courtier that the office was imposed upon him. His professional and parliamentary life at the same time showed how strong was in him the desire of men’s good opinion. After all allowance is made, I think it is clear that Bacon’s love of approbation was excessive; and if so, when once a courtier, he would be more at the mercy of the royal notions and moods than a wise man should be. As a general rule the praisers of other men are vain men: they unconsciously seek a quid pro quo; and even in an age when adulation of Sovereigns was a custom which no one dreamed of breaking through, and when the most laborious flatterer was considered the most accomplished man, a man, philosopher or other, who could stake so much as Bacon did on the favour of the King must have been weak in the quality of self-respect.
The real shock to the reader of our time is in the correspondence with the King about the new book; and in Bacon’s despair under the royal displeasure. The patronising tone of the pedant to the philosopher, and the intimation that the one had as little spare time to read the book as the other to write it, and the promise to commend where commendation was deserved, and the grand condescension at the last of informing the author that the King had had some of the very same ideas as himself, would be comic if we did not remember who it was that felt, or pretended to feel, delighted at this kind and degree of royal favour. We ask ourselves what concern kings, as kings, could have with such a book, and how it could matter to anybody what they thought of it. Some men, more likely to be able to judge of a work on the principles of philosophy than any Sovereign (because Sovereigns have another track to pursue), called the book a very fair production for a Lord Chancellor—showy rather than deep; but a few, a very few, saw something of its import and its scope: and among those few was one who said, “My conceit of his person was never increased towards him by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper in himself, and in that he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages.” While the King patted the philosopher on the back, and told him he had been making good use of his time, and that their ideas jumped, Ben Jonson looked up to him with a reverence as manly as it was profound.
Late researches, and a thorough good use of the materials so turned up, have materially changed for the better the aspect of Bacon’s character and conduct. The grossest charges of treachery and venality are questioned, and the perplexity of reconciling so much philosophy with so much vice may disappear: but there is quite enough left that is painful in the records of Bacon’s abject self-abasement before the King, and the King’s servants, and in his ecstacy of gratitude when his punishment was remitted. The passage in his Memorial, applying certain clauses in the Litany to his relations with the King, is too like profaneness to suit our time: but, towards the close, there is a little paragraph which betokens a more healthy state of feeling. He had been urging the King to employ him again; but he was now evidently aware that there was such a thing as life outside “the light of his countenance,” as he called the King’s favour. “I am like ground fresh,” he says. “If I be left to myself, I will grow and bear natural philosophy: but if the King will plough me up again, and sow me on, I hope to give him some yield.”
At last, he found how little the Court was necessary to him in any way. During his years of wealth and official power, he had been the slave of the great above him, and of the mean below him. His servants had preyed upon his substance and his good name. When they rose on his entrance, after his disgrace, he said, “Sit down, my masters; your rise has been my fall!” Once free, he lifted up his head, and found himself with the universe spread about him, and himself at liberty to study it. That study was so reviving, so consoling, so thoroughly congenial to his whole nature, that it is impossible to help regretting that he had not been born and reared far from courtly regions, and under no enticement to seek anything for himself but access to the foundations of philosophy. What might he not have been, and done, if he had never seen the face of Queen or King, except on occasions of royal visits to the University! He found peace at last, however, and learned in his last years how little the philosopher had to do with the favour of kings. There is, in his latest letters and papers, a tone of philosophical cheerfulness very consoling to posterity.
Twenty years after his death, Leibnitz was born. He, too, sought the favour of princes: and there was less excuse for him, from the circumstances of his birth and rearing. He also sacrificed philosophy to courtly objects, to an extent never chargeable against Bacon. Bacon had his profession to occupy him, and the statesmanship to which his profession led. Leibnitz was always the student; and philosophical pursuits should have constituted the business and the pleasure of his life. Unhappily his fancy, which was vivid and excitable, was early turned in the direction in which he found more fret and worry than ease and honour. We like to dwell on the image of the student lad of eighteen, passing the long summer day, from sunrise till dark, in a wood, trying to reconcile the systems of Aristotle and Plato; and we as thoroughly dislike the image of the same student, in the vigour of his years and faculties, spending his precious days in making out genealogies for royal patrons, and drawing out a claim for the crown of Poland in the form of a mathematical demonstration. If, as he says, he had seen the first six books of Euclid reduced into formal syllogisms, by two foolish logicians, he, in his turn, shows us the spectacle of a political question crushed into a mathematical form, and a historical inquiry drowned in a study of chaos, by a philosopher fitted into a wrong place. His singular activity and industry caused him to render great services to the interests of Thought; but his powers were for the most part wasted on work which any diligent man could have done as well.
Leibnitz was the son of a professor of jurisprudence at Leipsic; but his father died when the boy was only six years old. At school, and at college, his mind was intensely active; and he