Nof 1585, on the difficult question of her policy towards the Roman Catholic interest. It is a remarkable paper to be produced by a young man of twenty-four. Though Protestant in tone the Letter is yet neither Puritan nor partisan in character. It is a broad, calm, judicial statement of what Bacon considered to be the position of the English Church three years before the Armada. In this paper and in another on the same subject four years later, An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England (1589), which is the essay Of Unity in Religion in germ, we see the future Lord Chancellor. The philosopher had already written the first sketch of his ideas on the new learning, calling it with the simple grandiloquence of youth, Temporis Partus Maximus, the 'Greatest Birth of Time.' It is certain that Bacon hoped to win advancement at Court by means of his state papers. It is equally certain that the Lord Treasurer Burghley did not appreciate the work of his nephew. He was indeed employed to prepare papers from time to time, but no preferment came. Burghley was a plain, practical man, immersed in complicated affairs of state. It is possible, as has been suggested, that he quietly opposed the advancement of Francis Bacon in order to keep the pathway open for his son, Robert Cecil, a man of moderate ability only. It may be, Machiavellian as he was, that he recognized from the first the pliability of his nephew and declined to trust him with political business. Without a doubt, Bacon's literary and philosophical aims were to him but the visions of a youthful enthusiast. After years of hope deferred, at an age which he describes as "somewhat ancient, one and thirty years," Bacon wrote the famous letter to Lord Burghley, setting forth his claims with dignity and appealing for help in the furtherance of his ambition, "My Lord,-With as much confidence as mine own honest and faithful devotion unto your service and your honourable correspondence unto me and my poor estate can breed in a man, do I commend myself unto your Lordship. I wax now somewhat ancient: one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed; and I do not fear that action shall impair it, because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. I ever bare in mind (in some middle place that I could discharge) to serve her Majesty, not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour, nor under Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly), but as a man born under an excellent sovereign that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities. Besides I do not find in myself so much self-love, but that the greater parts of my thoughts are to deserve well (if I be able) of my friends, and namely of your Lordship; who, being the Atlas of this commonwealth, the honour of my house, and the second founder of my poor estate, I am tied by all duties, both of a good patriot, and of an unworthy kinsman, and of an obliged servant, to employ whatsoever I am to do you service. Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity or vainglory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia. is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than a man's own; which is the thing I greatly affect. And for your Lordship, perhaps you shall not find more strength and less encounter in any other. And if your Lordship shall find now, or at any time, that I do seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent, say then that I am a most dishonest man. And if your Lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation unto voluntary poverty, but this I will do- I will sell the inheritance I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of 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,— "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Lord Burghley did nothing-but preserve the letter. He probably thought it extravagant and hyperbolical. Bacon, undaunted, struggled on, keeping up his political interests, keeping up what he describes as his "ordinary course of study and meditation," and going somewhat more into Court society in the wake of his brother Anthony, who was living with him in Gray's Inn. To this period belongs the beginning of Bacon's intimacy with the Earl of Essex, who took both brothers into his service, Anthony as his secretary and Francis as his lawyer and man of political affairs. The social character of the early association of the three young men-Essex was the youngest -is indicated by three jeux d'esprit from Francis Bacon's pen, his early masques or 'devices.' Two of these were 'triumphs' offered by the Earl of Essex to the Queen, one in November, 1592, and the other in 1595; the third was a Gray's Inn revel of 1594. Bacon furnished the 'discourses,' or texts, and the essay Of Masques and Triumphs grew out of this practical experience of the stage. It is interesting if only as showing that when Bacon turned his mind to what he calls 'toys,' they are no longer toys. What he has to say about dramatic representation accompanied by music and color exhibits a lively fancy and good taste, while the discourses display the same qualities of style as his more serious writings, thought, wit, and fresh |