cts and reverence to your great place.

"20th June, 1625.
FR. ST. ALBAN."

Bacon always claimed that he was not "vindicative." But considering how
Bishop Williams, when he was Lord Keeper, had charged Bacon with
"knavery" and "deceiving his creditors" in the arrangements about his
fine, it is not a little strange to find that at the end of his life
Bacon had so completely made friends with him that he chose him as the
person to whom he meant to leave his speeches and letters, which he was
"willing should not be lost," and also the charge of superintending two
foundations of L200 a year for Natural Science at the universities. And
the Bishop accepted the charge.

The end of this, one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand;
the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a
fashion. On a cold day in March he stopped his coach in the snow on his
way to Highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. He
bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed it with snow. He was
taken with a bad chill, which forced him to stop at a strange house,
Lord Arundel's, to whom he wrote his last letter--a letter of apology
for using his house. He did not write the letter as a dying man. But
disease had fastened on him. A few days after, early on Easter morning,
April 9, 1626, he passed away. He was buried at St. Albans, in the
Church of St. Michael, "the only Christian church within the walls of
old Verulam." "For my name and memory," he said in his will, "I leave it
to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages."
So he died: the brightest, richest, largest mind but one, in the age
which had seen Shakespeare and his fellows; so bright and rich and large
that there have been found those who identify him with the writer of
_Hamlet_ and _Othello_. That is idle. Bacon could no more have written
the plays than Shakespeare could have prophesied the triumphs of natural
philosophy. So ended a career, than which no other in his time had
grander and nobler aims--aims, however mistaken, for the greatness and
good of England; aims for the enlargement of knowledge and truth, and
for the benefit of mankind. So ended a career which had mounted slowly
and painfully, but resolutely, to the highest pinnacle of
greatness--greatness full of honour and beneficent activity--suddenly to
plunge down to depths where honour and hope were irrecoverable. So
closed, in disgrace and disappoint