IS* 



B A CON. 



on, reason to suspect that ltia orbanfty was altogether 

 FAncis. artificial, and his affect ; IfhnY A:< a 



r ~ ' lawyer, he attempted to rial Sir Edward Coke, one 

 of the greatest ornaments ol the bei ch ; and in ] 

 of eloquence, he was perhaps superior to that great 

 man. Over his moral i truth forbids us to 



throw the veil of His grosser corruptions, 



h drcv- down on him the vengeance of the laws 

 and the contempt of all honest men, are sufficiently 

 blazoned in the page of English history. But it is 

 perhaps equally mortifying to reflect on that defi- 

 ciency of principle, that absence of ingenuous feel- 

 ing, that tendency to dissimulation, that everlasting 

 struggle to aggrandize himself by menial arts 

 beggarly importunities, and even by the more sordid 

 instrumentality of detraction ; all of which may be 

 traced in the undoubted memorials of his private life, 

 from the inauspicious moment when his father 

 thought fit to direct his steps into the tortuous paths 

 of political intrigue. To the early bias which he 

 acquired in the train of an ambassador at the court of 

 France, we are disposed to ascribe many of his future 

 aberrations. It may seem harsh, to pronounce so 

 freely concerning the abject disposition of a' man 

 tvhom posterity reveres. But he has taken care to 

 perpetuate the remembrance of his own servility. We 

 annot accuse his biographers of having imprudently 

 rifled the repositories of a departed friend, that they 

 anight add to tire magnitude of his remains, by re- 

 cording the garrulity of his private hours, and even 

 the traces of his frailties. He bequeathed his letters 

 and speeches to Dr Williams, bishop of Lincoln, (his 

 successor as lord keeper, ) leaving him at liberty to 

 publish them ; and this, according to his own ac- 

 count, he did in imitation of Demosthenes, Cicero, 

 and Pliny, who carefully preserved their orations and 

 epistles. Not content with writing a letter to this 

 purpose, he thought fit to give his injunction greater 

 solemnity, by inserting it in his will. What can be 

 more disgusting than the fulsome parasitical flat! 

 contained in his letters to the favourite Villi* 

 Who would believe that the immortal Bacon, at the 

 age of fifty-five, was capable of bending so low as to 

 profess it to be his greatest ambition to be the best 

 servant of the king's stripling minion ? His letters 

 to this dissolute youth, when only in the dawn of his 

 honours, are most elaborately written, and, as several 

 copies of some of them, with considerable variations, 

 have been preserved, it is evident that he made re- 

 peated attempts, before he could satisfy himself with 

 the laboured compliments and specious pretences, 

 hy which he strove to make Villiers believe, that in 

 forwarding his wishes, he would gain lasting honour 

 to himself. 



From this humiliating picture, we turn with satis- 

 faction to review the miperishable monuments of 

 Bacon's genius. In the intervals of his professional 

 studies at Gray's Inn, he had conceived the de- 

 sign of a great undertaking, to the accomplishment 

 of which he applied with incredible vigour, amidst 

 the multiplied interruptions and disquietudes of a 

 bustling life. We have already noticed his early 

 dissatisfaction with the Aristotelian doctrines; and 

 though he was not the first, who discerned the in- 

 utihty gf the scholastic logic as an instrument of 



discovery, he was certainly the first, who endeavour- 

 ed to r i a methodical digest, the legitimate 

 rules of philosophising. His fim work, which in 

 some degree unfolded his plan, was printed in 1605, 

 and professed to treat " Of the Proficicnce and Ad- 

 vancement of Learning." It w. 



enlarged and improved; and, having been translated 

 into Latin by the Rev. George Herbert and some 

 s, was published under the well known 

 title, Dp Dignitate ft Augmentis Sciehtiarum. The 

 important object which the author proposed was, to 

 trace the boundaries of the sciences then known, to 

 point out their mutual connections and dependencies, 

 to ex! .e of their relations to the different 



faculties of the human mind, to introduce a natural 

 classification of their various branches, and to enu- 

 merate the defects and omissions in all the attempts 

 made by former inquirers. According to Bacon, all 

 the varieties of human knowledge may be ranged 

 under history, poetry, and philosophy, correspi 

 to his division of the intellectual faculties into me- 

 mory, fancy, and reason. He distributes history in* 

 tral and civil ; poetry into narrative, dramatic, 

 and parabolic ; science into theology, and philooOphy; 

 the latter relating to the Deity, nature, and man ; 

 which is mere!) a repetition of Aristotle's classifica- 

 tion. An analysis of this work could convey no 

 adequate idea of its value. Though debased by a 

 considerable proportion of trifling matter, it contains 

 many profound, acute, and original observations, and 

 evinces an extent of erudition, a clearness of appre- 

 hension, and a solidity of judgment, which claim the 

 highest admiration. A number of the particulars which 

 he marks as desiderata, or as undiscovered region* 

 in the world of science, are indeed more fantastical 

 than solid; and it is greatly to be regietted, that the 

 whole of the performance is obscured by a cumber- 

 some load of uncouth and affected phraseology. Thus 

 he divides natural philosophy into the mine and the 

 furnace, and the philosophers into pioneers and 

 smiths, or diggers and hammerers ; the former en- 

 in the inquisition of causes, the latter in the 

 production of effects ; the former speculative, the 

 latter operative. Our limits do not permit us to en- 

 ter into a critical examination of Bacon's arrange* 

 ; ,t of the sciences, against which it is easy to pro- 

 pose many objections ; but no less exceptionable ar- 

 rangement has hitherto been offered to the world. 



The work which Bacon esteemed the chief of hi 

 writings, the Xovum Orgrinam Sckntiarum, was 

 printed in 16*20, a short time before his fall. It was 

 intended to supply one of the great defects which 

 he had noted in the method of directing the human fa- 

 culties, the want of a rational or inventive logic. His 

 opinions on this subject are condensed into the form 

 of aphorisms. Instead of the ancient method of syl- 

 logism, he proposed to conduct philosophical inqui- 

 ries by what he called induction, in which we rise 

 from an extensive collection of particular facts to 

 general conclusions. He laid down a series of rules 

 for making observations and conducting experiments. 

 But the most essential service which he has rendered 

 to science, is the investigation of those causes of 

 false judgment, which are most intimately connected 

 with the natural and acquired dispositions of the 



Franci* 



