Francis Bacon

“ Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, that man whose boldness in thought did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents, in his own writings, one of the most striking examples of the strength of the evil he did so much to destroy. ”

“ Sir Toby Matthew describes Francis Bacon as
"A friend unalterable to his friends;
A man most sweet in his conversation and ways";
and adds:
"It is not his greatness that I admire, but his virtue."
Thomas Bushel, his servant, in a letter to Mr. John Eliot, printed in 1628, in a volume called "The First Part of Youth's Errors," says:
"Yet lest the calumnious tongues of men might extenuate the good opinion you had of his worth and merit, I must ingenuously confess that my selfe and others of his servants were the occasion of exhaling his vertues into a darke exlipse ”

“ Francis Bacon which is prefixed to the "Histoire Naturelle," by Piere Amboise, published in Paris in 1631:
"Among so many virtues that made this great man commendable, prudence, as the first of all the moral virtues, and that most necessary to those of his profession, was that which shone in him the most brightly. His profound wisdom can be most readily seen in his books, and his matchless fidelity in the signal services that he continuously rendered to his Prince. Never was there man who so loved equity, or so enthusiastically worked for the public good as he ”

“ For such a man to write "The two books" would be no hard or lengthy task.
The wonder is that Francis Bacon should have attached his name to the 1597 edition of the essays. He had written and published under other names tomes of essays of at least equal merit. In Aphorism 128 of the "Novum Organum" Bacon says, "But how sincere I am in my profession of affection and goodwill towards the received sciences my published writings, especially the books on the Advancement of Learning, sufficiently shew." ”

“ He is writing thoughts rather than words, set down without art, disguising or reservation. But if his Lordship will not carry him along he has definitely decided on his course of action. The law is not now even referred to. If the object of the suit was not stated in 1580, there cannot be much doubt now but that it had to do with the making of books and pioneer work in the mine of truth. For ten years Francis Bacon had waited, buoyed up by encouragements and false hopes. Now he decides to take his fortune into his own hands and rely no more on assistance either from the Queen or Burghley. ”

“ He is embarrassed by usurers; he is arrested; debt comes upon him, as he says, like an armed man.
Of the earliest years of Bacon few memorials remain. But Mr Spedding brings together two conspicuous facts. The first is, that Bacon, at the age of fifteen, conceives his project of a reformation in philosophy; and the second is, that immediately on leaving college he accompanies Sir Amias Paulet on his embassy to France. Thus philosophy and diplomacy, speculation and state-craft, study and the world, take at once joint possession of Francis Bacon. ”

“ Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, died, aged 66. At the age of 13 he entered the university, where he made the most astonishing progress in all the sciences then taught, and at the age of 16 attacked the Aristotlean philosophy. He succeeded rapidly in office under government, and in 1619 was appointed lord high chancellor of England and baron of Verulam. Here, unfortunately, he sullied his name, and was fined, imprisoned and degraded, for bribery and corruption. This extraordinary man is justly entitled to the appellation of "the father of experimental philosophy." ”

“ This could not be in 1580, for Bacon wrote to Lord Burghley from Gray's Inn on the 18th October, 1580. Spedding commences the paragraph immediately following this letter by saying, "From this time we have no further news of Francis Bacon till the 5th of April, 1582," and although he does not reproduce the letter, he relies on a letter from Faunt to Anthony Bacon, to which that date is attributed in Birch's " Memorials," Vol. I. page 22. In it Faunt refers to having seen Anthony's mother and his brother Francis. Faunt left Paris for England on the 22nd March, 1582. ”

“ I. & II. Lord Macaulay’s ‘Essay on Francis Bacon.’
Mr Spedding, in the modest form of a commentary on the letters and occasional writings of Lord Bacon, is now giving us a biography of that celebrated man, which bids fair, for a long time to come, to be our highest authority on the subject. To place all the facts before us on which our judgment of the character of Lord Bacon should be formed, is his great object; he deals in few assertions of his own; he is disposed to let facts speak for themselves ”

“ It is a remarkable fact on which too much stress cannot be laid that in the two Lives of Bacon, scanty as they are, by contemporary writers, his exceptional industry is pointed out. There are certainly no visible fruits of this industry.
Although there is no definite information as to what was the state of Francis Bacon's education at twelve, there is testimony as to that of some of his contemporaries. Three instances will suffice.
Philip Melancthon (whose family name was Schwartzerd) was born in 1497. His education was at an early age directed by his maternal grandfather, John Reuter. ”

“ Truly the treatment which Francis Bacon has received confirms the truth of the aphorism, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
It is not the intention in the following brief survey of Bacon's life to enter upon any attempt to vindicate his character. Since his works and life have come prominently before the reading public, he has never been without a defender. Montagu, Hepworth Dixon, and Spedding have, one after the other, raised their voices against the injustice which has been done to the memory [Pg 6] of this great Englishman ”

“ As a philosopher, Bacon, who beheld all things from a cliff, thus viewed the intellectual globe, dilating his sight to survey the whole of science, and contracting it so that the minutest object could not escape him.
Sweet as such speculations were to such a mind: pleasing as the labour must have been in surmounting the steeps: delightful to tarry upon them, and painful to quit them, he did not suffer contemplation to absorb his mind; but, as a statesman, he was ever in action, ever advancing the welfare of his country. These opposite exertions were the necessary result of his peculiar mind ”

