IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8503, 5 August 1907, Page 5

IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

(Specially Written for the Wairarapa Age.) No. XII.—BACON ESSAYS, ETC. . (Second Notice.) In the previous notice of Bacon, we drew our readers' attention more particularly to the Essays. It may prove interesting now, to say something of Bacon himself, and of his works and influence; also to note some points of contact between him and Shakespeare. Of a distinguished father. Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper to Queen Elizabeth. Francis Bacon was the more distinguished son. Cecil.. Lord Burleigh, the ablest statesman, of the time, was his uncle. As a child he was much noticed by the Queen, who would often term him "her young Lord Keeper." In April, 1573, when a little over twelve years of age, he entered the University of 'Cambridge as a student of Trinity College. Some three years later he conceived the idea of inaugurating a new method in the study of Nature —an idea that engrossed his thoughts, moulded his life, and produced the great works that have made him immortal. Before he was twenty his father died; and, having to make his own way, he took to the Law; and rose ultimately to bs Lord Chancellor of England. This, however, was after many vain solicitations, constant disappointments, and an amount of sycophancy, and time-serving, that it is unpleasant to read or think of. From his great elevation he was suddenly hurled, on charges of bribery, etc., that he was unfortunately unable to refute; and though he was restored to some favour he died under the cloud that no royal clemency could clear away. He well knew his proper vocation, writing on one occasion, when bitter with hoDe deferred

—"I will retire myself with a couple of men to Cambridge, and then spend my life in my studies and contemplations," on which one of his biographers remarks:—"lt might have been well, prehaps, for his own reputation and the cause of learning 1 had he carried out this project. We should never have heard of him as Lord Chancellor, but we should have been spared the many controversies with j which our literature is still perplexed ; as to the morality of his public life." i Law and politics Bacon was compelled J to follow as a profession. Literature and philosophy he wooed aa a lover. His tastes and habits were of the grand and magnificent order; and to j this was due, in a great measure, ; wiiat we are compelled reluctantly to | term the basenesses that sullied his 1 great character • and wrecked his career. Had his means been ample, his genius would have given to posterity, instead of a fragment, the great instauration of his conception. Like some few others of the mighty ones of the earth he realized his own genius, and the value of what it produced. When he was only 31 he wrote ti his uncle—"l have taken all knowledge to be my province." In his ! great work he had the sublime confidence expressed in the opening words "Francis Baccn so thought, ar.d deemed that fo.- posterity to know his thoughts was of concern to them." Nor, after all his calamities was this confidence shaken; a clause in his will reading:—"My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and t) mine own countrymen after some years." Milton, another of the giants, at once recurs to one's memory here. He too was dominated by his poetic genius, as Bacon by his philosophical, and when he was only 33 years of age he wrote: — "An inward prompting grows daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in" this life joined with the strong propensity of Nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die." It is not sur-• prising that we find a similar aspiration in the Book of Books. The Psalmist hopes to benefit future generations:—"o, God forsake me not; until I have declared thy strength unto the next generation, and they might to everyone that is to come" (R.V.). On the character of Bacon's intellect and genius there is pretty general consensus of opinion; though, even here, there is not an entire absence of depreciatory remark. Macauley says in his forcible way:— "The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis nave moved the intellects which have moved the world." What Bacon says of Plato is pre-eminently true of himself: —"lie was a man of sublime genius, who took a view of everything as from a high rock." Of the value of the study of Bacon from an educational point of view, Professor Fowler writes:—"To the young student nothing is of so much importance as to be brought into contact with works of real genius. To lay oneself alongside a really subtle and capacious mind is almost an education in itself, and there must have been many men who have looked back on their first acquaintance with /the profound and brilliant pages of Bacon as forming one of the eras in their lives. Maxims such as these, 'Man is the servant and interpreter of nature,' 'Human knowledge and human power meet in one,' 'lt is not fruit bringing but light-bringing experiments that should be sought,' 'Truth is rightly called the daughter of Time,' not of authority,' 'the worst thing of all is the apotheosis of error,' which sparkle on almost every pag eof the Novum Organum, live longin the memory, and insensibly influence our who'e habit of thought. There is something about Bacon's diction, his quaintness of expression, and his power of illustration, which lays hold of the mind, and lodges itself in the memory, in a way which we hardly find paralleled in any other author, except it be Shakespeare. And what are the lessons which he thus effectually communicates? The duty of taking nothing upon trust which we can verify for ourselves, of rigidly examining our first principles, of being carefully on our guard against the various delusions arising from the peculiarities of human Nature, from our various interests and pursuits, from the force of words, and

from the disputes and traditions of the schools; the duty of forming our conclusions slowly and of constantly checking them by comparison with the facts of nature and life, of avoiding merely subtle and frivolous disputations, of confining our inquiries to questions of which the solution is within our power, and of subordinating all our investigations to the welfare of man and society." With this extract, which is too compact and informing to admit of being curtailed or condensed, we must end our notice; just mentioning the interesting fact that Bacon's devotion to experiment killed him. One frosty morning he stuffed a fowl with snow to see if it would preserve it. The chill so caught caused his death, but he had the satisfaction of being able to report that the experiment succeeded "excellently well." The frozen meat trade may thus claim Bacon for its originator! (The parrallelism between Bacon and Shalcespeare, that we cannot now find space for, may appear in a future note).