conclusion that imagination may become a cause, and even a cure of disease; and due not to marvel, but to material changes wrought by it in the bodily humors. See in this connection the ending of ch. 1, Book 4, of the De Augmentis. And in ch. 1 of Book 5, concerning the imagination, he says:

Logic discourses of the Understanding and Reason; Ethics of the Will, Appetite, and Affections: the one produces determinations, the other actions. It is true indeed that the imagination performs the office of an agent or messenger or proctor in both provinces, both the judicial and the ministerial. For sense sends all kinds of images over to imagination for reason to judge of; and reason again, when it has made its judgment and selection, sends them over to imagination before the decree be put in execution. For voluntary motion is ever preceded and incited by imagination; so that imagination is as a common instrument to both,-both reason and will; saving that this Janus of imagination has two different faces; for the face towards reason has the print of truth, and the face towards action has the print of goodness; which nevertheless are faces,quales decet esse sororum. [Such as sisters' faces should be.] Neither is the imagination simply and only a messenger; but it is either invested with or usurps no small authority in itself, besides the simple duty of the messenger. For it was well said by Aristotle, That the mind has over the body that commandment which the lord has over a bondman; but that reason has over the imagination that commandment which a magistrate has over a free citizen,' who may come also to rule in his turn. For we see that in matters of faith and religion our imagination raises itself above our reason; not that divine illumination resides in the imagination; its seat being rather in the very citadel of the mind and understanding; but that the divine grace uses the motions of the imagination as an instrument of illumination, just as it uses the motions of the will as an instrument of virtue; which is the reason why religion ever sought access to the mind by similitudes, types, parables, visions, dreams."

While in the university it was that his dislike of and his disbelief in the then extant philosophy arose, and particularly as taught by its great disciple, Aristotle, and due chiefly to its unfruitful methods." In the univer

sities,' he says, "they learn nothing but to believe: first that others know that which they know not; and after themselves know that which they know not. They are like becalmed ships; they never move but by the winds of other men's truth and have no oars of their own to steer withal."

When he left Cambridge, which was at the end of his third year, it was with the conviction that the institutions of learning were stagnant as to all true advancement in knowledge, and he seems ever after to have thought himself called as by some irresistible impulse to its renovation, or reformation; and to have been within the bounds of duty only when in some way at work in the line of this seemingly destined mission-the good of men. (See Sonnets 100 and 101.) As to this, he in our mentioned Head-light says: "This whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or, if you take it favorably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind, as it cannot be removed."

All must, we think, unite in saying that his labors ever tended in the direction indicated, whatever conclusions may be reached as to his private life. For this reason we feel to investigate with care and to suspend still our judgment. We have here a life and methods far out of the common road; envy can do much, and, as stated in the play of The Tempest, "misery acquaints us with strange bedfellows."

Upon leaving the university, at the age of sixteen, he spent some time abroad, and particularly in France, where diplomacy, cipher writing, and statistics, as well as philosophy, occupied his thoughts. While in France, he was somewhat under the care of Elizabeth's faithful minister at the French court, Sir Amias Paulett, and acquired, it is said, durable friendships with grave statesmen and men of letters. While thus absent he received news of his father's somewhat sudden death, occurring February 20, 1579, whereupon he immediately returned to England. By this event a distinguished influence was shorn away, as well as an intended financial provision; and Bacon's future prospects became at once overshadowed, and not merely from want of means, against which for years he was now compelled to struggle, but by reason, as well, of jealousy or lack of appreciation on the part of his relatives -the Cecils-who, heading the party in power, had the

ear of the queen. His relatives having been schooled not merely in the law, but in the then opening science of English statesmanship, these fields seemed to lie most open to him, though neither but for lack of means would have been chosen, as he himself tells us. Why he did not now devote himself exclusively to philosophy and letters may be found vividly pictured in The Anatomy of Melancholy, under the title "Love of Learning and Overmuch Study. With a Digression of the Misery of Scholars, and Why the Muses are Melancholy," vol. i., p. 185.

