tunes were still depressed. He was in great | war; in which difficulties were to be gradually pecuniary difficulties; and, on one occasion, surmounted, in which much discomfort was to was arrested in the street at the suit of a gold-be endured, and in which few splendid exploits smith, for a debt of £300, and was carried to a could be achieved. For the civil duties of his spunging-house in Coleman street. high place he was still less qualified. Though The kindness of Essex was in the mean eloquent and accomplished, he was in no time indefatigable. In 1596 he sailed on his sense a statesman. The multitude indeed still memorable expedition to the coast of Spain. continued to regard even his faults with fondAt the very moment of his embarcation, he ness. But the court had ceased to give him wrote to several of his friends, commending to credit, even for the merit which he really posthem, during his own absence, the interests of sessed. The person on whom, during the deBacon. He returned, after performing the most cline of his influence, he chiefly depended, to brilliant military exploit that was achieved on whom he confided his perplexities, whose adthe Continent by English arms, during the long vice he solicited, whose intercession he eminterval which elapsed between the battle of ployed, was his friend Bacon. The lamentable Agincourt and that of Blenheim. His valour, truth must be told. This friend, so loved, so his talents, his humane and generous disposi-trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the tion, had made him the idol of his countrymen, earl's fortunes, in shedding his blood, and' and had extorted praise from the enemies blackening his memory. whom he had conquered.* He had always been proud and headstrong; and his splendid success seems to have rendered his faults more offensive than ever. But to his friend Francis he was still the same. Bacon had some thoughts of making his fortune by marriage; and had begun to pay court to a widow of the name of Hatton. The eccentric manners and violent temper of this woman made her a disgrace and a torment to her connections. But Bacon was not aware of her faults, or was disposed to overlook them for the sake of her ample fortune. Essex pleaded his friend's cause with his usual ardour. The letters which the earl addressed to Lady Hatton and to her mother are still extant, and are highly honourable to him. "If," he wrote, "she were my sister or my daughter, I protest I would as confidently resolve to further it as I now persuade you." And again: "If my faith be any thing, I protest, if I had one as near me as she is to you, I had rather match her with him, than with men of far greater titles." This suit, 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 narrowminded, bad-hearted pedant, Sir Edward Coke, and did her best to make him as miserable as he deserved to be.

The fortunes of Essex had now reached their height, and began to decline. He possessed indeed all the qualities which raise men to greatness rapidly. But he had neither the virtues nor the vices which enable men to retain greatness long. His frankness, his keen sensibility to insult and injustice, were by no means agreeable to a sovereign naturally impatient of opposition, and accustomed, during forty years, to the most extravagant flattery and the most abject submission. The daring and contemptuous manner in which he bade dehance to his enemies excited their deadly hatred. His administration in Ireland was unfortunate, and in many respects hignly blamable. Though his brilliant courage and his impetuous activity fitted him admirably for such enterprises as that of Cadiz, he did t possess the caution, patience, and resolution necessary for the conduct of a protracted

Bee Cervantes's Novela de la Espanola Inglesa.

The

But let us be just to Bacon. We believe that, to the last, he had no wish to injure Essex. Nay, we believe that he sincerely exerted himself to serve Essex, as long as he thought he could serve Essex without injuring himself. The advice which he gave to his noble benefactor was generally most judicious. He did all in his power to dissuade the earl from accepting the government of Ireland. "For," says he, "I did as plainly see his overthrow, chained as it were by destiny to that journey, as it is possible for a man to ground a judgment upon future contingents." prediction was accomplished. Essex returned in disgrace. Bacon 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 age, by declining health, and by the long habit of listening to flattery and 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 of the parties whom he wished to reconcile. Essex 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 queen, the queen as a creature of the earl. The reconciliation 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 the council to answer for his conduct in Ireland, Bacon, after a faint attempt to excuse himself from taking part

