:-" tantum non sex

"Whilst he was commorant in the university, about sixteen years of age (as his Lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy, as his Lordship used to say, only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man. In which mind he continued to his dying day." In the subsequent Latin translation the expression he uses is slightly dif ferent, and somewhat more precise :decim annos ætatis nato," when he had all but completed his sixteenth year. The time referred to, then, may be taken to have been towards the close of the year 1576. This computation agrees very well with what follows in Rawley's account :- "After he had passed the circle of the liberal arts, his father thought fit to frame and mould him for the arts of state; and, for that end, sent him over into France with Sir Amyas Paulet, then employed ambassador lieger into France." According to Mr. Montagu (Life, Note O), Sir Amyas Paulet was sent as ambassador to France in September, 1576; although he immediately subjoins an extract of a letter from Sir Amyas, dated 22nd June, 1577, in which, writing to a friend in England, he says, "One year is already spent since my departure from you." In his Sylva Sylvarum (Experiment 997) Bacon himself speaks of having been at Paris when he was "about sixteen years old."

With the exception of a short visit to England with dispatches from the ambassador to the queen, which must have been made before December, 1578, when Sir Amyas was recalled, Bacon remained in France till after the death of his father, which took place in February, 1579. In his Sylva (Experiment 986) he mentions having been in Paris when he received the news. His later biographers make him to have spent some time after the recal of Sir Amyas Paulet in visiting the provincial parts of France; and there are some traces in his writings of his having at least once made an excursion to the

south-west. In his Sylva (Experiment 365) he makes mention of a mode of thickening milk practised in a village near Blois, in such a manner as if he had seen it; and in another work of his latter years, his Historia Vitae et Mortis, he records a conversation he had had with a person whom he met when he was a young man at Poictiers. In the Sixth Book of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, he gives an account of a method of cyphers which he says he invented when he was a young man at Paris. It was in that capital, no doubt, that he spent by far the greater part, if not the whole, of the two years and a half, or thereby, that he seems to have remained abroad. Mr. Montagu mentions, as a fact illustrative of the impression he had already begun to make, "that an eminent artist, to whom, when in Paris, he sat for his portrait, was so conscious of his inability to do justice to his extraordinary intellectual endowments, that he has written on the side of his picture, Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem” (If the canvas were worthy of it, I should prefer a picture of his mind). This is the portrait of which Mr. Montagu has given an engraving in the first volume of his edition of the works of Bacon, where it is described as a miniature by Hillyard.

It appears that Bacon was entered a student of Gray's Inn on the 21st of November, 1576; his four brothers, Nicholas, Nathaniel, Edward, and Anthony, being also all entered on the same day.* He was made a Bencher of his inn in 1586; and in 1588 he was elected Lent Reader. In Gray's Inn he erected, Rawley, writing

note.

*The true date of Bacon's admission as a student of Gray's Inn was, we believe, stated for the first time in an article in the London Review,' No. IV. (for October, 1835), p. 523, It had been assumed by Mr. Montagu, that he did not commence the study of the law till 1580. The authority referred to by the London Reviewer, is the Harleian MS., 1812, which is described as "a large volume of copies of the records of Gray's Inn." The original admission-book for this date is lost.

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in 1657, tells us, "that elegant pile or structure commonly known by the name of the Lord Bacon's Lodgings; which he inhabited by turns the most part of his life (some few years only excepted) unto his dying day." "The apartments in which Lord Bacon resided," says Mr. Montagu, are said to be at No. 1, Gray's Inn Square, on the north side, one pair of stairs; I visited them in June, 1832. They are said to be, and they appear to be, in the same state in which they must have been for the last two centuries; handsome oak wainscot, and a beautiful ornament over the chimney-piece." "In the garden," Mr. Montagu adds, "there was, till within the last three or four years, a small elevation surrounded by trees, called Lord Bacon's Mount, and there was a legend that the trees were planted by him; they were removed to raise the new building now on the west side of the garden, and they stood about three-fourths from the south end." The elms in the walks were also planted by Bacon, when he was Double Reader, in the year 1600.

