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has generally lost something of its bloom and freshness before the sterner faculties have reached maturity: and is commonly withered and barren while those faculties still retain all their energy. It rarely happens that the fancy and the judgment grow together. It happens still more rarely that the judgment grows faster than the fancy. This seems, however, to have been the case with Bacon. His boyhood and youth appear to have been singularly sedate. His gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is said by some writers to have been planned before he was fifteen; and was undoubtedly planned while he was still young. He observed as vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and judged as temperately, when he gave his first work to the world as at the close of his long career. But in eloquence, in sweetness, and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration, hig later writings are far superior to those of his youth. In this respect the history of his mind bears some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The treatise on the "Sublime and Beautiful," though written on a subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most unadorned of all Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or twenty-six. When at forty, r wrote the "Thoughts on the Causes of the ex

first check from good sense. Yet, though dis- | as it is first to ripen, it is also first to fade. It ciplined to such obedience, it gave noble proofs of its vigour. In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world-amidst things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales," or in those romances on which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's village performed so cruel an auto-da-feamidst buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent daydreams there was nothing wild-nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. He knew that all the secrets feigned by poets to have been written in the books of enchanters, are worthless when compared with the mighty secrets which are really written in the book of nature, and which, with time and patience, will be read there. He knew that all the wonders wrought by all the talismans in fable, were trifles, when compared to the wonders which might reasonably be expected from the philosophy of fruit; and, that if his words sank deep into the minds of men, they would produce effects such as superstition had never ascribed to the incantations of Merlin and Michael Scot. It was here that he loved to let his imagination loose. He loved to picture to him-isting Discontents," his reason and his judg self the world as it would be when his philosophy should, in his own noble phrase, "have enlarged the bounds of human empire." We might refer to many instances. But we will content ourselves with the strongest, the description of the "House of Solomon" in the "New Atlantis." By most of Bacon's contemporaries, and by some people of our time, this remarkable passage would, we doubt not, be considered as an ingenious rodomontade-a counterpart to the adventures of Sinbad or Baron Munchausen. The truth is, that there is not to be found in any human composition a passage more eminently distinguished by profound and serene wisdom. The boldness and originality of the fiction is far less wonderful than the nice discernment which carefully excluded from that long list of prodigies every thing that can be pronounced impossible; every thing that can be proved to lie beyond the mighty magic of induction and of time. Already some parts, and not the least startling parts, of this glorious prophecy have been accomplished, even according to the letter; and the whole, construed according to the spirit, is daily accomplishing all around us.

One of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of Bacon's mind, is the order in which its powers expanded themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained till the last: the blossoms did not appear till late. In general the development of the fancy is to the development of the judgment, what the growth of a girl is to the growth of a boy. The fancy attains at an earlier period to the perfection of its beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness and,

"New Atlantis.”

ment had reached their full maturity; but his eloquence was still in its splendid dawn. At fifty, his rhetoric was quite as rich as good taste would permit; and when he died, at almost seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emo tions produced by mountains and cascades; by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture; by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a parliamentary report. In his old age, he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance. It is strange that the essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful," and the "Letter to a Noble Lord," should be the productions of one man. But it is far more strange that the essay should have been a production of his youth, and the letter of his old age.

We will give very short specimens of Ba con's two styles. In 1597, he wrote thus "Crafty men contemn studies; simple mer admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdor without them, and won by observation. Reac not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, have a present wit; and if he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philoso phy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend." It will hardly be disputed that this is a passage to be "chewed and digested.*

We do not believe that Thucydides himself has | Proposition after proposition enters into the anywhere compressed so much thought into so small a space.

But

mind, is received not as an invader, but as a
welcome friend, and though previously un-
known, becomes at once domesticated.
what we most admire is the vast capacity of
that intellect which, without effort, takes in at
once all the domains of science-all the past,
the present, and the future, all the errors of
two thousand years, all the encouraging signs
of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the
coming age. Cowley, who was among the
most ardent, and not among the least discern-
ing followers of the new philosophy, has, in one
of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses

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 eleva tion 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 fertilizing 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.

