LIFE OF BACON. CHAPTER I. such parents, but also at that happy time "when learning had made her third circuit; when the art FROM HIS BIRTH TILL THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER. of printing gave books with a liberal hand to men 1560 to 1580. 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; of a memory to recollect its least circumstance;1 of the deepest search into affairs of any man at the council table, and of a personal dignity so well suited to his other excellencies, that his royal mistress was wont to say, "My lord keeper's soul is well lodged." He was still more fortunate in the rare qualities of his mother, for Sir Anthony Cooke, acting upon his favourite opinion then very prevalent, that women were as capable of learning as men, carefully instructed his daughters every evening, in the lessons which he had taught the king during the day; and amply were his labours rewarded; for he lived to see all his daughters happily married; and Lady Anne distinguished, not only for her conjugal and maternal virtues, but renowned as an excellent scholar, and the translator, from the Italian, of various sermons of Ochinus, a learned divine; and, from the Latin, of Bishop Jewel's Apologia, recommended by Archbishop Parker for general use." It was his good fortune not only to be born of 1 "He who cannot contract his sight as well as dilate it, wanteth a great faculty;" says Lord Bacon. She translated from the Italian fourteen sermons concerning the predestination and election of God, without date, Svo. See Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, title, Ochinus and Anne Cooke.-N.B. There is a publication entitled, "Sermons to the number of twenty-five, concerning the predestination." London: Printed by J. Day, without date, 8. Query, If by Lady Bacon? ().inus Barnardin, an' Italian monk of extraordinary merit, born at Sienna, 1487. Died 1591. Watts (S. A.) Jewel's Apologia translated by Anne Bacon, 1600, 1606, 1609, Fol. 16:26 12mo. 1655, 1719, 8vo. See Watts, tit. "Jewel." of all fortunes; when the nation had emerged from the dark superstitions of popery; when peace, throughout all Europe, permitted the enjoyment of foreign travel and free ingress to foreign scholars; and, above all, when a sovereign of the highest intellectual attainments, at the same time that she encouraged learning and learned men, gave an impulse to the arts, and a chivalric and refined tone to the manners of the people." Bacon's health was always delicate, and his temperament was of such sensibility, as to be affected, even to fainting, by very slight alterations in the atmosphere; a constitutional infirmity which seems to have attended him through life. While he was yet a child, the signs of genius, for which he was in after life distinguished, could not have escaped the notice of his intelligent parents. They must have been conscious of his extraordinary powers, and of their responsibility that, upon the right direction of his mind, his future eminence, whether as a statesman or as a philosopher, almost wholly depended. He was cradled in politics; he was not only the son of the lord keeper, but the nephew of Lord Burleigh. He had lived from his infancy amidst the nobility of the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself delighted, even in his childhood, to converse with him, and to prove him with questions, which he answered with a maturity above his years, and with such gravity that the queen would often call him her young lord keeper. Upon the queen's asking him, when a child, how old he was, he answered, "two years younger than your majesty's happy reign." But there were dawnings of genius of a much higher nature. When a boy, while his companions were diverting themselves near to his father's house in St. James's Park, he stole to the brick conduit to discover the cause of a singular See Bacon's beautiful conclusion of Civil Knowledge, in the Advancement of Learning, p. 000. See Paradise Regained, b. i. "When I was yet a child," &c.-See Burns: "I saw thee seek the sounding shore," &c.-See Beattie's Minstrel: "Baubles he heeded not," &c. echo ;1 and, in his twelfth year he was meditating | both admitted of Trinity College, under the care upon the laws of the imagination." At the early age of thirteen, it was resolved to send him to Cambridge, of which university, he, with his brother Anthony, was matriculated as a member, on the 10th of June, 1573.3 They were The laws of sound were always a subject of his thoughts. In the third century of the Sylva, he says, "we have laboured, as may appear, in this inquisition of sounds diligently; both because sound is one of the most hidden portions of nature, and because it is a virtue which may be called incorporeal and immateriate, whereof there be in nature but few." As one of the facts, he says in his Sylva Sylvarum, (Art. 140,) "There is in St. James's fields a conduit of brick, unto which joineth a low vault; and at the end of that a round house of stone; and in the brick conduit there is a window; the coming out. 4 of Dr. John Whitgift, a friend of the lord keeper's, then master of the college, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and distinguished through life, not only for his piety, but for his great learning, and unwearied exertions to promote the public good. What must have passed in his youthful, thoughtful, ardent mind, at this eventful moment, when he first quitted his father's house to engage in active life? What must have been his feelings when he approached the university, and saw, in the distance, the lofty spires, and towers, and venerable walls, raised by intellect and piety, "and hollowed by the shrines where the works of the mighty dead are preserved and reposed,5 and by the labours of the mighty living, with and in the round house a slit or rift of some little