Bacon — 06 - Chapter 3B

"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, "FR.

BACON.

"From Gorhambury, this 16th of July, 1603." But it was not done.

He "obtained his title, but not in a manner to distinguish him.

He was knighted at Whitehall two days before the coronation, but had to share the honour with 300 others."

It was not quite true that his "ambition was quenched."

For the rest of Cecil's life Cecil was the first man at James's Court; and to the last there was one thing that Bacon would not appear to believe--he did not choose to believe that it was Cecil who kept him back from employment and honour.

To the last he persisted in assuming that Cecil was the person who would help, if he could, a kinsman devoted to his interests and profoundly conscious of his worth.

To the last he commended his cause to Cecil in terms of unstinted affection and confiding hope.

It is difficult to judge of the sincerity of such language.

The mere customary language of compliment employed by every one at this time was of a kind which to us sounds intolerable.

It seems as if nothing that ingenuity could devise was too extravagant for an honest man to use, and for a man who respected himself to accept.

It must not, indeed, be forgotten that conventionalities, as well as insincerity, differ in their forms in different times; and that insincerity may lurk behind frank and clear words, when they are the fashion, as much as in what is like mere fulsome adulation.

But words mean something, in spite of forms and fashions.

When a man of great genius writes his private letters, we wish generally to believe on the whole what he says; and there are no limits to the esteem, the honour, the confidence, which Bacon continued to the end to express towards Cecil.

Bacon appeared to trust him--appeared, in spite of continued disappointments, to rely on his good-will and good offices.

But for one reason or another Bacon still remained in the shade.

He was left to employ his time as he would, and to work his way by himself.

He was not idle.

He prepared papers which he meant should come before the King, on the pressing subjects of the day.

The Hampton Court conference between the Bishops and the Puritan leaders was at hand, and he drew up a moderating paper on the _Pacification of the Church_.

The feeling against him for his conduct towards Essex had not died away, and he addressed to Lord Mountjoy that _Apology concerning the Earl of Essex_, so full of interest, so skilfully and forcibly written, so vivid a picture of the Queen's ways with her servants, which has every merit except that of clearing Bacon from the charge of disloyalty to his best friend.

The various questions arising out of the relations of the two kingdoms, now united under James, were presenting themselves.

They were not of easy solution, and great mischief would follow if they were solved wrongly.

Bacon turned his attention to them.

He addressed a discourse to the King on the union of the two kingdoms, the first of a series of discussions on the subject which Bacon made peculiarly his own, and which, no doubt, first drew the King's attention and favour to him.

But for the first year of James's reign he was unnoticed by the King, and he was able to give his attention more freely to the great thought and hope of his life.

This time of neglect gave him the opportunity of leisurely calling together and examining the ideas which had long had hold of his mind about the state of human knowledge, about the possibilities of extending it, about the hopes and powers which that new knowledge opened, and about the methods of realising this great prospect.

This, the passion of his life, never asleep even in the hottest days of business or the most hopeless days of defeat, must have had full play during these days of suspended public employment.

He was a man who was not easily satisfied with his attempts to arrange the order and proportions of his plans for mastering that new world of unknown truth, which he held to be within the grasp of man if he would only dare to seize it; and he was much given to vary the shape of his work, and to try experiments in composition and even style.

He wrote and rewrote.

Besides what was finally published, there remains a larger quantity of work which never reached the stage of publication.

He repeated over and over again the same thoughts, the same images and characteristic sayings.

Among these papers is one which sums up his convictions about the work before him, and the vocation to which he had been called in respect of it.

It is in the form of a "Proem" to a treatise on the _Interpretation of Nature_.

It was never used in his published works;

but, as Mr. Spedding says, it has a peculiar value as an authentic statement of what he looked upon as his special business in life.

It is this mission which he states to himself in the following paper.

It is drawn up in "stately Latin."

Mr. Spedding's translation is no unworthy representation of the words of the great Prophet of Knowledge: "Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the Commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

"Now among all the benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life....

But if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature--a light that should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our present knowledge; and so spreading further and further should presently disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the world--that man (I thought) would be the benefactor indeed of the human race--the propagator of man's empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror and subduer of necessities.

"For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to reconsider, carefulness to dispose and set in order;

and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.

So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.

"Nevertheless, because my birth and education had seasoned me in business of State; and because opinions (so young as I was) would sometimes stagger me; and because I thought that a man's own country has some special claims upon him more than the rest of the world;

and because I hoped that, if I rose to any place of honour in the State, I should have a larger command of industry and ability to help me in my work--for these reasons I both applied myself to acquire the arts of civil life, and commended my service, so far as in modesty and honesty I might, to the favour of such friends as had any influence.

