Friday, 6 April, 1327, it has been recently attempted to be shown is a forgery. By calculation, it appears that the 6 April, 1327, fell on a Monday! The Good Friday seems to have been a blunder of the manufacturer of the note. He was entrapped by reading the second sonnet, as it appears in the printed editions! Era il giorno ch' al sol si scolorano Per la pietà del suo fattore i rai. 'It was on the day when the rays of the sun were obscur- Era il giorno ch' al sol di color raro 'It was on the day that I was captivated, devotion for its The first meeting, according to the Abbé Costaing, was not in a church, but in a meadow-as appears by the 91st sonnet. The Laura of Sade, was not the Laura of Petrarch; but Laura de Baux, unmarried, and who died young, residing in the vicinity of Vaucluse. Petrarch had often viewed her from his own window, and often enjoyed her society amidst her family.* If the Abbé Costaing's discovery be confirmed, the good name of Petrarch is freed from the idle romantic passion for a married woman. would be curious if the famous story of the first meeting with Laura in the church of St Clare originated in the blunder of the forgerer's misconception of a passage which was incorrectly printed, as appears by existing manuscripts! It Literary forgeries have been introduced into bibliography; dates have been altered; fictitious titles affixed; and books have been reprinted, either to leave out, or to interpolate whole passages! I forbear entering minutely into this part of the history of literary forgery, for this article has already grown voluminous. When we discover, how ever, that one of the most magnificent of amateurs, and one of the most critical of bibliographers, were concerned in a forgery of this nature, it may be useful to spread an alarm among collectors. The duke de la Valliere, and the Abbé de St Leger, once concerted together to supply the eager purchaser of literary rarities with a copy of De Tribus Impostoribus, a book, by the date, pretended to have been printed in 1598, though, probably, a modern forgery of 1698. The title of such a work had long existed by rumour, but never was a copy seen by man! Works printed with this title have all been proved to be modern fabrications. A copy, however, of the introuvable original was sold at the Duke de la Valliere's sale! The history of this volume is curious. The Duke and the abbé having manufactured a text, had it printed in the old Gothic character, under the title De Tribus Impostoribus. They proposed to put the great bibliopolist, De Bure, in good humour, whose agency would sanction the imposture. They were afterwards to dole out copies at twenty-five louis each, which would have been a reasonable price for a book which no one ever saw! They invited De Bure to dinner, flattered and cajoled him, and, as they imagined, at a moment they had wound him up to their pitch, they exhibited their manufacture; the keen eyed-glance of the renowned cataloguer of the Bibliographic Instructive' instantly shot like lightning over it, and, like lightning destroyed the whole edition. He not only discovered the forgery, but reprobated it! He refused his sanction; and the forging duke and abbé, in confusion, suppressed the livre introuvable; but they owed a grudge to the honest bibliographer, and attempted to write down the work whence the de Bures derive their fame. Among the extraordinary literary impostors of our age, I draw this information from a little new year's gift,' which my learned friend, the Rev. S. Weston, presented to his friends in 1822, entitled, A visit to Vaucluse,' accompanied by a Supplement.' He derives his account apparently from a curious publication of L'Abbé Costaing de Pusigner d'Avignon, which I with other inquirers have not been able to procure, but which it is absolutely necessary to examine, before we can decide on the very curious but unsatisfactory accounts we have hitherto possessed of the Laura of Petrarch. if we except Lauder, who, detected by the Ithuriel pen of Bishop Douglas, lived to make his public recantation of his audacious forgeries, and Chatterton, who has buried his inexplicable story in his own grave; a tale, which seems but half told; we must place a man well known in the literary world under the assumed name of George Palmanaazaar. He composed his autobiography as the penance of contrition, not to be published till he was no more, when all human motives had ceased which might cause his veracity to be suspected. The life is tedious; but I have curiously traced the progress of the mind in an ingenious imposture, which is worth preservation. The present literary forgery consisted of personating a converted islander of Formosa; a place then little known, but by the reports of the Jesuits, and constructing a language and history of a new people, and a new religion, entirely of his own invention! This man was evidently a native of the south of France; educated in some provincial college of the Jesuits, where he had heard much of their discoveries of Japan; he had looked over their maps, and listened to their comments. He forgot the manner in which the Japanese wrote; but supposed, like orientalists, they wrote from the right to the left, which he found difficult to manage. He set about excogitating an alphabet; but actually forgot to give names to his letters, which afterwards baffled him before literary men. He fell into gross blunders; having inadvertently af firmed that the Formosans sacrificed eighteen thousand number. male infants annually, he persisted in not lessening the It was proved to be an