which the last Valois had been held by the house of Lorraine, was sufficient to harden her heart against a man who, in rank, in military reputation, in popularity among the citizens of the capital, bore some resemblance to the Captain of the League. Essex was convicted. Bacon made no effort to save him, though the queen's feelings were such, that he might have pleaded his benefactor's cause, possibly with success, certainly without any serious danger to himself. The unhappy nobleman was executed. His fate excited strong, perhaps unreasonable feelings of compassion and indignation. The queen was received by the citizens of London with gloomy looks and faint acclamations. She thought it expedient to publish a vindication of her late proceedings. The faithless friend who had assisted in taking the earl's life was now employed to murder the Bacon's writings and had been pleased with them. He was accordingly selected to write, "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert Ear! of Essex," which was printed by authority. In the succeeding reign, Bacon had not a word to say in defence of this performance, a performance abounding in expressions which no generous enemy would have employed respecting a man who had so dearly expiated his offences. His only excuse was, that he wrote it by command; that he considered himself an a mere secretary; that he had particular instructions as to the way in which he was t treat every part of the subject; and that, in fact, he had furnished only the arrangemen and the style. against his friend, submitted himself to the queen's pleasure, and appeared at the bar in support of the charges. But a darker scene was behind. The unhappy young nobleman, made reckless by despair, ventured on a rash and criminal enterprise, which rendered him liable to the highest penalties of the law. What course was Bacon to take! This was one of those conjunctures which show what men are. To a high-minded man, wealth, power, courtfavour, even personal safety, would have appeared of no account, when opposed to friendship, gratitude, and honour. Such a man would have stood by the side of Essex at the trial; would have "spent all his power, might, authority, and amity," in soliciting a mitigation of the sentence; would have been a daily visiter at the cell, would have received the last injunctions and the last embrace on the scaffold; would have employed all the powers of his in-earl's fame. The queen had seen some of tellect to guard from insult the fame of his generous though erring friend. An ordinary man would neither have incurred the danger of succouring Essex, nor the disgrace of assailing him. Bacon did not even preserve neutrality. He appeared as counsel for the prosecution. In that situation he did not confine himself to what would have been amply sufficient to procure a verdict. He employed all his wit, his rhetoric, and his learning-not to insure a conviction, for the circumstances were such that a conviction was inevitable; but to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those excuses which, though legally of no value, yet tended to diminish the moral guilt of the crime; and which, therefore, though they could not justify the peers in pronouncing an acquittal, might incline the queen to grant a pardon. The earl urged as a palliation of his frantic acts, that he was surrounded by powerful and inveterate enemies, that they had ruined his fortunes, that they sought his life, and that their persecutions had driven him to despair. This was true, and Bacon well knew it to be true. But he affected to treat it as an idle pretence. He compared Essex to Pisistratus, who, by pretending to be in imminent danger of assassination, and by exhibiting self-inflicted wounds, succeeded in establishing tyranny at Athens. This was too much for the prisoner to bear. He interrupted his ungrateful friend, by calling on him to quit the part of an advocate; to come forward as a witness, and tell the lords whether, in old times, he, Francis Bacon, had not, under his own hand, repeatedly asserted the truth of what he now represented as idle pretexts. It is painful to go on with this lamentable story. Bacon returned a shuffling answer to the earl's question; and, as if the allusion to Pisistratus were not sufficiently offensive, made another allusion still more unjustifiable. He compared Essex to Henry Duke of Guise, and the rash attempt in the city, to the day of the barricades at Paris. Why Bacon had recourse to such a topic it is difficult to say. It was quite unnecessary for the purpose of obtaining a verdict. It was certain to produce a strong impression on the mind of the haughty and jealous princess on whose pleasure the earl's fate depended. The faintest allusion to the degrading tutelage in We regret to say that the whole conduct of Bacon through the course of these transactions appears to Mr. Montagu not merely excusable, but deserving of high admiration. The inte grity and benevolence of this gentleman are so well known, that our readers will probably be at a loss to conceive by what steps he can have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion; and we are half afraid that they will suspect us of practising some artifice upon them when we report the principal arguments which he employs. In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu attempts to show that Bacon lay under greater obligations to the queen than to Essex. What these obligations were it is not easy to discover. The situation of queen's counsel and a remote reversion were surely favours very far below Bacon's personal and hereditary claims. They were favours which had not cost the queen a groat, nor had they put a groat into Bacon's purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's claims to gratitude on some other ground, and this Mr. Montagu felt. "What perhaps was her greatest kindness," says he, "instead of having hastily advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obligations to Eliza beth." Such indeed they were. Being the sou of one of her oldest and most faithful minis ters, being himself the ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had been condemned by her to