Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/55

Rh he had published the books which have made his fame "a possession forever" wherever the English language and literature shall spread.

In 1613, by the death of Sir Thomas Fleming and the promotions of Sir Edward Coke and Sir Henry Hobart, Sir Francis Bacon succeeded Hobart as Attorney-General. In 1616, he was made a Privy Councillor; nine months later, March 7, 1617, the Great Seal was delivered into his hands and he had followed his father as Lord Keeper; nine months later still, January 4, 1618, he became Lord Chancellor, and in July following was created Baron Verulam; January 27, 1621, the still higher title of Viscount St. Alban was conferred upon him.

During these years Bacon wrote much. To the year 1609 belongs the treatise De Sapientia Veterum, or Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, which he describes in the preface as a recreation from severer studies. It is a collection of thirty-one classical myths, each with a second title in English, often one word only, giving Bacon's interpretation of the myth; for example, Perseus; or War, Sphinx; or Science. The stories are remarkably well told, and should be better known than they are. In 1612, the second edition of the Essays, now enlarged from ten to thirty-eight, was published. Bacon's mother, Lady Anne Cooke Bacon, died in the interval between these two works, in August, 1610. Two masques belonging to this period tell us what was happening to him of a less grave nature. The Princess Elizabeth was married to the Elector Palatine, February 4, 1613, and the gentlemen of Gray's Inn Rh