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    Cornell University LibraryB 1197.C561896Bacon.

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    The original of this book is inthe Cornell University Library.

    There are no known copyright restrictions inthe United States on the use of the text.

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    (^nglijlib Mm of HetteriSEDITED BY JOHN MORLEY

    BACON

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    /c7^ ^fLcrHn^t?^^

    BACON

    R W. CHURCH,DEAN OF ST. FAUL's,HONOBART FELLOW OF OBIEL COLLEGE

    5LonlionMACMILLAN AND/ CO., Ltd.NEW YORK: THK MACMILLAN CO.

    1^9 6

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    Firstprinted i%Z^. Eej^rinied iZZ6, 1889, 1892, 1896Library Edition {Globe Svo) 1888

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    PREFACE.In preparing this sketch it is needless to say howdeeply I am indebted to Mr. Spedding and Mr. Ellis,the last editors of Bacon's writings, the very able andpainstaking commentators, the one on Bacon's life, theother on his philosophy. It is impossible to overstatethe affectionate care and high intelligence and honestywith which Mr. Spedding has brought together andarranged the materials for an estimate of Bacon's char-acter. In the result, in spite of the force and ingenuityof much of his pleading, I find myself most reluctantlyobliged to differ from him ; it seems to me to be acase where the French saying, cited by Bacon, inone of his commonplace books, holds good" Partrop se dibattre, la viriU se perd."- ^ But this does notdiminish the debt of gratitude which all who are in-terested about Bacon must owe to Mr. Spedding. Iwish also to acknowledge the assistance which I havereceived from Mr. G-ardiner's History of England andMr. Fowler's edition of the Novum Organvm : and notleast from M. de E6musat's work on Bacon, which seemsto me the most complete and the most just estimate

    ' Promus : edited by Mrs, H. Pott, p. 475.

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    vi PREFACE.both of Bacon's character and work, which has yetappeared ; though even in this clear and dispassionatesurvey we are reminded by some miscondeptions, strangein M. de E6musat, how what one nation takes for grantedis incomprehensible to its neighbour, and what a gapthere is still, even in matters of philosophy and literature,between the whole Continent and ourselves :

    " Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos."

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    CONTENTS.

    CHAPTEE I. PAGEEably Life .... . . 1

    CHAPTER II.Baoon and Elizabeth . . ... 28

    CHAPTER III.Bacon and James I. . 58

    CHAPTER IV.Bacon Solicitor-General . 81

    CHAPTER V.Bacon Attorney-General and Chancellor 100

    CHAPTEE VI.Bacon's Fall . ... .124

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    CONTESTTS.

    CHAPTER YII. PAQEBacon's Last Ybaes1621-1626 156

    CHAPTER VIII.Bacon's Philosophy 177

    CHAPTER IX.Bacon as a Weitbe . . 209

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    BACON.CHAPTEE I,EARLY LIFE.

    The life of Francis Bacon is one which it is a pain towrite or to read. It is the life of a man endowed withas rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was be-stowed on a human intellect ; the life of one with whomthe whole purpose of living and of every day's work wasto do great things to enlighten and elevate his race, toenrich it with new powers, to lay up in store for allages to come a source of blessings which should neverfail or dry up ; it was the life of a man who had highthoughts of the ends and methods of law and govern-ment, and with whom the general and public good wasregarded as the standard by which the use of publicpower was to be measured ; the life of a man who hadstruggled hard and successfully for the material pros-perity and opulence which makes work easy and gives aman room and force for carrying out his purposes. Allhis life long his first and never-sleeping passion was theromantic and splendid ambition after knowledge, for theconquest of nature and for the service of man ; gather-ing up in himself the spirit and longings and efforts of

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    2 BACOjST. [ohap.

    all discoverers and inventors of the arts, as they aresymbolised in the mythical Prometheus. He rose tothe highest place and honour; and yet that place andhonour were but the fringe and adornment of all thatmade him great. It is difficult to imagine a granderand more magnificent career ; and his name ranksamong the few chosen examples of human achievement.And yet it was not only an unhappy life ; it was a poorlife. We expect that such an overwhelming weight ofglory should be borne up by a character correspondingto it in strength and nobleness. But that is not whatwe find. No one ever had a greater idea of what hewas made for, or was fired with a greater desire todevote himself to it. He was all this. And yet beingall this, seeing deep into man's worth, his capacities, hisgreatness, his weakness, his sins, he was not true towhat he knew. He cringed to such a man as Bucking-ham. He sold himself to the corrupt and ignominiousGovernment of James I. He was willing to be employedto hunt to death a friend like Essex, guilty, deeplyguilty to the State, but to Bacon the most loving andgenerous of benefactors. With his eyes open he gave him-self up without resistance to a system unworthy of him ;he would not see what was evil in it, and chose to call itsevil good ; and he was its first and most signal victim.

    Bacon has been judged with merciless severity. Buthe has also been defended by an advocate whose namealone is almost a guarantee for the justness of the causewhich he takes up, and the innocency of the client forwhom he argues. Mr. Spedding devoted nearly a life-time and all the resources of a fine intellect and anearnest conviction to make us revere as well as admire

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 3Bacon. But it is vain. It is vain to fight against thefacts of his life ; his words, his letters. " Men aremade up," says a keen observer, " of professions, giftsand talents; and also of themselves."^ With all hisgreatness, his splendid genius, his magnificent ideas, hisenthusiasm for truth, his passion to be the benefactorof his kind, with all the charm that made him loved bygood and worthy friends, amiable, courteous, patient,delightful as a companion, ready to take any trouble,there was in Bacon's "self" a deep and fatal flaw. Hewas a pleaser of men. There was in him that subtlefault, noted and named both by philosophy and religion,in the apea-Kos of Aristotle, the dvOpmrdpea-Kos of St.Paul, which is more common than it is pleasant to think,even in good people, but which if it becomes dominantin a character is ruinous to truth and power. He wasone of the men, there are many of them, who are unableto release their imagination from the impression ofpresent and immediate power, face to face with them-selves. It seems as if he carried into conduct the lead-ing rule of his philosophy of nature, ^arerido vmcitur.In both worlds, moral and physical, he felt himselfencompassed by vast forces, irresistible by direct opposi-tion. Men whom he wanted to bring round to hispurposes were as strange, as refractory, as obstinate,as impenetrable as the phenomena of the natural world.It was no use attacldng in front and by a direct trial ofstrength people like Elizabeth or Cecil or James : hemight as well think of forcing some natural power indefiance of natural law. The first word of his teachingabout nature is that she must be won by observation of

    ' Dr. Mozley.

    -f.

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    4 BACON. [CHAP.her tendencies and demands ; the same radical disposi-tion of temper reveals itself in his dealings with men ;they, too, must be won by yielding to them, by adaptinghimself to their moods and ends ; by spying into thedrift of their humour, by subtly and pliantly falling inwith it, by circuitous and indirect processes, the fruitof vigilance and patient thought. He thought to direct,while submitting apparently to be directed. But hemistook his strength. Nature and man are differentpowers and under different laws. He chose to pleaseman, and not to follow what his soul must have toldhim was the better way. He wanted, in his dealingswith men, that sincerity on which he insisted so stronglyin his dealings with nature and knowledge. And theruin of a great life was the consequence.Francis Bacon was born in London on the 22d ofJanuary 15^, three years before Galileo. He was bornat York House, in the Strand ; the house which, thoughit belonged to the Archbishops of York, had been latelytenanted by Lord Keepers and Lord Chancellors, inwhich Bacon himself afterwards lived as Lord Chancellor,and which passed after his fall into the hands of theDuke of Buckingham, who has left his mark in theWater Gate which is now seen, far from the river, in thegarden of the Thames Embankment. His father wasSir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth's first Lord Keeper, thefragment of whose eflSgy in the Crypt of St. Paul's isone of the few relics of the old Cathedral before the fire.His uncle by marriage was that William Cecil who wasto be Lord Burghley. His mother, the sister of LadyCecil, was one of the daughters of Sir Antony Cook, aperson deep in the confidence of the reforming party.

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 5who had been tutor of Edward VI. She was a remark-able woman, highly accomphshed after the fashion ofthe ladies of her party, and as would become her father'sdaughter and the austere and laborious family to whichshe belonged. She was "exquisitely skilled in theGreek and Latin tongues ;" she was passionately religiousaccording to the uncompromising religion which theejciles had brought back with them from Geneva, Strass-burg, and Zurich, and which saw in Calvin's theology asolution of all the difl&culties, and in his discipline aremedy for all the evils, of mankind. This means thathis boyhood from the first was passed among the highplaces of the worldat one of the greatest crises ofEnglish history^in the very centre and focus of itsagitations. He was brought up among the chiefs andleaders of the rising religion, in the houses of the greatestand most powerful persons of the State, and naturally, astheir child, at times in the Court of the Queen, whojoked with him, and called him " her young LordKeeper." It means also that the religious atmospherein which he was brought up was that of the nascentand aggressive Puritanism, which was not satisfied withthe compromises of the Elizabethan Eeformation, andwhich saw in the moral poverty and incapacity of manyof its chiefs a proof against the great traditional systemof the Church which Elizabeth was loath to part with,and which, in spite of all its present and inevit-able shortcomings, her political sagacity taught her toreverence and trust.

