Bacon Bacon CXLV. serting in a sermon several passages accounted treasonable, for it seems they reflected on the ministry; but in a sermon never preached, nor ever intended to be made public. The king, who was beyond measure jealous on this head, fearing the man might either be acquitted on his trial, or not condemned to a capital punishment, had ordered his attorney general Bacon to sound the judges before-hand, and gather their opinions secretly and apart. My lord Coke obstinately refused to declare his; looking on this auricular taking of opinions, for so he named it, as not according to the custom of the realm, but new, and of pernicious tendency. About the same time. he had determined a cause at common law. The plaintiff, who thought himself injured, would not abide by his decision, but applied to chancery for CXXVIII, relief: where the defendant refused to appear, disclaiming the authority of that court: in which he was supported by the Chief Justice, who threatened the Chancellor with a premunire, grounded on a statute made 27th Edw. III. for thus invading the limits of his jurisdiction. The king, who thought his prerogative struck at anew in this attack on the court of his absolute power, as Bacon styles it, had the matter examined before the council; who condemned the Chief Justice for what he had done, and obliged him to make a submission on his knees. But what completed the distaste taken at him, was his behaviour in a cause of the bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, to whom the king had granted a vacant church in commendam. Serjeant Chiborne, who was counsel against the bishop, in arguing the case had maintained several positions, reckoned prejudicial and derogatory to the king's supreme and imperial power, which was affirmed to be distinct from, and of a higher nature than his ordinary authority. Informed of this, James, by his attorney general Bacon, ordered the judges to stay further proceedings in that business, till they had consulted with him. The judges assembled, and unanimously agreed, that they could not obey this order; that Letter CXLVIII. the letter they had received was contrary to law; that by their oath and the duty of their places they were not to delay justice; that they had therefore proceeded in the cause at the time fixed: and of this they certified the king in a writing under all their hands. Upon this remonstrance, he writ them an angry letter, and peremptorily commanded them to stay all proceedings, till his return to London. They were then summoned before the council, and sharply repri manded for suffering the popular lawyers to question his prerogative, which was represented as sacred and transcendent, not to be handled or mentioned in vulgar argument. At last raising his voice to frighten them into submission, he put this question to them severally: "If, at any time, in a case depending be"fore the judges, he conceived it to concern him "either in profit or power, and thereupon required to " consult with them, and that they should stay proceedings in the mean time; whether they ought "not to stay them accordingly?" They all, the Chief Justice only excepted, acknowledged it their duty to do so. His answer deserves to be for ever remembered: "That when such a case happened, he Bacon "would do that which should be fit for a judge "do." 66 to Vol. V. CXLVIII. Yet this great lawyer, who had the honest courage to resist the king to his face, wanted that independence of mind which alone enables a man to bear solitude, and an acquaintance with himself. His disgrace, which reflected more honour on him than all his preferments, he was unable to support; and therefore he soon after sued to be reinstated in the king's favour. To recover it, he meanly enough courted the favourite with an offer, which he would not hear of when it was formerly made to him. While in power, he had refused to give his daughter Vol. V. in marriage to Sir John Villiers, not without marks Letter of disrespect: he now submissively intreated the CLXXXI same person to honour him with his alliance: and employed Secretary Winwood to inform the earl of Buckingham of his extreme concern for what bad CLXXX, Bacon CXLII, to passed with regard to the earl's brother; that he now passionately wished the treaty might be renewed and accomplished; adding, that they should make their own terms of settlement, if his proposal was accepted. As the young lady was not only a celebrated beauty, but a great fortune, the person most interested made no difficulty to close with this proposal; and his mother recommended it to her second son with warmth. This alarmed the lord keeper Bacon. Ever jealous of Coke's reputation, and at odds with him, he dreaded his alliance with so powerful a family. His imagination suggested to him all the danger that threatened his present and future fortunes from this union and he could not forget that he had lately L. Coke. treated his antagonist with a freedom that rather insulted than admonished him. These apprehensions made him cast about how to defeat the intended match, by raising such objections to it as might touch the king and his favourite in point of public honour and advantage. His letters to both, on that occasion, are written with