In 1592, his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, procured for him the reversion of the registrarship of the Star Chamber, worth sixteen hundred pounds (forty thousand francs) a year; but the office did not become vacant till twenty years after, so that, as Bacon justly observes, “it might mend his prospects, but did not fill his barns.”
A parliament was summoned in 1593, and Bacon was returned to the House of Commons, for the County of Middlesex; he distinguished himself here as a speaker. “The fear of every man who heard him,” says his contemporary, Ben Jonson, “was lest he should make an end.” He made, however, on one occasion a speech which much displeased the Queen and Court. Elizabeth directed the Lord Keeper to intimate to him that he must expect neither favor nor promotion; the repentant courtier replied in writing, that “her Majesty’s favor was dearer to him than his life.”[9]
In the following year the situation of Solicitor-General[10] became vacant. Bacon ardently aspired to it. He applied successively to Lord Burleigh, his uncle, to Lord Puckering, his father’s successor, to the Earl of Essex, their rival, and finally to the Queen herself, accompanying his letters, as was the custom of the times, with a present, a jewel.[11] But once more he saw mediocrity preferred, and himself rejected. A Serjeant Fleming was appointed her Majesty’s Solicitor-General. Bacon, overwhelmed by this disappointment, wished to retire from public life, and to reside abroad. “I hoped,” said he in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, “her Majesty would not be offended that, not able to endure the sun, I fled into the shade.”
The Earl of Essex, whose mind, says Mr. Macaulay, “naturally disposed to admiration of all that is great and beautiful, was fascinated by the genius and the accomplishments of Bacon,”[12] had exerted every effort in Bacon’s behalf; to use his own language, he “spent all his power, might, authority, and amity;” he now sought to indemnify him, and, with royal munificence, presented him with an estate of the value of nearly two thousand pounds, a sum worth perhaps four or five times the amount in the money of our days. If anything could enhance the benefaction, it was the delicacy with which it was conferred, or, as Bacon himself expresses it, “with so kind and noble circumstances as the manner was worth more than the matter.”
Bacon published his Essays in 1597; he considered them but as the “recreations of his other studies.” The idea of them was probably first suggested by Montaigne’s Essais, but there is little resemblance between the two works beyond the titles. The first edition contained but ten Essays, which were shorter than they now are. The work was reprinted in 1598, with little or no variation; again in 1606; and in 1612 there was a fourth edition, etc. However, he afterwards, he says, “enlarged it both in number and weight;” but it did not assume its present form until the ninth edition, in 1625, that is, twenty-eight years after its first publication, and one year before the death of the author. It appeared under the new title of The Essaies or Covnsels Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Vervlam, Viscovnt St. Alban. Newly enlarged. This is not followed by the Religious Meditations, Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, seene and allowed. The Essays were soon translated into Italian with the title of Saggi Morali del Signore Francesco Bacono, Cavagliero Inglese, Gran Cancelliero d’ Inghilterra. This translation was dedicated to Cosmo de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany; and was reprinted in London in 1618. Of the three Essays added after Bacon’s decease, two of them, Of a King and Of Death, are not genuine; the Fragment of an Essay on Fame alone is Bacon’s.
In this same year (1597) he again took his seat in Parliament. He soon made ample amends for his opposition speech in the previous session; but this time he gained the favor of the Court without forfeiting his popularity in the House of Commons.
He now thought of strengthening his interest, or increasing his fortune, by a matrimonial connection; and he sought the hand of a rich widow, Lady Hatton, his second cousin; but here he was again doomed to disappointment; a preference was given to his old rival, the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, notwithstanding the “seven objections to him—his six children and himself.” But although Bacon was perhaps unaware of it, the rejection of his suit was one of the happiest events of his life; for the eccentric manners and violent temper of the lady rendered her a torment to all around her, and probably most of all to her husband. In reality, as has been wittily observed, the lady was doubly kind to him; “she rejected him, and she accepted his enemy.”
Another mortification awaited him at this period. A relentless creditor, a usurer, had him arrested for a debt of three hundred pounds, and he was conveyed to a spunging-house, where he was confined for a few days, until arrangements could be made to satisfy the claim or the claimant.
We now arrive at a painfully sad point in the life of Bacon; a dark foul spot, which should be hidden forever, did not history, like the magistrate of Egypt that interrogated the dead, demand that the truth, the whole truth, should be told.
We have seen that between Bacon and the Earl of Essex, all was disinterested affection on the part of the latter; the Earl employed his good offices for him, exerted heart and soul to insure his success as Solicitor-General, and, on Bacon’s failure, conferred on him a princely favor, a gift of no ordinary value.