Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 29Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
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[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON. From the painting by Van Somer, National Portrait Gallery.]
Life.—A study of Bacon takes us beyond the limits of the reign of Elizabeth, but not beyond the continued influences of that reign. Francis Bacon, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth, was born in London and grew up under the influences of the court. In order to understand some of Bacon's actions in later life, we must remember the influences that helped to fashion him in his boyhood days. Those with whom he early associated and who unconsciously molded him were not very scrupulous about the way in which they secured the favor of the court or the means which they took to outstrip an adversary. They also encouraged in him a taste for expensive luxuries. These unfortunate influences were intensified when, at the age of sixteen, he went with the English ambassador to Paris, and remained there for two and a half years, studying statecraft and diplomacy.
When Bacon was nineteen, his father died. The son, being without money, returned from Paris and appealed to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, one of Elizabeth's ministers, for some lucrative position at the court. In a letter to his uncle, Bacon says: "I confess I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province." This statement shows the Elizabethan desire to master the entire world of the New Learning. Instead of helping his nephew, however, Lord Burleigh seems to have done all in his power to thwart him. Bacon thereupon studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1582.
Bacon entered Parliament in 1584 and distinguished himself as a speaker. Ben Jonson, the dramatist, says of him "There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spoke more neatly, more presly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." This speaking was valuable training for Bacon in writing the pithy sentences of his Essays. A man who uses the long, involved sentences of Hooker can never become a speaker to whom people will listen. The habit of directness and simplicity, which Bacon formed in his speaking, remained with him through Life.
Among the many charges against Bacon's personal code of ethics, two stand out conspicuously. The Earl of Essex, who had given Bacon an estate then worth £1800, was influential in having him appointed to the staff of counselors to Queen Elizabeth. When Essex was accused of treason, Bacon kept the queen's friendship by repudiating him and taking an active part in the prosecution that led to the earl's execution. After James I. had made Bacon Lord High Chancellor of England, he was accused of receiving bribes as a judge. He replied that he had accepted only the customary presents given to judges and that these made no difference in his decisions. He was tried, found guilty, fined £40,000, and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure. After a few days, however, the king released him, forgave the fine, and gave him an annual pension of £1200.
The question whether he wrote Shakespeare's plays needs almost as much discussion on the moral as on the intellectual side. James Spedding, after studying Bacon's life and works for thirty years, said: "I see no reason to suppose that Shakespeare did not write the plays. But if somebody else did, then I think I am in a position to say that it was not Lord Bacon."
After his release, Bacon passed the remaining five years of his life in retirement,—studying and writing. His interest in observing natural objects and experimenting with them was the cause of his death. He was riding in a snowstorm when it occurred to him to test snow as a preservative agent. He stopped at a house, procured a fowl, and stuffed it with snow. He caught cold during this experiment and, being improperly cared for, soon died.
The Essays.—The first ten of his Essays, his most popular work, appeared in the year 1597. At the time of his death, he had increased them to fifty-eight. They deal with a with range of subjects, from Studies and Nobility, On the one hand, to Marriage and Single Life and Gardens on the other. The great critic Hallam say: "It would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters, were he unacquainted with the Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to read this or any other book for reputation's, sake; but very few in our language so well repay the pains, or afford more nourishment to the thoughts."
[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF BACON'S ESSAYS, 1597.]
The following sentence from the essay Of Studies will show some of the characteristics of his way of presenting thought:—
"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man: and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not."
We may notice here (1) clearness, (2) conciseness, (3) breadth of thought and observation.
A shrewd Scotchman says: "It may be said that to men wishing to rise in the world by politic management of their fellowmen, Bacon's Essays are the best handbook hitherto published." In justification of this criticism, we need only quote from the essay Of Negotiating:—
"It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter… Letters are good, when a man would draw an answer by letter back again, or when it may serve, for a man's justification, afterwards to produce his own letter, or where it may he danger to be interrupted or heard by pieces. To deal in person is good, when a man's face breedeth regard, as commonly with inferiors, or in tender cases, where a man's eye upon the countenance of him with whom he speaketh may give him a direction how far to go, and generally, where a man will reserve to himself liberty either to disavow or to expound."
Scientific and Miscellaneous Works.—The Advancement of Learning is another of Bacon's great works. The title aptly expresses the purpose of the took. He insists on the necessity of close observation of nature and of making experiments with various forms of matter. He decries the habit of spinning things out of one's inner consciousness, without patiently studying the outside world to see whether the facts justify the conclusions. In other words, he insists on induction. Bacon was not the father of the inductive principle, as is sometimes wrongly stated; for prehistoric man was compelled to make inductions before he could advance one step from barbarism. The trouble was that this method was not rigorously applied. It was currently believed that our valuable garden toad is venomous and that frogs are bred from slime. For his knowledge of bees, Lyly consulted classical authors in preference to watching the insects. Bacon's writings exerted a powerful influence in the direction of exact inductive method.
Bacon had so little faith in the enduring qualities of the English language, that he wrote the most of his philosophical works in Latin. He planned a Latin work in six parts, to cover the whole field of the philosophy of natural science. The most famous of the parts completed is the Novum Organum, which deals with certain methods for searching after definite truth, and shows how to avoid some ever present tendencies toward error.
Bacon wrote an excellent History of the Reign of Henry VII., which is standard to this day. He is also the author of The New Atlantis, which may be termed a Baconian Utopia, or study of an ideal commonwealth.
General Characteristics.—In Bacon's sentences we may often find remarkable condensation of thought in few words. A modern essayist has taken seven pages to express, or rather to obscure, the ideas in these three lines from Bacon:—
"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."[3]
His works abound in illustrations, analogies, and striking imagery; but unlike the great Elizabethan poets, he appeals more to cold intellect than to the feelings. We are often pleased with his intellectual ingenuity, for instance, in likening the Schoolmen to spiders, spinning such stuff as webs are made of "out of no great quantity of matter."
He resembles the Elizabethans in preferring magnificent to commonplace images. It has been often noticed that if he essays to write of buildings in general, he prefers to describe palaces. His knowledge of the intellectual side of human nature is especially remarkable, but, unlike Shakespeare, Bacon never drops his plummet into the emotional depths of the soul.