He replied, “I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little; less than the least:" and other such strange light terms he gave me, with that insulting, which cannot be expressed.

Herewith stirred, yet I said no more but this: "Mr. Attorney, do not depress me so far; for I have been your better, and may be again, when it please the queen."

With this he spake, neither I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born attorney-general; and in the end bade me not meddle with the queen's business, but with mine own; and that I was unsworn, &c. I told him, sworn or unsworn was all one to an honest man; and that I ever set my service first, and myself second; and wished to God, that he would do the like.

Then he said, it were good to clap a cap. utlegatum upon my back! To which I only said he could not; and that he was at a fault; for he hunted upon an old scent.

He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides; which I answered with silence, and showing that I was not moved with them.

little as I can in the king's causes, his Majesty now abounding in council; and to follow my private thrift and practice, and to marry with some convenient advancement. For as for any ambition, I do assure your honour, mine is quenched. In the queen's, my excellent mistress's, time, the quorum was small: her service was a kind of freehold, and it was a more solemn time. All those points agreed with my nature and judgment. My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen, whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit of the times succeeding.

Lastly, for this divulged and almost prostituted title of knighthood, I could without charge, by your honour's mean, be content to have it, both because of this late disgrace, and because I have three new knights in my mess in Gray's-Inn commons; and because I have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to my liking. So as if your honour will find the time, I will come to the court from Gorhambury, upon any warning.

How my sales go forward, your lordship shall in a few days hear. Meanwhile, if you will not be pleased to take farther day with this lewd fellow, I hope your lordship will not suffer him to take any part of the penalty, but principal, interest, and costs. So I remain your lordship's most bounden, FR. BACON.

TO ROBERT, LORD CECIL.*

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD LORDSHIP, THEY say late thanks are ever best. But the reason was, I thought to have seen your lordship ere this. Howsoever I shall never forget this your last favour amongst others; and it grieveth me not a little, that I find myself of no use to such an honourable and kind friend.

For that matter, I think I shall desire your assistance for the punishment of the contempt; not that I would use the privilege in future time, but because I would not have the dignity of the king's service prejudiced in my instance. But herein I will be ruled by your lordship.

It is fit likewise, though much against my mind, that I let your lordship know, that I shall not be able to pay the money within the time by your lordship undertaken, which was a fortnight. Nay, money I find so hard to come by at this time, as I thought to have become an humble suitor to your honour to have sustained me with your credit for the present from urgent debts with taking up 300l. till I can put away some land. But I am so forward with some sales, as this request, I hope, I may forbear.

For my estate, because your honour hath care of it, it is thus: I shall be able, with selling the skirts of my living in Hertfordshire,† to preserve the body; and to leave myself, being clearly out of debt, and having some money in my pocket, 3007. land per annum, with a fair house, and the ground well timbered. This is now my labour.

For my purpose or course, I desire to meddle as

3 July, 1603.

TO THE SAME.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD LORDSHIP,

In answer of your last letter, your money shall be ready before your day, principal, interest, and costs of suit. So the sheriff promised when I released errors; and a Jew takes no more. The rest cannot be forgotten; for I cannot forget your lordship's dum memor ipse mei; and if there have been aliquid nimis, it shall be amended. And, to be plain with your lordship, that will quicken me now which slackened me before. Then I thought you might have had more use of me than now, I suppose, you are like to have. Not but I think the impediment will be rather in my mind than in the matter or times. But to do you service, I will come out of my religion at any time.

For my knighthood,§ I wish the manner might be such as might grace me, since the matter will not; I mean, that I might not be merely gregarious in a troop. The coronation || is at hand. It may please your lordship to let me hear from you speedily. So I continue

Your lordship's ever much bounden, FR. BACON. From Gorhambury, this 16th of July, 1603.

alderman of London. She survived her husband above twenty years. Life of Lord Bacon, by Dr. William Rawley. He was knighted at Whitehall, 23 July, 1603. It was solemnized, 24 July, 160o

TO SIR JOHN DAVIS, HIS MAJESTY'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL IN IRELAND.*

MR. ATTORNEY,

I THANK you for your letter, and the discourse you sent of this new accident, as things then appeared. I see manifestly the beginning of better or worse but methinketh it is first a tender of the better, and worse followeth but upon refusal or default. I would have been glad to see you here; but I hope occasion reserveth our meeting for a vacation, when we may have more fruit of conference. To requite your proclamation, which, in my judgment, is wisely and seriously penned, I send you another with us, which happened to be in my hands when yours came. I would be glad to hear often from you, and to be advertised how things pass, whereby to have some occasion to think some good thoughts; though I can do little. At the least it will be a continuance in exercise of our friendship, which on my part remaineth increased by that I hear of your service, and the good respects I find towards myself. And so in Tormour's haste, I continue

Your very loving friend,

FR. BACON.

