The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Life of Bacon Part I
Nec tanto ceres labore, ut in fabulis est, liberam fertur quæsivisse filiam, quanto ego hane veluti pulcherrimam quandam imaginem, per omnes rerum formas et facies: dies noctesque indagare soleo, et quasi certis quibusdam vestigiis ducentem sector. Unde fit, ut qui, spretis quæ vulgus prava rerum æstimatione opinatur, id sentire et loqui et esse audet; quod summa per omne ævum sapientia optimum esse docuit, illi me protinus, sicubi reperiam, necessitate quadam adjungam. Quod si ego sive natura, sive meo fato ita sum comparatus, ut nulla contentione, et laboribus meis ad tale decus et fastigium laudis ipse valeam emergere; tamen quo minus qui eam gloriam assecuti sunt, aut eo feliciter aspirant, illos semper colam, et suspiciam, nec Dii puto, nec homines prohibuerint.
THIS LIFE OF FRANCIS BACON
IS
INSCRIBED TO
THE REVEREND AND LEARNED MARTIN DAVY, D D.,
MASTER OF CAIUS COLLEGE,
HENRY BICKERSTETH, CLEMENT T. SWANSTON,
GEORGE TUTHILL,
AND
TO THE MEMORY OF SAMUEL ROMILLY.
LIFE OF BACON.
CHAPTER I.
from his birth till the death of his father.
1560 to 1580.
Francis Bacon was born at York-House, in the Strand, on the 22d of January, 1560. He was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and of Anne, a daughter of the learned and contemplative Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward the Sixth. Of Sir Nicholas, it has been said, that he was a man full of wit and wisdom, a learned lawyer, and a true gentleman; of a mind the most comprehensive to surround the merits of a cause; of a memory to recollect its least circumstance;[1] of the deepest search into affairs of any man at the council table, and of a personal dignity so well suited to his other excellencies, that his royal mistress was wont to say, "My lord keeper's soul is well lodged."
He was still more fortunate in the rare qualities of his mother, for Sir Anthony Cooke, acting upon his favourite opinion then very prevalent, that women were as capable of learning as men, carefully instructed his daughters every evening, in the lessons which he had taught the king during the day; and amply were his labours rewarded; for he lived to see all his daughters happily married; and Lady Anne distinguished, not only for her conjugal and maternal virtues, but renowned[2] as an excellent scholar, and the translator, from the Italian, of various sermons of Ochinus, a learned divine; and, from the Latin, of Bishop Jewel's Apologia, recommended by Archbishop Parker for general use.[3]
It was his good fortune not only to be born of such parents, but also at that happy time "when learning[4] had made her third circuit; when the art of printing gave books with a liberal hand to men of all fortunes; when the nation had emerged from the dark superstitions of popery; when peace, throughout all Europe, permitted the enjoyment of foreign travel and free ingress to foreign scholars; and, above all, when a sovereign of the highest intellectual attainments, at the same time that she encouraged learning and learned men, gave an impulse to the arts, and a chivalric and refined tone to the manners of the people."
Bacon's health was always delicate, and his temperament was of such sensibility, as to be affected, even to fainting, by very slight alterations in the atmosphere; a constitutional infirmity which seems to have attended him through life.
While he was yet a child, the signs of genius, for which he was in afterlife distinguished, could not have escaped the notice of his intelligent parents. They must have been conscious of his extraordinary powers, and of their responsibility that, upon the right direction of his mind, his future eminence, whether as a statesman or as a philosopher, almost wholly depended.
He was cradled in politics; he was not only the son of the lord keeper, but the nephew of Lord Burleigh. He had lived from his infancy amidst the nobility of the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself delighted, even in his childhood, to converse with him, and to prove him with questions, which he answered with a maturity above his years, and with such gravity that the queen would often call him her young lord keeper. Upon the queen's asking him, when a child, how old he was, he answered, "two years younger than your majesty's happy reign."
But there were dawnings of genius of a much higher nature.[5] When a boy, while his companions were diverting themselves near to his father's house in St. James's Park, he stole to the brick conduit to discover the cause of a singular echo;[6] and, in his twelfth year he was meditating upon the laws of the imagination.[7]
At the early age of thirteen, it was resolved to send him to Cambridge, of which university, he, with his brother Anthony, was matriculated as a member, on the 10th of June, 1573.[8] They were both admitted of Trinity College, under the care of Dr. John Whitgift,[9] a friend of the lord keeper's, then master of the college, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and distinguished through life, not only for his piety, but for his great learning, and unwearied exertions to promote the public good.
What must have passed in his youthful, thoughtful, ardent mind, at this eventful moment, when he first quitted his father's house to engage in active life? What must have been his feelings when he approached the university, and saw in the distance, the lofty spires, and towers, and venerable walls, raised by intellect and piety, "and hollowed by the shrines where the works of the mighty dead are preserved and reposed,[10] and by the labours of the mighty living, with joint forces directing their strength against nature herself, to take her high towers, and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of man's dominion, so far as Almighty God of his goodness shall permit?"[11]
"As water," he says, "whether it be the dew of heaven, or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself, and for that cause the industry of man hath made and framed spring heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools, which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and necessity; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration, or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed; as universities, colleges, and schools, for the receipt and comforting of the same. All tending to quietness and privateness of life, and discharge of cares and troubles; much like the stations which Virgil prescribeth for the hiving of bees:
Principio sedes apihus statioque petenda,
Quo neque sit ventis aditus, etc.
He could not long have resided in Cambridge before he must have discovered his erroneous notionasof the mighty living, and of the pursuits in which they were engaged. Instead of students ready at all times to acquire any sort of knowledge, he found himself "amidst men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."[12]
Instead of the university being formed for the discovery of truths, he saw that its object was merely to preserve and diffuse the knowledge of our predecessors: instead of general inquiry, he found that all studies were confined to Aristotle who was considered infallible in philosophy, a dictator to command, not a consul to advise;[13] the lectures both in private in the colleges, and in public in the schools, being but expositions of his text, and comments upon his opinions, held as authentic as if they had been given under the seal of the pope.[14] Their infallibility, however, he was not disposed to acknowledge. Whilst in the university he formed his dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle, not for the worthlessness of the author, to whose gigantic intellect he ever ascribed all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of his method, being a philosophy, as he was wont to say, strong for disputations and contentions,[15] but barren for the production of works for the benefit and use of man; which, according to Bacon's opinion, is the only test of the purity of our motives for acquiring knowledge and of the value of knowledge when acquired; "Men," he says "have entered into a desire of knowledge some times from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give true account of their gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit and sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate."
It was not likely that, with such sentiments, he would meet with much sympathy in the univerity. It was still less probable that the antipathy by which he was opposed would check the ardour of his powerful mind. He went right onward in his course, unmoved by the disapprobation of men who turned from inquiries which they neither encouraged nor understood: and, seeing through the mists, by a light refracted from below the horizon, that knowledge must be raised on other foundations, and built with other materials than had been used through a long tract of many centuries, he continued his inquiries into he laws of nature,[16] and planned his immortal work upon which he laboured during the greater part of his life, and ultimately published when he was chancellor, saying, "I have held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy; which will be seen centuries after I am dead."[17]
After two years residence he quitted the university with the conviction not only that these seminaries of learning were stagnant, but that they were opposed to the advancement of knowedge. "In the universities," he says, "they learn nothing but to believe: first to believe that others know that which they know not; and after, themselves know that which they know not. They are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal:"[18] and in his Novum Organum, which he published when he was chancellor, he repeats what he had said when a boy. "In the universities, all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed that it cannot easily come into any one's mind to think of things out of the common road: or if, here and there, one should venture to use a liberty of judging, he can only impose the task upon himself without obtaining assistance from his fellows; and if he could dispense with this, he will still find his industry and resolution a great hindcrance to his fortune. For the studies of men in such places are confined, and pinned down to the writings of certain authors; from which, if any man happens to differ, he is presently reprehended as a disturber and innovator."[19]
Whether the intellectual gladiatorship by which students in the universities of England are now stimulated, then prevailed, does not appear, but his dislike of this motive he early and always avowed. "It is," he says, "an unavoidable decree with us ever to retain our native candour and simplicity, and not attempt a passage to truth under the conduct of vanity; for, seeking real nature with all her fruits about her, we should think it a betraying of our trust to infect such a subject either with an ambitious, an ignorant, or any other faulty manner of treating it."[20]
Some years after Bacon had quitted Cambridge, he published his opinions upon the defects of universities; in which, after having warned the community that, as colleges are established for the communication of the knowledge of our predecessors, there should be a college appropriated to the discovery of new truths, a living spring to mix with the stagnant waters. "Let it," he says, "be remembered that there is not any collegiate education of statesmen, and that this has not only a malign influence upon the growth of sciences, but is prejudicial to states and governments, and is the reason why princes find a solitude in regard of able men to serve them in causes of state."[21]
These warnings seem to have been disregarded, and the art of governing, not a ship, which would not be attempted without a knowledge of navigation, but the ship of the state, is intrusted, not to a knowledge of the principles of human nature, but to the knowledge of Latin and Greek and verbal criticisms upon the dead languages."[22]
And what has been the result? During the last two centuries one class of statesmen has resisted all improvement, and their opponents have been hurried into intemperate alterations: whilst philosophy, lamenting these contentions, has, instead of advancing the science of government, been occupied in counteracting laws founded upon erroneous principles; erroneous commercial laws; erroneous laws against civil and religious liberty; and erroneous criminal laws.[22]
So deeply was Bacon impressed with the magnitude of this evil, that by his will he endowed two lectures in either of the universities, by "a lecturer, whether stranger or English, provided he is not professed in divinity, law, or physic."
The subject of universities, and the importance to the community and to the advancement of science, that the spring should not be poisoned or polluted, was ever present to his mind,—and, in the decline of his life, he prepared the plan of a college for the knowledge of the works and creations of God, "from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall;" but the plan was framed upon a model so vast, that, without the purse of a prince and the assistance of a people, all attempts to realize it must be vain and hopeless. Some conception of his gorgeous mind in the formation of this college, may appear even at the entrance.
"We have (he says) two very long and fair galleries: and in one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies; also the inventor of ships; your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder; the inventor of music; the inventor of letters; the inventor of printing; the inventor of observations of astronomy; the inventor of works in metal; the inventor of glass; the inventor of silk of the worm; the inventor of wine; the inventor of corn and bread; the inventor of sugars; and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Upon every invention of value, we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourable reward. These statues are some of brass; some of mafole and touchstone; some of cedar and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron; some of silver; some of gold."[23]
Such is the splendour of the portico, or anteroom. Passing beyond it, every thing is to be found which imagination can conceive or reason suggest.[24]
After having enumerated all the instruments of knowledge, "such," he says, "is a relation of the true state of Solomon's house, the end of which foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."
In these glorious inventions of one rich mind, may be traced much of what has been effected in science and mechanics, since Bacon's death, and more that will be effected during the next two centuries.
After three years' residence in the university, his father sent him, at the age of sixteen, to Paris, under the care of Sir Amias Paulett, the English ambassador at that court: by whom, soon after his arrival, he was intrusted with a mission to the queen, requiring both secrecy and despatch: which he executed with such ability as to gain the approbation of the queen, and justify Sir Amias in the choice of his youthful messenger.
From the confidence thus reposed in him, and from the impression made upon all with whom he conversed; upon men of letters, with whom he contracted lasting friendships; upon grave states men and learned philosophers, it was manifest that the promise in his infancy of excellence, whether for active or for contemplative life, seemed beyond the most sanguine expectation to be realized.[25]
After the appointment of Sir Amias Paulett's successor, Bacon travelled into the French provinces, and spent some time at Poictiers. He prepared a work upon Ciphers,[26] which he
afterwards published, with an outline of the state of Europe, but the laws of sound and of imagination continued to occupy his thoughts.[27]
Whilst he was engaged in these meditations his father died suddenly, on the 20th February, 1579. He instantly returned to England.
CHAPTER II.
from the death of his father till he engaged in active life.
1580 to 1590.
Discovering, upon his arrival in England, that, by the sudden death of his father, he was left without a sufficient provision to justify him in devoting his life to contemplation,[28] it became necessary for him to select some pursuit for his support, "to think how to live, instead of living only to think."[29]
Law and politics were the two roads open before him; in both his family had attained opulence and honour. Law, the dry and thorny study of law, had but little attraction for his discursive and imaginative mind. With the hope, therefore, that, under the protection of his political friends, and the queen's remembrance of his father, and notice of him when a child, he might escape from the mental slavery of delving in this laborious profession, he made a great effort to secure some small competence, by applying to Lord Burleigh to recommend him to the queen, and interceding with Lady Burleigh to urge his suit with his uncle.[30]
But his application was unsuccessful; the queen and the lord treasurer, distinguished as they were for penetration into character, being little disposed LIFE OF BACON. to encourage him to rely upon others rather than upon himself, and to venture on the quicksands of politics, instead of the certain profession of the law, in which the queen had, when he was a child, predicted that he would one day be her "lord keeper."
To law, therefore, he was reluctantly obliged to devote, himself, and as it seems, in the year 1580, he was admitted a student of Gray's Inn, of which society his father had for many years been an illustrious member.[31]
Having engaged in this profession, he, as was to be expected, encountered and subdued the difficulties and obscurities of the science in which he was doomed to labour, and in which he afterwards was eminently distinguished, not only by his professional exertions and honours, but by his valuable works upon different practical parts of the law, and upon the improvement of the science, by exploring the principles of universal justice – the laws of law.
Extensive as were his legal researches, and great as was his legal knowledge, law was, however, but an accessory, not a principal study.[32] It was not to be expected that his mind should confine its researches within the narrow and perplexed study of precedents and authorities. He contracted his sight, when necessary, to the study of the law, but he dilated it to the whole circle of science, and continued his meditations upon his immortal work, which he had projected when in the university.
This course of legal and philosophical research was accompanied with such sweetness and affability of deportment, that he gained the affections of the whole society, and the kindness he experienced was not lost upon him. He assisted in their festivities; he beautified their spacious garden, and raised an elegant structure, known for many years after his death, as "The Lord Bacon's Lodgings," in which at intervals he resided till his death.
When he was only twenty-six years of age, he was promoted to the bench; in his twenty-eighth year he was elected lent reader;[33] and the 42d of Elizabeth he was appointed double reader.
His agreeable occupations, and extensive view of science, during his residence in Gray's Inn, did not check his professional exertions. In the year 1586, he applied to the lord treasurer to be called within the bar;[34] and in his thirtieth year was sworn queen's counsel learned extraordinary,[35] an honour which, until that time, had never been conferred upon any member of the profession.
CHAPTER III.
from his entrance into public life till his disappointment as solicitor.
1590 to 1596.
He thus entered on public life, submitting, as a lawyer and a statesman, to worldly occupations and the pursuit of worldly honours, that, sooner or later, he might escape into the calm regions of philosophy.
At this period the court was divided into two parties: at the head of the one were the two Cecils; of the other, the Earl of Leicester, and afterwards his son-in-law, the Earl of Essex.
To the Cecils Bacon was allied. He was the nephew of Lord Burleigh, and first cousin to Sir Robert Cecil, the principal secretary of state; but, connected as he was to the Cecils by blood, his affections were with Essex. Generous, ardent, and highly cultivated, with all the romantic enthusiasm of chivalry, and all the graces and accomplishments of a court, Essex was formed to gain partisans, and attach friends. Attracted by his mind and character, Bacon could have but little sympathy with Burleigh, who thought £100 an extravagant gratuity to the author of the Fairy Queen, which he was pleased to term "an old song," and, probably, deemed the listeners to such songs little better than idle dreamers. There was much grave learning and much pedantry at court, but literature of the lighter sort was regarded with coldness, and philosophy with suspicion: instead, therefore, of uniting himself to the party in power, he not only formed an early friendship himself with Essex, but attached to his service his brother Anthony, who had returned from abroad, with a great reputation for ability and a knowledge of foreign affairs.
