Queen's, my excellent Mistress's time, the quorum was small; her service was a kind of freehold and it was a more solemn time. All those points agreed with my nature and judgment. My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen, whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit of the times succeeding. "Lastly, for this divulged and almost prostituted title of knighthood,1 I could without charge, by your Honour's means, be content to have it, both because of this late disgrace, and because I have three new knights in my mess in Gray's Inn commons, and because I have found out an alderman's daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking. So as, if your Honour will find the time, I will come to the Court from Gorhambury upon any warning. "How my sales go forward, your Lordship shall in a few days hear. Meanwhile, if you will not be pleased to take further day with this lewd fellow" [Bacon's creditor] "I hope your Lordship will not suffer him to take any part of the penalty, but principal, interest, and costs." At the same time he appears to have sent Cecil a memorandum of his debts, 3,7007. in his own name (including 5007. “that I was beholden to your Honour for procuring "), and 1,300l. in the name of his brother Anthony. Cecil's answer seems to have demurred to delay in repayment, and to have hinted that there was some fault of excess, aliquid nimis-whether pecuniary extravagance or what else is not quite clear 2-which required correction on Bacon's part. The answer is good-tempered and grateful, containing a promise of amendment. "It may please your good Lordship, 3 "In answer of your last letter, your money shall be ready before your day principal, interest, and costs of suit. So the sheriff promised, when I released errors; and a Jew takes no more. The rest cannot be forgotten, for I cannot forget your Lordship's dum memor ipse mei: and if there have been aliquid nimis, it shall be amended. And, to be plain with your Lordship, that will quicken me now which slackened me before. Then I thought you might have had more use of me than now I suppose you are like to have. Not but I think the impediment will be rather in 1 Before James had been three months in England he had made about 700 knights. 2 It might possibly have been an excess of zeal in obtruding political advice, which appeared to Cecil to savour of ambition. In the Proem to the Interpretation of Nature Bacon complains that at this period of his life his "zeal was set down as ambition." 3 Some word has dropped out perhaps, "your Lordship's (kindness): " unless Cecil had himself used the following Latin quotation to protest his constant affection for his cousin, in which case the text may be correct. my mind than in the matter or times. But to do you service I will come out of my religion at any time. "For my knighthood, I wish the manner might be such as might grace me, since the matter will not; I mean, that I might not be merely gregarious in a troop. The coronation is at hand. It may please your Lordship to let me hear from you speedily. So I continue your Lordship's ever much bounden, "From Gorhambury, this 16th of July 1603." FR. BACON. The marriage with the alderman's daughter, the "handsome maiden,” did not take place till three years afterwards; but he had not so long to wait for the "divulged honour," which he desired partly to please the young lady and partly to salve his recent disgrace. He did not, however, obtain even his poor petition that he might escape being "gregarious." On 22 July the Court removed from Windsor to Westminster, and on the following day the King, in his garden, dubbed as knights all the judges, all the serjeants-at-law, all the doctors of civil law, all the gentlemen ushers, and many others of divers qualities; and on this occasion, as one of three hundred, the author of the Greatest Birth of Time was "gregariously" knighted. It is interesting and instructive to compare with the actual circumstances of Bacon's rebuff and his disappointment at this period, the account given of it in the autobiographical fragment contained in the Proem to the Interpretation of Nature. The actual fact was that Bacon had tried, by every possible means, by friends, by strangers, by enemies (as in the case of Southampton), by letters, by personal access, by the preparation of political papers, to push himself into the King's favourable notice; and he had retired from the struggle for a time because he had completely failed, and for no other reason. How different is the impression to be derived from the autobiography! There we find that the main cause of his retirement was the compunction of conscience. He admits indeed that one cause for this retirement was the misappreciation of his political zeal; but the main cause was his sense that he was called to proclaim i.e., I suppose, "I will come out of the philosophic pursuits to which I have. now religiously bound myself, having forsworn politics." He was now probably writing the Advancement of Learning. 2 See above p. 28. the kingdom of Philosophy and not to play a part in civil life. "I found my zeal set down as ambition, my life past the prime, my weak health chiding me for delay, and my conscience warning me that I was in no way doing my duty in omitting such services as I could myself unaided perform for men, while I was applying myself to tasks that depended upon the will of others; and, therefore, I at once tore myself away from all those thoughts and in accordance with my former resolution I devoted my whole energy to this work," i.e., to the Interpretation of Nature. § 13 THE DISCOURSE ON THE UNION" In speaking of "putting his ambition on his pen" Bacon probably had in his mind the Advancement of Learning, the first book of which is supposed to have been written this year (1603). At this time he also wrote the brief Proem on the Interpretation of Nature in which he propounds his new philosophical mission, apologising for having temporarily deserted it on the plea that public duties had appeared to demand that sacrifice. The apologetic part of the proem has been quoted above (see p. 28); but the latter part, in which he reviews the obstacles in the way of his philosophic