as gentlemen do not understand everything. Perhaps by and by might be more convenient, Madame?”
And Henderson withdrew.
“She is not a good girl, Bertha,” said Urquhart, “and I never understood your liking her. Pay her all she asks, however, as you have rather spoiled her, and we must not be over-hard upon faults that we have helped to create.”
REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Courtier-Philosophers.
bacon: leibnitz: voltaire: göthe: humboldt.
Some new interest has of late years gathered about the old topic of the companionship between political and intellectual sovereignty—the friendship between princes and philosophers. Old as the topic is, it is always practically fresh, because there are always persons who are dissatisfied if recognition from the Fountain of Honour (the Sovereign), or from the Government, is not afforded to the great philosophical and literary personages of the day; while yet there is a prevalent impression in society that there is no real relation between the honour which can be bestowed by princes or parliaments and that which cannot be withheld by mankind at large. While there is any fluctuation in the mind of society about this matter, it must be useful to study a few examples of that complete success which is assumed to lie in the union of the two kinds of honour on the head of the wise man. Nothing is gained by showing forth the troubles of intellectual men from misfortunes which might not have happened if they had had access to the Court. It must remain wholly uncertain whether they would have been, on the whole, greater or happier if they had had a monarch for a friend and a court for a home: but we may get pretty near the truth if we take up the positive, instead of the negative case, and see how some of the princes of the intellectual world have fared in the presence of the other order of princes.
As we want to reach something like a practical result, we must not travel back for examples to times so wholly unlike our own as that princes were a sort of gods, and intellectual men a sort of prophets or magicians on the one hand, or of household dependents on the other. We must keep within the term of the present organisation of society, or our aim will be diverted from moral to antiquarian purposes. We are accustomed to regard modern society as dating from about three hundred years ago: and just at that time we light on an example of the first order. The Prince of the powers of the Intellect was then about to appear. It is just three hundred years since Francis Bacon was born. He was closely connected with two Sovereigns. What was the result 7
While he was in his teens, his imagination was deeply engaged in both regions of greatness. He had sketched out the scheme of his Novum Organon, which he meant to call “The Noblest Birth of Time;” and he had won the favour of Queen Elizabeth by the discretion and grace with which he discharged a commission from the English ambassador at Paris to her Majesty. By family and official connection he was naturally trained to look to the Court and its favour for whatever he wanted; and this not only explains much of his despair when he was for a time, late in life, banished the Court, but accounts for the large share the Court occupied in his early plan of life. His most earnest desire in the world was to produce his great philosophical work, and lodge it securely in the human mind; and for the sake of this object he was ambitious of every advantage of character and position which he could obtain. It is probable that he let his aim be seen at that early time when the Queen took up her impression of him; for the ground on which his unfriendly cousins, the Cecils, prejudiced the Queen against him was that of his philosophy. He was a speculative man, they told her; and, as the Queen supposed a speculative man could not be fit for any practical business, she set him aside as an unprofitable servant for a Sovereign so occupied with serious affairs as she was. The reversion of a place which yielded him nothing for twenty years was all he obtained from her, though interest was made to the utmost extent which she would admit. Under these circumstances there is something offensive to our notions of manly dignity and English spirit in the tone of whatever Bacon wrote about the Queen—in the “Declaration of the true Causes of the great Troubles,” &c, and yet more in the “Discourse in Praise of his Sovereign,” a piece of adulation which cannot be read without disgust in our day: but it must be remembered that it was a part of a courtier’s breeding in those days to exalt the monarch in that way; that such compositions were regarded as a sort of poems, works of imagination, set forth with the arts of fancy; that the reign and character of Elizabeth were worthy of an enthusiastic style of record, from their grave importance to the whole civilised world,—for which reason it was, probably, that Bacon desired that this eulogium should be published after his death, when the Queen had long been gone; and, above all, we must remember that Bacon risked the Queen’s displeasure, repeatedly and unflinchingly, in the interest of his friend and benefactor, Lord Essex. Thus far we may be satisfied that Bacon had got no more harm morally than he had got good to his fortunes at Court. We should have had more pleasure in thinking of him as pursuing his studies in college or in a country home, or in the learned privacy which may be obtained in London; but the facts of the case were that Bacon was a lawyer, and so poor that he was at least twice arrested for debt. His great work was ever before his mind; but he had his bread to get, in the first place; and he had no hope of his book obtaining due attention, unless he could command that attention for it by his personal influence.
From the beginning of the next reign, we find him often in the royal presence as the spokesman of parliament. He had so skilful a way of placing the grievances and wants of the people before the King without offence that he was regularly deputed to the office; and it afforded a training in fine talk which it is rather disagreeable to think of in connection with such a man: but it was more as a member of parliament than as a