Bushel's
Abridg.

offended : and those who record his failings, like
those who have made observations on the spots in
the sun, neither pretend to diminish his real bright-
ness in himself, nor deny his universal influence on
the world of learning. Thus he withdrew from the

glare of a public station into the shade of retirement Post. Ç. 3. and studious leisure ; often lamenting, that ambition

and false glory had so long diverted him from the
noblest as well as the most useful employments of a
reasonable being : mortified, no doubt, into these
sentiments by a severe conviction, in his own per-
son, of the instability and emptiness of all human
grandeur.

Hitherto we have followed him through the bustle
and obliquity of business. We shall find him hence-
forth in a more pleasing, though a less conspicuous
situation ; freed from the servitude of a court; from
an intolerable attendance there, on the vices and fol-
lies of men every way his inferiors (for in this reign
no one could rise to power on more honourable
terms :) in a condition now to pursue the native bent
of his genius; to live to himself, and for the advan-
tage, not of one age, or one people only, but of all
mankind, and all times to come.

The first considerable work he engaged in, after
An. 1622, his retirement, wasthe history of Henry the Seventh ;

which he undertook at the desire of king James, and
published in the year 1622. Whatever some writers
may have insinuated of his melancholy and dejection,
we find every where, in this performance, evident
traces of a spirit unbroken by age, and unsubdued by
misfortunes. It has been highly applauded, and as
much condemned: a proof that it has more than
common merit. And we may venture to affirm, that,
whatever its faults are, they arise from no want of
vigour in the understanding, or of warmth in the ima-
gination of the writer. King James affected to con-
sider his great grandfather Henry as a perfect model
for the imitation of other monarchs : and as his was
the reign of flattery, this quickly grew to be the pre-
valent and fashionable opinion at court. Though in

of it,

Vol. V.

p. 45.

truth that prince's character was, in every part unamiable; and his conduct, on many occasions, weak or wicked. If my lord Bacon has not wholly escaped the infection of his age; if he has here and there attempted to brighten the imperfections, and throw in shades the bad features of the original he was drawing; yet, through these softenings, we can easily see this king as he was, and in all his genuine deformity. Suspicion and avarice, his own historian acknowledges, were the chief ingredients in his composition: and therefore his politics, both at home and abroad, were narrow, selfish, and false. Void of all great and extensive prudence, he endeavoured to supply that want by temporary shifts, and the little expedients of cunning. By these he commonly had Bacon, the luck to extricate himself out of difficulties, which a wiser man would have timely

foreseen, and a better man have wholly prevented. But as his genius was unsociable and solitary, the darkness in his temper passed on mankind for depth and sagacity in his understanding. His avarice too, was sordid and shameless. Nothing seemed mean, nothing unjust in his eyes, that could fill his coffers : and merely to fill them, for of wealth he had no enjoyment, he descended to arts of rapine no less scandalous than they were oppressive.

I have acknowledged that my lord Bacon's History has been taxed of partiality, and I will not dissemble that his style has been objected to, as full of affectation, full of false eloquence. But that was the vice, not of the man, but of the times he lived in: and particularly of a court, that, after the sovereign's example, delighted in the tinsel of wit and writing, in the poor ingenuity of punning and quibbling.

His Essays have, of all his works, been most current, and are still very justly esteemed. Towards the close of his life he greatly enlarged them both in number and weight; and published them anew, not only in English, but in a more universal language, which, he imagined, may preserve them as long

as books shall last. As they are intended not to amuse

p. 88.

but instruct; as they are neither a satire on human Lettres nature, nor the school of scepticism; Monsieur de sur les Voltaire observes, that they have been less popular Anglois, than the maxims of Rochefoucault, or the Essays of

,
Montagne. A remark that does my lord Bacon ho-
nour; who was too great a man to court a reputa-
tion from the multitude, by sacrificing to that malig-
nity, or indulging that curious extravagance, which
too many readers, I am afraid, expect to find grati-
fied, even in writings of a moral kind.

