and the pursuit of worldly honours, that, sooner or later, he might escape into the calm regions of philosophy.
At this period the court was divided into two parties: at the head of the one were the two Cecils; of the other, the Earl of Leicester, and afterwards his son-in-law, the Earl of Essex.
To the Cecils Bacon was allied. He was the nephew of Lord Burleigh, and first cousin to Sir Robert Cecil, the principal secretary of state; but, connected as he was to the Cecils by blood, his affections were with Essex. Generous, ardent, and highly cultivated, with all the romantic enthusiasm of chivalry, and all the graces and accomplishments of a court, Essex was formed to gain partisans, and attach friends. Attracted by his mind and character, Bacon could have but little sympathy with Burleigh, who thought £100 an extravagant gratuity to the author of the Fairy Queen, which he was pleased to term "an old song," and, probably, deemed the listeners to such songs little better than idle dreamers. There was much grave learning and much pedantry at court, but literature of the lighter sort was regarded with coldness, and philosophy with suspicion: instead, therefore, of uniting himself to the party in power, he not only formed an early friendship himself with Essex, but attached to his service his brother Anthony, who had returned from abroad, with a great reputation for ability and a knowledge of foreign affairs.
This intimacy could not fail to excite the jealousy of Lord Burleigh; and, in after life, Bacon was himself sensible that he had acted unwisely, and that his noble kinsmen had some right to complain of the readiness with which he and his brother had embraced the views of their powerful rival. But, attached as he was to Essex, Bacon was not so imprudent as to neglect an application to them whenever opportunity offered to forward his interests. In a letter written in the year 1591 to Lord Burleigh, in which he says that "thirty-one years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass," he made another effort to extricate himself from the slavery of the law, by endeavouring to procure some appointment at court; that, "not being a man born under Sol that loveth honour, nor under Jupiter that loveth business, but wholly carried away by the contemplative planet," he might by that mean become a true pioneer in the deep mines of truth. To these applications, the Cecils were not entirely inattentive; for, although not influenced by any sympathy for genius, "for a speculative man indulging himself in philosophical reveries, and calculated more to perplex than to promote public business," as he was represented by his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil,[1] they procured for him the reversion of the Registership of the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year, for which, modestly ascribing his success to the remembrance of his father's virtues, he immediately acknowledged his obligation to the queen. This reversion, however, was not of any immediate value: for, not falling into possession till after the lapse of twenty years, he said that "it was like another man's ground buttailing upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barns."
In the parliament which met on February 19, 1592, and which was chiefly called for consultation and preparation against the ambitious designs of the King of Spain, Bacon sat as one of the knights for Middlesex. On the 25th of February, 1592, he, in his first speech, earnestly recommended the improvement of the law, an improvement which through life he availed himself of every opportunity to encourage, not only by his speeches, but by his works; in which he admonishes lawyers, that although they have a tendency to resist the progress of legal improvement, and are not the best improvers of law, it is their duty to visit and strengthen the roots and foundation of their science, productive of such blessings to themselves and to the community; and he submitted to the king that the most sacred trust to sovereign power consisted in the establishing good laws for the regulation of the kingdom, and as an example to the world.
To assist in the improvement which he recommended, he, in after life, prepared a plan for a digest and amendment of the whole law, and particularly of the penal law of England, and a tract upon Universal Justice; the one like a fruitful shower, profitable and good for the latitude of ground on which it falls, the other like the benefits of heaven, permanent and universal.
In another debate on the 7th of March, Bacon forcibly represented, as reasons for deferring for six years the payment of the subsidies to which the house had consented, the distresses of the people, the danger of raising public discontent, and the evil of making so bad a precedent against themselves and posterity. With this speech the queen was much displeased, and caused her displeasure to be communicated to Bacon both by the lord treasurer and by the lord keeper. He heard them with the calmness of a philosopher, saying, that "he spoke in discharge of his conscience and duty to God, to the queen, and to his country; that he well knew the common beaten road to favour, and the impossibility that he who selected a course of life estimate only by the few, should be approved by the many." He said this, not in anger, but in the consciousness of the dignity of his pursuits, and with the full knowledge of the doctrine and consequences both of concealment and revelation of opinion: of the time to speak and the time to be silent.
If, after this admonition, he was more cautious in the expression of his sentiments, he did not
- ↑ There is a letter containing this expression, but I cannot find it.