From Gray's-Inn, this 23d of Octob. 1607.

bonam atque navam polliceor. Itaque salutem tibi dicit

Amicus tuus, &c.

Indorsed,

To Casaubon.

The beginning of a Letter immediately after my Lord Treasurer's decease.§

May 29, 1612.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY,

IF I shall seem in these few lines to write majora quam pro fortuna, it may please your Majesty to take it to be an effect, not of presumption, but of affection. For of the one I was never noted; and for the other I could never show it hitherto to the full; being as a hawk tied to another's fist, that might sometimes bait and proffer, but could never fly. And therefore if, as it was said to one that spoke great words, Amice, verba tua desiderant civitatem,|| so your Majesty say to me, "Bacon, your words require a place to speak them;" I must answer, that place, or not place, is in your Majesty to add or refrain: and though I never grow eager but to * yet your Majesty

TO ISAAC CASAUBON.+

CUм ex literis, quas ad dominum Carew misisti, cognoscam scripta mea a te probari, et mihi de judicio tuo gratulatus sum, et tibi, quam ea res mihi fuerit voluptati, scribendum existimavi. Atque illud etiam de me recte auguraris, me scientias ex latebris in lucem extrahere vehementer cupere. Neque enim multum interest ea per otium scribi, quæ per otium legantur, sed plane vitam, et res humanas, et medias earum turbas, per contemplationes sanas et veras instructiores esse volo. Quanta autem in hoc genere aggrediar, et quam parvis præsidiis, postmodum fortasse rescisces. Etiam tu pariter gratissimum mihi facies, si quæ in animo habes atque moliris et agitas, mihi nota esse velis. Nam conjunctionem animorum et studiorum plus facere ad amicitias judico, quam civilis necessitatis et occasionum officia. Equidem existimo neminem unquam magis vere potuisse dicere de sese, quam me ipsum, illud quod habet psalmus, multum incola fuit anima mea. Itaque magis videor cum antiquis versari, quam cum his, quibuscum vivo. Quid ni etiam possim cum absentibus potius versari, quam cum iis, qui præsto sunt; et magis electione in amicitiis uti, quam occasionibus de more submitti? Verum ad institutum revertor ego; si qua in re amicitia mea tibi aut tuis usui aut ornamento esse possit, tibi operam meam

From the MS. Collections of Robert Stephens, Esq. deceased.

+ This letter appears to have been written after Sir George Carew, mentioned in it, returned from his embassy in France, in October, 1609; and before the arrival of Casaubon in England, in October, 1610.

TO THE KING,

Immediately after the Lord Treasurer's death.

31 May, 1612.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENT MAJESTY,

I CANNOT but endeavour to merit, considering your preventing graces, which is the occasion of these few lines.

Your Majesty hath lost a great subject and a great servant. But if I should praise him in propriety, I should say, that he was a fit man to keep things from growing worse; but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better. For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little too much on himself, and to have all business still under the hammer; and, like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was more in operatione than in opere. And though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. So that although your Majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left; yet you do, as it were, turn a leaf, wherein if your Majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters, before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were not amiss. But the great matter, and most instant for the present, is the consideration of a parliament, for two effects; the one for the supply of your estate; the other for the better knitting of the

Robert earl of Salisbury, who died 24 May, 1612.

The draught of this imperfect letter is written chiefly in Greek characters.

These words of Themistocles are cited likewise by lord Bacon, at the end of his book De Augmentis Scientiarum.

hearts of your subjects unto your Majesty, according to your infinite merit; for both which, parliaments have been, and are, the ancient and honourable remedy. Now because I take myself to have a little skill in that region, as one that ever affected, that your Majesty might, in all your causes, not only prevail, but prevail with satisfaction of the inner man; and though no man can say but I was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man makes me believe that I was never one hour out of credit with the lower house; my desire is to know, whether your Majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto you some preparative remembrances, touching the future parliament.

Your Majesty may truly perceive, that, though I cannot challenge to myself either invention, or judgment, or elocution, or method, or any of those powers; yet my offering is care and observance : and as my good old mistress was wont to call me her watch-candle, because it pleased her to say, I did continually burn, and yet she suffered me to waste almost to nothing; so I must much more owe the like duty to your Majesty, by whom my fortunes have been settled and raised. And so craving pardon, I rest

Your Majesty's most humble servant devote,

anima mea;

TO THE KING.

