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release, as a matter of fact he did not write till fifteen days afterwards, and this at a time when the fortunes of Essex were in their very crisis, and when a word from a friend might have changed his destiny.

The "good services" were of a very tortuous nature. They consisted in writing letters in the name of Essex to Anthony Bacon, and in the name of Anthony Bacon to Essex, which letters, being shown by Bacon to the Queen, were to produce a favourable impression upon her. They were certainly most artistically composed, the impassioned antithetical euphuistic prose of Essex being admirably imitated, and Essex being made in the course of one of his letters to request his correspondent to burn it. "You know letters what hurt they have done me, and therefore make sure of this." But the most striking characteristic of these letters is as the reader will probably be prepared by this time to believe-that they all tend to magnify Bacon himself in the eyes of the Queen. Essex is not forgotten; but Essex stands second and Francis Bacon first. This consideration will explain many discrepancies between those letters, and the "Apology." For example, the "Apology" distinctly states that the Queen was bent upon calling Essex to trial, and that he endeavoured to dissuade her :

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"I besought her Majesty to be advised again and again, how she brought the cause into any public question. . . Immediately after, the Queen had thought of a course to have somewhat published in the Star Chamberwhich when her Majesty propounded unto me, I was utterly against it. . . Towards the end of Easter term her Majesty told me that she was determined now for the satisfaction of the world, to proceed against my Lord ad castigationem, et non ad destructionem-whereunto, I said, utterly to divert her, &c. Nevertheless, afterwards it pleased her to make a more solemn matter of the proceeding."

Compare this-than which nothing can be more explicit--with the exactly contradictory statement written by Francis Bacon in the letter supposed to be written to Essex by Anthony Bacon:

"I do assure your Lordship that my brother Francis Bacon, who is too wise (I think) to be abused, and too honest to abuse, though he be more reserved in all particulars than is needful, yet in generality he hath ever constantly and with asseveration affirmed to me that both those days, that of the Star Chamber and that at my Lord Keeper's, were won from the Queen merely upon necessity and point of honour, against her own inclination."

Letters. or "Apology," which are we to believe now? One's head turns round in bewilderment at the subtle complication of deceit within deceit. A little consideration will show, I think, that for once the "Apology" is true and the letter false. When the "Apology was written, Queen Elizabeth was dead, and there was no motive for denying a truth which would have made her unpopular; but when the letter was written, she was living, and the letter was intended to be read by her: and what could have gratified her

more, and more conciliated her to her faithful Francis Bacon, than to find that her servant had thus shielded her, even in his intercourse with his dearest friends, maintaining "reserve" in all details of her matters, and, even in "generalities," not shrinking from falsehood in her service to deceive his own brother?

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And this is the man who, according to Mr. Spedding, "all his life long had been studying to know and speak the truth!" And Mr. Spedding adds, "I doubt whether there was ever any man whose evidence in matters of fact may be more absolutely relied on." I know few things more extraordinary than this childlike confidence in Bacon's truthfulness on the part of one who has studied Bacon for five-and-twenty years. For surely, with the exception of Mr. Spedding, no reader of Bacon's Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation ought to be unprepared for Bacon's being untruthful. He gives us fair warning that we are not to expect him to employ truth where truth is inconvenient. A habit of simulation is no doubt bad; that he admits. But dissimulation is to be "in reasonable use, and a power to feign when there is no remedy." Not that Bacon could willingly resort to the clumsy awkwardness of a direct lie; only once, as far as I know, is he charged with anything approaching to this. When he simulates, he simulates artistically, with a substantial element of truth, and just the necessary, and no more than the necessary, admixture of falsehood to produce the requisite effect. Sometimes, indeed, we might be disposed to set down some of Bacon's simulations to the score of shortness of memory. For example, when he has written to Lord Keeper Puckering, "There hath nothing happened to me in the course of my business more contrary to my expectation than, your lordship's failing me and crossing me now in the now in the conclusion," and a few days afterwards, remembers "not further of his letter," except that I hoped your Lordship would do me no wrong;" this confusion of the perfect and the future tenses may be fairly accounted for by a versatile memory, habitually erring on the side of recollecting only what is convenient and forgetting what is inconvenient, though even in that case, such versatility of memory would scarcely be compatible with the eulogium pronounced by Mr. Spedding, that he “doubts whether there was ever any man whose evidence on matters of fact may be more absolutely relied on." But there are too many cases to which this lenient solution will not apply. Here, for example, is a case where Bacon deliberately recommends King James to use "simulation." He advises the King to suggest to the fallen Somerset the possibility that his fortunes may be still resuscitated, and, when the King

