whereof he took in the quantity of about three grains in thin warm broth every morning, for thirty years together next before his death. And for physic, he did indeed live physically, but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb, infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less; which (as he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humors of the body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth. And this was. no grievous thing to take. As for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been vulgarly spoken) he took not. His receipt for the gout, which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already set down in the end of the Natural History. It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity, for the moon was never in her passion, or eclipsed, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting, and that though he observed not nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his former strength again. He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week beforeGod so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast that he died by suffocation; and was buried in Saint Michael's church at Saint Albans, being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament, both because the body of his mother was interred there, and because it was the only church then remaining within the precincts of Old Verulam; where he hath a monument erected for him of white marble (by the care and gratitude of Sir Thomas Meautys, Knight, formerly his lordship's secretary, afterwards Clerk of the King's Honorable Privy Council under two kings), representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying, with an inscription composed by that accomplished gentleman and rare wit, Sir Henry Wotton. But howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as long as the world lasteth; in order to which I have endeavored (after my poor ability) to do this honor to his lordship, by way of conducing to the same. II. EVENTS IN BACON'S LIFE AND TIMES. Born at York House, as younger son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Trial and execution of Essex, Bacon being engaged against him Death of Queen Elizabeth Bacon King's Counsel; knighted by James I 1600 1600 1601 Early philosophical works Hampton Court Conference 1603-1610 1604 Bacon took court side in prosecution of Raleigh (1618), of In Bacon, as far as was possible in one man, the learning of the age met and mingled. All the Romance — i.e., at that date all the literary-languages of Europe were part of his province. In his pages all the classics save Homer and the Greek dramatists are rifled to enrich the Globus Intellectualis.' All the philosophies of the West, and most of the little then known of science, come within his ken. His criticisms of history are generally sound, as are his references to the dicta and methods of previous authors, and his quotations, though somewhat overlaid, are always illuminating. He had no pretension to the minute scholarship of a Casaubon or a Scaliger; but his grasp of the Latin tongue was firm, and his use of it facile. It is in the influence of Italy, ancient and modern, over his thought, that we find him as emphatically a child of the Renaissance as was Leonardo da Vinci. Of its physical and emotional excesses, whether of love, hate, cruelty, or violence, he had no touch; but in its love of letters and discovery, in its revolt from stereotyped restraints, its seeking after the substance of the new, incongruously at times tempered by reverence for the forms of the old, he was the greatest of the heirs of the movement. We shall have to note again how much he owed to the ancient philosophies he formally assailed; his acceptance of their political ideas is almost unreserved. Bacon's whole conception of a State - its relation to the individual; its supreme authority; the subordination of classes within its bounds; its proper attitude to other nations, of war, finance, commerce; its cultivation of art and science—is Greek to the core. His idea of a State religion, which he would at once reform and assert, and of the limits of dissent and conformity, recalls the Laws of Plato. His continually recurring standard of life, in all public and private relations, is neither more nor less than Aristotle's 'Golden Mean. Passing from theory to practical details, Bacon takes, with considerable modifications no doubt, but yet in the main he takes his model from nearer and more questionable authorities those of Rome grown crafty in her decline, of Florence struggling in vain against her tyrants, from the historians. of the Renaissance itself. - Guicciardini and Machiavel. (HUXLEY, in Fortnightly Review 29. 175, 183-185.) I know not what may be the opinion of those who are competent to judge of the labors or Euclid, or of Hipparchus, or of Archimedes; but I think that the question which will rise to the lips of the biological student, fresh from the study of the works of Galen, is rather, How did these men, with their imperfect appliances, attain so vast a measure of success? In truth, it is in the Greek world that we must seek, not only the predecessors, but the spiritual progenitors, of modern men of science. The |