xT. 73.] TO R. W. CHURCH. 749 
American life and manners which may be well 
enough for him to see, though we should desire the 
contrary, and will add to his rich repertory of stories, 
which they say he can tell so well. The day he was 
shown over our university he called here, and took a 
cup of tea with us. He had recently been visiting 
our good friend Lord Justice Fry at Failand, and 
spoke of Lord Blachford as his friend and neigh- 
are 
March 31, 1884. 
. . . I have, moreover, another reason for sending 
you this line, to thank you for the proof-sheets of the 
“Bacon.” I read it at a sitting, one day when I was 
too ill for my daily task. I enjoyed the book greatly, 
all the more, probably, from my freshness, not having 
read anything upon the subject that I now recall 
since Macaulay’s essay, ages ago. It is like reading 
a tragedy. 
What a great failure Bacon was, whenever he was 
tried! Poor Essex, hunted to death merely for “ get- 
ting up a row,” and Bacon sacrificing him without 
compunction, and without seeing that he was prob- 
ably made a tool of, merely to serve his personal ad- 
vantage! Then the poetical justice, as they call it, — 
very prosaic justice, — of his own destruction, by a 
bolt out of a clear sky, which an enemy was adroit 
enough to direct to his ruin. And poor Bacon with 
conscience enough to feel that he deserved it, but not 
spirit enough to make a fight. No, if Pope’s fling 
was undeserved, as you say, it was because of the 
mean and ignoble set around him. 
Almost as pitiable and tragic in its way, pitiable in 
its true sense, was the upshot of Bacon’s higher and 
nobler life, conceiving vaguely and laboring all his 
