a 
Sp ee aren * 
. 
‘ 
PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 377 
It is to be wished, that this writer had explained to us, to 
what delusion it has been owing, that so many enlightened 
persons have, for more than a century and a half, concurred 
in extolling Bacon, for his endeavours to withdraw philoso- 
phy from “ extravagant speculation,’ and to give it a di- 
rection and a method, calculated to improve the condition, 
as well as the knowledge, of mankind. Have they all been 
in error, and must Bacon be branded with the imputation 
of ignorance of the business of philosophy, and the limits of 
the understanding, merely because he has speculated upon 
the possibility of making gold? Is this circumstance enough 
to establish an affinity between the general aims of his philo- 
sophy and the extravagant pursuits of the Alchymists? A 
very few words will suffice upon this point. 
Wor. ViIlb-P. 11. 3B There 
there what you seldom find in other works.”"—Account of Sir Josuua Rey- 
wotps, prefixed to Marowe’s edition of his Discourses. 
“ We are glad,” the Reviewer adds, “‘ to be able to defend our opinions con- 
cerning the inferior merits of Bacon’s philosophical writings, compared with his 
other works, from the charge of singularity or presumption, by eet our- 
selves under the authority of such names as Burke and Jounson.” 
It is very observable, that, so far as Dr Jonnson’s authority is concerned, he 
does not appear, in the conversation referred to, to have made any compa- 
rison whatever between Bacon’s Essays and his other works: he only made a re- 
mark descriptive of the Essays, in which every one who has perused them will rea- 
dily concur ; and besides, the Reviewer ought to have known, that Jounson has, 
in one of his papers in the Adventurer, represented Bacon as the only Modern 
worthy of being compared, in a philosophical point of view, with Newron ; 
thereby showing, that he must have held the philosophical works of the former 
in the highest possible degree of estimation. Great as the excellence of the 
Essays undoubtedly is, it is difficult to believe, that such a man as Burke could 
deliberately rate them as of higher merit than the De Augmentis Scientiarum 
and Novum Organum. There is need of some better evidence, surely, that he 
had formed a deliberate opinion to that effect, than what is furnished by the 
scrap of conversation which forms the Reviewer's only document of proof. 
