Bacon for the loss. He gave him a piece of land at Twickenham, which Bacon afterwards sold for £1800. For a moment this failure daunted Bacon. After so discouraging an experience he seriously considered with himself whether it were not wiser for him altogether to forsake the law, the prizes in which seemed beyond his reach, and devote himself entirely to the scientific study which was his true end in life. It would have been better for his fame had he yielded to the promptings of the inner voice. But he was in need of money. With conscious misgivings he resolved to keep to the difficult path on which he had embarked. Essex dis Bacon. The outlook did not immediately grow brighter. Closer acquaintance with Essex convinced Bacon that he was not the man either to carry through any far-reaching political reforms or to aid his own advancement. appoints He was proving himself captious and jealoustempered. He was not maintaining his hold upon the queen's favour. Bacon energetically urged on him petty tricks of conduct whereby he might win and retain the queen's favour. He drew up a series of obsequious speeches which would fit a courtier's lips and might convince a sovereign that the man who spoke them to her deserved her confidence. one of The govern Ireland. Finally Bacon sought a bold means of release from a doubtful situation. He thoroughly appreciated the difficult problem which the government of Ireland offered Elizabethan statesmen, and he plainly told Essex ment of that Ireland was his destiny; Ireland was the aptest particulars for your Lordship to purchase honour on.' Bacon steadily pressed his patron to seek the embarrassing post of Governor or Lord-Deputy of the distracted country. The counsel took effect. The arduous office was conferred on Essex. His patron's case, as it presented itself to Bacon's tortuous mind, was one of kill or cure. Glory was to be gained by pacifying Ireland, by bringing her under peaceful rule. Infamy, enforced withdrawal from public life, was the reward of failure. The task was admittedly hard, and called for greater prudence than any of which Essex had yet given signs. But Bacon, from his point of view, thought it desirable that Essex should have the opportunity of achieving some definite triumph in life which would render his future influence supreme. Or if he were incapable of conspicuous success in life, then the more patent his inefficiency became, and the quicker he was set on one side, the better for his protégé's future. of Essex. Essex completely failed in Ireland, and he was ordered to answer for his conduct in the arbitrary Court of the Star Downfall Chamber. Thereupon Bacon set to work with Machiavellian skill to turn an apparently unpromising situation to his own advantage. He sought and obtained permission to appear at the inquiry into Essex's conduct as one of the Counsel for the Crown. He protested to the end that he was really working diplomatically in Essex's behalf, but he revealed the secret of his conduct when he also plainly told Essex that the queen's favour was after all more valuable to him than the earl's. His further guarded comment that he loved few persons better than his patron struck a hardly less cynical note. Essex was ultimately released from imprisonment on parole; but he then embarked on very violent courses. He sought Essex's to stir up a rebellion against the queen and her death. advisers in London. He placed himself in a position which exposed him to the penalties of high treason. Bacon again sought advantage from his patron's errors. He again appeared for the Crown at Essex's formal trial on the capital charge of treason. His advocacy did much to bring Essex's guilt home to the judges. With inhuman coolness Bacon addressed himself to the prisoner, and explained to him the heaviness of his offence. Finally Essex was condemned to death and was executed on 25th February, 1601. Bacon sacrificed all ordinary considerations of honour in his treatment of Essex. But his principles of active life deprived friendship of meaning for him. The material benefit to be derived by one man from association with another alone entered into his scheme of self- perfidy. advancement, and self-advancement was the only principle which he understood to govern the active stage of affairs.' Bacon's Bacon and The death of Elizabeth opened new prospects to Bacon, but the story of his life followed its old drift. He naturally sought the favour of the new king, James I. Naturally he would accommodate his own political opinions to those of the new king. The royal influence must, if it were possible, be drawn his way, be drawn towards him, be pressed into his individual service. Bacon probably at the outset had hopes of inducing the king to accept and act upon the good counsel that he should offer him, just as at the opening of their relations he thought it possible that he might lead Essex to take his enlightened advice. It was reported that the king was not devoid of large ideas. Bacon, who was never a good judge of men, may have credited the report. He may not have seen at first that James was without earnest purpose in life; that the king's intellect was cast in a narrow mould; that an extravagant sense of his own importance mainly dominated its working. Yet there was this excuse for Bacon's misapprehension. James was inquisitively minded. He was at times willing to listen to the exposition of good principles, however great his disinclination to put them into practice. P Advice to the king. By way of experiment, Bacon at the outset proffered King James I. some wise counsel. He repeated his old arguments for toleration in matters of religion. Bacon set forth these views as mere ballons d'essai, as straws to show him which way the wind blew. As soon as Bacon saw that the wind in the royal quarter was not blowing in the direction of toleration, he tacked about to win the breeze of royal approval some other way. He supported persecution. Happily another proposal of his was grateful to the new king. Bacon recommended a political union, a political amalgamation of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, of both of which James was now king. It was a wise plan in the circumstances, and one entirely congenial to the new Scottish monarch of England. James was not slow to mark his approval of Bacon's advice on the point, and Bacon's material prospects brightened. James's reign was a critical period in English history. Bacon's depth of intellectual vision enabled him to foresee, The political situation. perhaps more clearly than any other man of his age, the growing danger of a breach between the king and the people's representatives in the House of Commons. The English people was learning its political strength; the English people was learning the value of personal liberty, although the mass of them only hazily recognised the importance of self-government. Sir Walter Ralegh had enunciated the principle that in every just state some part of the government is or ought to be imparted to the people.' There was a growing conviction that government for the good of the many, rather than for the good of any one man, was essential to the full enjoyment of life. Government for the good of a sovereign who failed to move in the people any personal enthusiasm was certain to prove sooner or later an intolerable burden. Bacon acknowledged it to be the duty of a true statesman to seek to reconcile the two conflicting forces, the power of the king and the reasonable claims of the people. He had no faith in democracy; he believed in the one-man rule probably as sincerely as he believed in any political principle. The future peace of the country depended, in Bacon's view, on the king-on his power and will to dispense equal justice among his subjects, and to conform to his subjects' just wishes on matters affecting their personal liberties. The king should be persuaded to exert his power and will to this end. But the problem of how best to reconcile king and people was not one that could be solved by mere assumption of the king's benevolent intentions. Unless a man championed great principles, and applied them to the problem without fear of forfeiting royal favour, he wasted breath and ink. Bacon had no intention of imperilling his relations with the king, of sacrificing his personal chances of preferment. However clearly he may have diagnosed the situation, he had not moral fibre enough materially to shape its course of development. VI Bacon was eager to derive personal profit from any turn of the political wheel. Yet with the singular versatility that characterised him, he, amid all the bustle of the Literary political world in which he had immersed himself, occupations. found time to pursue his true vocation. Before Queen Elizabeth died he had produced the first edition of his Essays, those terse observations on life which placed him in the first rank of Elizabethan men of letters.1 They were penetrating 1 The first edition of the Essays appeared in 1597, and consisted only of ten essays together with two pieces called respectively 'Sacred Meditations,' and 'Colours of Good and Evil.' This volume was reprinted without alteration in 1598 and 1606. A revised version which came out in 1612 brought |