This intimacy could not fail to excite the jealousy of Lord Burleigh; and, in after life, Bacon was himself sensible that he had acted unwisely, and that his noble kinsmen had some right to complain of the readiness with which he and his brother had embraced the views of their powerful rival. But, attached as he was to Essex, Bacon was not so imprudent as to neglect an application to them whenever opportunity offered to forward his interests. In a letter written in the year 1591 to Lord Burleigh, in which he says that "thirty-one years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass," he made another effort to extricate himself from the slavery of the law, by endeavouring to procure some appointment at court; that, "not being a man born under Sol that loveth honour, nor under Jupiter that loveth business, but wholly carried away by the contemplative planet," he might by that mean become a true pioneer in the deep mines of truth. To these applications, the Cecils were not entirely inattentive; for, although not influenced by any sympathy for genius, "for a speculative man indulging himself in philosophical reveries, and calculated more to perplex than to promote public business," as he was represented by his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil,[36] they procured for him the reversion of the Registership of the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year, for which, modestly ascribing his success to the remembrance of his father's virtues, he immediately acknowledged his obligation to the queen. This reversion, however, was not of any immediate value: for, not falling into possession till after the lapse of twenty years, he said that "it was like another man's ground buttailing upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barns."
In the parliament which met on February 19, 1592, and which was chiefly called for consultation and preparation against the ambitious designs of the King of Spain, Bacon sat as one of the knights for Middlesex. On the 25th of February, 1592, he, in his first speech, earnestly recommended the improvement of the law, an improvement which through life he availed himself of every opportunity to encourage, not only by his speeches, but by his works; in which he admonishes lawyers, that although they have a tendency to resist the progress of legal improvement, and are not the best improvers of law, it is their duty to visit and strengthen the roots and foundation of their science, productive of such blessings to themselves and to the community; and he submitted to the king that the most sacred trust to sovereign power consisted in the establishing good laws for the regulation of the kingdom, and as an example to the world.
To assist in the improvement which he recommended, he, in after life, prepared a plan for a digest and amendment of the whole law, and particularly of the penal law of England, and a tract upon Universal Justice; the one like a fruitful shower, profitable and good for the latitude of ground on which it falls, the other like the benefits of heaven, permanent and universal.
In another debate on the 7th of March, Bacon forcibly represented, as reasons for deferring for six years the payment of the subsidies to which the house had consented, the distresses of the people, the danger of raising public discontent, and the evil of making so bad a precedent against themselves and posterity. With this speech the queen was much displeased, and caused her displeasure to be communicated to Bacon both by the lord treasurer and by the lord keeper. He heard them with the calmness of a philosopher, saying, that "he spoke in discharge of his conscience and duty to God, to the queen, and to his country; that he well knew the common beaten road to favour, and the impossibility that he who selected a course of life estimate only by the few, should be approved by the many." He said this, not in anger, but in the consciousness of the dignity of his pursuits, and with the full knowledge of the doctrine and consequences both of concealment and revelation of opinion: of the time to speak and the time to be silent.
If, after this admonition, he was more cautious in the expression of his sentiments, he did not relax in his parliaments y exertions, or sacrifice the interests of the public at the foot of the throne. He spoke often, and always with such force and eloquence as to insure the attention of the house; and, though he spoke generally on the side of the court, he was regarded as the advocate of the people: powerful advocate, according to his friend, Ben Jonson, who thus speaks of his parliamentary eloquence: "There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking: his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered: no member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss: he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power: the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."
It would have been fortunate for society if this check had impressed upon his mind the vanity of attempting to unite the scarcely reconcileahle characters of the philosopher and the courtier. His high birth and elegant taste unfitted Bacon for the common walks of life, and by surrounding him with artificial wants, compelled him to exertions uncongenial to his nature: but the love of truth, of his country, and an undying spirit of improvement, ever in the train of knowledge, ill suited him for the trammels in which he was expected to move. Through the whole of his life he endeavoured to burst his bonds, and escape from law and politics, from mental slavery to intellectual liberty. Perhaps the charge of inconsistency, so often preferred against him, may be attributed to the varying impulse of such opposite motives.[37]
In the spring of 1594,[38] by the promotion of Sir Edward Coke to the office of Attorney General, the solicitorship became vacant. This had been foreseen by Bacon, and, from his near alliance to the lord treasurer; from the friendship of Lord Essex; from the honourable testimony of the bar and of the bench; from the protection he had a right to hope for from the queen, for his father's sake; from the consciousness of his own merits and of the weakness of his competitors, Bacon could scarcely doubt of his success. He did not, however, rest in an idle security; for though, to use his own expression, he was "voiced with great expectation, and the wishes of all men," yet he strenuously applied to the lord keeper, to Lord Burleigh, to Sir Robert Cecil, and to his noble friend Lord Essex, to further his suit. To the Lord Keeper Puckering he applied as to a lawyer, having no sympathy with his pursuits or value for his attainments, in the hope of preventing his opposition, rather than from any expectation of his support; and he calculated rightly upon the lord keeper's disposition towards him, for, either hurt by Bacon's manner, of which he appeared to have complained, or from the usual antipathy of common minds to intellectual superiority, the lord keeper represented to the queen that two lawyers, of the names of Brograve and Brathwayte, were more meritorious candidates. Of the conduct of the lord keeper he felt and spoke indignantly. "If," he says, "it please your lordship but to call to mind from whom I am descended, and by whom, next to God, her majesty, and your own virtue, your lordship is ascended, I know you will have a compunction of mind to do me any wrong."
To Lord Burleigh he applied as to his relation and patron, and, as a motive to insure his protection, he intimated his intention to devote himself to legal pursuits, an intimation likely to be of more efficacy to this statesman than the assurance that the completion of the Novum Organum depended upon his success: and he formed a correct estimate of the lord treasurer, who strongly interceded with the queen, and kindly communicated to Bacon the motives by which she was influenced against him.
To Sir Robert Cecil he also applied, as to a kinsman; and, during the course of his solicitation, having suspected that he had been bribed by his opponent, openly accused him; but, having discovered his error, he immediately acknowledged that his suspicions were unfounded. He still, however, maintained that there had been treachery somewhere, and that a word the queen had used against him had been put into her mouth by Sir Robert's messenger.
Essex, with all the zeal of his noble and ardent nature, endeavoured to influence the queen on behalf of his friend, by every power which he possessed over her affections and her understanding; availing himself of the most happy moments to address her, refuting all the reasons which she could adduce against his promotion, and representing the rejection of his suit as an injustice to the public, and a great unkindness to himself. Not content with these earnest solicitations, Essex applied to every person by whom the queen was likely to be influenced.
That Bacon had a powerful enemy was evinced not only by the whole of Elizabeth's conduct during this protracted suit, but by the anger with which she met the earnest pleadings of Essex; by her perpetual refusals to come to any decision, and above all, by her remarkable expressions, that "Bacon had a great wit, and much learning, but that in law he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep." Essex was convinced that his enemy was the lord keeper, to whom he wrote, desiring "that the lord keeper would no longer consider him a suitor for Bacon, but for himself; that upon him would light the disgrace as well of the protraction as of the refusal of the suit; and complained with much bitterness of those who ought to be Bacon's friends.[39]
To the queen, Bacon applied by a letter worthy of them both. He addressed her respectfully, but with a full consciousness that he deserved the appointment, and that he had not deserved the reprimand he had received from her majesty, for the honest exercise of his duty in parliament. Apologizing for his boldness and plainness, he told the queen, "that his mind turned upon other wheels than those of profit; that he sought no great matter, but a place in his profession, often given to younger men; that he had never sought her but by her own desire, and that he would not wrong himself by doing it at that time, when it might be thought he did it for profit; and that if her majesty found other and abler men, he should be glad there was such choice of them." This letter, according to the custom of the times, he accompanied by a present of a jewel. When the queen, with the usual property of royalty, not to forget, mentioned his speech in parliament which yet rankled in her mind, and with an antipathy, unworthy of her love of letters, said, "he was rather a man of study, than of practice and experience;" he reminded her of his father, who was made solicitor of the Augmentation Office when he was only twenty-seven years old, and had never practised, and that Mr. Brograve, who had been recommended by the lord keeper, was without practice.
This contest lasted from April, 1594, till November, 1595; and what at first was merely doubt and hesitation in the queen's mind, became a struggle against the ascendency which she was conscious Essex had obtained over her, as she more than once urged that "if either party were to give way, it ought to be Essex; that his affection for Bacon should yield to her mislike." Of this latent cause Essex became sensible, and said to Bacon, "I never found the queen passionate against you till I was passionate for you." Such was the nature of this contest, which was so long protracted, that success could not compensate for the trouble of the pursuit; of this, and the difficulties of his situation, he bitterly complained. "To be," he said, "like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest fiicth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again. I am weary of it, as also of wearying my good friends."
On the 5th of November, 1596,[40] Mr. Sergeant Fleming was appointed solicitor-general, to the surprise of the public, and the deep-felt mortification of Bacon, and of his patron and friend, Lord Essex. The mortification of Essex partook strongly of the extremes of his character; of the generous regard of wounded affection, and the bitter vexation of wounded pride; he complained that a man every way worthy had "fared ill, because he had made him a mean and dependence;" but he did not rest here: he generously undertook the care of Bacon's future fortunes, and, by the gift of an estate, worth about £1800, at the beautiful village of Twickenham, endeavoured to remunerate him for his great loss of time and grievous disappointment.
How bitterly Bacon felt the disgrace of the queen's rejection, is apparent by his own letter, where he says, that "rejected with such circumstances, he could no longer look upon his friends, and that he should travel, and hoped that her majesty would not be offended that, no longer able to endure the sun, he had fled into the shade."
His greatest annoyance during this contest had arisen from the interruption of thoughts generally devoted to higher things. After a short retirement, "where he once again enjoyed the blessings of contemplation in that sweet solitariness which collecteth the mind, as shutting the eyes does the sight," during which he seems to have invented an instrument resembling a barometer, he resumed his usual habits of study, consoled by the consciousness of worth, which, though it may at first imbitter defeat from a sense of injustice, never fails ultimately to mitigate disappointment, by insuring the sympathy of the wise and the good.
This cloud soon passed away; for, though Bacon had stooped to politics, his mind, when he resumed his natural position, was far above the agitation of disappointed ambition. During his retirement he wrote to the queen, expressing his submission to the providence of God, which he says findeth it expedient for me "tolerare jugum in juventute mea;" and assuring her majesty that her service should not be injured by any want of his exertions. His forbearance was not lost upon the queen, who, satisfied with her victory, soon afterwards, with an expression of kindness, employed him in her service: and some effort was made to create a new vacancy by the advancement of Fleming.
During the contest, the University of Cambridge had conferred upon him the degree of master of arts, and he had in the first throes of vexation declared his intention of retiring there, a resolution, which, unfortunately for philosophy, he did not put into practice.In the year l596 Bacon completed a valuable tract upon the elements and use of the common law. It consists in the first part of twenty-five legal maxims, as specimens selected from three hundred, in which he was desirous to establish in the science of law, as he was to establish in all science, general truths for the diminution of individual labour, and the foundation of future discoveries: and, his opinion being that general truths could be discovered only by an extensive collection of particulars, he proceeded in this work upon the plan suggested in his Novum Organum.
In the second part he explains the use of the law for the security of persons, reputation, and property; which, with the greatest anxiety to advance freedom of thought and liberty of action, he well knew and always inculcated, was to be obtained only by the strength of the law restraining and directing individual strength.[41] In Orpheus's Theatre, he says, "all beasts and birds assembled, and forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, and some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp; the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men: who are are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge, which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence, and persuasion of books, of sermons, and harangues; so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."
His preface contains his favourite doctrine, that "there is a debt of obligation from every member of a profession to assist in improving the science in which he has successfully practised," and he dedicated his work to the queen, as a sheaf and cluster of fruit of the good and favourable season enjoyed by the nation, from the influence of her happy government, by which the people were taught that part of the study of a good prince was to adorn and honour times of peace by the improvement of the laws. Although this tract was written in the year 1596, and although he was always a great admirer of Elizabeth, it was not published till after his death.
The exertions which had been made by Essex to obtain the solicitorship for his friend, and his generous anxiety to mitigate his disappointment, had united them by the strongest bonds of affection.
In the summer of 1596, Essex was appointed to the command of an expedition against Spain; and though he was much troubled during the embarkation of his troops, by the want of discipline in the soldiery, chiefly volunteers, and by the contentions of their oilicers, too equal to be easily commanded, yet he did not forget the interests of Bacon, but wrote from Plymouth to the new-placed lord keeper, and all his friends in power, strongly recommending him to their protection.
In the early part of the year 1597 his first publication appeared. It is a small 12mo. volume of Essays, Religious Meditations, and a table of the Colours of Good and Evil. In his dedication to his loving and beloved brother, he states that he published to check the circulation of spurious copies, "like some owners of orchards, who gathered the fruit before it was ripe, to prevent stealing;" and he expresses his conviction that there was nothing in the volume contrary, but rather medicinable to religion and manners, and his hope that the Essays would, to use his own words, "be like the late new Halfpence, which, though the pieces were small, the silver was good."
The Essays, which are ten[42] in number, abound with condensed thought and practical wisdom neatly, pressly, and weightily stated,[43] and, like all his early works, are simple, without imagery. They are written in his favourite style of aphorisms, although each essay is apparently a continued work;[44] and without that love of antithesis and false glitter to which truth and justness of thought is frequently sacrificed by the writers of maxims.
Another edition, with a translation of the Meditationes Sacræ, was published in the next year; and a third in 1612, when he was solicitor-general; and a fourth in 1625, the year before his death.
The essays in the subsequent editions are much augmented, according to his own words; "I always alter when I add, so that nothing is finished till all his finished," and they are adorned by happy and familiar illustration, as in the essay of "Wisdom for a Man's self," which concludes in the edition of 1625 with the following extract, not to be found in the previous edition:—"Wisdom for a man's self is in many branches thereof a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, who shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which, as Cicero says of Pompey, are sui amantes sine rivali, are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned."
So in the essay upon Adversity, on which he had deeply reflected, before the edition of 1625, when it first appeared, he says: "The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground: judge, therefore, of the pleasures of the heart by the pleasures of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
The essays were immediately translated into French and Italian, and into Latin by some of his friends, amongst whom were Hacket, Bishop of Litchfield, and his constant, affectionate friend, Ben Jonson.[45]
His own estimate of the value of this work is thus stated in his letter to the Bishop of Winchester: "As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that manner purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that these kind of writings would, with less pains and assiduity, perhaps yield more lustre and reputation to my name than the others I have in hand."
Although it was not likely that such lustre and reputation would dazzle him, the admirer of Phodon,[46] who, when applauded, turned to one of his friends, and asked, "what have I said amiss?" although popular judgment was not likely to mislead him who concludes his observations upon the objections to learning and the advantages of knowledge, by saying, "Nevertheless, I do not pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me, by any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgment either of Æsop's cock, that preferred the barleycorn before the gem; or of Midas, that, being chosen judge be tween Apollo, president of the muses, and Pan, god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or of Paris, that judged for beauty and love against wisdom and power. For these things continue as they have been; but so will that also continue where upon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not. 'Justificata est sapientia a filiis suis:' "[47] yet he seems to have undervalued this little work, which, for two centuries, has been favourably received by every lover of knowledge and of beauty, and is now so well appreciated, that a celebrated professor of our own times truly says: "The small volume to which he has given the title of 'Essays', the best known and the most popular of all his works, is one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest advantage; the novelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the triteness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours, and yet after the twentieth perusal one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties."[48]
During his life, six or more editions, which seem to have been pirated, were published; and, after his death, two spurious essays "Of Death," and "Of a King," the only authentic posthumous essay being the fragment of an essay on Fame, which was published by his friend and chaplain, Dr. Rawley.
The sacred meditations, which are twelve in number,[49] are in the first edition in Latin, and have been partly incorporated into subsequent editions of the Essays, and into the Advancement of Learning.
The Colours of Good and Evil, are ten in number, and were afterwards inserted in the Advancement of Learning,[50] in his tract on Rhetoric.
Such was the nature of his first work, which was gratefully received by his learned contemporaries, as the little cloud seen by the prophet, and welcomed as the harbinger of showers that would fertilize the whole country.While, in this year, the Earl of Essex was preparing for his voyage, Bacon communicated to him his intention of making a proposal of marriage to Lady Hatton, the wealthy widow of Sir William Hatton, and daughter of Sir Thomas Cecil, and desired his lordship's interest in support of his pretensions, trusting, he said, "that the beams of his lordship's pen might dissolve the coldness of his fortune." Essex, with his wonted zeal, warmly advocated the cause of his friend, he wrote in the strongest terms to the father and mother of the lady, assuring them "that if Bacon's suit had been to his own sister or daughter, he would as confidently further it, as he now endeavoured to persuade them." Neither Bacon's merit, or the generous warmth of his noble patron touched the heart of the lady, who, fortunately for Bacon, afterwards became the wife of his great rival, Sir Edward Coke.
