was that of Aristotle. To this, or rather to the degradation of this, Bacon had early conceived a dislike-not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy, . . . only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man.'* And indeed, in Bacon's day, its infertility-in the form of scholasticism-had become manifest. It was perishing for lack of vitality, powerless to cope with progressive forces and independent thought. For the outworn procedures of à priori reasoning, Bacon suggested the substitution of another method, that of à posteriori investigation by observation and experiment. His merit lies in his indication of this, now generally denominated the Baconian or Inductive Method, as opposed to the Deductive Method of Aristotle. 'He raised experience, which hitherto had been only matter of chance, into a separate and independent object of thought;' and 'he awoke a general consciousness of its indispensable necessity.'t It has been said that he did not so much apply the principles of the new Philosophy as propose them. Nevertheless, like Moses on Mount Pisgah-to use the illustration of Cowley-it was his privilege first to behold the Promised Land; and, this being so, it seems profitless to inquire, at this date, whether, without a Bacon, the Inductive Method would have originated in England.

The outline of the new Philosophy has been sketched by its projector in a grand group of works, to which he gave the general title of Instauratio Magna-or 'Great Institution' of the Sciences. Of this, the six sections, given in the Distributio Operis prefixed to the Novum Organum, ‡ are as follow:—

I. Partitiones Scientiarum.-This was to be a survey of then existing knowledge, and to it belongs the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum, of which nine books were published in 1623. It is a translation, with large additions, of the author's previous work in English On the Advancement of Learning, 1605.

II. Novum Organum, or Indicia de Interpretatione Naturæ.—This so-called 'New Instrument of Philosophy' is an exposition of the Inductive Method, in two books, first published in 1620. It was valued by its author above all his other works, and was revised, altered, and corrected no less than twelve times. But even this is incomplete.

*Rawley in Spedding, i. 4.

Schwegler's Hist. of Philosophy, by Stirling, 1868, 152.

Bacon's Works, Ellis and Spedding, i. 71, 134. Preface to Novum Organum.

III. Phænomena Universi, or Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad condendam Philosophiam.—These were to be the materials for the new method. Histories of the Winds, 1622,—of Life and Death, 1623, -of Density and Rarity, 1658; the treatise called Sylva Sylvarum, 1627, and a few prefaces, are the only works extant which can be properly classed in this section of the Instauratio.

IV. Scala Intellectus.-This was to contain examples of the operation and results of the method. Nothing exists of it but a preface. V. Prodromi, or Anticipationes Philosophie Secunde.-This was to contain 'anticipations of the now philosophy,' i.e., facts established without the aid of the Baconian method, by which they were subsequently to be tested. Nothing remains of this section but a

preface.

VI. Philosophia Secunda, or Scientia Activa.-This was to be the result of the application of the new method to all the phenomena of the universe.' [Ellis.]

Such is this great conception, the importance and significance of which are evident. That it was only a half-executed conception, as the preceding list will show, is not surprising. If one man only could have sketched the plan, it was not in one man's power (even though that man were Bacon) to bring it to completion. He himself speaks of Sect. vi. as a task beyond his strength and hopes― et supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata;'* and, in the most finished work of the series-the Novum Organum, he reached but the threshold of his theme.

The chief of Bacon's remaining works, in the order of their publication, are his Essayes, or Counsels, Civill and Morall (1597–1625), compressed extracts of experience, the depth and suggestiveness of which are too well known for further comment; the Wisdom of the Ancients, 1609, in which the author endeavours to explain the allegory which he believes to be concealed in many of the ancient fables;† the Book of Apophthegms, 1625; the Elements of the Laws of England, 1636; the History of Henry VII.; and the unfinished fable of the New Atlantis, 1635, to which Rawley refers, as devised by its author to the end that he might exhibit therein a model or description of a College, instituted for the interpreting of Nature, and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of man.' (See also p. 46, s. 27).

46. Burton, Selden, Lord Herbert.-A writer, who, according to his epitaph at Oxford, consecrated his life to the gloomiest of all sciences, has left a singular tribute to his ruling passion in the • Distributio Operis.

+ v. Preface.

so-called Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, a systematic examination of the nature and treatment of hypochondria. Its author, Robert Burton (1577-1640), was rector of Seagrave, in Leicestershire. Despite the methodical divisions and subdivisions of the book, quotations of a most multifarious character make up its body and substance. Burton himself terms it a cento. It is certainly a cento unparalleled. Sterne was notoriously indebted to it, as also (it is said) were the wits of the Augustan and Georgian eras; and since Thackeray makes it the entire library of one of his literary characters, it may be inferred that its use, as a convenient storehouse of out-of-the-way erudition, is not, even now, unknown.

