download PDF version: 47.1MB - Global Grey

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I
225
That is the true conclusion of Rawley's " Vita Baconi."
We know from history that upon his deposition he was
put into the tower pro forma for four or five days, and
obliged to avoid London for a time, but that eventually he
was pardoned and might have returned to Parliament, and,
as we have just heard, that his king, surrounded by
incapable counsellors, sighed for him.
But Bacon scorned the idea of ever returning to a post
in which he had met with such hatred and jealousy.
lived exclusively to write his literary works for the benefit
of mankind. He lived for us !
And now we ask the question again. Did Mr. Spedding
really know everything pertaining to Bacon ? Mr. Sidney
Lee, author of the well-known book, " A Life of Shakes
peare," assumes he did, just as he himself (Mr. Lee) pre
sumes he knows "all" about that "William Shakespeare."
He
6. And yet Mr. Spedding disregards the most important
confession contained in the Last Will, viz., that Francis
Bacon wrote " curiously rhymed " books. He seems to
take it for granted that an English Chancellor, at his death,
should leave curiously rhymed books behind. Neither Mr.
Spedding, nor all those gentlemen who would still hold him
up as an absolute authority on Bacon, has the remotest idea
that there are rhymed verses concealed in Bacon's prose
works. In his Essay, " Of Studies," Bacon recommends us
to read certain books (among which, first and foremost, his
own must be counted) with
" attention, slowly, curiously."
This Mr. Spedding has, in most cases, neglected to do.
7.
But now we are coming to a point
in which Mr.
Spedding must not only admit carelessness, but must plead
guilty of having concealed one of the most important facts
from us in an inexcusable manner.
About the year 1825, Basil Montagu published the com
plete edition of Bacon's Works, which served Spedding,
Ellis and Heath as the most natural model to go by. That