LORD BACON.

Among the many great names which England boasts of, few have such claims to her gratitude as that ofFrancis Bacon. For besides the unparalleled services which science received from him, to hisoriginalgenius we may indirectly ascribe many, if not most, of those large improvements in the arts of life which have raised this nation to the highest place among the countries of the world.

Francis Bacon was the second son, by a second marriage, of Sir Nicholas Bacon, twenty years Keeper of the Great Seal in the reign of Elizabeth, and Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, the preceptor of Edward the Sixth. He was born at York House or Place, in the Strand, January 22, 1561. In 1573 he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he speedily acquired more than the ordinary learning of the age, becoming deeply versed in classical literature. Although taught to look up to Aristotle as to a writer whom it was almost heresy to question, yet at that early age he began to perceive where his philosophy failed, and to conceive the reorganization of a purer and better system. “His exceptions against that great philosopher not being founded on the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy only for disputations and contentions, but barren in the production of works for the benefit of the life of man, in which mind he continued to his dying day.”—(Dr. Rawley’s Life of Bacon.) His intellectual efforts were ever after bent on working out and declaring these novel views, of which, through many modifying and expanding minds, we now reap the fruits.

In 1576 he was entered as a Student in the Society of Gray’s Inn,with the view of keeping his terms for the bar. Before, however, he commenced his legal studies, his father sent him to France, in the suite of the Queen’s Ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet. During his residence abroad he wrote his first work, which was not intended originally for publication, but was improved and printed after some years. It is called, A short View of the Present State of Europe. It derives its chief interest from having been written at the early age of nineteen; but the civil and political views are sound, and the composition graceful.

In 1579 Sir Nicholas Bacon died, leaving Francis but a small share of his fortune, in consequence of family circumstances, which we need not here relate. Finding his private means insufficient for his support, he returned to England, and commenced the study of the Law, to which he applied himself with great diligence.

He did not, however, suffer the demands of his profession to interfere with those pursuits, in which he was fully persuaded that his great strength lay. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight he produced a work, which he called the Greatest Birth of Time. It was never published, and is lost in its separate form, but the substance of it remains in his Instauration.

In 1582 Bacon was called to the bar, and in 1588 was chosen Reader or Lecturer by the Society of which he was a member, and the same year he received the only mark of honour conferred upon him in the reign of Elizabeth, in the title of Counsel Learned in the Law Extraordinary. It seems strange that Bacon, who was the nephew of the Lord High Treasurer Burleigh, and cousin of the principal Secretary of State Sir Robert Cecil, should never have been able to obtain any office in the Court of Elizabeth. The reason possibly was that he had early attached himself to the faction of the Earl of Essex, who, though the Queen’s greatest favourite, was in constant opposition to her ministers. This unfortunate nobleman exerted himself to the utmost, at the extreme risk of offending: his testy mistress, to secure for Bacon the place of Solicitor General, as the first step of legal advancement; but he was unsuccessful. The ministers declared their belief that Bacon was merely a theorist, and that his talents were not of a nature fitted for practical purposes: perhaps there was no small mixture of jealousy in this declaration. To make some amends to his friend for this disappointment, Essex gave him an estate (which he afterwards sold at an under price for 1300l.) out of his private fortune: one of many kindnesses which Bacon too ill requited.

In 1592 Bacon published a defence of the government, in answer to a libel, in consequence of which he received the reversion of the register’s office to the Star-chamber, which he did not enjoy till twenty years after. In the Parliament of 1593 he was chosen member for the county of Middlesex, a proof that his public talents were not unappreciated by his countrymen. In the House he shone as an orator of the first class, his speeches were extremely elegant and forcible, and his wit so well blended with good sense and winning manners, as to secure to him the favourable attention of that assembly. He was frequently employed by the government to defend their measures in Parliament, which he did with consummate prudence, but he still went unrewarded.

In 1596 Bacon composed, but did not then print, his Maxims of the Law; and in the year following he published his first edition of Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral; the work by which he is best known to the general reader. In the trial of the Earl of Essex for high treason (1601) Bacon appeared as counsel for the Crown; and after the execution of that unfortunate nobleman, the Queen directed him to compose and publish An Account of the Earl of Essex’s Treasons. His apparent zeal on this occasion excited the indignation of the people, among whom Essex was much beloved, and he was obliged to apologize for his conduct, by a letter to the Earl of Devonshire, one of the firm partisans of Essex.

The death of Elizabeth, which soon followed that of her favourite, revived Bacon’s hopes of advancement. He applied himself early to obtain the favour of the new king; and a proclamation, which he drew up on James’s arrival, though never published, did him great service. He was introduced to the King at Whitehall, and was knighted, July 23, 1603. In the following year his services to the court in Parliament, and elsewhere, were rewarded by the title of King’s Counsel, with a stipend of forty, and an additional pension of sixty pounds.

