that are described in the ARABIAN TALES...
amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more
wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid
than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms 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 may 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 of, 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 he 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