In this year he seems to have been in great pecuniary difficulties, which, however they may have interrupted, did not prevent his studies; for, amidst his professional and political labours, he published a new edition of his essays,[51] and composed a law tract, not published until some years after his death, entitled the History of the Alienation Office.
In the year 1599, the celebrated case of Perpetuities, which had been argued many times at the bar of the King's Bench, was, on account of its difficulty and great importance, ordered to be argued in the Exchequer Chamber before all the judges of England;[52] and after a first argument by Coke, Solicitor-General, a second argument was directed, and Bacon was selected to discharge this arduous duty, to which he seems to have given his whole mind; and although Sir Edward Coke, in his report, states that he did not hear the argument, the case is reported at great length, and the reasoning has not been lost, for the manuscript exists, and seems to have been incorporated in his reading on the statute of uses to the society of Gray's Inn.
He thus commences his address to the students: "I have chosen to read upon the Statute of Uses, a law whereupon the inheritances of this realm are tossed at this day, like a ship upon the sea, in such sort, that it is hard to say which bark will sink, and which will get to the haven; that is to say, what assurances will stand good, and what will not. Neither is this any lack or default in the pilots, the grave and learned judges; but the tides and currents of received error, and unwarranted and abusive experience have been so strong, as they were not able to keep a right course according to the law. Herein, though I could not be ignorant either of the difficulty of the matter, which he that taketh in hand shall soon find, or much less of my own unableness, which I had continual sense and feeling of; yet, because I had more means of absolution than the younger sort, and more leisure than the greater sort, I did think it not impossible to work some profitable effect; the rather because where an inferior wit is bent and constant upon one subject, he shall many times, with patience and meditation, dissolve and undo many of the knots, which a greater wit, distracted with many matters, would rather cut in two than unknit: and, at the least, if my invention or judgment be too barren or too weak, yet by the benefit of other arts, I did hope to dispose or digest the authorities and opinions which are in cases of uses in such order and method, as they should take light one from another, though they took no light from me."
He then proceeds in a luminous exposition of the statute, of which a celebrated lawyer of our times,[53] says: "Lord Bacon's reading on the Statute of Uses is a very profound treatise on the subject, so far as it goes, and shows that he had the clearest conception of one of the most abstruse parts of our law. What might we not have expected from the hands of such a master, if his vast mind had not so embraced within its compass the whole field of science, as very much to detach him from his professional studies?"
There is an observation of the same nature by a celebrated professor in another department of science, Sir John Hawkins, who, in his History of Music, says, "Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, has given a great variety of experiments touching music, that show him to have not been barely a philosopher, an inquirer into the phenomena of sound, but a master of the science of harmony, and very intimately acquainted with the precepts of musical composition." And, in coincidence with his lordship's, sentiments of harmony, he quotes the following passage: "The sweetest and best harmony is when every part or instrument is not heard by itself, but a conflation of them all, which requireth to stand some distance off, even as it is in the mixtures of perfumes, or the taking of the smells of several flowers in the air."
With these legal and literary occupations he continued without intermission his parliamentary exertions, there not having been during the latter part of the queen's reign any debate in which he was not a distinguished speaker, or any important committee of which he was not an active member.
Early in the year 1599, a large body of the Irish, denied the protection of the laws, and hunted like wild beasts by an insolent soldiery, fled the neighbourhood of cities, sheltered themselves in their marshes and forests, and grew every day more intractable and dangerous; it became necessary, therefore, that some vigorous measures should be adopted to restrain their excesses.
A powerful army was raised, of which the command was intended by the queen to be conferred upon Lord Mountjoy; but Essex solicited an employment, which at once gratified his ambition and suited the ardour of his character, and which his enemies sought for him more zealously than his friends, foreseeing the loss of the queen's favour, from the certainty of his absence from court, and the probable failure of his expedition.
From the year 1596 till this period there had been some interruption of the intimacy between Bacon and Essex, arising from the honest expression of his opinion of the unwise and unworthy use which Essex made of his power over the queen. Notwithstanding the temporary estrangement which this difference of opinion occasioned, Essex was unwilling to accept this important command without consulting his intelligent friend. Bacon's narrative gives a striking picture of both parties. He says, "Sure I am (though I can arrogate nothing to myself but that I was a faithful remembrance to his lordship) that while I had most credit with him his fortune went on best. And yet in two main points we always directly and contradictorily differed, which I will mention to your lordship, because it giveth light to all that followed. The one was, I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the queen was by obsequiousness and observance; and I remember I would usually engage confidently, that if he would take that course constantly, and with choice of good particulars to express it, the queen would be brought in time to Assuerus' question, to ask, what should be done to the man that the king would honour? meaning, that her goodness was without limit, where there was true concurrence, which I knew in her nature to be true. My lord, on the other side, had a settled opinion, that the queen could be brought to nothing but by a kind of necessity and authority ; and I well remember, when by violent courses at any time he had got his will, he would ask me: Now, sir, whose principles be true? And I would again say to him: My lord, these courses be like to hot waters, they will help at a pan but if you use them, you shall spoil the stomach, and you shall be fain still to make them stronger and stronger, and yet in the end they will lese their operation: with much other variety, wherewith I used to touch that string. Another point was, that I always vehemently dissuaded him from seeking greatness by a military dependence, or by a popular dependence, as that which would breed in the queen jealousy, in himself presumption, and in the state perturbation; and I did usually compare them to Icarus' two wings, which were joined on with wax, and would make him venture to soar too high, and then fail him at the height. And I would further say unto him: My lord, stand upon two feet, and fly not upon wax wings. The two feet are the two kinds of justice commutative and distributive: use your greatness or advancing of merit and virtue, and relieving wrongs and burdens; you shall need no other art of fineness: but he would tell me, that opinion came not from my mind, but from my robe. But his difference in two points so main and material, bred in process of time a discontinuance of privateness (as it is the manner of men seldom to communicate where they think their courses not approved) between his lordship and myself; so as I was not called nor advised with for some year and a half before his lordship's going into Ireland, as in former time: yet nevertheless, touching his going into Ireland, it pleased him expressly and in a set manner to desire mine opinion and counsel."[54]
Thus consulted, Bacon, with prophetic wisdom, warned him of the ruin that would inevitably result from his acceptance of an appointment, attended not only with peculiar difficulties, which from habit and temper he was unfit to encounter, but also with the certain loss of the queen's favour, from his absence, and the constant plotting of his enemies. Essex heard this advice, urged as it was, with an anxiety almost parental, as advice is generally heard when opposed to strong passion. It was totally disregarded. It is but justice to Bacon to hear his own words. He says: "I did not only dissuade, but protest against his going, telling him with as much vehemency and asseveration as I could, that absence in that kind would exulcerate the queen's mind, whereby it would not be possible for him to carry himself so as to give her sufficient contentment; nor for her to carry herself so as to give him sufficient countenance, which would be ill for her, ill for him, and ill for the state. And because I would omit no argument, I remember I stood also upon the difficulty of the action: many other reasons I used, so as I am sure I never in any thing in my lifetime dealt with him in like earnestness by speech, by writing, and by all the means I could devise. For I did as plainly see his overthrow chained, as it were by destiny, to that journey, as it is possible for a man to ground a judgment upon future contingents. But my lord, howsoever his ear was open, yet his heart and resolution was shut against that advice, whereby his ruin might have been prevented."[54]
It did not require Bacon's sagacity to foresee these sad consequences. Elizabeth had given an unwilling assent to the appointment, and, though accustomed to yield to the vehement demands of her favourite, was neither blind to his faults, or slow in remembering them, when his absence gave her time for reflection; but she shared with all monarchs the common wish to obtain the disinterested affection of those whom she distinguished with her favour.
By the loss of Leicester, and the recent death of Burleigh, she was left in the decline of her life "in a solitude of friens," when Essex, of a character more congenial to the queen than either of those noblemen, became, between twenty and thirty years of age, a candidate for court favour. Well read, highly born, accomplished, and imbued with the romantic chivalry of the times, he amused her by his gayety, and flattered her by his gallantry; the rash ingenuousness of his temper gave an air of sincerity to all his words and actions, while strength of will, and a daring and lofty spirit like her own, lessened the distance between them, and completed the ascendency which he gained over her affections; an ascendancy which, even if the queen had not been surrounded by his rivals and enemies, could not but be diminished by his absence.
In March, 1599, he was appointed lord lieutenant, and, attended with the flower of the nobility and the acclamations of the people, he quitted London, and in the latter end of the month arrived at Dublin. From this time until his return, the whole of his actions were marked by a strong determination that his will should be paramount to that of the queen.
The first indication of his struggle for power was the appointment, against the express wish of the queen, of his friend, Lord Southampton, to be general of the horse, which he was ordered to rescind. Essex, who had much personal courage, and who would have distinguished himself at a tournament, or a passage at arms, being totally unfit to manage an expedition requiring all the skill, experience, and patient endurance of a veteran soldier, the whole campaign was a series of rash enterprise, neglected opportunity, and relaxed discipline, involving himself and his country in defeat and disgrace. By this ill-advised conduct he so completely aliened the minds of his soldiers, that they were put to flight by an inferior number of the enemy; at which Essex was so much enraged, that he cashiered all the officers, and decimated the men.
Bacon, seeing how truly he had prophesied, and observing the pain felt by the queen, availed himself of every opportunity to prevent his ruin in her affections. "After my lord's going," he says, "I saw then how true a prophet I was, in regard of the evident alteration which naturally succeeded in the queen's mind; and thereupon I was still in watch to find the best occasion that in the weakness of my power I could either take or minister, to pull him out of the fire if it had been possible; and not long after, methought I saw some overture thereof, which I apprehended readily, a particularity I think be known to very few, and the which I do the rather relate unto your lordship, because I hear it should be talked, that while my lord was in Ireland I revealed some matters against him, or I cannot tell what; which, if it were not a mere slander as the rest is, but had any, though never so little colour, was surely upon this occasion. The queen one day at Nonsuch, a little (as I remember) before Cuffes coming over, I attending on her, showed a passionate distaste of my lord's proceedings in Ireland, as if they were unfortunate, without judgment, contemptuous, and not without some private end of his own, and all that might be, and was pleased, as she spake of it to many that she trusted least, so to fall into the like speech with me; whereupon I, who was still awake, and true to my grounds which I thought surest for my lord's good, said to this effect: Madam, I know not the particulars of estate, and I know this, that princes actions must have no abrupt periods or conclusions, but other wise I would think, that if you had my Lord of Essex here with a white staff in his hand, as my Lord of Leicester had, and continued him still about you for society to yourself, and for an honour and ornament to your attendance and court in the eyes of your people, and in the eyes of foreign ambassadors, then were he in his right element; for, to discontent him as you do, and yet to put arms and power into his hands, may be a kind of temptation to make him prove cumbersome and unruly. And therefore if you would imponere bonam clausulam, and send for him, and satisfy him with honour near you, if your affairs, which (as I have said) I am not acquainted with, will permit it, I think were the best way."[55]
These kind exertions for his friend were, however, wholly defeated by the haughtiness and imprudence of Essex, who, to the just remonstrances of the queen, gave no other answers than peevish complaints of his enemies; and, to the astonishment of all persons, he, without her permission, returned to England, arrived before any person could be apprized of his intention, and, the queen not being in London, he, without stopping to change his dress, or to take any refreshment, proceeded to Nonsuch, where the court was held. Travel-stained as he was, he sought the queen in her chamber, and found her newly risen, with her hair about her face. He kneeled to her, and kissed her hands. Elizabeth, taken by surprise, gave way to all her partiality for him, and to the pleasure she always had in his company. He left her presence well pleased with his reception, and thanked God, though he had suffered much trouble and storm abroad, that he found a sweet calm at home. He had another conference for an hour with the queen before midday, from which he returned well contented with his future prospects, receiving the visits of the whole court, Cecil and his party excepted.[56]During the day the queen saw her ministers.[57] After dinner he found her much changed: she received him coldly, and appointed the lords to hear him in council that very afternoon. After sitting an hour, they adjourned the court to a full council on the next day; but, between eleven and twelve at night, an order came from the queen that Essex should keep his chamber.[58]
On the next day the lords met in council, and presented a favourable report to the queen, who said she would pause and consider it, Essex still continuing captive in his chamber,[59] from whence the queen ordered him to be committed into custody, lest, having his liberty, he might be far withdrawn from his duty through the corrupt counsels of turbulent men, not however to any prison, lest she might seem to destroy all hope of her ancient favour, but to the lord keeper's, at York House, to which in the afternoon he was taken from Nonsuch.[60]
Bacon's steady friendship again manifested itself. He wrote to Essex the moment he heard of his arrival, and in an interview between them, he urged the advice which he had communicated in his letter. This letter and advice are fortunately preserved. In his letter he says: My lord, conceiving that your lordship came now up in the person of a good servant to see your sovereign mistress, which kind of compliments are many times "instar magnorum meritorum;" and therefore that it would be hard for me to find you, I have committed to this poor paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man's, and more yours than any man. To these salutations, I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your lordship, in your last conference with me before your journey, spake not in vain, God making it good, that you trusted we should say, "quis putasset?" Which, as it is found true in a happy sense, so I wish you do not find another "quis putasset," in the manner of taking this so great a service; but I hope it is as he said, "nubecula est citò transibit;" and that your lordship's wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best. So referring all to sometime that I may attend you, I commit you to God's best preservation.
And his advice is thus stated by Bacon: "Well, the next news that I heard, was that my lord was come over, and that he was committed to his chamber for leaving Ireland without the queen's license: this was at Nonsuch, where (as my duty was) I came to his lordship, and talked with him privately about a quarter of an hour, and he asked mine opinion of the course that was taken with him; I told him: My lord, nubecula est, cito transibit: it is but a mist; but shall I tell your lordship it is as mists are, if it go upwards, it may perhaps cause a shower, if downwards it will clear up. And therefore, good my lord, carry it so, as you take away by all means all umbrages and distastes from the queen, and especially if I were worthy to advise you, (as I have been by yourself thought, and now your question imports the continuance of that opinion,) observe three points: first, make not this cessation or peace, which is concluded with Tyrone, as a service wherein you glory, but as a snuffling up of a prosecution which was not very fortunate. Next, represent not to the queen any necessity of estate, hereby, as by a coercion or wrench, she should think herself enforced to send you back into Ireland; but leave it to her. Thirdly, seek access, importune, opportune, seriously, sportingly, every way. I remember my lord was willing to hear me, but spake very few words, and shaked his head sometimes, as if he thought I was in the wrong; but sure I am, he did just contrary in every one of these three points."[61]
After his committal to the lord keeper's, there was great fluctuation of opinion with respect to his probable fate. On one day the hope of his restoration to favour prevailed; on the next, as the queen, by brooding over the misconduct of Essex, by additional accounts of the consequences of his errors in Ireland, by turbulent speeches and seditious pamphlets, was much exasperated, his ruin was predicted. Pamphlets were circulated and suppressed; there were various conferences at York House between the different statesmen and Essex; and it was ultimately determined that the matter should be investigated, not by public accusation, but by a declaration in the Star Chamber, in the absence of Essex, of the nature of his misconduct. Such was the result of the queen's conflict between public opinion and her affection for Essex.[62]
In this perplexity she consulted Bacon, who from this, and from any proceeding, earnestly dissuaded the queen, and warned her that, from the popularity of Essex and this unusual mode of accusation, it would be said that justice had her balance taken from her; and that, instead of promoting, it would interrupt the public tranquillity. She heard and was offended with his advice, and acted in direct opposition to it. At an assembly of privy councillors, of judges, and of statesmen, held on the 30th of November, they declared, without his being heard in his defence, the nature of Essex's misconduct; a proceeding which, as Bacon foretold, and which the queen too late acknowledged, aggravated the public discontent. At this assembly Bacon was not present, which, when his absence was mentioned by the queen, he excused by indisposition.[63]Bacon's account of this proceeding is as follows: "Immediately after the queen had thought of a course (which was also executed) to have somewhat published in the Star Chamber, for the satisfaction of the world, touching my lord of Essex his restraint, and my lord of Essex not to be called to it, but occasion to be taken by reason of some libels then dispersed; which when her majesty propounded unto me, I was utterly against it, and told her plainly that the people would say, that my lord was wounded upon his back, and that justice had her balance taken from her, which ever consisted of an accusation and defence, with many other quick and significant terms to that purpose; insomuch that I remember I said, that my lord in foro famaæ was too hard for her; and therefore wished her, as I had done before, to wrap it up privately: and certainly I offended her at that time, which was rare with me; for I call to mind that both the Christmas, Lent, and Easter Term following, though I came divers times to her upon law business, yet methought her face and manner was not so clear and open to me, as it was at the first. But towards the end of Easter term, her majesty brake with me, and told me that she had found my words true, for that the proceeding in the Star Chamber had done no good, but rather kindled factious bruits, as she termed them, than quenched them."[64]
If the partisans of Essex had acted with the cautious wisdom of Bacon, the queen's affections undisturbed would have run kindly into their old channel, but his followers, by new seditious discourses and offensive placards, never gave her indignation time to cool. About Christmas, Essex, from agitation of mind, and protracted confinement, fell into a dangerous illness, and the queen sent to him some kind messages by her own physician, but his enemies persuaded her that his illness was partly feigned; and when at last his near approach to death softened the queen in his favour, the injudicious expressions of those divines who publicly prayed for him, amounting to sedition, entirely hardened her heart against him. Upon the earl's recovery, and after some months patient endurance on his part, the queen desired to restore him to favour; and on the 19th of March Essex was removed to his own house, in the custody of Sir Richard Barkley.[65]
About three years previous to his accepting the command in Ireland, Essex published a tract, entitled "An Apologie of the Earl of Essex against those which jealously and maliciously tax him to be the hinderer of the peace and quiet of his country." This tract originated, as it seems, in an admonition of Bacon's, which he thus states: "I remember, upon his voyage to the islands, I saw every spring put forth such actions of charge and provocation, that I said to him, My lord, when I came first unto you I took you for a physician that desired to cure the diseases of the state; but now I doubt you will be like those physicians which can he content to keep their patients low, because they would always be in request: which plainness he nevertheless took very well, as he had an excellent ear, and was patientissimus veri, and assured me the case of the realm required it; and I think this speech of mine, and the like renewed afterwards, pricked him to write that apology which is in many men's hands."[66]
Essex had scarcely been liberated, when the Apology was reprinted by some injudicious partisan. The queen, greatly exasperated, ordered two of the printers to be imprisoned, and meditated proceedings against Essex; but he having written to the Archbishop of Canterbury and various of his friends, and having ordered the publishers to suppress the work, the storm was averted.[67] The spirit in which the republication of this tract originated extended to the circulation of other libels,[68] so reflecting upon the conduct of the queen, that she said the subject should be publicly examined; and, acknowledging the foresight of Bacon with respect to the former inquiry, she consulted him as to the expediency of proceeding by information.
