flatter himself, that God hath with his name imparted unto him his nature also.

2. Of all kind of men, God is the least beholden unto them; for he doth most for them, and they do ordinarily least for Him.

3. A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.

12. That king which is not feared is not loved; and he that is well seen in his craft, must as well study to be feared as loved; yet not loved for fear, but feared for love.

We may here also mention a somewhat longer piece, entitled "An Essay on Death," commonly printed, in the complete editions of Bacon, among what are called his Theological Works. The only authority for attributing it to Bacon is that of the Remains (1648), in which volume it first appeared. It is a composition of considerable beauty, but not in his manner. In the common collection of the Essays, it may be remembered, there is one on Death (the second), first printed in 1612.

It will be admitted by all that these Essays of Bacon's do at least, as he himself says of them, "come home to men's business and bosoms." They are full of that sort of wisdom which is profitable for the guidance of life, and to which every reader's experience of himself and of others responds. This they are, it is needless to say, without having anything of vulgarity or triviality; on the contrary, nearly every thought is as striking for its peculiarity and refinement as for its truth. But, with all their combined solidity and brilliancy, they are not much marked by any faculty of vision extending beyond actual humanity. Their pervading spirit, without being either low or narrow, is still worldly. It is penetrating and sagacious, rather than either far-seeing or subtle. The genius displayed in them is that of oratory and wit, rather than that of either metaphysics or the higher order of poetry. The author has a greater gift of looking into the heart of man than into the heart of things. He is observant, reflective, ingenious, fanciful, and, to the measure that all that allows, both eloquent and wise;

but, it may be from the form or nature of such compositions not admitting of it, he can hardly be said to be in these Essays very eminently either capacious or profound.

Of its kind, however, though that kind may not be the highest, the writing is wonderful. What a spirit of life there is in every sentence! How admirably is the philosophy everywhere animated and irradiated by the wit; and how fine a balance and harmony is preserved between the wit and the sense, the former never becoming fantastic any more than the latter dull! The moral spirit, too, though worldly, is never offensively so; it is throughout considerate, tolerant, liberal, generous; and, if we have little lofty indignation, we have as little violence, or bitterness, or one-sidedness. It is not a morality with which any tendency to enthusiasm or fanaticism in such matters will sympathize; but yet it is not wanting either in distinctness or in elevation, any more than in a reasonable charity. Prudence is no doubt a large ingredient; but principle is by no means absent. Nor does much appear to be introduced in these Essays for mere effect. At any rate, the quantity of idea, of one sort or another, in proportion to the space, is almost without example, at least with so little apparent forcing or straining, so easy and smooth a flow. Brilliant as the light is, it is so managed as to fall softly upon the eye, to satisfy rather than to dazzle. One new or uncommon thought is presented after another in more rapid succession than in almost any other book; and yet the mind of the reader is neither startled nor fatigued, so consummate is the rhetorical art. Our review has necessarily been confined to a series of selections or samples; for, with such compactness everywhere, analysis or abridg ment was impossible. But, although many things are left unnoticed in our abstract, we have endeavoured to make it comprehend the portion of each Essay which, admitting of being detached from the rest (always of course an indispensable condition), seemed the most remarkable.

SECTION II.

THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS.

66

In the year 1601 occurred the trial, conviction, and execution of Bacon's friend Essex, and the publication soon after by the government of what was called "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons" of the earl and his accomplices, which was drawn up by Bacon, who had also appeared on the part of the crown_at the trial. It is accordingly included among his works, as well as an Apology," or defence of his conduct, which he deemed it expedient to print, some short time after, in the form of a letter to the Earl of Devonshire. James I. became king of England by the death of Elizabeth, on the 24th of March, 1603; and Bacon was knighted on the 23rd of July, the day before the coronation, on which occasion above three hundred other gentlemen received the same honour. In a letter written a few days previous to his relation Robert Lord Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury), the chief minister of the new king, he intimates that he would be glad to have "this divulged and almost prostituted honour,' other reasons, "because," he among "I have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to my liking." This was Alice, one of the daughters and coheirs of Benedict Barnham, Esq., alderman of London, whom he afterwards married. He had also been continued in his rank (or rather office, as it was then considered) of king's counsel by a warrant signed by James at Worksop, on his way to London, on the 21st of April.*

says,

Published by Mr. Collier in the Egerton Papers, p. 367 Mr. Montagu's account, given under the year 1604 (Life, p. 108), is, that Bacon was made by patent king's counsel learned

