BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1521, 17 August 1912, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW, A GREETING. . Good morning, Life—and all Things glad and beautiful. My pockets nothing hold, But ne that owns the gold, Tho Sun, is my great friend— • His spending has no end. Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds whoso throats Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady bowers, And you green fields of flowers. Hail to you women fair, That make a show 60 rare In cloth as white as milk — Be't calico or silk: Good morning,. Life—and all Things glad and beautiful.' ' , -W. H. Davics. HAUNTED. . How restless are tho dead whose silent feet will 6tray In to our lone retreat or solitary way. Within the dew-wet wood or. sun enchanted lajie ■ • ■ Wo meet them faoo to face, we hear them speak again. How powerful are the dead whose voices - ever speak Bo softly by our side in accents faint and weak. ... Hey bid us go or stay, or do, or leave undone. We hear them breathe our name ere ■'• dawn has well begun. How silent are the dead when come ac- , cusing fears 'To chide our aching hearts, to fill our days - with tears. They hush not now our grief, nor heed us as we'plead For some unspoken word, or some ungentle deed. Beside tho golden fire they take the empty-chair They tread from room to Toom, they pass : from, stair .to stair; 'And.When comes tranquil'• night.to call to us to sleep - Within' bur pleasant dreams the restless 'deadwill creep. How pitiless ,tho dead who 'come in dear- ■ .'..est guise. .• - . , ; And most beloved ways before our wistful eyes. • ' . .' ' . • ■ To cry to us lost words that- we remembered not, .' '", To act again each scene that we'had half ' '.forgot. ', - ■ And\shpuld we seek to ease our heart ' with, some'caress, .-' . How-timidly they fly and leave us loneli- • ness. . How fugitive the dead who at out stricken -call . Hide in the chilly tomb and answer not at. all. —Dora Sigerson ShorteT. tEB SONG OF JETHRO THE POTTEIt. Jethro the potter am I. Lord of no ancient line. • '■-,' Yet at my breath the clay Glows with the spark divine. Though at my bidding, men •Bend not the servile knee, - Yet in my hands dead earth Takes on eternity. Mounted on prancing, steeds, Kings pass me by, nor guess How soon shall pomp and namo Suffer forgetfulness; While I, all ragged clad. Shaping with fingers deft Urns for the dust of those Time has of lifo.bereft, . . .:. Whistle my life away, Kingdoms and kings foTgot. ■ ,• Sure that whilostimo endures My art shall perish not. ■■' —Eeginald Dunderdalo Forbes.

;MR. BALFOUR ON BACON. "' $$*■ |j % .''ti .*"s. Sy'K ' In unveiling-a statue to Francis Bacon JV.iLondon a few woeks.ago, Mr. Balfour dalle a fine- 6peech. He said: : The great man-'whoso introduction into Gray's ?Inii<-;some" 300, years, ago we'have met-to '.commemorate, was; after all, a -member' fit 'this society" 'through his' wh,ole life. Here he spent many of his days before he rose to the nighest legal position'in. the country, and after he fell from.that position ho returned.to his old friends' and -dwelt again among his earliest surroundings. It was to this Inn ho gave some of the best work of bis life, adorning it, regulating it, and taking: part in its transactions; and it would be fitting that the man who unveils the memorial of this great membor of Gray's Inn should himself be a member of, that Inn. : That qualification, alas, I certainly do not, possess. Neither do I possess ari,y title to speak upon Lord Bacon's services to tho law. I understand that his views upon codification were far in advance of the times, and, according to some authorities, had even an effect upon that great effort at legal codification, the Code Napoleon. Upon Lord Bacon as a politician it would not be difficult and it might be interesting io dilate. Although I think he lacked that personality which is a necessary element of success in every age for a man who wishes to 'succeed in politics, ho had a breadth of view, a moderation of spirit which, had his advice been listened to might have altered the history of this country and even of Europe. Then, again, I suppose I may be asked to talk to you about Bacon's private life, of his character, of what he was as a man. But I confess.that this subject does not attract me. .Anybody who comes to the study of Bacon's life, bearing in mind that his memory is weighted with the satire of Pope and the rhetoric of Macaulay, only approaches the subject with a desire to find that they have exaggerated, and grossly exagecrated, the dark shade upon their hero's character, and, Indeed, they have grossly exaggerated. gtcar, hear.) Bacon was not a bad man. e was not a mean man. I believe he loved justice, and yet though all that be true, I do not think it was Bacon's character as a man immersed in affairs, nor even his. domestic character, which really repays us or 'will' give pleasure to any impartial student. I do not think that Bacon's relations either to Essex or to Salisbury or to- Buckingham, to Queen Elizabeth, or to James I, put him, however wo look at it, in a very interesting or agreeable light.

