James Spedding
James Spedding was an English author chiefly known as the editor of the Works of Francis Bacon. He was born in Cumberland the younger son of a country squire, and was educated at Bury St. Edmunds and Trinity College, Cambridge where he took a second class in the classical tripos, and was junior optime in mathematics in 1831.
In 1835 he entered the colonial office, but he resigned this post in 1841. In 1842 he was secretary to Lord Ashburton on his American mission, and in 1855 he became secretary to the Civil Service Commission but from 1841 onwards he was constantly occupied in his researches into Bacon’s life and philosophy. On March 1, 1881 he was knocked down by a cab in London and on the 9th he died of erysipelas.
His Work
Spedding’s great edition was begun in 1847 in collaboration with Robert Leslie Ellis and D. D. Heath. In 1853 Ellis had to leave the work to Spedding, with the occasional assistance of Heath, who edited most of the legal writings. The Works were published in 1857-1859 in seven volumes, followed by the Life and Letters (1861-1874). Taken together these works contain practically all the material which exists in connection with the subject, collected and weighed with care and impartiality.
In 1853, Delia Bacon approached Spedding with her belief that Francis Bacon was instrumental in the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Speddings’s initial reaction was speechless astonishment; but on later occasions he clearly expressed his disfavour of the Baconian hypothesis, and explained some of the common-sense reasons against it. Spedding was also one of the first people to perceive Shake-Speare’s hand in the additions to “Sir Thomas More”. Spedding humorously emphasized his devotion to Bacon in the title of one of his non-Baconian works, Reviews and Discussions, Literary, Political and Historical, not relating to Bacon, (1879).
Robert Leslie Ellis
Robert Leslie Ellis was an English polymath, remembered principally as a a mathematician and editor of the Works of Francis Bacon. Ellis was the youngest of six children of Francis Ellis (1772—1842) of Bath. Educated privately, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1836, graduating as Senior Wrangler in 1840 and elected Fellow of Trinity shortly afterwards. Although he had also entered Inner Temple in 1838, was called to the bar in 1840, and later helped William Whewell with jurisprudence, Ellis never practised law. He hoped unsuccessfully for the Cambridge chair of civil law. Inheriting substantial estates in Ireland on the death of his father, Ellis contemplated entering Parliament as a whig under the patronage of Sir William Napier (1785—1860): his courtship of one of Napier’s daughters unfortunately ended in some confusion, and Ellis never married.
As a mathematician, Ellis founded the Cambridge Mathematical Journal with D. F. Gregory in 1837. His own major mathematical contributions were on functional and differential equations, and the theory of probability (On the foundations of the theory of probabilities, 1849). Philosophically, Ellis (like George Boole and later John Venn) defended an objective rather than subjective theory of probability. He corresponded with Augustus De Morgan on the conjectured four color theorem. Ellis took on the editing of “Francis Bacon’s Works” with two other Trinity fellows, Douglas Denon Heath and James Spedding.
Unfortunately, dramatic deterioration of Ellis’s health from 1847 left his work on the general prefaces to Bacon’s philosophy unfinished. Spedding and Heath completed the “Works” in seven volumes, published 1857—1859.
As a mathematician, Ellis founded the Cambridge Mathematical Journal with D. F. Gregory in 1837. His own major mathematical contributions were on functional and differential equations, and the theory of probability (On the foundations of the theory of probabilities, 1849). Philosophically, Ellis (like George Boole and later John Venn) defended an objective rather than subjective theory of probability. He corresponded with Augustus De Morgan on the conjectured four color theorem. Ellis took on the editing of “Francis Bacon’s Works” with two other Trinity fellows, Douglas Denon Heath and James Spedding. Unfortunately, dramatic deterioration of Ellis’s health from 1847 left his work on the general prefaces to Bacon’s philosophy unfinished. Spedding and Heath completed the “Works” in seven volumes, published 1857—1859.
He was so named after his godfather Mons. Denon, a noted French savant, Director of the Louvre, and Master of the Mint under Napoleon, was born in Chancery Lane, January 6th, 1811. He attended a private school at Greenwich, kept by Dr Burney, but left before he was 16, owning to indifferent health, and spent the best part of 1826—7 in Paris, with his father’s friend Monsieur Guyet, a strong Liberal, whose house was the frequent meeting place of the more eminent members of the opposition to the Government of Chas. X. Guizot, Casimir Périer and the Duc de Broglie, were all friends of the Guyets. Here he learnt French, and heard and saw much of interest. He was a spectator of the famous review of the National Guard in 1827, when the men, in place of the expected Vive le Roi, shouted to the King A bas Villèle, the name of the reactionary Premier, who had attempted to destroy the liberty of the Press.