have been expected to succeed. Nor, indeed, did he wholly fail. Once, however, he indulged in a burst of patriotism, which cost him a long and bitter remorse, and which he never ventured to repeat. The court asked for large subsidies and for speedy payment. The remains of Bacon's speech breathe all the spirit of the Long Parlia

ment.

"The Queen and her ministers resented this outbreak of public spirit in the highest manner. The young patriot condescended to make the most abject apologies. He abjured the Lord Treasurer to show some favour to his poor servant and ally. He bemoaned himself to the Lord Keeper, in a letter which may keep in countenance the most unmanly of the epistles which Cicero wrote during his banishment. The lesson was not thrown away. Bacon never offended in the same manner again.'

It is here that we begin to see the justification of the last epithet in Pope's antithetical description of Bacon

"The greatest, brightest, meanest of mankind."

In the want of manliness, which made him abjure this convictions when he found them creating displeasure at court, we see a baseness kindred to that immeasurable baseness which made him not simply abjure, but malignantly trample on a fallen friend; and that which in both instances gives this baseness so despicable a colour, is the paltriness of the motive-the greatest man of his age selling his soul for the smiles of a court!

It is sometimes said that we should not dwell upon the faults of great men. Certainly we should not dwell upon their faults to the exclusion of their great qualities. But if ever a striking lesson is to

be drawn from the examples of men, it is to be drawn from the examples of great men: perhaps the light of their glory may make the shadows deeper, but they thereby make them distincter. It is not pleasant to behold intellectual greatness allied to moral turpitude; and in the case of an author, who has, perhaps, greatly assisted our mental culture, and for whom we feel a sort of reverential gratitude, it is peculiarly distressing. But we must not juggle with ourselves; there is nothing but peril in shutting our eyes to the truth. Now what is the truth with respect to Bacon's conduct?

He had gained the affection of the daring, dashing, brilliant, high-spirited Earl of Essex. The ardent temperament of the young Earl showed itself in his uniform treatment of Bacon, no less clearly than in his reckless political career. It was no friendship contenting itself with words. When the office of Attorney-General became vacant, Essex strove to secure it for his friend, declaring to Sir Robert Cecil, who refused him, that he would "spend all his power, might, authority, and amity, and with tooth-and-nail procure the same against whomsoever." The office was, however, given to another. Essex then pressed the Queen to make Bacon Solicitor-General; but after a contest of a year and a half he was again defeated. The Earl consoled himself and Bacon by presenting him with an estate near Twickenham worth two thousand pounds; and presented it, as Bacon owned," with so kind and noble circumstance as the manner was worth more than the matter."

"While in this year, 1598, the Earl of Essex was preparing for the voyage," says Mr. Montagu,

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"Bacon communicated to him his intention of making a proposal of marriage to the Lady Hatton, the wealthy widow of Sir W. Hatton, and desired his lordship's interest in support of his pretensions." Essex pleaded his friend's cause with warmth. "If she were my sister or my daughter," said he, "I protest I would as confidently resolve to further it as I now persuade you."

"The suit," says Mr. Macaulay, "happily for Bacon, was unsuccessful. The lady, indeed, was kind to him in more ways than one. She rejected him, and she accepted his enemy. She married that narrow-minded, bad-hearted pedant, Sir Edward Coke, and did her best to make him as miserable as he deserved to be."

Such had been the friendship of Essex for Bacon -a friendship "destined to have a dark, a mournful, a shameful end. 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."*

Bacon's conduct is without excuse; but it is of a piece with what we noted before with respect to his repentant servility. Essex, from having been perhaps the foremost man in all England, was now on the eve of his disgrace, his rebellion, and his fearful end. For his conduct in Ireland he was about to answer. The Queen's favour had departed from him. And what did Bacon? This part of the story has been so admirably narrated by Mr. Macaulay, that our readers cannot but be grateful to us for presenting it in his words: "We believe

* Macaulay.

that Bacon sincerely exerted himself to serve Essex, as long as he thought he could serve Essex without injuring himself. He attempted to mediate between his friend and the Queen; and, we believe, honestly employed all his address for that purpose. But the task which he had undertaken was too difficult, delicate, and perilous, even for so wary and dexterous an agent. He had to manage two spirits equally proud, resentful, and ungovernable. At Essex House he had to calm the rage of a young hero, incensed by multiplied wrongs and humiliations; and then to pass to Whitehall for the purpose of soothing the peevishness of a sovereign whose temper, never very gentle, had been rendered morbidly irritable by declining health, and by long habit of listening to flattery, and of exacting implicit obedience. It is hard to serve two masters. Situated as Bacon was, it was scarcely possible for him to shape his course so as not to give one or both of his employers reason to complain. For a time he acted as fairly as in circumstances so embarrassing could reasonably be expected. At length he found that while he was trying to prop the fortunes of another he was in danger of shaking his own. He had disobliged both parties whom he wished to reconcile. thought him wanting in zeal as a friend-Elizabeth thought him wanting in duty as a subject. The Earl looked on him as a spy of the Queenthe Queen, as a creature of the Earl. The recon-ciliation which he had laboured to effect appeared utterly hopeless. A thousand signs, legible to eyes far less keen than his, announced that the fall of his patron was at hand. He shaped his course accordingly. When Essex was brought before

Essex

the Council to answer for his conduct in Ireland, Bacon, after a faint attempt to excuse himself for taking part against his friend, submitted himself to the Queen's pleasure, and appeared at the bar in support of the charges. But a darker scene was behind. The unhappy young nobleman, made reckless by despair, ventured on a rash and criminal enterprise, which rendered him liable to the highest penalties of the law.

What course was Bacon to take? This was one of those conjunctures which show what men are. To a high-minded man, wealth, power, courtfavour, even personal safety, would have appeared of no account, when opposed to friendship, gratitude, and honour. Such a man would have stood by the side of Essex at the trial-would have 66 spent all his power, might, authority, and amity" in soliciting a mitigation of the sentence-would have been a daily visitor at the cell-would have received the last injunctions, and the last embrace on the scaffold-would have employed all the powers of his intellect to guard from insult the fame of his generous though erring friend. An ordinary man would neither have incurred the danger of succouring Essex, nor the disgrace of assailing him. Bacon did not even preserve neutrality: he appeared as counsel for the prosecution. In that situation he did not confine himself to what would have been amply sufficient to procure a verdict. He employed all his wit, his rhetoric, his learning-not to ensure conviction, for the circumstances were such that conviction was inevitablebut to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those excuses, which, though legally of no value, yet tended to diminish the moral guilt of the crime;