1552; beheaded 1618,) who is distinguished as a soldier, as a courtier, as an adventurous colonizer of barbarous countries, and as a poet and historian. Raleigh spent many of his early years in foreign wars, and, in 1580, was very serviceable to Queen Elizabeth, in quelling a rebellion in Ireland. Between 1584 and 1595, he conducted several nautical expeditions of importance, some of which were designed for the colonization of Virginia -an object upon which he spent forty thousand pounds. On the accession of King James in 1603, he was, with apparent injustice, condemned for high treason, and committed to the tower, where he remained for fourteen years. Part of this time he spent in the composition of his principal work, entitled The History of the World, the first part of which appeared in 1614, bringing down the narrative nearly to the birth of Christ: the portions which refer to the history of Greece and Rome are much admired. Sir Walter wrote several political treatises, which were not published till after his death. His poetry was the production of his earlier years, and possesses great merits. After his long imprisonment, he was allowed by the king to proceed upon an expedition to South America, in which he failed; and he was then executed upon his former sentence.

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626), Lord Chancellor of England, and latterly created Viscount of St. Alban's, was one of the greatest men of this, or of any other age. He wrote upon history and law, the advancement of learning, and nearly all matters relating to the cultivation of the mind. Of his works, which extend to ten volumes, the most remarkable are, The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, and afterwards enlarged, and his Novum Organum, published in 1620; which, with the former book in its extended shape, forms one grand work, under the title of The Instauration of the Sciences. In this magnificent production, he first answers the objections made to the progress of knowledge, and then proceeds to divide human learning into three parts, history, poesy, and philosophy, respectively referring to memory, imagination, and reason, which he conceived to be the proper distribution of the intellectual faculties. He next explains

his new method (novum organum) of employing these faculties for the increase of real knowledge; namely, the ascertainment, in the first place, of facts, and then reasoning upon these towards conclusions-a mode of arriving at truth which may appear very obvious, but which was nevertheless unknown to the predecessors of this illustrious person. Formerly, men reasoned in a quibbling manner, without regard to facts, according to a plan laid down by Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. It was Bacon who first showed that nothing pretending to the character of human knowledge could be considered as ascertained, unless it had been subjected to the test of experiment, or drawn from observations patent to the senses. A subsequent portion of the Instauration contained a history of Nature, intended as a pattern of the method of employing his novum organum; and in a still farther section, he showed the steps, as he called them, by which the human intellect might regularly ascend in its philosophical inquiries. He had intended to write something more, which should complete his design, but was prevented by want of time. This splendid work, which has given a new turn to the mind of man, and been of incomprehensible utility in promoting knowledge, was planned by its author at twenty-six years of age, when he was a student of law in Gray's Inn; and it was prosecuted under the pressure of many heavy duties. It can never be told without shame, that its author, notwithstanding the skill with which he surveyed past knowledge, and pointed the way to much more important acquisitions, was inferior in practical virtue to many humbler men, being found guilty by Parliament of receiving bribes as Lord Chancellor, for the infamous purpose of perverting justice. His style of writing is almost as much ornamented by figures of rhetoric as the contemporary poetry, yet it is never on that account found wanting in precision. As a specimen, may be given a few passages from his chapter on the

USES OF KNOWLEDGE.

Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds; though a little of it doth rather work a contrary effect. It

*

*

taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of nothing but [what is] examined and tried. It taketh away all vain admiration of any thing, which is the root of all weakness: for all things are admired, either because they are new or because they are great. * * If a man meditate upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with the men upon it (the divineness of souls excepted) will not seem more than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or adverse fortune: which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue, and imperfection of manners. * * Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears together. It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind,-sometimes purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping the digestion, sometimes increasing the appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and ulcerations thereof, and the like; and I will therefore conclude with the chief reason of all, which is, that it disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable and susceptible of reformation. For the unlearned man knoweth not what it is to descend into himself, and call himself to account: nor the pleasure of that most pleasant life, which consists in our daily feeling ourselves become better.* The good parts he hath, he will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them: the faults he hath he will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much to amend them; like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Whereas with the learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use and employment thereof.

It was the opinion of Bacon, that knowledge was the same as power. His own life unfortunately showed that there might be great knowledge without power. Subsequent philosophers have agreed that knowledge is what Bacon described it, only when combined with moral excellence, which, though apt to be favoured and improved by knowledge, is not always found in its company.

