Bacon must be prepared for a demand on the most ftrenuous intellectual effort of which he is capable if he would scale the heights, or plumb the depths, or explore the vaft reaches of the thinking herein set before him. Unless there are meditative pauses for reflection and maftery, much will be loft. Another diftinctive characteristic is the inestimably perfect literary workmanship. Here is no mere artifan of words, but an artist of cunningeft faculty. This is obfervable in even the bits of hiftorical narrative that will be found in our little book, and may well read a lesson to present-day flatternness and flovenliness of English. Thefe two elements unite to lift a reader up; for there is no fpeaking down to him in all the pages of Bacon if he be unwilling to be lifted up.

I bave of fet purpose chofen a confiderable number of the selections from the hiftorical and narrative writings of Bacon, e.g., I could not hesitate to give in full his judgment and eftimate of Queen Elizabeth. The judgment and estimate of fuch a man of Such a woman is what ought to be known univerfally as corrective of jaundiced or fhallow mis-estimates that are current. Nor are his judgments and eftimates of the

ancients of lefler value, e.g., it is inftructive to weigh the things that Bacon felects in proof of the furpaffing greatness of Alexander the Great-not mere exploits or victories, but criteria of his intellect. Similarly, even minor names grow lustrous in his marvellous phrafing-much as a poor Scrap of broken glass under the fun's rays Sparkles on the brown earth as though it were a diamond. I do not think that a fingle quotation in this flender book is without diftinction of fome Baconian kind. Even the briefeft has been deliberatively chofen.

6

I have not drawn very largely on the immortal Ellays. Whoever has any books at all, or at least anything of Bacon, has thefe Elays. I the more readily, therefore, limited myself to three complete Efays and a few pearls,' not ' at random ftrung?' The CONFESSION OF FAITH I felt must go in unmutilated at all hazards.

Our extracts are mainly from what his ultimate editor, James Spedding, has defignated his Literary Works? His PHILOSOPHICAL and LEGAL writings had to be almost wholly shut out for the present. Nevertheless space has been made for a few choice things from them. It is disappointing

that in relation to his legal' treatifes and advices' his plan' and 'platform' of service to be rendered by the profeffion remain unfulfilled. For myself, his legal writings, as much as his philofophical, reveal the wonder of riches of his mind. Ceke was a mere pettifogger befide him, and knew it. So, too, his great Speeches'-wherein he fo won the praise of rare Ben'—and his abundant' Letters' have been reluctantly all but put afide. The reader of his flightest Letter who takes time to ponder will be ftruck and rewarded by pondering the thought and the fineness of workmanship lavished on it. Specially let the charming Epiftles-dedicatory be studied.

My text has been throughout Spedding, Ellis and Heath's monumental edition of the Works.

It Seems expedient to remind readers that the following book removed finally from Bacon the long mis-affigned and mifunderstood and malignantly used Chriftian Paradoxes' Lord Bacon not the Author of

"The Chriftian Paradoxes," being a reprint of "Memorials of Godliness and Christianity," by Herbert Palmer, B.D., with Introduction, Memoir and Notes,' 1865 (pp. viii., 126). Finally, I cannot

help expreffing my fenfe of the difcredit due to our literature by the continuous quotation of Pope's perverfe couplet on the great if human Chancellor, as though it were true, whereas it was out and out falfe. The wrong is the more inexcufable inafmuch as Spence's Anecdotes' revealed that Pope did not believe his own couplet; only it was too fmart and good a thing to be fuppreffed. May our Baconiana fend fome elect fouls to his entire Works!

ALEXANDER B. GROSART.