the perplexity of a man who fears something he is unwilling to own; which yet his prudence passes over with a seeming unconcern, to enlarge only upon considerations that regard those .whom he would be thought to serve. But this management proved ineffectual. It was resented by the earl of Buckingham, and checked by a rough answer from the king. The lady Compton too, informed of the part he was acting, gave a loose to her tongue, and railed at him with a bitterness natural to women when they are thwarted in any favourite pursuit of interest or passion. Having thus, to prevent a distant and uncertain danger, involved himself in one that was real and immediate, he made no scruple to change sides at once; to go directly against his former opinion; and to offer unasked his interest in the young lady's mother for promoting the match he had just CLXXXIV. been labouring to disappoint. On such trivial accidents do the fortunes of ministers depend: and to such little and shameful arts is ambition often obliged to stoop. Nor even thus did he presently regain his Letter credit with Buckingham. The family continued to load him with reproaches; and he remained long under that agony of heart which an aspiring man must feel, when his power and dignity are at the mercy of a king's minion, young, and giddy with his elevation, and who thinks himself offended. They were however reconciled at last; and their friendship, if obsequiousness in one to all the humours of the other deserves the name of friendship, continued without interruption for some years; while Buckingham went on daily to place and displace the great officers of the crown, as wantonness of fancy, or anger, or interest led him; to recommend or discountenance every private person who had a suit depending in any court, just as he was influenced; to authorize and protect every illegal project, that could serve most speedily to enrich himself or his kindred. In a word, he became formidable even to the master who had raised him from the dust, and who should have still awed him by his authority: and this amidst the dissipation of a life, given up to idle amusements, or sullied with criminal pleasures. In the beginning of 1619, Sir Francis Bacon was An. 1619: created lord high Chancellor of England, and shortly after baron of Verulam; which title he exchanged the year following, for that of viscount St. Albans. Such events in his life as these may be passed over slightly: he was so great a man, that external honours could add no lustre to his name. Indeed had they been the immediate reward of those nobler services he had done, and was still meditating to do his country, they might deserve more particular notice, for the sake of him who bestowed them. Neither the weight and variety of business, nor the pomps of a court, could divert his attention from the study of philosophy. Those were his avocations and incumbrances; this was his beloved employment, and almost the only pleasure in which he indulged his freer and better hours. He gave to the public in 1620 his Novum Organon, as a second part to his An. 1620. grand Instauration of the Sciences: a work that for twelve years together he had been methodizing, altering, and polishing; till he had laboured the whole into a series of aphorisms, as it now appears. Of all his writings this seems to have undergone the strictest revision, and to be finished with the severest judgment. Indeed the form into which it is cast admits of nothing foreign, of nothing merely ornamental. The lights and embellishments of imagination, the grace and harmony of style, are rejected here, as beauties either superfluous, or of an inferior nature. The author has, besides, made use of several terms in a new and peculiar sense, which may have discouraged some readers, as it has made others imagine them equally unintelligible with the horrors of a vacuum, the quiddities, and substantial forms, of the philosophy which he attempted to discredit: and therefore, of all his writings it has been the least read, or understood. It was intended as a more useful, a more extensive logic than the world had yet been acquainted with: an art not conversant about syllogisms, and modes of argumentation, that may be serviceable sometimes in arranging truths already known, or in detecting fallacies that lie concealed among our own reasonings and those of other men; but an art inventive of arts: productive of new discoveries, real, important, and of general use to human life. This he proposed, by turning our attention from notions to things; from those subtle and frivolous speculations that dazzle, not enlighten, the understanding, to a sober and sensible investigation of the laws and powers of nature, in a way becoming sages who make truth and information the sole aim of their inquiries. In order to this, his first endeavour was to weed out of the mind such errors as naturally grow in it, or have been planted there by education, and cherished by the influence of men, whose writings had long claimed a right of prescription to rule and mislead mankind. To a mind thus prepared for instruction, he proposes the second and scientifical part of his scheme, the true method of interpreting nature, by fact and observation; by sound and ge |