against his friend, submitted himself to the which the last Valois had been held by the queen's pleasure, and appeared at the bar in house of Lorraine, was sufficient to harden her support of the charges. But a darker scene heart against a man who, in rank, in military was behind. The unhappy young nobleman, reputation, in popularity among the citizens of made reckless by despair, ventured on a rash the capital, bore some resemblance to the and criminal enterprise, which rendered him Captain of the League. Essex was convicted, liable to the highest penalties of the law. What Bacon made no effort to save him, though the course was Bacon to take? This was one of queen's feelings were such, that he might have those conjunctures which show what men are. pleaded his benefactor's cause, possibly with To a high-minded man, wealth, power, court- success, certainly without any serious danger favour, even personal safety, would have ap- to himself. The unhappy nobleman was exepeared of no account, when opposed to friend-cuted. His fate excited strong, perhaps unship, gratitude, and honour. Such a man would reasonable feelings of compassion and indig have stood by the side of Essex at the trial; nation. The queen was received by the citiwould have "spent all his power, might, author-zens of London with gloomy looks and faint ity, and amity," in soliciting a mitigation of the acclamations. She thought it expedient to sentence; would have been a daily visiter at publish a vindication of her late proceedings. the cell, would have received the last injunc- The faithless friend who had assisted in taking tions and the last embrace on the scaffold; the earl's life was now employed to murder the would have employed all the powers of his in-earl's fame. The queen had seen some of tellect to guard from insult the fame of his Bacon's writings and had been pleased with generous though erring friend. An ordinary them. He was accordingly selected to write man would neither have incurred the danger "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons of succouring Essex, nor the disgrace of as- attempted and committed by Robert Earl of sailing him. Bacon did not even preserve Essex," which was printed by authority. In neutrality. He appeared as counsel for the the succeeding reign, Bacon had not a word to prosecution. In that situation he did not con- say in defence of this performance, a perfine himself to what would have been amply formance abounding in expressions which no sufficient to procure a verdict. He employed generous enemy would have employed reall his wit, his rhetoric, and his learning-not specting a man who had so dearly expiated his to insure a conviction, for the circumstances offences. His only excuse was, that he wrote were such that a conviction was inevitable; it by command; that he considered himself a but to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those a mere secretary; that he had particular inexcuses which, though legally of no value, yet structions as to the way in which he was to tended to diminish the moral guilt of the crime; treat every part of the subject; and that, in and which, therefore, though they could not fact, he had furnished only the arrangemen justify the peers in pronouncing an acquittal, and the style. might incline the queen to grant a pardon. The earl urged as a palliation of his frantic acts, that he was surrounded by powerful and inveterate enemies, that they had ruined his fortunes, that they sought his life, and that their persecutions had driven him to despair. This was true, and Bacon well knew it to be true. But he affected to treat it as an idle pretence. He compared Essex to Pisistratus, who, by pretending to be in imminent danger of assassination, and by exhibiting self-inflicted wounds, succeeded in establishing tyranny at Athens. This was too much for the prisoner to bear. He interrupted his ungrateful friend, by calling on him to quit the part of an advocate; to come forward as a witness, and tell the lords whether, in old times, he, Francis Bacon, had not, under his own hand, repeatedly asserted the truth of what he now represented as idle pretexts. It is painful to go on with this lamentable story. Bacon returned a shuffling answer to the earl's question; and, as if the allusion to Pisistratus were not sufficiently offensive, made another allusion still more unjustifiable. He compared Essex to Henry Duke of Guise, and the rash attempt in the city, to the day of the barricades at Paris. Why Bacon had recourse to such a topic it is difficult to say. It was quite unnecessary for the purpose of obtaining a verdict. It was certain to produce a strong impression on the mind of the haughty and jealous princess on whose pleasure the earl's fate depended. The faintest allusion to the degrading tutelage in

We regret to say that the whole conduct of Bacon through the course of these transactions appears to Mr. Montagu not merely excusable, but deserving of high admiration. The integrity and benevolence of this gentleman are so well known, that our readers will probably be at a loss to conceive by what steps he can have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion; and we are half afraid that they will suspect us of practising some artifice upon them when we report the principal arguments which he employs.

In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu attempts to show that Bacon lay under greater obligations to the queen than to Essex. What these obligations were it is not easy to discover. The situation of queen's counsel and a remote reversion were surely favours very far below Bacon's personal and hereditary claims. They were favours which had not cost the queen a groat, nor had they put a groat into Bacon's purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's claims to gratitude on some other ground, and this Mr. Montagu felt. "What perhaps was her greatest kindness," says he, "instead of having hastily advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obligations to Eliza beth." Such indeed they were. Being the son of one of her oldest and most faithful ministers, being himself the ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had been condemned by her to drudgery, to obscurity

to poverty. She had depreciated his acquire- | ton's broad pieces and Sir John Kennedy's ments. She had checked him in the most im- cabinet was not of such vast importance as to perious manner when in Parliament he ven- sanctify all the means which might conduce to tured to act an independent part. She had re- that end. If the case were fairly stated, it would, fused to him the professional advancement to we much fear, stand thus: Bacon was a servile which he had a just claim. To her it was advocate that he might be a corrupt judge. owing that while younger men, not superior to him in extraction and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, were filling the highest offices of the state, adding manor to manor, rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a spunging-house for a debt of three hundred pounds. Assuredly if Bacon owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed none to Essex. If the queen really was his best friend, the earl was his worst enemy. We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a little further. He might have maintained that Bacon was fully justified in revenging himself on a man who had attempted to rescue his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by the queen, who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had been so cruel as to present him with a landed estate.

