473 



BACON, FRANCIS. 



BACON, FRANCIS. 



47-1 



The reception of the work was such as, in the nature of things, 

 must always be given to a production of its class mingled ridicule 

 and admiration. The geniuses and professed wits laughed at it, and 

 some of the chancellor's friends remonstrated with him on the subject. 

 The pedantic king described it as like the peace of Qod, it passeth 

 all understanding. Baeou presented a copy to Sir Edward Coke, on 

 which there is still to be seen, in the handwriting of this eminent 

 Hwyer, the following reproof to the author for going out of his pro- 

 fession, with an allusion to his character as a prerogative lawyer, and 

 his corrupt administration of the court of chancery. 



" Edw. Coke ; ex dono authoris. 

 Auctori consilium. 



Instanrare paras vetcrum c'.ocumcnta sophorum, 

 Instaura leges justiamque prius. Oct. 1620." 



Under a device, on the title-page, of a ship passing through the 

 pillars of Hercules, Coke wrote in a clumsy attempt at wit 



" It deserveth not to be read in schools, 

 But to be freighted in the ship of fools." 



And he was represented by more than one man of distinction in 

 those times as "no great philosopher a man rather of show than of 

 depth, who wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor." 



He was understood by some. Ben Jonson, after the author's death, 

 describi 1 the book in terms of the highest praiee. "Though by the 

 most of superficial men who cannot get beyond the title of nominal?, 

 it is not. penetrated nor understood, it really openeth all defects of 

 learning whatsovcr. Sly conceit of his person was never increased 

 towards him by his place or honours. But I have and do reverence 

 him for the greatness that was only proper in himself, and in that he 

 seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men and most 

 worthy of admiration that had been in many ages." The king, 

 although he had expressed what doubtless he felt, the difficulty of 

 understanding the work, wrote to Bacon statins; that he agreed with 

 him in many of his remarks, and assured him that he could not have 

 " made choice of a subject more befitting his place and his universal 

 and methodical knowledge." Sir Henry \Votton, on receiving three 

 copies, expressed himself thus : " Your lordship hath done a great 

 and everliving benefit to all the children of nature, and to nature her- 

 self in her uppermost extent of latitude : who never before had so 

 noble nor so true an interpreter; never so inward a secretary of her 

 cabinet." On the continent the work was more highly honoured than 

 at home, being, esteemed by many of the most competent judges, as 

 one of the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. 



After this the glory of Bacon set for ever. He was ruined by his 

 improvidence, which gave him a perpetual craving for money to supply 

 the wants which it created, and at last undermined the principle of 

 honour and of honesty. Various writers have glozed over the dis- 

 graceful truths which belong to this period of an extraordinary life, 

 and have thus deprived the world of the warning and instruction 

 which they afford. Shortly after Bacon's elevation to the woolsack, 

 one Wrenham, against whom he had decided a case in chancery, com- 

 pl lined to the king, and though, when inquired into, the circumstances 

 turned out in Bacon's favour, the industry and pertinacity of this 

 individual excited suspicions in several quarters of the integrity of the 

 chancellor. The House of Commons appointed a committee of inquiry, 

 which sat daily on the case, and made reports each day to the House 

 on the evidence brought before them. The first case reported on was 

 tli:.t of a poor gentleman of the name of Aubrey, who finding his suit 

 in chancery going on with a ruinous slowness, was advised to .quicken 

 it by a gift to the lord chancellor. In his anxiety and distress he 

 borrowed 1 002. from a usurer ; Lord Bacon received the money. Sir 

 George Hastings and Mr. Jenkins took the bribe in to the lord chan- 

 cellor at his lodgings in Gray's Inn, and on coming out again assured 

 the poor and anxious suitor in his lordship's name of thankfulness 

 and success. The case was decided against him. When the chan- 

 cellor heard of the complaints of his victim, he sent for his friend 

 Sir George Hastings, and entreated him, with many professions of 

 affection and esteem, to stay the clamour of the poor man whom he 

 had cheated. The evidence in the next case varied the form and 

 deepened the colours of the lord chancellor's guilt. Mr. Egerton had 

 several suits pending in chancery against Sir Rowland Egerton, aud 

 under the name of an expression of gratitude for past services, he 

 presented the chancellor with SOOl. The case went in his favour, 

 until the opposite and losing party expressed his gratitude also to the 

 judge in the shape of 400t, when the superiority of four over three 

 turned the scales of equity against him. On one of these occasions, 

 when the decision was drawn out though not delivered, the influence 

 of a well-bestowed bribe induced the chancellor to reverse his decree. 

 The Lady Wharton, hearing that her suit was likely to go against her, 

 was too clever and high-spirited a woman to be defeated without a 

 struggle. She wrought a purse with her own hands, and having filled 

 it with 100/., waited upon Bacon at his apartments, and begged his 

 acceptance of a purse of her own making. She gained her cause 

 Before the end of tho proceedings the cases against the chancellor 

 rose in number to at least twenty-four. 



