king conferred upon him the valuable farm of the Alienation Office, and he succeeded in obtaining for his residence, York House, the place of his birth, and where his father had lived, when lord keeper in the reign of Elizabeth.
This may be considered the summit of this great man's worldly prosperity. He had been successively solicitor and attorney-general, privy councillor, lord keeper, and lord chancellor, having had conferred upon him the dignities, first of knight, then of Baron of Verulam, and, early in the next year, of Viscount St. Albans; but, above all, he was distinguished through Europe by a much prouder title, as the greatest of English philosophers.
At York House, on the 22d of January, 1620, he celebrated his sixtieth birthday, surrounded by his admirers and friends, amongst whom was Ben Jonson, who composed, in honour of the day, a poem founded on the fiction of the poet's surprise upon his reaching York House, at the sight of the genius of the place performing some mystery. Fortune is justly represented insecurely placed upon a wheel, whose slightest revolution may cause her downfall. It has been said that wailing sounds were heard, before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and at last the rushing of mighty wings when the angel of the sanctuary departed. Had the poet been a prophet, he would have described the good genius of the mansion, not exulting, but dejected, humbled, and about to depart forever.
CHAPTER III.
from the publication of the novum organum to his retirement from active life.
October, 1620, to June, 1621.
Glittering in the blaze of worldly splendour, and absorbed in worldly occupations, the chancellor, now sixty years of age, could no longer delude himself with the hope of completing his favourite work, the great object of his life, upon which he had been engaged for thirty years, and had twelve times transcribed with his own hand. He resolved at once to abandon it, and publish the small fragment which he had composed. For this act of despair he assigned two reasons:—"Because I number my days, and would have it saved;" and "to try whether I can get help in one intended part of this work, namely, the compiling of a Natural and Experimental History, ​which must be the foundation of a true and active philosophy." Such are the consequences of vain attempts to unite deep contemplation and unremitting action! Such the consequences of forgetting our limited powers; that we can reach only to our arm's length, and our voice be heard only till the next air is still!
It will be remembered, that in the Advancement of Learning, he separates the subject of the human mind into
| | 1. The Understanding. $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. Invention. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. The Understanding. $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 2. Judgment. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. The Understanding. $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 3. Memory. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 1. The Understanding. $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 4. Tradition. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | 2. The Will. | |
Under the head of Invention he says, "The invention of sciences, I purpose, if God give me leave hereafter to propound, having digested it into two parts; whereof the one I term experientia literata, and the other interpretatio naturæ: the former being but a degree and rudiment of the latter. But I will not dwell too long, nor speak too great upon a promise." This promise, he, however, lived partly to realize.
In the year 1623, he completed his tract upon Literate Experience, in which, after having explained that our inventions, instead of resulting from reason and foresight, have ever originated in accident; that "we are more beholden to a wild goat for surgery: to a nightingale for modulations of music: to the ibis for some part of physic: to a pot-lid that flew open for artillery: in a word, to chance rather than to logic: so that it is no marvel that the Egyptians had their temples full of the idols of brutes; but almost empty of the idols of men:" he divides this art of Discovery into two parts: "For either the indication is made from experiments to experiments, or from experiments to axioms, which may likewise design new experiments; whereof the former we will term Experientia Literata; the latter, Interpretatio Naturæ, or Novum Organum: as a man may go on his way after a threefold manner, either when himself feels out his way in the dark; or, being weak-sighted, is led by the hand of another; or else when he directs his footing by a light. So when a man essays all kind of experiments without sequence or method, that is a mere palpation; but when he proceeds by direction and order in experiments, it is as if he were led by the hand; and this is it which we understand by Literate Experience; for the light itself, which is the third way, is to be derived from the interpretation of nature, or the New Organ."
He then proceeds to explain his doctrine of "Literate Experience," or the science of making experiments. The hunting of Pan.
In this interesting inquiry the miraculous vigilance of this extraordinary man may possibly be more apparent than in his more abstruse works. An outline of it is subjoined. ​
The Novum Organum is the next subject of consideration. It thus opens:
FRANCISCUS
DE VERULAMIO
SIC COGITAVIT.
His despair of the possibility of completing his important work, of which his Novum Organum was only a portion, appears at the very entrance of the volume, which, instead of being confined to the Novum Organum, exhibits an outline, and only an outline, of the whole of his intended labours.
After his dedication to the king, he, according to his wonted mode, clears the way by a review of the state of learning, which, he says, is neither prosperous nor advanced, but, being barren in effects, fruitful in questions, slow and languid in its improvement, exhibiting in its generality the counterfeit of perfection, ill filled up in its details, popular in its choice, suspected by its very promoters, and therefore countenanced with artifices, it is necessary that an entirely different way from any known by our predecessors must be opened to the human understanding, and different helps be obtained, in order that the mind may exercise its jurisdiction over the nature of things.
The intended work is then separated into six parts:
1. Divisions of the Sciences. 2. Novum Organum; or, Precepts for the Interpretation of Nature. 3. Phenomena of the Universe; or, Natural and Experimental History on which to found Philosophy. 4. Scale of the Understanding. 5. Precursors or Anticipations of the Second Philosophy. 6. Sound Philosophy, or Active Science.
And with respect to each of these parts he explains his intentions.
As to the first, or The Division of the Sciences, he, in 1605, had exhibited an outline in the Advancement of Learning, and lived nearly to complete it in the year 1623. In this treatise he describes the cultivated parts of the intellectual world and the deserts; not to measure out regions, as augurs for divination, but. as generals to invade for conquest.
The Novum Organum is a treatise upon the conduct of the understanding in the systematic discovery of truth, or the art of invention by a New Organ: as, in inquiring into any nature, the hydrophobia, for instance, or the attraction of the magnet, the Novum Organum explains a mode of proceeding by which its nature and laws may with certainty be found.
It having been Bacon's favourite doctrine, that important truths are often best discovered in small and familiar instances, as the nature of a commonwealth, in a family and the simple conjugations of society, man and wife, parents and children, master and servant, which are in every cottage; and as he had early taught that all truths, however divisible as lines and veins, are not separable as sections and separations, but partake of one common essence, which, like the drops of rain, fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current, it may seem extraordinary that it should not have occurred to him that the mode to discover any truth might, possibly, be seen by the proceedings in a court of justice, where the immediate and dearest interests of men being concerned, and great intellect exerted, it is natural to suppose that the best mode of invention would be adopted.
In a well constituted court of justice the judge is without partiality. He hears the evidence on both sides, and the reasoning of the opposite advocates. He then forms his judgment. This is the mode adopted by Bacon in the Novum Organum for the discovery of all truths. He endeavours to make the philosopher in his study proceed as a judge in his court.
For this purpose his work is divisible into three parts: 1st. The removal of prejudice or the ​destruction of idols, or modes by which the judgment is warped from the truth. 2dly. By considering facts on both sides; as if the inquiry be into the nature of heat, by considering all the affirmative and negative instances of heat.
| Affirmative Table. | Negative Table. |
| The Sun's direct rays. Blood of Terrestrial Animals. Living Animals, &c. | The Moon's rays. Blood of Fish. Dead Animals, &c. |
3dly. By explaining the mode in which the facts presented to the senses ought by certain rules to be examined.
As the commander of an army, before he commences an attack, considers the strength and number of his troops, both regular and allies; the spirit by which they are animated, whether they are the lion, or the sheep in the lion's skin; the power of the enemy to which he is opposed: their walled towns, their stored arsenals and armories, their horses and chariots of war, elephants, ordnance and artillery, and their races of men; and then in what mode he shall commence his attack and proceed in the battle: so, before man directs his strength against nature, and endeavours to take her high towers and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of his dominion, he ought duly to estimate,
1st. His powers, natural and artificial, for the discovery of truth.
2d. His different motives for the exercise of his powers.
3d. The obstacles to which he is opposed; and, 4th. The mode in which he can exert his powers with, most efficacy, or the Art of Invention.
Of these four requisites, therefore, a perfect work upon the conduct of the understanding ought, as it seems, to consist: but the Novum Organum is not thus treated. To system Bacon was not attached: for "As young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a farther stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be farther polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.
Instead of explaining our different powers, our tenses, our Imagination, our Reason, there are in the Novum Organum only some scattered observations upon the defects of the senses;—upon the different causes or idols by which the judgment is alwayc liable to be warped, and some suggestions as to the artificial helps to our natural powers in exploring the truths which are exhibited to the senses.
With respect to the defects of the senses, he says that things escape their cognisance by seven modes:
1st. From distance; which is remedied by substitutes, as beacons, bells, telegraphs, &c.
2d. By the interception of interposing bodies; which is remedied by attention to outward or visible signs, as the internal state of the body by the pulse, &c.
3d. By the unfitness of the body: or,
4th. Its insufficiency in quantity to impress the sense, as the air and the vital spirit, which is imperceptible by sight or touch.
5th. From the insufficiency of time to actuate the sense, either when the motion is too slow, as in the hand of a clock or the growth of grass, or too rapid, as a bullet passing through the air.
6th. From the percussion of the body being too powerful for the sense, as in looking at the midday sun; which is remedied by removing the object from the sense; or by diminishing its force by the interposition of a medium, as smoking tobacco through water; or by reflection, as the sun's rays in a mirror or basin of water: and—
7th. Because the sense is pre-occupied by another object, as by the use of perfumes.
The defects of the judgment he investigates in a more laborious inquiry. "There are," he says, "certain predispositions which beset the mind of man; certain idols which are constantly operating upon the mind and warping it from the truth; for the mind of man, drawn over and clouded with the sable pavilion of the body, is so far from being like smooth, equal, and clear glass, which might sincerely take and reflect the beams of things according to their true incidence, that it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstitions, apparitions, and impostures; which idols are of such a pernicious nature, that, if they once take root in the mind, they will so possess it that truth can hardly find entrance; and, even should it enter, they will again rise up, choke, and destroy it."
These idols are of two sorts: 1st. Common to all men, therefore called Idols of the Tribe, including the defects of words, called Idols of the Market; 2d. Peculiar to peculiar individuals, either from their original conformation, or from their education and pursuits in life, called Idols of the Den, including the errors from particular opinions, called Idols of the Theatre. So that his doctrine of idols may be thus exhibited:
1. Of the Tribe.—Of the Market
2. Of the Den.—Of the Theatre.
The Idols of the Tribe, or warps to the judgment, ​by which all mankind swerve from the truth, are of two classes: 1st. When man is under the influence of a passion more powerful than the love of truth, as worldly interest, crying "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:" or, 2dly, When, under the influence of the love of truth, he, like every lover, is hurried without due and cautious inquiry by the hope of possessing the object of his affections; which manifests itself either in hasty assent, or hasty generalization, the parents of credulity:—in tenacity in retaining opinions, the parent of prejudice:—in abandoning universality, the parent of feeble inquiry:—or in indulging in subtleties and refinements and endless inquiry, the parent of vain speculations, spinning out of itself cobwebs of learning, admirable for their fineness of texture, but of no substance or profit.
As men associate by discourse, and words are imposed according to the capacity of the vulgar, a false and improper imposition of words unavoidably possesses the understanding, leading men away to idle controversies and subtleties, irremediable by definitions, which, consisting of words, shoot back, like the Tartar's bow, upon the judgment from whence they came.
These defects of words, or Idols of the Market, are either names of non-existences, as the primum mobile, the element of fire, &c.; or confused names of existences, as beauty, virtue, &c.; which, from the subtlety of nature being infinite, and of words finite, must always exist. Words tell the minutes, but not the seconds. When we attempt to reach heaven, we are stopped by the confusion of languages.
The Idols of the Den, or attachment by particular individuals to particular opinions, he thus explains: "We every one of us have our particular den or cavern, which refracts and corrupts the light of nature; either because every man has his respective temper, education, acquaintance, course of reading, and authorities; or from the difference of impressions, as they happen in a mind prejudiced or prepossessed, or in one that is calm and equal. Of which defects Plato's cave is an excellent emblem: for, certainly, if a man were continued from his childhood to mature age in a grotto or dark and subterraneous cave, and then should come suddenly abroad, and should behold the stately canopy of heaven and the furniture of the world, without doubt he would have many strange and absurd imaginations come into his mind and people his brain. So in like manner we live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits are enclosed in the caves of our bodies, complexions, and customs, which must needs minister unto us infinite images of error and vain opinions, if they do seldom and for so short a time appear above ground out of their holes, and do not continually live under the contemplation of nature, as in the open air." Of these Idols of the Den, the attachment of professional men, divines, lawyers, politicians, &c., to their respective sciences, are glaring instances.
Idols of the Theatre, or depraved theories, are, of course, infinite and inveterate; appearing in that numerous litter of strange, senseless, absurd opinions, which crawl about the world to the disgrace of reason, and the wretchedness of mankind.
Upon the destruction of these idols, Bacon is unceasing in his exhortations. "They must," he says, "by the lover of truth be solemnly and forever renounced, that the understanding may be purged and cleansed; for the kingdom of man, which is founded in the sciences, can scarce be entered otherwise than the Kingdom of God, that is, in the condition of little children:" and, with an earnestness not often found in his works, he adds, "If we have any humility towards the Creator; if we have any reverence and esteem of his works; if we have any charity towards men, or any desire of relieving their miseries and necessities; if we have any love for natural truths; any aversion to darkness, any desire of purifying the understanding, we must destroy these idols, which have led experience captive, and childishly triumphed over the works of God; and now at length condescend, with due submission and veneration, to approach and peruse the volume of the creation; dwell some time upon it, and bringing to the work a mind well purged of opinions, idols, and false notions, converse familiarly therein. This volume is the language which has gone out to all the ends of the earth, unaffected by the confusion of Babel; this is the language that men should thoroughly learn, and not disdain to have its alphabet perpetually in their hands; and in the interpretation of this language they should spare no pains, but strenuously proceed, persevere, and dwell upon it to the last."
Such is a faint outline of Bacon's celebrated doctrine of idols, which has sometimes been supposed to be the most important of all his works, and to expose the cause of all the errors by which man is misled.
Upon the motives by which the lover of truth, seeking nature with all her fruits about her, can alone be actuated, and which he has explained in other parts of his works, he, in the Novum Organum, contents himself with saying, "We would in general admonish all to consider the true ends of knowledge, and not to seek it for the gratification of their minds, or for disputation, or that they may despise others, or for emolument, or fame, or power, or such low objects, but for its intrinsic merit and the purposes of life."
The obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge are:
| | 1. Worldly occupation. |
| 1. Want of time, | 2. Sickness |
| and | 3. Shortness of life. |
| 2. Want of means. |
The obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge from want of means he through life deeply felt, and he never omitted an opportunity earnestly to express his hope that it would be diminished or destroyed by such a collection of natural history as would show the world, not as man has made it, not as it exists only in imagination, but as it really exists, as God has made it.
Anxious to lay the true foundation of philosophy, he, in the Novum Organum, availed himself of the power with which he was intrusted, to induce the king to form such a collection of natural history as he had measured out in his mind, and such as really ought to be procured; "a great and royal work, requiring the purse of a prince and the assistance of a people." He, therefore, in the dedication, and in his presentation letter, urged the king to imitate Solomon, by procuring the compilation and completion of such a natural and experimental history as should be serviceable for raising the superstructure of philosophy: that, at length, after so many ages, philosophy and the sciences may no longer he unsettled and speculative, but fixed on the solid foundation of a varied and well-considered experience: and in his reply to the king's acknowledgment of the receipt of the Novum Organum, he repeats his hope that the king will aid him in employing the community in collecting a natural and experimental history, as "basis totius negotii; for who can tell, now this mine of truth is opened, how the veins go, and what lieth higher, and what lieth lower?"
Such were the hopes in which he indulged. So difficult is it to love and be wise. The king complimented him upon his work, saying, that, "like the peace of God, it passeth all understanding;" but of a collection of natural history, "ne verbum quidem."
Annexed to this doctrine of idols, there are some inquiries into the signs of false philosophy; the causes of the errors in philosophy; and the grounds of hope that knowledge must be progressive; hopes which he had beautifully stated in the conclusion of his Advancement of Learning.
After having thus cleared the way by considering the modes by which we are warped from the truth: by which, formed to adore the true God, we fall down and worship an idol: after having admonished us, that, in the conduct of the understanding, a false step may be fatal, that a cripple in the right will beat a racer in the wrong way, erring in proportion to his fleetness, he expresses; his astonishment that no mortal should have taken care to open and prepare a way for the human understandings from sense and a well-conducted experience, but that all things should be left either to the darkness of tradition, the giddy agitation and whirlwind of argument, or else to the uncertain waves of accident, or a vague and uninformed experience. To open this way, to discover how our reason shall be guided, that it may be right, that it be not a blind guide, but direct us to the place where the star appears, and point us to the very place where the babe lieth, is the great object of this inquiry.
As our opinions are formed by impressions made upon our senses, by confidence in the communications of others, and by our own meditations, man, in the infancy of his reason, is unavoidably in error: for, although our senses never deceive us, the communications made by others, and our own speculations must, according to the ignorance of our teachers, and the liveliness of our own imaginations, teem with error.
Bacon saw the evil, and he saw the remedy: he saw and taught his contemporaries and future ages, that reasoning is nothing worth, except as it is founded on facts.
In his Sylva Sylvarum, he thus speaks: "The philosophy of Pythagoras, which was full of superstition, did first plant a monstrous imagination, which afterwards was, by the school of Plato and others, watered and nourished. It was, that the world was one entire, perfect, living creature; that the ebbing and flowing of the sea was the respiration of the world, drawing in water as breath, and putting it forth again. They went on and inferred, that if the world were a living creature, it had a soul and spirit. This foundation being laid, they might build upon it what they would; for in a living creature, though never so great, as, for example, in a great whale, the sense, and the effects of any one part of the body, instantly make a transcursion throughout the whole body: so that by this they did insinuate that no distance of place, nor want or indisposition of matter, could hinder magical operation; but that, for example, we might here in Europe have sense and feeling of that which was done in China. With these vast and bottomless follies, men have been in part entertained. But we that hold firm to the works of God, and to the sense, which is God's lamp, Lucerna Dei Spiraculum Hominis, will inquire, with all sobriety and severity, whether there is to be found, in the footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues.
In this state of darkness was society involved, when Bacon formed his Art of Invention, which consists in collecting all bodies that have any affinity with the nature sought; and in a systematic examination of the bodies collected.
To discover facts is, therefore, his first object; ​but, as natural and experimental history is so copious and diffusive as to confound and distract the understanding, unless digested in proper order, tallies are formed and so digested, that the understanding may commodiously work upon them.
table i.
The first, or Affirmative Table, consists of a general collection of all the known analogous instances which agree in the nature sought, from subjects however dissimilar or sordid they may be supposed to be, and without being deterred by the apparent number of particulars. If, for instance, the nature sought be heat or light, these tables may be thus conceived:
| Heat. | Light. |
| The Sun's direct rays. Forked Lightning. Flame. Blood of Terrestrial Animals. Living Animals. Pepper masticated, &c. | The Heavenly Bodies. Rotten Wood. Putrid Scales of Fish. Glow Worms. Sugar scraped. Eyes of certain Animals. Drops of Salt Water fom ours. Silk Stockings rubbed, &c. |
Such is the object of his first or affirmative table, which, he warns his reader, is not to raise the edifice, but merely to collect the materials, and which is, therefore, to be made without any hasty indulgence of speculation, although the mind may, in proportion to its ingenuity, accidentally, from an inspection of affirmative instances, arrive at a just conclusion.
table ii.
The second, or Negative Table, consists of a collection of all the known instances of similar bodies, which do not agree in the same nature. Thus, let the nature sought be heat.
| Affirmative Table. | Negative Table. |
| The Sun's direct rays. Blood of Terrestrial Animals. Living Animal Boiling Water&c. &c. | The Moon's Rays. Blood of Fish. Dead Animals. Ice, &c. &c. |
By observing this table, it appears that the blood of all animals is not hot. This table, therefore, prevents hasty generalization: "As if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse which were brought before him in the house, and should have sought David, who was absent in the field."
By observing the table, it also appears, that boiling water is hot; ice is cold:—living bodies are hot; dead bodies are cold;—but in boiling water and in living bodies there is motion of parts: in ice and dead bodies they are fixed. Another use, therefore, of this table is to discover the nature sought by observing its qualities which are absent in the analogous nature, "like the images of Cassius and Brutus, in the funeral of Junia;" of which, not being represented as many others were, Tacitus saith, "Eo ipso præfulgebant quod non visebantur."
table iii.
