during the king's pleasure. He was also declared to be incapable of holding state office, and was forbidden ever to appear at court again. He was imprisoned for one night only, and then retired heart-broken and in disgrace to his house at Gorhambury, near St Albans.

He died in 1626 near London, from a chill caught while trying an experiment of preserving meat by freezing, the chill being aggravated by his being put into a damp bed at Lord Arundel's house near Highgate. He was buried at St Albans.

To make a just estimate of the moral character of Lord Bacon is a task of great difficulty, and no doubt he has been over-blamed by some writers who have made no allowance in the individual for corruptions which were too generally winked at in society; while on the other hand his friends have advanced on his behalf excuses which cannot possibly clear him. His early life was embittered by disappointments, his later life stained with covetousness and extravagance. He always lived splendidly and far beyond his means, and his creditors were constantly harassing him. To escape from his pecuniary embarrassments he sought to increase an income, already princely, by accepting bribes which a corrupt age was too ready to offer; and exposure and disgrace were the legitimate consequence of his loss of honour and self-respect. No reader of Bacon's Essays would ever infer from them that he was a good man, but they bespeak a shrewd and clever man.

As a philosopher, enunciating and enforcing the true mode of philosophical inquiry, Bacon has rendered to subsequent generations services of incalculable value. He established beyond all controversy the superiority of the method of induction and analysis over the old Aristotelian method of deduction and synthesis, and there is hardly a department of knowledge but can show wonderful achievements which are the practical and direct result of his teaching.

The great work conceived and sketched out in many details by him, but never finished, was to have consisted

of six books, and to have been called Instauratio Magna, to which the Advancement of Learning (1605), enlarged and republished in Latin (1623) as De Augmentis Scientiarum, is an introduction, while the Novum Organum was to be the second book.

Among his smaller works are the Essays, Wisdom of the Ancients, an exposition of the political and moral truth. he supposes to be contained in the classical mythology, the New Atlantis, and the History of Henry VII.

INTRODUCTION TO BACON'S ESSAYS.

IN 1597 Bacon published a small volume, dedicated to his brother Anthony, containing, among other things, ten of his essays.

In 1612 he reprinted them, increased in number to thirty-eight, and dedicated to his brother-in-law, Sir John Constable, death having overthrown his first intention of dedicating them to Prince Henry.

In 1625 he again issued them, now fifty-eight in number, and dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham.

It is interesting, in reading the deliberately recorded opinions of a great man, to know whether they belong to his earlier or later life, and how far they were influenced by contemporary history: I have, therefore, at the head of each essay placed its date.

It would be a work as superfluous as presumptive to put before the reader any commendation of the study of Bacon's Essays. They are not only remarkable, but unequalled for their conciseness, their pertinence, their practical suggestiveness, their vivacity, even when treating of trite subjects, and their compression of many thoughts into the smallest possible compass in words. No student can satisfactorily paraphrase them without much expansion; no annotator, I fear, can adequately elucidate them without himself writing essays upon their various points.

ESSAYS CIVIL AND MORAL.

I-OF TRUTH. (1625.)

'What is Truth?' said jesting Pilate;1 and would not stay for an answer.

3

Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits,5 which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients.

11

But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of Truth; nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand 10 to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, 12 as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell this same Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs 13 of the world half so stately 14 and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth 15 best by day, but it will not rise16 to the price of a diamond or carbuncle,17 that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering