considerable value Bacon in vain endeavoured to persuade Essex to desist from the course of policy which ended in his execution; but there his gratitude towards his benefactor ended. When Essex was brought to trial for a conspiracy against the Queen, Bacon, as Queen's Counsel, appeared against his old friend, employing all his powers of oratory and argument to substantiate against him the charge of treason; and, after the Earl's execution, wrote, at the Queen's request, "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by the Robert, Earl of Essex." It is easy to say that Bacon in his conduct in this matter did not exceed the duties appertaining to him as Queen's Counsel, and that he could not have acted otherwise with prudence; but the fact remains that no high-minded or generous man would have done as he did. After all has been said that can be said to extenuate the part he took in this matter, it remains the great blot on his memory.

During the life of Queen Elizabeth, Bacon's efforts to advance his fortunes were constantly thwarted, but in the succeeding reign he attained the summit of his ambition. In 1603 he was knighted, in 1607 he became Solicitor-General, in 1613 Attorney-General, and in 1618 Lord Chancellor. He was also created Baron Verulam, and at a late period Viscount St. Albans. In 1621 he was charged before the House of Lords with corruption in the exercise of his office. He pleaded guilty, was deprived of the Great Seal, disqualified from holding any public office in future, fined £40,000, and condemned to imprisonment in the Tower during the King's pleasure. He was released from confinement after a single night, and his fine was commuted by the King; but his public career was for ever at an end. His guilt, rightly viewed, does not seem to have been great; if, as regards receiving gifts from successful litigants, he was no better than the majority of his contemporaries, he was no worse. He died in 1626 from the effects of a chill he had caught while making an experiment as to the preservative qualities of snow.

We have related the story of Bacon's life very briefly, partly

because, in spite of the labours of the late Mr. Spedding, who devoted a lifetime of painstaking industry to its elucidation, portions of it are still matter of dispute; partly because to enter into details about his public career would have led us greatly beyond our limits. He was a little, square-shouldered, nervous-looking man, with a finely intellectual head and small features. Speaking of his powers as an orator, Ben Jonson says, "No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness or 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. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." "My conceit of his person," writes the same authority, was never increased towards him by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him for his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for greatness he could not want." Ben Jonson is not an impartial witness; nevertheless what he says is sufficient to prove that Bacon was a man whose intellectual power impressed strongly those with whom he came into contact.

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Of Bacon's most generally read work, the "Essays," the first edition, containing only ten, appeared in 1597. In 1612 the second edition, containing thirty-eight, appeared; and in 1625 the complete edition, containing fifty-eight, was published. There is not much room for difference of opinion regarding these productions. They contain little or nothing to gratify any high moral ideal; people who think, with John Wesley, that one of the first things a Christian ought to pray to be delivered from is prudence, will not find much in Bacon's "Essays" to please them. They are the counsels of a shrewd, politic man of the world, who has looked with eager and penetrating eye upon mankind as it appears in the senate-house,

Bacon's Writings.

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in courts of law, in the commercial world; of a man who is firmly convinced that self-interest is the actuating principle of humanity. Even when treating of themes which might have made a more enthusiastic writer rise to flights of poetry and warm human feeling, Bacon remains cold and unimpassioned. The severe terseness of the style of the "Essays," in which every sentence is packed with as much matter as it can possibly hold, makes their intelligent perusal at first a task. of some difficulty; but fresh perusals reveal their inexhaustible wealth of matter,-indeed, as Dugald Stewart said, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in them something overlooked before.

The chief other English works of Bacon are the "Advancement of Learning;" "History of Henry VII.," a very masterly piece of work of its kind, and, as has been elaborately demonstrated, wonderfully accurate in all its leading statements; the “New Atlantis," a philosophical romance; and "Sylva Sylvarum," a treatise on natural history, which was the last work of his life. His great philosophical work, the "Novum Organum," which is written in Latin, appeared in 1620. "It would be presumptuous to attempt anything like an exact valuation of Bacon's intellectual power. We state only what lies upon the surface when we say that the character and products of intellect are very often as much over-estimated upon one side as they are under-estimated upon another. He is frequently praised as if he had originated and established the inductive method, as if he had laid down the canons appealed to in modern science as the ultimate conditions of sound induction. This is going too far. Bacon was an orator, not a worker; a Tyrtæus, not a Miltiades. He rendered a great service by urging recourse to observation and experiment rather than to speculation; but neither by precept nor by example did he show how to observe and experiment well, or so as to arrive at substantial conclusions. Not by precept; for if modern inductive method were no better than Bacon's inductive method, Macaulay's caricature of the process would not be so very unlike the reality. Nor by example; for the majority of his