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vii. p. 222. "That the Lord Chancellor said unto Sir George Hastings, if he would affirm the giving this hundred pounds, his lordship would and must deny it upon his honour." † Vol. i. p. 365.

replies that he can hold out no hopes of such resuscitation, this is Bacon's answer, an answer characteristic of the author of the Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation: "I am far enough from opinion that the re-integration or resuscitation of Somerset's fortune can ever stand with his Majesty's honour or safety. . . But yet the glimmering of that which the King hath done to others, by way of talk to him, cannot hurt, as I conceive." Or take another case of a lighter kind, where, however, in two letters, Bacon distinctly contradicts himself. The letter refers to the proposed marriage between Coke's daughter and the brother of Buckingham. In his first letter, Bacon assumes the high tone and dissuades the marriage on the ground of Buckingham's interests alone: "For as for me, as my judgment is not so weak to think it can do me any hurt. so my love to ycu is so strong, as I would prefer the good of you and yours before mine own particular." But six weeks afterwards we get at his real motive :- -“I did ever fear that this alliance would go near to lose me your Lordship that I hold so dear."* The letters of

Bacon teem with such expressions of untruthfulness. Still, in the face of these innumerable refutations, I am quite sure Mr. Spedding will not cease to maintain his paradox that Bacon had been "all his life long studying to know and to speak the truth." Then be it so; but he must be placed under that class of truth-seekers which might be described as "always learning and never able to come to the knowledge" of the art of speaking the truth.t

II.

From Bacon the friend we pass to Bacon the judge. Here Mr. Spedding offers me a rich harvest of surmises very tempting to criticism. When, for example, Mr. Spedding quotes the Essay on Negotiating to show that Bacon may have thought it better to remonstrate with Buckingham on his interferences, by word of mouth, rather than by letter, I am tempted to quote from the same Essay, "Letters are good when it may serve for a man's justification afterwards to produce his own letter." When Mr. Spedding surmises that Bacon may not have been so very bad in taking bribes, because, when he succeeded to the Lord Chancellorship, he may have found it already worth more than the legitimate £2,790, and it may have been even "worth more than £3,000 a year," I am tempted to show from a single page in Bacon's accounts (vi. 327) that whatever Bacon may have found it, he made it worth to himself no less than £4,160 12s. 10d. in three months. Again when Mr. Spedding surmises that Bacon "probably corrected and

* Vol. vi. 242.

+ Want of space obliges me to omit all reference to Bacon's conduct at the final trial of Essex.

reformed the practice in some particulars" because in some cases he “objected to a gift as being of too great value," it would have been interesting to point out that, in Bacon, such "objections" did not necessarily involve the return of the bribe, but that while Bacon "consulted his duty" in objecting, he could at the same time "consult his fortune" in keeping what he objected to, as when his Lordship took it and poised it, and said it was too much, and returned "-not the gift of four hundred pounds in gold but-" answer that Mr. Egerton had not only enriched him, but had laid a tie upon his Lordship to do him favour in all his just causes."

But all these matters must be passed by for the present, and we have only space to prove thus much, that on one definite occasion Bacon did, as I have maintained in my Introduction, "receive orders" from Buckingham, and did pervert justice in compliance with these orders.

