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GILES FLETCHER. 1588-1623

THIS truly pleasing Christian poet, the brother of Phineas Fletcher, who, in the words of old Antony Wood, "was equally beloved of the Muses and Graces," was born 1588. But very little is known of his life. He has, however, immortalized his name by that beautiful poem entitled, "Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death:" a poem which displays great sweetness, united to harmony of numbers. Headley styles i "rich and picturesque," and Campbell1 says, that "inferior as he is to Spen ser and Milton, he might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between those congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter, in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained."

REDEMPTION.

When I remember Christ our burden bears,

I look for glory, but find misery;

I look for joy, but find a sea of tears;

I look that we should live, and find Him die;
I look for angels' songs, and hear Him cry :

Thus what I look, I cannot find so well;

Or, rather, what I find I cannot tell;

These banks so narrow are, those streams so highly swell,
Christ suffers, and in this his tears begin;

Suffers for us--and our joy springs in this
Suffers to death-here is his manhood seen;
Suffers to rise-and here his Godhead is;
For man, that could not by himself have ris',
Out of the grave doth by the Godhead rise ;
And God, that could not die, in manhood dies,
That we in both might live by that sweet sacrifice.

A tree was first the instrument of strife,
Where Eve to sin her soul did prostitute;

A tree is now the instrument of life,

Though ill that trunk and this fair body suit;
Ah! cursed tree, and yet O blessed fruit!

Ihat death to Him, this life to us doth give:
Strange is the cure, when things past cure revive,
And the Physician dies to make his patient live.

Sweet Eden was the arbor of delight,

Yet in his honey-flowers our poison blew;
Sad Gethseman, the bower of baleful night,
Where Christ a health of poison for us drew,
Yet all our honey in that poison grew:
So we from sweetest flowers could suck our bane,
And Christ from bitter venom could again
Extract life out of death, and pleasure out of pain.

A man was first the author of our fall,
A Man is now the author of our rise

1 Specimens, vol. ii. p. 306.

A garden was the place we perish'd all,
A garden is the place He pays our price:
And the old serpent, with a new device,
Hath found a way himself for to beguile:
So he, that all men tangled in his wile,

Is now by one Man caught, beguiled with his own guile.
The dewy night had with her frosty shade
Immantled all the world, and the stiff ground
Sparkled in ice; only the Lord that made

All for Himself, Himself dissolved found,
Sweat without heat, and bled without a wound;
Of heaven and earth, and God and man forlore,
Thrice begging help of those whose sins he bore,
And thrice denied of those. not to deny had swore.

FRANCIS BACON. 1561-1626.

Him for the studious shade

Kind nature form'd, deep, comprehensive, clear,

Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,

Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully join'd,

The great deliverer he! who, from the gloom

Of cloister'd monks and jargon-teaching schools,
Led forth the true philosophy, there long

Held in the magic chain of words and forms,
And definitions void.

THOMSON.

FRANCIS BACON, Viscount of St. Albans, and lord high chancellor of Eng land, was born in London, January 22, 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal. He entered Cambridge at the early age of thirteen, and after spending four years there, where he was distinguished for his zealous application to study, and for the extraordinary maturity of his understanding, he went abroad and travelled in France. But his father dying suddenly in 1579, and leaving but very little property, he hastily returned to England, and prosecuted the study of the law. He did not, however, neglect philosophy, for not far from this period he planned his great work, “The Instauration of the Sciences." In 1590 he obtained the post of counsel extraordinary to the queen, and three years after he had a seat in parliament from Middlesex. On the accession of James I. new honors awaited him. He was knighted in 1603. In 1607 he married Alice, daughter of Benedict Barnham, Esq., alderman of London, by whom he had a considerable fortune, but no children. In subsequent years he obtained successively the offices of king's counsel, solicitor general, and attorney general. In 1617 the king presented the great seal to him; in 1618 he obtained the title of lord high chancellor of England, and about six months after the title of Baron of Verulam, which title gave place in the following year to that of Viscount of St. Albans. But a "killing frost" was soon to nip these buds of honor: his fall and disgrace

1 This is a town in Hertfordshire, famous for the two battles fought in 1455 and 146'. between the two rival houses of York and Lancaster. It was anciently called Verulam, whence Bacon's subsequent title of honor, Baron Verulam.

were at hand. In 1621 a parliamentary inquiry was instituted into his conduct as judge, which ended in his condemnation and disgrace, for having received numerous presents or bribes from parties whose cases were brought before him for decision. He fully confessed to the twenty-three articles of fraud, deceit, mal-practice, and corruption which were laid to his charge; and when waited on by a committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire whether the confession was subscribed by himself, he answered, “It is my hand, my act, my heart: I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." He was fined £40,000; sent prisoner to the Tower; and declared incapable of any office or employment in the state. After a short confinement he was released, and in 1625 obtained a full pardon. He died on the 9th of April, 1626.

