1607.

Feb.

Leave, gentlemen, to the Spaniards, the delusion that a VII. 25. heap of gold, filched from a feeble race, can give the dominion of the world. If union with the Scots will not bring riches to our doors, it will bring safety to our frontiers, will give us strength at sea and reserves on land. Alone we have borne our flag aloft; with Scotland united in arms, with Ireland settled and at peace, with our war fleets on every sea, our merchants in every port, we shall become the first power in the world. Warmed with such glorious hopes, how can the gentleman of England stand upon terms and audits-upon mine and thine-upon he knows not what!

26. The House rings with applause. Cecil sends a copy of this speech to James; and in the midst of his trials, it is some pleasure to the poor pedant to see what splendid things a practical statesman and philosopher can say for his favourite scheme.

If the Union is postponed until another generation, its eloquent advocate gains his place.

Lord Campbell assumes that Egerton's plan for Bacon's June 25. promotion failed, and that he rose into office through the changes on Popham's death. These are mistakes. Fleming succeeds Popham, Tanfield succeeds Fleming, and Hobart remains Attorney. To create a vacancy, Doderidge has to take the coif, when Bacon's commission as the King's Solicitor-General immediately passes the Seal.

26. Cecil to Lake, April 16, 1607, S. P. O.; Chron. Jurid., 183.

M

CHAPTER VIII.

1607. June 25.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL.

VIII. 1. 1. ON the twenty-fifth of June, 1607, at the age of forty-six years and five months, Bacon entered office. During the six years which he acted as Solicitor-General, Lord Campbell has found no flaw in his practice-abstinence which is due in part to the circumstance that for these six years, with the unimportant exception of the trial of Lord Sanquhair for murder, Lord Campbell has overlooked every fact in Bacon's life. If there is nothing to relate, there may be nothing to condemn.

1608. April.

Yet there is much in the story of these six yearsyears in which he wrought at the Essays and shaped out the New Philosophy; in which, to his personal disquiet, he resisted the design of Sir John Pakington and his friends to abridge the authority of the Court of Wales; in which, at his personal risk and loss, he aided to plant Virginia and Ulster; in which, against his professional interests, he engaged in many a good fight for popular liberties against the Crown-which men of sense and spirit will wish for the sake of example to keep alive.

2. Cecil is now at his height of fortune. On the sudden, dramatic death of Dorset, the most daring of poets, the most prudent of financiers, Cecil takes the White Staff without parting from his office as premier Secretary of

1. Campbell's Life of Bacon, iii. 56.

2. Eure to Cecil, April 27, 1608, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, July 7, 1608; Provisoes between Salisbury and Morral, Dec. 1608, S. P. O.

1608.

April.

State. He is now nearly all in all. Except in naval VIII. 2. affairs, in which Nottingham's great age and eminence as a sailor forbid all meddling, no department of the public service, home or foreign, trade, police, finances, law, religion, war and peace, escapes the quick eye and controlling hand of the tiny hunchback. Every one serves him, every enterprise enriches him. He builds a new palace at Hatfield, a new Exchange in the Strand. Countesses intrigue for him. His son marries a Howard, his daughter a Clifford. Ambassadors start for Italy, less to see Doges and Grand Dukes than to pick up pictures and statues, bronzes and hangings for his vast establishment at Hatfield Chace. Gardeners travel through France to buy up for him mulberries and vines. Salisbury House on the Thames almost rivals the luxurious villas of the Roman Cardinals in wealth of tapestry, of furniture and plate. Yet under this blaze of worldly success Cecil is the most miserable May. of men. Friends grudge his rise; his health is broken; the reins which his ambition draws into his hands are beyond the powers of a man to grasp; and the vigour of his frame, wasted by years of voluptuous licence, fails him at a moment when the strain on his faculties is at the full.

3. In this strain of powers no longer fresh, in this solitude of severed friendships, in this misery of broken health, Cecil turns to his hale, bright cousin, not for the companionship he will not give, but for the hints and helps a lawyer has to sell. Bacon does not love him. More than Coke, Cecil has been to him a cross and grief; for while he can fight with his own weapons the coarse and spiteful foe, his gentle heart supplies no armoury of defence against the cold and veiled contempt of his perfidious

3. Bacon to Cecil, Aug. 24, 1608, S P. O.; Essays, xliv.

Aug.

1608.

Aug.

VIII. 3. friend. When this agonized spectre of success invites him to more frequent consultations on affairs, instead of gliding into that kindly and gracious correspondence which is the habit of his pen, he chooses to stand with him on the ceremonial footing of good manners and the duties of his place. While writing notes of business like the following, Bacon may have in mind the day, not long ago, when the Earl of Salisbury declined to cross the Strand to taste the hypocras and kiss the bride :

Aug. 24.

BACON TO SALISBURY.

This Wednesday, the 24th of Aug. 1608.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP,

I had cast not to fail to attend your Lordship tomorrow, which was the day your Lordship had appointed for your being at London; but having this day about noon received knowledge of your being at Kensington, and that it had pleased your Lordship to send for me to dine with you as this day, I made what diligence I could to return from Gorhambury; and though I came time enough to have waited on your Lordship this evening, yet, your Lordship being in so good a place to refresh yourself, and though it please your Lordship to use me as a kinsman, yet I cannot leave behind me the shape of a Solicitor. I thought it better manners to stay till to-morrow, what time I will wait on you. And at all times rest, your Lordship's most humble and bounden,

F. BACON.

To the last hour of Cecil's life, Bacon keeps this ceremonial style. No kindness flows between the cousins; they talk of business, not of love; and when Cecil passes to his rest, a new edition of the Essays, under cover of a

treatise on Deformity, paints in true and bold lines, but VIII. 3. without one harsh touch, the genius of the man.

4. The feud of the four shires is again ablaze. Sir John Pakington has found that the King's promise to do right has borne no fruit for him or for his friends sweeter than the sour crabs of his own orchard. Lord Zouch is gone, and Lord Eure, with a new set of standing orders, reigns in his stead; yet the Court of Wales, under this new President, is no less warm to maintain its right than under the old. Indeed, in the belief of wise and practical men, the time has not arrived for either abolishing the court or interfering with its powers.

This Court of Wales and the Welsh Border, like the more important Court of the North, was erected as a defence against Papist missionaries and Papist plots. The gentry of Wales and of the Border shires were mainly Roman Catholic; and every villain who in Elizabeth's time disturbed the public peace, and brought shame or punishment on the members of the Roman Church, reckoned on the aid of an army of fighting and fanatical Sir Hughs. The Court of Wales kept them under. The poor, who wished to smelt the ironore, to feed their sheep, to dredge their streams for pearls, and net their bays for fish, in peace, blessed it for this boon, and not for this alone; for this royal Court gave them such cheap and speedy justice as could not be obtained in counties governed by the ordinary courts under the common law. If prompt and stern, its rule was national in spirit, popular in aim. The abuses which crept in a few years later, and which caused its fall, were of a kind unknown in the days of Elizabeth, and only just beginning

4. Cott. MSS. Vit., c. 1; Dom. Papers of James the First, xxviii. 48, xxxii. 13, 14, S. P. O.; Heath's Preface, Bacon's Works, vii. 584.

1608. Nov.