d even of serious and learned debate. From Ben Jonson in
his own day, to James Spedding the friend of Tennyson, he has not lacked
eminent eulogists, who look up to him as not only the greatest and
wisest, but as among the noblest and most worthy of mankind: while the
famous epigram of Pope, expanded by Macaulay into a stately and eloquent
essay, has impressed on the popular mind the lowest estimate of his
moral nature; and even such careful scholars as Charles de Remusat and
Dean Church, who have devoted careful and instructive volumes to the
survey of Bacon's career and works, insist that with all his
intellectual supremacy, he was a servile courtier, a false friend, and a
corrupt judge. Yet there are few important names in human history of men
who have left us so complete materials for a just judgment of their
conduct; and it is only a lover of paradox who can read these and still
regard Bacon's character as an unsolved problem.

Mr. Spedding has given a long life of intelligent labor to the
collection of every fact and document throwing light upon the motives,
aims, and thoughts of the great "Chancellor of Nature," from the cradle
to the grave. The results are before us in the seven volumes of 'The
Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon,' which form perhaps the most
complete biography ever written. It is a book of absolute candor as well
as infinite research, giving with equal distinctness all the evidence
which makes for its hero's dishonor and that which tends to justify the
writer's reverence for him. Another work by Mr. Spedding, 'Evenings with
a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elaborate refutation, from the
original and authentic records, of the most damning charges brought by
Lord Macaulay against Bacon's good fame. It is a complete and
overwhelming exposure of false coloring, of rhetorical artifices, and of
the abuse of evidence, in the famous essay. As one of the most
entertaining and instructive pieces of controversy in our literature, it
deserves to be widely read. The unbiased reader cannot accept the
special pleading by which, in his comments, Spedding makes every failing
of Bacon "lean to virtue's side"; but will form upon the unquestioned
facts presented a clear conception of him, will come to know him as no
other man of an age so remote is known, and will find in his many-sided
and magnificent nature a full explanation of the impressions which
partial views of it have made upon his worshipers and his de