service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (he said) lay so deep. This which I have writ unto your Lordship is rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising, or reservation. Wherein I have done honour both to your Lordship's wisdom, in judging that that will be best believed of your Lordship which is truest, and to your Lordship's good nature, in retaining no thing from you. And even so I wish your Lordship all happiness, and to myself means and occasions to be added to my faithful desire to do you service. From my lodgings at Gray's Inn." (1592.)
This letter has often been quoted. It ought always to be quoted in a life of Francis Bacon, for it is a clear and definite outline of his plans for his own career, and it helps to explain his character. He proposed to devote himself to a life of study, he wished to make the results of that study useful to his fellow-men, and he thought that place and power would give him "the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene)." In splendid promise and splendid achievement, nothing in literary history can be compared with the statement,—"I have taken all knowledge to be my province." Keats, writing on a far more limited theme, has expressed in imperishable verse what Bacon goes on to say had become the fixed idea of his mind,—
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
