out on horseback. Read Spence's Anecdotes. Pope is a fine fellow-always thought him So. Corrected blunders in nine apophthegms of Bacon-all historical; and read Mitford's Greece."

Byron did not know that the Apophthegms were but a "morning's work," when illness had rendered him incapable of serious study; and that it is by no means certain we have the genuine dictation in this collection.

The POLITICAL and LEGAL works require no prefatory detail of a biographical or historical character. Our author was, unfortunately, born and bred a courtier; and he thought, wrote, and acted as became an adherent of the court party, by birth, parentage, and education. The lawyer was, therefore, grafted upon the courtier; and the politician was neither more nor less than the compound of both. The law, common and statute, combined with prerogative, made up the cardinal principle of political action, and formed the ultimate and immediate standard of public virtue; it was the courtier's test; and though one more enlarged and philosophical would have been more worthy of him, we should recollect that if few subscribe to it now, still fewer knew of it then. The court, the law, the country were successively regarded, but the first was paramount; the second was supposed, as the forms of the constitution were always rigidly observed, to include the third, as it certainly did the first. Much that is grating to modern liberality in Bacon's publications, speeches, and conduct, may thus be more easily accounted for than justified. The capital error of his age was the mixing up of religion with state affairs, to the huge disadvantage of the commonweal. Ecclesiastical power had lately been transferred into political hands, but the spell of its sorcery was broken in the transfer, and the vain attempt to restore its potency cost the country two revolutions. It is to be borne in mind, that the most zealous approvers of this mischievous policy, whenever and however persisted in, are the very men whose hostility to civil liberty is only surpassed by their rancorous hatred of christianity itself.

The political writings are all of a practical nature; and when the high and multifarious character of his engagements is considered, this circumstance entitles him to be regarded as the busiest as well as the greatest man of his time. They are more numerous than bulky, and their value is more proportioned to their variety than their extent.

The first of these Tracts, On the State of Europe, was written at a very early period, and is probably nothing more than a careful draught for diplomatic rather than general use. It is crabbed and compressed in manner, and devoid alike of sentiment or metaphor; but it presents an accurate chart of the state of the continent, and a similar sketch of its existing state would not be an uninteresting or useless work. There is one European potentate to whose successor Bacon's stern description would still apply, "he governeth altogether as a tyrant;" and this must of course refer to "the Muscovite emperor of Russia."

The Discourse in the Praise of his Sovereign, exceeds in eloquence and flattery the piece which will be found near the end of the second volume, In Felicem Memoriam Elizabethæ The one was evidently penned during the life of the Virgin Queen, and the other was written soon after her death. The former is the discourse of a courtier, the latter of a politician, but though quite distinct in execution, they were both intended to counteract, the one at home, and the other abroad, the bull of the Vatican, and the calumnies of more private papists. From a letter to Sir George Carew it appears that he sent the Latin Tract to the President De Thou. It is to be remarked, however, that neither of these pamphlets were made public during his life. James hated the memory of his illustrious predecessor; but that the author should not merely not print either piece, but should even omit in the De Augmentis the beautiful passages of praise which appear in The Advancement of Learning, can only be accounted for by degrading him. The philosopher forfeited his freedom when he aspired to become a courtier ; and as he had sold himself to the court, and had already

incurred the loss of popular esteem, without obtaining a tittle of preferment, something must be allowed to disappointment as well as servility.

Detesting Elizabeth's ecclesiastical government as much as we admire her political administration, it will not be denied that the character was worthy of his pen; and no one has drawn it with more grace and vigour than the neglected" Counsel Extraordinary." The flowers of his rhetoric, if we may be allowed to euphuize, are full of the honey of his philosophy; they are as fragrant as they are brilliant; the bright array of compliments comprises the substance of her proud reign. How eloquent is the following matter-of-fact paragraph! "She hath reigned in a most populous and wealthy peace, her people greatly multiplied, wealthily appointed, and singularly devoted. She wanted not the example of the power of her arms in the memorable voyages and invasions prosperously made and achieved by sundry her noble progenitors. She had not wanted pretences, as well of claim and right, as of quarrel and revenge. She hath reigned during the minority of some of her neighbour princes, and during the factions and divisions of their people upon deep and irreconcilable quarrels, and during the embracing greatness of some one that hath made himself so weak through too much burthen, as others are through decay of strength; and yet see her sitting as it were within the compass of her sands. Scotland, that doth as it were eclipse her island; the United Provinces of the Low Countries, which for wealth, commodity of traffic, affection to our nation, were most meet to be annexed to this crown; she left the possession of the one, and refused the sovereignty of the other: so that notwithstanding the greatness of her means, the justness of her pretences, and the rareness of her opportunity, she hath continued her first mind, she hath made the possessions which she received the limits of her dominions, and the world the limits of her name, by a peace that hath stained all victories." Sir Walter Scott may have had this passage before him, when he drew the stately lady, in his Kenilworth.