Against this or any proceeding Bacon earnestly protested; and, although the honest expression of his sentiments so much offended the queen that she rose from him in displeasure, it had the effect of suspending her determination for some weeks, though she ultimately ordered that Essex should be accused in the Star Chamber. The following is Bacon's account of this resolution: "After this, during the while since my lord was committed to my lord keeper's, I came divers times to the queen, as I had used to do, about causes of her revenue and law business: when the queen at any time asked mine opinion of my lord's case, I ever in one tenor, besought her majesty to be advised again and again, how she brought the cause into any public question: nay, I went further, for I told her my lord was an eloquent and well spoken man, and besides his eloquence of nature or art, he had an eloquence of accident which passed them both, which was the pity and benevolence of his hearers; and therefore wished the conclusion might be, that they might wrap it up privately between themselves, and that she would restore my lord to his former attendance, with some addition of honour to take away discontent. But towards the end of Easter term her majesty brake with me, and told me that she had found my words true, for that the proceeding in the Star Chamber had done no good, but rather kindled factious bruits (as she termed them) than quenched them, and therefore that she was determined now for the satisfaction of the world, to proceed against my lord in the Star Chamber, by an information ore tenus, and to have my lord brought to his answer; howbeit she said, she would assure me that whatsoever she did should be towards my lord ad castigationem, et non ad destructionem, as indeed she had often repeated the same phrase before: whereunto I said, to the end utterly to divert her, Madam, if you will have me speak to you in this argument, I must speak to you as Friar Bacon's head spake, that said first, Time is, and then Time was, and Time would never be; for certainly, said I, it is now far too late, the matter is cold, and hath taken too much wind; whereat she seemed again offended, and rose from me, and that resolution for a while continued; and after, in the beginning of Midsummer term, I attending her, and rinding her settled in that resolution, which I heard of also otherwise, she falling upon the like speech, it is true, that seeing no other remedy, I said to her slightly, Why, madam, if you will needs have a proceeding, you were best have it in some such sort as Ovid spake of his mistress, Est aliquid luce patente minus, to make a council-table matter of it, and there an end; which speech again she seemed to take in ill part, but yet I think it did good at that time, and helped to divert that course of proceeding by information in the Star Chamber. Nevertheless, afterwards it pleased her to make a more solemn matter of the proceeding, and some few days after, when order was given that the matter should be heard at York House, before an assembly of councillors, peers, and judges, and some audience of men of quality to be admitted."
Such were the measures adopted by the queen to dispel, as she termed them, "the bruits and malicious imputations" of her people; but, jealous of their affections, she resented every murmur of public disapprobation by some new severity to Essex; and her conduct, neither marked by strict justice, or generous forgiveness, exhibited more of the caprice of an angry woman than the steady resentment of an offended monarch. What calamities would have been averted, if, instead of suffering herself to be hurried by this conflict of agitated feelings, the queen had attended to the advice of Bacon, whose care for her honour, and love for his friend, might have been safely trusted, and who, looking through the present, decided upon consequences with a certainty almost prophetic. The most profound statesman of the present day, possessed of all the light which history gives him, can add nothing te the prudent politic course which Bacon pointed out to the queen. She rejected this advice with a blind despotism that would neither be counselled with or against her inclinations, and fearing and suspecting all around her, ruined the man she wished to save, and eventually made total wreck of her own peace of mind.
It was determined that proceedings should be instituted; but, as the queen assured Bacon, only "ad castigationem non ad destructionem" not to taint the character of Essex, by which he might be rendered unable to bear office about her person, but before a selected council, "inter domesticos parietes, non luce forensi." This resolution having been formed, the queen's counsel learned in the law, were assembled to determine upon the mode of proceeding. At this meeting, it was said by one of the courtiers, that her majesty was not resolved whether Mr. Bacon should act in this trial as one of her counsel. What must have passed in his mind when he heard this observation! He knew enough of the common charities of courts to suspect every thing. He knew that the queen looked with great jealousy and distrust at his having "crossed her disposition" by his steady friendship for Essex. He saw, therefore, that whether this remark was a stratagem to sound his intentions, or that some attempt had been made to ruin him in the queen's opinion, by inducing her to suppose that he would sacrifice her to the popular clamour, of which she was too sensible, it required his immediate and vigilant attention. In this situation of no common difficulty, the conflict of his various duties, to the queen, to Essex, and to himself, were instantly present to his mind.
To the queen he was under the greatest obligation: she was the friend of his father, and had been his friend from his infancy; she consulted with him in all her difficulties; she had conferred upon him a valuable reversion of £2000 a year, had promoted him to be her counsel, and, what perhaps was her greatest kindness, instead of having hastily advanced him, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obligations to Elizabeth, of whom he never spoke but with affection for her virtues, and respect for her commanding intellect.
He had also great esteem for the virtues of Essex, and great admiration of the higher powers of his mind. He felt for him with all the hopes and fears of a parent for a wayward child, and with all the affection of a friend, from a deep feeling of his constant regard, and the grateful recollection of what, in the common world, would be deemed of more importance, an act of pecuniary kindness, not, as in these cases is generally supposed, to purchase, but to procure his liberty of thought and action.
Of his relative duties to the queen and to Essex, no man was a more competent judge than Bacon: no man was better, none so well grounded in the true rules of this difficult part of moral science. In his tract on Duty, in the Advancement of Learning, he truly says, "There is formed in every thing a double nature of good; the one as every thing is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a greater body; wehereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier. This double nature of good and the comparative thereof is much more engraven upon man, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being, according to that memorable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and instance by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, 'Necesse est ut eam non ut vivam. '" And when Essex proffered him assistance, he, weighing these duties, admonished his friend that this was not to interfere with his duty to his sovereign. His words were, "I must and will ever acknowledge my lord's love, trust, and favour towards me, after the queen had denied me the solicitor's place, when he said, You have spent your time and thoughts in my matters; I die, these were his very words, if I do not somewhat towards your fortune. My answer, I remember, was that for my fortune it was no great matter; but that his lordship's offer (which was of a piece of land worth about £1800) made me call to mind what was wont to be said when I was in France of the Duke of Guise, that he was the greatest usurer in France, because he had turned all his estate into obligations. He bad me take no care for that, and pressed it; whereupon I said, "My lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? Always it is with a saving of his faith to the king and his other lords."[69]
His considerations were not, however, confined to his duties to the queen and to Essex, but extended to the peculiar situation in which, with respect to his own worldly prospects, he was placed. He saw that, if he did not plead against Essex, all his hopes of advancement might, without any benefit to his friend, be destroyed; and that if he did plead against him, he should be exposed to obloquy and misrepresentation. The consideration of his worldly prospects were to him and to the community of great importance.
It is, perhaps, to be lamented that, formed for contemplation, he was induced, either by his necessities, or any erroneous notion of the virtue of activity, to engage in public life; but he was always unskilful to note the card of prudent lore, and it was his favourite opinion that, to dignify and exalt knowledge, contemplation and action should be nearly and strongly conjoined and united together: a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.
Having engaged and encountered all the difficulties of his profession, he was entitled, by his commanding intellect, to possess the power, which, although it had not precedence in his thoughts, followed regularly in the train of his duty; not the common vulgar power, from ostentation, loving trivial pomp and city noise; or from ambition, which, like the sealed dove, mounts and mounts because it is unable to look about it; but power to advance science and promote merit, according to his maxim and in the spirit of his own words "detur digniori." "Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground." With these prospects before him, he could not be so weak as hastily to abandon them, by yielding to that generous illusion by which the noblest minds are often raised in their own esteem by imagined disinterestedness.
With respect to his professional duties, he was in less difficulty. He knew that his conduct would be subject "to envy and peril," but knowing also that these aspersions would originate in good feeling, in the supposition of ingratitude and disregard of truth, he could not be alarmed at the clamours of those who knew not what they did. To consider every suggestion, in favour and in opposition to any opinion, is, according to his doctrine in the Novum Organum, the only solid foundation upon which any judgment, even in the calm inquiries of philosophy, can be formed. In public assemblies, therefore, agitated by passions by which the progress of truth is disturbed, he of all men knew and admired the wise constitution of our courts, in which it has been deemed expedient, that, to elicit truth, the judge should hear the opposite statements of the same or of different powerful disinterested minds, who may be more able than the suitors to do justice to the causes upon which their interests depend. A more efficacious mode to disentangle difficulty, to expose falsehood, and discover truth, was, perhaps, never devised. It prevents the influence of passions by which truth may be impeded, and calls in aid every intellectual power by which justice may be advanced. He was not likely, therefore, to be moved by the censures of those who, ignorant of the principles upon which this practice is founded, imagine advocates to be indiscriminate defenders of right and wrong, instead of being officers assisting in the administration of justice, and acting under the impression that truth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question. He was not likely to be moved by that ignorant censure which mixes the counsel with his client, instead of knowing that the advocate is indifferent on which side he pleads, whether for the most unfortunate or the most prosperous, for the most virtuous or the most abandoned member of the community; and that, if he were not indifferent, – if he were to exercise any discretion as to the party for whom he pleads, the course of justice would be interrupted by prejudice to the suitor, and the exclusion of integrity from the profession. The suitor would be prejudiced in proportion to the respectability of the advocate who had shrunk from his defence, and the weight of character of the counsel would be evidence in the cause. Integrity would be excluded from the profession, as the counsel would necessarily be associated with the cause of his client; with the slanderer, the adulterer, the murderer, or the traitor, whom it may be his duty to defend.
Such were the various conflicting duties by which a common mind might have been perplexed; but, strong in knowledge, he, without embarrassment, looked steadily at the undefined shapes of difficulty and danger, of possible mistake or mischance, and, without any of the vacillation in which contemplative genius is too apt to indulge, he saw instantly the path of his duty, and steadily advanced in it. He saw that, if he acted in obedience to general rules, he ought neither to desert the queen, or to bereave himself of the power to do good. If, not adhering to general rules, he exercised his own understanding upon the particular circumstances of the case, he saw that, by yielding to popular feeling, he might gain momentary applause, might leave Essex to a merciless opponent, and, by depriving himself of all influence over the queen, might sacrifice his friend at the foot of the throne.
He therefore wrote instantly to the queen, and, by this sagacious and determined conduct, having at once defeated the stratagems by which it was vainly hoped that he would be entangled, he, regardless of the senseless clamour of those who praise they know not what, and know not whom; of those who could neither be put in possession of his real sentiments towards Essex, or the private communications on his behalf with the queen, went right onward with his own, and the approbation of intelligence.
The following is Bacon's own account of this extraordinary event: – And then did some principal counsellors send for us of the learned counsel, and notify her majesty's pleasure unto us: save that it was said to me openly by one of them, that her majesty was not yet resolved whether she would have me ferborns in the business or no. And hereupon might arise that other sinister and untrue speech, that I hear, is raised of me, how I was a suitor to be used against my lord of Essex at that time; for it is very true, that I that knew well what had passed between the queen and me, and what occasion I had given for both of distate and distrust in crossing her disposition, by standing steadfastly for my lord of Essex, and suspecting it also to be a stratagem arising from some particular emulation, I writ to her two or three words of compliment, signifying to her majesty, "That if she would be pleased to spare me in my lord of Essex's cause, out of the consideration she took of my obligation towards him, I should reckon it for one of her greatest favours: but otherwise desiring her majesty to think that I knew the degrees of duties; and that no particular obligation whatsoever to any subject could supplant or weaken that entireness of duty that I did owe and bear to her and her service." And this was the goodly suit I made, being a respect no man that had his wits could have omitted: but nevertheless I had a farther reach in it; for I judged that day's work would be a full period of any bitterness or harshness between the queen and my lord: and therefore, if I declared myself fully according to her mind at that time, which could not do my lord any manner of prejudice, I should keep my credit with her ever after, whereby to do my lord service.
The proceedings after this communication to the queen are thus stated by Bacon: – "Here upon the next news that I heard was, that we were all sent for again; and that her majesty's pleasure was, we all should have parts in the business; and the lords falling into distribution of our parts, it was allotted to me, that I should set forth some undutiful carriage of my lord, in giving occasion and countenance to a seditious pamphlet, as it was termed, which was dedicated unto him, which was the book before mentioned of King Henry IV. Whereupon I replied to that allotment, and said to their lordships, That it was an old matter, and had no manner of coherence with the rest of the charge, being matters of Ireland: and therefore, that I having been wronged by bruits before, this would expose me to them more; and it would be said I gave in evidence mine own tales. It was answered again with good shew, that because it was considered how I stood tied to my lord of Essex, therefore that part was thought fittest for me, which did him least hurt; for that whereas all the rest was matter of charge and accusation, this only was but matter of caveat and admonition. Wherewith, though I was in mine own mind little satisfied, because I knew well a man were better to be charged with some faults, than admonished of some others; yet the conclusion binding upon the queen's pleasure directly, 'volens nolens,' I could not avoid that part that was laid upon me."[70] On the 5th June, 1600, this trial took place. It was marked by the same indecision that had characterized the whole of the queen's conduct. To give effect to her wishes that Essex should be censured, not sentenced, each man had his part allotted; and lest this mark of her disapprobation should hereafter be urged against him, she commanded that no official record should be kept of the proceedings, that he might not be rendered incapable of bearing office in her household.The privy counsel met at the lord keeper's house, and were assisted by noblemen selected for that purpose. The commissioners were eighteen, the auditory about two hundred; there was much state and solemnity in the assembly, and much humility and contrition on the part of Essex, who knelt while the commission was opened, and so remained till he had leave to rise. From this moile of conduct, which, doubtless, had been prescribed to him, he never departed but once during his examination, and he was then reminded by the lord treasurer of the course he was expected to pursue.
The case was opened by a statement, that "to command down the winds of malicious and seditious rumours wherewith men's conceits may have been tossed to and fro, the queen was pleased to call the world to an understanding of her princely course held towards the Earl of Essex, as well in herebefore protracting, as in now proceeding against him, not in the ordinary and open place of offenders and criminals, which might leave a taint upon his honour, but, on account of his penitence and submission, her majesty had ordered that the hearing should be before a great, honourable, and selected council, a full and deliberate, and yet in respect a private, mild, and gracious hearing." The chief heads of the accusation were then stated by the lawyers, who, with the exception of Bacon, either not in the court secret, or disregarding their instructions, pursued their argument with their usual pertinacity, coloured by the respective characters of the men, and of course by Sir Edward Coke, with his accustomed rancour. Bacon, on the contrary, though he was favoured with a part of the charge least likely to be injurious to Essex, still complained that he might injure his friend, and, though in array against him, evidently fought on his side.
