tified with Shakespearean parts, and for the last eighty years every actor or actress of ambition in Germany, France, or Italy has been well content to base his or her claim to reputation on the histrionic interpretation of Shakespearean rôles. It may consequently be asserted that in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is now recognised. It is universally allowed that in knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, in command of all the force and felicity of language, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival in the literature of any nation or epoch. His unassailable supremacy ultimately springs from the versatile working of his insight and intellect by virtue of which his pen limned with unerring precision almost every gradation of thought and emotion that animates the living stage of the world. His genius enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that present themselves on the highway of life. So mighty a faculty thus sets at naught the common limitations of nationality and is acclaimed by the whole civilised world.

SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAITS.-According to Aubrey's account, Shakespeare was 'a handsome well-shaped man,' and it is to be regretted that no wholly satisfactory portrait of him exists. The rudely-carved bust on the monument in Stratford Church and the copperplate engraving on the title-page of the First Folio were honest endeavours to depict the poet's features, but are not remarkable as works of art. Both, moreover, were produced after the poet's death. Numerous paintings have from time to time during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries been claimed by owners or critics to be contemporary portraits of Shakespeare, but in no case has the claim been fully sustained. There is a likelihood, however, that the picture now in the Stratford-on-Avon Memorial Gallery, and known as the 'Flower portrait' or the 'Droeshout painting,' may be the original painting on which Droeshout based his engraving in the First Folio. Of considerable interest, too, is the Chandos portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London (named after a former owner, the Duke of Chandos); this picture was painted in the first half of the seventeenth century, and was at one time in the possession of Sir William D'Avenant. The tradition that it was from the brush of Shakespeare's friend and fellow-actor, Richard Burbage, cannot be corroborated; it was doubtless painted for an admirer of the dramatist some years after his death, from somewhat fanciful verbal descriptions of his personal appearance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-In the eighteenth century Shakespeare was edited critically for the first time, and numerous efforts were made by a long succession of editors to free the text from the incoherences which disfigured the folio version. The earliest of the critical editors of Shakespeare was Nicholas Rowe, whose edition appeared in 1709. The poet Pope brought out an edition in 1725, and this was followed in 1733 by the work of Lewis Theobald, who proved himself a masterly emendator. Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition was published in 1744. Bishop Warburton revised Pope's edition in 1747. Dr Johnson's edition appeared in 1765, and that of Edward Capell, the most industrious of all students of the text and contemporary literature, in 1768. The learned, although somewhat freakish, George Steevens greatly improved Dr Johnson's work in a reissue in 1773, which was often republished. In 1790 Edmund Malone completed an edition of high archæological value. In 1803 appeared the first variorum edition, in twenty-one volumes; this was prepared by Isaac Reed from notes made by George Steevens. The second variorum, mainly a reprint of the first, is dated in 1813; and the third and best, prepared by James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr Johnson's biographer, was published in 1821; it was largely based on material amassed by Malone. Of editions produced in the nineteenth century,

the most valuable are those prepared by Alexander Dyce in 1857; 57 Nicolaus Delius, 1854-61; by Howard Staunton, 1868-70; and by the Cambridge editors, William George Clark and Dr Aldis Wright, 1863-66. The notes to the Cambridge edition deal, however, solely with textual variations. More recent complete annotated editions are The Temple Shakespeare, edited by Mr Israel Gollancz (40 vols. 12mo, 1894-96), and The Eversley Shakespeare, edited by Professor C. H. Herford, with good introductions (10 vols. 8vo, 1899).

Elaborate materials for a biography were collected by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps in his Outlines of the Life of Shake speare (7th ed. 1887). Mr F. G. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual (1876), in his Life of Shakespeare (1886), in his History of the Stage (1890), and in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), added for the first time much useful information respecting the history of the contemporary stage and Shakespeare's relations with fellow-dramatists The latest general life of Shakespeare

and account of his works is by the writer of the present article (1st ed. November 1898; illus. ed. December 1899; Students ed 1900).

