contemn

last; the blossoms did not appear till sculpture, by the faces and necks of late. In general, the development of beautiful women, in the style of a the fancy is to the development of the Parliamentary report. In his old age judgment what the growth of a girl he discussed treaties and tariffs in the is to the growth of a boy. The fancy most fervid and brilliant language of attains at an earlier period to the per- romance. It is strange that the Essay fection of its beauty, its power, and on the Sublime and Beautiful, and the its fruitfulness; and, as it is first to Letter to a Noble Lord, should be the ripen, it is also first to fade. It has productions of one man. But it is far generally lost something of its bloom more strange that the Essay should and freshness before the sterner facul- have been a production of his youth, ties have reached maturity; and is and the Letter of his old age. commonly withered and barren while We will give very short specimens those faculties still retain all their of Bacon's two styles. In 1597, he energy. It rarely happens that the wrote thus: "Crafty men fancy and the judgment grow together. studies; simple men admire them; and It happens still more rarely that the wise men use them; for they teach not judgment grows faster than the fancy. their own use: that is a wisdom withThis seems, however, to have been the out them, and won by observation. case with Bacon. His boyhood and Read not to contradict, nor to believe, youth appear to have been singularly but to weigh and consider. Some sedate. His gigantic scheme of philo- books are to be tasted, others to be sophical reform is said by some writers swallowed, and some few to be chewed to have been planned before he was and digested. Reading maketh a full fifteen, and was undoubtedly planned man, conference a ready man, and while he was still young. He observed writing an exact man. And therefore as vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and if a man write little, he had need have judged as temperately when he gave a great memory; if he confer little, his first work to the world as at the have a present wit; and if he read close of his long career. But in elo- little, have much cunning to seem to quence, in sweetness and variety of know that he doth not. Histories expression, and in richness of illus- make men wise, poets witty, the mathetration, his later writings are far matics subtle, natural philosophy deep, superior to those of his youth. In this morals grave, logic and rhetoric able respect the history of his mind bears to contend." It will hardly be dissome resemblance to the history of the puted that this is a passage to be mind of Burke. The treatise on the "chewed and digested." We do not Sublime and Beautiful, though written believe that Thucydides himself has on a subject which the coldest meta-any where compressed so much thought physician could hardly treat without into so small a space. being occasionally betrayed into florid In the additions which Bacon afterwriting, is the most unadorned of all wards made to the Essays, there is Burke's works. It appeared when he nothing superior in truth or weight to was twenty-five or twenty-six. When, what we have quoted. But his style at forty, he wrote the Thoughts on was constantly becoming richer and the Causes of the existing Discontents, softer. The following passage, first his reason and his judgment had published in 1625, will show the exreached their full maturity; but his tent of the change: "Prosperity is the eloquence was still in its splendid blessing of the Old Testament; addawn. At fifty, his rhetoric was quite versity is the blessing of the New, as rich as good taste would permit; which carrieth the greater benediction and when he died, at almost seventy, and the clearer evidence of God's it had become ungracefully gorgeous. favour. Yet, even in the Old TestaIn his youth he wrote on the emotions ment, if you listen to David's harp produced by mountains and cascades, you shall hear as many hearse-like by the master-pieces of painting and airs as carols; and the pencil of the

Holy Ghost hath laboured more in | been surpassed. Every part of the describing the afflictions of Job than book blazes with wit, but with wit the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity which is employed only to illustrate is not without many fears and dis- and decorate truth. No book ever tastes; and adversity is not without made so great a revolution in the comforts and hopes. We see in needle-mode of thinking, overthrew so many works and embroideries it is more prejudices, introduced so many new pleasing to have a lively work upon a opinions. Yet no book was ever sad and solemn ground, than to have written in a less contentious spirit. It a dark and melancholy work upon a truly conquers with chalk and not lightsome ground. Judge therefore of with steel. Proposition after propothe pleasure of the heart by the sition enters into the mind, is received pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue not as an invader, but as a welcome is like precious odours, most fragrant friend, and, though previously unwhen they are incensed or crushed; known, becomes at once domesticated. for prosperity doth best discover vice, But what we most admire is the vast but adversity doth best discover virtue." capacity of that intellect which, withIt is by the Essays that Bacon is out effort, takes in at once all the best known to the multitude. The domains of science, all the past, the Novum Organum and the De Augmentis present, and the future, all the errors are much talked of, but little read. of two thousand years, all the enThey have produced indeed a vast couraging signs of the passing times, effect on the opinions of mankind; all the bright hopes of the coming age. but they have produced it through Cowley, who was among the most the operation of intermediate agents. They have moved the intellects which have moved the world. It is in the Essays alone that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric school, and talks to plain men, in language which every body understands, about things in which everybody is interested. He has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such consummate ability questions with which they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school.

Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the highest perfection. Many of the aphorisms, but particularly those in which he gives examples of the influence of the idola, show a nicety of observation that has never

ardent, and not among the least discerning followers of the new philosophy, has, in one of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with peculiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city; before him a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey. While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mirage, he was gazing from a far higher stand on a far lovelier country, following with his eye the long course of fertilising rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens, and portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba. It is painful to turn back from