breadth: if you cry out in the rift, it will make a fearful roaring at the window. The cause is, for that all concaves, that proceed from more narrow to more broad, do amplify the sound at In the tenth century of the Sylva, after having enume-joint forces directing their strength against nature rated many of the idle imaginations by which the world then was, and, more or less, always will be, misled, he says, "With these vast and bottomless follies men have been in part entertained. But we, that hold firm to the works of God, and to the sense, which is God's lamp, lucerna Dei spiraculum hominis, will inquire with all sobriety and severity, whether there be to be found in the footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues and what the force of imagination is, either upon the body imaginant, or upon another body." He then proceeds to state the different kinds of the power of imagination, saying it is in three kinds : the first, upon the body of the imaginant, including likewise the child in the mother's womb; the second is, the power of it upon dead bodies, as plants, wood, stone, metal, &c. ; the third is, the power of it upon the spirits of men and living creatures; and with this last we will only meddle. The problem therefore is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that such a thing shall be; as that such a one will love him; or that such a one will grant him his request; or that such a one shall recover a sickness, or the like, it doth help any thing to the effecting of the thing In the solution of this problem he, according to his custom, enumerates a variety of instances, and, among others, the following fact, which occurred to him when a child, for he left his father's house when he was thirteen. itself. For example, he says, I related one time to a man, that was turious and vain enough in these things, that I saw a kind of juggler, that had a pair of cards, and would tell a man that it was a mistaking in me; for, said he, it was not the what card he thought. This pretended learned man told me, knowledge of man's thought, (for that is proper to God,) but it was the enforcing of a thought upon him, and binding his imagination by a stronger, that he could think no other card. And thereupon he asked me a question or two, which I thought he did but cunningly, knowing before what used to be the feats of the juggler. Sir, said he, do you remember whether he told the card the man thought himself, or bade another to tell it. I answered, (as was true,) that he bade another tell it. Whereunto he said, so I thought; for, said he, himself could not have put on so strong an imagination, but by telling the other the card, who believed that the juggler was some strange man, and could do strange things, that other man caught a strong imagination. I hearkened unto him, thinking for a vanity he spoke prettily. Then he asked me another question; saith he, do you remember whether he bade the man think the card first, and afterwards told the other man in his ear what he should think, or else that he did whisper first in the man's ear, that he should tell the card, telling that such a man should think such a card, and after bade the man think a card: I told him, as was true, that he did first whisper the man in the ear, that such a man should think such a card; upon this the learned man did much exult, and please himself, saying, lo, you may see that my opinion is right; for if the man had thought first, his thought had been fixed; but the other imagining first, bound his thought. Which, though it did somewhat sink with me, yet I made lighter than I thought, and said, I thought it was confederacy between the juggler and the two servants; though, indeed, I had no reason so to think; for they were both my father's servants, and he had never played in the house before. 3 An. 1573, June 10. Antonius Bacon Coll. Trin. Convict. i. admissus in matriculam Acad. Cantabr. Franciscus Bacon Coll. Trin. Convict. i. admissus in matriculam academiæ Cantabr. eodem die et anno. (Regr. Acad.) herself, to take her high towers, and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of man's dominion, so far as Almighty God of his goodness shall permit ?"'6 "As water," he says, "whether it be the dew of heaven, or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself, and for that cause the industry of man hath made and framed spring heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools, which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and necessity; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration, or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed; as universities, colleges, and schools, for the receipt and comforting of the same. All tending to quietness and privateness of life, and discharge of cares and troubles; much like the stations which Virgil prescribeth for the hiving of bees: Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda, See the Biog. Brit. In 1565, Whitgift so distinguished himself in the pulpit, that the lord keeper recommended him to the queen. But the works touching books are chiefly two; first, Libraries, wherein, as in famous shrines, the relics of the ancient saints, full of virtue, are reposed. Secondly, New Editions of Authors, with correct impressions; more faithful Translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations; with the like train furnished and adorned. In a letter to Sir Thomas Bodley, he says, "and the second copy I have sent unto you, not only in good affection, but in a kind of congruity, in regard of your great and rare desert of learning. For books are the shrines where the saint is, or is believed to be. And you, having built an ark to save learning from deluge, deserve propriety in any new instrument or engine, whereby learning should be improved or advanced."-Steph. 