The history of Lord Bacon would be that of the intellectual faculties,
and a theme so worthy of the philosophical biographer remains yet to be
written. The personal narrative of this master-genius or inventor must
for ever be separated from the _scala intellectus_ he was perpetually
ascending: and the domestic history of this creative mind must be
consigned to the most humiliating chapter in the volume of human life; a
chapter already sufficiently enlarged, and which has irrefutably proved
how the greatest minds are not freed from the infirmities of the most
vulgar.
The parent of our philosophy is now to be considered in a new light, one
which others do not appear to have observed. My researches into
contemporary notices of Bacon have often convinced me that his
philosophical works, in his own days and among his own countrymen, were
not only not comprehended, but often ridiculed, and sometimes
reprobated; that they were the occasion of many slights and
mortifications which this depreciated man endured; but that from a very
early period in his life, to that last record of his feelings which
appears in his will, this "servant of posterity," as he prophetically
called himself, sustained his mighty spirit with the confidence of his
own posthumous greatness. Bacon cast his views through the maturity of
ages, and perhaps amidst the sceptics and the rejectors of his plans,
may have felt at times all that idolatry of fame, which has now
consecrated his philosophical works.
At college, Bacon discovered how "that scrap of Grecian knowledge, the
peripatetic philosophy," and the scholastic babble, could not serve the
ends and purposes of knowledge; that syllogisms were not things, and
that a new logic might teach us to invent and judge by induction. He
found that theories were to be built upon experiments. When a young man,
abroad, he began to make those observations on nature, which afterwards
led on to the foundations of the new philosophy. At sixteen, he
philosophised; at twenty-six, he had framed his system into some form;
and after forty years of continued labours, unfinished to his last hour,
he left behind him sufficient to found the great philosophical
reformation.
On his entrance into active life, study was not however his prime
object. With his fortune to make, his court connexions and his father's
example opened a path for ambition. He chose the practice of common law
as his means, while his inclinations were looking upwards to political
affairs as his end. A passion for study, however, had strongly marked
him; he had read much more than was required in his professional
character, and this circumstance excited the mean jealousies of the
minister Cecil, and the Attorney-General Coke. Both were mere practical
men of business, whose narrow conceptions and whose stubborn habits
assume that whenever a man acquires much knowledge foreign to his
profession, he will know less of professional knowledge than he ought.
These men of strong minds, yet limited capacities, hold in contempt all
studies alien to their habits.
Bacon early aspired to the situation of Solicitor-General; the court of
Elizabeth was divided into factions; Bacon adopted the interests of the
generous Essex, which were inimical to the party of Cecil. The queen,
from his boyhood, was delighted by conversing with her "young
lord-keeper," as she early distinguished the precocious gravity and the
ingenious turn of mind of the future philosopher. It was unquestionably
to attract her favour, that Bacon presented to the queen his "Maxims and
Elements of the Common Law," not published till after his death.
Elizabeth suffered her minister to form her opinions on the legal
character of Bacon. It was alleged that Bacon was addicted to more
general pursuits than law, and the miscellaneous books which he was
known to have read confirmed the accusation. This was urged as a reason
why the post of Solicitor-General should not be conferred on a man of
speculation, more likely to distract than to direct her affairs.
Elizabeth, in the height of that political prudence which marked her
character, was swayed by the vulgar notion of Cecil, and believed that
Bacon, who afterwards filled the situation both of Solicitor-General and
Lord Chancellor, was "a man rather of show than of depth." We have
recently been told by a great lawyer that "Bacon was a master."
On the accession of James the First, when Bacon still found the same
party obstructing his political advancement, he appears, in some
momentary fit of disgust, to have meditated on a retreat into a foreign
country; a circumstance which has happened to several of our men of
genius, during a fever of solitary indignation. He was for some time
thrown out of the sunshine of life, but he found its shade more fitted
for contemplation; and, unquestionably, philosophy was benefited by his
solitude at Gray's Inn. His hand was always on his work, and better
thoughts will find an easy entrance into the mind of those who feed on
their thoughts, and live amidst their reveries. In a letter on this
occasion, he writes, "My ambition now I shall only put upon my PEN,
whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit, of THE TIMES
SUCCEEDING." And many years after, when he had finally quitted public
life, he told the king, "I would live to study, and not study to live:
yet I am prepared for _date obolum Belisario_; and, I that have borne a
bag, can bear a wallet."
Ever were THE TIMES SUCCEEDING in his mind. In that delightful Latin
letter to Father Fulgentio, where, with the simplicity of true grandeur,
he takes a view of all his works, and in which he describes himself as
"one who served posterity," in communicating his past and his future
designs, he adds that "they require some ages for the ripening of them."
There, while he despairs of finishing what was intended for the sixth
part of his Instauration, how nobly he despairs! "Of the perfecting this
I have cast away all hopes; but in future ages, perhaps, the design may
bud again." And he concludes by avowing, that the zeal and constancy of
his mind in the great design, after so many years, had never become cold
and indifferent. He remembers how, forty years ago, he had composed a
juvenile work about those things, which with confidence, but with too
pompous a title, he had called _Temporis Partus Maximus_; the great
birth of time! Besides the public dedication of his _Novum Organum_ to
James the First, he accompanied it with a private letter. He wishes the
king's favour to the work, which he accounts as much as a hundred years'
time; for he adds, "I am persuaded _the work will gain upon men's minds
in_ AGES."
In his last will appears his remarkable legacy of fame. "My name and
memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own countrymen, AFTER
SOME TIME BE PAST OVER." Time seemed always personated in the
imagination of our philosopher, and with time he wrestled with a
consciousness of triumph.
I shall now bring forward sufficient evidence to prove how little Bacon
was understood, and how much he was even despised, in his philosophical
character.
In those prescient views by which the genius of Verulam has often
anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding times,
there was one important object which even his foresight does not appear
to have contemplated. Lord Bacon did not foresee that the English
language would one day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can
discover, or poetry can invent; that his country would at length possess
a national literature of its own, and that it would exult in classical
compositions which might be appreciated with the finest models of
antiquity. His taste was far unequal to his invention. So little did he
esteem the language of his country, that his favourite works are
composed in Latin; and he was anxious to have what he had written in
English preserved in that "universal language which may last as long as
books last." It would have surprised Bacon to have been told, that the
most learned men in Europe have studied English authors to learn to
think and to write. Our philosopher was surely somewhat mortified, when
in his dedication of the Essays he observed, that "of all my other works
my Essays have been most current; for that, _as it seems_, they come
home to men's business and bosoms." It is too much to hope to find in a
vast and profound inventor a writer also who bestows immortality on his
language. The English language is the only object in his great survey of
art and of nature, which owes nothing of its excellence to the genius of
Bacon.
He had reason indeed to be mortified at the reception of his
philosophical works; and Dr. Rawley, even some years after the death of
his illustrious master, had occasion to observe, that "His fame is
greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his
own nation"; thereby verifying that divine sentence, a prophet is not
without honour, save in his own country and in his own house. Even the
men of genius, who ought to have comprehended this new source of
knowledge thus opened to them, reluctantly entered into it; so repugnant
are we suddenly to give up ancient errors which time and habit have made
a part of ourselves. Harvey, who himself experienced the sluggish
obstinacy of the learned, which repelled a great but a novel discovery,
could, however, in his turn deride the amazing novelty of Bacon's _Novum
Organum_. Harvey said to Aubrey, that "Bacon was no great philosopher;
he writes philosophy like a lord chancellor." It has been suggested to
me that Bacon's philosophical writings have been much overrated.--His
experimental philosophy from the era in which they were produced must be
necessarily defective: the time he gave to them could only have been had
at spare hours; but like the great prophet on the mount, Bacon was
doomed to view the land afar, which he himself could never enter.