projects, and his plans for surmounting them, is no less worthy of study; and it comes fitly here because it shows how his philosophic plans pervaded his whole life, and influenced both his political views and his applications to individual friends and patrons whom he regarded as likely to forward the great cause of Science. "Nor am I discouraged from it because I see in the present time some kind of impending decline and fall of the knowledge and erudition now in use. "Not that I apprehend any more barbarian invasions unless possibly the Spanish empire should recover its strength, and after crushing other nations. by arms should itself sink beneath its own weight; but from the civil wars which may be expected I think (judging from certain fashions which have come in of late) to spread through many countries, from the malignity of religious sects, and from those compendious artifices and devices which have crept into the place of solid erudition I augured a storm not less fatal for literature and science. Against these evils the Printing-press is no security. And doubtless these hostile influences are destined to over whelm that fair-weather learning, which needs the nursing of luxurious leisure and the sunshine of reward and praise, and which can neither withstand the shock of adverse opinion nor escape the imposture of qucakery. "Far otherwise is it with Science, whose dignity is fortified by works of use and power. Therefore to the injuries that might be wrought by Time I give no heed. As for the injuries that might proceed from men, they trouble me not. For if any one charge me with seeking to be wise overmuch, I answer simply that whereas in practical life there is a place for modesty, in philosophy there is no place for aught save truth. But if any one call on me for works and that at once, I say, and without any imposture, that a man in my position, not yet past middle life, retarded by ill health, who with his hands full of business, and without light or guidance, has entered upon an argument of the utmost obscurity, has done enough if he constructs the machine, though he may never set it in motion." 35 1 After protesting that works, though they will ultimately be attained, must not be sought at once, and that he must not be called on to make definite promises as forecasts of results, nor to deviate from his prescribed course, he continues thus: "My plan of publication is as follows. Those writings which aim at securing a response from the minds of others, and at purging, so to speak, the threshing-floor of the understanding, are to be published to the world at large; the rest are to be passed from hand to hand with selection and judgment. "I am not ignorant indeed that it is a stale trick for impostors to reserve some secrets, which are no whit better than those which they offer to the public. But in my case this resolve is not the result of imposture, but of a sober forethought. For I see that both the Formula of the Interpretation of Nature and the discoveries thereby made, will be quickened and preserved in the guardianship of a few selected minds. "This however is not my affair, for I take no thought for anything that depends on things external. I am not chasing after fame, I am not attracted by the ambition of founding a sect after the manner of heresiarchs; and the mere notion of aiming at private gain from so vast an undertaking seems to me as absurd as it is disgraceful. Enough for me the consciousness of well-deserving, and those practical results which Fortune herself is powerless to prevent." Notwithstanding his resolution to "meddle as little as possible with the King's cause and to follow his private thrift and 1 Spedding, iii. 519, practice," Francis (now Sir Francis) Bacon does not seem to have felt precluded from tendering the King political advice. There were some points in the new Sovereign's characterand those the most obvious on a short acquaintance-which might naturally lead Bacon to take a favourable view of the King's political future. James was learned, open to new ideas, and averse to intolerance. These characteristics might be revealed in a few hours. It needed months or years to reveal the King's fatal deficiency in earnestness, his inconstancy of purpose, his inability to sympathise with an English House of Commons, and his want of political foresight. Even a cool observer might therefore have augured well at first concerning the new reign; and Bacon, in spite of all his professions of philosophic coolness, was one of the most blindly sanguine of observers. It is this excess of hopefulness-this determination not only to make the best, but to see the best, of everything-which explains, more adequately than any hypothesis of deliberate flattery, the language of adulation in which he addressed the King in the earlier years of his reign. Perhaps Bacon never, to the last, thoroughly realised the inherent weakness of James's character; perhaps he found it impracticable to discontinue the habit once formed, and perceived that flattery was necessary in approaching a Sovereign who mistook deference for devotion; be the cause what it may, he never tendered counsel to the King without disguising it in obsequiousness; and James, in his lips, is always a sovereign incomparable, not to be mentioned in the same breath with any other except Solomon, the Prinum Mobile, and God.1 With one at all events of James's political aspirations Bacon 1 James himself did not shrink from mentioning himself in a most irreverent juxtaposition with Christ (see below, p. 280): and compare his verses composed on the comet that appeared at the Queen's death: "Thee to invite the great God sent his star, (Gardiner, History, iii. 295.) Possibly Bacon's language in this respect, would not be found, not much, if at all, worse than that of many of the King's flatterers; but it is sometimes extremely repulsive. See p. 183, where he says to James: "I will make two prayers unto your Majesty as I use to do to God Almighty, when I commend to Him His glory and cause. And elsewhere he illustrates three requests which he makes to the King by reference "to the three petitions of the Litany-Libera nos, Domine; parce nobis, Domine, exaudi nos, Domine." |