LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 281 



great words, Amice, verba tua desiderant civitattm,* so your 

 majesty say to me, &quot; Bacon, your words require a place to 

 speak them ;&quot; I must answer, that place, or not place, is in 

 your majesty to add or refrain: and though I never grow 

 eager but to ft***** yet your majesty 



To the King, immediately after the Lord Treasurer s 



death. 



It may please your excellent Majesty, 



I cannot but endeavour to merit, considering your pre 

 venting graces, which is the occasion of these few lines. 



Your majesty hath lost a great subject and a great ser 

 vant. But, if I should praise him in propriety, I should 

 say that he was a fit man to keep things from growing 

 worse ; but no very fit man to reduce things to be much 

 better. For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little 

 too much on himself, and to have all business still under 

 the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to 

 mould it as he thought good ; so that he was more in opera- 

 tione than in opere. And though he had fine passages of 

 action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. So that 

 although your majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy 

 persons left, yet you do, as it were, turn a leaf wherein if 

 your majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters 

 before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were 

 not amiss. But the great matter, and most instant for the 

 present, is the consideration of a parliament, for two effects ; 

 the one for the supply of your estate ; the other for the 

 better knitting of the hearts of your subjects unto your 

 majesty, according to your infinite merit; for both which, 

 parliaments have been, and are, the ancient and honourable 

 remedy. 



Now because I take myself to have a little skill in that 

 region, as one that ever affected that your majesty might, 

 in all your causes, not only prevail, but prevail with satis 

 faction of the inner man ; and though no man can say but 

 I was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man 

 makes me believe that I was never one hour out of credit 

 with the lower house ; my desire is to know, whether your 

 majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto 

 you some preparative remembrances, touching the future 

 parliament. 



* These words of Themistocles are cited likewise by Lord Bacon at the end 

 of his book De Augmentis Scientianun. 



