' Suidas brings
many citations out of him, all which show him an excellent poet.
many citations out of him, all which show him an excellent poet.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v02 - Aqu to Bag
For the first twenty-four hours it was
impossible to learn anything; for even the most zealous require
at least a day to form some idea of a book. Next morning, on
first going out, I encountered a friend of mine, a young fellow
then and now a man of mature age, who has never had a sus-
## p. 1140 (#566) ###########################################
1140
MASSIMO TAPARELLI D'AZEGLIO
picion of the cruel blow he unconsciously dealt me. I met him
in Piazza San Fedele, where I lived; and after a few words, he
said, "By the by, I hear you have published a novel. Well
done! " and then talked away about something quite different
with the utmost heedlessness. Not a drop of blood was left in
my veins, and I said to myself, "Mercy on me! I am done for:
not even a word is said about my poor 'Fieramosca! >» It
seemed incredible that he, who belonged to a very numerous
family, connected with the best society of the town, should have
heard nothing, if the slightest notice had been taken of it. As
he was besides an excellent fellow and a friend, it seemed
equally incredible that if a word had been said and heard, he
should not have repeated it to me. Therefore, it was a failure;
the worst of failures, that of silence. With a bitter feeling at
heart, I hardly knew where I went; but this feeling soon
changed, and the bitterness was superseded by quite an opposite
sensation.
'Fieramosca' succeeded, and succeeded so well that I felt
abasourdi, as the French express it; indeed, I could say "Je
n'aurais jamais cru être si fort savant. " My success went on in
an increasing ratio: it passed from the papers and from the
masculine half to the feminine half of society; it found its way
to the studios and the stage. I became the vade-mecum of every
prima-donna and tenor, the hidden treat of school-girls; I pene-
trated between the pillow and the mattress of college, boys, of
the military academy cadet; and my apotheosis reached such a
height that some newspapers asserted it to be Manzoni's work. It
is superfluous to add that only the ignorant could entertain such
an idea; those who were better informed would never have made
such a blunder.
My aim, as I said, was to take the initiative in the slow
work of the regeneration of national character. I had no wish
but to awaken high and noble sentiments in Italian hearts; and
if all the literary men in the world had assembled to condemn
me in virtue of strict rules, I should not have cared a jot, if, in
defiance of all existing rules, I succeeded in inflaming the heart
of one single individual. And I will also add, who can say that
what causes durable emotion is unorthodox? It may be at vari-
ance with some rules and in harmony with others; and those
which move hearts and captivate intellects do not appear to me
to be the worst.
## p. 1141 (#567) ###########################################
1141
.
BABER
(1482-1530)
BY EDWARD S. HOLDEN
HE emperor Baber was sixth in descent from Tamerlane, who
died in 1405.
Tamerlane's conquests were world-wide, but
they never formed a homogeneous empire. Even in his life-
time he parceled them out to sons and grandsons. Half a century
later Trans-oxiana was divided into many independent kingdoms each
governed by a descendant of the great conqueror.
When Baber was born (1482), an uncle was King of Samarkand
and Bokhara; another uncle ruled Badakhshan; another was King
of Kabul. A relative was the powerful King of Khorasan. These
princes were of the family of Tamerlane, as was Baber's father,-
Sultan Omer Sheikh Mirza,-who was the King of Ferghana. Two
of Baber's maternal uncles, descendants of Chengiz Khan, ruled the
Moghul tribes to the west and north of Ferghana; and two of their
sisters had married the Kings of Samarkand and Badakhshan.
third sister was Baber's mother, wife of the King of Ferghana.
The
The capitals of their countries were cities like Samarkand,
Bokhara, and Herat. Tamerlane's grandson-Ulugh Beg-built at
Samarkand the chief astronomical observatory of the world, a cen-
tury and a half before Tycho Brahe (1576) erected Uranibourg in Den-
mark. The town was filled with noble buildings,- mosques, tombs,
and colleges. Its walls were five miles in circumference. *
Its streets were paved (the streets of Paris were not paved till the
time of Henri IV. ), and running water was distributed in pipes. Its
markets overflowed with fruits. Its cooks and bakers were noted for
their skill. Its colleges were full of learned men, poets,† and doctors
of the law. The observatory counted more than a hundred observers
and calculators in its corps of astronomers. The products of China,
of India, and of Persia flowed to the bazaars.
Bokhara has always been the home of learning. Herat was at
that time the most magnificent and refined city of the world. ‡ The
court was splendid, polite, intelligent, and liberal. Poetry, history,
* Paris was walled in 1358; so Froissart tells us.
"In Samarkand, the Odes of Baiesanghar Mirza are so popular, that
there is not a house in which a copy of them may not be found. " — Baber's
'Memoirs. '
Baber spent twenty days in visiting its various palaces, towers, mosques,
gardens, colleges—and gives a list of more than fifty such sights.
## p. 1142 (#568) ###########################################
BABER
1142
philosophy, science, and the arts of painting and music were culti-
vated by noblemen and scholars alike. Baber himself was a poet of
no mean rank. The religion was that of Islam, and the sect the
orthodox Sunni; but the practice was less precise than in Arabia.
Wine was drunk; poetry was prized; artists were encouraged. The
mother-language of Baber was Turki (of which the Turkish of Con-
stantinople is a dialect). Arabic was the language of science and of
theology. Persian was the accepted literary language, though Baber's
verses are in Turki as well.
We possess Baber's 'Memoirs' in the original Turki and in Persian
translations also. In what follows, the extracts will be taken from
Erskine's translation,* which preserves their direct and manly charm.
To understand them, the foregoing slight introduction is necessary.
A connected sketch of Baber's life and a brief history of his conquests
can be found in 'The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan. ’†
We are
here more especially concerned with his literary work. To compre-
hend it, something of his history and surroundings must be known.
FROM BABER'S MEMOIRS›
IN
THE month of Ramzan, in the year 899 [A. D. 1494], and
in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghana.
The country of Ferghana is situated in the fifth climate, on
the extreme boundary of the habitable world. On the east it
has Kashgar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south, the hill
country; on the north, in former times there were cities, yet
at the present time, in consequence of the incursions of the
Usbeks, no population remains. Ferghana is a country of small
extent, abounding in grain and fruits. The revenues may suffice,
without oppressing the country, to maintain three or four thou-
sand troops.
My father, Omer Sheikh Mirza, was of low stature, had a
short, bushy beard, brownish hair, and was very corpulent. As
for his opinions and habits, he was of the sect of Hanifah, and
strict in his belief. He never neglected the five regular and
stated prayers. He read elegantly, and he was particularly fond
of reading the 'Shahnameh. ' Though he had a turn for poetry,
he did not cultivate it. He was so strictly just, that when the
caravan from [China] had once reached the hill country to the
*(Memoirs of Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, and
translated by Leyden and Erskine,' etc. London, 1826, quarto.
By Edward S. Holden, New York, 1895, 8vo, illustrated.
The Book of Kings,' by the Persian poet Firdausi.
## p. 1143 (#569) ###########################################
BABER
1143
east of Ardejan, and the snow fell so deep as to bury it, so
that of the whole only two persons escaped; he no sooner re-
ceived information of the occurrence than he dispatched overseers
to take charge of all the property, and he placed it under guard
and preserved it untouched, till in the course of one or two years,
the heirs coming from Khorasan, he delivered back the goods
safe into their hands. His generosity was large, and so was his
whole soul; he was of an excellent temper, affable, eloquent, and
sweet in his conversation, yet brave withal and manly.
The early portion of Baber's 'Memoirs' is given to portraits of the
officers of his court and country. A few of these may be quoted.
Khosrou Shah, though a Turk, applied his attention to the
mode of raising his revenues, and he spent them liberally. At
the death of Sultan Mahmud Mirza, he reached the highest pitch
of greatness, and his retainers rose to the number of twenty
thousand. Though he prayed regularly and abstained from for-
bidden foods, yet he was black-hearted and vicious, of mean
understanding and slender talents, faithless and a traitor. For
the sake of the short and fleeting pomp of this vain world, he
put out the eyes of one and murdered another of the sons of the
benefactor in whose service he had been, and by whom he had
been protected; rendering himself accursed of God, abhorred of
men, and worthy of execration and shame till the day of final
retribution. These crimes he perpetrated merely to secure the
enjoyment of some poor worldly vanities; yet with all the power
of his many and populous territories, in spite of his magazines of
warlike stores, he had not the spirit to face a barnyard chicken.
He will often be mentioned in these memoirs.
Ali Shir Beg was celebrated for the elegance of his manners;
and this elegance and polish were ascribed to the conscious pride
of high fortune: but this was not the case; they were natural to
him. Indeed, Ali Shir Beg was an incomparable person. From
the time that poetry was first written in the Turki language,
no man has written so much and so well. He has also left
excellent pieces of music; they are excellent both as to the airs
themselves and as to the preludes. There is not upon record
in history any man who was a greater patron and protector of
men of talent than he. He had no son nor daughter, nor wife
nor family; he passed through the world single and unincum-
bered.
## p. 1144 (#570) ###########################################
BABER
1144
Another poet was Sheikhem Beg. He composed a sort of
verses, in which both the words and the sense are terrifying
and correspond with each other. The following is one of his
couplets:-
During my sorrows of the night, the whirlpool of my sighs bears
the firmament from its place;
The dragons of the inundations of my tears bear down the four
quarters of the habitable world!
It is well known that on one occasion, having repeated these
verses to Moulana Abdal Rahman Jami, the Mulla said, "Are you
repeating poetry, or are you terrifying folks? "
A good many men who wrote verses happened to be present.
During the party the following verse of Muhammed Salikh was
repeated:-
What can one do to regulate his thoughts, with a mistress possessed
of every blandishment?
Where you are, how is it possible for our thoughts to wander to
another?
It was agreed that every one should make an extempore
couplet to the same rhyme and measure. Every one accord-
ingly repeated his verse. As we had been very merry, I re-
peated the following extempore satirical verses: —
What can one do with a drunken sot like you?
What can be done with one foolish as a she-ass?
Before this, whatever had come into my head, good or bad,
I had always committed it to writing. On the present occasion,
when I had composed these lines, my mind led me to reflections,
and my heart was struck with regret that a tongue which could
repeat the sublimest productions should bestow any trouble on
such unworthy verses; that it was melancholy that a heart ele-
vated to nobler conceptions should submit to occupy itself with
these meaner and despicable fancies. From that time forward
I religiously abstained from satirical poetry. I had not then
formed my resolution, nor considered how objectionable the prac-
tice was.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE YEAR 904 [A. D. 1498-99]
Having failed in repeated expeditions against Samarkand and
Ardejan, I once more returned to Khojend. Khojend is but a
## p. 1145 (#571) ###########################################
BABER
1145
small place; and it is difficult for one to support two hundred
retainers in it. How then could a [young] man, ambitious of
empire, set himself down contentedly in so insignificant a place?