contemplating Bacon's philosophy to | philosophy. He would have fulfilled contemplate his life. Yet without so a large part of his own magnificent turning back it is impossible fairly to predictions. He would have led his estimate his powers. He left the Uni- followers, not only to the verge, but versity at an earlier age than that at into the heart of the promised land. which most people repair thither. He would not merely have pointed out, While yet a boy he was plunged into but would have divided the spoil. the midst of diplomatic business. Above all, he would have left, not Thence he passed to the study of a only a great, but a spotless name. vast technical system of law, and Mankind would then have been able worked his way up through a suc- to esteem their illustrious benefactor. cession of laborious offices to the high- We should not then be compelled to est post in his profession. In the regard his character with mingled mean time he took an active part in contempt and admiration, with mingled every Parliament; he was an adviser aversion and gratitude. We should of the Crown: he paid court with the not then regret that there should be greatest assiduity and address to all so many proofs of the narrowness and whose favour was likely to be of use selfishness of a heart, the benevolence to him; he lived much in society; he of which was yet large enough to take noted the slightest peculiarities of in all races and all ages. We should character and the slightest changes of not then have to blush for the disfashion. Scarcely any man has led a ingenuousness of the most devoted more stirring life than that which worshipper of speculative truth, for Bacon led from sixteen to sixty. the servility of the boldest champion Scarcely any man has been better en- of intellectual freedom. We should titled to be called a thorough man of not then have seen the same man at the world. The founding of a new one time far in the van, and at another philosophy, the imparting of a new time far in the rear of his generation. direction to the minds of speculators, We should not then be forced to own this was the amusement of his leisure, that he who first treated legislation as the work of hours occasionally stolen a science was among the last Engfrom the Woolsack and the Council lishmen who used the rack, that he Board. This consideration, while it who first summoned philosophers to increases the admiration with which the great work of interpreting nature we regard his intellect, increases also was among the last Englishmen who our regret that such an intellect sold justice. And we should conclude should so often have been unworthily our survey of a life placidly, honouremployed. He well knew the better ably, beneficently passed, "in induscourse, and had, at one time, resolved trious observations, grounded conto pursue it. "I confess," said he inclusions, and profitable inventions and a letter written when he was still young, "that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends." Had his civil ends continued to be moderate, he would have been, not only the Moses, but the Joshua of

discoveries," with feelings very different from those with which we now turn away from the checkered spectacle of so much glory and so much shame.

From a Letter of Bacon to Lord Bur

leigh.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
(OCTOBER, 1838.)

to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of power.

Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Corre spondence of Sir William Temple. By the Right HoN. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1836. MR. COURTENAY has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, The volumes before us are fairly indeed, on some questions, been so entitled to the praise of diligence, care, Whiggish, that both those who ap-good sense, and impartiality; and plauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good will of many who strongly dissent from his opinions.

This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by a preface in which he informs us that the assistance furnished to him from various quarters" has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life." We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events

these qualities are sufficient to make a book valuable, but not quite sufficient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and compression. The information with which he furnishes us, must still, we apprehend, be considered as so much raw material. To manufacturers it will be highly useful; but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write.

We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls against the Whigs of the present day. Not only are these passages out of place in a historical work, but some of them are

intrinsically such that they would be- Ja turbulent people, without being guilty come the editor of a third-rate party of any disgraceful subserviency to newspaper better than a gentleman of either, seems to be very high praise; Mr. Courtenay's talents and knowledge and all this may with truth be said of For example, we are told that, "it is a Temple. remarkable circumstance, familiar to Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. those who are acquainted with history, A temper not naturally good, but unbut suppressed by the new Whigs, that der strict command; a constant regard the liberal politicians of the seventeenth to decorum; a rare caution in playing century and the greater part of the that mixed game of skill and hazard, eighteenth, never extended their libe- human life; a disposition to be content rality to the native Irish, or the pro- with small and certain winnings rather fessors of the ancient religion." What than to go on doubling the stake; these schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of seem to us to be the most remarkable this remarkable circumstance? What features of his character. This sort of Whig, new or old, was ever such an moderation, when united, as in him it idiot as to think that it could be sup-was, with very considerable abilities, is, pressed? Really we might as well under ordinary circumstances, scarcely say that it is a remarkable circum- to be distinguished from the highest stance, familiar to people well read in and purest integrity, and yet may be history, but carefully suppressed by the perfectly compatible with laxity of prinClergy of the Established Church, that ciple, with coldness of heart, and with in the fifteenth century England was the most intense selfishness. Temple, in communion with Rome. We are we fear, had not sufficient warmth and tempted to make some remarks on elevation of sentiment to deserve the another passage, which seems to be name of a virtuous man. He did not the peroration of a speech intended to betray or oppress his country: nay, he have been spoken against the Reform rendered considerable services to her; Bill: but we forbear. but he risked nothing for her.

No

We doubt whether it will be found temptation which either the King or that the memory of Sir William Temple the Opposition could hold out ever inowes much to Mr. Courtenay's re-duced him to come forward as the supsearches. Temple is one of those men porter either of arbitrary or of factious whom the world has agreed to praise measures. But he was most careful highly without knowing much about not to give offence by strenuously opthem, and who are therefore more posing such measures. He never put likely to lose than to gain by a close himself prominently before the public examination. Yet he is not without eye, except at conjunctures when he fair pretensions to the most honourable was almost certain to gain, and could place among the statesmen of his time. not possibly lose, at conjunctures when A few of them equalled or surpassed the interest of the State, the views of the him in talents; but they were men of Court, and the passions of the multino good repute for honesty. A few tude, all appeared for an instant to comay be named whose patriotism was incide. By judiciously availing himself purer, nobler, and more disinterested of several of these rare moments, he than his; but they were men of no succeeded in establishing a high chaeminent ability. Morally, he was above racter for wisdom and patriotism. When Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell.

To say of a man that he occupied a high position in times of misgovernment, of corruption, of civil and religious faction, that nevertheless he contracted no great stain and bore no part in any great crime, that he won the esteem of a profligate Court and of

the favourable crisis was passed, he never risked the reputation which he had won. He avoided the great offices of State with a caution almost pusillanimous, and confined himself to quiet and secluded departments of public business, in which he could enjoy moderate but certain advantages without incurring envy. If the circumstances