BACOX 203 tinguish himself as a patron of learning. Ba- [ con possessed the additional title to his favor that his eloquence and information gave him ! great weight in parliament. Appointed by the house on the committee to make a representa- tion of the misconduct of the royal purveyors, j he discharged the task with so much discretion that while he satisfied the king, he won from j the house a vote of thanks. James made him one of his counsel, an office to which a small pension was attached, and from that time he continued to rise in spite of the opposition of the Cecils, and the rivalry of Sir Edward Coke, the attorney general. In 1607 he was made solicitor general, by which his practice in West- minster hall was rapidly extended. About the same time he married Alice, daughter of Bene- dict Barnham, a wealthy alderman of London | thus succeeding in his third attempt at a wealthy marriage. His tact, his knowledge, and his j eloquence combined, raised him to the highest ; point of reputation in the commons, while his standing at the bar was every day confirmed, and his favor at court was increased. But these political and personal struggles did not separate him from those philosophical inqui- ries which were the first love of his heart. In 1605 he published "The Advancement of Learning" (subsequently expanded into the De Augmentig), a work which inaugurated an era in the history of English literature and science. It professed to be a survey of existing knowledge, with a description of the parts of science yet unexplored, and might be regarded as a picture both of the cultivated parts of the intellectual world, and of its outlying, untrodden deserts. This work alone would have been sufficient to place Bacon among the intellectual giants of his race. Yet his active and vigorous mind continued to busy itself with other specula- tions ; besides his many speeches in the com- mons and his arguments at the bar, he wrote numerous tracts, such as " A Discourse on the Happy Union," "An Advertisement touching the Controversy of the Church of England," and pamphlets upon law reform and other topics of prevalent interest. All the while he was also employed in meditating the great No- vum Orgcmum Seientiarum, of which sketches were prepared in the shape of his Oogitata et Visa, Filum Labyrinthi,-an<l Temporis Par- tw# Maximus. His lesser writings he under- took, as he says, to secure him a degree of re- spect and consideration in the general mind, which might afterward serve to conciliate it toward the peculiarity of his opinions, or to answer as a bulwark against unfriendly as- saults. In this intention he wrote and sent forth in 1609 " The Wisdom of the Ancients," a book in which the classical fables are made the vehicles of original and striking thoughts, clothed in remarkable beauty of language, and ornamented with graceful figures. Meantime Ms political advancement went steadily for- ward. In 1611 he was a joint judge of the knight marshal's court ; and the next year he i was appointed attorney general, and elected a member of the privy council. While lie held the office of attorney general he was engaged in several important causes. He was the pros- ecutor of Oliver St. John, of Owen and Talbot, and of the old clergyman Peacham, who was indicted for the treason contained in a sermon which was never preached. It is said that he was examined in the Tower under torture, and that Bacon was present assisting at the opera- tion. It is a curious fact that the founder of modern philosophy should have consented to the barbarous system of extorting evidence by the rack. A more important trial was that of the earl and countess of Somerset and their accomplices for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the conduct of which he earned the highest distinction. The pecuniary embar- rassments under which he once suffered were of course now at an end. His professional practice was large ; the office of attorney gen- eral was worth 6,000 per annum ; as registrar of the star chamber he was entitled to 1,600 per annum; his father's seat at Gorhambury had passed to him in consequence of the death of his brother ; and he was also possessed of a considerable estate in Hertfordshire, besides the fortune acquired through his wife. In 1616 Bacon relinquished the bar, but retained his chamber practice. In the spring of the following year the lord chancellor, Ellesmere, resigned the seals, which were handed over to Bacon, with the title of lord keeper. In Jan- uary, 1618, he was created lord high chancel- lor, and the same year was raised to the peer- age as baron of Verulam. His higher title of Viscount St. Albans was not conferred upon him till 1621. Bacon entered upon his judicial duties with elaborate pomp, and delivered a long and eloquent speech in the presence of the judges and the nobility. The Novum Or- ffftnum, the great restoration of the sciences, which had been the burden of the thoughts of his life, was first printed in October, 1620. Twelve times it had been copied and revised before it assumed the shape in which it was committed to posterity. The full title of Ba- con's work was the Novum Organum sine In- dicia Vera de Interpretation Natures, et Regno ffominis, and the title sums up its principal object. He proposed to replace the scholastic logic represented in the Organon of Aristotle by a new organon, in which the true and solid principle of investigating nature should sup- plant the old principle of mere verbal dialec- tics, and lead to "fruit " in the shape of genu- ine knowledge. It was written in Latin, be- cause it was addressed especially to the learned men of Europe, and in axioms, or short pithj sentences, that it might strike upon their minds by its repetitions, and be easily engraved upon the memory. It is yet, however, but a part of a larger work of that Iwtauratio Magna in which he designed to rehabilitate not only the methods of science, but science itself, and of which the De Augmentis was an opening
