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The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England. A new Edition. By Basil
Montagu, Esq., 16 vols. 8vo. London: 1825-1834.
We return our hearty thanks to Mr. Montagu. for this truly valuable work. From
the opinions which he expresses as a biographer we often dissent. But about his
merit as a collector of the materials out of which opinions are formed, there
can be no dispute; and we readily acknowledge that we are in a great measure
indebted to his minute and accurate researches for the means of refuting what we
cannot but consider as his errors.
The labor which has been bestowed on this volume has been a labor of love. The
writer is evidently enamored of the subject. It fills his heart. It constantly
overflows from his lips and his pen. Those who are acquainted with the Courts in
which Mr. Montagu practices with so much ability and success well know how often
he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or
some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum. The
Life before us doubtless owes much of its value to the honest and generous
enthusiasm of the writer. This feeling has stimulated his activity, has
sustained his perseverance, has called forth all his ingenuity and eloquence;
but, on the other hand, we must frankly say that it has, to a great extent,
perverted his judgment.
We are by no means without sympathy for Mr. Montagu even in what we consider as
his weakness. There is scarcely any delusion which has a better claim to be
indulgently treated than that under the influence of which a man ascribes every
moral excellence to those who have left imperishable monuments of their genius.
The causes of this error lie deep in the inmost recesses of human nature. We are
all inclined to judge of others as we find them. Our estimate of a character
always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own
interests and passions. We find it difficult to think well of those by whom we
are thwarted or depressed; and we are ready to admit every excuse for the vices
of those who are useful or agreeable to us. This is, we believe, one of those
illusions to which the whole human race is subject, and which experience and
reflection can only partially remove, It is, in the phraseology of Bacon, one of
the idola tribus. Hence it is that the moral character of a man eminent in
letters or in the fine arts is treated, often by contemporaries, almost always
by posterity, with extraordinary tenderness. The world derives pleasure and
advantage from the performances of such a man. The number of those who suffer by
his personal vices is small, even in his own time, when compared with the number
of those to whom his talents are a source of gratification. In a few years all
those whom he has injured disappear. But his works remain, and are a source of
delight to millions. The genius of Sallust is still with us. But the Numidians
whom he plundered, and the unfortunate husbands who caught him in their houses
at unseasonable hours, are forgotten. We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the
keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty of his style, till
we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian. Falstaff and Tom Jones
have survived the gamekeepers whom Shakespeare cudgeled and the landladies whom
Fielding bilked. A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers; and
they cannot but judge of him under the deluding influence of friendship and
gratitude. We all know how unwilling we are to admit the truth of any
disgraceful story about a person whose society we like, and from whom we have
received favors; how long we struggle against evidence, how fondly, when the
facts cannot be disputed, we cling to the hope that there may be some
explanation or some extenuating circumstance with which we are unacquainted.
Just such is the feeling which a man of liberal education naturally entertains
towards the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to them is
incalculable. They have guided him to truth. They have filled his mind with
noble and graceful images. They have stood by him in all vicissitudes,
comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude. These
friendships are exposed to no danger from the occurrences by which other
attachments are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on; fortune is inconstant;
tempers are soured; bonds which seemed indissoluble are daily sundered by
interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But no such cause can affect the silent
converse which we hold with the highest of human intellects. That placid
intercourse is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These are the old
friends who are never seen with new faces, who axe the same in wealth and in
poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the
dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant.
Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference
of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of
Bossuet.
Nothing, then, can be more natural than that a person endowed with sensibility
and imagination should entertain a respectful and affectionate feeling towards
those great men with whose minds he holds daily communion. Yet nothing can be
more certain than that such men have not always deserved to be regarded with
respect or affection. Some writers, whose works will continue to instruct and
delight mankind to the remotest ages, have been placed in such situations that
their actions and motives are as well known to us as the actions and motives of
one human being can be known to another; and unhappily their conduct has not
always been such as an impartial judge can contemplate with approbation. But the
fanaticism of the devout worshipper of genius is proof against all evidence and
all argument. The character of his idol is matter of faith; and the province of
faith is not to be invaded by reason. He maintains his superstition with a
credulity as boundless, and a zeal as unscrupulous, as can be found in the most
ardent partisans of religious or political factions. The most decisive proofs
are rejected; the plainest rules of morality are explained away; extensive and
important portions of history are completely distorted. The enthusiast
misrepresents facts with all the effrontery of an advocate, and confounds right
and wrong with all the dexterity of a Jesuit; and all this only in order that
some man who has been in his grave during many ages may have a fairer character
than he deserves.
