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LORD BACON:

HIS LIFE AND WORKS.

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FOR my burial,' said lord Bacon,-these are the words of his last will,- For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans: there was my Mother buried, and it is the parish-church of my manor-house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of Old Verulam. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages.'

A legacy so splendid the world never before received. It is the name of one who

was, emphatically, the minister and inter

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preter of Nature,-the chosen instrument for communicating to mankind that knowledge which an awful Providence, whose ways are not our ways, had hitherto concealed from the sight of man. It is the memory of one who will never be forgotten whilst eloquence can be felt, philosophy understood, or wisdom revered.

To learn what was the life of so illustrious a character, to contemplate such unexampled excellence, cannot but tend, by exalting our conceptions of our own nature, to impart an unwonted elevation to our thoughts, to enlarge and ennoble our views; and it will, we trust, induce such of our readers as are not conversant with lord Bacon's works, no longer to neglect those rich treasures of wisdom which he gathered, not for his own glory, but the good of men.

FRANCIS BACON was born on the 22nd January, 156, at York House, in the Strand. He was the youngest son of sir

Nicholas Bacon,* of whom it was said by Queen Elizabeth, 'My lord Keeper's soul is well lodged.' His mother, one of the daughters of sir Anthony Cook, tutor to king Edward VI., was as learned as she was virtuous, having been accustomed, from her youth, to those robust studies which, without impairing the graces of womanhood, impart a lasting strength and lustre to the mind. It was usual for her father, when he returned in the evening from instructing his royal pupil, to gather his daughters around him, and instil into them those lessons which, in the morning, he had taught the Prince. They were all skilled in the learned languages; and Ann, the mother of Bacon, besides other literary productions, made an elegant version, in English, of Bishop

Camden thus characterises sir Nicholas :-' A man exceeding gross-bodied, sharp-witted, of singular wisdom, rare eloquence, excellent memory, and a pillar, as it were, of the Privy Council.'-History of Elizabeth, p. 235.

Jewel's famous Apology, which was so much esteemed by Archbishop Parker, that, by his special order, it was published for com

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Springing from such a stock, and trained up by parents so excellent, it need excite no wonder, that Bacon, in the very spring-time of his life, put forth the buds of promise, and attracted, when a child, the attention of the Queen. She delighted to prove him with questions, which he answered with such ability and gravity, that Elizabeth would often playfully call him her young lord Keeper. Upon the Queen's asking him how old he was, he readily answered, 'two years younger than your majesty's happy reign.'+

* Strype's Annals of Elizabeth, c. 25, p. 251. There appear to have been two editions by lady Bacon; one published in 1562, two years after the birth of her youngest son, Francis, and the other in 1564.

Rawley's Life of Bacon, prefixed to the Resuscitatio. His recent biographer states, (but without re

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