Chapter XI: Part XV: No. Xx.—on Self-Control (2)

“My humble duty first remembered to your good worship. I thought good
to write unto you to sartey you of my lady’s great unquietness in the
house. Since her last falling-out with me she showed me a good
countenance as ever she did before. Now, yesterday I had a sparhawk
given me, and she killed a brace of partridges, and then I came home
before the evening was shut in; indeed, all the folks had supped:
whereat she seemed to be very sore angry with these words—‘What come
you home now? I would you and your hawk would keep you away
altogether. You have been a-breaking of hedges between neighbour and
neighbour, and now you come home out of order, and show an ill example
in my house. Well, you shall keep no hawk here.’ ‘I am the more
sorrier I have given no acause that your ladyship should be offended,
nor I will not. To please your ladyship I will pull off her head.’
Whereat she stamped and said, I would do by her as I did by the bitch.
Insomuch she would let me have no supper. So truly I went to bed
without my supper. There is not one man in the house but she fall out
withal, and is not in charity one day in a week but with priests,
which will undo her. There is one Page that had six pounds on her. Mr
Willcocks had a paper with a great deal of gold in it. Wellblod had
two quarterns of wheat. Dicke had something the other day; what, I
know not.”

There is more of the same kind; though whether it is quite fair to take the testimony of this Edward Spencer without hearing what Lady Bacon could report of _him_, is worth a thought. He must have been a surly fellow, from his offering so readily to pull off the hawk’s head. Our next quotation brings us back to Francis, and the unhappy subject of his debts: we have hints, too, of the influence under which she suspects these debts to be incurred, which the modern biographer is unable to follow out; and which, from the different manners of a former age, it is difficult entirely to understand. But we are confirmed by these extracts in our previous convictions, that the loss which Francis is said to have sustained by the sudden death of his father (who thus failed to make the full provision for him he intended) cannot be represented as the real cause of his embarrassments. Mr Spedding represents this fact “as perplexing the problem of his life with a new and inconvenient addition.” But it could not have materially perplexed the problem of his life, unless it disabled him from living upon his private fortune. It made him a poorer gentleman; but if he had been a richer, he would still have been a suitor at the Court, and still, in all probability, have incurred debts. He and Anthony live together, and we find them alternately assisting each other. There is no evidence of a great disparity in their fortunes. What share Francis had in the “coach” we know not, but we hear of him purchasing horses; and certainly the mother does not look upon the embarrassments of Francis as some inevitable consequence of his position. She is applied to, in the present case, to assist him in the payment of his debts, by joining in the sale of an estate which belongs to him, but in which she has some legal right. Anthony makes the request, and receives the following reply:—

“For your brotherly care of your brother Francis’s estate you are to
be well liked, and so I do as a Christian mother that loveth you both
as the children of God; but, as I wrote but in a few words yesterday
by my neighbour, the state of you both doth much disquiet me, as in
Greek words I signified shortly.

“I have been too ready for you both till nothing is left. And surely,
though I pity your brother, yet so long as he pitieth not himself, but
keepeth that bloody Percy, as I told him then, yea as a
coach-companion and bed-companion,—a proud, profane, costly fellow,
whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike, and
doth less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his
health,—surely I am utterly discouraged, and make a conscience further
to undo myself to maintain such wretches as he is. This Jones (?)
never loved your brother, indeed, but for his own credit, being upon
your brother, and thankless, though bragging. But your brother will be
blind to his own hurt.... It is most certain till first Enney (?), a
filthy, wasteful knave, and his Welshman, one after another—for take
one, and they will still swarm ill-favouredly—did so lead him, as in a
train; he was a towardly young gentleman, and a son of much good hope
in goodliness. But seeing that he hath nourished most sinful proud
villains wilfully, I know not what other answer to make.”

Then, partly relenting, she adds in a postscript:—

“If your brother desire a release to Mr Harvey, let him so require it
himself, and but upon this condition, by his own hand and bond, I will
not; that is, that he make and give me a true note of all his debts,
and leave to me the whole order and receipt of all his money for his
land, to Harvey, and the just payment of all his debts thereby. And,
by the mercy and grace of God, it shall be performed by me to his
quiet discharge, without cumbering him, and to his credit. For I will
not have his cormorant seducers, and instruments of Satan to him,
committing foul sin by his countenance to the displeasing of God and
his godly true fear. Otherwise I will not, _pro certo_.”

This was a condition which, as Mr Spedding observes, was hard of digestion for an expectant Attorney-General. It was not complied with. But we need not attempt to follow these obscure transactions further; and here we may part company with Lady Bacon. In justice to her let it be added that, if she scolded her son Francis, she could assert his claims boldly before others. In a reported conversation with Sir Robert Cecil she does not scruple to hint that he is but ill used by his powerful relatives. She little understands what manner of son she has; she says truly that he is thinking _nescio quid_, but she is not without a certain degree of motherly pride, as well as motherly tenderness, for him.

