‘I have taken all knowledge to be my province,’ Francis, aged thirty-one, had written to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer; and now, twelve years later, he desired to give some proof of it, not only to men of understanding but to his sovereign. The work was to consist of two parts, or books, and each would bear a dedication to the King.
Francis felt with deep conviction that learning was not a matter for scholars only, but for all men; and his purpose was to show what wealth of interest awaited the reader whose mind was not dulled by past tradition of scholarship but was ready and alive to explore a whole new world of thought, just as his contemporaries were inspired to cross the oceans and discover the new lands that lay beyond. ‘It would be a disgrace for mankind if the expanse of the material globe, the land, the seas, the stars, were opened up and brought to light, while, in contrast to this enormous expansion, the bounds of the intellectual globe should be restricted to what was known to the ancients.’
It was part of his thesis to show that true learning had, from the very dawn of history, been the natural part of all heroic men, of soldiers, statesmen, rulers. God, in the beginning, had created light, and this light, as Francis saw it, was not just the brightness of the sun above the earth, but the light of understanding which turned man from a brute beast into a being who could comprehend, whose garden, the world about him, comprised all things for his need. Because of the divine spark within him all that he saw, all that he touched—water lapping the shores, plants and trees that bore fruit—served to enlighten him. ‘Nothing,’ Francis believed, ‘was denied to man’s enquiry and invention,’ and in the first book, certainly begun and possibly finished by the end of 1604, he cited numerous examples, from the scriptures and history, of those men who not only led exacting and extremely active lives but had used the light with which God had graced them to further knowledge: Moses the lawgiver, ‘God’s first pen’, Solomon the king, Xenophon the Athenian, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great. Soldiers and orators—Francis returns to them again and again, with Julius Caesar cited the most frequently. Earlier in the first book, when discussing leisure and how it should be spent, he quoted the Greek orator Demosthenes to his adversary Aeschines. ‘That was a man given to pleasure, and had told him that his orations did smell of the lamp. Indeed, said Demosthenes, there is a great difference between the things that you and I do by lamp-light.’ A sly dig from Francis himself, surely, at some of his own friends.
He was at great pains to distinguish between the proven facts of history, on the one hand, and tradition, which was so often at fault; and in the first book he showed how these misconceptions had come about—mostly from learned men ‘who have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own reasons and conceits.’ The genuine seeker after truth must be all-embracing in his thirst for knowledge, and must not hesitate, when he looks about him, to probe the depths of his own being, recognise the defects and then remedy them, so that what good qualities he may possess develop to the full. ‘It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind,’ Francis observes, and a chord is struck in the memory of the ordinary reader, the phrase is somehow familiar. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow…?’ Yes, Macbeth, said to have been acted at Court the following year, though, like Julius Caesar, it was not published until seven years after William Shakespeare’s death. ‘It were too long to go over the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the diseases of the mind; sometimes purging the ill humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, sometimes helping digestion, sometimes increasing the appetite, sometimes healing the wounds.’
His final paragraph is a supreme example of his wit and style, and one has an impression of him seated in his chamber at Gray’s Inn, a group of chosen law-students grouped about him, and one or two of his closer friends besides—Tobie Matthew almost certainly. As his Majesty’s Learned Counsel read aloud from the manuscript between his hands, he would now and again throw a quizzical glance from his ‘lively, hazel eye’ at his avid listeners.
‘I do not pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me by any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgement, either of Aesop’s cock, that preferred the barleycorn before the gem; or of Midas, that being chosen judge between Apollo president of the Muses, and Pan god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or of Paris, that judged for beauty and love against wisdom and power; or of Agrippina (let him kill his mother that he be emperor) that preferred empire with condition never so detestable; or of Ulysses (that preferred an old woman to an immortality) being a figure of those which prefer custom and habit before all excellence; or of a number of the like popular judgements. For these things continue as they have been: but so will that also continue whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: Justificata est sapientia a filiis suis—Wisdom is justified of her children.’
