PART XV.

NO. XX.—ON SELF-CONTROL.

“He who desires to influence others must learn to command himself,” is

an old aphorism, on which, perhaps, something new may be said. In the

ordinary ethics of the nursery, self-control means little more than a

check upon temper. A wise restraint, no doubt; but as useful to the

dissimulator as to the honest man. I do not necessarily conquer my anger

because I do not show that I am angry. Anger vented often hurries

towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.

A hasty temper is not the only horse that runs away with the charioteer

on the Road of Life. Nor is it the most dangerous, for it seldom runs

away far. It gives a jerk and a shake; but it does not take the bit

between its teeth, and gallop blindly on, mile after mile, in one

obstinate direction towards a precipice. A hasty temper is an infirmity

disagreeable to others, undignified in ourselves—a fault so well known

to every man who has it, that he will at once acknowledge it to be a

fault which he ought to correct. He requires, therefore, no moralising

essayist to prove to him his failing, or teach him his duty. But still a

hasty temper is a frank offender, and has seldom that injurious effect

either on the welfare of others, or on our own natures, mental and

moral, which results from the steady purpose of one of those vices which

are never seen in a passion.

In social intercourse, if his character be generous and his heart sound,

a man does not often lose a true friend from a quick word. And even in

the practical business of life, wherein an imperturbable temper is

certainly a priceless advantage, a man of honesty and talent may still

make his way without it. Nay, he may inspire a greater trust in his

probity and candour, from the heat he displays against trickiness and

falsehood. Indeed there have been consummate masters in the wisdom of

business who had as little command of temper as if Seneca and Epictetus

had never proved the command of temper to be the first business of

wisdom. Richelieu strode towards his public objects with a footstep

unswervingly firm, though his servants found it the easiest thing in the

world to put him into a passion. Sometimes they did so on purpose,

pleased to be scolded unjustly, because sure of some handsome amends.

And in treating of self-control, I am contented to take that same

Richelieu, the Cardinal, as an illustration of the various and expansive

meaning which I give to the phrase. Richelieu did not command his temper

in the sphere of his private household: he commanded it to perfection in

his administration of a kingdom. He was cruel, but from policy, not from

rage. Among all the victims of that policy, there was not one whose doom

could be ascribed to his personal resentments. The life of no subject,

and the success of no scheme, depended on the chance whether the

irritable minister was in good or bad humour. If he permitted his temper

free vent in his household, it was because there he was only a private

individual. There, he could indulge in the luxury of ire without

disturbing the mechanism of the state. There, generous as a noble and

placable as a priest, he could own himself in the wrong, and beg his

servants’ forgiveness, without lowering the dignity of the minister,

who, when he passed his threshold, could ask no pardon from others, and

acknowledge no fault in himself. It was there where his emotions were

most held in restraint,—there where, before the world’s audience, his

mind swept by concealed in the folds of its craft, as, in Victor Hugo’s

great drama, _L’Homme Rouge_ passes across the stage, curtained round in

his litter, a veiled symbol of obscure, inexorable, majestic fate,—it

was there where the dread human being seemed to have so mastered his

thoughts and his feelings, that they served but as pulleys and wheels to

the bloodless machine of his will,—it was there that self-control was in

truth the most feeble. And this apparent paradox brings me at once to

the purpose for which my essay is written.

What is SELF? What is that many-sided Unity which is centred in the

single Ego of a man’s being? I do not put the question metaphysically.

Heaven forbid! The problem it involves provokes the conjectures of all

schools, precisely because it has received no solution from any. The

reader is welcome to whatever theory he may prefer to select from

metaphysical definitions, provided that he will acknowledge in the word

Self the representation of an integral individual human being—the

organisation of a certain fabric of flesh and blood, biassed, perhaps,

originally by the attributes and peculiarities of the fabric itself—by

hereditary predispositions, by nervous idiosyncrasies, by cerebral

developments, by slow or quick action of the pulse, by all in which mind

takes a shape from the mould of the body;—but still a Self which, in

every sane constitution, can be changed or modified from the original

bias, by circumstance, by culture, by reflection, by will, by

conscience, through means of the unseen inhabitant of the fabric. Not a

man has ever achieved a something good or great, but will own that,

before he achieved it, his mind succeeded in conquering or changing some

predisposition of body.

True self-control, therefore, is the control of that entire and complex

unity, the individual Self. It necessitates an accurate perception of

all that is suggested by the original bias, and a power to adapt and to

regulate, or to oppose and divert, every course to which that bias

inclines the thought and impels the action.

For Self, left to itself, only crystallises atoms homogeneous to its

original monad. A nature constitutionally proud and pitiless,

intuitively seeks, in all the culture it derives from intellectual

labour, to find reasons to continue proud and pitiless—to extract from

the lessons of knowledge arguments by which to justify its impulse, and

rules by which the impulse can be drilled into method and refined into

policy.

Among the marvels of psychology, certainly not the least astounding is

that facility with which the conscience, being really sincere in its

desire of right, accommodates itself to the impulse which urges it to go

wrong. It is thus that fanatics, whether in religion or in politics, hug

as the virtue of saints and heroes the barbarity of the bigot, the

baseness of the assassin. No one can suppose that Calvin did not deem

that the angels smiled approbation when he burned Servetus. No one can

suppose that when Torquemada devised the Inquisition, he did not

conscientiously believe that the greatest happiness of the greatest

number could be best secured by selecting a few for a roast. Torquemada

could have no personal interest in roasting a heretic; Torquemada did

not eat him when roasted; Torquemada was not a cannibal.

Again: no one can suppose that when the German student, Sand, after long

forethought, and with cool determination, murdered a writer whose

lucubrations shocked his political opinions, he did not walk to the

scaffold with a conscience as calm as that of the mildest young lady who

ever slaughtered a wasp from her fear of its sting.

So when Armand Richelieu marched inflexibly to his public ends, the spy

on his left side, the executioner on his right, Bayard could not have

felt himself more free from stain and reproach. His conscience would

have found in his intellect not an accusing monitor but a flattering

parasite. It would have whispered in his ear—“Great Man—Hero, nay,

rather Demigod[5]—to destroy is thy duty, because to reconstruct is thy

mission. The evils which harass the land—for which Heaven, that gave

thee so dauntless a heart and so scheming a brain, has made thee

responsible—result from the turbulent ambition of nobles who menace the

throne thou art deputed to guard, and the licence of pestilent schisms

at war with the Church of which thou art the grace and the bulwark. Pure

and indefatigable patriot, undeterred by the faults of the sovereign who

hates thee, by the sins of the people who would dip their hands in thy

blood, thou toilest on in thy grand work serenely, compelling the

elements vainly conflicting against thee into the unity of thine own

firm design—unity secular, unity spiritual—one throne safe from rebels,

one church free from schisms; in the peace of that unity, the land of

thy birth will collect and mature and concentrate its forces, now wasted

and waning, till it rise to the rank of the one state of Europe—the

brain and the heart of the civilised world! No mythical Hercules thou!

Complete thy magnificent labours. Purge the land of the Lion and

Hydra—of the throne-shaking Baron—the church-splitting Huguenot!”

Footnote 5:

An author dedicated a work to Richelieu. In the dedication, referring

to the ‘Siege of Rochelle,’ he complimented the Cardinal with the word

Hero. When the dedication was submitted to Richelieu for approval, he

scratched out “Hèros,” and substituted “Demi-Dieu!”

Armand Richelieu, by nature not vindictive nor mean, thus motions

without remorse to the headsman, listens without shame to the spy, and,

when asked on his deathbed if he forgave his enemies, replies,

conscientiously ignorant of his many offences against the brotherhood

between man and man, “I owe no forgiveness to enemies; I never had any

except those of the State.”

For human governments, the best statesman is he who carries a keen

perception of the common interests of humanity into all his projects,

howsoever intellectually subtle. But that policy is not for the

interests of humanity which cannot be achieved without the spy and the

headsman. And those projects cannot serve humanity which sanction

persecution as the instrument of truth, and subject the fate of a

community to the accident of a benevolent despot.

In Richelieu there was no genuine self-control, because he had made his

whole self the puppet of certain fixed and tyrannical ideas. Now, in

this the humblest and obscurest individual amongst us is too often but a

Richelieu in miniature. Every man has in his own temperament peculiar

propellers to the movement of his thoughts and the choice of his

actions. Every man has his own favourite ideas rising out of his

constitutional bias. At the onset of life this bias is clearly revealed

to each. No youth ever leaves college but what he is perfectly aware of

the leading motive-properties of his own mind. He knows whether he is

disposed by temperament to be timid or rash, proud or meek, covetous of

approbation or indifferent to opinion, thrifty or extravagant, stern in

his justice or weak in his indulgence. It is while his step is yet on

the threshold of life that man can best commence the grand task of

self-control; for then he best adjusts that equilibrium of character by

which he is saved from the despotism of one ruling passion or the

monomania of one cherished train of ideas. Later in life our introvision

is sure to be obscured—the intellect has familiarised itself to its own

errors, the conscience is deafened to its own first alarms; and the more

we cultivate the intellect in its favourite tracks, the more we question

the conscience in its own prejudiced creed, so much the more will the

intellect find skilful excuses to justify its errors, so much the more

will the conscience devise ingenious replies to every doubt we submit to

the casuistry of which we have made it the adept.

Nor is it our favourite vices alone that lead us into danger—noble

natures are as liable to be led astray by their favourite virtues; for

it is the proverbial tendency of a virtue to fuse itself insensibly into

its neighbouring vice; and, on the other hand, in noble natures, a

constitutional vice is often drilled into a virtue.

But few men can attain that complete subjugation of self to the harmony

of moral law, which was the aim of the Stoics. A mind so admirably

balanced that each attribute of character has its just weight and no

more, is rather a type of ideal perfection, than an example placed

before our eyes in the actual commerce of life. I must narrow the scope

of my homily, and suggest to the practical a few practical hints for the

ready control of their faculties.

