IN FRANCE. 



impression made upon all with whom he conversed, upon 

 men of letters, with whom he contracted lasting friendships, 

 upon grave statesmen and learned philosophers, it was 

 manifest that the promise in his infancy of excellence, 

 whether for active or for contemplative life, seemed beyond 

 the most sanguine expectation to be realized, (a) 



After the appointment of Sir Amias Paulett s successor, 

 Bacon travelled into the French provinces, and spent some 

 time at Poictiers. He prepared a work upon Cyphers, (b) 

 which he afterwards published, with an outline of the state 

 of Europe, (c) but the laws of sound and of imagination 

 continued to occupy his thoughts, (z) 



(a) It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that an eminent artist, to whom, 

 when in Paris, he sat for his portrait, was so conscious of his inability to do 

 justice to his extraordinary intellectual endowments, that he has written on 

 the side of his picture : Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem. See 

 the last note in the Notes to this Life. 



(0) In the Augmentis Scientiarum, Lib. vi. speaking of Cyphers, he says, 

 Ut verd suspicio omnis absit, aliud inventum subjiciemus, quod certe cum 

 adolescentuli essemus Parisiis excogitavimus, nee etiam adhuc visa nobis 

 res digna est quae pereat. Watts English Translation of this part is as 

 follows : But that jealousies may be taken away, we will annex another 

 invention, which, in truth, we devised in our youth, when we were at 

 Paris : and is a thing that yet seemeth to us not worthy to be lost. It 

 containeth the highest degree of cypher, which is to signify omnia per 

 omnia, yet so, as the writing infolding, may bear a quintuple proportion to 

 the writing infolded ; no other condition or restriction whatsoever is required. 

 See p. 314, of vol. viii. of this edition. 



(c) See note Q at the end. 



(2) His meditations were both upon natural science and human sciences, 

 as will appear from the following facts. 



In his history of life and death, speaking of the differences between youth 

 and old age, and having enumerated many of them, he proceeds thus : 

 When I was a young man at Poictiers in Prance, I familiarly conversed 

 with a young gentleman of that country, who was extremely ingenious, but 

 somewhat talkative; he afterwards became a person of great eminence. 

 This gentleman used to inveigh against the manners of old people, and 

 would say, that if one could see their minds as well as their bodies, their 

 minds would appear as deformed as their bodies; and indulging his ovrn 



VOL. XV. C 



