Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude, from link to link
It circulates the soul of all the worlds.",
Excursion, page 387.

NOTE F. Referring to page 140.

To this tendency to hasty assent, which is one of the idols of the understanding, originating in a love of truth, (see ante note E) it may seem that Bacon ought to have traced the evils of credulity, which he has classed under Fantastical Learning. (page 171.) Bacon, also says,

"The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and extremely covet that it may not be pensile: but that it may light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support itself in its swift motions and disqui. sitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that in all motions of bodies, there is some point quiescent: and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bare up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world, whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some atlas or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the understanding, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven." He says also,

"We are not so eager as to reap moss for corn: or the tender blade for ears: but wait with patience the ripeness of the

harvest."

And again,

Beware of too forward maturation of knowledge, which makes man bold and confident, and rather wants great proceeding than causeth it."

"Such a rash impotency and intemperance doth possess and infatuate the whole race of man: that they do not only presume upon and promise to themselves what is repugnant in nature to be performed: but also are confident that they are able to conquer, even at their pleasure, and that by way of recreation, the most difficult passages of nature without trouble or travail."

"Stay a little, that you may make an end the sooner," was a favourite maxim of Sir Nicholas Bacon.

In Locke's Conduct of the Understanding, there are some observations upon the evils of haste in the acquisition of knowledge, in departing from the old maxim that "the sinews of wisdom are slowness of belief." So true it is,

"We must take root downwards, if we would bear fruit upwards; if we would bear fruit and continue to bear fruit, when the foodful plants that stand straight, only because they grew in company; or whose slender service-roots owe their whole steadfastness to their entanglement, have been beaten down by the continued rains, or whirled aloft by the sudden hurricane."-Coleridge.

So true is it, that

"The advances of nature are gradual. They are scarce discernible in their motions, but only visible in their issue. Nobody perceives the grass grow or the shadow move upon the dial till after some time and leisure we reflect upon their progress."-South.

NOTE G.

Referring to page 140.

Although the love of excelling is the motive by which in our public schools, and our universities, youth is stimulated, and is in the common world a very common motive of action, yet this intellectual gladiatorship does not and never did influence the noblest minds: it is only a temporary motive, and fosters bad passion. The love of excellence on the other hand, is powerful and permanent, and constantly generates good feeling. That the love of excelling does not influence philosophy, is an opinion so prevalent that, assuming it to be the motive by which men are generally induced to engage in public life, it has been urged by politicians as an objection to learning, "that it doth divert men's travails from action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness."* The error of the supposition that the love of excelling can influence philosophy, may be seen in the nature of the passion, in the opinions of eminent moralists, and in the actions of those illustrious men, who, without suffering worldly distinctions to have precedence in their thoughts, are content without them, or with them, when following in the train of their duty.

With respect to the nature of the passion, it is difficult to suppose that it can influence any mind, which lets its hopes and fears wander towards future and far distant events. "If a man," says Bacon, “meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, (the divineness of souls except,) will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where as some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to-and-fro a little heap of dust." So says Bishop Taylor, "Whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded upon the pavement and floor of heaven. And if we would suppose the pismires, had but our understanding, they also would have the method of a man's greatness, and divide their little mole-hills into provinces and exarchats: and if they also grew as vitious and as miserable, one of their princes would lead an army out, and kill his neighbour ants, that he might reign over the next

handful of a turf."

The same lesson may be taught by a moment's self-reflection.

"I shall entertain you," Bishop Taylor, in the preface to his Holy Dying, says, "in a charnel-house, and carry your meditation a while into the chambers of death, where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholick arts, and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. The sight that St. Augustin most noted in that house of sorrow was the body of Cæsar clothed with all the dishonours of corruption that you can suppose in six

months' burial."

"I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire, by giving way that after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured amongst his armed ancestours"

With respect to the opinions and actions of eminent men, Bacon says, "It is commonly found that men have views to fame and ostentation, sometimes in uttering, and sometimes in circulating the knowledge they think they have acquired. But for our undertaking, we judge it of such a nature, that it were highly unworthy to pollute it with any degree of ambition or affectation; as it is an unavoidable decree with us ever to retain our native candour and simplicity, and not attempt a passage to truth under the conduct of vanity; for, seeking

betraying of our trust to infect such a subject either with an ambitious, an ignorant, or any other faulty manner of treating

This peccant humour of learning, "the delivering know-real nature with all her fruits about her, we should think it a ledge too peremptorily, ought, it seems, to have been referred to delivery of knowledge, where it is more copiously treated." -See page 213.)