The third, or Table of Comparisons, consists of comparison of quantity of the nature sought in the same bodies and in different bodies. Thus,
comparisons of heat. :
| In different bodies. | In the same body. |
| There is no solid body naturally hot. All bodies are in different degrees capable of heat. There is no whole vegetable hot to the external touch. Living Animals. Flame. Anvil struck by hammer. The continuance of a body in heat. Boiling water. Pepper masticated. Boiling lead. Gas. Lightning. Acids, &c. &c. | In Animals. Animal heat varies from minute perceptibility to about the heat of the hottest day. It is always endurable. It is increased by food, venery, exercise, fever, &c. In some fevers the heat is constant, in others intermitent, &c. Heat varies in different parts of the same body. Animals differ in heat &c. Flame. 1. The lambent flame, related by historians to have appeared on the heads of children, gently playing about the hair. 2. The coruscations seen in a clear night on a sweating horse. 3. Of the glow-worm. 4. Of the ignis fatuus. 5. Of spirits of wine. 6. Of vegetables, straw, dry leaves. 7. Of boiling metals. 8. Of blast furnaces. |
By observing this table the cause of the different quantities of the nature sought, some approximation may be made to the nature itself. Thus, vegetables, or common water, do not exhibit heat to the touch, but masticated pepper or boiling water are hot. Flame is hotter than the human body: boiling water than warm. Is there any difference except in the motion of the parts?
table iv.
Or of Exclusions, is of a more complicated nature. Bacon assumes that the quality of any nature can be ascertained by its being always present when the sought nature is present: is always absent when the sought nature is absent: increases always with its increase, and decreases with its decrease.
Upon this principle his table of exclusion is formed, by excluding, 1st, Such particular natures as are not found in any instances where the given nature is present; or, 2d, Such as are found in any instances where that nature is absent; and 3d, ​Such as are found to increase in any instance when the given nature decreases; or, 4th, To decrease when that nature increases. Thus,
| Natures not always present with the sought nature. | Natures not always present with the sought nature. | Nature varying according to some inverse law of the sought nature. | Nature varying according to some inverse law of the sought nature. |
| Which may be absent when the sought nature is present | Which may be present when the sought nature is absent. | Which may increase as the sought nature decreases. | Which may decrease as the sought nature increases. |
| Light Quiescence of parts, &c. | Fluidity. Motion of the whole body. Quiescence of parts. | Quiescence of parts, &c. | Light Iron may be heated to a greater heat than the flame of spirit of wine. Quiescence of parts, &c. |
The object of this exclusion is to make a perfect resolution and separation of nature, not by fire, but by the mind, which is, as it were, the divine fire: that, after this rejection and exclusion is duly made, the affirmative, solid, true, and well defined form will remain as the result of the operation, whilst the volatile opinions go off in fume.
table v.
The fifth table of Results, termed the first vintage or dawn of doctrine, consists of a collection of such natures as always accompany the sought nature, increase with its increase, and decrease with its decrease.
It appears, that, in all instances, the nature of heat is motion of parts;—flame is perpetually in motion;—hot or boiling liquors are in continual agitation;—the sharpness and intensity of heat is increased by motion, as in bellows and blasts;—existing fire and heat are extinguished by strong compression, which checks and puts a stop to all motion;—all bodies are destroyed, or at least remarkably altered, by heat; and, when heat wholly escapes from the body, it rests from its labours; and hence it appears, that heat is motion, and nothing else.
Having collected and winnowed, by the various tables, the different facts presented to the senses, he proposed to examine them by nine different processes: of which he has investigated only the first, or Prerogative Instances, those instances by which the nature sought is most easily discovered. They may be thus exhibited:
| | | 1. Solitary. |
| | | 2. Travelling. |
| | 1. Exclusion | 3. Journeying. |
| | of irrelevants. | 4. Nature in motion. |
| | | 5. Constituent. |
| 1. Contracting the inquiries | | |
| within narrow limits. | | 1. Patent and Latent. |
| | | 2. Maxima. Minima. |
| | 2. Nature | 3. Frontier. |
| | conspicuous | 4. Singular. |
| | | 5. Divorce. |
| 2. Reality and Appearances. | 2. Reality and Appearances. | 6. Deviating. |
| 3. Resemblances and differences. ||
1. exclusion of irrelevants.
Solitary Instances.—If the inquiry be into the nature of colour: a rainbow and a piece of glass in a stable window, differ in every thing except in the prismatic colours; they are therefore solitary in resemblance. The different parts of the same piece of marble, the different parts of a leaf of a variegated tulip, agree in every thing, save the colour; they are, therefore, solitary in difference.
By thus contracting the limits of the inquiry, may it not possibly be inferred, that colour depends upon refraction of the rays of light?
Nature in motion.—Observe nature in her processes. If any man desired to consider and examine the contrivances and industry of a certain artificer, he would not be content to view only the rude materials of the workman, and then immediately the finished work, but covet to be present whilst the artist prosecutes his labour, and exercises his skill. And the like course should be taken in the works of nature.
Travelling Instances.—In inquiring into any nature, observe its progress in approaching to or receding from existence. Let the inquiry be into the nature of whiteness. Take a piece of clear glass and a vessel of clear water, pound the glass into fine dust and agitate the water, the pulverised glass and the surface of the water will appear white; and this whiteness will have travelled from non-existence into existence. Again, take a vessel full of any liquor with froth at the top, or take snow, let the froth subside and the snow melt; the whiteness will disappear, and will have travelled from existence to non-existence.
Journeying Instances.—In inquiring into any nature, observe its motions gradually continued or contracted. An inquirer into the vegetation of plants should have an eye from the first sowing of the seed, and examine it almost every day, by taking or plucking up a seed after it had remained for one, two, or three days in the ground; to observe with diligence when, and in what manner the seed begins to swell, grow plump, and be filled or become turgid, as it were, with spirit; next, how it bursts the skin, and strikes its fibres with some tendency upwards, unless the earth be very stubborn; how it shoots its fibres in part, to constitute roots downwards; in part, to form stems upwards, and sometimes creeping sideways, if it there find the earth more open, pervious, and yielding, with many particulars of the same kind. And the like should be done as to eggs during their hatching, where the whole process of vivification and organization might be easily viewed; and what becomes of the yolk, what of the white, &c. The same is also to be attempted in inanimate bodies; and this we have endeavoured after, by observing the ways ​wherein liquors open themselves by fire; for water opens one way, wine another, verjuice another and milk, oil, &c., with a still greater difference.
Constituent Instances.—In inquiring into any nature, separate complex into simple natures. Let the nature sought be memory, or the means of exciting and helping the memory: the constituent instances may be thus exhibited:
| | 1. The patient. | 1. The mind free. |
| | 1. The patient. | 2. The mind agitated. |
| 1. The art of making strong impressions. |
| | 2. The agent. | 1. Variety of impression. |
| | 2. The agent. | 2. Slowness of impression. |
| | | 1. Order. |
| | 1. Cutting off infinity. | 2. Places for artificial memory. |
| 2. The art of recalling impressions. | | 3. Technical memory. |
| | 2. Reducing intellectual to sensible things. | 2. Reducing intellectual to sensible things. |
Such are specimens of his mode of excluding irrelevant natures.
2. observing the nature where most conspicuous, or instances of extremes.
Patent and Latent Instances. In inquiring into any nature, observe where the nature, in its usual state, appears most conspicuous, and where it appears in its weakest and most imperfect state. The loadstone is a glaring instance of attraction. The thermometer is a glaring instance of the expansive nature of heat. Flame exhibits its expansive nature to the sense, but it is momentary and vanishes. Again, let the inquiry be into the nature of solidity, the contrary of which is fluidity. Froth, snow, bubbles, whether of soap and water, blown by children, or those which may be seen occasionally on the surface of a fluid or on the side of a vessel, or the looking-glasses made of spittle by children in a loop of a single hair or a rush, where we see a consistent pellicule of water, like infant ice, exhibit solidity in its most feeble states.
Maxima and Minima. In inquiring into any nature, observe it in its extremes, or its maxima and minima. Gold in weight; iron in hardness; the whale in bulk of animal bodies; the hound in scent; the explosion of gunpowder in sudden expansion, are instances of maxima. The minute worms in the skin is an instance of minimum in animal bulk.
Frontier Instances. Observe those species of bodies which seem composed of two species; as moss, which is something betwixt putrefaction and a plant; flying fishes, which are a species betwixt birds and fish; bats, which are betwixt birds and quadrupeds; the beast so like ourselves, the ape; the biformed births of animals; the mixtures of different species, &c.
Singular Instances. In inquiring into any nature, observe those instances which, in regular course, are solitary amidst their own natures. Quicksilver amongst metals; the power of the carrier pigeon to return to the place from whence it was carried; the scent of the bloodhound; the loadstone amongst stones; that species of flowers which do not die when plucked from the stalk, but continue their colours and forms unaltered through the winter. So with grammarians the letter G is held singular for the easiness of its composition with consonants, sometimes with double and sometimes with triple ones, which is a property of no other letter. So the number 9 amongst figures possesses the peculiar property, that the sum of the digits of all its multiples is 9.
Instances of Divorce. Observe the separation of such natures as are generally united. Light and heat are generally united; but in a cold moonlight night there is light without heat, and in hot water there is heat without light. The action of one body upon another is in general affected by the medium through which it acts; thus sound varies with the state of the atmosphere, and through a thick wall is scarcely perceptible. The magnetic attraction seems to be an instance of divorce, as it acts indifferently through all mediums.
Deviating Instances. Observe nature when apparently deviating from her accustomed course; as in all cases of monsters, prodigious births, &c. He who knows the ways of nature will the easier observe her deviations; and he who knows her deviations, will more exactly describe her ways. For the business in this matter is no more than by quick scent to trace out the footways of nature in her wilful wanderings, that so after ward you may be able at your pleasure to lead or force her to the same place and posture again. As a man's disposition is never well known till he be crossed, nor did Proteus ever change shapes till he was straitened and held fast.
Such are specimens of his modes of viewing nature where most conspicuous.
3. fixing the real, between different apparent causes.
Crucial Instances. When, in inquiring into any particular nature, the mind is in æquilibrio between two causes, observe if there is not some instance which marks the cause of the sought nature. Let the nature sought be gravity. Heavy bodies, having a tendency to the earth, must fall ex mero motu, from their own construction, or be attracted by the earth. Let two equal bodies fall through equal spaces at different distances from the earth, and if they fall through these equal spaces in unequal times, the descent is influenced by the attraction of the earth.
4. resemblances and differences.
Observe resemblances between apparent differences.—Are not gums of trees and gems produced in the same manner, both of them being only exudations and percolations of juices: gums being the transuded juices of trees, and gems of stones; whence the clearness and transparency of them both are produced by means of a curious and exquisite percolation?—Are not the hairs of beasts and the feathers of birds produced in the same manner, by the percolation of juices? and are not the colours of feathers more beautiful and vivid, because the juices are more subtilely strained through the substance of the quill in birds than through the skins of beasts? Do not the celestial bodies move in their orbits by the same laws which govern the motions of the bodies terrestrial.
From the conformity between a speculum and the eye, the structure of the ear and of the cavernous places that yield an echo, it is easy to form and collect this axiom,—that the organs of the senses, and the bodies that procure reflections to the senses, are of a like nature. And, again, the understanding being thus admonished, easily rises to a still higher and more noble axiom; viz., that there is no difference between the consents and sympathies of bodies endowed with sense, and those of inanimate bodies without sense, only that in the former an animal spirit is added to the body so disposed, but is wanting to the latter; whence, as many conformities as there are among inanimate bodies, so many senses there might be in animals, provided there were organs or perforations in the animal body, for the animal spirit to act upon the parts rightly disposed, as upon a proper instrument. And, conversely, as many senses as there are in animals, so many motions there may be in bodies inanimate, where the animal spirit is wanting; though there must, of necessity, be many more motions in inanimate bodies than there are senses in animate bodies, because of the small number of the organs of sense.
Real differences in apparent resemblances.—Do any two beings differ more from each other than two human beings? Men's curiosity and diligence have been hitherto principally employed in observing the variety of things, and explaining the precise differences of animals, vegetables, and fossils, the greatest part of which variety and differences are rather the sport of nature, than matters of any considerable and solid use to the sciences. Such things, indeed, serve for delight, and sometimes contribute to practice, but afford little or no true information, or thorough insight into nature; human industry, therefore, must be bent upon inquiring into, and observing the similitudes and analogies of things, as well in their wholes as in their parts; for these are what anite nature, and begin to build up the sciences.
Such are specimens, mere specimens, of this most valuable of all his works, and by him most highly valued. It is written in a plain, unadorned style, in aphorisms, invariably stated by him to be the proper style for philosophy, which, conscious of its own power, ought to go forth "naked and unarmed;" but, from the want of symmetry and ornament, from its abstruseness, from the novelty of its terms, and from the imperfect state in which it was published, it has, although the most valuable, hitherto been too much neglected: but it will not so continue. The time has arrived, or is fast approaching, when the pleasures of intellectual pursuit will have so deeply pervaded society, that they will, to a considerable extent, form the pleasures of our youth; and the lamentation in the Advancement of Learning will be diminished or pass away: "Nevertheless, I do not pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me, by any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgment, either of Æsop's cock, that preferred the barley-corn before the gem; or of Midas, that, being chosen judge between Apollo, president of the muses, and Pan, god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or of Paris, that judged for beauty and love, against wisdom and power; or of Agrippina, 'occidat matrem modo imperet,' that preferred empire with any condition, never so detestable; or of Ulysses, 'qui vetulam prætulit immortalitati,' being a figure of those which prefer custom and habit before all excellency; or of a number of the like popular judgments. For these things must continue as they have been: but so will that also continue, whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: 'justificata est sapientia a filiis suis.'"
Copies of the work were sent to the king, the University of Cambridge, Sir Henry Wotton, and Sir Edward Coke.
The tranquil pursuits of philosophy he was now, (1620,) for a time, obliged to quit, to allay, if possible, the political storm in which the state was involved, and which he vainly thought that he had the power to calm. It is scarcely possible for any chancellor to have been placed in a situation of greater difficulty. He knew the work that must be done, and the nature of his materials.
The king, who was utterly dependent upon the people, was every day resorting to expedients which widened the breach between them: despotic without dignity, and profuse without magnificence, meanly grasping, and idly scattering neither winning their love, nor commanding their reverence, he seemed in all things the reverse of his illustrious predecessor, exceptin what could be well spared, the arbitrary spirit common to them both. While the people were harassed and pillaged by the wretches to whom the king had delegated his authority, he reaped only part of the spoil, but all the odium.
The chancellor had repeatedly assured the king ​that his best interests, which consisted in a good understanding with his subjects, could be maintained only by calling frequent parliaments: advice not likely to be acceptable to a monarch who had issued a proclamation, commanding all his people, from the highest to the lowest, "not to intermeddle, by pen or speech, with state concernments and secrets of empire, at home or abroad, which were not fit themes for common meetings or vulgar persons;" but, whatever their secret dissatisfaction might be, the whole body of the nation manifested so much zeal for the recovery of the palatinate, that the juncture was deemed favourable for relieving the king's pecuniary difficulties, who consented with this view to summon a parliament.
This resolution was no sooner formed, than the chancellor was instructed to confer with the most proper persons as to the best means of carrying it into effect; and he accordingly availed himself of the assistance of the two chief justices, and of Serjeant Crew, who, after mature deliberation, agreed upon four points, which were immediately communicated to his majesty and to Buckingham.
Different days were fixed for the meeting of this eventful parliament, which was called with a full knowledge of the king's motive for sum moning them; and that, had not the expedient respecting benevolence wholly failed, this council of the nation would never have been assembled; as the king considered the Commons "daring encroachers upon his prerogative; endeavouring to make themselves greater, and their prince less, than became either."
Previous to the meeting, the lord chancellor was raised to the dignity of Viscount St. Alban, by a patent which stated that the king had conferred this title because he thought nothing could adorn his government more or afford greater enconragement to virtue and public spirit, than the raising worthy persons to honour; and with this new dignity, he, on the 27th day of January, was with great ceremony invested at Theobalds, the patent being witnessed by the most illustrious peers of the realm, the Lord Carew carrying, and the Marquess of Buckingham supporting the robe of state before him, while his coronet was borne by the Lord Wentworth. The new viscount returned solemn thanks to the king for the many favours bestowed upon him.
The thirtieth of January, an ominous day to the family of the Stuarts, was at last fixed for the king to meet his people, writhing as they were under the intolerable grievances by which they were oppressed; grievances which, notwithstanding the warnings and admonitions addressed to the king when he ascended the throne, had most culpably increased. Power, not only tenacious inretaining its authority, but ever prone to increase its exactions, may disregard the progress of knowledge, but it is never disregarded with impunity. Truth, the daughter of time, not of authority, is constantly warning the community in what their interests consist, and that to protect, not to encroach upon these interests, all governments are formed.
Upon the opening of parliament the king addressed the Commons. He stated his opinion of their relative duties: that he was to distribute justice and mercy; and they, without meddling with his prerogative, were by petition to acquaint him with their distresses, and were to supply his pecuniary wants.
At first there appeared nothing but duty and submission on the part of the Commons. Determined, if possible, to maintain a good correspondence with their prince, they without one dissenting voice voted him two subsidies, and that too at the very beginning of the session, contrary to the maxims frequently adopted by former parliaments. They then proceeded, in a very temperate and decided manner, to the examination of their oppressions, intimating that the supply of the king's distresses and the removal of their vexations were to advance hand in hand without precedency, as twin brothers.
Of their grievances the Commons loudly and justly complained. Under the pretext of granting patents, the creatures of Buckingham had rapaciously exacted large fees. These exactions can scarcely be credited. There were patents for every necessary and convenience of life; for gold and silver thread; for inns and ale-houses; for remitting the penalties of obsolete laws, and even for the price of horse-meat, starch, candles, tobacco-pipes, salt, and train-oil; and such traders as presumed to continue their business without satisfying the rapacity of the patentees, had been severely punished by vexatious prosecutions, fine, and imprisonment. The outcries of the subject were incessant. "Monopolies and briberies were beaten upon the anvil every day, almost every hour." The complaints were so numerous that not less than eighty committees to redress abuses in the church, in the courts of law, and in every department of the state, were immediately nominated. From the mass of evils under consideration, the House first directed its attention to the three great patents, of inns, of ale-houses, and of gold and silver thread. The chief actors were Sir Giles Mompesson, a man of property, and a member of the house, and Sir Francis Michell, his tool, a poor justice, who received annually £100 for issuing warrants to enforce his tyranny. The rage for punishment was not confined to Mompesson and Michell. Sir Henry Yelverton, the attorney-general, who had incurred the displeasure of Buckingham, was prosecuted and severely punished, for some irregularity respecting a patent for a charter for the city of London.
It appeared before a committee of the house, that the profits from these patents were shared by ​all classes of society who were connected with Buckingham. Amongst the patentees were the Lord Harrington and the Countess of Bedford. Christopher Villiers, and Sir Edward Villiers, half-brother of the lord marquis, received £1,800 annually between them; and from one single patent the king's annual profit was £10,000.
These rumours reached and alarmed the king, who instantly caused a communication to be made to the lords, that the patent was sanctioned by divers of the judges for the point of law, and by divers lords for point of convenience.
Reform was now the universal cry of the nation. It was one of those periodical outcries, which ever has been and ever will be heard in England, till, by admitting the gradual improvement which the progress of knowledge requires, the current, instead of being opposed, is judiciously directed. The streams which for centuries roll on, and for centuries are impeded, at last break down or rush over the barriers and carry every thing before them. When in this deluge the ark itself is in danger, the patriot endeavours to confine the torrent within its proper banks, and to resist or direct its impetuosity, while the demagogue joins in the popular clamour, visiting on individuals the faults of the times, and sacrificing, as an atonement to injured feeling, the most virtuous members of the community.
When the complaints of the people could no longer be resisted, and public inquiry became inevitable, Buckingham, insensible to all other shame, appeared fully conscious of the infamy of exposure. The honour of a gentleman and the pride of nobility slept at ease upon the money bags extorted from the sufferers, but he and his noble colleagues endured the utmost alarm at the prospect of discovery.
Conscious of his peril, disquieted, and robbed of all peace of mind, admonished "That the arrow of vengeance shot against his brother grazed himself," he consulted one of the ablest men in England, Williams, then Dean of Westminster, who, well versed in matters of state, soon saw the position in which all parties were placed. He recommended that Villiers should, without a moment's delay, be sent upon some foreign embassy; and, his guilt being less enormous or less apparent than of the other offenders, he was thus protected by the power of his brother. Villiers being safe, Williams advised compliance with the humour of the people, and suggested that in this state tempest Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir F. Michell "should be thrown overboard as wares that might be spared," quoting a wise heathen as a precedent, well knowing that his breviary contained no such doctrine: advice which was gratefully received by the marquis, who declared that, for the future, he would attend to no other counsellor.
It may, at first sight, appear remarkable, that, in matters of such moment, Buckingham should apply for counsel to Williams rather than to Bacon, by whose advice he professed to be always guided: it is, however, certain that he not only communicated privately with Williams, but that he carried him to the king, whom they found closeted with the prince, in much distress and perplexity, when the dean read to his royal master a document prepared at the suggestion of Buckingnam, or the fruit of his own politic brain.