It seems to me that a man will best gain command over those intellectual

faculties which he knows are his strongest, by cultivating the faculties

that somewhat tend to counterbalance them. He in whom imagination is

opulent and fervid will regulate and discipline its exercise by forcing

himself to occupations or studies that require plain common sense. He

who feels that the bias of his judgment or the tendency of his

avocations is over-much towards the positive and anti-poetic forms of

life, will best guard against the narrowness of scope and feebleness of

grasp which characterise the intellect that seeks common sense only in

commonplace, by warming his faculties in the glow of imaginative genius;

he should not forget that where heat enters it expands. And, indeed, the

rule I thus lay down, eminent men have discovered for themselves. Men of

really great imagination will be found to have generally cultivated some

branch of knowledge that requires critical or severe reasoning. Men of

really great capacities for practical business will generally be found

to indulge in a predilection for works of fancy. The favourite reading

of poets or fictionists of high order will seldom be poetry or fiction.

Poetry or fiction is to them a study, not a relaxation. Their favourite

reading will be generally in works called abstruse or dry—antiquities,

metaphysics, subtle problems of criticism, or delicate niceties of

scholarship. On the other hand, the favourite reading of celebrated

lawyers is generally novels. Thus in every mind of large powers there is

an unconscious struggle perpetually going on to preserve its

equilibrium. The eye soon loses its justness of vision if always

directed towards one object at the same distance—the soil soon exhausts

its produce if you draw from it but one crop.

But it is not enough to secure counteraction for the mind in all which

directs its prevailing faculties towards partial and special results; it

is necessary also to acquire the power to keep differing faculties and

acquirements apart and distinct on all occasions in which it would be

improper to blend them. When the poet enters on the stage of real life

as a practical man of business, he must be able to leave his poetry

behind him; when the practical man of business enters into the domain of

poetry, he must not remind us that he is an authority on the Stock

Exchange. In a word, he who has real self-control has all his powers at

his command, now to unite and now to separate them.

In public life this is especially requisite. A statesman is seldom

profound unless he be somewhat of a scholar; an orator is seldom

eloquent unless he have familiarised himself with the world of the

poets. But he will never be a statesman of commanding influence, and

never an orator of lasting renown, if, in action or advice on the

practical affairs of nations, he be more scholar or poet than orator or

statesman. Pitt and Fox are memorable instances of the discriminating

self-abnegation with which minds of masculine power can abstain from the

display of riches unsuited to place and occasion.

In the Mr Fox of St Stephen’s, the nervous reasoner from premises the

broadest and most popular, there is no trace of the Mr Fox of St Anne’s,

the refining verbal critic, with an almost feminine delight in the

filigree and trinkets of literature. At rural leisure, under his

apple-blossoms, his predilection in scholarship is for its daintiest

subtleties; his happiest remarks are on writers very little read. But

place the great Tribune on the floor of the House of Commons, and not a

vestige of the fine verbal critic is visible. His classical allusions

are then taken from passages the most popularly known. And, indeed, it

was a saying of Fox’s, “That no young member should hazard in Parliament

a Latin quotation not found in the Eton Grammar.”

Pitt was yet more sparing than Fox in the exhibition of his scholarship,

which, if less various than his rival’s, was probably quite as deep. And

one of the friends who knew him best said, that Pitt rigidly subdued his

native faculty of _wit_, not because he did not appreciate and admire

its sparkles in orators unrestrained by the responsibilities of office,

but because he considered that a man in the position of First Minister

impaired influence and authority by the cheers that transferred his

reputation from his rank of Minister to his renown as Wit. He was right.

Grave situations are not only dignified but strengthened by that gravity

of demeanour which is not the hypocrisy of the would-be wise, but the

genuine token of the earnest sense of responsibility.

Self-control thus necessitates, first, Self-Knowledge—the consciousness

and the calculation of our own resources and our own defects. Every man

has his strong point—every man has his weak ones. To know both the

strong point and the weak ones is the first object of the man who means

to extract from himself the highest degree of usefulness with the least

alloy of mischief. His next task is yet more to strengthen his strong

points by counterbalancing them with weights thrown into the scale of

the weak ones; for force is increased by resistance. Remedy your

deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. Every man

has in him good and evil. His good is his valiant army, his evil is his

corrupt commissariat; reform the commissariat, and the army will do its

duty.

The third point in Self-control is Generalship—is Method—is that calm

science in the midst of movement and passion which decides where to

advance, where to retreat—what regiments shall lead the charge, what

regiments shall be held back in reserve. This is the last and the

grandest secret: the other two all of us may master.

The man who, but with a mind somewhat above the average (raised above

the average whether by constitutional talent or laborious acquirement),

has his own intellect, with all its stores, under his absolute

control,—that man can pass from one state of idea to another—from action

to letters, from letters to action—without taking from one the

establishment that would burden the other. It is comparatively a poor

proprietor who cannot move from town to country but what he must carry

with him all his servants and half his furniture. He who keeps the

treasures he has inherited or saved in such compartments that he may

know where to look for each at the moment it is wanted, will rarely find

himself misplaced in any change of situation. It is not that his genius

is versatile, but that it has the opulent attributes which are essential

to successful intellect of every kind. The attributes themselves may

vary in property and in degree, but the power of the SELF—of the unity

which controls all at its disposal—should be in the facility with which

it can separate or combine all its attributes at its will.

It is thus, in the natural world, that an ordinary chemist may

accomplish marvels beyond the art of magicians of old. Each man of good

understanding, who would be as a chemist to the world within himself,

will be startled to discover what new agencies spring into action merely

by separating the elements dormant when joined, or combining those that

were wasted in air when apart. In one completed Man there are the forces

of many men. Self-control is self-completion.

NO. XXI.—THE MODERN MISANTHROPE.

“All the passions,” saith an old writer, “are such near neighbours, that

if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets.” Thus

love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark

that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not

catch, it quenches fire. The misanthrope who professes to hate mankind

has generally passed to that hate from too extravagant a love. And love

for mankind is still, though unconsciously to himself, feeding hate by

its own unextinguished embers. “The more a man loves his mistress,” says

Rochefoucauld, “the nearer he is to hate her.” Possibly so, if he is

jealous; but in return, the more he declares he hates her, the nearer he

is to loving her again. Vehement affections do not move in parallels but

in circles. As applied to them the proverb is true, “_Les extrêmes se

touchent_.” A man of ardent temperament who is shocked into misanthropy

by instances of ingratitude and perfidy, is liable any day to be carried

back into philanthropy, should unlooked-for instances of gratitude and

truth start up and take him by surprise. But if an egotist, who,

inheriting but a small pittance of human affection, concentres it

rigidly on himself, should deliberately school his reason into calm

contempt for his species, he will retain that contempt to the last. He

looks on the world of man, with its virtues and vices, much as you, O my

reader, look on an ant-hill! What to you are the virtues or vices of

ants? It is this kind of masked misanthropy which we encounter in our

day—the misanthropy without a vizard belongs to a ruder age.

The misanthrope of Shakespeare and Molière is a passionate savage; the

misanthrope who has just kissed his hand to you is a polished gentleman.

No disgust of humanity will ever make _him_ fly the world. From his

club-window in St James’s his smile falls on all passers-by with equal

suavity and equal scorn. It may be said by verbal critics that I employ

the word misanthrope incorrectly—that, according to strict

interpretation, a misanthrope means not a despiser but a hater of men,

and that this elegant gentleman is not, by my own showing, warmblooded

enough for hate. True, but contempt so serene and immovable is the

philosophy of hate—the intellectual consummation of misanthropy. My hero

would have listened with approving nod to all that Timon or Alceste

could have thundered forth in detestation of his kind, and blandly

rejoined, “Your truisms, _mon cher_, are as evident as that two and two

make four. But you can calculate on the principle that two and two make

four without shouting forth, as if you proclaimed a notable discovery,

what every one you meet knows as well as yourself. Men are

scoundrels—two and two make four—reckon accordingly, and don’t lose your

temper in keeping your accounts.” My misanthrope _à la mode_ never rails

at vice; he takes it for granted as the elementary principle in the

commerce of life. As for virtue, he regards it as a professor of science

regards witchcraft. No doubt there are many plausible stories, very

creditably attested, that vouch for its existence, but the thing is not

in nature. Easier to believe in a cunning imposture than an impossible

fact. It is the depth and completeness of his contempt for the world

that makes him take the world so pleasantly. He is deemed the man of the

world _par excellence_, and the World caresses and admires its Man.

The finest gentleman of my young day, who never said to you an unkind

thing nor of you a kind one—whose slightest smile was a seductive

fascination—whose loudest tone was a flute-like melody—had the sweetest

way possible of insinuating his scorn of the human race. The urbanity of

his manners made him a pleasant acquaintance—the extent of his reading

an accomplished companion. No one was more versed in those classes of

literature in which Mephistopheles might have sought polite authorities

in favour of his demoniacal views of philosophy. He was at home in the

correspondence between cardinals and debauchees in the time of Leo X. He

might have taken high honours in an examination on the memoirs

illustrating the life of French _salons_ in the _ancien régime_. He knew

the age of Louis Quinze so well that to hear him you might suppose he

was just fresh from a _petit souper_ in the _Parc aux Cerfs_.

Too universally agreeable not to amuse those present at the expense of

those absent, still, even in sarcasm, he never seemed to be ill-natured.

As one of his associates had a louder reputation for wit than his own,

so it was his modest habit to father upon that professed _diseur de bons

mots_ any more pointed epigram that occurred spontaneously to himself.

“I wonder,” said a dandy of another dandy who was no Adonis, “why on

earth —— has suddenly taken to cultivate those monstrous red whiskers.”