In which also I had another motive: for I felt that those things I have spoken of--be they great or small--reach no further than the condition and culture of this mortal life; and I was not without hope (the condition of religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold office in the State, I might get something done too for the good of men's souls.

When I found, however, that my zeal was mistaken for ambition, and my life had already readied the turning-point, and my breaking health reminded me how ill I could afford to be so slow, and I reflected, moreover, that in leaving undone the good that I could do by myself alone, and applying myself to that which could not be done without the help and consent of others, I was by no means discharging the duty that lay upon me--I put all those thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work.

Nor am I discouraged from it because I see signs in the times of the decline and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use.

Not that I apprehend any more barbarian invasions (unless possibly the Spanish empire should recover its strength, and having crushed other nations by arms should itself sink under its own weight); but the civil wars which may be expected, I think (judging from certain fashions which have come in of late), to spread through many countries--together with the malignity of sects, and those compendious artifices and devices which have crept into the place of solid erudition--seem to portend for literature and the sciences a tempest not less fatal, and one against which the Printing-office will be no effectual security.

And no doubt but that fair-weather learning which is nursed by leisure, blossoms under reward and praise, which cannot withstand the shock of opinion, and is liable to be abused by tricks and quackery, will sink under such impediments as these.

Far otherwise is it with that knowledge whose dignity is maintained by works of utility and power.

For the injuries, therefore, which should proceed from the times, I am not afraid of them; and for the injuries which proceed from men, I am not concerned.

For if any one charge me with seeking to be wise over-much, I answer simply that modesty and civil respect are fit for civil matters; in contemplations nothing is to be respected but Truth.

If any one call on me for _works_, and that presently, I tell him frankly, without any imposture at all, that for me--a man not old, of weak health, my hands full of civil business, entering without guide or light upon an argument of all others the most obscure--I hold it enough to have constructed the machine, though I may not succeed in setting it on work....

If, again, any one ask me, not indeed for actual works, yet for definite premises and forecasts of the works that are to be, I would have him know that the knowledge which we now possess will not teach a man even what to _wish_.

Lastly--though this is a matter of less moment--if any of our politicians, who used to make their calculations and conjectures according to persons and precedents, must needs interpose his judgment in a thing of this nature, I would but remind him how (according to the ancient fable) the lame man keeping the course won the race of the swift man who left it; and that there is no thought to be taken about precedents, for the thing is without precedent.

"For myself, my heart is not set upon any of those things which depend upon external accidents.

I am not hunting for fame: I have no desire to found a sect, after the fashion of heresiarchs; and to look for any private gain from such an undertaking as this I count both ridiculous and base.

Enough for me the consciousness of well-deserving, and those real and effectual results with which Fortune itself cannot interfere."

In 1604 James's first Parliament met, and with it Bacon returned to an industrious public life, which was not to be interrupted till it finally came to an end with his strange and irretrievable fall.

The opportunity had come; and Bacon, patient, vigilant, and conscious of great powers and indefatigable energy, fully aware of all the conditions of the time, pushed at once to the front in the House of Commons.

He lost no time in showing that he meant to make himself felt.

The House of Commons had no sooner met than it was involved in a contest with the Chancery, with the Lords, and finally with the King himself, about its privileges--in this case its exclusive right to judge of the returns of its members.

Bacon's time was come for showing the King both that he was willing to do him service, and that he was worth being employed.

He took a leading part in the discussions, and was trusted by the House as their spokesman and reporter in the various conferences.

The King, in his overweening confidence in his absolute prerogative, had, indeed, got himself into serious difficulty; for the privilege was one which it was impossible for the Commons to give up.

But Bacon led the House to agree to an arrangement which saved their rights; and under a cloud of words of extravagant flattery he put the King in good-humour, and elicited from him the spontaneous proposal of a compromise which ended a very dangerous dispute.

"The King's voice," said Bacon, in his report to the House, "was the voice of God in man, the good spirit of God in the mouth of man; I do not say the voice of God and not of man; I am not one of Herod's flatterers; a curse fell upon him that said it, a curse on him that suffered it.

We might say, as was said to Solomon, We are glad, O King, that we give account to you, because you discern what is spoken."

The course of this Parliament, in which Bacon was active and prominent, showed the King, probably for the first time, what Bacon was.

