NO. XXI.—THE MODERN MISANTHROPE.
“All the passions,” saith an old writer, “are such near neighbours, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets.” Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire. The misanthrope who professes to hate mankind has generally passed to that hate from too extravagant a love. And love for mankind is still, though unconsciously to himself, feeding hate by its own unextinguished embers. “The more a man loves his mistress,” says Rochefoucauld, “the nearer he is to hate her.” Possibly so, if he is jealous; but in return, the more he declares he hates her, the nearer he is to loving her again. Vehement affections do not move in parallels but in circles. As applied to them the proverb is true, “Les extrêmes se touchent.” A man of ardent temperament who is shocked into misanthropy by instances of ingratitude and perfidy, is liable any day to be carried back into philanthropy, should unlooked-for instances of gratitude and truth start up and take him by surprise. But if an egotist, who, inheriting but a small pittance of human affection, concentres it rigidly on himself, should deliberately school his reason into calm contempt for his species, he will retain that contempt to the last. He looks on the world of man, with its virtues and vices, much as you, O my reader, look on an ant-hill! What to you are the virtues or vices of ants? It is this kind of masked misanthropy which we encounter in our day—the misanthropy without a vizard belongs to a ruder age.
The misanthrope of Shakespeare and Molière is a passionate savage; the misanthrope who has just kissed his hand to you is a polished gentleman. No disgust of humanity will ever make him fly the world. From his club-window in St James’s his smile falls on all passers-by with equal suavity and equal scorn. It may be said by verbal critics that I employ the word misanthrope incorrectly—that, according to strict interpretation, a misanthrope means not a despiser but a hater of men, and that this elegant gentleman is not, by my own showing, warmblooded enough for hate. True, but contempt so serene and immovable is the philosophy of hate—the intellectual consummation of misanthropy. My hero would have listened with approving nod to all that Timon or Alceste could have thundered forth in detestation of his kind, and blandly rejoined, “Your truisms, mon cher, are as evident as that two and two make four. But you can calculate on the principle that two and two make four without shouting forth, as if you proclaimed a notable discovery, what every one you meet knows as well as yourself. Men are scoundrels—two and two make four—reckon accordingly, and don’t lose your temper in keeping your accounts.” My misanthrope à la mode never rails at vice; he takes it for granted as the elementary principle in the commerce of life. As for virtue, he regards it as a professor of science regards witchcraft. No doubt there are many plausible stories, very creditably attested, that vouch for its existence, but the thing is not in nature. Easier to believe in a cunning imposture than an impossible fact. It is the depth and completeness of his contempt for the world that makes him take the world so pleasantly. He is deemed the man of the world par excellence, and the World caresses and admires its Man.
The finest gentleman of my young day, who never said to you an unkind thing nor of you a kind one—whose slightest smile was a seductive fascination—whose loudest tone was a flute-like melody—had the sweetest way possible of insinuating his scorn of the human race. The urbanity of his manners made him a pleasant acquaintance—the extent of his reading an accomplished companion. No one was more versed in those classes of literature in which Mephistopheles might have sought polite authorities in favour of his demoniacal views of philosophy. He was at home in the correspondence between cardinals and debauchees in the time of Leo X. He might have taken high honours in an examination on the memoirs illustrating the life of French salons in the ancien régime. He knew the age of Louis Quinze so well that to hear him you might suppose he was just fresh from a petit souper in the Parc aux Cerfs.
Too universally agreeable not to amuse those present at the expense of those absent, still, even in sarcasm, he never seemed to be ill-natured. As one of his associates had a louder reputation for wit than his own, so it was his modest habit to father upon that professed diseur de bons mots any more pointed epigram that occurred spontaneously to himself. “I wonder,” said a dandy of another dandy who was no Adonis, “why on earth —— has suddenly taken to cultivate those monstrous red whiskers.” “Ah,” quoth my pleasant fine gentleman, “I think for my part they become his style of face very much; A—— says ‘that they plant out his ugliness.’” For the rest, in all graver matters, if the man he last dined with committed some act which all honest men blamed, my misanthrope evinced his gentle surprise, not at the act, but the blame—“What did you expect?” he would say, with an adorable indulgence, “he was a man—like yourselves!”
Sprung from one of the noblest lineages in Christendom—possessed of a fortune which he would smilingly say “was not large enough to allow him to give a shilling to any one else,” but which, prudently spent on himself, amply sufficed for all the elegant wants of a man so emphatically single—this darling of fashion had every motive conceivable to an ordinary understanding not to be himself that utter rogue which he assumed every other fellow-creature to be. Nevertheless, he was too nobly consistent to his creed to suffer his example to be at variance with his doctrine; and here he had an indisputable advantage over Timon and Alceste, who had no right, when calling all men rogues, to belie their assertion by declining to be rogues themselves. His favourite amusement was whist, and in that game his skill was so consummate that he had only to play fairly in order to add to his income a sum which, already spending on himself all that he himself required, he would not have known what to do with. But, as he held all men to be cheats, he cheated on principle. It was due to the honour of his philosophy to show his utter disdain of the honour which impostors preached, but which only dupes had the folly to practise. If others did not mark the aces and shuffle up the kings as he did, it was either because they were too stupid to learn how, or too cowardly to risk the chance of exposure. He was not as stupid, he was not as cowardly, as the generality of men. It became him to show his knowledge of their stupidity and his disdain of their cowardice. Bref—he cheated!—long with impunity: but, as Charron says, L’homme se pique—man cogs the dice for his own ruin. At last he was suspected, he was watched, he was detected. But the first thought of his fascinated victims was not to denounce, but to warn him—kindly letters conveying delicate hints were confidentially sent to him: he was not asked to disgorge, not exhorted to repent; let bygones be bygones, only for the future, would he, in playing with his intimate associates, good-naturedly refrain from marking the aces and shuffling up the kings?
I can well imagine the lofty smile with which the scorner of men must have read such frivolous recommendations to depart from the philosophical system adorned in vain by his genius if not enforced by his example. He who despised the opinions of sages and saints—he to be frightened into respecting the opinions of idlers at a club!—send to him an admonition from the world of honour, to respect the superstitions of card-players! as well send to Mr Faraday an admonition from the world of spirits to respect the superstitions of table-rappers! To either philosopher there would be the same reply—“I go by the laws of nature.” In short, strong in the conscience of his opinion, this consistent reasoner sublimely persevered in justifying his theories of misanthropy by his own resolute practice of knavery, inexcusable and unredeemed.
“What Timon thought, this god-like Cato was!”
But man, whatever his inferiority to the angels, is still not altogether a sheep. And even a sheep only submits to be sheared once a year; to be sheared every day would irritate the mildest of lambs. Some of the fellow-mortals whom my hero smiled on and plundered, took heart, and openly accused him of marking the aces and shuffling up the kings. At first his native genius suggested to him the wisdom of maintaining, in smiling silence, the contempt of opinion he had hitherto so superbly evinced. Unhappily for himself, he was induced by those who, persuaded that a man of so high a birth could never have stooped to so low a peccadillo, flattered him with the assurance of an easy triumph over his aspersers—unhappily, I say, he was induced into a departure from that system of action which he had hitherto maintained with so supreme a success. He condescended, for the first time in his life, to take other men into respect—to regard what might be thought of him by a world he despised. He brought an action for libel against his accusers. His counsel, doubtless by instruction, sought to redeem that solitary inconsistency in his client, by insinuating that my lord’s chosen associates were themselves the cheats, malignant conspirators against the affable hawk of quality in whom they had expected to find a facile pigeon.
The cuttle-fish blackens the water to escape from his enemies, but he does not always escape; nay, in blackening the water he betrays himself to the watchful spectators. My hero failed in his action, and quitted the court leaving behind him the bubble reputation. If I am rightly informed, Adversity, that touchstone of lofty minds, found this grand philosopher as serene as if he had spent his life in studying Epictetus. He wrapt himself, if not in virtue, at least in his scorn of it,—
“Et udo
Spernit humi defugiente penno.”
He retired to the classic Tusculum of his villa in St John’s Wood. There, cheered by the faithful adherence of some elegant companions, who, if they did not believe him innocent, found him unalterably agreeable, he sipped his claret and moralised on his creed. Doubtless he believed that “the talk would soon subside,” “the thing blow over.” The world would miss him too much not to rally again round the sage who so justly despised it. Perhaps his belief might have been realised, but,
“Vita summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam”—
Death, the only player that no man can cheat, cut into his table, and trumped the last card of his long suit.
