CHAPTER II. BACON LIKE HIMSELF. IN the year 1585, a young barrister, no more than twenty-five years old, composed a juvenile work on philosophy which, he tells us "with great confidence and a magnificent title," he named The Greatest Birth of Time.1 A barrister of twenty-five who could at such an age compose a work with such a title is clearly an exceptional character; and if we wish to understand him we shall do well to attend to what he himself tells us about his own youth and the projects of his early manhood. These he describes as follows: "Whereas I believed myself born for the service of mankind, and reckoned the care of the common weal to be among those duties that are of public right, open to all alike, even as the waters and the air, I therefore asked myself what could most advantage mankind, and for the performance of what tasks I seemed to be shaped by nature. Thereon I found no work so meritorious as the discovery and development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilize the life of man. Above all, if any man could succeed—not in merely bringing to light some one particular invention, however useful—but in kindling in nature a luminary which would, at its first rising, shed some light on the present limits and borders of human discoveries, and which afterwards, as it rose still higher, would reveal and bring into clear view every nook and cranny of darkness, it seemed to me that such a discoverer would deserve to be called the true Extender of the Kingdom of Man over the universe, the champion of human liberty, and the exterminator of the necessities that now keep man in bondage. Moreover, I found in my own nature a special adaptationfor the contemplation of truth. For I had a mind at once versatile enough for that most 1 Life, vol. ii. p. 533. Where hereafter numbers are given in a reference without the name of any book, the reference will always be to some volume and page of Mr. Spedding's Life and Letters of Lord Bacon." important object-I mean the recognition of similitudes-and at the same time sufficiently steady and concentrated for the observation of subtle shades of difference. I possessed a passion for research, a power of suspending judgment with patience, of meditating with pleasure, of assenting with caution, of correcting false impressions with readiness, and of arranging my thoughts with scrupulous pains. I had no hankering after novelty, no blind admiration for antiquity. Imposture in every shape I utterly detested. For all these reasons I considered that my nature and disposition had as it were a kind of kinship and connection with truth. "But my birth, my rearing and education, had all pointed, not towards philosophy, but towards politics: I had been as it were imbued in politics from childhood. Moreover, as is not unfrequently the case with young men, I was sometimes shaken in my mind by [other men's] opinions.1 I also thought that my duty towards my country had special claims upon me, such as could not be urged by other duties of life. Lastly, I conceived the hope that, if I held some honourable office in the state, I might thus secure helps and supports to aid my labours, with a view to the accomplishment of my destined task. With these motives I applied myself to politics, and with all due modesty I also recommended myself to the favour of influential friends. There was one other consideration that influenced me. The objects of philosophy just now mentioned, be they what they may, do not extend their influence beyond the condition and culture of this present mortal life. Now, as my life had fallen on times when religion was not in a very prosperous state, it occurred to me that in the discharge of the duties of political office it might be also in my power to make some provision even for the safety of souls.” 2 All that we know of Francis Bacon from other sources confirms thus much, at all events, of what he here sets down about himself—that he looked upon himself as "specially moulded by nature for the contemplation of the truth," and that even his attainment of office and his "commendations of himself to influential friends" were regarded by him (in theory) as steppingstones to "his destined task," which was the establishment of the Kingdom of Man over Nature. However strong may have been the political tendencies of his "birth and education," as he says above, there can be no doubt that from his earliest years his natural leanings were towards philosophy. Even in his fourteenth year, while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, he had already conceived a dissatisfaction with Aristotle, and had noted, so Rawley tells us, "the unfruitfulness of a philosophy 1 After long consideration I am inclined to think that this is the meaning of the passage. It is in accordance with Bacon's use of the word "opinio." 2 De Interpretatione Naturæ Proæmium, Works, vol. iii. pp. 518, 519. only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man." Such is the testimony of his biographer; and he adds that this had been "imparted from his lordship." 1 The three or four little anecdotes which preserve all that we know about Bacon's youth, exhibit the young philosopher already with a gravity beyond his years, and with a predisposition to observe Nature, not merely to study books. At Cambridge we find him noting the transmission of sound through a pillar from the room of one student to another. Of his life in his father's house we have no reminiscence except of some conjuring trick which he observed and attempted to explain in his boyhood. Another tale about the rumbling sound produced by shouting down a conduit in St. James's Fields, and another about the multiplication of echoes noted by him at some place near Paris, make up nearly the whole of what Bacon tells us about his youth. There seems to have been noted in him from the first a strange mixture of grave dignity and of shyness—the dignity or magnificence" (as he himself calls it) of a man conscious of great powers, and the shyness of one who felt that he was not in his element in active life, moving unrecognized among common people. By the Queen his great parts were early noticed, and his precocious gravity and "magnificence" appears in the well-known compliment in which he connected his age with her Majesty's happy reign. Hilliard, who painted his portrait in his youth, notes on the canvas that he would have preferred to have painted the boy's mind, and not his face. When he was in his confident mood, writes Yelverton in after years, he excelled all persons in powers of persuasion.2 In the days of his greatness "he commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion."3 But in the days of his obscurity, Bacon was not so genial or so attractive. "All things move violently to their place, but easily in their place"-this is one of Bacon's own favourite 1 Works, vol. i. p. 4. 