Francis Bacon is a major figure in the intellectual tradition of Europe. Statesman, philosopher, supreme promoter of natural science based on observation and experiment, Bacon was the patron saint of the Royal Society and of Restoration science, the dedicatee of Immanuel Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; translated as Critique of Pure Reason, 1855), and the lawyer whose legal reforms were embodied in the Code Napoléon of France in the nineteenth century. As the subject of popular myth Bacon's reputation has been dramatically shaped by the execution of his patron, the Earl of Essex (which in the eyes of many historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries defined Bacon as an arch betrayer), and by his own fall from power near the end of his life (charged with bribery in his dealings in the court of Chancery). The portrait of Bacon as corrupt has been widely recycled, providing a seductive set of contradictions, expressed by Alexander Pope in an epigram in his An Essay on Man (1734): "If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd, / The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."
Francis, born on 22 January 1561, and his brother, Anthony, were the two surviving sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon by his second marriage.