impossibility in so small an island, without occasioning a depopulation. He had made it a principle in this imposture never to vary when fearful of detection by those about him. he had once said a thing. All this was projected in haste, He was himself surprised at his facility of invention, bet, a considerable portion of a new language, a grammar, and the progress of his forgery. He had formed an alphareligion! a new division of the year into twenty months, and a new He had accustomed himself to write his language; but being an inexpert writer with the unusual way of writing backwards, he found this so difficult, that he was compelled to change the complicated forms of some of his letters. He now finally quitted his home, assuming the character of a Formosan convert, who had been educated by the Jesuits. He was then in his fifteenth or sixteenth year. To support his new character, he practised some religious mummeries; he was seen worshipping the rising and setting sun. He made a prayer-book, with rude drawgibberish prose and verse, written in his invented charac ings of the sun, moon, and stars, to which he added some ter, muttering or chanting it, as the humour took him. His custom of eating raw flesh seemed to assist his deception more than the sun and moon. In a garrison at Sluys he found a Scotch regiment in the Dutch pay; the commander had the curiosity to invite our Formosan to confer with Innes, the chaplain of the regi ment. This Innes was probably the chief cause of the imposture being carried to the extent it afterwards reached. Innes was a clergyman, but a disgrace to his cloth. As soon as he fixed his eye on our Formosan, he hit on a project; it was nothing less than to make Psalmanaazaar the ladder of his own ambition, and the stepping-place for him to climb up to a good living! Innes was a worthless character; as afterwards appeared, when by an audacious imavowed himself to be the author of an anonymous work, position, Innes practised on the Bishop of London, he entitled 'A modest Inquiry after Moral Virtue' for this he obtained a good living in Essex; the real author, a the work in print, and to pay him the profit of the edition poor Scotch clergyman, obliged him afterwards to disclaim which Innes had made! He lost his character, and retired to the solitude of his living; if not penitent, at least mortified. Such a character was exactly adapted to become the foster-father of imposture. Innes courted the Formosan, and easily won on the adventurer, who had hitherto in vain sought for a patron. Meanwhile no time was lost by Innes to inform the unsuspicious and generous Bishop of London of the prize he possessed-to convert the Formos an was his ostensible pretext; to procure preferment his concealed motive. It is curious enough to observe, that the ardour of conversion died away in Innes, and the most marked neglect of his convert prevailed, while the answer of the bishop was protracted or doubtful. He had at first proposed to our Formosan impostor to procure his dis charge, and convey him to England; this was eagerly consented to by our pliant adventurer. A few Dutch schellings, and fair words, kept him in good humour; but no letter coming from the bishop, there were fewer words, and not a stiver ! This threw a new light over the character of Innes to the inexperienced youth. Psalmanaazaar sagaciously now turned all his attention to some Dutch ministers; Innes grew jealous lest they should pluck the bird which he had already in his net. He resolved to baptize the impostor-which only the more convinced Psalmanaazaar that Innes was one himself; for before this time Innes had practised a stratagem on him, which had clearly shown what sort of a man his Formosan was. The stratagem was this: he made him translate a passage in Cicero, of some length, into his pretended language, and give it him in writing; this was easily done, by Psalmanaazaar's facility of inventing characters. After Innes had made him construe it, he desired to have another version of it on another paper. The proposal, and the arch manner of making it, threw our impostor into the most visible confusion. He had had but a short time to invent the first paper, less to recollect it; so that in the second transcript not above half the words were to be found which existed in the first. Innes assumed a solemn air, and Psalmanaazaar was on the point of throwing himself on his mercy, but Innes did not wish to unmask the impostor; he was rather desirous of fitting the mask closer to his face. Psalmanaazaar, in this hard trial, had given evidence of uncommon facility, combined with a singular memory. Innes cleared his brow, smiled with a friendly look, and only hinted in a distant manner, that he ought to be careful to be better provided for the future! An advice which Psalmanaazaar afterwards bore in mind, and at length produced the forgery of an entire new language; and which, he remarkably observes, 'by what I have tried since I came into England, I cannot say but I could have compassed it with less difficulty than can be conceived had I applied closely to it.' When a version of the catechism was made into the pretended Formosan language, which was submitted to the judgment of the first scholars, it appeared to them grammatical, and was pronounced to be a real language, from the circumstance that it resembled no other! and they could not conceive that a stripling could be the inventor of a language. If the reader is curious to examine this extraordinary imposture, I refer him to that literary curiosity, 'An historical and geographical