CHAPTER IV.

BACON SOLICITOR-GENERAL.

THE great thinker and idealist, the great seer of a world of knowledge to which the men of his own generation were blind, and which they could not, even with his help, imagine a possible one, had now won the first step in that long and toilsome ascent to success in life, in which for fourteen years he had been baffled. He had made himself, for good and for evil, a servant of the Government of James I. He was prepared to discharge with zeal and care all his duties. He was prepared to perform all the services which that Government might claim from its servants. He had sought, he had passionately pressed to be admitted within that circle in which the will of the King was the supreme law; after that, it would have been ruin to have withdrawn or resisted; but it does not appear that the thought or wish to resist or withdraw ever presented itself; he had thoroughly convinced himself that in doing what the King required he was doing the part of a good citizen and a faithful servant of the State and Commonwealth. The two lives, the two currents of purpose and effort, were still there. Behind all the wrangle of the courts and the devising of questionable legal subtleties to support some

G

unconstitutional encroachment, or to outflank the defence of some obnoxious prisoner, the high philosophical meditations still went on; the remembrance of their sweetness and grandeur wrung more than once from the jaded lawyer or the baffled counsellor the complaint, in words which had a great charm for him, Multum incola fuit anima mea," My soul hath long dwelt," where it would not be. But opinion, and ambition, and the immense convenience of being great, and rich, and powerful, and the supposed necessities of his condition, were too strong even for his longings to be the interpreter and the servant of nature. There is no trace of the faintest reluctance on his part to be the willing minister of a court of which not only the principal figure, but the arbiter and governing spirit, was to be George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

The first leisure that Bacon had after he was appointed Solicitor he used in a characteristic way. He sat down to make a minute stock-taking of his position and its circumstances. In the summer of 1608 he devoted a week of July to this survey of his life, its objects and its appliances; and he jotted down, day by day, through the week, from his present reflections, or he transcribed from former note-books, a series of notes in loose order, mostly very rough and not always intelligible, about everything that could now concern him. This curious and intimate record, which he called Commentarius Solutus, was discovered by Mr. Spedding, who not unnaturally had some misgivings about publishing so secret and so ambiguous a record of a man's most private confidences. with himself. But there it was, and, as it was known, he no doubt decided wisely in publishing it as it stands ;

he has done his best to make it intelligible, and he has also done his best to remove any unfavourable impressions that might arise from it. It is singularly interesting as an evidence of Bacon's way of working, of his watchfulness, his industry, his care in preparing himself long beforehand for possible occasions, his readiness to take any amount of trouble about his present duties, his self-reliant desire for more important and difficult ones. It exhibits his habit of self-observation and self-correction, his care to mend his natural defects of voice, manner, and delivery; it is even more curious in showing him. watching his own physical constitution and health, in the most minute details of symptoms and remedies, equally with a scientific and a practical object. It contains his estimate of his income, his expenditure, his debts, schedules of lands and jewels, his rules for the economy of his estate, his plans for his new gardens, and terraces, and ponds, and buildings at Gorhambury. He was now a rich man, valuing his property at £24,155 and his income at £4975, burdened with a considerable debt, but not more than he might easily look to wipe out. But, besides all these points, there appear the two large interests of his life, the reform of philosophy, and his ideal of a great national policy. The "greatness of Britain" was one of his favourite subjects of meditation. He puts down in his notes the outline of what should be aimed at to secure and increase it; it is to make the various forces of the great and growing empire work together in harmonious order, without waste, without jealousy, without encroachment and collision; to unite not only the interests but the sympathies and aims of the Crown with those of the people and Parliament; and

so to make Britain, now in peril from nothing but from the strength of its own discordant elements, that "Monarchy of the West" in reality, which Spain was in show, and, as Bacon always maintained, only in show. The survey of the condition of his philosophical enterprise takes more space. He notes the stages and points to which his plans have reached; he indicates, with a favourite quotation or apophthegm-"Plus ultra❞— ausus vana contemnere "-" aditus non nisi sub persona infantis," soon to be familiar to the world in his published writings the lines of argument, sometimes alternative ones, which were before him; he draws out schemes of inquiry, specimen tables, distinctions and classifications about the subject of Motion, in English interlarded with Latin, or in Latin interlarded with English, of his characteristic and practical sort; he notes the various sources from which he might look for help and cooperation" of learned men beyond the seas"-"to begin first in France to print it "-"laying for a place to command wits and pens:" he has his eye on rich and childless bishops, on the enforced idleness of State prisoners in the Tower, like Northumberland and Raleigh, on the great schools and universities, where he might perhaps get hold of some college for "Inventors"-as we should say, for the endowment of research. These matters fill up a large space of his notes. But his thoughts were also busy about his own advancement. And to these sheets of miscellaneous memoranda Bacon confided not only his occupations and his philosophical and political ideas, but, with a curious innocent unreserve, the arts and methods which he proposed to use in order to win the favour of the great and to pull down.

the reputation of his rivals.

He puts down in detail

how he is to recommend himself to the King and the King's favourites :

"To set on foot and maintain access with his Majesty, Dean of the Chapel, May, Murray. Keeping a course of access at the beginning of every term and vacation, with a memorial. To attend some time his repasts, or to fall into a course of familiar discourse. To find means to win a conceit, not open, but private, of being affectionate and assured to the Scotch, and fit to succeed Salisbury in his manage in that kind; Lord Dunbar, Duke of Lennox, and Daubiny secret."

:

Then, again, of Salisbury :

"Insinuate myself to become privy to my Lord of Salisbury's estate." "To correspond with Salisbury in a habit of natural but no ways perilous boldness, and in vivacity, invention, care to cast and enterprise (but with due caution), for this manner I judge both in his nature freeth the stands, and in his ends pleaseth him best, and promiseth more use of me. I judge my standing out, and not favoured by Northampton, must needs do me good with Salisbury, specially comparative to the Attorney."

The Attorney Hobart filled the place to which Bacon had so long aspired, and which he thought, perhaps reasonably, that he could fill much better. At any rate one of the points to which he recurs frequently in his notes, is to exhort himself to make his own service a continual contrast to the Attorney's; "to have in mind and use the Attorney's weakness;" enumerating a list of instances. "Too full of cases and distinctions. Nibbling solemnly; he distinguisheth but apprehends not." "No gift with his pen in proclamations and the like," and at last he draws out in a series of epigrams his view of "Hubbard's disadvantages":

"Better at shift than at drift. . . Subtilitas sine acrimonia. .