Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/28

Rh surrounding Bacon by right of birth. He was brought up in the society of the greatest personages in England and was known to the Queen as a child. Dr. William Rawley, his chaplain and first biographer, tells the story of Elizabeth's attraction towards the bright boy. The Queen "delighted much then to confer with him, and to prove him with questions; unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that Her Majesty would often term him, The Young Lord-Keeper. Being asked by the Queen how old he was, he answered with much discretion, being then but a boy, That he was two years younger than Her Majesty's happy reign; with which answer the Queen was much taken." This anecdote, furnishing the only glimpse of Francis Bacon as a child, is as picturesque as it is authentic.

In April, 1573, Francis and Anthony Bacon, boys of twelve and fourteen, respectively, were entered as fellow-commoners of Trinity College, Cambridge, under the care of John Whitgift, then Master of Trinity and Vice-Chancellor of the University, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Whitgift's account-book tells us incidentally what was the general course of study at Trinity College in Bacon's boyhood. It shows that between April, 1573, and Christmas, 1575, he supplied the Bacon boys with the following books,—Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, Xenophon, Homer's Iliad, Hermogenes, Demosthenes's Olynthiacs, Aristotle, and Plato. We do not know how these authors were studied, but it is certain that Francis Bacon left Cambridge in his Rh