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1625.] INTERFERENCE ON BEHALF OF A SUITOR.

529

The Duke you know loveth me, and my Lord Treasurer standeth now towards me in very good affection and respect.' You, that are the third person in these businesses, I assure myself, will not be wanting; for you have professed and shewed, ever since I lost the seal, your good will towards me. I rest

Your affectionate and assured friend.

The letter to the Earl of Dorset 2 which follows is noticeable chiefly as being a letter from Bacon on behalf of a suitor. Being written without either preface or postscript of apology, it may be presumed to be the sort of letter which a neighbour or a friend would in those days naturally write in such a case; and it will be seen how much it resembles one of Buckingham's letters to himself on like occasions. I suppose nobody will suspect that it was written with any intention to dictate decrees or interfere with justice.

TO THE EARL OF DORSET.3

My very good Lord,

This gentleman, the bearer hereof (Mr. Colles by name) is my neighbour. He is a civil young man. I think he wanteth no mettle, but he is peaceable. It was his hap to fall out with Mr. Matthew Francis, sergeant at arms, about a toy; the one affirming that a hare was fair killed, and the other foul. Words multiplied, and some blows passed on either side. But since the first falling out the sergeant hath used towards him divers threats and affronts, and which is a point of danger, sent to him a letter of challenge but Mr. Colles, doubting the contents of the letter, refused to receive it. Motions have been made also of reconcilement or of reference to some gentlemen of the country not partial but the sergeant hath refused all, and now at last sueth him in the Earl Marshal's court. The gentleman saith he distrusteth not his cause upon the hearing, but would be glad to avoid restraint or long and chargeable attendance. Let me therefore pray your good Lordship to move the noble Earl" in

1 If the change was due to Bacon's letter of complaint to Buckingham (the missing letter), this must have been written after the 3rd of July, 1625.

2 Sir Edward Sackville became Earl of Dorset on the 28th of March, 1624, by the death of his brother.

3 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 207. Copy, hastily written. No fly-leaf. Indorsed, "To E. Dorset. Gor. 1625."

First written "He is commended for," but a line is drawn through the two last words. 5 The Earl of Arundel, then Earl Marshal.

VOL. VII.

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that kind to carry a favourable hand towards him, such as may stand with justice and the orders of that court. I ever rest Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant.

4.

The Plague had been raging in London all this summer, and Bacon himself (who appears to have remained at Gorhambury) had been visited at the same time with a "dangerous and tedious sickness." If this was the "gravissimus morbus" of which he speaks in the next letter as one from which he has not yet recovered (and the expression suits it well, though sicknesses were now too frequent with him to serve for dates) we may suppose it to have been written in the autumn of 1625, and place it here without much risk of error. It was first printed by Rawley among the Opuscula (1658), and is our principal authority for the condition of the Instauratio at this time, and for his plans and hopes regarding it and his other writings.

It is some consolation in this dreary time to know that his belief in the value and virtue and final success of that enterprise was never shaken. His earthly comforts were growing colder and colder. The hopes which he had indulged, first of a comfortable provision for a life of study, then of help to overcome his debts, and lastly of bare means "to live out of want and die out of ignominy," had one by one fallen away and left him desolate. But that the "mine of truth ” which he was opening would keep its promise, and that Man would thereby in some future generation be the master of Nature and her forces, was a hope which continued with him to the end, and so refreshed and sustained his spirit that if the compositions of his last years are distinguishable at all from those of his prime, it is rather by their greater conciseness, solidity, and rapidity of style than by any signs of exhaustion or decay; and how far he was from feeling any abatement of mental power and activity we may gather from the quantity and nature of the work still lying before him which he speaks of as intending and expecting to get it done. For though he leaves the sixth and concluding part of the Instauration '-the Philosophia Secunda-to Posterity, as a thing which must wait for the third, the collection of Natural History; and though he commends the third to Kings, Popes, or Colleges, as beyond the industry and endeavour of a private man; yet the remainder of the second part, which was to complete the description of the Novum Organum, or

1 It may have been the "sharp sickness of some weeks" from which he had "newly recovered" on the 8th of September, 1624. See above p. 520.