For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler's History and Antiquities (1806), John R. Wise's Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood (1861), the present writer's Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare (1890), and Mrs C. C. Stopes's Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries (1897) may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume a tentative 'Glossary of Words still used in Warwickshire to be found in Shakespeare.' Nathan Drake's Shakespeare and his Times (1817) and G. W. Thornbury's Shakespeare's England (1856) collect much material respecting Shakespeare's social environment. Francis Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807; new ed. 1839), Shakespeare's Library (ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), Shakespeare's Plutarch (ed. Skent, 1875), and Shakespeare's Holinshed (ed. W. G. BoswellStone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shakespeare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon (1874) and Dr E. A. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (1869; new ed. 1893) are valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concordances to the Plays have been prepared by Mrs Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the Poems by Mrs H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London and New York, 1895). The publications of the (Old) Shakespeare Society (1841-53), of the New Shakspere Society (1874-93), and of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft of Weimar (1865-1901) comprise many papers of value in the æsthetic, textual, historical, and biographical study of Shakespeare. The most important critical studies by Englishmen are Coleridge's Notes and Lectures (collected by T. Ashe, 1833) Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspere's Plays (1817), Professor Dowden's Shakspere, his Mind and Art (1875), Mr A. C. Swinburne's A Study of Shakespeare (1879). Reference may also be made with advantage to Thomas Spencer Baynes's Shakespeare Studies (1893), to Dr Ward's chapters on Shakespeare in his English Dramatic Literature (new ed. 1898), to Richard G. Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885), and to Mr F. S. Boas's Shakespeare and his Predecessors (1895). The essays on Shakespeare's heroines, respectively by Mrs Jameson in 1832 and Lady Martin in 1885, are pleasant reading. Among numerous German criticisms of Shakespeare, most interesting are the fragmentary notices in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Wahrheit und Dichtung, Heine's Studies of Shakespeare's Heroines (Eng. trans. 1895), and Kreyssig's Shakespeare-Fragen (Leipzig, 1871). Ulrici's Shakespeare's Dramatic Art and Gervinus's Commen taries, both of which are well known in English translations, are of comparatively smaller value. William Shakespeare, an attractive if somewhat fanciful treatise by the Danish writer Dr Georg Brandes, was published in an English translation (1898, 2 vols.). Among recent French critics of Shakespeare the most memorable are Guizot's Shakespeare et son Temps (1852); a rhapsody by the poet Victor Hugo (1864); and Alfred Mézières's Shakespeare, ses Œuvres et ses Critiques (1860), which is a saner appreciation. The latest and one of the best works on Shakespeare in Italian is Signior Federico Garlanda's Guglielmo Shakespeare: il Poeta e i' Uomo (Rome, 1900). Extensive bibliographies of Shakespeare's works and Shakespeariana are given in Lowndes's Library Manual (ed. Bohn), in Franz Thimm's Shakespeariana (1864 and 1871), in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.; skilfully classified by Mr H. R. Tedder), in the Dictionary of National Biography (by the present writer), and in the British Museum Catalogue (the Shakespearean entries in which, comprising 3680 titles, were sepa rately published in 1897).

SIDNEY LEE.

George Chapman, the translator of Homer, was born near Hitchin about 1559, is supposed to have studied at Oxford and at Cambridge, and died in 1634. Wood describes him as 'a person of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate, qualities rarely meeting in a poet.' He enjoyed the royal patronage of King James and Prince Henry, and the friendship of Spenser, Jonson, and Shakespeare. According to Oldys, he 'preserved in his conduct the true dignity of poetry, which he compared to the flower of the sun, that disdains to open its leaves to the eye of a smoking taper.' Chapman wrote early and copiously for the stage.

