Chapter XXIV.
THE MISSING FOURTH PART OF "THE GREAT INSTAURATION."
It has been urged by critics that Bacon, whilst professing to take all knowledge for his province, ignored one-half of it—that half which was a knowledge of himself; that to him the external world was everything, the internal nothing. All that Nature revealed was external; nothing that was internal was of much importance.
It must be remembered that all that we have of Bacon's was written as he was passing into the "vale of life." Of his early productions nothing has come down to the present times under his own name. The following extracts from his acknowledged works establish two facts:—(1) That the foregoing criticism is unfounded, for he placed the study of man's mind and character above all other enquiries. (2) That he had prepared examples, being "actual types and models, by which the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention from the beginning to the end in certain subjects and those various and remarkable should be set, as it were, before the eyes." Where are these works to be found?
Bacon never tires of quoting from the Roman poet the line—
"Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,"
which, in an Elizabethan handwriting, may be seen in a contemporary volume thus rendered—
"He of all others fittest is to write
Which with some profit allso ioynes delight."
He repeats in different forms, until the reiteration becomes almost tedious, the following incident:—