Middleton's Life of Cicero is a striking instance of the influence of this sort
of partiality. Never was there a character which it was easier to read than that
of Cicero. Never was there a mind keener or more critical than that of
Middleton. Had the biographer brought to the examination of his favorite
statesman's conduct but a very small part of the acuteness and severity which he
displayed when he was engaged in investigating the high pretensions of
Epiphanius and Justin Martyr, he could not have failed to produce a most
valuable history of a most interesting portion of time. But this most ingenious
and learned man, though
"So wary held and wise That, as 'twas said, he scarce received For gospel what
the church believed,"
had a superstition of his own. The great Iconoclast was himself an idolater. The
great Avvocato del Diavolo, while he disputed, with no small ability, the claims
of Cyprian and Athanasius to a place in the Calendar, was himself composing a
lying legend in honor of St. Tully. He was holding up as a model of every virtue
a man whose talents and acquirements, indeed, can never be too highly extolled,
and who was by no means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was
under the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions for which
Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advocates, could contrive no
excuse, actions which in his confidential correspondence he mentioned with
remorse and shame, are represented by his biographer as wise, virtuous, heroic.
The whole history of that great revolution which overthrew the Roman
aristocracy, the whole state of parties, the character of every public man, is
elaborately misrepresented, in order to make out something which may look like a
defense of one most eloquent and accomplished trimmer.
The volume before us reminds us now and then of the Life of Cicero. But there is
this marked difference. Dr. Middleton evidently had an uneasy consciousness of
the weakness of his cause, and therefore resorted to the most disingenuous
shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts. Mr. Montagu's
faith is sincere and implicit. He practices no trickery. He conceals nothing. He
puts the facts before us in the full confidence that they will produce on our
minds the effect which they have produced on his own. It is not till he comes to
reason from facts to motives that his partiality shows itself; and then he
leaves Middleton himself far behind. His work proceeds on the assumption that
Bacon was an eminently virtuous man. From the tree Mr. Montagu judges of the
fruit. He is forced to relate many actions which, if any man but Bacon had
committed them, nobody would have dreamed of defending, actions which are
readily and completely explained by supposing Bacon to have been a man whose
principles were not strict, and whose spirit was not high, actions which can be
explained in no other way without resorting to some grotesque hypothesis for
which there is not a tittle of evidence. But any hypothesis is, in Mr. Montagu's
opinion, more probable than that his hero should ever have done anything very
wrong.
This mode of defending Bacon seems to us by no means Baconian. To take a man's
character for granted, and then from his character to infer the moral quality of
all his actions, is surely a process the very reverse of that which is
recommended in the Novum Organum. Nothing, we are sure, could have led Mr.
Montagu to depart so far from his master's precepts, except zeal for his
master's honor. We shall follow a different course. We shall attempt, with the
valuable assistance which Mr. Montagu has afforded us, to frame such an account
of Bacon's life as may enable our readers correctly to estimate his character.
It is hardly necessary to say that Francis Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, who held the great seal of England during the first twenty years of the
reign of Elizabeth. The fame of the father has been thrown into shade by that of
the son. But Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man. He belonged to a set of men whom
it is easier to describe collectively than separately, whose minds were formed
by one system of discipline, who belonged to one rank in society, to one
university, to one party, to one sect, to one administration, and who resembled
each other so much in talents, in opinions, in habits, in fortunes, that one
character, we had almost said one life, may, to a considerable extent, serve for
them all.
They were the first generation of statesmen by profession that England produced.
Before their time the division of labor had, in this respect, been very
imperfect. Those who had directed public affairs had been, with few exceptions,
warriors or priests; warriors whose rude courage was neither guided by science
nor softened by humanity, priests whose learning and abilities were habitually
devoted to the defense of tyranny and imposture. The Hotspurs, the Nevilles, the
Cliffords, rough, illiterate, and unreflecting, brought to the council-board the
fierce and imperious disposition which they had acquired amidst the tumult of
predatory war, or in the gloomy repose of the garrisoned and moated castle. On
the other side was the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all that was then
considered as learning, trained in the Schools to manage words, and in the
confessional to manage hearts, seldom superstitious, but skilful in practicing
on the superstition of others; false, as it was natural that a man should be
whose profession imposed on all who were not saints the necessity of being
hypocrites; selfish, as it was natural that a man should be who could form no
domestic ties and cherish no hope of legitimate posterity, more attached to his
order than to his country, and guiding the politics of England with a constant
side-glance at Rome.
