sopher has no thoughts of small worth': With me it is thus, and, I think, with all men in my case; if I bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind, but if I rid myself of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. Some counsellor he must have to whom he may disburden his thoughts. He often speaks, and with something like pathos, of the value of a friend in helping one to clear one's thoughts, and of his own friendless and solitary condition in his arduous search after truth. A man were better relate himself to a statua than to let his thoughts pass in smother, and Bacon's statua was pen and paper. Perhaps some dim sense of his own principal deficiency was one reason why Bacon so systematically related himself to paper. Writing, he said, maketh an exact man; and exactness, as he knew, was not a strong point with him. He was singularly inexact, and by nature indifferent to details; and however strenuously he may have laboured to remedy this defect, yet a defect it always remained, seriously influencing his philosophic investigations, his statesmanship, and his morals. De minimis non curat lex,' said King James good-humouredly of his great Chancellor; and the Chancellor goodhumouredly admits the justice of the charge. He was by nature indifferent to small things; but he strove to remove this inexactness, and one of his remedies was the abundant use of writing. Writing seemed to Bacon profitable for all things. No course of invention, he said, can be satisfactory unless it be carried on in writing.1 But it was not for great inventions merely : for every kind of work, philosophic, political, private, be it an onslaught on the ancient philosophy, or a speech in parliament, or a council meeting, or an interview with some great lord or lady, Bacon in each case begins by relating himself to paper. Even if his object was no

Novum Organum, Aphorism CI.

more than to win credit at the expense of some legal rival by being more round or resolute, or to exchange his shy and nervous manner for a more confident carriage— for each and all of these things Bacon did not think it amiss to take counsel with paper.1

Hence it comes to pass that, though throughout the whole of the Essays one can scarcely find a word about the writer, yet they really make up a kind of autobiography. The very names, and perhaps the order of the Essays, in the earlier and later editions, tell the story of youth passing into age, and the student making way for the statesman. In the edition of 1597 the student is predominant. Studies lead the way, and the few essays that follow in that short edition turn almost all upon the subjects that would interest an ordinary student or gentleman leading a private life-Discourse, Followers, Suitors, Expence, Health, Honour. The only two that have any savour of the politician, Faction and Negociating, come last in order, and they are short and incomplete. Passing to the edition of 1612, we find the first place occupied by Religion; but it is religion treated from the statesman's point of view, as the most interesting subject in the politics of the day. But in 1625 the old man, drawing near his grave while the work of his life is yet unaccomplished, is driven back on that which he had made the object of the fresh ambitions of his hopeful youth. Death comes near the beginning, but not first : the first place is given to Truth. And so the final edition of the Essays of the author of the Instauratio Magna will

1 See p. xlix., also Life, Vol. vii. p. 197, 'Everybody prepares himself for great occasions. Bacon seems to have thought it no loss of time to prepare for small ones too.' See also Mr. Spedding's note on the Temporis Partus Masculus as an 'experiment' in 'a spirit of contemptuous invective,' Works, Vol. iii. p. 525; To assist his memory and perhaps also to excite his thoughts, he was in the habit of jotting down in common-place books such reflexions and suggestions as occurred to him on the sudden.'

begin for all posterity with the indignant protest against the indolence of mankind, who question Nature in jest, and will not believe that the Truth—Nature's answer—is attainable, if they will but wait to be taught. What is Truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Thus, then, the Essays contain an abridgment of Bacon's life, the essence of his manners, his morals, and his politics, tinged throughout with his philosophy: and, in order thoroughly to understand the Essays, we must endeavour to understand their author as a philosopher, a politician, and a moralist, or—to return to Montaigne, with whom we set out- we must curiously endeavour to find out what he was himself.'

Multum incola: my soul hath long dwelt with those that are enemies unto peace—this is the text that Bacon himself has given us as the key-note of his life.1 No other words are so often on his lips as these. He is a pilgrim in an unfriendly land, a stranger to his work; his occupations are alien to his nature. He was intended to be a Frophet of Science, mouthpiece of the discoveries of Time, and fate has diverted him to the petty details of a lawyer's, or a courtier's, or a statesman's life. Whether engaged in writing the histories of monarchs, or preparing devices for the royal pleasure, in legal practice, in parliamentary business, in drawing up royal proclamations, in giving judgments from the bench, in discussing the highest matters of national policy, or defending the pettiest rights of the royal prerogative, it is always the same; Bacon is still multum incola, not at home in his work, a Prophet who has missed his vocation. I think no man may more truly say with the Psalmist, Multum incola fuit anima mea, than myself: for I do confess, since I was of any understanding, my mind hath been in

1 Bacon never uses these words in their full force. He means that he dwells amid alien occupations.

effect absent from that I have done. The history of Bacon's life is a record of the temptations by which he was allured from philosophy, of struggles, penitences, relapses, and final failure.

We cannot definitely say how soon Bacon conceived the idea of his philosophic mission. However much he may have been endowed-as his biographer Rawley tells us he was even in 'his first and childish years with pregnancy and towardness of wit,' yet it would be absurd to suppose that, when he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, a boy between twelve and thirteen years of age, 'at the ordinary years of ripeness for the University, or something earlier'-he had the Instauratio Magna already in his mind. Yet, we are informed that while still a resident at the University, he had already conceived a dislike for the philosophy of the schools. Aristotle's philosophy was then, as always, his aversion, not merely for its barren logic and puerile induction, but also as embodying the evil Spirit of Authority, barring the way to improvement and thus retarding science. Already the young student had noted the 'unfruitfulness of a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man.' 2 Such is the testimony of his biographer, speaking of what had been 'imparted from his lordship'; and we have Bacon's own confession that the ardour and constancy of his mind in his pursuit of truth had been protracted over a long time, it being now forty years (he is writing thus in his sixtyfifth year) since I composed a juvenile work on this subject, which, with great confidence and a magnificent title, I named the Greatest Birth of Time. 3

Between his fortieth and fiftieth year, looking back

1

Life, Vol. iii. p. 253. 3 Life, Vol. vii. p. 533.

2 Works, Vol. i. p. 4.

man.

upon and justifying his past life, he speaks as one who had from the first recognised that he was born to be useful to mankind and specially moulded by nature for the contemplation of the truth. He justifies his divergence into law and politics on the ground that his country had claimed such a sacrifice at his hands. But he found no work so meritorious as the discovery and development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilize the life of I found in myself-he thus continues- -a mind at once versatile enough for that most important object the recognition of similarities, and at the same time steady and concentrated enough for the observation of subtle shades of difference. I possessed an earnestness of research, a power of suspending judgment with patience, of meditating with pleasure, of asserting with caution, of correcting false impressions with readiness, and of arranging my thoughts with careful pains: I had no passion for novelty, no fond admiration for antiquity; imposture in every shape I utterly hated. And, thus endowed, I considered myself as it were a relation and kinsman of truth.1

There was no exaggeration in this self-painted portrait. One at least of the qualities here enumerated he possessed even to excess, that most dangerous faculty of recognising similarities. It is curiously characteristic of Bacon that he lays more stress upon that most important C+ object the recognition of similarities, than upon the observation of subtle shades of difference. Yet the latter is pre-eminently the philosopher's faculty, while the former is the poet's. But Bacon was a poet, the poet of Science. His eye, like the poet's

in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven

1 Works, Vol. iii. p. 519.

He also speaks of himself (1592) as willing to serve Her Majesty,' but not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly).' Life, Vol. i. p. 108. See also pp. liii, lxiii.