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ham, Trinity College, Cambridge, the University | his body was reduced to bones, and his bones alof Cambridge, and the University of Oxford.- most to dust. For though the earth in the chanThe present was gratefully acknowledged by the different patrons to whom it was presented, and by all the learning of England.

Fifty years after its publication it was included at Rome in the list "Librorum Prohibitorum," in which list it is now included in Spain.

The vanity of these attempts to resist the progress of knowledge might, it should seem, by this time be understood even at the Vatican.

How beautifully are the consequences of this intolerance thus stated by Fuller: "Hitherto the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till

cel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of the council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory as dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution,—if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people) be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off from any Christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutter

princes is commonly more sad and besieged with melan-worth, sent his officers, vultures with a quick sight choly; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but vicissitude, perpetually and interchangeably returning of fruition and appetite; so that the good of this delight must needs be simpler,

without accident or fallacy."

In the year 1632 a translation into French was published in Paris. The following is a copy of the title page: "Neve Livres de la Dignité et de l'Accroissement des Sciences, composez par Francois Bacon, Baron de Verulam et Vicomte de Saint Aubain, et traduits de Latin en Francois par le Sieur de Golefer, Conseiller et Historiographe du Roy. A Paris, chez Jaques Dugast, rue Sainct Jean de Beauvais, a l'Olivier de Robert Estienne et en sa boutique au bas de la rue de la Harpe. M.DC.XXXII. avec privilege du Roy."-Of this edition Archbishop Tenison says, "This work hath been also translated into French, upon the motion of the Marquis Fiat; but in it there are many things wholly omitted, many things perfectly mistaken, and some things, especially such as relate to religion, wilfully perverted. Insomuch that, in one place, he makes his lordship to magnify the Legend: a book sure of little credit with him, when he thus began one of his essays, 'I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and

scent at a dead carcass, to ungrave him. Accordingly to Lutterworth they come; summer, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, and their servants, so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone amongst so many hands, take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."

If Bacon had completed his intended work the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame upon "Sympathy and Antipathy," the constant

is without a mind.'" I have a copy of this edition.

antipathy of ignorance to intellect, originating sometimes in the painful feeling of inferiority,

A letter of the Lord Bacon's, in French, to the Marquess Fiat, sometimes in the fear of worldly injury, but

relating to his Essays.

Monsieur l'Ambassadeur mon File,-Voyant que vostre excellence faict et trait mariages, non seulement entre les princes d'Angletere et de France, mais aussi entre les langues (puis que faictes traduire non liure de l'Advancement des Sciences en Francois) i' ai bien voulu vous envoyer, &c.

There is a translation into French in the edition of Lord Bacon's works, published in the eighth year of the French Republic. The following is the title page of this edition "Euvres de François Bacon, Chancelier d'Angletaire; tra

always in the influence of some passion more powerful than the love of truth, would not have escaped his notice.

In this year he also published his History of Life and Death, which, of all his works, is one of the most extraordinary, both for the extent of his views, and the minute accuracy with which each part is investigated. It is addressed, not, to

duites par Ant. La Salle; avec des notes critiques, historiques et litteraires. Tome premier. A Dijon, de l'Impri-use his own expression, "to the Adonises of litemerie de L. N. Frantin, an 8 de la Republique Française."

1623..

1624.

1633.

1645

1652

1662

1765

DE AUGMENTIS-Latin.

Folio... Haviland.... London.... 1st edit.
4to..... Mettayer.... Paris...... 2d edit.
Folio Haviland.... London.... 3d edit.

12mo...

Moirardum . . Dutch

12mo... Wynyard

rature, but to Hercules's followers; that is, the more severe and laborious inquirers into truth."

Upon his entrance, in the Advancement of Learning, on the science of human nature, he says, "The knowledge of man, although only a portion of knowledge in the continent of nature, is to man the end of all knowledge:" and, in furtherance of this opinion, he explains that the Wirceburgi. 8th. 2 vols. object of education ought to be knowledge and improvement of the body and the mind.