In the more brilliant period of this amiable man-scorner’s social career, once, and once only, he is said to have given way to anger. One of his associates (I say designedly associates, not friends, out of respect for his memory, since friendship is a virtue, and he therefore denied its existence)—one of his associates, warmed perhaps into literature by his own polite acquaintance with all that is laide in belles lettres, wrote a comedy. The comedy was acted. My hero honoured the performance by appearing in the author’s box. Leaning forward so as to be seen of all men, he joined his hands in well-bred applause of every abortive joke and grammatical solecism, till, in a critical part of the play, there occurred a popular claptrap—a something said in praise of virtue and condemnation of vice. The gallery of course responded to the claptrap, expressing noisy satisfaction at the only sentiment familiar to their comprehension which they had hitherto heard. But my archetype of modern misanthropy paused aghast, suspended
“The soft collision of applauding gloves,”
and, looking at his associate as reproachfully as Cæsar might have looked at Brutus when he sighed forth “Et tu, Brute!” let fall these withering words, “Why, Billy, this is betraying the Good Old Cause.” So saying, he left the box, resentful. Now, this man I call the genuine, positive, realistic Misanthrope, compared to whom Timon and Alceste are poetical make-believes!
SPEDDING’S LIFE OF BACON.[[6]]
[6]. ‘The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon.’ By James Spedding. Vols. I. & II. Lord Macaulay’s ‘Essay on Francis Bacon.’
Mr Spedding, in the modest form of a commentary on the letters and occasional writings of Lord Bacon, is now giving us a biography of that celebrated man, which bids fair, for a long time to come, to be our highest authority on the subject. To place all the facts before us on which our judgment of the character of Lord Bacon should be formed, is his great object; he deals in few assertions of his own; he is disposed to let facts speak for themselves; he guides our opinion by a full narrative of the events, and makes few attempts to influence us by argument or eloquence. A more satisfactory or trustworthy book has rarely come before us.
We will not say that Mr Spedding’s narrative is never coloured by an imagination which has received its unconscious prompting from his admiration of Bacon: one rather amusing instance of this colouring of the imagination we think we have detected, and shall have occasion to notice; but no admiring biographer of a great man has more studiously refrained from thrusting forward his own opinions or conceptions where the reader is merely desirous of obtaining a clear insight into the facts themselves. Mr Spedding has not yet completed his task, but he has given us in these two volumes more materials of interest than in the space of a single paper we shall have room to touch upon, and the main topic which occupies them is fully discussed and finally dismissed.
That topic is the relation between Bacon and Essex. Of the splendid Essay of Lord Macaulay’s, which is still ringing in the ears of most English readers, no part was written with more force, or was more damaging to the character of Bacon, than that which treated of his conduct to the Earl of Essex. Many who could have forgiven the peccant Chancellor for being too ready to accept whatever was offered to him in the shape of present or gratuity, could not pardon the cold-blooded and faithless friend. Now it is precisely on this subject that Mr Spedding presents us with materials for forming a very different judgment from that which the eloquent pages of Macaulay had betrayed us into. Up to the period when Essex disappears from the scene, these two volumes give us their clear guidance. Of that guidance we very gladly avail ourselves.
We would premise that it is not our purpose, or endeavour, to defend Bacon at all points—to robe our Chancellor in spotless ermine; neither do we think that the result of renewed investigation is a clear verdict of “Not Guilty” on all the charges that have been brought against him. There is much in Macaulay’s estimate both of the character and the philosophy of Bacon with which we cordially agree. It happens frequently with great historic names that there is an oscillation of public opinion; the too harsh verdict of one writer, or one age, is followed by a verdict as much too lenient. Such oscillation seems to have lately taken place with regard to Bacon, and the disposition is at present to find nothing blameworthy in him. This disposition we do not share. We think that no good is done, but rather harm, when enthusiasm for the brilliant achievements of any man, whether in a career of war, or statesmanship, or letters, induces us to shut our eyes to his moral defects. For in these cases we do not, and cannot, exactly shut our eyes: we do something worse; we try to see that vices are not vices. We lower our standard, that we may pass no unfavourable judgment. It is an ill lesson that teaches us to forgive the overbearing despotism of a great soldier or great minister, or the rascality of a great wit; to see no injustice in a Napoleon, and no villany in a Sheridan. We believe that the censure of Lord Macaulay is too severe, but it is censure and not praise which the character of Bacon provokes. We all know that the fervid eloquence, or rather the ardent temperament, of our more than English Livy, led him into manifest exaggerations; but in general, we should say that his drawing is true to nature, except that it had this too swelling outline. His exaggerations were like those of Michael Angelo, who drew muscles disproportionately large, but who never drew a muscle where none existed. A sterling good sense presided over the verdicts of Macaulay—over the yes or no; but the verdict once determined, the impassioned orator ran the risk of falsifying it by the ruthless, unmitigated energy with which it was delivered.
We should not say of Bacon either that he was the “greatest” or the “meanest” of mankind. But as certainly as he was great in his intellectual attributes, so certainly was he not great in his moral character. Here he lacked elevation. He could tolerate artifice, and dissimulation, and gross flattery. If the crime of Essex justified him, as we are inclined to think it did, in breaking entirely with that nobleman, and treating him as an enemy to the State, what are we to say of the strain of advice which he habitually gives to Essex while the two are yet in perfect amity? A mere personal ambition, to be obtained by the petty arts of the courtier, is all that he prompts his friend to aspire after. Win the Queen—honestly, if possible; but, at all events, win the Queen! This is the burden of his counsel. Bacon was great in his intellectual speculations; he was mean in the conduct of life. The antithesis still remains to us in a modified form. All his life is a continual suing for place; and what he obtained by flattery and subservience, he lost by some poor cupidity.
Bacon was a philosopher from his youth, but from his youth to his old age he was also a lover of social distinctions, and of a sumptuous mode of life. If he had the desire to take all human knowledge for his province, and to extend his name and his good influence into future ages, if he desired to be a reformer even of philosophy itself, he had also other desires of a much more commonplace description; not evil in themselves—good perhaps in themselves—but not subordinated to the high morality which might have been expected from one so wise. But if in his rise to power he showed too much servility—if, when in the seat of power, he showed too much cupidity,—surely no one ever fell from greatness, no one was ever struck down from the seat of power, for so slight a measure of criminality. No historic personage can be mentioned amongst us, on whom so severe a punishment, so deep a disgrace, was inflicted for a fault so little heinous.
The first great error which Bacon committed, the consequence of which pursued him all his life, was the running into debt. It was a life-long fault. It was his fault, not his misfortune. He received less, we know, from his father than he might reasonably have expected, less than his brothers had received, but no biographer has ventured to call him poor—so poor that he could not have held his ground as a student of the law without incurring debt. Whether it was mere carelessness and imprudence, or a wilful spending “according to his hopes, not his possessions,” we find him very early in debt; and as years advance we find the debts, of course, more and more onerous. No one knew better than Bacon that he who owes has to borrow, and that he who borrows will have, in some form, to beg, to sue—will be tempted to sordid actions—will lose his independence, his upright attitude amongst men. There is no greater slavery than debt. It bred in Bacon that “itching palm,” and that perpetual suing, which disgrace his career.
He begins to sue from his very first entry into life. He puts his trust in the Lord Treasurer. And what is remarkable, the very nature of the first suit he makes is unknown. It was some office, not of a legal character, as we should conjecture. Writing to Walsingham about it, he says that the delay in answering it “hinders me from taking a course of practice which, by the leave of God, if her Majesty like not of my suit, I must and will follow: not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit sake, which I know by living out of action will wear.” At this date, 25th August 1585, he does not plead absolute inability to live on his private fortune. Subsequently, when his debts have increased, he writes upon this subject in a very different strain. He is embarrassed by usurers; he is arrested; debt comes upon him, as he says, like an armed man.
Of the earliest years of Bacon few memorials remain. But Mr Spedding brings together two conspicuous facts. The first is, that Bacon, at the age of fifteen, conceives his project of a reformation in philosophy; and the second is, that immediately on leaving college he accompanies Sir Amias Paulet on his embassy to France. Thus philosophy and diplomacy, speculation and state-craft, study and the world, take at once joint possession of Francis Bacon.