It is to be hoped that the fiend ambition did not so far possess him, as to recommend the greater sacrifice of Bacon, should Mompesson and Michell be deemed insufficient to allay the storm; but if ambition did influence this politic prelate, if the vision of the seals floated before him, and induced him to plot against the "gracious Duncan," he could not but foresee that the result of the inquiries would only convince the parliament that Mompesson and Michell were mere puppets moved for the profit and advantage of others, and that Buckingham, or one as highly placed, might be demanded.
On the 15th of March, 1620, Sir Robert Phillips reported from the committee appointed to inquire into the abuses of courts of justice, of which he was chairman, that two petitions had been presented for corruption against the lord chancellor, by two suitors in the court of chancery, the one named Aubrey, the other Egerton.
Aubrey's petition stated, "That having a suit pending before the lord chancellor, and being worn out by delays, he had been advised by his counsel to present £100 to the chancellor, that his cause might, by more than ordinary means, be expedited, and that in consequence of this advice he had delivered the £100 to Sir George Hastings and to Mr. Jenkins, of Gray's Inn, by whom it was presented to his lordship; but notwithstanding this offering, the chancellor had decided against him."
Egerton's complaint was, that "To procure my lord's favour, he had been persuaded by Sir George Hastings and Sir Richard Young, to make some present to the chancellor; and that he accordingly delivered to Sir George and to Sir Richard £400, which was delivered by them to the chancellor as a gratuity, for that my lord, when attorney-general, had befriended him: and that, before this advice, Egerton had himself, either before or after the chancellor was intrusted with the great seal, presented to his lordship a piece of plate worth fifty guineas; but that, not withstanding these presents, the lord chancellor, assisted by Lord Chief Justice Hobart, had decided against him.
If Bacon, instead of treating the charge with contempt, and indulging in imaginations of the friendship of Buckingham and of the king, thinking, as they were, only of their own safety, had ​trusted to his own powerful mind, and met the accusation instantly and with vigour, he might at once, strong as the tide was against all authority, have stemmed the torrent, and satisfied the intelligent, that the fault was not in the chancellor, but the chancery.
Might he not have reminded the house that, although.he knew the temporary power of custom against opinion, he, in resistance of the established practice, had exerted himself to prevent any interference, even by Buckingham or the king, in the administration of justice, by which the impartiality of the judges might be, or might appear to be disturbed.
Could he not have said that both petitions contained internal and unanswerable proof that it was not the corruption of the judge, but the fault of the times, in which the practice originated? Could he not have said that the presents were made openly, in the presence of witnesses?
How could these offerings have influenced his judgment in favour of the donor, when, in both cases, he decided against the party by whom the presents were made? In the case of Aubrey, he, to repeat the strong expressions which had been used, made "a killing decree against him:" and, with respect to Egerton, the decision was in favour of his opponent, Rowland, who did not make any present until some weeks after the judgment was pronounced.
But, not contenting himself by thus showing that the offerings were neither presented nor received as bribes, could he not have said, the petitions both state that the presents were recommended by counsel, and delivered by men of title and members of parliament? Did they then act in compliance with long established practice, or were they all bribed? Were the practitioners in this noble profession polluted by being accessory to the worst species of bribery? Why, when the charge was made, did the recorder instantly say, "If Egerton desired to congratulate him at his coming to the seal for his kindness and pains in former business, what wrong hath he done, if he hath received a present? And if there were a suit depending, who keeps a register in his heart of all causes? nay, who can, amongst such a multitude?"
Could he not have said that the custom of the chancellor's receiving presents had existed from the earliest periods? that a member had reminded the house of its existence, and said, "I think the chancellor took gratuities, and the lord chancellor before, and others before him? I have, amongst the muniments of my own estate, an entry of a payment to a former chancellor of a sum for the pains he had taken in hearing our cause."
This custom of judges receiving presents was not peculiar to England, but existed in the most enlightened governments; in the different states of Greece; in all feudal states; in France, where the suitors always presented the judge with some offering, in conformity with their established maxim, "Non deliberetur, donec solventur species," and in England, from time immemorial. It existed before the time of King John, and during his reign; and notwithstanding the rights secured at Runnymede, it has ever continued. It existed in the reign of Henry the Fifth; and although, during the reign of Henry the Eighth, Sir Thomas More declined to receive presents, his very power of declining proves that it was customary to offer them, and, in conformity with this practice, the usual presents were made to Lord Bacon within a few hours after he had accepted the great seal, the only pecuniary compensation, except a very trifling salary, to which the lord keeper was entitled for labours never intended to be gratuitous.
What could have been said in answer to this statement, that the presents were made openly, that the decision was against the party by whom they were made, and that they were made by the advice of counsel, and delivered by men of eminence, and sanctioned by immemorial practice in this and in all countries?
Might he not have called upon the justice of the House for protection from the aspersions of two discontented suitors, who had no more cause of complaint against him than Wraynham, by whom he was slandered, or Lord Clifford, by whom he was threatened to be assassinated? Might he not have called upon the house for protection against these calumnies at a time when the excited people wished for some sacrifice, as a tribute to public opinions, an atonement for public wrongs, and a security for better times?
The people are often censured for their selection of a victim, but, where they contend for a principle, they lose sight of the individual. It is this dangerous indifference that enables bad men to direct, for private ends, a popular tumult. The Jewish people demanded merely their annual privilege; it was the priests who said, "Save Barrabas."
​To the Right Honourable his very good Lords, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Upper House of Parliament assembled.
My very good Lords, I humbly pray your lordships all to make a favourable and true construction of my absence. It is no feigning or fainting, but sickness both of my heart and of my back, though joined with that comfort of mind that persuadeth me that I am not far from heaven, whereof I feel the first-fruits. And because, whether I live or die, I would be glad to preserve my honour and fame, so far as I am worthy, hearing that some complaints of base bribery are coming before your lordships, my requests unto your lordships are:
First, that you will maintain me in your good opinion, without prejudice, until my cause be heard.
Secondly, that in regard I have sequestered my mind at this time in great part from worldly matters, thinking of my account and answers in a higher court, your lordships will give me convenient time, according to the course of other courts, to advise with my counsel and to make my answer; wherein, nevertheless, my counsel's part will be the least; for I shall not, by the grace of God, trick up an innocency with cavillations, but plainly and ingenuously (as your lordships know my manner is) declare what I know or remember.
Thirdly, that, according to the course of justice, I may be allowed to except to the witnesses brought against me; and to move questions to your lordships for their cross-examinations; and likewise to produce my own witnesses for the discovery of the truth.
And lastly, that if there be anymore petitions of like nature, that your lordships would be pleased not to take any prejudice or apprehension of any number or muster of them, especially against a judge, that makes two thousand orders and decrees in a year, (not to speak of the courses that have been taken for hunting out complaints against me,) but that I may answer them according to the rules of justice, severally and respectively.
These requests I hope appear to your lordships no other than just. And so thinking myself happy to have so noble peers and reverend prelates to discern of my cause; and desiring no privilege of greatness for subterfuge of guiltiness, but meaning, as I said, to deal fairly and plainly with your lordships, and to put myself upon your honours and favours, I pray God to bless your counsels and persons. And rest your lordships humble servant,
Fr. St. Alban, Canc.
March 10, 1620.
This letter, which was delivered by Buckingham, the Lords immediately answered, by assuring the chancellor "that the proceedings should be according to the right rule of justice; that it was the wish of the House that his lordship should near his honour from the different aspersions, and praying him to provide for his defence;" a courtesy which his lordship instantly acknowledged, with the expression of his intention to speak more fully at a future time.
Thus resolved to defend himself, there was some communication between the chancellor and Buckingham; whether it was confined to the favourite must be left to conjecture; but it appears to have had its full effect both upon him.aml upon the king, who, seeing the untoward events which might yet occur from the discussions of this inquiring parliament, sent a message to the Commons, expressing his comfort that the House was careful to preserve his honour; his wish that the parliament should adjourn to the 10th of April; and his assurance that the complaints against the lord chancellor should be carefully examined before a committee of six peers and twelve commoners; a proposal not very acceptable to Sir Edward Coke, who thought it might defeat the parliamentary proceedings which he was so anxious to prosecute.
On the 20th, the Commons proceeded to the examination of witnesses, and a further complaint was preferred in the cause of Wharton and Willoughby, by the Lady Wharton, against whom the chancellor had decided. It appeared that the presents were made openly at two several times, with the knowledge and in the presence of witnesses.
The cry having been raised, the lowest members of the profession, a common informer and a disgraced registrar were, with their crew, employed in hunting for charges; and, so ready was the community to listen to complaints, that it mattered not by whom they were preferred; "greatness was the mark, and accusation the game." One of his many faithful friends, Sir Thomas Meautys, rose to resist this virulence. He admonished the House of the misstatements that would be made by such accusers, men without character, under the influence of motives which could not be misunderstood. "I have known," he said, "and observed his lordship for some years: he hath sown a good seed of justice; let not the abandoned and envious choke it with their tares." He had as much prospect of success as if he had attempted to stop the progress of a volcano.
Additional charges, thus collected, and of the same nature, were preferred against him.
On the 26th of March, in conformity with the advice given by Williams, sentence was passed upon Mompesson and Michell, many patents were recalled, and the king, after having addressed the House, adjourned the parliament.
The king's speech abounded with that adroit flattery to the House, which he so frequently practised when he had any thing to gain or any thing to fear; he did not name the chancellor directly, and, when he glanced at the charge of bribery, while he cautioned them not to be carried away "by the impertinent discourses of those ​who named the innocent as well as the guilty;" he contrived lo praise Buckingham, and to turn the charge itself into a dexterous commendation both of his favourite and the prince.
The parliament was then adjourned to the 17th of April, with the hope that, during the recess, the favourite or his master might contrive some expedient to delay or defeat investigation; and that time might mitigate the displeasure which, in both Houses, seemed strong against the chancellor.
The proceedings within the House were suspended, but the chancellor's opponents, unchecked or secretly encouraged by his pretended friends, continued their exertions, actuated either by virtuous indignation at the supposition of his guilt, or by motives less pure,—the hope of gaining by his fall, or envy of the greatness which overshadowed them.
The state of the chancellor's mind during this storm has been variously represented; by some of his contemporaries he is said to have been depressed: by others that he was merry, and not doubting that he should be able to ride safely through the tempest. His playfulness of spirit never forsook him. When, upon the charge being first made, his servants rose as he passed through the hall, "Sit down, my friends," he said, "your rise has been my fall;" and when one of his friends said, "You must look around you," he replied, "I look above me." Playfulness in affliction is, however, only an equivocal test of cheerfulness; in a powerful mind grief rests itself in the exercise of the antagonist feelings, and, by a convulsive effort, throws off the load of despair.
Difficult as it may be to discover the real state of his mind, it cannot be supposed, accustomed as he was to active life, and well aware of the intrigues of courts, that, in this moment of peril, his sagacity slumbered, or that he was so little attentive to his own interests, as to be sheltered in the shades of Gorhambury, all meaner things forgotten, watching the progress of some chymical experiment, or wandering with Hobbes in the mazes of metaphysics.
His enemies, who were compassing his ruin, might imagine that be was thus indulging in the day-dreams of philosophy, but, so imagining, they were ignorant of his favourite doctrine, that "Learning is not like some small bird, as the lark, that can mount and sing, and please herself, and nothing else, but that she holds as well of the hawk, that can soar aloft, and at the right moment can stoop and seize upon her prey." The chancellor retired to prepare for his defence, to view the nature of the attack, and the strength of his assailants.
The charges, which were at first confined to Aubrey and Egerton, were now accumulated to twenty-three in number, by raking up every instance of an offering, even to the case of Wraynham, who had been punished for his scurrilous libel against the chancellor and the master of the rolls.
Of this virulence the chancellor thus complained to Buckingham: "Your lordship spoke of purgatory. I am now in it; but my mind is in a calm; for my fortune is not my felicity. I know I have clean hands and a clean heart, and I hope a clean house for friends or servants. But Job himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him, as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, especially in a time when greatness is the mark, and accusation is the game. And if this be to be a chancellor, I think if the great seal lay upon Hounslow Heath, nobody would take it up. But the king and your lordship will I hope put an end to these my straits, one way or other." And in a subsequent letter he said, "I perceive, by some speech that passed between your lordship and Mr. Meautys, that some wretched detractor hath told you, that it were strange I should be in debt; for that I could not but have received a hundred thousand pounds gifts since I had the seal, which is an abominable falsehood. Such tales as these made St. James say that the tongue is a fire, and itself fired from hell, whither when these tongues shall return, they will beg a drop of water to cool them. I praise God for it, I never took penny for any benefice or ecclesiastical living; I never took penny for releasing any thing I stopped at the seal; I never took penny for any commission, or things of that nature: I never shared with any servant for any second or inferior profit."
About the same period he thus wrote to the king, in a letter which he intrusted to the discretion of Buckingham to withhold or deliver:
It may please your most excellent majesty,—Time hath been when I have brought unto you "Gemitum Columbæ" from others, now I bring it from myself. I fly unto your majesty with the wings of a dove, which, once within these seven days, I thought would have carried me a higher flight. When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is come upon me I have been (as your majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried "suavibus modis." I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty, or intolerable, or hateful man in my conversation or carriage: I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be; for these are the things that use to raise dislikes abroad.
I For the House of Commons, I began my credit there, and now it must be the place of the sepulture thereof. And yet this parliament, upon the message touching religion, the old love revived, ​and they said, I was the same man still, only honesty was turned to honour.
For the Upper House, even within these days, before these troubles, they seemed as to take me into their arms, finding in me ingenuity, which they took to be the true, straight line of nobleness, without crooks or angles.
And for the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times.
And therefore I am resolved, when I come to my answer, not to trick my innocency (as I writ to the lords) by cavillations or voidances, but to speak to them the language that my heart speaketh to me, in excusing, extenuating, or ingenuous confessing; praying God to give me the grace to see to the bottom of my faults, and that no hardness of heart do steal upon me, under show of more neatness of conscience, than is cause.
But not to trouble your majesty any longer, craving pardon for this long mourning letter, that which I thirst after, as the hart after the streams, is, that I may know by my matchless friend that presenteth to you this letter, your majesty's heart (which is an abyssus of goodness, as I am an abyssus of misery) towards me. I have been ever your man, and counted myself but a usufructuary of myself, the property being yours. And now making myself an oblation, to do with me as may best conduce to the honour of your justice, the honour of your mercy, and the use of your service, resting as clay in your majesty's gracious hands,
Fr. St. Alban, Canc.
March 25, 1620.
To the preparation of his defence he now proceeded—a preparation which could scarcely to any advocate have been attended with difficulty, whether considering the general nature of the complaints, or the weight due to each particular charge.
There are circumstances attending these accusations, by which at this time the judgment may be warped, that did not exist two centuries since. We may be misled by transferring the opinions of the present to past times, and by supposing that the accusations were preferred by some or all of thesuitors whose names are mentioned, and on whose behalf the presents were offered after the termination of their causes; but it was then well known, that these suitors reluctantly attended, in obedience to the summons obtained in consequence of the petitions presented by the two discontented persons against whom the chancellor had decided, notwithstanding their supposition that his judgment was to be purchased.
It could not have escaped the notice of any advocate that the presents were made on behalf of the suitors, by men of character, counsellors, and members of parliament, Sir George Hastings, Sir Richard Young, Sir Henry Holmes, Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Thelwall, Mr. Toby Matthew, and Sir Thomas Perrott; and that they were made openly, with the greatest publicity, both from the nature of the presents themselves, and from the manner in which they were presented; so openly, that even Sir Edward Coke admitted the fact, that they were delivered in the presence of witnesses; and the chancellor, in answer to the 21st charge, that, "upon a dispute between three public companies of the apothecaries and grocers, he had received presents from each of the companies," instantly said, "Could I have taken these presents in the nature of a bribe, when I knew it could not be concealed, because it must needs be put to the account of the three several companies, each of whom was jealous of the other?"
Who can suppose that, if secrecy had been the object, presents of articles constantly in sight would have been selected; gold buttons, tasters of gold, ambergrease, cabinets, and suits of hangings for furniture; they were made, as was notorious, according to the established custom, in this, and in all countries, a custom which, as the Chancellor l'Hôpital endeavoured to abolish in France, the Chancellor Bacon would most gladly have abolished in England, and demanded from the country a proper remuneration for the arduous labours of his high office.
No man felt more deeply the evils which then existed, of the interference by the crown and by statesmen to influence judges. How beautifully did he admonish Buckingham, regardless as he proved of all admonition, "By no means be you persuaded to interpose yourself, either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to be depending, in any court of justice, nor suffer any other great man to do it where you can hinder it; and by all means dissuade the king himself from it, upon the importunity of any for themselves or their friends. 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; judges must be Chaste as Caesar's wife, neither to be, nor to be suspected to be unjust: and, sir, the honour of the judges in their judicature is the king's honour, whose person they represent."
Thus did he raise his voice in opposition to an inveterate practice. The first mode of correcting error, whether in individuals or in the community, is by proclaiming its existence ; the next is, when ripe for action, by acting.
That the presents influenced the judgment of the chancellor was never for a moment supposed by any man. Fourteen out of the twenty-two ​charges related to presents made long after the causes were terminated, and the complaints of his accusers were, not that the gratuities had, but that they had not influenced his judgment, as he had decided against them.
Such topics would have occurred to any advocate. With what force would they have been urged by the chancellor? In his Novum Organum, which he had published in the previous year, he had warned society, that "at the entrance of every inquiry our first duty is to eradicate any idol by which the judgment may be warped; as the kingdom of man can be entered only as the kingdom of God, in the simplicity of little children." How powerfully, then, would he have called upon the lovers of truth and of justice to divest their minds of all prejudice; to be, when sitting in judgment upon a judge, themselves impartial. Knowing the nature of the high tribunal before whom he was to appear, there could, indeed, have been scarcely any necessity for such an appeal. He knew the joy which they "would feel, if he could clear his honour." He knew that, however grateful it may be to common minds to indulge in the vulgar pleasure of imaginary self-importance from the depression of superiority, a disinclination to condemn, even if truth call for conviction, is an attribute of every noble mind, always afflicted at the infirmities of genius. Knowing that, amongst the peers, many valued themselves upon ancient learning, he would have reminded them, that "the tree scathed with lightning, was with them of the olden time ever held sacred. Sure no tree of the forest, under Jove's favour, ever flourished more than myself; witness for me all those who, while the dews of heaven rested on me, were rejoiced to shelter under my branches: and I the more readily, my lords, remind you of an ensample of heathen piety, because I would not in the presence of some of you speak of Christian charity, which, if it were not recorded by one who cannot lie, I have found so cold that I might suppose it to be only painted forth in books, but, indeed, without life, or heat, or motion."
He could not have thought it necessary to warn the lords, as he had apprized the king, that "when from private appetite it is resolved that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with;" nor to have said to the lords, as he had said to the king, "For the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice: howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times." For such appeals there would not, before such a tribunal, have been any necessity. Passing from these general observations, how easy would it have been to have examined each particular charge, by separating the bundle, and breaking it stick by stick?
In the case of Holman and Young, it was alleged that £1000 had been given to the chancellor by Young. Upon investigation it appeared, on this charge of a discontented suitor, that instead of £1000 having been advanced, the sum was £100, which was presented on behalf of Young after the decree, either by Young or Mr. Toby Matthew, a son of the Archbishop of York, through life an intimate friend and correspondent of the chancellor's, and in 1623 knighted by King James.
In the cause of Worth and Mainwaring, it was alleged that the chancellor had been bribed by £100. Upon examination it appeared, that some months after the decree, which was for a great inheritance, the successful party presented £100 to the chancellor.
In the case of Hody and Hody, the charge was, that £100 or £200 was presented to the chancellor. The fact was, that some time after the suit was terminated, Sir Thomas Perrot and Sir Henry Holmes presented the chancellor with some gold buttons, worth forty guineas.
In the case between Reynell and Peacock, the charge was, that there was much money given on both sides, and a diamond ring. The facts turned out to be that presents were given on both sides; that Sir George Reynell was a near ally of the chancellor's, and presented a gratuity as a new year's gift for former favours, when the great seal was first delivered to the lord keeper, and when presents were, as of course, presented by various persons; and that, by the intervention of a friend and neighbour at St. Alban's, he borrowed a sum of Peacock.
In the cause of Barker and Hill, the charge was, that the chancellor had been bribed by a present made by Barker. The fact was, that the sum was presented some time after the decree had been made.
In the case of Smithwick and Wyche, the charge was, that Smithwick had presented £600 to the chancellor, but he had decided against him, and the money was repaid. The fact was, that Smithwick had paid £200 to Hunt, one of the chancellor s servants, unknown to the chancellor; that the decision was against Smithwick, and that the chancellor, when he saw an entry of the sum in his servant s account, had defalced it, and ordered it to be returned.
He might, in the same manner, have decomposed all the charges. He might have selected the fourteen cases in which the presents were made after, and many of them long after judgment had been pronounced. He might have taken each particular case where the presents were before judgment, and the decrees against the donors. He might have explained that, in some of the ​cases, he acted only as arbitrator; and in others that the sums received were not gifts, but loans, and that he had decided against his creditor; and in others that the sums offered were refused and returned. And to the twenty-eighth charge, "that the lord chancellor hath given way to great exactions by his servants," he surely might have admitted that he was negligent in not looking better to his servants. Standing on a cliff, and surveying the whole intellectual world, he did not see every pebble on the shore.