Dutch.

12mo Ravestein Dutch

. 8vo.... Gerard ... Venice

1779... 8vo.... Stahel. . . . . .

1829.... 8vo.... Riegelii

[blocks in formation]

. 4th edit. 5th edit. . 6th edit. ..7th edit.

Nuremberg. 9th. 2 vols.

Oxford.... Folio.
London .. Folio.
Paris...... 4to.

Rep.... French. . Frantin .... Dijon...... 8vo.

Of the importance of knowledge of the body, that, "while sojourning in this wilderness, and travelling to the land of promise, our vestments should be preserved," he is incessant in his ob. servations. He divides the subject into

1. The preservation of Health.
2. The cure of Diseases.

1. Health.
2. Strength. 3. The prolongation of Life.
3. Beauty.

4. Pleasure.

His History of Life and Death may be regarded as a treatise upon the art of Preservation of Health, and Prolongation of Life.

As a foundation of his investigations he considers,

1st. The causes of the consumption of the
body.

2dly. The modes of reparation.

Of consumption he says there are two causes: the depredation of vital spirit and the depredation of ambient air; and if the action of either of these agents can be destroyed, the decomposition is more or less retarded, as in bodies enclosed in wax or coffins, where the action of the external air is excluded: and when the action of both these causes can be prevented, the body defies decomposition, as in bricks and burnt bodies, where the vital air is expelled by exposure of the clay to the ambient air, and afterwards by fire; or as a fly in amber, more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian monarch.

In making the agents less predatory, and the patients less depredable, the science of the re tardation of consumption consequently consists.

He proceeds, therefore, with his usual accuracy, to consider how these objects are to be attained; and, having considered them, he proceeds to the doctrine of reparation, both of the whole frame and the decayed parts.

His History of Life and Death contains his favourite doctrine of vital spirit, or excitability, or life, which he notices in various parts of his

works.

In this place more cannot be attempted than, as a specimen of the whole of this important subject, to explain one or two of the positions.

In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude: from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds."

Excursion, book 9.

As another specimen, the mode of explaining the condensation of spirit by flight may be selected.

The spirit, he says, is condensed by flight,— cold,-appeasing, and quelling. The condensation by flight is when there is an antipathy between the spirit and the body upon which it acts; as, in opium, which is so exceedingly powerful in condensing the spirit, that a grain will tranquillize the nerves, and by a few grains they may be so compressed as to be irrecoverable. The touched spirit may retreat into its shell for a time or forever: or it may, when fainting, be recalled, by the application of a stimulant, as surprise from a sudden impulse; a blow, or a glass of water thrown on the face; or the prick of a pin, or the action of mind on mind.

"I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand

Any exploit worthy the name of honour."

As another specimen, his sentiments upon death, the decomposition of compounds, may be selected.

tical motion is that by which the parts of the body In his doctrine of motion, he says, "The poliare restrained, from their own immediate appetites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may pre

serve the existence of the whole body. Thus, the spirit, which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts uniteas metals rust, fluids turn sour; and, in animals, when the spirit which held the parts together escapes, all things are dissolved, and return to their own natures or principles: the oily parts to themwhich necessarily ensues that odour, that unctuoselves, the aqueous to themselves, &c., upon

faction." So true is it, that in nature all is

The foundation position is, that "All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body, in the upper parts of the earth, without its spirit, whether it sity, that confusion of parts, observable in putrebe generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise; for beauty; that, notwithstanding our partial views the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum, but and distressing associations, the forms of death, either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the sub-misshapen as we suppose them, are but the tenstance; and this not a vis, an energy, or a fiction, but a real, subtile, and invisible, and, therefore, neglected body, circumscribed by place and dimension."

This doctrine is thus stated in the Excursion:

To every form of being is assigned
An active principle, howe'er removed
From sense and observation; it subsists
In all things, in all natures, in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,

dencies to union in similar natures.

