Venius, where either the attribute distinguishing the moral quality to be personified is so dark and far-fetched as to be absolutely unintelligible without explanation, or where it is of a nature unfit for the purposes of art. Those who are acquainted with the works of Rubens (the pupil of Venius), to whom Spenser has been so well compared by Campbell, will be at no loss to understand our meaning.

Like many great poets of ancient and modern times, Spenser sought to give vigour and solemnity to his language by a plentiful adoption of archaisms, words, and expressions consecrated by their having been employed by older authors. Virgil gave an air of antiquity and simplicity to the Eneid by using multitudes of venerable words employed by Ennius. Spenser imitated Chaucer; just as La Fontaine gave naïveté and edge to his sly satire by an infusion of the admirable expressions of Villon and Rabelais: and we hardly agree with those critics who have complained of our poet's freedom in this respect. If the rough but time-honoured stones taken from the Cyclopean walls of old Ennius be allowed to give dignity to the graceful Ionic edifice of Virgil, we do not see why the simple diction of Chaucer should not harmonize well with the rich elegance of the 'Faery Queen' the rather that the latter work is, after all, a Tale. of Chivalry-a Romance.

CHAPTER IV.

BACON.

His Birth and Education-View of the State of Europe'-His Career-Impeached for Corruption-Death-His Character-State of Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century-Its Corruptions and Defects-Bacon's System-Not a Discoverer-The New Philosophy-Analysis of the Instauratio: I. De Augmentis; II. Novum Organum; III. Sylva Sylvarum; IV. Scala Intel. lectus; V. Prodromi; VI. Philosophia Secunda-The Baconian LogicStyle-His Minor Works.

FRANCIS BACON, the Luther of Philosophy, was born in London on the 22d of January, 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, a distinguished lawyer and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The subject of our present remarks was sent, while yet a boy of thirteen, to the University of Cambridge; and though it appears to have been customary at this period to begin the public part of education much earlier than is now usual, we can hardly be wrong in deeming that Bacon must have given proofs of a most precocious intellect, when we learn that when hardly sixteen he had formed distinct notions respecting the defects of the Aristotelian

system of philosophy, and had no doubt already conceived the outline of that gigantic plan of destruction and innovation which has made his name immortal. After remaining four years at Cambridge he went abroad, and travelled in France, probably intending to pass several years in acquiring practical experience in the various courts of the continent; but the death of his father, in 1579, suddenly recalled him to England; not however before he had given proof of the success with which he had employed his time in foreign countries, by the production of a most sagacious and valuable essay On the State of Europe.' The political knowledge exhibited in this little treatise, and the profound wisdom and acuteness displayed in it, would astonish us, as the work of one hardly entered upon the period of adolescence, if any manifestation of intellect could surprise us on the part of this astonishing person. It is obvious that he had already felt the mysterious vocation of genius-that secret oracle which points out to the highest order of minds the true path which Providence intended them to pursue, a path from which they never deviate with impunity. Bacon so strongly felt that the true bent of his character would lead him to consecrate his future life to sublime and solitary meditation, and was so proudly and justly confident in the yet unexrcised strength of his intellect, that he entreated Burleigh, the powerful favourite and Chancellor, to procure him from the state some provision which would enable him to prosecute his studies in uninterrupted leisure.

Burleigh, however, refused to accede to a proposition which must have appeared then, as it would now, so extraordinary and unusual; and the young philosopher was obliged to devote himself to the study of the law, which he pursued with industry and success. Bacon's after career affords a melancholy example of the danger of neglecting that inward voice which calls, as we have said a few lines back, the sublimer intellects among mankind to the true sphere of their exertions, whispering to the mental, as the Dæmon of Socrates to the moral, ear the true direction of the course.

He

While studying the law in Gray's Inn, Bacon sketched out the first plan of the Instauration,' and probably had decided upon the general purport and arrangement of the great works which contain his conclusions. The rest of his personal career may be described in a few words: the task is a melancholy and humiliating one. rapidly passed through the inferior dignities of the law and of the state, being appointed queen's counsel in 1590, and in 1593 chosen member of parliament for the county of Middlesex. Both in the courts of law and in the House of Commons he was distinguished for the vastness of his knowledge and for the brilliancy of his eloquence; but he was also notorious, even in that age, for his subserviency to the most iniquitous despotism of the court. Having on one occasion (we select a single example from among many) advo

cated before the Commons, with all the power which marked his mind, a measure of a popular tendency, he was weak enough, on the first intimation of his independence having displeased the sovereign, to renounce, with shameless facility, the convictions which he had just before been asserting, and even to apologise for having entertained them. But this great man was reserved for yet deeper degra dation. His political conduct continued to present a worthy continuation to this lamentable commencement. Obeying every fickle current of court favour, he first deserted the party of the Cecils (i. e. of his first protector and kinsman Burleigh) for that of the unfortunate Essex, who, failing in obtaining for his new proselyte the dignity of attorney-general, rewarded his apostacy with the gift of an estate at Twickenham worth two thousand pounds.