Mr. Montagu conceives that none but the ignorant and unreflecting can think Bacon censurable for any thing that he did as counsel for the crown; and maintains that no advocate can justifiably use any discretion as to the party for whom he appears. We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not agreeable to reason and morality; whether it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head and a band round his neck, do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire; whether it be right that, not merely believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indig nant exclamation, by gestures, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement false. It is not necessary on the present occasion to decide these questions. The professional rules, be they good or bad, are rules to which many wise and virtuous men have conformed, and are daily conform

Again, we can hardly think Mr. Montagu serious when he tells us that Bacon was bound for the sake of the public not to destroy his own hopes of advancement, and that he took part against Essex from a wish to obtain power which might enable him to be useful to his country. We really do not know how to refute such ing. If, therefore, Bacon did no more than arguments except by stating them. Nothing is these rules required of him, we shall readily impossible which does not involve a contradic-admit that he was blameless. But we conceive tion. It is barely possible that Bacon's motives that his conduct was not justifiable according for acting as he did on this occasion may have to any professional rules that now exist or that been gratitude to the queen for keeping him ever existed in England. It has always been poor, and a desire to benefit his fellow-crea- held, that in criminal cases, in which the pritures in some higher situation. And there is soner was denied the help of counsel, and a possibility that Bonner may have been a above all in capital cases, the advocate for good Protestant, who, being convinced that the the prosecution was both entitled and bound to blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, exercise a discretion. It is true that after the heroically went through all the drudgery and Revolution, when the Parliament began to infamy of persecution that he might inspire make inquisition for the innocent blood which the English people with an intense and lasting had been shed by the last Stuarts, a feeble athatred of Popery. There is a possibility that tempt was made to defend the lawyers who had Jeffries may have been an ardent lover of been accomplices in the murder of Sir Thomas liberty, and that he may have beheaded Alger- Armstrong, on the ground that they had only non Sydney and burned Elizabeth Gaunt only acted professionally. The wretched sophism in order to produce a reaction which might was silenced by the execrations of the House lead to the limitation of the prerogative. There of Commons. "Things will never be well is a possibility that Thurtell may have killed done," said Mr. Foley, "till some of that proWeare only in order to give the youth of Eng-fession be made examples." land an impressive warning against gaming and bad company. There is a possibility that Fauntleroy may have forged powers of attorney only in order that his fate might turn the attention of the public to the defects of the penal law. These things, we say, are possible. But they are so extravagantly improbable, that a man who should act on such suppositions would be fit only for Saint Luke's. And we do not see why suppositions on which no rational man would act in ordinary life should be admitted into history.

Mr. Montagu's notion that Bacon desired power only in order to do good to mankind appears somewhat strange to us when we consider how Bacon afterwards use power and how he lost it. Surely the service which he rendered to mankind by taking Lady Whar

"We have a

new sort of monsters in the world," said the younger Hampden, "haranguing a man to death. These I call bloodhounds. Sawyer is very criminal and guilty of this murder." "I speak to discharge my conscience," said Mr. Garroway. "I will not have the blood of this man at my door. Sawyer demanded judgment against him and execution. I believe him guilty of the death of this man. Do what you will with him." "If the profession of the law," said the elder Hampden, "gives a man autho rity to murder at this rate, it is the interest of all men to rise and exterminate that profes sion." Nor was this language held only by unlearned country gentlemen. Sir William Williams, one of the ablest and most unscru pulous lawyers of the age, took the same view of the case. He had not hesitated, he said, to

he rounded and pointed some period dictated by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form to some slander invented by the dastardly malignity of Cobham, he was not sinning merely against his friend's honour and his own? Could he not feel that letters, eloquence, phi

