actions, beyond that your heart can propound: Nam Deus major est corde: even to the environing of his benedictions, I recommend your lordship. Rawley's XXXIX. To the QUEEN: written by FRANCIS BACON for the Earl of ESSEX. Resuscita tio. It may please your Majesty, IT were great simplicity in me to look for better, than that your majesty should cast away my letter, as you have done me; were it not that it is possible your majesty will think to find somewhat in it, whereupon your displeasure may take hold; and so indignation may obtain that of you which favour could not. Neither might I in reason presume to offer unto your majesty dead lines, myself being excluded as I am; were it not upon this only argument or subject; namely to clear myself in point of duty. Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favours be cast upon the waters, and my honours be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and unattempted. And therefore, since the world, out of error, and your majesty, I fear, out of art, is pleased to put upon me, that I have so much as any election, or will in this my absence from attendance, I cannot but leave this protestation with your majesty; that I am, and have been merely a patient, and take myself only to obey and execute your majesty's will. And indeed, madam, I had never thought it possible that your majesty could have so disinteressed yourself of me; nor that you had been so perfect in the art of forgetting; nor that after a quintessence of wormwood, your majesty would have taken so large a draught of poppy, as to have passed so many 1 summers without all feeling of my sufferings. But the only comfort I have is this, that I know your majesty taketh delight and contentment in executing 1 This shews this letter was wrote before the earl of Essex had been reconciled to the queen; and our author not having been called or advised with for some year and a half before the earl's going to Ireland, determines the date at the latest to the beginning of 1598. this disgrace upon me. And since your majesty can find no other use of me, I am glad yet I can serve for that. Thus making my most humble petition to your majesty, that in justice, howsoever you may by strangeness untie, or by violence cut asunder all other knots, your majesty would not touch me in that which is indissoluble: that is, point of duty; and that your majesty will pardon this my unwarranted presumption of writing, being to such an end: I cease in all humbleness ; Your Majesty's poor, and never so unworthy servant, SIR, XL. To Sir ROBERT CECIL. ESSEX. I FORBEAR not to put in paper, as much as I thought to have spoken to your honour to-day, if I could have stayed: knowing that if your honour should make other use of it, than is due to good meaning, and than I am persuaded you will; yet to persons of judgment, and that know me otherwise, it will rather appear, as it is, a precise honesty, and this same suum cuique tribuere, than any hollowness to any. It is my luck still to be akin to such things as I neither like in nature, nor would willingly meet with in my course; but yet cannot avoid, without shew of base timorousness, or else of unkind or suspicious strangeness. [Some hiatus in the copy.] And I am of one spirit still. I ever liked the Galenists, that deal with good compositions; and not the Paracelsians, that deal with these fine separations and in music, I ever loved easy airs, that go full all the parts together; and not these strange points of accord and discord. This I write not, I assure your honour, officiously; except it be according to Tully's Offices; that is, honestly and morally. For though, I thank God, I account, upon the proceeding, in the queen's service, or not proceeding, both ways; and therefore neither mean to fawn nor retire; yet I naturally desire good opinion with any person which for fortune or spirit is to be regarded: much more with a Rawley's Resuscitatio. Rawley's tio. secretary of the queen's, and a cousin-german, and otie with whom I have ever thought myself to have some sympathy of nature, though accidents have not suf fered it to appear. Thus not doubting of your honourable interpretation and usage of that I have written, I commend you to the divine preservation. From Gray's-Inn. SIR, XLI. To Sir ROBERT CECIL. YOUR honour knoweth, my manner is, though it be not the wisest way, yet taking it for the honestest, to do as Alexander did by his physician, in drinking the medicine, and delivering the advertisement of suspicion so I trust on, and yet do not smother what I hear. I do assure you, Sir, that by a wise friend of mine, and not factious towards your honour, I was. told with asseveration, that your honour was bought by Mr. Coventry for two thousand angels: and that you wrought in a contrary spirit to my lord your father. And he said farther, that from your servants, from your lady, from some counsellors that have observed you in my business, he knew you wrought underhand with me: the truth of which tale I do not believe. You know the event will shew, and God will right. But as I reject this report, though the strangeness of my case might make me credulous, so I admit a conceit, that the last messenger my lord and yourself used, dealt ill with your honours; and that word, speculation, which was in the queen's mouth, rebounded from him as a commendation: for I am not ignorant of those little arts. Therefore, I pray, trust not him again in my matter. This was much to write; but I think my fortune will set me at liberty, who am weary of asserviling myself to every man's charity. Thus I, etc. SIR, XLII. TO FOULK GREVIL. I UNDERSTAND of your pains to have visited me, for which I thank you. My matter is an endless question. I assure you I had said, Requiesce, anima mea : but I now am otherwise put to my psalter; Nolite confidere. I dare go no farther. Her majesty had, by set speech, more than once assured me of her intention to call me to her service; which I could not understand but of the place I had been named to. And now, whether invidus homo hoc fecit; or whether my matter must be an appendix to my lord of Essex suit; or whether her majesty, pretending to prove my ability, meaneth but to take advantage of some errors, which like enough, at one time or other, I may commit; or what it is; but her majesty is not ready to dispatch it. And what though the master of the Rolls, and my lord of Essex, and yourself, and others, think my case without doubt, yet in the mean time I have a hard condition to stand so, that whatsoever service I do to her majesty, it shall be thought but to be servitium viscatum, lime-twigs and fetches to place myself; and so I shall have envy, not thanks. This is a course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt every man's nature; which will, I fear, much hurt her majesty's service in the end. I have been like a piece of stuff bespoken in the shop; and if her majesty will not take me, it may be the selling by parcels will be more gainful. For to be, as I told you, like a child following a bird, which, when he is nearest flieth away, and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infinitum; I am weary of it, as also of wearying my good friends: of whom, nevertheless, I hope in one course or other gratefully to deserve. And so, not forgetting your business, I leave to trouble you with this idle letter, being but justa et moderata querimonia: for indeed, I do confess, primus amor will not easily be cast off. And thus again I commend me to you. Rawley's Resuscita tio. Rawley's Resuscitatio. Ibid. XLIII. To my Lord of ESSEX. It may please your good Lordship, 2 I AM very sorry her majesty should take my motion to travel in offence. But surely under her majesty's royal correction, it is such an offence as it should be an offence to the sun, when a man, to avoid the scorching heat thereof, flyeth into the shade. And your lordship may easily think, that having now these twenty years, for so long it is, and more, since I went with Sir Amyas Paulet into France, from her majesty's royal hand, made her majesty's service the scope of my life; I shall never find a greater grief than this, relinquere amorem primum. But since, principia actionum sunt tantum in nostra potestate, I hope her majesty of her clemency, yea and justice, will pardon me, and not force me to pine here with melancholy, For though mine heart be good, yet mine eyes will be sore; so as I shall have no pleasure to look abroad: and if I should otherwise be affected, her majesty in her wisdom will but think me an impudent man, that would face out a disgrace. Therefore, as I have ever found you my good lord and true friend, so I pray open the matter so to her majesty, as she may discern the necessity of it without adding hard conceit to her rejection; of which, I am sure, the latter I never deserved. Thus, etc. XLIV. To Sir ROBERT CECIL, at his being in It may please your honourable Lordship, I KNOW you will pardon this my observance, in writing to you, empty of matter, but out of the fullness of my love. I am sorry that as your time of absence is prolonged, above that was esteemed at your lordship's setting forth; so now, upon this last advertisement received from you, there groweth an opinion amongst better than the vulgar, that the difficulties also of 2 This letter was therefore wrote about the year 1598. |