[blocks in formation]

it."

So John Milton says,

"I am not speaking to the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented shall be the reward

of those whose published labours advance the good of man

kind."

See page 164 ante.

And Tucker, in his most valuable work on the Light of under Sol, that loveth honour; nor under Jupiter, that loveth Nature pursued, in his chapter on vanity, says,

"We find in fact that the best and greatest men, those who have done the most essential services to mankind, have been the most free from the impulses of vanity. Lycurgus and Solon, those two excellent lawgivers, appear to have had none: Socrates, the prime apostle of reason, Euclid and Hippocrates, had none: whereas Protagoras with his brother sophists, Diogenes, Epicurus, Lucretius, the Stoics who were the bigots, and the latter Academies who were the free thinkers of antiquity, were overrun with it. And among the moderns, Boyle, Newton, Locke, have made large improve ments in the sciences without the aid of vanity; while some others I could name, having drawn in copiously of that intoxicating vapour, have laboured only to perplex and obscure them."

Thomas Carlysle, in his Life of Schiller, just published, says, "The end of literature was not, in Schiller's judgment, to amuse the idle, or to recreate the busy, by showing spectacles for the imagination, or quaint paradoxes and epigrammatic disquisitions for the understanding: least of all was it to gratify in any shape the selfishness of its professors, to minister to their malignity, their love of money, or even of fame. For persons who degrade it to such purposes, the deepest contempt of which his kindly nature could admit was at all times in store. Unhappy mortal!' says he to the literary tradesman, the man who writes for gain, 'Unhappy mortal! that with science and art, the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothing more, than the day drudge with the meanest! That in the domain of perfect freedom bearest about in thee the spirit of a slave! As Schiller viewed it, genuine literature includes the essence of philosophy, religion, art; whatever speaks to the immortal part of man. The daughter, she is likewise the nurse of all that is spiritual and exalted in our character. The boon she bestows is truth; truth not merely physical, political, economical, such as the sensual man in us is perpetually demanding, ever ready to reward, and likely in general to find; but the truth of moral feeling, truth of taste, that inward truth in its thousand modifications, which only the most ethereal portion of our nature can discern, but without which that portion of it languishes and dies, and we are left divested of our birthright, thenceforward of the earth earthy,' machines for earning and enjoying no longer worthy to be called the Sons of Heaven. The treasures of literature are thus celestial, imperishable, beyond all price: with her is the shrine of our best hopes, the palladium of pure manhood; to be among the guardians and servants of this is the noblest function that can be entrusted to a mortal. Genius, even in its faintest scintillations, is 'the inspired gift of God;' a solemn mandate to its owner to go forth and labour in his sphere, to keep alive 'the sacred fire' among his brethren, which the heavy and polluted atmosphere of this world is forever threatening to extinguish. Woe to him if he neglect this mandate, if he hear not its small still voice! Woe to him if he turn this inspired gift into the servant of his evil or ignoble passions; if he offer it on the altar of vanity, if he sell it for a piece of money!"

business, for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly but as a man born under an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities. Besides I do not find in myself so much self-love, but that the greater part of my thoughts are to deserve well, if I were able of my friends, and namely of your lordship; who being the Atlas of this commonwealth, the honour of my house, and the se cond founder of my poor estate, I am tied by all duties, both of a good patriot, and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever I am, to do you service. Again the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me: for though I cannot accuse myself, that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities: the other with blind experi ments and auricular traditions, and impostures, hath committed so many spoils; I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or, if one take it favourably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind, as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is a thing I greatly affect. And for your lordship, perhaps you shall not find more strength and less encounter in any other. And if your lordship shall find now or at any time, that I do seek or affect any place, whereunto any that is nearer unto your lordship shall be concurrent, say then that I am a most dishonest man. And if your lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty: but this I will do, I will sell the inheritance that I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain, that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which, he said, lay so deep. This which I have writ unto your lordship, is rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising, or reservation: wherein I have done honour both to your lordship's wisdom, in judging that that will be best believed of your lordship which is truest; and to your lordship's good nature, in retaining nothing from you. And even so, I wish your lordship all happiness, and to myself means and occasion to be added to my faithful desire to do your service. From my lodging at Gray's-Inn."

