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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



this time, the death of Sir William Hatton cre- 

 ated a vacancy of another kind, and Bacon was 

 as ready to take Sir William's place in his family 

 and household as he had ever been to serve the 

 queen. Essex rushed with characteristic energy 

 and fire into this new suit of Bacon's, but his 

 fervent pleadings went the way of their prede- 

 cessors; the lady preferred to be consoled by 

 Coke, who thus a second time carried off a coveted 

 prize from Bacon. 



To go through the list of Bacon's applications 

 for good things, that were nearly always refused 

 him, in the later years of Elizabeth's and earlier 

 of James's reign, were a wearisome and thankless 

 task. It is worth while, however, to take a pass- 

 ing glance at the motives he sometimes assigned 

 for his eagerness to get them. In 1600 he pe- 

 titioned the queen for an estate. There were 

 three feelings at work, he declares, to make him 

 ask the favor — his love for his mother, who he 

 mightily desired might carry to her grave the 

 comfort of seeing her son with an unencumbered 

 property ; his desire to secure Gorhambury, and 

 be able to entertain her majesty there, and "to 

 trim and dress the grounds for her majesty's sol- 

 ace ; " and his wish to be freed " from the con- 

 tempt of the contemptible, that measure a man 

 by his estate." i This last is that ignoblest of 

 motives which the great-hearted Diogenes of our 

 day has called " striking the surrounding flunkeys 

 yellow." And a few months after James's acces- 

 sion, when he found a royal favor, the then dis- 

 honoring honor of knighthood, which Ben Jonson 

 refused, within his reach, he asks for it " because 

 of my late disgrace" — an arrest for debt, pre- 

 sumably — " and because I have three new knights 

 in my mess in Gray's-Inn commons, and because 

 I have found out" (the phrase is significant) "an 

 alderman's daughter, an handsome maiden, to my 

 liking." 2 At that time the king never seemed 

 so happy as when making knights ; and in a fe\r 

 days the high-souled philosopher was able to 

 woo his handsome maiden as Sir Francis Bacon. 

 And having, after three years' wooing, won the 

 handsome maiden, he proceeds to utilize her as 

 he had before utilized his mother. Pleading 

 anxiously with the lord-chancellor for the so- 

 licitorship, he wrote : " Were it not to satisfy my 

 wife's friends, and to get myself out of being a 

 common gaze and speech, I protest before God I 

 would never speak word for it." 3 And though 

 one feels a shock at hearing or seeing the word 

 " shameless " applied to any part of Bacon's con- 



1 Spedding, vol. ii.. p. 166. 3 Ibid., vol. iii., p. 80. 

 "Ibid., vol. iii., p. 296. 



duct, yet the word will leap to one's lips in front 

 of one passage of his life. When the death of 

 Elizabeth put him in a flutter of expectation, and 

 he was busy speeding self-recommendatory letters 

 to every person possessing influence with the 

 new king that he could claim any degree of ac- 

 quaintance with, he sent one to Southampton, 

 the man who had been tried and condemned with 

 Essex, on the day when Bacon stood among the 

 accusers of his former benefactor. In this he as- 

 sures Southampton, " It is as true as a thing that 

 God knoweth that this great change hath wrought 

 in me no other change toward your lordship than 

 this, that I may safely be now that which I was 

 truly before." ' Surely the force of philosophi- 

 cal effrontery could hardly further go than this. 



At last, after twenty-seven years of crushing 

 and pushing and elbowing among the " press " of 

 place-hunters, Bacon got his feet planted on the 

 lowest round of his Jacob's ladder; having, in 

 1G0G, wrung from the king a promise of the 

 solicitorship on the next vacancy, he became so- 

 licitor-general in 1607. Six years later he was 

 made attorney-general, ten years later lord-keep- 

 er, and eleven years later lord-chancellor. Thus 

 the ladder was ascended, and heaven gained! 

 But neither in scaling nor in attainment did Ba- 

 con's craving allow him any respite. Omitting 

 the smaller instances, I shall just look at two 

 prominent ones. In 1612 his cousin Salisbury, 

 high-treasurer and secretary of state, died.' Ba- 

 con thought he would himself make an admirable 

 secretary, and drew up, perhaps sent to the king, 

 an application for the place. And this brings us 

 face to face with a very unpleasant feature in 

 Bacon's character, his habit of flattering men iu 

 their lifetime, and depreciating them after their 

 death. Five years before he had told Salisbury, 

 " I do esteem whatsoever I have or may have in 

 this world but as trash, in comparison of having 

 the honor and happiness to be a near and well- 

 accepted kinsman to so rare and worthy a coun- 

 selor, governor, and patriot." 2 What is his lan- 

 guage now? "Now that he is gone, in whose 

 lifetime the virtues might reckon on destruction 

 with 'the utmost certainty." 3 The inducements 

 too, which he suggests to James, are curious : 

 " I will be as ready as a chessman to be wherever 

 your majesty's royal hand will set me." 4 James, 

 however, chose to be his own secretary for a time. 

 The second application is perhaps the strangest 

 of all Bacon's proceedings in this way. Lord- 



1 Spedding, vol. Iii., p. 75. 2 Ibid., vol. iv., p. 12. 

 3 " Quo vivente virtutibua certiseimura exitium." 

 * Speddiug, vol. iv., p. 282. 



