Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

368 FMANCIS BACON
own part, in the acknowledged, works of Francis Bacon we see
but a collection of masterly sketches — vast maps in outline,
magnificent designs, whose every detail he had elsewhere studied
and attempted to trace out, so that the next ages should have
but to copy, fill in, enlarge, diminish, colour, or elaborate.
" Will you make this man a monster, with powers abnormal and
supernatural?" The question has been asked more than once,
and the reply is as before.
No man could have read, imagined,
cogitated, and devised as Francis Bacon did, if at the same time
he had to conduct the mechanical business requisite in the production
of great works on a vast variety of subjects. Though
we have it on the authority of Dr. Sprat, that the powers of mind
of Bacon were equal to those of twenty, if not (as some seem to
have said) of a thousand men ;
yet neither his bodily strength
nor length of days would have sufficed for such a work. He
must have had help in the most tedious particulars, and the
method has already been explained by which, according to the
present view, the Freemasons and Rosicrucians became engines
or machines for the execution of all mechanical work.
And for a monster in mind, who has ever matched Francis
Bacon? Truly, like Caesar, he
" Did get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone."
Is it not true that still
" He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus ; and that petty men
"Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find themselves dishonourable graves " 1
A monster ? — Yes, that is the very name which his friend Sir
Tobie Matthew claims for him. He challenges any one " to muster
out of any age four men who, in many respects, should excel
four such as we are able to show — Cardinal Wolsey, Sir
Thomas More, Sir Philip Sydney, and Sir Francis Bacon, for
they were all a kind of monsters in their several ways."
After extolling the first three, he continues