"To the Lord Treasurer Burghley.-It may please your good lordship, I am to give you humble thanks for your favourable opinion, which by Mr. Secretary's report I find you conceive of me, for the obtaining of a good place, which some of my honourable friends have wished unto me asc opinanti. I will use no reason to persuade your lordship's mediation, but this, that your lordship, and my other friends, shall in this beg my life of the queen; for I see well the bar will be my bier, as I must and will use it, rather than my poor estate or reputation shall decay."

The most apparent extraordinary influence of ambition, which is but a form of the love of excelling, is in the conduct of Lord Bacon in his political life, who appears to have been "To my Lord of Essex.-For as for appetite, the waters of attracted by worldly distinction, although he well knew its Parnassus are not like the waters of the Spaw, that give a emptiness, and well knew "how much it diverteth and inter- stomach; but rather they quench appetite and desires." rupteth the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like A letter of recommendation of his service to the Earl of unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which while Northumberland, a few days before Queen Elizabeth's death. she goeth aside and stoopeth to take up the race is hindered."*"To be plain with your lordship, it is very true, and no That Bacon's real inclination was for contemplation, appears in the following letters: "To my Lord Treasurer Burghley, (A. D. 1591.)-"My lord, with as much confidence as mine own honest and faithful devotion unto your service, and your honourable correspondence unto me and my poor estate can breed in a man, do I commend myself unto your lordship. I wax now somewhat ancient; one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed; and I do not fear that action shall impair it; because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. I ever bear a mind, in some middle place that I could discharge, to serve her majesty; not as a man born

See page 174 of this volume.

winds or noises of civil matters can blow this out of my head or heart, that your great capacity and love towards studies and contemplations of a higher and worthier nature, than popular, a nature rare in the world, and in a person of your lordship's quality almost singular, it is to me a great and chief motive to draw my affection and admiration towards you."

"To Mr. Matthew."-Written, as it seems, when he had made progress in the Novum Organum, probably about 1609. "I must confess my desire to be, that my writings should not court the present time, or some few places, in such sort as might make them either less general to persons, or less permanent in future ages. As to the Instauration your so full approbation thereof I read with much comfort, by how much more my heart is upon it; and by how much less I expected consent and concurrence in a matter so obscure. Of this I

can assure you, that though many things of great hope decay | Unmindful of the feebleness of his constitution; unmindful with youth, and multitude of civil businesses is wont to diminish the price, though not the delight of contemplations, yet the proceeding in that work doth gain with me upon my affection and desire, both by years and businesses. And therefore I hope, even by this, that it is well pleasing to God, from whom, and to whom, all good moves. To him I most heartily commend you."

"To Sir George Villiers, acknowledging the king's favour. -Sir, I am more and more bound unto his majesty, who, I think, knowing me to have other ends than ambition, is contented to make me judge of mine own desires."

Such was Bacon's inclination: and if, instead of his needy circumstances, he had possessed the purse of a prince, and the assistance of a people,* he

of his love of contemplation; unmindful of his own words:
he in an evil hour accepted the offer. One of the conse
quences was, the sacrifice of his favourite work, upon which
he had been engaged for thirty years, and had twelve
times transcribed with his own hand. In his letter to the
king, dated 16th October, 1620, and sent with the Novum Or.
ganum, he says: "The reason why I have published it now
specially, being imperfect, is, to speak plainly, because I num-
"But time, in the
ber my days and would have it saved." The same sentiment
was expressed by him in the year 1607.
interim, being on the wing, and the author too much engaged
in civil affairs, especially considering the uncertainties of life,
he would willingly hasten to secure some part of his design
from contingencies." Another consequence was, the injury
to his reputation; a subject upon which, although I hope at
some future time to be more explicit, I cannot refrain from
subjoining a few observations.

