these names to your L., to be preferred to hys Matie, to make hys choyse of two, if it may so seeme good to your L., or to add or to alter the same as your L. shall thynk best: my brother Danyell, my brother Williams, my brother Tanfyld, and my brother Altham, all men learned and of good estate.”*

66

His great church patronage, likewise, he dispensed with a single view to the public weal. Livings," said he, "rather want learned men than learned men livings, many in the Universities pining for want of places. I wish, therefore, some may have single coats before others have doublets; and this method I have observed in bestowing the King's benefices."+

Lord Ellesmere was too deeply engaged in professional and of ficial pursuits himself to worship the Muses; but he was the friend and patron of poets. He was particularly kind to Spenser, with whom he was connected by marriage, and assisted him in his suits both in Ireland and at the Court of Elizabeth. We have seen that he patronised the plays of Shakspeare; and he is said to have been assisted in masques which he gave to the Court by Ben Jonson. The name of Milton will be associated with the Egerton family while the English is known as a spoken or a dead language; but the author of "Comus" was only nine years old at the death of the Chancellor; and although he was, no doubt, carried from Horton to Harefield to see the old Peer, he could only have been patted by him on the head, and sent into the buttery to have the wing of a capon and a glass of sack.

Although Lord Ellesmere had so little leisure for polite literature, he is to be placed in the catalogue of noble and royal authors, He wrote four treatises: 1. On the Prerogative Royal; 2. On the Privileges of Parliament; 3. On Proceedings in Chancery; 4. On the Power of the Star Chamber. These remaining in MS. at the time of his death, Williams, his chaplain, when offered any legacy he might choose, begged to have them, and afterwards presented them to King James. They have since been printed, but they do not add much to the fame of the writer.

Lord Bacon has recorded two of his jests, which, although they appear, among many of infinite value, in what Mr. Macaulay considers "the best jest-book in the word," make us rather rejoice that no more of them have been preserved.

They were wont to call referring to the Master in Chancery committing. My Lord Keeper Egerton, when he was 'Master of the Rolls, was wont to ask 'What the cause had done that it should be committed?'”

"My Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, when he had read a petition which he disliked, would say, 'What, would you have my hand to

* Ibid. 389.

† Speech at the conference of Divines at Hampton Court, 1603-4.

Macauley's Essays, vol. ii. p. 372.

§ This it seems was a standing equity jest, and threw the bar into an agony of laughter every term.

6

And

this now? And the party answering Yes,' he would say farther, Well, you shall; nay, you shall have both my hands to it.' so would, with both his hands, tear it in pieces."

"*

He was a remarkably handsome and athletic man, and in his youth was much addicted to the sports of the field. He retained his personal beauty in his old age, insomuch that many went to the Court of Chancery to gaze at him; "and happy were they,” says the facetious Fuller, "who had no other business there !!!"

Although he always lived in a style suitable to his station, he left entirely of his own conquest landed estates to the value of 8000l. a year-equal to the wealth of the high hereditary nobility of that time.‡

His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Ravenscroft, of Bretton, in the country of Flint, by whom he had two sons,Sir Thomas, whose death in Ireland we have mentioned, and Sir John, who succeeeed to his honours. The Chancellor married, secondly, the widow of Sir John Walley, of Pitfield, sister of Sir George More; and, lastly, Alice, daughter of Sir John Spencer, of Althorpe, in the county of Northampton, and widow of Ferdinando Earl of Derby, by neither of whom he had any issue. The latter survived him many years, and fostered the opening genius of Milton.

The Grandeur of the Law's shows that many distinguished

* Bacon's Apothegms. Works, vol. ii. 426. 482.

† In the Egerton Papers is preserved a licence to sport granted to him when Solicitor General. Indorsed "The L. Pagetes Warraunt.

"These are to will and commande youc, and every of youe, that whensoever my verie good frend Mr. Thomas Egerton, Esquier, hir Maties Sollycitour Generall shall come into any my parkes in Staffordshier within your severall chardges, thatt youe attend uppon him and make him the best sporte that you maie, geving him free libertie to hunt and kill within the same parkes att his pleasure. And likewise whensoever he shall dyrect his letters to youe, or anie of youe, for the having off anie somer or wynter deare, that youe deliver the same unto such persons as he shall appointe, takinge care that he be verie well served thereoff. And these letters shalbe a suffycyent warrant, from tyme to tyme, to youe and eurie of you in this behalfe. Fare you well. From Draiton, this xxiiijth off Maie 1583, "Yor. mar.

"J. PAGET.

"To Richard Sneade, keeper of my parke at Beaudesert. Willm Crispe, keper of my parke att Seney, And to John Godwin, keper of my great Parke at Bromley Pagett. And to every of them, and in their absence, to the deputie and deputies, and to every of them."-Egerton Pap. 95.

There is likewise in the same collection the formal appointment of him while Solicitor General as "Master of the Game" to Henry Earl of Derby, with the fee of a buck in summer and a doe in winter, with an annuity of five marks, and a power to distrain in case of arrears.-Eg. Pap. 96.

In 1606 he proposed that, like other Chancellors, he should have a grant of lands from the Crown (Egerton Papers, 408.), but none appears to have been made to him. Among other reasons he urged the expence to which he had been put in entertaining Queen Elizabeth at Harefield.

