"If I could purge knowledge 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 conclusions, and
profitable inventions and discoveries . . . This, whether it be
curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably)
philanthropy, is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be removed." If
Cecil cannot help him to a post, if he cannot serve the truth, he
will reduce himself, like Anaxagoras, to voluntary poverty, " . . .
and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true pioneer in that mine of
truth . . . " {276a} Really, from first to last he was the prince of
begging-letter writers, endlessly asking for place, pensions,
reversions, money, and more money.
Though his years were thirty-one, Bacon was as young at heart as
Shelley at eighteen, when he wrote thus to Cecil, "my Lord Treasurer
Burghley." What did Cecil care for his youngish kinsman's
philanthropy, and "vast speculative ends" (how MODERN it all is!),
and the rest of it? But just because Bacon, at thirty-one, IS so
extremely "green," going to "take all knowledge for his province (if
some one will only subsidise him, and endow his research), I conceive
that he was in earnest about his reformation of science.
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