in the prime of early youth, Would have shunned the broad way and the green, And laboured up the hill of heavenly truth. When the chancellor first heard of the threatened attack Upon the nature of ambition and great place, it is scarcely upon him by the very Parliament, convened by his advice for possible to suppose that he could have entertained erroneous the detection of abuses, he wrote to the House of Lords, reopinions. His sentiments are contained in his Essays on those subjects, and are incidentally mentioned in different questing to be heard: and he thus wrote to the Marquis of parts of his works. He could not much respect a passion by Buckingham:-"Your lordship spoke of purgatory. I am which men, to use his own words, were "Like a seeled now in it; but my mind is in a calm, for my fortune is not dove, that mounts and mounts because he cannot see about my felicity; I know I have clean hands, and a clean heart; him.... As if," he says, “man, made for the contemplation and I hope a clean house for friends, or servants. But Job of heaven, and all noble objects, should doe nothing but kneel himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting before a little idol, and make himselfe subject, though not of for matters against him, as hath been used against me, may, the mouth (as beasts are) yet of the eye, which was given for a time, seem foul, especially in a time when greatness is him for higher purposes." He must have contrasted the phi-the mark, and accusation is the game. And if this be to be a losophic freedom of a studious life with the servile restraints chancellor, I think, if the great seal lay upon Hounslow of an ambitious life, who says "Men in great place, are Heath, nobody would take it up. But the king and your thrice servants: servants of the soveraigne or state; servants lordship will, I hope, put an end to these my straits one way or other." By what way the king and his lordship did put of fame; and servants of businesse. So as they have no an end to these straits, is stated by Bushel in his old age, in freedome, neither in their persons; nor in their actions; nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seeke power and to the year 1659, thirty-three years after the death of the chanJose liberty; to seeke power over others, and to lose power cellor. As the tract is very scarce, I subjoin the statement. "But before this could be accomplished to his own content, over a mans selfe." He was not likely to form an erroneous estimate of different pleasures who knew that the great dif- there arose such complaints against his lordship and the then ference between men consisted in what they accepted and favourite atcourt, that for some days put the king to this query, rejected. "The logical part of men's minds," he says, "is whether he should permit the favourite of his affection, or the often good, but the mathematical part nothing worth: that is, oracle of his council, to sink in his service; whereupon his they can judge well of the mode of attaining any end, but lordship was sent for by the king, who, after some discourse, cannot estimate the value of the end itself."-(See page 177.) gave him this positive advice, to submit himself to his house But, notwithstanding his love of contemplation, and his know of peers, and that (upon his princely word) he would then ledge that the splendid speculations of genius are rarely united restore him again, if they (in their honours) should not be sensible of his merits. Now though my lord foresaw his apwith that promptness in action or consistence in general conduct which is necessary for the immediate control of civil proaching ruin, and told his majesty there were little hopes affairs, he was impelled by various causes to engage in active of mercy in a multitude, when his enemies were to give fire, His necessities in youth: the importunities of his if he did not plead for himself; yet such was his obedience to friends; the queen encouraging him, "as her young lord him from whom he had his being, that he resolved his makeeper:" his sentiment that all men should be active, that jesty's will should be his only law, and so took leave of him man's motto should not be abstine but sustine: that in this with these words: "Those that will strike your chancellor, theatre of man's life, God and angels only should be lookers it's much to be feared will strike at your crown;' and wished, on:† his opinion that he was actuated by the only lawful end that as he was then the first, so he might be the last of sacrifices. Soon after (according to his majesty's commands) of aspiring "the power to do good," and the consciousness. of his own superiority by which he was hurried into the opi- he wrote a submissive letter to the house, and sent me to my nion that he could subdue all things under his feet, induced Lord Windsor to know the result, which I was loath, at my him to attempt the union of two not very reconcilable cha- return, to acquaint him with; for, alas! his sovereign's favour was not in so high a measure, but he, like the phoenix, must racters, the philosopher and the statesman. be sacrificed in flames of his own raising, and so perished, like Icarus, in that his lofty design, the great revenue of his office being lost, and his titles of honour saved but by the bishops' votes; whereunto he replied, that he was only bound to thank his clergy; the thunder of which fatal sentence did much perplex my troubled thoughts, as well as others, to see that famous lord, who procured his majesty to call this parliament, must be the first subject of this revenge,

life.

Forth reaching to the fruit, he plucked, he eat, and, after all the honours of his professions had been successively conferred upon him, in the year 1617, when he was fifty-seven years of age, the great seals were offered to him.