Of the first of these facts, and the most important in his life, Mr Spedding speaks in a passage of much eloquence, glowing and chastened withal:—
“That the thought first occurred to him during his residence at Cambridge, therefore before he had completed his fifteenth year, we know upon the best authority—his own statement to Dr Rawley. I believe it ought to be regarded as the most important event of his life—the event which had a greater influence than any other upon his character and future course. From that moment there was awakened within his breast the appetite which cannot be satiated, and the passion which cannot commit excess. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated all the energies of his mind, gave a value to every vacant interval of time, an interest and significance to every random thought and casual accession of knowledge—an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race—an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations. From that moment, though still subject to interruptions, disappointments, errors, and regrets, he could never be without either work or hope or consolation.”
But this young philosopher is son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the late Lord Chancellor; the Queen has laid her hand upon his head while yet a boy, and called him her young Lord Keeper; he is nephew to the Prime Minister; he dreams of courts, of place, of power. He must unite his lofty speculations with the great affairs of State; he must survey human knowledge from the high places of society. He enters Gray’s Inn, is a student of the law, and his heart aches after office and promotion.
There is one person very intimately connected with Bacon, whom Mr Spedding has brought before us with a novel distinctness—his mother, Lady Bacon. We are not aware that her presence will throw much light on the character of her son, but henceforth, we are sure, no biography of the son will be written in which this lady will not be a conspicuous figure. She is one of those strongly-marked characters that always please the imagination; dogmatic, perverse, full of maternal anxiety, pious and splenetic, with marvellous shrewd sense and a very ungovernable temper. The knowledge of her character would enable us to answer one question. Presuming that any one should think fit to ask why Bacon did not seek the retirement of Gorhambury, the answer is quite ready. There would have been no peace for him under the roof of his lady mother. Puritan and termagant, his philosophy would have been “suspect” to her; and his retirement would have been certainly denounced as unpardonable sloth. She is a learned lady, mingles scraps of Latin and Greek in her epistles, and she can write, when the occasion demands, in a very stately English style—stately, but straightforward withal. Her son’s epistolary style is often involved and verbose. He does not often come so directly to the point as Lady Bacon does in the following letter, written to Lord Burghley, in the interest of the Nonconformist clergy, or Preachers, as they were then called. In a conference which had lately taken place at Lambeth between them and the bishops, she thinks they had not fair-play; she appeals, in their name, to her Majesty and the Council:—
“They would most humbly crave, both of God in heaven, whose cause it is, and of their Majesty, their most excellent sovereign here on earth, that they might obtain quiet and convenient audience rather before her Majesty herself, whose heart is in God his hand to touch and to turn, or before your Honours of the Council, whose wisdom they greatly reverence; and if they cannot strongly prove before you out of the word of God that reformation which they so long have called and cried for to be according to Christ his own ordinance, then to let them be rejected with shame out of the Church for ever.... And therefore, for such weighty conference they appeal to her Majesty and her honourable wise Council, whom God has placed in highest authority for the advancement of His kingdom; and refuse the bishops for judges, who are parties partial in their own defence, because they seek more worldly ambition than the glory of Jesus Christ.”
Mr Spedding next introduces to us the same lady under the agitations, as he says, of maternal anxiety. Anthony Bacon, the elder brother of Francis, has been long upon the Continent collecting intelligence, and otherwise amusing or occupying himself. He sends over one Lawson, a confidential servant, to Lord Burghley with some important communication. Lawson is a Catholic. That her son Anthony should be so long in Popish parts is a dire grievance to Lady Bacon; that he should have in his confidence a Papist servant, is not to be borne. She prevails upon Burghley to have this Lawson arrested and retained in England. One snake is, at all events, caught, and shall be held firm. Anthony writes to his friend, Francis Allen, to obtain for him the liberation of Lawson. Allen, furnished with a letter from Lord Burghley (who seems, for his own part, to be willing to release the man), proceeds to Gorhambury. His intercession with Lady Bacon he tells himself in a letter to Anthony:—
“Upon my arrival at Godombery my lady used me courteously until such time I began to move her for Mr Lawson, and, to say the truth, for yourself;—being so much transported with your abode there that she let not to say that you are a traitor to God and your country: you have undone her; you seek her death; and when you have that you seek for, you shall have but a hundred pounds more than you have now.
“She is resolved to procure her Majesty’s letter to force you to return; and when that shall be, if her Majesty gave you your right or desert, she should clap you up in prison....
“I am sorry to write it, considering his deserts and your love towards him; but the truth will be known at the last, and better late than never: it is vain to look for Mr Lawson’s return, for these are her ladyship’s own words—‘No, no,’ saith she, ‘I have learned not to employ ill to good; and if there were no more men in England, and although you should never come home, he shall never come to you.’
“It is as unpossible to persuade my lady to send him, as for myself to send you Paul’s steeple....
“When you have received your provision, make your repair home again, lest you be a means to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of mind received, daily by your stay will be her end; also saith her jewels be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven several persons.
“Thus much I must confess unto you for a conclusion, that I have never seen and never shall see a wise lady, an honourable woman, a mother more perplexed for her son’s absence, than I have seen that honourable dame for yours. Therefore lay your hand on your heart, look not for Mr Lawson; here he hath, as a man may say, heaven and earth against him and his return.”
Soon after this Anthony does return home, and Lady Bacon addresses him a letter, in which there are some allusions to Francis, which will be read with interest:—
“This one chiefest counsel your Christian and natural mother doth give you even before the Lord, that above all worldly respects you carry yourself ever at your first coming as one that doth unfeignedly profess the true religion of Christ, and hath the love of the truth now, by long continuance, fast settled in your heart, and that with judgment, wisdom, and discretion; and are not afraid or ashamed to testify the same by hearing and delighting in those religious exercises of the sincerer sort, be they French or English. In hoc noli adhibere fratrem tuum ad consilium aut exemplum....
“I trust you, with your servants, use prayer twice in a day, having been where reformation is. Omit it not for any. It will be your best credit to serve the Lord duly and reverently, and you will be observed at first now. Your brother is too negligent herein, but do you well and zealously; it will be looked for of the best-learned sort, and that is best.”
Full of prudence, full of zeal, suspecting her sons themselves and every one about them, anxious to manage them on all points, whether in their diet or their religion, such is Lady Bacon. She is writing still to Anthony.
“Gratia et salus. That you increase in amending I am glad. God continue it every way. When you cease of your prescribed diet, you had need, I think, to be very wary both of your sudden change of quantity and of season of your feeding—especially suppers late or full. Procure rest in convenient time; it helpeth much to digestion. I verily think your brother’s weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep, and then, in consequent, by late rising and long lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful, and himself continueth sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to their mother’s good counsel in time to prevent. The Lord, our heavenly Father, heal and bless you both as His sons in Christ Jesus. I promise you, touching your coach, if it be so to your contentation, it was not wisdom to have it seen or known at the Court; you shall be so much pressed to lend, and your man, for gain, so ready to agree, that the discommodity thereof will be as much as the commodity. Let not your men see my letter. I write to you, and not to them.”
And again, a few days later:—
“I am glad, and thank God of your amendment. But my man said he heard you rose at three of the clock. I thought that was not well, so suddenly from bedding much to rise so early—newly out of your diet.... I like not your lending your coach yet to my lord and lady. If you once begin, you shall hardly end. It was not well it was so soon sent into the Court to make talk, and at last be promised and misliked. Tell your brother I counsel you to send it no more. What had my Lady Shriefess to borrow your coach?”
Any comment of ours would only weaken the effect of such graphic letters as these. We are enabled even to follow our zealous, dogmatic, yet motherly woman, into her own household. Edward Spencer was a servant of Anthony’s, but was left for some reason at Gorhambury. He writes to his master:—
“My humble duty remembered to your good worship. I thought good to write to you to satisfy you how unquiet my lady is with all her household.” [Then he enters into a long story how my lady had said of a certain “grænen bitch,” whatever that may be, that it should be hanged; and how, when Edward Spencer obeys her command, and hangs the dog, my lady breaks out into a “fransey.”]—“My lady do not speak to me as yet. I will give none offence to make her angry; but nobody can please her long together.”