In 1580, the year following his father's death, he by letter, both to his Uncle and Aunt Burghley, sought some place or preferment, by asking of them recommendations to the queen. This failing to bring the desired results, to the law he reluctantly turned his attention, and was this year admitted to Gray's Inn, of which society his father had for many years been a prominent member, and of whose society of ancients he had himself been a member since the age of sixteen. In the law, as elsewhere, he became proficient, by mastering each step in the advance. And though it was to him ever but an accessory, and not his principal study, he still became as proficient, perhaps, not merely in its precepts, precedents, and authorities, but in its philosophy, as any man of his day, his great rival Coke not excepted. He indeed explored deeply the principles of universal justice and looked at his profession in the line of his philosophy. He says: "I hold every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which,' as men do of course seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they to endeavour themselves by way of amends, to be a help and ornament." At the festivities of Gray's Inn he often assisted, and was the author of its most brilliant masks. He took much interest in its spacious gardens. Observe the emphasis upon the garden in the plays, in Addison, and everywhere in this literature. In his Essay on Gardens he says: "God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiwork; and a man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to

1 This form of expression, "from the which," and " to the which," may be found quite frequent in the plays. See our quotation from Othello, p. 197.

civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection." From one of his alluded-to masks we, as to a poetic use of the word garden, quote as follows:

The gardens of love wherein he now playeth himself, are fresh to-day and fading to morrow, as the sun comforts them or is turned from them. But the gardens of the Muses keep the privilege of the golden age; they ever flourish and are in league with time. The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power: the verses of a poet endure without a syllable lost, while states and empires pass many periods. Let him not think he shall descend, for he is now upon a hill as a ship is mounted upon the ridge of a wave; but that hill' of the Muses is above tempests, always clear and calm; a hill of the goodliest discovery that man can have, being a prospect upon all the errors and wanderings of the present and former times. Yea, in some cliff it leadeth the eye beyond the horizon of time, and giveth no obscure divinations of times to come. So that if he will indeed lead vitam vitalem, a life that unites safety and dignity, pleasure and merit; if he will win admiration without envy; if he will be in the feast and not in the throng, in the light and not in the heat; let him embrace the life of study and contemplation." (Bacon's Letters, vol. i., p. 379.)

:

Again as to the garden, we in Othello, Act i., sc. 3, p. 440, have:

Iago. Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that, if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: But we have reason, to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call-love, to be a sect, or scion.

Rod. It cannot be.

Iago. It is merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will. Come be a man: drown thyself? drown cats and blind puppies.'

'Let the emphasis placed upon the "hill" in these writings be noted.

At Gray's Inn he lived absorbed in work, much as a recluse in his chambers. Here it was that, in 1583, his first essay on the instauration of philosophy was composed, and to which, as stated, he gave the title Temporis Partus Maximus. On June 27th of the previous year he was admitted utter barrister, and in this habit is said occasionally to have been seen abroad in the city. This did not confer the right to practise, however, and he was twentysix years of age before he became a bencher-that is, before he was called within bars, upon which event he, in a letter to his Uncle Burghley, among other things, says: "I find in my simple observation, that they which live as it were in umbra and not in public or frequent action, how moderately and modestly soever they behave themselves, yet laborant invidia; I find also that such persons as are of nature bashful (as myself am), whereby they want that plausible familiarity which others have, are often mistaken for proud. But once I know well, and I most humbly beseech your lordship to believe that arrogancy and overweaning is so far from my nature, as if I think well of myself in any thing it is in this, that I am free from that vice." (Works, vol. i., p. 23) At the age of twenty-eight he was by the Society of Gray's Inn chosen lent reader, and by the 42d of Elizabeth double reader and in his thirtieth year he was considered one of the queen's counsel learned extraordinary in the law, but which, being held without warrant or patent, yielded him no revenue.

He, as a member of the House of Commons, was in the Parliament which met in November, 1584, while the nation was in its white heat concerning the maintenance of the Protestant or Reformed faith as against Spain and the influences of Rome. A bull of excommunication had been issued against Elizabeth by the pope as early as 1569. Bacon was also in the Parliament which met in October, 1586, and which passed judgment upon Mary Queen of Scots, and was one of the committee to whom the matter was referred. See Bacon's Letters, vol. i., pp. 61-67.

During this year he began to indulge his pen in carefully prepared papers touching church affairs, and one concerning a policy to keep the Catholic interest in check was prepared by him in the previous year. This was

1 Such papers at this time circulated from hand to hand, and were