"Such a collection of natural history," says Bacon, "as we have measured out in our mind, and such as really ought to be procured, is a great and royal work, requiring the purseful wrath; and that so unparalleled a master should be thus of a prince and the assistance of a people."

+ See his beautiful illustration in page 220 of this volume. "Power to doe good, is the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet towards men, are little better than good dreams: except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power, and place as the vantage, and commanding ground. Merit, and good works, is the end of man's motion; and conscience of the same, is the accomplishment of man's rest. For if a man be partaker of God's theatre; he shall likewise be partaker of

God's rest."

See page 163 of this volume.
VOL. I.-32

brought upon the public stage for the foolish miscarriages of his own servants, whereof with grief of heart I confess my. self to be one. Yet shortly after the king dissolved the par liament, but never restored that matchless lord to his place, which made him then to wish the many years he had spent in state policy and law study had been solely devoted to true philosophy: for, said he, the one at best doth but comprehend man's frailty in its greatest splendour, but the other the mysterious knowledge of all things created in the six days' work." That there was a private interview between the chancellor and the king, thus appears from the journals of the House of Lords, 17th April, 1621. "The lord treasurer

signified, that in the interim of this cessation, the lord chancellor was an humble suitor unto his majesty, that he might see his majesty, and speak with him; and although his majesty, in respect of the lord chancellor's person, and of the place he holds, might have given his lordship that favour, yet, for that his lordship is under trial of this house, his majesty would not on the sudden grant it. That on Sunday last, the king calling all the lords of this house which were of his council before him, it pleased his majesty, to show their lordships, what was desired by the lord chancellor, demanding their lordships advice therein. The lords did not presume to advise his majesty; for that his majesty did suddenly propound such a course as all the world could not devise better, which was that his majesty would speak with him privately. That yesterday, his majesty admitting the lord chancellor to his presence, &c. It was thereupon ordered, That the lord treasurer should signi y unto his majesty, that the lords do thankfully acknowledge that his majesty's favour, and hold themselves, highly bound unto his majesty for the same." In the morning of the 24th of April, a few days after this interview, the king was present in the House of Lords, commended the complaint of all public grievances, and protested, that he would prefer no person whomsoever before the public good; and, in the evening of the same day, the Prince of Wales signified to the lords, that the Lord Chancellor had sent a submission.-The sentence was passed. The king remitted all which it was in his power to pardon. That the time would arrive when it would be proper to investigate the whole nature of these proceedings, Bacon foresaw. In a paper written in November, 1692, in Greek characters, and found amongst his papers, he says, "Of my offences, far be it from me to say, Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas: but I will say what I have good warrant for, they were not the greatest offenders in Israel, upon whom the wall of Shilo fell:" And in his will, after desiring to be buried by his mother, he says, "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." It is hoped that documents are now in existence, by which the whole of this transaction may, without impropriety, be elucidated. It seems that, from the intimacy between Archbishop Tennison and Dr. Rawley, the chancellor's chaplain and secretary, all the facts were known to the Archbishop, who published his Baconiana in the year 1679, "too near to the heels of truth and to the times of the persons concerned;" in which he says, "His lordship owned it under his hand, 'that he was frail and did partake of the abuses of the times.' And surely he was a partaker of their severities also. The great cause of his suffering is to some a secret. I leave them to find it out by his words to King James. 'I wish, as I am the first, so I may be the last sacrifice in your times, and, when from private appetite it is resolved, that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket, whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with.' At present I shall only add, that when upon his being accused, he was told it was time to look about him, he said, 'I do not look about me, I look above me,' and when he was condemned, and his servants rose upon his passing through the gallery, 'Sit down, my friends,' he said, 'your rise has been my fall.'"

That the love of excelling is only a temporary motive for the acquisition of knowledge, may as easily be demonstrated: when the object is gained, or the certainty of failure discovered, what motive is there for exertion? What worlds are there to conquer ? "Sed quid ego hæc, quæ cupio deponere et toto animo atque omni curâ piλoσopetv. Sic inquam in animo est. Vellem ab initio ;" are the words of Cicero. "Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world," are the words of Burke. Milton, in his tract on Education, speaking of young men when they quit the universities: "Now on the sudden transported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them with the sway of friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent

and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat, contentious, and flowing fees; others betake them to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, (knowing no better,) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned."