Description of Formosa, with accounts of the Religion, Customs, and Manners of the Inhabitants, by George Psalmanaazaar, a Native of the said Isle,' 1704; with numerous plates, wretched inventions! of their dress! religious ceremonies! their tabernacle and altars to the sun, the moon, and the ten stars! their architecture! the viceroy's castle a temple! a city house! a countryman's house! and the Formosan alphabet! In his conferences before the Royal Society with a Jesuit just returned from China, the Jesuit had certain strong suspicions that our hero was an impostor. The good father remained obstinate in his own conviction, but could not satisfactorily communicate it to others; and Psalmanaazaar, after politely asking pardon for the expression, complains of the Jesuit that HE lied most impudenth mentitur impudentissime! Dr Mead absurdly insisted Psalmanaazaar was a Dutchman or a German; some thought him a Jesuit in disguise, a tool of the non-jurors; the catholics thought him bribed by the protestants to expose their church; the presbyterians that he was paid to explode their doctrine, and cry up episcopacy! This fabulous history of Formosa seems to have been projected by his artful prompter Innes, who put Varenius into Psalmanaazaar's hands to assist him; trumpeted forth in the domestic and foreign papers on account of this converted Formosan; maddened the booksellers to hurry the author, who was scarcely allowed two months to produce this extraordinary volume: and as the former accounts which the public possessed of this island were full of monstrous absurdities and contradictions, these assisted the present imposture. Our forger resolved not to describe new and surprising things as they had done, but rather studied to clash with them, probably that he might have an opportunity of pretending to correct them. The first edition was immediately sold; the world was more divided than ever in opinion: in a second edition he fixed a vindication!-the unhappy forger got about twenty guineas for an imposture, whose delusions spread far and wide! Some years afterwards Psalmanaazaar was en pre gaged in a minor imposture; one man had persuaded him to father a white composition called the Formosan japan! which was to be sold at a high price! It was curious for its whiteness, but it had its faults. The project failed, and Psalmanaazaar considered the miscarriage of the white Formosan japan as a providential warning to repent of all his impostures of Formosa! Among these literary forgeries may be classed several ingenious ones fabricated for a political purpose. We had certainly numerous ones during our civil wars in the reign of Charles I. This is not the place to continue the conhas been ranked among them, from the ambiguous claim troversy respecting the mysterious Eikon Basiliké, which of Gauden. A recent writer who would probably incline not to leave the monarch were he living, not only his head but the little fame he might obtain by the Verses' said to be written by him at Carisbrooke Castle, would deprive him also of these. Henderson's death-bed recantation is also reckoned among them; and we have a large collection of 'Letters of Sir Henry Martin to his Lady of Delight,' which were certainly the satirical effusions of a wit of that day, but by the price they have obtained, are probably considered as genuine ones, and exhibit an amusing picture of his loose rambling life. There is a ludicrous speech of the strange Earl of Pembroke, which, was forged by the inimitable Butler, and Sir John Firkenhead, a great humorist and wit, had a busy pen in these spurious letters and speeches. OF LITERARY FILCHERS. An honest historian at times will have to inflict severe strokes on his favourites. This has fallen to my lot, for in the course of my researches, I have to record that we have both forgers and purloiners, as well as other more obvious impostors, in the republic of letters! The present article descends to relate anecdotes of some contrivances to possess our literary curiosities by other means than by purchase; and the only apology which can be alleged for the splendida peccata, as St Austin calls the vir tues of the heathens, of the present innocent criminals, is their excessive passion for literature, and otherwise the respectability of their names. According to Grose's 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, we have had celebrated collectors, both in the learned and vulgar idioms. But one of them, who had some reasons too to be tender on this point, distinguishes this mode of completing his collections, not by book-stealing, but by book-coveting. On some occasions, in mercy, we must allow of softening names. Were not the Spartans allowed to steal from one another, and the bunglers only punished? It is said that Pinelli made occasional additions to his literary treasures sometimes by his skill in an art which lay much more in the hand than in the head: however, as Pinelli never stirred out of his native city but once in his lifetime, when the plague drove him from home, his field of action was so restricted, that we can hardly conclude that he could have been so great an enterpriser in this way. No one can have lost their character by this sort of exercise in a confined circle, and be allowed to prosper! A light-fingered Mercury would hardly haunt the same spot: however, this is, as it may be! It is probable that we owe to this species of accumulation many precious manuscripts in the Cottonian collection. It appears by the manuscript note-book of Sir Nicholas Hyde, chief-justice of the king's bench from the second to the seventh year of Charles the First, that Sir Robert Cotton had in his library, records, evidences, ledger-books, original letters, and other state-papers, belonging to the king; for the attorney-general of that time, to prove this, showed a copy of the pardon which Sir Robert had obtained from King James for embezzling records, &c.