picture from head to foot1 over with him into France, as a thing which he foresaw would be much desired there, that so they might enjoy the image of his person as well as the images of his brain, his books. Amongst the rest, Marquis Fiat, a French nobleman, who came ambassador into England, in the beginning of Queen Mary, wife to King Charles, was taken with an extraordinary desire of seeing him; for which he made way by a friend; and when he came to him, being then through weakness confined to his bed, the marquis saluted him with this high expression, That his lordship had been ever to him like the angels, of whom he had often heard, and read much of them in books, but he never saw them. After which they contracted an intimate acquaintance, and the marquis did so much revere him, that besides his frequent visits, they wrote letters one to the other, under the titles and appellations of father and son. As for his many salutations by letters from foreign worthies devoted to learning, I forbear to mention them, because that is a thing common to other men of learning or note, together with him.

“But yet, in this matter of his fame, I speak in the comparative only, and not in the exclusive. For his reputation is great in his own nation also, especially amongst those that are of a more acute and sharper judgement; which I will exemplify but with two testimonies and no more. The former, when his History of King Henry the Seventh was to come forth, it was delivered to the old Lord Brook, to be perused by him; who, when he had dispatched it, returned it to the author with this eulogy, Commend me to my lord, and bid him take care to get good paper and ink, for the work is incomparable. The other shall be that of Doctor Samuel Collins, late provost of King's College in Cambridge, a man of no vulgar wit, who affirmed unto me,2 That when he had read the book of the Advancement of Learning, he found himself in a case to begin his studies anew, and that he had lost all the time of his studying before.

"It hath been desired that something should be signified touching his diet, and the regimen of his health, of which, in regard of his universal insight into nature, he may perhaps be to some an example. For his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, as his stomach would bear it, than a restrained; which he also commended in his book of The History of Life and Death. In his younger years he was much given to the finer and lighter sorts of meats, as of fowls, and such like; but afterward, when he grew more judicious, he preferred the stronger meats, such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable, upon which he would often make his meal, though he had other meats upon the table. You may be sure he would not

1 This picture was presented to him by Bacon himself, according to the Latin

version.

2 In the Latin version Rawley has thought it worth while to add that this may have been said playfully: Sive festive sive serio.

3 More judicious (that is) by experience and observation: experientiâ edoctus is the expression in the Latin version.

neglect that himself, which he so much extolled in his writings, and that was the use of nitre; whereof he took in the quantity of about three grains in thin warm broth every morning, for thirty years together next before his death. And for physic, he did indeed live physically, but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb,1 infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less; which (as he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours of the body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth. And this was no grievous thing to take. As for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been vulgarly spoken 2) he took not. His receipt for the gout, which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already set down in the end of the Natural History.

"It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity for the moon was never in her passion or eclipsed, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting; and that, though he observed not

2

1 In the Latin version Rawley gives the quantity: Rhabarbari sesquidrachmam. [Rawley's words indicate that Bacon was popularly supposed to be a constant valetudinarian, and certainly the Memoriæ Valetudinis (Spedding, iv. 78-9) in his Commentarius Solutus would lead us to infer that he was in the habit of watching his own constitution and symptoms very attentively.

"I doe find nothing to induce stopping more and to fill the head and to induce languishing and distast and fevrous disposicion more I say then any maner of offer to sleep at afternoon, eyther ymmediately after dynner or at 4 of clock. And I could never yet fynd resolucion and strength enough in my self to

inhibite it.

"I have fownd a dyett to feed of boyld meat, coole salletts, abstinence of wyne, to doe me much good, but it may not be contynued for palling and weakenyng my stomach.

"I have fownd good of 3 spoonefulls of Syrope of vinegar simple or (sic) syrope of lemans taken ymediately before supper, for it quickneth appetite and raiseth ye expulsive vertue for any remayn of collection in ye stomach.

"I have ever had opinion that some comforting drink at 4 a clock howre wch is the howre of my languishing were proper for me."

Still more suggestive is the manner in which a valetudinarian note is suddenly interpolated in the midst of other notes about "forms," i.e. retorts, witticisms, &c. (Spedding, iv. 57).

"To send message of complemt to my La. Dorsett the wydowe.

"fo. Princes when in justs triumphes or games of victorye men deserve crownes for their perfourmance, doe not crown them beloe whear they perfourmed but calleth them up. So God by death" [evidently a note applying to Lord Dorset and intended for the consolation of Lady Dorset].

"fo. It is not for me to seek this without your favour but rather to desire your favour without it.

"When I was last at Gorhambury I was taken much wth my symptome of melancholy and dout of p'sent perill, I found it first by occasion of soppe wth sacke taken midde meal and it contynued with me that night and y next mornyng, but note it cleared and went from me without purge and I turned right and disposed of myself.

"fo. My L. Chanc. will not ayd legacies of mariage where the woman is gott away without ye consent of her frendes, and his By woord is, Yf you provyde flesh for your self provyde bread likewise."]

nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his former strength again.