That the love of excelling has a tendency to generate bad feeling, is as easily demonstrated. Tucker says, “This passion always chooses to move alone in a narrow sphere, where nothing noble or important can be achieved, rather than join with others in moving mighty engines, by which much good might be effected. Where did ambition ever glow more intensely than in Cæsar? whose favourite saying, we are told, was, that he would rather be the first man in a petty village, than the second in Rome. Did not Alexander, another madman of the same kind, reprove his tutor Aristotle for publishing to the world those discoveries in philosophy he would have had reserved for himself alone? 'Nero,' says Plutarch, put the fiddlers to death, for being more skilful in the trade than he was.' Dionysius, the elder, was so angry at Philoxenus for singing, and with Plato for disputing better than he did, that he sold Plato a slave to Egina, and condemned Philoxenus to the quarries." In illustration of this doctrine, I cannot refrain from subjoining an anecdote which explains the whole of this morbid feeling. "A collector of shells gave thirty-six guineas for a shell: the instant he paid the money, he threw the shell upon the hearth, and dashed it into a thousand pieces: 'I have now,' said he, 'the only specimen in England.'”

The love of excelling has, however, its uses. It leads "to that portion of knowledge for which it operates

The spur is powerful, and I grant its force;
It pricks the genius forward in his course,
Allows short time for play and none for sloth,
And, felt alike by each, advances both—'

and is attended with the chance of generating a habit to acquire knowledge, which may continue when the motives themselves have ceased to act. It is a bait for pride, which, when seized, may sink into the affections."

Such is the nature of the love of excelling. The love of excellence, on the other hand, produced the Paradise Lost: the Ecclesiastical Polity, and the Novum Organum. It influenced Newton, and Descartes, and Hooker, and Bacon. It has ever permanently influenced, and will ever permanently influence the noblest minds, and has ever generated, and will ever generate good feeling. "We see," says Bacon, "in all other pleasures there is a satiety, and after they be used, their verdure departeth: which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures: and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy: but of knowledge there is no satiety; but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable, and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply without fallacy or accident." "I have," says Burke, "through life been willing to give every thing to others, and to reserve nothing to myself, but the inward conscience that I have omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for its service, and to place them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it. This conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man; never checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, any policy. I was always ready to the height of my means (and they were always infinitely below my desires) to forward those abilities which overpowered my own." And so Pæderatus, "being left out of the election of the number of the three hundred, said, 'It does me good to see there are three hundred found better in the city than myself.""

If any reader of this note conceive that education cannot

efforts of Marcellus to take the town. An Athenian admiral delayed till evening to attack, on the coast of Attica, a Lacedemonian fleet, which was disposed in a circle, because he knew that an evening breeze always sprung up from the land. The breeze arose, the circle was disordered, and at that instant he made his onset. The Athenian captives, by repeating the strains of Euripides, were enabled to charm their masters into a grant of their liberty."

be conducted without the influence of this motive, he will | Roman fleet before Syracuse, and baffled the unceasing find the subject most ably investigated in the chapter on Vanity in Tucker's Light of Nature:--and if he imagine that this doctrine is injurious, he may be satisfied that there never will be wanting men to fill up the niches of society. "These things will continue as they have been: but so will that also continue whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: Justificata est sapientia a filiis suis."" And if he imagine that this doctrine will deter elevation of mind from engaging in worldly pursuit, let him read Bacon's refutation of the conceit that learning should dispose men to leisure and privateness, and his admonition that we should direct our strength against nature herself, and take her high towers and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of man's dominion as far as Almighty God of his goodness shall permit.

NOTE I.

Referring to page 140.

In page 207 of this work may be found Bacon's observations upon the importance of invention: upon which the considerations seem to be:

1. The utility of inventions.

"Let any one consider what a difference there is betwixt the life led in any polite province of Europe, and in the savage and barbarous parts of the world; and he will find it so great that one man may deservedly seem a god to another, not only on account of greater helps and advantages, but also upon a comparison of the two conditions; and this difference is not owing to the soil, the air, or bodily constitution, but to

arts."

NOTE M.

