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ti A C O N. 





sending him to France, in his seventeenth year, with 

 Sir Aflrfu Powlct, the ambassador. In this situa- 

 tion he enjoyed the entire confidence and approba- 

 tion of his patron, by whom he was, in one instance, 

 charged with a very important commission to the 

 queen, in which he acquitted himself with great abi- 

 lity. About this time also he wrote an inquiry into, 

 the state of Europe, which afterwards gained him 

 considerable applause in the political world. When 

 he was nineteen years of age, a gloom was thrown 

 over his future prospects by the sudden death of his 

 father, from whom he inherited a very small patri- 

 mony, as the youngest of five brothers. 



Returning from France, he determined -to study 

 law ; and, with this view, entered the honourable 

 society of Gray's Inn, where he soon rose to great 

 eminence, and, at the age ot twenty-eight, was cho- 

 sen their Lent reader. Two years afterwards he was 

 made one of the clerks of the conn _il. About this pe- 

 riod his time was divided between the studies of law 

 and philosophy ; but his most ardent affections were 

 set on the high offices of state ; and to the at- 

 tainment of these favourite objects, he seized every 

 opportunity of applying. He long and anxiously 

 courted the good graces of Lord Essex, and had 

 also frequent access to the queen, who gave him 

 great reason to believe that she was favourably dis- 

 posed towards him. Her majesty, however, bestow- 

 ed upon him no substantial mark of her regard, ex- 

 cept the reversion of a lucrative office, that of regis- 

 ter to the star-chamber, which became vacant about 

 twenty years afterwards. It is alleged, that the 

 antipathy or jealousy of Cecil, then secretary of state, 

 obstructed his preferment, partly because the secre- 

 tary disliked his attachment to the fortunes of Es- 

 sex, and partly because he dreaded the ascendancy of 

 his talents. Cecil is said to have been at great pains 

 to impress on the queen's' mind a conviction, that 

 Bacon, being always immersed in abstract specula- 

 tion, was ill qualified for the activity of public busi- 

 ness; and it is to be regretted, that these insinuations, 

 however questionable the motives which dictated 

 them, did not operate as a permanent obstacle to his 

 elevation. If he had been content with a private 

 station, his philosophical inquiries might have been 

 more successfully conducted ; and those temptations 

 might have been escaped, which afterwards had 

 power to corrupt his integrity. The subsequent 

 conduct of Bacon to his benefactor, the unfortunate 

 Earl of Essex, who had not only strained every 

 nerve to ingratiate him with the queen, but aug- 

 mented his fortune by some munificent donations, 

 drew down on him' the most unqualified expressions 

 of public reprobation, and affixed a stain to his me- 

 mory which the lustre of his talents serves only to 

 render more conspicuous. The obsequious candi- 

 date for courtly favour, prostituted his abilities by 

 pleading against the man who had protected and en- 

 riched him, and violated the holy bonds of friendship, 

 by extracting evidences of his patron's guilt from 

 private letters which he spontaneously produced. 

 As if all this had been too little, he was selected as 

 the fittest instrument for attacking the posthumous 

 fame of his sacrificed friend, and condescended to 

 gratify the queen and the ministry, by publishing an 



elaborate Declaration of the Treasons of / 

 i'.nri of Essex. His miserable Apology for his con- 

 duct, tended, in the opinion of the nation, rather to 

 aggravate than to extenuate the baseness of dew rting 

 the man on whom he had long fawned ; and thirst- 

 ing for the infamy of one, whose blood might have 

 satiated the hireling retainers of power. Elizabeth 

 never requited Bacon for the execution of his odious 

 task ; and the ministry had no great encouragement 

 to be lavish of their gifts to a man, who had proved 

 himself capable of inflicting the deepest wounds on 

 the objtct of his former adulation. Btfore this time, 

 he had incurred the queen's displeasure, in conse- 

 quence of the freedom with which he expressed hi* 

 opinions in parliament, of which he became a mem- 

 ber in 1592. 



After the death of Elizabeth, the career of his 

 ambition was more prosperous. Before James I. ar- 

 rived in England, Bacon wrote letters to all the 

 Scottish gendemen of whom he had the slightest 

 knowledge, offering his services to the king, and ear- 

 ni otly soliciting their interest to procure him employ- 

 inei.t in the aftairs of state. He was one of the 237 

 persons, on whom the honour of knighthood was 

 conferred, soon after the accession of the new sove- 

 reign ; and he was also appointed one of the king's 

 counsel learned. The endeavours of Cecil, Earl of 

 Salisbury, could not now defeat the servile arts by 

 which Bacon rose progressively through so many 

 steps of preferment. In 1605 he recommended him- 

 self to the notice of James, by addressing to him his 

 great work Of the Advancement of Learning, in 

 the introduction to which he compliments that pe- 

 dantic monarch, as being incomparably superior in 

 judgment, learning, eloquence, and every princely 

 attribute, to Julius Caesar, Marcus Antoninus, Her- 

 mes Trismegistus, and all the potentates and demi- 

 gods of ancient times. In 1607 he was appointed 

 solicitor-general. Four years afterwards he was 

 made joint judge of the knight marshal's court. la 

 1613 he became attorney-general, and was sworn a 

 member of the privy council. In 1617, he was raised 

 to the high office of keeper of the great seal of Eng- 

 land ; and on the 4th of January 1619, he was ad- 

 vanced to the greatest legal dignity which the favour 

 of his master could bestow, the office of lord chan- 

 cellor, an office which he had long laboured to pro- 

 cure, not only by descending to the most humiliating 

 importunities, but also by vilifying the talents and 

 principles of his rivals. In the course of the same 

 vear he was successively created Baron Verulam, and 

 Viscount St Albans. James had advanced him no^ 

 less than nine times : six in office, and three in dig- 

 nity. After having thus rapidly attained the climax 

 of his hopes, he sunk with still greater rapidity into 

 the lowest degradation. 



It is well known that the parliament which met 

 in 1621, acted with a firm and determined boldness, 

 of which there had previously been few examples in 

 the history of England. In the examination of grie- 

 vances, the commons were led to attend particularly 

 to some patents for monopolies, which had excited 

 loud murmxrs among the subjects. Bacon and the 

 other officers of state were supposed to have been 

 the agents of Buckingham in obtaining these oppress 



Franci*. 