own generalisations are loose to a degree. To call Bacon the founder of scientific method is to mistake the character of his mind, and to do him an injustice by resting his fame upon a false foundation. Unwearied activity, inexhaustible constructiveness-that, and not scientific accuracy or patience, was his characteristic. He had what Peter Heylin calls "a chymical brain ;" every group of facts that entered his mind he restlessly threw into new combinations. We over-estimate the man upon one side when we give him credit for scientific rigour; his contemporary, Gilbert, who wrote upon the magnet, probably had more scientific caution and accuracy than he. And we under-estimate him upon another side when we speak as if the Inductive Philosophy had been the only outcome of his everactive brain. His projects of reform in Law were almost as vast as his projects of reform in Philosophy. In Politics he drew up opinions on every question of importance during the forty years of his public life, and was often employed by the Queen and Lord Burleigh to write papers of State. All this was done in addition to his practical work as a lawyer. And yet his multiplex labours do not seem to have used up his mental vigour; his schemes always outran human powers of performance. His ambition was not to make one great finished effort and then rest; his intellectual appetite seemed almost insatiable."1

Passing over many authors of less importance, we come to a writer whose genius and character were as far removed from Bacon's as it is possible to imagine. The vast intellect of "high-browed Verulam" commands our respectful admiration, but it is icy and ungenial; we cannot bring ourselves to love the man, however much we may venerate the writer. Not so with witty Thomas Fuller (1608-1661). Even now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, it is impossible for any reader of his works not to conceive a feeling approaching to affection for one so full of the milk of human kindness, so re

1 Professor Minto's "Manual of English Prose Literature," p. 238. A very able and careful work, showing a large amount of original labour and thought.

dolent of harmless wit, so free from any taint of malice or bitterness. He lived at a time when the venom of party-spirit permeated every section of society, breaking family ties and putting an end to the closest friendships; yet, though a staunch Royalist, and ready to suffer for the cause of the King, he remained moderate in his sentiments, and was willing to acknowledge the virtues of the Puritans. Fuller was born at Aldwinkle in Northamptonshire, where his father was Rector. At twelve years of age he was sent to Cambridge, where he took his degree of M.A. in 1628. In 1631 he was made a prebendary of Salisbury and vicar of Broad Windsor in Dorsetshire, where his first prose work, the "Holy War," was written. It was published in 1640, and had been preceded by a poem, of which nothing is now remembered but the title, which shows the love of alliteration which then prevailed. The title was, "David's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, and Heavy Punishment." On the outbreak of the great Civil War, Fuller obtained a chaplaincy in the royal army, and while following the forces from place to place, employed himself in collecting materials for his "Worthies of England." During the prolonged siege of Exeter, he resumed his interrupted studies, and ministered regularly to the citizens of the besieged town. When Exeter capitulated, Fuller removed to London, where, in 1655, he received from Cromwell special permission to preach. On the Restoration he received sundry ecclesiastical honours; and his death, which occurred in 1661, happened just when he was on the eve of being appointed a bishop.

Fuller's chief works are "The Holy State" (1642), commonly bound up with "The Profane State" (1648); “Good Thoughts in Bad Times" (1644-45); "Good Thoughts in Worse Times" (1649); "Pisgah Sight of Palestine," a very quaint book on the geography of the Holy Land, illustrated. with plates as amusing as the text (1650); "Abel Redivivus," a collection of lives of martyrs, and so on (1651); "Church History of Britain" (1656); "Mixed Contemplations in Better Times" (1660); and the "Worthies of England," which was published in the year after his death. There is no