One of the most entertaining prose writers of this age, was ROBERT BURTON (1576-1640), rector of Segrave in Leicestershire, and a member of the college of Christ Church in Oxford. This individual led a studious and solitary life in his college, till he at length became oppressed with melancholy, and resolved to write a book upon that subject, with the view of curing himself. This work, which appeared in 1621, is entitled The Anatomy of Melancholy, and presents, in quaint

*This expression is given in the original in Latin.

BURTON.-DEKKAR.

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language, and with shrewd and amusing observations, a full view of all the kinds of that disease. It was so successful at first, that the publisher realized a fortune by it; and Warton says, that the author's variety of learning, his quotations from scarce and curious books, his pedantry, sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance, miscellaneous matter, intermixture of agreeable tales and illustrations, and perhaps, above all, the singularities of his feelings, clothed in an uncommon quaintness of style, have contributed to render it, even to modern readers, a valuable repertory of amusement and information.' The author, it is said, from a calculation of his nativity, foretold the time of his own death, which occurred at the period predicted, but not without some suspicion of its having been occasioned by his own hand. In his epitaph, in the cathedral of Oxford, he is described as having lived and died by melancholy.

It may be observed, that there was no absolute want of the lighter kind of prose during this age. Several of the dramatists and others amused themselves by throwing off small works of a satirical and humorous cast, but all of them in a style so far from pure or elegant, and so immediately referring to passing manners, that they have, with hardly an exception, sunk into oblivion. THOMAS DEKKAR, who has already been spoken of as a writer of plays, produced no fewer than fourteen works of this kind; in one, entitled The Gull's Hornbook, published in 1609, he assumes the character of a guide to the fashionable follies of the town, but only with the design of exposing them to ridicule. What he says here respecting fine clothes and luxurious eating, may serve as a specimen of the light writing of the period.

DEKKAR AGAINST FINE CLOTHES.

Good clothes are the embroidered trappings of pride, and good cheer the very root of gluttony. Did man, think you, come wrangling into the world about no better matters, than all his lifetime to make privy searches in Birchin-Lane for whale bone doublets, or for pies of nightingale's tongues in Heliogabalus his kitchen? No, no; the first suit of apparel that ever mortal man put on, came neither from the mercer's shop, nor the merchant's warehouse; Adam's bill would have been taken then, sooner than a knight's bond now; yet was he great in nobody's books for satin and velvets. The silk-worms had something else to do

in those days than to set up looms, and be free of the weavers. His breeches were not so much worth as King Steven's, that cost but a poor noble; for Adam's holiday hose and doublet were of no better stuff than plain fig-leaves, and Eve's best gown of the same piece; there went but a pair of shears between them. An antiquary of this town has yet some of the powder of those leaves to show. Tailors then were none of the twelve companies; their hall, that now is larger than some dorfes among the Netherlanders, was then no bigger than a Dutch butcher's shop: they durst not strike down their customers with large bills: Adam cared not an apple-paring for their lousy hems. There was then neither the Spanish slop, nor the skipper's galligaskin, nor the Danish sleeve, nor the French standing collar: your treble-quadruple ruffs, nor your stiffnecked rabatos, that have more arches for pride, than can stand under five London bridges, durst not then set themselves out in point; for the patent for starch could by no means be signed. Fashion was then counted a disease, and horses died of it: but now, thanks to folly, it is held the only rare physic; and the purest golden asses live upon it.

One of the greatest writers and most conspicuous political characters of the time, was JOHN SELDEN (1584 -1654), a lawyer of active and vigorous character. Selden figured as a friend of liberal government, in the Parliaments of Charles I., and had a distinguished share in the framing of the Petition of Rights, by which that sovereign was induced to make a large concession of his monarchical privileges. He published a great variety of legal, political, and antiquarian tracts, replete with learning, and displaying in many parts no small share of good sense, but none of which, except his Table Talk, are now very popular. HALL, bishop of Norwich, whose poetical satires have already been alluded to, wrote Occasional Meditations, which still retain popularity as a devotional work, besides many controversial pamphlets, which made a strong impression in their own day. His prose composition is admired for its sententious firmness, and brevity. LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY (1581-1648), is remarkable as the first infidel writer in the English language; he was a man of lively and eccentric genius, and wrote also the first autobiography in the language. The work for which he is now chiefly valued, is his history of the Reign of Henry VIII. THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679), of Malmesbury, is celebrated as the first great English writer on political philosophy. Being a zealous friend of monarchy, he began in 1628 to publish a long series of works, designed to warn the people as to the consequences of their