And if we turn from the new method by which he would advance all knowledge, and on which his fame as a philosopher chiefly rests,—­ that method which has led to discoveries that even Bacon never dreamed of, not thinking of the fruit he was to bestow, but only the way to secure it,—­even as a great inventor thinks more of his invention than of the money he himself may reap from it, as a work of creation to benefit the world rather than his own family, and in the work of which his mind revels in a sort of intoxicated delight, like a true poet when he constructs his lines, or a great artist when he paints his picture,—­a pure subjective joy, not an anticipated gain;—­if we turn from this “method” to most of his other writings, what do we find?  Simply the lucubrations of a man of letters, the moral wisdom of the moralist, the historian, the biographer, the essayist.  In these writings we discover no more worldliness than in Macaulay when he wrote his “Milton,” or Carlyle when he penned his “Burns,”—­even less, for Bacon did not write to gain a living, but to please himself and give vent to his burning thoughts.  In these he had no worldly aim to reach, except perhaps an imperishable fame.  He wrote as Michael Angelo sculptured his Moses; and he wrote not merely amid the cares and duties of a great public office, with other labors which might be called Herculean, but even amid pains of disease and the infirmities of age,—­when rest, to most people, is the greatest boon and solace of their lives.

Take his Essays,—­these are among his best-known works,—­so brilliant and forcible, suggestive and rich, that even Archbishop Whately’s commentaries upon them are scarcely an addition.  Surely these are not on material subjects, and indicate anything but a worldly or sordid nature.  In these famous Essays, so luminous with the gems of genius, we read not such worldly-wise exhortations as Lord Chesterfield impressed upon his son, not the gossiping frivolities of Horace Walpole, not the cynical wit of Montaigne, but those great certitudes which console in affliction, which kindle hope, which inspire lofty resolutions,—­anchors of the soul, pillars of faith, sources of immeasurable joy, the glorious ideals of true objects of desire, the eternal unities of truth and love and beauty; all of which reveal the varied experiences of life and the riches of deeply-pondered meditation on God and Christianity, as well as knowledge of the world and the desirableness of its valued gifts.  How beautiful are his thoughts on death, on adversity, on glory, on anger, on friendship, on fame, on ambition, on envy, on riches, on youth and old age, and divers other subjects of moral import, which show the elevation of his soul, and the subjective as well as the objective turn of his mind; not dwelling on what he should eat and what he should drink and wherewithal he should be clothed, but on the truths which appeal to our higher nature, and which raise the thoughts of men from earth to heaven, or at least to the realms of intellectual life and joy.