Francis Bacon the double-edged life of the philosopher and statesman PDF
Preview Francis Bacon the double-edged life of the philosopher and statesman
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon The Double-Edged Life of the Philosopher and Statesman Robert P. Ellis McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina Frontispiece: Francis Bacon. LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA Ellis, Robert P. (Robert Patrick), 1935– Francis Bacon : the double-edged life of the philosopher and statesman / Robert P. Ellis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ♾ ISBN 978-0-7864-9727-0 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-2052-7 (ebook) 1. Bacon, Francis, 1561–1626. I. Title. B1197.E45 2015 192—dc23 [B] 2015013945 BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE © 2015 Robert P. Ellis. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Portrait statue of Francis Bacon in the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress) Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com In memory of Anthony L. Ellis (1967–2014) This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 5 1. Now Somewhat Ancient 17 2. Like a Child Following a Bird 33 3. Not in the Proportion I Hoped 49 4. The Corner- Stone Laid 62 5. Prospects and Possibilities 81 6. A Greater Place 98 7. Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor 109 8. Still Ascending 123 9. A Broken Reed 140 10. Seeking an Otium 156 11. They Come Home 173 12. An Experiment or Two 190 Chapter Notes 201 Bibliography 205 Index 209 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Francis Bacon became a presence to me when I was a small boy, for he occupied one page in a book called Minute Biographies by two authors who hoped that this compilation would attract boys and girls and adults, a wish perhaps more often fulfilled in the 1930s than today. He came fitfully to my attention during school and college and more seriously in my first graduate course, which was supposed to be about English literature of the seventeenth century, but in the hands of the professor became largely about two writers, John Donne, a minor figure in this book, and Francis Bacon. Subsequently I taught Bacon as a rel- atively small part of my own rather generalized literature courses but never wrote about him. I read Catherine Drinker Bowen’s biography Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man not long after it appeared, and a good deal more about him later. He attracted me as a fine writer and a versatile man who com- bined a busy and eventually highly important public life as a politician and judge with a powerful desire to promote what the title of one of his books, The Advancement of Learning,intimates. Bowen’s book remains today the one that a non- specialist reader is likely to encounter first. It is a fine book but a half- century old, and much more has been learned about the man. Scholarly publications about Bacon are numerous and probably unending, but in this century such works grow very specialized. A large biography that could digest all the facets of Bacon’s remarkable life is possible and desirable, but the common reader (to use a term coined by Samuel Johnson, applied by Virginia Woolf in two books of essays, and still serviceable, I believe, to designate serious but unspecialized readers) still awaits such a book. For those readers I have written a smaller book 1
The list of books you might like
