The sun., 1901-11-03

| ing very much In detail; and II is difncult
{ Just yet 10 estimate fairly how much he
| told In each opposite direction. hardly
remember any one whom IL was so easy
| both to praise truly and condemn truly
according to the side OF him you looked at. :
We have said that Dean Church con-
tributed a little book about Bacon to Mac
millan's -Men Of Letters" seriee. or this
brief biography the author says In letter
I to DIR. Gray: -Writing such book means
writing not only about the subject's genius
and his works, but about his life; and the
more I read OF Bacon, the man. and his
life, the less / like him. James Speeding
edited his letters, dc., with IN running
commentary, In which he makes him out
to be one OF the noblest and purest OF men,
I can only read in him one OF the poorest
and most ungenerous OF characters. But
Il n a horrid thing to have TO connect ones
name with what will be called blackening
one of the greatest OF the benefactors OF
the race" In a later letter TO tho same
correspondent Dean Church recurs to the
subject: Il get driven out Of all patience
by Spedding's special pleading FOR him.
He lBaconl seems TO me to have done no
uork, to have shown no example OF what
he calls his method. His imagination was
his great faculty, and all that Is most valua-
BILE In him Ii due to the president instino-
tive insight with which he looked on the
possibilities OF all knowledge; TO the en-
thusiasm Of a seer. not Of a philosopher
who had measured. and weighed, and COM
pared. and done what Mozley calls the
underground work OF solid thinking. Gall
leo, as you say, and Pascal did what Bacon
talked about without knowing how to do 1t,
and they talked after they had touch OF
the realities Of hunt after physical truth.
l believe this may be said now with less
inridid than Of old. still 1t II a bore to abate
reverence for a great name. After all,
he belongs to an age Of vast. ambitious
adventure which went to sea, little know
ing whittier It went, and Ill provided with
knowledge or instruments. His Is sort
Of poetical Inauguration of science. as
Shakesr sare opened the gate to that COM
plex modern world OF ideas, and feelings,
and tendencies, so different from the
medieval or the classical world
We must here find space for an excerpt
from a letter written TO Mrs. Asa Gray
soon after her husbands death. Dean
Church remarks that besides the interest
Of the subjects discussed, there Is a special
CutNfN III III WAY PoP''o' s'p"N " f'N
small. which Is his own, and which seems
to me TO distinguish him from even his
more famous contemporaries. There is
the scientific spirit in its beat form, i'm
aginative, fearless. cautious, with large
horizons and very attentive and careful
TO objections and qualifications. and there
is besides, what Is so often wanting in scien-
tific writing the human spirit. always
remembering that. besides facts and laws.
however wonderful and minute, there are
souls and characters over against them
of as great account ~ they, In whose mir
rors they are reflected. whom they excite
and delight, and without whose interest
they would be blanks. This combination
comes out in his great generalizations, in
the bold and yet consderate way in which
he deals with Darwins ideas, and In the
notices Of so many of his scientific friends,
whom we feel that he was interested in "a
men, and not only as scientific inquirers.
''' And what life OF labor II was! am
perfectly aghast at the amount Of grinding
work Of which these papers are the indirect
evidence. II makes one think Of ones
own lettering life"