first check from good sense. Yet, though dis- as it is first to ripen, it is also first to fade. It ciplined to such obedience, it gave noble proofs has generally lost something of its bloom and of its vigour. In truth, much of Bacon's life freshness before the sterner faculties have was passed in a visionary world-amidst things reached maturity: and is commonly withered as strange as any that are described in the and barren while those faculties still retain all "Arabian Tales," or in those romances on their energy. It rarely happens that the fancy which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's and the judgment grow together. It happens village performed so cruel an auto-da-fe- still more rarely that the judgment grows faster amidst buildings more sumptuous than the than the fancy. This seems, however, to have palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful been the case with Bacon. His boyhood and than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances youth appear to have been singularly sedate. more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, His gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is arms more formidable than the lance of As- said by some writers to have been planned tolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam before he was fifteen; and was undoubtedly of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day- planned while he was still young. He observed dreams there was nothing wild-nothing but as vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and judged what sober reason sanctioned. He knew that as temperately, when he gave his first work to all the secrets feigned by poets to have been the world as at the close of his long career. written in the books of enchanters, are worth- But in eloquence, in sweetness, and variety of less when compared with the mighty secrets expression, and in richness of illustration, his which are really written in the book of nature, later writings are far superior to those of his and which, with time and patience, will be youth. In this respect the history of his mind read there. He knew that all the wonders bears some resemblance to the history of the wrought by all the talismans in fable, were mind of Burke. The treatise on the "Sublime trifles, when compared to the wonders which and Beautiful," though written on a subject might reasonably be expected from the phi- which the coldest metaphysician could hardly losophy of fruit; and, that if his words sank treat without being occasionally betrayed into deep into the minds of men, they would pro- florid writing, is the most unadorned of all duce effects such as superstition had never Burke's works. It appeared when he was ascribed to the incantations of Merlin and Mi- twenty-five or twenty-six. When at forty, b chael Scot. It was here that he loved to let his wrote the "Thoughts on the Causes of the ex imagination loose. He loved to picture to him-isting Discontents," his reason and his judg self the world as it would be when his philoso- ment had reached their full maturity; but his phy should, in his own noble phrase, "have eloquence was still in its splendid dawn. At enlarged the bounds of human empire." We fifty, his rhetoric was quite as rich as good might refer to many instances. But we will taste would permit; and when he died, at content ourselves with the strongest, the de- almost seventy, it had become ungracefully scription of the "House of Solomon" in the gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emo"New Atlantis." By most of Bacon's contem- tions produced by mountains and cascades; by poraries, and by some people of our time, this the masterpieces of painting and sculpture; by remarkable passage would, we doubt not, be the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the considered as an ingenious rodomontade-a style of a parliamentary report. In his old age, counterpart to the adventures of Sinbad or Ba- he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most ron Munchausen. The truth is, that there is fervid and brilliant language of romance. It not to be found in any human composition a is strange that the essay on the "Sublime and passage more eminently distinguished by pro- Beautiful," and the "Letter to a Noble Lord," found and serene wisdom. The boldness and should be the productions of one man. But it originality of the fiction is far less wonderful is far more strange that the essay should have than the nice discernment which carefully ex-been a production of his youth, and the letter cluded from that long list of prodigies every of his old age. thing that can be pronounced impossible; every thing that can be proved to lie beyond the mighty magic of induction and of time. Already some parts, and not the least startling parts, of this glorious prophecy have been accomplished, even according to the letter; and the whole, construed according to the spirit, is daily accomplishing all around us. One of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of Bacon's mind, is the order in which its powers expanded themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained till the last: the blossoms did not appear till late. In general the development of the fancy is to the development of the judgment, what the growth of a girl is to the growth of a boy. The fancy attains at an earlier period to the perfection of its beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness and, "New Atlantis," We will give very short specimens of Ba con's two styles. In 1597, he wrote thus "Crafty men contemn studies; simple mer admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdom without them, and won by observation. Reac not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted l others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, have a present wit; and if he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philoso phy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend." It will hardly be disputed that this is a passage to be "chewed and digested." LORD BACON. We do not believe that Thucydides himself has | Proposition after proposition enters into the But mind, is received not as an invader, but as a think, as he appears in the first book of the In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the "Essays," there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have quoted. But his style was constantly becoming richer and softer. The following passage, first published in 1625, will show the extent of the change: "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidences of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp you shall hear as many hearse-standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground. Judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, inost fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." It is by the "Essays" that Bacon is best known to the multitude. The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much talked of, but little read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on the opinions of mankind; but they have produced it through the operations of intermediate agents. They have moved the intellects which have moved the world. It is in the "Essays" alone that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with the minds of ordinary readers. There, he opens an exoteric school, and he talks to plain men in language which everybody understands, about things in which everybody is interested. He has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such consummate ability questions with which they are familiar, may well be supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school. Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the highest perfection. Many of the aphorisms, but particularly those in which he gives examples of the influence of the idola, show a nicety of observation that has never been surpassed. Every part of the book blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. Yet, no book was ever written in a less contentious spirit. It truly conquers with chalk and not with steel. It is painful to turn back from contemplating Bacer's philosophy to contemplate his life. Yet wunout so turning back it is impossible fairly to estimate his powers. He left the University at an earlier age than that at which most people repair thither. While yet a boy he was plunged into the midst of diplomatic business. Thence he passed to the study of a vast technical system of law, and worked his way up through a succession of laborious offices to the highest post in his profession. In the mean time he took an active part in every Parliament; he was an adviser of the crown; he paid court with the greatest assiduity and address to all whose favour was likely to be of use to him; he lived much in society; he noted the slightest peculiarities of character and the slightest changes of fashion. Scarcely any man has led a more stirring life than that which Bacon led from sixteen to sixty. Scarcely any man has been better entitled to be called a thorough man of the world. The founding of a new philosophy, the imparting of a new direction to the minds of speculators-this was the amusement of his leisure, the work of hours occasionally stolen from the Woolsack and the Council Board. This consideration, while it increases the admiration with which we regard his intellect, increases also our regret that such an intellect should so often have been unworthily employed. well knew the better course, and had, at one He time, resolved to pursue it. "I confess," said | not then have to blush for the disingenuous. he in a letter written when he was still young, that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends." Had his civil ends continued to be moderate, he would have been, not only the Moses, but the Joshua of philosophy. He would have fulfilled a large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have led his followers, not only to the verge, but into the heart of the promised land. He would not merely have pointed out, but would have divided the spoil. Above all, he would have left not only a great, but a spotless name. Mankind would then have been able to esteem their illustrious benefactor. (We should not then be compelled to regard his character with mingled contempt and admiration, with mingled aversion and gratitude. We should not then regret that there should be so many proofs of the narrowness and selfishness of a heart, the benevolence of which was yet large enough to take in all races and all ages. We should ness of the most devoted worshipper of specu lative truth, for the servility of the boldest champion of intellectual freedom. We should not then have seen the same man at one time far in the van, and at another time far in the rear of his generation. We should not then be forced to own, that he who first treated legislation as a science was among the last Englishmen who used the rack; that he who first summoned philosophers to the great work of interpreting nature was among the last Englishmen who sold justice. And we should conclude our survey of a life placidly, honourably, beneficently passed, "in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profita ble inventions and discoveries," with feelings very different from those with which we now turn away from the checkered spectacle of so much glory and so much shame. From a Letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh. END OF VOL IL MACKINTOSH'S HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND, IN 1688.