In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the "Essays," there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have quoted. But his style was constantly becoming richer and softer. The following passage, first published in 1625, will show the extent of the change: "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidences of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp you shall hear as many hearse-standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we like 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 needleworks 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 when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." It is by the "Essays" that Bacon is best known to the multitude. The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much talked of, but little read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on the opinions of mankind; but they have produced it through the operations 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 he talks to plain men in language which everybody 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 been surpassed. Every part of the book blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. Yet, no book was ever written in a less contentious spirit. It truly conquers with chalk and not with steel.

It is painful to turn back from contemplating Bacon's philosophy to contemplate his life. Yet without so turning back it is impossible fairly to estimate his powers. He left the University at an earlier age than that at which most people repair thither. While yet a boy he was plunged into the midst of diplomatic business. Thence he passed to the study of a vast technical system of law, and worked his way up through a succession of laborious offices to the highest post in his profession. In the mean time he took an active part in every Parliament; he was an adviser of the crown; he paid court with the greatest assi duity and address to all whose favour was likely to be of use to him; he lived much in society; he noted the slightest peculiarities of character and the slightest changes of fashion. Scarcely any man has led a more stirring life than that which Bacon led from sixteen to sixty. Scarcely any man has been better en titled to be called a thorough man of the world. The founding of a new philosophy, the impart ing of a new direction to the minds of specu lators-this was the amusement of his leisure, the work of hours occasionally stolen from the Woolsack and the Council Board. This consideration, while it increases the admiration with which we regard his intellect, increases also our regret that such an intellect should so often have been unworthily employed. He well knew the better course, and had, at one

time, resolved to pursue it. "I confess," said | not then have to blush for the disingenuous he in a letter written when he was still young, ness of the most devoted worshipper of specuthat I have as vast contemplative ends as I lative truth, for the servility of the boldest have moderate civil ends." Had his civil ends champion of intellectual freedom. We should continued to be moderate, he would have been, not then have seen the same man at one time not only the Moses, but the Joshua of philo- far in the van, and at another time far in the sophy. He would have fulfilled a large part rear of his generation. We should not then be of his own magnificent predictions. He would forced to own, that he who first treated legisnave led his followers, not only to the verge, lation as a science was among the last Engbut into the heart of the promised land. He lishmen who used the rack; that he who first would not merely have pointed out, but would summoned philosophers to the great work of have divided the spoil. Above all, he would interpreting nature was among the last Enghave left not only a great, but a spotless name. lishmen who sold justice. And we should Mankind would then have been able to esteem conclude our survey of a life placidly, honourtheir illustrious benefactor. We should not ably, beneficently passed, "in industrious obthen be compelled to regard his character with servations, grounded conclusions, and profita mingled contempt and admiration, with min- ble inventions and discoveries," with feelings gled aversion and gratitude. We should not very different from those with which we now then regret that there should be so many proofs turn away from the checkered spectacle of su of the narrowness and selfishness of a heart, much glory and so much shame. the benevolence of which was yet large enough to take in all races and all ages. We should|

* From a Letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh.

MACKINTOSH'S HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION IN

ENGLAND, IN 1688.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1835.]

Ir is with unfeigned diffidence that we ven- at mess in Hampshire, or on the Treasuryture to give our opinion of the last work of Sir | bench and at Brookes's during the storms which James Mackintosh. We have in vain tried to overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne had perform what ought to be to a critic an easy been passed in the Bodleian Library, he might and habitual act. We have in vain tried to have avoided some inaccuracies; he might separate the book from the writer, and to judge have enriched his notes with a greater number of it as if it bore some unknown name. But of references; but he never would have proit is to no purpose. All the lines of that vene-duced so lively a picture of the court, the rable countenance are before us. All the little camp, and the senate-house. In this respect peculiar cadences of that voice, from which scholars and statesmen loved to receive the lessons of a serene and benevolent wisdom, are in our ears. We will attempt to preserve strict impartiality. But we are not ashamed to own, that we approach this relic of a virtuous and most accomplished man with feelings of respect and gratitude which may possibly pervert our judgment.

Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great advantages over almost every English historian who has written since the time of Burnet. Lord Lyttleton had indeed the same advantages; but he was incapable of using them. Pedantry was so deeply fixed in his nature, that the hustings, the treasury, the exchequer, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, left him the same dreaming schoolboy that they found him.

When we compare the two interesting works of which we have been speaking, we have little difficulty in awarding the superiority to that of Sir James Mackintosh. Indeed, the supe

hardly more clear than the superiority of Sir James to Mr. Fox as an historian. Mr. Fox with a pen in his hand, and Sir James on his legs in the House of Commons, were, we think, each out of his proper element. They were

It is hardly possible to avoid instituting a comparison between this work and another celebrated Fragment. Our readers will easily guess that we allude to Mr. Fox's History of James II. The two books are written on the same subject. Both were posthumously pub-riority of Mr. Fox to Sir James as an orator is lished. Neither had received the last corrections. The authors belonged to the same political party, and held the same opinions concerning the merits and defects of the English constitution, and concerning most of the prominent characters and events in English his-men, it is true, of far too much judgment and tory. They had thought much on the princi- ability to fail scandalously in any undertaking ples of government; but they were not mere to which they brought the whole power of their speculators. They had ransacked the archives minds. The History of James II. will always of rival kingdoms, and pored on folios which keep its place in our libraries as a valuable had mouldered for ages in deserted libraries; book; and Sir James Mackintosh succeeded in but they were not mere antiquaries. They winning and maintaining a high place among had one eminent qualification for writing his-the parliamentary speakers of his time. Yet tory:-they had spoken history, acted history, lived history. The turns of political fortune, the ebb and flow of popular feeling, the hidden mechanism by which parties are moved, all these things were the subjects of their constant thought and of their most familiar conversation. Gibbon has remarked, that his history is much the better for his having been an officer in the militia and a member of the House of Commons. The remark is most just. We have not the smallest doubt that his campaign, though he never saw an enemy, and his parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of far more use to him than years of retirement and study would have been. If the time that he spent on parade and

we could never read a page of Mr. Fox's writ ing, we could never listen for a quarter of an hour to the speaking of Sir James, without feeling that there was a constant effort, a tug up hill. Nature, or habit which had become nature, asserted its rights. Mr. Fox wrote debates. Sir James Mackintosh spoke essays.

As far as mere diction was concerned, indeed, Mr. Fox did his best to avoid those faults which the habit of public speaking is likely to generate. He was so nervously apprehensive of sliding into some colloquial incorrectness, of debasing his style by a mixture of parliamentary slang, that he ran into the opposite error, and purified his vocabulary with a scru pulosity unknown to any purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow Addison, * History of the Revolution in England, in 1688. Com-Bolingbroke, or Middleton, to be a sufficien prising a view of the Reign of James the Second, from authority for an expression. He declared that his Accession, to the Enterprise of the Prince of Orange; he would use no word which was not to be found by the late Right Honourable Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH ;

and completed to the Settlement of the Crown, by the in Dryden. In any other person we should Editor. To which is prefixed a Notice of the Life, Writ-have called this solicitude mere loppery; and, ings, and Speeches of Sir James Mackintosh. 4to. Lon-in spite of all our admiration for Mr. Fox, we

don. 1834

......