As soon as I received advice that the garrison of Ardejan had
declared for me, I made no delay. And thus, by the grace of
the Most High, I recovered my paternal kingdom, of which I
had been deprived nearly two years. An order was issued that
such as had accompanied me in my campaigns might resume
possession of whatever part of their property they recognized.
Although the order seemed reasonable and just in itself, yet it
was issued with too much precipitation. It was a senseless thing
to exasperate so many men with arms in their hands.
In war
and in affairs of state, though things may appear just and rea-
sonable at first sight, no matter ought to be finally decided with-
out being well weighed and considered in a hundred different
lights. From my issuing this single order without sufficient
foresight, what commotions and mutinies arose! This inconsider-
ate order of mine was in reality the ultimate cause of my being
a second time expelled from Ardejan.
Baber's next campaign was most arduous, but in passing by a
spring he had the leisure to have these verses of Saadi inscribed on
its brink:-
I have heard that the exalted Jemshid
Inscribed on a stone beside a fountain:
"Many a man like us has rested by this fountain,
And disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
Should we conquer the whole world by our manhood and
strength,
Yet could we not carry it with us to the grave. "
Of another fountain he says:- -"I directed this fountain to be
built round with stone, and formed a cistern. At the time when the
Arghwan flowers begin to blow, I do not know that any place in the
world is to be compared to it. " On its sides he engraved these
verses:-
Sweet is the return of the new year;
Sweet is the smiling spring ;
Sweet is the juice of the mellow grape;
Sweeter far the voice of love.
Strive, O Baber! to secure the joys of life,
Which, alas! once departed, never more return.
## p. 1146 (#572) ###########################################
1146
BABER
From these flowers Baber and his army marched into the passes
of the high mountains.
His narrative goes on:-
It was at this time that I composed the following verses:
There is no violence or injury of fortune that I have not experi-
enced;
This broken heart has endured them all. Alas! is there one left
that I have not encountered?
For about a week we continued pressing down the snow
without being able to advance more than two or three miles. I
myself assisted in trampling down the snow. Every step we
sank up to the middle or the breast, but we still went on,
trampling it down. As the strength of the person who went first
was generally exhausted after he had advanced a few paces, he
stood still, while another took his place. The ten, fifteen, or
twenty people who worked in trampling down the snow, next
succeeded in dragging on a horse without a rider. Drawing this
horse aside, we brought on another, and in this way ten, fifteen,
or twenty of us contrived to bring forward the horses of all our
number. The rest of the troops, even our best men, advanced
along the road that had been beaten for them, hanging their
heads. This was no time for plaguing them or employing
authority. Every man who possesses spirit or emulation hastens
to such works of himself. Continuing to advance by a track
which we beat in the snow in this manner, we reached a cave
at the foot of the Zirrin pass. That day the storm of wind was
dreadful. The snow fell in such quantities that we all expected
to meet death together. The cave seemed to be small. I took
a hoe and made for myself at the mouth of the cave a resting-
place about the size of a prayer-carpet. I dug down in the
snow as deep as my breast, and yet did not reach the ground.
This hole afforded me some shelter from the wind, and I sat
down in it. Some desired me to go into the cavern, but I
would not go. I felt that for me to be in a warm dwelling,
while my men were in the midst of snow and drift,- for me to
be within, enjoying sleep and ease, while my followers were in
trouble and distress,- would be inconsistent with what I owed
them, and a deviation from that society in suffering which was
their due. I continued, therefore, to sit in the drift.
## p. 1147 (#573) ###########################################
BABER
[147
Ambition admits not of inaction;
The world is his who exerts himself;
In wisdom's eye, every condition
May find repose save royalty alone.
By leadership like this, the descendant of Tamerlane became the
ruler of Kabul. He celebrates its charms in verse:-
Its verdure and flowers render Kabul, in spring, a heaven,-
but this kingdom was too small for a man of Baber's stamp. He
used it as a stepping-stone to the conquest of India (1526).
Return a hundred thanks, O Baber! for the bounty of the merciful
God
Has given you Sind, Hind, and numerous kingdoms;
If, unable to stand the heat, you long for cold,
You have only to recollect the frost and cold of Ghazni.
In spite of these verses, Baber did not love India, and his mon-
archy was an exile to him. Let the last extract from his memoirs
be a part of a letter written in 1529 to an old and trusted friend in
Kabul. It is an outpouring of the griefs of his inmost heart to his
friend. He says:-
My solicitude to visit my western dominions (Kabul) is
boundless and great beyond expression. I trust in Almighty
Allah that the time is near at hand when everything will be
completely settled in this country. As soon as matters are
brought to that state, I shall, with the permission of Allah, set
out for your quarters without a moment's delay. How is it pos-
sible that the delights of those lands should ever be erased from
the heart? How is it possible to forget the delicious melons
and grapes of that pleasant region? They very recently brought
me a single muskmelon from Kabul. While cutting it up, I felt
myself affected with a strong feeling of loneliness and a sense of
my exile from my native country, and I could not help shedding
tears. [He gives long instructions on the military and political
matters to be attended to, and continues without a break:-]
At the southwest of Besteh I formed a plantation of trees; and
as the prospect from it was very fine, I called it Nazergah [the
view]. You must there plant some beautiful trees, and all
around sow beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs.
[And he goes straight on:-] Syed Kasim will accompany the
artillery. [After more details of the government he quotes.
## p. 1148 (#574) ###########################################
1148
BABRIUS
fondly a little trivial incident of former days and friends, and
says:] Do not think amiss of me for deviating into these
fooleries. I conclude with every good wish.
The Memoirs' of Baber deserve a place beside the writings of
the greatest of generals and conquerors. He is not unworthy to be
classed with Cæsar as a general and as a man of letters. His char-
acter was more human, more frank, more lovable, more ardent. His
fellow in our western world is not Cæsar, but Henri IV. of France
and Navarre.
Edward S. Holden
BABRIUS
(First Century A. D. )
B
ABRIUS, also referred to as Babrias and Gabrias, was the
writer of that metrical version of the folk-fables, commonly
referred to Æsop, which delights our childhood. Until the
time of Richard Bentley he was commonly thought of merely as a
fabulist whose remains had been preserved by a few grammarians.
Bentley, in the first draft (1697) of the part of his famous Disser-
tation treating of the fables of Esop, speaks thus of Babrius, and
goes not far out of his way to give a rap at Planudes, a late Greek,
who turned works of Ovid, Cato, and Cæsar into Greek:-
༥.
ambics.
Tzetzes.
-
came one Babrius, that gave a new turn of the fables into choli-
Nobody that I know of mentions him but Suidas, Avienus, and
There's one Gabrias, indeed, yet extant, that has comprised each
fable in four sorry iambics. But our Babrius is a writer of another size and
quality; and were his book now extant, it might justly be opposed, if not pre-
ferred, to the Latin of Phædrus. There's a whole fable of his yet preserved
at the end of Gabrias, of The Swallow and the Nightingale.
' Suidas brings
many citations out of him, all which show him an excellent poet.
There are two parcels of the present fables; the one, which are the more
ancient, one hundred and thirty-six in number, were first published out of the
Heidelberg Library by Neveletus, 1610. The editor himself well observed
that they were falsely ascribed to Æsop, because they mention holy monks.
To which I will add another remark, — that there is a sentence out of Job.
Thus I have proved one-half of the fables now extant that carry the
name of Æsop to be above a thousand years more recent than he. And the
other half, that were public before Neveletus, will be found yet more modern,
and the latest of all.
This collection, therefore, is more recent than
.
## p. 1149 (#575) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1149
that other; and, coming first abroad with Æsop's 'Life,' written by Planudes,
'tis justly believed to be owing to the same writer. That idiot of a monk
has given us a book which he calls The Life of Esop,' that perhaps cannot
be matched in any language for ignorance and nonsense.
He had picked up
two or three true stories, that Æsop was a slave to a Xanthus, carried a
burthen of bread, conversed with Crœsus, and was put to death at Delphi; but
the circumstances of these and all his other tales are pure invention.
But of all his injuries to Æsop, that which can least be forgiven him is the
making such a monster of him for ugliness, an abuse that has found credit
so universally that all the modern painters since the time of Planudes have
drawn him in the worst shapes and features that fancy could invent. 'Twas
an old tradition among the Greeks that Æsop revived again and lived a sec-
ond life. Should he revive once more and see the picture before the book
that carries his name, could he think it drawn for himself? - or for the
monkey, or some strange beast introduced in the Fables > ?
But what reve-
lation had this monk about Æsop's deformity? For he must have it by
dream or vision, and not by ordinary methods of knowledge. He lived about
two thousand years after him, and in all that tract of time there's not a
single author that has given the least hint that Æsop was ugly. "
-
Thus Bentley; but to return to Babrius. Tyrwhitt, in 1776, fol-
lowed this calculation of Bentley by collecting the remains of Ba-
brius. A publication in 1809 of fables from a Florentine manuscript
foreran the collection (1832) of all the fables which could be entirely
restored. In 1835 a German scholar, Knoch, published whatever had
up to that time been written on Babrius, or as far as then known by
So much had been accomplished by modern scholarship. The
calculation was not unlike the mathematical computation that a star
should, from an apparent disturbance, be in a certain quarter of the
heavens at a certain time. The manuscript of Babrius, it became
clear, must have existed. In 1842 M. Mynas, a Greek, who had
already discovered the 'Philosophoumena' of Hippolytus, came upon
the parchment in the convent of St. Lama on Mount Athos. He was
employed by the French government, and the duty of giving the
new ancient to the world fell to French scholars. The date of the
manuscript they referred to the tenth century. There were con-
tained in it one hundred and twenty-three of the supposed one hun-
dred and sixty fables, the arrangement being alphabetical and ending.
with the letter O. Again, in 1857 M. Mynas announced another dis-
covery. Ninety-four fables and a prooemium were still in a convent
at Mount Athos; but the monks, who made difficulty about part-
ing with the first parchment, refused to let the second go abroad.
M. Mynas forwarded a transcript which he sold to the British Mu-
seum. It was after examination pronounced to be the work of a
forger, and not even what it purported to be the tinkering of a
writer who had turned the original of Babrius into barbarous Greek
## p. 1150 (#576) ###########################################
1150
BABRIUS
and halting metre. Suggestions were made that the forger was
Mynas himself. And there were scholars who accounted the manu-
script as genuine.
