ENGLISH LITERATURE. in some profitable occupation. After in vain soliciting his uncle, Lord Burleigh, to procure for him such a provision from government as might allow him to devote his time to literature and philosophy, he spent several years in the study of the law. While engaged in practice as a barrister, however, he did not forget philosophy, as it appears that he sketched at an early period of life his great work Bacon was in some measure led by pecuniary diffi- After the accession of James, the fortunes of Although his income had now been greatly enlarged by the emoluments of office and a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy alderman, his extravagance, and that of his servants, which he seems to have been too good-natured to check, continued to keep him in difficulties. He cringed before the king and his favourite Villiers; and at length, in 1619, reached the summit of his ambition, by being created Lord High Chancellor of England, and Baron Verulam. This latter title gave place in the following year to that of Viscount St Albans. As chancellor, it cannot be concealed that, both in his political and judicial capacities, he grossly deserted his duty. Not only did he suffer Villiers to interfere with his decisions as a judge, but, by accepting numerous presents or bribes from suitors, gave occasion, in 1621, to a parliamentary inquiry, which ended in his condemnation and disgrace. He fully confessed the twenty-three articles of corruption which were laid to his charge; and when waited on by a committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire whether the confession was subscribed by himself, he answered, It is my act, my hand, my heart: I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.' Banished from public life, he had now ample leisure to attend to his philosophical and literary pursuits. Yet, even while he was engaged in business, these had not been neglected. In 1597, he published the first edition of his Essays, which were afterwards greatly enlarged. These, as he himself says of them, come home to men's business and bosoms; and, like the late new halfpence, the pieces are small, and the silver is good.' From the generally interesting nature of the subjects of the Essays,' and the excellence of their style, this work immediately acquired great popularity, and to the present day continues the most generally read of all the author's productions. It is also,' to use the words of Mr Dugald Stewart, one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest advantage, the novelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the triteness of his subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours, and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic *First Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britan activity they impart to our torpid faculties."* In nica,' p. 36, seventh edition. 1605, he published another work, which still continues to be extensively perused; it is entitled Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human. This volume, which was afterwards enlarged and published in the Latin language, with the title De Augmentis Scientiarum, constitutes the first part of his great work called Instauratio Scientiarum, or the Instauration of the Sciences. The second part, entitled Novum Organum, is that on which, chiefly, his high reputation as a philosopher is grounded, and on the composition of which he bestowed most labour. It is written in Latin, and appeared in 1620. In the first part of the Advancement of Learning, after considering the excellence of knowledge and the means of disseminating it, together with wat had already been done for its advancement, and what omitted, he proceeds to divide it into the three branches of history, poetry, and philosophy; these having reference to what he considers the three parts of man's understanding'memory, imagination, and reason. The concluding portion of the volume relates to revealed religion. The Novum Organum,' which, as already mentioned, is the second and most important part of the Instauration of the Sciences,' consists of aphorisms, the first of which furnishes a key to the author's leading doctrines: Man, who is the servant and interpreter of nature, can act and understand no further than he has, either in operation or in contemplation, observed of the method and order of nature.' His new method-novum organum-of employing the understanding in adding to human knowledge, is fully expounded in this work, the following translated extracts from which will make manifest what the reformation was which he sought to accomplish. . After alluding to the little aid which the useful arts had derived from science, and the small improvement which science had received from practical men, he proceeds' But whence can arise such vagueness and sterility in all the physical systems which have hitherto existed in the world? It is not certainly from anything in nature itself; for the steadiness and regularity of the laws by which it is governed, clearly mark them out as objects of certain and precise knowledge. Neither can it arise from any want of ability in those who have pursued such inquiries, many of whom have been men of the highest talent and genius of the ages in which they lived; and it can therefore arise from nothing else but the perverseness and insufficiency of the methods that have been pursued. Men have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to draw from their own minds all the materials which they employed; but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have had facts, and not opinions, to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world.' 'As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propositions, which are accounted principles, and round which, as round so many fixed poles, disputation and argument continually revolve. From the propositions thus hastily assumed, all things are derived, by a process compendious and precipitate, ill suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate. The way that promises success is the reverse of this. It requires that we should generalise slowly, going from particular things to those which are but one step more general; from those to others of still greater extent, and so on to such as are universal. By such means we may hope to arrive at ❘ principles, not vague and obscure, but luminous and well-defined, such as nature herself will not refuse to acknowledge.' After describing the causes which lead the understanding astray in the search after knowledge-the idols, as he figuratively terms them, before which it is apt to bow-Bacon, in the second book of the 'Novum Organum,' goes on systematically to expound and exemplify his method of philosophising, indicated in the foregoing extracts, and to which the appellation of the inductive method is applied. This he does in so masterly a way, that he has earned with posterity the title of the father of experimental science. The power and compass,' says Professor Playfair, of a mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not merely the outline, but many of the most minute ramifications, of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages.' It is true that the inductive method had been both practised and even cursorily recommended by more than one philosopher prior to Bacon; but unquestionably he was the first to unfold it completely, to show its infinite importance, and to induce the great body of scientific inquirers to place themselves under its guidance. In another respect, the benefit conferred by Bacon upon mankind was perhaps still greater. He turned the attention of philosophers from speculations and disputes upon questions remote from use, and fixed it upon inquiries 'productive of works for the benefit of the life of man.' The Aristotelian philosophy was barren; the object of Bacon was the amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over the world'— the enlargement of the bounds of human empire to the effecting all things possible'-the augmentation, by means of science, of the sum of human happiness, and the alleviation of human suffering. In a word, he was eminently a utilitarian. The third part of the 'Instauration of the Sciences,' entitled Sylva Sylvarum, or History of Nature, is devoted to the facts and phenomena of natural science, including original observations made by Bacon himself, which, though sometimes incorrect, are useful in exemplifying the inductive method of searching for truth. The fourth part is called Scala Intellectus, from its pointing out a succession of steps by which the understanding may ascend in such investigations. Other