* Gough has more than insinuated that Rawlinson and his friend Umfreville lie under very strong suspicions;' and he asserts that the collector of the Wilton treasures made as free as Dr Willis with his friend's coins. But he has also put forth a declaration relating to Bishop More, the famous collector, that the bishop collected his library by plundering those of the clergy in his diocese; some he paid with sermons or more modern books; others, less civilly, only with a quid illiterati cum libris?" This plun dering then consisted rather of cajoling others out of what they knew not how to value; and this is an advantage which every skilful lover of books must enjoy over those * Lansdowne MSS. 888, in the former printed catalogue, Art. 79. whose apprenticeship has not expired. I have myself been plundered by a very dear friend of some such literary curiosities, in the days of my innocence and of his precocity of knowledge. However, it does appear that Bishop More did actually lay violent hands in a snug corner on some irresistible little charmer; which we gather from a precaution adopted by a friend of the bishop, who one day was found busy in hiding his rarest books, and locking up as many as he could. On being asked the reason of this odd occupation, the bibliopolist ingenuously replied, the Bishop of Ely dines with me to-day.' This fact is quite clear, and here is another as indisputable. Sir Robert Saville writing to Sir Robert Cotton, appointing an interview with the founder of the Bodleian Library, cautions Sir Robert, that 'If he held any book so dear as that he would be loath to lose it, he should not let Sir Thomas out of his sight, but set "the hoke" aside before hand.' A surprise and detection of this nature has been revealed in a piece of secret history by Amelot de la Houssaie, which terminated in very important political consequences. He assures us that the personal dislike which Pope Innocent X, bore to the French had originated in his youth, when cardinal, from having been detected in the library of an eminent French collector, of having purloined a most rare volume. The delirium of a collector's rage overcame even French politesse; the Frenchman not only openly accused his illustrious culprit, but was resolved that he should not quit the library without replacing the precious volume -from accusation and denial both resolved to try their strength; but in this literary wrestling-match the book dropped out of the cardinal's robes!--and from that day he hated the French-at least their more curious collectors! Even an author on his dying-bed, at those awful moments, should a collector be by his side, may not be considered secure from his too curious hands. Sir William Dugdale possessed the minutes of King James's life, written by Camden, till within a fortnight of his death; as also Camden's own life, which he had from Hacket, the author of the folio life of Bishop Williams; who, adds Aubrey, 'did filch it from Mr Camden, as he lay a dying! He afterwards corrects his information, by the name of Dr Thorndyke, which, however, equally answers our purpose, to prove that even dying authors may dread such collectors! The medallists have, I suspect, been more predatory than these subtractors of our literary treasures; not only from the facility of their conveyance, but from a peculiar contrivance which of all those things which adinit of being secretly purloined, can only be practised in this department for they can steal and no human hand can search them with any possibility of detection-they can pick a cabinet and swallow the curious things, and transport them with perfect safety, to be digested at their leisure. An adventure of this kind happened to Baron Stosch, the famous antiquary. It was in looking over the gems of the royal cabinet of medals, that the keeper perceived the loss of one; his place, his pension, and his reputation were at stake; and he insisted that Baron Stosch should be most minutely examined: in this dilemma, forced to confession, this erudite collector assured the keeper of the royal cabinot, that the strictest search would not avail: Álas, sir! I have it here within,' he said, pointing to his breast-an emetic was suggested by the learned practitioner himself, probably from some former experiment. This was not the first time that such a natural cabinet had been invented; the antiquary Vaillant, when attacked at sea by an Algerine, zealously swallowed a whole series of Syrian kings; when he landed at Lyons, groaning with his concealed treasure, he hastened to his friend, his physician, and his brother antiquary Dufour,-who at first was only anxious to inquire of his patient, whether the medals were of the higher empire? Vaillant showed two or three, of which nature had kindly relieved him. A collection of medals was left to the city of Exeter, and the donor accompanied the bequest by a clause in his will, that should a certain antiquary, his old friend and rival, be desirous of examining the coins, he should be watched by two persons, one on each side. La Croze informs us in his life, that the learned Charles Patin, who has written a work on medals, was one of the present race of collectors; Patin offered the curators of the public library at Basle to draw up a catalogue of the cabinet of Amerback there preserved, containing a good number of medals; but they would have been more numerous, had the catalogue-writer not diminished both them and his labour, by sequestrating some of the most rare, which was not discovered till this plunderer of antiquity was far out of their reach. 