    At the age of twelve he was sent to Cambridge, andput under Whitgift at Trinity. It is a question whichrecurs continually to readers about those times and their

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    6 BACON. [OHAP.precocious boys, what boys were then? For whateverwas the learning of the universities, these boys taoktheir place with men and consorted with them, sharingsuch knowledge as men had, and performing exercisesand hearing lectures according to the standard of men.Grotius at eleven was the pupil and companion ofScaliger and the learned band of Leyden; at fourteenhe was part of the company which went with theambassadors of the States -General to Henry IV. ; atsixteen, he was called to the bar, he published an out-of-the-way Latin writer, Martianus Capella, with alearned commentary, and he was the correspondent ofDe Thou. When Bacon was hardly sixteen he wasadmitted to the Society of " Ancients " of Gray's Inn,and he went in the household of Sir Amyas Paulet, theQueen's Ambassador, to France. He thus spent twoyears in France, not in Paris alone, but at Blois, Tours,and Poitiers. If this was precocious, there is no indica-tion that it was thought precocious. It only meant thatclever and promising boys were earlier associated withmen in important business than is customary now. Theold and the young heads began to work together sooner.Perhaps they felt that there was less time to spare.In spite of instances of longevity, life was shorter forthe average of busy meii, for the conditions of life wereworse.

    Two recollections only have been preserved of hisearly years. One is that, as he told his chaplain. Dr.Eawley, late in life, he had discovered, as far back ashis Cambridge days, the " unfruitfulness " of Aristotle'smethod. It is easy to make too much of this. It isnot uncommon for undergraduates to criticise their text-

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 7books : it was the fashion with clever men, as, forinstance, Montaigne, to talk against Aristotle withoutknowing anything about him: it is not uncommon formen who have worked out a great idea to find traces ofit, on precarious grounds, in their boyish thinking. Still,it is worth noting that Bacon himself believed that hisfundamental quarrel with Aristotle had begun with thefirst efforts of thought, and that this is the one recollec-tion remaining of his early tendency in speculation.The other is more trustworthy, and exhibits that in-ventiveness which was characteristic of his mind. Hetells us in the De Augmentis that when he was in Francehe occupied himself with devising an improved systemof cypher-writinga thing of daily and indispensableuse for rival statesmen and rival intriguers. But theinvestigation, with its call on the calculating and com-bining faculties, would also interest him, as an exampleof the discovery of new powers by the human mind.

    In the beginning of 1579 Bacon, at eighteen, wascalled home by his father's death. This was a greatblow to his prospects. His father had not accom-plished what he had intended for him, and FrancisBacon was left with only a younger son's "narrowportion." What was worse, he lost one whose creditwould have served him in high places. He enteredon life, not as he might have expected, independentand with court favour on his side, but with his verylivelihood to gaina competitor at the bottom ofthe ladder for patronage and countenance. This greatchange in his fortunes told very unfavourably on hishappiness, his usefulness, and, it must be added, on hischaracter. He accepted it, indeed, manfully, and at

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    8 BACON. [CHAP.once threw himself into the study of the law as theprofession by which he was to live. But the law,though it was the only path open to him, was not theone which suited his genius, or his object in life. Tothe last he worked hard and faithfully, but with doubt-ful reputation as to his success, and certainly againstthe grain. And this was not the worst. To make upfor the loss of that start in life of which his father'suntimely death had deprived him, he became, for almostthe rest of his life, the most importunate and mostuntiring of suitors.

    In 1579 or 1580 Bacon took up his abode atGray's Inn, which for a long time was his home. Hewent through the various steps of his profession. Hebegan, what he never discontinued, his earnest andhumble appeals to his relative the great Lord Burghley,to employ him in the Queen's service, or to put him insome place of independence : through Lord Burghley'sfavour he seems to have been pushed on at his Inn,where, in 1586, he was a Bencher ; and in 1684 he cameinto Parliament for Melcombe Regis. He took somesmall part in Parliament : but the only record of hisspeeches is contained in a surly note of Recorder Fleet-wood, who writes as an old member might do of a youngone talking nonsense. He sat again for Liverpool inthe year of the Armada (1688), and his name begins toappear in the proceedings. These early years, we know,were busy ones. In them Bacon laid the foundation ofhis observations and judgments on men and affairs ; andin them the great purpose and work of his life was con-ceived and shaped. But they are more obscure yearsthan might have been expected in the case of a man of

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 9Bacon's genius and family, and of such eager and un-concealed desire to rise and be at work. No doubt hewas often pinched in his means ; his health was weak,and he was delicate and fastidious in his care of itplunged in work, he lived very much as a recluse in hischambers, and was thought to be reserved, and whatthose who disliked him called arrogant. But Bacon wasambitiousambitious, in the first place, of the Queen'snotice and favour. He was versatile, brilliant, courtly,besides being his father's son; and considering howrapidly bold and brilliant men were able to push theirway and take the Queen's favour by storm, it seemsstrange that Bacon should have remained fixedly in theshade. Something must have kept him back. Burghleywas not the man to neglect a useful instrument withsuch good will to serve him. But all that Mr. Spedding'sindustry and profound interest in the subject has broughttogether throws but an uncertain light on Bacon's longdisappointment. Was it the rooted misgiving of a manof afiairs like Burghley at that passionate contempt ofall existing knowledge and that undoubting confidencein his own power to make men know, as they never hadknown, which Bacon was even now professing ? Or wasit something soft and over-obsequious in character whichmade the uncle, who knew well what men he wanted,disinclined to encourage and employ the nephew?Was Francis not hard enough, not narrow enough, toofull of ideas, too much alive to the shakiness of currentdoctrines and arguments on religion and policy? Washe too open to new impressions, made by objections orrival views ? Or did he show signs of wanting backboneto stand amid difficulties and threatening prospects 1

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    10 BACON. [CHAP.Did Burghley see something in him of the pliabilitywhich he could remember as the serviceable quality ofhis own young dayswhich suited those days of rapidchange, but not days when change was supposed to beover, and when the qualities which were wanted werethose which resist and defy it f The only thing that isclear is that Burghley, in spite of Bacon's continualapplications, abstained to the last from advancing hisfortunes.

    Whether employed by government or not, Baconbegan at this time to prepare those carefully-writtenpapers on the public affairs of the day, of which he hasleft a good many. In our day they would have beenpamphlets or magazine articles. In his they were circu-lated in manuscript, and only occasionally printed. Thefirst of any importance is a letter of advice to the Queen,about the year 1585, on the policy to be followed witha view to keeping in check the Roman Catholic interestat home and abroad. It is calm, sagacious, and, accordingto the fashion of the age, slightly Machiavellian. But thefirst subject on which Bacon exhibited his characteristicqualities, his appreciation of facts, his balance of thought,and his power, when not personally committed, of stand-ing aloof from the ordinary prejudices and assumptionsof men round him, was the religious condition and pros-pects of the Enghsh Church. Bacon had been broughtup in a Puritan household of the straitest sect. Hismother was an earnest, severe, and intolerant Calvinist,deep in the interests and cause of her party, bitterly re-senting all attempts to keep in order its pretensions.She was a masterful woman, claiming to meddle with herbrother-in-law's policy, and though a most affectionate

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 11mother she was a woman of violent and ungovernabletemper. Her letters to her son Antony, whom she lovedpassionately, but whom she suspected of keeping dan-gerous and papistical company, show us the imperiousspirit in which she claimed to interfere with her sonsand they show also that in Francis she did not findall the deference which she looked for. Recommend-ing Antony to frequent "the religious exercises ofthe sincerer sort," she warns him not to follow hisbrother's advice or example. Antony was advised touse prayer twice a day with his servants. "Yourbrother," she adds, "is too negligent therein." She isanxious about Antony's health, and warns him not tofall into his brother's ill-ordered habits ; " I verily thinkyour brother's weak stomach to digest hath been muchcaused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and thenmusing nesdo quid when he should sleep, and then in con-sequent by late rising and long lying in bed ; wherebyhis men are made slothful and himself continuethsickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to theirmother's good counsel in time to prevent." It seemsclear that Francis Bacon had shown his mother that notonly in the care of his health, but in his judgment onreligious matters, he meant to go his own way. Mr.Spedding thinks that she must have had much influenceon him : it seems more likely that he resented her inter-ference, and that the hard and narrow arrogance whichshe read into the G-ospel produced in him a strong reac-tion. Bacon was obsequious to the tyranny of power, buthe was never inclined to bow to the tyranny of opinion ;and the tyranny of Puritan infallibility was the lastthing to which he was likely to submit. His mother

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    12 BACON. [OHAP.would have wished him to sit under Cartwright andTravers. The friend of his choice was the Anglicanpreacher, Dr. Andrewes, to whom he submitted all hisworks, and whom he called his "inquisitor general;"and he was proud to sign himself the pupil of Whitgift,and to write for himthe archbishop of whom Lady-Bacon wrote to her son Antony, veiling the dangeroussentiment in Greek, " that he was the ruin of the church,for he loved his own glory more than Christ's.''

