Soon after the accession of King James he was knighted. He had much objection to accept the "almost prostituted title," and to be "gregarious in a troop," but he thought it advisable to submit, for this reason among others, that, as he says, "I have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden to my liking." (W. M. xп. 279.) This was Alice Barnham, who three years later became his wife, and "brought him a sufficiently ample and liberal portion, in marriage. Children he had none." (Rawley.)

At the beginning of 1604 his health must have been pretty good, for Montagu tells us that "during the whole of the conflicts in the stormy session of the parliament which assembled on the 19th of March in that year his exertions were unremitting. He spoke in every debate. He sat upon twenty committees, many of them appointed for the consideration of the important questions agitated at that eventful time. He was selected to attend the conferences of the privy council; to report the result; and to prepare various remonstrances and addresses; was nominated as a mediator between the Commons and the Lords, &c. During the next terms, and the next sessions of parliament his legal and political exertions continued without intermission. Committees were appointed for the consideration of subsidies; of articles of religion; purveyors; recusants, &c. &c. He was a member of them all." (L. M. 119.)

Along with all these labours he was diligently pursuing his inquiry into "all knowledge," and in 1605 appeared “The twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the proficience and advancement of Learning divine and humane;" consisting "of these two parts: the former concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof; the later, what the

particular acts and works are which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning, and again what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts." (W. III. 264).

"The

In this work medicine holds an honourable place. knowledge that concerneth man's body," he says, "is divided as the good of man's body is divided unto which it referreth. The good of man's body is of four kinds, Health, Beauty, Strength, and Pleasure: so the knowledges are Medicine, or art of Cure; art of Decoration, which is called Cosmetic; art of Activity, which is called Athletic; and art Voluptuary, which Tacitus truly calleth eruditus luxus. This subject of man's body is of all other things in nature most susceptible of remedy; but then that remedy is most susceptible of error. For the same subtility of the subject doth cause large possibility and easy failing; and therefore the inquiry ought to be the more exact .... Thus much is evidently true, that of all substances which nature hath produced, man's body is the most extremely compounded. For we see herbs and plants are nourished by earth and water; beasts for the most part by herbs and fruits; man by the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, herbs, grains, fruits, water, and the manifold alterations, dressings, and preparations of these several bodies, before they come to be his food and aliment. Add hereunto that beasts have a more simple order of life, and less change of affections to work upon their bodies; whereas man in his mansion, sleep, exercise, passions, hath infinite variations.... This variable composition of man's body hath made it as an instrument easy to distemper; and therefore the poets did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo: because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man's body, and to reduce it to harmony. So then the subject being so variable hath

B

made the art by consequent more conjectural; and the art being conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left for imposture.... And many times the impostor is prized and the man of virtue taxed (censured). Nay we weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a montabank or witch before a learned physician...." (W. III, 371.)

see the

There is no doubt but if the physicians will learn and use the true approaches and avenues of nature, they may assume as much as the poet saith;

Et quoniam variant morbi, variabimus artes;

Mille mali species, mille salutis erunt :

which that they should do, the nobleness of their art doth deserve; well shadowed by the poets, in that they made Aescu. lapius to be the son of the Sun, the one being the fountain of life, the other as the second stream; but infinitely more honoured by the example of our Saviour, who made the body of man the object of his miracles, as the soul was the object of his doctrine. For we read not that ever he vouchsafed to do any miracle about honour, or money (except that one for giving tribute to Cæsar,) but only about the preserving, sustaining, and healing the body of man." (W. III. 371, 3.)

The pre-eminent abilities of Bacon, the excellence of this work, and it may be in part its flattering dedication to the King, soon led to his promotion. In 1607 he was made SolicitorGeneral, in 1613 Attorney-General, in 1616 Privy Counseller, in 1617 Lord Keeper, and on the 4th of January 1619 Lord High Chancellor in July of the same year he was created Baron of Verulam.

This continued course of prosperity probably contributed much to the preservation of his health, for though in 1616 he says "I have small hopes that I shall live long," I find no men

tion of any particular illness for several years: but on the 8th of June 1617 he writes to the Earl of Buckingham from Whitehall

'My very good Lord-This day I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice; not one cause unheard; the lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make; not one petition unanswered. And this, I think, could not be said in our age before. This I speak, not out of ostentation but out of gladness, when I have done my duty. I know men think I cannot continue if I should thus oppress myself with business: but that account is made. The duties of life are more than life; and if I die now, I shall die before the world be weary of Ime, which in our times is somewhat rare. And all this while I have been a little unperfect in my foot. But I have taken pains more like the beast with four legs than like a man with scarce two legs. But if it be a gout, which I do neither acknowledge, nor much disclaim, it is a good-natured gout; for I have no rage of it, and it goeth away quickly. I have hope it is but an accident of changing from a field air to a Thames air; or rather, I think, it is the distance of the king and your lordship from me, that doth congeal my humours and spirits.

When I had written this letter I received your lordship's letter of the third of this present, wherein your lordship showeth your solicitous care of my health, which did wonderfully comfort me. And it is true that at this present I am very well, and my supposed gout quite vanished." (W. M. xII, 319.)

On the 18th of the same month he writes "to the Lord Viscount Fenton-my health, I thank God, is good; and I hope this supposed gout was but an incomer:" (a comer in, a visitor who makes no long stay.) Again, writing from Gorhambury, to the Earl of Buckingham, July 29th, he says "I am, I thank God, much relieved with my being in the country air; and the

order I keep; so that, of late years I have not found my

health better."

And so it probably continued, with the interruption only of slight fits of the gout, of one of which he writes to Buckingham, on the 2nd of October 1620, "the pain of my foot is gone but the weakness doth a little remain;" till, on the 22nd of January 1621, he celebrated at York House, the place of his birth, his sixtieth birthday, surrounded by his admirers and friends; on the 27th he was created Viscount St Alban.

A few months before this he had published his greatest philosophical work, entitled "Novum Organum: Aphorismi de Interpretatione Naturæ et Regno Hominis," of which Rawley says "I myself have seen at least twelve copies, revised year by year one after another, and every year altered and amended."

This was the most important contribution he had made to the great object of his life, which he had expressed upwards of eight and twenty years before, and which had never been long out of his thoughts. He then said "I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath com. -mitted so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed." How far he succeeded Sir John Herschel tells: "Previous to the publication of the Novum Organum of Bacon, natural philosophy, in any legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could hardly be said to exist.... He will justly be looked upon in all future ages as the great reformer of philoso