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"FIT FOR A SECOND PLACE."

as men of no great note in the profession, and younger in proceeding, "without blame aspire to." "He is glad to find, like the Lacedæmonian, that there is such choice of abler men if her Majesty like another better. The conclusion shall be that I wish your Majesty served answerable to yourself. Principis est virtus maxima nosse suos." A letter that should, like many others, have been printed at length if space admitted, for its boldness and manliness, not to say rashness, of which we shall have another instance by-and-by.

On the 10th of October, Anthony sets out to see the Queen at Windsor, but is taken so ill at Eton as to be unable to proceed. On the 10th, he writes to his impatient brother Francis: "Yet if you will, and think it to the purpose, I mean to venture an extraordinary letter to the Earl, correspondent to the duty of a brother, and of a free devoted servant to his lordship, which I will be so bold as to beseech his lordship, having once read it, to burn in my man's sight." Anthony Bacon has written in his brother's behalf to Essex. The Earl, on or about the 16th or 18th, writes in reply, he has been so ill that he has been compelled to keep his bed, where he has remained ever since, or he would have written before. "She was content to hear me plead at large for your brother, but condemned my judgment in thinking him fittest to be attorney, whom his own uncle did name fit to a second place, and said that the sole exception against Mr. Coke was stronger against your brother, which was youth. To the first I answered, that it was rather the humour of my lord to have a man obnoxious to him, and to the second that the comparison held not good, for if they were both of one standing, yet herself knew there

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was such a difference in the worthiness of the persons, as if Mr. Coke's head and beard were grown grey with age, it would not counterpoise his other disadvantages. And yet Mr. Bacon was the ancient in standing by three or four years. Your offers and my mingling arguments of merit with arguments of affection, moved somewhat; but all had been too little if I had not a promise negative, and desired her, before she resolved upon any of them, to hear me again. So she referred me over till this day."

"To-day I found her stiff in her opinion, that she would have her own way. Therefore, I grew more earnest than

ever I did before, insomuch as she told me she would be advised by those that had more judgment in these things than myself. I replied, so she might be, and yet it would be more for her service to hear me than to hear them; for my speech had truth and zeal to her without respect of private ends. If I failed in judgment to discern between the worth of one man and another, she would teach it me; and it was not an ill rule for to hold him an honest and wise man whom many wise and honest men hold in reputation. But those whom she trusted did leave out the wisest and worthiest, and did praise for affection. Whereupon, she bade me name any man of worth whom they had not named. I named Mr. Morris,† and gave him his due. She acknowledged his gifts, but said, his speaking against her in such a manner as he had done should be a bar against any preferment at her hands, but seemed to marvel that in their bill they had never thought of him. I told her that

Birch, Memoirs of Eliz.,' vol. i., p. 127.

+ This Mr. Morris was the recorder for Chelmsford, whom we have seen imprisoned. He has been released through the earl's intercession.

I was a stranger to the law, and to almost all that professed it; but I was persuaded that there were many unspoken of more worthy than those that had been conceded to her. To conclude this last stratagem hath moved their proceeding, which yet hath been as violently urged this day as ever was anything."

So this mention of Mr. Morris is "a stratagem" is it? being out of favour, though not hateful to her Majesty, and therefore not likely to hinder Mr. Bacon. We see by this that Coke has no reason to like the Earl of Essex, and if he requite him by-and-by it shall be no wonder. But then Robert Devereux having done so much to serve Francis Bacon, this last will stand his friend. We shall see. There is here no mention of Bacon's law, no attempt to show that he is fit for the place; "he is well considered by the wise," but this is very vague testimony: it is not said that he knows his profession, but that he has other qualifications. The Earl as a young rash man will go further than Bacon's own uncle for him; and being ignorant of Coke's transcendent merits will abuse him in the Queen's ear. In this character of Coke he has taken his cue from Bacon. Sparing no arts, even the most unworthy, to gain his end, the place-hunter has already vilified Coke to Essex--speaks of him as the "huddler." Why the opprobrious epithet is used, or wherein is its application, it is difficult to see. Perhaps Coke was not orderly in his business, yet no complaint has arisen to this point; perhaps it was only in reference to his rhetoric; and Coke, we know, was a huddler in this matter-tumbling out his barbarous law Latin, his proofs of holy writ, and his cases from the year books, without order or method, but always to the point-always exhaustively.

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By November the 1st, the news has got abroad in the inns of court that the Queen has given way to the Earl; that Bacon is to be attorney over Coke's head; that Francis Bacon is to be made a public man at last. A friend, Robert Kemp, of Gray's Inn, barrister-at-law, writes to congratulate him; and Bacon writes back to him in great spirits, on the 4th, very happily and pleasantly, and, so far as I know, the only friendly and warm epistle he ever wrote. It contains this passage to the point. "For my fortune (to speak correct) it is very slow, if any thing can be slow to him that is secure in the event. I propose to remain till Michaelmas term, then to St. Albans, and after term to court." So Bacon calculates on the certainty, and yet six days after, in a letter to the Earl, he writes :

"I have some cause to think he" (probably Puckering) "worketh for the Huddler underhand. This I write to the end, and chiefly that your lordship be pleased to send again whether they have not amongst them drawn out the nail, which your lordship had driven in for the negative of the huddler," concluding by asking his lordship to urge again, and a postscript to burn the letter, "because it is not such, but the light showeth through."*

Mr. Standen delivered this letter. The original of which this is the copy, being "read with more length and attention than infinite others," and immediately burned by the Earl in a candle. Yet even now, after the lapse of three hundred years, the crime rises in judgment against the criminal, spite of his wariness and cunning.

We have traced this matter so far at length, and at

*Montagu, vol. xi., p. 74.

F

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THE ADVISED PARTISANS.

great risk of being tedious to the general reader, because the fame of Lord Bacon, justly or unjustly, is of that weight and importance that any hurried imputation, unenforced by proof, would be open to the heaviest charge of shame. I should not have entered on the uncongenial task of displaying fully the meanness of any man so truly despicable in his private actions, least of all of so great an intellectual benefactor, but for the injudicious and false assertions of a book recently published with the pretence of defending his fame, but really only with the intention of slandering and vilifying his contemporaries, and especially his noble friend Essex, and that great and distinguished lawyer, Sir Edward Coke.

Had an honest justification of Bacon been aimed at, it could have been gained without slander. His honour might be honestly defended, if it could not be excused. But clumsy falsehoods, deliberate falsification of history, gross perversions, could by no means gain the end. For untruths on their face court examination and disproof.

NOTE TO THE READER.

The two next chapters, being controversial and in direct reply to a Life of Lord Bacon recently published,* may be avoided, and the biography resumed from page 147.

*The Personal History of Lord Bacon, from Unpublished Papers, by William Hepworth Dixon, of the Inner Temple.'