Bacon, Mr. Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, &c. Afterwards the warriors and
Ministers of State shall come in their order.

I must begin with the celebrated Viscount Verulam, known in Europe by the
name of Bacon, which was that of his family. His father had been Lord
Keeper, and himself was a great many years Lord Chancellor under King
James I. Nevertheless, amidst the intrigues of a Court, and the affairs
of his exalted employment, which alone were enough to engross his whole
time, he yet found so much leisure for study as to make himself a great
philosopher, a good historian, and an elegant writer; and a still more
surprising circumstance is that he lived in an age in which the art of
writing justly and elegantly was little known, much less true philosophy.
Lord Bacon, as is the fate of man, was more esteemed after his death than
in his lifetime. His enemies were in the British Court, and his admirers
were foreigners.

When the Marquis d'Effiat attended in England upon the Princess Henrietta
Maria, daughter to Henry IV., whom King Charles I. had married, that
Minister went and visited the Lord Bacon, who, being at that time sick in
his bed, received him with the curtains shut close. "You resemble the
angels," says the Marquis to him; "we hear those beings spoken of
perpetually, and we believe them superior to men, but are never allowed
the consolation to see them."

You know that this great man was accused of a crime very unbecoming a
philosopher: I mean bribery and extortion. You know that he was
sentenced by the House of Lords to pay a fine of about four hundred
thousand French livres, to lose his peerage and his dignity of
Chancellor; but in the present age the English revere his memory to such
a degree, that they will scarce allow him to have been guilty. In case