The knowledge of this science Bacon considers of the utmost importance to our well-being:—that the action of the spirit is the cause of consumption and dissolution;—is the agent which produces all bodily and mental effects;-influences the will in the production of all animal motions, as in the whale and the elephant;-and is the cause of all our cheerfulness or melancholy :-that the perfection of our being consists in the proper portion

of this spirit properly animated, or the proper portion of excitability properly excited; that its presence is life, its absence death.

This subject, deemed of such importance by Bacon, has been much neglected, and occasionally been supposed to be a mere creature of the imagination.

Although the History of Life and Death is apparently a separate tract, it is the last portion of the third of the six books into which the third part of the Instauration is divided, which are the histories of

1st. The Winds.

2d. Density and Rarity.

3d. Heavy and Light.

4th. Sympathy and Antipathy.
5th. Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt.
6th. Life and Death.

His reason for the publication of this tract, he thus states: "Although I had ranked the History of Life and Death as the last among my six monthly designations; yet I have thought fit, in respect of the prime use thereof, in which the least loss of time ought to be esteemed precious, to invert that order."

The History, which was published in Latin, is inscribed "To the present age and posterity, in the hope and wish that it may conduce to a common good, and that the nobler sort of physicians will advance their thoughts, and not employ their times wholly in the sordidness of cures, neither be honoured for necessity only, but that they will become coadjutors and instruments of the divine omnipotence and clemency in prolonging and renewing the life of man, by safe, and convenient, and civil ways, though hitherto unassayed."

This was the last of his philosophical publications during his life; but they were only a small portion of his labours, which are thus recorded by Dr. Rawley:The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil affairs and from an active life, he employed wholly in contemplation and studies: a thing whereof his lordship would often speak during his active life, as if he affected to die in the shadow, and not in the light. During this time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin, which I will enumerate, as near as I can, in the just order wherein they were written.

A preface to a Digest of the Laws of England.
The beginning of the History of the Reign of
King Henry the Eighth.

De Augmentis Scientiarum; or the Advance-
ment of Learning: put into Latin, with seve-
ral enrichments and enlargements.
Counsels, civil and moral; or his book of
Essays, likewise enriched and enlarged.
The conversion of certain Psalms into English

verse.

The translation into Latin of the History of
King Henry the Seventh; of the Counsels,
civil and moral; of the dialogue of the Holy
War; of the fable of the New Atlantis; for
the benefit of other nations.

His revising of his book De Sapientia Veterum.
Inquisitio de Magnete.

Topica Inquisitionis; de Luce, et Lumine.
Lastly, Sylva Sylvarum; or the Natural His-
tory.

"He also designed, upon the motion and invitation of his late majesty, to have written the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; but that work perished in the designation merely, God not lending him life to proceed further upon it than only in one morning's work: whereof there is extant an Ex Ungue Leonem."

Such were his works during the short period, when, between sixty and seventy years of age, he, fortunately for himself and society, was thrown from active into contemplative life; into that philosophical seclusion, where he might turn from calumny, from the slanders of his enemies, to the admiration of all civilized Europe; from political rancour and threats of assassination, to the peaceful safety of sequestered life; from the hollow compacts which politicians call union, formed by expediency and dissolved at the first touch of interest, to the enduring joys of intellectual and virtuous friendship, and the consolations of piety.

These blessings he now enjoyed. Eminent foreigners crossed the seas on purpose to see and discourse with him.

Gondomar, who was in Spain, wrote to express his regard and respect, with lamentations that his public duties prevented his immediate attendance upon him in England.

When the Marquis d'Effiat accompanied the Princess Henrietta-Maria, wife to Charles the First, to England, he visited Lord Bacon; who, The History of the Reign of King Henry the being then sick in bed, received him with the Seventh. curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," Abecedarium Nature; or a Metaphysical Piece. said that minister to him: "we hear those beings

Historia Ventorum.

Historia Vitæ et Mortis.

Historia Densi, et Rari.

Historia Gravis et Levis.

