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A RISING YOUNG LAWYER.

tions, imbibing, however, during his residence abroad, that taste for magnificence and display which kept him through all his life a needy man, and proved a source of much misery and sin. Something of a woman's nature appears to have mingled with the qualities of his early manhood; his love of beauty displayed itself in a passion for rich dress and furniture, birds, flowers, perfumes, and fine scenery. It might, certainly, have taken a less innocent and more destructive shape. During his stay in France he spent much time at Poictiers, employed chiefly in collecting materials for his maiden work, entitled Of the State of Europe.

Recalled to England in 1579 by his father's sudden death, he settled down to study law, with little money but a great 1582 mind, in Gray's Inn. In 1582 he was called to the bar; A.D. and in 1585 he obtained a seat in the Commons for Melcombe. When the dapper, richly-dressed youth of twenty-four, whose round rosy face was new to the House, first rose to speak, indifference speedily changed to curiosity, and curiosity to deep attention. It was felt by all that the young lawyer, already well known in the courts, was a man of no common powers. Even then the main idea of his life, so nobly carried out in his great system of philosophy, began to develop itself in every speech. "Reform" was his motto; and for this he fought hard in the earlier years of his public life.

At the opening of his career he made a great mistake, fatal to his happiness and fatal to his fame. He lived beyond his means, and thus became hampered with debt, from which he never quite got free. In conjunction with his brother he set up a coach; for which some excuse may be found in the fact, that even at this early age he suffered severely from gout and ague. He was forced to borrow from the Jews; and it might often have gone hard with the young men in their city lodging, had not their kind mother, Lady Anne, sent frequent supplies of ale and poultry in from Gorhambury.

Looked coldly on by his relatives the Cecils, he became a partisan of Essex, who tried hard to get him made Solicitor-General. But Burleigh and his clan were too strong for the Earl, and Bacon

was defeated. To console him for this reverse, Essex gave him the beautiful estate of Twickenham Park. The value of the gift was great some £1800; and there, under the spreading cedars, the hard-worked lawyer, dried up for many a week in the hot and dusty courts, used gladly to enjoy his leisure by the gentle Thames.

But Bacon soon saw that Essex was a dangerous friend, and, after earnest remonstrances from the lawyer, which the Earl appears to have despised, the connection between them was dissolved. Through the remaining years of Elizabeth's reign, Bacon, who had already become member for Middlesex and a Queen's Counsel, continued to rise in the House. All that he could do to save Essex, he did; at the risk of offending the touchy old Queen he pleaded the cause of his former friend and patron. But every effort was rendered useless by the mad folly of the Earl, who had been spoiled by the doting Elizabeth. Forgiven again and again, this madman persisted in trying to kindle a rebellion; and after his failure in London he died on the scaffold. Bacon has been charged with base ingratitude and treachery in this case of Essex. But he could not save a man who rushed so blindly on to death. What he could do, he seems to have done. His public office of Queen's Counsel enabled him to deal more gently with the foolish Earl than a stranger might have dealt. And when at the Queen's command he drew up a paper declaring the treasons of Essex, its lenient tone made the angry Elizabeth cry out, "I see old love is not easily forgotten."

Through these changeful years Bacon had been writing some of the celebrated Essays, which form his chief English work, and entitle him to the fame of holding a first rank among 1597 the grand old masters of English prose. When first A.D. published in 1597, the "Essays" were only ten in number;

but others were added in 1612, and after his fall he spent much time in expanding and retouching them.

These years were also marked by a disappointment in love. A rich young widow, named Lady Hatton, was the object of his hopes; but his great rival at the bar proved also a formidable rival in the court of love. Attorney-General Coke stepped in and bore away the golden prize.

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BACON LORD CHANCELLOR.

However the wound soon healed; for in 1606 an elderly bridegroom of forty-five, richly clad in purple Genoa velvet, stood at the altar beside a fair young bride in cloth of silver. The lady was the daughter of a Cheapside merchant, Alice Barnham, who on that day changed her name to Lady Bacon. Sir Francis had been lately knighted by King James.

From the Solicitor-Generalship, won in 1607, he stepped on in 1613 to the rank of Attorney-General; in 1617 he received the Great Seal; and in the following year he reached the sum1618 mit of his profession, being made Lord High Chancellor A.D. of England with the title of Baron Verulam. Thus, at

last, had Bacon beaten Coke, his rival in love, in law, and in ambition.

