"I have read in books," he wrote,
"that it is accounted a great bliss to have Leisure with Honour.
That was never my fortune. For time was I had Honour without
Leisure; and now I have Leisure without Honour. But my desire is
now to have Leisure without Loitering." So now he lived as he
himself said "a long cleansing week of five years." Then the end
came.
It was Bacon's thirst for knowledge that caused his death. One
winter day when the snow lay on the ground he drove out in his
coach. Suddenly as he drove along looking at the white-covered
fields and roads around, the thought came to him that food might
be kept good by means of snow as easily as by salt. He resolved
to try, so, stopping his coach, he went into a poor woman's
cottage and bought a hen. The woman killed and made ready the
hen, but Bacon was so eager about his experiment that he stuffed
it himself with snow. In doing this he was so chilled by the
cold that he became suddenly ill, too ill to return home. He was
taken to a house near "where they put him into a good bed warmed
with a pan"* and there after a few days he died.
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