Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/83

 officers, by rewarding the virtuous; skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, and understanding in the business of the court; and discountenancing the vicious, sowers of suits, disturbers of jurisdiction, impeders, by tricks and shifts, of the plain and direct course of justice, and bringing it into oblique lines and labyrinths: and the poller and exacter of fees, who justifies the common resemblance of the courts to the bush, whereunto, while the sheep flies for defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece:—to himself, by counteracting the tendency of his situation to warp his character, and by proper use of times of recreation:—to his profession, by preserving the privileges of his office, and by improvement of the law:—and to society, by advancing justice and good feeling, in the suppression of force and detection of fraud; in readiness to hear the complaints of the distressed; in looking with pity upon those who have erred and strayed; in courtesy; in discountenancing contentious suits; in attending to appearances, esse et videri; in encouraging respect for the office; and by resigning in due time." In his youth he had exerted himself to improve the gardens of Gray's Inn: in gardens he always delighted, thinking them conducive to the purest of human pleasures, and he now, as chancellor, had the satisfaction to sign the patent for converting Lincoln's Inn Fields into walks, extending almost to the wall where his faithful friend Ben Jonson had, when a boy, worked as a brick layer.

For relaxation from his arduous occupations he was accustomed to retire to his magnificent and beautiful residence at Gorhambury, the dwelling-place of his ancestors, where, "when his lordship arrived, St. Albans seemed as if the court had been there, so nobly did he live. His servants had liveries with his crest: his watermen were more employed than even the king's." About half a mile from this noble mansion, of which the ruins yet remain, and within the bounds of Old Verulam, the lord chancellor built, at the expense of about £10,000, a most ingeniously contrived house, where, in the society of his philosophical friends, he escaped from the splendour of chancellor, to study and meditation. "Here," says Aubrey, "his lordship much meditated, his servant, Mr. Bushell, attending him with his pen and inkhorn, to set down his present notions Mr. Thomas Hobbes told me that his lordship would employ him often in this service, whilst he was there, and was better pleased with his minutes, or notes, set down by him, than by others who did not well understand his lordship. He told me that he was employed in translating part of the Essays, viz. three of them, one whereof was that of Greatness of Cities, the other two I have now forgot." Such was the gorgeous splendour, such the union of action and contemplation in which he lived.

About this period the king conferred upon him the valuable farm of the Alienation Office, and he succeeded in obtaining for his residence, York House, the place of his birth, and where his father had lived, when lord keeper in the reign of Elizabeth. This may be considered the summit of this great man's worldly prosperity. He had been successively solicitor and attorney-general, privy councillor, lord keeper, and lord chancellor, having had conferred upon him the dignities, first of knight, then of Baron of Verulam, and, early in the next year, of Viscount St. Albans; but, above all, he was distinguished through Europe by a much prouder title, as the greatest of English philosophers.

At York House, on the 22d of January, 1620, he celebrated his sixtieth birthday, surrounded by his admirers and friends, amongst whom was Ben Jonson, who composed, in honour of the day, a poem founded on the fiction of the poet's surprise upon his reaching York House, at the sight of the genius of the place performing some mystery. Fortune is justly represented insecurely placed upon a wheel, whose slightest revolution may cause her downfall. It has been said that wailing sounds were heard, before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and at last the rushing of mighty wings when the angel of the sanctuary departed. Had the poet been a prophet, he would have described the good genius of the mansion, not exulting, but dejected, humbled, and about to depart forever.

October, 1620, to June, 1621. in the blaze of worldly splendour, and absorbed in worldly occupations, the chancellor, now sixty years of age, could no longer delude himself with the hope of completing his favourite work, the great object of his life, upon which he had been engaged for thirty years, and had twelve times transcribed with his own hand. He resolved at once to abandon it, and publish the small fragment which he had composed. For this act of despair he assigned two reasons:—"Because I number my days, and would have it saved;" and "to try whether I can get help in one intended part of this work, namely, the compiling of a Natural and Experimental History,