To those persons present who were not already apprized of the queen's wishes, Bacon's speech would be considered more consistent with his affection for his friend than his duty to the queen, as it was constructed as much as possible to do him service. "I hope," he said, "that my Lord Essex himself, and all who now hear me, will consider that the particular bond of duty, which I do now, and ever will acknowledge that I owe unto his lordship, must be sequestered and laid aside, in discharge of that higher duty, which we all owe unto the queen, whose grace and mercy I cannot enough extol; whereof the earl is a singular work, in that, upon his humble suit, she is content not to prosecute him in her court of justice, the Star Chamber, but, according to his own earnest desire, to remove that cup from him, for those are my lord's own words, and doth now suffer his cause to be heard inter privatos parietes by way of mercy and favour only, where no manner of disloyalty is laid to his charge; for if that had been the question, this had not been the place." In this strain he proceeded through the whole of his address.
He constantly kept in view the queen's determination neither to injure her favourite in person nor in purse; he averred that there was no charge of disloyalty; he stated nothing as a lawyer; nothing from his own ingenious mind; nothing that could displease the queen; he repeated only passages from letters, in the queen's possession, complaining of her cruelty and obduracy; topics which she loved to have set forth in her intercourse with a man whom she was thought to have too much favoured; he selected the most affecting expressions from the earl's letter, and though he at last performed his part of the task, by touching upon Hayward's book, he established in the minds of the hearers the fact that Essex had called in the work a week after he learnt that it was published.
To those who are familiar with Bacon's style, and know the fertility of his imagination, and the force of his reasoning, it is superfluous to observe that he brought to this semblance of a trial only the shadow of a speech; and that under the flimsy veil of an accuser there may easily be detected the face of a friend.
In answer to these charges, Essex, on his knees, declared that, ever since it had pleased her majesty to remove that cup from him, he had laid aside all thought of justifying himself, or of making any contestation with his sovereign; that he had made a divorce between himself and the world, and that, rather than bear a charge of disloyalty or want of affection, he would tear his heart out of his breast with his own hands. The first part of his defence drew tears from many of his hearers; but, being somewhat touched by the sharp speeches and rhetorical flourishes of his accusers, he expressed himself with so much heat, before he had gone half through with his reply, that he was interrupted by the lord keeper, who told him "this was not the course to do him good; that he would do well to commit himself to her majesty's mercy; that he was acquitted by all present of disloyalty, of which he did not stand charged, but of disobedience and contempt; and if he meant to say that he had disobeyed, without an intention of disobedience, it was frivolous and absurd."
In pronouncing the censure, the lord keeper declared, that if Essex had been tried elsewhere, and in another manner, a great fine and imprisonment for life must have been his sentence, but as he was in a course of favour, his censure was, "That the Earl of Essex should be suspended from his offices, and continue a prisoner in his own house till it pleased her majesty to release him." The Earl of Cumberland declared, that, if he thought the censure was to stand, he would ask more time, for it seemed to him somewhat severe; and intimated how easily a general commander might incur the like, but, in confidence of her majesty's mercy, he agreed with the rest.
Of this day's proceedings a confused and imperfect account has been published by several historians,[71] and an unfair view taken of the conduct of Bacon, who could not have any as signable motive for the course they have attributed to him. The queen was evidently determined to protect her favourite. The Cecils had abated their animosity. The people were anxious for his reinstatement. Anthony Bacon was at this time living under the protection of Essex, and the brothers were in constant and affectionate intercourse.
The sentence had scarcely been pronounced, (6th June, 1600,) when Bacon's anxiety for his friend again manifested itself. On the very next day he attended the queen, fully resolved to exert his utmost endeavours to restore Essex again to favour. The account of his interview with the queen, from which his friendship and the queen's affection for Essex may be seen, is thus stated by Bacon: "As soon as this day was past, I lost no time; but the very next day following, as I remember, I attended her majesty, fully resolved to try and put in use my utmost endeavour, so far as I in my weakness could give furtherance, to bring my lord again speedily into court and favour; and knowing, as I supposed at least, how the queen was to be used, I thought that to make her conceive that the matter went well then, was the way to make her leave off there; and I remember well I said to her, 'You have now, madam, obtained victory over two things, which the greatest princes in the world cannot at their wills subdue; the one is over fame; the other is over a great mind: for surely the world is now, I hope, reasonably well satisfied; and for my lord, he did shew that humiliation towards your majesty, at I am persuaded he was never in his lifetime more fit for your majesty's favour than he is now: therefore, if your majesty will not mar it by lingering, but give over at the best, and now you have made so good a full point, receive him again with tenderness, I shall then think that all that is past is for the best.' Whereat, I remember, she took exceeding great contentment, and did often iterate and put me in mind, that she had ever said, that her proceedings should be 'ad reparationem', and not 'ad ruinam;' as who saith, that now was the time I should well perceive that that saying of her's should prove true. And farther she willed me to set down in writing all that passed that day."[72]
In a few days Bacon waited upon the queen with the narrative, who, upon hearing him read Essex's answer, which was his principal care, "was exceedingly moved in kindness and relenting," and said, "How well you have expressed my lord's part: I perceive old love will not easily be forgotten." Availing himself of these favourable dispositions, Bacon ventured to say to the queen, "he hoped she meant that of herself;" and in the conclusion suggested that it might be expedient not to let this matter go forth to the public, since by her own command no record had been kept, and that it was not well to do that popularly which she had not suffered to be done judicially. The queen assented, and the narrative was suppressed.[73]
Amidst these exertions, known at that time only to the queen, to Essex, and to his confidential friends, Bacon was exposed to great obloquy, and, at the time when he was thinking only how he could most and best serve his friend, he was threatened by the populace with personal violence, as one who had deserted and betrayed him. Unmoved by such clamour, upon which he had calculated,[74] he went right onward in his course.
To Sir Robert Cecil, and to Lord Henry Howard, the confidential friend of Essex, and who had willingly shared his banishment from court, he indignantly complained of these slanders and threats. To Lord Howard he says:[75] "My Lord, There be very few besides yourself, to whom I would perform this respect. For I contemn mendacia famæ, as it walks among inferiors, though I neglect it not, as it may have entrance into some ears. For your lordship's love, rooted upon good opinion, I esteem it highly, because I have tasted of the fruits of it; and we both have tasted of the best waters, in my account, to knit minds together. There is shaped a tale in London's forge, that beateth apace at this time, that I should deliver opinion to the queen, in my lord of Essex's cause. First, that it was premunire, and now last, that it was high treason; and this opinion, to be in opposition and encounter of the lord chief justice's opinion, and the attorney general's. My lord, I thank God, my wit serveth me not to deliver any opinion to the queen, which my stomach serveth me not to maintain; one and the same conscience of duty guiding me and fortifying me. But the untruth of this fable, God and my sovereign can witness, and there I leave it; knowing no more remedy against lies than others do against libels. The root, no question of it, is, partly some light-headed envy at my accesses to her majesty; which being begun, and continued since my childhood, as long as her majesty shall think me worthy of them, I scorn those that shall think the contrary. And another reason is, the aspersion of this tale and the envy thereof, upon some greater man, in regard of my nearness. And therefore, my lord, I pray you answer for me to any person that you think worthy your own reply and my defence. For my lord of Essex, I am not servile to him, having regard to my superior's duty. I have been much bound unto him; and, on the other side, I have spent more time and more thoughts about his well-doing than ever I did about mine own. I pray God you his friends amongst you be in the right. Nulla remedia, tam facient dolorem, quam quaæ sunt salutaria. For my part, I have deserved better than to have my name objected to envy, or my life to a ruffian's violence. But I have the privy coat of a good conscience. I am sure these courses and bruits hurt my lord more than all. So having written to your lordship, I desire exceedingly to be preferred in your good opinion and love. And so leave you to God's goodness."
The answer of Lord Howard to this letter, the best answer that could be made to the slanderers of whom Bacon complains, is as follows: "I might be thought unworthy of that good conceit you hold of me, good Mr. Bacon, if I did not sympathize with so sensitive a mind in this smart of wrongful imputation of unthankfulness. You were the first that gave me notice, I protest, at Richmond of the rumour, though within two days after I heard more than I would of it: but as you suffer more than you deserve, so I cannot believe what the greedy malice of the world hath laid upon you. The travels of that worthy gentleman in your behalf, when you stood for a place of credit; the delight which he hath ever taken in your company; his grief that he could not seal up assurance of his love by fruits, effects, and offices proportionable to an infinite desire; his study, in my knowledge, to engage your love by the best means he could devise, are forcible persuasions and instances to make me judge that a gentleman so well born, a wise gentleman so well levelled, a gentleman so highly valued by a person of his virtue, worth, and quality, will rather hunt after all occasions of expressing thankfulness, so far as duty doth permit, than either omit opportunity or increase indignation. No man alive out of the thoughts of judgment, the ground of knowledge, and lesson of experience, is better able to distinguish betwixt public and private offices, and direct measure in keeping a measure in discharge of both, to which I will refer you for the finding out of the golden number. In my own particular opinion I esteem of you as I have ever done, and your rare parts deserve; and so far as my voice hath credit, justify your credit according to the warrant of your profession, and the store of my best wishes in all degrees towards you, &c. My credit is so weak in working any strange effect of friendship where I would do most, as to speak of blossoms without giving tastes of fruits were idleness; but if you will give credit to my words, it is not long since I gave testimony of my good affection in the ear of one that neither wants desire nor means to do for you. Thus wishing to your credit that allowance of respect and reverence which your wise and honest letter doth deserve, and resting ever ready to relieve all minds (so far as my ability and means will stretch) that groan under the burden of undeserved wrong, I commend you to God's protection, and myself to the best use you will make of me. In haste from my lodging," &c.
The partisans of Essex again interfered, to raise the flames which Bacon had so judiciously suppressed, and again were the queen's ministers compelled to check their imprudence.
On the 12th of June, 1600, the lord keeper, in his usual speech in the Star Chamber to the country gentlemen, mentioned the late proceeding against the Earl of Essex, who, he observed, had acknowledged his errors, and expressed his sorrow for them; but that some wicked persons had intermeddled by libelling what her majesty had done in that point, which occasioned a proclamation to be published against such seditious practices.[76]
Notwithstanding this ill-advised conduct, the queen was desirous to remove from Essex the restraint of a keeper, when her indignation was again excited by a rumour, that Essex had been duly authorized by her to create knights, though his having conferred that honour had been made a charge against him before the commissioners. In the first moment of her displeasure she determined to rescind the honours he had bestowed Bacon advised her against this step, and recommended that a letter written by her own hand to Essex, when in Ireland, should be made public in which she had commanded to the contrary. Upon sending to Essex for her letter, he returned a submissive reply, but said that it was either lost or mislaid; and, though her anger was great at the non-production of this document, she, early in the next month, ordered him to be liberated from his keeper, but not to quit London.[77]
Upon this release, which his declining health rendered necessary, he solicited permission to retire to the house of a relation near Reading; a permission which the queen, although she commanded him to dismiss two of his friends from his service, and although disturbed and displeased, seemed inclined to grant, as she listened to friendly communications made on his behalf, and received letters from him,[78] in which, having, discovered the wisdom of his friend's advice, "that the queen could not be controlled by resistance," he was endeavouring to regain by obsequiousness the ascendancy which he had lost by his rude and headstrong violence; assuring the queen, "that he kissed her royal hand and the rod which had corrected him; that he could never recover his wonted joy till he beheld her comfortable eyes, which had been his guiding stars, and by the conduct whereof he had sailed most happily whilst he held his course in a just latitude; that now he was determined to repent him of his offence, and to say with Nebuchodonosor, my dwelling is with the beast of the field, to eat grass as an ox, and to be wet with the dew of heaven, till it shall please the queen to restore my under standing to me."[79]
This abasement gratified Elizabeth, who said, "though she did not expect that his deeds would accord with his words, yet, if this could be brought to pass with the furnace, she should be more favourable to the profession of alchymy."
Bacon, who was too wise to cross Elizabeth in the spring-tide of her anger, without waiting till it was ebbing-water, now exerted all his power to reconcile her to her favourite, whom, in his many accesses to the queen, he availed himself of every opportunity to serve; and, although he could not, without exciting her displeasure, directly communicate with him, he, by the intervention of a friend, regularly acquainted him with the progress he made in abating the queen's anger; and, the moment he was restored to liberty, the assurances of his exertions were repeated by letter, and through the whole summer were regularly imparted to Essex.
In the same spirit, and with the same parental anxiety by which all Bacon's conduct had been influenced, he wrote two letters, one as from Anthony Bacon to Essex, the other from Essex, in answer, both to be shown by Bacon to the queen; and prepared a letter to be sent by Essex directly to her majesty, the scope of which were, says Bacon, "but to represent and picture forth unto her majesty my lord's mind to be such, as I knew her majesty would fainest have had it: which letters whosoever shall see, for they cannot now be retracted or altered, being by reason of my brother's or his lordship's servants delivery, long since come into divers hands, let him judge, especially if he knew the queen, and do remember those times, whether they were not the labours of one that sought to bring the queen about for my lord of Essex his good."[80]
To such expedients did his friendship for Essex induce him to submit: expedients, which, however they may be sanctioned by the conduct of courtiers, stooping, as they suppose, to occasions, not to persons, but ill accord with the admonition of Bacon's philosophy, that "the honest and just bounds of observation by one person upon another, extend no further but to understand him sufficiently, whereby not to give him offence; or whereby to be able to give him faithful counsel; or whereby to stand upon reasonable guard and caution with respect to a man's self: but to be speculative into another man, to the end to know how to work him, or wind him, or govern him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and ingenuous." Such is Bacon's doctrine, but having, as it appears, in his youth, taken an unfortunate bias from the censures of Burleigh and Cecil, and from the frequent assertions of Elizabeth, that he was without knowledge of affairs; he affected, through the whole of his life, an overstrained refinement in trifles, and a political subtlety, which never failed to awaken the suspicions of his enemies, and was altogether unworthy of his great mind.
From these various efforts Bacon indulged the most flattering hopes of the restoration of his friend to the queen's favour, in which, if Essex had acted with common prudence, he would have succeeded; though the queen kept alive her displeasure by many passionate expressions, "that he had long tried her anger, and she must have further proof of his humility, and that her father would not have endured his perverseness;" but Bacon, who knew the depths and soundings of the queen's character, was not dismayed by these ebullitions; he saw, under the agitated surface, a constant under-current of kindness.
Bacon s account is as follows: "From this time forth, during the whole latter end of that summer, while the court was at Nonsuch and Oatlands, I made it my task and scope to take and give occasions for my lord's redintegration in his fortunes: which my intention, I did also signify to my lord as soon as ever he was at his liberty, whereby I might without peril of the queen's indignation write to him; and, having received from his lordship a courteous and loving acceptation of my good-will and endeavours, I did apply it in all my accesses to the queen, which were very many at that time; and purposely sought and wrought upon other variable pretences, but only and chiefly for that purpose. And on the other side, I did not forbear to give my lord from time to time faithful advertisement what I found, and what I wished. And I drew for him, by his appointment, some letters to her majesty; which, though I knew well his lordship's gift and style was better than mine own, yet, because he required it, alleging, that by his long restraint he was grown almost a stranger to the queen's present conceits, I was ready to perform it; and sure I am, that for the space of six weeks or two months, it prospered so well, as I expected continually his restoring to his attendance. And I was never better welcome to the queen, nor more made of, than when I spake fullest and boldest for him: in which kind the particulars were exceeding many; whereof, for an example, I will remember to your lordship one or two. As at one time, I call to mind, her majesty was speaking of a fellow that undertook to cure, or at least to ease my brother of his gout, and asked me how it went forward; and I told her majesty, that at the first he received good by it, but after in the course of his cure he found him self at a stay, or rather worse: the queen said again 'I will tell you, Bacon, the error of it: the manner of these physicians, and especially these empirics, is to continue one kind of medicine, which at the first is proper, being to draw out the ill humour; but after, they have not the discretion to change the medicine, but apply still drawing medicines, when they should rather intend to cure and corroborate the part.' 'Good Lord! madam,' said I, 'how wisely and aptly can you speak and discern of physic ministered to the body, and consider not that there is the like occasion of physic ministered to the mind: as now in the case of my lord of Essex, your princely word ever was, that you intended ever to reform his mind, and not ruin his fortune: I know well you cannot but think that you have drawn the humour sufficiently; and therefore it were more than time, and it were but for doubt of mortifying or exulcerating, that you did apply and minister strength and comfort unto him: for these same gradations of yours are fitter to corrupt than correct any mind of greatness.' "
In the latter end of August, 1600, Essex was summoned to attend at York House, where the lord keeper, the lord treasurer, and secretary signified the queen's pleasure that he should be restored to liberty. He answered that his resolution was to lead a retired life in the country, but solicited them to intercede with her majesty that, before his departure, he might once come into the presence of the queen, and kiss her hand, that with some contentment, he might betake himself to his solitary life: hopes which, however, seemed not likely to be realized, as the queen's permission for him to retire into the country was accompanied with the declaration, that, although her majesty was contented that he should be under no guard but of duty and discretion, yet he must in no sort suppose that he was freed of her indignation, or presume to approach the court, or her person.
