THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

FRANCIS BACON UI
years in advance of his income forbade him the luxury of scruples. It
might have passed unnoticed, except that he had made enemies in
Essex' case, and by his readiness to sabre foes with his speech. A friend
had warned him that "it is too common in every man's mouth in Court
that ... as your tongue hath been a razor to some, so shall theirs be
to you." 114 But he left the warnings unnoticed. He seemed to be hi good
favor with the King; he had been made Baron Verulam of Verularn in
1618, and Viscount St. Albans in 1621; and for three years he had been
Chancellor.
^Then suddenly the blow came. In 1621 a disappointed suitor charged
him with taking money for the despatch of a suit; it was no unusual
matter, but Bacon knew at once that if his enemies wished to press it
they could force his fall. He retired to his home, and waited developments.
When he learned that all his foes were clamoring for his dismissal,
he sent in his "confession and humble submission" to the King. James,
yielding to pressure from the now victorious Parliament against which
Bacon had too persistently defended him, sent him to the Tower. But
Bacon was released after two days; and the heavy fine which had been
laid upon him was remitted by the King. His pride was not quite
broken. "I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years,"
he said; "but it was the justest judgment that was in Parliament these
two hundred years."
He spent the five years that remained to him in the obscurity and
peace of his home, harassed by an unwonted poverty, but solaced by the
active pursuit of philosophy. In these five years he wrote his greatest
Latin work, De Augmentis Scientiarum, published an enlarged edition
of the Essays, a fragment called Sylva Sylvarum, and a History of Henry
VII. He mourned that he had not sooner abandoned politics and given
all his time to literature and science. To the very last moment he was
occupied with work, and died, so to speak, on the field of battle. In his
essay "Of Death* 9
he had voiced a wish to die "in an earnest pursuit,
which is like one wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the
hurt." Like Caesar, he was granted his choice.
In March, 1626, while riding from London to Highgate, and turning
over in his mind the question how far flesh might be preserved from
putrefaction by being covered with snow, he resolved to put the matter
to a test at once. Stopping off at a cottage, he bought a fowl, killed it,
and stuffed it with snow. While he was doing this he was seized with
chills and weakness; and finding himself too ill to ride back to town, he
gave directions that he should be taken to the nearby home of Lord
Arundel, where he took to bed. He did not yet resign life; he wrote cheerfully
that "the experiment . . . succeeded excellently well." But it was
bis last. The fitful fever of his varied life had quite consumed him; he
. 9 p. 13 note.