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much exaggeration in the declamations of both parties. But when we compare the state in which political science was at the close of the reign of George the Second with the state in which it had been when James the Second came to the throne, it is impossible not to admit that a prodigious improvement had taken place. We are no admirers of the political doctrines laid down in Blackstone's Commentaries. But if we consider that those Commentaries were read with great applause in the very schools where, seventy or eighty years before, books had been publicly burned by order of the University of Oxford for containing the damnable doctrine that the English monarchy is limited and mixed, we cannot deny that a salutary change had taken place. “The Jesuits," says Pascal, in the last of his incomparable letters, "have obtained a Papal decree, condemning Galileo's doctrine about the motion of the earth. It is all in vain. If the world is really turning round, all mankind together will not be able to keep it from turning, or to keep themselves from turning with it." The decrees of Oxford were as ineffectual to stay the great moral and political revolution as those of the Vatican to stay the motion of our globe. That learned University found itself not only unable to keep the mass from moving, but unable to keep itself from moving along with the mass. Nor was the effect of the discussions and speculations of that period confined to our own country. While the Jacobite party was in the last dotage and weakness of its paralytic old age, the political philosophy of England began to produce a mighty effect on France, and, through France, on Europe.

before us.

LORD BACON. (JULY, 1837.)

The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chan cellor of England. A new Edition. By BASIL MONTAGU, Esq. 16 vols. 8vo. London: 1825-1834.

WE return our hearty thanks to Mr. Montagu for this truly valuable work. From the opinions which he expresses as a biographer we often dissent. But about his merit as a collector of the materials out of which opinions are formed, there can be no dispute; and we readily acknowledge that we are in a great measure indebted to his minute and accurate researches for the means of refuting what we cannot but consider as his erorrs,

The labour which has been bestowed on this volume has been a labour of love. The writer is evidently enamoured of the subject. It fills his heart. It constantly overflows from his lips and his pen. Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success well know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum, The Life before us doubtless owes much of its value to the honest and generous enthusiasm of the writer. This feeling has stimulated his activity, has sustained his perseverance, has called forth all his ingenuity and eloquence: but, on the other hand, we must frankly say that it has, to a great extent, perverted his judgment.

We are by no means without sympathy for Mr. Montagu even in what we consider as his weakness. There is scarcely any delusion which has a better claim to be indulgently treated than Here another vast field opens itself that under the influence of which a man But we must resolutely ascribes every moral excellence to those turn away from it. We will conclude who have left imperishable monuments by advising all our readers to study Sir of their genius. The causes of this James Mackintosh's valuable Frag-error lie deep in the inmost recesses of ment, and by expressing our hope that they will soon be able to study it without those accompaniments which have hitherto impeded its circulation.

human nature. We are all inclined to judge of others as we find them. Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions. We find it difficult to think

seemed indissoluble are daily sundered by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But no such cause can affect the silent converse which we hold with the highest of human intellects. That placid intercourse is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato

petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet.

well of those by whom we are thwarted to truth. They have filled his mind or depressed; and we are ready to ad- with noble and graceful images. They mit every excuse for the vices of those have stood by him in all vicissitudes, who are useful or agreeable to us. This comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickis, we believe, one of those illusions to ness, companions in solitude. These which the whole human race is subject, friendships are exposed to no danger and which experience and reflection from the occurrences by which other can only partially remove. It is, in the attachments are weakened or dissolved. phraseology of Bacon, one of the idola Time glides on; fortune is incontribus. Hence it is that the moral cha-stant; tempers are soured; bonds which racter of a man eminent in letters or in the fine arts is treated, often by contemporaries, almost always by posterity, with extraordinary tenderness. The world derives pleasure and advantage from the performances of such a man. The number of those who suffer by his personal vices is small, even in his own time, when compared with the number of those to whom his talents are a source of gratification. In a few years all those whom he has injured disappear. But his works remain, and are a source is never sullen. Cervantes is never of delight to millions. The genius of Sallust is still with us. But the Numidians whom he plundered, and the unfortunate husbands who caught him in their houses at unseasonable hours, are forgotten. We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian. Falstaff and Tom Jones have survived the gamekeepers whom Shakspeare cudgelled and the landladies whom Fielding bilked. A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers; and they cannot but judge of him under the deluding influence of friendship and gratitude. We all know how unwilling we are to admit the truth of any disgraceful story about a person whose society we like, and from whom we have received favours; how long we struggle against evidence, how fondly, when the facts cannot be disputed, we cling to the hope that there may be some explanation or some extenuating circumstance with which we are unacquainted. Just such is the feeling which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to them is incalculable. They have guided him

