He assures his patron (1608) that he esteems whatsoever he has or may have in this world but as trash

"In comparison of having the honour and happiness to be a near and well-accepted kinsman to so rare and worthy a counsellor, governor, or patriot. For having been a studious, if not curious observer, as well of antiquities of virtue as of late pieces, I forbear to say to your Lordship what I find or conceive."

And in the year 1611, not long before his cousin's death, he writes this last protest of allegiance :

"I do protest before God, without compliment, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that centre."

These words he writes thanking Cecil for his promises of help, "upon the occasion of Mr. Attorney's infirmity;" and they seem to imply that, if Cecil would hereafter secure his promotion to the Attorney's place, Bacon would give up philosophy and every other distraction that might prevent him from devoting his whole life to his patron's service.

But on 24 May, 1612 Salisbury died; and in less than a week afterwards, on 31 May, Bacon, offering his services in his cousin's place, writes of him thus to the King.

1

"He was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better; for he loved to keep the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, . . . and, though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on." 2

Elsewhere he writes that "my Lord of Salisbury had a good method, if his means had been upright;" and, in less than four months after his death (18 Sept.), he can congratulate the King upon his deliverance from the incapable counsellor who had planned and mismanaged the Great Contract :

"To have your wants and necessities in particular, as it were hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your Lords and Commons, to be talked of for four months together; to stir a number of projects and then blast them and leave your Majesty nothing but the scandal of them; to pretend even carriage between your Majesty's rights and the ease of the people, and to satisfy neither-these courses and others the like, I hope, are gone with the deviser of them."

1 Comp. Essays, xix. 45.

Ib. xxii. 124.

Then follow these words, which are cancelled in the MS., and which therefore (it is to be presumed) he did not send to the King; but that he should have even thought of sending them. is sufficiently remarkable :—

"I protest to God, though I be not superstitious, when I saw your Majesty's book against Vorstius and Arminius, and noted your zeal to deliver the Majesty of God from the vain and indign comprehension of heresy and degenerate philosophy. . . . perculsit ilico animum that God would set shortly upon you some visible favour; and let me not live if I thought not of the taking away of that man."

Two or three months later appeared the second edition of the Essays, commenting on which-only seven months after the decease of "so rare and worthy a counsellor, governor and patriot "-Chamberlain writes as follows: "Sir Francis Bacon has set out new Essays; where (in a chapter of Deformity)," Essay xliv. "the world takes notice that he paints out his little cousin to the life."

§ 25 BACON SUING FOR PROMOTION

From 1608 to 1620 Bacon seems to have spent such leisure as he could snatch from business in revising the Novum Organum. But the disadvantages under which he pursued his great wish are well illustrated by a brief treatise on the Intellectual Sphere (Descriptio Globi Intellectualis) written in 1612. Beginning with a division of the provinces of the world of knowledge, it speedily passes into a detailed account of astronomy; a subject to which his attention may not improbably have been directed by Galileo's invention of the telescope and the discovery of Jupiter's satellites (May 1609-January 1610). But the work of a Solicitor-General desiring and scheming to be Attorney-General was not favourable for scientific study. In the Thema Coeli (which is the second part of the Descriptio) he constructs a theory of the Universe in which he denies the density and solidity of the moon, as well as the revolution of the earth. True, he admits that his own theory resembles all existing theories in being hypothetical; but in reality he had not given the subject even that decent degree of attention which would have justified him in forming a hypothesis on it.

The researches of Kepler, published in 1609 and known in

England at least as early as 1610, are left unnoticed by Bacon in 1612; and he speaks briefly and unappreciatively of those famous discoveries of Galileo concerning which, two years before, the able mathematician Harriot had written, "Methinks my diligent Galileus hath done more in his threefold discovery than Magellane in opening the straits to the South Sea." Harriot indeed might have said of the Solicitor's speculations in this direction what Harvey said of the Lord Chancellor's physiology, that he wrote astronomy like a Solicitor-General-or, still worse, like a Solicitor-General aspiring to be Attorney-General. Yet such as it is, this little quasi-astronomical attempt, with its Appendix, is almost the only literary work (besides the revision of the Novum Organum) for which Bacon will find leisure during the next eight years.1

