XV111 LIFE OF BACON. 



1579. Whilst he was engaged in these meditations his father 

 died suddenly, on the 20th February, 1579. He instantly 

 returned to England. 



humour, he pretended, that the defects of old men s minds, in some 

 measure corresponded to the defects of their bodies. Thus dryness of the 

 skin, he said, was answered by impudence ; hardness of the viscera, by 

 relentlessness ; blear-eyes, by envy ; and an evil eye, their down look, and 

 incurvation of the body, by atheism, as no longer, says he, looking up to 

 heaven ; the trembling and shaking of the limbs, by unsteadiness and in 

 constancy; the bending of their fingers as to lay hold of something, by 

 rapacity and avarice; the weakness of their knees, by fearfulness; their 

 wrinkles, by indirect dealings and cunning, &c.* 



And again, for echoes upon echoes, there is a rare instance thereof in a 

 place which I will now exactly describe. It is some three or four miles 

 from Paris, near a town called Pont-Charenton ; and some bird -bolt shot 

 or more from the river of Sein. The room is a chapel or small church. 

 The walls all standing, both at the sides and at the ends. Speaking at the 

 one end, I did hear it return the voice thirteen several times, (a) 



There are certain letters that an echo will hardly express ; as S for one, 

 especially being principal in a word. I remember well, that when I went 

 to the echo at Pont-Charenton, there was an old Parisian, that took it to be 

 work of spirits, and of good spirits. For, said he, call &quot; Satan,&quot; and the 

 echo will not deliver back the devil s name ; but will say, &quot;va t en;&quot; which 

 is as much in French as &quot;apage,&quot; or avoid. And thereby I did hap to 

 find, that an echo would not return an S, being but a hissing and an in 

 terior sound. (6) 



So too the nature of imagination continued to interest him. In the Sylva, 

 art. 986, (c) he says, the relations touching the force of imagination and 

 the secret instincts of nature are so uncertain, as they require a great deal of 

 examination ere we conclude upon them. I would have it first throughly 

 inquired, whether there be any secret passages of sympathy between persons 

 of near blood ; as parents, children, brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, 

 wives, &c. There be many reports in history, that upon the death of persons 

 of such nearness, men have had an inward feeling of it. I myself remember, 

 that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days before 

 my father s death I had a dream, which I told to divers English gentlemen, 

 that my father s house in the country was plastered all over with black 

 mortar. 



* See vol. xiv. of this ed. p. 408. 

 (a) Sylva, art. 249, vol. iv. of this edition, p. 128. 

 (6) Sylva, art. 251, vol. iv. of this edition, p. 129. 

 (c) Vol. iv. of this edition, p. 528. 



