FRANCIS BACON.

1561-1626.

"Those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philosophers, who made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo."-LORD MACAULAY.

To Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, residing at York House in the Strand, Francis, the youngest of several sons, was born the twentysecond of January, 1561. The mother of Francis was Anne, a very learned and accomplished lady, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to Edward I. Sir Nicholas was a man of great business ability, and was noted for his fine personal appearance. Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of him, My Lord Keeper's soul is well lodged." In childhood Francis exhibited remarkable precocity. On one occasion, when the queen inquired his age, he surprised her by replying, "I am two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign." Delighted with his wit and gravity, she used to call the boy "My young lord keeper."

At thirteen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained three years. Like Milton, he conceived a strong distaste for the curriculum, and especially for the Aristotelian philosophy. We find him at sixteen in Paris, under the care of the English ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet, where he appears to have lived remarkably free from the vices for which that brilliant capital was then notorious. A passion for rich dress and equipage, and a love of art, beauty, and magnificence, seem to have been deeply imbibed at this time. From Paris he went to Poictiers, where he studied hard; investigating, among other subjects, that of Echoes, which had enlisted his attention in childhood, and Cipher-writing. He was already collecting materials for a literary work entitled, Of the State of Europe.

His father suddenly dying in February, 1579, young Bacon returned home. "I found it necessary," he says, "to think to live, instead of living to think." After in vain soliciting aid from his uncle, Lord Burleigh, who seems to have cherished a mean jealousy of Bacon's superior abilities, which were likely to make him a formidable rival to Burleigh's son, Francis became, in 1580, a student of law in Gray's Inn. In 1586 he became a "Bencher; in 1588, "Lent Reader;" in 1589, "Counsel Learned Extraordinary to the Queen." In 1591 he endeavored to procure from his powerful uncle some lucrative appointment which should give him means and leisure for philosophical and scientific research. In his letter applying for such a position, he remarks, "Thirty-one years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass." The Cecils rather stingily procured him the reversion of the Registership of the Star Chamber, worth, whenever it should fall into possession, some £1,600 a year. Unluckily, the prior occupant stubbornly refused to die, and Bacon had to wait twenty years for the commencement of the receipt of the income.

In February, 1592, he took his seat as member of Parliament for Middlesex, making his first speech on the twenty-fifth of that month. On the seventh of March he made another speech of great power, in favor of popular rights and economical reform. The queen was angered by his bold stand against the encroachments of royalty, and caused her displeasure to be communicated to him through several channels. After this,