160 STATESMEN AND SAGES end gift-giving to judges. His formal confession to Parliament is a justification of every act complained of, for he relieves it, while acknowledging it, of those details which imply bribery. He devoted the last five years of his life to putting forth the greatest works ever published t>y man ; including the first complete edition of the so-called Shakespeare plays. Fortunate is it for the world that he was driven from the task of settling petty squabbles about the trash of the time, listening to " weary lawyers with endless tongues ; " adjudicating questions of pounds, shillings, and pence between litigants whose very names have disappeared ; and was ship- wrecked by the stress of the great storm that struck him, like Prospero, on an island of solicitude, with books that "he prized above his dukedom," to perform labors in which all mankind will be interested even to the consummation of civil- ization on earth. His patience, his gentleness, his forbearance were saint-like ; still in his right hand he carried "gentle peace to silence envious tongues." His appearance, we are told, struck all men who beheld him with a great sense of awe. Those who were most closely associated with him loved him most dearly. His purposes were Godlike. They were " the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's es- tate." Macaulay says of Bacon's experimental philosophy : " It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has guided the thunderbolt in- nocuously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the power of human muscle ; it has accelerated motion ; it has annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business ; it has enabled men to descend to the depths of the sea ; to soar into the air ; to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth ; to traverse the land with cars which whirl along without horses ; and the ocean with ships which sail against the wind." In other words, the brain of this tremendous, this incomprehensible, this com- plex man, lies at the base of all our literature and of all our modern progress and civilization. The world is hardly big enough for his fame, and the praises of man- kind cannot fill the measure of his greatness.