“Ah,” quoth my pleasant fine gentleman, “I think for my part they become

his style of face very much; A—— says ‘that they plant out his

ugliness.’” For the rest, in all graver matters, if the man he last

dined with committed some act which all honest men blamed, my

misanthrope evinced his gentle surprise, not at the act, but the

blame—“What did you expect?” he would say, with an adorable indulgence,

“he was a man—_like yourselves_!”

Sprung from one of the noblest lineages in Christendom—possessed of a

fortune which he would smilingly say “was not large enough to allow him

to give a shilling to any one else,” but which, prudently spent on

himself, amply sufficed for all the elegant wants of a man so

emphatically single—this darling of fashion had every motive conceivable

to an ordinary understanding not to be himself that utter rogue which he

assumed every other fellow-creature to be. Nevertheless, he was too

nobly consistent to his creed to suffer his example to be at variance

with his doctrine; and here he had an indisputable advantage over Timon

and Alceste, who had no right, when calling all men rogues, to belie

their assertion by declining to be rogues themselves. His favourite

amusement was whist, and in that game his skill was so consummate that

he had only to play fairly in order to add to his income a sum which,

already spending on himself all that he himself required, he would not

have known what to do with. But, as he held all men to be cheats, he

cheated on principle. It was due to the honour of his philosophy to show

his utter disdain of the honour which impostors preached, but which only

dupes had the folly to practise. If others did not mark the aces and

shuffle up the kings as he did, it was either because they were too

stupid to learn how, or too cowardly to risk the chance of exposure. He

was not as stupid, he was not as cowardly, as the generality of men. It

became him to show his knowledge of their stupidity and his disdain of

their cowardice. _Bref_—he cheated!—long with impunity: but, as Charron

says, _L’homme se pique_—man cogs the dice for his own ruin. At last he

was suspected, he was watched, he was detected. But the first thought of

his fascinated victims was not to denounce, but to warn him—kindly

letters conveying delicate hints were confidentially sent to him: he was

not asked to disgorge, not exhorted to repent; let bygones be bygones,

only for the future, would he, in playing with his intimate associates,

good-naturedly refrain from marking the aces and shuffling up the kings?

I can well imagine the lofty smile with which the scorner of men must

have read such frivolous recommendations to depart from the

philosophical system adorned in vain by his genius if not enforced by

his example. He who despised the opinions of sages and saints—he to be

frightened into respecting the opinions of idlers at a club!—send to him

an admonition from the world of honour, to respect the superstitions of

card-players! as well send to Mr Faraday an admonition from the world of

spirits to respect the superstitions of table-rappers! To either

philosopher there would be the same reply—“I go by the laws of nature.”

In short, strong in the conscience of his opinion, this consistent

reasoner sublimely persevered in justifying his theories of misanthropy

by his own resolute practice of knavery, inexcusable and unredeemed.

“What Timon thought, this god-like Cato was!”

But man, whatever his inferiority to the angels, is still not altogether

a sheep. And even a sheep only submits to be sheared once a year; to be

sheared every day would irritate the mildest of lambs. Some of the

fellow-mortals whom my hero smiled on and plundered, took heart, and

openly accused him of marking the aces and shuffling up the kings. At

first his native genius suggested to him the wisdom of maintaining, in

smiling silence, the contempt of opinion he had hitherto so superbly

evinced. Unhappily for himself, he was induced by those who, persuaded

that a man of so high a birth could never have stooped to so low a

peccadillo, flattered him with the assurance of an easy triumph over his

aspersers—unhappily, I say, he was induced into a departure from that

system of action which he had hitherto maintained with so supreme a

success. He condescended, for the first time in his life, to take other

men into respect—to regard what might be thought of him by a world he

despised. He brought an action for libel against his accusers. His

counsel, doubtless by instruction, sought to redeem that solitary

inconsistency in his client, by insinuating that my lord’s chosen

associates were themselves the cheats, malignant conspirators against

the affable hawk of quality in whom they had expected to find a facile

pigeon.

The cuttle-fish blackens the water to escape from his enemies, but he

does not always escape; nay, in blackening the water he betrays himself

to the watchful spectators. My hero failed in his action, and quitted

the court leaving behind him the bubble reputation. If I am rightly

informed, Adversity, that touchstone of lofty minds, found this grand

philosopher as serene as if he had spent his life in studying Epictetus.

He wrapt himself, if not in virtue, at least in his scorn of it,—

“Et udo

Spernit humi defugiente penno.”

He retired to the classic Tusculum of his villa in St John’s Wood.

There, cheered by the faithful adherence of some elegant companions,

who, if they did not believe him innocent, found him unalterably

agreeable, he sipped his claret and moralised on his creed. Doubtless he

believed that “the talk would soon subside,” “the thing blow over.” The

world would miss him too much not to rally again round the sage who so

justly despised it. Perhaps his belief might have been realised, but,

“Vita summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam”—

Death, the only player that no man can cheat, cut into his table, and

trumped the last card of his long suit.

In the more brilliant period of this amiable man-scorner’s social

career, once, and once only, he is said to have given way to anger. One

of his associates (I say designedly associates, not friends, out of

respect for his memory, since friendship is a virtue, and he therefore

denied its existence)—one of his associates, warmed perhaps into

literature by his own polite acquaintance with all that is _laide_ in

_belles lettres_, wrote a comedy. The comedy was acted. My hero honoured

the performance by appearing in the author’s box. Leaning forward so as

to be seen of all men, he joined his hands in well-bred applause of

every abortive joke and grammatical solecism, till, in a critical part

of the play, there occurred a popular claptrap—a something said in

praise of virtue and condemnation of vice. The gallery of course

responded to the claptrap, expressing noisy satisfaction at the only

sentiment familiar to their comprehension which they had hitherto heard.

But my archetype of modern misanthropy paused aghast, suspended

“The soft collision of applauding gloves,”

and, looking at his associate as reproachfully as Cæsar might have

looked at Brutus when he sighed forth “_Et tu, Brute!_” let fall these

withering words, “Why, Billy, this is betraying the Good Old Cause.” So

saying, he left the box, resentful. Now, this man I call the genuine,

positive, realistic Misanthrope, compared to whom Timon and Alceste are

poetical make-believes!

SPEDDING’S LIFE OF BACON.[6]

Footnote 6:

‘The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon.’ By James Spedding. Vols.

I. & II. Lord Macaulay’s ‘Essay on Francis Bacon.’

Mr Spedding, in the modest form of a commentary on the letters and

occasional writings of Lord Bacon, is now giving us a biography of that

celebrated man, which bids fair, for a long time to come, to be our

highest authority on the subject. To place all the facts before us on

which our judgment of the character of Lord Bacon should be formed, is

his great object; he deals in few assertions of his own; he is disposed

to let facts speak for themselves; he guides our opinion by a full

narrative of the events, and makes few attempts to influence us by

argument or eloquence. A more satisfactory or trustworthy book has

rarely come before us.

We will not say that Mr Spedding’s narrative is never coloured by an

imagination which has received its unconscious prompting from his

admiration of Bacon: one rather amusing instance of this colouring of

the imagination we think we have detected, and shall have occasion to

notice; but no admiring biographer of a great man has more studiously

refrained from thrusting forward his own opinions or conceptions where

the reader is merely desirous of obtaining a clear insight into the

facts themselves. Mr Spedding has not yet completed his task, but he has

given us in these two volumes more materials of interest than in the

space of a single paper we shall have room to touch upon, and the main

topic which occupies them is fully discussed and finally dismissed.

That topic is the relation between Bacon and Essex. Of the splendid

Essay of Lord Macaulay’s, which is still ringing in the ears of most

English readers, no part was written with more force, or was more

damaging to the character of Bacon, than that which treated of his

conduct to the Earl of Essex. Many who could have forgiven the peccant

Chancellor for being too ready to accept whatever was offered to him in

the shape of present or gratuity, could not pardon the cold-blooded and

faithless friend. Now it is precisely on this subject that Mr Spedding

presents us with materials for forming a very different judgment from

that which the eloquent pages of Macaulay had betrayed us into. Up to

the period when Essex disappears from the scene, these two volumes give

us their clear guidance. Of that guidance we very gladly avail

ourselves.

We would premise that it is not our purpose, or endeavour, to defend

Bacon at all points—to robe our Chancellor in spotless ermine; neither

do we think that the result of renewed investigation is a clear verdict

of “Not Guilty” on all the charges that have been brought against him.

There is much in Macaulay’s estimate both of the character and the

philosophy of Bacon with which we cordially agree. It happens frequently

with great historic names that there is an oscillation of public

opinion; the too harsh verdict of one writer, or one age, is followed by

a verdict as much too lenient. Such oscillation seems to have lately

taken place with regard to Bacon, and the disposition is at present to

find nothing blameworthy in him. This disposition we do not share. We

think that no good is done, but rather harm, when enthusiasm for the

brilliant achievements of any man, whether in a career of war, or

statesmanship, or letters, induces us to shut our eyes to his moral

defects. For in these cases we do not, and cannot, exactly _shut our

eyes_: we do something worse; we try to see that vices are not vices. We

lower our standard, that we may pass no unfavourable judgment. It is an

ill lesson that teaches us to forgive the overbearing despotism of a

great soldier or great minister, or the rascality of a great wit; to see

no injustice in a Napoleon, and no villany in a Sheridan. We believe

that the censure of Lord Macaulay is too severe, but it is censure and

not praise which the character of Bacon provokes. We all know that the

fervid eloquence, or rather the ardent temperament, of our more than

English Livy, led him into manifest exaggerations; but in general, we

should say that his drawing is true to nature, except that it had this

too swelling outline. His exaggerations were like those of Michael

Angelo, who drew muscles disproportionately large, but who never drew a

muscle where none existed. A sterling good sense presided over the

verdicts of Macaulay—over the yes or no; but the verdict once

determined, the impassioned orator ran the risk of falsifying it by the

ruthless, unmitigated energy with which it was delivered.