And again—
“My humble duty first remembered to your good worship. I thought good to write unto you to sartey you of my lady’s great unquietness in the house. Since her last falling-out with me she showed me a good countenance as ever she did before. Now, yesterday I had a sparhawk given me, and she killed a brace of partridges, and then I came home before the evening was shut in; indeed, all the folks had supped: whereat she seemed to be very sore angry with these words—‘What come you home now? I would you and your hawk would keep you away altogether. You have been a-breaking of hedges between neighbour and neighbour, and now you come home out of order, and show an ill example in my house. Well, you shall keep no hawk here.’ ‘I am the more sorrier I have given no acause that your ladyship should be offended, nor I will not. To please your ladyship I will pull off her head.’ Whereat she stamped and said, I would do by her as I did by the bitch. Insomuch she would let me have no supper. So truly I went to bed without my supper. There is not one man in the house but she fall out withal, and is not in charity one day in a week but with priests, which will undo her. There is one Page that had six pounds on her. Mr Willcocks had a paper with a great deal of gold in it. Wellblod had two quarterns of wheat. Dicke had something the other day; what, I know not.”
There is more of the same kind; though whether it is quite fair to take the testimony of this Edward Spencer without hearing what Lady Bacon could report of him, is worth a thought. He must have been a surly fellow, from his offering so readily to pull off the hawk’s head. Our next quotation brings us back to Francis, and the unhappy subject of his debts: we have hints, too, of the influence under which she suspects these debts to be incurred, which the modern biographer is unable to follow out; and which, from the different manners of a former age, it is difficult entirely to understand. But we are confirmed by these extracts in our previous convictions, that the loss which Francis is said to have sustained by the sudden death of his father (who thus failed to make the full provision for him he intended) cannot be represented as the real cause of his embarrassments. Mr Spedding represents this fact “as perplexing the problem of his life with a new and inconvenient addition.” But it could not have materially perplexed the problem of his life, unless it disabled him from living upon his private fortune. It made him a poorer gentleman; but if he had been a richer, he would still have been a suitor at the Court, and still, in all probability, have incurred debts. He and Anthony live together, and we find them alternately assisting each other. There is no evidence of a great disparity in their fortunes. What share Francis had in the “coach” we know not, but we hear of him purchasing horses; and certainly the mother does not look upon the embarrassments of Francis as some inevitable consequence of his position. She is applied to, in the present case, to assist him in the payment of his debts, by joining in the sale of an estate which belongs to him, but in which she has some legal right. Anthony makes the request, and receives the following reply:—
“For your brotherly care of your brother Francis’s estate you are to be well liked, and so I do as a Christian mother that loveth you both as the children of God; but, as I wrote but in a few words yesterday by my neighbour, the state of you both doth much disquiet me, as in Greek words I signified shortly.
“I have been too ready for you both till nothing is left. And surely, though I pity your brother, yet so long as he pitieth not himself, but keepeth that bloody Percy, as I told him then, yea as a coach-companion and bed-companion,—a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike, and doth less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his health,—surely I am utterly discouraged, and make a conscience further to undo myself to maintain such wretches as he is. This Jones (?) never loved your brother, indeed, but for his own credit, being upon your brother, and thankless, though bragging. But your brother will be blind to his own hurt.... It is most certain till first Enney (?), a filthy, wasteful knave, and his Welshman, one after another—for take one, and they will still swarm ill-favouredly—did so lead him, as in a train; he was a towardly young gentleman, and a son of much good hope in goodliness. But seeing that he hath nourished most sinful proud villains wilfully, I know not what other answer to make.”
Then, partly relenting, she adds in a postscript:—
“If your brother desire a release to Mr Harvey, let him so require it himself, and but upon this condition, by his own hand and bond, I will not; that is, that he make and give me a true note of all his debts, and leave to me the whole order and receipt of all his money for his land, to Harvey, and the just payment of all his debts thereby. And, by the mercy and grace of God, it shall be performed by me to his quiet discharge, without cumbering him, and to his credit. For I will not have his cormorant seducers, and instruments of Satan to him, committing foul sin by his countenance to the displeasing of God and his godly true fear. Otherwise I will not, pro certo.”
This was a condition which, as Mr Spedding observes, was hard of digestion for an expectant Attorney-General. It was not complied with. But we need not attempt to follow these obscure transactions further; and here we may part company with Lady Bacon. In justice to her let it be added that, if she scolded her son Francis, she could assert his claims boldly before others. In a reported conversation with Sir Robert Cecil she does not scruple to hint that he is but ill used by his powerful relatives. She little understands what manner of son she has; she says truly that he is thinking nescio quid, but she is not without a certain degree of motherly pride, as well as motherly tenderness, for him.
We must now turn to that portion of Bacon’s history in which we see him brought into relationship with Essex. Mr Spedding has represented the friendship of the two men as being based on very noble motives. Essex was no doubt attracted to Bacon, in the first instance, by a generous admiration for his talents. But we do not find that on Bacon’s side there was any reciprocal ardour. We cannot help thinking that what Bacon chiefly saw in Essex was the young nobleman likely to be the great favourite of Elizabeth. Bacon, we are told by Mr Spedding, saw in Essex a man capable of “entering heartily into all his largest speculations for the good of the world, and placed by accident in a position to realise, or help to realise them. It was natural to hope that he could do it.”—(Vol. i. p. 106.) We have a portrait of Essex, as he first appeared to Bacon, drawn in glowing colours. This young nobleman is not only described as being (what all have admitted) generous, brave, and ardent in his friendship, but credit is given him for wide contemplative ends, or, at least, an aptitude is presumed in him for purely patriotic or philanthropic purposes. Now, from the commencement to the termination of his career, all his good qualities are seen in the service of a mere flagrant personal ambition. He is jealous of every honour bestowed upon another: he must be first in the country. And so far from detecting any great plan or noble intention in the use of power, we see him, still at an early age, prepared to throw the whole nation into confusion in order to obtain place or power for himself. And as to Bacon, throughout the whole of his correspondence with Essex there are no traces of anything higher than prudential and sometimes crafty counsels, how best to obtain favour and advancement at Court. The relationship between them is chiefly this, that Essex is to obtain office and promotion for Bacon, and Bacon by his aid and advice is to administer to the greatness of Essex. The relationship has nothing in it peculiarly reprehensible, but nothing certainly of an elevating character. Sometimes the strain of advice which the philosopher gives is of a quite ignoble character, counselling, as it does, a tricky, dissimulating conduct. It is no Utopia of any kind, moral or scientific, that he has in view for Essex, or for himself as connected with Essex. It is how to rise at Court that he studies for his friend, and it is the petty arts of the courtier that he sometimes condescends to teach.
We will content ourselves with one quotation: it must be a rather long one, because a single sentence wrung from its context may give no fair impression of the general strain of a letter of advice. The following was written to Essex soon after his famous expedition to Cadiz:—
“I said to your Lordship last time, Martha, Martha, attendis ad plurima, unum sufficit; win the Queen: if this be not the beginning, of any other course I see no end....
“For the removing the impression of your nature to be opiniastre, and not rulable: First, and above all things, I wish that all matters past, which cannot be revoked, your Lordship would turn altogether upon insatisfaction, and not upon your nature or proper disposition. This string you cannot upon every apt occasion harp upon too much. Next, whereas I have noted you to fly and avoid (in some respect justly) the resemblance or imitation of my Lord of Leicester and my Lord Chancellor Hatton; yet I am persuaded (howsoever I wish your Lordship as distant as you are from them in points of favour, integrity, magnanimity, and merit) that it will do you much good, between the Queen and you, to allege them (as oft as you find occasion) for authors and patterns. For I do not know a readier mean to make her Majesty think you are in your right way. Thirdly, when at any time your Lordship upon occasion happen in speeches to do her Majesty right (for there is no such matter as flattery amongst you all), I fear you handle it magis in speciem adornatis verbis quam ut sentire videaris, so that a man may read formality in your countenance; whereas your Lordship should do it familiarly et oratione fidâ. Fourthly, your Lordship should never be without some particulars of art, which you should seem to pursue with earnestness and affection, and then let them fall upon taking knowledge of her Majesty’s opposition and dislike. Of which the weightiest sort may be, if your Lordship offers to labour in the behalf of some that you favour for some of the places that are void, choosing such a subject as you think her Majesty is likely to oppose unto. And if you will say that this is conjunctum cum alienâ injurâ, I will not answer, Hæc non aliter constabunt; but I say commendation from so good a mouth doth not hurt a man, though you prevail not. A less weighty sort of particulars may be the pretence of some journeys, which at her Majesty’s request your Lordship mought relinquish; or if you would pretend a journey to see your living and estate towards Wales, or the like; for as for great foreign journeys of employment and service, it standeth not with your gravity to play or stratagem with them. And the lightest sort of particulars, which yet are not to be neglected, are in your habits, apparel, wearings, gestures, and the like....
