The hand of Lord Bacon had already moulded the language at pleasure, and he might have preceded his friend Hobbes in the lucidity of a philosophical style. The style of Lord Bacon is stamped with the originality of the age, and is as peculiar to him as was that of Shakspeare to the poet. He is not only the wittiest of writers in his remote allusions, but poetical in his fanciful conceptions. His style long served for a model to many succeeding writers. One of the most striking imitations is that curious folio of secret history, and brilliant sententiousness, and witty pedantry, the Life of Archbishop Williams by Bishop Hacket. It was with declining spirit Lord Bacon composed his “History of Henry the Seventh;” it was an oblation to majesty; the king himself was his critic; and the Solomon, as he terms Henry the Seventh, was that image of peaceful sovereignty which James affected.
He who thought that the language would have failed him, has himself failed to the language, and we have lost an English classic. Since the experimental philosophy arose out of practical discoveries, it should not have been limited to recluse students, but open to the practitioners not yet philosophers, now condemned to study it by translations of a translation. It required two centuries before the writings of Bacon reached the many. Now, a single volume, in the most popular form, places them in the hands of artisans and artists, who are to learn from them to think, to observe, and to invent.
The first modern edition of the collected writings of Lord Bacon was that by Blackbourne, in 1730. It probably awoke the public attention; but English readers eager to possess themselves of the Baconian philosophy were still doomed to their old ignorance, for no one was yet to be found bold enough to risk versions, which in the mere translation often require to be elucidated. This first edition, however, hastened the arduous task of “methodising” the philosophy of Bacon in English, by Dr. Peter Shaw, in 1733, who then suggested that the noble Baconian scheme had not been “sufficiently understood and regarded.” This Dr. Shaw was one of the court physicians, attached to scientific pursuits, which he usefully displayed by popular lectures and writings, on subjects with which the public were then not familiar. Imbued with the genius of Bacon, this diligent student unfortunately had a genius of his own; he fancied that he could reconstruct the works of our great philosopher, by a more perfect arrangement. He separated, or he joined; he classed, and he new-named; and not the least curious of his singularities is that of assigning right principles for his wrong doings. He did not abridge his author; for justly he observes, great works admit of no abridgment; but to shorten their extent, he took the liberty of what he terms “dropping,”—that is, “leaving out.” Of his translations of the Latin originals, of which he experienced all the difficulty, he observes, that “a direct translation would have left the works more obscure than they are,” and therefore he adopted what he terms “an open version.” A precise notion of this mode of free translation, it might be difficult to fix on; it would be too open if it admitted what was not in the original, or if it suffered what was essential to escape. His irremissible sin was that of “modernizing the English” of Lord Bacon. The most racy and picturesque expressions of our elder writers were then to be weakened down to a vapid colloquial style. Willymot had translated Lord Bacon’s “Essays” from the Latin, and thus substituted his own loose incondite sentences, which he deemed “more fashionable language,” for the brilliancy or the energy of Lord Bacon’s native vein. Dr. Shaw’s three goodly quartos, however, long conveyed in some shape to the English public the Baconian philosophy. There is something still seductive in these fair volumes, with their copious index, and a glossary of the philosophical terms invented by Bacon; I loved them in the early days of my studies; and they have been deemed worthy to be revived in a late edition.
In my youth, the illustrious name of Lord Bacon was more familiar to readers than his works, and they were more frequently reminded of the Lord Chancellor by the immortal verse of Pope, than by that Life of Bacon by Mallet, which may be read without discovering that the subject was the father of modern philosophy, excepting that in the last page, as if accidentally, there occurs a slight mention of the Great Instauration itself! The very choice of Mallet, in 1740, for an editor of Lord Bacon, is a striking evidence how imperfectly the genius of the Instaurator of sciences was comprehended.
The psychological history of Lord Bacon has all that oneness which is the perfection of mind. We see him in his boyhood, studious of the phenomena of nature, meditating on the multiplication of echoes at the brick-conduit, near his father’s house; there he sought to discover the laws of sound; as in his latest days, when on the snowy road an experiment suddenly occurred, “touching the conservation and the induration of bodies,” whether snow could not preserve flesh equally with salt. Alighting from his carriage, with his own hands he assisted the experiment, and was struck by that chilliness which, a few days after, closed in death; yet the dying naturalist, too weak to write the last letter he dictated, expressed his satisfaction that the experiment “answered excellently well.”
But he who, by the cruelty of fortune and mortal infirmity, lived many lives in the span of one short life, ever wrestling with Nature to subdue her, could never subdue himself by himself. He idolized state and magnificence in his own person; the brilliancy of his robes and the blaze of his equipage his imagination seemed to feed on; he loved to be gazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at in the cabinet; but with this feminine weakness, this philosopher was still so philosophic as to scorn the least prudential care of his fortune. So that, while he was enamoured of wealth, he could not bring himself down to the love of money. Participating in the corruptions of the age, he was himself incorruptible; the Lord Chancellor never gave a partial or unjust sentence, and Rushworth has told us, that not one of his decrees was ever reversed. Such a man was not made to crouch and to fawn, to breathe the infection of a corrupted court, to make himself the scape-goat in the mysterious darkness of court-intrigues; but he was this man of wretchedness! Truly he exclaimed one day, in grasping a volume, For this only am I fitted. The intellectual architect who had modelled his house of Solomon, and should have been for ever the ideal inhabitant of that palace of the mind, was the tenant of an abode of disorder, where every one was master but its owner, a maculated man seeking to shelter himself in dejection and in shade. Whisperers, surmisers, evil eyes and evil tongues, the domestic asp, whose bite sends poison into the veins of him on whom it hangs—those were his familiars, while his abstracted mind was dictating to his chaplain the laws and economy of nature.
Yet there were some better spirits in the mansion of Gorhambury, and even in the obscurity of Gray’s Inn, who have left testimonies of their devotion to the great man long after his death. In the psychological history of Lord Bacon, we must not pass by the psychological monument which the affectionate Sir Thomas Meautys, who, by his desire, lies buried at his feet, raised to his master. The design is as original as it is grand, and is said to have been the invention of Sir Henry Wotton, who, in his long residence abroad, had formed a refined taste for the arts which were yet strangers in England. The simplicity of our ancestors had placed their sculptured figures recumbent on their tombs; the taste of Wotton raised the marble figure to imitate life itself, and to give the mind of the original to its image. The monument of Bacon exhibits the great philosopher seated in profound contemplation in his habitual attitude, for the inscription records for posterity, Sic sedebat.[5]
[1] The Abate Andres, in his erudite “Origine &c. d’ogni Letteratura,” gives this remarkable description—“i GHIRIBIZZI della Dialetica e Metafisica d’Aristotele.” As we are at a loss to discover the origin of the term gibberish, and as it is suitable to the present occasion, may we conjecture that we have here found it?—xii. 26.
[2] Enfield, ii. 448.