Thomas Babington

“ Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, a renowned English historian, essayist, poet and statesman, was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800, and died at Kensington, December 28, 1859. His most famous works are: “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and the “History of England.”
Behold! in Liberty’s unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.
“Centennial Ode,” Stanza 22,—Charles Sprague.
Charles Sprague, a noted American poet, was born in Boston, October 26, 1791, and died there, January 22, 1875. He wrote: “The Family Meeting,” “The Winged Worshippers,” and “Curiosity.” ”

“ Indeed, many longish books, like Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship and Ruskin's Modern Painters, are, in spirit, rather literary essays than formal treatises. The most popular essayist and historian of his time was Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) , an active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor. He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of Commons, as member for Calne, for Leeds, and for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished part in the debates on the Reform bill of 1832. ”

“ Babington in his stead; for with him conscience never seems to have stood in the way of preferment. Nor had Dr. Babington any objection to heaping together a plurality of livings and offices. Between 1557 and 1560 he was rector of at least four parishes, Milton Keynes, Twyford, Sherrington Aldworth,and Adstock ”

“ Subsequently Anthony travelled in France and made the acquaintance of Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan, Mary Stuart's emissaries at Paris, who were vigorously plotting with Spain in their mistress's behalf. According to a passage in Leti's Vita di Sisto V (iii. 103, ed. 1821) , Babington extended his journey to Rome, and was accompanied by many fellow-members of the Roman catholic secret society. Queen Mary's friends abroad evidently marked Babington out, while on the continent, as a fitting leader of a catholic insurrection in England. ”

“ MACAULAY, MRS. CATHERINE (SAWBRIDGE) (1731-1791) . —Dau. of a landed proprietor of Kent, was an advocate of republicanism, and a sympathiser with the French Revolution. She wrote a History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Elevation of the House of Hanover (8 vols., 1763-83) , which had great popularity in its day, some critics, e.g. Horace Walpole, placing it above Hume. Though a work of no real research or authority, it is in the main well written.
MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD (1800-1859) . —Historian, essayist, and statesman, s. ”

“ HABINGTON, ABINGTON, or ABINGDON, EDWARD (1553?–1586) , one of the conspirators in the plot formed by Anthony Babington [see Babington, Anthony] , was eldest son of John Habington (1515-1581) of Hindlip, Worcestershire, by his wife Catherine, daughter of John Wykes. Thomas Habington [q. v.] was a younger brother. His father held the office of under-treasurer or 'cofferer' to Queen Elizabeth (Camden, Annales, ii. 476; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. p. 637 a and b) . ”

“ In any other young man, indeed in any other man, this would have been a ridiculous flight of presumption. There have been thousands of better mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, physicians, botanists, mineralogists, than Bacon. No man would go to Bacon’s works to learn any particular science or art, any more than he would go to a twelve-inch globe in order to find his way from Kennington turnpike to Clapham Common. ”

“ Every age produces those links between the man and the baboon. Every age is fertile of Oldmixons, of Kenricks, and of Antony Pasquins. But was it for Bacon so to prostitute his intellect? Could he not feel that, while he rounded and pointed some period dictated by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form to some slander invented by the dastardly malignity of Cobham; he was not sinning merely against his friend’s honour and his own? Could he not feel that letters, eloquence, philosophy, were all degraded in his degradation? ”

“ 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. ”

“ To give to the human mind a direction which it shall retain for ages is the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits. It cannot, therefore, be uninteresting to inquire what was the moral and intellectual constitution which enabled Bacon to exercise so vast an influence on the world.
In the temper of Bacon,—we speak of Bacon the philosopher, not of Bacon the lawyer and politician,—there was a singular union of audacity and sobriety. ”

“ Felton and Bellingham reposed trust in no human being; and they were therefore able to accomplish their evil purposes. But Babington's conspiracy against Elizabeth, Fawkes's conspiracy against James, Gerard's conspiracy against Cromwell, the Rye House conspiracy, the Cato Street conspiracy, were all discovered, frustrated and punished. In truth such a conspiracy is here exposed to equal danger from the good and from the bad qualities of the conspirators. Scarcely any Englishman, not utterly destitute of conscience and honour, will engage in a plot for slaying an unsuspecting fellow creature ”

