X PREFACE. 



father, according to Rawley, had accumulated a considerable 

 sum of money for the purpose of purchasing an estate for his 

 youngest son, but his sudden death prevented its accomplish 

 ment, and Francis was left with only a fifth part of his father s 

 personal property. Diplomacy was now abandoned as a career, 

 his prospects of a studious leisure became more distant than 

 ever, and for one who would willingly have lived only to study, 

 there was nothing left but to study how to live a . Soon after 

 his return to England he appears to have entered upon a 

 course of law at Gray s Inn, and on the 27th of June, 1582, 

 we find him admitted as an utter barrister. The next year 

 he is seen abroad in the city in his barrister s dress, and pro 

 mises to do well. Meanwhile he has made a beginning of 

 the great work on which his fame was to rest, the first sketch 

 of which he called, as he told Father Fulgentio forty years 

 later, by the ambitious title of Temporis Partus Maxhnus. 



In 1584 Bacon appeared upon a new stage, which he never 

 left for thirty years and upwards, and on which some of his 

 greatest triumphs were achieved. On the 23rd of November 

 he took his seat in the House of Commons as member for 

 Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In D Ewes s Journal (p. 337), 

 his name appears on the Committee appointed on the pth of 

 December to consider the * Bill for redress of Disorders in 

 Common Informers. In the next Parliament, which met 

 Oct. 29, 1586, he sat for Taunton, and on the 4th of No 

 vember made a speech on the great cause of Mary, Queen 

 of Scots, but no report of it has been preserved. With other 

 members of both Houses he attended (Nov. 12) upon the 



Of his personal appearance at this time we can form an idea from 

 the interesting picture painted by Hilliard in 1578, with the significant 

 motto, showing that his intellectual pre-eminence was already becoming 

 conspicuous, Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem. The artist is he 

 of whom Donne says : 



A hand or eye 



By Hilliard drawn, is worth a history 

 By a worse painter made. 



