Page images
PDF
EPUB

which house he was a member; where he erected that elegant pile or structure commonly known by the name of the Lord Bacon's Lodgings, which he inhabited by turns the most part of his life (some few years only excepted) unto his dying day. In which house he carried himself with such sweetness, comity, and generosity, that he was much revered and beloved by the readers and gentlemen of the house.

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 estate; for which, if the Majesty Royal then had been pleased, he was most fit. In his younger years he studied the service and fortunes (as they call them) of that noble but unfortunate earl, the Earl of Essex; unto whom he was, in a sort, a private and free counselor, and gave him safe and honorable advice, till in the end the earl inclined too much to the violent and precipitate counsel of others, his adherents and followers; which was his fate and ruin.

His birth and other capacities qualified him above others of his profession to have ordinary accesses at court, and to come frequently into the Queen's eye, who would often grace him with private and free communication, not only about matters of his profession or business in law, but also about the arduous affairs of estate; from whom she received from time to time great satisfaction. Nevertheless, though_she_cheered him much with the bounty of her countenance, yet she never cheered him with the bounty of her hand, having never conferred upon him any ordinary place or means of honor or profit, save only one dry reversion of the Register's Office in the Star Chamber, worth about 1600l. per annum, for which he waited in expectation either fully or near twenty years; of which his lordship would say in Queen Elizabeth's

time, That it was like another man's ground buttaling upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn; (nevertheless, in the time of King James it fell unto him); which might be imputed, not so much to Her Majesty's averseness or disaffection towards him as to the arts and policy of a great statesman then, who labored by all industrious and secret means to suppress and keep him down, lest, if he had risen, he might have obscured his glory.

But though he stood long at a stay in the days of his mistress Queen Elizabeth, yet after the change, and coming in of his new master King James, he made a great progress; by whom he was much comforted in places of trust, honor, and revenue. I have seen a letter of his lordship's to King James, wherein he makes acknowledgment That he was that master to him that had raised and advanced him nine times; thrice in dignity, and six times in office. His offices (as I conceive) were Counsel Learned Extraordinary to His Majesty, as he had been to Queen Elizabeth; King's Solicitor-General; His Majesty's Attorney-General; Counselor of Estate, being yet but Attorney; Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England; lastly, Lord Chancellor; which two last places, though they be the same in authority and power, yet they differ in patent, height, and favor of the prince; since whose time none of his successors, until this present honorable lord, did ever bear the title of Lord Chancellor. His dignities were first Knight; then Baron of Verulam; lastly, Viscount Saint Alban; besides other good gifts and bounties of the hand, which His Majesty gave him, both out of the Broad Seal and out of the Alienation Office, to the value in both of eighteen hundred pounds per annum; which, with his manor of Gorhambury, and other lands and possessions near thereunto adjoining, amounting to a third part more, he retained to his dying day.

Towards his rising years, not before, he entered into a married estate, and took to wife Alice, one of the daughters and coheirs of Benedict Barnham, Esquire and Alderman of London, with whom he received a sufficiently ample and liberal portion in marriage. Children he had none; which, though they be the means to perpetuate our names after our deaths, yet he had other issues to perpetuate his name, the issues of his brain; in which he was ever happy and admired, as Jupiter was in the production of Pallas. Neither did the want of children detract from his good usage of his consort during the intermarriage, whom he prosecuted with much conjugal love and respect, with many rich gifts and endowments, besides a robe of honor which he invested her withal, which she wore until her dying day, being twenty years and more after his death.

[ocr errors]

In

The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil affairs and from an active life, he employed wholly in contemplation and studies a thing whereof his lordship would often speak during his active life, as if he affected to die in the shadow and not in the light; which also may be found in several passages of his works. which time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin, which I will enumerate (as near as I can) in the just order wherein they were written: The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh; Abcedarium Naturæ, or a metaphysical piece, which is lost; Historia Ventorum; Historia Vitæ et Mortis ; Historia Densi et Rari, not yet printed; Historia Gravis et Levis, which is also lost; a Discourse of a War with Spain; a Dialogue touching an Holy War; the fable of The New Atlantis; a Preface to a Digest of the Laws of England; the beginning of the History of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; De Augmentis Scientiarum, or The Advancement of Learning, put into Latin, with several

enrichments and enlargements; Counsels Civil and Moral, or his book of Essays, likewise enriched and enlarged; the Conversion of Certain Psalms into English Verse; the translation into Latin of the History of King Henry the Seventh, of the Counsels Civil and Moral, of the Dialogue of the Holy War, of the fable of The New Atlantis, for the benefit of other nations; his revising of his book De Sapientia Veterum; Inquisitio de Magnete; Topica Inquisitionis de Luce et Lumine-both these not yet printed; lastly, Sylva Sylvarum, or the Natural History. These were the fruits and productions of his last five years. His lordship also designed, upon the motion and invitation of his late Majesty, to have written the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; but that work perished in the designation merely, God not lending him life to proceed further upon it than only in one morning's work; whereof there is extant an ex ungue leonem, already printed in his lordship's Miscellany Works.

There is a commemoration due as well to his abilities and virtues as to the course of his life. Those abilities which commonly go single in other men, though of prime and observable parts, were all conjoined and met in him. Those are sharpness of wit, memory, judgment, and elocution. For the former three, his books do abundantly speak them, which with what sufficiency he wrote, let the world judge; but with what celerity he wrote them, I can best testify. But for the fourth, his elocution, I will only set down what I heard Sir Walter Raleigh once speak of him by way of comparison (whose judgment may well be trusted), That the Earl of Salisbury was an excellent speaker, but no good penman; that the Earl of Northampton (the Lord Henry Howard) was an excellent penman, but no good speaker; but that Sir Francis Bacon was eminent in both.

I have been induced to think that if there were a beam of knowledge derived from God upon any man in these modern times, it was upon him. For though he was a

great reader of books, yet he had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds and notions from within himself; which, notwithstanding, he vented with great caution and circumspection. His book of Instauratio Magna (which in his own account was the chiefest of his works) was no slight imagination or fancy of his brain, but a settled and concocted notion, the production of many years' labor and travail. I myself have seen at the least twelve copies of the Instauration, revised year by year, one after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof, till at last it came to that model in which it was committed to the press; as many living creatures do lick their young ones till they bring them to their strength of limbs.

In the composing of his books he did rather drive at a masculine and clear expression than at any fineness or affectation of phrases, and would often ask if the meaning were expressed plainly enough, as being one that accounted words to be but subservient or ministerial to matter, and not the principal. And if his style were polite, it was because he could do no otherwise. Neither was he given to any light conceits, or descanting upon words, but did ever purposely and industriously avoid them; for he held such things to be but digressions or diversions from the scope intended, and to derogate from the weight and dignity of the style.

He was no plodder upon books, though he read much, and that with great judgment, and rejection of impertinences incident to many authors; for he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies, as walking, or taking the air abroad in his coach, or some other befitting recreation; and yet he would lose no time, inasmuch as upon his first and immediate return he would fall to reading again, and so suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement.

« PreviousContinue »