VIII

Yet so full of contradiction is Bacon's career, that it was when he stood beneath the shadow of the ruin which was to

1620.

destroy his worldly fortune and repute that he The Novum crowned the edifice of his philosophical ambition Organum, which was to bring him imperishable glory. In 1620 he published his elaborate Latin treatise, Novum Organum. It is only a fragment-an unfinished second instalment of that projected encyclopædia in which he designed to unfold the innermost secrets of nature. But such as it is, the Novum Organum is the final statement of his philosophic and scientific position. It expounds 'the new instrument,' the logical method of induction whereby nature was thenceforth to be rightly questioned, and her replies to be rightly interpreted. The book is the citadel of Bacon's philosophic system. To this exposition of his ultimate aim in life Bacon justly attached the highest importance. Twelve times amid the bustle of public business had he rewritten the ample treatise before he ventured on its publication. For twelve years, amid all the preoccupation of his public career, a draft of the volume had never been far from his hand. The Novum Organum was obsequiously dedicated to the king. A very few months later, the irony of fate was finally to bring home to Bacon the error of dividing his allegiance between intellectual ideals and worldly of Parliahonours and riches. For eight years James had suspended the sittings of Parliament. But money difficulties were growing desperate. At length the king resolved on the perilous device of making a fresh appeal to Parliament to extricate him from his embarrassments. Bacon was well

The wrath

ment.

aware of the exasperated state of public feeling, but with a curiously mistaken faith in himself and in his reputation, he deemed his own position perfectly secure. When Parliament met he discovered his error. At first he sought to close his eyes to the true character of the crisis, but they were soon rudely opened. His enemies were numerous in the House of Commons, and were in no gentle mood.

The charge of corruption.

Heated censure was passed on Bacon and on others of the king's associates as soon as the session opened. Quickly a specific charge was brought against him. Two petitions were presented to the House of Commons by suitors in Bacon's court charging him with taking bribes in his court, of corrupting justice. The charge was undisguised. There was no chance of misapprehending its gravity, but with characteristic insensibility, Bacon affected to regard the attack as some puerile outcome of spite. He asserted that it was unworthy of consideration. The House of Commons, however, referred the complaints to the House of Lords, and the Lords took the matter too seriously to leave Bacon longer in doubt of his danger.

Bacon's

As soon as the scales dropped from his eyes, the shock unmanned him. He fell ill, and was unable to leave his house. Fresh charges of corrupting justice were collapse. brought against him, and he was called upon for an answer. Seeking and obtaining an interview with the king, he confessed to his sovereign that he had taken presents from suitors, but he solemnly asseverated that he had received none before the cause was practically decided. He denied that gifts had ever led him to pervert justice. Unluckily, evidence was forthcoming that at any rate he took a bribe while one cause was pending.

As soon as he studied the details of the indictment, Bacon perceived that defence was impossible, and his failing nerve

His con

fession of

guilt.

allowed him to do no more than throw himself on the mercy of his peers. His accusers pressed for a definite answer to the accusation, but he gave none. He declined to enter into details. He declared in writing that he was heartily sorry and truly penitent for the corruption and neglect of which he confessed himself guilty. The story is a pitiful one. Bacon, reduced to the last stage of nervous prostration, figures in a most ignoble light throughout the proceedings. He turned his back to the smiter in a paroxysm of fear. On the 1st of May 1621 he was dismissed from his office of Lord Chancellor, and two days later, in his absence through illness, sentence was pronounced upon him by the House of Lords. He was ordered to pay a fine of £40,000 and to be imprisoned for life, and was declared incapable of holding any office in the State.