A discourse of a war with Spain.
A dialogue touching a Holy War.
The fable of the New Atlantis.

continually talked of, we believe them superior to mankind, and we never have the consolation to see them." "Your kindness," he answered, may compare me to an angel, but my infirmities tell me that I am a man." In this interview a friendship originated which continued during their lives, and is recorded in his will, where,

(K)

him, was once more his own, and nature, whom he worshipped, spread her vast untrodden fields before him, where, with science as his handmaid, he might wander at his will; but the expectations of the learned world and the hopes of his devoted friends were all blighted by a perceptible decay of his health and strength in the beginning of the sickly year of 1625.

amongst his legacies to his friends, he says, "I the distractions of politics refreshed and consoled give unto the right honourable my worthy friend, the Marquis Fiatt, late lord ambassador of France, my books of orisons or psalms curiously rhymed." As a parent he wrote to the marquis, who esteemed it to be the greatest honour conferred upon him to be called his son. He caused his Essays and treatise De Augmentis to be translated into French; and, with the affectionate enthusiasm of youth, upon his return to France, requested and obtained his portrait.

During this year his publications were limited to a new edition of his Essays, a small volume of

His friendship with Sir Julius Cæsar, Master Apophthegms, the production, as a recreation in of the Rolls, continued to his death.

Selden, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, expressed his respect, with the assurance that "never was any man more willing or ready to do your lordship's service than myself." Ben Jonson, not in general too profuse of praise, says, "My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his works one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages: in his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want; neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest."

Sir Thomas Meautys stood by him to his death with a firmness and love which does honour to him and to human nature.

His exclusion from the verge of the court had long been remitted; and, in the beginning of the year 1624, the whole of the parliamentary sentence was pardoned, by a warrant which stated that, "calling to mind the former good services | of the Lord St. Albans, and how well and profitably he hath spent his time since his trouble, we are pleased to remove from him that blot of ignominy which yet remaineth upon him, of incapacity and disablement; and to remit to him all penalties whatsoever inflicted by that sentence. Having therefore formerly pardoned his fine, and released his confinement, these are to will and require you to prepare, for our signature, a bill containing a pardon of the whole sentence."

This was one of the last of the king's acts, who thus faithfully performed, to the extent of his ability, all his promises. He died at Theobalds, on the 27th of March, 1625.

His lordship was summoned to parliament in the succeeding reign, but was prevented, by his infirmities, from again taking his seat as a peer. Though Lord Bacon's constitution had never been strong, his temperance and management of his health seemed to promise old age, which his unbounded knowledge and leisure for speculation could not fail to render useful to the world and glorious to himself. The retirement, which in all

sickness, of a morning's dictation, and a translation of a few of the Psalms of David into English verse, which he dedicated to a divine and poet, his friend, the learned and religious George Herbert. This was the last exercise, in the time of his illness, of his pious mind; and a more pious mind never existed.

There is scarcely a line of his works in which a deep, awful, religious feeling is not manifested. It is perhaps, most conspicuous in his Confession of Faith, of which Dr. Rawley says, "For that treatise of his lordship's, inscribed, A Confession of the Faith, I have ranked that in the close of this whole volume; thereby to demonstrate to the world that he was a master in divinity, as well as in philosophy or politics, and that he was versed no less in the saving knowledge than in the universal and adorning knowledges; for though he composed the same many years before his death, yet I thought that to be the fittest place, as the most acceptable incense unto God of the faith wherein he resigned his breath; the crowning of all his other perfections and abilities; and the best perfume of his name to the world after his death. This confession of his faith doth abundantly testify that he was able to render a reason of the hope which was in him.”

It might be said of him, as one of the most deep thinking of men said of himself, "For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I have none at all, yet, in despite thereof, I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian; not that I merely owe this title to the font, my education, or clime wherein I was born, but having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and examined all, I find myself bound by the principles of grace and the law of mine own reason to embrace no other religion than this."

From his Prayers, found after his death, his piety cannot be mistaken. They have the same glory around them, whether they are his supplications as a student, as an author, or as a preserver, when chancellor, of the religious sentiments of the country.

