"That the course Bacon took indicates poverty of moral feeling cannot be denied. Yet our sentiment on the precedence of personal over political ties is based on our increased sense of political security, and is hardly applicable to a state of things in which anarchy, with its attendant miseries, would inevitably have followed on the violent overthrow of the Queen's right to select her Ministers."

Essex was convicted, condemned, and executed. So threatening, however, was the attitude of the people, to whom the dashing, debonair Earl had presented himself in the light of a national hero by his capture and sack of Cadiz, that Elizabeth quailed before it, and insisted on an official "declaration" of Essex's treason being prepared. The drawing up of this was entrusted to Bacon. In it he persistently takes the blacker view of his late friend's conduct, refusing to admit any palliation of the crimes with which he was accused. Whether pricked in conscience over his conduct, or stung into irritation by the taunts of the friends of Essex, he issued immediately thereafter a justification of his action, which savours not a little of Jesuitical casuistry. Qui s'excuse s'accuse! There is reason to believe that the passage in the Essay on "Friendship," written in 1607, and beginning, "There be some whose lives are, as if they perpetually played upon a stage, disguised to all others, open only to

themselves. But perpetual dissimulation is painful, and he that is all fortune and no nature is an exquisite Hirelinge, &c.," but which was omitted in the 1625 edition, had direct reference to the career of Essex.

In 1597 the first edition of his "Essays" was published. The volume, which was of small octavo size, and dedicated to his brother Anthony, contained the following ten papers :-(1) Of Studies. (2) Of Discourse. (3) Of Ceremonies and Respect. (4) Of Followers and Friends. (5) Of Sutors (suitors). (6) Of Expense. (7) Of Regiment of Health. (8) Of Honour and Reputation. (9) Of Faction. (10) Of Negociating. The pregnancy of the thought and the pithiness of the style rendered the book wellnigh an epoch-making one. Its popularity was great, almost from the day of issue. But of this more anon.

Elizabeth was now rapidly nearing the end of her memorable reign-a reign which for her closed amid the gloom of that Weltschmerz, or weariness with the world, resulting from the discovery that those she had believed devoted to her were, even then, secretly doing reverence to the rising star of the King of Scots. Her isolation and heart-loneliness were as pathetic as they were pitiable. All her older

1 Cf. Arber's Harmony of the Essays of Bacon, wherein the several editions are printed in parallel columns.

Ministers had predeceased her. Burghley, the greatest of all, had died in 1598, and was succeeded by his son. A new race of politicians had arisen, with new methods of diplomacy savouring more of the dawning than of the dying century.

Among the worshippers of the new luminary was Bacon. Once while emphatically asserting himself in the State paper he addressed to Cecil on the "Pacification of Ireland," a loyal well-wisher for the long life and prosperity of Elizabeth, he was already coquetting with the "King across the Border." For scarcely had the "British Solomon had time to seat himself on the throne of England, than, with all a supple-backed courtier's adaptability to circumstances, Bacon sought to win the monarch's goodwill by flattery, which from him, intellectual giant as he was, must have been as false as it was fulsome. He received the honour of knighthood, however, in 1603, followed by a pension of £60 a year, in consideration of James's respect for his late brother Anthony's (who had died in 1601) staunch championship of the Scottish succession. He was also appointed a "King's Counsel," with an annual gratuity of £40. The means whereby he flattered the King's Caledonian sympathies, in largest measure, however, were by advocating, both in Parliament and with his pen, a scheme for the Union of the Kingdoms as well

as the Crowns of England and Scotland. His "Articles touching the Union" is a skilful collection of all historical and scientific analogies bearing on the conclusion he sought to prove, viz., that "there is a consent between the rules of nature and the true rules of policy; the one being nothing else but an order in the government of the world, the other an order in the government of an estate." The germs of his essay on "The True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates," in the form it assumed in the edition of 1612, are undoubtedly to be found in his "Articles touching the Union." The fact may also be of interest that, when in October 1604 James adopted the title of "King of Great Britany"-abbreviated into "Great Britain "—he assumed the name suggested by Bacon. The arguments of the latter, moreover, were so cogent that the Joint Committee, which met to discuss the terms of Union, came to an almost unanimous agreement. The majority of the Commons were also won over, and had not the King obstinately stood out for vesting the right of conferring letters of naturalisation in the Crown, the Union might have been consummated 100 years prior to the date of its actual accomplishment.

In 1605 Bacon issued the first of his great

1 P. 122. The form in which we now possess this Essay differs materially from that in the edition of 1612.

philosophical treatises, the Advancement of Learning afterwards translated and expanded into the Latin dissertation, De Augmentis Scientiarum-a noble review of the state of learning in his age, its defects, the emptiness of many of the studies chosen, and the means to be adopted to secure improvement. "On Seeming Wise," "On Custom and

His essays
Education,

2

" and "On Studies,'

with topics indicated rather than treated of in the Advancement of Learning, but which are nevertheless to be found there.)

At the mature age of forty-five, Bacon bethought himself he ought to marry, being aided in arriving at this conclusion by the charms of a certain alderman's daughter, named Alice Barnham, who, on the 10th May 1606, became Lady Bacon. His marriage brought him a moderate fortune, acceptable to a man as deeply in debt as he was. Bacon as a wooer seems somewhat out of keeping. Yet from Dudley Carleton we learn that the ceremony was celebrated with great pomp, the bridegroom being "clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion." The Essay on "Marriage and Single Life," written about a year after he had 8 P. 169.

4

1

P. 107.