19. Nor doth our trumpet summon, and encourage men to tear and rend one another with contradictions; and in a civil rage to bear arms, and wage war against themselves; but rather, a peace concluded between them, they may with joint force direct their strength against Nature herself; and take her high towers, and dismantle her fortified holds; and thus enlarge the borders of man's dominion, so far as Al mighty God in his goodness shall permit.-Adv. Learn. Such were his imaginations of the tranquillity | knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searchand occupations in our universities. He could not long have resided in Cambridge before he must have discovered his erroneous notions of the mighty living, and of the pursuits in which they were engaged. Instead of students ready at all times to acquire any sort of knowledge, he found himself "amidst men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."1 Instead of the university being formed for the discovery of truths, he saw that its object was merely to preserve and diffuse the knowledge of our predecessors: instead of general inquiry, he found that all studies were confined to Aristotle, who was considered infallible in philosophy, a dictator to command, not a consul to advise ; the lectures both in private in the colleges, and in public in the schools, being but expositions of his text, and comments upon his opinions, held as authentic as if they had been given under the seal of the pope.3 Their infallibility, however, he was not disposed to acknowledge. Whilst in the university he formed his dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle, not for the worthlessness of the author, to whose gigantic intellect he ever ascribed all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of his method, being a philosophy, as he was wont to say, strong for disputations and contentions,* but barren for the production of works for the benefit and use of man; which, according to Bacon's opinion, is the only test of the purity of our motives for acquiring knowledge and of the value of knowledge when acquired; “Men," he says, "have entered into a desire of knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man:-as if there were sought in 1 See the Advancement of Learning, under Contentious Learning. See Gibbon's Memoirs. See vol. viii. London Magazine, page 509. Let him who is fond of indulging in a * See Advancement of Learning, under Credulity, p. 000. ing and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit and sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate." It was not likely that, with such sentiments, he would meet with much sympathy in the university. It was still less probable that the antipathy by which he was opposed would check the ardour of his powerful mind. He went right onward in his course, unmoved by the disapprobation of men who turned from inquiries which they neither encouraged nor understood: and, seeing through the mists, by a light refracted from below the horizon, that knowledge must be raised on other foundations, and built with other materials than had been used through a long tract of many centuries, he continued his inquiries into the laws of nature,5 and planned his immortal work upon which he laboured during the greater part of his life, and ultimately published when he was chancellor, saying, "I have held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy; which will be seen centuries after I am dead." After two years residence he quitted the university with the conviction not only that these seminaries of learning were stagnant, but that they were opposed to the advancement of knowledge. "In the universities," he says, "they learn nothing but to believe: first to believe that others know that which they know not; and after, themselves know that which they know not. They are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal :"7 and in his Novum Organum, which he published when he was chancellor, he repeats what he had said when a boy. "In the universities, all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed that it cannot easily come into any one's mind to think of things out of the common road: or if, here and there, one should venture to use a liberty of judging, he can only impose the task upon himself without obtaining assistance from his fellows; and if he could dispense with this, he will still find his industry and resolution a great hinderance to his fortune. For the studies of men in such places are confined, and pinned down to I remember in Trinity College in Cambridge, there was an upper chamber, which being thought weak in the roof of it, was supported by a pillar of iron of the bigness of one's arm in the midst of the chamber; which if you had struck, it would make a little flat noise in the room where it was struck, but it would make a great bomb in the chamber beneath.-Sylva See the dedication of the Novum Organum to the king. "Mortuus fortasse id effecero, ut illa posteritati, nová hac accensâ face in philcsophiæ tenebris, perlucere possint. 