414 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF THE 



" ably received by the world." It states, that the Treatise 

 De Augmentis Scientiarum had been reprinted at Paris in 1624; 

 that is, the year after it was published in London ; and re- 

 ference is made to some high eulogiums, which had been pro- 

 nounced by French writers upon that important work. It far- 

 ther mentions, that a number of editions of a French trans- 

 lation of his moral and political pieces had been called for, 

 within a short period after its publication ; a circumstance 

 which Bayle casually notices in another of his works, the 

 Reponse aux Questions cCun Provincial *. 



That Bacon's philosophical views were well known in France, 

 before his death, is a fact, for which we have an authority the 

 more satisfactory, that it is that of the biographer and disciple 

 of his great French rival, in the reformation of knowledge. 

 " While Descartes," says i\DRiAN Baillet, in his copious 

 and instructive life of that philosopher, " was in Paris in 1626, 

 " he heard the news of the death of the Lord Chancellor 

 " Bacon, which happened in April of that year. The intel- 

 " ligence very sensibly affected those who aspired to the re* 

 " establishment of true philosophy ; and who knew, that Bacon 

 " had been labouring in that great undertaking for several years 

 " before his death. The accomplishment of this heroical de- 

 " sign," continues this devoted Cartesian, " was reserved for 

 " a still more extraordinary genius; but the praises which 

 " Bacon received were justly due, even from those who did 

 " not approve of his plan for the reformation of philosophy f ." 



The 



* Chap. 9. Troisieme parlie. — Bacon's Essays, and his Advancement of Learn- 

 ing, were translated into the French language a considerable time before his 

 death. His Natural History, and New Atlantis, were translated into that lan- 

 guage by Pierre D'Amboise in 1631. Bacon's works, says this writer, " de- 

 serve a place in all libraries, and to be ranked with the noblest literary mo- 

 numents of antiquity." 



f La Vie de M. Descartes, par Baillet, torn. i. p. 147, 148. 4to. 