The following are the most important works of this wonderful man: 1. His "Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral." They were published in 1596, so that Shakspeare, who lived twenty years after, and during which time wrote his best plays, had the benefit of their perusal: and what delight and what profit must such a genius as his have derived from them; for no book contains a greater fund of useful knowledge, or displays a more intimate acquaintance with human life and manners. "It may be read," says the great Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, "from beginning to end in a few hours, and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before."

2. "The Proficience and Advancement of Learning." This forms the first part of his great work afterwards published under the title of Instauratio Scientiarum, "The Reform in the Study of the Sciences." It is divided into two books: the first chiefly considers the objections to learning, and points out the many impediments to its progress: the second, the distribution of knowledge, which he divides into three parts. "The parts of human learning," says he, "have reference to the three parts of man's understanding, which is the seat of learning: History to his Memory, Poesy to his Imagination, and Philosophy to his Reason." He gives also a full genealogical table of knowledge, agreeably to this distribution. This is a work of vast learning.

3. His celebrated treatise "Of the Wisdom and Learning of the Ancients." The object of this is to show that all the allegories and fables of antiquity have some concealed meaning, which had never been sufficiently explained. In the interpretation of these ancient mysteries, he has displayed his remarkable sagacity and penetration, besides interspersing throughout various important observations on collateral subjects.

4. The Novum Organum, or « New Instrument," or "Method of Studying the Sciences." This is the great work which has immortalized his name, and placed him at the head of the philosophic world. The great Greek philosopher Aristotle called his philosophical work the "Organum." The "Method" which he adopted in scientific inquiries was rather to frame systems and lay down principles, and then to seek or make things conform thereto. But Lord Bacon, in his « New Method," insists upon the duty of carefully ascertaining facts in the first place, and then reasoning upon them towards conclusions. แ Man," he says, "who is the servant and interpreter of nature, can act and understand no further than he has, either in operation or in contemplation, observed of the method and order of nature." And again, "Men have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to draw from their own minds all the materials which they employed: but if, instead of doing so, hey had consulted experience and observation, they would have had facts

and not opinions to reason about, and might ultimately have arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world." Thus Bacon established the method of Induction' as the only true key to the temple of knowledge, and has therefore been called the Father of the Inductive Philosophy. "The power and compass," says Professor Playfair, "of a mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not merely the outline. but many of the most minute ramifications of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages.'

"2

Such is a brief and meagre view of the wonderful intellectual labors of this extraordinary man. He was not insensible of their value, for his last will contains this remarkable passage: "My name and memory I leave to 1oreign nations and to my own country after some time is passed over." 3

DIVERSE OBJECTS OF MEN TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE.

Men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use of man. As if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich store-house for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of

man's estate.

PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE.

As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may, by union, comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the industry of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools; which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and

1 This is called the Inductive system, from the Latin inductio, "a leading up," from particular facts to general conclusions.

2 The best edition of Bacon is that by Basil Montagu, 17 vols. 8vo, London. It has been reprinted here in three volumes. Read, particularly, a very able article in the "Edinburgh Review," by Me caulay, July, 1837. Read, also, two in the "Retrospective," iii. 141, and iv. 280; also, an article in the third vol. of D'Israeli's "Amenities of Literature ;" another, in Hazlitt's "Age of Elizabeth;" and the work recently published in Dublin, entitled "Selections from Bacon," by Thos. W. Moffett. 3 "Who is there, that, upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon, does not instantly recognise every thing of genius the most profound, every thing of literature the most extensive, every thing of discovery the most penetrating, every thing of observation on human life the most distinguishing and refined."-Burke.

necessity so knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed, as universities, colleges, and schools for the receipt and comforting the same.

PLEASURE OF KNOWLEDGE.

The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other in nature; for shall the pleasures of the affections so exceed the pleasures of the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner; and must not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections? We see in all other pleasures there is a satiety, and after they be used, their verdure. departeth; which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasure, and that it was the novelty which pleased and not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy; but of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually. interchangeable; and therefore appeareth to be good, in itself simply, without fallacy or accident.

1

THE USES OF KNOWLEDGE.

Learning taketh away the wildness, and barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds: though a little superficial learning doth rather work a contrary effect. It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of nothing but examined and tried. It taketh away vain admiration of any thing, which is the root of all weakness: for all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great. For novelty, no man wadeth in learning or contemplation thoroughly, but will find that printed in his heart, "I know nothing." Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and adviseth well of the motion. And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage, or a fort, or some walled town at the most, he said, "It seemed to him, that he was advertised of the battle of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of." So certainly, if a man meditate upon

1 A perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.- COMUS,

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