1625.]

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION.

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new logical machinery,-as well as the whole of the fourth, which was to contain examples of its correct use and application, and the whole of the fifth which was to consist of his own provisional speculations—" anticipations," as he called them-in natural philosophy,―could be supplied by no hand but his own: and of these he shows no signs of despairing. Life and health and leisure being allowed, he does not seem to have apprehended any want of faculty or spirit or courage.

EPISTOLA AD FULGENTIUM.1

Reverendissime P. Fulgenti,

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Fateor me literarum tibi debitorem esse: suberat excusatio justa nimis; implicatus enim fueram gravissimo morbo, a quo necdum liberatus sum. Volo Reverentiæ tuæ nota esse consilia mea de scriptis meis, quæ meditor et molior: non perficiendi spe, sed desiderio experiundi; et quia posteritati (sæcula enim ista requirunt) inservio. Optimum autem putavi ea omnia, in Latinam linguam traducta, in tomos dividere. Primus tomus constat ex libris 'De Augmentis Scientiarum: qui tamen, ut nosti, jam perfectus et editus est, et partitiones scientiarum complectitur; quæ est Instaurationis' meæ pars prima. De buerat sequi 'Novum Organum;' interposui tamen scripta mea moralia et politica, quia magis erant in promptu. Hæc sunt: primo, Historia regni Henrici septimi Regis Angliæ;' deinde sequetur libellus ille, quem vestra lingua 'Saggi Morali ' appellastis. Verum illi libro nomen gravius impono, scilicet ut inscribatur,Sermones fideles, sive Interiora rerum.' Erunt autem sermones isti et numero aucti et tractatu multum amplificati. Item continebit tomus iste libellum 'De Sapientia Veterum: atque hic tomus (ut diximus) interjectus est, et non ex ordine Instaurationis.' Tum demum sequetur Organum Novum;' cui secunda pars adhuc adjicienda est; quam tamen animo jam complexus et metitus sum. Atque hoc modo secunda pars Instaurationis absolvetur. Quod ad tertiam partem Instaurationis attinet, Historiam scilicet Naturalem, opus illud est plane regium aut papale, aut alicujus collegii aut ordinis; neque privata industria pro merito perfici potest. At portiones

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Opuscula,' p. 172. Father Fulgentio, according to Tenison (Baconiana, p. 101) was "a divine of the republic of Venice, and the same who wrote the life of his colleague the excellent Father Paul."

illæ quas jam in lucem edidi, 'De Ventis,' 'De Vita et Morte,' non sunt historia pura, propter axiomata et observationes majores interpositas; sed genus scripti commistum ex historia naturali et machina intellectus rudi et imperfecta ; quæ est Instaurationis pars quarta. Itaque succedet illa ipsa quarta pars, et multa exempla machinæ continebit magis exacta, et ad inductivas regulas magis applicata. Quinto sequetur iste liber, quem Prodromum philosophiæ secundæ' inscripsimus; qui inventa nostra circa nova axiomata ab experimentis ipsis excitata continebit; ut tanquam columnæ jacentes sustollantur: quem posuimus Instaurationis partem quintam. Postremo, superest Philosophia ipsa Secunda, quæ est Instaurationis pars sexta; de qua spem omnino abjecimus: sed a sæculis et posteritate fortasse pullulabit. Attamen in Prodromis (iis dico tantum, quæ ad universalia naturæ fere pertingunt) non levia jacta erunt hujus rei fundamenta. Conamur (ut vides) tenues grandia: in eo tantum spem ponentes, quod videntur ista a Dei providentia et immensa bonitate profecta. Primo, propter ardorem et constantiam mentis nostræ, quæ in hoc instituto non consenuit, nec tanto temporis spatio refrixit. Equidem memini me, quadraginta abhinc annis, juvenile opusculum circa has res confecisse, quod magna prorsus fiducia et magnifico titulo Temporis Partum Maximum'inscripsi. Secundo, quod propter infinitam utilita

tem Dei Opt. Max. auctoramento gaudere videatur.

