NOTES 4D 4E. 



so fit a messenger for mine own letter, I thought good also to redouble by 

 writing. And so I commend you to God s protection. From Gray s Inn, this 

 9th day of July, 1600. (a) 



An Answer of my Lord of Essex to the immediately preceding Letter of 

 Mr. Bacon s. 



Mr. Bacon, I can neither expound nor censure your late actions, being 

 ignorant of all of them, save one, and having directed my sight inward only, to 

 examine myself. You do pray me to believe that you only aspire to the 

 conscience and commendation of bonus civis and bonus vir ; and I do faithfully 

 assure you, that while that is your ambition (though your course be active and 

 mind contemplative), yet we shall both, convenire in eodem tertio, and convenire 

 inter nos ipsos. Your profession of affection, and offer of good offices, are wel 

 come to me ; for answer to them I will say but this, that you have believed I 

 have been kind to you ; and you may believe that I cannot be other, either 

 upon humour or mine own election. I am a stranger to all poetical conceits, 

 or else I should say somewhat of your poetical example. But this I must say, 

 that I never flew with other wings, than desire to merit and confidence in my 

 sovereign s favour ; and when one of these wings failed me, I would light no 

 where but at my sovereign s feet, though she suffered me to be bruised with my 

 fall. And till her majesty, that knows I was never bird of prey, finds it to 

 agree with her will, and her service, that my wings should be imped again, I 

 have committed myself to the mue. No power, but my God s and my sove 

 reign s, can alter this resolution of your retired friend, ESSEX. 



If it is imagined that the apparent coldness of this letter ought to be ascribed 

 to injured feeling, to that lofty spirit, which could not brook any real or apparent 

 opposition, let the time when it was written : let it be connected with the letters 

 in note E : let the conclusion of the letter, beginning at &quot; till her majesty,&quot; 

 and let Bacon s accidental account of these letters in page Ixxxi, &quot; and having 

 received from his lordship a courteous and loving acceptation of my good will 

 and endeavours/ 5 be considered ; and it will, perhaps, clearly appear that this 

 was a letter intended to be seen by the Queen. 



4 E. Life, p. Ixxix. 



The following are the letters : 



Two Letters framed, one as from Mr. Anthony Bacon to the Earl of Essex ; the 



other, as the Earl s answer. 



My singular good Lord, This standing at a stay doth make me, in my love 

 towards your lordship, jealous, lest you do somewhat, or omit somewhat, that 

 amounteth to a new error; for I suppose that of all former matters there is a full 

 expiation ; wherein, for any thing which your lordship doth, I, for my part, 

 (who am remote) cannot cast or devise wherein my error should be, except in 

 one point, which I dare not censure nor dissuade ; which is, that as the prophet 

 saith, in this affliction you look up &quot; ad manum per cutien tern,&quot; and so make 

 your peace with God. And yet I have heard it noted, that my lord of Leicester, 

 who could never get to be taken for a saint, yet in the Queen s disfavour waxed 

 seeming religious j which may be thought by some, and used by others, as a 

 case resembling yours, if men do not see, or will not see, the difference between 

 your two dispositions. But, to be plain with your lordship, my fear rather is, 

 because I hear how some of your good and wise friends, not unpractised in the 

 court, and supposing themselves not to be unseen in that deep and unscrutable 

 centre of the court, which is her majesty s mind, do not only toll the bell, but 

 even ring out peals, as if your fortune were dead and buried, and as if there 



(a) A copy of this letter is supposed, erroneously perhaps, to have been sent 

 by Bacon to Lord Salisbury, on the 20th of July. 



