Sir Henry Wotton to Lord Bacon.

Right Honourable, and my very good Lord,

I have your lordship's letters dated the 20th of October, and I have withal by the care of my cousin, Mr. Thomas Meawtis, and by your own special favour, three copies of that work, where with your lordship hath done a great and ever-living benefit to all the children of Nature; and to Nature herself, in her uttermost extent and latitude: who never before had so noble nor so true an interpreter, or (as I am readier to style your lordship) never so inward a secretary of her cabinet. But of your said work (which came but this week to my hands) I shall find occasion to speak more hereafter; having yet read only the first book thereof, and a few aphorisms of the second. For it is not a banquet, that men may superficially taste, and put up the rest in their pockets; but, in truth, a solid feast, which requireth due mastication. Therefore when I have once myself perused the whole, I determine to have it read piece by piece at certain hours in my domestic college, as an ancient author: for I have learned thus much by it already, that we are extremely mistaken in the computation of antiquity, by searching it backwards, because indeed the first times were the youngest; especially in points of natural discovery and experience. For though I grant, that Adam knew the natures of all beasts, and Solomon of all plants, not only more than any, but more than all since their time; yet that was by divine infusion, and therefore they did not need any such Organum as your lordship hath now delivered to the world; nor we neither, if they had left us the memories of their wisdom.

But I am gone further than I meant in speaking of this excellent labour, while the delight yet I feel, and even the pride that I take in a certain congeniality (as I may term it) with your lordship's studies, will scant let me cease. And, indeed, I owe your lordship even by promise (which you are pleased to remember, thereby doubly binding me) some trouble this way; I mean, by the commerce of philosophical experiments, which surely, of all other, is the most ingenuous traffic. Therefore, for a beginning, let me tell your lordship a pretty thing which I saw coming down the Danube, though more remarkable for the application than for the theory. I lay a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken by the Duke of Bavaria; who, blandiente fortund, was gone on to the

late effects. There I found Kepler, a man famous in the sciences, as your lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence one of your books, that he may see we have some of our own that can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his Harmonice. In this man's study I was much taken with the draught of a landskip on a piece of paper, methoughts masterly done: whereof inquiring the author, he bewrayed with a smile, it was himself; adding, he had done it, Non tanquam Pictor, sed tanquam Mathematicus. This set me on fire; at last he told me how. He hath a little black tent (of what stuff is not much importing) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field, and it is convertible (like a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure, capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease; exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in the diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk, with a convex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected tent, through which the visible radiations of all the objects without are intromitted, falling upon a paper, which is accommodated to receive them, and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance, turning his little tent round by degrees till he hath designed the whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your lordship, because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography: for otherwise, to make landskips by it were illiberal; though surely no painter can do them so precisely. Now from these artificial and natural curiosities, let me a little direct your lordship to the contemplation of fortune.

The rest of the letter tells of the changed face of politics about the German Emperor.

It was in October, 1620, that Francis Bacon presented to King James his "Novum Organum,"

before, taking the ancient name of the town beside the family seat at Gorhambury, and in January, 1621, he was made Viscount, with his title derived from the later name of the town-Viscount St. Albans.

In March followed his fall. In May, 1621, he was sentenced, and thenceforth he withdrew from political life.

His last five years were spent in the worthiest use of his intellect. Bacon was, however, among those who sought the office of Provost of Eton, which was given to Sir Henry Wotton. In 1625, the year before his death, he published the third edition of his Essays, leaving them perfected to the utmost of his power. Of the Essays, as they were then published, these are three :

ESSAYS OF BACON, 1625. Of Truth.

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor, again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts; that doth bring lies in favour: but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day: but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like; but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers in great severity called poesy, Vinum Dæmonum,1 because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus, in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and His sabbath work ever since is the illumination of His spirit. First He breathed light upon the face of the matter or chaos; then He breathed light into the face of man; and still He breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The poet,2 that beautified the sect3 that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand

in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below." So always, that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business: it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver; which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false, and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith prettily when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge? Saith he, " If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth is as much to say as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.” For a lie faces God and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold that when Christ cometh He shall not find faith upon the earth.

Of Friendship.

It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and untruth together, in few words, than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation, such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius, of Tyana; and, truly and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: "Magna civitas, magna solitudo;" because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness: and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza to open the liver; steel to open the spleen; flowers of sulphur

Essais, Liv. II., chap. xviii. Du Desmentir.