Commendatum, rogo, me habeat Reverentia vestra illustrissimo viro Domino Molines, cujus suavissimis et prudentissimis literis quam primum, si Deus volet, rescribam. Vale, P. reverendis

sime.

Reverentiæ tuæ amicus addictissimus,

FR. ST. ALBAN.

1 This was probably the work of which Henry Cuffe (the great Oxford scholar who was executed in 1601 as one of the chief accomplices in the Earl of Essex's treason) was speaking, when he said that "a fool could not have written it and a wise man would not." Bacon's intimacy with Essex had begun about 35 years before this letter was written.

2 "Most reverend Father Fulgentio,

"I confess that I owe you a letter; but I had too good an excuse: for I was suffering under a very severe illness, from which I have not yet recovered. I wish to make known to your Reverence my intentions with regard to the writings which I meditate and have in hand; not hoping to perfect them, but desiring to try; and because I work for posterity; these things requiring ages for their accomplishment. I have thought it best, then, to have all of them translated into Latin and divided into volumes. The first volume consists of the books concerning the 'Advancement of Learning;' and this, as you know, is already finished and

1625.

BACON'S RECOVERY FROM AN ILLNESS.

533

5.

The illness which had interrupted Bacon's correspondence with Father Fulgentio was probably the same which delayed his answer to a letter received from the Queen of Bohemia during the prevalence of the plague; though there is a little difficulty about the date, because the two circumstances which taken together should have fixed it, do not quite agree. It professes to have been written as soon as he had recovered from " a dangerous and tedious sickness," coinciding with the plague in the city; which would suit October, 1625. But it enclosed a discourse, written (it says) 'about two years since;" namely the "Discourse on a war with

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published, and includes the partitions of the sciences; which is the first part of my 'Instauration.' The 'Novum Organum' should have followed: but I interposed my moral and political writings, as being nearer ready. These are: First, the History of the reign of Henry the Seventh King of England;" after which will follow the little book which in your language you have called Saggi Morali. But give it a weightier name; entitling it'Faithful Discourses-or the Inwards of things.' But these discourses will be both increased in number and much enlarged in the treatment. The same volume will contain also my little book on The Wisdom of the Ancients.' And this volume is (as I said) interposed, not being a part of the Instauration.' After this will follow the Novum Organum, to which there is still a second part to be added-but I have already compassed and planned it out in my mind. And in this manner the second part of the Instauration' will be completed. As for the third part, namely, the Natural History,' that is plainly a work for a King or Pope, or some college or order: and cannot be done as it should be by a private man's industry. And those portions which I have published, concerning 'Winds,' and concerning Life and Death,' are not history pure because of the axioms and greater observations that are interposed: but a kind of writing mixed of natural history and a rude and imperfect intellectual machinery; which is the fourth part of the 'Instauration.' Next therefore will come the fourth part itself; wherein will be shown many examples of this machine, more exact and more applied to the rules of induction. In the fifth place will follow the book which I have entitled the 'Precursors of the Second Philosophy,' which will contain my discoveries concerning new axioms, suggested by the experiments themselves: that they may be raised as it were and set up, like pillars that were on the ground. And this I have set down as the fifth part of my 'Instauration.' Last comes the 'Second Philosophy' itself—the sixth part of the 'Instauration :' of which I have given up all hope; but it may be that the ages and posterity will make it flourish. Nevertheless in the 'Precursors'-those I mean which touch upon the universalities of nature-no slight foundations of this will be laid.

"Conamur (you see) tenues grandia. But my hope is in this, that these things appear to proceed from the providence and infinite goodness of God. First because of the ardour and constancy of my own mind, which in this pursuit has not grown old nor cooled in so great a space of time: it being now forty years, as I remember, since I composed a juvenile work on this subject, which with great confidence and a magnificent title I named 'The Greatest Birth of Time.' Secondly because it seems, by reason of its infinite utility, to enjoy the sanction and favour of God, the all-good and all-mighty.

"Commend me, I beseech your Reverence, to the most illustrious gentleman, Signor Molines, to whose most agreeable and wise letter I will return an answer, God willing, as soon as I can.

"Farewell most reverend father,

"Your Reverence's most devoted friend,
"FR. S. ALBAN."

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