LORD BACON.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1837.]

defence of one most eloquent and accomplished Trimmer.

The volume before us reminds us now and then of the "Life of Cicero." But there is this marked difference. Dr. Middleton evidently had an uneasy consciousness of the weakness of his cause, and therefore resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts. Mr. Montagu's faith is sincere and implicit. He practises no trickery. He conceals nothing. He puts the facts before us in the full confidence that they will produce on our minds the effect which they have produced on his own. It is not till he comes to reason from facts to motives, that his partiality shows itself; and then he leaves Middleton himself far behind. His work proceeds on the assumption that Bacon was an eminently virtuous man. From the tree Mr. Montagu judges of the fruit. He is forced to relate many actions, which, if any man but Bacon had committed them, nobody would have dreamed of defending-actions which are readily and completely explained by supposing Bacon to have been a man whose principles were not strict, and whose spirit was not high

towards those great men with whose minds he holds daily communion. Yet nothing can be more certain than that such men have not always deserved, in their own persons, to be regarded with respect or affection. Some writers, whose works will continue to instruct and delight mankind to the remotest ages, have, Deen placed in such situations, that their actions and motives are as well known to us as the actions and motives of one human being can be known to another; and unhappily their conduct has not always been such as an impartial judge can contemplate with approbation. But the fanaticism of the devout worshipper of genius is proof against all evidence and all argument. The character of his idol is matter of faith; and the province of faith is not to be invaded by reason. He maintains his superstition with a credulity as boundless, and a zeal as unscrupulous, as can be found in the most ardent partisans of religious or political factions. The most overwhelming proofs are rejected; the plainest rules of morality are explained away; extensive and important portions of history are completely distorted; the enthusiast misrepresents facts with all the effrontery of an advocate, and confounds right and wrong with all-actions which can be explained in no other the dexterity of a Jesuit and all this only in order that some man who has been in his grave for ages may have a fairer character than he deserves.

Middleton's "Life of Cicero" is a striking instance of the influence of this sort of partiality. Never was there a character which it was easier to read than that of Cicero. Never was there a mind keener or more critical than that of Middleton. Had the doctor brought to the examination of his favourite statesman's conduct but a very small part of the acuteness and severity which he displayed when he was engaged in investigating the high pretensions of Epiphanius and Justin Martyr, he could not have failed to produce a most valuable history of a most interesting portion of time. But this most ingenious and learned man, though

"So wary held and wise

That, as't was said, he scarce received For gospel what the church believed," had a superstition of his own. The great Iconoclast was himself an idolater. The great Avvocata del Diavolo, while he disputed, with no small ability, the claims of Cyprian and Athanasius to a place in the Calendar, was himself composing a lying legend in honour of St. Tully! He was holding up as a model of every virtue a man whose talents and acquirements, indeed, can never be too highly extolled, and who was by no means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was under the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions for which Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advocates, could contrive no excuse, actions which in his confidential correspondence he mentioned with remorse and shame, are represented by his biographer as wise, virtuous, heroic. The whole history of that great revolution which overthrew the Roman aristocracy, the whole state of parties, the character of every public man, is elaborately misrepresented, in order to make out something which may look like a

way, without resorting to some grotesque hypothesis for which there is not a title of evidence. But any hypothesis is, in Mr. Montagu's opinion, more probable than that his hero should ever have done any thing very wrong.

This mode of defending Bacon seems to us by no means Baconian. To take a man's character for granted, and then from his character to infer the moral quality of all his actions, is surely a process the very reverse of that which is recommended in the Novum Organum. Nothing, we are sure, could have led Mr. Montagu to depart so far from his master's precepts, except zeal for his master's honour. We shall follow a different course. We shall attempt, with the valuable assistance which Mr. Montagu has afforded us, to frame such an account of Bacon's life as may enable our readers correctly to estimate his character.

It is hardly necessary to say that Francis Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who held the great seal of England during the first twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth. The fame of the father has been thrown into shade by that of the son. But Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man. He belonged to a set of men whom it is easier to describe collectively than separately; whose minds were formed by one system of discipline; who belonged to one rank in society, to one university, to one party, to one sect, to one administration; and who resembled each other so much in talents, in opinions, in habits, in fortunes, that one character, we had almost said one life, may, to a considerable extent, serve for them all.

They were the first generation of statesmen by profession that England produced. Before their time the division of labour had, in this respect, been very imperfect. Those who had directed public affairs had been, with few exceptions, warriors or priests: warriors whose rude courage was neither guided by science nor softened by humanity; priests whose learning and abilities were habitually devoted

to the defence of tyranny and imposture. The Hotspurs, the Nevilles, the Cliffords-rough, illiterate, and unreflecting-brought to the council-board the fierce and imperious disposition which they had acquired amidst the tumult of predatory war, or in the gloomy repose of the garrisoned and moated castle. On the other side was the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all that was then considered as learning; trained in the schools to manage words, and in the confessional to manage hearts; seldom superstitious, but skilful in practising on the superstition of others; false as it was natural that a man should be, whose profession imposed on all who were not saints the necessity of being hypocrites; selfish as it was natural that a man should be, who could form no domestic ties, and cherish no hope of legitimate posterity; more attached to his order than to his country, and guiding the politics of England with a constant side-glance at Rome. But the increase of wealth, the progress of knowledge, and the reformation of religion produced a great change. The nobles ceased to be military chieftains; the priests ceased to possess a monopoly of learning; and a new and remarkable species of politicians appeared.

Henry that the new theology obtained the ascendant at one time, and that the lessons of the nurse and of the priest regained their infruence at another. It was not only in the house of Tudor that the husband was exasperated by the opposition of the wife, that the son dissented from the opinions of the father, that the brother persecuted the sister, the one sister persecuted another. The principles of conservation and reform carried on their warfare in every part of society, in every congregation, in every school of learning, round the hearth of every private family, in the recesses of every reflecting mind.

It was in the midst of this ferment that the minds of the persons whom we are describing were developed. They were born Reformers. They belonged by nature to that order of men who always form the front ranks in the great intellectual progress. They were, therefore, one and all Protestants. In religious matters, however, though there is no reason to doubt that they were sincere, they were by no means zealous. None of them chose to run the smallest personal risk during the reign of Mary. None of them favoured the unhappy attempt of Northumberland in favour of his daughterThese men came from neither of the classes in-law. None of them shared in the desperate which had, till then, almost exclusively fur- councils of Wyatt. They contrived to have nished ministers of state. They were all lay- business on the Continent; or, if they stayed in men; yet they were all men of learning, and England, they heard Mass and kept Lent with they were all men of peace. They were not great decorum. When those dark and perilmembers of the aristocracy. They inherited ous years had gone by, and when the crown no titles, no large domains, no armies of re- had descended to a new sovereign, they took tainers, no fortified castles. Yet they were not the lead in the reformation of the church. But ow men, such as those whom princes, jealous they proceeded not with the impetuosity of of the power of a nobility, have sometimes theologians, but with the calm determination raised from forges, and cobblers' stalls, to the of statesmen. They acted, not like men who highest situations. They were all gentlemen considered the Romish worship as a system by birth. They had all received a liberal edu- too offensive to God and too destructive of cation. It is a remarkable fact that they were souls to be tolerated for an hour; but like men all members of the same university. The two who regarded the points in dispute among great national seats of learning had even then Christians as in themselves unimportant; and acquired the characters which they still retain. who were not restrained by any scruple of In intellectual activity, and in readiness to conscience from professing, as they had before admit improvements, the superiority was then, professed, the Catholic faith of Mary, the Proas it has ever since been, on the side of the testant faith of Edward, or any of the numerous less ancient and splendid institution. Cam-intermediate combinations which the caprice bridge had the honour of educating those celebrated Protestant bishops whom Oxford had the honour of burning; and at Cambridge were formed the minds of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of Europe.

The statesmen of whom we speak passed their youth surrounded by the incessant din of theological controversy. Opinions were still in a state of chaotic anarchy, intermingling, separating, advancing, receding. Sometimes the stubborn bigotry of the Conservatives seemed likely to prevail. Then the impetuous onset of the Reformers for a moment carried all before it. Then again the resisting mass made a desperate stand, arrested the movement, and forced it slowly back. The vacillation which at that time appeared in English legislation, and which it has been the fashion to attribute to the caprice and to the power of one or two individuals, was truly a national vacillation. It was not only in the mind of

of Henry, and the temporizing policy of Cranmer, had formed out of the doctrines of both the hostile parties. They took a deliberate view of the state of their own country and of the continent. They satisfied themselves as to the leaning of the public mind; and they chose their side. They placed themselves at the head of the Protestants of Europe, and staked all their fame and fortunes on the suc cess of their party.