    Certainly, in the remarkable paper on Controversies inthe Church (1589), Bacon had ceased to feel or to speak asa Puritan. The paper is an attempt to compose the con-troversy by pointing out the mistakes in judgment, intemper, and in method on both sides. It is entirely unlikewhat a Puritan would have written : it is too moderate,too tolerant, too neutral, though like most essays ofconciliation it is open to the rejoinder from both sidescertainly from the Puritanthat it begs the question byassuming the unimportance of the matters about whicheach contended with so much zeal. It is the confirmation,but also the complement, and in some ways the cor-rection of Hooker's contemporary view of the quarrelwhich was threatening the life of the English Church,and not even Hooker could be so comprehensive and sofair. For Hooker had to defend much that was inde-fensible : he had to defend a great traditional system,just convulsed by a most tremendous shocka shockand alteration, as Bacon says, "the greatest and mostdangerous that can be in a State," in which old clues andhabits and rules were confused and all but lost ; in whicha frightful amount of personal incapacity and worthless-ness had, from sheer want of men, risen to the high

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    I.] EAELY LIFE. 13places of the Church ; and in which force and violence,sometimes of the most hateful kind, had come to beaccepted as ordinary instruments in the government ofsouls. Hooker felt too strongly the unfairness, the folly,the intolerant aggressiveness, the malignity of hisopponents,he was too much alive to the wrongs in-flicted by them on his own side, and to the incredibleabsurdity of their arguments,to do justice to what wasonly too real in the charges and complaints of thoseopponents. But Bacon came from the very heart of thePuritan camp. He had seen the inside of Puritanismits best as well as its worst side. He witnesses to thehumility, the conscientiousness, the labour, the learning,the hatred of sin and wrong, of many of its preachers.He had heard, and heard with sympathy, all that couldbe urged against the bishops' administration, and againsta system of legal oppression in the name of the Church.Where religious elements were so confusedly mixed, andwhere each side had apparently so much to urge on behalfof its claims, he saw the deep mistake of loftily ignoringfacts, and of want of patience and forbearance with thosewho were scandahsed at abuses, while the abuses, in somecases monstrous, were tolerated and turned to profit.Towards the bishops and their policy, though his lan-guage is very respectful, for the government was impli-cated, he is very severe. They punish and restrain, butthey do not themselves mend their ways or supply whatwas wanting; and theirs are " injurice potentiorum,""in-juries come from them that have the upper hand." ButHooker himseK did not put his finger more truly and moresurely on the real mischief of the Puritan movementon the immense outbreak in it of unreasonable party

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 15all untruths unlawful," forgetful of the Egyptian mid-wives and Eahab, and Solomon, and even of Him " who,the more to touch the hearts of the disciples with a holy-dalliance, made as though he would have passed Em-maus." He is thinking of their failure to apply aprinciple which was characteristic of his mode ofthought, that even a statement about a virtue like veracity" hath limit as all things else have : " but it is odd toiind Bacon bringing against the Puritans the converse ofthe charge which his age, and Pascal afterwards, broughtagainst the Jesuits. The essay, besides being a pictureof the times as regards religion, is an example of whatwas to be Bacon's characteristic strength and weakness :his strength, in lifting up a subject, which had beendegraded by mean and wrangling disputations, into ahigher and larger light, and bringing to bear on it greatprinciples and the results of the best human wisdom andexperience, expressed in weighty and pregnant maximshis weakness, in forgetting, as, in spite of his philosophy,he so often did, that the grandest major premisses needwell-proved and ascertained minors, and that the enuncia-tion of a principle is not the same thing as the appli-cation of it. Doubtless there is truth in his closingwords ; but each party would have made the commentthat what he had to prove, and had not proved, was thatby following his counsel they would " love the wholebetter than a part.

    "Let them not fear . . . the foud calumny of neutrality : butlet them know that is true which is said by a wise man, thatneuters m contentions are either better or worse than either side.These iSiings have I in all sincerity and simplicity set down touch-ing the controversies which now trouble the Church of England :and that without all art and insinuation, and therefore not like to

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    16 BACON. [CHAP.be grateful to either part. Notwithstanding, I trust what has beensaid shall find a correspondence in their minds which are not em-barked in partiality, and which love the whole better than apart."

    Up to this time, though Bacon had showed himselfcapable of taking a broad and calm view of questionswhich it was the fashion among good men, and menwho were in possession of the popular ear, to treat withnarrowness and heat, there was nothing to disclose hisdeeper thoughts ^-nothing foreshadowed the purposewhich was to iill his life. He had, indeed, at the age oftwenty-five, written a " youthful " philosophical essay, towhich he gave the pompous title " Temporis Partus Maxi-mus," " the Greatest Birth of Time." But he was thirty-one when we first find an indication of the great idea andthe great projects which were to make his name famous.This indication is contained in an earnest appeal to LordBurghley for some help which should not be illusory.Its words are distinct and far-reaching ; and they are thefirst words from him which tell us what was in his heart.The letter has the interest to us of the first announce-ment of a promise which, to ordinary minds, must haveappeared visionary and extravagant, but which was sosplendidly fulfilled ; the first distant sight of that sea ofknowledge which henceforth was opened to mankind,but on which no man, as he thought, had yet entered.It contains the famous avowal" I have taken all know-ledge to he my province "made in the confidence born oflong and silent meditations and questionings, but madein a simple good faith which is as far as possible fromvain boastfulness.

    " Mt LokdWith as much confidence as mine own honest andfaithful devotion unto your service and your honourable correspon-

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    18 BACON. [CHAP.did, Tvho reduced himself vrith contemplation unto voluntarypoverty, but this I will doI will sell the inheritance I have,and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gainthat shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care ofservice, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioner in thatmine of truth, which (he said) lay so deep. This which I havewrit unto your Lordship is rather thoughts than words, being setdown without all art, disguising, or reservation. Wherein I havedone honour both to your Lordship's wisdom, in judging that thatwill be best believed of your Lordship which is truest, and to yourLordship's good nature, in retaining nothing from you. And even so1 wish your Lordship all happiness, and to myself means andoccasions to be added to my faithful desire to do you service. Frommy lodgings at Gray's Inn.

    This letter, to his unsympathetic and suspicious, butprobably not unfriendly relative, is the key to Bacon'splan of life ; which, with numberless changes of form,he followed to the end. That is, a profession, steadily,seriously, and laboriously kept to, in order to providethe means of living ; and beyond that, as the ultimateand real end of his life, the pursuit, in a way un-attempted before, of all possible human knowledge, andof the methods to improve it and make it sure and fruit-ful. And so his life was carried out. On the one hand,it was a continual and pertinacious seeking after govern-ment employment, which could give credit to his nameand put money in his pocketattempts by generalbehaviour, by professional services when the occasionoffered, by putting his original and fertile pen at theservice of the government, to win confidence, and toovercome the manifest indisposition of those in powerto think that a man who cherished the chimera ofuniversal knowledge could be a useful public servant.On the other hand, all the while, in the crises of his

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 19disappointment or triumph, the one great subject laynext his heart, filling him with fire and passionhow really to know, and to teach men to know in-deed, and to use their knowledge so as to commandnature ; the great hope to be the reformer and re-storer of knowledge in a more wonderful sense than theworld had yet seen in the reformation of learning andreligion, and in the spread of civilised order in the greatstates of the Renaissance time. To this he gave hisbest and deepest thoughts; for this he was for everaccumulating, and for ever rearranging and reshapingthose masses of observation and inquiry and inventionand mental criticism which were to come in as partsof the great design which he had seen in the visionsof his imagination, and of which at last he was onlyable to leave noble fragments, incomplete after number-less recastings. This was not indeed the only, but itwas the predominant and governing interest of his life.Whether as solicitor for Court favour or public officewhether drudging at the work of the law, or manag-ing State prosecutions ; whether writing an oppor-tune pamphlet against Spain or Father Parsons, or in-A).^.venting a " device " for his Inn or for Lord Essex to giveamusement to Queen Elizabeth ; whether fulfilling hisduties as member of Parliament or rising step by stepto the highest places in the Council Board and the Statewhether in the pride of success or under the amazementof unexpected and irreparable overthrow, while itseemed as if he was only measuring his strength againstthe rival ambitions of the day, in the same spirit andwith the same object as his competitors, the true motiveof all his eagerness and all his labours was not theirs.

