Bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; _facts_, not guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens.
Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his _Apologia_ from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration." It is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations and aspirations shall tend.

The atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite culture.

It had its natural effect.

Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, were without education.

This may have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort.
There were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the dead languages.