"For the royal wisdom and policy of government, he that shall note and observe the prudent temper she useth in admitting access; of the one side maintaining the majesty of her degree, and on the other side not prejudicing herself by looking to her estate through too few windows: her exquisite judgment in choosing and finding good servants, a point beyond the former: her profound discretion in assigning and appropriating every of them to their aptest employment: her penetrating sight in discovering every man's ends and drifts: her wonderful art in keeping servants in satisfaction, and yet in appetite: her inventing wit in contriving plots and overturns: her exact caution in censuring the propositions of others for her service: her foreseeing events: her usage of occasions :-he that shall consider of these, and other things that may not well be touched, as he shall never cease to wonder at such a queen, so he shall wonder the less, that in so dangerous times, when wits are so cunning, humours extravagant, passions so violent, the corruptions so great, the dissimulation so deep, factions so many; she hath notwithstanding done such great things, and reigned in felicity." The last sentence is truly the crowning exaggeration.

"Time is her best commender, which never brought forth such a prince, whose imperial virtues contend with the excellence of her person; both virtues contend with her fortune; and both virtue and fortune contend with her fame."

In 1592, Bacon vindicated the queen and government in his first political pamphlet, entitled “Certain Observations upon a Libel." It was probably undertaken to please some of the ministers who had been personally abused by his Jesuitical antagonist. The examination of the libel, upon the eight points" which he had observed in reading it," is very complete. It is a tract on the civil and ecclesiastical state of the kingdom, and it will be found to contain much interesting matter, especially under the second and third divisions of the subject. Men will judge very differently of Bacon's merits in the controversy. The respective cases of the catholic and puritan, dissenters are involved in it, and it would have been

marvellous had the government scribe pleased either of these formidable factions. As a church-of-England man, he was in the predicament of having to make good his position against the Romanists, on grounds which were not calculated to afford him much assistance in contending with the protestant dissidents. The catholics, as the ousted party, sought to recover possession to reconquer their spiritual domination-by open rebellion, by foreign invasion, and by the thunders of the Vatican; and therefore they were opposed to the queen's civil and ecclesiastical government. The puritans detested the popery of established protestantism, and were opposed only to her ecclesiastical regiment. But both fared alike, and both were treated as rebels. Severe penal laws were enacted to restrain both parties ;—their effect upon the papists was afterwards exhibited in the massacre of the protestants in Ireland, and the great rebellion may be considered as their natural effect on the English puritans. From that time to the present, these consequences have been in active operation; and as subjects have grown wiser, monarchs have grown milder. When governments infer political conduct from religious doctrine, civil treason from speculative opinion, overt sedition from simple non-uniformity; and proceed on this monstrous conclusion to take measures for punishing the holders of the doctrine as if it had been reduced to practice, the opinion as if it had brought forth treason, the non-uniformity as if the cold negative had precipitated itself into rampant sedition, legislation is turned into rank persecution, and such legislators provide for endless discord under pretence of preserving the peace. Bacon lived to urge more reasonable courses than those which he here attempts to justify. But he never understood the principles of religious liberty; he was trammelled by notions of official experience; and the only party which could have furnished him with the most perfect clue of guidance through the thick-coming perplexities, was despised by him, and persecuted. Neither the papists, the church-of-Englandists, nor the puritans, whatever might be their immediate or avowed objects, whether restoration, stability, or further reformation, dreamed of a toleration; and the honour of first asserting the rights of conscience, was due to a sect which had no connexion with any of them. The Independents, whom Bacon refers to as the Brownists, a sort of nick-name which did not last long, were the first teachers of civil equality; and it is hardly credible that our author should thus write of a sect as crushed, which was destined so soon afterwards to "wrong the wronger till he rendered right." After speaking in moderate terms of the puritans, he thus adverts to the "third kind of Gospellers, called Brownists."

"And as for those which we call Brownists, being when they were at the most a very small number of very silly and base people, here and there in corners dispersed, they are now, thanks be to God, by the good (!) remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out; so as there is scarce any news of them. Neither had they been much known at all, had not Brown their leader written a pamphlet, wherein, as it came into his head, he inveighed more against logic and rhetoric, than against the state of the church, which writing was much read; and had not also one Barrow, being a gentleman of a good house, but one that lived in London at ordinaries, and there learned to argue in table-talk, and so was very much known in the city and abroad, made a leap from a vain and libertine youth to a preciseness in the highest degree, the strangeness of which alteration made him very much spoken of; the matter might long before have breathed out."

This is as simple and foolish a sneer as ever was written. But will it be believed that this same Barrow, though the sect was "worn out," was actually condemned to die for his "preciseness" the very next year? He and Greenwood were butchered, aye, and butchered privately, for their "preciseness," in 1593! They had maintained that churches should not be dependent on the state; and they had dared to form them, and conduct religious exercises in them, in a manner different from that prescribed by state-authority; and they were condemned to DIE! "A morning arrived," says Vaughan, " in which, at an early hour, these

