SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY. 221 



he petitioned the Kin^ for a total remission of his sentence, and obtained 

 a full and entire pardon. 



" He now withdrew from the glare of a public station into the shade of retire- 

 ment and studious leisure ; often lamenting that worldly ambition had so long 

 diverted him from the noblest as well as the most useful employments of a reason- 

 able being : — mortified into these sentiments by his severe personal experience of 

 the instability and emptiness of all human grandeur. 



The man who loves the golden mean 

 Will not in squalid hut be seen, 

 Yet calmly will despise the state 

 And envied mansions of the great. 

 The loftiest foreign pine but grows 

 To shake with every wind that blows : 

 The highest tower on castle wall 

 Is that vphich has the heaviest fall, 

 And the fierce shaft of lightning dread 

 Strikes ever on the mountain's head. 



"Bacon now found himself freed from the servitude of a Court, and from 

 mingling with the vices and follies of men in every way his inferiors ; and at liberty 

 to pursue the native bent of his genius to the advantage, not only of one age or one 

 people, but to the enduring benefit of the whole human race. The first considerable 

 work in which he engaged, after his retirement, was his * History of Henry 

 VII.,' wherein the entire character of that suspicious and avaricious Monarch is 

 admirably pourtrayed. 



** Of all his works, his * Essays' have been the most current, and are still 

 popular. They are intended not to amuse but to instruct, and are remarkable for 

 the pithiness of their style, or for that condensation which gives a large quantity 

 of matter in a few words. Nothing can give a more exalted idea of the fruitful- 

 ness and vigour of his genius than the number and nature of the works which he 

 composed in this last scene of his life. Under the discouragement of public 

 censure, broken in his health, broken in his fortune, he enjoyed his retirement not 

 above five years — a little portion of time ! Yet he found means to crowd into it 

 what might have been the whole business, and the glory too, of a long and fortu- 

 nate life. Some of his former works he methodized and enriched ; several new 

 ones he composed, no less considerable for the greatness and variety of the 

 subjects he treated, than from his manner of treating them. Nor are they works 

 of mere erudition and labour that require little else but strength of constitution 

 and obstinate application — they are original efforts of genius and reflection on 

 subjects either new, or handled in a manner to make them so. His notions he 

 drew from his own fund ; and they were solid, comprehensive, systematical — the 

 disposition of his whole plan throwing light and grace on all the particular parts 

 of it." 



"The multiplicity of business and study in which he had been long engaged, but 

 above all, the anguish of mind he had endured, undermined his health. After 

 having been for some time in a declining state, he owed his death at last to an 

 excess not unbecoming a philosopher — in pursuing, with more application than his 

 strength could bear, * certain experiments touching the conservation of bodies.' 

 He was so suddenly struck on his head and stomach that he was forced to retire 

 into the Earl of Arundel's house, at Highgate, near which he happened to be. 

 There he sickened of a fever, with effusion into the air tubes of the lungs, and, 

 after a week's confinement to his bed, expired, on the 9th of April, 1626, in the 

 66th year of his age. He was buried privately, at St. Michael's church, near St. 

 Alban's. There the gratitude of a private man, formerly his servant (Sir Thomas 

 Meautys), erected a monument to his memory : but that memory alone is an un- 

 decaying monument deserving the lasting homage of mankind, and calling upon all 

 true lovers of science to revere his name, study his writings, and embalm his 

 example." 



We must now take leave to close-our account of this exceedingly 

 interesting lecture. Dr. Maiden's delivery is entirely free from the 

 hurried and ungraceful manner of which even more practised orators 

 are often guilty. He was listened to with the most profound attention, 

 and at the termination of his discourse, a vote of thanks to the Lecturer 

 was proposed by Dr. Redford, seconded by Dr. Corbet, and carried 

 unanimously. 