“ Bacon was, to say nothing of his highest claims to respect, a gentleman, a nobleman, a scholar, a statesman, a man of the first consideration in society, a man far advanced in years. Is it possible to believe that such a man would, to gratify any human being, irreparably ruin his own character by his own act? ”

“ Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato’s opinion, would not be tolerated in a well regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon’s plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just and the unjust. In Plato’s opinion man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion philosophy was made for man ”

“ Bacon’s love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man over matter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The real explanation of all this is perfectly obvious; and nothing but a partiality amounting to a ruling passion could cause anybody to miss it. The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness his high civil honours, and the far higher honours gained by his intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten the right. ”

“ But it is certain that the general opinion was pronounced against Bacon in a manner not to be misunderstood. Soon after his marriage he put forth a defence of his conduct, in the form of a Letter to the Earl of Devon. This tract seems to us to prove only the exceeding badness of a cause for which such talents could do so little.
It is not probable that Bacon’s Defence had much effect on his contemporaries. But the unfavourable impression which his conduct had made appears to have been gradually effaced. Indeed it must be some very peculiar cause that can make a man like him long unpopular. ”

“ A good and wise man would doubtless disapprove of the arbitrary measures of Elizabeth. Put would he have really served the interests of political liberty, if he had put faith in the professions of the Romish casuists, joined their party, and taken a share in Northumberland’s revolt, or in Babington’s conspiracy? Would he not have been assisting to establish a far worse tyranny than that which he was trying to put down? In the same manner, a good and wise man would doubtless see very much to condemn in the conduct of the Church of England under the Stuarts. ”

“ Bacon was the ablest public man then living in Europe. He was near sixty years old. He had thought much, and to good purpose, on the general principles of law. He had for many years borne a part daily in the administration of justice. It was impossible that a man with a tithe of his sagacity and experience should not have known that a judge who suffers friends or patrons to dictate his decrees violates the plainest rules of duty. ”

“ Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of one of the most magnificent of English libraries, was among those stubborn Conservatives who considered the hopes with which Bacon looked forward to the future destinies of the human race as utterly chimerical, and who regarded with distrust and aversion the innovating spirit of the new schismatics in philosophy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That Bacon was altogether mistaken as to this point will now hardly be disputed. His philosophy has flourished during two hundred years, and has produced none of this levelling. The interval between a man of talents and a dunce is as wide as ever; and is never more clearly discernible than when they engage in researches which require the constant use of induction. ”

“ But fortune placed him in a situation in which his weakness covered him with disgrace, and in which his accomplishments brought him no honour. In a college, much eccentricity and childishness would have been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all that learning could do for him on the throne was to make people think him a pedant as well as a fool.
Bacon was favourably received at Court; and soon found that his chance of promotion was not diminished by the death of the Queen. ”

“ But she survived to be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her grave. ”

“ It is not probable that a man of Bacon’s nice observation would speak in Parliament exactly as he spoke in the Court of Queen’s Bench. But the graces of manner and language must, to a great extent, have been common between the Queen’s Counsel and the Knight of the Shire.
Bacon tried to play a very difficult game in politics. He wished to be at once a favourite at Court and popular with the multitude. If any man could have succeeded in this attempt, a man of talents so rare, of judgment so prematurely ripe, of temper so calm, and of manners so plausible, might have been expected to succeed. ”

“ We will give very short specimens of Bacon’s two styles. In 1597, he wrote thus: “Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdom without them, and won by observation. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, 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 ”

“ It was not hard for a man of his powers to acquire that very moderate portion of technical knowledge which, when joined to quickness, tact, wit, ingenuity, eloquence, and knowledge of the world, is sufficient to raise an advocate to the highest professional eminence. The general opinion appears to have been that which was on one occasion expressed by Elizabeth. “Bacon,” said she, “hath a great wit and much learning; but in law showeth to the uttermost of his knowledge, and is not deep.” ”

“ Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a valetudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines more palatable, to invent repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows on which he might sleep soundly ”

“ We repeat that we dispute neither the ingenuity nor the accuracy of the theory contained in the second book of the Novum Organum; but we think that Bacon greatly overrated its utility. We conceive that the inductive process, like many other processes, is not likely to be better performed merely because men know how they perform it. William Tell would not have been one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that his arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the attraction of the earth. ”