Bacon's attachment to Essex was as mercenary as had been his adherence to Burleigh, and, on the disgrace and impeachment of the Earl, the great lawyer showed a base eagerness to aid the overthrow of the unhappy and illustrious victim, exhibiting a ferocious violence hardly exceeded in the long and black annals of mercenary tribunals and subservient advocates. In order to gratify the court, Bacon crowned his apostacy by composing a 'Declaration of the Treasons and Practices of the Earl of Essex.' In the foul descent from baseness to baseness which marks the whole of Bacon's political career, we cannot find any extenuating circumstances, except indeed such as transfer his guilt from deliberate depravity to a servile calculation of interest. It is consoling indeed to reflect that there has been in no part of human conduct so great an improvement in point of morality as in the change which has taken place in political relations from the sixteenth century to the present day. The fatal prevalence of that atrocious and infernal policy which is systematised with such a hideous minuteness in the pages of Machiavelli, had extended itself from the petty Italian states, where it first appeared, to all the countries of Europe; and that dreadful sophism that "we may do evil that good may come" had destroyed the natural barriers between right and wrong in public affairs. It is but a poor excuse to say that Bacon was no worse than many of his contemporaries; still less to attempt to palliate ingratitude and cowardice by alleging that Bacon deserted his benefactors and attacked the fallen without the inducement of passion and animosity: the avarice, the ambition, the cool calculation of profit, which was the cause of such wretched servility, is certainly not less able to excite our contempt, than a similar conduct dictated by sincere hatred or a natural depravity would be capable of inspiring us with detestation. The truth is that Bacon, though not personally avaricious, was cursed with that passion for state, splendour, and magnificence which is so frequently found in a highly imaginative character; and being always plunged in difficulties, he took, with that unscrupulousness too common at the period when he lived, the shortest way to supply his incessant needs.

In 1603, at the beginning of the reign of James I., Bacon was knighted, and appointed successively king's counsel, solicitor-general, and attorney-general (the last dignity having been attained in 1613), and he fully justified whatever confidence the court could have placed in his subserviency and pliability: so far indeed had he forgotten the great principles of the law whose unworthy minister he was, that he assisted in inflicting on a certain Paacham, an aged and obscure cler gyman, accused of treason, the cruelties of the torture, in order to extort a confession by a means in no way countenanced by the Eng. lish constitution. It was at this period that Bacon married the daughter of a wealthy alderman, and seems in this, as well as so many other acts of his life, to have consulted interest. He still continued to advance in his career of ambition, and in 1619 reached the highest dignity to which an English subject can aspire, having been named in that year Lord High Chancellor, with the title of Baron Verulam. This rank he afterwards exchanged, by the protection of Villiers the vain and haughty favourite of James- for the still more exalted style of Viscount St. Alban's. In this advance he probably received from Villiers the hire for some new act of obsequiousness to the favourite's power, for he allowed the minister to interfere in and control the exercise of his high judicial functions- —a crime of which he was accused before parliament, and of which (together with many minor instances of corruption) he proclaimed himself guilty in a confession written with his own hand. On being asked, by a committee sent for the purpose from the House of Lords, whether he confessed the authenticity and the truth of this humiliating avowal, he is reported to have said, with an expression of sorrow and repentance which under any other circumstances would have been deeply touching, "It is my act, my hand, my heart; I beseech your lordships, press not upon a broken reed." Being fully convicted of these grave charges, he was deprived by parliament of the office he had so unworthily prostituted, and sent, with the dark stain of a just condemnation upon him, to finish his life in retirement and disgrace.

He retired to his estates, and, devoting the remainder of his life to those grand speculations which have survived his follies and his crimes, and let us hope also to repentance for his past errors, he died in 1626, deeply in debt, leaving, as he says himself, with a noble sense of the services he had rendered to the human race, "his name and memory to foreign nations, and to mine own country after some time is passed over."

It is singular enough that the death of this great philosopher should have been caused by a cold caught in performing a physical experiment, and that he should have been, not the apostle only, but also the martyr of science. It is related that, travelling by Highgate, near London, ir wintry weather, he was struck with the idea

that flesh might be preserved by means of snow as well as by salting: he bought a fowl, and, descending from his coach, assisted with his own hands in making an immediate trial of the project by stuffing the hen with snow; and in doing this he is said to have received a chill, which, aggravated by his being immediately put into a damp bed at Lord Arundel's house, caused his death in a very few days. But even when his end was approaching, the great philosopher, with 'the ruling passion strong in death," could not forbear communicating to a friend, in a letter which he dictated, being too ill to write himself, that his experiment "had succeeded excellently."

A monument was erected over his grave by his faithful friend and disciple, Sir Thomas Meautys, who was buried at his master's feet: and this monument, executed after the design of Sir Henry Wotton, a man imbued with a taste for Italian art, has a peculiar interest as being a portrait of the philosopher, who is represented in his usual dress seated in an attitude of profound meditation; and the work bears the appropriate inscription, "Sic sedebat."

Of Bacon's personal manners and demeanour all that we know is calculated to give us a most extraordinary idea of the charms of his conversation and the amiability of his character. Ben Jonson, himself so remarkable for his own wonderful stores of learning and powers of conversation, and who was, too, no very indulgent critic, has expressed his admiration of Bacon's eloquence and ready wit. It is consoling to find that, while the conduct of the politician presents so many points for the severest reprobation of the moralist, the character of the man was as attractive as his intellect was sublime. Bacon was a most profuse and generous master to his dependants; and his flagitious avidity for money may be as justly attributed to an easiness of temper, preventing him from being able to say "no" to a petitioner, and to those habits of inattention to small matters which so often accompany the literary character, as to the darker vices to which they might be ascribed by severer judges. Osborn, a contemporary writer, most probably gives the result of personal experience in the following description of Bacon's conversational powers:-"In all companies he did appear a good proficient, if not a master, in those arts entertained for the subject of every one's discourse. His most casual talk deserveth to be written. As I have been told, his earliest copies required no great labour to render them competent for the nicest judgment. I have heard him entertain a country lord in he proper terms relating to horses and dogs; and at another time out-cant a London chirurgeon. Nor did an easy falling into argument appear less an ornament in him. The ears of his hearers received more gratification than trouble; and were no less sorry when he came to conclude, than displeased with any who did interrupt him." The learned and amusing Howell calls him "a man of recondite science, born for the salvation of learning, and, I think