DR. RAWLEY'S LIFE OF BACON. 15 



injuries ; which if he had minded, he had both opportunity and 

 place high enough to have done it. He was no heaver of men 

 out of their places, as delighting in their ruin and undoing. He 

 was no defamer of any man to his prince. One day, when a 

 great statesman was newly dead, that had not been his friend, 

 the king asked him, What he thought of that lord which was gone? 

 he answered, That he would never have made His Majesty's estate 

 better, but he was sure he would have kept it from being worse ; 

 which was the worst he would say of him: which I reckon not 

 among his moral, but his Christian virtues. 



His fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts 

 abroad, than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that 

 divine sentence, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own 

 country, and in his own house. Concerning which I will give 

 you a taste only, out of a letter written from Italy (the store- 

 house of refined wits) to the late Earl of Devonshire, then the 

 Lord Candish : / will expect the new essays of my Lord Chan- 

 cellor Bacon, as also his History, with a great deal of desire, and 

 whatsoever else he shall compose : but in particular of his History 

 I promise myself a thing perfect and singular, especially in Henry 

 the Seventh, where he may exercise the talent of his divine under- 

 standing. This lord is more and more known, and his books here 

 more and more delighted in ; and those men that have more than 

 ordinary knowledge in human affairs, esteem him one of the most 

 capable spirits of this age ; and he is truly such. Now his fame 

 doth not decrease wilh days since, but rather increase. Divers 

 of his works have been anciently and yet lately translated into 

 other tongues, both learned and modern, by foreign pens. 

 Several persons of quality, during his lordship's life, crossed the 

 seas on purpose to gain an opportunity of seeing him and dis- 

 coursing with him ; whereof one carried his lordship's picture 

 from head to foot 1 over with him into France, as a thing which 

 he foresaw would be much desired there, that so they might 

 enjoy the image of his person as well as the images of his brain, 

 his books, Amongst the rest, Marquis Fiat, a French noble- 

 man, who came ambassador into England, in the beginning 

 of Queen Mary, wife to King Charles, was taken with an 

 extraordinary desire of seeing him ; for which he made way by a 

 friend ; and when he came to him, being then through weakness 

 confined to his bed, the marquis saluted him with this high 



1 This picture was presented to him by Bacon himself, according to the Latin 

 version. 



