“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.