Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/54

Rh means he had acquired as his brother's heir, Bacon was for the first time relieved from pressing pecuniary anxieties. He was free to devote what leisure he could secure to those "vast contemplative ends" which in his better moments he always regarded as his real interest in life. Now, too, he reaped the rich harvest of the long years of his unpaid apprenticeship. Queen Elizabeth had thought him a theorist in the law, and had caused him to serve twice seven years roving afield in practice. The result was that when Sir Francis Bacon became Solicitor-General, he brought to the discharge of his duties such a wealth of knowledge of the law, in both theory and practice, as none of his predecessors were able to approach, and some of them had been very able lawyers. At the same time, and this fact is often not even mentioned by Francis Bacon's biographers, at the same time, through repeated disappointments, through insecure health, through anxiety, through loneliness, through calumny, this extraordinary man had kept up his studies and meditations. They were carried on as we know in hours stolen from sleep, between sessions of Parliament, during the few holidays of a busy life, and always under physical difficulties, for the essay Of Regiment of Health reflects Bacon's personal experience in managing a mind too active for the body it inhabited. Bacon came into his own late in life, but when success found him, his rise was rapid. Within ten years after obtaining the Solicitor-Generalship, he had reached the top of his profession as Lord Chancellor; within twenty years Rh