Chapter 10 - Page 2

conceits of the present state of
learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure
it."

In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with additions
surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality.

Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the
most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his
mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling,"
to use his own phrase, "of the laws of England."

To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney General and
Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of any other
man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary
industries just described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.

The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years
of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase
the regret with which we think on the many years which he had
wasted, to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as
was not worthy such a student."

He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England
under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National
History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable
additions to his Essays. He published the inestimable Treatise De
Argumentis Scientiarum.

Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment,
and quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:

The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and
languor bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST JESTBOOK IN THE WORLD
is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to any
book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable of
serious study.

Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light
upon Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he
was competent to write the Plays and Poems:

With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of
comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other
human being.

The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of
character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden or a
court-masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable
of taking in the whole world of knowledge.

His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave
to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a
lady; spread it, and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose
beneath its shade.

The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of
the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.

In a letter written when he was only