§ In the book with this title by my friend Mr. Foss, he reckons 82 existing peerages sprung from the law :

noble houses owe their origin to Westminster Hall; but I do not recollect any instance of the family of a lawyer who had raised himself from obscurity being so soon associated with the old aristocracy, or rising so rapidly to the highest rank in the peerage. John, the eldest surviving son, being created Earl of Bridgewater soon after his father's death, was married to a daughter of the Earl of Derby; and being Lord President of the Principality and Marches of Wales, and Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Salop, Hereford, Gloucester, Monmouth, Glamorgan, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Cardigan, Flint, Caernarvon, Anglesea, Merioneth, Radnor, Brecknock, Montgomery, and Denbigh, kept his Court at Ludlow Castle, where his children were going'

to attend their father's state And new entrusted sceptre

-when passing through Haywood Forest they were benighted, and Lady Alice was for a short time lost. This incident gave rise

to COMUS, which was acted by her and her brothers, Lord Brackley and the Honourable Thomas Egerton.

After this illustration, the family derived little additional splendour from the Ducal Coronet, which, in another generation, was bestowed upon them.

The male line of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, after producing many great and honourable characters, has failed. Several distinguished families are proud to trace their descent from him

through females, and every one would rejoice to see his titles restored to the English peerage.*

CHAPTER LI.

LIFE OF LORD BACON FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE BECAME A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

It will easily be believed that I enter with fear and trembling on the arduous undertaking of attempting to narrate the history, and to delineate the character, of

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."

I must say, that I consider a life of Lord Bacon still a desideratum in English literature. He has often been eulogised and vituperated: there have been admirable expositions of his philosophy and criticisms on his writings; we have very lively sketches of some of his more striking actions; and we are dazzled by brilliant contrasts between his good and bad qualities, and between the vicissitudes of prosperous and adverse fortune which he experienced. But no writer has yet presented him to us familiarly and naturally, from boyhood to old age- shown us how his character was formed and developed-explained his motives and feelings at the different stages of his eventful career—or made us acquainted with him as if we had lived with him, and had actually seen him taught his alphabet by his mother-patted on the head by Queen Elizabeth -mocking the worshippers of Aristotle at Cambridge-catching the first glimpses of his great discoveries, and yet uncertain whether the light was from heaven-associating with the learned and the gay at the Court of France-devoting himself to Bracton and the Year Books in Gray's Inn-throwing aside the musty folios of the law to write a moral essay, to make an experiment in natural philosophy, or to detect the fallacies which had hitherto obstructed the progress of usful truth-contented for a time with taking "all knowledge for his province"-roused from these speculations by the stings of vulgar ambition-plying all the arts of flattery to gain official advancement by royal and courtly favour-entering the Ilouse of Commons, and displaying powers of oratory of which he had been unconscious-seduced by the love of popular applause, for a brief space becoming a patriot-making amends, by defending all the worst excesses of prerogative-publishing to the world lucubrations on morals which show the nicest perception of what is honourable and beautiful, as well as prudent, in the

*The titles of Earl of Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley have since been conferred on Lord Francis Egerton, a descendant of Lord Chancel or Ellesmere. 3d e dition.

conduct of life-yet the son of a Lord Keeper, the nephew of the prime minister, a Queen's counsel, with the first practice at the bar, arrested for debt, and languishing in a spunging-house-tired with vain solicitations to his own kindred for promotion, joining the party of their opponent, and, after experiencing the most generous kindness from the young and chivalrous head of it, assisting to bring him to the scaffold, and to blacken his memory-seeking, by a mercenary marriage, to repair his broken fortunes-on the accession of a new Sovereign offering up the most servile adulation to a Pedant whom he utterly despised-infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down, with 300 others, to receive the honour of knighthood-truckling to a worthless favourite with slavish subserviency that he might be appointed a law-officer of the Crown-then giving the most admirable advice for the compilation and emendation of the laws of England, and helping to inflict torture on a poor parson whom he wished to hang as a traitor for writing an unpublished and unpreached sermon-attracting the notice of all Europe by his philosophical works, which established a new era in the mode of investigating the phenomena both of matter and mind-basely intriguing in the meanwhile for further promotion, and writing secret letters to his Sovereign to disparage his rivals-riding proudly between the Lord High Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal, preceded by his mace-bearer and purse-bearer, and followed by a long line of nobles and Judges, to be installed in the office of Lord High Chancellor-by-and-bye, settling with his servants the account of the bribes they had received for him -a little embarrassed by being obliged out of decency, the case being so clear, to decide against the party whose money he had pocketed, but stifling the misgivings of conscience by the splendour and flattery which he now commanded-struck to the earth by the discovery of his corruption-taking to his bed, and refusing sustenance-confessing the truth of the charges brought against him, and abjectly imploring mercy-nobly rallying from his disgrace, and engaging in new literary undertakings, which have added to the splendour of his name-still exhibiting a touch of his ancient vanity, and in the midst of pecuniary embarrassment refusing to "be stripped of his feathers"-inspired, nevertheless, with all his youthful zeal for science in conducting his last experiment of "stuffing a foul with snow to preserve it," which succeeded "excellently well," but brought him to his grave, and, as the closing act of a life so checkered, making his will, whereby, conscious of the shame he had incurred among his contemporaries, but impressed with a swelling conviction of what he had achieved for mankind, he bequeathed his "name and memory to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages."

I am very far from presuming to think that I am about to supply the deficiencies of his former biographers. My plan and my space are limited: and though it is not possible in writing the life of Bacon to forget that he was a philosopher and a fine writer, I