If Lord Bacon were living in these days, he would know that the way to do it would be to commence all such sentences with "Why, they say," etc. Have you never wondered who "they" were, who are all the time saying such important, and often such disagreeable things?
FRANCIS BACON.
Lord Bacon says, "I knew one that when he wrote a letter, he would put that which was most material in the postscript; as if it had been
a by matter." I have received just such letters as that, and sometimes they are from boys and girls. Remember, the great Lord Bacon does not say that it is a wise thing to do, but "a point of cunning."
I do not find that he wrote about getting into debt, but perhaps he did, for he certainly knew a great deal about it. He has the name of having been all his life in debt to some of his friends. So, wise man as he was, like most other men, we can, as soon as we begin to study his life, find something to avoid, as well as something to copy.
Yet we are to remember him as a wonderful man. Here is what one writer says of him: "A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it in so elegant, significant, abundant and yet so choice a way of words, of metaphors, of allusions, perhaps the world has not seen since it was a world." That sentence was written long ago, yet men think much the same of him still.
He was not only a lawyer, but a philosopher. Now just what does that word mean? Do you know? I thought not. Let us go to the dictionary and see. "Philosopher: one devoted to
philosophy." Very well, Webster, but what is philosophy? Look again. "Philosophy: the love of, or search after wisdom." Why, that is extraordinary! Then we may all be philosophers! But Webster says a great deal more about the word. If you have a bit of the philosopher in your nature, I think after reading this article, you will go at once to the dictionary, and have more wisdom after you have carefully studied the word Philosophy than you had before. Here is one more definition of the word, to give you a hint of what Lord Bacon filled his time with. Philosophy: "The science of things divine and human, and the causes in which they are contained."
I wonder if you now feel introduced to this great man? Enough so, certainly, not to think of him as a piece of pork! It is more than two hundred and fifty years since he died. He was not an old man, only about sixty-five, I believe; yet he had done a great deal of work, and will be remembered, I suppose, as long as there are books to read.