We must now turn to that portion of Bacon’s history in which we see him brought into relationship with Essex. Mr Spedding has represented the friendship of the two men as being based on very noble motives. Essex was no doubt attracted to Bacon, in the first instance, by a generous admiration for his talents. But we do not find that on Bacon’s side there was any reciprocal ardour. We cannot help thinking that what Bacon chiefly saw in Essex was the young nobleman likely to be the great favourite of Elizabeth. Bacon, we are told by Mr Spedding, saw in Essex a man capable of “entering heartily into all his largest speculations for the good of the world, and placed by accident in a position to realise, or help to realise them. It was natural to hope that he could do it.”—(Vol. i. p. 106.) We have a portrait of Essex, as he first appeared to Bacon, drawn in glowing colours. This young nobleman is not only described as being (what all have admitted) generous, brave, and ardent in his friendship, but credit is given him for wide contemplative ends, or, at least, an aptitude is presumed in him for purely patriotic or philanthropic purposes. Now, from the commencement to the termination of his career, all his good qualities are seen in the service of a mere flagrant personal ambition. He is jealous of every honour bestowed upon another: he must be first in the country. And so far from detecting any great plan or noble intention in the use of power, we see him, still at an early age, prepared to throw the whole nation into confusion in order to obtain place or power for himself. And as to Bacon, throughout the whole of his correspondence with Essex there are no traces of anything higher than prudential and sometimes crafty counsels, how best to obtain favour and advancement at Court. The relationship between them is chiefly this, that Essex is to obtain office and promotion for Bacon, and Bacon by his aid and advice is to administer to the greatness of Essex. The relationship has nothing in it peculiarly reprehensible, but nothing certainly of an elevating character. Sometimes the strain of advice which the philosopher gives is of a quite ignoble character, counselling, as it does, a tricky, dissimulating conduct. It is no Utopia of any kind, moral or scientific, that he has in view for Essex, or for himself as connected with Essex. It is how to rise at Court that he studies for his friend, and it is the petty arts of the courtier that he sometimes condescends to teach.

We will content ourselves with one quotation: it must be a rather long one, because a single sentence wrung from its context may give no fair impression of the general strain of a letter of advice. The following was written to Essex soon after his famous expedition to Cadiz:—

“I said to your Lordship last time, _Martha, Martha, attendis ad
plurima, unum sufficit_; win the Queen: if this be not the beginning,
of any other course I see no end....

“For the removing the impression of your nature to be _opiniastre_,
and not rulable: First, and above all things, I wish that all matters
past, which cannot be revoked, your Lordship would turn altogether
upon insatisfaction, and not upon your nature or proper disposition.
This string you cannot upon every apt occasion harp upon too much.
Next, whereas I have noted you to fly and avoid (in some respect
justly) the resemblance or imitation of my Lord of Leicester and my
Lord Chancellor Hatton; yet I am persuaded (howsoever I wish your
Lordship as distant as you are from them in points of favour,
integrity, magnanimity, and merit) that it will do you much good,
between the Queen and you, to allege them (as oft as you find
occasion) for authors and patterns. For I do not know a readier mean
to make her Majesty think you are in your right way. Thirdly, when at
any time your Lordship upon occasion happen in speeches to do her
Majesty right (for there is no such matter as flattery amongst you
all), I fear you handle it _magis in speciem adornatis verbis quam ut
sentire videaris_, so that a man may read formality in your
countenance; whereas your Lordship should do it familiarly _et
oratione fidâ_. Fourthly, your Lordship should never be without some
particulars of art, _which you should seem to pursue with earnestness
and affection, and then let them fall upon taking knowledge of her
Majesty’s opposition and dislike_. Of which the weightiest sort may
be, if your Lordship offers to labour in the behalf of some that you
favour for some of the places that are void, choosing such a subject
as you think her Majesty is likely to oppose unto. And if you will say
that this is _conjunctum cum alienâ injurâ_, I will not answer, _Hæc
non aliter constabunt_; but I say commendation from so good a mouth
doth not hurt a man, though you prevail not. A less weighty sort of
particulars may be the pretence of some journeys, which at her
Majesty’s request your Lordship mought relinquish; or if you would
pretend a journey to see your living and estate towards Wales, or the
like; for as for great foreign journeys of employment and service, it
standeth not with your gravity to play or stratagem with them. And the
lightest sort of particulars, which yet are not to be neglected, are
in your habits, apparel, wearings, gestures, and the like....

“The third impression is of a popular reputation; which, because it is
a thing good in itself, being obtained as your Lordship obtaineth it,
that is _bonis artibus_; and besides well governed, is one of the best
flowers of your greatness, both present and to come; it would be
handled tenderly. The only way is to quench it _verbis_, but not
_rebus_. And, therefore, _to take all occasions to the Queen to speak
against popularity and popular courses vehemently, and to tax it on
all others; but nevertheless to go in your honourable commonwealth
courses as you do_. And, therefore, I will not advise you to cure this
by dealing in monopolies or any oppressions. Only, if in Parliament
your Lordship be forward for treasure in respect of the wars, it
becometh your person well; and if her Majesty object popularity to you
at any time, I would say to her, A Parliament will show that; and so
feed her with expectation.”

