The Essays Or Counsels Civil And Moral

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Introduction

FRANCIS BACON was born three years before Shakespeare, on the 22d of January, 1561, and died ten years after Shakespeare, on the oth of April, 1626. Shakespeare’s age when he died was 52, and Bacon’s 65. The two. men were the greatest births of their own time. One glanced “from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven” as a poet. The other taught men to look abroad into God’s world, and by patient experiment to find their way from outward signs to knowledge of the inner working of those laws of Nature which are fixed energies appointed by the wisdom of the Creator as sources of all that we see and use. As the working of each law is discovered, Bacon would have the searcher next look for its applications to the well-being of man.

Sir William Cecil, afterward Lord Burleigh, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper, married two daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. Anne Cooke was the second wife of Sir Nicholas, who had six children by a former marriage. His second wife had two sons, Anthony and Francis. Francis was thus the youngest in a family of eight, living sometimes in London, at

; York House, and sometimes at Gorhambury, near St. Albans. In April, 1573, Francis Bacon, twelve years old, entered, with his elder brother Anthony, as fellow-com- _moner, at Trinity College, Cambridge. He left Camridge after about four years’ study there.

At Cambridge he felt the fruitlessness of those dacs 9

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ings in philosophy which bade him get clear understand. ing by beating the bounds of his own brain. ‘This was a philosophy, he used to say, only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man, The desire to turn philosophic thought into a more useful course became strong in him even then.

He was to be trained for the service of the State, and after leaving Cambridge, at sixteen, went in the suit of an ambassador to Paris. But while he was in France his father died, before he had made the provision he designed for his sons by the second marriage. Bacon then, at the age of eighteen, came to London to prepare for earning by the practise of the law. Fle became a barrister in June, 1582. He entered the House of Commons in November, 1584, as member for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire, He sat for Taunton in the Parliament that met in October, 1586, and was among those who petitioned for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. He sat next for Liverpool, and in October, 1589, obtained by his Court interest the reversion to the office of Clerk of the Council in the Star Chamber, which was_ of great money value; but it did not become vacant for him until 1608. Ele was member for Middlesex in the Parliament that met in 1593, and piqued the Queen by raising constitutional objections to her manner of asking a subsidy to meet the cost of providing against dangers from the Catholic Powers. Anthony and Francis Bacon were then both looking for patronage to the young Earl of Essex, who was six years younger than Francis, impetuous, generous, and in favor with the Queen. Bacon, thirty-three years old, sought advance in his profession to the office of Attorney-General. The Queen gave it to Sir Edward Coke, who was already Solicitor-General, was nine years older than Bacon, and could not fairly

INTRODUCTION. Vv have been set aside for one who was so much his junior at the bar. Suit was then made on Bacon’s behalf for the office of Solicitor-General, but after months of delay it was given, in November, 1595, to another man, Bacon felt that the Queen was still offended by his action in the matter of the subsidy. Essex said that the refusal of his client was meant by the Queen as an insult to himself, and that Bacon must accept from him a piece of land as amends for the disappointment. So Bacon took the piece of land, since known as Twickenham Park ; he sold it afterward for eighteen hundred pounds. It was worth, therefore, about twelve thousand in modern value. In taking it, he said afterward that he explicitly guarded himself against owing on account of it any service to his patron that might traverse his duty to his Queen. Essex entered into correspondence with James VI. of Scotland by cipher, through the agency of Anthony Bacon, in the matter of the succession to the throne; and Francis Bacon could not have been ignorant of this.

In 1597, Bacon, wanting money, sought to marry the rich young widow of Sir William Hatton. She was married in November, 1598, to Sir Edward Coke. It was at this time, in 1597—in the thirty-seventh year of his life—that Bacon published the first edition of his “Essays.” It was a little book, containing only the ten Essays which will be found in the first section of the present volume. They deal only with man’s relation to s world, but the volume did not exclude the religious > of life, for that was added in twelve more essays, : ae Meditations,” written in Latin, on such subas “The Works of God and Man;” “The Mifa- *) f Our Saviour ;” “ Earthly Hope;” “The Exalta-

of Charity;” “Atheism ;” “ Heresies;” “The 1 of the Scriptures.” The ten English Essays, it vi INTRODUCTION, will be observed, have a significant order. They begin with man alone, using his mind—‘ Of Study;” then comes relation to the minds and lives of others—* Of Discourse ;” ‘‘ Of Ceremonies and Respects ;” “ Of Followers and Friends ;” “ Of Suitors ;” then personal relation to the means of living—“ Of Expense;” “ Of Regimen of Health ;” and then relation to the world at large and to affairs of State—* Of Honor and Reputation ;” “ Of Faction;” “ Of Negotiating.” That is all. Upon each theme Bacon’s conception of an essay was in accordance with the original meaning of the word, which makes it equivalent with “assay.” The same analytical method that, in dealing with outward Nature, would seek to resolve knowledge of all things into knowledge of their elements, for study of the principles upon which they can be recombined for the advancement of the general well-being, was in the Essays applied to observed conditions of the inner life of man. Bacon’s philosophical writings and his Essays are two parts of the same whole; one dealing with the world outside us, and the other with the world within.