Some defence of this nature could not but have occurred to the chancellor?
Whatever doubt may exist as to the state of his mind, there is none with respect either to the king or Buckingham. The king was disquieted, and Buckingham robbed of all peace. This was the very state of mental fusion favourable for experiment by a shrewd politician. "It is the doctrine of philosophy that to be speculative into another man, to the end to know how to work him, or wind him, or govern him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and ingenuous." This is not the politician's creed.
The king's fears, notwithstanding his pecuniary distresses, disposed him to dissolve the parliament, to which he had been advised, though by this measure he should lose his two subsidies. Williams dissuaded him from such an expedient. "There is," he said, "no colour to quarrel at this general assembly of the kingdom, for tracing delinquents to their form: it is their proper work, and your majesty hath nobly encouraged them to it. Your lordship," he said, turning to Buckingham, "is jealous, if the parliament continue imbodied, of your own safety. Follow it, swim with the tide: trust me and your other servants that have some credit with the most active members, to keep you clear from the strife of tongues; but if you breakup this parliament, in pursuit of justice, only to save some cormorants who have devoured that which they must disgorge, you will pluck up a sluice which will overwhelm you all."
The king listened to the advice of Williams; and his determination not to dissolve the parliament was followed, of course, by the consideration how the charges were to be met, by resistance or by submission.
There cannot be any difficulty in following the train of Williams's reasoning in this conclave. "Resistance will be attended with danger to your lordship and to his majesty. These popular outcries thrive by opposition, and when they cease to be opposed, they cease to exist. The chancellor has been accused. He cannot escape unheard. He must be acquitted or convicted. He cannot, in this time of excitement and prejudgment, expect justice. His mind will easily be impressed by the fate of other great men, sacrifices to the blind ignorance of a vulgar populace, whom talent will not propitiate or innocence appease. Can it be doubted, that the prudent course will be the chancellor's submission, as an atonement for all who are under popular suspicion? The only difficulty will be to prevail upon him to submit. He has resolved to defend himself, and in speech he is all-powerful; but he is of a yielding nature, a lover of letters, in mind contemplative, although in life active; his love of retirement may be wrought upon; the king can remit any fine, and, the means once secured to him of learned leisure for the few remaining years of his life, he will easily be induced to quit the paradise of earthly honours."
So spoke the prelate; and the voice that promised present immunity to the king and his humbled favourite, seemed to them the voice of an angel: but the remedies of a state empiric, like those of all empirics, are only immediate relief; "they help at a pang, but soon leese their operation."
The king fatally resolved upon this concession, and Bacon's remarkable prediction fell upon him and his successor, "They who will strike at your chancellor will strike at your crown."
There was not any suggestion by Williams that the chancellor could not have anticipated, except the monstrous fact that the king and Buckingham were consenting to his downfall. Once convinced that his weak and cowardly master was not only willing but anxious to interpose him between an enraged people and his culpable favourite, his line of conduct became evident: he was as much bound to the stake as if already chained there; and, when the fate of Essex and of Somerset recurred to him, he must have felt how little dependence could be placed upon court favour, and how certain was the utter ruin of a man who attempts to oppose a despotic prince. He might well say, "he was become clay in the king's hand." He who is robbed of all that constitutes a man, freedom of thought and action, which is the breath of his nostrils, becomes no thing but a lifeless statue.
Before the 16th of April the king sent for the chancellor, who instantly prepared minutes for their conference, in which he says, "The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence. With respect to this charge of bribery, I am as innocent as any born upon St. Innocent's day: I never had bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing sentence or order. If, however, it is absolutely necessary, the king's will shall be obeyed. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the king, in whose hands I am as clay, to be made a vessel of honour or dishonour."
That an interview between the king and Bacon took place is clear, from the following entry in the journals of the House of Lords of April 17:
"The lord treasurer signified, that in the interim of this cessation, the lord chancellor was an ​humble suitor unto his majesty, that he might see his majesty and speak with him; and although his majesty, in respect of the lord chancellor's person, and of the place he holds, might have given his lordship that favour, yet, for that his lordship is under the trial of this house, his majesty would not on the sudden grant it.
"That on Sunday last, the king calling all the lords of this house which were of his council before him, it pleased his majesty to show their lordships what was desired by the lord chancellor, demanding their lordships advice therein.
"The lords did not presume to advise his majesty; for that his majesty did suddenly propound such a course as all the world could not advise a better; which was, that his majesty would speak with him privately.
"That yesterday, his majesty admitting the lord chancellor to his presence, his lordship desired that he might have a particular of those matters wherewith he is charged before the lords of this house; for that it was not possible for him, who passed so many orders and decrees in a year, to remember all things that fell out in them; and that, this being granted, his lordship would desire two requests of his majesty. 1. That, where his answers should be fair and clear, to those things objected against him, his lordship might stand upon his innocency. 2. Where his answer should not be so fair and clear, there his lordship might be admitted to the extenuation of the charge; and where the proofs were full and undeniable, his lordship would ingenuously confess them, and put himself upon the mercy of the lords.
"Unto all which his majesty's answer was, he referred him to the lords of this house, and therefore his majesty willed his lordship to make report to their lordships.
"It was thereupon ordered, that the lord treasurer should signify unto his majesty, that the lords do thankfully acknowledge his majesty's favour, and hold themselves highly bound unto his majesty for the same."
At this interview the king, who had determined to sacrifice the "oracle of his counsel rather than the favourite of his affection," gave him his advice, as it was termed, "that he should submit himself to the House of Peers, and that upon his princely word he would then restore him again, if they in their honours should not be sensible of his merits."
How little this command accorded with the chancellor's intention to defend himself, may be gathered from his distress and passionate remonstrance. "I see my approaching ruin: there is no hope of mercy in a multitude, if I do not plead for myself, when my enemies are to give fire. Those who strike at your chancellor will strike at your crown". All remostrance proving fruitless, he took leave of the king with these memorable words: "I am the first; I wish I may be the last sacrifice."
The parts were now cast, and the last act of the drama alone remained to be performed.
On the 17th of April, 1G21, the House met, when some account of the king's interview with the chancellor was narrated by the lord treasurer, and ordered to be entered upon the journals of the House; and, a rumour having been circulated that Buckingham had sent his brother abroad to escape inquiry, he protested unto the lords, "that whereas the opinion of the world is, that his lordship had sent his brother, Sir Edward Villiers, abroad in the king's service, of purpose to avoid his trial touching some grievances complained of by the Commons, his lordship was so far from that, that his lordship did hasten his coming home; and, if any thing blameworthy can be objected against him, his lordship is as ready to censure him as he was Mompesson."
It was then moved by the Earl of Arundel, that the three several committees do make their report to-morrow morning of the examinations by them taken touching the lord chancellor.
On the 20th, the chancellor wrote to the king, to thank him for the goodness manifested in his access on the 16th, and expressing an assured hope, that, as the king imitated Christ, by not breaking the broken reed, or quenching the smoking flax, so would the lords of the Upper House in grace and mercy imitate their royal master: and on the 22d of April he addressed a letter to the House of Lords, which had, of course, been submitted to Buckingham and the king, and was in due time communicated to their lordships by the Prince of Wales.
In that letter, which can be understood only by those who are in possession of the facts now stated, he consented to desert his defence; and that word, used by a man so rich in language, so felicitous in every shade of expression, fully discloses what was passing in his mind. He praised the king, chiefly for his mercy, recommended him as an example to the lords, and reminded the prelates that they were the servants of Christ. He concluded his address by intimating what he hoped would be the measure of his punishment, but not till he had related some passages, from ancient history, in his usual manner, and considered the case and its results to society with a degree of philosophical calmness, which could not possibly contemplate the ruin that ensued, or any punishment beyond the loss of his office.
On the morning of the 24th, the king addressed the house in a speech, which showed his disposition to meet the wishes of the people by admitting, "that as many complaints are already made against courts of judicature, which are in examination, and are to be proceeded upon by the lords, his majesty will add some, which he thinks fit to be also complained of and redressed, viz.: That no ​orders be made but in public court, and not in chambers; that excessive fees be taken away; that no bribery nor money be given for the hearing of any cause. These and many other things his majesty thought fit to be done this session. And his majesty added, that when he hath done this, and all that he can do for the good of his subjects, he confesseth he hath done but the duty whereunto he was born."—The house then adjourned till the afternoon.
In the afternoon the Prince of Wales "signified unto the lords that the lord chancellor had sent the following submission to their lordships:
"To the Right Honourable the Lords of Parliament, in the Upper House assembled.
"The humble Submission and Supplication of the Lord Chancellor.
"It may please your lordships,—I shall humbly crave at your lordships hands a benign interpretation of that which I shall now write. For words that come from wasted spirits and an oppressed mind are more safe in being deposited in a noble construction, than in being circled with any reserved caution.
"This being moved, and, as I hope, obtained, in the nature of a protection to all that I shall say, I shall now make into the rest of that wherewith I shall at this time trouble your lordships a very strange entrance. For, in the midst of a state of as great affliction as I think a mortal man can endure, (honour being above life,) I shall begin with the professing of gladness in some things.
"The first is, that hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection of guiltiness, which (in few words) is the beginning of a golden world. The next, that, after this example, it is like that judges will fly from any thing that is in the likeness of corruption, (though it were at a great distance.) as from a serpent; which tendeth to the purging of the courts of justice, and the reducing them to their true honour and splendour. And in these two points, God is my witness, that though it be my fortune to be the anvil upon which these good effects are beaten and wrought, I take no small comfort.
"But, to pass from the motions of my heart, whereof God is only judge, to the merits of my cause, whereof your lordships are judges, under God and his lieutenant, I do understand there hath been heretofore expected from me some justification; and therefore I have chosen one only justification instead of all other, out of the justifications of Job. For, after the clear submission and confession which I shall now make unto your lordships, I hope I may say and justify with Job, in these words: 'I have not hid my sins as did Adam, nor concealed my faults in my bosom.' This is the only justification which I will use.
"It resteth, therefore, that without fig-leaves I do ingenuously confess and acknowledge that, having understood the particulars of the charge, not formally from the House, but enough to inform my conscience and memory, I find matter sufficient and full both to move me to desert the defence, and to move your lordships to condemn and censure me. Neither will I trouble your lordships by singling those particulars, which I think may fall off.
Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una?
Neither will I prompt your lordships to observe upon the proofs, where they come not home, or the scruples touching the credits of the witnesses; neither will I represent unto your lordships how far a defence might, in divers things, extenuate the offence, in respect of the time or manner of the gift, or the like circumstances, but only leave these things to spring out of your own noble thoughts and observations of the evidence and examinations themselves, and charitably to wind about the particulars of the charge, here and there, as God shall put into your mind, and so submit myself wholly to your piety and grace.
"And now that I have spoken to your lordships as judges, I shall say a few words to you as peers and prelates, humbly commending my cause to your noble minds and magnanimous affections.
"Your lordships are not simple judges, but parliamentary judges; you have a further extent of arbitrary power than other courts; and, if your lordships be not tied by the ordinary course of courts or precedents, in points of strictness and severity, much more in points of mercy and mitigation.
​"But my case standeth not there. For my humble desire is, that his majesty would take the seal into his hands, which is a great downfall: and may serve, I hope, in itself, for an expiation of my faults. Therefore, if mercy and mitigation be in your power, and do no ways cross your ends, why should I not hope of your lordships favour and commiseration?
"Your lordships will be pleased to behold your chief pattern, the king, our sovereign, a king of incomparable clemency, and whose heart is inscrutable for wisdom and goodness. Your lordships will remember that there sat not these hundred years before a prince in your house, and never such a prince whose presence deserveth to be made memorable by records and acts mixed of mercy and justice; yourselves are either nobles (and compassion ever beateth in the veins of noble blood) or reverend prelates, who are the servants of Him that would not break the bruised reed, nor quench smoking flax. You all sit upon one high stage; and therefore cannot but be more sensible of the changes of the world, and of the fall of any of high place. Neither will your lordships forget that there are vitia temporis as well as vitia hominis, and that the beginning of reformations hath the contrary power of the pool of Bethesda; for that had strength to cure only him that was first cast in, and this hath commonly strength to hurt him only that is first cast in; and for my part, I wish it may stay there, and go no further.
"Lastly, I assure myself your lordships have a noble feeling of me, as a member of your own body, and one that, in this very session, had some taste of your loving affections, which, I hope, was not a lightening before the death of them, but rather a spark of that grace, which now in the conclusion will more appear.
"And therefore my humble suit to your lordships is, that my penitent submission may be my sentence, and the loss of the seal my punishment; and that your lordships will spare any further sentence, but recommend me to his majesty's grace and pardon for all that is past. God's Holy Spirit be amongst you. Your lordships humble servant and suppliant,
"Fr. St. Alban, Canc."
April 22, 1621.
Although the king and Buckingham hoped that this general submission would be satisfactory, the agitation was too great to be thus easily quieted. It was, after deliberation, resolved that the lord chancellor's submission gave not satisfaction to their lordships, for that his lordship's confession therein was not fully nor particularly set down, and for many other exceptions against the submission itself, the same in sort extenuating his confession, and his lordship seeming to prescribe the sentence to be given against him by the house.
Their lordships resolved, that the lord chancellor should be charged particularly with the briberies and corruptions complained of against him, and that his lordship should make a particular answer thereunto. It was, therefore, ordered that the particulars of the charge be sent to the lord chancellor, and that the lords do expect his answer to the same with all convenient expedition. They were sent accordingly.
This fatal result was instantly communicated to the chancellor by his faithful attendant, Bushel. He proceeded, therefore, to a minute answer to each particular charge, which he so framed that future ages might see the times when the presents were made, and the persons by whom they were offered.
On the 30th of April, the lord chief justice signified that he had received from the lord chancellor a paper roll, sealed up, which was delivered to the clerk; and being opened, and found directed to their lordships, it was read:
"To the Right honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the High Court of Parliament assembled,
"The Confession and Humble Submission of me, the Lord Chancellor.
"Upon advised consideration of the charge, descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence, and put myself upon the grace and mercy of your lordships.
"The particulars I confess and declare to be as followeth:
"1. To the first, article of the charge, viz. in the cause between Sir Rowland Egerton and Edward Egerton, the lord chancellor received five hundred pounds on the part of Sir Rowland Egerton, before he decreed the cause: I do confess and declare, that upon a reference from his majesty of all suits and controversies between Sir Rowland Egerton and Mr. Edward Egerton, both parties submitted themselves to my award, by recognisance reciprocal in ten thousand marks apiece. Thereupon, after divers hearings, I made my award, with advice and consent of my Lord Hobart. The award was perfected and published to the parties, which was in February; then, some days after, the five hundred pounds mentioned in the charge was delivered unto me. Afterwards Mr. Edward Egerton fled off from the award; then, in midsummer term following, a suit was begun in chancery by Sir Rowland, to have the award confirmed; and upon that suit was the decree made which is mentioned in the article.
"2. To the second article of the charge, viz. in the same cause he received from Edward Egerton four hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that ​soon after my first coming to the seal, (being a time when I was presented by many,) the four hundred pounds mentioned in the charge was delivered unto me in a purse, and I now call to mind, from Mr. Edward Egerton; but, as far as I can remember, it was expressed by them that brought it to be for favours past, and not in respect to favours to come.
"3. To the third article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Hody and Hody, he received a dozen of buttons, of the value of fifty pounds, about a fortnight after the cause was ended: I confess and declare, that, as it is laid in the charge, about a fortnight after the cause was ended, (it being a suit of a great inheritance,) there were gold buttons about the value of fifty pounds, as is mentioned in the charge, presented unto me, as I remember, by Sir Thomas Perient and the party himself.
"4. To the fourth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between the Lady Wharton and the co-heirs of Sir Francis Willoughby, he received of the Lady Wharton three hundred and ten pounds: I confess and declare, that I received of the Lady Wharton, at two several times, (as I remember,) in gold, two hundred pounds and a hundred pieces, and this was certainly pendente lite; but yet I have a vehement suspicion that there was some shuffling between Mr. Shute and the register, in entering some orders, which afterwards I did distaste.
"5. To the fifth article of the charge, viz., in Sir Thomas Monk's cause, he received from Sir Thomas Monk, by the hands of Sir Henry Helmes, a hundred and ten pounds; but this was three-quarters of a year after the suit was ended: I confess it to be true, that I received a hundred pieces; but it was long after the suit ended, as is contained in the charge.
"6. To the sixth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Sir John Treavor and Ascue, he received, on the part of Sir John Treavor, a hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that I received at new year's-tide a hundred pounds from Sir John Treavor; and because it came as a new year's gift, I neglected to inquire whether the cause was ended or depending; but since I find, that though the cause was then dismissed to a trial at law, yet the equity is reserved, so as it was in that kind pendente lite.
"7. To the seventh article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Holman and Young, he received of Young a hundred pounds, after the decree made for him; I confess and declare, that, as I remember, a god while after the cause ended, I received a hundred pounds, either by Mr. Tobie Matthew, or from Young himself; but whereas I understood that there was some money given by Holman to my servant Hatcher, with that certainly I was never made privy.
"8. To the eighth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Fisher and Wrenham, the lord chancellor, after the decree passed, received from Fisher a suit of hangings, worth a hundred and sixty pounds and better, which Fisher gave by advice of Mr. Shute: I confess and declare, that some time after the decree passed, I being at that time upon remove to York House, I did receive a suit of hangings of the value, I think, mentioned in the charge, by Mr. Shute, as from Sir Edward Fisher, towards the furnishing of my house, as some others that were no way suitors did present me the like about that time.
"9. To the ninth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Kennedey and Vanlore, he received a rich cabinet from Kennedey, prized at eight hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that such a cabinet was brought to my house, though nothing near half the value; and that I said to him hat brought it, that I came to view it, and not to receive it; and gave commandment that it should be carried back, and was offended when I heard it was not; and some year and a half after, as I remember, Sir John Kennedey having all that time refused to take it away, as I am told by my servant, I was petitioned by one Pinckney, that it might be delivered to him, for that he stood engaged for the money that Sir John Kennedey paid for it. And thereupon Sir John Kennedey wrote a letter to my servant Shereborne with his own hand, desiring that I would not do him that disgrace as to return that gift back, much less to put it into a wrong hand; and so it remains yet ready to be returned to whom your lordships shall appoint.
"10. To the tenth article of the charge, viz., he borrowed of Vanlore a thousand pounds, upon his own bond, at one time, and the like sum at another time, upon his lordship's own bill, subscribed by Mr. Hunt, his man: I confess and declare, that I borrowed the money in the article set down, and that this is a true debt. And I remember well that I wrote a letter from Kew, above a twelvemonth since, to a friend about the king, wherein I desired that, whereas I owed Peter Vanlore two thousand pounds, his majesty would be pleased to grant me so much out of his fine set upon him in the Star Chamber.
"11. To the eleventh article of the charge, viz., he received of Richard Scott two hundred pounds, after his cause was decreed, (but upon a precedent promise,) all which was transacted by Mr. Shute: I confess and declare, that some fortnight after, as I remember, that the decree passed, I received two hundred pounds, as from Mr. Scolt, by Mr. Shute ; but, for any precedent promise or transaction by Mr. Shute, certain I am I knew of none.
"12. To the twelfth article of the charge, viz., he received in the same cause, on the part of Sir John Lentall, a hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that some months after, as I remember ​that the decree passed, I received a hundred pounds by my servant Shereburne, as from Sir John Lentall, who was not the adverse party to Scott, but a third person, relieved by the same decree, in the suit of one Powre.
"13. To the thirteenth article of the charge, viz., he received of Mr. Wroth a hundred pounds, in respect of the cause between him and Sir Arthur Maynewaringe; I confess and declare, that this cause, being a cause for inheritance of good value, was ended by my arbitrament, and consent of parties; and so a decree passed of course. And some month after the cause thus ended, the hundred pounds mentioned in the article was delivered to me by my servant Hunt.
"14. To the fourteenth article of the charge, viz., he received of Sir Raphe Hansby, having a cause depending before him, five hundred pounds; I confess and declare, that there were two decrees, one, as I remember, for the inheritance, and the other for goods and chattels, but all upon one bill; and some good time after the first decree, and before the second, the said five hundred pounds were delivered me by Mr. Tobie Matthew, so as I cannot deny but it was upon the matter, pendente lite.