It is only the fear of being tedious that prevents us from giving other passages in which Bacon counsels dissimulation and these petty artifices of the courtier. We do not say that passages like this deserve any violent reprobation, but we do say that the writer of them must have a very lax morality on the subject of truth-speaking; he _must_ be deficient in self-respect, in moral dignity. Such a counsellor would not improve _the man_ who followed his advice, however he might improve his _fortunes_. There was a love of manœuvring, of petty diplomacy, in Bacon. In one place we find him framing two fictitious letters, the one pretending to be written by his brother Anthony, and the other by the Earl of Essex. This fictitious correspondence was to be shown to the Queen.—(Vol. ii. p. 197.)

In Bacon, we may observe, we have not the mere ordinary contrast between good teaching and bad practice. We have not a Seneca professing a stoical morality and writing apologies for Nero (or any instance of this kind which the reader may choose for himself, for Seneca may have his defenders, and many are disposed at present to say a good word in favour of Nero). It is not a contrast of this kind we have chiefly to remark in Bacon: what we notice is a defect in the cultivation of the moral sentiments. The force of his intellect had gone out in another direction. He had great aspirations for the good of mankind; but these aspirations were connected with his theory of knowledge, and they were aspirations after increased power, and “commodity,” and the physical wellbeing of man. It was not his habit to dwell much upon those moral sentiments which make, in all ages, the elevation of the individual mind.

But the grave and specific charge brought against Bacon is that of ingratitude to his friend. We have to ask what was the amount or kind of obligation under which Bacon had been placed? What was the friendship he was supposed to have sacrificed to his interest? And whether the criminal conduct of Essex did not manumit him from all the bonds of friendship, whatever they might have been? Though not always a high-minded counsellor, Bacon was the last man in the country to tolerate an open act of rebellion against the Queen and the established Government. The evidence, as laid before us by Mr Spedding, proves beyond a doubt the grave criminality of Essex. If we have a friend who passes with us as an honest man, and he suddenly proves a villain, we generally fling our friendship to the winds—we disclaim and renounce the man who, in addition to his other villanies, has practised a treachery upon ourselves. In fact, the condemnation of Essex may be said to be here the acquittal of Bacon.

We shall not haggle about the amount of specific service rendered by Essex to his friend. Every generous mind feels gratitude according to the generosity of purpose of the donor. Essex, in the ardour of his youth, was, as we have said, drawn towards Bacon by admiration of his great intellect, and was only too zealous to promote his interest. His zeal outran his discretion. Nothing came of it but disappointment to both parties. But this would not have extinguished a grateful feeling.

We have no ground whatever for supposing that the intercession of Essex really _prevented_ Bacon from obtaining first the Attorney-Generalship, and, subsequently, the Solicitor-Generalship. That nobleman speaks of his solicitations doing more harm than good; but an expression of this kind was either a generous depreciation of his own services, or the result of a moody anger against the Queen whom he had failed to move. It does not seem that Bacon at this time had any chance at Court. The Queen was in no hurry to promote him. He had obtained no practice at the bar, and it is no want of charity to attribute this in Bacon to an unwillingness to spend his strength and powers on the ordinary routine of legal business. But this unwillingness must have operated against him. The very qualities for which we now admire Bacon must have disparaged him as a man of business in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Burghley. A man who has long ago left his college, and who is still dreaming about reforms in philosophy, and who tells the Lord Treasurer himself that “he has as vast contemplative ends as he has moderate civil ends,” does not seem exactly the person for an Attorney-General. Bacon, at all events, does not scruple, on a subsequent occasion, to have recourse again to his friend’s intercession. When Egerton became Lord Keeper, Bacon wished to succeed him as Master of the Rolls, and he requests Essex to write to Egerton in his favour. He makes this request (we may observe in passing) in a diplomatic manner; he writing half the matter in his own letter, and Anthony being more explicit in a letter he sends at the same time. It is impossible not to remark that Bacon is grasping at the higher prizes of the profession before he has endured the heat and burden of a lawyer’s life.

His friend Essex being unable to procure for him either the Attorney-Generalship or the Solicitor-Generalship, and feeling indebted for many services, gave him a small estate, worth, we are told, £1800 in the currency of these times. This was a gift which, in one sense of the word, Bacon may be said to have earned; but, if we may judge according to the present state of feeling on these matters, it was a gift which he could not have felt perfectly satisfied in accepting. Nothing but his debts, we venture to assert, persuaded him to accept it. The services he had rendered were not such as are paid by money—they were never rendered for money-payment. It would be a very coarse interpretation (and one which Mr Spedding has avoided) to call this gift a _fee_ for advice and assistance tendered to the Earl. It was not professional advice that he gave, whether he taught him how to rise at Court, or assisted him in the duties of a privy councillor. There was an interchange of good offices between the two men; but Bacon sinks from his rightful equality if he accepts money as an equivalent for any _balance_ of such good offices as might be in his favour. Mr Spedding suggests that the aid which Bacon rendered in certain masques or devices got up for the entertainment of the Queen must be included in the list of his services; but Mr Spedding would not certainly have counselled him to hold out his hand for a money-payment for what was doubtless entered into in the spirit of a literary amusement. If, indeed, the two speeches which are given us here on Knowledge and in Praise of the Queen were really delivered at these devices, Bacon must have made these entertainments subservient to certain graver purposes of his own. We should like to know if the audience felt thankful to the author for his eloquent but very long orations.