But the increase of wealth, the progress of knowledge, and the reformation of
religion produced a great change. The nobles ceased to be military chieftains;
the priests ceased to possess a monopoly of learning; and a new and remarkable
species of politicians appeared.
These men came from neither of the classes which had, till then, almost
exclusively furnished ministers of state. They were all laymen; yet they were
all men of learning; and they were all men of peace. They were not members of
the aristocracy. They inherited no titles, no large domains, no armies of
retainers, no fortified castles. Yet they were not low men, such as those whom
princes, jealous of the power of a nobility, have sometimes raised from forges
and cobblers' stalls to the highest situations. They were all gentlemen by
birth. They had all received a liberal education. It is a remarkable fact that
they were all members of the same university. The two great national seats of
learning had even then acquired the characters which they still retain. In
intellectual activity, and in readiness to admit improvements, the superiority
was then, as it has ever since been, on the side of the less ancient and
splendid institution. Cambridge had the honor of educating those celebrated
Protestant Bishops whom Oxford had the honor of burning; and at Cambridge were
formed the minds of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the
secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of Europe.
The statesmen of whom we speak passed their youth surrounded by the incessant
din of theological controversy. Opinions were still in a state of chaotic
anarchy, intermingling, separating, advancing, receding. Sometimes the stubborn
bigotry of the Conservatives seemed likely to prevail. Then the impetuous onset
of the Reformers for a moment carried all before it. Then again the resisting
mass made a desperate stand, arrested the movement, and forced it slowly back.
The vacillation which at that time appeared in English legislation, and which it
has been the fashion to attribute to the caprice and to the power of one or two
individuals, was truly a national vacillation. It was not only in the mind of
Henry that the new theology obtained the ascendant one day, and that the lessons
of the nurse and of the priest regained their influence on the morrow. It was
not only in the House of Tudor that the husband was exasperated by the
opposition of the wife, that the son dissented from the opinions of the father,
that the brother persecuted the sister, that one sister persecuted another. The
principles of Conservation and Reform carried on their warfare in every part of
society, in every congregation, in every school of learning, round the hearth of
every private family, in the recesses of every reflecting mind.
It was in the midst of this ferment that the minds of the persons whom we are
describing were developed. They were born Reformers. They belonged by nature to
that order of men who always form the front ranks in the great intellectual
progress. They were therefore, one and all, Protestants. In religious matters,
however, though there is no reason to doubt that they were sincere, they were by
no means zealous. None of them chose to run the smallest personal risk during
the reign of Mary. None of them favored the unhappy attempt of Northumberland in
favor of his daughter-in-law. None of them shared in the desperate councils of
Wyatt. They contrived to have business on the Continent; or, if they staid in
England, they heard mass and kept Lent with great decorum. When those dark and
perilous years had gone by, and when the Crown had descended to a new sovereign,
they took the lead in the reformation of the Church. But they proceeded, not
with the impetuosity of theologians, but with the calm determination of
statesmen. They acted, not like men who considered the Romish worship as a
system too offensive to God, and too destructive of souls, to be tolerated for
an hour, but like men who regarded the points in dispute among Christians as in
themselves unimportant, and who were not restrained by any scruple of conscience
from professing, as they had before professed, the Catholic faith of Mary, the
Protestant faith of Edward, or any of the numerous intermediate combinations
which the caprice of Henry and the servile policy of Cranmer had formed out of
the doctrines of both the hostile parties. They took a deliberate view of the
state of their own country and of the Continent: they satisfied themselves as to
the leaning of the public mind; and they chose their side. They placed
themselves at the head of the Protestants of Europe, and staked all their fame
and fortunes on the success of their party.
It is needless to relate how dexterously, how resolutely, how gloriously they
directed the politics of England during the eventful years which followed, how
they succeeded in uniting their friends and separating their enemies, how they
humbled the pride of Philip, how they backed the unconquerable spirit of
Coligny, how they rescued Holland from tyranny, how they founded the maritime
greatness of their country, how they outwitted the artful politicians of Italy,
and tamed the ferocious chieftains of Scotland. It is impossible to deny that
they committed many acts which would justly bring on a statesman of our time
censures of the most serious kind. But, when we consider the state of morality
in their age, and the unscrupulous character of the adversaries against whom
they had to contend, we are forced to admit that it is not without reason that
their names are still held in veneration by their countrymen.
