Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/125

Rh others, who, powerful when he was nothing, might have blighted his opening fortunes forever, forgetting his advocacy of the rights of the people in the face of the court, and the true and honest counsels, always given by him, in times of great difficulty, both to Elizabeth and her successor. When was a "base sycophant" loved and honoured by piety such as that of Herbert, Tenison, and Rawley, by noble spirits like Hobbes, Ben Jonson, and Selden, or followed to the grave, and beyond it, with devoted affection, such as that of Sir Thomas Meautys.

Forced by the narrowness of his fortune into business, conscious of his own powers, aware of the peculiar quality of his mind, and disliking his pursuits, his heart was often in his study, while he lent his person to the robes of office; and he was culpably unmindful of the conduct of his servants, who amassed wealth meanly and rapaciously, while their careless master, himself always poor, with his thoughts on higher ventures, never stopped to inquire by what methods they grew rich. No man can act thus with impunity; he has sullied the brightness of a name which ought never to have been heard without reverence, injured his own fame, and has been himself the victim upon the altar which he raised to true science; becoming a theme to "point a moral or adorn a tale," in an attempt to unite philosophy and politics, an idol, whose golden head and hands of base metal form a monster more hideous than the Dagon of the Philistines.

His consciousness of the wanderings of his mind made him run into affairs with over-acted zeal and a variety of useless subtleties; and in lending himself to matters immeasurably beneath him, he sometimes stooped too low. A man often receives an unfortunate bias from an unjust censure. Bacon, who was said by Elizabeth to be without knowledge of affairs, and by Cecil and Burleigh to be unfit for business, affected through the whole of his life an over-refinement in trifles, and a political subtlety unworthy of so great a mind: it is also true that he sometimes seemed conscious of the pleasure of skill, and that he who possessed the dangerous power of "working and winding" others to his purpose, tried it upon the little men whom his heart disdained; but that heart was neither "cloven nor double." There is no record that he abused the influence which he possessed over the minds of all men. He ever gave honest counsel to his capricious mistress, and her pedantic successor; to the rash, turbulent Essex, and to the wily, avaricious Buckingham. There is nothing more lamentable in the annals of mankind than that false position, which placed jne of the greatest minds England ever possessed at the mercy of a mean king and a base court favourite.