ers and philosophy. The noble
treatise on the _Advancement of Learning_, which at a later period
was expanded into the _De Augmentis_, appeared in 1605.

The _Wisdom of the Ancients_, a work which if it had proceeded from
any other writer would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit
and learning, was printed in 1609.

In the meantime the _Novum Organum_ was slowly proceeding. Several
distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of
that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration
of his genius.

Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the _Cogitata et Visa_, one of
the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great
oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all
proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master
workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise
over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of
learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it."

In 1612 a new edition of the _Essays_ appeared, with additions
surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality.

Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the
most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his
mighty powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to
use his own phrase, "of the laws of England."

To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney General and
Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for
hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just
described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.

The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years
of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase
the regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted,
to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as was not
worthy such a student."

He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England
under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History,
a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to
his Essays. He published the inestimable _Treatise De Argumentis
Scientiarum_.

Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and
quiet his appetite for work