So stands the account against Bacon, and the two men are still friends, when one of them suddenly appears in the new character of traitor and rebel. We say _suddenly_, for, though Essex had been long plotting some surprise upon the Government—some insurrectionary movement—some advantage to be taken either of his military power or his popularity with the mob—yet he had so far learnt one lesson of his friend, the lesson of dissimulation, that he had been able to conceal from him these secret purposes. Even so far back as when he was organising his great expedition to Ireland, which was to crush the rebellion of Tyrone, he is suspected of some intention of using the forces that were put under his command _against_ the Queen’s Government. We are certainly driven to this alternative: _either_ the Earl on that expedition manifested such incapacity as is unparalleled even in those days of brave knights and incompetent generals; _or_ he acted throughout in the spirit of a traitor. He has the command of an army, large for those days, of 16,000 men; he does absolutely nothing with it—fritters it away; comes up at length to Tyrone with some 4000 men, Tyrone greatly outnumbering him. He draws up his forces on a hill; Tyrone refuses to charge uphill, but invites Essex to a parley. Essex accepts the invitation; has half an hour’s talk with the rebel, who gives him _verbally_ the terms on which he is willing to lay down his arms—terms which are those of a conqueror. Essex promises to carry these terms to the Queen, concludes a truce, and there the campaign ends. The sum total, as Mr Spedding says, would stand thus:—Expended, £300,000 and ten or twelve thousand men; Received a suspension of hostilities for six weeks, with promise of a fortnight’s notice before recommencing them, and a verbal communication of the conditions on which he was willing to make peace.

Essex hastens back to England to make his own peace with the Queen. She at first receives him amicably; but reasons of State overweigh her personal amity; some inquiry must be made into the disastrous expedition; he is commanded to keep his own chamber. This takes place at Nonsuch.

At this juncture Bacon writes the following letter. It proves, as Mr Spedding observes, that Bacon could have had no suspicion of any treasonable scheme on the part of Essex; but we cannot help remarking the tone of _hollowness_ in the letter, and especially in that _congratulatory_ sentence, which cannot fail to strike the reader. He knew enough of the expedition to Ireland to know that, from whatever cause, it was an utter failure.

“My Lord,—Conceiving that your Lordship comes now up in the person of
a good servant to serve your sovereign mistress, which kind of
compliments we many times _instar magnorum meritorum_, and therefore
it would be hard for me to find you, I have committed to this poor
paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man’s,
and more yours than any man. To these salutations I add a due and
joyful gratulation, confessing that your Lordship in your last
conference with me, before your journey, spake not in vain, God making
it good, that you trusted we should say _Quis putasset_, which, as it
is found true in a happy sense, or I wish you do not find another
_Quis putasset_ in _the manner of taking this so great a service_. But
I hope it is, as he said, _Nubecula est, cito transibit_: and that
your Lordship’s wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will
turn all to the best. So referring all to some time that I may attend
you, I commit you to God’s best preservations.”

We do not believe that Bacon was capable of an ardent friendship for any one; he was urbane and courteous to all, as is the manner with men of thought and equanimity. With regard to Essex, this letter alone would be sufficient proof to us that he had all along been more of the courtier than the friend. No friend, in these circumstances, _could_ have written in this hollow strain of congratulation.

In a short time, however, this strain alters. Essex is examined before the Council, and is committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper. He remains in privacy at York House. The _nubecula_ is growing into a very dark cloud. Bacon, in his interviews with the Queen, does all that a cautious man can do to bring about a reconciliation. But if a reconciliation is impossible, he must serve his sovereign, and not Essex. He now writes thus:—

“My Lord,—No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship,
which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to
believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of
_bonus civis_, which with us is a good and true servant to the Queen;
and next of _bonus vir_, that is an honest man. I desire your Lordship
also to think that although I confess I love some things much better
than I love your Lordship, as the Queen’s service, her quiet and
contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the
like, yet I love few persons better than yourself, both for
gratitude’s sake and your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by
accident and abuse. Of which my good affections I was ever and am
ready to yield testimony by any good offices, but with such
reservations as yourself cannot but allow; for as I was ever sorry
that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus’s
fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially
ostrich’s, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more
glad.”

To which letter Essex returned a dignified answer, such as a man might have written who intended to retire from an unjust world into contemplative life.