"15. To the fifteenth article of the charge, viz., William Compton being to have an extent for a debt of one thousand and two hundred pounds, the lord chancellor stayed it, and wrote his letter, upon which part of the debt was paid presently, and part at a future day. The lord chancellor hereupon sends to borrow five hundred pounds; and because Compton was to pay four hundred pounds to one Huxley, his lordship requires Huxley to forbear it six months, and thereupon obtains the money from Compton. The money being unpaid, suit grows between Huxley and Compton in chancery, where his lordship decrees Compton to pay Huxley the debt, with damages and costs, when it was in his own hands: I declare, that in my conscience, the stay of the extent was just, being an extremity against a nobleman, by whom Compton could be no loser. The money was plainly borrowed of Compton upon bond with interest; and the message to Huxley was only to entreat him to give Compton a longer day, and in no sort to make me debtor or responsible to Huxley; and, therefore, though I were not ready to pay Compton his money, as I would have been glad to have done, save only one hundred pounds, which is paid; I could not deny justice to Huxley, in as ample manner as if nothing had been between Compton and me. But, if Compton hath been damnified in my respect, I am to consider it to Compton.
"16. To the sixteenth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Sir William Bronker and Awbrey, the lord chancellor received from Awbrey a hundred pounds: I do confess and declare, that the money was given and received; but the manner of it I leave to the witnesses.
"17. To the seventeenth article of the charge, viz., in the Lord Mountague's cause, he from the Lord Mountague six or seven hundred pounds; and more was to be paid at the ending of the cause: I confess and declare, there was money given, and (as I remember) by Mr. Bevis Thelwall, to the sum mentioned in the article after the cause was decreed; but I cannot say it was ended, for there have been many orders since, caused by Sir Frauncis Englefeild's contempts; and I do remember that, when Thelwall brought the money, he said, that my lord would be further thankful if be could once get his quiet; to which speech I gave little regard.
"18. To the eighteenth article of the charge, viz., in the cause of Mr. Dunch, be received of Mr. Dunch two hundred pounds; I confess and declare, that it was delivered by Mr. Thelwall to Hatcher my servant, for me, as I think, some time after the decree; but I cannot precisely inform myself of the time.
"19. To the nineteenth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Reyuell and Peacock, he received from Reynell two hundred pounds, and a diamond ring worth five or six hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that, at my first coming to the seal, when I was at Whitehall, my servant Hunt delivered me two hundred pounds, from Sir George Reynell, my near ally, to be bestowed upon furniture of my house; adding further, that he received divers former favours from me; and this was, as I verily think, before any suit begun. The ring was received certainly pendente lite; and, though it were new year's-tide, yet it was too great a value for a new year's gift, though, as I take it, nothing near the value mentioned in the article.
"20. To the twentieth article of the charge, viz., he took of Peacock a hundred pounds, and borrowed a thousand pounds, without interest, security, or time of payment: I confess and declare, that I received of Mr. Peacock a hundred pounds at Dorset House, at my first coming to the seal, as a present; at which time no suit was begun; and that, the summer after, I sent my then servant Lister to Mr. Rolf, my good friend and neighbour, at St. Albans, to use his means with Mr. Peacock (who was accounted a moneyed man) for the borrowing of five hundred pounds; and after, by my servant Hatcher, for borrowing of five hundred pounds more, which Mr. Rolf procured, and told me, at both times, that it should be without interest, script, or note; and that I should take my own time or payment of it.
"21. To the one-and-twentieth article of the charge, viz., in the cause between Smithwick and Wyche, he received from Smithwick two hundred pounds, which was repaid: I confess and declare, that my servant Hunt did, upon his accompt, being my receiver of the fines of original writs, cfiarge himself with two hundred pounds, ​formerly received of Smithwick, which, after that I had understood the nature of it, I ordered him to repay it, and to defaulk it of his accompt.
"22. To the two-and-twentieth article of the charge, viz., in the cause of Sir Henry Russwell, he received money from Russwell; but it is not certain how much: I confess and declare, that I received money from my servant Hunt, as from Mr. Russwell, in a purse; and, whereas the sum in the article is indefinite, I confess it to be three or four hundred pounds; and it was about some months after the cause was decreed, in which decree I was assisted by two of the judges.
"23. To the three-and-twentieth article of the charge, viz., in the cause of Mr. Barker, the lord chancellor received from Barker seven hundred pounds: I confess and declare, that the money mentioned in the article was received from Mr. Barker, some time after the decree passed.
"24. To the four-and-twentieth article, five-and-twentieth, and six-and-twentieth articles of the charge, viz., the four-and-twentieth, there being a reference from his majesty to his lordship of a business between the Grocers and the Apothecaries, the lord chancellor received of the Grocers two hundred pounds. The five-and-twentieth article; in the same cause, he received of the Apothecaries that stood with the Grocers, a taster of gold, worth between forty and fifty pounds, and a present of ambergrease. And the six-and-twentieth article: he received of the New Company of the Apothecaries that stood against the Grocers, a hundred pounds: To these I confess and declare, that the several sums from the three parties were received; and for that it was no judicial business, but a concord, or composition between the parties, and that as I thought all had received good, and they were all three common purses, I thought it the less matter to receive that which they voluntarily presented; for if I had taken it in the nature of a corrupt bribe, I knew it could not be concealed, because it must needs be put to accompt to the three several companies.
"27. To the seven-and-twentieth article of the charge, viz., he took of the French merchants a thousand pounds, to constrain the vintners of London to take from them fifteen hundred tuns of wine; to accomplish which, he used very in direct means, by colourof his office and authority, without bill or suit depending; terrifying the vintners, by threats and imprisonments of their persons, to buy wines, whereof they had no need or use, at higher rates than they were vendible: I do confess and declare, that Sir Thomas Smith did deal with me in the behalf of the French company; informing me that the vintners, by combination, would not take off their wines at any reasonable prices. That it would destroy their; trade, and stay their voyage for that year; and that it was a fair business, and concerned the state, and he doubted not but I should receive thanks from the ring, and honour by it; and that they would gratify me with a thousand pounds for my travel in it; whereupon I treated between them, by way of persuasion, and (to prevent any compulsory suit) propounding such a price as the vintners might be gainers six pounds per tun, as it was then maintained to me; and after, the merchants petitioning to the king, and his majesty recommending the business unto me as a business that concerned his customs and the navy, dealt more earnestly and peremptorily in it; and, as I think, restrained in the messengers' hands for a day or two some that were the more stiff; and afterwards the merchants presented me with a thousand pounds out of their common purse; acknowledging themselves that I had kept them from a kind of ruin, and still maintaining to me that the vintners, if they were not insatiably minded, had a very competent gain. This is the merits of the cause, as it then appeared unto me.
"28. To the eight-and-twentieth article of the charge, viz., the lord chancellor hath given way to great exactions by his servants, both in respect of private seals, and otherwise for sealing of injunctions: I confess, it was a great fault of neglect in me, that I looked no better to my servants.
"This declaration I have made to your lordships with a sincere mind; humbly craving, that if there should be any mistaking, your lordships would impute it to want of memory, and not to any desire of mine to obscure truth, or palliate anything: for I do again confess, that in the points charged upon me, although they should be taken as myself have declared them, there is a great deal of corruption and neglect, for which I am heartily and penitently sorry, and submit myself to the judgment, grace, and mercy of the court.
"For extenuation, I will use none concerning the matters themselves; only it may please your lordships, out of your nobleness, to cast your eyes of compassion upon my person and estate. I was never noted for an avaricious man. And the apostle saith, that covetousness is the root of all evil. I hope also, that your lordships do the rather find me in the state of grace; for that, in all these particulars, there are few or none that are not almost two years old, whereas those that have a habit of corruption do commonly wax worse and worse; so that it hath pleased God to prepare me, by precedent degrees of amendment, to my present penitency. And for my estate, it is so mean and poor, as my care is now chiefly to satisfy my debts.
"And so, fearing I have troubled your lordships too long, I shall conclude with an humble suit unto you, that, if your lordships proceed to sentence, your sentence may not be heavy to my ruin, but gracious, and mixed with mercy; and not only so, but that you would be noble intercessors for me ​to his majesty likewise, for his grace and favour. Your lordships humble servant and suppliant,
"Fr. St. Alban, Canc."
This confession and submission being read, it was agreed that certain lords do go unto the lord chancellor, and show him the said confession; and tell him that the lords do conceive it to be an ingenuous and full confession, and demand whether it be his own hand that is subscribed to the same; and their lordships being returned, reported, that the lord chancellor said, "It is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships, be merciful unto a broken reed."
On the 2d of May, the seals having been sequestered, the House resolved to proceed to judgment on the next day.
In this interval, on the evening of the 2d of May, the chancellor wrote to the king, "to save him from the sentence, to let the cup pass from him; for if it is reformation that is sought, taking the seals will, with the general submission, be sufficient atonement."
These his last hopes were vain: the king did not, he could not interpose.
On the 3d of May the Lords adjudged, "that, upon his own confession, they had found him guilty: and therefore that he shall undergo fine and ransom of forty thousand pounds; be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure; be forever incapable of any office, place, or employment in the state or commonwealth; and shall never sit in parliament, nor come within the verge of the court."
Thus fell, from the height of worldly prosperity, Francis, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. The cause of his having deserted his defence he never revealed. He patiently endured the agony of uncommunicated grief. He confidently relied upon the justice of future ages. There are, however, passages in his writings whre his deep feeling of the injury appear.
In the Advancement of Learning we are admonished that, "Words best disclose our minds when we are agitated,
Vino tortus et ira;
for, as Proteus never changed shapes till he was straitened and held fast with cords, so our nature appears most fully in trials and vexations."
By observing his words in moments of agitation, the state of his mind is manifest.
When imprisoned in the Tower, he instantly wrote to Buckingham, saying, "However I have acknowledged that the sentence is just, and for reformation sake fit, I have been a trusty, and honest, and Christ-loving friend to your lordship, and the justest chancellor that hath been in the five changes since my father's time."
In another letter, "God is my witness, that, when I examine myself, I find all well, and that I have approved myself to your lordship a true friend, both in the watery trial of prosperity, and in the fiery trial of adversity:" "I hope his majesty may reap honour out of my adversity, as he hath done strength out of my prosperity."
"For the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the time," was his expression in the midst of his agony.
In a collection of his letters in the Lambeth Library there is the following passage in Greek characters; Οφ μγ οφενσ βε ιτ φρομ με το σαγ, δατ νενιαμ κορνις; νεξατ κενσυρα κολνμβασ: βυτ ι ωιλλ σαγ θατ ι ανε γοοδ ωαρραντ φορ: θεγ ωερε νοτ θε γρεατεστ οφφενδερς ιν Ισραελ νπον ωηομ θε ωαλλ φελλ.
In his will, he says, "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages."
These words, not to be read till he was at rest from his labours, were cautiously selected, with the knowledge which he, above all men, possessed of the power of expression, and of their certain influence, sooner or later, upon society.
The obligation to silence, imposed upon Bacon, extended to his friends after he was in the grave.
Dr. Rawley, his first and last chaplain, says, "Some papers touching matters of estate, tread too near to the heels of truth, and to the times of the persons concerned."
Archbishop Tennison says, "The great cause of his suffering is to some a secret. I leave them to find it out by his words to King James: 'I wish that as I am the first, so I may be the last of sacrifices in your times:' and when, from private appetite, it is resolved that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with."
From these observations it may be seen, that there was a conflict in the minds of these excellent men between their inclination to speak and their duty to be silent. They did not violate this duty; but one of his most sincere and grateful admirers, who, although he had painfully, but sacredly, preserved the secret from his youth to his old age, at last thus spoke:
"Before this could be accomplished to his own content, there arose such complaints against his lordship, and the then favourite at court, that for some days put the king to this quere, whether he should permit the favourite of his affection, or the oracle of his council, to sink in his service; whereupon his lordship was sent for by the king, who, after some discourse, gave him this positive advice, to submit himself to his House of Peers, and that, upon his princely word, he would then ​restore him again, if they, in their honours, should not be sensible of his merits. Now, though my lord saw his approaching ruin, and told his majesty there was little hopes of mercy in a multitude, when his enemies were to give fire, if he did not plead for himself: yet such was his obedience to him from whom he had his being, that he resolved his majesty's will should be his only law; and so took leave of him with these words: Those that will strike at your chancellor, it is much to be feared, will strike at your crown; and wished, that as he was then the first, so he might be the last of sacrifices.
"Soon after, according to his majesty's commands, he wrote a submissive letter to the House, and sent me to my Lord Windsor to know the result, which I was loath, at my return, to acquaint, him with; for, alas! his sovereign's favour was not in so high a measure, but he, like the phœnix, must be sacrificed in flames of his own raising, and so perished, like Icarus, in that his lofty design: the great revenue of his office being lost, and his titles of honour saved but by the bishops votes, whereto he replied, that he was only bound to thank his clergy.
"The thunder of which fatal sentence did much perplex my troubled thoughts as well as others, to see that famous lord, who procured his majesty to call this parliament, must be the first subject of their revengeful wrath, and that so unparalleled a master should be thus brought upon the public stage, for the foolish miscarriage of his own servants, whereof, with grief of heart, I confess myself to be one. Yet, shortly after, the king dissolved the parliament, but never restored that matchless lord to his place, which made him then to wish the many years he had spent in state policy and law study had been solely devoted to true philosophy: for, said he, the one, at the best, doth but comprehend man's frailty in its greatest splendour; but the other, the mysterious knowledge of all things created in the six days work."
On the llth of July the great seals were delivered to Williams, who was now Lord Keeper of England and Bishop of Lincoln, with permission to retain the deanery of Westminster, and to hold, the rectory of Waldegrave in commendam.
CHAPTER IV.
from his fall to his death.
1621 to 1626.
Such was the storm in which he was wrecked. "Methinks," says Archbishop Tennison, "they are resembled by those of Sir George Summers, who being bound by his employment to another coast, was by tempest cast upon the Bermudas: and there a shipwrecked man made full discovery of a new, temperate, fruitful region, where none had before inhabited; and which mariners, who had only seen as rocks, had esteemed an inaccessible and enchanted place."
This temperate region was not unforeseen by the chancellor.
In a letter to the king, on the 20th March, 1622, he says, "In the beginning of my trouble, when in the midst of the tempest, I had a kenning of the harbour, which I hope now by your majesty's favour I am entering into: now my study is my exchange, and my pen my practice for the use of my talent."
It is scarcely possible to read a page of his works without seeing that the love of knowledge was his ruling passion; that his real happiness consisted in intellectual delight. How beautifully does he state this when enumerating the blessings attendant upon the pursuit and possession of knowledge:
"The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other nature: for, shall the pleasures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner; and must not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections we see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used their verdure departeth, which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply, without fallacy or accident. Neither is that pleasure of small efficacy and contentment to the mind of man, which the poet Lucretius describeth elegantly,
Suave mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis, &c.
It is a view of delight, to stand or walk upon the shore-side, and to see a ship tossed with tempest upon the sea; or to be in a fortified tower, and to see two battles join upon a plain; but it is a pleasure incomparable for the mind of man to be settled, landed, and fortified in the certainty of truth; and from thence to decry and behold the errors, perturbations, labours, and wanderings up and down of other men."
Happy would it have been for himself and society, if, following his own nature, he had passed his life in the calm but obscure regions of philosophy.
He now, however, had escaped from worldly turmoils, and was enabled, as he wrote to the king, to gratify his desire "to do, for the little time God shall send me life, like the merchants of London, which, when they give over trade, lay out their money upon land: so, being freed ​from civil business, I lay forth my poor talent upon those things, which may be perpetual, still having relation to do you honour with those powers I have left."
In a letter to Buckingham, on the 20th of March, 1621, he says, "I find that, building upon your lordship's noble nature and friendship, I have built upon the rock, where neither winds nor waves can cause overthrow:" and, in the conclusion of the same year, "I am much fallen in love with a private life, but yet I shall so spend my time, as shall not decay my abilities for use."
And in a letter to the Bishop of Winchester, in which, after having considered the conduct in their banishments, of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca, he proceeds thus: "These examples confirmed me much in a resolution, whereunto I was otherwise inclined, to spend my time wholly in writing, and to put forth that poor talent, or half-talent, or what it is that God hath given me, not as heretofore to particular exchanges, but to banks or mounts of perpetuity, which will not break. Therefore having not long since set forth a part of my Instauration, which is the work that, in mine own judgment, si nunquam fallit imago, I may most esteem, I think to proceed in some new parts thereof; and although I have received from many parts beyond the seas testimonies touching that work, such as beyond which I could not expect at the first in so abstruse an argument, yet, nevertheless, I have just cause to doubt that it flies too high over men's heads. I have a purpose, therefore, though I break the order of time, to draw it down to the sense by some patterns of a natural story and inquisition. And, again, for that my book of Advancement of Learning may be some preparative or key for the better opening of the Instauration, because it exhibits a mixture of new conceits and old ; whereas the Instauration gives the new unmixed, otherwise than with some little aspersion of the old, for taste's sake, I have thought good to procure a translation of that book into the general language, not without great and ample additions and enrichment thereof, especially in the second book, which handleth the partition of sciences, in such sort, as I hold it may serve in lieu of the first part of the Instauration, and acquit my promise in that part.
"Again, because I cannot altogether desert the civil person that I have borne, which if I should forget, enough would remember, I have also entered into a work touching laws, propounding a character of justice in a middle term, between the speculative and reverend discourses of philosophers and the writings of lawyers, which are tied, and obnoxious to their particular laws; and although it he true that I had a purpose to make a particular digest, or recompilement of the laws of mine own nation, yet because it is a work of assistance, and that I cannot master by my own forces and pen, I have laid it aside. Now, having in the work of Instauration had in contemplation the general good of men in their very being, and the dowries of nature; and in my work of laws, the general good of men likewise in society, and the dowries of government: I thought in duty I owed somewhat to my country, which I ever loved; insomuch, as, although my place hath been far above my desert, yet my thoughts and cares concerning the good thereof were beyond and over and above my place: so now, being as I am, no more able to do my country service, it remained unto me to do it honour; which I have endeavoured to do in my work of the reign of King Henry VII. As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature; I count them but as the recreation of my other studies, and in that sort I purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement, perhaps, yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand. But I count the use that a man should seek of the publishing his own writings before his death to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him."
The sentence now remained to be executed. On the last day of May, Lord St. Albans was committed to the Tower; and, though he had placed himself altogether in the king's hands, confident in his kindness, it is not to be supposed that he could be led to prison without deeply feeling his disgrace. In the anguish of his mind he instantly wrote to Buckingham and to the king, submitting, but maintaining his integrity as chancellor.
"Good my lord,—Procure the warrant for my discharge this day. Death, I thank God, is so far from being unwelcome to me, as I have called for it (as Christian resolution would permit) any time these two months. But to die before the time of his majesty s grace, and in this disgraceful place, is even the worst that could be; and when I am dead, he is gone that was always in one tenor, a true and perfect servant to his master, and one that was never author of any immoderate, no, nor unsafe, no, (I will say it,) not unfortunate counsel; and one that no temptation could ever make other than a trusty, and honest, and Christ-loving friend to your lordship: and, howsoever I acknowledge the sentence just, and for reformation sake fit, the justest chancellor that hath been in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time. God bless and prosper your lordship, whatsoever become of me.
"Your lordship's true friend, living and dying,
After two days' imprisonment he was liberated; and, the sentence not permitting him to come within the verge of the court, he retired, with the ​king's permission, to Sir John Vaughan's house at Parson's Green, from whence, although anxious to continue in or near London, he went, in compliance with his majesty's suggestion, for a temporary retirement to Gorhambury, where he was obliged to remain till the end of the year, but with such reluctance, that, with the hope of quieting the king's fears, he at one time intended to present a petition to the House of Lords to remit this part of his sentence.
In the month of July he wrote, both to Buckingham and to the king, letters in which may be seen his reliance upon them for pecuniary assistance, his consciousness of innocence, a gleam of hope that he should be restored to his honours, and occasionally allusions to the favours he had conferred. To these applications he received the following answer from Buckingham:
To the Lord St. Alban.
My noble lord:—The hearty affection I have borne to your person and service hath made me ambitious to be a messenger of good news to you, and an eschewer of ill; this hath been the true reason why I have been thus long in answering you. not any negligence in your discreet, modest servant you sent with your letter, nor his who now returns you this answer, ofttimes given me by your master and mine; who, though by this may seem not to satisfy your desert and expectation, yet, take the word of a friend who will never fail you, hath a tender care of you, full of a fresh memory of your by-past service. His majesty is but for the present, he says, able to yield unto the three years advance, which if you please to accept, you are not hereafter the farther off from obtaining some better testimony of his favour, worthier both of him and you, though it can never be answerable to what my heart wishes you, as your lordship's humble servant,
G. Buckingham.
That he was promised some compensation for the loss of his professional emoluments seems probable, not only from his letters to the king, and from the aid received, but from his having lived in splendour after his fall, although his certain annual income seems not to have exceeded £2500. With this income he, with prudence, might, although greatly in debt, have enjoyed worldly comfort: but in prudence he was culpably negligent. Thinking that money was only the baggage of virtue, that this interposition of earth eclipsed the clear sight of the mind, he lived not a a philosopher ought to have lived, but as a nobleman had been accustomed to live. It is related that the prince, coming to London, saw at a distance a coach followed by a considerable number of people, on horseback; and, upon inquiry, was told it was the Lord St. Albans, attended by his friends; on which his highness said, with a smile, "Well, do what we can, this man scorns to go out like a snuff."
