FRANCIS BACON 157 His pecuniary embarrassments were numerous, and continuous. Falstaff doubtless expresses a thought which often recurred to him : " I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse ; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable." More than once he was thrown into a " sponging-house " for debt. His brother Anthony loaned him money repeat- edly. In 1592 a "hard Jew or Lombard" put him in confinement for a debt on a bond. Anthony mortgaged his property to pay his debts. In 1594 Ma- lone believes the play of " The Merchant of Venice " was in existence, in which Bassanio, being in debt to a hard Jew, his friend, Antonius, mortgages his own flesh to help him out of his troubles ; and the Jew money-lender is sent down through all the ages the terrible type and exemplar of the merciless usurer. Bacon continues a " briefless barrister," with much time at his disposal. He helps in the composition of the play called "The Misfortunes of Arthur." He writes a Sonnet to the Queen. About this time, 1592, the Shakespeare plays begin to appear. Bacon assists in the preparation of several " masks " and " revels," gotten up by Gray's Inn. "The Comedy of Errors" first appears in the hall of that society, which still stands in London. The " Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece " appear, dedicated to Bacon's intimate friend, Lord Southampton ; and that noble- man in 1594 contributes a large sum to the construction of the Globe play-house, Bacon having observed that the stage is a powerful instrumentality to " play on the minds " of the people ; and on this stage a series of historical plays are put forth, everyone of which represents kings as monsters or imbeciles. The Shakespeare plays continue to be poured forth, and Bacon suffers from a siege of " Jews and duns." He describes himself " as poor and sick, working for bread." " I am purposed," he says, "not to follow the practice of the law." " It is easier," says Mr. Spedding, Bacon's biographer, " to understand why Bacon was resolved not to devote his life to the ordinary practice of a lawyer, than what plan he had to clear himself of the difficulties which were now accumulating upon him, and to obtain the means of living and working. What course he be- took himself to at the crisis at which we have now arrived, I cannot possibly say." We have here the time, the opportunity, the incentive, and the necessity for the composition of the Shakespeare plays ; part of the fruits of the repre- sentation of which made Shakespeare very wealthy. In January, 1597, the first acknowledged work of Bacon his "Essays" was published. They were ten in number. Bacon said of them he hoped they would be " like the late new half-pence, which, though the pieces are small, the silver is good." Until he was forty-four years of age, Bacon was kept poor and out of office by his uncle Burleigh, and his cousin Cecil ; during the life-time of Queen Eliza- beth he was steadily passed over and suppressed ; and even during the first years of the reign of King James I., the influence of Cecil, then the Earl of Salisbury, was sufficient to keep him out of office. In 1605, Bacon published his first great philosophical work, "The Advancement of Learning ;" in 1607, he became So- licitor-General ; and in 1612, Attorney-General, and member of the Privy Council