cannot but think that his extreme attention to the petty niceties of language was hardly worthy of so manly and so capacious an understanding. There were purists of this kind at Rome; and their fastidiousness was censured by Horace with that perfect good sense and good taste which characterize all his writings. There were purists of this kind at the time of the revival of letters: and the two greatest scholars of that time raised their voices, the one from within, the other from without the Alps, against a scrupulosity so unreasonable. "Carent," said Politian, "quæ scribunt isti viribus et vita, carent actu, carent affectu, carent indole. Nisi liber ille præsto sit ex quo quid excerpant, colligere tria verba non possunt. Horum semper igitur oratio tremula, vacillans, infirma. Quæso ne ista superstitione te alliges. Út bene currere non potest qui pedum ponere studet in alienis tantum vestigiis, ita nec bene scribere qui tanquam de præscripto non audet egredi."-" Posthac," exclaims Erasmus, "non licebit episcopos appellare patres reverendos, nec in calce literarum scribere annum a Christo nato, quod id nusquam faciat Cicero. Quid autem ineptius quam, toto seculo novato, religione, imperiis, magistratibus, locorum vocabulis, ædificiis, cultu, moribus, non aliter audere loqui quam locutus est Cicero ? Si revivisceret, ipse Cicero, rideret hoc Ciceronianorum genus."

While Mr. Fox winnowed and sifted his phraseology with a care, which seems hardly consistent with the simplicity and elevation of his mind, and of which the effect really was to debase and enfeeble his style, he was little on his guard against those more serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator, who undertakes to write history, is in danger of falling. There is about the whole book a vehement, contentious, replying manner. Almost every argument is put in the form of an interrogation, an ejaculation, or a sarcasm. The writer seems to be addressing himself to some imaginary audience; to be tearing in pieces a defence of the Stuarts which has just been pronounced by an imaginary Tory. Take, for example, his answer to Hume's remarks on the execution of Sydney; and substitute "the honourable gentleman," or "the noble lord," for the name of Hume. The whole passage sounds like a powerful reply, thundering at three in the morning from the Opposition Bench. While we read it, we can almost fancy that we see and hear the great English debater, such as he has been described to us by the few who can still remember the Westminster Scrutiny, and the Oczakow Negotiations, in the full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of his words. It is true that the passage to which we have referred, and several other passages which we could point out, are admirable, when considered merely as exhibitions of mental power. We at once recognise that consummate master of the whole art of intellectual gladiatorship, whose Speeches, imperfectly as they have been transmitted to us, should be studied day and Dight by every man who wishes to learn the science of legical defence. We find in several

parts of the History of James II. fine sprok mens of that which we conceive to have been the great characteristic of Demosthenes among the Greeks, and of Fox among the orators of England,-reason penetrated, and if we may venture on the expression, made red-hot by passion. But this is not the kind of excellence proper to history; and it is hardly too much to say, that whatever is strikingly good in Mr. Fox's Fragment is out of place.

With Sir James Mackintosh the case was reversed. His proper place was his library, a circle of men of letters, or a chair of moral and political philosophy. He distinguished himself highly in Parliament. But nevertheless Parliament was not exactly the sphere for him. The effect of his most successful speeches was small, when compared with the quantity of ability and learning which was expended on them. We could easily name men who, not possessing a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure and admiration, could not but acknowledge that he rather lectured than debated. An artist who should waste on a panorama, on a scene, or on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we admire in some of the small Dutch interiors, would not squander his powers more than this eminent man too often did. His audience resembled the boy in the "Heart of MidLothian," who pushes away the lady's guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white money. They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were constantly passing about from hand to hand, to the gold which they had never before seen, and with the value of which they were unacquainted. It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh did not wholly devote his later years to philosophy and literature. His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transitory impressions, to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at midnight, without saying any thing that any one of them will be able to remember in the morning. His arguments were of a very different texture from those which are produced in Parliament at a moment's notice,-which puzzle a plain man who, if he had them before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which the great debater who employed them forgets within half an hour, and never thinks of again. Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh, was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was the same with his conversation. In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency, no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for tlie sake of momentary effect. His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged; every

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