Advancement of Learning, he found himself in a case to begin his studies anew, and that he had lost all the time of his studying before. It hath been desired, that something should be signified touching his diet, and the regimen of his health, of which, in regard of his universal insight into nature, he may perhaps be to some an example. For his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, as his stomach would bear it, than a restrained; which he also commended in his book of the History of Life and Death. In his younger years he was much given to the finer and lighter sort of meats, as of fowls, and such like; but afterward, when he grew more judicious, he preferred the stronger meats, such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable; upon which he would often make his meal, though he had other meats upon the table. You may be sure he would not neglect that himself, which he so much extolled in his writings, and that was the use of nitre; whereof he took in the quantity of about three grains in thin warm broth every morning, for thirty years together next before his death. And for physic, he did indeed live physically, but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb,2 infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less; which (as he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours 1 More judicious (that is) by experience and observation: experientiâ edoctus is the expression in the Latin version. 2 In the Latin version Rawley gives the quantity: Rhabarbari sesquidrachmam. of the body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth. And this was no grievous thing to take. As for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been vulgarly spoken) he took not. His receipt for the gout, which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already set down in the end of the Natural History. It may seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity for the moon was never in her passion, or eclipsed, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting; and that, though he observed not nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof; and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his former strength again. 66 : He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, 1 Lord Campbell (who appears to have read Rawley's memoir only in the Latin, where the words are quoties luna defecit sive eclipsin passa est), supposing defecit to mean waned, discredits this statement, on the ground that no instance is recorded of Bacon's having fainted in public, or put off the hearing of any cause on account of the change of the moon, or of any approaching eclipse, visible or invisible." And it is true that if defectus lunæ meant a change of the moon, or even a dark moon (which it might have meant well enough if the Romans had not chosen to appropriate the word to quite another meaning), the accident must have happened in public too often to pass unnoticed. But Rawley was too good a scholar to misapply so common a word in that way. He evidently speaks of eclipses only, and of eclipses visible at the place. Now it is not at all likely that lunar eclipses visible at Westminster would have coincided with important business in which Bacon was conspicuously engaged, often enough (even if he did faint every time) to establish a connexion between the two phenomena. Of course Rawley's statement is not sufficient to prove the reality of any such connexion; but there is no reason to suppose it an invention, and the fact of the fainting-fits may be fairly taken, I think, as evidence of the extreme delicacy of Bacon's temperament, and its sensibility to the skiey influences. That Bacon himself never alluded to this relation between himself and the moon is easily accounted for by supposing that he was not satisfied of the fact. He may have observed the coincidence, and mentioned it to Rawley; and Rawley (whose commonplace book proves that he had a taste for astrology) may have believed in the physical connexion, though Bacon himself did not. in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation; and was buried in St. Michael's church at St. Albans; being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament, both because the body of his mother was interred there, and because it was the only church then remaining within the precincts of old Verulam: where he hath a monument erected for him in white marble (by the care and gratitude of Sir Thomas Meautys, knight, formerly his lordship's secretary, afterwards clerk of the King's Honourable Privy Council under two kings); representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying, with an inscription composed by that accomplished gentleman and rare wit, Sir Henry Wotton.1 FRANCISCUS BACON, BARO DE VERULAM, S1. ALBANI VICmes, SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS SCIENTIARUM LUMEN FACUNDIE LEX SIC SEDEBAT. QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIE ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET NATURE DECRETUM EXPLEVIT COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR AN. DNI M.DC.XXVI. TANTI VIRI MEM. THOMAS MEAUTUS SUPERSTITIS CULTOR DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR H. P. |