F. B.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENt Majesty, My principal end being to do your Majesty service, I crave leave to make at this time to your Majesty this most humble oblation of myself. I may truly say with the psalm, Multum incola fuit for my life hath been conversant in things, wherein I take little pleasure. Your Majesty may have heard somewhat, that my father was an honest man; and somewhat yet I may have been of myself, though not to make any true judgment by, because I have hitherto had only potestatem verborum, nor that neither. I was three of my young years bred with an ambassador in France, and since I have been an old truant in the schoolhouse of your council chamber, though on the second form; yet longer than any, that now sitteth, hath been in the head form. If your Majesty find any aptness in me, or if you find any scarcity in others, whereby you may think it fit for your service to remove me to business of state, although I have a fair way before me for profit, and, by your Majesty's grace and favour, for honour and advancement, and in a course less exposed to the blast of fortune; yet now that he † is gone, quo vivente virtutibus certissimum exitium, I will be ready as a chessman to be wherever your Majesty's royal hand

Sir Amias Poulet, who was sent ambassador to France, in September, 1576. He was succeeded by Sir Edward Staf ford, in December, 1578.

+Lord Treasurer Salisbury.

The beginning of this letter is wanting.

It will be but justice to the memory of the earl of Salisbury to remark, that this disadvantageous character of him by Sír Francis Bacon seems to have been heightened by the preju

shall set me. Your Majesty will bear me witness, I have not suddenly opened myself thus far. I have looked on upon others. I see the exceptions; I see the distractions; and I fear Tacitus will be a prophet, magis alii homines, quam alii mores. I know mine own heart; and I know not whether God, that hath touched my heart with the affection, may not touch your royal heart to discern it. Howsoever, I shall go on honestly in mine ordinary course, and supply the rest in prayers for you, remaining, &c.

TO THE KING.‡

Lastly, I will make two prayers unto your Majesty, as I used to do to God Almighty, when I commend to him his own glory and cause; so I will pray to your Majesty for yourself.

The one is, that these cogitations of want do not any ways trouble or vex your mind. I remember Moses saith of the land of promise, that it was not like the land of Egypt, that was watered with a river, but was watered with showers from heaven; whereby I gather, God preferreth sometimes uncertainties before certainties, because they teach a more immediate dependence upon his providence. Sure I am, nil novi accidit vobis. It is no new thing for the greatest kings to be in debt; and, if a man shall parvis componere magna, I have seen an earl of Leicester, a chancellor Hatton, an earl of Essex, and an earl of Salisbury in debt; and yet was it no manner of diminution to their power or greatness.

My second prayer is, that your Majesty, in respect of the hasty freeing of your state, would not descend to any means, or degree of means, which carrieth not a symmetry with your majesty and greatness. He is gone, from whom those courses did wholly flow. So have your wants and necessities in particular, as it were, hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your lords and commons to be talked of for four months together: to have all your courses to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, which were wont to be held arcana imperii : to have such worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon good assurance, and with such * *, as if it should save the bark of your fortune: to contract still where might be had the readiest payment, and not the best bargain: to stir a number of projects for your profit, and then to blast them, and leave your Majesty nothing but the scandal of them: to pretend an even carriage between your Majesty's rights and the ease of the people, and to satisfy neither. These courses and others the like, I hope, are gone with the deviser of them; which have turned your Majesty to inestimable prejudice.§

I hope your Majesty will pardon my liberty of dices of the latter against that able minister, grounded upon some suspicions, that the earl had not served him with so much zeal, as he might have expected from so near a relation, either in queen Elizabeth's reign, or that of her successor. Nor is it any just imputation on his lordship, that he began to decline in king James I.'s good opinion, when his Majesty's ill economy occasioned demands on the lord treasurer, which all his skill in the business of the finances could not answer,

writing. I know these things are majora quam pro fortuna: but they are minora quam pro studio et voluntate. I assure myself, your Majesty taketh not me for one of a busy nature; for my state being free from all difficulties, and I having such a large field for contemplations, as I have partly, and shall much more make manifest to your Majesty and the world, to occupy my thoughts, nothing could make me active but love and affection. So praying my God to bless and favour your person and estate, &c.

