some additions of his own at the end, and he refers to 2d Strype's Annals' 469. Her parental care of her two sons, Anthony and Francis, two of the most extraordinary men of her time, and of any time, is, possibly, the best evidence of her powers and which was deeply felt by Francis, who, in his will, says: For my burial I desire it may be in St. Michael's church, near St. Albans, there was my mother buried." In Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, the extraordinary vigilance used by Lady Anne in superintending their conduct, long after they were adults, may be seen.

The importance of early impressions, and, above all, of early infant education, can never be too strongly impressed upon the mind. The blessings attendant upon the performance of this duty, both to the child and to the parent, may be seen by a few facts, and conceived by any person who thinks of the sweet love of a mother for her child, and knows that "Nature never said one thing and wisdom another." See Cowper's Review of Schools, and see his poem upon the receipt of his mother's picture. I subjoin a few instances, ancient and modern, of the beneficial effects of maternal education.

Arete, the daughter of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic philosopher, after her father's death, presided over the school, and taught her son, Aristippus, philosophy. Diog. Laert. L. ii. in Aristippo.

Istrina, queen of the Scythians, wife of Aripithis, taught her son the language and learning of the Greeks. Herodotus and Melpomene.

What heart has not glowed at the memory of the mother of the Gracchi. The devout Pilcheria, mother of the emperor Arcadius, when not fifteen years of age, governed with discretion. She tended both the moral and intellectual education of her son Theodosius.

Zenobia Suidas, the celebrated queen of Palmyra, was acquainted with the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian languages, and instructed her sons Herennianus and Timolaus. Pollio Trebellius et Fulg. Lib. viii. cap. iii.

Amalasunta succeeded, with her son Athalaric, to her father Theodoric, in the kingdom of Italy. She educated her son after the Roman manner, and reared in him his father's virtues. She was acquainted with all the languages that were spoken in the Roman empire. Jo. Magnus, 1. 10.

Hooker, about the eighteenth year of his age, fell into a dangerous sickness, which lasted two months; all which time his mother, having notice of it, did in her hourly prayers as earnestly beg his life of God, as Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, did that he might become a true Christian; and their prayers were both so heard as to be granted: which Mr. Hooker would often mention with much joy, and as often pray that he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother; of whom, he would often say, he loved her so dearly that he would endeavour to be good even as much for hers as for his own sake. Walton's Lives.

The mother of George Herbert, in the time of her widowhood, being desirous to give Edward, her eldest son, such advantages of learning, and other education, as might suit his birth and fortune, and thereby make him more fit for the service of his country, did, at his being of a fit age, remove from Montgomery Castle with him to Queen's College, and having provided him a fit tutor, she commended him to his care, yet she continued there with him, and still kept him in a moderate awe of herself, and so much under her own eye, as to see and converse with him daily. Walton's Life of George Herbert.

Professor Gregory, who invented the reflecting telescope, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, was instructed by his mother in the elements of mathematics. Kant, the celebrated metaphysician, derived in part his devotional spirit from the instructions of maternal piety.

Gray the poet was the only child of his mother who survived. The rest died in their infancy from suffocation produced by a fulness of the blood: and he owed his life to a memorable instance of the love and courage of his mother. who removed the paroxysm which attacked him by opening a vein with her own hand. To her exertions it was owing, that when her home was rendered unhappy by the cruelty of her husband, our poet was indebted for his education. Mason records that Gray seldom mentioned his mother without a sigh.

The early years of the lamented John Tweddell,

"Of all that virtue love for virtue loved,"

were passed under the tuition of a most pious and affectionate mother.

Bishop Watson thus speaks of his mother: " My mother's maiden name was Newton she was a very charitable and good woman, and I am indebted to her (I mention it with filial piety) for embuing my young mind with principles of religion, which have never forsaken me. Erasmus, in his little treatise entitled Antibarbarorum, says, that the safety of states depends upon three thingsupon a proper or improper education of the prince, upon public preachers, and upon schoolmasters; and he might with reason have added, upon mothers; for the care of the mother precedes that of the schoolmaster, and may stamp upon the rasa tabula of the infant mind, characters of virtue and religion which no time can efface." Bishop Watson's Life, p. 7. ed. 4to. 1817.