Mr. Montagu gives from the original preserved among the Lansdowne MSS. a letter of Bacon's to Lord Burghley, dated 6th May, 1586, from which, he says, it appears that Bacon had some time before applied to the Lord Treasurer to be called within the bar, or to be made what was then called an inner barrister. But this was no doubt merely his application to be made a bencher, his promotion to which rank Mr. Montagu has previously noticed. The inner barristers of that day were the benchers and readers, the term having reference to the bar, not of the court, but of the hall of the inn, and the place occupied by them at the readings and exercises of the house. The letter, however, is interesting for what Bacon says of his own disposition and habits at this date. "I find also," he writes, "that such persons as are of nature bashful (as myself is), whereby they want that plausible familiarity which others have, are often mistaken for proud. But once I know well, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to believe, that arrogancy and over-weening is so far from my nature, as, if I think

well of myself in anything, it is in this, that I am free from that vice." In his thirtieth year, according_to Mr. Montagu (meaning apparently the year 1589), Bacon was appointed Queen's Counsel learned extraordinary, an honour," it is added, "which until that time had never been conferred upon any member of the profession." Rawley calls it "a grace (if I err not) scarce

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known before."*

It appears to have been from about this date that Bacon began to attach himself to the prevalent royal favourite, the Earl of Essex. Nevertheless, it was about this very time that his relations the Cecils, hostile as they were to Essex and his faction, procured for him the reversion of the valuable place of Register of the Star Chamber. It was worth about 1600/. per annum; "for

*Mr. Jardine, in Criminal Trials' (Library of Entertaining Knowledge'), 1832, vol. i. p. 385, note, observes that "it does not distinctly appear at what time Bacon received his nomination as Queen's Counsel." Mr. Jardine adds, "He is said to have been the first King's Counsel under the degree of Sergeant."

6

We do not find that Mr. Montagu anywhere assigns a precise date to this appointment, although he notices it under the year 1591 (Life, p. xxvi.). But Dugdale (in Baconiana,' p. 247) states that Bacon was made one of the Clerks of the Council in 32 Eliz., quoting as his authority the Patent Rolls of that year, p. 11. The 32 Eliz. extended from Nov. 1589 to Nov. 1590. This, we suppose, is the same appointment which Rawley designates as that of Register of the Star Chamber; the Judges of the Court of Star Chamber having been the Lords of the Council, or chief ministers of the crown. Indeed it is clear, from a comparison of various passages in the Egerton Papers (edited by Mr. Collier for the Camden Society, 4to. London, 1840), that the office of which Bacon held the reversion, was called indifferently the Clerkship of the Council, or the Clerkship of the Star Chamher (Confer pp. 272 and 429). Mr. Collier, however, would appear to be mistaken in his assertion, at p. 266, that Bacon did not obtain the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star Chamber till some time after his disappointment in regard to the office of Solicitor-General.

which," says Rawley, "he waited in expectation either fully or near twenty years; of which his lordship would say, in Queen Elizabeth's time, that it was like another man's ground buttaling [abutting] upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn. Nevertheless, in the time of King James it fell unto him." But it can scarcely be made matter of charge against Elizabeth or her ministers, as the worthy chaplain in his zeal would almost make it, that the office did not become vacant sooner. Bacon's failure in obtaining any present provision, he goes on, "might be imputed, not so much to her Majesty's averseness or disaffection towards him, as to the arts and policy of a great statesman then [he means Burghley], who laboured by all industrious and secret means to suppress and keep him down; lest, if he had risen, he might have obscured his glory.' According to Mr. Collier (Egerton Papers, p. 269), "there is some reason to think that Bacon at one time acted as private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil." But this was perhaps at a date considerably later; for the letter which gives occasion to the remark, and which is stated to be addressed in the hand-writing of Bacon, is dated the 25th of December, 1597.

Long ere now, however, Bacon had commenced his career as a politician. Instead of having, as is commonly stated, first entered parliament in 1592, it appears from Browne Willis's Notitia Parliamentaria and D'Ewes's Journals that he had sat in every House of Commons from the fifth parliament of Elizabeth, which met in 1585. He was returned to that parliament for Melcombe Regis; to Elizabeth's sixth parliament, which met in 1586, for Taunton; to her seventh, which met in 1588, for Liverpool; to her eighth, which met in 1592, for Middlesex; to her ninth, which met in 1597, for Ipswich; to her tenth, which met in 1601, for both Ipswich and St. Alban's, when he elected to serve for the former place; to James's first parliament, which met in 1603, again for the same two places, when he elected, as before, to serve for Ipswich; and to James's second parliament, which