ries. In a letter on this
occasion, he writes, "My ambition now I shall only put upon my PEN,
whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit, of THE TIMES
SUCCEEDING." And many years after, when he had finally quitted public
life, he told the king, "I would live to study, and not study to live:
yet I am prepared for _date obolum Belisario_; and, I that have borne a
bag, can bear a wallet."

Ever were THE TIMES SUCCEEDING in his mind. In that delightful Latin
letter to Father Fulgentio, where, with the simplicity of true grandeur,
he takes a view of all his works, and in which he describes himself as
"one who served posterity," in communicating his past and his future
designs, he adds that "they require some ages for the ripening of them."
There, while he despairs of finishing what was intended for the sixth
part of his Instauration, how nobly he despairs! "Of the perfecting this
I have cast away all hopes; but in future ages, perhaps, the design may
bud again." And he concludes by avowing, that the zeal and constancy of
his mind in the great design, after so many years, had never become cold
and indifferent. He remembers how, forty years ago, he had composed a
juvenile work about those things, which with confidence, but with too
pompous a title, he had called _Temporis Partus Maximus_; the great
birth of time! Besides the public dedication of his _Novum Organum_ to
James the First, he accompanied it with a private letter. He wishes the
king's favour to the work, which he accounts as much as a hundred years'
time; for he adds, "I am persuaded _the work will gain upon men's minds
in_ AGES."

In his last will appears his remarkable legacy of fame. "My name and
memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own countrymen, AFTER
SOME TIME BE PAST OVER." Time seemed always personated in the
imagination of our philosopher, and with time he wrestled with a
consciousness of triumph.

I shall now bring forward sufficient evidence to prove how little Bacon
was understood, and how much he was even despised, in his philosophical
character.

In those prescient views by which the genius of Verulam has often
anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding times,
there was one important object which even his foresight does not appear
to have contemplated. Lord Bacon did not foresee that the English
language would one day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can
discover, or poetry can invent; that his c