The discovery of the first part added substantially to the remains
which we have of the poetry of ancient Greece. The terseness, sim-
plicity, and humor of the poems belong to the popular classic all
the world over, in whatever tongue it appears; and the purity of the
Greek shows that Babrius lived at a time when the influence of the
classical age was still vital. He is placed at various times. Bergk
fixes him so far back as B. C. 250, while others place him at the
same number of years in our own era. Both French and German
criticism has claimed that he was a Roman. There is no trace of
his fables earlier than the Emperor Julian, and no metrical version
of the Æsopean fables existed before the writing of Babrius. Socra-
tes tried his hand at a version or two. But when such Greek writ-
ers as Xenophon and Aristotle refer to old folk-tales and legends, it
is always in their own words. His fables are written in choliambic
verse; that is, imperfect iambic which has a spondee in the last foot
and is fitted for the satire for which it was originally used.
The fables of Babrius have been edited, with an interesting and
valuable introduction, by W. G. Rutherford (1883), and by F. G.
Schneidewin (1880). They have been turned into English metre by
James Davies, M. A. (1860). The reader is also referred to the article
( Æsop' in the present work.
THE NORTH WIND AND THE SUN
B
ETWIXT the North wind and the Sun arose
A contest, which would soonest of his clothes
Strip a wayfaring clown, so runs the tale.
First, Boreas blows an almost Thracian gale,
Thinking, perforce, to steal the man's capote :
He loosed it not; but as the cold wind smote
More sharply, tighter round him drew the folds,
And sheltered by a crag his station holds.
But now the Sun at first peered gently forth,
And thawed the chills of the uncanny North;
Then in their turn his beams more amply plied,
Till sudden heat the clown's endurance tried;
Stripping himself, away his cloak he flung:
The Sun from Boreas thus a triumph wrung.
THE fable means, "My son, at mildness aim:
Persuasion more results than force may claim. "
## p. 1151 (#577) ###########################################
BABRIUS
JUPITER AND THE MONKEY
BABY-SHOW with prizes Jove decreed
A
For all the beasts, and gave the choice due heed.
A monkey-mother came among the rest;
A naked, snub-nosed pug upon her breast
She bore, in mother's fashion. At the sight
Assembled gods were moved to laugh outright.
Said she, "Jove knoweth where his prize will fall!
I know my child's the beauty of them all. ”
THIS fable will a general law attest,
That each one deems that what's his own, is best.
THE MOUSE THAT FELL INTO THE POT
MOUSE into a lidless broth-pot fell;
A
Choked with the grease, and bidding life farewell,
He said, "My fill of meat and drink have I
And all good things: 'Tis time that I should die. "
THOU art that dainty mouse among mankind,
If hurtful sweets are not by thee declined.
THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
1151
TH
HERE hung some bunches of the purple grape
On a hillside. A cunning fox, agape
For these full clusters, many times essayed
To cull their dark bloom, many vain leaps made.
They were quite ripe, and for the vintage fit;
But when his leaps did not avail a whit,
He journeyed on, and thus his grief composed :-
"The bunch was sour, not ripe, as I supposed. "
THE CARTER AND HERCULES
A
CARTER from the village drove his wain:
And when it fell into a rugged lane,
Inactive stood, nor lent a helping hand;
But to that god, whom of the heavenly band
He really honored most, Alcides, prayed:
"Push at your wheels," the god appearing said,
"And goad your team; but when you pray again,
Help yourself likewise, or you'll pray in vain. ”
## p. 1152 (#578) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1152
THE YOUNG COCKS
wo Tanagræan cocks a fight began;
Τ
Their spirit is, 'tis said, as that of man:
Of these the beaten bird, a mass of blows,
For shame into a corner creeping goes;
The other to the housetop quickly flew,
And there in triumph flapped his wings and crew.
But him an eagle lifted from the roof,
And bore away. His fellow gained a proof
That oft the wages of defeat are best,-
None else remained the hens to interest.
WHEREFORE, O man, beware of boastfulness:
Should fortune lift thee, others to depress,
Many are saved by lack of her caress.
THE ARAB AND THE CAMEL
A
N ARAB, having heaped his camel's back,
Asked if he chose to take the upward track
Or downward; and the beast had sense to say
"Am I cut off then from the level way? »
THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE SWALLOW
AR from men's fields the swallow forth had flown,
When she espied amid the woodlands lone
The nightingale, sweet songstress. Her lament
Was Itys to his doom untimely sent.
F^
Each knew the other through the mournful strain,
Flew to embrace, and in sweet talk remain.
Then said the swallow, "Dearest, liv'st thou still ?
Ne'er have I seen thee, since thy Thracian ill.
Some cruel fate hath ever come between;
Our virgin lives till now apart have been.
Come to the fields; revisit homes of men;
Come dwell with me, a comrade dear, again,
Where thou shalt charm the swains, no savage brood:
Dwell near men's haunts, and quit the open wood:
One roof, one chamber, sure, can house the two,
Or dost prefer the nightly frozen dew,
And day-god's heat? a wild-wood life and drear?
## p. 1153 (#579) ###########################################
BABRIUS
Come, clever songstress, to the light more near. "
To whom the sweet-voiced nightingale replied:
"Still on these lonesome ridges let me bide;
Nor seek to part me from the mountain glen:—
I shun, since Athens, man, and haunts of men;
To mix with them, their dwelling-place to view,
Stirs up old grief, and opens woes anew. "
SOME Consolation for an evil lot
Lies in wise words, in song, in crowds forgot.
But sore the pang, when, where you once were great,
Again men see you, housed in mean estate.
THE HUSBANDMAN AND THE STORK
TH
HIN nets a farmer o'er his furrows spread,
And caught the cranes that on his tillage fed;
And him a limping stork began to pray,
Who fell with them into the farmer's way:
"I am no crane: I don't consume the grain:
That I'm a stork is from my color plain;
A stork, than which no better bird doth live;
I to my father aid and succor give. "
The man replied:-"Good stork, I cannot tell
Your way of life: but this I know full well,
I caught you with the spoilers of my seed;
With them, with whom I found you, you must bleed. "
-
THE PINE
1153
WALK with the bad, and hate will be as strong
'Gainst you as them, e'en though you no man wrong.
SON
OME Woodmen, bent a forest pine to split,
Into each fissure sundry wedges fit,
To keep the void and render work more light.
Out groaned the pine, "Why should I vent my spite
Against the axe which never touched my root,
So much as these cursed wedges, mine own fruit;
Which rend me through, inserted here and there! "
A FABLE this, intended to declare
That not so dreadful is a stranger's blow
As wrongs which men receive from those they know.
II-73
## p. 1154 (#580) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1154
THE WOMAN AND HER MAID-SERVANTS
VERY careful dame, of busy way,
A Kept maids at home, and these, ere break of day,
She used to raise as early as cock-crow.
They thought 'twas hard to be awakened so,
And o'er wool-spinning be at work so long;
Hence grew within them all a purpose strong
To kill the house-cock, whom they thought to blame
For all their wrongs. But no advantage came;
Worse treatment than the former them befell:
For when the hour their mistress could not tell
At which by night the cock was wont to crow,
She roused them earlier, to their work to go.
A harder lot the wretched maids endured.
BAD judgment oft hath such results procured.
THE LAMP
LAMP that swam with oil, began to boast
At eve, that it outshone the starry host,
And gave more light to all. Her boast was heard:
Soon the wind whistled; soon the breezes stirred,
And quenched its light. A man rekindled it,
And said, "Brief is the faint lamp's boasting fit,
But the starlight ne'er needs to be re-lit. »
A
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE
T
O THE shy hare the tortoise smiling spoke,
When he about her feet began to joke:
"I'll pass thee by, though fleeter than the gale. "
"Pooh! " said the hare, "I don't believe thy tale.
Try but one course, and thou my speed shalt know. "
"Who'll fix the prize, and whither we shall go? "
Of the fleet-footed hare the tortoise asked.
To whom he answered, "Reynard shall be tasked
With this; that subtle fox, whom thou dost see. "
The tortoise then (no hesitater she! )
Kept jogging on, but earliest reached the post;
The hare, relying on his fleetness, lost
Space, during sleep, he thought he could recover
When he awoke. But then the race was over;
The tortoise gained her aim, and slept her sleep.
FROM negligence doth care the vantage reap.
## p. 1155 (#581) ###########################################
1155
FRANCIS BACON
(1561-1626)
BY CHARLTON T. LEWIS
T
HE startling contrasts of splendor and humiliation which
marked the life of Bacon, and the seemingly incredible
inconsistencies which hasty observers find in his character,
have been the themes of much rhetorical declamation, and even of
serious and learned debate. From Ben Jonson in his own day, to
James Spedding the friend of Tennyson, he has not lacked eminent
eulogists, who look up to him as not only the greatest and wisest,
but as among the noblest and most worthy of mankind: while the
famous epigram of Pope, expanded by Macaulay into a stately and
eloquent essay, has impressed on the popular mind the lowest esti-
mate of his moral nature; and even such careful scholars as Charles
de Rémusat and Dean Church, who have devoted careful and instruct-
ive volumes to the survey of Bacon's career and works, insist that
with all his intellectual supremacy, he was a servile courtier, a false
friend, and a corrupt judge. Yet there are few important names in
human history of men who have left us so complete materials for a
just judgment of their conduct; and it is only a lover of paradox
who can read these and still regard Bacon's character as an unsolved
problem.
Mr. Spedding has given a long life of intelligent labor to the col-
lection of every fact and document throwing light upon the motives,
aims, and thoughts of the great "Chancellor of Nature," from the
cradle to the grave. The results are before us in the seven volumes
of 'The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon,' which form perhaps
the most complete biography ever written. It is a book of absolute
candor as well as infinite research, giving with equal distinctness all
the evidence which makes for its hero's dishonor and that which
tends to justify the writer's reverence for him. Another work by Mr.
Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elab-
orate refutation, from the original and authentic records, of the most
damning charges brought by Lord Macaulay against Bacon's good
fame. It is a complete and overwhelming exposure of false color-
ing, of rhetorical artifices, and of the abuse of evidence, in the
famous essay.
As one of the most entertaining and instructive
pieces of controversy in our literature, it deserves to be widely read.
The unbiased reader cannot accept the special pleading by which, in
his comments, Spedding makes every failing of Bacon "lean to
## p. 1156 (#582) ###########################################
1156
FRANCIS BACON
virtue's side"; but will form upon the unquestioned facts presented a
clear conception of him, will come to know him as no other man of
an age so remote is known, and will find in his many-sided and mag-
nificent nature a full explanation of the impressions which partial
views of it have made upon his worshipers and his detractors.