drudgery, to obscurity Y to poverty. She had depreciated his acquire- | ton's broad pieces and Sir John Kennedy's ments. She had checked him in the most im- cabinet was not of such vast importance as to perious manner when in Parliament he ven- sanctify all the means which might conduce to tured to act an independent part. She had re- that end. If the case were fairly stated, it would, fused to him the professional advancement to we much fear, stand thus: Bacon was a servile which he had a just claim. To her it was advocate that he might be a corrupt judge. owing that while younger men, not superior to him in extraction and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, were filling the highest offices of the state, adding manor to manor, rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a spunging-house for a debt of three hundred pounds. Assuredly if Bacon owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed none to Essex. If the queen really was his best friend, the earl was his worst enemy. We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a little further. He might have maintained that Bacon was fully justified in revenging himself on a man who had attempted to rescue his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by the queen, who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had been so cruel as to present him with a landed estate. Mr. Montagu conceives that none but the ignorant and unreflecting can think Bacon censurable for any thing that he did as counsel for the crown; and maintains that no advocate can justifiably use any discretion as to the party for whom he appears. We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not agreeable to reason and morality; whether it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head and a band round his neck, do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire; whether it be right that, not merely believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indig nant exclamation, by gestures, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perAgain, we can hardly think Mr. Montagu plexing another, to cause a jury to think that serious when he tells us that Bacon was bound statement false. It is not necessary on the for the sake of the public not to destroy his present occasion to decide these questions. own hopes of advancement, and that he took The professional rules, be they good or bad, part against Essex from a wish to obtain power are rules to which many wise and virtuous which might enable him to be useful to his coun- men have conformed, and are daily conformtry. We really do not know how to refute such ing. If, therefore, Bacon did no more than arguments except by stating them. Nothing is these rules required of him, we shall readily impossible which does not involve a contradic- admit that he was blameless. But we conceive tion. It is barely possible that Bacon's motives that his conduct was not justifiable according for acting as he did on this occasion may have to any professional rules that now exist or that been gratitude to the queen for keeping him ever existed in England. It has always been poor, and a desire to benefit his fellow-crea- held, that in criminal cases, in which the pritures in some higher situation. And there is soner was denied the help of counsel, and a possibility that Bonner may have been a above all in capital cases, the advocate for good Protestant, who, being convinced that the the prosecution was both entitled and bound to blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, exercise a discretion. It is true that after the heroically went through all the drudgery and Revolution, when the Parliament began to infamy of persecution that he might inspire make inquisition for the innocent blood which the English people with an intense and lasting had been shed by the last Stuarts, a feeble athatred of Popery. There is a possibility that tempt was made to defend the lawyers who had Jeffries may have been an ardent lover of been accomplices in the murder of Sir Thomas liberty, and that he may have beheaded Alger- Armstrong, on the ground that they had only non Sydney and burned Elizabeth Gaunt only acted professionally. The wretched sophism in order to produce a reaction which might was silenced by the execrations of the House lead to the limitation of the prerogative. There of Commons. "Things will never be well is a possibility that Thurtell may have killed done," said Mr. Foley, "till some of that proWeare only in order to give the youth of Eng-fession be made examples." "We have a land an impressive warning against gaming and had company. There is a possibility that Fauntleroy may have forged powers of attorney only in order that his fate might turn the attention of the public to the defects of the penal law. These things, we say, are possible. But they are so extravagantly improbable, that a man who should act on such suppositions would be fit only for Saint Luke's. And we do not see why suppositions on which no rational man would act in ordinary life should be admitted into history. Mr. Montagu's notion that Bacon desired power only in order to do good to mankind appears somewhat strange to us when we consider how Bacon afterwards use power and how he lost it. Surely the service which he rendered to mankind by taking Lady Whar new sort of monsters in the world," said the younger Hampden, "haranguing a man to death. These I call bloodhounds. Sawyer is very criminal and guilty of this murder." "I speak to discharge my conscience," said Mr. Garroway. "I will not have the blood of this man at my door. Sawyer demanded judgment against him and execution. I believe him guilty of the death of this man. Do what you will with him.” “If the profession of the law,” said the elder Hampden, "gives a man autho rity to murder at this rate, it is the interest of all men to rise and exterminate that profession." Nor was this language held only by unlearned country gentlemen. Sir William Williams, one of the ablest and most unscrupulous lawyers of the age, took the same view of the case. He had not hesitated, he said, by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form