take part in the prosecution of the bishops, be- he endow such purposes with words? Could cause they were allowed counsel. But he no hack-writer, without virtue or shame, be maintained that where the prisoner was not found to exaggerate the errors, already so allowed counsel, the counsel for the crown dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit! was bound to exercise a discretion, and that Every age produces those links between the every lawyer who neglected this distinction man and the baboon. Every age is fertile of was a betrayer of the law. But it is unneces- Concanens, of Gildons, and of Antony Passary to cite authority. It is known to every-quins. But was it for Bacon so to prostitute body who has ever looked into a court of quar- his intellect? Could he not feel that, while ter-sessions that lawyers do exercise a discretion in criminal cases; and it is plain to every man of common sense that if they did not exercise such a discretion, they would be a more hateful body of men than those bravoes who used to hire out their stilettos in Italy. Bacon appeared against a man who was in-losophy, were all degraded in his degradation? deed guilty of a great offence, but who had The real explanation of all this is perfectly been his benefactor and friend. He did more obvious; and nothing but a partiality amounting than this. Nay, he did more than a person to a ruling passion could cause anybody to miss who had never seen Essex would have been it. The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a justified in doing. He employed all the art of high order. We do not say that he was a bad Ian advocate in order to make the prisoner's man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He conduct appear more inexcusable, and more bore with meekness his high civil honours, dangerous to the state, than it really had been. and the far higher honours gained by his inAll that professional duty could, in any case, tellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked have required of him, would have been to con- into treating any person with malignity and induct the cause so as to insure a conviction. solence. No man more readily held up the left But from the nature of the circumstances there cheek to those who had smitten the right. No could not be the smallest doubt that the earl man was more expert at the soft answer which would be found guilty. The character of the turneth away wrath. He was never accused crime was unequivocal. It had been commit- of intemperance in his pleasures. His even ted recently, in broad daylight, in the streets of temper, his flowing courtesy, the general rethe capital, in the presence of thousands. If spectability of his demeanour, made a favourever there was an occasion on which an advo-able impression on those who saw him in situacate had no temptation to resort to extraneous tions which do not severely try the principles. topics for the purpose of blinding the judgment His faults were-we write it with pain--coldand inflaming the passions of a tribunal, thisness of heart and meanness of spirit. He was that occasion. Why then resort to arguments which, while they could add nothing to the strength of the case, considered in a legal point of view, tended to aggravate the moral guilt of the fatal enterprise, and to excite fear and resentment in that quarter, from which alone the earl could now expect mercy? Why | remind the audience of the arts of the ancient tyrants? Why deny, what everybody knew to be the truth, that a powerful faction at court had long sought to effect the ruin of the prisoner ? Why, above all, institute a parallel between the unhappy culprit and the most wicked and most successful rebel of the age? Was it absolutely impossible to do all that professional duty required, without reminding a jealous sovereign of the League, of the barricades, and of all the humiliations which a too powerful subject had heaped on Henry the Third.

But if we admit the plea which Mr. Montagu urges in defence of what Bacon did as an advocate, what shall we say of the "Declaration of the Treasons of Robert Earl of Essex!" Here at least there was no pretence of professional obligation. Even those who may think it the duty of a lawyer to hang, draw, and quarter his benefactors, for a proper consideration, will hardly say that it is his duty to write abusive pamphlets against them, after they are in their graves. Bacon excused himself by saying that he was not answerable for the matter of the book, and that Le furnished only the language. But why did

seems to have been incapable of feeling strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great sacrifices. His desires were set on things below. Wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of plate, gay hangings, curious cabinets, had as great attractions for him as for any of the courtiers who dropped on their knees in the dirt when Elizabeth passed by, and then hastened home to write to the King of Scots that her grace seemed to be breaking fast. For these objects he had stooped to every thing and endured every thing. For these he had sued in the humblest manner, and when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, had thanked those who had repulsed him, and had begun to sue again. For these objects, as soon as he found that the smallest show of independence in Parliament was offensive to the queen, he had abased himself to the dust before her, and implored forgiveness, in terms better suited to a convicted thief than to a knight of the shire. For these he joined, and for these he forsook Lord Essex. He continued to plead his patron's cause with the queen, as long as he thought that by pleading that cause he might serve himself. Nay, he went further, for his feelings, though not warm, were kind-he pleaded that cause as long as he thought he could plead it without injury to himself But when it became evident that Essex was going headlong to his ruin, Bacon began to tremble for his own fortunes. What he had to fear

a college, much eccentricity and childishness would have been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all that learning could do for him on the throne, was to make people think him a pedant as well as a fool.

