Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/365

 Bacon Thomas Tenison, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who had access to Rawley's papers after his death, published in 1679 a small volume entitled 'Baconiana, or certain genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon,' &c. This volume contains, by way of introduction, an 'account of all the Lord Bacon's works' of considerable interest to the bibliographer.

A collection of Bacon's unpublished letters, written during the reign of James I, was published by Robert Stephens in 1702. A second volume, also collected by him, was published in 1734. In addition to letters, this latter volume contains several tracts and fragments, the most important, perhaps, of which is the 'Redargutio Philosophiarum,' only a small portion of which had been published by Gruter in 1653. Finally, another collection of unpublished letters, speeches, &c.,was issued by Dr. Thomas Birch in 1763.

None of Bacon's legal works were published during his lifetime. In 1630 appeared the 'Maxims of the Law,' together with a second edition of the 'Use of the Law,' under the common title 'The Elements of the Common Law.' Mr. Heath thinks that the attribution of the second tract (the first edition of which appeared in 1629) to Bacon is erroneous. The 'Reading on the Statute of Uses' was first published, in a very incorrect form, in 1642. Three speeches concerning the Post-Nati of Scotland, the Naturalisation of the Scotch in England, and the Union of the Laws of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, were first published in 1641. The Four Arguments on Impeachment of Waste, Lowe's case of Tenures, the case of Revocation of Uses, and the Jurisdiction of the Council of the Marches, first appeared in Blackbourne's edition of Bacon's entire works, published in 1730. The argument in Chudleigh's case was recovered by Mr. Spedding.

The first edition, professing to be complete, of Bacon's works, issued in England, was that of Blackboume, in 1730. An edition, with life, by Mallet, appeared in 1740, in 4 vols, folio; another by the same in 1753, in 3 vols, folio. What long served as the trade edition was a reprint of the edition put out by Birch in 1765. A handsome but ill-arranged edition, under the superintendence of Mr. Basil Montagu, was issued by Pickering (in 17 vols. 8vo.) between 1825 and 1836. The appearance of this edition was the occasion of Macaulay's Essay. The splendid and carefully annotated edition of Ellis, Spedding, and Heath, in seven volumes, was brought out by Longmans in 1857 and following years. Mr. Spedding has incorporated the letters and occasional works of Bacon in another work, occupying seven volumes, entitled 'Letters and Life of Bacon,' Longmans, 1861 and following years. The substance of this work, omitting most of the letters, but retaining the greater part, of the biography, has recently appeared under the title of 'The Life and Times of Francis Bacon,' 2 vols., Trübner and Co., 1878.

Of Bacon's separate works, the most recent edition of the 'Advancement of Learning' is that by Aldis Wright (1869), and of the 'Novum Organum' that by T. Fowler (1878), both issued by the Clarendon Press at Oxford. Amongst recent editions of the 'Essays' are those of Archbishop Whately (1856, 6th edit. 1864), Mr. Aldis Wright (1862), and Dr. Abbott (1879). 'A Harmony of the Essays' — the texts of the first four editions printed in parallel columns — was issued by Professor Edward Arber in 1869.

In the history of literature Bacon is mainly known as the writer of the 'Essays.' But in the history of science, logic, and philosophy, the chief interest which attaches to his name is that of a reformer of scientific method.

The method which obtained almost exclusively in scientific inquiries during the middle ages is what is commonly called the deductive method. It is absurd to speak as if Bacon were the inventor of induction. What Bacon complained of, and rightly complained of, was not that the writers and teachers of his time had no recourse to the observation of facts at all, but that they only looked out for facts in support of preconceived theories, or constructed their theories on a hasty and unmethodical examination of a few facts collected at random. In either case they neglected to test or verify their generalisations, while they wasted their efforts in drawing out syllogistically long trains of elaborate conclusions, which, for aught they knew, might be vitiated by the unsoundness of the original premisses.

It was to remedy these defects that Bacon designed the second part of his 'Great Instauration,' the 'Novum Organum.' The first book consists of a number of brilliant and pregnant aphorisms. In the second book Bacon sets to work to construct his own method, and, though the book ends abruptly before he has completed one quarter of his scheme, he succeeds in laying the foundations of a science for the interpretation of nature, which, rough and cumbrous as are some of the materials of which they are composed, furnish the ground-plan on which almost all subsequent workers in this department of knowledge have built. Inductive logic, that is, the systematic analysis and arrangement of inductive evidence, as