riches at least as plentifully, we may be well assured, had it not been bound and weighed down by these entanglements. As it was, he was obliged to select a field of exertion, in which he might be the worker of his own fortunes. He chose the law, his father's profession, and that also in which it seemed probable that his court connections would prove most available in assisting his rise. Having entered himself, accordingly, of Gray's inn, he sat down for some years to a life of sedulous study; but, determined, as it would seem, not to divorce himself from his old pursuits, to which his disposition most naturally inclined him, while cultivating that new learning by which he was to win his bread, his hours of application were divided between law and philosophy.

There is evidence that while thus employed, he had not only completed the idea of his inductive system in his own mind, but had sketched at least its general outline in a little work which he called Temporis Partus Maximus, The Greatest Birth of Time. He was far however from neglecting his legal studies-and when he was in due course called to the bar, his knowledge and talents soon procured him a respectable practice. In 1588, he discharged with applause the office of reader of his inn; and immediately after he was appointed by the queen her counsel learned in the law extraordinary-an honour for which he was probably indebted to the good offices of his powerful relation, Lord Burleigh. But, as throughout the whole of Bacon's legal and political career, there is much that is unsatisfactory to the admirers of his genius, and much also that is not to be very easily explained upon any hypothesis of his character and motives that may be proposed, so the course which he took at its very commencement is far from being the most intelligible part of it. Nearly connected as he was with the Cecils, he chose to attach himself to the party of their great opponent, the earl of Essex; and there is too much reason to believe from his subsequent conduct, that he was induced to form this alliance not so much from any distinterested admiration of the high qualities of that able and generous but unfortunate nobleman, as with the view of thereby the more effectually promoting his own advancement. He seems to have calculated that he would secure for himself a double chance of favour by thus having hold, as it were, of the leaders of both the rival parties that divided the court. As generally happens however with such over-refined schemes of policy, this project of Bacon's, if he did entertain it, seems to have failed. Essex, zealously as he endeavoured to further the interests of his new partizan, was never able to procure him any thing from the ministry or his sovereign; nay, his patronage, as might indeed be supposed, proved actually injurious to its object. His relations, the Cecils, had bestowed upon him the reversion of the office of register of the star-chamber; upon the enjoyment of the income of which, however, he did not enter till twenty years afterwards. He used to say that "it was like another man's ground buttalling upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but did not fill his barn." In 1594, he first appeared decidedly as a candidate for political honours, by making application for the office of solicitor-general. On this occasion he pursued his suit with extraordinary earnestness, and called to his aid all the influence of his friends. Essex in particular exerted himself in his behalf with his characteristic ardour.

All

however was in vain; the place was given to another; but so strongly did Essex feel that his advocacy, instead of assisting, had in fact hurt the cause of his friend, that he insisted upon remedying the mischief which he conceived had resulted from his interference by making over to Bacon a piece of land, which the latter afterwards sold for £1800. "I know," said he, in bestowing upon him this gift, "you are the least part of your own matter, but you fare ill, because you have chosen me for your mean and dependance." It is melancholy to have to relate how Bacon requited this generosity. A few years after this time, (namely in 1601) Essex, as is well known, was brought to the block. Without attempting to extenuate the legal guilt, and certainly without denying the extreme imprudence and rashness of the misguided nobleman, we shall not be thought to speak of him with undue charity, when we say that at least he did not deserve that Bacon should be found among those who assisted in bringing him to a bloody death. Yet so it was; his former friend, whose fortunes he had done every thing in his power to advance, and who had shared in his profuse liberality, not only appeared as the crown lawyer to plead against him on his trial, and to urge his condemnation, but after his execution, when the law, it might have been thought, had had its full revenge upon its victim, was persuaded to lend the aid of his eloquent pen, to blazon forth the treasons of his ancient benefactor, and to employ all the arts of the skilful advocate to hand down his name with infamy to posterity. This conduct, as it well deserved, brought down upon Bacon a storm of public odium, which long continued to pursue him. Many years afterwards, he attempted in a letter addressed to the earl of Devonshire, to vindicate the motives from which he had acted, on the pretence that his duty to his sovereign who had commanded his services, was a higher obligation than that by which he was bound to his friend; but it can hardly be supposed that he did much to set himself right in public estimation by so paltry an apology. The atrocity of an act of ingratitude so revolting to the natural feelings of man was not to be quibbled away. Bacon, however, it is worth remarking, seems to have entertained, or at least to have professed, both upon this and upon other subjects, what perhaps we may call a more subtle morality than that commonly received. There can be little doubt, indeed, we think, that he sometimes suffered himself to be imposed upon by the sophistries of his very ingenious and refining intellect, in regard to points of principle as to which a man of plainer judgment would not have been so likely to go astray. Some parts of his future political conduct furnish still more striking evidence of this. Meanwhile, however, he was far from giving up "what was meant for mankind," wholly to the struggles of political ambition.

