INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth, was born in London on January 22, 1561. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of twelve, and in 1576 he interrupted the law studies he had begun in that year, to go to France in the train of the English Ambassador, Sir Amyas Paulet. He was called home in 1579 by the death of his father; and, having been left with but a small income, he resumed the study of law, and became a barrister in 1582. Two years later he entered the House of Commons, and began to take an active part in politics.
From an early age Bacon had been interested in science, and it was in the pursuit of scientific truth that his heart lay. He conceived, however, that for the achievement of the great results at which he aimed, money and prestige were necessary; and he worked hard for both. He was a candidate for several offices of state during Elizabeth's reign, but gained no substantial promotion, and was often in hard straits for money. He received aid from influential patrons, notably the Earl of Essex; and his desertion of this nobleman, with the part he took in his prosecution for treason, is regarded as one of the chief blots on his personal record.
Shortly after the accession of James I, Bacon was knighted; in 1606 he married the daughter of an alderman; and in the following year he received the appointment of Solicitor-General, the first important step in the career which culminated in the Lord Chancellorship in 1618. In the latter year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam, and in 1621 he became Viscount St. Albans. He was now at the summit of his public career; but within four months the crash came, and he was convicted of bribery, and sentenced by the House of Lords to the loss of all his offices, to imprisonment, and to the payment of a large fine. He died in retirement on April 9, 1626, leaving no children.
Bacon's most important writings in science and philosophy are parts of a vast work which he left unfinished, his "Magna Instauratio." The first part of this, the "De Augmentis," is an enlargement in Latin of his book on "The Advancement of
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