Andrews, who had been selected by the King as his champion.1 This will also explain the following letter which accompanied a copy of the Cogitata et Visa sent by Bacon to the Bishop about October, 1609 :

"MY VERY GOOD LORD-Now your Lordship hath been so long in the church and the palace disputing between kings and popes, methinks you should take pleasure to look into the field, and refresh your mind with some matter of philosophy; though that science be now through age waxed a child again, and left to boys and young men; and because you were wont to make me believe you took liking to my writings, I send you some of this vacation's fruits and thus much more of my mind and purpose.

"I hasten not to publish; perishing I would prevent. And I am forced to respect as well my times as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case, if I bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies; which I purpose to suppress, if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy, which I go on with, though slowly. I send not your Lordship too much, lest it may glut you.

"Now let me tell you what my desire is. If your Lordship be so good now, as when you were the good Dean of Westminster, my request to you is that not by pricks, but by notes, you would mark unto me whatsoever shall seem unto you either not current in the style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient for the person of the writer; for no man can be judge and party and when our minds judge by reflection of ourselves they are more subject to error. And though for the matter itself my judgment be in some things fixed, and not accessible by any man's judgment that goeth not my way, yet even in those things the admonition of a friend may make me express myself diversely. I would have come to your Lordship, but that I am hastening to my house in the country. And so I commend your Lordship to God's goodness."

1 A choice creditable to the King's judgment, as Mr. Spedding remarks, if only he could have refrained from interfering with his champion. See Carleton's letter (11 November, 1608), “I doubt he [Andrews] be not at leisure for any bye matters, the King doth so hasten and spur him on in this business of Bellarmin's ; which he were likely to perform very well (as I hear by them that can judge) if he might take his own time, and not be troubled nor entangled with arguments obtruded to him continually by the King."

There is an interesting note about him in the Commentarius Solutus (1608) showing how Bacon valued his aid: "Not desisting to drawe in the Bp. Aund(rews) being single, rych, sickly, a professor to some experiments."

* This must not be taken literally; for at the beginning of the vacation in July, 1608, Bacon speaks of "imparting my Cogitata et Visa, with choice, ut videbitur." Probably he had revised or re-written the work in the vacation

of 1609.

M

The second project mentioned in the Commentarius Solutus was a treatise on what Bacon calls "the utmost antiquities and mysteries of the poets." It was his genuine belief that the old Greek and Latin myths contained secrets of religion and policy, "sacred relics or abstracted arts of better times, which, by tradition from more ancient nations, fell into the trumpets and tunes of the Grecians." His attempt to interpret these myths and unfold their secrets he embodied in a little Latin treatise called the Sapientia Veterum or Wisdom of the Ancients. This he sent to Matthew with the following letter :

"MR. MATTHEW,

"I do heartily thank you for your letter of the 24th of August from Salamanca; and in recompense thereof I send you a little work of mine that hath late begun to pass the world. They tell me my Latin is turned silver and become current. Had you been here you should have been my inquisitor before it came forth but I think the greatest inquisitor in Spain will allow it. But one thing you must pardon me, if I make no haste to believe that the world should be grown to such an ecstasy as to reject truth in philosophy because the author dissenteth in religion.

"My great work goeth forward; and after my manner I alter ever when I add: so that nothing is finished till all be finished.

"This I have written in the midst of a term and parliament, thinking no time so precious but that I should talk of these matters with so good and dear a friend. And so with my wonted wishes I leave you to God's goodness.

"From Gray's Inn, the 17th of February, 1610."

This was a busy time with Bacon. Parliament had met (9 February, 1610), and all through the session he had his hands full, supporting the Great Contract, defending the King's rights or claims, and endeavouring to keep the House of Commons in good humour. Whether on account of the pressure of political work, or for whatever reason, no literary production of this year has been handed down to us beyond a fragment which he sent to James entitled A Beginning of a History of His Majesty's Time. It is fortunate that the King gave him no encouragement that induced him to continue his work. No courtier should write contemporary history, least of all such a courtier as Francis Bacon, who volunteers a readiness to alter anything in his book upon the King's "least beck."

