LIFE OF BACON. 



CHAPTER III. 



FROM THE PUBLICATION OF THE NOVUM ORGANUM 



TO HIS RETIREMENT FROM ACTIVE LIFE, 



October, 1620, to June, 1621. 



GLITTERING in the blaze of worldly splendour, and 

 absorbed in worldly occupations, the Chancellor, now sixty 

 years of age, could no longer delude himself with the 

 hope of completing his favourite work, the great object 

 of his life, upon which he had been engaged for thirty 

 years, and had twelve times transcribed with his own 

 hand. He resolved at once to abandon it, and publish the 

 small fragment which he had composed, (a) For this act 



() &quot; His book of Instauratio Magna (which, in his account was the 

 chiefest of his works) was no slight imagination or fancy of his brain, but 

 a settled and concocted notion ; the production of many years labour and 

 travail. I myself have seen at the least twelve copies of the Instauration, 

 revised year by year, one after another, and every year altered and amended 

 in the frame thereof; till at last it came to that model in which it was 

 committed to the press : as many living creatures do lick their young ones 

 till they bring them to their strength of limbs.&quot; Rawley s Life. 



&quot; There be two of your council, and one other bishop of this land 

 (Dr. Andrews), that know I have been about some such work near thirty 

 years, so as I made no haste. And the reason why I have published it 

 now, specially being unperfect, is, to speak plainly, because I number my 

 days, and would have it saved. There is another reason of my so doing, 

 which is to try whether I can get help in one intended part of this work, 

 namely, the compiling of a natural and experimental history, which must 

 be the main foundation of a true and active philosophy.&quot; Letter to the 

 King, see vol. ix. p. xiii, in preface. 