But though he seemed in the high road to preferment, Bacon had powerful enemies to obstruct his advancement. Sir Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burleigh, created Earl of Salisbury by James I., though Bacon’s cousin by the maternal side, had always shown himself averse to his kinsman’s preferment, apparently from jealousy of his uncommon talents. Between Bacon and the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, there existed a more violent hostility, arising from various causes. Sir Edward was successful early, Bacon late, and the power which Coke obtained, he used to depress his antagonist. Theyhad both been suitors of the rich Lady Hatton, Lord Burleigh’s grand-daughter, whom Coke married; and, as a farther exasperation of their enmity, in that celebrated dispute, which occurred in 1616, between the courts of King’s Bench and Chancery, “Whether the Chancery, after judgment given in the Courts of Law, was prohibited from giving relief upon matters arising in equity, which the judges at law could not determine or relieve,” Bacon had a leading share in obtaining that decision in favour of the privileges of the Court of Chancery, which has had so great an influence upon the jurisdiction of courts.

In 1605 Bacon published his first specimen of The Advancement of Learning. His view of the service he was doing to science, is shewn in a letter to Lord Salisbury, sent with a copy of this work, where he says, that “in this book he was contented to awake better spirits, being himself like a bell-ringer, who is the first to call others to church.”

The following year he married Alice, the daughter of Benedict Barnham, alderman, a lady of large fortune, who outlived him many years, and by whom he had no children. The year 1607 produced him his first solid success. Lord Salisbury had arisen to such power and confidence with his master, that he no longer feared the talents of Bacon, and with his concurrence, if not by his means, Bacon was at length appointed Solicitor-General, which, besides its future promise, was an office worth 5000l.or 6000l.a-year to him in private practice. Though now a busy man, and constantly engaged in affairs of the Crown, he nevertheless found time to write and publish his Wisdom of the Ancients, a work of great elegance and profound learning, but not one to which the present age owes much. In 1611 he was appointed joint judge of the Marshal’s court, and immediately afterwards Attorney-General, on the promotion of Lord Coke to the office of Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. Bacon did not attach himself to the fortunes of the reigning favourite Somerset, and when that lord and his countess were brought to trial for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, he had the management of the case for the Crown, which he so conducted as to keep himself out of the disgrace into which Coke and others fell with the King, on account of this critical affair.

He was farther advanced to the office of Lord Keeper in March, 1617, on the resignation of the Lord Chancellor Viscount Brackley, and the same year sat at the head of the council-board, as manager of the King’s affairs, during the absence of the monarch and his new favouriteBuckingham in Scotland. On the return of the King, Bacon was made Lord High Chancellor, Jan. 4, 1618; and in July following he was created Baron of Verulam. In 1620 he sent to the King hisNovum Organum, or ‘New Instrument of Logic, better calculated for the real progress of science than that of Aristotle.’

The next year Bacon received the title of Viscount St. Albans, and opened the Parliament of February, 1621, the most honoured, and among the most powerful subjects of the realm. But this parliament was fatal to him. James had not called this assembly together for more than ten years, except for the short session of two months in 1614, and during that period had been subsisting on the unconstitutional resources of benevolences, and the sale of monopolies. Almost the first act of this parliament was the inquiry into abuses, and more particularly those of the courts of justice, and the sale of patents. As all patents had to pass the seal, it was natural that the conduct of the Lord Keeper should be looked into, and this led to farther inquiry concerning the administration of justice in the Chancellor’s court. The chairman of a committee appointed to conduct this inquiry, brought up two charges of bribery against Bacon. This alarmed James and his favourite, and the parliament was adjourned for three weeks, in the hope that the affair would blow over. But during this recess, twenty-two cases of bribery were charged upon the Chancellor, and a deputation from the lower House waited on him to know whether he would confess or refute them. In a few days he chose to make confession, and threw himself on the mercy of his peers. His confession was not thought ample enough, and too extenuatory; and he was obliged to make one still more full, in writing, upon which a deputation of thirteen Lords was sent to him, to know whether it were really his. His answer to them was, “My Lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart; I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” At the petition of the Peers, the seals were sequestrated, Bacon was deprived of his speakership and of his seat in Parliament, and farther was fined 40,000l., sentenced to imprisonment during the King’s pleasure, debarred from entering the verge of the Court, and declared incapable of holding any office in future. This penalty was considerably mitigated by James, who confined him but for a short space in the Tower, allowed him to make over the fine to assignees of his own choosing, and, for the settling of his affairs, gave him leave to reside for some time within the verge of the Court. After some years, at the earnest solicitation of Bacon, “that his royal master would be pleased to wipe out his disgrace from the page of history by his princely pardon,” he received the favour he so much desired.

At the age of sixty-one, Bacon retired to his country-seat at Gorhambury, having an income of about 2500l.His debts amounted to about 30,000l., of which he liquidated a third before his death.

