Bacon

This introduction to the life and works of Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1884. The author, R. W. Church (1815–90), who also wrote on Spenser for this series, begins forcefully: 'The life of Francis Bacon is one which it is a pain to write or to read. It is the life of a man endowed with as rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was bestowed on a human intellect … And yet it was not only an unhappy life; it was a poor life.' Church, while paying the highest tribute to Bacon's intellectual achievements in so many different fields, argues that 'there was in Bacon's 'self' a deep and fatal flaw. He was a pleaser of men.' He believed that this work should correct the adulatory stance adopted by earlier biographers, and reveal the whole, imperfect man.