Bacon's determination to obtain promotion in his profession. may naturally have turned his attention to the duties of a judge and may have induced him to include that subject among the Essays published in 1612. The Essay on Judicature breathes a spirit of loyalty and almost of subservience, which might well commend the aspiring lawyer to the King. Besides many admirable remarks on the mischief that may be wrought by a judge who is unjust, dilatory, impatient, or avaricious, he speaks emphatically on the necessity of consultation between the judges and the Sovereign. In accordance with old custom judges were sometimes consulted by the King before, or during, a trial in which the interests of the Government were affected. But already in the time of Sir Thomas More the custom, or the abuse of it, seems to have been considered irregular; for the author of Utopia 2 protests against those who give the King counsel "to endaunger unto his grace the judges of the Realme, that he maye haue them euer on his side, and that they may in euerye matter despute and reason for the kynges right. Yea, and further, to call them into his palace and to require them there to argue and discusse his matters in his owne presence." But Bacon sees none of the dangers seen by Sir Thomas More. He desires to extend, not to curtail, the royal control over the judges. No one contended that, where individual interests were

1 The New Atlantis (see § 58) was written before 1614.

2 Arber's reprint, p. 60.

concerned, the Crown had any right to interfere with the ordinary course of justice; but the Solicitor-General, in his essay on Judicature, acutely suggests that cases affecting individuals ("meum and tuum") may indirectly affect the State, and therefore be liable to State interference.

"It is a happy thing in a State when Kings and States1 do often consult with judges, and again when judges do often consult with the King and State. . . . For many times, the thing deduced to judgment may be meum et tuum when the reason and consequence thereof may trench to point of Estate." 2

After Bacon's promotion, we shall in due course see a practical application of this theory concerning the fitness of consultation between King and judges. Meantime, he is merely an expectant; but with prospects greatly improved by the death of Salisbury. But it naturally occurred to him that the path of influence and power might now be more open and rapid through the King's Privy Council than through the routine of legal promotion. Salisbury's death had vacated the place of Secretary as well as that of Treasurer. Elizabethan traditions had passed away with Cecil, and there was room for a new man and new notions at the Council board. And new notions were sadly needed. The total result of Salisbury's financial policy (as shaped or thwarted by the King) had been to halve the debt at the cost of almost doubling the annual deficiency. The debt was now £500,000; the annual deficiency £160,000. The Great Contract had failed; the constitutional problems put forward in the last session all remained unsolved; the House of Commons had entered new paths of jealousy and suspicion. For all reasons the King needed a new Councillor, one who should be in fact. his Prime Minister; and that he was the man, selected at once by circumstances and by natural fitness for this position, Bacon never for a moment questioned. His only doubt was as to the wording and expression of the delicate offer which he desired to make to the King. Here is his first rough draft; partly written (for privacy's sake) in Greek characters, after his mother's fashion.

"THE BEGINNING OF A LETTER TO THE KING, IMMEDIATELY AFTER MY LORD TREASURER'S DECEASE.1

"It may please your Majesty,

May 29, 1612.

"If I shall seem in these few lines to write majora quam pro fortuna, it may please your Majesty to take it to be an effect not of presumption but of affection. For of the one I was never noted; and for the other I could never shew it hitherto to the full; having been as a hawk tied to another's fist, that mought sometimes bate3 and proffer, but could never fly. And therefore if as it was said to one that spoke great words, Amice, verba tua desiderant civitatem-so your Majesty say to me, 'Bacon, your words require a place to speak them,' I must answer that place, or not place, is in your Majesty to add or refrain: and, though I never go higher but to Heaven, yet your Majesty. . .

Here the letter breaks off, and two days afterwards (31 May) he tried again, in a second draft, much less egotistical, more biblically adapted to the King's style, and more calculated to be persuasive by putting the King's needs in the fore-front:

"31 MAY: LETTER TO THE KING, IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LORD TREASURER'S DEATII.

"It may please your excellent Majesty,

"I cannot but endeavour to merit, considering your preventing graces,* which is the occasion of these few lines.

"Your Majesty hath lost a great subject and a great servant. But if I should praise him in propriety, I should say that he was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better. For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, and to have all business still under the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was more in operatione than in opere. And though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. So that although your Majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left, yet you do as it were turn a leaf, wherein if your Majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters, before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were not amiss. But the great matter and most instant for the present, is the consideration of a Parlament, for two effects: the one for the supply of your estate, the other for the better knitting of the hearts of your subjects unto

1 Cecil died on 24 May, so that this letter was written five days afterwards. 2 Cecil's.

i.e. beat (battre) or flutter its wings.

Compare the expression in the Prayer-book, "that thy grace may always prevent and follow us." Bacon is fond of applying the language of religious prayer to the King; see p.103.