Bacon, Francis
Francis (1561-1626), an English statesman, philosopher, and man of letters. He was well born. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, and was privileged to travel abroad, particularly in France. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth and James I, he was a member of Parliament, and rose to high position. In Parliament he spoke so well, says Ben Jonson, that "the fear of every man that heard him was that he should make an end." In 1617 he was lord keeper of the seal, and in the next year was made lord high-chancellor. He was created Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans. In spite of his position, liberal salary, and honors, extravagance led him into doubtful practices. He was accused before the House of Lords of receiving money for appointments to office, and for grants of trade privileges. He acknowledged his guilt and was sentenced to pay a fine of $200,000 and to be imprisoned in the tower during the pleasure of the king. He was soon released, but he was ever after disqualified to hold public office. Bacon claimed that though he had accepted money he had not allowed it to influence him. His friends claimed that his punishment was prompted by Puritan zeal and partisanship.
Bacon possessed a brilliant and powerful mind. He lived in a day when scientific notions were crude. He fell into grievous errors, holding that the sun revolves about the earth, etc., but he was a close student of literature, of men, and of nature. He protested against traditional authority in science. In the history of the development of science, he is regarded as one of the earliest and foremost advocates of the principle that accurate scientific knowledge is to be obtained, not from men and not from books, but from nature. He was an advocate of experimental science, and held views which have ripened into the laboratory of the school and college. "We should not," said he, "like the spiders, which draw their threads from themselves, derive our ideas merely from ourselves; nor should we, like the ants, merely collect; but we should, like the bees, collect and elaborate." Much of his writing was done in Latin, then the language of the learned. He is said to have got his death from a cold caught in packing a fowl in snow, to see whether it would keep or not. Here we have the germ of the refrigerator.
Although we have seen that Bacon himself was not proof against temptation, and that he was far from an honest man, his Civil and Moral Essays are by far his best work, and constitute his strongest claim to remembrance. His essays Of Truth, Of Revenge, Of Envy, Of Travel, Of Great Place, Of Dispatch, Of Friendship, Of Expense, Of Ambition, Of Usury, Of Vainglory, and others are unsurpassed. He seems to knwo how to fortify others where he himself was weak. To give his valuable sayings would be to quote his essays entire. A few sentences must serve as examples:
Studies serve for delight, or ornament, and for ability.
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them.
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.
No pleasure is comparable to the standing up on the vantage-ground of truth.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
The remedy is worse than the disease.
Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
Virtue is like a rich stone,--best plain set.
God Almighty first planted a garden.
SAID OF BACON.
Next to Shakespeare the greatest name of the Elizabethan Age is that of Bacon.
He had the sound, distinct, comprehensive knowledge of Aristotle, with all beautiful lights, graces, and embellishments of Cicero.--Addison.
The great secretary of nature and all learning.--Walton.
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.
--Pope.
To ordinary eyes the Chancellor was at the summit of human success. Jonson had just sung of him as one "whose even thread the Fates spin round and full out of their choicest and their whitest wool," when the storm burst. The Commons charged Bacon with corruption in the exercise of his office. It had been customary among Chancellors to receive gifts from successful suitors after their suit was ended. Bacon, it is certain, had taken such gifts from men whose suits were still unsettled; and though his judgment may have been unaffected by them, the fact of their reception left him with no valid defence. He at once pleaded guilty to the charge. "I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence." "I beseech your Lordships," he added, "to be merciful to a broken reed." The heavy fine imposed on him was remitted by the Crown; but the Great Seal was taken from him, and he was declared incapable of holding office in the State or of sitting in Parliament. Bacon's fall restored him to that position of real greatness from which his ambition had so long torn him away. "My conceit of his person," said Ben Jonson, "was never increased towards him by his place or honours. But I have and do reverence him for his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength: for greatness he could not want." His intellectual activity was never more conspicuous than in the last four years of his life. He had presented "Novum Organum" to James in the year before his fall; in the year after it he produced his "Natural and Experimental History." He began a digest of the laws, and a "History of England under the Tudors," revised and expanded his "Essays," dictated a jest book, and busied himself with experiments in physics. It was while studying the effect of cold in preventing animal putrefaction that he stopped his coach to stuff a fowl with snow and caught the fever which ended in his death.--John R. Green, Short History of the English People.