244 Open yourself,' " writes Yelverton to Bacon, "bravely and confidently, wherein you can excel all subjects," vi. 248. 3 Ben Jonson, Discoveries, ed. Gifford, p. 749. axioms; and he tells us it applies to men as well as to things. It certainly applied to him. He was not "in his place," as long as he was not recognized to be great; and while he was rising to greatness he "moved violently." The grave dignity and magnificence which might be attractive in Bacon the Lord Chancellor, repelled those who had to do with him as Mr. Francis Bacon. Sometimes indeed it created admiration, as in the case of the client who was ashamed to thank Mr. Bacon for his services, for " he seemed more like a god than like a man ; "1 but more often it caused offence. Anthony Bacon's friend, Mr. Faunt, complains bitterly of "the strangeness which hath at other times been used to me by your brother."2 The principal creditor of the two brothers, Mr. Trott by name, addresses the younger brother Francis with far more respect than the elder, even though he expostulates with Anthony upon what he deems the unfairness and ingratitude of Francis. The same difference of tone is observable in the letters addressed by Lady Anne. Bacon to the two brothers. She lectures Anthony far more freely than Francis, and often makes Anthony the medium of warnings and expostulations indirectly addressed to Francis. Essex apologizes to Puckering for Bacon's abrupt behaviour. "This manner of his," he writes, " was only a natural freedom and plainness, which he had used with me, and, in my knowledge, with some other of his best friends," and he explains that it had been caused by "a diffidence of your Lordship's honourable favour and love towards him." 3 Bacon himself admits to Lady Burghley that he is "not yet greatly perfect in ceremonies of court." But making this admission in his twentieth year, he is not disposed at present to enslave himself to these ceremonies. He is a young man, and takes the high style of a young man. “My thankful and serviceable mind shall be always like itself, howsoever it vary from the common disguising. Your Ladyship is wise and of good nature to discern from what mind every action proceedeth, and to esteem of it accordingly." Six years however pass away and Bacon finds that being "like himself" does not quite answer in society, at all events in Court society. The charges of arrogance and pride become so loud and numerous 1 I have lost the exact reference. It is in Birch's MSS. of Anthony Bacon's correspondence, in the British Museum. 2 Life, i. 31. 3 lbid. i. 366. that they reach the ear of his patron Lord Burghley, who thought them important enough to remonstrate with his nephew upon his conduct. Bacon answers by denying the charge, but promising amendment of his outward behaviour. "For that your Lordship may otherwise have heard of me, it shall make me more wary and circumspect in carriage of myself. Indeed, I find in my simple observation that they which live as it were in umbra, and not in public or frequent action, how moderately and modestly soever they behave themselves, yet laborant invidia. I find also that such persons as are of nature bashful (as myself is), whereby they want that plausible familiarity which others have, are often mistaken for proud. But once,' I know well, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to believe, that arrogancy and overweening is so far from my nature as, if I think well of myself in anything, it is in this, that I am free from that vice. And I hope upon this, your Lordship's speech, I have entered into those considerations as my behaviour shall no more deliver me for other than I am." If we had leisure to pursue the life of Bacon into his later years, we should see how anxiously and deliberately he set himself to work to rid himself of this inconvenient bashfulness and to cultivate "plausible familiarity." In a miscellaneous notebook written in 1608 we find an infinite variety of devices set down in writing, all tending to the achievement of this "familiarity." For example: "To attend sometime his (the King's) repasts, and to fall into a course of familiar discourse to have ever in readiness matter to minister talk with every of the great counsellors respectivè, both to induce familiarity, and for countenance in public place; to correspond with Salisbury in a habit of natural but noways perilous boldness, and in vivacity, invention, care to cast and enterprise (but with due caution, for this manner I judge both in his nature freeth the stands, and in his ends pleaseth him best and promiseth most use of me); to have particular occasions, fit, and grateful, and continual, to maintain private speech with every the great persons, and sometimes drawing more than one of them together. This specially in public places, and without care or affectation." 3 So inconvenient is this vice of shyness and proud formality that he finds it preferable to appear to be even rude:— "To free myself at once from payment of `formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness and rudeness." 1 i.e. Once for all. 2 Life, i. 59, 6th of May, 1586. с |