Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

96 FRANCIS BACON
present, however, Ms field of ambition was in the school-room
and library, where, perhaps, from the delicacy of his constitution,
but still more from the bent of his genius, he was more at
home than in the playground. His career there was victorious
new prospects of boundless extent opening on every side, 1 until
at length, just about the Age at which an intellect of quick
growth begins to be conscious of original power, he was sent to
the university, where he hoped to learn all that men knew.
By the time, however, that he had gone through the usual course,
he was conscious of a disappointment, and came out of college at
fifteen, by his own desire apparently, and, without waiting to
take a degree, in precisely the same opinion as Montaigne when be
left college, as he says, " having run through my whole course,
as they call it, and, in truth, without any advantage tbat I can
honestly brag of."
Francis stayed at Cambridge only for three years, being more
than once driven away by outbreaks of the plague; once for so long
as eight or nine months. Yet he had made such progress in his
studies that he seems to have begged his father to remove him,
because he had already found that the academical course which
he was pursuing was " barren of the production of fruits for
the life of man. " Leaving the university before he was sixteen
and without taking a degree, he yet carried with him the germs
of his plan for reconstituting the whole round of the arts and
sciences, a plan from which he never departed, and upon which
he was still working at the time of his death.
That this should have been possible, argues an unusually
extensive reading, and an acquaintance with branches of learning
far beyond the subjects prescribed by the university authorities,
and taking together all the facts concerning his great
schemes, and the indications which he gives as to the origin of
one of them, it is probable that during his sixteenth year, and
perhaps earlier, he embarked in the study of the Indian, Arabian,
l It seems probable that in these early days the ideas and schemes of Sir
Nicholas regarding an improved system of education and learning were discoursed
of to his little son, and that the germs of his own great plans were thus
planted.