For three years he held the seals as Chancellor, and great was the splendour of his life. Baron Verulam soon became Viscount St. Albans. But the glitter of costly lace and the sheen of gilded coaches, of which these years were full, grow dim and tarnished before a splendour that cannot fade. The Lord Chancellor, with his titles of honour, is almost forgotten when the author of the Novum Organum rises in our view. This celebrated work, 1620 of which more will soon be said, appeared in 1620; and A.D. the pains which Bacon took to make it worthy of his fame may be judged from the fact, that he copied and corrected it twelve times before he gave it to the world. The greatest of Bacon's works was yet fresh from the press when dark clouds began to gather round its author. Coke, his bitter foe, and others whom the poison of envy had also tainted, raised a clamour against the Chancellor for taking bribes. Undoubtedly Bacon was guilty of the crime, for his extravagance and love of show drained his purse continually, and a needy man is often mean. But it may be said, in extenuation of his fault, that it was the common practice in that day for judges to 1621 receive fees and gifts; indeed, the greater part of their income was derived from such sources. A case, containing at least twenty-two distinct charges of bribery and corruption, being prepared by the House of Commons, the Lords

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DISGRACE AND DEATH OF BACON.

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proceeded to sit in judgment upon the highest lawyer in the land. Humbled by the disgrace of his impeachment, and broken down by a fierce attack of his old enemy the gout, the great philosopher, but weak and erring man, sent to the Lords a full confession of his faults. "It is," said he to some of his brother peers who came to ask if this was his own voluntary act, "it is my act-my hand-my heart. O my lords, spare a broken reed!" So fell the Viscount St. Albans from his lofty place, sentenced to pay a fine of £40,000, and to lie in the Tower during the pleasure of the King James was magnanimous enough to remit the fine, and to set the fallen lawyer free in two days.

The evening of this chequered life was spent chiefly in country retirement at Gorhambury. Books, experiments, and a quiet game at bowls were the chief recreations of the degraded statesman. His busy hours were spent in the revisal and enlargement of his Essays, the composition of his History of King Henry VII., a philosophical fiction called The New Atlantis, and that part of his great work which relates to Natural History. Heavy debts still hung upon him. He applied for the Provostship of Eton, but failed. The story of his death is curious. Driving in his carriage one snowy day, the thought struck him that flesh 1626 might be preserved as well by snow as by salt. he stopped, went into a cottage by the road, bought a fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it full of snow. Feeling chilly and too unwell to go home, he went to the house of the Earl of Arundel, which was near. There he was put into a damp bed; fever ensued; and in a few days he was no more.

At once

A.D.

The scale upon which the ground-plan of Bacon's great work is drawn is very magnificent; but no single human mind, working within the compass of a human life, could hope to accomplish the grand design. Yet even to have grasped the idea of such a giant plan is enough to prove a mighty genius. While fagging at his law books and briefs in old Gray's Inn, the thought had dawned upon his mind; and through thirty years of up-hill labour at the bar and fierce political struggles in the House he was steadily collecting materials to fill in the outlines of his colossal sketch. An

English treatise on the Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, was the herald of the greater work, which appeared in his brightest days to gild them with a lustre brighter still-a lustre, too, which even his sad disgrace and doubtful character could not wholly dim. The plan of the work, which was written in Latin and was styled Instauratio Magna, may be understood from the following view:

I. De Augmentis Scientiarum.—This treatise, in which the English work on the Advancement of Learning is embodied, gives a general summary of human knowledge, taking special notice of gaps and imperfections in science.

II. Novum Organum.-This work explains the new logic, or inductive method of reasoning, upon which his philosophy is founded. Out of nine sections, into which he divides the subject, the first only is handled with any fulness, the other eight being merely named.

III. Sylva Sylvarum.-This part was designed to give a complete view of what we call Natural Philosophy and Natural History. The subjects he has touched on under this head are four-the History of Winds, of Life and Death, of Density and Rarity, of Sound and Hearing.

IV. Scala Intellectus. Of this we have only a few of the opening

pages.

V. Prodromi. -A few fragments only were written. VI. Philosophia Secunda.-Never executed.

The Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral, of which ten were published in 1597, were afterwards greatly increased in number and extent, being especially enriched with the brighter blossoms of their great author's matured fancy. In this respect that his fancy was more vivid in age than in youth-the mind of Bacon formed an exception to the common rule; for, in general, the fancy of a young man grows less bright as his reason grows strong, just as the coloured petals of a flower fade and drop to make room for the solid substance of the fruit. Though often stiff and grave,