observed fact for syllogism with major premiss unproved—this revolution in method could not be reserved, for one department of thought. Bacon's references are mainly to the Discourses and not to the Prince, but he had well digested both.7 The Essays bear the impress of Machiavelli's positive spirit, and Bacon's ideal of history is his. 'Its true office is to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment.' His own history of Henry VII. is a good example of such a life as Machiavelli would have written of such a hero.8
The most powerful English thinker of Machiavelli's political school is Hobbes. He drew similar lessons from a similar experience—the distractions of Civil War at home, and the growth, which he watched during many years of exile, of centralised monarchy abroad. Less important is Harrington, whose Oceana or model of a commonwealth was once so famous, and is in truth one of the most sensible productions of that kind of literature. Harrington travelled in Italy, was much at home with Italian politics and books on politics, and perhaps studied Machiavelli more faithfully than any other of his countrymen. He tells us, writing after the Restoration, that his works had then fallen into neglect.9 Scattered through the Patriot King and other writings of Bolingbroke are half a dozen references to Machiavelli,10 but they have the air, to use a phrase of Bacon's, of being but cloves stuck in to spice the
