earth which setteth up a throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but Knowledge and Learning."

Learning helps to fortune and advancement-more men have had their livings given them by Homer than by Cæsar; Learning helps to pleasure and delight, surpassing all other in nature; by Learning man ascendeth in the heavens where in body he cannot come; and Bacon ends with the Dignity and Use of Knowledge and Learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality and continuance. "The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in Books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called Images, because they generate still and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. So that if the invention of the Ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits: how much more are Letters to be magnified, which as Ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions of the other?"

In the opening of the Second Book of the "Dignity and Advancement of Learning," Bacon directly addresses the king on behalf of the endowment of research, by help to places of learning (foundations and endowments, with revenues or privileges), books of learning (libraries and new editions), and the persons of the learned (endowment of Readers in Sciences, and reward of Writers and enquirers concerning any parts of Learning not sufficiently laboured and prosecuted). He regrets that Colleges in Europe are all dedicated to Professions, and none left free to Arts and Sciences at large; that teachers are ill paid ; that the Universities of Europe are not working together with mutual intelligence; that there is want of intelligent oversight for the renewal of the system of teaching and fresh adaptation to new wants; and that there is no public appointment of writers and enquirers to make research "concerning such parts of knowledge as appear not to have been sufficiently laboured or undertaken." The removal of such defects is work only for kings, "towards which the endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a crossway, that may point at the way, but cannot go it." But the inducing part of action to secure full culture of the fields of knowledge Bacon proceeds, as a private man, to undertake by "a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man."

Then follows Bacon's analytical division and subdivision of learning into all its parts. It is either Human or Divine. In each case it appeals to the three parts of man's understanding to Memory as History; to Imagination as Poesie; to Reason as Human Philosophy, or Divine Doctrine and Precept.

From each of these three main divisions of Learning there branch sub-divisions. "History is Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary, whereof," says Bacon, “the three first I allow as extant, the fourth I note as deficient. For no man hath propounded to himself the general state of learning to be described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of Nature and the state civil and ecclesiastical; without which the History of the World seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye out, that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of the person."

History of Nature Bacon sub-divides into three parts-Nature in Course: that is, History of Creatures; Nature Erring or Varying: that is, History of Marvels; Nature altered or wrought: that is, History of Arts. Also of Civil History three kinds: Memorials, which are History unfinished, or first rough draft; Antiquities, which are History defaced; and Perfect History, which again divides into three kinds, as it is history of a Time, a Person, or an Action.

By such analysis Bacon obtains his map of the whole realm of knowledge, with comment upon every part, discrimination of the cultivated and uncultivated parts, the fertile and the barren. His three branches, from one centre, divide, and again and yet again divide, until they spread into a large circle of fine outmost twigs, each representing some one object of study. The right student, beginning anywhere at the circumference, seeks inward for the point of union with another study, from a particular truth to a more general truth (or law); and from that, led inward still, by the way of search that is therefore called inductive, he approaches ever nearer to the point from which all branches of human knowledge have their beginning. For all that is within us and without us is but as the expansion of one thought of an All-Wise Creator.

This inductive method we shall find, when Bacon has advanced to his full definition of the right way of research, is a condition of success in the discovery of those great Laws of Nature from which are then to be deduced all possible applications of their powers to the use of man.

"Thus," Bacon says, at the end of his Second Book of the "Advancement of Learning," "I have made, as it were, a small Globe of the Intellectual World, as truly and faithfully as I could discover, with a note and description of those parts which seem to me not constantly

In any

And

occupate, or not well converted by the labour of Man... thing that is well set down, I am in good hope, that if the first reading move an objection, the second reading will make an answer. in those things wherein I have erred, I am sure I have not prejudiced the right by litigious arguments, which certainly have this contrary effect and operation, that they add authority to error and destroy the authority of that which is well invented. For question is an honour and preferment to falsehood, as on the other side it is a repulse to truth. But the errors I claim and challenge to myself as mine own. The good, if any be, is due, tanquam adeps sacrificii, to be incensed to the honour first of the Divine Majesty, and next of your Majesty, to whom on earth I am most bounden."

