shall find an alteration to their contentment over that which now is."

Gradually he passes from politics to speak of his own affairs, his estate, his health, his pecuniary prospects.

In an earlier entry he had reminded himself to "send message of compliment to my Lady Dorset the widow," and he now more definitely notes the desirableness of inducing the rich widow to remember him in her will: "applying myself to be inward with my Lady Dorset per Champners ad utilitatem) test(amentariam)."

Another note reminds him to think about the will of his halfsister, formerly Lady Neville; and how to humour the eccentricities of some old-fashioned squire by calling him a franklin: “encouragement of Crosseby with great words (such a Franklin)." Then follow minute details of medicines that agree and disagree with him; particulars of his lands and goods; and so at last he comes back to politics again.

After another note about the Recusants he returns for the third time to the Attorney, this time with a separate heading, "Hubbard's 1 disadvantage:"

"Better at shift than at drift. Subtilitas sine acrimonia. No power with the judge. He will alter a thing but not mend. Sociable save in profit. Solemn goose, stately leastwise nodd (?) not crafty. They have made him believe he is wondrous wi(se). He never beats down unfit suits with law. In persons as in people, some shew more wise than they are."

The next heading is "Customs adapted to the individual," and the contents show the writer ascending in thought even above the place of the Attorney and deliberating how he can adapt his customs to the humours of great men, so as to win his way by their favour to the highest legal position in the State. The first "individual" selected is the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain to the Household, a pompous man, fond of adulation, who might naturally be supposed to have influence with the King; concerning him he makes the following note, "To furnish my Lord of Suffolk with ornaments for public speeches. To make him think how he should be reverenced by a Lord Chancellor, if I were: Princelike." At the Council table he resolves "chiefly to make good my Lord of Salisbury's (Cecil's motions and speeches," he will efface every vestige of his natural and student-like shyness and nervousness: "to suppress at once my speaking with panting and labour of breath and voice. Not to fall upon the main too sudden; but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion. To free myself at once from payment of formality and compliment, though with some shew of carelessness, pride, and rudeness." The note-book ends as it began, with money matters.

These extracts supply a sufficient answer to the question, Which will Bacon choose, Philosophy or Politics? Obviously, he will serve neither of these two masters; he will attempt to serve both. It is equally clear that, although he may still consider that his civil ends are subordinated to his contemplative ends, the former are no longer "moderate," and that his projects for his own advancement occupy almost as much of his attention as Philosophy and Politics.

In commenting on his deliberate and calculated flattery of great men, and disparagement of rivals, we must repeat that Bacon at all events avowed and justified such conduct. In his Advancement of Learning,1 he censures the "tenderness and want of compliance in some of the most ancient and revered philosophers, who retired too early from civil business that they might avoid indignities and perturbations, and live (as they thought) more pure and saint-like;" he cannot "tax or condemn the morigeration or application of learned men to men in fortunes." The resolution registered in his private note-book to win "credit comparate to the Attorney in being more short, round and resolute," 2 is at least consistent with the public avowal that "Honour that is gained and broken upon another, hath the quickest reflection." Those who are startled by Bacon's secret plans for showing off his abilities to the best advantage, should refer to the precepts published in the De Augmentis, for attaining success in life. One of these is that a man should set forth to advantage before others, with grace and skill, his own virtues, fortunes and merits, and "cover artificially his weaknesses, defects, misfortunes and disgraces." For this end he inculcates dissimulation and adaptability of mind; "if a man is dull, he must affect gravity; if a coward, mildness;" and he "must strive with all possible endeavour to render the mind obedient to occasions and opportunities;" "for nothing is more politic than to make the wheels of the mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of fortune." It is true that Bacon begins this little treatise (called "The Architect of Fortune") in the De Augmentis with the warning that no man's fortune can be a worthy end in itself, and that fortune only deserves this "speculation and doctrine," so far as it is an instrument of virtue and merit;" but he concludes it with the practical precept that the Architect should accustom his mind to judge of the proportion and value of all things as they conduce more or less to his own fortune and his own ends.

No mistake can be greater than to suppose that Bacon reminded himself in this extraordinary fashion of the duty of advancing himself in life, because he was by nature disposed to be extraordinarily forgetful of that duty. The duty was always present to his mind: it was only the ways and means of which he desired to make systematic note. He saw all men desiring self-advancement, but few aiming at it systematically and scientifically. Feeling a contempt for so half-hearted a pursuit of fortune, he desired to reduce the chase to a science, and to make all his acts in every department of life conduce towards it-his friendships, compliments, conversations, legal business, House of Commons business, access to the King-everything was to be made subservient to two objects, and one of these was "his own particular."