Soon after this correspondence Essex was released from even the gentle confinement in which he had been held. He could have retired, with none to molest him, into contemplative life. His private fortune was untouched; his name was still popular with the multitude. Perhaps, after a short interval of retirement patiently endured, he might have returned to Court, and have been reinstated in all his honour and offices.

The truth was that he had been for some time past tampering with treason of the boldest and most criminal description. Before leaving Ireland he held a consultation with his friends Blount and Southampton, and told them “that he found it necessary for him to go to England, and thought it fit to carry with him as much of the army as he could conveniently transport, to go on shore with him to Wales, and there to make good his landing till he could send for more; not doubting but his army would so increase in a small time that he should be able to march to London and make his conditions as he desired.” The evidence for this treasonable scheme is stated by Mr Spedding, vol. ii. p. 147.

The time had passed for this “monstrous” project, as Mr Spedding justly calls it. But the scheme into which he now enters is still more monstrous; it is still more irrational, and, but for evidence of an unusually clear and stringent character, would be utterly incredible. That scheme was to force himself upon the Queen, and by an insurrectionary movement to be carried, in some way, to the highest position a subject could hold—perhaps to some still higher position. What was to be his pretence? what the _cry_ by which he was to rouse the multitude? The succession to the English throne of James of Scotland had not been formally declared, and the _cry_ was to be that the ministers were plotting to sell the crown of England to the Infanta!! It was too absurd, one would say, even for a mob zealous for the Protestant succession. Some overtures, or solicitations for aid, were made to James, but of what nature we know not. While the Protestants were to be alarmed, the Catholics were to be propitiated by promises of toleration. But Blount and other Catholics who entered into the plot were, no doubt, induced to do so by stronger motives than mere promises of toleration—by those vague expectations and hopes which a season of anarchy and confusion and civil war would open to a party who still amounted to a large minority of the nation. “By the end of January 1601,” to adopt the statement of Mr Spedding, “all their intrigues and secret consultations had ripened into a deliberate and deep-laid plan for surprising the Court, mastering the guard, and seizing the Queen’s person, and so forcing her to dismiss from her counsels Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, and others, and to make such changes in the State as the conspirators thought fit.” The several confessions of those engaged in the plot, and of Essex himself, leave no doubt whatever of the fact. How such a plot is to be rationally explained is still a perplexity. Sir Christopher Blount, with a company of armed men, was to take the Court gate; Sir John Davis was to master the hall and go up into the Great Chamber, where already some of the conspirators would have straggled in and seized upon the halberts of the guard, which usually stood piled up against the wall; Sir Charles Davers was to have taken possession of the Presence; whereupon Essex, with the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and other noblemen, would have gone in to the Queen; they would have used her authority for calling a Parliament, condemned all whom they denounced as misgoverning the State, and made, it is added, changes in the government. If such a plot had succeeded, what else could have ensued than to set loose all the several parties, sects, and factions of which the country was composed, to struggle anew for the supremacy?

Meanwhile, some rumours of what was in preparation reached the Court; Essex was summoned to the Council; he excused himself on the plea of ill health. The conspirators were alarmed; it seemed to them that their plot was detected. It was not yet matured—the hour of action had not yet come. Still, it appeared to them that something must be done. His friends were assembled. To surprise the Court was impossible, if the Court was already on its guard. But the city might be raised; an insurrectionary movement might be excited if Essex, still an idol of the populace, went among the citizens proclaiming that his life was in danger from the machinations of his enemies. While this expedient was being debated there arrived from the Court the Lord Keeper, with three other lords, sent from the Queen to know the meaning of this unusual assemblage, and to demand its dismissal. Essex was invited to explain to them the cause of his present discontent. Their coming still further precipitated the action. Essex locked up the four noblemen in his library, and set off himself, accompanied with some two hundred gentlemen, to rouse the city to arms. But for the inopportune appearance of these noblemen, Essex and his friends would have proceeded in stately fashion on horseback to St Paul’s Cross; they would have arrived before the sermon was over (it was Sunday), and would have explained their case to the assembled people. Essex was not deficient as an orator, and he could, at all events, have obtained a solemn hearing. But the visit of the councillors spoilt even the execution of the after-plot. The party went on foot; Essex had no opportunity to address the people; he could only cry out as he passed along that his life was in danger. A nobleman running along the streets on a Sunday morning, followed by two hundred gentlemen with drawn swords, and exclaiming that his life was in danger, must have been a curious spectacle for the citizens of London. But it must have been as unintelligible as it was curious. No one joined him. The Queen’s troops were collected to oppose him. He made his way back to Essex House, where he was captured, and conveyed to prison.

Up to this time Bacon’s conduct towards Essex lies open to no peculiar censure. We have said that he does not appear to us in the light of a very wise counsellor, or a very warm friend; but, as regards Essex, no specific charge of ingratitude can be brought against him. It is after this abortive and miserable attempt at rebellion that his conduct to his former friend changes. And well, we think, it might. Of the character and designs of Essex there could be now no doubt whatever. He has thrown off all disguise. He stands there an enemy to the commonwealth. Nothing but the extreme absurdity of his conduct hides from us its extreme criminality.

