Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/37

 While, in this year, the Earl of Essex was preparing for his voyage, Bacon communicated to him his intention of making a proposal of marriage to Lady Hatton, the wealthy widow of Sir William Hatton, and daughter of Sir Thomas Cecil, and desired his lordship's interest in support of his pretensions, trusting, he said, "that the beams of his lordship's pen might dissolve the coldness of his fortune." Essex, with his wonted zeal, warmly advocated the cause of his friend, he wrote in the strongest terms to the father and mother of the lady, assuring them "that if Bacon's suit had been to his own sister or daughter, he would as confidently further it, as he now endeavoured to persuade them." Neither Bacon's merit, or the generous warmth of his noble patron touched the heart of the lady, who, fortunately for Bacon, afterwards became the wife of his great rival, Sir Edward Coke.

In this year he seems to have been in great pecuniary difficulties, which, however they may have interrupted, did not prevent his studies; for, amidst his professional and political labours, he published a new edition of his essays, and composed a law tract, not published until some years after his death, entitled the History of the Alienation Office.

In the year 1599, the celebrated case of Perpetuities, which had been argued many times at the bar of the King's Bench, was, on account of its difficulty and great importance, ordered to be argued in the Exchequer Chamber before all the judges of England; and after a first argument by Coke, Solicitor-General, a second argument was directed, and Bacon was selected to discharge this arduous duty, to which he seems to have given his whole mind; and although Sir Edward Coke, in his report, states that he did not hear the argument, the case is reported at great length, and the reasoning has not been lost, for the manuscript exists, and seems to have been incorporated in his reading on the statute of uses to the society of Gray's Inn.

He thus commences his address to the students: "I have chosen to read upon the Statute of Uses, a law whereupon the inheritances of this realm are tossed at this day, like a ship upon the sea, in such sort, that it is hard to say which bark will sink, and which will get to the haven; that is to say, what assurances will stand good, and what will not. Neither is this any lack or default in the pilots, the grave and learned judges; but the tides and currents of received error, and unwarranted and abusive experience have been so strong, as they were not able to keep a right course according to the law. Herein, though I could not be ignorant either of the difficulty of the matter, which he that taketh in hand shall soon find, or much less of my own unableness, which I had continual sense and feeling of; yet, because I had more means of absolution than the younger sort, and more leisure than the greater sort, I did think it not impossible to work some profitable effect; the rather because where an inferior wit is bent and constant upon one subject, he shall many times, with patience and meditation, dissolve and undo many of the knots, which a greater wit, distracted with many matters, would rather cut in two than unknit: and, at the least, if my invention or judgment be too barren or too weak, yet by the benefit of other arts, I did hope to dispose or digest the authorities and opinions which are in cases of uses in such order and method, as they should take light one from another, though they took no light from me." He then proceeds in a luminous exposition of the statute, of which a celebrated lawyer of our times, says: "Lord Bacon's reading on the Statute of Uses is a very profound treatise on the subject, so far as it goes, and shows that he had the clearest conception of one of the most abstruse parts of our law. What might we not have expected from the hands of such a master, if his vast mind had not so embraced within its compass the whole field of science, as very much to detach him from his professional studies?" There is an observation of the same nature by a celebrated professor in another department of science, Sir John Hawkins, who, in his History of Music, says, "Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, has given a great variety of experiments touching music, that show him to have not been barely a philosopher, an inquirer into the phenomena of sound, but a master of the science of harmony, and very intimately acquainted with the precepts of musical composition." And, in coincidence with his lordship's, sentiments of harmony, he quotes the following passage: "The sweetest and best harmony is when every part or instrument is not heard by itself, but a conflation of them all, which requireth to stand some distance off, even as it is in the mixtures of perfumes, or the taking of the smells of several flowers in the air." With these legal and literary occupations he continued without intermission his parliamentary exertions, there not having been during the latter part of the queen's reign any debate in which he was not a distinguished speaker, or any important committee of which he was not an active member.

Early in the year 1599, a large body of the Irish, denied the protection of the laws, and hunted like wild beasts by an insolent soldiery, fled the neighbourhood of cities, sheltered themselves in their marshes and forests, and grew every day more intractable and dangerous; it became