FRANCIS BACON. 



561 



THE PUBLIC CAREER AND PERSONAL CHARACTER OF 



FRANCIS BACON. 1 



Br JAMES KOWLEY. 



THE subject of this paper, difficult as it is 

 even to men of exceptional knowledge and 

 capacity, has yet two conspicuous advantages — 

 its limits are marked with tolerable distinctness, 

 and the area those limits inclose is not too wide 

 to be fairly taken in by any mind of average ca- 

 pacity. It is true that to most the mere mention 

 of the name " Lord Bacon " suggests a field of 

 intellectual labor that stretches far beyond the 

 horizon of all ordinary and of most extraordinary 

 observers ; but that is because those that think 

 and talk about Lord Bacon generally think and 

 talk about the writer of the " Novum Organum " 

 and " History of Henry VII.," not about the 

 learned counsel, the attorney-general, the lord- 

 chancellor. My business at present is exclu- 

 sively with the latter. Not only too is the range 

 of the subject distinctly limited, but also the 

 facts it deals with have been fairly ascertained. 

 Thanks to Bacon's own care in preserving the 

 letters and other documents that reveal or illus- 

 trate his actions, and the loving diligence of a 

 succession of scholars — of whom Mr. James Sped- 

 ding is the latest, fullest, and worthiest — the 

 most eventful passages of his life have been laid 

 bare to the satisfaction of rational curiosity. 

 There is not much dispute about what Bacon act- 

 ually said and did on the occasions which sup- 

 ply the most abundant matter for controversy ; 

 it is almost invariably on the right interpretation 

 of his sayings and doings that the disputants join 

 issue. Bacon's apologists do not deny that he 

 had been nobly befriended by the man against 

 whose life he pleaded in court, that he watched — 

 so far as we know, without flinching — the agonies 

 of a half-crazy parson in whose unpreached ser- 

 mon the king professed that he saw most danger- 

 ous treason, that he allowed the reigning favorite 

 to write him letters desiring him as chancellor to 

 show all the favor he might to particular suitors, 

 that he took presents from parties to causes in 

 his court whose cases were still undecided, and 

 that he was active in many of the transactions 

 that the historians of James's reign have visited 

 with emphatic reprobation ; but they maintain 

 that in most of these alleged misdeeds Bacon was 



1 This paper i? the substance of a lecture given at 

 the Museum and Library, Bristol, in February last. 



108 



justified by their circumstances or by the prac- 

 tice of the time, and in the remainder that his sin 

 was not of so dark a hue as not to be easily for- 

 given by fellow-sinners. Even over the minor 

 details of his actions there is little wrangling. 



Now, the proper method of treating this sub- 

 ject seems to be to fix the attention solely on 

 Bacon as a lawyer and statesman, forgetting for 

 the moment that he was ever anything else. If 

 we do not carefully separate the chancellor from 

 the philosopher, or rather — to take a hint from 

 the poet Cowley — contemplate the chancellor of 

 King James's laws apart from the chancellor of 

 Nature's laws, do not succeed in isolating the 

 former, we shall be sure to go astray. Bacon 

 chose to cast in his lot with the Cecils, Howards, 

 and Egertons of the day ; and as a Cecil, a How- 

 ard, or an Egerton, he must consent to be judged. 

 In his will " he leaves his name and memory to 

 men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, 

 and to the next ages." But every one whom 

 fortune or his own energy has lifted into high 

 place does pretty much the same, though he may 

 not often say as much. One, however, cannot 

 help suspecting that the spoken appeal of the 

 author of the " Essays " and " Advancement of 

 Learning " has been more potent with the dis- 

 pensers of posthumous justice than the dumb ap- 

 peal of his unlettered brethren. Literature has 

 taken charge of all alike, and literary men are 

 not the " kinless loons " that Cromwell's Scottish 

 judges were ; the justice they deal out to his- 

 torical characters of their own craft is more gen- 

 erously tempered with mercy than that which 

 they deal out to those whose kinship they do not 

 acknowledge. In this there is nothing to'be sur- 

 prised at,, and little to blame; working in the 

 full sunlight of a grand intellectual reputation, 

 literature can hardly help being dazzled. But at 

 present my course is clear: strictly speaking, it 

 is to Viscount St. Albans, not Francis Bacon, 

 that we must now give our attention. 



Yet, comparatively narrow as our field is thus 

 made, there is in it, as experience has shown, am- 

 ple scope for criticism and controversy. Bacon's 

 public career has provoked a good deal of both ; 

 of the latter something more than its fair share. 

 For the criticism I make no apology. The sub- 



