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forfeiting his reputation for veracity, I am glad to hear it." That worldly men have at all times done such things is true enough. From Bacon perhaps something better might have been expected.

Who would not laugh if such a man there be?

Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

Yet one can understand how keenly Bacon must have longed for power at this moment. A new era was opening; a king had succeeded who was certainly a scholar, and might be a lover of science. Clouds were gathering on the political horizon, and every Englishman who loved his country must have wished to do something to avert the threatened storm. In the interests of science, and in the interests of England, Bacon could not but wish for power; while he was too shrewd to "expect to command the end, and not to endure the mean." With patient care he trimmed his sail to every breeze of fortune. Northumberland's star sank as rapidly as it had risen, and Bacon's "seed of affection and zeal" withered away. The direction of State affairs was still in the hands of Cecil (now Earl of Salisbury), and to him Bacon "applied himself" with a constancy which nothing could wear out. It was in vain that Bacon assured him that he counted all things but loss "in comparison of having the honor and happiness of being a near and well-accepted kinsman to so worthy a counsellor, governor, and patriot," and that "if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I could take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that centre." In vain does he study to **Correspond with Salisbury in a habit of natural but no ways perilous boldness." and "at Council Table chiefly to make good my Lord of Salisbury's mo

tions and speeches." Nothing could remove the rooted distrust, due probably to jealousy, with which Salisbury regarded him; so long as Salisbury lived Bacon remained, in his own words, "as a hawk tied to another's fist." On Salisbury's death, in 1612, all his pentup bitterness burst forth. Salisbury is hardly buried when Bacon writes to the King, censuring his policy-"these courses and others the like are gone, I hope, with the deviser of them"-und he can hardly refrain from openly congratulating him on the goodness of Heaven as shown in "the taking away of that man."

It is evident that Bacon had never really approved of Salisbury's policy. Nothing could be less to his mind than Salisbury's way of haggling and bargaining with the Commons. All Bacon's political views were on a grand scale. There is no doubt as to the sincerity of his monarchical principles. To him, as to other statesmen of his time, it seemed better to strengthen the royal prerogative than to entrust the government of the country to the House of Commons as it was then. His ideal was that of a wise king taking the lead in matters of reform, while a grateful parliament willingly voted supplies. Bacon was a lover of parliaments, though he did not wish to see them encroaching on the authority of the King; and he was frequently employed to mediate in disputes between the King and the Houses. Religious differences he would have removed by a more comprehensive ecclesiastical policy, while by a warlike foreign policy he would have diverted the Commons from the contemplation of their "grievances." Bacon was full of plans for the aggrandizement of the country; for the pacification of Ireland; for the civilizing of "the wilds of Scotland"; for English supremacy abroad, as the centre of a vast Protestant coalition. Professor Gardiner says, that "if James

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had been other than he was, the name of Bacon would have come down to us as great in politics as it is in science." But Bacon was never to have a free hand to work out his ideals. James had thrown off the yoke of Salisbury only to submit to that of a favorite; and Bacon must either give up the pursuit of power, or follow it by humoring the caprice and vanity of Villiers. At first, with characteristic optimism, he hopes great things of Villiers. He gives him excellent advice, reminding him that "it is the life of an ox or beast to eat and never to exercise; but men are born (and especially Christian men) not to cram in their fortunes, but to exercise their virtues." Villiers soon tired of this kind of exhortation, if he ever liked it; the King remonstrated with Bacon on the "parental tone" which he had presumed to adopt towards the favorite. Flattery was what Villiers wanted, and flattery -"laid on with a trowel"-is what Bacon henceforth gives him. It was now certain that Bacon would never have any real power in the State. Promotion came to him, with honors and rank, but never the power to do good, either to science or the country. James turned from the Novum Organum with a sneer; and one by one Bacon's political schemes fell to the ground. He had wished to see reform going hand in hand with the prerogative; all he in effect accomplished was to strengthen the hands of an oppressive government.

It would doubtless have been better if Bacon, when he saw his advice neglected, had done as other men have done in such a case-thrown up office, and refused to associate himself with measures of which he disapproved. But it is to be remembered that Bacon was by conviction a "peremptory royalist"; though not in sympathy with the

15 History of England from the Accession of James I.," i. 181.

policy of the government, he may yet have believed that the government of a despotic king was to be preferred to that of an untried and half-organized House of Commons. When he strove to strengthen the prerogative against Coke and the lawyers, his action is not to be attributed to mere "servility"; he took what he honestly believed to be the better side.

