Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

though secretly, to support their cause; because he has avoided, in the whole of his voluminous writings, touching upon any points that might glance at his being infected by their superstition, so dangerous, in appearance, to a jealous tyrant; and that his profound silence can hardly be accounted for in any other manner. In his 41st epistle to Lucilius he has a passage which inculcates a belief, almost verbatim, one of those asserted by St Paul,---Know you not that the Spirit of God is in you, except ye be reprobate †? and again, He is near unto every one of you.

A. B.

SIR,

Fragments of Lord Bacon.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BEE.

(March 6. 1793.)

DURING one of my late pedestrian journies, to examine and glean the beauties and curiosities of this interesting island of Britain, I happened to be entertained at the house of

+ Prope est à te Deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili, facer intra nos Spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum Observator et Custos; hic prout á nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse tractat.

a venerable old widow lady, in the county of Brecknock, the heiress of a small Highland estate, to which she had unluckily failed in bringing an heir.

In her hospitable, but decaying mansion, there was a portrait upon board, of no great excellence, save for its being an original of the great Lord Bacon.

As I was gazing with great eagerness on this portrait, the good lady said to me," You seem, Sir, to be a great admirer of Lord Bacon, when you can fix so ravenously upon that poor picture of his person." "Madam (replied I,) how can I but dote upon the shell that contained such a wonderful kernel!" "6 My grandfather (rejoined the lady,) by my mother's side of the house, was a Rawley; and from him this picture came down to me, with a box of old papers, most of which have been used in the family for domestic purposes, as they lay all higgledy piggledy, and seemed to be nothing but jottings, and in a hand quite illegible. However, I gathered from these papers, that they were gotten at the same time with the picture, as the parson could here and there decypher, in the antique writing, the names of Bacon and Rawley; so I used no more of these papers, but made the parson look more attentively at them, who advised me to keep them, as they might contain some hints about my estate, and that he could trace out somewhat that seemed to relate to the good estate of the church."

Upon this I asked the lady's permission to examine the box, which she very frankly granted.

I had no sooner examined a few of the loose papers, which lay in chaotic confusion, than, to my great joy, I found several, that, from their contexture, appeared to be parts of an Essay on the Art of Life, and that they bore the strongest marks of the stile of the illustrious Lord Bacon.

Stung with the most violent curiosity, and animated in my research by what I had seen, I intreated my kind hostess to allow me, in her presence, or in the presence of the parson, to examine the whole mass, to which she readily consented; and the worthy clergy man waved his presence, on my promising him, upon my honour, if I found any thing relating to ecclesiastical affairs, in respect of tythes, that I would lay them aside, and transcribe them' from the manuscripts.

Having seen much of the hand-writing of Sir Francis Bacon in the British museum, among Dr Birch's manuscripts, and in the Lambeth library, I looked all over the papers for the hand-writing or signature of the philosopher, but found none, save two or three times on the margin, and in the interlineations.

As I observed morsels relating to a variety of subjects, I took one at a venture, with a view to find whether it might belong to any of the published essays of Lord Bacon, and I chanced

to light upon this, which, with some slight differences, is in his fifteenth of the edited essays.

"The part of Epimetheus mought well become Prometheus in the cases of discontentments; for there is not a better provision or antidote against them.

66

Epimetheus, when griefs and querulous evils were flying abroad, gave them free issue from the vessel, and then hee shut the lid and kept hope at the bottom."

Delighted with this coincidence, I earnestly sought for something of complete contexture, or at least sufficient to indicate the title and nature of the subject, that I might follow it out; for I observed that there were no running titles, or catch-words on the margin, to facilitate the recovery of the tissue. After nine or ten hours indefatigable work, in turning over and over all the scraps, I got at last together the fragments of the essay on the Art of Life, which, from its stile, I suppose to have been intended for one of "The Essayes and Counsels, Civil and Moral" and that it had been intended to be greatly enlarged, there being the following note, in the hand of the writer of the manuscript, on the margin of the piece upon Economy: "this my lord intendeth to dilate and elucidate with tabills, pourtraying various modifications of expence."

Now for the fragments, which I class under the various subjects of them in their order, viz.

1st, Art of preserving and improving bodily health and strength.

2dly, Art of obtaining and preserving the habits of industry.

3dly, Art of acquiring and preserving a permanent reputation in domestic and social intercourse.

4thly, Art of regulating expences, with due but splendid economy.

5thly, In the rational, useful, and amusing employment of leisure.

6thly, In urbanity and politeness of manners, with due regard to our own interests.

7thly, In the habit of attention and observation, with respect to the operations of nature, and of society.

8thly, In the cultivation of such habits as terminate in an amiable, tranquil, and respectable old age.

9thly, And lastly, in a philosophical and religious preparation for death.

FRAGMENTS OF LORD BACON.

1. Art of Life.

*** It was a wise saying of the prince of physicians, and worthy of especiall note, that errors, in the first concoction, are seldom

« ForrigeFortsæt »