Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/378

 250 NOTES TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. signified, that in the interim of this cessation, the lord chan cellor was an humble suitor unto his majesty, that he might see his majesty, and speak with him; and although his majesty, in respect of the lord chancellor s person, and of the place he hnlds, might have given his lordship that favour, yet, for that his lordship is under trial of this house, his ma jesty would not on the sudden grant it. That on Sunday last, the king culling all the lords of this house which were of his council before him, it pleased his majesty, to show their lord ships, what was desired by the lord chancellor, demanding their lordships advice therein. The lords did not presume to advise his majesty; for that his majesty did suddenly pro pound such a course as all the world could not devise better, which was that his majesty would speak with him privately. That yesterday, his majesty admitting the lord chancellor to his presence, &c. It was thereupon ordered, That the lord treasurer should signiyunto his majesty, that the lords do thankfully acknowledge that his majesty s favour, and hold themselves, highly boui-d unto his majesty for the same.&quot; In the morning of the 1th of April, a few days after this interview, the king was j resent in the House of Lords, com mended the complaint of all public grievances, and protested, that he would prefer no peison whomsoever before the public good; and, in the evening of the same day, the Prince of Wales signified to the lords, that the Lord Chancellor had sent a submission. The sentence was passed. The king remitted all which it was in his power to pardon. That the time would arrive when it would be proper to investigate the whole nature of these proceedings, Bacon foresaw. In a paper written in November, 1&02, in Greek characters, and found amongst his papers, he sajs, &quot; Of my offences, far be it from me to say, Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas : but I will say what I have good warrant for, they were not the greatest offenders in Israel, upon whom the wall of Shilo fell:&quot; And in his will, after desiring to be buried by his mo ther, he says, &quot;For my name and memory, I leave it to men s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.&quot; It is hoped that documents are now in existence, by which the whoie of this transaction may, without impro priety, be elucidated. It seems that, from the intimacy be tween Archbishop Tennison and Dr. Rawley, the chancellor s chaplain and secretary, all the facts were known to the Archbishop, who published his Baconiana in the year 1679, &quot;too near to the heels of truth and to the times of the per sons concerned;&quot; in which he says, &quot;His lordship owned it under his hand, that he was frail and did partake of the abuses of the times. And surely he was a partaker of their severities also. The great cause of his suffering is to some a secret. 1 leave them to find it out by his words to King ly be fice in your times, and, when from private appetite it is re solved, that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket, whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with. At present I shall only add, that when upon his being accused, he was told it was time to look about him, he said, I do not look about me, I look above me, and when he was condemned, and his servants rose upon his passing through the gallery, Sit down, my friends, he said, your rise has been my fall. &quot; That the love of excelling is only a temporary motive for the acquisition of knowledge, may as easily be demonstrated: when the object is gained, or the certainty of failure disco vered, what motive is there for exertion s What worlds are there to conquer ? &quot; Sed quid ego hsc, quse cupio deponere et toto auimo atque omni cura tpt^ocrotpfiv. Sic inquam in ammo est. Vellem ab initio;&quot; are the words of Cicero. &quot; Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world,&quot; are the words of Burke. Milton, in his tract on Education, speaking of young men when they quit the universities: &quot;Now on the sudden transported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy und delightful knowledge ; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them with the away of friends either to an ambitious and merce nary, or ignorantly zealous divinity ; some allured to the trade- &amp;gt;f law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat, contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to state affairs, with souls so un principled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery ; if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, (knowing no better,) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the schools and universities us we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned.&quot; That the love of excelling- has a tendency to generate bad feeling, is as easily demonstrated. Tucker says, &quot;This pus- sion always chooses to move alone in a narrow sphere, where nothing noble or important can be achieved, rather than join with others in moving mighty engines, by which much good might be effected. Where did ambition ever glow more intensely than in Cffisar ! whose favourite saying, we are told, was, that he would rather be the first man in a petty village, than the second in Rome. Did not Alexander, another madman of the same kind, reprove his tutor Aristotle for publishing to the world those discoveries in philosophy he would have had reserved for himself alone 1 Nero, says Plutarch, put the fiddlers to death, for being more skilful in the trade than he was.&quot; Dionysius, the elder, was so angry at Philoxenus for singing, and with Plato for disputing better than he did, that he sold Plato a slave to JEginsL, and con demned Philoxenus to the quarries.&quot; In illustration of this doctrine, I cannot refrain from subjoining an anecdote which explains the whole of this morbid feeling. &quot;A collector of shells gave thirty-six guineas for a shell : the instant he paid the money, he threw the shell upon the hearth, and dashed it into a thousand pieces: I have now, said he, the only specimen in England. &quot; The love of excelling has, however, its uses. It leads &quot;to that portion of knowledge for which it operates The spur is powerful, and I grant its force ; It pricks the genius forward in his course, Allows short time for play and none for sloth, And, felt alike by each, advances both and is attended with the chance of generating a habit to ac quire knowledge, which may continue when the motives themselves have ceased to act. It is a bait for pride, which, when seized, may sink into the affections.&quot; Such is the nature of the love of excelling. The love of excellence, on the other hand, produced the Paradise Lost : the Ecclesiastical Polity, and the Novutn Organum. It in fluenced Newton, and Descartes, and Hooker, and Bacon. It has ever permanently influenced, and will ever perma nently influence the noblest minds, and has ever generated, and will ever generate good feeling. &quot;We see,&quot; says Ba con, &quot;in all other pleasures there is a satiety, and after they be used, their verdure departeth: which showeth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures : and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy : but of knowledge there is no satiety; but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually inter changeable, and therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply without fallacy or accident.&quot; &quot; I have,&quot; says Burke, &quot;through life been willing to give every thing to others, and to reserve nothing to myself, but the inward conscience that I have omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for its service, and to place them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it. This conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man ; never checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, any policy. I was always ready to the height of j my means (and they were always infinitely below my de- i sires) to forward those abilities which overpowered my own.&quot; And so Pffideratus, &quot;being left out of the election of the number of the three hundred, said, It does me good to see there are three hundred found better in the city than . myself. &quot; , If any reader of this note conceive that education cannot