Too much has been made of Bacon's action at the trial of Peacham, a half-mad clergyman, in whose study an unpublished sermon was found, containing disloyal reflections on the King and government. Peacham was ordered to be tortured. Bacon did not (so far as we know) advise the torture in this case, though he seems, like many good and wise men of the period, to have regarded torture as a regrettable necessity. The torture producing no result, it was determined to consult the judges of the Court of King's Bench in order to make sure of a conviction. There was nothing unusual in this. For a prisoner to be tried and acquitted would have been considered equivalent to a defeat of the government, and it was customary in difficult cases to take the opinion of the judges before bringing the accused to trial. The judges whom Bacon consulted in Peacham's case were not those who were to try him. Bacon, it is true, introduced a dangerous precedent. Fearing that the judges might be overborne by Coke, he recommended that they should be consulted separately, which was done, Coke loudly protesting. Equally defensible from the point of view of a royalist of that time were the proceedings against St. John. The King had tried to raise money by a "Benevolence." The contributions were really voluntary, all undue pressure on the part of government agents being forbidden. St. John, however, declaimed against all Benevolences, and expressed his opinion in terms SO

coarse and insulting to the King that it was resolved to prosecute him. He was sentenced to a heavy fine and imprisonment, both of which were remitted on his submission. It is far more difficult to defend Bacon's action at the trial, some years after, of his old friend and colleague, Sir Henry Yelverton. Yelverton was not accused of anything worse than mistaking the King's verbal orders, and having made an ample submission and apology, might have expected to get off easily. Bacon, then Lord Keeper, pronounced a ruinous sentence. Professor Gardiner says significantly, "Looked at from the point of view of a guardian of official duty, the sentence on Yelverton might easily be justified. What did not appear in Court was that Buckingham was hostile to Yelverton." 16

It must be concluded that Bacon, though not the unscrupulous timeserver that has been represented, was wanting in moral fibre. He had not sufficient decision of character to assert his own right principles when they were likely to meet with disapproval in high places. When at last he became Lord Chancellor, nothing could be more excellent than his intentions. Years before he had written to Villiers (now Marquis of Buckingham), “By no means be you persuaded to interpose yourself by word or letter in any cause depending, or like to be depending, in any Court of Justice." But from the first he was worried by a continual stream of letters from Buckingham, urging him to show favor to this or that suitor, with -or sometimes without-the conventional reservation that he should do so in so far as justice should permit. More than once Bacon remonstrated, and once at least Buckingham promised to desist. But Buckingham forgot his promise, and Bacon ceased to remonstrate. Mr. Spedding suggests that Buckingham's letters were meant, 16 Dictionary of National Biography."

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not to influence Bacon's decisions, but to satisfy the persons who asked for them; that "he would direct his secretary to draw up a letter for his signature in the usual form," but that it would be understood that Bacon would give no heed to it." Buckingham's letters, which have been preserved, hardly bear that complexion. In one he "doubts not, but as his Majesty is satisfied with the equity" of a suit, the Lord Chancellor will be satisfied too; and he frequently urges Bacon to "show what favor you can" to suitors, "for my sake." Buckingham's letters attest that Bacon's decisions did not always meet his views, and there is only one instance in which Bacon is proved to have been influenced by him. This was the case of a Dr. Steward, in which, judgment being already given, Buckingham urged him to reconsider it; "although I know it is unusual to your Lordship to make alterations when things are so far past, yet in regard I owe him a good turn which I know not how to perform but in this way, I desire your Lordship, if there be any case for mitigation, your Lordship should show him what favor you may for my sake." Upon this Bacon referred the matter to commissioners, who reversed his own earlier decision.18 There is room to hope that this case was exceptional; but as he allowed himself to be thus influenced in a matter which had been actually decided, it is difficult to believe that he was never influenced at all in cases which were still pending.19 This is the only sense

17" Letters and Life," vi. 259.

18 Ibid. vii. 585. Mr. Spedding referred this case to Mr. Heath, the editor of Bacon's legal works, who decided emphatically against Bacon. Dr. Abbott discusses it fully in his "Francis Bacon': Introduction, pp. 27-29.

19 Dean Church suggests that Bacon's compliance may generally have gone no further than to expedite the cases of Buckingham's friends. Sometimes, no doubt, they would happen to be in the right, and Bacon could honestly decide in their favor.

in which Bacon can be suspected of perverting justice. To suggest that he sold it for money is so wildly absurd as not to be worth arguing about. Yet this is what his contemporaries were led to believe! In 1621 Parliament was again summoned. It does not seem to have crossed Bacon's mind that he might be less acceptable to the Commons than formerly. He feared that there might be some trouble about the monopolies, and advised that the more oppressive should be removed; but his advice was not followed, and Parliament met in an angry humor. At first there appeared a disposition to make Bacon responsible in his official character for the monopolies; but soon rumors of a more ominous kind began to be heard. It was said that the Lord Chancellor had received gratuities, not only from suitors whose cases had been decided-that was merely the usual custom-but from some whose cases were still awaiting judgment. Secure in the consciousness of rectitude, Bacon heard the charge almost with indifference. "My mind is calm," he wrote, “. I know that I have clean hands and a clean heart." It was only by degrees that the conviction was forced upon him that, however innocent as to the spirit, he had so far transgressed the letter of the law, that the charges against him might be made to look very black indeed. Presents had been sent to him, even while cases were pending; but while disapproving of the practice, and warning the other judges against it, he, sure of his own incorruptibility, had not troubled to send them back. "I take myself," he wrote, "to be innocent in my heart"; but he had no longer any hope of making his innocence clear to the world. "The proofs" were "too pregnant to the contrary." His nerve broke down utterly, and he acknowledged himself guilty without reservation. His con

