20 J. HOPZrNSOU" — ANNIVERSAEY ADDRESS : 



sufficient reason to hang them, but as the evidence against Sir 

 William is very slight, he gets together a mass of secret papers 

 with which he hopes to incriminate him. Eacon orders him, by 

 command of the King, to give them up to him, and the result is 

 that Sir William is proved to be innocent and is at once set at 

 liberty. There is some evidence against Sir Thomas, but Bacon 

 and the Lord Chancellor (Yelverton) believe it to be inconclusive, 

 and advise the King to pardon him, as an act of justice, mercy, 

 and expediency. Their advice is taken. Sir Thomas Monson 

 declares his innocence, and requests that his pardon may be read 

 as evidence of it. His wish is gratified, and he leaves the Tower 

 a loyal and devoted subject of the King. 



Doctor Burgess, a famous Puritan preacher, has for some time 

 been suspended from his ministry in the Church. His loss is sorely 

 felt in London ; his inspiring words and thundering denunciation 

 of all evil ways are much needed. Many wish to hear him again ; 

 amongst others the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn. It is Bacon's 

 first act on becoming a Privy Councillor to procure his restoration 

 to the Church, and this is just after he has brought about the 

 release of one of the Monsons and before he obtains the release of 

 the other. All these acts expose him to the malignity of those 

 in power who are intolerant and bigoted. Who can doubt his 

 sincerity ? 



In 1620 an epoch in the history of philosophy is created, for in 

 this year appears Bacon's great work, the ' Novum Organum.^ He 

 has been working at it for "near thirty years," he says, and frag- 

 ments of it, each complete in itself, had appeared in various forms, 

 bat they were probably first put together as a connected whole 

 about the year 1608, for his chaplain. Dr. Rawley, says that he 

 has seen " at the least twelve copies . . . revised year by year, one 

 after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame 

 thereof;" and in a letter to his friend Toby Matthew, as early as 

 1610, Bacon himself says: "My great work goeth forward; and 

 after my manner I alter ever when I add ; so that nothing is 

 finished till all be finished." 



The 'JVovum Organum,'' or ' N"ew Instrument,' was only a section 

 — the second — of a much larger work, the '■Magna Instauratio,'' of 

 which the greater part of the ' Advancement of Learning ' in its 

 Latin form, now called ' Partitiones Scientiarum,'' was to form the 

 first part. This second part. Bacon says, " sets forth the art itself 

 of interpreting nature and of a truer operation of the understand- 

 ing." But he did not consider the ' Novum Organum ' to be the 

 complete second part of the Great Instauration of Science, but 