Bacon was at this time warning the Earl of Essex of a danger before him, and applying counsels, civil and moral, to the particular case of his patron as remedy for “a cold and malignant humor growing upon Her Majesty toward your lordship.” There was a very shrewd analytical letter written to Essex in October, 1596. One recommendation was “that your lordship should never be without some particulars afoot, which you should seem to pursue with earnestness and affection, and then let them fall, upon taking knowledge of Her Majesty’s opposition and dislike.” Among minor devices of this kind he suggested “the pretence of some journeys, which, at Her Majesty’s request, your lordship might relinquish ; as if you would pretend a journey to

INTRODUCTION. vii see your living and estate toward Wales, or the like; for as for great foreign journeys of employment and service, it standeth not with your gravity to play or stratagem with them. And the lightest sort of particulars, which yet are not to be neglected, are in your habits, apparel, wearings, gestures, and the like.” In March, 1599, Essex left London as Lord Deputy of Ireland, meaning great things ; and again he had received lessons of life in a letter from Bacon. In September he accept- _ed an armistice and entertained conditions of peace from Tyrone, that might have been dictated by a conqueror. The Queen was displeased. Essex hurried back to her, Tyrone rebelled again, and Essex was replaced by a more vigorous Lord Deputy. In February, 1601, the rash counsels of Essex led him to an overt act of rebellion. He was then lodged in the Tower, and on trial ‘for his life. Bacon, then Queen’s Counsel, though engaged in the prosecution, was not officially called upon to speak, when twice, during the trial, he rose to show his zeal for the Crown by violence against the traitor. Once in that way he coupled Essex with Cain ; another time he rose and said, “I have never yet seen in any case such favor shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons.” On the 25th of February, 1601, Essex was beheaded within the Tower; and it was the keen intellect of Bacon that was employed afterward by the Government in drawing up “A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert, late Earl of Essex, and his Complices.” Bacon had thus experimented, prudently and honestly, as he believed, toward the full recovery of the Queen’s favor. The Queen died on the 24th of March, 1603, but if she had lived Bacon’s ‘experiment would hardly have succeeded.

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Bacon’s Essays disclose to us counsels of life by a man of the rarest intellect, with weight of thought in every sentence. But in his own life Bacon proved himself wanting, just where he is found wanting in his Essays. Life is directed best by those who allow due influence to each of its elements in man—the will, the intellect, and the emotions ; and Bacon’s failures both as actor in life and as interpreter of action may depend chiefly, as Dr. Kuno Fischer has suggested, upon undue predominance of the intellectual over the emotional part of a man’s nature. Its imperfection in himself made it also less easy for him to understand its operation in the minds of others. Bacon was not, what no being upon earth can be, as Pope called him, “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;” he never consciously said to himself, “evil, be thou my good.” Emotion being out of place in philosophical researches into Nature, Bacon’s inductive philosophy went straight to its aim when he endeavored to guide men’s minds into the one way of profitable research. But the modifications of man’s speech and actions that are due to the just influence of feeling are so far essential to the right conduct of life that whoever wants or avoids the prompting to them cannot live long without blundering very gravely more than once, as Bacon did. He was well read in Machiavelli, whose keen intellect he appreciated ; indeed, from the fifth chapter of the second book of Machiavelli’s “ Discourses upon Livy” Bacon took suggestion of his essay of “ Vicissitudes of Things.” There is a touch of Machiavelli often in Bacon’s counsels of life; they are all wise, but they are not the whole abstract of worldly wisdom, and sometimes, not often, they sink where they should rise.

Bacon kept his first little book of Essays by him, adding, altering, and writing more as inclination or occasion prompted. Under James I. he prospered rapidly. The

INTRODUCTION. ix books in which he developed his method of research into Nature—his philosophy—appeared from time to time. He rose to the head of his profession. In the year of Shakespeare’s death, Bacon was made a Privy Councillor. In March, 1617, he became Lord-Keeper. In January, 1618, he became Lord Chancellor; in July he became Baron Verulam; in October, 1620, he produced what we have of the chief work in his philosophical series, the “‘ Novum Organum;” on the 27th of January, 1621, he was made Viscount St. Albans, and touched the highest point of all his greatness. On the 3d of May in the same year he was sentenced, upon twentythree specified charges of corruption, admitted by himself, to a fine of forty thousand pounds, which the King remitted ; to be committed to the Tower during the King’s pleasure, and he was released next day; thenceforth to be incapable of holding any office in the State, or sitting in Parliament. It was decided by a majority of two that he should not be stripped of his titles. There remained to him five years of life, and in these he withdrew from all strife of the world, closing his life in peace. During all these years he had been embodying his counsels of life in his “ Essays.” They had increased in number from ten to thirty-eight when he produced an edition of them in 1612; and in his last edition of them, that was issued as “newly written” in the year before his death, the number had risen to fifty-eight. That is their final form, as given in the second section of the present volume.

Real literature has for one of its qualities that it deals with the essentials of life. It is therefore not addressed to a select company of critics, but to all who live. Every

true book that has really a place in literature speaks to every mind that has been awakened to a consciousness _ of interests beyond those of the flesh. If it be said that x INTRODUCTION.

Bacon’s Essays are mere literature and caviare to the general, let it be replied that, being absolutely literature, they are absolutely life—life, that is the dearest interest of each of us, as one of the acutest of men sought to interpret it; and have we not our own experience of life to measure with it as we read ?

HENRY MORLEY.

‘Wovember, 1883.