still retained 32; as if it had been natural to him to use good forms, as Ovid spake of his faculty of versifying,

"Et quod tentabam scribere, versus erat ".

When his office called him, as he was of the king's council learned, to charge any offenders, either in criminals or capitals, he was never of an insulting and domineering nature over them, but always tender-hearted, and carrying himself decently towards the parties (though it was his duty to charge them home), but yet as one that looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion. And in civil business, as he was counsellor of estate, he had the best way of advising, not engaging his master in any precipitate or grievous courses, but in moderate and fair proceedings: the king whom he served giving him this testimony, That he ever dealt in business suavibus modis; which was the way that was most according to his own heart.

Neither was he in his time less gracious with the subject than with his sovereign. He was ever acceptable to the House of Commons 33 when he was a member thereof. Being the king's attorney, and chosen to a place in parliament, he was allowed and dispensed with to sit in the House; which was not permitted to other attorneys.

And as he was a good servant to his master, being never in nineteen years' service (as himself averred) rebuked by the king for anything relating to His Majesty, so he was a good master to his servants, and rewarded their long attendance with good places freely 34 when they fell into his power; which was the cause that so many young gentlemen of blood and quality sought to list themselves in his retinue. And if he were abused by any of them in their places, it was not only the error of the goodness of his nature, but the badges of their indiscretions and intemperances.

This lord was religious: for though the world be apt to suspect and prejudge great wits and politics to have somewhat of the atheist, yet he was conversant with God, as appeareth by several passages throughout the whole current of his writings. Otherwise he should have crossed his own principles, which were,

32 This is probably the true explanation of a habit of Bacon's which seems at first sight a fault, and perhaps sometimes is; and of which a great many instances have been pointed out by Mr. Ellis ;-a habit of inaccurate quotation. In quoting an author's words, especially where he quotes them merely by way of voucher for his own remark, or in acknowledgment of the source whence he derived it, or to suggest an allusion which may give a better effect to it, he very often quotes inaccurately. Sometimes, no doubt, this was unintentional, the fault of his memory; but more frequently, I suspect, it was done deliberately, for the sake of presenting the substance in a better form, or a form better suited to the particular occasion. In citing the evidence of witnesses, on the contrary, in support of a narrative statement or an argument upon matter of fact, he is always very careful.

33 The Latin version adds, in quo sæpe peroravit, non sine magno applausu; a statement of the truth of which abundant evidence may be found in all the records which remain of the proceedings of the House of Commons. The first parliament in which he sate was that of 1584: after which he sate in every parliament that was summoned up to the time of his fall.

As an edition of Bacon would hardly be complete unless it contained Ben Jonson's famous description of his manner of speaking, I shall insert it here:-" Yet there hap. pened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. in his power. The fear of every man that heard him -Discoveries: under title Dominus Verulamius.

He commanded where he spoke ; No man had their affections more was, lest he should make an end."

34 Gratis, in the Latin version; i.e. without taking any money for them, an unusual thing in Bacon's time, when the sale of offices was a principal source of all great men's

incomes.

That a little philosophy maketh men apt to forget God, as attributing too much to second causes; but depth of philosophy bringeth a man back to God again. Now I am sure there is no man that will deny him, or account otherwise of him, but to have him been a deep philosopher. And not only so; but he was able to render a reason of the hope which was in him, which that writing of his of the Confession of the Faith doth abundantly testify. He repaired frequently, when his health would permit him, to the service of the church, to hear sermons, to the administration of the sacrament of the blessed Body and Blood of Christ; and died in the true faith, established in the Church of England.

This is most true-he was free from malice, which (as he said himself) he never bred nor fed 35. He was no revenger of injuries; which if he had minded, he had both opportunity and place high enough to have done it. He was no heaver of men out of their places, as delighting in their ruin and undoing. He was no defamer of any man to his prince. One day, when a great statesman was newly dead, that had not been his friend, the king asked him, What he thought of that lord which was gone? he answered, That he would never have made His Majesty's estate better, but he was sure he would have kept it from being worse; which was the worst he would say of him: which I reckon not among his moral, but his Christian virtues.

His fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad, than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. Concerning which I will give you a taste only, out of a letter written from Italy (the storehouse of refined wits) to the late Earl of Devonshire, then the Lord Candish: I will expect the new essays of my Lord Chancellor Bacon, as also his History, with a great deal of desire, and whatsoever else he shall compose; but in particular of his History I promise myself a thing perfect and singular, especially in Henry the Seventh, where he may exercise the talent of his divine understanding. This lord is more and more known, and his books here more and more delighted in; and those men that have more than ordinary knowledge in human affairs, esteem him one of the most capable spirits of this age; and he is truly such. Now his fame doth not decrease, with days since, but rather increase. Divers of his works have been anciently and yet lately translated into other tongues, both learned and modern, by foreign pens. Several persons of quality, during his lordship's life, crossed the seas on purpose to gain an opportunity of seeing him and discoursing with him; whereof one carried his lordship's picture from head to foot 36 over with him into France, as a thing which he foresaw would be much desired there, that so they might enjoy the image of his person as well as the images of his brain, his books. Amongst the rest, Marquis Fiat, a French nobleman, who came ambassador into England, in the beginning of Queen Mary, wife to King Charles, was taken with an extraordinary desire of seeing him; for which he made way by a friend; and when he came to him, being then through weakness confined to his bed, the marquis saluted him with this high expression, That his lordship had been ever to him like

35"He said he had breeding swans and feeding swans; but for malice, he neither bred it nor fed it." From a commonplace book of Dr. Rawley's in the Lambeth Library. "Et posso dir," says Sir Tobie Matthew, in his dedication to Cosmo de' Medici of an Italian translation of the Essays and Sapientia Veterum, 1618, "et posso dir con verita (per haver io havuto l'honore di pratticarlo molti anni, et quando era in minoribus, et hora quando sta in colmo et fiore della sua grandezza) di non haver mai scoperto in lui animo di vendetta, per qualsivoglia aggravio che se gli fosse fatto; nè manco sentito uscirgli di bocca parola d'ingiuria contra veruno, che mi paresse venite da passione contra la tal persona; ma solo (et questo ancora molto scarsamente) per giudicio fattone in sangue freddo. Non-è già la sua grandezza quel che io ammiro, ma la sua virtù ; non sono li favori fattimi da lui (per infiniti che siano) che mi hanno posto il cuore in questi ceppi et catene in che mi ritrovo, ma si bene il suo procedere in commune; che se egli fosse di conditione inferiore, non potrei manco honorarlo, e se mi fosse nemico io dovrei con tutto ciò amar et procurar di servirlo."

36 This picture was presented to him by Bacon himself, according to the Latin version.

the angels; of whom he had often heard, and read much of them in books, but he never saw them. After which they contracted an intimate acquaintance, and the marquis did so much revere him, that besides his frequent visits, they wrote letters one to the other, under the titles and appellations of father and son. As for his many salutations by letters from foreign worthies devoted to learning, I forbear to mention them, because that is a thing common to other men of learning or note, together with him.

But yet, in this matter of his fame, I speak in the comparative only, and not in the exclusive. For his reputation is great in his own nation also, especially amongst those that are of a more acute and sharper judgment; which I will exemplify but with two testimonies, and no more. The former, when his History of King Henry the Seventh was to come forth, it was delivered to the old Lord Brook, to be perused by him; who, when he had dispatched it, returned it to the author with this eulogy, Commend me to my lord, and bid him take care to get good paper and ink, for the work is incomparable. The other shall be that of Doctor Samuel Collins, late provost of King's College in Cambridge, a man of no vulgar wit, who affirmed unto me 37, That when he had read the book of the Advancement of Learning, he found himself in a case to begin his studies anew, and that he had lost all the time of his studying before.

It hath been desired, that something should be signified touching his diet and the regimen of his health, of which, in regard of his universal insight into nature, he may perhaps be to some an example. For his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, as his stomach would bear it, than a restrained; which he also commended in his book of the History of Life and Death. In his younger years he was much given to the finer and lighter sort of meats, as of fowls, and such like; but afterward, when he grew more judicious 38, he preferred the stronger meats, such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable; upon which he would often make his meal, though he had other meats upon the table. You may be sure he would not neglect that himself, which he so much extolled in his writings, and that was the use of nitre; whereof he took in the quantity of about three grains in thin warm broth every morning, for thirty years together next before his death. And for physic, he did indeed live physically, but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb 39, infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less; which (as he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours of the body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth. And this was no grievous thing to take. As for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been vulgarly spoken) he took not. His receipt for the gout, which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already set down in the end of the Natural History.

It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity: for the moon was never in her passion, or eclipsed 40, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting; and that, though he observed not nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his former strength again.

37 In the Latin version Rawley has thought it worth while to add that this may have been said playfully: Sive festive sive serio.

38 More judicious (that is) by experience and observation: experientiâ edoctus is the expression in the Latin version,

39 In the Latin version Rawley gives the quantity: Rhabarbari sesquidrachmam. 40 Lord Campbell (who appears to have read Rawley's memoir only in the Latin, where the words are quoties luna defecit sive eclipsin passa est), supposing defecit to mean waned, discredits this statement, on the ground that "no instance is recorded of Bacon's having fainted in public, or put off the hearing of any cause on account of the change of the moon, or of any approaching eclipse, visible or invisible". And it is true that if defectus lunæ meant a change of the moon, or even a dark moon (which it might have meant well enough if the Romans had not chosen to appropriate the word to quite another meaning),

He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation; and was buried in St. Michael's Church at St. Albans; being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament, both because the body of his mother was interred there, and because it was the only church then remaining within the precincts of old Verulam: where he hath a monument erected for him in white marble (by the care and gratitude of Sir Thomas Meautys, knight, formerly his lordship's secretary, afterwards clerk of the King's Honourable Privy Council under two kings); representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying, with an inscription composed by that accomplished gentleman and rare wit, Sir Henry Wotton 41.

But howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as long as the world lasteth. In order to which I have endeavoured (after my poor ability) to do this honour to his lordship, by way of conducing to the same.

the accident must have happened in public too often to pass unnoticed. But Rawley was too good a scholar to misapply so common a word in that way. He evidently speaks of eclipses only, and of eclipses visible at the place. Now it is not at all likely that lunar eclipses visible at Westminster would have coincided with important business in which Bacon was conspicuously engaged, often enough (even if he did not faint every time) to establish a connexion between the two phenomena. Of course Rawley's statement is not sufficient to prove the reality of any such connexion; but the fact of the fainting-fits need not be doubted, and may be fairly taken, I think, as evidence of the extreme delicacy of Bacon's temperament, and its sensibility to the skiey influences. That Bacon himself never alluded to this relation between himself and the moon is easily accounted for by supposing that he was not satisfied of the fact. He may have observed the coincidence, and mentioned it to Rawley; and Rawley (whose commonplace book proves that he had a taste for astrology) may have believed in the physical connexion, though Bacon himself did not.

FINIS.

41 FRANCISCUS BACON, BARO DE VERULAM, SI. ALBANI VICmes,

SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS

SCIENTIARUM LUMEN FACUNDIE LEX

SIC SEDEBAT.

QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIÆ

ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET

NATURE DECRETUM EXPLEVIT

COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR

AN. DNI. M.DC.XXVI.
ÆTATIS LXVI.

TANTI VIRI

MEM.

THOMAS MEAUTUS

SUPERSTITIS CULTOR

DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR

H. P.