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1835.] It is with unfeigned diffidence that we ven- at mess in Hampshire, or on the Treasuryture to give our opinion of the last work of Sir bench and at Brookes's during the storms which James Mackintosh. We have in vain tried to overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne had perform what ought to be to a critic an easy been passed in the Bodleian Library, he might and habitual act. We have in vain tried to have avoided some inaccuracies; he might separate the book from the writer, and to judge have enriched his notes with a greater number of it as if it bore some unknown name. But of references; but he never would have proit is to no purpose. All the lines of that vene- duced so lively a picture of the court, the rable countenance are before us. All the little camp, and the senate-house. In this respect peculiar cadences of that voice, from which Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great scholars and statesmen loved to receive the advantages over almost every English hislessons of a serene and benevolent wisdom,torian who has written since the time of Burare in our ears. We will attempt to preserve net. Lord Lyttleton had indeed the same adstrict impartiality. But we are not ashamed vantages; but he was incapable of using them. to own, that we approach this relic of a virtu- Pedantry was so deeply fixed in his nature, ous and most accomplished man with feelings that the hustings, the treasury, the exchequer, of respect and gratitude which may possibly the House of Commons, the House of Lords, pervert our judgment. left him the same dreaming schoolboy that they found him. It is hardly possible to avoid instituting a comparison between this work and another When we compare the two interesting works celebrated Fragment. Our readers will easily of which we have been speaking, we have litguess that we allude to Mr. Fox's History of tle difficulty in awarding the superiority to that James II. The two books are written on the of Sir James Mackintosh. Indeed, the supesame subject. Both were posthumously pub-riority of Mr. Fox to Sir James as an orator is lished. Neither had received the last correc- hardly more clear than the superiority of Sir tions. The authors belonged to the same poli-James to Mr. Fox as an historian. Mr. Fox tical party, and held the same opinions con- with a pen in his hand, and Sir James on his cerning the merits and defects of the English legs in the House of Commons, were, we think, constitution, and concerning most of the pro- each out of his proper element. They were minent characters and events in English his- men, it is true, of far too much judgment and tory. They had thought much on the princi- ability to fail scandalously in any undertaking ples of government; but they were not mere to which they brought the whole power of their speculators. They had ransacked the archives minds. The History of James II. will always of rival kingdoms, and pored on folios which keep its place in our libraries as a valuable had mouidered for ages in deserted libraries; book; and Sir James Mackintosh succeeded in but they were not mere antiquaries. They winning and maintaining a high place among had one emunt qualification for writing his-the parliamentary speakers of his time. Yet tory-they had spoken history, acted history, we could never read a page of Mr. Fox's writlived history. The turns of political fortune, ing, we could never listen for a quarter of an the ebb and flow of popular feeling, the hidden hour to the speaking of Sir James, without mechanism by which parties are moved, all feeling that there was a constant effort, a tug these things were the subjects of their con-up hill. Nature, or habit which had become stant thought and of their most familiar conversation. Gibbon has remarked, that his history is much the better for his having been an officer in the militia and a member of the House of Commons. The remark is most just. We have not the smallest doubt that his campaign, though he never saw an enemy, and his parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of far more use to him than years of retirement and study would have been. If the time that he spent on parade and nature, asserted its rights. Mr. Fox wrote debates. Sir James Mackintosh spoke essays. As far as mere diction was concerned, indeed, Mr. Fox did his best to avoid those faults which the habit of public speaking is likely to generate. He was so nervously apprehensive of sliding into some colloquial incorrectness, of debasing his style by a mixture of parlia mentary slang, that he ran into the opposite error, and purified his vocabulary with a seru pulosity unknown to any purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow Addison, * History of the Revolution in England, in 1688. Com-Bolingbroke, or Middleton, to be a sufficien prising a view of the Reign of James the Second, from authority for an expression. He declared that his Accession, to the Enterprise of the Prince of Orange, he would use no word which was not to be found by the late Right Honourable Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH ; and completed to the Settlement of the Crown, by the in Dryden. In any other person we should Editor. To which is prefixed a Notice of the Life, Writ-have called this solicitude mere 10ppery; and, ings, and Speeches of Sir James Mackintosh. 4to. Lon-in spite of all our admiration for Mr. Fox, we 2 B don. 1834. VOL. III.