It is only in his maturity, indeed, that we are privileged to enter
into his mind and read his heart. But enough is known of the
formative period of his life to show us the sources of his weaknesses
and of his strength. The child whom high authorities have regarded
as endowed with the mightiest intellect of the human race was born
at York House, on the Strand, in the third year of Elizabeth's reign,
January 22d, 1561. He was the son of the Queen's Lord Keeper of
the Seals, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and his second wife Anne, daughter
of Sir Anthony Cook, formerly tutor of King Edward VI. Mildred,
an elder daughter of the same scholar, was the wife of William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, who for the first forty years of her reign was
Elizabeth's chief minister. As a child Bacon was a favorite at court,
and tradition represents him as something of a pet of the Queen,
who called him "my young Lord Keeper. " His mother was among
the most learned women of an age when, among women of rank,
great learning was as common and as highly prized as great beauty;
and her influence was a potent intellectual stimulus to the boy,
although he revolted in early youth from the narrow creed which
her fierce Puritan zeal strove to impose on her household. Outside
of the nursery, the atmosphere of his world was that of craft, all
directed to one end; for the Queen was the source of honor, power,
and wealth, and advancement in life meant only a share in the
grace distributed through her ministers and favorites. Apart from
the harsh and forbidding religious teachings of his mother, young
Francis had before him neither precept nor example of an ambition
more worthy than that of courting the smiles of power.
At the age of twelve he entered Trinity College, Cambridge
(April, 1573), and left it before he was fifteen (Christmas, 1575); the
institution meanwhile having been broken up for more than half a
year (August, 1574, to March, 1575) by the plague, so that his inter-
mittent university career summed up less than fourteen months.
There is no record of his studies, and the names of his teachers are
unknown; for though Bacon in later years called himself a pupil of
Whitgift, and his biographers assumed that the relation was direct
and personal, yet that great master of Trinity had certainly ended his
teaching days before Bacon went to Cambridge, and had entered as
Dean of Lincoln on his splendid ecclesiastical career. University life
was very different from that of our times. The statutes of Cam-
bridge forbade a student, under penalties, to use in conversation with
## p. 1157 (#583) ###########################################
FRANCIS BACON
1157
another any language but Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, unless in his pri-
vate apartments and in hours of leisure. It was a regular custom at
Trinity to bring before the assembled undergraduates every Thurs-
day evening at seven o'clock such junior students as had been
detected in breaches of the rules during the week, and to flog them.
It would be interesting to know in what languages young Bacon con-
versed, and what experiences of discipline befell him; but his subse-
quent achievements at least suggest that Cambridge in the sixteenth
century may have afforded more efficient educational influences than
our knowledge of its resources and methods can explain. For it is
certain that, at an age when our most promising youths are begin-
ning serious study, Bacon's mind was already formed, his habits and
modes of research were fixed, the universe of knowledge was an
open field before him. Thenceforth he was no man's pupil, but in
intellectual independence and solitude he rapidly matured into the
supreme scholar of his age.
After registering as a student of law at Gray's Inn, apparently
for the purpose of a nominal connection with a profession which
might aid his patrons in promoting him at court, Bacon was sent
in June, 1576, to France in the train of the British Ambassador, Sir
Amyas Paulet; and for nearly three years followed the roving em-
bassy around the great cities of that kingdom. The massacre of
St. Bartholomew had taken place four years before, and the boy's
recorded observations on the troubled society of France and of
Europe show remarkable insight into the character of princes and
the sources of political movements. Sir Nicholas had hitherto directed
his son's education and associations with the purpose of making
him an ornament of the court, and had set aside a fund to provide
Francis at the proper time with a handsome estate. But he died
suddenly, February 20th, 1579, without giving legal effect to this
provision, and the sum designed for the young student was divided
equally among the five children, while Francis was excluded from
a share in the rest of the family fortune; and was thus called home
to England to find himself a poor man.
He made himself a bachelor's home at Gray's Inn, and devoted
his energies to the law, with such success that he was soon recog-
nized as one of the most promising members of the profession. In
1584 he entered Parliament for Melcombe Regis in Somersetshire,
and two years later sat for Liverpool. During these years the schism
between his inner and his outer life continued to widen. Drawing
his first breath in the atmosphere of the court, bred in the faith that
honor and greatness come from princes' favor, with a native taste
for luxury and magnificence which was fostered by delicate health,
he steadily looked for advancement through the influence of Burghley
## p. 1158 (#584) ###########################################
1158
FRANCIS BACON
and the smiles of the Queen. But Burghley had no sympathy with
speculative thought, and distrusted him for his confidences concerning
his higher studies, while he probably feared in Bacon a dangerous
rival of his own son; so that with expressions of kind interest, he
refrained from giving his nephew practical aid. Elizabeth, too, sus-
pected that a young man who knew so many things could not be
trusted to know his own business well, and preferred for important
professional work others who were lawyers and nothing besides.
Thus Bacon appeared to the world as a disappointed and uneasy
courtier, struggling to keep up a certain splendor of appearance and
associations under a growing load of debt, and servile to a Queen on
whose caprice his prospects of a career must depend. His unques-
tioned power at the bar was exercised only in minor causes; his
eloquence and political dexterity found slow recognition in Parlia-
ment, where they represented only themselves; and the question
whether he would ever be a man of note in the kingdom seemed
for twenty-five years to turn upon what the Crown might do for its
humble suitor.
Meanwhile this laborious advocate and indefatigable courtier,
whose labors at the bar and in attendance upon his great friends
were enough to fill the days of two ordinary men, led his real life
in secret, unknown to the world, and uncomprehended even by the
few in whom he had divined a capacity for great thought, and whom
he had selected for his confidants. From his childhood at the uni-
versity, where he felt the emptiness of the Aristotelian logic, the
instrument for attaining truth which traditional learning had conse-
crated, he had gradually formed the conception of a more fruitful
process. He had become convinced that the learning of all past ages
was but a poor result of the intellectual capacities and labors which
had been employed upon it; that the human mind had never yet
been properly used; that the methods hitherto adopted in research
were but treadmill work, returning upon itself, or at best could pro-
duce but fragmentary and accidental additions to the sum of knowl-
edge. All nature is crammed with truth, he believed, which it
concerns man to discover; the intellect of man is constructed for its
discovery, and needs but to be purged of errors of every kind, and
directed in the most efficient employment of its faculties, to make
sure that all the secrets of nature will be revealed, and its powers
made tributary to the health, comfort, enjoyment, and progressive
improvement of mankind.
This stupendous conception, of a revolution which should trans-
form the world, seems to have taken definite form in Bacon's mind
as early as his twenty-fifth year, when he embodied the outline of it
in a Latin treatise; which he destroyed in later life, unpublished, as
## p. 1159 (#585) ###########################################
FRANCIS BACON
1159
immature, and partly no doubt because he came to recognize in it an
unbecoming arrogance of tone, for its title was 'Temporis Partus Max-
imus' (The Greatest Birth of Time. ) But six years later he defines
these "vast contemplative ends" in his famous letter to Burghley,
asking for preferment which will enable him to prosecute his grand
scheme and to employ other minds in aid of it. "For I have taken
all knowledge to be my province," he says, "and if I could purge it
of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations,
confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and
auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils,
I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclus-
ions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that
province. This, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature, or
(if one take it favorably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it
cannot be removed. "
This letter reveals the secret of Bacon's life, and all that we know
of him, read in the light of it, forms a consistent and harmonious
whole. He was possessed by his vast scheme, for a reformation of
the intellectual world, and through it, of the world of human experi-
ence, as fully as was ever apostle by his faith. Implicitly believing
in his own ability to accomplish it, at least in its grand outlines, and
to leave at his death the community of mind at work, by the method
and for the purposes which he had defined, with the perfection of
all science in full view, he subordinated every other ambition to this;
and in seeking and enjoying place, power, and wealth, still regarded
them mainly as aids in prosecuting his master purpose, and in intro-
ducing it to the world. With this clearly in mind, it is easy to
understand his subsequent career. Its external details may be read
in any of the score of biographies which writers of all grades of
merit and demerit have devoted to him, and there is no space for
them here. For our purpose it is necessary to refer only to the
principal crises in his public life.
Until the death of Elizabeth, Bacon had no place in the royal
service worthy of his abilities as a lawyer. Many who, even in the
narrowest professional sense, were far inferior to him, were preferred
before him. Yet he obtained a position recognized by all, and sec-
ond only in legal learning to his lifelong rival and constant adver-
sary, Sir Edward Coke. To-day, it is probable that if the two
greatest names in the history of the common law were to be selected
by the suffrages of the profession, the great majority would be cast.
for Coke and Bacon. As a master of the intricacies of precedent and
an authority upon the detailed formulas of "the perfection of reason,»
the former is unrivaled still; but in the comprehensive grasp of the
law as a system for the maintenance of social order and the protec-
tion of individual rights, Bacon rose far above him. The cherished
## p. 1160 (#586) ###########################################
1160
FRANCIS BACON
aim of his professional career was to survey the whole body of the
laws of England, to produce a digest of them which should result in
a harmonious code, to do away with all that was found obsolete
or inconsistent with the principles of the system, and thus to adapt
the living, progressive body of the law to the wants of the growing
nation. This magnificent plan was beyond the power of any one
man, had his life no other task, but he suggested the method and
the aim; and while for six generations after these legal giants passed
away, the minute, accurate, and profound learning of Coke remained
the acknowledged chief storehouse of British traditional jurispru-
dence, the seventh generation took up the work of revision and
reform, and from the time of Bentham and Austin the progress of
legal science has been toward codification. The contest between the
aggregation of empirical rules and formulated customs which Coke
taught as the common law, and the broad, harmonious application of
scientific reason to the definition and enforcement of rights, still
goes on; but with constant gains on the side of the reformers, all of
whom with one consent confess that no general and complete recon-
struction of legal doctrine as a science is possible, except upon the
lines laid down by Bacon.
The most memorable case in which Bacon was employed to rep-
resent the Crown during Elizabeth's life was the prosecution of the
Earl of Essex for treason. Essex had been Bacon's friend, patron,
and benefactor; and as long as the earl remained faithful to the
Queen and retained her favor, Bacon served him with ready zeal and
splendid efficiency, and showed himself the wisest and most sincere
of counselors. When Essex rejected his advice, forfeited the Queen's
confidence by the follies from which Bacon had earnestly striven to
deter him, and finally plunged into wanton and reckless rebellion,
Bacon, with whom loyalty to his sovereign had always been the
supreme duty, accepted a retainer from the Crown, and assisted Coke
in the prosecution. The crime of Essex was the greatest of which a
subject was capable; it lacked no circumstance of aggravation; if the
most astounding instance of ingratitude and disloyalty to friendship
ever known is to be sought in that age, it will be found in the con-
duct of Essex to Bacon's royal mistress. Yet writers of eloquence
have exhausted their rhetorical powers in denouncing Bacon's faith-
lessness to his friend. But no impartial reader of the full story in
the documents of the time can doubt that throughout these events
Bacon did his duty and no more, and that in doing it he not merely
made a voluntary sacrifice of his popularity, but a far more painful
sacrifice of his personal feelings.