Unmindful that the want of prudence can never be supplied, he was exposed, in the decline of life, not only to frequent vexation, and his thoughts to continual interruption, but was frequently compelled to stoop to degrading solicitations, and was obliged to encumber Gorhambury and sell York House, dear to him from so many associations, the seat of his ancestors, the scene of his former splendour. These worldly troubles seem, however, not to have affected his cheerfulness, and never to have diverted him from the great object of his life, the acquisition and advancement of knowledge. When an application was made to him to sell one of the beautiful woods of Gorhambury, he answered, "No, I will not be stripped of my feathers."
In September the king signed a warrant for the release of the parliamentary fine, and, to prevent the immediate importunities of his creditors, assigned it to Mr. Justice Hutton, Mr. Justice Chamberlain, Sir Francis Barnham, and Sir Thomas Crew, whom Bacon, in his will, directed to apply the funds for the payment and satisfaction of his debts and legacies, having a charitable care that the poorest creditors or legatees should be first satisfied.
This intended kindness of the king the Lord Keeper Williams misunderstood, and endeavoured to impede by staying the pardon at the seal, until he was commanded by Buckingham to obey the king's order. In October the pardon was sealed.
He had scarcely retired to Gorhambury, in the summer of 1621, when he commenced his History of Henry the Seventh.
During the progress of the work considerable expectation of his history was excited: in the composition of which he seems to have laboured with much anxiety, and to have submitted his manuscript to the correction of various classes of society; to the king, to scholars, and to the uninformed. Upon his desiring Sir John Danvers to give his opinion of the work, Sir John said, "'Your lordship knows that I am no scholar.' 'Tis no matter,' said my lord, 'I know what a scholar can say: I would know what you can say.' Sir John read it, and gave his opinion what he misliked, which my lord acknowledged to be true, and mended it. 'Why,' said he, 'a scholar would never have told me this;'" but, notwithstanding this labour and anxiety, the public expectation was not realized.
If, however, in the History of Henry the Seventh, it is vain to look for the vigour or beauty with which the Advancement of Learning abounds: if the intricacies of a court are neither discovered nor illustrated with the same happiness as the intricacies of philosophy: if, in a work written when the author was more than ​sixty years of age, and if, after the vexations and labours of a professional and political life, the varieties and sprightliness of youthful imagination are not to be found, yet the peculiar properties of his mind may easily he traced, and the stateliness of the edifice be seen in the magnificence of the ruins.
His vigilance in recording every fact tending to alleviate misery, or to promote happiness, is noticed by Bishop Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, where he says, "I shall instance in the sweating sickness. The medicine for it was almost infallible: but, before that could be generally published, it had almost dispeopled whole towns. If the same disease should have returned, it might have been again as destructive, had not the Lord Bacon taken care to set down the particular course of physic for it in his History of Henry the Seventh, and so put it heyond the possibility of any private man's invading it."
One of his maxims of government for the enlargement of the bounds of the empire is to be found in his comment upon the ordinance, stated in the treatise "De Augmentis." "Let states and kingdoms that aim at greatness by all means take heed how the nobility, and grandees, and those which we call gentlemen, multiply too fast; for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain, driven out of heart, and in effect nothing else but the nobleman's bond slaves and labourers. Even as you may see in coppice-wood, if you leave your studdles too thick, you shall never have clean underwood, but shrubs and bushes: so in a country, if the nobility be too many, the commons will be base and heartless, and you will bring it to that, that not the hundredth poll will be fit for a helmet, especially as to the infantry, which is the nerve of an army; and so there will be great population, and little strength."
His love of familiar illustration is to be found in various parts of the history: as when speaking of the commotion by the Cornish men, on behalf of the impostor Perkin Warbeck: "The king judged it his best and surest way to keep his strength together in the seat and centre of his kingdom; according to the ancient Indian emblem, in such a swelling season, to hold the hand upon the middle of the bladder, that no side might rise."
And his kind nature and holy feeling appear in his account of the conquest of Granada. "Somewhat about this time came letters from Ferdinando and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, signifying the final conquest of Granada from the Moors; but the king would not by any means in person enter the city until he had first aloof seen the cross set up upon the great tower of Granada, whereby it became Christian ground; and, before he would enter, he did homage to God above, pronouncing by a herald from the height of that tower, that he did acknowledge to have recovered that kingdom by the help of the Almighty; nor would he stir from his camp till he had seen a little army of martyrs, to the number of seven hundred and more Christians, that had lived in bonds and servitude, as slaves to the Moors, pass before his eyes, singing a psalm for their redemption."
The work was published in folio, in 1622: and is dedicated to Prince Charles. Copies were presented to the king, to Buckingham, to the Queen of Bohemia, and to the lord keeper. It had scarcely been published when he felt and expressed anxiety that it should be translated into Latin, "as these modern languages will, at onetime or other, play the bankrupts with books; and, since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall give me leave, to recover it with posterity:" a wish which was more than gratified, as it was published, not only in various editions, in England, but was soon translated into French and into Latin.
Such was the nature of his literary occupations in the first year after his retirement, during which he corresponded with different learned foreigners upon his works; and great zeal having been shown for his majesty's service, he composed a treatise entitled, "An Advertisement touching a Holy War," which he inscribed to the Bishop of Winchester.
In the beginning of this year, (1623,) a vacancy occurred in the Provostship of Eton college, where, in earlier years, he had passed some days with Sir Henry Savile, pleasant to himself and profitable to society. His love of knowledge again manifested itself.
Having, in the spirit of his father, unfortunately engaged, in his youth, in active life, he now, in the spirit of his grandfather, the learned and contemplative Sir Anthony Cooke, who took more pleasure to breed up statesmen than to be one, offered himself to succeed the provost: as a fit occupation for him in the spent hour-glass of his life, and a retreat near London to a place of study.
The objection which would, of course, be made from what we, in our importance, look down upon as beneath his dignity, he had many years before anticipated in the Advancement of Learning, when investigating the objections to learning from the errors of learned men, from their fortunes; their manners; and the meanness of their employments: upon which he says, "As for meanness of employment, that which is most traduced to contempt is, that the government of youth is commonly allotted to them; which age, because it is the age of least authority, it is transferred to the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But how unjust this traducement is, if you will reduce things from ​popularity of opinion to measure of reason, may appear in that, we see men are more curious what they put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned; and what mould they lay about a young plant, than about a plant corroborate; so as the weakest terms and times of all things used to have the best applications and helps; and, therefore, the ancient wisdom of the best times did always make a just complaint, that states were too busy with their laws, and too negligent in point of education: which excellent part of ancient discipline hath been in some sort revived of late times, by the colleges of the Jesuits; of whom, although in regard of their superstition I may say, quo meliores, eo deteriores; yet in regard of this, and some other points concerning human learning and moral matters, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy, Pharnabasus, Talis quum sis, utinam noster esses."
His application was not successful; the king answered that it had been designed for Sir William Beecher, but that there was some hope that, by satisfying him elsewhere, his majesty might be able to comply with the request. Sir William was satisfied by the promise of £2500, but the provostship was given to Sir Henry Wotton, "who had for many years, like Sisyphus, rolled the restless stone of a state employment; knowing experimentally that the great blessing of sweet content was not to be found in multitudes of men or business," and that a college was the fittest place to nourish holy thoughts, and to afford rest both to his body and mind, which he much required from his age, being now almost threescore years, and from his urgent pecuniary wants; for he had always been as careless of money as though our Saviour's words, 'Care not for tomorrow,' were to be literally understood." He, therefore, upon condition of releasing a grant, which he possessed, of the mastership of the rolls, was appointed provost.
At this disappointment Bacon could not be much affected. One day, as he was dictating to Dr. Rawley some of the experiments in his Sylva, he had sent a friend to court, to receive for him a final answer, touching the effect of a grant which had been made him by King James. He had hitherto only hope of it, and hope deferred; and he was desirous to know the event of the matter, and to be freed, one way or other, from the suspense of his thoughts. His friend returning, told him plainly that he must thenceforth despair of that grant, how much soever his for tunes needed it. "Be it so," said his lordship; and then he dismissed his friend very cheerfully, with thankful acknowledgments of his service. His friend being gone, he came straightway to Dr. Rawley, and said thus to him, "Well, sir, yon business won't go on, let us go on with this, for this is in our power:" and then he dictated to him afresh, for some hours, without the least hesitancy of speech, or discernible interruption of thought.
He proceeded with his literary labours, and, during this year, published in Latin his celebrated treatise, "De Augmentis Scientiarum," and his important "Historia Vitæ et Mortis."
Between the year 1605, when the Advancement was published, and the year 1623, he made great progress in the completion of the work, which, having divided into nine books, and subdivided each book into chapters, he caused to be translated into Latin by Mr. Herbert, and some other friends, and published in Latin in 1623, in a volume entitled De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.
This treatise De Augmentis is an improvement, by expunging, enlarging, and arranging, of the Advancement of Learning.
In the first part there are scarcely any alterations, except the omission of his beautiful praise of Elizabeth, not, perhaps, very acceptable to her successor. The material alterations are in the analysis of Natural History and Natural Philosophy; in his expansion of a small portion of the science of "Justitia Universalis;" in that part of human philosophy under the head of Government, which relates to man as a member of society; and in his arrangement of the important subject of revealed religion.
| | | 1. By Divines. |
| | 1. Objections. | 2. By Politicians. |
| 1. Preliminary. | | 3. From the errors of learned men. |
| 1. Preliminary. | 2. Advantages. | 1. Divine | | | | | 1. Generations. | Heavens, Earth, Elements, Meteors, | Heavens, Earth, Elements, Meteors, | Heavens, Earth, Elements, Meteors, |
| | 2. Advantages. | 2. Human. | | | | | 1. Generations. | Sea. |
| | | 1. General. | | | | | | Monsters. |
| | 1. Promotion | | 1. Colleges. | | 1. Subject. | | 2. Preter generations. | 2. Monsters. |
| | of knowledge | 2. Particular. | 2. Libraries. | | | | | 3. Magic, &c. |
| | | | 3. Lectures. | 1. Nature. | | |
| | | | | 1. Nature. | | | 3. Arts. |
| | | | | | 2. Use. | | 1. Narrative. |
| | | | | | 2. Use. | | 2. Induction. |
| | | | | | 1. Fragments. | | 1. Memorials. |
| | | | | | 1. Fragments. | | 2. Antiquities. |
| | | | 1. Different histories. | | | | | 1. Chronicles. |
| 2. What done | | | | | | | 1. Simple. | 2. Lives. |
| and omitted. | | | | | 2. Perfect. | | | 3. Relations. |
| | | | | | | | 2. Mixed. |
| | | 1. History, relating | | | 1. The Church. | |
| | | to the Memory. | | 3. Ecclesiastical. | 2.Prophecy. | |
| | | | | | 3.Providence. | |
| | | | | 4. Literary. |
| | | | | 1. Orations. |
| | | | 2. Appendices. | 2. Prophecy. |
| | | | | 3. Apophthegms. |
| | | 2. Poetry, relating to the imagination. | 1. Narrative. | |
| | 2. Division. | 2. Poetry, relating to the imagination. | 2. Representative. | |
| | | 2. Poetry, relating to the imagination. | 3. Parabolical. | |
| | | | | 1. General |
| | | | 1. Natural. | | 1. Religion. |
| | | | | 2. Particular. | 2. Philosophy. |
| | | | | 2. Particular. | | | 1. As an individual. |
| | | 2. Philosophy, relating | | | 3. Man. | | 2. In society. | 1. Conversation. |
| | | to Reason. | | 1. Limits of Reason. | | | 2. In society. | 2. Negotiation. |
| | | | | | | | | 3. Government. | | 1. Enlarging a state. |
| | | | 2. Revealed. | 2. Unity in Religion. | | | | 3. Government. | | 2. Justitia Universalis. |
| | | | | 3. Scriptural Emanations. | 1. Errors in interpretation. | 1. Errors in interpretation. | 1. Errors in interpretation. |
| | | | | 3. Scriptural Emanations. | 2. Desiderata. |
Copies were presented to the king, to whom it was dedicated, the Prince, the Duke of ​
Bucking, Trinity College, Cambridge, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford.—The present was gratefully acknowledged by the different patrons to whom it was presented, and by all the learning of England.
Fifty years after its publication it was included at Rome in the list "Librorum Prohibitorum," in which list it is now included in Spain.
The vanity of these attempts to resist the progress of knowledge might, it should seem, by this time be understood even at the Vatican.
How beautifully are the consequences of this intolerance thus stated by Fuller: "Hitherto the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till his body was reduced to bones and his bones almost to dust. For though the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of the council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory as dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution, if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people) be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off from any Christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth, sent his officers, vultures with a quick sight scent at a dead carcass, to ungrave him. Accordingly to Lutterworth they come; summer, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, and their servants, so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone amongst so many hands, take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."
If Bacon had completed his intended work upon "Sympathy and Antipathy," the constant antipathy of ignorance to intellect, originating sometimes in the painful feeling of inferiority, sometimes in the fear of worldly injury, but always in the influence of some passion more powerful than the love of truth, would not have escaped his notice.
In this year he also published his History of Life and Death, which, of all his works, is one of the most extraordinary, both for the extent of his views, and the minute accuracy with which each part is investigated. It is addressed, not, to use his own expression, "to the Adonises of literature, but to Hercules's followers; that is, the more severe and laborious inquirers into truth."
Upon his entrance, in the Advancement of Learning, on the science of human nature, he says, "The knowledge of man, although only a portion of knowledge in the continent of nature, is to man the end of all knowledge:" and, in furtherance of this opinion, he explains that the object of education ought to be knowledge and improvement of the body and the mind.
| | 1. The preservation of Health. |
| 1. Health. | 2. The cure of Diseases. |
| 2. Strength. | 3. The prolongation of Life. |
| 3. Beauty. |
| 4. Pleasure. |
His History of Life and Death may be regarded as a treatise upon the art of Preservation of Health, and Prolongation of Life.
As a foundation of his investigations he considers,
* 1. The causes of the consumption of the body.
* 2. The modes of reparation.
Of consumption he says there are two causes: the depredation of vital spirit and the depredation of ambient air; and if the action of either of these agents can be destroyed, the decomposition is more or less retarded, as in bodies enclosed in wax or coffins, where the action of the external air is excluded: and when the action of both these causes can be prevented, the body defies decomposition, as in bricks and burnt bodies, where the vital air is expelled by exposure of the clay to the ambient air, and afterwards by fire; or as a fly in amber, more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian monarch.
In making the agents less predatory, and the patients less depredable, the science of the retardation of consumption consequently consists.
He proceeds, therefore, with his usual accuracy, to consider how these objects are to be attained; and, having considered them, he proceeds to the doctrine of reparation, both of the whole frame and the decayed parts.
His History of Life and Death contains his favourite doctrine of vital spirit, or excitability, or life, which he notices in various parts of his works.
In this place more cannot be attempted than, as a specimen of the whole of this important subject, to explain one or two of the positions.
The foundation position is, that "All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body, in the upper parts of the earth, without its spirit, whether it be generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise; for the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum, but either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the substance; and this not a vis, an energy, or a fiction, but a real, subtile, and invisible, and, therefore, neglected body, circumscribed by place and dimension."
This doctrine is thus stated in the Excursion:
To every form of being is assigned
An active principle, howe'er removed
From sense and observation; it subsists
In all things, in all natures, in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude: from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds."
Excursion, book 9
As another specimen, the mode of explaining the condensation of spirit by flight may be selected.
The spirit, he says, is condensed by flight,—cold,—appeasing, and quelling. The condensation by flight is when there is an antipathy between the spirit and the body upon which it acts; as, in opium, which is so exceedingly powerful in condensing the spirit, that a grain will tranquillize the nerves, and by a few grains they may be so compressed as to be irrecoverable. The touched spirit may retreat into its shell for a time or forever: or it may, when fainting, be recalled, by the application of a stimulant, as surprise from a sudden impulse; a blow, or a glass of water thrown on the face; or the prick of a pin, or the action of mind on mind.
"I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand
Any exploit worthy the name of honour."
As another specimen, his sentiments upon death, the decomposition of compounds, may be selected.
In his doctrine of motion, he says, "The political motion is that by which the parts of the body are restrained, from their own immediate appetites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may preserve the existence of the whole body. Thus, the spirit, which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite as metals rust, fluids turn sour; and, in animals, when the spirit which held the parts together escapes, all things are dissolved, and return to their own natures or principles: the oily parts to themselves, the aqueous to themselves, &c., upon which necessarily ensues that odour, that unctuosity, that confusion of parts, observable in putrefaction." So true is it, that in nature all is beauty; that, notwithstanding our partial views and distressing associations, the forms of death, misshapen as we suppose them, are but the tendencies to union in similar natures.
The knowledge of this science Bacon considers of the utmost importance to our well-being:—that the action of the spirit is the cause of consumption and dissolution;—is the agent which produces all bodily and mental effects;—influences the will in the production of all animal motions, as in the whale and the elephant;—and is the cause of all our cheerfulness or melancholy:—that the perfection of our being consists in the proper portion ​of this spirit properly animated, or the proper portion of excitability properly excited;—that its presence is life, its absence death.
This subject, deemed of such importance by Bacon, has been much neglected, and occasionally been supposed to be a mere creature of the imagination.
Although the History of Life and Death is apparently a separate tract, it is the last portion of the third of the six books into which the third part of the Installation is divided, which are the histories of
1st. The Winds.
2d. Density and Rarity.
3d. Heavy and Light.
4th. Sympathy and Antipathy.
5th. Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt.
6th. Life and Death.
His reason for the publication of this tract, he thus states: "Although I had ranked the History of Life and Death as the last among my six monthly designations; yet I have thought fit, in respect of the prime use thereof, in which the least loss of time ought to be esteemed precious, to invert that order."
The History, which was published in Latin, is inscribed "To the present age and posterity, in the hope and wish that it may conduce to a common good, and that the nobler sort of physicians will advance their thoughts, and not employ their times wholly in the sordidness of cures, neither be honoured for necessity only, but that they will become coadjutors and instruments of the divine omnipotence and clemency in prolonging and renewing the life of man, by safe, and convenient, and civil ways, though hitherto unassayed."
This was the last of his philosophical publications during his life; but they were only a small portion of his labours, which are thus recorded by Dr. Rawley:—"The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil affairs and from an active life, he employed wholly in contemplation and studies: a thing whereof his lordship would often speak during his active life, as if he affected to die in the shadow, and not in the light. During this time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin, which I will enumerate, as near as I can, in the just order wherein they were written.
The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh.
Abecedarium Naturæ; or a Metaphysical Piece.
Historia Ventorum.
Historia Vitæ et Mortis.
Historia Densi, et Rari.
Historia Gravis et Levis.
A discourse of a war with Spain.
A dialogue touching a Holy War.
The fable of the New Atlantis.
A preface to a Digest of the Laws of England.
The beginning of the History of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.
De Augmentis Scientiarum: or the Advancement of Learning: put into Latin, with several enrichments and enlargements.
Counsels, civil and moral; or his book of Essays, likewise enriched and enlarged.
The conversion of certain Psalms into English verse.
The translation into Latin of the History of King Henry the Seventh; of the Counsels,
civil and moral; of the dialogue of the Holy War; of the fable of the New Atlantis; for
the benefit of other nations.
His revising of his book De Sapientia Veterum.
Inquisitio de Magnete.
Topica Inquisitionis; de Luce, et Lumine.
Lastly, Sylva Sylvarum; or the Natural History.
"He also designed, upon the motion and invitation of his late majesty, to have written the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; but that work perished in the designation merely, God not lending him life to proceed further upon it than only in one morning's work: whereof there is extant an Ex Ungue Leonem."
Such were his works during the short period, when, between sixty and seventy years of age, he, fortunately for himself and society, was thrown from active into contemplative life; into that philosophical seclusion, where he might turn from calumny, from the slanders of his enemies, to the admiration of all civilized Europe; from political rancour and threats of assassination, to the peaceful safety of sequestered life; from the hollow compacts which politicians call union, formed by expediency and dissolved at the first touch of interest, to the enduring joys of intellectual and virtuous friendship, and the consolations of piety.
These blessings he now enjoyed. Eminent foreigners crossed the seas on purpose to see and discourse with him.
Gondomar, who was in Spain, wrote to express his regard and respect, with lamentations that his public duties prevented his immediate attendance upon him in England.
When the Marquis d'Effiat accompanied the Princess Henrietta-Maria, wife to Charles the First, to England, he visited Lord Bacon; who, being then sick in bed, received him with the curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," said that minister to him: "we hear those beings continually talked of, we believe them superior to mankind, and we never have the consolation to see them." "Your kindness," he answered, "may compare me to an angel, but my infirmities tell me that I am a man." In this interview a friendship originated which continued during their lives, and is recorded in his will where, ​amongst his legacies to his friends, he says, "I give unto the right honourable my worthy friend, the Marquis Fiatt, late lord ambassador of France, my books of orisons or psalms curiously rhymed." As a parent he wrote to the marquis, who esteemed it to be the greatest honour conferred upon him to be called his son. He caused his Essays and treatise De Augmentis to be translated into French; and, with the affectionate enthusiasm of youth, upon his return to France, requested and obtained his portrait.
