I think you shall do well. God keep you and prosper you. I ever rest Your true and most devoted servant, Gorhambury, 20 Aug. 1616. 3. FR. BACON. The creation took place at Woodstock on the 27th of August, and Villiers was now finally established in the office of "Favourite." "This is now the man," says Sherburn writing to Carleton on the 20th, "by whom all things do and must pass; and he far exceeds the former in favour and affection." That he was not at this time insensible of the responsibility of the position, or indifferent to the duties which it entailed, or over-confident of his own capacity to discharge them, appears from the fact that he not only took in good part the counsels which Bacon offered him from time to time, but applied to him for more. For it must have been about this time that he desired his advice in detail as to the manner in which he should frame himself for the performance of his new duties. Some good authorities, including Mr. Craik and Mr. Gardiner, would put it seven or eight months earlier; but the letter which Bacon wrote in answer (if the form of it in its earliest shape has suffered no alteration in the editing) cannot have been written before Villiers was a Peer, and to suppose it later would involve other difficulties. I say "in its earliest shape," because we have two versions of this letter much differing from one another; and differing among other things in that very particular which bears upon the question of date, -namely the style and title by which Villiers is addressed. And here a new difficulty meets us. For of these two versions, that which seems to be the later is that in which the new title does not appear. I shall endeavour presently to show how this may have come to pass; but I must first put the reader in a position to judge' of the relation in which the two versions stand to each other,—a thing which he cannot do now without reference to a very scarce pamphlet. For it must be observed that we know nothing about either of these versions except what we learn from themselves. Among Bacon's own papers I find no trace of any such composition -no fragment, or rudiment, or note, or allusion; insomuch that if the thing itself had not been preserved, we should have had no reason to suppose that any such correspondence had passed. Dr. 1S. P. Dom. James I., vol. lxxxviii., no. 57. Rawley either never heard of this letter of advice (which when he published the Resuscitatio, in 1657, might easily be) or did not believe it to be of Bacon's composition. Dr. Tenison in his "account of all the Lord Bacon's works" (Baconiana, 1679) takes no notice of it; though it had then twice appeared in print with Bacon's name:-sixteen years before in the second edition of the Cabala; nine years before in Lloyd's State Worthies: and it is hard to believe that he had not seen it in one or other of them. Nor does Stephens's catalogue, which I take to be a copy of Tenison's list of the papers received by him in 1782 from the executor of the executor of Sir Thomas Meautys,' contain any title descriptive of it. Its first appearance in any collection of Bacon's works was in 1730, when Blackbourne included it in his edition of the Opera omnia. It has held its place since: and its right to appear there (though I agree with Professor Craik that the evidence of authorship is chiefly internal) may be regarded, I think, as indisputable. But the form in which it is set out, and which all succeeding editors have faithfully reproduced, is in my opinion injudicious and unsatisfactory. The editor meant, no doubt, to preserve all that was material in both versions; but he forgot to give us any means of ascertaining how much of that which he took for his text was contained also in the other and without knowing that, how can we know what the other consisted of? His mode of proceeding he has himself described. He had before him three different copies: one in a separate quarto volume, published in 1661: another in the second edition of the Cabala, 1663; a third in Lloyd's State Worthies, 1670. Of these three, the copy in the Cabala being the fullest and most complete, he took it for his text, collated it with the other copies, and “in settling and correcting the copy as he went along, wherever he observed a material variation of the sense or substance in the quarto of 1661, he included it in crotchets thus [] and inserted it."2 If he had remembered that the clear omission of a passage is " a material variation of sense and substance," no less than a different reading of it-and had distinguished all passages so omitted in the quarto-he would have supplied us substantially with the information we want. But this he seems to have forgotten. The variations which he notices are only such as occur either in passages common to both copies, or in passages peculiar to the quarto. Where a sentence is found in both without material variation, nothing is said about it. Where a sentence which is found in the Cabala is omitted altogether : 1 See above, Vol. II. c. i. § 2. 2 "An account of the present edition "-(i.e. Blackbourne's edition, 1730). Vol. i. p. 177. in the quarto, nothing is said about that. How then are we to guess what the quarto is really like? how judge whether it is to be taken for the earlier or the later copy-the rough sketch or the improved edition ? To judge of this we must refer to the original; of which the only copy I have met with is in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. An examination of this has satisfied me that it represents the composition in an earlier form than the copy in the Cabala. But the differences between the two are so many that a really complete collation would cause more trouble to all parties than a reprint in full of both. This, therefore, I have given. The reader will then be able to judge for himself of the points in question; and I think he will conclude with me that the letter as printed in the quarto of 1661 is the letter as it was first drawn up; that it is not a fragment or a rudiment, but a thing finished and complete in itself; and that the copy in the Cabala is the same letter corrected, enlarged, and worked out in greater detail. At what time or times this improved version was produced, and with what object-whether to provide a handsome occasion for reminding Villiers of the counsel formerly given, or to furnish a specimen of a treatise de negotiis gerendis, or simply