temporaries, believing him to be guilty of corruption in its fullest sense, stood aghast in horror; "his offence foul, his confession pitiful." Coke unearthed the precedent of a judge who had been hanged for bribery. Southampton urged that Bacon should be degraded from the peerage. Neither of these charitable suggestions was adopted; but Bacon was effectually driven from public life. The few years remaining to him he devoted to philosophy, lamenting, with manifest sincerity and pellucid truth, that he had misspent his life in things for which he was least fit. "I have read in books," he said, "that it is accounted great bliss for a man to have leisure with honor. That was never my fortune. Time was when I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor." died in his sixty-sixth year, leaving his reputation to "men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages."

He

It cannot be that the historian of the future will adopt Mr. Spedding's magnificent apology in its entirety. A reaction has already set in. Mr. Sidney Lee, for instance, is hardly less severe than Macaulay in judging Bacon's conduct to Essex. Professor Gardiner, though anxious to place Bacon's character in the best light, laments his flattery and obsequiousness, and his "reliance on management at the expense of truthfulness." Grave charges remain; but those who see faultiness in the details of his life will nevertheless recognize the nobility of his general scheme. No one will ever again assert with Macaulay that Bacon's "desires were set on things below" to the exclusion of high and unselfish aspirations; or that-difficult as it was for him "to feel strong affections, to face great dangers, or to make great sacrifices" he had no loftier ambition than the acquisition of "wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals,

the coronet," and things of the sort. To these things Bacon was not indifferent; but he had, to a degree unbelievable by the ordinary man, the wish to benefit mankind, to improve and civilize human life, to heal and pacify the divisions of the nation. It is reaThe Gentleman's Magazine.

sonable to judge with some indulgence the mistakes and weaknesses of one the benevolence of whose heart was "large enough to take in all races and all ages."

19 20

20 Macaulay:

Ethel M. Bellewes. Essay on Bacon."

CHAPTER II.

THE ENEMY'S CAMP.

"My dear,"-Mr. Lauriston was addressing his wife Charlotte "did I hear you say you have brought no wine?"

"I did not consider it necessary," returned the lady decisively; "but there are two sorts of lemonade and some lime-juice, and a kind of pink sherbet which, I am told, is very refreshing. You will be much better without stimulant for a time."

Mr. Lauriston's face fell as he seated himself stiffly on a mackintosh, a precaution of his wife. He was already beginning to regret his expansiveness on that evening a month ago, when, in the course of a discussion of plans for the summer, he had described to the ladies some of the holidays of his youth, and among them that halycon fortnight which he had once spent under canvas by a river. He remembered now the thrill of half pleasurable surprise that had run through him when Agatha, his niece, said: "How delightful! Why shouldn't we do it this summer, if we could find a very quiet place?" He remembered how the novelty of the suggestion had at first alarmed the others, but how, little by little, conversation had seemed to smooth away all difficulties, how Mrs. Lauriston had gradually yielded to the pleading of the girls, how at last they had gone to bed fully determined to carry out the scheme. He remembered, too, how he had long lain awake reviving old memories of rivers, boats,

and tents, of clear starlit nights and hot cloudless days, of a time when there was not a care in the world and life's only business seemed to be to acquire health and happiness, its only anxiety a lively curiosity about the next meal; and how at last he had fallen asleep convinced that he was about to renew his youth.

This idea had endured through all the preparation for the great expedition, and he had joined in the enthusiasm as blithely as a boy. Everything had gone smoothly; he had met a man in the City who knew of the quietest nook in England, where a family might camp out for months and never see a soul. He had met another man who knew all about tents and could put him in the way of the very latest pattern, a peculiarly perfect kind that no wind could disturb, no rain penetrate, a kind with a firm wooden floor which defied the damp. He had found a useful ally in Martin, the invaluable person who looked after his garden at Ealing, tended the pony, cleaned the boots, waited at table on occasion, and was extremely willing to join in any scheme that might be suggested to him.

The idea had survived the journey, the long drive from the station in the middle of packing-cases and goods piled high on a farmer's wagon; it had survived the erection of the tents, at which Mr. Lauriston assisted by precept while Martin and the farmer's

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