in the Strand, London, in the year 1561. He was a grave and precocious child; and Queen Elizabeth, who knew him and liked him, used to pat him and call him her “young Lord Keeper”—his father being Lord Keeper of the Seals in her reign. At the early age of twelve he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained there for three years. In 1582 he was called to the bar; in 1593 he was M.P. for Middlesex. But his greatest rise in fortune did not take place till the reign of James I.; when, in the year 1618, he had risen to be Lord High Chancellor of England. The title which he took on this occasion—for the Lord High Chancellor is chairman of the House of Lords—was Baron Verulam; and a few years after he was created Viscount St Albans. His eloquence was famous in England; and Ben Jonson said of him: “The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.” In the year 1621 he was accused of taking bribes, and of giving unjust decisions as a judge. He had not really been unconscientious, but he had been careless; was obliged to plead guilty; and he was sentenced to pay a fine of £40,000, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king’s pleasure. The fine was remitted; Bacon was set free in two days; a pension was allowed him; but he never afterwards held office of any kind. He died on Easter-day of the year 1626, of a chill which he caught while experimenting on the preservative properties of snow.
[4.] His chief prose-works in English—for he wrote many in Latin—are the Essays, and the Advancement of Learning. His Essays make one of the wisest books ever written; and a great number of English thinkers owe to them the best of what they have had to say. They are written in a clear, forcible, pithy, and picturesque style, with short sentences, and a good many illustrations, drawn from history, politics, and science. It is true that the style is sometimes stiff, and even rigid; but the stiffness is the stiffness of a richly embroidered cloth, into which threads of gold and silver have been worked. Bacon kept what he called a Promus or Commonplace-Book; and in this he entered striking thoughts, sentences, and phrases that he met with in the course of his reading, or that occurred to him during the day. He calls these sentences “salt-pits, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle as you will.” The following are a few examples:—
“That that is Forced is not Forcible.”
“No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold.”
“Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Man’s Nature.”
“The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have intelligence, is a Man’s Self.”
“If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune.”
The following are a few striking sentences from his Essays:—
“Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”
“A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.”