The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-26

potent forces of the world, an intellect of child-like directness of expression and almost superhuman strength of concep- ton. Not one who has written since his day has produced anything that will compare in force. in comprehensiveness in terse compactness of expression with any one of a score of his short essays. In these respects they call for rever- ence, but where they express the lower part of his nature, the cunning of the courier, the lack of scruple of the weak and time-serving politician, living virtue in theory but not brave enough in prac- tice to make a stand for it, then the strength of intellect which is so great a merit in essays expressing his higher mind, makes the ba6eness of his thought when 1t Is base formidable to the last degree. for when Bacon Is giving bad advice no man can give worse, or give it in a way more calculated to degrade. To study his methods of expression is to see how child-like great genius Is. It Is the mind of inferior order which com- plicates question so that only experts can understand it. The great mind makes it so plain that child can un- derstand it If he will only take the trou- ble to try. To understand Bacon-to understand any whose mind really be- longs to the highest class-it is only nec- essary to be willing to think as child does in learning Its letters.
 He held his intellect ad u1tilitates hu- manas, for the service of mankind. While others before him had cultivated philos- ophy in the hope of becoming superior to humanity, he sought to serve the everyday needs of humanity through philosophy. The old philosophy sought to make an exclusive class of spiritual and intellectual aristocrats. Bacon sought to lfberate the universal mind of man from Its shackling ineffioiency.
 Born at York House, January 22, 1561, a date which Is consequently the gnomon of the real beginning of modern times. he had all human weaknesses, and when he died. April. 1926. he had Illustrated them in life which but for them we would surely not recognize as human. 50 great was the intellect which trans figured 1t, which, in spite of every weak ness incident to humanity, wrought through him the beginning of that "Norus ordo saccolorum' which has embodied the results of the cruci1tion in ths Chris tianity of the steam engine and the elec- trio motor.
 Perhaps Ben Jonsons Discoveries Made Upon Men and Natter are not essays in the same sense with Francis Bacon's, yet that is a matter of purely individual taste He is a quaint, enter taining writer, one that has worked off the fermentation of youth and has be- come meIlowed and ripened by age. Not one of the fancy brands. if you please, but plain, honest Gan epithet he so de- lighted in) Ben Jonson.
 It frequently happens that in rambling frorr subject to subject over the wide range of things that interest him. his writings result in an essay as complete in form as the most exacting critic could demand. Quite frequently. however, he prefers to gossip pleasantly. changing the subject when he tires of 1t, without regard to whether he has reached the end of 1t or not.
 Tn his lyric poems he shows the artis- tic sense which belonged to his season of concentrated effort. His ode to the moon,
 ~Queen and huntress, chaste and fair. Row the sun is laid to sleep"
 Is scarcely surpassed in it's art by an- other lyric in the language, and 1t repre- sents him well on the too infrequent oc- casions which subjected honest Ben" to the task of doing his best.
 A . playwright he was most popular.