Then the folding of the manuscript with a smile, and the opening of a discussion upon it, for according to his first biographer, the chaplain Dr. Rawley, who would later enter his service, he was ‘not one that would appropriate the speech wholly to himself, or delight to outvie others, but leave the liberty to the co-assessors to take their turns. Whereupon he would draw a man on and allure him to speak upon such a subject, as wherein he was peculiarly skilful, and would delight to speak. And for himself, he condemned no man’s observations, but would light his torch at every man’s candle.’
Whether Francis at this period of his life dined in the great hall at Gray’s Inn or with chosen companions in his own lodgings we do not know, but like his brother Anthony before him, he seems to have enjoyed good fare.
‘In his younger years,’ wrote Dr. Rawley, ‘he was much given to the finer and lighter sorts of meats, as of fowls, and such like; but afterwards, when he grew more judicious, he preferred the stronger meats, such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable; upon which he would often make his meal though he had other meats upon the table.’
‘Stronger meats from the shambles’ suggests a slaughterhouse running with blood, and the carcass of a great pig hanging from its hook to be cut and roasted later for Learned Counsel’s table. Small wonder that ‘once in six or seven days he took a maceration of rhubarb infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half-an-hour immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper) that it might dry the body less, which, as he said, did carry away the grosser humours of the body and did not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth.’ It was probably the unfortunate effects of rhubarb that had prevented Francis from calling upon the Duke of Northumberland two years previously, and the habit seems to have been continued. As to exercise, Dr. Rawley informs the reader ‘that he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies, as walking, or taking the air in his coach, or gentle exercise on horseback, and playing at bowls,’ but since Rawley’s own observation was of his master’s later years, possibly in 1605 relaxation was of another kind. Certainly it must not be forgotten that Ely Place, or Hatton Hall, the residence of Elizabeth Hatton, was only a short distance from Gray’s Inn, and despite her marriage to the Attorney-General Edward Coke there had never been an open rupture in the relationship between that spirited lady and her former suitor.
So, after dining on ‘the lighter sorts of meats’ with his companions and scribes, or taking a gentle walk, Francis would return to composition, and the continuation of the second book of his Advancement of Learning, which was to be at least three times the length of the first. Even his dedication to the King was more detailed. Of especial interest to the modern reader is his suggestion that professors and lecturers at universities and other places of learning should be better paid. Also that the governors of such institutions should consult with one another more, and have more frequent visits from ‘princes or superior persons.’ Both in the dedication and in the second book itself he uses his favourite analogy of comparing the work necessary in a garden to that of the cultivation of the mind, proof of his own tremendous interest in horticulture, which was to increase with the years. He observes to the King, ‘For if you will have a tree bear more fruit than it hath used to do, it is not anything you can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring of the earth and putting new mould about the roots that must work it,’ which leads him on to explain, ‘And because founders of colleges do plant, and founders of lectures do water, it followeth well to speak of the defect which is in public lectures; namely, in the smallness and meanness of the salary or reward which in most places is assigned to them; whether they be lectures of arts, or of professions.’ He also advised that there should be ‘more intelligence mutual between the universities of Europe than now there is.’
The second book covers every aspect of learning; natural history, civil history, divinity, philosophy, natural philosophy, physics and metaphysics, medicine, etc. Despite the formidable list of subjects discussed, it is not a difficult book to read, and perhaps one of the reasons it is neglected in our own time is because so much of what Francis persuasively advocated, which was revolutionary at the beginning of the seventeenth century, has since been adopted and accepted as natural. Above all The Advancement of Learning is important because for the first time it defined the steps of scientific method, and stressed the importance of seeking truth through reason rather than through revelation: it may, in fact, truly be described as marking the birth of scientific philosophy.
The reader intent on discovering clues to Francis the man behind the thoughts to which he gave utterance will find a rich reward in certain sentences and paragraphs scattered here and there amongst the whole, as when, for instance, he says that certain men of learning esteem it a ‘kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to enquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical,’ and proceeds to tell the tale of the philosopher who ‘while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars.’
He is particularly discerning in his discussion on the art of medicine. ‘The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of his cause. The master in the ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the politique, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but is judged most by the event; which is ever but as it is taken: for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, or if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be by art or accident? And therefore many times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician.’ Evidently a hit at the quacks of his own time, who were legion, as they are now.