6 When Gough touched on this odd subject in the first edition of his British Topography,' An Academic' in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1772, insinuated that this charge of literary pilfering was only a jocular one; on which Gough, in his second edition, observed that this was not the case, and that one might point out enough lightfingered antiquaries in the present age, to render such a charge extremely probable against earlier ones.' The most extraordinary part of this slight history is, that our public denouncer sometime after proved himself to be one of these light-fingered antiquaries; the deed itself, however, was more singular than disgraceful. At the distterment of the remains of Edward the First, around which, thirty years ago, assembled our most erudite antiquaries, Gough was observed, as Steevens used to relate, in a wrapping great coat of unusual dimensions; that witty and malicious Puck,' so capable himself of inventing mischief, easily suspected others, and divided his glance as much on the living piece of antiquity, as on the elder. In the act of closing up the relics of royalty, there was found wanting an entire fore-finger of Edward the first; and as the body was perfect when opened, a murmur of dissatisfaction was spreading, when Puck' directed their attention to the great antiquary in the watchman's great coat-from whence too surely was extracted Edward the First's great forefinger! so that the light-fingered antiquary' was reeng nized ten years after he had denounced the race, when he came to try his hand.'* OF LORD BACON AT HOME. The history of Lord Bacon would be that of the intellectual faculties, and a theme so worthy of the philosophi cal biographer remains yet to be written. The personal narrative of this master-genius or inventor must for ever be separated from the scala intellectus he was perpetually ascending and the domestic history of this creative mind must be consigned to the most humiliating chapter in the volume of human life: a chapter already sufficiently enlarged, and which has irrefutably proved how the greatest minds are not freed from the infirmities of the most vulgar. The parent of our philosophy is now to be considered in a new light one which others do not appear to have ob served. My researches into contemporary notices of Bacon have often convinced me that his philosophical works, in his own days and among his own countrymen, were not only not comprehended, but often ridiculed, and sometimes reprobated; that they were the occasion of many slights and mortifications which this depreciated man endured; but that from a very early period in his life, to that last record of his feelings which appears in his will, this servant of posterity,' as he prophetically called himself, sustained his mighty spirit with the confidence of his own posthumous greatness. Bacon cast his views through the maturity of ages, and perhaps amidst the sceptics and the rejectors of his plans, may have felt at times all that idolatry of fame, which has now consecrated his philosophical works. At college. Bacon discovered how that scrap of Grecian knowledge, the peripatetic philosophy,' and the scho lastic babble, cou'd not serve the ends and purposes of knowledge; that sv.ogisms were not things, and that a new logic might teach us to invent and judge by induction. He found that theories were to be built upon experiments. When a young man, abroad, he began to make those observations on Nature, which afterwards led on to the foun *It is probable that this story of Gough's pocketing the fore-finger of Edward the First, was one of the malicious inventions of George Steevens, after he discovered that the antiquary was among the few admitted to the untombing of the royal corpse; Steevens himself was not there! Srivanus Urban who must know much more than he cares to record af 'Puck,'-has, however, given the following secret history of what he callsungentlemanly and unwarrantable attacks on Gough, by Steevens. It seems that Steevens was a cullector of the works of Horarth, and while engaged in forming his collection, wrote an abrupt letter to Gough, to obtain from him some early impressions, by purchase or exchange. Gough resented the manner of his address by a rough refusal, he it is admitted to have been a peremptory one. Thus arose the implacable vengeance of Steevens, who used to boast that all the mischievous tricks he played on the grave antiquary, who was rarely over-kind to any one, was but a pleasant kind of revenge! dations of the new philosophy. At sixteen, he philosophised; at twenty-six, he had framed his system into some form; and after forty years of continued labours, unfinished to his last hour, he left behind him sufficient to found the great philosophical reformation, On his entrance into active life, study was not however his prime object. With his fortune to make, his court connexions and his father's example opened a path for ambition. He chose the practice of common law as his means, while his inclinations were looking upwards to political affairs as his end. A passion for study however bad strongly marked him; he had read much more than was required in his professional character, and this circumstance