“He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixtysixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation; and was buried in St. Michael's Church at St. Albans; being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament, both because the body of his mother was interred there, and because it was the only church then remaining within the precincts of old Verulam where he hath a monument erected for him in white marble (by the care and gratitude of Sir Thomas Meautys, knight, formerly his lordship's secretary, afterwards clerk of the King's Honourable Privy Council under two kings); representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying, with an inscription composed by that accomplished gentleman and rare wit, Sir Henry Wotton.

"But howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as long as the world lasteth. In order to which I have endeavoured (after my poor ability) to do this honour to his lordship, by way of conducing to the same."

It is possible that Rawley's reticence on the straits to which his patron was reduced led him to omit a " memorable relation," which he reported to Tenison as an illustration of Bacon's patience during his last five years of adversity. One day Bacon was dictating to Dr. Rawley some experiments in his Sylva. In the midst of his work a friend called in to bring him a final answer concerning some grant from the King, from which Bacon had hoped to repair his fortunes: "His friend told him plainly that he must thenceforth despair of that grant, how much soever his fortunes needed it. Be it so, said his Lordship; and then he dismissed his friend very cheerfully, with thankful acknowledgments of his service. His friend being gone, he came straightway to Dr. Rawley and said thus unto him, Well, sir, yon business won't go on: let us go on with this, for this is in our power. And then he dictated to him afresh for some hours, without the least hesitancy of speech or discernible interruption of thought."

Similar testimony is borne by his apothecary and secretary, Peter Boëner, who was in his service till the beginning of 1623:

"Though his fortune may have changed, yet I never saw any change in his mien, his words, or his deeds, towards any man. Ira enim hominis non implet justitiam Dei: but he was always the same both in sorrow and joy, as a philosopher ought to be."

§ 43 BACON'S CHARACTER: THE PROBLEM

In well-known words, Bacon has bequeathed his "name and memory to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." It is a pity he could not have bequeathed it to the great dramatist who died ten years before him; for none but Shakespeare could do justice to the singular and complex combinations of good and evil in this strange character. Some of the evil of it may be gathered from almost every chapter (except the last) of the preceding narrative; much more from a detailed study of his own letters; and most of all from his private notes; for never was man franker in committing to paper his own defects and infirmities. On the other hand, many of his better characteristics cannot receive great prominence in a biography dealing mainly with definite and important facts and utterances. I have not knowingly omitted a single good or kind action of any importance that is recorded in Mr. Spedding's copious biography to have been performed by him but naturally the correspondence of a Lord Chancellor and a philosopher turns on political or philosophical subjects, and not on the quiet amenities or philanthropies of the inner life. Bacon's better traits have to be inferred, not from anything that he himself said or did on particular occasions, but from the brief testimony of one or two of his most intimate friends, whose disinterested eulogies after his disgrace and death prove that to them at least he seemed not only genial, kindly, and affectionate, but also a bright example of lofty virtue.

There seems something of the nature of a psychological problem in the contradiction between Bacon as he appeared to his friends, and Bacon as he appears to us. We have noted already the spirit of genuine affection which breathes through the short memoir of him written by his chaplain Rawley. His domestic apothecary and secretary, Peter Boëner, expresses a wish that a

statue of him may be erected, not for his learning and researches, but "as a memorable example to all, of virtue, kindness, peacefulness, and patience." Ben Jonson speaks in the same strain of his "virtue;" he could never bring himself, he says, to condole with the great man after his fall, because he knew that no accident could do harm to his virtue, but rather serve to make it manifest. To the same effect writes Sir Toby Matthew, one of his most intimate friends, who was in the secret of his philosophic projects, and to whom he dedicated his Essay on Friendship: "It is not his greatness that I admire, but his virtue. It is not the favours I have received of him that have enthralled and enchained my heart, but his whole life and character; which are such that, if he were of an inferior condition, I could not honour him the less, and if he were my enemy, I should not the less love and endeavour to serve him."

ness.

In all this, it may be said, there is nothing strange, nothing that deserves to be called a problem: it is no new thing to find in the same man private virtues sharply contrasting with public defects. True; but if we enumerate the faults of which in the preceding narrative Bacon seems to stand convicted, they will appear to be precisely of the kind which would repel inferiors and familiar friends in private life. His behaviour, for example, to his long-suffering and friendly creditor Trott, a small matter in itself, is important as an indication of a selfish unreasonableHis treatment of Essex can hardly be termed, even by those who attempt to extenuate it, other than cold-blooded, ungenerous, and ungrateful; and a deficiency in generosity and in honourable instinct more easily alienates familiar dependents than a coarseness in open vice. As for his gross and persistent flattery to Cecil up to the day of his patron's death, followed by censorious criticism, almost before the same patron could be laid in his grave, and then by fervent congratulations to the King upon the goodness of God in delivering him from a pestilent counsellor-it argues a disposition so lost to all sense of consistency and shame that we can hardly understand how a man guilty of such time-serving can have attracted a single sincere friend. His rancour towards his enemy Coke, the want of moral discrimination indicated by his language at the