His punishment.

and scienti

Thus ended in deep disgrace Bacon's active career. The king humanely relieved him of his punishment, and he was set free with the heavy fine unpaid. He retired His retirefrom London to his house at St. Albans. Driven ment. from public life, he naturally devoted himself to literature and science to those spheres of labour which he believed himself brought into the world to pursue. Although his health was broken, his intellect was unimpaired His literary by his ruin, and he engaged with renewed energy fic occupain literary composition, in philosophical specula- tion. tion, and in scientific experiment. The first fruit of his enforced withdrawal from official business was a rapidly written monograph on Henry VII. He essayed history, he boldly said, because, being deprived of the opportunity of doing his country service,' it remained to him to do it honour.' His Reign of King Henry VII. is a vivid historical picture, independent in tone and of substantial accuracy. More germane

to his previous labours was a first instalment of a large collection of scientific facts and observations, which he published in Latin in the same year as his account of Henry vii. (1622), under the title Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad Condendam Philosophiam (Natural and Experimental History for the Foundation of Philosophy). Next year there followed De Augmentis Scientiarum, an enlarged version in Latin of his Advancement of Learning.

His vain hope of rehabilitation.

To the last Bacon, with characteristic perversity, declined to realise the significance of his humiliation. Of the sentence passed upon him, he remarked before he died, 'It was the justest censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years.' But he prefaced this opinion with the qualification, 'I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years.' As his life was closing, he cherished wild hopes of regaining the king's favour, even of returning to the domain of politics out of which he had passed so ignominiously. He offered to draw up a Digest of the Law, to codify the Law. He still addressed his patron of the past, King James, with the same adulation as of old. But fortunately for himself these illconceived efforts failed. When Charles 1. came to the throne on the death of his father James I., Bacon imagined that a new opportunity was opened to him, and he petitioned for that full pardon which would have enabled him to take his seat in Parliament. But his advances were then for a last time brusquely repulsed.

IX

Although Bacon's health was shattered and he could not yield himself in patience to exclusion from the public stage of affairs, his scientific enthusiasm still ran high. The immediate cause of his death was an adventure inspired by scientific curiosity. At the end of March

His death.

1626, being near Highgate, on a snowy day, he left his coach to collect snow with which he meant to stuff a hen in order to observe the effect of cold on the preservation of its flesh. He was thus a pioneer of the art of refrigeration, of preserving food by means of cold storage. In performing the experiment he caught a chill and took refuge in the house of a neighbouring friend, the art-connoisseur, Lord Arundel, who happened to be from home. Bacon was sixtyfive years old, and his constitution could bear no new strain. At Lord Arundel's house he died on the 9th of April of the disease now known as bronchitis. He was buried at St. Michael's Church, St. Albans, where his tomb may still be visited. The monument represents him elaborately attired

1 This circumstance rests on the testimony of the philosopher Hobbes, who was thirty-eight years old at the time of Bacon's death, and was in constant personal intercourse with him during the previous ten years. Hobbes's story, which Aubrey took down from his lips and incorporated in his life of Bacon (cf. Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. part ii. p. 602), runs as follows:-'The cause of his Lordship's death was trying an experiment. As he was taking an aire in a coach with Dr. Witherborne (a Scotchman, Physician to the King) towards Highgate, snow lay on the ground, and it came into my Lord's thoughts, why flesh might not be preserved in snow as in salt. They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach, and went into a poore woman's house at the bottome of Highgate Hill, and bought a hen, and made the woman exenterate it, and then stuffed the bodie with snow, and my Lord did help to doe it himselfe. The snow so chilled him, that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not returne to his lodgings (at Graye's Inne) but went to the Earl of Arundell's house at Highgate, where they putt him into a good bed warmed with a panne, but it was a damp bed that had not been layn in about a yeare before, which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 dayes he dyed of suffocation.' Bacon carried the frozen hen with him to Lord Arundel's house and lived long enough to assure himself that his experiment was successful. Lord Arundel happened to be absent from home on Bacon's arrival, and Bacon managed, before he understood the fatal character of his illness, to dictate a letter-the last words which he is known to have uttered-to his host explaining the situation. 'I was likely to have had the fortune,' the letter began, 'of Caius Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the mountain Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well.' ('A Collection of Letters made by Sr. Tobie Mathews, Kt., 1660,' p. 57.)