It is needless to relate how dexterously, how resolutely, how gloriously, they directed the politics of England during the eventful years which followed; how they succeeded in uniting their friends and separating their enemies; how they humbled the pride of Philip; how they backed the unconquerable spirit of Coligni; how they rescued Holland from tyranny; how they founded the maritime greatness of their country; how they outwitted the artful politicians of Italy, and tamed the ferocious chieftains of Scotland. It is impossible to deny that they committed many acts which

would justly bring on a statesman of our time | perhaps contained in the motto which Si censures of the most serious kind. But when Nicholas Bacon inscribed over the entrance of we consider the state of morality in their age, and the unscrupulous character of the adversaries against whom they had to contend, we are forced to admit, that it is not without reason that their names are still held in veneration by their countrymen.

There were, doubtless, many diversities in their intellectual and moral character. But there was a strong family likeness. The constitution of their minds was remarkably sound. No particular faculty was pre-eminently developed; but manly health and vigour were equally diffused through the whole.

his hall at Gorhambury-Mediocria firma. This maxim was constantly borne in mind by him. self and his colleagues. They were more solicitous to lay the foundations of their power deep, than to raise the structure to a conspi cuous but insecure height. None of them aspired to be sole minister. None of them provoked envy by an ostentatious display of wealth and influence. None of them affected to outshine the ancient aristocracy of the kingdom. They were free from that childish love of titles which characterized the successful courtiers of the generation which preceded them, and that which followed them. As to money, none of them could, in that age, justly be considered as rapacious. Some of them would, even in our time, deserve the praise of

the state was incorruptible. Their private morals were without stain. Their households were sober and well governed.

They were men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by exercise well-fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by circumstances rather than by any strong bias of inclination, that they were led to take a promi-eminent disinterestedness. Their fidelity to nent part in active life. In active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No men observed more accurately the signs of the times. No men had a greater practical acquaintance with human nature. Their policy was generally characterized rather by vigilance, by moderation, and by firmness, than by invention or by the spirit of enterprise.

Among these statesmen Sir Nicholas Bacon was generally considered as ranking next to Burleigh. He was called by Camden, "Sacris conciliis alterum columen;" and by George Buchanan,

"Diu Britannici

Regni secundum columen."

They spoke and wrote in a manner worthy of their excellent sense. Their eloquence The second wife of Sir Nicholas, and the was less copious and less ingenious, but far purer and more manly than that of the succeed-mother of Francis Bacon, was Anne, one of ing generation. It was the eloquence of men the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook-a man who had lived with the first translators of the of distinguished learning, who had been tutor Bible, and with the authors of the Book of to Edward the Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid Common Prayer. It was luminous, dignified, considerable attention to the education of his solid, and very slightly tainted with that affec-daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly tation which deformed the style of the ablest men of the next age. If, as sometimes chanced, they were under the necessity of taking a part in those theological controversies on which the dearest interests of kingdoms were then staked, they acquitted themselves as if their whole lives had been passed in the schools and the

convocation.

There was something in the temper of these celebrated men which secured them against the proverbial inconstancy both of the court and of the multitude. No intrigue, no combination of rivals, could deprive them of the confidence of their sovereign. No Parliament attacked their influence. No mob coupled their names with any odious grievance. Their power ended only with their lives. In this respect their fate presents a most remarkable contrast to that of the enterprising and brilliant politicians of the preceding, and of the succeeding generation. Burleigh was minister during forty years. Sir Nicholas Bacon held the great seal more than twenty years. Sir Thomas Smith was Secretary of State eighteen years;-Sir Francis Walsingham about as long. They all died in office, and in the full enjoyment of public respect and royal favour. Far different had been the fate of Wolsey, Cromwell, Norfolk, Somerset, and Northumberland. Far different also was the fate of Essex, of Raleigh, and of the still more illustrious uan whose life we propose to consider.

The explanation of this circumstance is

and happily married. Their classical acquirethe women of fashion of that age. Katherine, ments made them conspicuous even among who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin hexameters and pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musa Etmenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young women of England, Lady ther of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, the mo as a linguist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his Apologia from the Latin, so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker translated a series of sermons on fate and could suggest a single alteration. She also freewill from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This fact is the more curious, as Ochino was

one of that small and audacious band of Ita

lian reformers-anathematized alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome

-from which the Socinian sect deduces its origin.

Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind after the fashion of her age. But we must not suffer ourselves to be deluded into the belief, that she and her sisters were more accomplished women than many who are now living. On this subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have often heard men who wish, as almost all men of

* Strype's Life of Parker.

sense wish, that women should be highly edu- | changed, their relative value, when compared cated, speak with rapture of the English ladies with the whole mass of mental wealth possess of the sixteenth century, and lament that they ed by mankind, has been constantly falling can find no modern damsel resembling those They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who com- They are but a part of our treasures. Over pared, over their embroidery, the styles of Iso- what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, crates and Lysias, and who, while the horns over what comedy could she have smiled, if were sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the ancient dramatists had not been in her the lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that library? A modern reader can make shift immortal page which tells how meekly and without Edipus and Medea, while he posbravely the first great martyr of intellectual sesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows noliberty took the cup from his weeping jailer. thing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is faBut surely these complaints have very little miliar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, foundation. We would by no means dispa- and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the delicious rage the ladies of the sixteenth century or their irony of Plate, he may find some compensation pursuits But we conceive that those who in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from Neextol them at the expense of the women of phelococcygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput. our time forget one very obvious and very We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence important circumstance. In the reign of towards those great nations to which the huHenry the Eighth, and Edward the Sixth, a man race owes art, science, taste, civil and person who did not read Greek and Latin intellectual freedom, when we say, that the could read nothing, or next to nothing. The stock bequeathed by them to us has been so Italian was the only modern language which carefully improved that the accumulated inpossessed any thing that could be called a terest now exceeds the principal. We believe literature. All the valuable books then extant that the books which have been written in the in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would languages of western Europe, during the last hardly have filled a single shelf. England did two hundred and fifty years, are of greater not yet possess Shakspeare's plays, and the value than all the books which, at the beginning Faerie Queen; nor France Montaigne's Essays; of that period, were extant in the world. With nor Spain Don Quixote. In looking round the modern languages of Europe English woa well-furnished library, how few English or men are at least as well acquainted as English French books can we find which were extant men. When, therefore, we compare the acwhen Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth quirements of Lady Jane Grey and those of an received their education. Chaucer, Gower, accomplished young woman of our own time, Froissart, Comines, Rabelais, nearly complete we have no hesitation in awarding the supethe list. It was therefore absolutely necessary riority to the latter. We hope that our readers that a woman should be uneducated or classi- will pardon this digression. It is long; but it cally educated. Indeed, without a knowledge can hardly be called unseasonable, if it tends of one of the ancient languages no person to convince them that they are mistaken in could then have any clear notions of what was thinking that their great-great-grandmothers passing in the political, the literary, or the were superior women to their sisters and their religious world. The Latin was in the six-wives. teenth century all and more than all that the Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir French was in the eighteenth. It was the lan- Nicholas, was born at York House, his father's guage of courts as well as of the schools. It residence in the Strand, on the 22d of January, was the language of diplomacy; it was the 1561. His health was very delicate, and to language of theological and political contro- this circumstance may be partly attributed versy. Being a fixed language, while the living that gravity of carriage, and that love of se. languages were in a state of fluctuation, be- dentary pursuits, which distinguished him from ing universally known to the learned and the other boys. Everybody knows how much his polite, it was employed by almost every writer premature readiness of wit and sobriety of who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. deportment amused the queen; and how she A person who was ignorant of it was shut out used to call him her young Lord Keeper. We from all acquaintance-not merely with Ci- are told that while still a mere child he stole cero and Virgil-not merely with heavy trea- away from his playfellows to a vault in St. tises on canon-law and school divinity-but James's Fields, for the purpose of investiwith the most interesting memoirs, state pa-gating the cause of a singular echo which he pers, and pamphlets of his own time; nay, even with the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day-with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, with Hutton's epistles.

This is no longer the case. All political and religious controversy is now conducted in the modern languages. The ancient tongues are used only in comments on the ancient writers. The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is un

had observed there. It is certain that, at only twelve, he busied himself with very ingenious speculations on the art of legerdemaina subject which, as Professor Dugald Stewart has most justly observed, merits much more attention from philosophers than it has ever received. These are trifles. But the eminence which Bacon afterwards attained renders them interesting.

In the thirteenth year of his age he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge. That celebrated school of learning enjoyed the pe culiar favour of the Lord Treasurer and the