Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/33

Rh relax in his parliaments y exertions, or sacrifice the interests of the public at the foot of the throne. He spoke often, and always with such force and eloquence as to insure the attention of the house; and, though he spoke generally on the side of the court, he was regarded as the advocate of the people: powerful advocate, according to his friend, Ben Jonson, who thus speaks of his parliamentary eloquence: "There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking: his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered: no member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss: he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power: the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."

It would have been fortunate for society if this check had impressed upon his mind the vanity of attempting to unite the scarcely reconcileahle characters of the philosopher and the courtier. His high birth and elegant taste unfitted Bacon for the common walks of life, and by surrounding him with artificial wants, compelled him to exertions uncongenial to his nature: but the love of truth, of his country, and an undying spirit of improvement, ever in the train of knowledge, ill suited him for the trammels in which he was expected to move. Through the whole of his life he endeavoured to burst his bonds, and escape from law and politics, from mental slavery to intellectual liberty. Perhaps the charge of inconsistency, so often preferred against him, may be attributed to the varying impulse of such opposite motives.

In the spring of 1594, by the promotion of Sir Edward Coke to the office of Attorney General, the solicitorship became vacant. This had been foreseen by Bacon, and, from his near alliance to the lord treasurer; from the friendship of Lord Essex; from the honourable testimony of the bar and of the bench; from the protection he had a right to hope for from the queen, for his father's sake; from the consciousness of his own merits and of the weakness of his competitors, Bacon could scarcely doubt of his success. He did not, however, rest in an idle security; for though, to use his own expression, he was "voiced with great expectation, and the wishes of all men," yet he strenuously applied to the lord keeper, to Lord Burleigh, to Sir Robert Cecil, and to his noble friend Lord Essex, to further his suit. To the Lord Keeper Puckering he applied as to a lawyer, having no sympathy with his pursuits or value for his attainments, in the hope of preventing his opposition, rather than from any expectation of his support; and he calculated rightly upon the lord keeper's disposition towards him, for, either hurt by Bacon's manner, of which he appeared to have complained, or from the usual antipathy of common minds to intellectual superiority, the lord keeper represented to the queen that two lawyers, of the names of Brograve and Brathwayte, were more meritorious candidates. Of the conduct of the lord keeper he felt and spoke indignantly. "If," he says, "it please your lordship but to call to mind from whom I am descended, and by whom, next to God, her majesty, and your own virtue, your lordship is ascended, I know you will have a compunction of mind to do me any wrong."

To Lord Burleigh he applied as to his relation and patron, and, as a motive to insure his protection, he intimated his intention to devote himself to legal pursuits, an intimation likely to be of more efficacy to this statesman than the assurance that the completion of the Novum Organum depended upon his success: and he formed a correct estimate of the lord treasurer, who strongly interceded with the queen, and kindly communicated to Bacon the motives by which she was influenced against him.

To Sir Robert Cecil he also applied, as to a kinsman; and, during the course of his solicitation, having suspected that he had been bribed by his opponent, openly accused him; but, having discovered his error, he immediately acknowledged that his suspicions were unfounded. He still, however, maintained that there had been treachery somewhere, and that a word the queen had used against him had been put into her mouth by Sir Robert's messenger.

Essex, with all the zeal of his noble and ardent nature, endeavoured to influence the queen on behalf of his friend, by every power which he possessed over her affections and her understanding; availing himself of the most happy moments to address her, refuting all the reasons which she could adduce against his promotion, and representing the rejection of his suit as an injustice to the public, and a great unkindness to himself. Not content with these earnest solicitations, Essex applied to every person by whom the queen was likely to be influenced.

That Bacon had a powerful enemy was evinced not only by the whole of Elizabeth's conduct during this protracted suit, but by the anger with which she met the earnest pleadings of Essex; by her perpetual refusals to come to any decision, and above all, by her remarkable expressions, that "Bacon had a great wit, and much learning, but that in law he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep." Essex was convinced that his enemy was the lord keeper, to whom he wrote, desiring "that the lord keeper