Epsley, who was then setting out for Spain. And perhaps another letter, entreating his friendly services, which he sent to Gondomar soon after by Mr. Tobie Matthew, may relate to the same affair. In the end, however, the Provostship was given neither to Bacon nor to Sir William Becher, but to Sir Henry Wotton, who was inducted on the 26th of July, 1624.

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Bacon received no other place or office. His only cell of rest continued to be his old lodgings in Gray's Inn Square, from which, however, he occasionally retired to his country-seat at Gorhambury. "He died," says Dr. Rawley, on the 9th day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining, that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast that he died by suffocation." A short time before his death he dictated the following letter to Lord Arundel, from which we learn the circumstances under which he had repaired to his Lordship's house:-" My very good Lord, I was likely to have had the fortune of Caius Plinius the Elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the mount Vesuvius; for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey, between London and Highgate, I was taken with such a fit of casting [vomiting], as I knew not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me; which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to

it. I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than mine own; but, by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen." It is evident, however, that Bacon did not think he was dying when this was written. John Aubrey relates, that when Bacon was attacked by his illness he was accompanied by Dr. Witherborne, the King's Physician, and that, seeing snow on the ground as they approached Highgate, coming from London, they alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the foot of Highgate Hill, where they bought a hen, and stuffed the body with snow, Bacon assisting in the operation with his own hands. Aubrey further states that the bed into which he was put at Lord Arundel's house was damp, and had not been slept in for a year before. He breathed his last in the arms of his friend, and relation by marriage, Sir Julius Caesar, the Master of the Robes, who had been sent for at the commencement of his illness.

PART III.

BACON'S LEGAL, POLITICAL, AND EPISTOLARY WRITINGS.

BACON's enduring fame is that of a moralist, an historian, and a philosopher; but in his own day he was chiefly known as a lawyer and a politician. Ethics, theology, history, and philosophy were but the studies and pursuits of his leisure; his professional occupations were law and politics. Nor have his legal and political writings by any means yet lost all their interest and value. Here too we have his fertile, ingenious, abundant mind everywhere at work, and the same rich eloquence gilding whatever it touches with sunshine.

A very summary account, however, of the pieces composing this division of our author's works will suffice for our present purpose.

The tract entitled The Elements of the Common Law of England' has been already mentioned.* It is introduced by a Dedication to Elizabeth dated 1596, and also by a Preface; but both these addresses, as has been already remarked, refer only to the First Part of the work, which is entitled A Collection of some of the principal Rules and Maxims of the Common Law, with their Latitude and Extent.' The Second Part, entitled The Use of the Common Law for Preservation of our Persons, Goods, and Good Names, according to the Practice of the Law and Customs of this Land,'

*See ante, Vol. I. p. 17.

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appears to have been subsequently compiled. The two Parts were printed for the first time together, in 4to., at London, in 1630. In the Dedication of The Maxims' Bacon speaks of the collection as having been suggested both by what had been published by the Lord Chancellor, speaking for the queen, in full parliament in the year 1593, and much more by what he had himself been vouchsafed to understand from her majesty," imparting [importing ?]," he says, a purpose for these many year's infused into your majesty's breast to enter into a general amendment of the state of your laws, and to reduce them to more brevity and certainty, that the great hollowness and unsafety in assurances of lands and goods may be strengthened, the snaring penalties that lie upon many subjects removed, the execution of many profitable laws revived, the judge better directed in his sentence, the counsellor better warranted in his counsel, the student eased in his reading, the contentious suitor, that seeketh but vexation, disarmed, and the honest suitor, that seeketh but to obtain his right, relieved." In giving an account of his work in the Preface he says: I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endea vour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.. Having therefore from the beginning come to the study of the laws of this realm with a mind and desire no less, if I could attain unto it, that the same laws should be the better by my industry than that myself should be the better by the knowledge of them, I do not find that by mine own travail, without the help of authority, I can in any kind prefer so profitable an addition unto that science as by collecting the rules and grounds dispersed throughout the body of the same laws." The collection comprehends twenty-five general maxims or rules, which are illustrated by explanations and short examples. No rules, it is stated, have been omitted because they are ordinary or vulgar; those that concur with the civil or Roman law have been set down in the same words that

the civilians use; no certain method or order has been observed, because (a favourite principle with Bacon) "this delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjoined aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and to toss, and to make use of that which is so delivered to more several purposes and applications ;" the rules are set down only in Latin, without regard to grace or ornament of expression, or to anything in style except the preservation of the proper terms and technical language of the law; and no references to the books are given; "for although," says Bacon," the meanness of mine own person may now at first extenuate the authority of this collection, and that every man is adventurous to control; yet surely, according to Gamaliel's reason, if it be of weight, time will settle and authorize it; if it be light and weak, time will reprove it. So that, to conclude, you have here a work without any glory of affected novelty, or of method, or of language, or of quotations and authorities, dedicated only to use, and submitted only to the censure of the learned, and chiefly of time." What chiefly, however, makes the maxims profitable and instructive, he conceives, is the examples with which he has accompanied them. Finally, he adds, "Though I have thus, with as much discretion and foresight as I could, ordered this work, and, as I may say, without all colours or shows, husbanded it best to profit; yet nevertheless, not wholly trusting to mine own judgment, having collected three hundred of them, I thought good, before I brought them all into form, to publish some few, that, by the taste of other men's opinions in this first, I might receive either approbation in mine own course or better advice for the altering of the other which remain; for it is great reason that that which is intended to the profit of others should be guided by the conceits of others." The Second Part, on the Use of the Law, is a compendious account of the practice and administration of the English law both in criminal and civil cases. It appears, however, to be unfinished. The use of the law is defined as consisting " principally in these three things: 1. To se