In 1603 James I.
impossible to learn anything; for even the most zealous require
at least a day to form some idea of a book. Next morning, on
first going out, I encountered a friend of mine, a young fellow
then and now a man of mature age, who has never had a sus-
## p. 1140 (#566) ###########################################
1140
MASSIMO TAPARELLI D'AZEGLIO
picion of the cruel blow he unconsciously dealt me. I met him
in Piazza San Fedele, where I lived; and after a few words, he
said, "By the by, I hear you have published a novel. Well
done! " and then talked away about something quite different
with the utmost heedlessness. Not a drop of blood was left in
my veins, and I said to myself, "Mercy on me! I am done for:
not even a word is said about my poor 'Fieramosca! >» It
seemed incredible that he, who belonged to a very numerous
family, connected with the best society of the town, should have
heard nothing, if the slightest notice had been taken of it. As
he was besides an excellent fellow and a friend, it seemed
equally incredible that if a word had been said and heard, he
should not have repeated it to me. Therefore, it was a failure;
the worst of failures, that of silence. With a bitter feeling at
heart, I hardly knew where I went; but this feeling soon
changed, and the bitterness was superseded by quite an opposite
sensation.
'Fieramosca' succeeded, and succeeded so well that I felt
abasourdi, as the French express it; indeed, I could say "Je
n'aurais jamais cru être si fort savant. " My success went on in
an increasing ratio: it passed from the papers and from the
masculine half to the feminine half of society; it found its way
to the studios and the stage. I became the vade-mecum of every
prima-donna and tenor, the hidden treat of school-girls; I pene-
trated between the pillow and the mattress of college, boys, of
the military academy cadet; and my apotheosis reached such a
height that some newspapers asserted it to be Manzoni's work. It
is superfluous to add that only the ignorant could entertain such
an idea; those who were better informed would never have made
such a blunder.
My aim, as I said, was to take the initiative in the slow
work of the regeneration of national character. I had no wish
but to awaken high and noble sentiments in Italian hearts; and
if all the literary men in the world had assembled to condemn
me in virtue of strict rules, I should not have cared a jot, if, in
defiance of all existing rules, I succeeded in inflaming the heart
of one single individual. And I will also add, who can say that
what causes durable emotion is unorthodox? It may be at vari-
ance with some rules and in harmony with others; and those
which move hearts and captivate intellects do not appear to me
to be the worst.
## p. 1141 (#567) ###########################################
1141
.
BABER
(1482-1530)
BY EDWARD S. HOLDEN
HE emperor Baber was sixth in descent from Tamerlane, who
died in 1405.
Tamerlane's conquests were world-wide, but
they never formed a homogeneous empire. Even in his life-
time he parceled them out to sons and grandsons. Half a century
later Trans-oxiana was divided into many independent kingdoms each
governed by a descendant of the great conqueror.
When Baber was born (1482), an uncle was King of Samarkand
and Bokhara; another uncle ruled Badakhshan; another was King
of Kabul. A relative was the powerful King of Khorasan. These
princes were of the family of Tamerlane, as was Baber's father,-
Sultan Omer Sheikh Mirza,-who was the King of Ferghana. Two
of Baber's maternal uncles, descendants of Chengiz Khan, ruled the
Moghul tribes to the west and north of Ferghana; and two of their
sisters had married the Kings of Samarkand and Badakhshan.
third sister was Baber's mother, wife of the King of Ferghana.
The
The capitals of their countries were cities like Samarkand,
Bokhara, and Herat. Tamerlane's grandson-Ulugh Beg-built at
Samarkand the chief astronomical observatory of the world, a cen-
tury and a half before Tycho Brahe (1576) erected Uranibourg in Den-
mark. The town was filled with noble buildings,- mosques, tombs,
and colleges. Its walls were five miles in circumference. *
Its streets were paved (the streets of Paris were not paved till the
time of Henri IV. ), and running water was distributed in pipes. Its
markets overflowed with fruits. Its cooks and bakers were noted for
their skill. Its colleges were full of learned men, poets,† and doctors
of the law. The observatory counted more than a hundred observers
and calculators in its corps of astronomers. The products of China,
of India, and of Persia flowed to the bazaars.
Bokhara has always been the home of learning. Herat was at
that time the most magnificent and refined city of the world. ‡ The
court was splendid, polite, intelligent, and liberal. Poetry, history,
* Paris was walled in 1358; so Froissart tells us.
"In Samarkand, the Odes of Baiesanghar Mirza are so popular, that
there is not a house in which a copy of them may not be found. " — Baber's
'Memoirs. '
Baber spent twenty days in visiting its various palaces, towers, mosques,
gardens, colleges—and gives a list of more than fifty such sights.
## p. 1142 (#568) ###########################################
BABER
1142
philosophy, science, and the arts of painting and music were culti-
vated by noblemen and scholars alike. Baber himself was a poet of
no mean rank. The religion was that of Islam, and the sect the
orthodox Sunni; but the practice was less precise than in Arabia.
Wine was drunk; poetry was prized; artists were encouraged. The
mother-language of Baber was Turki (of which the Turkish of Con-
stantinople is a dialect). Arabic was the language of science and of
theology. Persian was the accepted literary language, though Baber's
verses are in Turki as well.
We possess Baber's 'Memoirs' in the original Turki and in Persian
translations also. In what follows, the extracts will be taken from
Erskine's translation,* which preserves their direct and manly charm.
To understand them, the foregoing slight introduction is necessary.
A connected sketch of Baber's life and a brief history of his conquests
can be found in 'The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan. ’†
We are
here more especially concerned with his literary work. To compre-
hend it, something of his history and surroundings must be known.
FROM BABER'S MEMOIRS›
IN
THE month of Ramzan, in the year 899 [A. D. 1494], and
in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghana.
The country of Ferghana is situated in the fifth climate, on
the extreme boundary of the habitable world. On the east it
has Kashgar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south, the hill
country; on the north, in former times there were cities, yet
at the present time, in consequence of the incursions of the
Usbeks, no population remains. Ferghana is a country of small
extent, abounding in grain and fruits. The revenues may suffice,
without oppressing the country, to maintain three or four thou-
sand troops.
My father, Omer Sheikh Mirza, was of low stature, had a
short, bushy beard, brownish hair, and was very corpulent. As
for his opinions and habits, he was of the sect of Hanifah, and
strict in his belief. He never neglected the five regular and
stated prayers. He read elegantly, and he was particularly fond
of reading the 'Shahnameh. ' Though he had a turn for poetry,
he did not cultivate it. He was so strictly just, that when the
caravan from [China] had once reached the hill country to the
*(Memoirs of Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, and
translated by Leyden and Erskine,' etc. London, 1826, quarto.
By Edward S. Holden, New York, 1895, 8vo, illustrated.
The Book of Kings,' by the Persian poet Firdausi.
## p. 1143 (#569) ###########################################
BABER
1143
east of Ardejan, and the snow fell so deep as to bury it, so
that of the whole only two persons escaped; he no sooner re-
ceived information of the occurrence than he dispatched overseers
to take charge of all the property, and he placed it under guard
and preserved it untouched, till in the course of one or two years,
the heirs coming from Khorasan, he delivered back the goods
safe into their hands. His generosity was large, and so was his
whole soul; he was of an excellent temper, affable, eloquent, and
sweet in his conversation, yet brave withal and manly.
The early portion of Baber's 'Memoirs' is given to portraits of the
officers of his court and country. A few of these may be quoted.
Khosrou Shah, though a Turk, applied his attention to the
mode of raising his revenues, and he spent them liberally. At
the death of Sultan Mahmud Mirza, he reached the highest pitch
of greatness, and his retainers rose to the number of twenty
thousand. Though he prayed regularly and abstained from for-
bidden foods, yet he was black-hearted and vicious, of mean
understanding and slender talents, faithless and a traitor. For
the sake of the short and fleeting pomp of this vain world, he
put out the eyes of one and murdered another of the sons of the
benefactor in whose service he had been, and by whom he had
been protected; rendering himself accursed of God, abhorred of
men, and worthy of execration and shame till the day of final
retribution. These crimes he perpetrated merely to secure the
enjoyment of some poor worldly vanities; yet with all the power
of his many and populous territories, in spite of his magazines of
warlike stores, he had not the spirit to face a barnyard chicken.
He will often be mentioned in these memoirs.
Ali Shir Beg was celebrated for the elegance of his manners;
and this elegance and polish were ascribed to the conscious pride
of high fortune: but this was not the case; they were natural to
him. Indeed, Ali Shir Beg was an incomparable person. From
the time that poetry was first written in the Turki language,
no man has written so much and so well. He has also left
excellent pieces of music; they are excellent both as to the airs
themselves and as to the preludes. There is not upon record
in history any man who was a greater patron and protector of
men of talent than he. He had no son nor daughter, nor wife
nor family; he passed through the world single and unincum-
bered.
## p. 1144 (#570) ###########################################
BABER
1144
Another poet was Sheikhem Beg. He composed a sort of
verses, in which both the words and the sense are terrifying
and correspond with each other. The following is one of his
couplets:-
During my sorrows of the night, the whirlpool of my sighs bears
the firmament from its place;
The dragons of the inundations of my tears bear down the four
quarters of the habitable world!
It is well known that on one occasion, having repeated these
verses to Moulana Abdal Rahman Jami, the Mulla said, "Are you
repeating poetry, or are you terrifying folks? "
A good many men who wrote verses happened to be present.
During the party the following verse of Muhammed Salikh was
repeated:-
What can one do to regulate his thoughts, with a mistress possessed
of every blandishment?
Where you are, how is it possible for our thoughts to wander to
another?
It was agreed that every one should make an extempore
couplet to the same rhyme and measure. Every one accord-
ingly repeated his verse. As we had been very merry, I re-
peated the following extempore satirical verses: —
What can one do with a drunken sot like you?
What can be done with one foolish as a she-ass?
Before this, whatever had come into my head, good or bad,
I had always committed it to writing. On the present occasion,
when I had composed these lines, my mind led me to reflections,
and my heart was struck with regret that a tongue which could
repeat the sublimest productions should bestow any trouble on
such unworthy verses; that it was melancholy that a heart ele-
vated to nobler conceptions should submit to occupy itself with
these meaner and despicable fancies. From that time forward
I religiously abstained from satirical poetry. I had not then
formed my resolution, nor considered how objectionable the prac-
tice was.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE YEAR 904 [A. D. 1498-99]
Having failed in repeated expeditions against Samarkand and
Ardejan, I once more returned to Khojend. Khojend is but a
## p. 1145 (#571) ###########################################
BABER
1145
small place; and it is difficult for one to support two hundred
retainers in it. How then could a [young] man, ambitious of
empire, set himself down contentedly in so insignificant a place?