There were, doubtless, many diversities in their intellectual and moral
character. But there was a strong family likeness. The constitution of their
minds was remarkably sound. No particular faculty was pre-eminently developed;
but manly health and vigor were equally diffused through the whole. They were
men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by exercise well fashioned for
speculative pursuits. It was by circumstances, rather than by any strong bias of
inclination, that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. In
active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from the faults of
mere theorists and pedants. No men observed more accurately the signs of the
times. No men had a greater practical acquaintance with human nature. Their
policy was generally characterized rather by vigilance, by moderation, and by
firmness, than by invention, or by the spirit of enterprise.
They spoke and wrote in a manner worthy of their excellent sense. Their
eloquence was less copious and less ingenious, but far purer and more manly than
that of the succeeding generation. It was the eloquence of men who had lived
with the first translators of the Bible, and with the authors of the Book of
Common Prayer. It was luminous, dignified, solid, and very slightly tainted with
that affectation which deformed the style of the ablest men of the next age. If,
as sometimes chanced, these politicians were under the necessity of taking a
part in the theological controversies on which the dearest interests of kingdoms
were then staked, they acquitted themselves as if their whole lives had been
passed in the Schools and the Convocation.
There was something in the temper of these celebrated men which secured them
against the proverbial inconstancy both of the Court and of the multitude. No
intrigue, no combination of rivals, could deprive them of the confidence of
their Sovereign. No parliament attacked their influence. No mob coupled their
names with any odious grievance. Their power ended only with their lives. In
this respect, their fate presents a most remarkable contrast to that of the
enterprising and brilliant politicians of the preceding and of the succeeding
generation. Burleigh was Minister during forty years. Sir Nicholas Bacon held
the great seal more than twenty years. Sir Walter Mildmay was Chancellor of the
Exchequer twenty-three years. Sir Thomas Smith was Secretary of State eighteen
years; Sir Francis Walsingham about as long. They all died in office, and in the
enjoyment of public respect and royal favor. Far different had been the fate of
Wolsey, Cromwell, Norfolk, Somerset, and Northumberland. Far different also was
the fate of Essex, of Raleigh, and of the still more illustrious man whose life
we propose to consider.
The explanation of this circumstance is perhaps contained in the motto which Sir
Nicholas Bacon inscribed over the entrance of his hall at Gorhambury, Mediocria
firma. This maxim was constantly borne in mind by himself and his colleagues.
They were more solicitous to lay the foundations of their power deep than to
raise the structure to a conspicuous but insecure height. None of them aspired
to be sole Minister. None of them provoked envy by an ostentatious display of
wealth and influence. None of them affected to outshine the ancient aristocracy
of the kingdom. They were free from that childish love of titles which
characterized the successful courtiers of the generation which preceded them and
of that which followed them. Only one of those whom we have named was made a
peer; and he was content with the lowest degree of the peerage. As to money,
none of them could, in that age, justly be considered as rapacious. Some of them
would, even in our time, deserve the praise of eminent disinterestedness. Their
fidelity to the State was incorruptible. Their private morals were without
stain. Their households were sober and well governed.
Among these statesmen Sir Nicholas Bacon was generally considered as ranking
next to Burleigh. He was called by Camden "Sacris conciliis alterum columen";
and by George Buchanan,
"diu Britannici Regni secundum columen."
The second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Francis Bacon was Anne, one of the
daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a man of distinguished learning who had been
tutor to Edward the Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid considerable attention to the
education of his daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly and happily
married. Their classical acquirements made them conspicuous even among the women
of fashion of that age. Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin
Hexameters and Pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musae
Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as
the best Greek scholar among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always
excepted. Anne, the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both as a
linguist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and
translated his Apologia from the Latin, so correctly that neither he nor
Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also translated a
series of sermons on fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This
fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small and audacious
band of Italian reformers, anathematized alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by
Zurich, and by Rome, from which the Socinian sect deduces its origin.
Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind after the fashion of
her age. But we must not suffer ourselves to be deluded into the belief that she
and her sisters were more accomplished women than many who are now living. On
this subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have often heard men
who wish, as almost all men of sense wish, that women should be highly educated,
speak with rapture of the English ladies of the sixteenth century, and lament
that they can find no modern damsel resembling those fair pupils of Ascham and
Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the styles of Isocrates and Lysias,
and who, while the horns were sounding, and the dogs in full cry, sat in the
lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and
bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his
weeping goaler. But surely these complaints have very little foundation. We
would by no means disparage the ladies of the sixteenth century or their
pursuits. But we conceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women
of our time forget one very obvious and very important circumstance. In the time
of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, a person who did not read Greek and
Latin could read nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern
language which possessed anything that could be called a literature. All the
valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly
have filled a single shelf, England did not yet possess Shakespeare's plays and
the Fairy Queen, nor France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In
looking round a well-furnished library, how many English or French books can we
find which were extant when Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth received their
education? Chaucer, Gower, Froissart, Commines, Rabelais, nearly complete the
list. It was therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be uneducated or
classically educated. Indeed, without a knowledge of one of the ancient
languages no person could then have any clear notion of what was passing in the
political, the literary, or the religious world. The Latin was in the sixteenth
century all and more than all that the French was in the eighteenth. It was the
language of courts as well as of the schools. It was the language of diplomacy;
it was the language of theological and political controversy. Being a fixed
language, while the living languages were in a state of fluctuation, and being
universally known to the learned and the polite, it was employed by almost every
writer who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. A person who was ignorant
of it was shut out from all acquaintance, not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not
merely with heavy treatises on canon-law and school divinity, but with the most
interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time, nay even with
the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the
fleeting topics of the day, with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's
dialogues, with Hutten's epistles.
This is no longer the case. All political and religious controversy is now
conducted in the modern languages. The ancient tongues are used only in comments
on the ancient writers. The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are
indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their
relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by
mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our
ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady
Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient
dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without
Oedipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of
Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol,
and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some
compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from Nephelococcygia, he may
take refuge in Lilliput. We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence towards those
great nations to which the human race owes art, science, taste, civil and
intellectual freedom, when we say, that the stock bequeathed by them to us has
been so carefully improved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the
principal. We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of
western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years,--translations from
the ancient languages of course included,--are of greater value than all the
books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the world. With the
modern languages of Europe English women are at least as well acquainted as
English men. When, therefore, we compare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey.
with those of an accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesitation
in awarding the superiority to the latter. We hope that our readers will pardon
up this digression. It is long; but it can hardly be called unseasonable, if it
tends to convince them that they are mistaken in thinking that the
great-great-grandmothers of their great-great-grandmothers were superior women
to their sisters and their wives.
Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas, was born at York House, his
father's residence in the Strand, on the twenty-second of January 1561. The
health of Francis was very delicate; and to this circumstance may be partly
attributed that gravity of carriage, and that love of sedentary pursuits which
distinguished him from other boys. Everybody knows how much sobriety of
deportment and his premature readiness of wit amused the Queen, and how she used
to call him her young Lord Keeper. We are told that, while still a mere child,
he stole away from his playfellows to a vault in St. James's Fields, for the
purpose of investigating the cause of a singular echo which he had observed
there. It is certain that, at only twelve, he busied himself with very ingenious
speculations on the art of legerdemain; a subject which, as Professor Dugald
Stewart has most justly observed, merits much more attention from philosophers
than it has ever received. These are trifles. But the eminence which Bacon
afterwards attained makes them interesting.
In the thirteenth year of his age he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge.
That celebrated school of learning enjoyed the peculiar favor of the Lord
Treasurer and the Lord Keeper, and acknowledged the advantages which it derived
from their patronage in a public letter which bears date just a month after the
admission of Francis Bacon. The master was Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, a narrow minded, mean, and tyrannical priest, who gained power by
servility and adulation, and employed it in persecuting both those who agreed
with Calvin about church-government, and those who differed from Calvin touching
the doctrine of Reprobation. He was now in a chrysalis state, putting off the
worm, and putting on the dragon-fly, a kind of intermediate grub between
sycophant and oppressor. He was indemnifying himself for the court which he
found it expedient to pay to the Ministers by exercising much petty tyranny
within his own college. It would be unjust, however, to deny him the praise of
having rendered about this time one important service to letters. He stood up
manfully against those who wished to make Trinity College a mere appendage to
Westminster school; and by this act, the only good act, as far as we remember,
of his long public life, he saved the noblest place of education in England from
the degrading fate of King's College and New College.
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