Thus liberated, but not restored to the queen's favour, he walked forth alone, without any greetings from his summer friends.
In the beginning of September, 1600, Essex retired to the country, with the pleasing hope that the queen's affection was returning, and that he would not only be received into favour, and restored to power, but that by the influence of this affection he might secure an object of the greatest importance, a renewal of his valuable patent for the monopoly of sweet wines, which, after having enriched him for years, was now expiring.
Essex considered this renewal as one of the most critical events of his life, an event that would determine whether he might hope ever to be reinstated in his former credit and authority; but Elizabeth, though capable of strong attachments, inherited the haughty and severe temper of her father; and, being continually surrounded by the enemies of Essex, was persuaded that his lofty spirit was not sufficiently subdued; and when, at length, she was more favourably disposed towards him, he destroyed all that her own lurking partiality and the kindness of his friends had prepared for him by a letter, which, professing affection and seeking profit, was so deficient in good taste and in knowledge of the queen's temper, that she saw through all the expressions of his devotion and humility, a view only to his own interest. The queen told me, says Bacon, "that my lord had written her some very dutiful letters, and that she had been moved by them, but when she took it to be the abundance of his heart, she found it to be but a preparative to a suit for the renewing of his farm of sweet wines." To this complaint Bacon made the following characteristic and ingenious reply: "O madam, how doth your majesty construe these things, as if these two could not stand well together, which indeed nature hath planted in all creatures. For there are but two sympathies, the one towards perfection, the other towards preservation: that to perfection, as the iron tendeth to the loadstone; that to preservation, as the vine will creep towards a stake or prop that stands by it, not for any love to the stake, but to uphold itself. And therefore, madam, you must distinguish my lord's desire to do you service, is as to his perfection, that which he thinks himself to be born for; whereas his desire to obtain this thing of you is but for a sustentation."
The result, however, was, that hurt by this letter, she indignantly and somewhat coarsely refused his suit, saying, "that an unruly beast ought to be stinted of his provender." After a month's suspense, it was notified to him that the patent was confided to trustees for the queen's use.
In the storm that now (October, 1600) gathered round Essex, the real state of his mind revealed itself. "When I expected," he said, "a harvest, a tempest has arisen to me; if I be wanting to myself, my friends, and my country, it is long of others, not of myself; let my adversaries triumph, I will not follow the triumphal chariot." He who had declared his willingness "to wander and eat grass with the beasts of the field, like Nebuchadnezzar, until the queen should restore his senses," now, that this abject prostration proved fruitless, loudly proclaimed that "he could not serve with base obsequiousness; that he was thrust down into private life, and wrongfully committed to custody, and this by an old woman no less crooked in mind than in body." These ebullitions of peevish anger were duly repeated to the queen by those who hoped for his utter ruin. Elizabeth, shocked at the ingratitude of a man upon whom she had lavished so many favours; whose repeated faults she had forgiven till forgiveness became a folly, now turned away with extreme indignation from all whom she suspected of urging one word in his favour; and, remembering the constant exertions which had ever been made by Bacon on his behalf, began to think of him with distrust and jealousy. She would not so much as look at him; and whenever he desired to speak with her about law business, sent him out slighting refusals.
Bacon, acting in obedience to his own doctrine, "that the best mean to clear the way in the wood of suspicion is frankly to communicate with the party who is suspect, if he is of a noble nature," demanded the cause of this alienation, in an interview with the queen, which he has thus related: (January, 1601, Æt. 41:)—"Then, she remembering, belike, the continual, and incessant, and confident speeches and courses that I had held on my lord's side, became utterly alienated from me; and for the space of at least three months, which was between Michaelmas and New-year's-tide following, would not so much as look on me, but turned away from me with express and purpose-like discountenance wheresoever she saw me; and at such time as I desired to speak with her about law business, ever sent me forth very slight refusals, insomuch as it is most true, that immediately after New year's-tide I desired to speak with her; and being admitted to her, I dealt with her plainly, and said, 'Madam, I see you withdraw your favour from me, and now I have lost many friends for your sake, I shall lose you too: you have put me like one of those that the Frenchmen call enfans perdus, that serve on foot before horse men, so have you put me into matters of envy without place, or without strength; and I know at chess a pawn before the king is ever much played upon: a great many love me not, because they think I have been against my lord of Essex; and you love me not, because you know I have been for him: yet will I never repent me that I have dealt in simplicity of heart towards you both, without respect of cautions to myself, and therefore vivus vidensque pereo. If I do break my neck, I shall do it in a manner as Master Dorrington did it, which walked on the battlements of the church many days, and took a view and survey where he should fall: and so, madam,' said I, 'I am not so simple, but that I take a prospect of mine overthrow, only I thought I would tell you so much, that you may know that it was faith, and not folly that brought me into it, and so I will pray for you. Upon which speeches of mine, uttered with some passion, it is true her majesty was exceedingly moved; and accumulated a number of kind and gracious words upon me, and willed me to rest upon this, Gradia mea sufficit, and a number of other sensible and tender words and demonstrations, such as more could not be; but as touching my lord of Essex, ne verbum quidem. Whereupon I departed, resting then determined to meddle no more in the matter, as I saw, that it would overthrow me, and not be able to do him any good."
Bacon's anguish, when he felt that the queen's displeasure was gradually taking the form most to be dreaded, the cold and severe aspect of offended justice, can be conceived only by those who had seen his patient watchfulness over his wayward friend. Through the whole of his career, Bacon had anxiously pursued him, warning him, when it was possible, to prevent the commission of error; excusing him to his royal mistress when the warning had proved fruitless; hoping all things, enduring all things; but the time seemed fast approaching, when, urged by his own wild passions, and the ruffian crew that beset him, he would commit some act which would place him out of the pale of the queen's mercy.
Irritated by the refusal of his patent, he readily listened to the pernicious counsels of a few needy and interested followers. Essex House had long been the resort of the factious and discontented; secretly courting the Catholics, and openly encouraging the Puritans, Essex welcomed all who were obnoxious to the court. He applied to the King of Scotland for assistance, opened a secret correspondence with Ireland, and, calculating upon the support of a large body of the nobility, conspired to seize the Tower of London and the queen herself, and marshalled his banditti to effect his purposes.
The queen, who had been apprized of the unusual concourse of persons to Essex House, was now fully acquainted with the extent of his treasons. In this emergency she acted with a firmness worthy of herself. She directed the Lord Mayor of London to take care that the citizens were ready, every man in his own house, to execute such commands as should be enjoined them. To Essex she sent the lord keeper, the lord chief justice, and the Earl of Worcester, to learn the cause of this treasonable assembly. He said "that there was a plot against his life; that somewere suborned to stab him in his bed; that he and his friends were treacherously dealt with, and that they were determined on resistance." Deaf to all remonstrances, and urged by his faction, he seized and confined the officers of state, and, without plan, without arms, and with a small body of conspirators, he proceeded into the city, calling upon the citizens to join him, but calling in vain. Disappointed in his hopes, and proclaimed a traitor, after a fruitless attempt to defend himself, he was seized, and committed to the Tower.
No man knew better, or felt more deeply the duties of friendship, than Bacon: he did not think friendships mere abstractions, metaphysical nothings, created for contemplation only; he felt, as he has taught, that friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the sanctuary of our calamities; that its fruits are peace in the affections, counsel in judgment, and active kindness; the heart, the head, and the hand. His friendship, therefore, both in words and acts, Essex constantly experienced. In the wildest storm of his passions, while others suffered him to drive onward, the voice of the pilot might be heard, pointing out the sunken rocks which he feared would wreck him; and when, at last, bound hand and foot, he was cast at the feet of the queen, to undergo her utmost indignation – he still walked with him in the midst of the fire, and would have borne him off unhurt, but for the evil spirits which beset him.
It is impossible to form a correct judgment of the conduct of Bacon at this unfortunate juncture, without considering the difficulties of his situation, and his conflicting duties. Men of the highest blood and of the fairest character were implicated in the treasons of Essex: men who were, like himself, highly favoured by the queen, and in offices of great trust and importance. Bacon's obligations to Essex, and his constant efforts to serve him were well known; and the queen had of late looked coldly upon him, and might herself suspect his fidelity; for sad experience had proved to her that a monarch has no true friend. In the interval between the commitment of Essex to the Tower, and his arraignment, Bacon must have become fully aware of the facts which would condemn Essex in the eyes of all good men, and render him amenable to the heaviest penalty of the law. Awakened, as from a dream, with the startling truth that Essex was guilty as well as imprudent, he saw that all which he and others had deemed rashness was the result of a long concocted treason. In whatever light it could be viewed, the course which Essex had pursued was ruinous to Bacon. He had been bondsman again and again to the queen for the love and duty of Essex; and now he had the mortification of discovering that, instead of being open and entire with him, Essex had abused his friendship, and had assumed the dissembling attitude of humility and penitence, that he might more securely aim a blow at the very life of his royal benefactress. This double treachery entirely alienated the affections of Bacon. He saw no longer the high-souled, chivalric Essex, open as the day, lucid as truth, giving both faults and virtues to the light, redeeming in the eyes of all men the bounty of the crown; he saw only an ungrateful man, whom the fiend ambition had possessed, and knew that the name of that fiend was "Legion."
On the 19th of February, 1601, Essex and Southampton were arraigned, and, upon the trial, one of the conspirators, allured by the hope of life, made a full disclosure of all their treasons.
Unable to deny facts clearly proved against him, Essex could insist only upon his motives, which he urged with the utmost confidence, He repeated his former assertion, that there was a plot against his life, and that Cecil, Cobham, and Raleigh had driven him to desperate measures. Bacon, who appeared as one of the counsel for the crown, resisted these imputations, and said, "It is evident, my lord of Essex, that you had planted in your heart a pretence against the government of your country; and, as Pisistratus, calculating upon the affections of the people, showed himself wounded in the streets of Athens, so you entered the city with the vain hope that the citizens would join in your rebellion. Indeed, my lord, all that you have said, or can say in these matters are but shadows, and therefore methinks it were your best course to confess, and not to justify."
Essex here interrupted him, and said, "The speech of Mr. Bacon calls upon me to defend myself; and be it known, my lords, I call upon him to be a witness for me, for he being a daily courtier, and having free access to her majesty, undertook to go to the queen in my behalf, and did write a letter most artificially, which was subscribed with my name, also another letter was drawn by him to occasion that letter, with others that should come from his brother, Mr. Anthony Bacon, both which he showed the queen, and in my letter he did plead for me feelingly against those enemies, and pointed them out as particularly as was possible; which letters I know Mr. Secretary Cecil hath seen, and by them it will appear what conceit Mr. Bacon held of me, so different from what he here coloureth and pleadeth against me."
To this charge, urged in violation of the most sacred confidence, which Essex well knew would render Bacon obnoxious to the queen, and suspected by all parties, he instantly and indignantly replied, "My lord, I spent more hours to make you a good subject, than upon any man in the world besides; but since you have stirred up this point, I dare warrant you this letter will not blush to see the light, for I did but perform the part of an honest man, and ever laboured to have done you good if it might have been, and to no other end; for what I intended for your good was wished from the heart, without touch of any man's honour." After this unjustifiable disclosure, which severed the last link between them, Bacon only spoke once, and with a bitterness that showed how deeply he was wounded.
Through the whole trial Essex conducted himself with courage and firmness worthy of a better cause. Though assailed by the lawyers with much rancour, and harassed by the deepest search into his offences; though harshly questioned by his adversaries, and betrayed by his confederates, he stood at bay, like some noble animal, who fears not his pursuers, nor the death that awaits him; and when, at last, the deliberate voices of his fellows peers proclaimed him guilty, he heard the sentence with manly composure, and, without one thought of himself, sought only to save the life of his friend.
Bacon having obtained a remission of the sentence in favour of six persons who were implicated, made one more effort to serve this unhappy nobleman. He says, "For the time which passed, I mean between the arraignment and my lord's suffering, I was but once with the queen, at what time though I durst not deal directly for my lord as things then stood: yet generally I did both commend her majesty's mercy, terming it to her as an excellent balm that did continually distil from her sovereign hands, and made an excellent odour in the senses of her people: and not only so, but I took hardness to extenuate, not the fact, for that I durst not, but the danger, telling her that if some base or cruel-minded person had entered into such an action, it might have caused much blood and combustion; but it appeared well they were such as knew not how to play the malefactors, and some other words which I now omit."
All exertions, however, proved fruitless; for, after much fluctuation on the queen's part, arising from causes variously stated by historians, Essex, on the 25th of February, 1601, was executed in the Tower.The queen having been coldly received by the citizens, after the death of Essex, or moved by some other cause, was desirous that a full statement should be made of the whole course of his treasons, and commanded Bacon to prepare it. He says, "Her majesty taking a liking of my pen, upon that which I had done before, concerning the proceeding at York House, and likewise upon some other declarations, which in former times by her appointment I put in writing, commanded me to pen that book, which was published for the better satisfaction of the world: which I did but so as never secretary had more particular and express directions and instructions in every point, how to guide my hand in it: and not only so, but after that I had made a first draught thereof, and propounded it to certain principal councillors, by her majesty's appointment, it was perused, weighed, censured, altered, and made almost a new writing, according to their lordships better consideration: wherein their lordships and myself both were as religious and curious of truth, as desirous of satisfaction: and myself indeed gave only words and form of style in pursuing their direction. And after it had passed their allowance, it was again exactly perused by the queen herself, and some alterations made again by her appointment; after it was set to print, the queen, who, as she was excellent in great matters, so she was exquisite in small, noted that I could not forget my ancient respect to my Lord of Essex, in terming him ever my Lord of Essex, my Lord of Essex almost in every page of the book, which she tho-ight not fit, but would have it made, Essex, or the late Earl of Essex: whereupon of force it was printed de novo, and the first copies suppressed by her peremptory commandment." He concludes the whole with these words; "Had I been as well believed either by the queen or by my lord, as I was well heard by them both, both my lord had been fortunate, and so had myself in his fortune."
Happier would it have been for the queen, and her ill-fated favourite, had they listened to his warning voice. Essex paid the forfeiture of his unrestrained passions by the stroke of the axe, but Elizabeth suffered the lingering torture of a broken heart; the offended majesty of England triumphed, she "queened it nobly," but the envenomed asp was in her bosom; she sunk under the consciousness of abused confidence, of ill-bestowed favours, of unrequited affection: the very springs of kindness were poisoned: suspicious of all around her, and openly deserted by those who hastened to pay court to her successor, her health visibly declined, and the last blow was given to her by some disclosure made on the death-bed of the Countess of Nottingham. Various rumours have arisen regarding this interview, and the cause of the queen's grief; but the fatal result has never been doubted. From that day, refusing the aid of medicine, or food, or rest, she sat upon the floor of her darkened chamber, and gave herself up to the most unrestrained sorrow. The spirit that had kept a world in awe was utterly prostrate; and, after a splendid and prosperous reign of forty-five years, desolate, afflicted, and weary of existence, she lingered till the 24th of March, 1603, on which day she died.
Bacon's respect for the queen was more manifested after her death, and even after his own death, than during her life.
In one of his wills he desires, that, whatever part of his manuscripts may be destroyed, his eulogy "In feliciem memoriam Elizabethæ" may be preserved and published: and, soon after the accession of James to the throne, he thus speaks of the queen.
