The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 387 



other hand, it has come to be more or less circum- 

 scribed and limited. Pope's famous verse, "The 

 wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," may be 

 disputed in all its three specifications. Bacon's 

 treatment of Essex, which formerly called forth 

 such bitter condemnation, has been, I think, com- 

 pletely justified ; and as for the taking of bribes, 

 which led to his disgrace, there were circumstances 

 which ought largely to mitigate the severity of 

 our judgment. But if Bacon was far from being 

 a mean example of human nature, it is surely an 

 exaggeration to call him the wisest and brightest 

 of mankind. He was a scholar and critic of vast 

 accomplishments, a writer of noble English prose, 

 and a philosopher who represented rather than 

 inaugurated a most beneficial revolution in the 

 aims and methods of scientific inquiry. He is one 

 of the real glories of English literature, but he is 

 also one of the most overrated men of modern 

 times. When we find Macaulay saying that Bacon 

 had " the most exquisitely constructed intellect that 

 has ever been bestowed on any of the children of 

 men," we need not be surprised to find that his 

 elaborate essay on Bacon is as false in its funda- 

 mental conception as it is inaccurate in details. 

 For a long time it was one of the accepted com- 

 monplaces that Bacon inaugurated the method by 



