FRANCIS BACON. 



565 



unfit by the preoccupation of my mind." l Too 

 much significance, however, may easily be given 

 to words like these, so much depends on the 

 humor a man is in when he writes them. Other 

 passages may be found in Bacon's letters and 

 papers that speak a different language. 



One thing, however, is clear : if Bacon failed 

 to win preferment in early life, it was not through 

 any excess of modesty or backwardness in ask- 

 ing. There is no blinking the fact, Bacon was a 

 sturdy beggar all his life. He prayed, and never 

 fainted ; he kept steadily knocking at the doors 

 of office ; no disappointment disheartened him, 

 no rebuff daunted him; it would be curious to 

 calculate what proportion of his extant letters 

 thank for past or solicit future favors or support. 

 The result of such a calculation would, I am 

 afraid, be humiliating. Almost his first letter 

 that has survived, one to his uncle Burghley, had 

 " no further errand but to commend unto your 

 lordship the remembrance of my suit which then 

 I moved unto you." 2 Almost the last entreats 

 Sir Humphrey May " to sound the Duke of Buck- 

 ingham's good affection toward me before you do 

 move him in the particular petitions." 3 And the 

 forty-five years of Bacon's life that lie between 

 these two letters are of a piece with such a be- 

 ginning and ending. His first suit, which lasted 

 for some seven years, fairly over, no practice com- 

 ing, and Mr. Mill, the Star-chamber obstructive, 

 being insensible to his clear duty, Bacon in his 

 thirty-third year, briefless barrister as he was, 

 addressed himself to the task of winning the 

 vacant attorney-generalship. His rival was Ed- 

 ward Coke, the great common-lawyer ; but Coke's 

 massive legal knowledge was, Bacon thought, 

 more than counterbalanced as an advantage by 

 the warm friendship the queen's favorite, Essex, 

 felt for himself. Essex certainly did his part 

 thoroughly ; he made his friend's case more than 

 bis own, spending, as he said, " his utmost friend- 

 ship, credit, and authority," in promoting Bacon's 

 suit, and during fourteen months of hot strife 

 never letting slip an opportunity of pressing Ba- 

 con's claim, and " driving in a nail for the nega- 

 tive of the Huddler," 4 as Bacon phrases it in 

 one of his letters, "Huddler" being Coke's nick- 

 name with Bacon and Essex. It was all lost 

 labor, however ; the Huddler got the place. But 

 his appointment left the solicitorship vacant, and 

 a fight began for the solicitorship, which was 

 kept up for eighteen months with an almost pas- 

 sionate, certainly injudicious, pertinacity on Es- 



1 Spedding, vol. iii., p. 253. 2 Ibid., vol. i., p. 12. 

 8 Ibid., vol. vii., p. 548. « Ibid., vol. i., p. 263. 



sex's part. Essex's letters to Bacon testify to 

 his utter abandonment of himself to his friend's 

 service. In one he writes: "She" (that is, the 

 queen) " in passion bade me go to bed, if I could 

 talk of nothing else. Wherefore, in passion, I 

 went away, saying, while I was with her, I could 

 not but solicit for the cause and man I so much 

 affected." ' In another, he comforts Bacon by 

 telling him that the queen " doth not contradict 

 confidently, which they that know the minds of 

 women say is a sign of yielding." ' 2 Bacon threat- 

 ened that, if refuse'd the place, he would retire 

 with a couple of men to Cambridge, and there 

 spend his life in studies and contemplations. 3 

 But neither Bacon's threats, nor Essex's ardor, 

 nor yet the colder advocacy of Burghley, availed 

 Bacon aught ; the solicitorship went to another. 

 Bacon swallowed his disgust, and did not retire 

 to Cambridge. In a few months, Egerton's ele- 

 vation to the office of lord-keeper threw open the 

 mastership of the rolls to legal ambition, and 

 Bacon at once turned a longing eye on the place. 

 Essex was at Plymouth, deep in preparations for 

 the grand enterprise against Cadiz, which, in a 

 month's time, was to make his own fame and the 

 nations ring through Europe. Yet he responded 

 promptly and heartily to his friend's appeal. If 

 Bacon was once more disappointed, it was not 

 through lack of zeal in Essex. While this suit 

 was still waiting for a final answer, others were 

 going on, the ghosts of which flit across Mr. 

 Spedding's pages. One of these is remarkable, 

 as involving in its rejection the gravest conse- 

 quences, if the suitor is to be believed. " I will," 

 writes Bacon to his uncle, " use no reason to per- 

 suade your lordship's mediation but this: that 

 your lordship and my other friends shall in this 

 beg my life of the queen ; for I see well the bar 

 will be my bier, as I must and will use it rather 

 than that my poor estate or reputation shall de- 

 cay. But I stand indifferent whether God call 

 me or her majesty." 4 That is, if I do not get 

 this post, I will take to practising at the bar, and 

 the bar is sure to be the death of me. He did 

 not get the post, but he was, notwithstanding, no 

 more careful to die than he had been before to 

 retire to Cambridge. He then tried to make a 

 bargain with Egerton, offering to give up the re- 

 version of the clerkship of the Star-chamber to 

 one of Egerton's sons, if Egerton would only in- 

 duce his mistress to make him master of the 

 rolls. But Egerton declined the offer — had, per- 

 haps, no mind to so one-sided a compact. About 



1 Spedding, vol. i., p. 289. 

 3 Ibid., vol. i., p. 291. 



2 Ibid., vol.i., p. 290. 

 4 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 49. 



