Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

86 FEANCIS BACON
worked with and for him, who knew him in his struggles and in
his triumphs, in his greatness and in his fall, is not the only
friendship which he has secured. Those still revere and love
him best who, like Basil Montagu, James Spedding, aud Hepworth
Dixon, have devoted years of their lives to the study of
his works and the contemplation of his life and character.
Lord Macaulay, who wrote one essay on Bacon, is astonished at
the enthusiasm with which a prolonged intimacy with the works
and life
of that great man had inspired his biographer, Basil
Montagu. " The writer," says Macaulay, " is enamoured of his
subject. It constantly overflows from his lips and his pen."
But this is the impression made upon most thoughtful persons
who read and read again (without previous prejudice or the aid
of a commentator) the works and letters of Bacon, until they
come to know not only the matter, but the man himself.
There can, we think, be but one issue to such a study:
admiration deepening into esteem, sympathy, and a feeling of
personal friendship, which no hostile or piecemeal criticism will
avail to shake.
The admiring warmth with which " Shakespeare " scholars
have justly extolled the character of their ideal author is precisely
that which creeps over and possesses the soul of the earnest
disciple of the " myriad-minded " Bacon. We may be incapable
of following, even in imagination, " the vast contemplative
ends " which he proposed to himself, and to the accomplishment
of which his life was actually consecrated. But no one who can
apprehend, however dimly, the plan and purpose of such a life,
can withhold from it a tribute of admiration, or can remain
insensible of the influence for good which that man must by
personal example have shed around him, and which through
his works he still diffuses. And, says Ben Jonson at the
conclusion of his sketch of Bacon's genius, " There is notone
color of the mind and another of the works." Such as
works are as a whole, such on the whole is their author.
Goodness, as well as greatness, is impressed upon the writings
of Bacon. We may be awe- struck in the contemplation of his
magnificent powers of mind, enchanted with his language, and