excited the mean jealousies of the minister Cecil, and the attorney-general Coke. Both were mere practical men of business, whose narrow conceptions and whose stubborn habits assume, that whenever a man acquires much knowledge foreign to his profession, he will know less of professional knowledge than he ought. These men of strong minds, yet limited capacities, hold in contempt all studies alien to their habits. Bacon early aspired to the situation of solicitor-general; the court of Elizabeth was divided into factions; Bacon adopted the interests of the generous Essex, which were inimical to the party of Cecil. The queen, from his boyhood, was delighted by conversing with her young lordkeeper,' as she early distinguished the precocious gravity and the ingenious turn of mind of the future philosopher. It was unquestionably to attract her favour, that Bacon presented to the queen his Maxims and Elements of the Common Law,' not published till after his death. Eliza beth suffered her minister to form her opinions on the legal character of Bacon. It was alleged that Bacon was addicted to more general pursuits than law, and the miscellaneous books which he was known to have read confirmed the accusation. This was urged as a reason why the post of solicitor-general should not be conferred on a man of speculation, more likely to distract than to direct her affairs, Elizabeth, in the height of that political prudence which marked her character, was swayed by the vulgar notion of Cecil, and believed that Bacon, who afterwards filled the situation both of solicitor-general and lurd chancellor, was A man rather of show than of depth.' We have been recently told by a great lawyer, that Bacon was a master.' On the accession of James the First, when Bacon still found the same party obstructing his political advancement, he appears, in some momentary fit of disgust, to have meditated on a retreat into a foreign country; a circumstance which has happened to several of our men of genius, during a fever of solitary indignation. He was for some time thrown out of the sunshine of life, but he found its shade more fitted for contemplation; and, unquestionably, philosophy was benefited by his solitude at Gray's Inn. His hand was always on his work, and better thoughts will find an easy entrance into the mind of those who feed on their thoughts, and live amidst their reveries. In a letter on this occasion, he writes, My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen, whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit, of the times succeeding,' And many years after when he had finally quitted public life, he told the king, I would live to study, and not study to live: yet I am prepared for date obolum Bellisario; and I thai have borne a bag, can bear a wallet.' Ever were the TIMES SUCCEEDING in his mind. In that delightful Latin letter to Father Fulgentio, where, with the simplicity of true grandeur, he takes a view of all his works, and in which he describes himself as 'one who served posterity,' in communicating his past and his future designs, he adds, that they require some ages for the ripening of them.' There, while he despairs of finishing what was intended for the sixth part of his Instauration, how nobly he despairs! Of the perfecting this I have cast away all hopes; but in future ages, perhaps, the design may bud again. And he concludes by avowing, that the zeal and constancy of his mind in the great design, after so many years, had never become cold and indiffer ent. He remembers how, forty years ago, he had composed a juvenile work about those things, which, with confidence, but with too pompous a title, he had called Temporis Partus Maximus; the great birth of time! Besides the public dedication of his Novum Organum to James the First, he accompanied it with a private letter. He wishes the king's favour to the work, which he accounts as much as a hundred years time; for he adds, 'I am persuaded the work will gain upon men's minds in AGES.' In his last will appears his remarkable legacy of fame. 'My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own countrymen after some time be passed over? Time seemed always personated in the imagination of our philosopher, and with time he wrestled with a consciousness of triumph. I shall now bring forward sufficient evidence to prove how little Bacon was understood, and how much he was even despised, in his philosophical character. In those prescient views by which the genius of Verulam has often anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding times, there was one important object which even his foresight does not appear to have contemplated. Lord Bacon did not foresee that the English language would one day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can discover, or poetry can invent; that his country should at length possess a national literature of its own, and that it should exult in classical compositions which might be appreciated with the finest models of antiquity. His taste was far unequal to his invention. So little he esteemed the language of his country, that his favourite works are composed in Latin; and he was anxious to have what he had written in English preserved in that 'universal language which may last as long as books last.' It would have surprised Bacon to have been told, that the most learned men in Europe have studied English authors to learn to think and to write. Our philosopher was surely somewhat mortified, when in his dedication of the Essays he observed, that of all my other works my Essays have been most