4 
414 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF THE 
“ ably received by the world.” It states, that the Treatise 
De Augmentis Scientiarum had been reprinted at Paris in 1624 ; 
that is, the year after it was published in London; and re- 
ference is made to some high eulogiums, which had been pro- 
nounced by French writers upon that important work. It far- 
ther mentions, that a number of editions of a French trans- 
lation of his moral and political pieces had been called for, 
within a short period after its publication; a circumstance 
which Baye casually notices in another of his works, the 
Reponse aux Questions dun Provincial *. | 
That Bacon’s philosophical views were well known in France, 
before his death, is a fact, for which we have an authority the 
more satisfactory, that it is that of the biographer and disciple 
of his great French rival, in the reformation of knowledge. 
“ While Descartes,’ says Aprian Batter, in his copious 
and instructive life of that philosopher, “ was in Paris in 1626, 
“ he heard the news of the death of the Lord Chancellor 
“ Bacon, which happened in April of that year. The intel- 
“ ligence very sensibly affected those who aspired to the re- 
“ establishment of true philosophy ; and who knew, that Bacon 
“ had been labouring in that great undertaking for several years 
“ before his death. The accomplishment of this heroical de- 
“ sign,” continues this devoted Cartesian, “ was reserved for 
“ a still more extraordinary genius; but the praises which 
“ Bacon received were justly due, even from those who did 
“ not approve of his plan for the reformation of philosophy +.” 
The 
* Chap. 9.—Troisiéme partie—Bacon’s Essays, and his Advancement of Learn- 
ing, were translated into the French language a considerable time before his 
ae His Natural History, and New Atlantis, were translated into that lan- 
guage by Pierre D’Amoorse in 1631. Bacon’s works, says this writer, ‘‘ de- 
serve a place in all oes and to be ranked with the noblest literary mo- 
numents of antiquity.” 
+ La Vie de M. Descartes, par Battier, tom. i. p. 147, 148, 4to. 