The defence which Essex was at first prepared to make was simply the repetition of the false clamour that he had raised when he rushed into the city—that his life was in danger, and that he acted according to the law of self-preservation. But, before the trial came on, several of his associates had made full confession of the actual plot that had long been in agitation, and which, only at the last moment, had been substituted by this open and clamorous appeal to the citizens of London. To Bacon, as one of her Majesty’s counsel, engaged, as we should say, for the prosecution, the real state of the case was known; the full extent of Essex’s criminality was known. Do we wonder that, at this moment, he altogether severed himself from Essex, and took his position as a zealous supporter of the Queen’s government?

Lord Macaulay, who could not have had before him the materials for forming a judgment which Mr Spedding has now placed within the reach of us all, wrote of Essex and Bacon in the following strain:—“The person on whom, during the decline of his influence, he chiefly depended, to whom he confided his perplexities, whose advice he solicited, whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. The lamentable truth must be told. This friend, so loved, so trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the Earl’s fortunes, in shedding his blood, and in blackening his memory.” A more unfortunate sentence, or one more replete with error, was never penned. It would be ungenerous to revive it in presence of the lucid statement of facts which Mr Spedding has given us, if it were not the case that many are still under the impressions derived from this eloquent essay. Essex, as we have seen, was very far from confiding his perplexities to Bacon, or soliciting his advice in those latter days of his life; and Bacon was so far from being instrumental to his ruin, that no advocacy on earth could have saved him. Nor can it be said that he blackened the memory of Essex, for neither on the trial, nor in the narrative which he subsequently drew up of the whole transaction, is the guilt of Essex overcharged. Nay, with the materials before us, the historian could add some very dark strokes to the picture; for he could show that, even at a time when Essex was receiving nothing but favours from the Court, he was meditating treason; and he could add that, in his last moments, he tarnished even his character for generosity by needlessly including others, hitherto unsuspected, in his guilt.

What could have been, we are tempted to ask, the hopes of Essex, or what his final purpose in this act of rebellion? Where could he have stopped? how found safety for himself in any measure short of a deposition of the Queen? He must have known that if, by overpowering her guard and putting a personal constraint upon her, he obliged the Queen to reinstate him in his former command, yet that the moment such force was withdrawn he would have been dismissed again, and exposed to the resentment of a proud and injured sovereign. A subject who goes so far must go farther still. Elizabeth must have been deposed, and James prematurely thrust into her place. It has been even suggested that Essex had some wild dream of filling the throne himself. He was to play Bolingbroke, and Elizabeth Richard II.

Those who take a lenient view of Essex’s character might shape a defence for him out of his very self-will and the headstrong nature of the man. They would say he did not calculate consequences. He had twice before regained the favour of the Queen by manifestation of his own violent and haughty temper. He had managed the Queen by proving that he was as self-willed as herself. He merely intended to follow the same course again—to threaten, and display his power. Such a defence we should not be unwilling ourselves to adopt, if the treasonable projects of Essex had sprung directly, and only, out of his last dismissal from Court and his employments. We can conceive that a spoilt and violent nobleman might have imagined that he could successfully overawe the Queen: she had, indeed, treated him as a spoilt child, and had something of a maternal weakness for him: he might have thought that he could subdue her spirit by this display of his power, and yet not have contemplated any more atrocious act of rebellion. But the ugly fact remains that he was meditating high treason of the most criminal description before he had been dismissed, and while he was still the most favoured subject of her Majesty.

Even to those who knew nothing of his antecedent schemes, it must have seemed a monstrous thing that a nobleman, because he has been dismissed from his command, should think of reinstating himself by an armed attack upon the palace, and a violent seizure of the person of the Queen. So much as this was known to Bacon, and was indisputably proved by the evidence submitted to him. But why, it will be said, did Bacon appear upon the trial at all? If his services were necessary to the support of the Queen’s government, he ought to have given them, whatever his friendship to Essex; but there were others who could have performed his part; he might have stepped aside; he, in silence, might have let justice take its course. “This man is guilty, but he was my friend; let others pursue him to his merited punishment.” He might have said this; _we wish he had_. It would have been a graceful part to play; it would have added a very pleasing trait to the biography of Bacon.

But such moral enthusiasm had no place in Bacon’s personal character. To retire from the post which his legal functions assigned to him, might have been seriously prejudicial to his own interests, and in the spirit of martyrdom Bacon did not share in the least degree. Meanwhile Essex by his conduct had forfeited the friendship henceforth of all honest men. It must be said that Bacon rather lost the opportunity of doing a gracious act, than that, in performing his duties as counsel to the Queen, he did anything gravely reprehensible. And he performed these duties fairly. It is objected against Bacon that he pressed heavily on the memory of Essex in the account he subsequently drew up of the events. This charge Mr Spedding has quite dispelled. He shows that that account is fully justified by the evidence. The fact is, that for a long time after his death a current of popular opinion ran in favour of the Earl; and the “Declaration,” therefore, which Bacon, with the assistance and under the direction of the Council, drew up, was regarded as a libel upon his memory. People refused to believe him guilty. If any remains of this partiality to the Earl has descended to our times, it will be finally dissipated by Mr Spedding’s work.