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    20 BACON. [CHAP.He wanted to be powerful, and still more to be rich : buthe wanted to be so, because without power and withoutmoney he could not follow what was to him the onlything worth following on eartha real knowledge ofthe amazing and hitherto almost unknown world inwhich he had to live. Bacon, to us, at least, at thisdistance, who can only judge him from partial and im-perfect knowledge, often seems to fall far short of whata man should be. He was not one of the high-mindedand proud searchers after knowledge and truth, likeDescartes, who were content to accept a frugal independ-ence so that their time and their thoughts might be theirown. Bacon was a man of the world, and wished to livein and with the world. He threatened sometimes retire-ment, but never with any very serious intention. In theCourt was his element, and there were his hopes.Often there seems little to distinguish him from theordinary place-hunters, obsequious and selfish, of everyage ; little to distinguish him from the servile and in-sincere flatterers, of whom he himself complains, whocrowded the antechambers of the great Queen, content tosubmit with smiling face and thankful words to the inso-lence of her waywardness and temper, in the hope, moreoften disappointed than not, of hitting her taste onsome lucky occasion, and being rewarded for the accidentby a place of gain or honour. Bacon's history, as readin his letters, is not an agreeable one ; after everyallowance made for the fashions of language, and thenecessities of a suitor, there is too much of insincereprofession of disinterestedness, too much of exaggeratedprofession of admiration and devoted service, too muchof disparagement and insinuation against others, for a

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 21man who respected himself. He submitted too much tothe miserable conditions of rising which he found. But,nevertheless it must be said that it was for no mean ob-ject, for no mere private selfishness or vanity, that he en-dured all this. He strove hard to be a great man and arich man. But it was that he might have his hands freeand strong and well furnished to carry forward the doubletask of overthrowing ignorance and building up the newand solid knowledge on which his heart was set : thatimmense conquest of nature on behalf of man which hebelieved to be possible, and of which he believed him-self to have the key.

    The letter to Lord Burghley did not help him much.He received the reversion of a place, the Clerkship of theCouncil, which did not become vacant for twenty years.But theseyears of service declined and place withheldwerebusy and useful ones. What he was most intent upon, andwhat occupied his deepest and most serious thought, wasunknown to the world round him, and probably not veryintelligible to his few intimate friends, such as his brotherAntony and Dr. Andrewes. Meanwhile he placed his penat the disposal of the authorities, andthough they regardedhim more as a man of study than of practice and experi-ence, they were glad to make use of it. His versatile geniusfound another employment. Besides his affluence intopics, he had the liveliest fancy and most active imagina-tion. But that he wanted the sense of poetic fitness andmelody, he might almost be supposed, with his reach andplay of thought, to have been capable, as is maintained , ,in some eccentric modem theories, of writing Shake- "'speare's plays. No man ever had a more imaginativepower of illustration, drawn from the most remote and

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 23a set of stock quotations with a special drift, bearingon some subject, such as the faults of universities orthe habits of lawyers. Nothing is too minute for hisnotice. He brings together in great profusion mereforms, varied turns of expression, heads and tails ofclauses and paragraphs, transitions, connections ; he notesdown fashions of compliment, of excuse or repartee,even morning and evening salutations ; he recordsneat and convenient opening and concluding sentences,ways of speaking more adapted than others to give aspecial colour or direction to what the speaker or writerhas to sayall that hook-and-eye work, which seems sotrivial and passes so unnoticed as a matter of course, andwhich yet is often hard to reach, and which makes all thedifference between tameness and liveliness, between clear-ness and obscurityall the difference, not merely to the /ease and naturalness, but often to the logical force of /speech. These collections it was his way to sift and tran-scribe again and again, adding as well as omitting. Fromone of these, belonging to 1594 and the following years,the PromMS ofFormularies and Elegamdes, Mr. Spedding hasgiven curious extracts ; and the whole collection has beenrecently edited by Mrs. Henry Pott. Thus it was that heprepared himself for what, as we read it, or as his audi-ence heard it, seems the suggestion or recollection of themoment. Bacon was always much more careful of thevalue or aptness of a thought than of its appearing newand original. Of all great writers he least minds repeat-ing himself, perhaps in the very same words ; so that asimile, art illustration, a quotation pleases him, he returnsto it-^he is never tired of it ; it obviously gives him satis-faction to introduce it again and again. These collections

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    I.J EARLY LIFE. 25glory to know, doubt to ' contradict, end to gain, sloth to search,seeking things in words, resting in a part of nature,these and thelike have been the things which have forbidden the happy matchbetween the mind of man and the nature of things, and in placethereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments. . . .Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledgewherein many things are reserved which kings with their treasurescannot buy nor with their force command ; their spials and intelli-gencers can give no news of them ; their seamen and discovererscannot saU where they grow. Now we govern nature in opinions,but we are thrall unto her in necessity ; but if we could be led byher in invention, we should command her in action.''

    To the same occasion as the discourse on the Praiseof Knowledge belongs, also, one in Praise of the Queen.As one is an early specimen of his manner of writing onphilosophy, so this is a specimen of what was equallycharacteristic of himhis political and historical writing.It is, in form, necessarily a panegyric, as high-fiown andadulatory as such performances in those days werebound to be. But it is not only flattery. It fixeswith true discrimination on the points in Elizabeth'scharacter and reign which were really subjects of admira-tion and homage. Thus of her unquailing spirit at thetime of the Spanish invasion :

    " Lastly, see a Queen, that when her realm was to have beeninvaded by an army the preparation whereof was like the ti-availof an elephant, the provisions infinite, the setting forth whereofwas the terror and wonder of Europe ; it was not seen that hercheer, her fashion, her ordinary manner, was anything altered ;not a cloud of that storm did appear in that countenance whereinpeace doth ever shine ; but with excellent assurance and advisedsecurity she inspired her council, animated her nobility, re-doubled the courage of her people; stiU having this nobleapprehension, not only that she would communicate her for-tune with them, but that it was She that would protect them, and

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    26 BACON. [CHAP.not they her ; which she testified by no less demonstration thanher presence in camp. Therefore that magnanimity that neitherfeareth greatness of alteration, nor the vows of conspirators, northe power of the enemy, is more than heroicall."

    These papers, though he put his hest workmanshipinto them, as he invariably did with whatever hetouched, were of an ornamental kind. But he did moreserious work. In the year 1592 a pamphlet had beenpublished on the Continent in Latin and English, Re-sponsio ad Edidum Begince Anglice, with reference to thesevere legislation which followed on the Armada, makingsuch charges against the Queen and the Government as itwas natural for the Roman Catholic party to make, andmaking them with the utmost virulence and unscrupu-lousness. It was supposed to be written by the ablestof the Eoman pamphleteers. Father Parsons. TheCrovernment felt it to be a dangerous indictment ; andBacon was chosen to write the answer to it. He hadadditional interest in the matter, for the pamphlet madea special and bitter attack on Burghley, as the personmainly responsible for the Queen's policy. Bacon'sreply is long and elaborate, taking up every charge, andreviewing from his own point of view the whole courseof the struggle between the Queen and the supportersof the Roman Catholic interest abroad and at home. Itcannot be considered an impartial review ; besides thatit was written to order, no man in England could thenwrite impartially in that quarrel ; but it is not moreone-sided and uncandid than the pamphlet which itanswers, and Bacon is able to recriminate with effect,and to show gross credulity and looseness of assertionon the part of the Roman Catholic advocate. But reli-

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    I.] EARLY LIFE. 27gion had too much to do with the politics of both sidesfor either to be able to come into the dispute with cleanhands : the Koman Catholics meant much more thantoleration, and the sanguinary pimishments of theEnglish law against priests and Jesuits were edgedby something even keener than the fear of treason.But the paper contains some large surveys of publicaffairs, which probably no one at that time could writebut Bacon. Bacon never liked to waste anything goodwhich he had written; and much of what he had writtenin the panegyric in Praise of the Queen is made useof again, and transferred with little change to the pagesof the Observations on a lAhel.

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    CHAPTEE II.BACON AND ELIZABETH.