current; for that as it seems, they come home to men's business ani bosoms.' It is too much to hope to find in a vast and profound inventor a writer also who be stows immortality on his language. The English language is the only object in his great survey of art and of nature, which owes nothing of its excellence to the genius of Bacon. He had reason indeed to be mortified at the reception of his philosophical works; and Dr Rawley, even some years after the death of his illustrious master, had occa sion to observe, that His fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.' Even the men of genius, who ought to have comprehended this new source of knowledge thus opened to them, reluctantly entered into it; so repugnant are we suddenly to give up ancient errors which time and habit have made apart of ourselves. Harvey, who himself experienced the sluggish obstinacy of the learned, which repelled a great but a novel discovery, could however in his turn deride the amazing novelty of Bacon's Novum Organum. Harvey said to Aubrey, that Bacon was no great philo sopher; he writes philosophy like a lord chancellor.' It has been suggested to me that Bacon's philosophical writings have been much over-rated. His experimental phi losophy from the era in which they were produced must be necessarily defective; the time he gave to them could only have been had at spare hours; but like the great prophet on the mount, Bacon was doomed to view the land afar, which he himself could never enter. Bacon found but small encouragement for his new learning among the most eminent scholars, to whom he submitted his early discoveries. A very copious letter by Sir Thomas Bodley on Bacon's desiring him to return the manuscript of Cogitata et Visa, some portion of the Novum Organum has come down to us; it is replete with objections to the new philosophy. I am one of that crew,' says Sir Thomas, that say we possess a far greater holdfast of certainty in the sciences than you will seem to acknowledge. He gives a hint too that Solomon complained of the infinite making of books in his time; that all Bacon delivers is only by averment without other force of argument, to disclaim all our axioms, maxims, &c, left by tradition from our elders unto us, which have passed all probations of the sharpest wits that ever were;' and he concludes, that the end of all Bacon's philosophy, by a fresh creating new principles of sciences, would be to be dispossessed of the learning we have; and he fears that it would require as many ages as have marched before us that knowledge should be perfectly achieved. Bodley truly compares himself to the carrier's horse which cannot planch the beaten way in which I was trained.' Bacon did not lose heart by the timidity of the carrier's horse' a smart vivacious note in return shows his quick apprehension. 'As I am going to my house in the country, I shall want my papers, which I beg you therefore to return. You are slothful, and you help me nothing, so that I am half in conceit you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvæ. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass by your door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury, I would make you tell another tale; or else 1 would add a cogitation against libraries, and be revenged on you that way.' A keen but playful retort of a great author too concious of his own views to be angry with his critic! The lodgings chalked up is some sarcasm which we must supply from our own conception; but the threatened cogitation against libraries must have caused Bodley's cheek to tingle. Let us now turn from the scholastic to the men of the world, and we shall see what sort of notion these critics entertained of the philosophy of Bacon. Chamberlain writes, This week the lord chancellor hath set forth his new work called Instauratio Magna, or a kind of Novum Organum of all philosophy. In sending it to the king, he wrote that he wished his majesty might be so long in reading it as he hath been in composing and polishing it, which s well near thirty years. I have read no more than the bare title, and am not greatly encouraged by Mr Cuffe's judgment, who having long since persued it, gave this censure, that a fool could not have written such a work, and a wise man would not.' A month or two afterwards we find that The king cannot forbear sometimes in reading the lord chancellor's last book to say, that it is like the peace of God, that surpasseth all understanding.' Two years afterwards the same letter-writer proceeds with another literary paragraph about Bacon. This lord busies himself altogether about books, and hath set out two lately, Historia Ventorum, and de Vita et Morte, with promise of more. I have yet seen neither of them, because I have not leisure; but if the life of Henry the Eighth (the Seventh), which they say he is about, might come out after his own manner (meaning his Moral Essays), I should find time and means enough to read it.' When this history made its appearance, the same writer observes, 'My Lord Verulam's history of Henry the Seventh is come forth; I have not read much of it, but they say it is a very pretty book.'