“ But it was the justest censure of Parliament that was these two hundred years."
Francis Bacon was a man of his time, and it was a time of gift-giving and gift-taking. He was ostentatious and lived always beyond his means. He kept a large retinue of servants and was too busy and too careless of detail to look to them closely. All this made him an easy prey to facility, which he describes as the fourth vice of authority,—"As for facility, it is worse than bribery; for bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or idle respects lead a man, he shall never be without." ”

“ Francis Bacon was born at York-House, in the Strand, on the 22d of January, 1560. He was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and of Anne, a daughter of the learned and contemplative Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward the Sixth. Of Sir Nicholas, it has been said, that he was a man full of wit and wisdom, a learned lawyer, and a true gentleman; of a mind the most comprehensive to surround the merits of a cause ”

“ No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of all men, Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns ”

“ Similarly we find Francis Bacon, in the preface to his Essayes of 1597, excusing himself for the publication on the ground that surreptitious adventurers were at work, and ‘to labour the staie of them had bin troublesome and subiect to interpretation’. Evidently he had come to a compromise, of which the Stationers’ Register retains traces in the cancellation by a court of an entry of the Essayes to Richard Serger, and a re-entry to H. Hooper, the actual publisher, ‘under the handes of Master Francis Bacon, Master Doctor Stanhope, Master Barlowe, and Master Warden Lawson’. ”

“ There are tricks of phrasing and other peculiarities which enable certain literary productions to be identified as the work of one man. Some of the finest Elizabethan literature [Pg 138] is to be found in the prefaces and dedications in these books.
The theory now put forth is that Francis Bacon was directing the production of a great quantity of the Elizabethan literature, and in every book in the production of which he was interested, he caused to be inserted one of these devices. He kept the blocks in his own custody ”

“ at which time he was attended by the great Secretary of Nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and by the ever-memorable and learned Dr. ”

“ The social character of the early association of the three young men—Essex was the youngest—is indicated by three jeux d' esprit from Francis Bacon's pen, his early masques or 'devices.' Two of these were 'triumphs' offered by the Earl of Essex to the Queen, one in November, 1592, and the other in 1595; the third was a Gray's Inn revel of 1594. Bacon furnished the 'discourses,' or texts, and the essay Of Masques and Triumphs grew out of this practical experience of the stage. It is interesting if only as showing that when Bacon turned his mind to what he calls 'toys,' they are no longer toys. ”

“ The result, however, was, that hurt by this letter, she indignantly and somewhat coarsely refused his suit, saying, "that an unruly beast ought to be stinted of his provender." After a month's suspense, it was notified to him that the patent was confided to trustees for the queen's use.
In the storm that now (October, 1600) gathered round Essex, the real state of his mind revealed itself. "When I expected," he said, "a harvest, a tempest has arisen to me; if I be wanting to myself, my friends, and my country, it is long of others, not of myself ”

“ But Francis Bacon was abandoned, and perhaps opposed by the colleague and nearest friend of his father, the brother-in-law of his mother, his maternal uncle, Lord Burleigh, then Prime Minister, who feared for his son the rivalry of his all-talented nephew. It is a trick common to envy and detraction, to convert a man’s very qualities into their concomitant defects ”

“ Ben Jonson’s views may be gathered from his Discoveries (1641) where he tells that Bacon was “one of the greatest men ... that had beene in many Ages ... perform’d that in our tongue which may be compar’d or preferr’d to, either insolent Greece or haughtie Rome.... So that hee may be nam’d and stand as the marke and akme of our language.... In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength: for Greatnesse he could not want.” Francis Bacon then was the mysterious poet of Time Vindicated. That Bacon was not the only concealed poet of those days is probably true. ”

“ And, in a word, it seemed that Nature had exempted from the ordinary frailities of men him whom she had marked out to deal with their crimes. All these good qualities made him the darling of the people and prized by the great ones of the State. But when it seemed that nothing could destroy his position, Fortune made clear that she did not yet wish to abandon her character for instability, and that Bacon had too much worth to remain so long prosperous. ”

“ Bacon, unmoved by the prejudice, by which during his life he was resisted, or the scurrilous libels by which he was assailed, went right onward in the advancement of knowledge, the only effectual mode of decomposing error. Where he saw that truth was likely to be received, he presented her in all her divine loveliness. When he could not directly attack error, when the light was too strong for weak eyes, he never omitted an opportunity to expose it. Truth is often silent as fearing her judge, never as suspecting her cause. ”

“ The spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad, a spirit admirably compounded of audacity and sobriety. There was a strong persuasion that the whole world was full of secrets of high moment to the happiness of man, and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with the key which, rightly used, would give access to them. ”

“ For his second wife he married Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, by whom he had two sons, Anthony and Francis. It is of more importance for the present purpose to know what type of man was the father of Francis Bacon. The author of the "Arte of English Poesie" (1589) relates that he came upon Sir Nicholas sitting in his gallery with the works of Quintillian before him, and adds: "In deede he was a most eloquent man and of rare learning and wisdome as ever I knew England to breed, and one that joyed as much in learned men and good witts." ”

“ His high birth and elegant taste unfitted Bacon for the common walks of life, and by surrounding him with artificial wants, compelled him to exertions uncongenial to his nature: but the love of truth, of his country, and an undying spirit of improvement, ever in the train of knowledge, ill suited him for the trammels in which he was expected to move. Through the whole of his life he endeavoured to burst his bonds, and escape from law and politics, from mental slavery to intellectual liberty. ”