A bill was filed, May 1617, by a youth not yet twenty-one against his two uncles, one, Dr. Steward by name, being a friend of Buckingham. To the plaintiff (when a child eight years old at the time of his father's death) had been left a legacy of £800, besides a share in his father's property. The rents and profits were to be taken by the executors till the sons should respectively attain the age of twenty. The executors had legacies of £200 a-piece. The executors mixed the money coming to them as executors and trustees with their own, and, when the plaintiff attained the age of twenty in March 1617, they disputed his claim to interest on the legacy, stating that they did not know whether they had "made any commodity out of the estate or not." The bill having been filed in May, the matter was brought before the Court on July 17. Bacon heard the argument on the defendant's demurrer to jurisdiction, in person, and overruled the demurrer by ordering the defendants to "answer over to the point of the legacy according to the charge in the bill." The defendants did not "answer over" for three or four months. On October 28, after the plaintiff had complained that the defendants, repeatedly refusing to attend, even when they did attend would not account-the defendants, instead of being punished, were allowed to have a Master who was a "civilian" joined at their request with Master Norton, and were given a week to proceed with their accounts. On November 3, the defendants put in their answer, and-with the full knowledge of the opinion twice implied by orders in the cause-admitting that they have refused to make any allowance for profits from the estate and legacy, they add, by way of reason, "being a thing by law not due to the plaintiff, nor yet in equity, as these defendants verily believe any man will think that shall be truly informed of this case." Upon this Master Norton and the civilian concur in a report

against them On November 28, the Solicitor-General, appearing for the defendants, was heard by the Court against the report, which, however, the Court confirmed and decreed accordingly. It was still, says Mr. Heath, open to the defendants to ask for a rehearing before the decree was signed, or failing in this, they might have moved for leave to file a Bill of Review. Instead of doing this, they disobeyed the decree and kept out of the way of process. Not till six months after the time for paying the plaintiff did Dr. Steward, when he was at last arrested, desire his objections to be considered. One year after the decree had been pronounced, Dr. Steward, alarmed at the increasing severity of the orders made by the Court to enforce obedience, appeals to Buckingham, who accordingly, December 2, 1618, writes to the Lord Chancellor as follows::

"My honourable Lord,-I having understood by Dr. Steward, that your Lordship hath made a decree against him in the Chancery, which he thinketh it very hard for him to perform; although I know how unusual it is to your Lordship to make any alterations when things are so far past, yet in regard I owe him a good turn which I know not how to perform but this way, I desire your Lordship,if there be any place left for mitigation, your Lordship would shew him what favour you may for my sake in his desires," &c.

On the following day, December 3, 1618, he writes again :—

"I have written a letter unto your Lordship which will be delivered unto you in behalf of Dr. Steward, and besides have thought fit to use all freedom with you in that as in other things. And therefore have thought fit to tell you, that being a man of very good reputation, and a stout man that will not yield to anything wherein he conceiveth any hard course against him, I should be sorry he should make any complaint against you. And therefore, if you can advise of any course how you may be eased of that burden and freed from his complaint, without shew of any fear of him or anything he can say, I will be ready to join with you for the accomplishment thereof," &c.

Now I submit, parenthetically, that for a Lord Chancellor to hold office, subject to the condition of tolerating such "freedom" from a royal favourite, is to "grovel," and that compliance with such a letter justifies me in calling Bacon, as I most emphatically do call him, the "tool of Villiere." But let that pass. Covering his shame in a postscript, and apologizing for the badness of his writing, as though the whole affair were the merest trifle, the Lord Chancellor replies on December 11:

"I forget not your Doctor's matter. I shall speak with him to-day, having received your Lordship's Letter; and what is possible shall be done. I pray you pardon my scribbling in haste."

For a Lord Chancellor determined to truckle, much was "possible." Accordingly Bacon first saw Dr. Steward privately to concert measures, and then, having called the parties together, he

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