concentration and despite flawless logic and construction, one turns from it as from a handbook of anecdotes or consecutive pages of bons mots. Bacon's philosophical writings like an author's diary read in connexion with his novels, indeed seem the essence of the man and perhaps overshadow the "minor" works. The history of Henry Seventh, however, in its celerity and shrewdness as a tale and as a personal expression, is unique; The Wisdom of the Ancients seems to epitomize Bacon's nature of poet and logician, and one feels that in shapeliness, cumulative power, and intellectual attractiveness, in flavour of strangeness and power, The Advancement of Learning has no rival. "Even in divinity," its author says, "some writings have more of the eagle than others." There is in The Advancement of Learning conspicuously much of the eagle. One does not wonder that Bacon should have said of it, "If the first reading will make an objection, the second will make an answer."
NOT ALWAYS
In surety and obscurity twice mailed,
And first achieving with initial rout
A riddance of weak fear and weaker doubt,
He strove alone. But when too long assailed
By nothing, even a stronger might have quailed
As he did, and so might have gazed about
Where he could see the last light going out,
Almost as if the fire of God had failed.
And so it was till out of silence crept
Invisible avengers of a name
Unknown, like jungle-hidden jaguars.
But there were others coming who had kept
Their watch and word; and out of silence came
A song somewhat as of the morning stars.