    The last decade of the century, and almost of Elizabeth'sreign (1590-1600), was an eventful one to Bacon'sfortunes. In it the vision of his great design discloseditself more and more to his imagination and hopes, andwith more and more irresistible fascination. In it hemade his first literary venture, the first edition of hisEssays (1597), ten in number, the first-fruits of hisearly and ever watchful observation of men and affairs.These years, too, saw his first steps in public life, thefirst efforts to bring him into importance, the first greattrials and tests of his character. They saw the begin-ning and they saw the end of his relations with the onlyfriend who, at that time, recognised his genius and hispurposes, certainly the only friend who ever pushed hisclaims ; they saw the growth of a friendship which wasto have so tragical a close, and they saw the beginningsand causes of a bitter personal rivalry which was to lastthrough life, and which was to be a potent elementhereafter in Bacon's ruin. The friend was the Earl ofEssex. The competitor was the ablest, and also themost truculent and unscrupulous of English lawyers,Edward Coke;

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    CHAP. II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 29While Bacon, in the shade, had been laying the

    foundations of his philosophy of nature, and vainly suingfor legal or political employment, another man hadbeen steadily rising in the Queen's favour and carryingall before him at Court, Eobert Devereux, Lord Essexand with Essex Bacon had formed an acquaintance whichhad ripened into an intimate and affectionate friendship.We commonly think of Essex as a vain and insolentfavourite, who did ill the greatest work given him to dothe reduction of Ireland; who did it ill from some un-explained reason of spite and mischief ; and who, whencalled to account for it, broke out into senseless and idlerebellion. This was the end : but he was not always thus.He began life with great gifts and noble ends : he was aserious, modest, and large-minded student both of booksand things ; and he turned his studies to full accoxmt.He had imagination and love of enterprise, whichgave him an insight into Bacon's ideas such as none ofBacon's contemporaries had. He was a man of simpleand earnest religion; he sympathised most with thePuritans, because they were serious and because theywere hardly used. Those who most condemn himacknowledge his nobleijess and generosity of nature.Bacon in after days, when all was over between them,spoke of him as a man alw&js pafientissimus veri ; "themore plainly and frankly you shall deal with my lord,"he writes elsewhere, "not only in disclosing particulars,but in giving him caveats and admonishing him of anyerror which in this action he may commit (such is hislordship's nature), the better he will take it." "Hemust have seemed," says Mr. Spedding, a little toograndly, "in th'e eyes of Bacon like the hope of the

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    30 BACON. [CHAP.world." The two men, certainly, became warmly at-tached. Their friendship came to be one of the closestkind, full of mutual services, and of genuine affectionon both sides. It was not the relation of a great patronand useful dependant ; it was, what might be expectedin the two men, that of affectionate equality. Each manwas equally capable of seeing what the other was, andsaw it. What Essex's feelings were towards Bacon theresults showed. Bacon, in after years, repeatedly claimedto have devoted his whole time and labour to Essex'sservice. Holding him, he says, to be " the fittest instru-ment to do good to the State, I applied myself to him ina manner which I think rarely happeneth among menneglecting the Queen's service, mine own fortune, and, ina sort, my vocation, I did nothing but advise and rumin-ate with myself . . . anything that might concern his lord-ship's honour, fortune, or service." The claim is far toowide. The " Queen's service " had hardly as yet comemuch in Bacon's way, and he never neglected it when itdid come, nor his ovm fortune or vocation : his lettersremain to attest his care in these respects. But, nodoubt, Bacon was then as ready to be of use to Essex,the one man who seemed to understand and value him,as Essex was desirous to be of use to Bacon.

    And it seemed as if Essex would have the ability aswell as the wish. Essex was, without exception, themost brilliant man who ever appeared at Elizabeth'sCourt, and it seemed as if he were going to be the mostpowerful. Leicester was dead. Burghley was growingold, and indisposed for the adventures and levity which,with all her grand power of ruling, Elizabeth loved. Sheneeded a favourite, and Essex was unfortunately marked

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    11.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 31out for what she wanted. He had Leicester's fascinationwithout his mean and cruel selfishness. He was asgenerous, as gallant, as quick to descry all great thingsin art and life, as Philip Sidney, with more vigour andfitness for active life than Sidney. He had not EaJeigh'ssad, dark depths of thought, but he had a daring courageequal to Ealeigh's, without Ealeigh's cynical contemptfor mercy and honour. He had every personal advan-tage requisite for a time when intellect and ready wit,and high-tempered valour, and personal beauty, andskill in afiairs, with equal skill in amusements, were ex-pected to go together in the accomplished courtier.And Essex was a man not merely to be courted andadmired, to shine and dazzle, but to be loved. Eliza-beth, with her strange and perverse emotional constitu-tion, loved him, if she ever loved any one. Every onewho served him loved him : and he was as much as anyone could be in those days, a popular favourite. Underbetter fortune he might have risen to a great height ofcharacter: in Elizabeth's Court he was fated to beruined.

    For in that Court all the qualities in him which neededcontrol received daily stimulus, and his ardour andhigh-aiming temper .turned into impatience and restlessirritability. He had a mistress who was at one time inthe humour to be treated as a tender woman, at anotheras an outrageous flirt, at another as the haughtiest andmost imperious of queens : her mood varied, no onecould tell how, and it was most dangerous to mistake it.It was part of her pleasure to find in her favourite aspirit as high, a humour as contradictory and determined,as her own : it was the charming contrast to the obsequi-

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    32 BACON. [chap.ousness or the prudence of the rest ; but no one couldbe sure at what unlooked-for moment, and how fiercely,she might resent in earnest a display of what she hadherself encouraged. Essex was ruined for all real great-ness by having to suit himself to this bewildering andmost unwholesome and degrading waywardness. Shetaught him to think himself irresistible in opinion andin claims : she amused herself in teaching him howcompletely he was mistaken. Alternately spoiled andcrossed, he learned to be exacting, unreasonable, absurdin his pettish resentments or brooding suUenness. Helearned to think that she must be dealt with by thesame methods which she herself employed. The effectwas not produced in a moment ; it was the result of acourtiership of sixteen years. But it ended in corruptinga noble nature. Essex came to believe thftt she who-cowed others must be frightened herself : that the sting-ing injustice which led a proud man to expect, only tosee how he would behave when refused, deserved to bebrought to reason by a counter-buffet as rough as herown insolent caprice. He drifted into discontent, intodisaffection, into neglect of duty, into questionableschemings for the future of a reign that must shortlyend, into criminal methods of guarding himself, ofhumbling his rivals and regaining influence. A "fatalimpatience," as Bacon calls it, gave his rivals an advan-tage which, perhaps in self-defence, they could not fail totake ; and that career, so brilliant, so full of promise ofgood, ended in misery, in dishonour, in remorse, on thescaffold of the Tower.

    With this attractive and powerful person Bacon'sfortunes, in the last years of the century, became more

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    11.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 33and more knit up. Bacon was now past thirty, Essexa few years younger. In spite of Bacon's apparentadvantage and interest at Court, in spite of abilities,which, though his genius was not yet known, his con-temporaries clearly recognised, he was still a struggKngand unsupcessful man : ambitious to rise, for no unworthyreasons, but needy, in weak health, with careless andexpensive habits, and embarrassed with debt. He hadhoped to rise by the favour of the Queen, and for thesake of his father. For some ill-explained reason he wasto the last disappointed. Though she used him "formatters of state and revenue," she either did not likehim, or did not see in him the servant she wanted toadvance. He went on to the last pressing his uncle. LordBurghley : he applied in the humblest terms, he madehimself useful with his pen, he got his mother to write forhim ; but Lord Burghley, probably because he thoughthis nephew more of a man of letters, than a sound lawyerand practical public servant, did not care to bring himforward. From his cousin, Eobert Cecil, Bacon receivedpolite words and friendly assurances; Cecil may haveundervalued him, or have been jealous of him, or sus-pected him as a friend of Essex : he certainly gave Bacongood reason to think that his words meant nothing.Except Essex, and perhaps his brother Antonythe mostaffectionate and devoted of brothersno one had yetrecognised all that Bacon was. Meanwhile time waspassing. The vastness, the difficulties, the attractionsof that conquest of all knowledge which he dreamed of,were becoming greater every day to his thoughts. Thelaw, without which he could not live, took up time andbrought in little. Attendance on the Court was ex^

    B

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    34 BACON. [CHAP.pensive, yet indispensable, if he -wished for place. Hismother was never very friendly, and thought himabsurd and extravagant. Debts increased and creditorsgrumbled. The outlook was discouraging, when hisfriendship with Essex opened to him a more hopefulprospect. ,

    In the year 1593 the Attorney-General's place wasvacant, and Essex, who in that year became a Privy Coun-cillor, determined that Bacon should be Attorney-General.Bacon's reputation as a lawyer was overshadowed by hisphilosophical and literary pursuits. He was thoughtyoung for the office, and he had not yet served in anysubordinate place. And there was another man, whowas supposed to carry all English law in his head, fullof rude force and endless precedents, hard of heart, andvoluble of tongue, who also wanted it. An Attorney-General was one who would bring all the resources andhidden subtleties of English law to the service of theCrown, and use them with thorough-going and unflinchingresolution against those whom the Crown accused oftreason, sedition, or invasion of the prerogative. It .isno wonder that the Cecils, and the Queen herself, thoughtCoke likely to be a more useful public servant thanBacon : it is certain what Coke himself thought aboutit, and what his estimate was of the man whom Essexwas pushing against him. But Essex did not take uphis friends cause in the lukewarm fashion in whichBurghley had patronised his nephew. There was no-thing that Essex pursued with greater pertinacity. Heimportuned the Queen. ~ He risked without scrupleoffending her. She apparently long shrank from directlyrefusing his request. The Cecils were for Cokethe