The care of the education of Sir William Jones devolved upon his mother, who in many respects was eminently qualified for the task. Her character, as delineated by her husband with somewhat of mathematical precision, is this, that "She was virtuous without blemish, generous without extravagance, frugal but not niggard, cheerful but not giddy, close but not sullen, ingenious but not conceited, of spirit but not passionate, of her company cautious, in her friendship trusty, to her parents dutiful, and to her husband ever faithful, loving, and obedient.' She had naturally a strong understanding, which was improved by his conversation and instruction. Under his tuition she became a considerable proficient in algebra; and, with a view to qualify herself for the office of preceptor to her sister's son, who was destined to a maritime profession, made herself perfect in trigonometry and the theory of navigation.

In the plan adopted by Mrs. Jones for the instruction of her son, she proposed to reject the severity of discipline, and to lead his mind insensibly to knowledge and exertion, by exciting his curiosity and directing it to useful objects. To his incessant importunities for information on casual topics of conversation, which she watchfully stimulated, she constantly replied, "read and you will know," a maxim to the observance of which he always acknowledged himself indebted for his future attainments. By this method his desire to learn became as eager as her wish to teach; and such was her talent of instruction and his facility of retaining it, that in his fourth year he was able to read distinctly and rapidly any English book. She particularly attended at the same time to the cultivation of his memory, by making him learn and repeat some of the popular speeches in Shakespeare and the best of Gay's Fables.

Among those mothers who may be recorded as having early succeeded by widowhood to the father's place in the charge of education, we may enumerate the mothers of St. Peter Celestine; of Philip Beraldo, the elder; of Bologna, one of the greatest scholars of the fifteenth century; of Bishop Fisher, and the Protestant prelates Cranmer and Parker; of Papire Masson the historian, and of Buchanan the poet and in a later period, those of our own countrymen, Bishop Brownrigg, Dr. Wallis the mathematician, Cowley the poet and abroad, the mothers of Leibnitz; of Lami, of Florence.

Bishop Hall thus speaks of his mother, "How often have I blessed the memory of those divine passages of experimental divinity which I have heard from her mouth! What day did she pass without a large task of private devotion, whence she would still come forth with a countenance of undissembled mortification. Never any lips have read to me such feeling lectures of piety, neither have I known any soul that more accurately practised them; then her own temptations, desertions, and spiritual comforts, were her usual theme. Shortly, for I can hardly take off my pen from so exemplary a subject, her life and death were saint-like.

The early letters of the mother of the late Right Hon. William Pitt shew the powers of her mind and her affection.

The comments of John Lovell Edgeworth, in his life; and of Marmontel, in his memoirs, are very interesting on this subject.

See some valuable observations upon this subject, in Hints for the Improvement of early Education, Hatchard, 1822, written by Mrs. Hoare.

E. Life, p. ii.

Note from page 412, Biographia Britannica. The Lady Jane Grey was excellently skilled in Greek and Queen Elizabeth translated several pieces both from Greek and Latin. The most remarkable instance, however, of the spirit of learning which prevailed was in the family of Sir Anthony Cooke: for all his four daughters were perfectly skilled in the learned languages, and his second daughter, Anne, wife to the Lord Keeper Bacon, made both a florid and exact translation of Bishop Jewell's Apology for the church of England, from Latin into English, which was esteemed so useful in its nature, as well as so correct in its manner, that in the year 1567 it was published for common use, by the special order of Archbishop Parker, with some additions of his own at the end. (Strype's Annals, vol. ii. p. 469). There have been many ladies remarkable for their learning and their writings, but very few whose works, like the Lady Bacon's, were published by authority and commended to public reading it was this that stirred the gall of Father Parsons, who has reflected bitterly upon this lady (a relation of a conference between Henry IV. of France, &c. p. 197) for her performance, without reflecting that his ill language redounded more to her reputation than all the praises of her friends. (See Mallet's Life of Bacon, 4to.) It was to the great abilities and tender care of so accomplished a parent, that her two sons, Anthony and Francis, owed the early part of their education.

