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reputation. The union of the two crowns in the person of one sovereign, was extremely dreaded by foreigners, and in particular by Henry the fourth of France. The accession of a new kingdom to the native force of England, which even alone had been long formidable on the continent; the alliance of James with the most potent monarch of the North; his relation to the house of Lorrain, which had lately embroiled all France, rendered such fears very probable. But his conduct dissipated them for ever: and all Europe quickly saw, that no people but his own had any thing to apprehend from his power. At his arrival in England, he bestowed titles and honours with so wild a profusion, that there hardly remained any other mark of distinction but that of having Wilson, escaped them. The public stood amazed; and pasquinades were openly affixed, undertaking to assist weaker memories to a competent knowledge of the nobility. Sir Francis Bacon, who had been early in his homage, and application for favour, to the new sovereign, was knighted by him in person: and has left us the following picture of him, strongly touched in its most obvious features. "His speech," says he, "is swift and cursory; and in the full dialect of his "country in matters of business, short; in general

P. 7.

Bacon,
Vol. V.
Letter
LXXIII.

An. 1605.

66

66

discourse, large. He affecteth popularity, by gracing "such as he hath heard to be popular; not by any "fashions of his own. He is thought somewhat ge"neral in his favours; and his easiness of access is "rather because he is much abroad and in a crowd, "than that he giveth easy audience. He hasteneth "to a mixture of both kingdoms and occasions faster, "perhaps, than policy will well bear."

In 1605, Sir Francis Bacon recommended himself to the king's particular notice, as well as to the general esteem of his cotemporaries, by publishing a work he had long meditated; The Progress and Advancement of Learning. The great aim of this treatise, no less original in the design than happy in the execution, was to survey accurately the whole state and extent of the intellectual world; what parts of it had

been unsuccessfully cultivated; what lay still neglected, or unknown; and by what methods these might be discovered; and those improved to the farther advantage of society and human nature. By exposing the errors and imperfections of our knowledge, he led mankind into the only right way of supplying the one, and reforming the other: he taught them to know their wants. He even went farther, and himself pointed out to them the general methods of correction and improvement in the whole circle of arts and sciences. This work he first published in Tennison's English; but to render it of more extensive use, he Baconiana, recommended a translation of it into Latin to Dr. Playfer of Cambridge. Playfer, with the scrupulous accuracy of a grammarian, was more attentive to fashion his style to purity and roundness of periods, made out of the phraseology he had gleaned from classic writers, than to render his author's meaning in clear and masculine language. After the sight of a specimen or two, Sir Francis did not encourage him to proceed in it. He himself, after his retirement, very much enlarged and corrected the original, and with the assistance of some friends, turned the whole into Latin. This is the edition of 1623; and stands p. 27. as the first part to his great Instauration of the Sciences.

p. 25.

I have already observed that Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, opposed the progress of our author's fortune under Elizabeth: and he seems to have observed the same conduct towards him in the present reign, till he had fixed himself in the king's confidence so firmly as to be above all fear of a rival. Besides him, Sir Francis Bacon found a violent and lasting enemy in a man of his own profession, Sir Edward Coke; who, with great parts, had many and Stephens's signal failings. The quarrel betwixt them seems to tions, p.ix. have been personal: and it lasted to the end of their lives. Coke was jealous of Bacon's reputation in many parts of knowledge; by whom, again, he was envied for the high reputation he had acquired in one; each aiming to be admired, particularly,

Collec

for that in which the other excelled. This affectation in two extraordinary men has something in it very mean, and is not uncommon. The former was the greatest lawyer of his time; but could be nothing more. If the latter was not so, we can ascribe it only to his aiming at a more exalted character. The universality of his genius could not be confined within one inferior province of learning. If learning thus divided is not so proper to raise a singular name in one way, it serves to enlarge the understanding on every side, and to enlighten it in all its views. As the name of Sir Edward Coke will occur oftner than once in this history, and as he stood in particular competition to Bacon, I beg leave to dwell a little longer on his character. In his State Tri- pleadings he was apt to insult over misery. Of als, Vol. I. this we have a detestable instance in his behaviour p.207, &c. to Sir Walter Raleigh. He inveighed against that brave man on his trial with all the bitterness of cruelty, and in a style of such abandoned railing as bordered almost on fury: I wish I could not add, that this bitterness, this intemperance of tongue, seem to be the genuine effusions of his heart *. He conversed, it seems, more with books than men; and among the latter, with those only to whom he could dictate and give the law. The consequence of which was, that his conversation had all the air of a lecture; and that he retailed for new, a hundred stories that were either stale or trivial. He affected raillery, which was by no means his talent. His wit was often ill aimed, as it was always indelicate and vulgar; the rough horse-play of a pedant. Though he had accumulated immense wealth,