According to Mr. Montagu, it was in the fall of the year 1604 that he prepared and addressed to the king his work (which is, however, only a fragment) upon The Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain." In 1605 he published his "Two Books of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human," also addressed to James. On new year's day, 1606, he presented to the king his short paper entitled "Certain Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland;" and in the course of the same year, according to Mr. Montagu (Life, pp. 140, 141), his "two publications on "Church Controversies," and the "Pacification of the Church." But in the first place neither of these tracts appears to have been ever published till many years after both James and Bacon himself had left the world: and secondly, it is clear from the second, certainly written in the beginning of the reign of James, that the first must have been written long before the end of the preceding reign. On the 25th of June, 1607, Bacon was at last appointed solicitor-general, on Sir Edward Coke being made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. This year he is supposed to have communicated to his friends Andrews, then Bishop of Ely, and Sir Thomas Bodley, his exposition in Latin of some of the principles of his philosophy, entitled Cogitata et Visa; the letters sent with it, which as there given, however, are both without date, are in the Resuscitatio. In 1609, or more probably in in the law, with a fee of forty pounds a-year, "which," it is added, "is said to have been a grace scarce known before."" For this last expression reference is made in a foot-note to the life by Rawley; but Rawley uses it in speaking of his having been made queen's counsel extraordinary in the reign of Elizabeth, as Mr. Montagu has himself noticed in a preceding page (p. 24). Mr. Montagu adds, but without giving his authority, that the same day on which he was made king's counsel, James granted Bacon "by another patent under the great seal a pension of sixty pounds a-year, for special services received from his brother Anthony Bacon and himself." The same facts are stated in the Biographia Britannica on the authority of documents in Rymer's Foedera, and with the additional information that the two patents are dated the 25th of August, 1604.

the beginning of what we should now call the year 1610 he published his Latin Treatise "De Sapientia Veterum" (Concerning the Wisdom of the Ancients), of which we have a very good translation by his friend Sir Arthur Gorges (uniformly, as far as we have observed, called Georges by Mr. Montagu), already mentioned as the translator of the Essays into French. This translation was published in 1619, in Bacon's lifetime; and it is very probable that it may have had the advantage of his revision. The Wisdom of the Ancients is the next of what may be called the Moral Works which falls to be noticed; and we shall take our extracts from the English translation by Gorges, which is made from a second and enlarged edition of the Latin published in 1617. Italian translation was also published in 1618, and a French translation in 1619.

An

Gorges, however, has omitted two short Dedications prefixed to the Latin work; the one (which is placed second) to the author's Alma Mater, the University of Cambridge, the other to the Lord Treasurer the Earl of Salisbury, Chancellor of the University. The address to Salisbury is chiefly remarkable for the elegant turning of the compliments and the general felicity of the expression, qualities not to be adequately represented in a translation. One phrase may be noticed as reflecting a favourite idea of Bacon's; he speaks of philosophy as then through old age falling as it were into a second childhood-philosophia seculo nostro veluti per senium repuerascens, as he does, both in the Advancement of Learning, and more at length in the Novum Organum, of ancient times being the youth, and modern times the old age of the world. For the rest, he professes his design in the present treatise to have been to pass over whatever was manifest, obsolete, or common-place, and to produce something which should have a respect to the steeps and high places of life and the more remote recesses of science-ad vitæ ardua et scientiarum arcana. In the Dedication to the University, he intimates his hope and belief that some addition to the stores of learning and knowledge may be found to have been made by what he has here written