On opening his will, his wish to be buried at St. Albans thus appears: "For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's church, near St. Albans: there was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of Old Verulam."
Of his funeral no account can be found, nor is there any trace of the site of the house where he died.
He is buried in the same grave with his mother, in St. Michael's church.
On his monument he is represented sitting in contemplation, his hand supporting his head.
franciscus bacon. baro de verula. sti: albni: vicms:
SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS.
SCIENTIARUM LUMEN. FACUNDIÆ LEX.
SIC SEDEBAT:
QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIÆ
ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET
NATURÆ DECRETUM EXPLEVIT
COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR.
ANo DNI MDCCVI
ÆTATs LXVI
TANTI VIRI
MEM.
THOMAS MEAUTYS
SUPERSTITIS CULTOR
DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR
H P
This monument, erected by his faithful secretary, has transmitted to posterity the image of his person; and, though no statue could represent his mind, his attitude of deep and tranquil thought cannot be seen without emotion.
No sculptured form gives the lineaments of Sir Thomas Meautys. A plain stone records the fact, that he lies at his master's feet. Much time will not pass away before the few letters which may now be seen upon his grave will be effaced. His monument will be found in the veneration of after times, in the remembrance of his grateful adherence to the fallen fortunes of his master, "that he loved and admired him in life, and honoured him when dead."
CONCLUSION.
In his analysis of human nature, Bacon considers first the general properties of man, and then the peculiar properties of his body and of his mind. This mode may be adopted in reviewing his life.
He was of a temperament of the most delicate sensibility: so excitable, as to be affected by the slightest alterations in the atmosphere. It is probable that the temperament of genius may much depend upon such pressibility, and that to this cause the excellences and failures of Bacon may frequently be traced. His health was always delicate, and, to use his own expression, he was all his life puddering with physic.
He was of a middle stature, and well proportioned; his features were handsome and expressive, and his countenance, until it was injured by politics and worldly warfare, singularly placid. There is a portrait of him when he was only eighteen now extant, on which the artist has recorded his despair of doing justice to his subject by the inscription "Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem." His portraits differ beyond what may be considered a fair allowance for the varying skill of the artist, or the natural changes which time wrought upon his person; but none of them contradict the description given by one who knew him well, "that he had a spacious forehead and piercing eye, looking upward as a soul in sublime contemplation, a countenance worthy of one who was to set free captive philosophy."
His life of mind was never exceeded, perhaps never equalled. When a child,
"No childish play to him was pleasing."
While his companions were diverting themselves in the park, he was occupied in meditating upon the causes of the echoes and the nature of imagination. In after life he was a master of the science of harmony, and the laws of imagination he studied with peculiar care, and well understood. The same penetration he extended to colours, and to the heavenly bodies, and predicted the modes by which their laws would be discovered, and which, after the lapse of a century, were so beautifully elucidated by Newton.
The extent of his views was immense. He stood on a cliff, and surveyed the whole of nature. His vigilant observation of what we, in common parlance, call trifles, was, perhaps, more extraordinary: scarcely a pebble on the shore escaped his notice. It is thus that genius is, from its life of mind, attentive to all things, and, from seeing real union in the apparent discrepancies of nature, deduces general truths from particular instances.
His powers were varied and in great perfection. His senses were exquisitely acute, and he used them to dissipate illusions, by "holding firm to the works of God and to the sense, which is God's lamp, Lucerna Dei, spiraculum hominis."
His imagination was fruitful and vivid; but he understood its laws, and governed it with absolute sway. He used it as a philosopher. It never had precedence in his mind, but followed in the train of his reason. With her hues, her forms, and the spirit of her forms, he clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
He was careful in improving the excellences, and diminishing the defects of his understanding, whether from inability at particular times to acquire knowledge, or inability to acquire particular sorts of knowledge.