As a student, he prays, that he may not be inflated or misled by the vanity which makes man wise in his own conceit: "To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we put forth

ties."

most humble and hearty supplications, that hu- | in the New Atlantis: in his tract " De principiis," man things may not prejudice such as are divine; and the tract, entitled "The Conditions of Entineither that, from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any thing of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries."

As an author he prays in the same spirit: "Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which, coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory."

There is a tract entitled "The Characters of a believing Christian, in paradoxes and seeming contradictions," which is spurious.

Such are his religious sentiments in different parts of his works: but they are not confined to his publications. They appear where, according to his own doctrine, our opinions may always be discovered, in his familiar letters, in the testimony of his friends, in his unguarded observations, and in his will.

In a letter to Mr. Mathew, imprisoned for religion, he says, "I pray God, who understandeth us all better than we understand one another, contain you, even as I hope he will, at the least, within the bounds of loyalty to his majesty, and

cline of his life, in his letter to the Bishop of Winchester, he says, "Amongst consolations, it is not the least to represent to a man's self like examples of calamity in others. In this kind of consolation I have not been wanting to myself, though, as a Christian, I have tasted, through God's great goodness, of higher remedies."

The same spirit did not forsake him when chanceilor: "Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father from my youth up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath walked before thee: re-natural piety towards your country." In the demember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies: I have mourned for the divisions of thy church: I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine, which thy right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples."

In his essay on Atheism there is an observation, which may appear to a superficial observer hasty and unguarded, inconsistent with the language of philosophy, and at variance with his own doctrines. It was written, not in prostration to any idol, but from his horror of the barren and desolate minds that are continually saying, "There is no God," and his preference, if compelled to elect, of the least of two errors. "I had rather," he says, "believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."

As knowledge consists in understanding the sequence of events, or cause and effect, he knew that error must exist, not only from our ignorance, but from our knowledge of immediate causes.

The same holy feeling appears in all his important works. The preface to his Instauratio Magna opens and concludes with a prayer. The treatise "De Augmentis Scientiarum" abounds with religious sentiments, contains two tracts, one upon natural, the other upon revealed religion, the Sabbath and port of all men's labours," and concludes, "Attamen, quoniam etiam res quæque maximæ initiis suis debentur, mihi satis fuerit sevisse posteris et Deo immortali: cujus numen supplex precor, per filium suum et servatorem nostrum, ut has et hisce similes intellectus hu- In the infancy of his reason, man ascribes mani victimas, religione tanquam sale respersas, events to chance, or to a wrong natural cause, or et gloriæ suæ immolatas, propitius accipere dig- to the immediate interference of a superior benenetur." In the midst of his profound reasoning volent or malevolent being; and, having formed in the Novum Organum, there is a passage in an opinion, he entrenches himself within its narwhich his opinion of our incorporeal nature is dis-row boundaries, or is indolently content without closed. And the third part of the Instauration seeking for any remote cause, but philosophy enconcludes thus: "Deus Universi Conditor, Con-deavours to discover the antecedent in the chain servator, Instaurator, hoc opus, et in ascensione of events, and looks up to the first cause. ad gloriam suamn, et in descensione ad bonum humanum pro sua erga homines, benevolentia, et misericordia, protegat et regat, per Filium suum unicum, nobiscum Deum."

In his minor publications the same piety may be seen. It appears in the Meditationes Sacræ ; in the Wisdom of the Ancients; in the fables of Pan, of Prometheus, of Pentheus, and of Cupid: in various parts of the Essays, but particularly in the Essay on Atheism and Goodness of Nature:

This stopping at second causes, the property of animals and of ignorance, always diminishes as knowledge advances. Great intellect cannot be severed from piety. It was reserved for the wisest of men to raise a temple to the living God.

The philosopher who discovered the immediate cause of lightning was not inflated by his beau tiful discovery: he was conscious of the power "which dwelleth in thick darkness, and sendeth out lightning like arrows."

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