A few days before his execution (25 February, 1601) the composure which Essex had hitherto preserved gave way before the fear of death, or of that which follows death; and he poured forth a torrent of exaggerated accusations (some of which were afterwards proved to be groundless) against his secretary, his friends, his sister, and himself. "Would your Lordship have thought this weakness and this unnaturalness in this man!" writes the Earl of Nottingham to Montjoy. But this outburst proceeded neither from " unnaturalness" nor from vindictiveness; but from one whose mind was now thrown off its balance by superstition, yielding in death, as he had always yielded in life, to the impulse of the moment. The vague general self-reproaches wrung from a man on the verge of the grave by superstitious fears ought not to be allowed to exaggerate his crime; and the verdict of history must be that Essex, though guilty of treason, was not a deliberate traitor.

On Bacon's conduct different judgments will be pronounced according as each one judges more or less severely sins proceeding not from an occasional succumbing to temptation, but from an original and natural deficiency in moral taste and in the instinct of honour. Probably in consenting to contribute to the destruction of his friend, Bacon was acting under, what must have seemed to him, considerable pressure. If he had refused the task assigned to him by the Crown, he must have given up all chance of the Queen's favour and with it all hope of promotion. Very inferior men have made as great, or greater, sacrifices; but Bacon was not the man to make such a sacrifice. He had known once what it was to be in the cloud and under the displeasure of his royal mistress, and he was unwilling to renew that experience. Debts were pressing him, and poverty staring him in the face. Recent circumstances may have quickened his appreciation of the Queen's wisdom and judgment as well as his desire for her favour, and his feeling that Essex was a reckless, wilful, incorrigible outcast from the Court, capable now, neither of helping nor of being helped, doomed to

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tained; second, that a man who, against evidence, leaps to a "compact theory that a friend is a deliberate and consistent hypocrite, rather than adopt a "vague theory that his friend may be a combination of ambition, weakness, recklessness, and a number of other qualities good and bad-has "a weak side" in his affections or emotions, as well as in his intellect.

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ultimate destruction. Bacon had a keen sense of the value of fortune, of the possibilities of a learned leisure, of the importance of his own colossal plans for the benefit of the human race; on the other hand he had a very dull sense of the claims of honour and friendship. Forced to choose between prosperity and friendship, he preferred to be prosperous even at the cost of facilitating the ruin of a friend for whom ruin, in any case, was ultimately inevitable.

As it was, he gained less than he expected. But two years more remained for Elizabeth to reign, and Bacon was not destined to receive any office from her hands. Some reward, indeed, he received in shape of money; but he naturally considered £1,200 as very insufficient price for services which no one but himself could have rendered. Excusing himself to a friendly creditor, whom he cannot at once pay, owing to the delay of the promised reward, he says, "The Queen hath done somewhat for me, though not in the perfection I hoped." 1

§ 11 THE END OF THE OLD REIGN

The detailed discussion of the first edition of the Essays (published in January, 1597), will find a fitter place in the pages devoted to Bacon's works; but it is interesting here, to note how this, the most popular of his books, sprang out of, and illustrates, his own recent experiences. The writer assumes that the world is full of evil, and that men cannot get on in the world without a knowledge of evil arts, an assumption thus definitely expressed in the Advancement of Learning: "We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that wrote what men do, and not what they ought to do. For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine simplicity, except men know all the conditions of the serpent." The axiom that a man

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who wishes to succeed must "know all the conditions of the serpent" underlies the whole of the Essays.