5 Aristotle, "Ethics," Bk. viii.

A great city, a great solitude.

for the lungs; castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart, to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak, so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit; except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum;1 for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch. For when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his against the pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting. With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew. And this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death; for when Cæsar would have discharged the Senate, in regard of some ill presages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream.2 And it seemeth his favour was so great, as Antonius in a letter, which is recited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics,3 calleth him "venefica," witch, as if he had enchanted Cæsar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height, as, when he consulted with Mæcenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him that he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life; there was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus had ascended to that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith: "Hæc pro amicitiâ nostrâ non occultavi"; and the whole Senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. The like, or more, was between Septimius Severus and Plautianus; for he forced his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son; and did write also in a letter to the senate by these words: "I love the man so well as I wish he may over-live me." Now if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have thought

1 Care-sharers.

* These illustrations are from Plutarch's Lives of Pompey and Cæsar.

Cic. "Philipp." xiii. 11.

♦ These things, because of our friendship, I have not concealed. Dion. Cass. lxxv.

that this had proceeded of an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly that they found their own felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as an half piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire ; and yet, which is more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.

It is not to be forgotten what Commineus observeth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely, that he would communicate his secrets with none, and least of all those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding. Surely Commineus might have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Louis XI., whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true: Cor ne edito," eat not the heart.7 Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects: for it redoubleth joys and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth of operation upon a man's mind, of like 'virtue, as the alchymists used to attribute to their stone, for man's body: that it worketh all con. trary effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature. yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature. For in bodies union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action; and on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression; and even so is it of minds.

But

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding as the first is for the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempest: but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel which a man receiveth from his friend. But before you come to that, certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another. He tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, that speech was like cloth of arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery

Philippe de Commines began his career at the court of Charles le Hardi, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and was drawn, in 1472, from the service of Charles into the service of Louis XI., who gave him his confidence and treated him with great familiarity. Commines, therefore, had no personal reason to record "the same judginent also of his second master."

7 Quoted in Plutarch's treatise on "Education."

8 Praying in, inviting; "praying in aid" was a law term for the calling in of help to a cause from one who has interest in it. So Proculeius says to Cleopatra (“Ant. and Cl.," Act v., sc. 2) :

"You shall find

A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness,
When he is kneeled to."

Hanmer first pointed out the meaning of the phrase in this passage of
Shakespeare.

9 Plutarch's Life of Themistocles.

doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs. Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best), but even without that a man learneth of himself and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation, which is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. And certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self; and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning manners, the other concerning business. For the first, the best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes unproper for our case. But the best receipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take), is the admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors, and extreme absurdities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit for want of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of their fame and fortune. For, as S. James saith, they are as men that look sometimes into a glass and presently forget their own shape and favour. As for business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker on; or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another business of another man; it is well (that is to say, better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all); but he runneth two dangers: One, that he shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends, which he hath that giveth it. The other, that he shall have counsel given hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and mixed, partly of mischief and partly of remedy: even as if you would call a physician that is thought good, for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in way for a present cure,

1 Quoted by Plutarch in his tract on "Flesh Eating :" the original words are, αὐγὴ ξηρή ψυχή σοφωτάτη. In the opening of the first book of his "Advancement of Learning," Bacon has another reference to the " dry light" or "lumen siccum," saying that where fears and desires join personal care to the pursuit of knowledge, "it becometh 'lumen madidum' or 'maceratum,' being steeped and infused in the bumours of the affections." So in common speech a "dry subject " or" dry style" is that which is not at all touched by "the humours of the affections."

2 James i, 23.

but overthroweth your health in some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate will beware by furthering any present business how he dasheth upon other inconvenience. And therefore rest not upon scattered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead, than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels: I mean aid, and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many things there are which a man cannot do himself; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients to say, that a friend is another himself: 3 for that a friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, and die many times in desire of some things which they principally take to heart: the bestowing of a child, the finishing of a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him. So that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them. A man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy, but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless. I have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his own partif he have not a friend he may quit the stage.