We should not say of Bacon either that he was the “greatest” or the

“meanest” of mankind. But as certainly as he was great in his

intellectual attributes, so certainly was he _not_ great in his moral

character. Here he lacked elevation. He could tolerate artifice, and

dissimulation, and gross flattery. If the crime of Essex justified him,

as we are inclined to think it did, in breaking entirely with that

nobleman, and treating him as an enemy to the State, what are we to say

of the strain of advice which he habitually gives to Essex while the two

are yet in perfect amity? A mere personal ambition, to be obtained by

the petty arts of the courtier, is all that he prompts his friend to

aspire after. Win the Queen—honestly, if possible; but, at all events,

win the Queen! This is the burden of his counsel. Bacon was _great_ in

his intellectual speculations; he was _mean_ in the conduct of life. The

antithesis still remains to us in a modified form. All his life is a

continual suing for place; and what he obtained by flattery and

subservience, he lost by some poor cupidity.

Bacon was a philosopher from his youth, but from his youth to his old

age he was also a lover of social distinctions, and of a sumptuous mode

of life. If he had the desire to take all human knowledge for his

province, and to extend his name and his good influence into future

ages, if he desired to be a reformer even of philosophy itself, he had

also other desires of a much more commonplace description; not evil in

themselves—good perhaps in themselves—but not subordinated to the high

morality which might have been expected from one so wise. But if in his

rise to power he showed too much servility—if, when in the seat of

power, he showed too much cupidity,—surely no one ever fell from

greatness, no one was ever struck down from the seat of power, for so

slight a measure of criminality. No historic personage can be mentioned

amongst us, on whom so severe a punishment, so deep a disgrace, was

inflicted for a fault so little heinous.

The first great error which Bacon committed, the consequence of which

pursued him all his life, was _the running into debt_. It was a

life-long fault. It was his fault, not his misfortune. He received less,

we know, from his father than he might reasonably have expected, less

than his brothers had received, but no biographer has ventured to call

him poor—so poor that he could not have held his ground as a student of

the law without incurring debt. Whether it was mere carelessness and

imprudence, or a wilful spending “according to his hopes, not his

possessions,” we find him very early in debt; and as years advance we

find the debts, of course, more and more onerous. No one knew better

than Bacon that he who owes has to borrow, and that he who borrows will

have, in some form, to beg, to sue—will be tempted to sordid

actions—will lose his independence, his upright attitude amongst men.

There is no greater slavery than debt. It bred in Bacon that “itching

palm,” and that perpetual suing, which disgrace his career.

He begins to sue from his very first entry into life. He puts his trust

in the Lord Treasurer. And what is remarkable, the very nature of the

first suit he makes is unknown. It was some office, _not_ of a legal

character, as we should conjecture. Writing to Walsingham about it, he

says that the delay in answering it “hinders me from taking a course of

practice which, by the leave of God, if her Majesty like not of my suit,

I must and will follow: _not for any necessity of estate, but for my

credit sake_, which I know by living out of action will wear.” At this

date, 25th August 1585, he does not plead absolute inability to live on

his private fortune. Subsequently, when his debts have increased, he

writes upon this subject in a very different strain. He is embarrassed

by usurers; he is arrested; debt comes upon him, as he says, like an

armed man.

Of the earliest years of Bacon few memorials remain. But Mr Spedding

brings together two conspicuous facts. The first is, that Bacon, at the

age of fifteen, conceives his project of a reformation in philosophy;

and the second is, that immediately on leaving college he accompanies

Sir Amias Paulet on his embassy to France. Thus philosophy and

diplomacy, speculation and state-craft, study and the world, take at

once joint possession of Francis Bacon.

Of the first of these facts, and the most important in his life, Mr

Spedding speaks in a passage of much eloquence, glowing and chastened

withal:—

“That the thought first occurred to him during his residence at

Cambridge, therefore before he had completed his fifteenth year, we

know upon the best authority—his own statement to Dr Rawley. I believe

it ought to be regarded as the most important event of his life—the

event which had a greater influence than any other upon his character

and future course. From that moment there was awakened within his

breast the appetite which cannot be satiated, and the passion which

cannot commit excess. From that moment he had a vocation which

employed and stimulated all the energies of his mind, gave a value to

every vacant interval of time, an interest and significance to every

random thought and casual accession of knowledge—an object to live for

as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race—an idea to live in

vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and

heroic aspirations. From that moment, though still subject to

interruptions, disappointments, errors, and regrets, he could never be

without either work or hope or consolation.”

But this young philosopher is son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the late Lord

Chancellor; the Queen has laid her hand upon his head while yet a boy,

and called him her young Lord Keeper; he is nephew to the Prime

Minister; he dreams of courts, of place, of power. He must unite his

lofty speculations with the great affairs of State; he must survey human

knowledge from the high places of society. He enters Gray’s Inn, is a

student of the law, and his heart aches after office and promotion.

There is one person very intimately connected with Bacon, whom Mr

Spedding has brought before us with a novel distinctness—his mother,

Lady Bacon. We are not aware that her presence will throw much light on

the character of her son, but henceforth, we are sure, no biography of

the son will be written in which this lady will not be a conspicuous

figure. She is one of those strongly-marked characters that always

please the imagination; dogmatic, perverse, full of maternal anxiety,

pious and splenetic, with marvellous shrewd sense and a very

ungovernable temper. The knowledge of her character would enable us to

answer one question. Presuming that any one should think fit to ask why

Bacon did not seek the retirement of Gorhambury, the answer is quite

ready. There would have been no peace for him under the roof of his lady

mother. Puritan and termagant, his philosophy would have been “suspect”

to her; and his retirement would have been certainly denounced as

unpardonable sloth. She is a learned lady, mingles scraps of Latin and

Greek in her epistles, and she can write, when the occasion demands, in

a very stately English style—stately, but straightforward withal. Her

son’s epistolary style is often involved and verbose. He does not often

come so directly to the point as Lady Bacon does in the following

letter, written to Lord Burghley, in the interest of the Nonconformist

clergy, or _Preachers_, as they were then called. In a conference which

had lately taken place at Lambeth between them and the bishops, she

thinks they had not fair-play; she appeals, in their name, to her

Majesty and the Council:—

“They would most humbly crave, both of God in heaven, whose cause it

is, and of their Majesty, their most excellent sovereign here on

earth, that they might obtain quiet and convenient audience rather

before her Majesty herself, whose heart is in God his hand to touch

and to turn, or before your Honours of the Council, whose wisdom they

greatly reverence; and if they cannot strongly prove before you out of

the word of God that reformation which they so long have called and

cried for to be according to Christ his own ordinance, then to let

them be rejected with shame out of the Church for ever.... And

therefore, for such weighty conference they appeal to her Majesty and

her honourable wise Council, whom God has placed in highest authority

for the advancement of His kingdom; and refuse the bishops for judges,

who are parties partial in their own defence, because they seek more

worldly ambition than the glory of Jesus Christ.”

Mr Spedding next introduces to us the same lady under the agitations, as

he says, of maternal anxiety. Anthony Bacon, the elder brother of

Francis, has been long upon the Continent collecting intelligence, and

otherwise amusing or occupying himself. He sends over one Lawson, a

confidential servant, to Lord Burghley with some important

communication. Lawson is a Catholic. That her son Anthony should be so

long in Popish parts is a dire grievance to Lady Bacon; that he should

have in his confidence a Papist servant, is not to be borne. She

prevails upon Burghley to have this Lawson arrested and retained in

England. One snake is, at all events, caught, and shall be held firm.

Anthony writes to his friend, Francis Allen, to obtain for him the

liberation of Lawson. Allen, furnished with a letter from Lord Burghley

(who seems, for his own part, to be willing to release the man),

proceeds to Gorhambury. His intercession with Lady Bacon he tells

himself in a letter to Anthony:—

“Upon my arrival at Godombery my lady used me courteously until such

time I began to move her for Mr Lawson, and, to say the truth, for

yourself;—being so much transported with your abode there that she let

not to say that you are a traitor to God and your country: you have

undone her; you seek her death; and when you have that you seek for,

you shall have but a hundred pounds more than you have now.

“She is resolved to procure her Majesty’s letter to force you to

return; and when that shall be, if her Majesty gave you your right or

desert, she should clap you up in prison....

“I am sorry to write it, considering his deserts and your love towards

him; but the truth will be known at the last, and better late than

never: it is vain to look for Mr Lawson’s return, for these are her

ladyship’s own words—‘No, no,’ saith she, ‘I have learned not to

employ ill to good; and if there were no more men in England, and

although you should never come home, he shall never come to you.’

“It is as unpossible to persuade my lady to send him, as for myself to

send you Paul’s steeple....

“When you have received your provision, make your repair home again,

lest you be a means to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of

mind received, daily by your stay will be her end; also saith her

jewels be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven

several persons.

“Thus much I must confess unto you for a conclusion, that I have never

seen and never shall see a wise lady, an honourable woman, a mother

more perplexed for her son’s absence, than I have seen that honourable

dame for yours. Therefore lay your hand on your heart, look not for Mr

Lawson; here he hath, as a man may say, heaven and earth against him

and his return.”

Soon after this Anthony does return home, and Lady Bacon addresses him a

letter, in which there are some allusions to Francis, which will be read

with interest:—

“This one chiefest counsel your Christian and natural mother doth give

you even before the Lord, that above all worldly respects you carry

yourself ever at your first coming as one that doth unfeignedly

profess the true religion of Christ, and hath the love of the truth

now, by long continuance, fast settled in your heart, and that with

judgment, wisdom, and discretion; and are not afraid or ashamed to

testify the same by hearing and delighting in those religious

exercises of the sincerer sort, be they French or English. _In hoc

noli adhibere fratrem tuum ad consilium aut exemplum_....

