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kindness; keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies. For what are the sands of the sea to the sea, earth, heavens? And all these are nothing to thy mercies.* Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee, that I am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it, as I ought, to exchangers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit: so I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for my Saviour's sake, and receive me into thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways.

Two other short Prayers were first printed in the Baconiana (1679). One is there stated to have been called by Bacon himself "The Student's Prayer;" it is a translation from one of the paragraphs of the Preface published with the Novum Organum in 1620:—

To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications; that he remembering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness, for alleviating of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredu lity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and per

* In Mr. Montagu's and all the common editions the reading is "For what are the sands of the sea, earth, heavens, and all these are nothing to thy mercies." For this nonsense the copy in the Tatler substitutes "for what are the sands of the sea? Earth, heavens, and all these are nothing to thy mercies." The MS. in the Museum has been injured, and is partially obliterated; but the reading given in the text (we believe for the first time), though some of the writing has become very faint, may still be detected.

fectly given up to the divine cracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's. Amen.

The other is stated to have been entitled by Bacon "The Writer's Prayer:" it is translated from the concluding paragraph of the exposition of the entire plan of the Instauratio Magna (Distributio Operis) which was also prefixed to the Novum Organum on its first publication:

Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the firstborn of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst reviewed the works which thy hands had made, beheldest that every thing was very good, and thou didst rest with complacency in them. But man, reflecting on the works which he had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could by no means acquiesce in them. Wherefore, if we labour in thy works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy sabbath. We humbly beg that this mind may be stedfastly in us; and that thou, by our hands, and also by the hands of others, on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind. These things we commend to thy everlasting love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us. Amen.

Lastly, there is "The Translation of Certain Psalms into English Verse," first published by Bacon himself in a 4to. pamphlet, in 1625, and reprinted in the Second Part of the Resuscitatio (1661). In a Dedication to his "Very good friend, Mr. George Herbert (the wellknown sacred poet)," Bacon describes these performances as the poor exercise of his sickness, meaning, according to Tenison, a sickness which he had had in this year 1625. The Psalms which he versifies are the First, the Twelfth, the Ninetieth, the Hundred and Fourth, the Hundred and Twenty-sixth, the Hundred and Thirty-seventh, and the Hundred and Forty-ninth. The translation, or paraphrase, which he produces of the First, will be a sufficient specimen :—

Who never gave to wicked reed*
A yielding and attentive ear;
Who never sinners' paths did tread,
Nor sat him down in scorner's chair;
But maketh it his whole delight

On law of God to meditate;
And therein spendeth day and night:
That man is in a happy state.

He shall be like the fruitful tree
Planted along a running spring,
Which, in due season, constantly

A goodly yield of fruit doth bring:
Whose leaves continue always green,
And are no prey to winter's pow'r:
So shall that man not once be seen
Surprised with an evil hour.

With wicked men it is not so,
Their lot is of another kind:
All as the chaff, which to and fro
Is toss'd at mercy of the wind.
And when he shall in judgment plead,
A casting sentence bide he must:
So shall he not lift up his head
In the assembly of the just.

For why? the Lord hath special eye
To be the godly's stay at call:
And hath given over, righteously,

The wicked man to take his fall.

The attempt, it will be perceived, is not very successful; but it is one in which Milton has failed, as well as Bacon; and it may therefore be concluded that there is something in this old Hebrew poetry not very pliable to the trammels of English metre, at least of the more formal or artificial kind. Perhaps what the genius of Milton chiefly wanted for such a task was more of natural impulsiveness and spontaneous fervour; and there Bacon was also deficient. But the latter, with all his wonderful abundance and promptitude of fancy, and also his lofti

* Counsel.

ness and grandeur of conception, was essentially a rhetorician, not a poet. He wanted sensibility in all its forms. If he was a deep thinker, of depth of feeling he certainly had no capacity. There is no passion in anything he has written, any more than there was ever anything highspirited in his conduct. His verses might have had the coloured light of poetry, but they would have had none of its fire. And, perhaps, in other respects also his nature, both moral and intellectual, wanted the unity and completeness, the harmonious combination of opposite endowments, necessary for "the vision and the faculty divine" which makes a great poet.

SECTION V.

THE HISTORICAL WORKS.

BACON has himself in his Latin Letter to Father Fulgentio, written towards the close of his life, classed together his Moral and his Historical works; and they come properly under the same division. They are distinguished by the same general character from his other writings: from his Philosophical or Scientific works on the one hand; from his Letters, and other remains chiefly referring to the events of his own life or of his own time, on the other. Under these three heads all his writings may be conveniently enough arranged. His Moral and Theological works are full of narrative or historical passages; his Historical works of moral disquisition and reflection. History, in truth, is only ethical and economical speculation in a narrative form, the actual exemplification of the principles and precepts of moral wisdom.

Bacon's principal and indeed only considerable historical work is his History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh,' first published, in a folio volume, in 1622. "This," says Tenison, 66 was the first book which he composed after his retirement from an active life." have already had occasion to quote his Letter to the King of the 21st of April, 1621, announcing his intention of writing it.

We

In another Letter to the King, dated the 8th of October, he seems to speak of it as already finished: "I durst not," he says, "have presumed to entreat your majesty to look over the book, and correct it, or at least to signify what you would have amended; but, since you are pleased to send for the book, I will hope for it." It had, as we have seen from the Letter of Sir Thomas Meautys, been perused by his majesty in manuscript

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