As soon as I received advice that the garrison of Ardejan had
declared for me, I made no delay. And thus, by the grace of
the Most High, I recovered my paternal kingdom, of which I
had been deprived nearly two years. An order was issued that
such as had accompanied me in my campaigns might resume
possession of whatever part of their property they recognized.
Although the order seemed reasonable and just in itself, yet it
was issued with too much precipitation. It was a senseless thing
to exasperate so many men with arms in their hands.
In war
and in affairs of state, though things may appear just and rea-
sonable at first sight, no matter ought to be finally decided with-
out being well weighed and considered in a hundred different
lights. From my issuing this single order without sufficient
foresight, what commotions and mutinies arose! This inconsider-
ate order of mine was in reality the ultimate cause of my being
a second time expelled from Ardejan.
Baber's next campaign was most arduous, but in passing by a
spring he had the leisure to have these verses of Saadi inscribed on
its brink:-
I have heard that the exalted Jemshid
Inscribed on a stone beside a fountain:
"Many a man like us has rested by this fountain,
And disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
Should we conquer the whole world by our manhood and
strength,
Yet could we not carry it with us to the grave. "
Of another fountain he says:- -"I directed this fountain to be
built round with stone, and formed a cistern. At the time when the
Arghwan flowers begin to blow, I do not know that any place in the
world is to be compared to it. " On its sides he engraved these
verses:-
Sweet is the return of the new year;
Sweet is the smiling spring ;
Sweet is the juice of the mellow grape;
Sweeter far the voice of love.
Strive, O Baber! to secure the joys of life,
Which, alas! once departed, never more return.
## p. 1146 (#572) ###########################################
1146
BABER
From these flowers Baber and his army marched into the passes
of the high mountains.
His narrative goes on:-
It was at this time that I composed the following verses:
There is no violence or injury of fortune that I have not experi-
enced;
This broken heart has endured them all. Alas! is there one left
that I have not encountered?
For about a week we continued pressing down the snow
without being able to advance more than two or three miles. I
myself assisted in trampling down the snow. Every step we
sank up to the middle or the breast, but we still went on,
trampling it down. As the strength of the person who went first
was generally exhausted after he had advanced a few paces, he
stood still, while another took his place. The ten, fifteen, or
twenty people who worked in trampling down the snow, next
succeeded in dragging on a horse without a rider. Drawing this
horse aside, we brought on another, and in this way ten, fifteen,
or twenty of us contrived to bring forward the horses of all our
number. The rest of the troops, even our best men, advanced
along the road that had been beaten for them, hanging their
heads. This was no time for plaguing them or employing
authority. Every man who possesses spirit or emulation hastens
to such works of himself. Continuing to advance by a track
which we beat in the snow in this manner, we reached a cave
at the foot of the Zirrin pass. That day the storm of wind was
dreadful. The snow fell in such quantities that we all expected
to meet death together. The cave seemed to be small. I took
a hoe and made for myself at the mouth of the cave a resting-
place about the size of a prayer-carpet. I dug down in the
snow as deep as my breast, and yet did not reach the ground.
This hole afforded me some shelter from the wind, and I sat
down in it. Some desired me to go into the cavern, but I
would not go. I felt that for me to be in a warm dwelling,
while my men were in the midst of snow and drift,- for me to
be within, enjoying sleep and ease, while my followers were in
trouble and distress,- would be inconsistent with what I owed
them, and a deviation from that society in suffering which was
their due. I continued, therefore, to sit in the drift.
## p. 1147 (#573) ###########################################
BABER
[147
Ambition admits not of inaction;
The world is his who exerts himself;
In wisdom's eye, every condition
May find repose save royalty alone.
By leadership like this, the descendant of Tamerlane became the
ruler of Kabul. He celebrates its charms in verse:-
Its verdure and flowers render Kabul, in spring, a heaven,-
but this kingdom was too small for a man of Baber's stamp. He
used it as a stepping-stone to the conquest of India (1526).
Return a hundred thanks, O Baber! for the bounty of the merciful
God
Has given you Sind, Hind, and numerous kingdoms;
If, unable to stand the heat, you long for cold,
You have only to recollect the frost and cold of Ghazni.
In spite of these verses, Baber did not love India, and his mon-
archy was an exile to him. Let the last extract from his memoirs
be a part of a letter written in 1529 to an old and trusted friend in
Kabul. It is an outpouring of the griefs of his inmost heart to his
friend. He says:-
My solicitude to visit my western dominions (Kabul) is
boundless and great beyond expression. I trust in Almighty
Allah that the time is near at hand when everything will be
completely settled in this country. As soon as matters are
brought to that state, I shall, with the permission of Allah, set
out for your quarters without a moment's delay. How is it pos-
sible that the delights of those lands should ever be erased from
the heart? How is it possible to forget the delicious melons
and grapes of that pleasant region? They very recently brought
me a single muskmelon from Kabul. While cutting it up, I felt
myself affected with a strong feeling of loneliness and a sense of
my exile from my native country, and I could not help shedding
tears. [He gives long instructions on the military and political
matters to be attended to, and continues without a break:-]
At the southwest of Besteh I formed a plantation of trees; and
as the prospect from it was very fine, I called it Nazergah [the
view]. You must there plant some beautiful trees, and all
around sow beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs.
[And he goes straight on:-] Syed Kasim will accompany the
artillery. [After more details of the government he quotes.
## p. 1148 (#574) ###########################################
1148
BABRIUS
fondly a little trivial incident of former days and friends, and
says:] Do not think amiss of me for deviating into these
fooleries. I conclude with every good wish.
The Memoirs' of Baber deserve a place beside the writings of
the greatest of generals and conquerors. He is not unworthy to be
classed with Cæsar as a general and as a man of letters. His char-
acter was more human, more frank, more lovable, more ardent. His
fellow in our western world is not Cæsar, but Henri IV. of France
and Navarre.
Edward S. Holden
BABRIUS
(First Century A. D. )
B
ABRIUS, also referred to as Babrias and Gabrias, was the
writer of that metrical version of the folk-fables, commonly
referred to Æsop, which delights our childhood. Until the
time of Richard Bentley he was commonly thought of merely as a
fabulist whose remains had been preserved by a few grammarians.
Bentley, in the first draft (1697) of the part of his famous Disser-
tation treating of the fables of Esop, speaks thus of Babrius, and
goes not far out of his way to give a rap at Planudes, a late Greek,
who turned works of Ovid, Cato, and Cæsar into Greek:-
༥.
ambics.
Tzetzes.
-
came one Babrius, that gave a new turn of the fables into choli-
Nobody that I know of mentions him but Suidas, Avienus, and
There's one Gabrias, indeed, yet extant, that has comprised each
fable in four sorry iambics. But our Babrius is a writer of another size and
quality; and were his book now extant, it might justly be opposed, if not pre-
ferred, to the Latin of Phædrus. There's a whole fable of his yet preserved
at the end of Gabrias, of The Swallow and the Nightingale.
' Suidas brings
many citations out of him, all which show him an excellent poet.
There are two parcels of the present fables; the one, which are the more
ancient, one hundred and thirty-six in number, were first published out of the
Heidelberg Library by Neveletus, 1610. The editor himself well observed
that they were falsely ascribed to Æsop, because they mention holy monks.
To which I will add another remark, — that there is a sentence out of Job.
Thus I have proved one-half of the fables now extant that carry the
name of Æsop to be above a thousand years more recent than he. And the
other half, that were public before Neveletus, will be found yet more modern,
and the latest of all.
This collection, therefore, is more recent than
.
## p. 1149 (#575) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1149
that other; and, coming first abroad with Æsop's 'Life,' written by Planudes,
'tis justly believed to be owing to the same writer. That idiot of a monk
has given us a book which he calls The Life of Esop,' that perhaps cannot
be matched in any language for ignorance and nonsense.
He had picked up
two or three true stories, that Æsop was a slave to a Xanthus, carried a
burthen of bread, conversed with Crœsus, and was put to death at Delphi; but
the circumstances of these and all his other tales are pure invention.
But of all his injuries to Æsop, that which can least be forgiven him is the
making such a monster of him for ugliness, an abuse that has found credit
so universally that all the modern painters since the time of Planudes have
drawn him in the worst shapes and features that fancy could invent. 'Twas
an old tradition among the Greeks that Æsop revived again and lived a sec-
ond life. Should he revive once more and see the picture before the book
that carries his name, could he think it drawn for himself? - or for the
monkey, or some strange beast introduced in the Fables > ?
But what reve-
lation had this monk about Æsop's deformity? For he must have it by
dream or vision, and not by ordinary methods of knowledge. He lived about
two thousand years after him, and in all that tract of time there's not a
single author that has given the least hint that Æsop was ugly. "
-
Thus Bentley; but to return to Babrius. Tyrwhitt, in 1776, fol-
lowed this calculation of Bentley by collecting the remains of Ba-
brius. A publication in 1809 of fables from a Florentine manuscript
foreran the collection (1832) of all the fables which could be entirely
restored. In 1835 a German scholar, Knoch, published whatever had
up to that time been written on Babrius, or as far as then known by
So much had been accomplished by modern scholarship. The
calculation was not unlike the mathematical computation that a star
should, from an apparent disturbance, be in a certain quarter of the
heavens at a certain time. The manuscript of Babrius, it became
clear, must have existed. In 1842 M. Mynas, a Greek, who had
already discovered the 'Philosophoumena' of Hippolytus, came upon
the parchment in the convent of St. Lama on Mount Athos. He was
employed by the French government, and the duty of giving the
new ancient to the world fell to French scholars. The date of the
manuscript they referred to the tenth century. There were con-
tained in it one hundred and twenty-three of the supposed one hun-
dred and sixty fables, the arrangement being alphabetical and ending.
with the letter O. Again, in 1857 M. Mynas announced another dis-
covery. Ninety-four fables and a prooemium were still in a convent
at Mount Athos; but the monks, who made difficulty about part-
ing with the first parchment, refused to let the second go abroad.
M. Mynas forwarded a transcript which he sold to the British Mu-
seum. It was after examination pronounced to be the work of a
forger, and not even what it purported to be the tinkering of a
writer who had turned the original of Babrius into barbarous Greek
## p. 1150 (#576) ###########################################
1150
BABRIUS
and halting metre. Suggestions were made that the forger was
Mynas himself. And there were scholars who accounted the manu-
script as genuine.
