Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/407

] And so Campbell.—

Altogether, no age—not even our own—has produced such a constellation of poets, nor such a mass of exquisite, superb, and imperishable poetry. Whilst Shakespeare was fast departing, Milton was rising, and during this period wrote many of his inimitable smaller poems. Even the honest Andrew Marvel, when freed from his labours in the great struggle for the commonwealth, solaced himself with writing poetry, English and Latin, and some of it of no contemptible order—as in his boat-song of the exiles of the Bermudas:—

So he forgot occasionally polemics and politics in "a holy and a cheerful note" of his own. Even the saturnine Sir Thomas Overbury, whom Somerset and his wife had murdered in the Tower, could brighten up in poetry as in his "Choice of a Wife:"—

The prose of the age was equally remarkable. First and foremost stands Francis Bacon with his "Novimi Organum," a new instrument of discovery in philosophy, and other works of a kindred character. He tells us that in his youth, whilst he was only sixteen, he took a great aversion to the philosophy of Aristotle; being, he said, a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the life of man; and in this mind he continued through life. Besides other works of less note, in 1605 he published one of great importance on "The Advancement of Learning;" soon after he published the outline or groundwork of his Organum, under the title of "Cogitata et Visa; or, Things Thought Out and Seen," and proudly boasted of it as the greatest birth of time. He afterwards published the "Wisdom of the Ancients," and it was not till 1621, and when he had reached the summit of his profession, and been made Viscount of St. Albans, that he brought out his great work, "The Instauration of the Sciences," of which the "Novum Organum" is the second part. No work was so little understood at the time or has occasioned such a variety of opinions since. Bacon was well aware that such would be the case, for in his will he says that he leaves his name and memory to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over. Bacon asserted that he had superseded the Aristotelian philosophy, and introduced a new and accurate method of inquiry, both into mind and matter, by experiment and induction. By one party he is declared to be the great renovator of true knowledge, and the father of the modern sciences by this method; by another, that he did nothing of the kind, and that modern discovery would have progressed as well without his new instrument; that Aristotle pursued this method of induction himself, and that Galileo discovered the motion of the earth by the same means that Bacon taught at the same time. But whoever has acquainted himself with the system of Aristotle, and, still more, with the loose and absurd method by which it was taught in the schools before Bacon's time, must see that Bacon, if he did not altogether introduce the system reduced it to precision and accuracy, and thus put an end to the windy logic and abortive practice of the schools. They were accustomed to assume false and visionary premises, and reason from them by syllogisms which, of course, proved nothing. Bacon, by proceeding by analysis and synthesis—by first extracting from a substance, or a topic, everything that did not really belong to it, and then bringing these expurgated matters into contrast, drew sure conclusions, and advanced towards positive discovery. True, Galileo worked by the same method; but Bacon taught it, and made it clear to all understandings. To say, therefore, that modern science owes nothing to Bacon is to utter a self-evident falsity. Both in experimental philosophy and in metaphysical inquiry, it is Bacon's light, and not Aristotle's, which is followed. That Bacon himself made no great discoveries in prosecuting his own method, proves nothing; because, though he was not sufficiently advanced in the actual knowledge of the properties of matter, he saw and taught clearly how such knowledge was to be acquired, and applied to the legitimate development of science. How completely ignorant was the age in which he appeared of real experimental philosophy, is shown by the ridicule and contempt which was cast on the "Novum Organum." Such men as Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton expressed their profound admiration of it, but by the wits of the time Bacon was laughed at as little better than a maniac. Bishop Andrews, in allusion to his title of "St. Albans," said he was on the highway to Dunce-table. King James said, in his almost blasphemous way, that it was like the peace of God—passing all understanding; and lord Coke said—

He was represented by men eminent in the world's opinion as "no great philosopher—a man rather of show than of depth, who wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor." Abroad, as Bacon had foreseen, his work was received in a different manner, and pronounced by the learned one of the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. Our space does not admit of our going into an analysis of his great work; but whoever will carefully study it, will find not merely the exposition of his method, but views stretching into the heights and depths, not only of our own nature but of the nature and life of the universe in which we move, that stamp the mind of Bacon as one of the most capacious, many-sided, and profound that ever appeared.

Next to Bacon we should place the prose writings of Milton in general importance and intellectual greatness. As Bacon's were directed to the advancement of true liberty in philosophy, Milton's were directed to the liberation of the church and state from the tyranny of king and custom. His "Areopagitica," a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, is a grand plea for the freedom of the press; his "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cases," and the "Best Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church," go to the root