And not less pious, noble, and true, whether as applied to the De Augmentis alone, or to these dramas also, both inclusive, as twin products of the labors of a life, written chiefly in the earlier part of it, but enlarged, amended, elaborated, and finished in his later years, and finally given to the world together in the same year 1623, not openly as twins, but as utter strangers to each other, the one heralded to mankind under favor of a princely dedication and highsounding titles, the other carefully hidden, though secretly open, under a mask of Momus, and set to parade the universal theatre on its own merits in the name of a "noted weed," is the conclusion of this Advancement of Learning, an almost equally superb monument of his piety, his learning, his genius, and his intellect, in these words: "And certainly it may be objected to me with truth, that my words require an age; a whole age perhaps to prove them, and many ages to perfect them. But yet as even the greatest things are owing to their beginnings, it will be enough for me to have sown a seed for posterity and the Immortal God; whose Majesty I humbly implore through his Son our Saviour that He will vouchsafe favorably to accept these and the like offerings of the human intellect, seasoned with religion as with salt, and sacrificed to His Glory."

Finally, this order of degree, justice, and authentic place of things, from the glorious planet Sol, enthroned like the commandment of a king, down through states, communities, and brotherhoods in cities, sounds very much like this passage from a Speech of Lord Bacon: "We see the degrees and differences of duties in families, between father and son, master and servant; in corporate bodies, between

commonalties and their officers, recorders, stewards, and the like; yet all these give place to the king's commandments." The planets, too, were a favorite source of metaphor with him, as thus in the "Pericles":

"The senate-house of planets all did sit,

To knit in her their best perfections." Act I. Sc. 2.

"You

And thus it appears in another speech of Bacon : that are the judges of circuits are, as it were, the planets of the kingdom," and again, "it will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly united together than they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action." And here, again, we may remember "the magnificent palace, city, and hill" of the wise and good man of the New Atlantis, who wore "an aspect as if he pitied men," and "the several degrees of ascent whereby men did climb up the same, as if it had been a Scala Coeli." This is "the ladder to all high designs"- Heaven's Ladder! And doubtless for this reason, the intended Fourth Part of the Great Instauration was to be called "Scala Intellectus: The Scaling Ladder of the Intellect, or Thread of the Labyrinth." Holinshed speaks of "the palpable blindness of that age wherein King John lived, as also the religion which they reposed in a rotten ray, esteeming it as a Scala Coli, or ladder to life."1 Possibly, this passage may have been seen by William Shakespeare; but here, also, we have distinct and indubitable proof of the fact, that it had become imprinted in the memory of Francis Bacon.

1 Chron. of Eng., II. 388.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSION.

"I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men."- BACON.

§ 1. REFORMATION OF ABUSES.

How such a man could fall into the actual guilt of bribery to pervert justice, would be difficult to conceive, if that were really true in the full sense in which we understand the judicial offence of bribery and corruption; for this would necessarily imply, not only a direct contradiction to the tenor and spirit of all his writings, but such absolute want of moral principle and such Machiavellian baseness and utter worthlessness of character as would be wholly irreconcilable, as he himself said, when speaking of the Machiavellian Bad Arts, with any just notion of virtue, nobleness, or honor. A candid view of all the facts and circumstances, of which it is not improbable that we now know more, and can judge better, than the partial historians and personal enemies who have written against him, will certainly not justify this sweeping conclusion. We must take into view the state and condition of things in that age and the actual nature of the case; the character of the government as practically an absolute despotism, in which the most capricious favoritism was supreme arbiter of individual fortunes about the court; money a necessary, or the best, passport to place and power; abject subserviency a common condition of favor with the monarch and his greater favorites; and the most vile and corrupt prac tices a general thing among the principal courtiers, and

A

the custom notorious among nearly all the higher officers of state, judicial and other, the chancellor included, of receiving, not bribes as they understood them, but unlimited fees, customary gifts, gracious presents, and bountiful largesses, as well as the "ancient and known perquisites" of office. Many grew rich and great by sheer knavery, corrupt intrigue, and merciless plunder; and no man was quite safe in the possession of a lucrative and splendid office. All this is clearly exhibited in the history of such miscreants as Churchill, Cranfield, Williams, and the Villierses, not altogether omitting Buckingham himself. The Lord Chancellor was not merely a judge, but a high State functionary, next to royalty itself, and keeper of the King's conscience, which would not always be kept, in an age of princely magnificence, absolute prerogative, and unlimited power, and in a bottomless whirlpool of avarice, intrigue and ambition. Political rivalries, common enough in any age, were hugely grim and fierce in this reign, as witness the life-long struggle of Coke and Bacon for the ascendency in the State and over each other. Coke gained honor in being deposed from the King's Bench, and his defence of Magna Charta and his great merits in the law have made his name illustrious with posterity. Bacon, greatly his superior in knowledge, learning, genius, science and arts, if not his equal in law, and with a reputation and character far more illustrious than his, in his own time, is suddenly tumbled from the woolsack into eternal disgrace, and comes down to posterity a very by-word of infamy and meanness. But looking to the whole life and conduct of these men, and comparing the nobleness, disinterestedness, and purity of Bacon's life with the coarse ferocity, the inappeasable malignity, and the really unutterable meanness of Coke in many things, old Escalus might inquire, "Which is the wiser here? Justice, or Iniquity?" Not that all these things together can extenuate a crime, or a guilt confessed, nor that badness in others can be any excuse for baseness

in him; but that considerations like these may help to explain the fact of Bacon's fall from power, without the necessity of imputing to him the moral guilt of actual bribery and corruption, or any degree of meanness; much less a total want of moral sense, and an habitual baseness of character, as some of his biographers have ignorantly done.

Only some three years before the attack on Bacon, we find Buckingham and Coke fomenting charges of the like nature, and with the same corrupt and wicked purpose of creating a vacancy to be filled by some new minion, and putting up the same pretence of corruption in taking bribes, of money, a ring, a cabinet, a piece of plate, and the like, against the Lord Chancellor Egerton (Ellesmere), nearly breaking the old man's heart; and it might have been as successful with him as it was with Bacon, afterwards, had not the King himself come to his relief, and defeated the scheme by giving an earldom to Egerton and the Seals to Bacon. The real truth of the matter was, that the age began to discover that an ancient custom needed to be reformed, because it began to be felt as a grievance and an abuse. Old blackletter laws, fallen obsolete, practically superseded by custom almost equally ancient, and now lying more dead than asleep, were suddenly revived and put in force, and all at once what had been a lantern to the feet became a net in the path.

In like manner, long afterwards, in the reign of George I., the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield was arraigned before the House of Lords for "the sale of offices" in chancery. He had followed the custom and practice of his predecessors in office, time out of mind, and received presents from newly appointed officers as "the ancient and known perquisites of the Great Seal." Being a little avaricious, perhaps, he had carried the thing to a pretty high figure. The Masters had fallen into the practice of paying the presents out of the funds of the suitors in their hands and then