FKANCIS BACOy. 27 



caught the cold of which ho died. About the hist day in March, 

 1626, when snow is lying in shady places, he stojjs his coach 

 on his way to Highgate, buys a fowl, and, with his own hands, so 

 we are told, stuffs it with snow. This brings on a sudden chill, 

 and he takes refuge in Lord Arundel's house at Highgate, where, 

 to do him honour, the servants put him into the state bed. The 

 bed is damp, and in a few days, on Easter Sunday the 9th of April, 

 he dies of what we now call bronchitis. In his will he said : 

 *' For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near 

 St. Albans : there was my mother buried, and it is the parish 

 church of my mansion house of Gorhambury, and it is the only 

 Christian church within the walls of old Yerulam. . . . For my 

 name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to 

 foreign nations, and the next ages." 



" This passage," says his biographer, Easil Montague, " not to be 

 seen until he was at rest from his labours, impressed me with a 

 feeling of his consciousness of ill usage, and a conviction that the 

 time would arrive when justice would be done to his memory." 

 To do such justice Montague faithfully strives, with the light at 

 his command in 1834, but he predicts that some future historian, 

 assisted by his labours, " with all his zeal and ten-fold his ability ; 

 with power equal to the work and leisure to pursue it, will dig the 

 statue from the rubbish which may yet deface it ; and, obliterating 

 one by one the paltry libels scrawled upon its base, will place it, to 

 the honour of true science, in a temple worthy of his greatness." 

 This prediction has been amply fulfilled. James Spedding devoted 

 thirty years to the task, and in his ' Works of Francis Bacon,' in 

 seven volumes, in editing which he had two coadjutors, llobert 

 Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath ; and his ' Letters and Life 

 of Francis Bacon,' also in seven volumes, he has truly raised "a 

 temple worthy of his greatness." Xo one who has not read the 

 ' Letters and Life,' or at least Spedding' s shorter work, the ' Life 

 and Times of Francis Bacon,' is entitled at the present time to 

 express an opinion of Bacon's character, for the full materials from 

 which a correct opinion can be formed are not to be found in any 

 biogi'aphies but those of Spedding. 



That the life of Francis Bacon was not a perfect life must be 

 admitted, for it was a human life with human frailties. And 

 whether we may call it a noble life is open to question. A noble 

 life is one of self-sacrifice for the good of others. The life of 

 David Livingstone and that of General Gordon may be cited as 

 well-known examples of noble lives. Bacon devoted his life, as 

 they did, to good and noble ends, but the one element required to 