His friendship with Sir Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls, continued to his death.
Selden, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, expressed his respect, with the assurance that "never was any man more willing or ready to do your lordship's service than myself."
Ben Jonson, not in general too profuse of praise, says, "My conceit of his person was never increased toward 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 works 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; neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest."
Sir Thomas Meautys stood by him to his death with a firmness and love which does honour to him and to human nature.
His exclusion from the verge of the court had long been remitted; and, in the beginning of the year 1624, the whole of the parliamentary sentence was pardoned, by a warrant which stated that, "calling to mind the former good services of the Lord St. Albans, and how well and profitably he hath spent his time since his trouble, we are pleased to remove from him that blot of ignominy which yet remaineth upon him, of incapacity and disablement; and to remit to him all penalties whatsoever inflicted by that sentence. Having therefore formerly pardoned his fine, and released his confinement, these are to will and require you to prepare, for our signature, a bill containing a pardon of the whole sentence."
This was one of the last of the king's acts, who thus faithfully performed, to the extent of his ability, all his promises. He died at Theobalds, on the 27th of March, 1625.
His lordship was summoned to parliament in the succeeding reign, but was prevented, by his infirmities, from again taking his seat as a peer.
Though Lord Bacon's constitution had never been strong, his temperance and management of his health seemed to promise old age, which his unbounded knowledge and leisure for speculation could not fail to render useful to the world and glorious to himself. The retirement, which in all the distractions of politics refreshed and consoled him, was once more his own, and nature, whom he worshipped, spread her vast untrodden fields before him, where, with science as his hand maid, he might wander at his will; but the expectations of the learned world and the hopes of his devoted friends were all blighted by a perceptible decay of his health and strength in the beginning of the sickly year of 1625.
During this year his publications were limited to a new edition of his Essays, a small volume of Apophthegms, the production, as a recreation in sickness, of a morning's dictation, and a translation of a few of the Psalms of David into English verse, which he dedicated to a divine and poet, his friend, the learned and religious George Herbert. This was the last exercise, in the time of his illness, of his pious mind; and a more pious mind never existed.
There is scarcely a line of his works in which a deep, awful, religious feeling is not manifested. It is perhaps, most conspicuous in his Confession of Faith, of which Dr. Rawley says, "For that treatise of his lordship's, inscribed, A Confession of the Faith, I have ranked that in the close of this whole volume; thereby to demonstrate to the world that he was a master in divinity, as well as in philosophy or politics, and that he was versed no less in the saving knowledge than in the universal and adorning knowledges; for though he composed the same many years before his death, yet I thought that to be the fittest place, as the most acceptable incense unto God of the faith wherein he resigned his breath; the crowning of all his other perfections and abilities; and the best perfume of his name to the world after his death. This confession of his faith doth abundantly testify that he was able to render a reason of the hope which was in him."
It might be said of him, as one of the most deep thinking of men said of himself, "For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I have none at all, yet, in despite thereof, I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian; not that I merely owe this title to the font, my education, or clime wherein I was born, but having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and examined all, I find myself bound by the principles of grace and the law of mine own reason to embrace no other religion than this."
From his Prayers, found after his death, his piety cannot be mistaken. They have the same glory around them, whether they are his supplications as a student, as an author, or as a preserver, when chancellor, of the religious sentiments of the country.
As a student, he prays, that he may not be inflated or misled by the vanity which makes man wise in his own conceit: "To God the Father. God the Word, God the Spirit, we put forth ​most humble and hearty supplications, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that, from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any thing of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries."
As an author he prays in the same spirit: "Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which, coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory."
The same spirit did not forsake him when chancellor: "Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father from my youth up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee: remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies: I have mourned for the divisions of thy church: I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine, which thy right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples."
The same holy feeling appears in all his important works. The preface to his Instauratio Magna opens and concludes with a prayer. The treatise "De Augmentis Scientiarum" abounds with religious sentiments, contains two tracts, one upon natural, the other upon revealed religion, "the Sabbath and port of all men's labours," and concludes, "Attamen, quoniam etiam res quæque maximæ initiis suis debentur, mihi satis fuerit sevisse posteris et Deo immortali: cujus numen supplex precor, per filium suum et servatorem nostrum, ut has et hisce similes intellectus humani victimas, religione tanquam sale respersas, et gloriæ suaæ immolatas, propitius accipere dignetur." In the midst of his profound reasoning in the Novum Organum, there is a passage in which his opinion of our incorporeal nature is disclosed. And the third part of the Instauration concludes thus: "Deus Universi Conditor, Conservator, Instaurator, hoc opus, et in ascensione ad gloriam suam, et in descensione ad bonum humanum pro sua erga homines, benevolentia, et misericordia, protegat et regat, per Filium suum unicum, nobiscum Deum."
In his minor publications the same piety may be seen. It appears in the Meditationes Saeræ; in the Wisdom of the Ancients; in the fables of Pan, of Prometheus, of Pentheus, and of Cupid: in various parts of the Essays, but particularly in the Essay on Atheism and Goodness of Nature: in the New Atlantis: in his tract "De principiis," and the tract, entitled "The Conditions of Entities."
There is a tract entitled "The Characters of a believing Christian, in paradoxes and seeming contradictions," which is spurious.
Such are his religious sentiments in different parts of his works: but they are not confined to his publications. They appear where, according to his own doctrine, our opinions may always be discovered, in his familiar letters, in the testimony of his friends, in his unguarded observations, and in his will.
In a letter to Mr. Mathew, imprisoned for religion, he says, "I pray God, who understandeth us all better than we understand one another, contain you, even as I hope he will, at the least, within the bounds of loyalty to his majesty, and natural piety towards your country." In the decline of his life, in his letter to the Bishop of Winchester, he says, "Amongst consolations, it is not the least to represent to a man's self like examples of calamity in others. In this kind of consolation I have not been wanting to myself though, as a Christian, I have tasted, through God's great goodness, of higher remedies."
In his essay on Atheism there is an observation, which may appear to a superficial observer hasty and unguarded, inconsistent with the language of philosophy, and at variance with his own doctrines. It was written, not in prostration to any idol, but from his horror of the barren and desolate minds that are continually saying, "There is no God," and his preference, if compelled to elect, of the least of two errors. "I had rather," he says, "believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."
As knowledge consists in understanding the sequence of events, or cause and effect, he knew that error must exist, not only from our ignorance, but from our knowledge of immediate causes.
In the infancy of his reason, man ascribes events to chance, or to a wrong natural cause, or to the immediate interference of a superior benevolent or malevolent being; and, having formed an opinion, he entrenches himself within its narrow boundaries, or is indolently content without seeking for any remote cause, but philosophy endeavours to discover the antecedent in the chain of events, and looks up to the first cause.
This stopping at second causes, the property of animals and of ignorance, always diminishes as knowledge advances. Great intellect cannot be severed from piety. It was reserved for the wisest of men to raise a temple to the living God.
​The philosopher who discovered the immediate cause of the rainbow did not rest in the proximate cause, but raised his thoughts to Him who placeth his bow in the heavens. "Very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof: itcompasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle, and the hand of the Most High hath bended it."
Hence, therefore, Bacon said in his youth, and repeated in his age, "It is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but a farther proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion; for in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause; but when a man passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the works of Providence; then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair."
The testimony of his friends is of the same nature. His chaplain and biographer, Dr. Rawley, says, "That this lord was religious and conversant with God, appeareth by several passages throughout the whole current of his writings. He repaired frequently, when his health would permit him, to the service of the church; to hear sermons; to the administration of the sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ; and died in the true faith established in the Church of England."
His will thus opens: "I bequeath my soul and body into the hands of God by the blessed oblation of my Saviour; the one at the time of my dissolution, the other at the time of my resurrection."—Such are the proofs of his religious opinions.
His version of the Psalms was the last of his literary labours.
In the autumn, he retired to Gorhambury.
In the latter end of October he wrote to Mr. Palmer.
Good Mr. Palmer:—I thank God, by means of the sweet air of the country, I have obtained some degree of health. Sending to the court, I thought I would salute you; and I would be glad, in this solitary time and place, to hear a little from you how the world goeth, according to your friendly manner heretofore. Fare ye well, most heartily.
Your very affectionate and assured friend,
Fr. St. Alban.
Gorhambury, Oct. 29, 1625.
In November he wrote to the Duke of Buckingham.
The severe winter which followed the infectious summer of this year brought him very low.
On the 19th of December he made his will.
In the spring of 1626 his strength and spirits revived, and he returned to his favourite seclusion in Gray's Inn, from whence, on the 2d of April, either in his way to Gorhambury, or when making an excursion into the country, with Dr. Witherbone, the king's physician, it occurred to him, as he approached Highgate, the snow lying on the ground, that it might be deserving consideration, whether flesh might not be preserved as well in snow as in salt; and he resolved immediately to try the experiment. They alighted out of the coach, and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate Hill, and bought a hen, and stuffed the body with snow, and my lord did help "to do it himself. The snow chilled him, and he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to Gray's Inn, but was taken to the Earl of Arundel's house, at Highgate, where he was put into a warm bed, but it was damp, and had not been slept in for a year before.
Whether Sir Thomas Meautys or Dr. Rawley could be found does not appear; but a messenger was immediately sent to his relation, the Master of the Rolls, the charitable Sir Julius Cæsar, then grown so old, that he was said to be kept alive beyond nature's course, by the prayers of the many poor whom he daily relieved. He instantly attended his friend, who, confined to his bed, and so enfeebled that he was unable to hold a pen, could still exercise his lively fancy. He thus wrote to Lord Arundel:
    "My very good Lord,
"I was likely to have had the fortune of Cajus Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mountain Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate I was taken with such a fit of casting as I knew not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it.
"I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than my own; but, by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen."
​On opening his will, his wish to be buried at St. Albans thus appears: "For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's church, near St. Albans: there was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of Old Verulam."
Of his funeral no account can be found, nor is there any trace of the site of the house where he died.
He is buried in the same grave with his mother, in St. Michael's church.
On his monument he is represented sitting in contemplation, his hand supporting his head.
franciscus bacon. baro de verula. s$^{ti:}$ alb$^{ni:}$ vic$^{ms:}$   SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS.
SCIENTIARUM LUMEN. FACUNDIÆ LEX.
SIC SEDEBAT:   QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIÆ
ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET
NATURÆ DECRETUM EXPLEVIT
COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR.
AN$^o$ DNI MDCCVI
ÆTAT$^s$ LXVI
TANTI VIRI
MEM.
THOMAS MEAUTYS
SUPERSTITIS CULTOR
DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR
H P
This monument, erected by his faithful secretary, has transmitted to posterity the image of his person; and, though no statue could represent his mind, his attitude of deep and tranquil thought cannot be seen without emotion.
No sculptured form gives the lineaments of Sir Thomas Meautys. A plain stone records the fact, that he lies at his master's feet. Much time will not pass away before the few letters which may now be seen upon his grave will be effaced. His monument will be found in the veneration of after times, in the remembrance of his grateful adherence to the fallen fortunes of his master, "that he loved and admired him in life, and honoured him when dead."
CONCLUSION.
In his analysis of human nature, Bacon considers first the general properties of man, and then the peculiar properties of his body and of his mind. This mode may be adopted in reviewing his life.
He was of a temperament of the most delicate sensibility: so excitable, as to be affected by the slightest alterations in the atmosphere. It is probable that the temperament of genius may much depend upon such pressibility, and that to this cause the excellences and failures of Bacon may frequently be traced. His health was always delicate, and, to use his own expression, he was all his life puddering with physic.
He was of a middle stature, and well proportioned; his features were handsome and expressive, and his countenance, until it was injured by politics and worldly warfare, singularly placid. There is a portrait of him when he was only eighteen now extant, on which the artist has recorded his despair of doing justice to his subject by the inscription "Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem." His portraits differ beyond what may be considered a fair allowance for the varying skill of the artist, or the natural changes which time wrought upon his person; but none of them contradict the description given by one who knew him well, "that he had a spacious forehead and piercing eye, looking upward as a soul in sublime contemplation, a countenance worthy of one who was to set free captive philosophy."
His life of mind was never exceeded, perhaps never equalled. When a child,
"No childish play to him was pleasing."
While his companions were diverting themselves in the park, he was occupied in meditating upon the causes of the echoes and the nature of imagination. In after life he was a master of the science of harmony, and the laws of imagination he studied with peculiar care, and well understood. The same penetration he extended to colours, and to the heavenly bodies, and predicted the modes by which their laws would be discovered, and which, after the lapse of a century, were so beautifully elucidated by Newton.
The extent of his views was immense. He stood on a cliff, and surveyed the whole of nature. His vigilant observation of what we, in common parlance, call trifles, was, perhaps, more extraordinary: scarcely a pebble on the shore escaped his notice. It is thus that genius is, from its life of mind, attentive to all things, and, from seeing real union in the apparent discrepancies of nature, deduces general truths from particular instances.
His powers were varied and in great perfection. His senses were exquisitely acute, and he used them to dissipate illusions, by "holding firm to the works of God and to the sense, which is God's lamp, Lucerna Dei, spiraculum hominis."
His imagination was fruitful and vivid; but he understood its laws, and governed it with absolute sway. He used it as a philosopher. It never had precedence in his mind, but followed in the train of his reason. With her hues, her forms, and the spirit of her forms, he clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
​As to temporary inability, his golden rules were, "1st, Fix good, obliterate bad times. 2dly, In studies, whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours for it; but whatever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves."—He so mastered and subdued his mind as to counteract disinclination to study; and he prevented fatigue by stopping in due time: by a judicious intermission of studies, and by never plodding upon books; for, although he read incessantly, he winnowed quickly. Interruption was only a diversion of study; and if necessary, he sought retirement.
Of inability to acquire particular sorts of knowledge he was scarcely conscious. He was interested in all truths, and, by investigations in his youth upon subjects from which he was averse, he wore out the knots and stonds of his mind, and made it pliant to all inquiry. He contemplated nature in detail and in mass: he contracted the sight of his mind and dilated it.—He saw differences in apparent resemblances, and resemblances in apparent differences.—He had not any attachment either to antiquity or novelty.—He prevented mental aberration by studies which produced fixedness, and fixedness by keeping his mind alive and open to perpetual improvement.
The theory of memory he understood and explained: and in its practice he was perfect. He knew much, and what he once knew he seldom forgot.
In his compositions his first object was clearness: to reduce marvels to plain things, not to inflate plain things into marvels. He was not attached either to method or to ornament, although he adopted both to insure a favourable reception for abstruse truths.
Such is a faint outline of his mind, which, "like the sun, had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion, no quiet but in activity: it did not so properly apprehend, as irradiate the object; not so much find, as make things intelligible. There was no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention; his faculties were quick and expedite: they were ready upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjectures improving even to prophecy; he saw consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn, in the womb of their causes."
How much is it to be lamented that such a mind, with such a temperament, was not altogether devoted to contemplation, to the tranquil pursuit of knowledge, and the calm delights of piety.
That in his youth he should quit these pleasant paths for the troubels and trappings of public life would be a cause for wonder, if it were not remembered that man amongst men is a social being; and, however he may abstract hims-eif in his study, or climb the hill above him, he must daily mingle with their hopes and fears, their wishes and affections. He was cradled in politics: to be lord keeper was the boundary of the horizon drawn by his parents. He lived in an age when a young mind would be dazzled, and a young heart engaged by the gorgeous and chivalric style which pervaded all things, and which a romantic queen loved and encouraged: life seemed a succession of splendid dramatic scenes, and the gravest business a well acted court masque; the mercenary place-hunter knelt to beg a favour with the devoted air of a knight errant; and even sober citizens put on a clumsy disguise of gallantry, and compared their royal mistress to Venus and Diana. There was nothing to revolt a young and ingenuous mind: the road to power was, no doubt, then as it is now; but, covered with tapes try and strewed with flowers, it could not be suspected that it was either dirty or crooked. He had also that common failing of genius and ardent youth, which led him to be confident of his strength rather than suspicious of his weakness; and it was his favourite doctrine, that the perfection of human conduct consists in the union of contemplation and action, a conjunction of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action; but he should have recollected that Jupiter dethroned Saturn, and that civil affairs seldom fail to usurp and take captive the whole man. He soon saw his error: how futile the end, how unworthy the means! but he was fettered by narrow circumstances, and his endeavours to extricate himself were vain.
Into active life he entered, and carried into it his powerful mind and the principles of his philosophy. As a philosopher he was sincere in his love of science, intrepid and indefatigable in the pursuit and improvement of it: his philosophy is, "discover—improve." He was patientissimus veri. He was a reformer, not an innovator. His desire was to proceed, not "in aliud," but "in melius." His motive was not the love of excelling, but the love of excellence. He stood on such a height that popular praise or dispraise could not reach him.
He was a cautious reformer; quick to hear, slow to speak. "Use Argus's hundred eyes before you raise one of Briareus's hundred hands," was his maxim.
He was a gradual reformer. He thought that reform ought to be, like the advances of nature, scarce discernible in its motion, but only visible in its issue. His admonition was, "Let a living spring constantly flow into the stagnant waters."
He was confident reformer. "I have held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy which will be seen centuries after I am dead. It will be seen amidst the erection of temples, tombs, ​palaces, theatres, bridges, making noble roads, cutting canals, granting multitude of charters and liberties for comfort of decayed companies and corporations: the foundation of colleges and lectures for learning and the education of youth; foundations and institutions of orders and fraternities for nobility, enterprise, and obedience; but, above all, the establishing good laws for the regulation of the kingdom and as an example to the world."
He was a permanent reformer.—He knew that wise reform, instead of palliating a complaint, looks at the real cause of the malady. He concurred with his opponent, Sir Edward Coke, in saying, "Si quid moves a principio moveas. Errores ad principia referre est refellere." His opinion was, that he "who, in the cure of politic or of natural disorders, shall rest himself contented with second causes, without setting forth in diligent travel to search for the original source of evil, doth resemble the slothful husbandman, who moweth down the heads of noisome weeds, when he should carefully pull up the roots; and the work shall ever be to do again."
Cautious, gradual, permanent reform, from the love of excellence, is ever in the train of knowledge. They are the tests of a true reformer.
Such were the principles which he carried into law and into politics.
As a lawyer, he looked with micrescopic eye into its subtleties, and soon made great proficience in the science. He was active in the discharge of his professional duties: and published various works upon different parts of the law. In his offices of solicitor and attorney-general, "when he was called, as he was of the king's council learned, to charge any offenders, either in criminals or capitals, he was never of an insulting and domineering nature over them, but always tender-hearted, and carrying himself decently towards the parties, though it was his duty to charge them home, but yet as one that looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion."
As a judge, it has never been pretended that any decree made by him was ever reversed as unjust. As a patron of preferment, his favourite maxim was, "Detur digniori, qui beneficium digno dat omnes obligat."
As a statesman, he was indefatigable in his public exertions. "Men think," he said, "I cannot continue if I should thus oppress myself with business; but my account is made. The duties of life are more than life; and if I die now, I shall die before the world is weary of me, which in our times is somewhat rare."
His love of reform, his master passion, manifested itself both as a statesman and as a lawyer; but, before he attempted any change, he, with his usual caution, said, "There is a great difference between arts and civil affairs; arts and sciences should be like mines, resounding on all sides with new works, and further progress: but it is not good to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent or the utility evident; and well to beware that it is the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation."
The desire to change he always regarded with great jealousy. He knew that in its worst form it is the tool by which demagogues delude and mislead; and in its best form, when it originates in benevolence and a love of truth, it is a passion by which kind intention has rushed on with such fearless impetuosity, and wisdom been hurried into such lamentable excess: it is so nearly allied to a contempt of authority, and so frequently accompanied by a presumptuous confidence in private judgment: a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of the old paths, merely because they are old: it has such tendency to go too far rather than not far enough; that this great man, conscious of the blessings of society, and of the many perplexities which accompany even the most beneficial alterations, always looked with suspicion upon a love of change, whether it existed in himself or in others. In his advice to Sir George Villiers he said,—"Merit the admonition of the wisest of men: 'My son, fear God and the king, and meddle not with those who are given to change.'"
As a statesman his first wish was, in the true spirit of his philosophy, to preserve; the next, to improve the constitution in church and state.
In his endeavours to improve England and Scotland he was indefatigable and successful. He had no sooner succeeded than he immediately raised his voice for oppressed Ireland, with an earnestness which shows how deeply he felt for her sufferings. "Your majesty," he said, "accepted my poor field-fruits touching the union, but let me assure you that England, Scotland, and Ireland, well united, will be a trefoil worthy to be worn in your crown. She is blessed with all the dowries of nature, and with a race of generous and noble people; but the hand of man does not unite with the hand of nature. The harp of Ireland is not strung to concord. It is not attuned with the harp of David in casting out the evil spirit of superstition, or the harp of Orpheus in casting out desolation and barbarism."