Before I went into Germanie," says Ascham, "I came to Brodegate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholdinge. Her parentes, the duke and the duches, with all the houshould, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the parke. I found her in her chamber, readinge Phædon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as much delite, as some jentlemen would read a merrie tale in Bocase. After salutation, and dewtie done, with some other taulke, I asked her, why she would leese such pastime in the parke? Smiling, she answered me: I wisse, all their sport in the parke is but a shadoe to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folke, they never felt what trewe pleasure ment.'

Ascham, who was said to be the best master of the best scholar, speaking of his pupil Queen Elizabeth, says: "After dinner I went up to read with the Queen's majesty. We read then together in the Greek tongue, as I well remember, that noble oration of Demosthenes against Eschines for his false dealing in his embassage to King Philip of Macedon." Lord Bacon, in speaking of Queen Elizabeth, says: "This lady was indued with learning in her sex singular and rare even amongst masculine princes, whether we speak of learning or of language: or of science, modern or ancient: divinity or humanity. And, unto the very last year of her life, she accustomed to appoint set hours for reading, scarcely any young student in an university more daily or more duly."

G. Life, p. iii.

He had not the advantage of a good constitution of body, his father having been much afflicted with the gout and stone. Birch's Elizabeth.

In the Novum Organum he says, "We judge also, that mankind may conceive some hopes from our example, which we offer, not by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful. If any one, therefore, should despair, let him consider a man as much employed in civil affairs as any other of his age, a man of no great share of health, who must therefore have lost much time; and yet, in this undertaking, he is the first that leads the way, unassisted by any mortal, and stedfastly entering the true path that was absolutely untrod before, and submitting his mind to things, may thus have somewhat advanced the design." Rawley says, "The moon was never in her passion or eclipsed, but he was surprized with a sudden fit of fainting, and that though he observed not, nor took any previous knowledge of the eclipse thereof." None of his servants,"

46

་་

says Aubrey," durst appear before him without Spanish leather boots, for he would smell the neat's leather, which offended him." "His lordship," says Aubrey, would often drink a good draught of strong beer (March beer) to bed-wards, to lay his working fancy to sleep, which otherwise would keep him from sleeping great part of the night. I remember Sir John Danvers told me that his lordship much delighted in his curious garden at Chelsea, and as he was walking there one time he fell down in a swoon. My Lady Danvers rubbed his face, temples, &c. and gave him cordial water; as soon as he came to himself, said he, " Madam, I am no good footman." Is not this cheerfulness a proof that the sensation was habitual?

H. Life, p. iii.

Dr. Rawley says, "His first and childish years were not without some mark of eminency; at which time he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit; as they were presages of that deep and universal apprehension, which was manifest in him afterward: and caused him to be taken notice of by several persons of worth and place; and, especially, by the Queen; who (as I have been informed) delighted much then to confer with him, and to prove him with questions: unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that her majesty would often term him, the young lord keeper." Archbishop Tennison says, "It is observed that in his tender years, his pregnancy was such, as gave great indication of his future high accomplishments; insomuch as Queen Elizabeth took notice of him, and called him the young lord keeper; also, that asking him how old he was, though but a boy, he answered, that he was two years younger than her majesty's most happy reign."

I. Life, p. ix.

It appears probable that on this subject, which constantly occupied him, he was interested very early in life. There are various tracts extant which are rudiments of his Novum Organum, and appear to have been the subject of his meditations when a boy. In vol. xi. of this edition, page 478, there is a tract entitled Temporis Partus Masculus sive de Interpretatione Nature: this was first published by Stephens. It is translated, and is published in vol. xv. This tract was written when he was a boy, for in a letter to Father Fulgentio, (see vol. xii. 203), written after 1622, as he mentions the History of Henry VII. which was published in that year, he says, "I remember that about forty years ago, I composed a juvenile work about these things, which with great confidence and a pompous title I called Temporis Partum Maximum." Archbishop Tennyson, speaking of this, says, "This was a kind of embryo of the instauration, and, if it had been preserved, it might have delighted and profited philosophical readers, who could then have seen the generation of that great work, as it were from the first egg of it, and by reference to the tract it will be seen that it was sound judgment.' There is another tract entitled Temporis Partus Masculus, sive Instauratio Magna imperii Humani in Universum. This is also translated, and is in vol. xv. It was first published by Gruter. By reference to this it will appear, that it is a prayer to the Creator: and, by referring to the conclusion of the Distributio Operis prefixed to the Novum Organum, page 178, vol. ix. it will be seen that it also concludes with a prayer. There are various other tracts, which are rudiments of the Novum Örganum. See vol. i. of this edition in the preface, sect. 5, p. 27. sect. 6, p. 28. sect. 7, and sect. 8, p. 31.

