L' CHAPTER V. FRANCIS BACON. He was not born to shame! Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit; For 'tis a throne where honor may be crowned, Romeo and Juliet, iii, 2 ET us consider, as briefly as the importance of the subject will permit, some of the assaults which have been made upon the good name of Francis Bacon. I. HIS LIFE AS A COURtier. First, it has been charged, with much bitterness, that he was a courtier, truckling to power-an obsequious sycophant to the crown. It is sufficient answer to this to refer to the fact that, as a member of Parliament, he stood forth, in the face of Queen Elizabeth and all her power, and spoke in defense of the rights of the House of Commons and the people; and that, although this act injured seriously his chances of promotion, he resolutely refused to recant a single sentiment of the views he had enunciated. It is something in this age, when power is divided among many hands, for the ambitious man to defy the frown of authority; but in that era, when all power rested in the crown, opposition to the government was political suicide. There was no public opinion outside of the court; there were no newspapers; and Parliament itself was, as a rule, the creature of the royal will. Surely no man who was a mere truckler for place would thus have arrayed himself against the powers of the state; or, if he had unwittingly stumbled into such a position of antagonism, he would have hastened to repair the damage by proper and profuse apologies and recantations. It is true Bacon was ambitious, and he was a courtier because he was ambitious. There was no other avenue to preferment. He had to seek the favor of the court or sink into absolute nothingness, so far as position in the state was concerned. He says: Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property, which, like the air and water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might. be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.1 And again he says: But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts, (though God accept them), yet towards man are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground. 2 These two utterances constitute, I think, the very key-note to Bacon's whole public career. He sought place as the vantageground from which to benefit mankind. He knew how little respect. there is for genius in rags. He says: The learned pate Ducks to the golden fool. All is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursed natures He had noted that A dog's obeyed in office.* And who shall say he was wrong? Who shall say how far the title of Lord Verulam, or Viscount St. Albans, has cast a halo of dignity and acceptability over his philosophy? It is too often the position that commends the utterance. The horn of the hunter, ringing far and wide from the mountain top, reaches an audience which the same note, muffled in the thick depths of the valley, could not obtain. And if this be true in the enlarged, capacious and cultivated age of to-day, how much more must it have been the case in that wretched era, when, as Bacon said: Courts are but only superficial schools To dandle fools; The rural parts are turned into a den Of savage men. And remember mankind had not receded to these conditions;; 1 Proem Int. Nat. Essay Of Great Place. 3 Titus Andronicus, WV, 3. ♦ Lear, iv, 6. it had advanced to them. The people of Western Europe were just emerging from the most profound brutality and barbarism. The courts were the only centers of light and culture. Was it a crimefor the greatest intellect of the age to adapt itself to its pitiful environment? So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the times.' Was it an offense for the ablest man of the age to seek place as a stepping-stone to the opportunity for good? "The times were. out of joint," and he believed he was born to "set them right;" and he craved power as the Archimedes fulcrum from which he was to. move the world. Moreover, he was poor-poor with many wants a gentleman with the income of a yeoman. The path to fortune as well as power lay through the portals of the court. Can he be blamed for treading it? II. HIS ALLEGED INGRATITUDE TO Essex. But it is urged that Bacon was ungrateful to Essex. Wherein ? Why, it is said, - Essex gave him a piece of land worth about £1,800, and Bacon afterwards took part in his prosecution for treason. Why did Essex give this land? Because he was under many obligations to Bacon and his brother Anthony, for years of faithful,. patient and valuable services, not only as political allies, but as secretaries, laboring to advance his fortunes. Bacon had written. masks for his entertainments; he had written sonnets in his name, to advance his interests with the Queen; he had popularized him in the Plays; he had penned letters as if from himself to aid his fortunes; he had carried on his correspondence with all parts of Europe;. he had translated his ciphers; he had been his guide in politics; he had used all his vast genius and industry for his advancement. Bacon said in a letter, in 1600, to Lord Henry Howard, Essex being still alive: For my Lord cf Essex, I am not servile to him, having regard to my superior duty. I have been much bound unto him; on the other side, I have spent more timeand more thoughts about his well-doing than ever I did about mine own. 1 Coriolanus, iv, 7. Essex had tried, in return for these services, to secure Bacon the place of Solicitor, and had failed. Then he came to him and said: You have spent your time and thoughts in my matters; I die if I do not somewhat towards your fortune. That is to say, he could not live under the sense of this unrequited obligation. The Twickenham property was not a gift; it was the payment of a debt. But Bacon knew the rash and uncontrolable nature of his patron, and he accepted the property with a distinct intimation, at the time, that he should not follow him into any reckless enterprises. He said to him, as he himself records, in his "Apology": My Lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? Always it is with a saving of his faith to the King and his other lords. That is to say, his devotion as a friend must be limited by his obligations and duties as a citizen. Was this wrong? Should he, because of a gift of a piece of land, have followed the Earl into the foolish and treasonable practices. which culminated on the scaffold? It is true that "a friend should bear a friend's infirmities;" but should he therefore participate in his crimes? And though it be admitted that Bacon had been engaged in a conspiracy with Essex, in 1597, to create public opinion against the Cecils, and even, perhaps, to bring about the deposition of the Queen, by profound and far-reaching means,- does it therefore follow that he should have gone with the Earl in his wild and unreasonable attempt to raise the city and seize the person of the Queen? There are few things more utterly abominable than the man who, with talents hardly up to the requirements of private life, insists on rushing into the management of great public affairs, and is caught at last, like Essex, molten with terror, "betwixt the dread extremes of mighty opposites." And one has but to look at the picture of the unpleasant face of Essex, given herewith, to see that he was a commonplace, vulgar soul, made great by the accident of birth. Surely, that portrait does not represent the man for whom the greatest intellect of the human race should have died on the scaffold. And the course of Essex, after he was convicted of treason, and just before his execution, shows the real character of this ignoble man. His whole moral nature seemed to have given way, and he proceeded to reveal to the government the names of some of his best friends, especially Sir Henry Neville,-whose connection with his crime was not, until that time, known, and who had, no doubt, been drawn into the conspiracy by their devotion to himself and his fortunes! Hepworth Dixon says: He closes a turbulent and licentious life by confessing against his companions, still untried, more than the officers of the Crown could have proved against them; and, despicable to relate, most of all against the two men who have been his closest associates Blount and Cuffe. His confessions in the face of death deprive these prisoners of the last faint hope of grace. They go with Meyrick and Danvers to the gallows or the block.' But it may be said it was in bad taste for Bacon to participate in the trial of Essex, because he had once been his friend. This would be true if Bacon had volunteered for the task, but he did not; he tried to be relieved from it. But he was the sworn officer of the Crown, the official servant of the Queen; and the government of Elizabeth was an absolute despotism. He was ordered to appear and take part in the prosecution. He begged earnestly he pleaded-to be relieved. The Queen insisted; and not only insisted, but assigned to him in the first trial-despite his protests -that part of the arraignment which referred to Essex' followers hiring the players to play the Shakespeare play of Richard II.! Bacon protested that he had "been wronged by bruits before, and this would expose me to them more, and it would be said I gave in evidence mine own tales." But the Queen was inexorable; and, says Bacon, "I could not avoid that part that was laid upon me." But it may be said that, notwithstanding all this, Bacon should have refused to appear against one who had formerly been his friend, and who was publicly regarded as his benefactor. He should have resigned his place first. But there are no resignations in despotisms; and, moreover, the Cipher narrative shows us that Bacon may have held his own life at the tenure of the Queen's mercy. He may have been compelled, but a short time before, to confess the authorship of the Plays and his connection with a 1 Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 145. |