"It may please your Majesty,

"Hearing that you are at leisure to peruse story, a desire took me to make an experiment what I could do in your Majesty's times. Which being but a leaf or two, I pray your pardon if I send it for your recreation, considering that love must creep where it cannot go. But to this I add these petitions, first, that if your Majesty do dislike anything, you would conceive that I can amend it upon your least beck. Next, if I have not spoken of your Majesty encomiastically, your Majesty will be pleased only to ascribe it to the law of an history, which doth not clatter together praises upon the first mention of a name, but rather disperseth and weaveth them throughout the whole narration; and as for the proper place of commemoration (which is in the period of life) I pray God I may never live to write it....”

In this year (1610) his mother died, over eighty years of age. The last mention of her is in 1600, when her health is said to be "worn." In 1608, making an entry of his property, Bacon includes Gorhambury, his mother's estate, and makes no deduction from the income of the estate on her account; a circumstance that confirms the statement of Bishop Goodman, who writes that Bacon's mother was "little better than frantic (mad) in her age." In the following letter Bacon invites his kindly friend Sir Michael Hickes to be present at the funeral :

"SIR MICHAEL HICKES,

"It is but a wish, and not any ways to desire it to your trouble. But I heartily wish I had your company here at my mother's funeral, which I purpose on Thursday next in the forenoon. I dare promise you a good sermon to be made by Mr. Fenton, the preacher of Gray's Inn; for he never maketh other. Feast I make none. But if I might have your company for two or three days at my house I should pass over this mournful occasion with more comfort. If your son had continued at St. Julian's it mought have been an adamant to have drawn you: but now, if you come, I must say it is only for my sake. I commend myself to your Lady, and commend my wife to you both, and rest

"This Monday the 27th of August, 1610."

Yours ever assured

FR. BACON.

§ 23 THE DECLINE OF CECIL

As long as Cecil lived there was no chance of Bacon's having free access to the King and influence over his policy. This Bacon avowed afterwards to the King, when he declared that during his cousin's life he was like a hawk tied to another's wrist, which may flutter and "bate," but cannot fly; and he obscurely hints it in the last quoted note to the King, in which he says that his love "must creep since it cannot go" (i.e., walk upright). But there were now signs that the great man's influence was on the wane. The King had been warned by one of his nobles on his death-bed that, under cover of the Great Contract, he was being stripped of his royal dignities, and that "the subject was bound to relieve him and to supply his occasions without any such contractings;"1 and we are told that "ever after, the Earl of Salisbury, who had been a great stirrer in that business, began to decline." 2 On 25 November, 1610, the King wrote a letter to Salisbury soundly rating him for expecting from him an "asinine patience," and commanding the adjournment of Parliament, and on 29 February, 1611, Parliament was dissolved.

At the same time a favourite was coming to the front. A young Scotchman named Robert Carr, who had been one of the King's pages in Scotland but had been dismissed on James's accession to the English throne, coming to Court soon afterwards, had the good fortune to break his leg at a tilting match (1606) in the royal presence. This accident, combined with his great physical vigour and activity and strong animal spirits, sufficed to place the lad at once high in the King's favour. He was knighted without delay, and by the good offices of Cecil-who seems to have courted the rising Favourite-advantage was soon taken of a flaw in a legal conveyance to dispossess Sir Walter Raleigh's wife and children of the Manor of Sherborne, and to bestow it (1609) upon Carr. In March, 1611, still rising in royal favour, Sir Robert Carr was created Viscount Rochester.

Meanwhile honours and preferments were flying about. The Speaker of the last House of Commons, who had assisted the Great Contract and had made himself generally useful to the King on critical occasions, had been rewarded with the Mastership of the Rolls; and another of the King's supporters had been promised the reversion of the office. Finding himself unable to trust the good-will or ability of Salisbury to help him to the Attorney's place at the next vacancy, Bacon determined (early in 1611) to make a direct appeal to the King. The following letter, in which he expressly disclaims appealing to the intercession of those "friends" who are "near and assured" (obviously meaning Salisbury), and in which he gracefully touches on the possibility of his retiring from the "laborious place" of the Solicitorship, without actually threatening resignation, could hardly fail to make James feel how great a loss he would sustain if his Solicitor were to throw up his "course of painful service" and devote himself to literature :