But do not let us talk of Bacon assome people do, as though his life were a great tragedy. It was nothing of tho sort. Bacon was, broadly speaking,-an extremely successful man, tried by any. standard you like,, except, perhaps, the highest ethical and moral standard. He was a philosopher, and he was a statesman, and In the age in which he lived there were no two professions which gave you the certainty of a more uneasy life or a chance of a more disagreeablo death. (Laughter.) His first patron. Fs=ex. died on the scaffold; his second, the Duke of Buckingham, was stahbed by Felton; and, if you turn from statesmen to philosophers, how uneasv wa.s the life of Descartes, how unhanpy the career of Galileo, how tragic tho end of Giordano Bruno, who was burnt, if T Tcmember, just about the time when Bacon was in the middle of all lns'difficulties about tho treatment of Lord Essex. These were Bacon's contemporaries; 1 these were the great men—statesmen and philosophers— living during his period, and how much more fortunate was his career than theirs. He had not to fly from place to place for fe*ar of persecution. He never ran any •risk of tho executioner's axe or the assassin's dagger. Ho was not burnt at the stake; and, however dark may be our view of hereditary honours, everybody, I think, will admit that it is better to'be made a viscount than to be burnt. (Laughter.) • HISTORIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. I am left to consider Bacon as- a man of letters, a historian, nr a philosopher. He was all three; a writer of most noble prose; ono of the men most happily giftled for history that this country has producedjnnd, in tho last character of a philosopher, marking the beginning of a KTeat epoch. As a philosopher his fate has been mixed. He has been magnificently praised by.men whoso praise is worth Bomothing, both in this country and on tho Continent of Europe. Ho has been violently abused by men whose abuse—as philosophers, I mean—cannot be neglected, and, the worst fate of all, ho has been vulgarised by some of his most ardent idmirers. I shall try to say a few words of tho debt which European* thought holds to 'Bacon,' and why it is amid universal

1 approval we meet here to-day to unveil this tributo to his memory. I think wo should mako a great mistake if wo tried to mako out that Bacon was, what is almost assured he was not, a system-maker. Bacon, as I understand him, was a prophet and a seer. It is easy and quite true to say that In tho system of-inductive logic ho did not produce, as he'hoped to, a great instrument of discovery, so happily contrived that even mediocre men could protluco magnificent results by tho use of it. It is true, too, that ho overrated the coherence, consistency, and tho accuracy of his inductivo logic. I mako small stock of that objection. . . I must correct'one great error which I think is made with regard to him by those who criticise his inductivo methods. They seem to suppose that he was guilty of .the absurdity of thinking ■ that by merely collecting facts by observation, without tho exerciso of the scientific imagination or tho creative ability, without which you can no more make new scienco than you can mako new poetry, they seem to think that he fell into the error of imagining that those higher gifts were useless. I believe that to be completely uu.true. SCIENTIFIC NEGLECT. - I call him a seer. What ho saw was the neglect by tho scientific mind, engaged in verbal disputes, of the patient and childlike, attitude of those who como lo Nature, not to impose upon Nature their own ideas, but to learn from Nature what it is that she has to teach us. Bacon is never tired of telling us that the kingdom of Nature, like tho Kingdom of God, can only bo entered by those, who approach it in tho spirit of a child. And there, surely, he was right. There, surely, ho really did much to correct the almost insolent futility of those philosophers who thought they could impose, upon Nature the hasty generalisations which they had picked up partly from their crude observations, partly from their own imaginations. (Cheers.) I do not mean to troublo pou with many extracts, but I' think this' is v.-m'th while reading, because it represents tho man, at all oveuts! as I see him. "Train yourselves," said Baci.i. ,''*r' understand the real subtlety of tin igs, and you will learn to despise trie fictitious and disputatious subtleties of words, and freeing yourselves from such follies, you will give yourselves to tho task of facilitating —under the auspices of Divino compassion—the lawful wedlock ..between the mind and Nature. Be not liko tho empyrie ant which merely collects, nor like the cobweb-wearing theorists who do but spin webs from their'own intestines, •but-imitate the bees," which .both collect and fashion.- Against tho 'Naught beyond'' of the ancients, raise your cry of 'More .beyond'; when they speak'of''the' not imitable thunderbolt' let'us reply that the thunderbolt is imitable.' Let the discovery of the new terrestrial world encourage you to expect discovery of a new intellectual world."