† Bacon, in his vast survey of human knowledge, included even its humbler provinces, and condescended to form a collection of apophthegms: his lordship regretted the loss of a collection made by Julius Cæsar, while Plutarch indiscriminately drew much of the dregs. The wits, who could not always comprehend his plans, ridiculed the sage. I shall now quote a contemporary poet, whose works, for by their size they may assume that distinction, were never published. A Dr Andrews wasted a sportive pen on fugitive events; but though not always deficient in humour and wit, such is the freedom of his writings, that they will not often admit a quotation. The following is indeed but a strange pun on Bacon's title, derived from the town of St Alban's and his collection of apophthegms; ON LORD BACON PUBLISHING APOPHTHEGMS. He did deserve and hath the praise; But now he writes his apophthegms Surely he doses or he dreams; One said, St Albans now is grown unable, And is in the high-road-way-to Dunstable. [i. e To the close of his days were Lord Bacon's philosophical pursuits still disregarded and depreciated by ignorance and envy, in the forms of friendship or rivality. I shall now give a remarkable example. Sir Edward Coke was a mere great lawyer, and like all such, had a mind so walled in by law-knowledge, that in its bounded views it shut out the horizon of the intellectual faculties, and the whole of Henry Cuffe, secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, and executed, being concerned in his treason. A man noted for his classical acquirements and his genius, who perished early in life. Chamberlain adds the price of this moderate sized folio, which was six shillings. his philosophy lay in the statutes. In the library at Holkham there must be found a presentation copy of Lord Ba con's Novum Organum, the Instauratio Magna, 1620. It was given to Coke, for it bears the following note on the title-page in the writing of Coke: Edw. Coke, Ex dono authoris Auctori consilium Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum Instaura leges, justitiamque prius. The verses not only reprove Bacon for going out of his profession, but must have alluded to his character as a prechancery. The book was published in October, 1620, a rogative lawyer, and his corrupt administration of the few months before the impeachment. And so far one really valued the philosophy of Bacon appears by this: in may easily excuse the causticity of Coke; but how he this first edition there is a device of a ship passing between Hercules's pillars; the plus ultra, the proud exultation of our philosopher. Over this device Coke has written a miserable distich in English, which marks his utter contempt of the philosophical pursuits of his illustrious rival. This ship passing beyond the columns of Hercules he sarcastically conceits as The Ship of Fools,' the famous satire of the German Sebastian Brandt, translated by Alexander Barclay.; It deserveth not to be read in schools, But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools. Such then was the fate of Lord Bacon; a history not written by his biographers, but which may serve as a com ment on that obscure passage dropped from the pen of his chaplain, and already quoted, that he was more valued abroad than at home. SECRET HISTORY OF THE DEATH OF QUEEN It is an extraordinary cirsumstance in our history, that the succession to the English dominion, in two remarka ble cases, was never settled by the possessors of the throne themselves during their lifetime; and that there is every reason to believe this mighty transfer of three kingdoms became the sole act of their ministers, who considered the succession merely as a state expedient. Two of our most able sovereigns found themselves in this pre dicament; Queen Elizabeth, and the Protector Cromwell! Cromwell probably had his reasons not to name his successor; his positive election would have dissatisfied the opposite parties of his government, whom he only ruled while he was able to cajole them. He must have been aware that latterly he had need of conciliating all parties to his usurpation, and was probably as doubtful on his death-bed whom to appoint his successor, as at any other period of his reign. Ludlow suspects that Cromwell was so discomposed in body or mind, that he could not attend to that matter; and whether he named any one is to me uncertain.' All that we know is the report of the Secretary Thurlow and his chaplains, who, when the protector lay in his last agonies, suggested to him the propriety of choosing his eldest son, and they tell us that he agreed to this choice. Had Cromwell been in his senses, he would have probably fixed on Henry, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, rather than on Richard, or possibly had not chosen either of his sons! Elizabeth, from womanish infirmity, or from statereasons, could not endure the thoughts of her successor; and long threw into jeopardy the politics of all the cabinets of Europe, each of which had its favourite candidate to support. The legitimate heir to the throne of England was to be the creature of her breath, yet Elizabeth would not speak him into existence! This had, however, often raised the discontents of the nation, and we shall see how it harrassed the queen in her dying hours. It is even suspected that the queen still retained so much of the woman, that she could never overcome her perverse dislike to name a successor, so that according to this opinion, she died and left the crown to the mercy of a party! would have been acting unworthy of the magnanimity of her great character-and as it is ascertained that the queen was very sensible that she lay in a dying state several days before the natural catastrophe occurred, it is difficult to believe that she totally disregarded so important a circumstance. It is, therefore, reasoning a priori, most nɛtural to conclude, that the choice of a successor must have occupied her thoughts as well as the anxieties of her min This |