The real explanation of all this is perfectly obvious; and nothing but a partiality amounting to a ruling passion could cause anybody to miss it. The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness his high civil honours, and the far higher honours gained by his intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten the right. No man was more expert at the soft answer which turneth away wrath. He was never accused of intemperance in his pleasures. His even temper, his flowing courtesy, the general respectability of his demeanour, made a favour take part in the prosecution of the bishops, be- he endow such purposes with words! Could cause they were allowed counsel. But he no hack-writer, without virtue or shame, be maintained that where the prisoner was not found to exaggerate the errors, already so allowed counsel, the counsel for the crown dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit? was bound to exercise a discretion, and that Every age produces those links between the every lawyer who neglected this distinction man and the baboon. Every age is fertile of was a betrayer of the law. But it is unneces- Concanens, of Gildons, and of Antony Passary to cite authority. It is known to every- quins. But was it for Bacon so to prostitute body who has ever looked into a court of quar-his intellect? Could he not feel that, while ter-sessions that lawyers do exercise a discre- he rounded and pointed some period dictated tion in criminal cases; and it is plain to every man of common sense that if they did not exercise such a discretion, they would be a more hateful body of men than those bravoes who used to hire out their stilettos in Italy. Bacon appeared against a man who was in-losophy, were all degraded in his degradation? deed guilty of a great offence, but who had been his benefactor and friend. He did more than this. Nay, he did more than a person who had never seen Essex would have been justified in doing. He employed all the art of an advocate in order to make the prisoner's conduct appear more inexcusable, and more dangerous to the state, than it really had been. All that professional duty could, in any case, have required of him, would have been to conduct the cause so as to insure a conviction. But from the nature of the circumstances there could not be the smallest doubt that the earl would be found guilty. The character of the crime was unequivocal. It had been committed recently, in broad daylight, in the streets of the capital, in the presence of thousands. If ever there was an occasion on which an advo-able impression on those who saw him in situacate had no temptation to resort to extraneous topics for the purpose of blinding the judgment and inflaming the passions of a tribunal, this was that occasion. Why then resort to arguments which, while they could add nothing to the strength of the case, considered in a legal point of view, tended to aggravate the moral guilt of the fatal enterprise, and to excite fear and resentment in that quarter, from which alone the earl could now expect mercy? Why remind the audience of the arts of the ancient tyrants? Why deny, what everybody knew to be the truth, that a powerful faction at court had long sought to effect the ruin of the prisoner? Why, above all, institute a parallel between the unhappy culprit and the most wicked and most successful rebel of the age? Was it absolutely impossible to do all that professional duty required, without reminding a jealous sovereign of the League, of the barricades, and of all the humiliations which a too powerful subject had heaped on Henry the Third. But if we admit the plea which Mr. Montagu urges in defence of what Bacon did as an advocate, what shall we say of the "Declaration of the Treasons of Robert Earl of Essex!" Here at least there was no pretence of professional obligation. Even those who may think it the duty of a lawyer to hang, draw, and quarter his benefactors, for a proper consideration, will hardly say that it is his duty to write abusive pamphlets against them, after they are in their graves. Bacon excused himself by saying that he was not answerable for the matter of the book, and that he furnished only the language. But why did tions which do not severely try the principles. His faults were-we write it with pain-coldness of heart and meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of feeling strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great sacrifices. His desires were set on things below. Wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of plate, gay hangings, curious cabinets, had as great attractions for him as for any of the courtiers who dropped on their knees in the dirt when Elizabeth passed by, and then hastened home to write to the King of Scots that her grace seemed to be breaking fast. For these objects he had stooped to every thing and endured every thing. For these he had sued in the humblest manner, and when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, had thanked those who had repulsed him, and had begun to sue again. For these objects, as soon as he found that the smallest show of independence in Parliament was offensive to the queen, he had abased himself to the dust before her, and implored forgiveness, in terms better suited to a convicted thief than to a knight of the shire. For these he joined, and for these he forsook Lord Essex. He continued to plead his patron's cause with the queen, as long as he thought that by pleading that cause he might serve himself. Nay, he went further, for his feelings, though not warm, were kind-he pleaded that cause as long as he thought he could plead it without injury to himself. But when it became evident that Essex was going headlong to his ruin, Bacon began to tremble for his own fortunes. What he had to fear would ot indeed have been very alarming to a man of lofty character. It was not death. It was not imprisonment. It was the loss of court favour. It was the being left behind by others in the career of ambition. It was the having leisure to finish the Instauratio Magna. The queen looked coldly on him. The courtiers began to consider him as a marked man. He determined to change his