CHAPTER VI.
LORD BACON AND HIS COEVALS.
Except it be Milton's, there is not any prose fuller of grand poetic embodiments than Lord Bacon's.

Yet he always writes contemptuously of poetry, having in his eye no doubt the commonplace kinds of it, which will always occupy more bulk, and hence be more obtrusive, than that which is true in its nature and rare in its workmanship.

Towards the latter end of his life, however, being in ill health at the time, he translated seven of the Psalms of David into verse, dedicating them to George Herbert.

The best of them is Psalm civ .-- just the one upon which we might suppose, from his love to the laws of Nature, he would dwell with the greatest sympathy.

Partly from the wish to hear his voice amongst the rest of our singers, partly for the merits of the version itself, which has some remarkable lines, I have resolved to include it here.