His

first play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, was produced in 1596. All Fools, a good comedy, probably belongs to 1599. In 1598 he completed Marlowe's Hero and Leander, but not with Marlowe's music. After some experiments on parts of the Iliad, the great and complete translation was produced in 1611 in fourteen-syllable rhyming couplets. Chapman's equivalents for the compound Homeric epithets, the far-shooting Phoebus, the ever-living gods, the many-headed hill, silverfooted Thetis, the triple-feathered helm, highwalled Thebes, the strong-winged lance, &c., were happily chosen: vigour, old-world majesty, and passion are not awanting; and though Pope's version put Chapman's out of fashion, though some of Chapman's merits are quite unhomeric, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Keats restored the older translation to favour, and spite of obscurities, conceits, harshnesses, and serious slips in Greek, the translation still ranks as a great achievement. The Odyssey (1616) followed in ten-syllable couplets (1616). The conclusion of Book xix. of the Iliad runs thus in Chapman :

She thunder'd, feet of men and horse importun'd her
In midst of all, divine Achilles his fair person arm'd,
His teeth gnash'd as he stood, his eyes, so full of fire,
they warm'd,

Unsuffer'd grief and anger at the Trojans so combin'd.
His greaves first us'd, his goodly curets on his bosom
shin'd;
[the moon :
His sword, his shield that cast a brightness from it like
And as from sea sailors discern a harmful fire, let run
By herdsmen's faults, till all their stall flies up in
wrastling flame,
[none came
Which being on hills is seen far off; but being alone,
To give it quench; at shore no neighbours, and at sea
their friends

Driven off with tempests; such a fire from his bright shield extends

His ominous radiance; and in heaven impress'd his fervent blaze. [place His crested helmet, grave and high, had next triumphant On his curl'd head, and like a star it cast a spurry ray, About which a bright thick'ned bush of golden-hair did play, [arm'd, he tried Which Vulcan forg'd him for his plume. Thus compleete How fit they were, and if his motion could with ease abide Their brave instruction: and so far they were from hind'ring it,

That to it they were nimble wings, and made so light his spirit, [to air. That from the earth the princely captain they took up Then from his armoury he drew his lance, his father's

The fair scourge then Automedon takes up, and up
To guide the horse: the fight's seat last Achilles took
behind,
[heaven had shin'd.
Who look'd so arm'd as if the sun there fall'n from
And terribly thus charg'd his steeds: Xanthus and Balius,
Seed of the harpy, in the charge ye undertake of us,
Discharge it not, as when Patroclus ye left dead in field.
But when with blood, for this day's fast observ'd, revenge
shall yield

Our heart satiety, bring us off. Thus, since Achilles spake
As if his aw'd steeds understood, 'twas Juno's will to make
Vocal the palate of the one, who shaking his fair head,
(Which in his mane, let fall to earth, he almost buried,)
Thus Xanthus spake: Ablest Achilles, now (at least)

our care

Shall bring thee off; but not far hence the fatal minutes are Of thy grave ruin. Nor shall we be then to be reprov'd, But mightiest fate, and the great God. Nor was thy best belov'd

Spoil'd so of arms by our slow pace, or courage's empaire; The best of gods, Latona's son, that wears the golden hair, Gave him his death's wound, though the grace he gave to Hector's hand.

We, like the spirit of the west, that all spirits can command [must go,

For pow'r of wing, could run him off: but thou thyself So fate ordains, God and a man must give thee overthrow. This said, the Furies stopp'd his voice. Achilles, far [presage

in rage,

6

and comedies up to 1620, or later; yet of the dozen that have descended to us, not one possesses real vivifying dramatic power. In didactic observation and description he is sometimes happy, and hence he has been praised for possessing more thinking' than many of his contemporaries. His tendency to an epic method of narrative is frequently apparent and injurious to effect. But in many single passages he shows great poetic power and beauty, surpassing in this respect, in Professor Ward's judgment, all the Elizabethans but Shakespeare. Eastward Hoe was written in conjunction with Jonson and Marston, but is mainly Chapman's, according to Ward, who pronounces it one of the liveliest and healthiest, as it is one of the best-constructed comedies of the age.' As to the imprisonment of the authors for their political allusions, see below in the article on Jonson. The Gentleman Usher contains at least one fine scene (Act iv.). Its sequel, Monsieur d'Olive, is, Professor Ward thinks, one of our most diverting Elizabethan comedies.' Bussy d'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois give a striking picture of the intrigues at the court of Henry III. of France, and illustrate Chapman's love of similes and metaphors, as well as the

of Hesiod. The first act of All Fools contains some of Chapman's most characteristic work; it opens thus with a conversation between the three friends, Rinaldo, Fortunio, and Valerio :