“I trust you, with your servants, use prayer twice in a day, having

been where reformation is. Omit it not for any. It will be your best

credit to serve the Lord duly and reverently, and you will be observed

at first now. Your brother is too negligent herein, but do you well

and zealously; it will be looked for of the best-learned sort, and

that is best.”

Full of prudence, full of zeal, suspecting her sons themselves and every

one about them, anxious to manage them on all points, whether in their

diet or their religion, such is Lady Bacon. She is writing still to

Anthony.

“_Gratia et salus._ That you increase in amending I am glad. God

continue it every way. When you cease of your prescribed diet, you had

need, I think, to be very wary both of your sudden change of quantity

and of season of your feeding—especially suppers late or full. Procure

rest in convenient time; it helpeth much to digestion. I verily think

your brother’s weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and

confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing _nescio quid_ when

he should sleep, and then, in consequent, by late rising and long

lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful, and himself

continueth sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to their mother’s

good counsel in time to prevent. The Lord, our heavenly Father, heal

and bless you both as His sons in Christ Jesus. I promise you,

touching your coach, if it be so to your contentation, it was not

wisdom to have it seen or known at the Court; you shall be so much

pressed to lend, and your man, for gain, so ready to agree, that the

discommodity thereof will be as much as the commodity. Let not your

men see my letter. I write to you, and not to them.”

And again, a few days later:—

“I am glad, and thank God of your amendment. But my man said he heard

you rose at three of the clock. I thought that was not well, so

suddenly from bedding much to rise so early—newly out of your diet....

I like not your lending your coach yet to my lord and lady. If you

once begin, you shall hardly end. It was not well it was so soon sent

into the Court to make talk, and at last be promised and misliked.

Tell your brother I counsel you to send it no more. What had my Lady

Shriefess to borrow your coach?”

Any comment of ours would only weaken the effect of such graphic letters

as these. We are enabled even to follow our zealous, dogmatic, yet

motherly woman, into her own household. Edward Spencer was a servant of

Anthony’s, but was left for some reason at Gorhambury. He writes to his

master:—

“My humble duty remembered to your good worship. I thought good to

write to you to satisfy you how unquiet my lady is with all her

household.” [Then he enters into a long story how my lady had said of

a certain “grænen bitch,” whatever that may be, that it should be

hanged; and how, when Edward Spencer obeys her command, and hangs the

dog, my lady breaks out into a “fransey.”]—“My lady do not speak to me

as yet. I will give none offence to make her angry; but nobody can

please her long together.”

And again—

“My humble duty first remembered to your good worship. I thought good

to write unto you to sartey you of my lady’s great unquietness in the

house. Since her last falling-out with me she showed me a good

countenance as ever she did before. Now, yesterday I had a sparhawk

given me, and she killed a brace of partridges, and then I came home

before the evening was shut in; indeed, all the folks had supped:

whereat she seemed to be very sore angry with these words—‘What come

you home now? I would you and your hawk would keep you away

altogether. You have been a-breaking of hedges between neighbour and

neighbour, and now you come home out of order, and show an ill example

in my house. Well, you shall keep no hawk here.’ ‘I am the more

sorrier I have given no acause that your ladyship should be offended,

nor I will not. To please your ladyship I will pull off her head.’

Whereat she stamped and said, I would do by her as I did by the bitch.

Insomuch she would let me have no supper. So truly I went to bed

without my supper. There is not one man in the house but she fall out

withal, and is not in charity one day in a week but with priests,

which will undo her. There is one Page that had six pounds on her. Mr

Willcocks had a paper with a great deal of gold in it. Wellblod had

two quarterns of wheat. Dicke had something the other day; what, I

know not.”

There is more of the same kind; though whether it is quite fair to take

the testimony of this Edward Spencer without hearing what Lady Bacon

could report of _him_, is worth a thought. He must have been a surly

fellow, from his offering so readily to pull off the hawk’s head. Our

next quotation brings us back to Francis, and the unhappy subject of his

debts: we have hints, too, of the influence under which she suspects

these debts to be incurred, which the modern biographer is unable to

follow out; and which, from the different manners of a former age, it is

difficult entirely to understand. But we are confirmed by these extracts

in our previous convictions, that the loss which Francis is said to have

sustained by the sudden death of his father (who thus failed to make the

full provision for him he intended) cannot be represented as the real

cause of his embarrassments. Mr Spedding represents this fact “as

perplexing the problem of his life with a new and inconvenient

addition.” But it could not have materially perplexed the problem of his

life, unless it disabled him from living upon his private fortune. It

made him a poorer gentleman; but if he had been a richer, he would still

have been a suitor at the Court, and still, in all probability, have

incurred debts. He and Anthony live together, and we find them

alternately assisting each other. There is no evidence of a great

disparity in their fortunes. What share Francis had in the “coach” we

know not, but we hear of him purchasing horses; and certainly the mother

does not look upon the embarrassments of Francis as some inevitable

consequence of his position. She is applied to, in the present case, to

assist him in the payment of his debts, by joining in the sale of an

estate which belongs to him, but in which she has some legal right.

Anthony makes the request, and receives the following reply:—

“For your brotherly care of your brother Francis’s estate you are to

be well liked, and so I do as a Christian mother that loveth you both

as the children of God; but, as I wrote but in a few words yesterday

by my neighbour, the state of you both doth much disquiet me, as in

Greek words I signified shortly.

“I have been too ready for you both till nothing is left. And surely,

though I pity your brother, yet so long as he pitieth not himself, but

keepeth that bloody Percy, as I told him then, yea as a

coach-companion and bed-companion,—a proud, profane, costly fellow,

whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike, and

doth less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his

health,—surely I am utterly discouraged, and make a conscience further

to undo myself to maintain such wretches as he is. This Jones (?)

never loved your brother, indeed, but for his own credit, being upon

your brother, and thankless, though bragging. But your brother will be

blind to his own hurt.... It is most certain till first Enney (?), a

filthy, wasteful knave, and his Welshman, one after another—for take

one, and they will still swarm ill-favouredly—did so lead him, as in a

train; he was a towardly young gentleman, and a son of much good hope

in goodliness. But seeing that he hath nourished most sinful proud

villains wilfully, I know not what other answer to make.”

Then, partly relenting, she adds in a postscript:—

“If your brother desire a release to Mr Harvey, let him so require it

himself, and but upon this condition, by his own hand and bond, I will

not; that is, that he make and give me a true note of all his debts,

and leave to me the whole order and receipt of all his money for his

land, to Harvey, and the just payment of all his debts thereby. And,

by the mercy and grace of God, it shall be performed by me to his

quiet discharge, without cumbering him, and to his credit. For I will

not have his cormorant seducers, and instruments of Satan to him,

committing foul sin by his countenance to the displeasing of God and

his godly true fear. Otherwise I will not, _pro certo_.”

This was a condition which, as Mr Spedding observes, was hard of

digestion for an expectant Attorney-General. It was not complied with.

But we need not attempt to follow these obscure transactions further;

and here we may part company with Lady Bacon. In justice to her let it

be added that, if she scolded her son Francis, she could assert his

claims boldly before others. In a reported conversation with Sir Robert

Cecil she does not scruple to hint that he is but ill used by his

powerful relatives. She little understands what manner of son she has;

she says truly that he is thinking _nescio quid_, but she is not without

a certain degree of motherly pride, as well as motherly tenderness, for

him.

We must now turn to that portion of Bacon’s history in which we see him

brought into relationship with Essex. Mr Spedding has represented the

friendship of the two men as being based on very noble motives. Essex

was no doubt attracted to Bacon, in the first instance, by a generous

admiration for his talents. But we do not find that on Bacon’s side

there was any reciprocal ardour. We cannot help thinking that what Bacon

chiefly saw in Essex was the young nobleman likely to be the great

favourite of Elizabeth. Bacon, we are told by Mr Spedding, saw in Essex

a man capable of “entering heartily into all his largest speculations

for the good of the world, and placed by accident in a position to

realise, or help to realise them. It was natural to hope that he could

do it.”—(Vol. i. p. 106.) We have a portrait of Essex, as he first

appeared to Bacon, drawn in glowing colours. This young nobleman is not

only described as being (what all have admitted) generous, brave, and

ardent in his friendship, but credit is given him for wide contemplative

ends, or, at least, an aptitude is presumed in him for purely patriotic

or philanthropic purposes. Now, from the commencement to the termination

of his career, all his good qualities are seen in the service of a mere

flagrant personal ambition. He is jealous of every honour bestowed upon

another: he must be first in the country. And so far from detecting any

great plan or noble intention in the use of power, we see him, still at

an early age, prepared to throw the whole nation into confusion in order

to obtain place or power for himself. And as to Bacon, throughout the

whole of his correspondence with Essex there are no traces of anything

higher than prudential and sometimes crafty counsels, how best to obtain

favour and advancement at Court. The relationship between them is

chiefly this, that Essex is to obtain office and promotion for Bacon,

and Bacon by his aid and advice is to administer to the greatness of

Essex. The relationship has nothing in it peculiarly reprehensible, but

nothing certainly of an elevating character. Sometimes the strain of

advice which the philosopher gives is of a quite ignoble character,

counselling, as it does, a tricky, dissimulating conduct. It is no

Utopia of any kind, moral or scientific, that he has in view for Essex,

or for himself as connected with Essex. It is how to rise at Court that

he studies for his friend, and it is the petty arts of the courtier that

he sometimes condescends to teach.

We will content ourselves with one quotation: it must be a rather long

one, because a single sentence wrung from its context may give no fair

impression of the general strain of a letter of advice. The following

was written to Essex soon after his famous expedition to Cadiz:—

“I said to your Lordship last time, _Martha, Martha, attendis ad

plurima, unum sufficit_; win the Queen: if this be not the beginning,

of any other course I see no end....

“For the removing the impression of your nature to be _opiniastre_,

and not rulable: First, and above all things, I wish that all matters

past, which cannot be revoked, your Lordship would turn altogether

upon insatisfaction, and not upon your nature or proper disposition.

