INTRODUCTION 



Francis Bacon has given us his own estimate of the value and 

 position of The Advancement of Learning. " This writing," 

 says he, " seemeth to me, si nunquam fallit imago, not much 

 better than that noise or sound which musicians make while 

 they are tuning their instruments; which is nothing pleasant 

 to hear, but yet is . a cause why the music is sweeter after- 

 wards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of 

 the Muses, that they may play^that have better hands." 

 Wherein he errs in two opposite ways: for, on the one side, 

 .the book is nobler than the senseless jargon to which he 

 likens it; while, on the other, the musicians that have taken 

 up the work have scarcely succeeded in playing harmoni- 

 ously together. He seems not to be aware of the intrinsic 

 worth of the thoughts expressed in every page, while he also 

 seems to have imagined that a Millennium of Learning was 

 about to begin, to which this book should be, as it were, the 

 herald trumpet. Under so almost divine a sovereign as 

 King James I. learning will surely be fostered and advanced. 

 Controversies in religion, he thinks, are all but worn out 

 (and this on the eve of the great Puritan struggles and suc- 

 cesses!), and we shall have leisure to leave questions of faith 

 for the discovery of the Laws of Nature. And yet, with all 

 this, he does not discern the value of mathematics, that 

 branch of learning which was then making great advance, 

 and was destined to work wonders. He scarcely cared to 

 have an opinion on the " Copernican Theory " of Astronomy. 

 He never mentions his famous countryman Gilbert without 

 a sneer, or at least a disparaging remark; though he was 

 engaged on those discoveries in magnetism which have 

 tended to enlarge in many ways the empire of man over 

 Nature. He by no means emancipates himself thoroughly 

 from the thraldom of the old scholastic systems. He 

 regards Poetry as complete, requiring no farther develop- 

 ment: and is not conscious that he is living with those who 

 were above all others to be the pride of English Literature, 



