"My second prayer is, that your majesty, in respect of the hasty freeing of your state, would not descend to any means, or degree of means, which carrieth not a symmetry with your majesty and greatness. He is gone, from whom those courses did wholly flow. To have your wants and necessities in particular, as it were, hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your lords and commons to be talked of for four months together: to have all your courses to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, which were wont to be held arcana imperii: to have such worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon good assurance, and with such **, as if it should save the bark of your fortune: to contract still where might be had the readiest payment, and not the best bargain: to stir a number of projects for your profit, and then to blast them, and leave your majesty nothing but the scandal of them: to pretend an even carriage between your majesty's rights and the ease of the people, and to satisfy neither. These courses and others the like, are gone with the deviser of them; which have turned your majesty to inestimable prejudice.

"I hope your majesty will pardon my liberty of writing. I know these things are majora quam pro fortuna: but they are minora quam pro studio et voluntate. I assure myself, your majesty taketh not me for one of a busy nature; for my state being free from all difficulties, and I having such a large field for contemplations, as I have partly, and shall much more make manifest to your majesty and the world, to occupy my thoughts, nothing could make me active, but love and affection. So praying my God to bless and favour your person and estate."

Among these letters we have all the private proceedings in the case of the Earl of Somerset's trial for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. No where is Bacon's cunning and management more conspicuous than in the papers, hints, and notes for the conduct of this case; but, at the same time, no where is the servility and obsequiousness of the lawyer more apparent. The King was in dreadful apprehension lest Somerset, on his trial, should make some disclosure, of what nature is not known; consequently, every manoeuvre was employed to convict him without irritating him; take the following as a short specimen of Bacon's legal tactics.

"First, I shall read some passages of Overbury's letters, namely these: Is this the fruit of nine years love, common secrets, and common dangers?' In another letter: 'Do not drive me to extremity to do that, which you and I shall be sorry for.' In another letter: 'Can you forget him, between whom such secrets of all kinds have passed? &c.'

"Then will I produce Simcock, who deposeth from Weston's speech, that Somerset told Weston, that, if ever Overbury came out of prison, one of them must die for it.

"Then I will say what these secrets were. I mean not to enter into particulars, nor to charge him with disloyalty, because he stands

to be tried for his life upon another crime. But yet by some taste, that I shall give to the peers in general, they may conceive of what nature those secrets may be. Wherein I will take it for a thing notorious, that Overbury was a man, that always carried himself innocently, both towards the queen, and towards the late prince: that he was a man, that carried Somerset on in courses separate and opposite to the privy council: that he was a man of a nature fit to be an incendiary of a state: full of bitterness and wildness of speech and project: that he was thought also lately to govern Somerset, insomuch that in his own letters he vaunted, that from him proceeded Somerset's fortune, credit, and understanding.

"This course I mean to run in a kind of generality, putting the imputations rather upon Overbury than Somerset; and applying it, that such a nature was like to hatch dangerous secrets and practises."

A large space in these letters is filled with short notes from Buckingham to Lord Bacon when Chancellor, desiring him to show favour to different parties, whose suits were pending before him. It is much to be lamented that all these recommendations appear to have been attended to. There seems to have been no end to the obsequiousness of the Chancellor. The King's word was his law, and the King's favourite his tyrant. All love for the constitution, and for freedom, appears to have been extinct in him. He confesses he hates the word people. All right, save the divine right of his master, seems to have been, in his mind, a dream-a shadow. His care was to improve the King's revenues, which he attempted after the paltry and make-shift fashion of his sovereign; though, at the same time, in his writings he declares, that this is a mean plan of temporary expediency. But all his wisdom seems to have been in speculation-in action, he was like the most servile attendant about the Court, obsequious, timorous, dexterous, shifty, and corrupt.

The most meritorious point of his political life, is the attention which he bestowed on Ireland, and the wisdom with which he suggested the adoption of various plans for its amelioration. There are in these volumes several pages on this subject, which are dictated by the soundest policy.

It naturally follows, that many of these letters relate to his disgrace, and trial, and punishment, for taking bribes in his capacity of Judge of the Court of Chancery. This is the first letter in which we find it mentioned:

TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

"My very good Lord,

"Your Lordship spoke of purgatory. I am now in it; but my mind is in a calm; for my fortune is not my felicity. I know I have clean hands, and a clean heart; and, I hope, a clean house for friends

or servants. But Job himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him, as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, especially in a time, when greatness is the mark, and accusation is the game. And if this be to be a chancellor, I think, if the great seal lay upon Hounslow Heath, no body would take it up. But the king and your lordship will, I hope, put an end to these my straits, one way or other. And in troth, that which I fear most, is, lest continual attendance and business, together with these cares, and want of time to do my weak body right this spring, by diet and physic, will cast me down; and that it will be thought feigning, or fainting. But I hope in God, I shall hold out. God prosper you.”

It is well known, that, on hearing of the investigation, he gave all up for lost, fell ill, and confessed the truth of all charges with some limitations and constructions. There is a paper on the subject of bribery, which contains some curious distinctions made in his own defence.

"There be three degrees, or cases, of bribery, charged, or supposed, in a judge:

"The first, of bargain, or contract, for reward to pervert justice.

