Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/181

Rh am a vassal to His celestial creature, who pleaseth out of angelic grace, to pardon and allow my careful and zealous desires. My services are attended with envy, I must be offensive to the multitude, and to others that may be revengeful, who also have many and great friends. I can please none because I thirst only to please one, and malice is no less wakeful in itself than fearful to others, were not my trust in her divine justice which never suffereth her creatures to complain. The comfort I receive of those sacred lines are best expressed in silence, but I have written them anew in my heart, and adjoined them unto the rest of my admiring thoughts, which always travailing from wonder to wonder spend themselves in contemplation, being absent and present in reading secretly the story of marvels in that more than human perfection. I hope the end of this my travail shall be accepted with no less than the beginning is vouchsafed, for I have no other purpose of living, but to witness what I would perform if I had power. If I could do more than any man it were less than nothing balanced with my desires; if I could do as much as all the world, it were neither praise nor thanks worthy in respect of the duty I owe and the princess whom I serve."

To Cecil's character and abilities at this time Bacon has borne eloquent witness. Replying to a scurrilous pamphlet published in 1592, in which Burghley was charged with bringing into the Council his second son, "who had neither wit nor experience," he says:—

"It is confessed by all men that know the gentleman that he hath one of the rarest and most excellent wits of England; with a singular delivery and application of the same, whether it be to use a continued speech, or to