betony the wort four drachins by weight, and boiled honey, work (form) then four little pills thereof; let him eat then one, and swallow one in hot water and wine together; then of the wet (liquid) three cups full.

"21. For sore of inwards, or if he (the sick man) be swollen, take betony the wort; rub it in wine very small; let him lay it then about the wamb (belly), and let him swallow it; then also rathe (soon) it cometh to boot (amends)."

Hyoscyamus, our henbane, is good for "Lungs addle (disease), like juice of the same wort, give (it) to drink; with high wondering he will be healed." Knotgrass also is very good "for sore breasts of women which be in milk and swollen; take the same wort and knock (pound) it and lithe it with butter (add butter as a lenitive); lay it then thereto; it will drive away wonderfully the swollenness and the soreness." Thus peony is good for lunacy, and groundsel for gout. The uses of coriander and purslane we pass over, though the former is curious in a magical, and the latter in a medical sense. "For hardness of the inwards, take seed of gith corn (the berries of Daphne laureola), that is, the grains well purified; administer to drink in warm water; soon it stirreth the inwards." Great is the efficacy of mandrake; in fact, it was the "Cockle's Antibilious" of a very hoar antiquity, and the initiated Druid might fairly have said, in virtue of its reputation, “Mandrake cures more men than Holloway." The Herbarium, from Dioscorides, and the Medecina de Quadrupedibus of

VOL. I.

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Sextus Placitus, seem to contain the magical element in even larger proportion than the Herbarium of Apuleius. They are also more fantastic and less quotable, and they require more of Mr. Cockayne's Latin. The Fly Leaf Leechdoms are medicinal enough, but the Charms which follow, "to find lost cattle, for catching a swarm of bees, &c.," are altogether of an empirical character. The last charm for bewitched land is a very elaborate performance, and really beautiful in parts, but it is too lengthy for quo

tation.

We have thus run through the whole of Mr. Cockayne's volume, subject to our disabilities; but there is one disability which he has imposed upon us which is strikingly the reverse of many to which we have already alluded. Mr. Cockayne leaves out designedly a great many of the Saxon names of the worts, and we can only excuse him on the presumption that they are probably not quite fit to be printed in the vernacular. Such words may have been inscribed by the naughty little Saxon boys on the Saxon shutters, if there were shutters in those days, with the assistance of chalk, of which there was plenty as far as Salisbury Plain. But the wantonness of these little boys, and the bad constructions thence derived, ought not to deprive the veteran philologist of the instruction which a knowledge of these terms would impart to him.

179

MR. HEPWORTH DIXON'S DEFENCE OF LORD BACON.*

THE conduct of the great Lord Bacon has been so frequently canvassed that we are interested in anything which can be alleged in its behalf. But, we ask, what is the meaning of these reiterated attempts to reopen the inquest on a tarnished reputation? The tendency, which has become a prevailing epidemic, and which employs so many ingenious controversialists to redress other presumed cases of historical injustice, is insufficient to account for the combined series of efforts to challenge our convictions in this particular instance. Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. Spedding, if we may trust the report as to the alleged scope of his 'Dialogues with the Reviewers,' and, lastly, Mr. Hepworth Dixon, have been concerned first or last in a common endeavour to vindicate Bacon's character. We ask the rationale of these repeated apologies, and whence it is hoped to cleanse off the disgrace so

* 'Personal History of Lord Bacon,' from Unpublished Papers. By William Hepworth Dixon, of the Inner Temple. Murray, 1861.

identified with his fame? Is it because the materials for his defence have been previously overlooked? Is it owing to the discovery of new and sufficient evidence to clear away the stigma which has clung to him for two centuries and a half, a stigma affixed by the unanimous verdict of his peers, and since confirmed by the finding of such special jurors as Hume, Lingard, Hallam, Macaulay, Lord Campbell, and very judicious and careful Mr. Foss? Is there really a case to sustain an appeal, and to warrant a reversal of this authoritative sentence? Before we attempt to answer this question as we may, at short notice and in a limited space, we must first of all pay our tribute to the

motives of its advocates.

Thus Bacon was one of the supreme and select few (it would be difficult to enumerate more than twelve such) who, out of all races through recorded time, have succeeded in influencing widely the destinies of their kind. The great men who have been the glory of particular ages or nations, who have been all this and no more, belong to an inferior order. The superlative genius which could launch a new philosophy, to bear fruit from his own time henceforth for ever, is the glory, not of one age or people, but of the whole human species, past, present, and to The results of his labours are participated by all, and an interest in his character is coextensive with human thought. It is simply the most natural thing in the world that we should be solicitous for the fame of so great a benefactor, and if gratitude is too often a feeble induce

come.

ment, it has forcible aid from our spiritual complacency. Our pride in his triumphs, or shame in his lapses, is one of the secrets of our unconscious self-esteem. We are perplexed and irritated at the moral problem of the combination of base motives with such lofty speculations. When we are told that intellectual powers so varied and intense were associated with moral pravity, that such capacity of brain was coupled with meanness of spirit and coldness of heart, we doubt and we struggle with the humiliating inference. The credit of letters is especially implicated in the shame of his story, and men of letters are the first to contend against a view which to them is peculiarly and pre-eminently unwelcome. Thus something like esprit de corps combines with the generous impulse to sustain the glory of a great ideal type, and to vindicate the imagined harmonies of our imperfect human nature.

That Mr. Dixon, himself a devoted man of letters, should participate in this feeling is both natural and becoming; and in his case there is the special personal inducement that he has already done so serviceably in the case of William Penn. We have always thought that Mr. Dixon was successful in that instance in vindicating Penn from the imputations of Lord Macaulay. Like Mr. Paget after him, he adduced in Penn's behalf certain weighty evidence which Lord Macaulay had overlooked, and he marshalled his facts with a confidence in their force which demanded no help from rhetorical