“The third impression is of a popular reputation; which, because it is a thing good in itself, being obtained as your Lordship obtaineth it, that is bonis artibus; and besides well governed, is one of the best flowers of your greatness, both present and to come; it would be handled tenderly. The only way is to quench it verbis, but not rebus. And, therefore, to take all occasions to the Queen to speak against popularity and popular courses vehemently, and to tax it on all others; but nevertheless to go in your honourable commonwealth courses as you do. And, therefore, I will not advise you to cure this by dealing in monopolies or any oppressions. Only, if in Parliament your Lordship be forward for treasure in respect of the wars, it becometh your person well; and if her Majesty object popularity to you at any time, I would say to her, A Parliament will show that; and so feed her with expectation.”
It is only the fear of being tedious that prevents us from giving other passages in which Bacon counsels dissimulation and these petty artifices of the courtier. We do not say that passages like this deserve any violent reprobation, but we do say that the writer of them must have a very lax morality on the subject of truth-speaking; he must be deficient in self-respect, in moral dignity. Such a counsellor would not improve the man who followed his advice, however he might improve his fortunes. There was a love of manœuvring, of petty diplomacy, in Bacon. In one place we find him framing two fictitious letters, the one pretending to be written by his brother Anthony, and the other by the Earl of Essex. This fictitious correspondence was to be shown to the Queen.—(Vol. ii. p. 197.)
In Bacon, we may observe, we have not the mere ordinary contrast between good teaching and bad practice. We have not a Seneca professing a stoical morality and writing apologies for Nero (or any instance of this kind which the reader may choose for himself, for Seneca may have his defenders, and many are disposed at present to say a good word in favour of Nero). It is not a contrast of this kind we have chiefly to remark in Bacon: what we notice is a defect in the cultivation of the moral sentiments. The force of his intellect had gone out in another direction. He had great aspirations for the good of mankind; but these aspirations were connected with his theory of knowledge, and they were aspirations after increased power, and “commodity,” and the physical wellbeing of man. It was not his habit to dwell much upon those moral sentiments which make, in all ages, the elevation of the individual mind.
But the grave and specific charge brought against Bacon is that of ingratitude to his friend. We have to ask what was the amount or kind of obligation under which Bacon had been placed? What was the friendship he was supposed to have sacrificed to his interest? And whether the criminal conduct of Essex did not manumit him from all the bonds of friendship, whatever they might have been? Though not always a high-minded counsellor, Bacon was the last man in the country to tolerate an open act of rebellion against the Queen and the established Government. The evidence, as laid before us by Mr Spedding, proves beyond a doubt the grave criminality of Essex. If we have a friend who passes with us as an honest man, and he suddenly proves a villain, we generally fling our friendship to the winds—we disclaim and renounce the man who, in addition to his other villanies, has practised a treachery upon ourselves. In fact, the condemnation of Essex may be said to be here the acquittal of Bacon.
We shall not haggle about the amount of specific service rendered by Essex to his friend. Every generous mind feels gratitude according to the generosity of purpose of the donor. Essex, in the ardour of his youth, was, as we have said, drawn towards Bacon by admiration of his great intellect, and was only too zealous to promote his interest. His zeal outran his discretion. Nothing came of it but disappointment to both parties. But this would not have extinguished a grateful feeling.
We have no ground whatever for supposing that the intercession of Essex really prevented Bacon from obtaining first the Attorney-Generalship, and, subsequently, the Solicitor-Generalship. That nobleman speaks of his solicitations doing more harm than good; but an expression of this kind was either a generous depreciation of his own services, or the result of a moody anger against the Queen whom he had failed to move. It does not seem that Bacon at this time had any chance at Court. The Queen was in no hurry to promote him. He had obtained no practice at the bar, and it is no want of charity to attribute this in Bacon to an unwillingness to spend his strength and powers on the ordinary routine of legal business. But this unwillingness must have operated against him. The very qualities for which we now admire Bacon must have disparaged him as a man of business in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Burghley. A man who has long ago left his college, and who is still dreaming about reforms in philosophy, and who tells the Lord Treasurer himself that “he has as vast contemplative ends as he has moderate civil ends,” does not seem exactly the person for an Attorney-General. Bacon, at all events, does not scruple, on a subsequent occasion, to have recourse again to his friend’s intercession. When Egerton became Lord Keeper, Bacon wished to succeed him as Master of the Rolls, and he requests Essex to write to Egerton in his favour. He makes this request (we may observe in passing) in a diplomatic manner; he writing half the matter in his own letter, and Anthony being more explicit in a letter he sends at the same time. It is impossible not to remark that Bacon is grasping at the higher prizes of the profession before he has endured the heat and burden of a lawyer’s life.
His friend Essex being unable to procure for him either the Attorney-Generalship or the Solicitor-Generalship, and feeling indebted for many services, gave him a small estate, worth, we are told, £1800 in the currency of these times. This was a gift which, in one sense of the word, Bacon may be said to have earned; but, if we may judge according to the present state of feeling on these matters, it was a gift which he could not have felt perfectly satisfied in accepting. Nothing but his debts, we venture to assert, persuaded him to accept it. The services he had rendered were not such as are paid by money—they were never rendered for money-payment. It would be a very coarse interpretation (and one which Mr Spedding has avoided) to call this gift a fee for advice and assistance tendered to the Earl. It was not professional advice that he gave, whether he taught him how to rise at Court, or assisted him in the duties of a privy councillor. There was an interchange of good offices between the two men; but Bacon sinks from his rightful equality if he accepts money as an equivalent for any balance of such good offices as might be in his favour. Mr Spedding suggests that the aid which Bacon rendered in certain masques or devices got up for the entertainment of the Queen must be included in the list of his services; but Mr Spedding would not certainly have counselled him to hold out his hand for a money-payment for what was doubtless entered into in the spirit of a literary amusement. If, indeed, the two speeches which are given us here on Knowledge and in Praise of the Queen were really delivered at these devices, Bacon must have made these entertainments subservient to certain graver purposes of his own. We should like to know if the audience felt thankful to the author for his eloquent but very long orations.
So stands the account against Bacon, and the two men are still friends, when one of them suddenly appears in the new character of traitor and rebel. We say suddenly, for, though Essex had been long plotting some surprise upon the Government—some insurrectionary movement—some advantage to be taken either of his military power or his popularity with the mob—yet he had so far learnt one lesson of his friend, the lesson of dissimulation, that he had been able to conceal from him these secret purposes. Even so far back as when he was organising his great expedition to Ireland, which was to crush the rebellion of Tyrone, he is suspected of some intention of using the forces that were put under his command against the Queen’s Government. We are certainly driven to this alternative: either the Earl on that expedition manifested such incapacity as is unparalleled even in those days of brave knights and incompetent generals; or he acted throughout in the spirit of a traitor. He has the command of an army, large for those days, of 16,000 men; he does absolutely nothing with it—fritters it away; comes up at length to Tyrone with some 4000 men, Tyrone greatly outnumbering him. He draws up his forces on a hill; Tyrone refuses to charge uphill, but invites Essex to a parley. Essex accepts the invitation; has half an hour’s talk with the rebel, who gives him verbally the terms on which he is willing to lay down his arms—terms which are those of a conqueror. Essex promises to carry these terms to the Queen, concludes a truce, and there the campaign ends. The sum total, as Mr Spedding says, would stand thus:—Expended, £300,000 and ten or twelve thousand men; Received a suspension of hostilities for six weeks, with promise of a fortnight’s notice before recommencing them, and a verbal communication of the conditions on which he was willing to make peace.
Essex hastens back to England to make his own peace with the Queen. She at first receives him amicably; but reasons of State overweigh her personal amity; some inquiry must be made into the disastrous expedition; he is commanded to keep his own chamber. This takes place at Nonsuch.
At this juncture Bacon writes the following letter. It proves, as Mr Spedding observes, that Bacon could have had no suspicion of any treasonable scheme on the part of Essex; but we cannot help remarking the tone of hollowness in the letter, and especially in that congratulatory sentence, which cannot fail to strike the reader. He knew enough of the expedition to Ireland to know that, from whatever cause, it was an utter failure.
“My Lord,—Conceiving that your Lordship comes now up in the person of a good servant to serve your sovereign mistress, which kind of compliments we many times instar magnorum meritorum, and therefore it would be hard for me to find you, I have committed to this poor paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man’s, and more yours than any man. To these salutations I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your Lordship in your last conference with me, before your journey, spake not in vain, God making it good, that you trusted we should say Quis putasset, which, as it is found true in a happy sense, or I wish you do not find another Quis putasset in the manner of taking this so great a service. But I hope it is, as he said, Nubecula est, cito transibit: and that your Lordship’s wisdom and obsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best. So referring all to some time that I may attend you, I commit you to God’s best preservations.”