Rinaldo. Can one self cause, in subjects so alike
As you two are, produce effect so unlike ?
One like the Turtle all in mournful strains,
Wailing his fortunes; th' other like the Lark
Mounting the sky in shrill and cheerful notes,
Chanting his joys aspired: and both for love?
In one, love raiseth by his violent heat
Moist vapours from the heart into the eyes,

From whence they drown his breast in daily showers:
In th' other, his divided power infuseth

Only a temperate and most kindly warmth,
That gives life to those fruits of wit and virtue,
Which the unkind hand of an uncivil father
Had almost nipp'd in the delightsome blossom.
Fortunio. O, brother,

power and beauty of his versification; occasionally bombast is mixed with true poetry, though not so as to justify Dryden's denunciations. The Conspiracie and the Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron are undramatic, but contain some fine things. In a sonnet prefixed to the comedy of All Fools (1605), Chapman says that he was marked with age for aims of greater weight.'

Other plays are May Day (1611), The Widow's Tears (1612), and Cæsar and Pompey (1631). The posthumous tragedies, Alphonsus and Revenge for Honour, bear his name with doubtful right. The former, on the candidature of Richard of Cornwall for the imperial throne, is appallingly bloody in its incidents, and exhibits greater horrors than Kyd's worst passages. A peculiarity is, that the dialogue is freely interspersed with German words and lines, printed in German black letter, but so monstrously misspelt as at times to be barely intelligible. Ball, a comedy, and The Tragedie of Chabot were the joint work of Chapman and Shirley. The best of Chapman's dramatic works, Eastward Hoe and Chabot, were written in collaboration with others. Among Chapman's non-dramatic works are Enthymia Raptus, Petrarch's Seven Penitentiall Psalmes, The Divine Poem of Musaus, and The Georgicks

The

By strait guard of her father.

Rin. I dare swear,

love rewards our services

With a most partial and injurious hand, If you consider well our different fortunes : Valerio loves, and joys the dame he loves; I love, and never can enjoy the sight

Of her I love; so far from conquering In my desires' assault, that I can come To lay no battery to the fort I seek, All passages to it so strongly kept,

If just desert in love measured reward,
Your fortune should exceed Valerio's far;
For I am witness (being your bedfellow)
Both to the daily and the nightly service
You do unto the deity of love,

In vows, sighs, tears, and solitary watches.
He never serves him with such sacrifice,
Yet hath his bow and shafts at his command:
Love's service is much like our humorous lords,
Where minions carry more than servitors,
The bold and careless servant still obtains ;
The modest and respective nothing gains;
You never see your love unless in dreams,
He-Hymen puts in whole possession.
What different stars reign'd when your loves were born,
He forced to wear the willow, you the horn?
But, brother, are you not ashamed to make
Yourself a slave to the base lord of love,
Begot of fancy, and of beauty born?
And what is beauty? a mere quintessence,
Whose life is not in being, but in seeming;
And therefore is not to all eyes the same,
But like a cozening picture, which one way
Shows like a crow, another like a swan ;
And upon what ground is this beauty drawn?

Upon a woman, a most brittle creature,
And would to God (for my part) that were all.
For. But tell me, brother, did you never love?
Rin. You know I did, and was beloved again,
And that of such a dame as all men deem'd
Honour'd, and made me happy in her favours :
Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer

Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare, they would have made
An Ethiop beautiful: at least so thought
By such as stood aloof, and did observe her
With credulous eyes; but what they were indeed
I'll spare to blaze, because I loved her once,
Only I found her such, as for her sake,

I vow eternal wars against their whole sex,
Inconstant shuttlecocks, loving fools and jesters,
Men rich in dirt, and titles sooner won
With the most vile than the most virtuous;

Found true to none: if one amongst whole hundreds
Chance to be chaste, she is so proud withal,
Wayward and rude, that one of unchaste life
Is oftentimes approved a worthier wife :
Undressed, sluttish, nasty to their husbands,
Spunged up, adorned, and painted to their lovers :
All day in ceaseless uproar with their households,
If all the night their husbands have not pleased them;
Like hounds, most kind, being beaten and abused;
Like wolves, most cruel, being kindliest used.