A few pages further on he has something to say on another subject that is frequently argued in medical circles today. ‘Nay further, I esteem it the office of a physician not only to restore health, but to mitigate pains and dolors; and not only when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but when it may serve to make a fair and easy passage. So it is written of Epicurus, that after his disease was judged desperate, he drowned his stomach and senses with a large draught and inguration of wine; whereupon the epigram was made, he was not sober enough to taste any bitterness of the Stygian water. But the physicians contrariwise do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas in my judgement they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.’ Small wonder that Francis had marked his passage thus, ‘Of euthanasia at the end.’ Was he thinking once again of his brother Anthony?
The temptation to continue quoting from this fascinating work must be quelled… but then suddenly, later in the second book, we find him once more reverting to the diseases of the body, and saying, ‘So in medicining of the mind, which are not other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections…’ and two pages later, ‘Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience?’ And the probing reader asks, yes, but who said the same in verse? It was Hector, in Troilus and Cressida, published four years later.
Not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to heare Moral Philosophie.
The Reasons you alledge, so more conduce
To the hot passion of distemp’red blood,
Then to make up a free determination
’Twixt right and wrong.
Francis has a chapter on poetry in his Advancement of Learning, and curiously enough it is one of the shortest, for, he writes, ‘In this third part of learning, which is poesy, I can report no deficience. For being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind.’ He concludes with the line, ‘But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre.’ What does he mean? Not good for whom? For a writer who must not let himself be seduced by his imagination when more important work needs to be done? So the chapter ends abruptly, and he passes on to the ‘palace of the mind.’ Finally, in the conclusion to the whole book, he says, ‘I have been content to tune the instruments of the Muses, that they may play that have better hands.’
The Advancement of Learning was ready for publication in the autumn of October 1605, and was printed by Henry Tomes and sold at his shop at Gray’s Inn Gate, in Holborn. Francis had sent advance copies to the Earl of Northampton (one time Lord Harry Howard, friend of the Earl of Essex and brother Anthony), with a request that he should present the book to his Majesty. He also sent copies to the Lord Chancellor Lord Ellesmere, who had introduced him to Sir John and Lady Packington, to the Lord Treasurer Lord Buckhurst, to cousin Robert Cecil, now Earl of Salisbury and Chancellor of Cambridge University, to Sir Thomas Bodley at Oxford University, and of course to Tobie Matthew, who was in Italy at the time—indeed, he had been travelling abroad since the preceding April. His letters were in his customary formal style when addressing his superiors, but he was on easier terms with young Tobie. ‘I have now at last taught that child to go, at the swaddling whereof you were. My work touching the Proficiency and Advancement of Learning I have put into two books; whereof the former, which you saw, I count but as a page to the latter. I have now published them both; whereof I thought it a small adventure to send you a copy, who have more right to it than any man, except Bishop Andrews, who was my inquisitor.’ (This was Dr. Launcelot Andrews, an old friend and Dean of Westminster, who was about to become Bishop of Chichester, and to whom Bacon had more than once sent manuscripts for scrutiny and criticism.)
Francis had, so he thought, timed the moment of publication well, just before Parliament assembled for the new session; but unfortunately for him—a fate common to writers throughout the centuries when their books are overtaken by public events—the impact that his two volumes might have made was entirely overshadowed by the discovery of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament when the Lords and Commons should be assembled before his Majesty on the opening day, November 5th. The Advancement of Learning, save for a casual mention by Chamberlain that ‘Sir Francis Bacon hath set forth a new work,’ appears to have awakened no other comment. The great Powder Treason, known to the world since as the Gunpowder Plot, took precedence not only over all other business in both Houses of Parliament but in the minds and hearts of all subjects loyal to the Crown.
Francis, thankful that his Majesty’s life had been spared, as well as his own and that of other members of the Commons and the Lords, shed no tears over the fact that his own ten months and more of composition had misfired. The two books must be translated into Latin, the universal language of scholars at that time, and distributed in the continent of Europe, where their argument would be more readily appreciated and understood. When opportunity served, during the years that lay ahead, he would find time to incorporate all the ideas he had expressed in his Advancement of Learning in yet a further major work, written wholly in Latin.