*The offices of Attorney and Solicitor General have been rocks upon which many aspiring lawyers have made shipwreck of their virtue and human nature. Some of those gentlemen have acted at the bar as if they thought themselves, by the duty of their places, absolved from all the obligations of truth, honour, and decency. But their names are upon record, and will be transmitted to after ages with those characters of reproach and abhorrence that are due to the worst sort of murderers; those that murder under the sanction of justice.

in his profession and by several rich marriages, he was of a sordid avarice; a severe master, a griping landlord; in prosperity insolent, dejected and fawning in adversity: the same poorness of spirit influencing his behaviour in both conditions. One example of this may serve in place of several: after his disgrace, he submissively courted Buckingham's brother to a match with his daughter: in the height of his favour, he had rejected the same proposal with scorn. His profound skill in the common law has been universally allowed: and to this we cannot have a more unquestionable witness than Sir Francis Bacon; one State Tr. every way fit to judge, and an enemy. He was Vol. II. raised to be Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in P. 542. 1606, and of the King's Bench in 1613. On the bench he was above corruption: and had this saying frequently in his mouth, that a judge should neither give nor take a bribe. In the case of Peacham, in Bacon, the business of Commendams, he behaved himself Vol. V. with the honesty and firmness of one who knew that a judge ought neither to be flattered nor menaced out of his integrity. Towards the latter part of his life, he struck in with the country party in parliament, and stood in the breach against the arbitrary measures of James and Charles. He died in the reign of the latter, aged 88 years.

Letter

CXLV.

At length Sir Francis Bacon obtained the place he An. 1607. had so long expected; and in 1607 was declared — Solicitor General. This preferment was the effect of many letters and much instance on his part, to the earl of Salisbury, the lord chancellor Egerton, and the king himself. Neither do I find that he was ever promoted to any post without repeated and earnest application to ministers and favourites: a reflection that may serve at once to mortify and instruct an ambitious man of parts.

James had, from the beginning of his reign, passionately desired an union of Scotland and England: but his unreasonable partiality to the former, reckoning it as an equal half of the island, rendered the design abortive. Though Sir Francis Bacon laboured this argu

ment with all the arts of wit and reason, his eloquence, powerful as it was, had no effect on the house of commons. The parliament even shewed itself averse to this union, in proportion as the court appeared zealous for it. The new sovereign's conduct had alarmed them. They saw that, with a strong disposition to be profuse, he was absolutely in the power of favourites; and that some of the least valuable among his subjects were most in his favour. They saw farther, that he began already to propagate maxims of government destructive to liberty, and inconsistent with the whole tenor of the constitution. These things filled observing men with apprehensions for the future, which unhappily were but too well founded. The whole sum of his politics, both now and afterwards, was to distaste and alienate his subjects at home; to dishonour both himself and them abroad. It was a reign of embassies and negotiations, alike fruitless and expensive: a reign of favourites and proclamations, of idle amusements and arbitrary impositions. It was besides the great era of flattery. The ancient national simplicity of manners which ever accompanies magnanimity, and manly freedom of speech the noble effect of both, were now in a great measure lost; altered and effeminated into prostitute adulation and servile homage. This was become the fashionable language among the clergy as well as laity, and James heard himself daily addressed to, by the titles of sacred and divine: titles which discover the meanness rather than the dignity of human nature; and which, applied to him, were glaringly ridiculous. He had not one princely quality. The arts of governing a kingdom in peace he either did not, or would not understand: and his horror of war was constitutional and unconquerable. It may therefore seem unaccountable that a king of this temper should treat his parliaments with more haughtiness than any of his predecessors had ever done. But he had been told that England was neither to be exhausted nor provoked: and his actions shewed that he believed so, according to the letter.

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