As Bacon left Cambridge at Christmas, 1575, before he was 15 years of age, Rawley's recollection must have been at fault when he mentions the age of 16 as that when Bacon formed this opinion.
There is another account of this incident in which it is stated that Francis Bacon left Cambridge without taking a degree as a protest against the manner in which philosophy was taught there. In the preface to the "Great Instauration" Bacon repeats his protest: "And for its value and utility, it must be plainly avowed that that wisdom which we have derived principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk but it cannot generate: for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works."
This is merely a re-statement of the position he took up when at Cambridge. So this boy set up his opinion against that of the recognised professors of philosophy of his day, against the whole authority of the staff of the University, on a fundamental point on the most important question which could be raised as to the pursuit of knowledge. It is not too much to say that he had at this time covered the whole field of knowledge in a manner more thorough than it had ever been covered before, and with his mind, which was beyond the reach of his contemporaries, he began to lay down those laws which revolutionised all thought and have become the accepted method by which the pursuit of knowledge is followed.
It is necessary again to seek for parallels to justify the position which will be claimed for Francis Bacon at this period.
Philip Melancthon affords one and James Crichton another. At Heidelberg Melancthon remained three years. He left when he was 15, the principal cause of his leaving being disappointment at being refused a higher degree in the University solely, it is alleged, on account of his youth. In September, 1512, he was entered at the University of Tubingen, where, in the following year, before he was 17 years of age, he was created Doctor in Philosophy or Master of Arts. He then commenced a course of public lectures, embracing an extraordinary variety of subjects, including the learned languages, rhetoric, logic, ethics, mathematics, and theology. Here in 1516 he put forth his revision of the text of Terence. Besides he entered into an undertaking with Thomas Anshelmus to revise all the books printed by him. He bestowed great labour on a large work in folio by Nauclerus, which he appears to have almost entirely re-written.
So much romance has been thrown around James Crichton that it is difficult to obtain the real facts of his life. Sir Thomas Urquhart, in "Discovery of a Most Exquisite Jewel," published in 1652, gives a biography which is, without doubt, mainly apocryphal. Certain facts, however, are well established. He was born in the same year as was Bacon (1560). At 10 years of age he entered St. Andrew's University, and in 1575 (the year Bacon left Cambridge) took his degree, coming out third in the first class. In 1576 he went to France, as did Bacon—to Paris. In the College of Navarre he issued a universal challenge. This he subsequently repeated at Venice with equal success; that is, to all men, upon all things, in any of twelve languages named. The challenge is broad and formal. He pledged himself to review the schoolmen, allowed his opponents the privilege of selecting their topics—mathematics, no less than scholastic lore—either from branches publicly or privately taught, and promised to return answers in logical figure or in numbers estimated according to their occult power, or in any of a hundred sorts of verse. He is said to have justified before many competent witnesses his magnificent pretensions.
What Philip Melancthon was at fifteen, what James Crichton was at sixteen, Francis Bacon may have been. All the testimony which his contemporaries afford, especially having regard to his after life, justify the assertion that in knowledge and acquirements he was at least their equal.
About eighteen months later his portrait was painted by Hilliard, the Court miniature painter, who inscribed around it, as James Spedding says, the significant words—the natural ejaculation, we may presume, of the artist's own emotion—"Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem." If one could only find materials worthy to paint his mind.