L. L. V. 444. Bacon's Notes.)

" In his face a thought for the bird on the tree, the insect on the stream, ... he pursued his studies, sniffing at a flower or listening to a bird. In the bright country air, among his books, fish, flowers, collections, and experiments, with his horse, his dog. Bacon slowly regained some part of his lost health. . . .
" Sure, yet subtle, were the tests by which Bacon judged of men. Seeing Win wood strike a dog for having leaped upon a stool, he very justly set him down as of ungentle nature. ' Every gentleman,' he said loudly, ' loves a dog.' " (H. Dixon, Story, pp. 23, 29, 331.)
" And now," in Bacon's account, " we see the lover of birds and fowls :
"To the washerwoman for sending after the crane that flew into the Thames, five shillings.
" The Lord Chancellor was as fond of birds as of dress, and
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 63
he built in the gardens of York House a magnificent aviary at a cost of three hundred pounds. From this aviary the poor crane had flown into the Thames," etc. (lb. page 355.)
" Then, again, the accounts make visible, as he lived in the flesh, the tender and compassionate man." (lb. 355 — 357.)
" He was not inhuman or tyrannical." (Macaulay, 320.)
" For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that largeness as they may be turfed, and Kave living plants and bushes set in them, that the birds may have more scope and natural nestling, and that no foulness appear on the floor of the aviary." (Ess. of Gardens.)
In the New Atlantis the Father of Solomon's House (who had " an aspect as though he pitied men ") is explaining the " preparations and instruments " for study and experiment at the " House." " We have," he says, " also parks and inclosures for all sorts of beasts and birds ; which we use not only for view or rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials, that whereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man ; wherein we find many strange effects : as continuing life in them, though divers parts which you account vital be perished and taken forth ; resuscitating of some that seem dead in appearance, and the like. We try also poisons and other medicines upon them, as well as surgery and physic." (New Atlantis.)
" Of that other defect in anatomy, that it has not been practised on human bodies, what need to speak ? For it is a thing hateful and inhuman, and has been justly reproved by Celsus. . . . Wherefore, that utility may be considered, as well as humanity, the anatomy of the living subject . . . may well be discharged by beasts alive," etc. (De Aug. IV. 2.)
Montagu, Spedding, Abbott, Anton, and others, show that Bacon was in no way responsible for the torturing of Peacham.
He did not study human nature.
"Human nature and the human passions were not sciences in which Bacon was versed. He wanted that pliancy and congenial feeling which identifies itself with the pains and pleasures, the cares and solicitudes, the frailties and imperfec- tions, whims and caprices, sympathies, passions, emotions, and affections which variously agitate and disturb, rouse and irritate,
64 FRANCIS BACON
terrify and calm, enrapture, moderate, suspend, and enchain all the faculties of our nature, and all the cravings and desires of the human heart — for it is only in the delineation of the heart and its affections that we can expect to discover the soul and spirit of poetry." (Ess. by S. N. Carvalho, in New York Herald, Oct. 5, 1874.)
He was a profound student of human nature.
" So, then, the first article of this knowledge is to set down sound and true distributions and descriptions of the several characters and tempers of men's natures and dispositions, specially having regard to those differences which are most radical in being the fountains and causes of the rest,1' etc. " I cannot sufficiently marvel that this part of knowledge, touching the several characters of natures and dispositions, should be omitted both in morality and policy, considering it is of so great ministery and suppeditation to them both. {Advancement of Learning, II. ; Spedding, Works, III. pp. 432 — 473.) See, also, De Augmentis, VIII. 2 — "of procuring information of persons ; their natures, their desires and ends, their customs and fashions, their helps and advantages," etc., etc. (Spedding,
Works, V. pp. 59—78.)
See "The Essays," which, Bacon says, "of all my other works, have been most current ; for that, as it seems, they come
home to men's business and bosoms." They are all, more or
less, studies of human nature and character.
See, also, " Experiments touching the impressions which the
passions of the mind make upon the body." (Sylva Sylvarum,
Cent. VIII. 713—722), and of the effect of mind on body, and
body on mind, etc.
" His style, ... for the most part, describes men's minds
as well as pictures do their bodies : so it did his above all
men living. The course of it is vigorous and majestical . . .
in all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature." (See A Character of the Lord Bacon — Dr. Sprat's History of
the Royal Society, Part I. sec. 16, pages 35, 36.)
See, also, Cowley's poem on Bacon, addressed to the Royal
Society, for evidence that Bacon painted human nature " to
the life."
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 65
Wanting in boldness and independence of character.
" He had no political back-bone, no power of adhering to his convictions and pressing them on unwilling ears."
"Young or old, from twenty to sixty, he was always the same; . . . from the beginning to the end of his career his wiser counsels were neglected, and he was little better than an instrument in the hands of the unwise." (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 22.)
" He had no moral courage, and no power of self-sacrifice or self-denial." (Campbell, Bacon, p. 220.)
A patriot — Politically bold and independent in matters which he esteemed important.