Apart from the noise and stir of life, Bacon more sedulously bent his mind to the cultivation of philosophy, his true field of labour. With the exception of his Reign of Henry the Seventh, and a tract written against the match between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain, the five last years of his life were spent in making philosophical experiments, and in moulding his works to a more perfect form. It was his great wish that what he had written should be translated into the general language of learning, Latin; consequently much of his time during this period was employed in translating himself, or revising the translations of his friends. His chief labour, however, was the reduction of his Instauration to a most highly finished state of aphorisms. He took incredible pains with this great performance. His biographer and editor, Dr. Rawley, declares that this work was revised and corrected, almost re-written, at least ten times, and finally leftunfinished: for a book which taught what was known in the world, and wherein that knowledge was defective or pretended; which professed to teach a new system, by which general laws should be made for the foundation of true science; and which pointed out what remained to be known, was indeed rather the undertaking of many lives of manhood, than a few years of one suffering under a load of debt, disgrace, infirmity, and age. The peculiarity of Bacon’s philosophical doctrine may be expressed in few words. He found that the beliefs of learned men (apart from religious beliefs) rested upon the authority of one unquestionably great intelligence, Aristotle, who had invented laws of science, unfounded except in the speculations of his own mind, and many of them misunderstood by his idolizers. These laws were given or made, and facts were supposed to follow from them necessarily and without question. But Bacon proposed to found his general laws on actual experiments. So that when by a multitude of facts arising from this course of proceeding, laws should be produced which fairly accounted for phenomena, the application of such laws might farther become the confirmation of fresh and, it may be, more difficult, combinations. It is curious that Bacon’s own experiments should, for the most part, be so signally frivolous and inconclusive. This may be accounted for, in some measure, by the novelty of the method,—his own defence, for he was aware of the fact, is, “that he did not like to throw away any experiment, however seeming foolish, in case that some spark of truth should be contained in it, or suggested by it.” But he certainly didnot possess the power of applying his own principles to practice, and far better examples of the inductive powers may be found, even in the labours of his predecessors, than any which his own writings afford.

After having spent five years in this labour for posterity, on the 9th of April, 1626, Bacon died at the age of 66, at the house of Lord Arundel, in Highgate, on his way to London. A week’s acute illness carried him to his grave. He was buried at Old Verulam, and for a long time no “stone told where he lay,” till the affection of an old servant erected a marble monument to the memory of his noble master. His name was well known among the continental nations, and he himself was understood and appreciated by them, to a far greater extent than by his fellow-countrymen. Some allusion to this is found in his will, in which, after having commended his soul to God, and his body to the dust, he proceeds, prophetically, to “bequeath his name and fame to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over.”

The character of Bacon has been held up as an extraordinary anomaly, as containing the extremes of strength and weakness. Pope was pleased to call him

“The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,”

probably for the sake of the powerful contrast presented in the line. That his great strength lay in his intellectual powers there is no doubt, but that his moral power was slight enough for him to deserve the character of “meanest of mankind,” is not to be believed. The wrong he did to Essex is perhaps the strongest stain that remains on his memory. The charge of bribery is not so heinous in him as it appears to be at first sight. He says (and though it be a sophism yet it has some weight,) “that he never sold injustice,” nor did he: his decrees were pronounced without regard to the parties concerned, and were none of them reversed; moreover, judicial bribery was not thought so vicious then as it is now; in France, it was open and daily. Of the twenty-two charges brought against him, five only were really for bribery, that is, while the suit was pending. The rest were presents. He had lived in want for the greater portion of his life, and becoming suddenly rich, and full of various business, he was naturally careless of expenses, and left a great deal more than he ought to have done in the hands of his servants; who lived upon him so extravagantly, that on passing through his hall (when they rose at his presence) he said, “Sit down, my masters, your rise hath been my fall.” There is also every reason to believe that he was induced to suppress his defence by the intrigues of James, and his favourite Buckingham; to whose escape he had the weaknessto let himself be made a sacrifice. He has been accused of cringing to this powerful favourite in less important particulars; but his letters are no more than a type of the usual style of an inferior to a superior in the Court in which he lived. He fell upon hard times, first the courtier of a princess whose thirst of praise and requisition of humility was unbounded, then the courtier and servant of a king who all but believed himself to be a god. The most marvellous fact of Bacon’s character is, that he who knew men so well, and whose insight into their feelings and motives was so clear, should have been so blind as to remain totally ignorant, as is apparent from all his letters and writings, of that youthful spirit of freedom which in the subsequent reign sprung into such vigorous manhood. But he seems to have been “the king’s true chancellor,” and to have believed most firmly in that Divine right for which James argued and his son died.

Bacon’s private character was generous and humane almost to a fault. His manners were exceedingly winning, and his method of drawing from all sorts of men the information belonging to their separate callings was wonderful. He was constitutionally timid, and was always in weak health. His person was slightly above the common height, his countenance most dignified, and intellectually commanding.

[Statue of Lord Bacon in St. Michael’s Church, St. Alban’s.]

Engraved by W. Holl.SIR WALTER SCOTT.From a Bust by Chantrey.Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight & Co. Ludgate Street.

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