-37 parts of the History of James II. fine specimens of that which we conceive to have been the great characteristic of Demosthenes among the Greeks, and of Fox among the orators of England,-reason penetrated, and if we may venture on the expression, made red-hot by passion. But this is not the kind of excellence proper to history; and it is hardly too much to say, that whatever is strikingly good in Mr. Fox's Fragment is out of place. cannot but think that his extreme attention to the petty niceties of language was hardly worthy of so manly and so capacious an understanding. There were purists of this kind at Rome; and their fastidiousness was censured by Horace with that perfect good sense and good taste which characterize all his writings. There were purists of this kind at the time of the revival of letters: and the two greatest scholars of that time raised their voices, the one from within, the other from With Sir James Mackintosh the case was without the Alps, against a scrupulosity so un- reversed. His proper place was his library, a reasonable." Carent," said Politian, "quæ circle of men of letters, or a chair of moral scribunt isti viribus et vita, carent actu, carent and political philosophy. He distinguished affectu, carent indole. . . Nisi liber ille himself highly in Parliament. But neverthepræsto sit ex quo quid excerpant, colligere less Parliament was not exactly the sphere tria verba non possunt. . . Horum sem- for him. The effect of his most successful per igitur oratio tremula, vacillans, infirma. speeches was small, when compared with the Quæso ne ista superstitione te alliges. quantity of ability and learning which was .. Ut bene currere non potest qui pe- expended on them. We could easily name dum ponere studet in alienis tantum vestigiis, men who, not possessing a tenth part of his ita nec bene scribere qui tanquam de præ- intellectual powers, hardly ever address the scripto non audet egredi."-" Posthac," ex- House of Commons without producing a claims Erasmus, "non licebit episcopos appel- greater impression than was produced by his lare patres reverendos, nec in calce literarum most splendid and elaborate orations. His luscribere annum a Christo nato, quod id nus-minous and philosophical disquisition on the quam faciat Cicero. Quid autem ineptius Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. quam, toto seculo novato, religione, imperiis, magistratibus, locorum vocabulis, ædificiis, cultu, moribus, non aliter audere 'oqui quam Jocutus est Cicero? Si revivisc ipse Cicero, rideret hoc Ciceronianorum ejus." While Mr. Fox winnowed and sifted his phraseology with a care, which seems hardly consistent with the simplicity and elevation of his mind, and of which the effect really was to debase and enfeeble his style, he was little on his guard against those more serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator, who undertakes to write history, is in danger of falling. There is about the whole book a vehement, contentious, replying manner. Almost every argument is put in the form of an interrogation, an ejaculation, or a sarcasm. The writer seems to be addressing himself to some imaginary audience; to be tearing in pieces a defence of the Stuarts which has just been pronounced by an imaginary Tory. Take, for example, his answer to Hume's remarks on the execution of Sydney; and substitute "the honourable gentleman," or "the noble lord," for the name of Hume. The whole passage sounds like a powerful reply, thundering at three in the morning from the Opposition Bench. While we read it, we can almost fancy that we see and hear the great English debater, such as he has been described to us by the few who can still remember the Westminster Scrutiny, and the Oczakow Negotiations, in the full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of his words. It is true that the passage to which we have referred, and several other passages which we could point out, are admirable, when considered nerely as exhibitions of mental power. We at once recognise that consummate master of the whole art of intellectual gladiatorship, whose Speeches, imperfectly as they have been transmitted to us, should be studied day and Dight by every man who wishes to learn the science of logical defence. We find in several Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure and admiration, could not but acknowledge that he rather lectured than debated. An artist who should waste on a panorama, on a scene, or on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we admire in some of the small Dutch interiors, would not squander his powers more than this eminent man too often did. His audience resembled the boy in the "Heart of MidLothian," who pushes away the lady's guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white money. They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were constantly passing about from hand to hand, to the gold which they had never before seen, and with the value of which they were unacquainted. It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh did not wholly devote his later years to philosophy and literature. His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transitory impressions, to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at midnight, without saying any thing that any one of them will be able to remember in the morning. His arguments were of a very different texture from those which are produced in Parliament at a moment's notice,-which puzzle a plain man who, if he had them before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which the great debater who employed them forgets within half an hour, and never thinks of again. Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh, was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was the same with his conversation. In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency, no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary effect. His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged; every |