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HIS GREAT WORK.

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choose a point of self-humiliation by the side of the penitent thief.

His work on the revolution of the celestial bodies was passing through the press at the time of his fatal illness in 1543, when he had completed his seventieth year, and was brought to him just before he breathed his last; and thus, as has been beautifully expressed, he was "made to touch the first printed copy of his book when the sense of touch was gone, seeing it only as a dim object through the deepening dusk."1

He is buried under a flat stone in one of the side aisles of his own cathedral at Frauenburg. On his monument is painted a half-length portrait, pale, thin, aged, but with an expression of countenance intelligent and pleasant. His hair and eyes are black; he is habited as a priest; his hands are joined in prayer; before him is a crucifix; at his feet a skull, and behind him are a globe and a pair of compasses. His devotion, his deadness to the world, and his love of science are thus aptly symbolized.

Ecclesiastical distinctions were beautifully merged in the publication of the volume already mentioned. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic. The editor was no other than Andrias Osiander, the renowned German Protestant, present at the Diet of Augsburg, and one of the early coadjutors of Martin Luther, though in some important respects he afterwards diverged from his theological opinions. The preface was written by Osiander in the name of Copernicus, not by Copernicus himself, as is sometimes supposed; yet probably it contains matter taken from the author's Mss. Em

1 Daniel Deronda, iii. p. 267.

phasis is there given to the idea that hypotheses are allowable for the explanation of nature without affirming that they actually correspond with known facts. "It is not necessary that hypotheses should be true or even probable; it is sufficient that they lead to results of calculation which agree with observations." With this caution, lest the book should be open to accusations of heresy, and with the imprimatur of a cardinal, as well as with a dedication to the pope, there was associated on the title-page a most curious puff and a recommendation to purchase, perhaps unparalleled. The following is a translation:

"Six books of Nicholas Copernicus, of Thorn, concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. You have in this volume, recently prepared and edited, studious reader, the motion of the stars, fixed and erratic, according to ancient and modern observation, and illustrated by new and admirable hypotheses. You have also convenient tables by which you may calculate most easily. Therefore buy, read, and improve. Let no one ignorant of geometry open the book."1

1 The work is a small folio, and is divided into six books, prefaced by an address to the reader on the hypotheses propounded in the work; a kind of imprimatur by Cardinal Schonbergius, and a preface or dedication to Pope Paul III. The last is entitled Præfatio Authoris, though written by Osiander. The volume abounds in diagrams and mathematical calculations. The copy used in this sketch is in Dr. Williams's Library.

THE

FRANCIS BACON.

1561-1626.

[HE pre-eminent position in the annals of science occupied by LORD BACON renders it necessary that we should study the relation in which he stands to the subject of this volume. As philosophy was one main business of his life, and as his views of religion are plainly expressed in his works, he affords a signal example bearing on our theme; in that respect only does he come within the range of our notice. To attempt here a memoir of Bacon, under the different aspects which his biography should assume, is out of the question. As a lawyer his history must be judicial; as a statesman it must be political; as a man of high rank and vast power he requires to be socially considered in relation to the times when he lived, and the men amongst whom he moved; and his moral character, one is sorry to say, would require a deep and diversified method of inquiry, demanding examination of evidence, and a careful application of acknowledged rules of conduct to a special and extraordinary case.

A summary of the facts of Bacon's story is given in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors,1 in a

1 Vol. iii. p. 1.

manner so admirable and eloquent as to form one of the finest passages to be found in our biographical literature; it may be fitly introduced as a preface to our limited review.

"He has often been eulogised and vituperated; there have been admirable expositions of his philosophy and criticisms on his writings; we have very lively sketches of some of his more striking actions; and we are dazzled by brilliant contrasts between his good and bad qualities, and between the vicissitudes of prosperous and adverse fortunes which he experienced. But no writer has yet presented him to us familiarly and naturally from boyhood to old ageshown us how his character was formed and developed -explained his motives and feelings at the different stages of his eventful career; or made us acquainted with him as if we had lived with him, and had actually seen him taught his alphabet by his mother; patted on the head by Queen Elizabeth; mocking the worshippers of Aristotle at Cambridge; catching the first glimpses of his great discoveries, and yet uncertain whether the light was from heaven; associating with the learned and the gay at the court of France; devoting himself to Bracton and the Year Books in Gray's Inn; throwing aside the musty folios of the law to write a moral essay, to make an experiment in natural philosophy, or to detect the fallacies which had hitherto obstructed the progress of useful truth, contented for a time with taking all knowledge for his province;' roused from these speculations by the strings of vulgar ambition; plying all the arts of flattery to gain official advancement by royal and courtly favour; entering the House of Commons, and displaying

HIS EVENTFUL LIFE.

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powers of oratory of which he had been unconscious; being seduced by the love of popular applause, for a brief space becoming a patriot; making amends by defending all the worst excesses of prerogative; publishing to the world lucubrations on morals which show the nicest perceptions of what is honourable and beautiful as well as prudent in the conduct of life; yet, the son of a Lord Keeper, the nephew of the prime minister, a queen's counsel, with the first practice at the bar, arrested for debt, and languishing in a sponging-house, tired with vain solicitations of his own kindred for promotion, joining the party of their opponents, and after experiencing the most generous kindness from the young and chivalrous head of it, assisting to bring him to the scaffold, and to blacken his memory; seeking by a mercenary marriage to repair his broken fortunes; on the accession of a new sovereign, offering up the most servile adulation to a pedant whom he utterly despised; infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down, with 230 others, to receive the honour of knighthood; truckling to a worthless favourite with the most slavish subserviency, that he might be appointed a law officer of the crown; then giving the most admirable advice for the compilation and emendation of the laws of England, and helping to inflict torture on a poor parson, whom he wished to hang as a traitor for writing an unpublished and unpreached sermon; attracting the notice of all Europe by his philosophical works, which established a new era in the mode of investigating the phenomena both of matter and mind; basely intriguing in the meanwhile for further promotion, and writing secret letters to his sovereign to disparage his rivals; riding

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