worked with and for him, who knew him in his struggles and in his triumphs, in his greatness and in his fall, is not the only friendship which he has secured. Those still revere and love him best who, like Basil Montagu, James Spedding, and Hepworth Dixon, have devoted years of their lives to the study of his works and the contemplation of his life and character.

Lord Macaulay, who wrote one essay on Bacon, is astonished at the enthusiasm with which a prolonged intimacy with the works and life of that great man had inspired his biographer, Basil Montagu. "The writer," says Macaulay, "is enamoured of his subject. It constantly overflows from his lips and his pen.' But this is the impression made upon most thoughtful persons who read and read again (without previous prejudice or the aid of a commentator) the works and letters of Bacon, until they come to know not only the matter, but the man himself.

There can, we think, be but one issue to such a study: admiration deepening into esteem, sympathy, and a feeling of personal friendship, which no hostile or piecemeal criticism will avail to shake.

The admiring warmth with which "Shakespeare" scholars have justly extolled the character of their ideal author is precisely that which creeps over and possesses the soul of the earnest disciple of the "myriad-minded" Bacon. We may be incapable of following, even in imagination, "the vast contemplative ends" which he proposed to himself, and to the accomplishment of which his life was actually consecrated. But no one who can apprehend, however dimly, the plan and purpose of such a life, can withhold from it a tribute of admiration, or can remain insensible of the influence for good which that man must by personal example have shed around him, and which through his works he still diffuses. And, says Ben Jonson at the conclusion of his sketch of Bacon's genius, "There is not one color of the mind and another of the works." Such as works are as a whole, such on the whole is their author. Goodness, as well as greatness, is impressed upon the writings of Bacon. We may be awe-struck in the contemplation of his magnificent powers of mind, enchanted with his language, and

with the consummate ability with which he treats of all subjects, great or small; but we feel that this is not all. Mere intellect may attract attention and admiration, but it does not win esteem. Running through the whole of his works there is a thread of genuine goodness. It is a thread rather underlying the substance than superficially exhibited, but it is inextricably interwoven. Everywhere from Bacon's works there radiates this goodness, kindness of heart, large-minded toleration, "enthusiasm of humanity," respect for authority, reverence for, and trust in, a great and good God. This it is which "enthralled" his personal friends and "enamoured" his later biographer. This it is which prompts us to exclaim of him as Holofernes did of Virgil:

"Who understandeth thee not, loveth thee not."

CHAPTER IV.

FRANCIS BACON: AN OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE AND AIMS.

"All is not in years to me; somewhat is in hours well spent."

ΜΑ

"Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that's his name,

Made use and fair advantage of his days;

His head unmellow'd, but his judgment ripe."

-Promus.

-Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 4.

ANY and various opinions have been expressed in modern times concerning Francis Bacon, and the motives and aims supposed to have influenced his course and actions in public capacities. We may safely pass by these phases of his wonderful career, so carefully and devotedly recorded in the calm pages of James Spedding, 1 and will for the present consider the personality and life of Bacon from two different aspects: first, as the poet; secondly, as the most ardent promoter, if not the founder, of a vast secret society, destined to create a complete reformation in learning, science, literature, and religion. itself, throughout the whole wide world. In the lively works of Hepworth Dixon, and in scattered episodes in Spedding's Life of Bacon, we get occasional peeps behind the scene. But, in the last named work especially, it appears as if we were not meant to do so. The facts that Bacon in his youth "masked and mummed," and led the revels at Gray's Inn; that throughout his life he was appealed to on all great occasions to write witty speeches for others to deliver at the gorgeous "entertainments" which were the fashion of the day (and in which, doubtless, he took a leading part, in the background); that he and his brother Anthony, who was living with him in 1594,

1 See "Letters and Life of Bacon," seven vols., 8vo, or the abridgment of them, "Life and Times of Bacon," and especially "Evenings with a Reviewer," 2 vols., 8vo-James Spedding. (88)

actually removed from their lodgings in Gray's Inn to a house in Bishopsgate Street, in the immediate neighborhood of The Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were acted. These and many such important factors in his private history are slipped over, or altogether omitted in most accounts of him. They should not be so passed by, for Bacon's theatrical proclivities were no mere boyish or youthful taste; they grew with him and formed a very important part of his "method of discourse," a means by which he could inform those who could not read, instilling through the eyes and ears of the body sound teaching on all sorts of subjects. The stern morality which was often thus inculcated would not for one instant have been listened to, with patience, from the pulpit or the professed teacher, by the class of persons for whose benefit we believe that Francis Bacon wrote his earliest (and unacknowledged) plays. It will be seen that this love and respect for the theatre was with him to the end of his life. Nearly fifty metaphors and figures based upon stage-playing are to be found in his grave scientific works, and in the Latin edition of the Advancement of Learning, published simultaneously with the collected edition or "Folio" of the Shakespeare plays in 1623, he inserts a brave defence of stage-playing and a lament for the degradation of the theatre in his day.

Most persons who peruse these pages are probably acquainted with the outlines of Bacon's life. We therefore merely piece together particulars extracted from the works of his most painstaking and sympathetic biographer, James Spedding, and from the shorter "lives" and biographies of his secretary, Dr. Rawley, Hepworth Dixon, Prof. Fowler, and others.

Francis Bacon was born on the 22d of January, 1561, at York House, in the Strand. His father, Sir Nicholas (counsellor to Queen Elizabeth, and second prop in the kingdom), was a lord of known prudence, sufficiency, moderation, and integrity. His mother, Lady Anne Cooke, a choice lady, was eminent for piety and learning, being exquisitely skilled, for a woman, in the Greek and Latin languages. "These being the parents," says Dr. Rawley, "you may easily imagine what the issue was like

to be, having had whatsoever nature or breeding could put in him."

Sir Nicholas is described as 66 a stout, easy man, full of contrivance, with an original, and projective mind." The grounds laid out by him at Gorhambury suggested to his son those ideas of gardening which he himself afterwards put into practice, and which, developed in his essays and other writings,1 have led to the foundation of an English style of gardening.2 So with regard to cultivation of another kind. The scheme which Sir Nicholas presented to Henry VIII. for the endowment of a school of law and languages in London, is thought to have been, perhaps, the original germ of the New Atlantis, the idea being transferred from statecraft to nature. In politics the Lord Keeper held to the English party; that party which set its face against Rome, and those who represented Rome; against the Jesuits, the Spaniards, and the Queen of Scots. If he felt warm against any one, it was against the latter, whom he detested, not only as a wicked woman, but as a political tool in the hands of France and Spain. By the help of his clear head and resolute tongue, the great change of religion, which had recently taken place, had been accomplished, and it may easily be believed that " Burghley himself was scarcely more honoured by invective from Jesuit pens." But on the bench he had neither an equal nor an enemy. Calm, slow, cautious in his dealings, he was at the same time merry, witty, and overflowing with humour and repartee; qualities which recommended him very highly to the irritable, clever Queen, who loved a jest as well as he, and who seems to have appreciated the value of a faithful minister imbued with so much strong common sense, and with no dangerous qualities. Francis Bacon records a saying concerning his father, which was, doubtless, to the point, or he would not have entered it amongst his apophthegms: "Some men look wiser than they are, the Lord Keeper is wiser than he looks."

1 There seem to be many books of gardening and kindred subjects which will some day be traced to Bacon.

2 Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacon's Life, p. 17, from which we shall make large extracts, the book being out of print.