.... Lord, when I first came unto you, I took you for a physician that desired to cure the diseases of the state; but now I doubt you will be like those physicians which can be content to keep their patients low because they will be always in request" (L. & L. II, 54.) and on another occasion, "though you should not be the blessed physician that cometh in the declination of the disease, yet you embrace that condition which many noble spirits have accepted for advantage." (L. & L. II, 130.) In parliament he said "it is ever gains and no loss, when at the foot of the account there remains the purchase of safety The patient will ever part with some of his blood to save and clear the rest :" (L. & L. II, 86.) and writing to Mr. Secretary Cecil on the reduction of Ireland to obedience and peace, he says, "I do think much letting blood 'in declinatione morbi' is against method of cure : (W. M. v, 188.) and to King James on the improvement of his finances, "I beseech your majesty to give me leave to make this judgment; that your majesty's recovery must be by the medicines of the Galenists and Arabians, and not of the chemists or Paracelsians. For it will not be wrought by any one fine extract, or strong water, but by skilful company of a number of ingredients, and those by just weight and proportion," &c. (W. M. x11, 285.)* In the winter of 1624 Bacon dictated "for recreation in his sickness," and afterwards published, a collection of "Apophthegms new and old." Several of them relate to medicine, but these are not the best, and are rather amusing than instructive; for example ' "There was a bishop that was somewhat a delicate person, and bathed twice a day. A friend of his said to him; my Lord why do you bathe twice a day? The bishop answered, because I cannot conveniently bathe thrice. Dr. Johnson said that in sickness there were three things that were material; the physician, the disease, and the patient. And if any two of these joined, then they have the victory. For, Ne Hercules quidem contra duos. If the physician and the patient join, then down goes the disease; for the patient recovers. If the physician and the disease join, then down goes the patient; that is where the physician mistakes the cure. If the patient and the disease join, then down goes the physiciap, for he is discredited. There was a painter became a physician. Whereupon one said to him; You have done well; for before the faults of your work were seen, but now they are unseen. A physician advised his patient, that had sore eyes, that he should abstain from wine. But the patient said, I think rather, Sir, from water, for I have often marked it in blear eyes, and I have seen water come forth, but never wine." With such innocent pleasantry as this did the great philosopher beguile the tedious hours of sickness; but his thoughts were habitually turned to higher, and even the highest, objects, as indeed they had been through life. As a student he prayed "To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, that He, remembering the calamities of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness, for the alleviating of our miseries" As an author, "Thou O Father! who gavest the Visible Light as the firstborn of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the Intellectual Light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy Goodness returneth to thy Glory" As Chancellor, in a prayer found after his death, "Most gracious Lord God, my merciful father from my youth up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Remember, O Lord, how thy servant hath ... ... : walked before thee: remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies I have mourned for the divisions of thy church: I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary... Thy creatures have been my books, but thy scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples." And his last literary work was a "Translation of certain Psalms into English verse," which he dedicated "to his very good friend Mr. George Herbert," to whom he says, “The pains that it pleased you to take about some of my writings I cannot forget; which did put me in mind to dedicate to you this poor exercise of my sickness. Besides, it being my manner for dedications, to choose those that I hold most fit for the argument, I thought that in respect of divinity and poesy met, (whereof the one is the matter, the other the stile of this little writing,) I could not make better choice." (W. VII, 275.) One of the last acts of King James was to grant Lord Bacon a full pardon, and he was summoned to the first parliament of King Charles, but was prevented by his infirmities from taking his seat. In the same year (1625) a French nobleman who called upon him, finding him "through weakness confined to his bed," politely said "that his lordship had been ever to him like the angels," often heard of and read of but never seen, to which Bacon replied "your kindness may compare me to an angel, but my infirmities tell me that I am a man :" (L. M. 424.) and about the end of the year he wrote to the Queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of King James I. "I received your Majesty's gracious letter.. at a time when the great desolation of the plague was in the city, and when myself was ill of a dangerous and tedious sickness." From this he partially recovered, but the premature termination of his life occurred C soon after. The particulars are given by Aubrey: (11. 227.) "Mr. Hobbes told me that the cause of his Lordship's death was trying an experiment. As he was taking the air in a coach with Dr. Witherborne, physician to the King, towards Highgate, snow lay on the ground, and it came into my Lord's thoughts, why flesh might not be preserved in snow as in salt. They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach, and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a hen, and made the woman exenterate it, and then stuffed the body with snow, and my Lord did help to do it himself. The snow so chilled him, that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his lodgings, (I suppose then at Gray's Inn,) but went to the Earl of Arundell's house at Highgate,” where he dictated to its owner his last letter "My very good Lord-I was likely to have had the fortune of Caius Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mountain Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate I was taken with such a fit of casting, as I knew not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your house-keeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your Lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it. I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than my own; but by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen." "He died," says his chaplain, Dr. Rawley, "on the ninth day of April, in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixtysixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidently accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation, and was buried in St. Michael's church at St. Albans; being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament," in which he says "for my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's church, near St. Albans there was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of Old Verulam.” (L. M. 447.). : From the original documents and notices that I have quoted, though some of the latter are very slight and vague, it is not difficult to deduce a tolerably clear report of Lord Bacon's health, which was really better than might have been expected, from his delicate constitution and sensitive temperament, his hereditary tendency to gout, and the numerous exciting causes of disease to which he was subjected. In the last year of his prosperity, he speaks of himself as having been "civilibus negotiis occupatissimum, nec firma admodum valetudine, quod magnum habet temporis dispendium," and this was doubtless applicable to many years of his life, but there is no mention of any important disorder, till in his 32nd year, as we learn from one of his mother's letters, he was suffering from indigestion, which she attributes to "untimely going to bed and musing when he should sleep," to which his brother adds the want of a free |