But Bacon's theory is not quite consistent with his practice. His theory is that we are to know the Evil Arts, merely that we may be on our guard against them; but in practice he often puts forward some of the minor Evil Arts as though for general use. For any man who will regard life as a game of chess and human beings as the pieces, the Essays will afford useful hints for winning the game; hints that go straight to the mark and are always practicable and always suggestive of more than they actually say. There is no waste of words or sentiment. Everything is to the point and tends to practice. How terse, for example, and how practical is the Essay on Negociating, which tells you that "If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and his fashions and so lead him; or his ends, and so win him; or his weaknesses and disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have interest in him and so govern him!"1 And what wisdom there is in the reason given for the advice to employ lucky people; "For that breeds confidence; and they will strive to maintain their prescription!" 2

Perhaps the passage in the Essays that contains the most feeling recognition of right and wrong is-characteristically enough, as coming from one who was smarting under the rejection of a protracted suit-to be found in the Essay on Suitors where the writer protests that in every suit there ought to be some higher consideration than mere favour: "Surely there is, in some sort, a right in every suit: either a right of equity if it be a suit of controversy, or a right of desert, if it be a suit of petition." 3 But even here he assumes that his readers will occasionally favour the wrong side and only asks them not to carry their injustice to the length of oppression or slander.

In the little volume of 1597 there is not much of the philosophic enthusiasm which breathes in some of the later Essays. The subjects are for the most part on a common-place level, and the language is correspondingly homely. We must wait till 1620 for the splendid eulogy on Truth as "the sovereign good of human nature." In the Studies of 1597 we have only

the common sense view that "simple men admire them, wise men use them." This word "use is indeed the key-note to the ethics of the earlier Essays. Everything is to be "used" for some purpose-studies, discourse, money, men, friends, and factions. The purpose ought to be a good one-so the Essayist occasionally protests-but he shows you how to make these things subserve any purpose, good or bad. On the frank worldliness of Bacon's views of friendship, comment has been already made; but the Essay on Faction is no less frank in its recognition of self-interest as a natural and prevailing motive, and almost cynical in its suppression of resentment against ratters and traitors. "Mean men," i.e. men of low station, are told that if they wish to rise, they must "adhere," i.e. take a side; yet even for beginners, he adds, it generally answers to be the most popular man of your faction with the opposite faction 1 (just as Francis Bacon of the Essexian faction was at this time (1596-7) keeping on terms with the Cecilians); and again, "the traitor, in factions, lightly goeth away with it; for when matters have stuck long in balancing, the winning of some one man casteth them and he getteth all the thanks."2

Bacon's part in drawing up the work described by Lord Clarendon as a "pestilent libel," but published by the Government as a Declaration of the Treasons of Essex may be passed over the more briefly because he tells us (and we have no evidence to the contrary), that his task was little more than that of an amanuensis to the Council and the Queen.

But we cannot so lightly pass over the Apology,1 which, (though printed in 1604) was probably written in 1603, and naturally demands consideration at this period when we are bidding farewell to Essex. It was dedicated to Montjoy (by that time Earl of Devonshire) and its object was to vindicate the Author, not in the estimation of the vulgar sort (whom, he says, he does not so much regard), but in the judgment of certain other persons, from the charge of having been false to the Earl of Essex. Speaking of "the noble but unfortunate Earl" throughout in terms of respect and tenderness, it states that the Author, during a long and entirely disinterested friendship, neglected the Queen's service, his own fortune, and, in a sort, his vocation, first to retain, and then to redintegrate, Essex in the royal favour; in which course he protests that he continued faithfully and industriously "till his last impatience, for so I will call it"but he had once called it the hypocrisy of a Pisistratus and the treachery of a Judas when his benefactor's life was hanging in the balance-"after which day there was not time to work for him."

That Bacon's Apology is full of inaccuracies will be admitted by all who, without prejudice and with sufficient attention, will compare it with Bacon's letters; but it would be a hasty inference to conclude that he deliberately and consciously misrepresented a single incident. We have abundant proof that he was eminently inattentive to details. His scientific works are full of small inaccuracies; King James found in this defect of his Chancellor the matter for a witticism, "de minimis non curat lex;" his, most friendly biographer, Mr. Spedding, admits that his memory was "not very accurate in counting time," and Rawley, his private chaplain and devoted admirer, tells us that he habitually altered and improved upon the utterances of any author whom he happened to quote.

A slippery memory, and inattention to facts, especially to inconvenient facts, in a man of determined self-complacency, may easily lead to a complete distortion of history without definite and conscious falsehood. Just as Bacon habitually " improved on" the authors from whom he quoted, giving us, not what they said, but Spedding, iii. 141-160.