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.1

which when he is nearest flieth 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, 1596,2 Mr. Sergeant To the queen, Bacon applied by a letter worthy Fleming was appointed solicitor-general, to the surof them both. He addressed her respectfully, but prise of the public, and the deep-felt mortification with a full consciousness that he deserved the ap- of Bacon, and of his patron and friend, Lord Essex. pointment, and that he had not deserved the re- The mortification of Essex partook strongly of the primand he had received from her majesty, for the extremes of his character; of the generous regard honest exercise of his duty in parliament. Apolo- of wounded affection, and the bitter vexation of gizing for his boldness and plainness, he told the wounded pride; he complained that a man every queen, "that his mind turned upon other wheels way worthy had “fared ill, because he had made than those of profit; that he sought no great mat- | him a mean and dependence;" but he did not rest ter, but a place in his profession, often given to here: he generously undertook the care of Bacon's younger men; that he had never sought her but future fortunes, and, by the gift of an estate, worth by her own desire, and that he would not wrong about £1800, at the beautiful village of Twickenhimself by doing it at that time, when it might ham, endeavoured to remunerate him for his great be thought he did it for profit; and that if her loss of time and grievous disappointment. 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 prac

tice.

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,

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, emTo the right honourable the lord keeper, &c.-My very good lord, The want of assistance from them which should be Mr. ployed him in her service: and some effort was Fr. Bacon's friends, makes [me] the more industrious my-made to create a new vacancy by the advancement self, and the more earnest in soliciting mine own friends. Upon me the labour must lie of his establishment, and upon of Fleming. 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 any 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 put into practice.

commandment,-ESSEX.

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

2 See Dug. Orig. Jud.

In the year 1596 Bacon completed a valuable in the soldiery, chiefly volunteers, and by the contract upon the elements and use of the common tentions of their officers, too equal to be easily 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.

L

fall. It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out | pretend, and I know it will be impossible for me, by 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 selfwisdom to have pinioned."

any pleading of mine, to reverse the judgment either of Esop's cock, that preferred the barleycorn before the gem; or of Midas, that, being chosen judge between 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 whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not. • Justificata est sapientia a filiis suis:'"* 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 character

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 needle-istic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be works 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.1

accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties."

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,5 are in the first edition in Latin, and have been partly incorporated into subsequent editions of the Essays, and into the Advancement of Learning.

His own estimate of the value of this work is thus stated in his letter to the Bishop of Win- The Colours of Good and Evil, are ten in numchester: "As for my Essays, and some other par-ber, and were afterwards inserted in the Advanceticulars of that nature, I count them but as the re-ment of Learning, in his tract on Rhetoric. creations of my other studies, and in that manner Such was the nature of his first work, which purpose to continue them; though I am not ig-was gratefully received by his learned contemponorant that these kind of writings would, with raries, as the little cloud seen by the prophet, and less pains and assiduity, perhaps yield more lus- welcomed as the harbinger of showers that would tre and reputation to my name than the others I fertilize the whole country. have in hand."

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 the 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,1 and composed a law tract, not published until some years after his death, entitled the History of the Alienation Of fice.

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, 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

In the year 1599, the celebrated case of Per-detach him from his professional studies?" petuities, 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; 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 arguments, 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

It differs from the edition of 1597 only in having the Meditationes Sacræ in English instead of Latin. 21 Coke, 121, p. 287.

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 nc

• Mr. Hargrave.

cessary, therefore, that some vigorous measures | lord, stand upon two feet, and fly not upon two 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.

wings. The two feet are the two kinds of justice, commutative and distributive: use your greatness for advancing of merit and virtue, and relieving wrongs and burdens; you shall need no other art or fineness: but he would tell me, that opinion came not from my mind, but from my robe. But this 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."

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 ve

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 constant-hemency and asseveration as I could, that absence ly, 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 a 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 pang; 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

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."

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 dis..

Bacon's Apology.