to believe, without much effort of mind on their part, that they have learned a great deal, and seen very far into things; for it is but natural that many should take keenly to a writer who wraps them in the persuasion of large knowledge at little cost. To supersede the work of mental digestion by a certain ebullience and intoxication of the spirits, is perhaps an author's readiest and surest way to popular favour.

Still it must in fairness be owned, that Macaulay's success as a writer is not wholly owing to his faults. His merits are by no means inconsiderable. There is much, very much to be learned from him. And, after all the abatements due on the score of his faults, there will probably remain enough of real excellence to set him near, if not among, the best authors of the time. Besides his rich and varied command of matter, he has remarkable vigour and acuteness of mind, a fancy singularly sparkling and affluent, great copiousness and felicity of illustration; and if his want of reverence has sometimes led him to browbeat the real sanctities of humanity and religion, it has also caused him to plough up some fat soils which had too long been guarded from use by the dotages of superstition. Nor should he be blamed for having, or for exercising, the faculty of compelling many to read him, even while their minds are in revolt against him. The sobrieties and severities of truth may worthily borrow his arts and fascinations of diction and style; nor can it be justly disputed that he has in divers instances. lent them to that use.

But such, it seems to us, is by no means the case in the instance upon which we are about to remark. We refer to Macaulay's long and brilliant paper on Lord Bacon, which probably exemplifies the habitual temper and working of his mind better than anything else he has written, except the History; and has done more perhaps than any other of his Essays to favour the notion of his being "master of every species of composition."

In some respects, Bacon was probably one of the best and one of the worst themes he could have fallen upon; one of the best for him to exhibit himself in, and one of the worst for him to do justice to. For in Bacon's character there was

a strange mixture of good and bad, out of which a skilful attorney could easily make strong cases and effective points; while in his philosophy there is a depth and vastness, a rich, intricate, manifold complexity, from which a man of one idea may readily draw materials for the support of his favourite theory. Macaulay's purpose in this article seems to have required, that all the bad and weak points in Bacon's character should be singled out and swollen into unnatural prominence, that the writer might indulge with sufficient effect in the rhetoric of condemnation; and that his philosophy should be shorn of its glory, and desiccated of its life, and shrivelled into a shallow, barren, earth-born utilitarianism, that he might indulge with similar effect in the rhetoric of eulogy. Thus, to the end that he may satisfactorily display himself in the cen sure of the one and the praise of the other, he caricatures and spoils them both. And in his continual effort after brilliancy and effect, we see much of the critic, but very little of the real subject whereof he claims to be speaking.

Now, if it be true that the life and writings of this wonderful man furnish a singularly inviting field for the exercise of a vain, flippant, dashing rhetoric; it is also true that scarce any field can be named, wherein such a style of writing were more out of place. For, whatever may have been Bacon's faults as a man, or his merits as an author, assuredly neither are to be handled with justice to the subject, or with benefit to the reader, unless approached in a temper and frame of mind far other than that indicated by the style in question. For this rhetorical intemperance is one, and certainly not the least hurtful, of those "peccant humours" which Bacon designates as "idols of the den;" and concerning which we may justly say, in reference to the whole subject of Bacon's character and philosophy, what Bacon himself says on another subject: "These idols must with firm and solemn resolution be abjured and renounced, and the mind must be thoroughly purged and cleansed of them; for the kingdom of man, which is founded in the sciences, can scarce be entered otherwise than the kingdom of GOD, that is, in the condition of little children." Nor will it be amiss to remember here another admonition from

this most profound, comprehensive, and, we will add, ingenuous mind:

Knowledge, be it in quantity more or less, if taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effect of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity; for so the Apostle saith, "knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up"; and in another place, "if I spake with the tongues of men and angels, and had not charity, it were but as a tinkling cymbal."

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Of course everybody remembers Pope's verse, describing Bacon as "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;" verse containing not much indeed of poetry, but more of poetry than of truth. Macaulay's article is little more than this verse expanded and blown up into a long essay; a good deal of it being written very much in the style of what follows:

The difference between the soaring angel and the creeping snake was but a type of the difference between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the Attorney-General,-Bacon seeking for Truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals. Those who survey only one-half of his character may speak of him with unmixed admiration, or with unmixed contempt. But those only judge of him correctly, who take in at one view Bacon in speculation and Bacon in action. They will have no difficulty in comprehending how one and the same man should have been far before his age and far behind it; in one line the boldest and most useful of innovators, in another line the most obstinate champion of the foulest abuses.