The differences therefore between Bacon and an ordinary pushing man of the world appear to be two. Firstly, he succeeded in persuading himself that his own advancement was essential to the advancement of Philosophy, and therefore to the benefit of the human race for whose service he believed himself to have been born; secondly (in consequence, partly of this self-persuasion, partly of a natural cold-bloodedness of disposition), he did unscrupulously, and with his eyes open, what even men of the world cannot do without some reluctance or blinking. Many will study and flatter the humours of great men, but few will

:

do it deliberately and avowedly; some few may stoop to disparage a rival in order to obtain his place; but far fewer will do it in a business-like, thorough, and methodical manner, setting down on paper, under the formal heading of their rival's "Disparagement," elaborate entries of points and epigrams, so that, beneath the guise of casual utterances, they may undermine his influence; and still fewer-perhaps only one in the human race-could be found to jot down these petty details of a rival's depreciation among sketches of schemes for the establishment of a great Protestant Monarchy in the West, and for the foundation of a Philosophy which was to make mankind lords over the material world.

§ 22 LITERARY WORK

This year and the next (1608, 1609) still found Bacon's political path obstructed by Salisbury, and consequently gave him leisure for literature. Besides a treatise on Queen Elizabeth (In felicem memoriam Elizabethae) - interesting because it shows the respect which he entertained for a sovereign from whom he could no longer hope anything, his admiration for her administrative ability, and his approval of her policy towards Recusants -he also wrote (1609) Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland, in which he deprecates excess of paper-government ("that there be not too much of the line and compass"), and advocates freedom from taxes and customs, and the addition of an Irish title to the Prince of Wales. But the paper does not touch the really important part of the question, the treatment of the native population.

The Great Instauration was not neglected. "My Instauration sleeps not"-so he writes (1609) to Toby Matthew; and again in the same year :

"As for the Instauration, your so full approbation thereof I read with much comfort; by how much more my heart is upon it, and by how much less I expected consent and concurrence in a matter so obscure. Of this I can assure you, that though many things of great hope decay with youth (and multitude of civil businesses is wont to diminish the price, though not the delight, of contemplations) yet the proceeding in that work doth gain with me upon my affection and desire, both by years and business."

During this year (1609) he carried out two projects sketched (1608) in the Commentarius Solutus. "To discourse scornfully of the Grecians with some better respect to the Ægyptians, Persians, and Chaldees, and the utmost antiquities and the mysteries of the poets"--so he had written in the note-book of 1608; and accordingly he produced in 1609 a short contemptuous treatise on Greek philosophy entitled Refutation of the Philosophies (Redargutio Philosophiarum), which he sent to Toby Matthew with the following letter :

"For your caution for churchmen and church matters, as for any impediment it might be to the applause and celebrity of my work, it moveth me not; but as it may hinder the fruit and good which may come of a quiet and calm passage to the good port to which it is bound, I hold it a just respect: so as, to fetch a fair wind, I go not too much about. But the truth is, I shall have no occasion to meet them in my way, except it be as they will needs confederate themselves with Aristotle, who, as you know, is intemperately magnified with the Schoolmen; and is also allied (as I take it) to the Jesuits by Faber, who was a companion of Loyola and a great Aristotelian.

"I send you at this time the only part which hath any harshness;1 and yet I framed to myself an opinion, that whosoever allowed well of that preface which you so much commend, will not dislike, or at least ought not to dislike, this other speech of preparation; for it is written out of the same spirit, and out of the same necessity. Nay, it doth more fully lay open that the question between me and the ancients is not of the virtue of the race, but of the rightness of the way. And to speak truth, it is to the

...

other but as palma to pugnus, part of the same thing more large. Myself am like the miller of Huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows; for while the winds blew, the wind-mills wrought, and the water-mill was less customed. So I see that controversies of religion must hinder the advancement of sciences. Let me conclude with my perpetual wish towards yourself, that the approbation of yourself, by your own discreet and temperate carriage, may restore you to your country, and your friends to your society. And so I commend you to God's goodness.

"Gray's Inn, this 10th of October, 1609."

Matthew's caution about “churchmen and church matters" refers to the great pen-and-ink war in which Cardinal Bellarmin, having answered King James's book in defence of the oath of allegiance against the Pope, was himself answered by Bishop