itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey (between London and Highgate,) I was taken with such a fit of casting, as I know not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your house-keeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it.

'I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than my own; but by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen.'*

* Bacon's Works, vol. 12, p. 274.

X

In a few days after dictating this letter, lord Bacon breathed his last. 'He died,' says Dr. Rawley-who boasted of having been his first and last chaplain' on the ninth day of April, in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixtysixth year of his age, at the earl of Arundell's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before, God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold,. whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died of suffocation.'

From this account it appears, that the malady which so rapidly brought Bacon to the grave, was an inflammation of the air-cells of the lungs, now called bronchitis.' This disease (the pathology of which was then not understood,) most commonly occasions the death of old persons. In cases of this

sort, the proximate cause of death is, that the blood ceases to be either decarbonised or oxyginated, owing to the air-cells being, as it were, plastered over with a mucous, secreted by the membrane lining them, and which the debilitated patient is unable to expectorate.

He was buried near his mother in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans, according to his own express desire; and a monument of white marble, executed by an Italian artist, representing him in full portraiture, in his accustomed attitude of contemplation, with an inscription composed by şir Henry Wotton, was erected to his memory by his tried friend and secretary, sir Thomas Meautys,* who faithfully adhered to him through all his misfortunes; and, when dead, was laid at his master's feet.

* A beautiful engraving of St. Michael's Church and of Bacon's monument, is given in Mr. Montagu's edition of his works.

By his will, Bacon directed, that after his debts and legacies had been fully satisfied, the surplus should be laid out in the purchase of so much land of inheritance, as would be sufficient for the purpose of erecting and endowing two lectureships in natural philosophy and the sciences connected therewith, in either of the Universities, to be established by the advice of the bishops of Lincoln and Coventry. He had before imparted his intention to the bishop of Lincoln, in December, 1625, who highly approved of the plan, calling it a great and noble foundation, and a foot that would teach the age to come, to guess, in part, at the greatness of that Herculean mind which gave it existence.'* Lord Bacon's estate, however, was too much encumbered to realize so noble a design.

As to his person, concerning which the reader will naturally feel some curiosity, he

* Bacon's Works, vol. 15, p. 43.

is described by those who knew him well,* as of a middling stature; he had a spacious forehead, and piercing eye of a delicate, lively, hazel colour, which Dr. Harvey, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood, compared to the bright, beautiful eye of a viper; his countenance was indented, as if with age, before he was old; his presence was grave and comely.

He was noted for his lively wit and a marvellously strong and active memory. One of his contemporaries observes, † that his most casual talk deserved to be written, adding (as an illustration of his various knowledge) that he had heard him entertain a country lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and dogs, and at another time out-cant a

London surgeon. He delighted, whilst

meditating, to have music in the next room;

* Wilson's Life and Reign of James, in Bp. Kennet's Hist. vol. 2, p. 736; Aubrey, vol. 2, p. 226; Evelyn on Medals, p. 340.

+ Osborn's Works, p. 137, (tenth edit.)