AND HIS SHAKESPEARE.

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CHAPTER II.

BACON'S "new birth" into the higher intellectual life is thus graphically outlined by Spedding, in his luminous narrative in Vol. VIII. of his edition of Bacon's Works:

“There is no reason to suppose that he was regarded as a wonderful child. Of the first sixteen years of his life indeed nothing is known that distinguished him from a hundred other clever and well disposed boys. When the temperament is quick and sensitive, the desire of knowledge strong, and the faculties so vigorous, obedient, and equally developed that they find almost all things easy, the mind will commonly fasten upon the first object of interest that presents itself, with the ardor of a first love. Now these qualities, which so eminently distinguished Bacon as a man, must have been in him from a boy; and if we would know the source of those great impulses which began to work in him so early and continued to govern him so long, we must look for it among the circumstances by which his boyhood was surrounded. What his mother taught him we do not know; but we know that she was a learned, eloquent, and religious woman, full of affection and puritanical fervor, deeply interested in the condition of the church, and perfectly believing that the cause of the Nonconformists was the whole cause of Christ. Such a mother could not but endeavor to lead her child's mind into the temple where her own treasure was laid up, and the child's mind, so led, could not but follow thither with awful curiosity and impressions not to be effaced. Neither do we know what his father taught him; but he appears to have designed him for the service of the state, and we need not doubt but that the son of Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and nephew of her principal Secretary,

early imbibed a reverence for the mysteries of statesmanship and a deep sense of the dignity, responsibility, and importance of the statesman's calling. . . . It is certain that he was more than once in the immediate presence of the Queen herself, smiled on by the countenance which was looked up to by all the young and all the old around him with love and reverence. So situated, it must have been as difficult for a young and susceptible imagination not to aspire after civil dignities as for a boy bred in camps not to long to be a soldier. But the time for these was not yet come. For the present his field of ambition was still in the school-room; where, perhaps from the delicacy of his constitution, he was more at home than in the play-ground. His career there was victorious; new prospects of boundless extent opening on every side; till at length, just about the age at which an intellect of quick growth begins to be conscious of original power, he was sent to the University, where he hoped to learn all that men knew. By the time, however, that he had gone through the usual course and heard what the various professors had to say, he was conscious of a disappointment. It seemed that towards the end of the Sixteenth century men neither knew nor aspired to know more than was to be learned from Aristotle; a strange thing at any time; more strange than ever just then, when the heavens themselves seemed to be taking up the argument in their own behalf, and by suddenly lighting up within the very region of the Unchangeable and Incorruptible, and presently extinguishing, a new fixed star as bright as Jupiter-(the new star Cassiopeia shone with full lustre on Bacon's freshmanship)—to be protesting by signs and wonders against the cardinal doctrine of the Aristotleian philosophy. It was then that a thought struck him, the date of which deserves to be recorded, not for anything extraordinary in the thought itself, which had probably occurred to others before him, but for its influence upon his after life. If our study of nature be thus barren, he thought, our method of study must be wrong; might not a better method be

found? The suggestion was simple and obvious. The singularity was in the way he took hold of it. With most men such a thought would have come and gone in a passing regret; a few might have matured it into a wish; some into a vague project; one or two might perhaps have followed it out so far as to attain a distinct conception of the better method, and hazard a distant indication of the direction in which it lay. But in him the gift of seeing in prophetic vision what might be and ought to be was united with the practical talent of devising means and handling details. He could at once imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works. Upon the conviction, This may be done, followed at once the question, How may it be done? Upon that question answered, followed the resolution to try and do it.

"Of the degrees by which the suggestion ripened into a project, the project into an undertaking, and the undertaking unfolded itself into distinct proportions and the full grandeur of its total dimensions, I can say nothing. But that the thought first occurred to him during his residence at Cambridge, therefore before he had completed his fifteenth year, we know upon the best authority-his own statement to Dr. Rawley. I believe it ought to be regarded as the most important event in his life; the event which had a greater influence than any other his upon character and future course. From that moment there was awakened within his breast the appetite which cannot be satisfied and the passion which cannot commit excess. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated all the energies of his mind, gave a value to every vacant interval of time, and interest and significance to every random thought and casual accession of knowledge; an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul forever with religious and heroic aspirations. From that moment, though still subject to interruptions, disappointments, errors, and regrets, he could never be without either work or hope or consolation.”

Spedding was right. It was a moment of clear vision, of profound conviction, developing into high resolve, in a mighty faith and in a spirit of intense consecration; the most momentous in his career, both to himself and to mankind.

Ever since the days of Plato, man had been looking within for the truth, searching his intellect for the ideals of things, seeking to develop them from its recesses by the workings of its processes, and shutting his eyes to the realities of existence, of which knowledge is power. The result had been centuries of dreary waste and barrenness.

By God's gift, Bacon saw, as by a flash of inspiration, the fatal error in which mankind had been involved, with such disastrous consequences; and he discerned likewise the certainty of inestimable blessings following the adoption of the contrary course. This thought, so obviously vital in its bearing upon the destiny of the race, set his soul on fire, and though he was but a youth of fifteen, he determined to effect a revolution, by thus turning the whole tide of thought and of human affairs.

This mighty resolve was perhaps the birth of that universality, which distinguishes him from all others. His purpose is the measure of a man, and its accomplishment the measure of his growth. With Bacon all humanity was embraced within its scope and the universe was its subject-matter. The efficient prosecution of a design of such magnitude and the intense mental activity involved developed his powers to a corresponding compass, until he attained to an enormous breadth of comprehension, and a vision at once telescopic and microscopic in its range.

Deeming it necessary to the accomplishment of his purpose, he applied himself to the acquisition of all that was then known upon every subject, and in fact very little escaped him. In his own words, he made all knowledge his province': his bark "sailed round the whole circum

ference of the old and new world of sciences"; he traversed the highways and by-ways of its continents; and the vast extent of his acquirements is abundantly evidenced upon almost every page of his works. The profusion of his classical quotations and allusions, introduced in apt expression or enforcement of his thought, reveals his mastery of the ancient lore, with its accumulated wealth of wit, fable, and illustration, while his occasional quotations from French, Italian, and Spanish authors show his familiarity with mediaæval literature. The resources of history, both ancient and modern, were added to his acquirements, including both a knowledge of the course of events and an insight into the springs of action underlying them, together with a notable comprehension of the character, motives, and mould of the principal actors.

His intent centered in mankind, with whom he had also to deal, and by close observation and study he attained to an unrivalled knowledge of human nature; illustrated especially in his Essays, of which it is the substance, the warp and woof of their texture.

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He not only encompassed the "old world" of science, but he drew the boundary line and opened the expanse of its new world." He regenerated it, breathing into modern science its first breath of vital life, and infusing the spirit which now animates it. He cradled its infancy, opened its understanding through the avenues of the senses, gave initial development to its newly awakened powers, and enlisted the interest of mankind in its growth, so that in after years Newton, Faraday, and Franklin, and a host of colaborers of every nationality eagerly ministered to its further development, until now its stalwart arms are sustained by the multitude.

Man and Nature were his inspiring themes; and nature for man, for his interpretation, his comprehension, and his consequent dominion, as God's own vineyard,