Two other writers, although they cannot be said to belong more exclusively to the reign of James than to that of his successor, nevertheless produced some of their most important works within the period comprised in this chapter. One was Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648), the author of two deistical works, entitled respectively De Veritate and De Religione Gentilium, the first of which was published in 1624; of a valuable, if partial, History of the Life and Reign of Henry VIII.; and a singularly direct and candid autobiography. The other is John Selden (1584–1654), a man of a learning as vast as, but better disciplined than, Burton's, author of numerous works, of which the Treatise of Titles of Honour, 1614, his largest English work, and the History of Tithes, 1618, belong to this period. After his death was published his Table-Talk, 1689, reprinted in Mr. Arber's series.

47. The Minor Prose Writers.-Foremost among the minor writers comes the unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury (15811613), poisoned on account of his opposition to the marriage of Carr, James' favourite, with the Countess of Essex. Overbury was the author of the poem of The Wife, and of Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons, 1614, pieces characterised by the prevailing taste for conceit and epigram. A valuable and original Historie of the Turks, 1603, was written by Richard Knolles (1550?-1610). Among the chroniclers must be mentioned Richard Grafton (d. after 1572); Raphael Holinshed (d. 1580?), to whose Chronicles of England, Ireland, and Scotland Shakespeare was indebted for some of his raw material; John Stowe (1525-1605), author of the well-known Survey of London, 1598; John Speed (1552–1629), author of a History of Great Britain, 1611. In his Britannia, 1586, William Camden (1551– 1623) described the country topographically; and the achievements of the Elizabethan navigators were carefully commemorated in the

collections of Voyages and Travels compiled by Hakluyt, Purchas, and others.* For Jewel, Whitgift, Cartwright, and the other theological writers of the period the reader is referred to the Dictionary Appendix at the end of this volume.

Two prose translations also claim our notice. These are the Montaigne's Essays of John Florio (d. 1625), who by his censures on the contemporary drama has also been said to enjoy the doubtful distinction of being the original † of Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost; while the Plutarch (1579) of Sir Thomas North (1535?-post 1600), from the French of Amyot, was used by Shakespeare for his Roman plays just as Holinshed had been for the English Histories.'

·

48. The Authorised Version.-The account of the prose writings of the Shakespearean age is fittingly brought to an end by the Authorised Translation of the Scriptures, which, originating with the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, was commenced in 1607, and was published in 1611. The basis of this was the so-called Bishops', or Archbishop Parker's Bible, 1568, which was to be followed as closely as possible. The Bishops' Bible was based upon Cranmer's, which again may be said to derive from Tyndale's version. (See p. 45, s. 26.) To this literary descent, and to the careful collation of the new translation with the earlier ones, must be attributed that mellow archaism of phraseology which apparently removes the language of our present Bible to a period far more remote than the reign in which the translation was actually executed. 'The English of the Authorised Version represents, not the language of 1611 in its integrity, but the language which prevailed from time to time during the previous century.‡

See Dictionary Appendix (E).

+ See Boswell's Malone,' iv. 479-483, for some of the arguments for and against this. Warburton and Farmer held this view: few now do.

Eastwood and Wright, Preface to Bible Word-Book, 1886.

49. SUMMARY OF THE PERIOD.-50. THE 'METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL' OF POETS.51. COWLEY.-52. HERBERT, CRASHAW.-53. QUARLES, WITHER.-54. HERRICK, HABINGTON.-55. THE CAVALIER POETS.-56. WALLER.-57. MILTON. -58. BUTLER.-59. MARVELL.-60. THE MINOR POETS.-61. THE PROSA WRITERS.-62, HOBBES, CLARENDON.-63. FULLER, BROWNE.-64. WALTON. -65. THE DIARISTS.-66. BUNYAN.-67. LOCKE, TEMPLE.-68. THE THEOLOGIANS.-69. THE SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.-70. THE MINOR PROSE WRITERS. -71. THE NEWSPAPER PRESS.-72. THE SURVIVORS OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE.-73. THE STAGE OF THE RESTORATION.-74. DRYDEN.-75. SHADWELL, LEE.-76. OTWAY, SOUTHERNE.-77. THE COMIC DRAMATISTS.

49. Summary of the Period.-The period embraced by the last chapter came to an end with the death of James I., in 1625. The present chapter extends from that date to the close of the seventeenth century. It includes the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth, the Protectorates, the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and (two years only excepted) the reign of William and Mary. Taking the commencement of the Civil War as one point of division, and the Restoration in 1660 as another, this epoch of English literary history may be arranged in three stages-the first from 1625 to 1640, the second from 1640 to 1660, and the third from 1660 to 1700,-the date of the death of Dryden.

During the first of these stages the great school of dramatists, which had thrown a lustre over the two previous reigns of Elizabeth and James, was slowly dying out. Of the major prose writers of James' reign, only Selden and Lord Herbert were still active, Bacon having died in 1626. A hush preceded the coming struggle, and literature flourished chiefly in the hands of a little group of poets, of whom Jonson, in his minor pieces, and Donne (see p. 56, s. 36), who lived until 1631, may be said to be the leaders. Of these, Cowley, Wither, Herbert, Crashaw, Habington, Quarles, Suckling, and Carew had all published poems before 1640, and in that year Denham's masterpiece was written. Nothing had been printed of