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vancement of Learning, after considering the excellencies of knowledge, and the means of disseminating it, together with what had already been done for its advancement, and what omitted, Bacon proceeds to divide the subject into the three branches of history, poetry, and philosophy; these having reference to what he considers the three parts of man's understanding-memory, imagination, and reasoning.' The second, and most important part of the work, consists of aphorisms, the first of which furnishes a key to the author's leading doctrines. It is as follows:-Man, who is the servant and interpreter of nature, can act and understand no farther than he has, either in operation or in contemplation, observed of the method and order of nature.' This new method of employing the understanding in adding to human knowledge was designed to effect an entire reformation in the intellectual operations.

The third part of 'The Instauration of the Sciences,' entitled the History of Nature, is devoted to the facts and phenomena of natural science, including original observations made by Bacon himself, which, though sometimes incorrect, are useful in exemplifying the inductive method of searching for truth. The fourth, is called Scala Intellectus, because it points out a succession of steps by which the understanding may ascend in such investigations. The author projected two other parts to the same general work, but did not live to execute them. He also produced another celebrated work entitled, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, the object of which was to discover secret meanings in the mythological fables of antiquity. He wrote also Felicities of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, a History of King Henry the Eighth, a philosophical romance called the New Atlantis, and several minor productions.

Though ignominiously driven from public life, Bacon devoted himself still with untiring assiduity to philosophical investigations; and one of his ex periments was the immediate cause of his death. While travelling in his carriage at a time when there was snow upon the ground, he began to consider whether flesh might not be preserved by snow as well as by salt. In order to make the experiment, he alighted at a cottage near Highgate, bought a hen, and stuffed it with snow. This so chilled him that he was unable to return home, but went to the Earl of Arundel's house, in the neighborhood, where his illness was so much increased by the dampness of the bed into which he was put, that his death soon followed-an event that occurred on the ninth of April, 1626, and in the sixty-third year of his age. Thus died Sir Francis Bacon, who, had the virtues of his heart been equal to his genius, would have been one of the greatest men that any age or country ever produced. His will contains the following strikingly prophetic passage:-'My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country after some time has passed over.'

Bacon, like Sidney, was 'a warbler of poetic prose.' No English writer has surpassed him in fervor and brilliancy of style, in force of expression, or in richness and magnificence of imagery. Keen in discovering analogies where no resemblance is apparent to common eyes, he has sometimes in

dulged, to excess, in the exercise of this talent. But in general his comparisons are not less clear and apposite than full of imagination and meaning. He has treated of philosophy with all the splendor, yet none of the vagueness, of poetry. Sometimes, too, his style possesses a degree of conciseness very rarely to be found in the compositions of the Elizabethan age. In the subjoined extracts we are aware that we present but a faint view of the genius of this wonderful writer :—

UNIVERSITIES.

As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the industry of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools, which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and necessity; so knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed, as universities, colleges, and schools, for the receipt and comforting the

same.

* *

USES OF KNOWLEDGE.

Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds though a little of it doth rather work a contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of nothing but [what is] examined and tried. It taketh away all vain admiration of any thing, which is the root of all weakness: for all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great. If a man meditate upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls excepted) will not seem more than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue, and imperfection of manners. * * Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears together. It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mindsometimes purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping the digestion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and ulcerations thereof, and the like; and I will therefore conclude with the chief reason of all, which is, that it disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of reformation. For the unlearned man knoweth not what it is to descend into himself, and call himself to account; nor the pleasure of that most pleasant life, which consists in our daily feeling ourselves become better. The good parts he hath, he will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them: the faults he hath, he will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much to amend them; like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Whereas, with the learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use and employment thereof.

1 This expression is given in the original in Latin.

PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY.

The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearselike airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground; judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant where they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

FRIENDSHIP.

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It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god;' for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathens-as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and truly, and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: 'Magna civitas, magna solitudo,'-[' Great city, great solitude;'] because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods; but we may go farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we speak-so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness: for princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, can not gather this fruit, except, to make themselves capable thereof, they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them 'participes curarum,' [participators in cares;] for it is that which tieth the knot: and we see plainly that

this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men. It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy-namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none; and, least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding. Surely Comineus might have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Louis XI., whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true, 'Cor ne edito,'-['Eat not the heart.'] Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their own hearts; but one thing is most admirable, (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship,) which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend, works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the alchymists used to attribute to their stone for man's body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature; byt yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature; for, in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression-and even so is it of minds.

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his thoughts more easily-he marshalleth them more orderly--he seeth how they look when they are turned into words-finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia, 'That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad'—whereby the imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs. Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best,) but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation-which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in one of his enigmas, 'Dry light is ever the best;' and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judg ment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts; the one concerning manners, the other concerning business: for the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling

of a man's self to a strict account, is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead; observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case; but the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune: for, as St. James saith, they are as men 'that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and favour:' as for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or, that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or, that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations to think himself all in all: but when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight; and if any man think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces, asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is as well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all,) but he runneth two dangers; one, that he shall not be faithfully counselled-for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it; the other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning,) and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy-even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body-and, therefore, may put you in a way for present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and so cure the disease, and kill the patient: but a friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate, will beware, by furthering any present business, how he dasheth upon other inconvenience—and, therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels, for they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct. After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment,) followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels-I mean, aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many things there are which a man can not do himself; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients to say 'that a friend is another himself.' Men have their time, and die many times in desire of some things which they principally take to heart; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and his deputy; for he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man can not, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man can not sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like, but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. man's person hath many proper relations which he can not put off. not speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless: I have given the rule, where a man can not fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend he may quit the stage.

So, again, a

A man can

From the eminent and distinguished prose writers whom we have just noticed, we now revert to a useful, though less brilliant, class of authors

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