BACON 205 final. Once afterward he was summoned to attend parliament ; but he never recovered his standing, and he spent the remainder of his days in scientific studies, and among the few friends whom adversity had left him. His "History of Henry VII.," '"Apophthegms," some works on natural history, and a new and enlarged edition of the "Essays" (1625), | were all that he published after his fall. ; The imputations on his honor were doubt- less exaggerated by the prejudices of the day, but his own confessions force us to believe that they were well founded, or else that he, in base subserviency to the court, subscribed himself a liar. Mr. Basil Montagu, in his life of Bacon, adopts the latter alternative, and argues against his corruption in favor of his weakness. The practice of receiving gifts was an habitual one; and Bacon probably spoke the truth when he averred that he had been the justest chancellor for many years. He died, saying in his will that "my name and memory I leave to foreign nations and to my i own countrymen, after some time be passed j over." Lord Bacon had a capacity no less j adapted to grapple with the principles of legal science than to illustrate other departments of knowledge. He lived, however, at a time when the English law consisted mostly of bar- ren precedents, and judges were adverse to any reasoning that had not some analogy to cases already decided. The earliest of his writings on law, which he entitled " Elements of the Common Law of England," consisting of two treatises on " Maxims of the Law and the other Uses of the Law," appears to have been writ- ten in 1596. It was dedicated to Queen Eliza- beth, but he elicited no encouragement to pro- ceed in the work. The "Maxims" exhibit the same nice discrimination of analogies that was afterward shown in his popular treatise on the "Colors of Good and Evil." Bacon says in the preface that he had collected 300 maxims, but that he thought best first to publish some few, that he might from other men's opinions either receive approbation in his course, or advice for the altering of those which remain. He received neither. The " Maxims " expounded were but 24 in number, and all the residue were by this cold reception lost to the world. Few cases i are cited from the books, for which he gives j the reason that it will appear to those who are learned in the laws that his instances "are mostly judged cases, or sustained by similitude of reason, but that in some cases he intended to weigh down authorities by evidence of reason, and therein rather to correct the law than either to soothe a received error, or by un- profitable subtlety, which corrnpteth the sense of the law, to reconcile contrarieties." It is a common remark that he was not equal to some others, particularly Sir Edward Coke, in ap- plying and reasoning from cases, but it is entire- ly untrue if by that be meant less discrimination of adjudged cases. On the contrary, no man excelled him in exact judgment of authorities; but often he found these authorities unsupport- ed by just principles, or so conflicting that the rule was to be sought from reasoning, inde- pendent of reported cases. Sixteen years later, when he had become attorney general, he again referred to this subject in " A Proposal for Amending the Laws of England," a tract ad- dressed to King James, in which he speaks of the method of expounding the laws upon the plan which he had attempted in his early trea- tises, as certain to be productive of great ad- vantage, and professes his willingness to resume his labors if desired by the king to do so. The king, however, did not accept the proposal. During the five years that he survived his im- peachment and removal from office, Bacon again recurred to this favorite project, or rather he seems never to have laid it aside. A treatise on universal justice, consisting of 97 aphorisms, is contained in the De Augmentis, published during that period, which, he says, he wishes " to serve as a specimen of that digest which we propose and have in hand." The digest referred to is explained in an offer addressed to the king about that time. The plan he had in view was somewhat different from that which he had formerly proposed. It was to arrange into some order all the laws, whether statute or common law. The offer met with the same fate as the preceding one. Bacon says, in a letter to Bishop Andrews: "I had a purpose to make a particular digest or recom- pilement of the laws of mine own nation ; yet because it is a work of assistance and that which I cannot master by my own forces and pen, I have laid it aside." Of his other law writings, the "Readings on the Statute of Uses " is the most elaborate. It has now no practical value, in consequence of the change in the laws wrought by time, but it is esteemed by those who have examined it critically a very profound treatise. Bacon's life has been written by the Rev. William Rawley, who was his secretary and chaplain (London, 1658); by W. Dugdale, in the " Baconiana " of Thomas Tenison (1679); by Robert Stephens (1734); by David Mallet, at the head of an edition of his works (1740); by M. de Vauzelles (Paris, 1833); and by William Hepworth Dixon, " Personal History of Lord Bacon " (London, 1859). The best and most complete edition of his works is that of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (London, 1857). Basil Montagu's edition (1825 -'34) was the occasion of Macaulay's famous essay on Lord Bacon. Bacon, sa vie et son influence, by Remusat (Paris, 1857), is a valu- able work. An important monograph on Lord Bacon, entitled Franz Bacon von Verulam, by Kuno Fischer, was published in Leipsic in 1856. BACON, John, an English sculptor, born at South wark, Nov. 24, 1740, died Aug. 7, 1799. He was apprenticed at an early age to a porcelain manufacturer, in whose employment he learned the art of painting on china, i and also of making ornamental figures in that ! material. At the age of 18 he sent a small