Bacon found but small encouragement for his _new learning_ among the
most eminent scholars, to whom he submitted his early discoveries. A
very copious letter by Sir Thomas Bodley on Bacon's desiring him to
return the manuscript of the _Cogitata et Visa_, some portion of the
_Novum Organum_, has come down to us; it is replete with objections to
the new philosophy. "I am one of that crew," says Sir Thomas, "that say
we possess a far greater holdfast of certainty in the sciences than you
will seem to acknowledge." He gives a hint too that Solomon complained
"of the infinite making of books in his time;" that all Bacon delivers
is only "by averment without other force of argument, to disclaim all
our axioms, maxims, &c., left by tradition from our elders unto us,
which have passed all probations of the sharpest wits that ever were;"
and he concludes that the end of all Bacon's philosophy, by "a fresh
creating new principles of sciences, would be to be dispossessed of the
learning we have;" and he fears that it would require as many ages as
have marched before us that knowledge should be perfectly achieved.
Bodley truly compares himself to "the carrier's horse which cannot
blanch the beaten way in which I was trained."[225]
Bacon did not lose heart by the timidity of the "carrier's horse:" a
smart vivacious note in return shows his quick apprehension.
"As I am going to my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which
I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me
nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for
myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but _non
canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae_. If you be not _of the lodgings
chalked up_, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass by your
door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury, I would make you tell
another tale; or else I would add a cogitation _against libraries_, and
be revenged on you that way."
A keen but playful retort of a great author too conscious of his own
views to be angry with his critic! The singular phrase of the _lodgings
chalked up_ is a sarcasm explained by this passage in "The Advancement
of Learning." "As Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of
the French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to mark
up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that
entry of truth that cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds
which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with
pugnacity and contention."[226] The threatened agitation _against
libraries_ must have caused Bodley's cheek to tingle.
Let us now turn from the scholastic to the men of the world, and we
shall see what sort of notion these critics entertained of the
philosophy of Bacon. Chamberlain writes, "This week the lord chancellor
hath set forth his new work, called _Instauratio Magna_, or a kind of
_Novum Organum_ of all philosophy. In sending it to the king, he wrote
that he wished his majesty might be so long in reading it as he hath
been in composing and polishing it, which is well near thirty years. I
have read no more than the bare title, and am not greatly encouraged by
Mr. Cuffe's judgment,[227] who having long since perused it, gave this
censure, that a fool could not have written such a work, and a wise man
would not." A month or two afterwards we find that "the king cannot
forbear sometimes in reading the lord chancellor's last book to say,
that it is like _the peace of God, that surpasseth all understanding_."
Two years afterwards the same letter-writer proceeds with another
literary paragraph about Bacon. "This lord busies himself altogether
about _books_, and hath set out two lately, _Historia Ventorum_ and _De
Vita et Morte_, with promise of more. I have yet seen neither of them,
because I have not leisure; but if the Life of Henry the Eighth (the
Seventh), which they say he is about, might _come out after his own
manner_ (meaning his Moral Essays), I should find time and means enough
to read it." When this history made its appearance, the same writer
observes, "My Lord Verulam's history of Henry the Seventh is come forth;
I have not read much of it, but they say it is a very pretty book."[228]
Bacon, in his vast survey of human knowledge, included even its humbler
provinces, and condescended to form a collection of apophthegms: his
lordship regretted the loss of a collection made by Julius Caesar, while
Plutarch indiscriminately drew much of the dregs. The wits, who could
not always comprehend his plans, ridiculed the sage. I shall now quote a
contemporary poet, whose works, for by their size they may assume that
distinction, were never published. A Dr. Andrews wasted a sportive pen
on fugitive events; but though not always deficient in humour and wit,
such is the freedom of his writings, that they will not often admit of
quotation. The following is indeed but a strange pun on Bacon's title,
derived from the town of St. Albans and his collection of apophthegms:--