Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

and ultimate catholicity
AND MIS SECRET SOCIETY. 127
of learning, — the happy match which
shall be made between the mind of man and the nature of things,
and the ultimate " mingling of heaven and earth,"—is printed
in Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, 1 and should be read
and considered by all who care to understand what Dr. Eawley
describes as certain " grounds and notions within himself," or,
as it is elsewhere said, " fixed and universal ideas " which came
to him in his youth, and abode with him to the end of his life.
This speech is succeeded by the far longer Discourse in Praise
of the Queen— " an oration which for spirit, eloquence, and substantial
worth may bear a comparison with the greatest panegyrical
orations of modern times. " 2 The biographer explains
that, although this oration seems too long and elaborate to have
been used as part of a court entertainment, yet it might hare
been (and probably was) worked upon and enlarged afterwards,
and that the circumstances under which it was delivered caused
it to be received as something of much greater importance than
a mere court compliment.
Probably no one who has read the life and works of Bacon is
so foolish and unsympathetic as to believe that such
a man, in
exalting the theatre, writing for it, interesting others in its
behalf, had no higher aim than to amuse himself and his friends,
still less to profit by it, or even to make himself a name as a
mere playwright.
Considering merely the position which he held as a man of
letters and a philosopher, it is impossible to conceive that for
such purposes he would have risked his reputation and prospects—running
in the face
of public opinion, which was strong
against stage-playing, and risking the displeasure of most of the
members of his own Puritan family, some of whom would surely
hear reports of what he was doing.
1 i. 123-126.
2 See the remarks in Spedding, Letters and Life, i. 143, on this piece. The
editor shows its fitness for the occasion when it was delivered. Yet we are
convinced that it had a second and still more important aim than that which at
first sight appears. There was no need to answer an invective against the Government,
when Bacon ordered the printing and publication of 'this speech to be
done after his death.