two parts, which the author projected, were never executed. Another celebrated publication of Lord Bacon is his treatise, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, 1610; wherein he attempts, generally with more ingenuity than success, to discover secret meanings in the mythological fables of antiquity. He wrote also Felicities of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, a History of King Henry VII., a philosophical romance called the New Atlantis, and several minor productions which it is needless to specify. His letters, too, have been published. After retiring from public life, Bacon, though enjoying an annual income of £2500, continued to live in so ostentatious and prodigal a style, that, at his death, in 1626, his debts amounted to upwards of £22,000. His devotion to science appears to have been the immediate occasion of bringing his earthly existence to a close. While travelling in his carriage at a time when there was snow on the ground, he began to consider whether flesh might not be preserved by snow as well as by salt. In order to make the experiment, he alighted at a cottage near Highgate, bought a hen, and stuffed it with snow. This so chilled him, that he was unable to return home, but went to the Earl of Arundel's house in the neighbourhood, where his illness was so much increased by the dampness of a bed into which he was put, that he died in a few days.* In a letter to the earl, the last *This account is given by Aubrey, who probably obtained it from Hobbes, one of Bacon's intimate friends, and afterwards an acquaintance of Aubrey.-See Aubrey's Lives of Eminent ENGLISH LITERATURE. which he wrote, after comparing himself to the elder Pliny, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of Mount Vesuvius,' he does not forget to mention his own experiment, which, says he, 'succeeded excellently.' In his will, the follow which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed. 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 unto 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. The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the shall hear as many hearselike airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in de Bacon, like Sidney, was a warbler of poetic prose.' No English writer has surpassed him in fervour and brilliancy of style, in force of expression, or in rich-scribing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of ness and significance of imagery. Keen in discovering analogies where no resemblance is apparent to common eyes, he has sometimes indulged to excess in the exercise of his talent. Yet, in general, his comparisons are not less clear and apposite than full of imagination and meaning. He has treated of philosophy with all the splendour, yet none of the vagueness, of poetry, Sometimes his style possesses a degree of conciseness very rarely to be found in the compositions of the Elizabethan age. Of this quality the last of the subjoined extracts is a notable illustration. As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the Persons,' ii. 227. At pages 222 and 602 of the same volume, we several of his essays into Latin.' Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground; judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly, virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant where they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put in that speech, Whosoever is delighted in solitude, more truth and untruth together in few words, than is either a wild beast or a god; for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathens-as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and truly, and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and 241 16 talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little : Magna civitas, magna solitudo'-[' Great city, great solitude']; because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods; but we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak-so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness for princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except, to make themselves capable thereof, they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum' ['participators in cares']; for it is that which tieth the knot and we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men. It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy-namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and, least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding. Surely Comineus might have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Louis XI., whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true, 'Cor ne edito'-['Eat not the heart.'] | Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their own hearts; but one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend, works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the alchymists use to attribute to their stone for man's body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature; but yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression-and even so is it of minds. In a The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man recciveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more easily-he marshalleth them more orderly-he seeth how they look when they are turned into words -finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia, That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad'-whereby the imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs. Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best), but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. word, a man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation-which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best; and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts; the one concerning manners, the other concerning business: for the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self to a strict account, is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead; observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case; but the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favour:' as for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or, that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all: but when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight; and if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is as well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all), but he runneth two dangers; one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled-for it is a rare thing, except it be PROSE WRITERS. ENGLISH LITERATURE. from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it; the other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and mixed partly of mischief and partly of ren.edy-even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body -and therefore, may put you in a way for present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and so cure the disease, and kill the patient: but a friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate, will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience and, therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels, for they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct. After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit, which is, like the pomegranate, full of many kernels-I mean, aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, and see how many things there are which a man cannot do himself; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients, to say that a friend is another himself; for that a friend is far more than to cast himself. Men have their time, and die many times [Uses of Knowledge.] diseases of the mind-sometimes purging the ill [Books and Ships Compared.] If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to participation of their fruits, how much more are place, and consociateth the most remote regions in letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other! [Studies.] Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness ability, is in the judginent and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, are perfected by experience-for natural abilities are is the humour of a scholar; they perfect nature, and re-like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, and with diligence and attention. Some books also but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and SIR WALTER RALEIGH. In the brilliant constellation of great men which adorned the reigns of Elizabeth and James, one of *This expression is given in the original in Latiny tedd 243 |