TO THE KING.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR EXCELLEnt Majesty, I HAVE, with all possible diligence since your Majesty's progress, attended the service committed to the sub-commissioners, touching the repair and improvement of your Majesty's means: and this I have done, not only in meeting, and conference, and debate with the rest; but also by my several and private meditation and inquiry. So that, besides joint account, which we shall give to the lords, I hope I shall be able to give your Majesty somewhat ex proprio. For as no man loveth better consulere in commune than I do; neither am I of those fine ones, that use to keep back any thing, wherein they think they may win credit apart, and so make the consultation almost inutile. So nevertheless, in cases, where matters shall fall in upon the bye, perhaps of no less worth than that, which is the proper subject of the consultation; or where I find things passed over too slightly, or in cases where that, which I should advise, is of that nature, as I hold it not fit to be communicated to all those with whom I am joined; these parts of business I put to my private account; not because I would be officious, (though I profess I would do works of supererogation, if I could,) but in a true discretion and caution. And your Majesty had some taste in those notes, which I gave you for the wards, (which it pleased you to say were no tricks nor novelties, but true passages of business,) that mine own particular remembrances and observations are not like to be unprofitable. Concerning which notes for the wards, though I might say, sic vos non vobis; yet let that pass.

I have also considered fully of that great proposition, which your Majesty commended to my care and study, touching the conversion of your revenue of land into a multiplied present revenue of rent: wherein I say, I have considered of the means and course to be taken, of the assurance, of the rates, of the exceptions, and of the arguments for and against it. For though the project itself be as old as I can remember, and falleth under every man's capacity; yet the dispute and manage of it asketh a great deal of consideration and judgment; projects being like Æsop's tongues, the best meat and the worst, but which drew from him devices and remonstrances still extant, which that king, not being very ready to profit by, conceived some resentment against his old servant, and even reSained it against his memory.

Harl MSS. Vol. 1893. fol. 75. It seems to me no im

as they are chosen and handled. But surely, ubi deficiunt remedia ordinaria, recurrendum est ad extraordinaria. Of this also I am ready to give your Majesty an account.

Generally upon this subject of the repair of your Majesty's means, I beseech your Majesty to give me leave to make this judgment, that your Majesty's recovery must be by the medicines of the Galenists and Arabians, and not of the Chemists or Paracelsians. For it will not be wrought by any one fine extract, or strong water; but by a skilful company of a number of ingredients, and those by just weight and proportion, and that of some simples, which perhaps of themselves, or in over-great quantity, were little better than poisons; but mixed, and broken, and in just quantity, are full of virtue. And secondly, that as your Majesty's growing behind-hand hath been work of time; so must likewise be your Majesty's coming forth and making even. Not but I wish it were by all good and fit means accelerated; but that I foresee, that if your Majesty shall propound to yourself to do it per saltum, it can hardly be without accidents of prejudice to your honour, safety, or profit.

Indorsed,

My letter to the KING, touching his estate in general, September 18th, 1612.

IN HENRICUM PRINCIPEM WALLIÆ ELOGIUM FRANCISCI BACONI.*

HENRICUS primogenitus regis Magnæ Britanniæ, princeps Walliæ, antea spe beatus, nunc memoria felix, diem suum obiit 6 Novemb. anno 1612. Is magno totius regni luctu et desiderio extinctus est, utpote adolescens, qui animos hominum nec offendisset nec satiasset. Excitaverat autem propter bonam indolem multiplices apud plurimos omnium ordinum spes, nec ob brevitatem vitæ frustraverat. Illud imprimis accessit, quod in causa religionis firmus vulgo habebatur: prudentioribus quoque hoc animo penitus insederat, adversus insidias conjurationum, cui malo ætas nostra vix remedium reperit, patri eum instar præsidii et scuti fuisse, adeo ut et religionis et regis apud populum amor in eum redundaret, et in æstimationem jacturæ merito annumeraretur. Erat corpore validus et erectus, statura mediocri, decora membrorum compage, incessu regio, facie oblonga et in maciem inclinante, habitu plenior, vultu composito, oculorum motu magis sedato quam forti. Inerant quoque et in fronte severitatis signa, et in ore nonnihil fastus. Sed tamen si quis ultra exteriora illa penetraverat, et eum obsequi debito et sermone tempestivo deliniverat, utebatur eo benigno et facili, ut alius longe videretur colloquio quam aspectu, talisque prorsus erat, qui famam sui excitaret moribus dissimilem. Laudis et gloriæ fuit procul dubio appetens, et ad omnem speciem boni probable supposition, that this character was intended to be sent to Thuanus, in order to be inserted in his excellent history, if he should have continued it to the year 1612, whereas it reached only to 1607.