"The second, where the judge conceives the cause to be at an end, by the information of the party, or otherwise, useth not such diligence, as he ought, to inquire of it. And the third, when the cause is really ended, and it is sine fraude, without relation to any precedent promise.

"Now, if I might see the particulars of my charge, I should deal plainly with your Majesty, in whether of these degrees every particular case falls.

"But for the first of them, I take myself to be as innocent, as any born upon St. Innocent's day, in my heart.

"For the second, I doubt, in some particulars I may be faulty. "And for the last, I conceived it to be no fault; but therein I desire to be better informed, that I may be twice penitent, once for the fact, and again for the error. For I had rather be a briber, than a defender of bribes.

"I must likewise confess to your Majesty, that at new-years' tides, and likewise at my first coming in, which was, as it were, my wedding, I did not so precisely, as perhaps I ought, examine whether those that presented me, had causes before me, yea or no.

"And this is simply all, that I can say for the present, concerning my charge, until I may receive it more particularly. And all this while, I do not fly to that, as to say, that these things are vitia temporis, and not vitia hominis.

"For my fortune, summa summorum with me is, that I may not be made altogether unprofitable to do your Majesty service or honour. If your Majesty continue me as I am, I hope I shall be a new man, and shall reform things out of feeling, more than another can do out of example. If I cast part of my burden, I shall be more strong and

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delivré to bear the rest. And, to tell your Majesty what my thoughts run upon, I think of writing a story of England, and of recompiling of your laws into a better digest."

There is, however, a very fine letter to the King, on this subject.

"It may please your most excellent Majesty,

"Time hath been when I have brought unto you gemitum columbæ from others, now I bring it from myself. I fly unto your Majesty with the wings of a dove, which once, within these seven days, I thought would have carried me a higher flight. When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is come upon me: I have been, as your Majesty knoweth best, never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavi. bus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty, or intolerable, or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage: I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be? For these are the things that use to raise dislikes abroad.

"For the house of commons, I began my credit there, and now it must be the place of the sepulture thereof; and yet this parliament, upon the message touching religion, the old love revived, and they said, i was the same man still, only honesty was turned into honour.

"For the upper house, even within these days, before these troubles, they seemed as to take me into their arms, finding in me ingenuity, which they took to be the true straight line of nobleness, without any crooks or angles.

"And for the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the books of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times.

"And therefore I am resolved, when I come to my answer, not to trick up my innocency, as I writ to the lords, by cavillations or voidances; but to speak to them the language that my heart speaketh to me, in excusing, extenuating, or ingenuously confessing; praying to God to give me the grace to see the bottom of my faults, and that no hardness of heart do steal upon me, under shew of more neatness of conscience, than is cause. But not to trouble your Majesty any longer, craving pardon for this long mourning letter; that which I thirst after, as the hart after the streams, is, that I may know, by my matchless friend that presenteth to you this letter, your Majesty's heart (which is an abyssus of goodness, as I am an abyssus of misery) towards me. I have been ever your man, and counted myself but an usufructuary of myself, the property being yours. And now, making myself an oblation to do with me as may best conduce to the honour of your justice, the honour of your mercy, and the use of your service, resting as clay in your Majesty's gracious hands."

To this subject the letters often recur; and, after this period, we find his correspondence filled with complaints and petitions. We shall now proceed to reap a harvest of desultory quotation, which, if it were possible, it would be useless to class. They all of them have some importance attached to them, and most of them are observations of Bacon upon himself.

The following is this great man's petition to the House of Lords:

"My right honourable very good Lords,

"In all humbleness, acknowledging your lordships' justice, I do now, in like manner, crave and implore your grace and compassion. I am old, weak, ruined, in want, a very subject of pity. My only suit to your lordships is, to shew me your noble favour towards the release of my confinement, so every confinement is, and to me, I protest, worse than the Tower. There I could have had company, physicians, conference with my creditors and friends about my debts, and the necessities of my estate, helps for my studies and the writings I have in hand. Here I live upon the sword-point of a sharp air, endangered if I go abroad, dulled if stay within, solitary and comfortless without company, banished from all opportunities to treat with any to do myself good, and to help out any wrecks; and that, which is one of my greatest griefs, my wife, that hath been no partaker of my offending, must be partaker of this misery of my restraint.

May it please your lordships, therefore, since there is a time. for justice, and a time for mercy, to think with compassion upon that which I have already suffered, which is not little; and to recommend this my humble, and, as I hope, modest suit to his most excellent Majesty, the fountain of grace, of whose mercy, for SO much as concerns himself merely, I have already tasted, and likewise of his favour of this very kind, by some small temporary dispensations.

"Herein your lordships shall do a work of charity and nobility: you shall do me good; you shall do my creditors good; and, it may be, you shall do posterity good, if out of the carcase of dead and rotten greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there may be honey gathered for the use of future times.

"God bless your persons and counsels."

In a memorial of a conference with Buckingham, he says:

"I do not think any, except a Turk or Tartar, would wish to have another chop out of me. But the best is, it will be found there is a time for envy, and a time for pity; and cold fragments will not serve, if the stomach be on edge. For me, if they judge by that which is past, they judge of the weather of this year by an almanack of the old year; they rather repent of that they have done, and think they have but served the turns of a few."