to satisfy the natural desire a man sometimes feels to complete an unfinished or amend an imperfect work of his own hands-all this must be left to conjecture. Any of these motives may have led Bacon to take it up at any time, and the existence of such an enlarged and amended edition would have called for no further explanation, were it not for the singularity which I have already mentioned-the title which is given in it to the person addressed. But if the copy in the quarto (in which that person is addressed as "My Lord") was the earlier, how is it that in the enlarged copy made afterwards he is addressed only as "Sir"? It cannot be denied that this is a serious difficulty-a difficulty which would have been thought sufficient to determine the question of priority the other way, if all difficulties could have been got rid of by that supposition. But that is by no means the case; and I find it harder to believe that the quarto version was posterior in date, than to devise a theory which, without involving anything improbable in itself would account for the appearance of the title in the earlier copy and its disappearance from the later. I must first observe that there is something singular about this title even as it appears in the quarto-something which demands a conjectural explanation. "My Lord" and "your Lordship" occur, it will be seen, only in the first two paragraphs; throughout the rest of the letter the same person is addressed as "Sir." Now I think it would be hard to find another case in which a nobleman, not of royal blood, was intentionally called "Sir." That it happened through inadvertence, though not impossible, is in a case like this very improbable; and the thing admits of an easier explanation. We know enough of Bacon's habits of composition to justify us in assuming that in writing a letter of this importance to a person in Villiers's position he would make first a rough draft and then. a fair copy in his own hand. It may easily have happened that Villiers was made a Viscount after it was written fair and before it was dispatched. In that case he might think it good manners to take off the first leaf and rewrite it, in order to introduce the new title; but might not be at leisure or think it worth while to write out again the whole of so long a letter. If so, the rough draft, addressed throughout to Sir George Villiers, would remain in his cabinet, probably without any note of the alteration; and if at some later time, upon any of the motives I have suggested or any that others may suggest, he took it in hand to correct, amplify, and make more complete, he may easily have forgotten the accident of the change in Villiers's style at that particular juncture, and worked it out according to its original form and intention-that of a letter of advice to a young man newly adopted as the King's declared Favourite. I have thought the paper interesting and important enough in itself to justify this little speculation as to its history. But the point is not otherwise of any consequence. Nothing material depends upon the question whether it was written early or late in the year 1616, or how it came to be rewritten. Upon any view of it-if it was written by Bacon-it contains his deliberate opinion as to the duty of a "Favourite" in those days-that is of a private and confidential councillor chosen by the King out of personal affection. The office itself was one which he did not approve of. It was of the nature of what was then called a "Cabinet Council," (a very different thing from that which now goes by that name); a remedy proposed in Italy and practised in France for certain inconveniences incident to Councils of State; but a remedy, he says in his Essay of Counsel, "worse than the disease: which hath turned Metis the wife to Metis the mistress; that is Councils of State, to which Princes are married, to Councils of gracious persons recommended chiefly by flattery and affection." I suppose the councils to which he alludes were bodies exercising the authority of Councils of State; This was written before 1612. See Literary and Professional Works, vol. i. pp. 424, 555. which was not the case with James's favourites, for they had no authority more than belonged to the offices to which they might be promoted. But the censure of the one was in effect a censure of the other, and before the publication of the essay in which it was expressed (which was shortly after the death of Salisbury) the application had become so obvious as to suggest the suppression of the last clause. But as Bacon could not prevent the King from being governed by a Favourite, his next best service was to inspire the Favourite with an honest ambition to govern him wisely and well. And the opportunity being offered to him, this is the way in which he endeavoured to take advantage of it. In this case, as in others of the kind, I do not hold it to be any part of my business either to applaud or to defend or to correct the opinions expressed; but only to represent them faithfully, and to explain them where explanation is needed and I have any to offer. My contribution here will consist chiefly of the reprint of the first copy, which to almost everybody will be as new as if it were printed for the first time; and a rather better edition of the second by help of a manuscript in the Lansdowne collection, which has not been collated before. A LETTER OF ADVICE, WRITTEN BY SIR FRANCIS BACON TO The Duke of BUCKINGHAM, WHEN HE BECAME FAVOURITE TO KING JAMES. My noble Lord, Being over-ruled by your Lordship's command, first by word, and since by your letters, I have chosen rather to show my obedience than to dispute the danger of discovering my weakness in adventuring to give advice in a subject too high for me. But I know I commit it to the hands of a noble friend, and to any others, for the nature of the discourse, it is not communicable. My Lord, when the blessing of God (to whom in the first place, I know, you ascribe your preferment) and the King's favour (purchased by your noble parts, promising as much as can be expected from a Gentleman) had brought you to this high pitch of honour, to be in the eye, and ear, and even in the bosom of your gracious Master, and you had found by experience, the trouble of all men's confluence, and for all matters, to yourself as a mediator between them and their Sovereign, you were pleased to lay this command upon me: |