Viscount St Albans
(gcide) | Bacon \Bacon\, Francis Bacon \Francis Bacon\prop. n.
Francis Bacon. A celebrated English philosopher, jurist, and
statesman, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon. Born at York House,
London, Jan. 22, 1561: died at Highgate, April 9, 1626,
created Baron Verulam July 12, 1618, and {Viscount St.
Albans} Jan. 27, 1621: commonly, but incorrectly, called
Lord Bacon. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge,
April, 1573, to March, 1575, and at Gray's Inn 1575; became
attached to the embassy of Sir Amias Paulet in France in
1576; was admitted to the bar in 1582; entered Parliament in
1584; was knighted in 1603; became solicitor-general in 1607,
and attorney-general in 1613; was made a privy councilor in
1616, lord keeper in 1617, and lord chancellor in 1618; and
was tried in 1621 for bribery, condemned, fined, and removed
from office. A notable incident of his career was his
connection with the Earl of Essex, which began in July, 1591,
remained an intimate friendship until the fall of Essex
(1600-01), and ended in Bacon's active efforts to secure the
conviction of the earl for treason. (See Essex.) His great
fame rests upon his services as a reformer of the methods of
scientific investigation; and though his relation to the
progress of knowledge has been exaggerated and misunderstood,
his reputation as one of the chief founders of modern
inductive science is well grounded. His chief works are the
"Advancement of Learning," published in English as "The Two
Books of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of
Learning Divine and Human," in 1605; the "Novum organum sive
indicia vera de interpretatione naturae," published in Latin,
1620, as a "second part" of the (incomplete) "Instauratio
magna"; the "De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum,"
published in Latin in 1623; "Historia Ventorum" (1622),
"Historia Vitae et Mortis" (1623), "Historia Densi et Rari"
(posthumously, 1658), "Sylva Sylvarum" (posthumously, 1627),
"New Atlantis," "Essays" (1597, 1612, 1625), "De Sapientia
Veterum" (1609), "Apothegms New and Old," "History of Henry
VII." (1622). Works edited by Ellis, Spedding, and Heath (7
vols. 1857); Life by Spedding (7 vols. 1861, 2 vols. 1878).
See Shakspere. --Century Dict. 1906.
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