"The fate of Alexander the Great will be ours.> The conquests which: his contemporaries thought marvellous and likely to surpass the belief of posterity were described by later writers as nothing more than tho natural successes of one who justly dared to despise imaginary perils. Even so, our • triumphs—for we shall triumph—will be lightly esteemed by those who come after u,s; justly when they compare- bur trifling gains with theirs; unjustly if they attribute our victory to audacity rather than to humility and freedom from, that fatal human pride which has lost us everything, and has hallowed' the fluttering fancies of men in place of the imprint stamped upon things by the Divine seal."

I think that shows you Bacon as the seer, Bacon's fine hopes of what men could discover in order that the kingdom of man over Nature could be established, full of courage, full of insight, yet knowinghow slow must bo this process of gradually building up learning, and recognising—in this passage, at least, if he does not always recognise it—how small was the actual' contribution which he and his contemporaries could make towards it, how great was the final structure of which he and his contemporaries were laying tho first stone. CLAIM TO GATITUDE. , Many of his.admirers,speak rfs'ff his'one claim to - that if you. examine NsotoV impartially you. will bo always making useful discoveries. Youcan vulgarise this view of science and of discovery if you will, but you do get injustice, to Bacon if you take, that view. Jt .is true that he always,.as he said, looked on the estate of man with pity, and that to improve the estate of man in suceeding generations was one of his great objects. As wo are always talking of social reform, I presume that nobody will doubt that it was a great object, and surely that imagination which foresaw all that science could do for the estate of man was no imagination that crawled upon the 'ground, that could not look up to Heaven, could not see tho magnificence of the prospect which was, as he believed, opening out to- humanity. On tho contrary, 1 should like to ask those more competent than myself to decide the question howsoon this prophesy of Bacon really began to be accomplished. Though dates cannot be fixed, I believe it will be found that it is relatively recently—say, withrii tho last threo or four generations—that industry has really been the child of scientific discoverv. I would ask anybody to cast his eye over the history of discovery in such arts as those of medicine, in the general progress of industrial and agricultural discovery, and I believe he will conio to the conclusion forced upon my mind, which is that tho effect which science has had, and is now having, and in increasing measure is predestined to have upon the course oi this world, did not declare itself in unmistakable letters until a century and a half or two centuries had passed 6ince the death of tho great man whose name is associated with the philosophy of induction. (Cheers.)

I say that ho did all that a philosopher can do as a great philosopher and a great writer as distinguished from an investigator. He created the atmosphere in which scientific discovery flourishes. If you look at the great men of science who wore his contemporaries, if you look at the estimate in which science was held, the fears of orthodoxy, tho indifference of statesmen, tlio contempt of the multitude, you will see. that no greater work can bo done foT science than to see this is one of the greatest tasks that lies before humanity, and if humanity will only set itself to work in the true spirit to deal with that subject, they cannot fail to reap a harvest worthy, and more than worthy, of their efforts. At all events, I hope that I have suggested to you some of the reasons why all who.love knowledge, all who love science, all who look now with pity on the estate of man, all who look forward to seeing that estate improved by the efforts of thinkers, investigators, men of science, working together in the great co-operative effort of modern investigation, all who hold that view—and I think I have given you some reason why we should all hold it—(cheers)—will agree that I am performing no futile task when I unveil a statue which, none too sooni the members of this ancient body have conferred upon him who lived here so long, who worked here so fruitfully, and who always held this place in loving recollection. (Cheers.)