These different tracts will, possibly, elucidate what is said by Dr. Rawley, who, speaking of the Novum Organum, says, "His book of Instauratio Magna (which in his own account was the chiefest of his works,) was no slight imagination, or fancy of his brain, but a settled and concocted notion, the production of many years labour and travel. I myself have seen at the least twelve copies of the Instauration, revised year by year one after

another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at last it came to that model in which it was committed to the press, as many living creatures do lick their young ones, till they bring them to their strength of limbs."

The attention of the reader is particularly requested to the extracts (in pages xxviii and xxix of preface to vol. i.) and the observations upon universities in the Filum Labyrinthi, and in the Novum Organum.

"Lost, likewise," says Tennison, "is a book which he wrote in his youth, he called it (Temporis Partus Maximus) the Greatest Birth of Time: or rather, Temporis Partus Masculus, the Masculine Birth of Time. For so Gruter found it called in some of the papers of Sir William Boswel. This was a kind of embrio of the Instauration and the fragment, lately retrieved, and now first published. But this loss is the less to be lamented, because it is made up with advantage, in the second and better thoughts of the author, in the two first parts of his Instauration."

Mr. Mallet, speaking of this treatise, is pleased to deliver himself thus: "Though the piece itself is lost, it appears to have been the first outlines of that amazing design, which he afterwards filled up and finished, in his grand Instauration of the Sciences. As there is not a more amusing, perhaps a more useful speculation, than that of tracing the history of the human mind, if I may so express myself, in its progression from truth to truth, and from discovery to discovery; the intelligent reader would, doubtless, have been pleased, to see in the tract I have been speaking of, by what steps and gradations, a spirit like Bacon's advanced in new and universal theory."

But here seems to lie the difficulty: some writers who have reviewed the scattered works and fragments of Lord Bacon have, with great labour and industry, endeavoured to bring in this treatise, otherwise styled Of the Interpretation of Nature, as a part of that great body of philosophy which he had framed; whereas our author himself, speaking of this treatise, tells us, as the reader may see above, that it was not a part or portion of his great structure of philosophy, but the first sketch or rough draught of the whole. Now I conceive, that whoever looks into these fragments of the book on the Interpretation of Nature, as they stand in the works of our author, and shall afterwards compare them with the beginning of his Instauration, will not need many arguments to persuade him, that this conjecture is founded in truth, and that there is as much reason to conceive that the great work, just mentioned, rose out of the Temporis Partus Masculus, as that the Novum Organum sprung from another of the fragments which accompanies this, and is commonly called his Cogitata et Visa. If the reader would be told what is the issue, what the advantage of this laboured inquiry, he will surely be satisfied with this answer; that by drawing these fragments of the Interpretation of Nature into a good light, it appears, that what the honest and candid Tennison thought so fine a sight, the generation of Lord Bacon's philosophy from the egg, is still in our power; and what the ingenious and instructive Mr. Mallet most truly observes, the ability of reviewing and tracing the author's steps from one discovery in science to another, is yet in a great measure with us; which, to such as rightly apprehend Lord Bacon's worth, and have a just conception of the value of his writings, will appear somewhat of considerable consequence. I am satisfied, that in matters of this nature there is no absolute certainty, and that in the depths of Lord Bacon's knowledge, a man of ordinary talents may be very easily lost; but I own at the same time, the thing struck me so strongly, that I could not help putting it down, yet with all imaginable submission to the reader, to whose service, as I dedicate my labours, 1 hope (should it be found so) he will the more easily pardon my mistake. There are, however, a few circumstances more, to which I must desire the reader's attention, and then he will have a just notion of Mr. Bacon's frame of mind. While at Gray's Inn, he was eagerly engaged in the study and pursuit of his new philosophy, the whole scheme of which he had already formed. It was to this he applied his thoughts, and this was the great object of his ambition. If he desired or laboured for preferment in civil life, it was but with a view to gain thereby the means of