"She was a princess that, if Plutarch were now alive to write lives by parallels, would trouble him, I think, to find for her a parallel amongst women. This lady was endued with learning in her sex singular and rare, even amongst masculine princes; whether we speak of learning, language, or of science, modern or ancient, divinity or humanity: and, unto the very last year of her life, she was accustomed to appoint set hours for reading, scarcely any young student in an university more daily or more duly. As for her government, I assure myself, I shall not exceed, if I do affirm that this part of the island never had forty-five years of better times, and yet not through the calmness of the season, but through the wisdom of her regimen. For if there be considered of the one side, the truth of religion established; the constant peace and security; the good administration of justice; the temperate use of the prerogative, not slackened, nor much strained; the flourishing state of learning, suitable to so excellent a patroness; the convenient estate of wealth and means, both of crown and subject; the habit of obedience, and the moderation of discontents; and there be considered, on the other side, the differences of religion, the troubles of neighbour countries, the ambition of Spain and opposition of Rome; and then that she was solitary and of herself; these things, I say, considered, I could not have chosen a more remarkable instance of the conjunction of learning in the prince, with felicity in the people."
- ↑ "He who cannot contract his sight as well as dilate it, wanteth a great faculty;" says Lord Bacon.
- ↑ She translated from the Italian fourteen sermons concerning the predestination and election of God, without date, 8vo. See Watt's Bihliotheca Britannica, title, Ochinus and Anne Cooke.—N.B. There is a publication entitled, "Sermons to the number of twenly-five, concerning the predestination." London: Printed by J. Day, without date, 8vo.—Query, If by Lady Bacon?
- ↑ Ochinus Barnardin, an Italian monk of extraordinary merit, born at Sienna, 1487. Died 1594. Watts (S. A.) Jewel's Apologia translated by Anne Bacon, 1600, 1606, 1609, Fol. 1626, 12mo. 1685, 1719, 8vo. Sue Watts, tit. "Jewel."
- ↑ See Bacon's beautiful conclusion of Civil Knowledge, in the Advancement of Learning, p. 000.
- ↑ See Paradise Regained, b. i. "When I was yet a child," &c.—See Burns: "I saw thee seek the sounding shore," &c.—See Beanie's Minstrel: "Baubles he heeded not," &c.
- ↑ The laws of sound were always a subject of his thoughts. In the third century of the Sylva, he says, "we have laboured, as may appear, in this inquisition of sounds diligently; both because sound is one of the most hidden portions of nature, and because it is a virtue which may be called incorporeal and immateriate, whereof there be in nature but few."As one of the facts, he says in his Sylva Sylvarum, (Art. 140,) "There is in St. James's fields a conduit of brick, unto which joineth a low vault; and at the end of that a round house of stone; and in the brick conduit there is a window; and in the round house a slit or rift of some little breadth: if you cry out in the rift, it will make a fearful roaring at the window. The cause is, for that all concaves, that proceed from more narrow to more broad, do amplify the sound at the coming out.
- ↑ In the tenth century of the Sylva, after having enumerated many of the idle imaginations by which the world then was, and, more or less, always will be, misled, he says, "With these vast and bottomless follies men have been in pan entertained. But we, that hold firm to the works of God, and to the sense, which is God's lamp, lucerna Dei spiraculum hominis, will inquire with all sobriety and severity, whether there be to be found in the footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues: and what the force of imagination is, either upon the body imaginant, or upon another body."He then proceeds to state the different kinds of the power of imagination, saying it is in three kinds: the first, upon the body of the imaginant, including likewise the child in the mother's womb; the second is, the power of it upon dead bodies, as plants, wood, stone, metal, &c.; the third is, the power of it upon the spirits of men and living creatures; and with this last we will only meddle.The problem therefore is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that such a thing shall be; as that such a one will love him; or that such a one will grant him his request; or that such a one shall recover a sickness, or the like, it doth help any thing to the effecting of the thing itself.In the solution of this problem he, according to his custom, enumerates a variety of instances, and, among others, the following fact, which occurred to him when a child, for he left his father's house when he was thirteen.For example, he says, I related one time to a man, that was curious and vain enough in these things, that I saw a kind of juggler, that had a pair of cards, and would tell a man what card he thought. This pretended learned man told me, that it was a mistaking in me; for, said he, it was not the knowledge of man's thought, (for that is proper to God,) but it was the enforcing of a thought upon him, and binding his imagination by a stronger, that he could think no other card. And thereupon he asked me a question or two, which I thought he did but cunningly, knowing before what used to be the feats of the juggler. Sir, said he, do you remember whether he told the card the man thought himself, or bade another to tell it. I answered, (as was true,) that he bade another tell it. Whereunto he said, so I thought; for, said he, himself could not have put on so strong an imagination, but by telling the other the card, who believed that the juggler was some strange man, and could do strange things, that other man caught a strong imagination. I hearkened unto him, thinking for a vanity he spoke prettily. Then he asked me another question; saith he, do you remember whether he bade the man think the card first, and afterwards told the other man in his ear what he should think, or else that he did whisper first in the man's ear, that he should tell the card, telling that such a man should think such a card, and after bade the man think a card: I told him, as was true, that he did first whisper the man in the ear, that such a man should think such a card; upon this the learned man did much exult, and please himself, saying, lo, you may see that my opinion is right; for if the man had thought first, his thought had been fixed; but the other imagining first, bound his thought. Which, though it did somewhat sink with me, yet I made lighter than I thought, and said, I thought it was confederacy Between the juggler and the two servants; though, indeed, I had no reason so to think; for they were both my father's servants, and he had never played in the house before.
- ↑ An. 1573, June 10. Antonius Bacon Coll. Trin. Convict. i. admissus in matriculam Acad. Cantabr.Franciscus Bacon Coll. Trin. Convict. i. admissus in matriculam academiæ Cantabr. eodem die et anno. (Regt. Acad.)
- ↑ See the Biog. Brit. In 1565, Whitgift so distinguished himself in the pulpit, that the lord keeper recommended him to the queen.
- ↑ But the works touching books are chiefly two; first, Libraries, wherein, as in famous shrines, the relics of the ancient saints, full of virtue, are reposed. Secondly, New Editions of Authors, with correct impressions; more faithful Translations, more profitable flosses, more diligent annotations; with the like train furnished and adorned.
In a letter to Sir Thomas Bodley, he says, "and the second copy I have sent unto you, not only in good affection, hut in a kind of congruity, in regard of your great and rare desert of learning. For books are theshrines where the saint is, or is believed to be. And you, having built an ark to save learning from deluge, deserve propriety in any new instrument or engine, whereby learning should be improved or advanced."— Steph. 19. - ↑ Nor doth our trumpet summon, and encourage men to tear and rend one another with contradictions; and in a civil rage to bear arms, and wage war against themselves; but rather, a peace concluded between them, they may with joint force direct their strength against Nature herself; and take her high towers, and dismantle her fortified holds; and I thus enlarge the borders of man's dominion, so far as Almighty God in his goodness shall permit.— Adv. Learn.
- ↑ See the Advancement of Learning, under Contentious Learning. See Gibbon's Memoirs. See vol. viii. London Magazine, page 509. Let him who is fond of indulging in dream-like existence go to Oxford, and stay there; let him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with its mental twilight tempering the glare of noontide, or melloweing the shadowy moonlight; let him wander in the sylvan suburbs, or linger in her cloistered halls; but let him not catch the din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup with them, or speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants; for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and the religion gone, and the place of enchantment will melt from his embrace into thin air.
- ↑ See Advancement of Learning, under Credulity, p. 000.
- ↑ Tennison.
- ↑ Rawley—Tennison.
- ↑ I remember in Trinity College in Cambridge, there was an upper chamber, which being thought weak in the roof of it, was supported by a pillar of iron in the bigness of one's arm in the midst of the chamber; which if you had struck, it would make a little flat noise in the room where it was struck, but it would make a great bomb in the chamber beneath.—Sylva.
- ↑ See the dedication of the Novum Organum to the king. "Mortuus fortasse id effecero, ut ilia posteritati, novâ hac accensâ face in philosophiæ tenebris, perlucere possint.
- ↑ See the tract in Praise of Knowledge, p. 006.
- ↑ Ax. 90. lib. i.
- ↑ See the chapter on Vanity, in the admirable work, "Search's Light of Nature:" where the distinction between the love of excellence, as a motive for acquiring knowledge, is fully explained.
- ↑ Bacon says, First, therefore, amongst so many great foundations of colleges in Europe, I find strange that they are all dedicated to professions, and none left free to arts and sciences at large. And this I take to be a great cause, that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. For if you will have a tree bear more fruit than it hath used to do, it is not any thing you can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring of the earth, and putting new mould about the roots, that must work it. Neither is it to be forgotten, that this dedicating of foundations and dotations to professory learning, hath not only had a malign aspect und influence upon the growth of sciences, but hath also been prejudicial to states and governments. For hence it proceedeth that princes find a solitude in regard of able men to serve them in causes of state, because there is no education collegiate which is free, where such as were so disposed might give themselves to histories, modern languages, books of policy and civil discourse, and other the like enablements unto service of state. This truth, confirmed by daily experience, was, fifty years after his death, repeated by Milton, who indignantly says, "when young men quit the university for the trade of law, they ground their purposes, not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees: and if they quit it for state affairs, they betake themselves to this trust with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery, and court-shifts, and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom. After having prescribed the proper order of education, he adds. The next removal must be to the study of politics; to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies; that they may not in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great counsellors have lately shown themselves, but steadfast pillars of the state. After this they are to drive into the grounds of law and legal justice, delivered first, and with best warrant to Moses, and as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those extolled remains of Giecian lawgivers, Lycurgus, Solon, &c. and thence to all the Roman edicts and tables with their Justinian; and so to the Saxon laws of England. Milton, Education, vol. i. p. 270.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Such," says Milton, "are the errors, such the fruits of mispending our prime youth at schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned." See his Tract on Education
- ↑ This entrance to Bacon's college always forces itself on my mind when I visit the University Library of Cambridge; in which I see the portrait of Mr. Thomas Nicholson, known by the name of Maps, the proprietor of a circulating library, a laborious pioneer in literature. Under his feet are some relices from classic ground, more valuable, perhaps, for their antiquity than for their beauty. Delightful as is the love of antiquity, this artificial retrospective extension of our existence, (see Shakspeare's Sonnet, 123,) might it not be adorned, in the present times, by casts from the Elgin marbles, of which the cost does not exceed 200 l. By one of the universities (I think it is of Dublin) these casts have been procured. Let any parent of the mind, who considers the various modes by which the heart of a nation is formed, (which is beautifully described in Ramsden's sermon on the Cessation of Hostilities,) look in Boydell's Shakspeare, at Barry's Cordelia, to be found, most probably, in the Fitzwilliam collection: and let him compare it with the magnificent affecting fainting female in the Elgin marbles, and he will see the benefit which would result from the university containing these valuable relics.
- ↑ We have large and deep caves of several depths: the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom, and some of them are digged and made under great hills and mountains: so that if you reckon together the depth of the hiH and the depth of the cave, they are (some of them) above three miles deep; these caves we call the lower region, and we use them for all coagulations, indurations, refrigerations, and conservations of bodies. We use them likewise for the imitation of natural mines, and the producing also of new artificial metals, by compositions and materials.
We have high towers, the highest about half a mile in height, and some of them likewise set upon high mountains, so that the vantage of the hill with the tower is in the highest of them three miles at least. And these places we call the upper region. We use these towers, according to their several heights and situations, for insolation, refrigeration, conservation, and for the view of divers meteors, as winds, rain, snow, hail, and some of the fiery meteors.
We have great lakes, both salt and fresh; whereof we have use for the fish and fowl. We use them also for burials of some natural bodies: for we find a difference in things buried in earth, or in air below the earth; and things buried in water. We have also some rocks in the midst of the sea; and some bays upon the shore for some works, where in is required the air and vapour of the sea. We have likewise violent streams and cataracts, which serve us for many motions: and likewise engines for multiplying and enforcing of winds, to set also on going divers motions.
We have also a number of artificial wells and fountains, made in imitation of the natural sources and baths; as tincted upon vitriol, sulphur, steel, brass, lead, nitre, and other minerals.
We have also great and spacious houses, where we imitate and demonstrate meteors, as snow, hail, rain, some artificial rains of bodies, and not of water, thunders, lightnings.
We have also certain chambers, which we call chambers of health, where we qualify the air as we think good and proper for the cure of divers diseases, and preservation of health.
We have also fair and large baths of several mix tures, for the cure of diseases.
We have also large and various orchards and gardens; wherein we do not so much respect beauty, as variety of ground and soil, proper for divers trees and herbs: and some very spacious, where trees and berries are set, where of we make divers kinds of drink, besides the vineyards. In these we practise likewise all conclusions of grafting and inoculating, as well of wild trees as fruit trees, which produceth many effects.
We have also furnaces of great diversities, and that keep great diversity of heats, fierce and quick, strong and constant, soft and mild, blown, quiet, dry, moist, and the like. But above all we have heats, in imitation of the sun's and heavenly bodies, heats that pass divers inequalities, and (as it were) orbs, progresses, and returns, whereby we may produce admirable effects.
We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in the heaven, and remote places; and represent things near as afar off. We have also helps for the sight, far above spectacles and glasses.
We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds; which we use not only for new or rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials, that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man.
We have also particular pools where we make trials upon fishes, as we have said before of beasts and birds.
We have also places for breed and generation of those kinds of worms and flies which are of special use, such as are with you your silk worms and bees.
We have also precious stones of all kinds, many of them of great beauty and unknown; crystals and glasses of divers kinds. We represent also ordnance and instruments of war, and engines of all kinds; and likewise new mixtures and compositions of gunpowder, wildfires burning in water and unquenchable; also fireworks of all variety, both for pleasure and use. We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air; we have ships and boats for going under water, and brooking of seas; also swimming girdles and supporters.
We have also sound houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music, likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet.
We have also a mathematical house, where are all instruments, as well of geometry as astronomy, exquisitely made. We have also houses of deceits of the senses, &c. tc. - ↑ It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that an eminent artist, to whom, when in Paris, he sat for his portrait, was so conscious of his inability to do justice to his extraordinary intellectual endowments, that he has written on the side of his picture: Si tabula darelur digna animum mallem.
- ↑ In the Augmentis Scientiarum, lib. vi. speaking of ciphers, he says, Ut verô suspicio omnis absit, aliud inventum subjiciemus, quod certê cùm adolescentuli essemas Parisiis excogitavimus, nec etiam adhuc visa nobis res digna est quæ pereat. Watts's English translation of this part is as follows: But that jealousies may be taken away, we will annex another invention, which, in truth, we devised in our youth, when we were at Paris: and is a thing that yet seemeth to us not worthy to be lost. It containeth the highest degree of cipher, which is to signify omnia per omnia, yet so, as the writing infolding, may bear a quintuple proportion to the writing infolded; no other condition or restriction whatsoever is required.
- ↑ His meditations were both upon natural science and human sciences, as will appear from the following facts.
In his History of Life and Death, speaking of the differences between youth and old age, and having enumerated many of them, he proceeds thus: When I was a young man at Poictiers in France, I familiarly conversed with a young gentleman of that country, who was extremely ingenious, but somewhat talkative; he afterwards became a person of great eminence. This gentleman used to inveigh against the manners of old people, and would say, that if one could see their minds as well as their bodies, their minds would appear as deformed as their bodies; and indulging his own humour, he pretended, that the defects of old men's minds, in some measure corresponded to the defects of their bodies. Thus, dryness of the skin, he said, was answered by impudence; hardness of the viscera, by relentlessness; blear-eyes, by envy; and an evil eye, their down look, and incurvation of the body, by atheism, as no longer, says he, looking up to heaven; the trembling and shaking of the limbs, by unsteadiness and inconstancy; the bending of their fingers as to lay hold of something, by rapacity and avarice; the weakness of their knees, by tearfulness; their wrinkles, by indirect dealings and cunning, &c.
And again, for echoes upon echoes, there is a rare instance thereof in a place which I will now exactly describe. It is some three or four miles from Paris, near a town called Pont-Charenton; and some bird-bolt shot or more from the river of Sein. The room is a chapel or small church. The walls all standing, both at the sides and at the ends. Speaking at the one end, I did hear it return the voice thirteen several times. (Sylva, art. 249.)
There are certain letters that an echo will hardly express; as S for one, especially being principal in a word. I remember well, that when I went to the echo at Pont-Charenton, there was an old Parisian, that took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits. For, said he, call "Satan," and the echo will not deliver back the devil's name; but will say, "va t'en;" which is as much in French as "apage," or avoid. And thereby I did hap to find, that an echo would not return an S, being but a hissing and an interior sound. (Art. 750.)