The discussion in the Commons issued in referring the whole of the 

 cases to the Peers, the only authority competent to subject the lore 

 chancellor to trial. The king told a deputation of the Commons to 



Dij>ceed fearlessly whatever might be the consequences, and whoever 

 might be implicated; but he felt exceedingly for the chancellor, 

 received him with undiminished affection, aud caused a short recess 

 of parliament to give him time for his defence. The spirit of Bacon 

 was crushed withiu him. His servants were undoubtedly the agents 

 who sought out the victims of his corruption; and it is equally un- 

 doubted that their master was himself ruined by the rapacity and 

 extravagance in which he permitted them to indulge. During the 

 investigation of the charges, when Bacon one day entered his house, 

 and his costly menials rose up and saluted him, he said bitterly, " Sit 

 down, my masters, your rise has been my fall." He was great even 

 in such circumstances, and the native dignity of his mind shone out 

 even through the disgrace in which he had clothed himself. There is 

 something inexpressibly touching in the contrition which he expressed 

 in the general confession which he first sent to the lords appointed 

 to try him. In. compliance with their demand, Lord Bacon sent also 

 a particular confession of each charge by itself, aud when a deputa- 

 tion of the lords waited upon him to iuquire if this paper was his 

 own voluntary act, he replied, " It is my act my hand my heart. 

 Oh, my lords, spare a broken reed." He was stripped of his offices, 

 disqualified for public life, banished beyond the precincts of the court, 

 subjected to a fine of 40,000., and to imprisonment in the Tower 

 during the king's pleasure. 



He was confined for a short time in the Tower, and then discharged. 

 In the course of a few months he obtained a licence to come for a 

 time within the verge of the court. Aud though his sentence was 

 afterwards commuted by the king, his ruined fortunes were never 

 repaired, and we have seldom felt the degradation into which Bacon 

 had sunk himself so painfully as when reading the words of his pardon 

 for all the frauds, deceits, impostures, bribes, corruptions, aud other 

 mal-practices of which he had been found guilty. He was summoned 

 to attend parliament before he died ; but the remainder of his days 

 was speut chiefly in scientific pursuits, and the society of the friends 

 whom adversity had left him. His name being high abroad, when the 

 Marquis d'Kffrat brought into England the princess Henrietta Maria, 

 the wife of Charles I., he paid a visit to Bacon, and was received by 

 his lordship, who was lying sick in bed, with the curtains drawn. 

 " You resemble the angels (said that minister to him) ; we hear those 

 beings continually talked of, we believe them superior to mankind, 

 aud we never have the consolation to see them." His lordship replied, 

 ' that if the charity of others compared him to an angel, his own 

 infirmities told him he was a man." Bacon's works on natural history, 

 his ' History of Henry VII.,' and some others, were published after 

 his disgrace. Scientific pursuits were his consolation, and at last 

 caused his death. The father of experimental philosophy was the 

 martyr of an experiment. The retort which he was using burst, and 

 parts of it struck his head and stomach. Fever and defluxion were 

 the consequence. His last letter was written to the Earl of Arundel, 

 in whose house at Highgate he expired on the 9th of April, 1626, in 

 his sixty-sixth year. In his will he says, " My name and memory I 

 leave to foreign nations, and to my own countrymen, after some time 

 be passed over." Lord Bacon left no children. 



The accomplishments of Lord Bacon were unrivalled in hu day, 

 and his character displayed the phenomenon of great originality 

 combined with a most extensive range of acquirements. He was 

 an orator, a lawyer and a statesman. In the philosophy of ex- 

 periment and of observation he was pre-eminent. Ths metaphysical 

 and the physical were both congenial to his genius; and although 

 the taint of his immorality has induced many to doubt the extent 

 aud to depreciate the excellence of his knowledge and ability in every 

 department, except his method of studying nature, an impartial and 

 searching examination will fill us with admiration as we successively 

 trace his steps in almost every branch of intellectual exertion. 



Tho nind of Bacon was poetical : his works abound in imagery. 

 But in writing in verse he makes free use of colloquialisms, which 

 not seldom convey a ludicrous where he intended to present an, 

 impressive idea, and his poetry has consequently afforded abundant 

 scope for the merriment of small wits and juvenile critics. Lord 

 Bacon was certainly not a poet, but in his verses may be found many 

 vigorous lines, and some passages of great beauty. 



The merits of Bacon as an orator were, in the opinion of Ben 

 Jonson, the most competent critic of his age, confirmed as it is by 

 the testimony of Francis Osborne, and the effects of his eloquence, 

 undoubtedly not equalled in his own time. Sir Walter Raleigh 

 reckoned him the only man of his day who was equally eminent as a 

 writer and a speaker. Jonson says that his speech was full of gravity 

 and distinctness. The following passage, from Jonson, is remarkable : 

 "His hearers could not cough nor look aside from him without 

 loss. He commanded when he spoke ; and his judges were pleased 

 and angry at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his 

 power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should 

 make tin end." And after enumerating all the great orators of England 

 from Sir Thomas More to Lord Chancellor Egerton, he declares that 

 Bacon " hath filled up all numbers ; and performed that in our own 

 tongue which may be compared or preferred eitber to insolent Greece 

 or haughty Rome ... so that he may be named and stand as the 

 mark aud acme of our language." 

 The observations and experiments of Bacon in physical science, 



