power; which was destined by the writer neither to instruct tyrants nor to warn nations against their arts, but simply to add the theory of these arts to the stock of human knowledge; as a philosophical treatise on poisons might be intended only to explain their nature and effects, though the information contained in it might be abused by the dealer in poison, or usefully employed for cure or relief by the physician.

"Lord Bacon displayed a much smaller degree of this vice, but he displayed it in history, where it is far more unpardonable. In the singular passage where he lays down the theory of the advancement of fortune (which he knew so well and practised so ill), he states the maxim which induced the Grecian and Italian philosophers to compose their dissertations, that there be not anything in being or action which should not be drawn into contemplation or doctrine.' He almost avows an intention of embodying in the person of his hero (if that be the proper term) too much of the ideal conception of a wary, watchful, unbending ruler, who considers men and affairs merely as they affect him and his kingdom; who has no good quality higher then prudence; who is taught by policy not to be cruel when he is secure, but who treats pity and affection like malice and hatred, as passions which disturb his thoughts and bias his judgment. So systematic a purpose cannot fail to distort character and events, and to divest both of their power over feeling. It would have been impossible for Lord Bacon, if he had not been betrayed by his chilling scheme, to prefer Louis XI. to Louis XII., and to declare that Louis XI., Ferdinand the Catholic, and Henry VII., were the 'three magi among the kings of the age;' though it be true that Henry was the least odious of the three royal sages.

"It is due in the strictest justice to Lord Bacon not to omit, that the history was written to gratify James I., to whom he was then suing for bitter bread, who revised it, and whom he addressed in the following words:- 'I have therefore chosen to write the reign of Henry VII., who was in a sort your forerunner; and whose spirit as well as his blood is doubled upon your majesty.' Bacon had just been delivered from prison: he had passed his sixtietn year, and was galled by unhonoured poverty. What wonder if in these circumstances even his genius sunk under such a patron and such a theme!" 1

1 Lardner's Cyclopædia, Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 362.

Now setting aside for the present the general question as to the spirit in which history ought to be written, and the particular question as to the spirit in which this history is written, upon both which points I shall have a word to say presently, let us first consider the more positive and definite imputations contained in the foregoing passage. That Bacon wrote the book to gratify James; that in order to gratify James he represented Henry as a model of king-craft; and that the systematic purpose of so representing Henry as a model of king-craft" distorted character and events; - this is what the charge amounts to. And it is important to know how far it is true. For if it were so, to set about detecting and rectifying historical inaccuracies would be a mere waste of time and a mistaking of the proper duty of an editor. In that case the book as a history would be merely worthless. It would be curious only as a record of Bacon's ideaor rather of what he supposed to be James's idea of a model king, and should be treated accordingly. It seems to me however that the hypothesis is not only uncalled for, but utterly untenable.

That he "wrote the book to gratify James I." is indeed in one sense true enough. He wanted to do some service which James would appreciate, and he knew that a good history of so important a reign was one of the best services he could perform, and one the most certain to be appreciated. But it is plain that Sir J. Mackintosh meant something more than this; and if he meant, as I presume he did, that Bacon chose the subject because it gave him an opportunity for flattering James, I would first ask, why anybody should think so? Is it not the very same subject

which at least fifteen years before he had wished some me else to undertake for the simple purpose of supplying a main defect in our national literature? Did not the defect still remain? And was he not now at leisure to undertake the subject himself? Why then seek any further for his motive in choosing it?

But suppose he did choose the subject for the purpose of flattering James, how did he propose to treat it, so as to produce that effect? By setting up Henry the Seventh (we are told) as the model of a king! Now Henry was in his entire character and in all his ways, both as a man and as a king, the very contrast and opposite to James himself. Both indeed professed to love peace; and both were constant, without being uxorious, to their wives. But there the resemblance ends. In all other respects, to set up either as the model of what a king should be is little less than to point out the other as the model of what a king should not be. Neither was this a difficulty inherent in the subject. For however obvious and ineffaceable those features of Henry's character may appear to us, which mark him as so peculiarly the opposite of James, we are to remember that we read it by the light which Bacon himself threw upon it; that it was Bacon himself who brought them to light, brought them to light in this very history for the first time. Henry's character as drawn by preceding historians might have been used for purposes of flattery well enough. "He was a Prince," says Stowe, reporting the substance,

1 See his "Letter to the Lord Chancellor touching a History of Britain;" the original of which, preserved at Bridgwater House, is dated 2 April, 1605. - Collier's Descriptive Catalogue, p. 17. See also Advancement of Learning, the Second Book, paragraph 5.

without the flourishes, of what he found in Hall and Polydore," of marvellous wisdom, policy, justice, temperance, and gravity, and notwithstanding many and great occasions of trouble and war he kept his realm in right good order, for the which he was greatly reverenced of foreign princes." Such a passage would have been a very fair foundation in fact for a fancyportrait of a great and wise king. A man combining in himself all the cardinal virtues and reigning in a continued succession of victorious achievements in peace and war (so history reported him) might easily by a less skilful hand than Bacon's, using a very little of the novelist's or rhetorician's licence, have been turned into a handsome likeness of James or of anybody else. And who can believe that if Bacon had been really studying, not to draw the man as he was, but to produce such a representation of him as should seem to reflect honour upon his descendant, he would have introduced into the portrait those traits of coldness, reserve, suspicion, avarice, parsimony, partyspirit, partiality in the administration of justice when he was himself interested, finesse which was not policy, strength of will which blinded judgment, closeness and darkness which bred danger;-traits which are now inextricably interwoven with our idea of the man; but for traces of which the pages of Fabyan, of Polydore Vergil, of Hall, of Holinshed, and of Stowe, will be searched in vain? If it were necessary to believe that in introducing such features into the portrait he was thinking to gratify James at all, we must suppose that it was not by raising Henry to an ideal eminence which did not belong to him, but by degrading him from that ideal eminence which he enjoyed; and there

by relieving the reigning Solomon from his great rival for that title. But the thing seems to me altogether incredible.

If it be urged on the other hand that the character of Henry as interpreted by Bacon, however unlike it may be to James, is not so unlike Bacon himself; and that he was therein delineating his own ideal; it is enough to say that many of the peculiarities which he detects and points out in Henry's mind and ways, are noticed as weaknesses and errors, derogatory to his judgment and injurious to his fortunes. Many of his difficulties, for instance, are attributed to the shortness of his foresight, which prevented him from seeing distant dangers in time to prevent them. Who can sup

pose that that entered into Bacon's idea of a politic king? His "settled determination to depress all eminent persons of the house of York," might perhaps, upon Machiavel's principle that in order to secure a conquest it is necessary to extirpate the reigning family, have been reconciled with the proposed ideal. But Bacon expressly notices it as an error in his policy arising from a weakness in his mind; and the cause in fact of almost all his troubles. The severity of his exactions again is excused by Polydore Vergil as a politic art to keep turbulent subjects in obedience. Bacon imputes it to a vice of his nature in coveting to accumulate treasure, and represents it as procuring him the hatred of his people to such a degree that his state was insecure even in the height of his felicity. In the matter of Brittany, Bacon represents him as outwitted by the French king: and how? not (as Polydore would have it) from reposing too much trust in the promises of his confederates; but simply because the