1 See the tract in Praise of Knowledge, p. 006. the writings of certain authors; from which, if | These warnings seem to have been disregardany man happens to differ, he is presently repre-ed, and the art of governing, not a ship, which hended as a disturber and innovator."1 Whether the intellectual gladiatorship by which students in the universities of England are now stimulated, then prevailed, does not appear, but his dislike of this motive he early and always avowed. "It is," he says, "an unavoidable decree with us ever to retain our native candour and simplicity, and not attempt a passage to truth under the conduct of vanity; for, seeking real nature with all her fruits about her, we should think it a betraying of our trust to infect such a subject either with an ambitious, an ignorant, or any other faulty manner of treating it." Some years after Bacon had quitted Cambridge, he published his opinions upon the defects of universities; in which, after having warned the community that, as colleges are established for the communication of the knowledge of our predecessors, there should be a college appropriated to the discovery of new truths, a living spring to mix with the stagnant waters. "Let it," he says, "be remembered that there is not any collegiate education of statesmen, and that this has not only a malign influence upon the growth of sciences, but is prejudicial to states and governments, and is the reason why princes find a solitude in regard of able men to serve them in causes of state."3 would not be attempted without a knowledge of navigation, but the ship of the state, is intrusted, not to a knowledge of the principles of human nature, but to the knowledge of Latin and Greek and verbal criticisms upon the dead languages."4 And what has been the result? During the last two centuries one class of statesmen has resisted all improvement, and their opponents have been hurried into intemperate alterations: whilst philosophy, lamenting these contentions, has, instead of advancing the science of government, been occupied in counteracting laws founded upon erroneous principles; erroneous commercial laws; erroneous laws against civil and religious liberty; and erroneous criminal laws.* So deeply was Bacon impressed with the magnitude of this evil, that by his will he endowed two lectures in either of the universities, by "a lecturer, whether stranger or English, provided he is not professed in divinity, law, or physic." The subject of universities, and the importance to the community and to the advancement of science, that the spring should not be poisoned or polluted, was ever present to his mind,—and, in the decline of his life, he prepared the plan of a college for the knowledge of the works and creations of God, "from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall;" but the plan was framed upon a model so vast, that, without 2 See the chapter on Vanity, in the admirable work, the purse of a prince and the assistance of a peo"Search's Light of Nature:" where the distinction be-ple, all attempts to realize it must be vain and hopeless. Some conception of his gorgeous mind in the formation of this college, may appear even at the entrance. 1 Ax. 90. lib. i. tween the love of excelling and the love of excellence, as "We have (he says) two very long and fair galleries: and in one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies; also the inventor of ships; your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder; the inventor of music; the inventor of letters; the inventor of printing; the inventor of observations of astronomy; the inventor of works in metal; the inventor of glass; the inventor of silk of the worm; the inventor of wine; the inventor of corn and bread; the inventor of sugars; and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Upon every invention of value, we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourable reward. These statues are some of brass; some of marble and touch all the Roman edicts and tables with their Justinian; and "Such," says Milton, "are the errors, such the fruits of mispending our prime youth at schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned." See his Tract on Education stone; some of cedar and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron; some of silver; some of gold." Such is the splendour of the portico, or anteroom. Passing beyond it, every thing is to be found which imagination.can conceive or reason suggest. This entrance to Bacon's college always forces itself on my mind when I visit the University Library of Cambridge; in which I see the portrait of Mr. Thomas Nicholson, known by the name of Maps, the proprietor of a circulating library, a laborious pioneer in literature. Under his feet are some relics from classic ground, more valuable, perhaps, for their antiquity than for their beauty. Delightful as is the love of antiquity, this artificial retrospective extension of our existence, (see Shakspeare's Sonnet, 123,) might it not be adorned, in the present times, by casts from the Elgin marbles, of which the cost does not exceed 2001. By one of the universities (I think it is of Dublin) these casts have been procured. Let any parent of the mind, who considers the various modes by which the heart of a nation is formed, (which is beautifully described in Ramsden's sermon on the Cessation of Hostilities,) look in Boydell's Shakspeare, at Barry's Cordelia, to be found, most probably, in the Fitzwilliam collection: and let him compare it with the magnificent affecting fainting female in the Elgin marbles, and he will see the benefit which would result from the university containing these valuable relics. 2 We have large and deep caves of several depths: the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom, and some of them are digged and made under great hills and mountains: so that if you reckon together the depth of the hill and the depth of the cave, they are (some of them) above three miles deep; these caves we call the lower region, and we use them for all coagulations, indurations, refrigerations, and conservations of bodies. We use them likewise for the imitation of natural mines, and the producing also of new artificial metals, by compositions and materials. We have high towers, the highest about half a mile in height, and some of them likewise set upon high mountains, so that the vantage of the hill with the tower is in the highest of them three miles at least. And these places we call the upper region. We use these towers, according to their several heights and situations, for insolation, refrigeration, conservation, and for the view of