line of conduct, and to proceed in a new course with so much vigour as to make up for lost time. When once he had determined to act against his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted with more zeal than would have been necessary or justifiable if he had been employed against a stranger. He exerted his professional talents to shed the earl's blood, and his literary talents to blacken the earl's memory. It is certain that his conduct excited at the time great and general disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this disapprobation, though deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. But a great change was at hand. a college, much eccentricity and childishness would have been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all that learning could do for him on the throne, was to make people think him a pedant as well as a fool. Bacon was favourably received at court; and soon found that his chance of promotion was not diminished by the death of the queen. He was solicitous to be knighted, for two rea sons, which are somewhat amusing. The king had already dubbed half London, and Bacon found himself the only untitled person in his mess at Gray's Inn. This was not very agrees able to him. He had also, to quote his own words, "found an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to his liking." On both these grounds, he begged his cousin, Robert Cecil, “if it might please his good lordship," to use his interest in his behalf. The application was successful. Bacon was one of three hundred gentlemen who, on the coronation-day, received the honour, if it is to be so called, of knighthood. The handsome maiden, a daughter of Alderman Barnham, soon after consented to become Sir Francis's lady. The health of the queen had been long decaying; and the operation of age and disease was now assisted by acute mental suffering. The death of Elizabeth, though on the whole The pitiable melancholy of her last days has it improved Bacon's prospects, was in one regenerally been ascribed to her fond regret for spect an unfortunate event for him. The new Essex. But we are disposed to attribute her king had always felt kindly towards Lord Es dejection partly to physical causes, and partly sex, who had been zealous for the Scotch suc to the conduct of her courtiers and minis- cession; and, as soon as he came to the throne, ters. They did all in their power to conceal began to show favour to the house of Devereux, from her the intrigues which they were and to those who had stood by that house in carrying on at the court of Scotland. But her its adversity. Everybody was now at liberty keen sagacity was not to be so deceived. She to speak out respecting those lamentable events did not know the whole. But she knew that in which Bacon had borne so large a share. she was surrounded by men who were impa- Elizabeth was scarcely cold when the public, tient for that new world which was to begin at feeling began to manifest itself by marks of her death, who had never been attached to her respect towards Lord Southampton. That ac by affection, and who were now but very slight-complished nobleman, who will be remembered ly attached to her by interest. Prostration to the latest ages as the generous and discernand flattery could not conceal from her the cruel truth, that those whom she had trusted and promoted had never loved her, and were fast ceasing to fear her. Unable to avenge herself, and too proud to complain, she suffered sorrow and resentment to prey on her heart, till, after a long career of power, prosperity, and glory, she died sick and weary of the world. James mounted the throne; and Bacon employed all his address to obtain for himself a share of the favour of his new master. This was no difficult task. The faults of James, both as a man and as a prince, were numerous; but insensibility to the claims of genius and learning was not amongst them. He was indeed made up of two men-a witty, well-read scholar, who wrote, and disputed, andharangued, and a nervous, drivelling idiot, who acted. If he had been a Canon of Christ Church, or a Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would have left a highly respectable name to posterity; that he would have distinguished himself among the translators of the Bible, and among the divines who attended the Synod of Dort; that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon. But fortune piaced him in a situation in which his weakness covered him with disgrace; and in which his accomplishments brought him no honour. In ing patron of Shakspeare, was held in honour by his contemporaries, chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he had borne to, Essex. He had been tried and convicted to gether with his friend; but the queen had spared his life, and at the time of her death, he was still a prisoner. A crowd of visiters hastened to the Tower to congratulate him on his approaching deliverance. With that crowd Bacon could not venture to mingle. The mul titude loudly condemned him; and his conscience told him that the multitude had but too much, reason. He excused himself to Southampton by letter, in terms which, if he had, as Mr. Montagu conceives, done only what as a subject and an advocate he was bound to do, must be considered as shamefully servile. He owns his fear that his attendance would give offence, and that his professions of regard would obtain no credit, "Yet," says he, "it is. as true as a thing that God knoweth, that this great change hath wrought in me no other change towards your lordship than this, that I may safely be that to you now which I was truly before." How Southampton received these apologies we are not informed. But it is certain that the general opinion was pronounced against Bacon in a manner not to be misunderstood. Soon after, his marriage he put forth a defence of his conduct, in the form of a letter to the Earl of Devon. This tract seems to us to prove only the exceeding badness of a cause for which such talents could do so little. acceptable where his spirit was odious, and he It is not probable that Bacon's defence had be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which x 2 |