The discovery of the first part added substantially to the remains
which we have of the poetry of ancient Greece. The terseness, sim-
plicity, and humor of the poems belong to the popular classic all
the world over, in whatever tongue it appears; and the purity of the
Greek shows that Babrius lived at a time when the influence of the
classical age was still vital. He is placed at various times. Bergk
fixes him so far back as B. C. 250, while others place him at the
same number of years in our own era. Both French and German
criticism has claimed that he was a Roman. There is no trace of
his fables earlier than the Emperor Julian, and no metrical version
of the Æsopean fables existed before the writing of Babrius. Socra-
tes tried his hand at a version or two. But when such Greek writ-
ers as Xenophon and Aristotle refer to old folk-tales and legends, it
is always in their own words. His fables are written in choliambic
verse; that is, imperfect iambic which has a spondee in the last foot
and is fitted for the satire for which it was originally used.
The fables of Babrius have been edited, with an interesting and
valuable introduction, by W. G. Rutherford (1883), and by F. G.
Schneidewin (1880). They have been turned into English metre by
James Davies, M. A. (1860). The reader is also referred to the article
( Æsop' in the present work.
THE NORTH WIND AND THE SUN
B
ETWIXT the North wind and the Sun arose
A contest, which would soonest of his clothes
Strip a wayfaring clown, so runs the tale.
First, Boreas blows an almost Thracian gale,
Thinking, perforce, to steal the man's capote :
He loosed it not; but as the cold wind smote
More sharply, tighter round him drew the folds,
And sheltered by a crag his station holds.
But now the Sun at first peered gently forth,
And thawed the chills of the uncanny North;
Then in their turn his beams more amply plied,
Till sudden heat the clown's endurance tried;
Stripping himself, away his cloak he flung:
The Sun from Boreas thus a triumph wrung.
THE fable means, "My son, at mildness aim:
Persuasion more results than force may claim. "
## p. 1151 (#577) ###########################################
BABRIUS
JUPITER AND THE MONKEY
BABY-SHOW with prizes Jove decreed
A
For all the beasts, and gave the choice due heed.
A monkey-mother came among the rest;
A naked, snub-nosed pug upon her breast
She bore, in mother's fashion. At the sight
Assembled gods were moved to laugh outright.
Said she, "Jove knoweth where his prize will fall!
I know my child's the beauty of them all. ”
THIS fable will a general law attest,
That each one deems that what's his own, is best.
THE MOUSE THAT FELL INTO THE POT
MOUSE into a lidless broth-pot fell;
A
Choked with the grease, and bidding life farewell,
He said, "My fill of meat and drink have I
And all good things: 'Tis time that I should die. "
THOU art that dainty mouse among mankind,
If hurtful sweets are not by thee declined.
THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
1151
TH
HERE hung some bunches of the purple grape
On a hillside. A cunning fox, agape
For these full clusters, many times essayed
To cull their dark bloom, many vain leaps made.
They were quite ripe, and for the vintage fit;
But when his leaps did not avail a whit,
He journeyed on, and thus his grief composed :-
"The bunch was sour, not ripe, as I supposed. "
THE CARTER AND HERCULES
A
CARTER from the village drove his wain:
And when it fell into a rugged lane,
Inactive stood, nor lent a helping hand;
But to that god, whom of the heavenly band
He really honored most, Alcides, prayed:
"Push at your wheels," the god appearing said,
"And goad your team; but when you pray again,
Help yourself likewise, or you'll pray in vain. ”
## p. 1152 (#578) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1152
THE YOUNG COCKS
wo Tanagræan cocks a fight began;
Τ
Their spirit is, 'tis said, as that of man:
Of these the beaten bird, a mass of blows,
For shame into a corner creeping goes;
The other to the housetop quickly flew,
And there in triumph flapped his wings and crew.
But him an eagle lifted from the roof,
And bore away. His fellow gained a proof
That oft the wages of defeat are best,-
None else remained the hens to interest.
WHEREFORE, O man, beware of boastfulness:
Should fortune lift thee, others to depress,
Many are saved by lack of her caress.
THE ARAB AND THE CAMEL
A
N ARAB, having heaped his camel's back,
Asked if he chose to take the upward track
Or downward; and the beast had sense to say
"Am I cut off then from the level way? »
THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE SWALLOW
AR from men's fields the swallow forth had flown,
When she espied amid the woodlands lone
The nightingale, sweet songstress. Her lament
Was Itys to his doom untimely sent.
F^
Each knew the other through the mournful strain,
Flew to embrace, and in sweet talk remain.
Then said the swallow, "Dearest, liv'st thou still ?
Ne'er have I seen thee, since thy Thracian ill.
Some cruel fate hath ever come between;
Our virgin lives till now apart have been.
Come to the fields; revisit homes of men;
Come dwell with me, a comrade dear, again,
Where thou shalt charm the swains, no savage brood:
Dwell near men's haunts, and quit the open wood:
One roof, one chamber, sure, can house the two,
Or dost prefer the nightly frozen dew,
And day-god's heat? a wild-wood life and drear?
## p. 1153 (#579) ###########################################
BABRIUS
Come, clever songstress, to the light more near. "
To whom the sweet-voiced nightingale replied:
"Still on these lonesome ridges let me bide;
Nor seek to part me from the mountain glen:—
I shun, since Athens, man, and haunts of men;
To mix with them, their dwelling-place to view,
Stirs up old grief, and opens woes anew. "
SOME Consolation for an evil lot
Lies in wise words, in song, in crowds forgot.
But sore the pang, when, where you once were great,
Again men see you, housed in mean estate.
THE HUSBANDMAN AND THE STORK
TH
HIN nets a farmer o'er his furrows spread,
And caught the cranes that on his tillage fed;
And him a limping stork began to pray,
Who fell with them into the farmer's way:
"I am no crane: I don't consume the grain:
That I'm a stork is from my color plain;
A stork, than which no better bird doth live;
I to my father aid and succor give. "
The man replied:-"Good stork, I cannot tell
Your way of life: but this I know full well,
I caught you with the spoilers of my seed;
With them, with whom I found you, you must bleed. "
-
THE PINE
1153
WALK with the bad, and hate will be as strong
'Gainst you as them, e'en though you no man wrong.
SON
OME Woodmen, bent a forest pine to split,
Into each fissure sundry wedges fit,
To keep the void and render work more light.
Out groaned the pine, "Why should I vent my spite
Against the axe which never touched my root,
So much as these cursed wedges, mine own fruit;
Which rend me through, inserted here and there! "
A FABLE this, intended to declare
That not so dreadful is a stranger's blow
As wrongs which men receive from those they know.
II-73
## p. 1154 (#580) ###########################################
BABRIUS
1154
THE WOMAN AND HER MAID-SERVANTS
VERY careful dame, of busy way,
A Kept maids at home, and these, ere break of day,
She used to raise as early as cock-crow.
They thought 'twas hard to be awakened so,
And o'er wool-spinning be at work so long;
Hence grew within them all a purpose strong
To kill the house-cock, whom they thought to blame
For all their wrongs. But no advantage came;
Worse treatment than the former them befell:
For when the hour their mistress could not tell
At which by night the cock was wont to crow,
She roused them earlier, to their work to go.
A harder lot the wretched maids endured.
BAD judgment oft hath such results procured.
THE LAMP
LAMP that swam with oil, began to boast
At eve, that it outshone the starry host,
And gave more light to all. Her boast was heard:
Soon the wind whistled; soon the breezes stirred,
And quenched its light. A man rekindled it,
And said, "Brief is the faint lamp's boasting fit,
But the starlight ne'er needs to be re-lit. »
A
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE
T
O THE shy hare the tortoise smiling spoke,
When he about her feet began to joke:
"I'll pass thee by, though fleeter than the gale. "
"Pooh! " said the hare, "I don't believe thy tale.
Try but one course, and thou my speed shalt know. "
"Who'll fix the prize, and whither we shall go? "
Of the fleet-footed hare the tortoise asked.
To whom he answered, "Reynard shall be tasked
With this; that subtle fox, whom thou dost see. "
The tortoise then (no hesitater she! )
Kept jogging on, but earliest reached the post;
The hare, relying on his fleetness, lost
Space, during sleep, he thought he could recover
When he awoke. But then the race was over;
The tortoise gained her aim, and slept her sleep.
FROM negligence doth care the vantage reap.
## p. 1155 (#581) ###########################################
1155
FRANCIS BACON
(1561-1626)
BY CHARLTON T. LEWIS
T
HE startling contrasts of splendor and humiliation which
marked the life of Bacon, and the seemingly incredible
inconsistencies which hasty observers find in his character,
have been the themes of much rhetorical declamation, and even of
serious and learned debate. From Ben Jonson in his own day, to
James Spedding the friend of Tennyson, he has not lacked eminent
eulogists, who look up to him as not only the greatest and wisest,
but as among the noblest and most worthy of mankind: while the
famous epigram of Pope, expanded by Macaulay into a stately and
eloquent essay, has impressed on the popular mind the lowest esti-
mate of his moral nature; and even such careful scholars as Charles
de Rémusat and Dean Church, who have devoted careful and instruct-
ive volumes to the survey of Bacon's career and works, insist that
with all his intellectual supremacy, he was a servile courtier, a false
friend, and a corrupt judge. Yet there are few important names in
human history of men who have left us so complete materials for a
just judgment of their conduct; and it is only a lover of paradox
who can read these and still regard Bacon's character as an unsolved
problem.
Mr. Spedding has given a long life of intelligent labor to the col-
lection of every fact and document throwing light upon the motives,
aims, and thoughts of the great "Chancellor of Nature," from the
cradle to the grave. The results are before us in the seven volumes
of 'The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon,' which form perhaps
the most complete biography ever written. It is a book of absolute
candor as well as infinite research, giving with equal distinctness all
the evidence which makes for its hero's dishonor and that which
tends to justify the writer's reverence for him. Another work by Mr.
Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elab-
orate refutation, from the original and authentic records, of the most
damning charges brought by Lord Macaulay against Bacon's good
fame. It is a complete and overwhelming exposure of false color-
ing, of rhetorical artifices, and of the abuse of evidence, in the
famous essay.
As one of the most entertaining and instructive
pieces of controversy in our literature, it deserves to be widely read.
The unbiased reader cannot accept the special pleading by which, in
his comments, Spedding makes every failing of Bacon "lean to
## p. 1156 (#582) ###########################################
1156
FRANCIS BACON
virtue's side"; but will form upon the unquestioned facts presented a
clear conception of him, will come to know him as no other man of
an age so remote is known, and will find in his many-sided and mag-
nificent nature a full explanation of the impressions which partial
views of it have made upon his worshipers and his detractors.