About the year 1596, he had completed his Maxims of the law,' forming the first part of his treatise, entitled 'The Elements of the Common Law of England,' which however was not printed till after his death. In 1597, appeared the first part of his celebrated Essays, or Counsels'-a work which has been since reprinted innumerable times, and continues to hold its place as one of the most favourite popular manuals of instruction and entertainment in the language. These essays-which were much altered and enlarged in subsequent impressions were flatteringly received by the public from the first,

and were always esteemed by the author himself as among the happiest of his performances. In 1598, he composed a 'History of the Alienation Office,' which is held to be in the highest degree creditable to his legal learning, but which remained in manuscript till published in Mallet's edition of his collected works about the middle of last century. In 1600, he was elected to the office of double reader by the society of Gray's inn, the duties of which he discharged with great applause. Having soon after this, also, made his amende honorable to the dominant party in the court by his more than abandonment, as just related, of his early patron Essex, we find him pursuing the new path upon which he had entered with a manifest determination to make the most of the advantages he had received. In the house of commons-of which he had been for some years a member, having been first chosen to represent the county of Middlesex in 1592—he distinguished himself as an able and eloquent debater on the side of the crown. During the short remainder of the queen's life, however, he remained without any further preferment, but immediately on her death, he hastened to pay his court to the new sovereign, into whose favour he sought to ingratiate himself by every means which it was in his power to employ. He seems to have considered that he had now arrived at a crisis in the progress of his life, which called upon him to bring up all his resources to the occasion if he would play the game of his ambition with success. Nor were the pains he took without the expected effect.

On the arrival of James in London, (in July 1603) Bacon was introduced to him at Whitehall, and received the honour of knighthood. The following year he was named king's counsel, with a fee of forty pounds a year: another pension of £60 being granted him at the same time, for special services performed by himself and his brother Anthony Bacon. This appointment, and the known favour in which he stood with his sovereign, no doubt materially advanced his professional reputation and gains; and he soon after still farther augmented his fortune by marrying a rich city-heiress, Alice, the daughter of Benedict Barnham Esq. alderman. In 1607, he at last by renewed solicitation obtained the object for which he had applied thirteen years before, and was made solicitor-general. From this time, his importance both in Westminster-hall and in the house of commons greatly increased; and he was entitled to consider himself in the direct way to the highest honours which the crown could bestow. This prosperity, however, brought its annoyances and vexations as well as its golden visions along with it. His shining talents and growing influence exposed him in particular to the jealousy of his celebrated rival in the race of court-favour and professional distinction, Sir Edward Coke, who, quite as ambitious and unscrupulous as Bacon, was besides almost necessarily thrown by the character both of his acquirements and of his temper into a position, as it were, of antipathy and conflict with reference to his calm and philosophic contemporary. A great lawyer, as he most unquestionably was, and well knew himself to be, Coke naturally felt indignant that a man like Bacon, of very inferior attainments in the learning of their common profession, should yet be not only so far favoured as to be allowed to tread close upon his heels in the road of advancement, but should even be deemed to have some claim and some chance to step before him, or to mount to a station of more dignity and splendour than he himself