LETTERS FROM THE CABALA. 105 



holden in those cases in a right course. And so I bid you 

 farewell. 



FR. BACON. 



Sir Francis Bacon to the Lord Chancellor. 



It may please your Lordship, 



As I conceived it to be a resolution, both with his 

 majesty, and among your lordships of his council, that I 

 should be placed solicitor, and the solicitor to be removed 

 to be the king s serjeant ; so I most humbly thank your 

 lordship s fartherness and forwardness therein, your lordship 

 being the man that first devised the mean ; wherefore my 

 humble request unto your lordship is, that you would set in 

 with some strength to finish this your work ; which (I assure 

 yourself) I desire the rather, because being placed, I hope 

 for your many favours, to be able to do you some better 

 service : for as I am, your lordship cannot use me, nor 

 scarcely indeed know me, not that I vainly think I shall be 

 able to do any great matter, but certainly it will frame me to 

 use a more industrious observance and application to such as 

 I honour so much as I do your lordship, and not, I hope, 

 without some good offices, which may deserve your thanks. 

 And herewithal, good my lord, I humbly pray your lordship 

 to consider, that time groweth precious with me, and that a 

 married man is years seven older in his thoughts the first 

 day ; and therefore what a discomfortable thing it is for me 

 to be unsettled still. For surely, were it not that I think 

 myself born for to do my sovereign service, and therefore 

 in that station I will live and die ; otherwise for mine own 

 private comfort, it were better for me that the king should 

 blot me out of his book, or that I should turn my course to 

 endeavour to serve him in some other kind, than for me to 

 stand thus at a stop, and to have that little reputation which 

 by my industry I gather, to be scattered and taken away by 

 continual disgraces, every new man coming in before me 