It is only in his maturity, indeed, that we are privileged to enter
into his mind and read his heart. But enough is known of the
formative period of his life to show us the sources of his weaknesses
and of his strength. The child whom high authorities have regarded
as endowed with the mightiest intellect of the human race was born
at York House, on the Strand, in the third year of Elizabeth's reign,
January 22d, 1561. He was the son of the Queen's Lord Keeper of
the Seals, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and his second wife Anne, daughter
of Sir Anthony Cook, formerly tutor of King Edward VI. Mildred,
an elder daughter of the same scholar, was the wife of William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, who for the first forty years of her reign was
Elizabeth's chief minister. As a child Bacon was a favorite at court,
and tradition represents him as something of a pet of the Queen,
who called him "my young Lord Keeper. " His mother was among
the most learned women of an age when, among women of rank,
great learning was as common and as highly prized as great beauty;
and her influence was a potent intellectual stimulus to the boy,
although he revolted in early youth from the narrow creed which
her fierce Puritan zeal strove to impose on her household. Outside
of the nursery, the atmosphere of his world was that of craft, all
directed to one end; for the Queen was the source of honor, power,
and wealth, and advancement in life meant only a share in the
grace distributed through her ministers and favorites. Apart from
the harsh and forbidding religious teachings of his mother, young
Francis had before him neither precept nor example of an ambition
more worthy than that of courting the smiles of power.
At the age of twelve he entered Trinity College, Cambridge
(April, 1573), and left it before he was fifteen (Christmas, 1575); the
institution meanwhile having been broken up for more than half a
year (August, 1574, to March, 1575) by the plague, so that his inter-
mittent university career summed up less than fourteen months.
There is no record of his studies, and the names of his teachers are
unknown; for though Bacon in later years called himself a pupil of
Whitgift, and his biographers assumed that the relation was direct
and personal, yet that great master of Trinity had certainly ended his
teaching days before Bacon went to Cambridge, and had entered as
Dean of Lincoln on his splendid ecclesiastical career. University life
was very different from that of our times. The statutes of Cam-
bridge forbade a student, under penalties, to use in conversation with
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FRANCIS BACON
1157
another any language but Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, unless in his pri-
vate apartments and in hours of leisure. It was a regular custom at
Trinity to bring before the assembled undergraduates every Thurs-
day evening at seven o'clock such junior students as had been
detected in breaches of the rules during the week, and to flog them.
It would be interesting to know in what languages young Bacon con-
versed, and what experiences of discipline befell him; but his subse-
quent achievements at least suggest that Cambridge in the sixteenth
century may have afforded more efficient educational influences than
our knowledge of its resources and methods can explain. For it is
certain that, at an age when our most promising youths are begin-
ning serious study, Bacon's mind was already formed, his habits and
modes of research were fixed, the universe of knowledge was an
open field before him. Thenceforth he was no man's pupil, but in
intellectual independence and solitude he rapidly matured into the
supreme scholar of his age.
After registering as a student of law at Gray's Inn, apparently
for the purpose of a nominal connection with a profession which
might aid his patrons in promoting him at court, Bacon was sent
in June, 1576, to France in the train of the British Ambassador, Sir
Amyas Paulet; and for nearly three years followed the roving em-
bassy around the great cities of that kingdom. The massacre of
St. Bartholomew had taken place four years before, and the boy's
recorded observations on the troubled society of France and of
Europe show remarkable insight into the character of princes and
the sources of political movements. Sir Nicholas had hitherto directed
his son's education and associations with the purpose of making
him an ornament of the court, and had set aside a fund to provide
Francis at the proper time with a handsome estate. But he died
suddenly, February 20th, 1579, without giving legal effect to this
provision, and the sum designed for the young student was divided
equally among the five children, while Francis was excluded from
a share in the rest of the family fortune; and was thus called home
to England to find himself a poor man.
He made himself a bachelor's home at Gray's Inn, and devoted
his energies to the law, with such success that he was soon recog-
nized as one of the most promising members of the profession. In
1584 he entered Parliament for Melcombe Regis in Somersetshire,
and two years later sat for Liverpool. During these years the schism
between his inner and his outer life continued to widen. Drawing
his first breath in the atmosphere of the court, bred in the faith that
honor and greatness come from princes' favor, with a native taste
for luxury and magnificence which was fostered by delicate health,
he steadily looked for advancement through the influence of Burghley
## p. 1158 (#584) ###########################################
1158
FRANCIS BACON
and the smiles of the Queen. But Burghley had no sympathy with
speculative thought, and distrusted him for his confidences concerning
his higher studies, while he probably feared in Bacon a dangerous
rival of his own son; so that with expressions of kind interest, he
refrained from giving his nephew practical aid. Elizabeth, too, sus-
pected that a young man who knew so many things could not be
trusted to know his own business well, and preferred for important
professional work others who were lawyers and nothing besides.
Thus Bacon appeared to the world as a disappointed and uneasy
courtier, struggling to keep up a certain splendor of appearance and
associations under a growing load of debt, and servile to a Queen on
whose caprice his prospects of a career must depend. His unques-
tioned power at the bar was exercised only in minor causes; his
eloquence and political dexterity found slow recognition in Parlia-
ment, where they represented only themselves; and the question
whether he would ever be a man of note in the kingdom seemed
for twenty-five years to turn upon what the Crown might do for its
humble suitor.
Meanwhile this laborious advocate and indefatigable courtier,
whose labors at the bar and in attendance upon his great friends
were enough to fill the days of two ordinary men, led his real life
in secret, unknown to the world, and uncomprehended even by the
few in whom he had divined a capacity for great thought, and whom
he had selected for his confidants. From his childhood at the uni-
versity, where he felt the emptiness of the Aristotelian logic, the
instrument for attaining truth which traditional learning had conse-
crated, he had gradually formed the conception of a more fruitful
process. He had become convinced that the learning of all past ages
was but a poor result of the intellectual capacities and labors which
had been employed upon it; that the human mind had never yet
been properly used; that the methods hitherto adopted in research
were but treadmill work, returning upon itself, or at best could pro-
duce but fragmentary and accidental additions to the sum of knowl-
edge. All nature is crammed with truth, he believed, which it
concerns man to discover; the intellect of man is constructed for its
discovery, and needs but to be purged of errors of every kind, and
directed in the most efficient employment of its faculties, to make
sure that all the secrets of nature will be revealed, and its powers
made tributary to the health, comfort, enjoyment, and progressive
improvement of mankind.
This stupendous conception, of a revolution which should trans-
form the world, seems to have taken definite form in Bacon's mind
as early as his twenty-fifth year, when he embodied the outline of it
in a Latin treatise; which he destroyed in later life, unpublished, as
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FRANCIS BACON
1159
immature, and partly no doubt because he came to recognize in it an
unbecoming arrogance of tone, for its title was 'Temporis Partus Max-
imus' (The Greatest Birth of Time. ) But six years later he defines
these "vast contemplative ends" in his famous letter to Burghley,
asking for preferment which will enable him to prosecute his grand
scheme and to employ other minds in aid of it. "For I have taken
all knowledge to be my province," he says, "and if I could purge it
of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations,
confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and
auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils,
I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclus-
ions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that
province. This, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, or nature, or
(if one take it favorably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it
cannot be removed. "
This letter reveals the secret of Bacon's life, and all that we know
of him, read in the light of it, forms a consistent and harmonious
whole. He was possessed by his vast scheme, for a reformation of
the intellectual world, and through it, of the world of human experi-
ence, as fully as was ever apostle by his faith. Implicitly believing
in his own ability to accomplish it, at least in its grand outlines, and
to leave at his death the community of mind at work, by the method
and for the purposes which he had defined, with the perfection of
all science in full view, he subordinated every other ambition to this;
and in seeking and enjoying place, power, and wealth, still regarded
them mainly as aids in prosecuting his master purpose, and in intro-
ducing it to the world. With this clearly in mind, it is easy to
understand his subsequent career. Its external details may be read
in any of the score of biographies which writers of all grades of
merit and demerit have devoted to him, and there is no space for
them here. For our purpose it is necessary to refer only to the
principal crises in his public life.
Until the death of Elizabeth, Bacon had no place in the royal
service worthy of his abilities as a lawyer. Many who, even in the
narrowest professional sense, were far inferior to him, were preferred
before him. Yet he obtained a position recognized by all, and sec-
ond only in legal learning to his lifelong rival and constant adver-
sary, Sir Edward Coke. To-day, it is probable that if the two
greatest names in the history of the common law were to be selected
by the suffrages of the profession, the great majority would be cast.
for Coke and Bacon. As a master of the intricacies of precedent and
an authority upon the detailed formulas of "the perfection of reason,»
the former is unrivaled still; but in the comprehensive grasp of the
law as a system for the maintenance of social order and the protec-
tion of individual rights, Bacon rose far above him. The cherished
## p. 1160 (#586) ###########################################
1160
FRANCIS BACON
aim of his professional career was to survey the whole body of the
laws of England, to produce a digest of them which should result in
a harmonious code, to do away with all that was found obsolete
or inconsistent with the principles of the system, and thus to adapt
the living, progressive body of the law to the wants of the growing
nation. This magnificent plan was beyond the power of any one
man, had his life no other task, but he suggested the method and
the aim; and while for six generations after these legal giants passed
away, the minute, accurate, and profound learning of Coke remained
the acknowledged chief storehouse of British traditional jurispru-
dence, the seventh generation took up the work of revision and
reform, and from the time of Bentham and Austin the progress of
legal science has been toward codification. The contest between the
aggregation of empirical rules and formulated customs which Coke
taught as the common law, and the broad, harmonious application of
scientific reason to the definition and enforcement of rights, still
goes on; but with constant gains on the side of the reformers, all of
whom with one consent confess that no general and complete recon-
struction of legal doctrine as a science is possible, except upon the
lines laid down by Bacon.
The most memorable case in which Bacon was employed to rep-
resent the Crown during Elizabeth's life was the prosecution of the
Earl of Essex for treason. Essex had been Bacon's friend, patron,
and benefactor; and as long as the earl remained faithful to the
Queen and retained her favor, Bacon served him with ready zeal and
splendid efficiency, and showed himself the wisest and most sincere
of counselors. When Essex rejected his advice, forfeited the Queen's
confidence by the follies from which Bacon had earnestly striven to
deter him, and finally plunged into wanton and reckless rebellion,
Bacon, with whom loyalty to his sovereign had always been the
supreme duty, accepted a retainer from the Crown, and assisted Coke
in the prosecution. The crime of Essex was the greatest of which a
subject was capable; it lacked no circumstance of aggravation; if the
most astounding instance of ingratitude and disloyalty to friendship
ever known is to be sought in that age, it will be found in the con-
duct of Essex to Bacon's royal mistress. Yet writers of eloquence
have exhausted their rhetorical powers in denouncing Bacon's faith-
lessness to his friend. But no impartial reader of the full story in
the documents of the time can doubt that throughout these events
Bacon did his duty and no more, and that in doing it he not merely
made a voluntary sacrifice of his popularity, but a far more painful
sacrifice of his personal feelings.
In 1603 James I.