Nothing, then, can be more natural than that a person endowed with sensibility and imagination should entertain a respectful and affectionate feeling towards those great men with whose minds he holds daily communion. Yet nothing can be more certain than that such men have not always deserved to be regarded with respect or affection. Some writers, whose works will continue to instruct and delight mankind to the remotest ages, have been placed in such situations that their actions and motives are as well known to us as the actions and motives of one human being can be known to another; and unhappily their conduct has not always been such as an impartial judge can contemplate with approbation. But the fanaticism of the devout worshipper of genius is proof against all evidence and all argument. The character of his idol is matter of faith; and the province of faith is not to be invaded by reason. He maintains his superstition with a credulity as boundless, and a zeal as unscrupulous, as can be found in the most ardent

partisans of religious or political fac-| overthrew the Roman aristocracy, the tions. The most decisive proofs are whole state of parties, the character of rejected; the plainest rules of morality every public man, is elaborately misare explained away; extensive and represented, in order to make out someimportant portions of history are com- thing which may look like a defence of pletely distorted. The enthusiast mis-one most eloquent and accomplished represents facts with all the effrontery trimmer. of an advocate, and confounds right and wrong with all the dexterity of a Jesuit; and all this only in order that some man who has been in his grave during many ages may have a fairer character than he deserves.

Middleton's Life of Cicero is a striking instance of the influence of this sort of partiality. Never was there a character which it was easier to read than that of Cicero. Never was there a mind keener or more critical than that of Middleton. Had the biographer brought to the examination of his favourite statesman's conduct but a very small part of the acuteness and severity which he displayed when he was engaged in investigating the high pretensions of Epiphanius and Justin Martyr, he could not have failed to produce a most valuable history of a most interesting portion of time. But this most ingenious and learned man, though "So wary held and wise

The volume before us reminds us now and then of the Life of Cicero. But there is this marked difference. Dr. Middleton evidently had an uneasy consciousness of the weakness of his cause, and therefore resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts. Mr. Montagu's faith is sincere and implicit. He practises no trickery. He conceals nothing. He puts the facts before us in the full confidence that they will produce on our minds the effect which they have produced on his own. It is not till he comes to reason from facts to motives that his partiality shows itself; and then he leaves Middleton himself far behind. His work proceeds on the assumption that Bacon was an eminently virtuous man. From the tree Mr. Montagu judges of the fruit. He is forced to relate many actions which, if any man but Bacon had committed them, noThat, as 'twas said, he scarce received body would have dreamed of defendFor gospel what the church believed," ing, actions which are readily and had a superstition of his own. The completely explained by supposing great Iconoclast was himself an idol- Bacon to have been a man whose ater. The great Avvocato del Diavolo, principles were not strict, and whose while he disputed, with no small spirit was not high, actions which can ability, the claims of Cyprian and be explained in no other way without Athanasius to a place in the Calendar, resorting to some grotesque hypothesis was himself composing a lying legend for which there is not a tittle of evi in honour of St. Tully. He was hold-dence. But any hypothesis is, in Mr. ing up as a model of every virtue a Montagu's opinion, more probable than man whose talents and acquirements, that his hero should ever have done indeed, can never be too highly ex- any thing very wrong. tolled, and who was by no means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was under the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions for which Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advocates, could contrive no excuse, actions which in his confidential correspondence he mentioned with remorse and shame, are represented by his biographer as wise, virtuous, heroic. The whole history of that great revolution which

This mode of defending Bacon seems to us by no means Baconian. To take a man's character for granted, and then from his character to infer the moral quality of all his actions, is surely a process the very reverse of that which is recommended in the Novum Organum. Nothing, we are sure, could have led Mr. Montagu to depart so far from his master's precepts, except zeal for his master's honour follow a different course.

We shall We shall at

tempt, with the valuable assistance | could form no domestic ties and cherish which Mr. Montagu has afforded us, no hope of legitimate posterity, more to frame such an account of Bacon's attached to his order than to his life as may enable our readers correctly country, and guiding the politics of to estimate his character. England with a constant side-glance at Rome.

change.

It is hardly necessary to say that Francis Bacon was the son of Sir But the increase of wealth, the proNicholas Bacon, who held the great gress of knowledge, and the reformaseal of England during the first twenty tion of religion produced a great years of the reign of Elizabeth. The The nobles ceased to be fame of the father has been thrown military chieftains; the priests ceased into shade by that of the son. But to possess a monopoly of learning; and Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man. a new and remarkable species of poliHe belonged to a set of men whom it ticians appeared. is easier to describe collectively than separately, whose minds were formed by one system of discipline, who belonged to one rank in society, to one university, to one party, to one sect, to one administration, and who resembled each other so much in talents, in opinions, in habits, in fortunes, that one character, we had almost said one life, may, to a considerable extent, serve for them all.

