holas
Bacon; educated at Cambridge; called to the bar when 21, after study at
Gray's Inn; represented successively Taunton, Liverpool, and Ipswich in
Parliament; was a favourite with the queen; attached himself to Essex,
but witnessed against him at his trial, which served him little; became
at last in succession Attorney-General, Privy Councillor, Lord Keeper,
and Lord Chancellor; was convicted of venality as a judge, deposed, fined
and imprisoned, but pardoned and released; spent his retirement in his
favourite studies; his great works were his "Advancement of Learning,"
"Novum Organum," and "De Augmentis Scientiarum," but is seen to best
advantage by the generality in his "Essays," which are full of practical
wisdom and keen observation of life; indeed, these show such shrewdness
of wit as to embolden some (see _SUPRA_) to maintain that the
plays named of Shakespeare were written by him (1561-1626).

BACON, ROGER, a Franciscan monk, born at Ilchester, Somerset; a
fearless truth-seeker of great scientific attainments; accused of magic,
convicted and condemned to imprisonment, from which he was released only
to die; suggested several scientific inventions, such as the telescope,
the air-pump, the diving-bell, the camera obscura, and gunpowder, and
wrote some eighty treatises (1214-1294).

BACON, SIR NICHOLAS, the father of Francis, Lord Bacon, Privy
Councillor and Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth; a prudent
and honourable man and minister, and much honoured and trusted by the
queen (1510-1579).

BACSANYI, JANOS, a Hungarian poet; he suffered from his liberal
political opinions, like many of his countrymen (1763-1845).

BACTE`RIA, exceedingly minute organisms of the simplest structure,
being merely cells of varied forms, in the shape of spheres, rods, or
intermediate shapes, which develop in infusions of organic matter, and
multiply by fission with great rapidity, fraught, as happens, with life
or death to the higher forms of being; conspicuous by the part they play
in the process of fermentation and in the origin and progress of disease,
and to the knowledge of which, and the purpose they serve in nature, so
much has been contributed by the labours of M. Pasteur.

BAC`TRIA, a province of ancient Persia, now BALKH (q. v.),
the presumed fatherland of the Aryans and the birthplace of the
Zoroastrian religion.

BACTRIAN SAGE, a name given to Zoroaster as a native of Bactria.

BACUP (23),