There is one specific accusation which Mr Jardine brought against Bacon, which is here very completely refuted. Mr Jardine, in examining the original depositions from which this “Declaration” was drawn up, found paragraphs marked along the margin with a significant _om._ against them. He further found that these passages had been _omitted_ in the “Declaration,” and he concluded that this _om._ was in the handwriting of Bacon, who had marked these passages for omission _because they told in favour of Essex_. Mr Spedding replies:—

“First, it is by no means certain that the marks in question were made
with reference to the Declaration at all. Secondly, it is quite
possible that the passages in question had been omitted at the trial.
Thirdly, whether the omission were right or wrong, there is no ground
for imputing it to Bacon personally. Fourthly, the passages omitted do
not in any one particular tend to soften the evidence against Essex as
explained in the narrative part, or to modify in any way the history
of the case, as far as it concerned him.”

The last, the Fourthly, is quite sufficient to demolish Mr Jardine’s hypothesis. These passages appear to have been omitted because they affected living persons whom the Council wished to spare, or because they contained matters which the Council did not wish to publish to all the enemies of the Queen’s Government at home or abroad. Mr Spedding, however, has enabled the reader to judge for himself by publishing these omitted passages.

As very much stress has been laid on the presumed unfairness of this Declaration composed by Bacon, it must be remembered, under the supervision of the Council, we quote at length Mr Spedding’s concluding observations upon it:—

“With regard to the general charge of untruthfulness, I have said that
nobody has yet attempted to specify any particular untruth expressed
or implied in the Government Declaration. And it is singular that Mr
Jardine himself does not form an exception; for though he does
specify, as contradicted by one of the omitted passages, a particular
statement which he _assumes_ to be contained in the Declaration, it is
certain that there is no such statement there; but that, on the
contrary, the precise import of that passage, as Mr Jardine himself
infers it, is represented in the body of the narrative with delicate
exactness. In the absence of such specification, I can only oppose to
the general charge a general expression of my own conviction; which
is, that the narrative put forth by the Government was meant to be,
and was by its authors believed to be, a narrative strictly and
scrupulously veracious. It is true that it was written under the
excitement and agitation of that last and most portentous disclosure,
which, in proving that Essex had been capable of designs far worse
than anybody had suspected him of, suggested a new explanation of all
that had been most suspicious and mysterious in his previous
proceedings; and it may be that things which before had been rejected
as incredible were now too easily believed. In so dark a thing as
treason it is impossible to have positive evidence at every step. Many
passages must remain obscure, and fairly open to more interpretations
than one; and in one or two of those points which are and profess to
be ‘matter of inference or presumption,’ as distinguished from ‘matter
of plain and direct proof,’ there is room, probably, without setting
aside such indisputable facts, for an interpretation of Essex’s
conduct more favourable than that adopted by the Queen and her
councillors.... In my own account of the matter I have abstained, in
deference to so general a prejudice, from using the Declaration as an
authority; and have assumed as a fact nothing for which I cannot quote
evidence independent of it. For the rest, I shall let it speak for
itself. It will be found to be a very luminous and coherent narrative,
and certainly much nearer the truth than any which has been put forth
since it became the fashion to treat it as a fiction.”

Having elected to serve the Queen, and not his former friend (and he probably never hesitated a moment on this subject; he probably would have thought it mere idle romance to sacrifice the actual life and duties before him to the memory of a dead friendship)—having elected to serve the Queen, we do not find that in assisting to conduct the prosecution Bacon behaved with undue harshness towards the accused. The allusion to the Duke of Guise, which Macaulay blames so severely, appears to be one very natural to arise to a speaker on such an occasion. Essex did intend, like the Duke of Guise, to overawe his sovereign. In one respect the parallel pays an undeserved compliment to Essex. The Duke of Guise had the support of a great party—the zealous Catholics; if Essex could have attained the like support from the zealous Protestants, the Puritans, his scheme might, at least, have worn a more rational aspect. Perhaps he fondly conceived that the Puritans would adopt him as their representative. He thought himself a very good Puritan. This bad citizen was highly indignant when Coke cast a slur upon his religion.

Here we lose for the present the guidance of Mr Spedding. We wait with interest for such disclosures as he may make for us in the great charge that burdens the memory of Bacon—that of judicial corruption. There are, indeed, two or three broad facts which, we apprehend, no historical investigation can materially alter, and which, we think, enable us to come to a safe conclusion in this subject. But still there is much we should like to have cleared up to us; especially we should like to know what had been the custom of previous Chancellors in this matter of the reception of presents. Could, for instance, the same charges which were brought against Bacon have been brought against the father, Sir Nicholas Bacon?