These men came from neither of the classes which had, till then, almost exclusively furnished ministers of state. They were all laymen; yet they were all men of learning; and they were all men of peace. They were not members of the aristocracy. They inherited no titles, no large domains, no armies of retainers, no fortified castles. Yet they were not low men, such as those whom princes, jealous of the power of a They were the first generation of nobility, have sometimes raised from statesmen by profession that England forges and cobblers' stalls to the highest produced. Before their time the di- situations. They were all gentlemen vision of labour had, in this respect, by birth. They had all received a been very imperfect. Those who had liberal education. It is a remarkable directed public affairs had been, with fact that they were all members of the few exceptions, warriors or priests; same university. The two great nawarriors whose rude courage was tional seats of learning had even then neither guided by science nor softened acquired the characters which they by humanity, priests whose learning still retain. In intellectual activity, and abilities were habitually devoted and in readiness to admit improveto the defence of tyranny and im-ments, the superiority was then, as it posture. The Hotspurs, the Nevilles, has ever since been, on the side of the the Cliffords, rough, illiterate, and un-less ancient and splendid institution. reflecting, brought to the council-board Cambridge had the honour of educatthe fierce and imperious dispositioning those celebrated Protestant Bishops which they had acquired amidst the tu- whom Oxford had the honour of mult of predatory war, or in the gloomy repose of the garrisoned and moated castle. On the other side was the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all that was then considered as learning, trained in the Schools to manage words, and in the confessional to manage hearts, seldom superstitious, but skilful in practising on the superstition of others, false, as it was natural that a man should be whose profession imposed on all who were not saints the necessity of being hypocrites, selfish, as it was natural that a man should be who

burning; and at Cambridge were formed the minds of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of Europe.

The statesmen of whom we speak passed their youth surrounded by the incessant din of theological controversy. Opinions were still in a state of chaotic anarchy, intermingling, separating, advancing, receding. Sometimes the stubborn bigotry of the Conservatives seemed likely to prevail. Then the impetuous onset of the Reformers for

a moment carried all before it. Then dered the Romish worship as a system again the resisting mass made a des- too offensive to God, and too destrucperate stand, arrested the movement, tive of souls, to be tolerated for an hour, and forced it slowly back. The vacil- but like men who regarded the points lation which at that time appeared in in dispute among Christians as in themEnglish legislation, and which it has selves unimportant, and who were not been the fashion to attribute to the restrained by any scruple of conscience caprice and to the power of one or two from professing, as they had before individuals, was truly a national vacil-professed, the Catholic faith of Mary, lation. It was not only in the mind of the Protestant faith of Edward, or any Henry that the new theology obtained of the numerous intermediate combinathe ascendant one day, and that the tions which the caprice of Henry and lessons of the nurse and of the priest the servile policy of Cranmer had regained their influence on the morrow. formed out of the doctrines of both the It was not only in the House of Tudor hostile parties. They took a deliberate that the husband was exasperated by view of the state of their own country the opposition of the wife, that the son and of the Continent: they satisfied dissented from the opinions of the themselves as to the leaning of the father, that the brother persecuted the public mind; and they chose their side. sister, that one sister persecuted an- They placed themselves at the head of other. The principles of Conservation the Protestants of Europe, and staked and Reform carried on their warfare in all their fame and fortunes on the sucevery part of society, in every con- cess of their party. gregation, in every school of learning, It is needless to relate how dexterround the hearth of every private fa-ously, how resolutely, how gloriously mily, in the recesses of every reflecting they directed the politics of England mind.

during the eventful years which followed, how they succeeded in uniting their friends and separating their enemies, how they humbled the pride of Philip, how they backed the unconquerable spirit of Coligni, how they rescued Holland from tyranny, how they founded the maritime greatness

It was in the midst of this ferment that the minds of the persons whom we are describing were developed. They were born Reformers. They belonged by nature to that order of men who always form the front ranks in the great intellectual progress. They were therefore, one and all, Protestants. In of their country, how they outwitted religious matters, however, though there is no reason to doubt that they were sincere, they were by no means zealous. None of them chose to run the smallest personal risk during the reign of Mary. None of them favoured the unhappy attempt of Northumberland in favour of his daughter-in-law. None of them shared in the desperate councils of Wyatt. They contrived to have business on the Continent; or, if they staid in England, they heard mass and kept Lent with great decorum. When those dark and perilous years had gone by, and when the crown had There were, doubtless, many diverdescended to a new sovereign, they sities in their intellectual and moral took the lead in the reformation of the character. But there was a strong Church. But they proceeded, not with family likeness. The constitution of the impetuosity of theologians, but with their minds was remarkably sound. the calm determination of statesmen. No particular faculty was preeminently They acted, not like men who consi-developed; but manly health and vi

the artful politicians of Italy, and tamed the ferocious chieftains of Scotland. It is impossible to deny that they committed many acts which would justly bring on a statesman of our time censures of the most serious kind. But, when we consider the state of morality in their age, and the unscrupulous character of the adversaries against whom they had to contend, we are forced to admit that it is not without reason that their names are still held in veneration by their countrymen.

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