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army. The Queen wrote her disapproval; Essex left his command to hurry to her, and on the 28th of September, about ten o'clock in the morning, alighted at the court gate in post, and made all haste up to the presence, and so to the privy chamber, and stayed not till he came to the queen's bedchamber, where he found the queen newly up, with her hair about her face, and he so full

of dirt and mire that his very face was full of it." He was commanded in the evening to keep his chamber. Next day he was examined before the Council, and was put under easy restraint-first with the Lord-Keeper, then in his own house. Tyrone rose in rebellion again; Lord Mountjoy was sent, whose action was efficient. Essex was then suspended from his offices of Privy Councillor, Lord-Marshal, and Master of the Ordnance. In August he was released from custody, but forbidden to come to Court. His monopoly of sweet wines expired, and Elizabeth would not renew the patent. Then his quick temper became rebellious. He had been in correspondence with James VI. of Scotland-by cypher in the hand of Francis Bacon's brother Anthony-to force from Elizabeth, now sixty-eight years old, a recognition of her successor. impulsive dealing with this question perhaps introduced the considerations that had paralyzed his Irish policy. But Essex now passed into open rebellion. On the 8th of February, 1601, he and three hundred gentlemen, including Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Southampton, were at Essex House. The Queen sent the Lord-Keeper and other officers of State to ask the reason of the gathering. Essex contrived to lock them up in his library, and then, with his adherents, he rode out to raise the Londoners. His object was to seize Whitehall, and winning access to the Queen, compel her to dismiss her present advisers, and then call a Parliament. But he overrated his own influence with the people, and after some lives had been lost, retreated by

His

water to Essex House, burnt some papers, and was forced to surrender. That night the Earls of Essex and Southampton were prisoners in the Tower.

Queen's counsel-Bacon one of them-were called upon to inquire into this act of treason by examining the prisoners. They worked for seven days, in parties of not more than three, taking the several prisoners in succession. When Essex was arraigned, the evidence against him was produced by Coke, and Coke's way of letting it run off into side issues was rather favourable to the accused. Then Bacon rose-not being called upon to rise-pointed more strongly the accusations against his friend and benefactor, and brought the evidence back into a course more perilous to his life. "As Cain," said Bacon, "that first murderer, took up an excuse for his fact, shaming to outface it with impudency, thus the earl made his colour the severing some men and councillors from her Majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of his pretended enemies, lest they should murder him in his house." The evidence proceeded, and Coke's method again gave the earl some advantage. Bacon then rose and said: "I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons." And he proceeded again to urge the main accusation home against Essex.

On the 25th of February, 1601, Essex was beheaded, by his own wish privately, within the Tower. Upon Lord Southampton sentence was not executed, but he remained a prisoner during the rest of Elizabeth's reign. Justification of the execution of the Earl of Essex was entrusted to the advocate who had pressed with most energy the case against him at his trial. Materials were supplied in "twenty-five papers concerning the Earl of Essex's treasons, etc., to be delivered to Mr. Francis Bacon, for her

Majesty's service"; and Bacon's hand, following particular instructions as to the manner of treatment, drew up for the public "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices." Before its publication (in 1601) this declaration was discussed by councillors and queen, and underwent the alterations incident to such discussion.

Bacon had been living beyond his means, and was still seeking advancement. In September, 1598, he had been arrested for debt, but in the spring of 1601 his worldly means were somewhat improved by the death of his brother Anthony. He obtained a gift of £1,200, the fine of one of the accomplices of Essex, but he received no higher reward of his services before the death of Elizabeth, on the 24th of March, 1603.

Under

King James.

After Elizabeth's death, Bacon prospered. He was made Sir Francis by his own wish in July, 1603, that he might not lose grade, because new knights were multiplying, and there were three of them in his mess at Gray's Inn. Essex had been active for James. Bacon told the Earl of Southampton that he "could be safely that to him now which he had truly been before;" and adapted himself to the new political conditions by writing a defence of his recent conduct, as Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie in certain Imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex." To the first Parliament of King James, Bacon was returned by Ipswich and St. Albans. He was confirmed in his office of King's Counsel in August, 1604; but when the office of Solicitor-General became vacant again in that year, he was not appointed to it.

In 1605, about the time of the discovery of Gunpowder Plot, there appeared, in English, "The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the Proficience and Aduauncement of Learning, Diuine and Humane. To the King." These

Two Books of the Advancement of Learning

Two Books of the Ad

vancement of Learning.

--which, in 1623, towards the end of his life, re-appeared in Latin, expanded into nine books, De Augmentis Scientiarum, Libri IX. — form the first part, or the ground work, of his Instauratio Magna, or "Great Reconstruction of Science." They were dedicated to King James, as from one who had been "touched, yea, and possessed, with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution." Of the "universality and perfection" of his Majesty's learning, Bacon said, in this dedication: "I am well informed that this which I say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been since Christ's time any king or temporal monarch which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human." His Majesty stood "invested of that triplicity which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes: the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher." It was fit, therefore, to dedicate to such a king a treatise in two parts: one on the excellency of learning and knowledge, the other on the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof.

In his First Book Bacon pointed out the discredits of learning from human defects of the learned, and emptiness of many of the studies chosen, or the way of dealing with them. This came especially by the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge, as if there were sought in it "a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate."

The rest of the First Book was given to an argument upon the Dignity of Learning; and the Second Book, on the Advancement of Learning, is, as Bacon himself described it, "a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a plot made and recorded to memory may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours." Bacon makes, by a sort of exhaustive analysis, a

ground-plan of all subjects of study, as an intellectual map, helping the right inquirer in his search for the right path. The right path is that by which he has the best chance of adding to the stock of knowledge in the world something worth labouring for, as labour for "the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate."

In working out this plan, Bacon begins by clearing the way to knowledge from "the discredits and disgraces which it hath received; all from ignorance, but ignorance severally disguised, appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of Divines; sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of Politics, and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of Learned Men themselves."

Divines say that man fell through desire for knowledge; that Solomon censured much reading as a weariness of the flesh; that St. Paul warned us against being spoiled through vain philosophy ; and that the contemplation of Second Causes derogates from our dependence upon God, who is the First Cause. But the desire for knowledge by which man fell was desire, not for the pure knowledge of Nature by the light of which the first man named the animals according to their properties, but for the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself. There is no quantity of knowledge— nothing but God and the contemplation of God-that can cause the soul of man to swell. Solomon says that God hath placed the world in man's heart, yet cannot man find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end: declaring, not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light. That the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end is not possible to be found out by man, may be referred to the impediments, as of shortness of life, ill conjunction of labours, ill tradition of knowledge. But that nothing parcel of the world is denied to man's inquiry and invention, Solomon shows when he saith, The Spirit of Man is as the Lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the inwardness of all secrets. It is not the quantity of knowledge, but its quality, that may be hurtful when it is not blended with its true corrective :-" this corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh Knowledge so sovereign, is Charity." We must not so rest our happiness on knowledge as to forget our mortality; we must apply our knowledge to repose and contentment, not to distaste or repining. All knowledge is an impression of pleasure in itself; but when men fall to framing conclusions out of their knowledge, applying it to their particular, and ministering to themselves thereby weak fears or vast desires, there groweth that carefulness and trouble of mind which is spoken of: