I. 9.

9. What Hallam left dark and Campbell foul should be cleansed as soon as may be from dust and stain. It is our due. One man only set aside, our interest in Bacon's fame is greater than in that of any Englishman who ever lived. We cannot hide his light, we cannot cast him out. For good, if it be good, for evil, if it must be evil, his brain has passed into our brain, his soul into our souls. We are part of him; he is part of us; inseparable as the salt and sea. The life he lived has become our law. If it be true that the Father of Modern Science was a rogue and cheat, it is also most true that we have taken a rogue and cheat to be our god.

10. In front of all detail of fact, a general question must be put.

Bacon seemed born to power. His kinsmen filled the highest posts. The sovereign liked him; for he had the bloom of cheek, the flame of wit, the weight of sense, which the great Queen sought in men who stood about her throne. His powers were ever ready, ever equal. Masters of eloquence and epigram praised him as one of them, or one above them, in their peculiar arts. Jonson tells us he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges pleased or angry at his will. Raleigh tells us he combined the most rare of gifts; for while Cecil could talk and not write, Howard write and not talk, he alone could both talk and write. Nor were these gifts all flash and foam. If no one at the court could match his tongue of fire, so no one in the House of Commons could breast him in the race of work. He put the dunce to flight, the drudge to shame. If he soared high above rivals in his more passionate play of speech, he never met a rival in the dull, dry task of ordinary toil. Raleigh, Hyde, and Cecil had small

chance against him in debate; in committee Yelverton I. 10. and Coke had none.

Why was he left behind?

11. Other men got on. Coke became Attorney-General, Fleming Solicitor-General. Raleigh received his knighthood, Cecil his knighthood. He alone won no spur, no place. Time passed. Devereux became a Privy Councillor. Cobham got the Cinq Ports, Raleigh the patent of Virginia. Years again raced on. A new king came in, and still no change. Cecil became an Earl, Howard an Earl. What kept the greatest of them down? was certainly not that he was hard like Popham, or crazed like Devereux, or gnarled like Coke. A soft voice, a laughing lip, a melting heart, made him hosts of friends. No child, no woman, could resist the spell of his sweet speech, of his tender smile, of his grace without study, his frankness without guile. Yet where he failed, men the most sullen and morose got on.

It

12. Why did he not win his way to place? He sought it never man with more passionate haste; for his big brain beat with a victorious consciousness of parts: he hungered, as for food, to rule and bless mankind. This question must be met. While men of far lower birth and claims got posts and honours, solicitorships, judgeships, embassies, portfolios, how came this strong man to pass the age of forty-six without gaining power or place?

Can it have been because he was servile and corrupt?

13. Rank and pay, the grace of kings, the smiles of ministers, were in Bacon's days, as in other days before and since, the wages of men who knew how to sink their views, to spend their years, to pledge their thought, their love,

I. 13. their faith, for a yard of ribbon or a loaf of bread. If Bacon were a man prostituting glorious gifts and strong convictions for a beck or nod, a pension or a place, why did he not rise? why not grow rich? If he were a rogue, he must have sold his virtue for less than Popham, his intelligence for less than Coke. How, then, could he be wise?

Wisest and meanest-there is the rub! But turn the case round. How if his virtues, not his vices, kept him down so long? How if his honesty, tolerance, magnanimity, not his heartlessness, his servility, and his corruption, caused his fall?

14. Look at the broad facts of the man's life first. Small facts may be true, broad facts must be true. One day in a man's course is hard to judge; a year less hard; a whole life not at all hard. It is the same in nature. Watch for one night the track of a planet. Can you say if it move to the right or left? You are not sure. It seems to go back. It seems to go on. Watch it for a month, and you find that its path is forward. Is the star in fault? Not in the least. It is your own base that moves. Look at any chasm, peak, or scar on the earth's face: you see the earth jagged, crude, motionless. Take in the whole orb at once: you find it smooth, round, beautiful, and swift. In Bacon's own words, a wise man "will not judge the whole play by one act." Still less by one scene, one speech, one word, will he judge.

In taking Bacon's course as a whole what do we find? A man born to high rank, who seeks incessantly for place, who is above all men and by universal testimony fit for power; yet one who passes the age of forty-six before he gets a start; one who, after serving the Crown for more

HIS COMPARATIVE POVERTY.

9

than fourteen years in the highest offices of the most lucrative branch of the public administration, dies a poorer man than he was born.

15. Bacon was fifty-two when he became AttorneyGeneral; fifty-seven when he became Lord Chancellor. For one who had been Elizabeth's young Lord Keeper at ten, who had been a bencher of Gray's Inn at twenty-six, Lent Reader at twenty-eight, this rise in his profession came late in life; later than it came to barristers who could boast of neither his personal force nor his father's official rank.

Coke was Attorney-General at forty-two. Egerton was Lord Keeper at forty-six; Bromley Lord Chancellor at forty-seven, Hatton at forty-eight.

It was much the same at Court as at the Bar. Youth was at the prow and beauty at the helm. At twentytwo Sydney went ambassador to Vienna; at thirty he went governor to Flushing. At twenty-six Essex was a Privy-Councillor; at twenty-nine Commander-in-Chief. At thirty-two Raleigh received his powers to plant Virginia.

16. Again if Francis Bacon rose later in life than Egerton or Coke, even after he had risen to the loftiest summit of the Bar he won for himself none of the sweets of office. Alone among the great lawyers of his time he died poor. Hatton left a prince's wealth. Egerton founded the noble house of Ellesmere, Montagu that of Manchester. Coke was one of the richest men in England. Popham bequeathed to his children Littlecote and Wellington. Bennet, Hobart, Fleming, each left a great estate. How explain this rule and this exception?

Surely they are not explained by the theory that

I. 14.

I. 16.

Bacon's servility held him down, while Coke's servility sent him up; that Bacon's corruption kept him poor, while Popham's corruption made him rich!

17. To judge a man's life in mass may not be the way to please a Cecil or a Coke; the libidinous statesman who made love to Lady Derby, who sold his country for Spanish gold, who gave power to his infamous mistress Lady Suffolk to vend her smiles; or the acrid lawyer who jibed at Raleigh, who married a jilt for her money, who gave his daughter for a place. Nor is it the way to please those painters and lampooners who prefer dash to truth; for a man so judged is not to be hit on paper in a mere smudge of black and white, by dubbing him wise and mean, sage and cheat, Solomon and Scapin, all in one.

18. The lie, it may be hoped, is about to pass away. An editor worthy of Bacon has risen to purge his fame. Such labours as those undertaken by Mr. Spedding demand a life, and he has not scrupled to devote the best years of an active and learned manhood to the preliminary toil. Lord Bacon's Literary, Legal, and Philosophical Works are already before the world in seven of Mr. Spedding's princely volumes, printed and noted with the most skilful and loving care. Three or four volumes of Occasional and Personal Works are still to come, for which we may have to wait as many years. Meanwhile, the appearance of this new edition has drawn men's thoughts to the character of Bacon as painted by his foes; and the instinct, strong as virtue, to reject the spume of satire and falsehood, has sprung at the voice of Mr. Spedding into lusty life.

To aid in some small part in