DR. RAWLEY'S LIFE OF BACON. 17 



that was the use of nitre ; whereof he took in the quantity of 

 about three grains in thin warm broth every morning, for 

 thirty years together next before his death. And for physic, 

 he did indeed live physically, but not miserably ; for he took 

 only a maceration of rhubarb ! , infused into a draught of white 

 wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, 

 once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether 

 dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less ; which (as 

 he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours of the 

 body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as 

 sweating doth. And this was no grievous thing to taker" As 

 for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been 

 vulgarly spoken) he took not. His receipt for the gout, which 

 did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already 

 set down in the end of the Natural History. 



It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure 

 of his nativity : for the moon was never in her passion, or 

 eclipsed 2 , but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting; 

 and that, though he observed not nor took any previous know- 

 ledge of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, 

 he was restored to his former strength again. 



He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the 

 early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's 

 resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of 

 Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he 

 casually repaired about a week before ; God so ordaining that 



1 In the Latin version Rawley gives the quantity : Rhalarbari sesquidrachmam. 



2 Lord Campbell (who appears to have read Rawley's memoir only in the Latin, 

 where the words are quoties luna defecit sivc eclipsin passa est*), supposing defccit to 

 mean waned, discredits this statement, on the ground that " no instance is recorded 

 of Bacon's having fainted in public, or put off the hearing of any cause on account of 

 the change of the moon, or of any approaching eclipse, visible or invisible." And it is 

 true that if defectus lunce meant a change of the moon, or even a dark moon (which 

 it might have meant well enough if the Romans had not chosen to appropriate the 

 word to quite another meaning), the accident must have happened in public too often 

 to pass unnoticed. But Rawley was too good a scholar to misapply so common 

 a word in that way. He evidently speaks of eclipses only, and of eclipses visible at 

 the place. Now it is not at all likely that lunar eclipses visible at Westminster would 

 have coincided with important business in which Bacon was conspicuously engaged, 

 often enough (even if he did faint every time) to establish a connexion between the 

 two phenomena. Of course Rawley's statement is not sufficient to prove the reality of 

 any such connexion ; but the fact of the fainting-fits need not be doubted, and may 

 be fairly taken, I th nk, as evidence of the extreme delicacy of Bacon's temperament, 

 and its sensibility to the skiey influences. That Bacon himself never alluded to this 

 relation between himself and the moon is easily accounted for by supposing that he 

 .was not satisfied of the fact. He may have observed the coincidence, and mentioned 



it to Rawley ; and Rawley (whose commonplace book proves that he had a taste for 

 astrology) may have believed in the physical connexion, though Bacon himself did not. 

 VOL. I. C 