The two or three broad facts we allude to are these: 1. After a considerable interval Parliament had met, and “grievances had been gone into.” Monopolies were first attacked, and their attention was called to certain corrupt practices in the Court of Chancery. Bacon was impeached before the House of Lords. 2. The Lord Chancellor no longer stood in an amiable footing with the favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was very willing to have the Great Seal to bestow on some other client. The impeached Chancellor was not likely to receive any assistance from the Court. The King advised Bacon to throw himself on his royal mercy. 3. Under these circumstances Bacon _did_ plead guilty, and threw himself on the mercy of the King; who certainly fulfilled his part of the compact by remitting all that he possibly could of the sentence passed by the House of Lords.

Now we cannot suppose that Bacon would plead guilty unless there were really some corrupt practices of which his conscience told him he was culpable. To suppose otherwise would, as Macaulay has argued, convict him of a dastardly conduct almost as infamous as judicial corruption. But although it is impossible to suppose that there was not _something to confess_—something culpable and illegal to plead guilty to—yet it is very possible that, by showing that he was not more culpable than others, he might have defended himself successfully before the House of Lords. A man of sterner stuff would have adopted this line of defence; he would have carried the war into other territories. Of this the Court was not at all desirous, and Bacon, a lover of peace, thought it the better bargain to plead guilty and keep the King for his friend.

We do not accuse the Lord Chancellor of pleading guilty, and being conscious of perfect innocence; we say that he resigned a line of defence which might have been successful with his judges, in obedience to the wishes of the Court. In the position in which he found himself, submission was better policy than defence.

It is idle to suppose that Bacon received no presents but such as would be classed under the head of fees or customary donations: there was the element of _secrecy_ in the transactions which were now brought to light, and which were to be made the subject of investigation before the House of Lords. The money was given, it is true, to an officer of the Court; it was not slipped into the hand, or dropped stealthily into the sleeve of the judge himself: but the officer of the Court did not talk about such transactions as these; he had the proper _esprit de corps_, if he had no other motive for silence. But still there are many cases in which a custom, acknowledged to be bad and immoral even by those who fall into it, is yet so prevalent that it seems an injustice to single out any one individual, and punish it in him; and this seems to be the position in which Bacon stands. An illustration occurs to us in some of the vicious customs of trade. The illustration may not be very dignified, but it is apposite. A little time ago the public was suddenly made aware of divers impositions that had been long practised on it. Some articles of commerce were systematically adulterated; others were sold under false descriptions. Here were reels of cotton warranted to contain 300 yards, which did not contain say more than 200; and it was reported at the time (we of course do not vouch for the truth of a statement which we use only by way of illustration) that respectable houses of trade gave orders to the manufacturers for reels of cotton which should be marked as having a greater number of yards than were actually wound on them. Now let us suppose that a custom of this kind prevails, and that suddenly one man, and he not the most flagrant offender, is singled out for punishment. You cannot say the man is guiltless—he will not say himself that he is guiltless; he never approved of the custom, though he fell into it; he knew that it could not bear the light of day; he knew that though his own class did not condemn the custom, the moral opinion of society at large would unhesitatingly denounce it. He pleads guilty—as Bacon did—and throws himself upon the charitable construction of the public. And the public, if it cannot pardon, will not be disposed to punish severely.

The difference between _a prevalent bad custom_, and a custom which society at a given time does not pronounce _to be bad_, is stated by Lord Macaulay with his usual force and precision. We shall be glad to hear, from the further investigation of Mr Spedding, which of these most strictly applies to the practice of which Bacon stands accused.

We cannot leave our subject without expressing our assent (with certain reservations) to the estimate which Lord Macaulay has formed of Bacon in his character of philosopher—in that character in which there can be only the difference of more or less admiration.

We admire—as who does not?—the eloquent and far-seeing man who perceived that too much of our time was spent over books, and too little in the study of that nature which appeals at each moment to our senses, and promises to those who will investigate her laws new powers as well as new knowledge. But we agree with Macaulay in setting little store upon the rules of a new logic by which he offered to aid the investigation of those laws. No logic of any kind ever taught a man to reason. No truth was ever discovered by either Aristotelian or Baconian logic. It may be fit and proper to make the process of reasoning a subject of subtle analysis; but just as the poet must come before the critic, and never yet was formed by the critic, so the reasoner comes before the logician, and never yet was an able reasoner made so by rules of logic. It was a glorious word spoken in season, to tell men to observe and to experiment—to take nothing upon mere tradition or authority that could possibly be tested by experiment. But the rules Bacon gives for conducting observation and experiment have never made a good observer, or contributed themselves to our scientific discoveries. “The inductive method,” as Macaulay says, “has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being.... Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method, but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analysed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery of a new principle—had shown that such discoveries must be made by induction, and by induction alone; and had given the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision.”