UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01653 7383 The Works OF Francis Bacon The Wisdom of the Ancients and Other Essays R C BLACK'S READERS SERVICE COMPANY ROSLYN, NEW YORK 1 INTRODUCTION Few careers as public as Francis Bacon's retain so many dark corners and obstinate secrets, few characters that have been so exposed to the searchlight of investigation remain as difficult to understand. Seldom is one called upon to admire a man, as one must admire the author of "The Advancement of Learning," and at the same time to despise him, as one must despise the betrayer of Essex; seldom is it possible to admire at all when it is so obviously impossible either to love or like; seldom has fortune dealt so variously with a man as it dealt with the disappointed servant of Elizabeth and the proud Chancellor of James I. His character is a study in contradictions, his life a study in contrasts. In the world of the intellect he was an unswerving idealist, devoted to a noble cause; in the world of practical affairs, he was a calculating sychophant and an unscrupulous opportunist. Equally startling are the contrasts exhibited by his career. Baffled in his quest of place and power until he was almost fifty, he was suddenly elevated to the heights, and then as suddenly cast down again in ruin and disgrace. It is not easy to pass judgment on such a man and such a life; but his contemporaries, even when they respected his talents, mistrusted him, and posterity has confirmed their opinion by condemning him, even while fully acknowledging the quality and range of his genius. When Francis Bacon was born, on the 22nd of January, 1561, at York House in the Strand, he drew his first breath among the chosen of the earth. His father was Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper; his mother was the daughter of Sir Antony Cook and the sister of Lady Cecil; his uncle by marriage was William Cecil, later the great Lord Burghley. "This means," writes Dean Church, "that his boyhood from the first was passed among the high places of the world-at one of the greatest crises of English history-in the very centre and focus |