The session was not so stormy as some of the later ones; but occasions arose which revealed to the King and to the House of Commons the deeply discordant assumptions and purposes by which each party was influenced, and which brought out Bacon's powers of adjusting difficulties and harmonising claims.

He never wavered in his loyalty to his own House, where it is clear that his authority was great.

But there was no limit to the submission and reverence which he expressed to the King, and, indeed, to his desire to bring about what the King desired, as far as it could be safely done.

Dealing with the Commons, his policy was "to be content with the substance and not to stand on the form."

Dealing with the King, he was forward to recognise all that James wanted recognised of his kingcraft and his absolute sovereignty.

Bacon assailed with a force and keenness which showed what he could do as an opponent, the amazing and intolerable grievances arising out of the survival of such feudal customs as Wardship and Purveyance; customs which made over a man's eldest son and property, during a minority, to the keeping of the King, that is, to a King's favourite, and allowed the King's servants to cut down a man's timber before the windows of his house.

But he urged that these grievances should be taken away with the utmost tenderness for the King's honour and the King's purse.

In the great and troublesome questions relating to the Union he took care to be fully prepared.

He was equally strong on points of certain and substantial importance, equally quick to suggest accommodations where nothing substantial was touched.

His attitude was one of friendly and respectful independence.

It was not misunderstood by the King.

Bacon, who had hitherto been an unsworn and unpaid member of the Learned Counsel, now received his office by patent, with a small salary, and he was charged with the grave business of preparing the work for the Commissioners for the Union of the Kingdoms, in which, when the Commission met, he took a foremost and successful part.

But the Parliament before which their report was to be laid did not meet till ten months after the work of the Commission was done (Dec.

, 1604--Nov.

, 1605).

For nearly another year Bacon had no public work.

The leisure was used for his own objects.

He was interested in history in a degree only second to his interest in nature; indeed, but for the engrossing claims of his philosophy of nature, he might have been the first and one of the greatest of our historians.

He addressed a letter to the Chancellor Ellesmere on the deficiencies of British history, and on the opportunities which offered for supplying them.

He himself could at present do nothing; "but because there be so many good painters, both for hand and colours, it needeth but encouragement and instructions to give life and light unto it."

But he mistook, in this as in other instances, the way in which such things are done.

Men do not accomplish such things to order, but because their souls compel them, as he himself was building up his great philosophical structure, in the midst of his ambition and disappointment.

And this interval of quiet enabled him to bring out his first public appeal on the subject which most filled his mind.

He completed in English the _Two Books of the Advancement of Knowledge_, which were published at a book-shop at the gateway of Gray's Inn in Holborn (Oct.

, 1605).

He intended that it should be published in Latin also; but he was dissatisfied with the ornate translation sent him from Cambridge, and probably he was in a hurry to get the book out.

It was dedicated to the King, not merely by way of compliment, but with the serious hope that his interest might be awakened in the subjects which were nearest Bacon's heart.

Like other of Bacon's hopes, it was disappointed.

The King's studies and the King's humours were not of the kind to make him care for Bacon's visions of the future, or his eager desire to begin at once a novel method of investigating the facts and laws of nature; and the appeal to him fell dead.

Bacon sent the book about to his friends with explanatory letters.

To Sir T. Bodley he writes: "I think no man may more truly say with the Psalm, _Multum incola fuit anima mea_ [Ps.

120] than myself.

For I do confess since I was of any understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from that I have done; and in absence are many errors which I willingly acknowledge; and among them, this great one which led the rest: that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part, I have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by the preoccupation of my mind.

Therefore, calling myself home, I have now enjoyed myself; whereof likewise I desire to make the world partaker."

To Lord Salisbury, in a note of elaborate compliment, he describes his purpose by an image which he repeats more than once.

"I shall content myself to awake better spirits, _like a bell-ringer, which is first up to call others to church_."

But the two friends whose judgment he chiefly valued, and who, as on other occasions, were taken into his most intimate literary confidence, were Bishop Andrewes, his "inquisitor," and Toby Matthews, a son of the Archbishop of York, who had become a Roman Catholic, and lived in Italy, seeing a good deal of learned men there, apparently the most trusted of all Bacon's friends.

When Parliament met again in November, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot and its consequences filled all minds.

Bacon was not employed about it by Government, and his work in the House was confined to carrying on matters left unfinished from the previous session.

On the rumour of legal promotions and vacancies Bacon once more applied to Salisbury for the Solicitorship (March, 1606).

But no changes were made, and Bacon was "still next the door."