In these reforms he acted with his usual caution. He looked about him to discover the straight and right way, and so to walk in it. He stood on such an eminence, that his eye rested not upon small parts, but comprehended the whole. He stood on the ancient way. He saw this happy country, the mansion-house of liberty. He saw the order and beauty of her sacred buildings, the learning and piety of her priests, the sweet repose and holy quiet of her decent Sabbaths, and that best sacrifice of humble and simple devotion, more acceptable ​than the fire of the temple, which went not out by day or by night. He saw it in the loveliness of his own beautiful description of the blessings of government. "In Orpheus's theatre all beasts and birds assembled, and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp, the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men: who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge, which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence, and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."
In gradual reform of the law, his exertions were indefatigable. He suggested improvements both of the civil and criminal law: he proposed to reduce and compile the whole law; and in a tract upon universal justice, "Leges Legum," he planted a seed which, for the last two centuries, has not been dormant, and is now just appearing above the surface. He was thus attentive to the ultimate and to the immediate improvement of the law: the ultimate improvement depending upon the progress of knowledge. "Veritas temporis filia dicitur, non authoritatis:" the immediate improvement upon the knowledge by its professors in power, of the local law, the principles of legislation, and general science.
So this must ever be. Knowledge cannot exist without the love of improvement. The French chancellors, D'Aguesseau and L'Hôpital, were unwearied in their exertions to improve the law; and three works upon imaginary governments, the Utopia, the Atlantis, and the Armata, were written by English chancellors.
So Sir William Grant, the reserved, intellectual master of the rolls, struck at the root of sanguinary punishment, when, in the true spirit of philosophy, he said, "Crime is prevented, not by fear, but by recoiling from the act with horror which is generated by the union of law, morals, and religion. With us they do not unite; and our laws are a dead letter."
So, too, by the exertions of the philosophic and benevolent Sir Samuel Romilly, who was animated by a spirit public as nature, and not terminated in any private design, the criminal law has been purified; and, instead of monthly mas sacres of young men and women, we, in our noble times, have lately read that "there has not been one execution in London during the present shrievalty."—With what joy, with what grateful remembrance has this been read by the many friend; of that illustrious statesman, who, regardless of the senseless yells by which he was vilified, went right onward in the improvement of law, the advancement of knowledge, and the diffusion of charity.
Such were Bacon's public exertions.—In private life he was always cheerful and often playful, according to his own favourite maxim, "To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat, and of sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting."
The art of conversation, that social mode of diffusing kindness and knowledge, he considered to be one of the valuable arts of life, and all that he taught he skilfully and gracefully practised. When he spoke, the hearers only feared that he should be silent, yet he was more pleased to listen than to speak, "glad to light his torch at my man's candle." He was skilful in alluring his company to discourse upon subjects in which they were most conversant. He was ever happy to commend, and unwilling to censure; and when he could not assent to an opinion, he would set forth its ingenuity, and so grace and adorn it by his own luminous statement, that his opponent could not feel lowered by his defeat.
His wit was brilliant, and when it flashed upon any subject, it was never with ill-nature, which, like the crackling of thorns, ending in sudden darkness, is only fit for a fool's laughter; the sparkling of his wit was that of the precious diamond, valuable for its worth and weight, denoting the riches of the mine.
He had not any children; but, says Dr. Rawley, the want of children did not detract from his good usage of his consort during the intermarriage, whom he prosecuted with much conjugal love and respect, with many rich gifts and endowments, besides a robe of honour which he invested her withal, which she wore until her dying day, being twenty years and more after his death."
He was religious, and died in the faith established in the church of England.
Bacon has been accused of servility, of dissimulation, of various base motives, and their filthy brood of base actions, all unworthy of his high birth, and incompatible with his great wisdom, and the estimation in which he was held by the noblest spirits of the age. It is true that there were men in his own time, and will be men in all times, who are better pleased to count spots in the sun than to rejoice in its glorious brightness. Such men have openly libelled him, like Dewes and Weldon, whose falsehoods were detected as soon as uttered, or have fastened upon certain ceremonious compliments and dedications, the fashion of his day, as a sample of his servility, passing over his noble letters to the queen, his lofty contempt for the Lord Keeper Puckering, his open dealing with Sir Robert Cecil and with ​others, who, powerful when he was nothing, might have blighted his opening fortunes forever, forgetting his advocacy of the rights of the people in the face of the court, and the true and honest counsels, always given by him, in times of great difficulty, both to Elizabeth and her successor. When was a "base sycophant" loved and honoured by piety such as that of Herbert, Tenison, and Rawley, by noble spirits like Hobbes, Ben Jonson, and Selden, or followed to the grave, and beyond it, with devoted affection, such as that of Sir Thomas Meautys.
Forced by the narrowness of his fortune into business, conscious of his own powers, aware of the peculiar quality of his mind, and disliking his pursuits, his heart was often in his study, while he lent his person to the robes of office; and he was culpably unmindful of the conduct of his servants, who amassed wealth meanly and rapaciously, while their careless master, himself always poor, with his thoughts on higher ventures, never stopped to inquire by what methods they grew rich. No man can act thus with impunity; he has sullied the brightness of a name which ought never to have been heard without reverence, injured his own fame, and has been himself the victim upon the altar which he raised to true science; becoming a theme to "point a moral or adorn a tale," in an attempt to unite philosophy and politics, an idol, whose golden head and hands of base metal form a monster more hideous than the Dagon of the Philistines.
His consciousness of the wanderings of his mind made him run into affairs with over-acted zeal and a variety of useless subtleties; and in lending himself to matters immeasurably beneath him, he sometimes stooped too low. A man often receives an unfortunate bias from an unjust censure. Bacon, who was said by Elizabeth to be without knowledge of affairs, and by Cecil and Burleigh to be unfit for business, affected through the whole of his life an over-refinement in trifles, and a political subtlety unworthy of so great a mind: it is also true that he sometimes seemed conscious of the pleasure of skill, and that he who possessed the dangerous power of "working and winding" others to his purpose, tried it upon the little men whom his heart disdained; but that heart was neither "cloven nor double." There is no record that he abused the influence which he possessed over the minds of all men. He ever gave honest counsel to his capricious mistress, and her pedantic successor; to the rash, turbulent Essex, and to the wily, avaricious Buckingham. There is nothing more lamentable in the annals of mankind than that false position, which placed jne of the greatest minds England ever possessed at the mercy of a mean king and a base court favourite.
* ↑ See Bacon's will.
* ↑ The art of experimenting is, 1. By repetition. 1. Production. 2. By extension. 3. By compulsion. 2. Inversion. 1. Of the matter. 3. Variation. 2. Of the efficient. 3. Of the quantity. 1. Simple 1. From nature. 1. To nature. 2. To art. 4. Translation. 2. From art. 1. Systematic. 1. To a different art. 2. To a part of the same art. 3. From experiment to experiment. 2. Compound. 2. Chance. A few moments consideration of each of these subjects will not be lost. Production is experimenting upon the result of the experiment, and is either, 1st, by Repetition, continuing the experiment upon the result of the experiment; as Newton, who, after having separated light into seven rays, proceeded to separate each distinct pencil of rays; or, 2dly, by Extension, or urging the experiment to a greater subtlety, as in the memory being helped by images and pictures of persons: may it not also be helped by imaging their gestures and habits? or, 3dly, by Compulsion, or trying an experiment till its virtue is annihilated: not merely hunting the game, but killing it; as burning or macerating a loadstone, or dissolving iron till the attraction between the iron and the loadstone is gone. Inversion is trying the contrary to that which is manifested by the experiment: as in heating the end of a small bar of iron, and placing the heated end downwards, and your hand on the top, it will presently burn the hand. Invert the iron, and place the hand on the ground, to ascertain whether heat is produced as rapidly by descent as by ascent. Variation is either of the matter, as the trying to make paper of woollen, as well as of linen; or of the efficient, as by trying if amber and jet, which when rubbed, will attract straw, will have the same effect if warmed at the fire, or of the quantity, like Æsop's housewife, who thought that by doubling her measure of barley, her hen would daily lay her two eggs. Translation is either from nature to nature, as Newton translating the force of gravity upon the earth to the celestial bodies; or from nature to art, as the manner of distilling might be taken from showers or dew, or from that homely experiment of drops adhering to covers put upon pots of boiling water; or from art to a different art, as by transferring the invention of spectacles, to help a weak sight, to an instrument fastened to the ear, to help the deaf; or to a different part of the same art: as, if opiates repress the spirits in diseases, may they not retard the consumption of the spirits so as to prolong life; or from experiment to experiment: as upon flesh putrefying sooner in some cellars than in others, by considering whether this may not assist in finding good or bad air for habitations. Such are the modes of experimenting by translation, open to all men who will awake and perpetually fix their eyes, one while on the nature of things, another on the application of them, to the use and service of mankind. Copulation of experiments is trying the efficacy of united experiments, which, when separate, produce the same effect: as, by pulling off the more early buds when they are newly knotted, or by laying the roots bare until the spring, late roses will be produced. Will not the germination be more delayed by a union of these experiments? Chances of an experiment, or the trying a conclusion, not for that any reason, or other experiment, induceth you to it, but only because the like was never attempted before: an irrational, and, as it were, a passionate manner of experimenting; but yet the wonders of nature lie out of the high road and beaten paths, so as the very absurdity of an attempt may sometimes be prosperous. Such is the nature of his tract entitled "Literate Experience." ↑ They may be thus exhibited: To nature. 1. From nature. To art. To a different art. 2. From art. To a different part of the same art. 3. From experiment to experiment.
* ↑  Vol. ix. p. 145, 147. Cum autem incertus esset, quando inæc alicui posthac in mentem ventura sint; eo potissimum usus argumento, quod neminem hactenus invenit, qui ad similes cogitationes animum applicuerit; decrevit prima quæque, quæ perficere licuit, in publicum edere. Neque hæc festinatio ambitiosa fuit, sed sollicita; ut si quid illi humanitus accideret, exstaret tamen designatio quædam, ac destinatio rei quam animo complexus est; utque exstaret simul signum aliquod honestæ suæ et propensæ in generis humani commoda voluntatis. Certe aliam quamcunque ambitionem inferiorem duxit re, quam præ manibus habuit. Aut enim hoc quod agitur nihil est; aut tantum, ut merito ipso contentum esse debeat, nec fructum extra quærere.   FRANCIS OF VERULAM   THOUGHT THUS. Uncertain, however, whether these reflections would ever hereafter suggest themselves to another, and particularly having observed that he has never yet met with any person disposed to apply his mind to similar meditations, he determined to publish whatsoever he had first time to conclude. Nor is this the haste of ambition, but of his anxiety, that if the common lot of mankind should befall him, some sketch and determination of the matter his mind had embraced might be extant, as well as an earnest of his will being honourably bent upon promoting the advantage of mankind. He assuredly looked upon any other ambition as beneath the matter he had undertaken; for that which is here treated of is either nothing, or it is so great that he ought to be satisfied with its own worth and seek no other return.
* ↑ Thus 9 X 2 = 18 and 8 + 1 = 9. 9 X 3 = 27 and 2 + 7 = 9. 9 X 11 = 99 and 9 + 9 = 18 and 1 + 8 = 9.
* ↑  Different editions of the treatise De Augmentis. 1. The first edition is thus described by Tenison: "The fairest and most correct edition of this book in Latin is that in folio, printed at London, 1623; and whoever would understand the Lord Bacon's cypher, let him consult that accurate edition: for, in some other editions which I have perused, the form of the letters of the alphabet, in which much of the mystery consisteth, is not observed, but the roman and italic shapes of them are confounded." The following is a copy of the title page: "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Vervlamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri ix. Ad Regem svvm. Londini, in Officina Joannis Haviland, mdcxxiii." There is a copy at Cambridge and in the British Museum, and I have a copy. 2. The work had scarcely appeared in England, when an edition was published in France: it appeared in 1624. The following is a copy of the title page: Francisci Baronis de Vervlamio Vicecomitis Sancti Albani, de Dignitate et Augmentis Scienciarum. Libri ix. Ad Regem svvm. Iuxta exemplar Londini impressum. Parisiis, typis Petri Metayer, typographi Regij. m.dc xxiv." I have a copy. 3. In 1638 an edition was published by Dr. Rawley, in a folio entitled, "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Vervlamio Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani tractatus de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum qui est Instaurationis magne pars prima. Ad regem svvm. Londini, typis Ioh. Haviland. Prostant ad insignia Regia in Cæmeterio D. Pauli, apud Iocosam Norton et Richardum Whitakerum. 1638." 4. In the year 1645 an edition in 12mo. was published in Holland. The following is the title page: Francisci Baconis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri ix. Ad Regem suum. Editio nova, cum Indice rerum et verborum locupletissimo. Lugd. Batav. apud Franciscum Moyardum et Adrianum Wijngaerde. Anno 1645." The title page of this Dutch edition is adorned with an engraving, not undeserving the attention of our students in England: it is of a youth aspiring to the attainment of knowledge. 5. In 1652 another edition in 12mo. was published in Holland: the engraving prefixed to the edition of 1615 is also prefixed to this edition; but the descriptive title is omitted, and the address to the reader is at the back of the engraving. The following is the title page: "Fr. Baconis de Vervlam Angliæ Cancellarii de Avgmentis Scientiarvm. Lib. ix. Lvgd. Batavorvm, ex officina Adriani Wijngaerden. Anno 1652." 6. In 1662 another edition was published in 12mo. in Holland. The following is a copy of the title page: "Fr. Baconis de Vervlam Angliæ Cancellarii de Avgmentis Scientiarum. Lib. ix. Amstelædami, sumptibus Joannis Ravesteinij. 1662." At the back of which, as in the edition of 1652, there is the address to the reader: "Amice Lector. Hoc opus de Augmentis Scientiarum, novo ejusdem autoris organo si præmittatur, non modo necessarium ei lucem præbet; sed et partitiones continet scientiarum quæ primam Instaurationis magnæ partem constituunt quas id circo auctor in ipso organi limine retractare noluit. Hæc te scire volebam." 7. In 1765 an edition in 8vo. was published at Venice. The following is the title page: "Francisci Baronis de Verulamio, Angliæ Cancellarii de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Pars prima. Lugani, mdcclxiii. Expensis Gasparis Girardi, Bibliopolæ Veneti." I have a copy. 8. In 1779 an edition was published on the continent. The following is the title page: "Francisci Baconi Baronis de Verulamio de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Tomus 1. Wirceburgi, apud Jo. Jac. Stahel. 1779." 9. In 1829 another edition was published on the continent, in two vols., of which the following is the title page: "Francisci Baconis de Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. Libri ix. Ad fidem optimarum editionum edidit vitamque auctoris adjecit Philippus Mayer, Philosophie Doctor et Gymnasii Norimbergensis Collega. Norimbergae, aumptibus Riegelii et Wiessneri. mdcccxxxix." Such are the different editions of which I have any knowledge. I understand that editions have been published in Germany, for which I have sent, and hope to be able to procure. Is it not rather extraordinary that not an edition has been published in either of the universities of England Translations. In the year 1640 a translation into English was published at Oxford, with a portrait of the philosopher writing his Instauratio, and the following inscriptions prefixed and subjoined: "Tertiusa Platone philosophiæ princeps. Quod feliciter vortat reip. literariæ V. C. Fran, de Verulamio philosoph. libertates assertor avdax, scientiaru' reparator felix mundi mentisq. magnus arbiter inclytis max. terrarum orbis Acad. Oxon. Contab. Q. hanc suam Instavr. voto suscepto vivus decernebat obiit v. non. April. II. D. N. Caroli I. Pp. Aug. ciↄ iↄc xxvi"—Appended is another engraving of two spheres, the one of the visible, the other of the intellectual world, and supported by two fixed pillars, the one Oxford and the other Cambridge, with a vessel sailing between them, with the following inscription: "Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning, or the Partitions of Sciences, ix Bookes. Written in Latin by the most illustrious and famous Lord Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Vicont St. Alban, Counsilour of Estate and Lord Chancellor of England. Interpreted by Gilbert Wats. Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia. Oxford, printed by Leon. Lichfield, printer to the University for Rob. Young, and Ed. Forrest, ciciↄc xl." In the year 1674 another edition of the translation by Wats was published in London, but instead of the engravings which were prefixed to the edition of 1640, there is prefixed to the annexed title page only a portrait of Lord Bacon. The following is the title page: "Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning: or the Partitions of Sciences. Nine Books. Written in Latin by the most eminent, illustrious and famous Lord Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Counsellor of Estate, and Lord Chancellor of England. Interpreted by Gilbert Wats. London, printed for Thomas Williams, at the Golden Ball in Osier lane, 1674." Of these translations Archbishop Tenison thus speaks in the Baconiana: "The whole of this book was rendered into English by Dr. Gilbert Wats, of Oxford, and the translation has been well received by many: but some there were, who wished that a translation had been set forth, in which the genius and spirit of the Lord Bacon had more appeared. And I have seen a letter written by certain gentlemen to Dr. Rawley, wherein they thus importune him for a more accurate version, by his own hand. It is our humble suit to you, and we do earnestly solicit you to give yourself the trouble to correct the too much defective translation of De Augmentis Scientiarum, which Dr. Wats hath set forth. It is a thousand pities that so worthy a piece should lose its grace and credit by an ill expositor; since those persons who read that translation, taking it for genuine, and upon that presumption not regarding the Latin edition, are thereby robbed of that benefit which, if you would please to undertake the business, they might receive. This tendeth to the dishonour of that noble lord, and the Advancement of Learning." Of the correctness or incorrectness of these observations, some estimate may be formed from the following specimens; The Instauratio Magna thus begins: "Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit."—Translation by Wats: "Francis Lord Verulam consulted thus." Another specimen: Advancement of Learning.—"We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used their verdure departeth; which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures, and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious men turn melancholy; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable, and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply, without fallacy or accident." Wats's Translation. "In all other pleasures there is a finite variety, and after they grow a little stale, their flower and verdure fades and departs; whereby we are instructed that they were not indeed pure and sincere pleasures, but shadows and deceits of pleasures, and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality; wherefore voluptuous men often turn friars, and the declining age of ambitious princes is commonly more sad and besieged with melancholy; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but vicissitude, perpetually and interchangeably returning of fruition and appetite; so that the good of this delight must needs be simpler, without accident or fallacy." In the year 1632 a translation into French was published in Paris. The following Is a copy of the title page: "Neve Livres de la Dignité et de l'Accroissement des Sciences, composez par Francois Bacon, Baron de Verulam et Vicomte de Saint Aubain, et traduits de Latin en Francois par le Sieur de Golefer, Conseiller et Historiographe du Roy. A Paris, chez Jaques Dugast, rue Sainct Jean de Beauvais, a l'Olivier de Robert Estienne et en sa boutique au bas de la rue de la Harpe. m.dc.xxxii. avec privilege du Roy."—Of this edition Archbishop Tenison says, "This work hath been also translated into French, upon the motion of the Marquis Fiat; but in it there are many things wholly omitted, many things perfectly mistaken, and some things, especially such as relate to religion, wilfully perverted. Insomuch that, in one place, he makes his lordship to magnify the Legend: a book sure of little credit with him, when he thus began one of his essays, I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind." I have a copy of this edition. A letter of the Lord Bacon's, in French, to the Marquess Fiat, relating to his Essays. Monsieur l'Ambassadeur mon File,—Voyant que vostre excellence faict et trait mariages, non seulement entre les princes d' Angletere et de France, mais aussi entre les langues (puis que faictes traduire non liure de l'Advancement des Sciences en Francois) i' ai bien voulu vous envoyer, &c. There is a translation into French in the edition of Lord Bacon's works, published in the eighth year of the French Republic. The following is the title page of this edition: "Œuvres de Franois Bacon, Chancelier d' Angletaire; traduites par Ant. La Salle; avec des notes critiques, historiques et litteraires. Tome premier. A Dijon, de l'Imprimerie de L. N. Frantin, an 8 de la Republique Française." De Augmentis—Latin. 1623 ..... Folio ... Haviland .... London .... 1st edit. 1624 ..... 4to ... Mettayer .... Paris .... 2d edit. 1633 ..... Folio ... Haviland .... London .... 3d edit. 1645 ..... 12mo ... Moirardum .... Dutch .... 4th edit. 1652 ..... 12mo ... Wynyard .... Dutch .... 5th edit. 1662 ..... 12mo ... Ravestein .... Dutch .... 6th edit. 1765 ..... 8vo ... Gerard .... Venice .... 7th edit. 1779 ..... 8vo ... Stahel .... Wirceburgi .... 8th edit. 2 vols. 1829 ..... 8vo ... Riegelli .... Nuremberg .... 9th edit. 2 vols. Translations. 1640 ..... English . G. Wats .... Oxford .... Folio. 1674 ..... English ... Mettayer .... London .... Folio 1632 ..... French ... Dugast .... Paris .... 4to. 8th year Rep ..... French ... Frantin .... Dijon .... 8vo.