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of Edinburgh, Session 1877 - 78 . 
a little closer to the experience of the senses.” It is a most curious 
circumstance that Bacon, with all his great intellect, could not stomach 
the Copernican theory. Indeed, in some things he was even behind 
his age. He spoke slightingly of Gilbert as a mere specialist — 
Gilbert, whose discoveries in magnetism have, I believe, been 
scarcely superseded at the present day. He accords no just tribute 
to Harvey, who had been his own physician. Harvey, on the 
other hand, appears to have set no great store by Bacon. Harvey 
is reported to have said : — “ He writes on philosophy like a Lord 
Chancellor.” Now' that I have begun with Bacon’s intellectual 
defects, I may as well finish with them. Bacon was strikingly 
deficient in the power of looking at things historically ; indeed, it 
never seems to have occurred to him to do so. He treated Aristotle 
and Plato as if they were men of his own time, who differed from 
him in opinion. In his work called the Wisdom of the Ancients , 
he undertakes to show that under each of the fables of the Greek 
mythology there was wrapped up and concealed some piece of 
physical, metaphysical, or political philosophy. His interpretations 
of the myths are rich in ingenuity, but at the same time they are 
perfectly arbitrary and reckless ; and they ignore the primary ques- 
tion of all, which is, How are we to conceive myths originally to 
have been formed and established in the minds of a people 1 To 
this question the quite recent science of comparative mythology 
offers some sort of solution. Bacon’s view of the myths was very 
prosaic ; he regarded them as didactic stories for the improvement 
of child-like minds. His view of poetry itself is of the same 
character. He describes it as “ a part of learning,” and evidently 
values it only so far as it is useful — that is to say, didactic. It is 
with a covert sneer that he says : — “ Poesy was ever thought to have 
some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the 
mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind ; 
whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of 
things.” He divides poetry into Narrative, Representative, and 
Allusive. In speaking of Representative poetry — that is, the 
drama — he makes no mention of Shakespeare, whom indeed he did 
not appreciate. He cares most for Allusive poetry, which conveys 
truth under the form of allegory. He excluded Lyrical poetry from 
the category of poetry altogether. He says : — “We exclude satires, 