In May, 1606, he did what had for some time been in his thoughts: he married; not the lady whom Essex had tried to win for him, that Lady Hatton who became the wife of his rival Coke, but one whom Salisbury helped him to gain, an alderman's daughter, Alice Barnham, "an handsome maiden," with some money and a disagreeable mother, by her second marriage, Lady Packington.

Bacon's curious love of pomp amused the gossips of the day.

"Sir Francis Bacon," writes Carleton to Chamberlain, "was married yesterday to his young wench, in Maribone Chapel.

He was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion."

Of his married life we hear next to nothing: in his _Essay on Marriage_ he is not enthusiastic in its praise; almost the only thing we know is that in his will, twenty years afterwards, he showed his dissatisfaction with his wife, who after his death married again.

But it gave him an additional reason, and an additional plea, for pressing for preferment, and in the summer of 1606 the opening came.

Coke was made Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, leaving the Attorney's place vacant.

A favourite of Salisbury's, Hobart, became Attorney, and Bacon hoped for some arrangement by which the Solicitor Doddridge might be otherwise provided for, and he himself become Solicitor.

Hopeful as he was, and patient of disappointments, and of what other men would have thought injustice and faithlessness, he felt keenly both the disgrace and the inconvenience of so often expecting place, and being so often passed over.

While the question was pending, he wrote to the King, the Chancellor, and Salisbury.

His letter to the King is a record in his own words of his public services.

To the Chancellor, whom he believed to be his supporter, he represented the discredit which he suffered--he was a common gaze and a speech;" "the little reputation which by his industry he gathered, being scattered and taken away by continual disgraces, _every new man coming above me_;" and his wife and his wife's friends were making him feel it.

The letters show what Bacon thought to be his claims, and how hard he found it to get them recognised.

To the Chancellor he urged, among other things, that time was slipping by-- "I humbly pray your Lordship to consider that time groweth precious with me, and that a married man is seven years elder in his thoughts the first day....

And were it not to satisfy my wife's friends, and to get myself out of being a common gaze and a speech, I protest before God I would never speak word for it.

But to conclude, as my honourable Lady your wife was some mean to make me to change the name of another, so if it please you to help me to change my own name, I can be but more and more bounden to you; and I am much deceived if your Lordship find not the King well inclined, and my Lord of Salisbury forward and affectionate."

To Salisbury he writes: "I may say to your Lordship, in the confidence of your poor kinsman, and of a man by you advanced, _Tu idem fer opem, qui spem dedisti_; for I am sure it was not possible for any living man to have received from another more significant and comfortable words of hope; your Lordship being pleased to tell me, during the course of my last service, that you would raise me; and that when you had resolved to raise a man, you were more careful of him than himself;

and that what you had done for me in my marriage was a benefit to me, but of no use to your Lordship....

And I know, and all the world knoweth, that your Lordship is no dealer of holy water, but noble and real; and on my part I am of a sure ground that I have committed nothing that may deserve alteration.

And therefore my hope is your Lordship will finish a good work, and consider that time groweth precious with me, and that I am now _vergentibus annis_.

And although I know your fortune is not to need an hundred such as I am, yet I shall be ever ready to give you my best and first fruits, and to supply (as much as in me lieth) worthiness by thankfulness."

Still the powers were deaf to his appeals; at any rate he had to be content with another promise.

Considering the ability which he had shown in Parliament, the wisdom and zeal with which he had supported the Government, and the important position which he held in the House of Commons, the neglect of him is unintelligible, except on two suppositions: that the Government, that is Cecil, were afraid of anything but the mere routine of law, as represented by such men as Hobart and Doddridge; or that Coke's hostility to him was unabated, and Coke still too important to be offended.

Bacon returned to work when the Parliament met, November, 1606. The questions arising out of the Union, the question of naturalisation, its grounds and limits, the position of Scotchmen born _before_ or _since_ the King's accession, the _Antenati_ and _Postnati_, the question of a union of laws, with its consequences, were discussed with great keenness and much jealous feeling.

On the question of naturalisation Bacon took the liberal and larger view.

The immediate union of laws he opposed as premature.

He was a willing servant of the House, and the House readily made use of him.

He reported the result of conferences, even when his own opinion was adverse to that of the House.

And he reported the speeches of such persons as Lord Salisbury, probably throwing into them both form and matter of his own.

At length, "silently, on the 25th of June," 1607, he was appointed Solicitor-General.

He was then forty-seven.

"It was also probably about this time," writes Mr. Spedding, "that Bacon finally settled the plan of his '_Great Instauration_,' and began to call it by that name."

CHAPTER IV.