We do not believe that Bacon was capable of an ardent friendship for any one; he was urbane and courteous to all, as is the manner with men of thought and equanimity. With regard to Essex, this letter alone would be sufficient proof to us that he had all along been more of the courtier than the friend. No friend, in these circumstances, could have written in this hollow strain of congratulation.
In a short time, however, this strain alters. Essex is examined before the Council, and is committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper. He remains in privacy at York House. The nubecula is growing into a very dark cloud. Bacon, in his interviews with the Queen, does all that a cautious man can do to bring about a reconciliation. But if a reconciliation is impossible, he must serve his sovereign, and not Essex. He now writes thus:—
“My Lord,—No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship, which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of bonus civis, which with us is a good and true servant to the Queen; and next of bonus vir, that is an honest man. I desire your Lordship also to think that although I confess I love some things much better than I love your Lordship, as the Queen’s service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like, yet I love few persons better than yourself, both for gratitude’s sake and your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by accident and abuse. Of which my good affections I was ever and am ready to yield testimony by any good offices, but with such reservations as yourself cannot but allow; for as I was ever sorry that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus’s fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially ostrich’s, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more glad.”
To which letter Essex returned a dignified answer, such as a man might have written who intended to retire from an unjust world into contemplative life.
Soon after this correspondence Essex was released from even the gentle confinement in which he had been held. He could have retired, with none to molest him, into contemplative life. His private fortune was untouched; his name was still popular with the multitude. Perhaps, after a short interval of retirement patiently endured, he might have returned to Court, and have been reinstated in all his honour and offices.
The truth was that he had been for some time past tampering with treason of the boldest and most criminal description. Before leaving Ireland he held a consultation with his friends Blount and Southampton, and told them “that he found it necessary for him to go to England, and thought it fit to carry with him as much of the army as he could conveniently transport, to go on shore with him to Wales, and there to make good his landing till he could send for more; not doubting but his army would so increase in a small time that he should be able to march to London and make his conditions as he desired.” The evidence for this treasonable scheme is stated by Mr Spedding, vol. ii. p. 147.
The time had passed for this “monstrous” project, as Mr Spedding justly calls it. But the scheme into which he now enters is still more monstrous; it is still more irrational, and, but for evidence of an unusually clear and stringent character, would be utterly incredible. That scheme was to force himself upon the Queen, and by an insurrectionary movement to be carried, in some way, to the highest position a subject could hold—perhaps to some still higher position. What was to be his pretence? what the cry by which he was to rouse the multitude? The succession to the English throne of James of Scotland had not been formally declared, and the cry was to be that the ministers were plotting to sell the crown of England to the Infanta!! It was too absurd, one would say, even for a mob zealous for the Protestant succession. Some overtures, or solicitations for aid, were made to James, but of what nature we know not. While the Protestants were to be alarmed, the Catholics were to be propitiated by promises of toleration. But Blount and other Catholics who entered into the plot were, no doubt, induced to do so by stronger motives than mere promises of toleration—by those vague expectations and hopes which a season of anarchy and confusion and civil war would open to a party who still amounted to a large minority of the nation. “By the end of January 1601,” to adopt the statement of Mr Spedding, “all their intrigues and secret consultations had ripened into a deliberate and deep-laid plan for surprising the Court, mastering the guard, and seizing the Queen’s person, and so forcing her to dismiss from her counsels Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, and others, and to make such changes in the State as the conspirators thought fit.” The several confessions of those engaged in the plot, and of Essex himself, leave no doubt whatever of the fact. How such a plot is to be rationally explained is still a perplexity. Sir Christopher Blount, with a company of armed men, was to take the Court gate; Sir John Davis was to master the hall and go up into the Great Chamber, where already some of the conspirators would have straggled in and seized upon the halberts of the guard, which usually stood piled up against the wall; Sir Charles Davers was to have taken possession of the Presence; whereupon Essex, with the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and other noblemen, would have gone in to the Queen; they would have used her authority for calling a Parliament, condemned all whom they denounced as misgoverning the State, and made, it is added, changes in the government. If such a plot had succeeded, what else could have ensued than to set loose all the several parties, sects, and factions of which the country was composed, to struggle anew for the supremacy?
Meanwhile, some rumours of what was in preparation reached the Court; Essex was summoned to the Council; he excused himself on the plea of ill health. The conspirators were alarmed; it seemed to them that their plot was detected. It was not yet matured—the hour of action had not yet come. Still, it appeared to them that something must be done. His friends were assembled. To surprise the Court was impossible, if the Court was already on its guard. But the city might be raised; an insurrectionary movement might be excited if Essex, still an idol of the populace, went among the citizens proclaiming that his life was in danger from the machinations of his enemies. While this expedient was being debated there arrived from the Court the Lord Keeper, with three other lords, sent from the Queen to know the meaning of this unusual assemblage, and to demand its dismissal. Essex was invited to explain to them the cause of his present discontent. Their coming still further precipitated the action. Essex locked up the four noblemen in his library, and set off himself, accompanied with some two hundred gentlemen, to rouse the city to arms. But for the inopportune appearance of these noblemen, Essex and his friends would have proceeded in stately fashion on horseback to St Paul’s Cross; they would have arrived before the sermon was over (it was Sunday), and would have explained their case to the assembled people. Essex was not deficient as an orator, and he could, at all events, have obtained a solemn hearing. But the visit of the councillors spoilt even the execution of the after-plot. The party went on foot; Essex had no opportunity to address the people; he could only cry out as he passed along that his life was in danger. A nobleman running along the streets on a Sunday morning, followed by two hundred gentlemen with drawn swords, and exclaiming that his life was in danger, must have been a curious spectacle for the citizens of London. But it must have been as unintelligible as it was curious. No one joined him. The Queen’s troops were collected to oppose him. He made his way back to Essex House, where he was captured, and conveyed to prison.
Up to this time Bacon’s conduct towards Essex lies open to no peculiar censure. We have said that he does not appear to us in the light of a very wise counsellor, or a very warm friend; but, as regards Essex, no specific charge of ingratitude can be brought against him. It is after this abortive and miserable attempt at rebellion that his conduct to his former friend changes. And well, we think, it might. Of the character and designs of Essex there could be now no doubt whatever. He has thrown off all disguise. He stands there an enemy to the commonwealth. Nothing but the extreme absurdity of his conduct hides from us its extreme criminality.
The defence which Essex was at first prepared to make was simply the repetition of the false clamour that he had raised when he rushed into the city—that his life was in danger, and that he acted according to the law of self-preservation. But, before the trial came on, several of his associates had made full confession of the actual plot that had long been in agitation, and which, only at the last moment, had been substituted by this open and clamorous appeal to the citizens of London. To Bacon, as one of her Majesty’s counsel, engaged, as we should say, for the prosecution, the real state of the case was known; the full extent of Essex’s criminality was known. Do we wonder that, at this moment, he altogether severed himself from Essex, and took his position as a zealous supporter of the Queen’s government?
Lord Macaulay, who could not have had before him the materials for forming a judgment which Mr Spedding has now placed within the reach of us all, wrote of Essex and Bacon in the following strain:—“The person on whom, during the decline of his influence, he chiefly depended, to whom he confided his perplexities, whose advice he solicited, whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. The lamentable truth must be told. This friend, so loved, so trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the Earl’s fortunes, in shedding his blood, and in blackening his memory.” A more unfortunate sentence, or one more replete with error, was never penned. It would be ungenerous to revive it in presence of the lucid statement of facts which Mr Spedding has given us, if it were not the case that many are still under the impressions derived from this eloquent essay. Essex, as we have seen, was very far from confiding his perplexities to Bacon, or soliciting his advice in those latter days of his life; and Bacon was so far from being instrumental to his ruin, that no advocacy on earth could have saved him. Nor can it be said that he blackened the memory of Essex, for neither on the trial, nor in the narrative which he subsequently drew up of the whole transaction, is the guilt of Essex overcharged. Nay, with the materials before us, the historian could add some very dark strokes to the picture; for he could show that, even at a time when Essex was receiving nothing but favours from the Court, he was meditating treason; and he could add that, in his last moments, he tarnished even his character for generosity by needlessly including others, hitherto unsuspected, in his guilt.
