s more
formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than
the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was
nothing wild--nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.

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

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

He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it
portable.

His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in
literature.

It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each
and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the
Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man
of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a
prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not
produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written
anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written this:

The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be ye yt moves my bones.

When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he
ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake
forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor
prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never
notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, until you bite into a
layer of it in a pie.