This string you cannot upon every apt occasion harp upon too much.

Next, whereas I have noted you to fly and avoid (in some respect

justly) the resemblance or imitation of my Lord of Leicester and my

Lord Chancellor Hatton; yet I am persuaded (howsoever I wish your

Lordship as distant as you are from them in points of favour,

integrity, magnanimity, and merit) that it will do you much good,

between the Queen and you, to allege them (as oft as you find

occasion) for authors and patterns. For I do not know a readier mean

to make her Majesty think you are in your right way. Thirdly, when at

any time your Lordship upon occasion happen in speeches to do her

Majesty right (for there is no such matter as flattery amongst you

all), I fear you handle it _magis in speciem adornatis verbis quam ut

sentire videaris_, so that a man may read formality in your

countenance; whereas your Lordship should do it familiarly _et

oratione fidâ_. Fourthly, your Lordship should never be without some

particulars of art, _which you should seem to pursue with earnestness

and affection, and then let them fall upon taking knowledge of her

Majesty’s opposition and dislike_. Of which the weightiest sort may

be, if your Lordship offers to labour in the behalf of some that you

favour for some of the places that are void, choosing such a subject

as you think her Majesty is likely to oppose unto. And if you will say

that this is _conjunctum cum alienâ injurâ_, I will not answer, _Hæc

non aliter constabunt_; but I say commendation from so good a mouth

doth not hurt a man, though you prevail not. A less weighty sort of

particulars may be the pretence of some journeys, which at her

Majesty’s request your Lordship mought relinquish; or if you would

pretend a journey to see your living and estate towards Wales, or the

like; for as for great foreign journeys of employment and service, it

standeth not with your gravity to play or stratagem with them. And the

lightest sort of particulars, which yet are not to be neglected, are

in your habits, apparel, wearings, gestures, and the like....

“The third impression is of a popular reputation; which, because it is

a thing good in itself, being obtained as your Lordship obtaineth it,

that is _bonis artibus_; and besides well governed, is one of the best

flowers of your greatness, both present and to come; it would be

handled tenderly. The only way is to quench it _verbis_, but not

_rebus_. And, therefore, _to take all occasions to the Queen to speak

against popularity and popular courses vehemently, and to tax it on

all others; but nevertheless to go in your honourable commonwealth

courses as you do_. And, therefore, I will not advise you to cure this

by dealing in monopolies or any oppressions. Only, if in Parliament

your Lordship be forward for treasure in respect of the wars, it

becometh your person well; and if her Majesty object popularity to you

at any time, I would say to her, A Parliament will show that; and so

feed her with expectation.”

It is only the fear of being tedious that prevents us from giving other

passages in which Bacon counsels dissimulation and these petty artifices

of the courtier. We do not say that passages like this deserve any

violent reprobation, but we do say that the writer of them must have a

very lax morality on the subject of truth-speaking; he _must_ be

deficient in self-respect, in moral dignity. Such a counsellor would not

improve _the man_ who followed his advice, however he might improve his

_fortunes_. There was a love of manœuvring, of petty diplomacy, in

Bacon. In one place we find him framing two fictitious letters, the one

pretending to be written by his brother Anthony, and the other by the

Earl of Essex. This fictitious correspondence was to be shown to the

Queen.—(Vol. ii. p. 197.)

In Bacon, we may observe, we have not the mere ordinary contrast between

good teaching and bad practice. We have not a Seneca professing a

stoical morality and writing apologies for Nero (or any instance of this

kind which the reader may choose for himself, for Seneca may have his

defenders, and many are disposed at present to say a good word in favour

of Nero). It is not a contrast of this kind we have chiefly to remark in

Bacon: what we notice is a defect in the cultivation of the moral

sentiments. The force of his intellect had gone out in another

direction. He had great aspirations for the good of mankind; but these

aspirations were connected with his theory of knowledge, and they were

aspirations after increased power, and “commodity,” and the physical

wellbeing of man. It was not his habit to dwell much upon those moral

sentiments which make, in all ages, the elevation of the individual

mind.

But the grave and specific charge brought against Bacon is that of

ingratitude to his friend. We have to ask what was the amount or kind of

obligation under which Bacon had been placed? What was the friendship he

was supposed to have sacrificed to his interest? And whether the

criminal conduct of Essex did not manumit him from all the bonds of

friendship, whatever they might have been? Though not always a

high-minded counsellor, Bacon was the last man in the country to

tolerate an open act of rebellion against the Queen and the established

Government. The evidence, as laid before us by Mr Spedding, proves

beyond a doubt the grave criminality of Essex. If we have a friend who

passes with us as an honest man, and he suddenly proves a villain, we

generally fling our friendship to the winds—we disclaim and renounce the

man who, in addition to his other villanies, has practised a treachery

upon ourselves. In fact, the condemnation of Essex may be said to be

here the acquittal of Bacon.

We shall not haggle about the amount of specific service rendered by

Essex to his friend. Every generous mind feels gratitude according to

the generosity of purpose of the donor. Essex, in the ardour of his

youth, was, as we have said, drawn towards Bacon by admiration of his

great intellect, and was only too zealous to promote his interest. His

zeal outran his discretion. Nothing came of it but disappointment to

both parties. But this would not have extinguished a grateful feeling.

We have no ground whatever for supposing that the intercession of Essex

really _prevented_ Bacon from obtaining first the Attorney-Generalship,

and, subsequently, the Solicitor-Generalship. That nobleman speaks of

his solicitations doing more harm than good; but an expression of this

kind was either a generous depreciation of his own services, or the

result of a moody anger against the Queen whom he had failed to move. It

does not seem that Bacon at this time had any chance at Court. The Queen

was in no hurry to promote him. He had obtained no practice at the bar,

and it is no want of charity to attribute this in Bacon to an

unwillingness to spend his strength and powers on the ordinary routine

of legal business. But this unwillingness must have operated against

him. The very qualities for which we now admire Bacon must have

disparaged him as a man of business in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth and

Lord Burghley. A man who has long ago left his college, and who is still

dreaming about reforms in philosophy, and who tells the Lord Treasurer

himself that “he has as vast contemplative ends as he has moderate civil

ends,” does not seem exactly the person for an Attorney-General. Bacon,

at all events, does not scruple, on a subsequent occasion, to have

recourse again to his friend’s intercession. When Egerton became Lord

Keeper, Bacon wished to succeed him as Master of the Rolls, and he

requests Essex to write to Egerton in his favour. He makes this request

(we may observe in passing) in a diplomatic manner; he writing half the

matter in his own letter, and Anthony being more explicit in a letter he

sends at the same time. It is impossible not to remark that Bacon is

grasping at the higher prizes of the profession before he has endured

the heat and burden of a lawyer’s life.

His friend Essex being unable to procure for him either the

Attorney-Generalship or the Solicitor-Generalship, and feeling indebted

for many services, gave him a small estate, worth, we are told, £1800 in

the currency of these times. This was a gift which, in one sense of the

word, Bacon may be said to have earned; but, if we may judge according

to the present state of feeling on these matters, it was a gift which he

could not have felt perfectly satisfied in accepting. Nothing but his

debts, we venture to assert, persuaded him to accept it. The services he

had rendered were not such as are paid by money—they were never rendered

for money-payment. It would be a very coarse interpretation (and one

which Mr Spedding has avoided) to call this gift a _fee_ for advice and

assistance tendered to the Earl. It was not professional advice that he

gave, whether he taught him how to rise at Court, or assisted him in the

duties of a privy councillor. There was an interchange of good offices

between the two men; but Bacon sinks from his rightful equality if he

accepts money as an equivalent for any _balance_ of such good offices as

might be in his favour. Mr Spedding suggests that the aid which Bacon

rendered in certain masques or devices got up for the entertainment of

the Queen must be included in the list of his services; but Mr Spedding

would not certainly have counselled him to hold out his hand for a

money-payment for what was doubtless entered into in the spirit of a

literary amusement. If, indeed, the two speeches which are given us here

on Knowledge and in Praise of the Queen were really delivered at these

devices, Bacon must have made these entertainments subservient to

certain graver purposes of his own. We should like to know if the

audience felt thankful to the author for his eloquent but very long

orations.

So stands the account against Bacon, and the two men are still friends,

when one of them suddenly appears in the new character of traitor and

rebel. We say _suddenly_, for, though Essex had been long plotting some

surprise upon the Government—some insurrectionary movement—some

advantage to be taken either of his military power or his popularity

with the mob—yet he had so far learnt one lesson of his friend, the

lesson of dissimulation, that he had been able to conceal from him these

secret purposes. Even so far back as when he was organising his great

expedition to Ireland, which was to crush the rebellion of Tyrone, he is

suspected of some intention of using the forces that were put under his

command _against_ the Queen’s Government. We are certainly driven to

this alternative: _either_ the Earl on that expedition manifested such

incapacity as is unparalleled even in those days of brave knights and

incompetent generals; _or_ he acted throughout in the spirit of a

traitor. He has the command of an army, large for those days, of 16,000

men; he does absolutely nothing with it—fritters it away; comes up at

length to Tyrone with some 4000 men, Tyrone greatly outnumbering him. He

draws up his forces on a hill; Tyrone refuses to charge uphill, but

invites Essex to a parley. Essex accepts the invitation; has half an

hour’s talk with the rebel, who gives him _verbally_ the terms on which

he is willing to lay down his arms—terms which are those of a conqueror.

Essex promises to carry these terms to the Queen, concludes a truce, and

there the campaign ends. The sum total, as Mr Spedding says, would stand

thus:—Expended, £300,000 and ten or twelve thousand men; Received a

suspension of hostilities for six weeks, with promise of a fortnight’s

notice before recommencing them, and a verbal communication of the

conditions on which he was willing to make peace.

