Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans

Baron Verulam of Verulam
In sketching the life and character of a man, especially if he has been fortunate enough to be both praised and blamed, one cannot be too vigilant in avoiding bias, an infection from which biographers rarely escape. Several biographies and sketches, more or less complete, of the life of Francis Bacon, have been written: the first by Rawley, his private chaplain; then, by Boener, his physician; Campbell, Montagu, Fowler, Abbott, Garnett, and notably by Spedding, who has also given us many of his letters.

The best test of a man’s character and worth should be found in the testimony of contemporaries, and of these we have a cloud of unimpeachable witnesses to Francis Bacon’s transcendent genius, righteousness, and altruism, Rawley, Boener, Matthew, Fuller, Aubrey, and many others, Aubrey making the sweeping declaration that “All who were good and great loved him.”

Some modern writers, however, have seen in him nothing, and others everything, to commend. To understand this we must recognize the fact that the human mind, with rare exceptions, is subconsciously or by transmission from some other mind that has adventured into the same field which it is exploring, sensitively alive to suggestion which is readily transformed into theory unless restrained. Such a mind when it undertakes to delineate a dead man’s character, with little beside his correspondence with various people, with some of whom he can be familiar, while with others he must be reserved or evasive, complaisant or aggressive, is sure to produce a portrait which would be unrecognizable to a contemporary.

>>The Honourable Author