divers meteors, as winds, rain, snow, hail, and some of the fiery meteors. We have great lakes, both salt and fresh; whereof we have use for the fish and fowl. We use them also for burials of some natural bodies: for we find a difference in things buried in earth, or in air below the earth; and things After having enumerated all the instruments of knowledge, "such," he says, "is a relation of the true state of Solomon's house, the end of which foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." In these glorious inventions of one rich mind, may be traced much of what has been effected in science and mechanics, since Bacon's death, and more that will be effected during the next two centuries. After three years' residence in the university, his father sent him, at the age of sixteen, to Paris, under the care of Sir Amias Paulett, the English ambassador at that court: by whom, soon after his arrival, he was intrusted with a mission to the queen, requiring both secrecy and despatch: which he executed with such ability as to gain the approbation of the queen, and justify Sir Amias in the choice of his youthful messenger. From the confidence thus reposed in him, and from the impression made upon all with whom he conversed; upon men of letters, with whom he contracted lasting friendships; upon grave statesmen and learned philosophers, it was manifest that the promise in his infancy of excellence, whether for active or for contemplative life, seemed beyond the most sanguine expectation to be realized.3 After the appointment of Sir Amias Paulett's successor, Bacon travelled into the French provinces, and spent some time at Poictiers. He prepared a work upon Ciphers, which he after buried in water. We have also some rocks in the midst of the sea; and some bays upon the shore for some works, where-likewise for dissections and trials, that thereby we may in is required the air and vapour of the sea. We have likewise violent streams and cataracts, which serve us for many motions: and likewise engines for multiplying and enforcing of winds, to set also on going divers motions. We have also a number of artificial wells and fountains, made in imitation of the natural sources and baths; as tincted upon vitriol, sulphur, steel, brass, lead, nitre, and other minerals. take light what may be wrought upon the body of man. We have also particular pools where we make trials upon fishes, as we have said before of beasts and birds. We have also places for breed and generation of those kinds of worms and flies which are of special use, such as are with you your silk worms and bees. We have also precious stones of all kinds, many of them of great beauty and unknown; crystals and glasses of divers kinds. We represent also ordnance and instruments of war, and engines of all kinds; and likewise new mixtures and We have also great and spacious houses, where we imitate and demonstrate meteors, as snow, hail, rain, some artificial rains of bodies, and not of water, thunders, light-compositions of gunpowder, wildfires burning in water nings. We have also certain chambers, which we call chambers of health, where we quality the air as we think good and proper for the cure of divers diseases, and preservation of health. We have also fair and large baths of several mixtures, for the cure of diseases. We have also large and various orchards and gardens; wherein we do not so much respect beauty, as variety of ground and soil, proper for divers trees and herbs: and some very spacious, where trees and berries are set, whereof we make divers kinds of drink, besides the vineyards. In these we practise likewise all conclusions of grafting and inoculating, as well of wild trees as fruit trees, which produceth many effects. We have also furnaces of great diversities, and that keep great diversity of heats, fierce and quick, strong and constant, soft and mild, blown, quiet, dry, moist, and the like. But above all we have heats, in imitation of the sun's and heavenly bodies, heats that pass divers inequalities, and (as it were) orbs, progresses, and returns, whereby we may produce admirable effects. and unquenchable; also fireworks of all variety, both for pleasure and use. We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air; we have ships and boats for going under water, and brooking of seas; also swimming girdles and supporters. We have also sound houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music, likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We have also a mathematical house, where are all instruments, as well of geometry as astronomy, exquisitely made. We have also houses of deceits of the senses, &c. &c. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that an eminent artist, to whom, when in Paris, he sat for his portrait, was so conscious of his inability to do justice to his extraordinary intellectual endowments, that he has written on the side of his picture: Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem. In the Augmentis Scientiarum, lib. vi. speaking of ciphers, he says, Ut verò suspicio omnis absit, aliud inventum subjiciemus, quod certè cùm adolescentuli essemus Parisiis excogitavimus, nec etiam adhuc visa nobis res digna est que pereat. Watts's English translation of this We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in the heaven, and remote places; and represent things near as afar off, and things afar off as near, making feigned distances. We have also helps for the sight, far above specta-part is as follows: But that jealousies may be taken away, cles and glasses. We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds; which we use not only for view or rareness, but we will annex another invention, which, in truth, we de vised in our youth, when we were at Paris: and is a thing that yet seemeth to us not worthy to be lost. It containeth |