Essex hastens back to England to make his own peace with the Queen. She

at first receives him amicably; but reasons of State overweigh her

personal amity; some inquiry must be made into the disastrous

expedition; he is commanded to keep his own chamber. This takes place at

Nonsuch.

At this juncture Bacon writes the following letter. It proves, as Mr

Spedding observes, that Bacon could have had no suspicion of any

treasonable scheme on the part of Essex; but we cannot help remarking

the tone of _hollowness_ in the letter, and especially in that

_congratulatory_ sentence, which cannot fail to strike the reader. He

knew enough of the expedition to Ireland to know that, from whatever

cause, it was an utter failure.

“My Lord,—Conceiving that your Lordship comes now up in the person of

a good servant to serve your sovereign mistress, which kind of

compliments we many times _instar magnorum meritorum_, and therefore

it would be hard for me to find you, I have committed to this poor

paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man’s,

and more yours than any man. To these salutations I add a due and

joyful gratulation, confessing that your Lordship in your last

conference with me, before your journey, spake not in vain, God making

it good, that you trusted we should say _Quis putasset_, which, as it

is found true in a happy sense, or I wish you do not find another

_Quis putasset_ in _the manner of taking this so great a service_. But

I hope it is, as he said, _Nubecula est, cito transibit_: and that

your Lordship’s wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will

turn all to the best. So referring all to some time that I may attend

you, I commit you to God’s best preservations.”

We do not believe that Bacon was capable of an ardent friendship for any

one; he was urbane and courteous to all, as is the manner with men of

thought and equanimity. With regard to Essex, this letter alone would be

sufficient proof to us that he had all along been more of the courtier

than the friend. No friend, in these circumstances, _could_ have written

in this hollow strain of congratulation.

In a short time, however, this strain alters. Essex is examined before

the Council, and is committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper. He

remains in privacy at York House. The _nubecula_ is growing into a very

dark cloud. Bacon, in his interviews with the Queen, does all that a

cautious man can do to bring about a reconciliation. But if a

reconciliation is impossible, he must serve his sovereign, and not

Essex. He now writes thus:—

“My Lord,—No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship,

which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to

believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of

_bonus civis_, which with us is a good and true servant to the Queen;

and next of _bonus vir_, that is an honest man. I desire your Lordship

also to think that although I confess I love some things much better

than I love your Lordship, as the Queen’s service, her quiet and

contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the

like, yet I love few persons better than yourself, both for

gratitude’s sake and your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by

accident and abuse. Of which my good affections I was ever and am

ready to yield testimony by any good offices, but with such

reservations as yourself cannot but allow; for as I was ever sorry

that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus’s

fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially

ostrich’s, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more

glad.”

To which letter Essex returned a dignified answer, such as a man might

have written who intended to retire from an unjust world into

contemplative life.

Soon after this correspondence Essex was released from even the gentle

confinement in which he had been held. He could have retired, with none

to molest him, into contemplative life. His private fortune was

untouched; his name was still popular with the multitude. Perhaps, after

a short interval of retirement patiently endured, he might have returned

to Court, and have been reinstated in all his honour and offices.

The truth was that he had been for some time past tampering with treason

of the boldest and most criminal description. Before leaving Ireland he

held a consultation with his friends Blount and Southampton, and told

them “that he found it necessary for him to go to England, and thought

it fit to carry with him as much of the army as he could conveniently

transport, to go on shore with him to Wales, and there to make good his

landing till he could send for more; not doubting but his army would so

increase in a small time that he should be able to march to London and

make his conditions as he desired.” The evidence for this treasonable

scheme is stated by Mr Spedding, vol. ii. p. 147.

The time had passed for this “monstrous” project, as Mr Spedding justly

calls it. But the scheme into which he now enters is still more

monstrous; it is still more irrational, and, but for evidence of an

unusually clear and stringent character, would be utterly incredible.

That scheme was to force himself upon the Queen, and by an

insurrectionary movement to be carried, in some way, to the highest

position a subject could hold—perhaps to some still higher position.

What was to be his pretence? what the _cry_ by which he was to rouse the

multitude? The succession to the English throne of James of Scotland had

not been formally declared, and the _cry_ was to be that the ministers

were plotting to sell the crown of England to the Infanta!! It was too

absurd, one would say, even for a mob zealous for the Protestant

succession. Some overtures, or solicitations for aid, were made to

James, but of what nature we know not. While the Protestants were to be

alarmed, the Catholics were to be propitiated by promises of toleration.

But Blount and other Catholics who entered into the plot were, no doubt,

induced to do so by stronger motives than mere promises of toleration—by

those vague expectations and hopes which a season of anarchy and

confusion and civil war would open to a party who still amounted to a

large minority of the nation. “By the end of January 1601,” to adopt the

statement of Mr Spedding, “all their intrigues and secret consultations

had ripened into a deliberate and deep-laid plan for surprising the

Court, mastering the guard, and seizing the Queen’s person, and so

forcing her to dismiss from her counsels Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, and

others, and to make such changes in the State as the conspirators

thought fit.” The several confessions of those engaged in the plot, and

of Essex himself, leave no doubt whatever of the fact. How such a plot

is to be rationally explained is still a perplexity. Sir Christopher

Blount, with a company of armed men, was to take the Court gate; Sir

John Davis was to master the hall and go up into the Great Chamber,

where already some of the conspirators would have straggled in and

seized upon the halberts of the guard, which usually stood piled up

against the wall; Sir Charles Davers was to have taken possession of the

Presence; whereupon Essex, with the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and

other noblemen, would have gone in to the Queen; they would have used

her authority for calling a Parliament, condemned all whom they

denounced as misgoverning the State, and made, it is added, changes in

the government. If such a plot had succeeded, what else could have

ensued than to set loose all the several parties, sects, and factions of

which the country was composed, to struggle anew for the supremacy?

Meanwhile, some rumours of what was in preparation reached the Court;

Essex was summoned to the Council; he excused himself on the plea of ill

health. The conspirators were alarmed; it seemed to them that their plot

was detected. It was not yet matured—the hour of action had not yet

come. Still, it appeared to them that something must be done. His

friends were assembled. To surprise the Court was impossible, if the

Court was already on its guard. But the city might be raised; an

insurrectionary movement might be excited if Essex, still an idol of the

populace, went among the citizens proclaiming that his life was in

danger from the machinations of his enemies. While this expedient was

being debated there arrived from the Court the Lord Keeper, with three

other lords, sent from the Queen to know the meaning of this unusual

assemblage, and to demand its dismissal. Essex was invited to explain to

them the cause of his present discontent. Their coming still further

precipitated the action. Essex locked up the four noblemen in his

library, and set off himself, accompanied with some two hundred

gentlemen, to rouse the city to arms. But for the inopportune appearance

of these noblemen, Essex and his friends would have proceeded in stately

fashion on horseback to St Paul’s Cross; they would have arrived before

the sermon was over (it was Sunday), and would have explained their case

to the assembled people. Essex was not deficient as an orator, and he

could, at all events, have obtained a solemn hearing. But the visit of

the councillors spoilt even the execution of the after-plot. The party

went on foot; Essex had no opportunity to address the people; he could

only cry out as he passed along that his life was in danger. A nobleman

running along the streets on a Sunday morning, followed by two hundred

gentlemen with drawn swords, and exclaiming that his life was in danger,

must have been a curious spectacle for the citizens of London. But it

must have been as unintelligible as it was curious. No one joined him.

The Queen’s troops were collected to oppose him. He made his way back to

Essex House, where he was captured, and conveyed to prison.

Up to this time Bacon’s conduct towards Essex lies open to no peculiar

censure. We have said that he does not appear to us in the light of a

very wise counsellor, or a very warm friend; but, as regards Essex, no

specific charge of ingratitude can be brought against him. It is after

this abortive and miserable attempt at rebellion that his conduct to his

former friend changes. And well, we think, it might. Of the character

and designs of Essex there could be now no doubt whatever. He has thrown

off all disguise. He stands there an enemy to the commonwealth. Nothing

but the extreme absurdity of his conduct hides from us its extreme

criminality.

The defence which Essex was at first prepared to make was simply the

repetition of the false clamour that he had raised when he rushed into

the city—that his life was in danger, and that he acted according to the

law of self-preservation. But, before the trial came on, several of his

associates had made full confession of the actual plot that had long

been in agitation, and which, only at the last moment, had been

substituted by this open and clamorous appeal to the citizens of London.

To Bacon, as one of her Majesty’s counsel, engaged, as we should say,

for the prosecution, the real state of the case was known; the full

extent of Essex’s criminality was known. Do we wonder that, at this

moment, he altogether severed himself from Essex, and took his position

as a zealous supporter of the Queen’s government?

Lord Macaulay, who could not have had before him the materials for

forming a judgment which Mr Spedding has now placed within the reach of

us all, wrote of Essex and Bacon in the following strain:—“The person on

whom, during the decline of his influence, he chiefly depended, to whom

he confided his perplexities, whose advice he solicited, whose

intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. The lamentable truth

must be told. This friend, so loved, so trusted, bore a principal part

in ruining the Earl’s fortunes, in shedding his blood, and in blackening

his memory.” A more unfortunate sentence, or one more replete with

error, was never penned. It would be ungenerous to revive it in presence

of the lucid statement of facts which Mr Spedding has given us, if it

were not the case that many are still under the impressions derived from

this eloquent essay. Essex, as we have seen, was very far from confiding

his perplexities to Bacon, or soliciting his advice in those latter days

of his life; and Bacon was so far from being instrumental to his ruin,

that no advocacy on earth could have saved him. Nor can it be said that

he blackened the memory of Essex, for neither on the trial, nor in the

narrative which he subsequently drew up of the whole transaction, is the

guilt of Essex overcharged. Nay, with the materials before us, the

historian could add some very dark strokes to the picture; for he could

show that, even at a time when Essex was receiving nothing but favours

from the Court, he was meditating treason; and he could add that, in his

last moments, he tarnished even his character for generosity by

needlessly including others, hitherto unsuspected, in his guilt.

