CCCcl LIFE OF BACON. 



CONCLUSION. 



In his analysis of human nature, Bacon considers first 

 the general properties of man, and then the peculiar 

 properties of his body and of his mind, (a) This mode 

 may be adopted in reviewing his life. 



His tem- He was of a temperament of the most delicate sensibility : 

 perament. gQ exc it a bi e&amp;gt; as to be affected by the slightest alterations 

 in the atmosphere, (b) It is probable that the temperament 

 of genius may much depend upon such possibility, (c) 

 and that to this cause the excellencies and failures of 

 Bacon may frequently be traced. His health was always 

 delicate, and, to use his own expression, he was all his life 

 puddering with physic, (e) 



His person. He was of a middle stature, and well proportioned; his 

 features were handsome and expressive, and his counte 

 nance, until it was injured by politics and worldly warfare, 

 singularly placid. There is a portrait of him when he 

 was only eighteen now extant, on which the artist has 

 recorded his despair of doing justice to his subject, 

 by the inscription &quot; Si tabula daretur digna, animum 

 mallem. (f) His portraits differ beyond what may be 



0) See p. 135. (6) See note G at the end, and note (a), next page. 



(c) See Coleridge s Aids to Reflection, where he considers this sensibility 

 to be the foundation of the temperament of genius; that, rightly directed, 

 it leads to all that is great and good ; wrongly directed, to all that is bad 

 and vicious ; and that in the twilight between both, there lies sentimentality 

 more injurious perhaps than open vice. To the same effect Lord Bacon 

 says : &quot; In the law of the leprosy it is said, If the whiteness overspread 

 the flesh, the patient may pass abroad for clean : but if there be any whole 

 flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean. One of the rabbins 

 noteth a principle of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not 

 so much corrupt manners as those that are half good and half evil.&quot; 



(e) See his letter to Sir Humphry May, vol. xii. p. 407. 



(/) See note (a), p. 17. The original is in the possession of Adam 

 Hawkins, Esq. who kindly permitted me to take a copy, from which the 

 slight engraving in this edition is taken. 