OF STUDIES.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judg ment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience. For natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study: and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them: For they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others,

3 It was Cicero ("De Amicitia ") who said this of a friend: "Est enim is quidem tamquam alter idem."

but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little he had need have a great memory; if he confer little he had need have a present wit; and if he read little he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. "Abeunt studia in mores." Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again: if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are "cymini sectores." 3 If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

From Plato's 66 'Republic" downward various attempts have been made by philosophers in playful earnest to suggest ideal commonwealths. Such a work of intellectual fancy, practical in essence and glancing everywhere at the political life of the days of Henry VIII., was More's "Utopia." Joseph Hall, in 1607, had in his "Mundus Alter et Idem," "A World Other and the Same," imagined a great Austral continent, parcelled out into lands that typified the vices and follies of mankind, near to which was the Terra Sancta, little known. The gluttons and wine-bibbers peopled a Crapulia; the masterful women a Viraginia, or Gynia Nova; the fools a Moronia, the largest of those regions; and Lavernia was the land of thieves. Dr. William King long afterwards began a translation of Hall's "Mundus Alter et Idem," which, being found among his "Remains," was supposed by their editor to be a fragment of an original work, a satire on the Dutch, and printed by him in 1732 as "a fragment in the manner of Rabelais." Another famous sketch of an ideal commonwealth was Campanella's "Civitas Solis," City of the Sun, a city glorified by knowledge, ruled by the citizen who had attained to the most perfect intellect, through Triumvirs, who represented severally Power, Wisdom, and Love. Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis" is an ideal, at the heart of which he placed the highest spiritual aim of his philosophy, the drawing of men near to the divine life by search for the wisdom of God in His works, that they may make it theirs. Bacon, like Joseph Hall, laid the scene of his imagined life in a then undiscovered Australia, as the old Greek legend placed Atlantis in the New World beyond the Atlantic, that was yet to remain for eighteen

centuries unknown. Bacon also attached his fancy to the ancient fable of Atlantis.

Solon, who died 558 years before Christ, was said to have been writing in his last days what he had heard in Egypt of Atlantis, a perfect island, rich in precious metals, wine, grain, choicest fruit. Neptune was its chief deity, and its ten kingdoms were ruled by ten of his descendants. Plato, who died B.C. 347, has left among his dialogues three that are thus related to one another: " "Timias represents the Divine Cosmos; the "Republic," Man in Society; "Critias" (unfinished), the perfect Society shown in action under the pressure of terrible enemies, the pressure being an invasion from Atlantis. Plato represents that Timæus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian Critias, having listened to dialogue in which Socrates had developed the nature of Justice in the constitution of a true Republic, Socrates called on them to show such a State in action. Critias undertook to do so by telling of the rescue of Europe by the ancient citizens of Attica, ten thousand years before, from an inroad of countless and irresistible invaders out of the vast island of Atlantis -an island greater than all Libya and Asia-in the Western Ocean. The story of this struggle was preserved, it was said, with the ancient records of the temple of Naith, or Athene, at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down, through Solon, by a family tradition to Critias. The divine life had become slowly imbruted in the Atlantid Kings, till they were reckless and ambitious. They poured into Europe, and broke their force against the trained valour and wisdom of the citizens of Attica. But the perfect citizens, having achieved their victory, were lost from the face of the earth, which swallowed them in one night, while Atlantis itself, with all its people, was drowned in the ocean. The sinking of that great land was the cause of what in Plato's time was supposed to be the fact that the Atlantic Ocean is a great region of shallow water and mud.

Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis" is, like Plato's "Critias," unfinished; but it is nearly finished, and sets forth the whole design. It is one of the works in which he sought to win men to an experimental study of Nature, and was first published nine years after his death. Bacon died in 1626, and the English version of the "New Atlantis,” first written in Latin, appeared in 1629 as an appendix to Bacon's "Sylva Sylvarum; or, a Natural History in Ten Centuries." It accords with that view of his philosophy given by Bacon in his "Novum Organum," where he distinguishes "three kinds and, as it were, degrees of human ambition; first, that of those who desire to enlarge their own power in their country, which is a vulgar and degenerate kind; next, that of those who strive to enlarge the power and dominion of their country among the human race, which is certainly more dignified, but no less covetous. But if one should endeavour to renew and enlarge the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, this ambition (if so it may be called) is, beyond a doubt, more sane and noble than the other two. Now the dominion of men over things depends alone on arts and sciences; for Nature is only governed by obeying her."