Of the other works which he composed in this last scene of his life, I forbear to make any mention here: they will be all enumerated in another place. Let me only observe, that nothing can give a more exalted idea of the fruitfulness and vigour of his genius, than the number and nature of those writings. Under the discouragement of a public censure, broken in his health,

broken in his fortunes, he enjoyed his retirement not above five years : a little portion of time! yet he found means to crowd into it what might have been the whole business, and the glory too, of a long and fortunate life. Some of his former pieces he methodized and enriched : several new ones he composed, no less considerable for the greatness and variety of the arguments he treated, than for his manner of treating them. Nor are they works of mere erudition and labour, that require little else but strength of constitution and obstinate application : they are original efforts of genius and reflection, on subjects either new, or handled in a manner that makes them so. His notions he drew from his own fund; and they were solid, comprehensive, systematical; the disposition of his whole plan throwing light and grace on all the particular parts. In considering every subject, he seems to have placed himself in a point of view so advantageous and elevated, that he could from thence discover a whole country round him, and mark out the several spots of it, distinctly and with ease. These characters are equally due to the works in which he made some progress, and to those he could only attempt.

His supposed poverty has been much insisted on, not only by our own writers, but by foreigners. Some Wilson. of the former have asserted, that he languished out a solitary being in obscurity and indigence: and among the latter, Le Clerc, who was led into the same notion by a passage in one of Howel's letters, has animadverted with an honest indignation on the meanness of that prince, who could leave such a man as he was to struggle, in his declining age, both with penury and affliction. I believe the matter has been exaggerated. Perhaps he did not enjoy affluence or entire ease of fortune : but his ordinary income must have placed him above sordid want and anxiety. Dr. Rawley, who lived long in his family, affirms that the king had given him, out of the broad seal and alienation office, to the value of eighteen hundred pounds a year; which, with his own lands, amounting to a third part more, he retained to his death. But then he had treasured up nothing in his prosperous condition against the day of adversity : and his pension was not only precarious, but ill-paid, by a king, who, instead of husbanding his revenues for great or good purposes, was daily lavishing them away, in fruitless negotiations, or on the least deserving of his subjects. Add to these things, that my lord Bacon lay all this time under the incumbrance of a vast debt; and that he had doubtless expended very considerable sums in procuring or making experiments. Even those, whom we see close and sparing on every other occasion, are yet profuse in gratifying a favourite passion. From all which arose that distress and those difficulties into which he was often plunged. That they were many and great, we can entertain no doubt. It is but too strongly confirmed to us by some unusual expressions in his letters to king James; where we find him pouring out his heart in complaints and supplications of such a strain, as every one who reveres his

It appears by a letter of Buckingham to him, that he asked for the provostship of Eton college, and was refused it.

An. 1625.

Bacon, memory will wish he had never uttered. Those who
Vol. V.
Letter

insist on the meanness, those who plead for the dig. cclxxvr. nity, of human nature, may, in this one man, find

abundant matter to support their several opinions. But, let us draw a veil over imperfections, and at the same time acknowledge, that a very ordinary penetration may serve to discover remarkable blemishes and failings in the most comprehensive minds, in the greatest characters, that ever adorned mortality.

King James died in 1625; after an inglorious and a fatal reign of three and twenty years : despised by foreigners, despised and hated by his own subjects. The mischievous notions he broached, the perverse conduct he held, gave rise to those divisions that quickly after involved his kingdoms in all the guilt and misery of a civil war : that shook the British constitution to its foundations, and in the end overturned it; though apparently framed to last for ages, as it had been ages in building up and perfecting.

His unfortunate chancellor survived him something above a year. The multiplicity of business and study in which he had been long engaged, but above all the anguish of mind he secretly laboured under, had undermined and broken into his health. After having been for some time infirm and declining, he owed his death at last to an excess, not unbecoming a philosopher; in pursuing, with more application than his strength could bear, certain experiments touching the conservation of bodies. He was so suddenly struck in his head and stomach, that he found himself obliged to retire into the earl of Arundel's house at Highgate, near which he then happened to be. There he sickened of a fever, attended

with a defluxion on his breast; and, after a week's An. 1626. illness, expired; on the ninth of April, in the sixty

sixth year of his age. How he bore this indisposition, or what discourses he held at the nearer approaches of death, no account is to be found ; an omission which every reader must feel and regret : as nothing can awaken the attention, nothing affect the heart of man more strongly than the behaviour of

a