Now, though these statements have in them something of truth, they are by no means true in the degree to which they are pushed. It is but an instance, such as the writer is always itching to practise, of endeavouring to crush a great subject within the terms of an epigram or antithesis. Hence his seeming incapability of moderation: passionately fond of extremes, and scorning the golden mean of justice and truth, he prefers, apparently, to say nothing, unless he may speak in superlatives; all which might be better put up with, if it seemed to spring from the enthusiasm of thought, and not from an ambition to startle and amaze. He therefore represents Bacon as far guiltier of practical abuses, and far bolder in speculative innova tion, than the calm, sober student of his life and works would ever imagine him to be. To make good this representation, every thing doubtful or reprehensible in Bacon's conduct (and that there was much of this, probably none will deny) is strangely exaggerated and overstrained; while at the same time every thing, both personal and circumstantial, that would

go to temper and relieve the bad impression (for there was much of this also) is as strangely overlooked or suppressed.

Bacon's character as a man is certainly not entitled to be held up as a model of virtue and honour, neither can it with justice be set forth as a special mark of abhorrence or contempt. Morally, he appears not to have been much, if at all, in advance of his age; though we suspect it would be found, on due examination, that there were many public men of the time below him, where there was one above him, in this respect. He was not only greatly admired as a thinker, but deeply loved and honoured as a man, by many of the best and purest men of the age; which could hardly have been the case, but that, with all his blemishes, he had great moral and social virtucs. Though often straightened for means, he was always very generous to his servants: his temper and carriage were eminently gentle and humane: he was never accused of insolence to any human being; which is the common pleasure of mean-spirited men: he did all that wisdom and friendship could do, to keep Essex and Villiers out of crime, and never deserted either of them, till other and higher attachments compelled him his conduct in Parliament was always manly, his views as a legislator were liberal, and leaning strongly towards improvement; and if on one occasion he crouched more than we might wish under the stern rebuke of Elizabeth, it was no more than the whole House of Commons had often done before it is not pretended that he ever gave an unjust or illegal judgment as Chancellor: his private life was blameless, and abounding in works of piety and charity: and his losing the favour, if indeed he did not incur the anger of the King and Buckingham, when they were in the full career of rapacity and corruption, should perhaps be taken as proof that he had resisted them as much as he could without losing the power to resist them at all.

Hallam, who is far enough from sparing Bacon's faults, and whose censure appears sometimes to verge upon excessive severity, admits that "with all his pliancy there are fewer overstrained expressions about the prerogatives in his political writings than we should expect"; and that, "though his practice was servile, his principals were not unconstitutional :"

which is no slight praise for a statesman of those times. And one might hesitate to believe that "the meanest of mankind" could have written the following to a favourite of James the First; especially, considering how much power that favourite had to crush whom he feared, and how much cause to fear one who told him the truth: "As far as it may lie in you, let no arbitrary power be intruded: the people of this kingdom love the laws thereof, and nothing will oblige them more than a confidence of the free enjoying of them; what the nobles upon an occasion once said in Parliament, Nolumus leges Anglia mutare, is imprinted in the hearts of all the people." From this and other like passages, we may perhaps infer why that accomplished profligate joined in crushing so wise and just a counsellor. With an imperious master, a rapacious minister, and a servile court, it strikes us rather as matter of grief than of wonder, that Bacon should have stooped to some unworthy and ill-favoured compliances; and on duly weighing the temptations of his place, perhaps we shall conclude it better to pray that we be not led into similar temptations, than to censure him too harshly for yielding to them.

One of Macaulay's severest charges against Bacon is for writing the "Declaration of the Treasons of Robert, Earl of Essex." The Earl, he informs us, was a great favourite with the people, and "his fate excited strong, perhaps unreasonable feelings of compassion and indignation. The Queen was received by the citizens of London with gloomy looks and faint acclamations. She thought it expedient to publish a vindication of the late proceedings;" and she imposed upon Bacon the task of drawing up that vindication. Macaulay does not question the truth of what Bacon afterwards alleged, "that he wrote it by command; that he considered himself as a mere secretary; and that he was not answerable for the matter of the book, he having furnished only the arrangement and the style." But the pith of the censure is this: "Why did he endow such a purpose with words? Could no hack-writer, without virtue or shame, be found, to exaggerate the errors, already so dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit."

A similar thing occurred soon after the execution of Charles the First. This act was received by the nation with one long,