THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FRANCIS BACON, BARON OF VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS. BY WILLIAM RAWLEY, D.D. HIS ́LORDSHIP'S FIRST AND LAST CHAPLAIN AND OF LATE HIS [This is the title of an edition printed in 1670, after Dr. Rawley's death, and prefixed to the ninth edition of the Sylva Sylvarum. The text of the Life itself is taken from the second edition of the Resuscitatio, the latest with which Rawley had anything to do. I have, however, modernised the pelling; altered at discretion the typographical arrangement as to capitals, italics, and punctuation, which is very perplexing to a modern eye and has nothing to recommend it; and added the notes. —J. S.] THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE AUTHOR.1 FRANCIS BACON, the glory of his age and nation, the adorner and ornament of learning, was born in York House, or York Place, in the Strand, on the two and twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord 1560. His father was that famous counsellor to Queen Elizabeth, the second prop of the kingdom in his time, Sir Nicholas Bacon, knight, lord-keeper of the great seal of England; a lord of known prudence, sufficiency, moderation, and integrity. His mother was Anne, one of the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook; unto whom the erudition of King Edward the Sixth had been committed; a choice lady, and eminent for piety, virtue, and learning; being exquisitely skilled, for a woman, 1 This Life was first published in 1657, as an introduction to the volume entitled "Resuscitatio; or bringing into public light several pieces of the works, civil, historical, philosophical, and theological, hitherto sleeping, of the Right Honourable Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban; according to the best corrected copies." Of this volume a second edition, or rather a re-issue with fresh titlepage and dedication, and several sheets of new matter inserted, appeared in 1661; the "Life of the Honourable Author" being prefixed as before, and not altered otherwise than by the introduction of three new sentences; to make room for which two leaves were cancelled. A third edition was brought out in 1671 by the original publisher, containing a good deal of new matter; for which however Dr Rawley, who died in 1667, is not answerable. in the Greek and Latin tongues. These being the parents, you may easily imagine what the issue was like to be; having had whatsoever nature or breeding could put into him. His first and childish years were not without some mark of eminency; at which time he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were presages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterward; and caused him to be taken notice of by several persons of worth and place, and especially by the queen; who (as I have been informed) delighted much then to confer with him, and to prove him with questions; unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that Her Majesty would often term him, The young Lord-keeper. Being asked by the queen how old he was, he answered with much discretion, being then but a boy, That he was two years younger than Her Majesty's happy reign; with which answer the queen was much taken.1 At the ordinary years of ripeness for the university, or rather something earlier, he was sent by his father to Trinity College, in Cambridge,2 to be educated and bred under the tuition of Doctor John White-gift, then master of the college; afterwards the renowned archbishop of Canterbury; a prelate of the first magnitude 1 This last sentence was added in the edition of 1661. The substance of it had appeared before in the Latin Life prefixed to the Opuscula Philosophica in 1658, which is only a free translation of this, with a few corrections. 2 He began to reside in April 1573; was absent from the latter end of August 1574 till the beginning of March, while the plague raged; and left the university finally at Christmas 1575, being then on the point of sixteen. See Whitgift's accounts, printed in the British Magazine, vol. xxxii. p. 365., and xxxiii. p. 444. |