Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/117

 of this spirit properly animated, or the proper portion of excitability properly excited;—that its presence is life, its absence death.

This subject, deemed of such importance by Bacon, has been much neglected, and occasionally been supposed to be a mere creature of the imagination.

Although the History of Life and Death is apparently a separate tract, it is the last portion of the third of the six books into which the third part of the Installation is divided, which are the histories of

His reason for the publication of this tract, he thus states: "Although I had ranked the History of Life and Death as the last among my six monthly designations; yet I have thought fit, in respect of the prime use thereof, in which the least loss of time ought to be esteemed precious, to invert that order." The History, which was published in Latin, is inscribed "To the present age and posterity, in the hope and wish that it may conduce to a common good, and that the nobler sort of physicians will advance their thoughts, and not employ their times wholly in the sordidness of cures, neither be honoured for necessity only, but that they will become coadjutors and instruments of the divine omnipotence and clemency in prolonging and renewing the life of man, by safe, and convenient, and civil ways, though hitherto unassayed." This was the last of his philosophical publications during his life; but they were only a small portion of his labours, which are thus recorded by Dr. Rawley:—"The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil affairs and from an active life, he employed wholly in contemplation and studies: a thing whereof his lordship would often speak during his active life, as if he affected to die in the shadow, and not in the light. During this time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin, which I will enumerate, as near as I can, in the just order wherein they were written.

"He also designed, upon the motion and invitation of his late majesty, to have written the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; but that work perished in the designation merely, God not lending him life to proceed further upon it than only in one morning's work: whereof there is extant an Ex Ungue Leonem."

Such were his works during the short period, when, between sixty and seventy years of age, he, fortunately for himself and society, was thrown from active into contemplative life; into that philosophical seclusion, where he might turn from calumny, from the slanders of his enemies, to the admiration of all civilized Europe; from political rancour and threats of assassination, to the peaceful safety of sequestered life; from the hollow compacts which politicians call union, formed by expediency and dissolved at the first touch of interest, to the enduring joys of intellectual and virtuous friendship, and the consolations of piety.

These blessings he now enjoyed. Eminent foreigners crossed the seas on purpose to see and discourse with him.

Gondomar, who was in Spain, wrote to express his regard and respect, with lamentations that his public duties prevented his immediate attendance upon him in England.

When the Marquis d'Effiat accompanied the Princess Henrietta-Maria, wife to Charles the First, to England, he visited Lord Bacon; who, being then sick in bed, received him with the curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," said that minister to him: "we hear those beings continually talked of, we believe them superior to mankind, and we never have the consolation to see them." "Your kindness," he answered, "may compare me to an angel, but my infirmities tell me that I am a man." In this interview a friendship originated which continued during their lives, and is recorded in his will where,