For. Fie, thou profanest the deity of their sex.
Rin. Brother, I read that Egypt heretofore
Had Temples of the richest frame on earth;
Much like this goodly edifice of women:
With alabaster pillars were those Temples
Upheld and beautified, and so are women,
Most curiously glazed, and so are women,
Cunningly painted too, and so are women,
In outside wondrous heavenly, so are women;
But when a stranger view'd those fanes within,
Instead of gods and goddesses, he should find
A painted fowl, a fury, or a serpent ;
And such celestial inner parts have women.
Valerio. Rinaldo, the poor fox that lost his tail,
Persuaded others also to lose theirs :
Thyself, for one perhaps that for desert
Or some defect in thy attempts refused thee,
Revilest the whole sex, beauty, love, and all.
I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun;
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines,
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of Art and Nature,
Are given in vain to men, so without love
All beauties bred in women are in vain ;
All virtues born in men lie buried,
For love informs them as the sun doth colours,
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers;
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse:
Oh, 'tis the Paradise, the heaven of earth;
And didst thou know the comfort of two hearts,
In one delicious harmony united,

As to joy one joy, and think both one thought,
Live both one life, and therein double life;

To see their souls met at an interview
In their bright eyes, at parley in their lips,
Their language, kisses: and to observe the rest,
Touches, embraces, and each circumstance
Of all love's most unmatched ceremonies :
Thou wouldst abhor thy tongue for blasphemy.
Oh! who can comprehend how sweet love tastes
But he that hath been present at his feasts?

Rin. Are you in that vein too, Valerio?
'Twere fitter you should be about your charge,
How plough and cart goes forward; I have known
Your joys were all employ'd in husbandry,
Your study was how many loads of hay

A meadow of so many acres yielded;
How many oxen such a close would fat.
And is your rural service now converted
From Pan to Cupid? and from beasts to women?
Oh, if your father knew this, what a lecture
Of bitter castigation he would read you!

Val. My father? why, my father? does he think
To rob me of myself? I hope I know

I am a gentleman; though his covetous humour
And education hath transform'd me baily,
And made me overseer of his pastures,

I'll be myself in spite of husbandry. [Enter GRATIANA.
And see, bright heaven, here comes my husbandry.
Here shall my cattle graze, here Nectar drink,
Here will I hedge and ditch, here hide my treasure:
O poor Fortunio, how wouldst thou triumph,
If thou enjoy'd'st this happiness with my sister!

For. I were in heaven if once 'twere come to that.
Rin. And methinks 'tis my heaven that I am past it.

'Young men think old men are fools: but old men know young men are fools' is well put. 'Death and his brother sleep,' so often and so variously linked in contrast by the poets, are by Chapman thus conjoined:

Since sleep and death are called the twins of nature. We are reminded of Bunyan by:

He that to nought aspires doth nothing need:
Who breaks no law is subject to no king.

A homely simile is :

Shoes ever overthrow that are too large,

And hugest cannon burst with overcharge.

There are many ways of putting what Chapman words so: 'An Englishman, being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.' 'Man is a name of honour for a king' is a pithy single line or sentence; so are 'He that is one man's slave is free from none;' ;''Flatterers look like friends as wolves like dogs;' 'Danger the spur of great minds;' 'A death for love's no death, but martyrdom.' What Keats felt when he heard Chapman speak out loud and bold' we know from Keats's most famous sonnet, 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.'

A complete edition of Chapman's works was published in three volumes in 1873-75, with an essay by Mr Swinburne, also separately published (1875); the volume of the plays was edited by Mr R. H. Shepherd. Another three-volume edition of the plays (1873) retained the old spelling, including the preposterous German of Alphonsus. Dr Carl Elze edited Alphonsus in 1867. Hooper's is the standard edition of the Homer (5 vols. 1857).

Francis Bacon.