Referring to page 142.

riments in the New Atlantis.
See page 268 of this volume, relating to the houses of expe-

At the time I am writing this note, a proposal has just been published for the formation of a university in Yorkshire, and another proposal for the formation of a university in London: aud I please myself with the consciousness of the good which must result from the agitation of this question, in the age in which we are so fortunate to live. London is, perhaps, except Madrid, the only capital in Europe, with out an university. Why is such an institution expedient in Edinburgh and Dublin, and inexpedient in the capital in England? Lord Bacon thought, in the year 1620, that from the constitution of our universities, they opposed the advancement of learning. He says, "In the customs and institutions of schools, universities, colleges, and the like conventions, destined for the seats of learned men and the promotion of knowledge, all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed, that it cannot easily come into any "If some large obelisk were to be raised, would it not one's mind to think of things out of the common road. Or seem a kind of madness for men to set about it with their if here and there one should venture to use a liberty of judgnaked hands? and would it not be greater madness still to ing, he can only impose the task upon himself, without obincrease the number of such naked labourers, in confidence taining assistance from his fellows; and if he could dispense of effecting the thing? and were it not a further step in with this, he will still find his industry and resolution a great lunacy, to pick out the weaker bodied, and use only the hinderance to the raising of his fortune. For the studies of robust and strong; as if they would certainly do? but if, not men in such places are confined, and pinned down to the content with this, recourse should be had to anointing the writings of certain authors; from which, if any man happens limbs, according to the art of the ancient wrestlers, and then to differ, he is presently reprehended as a disturber and innoall begin afresh, would not this be raving with reason? Yet vator. But there is surely a great difference between arts this is but like the wild and fruitless procedure of mankind and civil affairs; for the danger is not the same from new in intellectuals; whilst they expect great things from multi-light, as from new commotions. In civil affairs, it is true, a tude and consent; or the excellence and penetration of capacity; or strengthen, as it were, the sinews of the mind with logic. And yet, for all this absurd bustle and struggle,

2. Utility of an art of invention.

men still continue to work with their naked understandings." The object of the Novum Organum is to explain the nature of the art of invention.

3. The high estimation of inventors.

In addition to the passage to which this note is appended, there is another similar passage, I believe, in the Novum Organum.

"The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among all human actions. And this was the judgment of antiquity, which attributed divine honours to inventors, but conferred only heroical honours upon those who deserved well in civil affairs, such as the founders of empires, legislators, and deliverers of their country. And whoever rightly considers it, will find this a judicious custom in former ages, since the benefits of inventors may extend to all mankind, but civil benefits only to particu lar countries, or seats of men ; and these civil benefits seldom descend to more than a few ages, whereas inventions are perpetuated through the course of time. Besides, a state is seldom amended in its civil affairs, without force and perturbation, whilst inventions spread their advantage, without doing injury or causing disturbance."

See also in page 269 of this volume, where Bacon speaks in his New Atlantis of the respect due to inventors: the passage beginning with the words, "we have two very long and fair galleries."

4. The art of inventing arts and sciences is deficient. See page 207 of this volume.

NOTE L.

Referring to page 141.

The power of man is his means to attain any end. "Archimedes by his knowledge of optics was enabled to burn the

*See page 165 of this volume.

change even for the better is suspected, through fear of disturbance; because these affairs depend upon authority, consent, reputation, and opinion, and not upon demonstration:

but arts and sciences should be like mines, resounding on all sides with new works, and farther progress. And thus it ought to be, according to right reason; but the case, in fact, is quite otherwise. For the above-mentioned administration and policy of schools and universities, generally opposes and greatly prevents the improvement of the sciences."

Whether these observations made by Bacon, in 1620, are to

any and what extent applicable to the year 1820, I know not: but I have been informed, that the anxiety for improvement, for which this age is distinguished, has extended to the university of Cambridge: that it has already beautified the buildings; and that an inquirer may now safely consider whether the compendia and calculations of moral and politi cal philosophy which are to be found in the university manu als, are best calculated to form high national sentiments.

There is scarcely any subject of more importance than the subject of universities. So Bacon thought. In this note, I had intended to have collected his scattered opinions, and to have investigated various questions respecting universities; but I must reserve these considerations for the same passage in the treatise "De Augmentis," where I hope to examine

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »