In retirement, with a pension of L1,200, making, with his other means, an annual income of L2,500, this "meanest of mankind" set himself busily to work to prove to the world that he could also be the "wisest and brightest;"[33] a duality of fame approached by others, but never equalled.

He was, in fact, two men in one: a dishonest, truckling politician, and a large-minded and truth-seeking philosopher.
BEGINS HIS PHILOSOPHY .-- Retired in disgrace from his places at court, the rest of his life was spent in developing his _Instauratio Magna_, that revolution in the very principles and institutes of science--that philosophy which, in the words of Macaulay, "began in observations, and ended in arts." A few words will suffice to close his personal history.
While riding in his coach, he was struck with the idea that snow would arrest animal putrefaction.

He alighted, bought a fowl, and stuffed it with snow, with his own hands.

He caught cold, stopped at the Earl of Arundel's mansion, and slept in damp sheets; fever intervened, and on Easter Day, 1626, he died, leaving his great work unfinished, but in such condition that the plan has been sketched for the use of the philosophers who came after him.
He is said to have made the first sketch of the _Instauratio_ when he was twenty-six years old, but it was much modified in later years.

He fondly called it also _Temporis Partus Maximus_, the greatest birth of Time.
After that he wrote his _Advancement of Learning in 1605_, which was to appear in his developed scheme, under the title _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, written in 1623.