Lord Bacon is the name by which contemporaries and succeeding generations have agreed to speak of the aggressive intellectual reformer, the great English writer, the servile statesman, the corrupt Chancellor, who by etiquette and the rules of the peerage should rather be spoken of as Lord Verulam or Viscount St Albans; in his Apophthegms he spoke of himself as 'the Lord Bacon,' as well as 'the Lord St Albans.' Born at York House in the Strand on the 22nd of January 1561, Francis Bacon was the younger son by his second marriage of Sir Nicholas Bacon, LordKeeper of the Great Seal; his mother, Ann, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was a lady of strong will and great accomplishments, and a zealous Calvinist. In childhood he displayed such vivacity of intellect and sedateness of behaviour that Queen Elizabeth used to call him her young Lord-Keeper; and at the age of twelve he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he early became disgusted with the Aristotelian philosophy, which still held unquestioned sway in the great English schools of learning. This dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle, as Bacon himself declared to his secretary, Dr Rawley, he fell into, 'not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man.' After spending two years at Cambridge, he began the study of law at Gray's Inn (1576); but that same year he went to France for about three years with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador. His observations on foreign affairs were afterwards published in a work entitled Of the State of Europe. By the sudden death of his father in 1579, he was compelled to return hastily to England and engage in some profession. After in vain soliciting his uncle, Lord Burghley, to procure for him such a provision from Government as might allow him to devote his time to literature and philosophy, he returned to the study of the law, was called to the Bar in 1582, and became a bencher of his inn in 1586. While engaged in practice as a barrister he did not forget philosophy; early in life he sketched his vast (but never completed) work, The Instauration of the Sciences. He became member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis in 1584, for Taunton in 1586, and for Middlesex in 1593. In 1584 he sought to attract the queen's attention by addressing to her a paper of advice in which, with a boldness unique in a barrister of three-and-twenty, he argued for more tolerance in the treatment of recusants; and in 1589 he wrote a pamphlet on the controversies in the Anglican Church, in which he pleaded for elasticity in matters of doctrine and discipline. As an orator he is highly extolled by Ben Jonson.

In one of his speeches he distinguished himself by taking the popular side in a question respecting some large subsidies demanded by the court, and gave great offence to Her Majesty. To Lord Burghley and his son, Robert Cecil, Bacon continued to pay court in hope of advancement, til! at length, finding himself disappointed in that quarter, he attached himself to Burghley's rival, Essex, who, with all the ardour of a generous friendship, endeavoured in vain to procure for him in 1593 the office first of Attorney and then of Solicitor General, and in 1596 that of Master of the Rolls. Essex in some degree soothed Bacon's disappointment by presenting him with an estate at Twickenham, which he afterwards sold for £1800. Bacon recommended his patron to resort to petty flattery of the queen, misunderstanding his frank character; and advised him to undertake the suppression of Tyrone's rebellion (1598). When Essex was brought to trial after his return from Ireland in disgrace in 1599, the friend whom he had so greatly obliged was associated at his own request (in a subordinate capacity) with the prosecuting counsel, in the hope, as he said, of aiding his patron; but Essex was dismissed from all his offices. When Essex broke into open rebellion in 1601, Bacon voluntarily endeavoured to secure his conviction on the capital charge of treason. He complied, moreover, after the earl's execution, with the queen's request that he should write A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert, Earl of Essex, which was printed by authority; and in another paper he defended his own conduct on the ground that the claims of the State must override those of friendship. In Elizabeth's last years Bacon tried to mediate between Crown and Parliament, and himself advised tolerance in Ireland.

After the accession of James the fortunes of Bacon began to improve. He made extravagant professions of loyalty, planned schemes for the union of England and Scotland, and proved that the difficulties between king and commons could easily be arranged. He was knighted in July 1603, and in subsequent years obtained successively the offices of King's Counsel, Solicitor-General (1607), and Attorney-General (1613). In the execution of his duties he did not scruple to lend himself to the most arbitrary measures of the court, and in 1615 he even assisted in an attempt to extort a confession of treason, under torture, from an old clergyman of the name of Peacham. Torture was applied, not at Bacon's suggestion, but with his assent, and he examined the prisoner while on the rack, without result. Peacham was then tried in King's Bench, Bacon undertaking to confer with each judge so as to secure a conviction. Coke resisted Bacon's advice, and in consequence Bacon helped to get Coke dismissed.

Although his income had now been greatly enlarged by the emoluments of office and a marriage