22 J. HOPKINSON- — ANNIVEKSAKY ADDRESS : 



of these remarkable words remained dormant until the distinction 

 here so clearly and correctly drawn led to Newton's discovery of 

 the composition of light, although he was mistaken as to its 

 nature, believing it to be corpuscular instead of undulatory, in 

 other words material rather than a mode of motion, as heat also is. 

 Three months after the publication of this work (in January, 

 1621) Bacon is created Viscount St. Alban, his eighth promotion, 

 " a diapason in music," he says, " a good number and accord for 

 the close." And the close soon came, for in another three months 

 the Great Seal is taken from him, he is debarred from ever again 

 taking any office imder the Crown, or coming within the verge of 

 the Court, fined £40,000, and imprisoned in the Tower. In his 

 essay "Of Great Place," he says: "The rising unto Place is 

 laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is 

 sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The 

 standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at 

 least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing." Few men have 

 taken greater pains to rise into " Place " than he did, and few have 

 had a greater or more unexpected downfall. His arch-enemy, 

 Coke, had been trying for years to find a weak spot in his armour, 

 had managed to ingratiate himself with the favourite, Buckingham, 

 and had found an aspiiant for the Great Seal who was willing to 

 pay handsomely for its possession. The weak spot was at last 

 found, and Bacon was shown to have partaken of the abuses of the 

 age, having accepted presents from suitors as his predecessors since 

 his father's time had done. In allowing the abuses in his Court to 

 continue, even for a single day, and in taking advantage of them 

 himself, he was undoubtedly in the wrong, but he appears to have 

 striven against these abuses after a time, and eventually to have 

 overcome them, for all the charges of accepting fees from suitors 

 that were brought against him relate to the first two years of his 

 office. His own estimate of his conduct, written in cypher and not 

 intended to be published, is probably correct : "I was the justest 

 judge that was in England these fifty years, but it was the justest 

 censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years." Not 

 a single case was brought home to him of allowing a present to 

 influence him in his decisions, and the charges raked up against 

 him were from suitors to whom his decisions had been adverse ; and 

 although, after his fall, as might naturally be expected, attempts 

 were made to obtain reversals of some of his judgments, not a 

 single attempt was successful. But there was one instance in 

 which, after giving a decision adverse to one of Buckingham's 

 friends, he had, at the favourite's request, a private interview with 