So too the nature of imagination continued to interest him. In the Sylva, art. 986, he says, the relations touching the force of imagination and the secret instincts of nature are so uncertain, as they require a great deal of examination ere we conclude upon them. I would have it first thoroughly inquired, whether there be any secret passages of sympahby between persons of near blood; as parents, children, brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, wives, &c. There be many reports in history, that upon the death of persons of such nearness, men have had an inward feeling of it. I myself remember, that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days before my father's death I had a dream, which I told to divers English gentlemen, that my father's house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar. - ↑ Rawley Biog. Brit.
- ↑ This is an expression of his own, I forget where.
- ↑ My singular good lord,
My humble duty remembered, and my humble thanks presented for your lordship's favour and countenance, which it pleased your lordship, at my being with you, to vouchsafe me, above thy degree and desert: my letter hath no further errand hut to commend unto your lordship the remembrance of my suit, which then I moved unto you; whereof it also pleased your lordship to give me good hearing, so far forth as to promise to tender it unto her majesty, and withal to add, in behalf of it, that which I may better deliver by letter than by speech; which is, that although it must be confessed that the request is rare and unaccustomed, yet if it be observed how few there be which full in with the study of the common laws, either being well left or friended, or at their own free election, or forsaking likely success in other studies of more delight and no less preferment, or setting hand thereunto early, without waste of years; upon such survey made, it may be my case may not seem ordinary, no more than my suit, and so more beseeming unto it. As I forced myself to say this in excuse of my motion, lest it should appear unto your lordship altogether indiscreet and unadvised, so my hope to obtain it resteth only upon your lordship's good affection toward me, and grace with her majesty, who, methinks, needeth never to call for the experience of the thing, where she hath so great and so good of the person which recommendeth it. According to which trust of mine, if it may please your lordship both herein and elsewhere to be my patron, and to make account of me, as one in whose well-doing your lordship hath interest, albeit, indeed, your lordship hath had place to benefit many, and wisdom to make due choice of lighting places for your goodness, yet do I not fear any of your lordship's former experiences for staying my thankfulness borne in art, howsoever God's good pleasure shall enable me or disable me, outwardly, to make proof thereof; for I cannot account your lordship's service distinct from that which I to God and my prince; the performance whereof to best proof and purpose is the meeting point and rendezvous of all my thoughts. Thus I take my leave of your lordship, in humble manner, committing you, as daily in my prayers, so, likewise, at this present, to the merciful protection of the Almighty.
Your most dutiful and bounden nephew.From Grey's Inn,
this 16th of September, 1580.B. Fra.
To Lady Burghley, to speak for him to her lord.
My singular good lady,
I was as ready to shew myself mindful of my duty, by waiting on your ladyship, at your being in town, as now by writing, had I not feared lest your ladyship's short stay, and quick return might well spare me, that came of no earnest errand. I am not yet greatly perfect in ceremonies of court, whereof, I know, your ladyship knoweth both the right use, and true value. My thankful and serviceable mind shall be always like itself, howsoever it vary from the common disguising. Your ladyship is wise, and of good nature to discern from what mind every action procecdeth, and to esteem of it accordingly. This is all the message which my letter hath at this time to deliver, unless it please your ladyship further to give me leave to make this request unto you, that it would please your good ladyship, in your letters, where with you visit my good lord, to vouchsafe the mention and recommendation of my suit; wherein your ladyship shall bind me more unto you than I can look ever to be able sufficiently to acknowledge. Thus, in humble manner, I take my leave of your ladyship, committing you, as daily in my prayers, so, likewise, at this present, to the merciful providence of the Almighty.
Your ladyship's most dutiful and bounden nephew,From Grey's Inn,
this 10th of September, 1580.B. Fra. - ↑ The admission book at Gray's Inn begins in the year 1580; but the first four pages have been torn off. Bacon's name, however, appears in the list of members of the society, in the year 1581: the book abounds with Lord Bacon's autographs.
- ↑ Contemplation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst, but of that after knowledge. How fresh and exalted a pleasure did David find from his meditation in the divine law! all the day long it was the theme of his thoughts. The affairs of state, the government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, but it was this only that refreshed his mind. How short of this are the delights of the epicure! how vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash.—South.
Being returned from travel he applied himself to the study of the common law, which he took upon him to be his profusion. Notwithstanding that he professed the law for his livelihood and subsistence, yet his heart and affection was more carried after the affairs and places of state for which, if the majesty royal then had been pleased, he was most fit. The narrowness of his circumstances obliged him to think of some profession for a subsistence; and he applied himself, more through necessity than choice, to the study of the common law, in which he obtained to great excellence, though he made that (as himself said) but as an accessory, and not his principal study.—Rawley. - ↑ Dugdale, in his account of Bacon, says, in 30th Elizabeth, (being then but twenty-eight years of age) the honourable society of Gray's Inn chose him for their lent reader. Orig. p. 295.
- ↑ In the time of Lord Bacon there was a distinction between outer and inner barristers. By the following letter in 1586, it will appear that he applied to the lord treasurer that he might be called within bars.
To the right honourable the lord treasurer.
My very good lord,*
I take it as an undoubted sign of your lordship's favour unto me that, being hardly informed of me, you took occasion rather of good advice than of evil opinion thereby. And if your lordship had grounded only upon the said information of theirs, I might and would truly have upholden that few of the matters were justly objected; as the very circumstances do induce, in that they were delivered by men that did misaffect me, and, besides, were to give colour to their own doings. But because your lordship did mingle there with both a late motion of mine own, and somewhat which you had otherwise heard, I know it to be my duty (and so do I stand affected) rather to prove your lordship's admonition effectual in my doings hereafter, than causeless by excusing what is past. And yet (with your lordship's pardon humbly asked) it may please you to remember, that I did endeavour to set forth that said motion in such sort as it might breed no harder effect than a denial. And I protest simply before God, that I sought therein an ease in coining within bars, and not any extraordinary or singular note of favour. And for that your lordship may otherwise have heard of me it shall make me more wary and circumspect in carriage of myself; indeed I find in my simple observation, that they which live as it were in umbra and not in public or frequent action, how moderately and modestly soever they behave themselves, yet laborant invidia; I find also that such persons as are of nature bashful, (as myself is,) whereby they want that plausible familiarity which others have, are often mistaken for proud. But once I know well, and I most humbly beseech your lordship to believe, that arrogancy and overweening is so far from my nature, as if I think well of myself in any thing it is in this, that I am free from that vice. And I hope upon this your lordship's speech, I have entered into those considerations, as my behaviour shall no more deliver the for other than I am. And so wishing unto your lordship all honour, and to myself continuance of your good opinion, with mind and means to deserve it, I humbly take my leave.Your lordship's most bounden nephew,
Grey's Inn,
this 6th of May, 1586.Fr. Bacon.* Landa, MS. li. art. 5. Orig.
- ↑ Rawley, in his life, says, he was, after a while, sworn to the queen's counsel learned extraordinary; a grace, if I err not, scarce known before. "He was counsel learned extraordinary to his majesty, as he had been to Queen Elizabeth." Extract from Biographia Britannica, vol. i. page 373.—He distinguished himself no less in his practice, which was very considerable; and after discharging the office of reader at Gray's Inn, which he did, in 1588, when in the twenty-sixth year of his age, he was become so considerable, that the queen, who never over valued any man's abilities, thought fit to call him to her service in a way which did him very great honour, by appointing him her counsel learned in the law extraordinary: by which, though she contributed abundantly to his reputation, yet she added but very little to his fortune, as indeed in this respect he was never much indebted to her majesty, how much soever he might be in all others. He, in his apology respecting Lord Essex, says, "They sent for us of the learned council."
- ↑ There is a letter containing this expression, but I cannot find it.
- ↑ During this year he published a tract, containing observations upon libel. See p. 000.
- ↑ 10 April, Dug. Orig.
- ↑ To the right honourable the lord keeper, &c. – My very good lord. The want of assistance from them which should be Mr. Fr. Bacon's friends, makes [me] the more industrious myself, and the more earnest in soliciting mine own friends. Upon me the labour must lie of his establishment, and upon me the disgrace will light of his being refused. Therefore I pray your lordship, now account me not as a solicitor only of my friend's cause, but as a party interested in this; and employ all your lordship's favour to me, or strength for me, in procuring a short and speedy end. For though I know it will never be carried my other way, yet I hold both my friend and myself disgraced by this protraction. More I would write, but that I know to so honourable and kind a friend, this which I have said is enough. And so I commend your lordship to God's best protection, resting, at your lordship's commandment,—Essex.
- ↑ See Dug. Orig. Jud.
- ↑ In societati civili, aut lex aut vis valet—Justitia Universalis.
- ↑ 1. Of Study.
2. Of Discourse.
3. Of Ceremonies and Respect.
4. Of Followers and Friends.
5. Suitors.
6. Of Expense.
7. Of Regiment of Health.
8. Of Honour and Reputation.
9. Of Faction.
10. Of Negociating. - ↑ See Ben Jonson's description of his speaking in parliament, ante. 25.
- ↑ The following ia selected as a specimen from his first essay "Of Study:"
¶Reade not to contradict, nor to believe, but to waigh and consider.
¶ Some bookes are to be tasted, others to he swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That is, some bookes are to be read only in parties; others to be read but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention.
¶Histories make men wise, poets wittie, the mathematicks subtle, natural philosophie deepe, moral, grave; logicke, and rhetoricke able to contend. - ↑ Tennison. See note (a), p. 226.
- ↑ Apothegm 30.
- ↑ See p. 184
- ↑ Dugald Stewart.
- ↑ Of the Works of God and Man.
Of the Miracles of our Saviour.
Of the Innocency of the Dove, and the Wisdom of the Serpent.
Of the Exaltation of Charity.
Of the Moderation of Cares.
Of Earthly Hope.
Of Hypocrites.
Of Impostors.
Of the several kinds of Imposture.
Of Atheism.
Of Heresies.
Of the Church and the Scripture. - ↑ See p. 216.
- ↑ It differs from the edition of 1597 only in having the Meditationes Sacræ in English instead of Latin.
- ↑ I Coke, 121, p. 287
- ↑ Mr. Hargrave.
- ↑ 54.0 54.1 Bacon's Apology.
- ↑ Bacon's Apology.
- ↑ See Sydney Papers, 117–127. Camden and Birch.
- ↑ See Sydney Papers. Michaelmas day at noon, (vol. ii p 128,) containing the account of the different persons who hastened to court on that day.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, vol, ii. p. 129.
- ↑ Sydney Papers 130–133.
- ↑ Sydney Papers 131–139.
- ↑ Bacons Apology, vol. ii. p. 336.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, 131–139.
- ↑ Bacon's Apology, vol ii. p. 340.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 138–164.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, 149.
- ↑ Bacon's Apology, vol. ii. p. 335.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, vol. ii. 182–187, 191–193.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, vol. ii. 196–199.
- ↑ Bacon's Apology.
- ↑ See Bacon's Apology, vol. ii. p. 339.
- ↑ See particularly Hume.
- ↑ See Bacon's Apology.
- ↑ Bacon's account is as follows: – I obeyed her commandment, and within some few days after brought her again the narration, which I did read unto her in two several afternoons; and when I came to that part that set forth my lord's own answer, which was my principal care, I do well bear in mind that she was extraordinarily moved with it, in kindness and relenting towards my lord: and told me afterwards, speaking how well I had expressed my lord's part, that she perceived old love would not easily be forgotten: whereunto I answered suddenly, that I hoped she meant that by herself. But in conclusion, I did advise her, that now she had taken a representation of the matter to herself, that she would let it go no farther: "For, madam," said I, "the fire blazeth well already, what should you tumble it? And besides, it may please you to keep a convenience with yourself in this case; for since your express direction was, there should be no register nor clerk to take this sentence, nor no record or memorial made up of the proceeding, why should you now do that popularly, which you would not admit to be done judicially?" Whereupon she did agree that that writing should be suppressed; and I think there were not five persons that ever saw it.—Apology.
- ↑ His Apology to the Earl of Devonshire contains various observations to this effect: – I was not so unseen in the world, but I knew the condition was subject to envy and peril, but I resolved to endure it, in expectation of better. According to the ordinary charities of court, it was given out, that I was one of them that incensed the queen against my lord of Essex; and I must give this testimony to my lord Cecil, that one time in his house at the Savoy, he dealt with directly, and said to me, "Cousin, I hear it, but I believe it not, that you should do some ill office to my lord of Essex; for my part, I am merely passive, and not active in this action; and I follow the queen, and that heavily, and I lead her not; my lord of Essex is one that in nature I could consent with as well as with any one living; the queen indeed is my sovereign, and I am her creature, I may not lose her, and the same course I would wish you to take." Whereupon I satisfied him how far I was from any such mind.
- ↑ Birch, 459.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, vol. ii. 201.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, p. 204. Her majesty is greatly troubled with the last number of knights made by the Earl of Essex in Ireland, and purposes, by public proclamation, to command them from the place due to their dignity; and that no ancient gentleman of the kingdom gave them any place. The warrant was signed, as I heard; but by Mr. Secretary's very special care and credit, it is stayed till Sunday the lords meet in court. Mr. Bacon is thought to be the man that moves her majesty unto it, affirming, that by the law the earl had no authority to make them, being by her majesty's own letter, of her own hand written, commanded the contrary.
Her majesty had ordered the lord keeper to remove my lord of Essex's keeper from him; but a while after, being somewhat troubled with the remembrance of his making so many knights, made a stay of her former order, and sent unto the earl for her own letter, which she writ unto him to command him to make none. But with a very submissive letter, he returned answer that he had lost it or mislaid it, for he could not find it; which somewhat displeases her majesty. As yet his liberty stands upon these terms. &c., &c.--23 June, 1600. - ↑ Sydney Papers 205–7–8–12.
- ↑ Camden, 169. Birch's Elizabeth, 461. One of the letters written by Mr. Francis Bacon for the earl, and printed among the works of the former, beginning with these words, "It were great simplicity in me," &c., is much inferior to what the earl himself would have written. But there are two others, which appear to have come from his lordship's own hand, and have not yet been seen in print. The first is in these terms:"Let me beg leave, most dear and most admired sovereign, to remember the story of your own gracious goodness, when I was even at the mouth of the grave. No worldly means had power to stay me in this world but the comfort which I received from your majesty. When I was weak and full of infirmities, the increase of liberty which your majesty gave, and the gracious message which your majesty sent me, made me recover in a few weeks that strength, which my physicians in a long time durst not hope for. And now, lastly, when I should be forever disabled for your majesty's service, and by consequence made unwilling to live, your majesty at my humble supplication granted, that that cup should pass from me. These are deeply engraven in my memory, and they shall ever be acknowledged by my tongue and pen. But yet after all these, without one farther degree of your mercy your servant perisheth. Indignatio principis mors est. He cannot be said to live, that feels the weight of it. What then can your majesty think of his state that hath thus long lived under it, and yet sees not your majesty reach out your fair hand to take off part of this weight? If your majesty could know what I feel, your sweet and excellent nature could not but be compassionate. I dare not lift up my voice to speak; but my humble (now exiled, though once too happy) eyes are lifted up, and speak in their dumb language, which your majesty will answer your own chosen time. Till then no soul is so afflicted as that ofYour majesty's humblest vassal, Essex.The other letter was written on the 17th of November, the anniversary of her accession to the throne:
"Vouchsafe, dread sovereign, to know there lives a man, though dead to the world, and in himself exercised with continual torments of body and mind, that doth more true honour to your thrice blessed day, than all those that appear in your sight. For no soul had ever such an impression of your perfections, no alteration showed such an effect of your power, nor no heart ever felt such a joy of your triumph. For they that feel the comfortable influence of your majesty's favour, or stand in the bright beams of your presence, rejoice partly for your majesty's, but chiefly for their own happiness. Only miserable Essex, full of pain, full of sickness, full of sorrow, languishing in repentance for his offences past, hateful to himself, that he is yet alive, and importunate on death, if your favour be irrevocable; he joys only for your majesty's great happiness and happy greatness: and were the rest of his days never so many, and sure to be as happy as they are like to be miserable, he would lose them all to have his happy 17th day many and many times renewed with glory to your majesty, and comfort of all your faithful subjects, of whom none is accursed but your majesty's humblest vassal, Essex. - ↑ In another part of his Apology he says: "And I drew for him, by his appointment, some letters to her majesty; which though I knew well his lordship's gift and style was far better than mine own, yet, because he required it, alleging, that by his long restraint he was grown almost a stranger to the queen's present conceits, I was ready to perform it; and sure I am, that for the space of six weeks or two months it prospered so well, as I expected continually his restoring to his attendance."