What could have been, we are tempted to ask, the hopes of Essex, or what his final purpose in this act of rebellion? Where could he have stopped? how found safety for himself in any measure short of a deposition of the Queen? He must have known that if, by overpowering her guard and putting a personal constraint upon her, he obliged the Queen to reinstate him in his former command, yet that the moment such force was withdrawn he would have been dismissed again, and exposed to the resentment of a proud and injured sovereign. A subject who goes so far must go farther still. Elizabeth must have been deposed, and James prematurely thrust into her place. It has been even suggested that Essex had some wild dream of filling the throne himself. He was to play Bolingbroke, and Elizabeth Richard II.
Those who take a lenient view of Essex’s character might shape a defence for him out of his very self-will and the headstrong nature of the man. They would say he did not calculate consequences. He had twice before regained the favour of the Queen by manifestation of his own violent and haughty temper. He had managed the Queen by proving that he was as self-willed as herself. He merely intended to follow the same course again—to threaten, and display his power. Such a defence we should not be unwilling ourselves to adopt, if the treasonable projects of Essex had sprung directly, and only, out of his last dismissal from Court and his employments. We can conceive that a spoilt and violent nobleman might have imagined that he could successfully overawe the Queen: she had, indeed, treated him as a spoilt child, and had something of a maternal weakness for him: he might have thought that he could subdue her spirit by this display of his power, and yet not have contemplated any more atrocious act of rebellion. But the ugly fact remains that he was meditating high treason of the most criminal description before he had been dismissed, and while he was still the most favoured subject of her Majesty.
Even to those who knew nothing of his antecedent schemes, it must have seemed a monstrous thing that a nobleman, because he has been dismissed from his command, should think of reinstating himself by an armed attack upon the palace, and a violent seizure of the person of the Queen. So much as this was known to Bacon, and was indisputably proved by the evidence submitted to him. But why, it will be said, did Bacon appear upon the trial at all? If his services were necessary to the support of the Queen’s government, he ought to have given them, whatever his friendship to Essex; but there were others who could have performed his part; he might have stepped aside; he, in silence, might have let justice take its course. “This man is guilty, but he was my friend; let others pursue him to his merited punishment.” He might have said this; we wish he had. It would have been a graceful part to play; it would have added a very pleasing trait to the biography of Bacon.
But such moral enthusiasm had no place in Bacon’s personal character. To retire from the post which his legal functions assigned to him, might have been seriously prejudicial to his own interests, and in the spirit of martyrdom Bacon did not share in the least degree. Meanwhile Essex by his conduct had forfeited the friendship henceforth of all honest men. It must be said that Bacon rather lost the opportunity of doing a gracious act, than that, in performing his duties as counsel to the Queen, he did anything gravely reprehensible. And he performed these duties fairly. It is objected against Bacon that he pressed heavily on the memory of Essex in the account he subsequently drew up of the events. This charge Mr Spedding has quite dispelled. He shows that that account is fully justified by the evidence. The fact is, that for a long time after his death a current of popular opinion ran in favour of the Earl; and the “Declaration,” therefore, which Bacon, with the assistance and under the direction of the Council, drew up, was regarded as a libel upon his memory. People refused to believe him guilty. If any remains of this partiality to the Earl has descended to our times, it will be finally dissipated by Mr Spedding’s work.
There is one specific accusation which Mr Jardine brought against Bacon, which is here very completely refuted. Mr Jardine, in examining the original depositions from which this “Declaration” was drawn up, found paragraphs marked along the margin with a significant om. against them. He further found that these passages had been omitted in the “Declaration,” and he concluded that this om. was in the handwriting of Bacon, who had marked these passages for omission because they told in favour of Essex. Mr Spedding replies:—
“First, it is by no means certain that the marks in question were made with reference to the Declaration at all. Secondly, it is quite possible that the passages in question had been omitted at the trial. Thirdly, whether the omission were right or wrong, there is no ground for imputing it to Bacon personally. Fourthly, the passages omitted do not in any one particular tend to soften the evidence against Essex as explained in the narrative part, or to modify in any way the history of the case, as far as it concerned him.”
The last, the Fourthly, is quite sufficient to demolish Mr Jardine’s hypothesis. These passages appear to have been omitted because they affected living persons whom the Council wished to spare, or because they contained matters which the Council did not wish to publish to all the enemies of the Queen’s Government at home or abroad. Mr Spedding, however, has enabled the reader to judge for himself by publishing these omitted passages.
As very much stress has been laid on the presumed unfairness of this Declaration composed by Bacon, it must be remembered, under the supervision of the Council, we quote at length Mr Spedding’s concluding observations upon it:—
“With regard to the general charge of untruthfulness, I have said that nobody has yet attempted to specify any particular untruth expressed or implied in the Government Declaration. And it is singular that Mr Jardine himself does not form an exception; for though he does specify, as contradicted by one of the omitted passages, a particular statement which he assumes to be contained in the Declaration, it is certain that there is no such statement there; but that, on the contrary, the precise import of that passage, as Mr Jardine himself infers it, is represented in the body of the narrative with delicate exactness. In the absence of such specification, I can only oppose to the general charge a general expression of my own conviction; which is, that the narrative put forth by the Government was meant to be, and was by its authors believed to be, a narrative strictly and scrupulously veracious. It is true that it was written under the excitement and agitation of that last and most portentous disclosure, which, in proving that Essex had been capable of designs far worse than anybody had suspected him of, suggested a new explanation of all that had been most suspicious and mysterious in his previous proceedings; and it may be that things which before had been rejected as incredible were now too easily believed. In so dark a thing as treason it is impossible to have positive evidence at every step. Many passages must remain obscure, and fairly open to more interpretations than one; and in one or two of those points which are and profess to be ‘matter of inference or presumption,’ as distinguished from ‘matter of plain and direct proof,’ there is room, probably, without setting aside such indisputable facts, for an interpretation of Essex’s conduct more favourable than that adopted by the Queen and her councillors.... In my own account of the matter I have abstained, in deference to so general a prejudice, from using the Declaration as an authority; and have assumed as a fact nothing for which I cannot quote evidence independent of it. For the rest, I shall let it speak for itself. It will be found to be a very luminous and coherent narrative, and certainly much nearer the truth than any which has been put forth since it became the fashion to treat it as a fiction.”
Having elected to serve the Queen, and not his former friend (and he probably never hesitated a moment on this subject; he probably would have thought it mere idle romance to sacrifice the actual life and duties before him to the memory of a dead friendship)—having elected to serve the Queen, we do not find that in assisting to conduct the prosecution Bacon behaved with undue harshness towards the accused. The allusion to the Duke of Guise, which Macaulay blames so severely, appears to be one very natural to arise to a speaker on such an occasion. Essex did intend, like the Duke of Guise, to overawe his sovereign. In one respect the parallel pays an undeserved compliment to Essex. The Duke of Guise had the support of a great party—the zealous Catholics; if Essex could have attained the like support from the zealous Protestants, the Puritans, his scheme might, at least, have worn a more rational aspect. Perhaps he fondly conceived that the Puritans would adopt him as their representative. He thought himself a very good Puritan. This bad citizen was highly indignant when Coke cast a slur upon his religion.
Here we lose for the present the guidance of Mr Spedding. We wait with interest for such disclosures as he may make for us in the great charge that burdens the memory of Bacon—that of judicial corruption. There are, indeed, two or three broad facts which, we apprehend, no historical investigation can materially alter, and which, we think, enable us to come to a safe conclusion in this subject. But still there is much we should like to have cleared up to us; especially we should like to know what had been the custom of previous Chancellors in this matter of the reception of presents. Could, for instance, the same charges which were brought against Bacon have been brought against the father, Sir Nicholas Bacon?
The two or three broad facts we allude to are these: 1. After a considerable interval Parliament had met, and “grievances had been gone into.” Monopolies were first attacked, and their attention was called to certain corrupt practices in the Court of Chancery. Bacon was impeached before the House of Lords. 2. The Lord Chancellor no longer stood in an amiable footing with the favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was very willing to have the Great Seal to bestow on some other client. The impeached Chancellor was not likely to receive any assistance from the Court. The King advised Bacon to throw himself on his royal mercy. 3. Under these circumstances Bacon did plead guilty, and threw himself on the mercy of the King; who certainly fulfilled his part of the compact by remitting all that he possibly could of the sentence passed by the House of Lords.
