Languages & literature > Bacon's essays, and Goldsmith's essays

HISTORICAL AND
iv
penetration with which he pursued his inqui¬
ries and reflections, remains in a work, written,
in part at least, when he was only nineteen
years of age, but probably finished and revised
while he lived in Gray’s Inn. It is entitled
“ Of the State of Europe,” and contains mi¬
nutes of the princes then reigning, their fami¬
lies, interests, forces, revenues, and principal
transactions, with observations which strongly
marjk the early maturity of the writer’s judg¬
ment.
The sudden death of Sir Nicholas Bacon
left his son Francis, the youngest of five bro¬
thers, in circumstances which obliged him to
return abruptly from France, and to engage in
some lucrative profession. His choice was soon
fixed upon the study of the common law, not,
however, as his principal object, but merely as
a subsidiary pursuit. Entering himself in the
society of Gray’s Inn, he applied with so much
assiduity to the studies peculiar to his profes¬
sion, that at the age of twenty-eight years he
was appointed by the queen to the honourable
post of her learned Counsel Extraordinary.
But the commanding genius of Bacon, capable
of comprehending and enlarging the field of
science, was not to be confined within the nar-