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    II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 35" Huddler," as Bacon calls him,.in a letter to Essex; butthe appointment was delayed. All through 1593, anduntil April 1594, the struggle went on.When Robert Cecil suggested that Essex should becontent with the Solicitor's place for Bacon, "prayinghim to be well advised, for if his Lordship had spokenof that it might have been of easier digestion to theQueen," he turned round on Cecil

    "Digest me no digesting (said the Earl) ; for the Attorneyshipis that I must have for Francis Bacon ; and in that I will spendmy uttermost credit, friendship, and authority against whomsoever,and that whosoever went about to procure it to others, that itshould cost both the mediators and the suitors the setting on beforethey came by it. And this be you assured of. Sir Robert, quoththe Earl, for now do I fully declare myself ; and for your own part.Sir Robert, I do think much and strange both of my Lord yourfather and you, that can have the mind to seek the preferment ofa stranger before so near a kinsman ; namely, considering if youweigh in a balance his parts and sufficiency in any respect withthose of his competitor, excepting only four poor years of admit-tance, which Francis Bacon hath more than recompensed with thepriority of his reading, in all other respects you shall find no com-parison between them. ''

    But the Queen's disgust at some very slight show ofindependence on Bacon's part in Parliament, imforgivenin spite of repeated apologies, together vsdth the influ-ence of the Cecils and the pressure of so formidableand so useful a man as Coke, turned the scale againstEssex. In April 1594, Coke was made Attorney. Cokedid not forget the pretender to law, as he would thinkhifla, who had dared so long to dispute his claims ; andBacon was deeplywounded. "No man," he thought, "hadever received a more exquisite disgrace," and he spoke

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    38 BACON. [CHAP.friend only encouraged him. He did more. He helpedhim when Bacon most wanted help, in his straightenedand embarrassed "estate." Essex, when he could donothing more, gave Bacon an estate worth at least1800. Bacon's resolution is recorded in the followingletter :

    " It mat please totje good LoKDsnrpI pray God her Majesty'sweighing be not like the weight of a balance ; gravia deorsum lemasursum. But I am as far from being altered in devotion towardsher, as I am from distrust that she will be altered in opinion towardsme, when she knoweth me better. For myself, I have lost someopinion, some time, and some means ; this is my account ; but thenfor opinion, it is a blast that goeth and cometh ; for time, it istrue it goeth and cometh not ; hut yet I have learned that it maybe redeemed. For means, I value that most ; and the rather,because I am purposed not to follow the practice of the law [if herMajesty coniTnand Trie in any particular, I shall he ready to do herwilling service) ; and my reason is only, because it drinketh too muchtime, which I have dedicated to better purposes. But even for thatpoint of estate and means, I partly lean to Thales' opinion. That aphilosopher may be rich if he will. Thus your Lordship seeth how Icomfort myself ; to the increase whereof I would fain please myselfto believe that to be true which my Lord Treasurer writeth ; whichis, that it is more than a philosopher morally can disgest. But with-out any such high conceit, I esteem it like the pulling out of anaching tooth, which, I remember, when I was a child, and hadlittle philosophy, I was glad of when it was done. For yourLordship, I do think myself more beholding to you than to anyman. And I say, I reckon myself as a common (not popular butcommon) ; and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, somuch your Lordship shall be sure to have.Your Lordship's toobey your honourable commands, more settled than ever."

    It may be that, as Bacon afterwards maintained, theclosing sentences of this letter implied a significant re-serve of his devotion. But during the brilliant andstormy years of Essex's career which followed, Bacon's

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    II.] BACOIT AND ELIZABETH. 39relations to him continued unaltered. Essex pressedBacon's claims whenever a chance offered. He did hisbest to get Bacon a rich wifethe young widow of SirChristopher Hattonbut in vain. Instead of Baconshe accepted Coke, and became famous afterwards in thegreat family quarrel, in which Coke and Bacon againfound themselves face to face, and which nearly ruinedBacon before the time. Bacon worked for Essex whenhe was wanted, and gave the advice which a shrewd andcautious friend would give to a man who, by his successand increasing pride and self-confidence, was runninginto serious dangers, arming against himself deadly foes,and exposing himself to the chances of fortune. Baconwas nervous about Essex's capacity for war, a capacitywhich perhaps was not proved, even by the most brilliantexploit of the time, the capture of Cadiz, in which Essexforeshadowed the heroic but well -calculated audacitiesof Nelson and Cochrane, and showed himself as littleable as they to bear the intoxication of success, and towork in concert with envious and unfriendly associates.At the end of the year 1596, the year in which Essexhad won such reputation at Cadiz, Bacon wrote him aletter of advice and remonstrance. It is a lively pictureof the defects and dangers of Essex's behaviour as theQueen's favourite ; and it is a most characteristic andworldly-wise summary of the ways which Bacon wouldhave him take, to cure the one and escape the other.Bacon had, as he says, " good reason to think that theEarl's fortune comprehended his own." And the lettermay perhaps be taken as an indirect warning to Essexthat Bacon must, at any rate, take care of his ownfortune, if the Earl persisted in dangerous courses.

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    40 BACOW. [chap.Bacon shows how he is to remove the impressions,strong in the Queen's mind, of Essex's defects ; how heis, by due submissions and stratagems, to catch herhumour

    "But whether I counsel you the best, or for the best, dutybindeth me to offer to you my Tvishes. I said to your Lordshiplast time, Martha, Mwrtha, aitendis ad plurima, unum, suffieit; winthe Queen : if this be not the beginning, of any other course I seeno end."

    Bacon gives a series of minute directions how Essexis to disarm the Queen's suspicions, and to neutrahsethe advantage which his rivals take of them ; how he isto remove "the opinion of his nature being opiniastreand not rulable ; " how, avoiding the faults of Leicesterand Hatton, he is, as far as he can, to "allege them forauthors and patterns. " Especially, he must give up thatshow of soldier-like distinction, which the Queen so dis-liked, and take some quiet post at Court. He must not

    ' alarm the Queen by seeking popularity; he must takecare of his estate; he must get rid of some of his officers;and he must not be disquieted by other favourites.Bacon wished, as he said afterwards, to see him" with a white staff in his hand, as my Lord of Leicesterhad," an honour and ornament to the Court in the eyesof the people and foreign ambassadors. But Essex wasnot fit for the part which Bacon urged upon him, thatof an obsequious and vigilant observer of the Queen'smoods and humours. As time went on, things becamemore and more difficult between him and his strangemistress : and there were never wanting men who, likeCecil and Ealeigh, for good and bad reasons, feared andhated Essex, and who had the craft and the skill to

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    II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 41make the most of his inexcusable errors. At last heallowed himself, from ambition, from the spirit of contra-diction, from the blind passion for doing what he thoughtwould show defiance to his enemies, to be tempted intothe Irish campaign of 1599. Bacon at a later timeclaimed credit for having foreseen and foretold its issue." I did as plainly see his overthrow, chained as it wereby destiny to that journey, as it is possible for any manto ground a judgment on future contingents." Hewarned Essex, so he thought in after years, of thedifficulty of the work; he warned him that he wouldleave the Queen in the hands of his enemies : " Itwould be ill for her, ill for him, ill for the State.'' "Iam sure," he adds, " I never in anything in my lifedealt with him in like earnestness by speech, by writing,and by all the means I could devise." But Bacon'smemory was mistaken. We have his letters. WhenEssex went to Ireland, Bacon wrote only in thelanguage of sanguine hope : so little did he see " over-throw chained by destiny to that journey," that " somegood spirit led his pen to presage to his Lordshipsuccess : " he saw in the enterprise a great occasion ofhonour to his friend : he gave prudent counsels, but helooked forward confidently to Essex being as "fatal acaptain to that war, as Africanus was to the war of Car-thage.'' Indeed, however anxious he may have been, hecould not have foreseen Essex's unaccountable and tothis day unintelligible failure. But failure was the end,from whatever cause ; failure, disgraceful and complete.Then followed wild and guilty but abortive projects forretrieving his failure, by using his power in Ireland tomake himself formidable to his enemies at Court, and

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    44 BACON. [CHAP.of the same sort and order as that for which Northum-berland sent Somerset to the block : the treason of beingan unsuccessful rival.

    Meanwhile Bacon had been getting gradually intothe unofficial employ of the Government. He had be-come one of the " Learned Counsel," lawyers with sub-ordinate and intermittent work, used when wanted, butwithout patent or salary, and not ranking with theregular law officers. The Government had found himuseful in affairs of the revenue, in framing interrogatoriesfor prisoners in the Tower, in drawing up reports ofplots against the Queen. He did not in this way earnenough to support himself; but he had thus come tohave some degree of access to the Queen, which herepresents as being familiar and confidential, though hestill perceived, as he says himself, that she did not likehim. At the first news of Essex's return to England,Bacon greeted him :

    " My LoedConceiving that your Lordship came now up inthe person of a good servant to see your sovereign mistress, whichkind of compliments are many times instar tnagnorum meritorum,and therefore it would be hard for me to find you, I have com-mitted to this poor paper the humble salutations of him that ismore yours than any man's, and more yours than any man. To.these salutations I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessingthat your Lordship, in your last conference with me before yourjourney, spake not in vain, God making it good, That you trustedwe should say Quis putasset t Which as it is found true in a happysense, so I wish you do not find another QvAs putasset in the mannerof taking this so great a service. But I hope it is, as he said,Nubecula est, cito transibit, and that your Lordship's wisdom andobsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best.So referring all to some time that I may attend you, I commit youto God's best preservation."

