Concerning the best of these essays there are as many opinions as there are readers, and what one gets out of them depends largely upon his own thought and intelligence.  In this respect they are like that Nature to which Bacon directed men’s thoughts.  The whole volume may be read through in an evening; but after one has read them a dozen times he still finds as many places to pause and reflect as at the first reading.  If one must choose out of such a storehouse, we would suggest “Studies,” “Goodness,” “Riches,” “Atheism,” “Unity in Religion,” “Adversity,” “Friendship,” and “Great Place” as an introduction to Bacon’s worldly-wise philosophy.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.  Other works of Bacon are interesting as a revelation of the Elizabethan mind, rather than because of any literary value. The New Atlantis is a kind of scientific novel describing another Utopia as seen by Bacon.  The inhabitants of Atlantis have banished Philosophy and applied Bacon’s method of investigating Nature, using the results to better their own condition.  They have a wonderful civilization, in which many of our later discoveries—­academies of the sciences, observatories, balloons, submarines, the modification of species, and several others—­were foreshadowed with a strange mixture of cold reason and poetic intuition. De Sapientia Veterum is a fanciful attempt to show the deep meaning underlying ancient myths,—­a meaning which would have astonished the myth makers themselves.  The History of Henry VII is a calm, dispassionate, and remarkably accurate history, which makes us regret that Bacon did not do more historical work.  Besides these are metrical versions of certain Psalms—­which are valuable, in view of the controversy anent Shakespeare’s plays, for showing Bacon’s utter inability to write poetry—­and a large number of letters and state papers showing the range and power of his intellect.

BACON’S PLACE AND WORK.  Although Bacon was for the greater part of his life a busy man of affairs, one cannot read his work without becoming conscious of two things,—­a perennial freshness, which the world insists upon in all literature that is to endure, and an intellectual power which marks him as one of the great minds of the world.

Of late the general tendency is to give less and less prominence to his work in science and philosophy; but criticism of his Instauratio, in view of his lofty aim, is of small consequence.  It is true that his “science” to-day seems woefully inadequate; true also that, though he sought to discover truth, he thought perhaps to monopolize it, and so looked with the same suspicion upon Copernicus as upon the philosophers.  The practical man who despises philosophy has simply misunderstood the thing he despises.  In being practical and experimental in a romantic age he was not unique, as is often alleged, but only expressed the tendency of the English mind in all ages.  Three centuries earlier the monk