old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name,
is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's
fault, but the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.

No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly
subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense.


In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid
things as strange as any that are described in the "Arabian Tales"
. . . amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin,
fountains more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade,
conveyances more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more
formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious
than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams
there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.


Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum
. . . Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is
employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made
so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many
prejudices, introduced so many new opinions.

But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect
which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science-
-all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two
thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all
the bright hopes of the coming age.