xviii PREFACE 



effecting of all things possible ' *. Dr. Sprat's History 

 of the Royal Society proves that Bacon's vision of 

 '^ Salomon's House was a prevision of the Royal Society 

 — the best of all proofs that Bacon was prophet, and 

 partly parent, of modern science. 



Lastly, the prescience, which Bacon owed to his 

 comprehensiveness, his suggestiveness, his new logic 

 of inductive reasoning, his conversion of ancient 

 atomism into modem corpuscular science, and his 

 aspiration after a Royal Society for making discoveries 

 from experience, became a potent and permanent 

 influence by means of his expression of great thoughts 

 in majestic language. The key to Bacon's style is 

 contained in the words, * I hold the entry of common- 

 places to be a matter of great use and essence in 

 studying * '. It was this habit which made him deep 

 and full, caused his sentences to contain the com- 

 pressed essence of things, and charged his writings 

 with pregnant sayings which are often aphorisms 

 and always aphoristic *. 



Again, his style is the reflection of a thoroughly 

 logical mind, full of order, distinctness, design ; fond, 

 indeed, of sudden strokes and breaks as new thoughts 

 occur, but sustaining itself, or, if it fails, desisting and 

 leaving an unflnished torso : nobody, in consequence, 

 has suffered more from posthumous publication. His 

 style is also the reflection of a poetical mind, which 

 adorns its logic with an imagery, picturesque, 

 piquant, and full of metaphors, similes and ana- 

 logies, sometimes strained, always suggestive. Nor 

 must we forget that it is the style of an orator, who 

 knows how to fit his words to the occasion, and writes 

 at will in language, now compressed as in the first 

 edition of the Essays, now more ornate as in those 

 added to the second edition, now flowing onwards 

 with easy eloquence as in those added in the third 

 edition as we now have them. It is, indeed, the 



» Post, pp. 246, 253, 255, 265-end. * Post, p. 145. 



» Ct.post, pp. 151-2. 



