Page:1909. Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography.djvu/137

IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? and so thoroughly subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense.

In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world—amid things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales" &hellip; amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.

Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. &hellip; Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. 123