Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients. Francis Bacon
of midday light.
We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which nature adapted him, and from which no extent of occupation could entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption.
Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair.
Here the writer yielded not to vitia temporis; but combated them with might and main, with heart and soul.
In 1623, he published the Life of Henry VII. In a letter addressed to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: “ ’Time was I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor.” But his honor without leisure had precipitated him into “bottomless perdition;” his leisure without honor retrieved his name, and raised him again to an unattainable height.
In the following year, he printed his Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning, under the title of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.
This was not, however, a mere translation; for he made in it omissions and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter; in short, he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted in France in 1624, one year after its appearance in England. It was immediately translated into French and Italian, and was published in Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 1645, 1650, and 1662.
In 1624, he solicited of the King a remission of the sentence, to the end, says he, “that blot of ignominy may be removed from me and from my memory with posterity.” The King granted him a full pardon. But he never more took his seat in the House of Lords. When the new Parliament met, after the accession of Charles the First, age, infirmity, and tardy wisdom had extinguished the ambition of Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. When the writ of summons to the Parliament reached him, he exclaimed: “I have done with such vanities!”
But the philosopher pursued his labor of love. He published new editions of his writings, and translated them into Latin, from the mistaken notion that in that language alone could they be rescued from oblivion. His crabbed latinity is now read but by few, or even may be said to be nearly forgotten; while his noble, majestic English is read over the whole British empire, on which the sun never sets, is studied and admired throughout the old world and the new, and it will be so by generations still unborn; it will descend to posterity in company with his contemporary, Shakspeare (whose name he never mentions), and will endure as long as the great and glorious language itself; indeed, as he foretold of his Essays, it “will live as long as books last.”
In the translation of his works into Latin, he was assisted by Rawley, his future biographer, and his two friends, Ben Jonson, the poet, and Hobbes, the philosopher.
He wrote for his “own recreation,” amongst very serious studies, a Collection of Apophthegms, New and Old, said to have been dictated in one rainy day, but probably the result of several “rainy days.” This contains many excellent jocular anecdotes, and has been, perhaps, with too much indulgence, pronounced by Macaulay to be the best jest-book in the world.
He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England, but he soon discontinued it, because it was “a work of assistance, and that which he could not master by his own forces and pen.” James the First had not sufficient elevation of mind to afford him the means of securing the assistance he required.
He wrote his will with his own hand on the 19th of December, 1625. He directs that he shall be interred in St. Michael’s Church, near St. Albans: “There was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house at Gorhambury. … For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.” This supreme act of filial piety towards his gifted mother is affecting. Let no “uncharitable” word be uttered over his last solemn behest; foreign nations and all ages will not refuse a tribute of homage to his genius! Gassendi presents an analysis of his labors, and pays a tribute of admiration to their author; Descartes has mentioned him with encomium; Malebranche quotes him as an authority; Puffendorff expressed admiration of him; the University of Oxford presented to him, after his fall, an address, in which he is termed “a mighty Hercules, who had by his own hand greatly advanced those pillars in the learned world which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable.” Leibnitz ascribed to him the revival of true philosophy; Newton had studied him so closely that he adopted even his phraseology; Voltaire and D’Alembert have rendered him popular in France. The modern philosophers of all Europe regard him reverentially as the father of experimental philosophy.
He attempted at this late period of his life a metrical translation into English of the Psalms of David; although his prose is full of poetry, his verse has but little of the divine art.
He again declined to take his seat as a peer in Charles’s second Parliament; but the last stage of his life displayed more dignity and real greatness than the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” of his high offices and honors. The public of England and of “foreign nations” forgot the necessity of “charitable speeches” and anticipated “the next ages.” The most distinguished foreigners repaired to Gray’s Inn to pay their respects to him. The Marquis d’Effiat, who brought over to England the Princess Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles the First, went to see him. Bacon, confined to his bed, but unwilling to decline the visit, received him with the curtains drawn. “You resemble the angels,” said the French minister to him, “we hear those beings continually talked of; we believe them superior to mankind; and we never have the consolation to see them.”
But in ill health and infirmity he continued his studies and experiments; as it occurred to him that snow might preserve animal substances from putrefaction as well as salt, he tried the experiment, and stuffed a fowl with snow with his own hands. “The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to become its martyr;” he took cold. From his bed he dictated a letter to the Earl of Arundel, to whose house he had been conveyed. “I was likely to have had the fortune of Caïus Plinius the Elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mount Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well.” He had, indeed, the fortune of Pliny the Elder; for he never recovered from the effects of his cold, which brought on fever and a complaint of the chest; and he expired on the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Thus died, a victim to his devotion to science, Francis Bacon, whose noble death is an expiation of the errors of his life, and who was, as has been justly observed, notwithstanding all his faults, one of the greatest ornaments and benefactors of the human race.
No account has been preserved of his funeral; but probably it was private. Sir Thomas Meautys, his faithful secretary, erected at his own expense a monument to Bacon’s memory. Bacon is represented sitting, reclining on his hand, and absorbed in meditation. The effigy bears the inscription: sic sedebat.
The singular fact ought not to be omitted, that notwithstanding the immense sums that had been received by him, legitimately or otherwise, he died insolvent. The fault of his life had been that he never adapted his expenses to his income; perhaps even he never calculated them. To what irretrievable ruin did not this lead him? To disgrace and dishonor, in the midst of his career; to insolvency at its end. His love of worldly grandeur was uncontrollable, or at least uncontrolled. “The virtue of prosperity is temperance,” says he himself; but this virtue he did not possess. His stately bark rode proudly over the waves, unmindful of the rocks; on one of these, alas! it split and foundered.
Bacon was very prepossessing in his person; he was in stature above the middle size; his forehead was broad and high, of an intellectual appearance; his eye was lively and expressive; and his countenance bore early the marks of deep thought.
It might be mentioned here with instruction to the reader, that few men were more impressed than Bacon with the value of time, the most precious element of life. He assiduously employed the smallest portions of it; considering justly that