would ot indeed have been very alarming to a man of lofty character. It was not death. It was not imprisonment. It was the loss of court favour. It was the being left behind by others in the career of ambition. It was the having leisure to finish the Instauratio Magna. Bacon was favourably received at court; The queen looked coldly on him. The cour- and soon found that his chance of promotion tiers began to consider him as a marked man. was not diminished by the death of the queen. He determined to change his line of conduct, He was solicitous to be knighted, for two reaand to proceed in a new course with so much sons, which are somewhat amusing. The king vigour as to make up for lost time. When had already dubbed half London, and Bacon once he had determined to act against his found himself the only untitled person in his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he mess at Gray's Inn. This was not very agreeacted with more zeal than would have been ne- able to him. He had also, to quote his own cessary or justifiable if he had been employed words, "found an alderman's daughter, a against a stranger. He exerted his profession-handsome maiden, to his liking." On both al talents to shed the earl's blood, and his literary talents to blacken the earl's memory. It is certain that his conduct excited at the time great and general disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this disapprobation, though deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. But a great change was at hand.

these grounds, he begged his cousin, Robert
Cecil, "if it might please his good lordship,"
to use his interest in his behalf.
The applica
tion was successful. Bacon was one of three
hundred gentlemen who, on the coronation-day,
received the honour, if it is to be so called, of
knighthood. The handsome maiden, a daughter
of Alderman Barnham, soon after consented
to become Sir Francis's lady.

The health of the queen had been long decaying; and the operation of age and disease was now assisted by acute mental suffering. The death of Elizabeth, though on the whole The pitiable melancholy of her last days has it improved Bacon's prospects, was in one regenerally been ascribed to her fond regret for spect an unfortunate event for him. The new Essex. But we are disposed to attribute her king had always felt kindly towards Lord Esdejection partly to physical causes, and partly sex, who had been zealous for the Scotch sucto the conduct of her courtiers and minis- cession; and, as soon as he came to the throne, ters. They did all in their power to conceal began to show favour to the house of Devereux, from her the intrigues which they were and to those who had stood by that house in carrying on at the court of Scotland. But her its adversity. Everybody was now at liberty keen sagacity was not to be so deceived. She to speak out respecting those lamentable events did not know the whole. But she knew that in which Bacon had borne so large a share. she was surrounded by men who were impa- Elizabeth was scarcely cold when the public tient for that new world which was to begin at feeling began to manifest itself by marks of her death, who had never been attached to her respect towards Lord Southampton. That acby affection, and who were now but very slight-complished nobleman, who will be remembered ly attached to her by interest. Prostration to the latest ages as the generous and discernand flattery could not conceal from her the cruel truth, that those whom she had trusted and promoted had never loved her, and were fast ceasing to fear her. Unable to avenge herself, and too proud to complain, she suffered sorrow and resentment to prey on her heart, till, after a long career of power, prosperity, and glory, she died sick and weary of the world. James mounted the throne; and Bacon employed all his address to obtain for himself a share of the favour of his new master. This was no difficult task. The faults of James, both as a man and as a prince, were numerous; but insensibility to the claims of genius and learning was not amongst them. He was indeed made up of two men-a witty, well-read scholar, who wrote, and disputed, andharangued, and a nervous, drivelling idiot, who acted. If he had been a Canon of Christ Church, or a Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would have left a highly respectable name to posterity; that he would have distinguished himself among the translators of the Bible, and among the divines who attended the Synod of Dort; that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon. But fortune placed him in a situation in which his weakness covered him with disgrace; and in which his accomplishments brought him no honour. In

ing patron of Shakspeare, was held in honour by his contemporaries, chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he had borne to Essex. He had been tried and convicted together with his friend; but the queen had spared his life, and at the time of her death, he was still a prisoner. A crowd of visiters hastened to the Tower to congratulate him on his approaching deliverance. With that crowd Bacon could not venture to mingle. The multitude loudly condemned him; and his conscience told him that the multitude had but too much reason. He excused himself to Southampton by letter, in terms which, if he had, as Mr. Montagu conceives, done only what as a subject and an advocate he was bound to do, must be considered as shamefully servile. He owns his fear that his attendance would give offence, and that his professions of regard would obtain no credit. Yet," says he, "it is as true as a thing that God knoweth, that this great change hath wrought in me no other change towards your lordship than this, that I may safely be that to you now which I was truly before."

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How Southampton received these apologies we are not informed. But it is certain that the general opinion was pronounced against Bacon in a manner not to be misunderstood. Soon after his marriage he put forth a defence