158 STATESMEN AND SAGES He was then fifty-one years of age, and Shakespeare forty-eight. After the ap- pointment of Bacon as Attorney-General, no more of the Shakespeare plays appeared ; the " Tempest," which is evidently the last of the series, for in it Pros- pero declares " I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book ; " is set down by the commentators, as written between 1609 and 1611. At that time Shakespeare was forty-five or forty-seven years of age, and lived for five or seven years thereafter in utter intellectual idleness, in Stratford. In 1609 Bacon published "The Wisdom of the Ancients," a prose work of great poetical beauty. His professional practice was large and his income princely. In 1617 he succeeded Ellesmere, the Lord Chancellor, with the title of lord-keeper. In January, 1618, he was created lord high chancellor, and the same year was raised to the peerage as Baron of Verulam ; and in 1621 he was made Viscount St. Albans. The " Novum Organum," his great life-work, was printed in October, 1620. His extraordinary industry is revealed in the fact that it had been copied and revised twelve times before it took its present shape. The new philosophy meant the study of nature and the acquisition of the knowledge of things. In this search the "most common," "base, illiberal and filthy matters," are not to be overlooked. We find in the plays the same novel philosophy : " Some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone ; and most poor matters Point to rich ends." (Tempest, iii. i.)
- Bacon's leading thought was the good of humanity. He held that study,
instead of employing itself in wearisome and sterile speculations, should be en- gaged in mastering the secrets of nature and life, and in applying them to human use. His method, in the attainment of this end, was rigid and pure observation, aided by experiment and fructified by induction. . . . He clearly invented a thermometer ; he instituted ingenious experiments on the compressibility of bodies, and on the density and weight of air ; he suggested chemical processes ; he suggested the law of universal gravitation, afterward demonstrated by New- ton ; he foresaw the true explication of the tides, and the cause of colors." ["American Cyclopedia." Vol. II,, p. 204.] This great work, the " Novum Organum," as often happens, was received by the majority of readers of his time with laughter and ridicule. Coke wrote on the title-page of a presentation copy : a It deserveth not to be read in schools, But to be freighted in the ship of fools." The ill-fortune which had so shrouded Bacon's struggling youth, and which had given way to such a magnificent sun-burst of splendid prosperity, was again