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    II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 45But when Essex's conduct in Ireland had to be dealt

    with, Bacon's services were called for ; and from this timehis relations towards Essex were altered. Every one, noone better than the Queen herself, knew all that heowed to Essex. It is strangely illustrative of the time,that especially as Bacon held so subordinate a position,he should have been required, and should have beentrusted, to act against his only and most generous bene-factor. It is strange, too, that however great his loyaltyto the Queen, however much and sincerely he might con-demn his friend's conduct, he should think it possibleto accept the task. He says that he made some remon-strance ; and he says, no doubt truly, ||aat during thefirst stage of the business he used the ambiguousposition in which he was placed to soften Essex's in-evitable punishment, and to bring about a reconciliationbetween him and the Queen. But he was required, asthe Queen's lawyer, to set forth in public Essex's offences;and he admits that he did so "not over tenderly." Yet allthis, even if we have misgivings about it, is intelhgible. Ifhe had declined, he could not, perhaps, have done the ser-vice which he assures us that he tried to do to Essex ; andit is certain that he would have had to reckon with theterrible lady who in her old age still ruled England fromthe throne of Henry VIII., and who had certainly no greatlove for Bacon himself. She had abeady shown him in a /(, 5-much smaller matter what was the forfeit to be paid forany resistance to her will. All the hopes of his life mustperish ; all the grudging and suspicious favours which hehad won with such unremitting toil and patient waitingwould be sacrificed, and he would henceforth live underthe wrath of those who never forgave. And whatever he

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    II.] BACOK AND ELIZABETH. 47Lordship also to think that though I confess I love some things muchhotter than I love your Lordship, as the Queen's service, her quietand contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my coimtry,and the like, yet I love few persons hetter than yourself, both forgratitude's sake and for your own virtues, which cannot hurt butby accident or abuse. Of which my good affection I was ever readyand am ready to yield testimony by any good ofGlces, but with suchreservations as yourself cannot but allow : for as I was ever sorrythat your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus'fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, speciallyostrich's, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be moreglad. And this is the axletree whereupon I have turned and shallturn, which to signify to you, though I think you are of yourself per-suaded as much, is the cause of my writing ; and so I commendyour Lordship to God's goodness. From Gray's Inn, this 20thday of July, 1600.-

    " Your Lordship's most humbly,"Fr. Bacon."

    To this letter Essex returned an answer of dignifiedreserve, such as Bacon might himself have dictated.

    "Mk. Bacon I can neither expound nor censure your lateactions : being ignorant of all of them, save one ; and having directedmy sight inward only, to examine myself. You do pray me to believethat you only aspire to the conscience and commendation of honusdvis and bomis vir ; and I do faithfully assure you, that while thatis your ambition (though your course be active and mine contem-plative), yet we shall both convenire in eodem tertio and convenireinter nosipsos. Your profession of aflfection and offer of good oflicesare welcome to me. For answer to them I will say but this, thatyou have believed I have been kind to you, and you may believethat I cannot be other, either upon humour or my own election. Iam a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else I should say somewhatof your poetical example. But this I must sny, that I never flewwith other wings than desire to merit and confidence in my Sove-reign's favour ; and when one of these wings failed me I wouldlight nowhere but at my Sovereign's feet, though she suffered meto be bruised with my fall. And till her Majesty, that knows Iwas never bird of prey, finds it to agree with her will and her

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    48 " BACON. [chap.service that my wings should be iiaped again, I have committedmyself to the mire. No power but my God's and my Sovereign'scan alter this resolution of

    '' Your retired friend,

    "Essex."

    But after Essex's mad attempt in the city a new stateof things arose. The inevitable result was a trial for hightreason, a trial of which no one could doubt the purposeand end. The examination oi accomplices revealedspeeches, proposals, projects, not very intelligible to usin the still imperfectly understood game of intrigue thatwas going on among all parties at the end of Elizabeth'sreign, but quite enough to place Essex at the mercy ofthe Government and the offended Queen. " The new in-formation,'' says Mr. Spedding, " had been immediatelycommunicated to Coke and Bacon." Coke, as Attorney-General, of course conducted the prosecution; and thenext prominent person on the side of the Crown was notthe Solicitor, or any other regular law officer, but Bacon,though holding the very subordinate place of one of the"Learned Counsel."

    It does not appear that he thought it strange, that heshowed any pain or reluctance, that he sought to be ex-cused. He took it as a matter of course. The partassigned to Bacon in the prosecution was as important asthat of Coke : and he played it more skilfully and effect-ively. Trials in those days were confused affairs, oftenpassing into a mere wrangle between the judges, lawyers,and lookers-on, and the prisoner at the bar. It was soin this case. Coke is said to have blundered in his wayof presenting the evidence, and to have been led awayfrom the point into an altercation with Essex. Probably

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    50 BACON. [CHAP.private man dare approach the person of his sovereign with atraitorous intent. And therefore they run another side course,oblique et A latere : some to reform corruptions of the State andreligion ; some to reduce the ancient liherties and customs pre-tended to he lost and worn out ; some to remove those persons thatheing in high places make themselves subject to envy ; hut all ofthem aim at the overthrow of the State and destruction of the pre-sent rulers. And this likewise is the use of those .that work mis-chief of another quality ; as Cain, that first murderer, took up anexcuse for his fact, shaming to outface it with impudency, thusthe Earl made his colour the severing some great men. and coun-cillors from her Majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of hispretended enemies lest they should murder him in his house. There-fore he saith he was compelled to fly into the City for succour andassistance ; notmuch unlike Pisistratus, of whom it was so ancientlywritten how he gashed and wounded himself, and in that sort rancrying into Athens , that his life was sought and like to have heentaken away ; thinking to have moved the people to have pitiedhim and taken his part by such counterfeited harm and dangerwhereas his aim and drift was to take the government of the cityinto his hands and alter the form thereof. With like pretences ofdangers and assaults the Earl of Essex entered the City of Londonand passed through the bowels thereof, blanching rumours that heshould have been murdered and that the State was sold ; whereashe had no such enemies, no such dangers : persuading themselvesthat if they could prevail all would have done well. But nowmagna scelera terminamtur in Jiceresin : for you, my Lord, shouldknow that though princes give their subjects cause of discontent,though they take away the honours they have heaped upon them,though they bring them to a lower estate than they raised themfrom, yet ought they not to be so forgetful of their allegiance thatthey should enter into any undutiful act ; much less upon rebellion,as you, my Lord, have done. All whatsoever you have or can say inanswer hereof are hut shadows. And therefore methinks it werebest for you to confess, not to justify. ' "

    Essex was provoked by Bacon's incredulous sneerabout enemies and dangers"I call forth Mr. Baconagainst Mr. Bacon," and referred to the letters which

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    II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 51Bacon had written in his name, and in which these dan-gerous enmities were taken for granted. Bacon, inanswer, repeated what he said so often" That he hadspent more time in vain in studying how to make theEarl a good servant to the Queen and State, than he haddone in anything else." Once more Coke got the pro-ceedings into a tangle, and once more Bacon came for-ward to repair the miscarriage of his leader.

    " ' I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to anyprisoner ; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by frac-tions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons.May it please your Grace, you have seen how weakly he hathshadowed his purpose and how slenderly he hath answered theobjections against him. But, my Lord, I doubt the variety ofmatters and the many digressions may minister occasion of forget-fulness, and may have severed the judgments of the Lords ; andtherefore I hold it necessary briefly to recite the Judges' opinions.

    '' That being done, he proceeded to this effect :" ' Now put the case that the Earl of Essex's intents were, as he

    would have it believed, to go only as a suppliant to her Majesty.Shall their petitions be presented by armed petitioners ? This mustneeds bring loss of property to the prince. Neither is it any pointof law, as my Lord of Southampton would have it believed, thatcondemns them of treason. To take secret counsel, to execute it, torun together in numbers armed with weapons,what can be theexcuse ? Warned by the Lord Keeper, by a herald, and yet persistWill any simple man take this to be less than treason !