" It is creditable alike to his statesmanship and to his inde- pendence of character that, at a time when all deviations from the forms of the prayer-book were known to be distasteful to the Queen, Bacon should have pleaded for elasticity, and that 'the contentious retention of custom is a turbulent thing."1 (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 26.)
" Bacon, who now sat for Middlesex, barred his own path by a speech in the House of Commons . . . upon subsidies, which he considered too burdensome for a people overlaid with taxes. ... It was, therefore, in entire good faith that Bacon pro- tested against the subsidies, declaring that the gentlemen must sell their plate and the farmers their brass pots before this should be paid. The House was unanimously against him. . . . But the speech, though made in manifest sincerity, did not, on that account, conciliate the Queen ; and Bacon's conscientious opposition brought on him the penalty of exclu- sion from the royal presence/' (lb. p. 35.)
"Bacon's fame as a patriot was fixed in these transactions. The breadth of his views, the comprehensiveness of his politics, the solidity of his understanding were observed by his con- temporaries." (Hep worth Dixon, Story, p. 37.)
" The House had not sat a week . . . before he hinted at his scheme for amending the whole body of English law. . . . Reform the code ! Bacon tells a House full of Queen's Serjeants and utter barristers that laws are made to guard the rights of the people, not to feed the lawyers. . . So runs his speech. ... a noble thought ... a plan developed in his maxims
66 FBANCIS BACON
of the law . . . universally read . . . the Code Napoleon is the sole embodiment of Bacon's thought. Ten days later he gave a check to the Government, which brought down on his head the censures of Burghley and Puckering, which are said to have represented the personal anger of the Queen. . . . Burghley asked the Peers to confer on a grant of money for the Queen's service, and Cecil reported to the Commons that the Peers had decided for them what they were to give. . . . Who rose to warn the minister of this grave mistake ? . . Bacon stood up. A few clear words declared that ... to give was the prerogative of the people — to dictate what they should give was not the duty of the Peers." (lb. 65, 66.)
Bacon compared unfavourably with Coke.
Bacon as Attorney-General " holding up to posterity for ever the contrast between his courtier-like servility, and Coke's manly independence." (Abbott, Introduction to Essays, lvi.)
Bacon compared favourably with Coke.
" Some of the judges, and amongst them Egerton, wished to make Bacon Attorney-General, for the great common-lawyer, if a giant in legal erudition, had the manners of a bully, and the spirit of a slave. In the long succession of English judges, it is doubtful whether any one has left on the bench so distinct an impression of having been a cold, harsh, brawling, ungenerous man as Coke," etc., etc. (Hepworth Dixon, 79, 80.)
" Wanting the warmth of heart, the large round sympathies, which enabled his rival at the bar to see into political questions with the eye of a poet and a statesman, Coke could only treat a constituted court as a thing of words, dates, readings, and decisions, not as a living fact in close relation to other living facts, and having in itself the germs of growth and change." (lb. 231.) See Spedding, Let. and Life, I. 232.
An inequitable judge — His judgments questioned.
" Unhappily he was employed in perverting laws to the vilest purposes of tyranny." (Macaulay, 330.)
" He did worse than nothing in politics. He degraded him- self, he injured his country and posterity by tarnishing the honourable traditions of the bench." (Abbott, Introduction to
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 67
Essays, xcvi. And see, by the same, " Francis Bacon,'' pp. xx., xxi., xxix.)
An equitable judge — His judgments neither questioned nor reversed.
" His favourites took bribes, but his Lordship always gave judgment secundum cequum et bonum. His decrees in chancery stand firme ; there are fewer of his decrees reverst than of any other Chancellor." (John Aubrey, Sped. L. L. VII. 557.)
" A most indefatigable servant to the King, and a most earnest lover of the public." (Sir Tobie Matthew.)
" Bacon was the first of a new order of public men. . . . Bad men kill offices and good men found them." (See Hep- worth Dixon's Story, p. 210, etc. See also Lord Chief Justice Hale on the Jurisdiction of the Lords' House, 1716.)
Apologises abjectly to the Queen about his speech on the subsidy.
" The young patriot condescended to make the most abject apologies; . . . he bemoaned himself to the Lord Keeper, in a letter which may keep in countenance the most unmanly of the epistles which Cicero wrote during his banishment. The lesson was not thrown away. Bacon never offended in the same manner again:' (Macaulay, Essays, pp. 303-4.)
" The Queen was deeply incensed, and desired it to be inti- mated to the delinquent . . . that he must never look to her for favour or promotion. An eloquent eulogist says that ' he heard them with the calmness of a philosopher,' but his answers shoio that he was struck with repentance and remorse, and that, in the hope of obtaining pardon, he plainly intimated that he should never repeat the offence." (Campbell, p. 23.)
" His compunction for his opposition to the subsidy." (lb. 24.)
Does not offer any apology to the Queen about his speech on the subsidy.
The letter is extant and contains not a word of apology. " This letter is a justification and no apology" (Spedding,