Now we cannot suppose that Bacon would plead guilty unless there were really some corrupt practices of which his conscience told him he was culpable. To suppose otherwise would, as Macaulay has argued, convict him of a dastardly conduct almost as infamous as judicial corruption. But although it is impossible to suppose that there was not something to confess—something culpable and illegal to plead guilty to—yet it is very possible that, by showing that he was not more culpable than others, he might have defended himself successfully before the House of Lords. A man of sterner stuff would have adopted this line of defence; he would have carried the war into other territories. Of this the Court was not at all desirous, and Bacon, a lover of peace, thought it the better bargain to plead guilty and keep the King for his friend.
We do not accuse the Lord Chancellor of pleading guilty, and being conscious of perfect innocence; we say that he resigned a line of defence which might have been successful with his judges, in obedience to the wishes of the Court. In the position in which he found himself, submission was better policy than defence.
It is idle to suppose that Bacon received no presents but such as would be classed under the head of fees or customary donations: there was the element of secrecy in the transactions which were now brought to light, and which were to be made the subject of investigation before the House of Lords. The money was given, it is true, to an officer of the Court; it was not slipped into the hand, or dropped stealthily into the sleeve of the judge himself: but the officer of the Court did not talk about such transactions as these; he had the proper esprit de corps, if he had no other motive for silence. But still there are many cases in which a custom, acknowledged to be bad and immoral even by those who fall into it, is yet so prevalent that it seems an injustice to single out any one individual, and punish it in him; and this seems to be the position in which Bacon stands. An illustration occurs to us in some of the vicious customs of trade. The illustration may not be very dignified, but it is apposite. A little time ago the public was suddenly made aware of divers impositions that had been long practised on it. Some articles of commerce were systematically adulterated; others were sold under false descriptions. Here were reels of cotton warranted to contain 300 yards, which did not contain say more than 200; and it was reported at the time (we of course do not vouch for the truth of a statement which we use only by way of illustration) that respectable houses of trade gave orders to the manufacturers for reels of cotton which should be marked as having a greater number of yards than were actually wound on them. Now let us suppose that a custom of this kind prevails, and that suddenly one man, and he not the most flagrant offender, is singled out for punishment. You cannot say the man is guiltless—he will not say himself that he is guiltless; he never approved of the custom, though he fell into it; he knew that it could not bear the light of day; he knew that though his own class did not condemn the custom, the moral opinion of society at large would unhesitatingly denounce it. He pleads guilty—as Bacon did—and throws himself upon the charitable construction of the public. And the public, if it cannot pardon, will not be disposed to punish severely.
The difference between a prevalent bad custom, and a custom which society at a given time does not pronounce to be bad, is stated by Lord Macaulay with his usual force and precision. We shall be glad to hear, from the further investigation of Mr Spedding, which of these most strictly applies to the practice of which Bacon stands accused.
We cannot leave our subject without expressing our assent (with certain reservations) to the estimate which Lord Macaulay has formed of Bacon in his character of philosopher—in that character in which there can be only the difference of more or less admiration.
We admire—as who does not?—the eloquent and far-seeing man who perceived that too much of our time was spent over books, and too little in the study of that nature which appeals at each moment to our senses, and promises to those who will investigate her laws new powers as well as new knowledge. But we agree with Macaulay in setting little store upon the rules of a new logic by which he offered to aid the investigation of those laws. No logic of any kind ever taught a man to reason. No truth was ever discovered by either Aristotelian or Baconian logic. It may be fit and proper to make the process of reasoning a subject of subtle analysis; but just as the poet must come before the critic, and never yet was formed by the critic, so the reasoner comes before the logician, and never yet was an able reasoner made so by rules of logic. It was a glorious word spoken in season, to tell men to observe and to experiment—to take nothing upon mere tradition or authority that could possibly be tested by experiment. But the rules Bacon gives for conducting observation and experiment have never made a good observer, or contributed themselves to our scientific discoveries. “The inductive method,” as Macaulay says, “has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being.... Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method, but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analysed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery of a new principle—had shown that such discoveries must be made by induction, and by induction alone; and had given the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision.”
We for our part have always noticed that when a man talks much about “Baconian philosophy,” he is going to stuff into our ears some incredible nonsense. He who has good evidence to bring forward—trusts at once to his evidence. Phrenologists, mesmerists, spiritualists, all who have a very weak case, are great discoursers on the rules of induction. They eke out their defective reasoning by proving to us, whether we are aware of it or not, that they are very good reasoners. Most readers, fortunately for themselves, are satisfied with a few brilliant passages of the ‘Novum Organum.’ If they proceeded farther, they might find that not only did it not assist them in their researches after physical truth, but that it embarrassed them considerably as to the real nature of physical science, and the kind of truth to be sought for.
Bacon was a great writer, a great thinker, but he was not “the father of modern philosophy.” If we are to have fathers in science, the title must be given to such men as Galileo, Kepler, Newton. He who discovers one great scientific truth does more even for the logic of science than any writer upon that logic can perform.
Science does not stand in contradiction to the metaphysical or ethical discussions of ancient or of modern times. There is no contrast such as is popularly described between the old philosophy and the new. But a vast addition has been made to one kind of our knowledge. And with regard to that great argument of utility which Lord Macaulay has so eloquently developed, it must be borne in mind that the utility of the physical sciences made itself known by certain individual discoveries and inventions, not by mere abstract contemplation of what the study of nature might produce. In fact, the utility of the pursuit was the very argument which Socrates made use of to draw men from the study of objective nature to the study of themselves. As matters then stood, more seemed likely to be effected by regulating the mind of man than by observing the winds or the clouds, or any of the phenomena of nature.
Let us carry ourselves back in imagination to the state of philosophy which existed at Athens in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, and which Mr Merivale has so pleasantly described in his last volume of ‘The History of the Romans under the Empire.’ Philosophy seems to have come to a dead-lock. “On every side it was tacitly acknowledged that the limits of each specific dogma had been reached; that all were true enough to be taught, and none so true as to be exclusively believed. Their several professors lived together in conventional antagonism, and in real good-fellowship. Academics and Peripatetics, Stoics and Epicureans, Pyrrhonists and Cynics, disputed together or thundered one against the other through the morning, and bathed, dined, and joked together, with easy indifference, through the evening.” Well, let us suppose that amongst this conclave a Baconian philosopher had presented himself, with his new organon and his speculations on the new power men would derive, if, with this organon in their hands, they would proceed to the study of nature. After some struggle to get a footing in what Mr Merivale has described as a most conservative university, he would perhaps have been allowed to open his school in Athens, and he would have added one more figure to that group of philosophers who disputed in the morning, and dined amicably together in the evening. Another admirable talker would have appeared amongst them. This would have been the whole result. But now let us imagine that to this Athens a Galileo had come with his telescope and revealed the satellites of Jupiter; let us imagine that a Cavendish had come with his electric battery and decomposed water into two gases, one of which burst readily into flame; what a stir would there then have been amongst all the schools and classes of Athens! Still larger telescopes would have been made, and the electric battery applied to all sorts of substances. An era of experimental philosophy would at once have been inaugurated.
All honour to the great and eloquent writer; but such palms and such wreaths as Science has to bestow are due to those who have discovered scientific truths. These are they who have really stirred the minds of men as well as placed power in their hands; and, without gainsaying a word of what Lord Macaulay has so brilliantly stated of the utilities of science, it is worthy of notice that in no department of philosophy have truth and knowledge been sought for with so much avidity purely for their own sakes. And it should be added that only by the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake can its utilities be developed. For it is one thing to prosecute science with a general conviction that its truths will turn to inventions for the good of man, and quite another thing to set before ourselves some desirable end or object of a practical kind as the goal to which we are striving. This is what the alchemists did when they set before themselves the transmutation of metals as the achievement to be accomplished. To study nature under such guidance as this would be a great mistake. We may be wasting our time on an impossibility; we should certainly be narrowing the sphere of our observation. But when we strive in every direction to proceed from the known to the unknown, by seizing upon every new relation which offers itself to the understanding, then we can hardly fail to stumble upon some discovery of a practical utility. The passion for knowledge sweeps all things into our net, and we may find marvellous treasures there we never dreamt of. The higher sentiment of the love of knowledge is that which can alone conduct us to the utilities of knowledge. We cannot predict what science will enable us to do, and then proceed with our studies in order that we may accomplish this end. It is science which teaches us what new ends can be accomplished. It is an ever-broadening knowledge, procured immediately for its own sake, that opens up to us the new possibilities, the new powers, that man may aspire to and possess.