In May, 1606, Bacon, aged forty-six, married Alice Barnham, daughter of a London merchant who was dead, and whose widow had taken in second marriage Sir John Pakington, of Worcestershire. The lady had £220 a year, which was settled on herself. In June, 1607, Sir Francis Bacon became Solicitor-General. While rising in his profession, he was still at work on writings that set forth portions of his philosophy. In 1607 he sent to Sir Thomas Bodley his Cogitata et Visa-a first sketch of the Novum Organum. In 1608-the year of John Milton's birthBacon obtained the clerkship of the Star Chamber, worth £1,600 a year, of which the reversion had been given him in 1589.

Bacon's
Essays

Second
Edition.
1612.

In 1612 appeared, in November or December, Bacon's Second Edition of the Essays; there had been, since the first, two unauthorised editions, in 1598 and 1606. In Bacon's own second edition the number of the essays was increased from ten to thirty-eight, and those formerly printed had been very thoroughly revised. The range of thought, also, was widened, and the first essay was "Of Religion." The purpose of dedicating this edition to Prince Henry was stopped by the prince's death, on the 6th of November.

Bacon's Essays disclose to us counsels of life by a man

of the rarest intellect, with weight of thought in every sentence. But in his own life Bacon proved himself wanting, just where he is found wanting in his Essays. Life is directed best by those who allow due influence to each of its elements in man-the will, the intellect, and the emotions; and Bacon's failures, both as actor in life and as interpreter of action, may depend chiefly, as Dr. Kuno Fischer has suggested, upon undue predominance of the intellectual over the emotional part of a man's nature. Its imperfection in himself made it also less easy for him to understand its operation in the minds of others. Bacon was not-what no being upon earth can be "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;" he never consciously said to himself, "Evil, be thou my good." Emotion being out of place in philosophical researches into Nature, Bacon's inductive philosophy went straight to its aim when he endeavoured to guide men's minds into the one way of profitable research. But the modifications of men's speech and actions that are due to the just influence of feeling, are so far essential to the right conduct of life that whoever wants or avoids the prompting to them cannot live long without blundering very gravely more than once : as Bacon did. He was well read in Machiavelli, whose keen intellect he appreciated; indeed, from the fifth chapter of the second book of Machiavelli's "Discourses upon Livy " Bacon took suggestion of his Essay of "Vicissitudes of Things." There is a touch of Machiavelli often in Bacon's counsels of life, without the subtle irony of the Italian; they are all wise, but they are not the whole abstract of worldly wisdom, and sometimes-not oftenthey sink where they should rise.

Bacon kept his first little book of Essays by him, adding, altering, and writing more, as inclination or occasion prompted. They had increased in number from ten to thirtyeight when he produced an edition of them in 1612; and in

his last edition of them, that was issued as "newly written in the year before his death, the number had risen to fiftyeight. That is their final form.

Bacon and
King James.

In February, 1613, Bacon contrived for the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple a "Masque of the Marriage of the Thames and the Rhine," on the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine. In October, 1613, Bacon was made Attorney-General. The dispassionate mind that his philosophy required, Bacon applied somewhat too coldly to the philosophy of life. Without hatreds or warm affections, preferring always a kind course to an unkind one, but yielding easily to stubborn facts in his search for prosperity, Bacon, I have said, failed as a man, although he had no active evil in his character, for want of a few generous enthusiasms. Seeking to please a mean master, who was the dispenser of his earthly good, in 1614 Bacon was official prosecutor of Oliver St. John, a gentleman of Marlborough, who had written a letter to the mayor of his town on the illegality of the king's act in raising money by benevolences. In December of the same year the Rev. Edmund Peacham, a clergyman seventy years old, rector of Hinton St. George, Somersetshire, was deprived of his orders by the High Commission for accusations against his diocesan. In searching his house, a manuscript sermon was found, which had been written, but not preached. It censured acts of the king—as sale of Crown lands, gifts to favourites-and seems to have suggested that the recovery of Crown lands to the people might cost blood. The old clergyman was, by the king's desire, accused of treason, and was twice put to the rack, that accusation of himself or others might be wrung from him. As AttorneyGeneral, Bacon, serving his master, discussed privately with the judges in furtherance of the king's desire that Peacham might be convicted of treason for the composition