What could have been, we are tempted to ask, the hopes of Essex, or what

his final purpose in this act of rebellion? Where could he have stopped?

how found safety for himself in any measure short of a deposition of the

Queen? He must have known that if, by overpowering her guard and putting

a personal constraint upon her, he obliged the Queen to reinstate him in

his former command, yet that the moment such force was withdrawn he

would have been dismissed again, and exposed to the resentment of a

proud and injured sovereign. A subject who goes so far must go farther

still. Elizabeth must have been deposed, and James prematurely thrust

into her place. It has been even suggested that Essex had some wild

dream of filling the throne himself. He was to play Bolingbroke, and

Elizabeth Richard II.

Those who take a lenient view of Essex’s character might shape a defence

for him out of his very self-will and the headstrong nature of the man.

They would say he did not calculate consequences. He had twice before

regained the favour of the Queen by manifestation of his own violent and

haughty temper. He had managed the Queen by proving that he was as

self-willed as herself. He merely intended to follow the same course

again—to threaten, and display his power. Such a defence we should not

be unwilling ourselves to adopt, if the treasonable projects of Essex

had sprung directly, and only, out of his last dismissal from Court and

his employments. We can conceive that a spoilt and violent nobleman

might have imagined that he could successfully overawe the Queen: she

had, indeed, treated him as a spoilt child, and had something of a

maternal weakness for him: he might have thought that he could subdue

her spirit by this display of his power, and yet not have contemplated

any more atrocious act of rebellion. But the ugly fact remains that he

was meditating high treason of the most criminal description before he

had been dismissed, and while he was still the most favoured subject of

her Majesty.

Even to those who knew nothing of his antecedent schemes, it must have

seemed a monstrous thing that a nobleman, because he has been dismissed

from his command, should think of reinstating himself by an armed attack

upon the palace, and a violent seizure of the person of the Queen. So

much as this was known to Bacon, and was indisputably proved by the

evidence submitted to him. But why, it will be said, did Bacon appear

upon the trial at all? If his services were necessary to the support of

the Queen’s government, he ought to have given them, whatever his

friendship to Essex; but there were others who could have performed his

part; he might have stepped aside; he, in silence, might have let

justice take its course. “This man is guilty, but he was my friend; let

others pursue him to his merited punishment.” He might have said this;

_we wish he had_. It would have been a graceful part to play; it would

have added a very pleasing trait to the biography of Bacon.

But such moral enthusiasm had no place in Bacon’s personal character. To

retire from the post which his legal functions assigned to him, might

have been seriously prejudicial to his own interests, and in the spirit

of martyrdom Bacon did not share in the least degree. Meanwhile Essex by

his conduct had forfeited the friendship henceforth of all honest men.

It must be said that Bacon rather lost the opportunity of doing a

gracious act, than that, in performing his duties as counsel to the

Queen, he did anything gravely reprehensible. And he performed these

duties fairly. It is objected against Bacon that he pressed heavily on

the memory of Essex in the account he subsequently drew up of the

events. This charge Mr Spedding has quite dispelled. He shows that that

account is fully justified by the evidence. The fact is, that for a long

time after his death a current of popular opinion ran in favour of the

Earl; and the “Declaration,” therefore, which Bacon, with the assistance

and under the direction of the Council, drew up, was regarded as a libel

upon his memory. People refused to believe him guilty. If any remains of

this partiality to the Earl has descended to our times, it will be

finally dissipated by Mr Spedding’s work.

There is one specific accusation which Mr Jardine brought against Bacon,

which is here very completely refuted. Mr Jardine, in examining the

original depositions from which this “Declaration” was drawn up, found

paragraphs marked along the margin with a significant _om._ against

them. He further found that these passages had been _omitted_ in the

“Declaration,” and he concluded that this _om._ was in the handwriting

of Bacon, who had marked these passages for omission _because they told

in favour of Essex_. Mr Spedding replies:—

“First, it is by no means certain that the marks in question were made

with reference to the Declaration at all. Secondly, it is quite

possible that the passages in question had been omitted at the trial.

Thirdly, whether the omission were right or wrong, there is no ground

for imputing it to Bacon personally. Fourthly, the passages omitted do

not in any one particular tend to soften the evidence against Essex as

explained in the narrative part, or to modify in any way the history

of the case, as far as it concerned him.”

The last, the Fourthly, is quite sufficient to demolish Mr Jardine’s

hypothesis. These passages appear to have been omitted because they

affected living persons whom the Council wished to spare, or because

they contained matters which the Council did not wish to publish to all

the enemies of the Queen’s Government at home or abroad. Mr Spedding,

however, has enabled the reader to judge for himself by publishing these

omitted passages.

As very much stress has been laid on the presumed unfairness of this

Declaration composed by Bacon, it must be remembered, under the

supervision of the Council, we quote at length Mr Spedding’s concluding

observations upon it:—

“With regard to the general charge of untruthfulness, I have said that

nobody has yet attempted to specify any particular untruth expressed

or implied in the Government Declaration. And it is singular that Mr

Jardine himself does not form an exception; for though he does

specify, as contradicted by one of the omitted passages, a particular

statement which he _assumes_ to be contained in the Declaration, it is

certain that there is no such statement there; but that, on the

contrary, the precise import of that passage, as Mr Jardine himself

infers it, is represented in the body of the narrative with delicate

exactness. In the absence of such specification, I can only oppose to

the general charge a general expression of my own conviction; which

is, that the narrative put forth by the Government was meant to be,

and was by its authors believed to be, a narrative strictly and

scrupulously veracious. It is true that it was written under the

excitement and agitation of that last and most portentous disclosure,

which, in proving that Essex had been capable of designs far worse

than anybody had suspected him of, suggested a new explanation of all

that had been most suspicious and mysterious in his previous

proceedings; and it may be that things which before had been rejected

as incredible were now too easily believed. In so dark a thing as

treason it is impossible to have positive evidence at every step. Many

passages must remain obscure, and fairly open to more interpretations

than one; and in one or two of those points which are and profess to

be ‘matter of inference or presumption,’ as distinguished from ‘matter

of plain and direct proof,’ there is room, probably, without setting

aside such indisputable facts, for an interpretation of Essex’s

conduct more favourable than that adopted by the Queen and her

councillors.... In my own account of the matter I have abstained, in

deference to so general a prejudice, from using the Declaration as an

authority; and have assumed as a fact nothing for which I cannot quote

evidence independent of it. For the rest, I shall let it speak for

itself. It will be found to be a very luminous and coherent narrative,

and certainly much nearer the truth than any which has been put forth

since it became the fashion to treat it as a fiction.”

Having elected to serve the Queen, and not his former friend (and he

probably never hesitated a moment on this subject; he probably would

have thought it mere idle romance to sacrifice the actual life and

duties before him to the memory of a dead friendship)—having elected to

serve the Queen, we do not find that in assisting to conduct the

prosecution Bacon behaved with undue harshness towards the accused. The

allusion to the Duke of Guise, which Macaulay blames so severely,

appears to be one very natural to arise to a speaker on such an

occasion. Essex did intend, like the Duke of Guise, to overawe his

sovereign. In one respect the parallel pays an undeserved compliment to

Essex. The Duke of Guise had the support of a great party—the zealous

Catholics; if Essex could have attained the like support from the

zealous Protestants, the Puritans, his scheme might, at least, have worn

a more rational aspect. Perhaps he fondly conceived that the Puritans

would adopt him as their representative. He thought himself a very good

Puritan. This bad citizen was highly indignant when Coke cast a slur

upon his religion.

Here we lose for the present the guidance of Mr Spedding. We wait with

interest for such disclosures as he may make for us in the great charge

that burdens the memory of Bacon—that of judicial corruption. There are,

indeed, two or three broad facts which, we apprehend, no historical

investigation can materially alter, and which, we think, enable us to

come to a safe conclusion in this subject. But still there is much we

should like to have cleared up to us; especially we should like to know

what had been the custom of previous Chancellors in this matter of the

reception of presents. Could, for instance, the same charges which were

brought against Bacon have been brought against the father, Sir Nicholas

Bacon?

The two or three broad facts we allude to are these: 1. After a

considerable interval Parliament had met, and “grievances had been gone

into.” Monopolies were first attacked, and their attention was called to

certain corrupt practices in the Court of Chancery. Bacon was impeached

before the House of Lords. 2. The Lord Chancellor no longer stood in an

amiable footing with the favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was very

willing to have the Great Seal to bestow on some other client. The

impeached Chancellor was not likely to receive any assistance from the

Court. The King advised Bacon to throw himself on his royal mercy. 3.

Under these circumstances Bacon _did_ plead guilty, and threw himself on

the mercy of the King; who certainly fulfilled his part of the compact

by remitting all that he possibly could of the sentence passed by the

House of Lords.

Now we cannot suppose that Bacon would plead guilty unless there were

really some corrupt practices of which his conscience told him he was

culpable. To suppose otherwise would, as Macaulay has argued, convict

him of a dastardly conduct almost as infamous as judicial corruption.

But although it is impossible to suppose that there was not _something

to confess_—something culpable and illegal to plead guilty to—yet it is

very possible that, by showing that he was not more culpable than

others, he might have defended himself successfully before the House of

Lords. A man of sterner stuff would have adopted this line of defence;

he would have carried the war into other territories. Of this the Court

was not at all desirous, and Bacon, a lover of peace, thought it the

better bargain to plead guilty and keep the King for his friend.

We do not accuse the Lord Chancellor of pleading guilty, and being

conscious of perfect innocence; we say that he resigned a line of

defence which might have been successful with his judges, in obedience

to the wishes of the Court. In the position in which he found himself,

submission was better policy than defence.