PHILOSOPHICAL WHITINGS OF LORD BACON. 377 



It is to be wished, that this writer had explained to us, to 

 what delusion it has been owing, that so many enlightened 

 persons have, for more than a century and a half, concurred 

 in extolling Bacon, for his endeavours to withdraw philoso- 

 phy from " extravagant speculation," and to give it a di- 

 rection and a method, calculated to improve the condition, 

 as well as the knowledge, of mankind. Have they all been 

 in error, and must Bacon be branded with the imputation 

 of ignorance of the business of philosophy, and the limits of 

 the understanding, merely because he has speculated upon 

 the possibility of making gold ? Is this circumstance enough 

 to establish an affinity between the general aims of his philo- 

 sophy and the extravagant pursuits of the Alchymists ? A 

 very few words will suffice upon this point. 

 Vol. VIII. P. II. 3B There 



there what you seldom find in other works. 11 — Account of Sir Joshua Rey~ 

 nolds, prefixed to Mai.one's edition of his Discourses. 



" We are glad, 1 ' the Reviewer adds, " to be able to defend our opinions con- 

 cerning the inferior merits of Bacon's philosophical writings, compared with his 

 other works, from the charge of singularity or presumption, by sheltering our- 

 selves under the authority of such names as Burke and Johnson. 11 



It is very observable, that, so far as Dr Johnson 1 s authority is concerned, he 

 does not appear, in the conversation referred to, to have made any compa- 

 rison whatever between Bacon's Essays and his other works : he only made a re- 

 mark descriptive of the Essays, in which every one who has perused them will rea- 

 dily concur ; and besides, the Reviewer ought to have known, that Johnson has, 

 in one of his papers in the Adventurer, represented Bacon as the only Modern 

 worthy of being compared, in a philosophical point of view, with Newton ; 

 thereby showing, that he must have held the philosophical works of the former 

 in the highest possible degree of estimation. Great as the excellence of the 

 Essays undoubtedly is, it is difficult to believe, that such a man as Burke could 

 deliberately rate them as of higher merit than the De Augmentis Scientiarum 

 and Novum Organum. There is need of some better evidence, surely, that he 

 had formed a deliberate opinion to that effect, than what is furnished by the 

 «crap of conversation which forms the Reviewer's only document of proof. 