    "The Earl of Essex answered that if he had purposed anythingagainst others than those his private enemies, he would not havestirred with so slender a company. Whereunto Mr. Bacon an-swered :

    " ' It was not the company you carried with you but the assist-ance you hoped for in the City which you trusted unto. The Dukeof Guise thrust himself into the streets of Paris on the day of theBarricados in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight gentle-men, and found that help in the city which (thanks be to God) youfailed ofhere. And what followed ? The King was forced to puthim-

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    54 BACON. [CHAP.is, that to have declined would have incurred theQueen's displeasure : he would have forfeited any-chance of advancement; nay, closely connected as hehad been with Essex, he might have been involved inhis friend's ruin. But inferior men have marred theirfortunes by standing by their friends in not undeservedtrouble, and no one knew better than Bacon what wasworthy and noble in human action. The choice lay be-fore hinL He seems hardly to have gone through anystruggle. He persuaded himself that he coidd not helphimself, under the constraint of his duty to the Queen :and he did his best to get Essex condemned.

    And this was not all. The death of Essex was ashock to the popularity of Elizabeth greater than any-thing that had happened in her long reign. Bacon'sname also had come into men's mouths as that of atime-server, who played fast and loose with Essex andhis enemies, and who, when he had got what he couldfrom Essex, turned to see what he could get from thosewho put him to death. A justification of the wholeaffair was felt to be necessary; and Bacon was fixed uponfor the distinction and the dishonour of doing it. Noone could tell the story so well, and it was felt that hewould not shrink from it. Nor did he. In cold bloodhe sat down to blacken Essex, using his intimate personalknowledge of the past to strengthen his statementsagainst a friend who was in his grave, and for whomnone could answer but Bacon himself. It is a well-compacted and forcible account of Essex's misdoings, onwhich of course the colour of deliberate and dangeroustreason was placed. Much of it, no doubt, was truebut even of the facts, and much more of the colour, there

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    n.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 55was no check to be had, and it is certain that it was anobject to the Government to make out the worst. Itis characteristic that Bacon records that he did not losesight of the claims of courtesy, and studiously spoke of" my Lord of Essex " in the draft submitted for correc-tion to the Queen ; but she was more unceremonious,and insisted that the " rebel" should be spoken of simplyas "Essex."

    After a business of this kind, fines and forfeituresflowed in abundantly, and were " usually bestowed on de-serving servants or favoured suitors by way of reward ;and Bacon came in for his share. Out of one of thefines he received 1200. "The Queen hath done some-thing for me," he writes to a friendly creditor, " thoughnot in the proportion I had hoped," and he afterwardsasked for something more. It was rather under thevalue of Essex's gift to him in 1594. But she stillrefused him all promotion. He was without an ofiBcialplace in the Queen's service, and he never was allowedto have it. It is clear that the "Declaration of theTreason of the Earl of Essex," if it justified the Govern-ment, did not remove the odium which had fallen onBacon. Mr. Spedding says that he can find no signs ofit. The proof of it is found in the " Apology " whichBacon found it expedient to write after Elizabeth's deathand early in James's reign. He found that the recollec-tion of the way in which he had dealt with his friendhung'heavy upon him : men hesitated to trust him inspite of his now recognised ability. Accordingly, hedrew up an apology, which he addressed to LordMountjoy, the friend, in reality half the accomplice, ofEssex, in his wild, ill-defined plan for putting pressure

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    56 BACON. [chap.on Elizabeth. It is a clear, able, of course ex parte state-ment of the doings of the three chief actors, two of whomcould no longer answer for themselves, or correct andcontradict the third. It represents the Queen as implac-able and cruel, Essex as incorrigibly and outrageouslywilful, proud, and imdutiful. Bacon himself as usingevery effort and device to appease the Queen's angerand suspiciousness, and to bring Essex to a wiser andhumbler mind. The picture is indeed a vivid one, andfull of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and mercilessmistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dustthe haughty spirit of a once - loved but rebelliousfavourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, sheyet wishes to bring once more under her yoke ; and ofthe calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerousgame, not without personal interest, but with undis-turbed presence of mind, and doing his best to avert anirreparable and fatal breach. How far he honestly didhis best for his misguided friend we can only know fromhis own report ; but there is no reason to think that hedid Essex ill service, though he notices in passing anallegation that the Queen in one of her angry fits hadcharged him with this. But his interest clearly wasto make up the quarrel between the Queen andEssex. Bacon would have been a greater man withboth of them if he had been able to do so. He hadbeen too deeply in Essex's intimacy to make his newposition of mediator, with a strong bias on the Queen'sside, quite safe and easy for a man of honourable mindbut a cool-judging and prudent man may well haveacted as he represents himself acting without forgettingwhat he owed to his friend. Till the last great moment

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    II.] BACON AND ELIZABETH. 57of trial there is a good deal to be said for Bacon : a mankeenly alive to Essex's faults, with a strong sense ofwhat he owed to the Queen and the State, and with hisown reasonable chances of rising greatly prejudiced byEssex's folly. But at length came the crisis whichshowed the man, and threw light on all that had passedbefore, when he was picked out. out of his regularplace, to be charged with the task of bringing home thecapital charge against Essex. He does not say hehesitated. He does not say that he asked to be excusedthe terrible office. He did not flinch as the minister of

    . vengeance for those who required that Essex should die.He did his work, we are told by his admiring biographer,better than Coke, and repaired the blunders of theprosecution. He passes over very shortly this part ofthe business : " it was laid upon me with the rest of myfellows ; " yet it is the knot and key of the whole, asfar as his own character is concerned. Bacon had hispublic duty : his public duty may have compelled himto stand apart from Essex. But it was his interest, it wasno part of his public duty, which required him to acceptthe task of accuser of his friend, and in his friend's direstneed calmly to drive home a well-directed stroke thatshould extinguish chances and hopes, and make his ruincertain. No one who reads his anxious letters aboutpreferment and the Queen's favour, about his disap-pointed hopes, about his straitened means and distressfor money, about his difficulties with his creditorshewas twice arrested for debtcan doubt that the questionwas between his own prospects and his friend ; and thatto his own interest he sacrificed his friend and his ownhonour.

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    CHAPTEE III.BACON AND JAMES I.

    Bacon's life was a double ore. There was the life ofhigh thinking, of disinterested aims, of genuine enthu-siasm, of genuine desire to delight and benefit mankind,by opening new paths to wonder and knowledge andpower. And there was the put on and worldly life,the life of supposed necessities for the provision ofdaily bread, the life of ambition and self-seeking, whichhe followed, not without interest and satisfaction, but atbottom because he thought he mustmust be a greatman, must be rich, must live in the favour of the great,because without it his great designs could not beaccomplished. His original plan of life was disclosedin his letter to Lord Burghley : to get some office withan assured income and not much work, and then todevote the best of his time to his own subjects. Butthis, if it was really his plan, was gradually changed :first, because he could not get such a place ; and nextbecause his connection with Essex, the efforts to gainhim the Attorney's place, and the use which the Queenmade of him after Essex could do no more for him,drew him more and more into public work, and speciallythe career of the law. We know that he would not by

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    62 BACON. [OHAP.his intelligence. But there is no trace that he pridedhimself on the variety and versatihty of these powers, orthat he even distinctly reaUsed to himself that it wasanything remarkable that he should have so many dis-similar objects and be able so readily to pursue them insuch different directions.

    It is doubtful whether, as long as Elizabeth Hved,Bacon could ever have risen above his .position amongthe " Learned Counsel," an office without patent or salaryor regular employment. She used him, and he was willingto be used ; but he plainly did not appear in her eyes tobe the kind of man who would suit her in the moreprominent posts of her Government. Unusual andoriginal ability is apt, till it is generally recognised, tocarry with it suspicion and mistrust, as to its being reallyall that it seems to be. Perhaps she thought of the possi-bility of his flying out unexpectedly at some inconvenientpinch, and attempting to serve her interests, not in herway, but in his own ; perhaps she distrusted in businessand state affairs so brilliant a discourser, whose heart wasknown, first and above all, to be set on great dreams ofknowledge ; perhaps those interviews with her in whichhe describes the counsels which he laid before her, andin which his shrewdness and foresight are conspicuous,may not have been so welcome to her as he imaginedperhaps, it is not impossible, that he may have been toocomphant for her capricious taste, and too visibly anxiousto please. Perhaps, too, she could not forget, in spite ofwhat had happened, that he had been the friend, and notthe very generous friend, of Essex. But, except as to ashare of the forfeitures, with which he was not satisfied,his fortimes did not rise under Elizabeth.

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    ni.] BACON AND JAMES I. 63Whatever may have been the Queen's feelings towards

    him, there is no doubt that one powerful influence, which'lasted into the reign of James, was steadily adverseto his advancement. Burghley had been strangelyniggardly in what he did to help his brilliant nephewhe was going oflF the scene, and probably did not care totrouble himseK about a younger and imcongenial aspirantto service. But his place was taken by his son, EobertCecil ; and Cecil might naturally have been expected towelcome the co-operation of one of his own family, whowas foremost among the rising men of Cecil's own genera^tion, and who certainly was most desirous to do him ser-vice. But it is plain that he earlymade up his mind to keepBacon in the background. It is easy to imagine reasons,though the apparent shortsightedness of the policy maysurprise us ; but Cecil was too reticent and self-controlleda man to let his reasons