History of the English Language and Literature remitted; Bacon was set free in two days; a pension was allowed him; but he never afterwards held office of any kind. He died on Easter-day of the year 1626, of a chill which he caught while experimenting on the preservative properties of snow. 4. His chief prose-works in English—for he wrote many in Latin—are the Essays, and the Advancement of Learning. His Essays make one of the wisest books ever written; and a great number of English thinkers owe to them the best of what they have had to say. They are written in a clear, forcible, pithy, and picturesque style, with short sentences, and a good many illustrations, drawn from history, politics, and science. It is true that the style is sometimes stiff, and even rigid; but the stiffness is the stiffness of a richly embroidered cloth, into which threads of gold and silver have been worked. Bacon kept what he called a Promus or Commonplace-Book; and in this he entered striking thoughts, sentences, and phrases that he met with in the course of his reading, or that occurred to him during the day. He calls these sentences â——salt-pits, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle as you will.â—— The following are a few examples:— â——That that is Forced is not Forcible.â—— â——No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold.â—— â——Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Manâ——s Nature.â—— â——The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have intelligence, is a Manâ——s Self.â—— 301 â——If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune.â—— The following are a few striking sentences from his Essays:— â——Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.â—— â——A manâ——s nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.â—— â——A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.â—— No man could say wiser things in pithier words; and we may well say of his thoughts, in the words of Tennyson, that they are— â——Jewels, five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all time Sparkle for ever.â—— 5. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has been already treated of in the chapter on the sixteenth century. But it may be noted here that his first two periods—as they are called—fall within the sixteenth, and his last two periods within the seventeenth century. His first period lies between 1591 and 1596; and to it are ascribed his early poems, his play of Richard II., and some other historical plays. His second period, which stretches from 1596 to 1601 holds the Sonnets, the Merchant of Venice, the Merry Wives of Windsor, and a few historical dramas. But his third and fourth periods were richer in production, and in greater productions. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
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