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delinquents were conveyed from their cells to the place of execution. The rope being fastened to the tree, was placed on their necks, and in this state they were allowed, for a few moments, to address the people who were collected around them. These awful moments were employed in avowing their unfeigned loyalty to the queen, and submission to the civil government of their country. They affirmed, that in what they had published they were far from meaning evil towards her Majesty, or the magistracy of the realm; and if aught had escaped them which partook of irreverence as to any man's person, they confessed their sorrow, and implored forgiveness of the injured party. They acknowledged what they had written in support of their doctrine, but admonished the people to adopt their opinions only as they should find sound proof of the same in holy Scripture;' and concluded with exhorting them not only to support the civil power, but, if need be, to submit to an unjust death, rather than resist it. When they had prayed for the queen, their country, and for all their enemies, and were in the act of closing their eyes upon the world, they were told that a reprieve had been sent by her Majesty. This message,' the prisoners observe,' was not only thankfully received of us, but with exceeding rejoicing of all the people, both at the place of execution, and in the ways, streets, and houses, as we returned.' On that day, Barrow sent a statement of these occurrences to a distinguished relative, having access to Elizabeth, and urged, that as his attachment to the queen's person and government could be no longer doubtful, he might be set at liberty, or at least be removed from the loathsome gayle' of Newgate. On the morning, however, of the following day, these deluded victims were conveyed secretly to the place of slaughter, and were there put to death."

This is an instance of deliberate, judicial assassination; and while Francis Bacon was "counsel extraordinary," murder was one of his "good remedies!" Between Elizabeth and Mary, in religious matters, there is in fact little to choose, it is a mere question of degrees of blood-guiltiness. We may extenuate, but can never defend their conduct. They were both ecclesiastical tyrants, and the latter the more disinterested of the two. Mary butchered for the supremacy of the pope, Elizabeth for her own. The one was a consistent persecutor; she laboured in her vocation, she decimated under an indulgence; but the other was no legitimate purveyor to the seven-hilled monster, and her bishops did not belong to his kennel of ban-dogs;—she was a protestant, her creed was the Bible; she shook her own throne when she made it so like his, and when she began to hang, draw, quarter, and burn, her conduct is branded with an infamy as black as that which settles on the memory of her sister. It remains for this age, enlightened by centuries of bitter experience, to deprive the spirit of persecution of the means of mischief.

The three tracts next to be noticed relate to the unfortunate Earl of Essex, and the part which Bacon acted towards him as a friend and as an adverse counsel.

The first of these pieces was prepared by our author just after the extra-judicial investigation at York House, in June 1600, under the title of Proceedings of the Earl of Essex; and it is a mere statement of the matters then and there" laid to the earl's charge," for the satisfaction of the queen. It was not " imprinted" at the time, and Elizabeth never intended that it should be, for it really exhibits the whole inquiry as a mock-heroic farce, got up by her Majesty's servants," rather to justify the doting queen's dilatoriness, than to punish her refractory minion. After Whyte's, and Camden's, and Morrison's grave account of the trial, it lets us into the court secret, and shows how the folly of Elizabeth set in solemn motion the truckling privy council," enlarged and assisted," as it was, by a corps of legal janizaries. Essex had disobeyed his orders, and a similar disobedience in modern times would have cost him his head; but it is evident from the prefatory matter of this tract, that the heroical septuagenarian never intended to punish him. It is perfectly astonishing that the sagacious relator of the earl's "proceedings" did not see their ridiculous incongruity with her Majesty's conduct. The ludicrous effect is considerably heightened by the

pompous assertion at the onset, of her Majesty being "imperial, and immediate under God, and not holden to render account of her actions to any."

Bacon played a part in this serio-comical affair, but it was a very inconsiderable one. There were four counsel engaged" for charging the earl," the Attorney-general, Sergeant Yelverton, the Solicitor-general, and Mr. Bacon, "all her Highness's learned counsel," and each had his character assigned. What were the instructions in our author's brief? "Her Majesty's pleasure was that we should all have parts in the business; and the lords falling into a distribution of our parts, it was allotted to me, that I should set forth some undutiful carriage of my Lord, in giving occasion and countenance to a seditious pamphlet, as it was termed, which was dedicated unto him." Our worthy counsel demurs to that allotment on the very important ground, that it was an old matter, and had nothing to do with the charge; but he was told that that part was fittest for him, which did Essex the least hurt; and, whatever others did, he served both Crown and culprit well.

Notwithstanding a good deal of declamation on this subject, we think the conduct of Bacon was defensible. He had given Essex the soundest advice, and so long as the young man followed it, he was prosperous. His patron, or rather his generous client, had now got into disgrace by neglecting it, but he was in no danger, and before and at the very time when the frivolous part was assigned him against his friend, he was using his influence with the queen to procure a less ostentatious reconciliation. In fact he was professionally concerned for both parties, in the forthcoming masque of " All for Love.” It is well known that by the express direction of Elizabeth, there was no register or clerk to take the sentence against the earl, and no record or memorial made of the proceeding.

When the earl was " at his liberty, Bacon made it his task and scope to take and give occasions for his redintegration in his fortunes," and no sooner was he "at his liberty," than he embarked in fatal courses. Bacon did not forsake him, when to all appearance he had forsaken himself. Having received from his Lordship a courteous and loving acceptation of my good will and endeavours, I did apply it in all my accesses to the queen, which were very many at that time; and purposely sought and wrought upon other variable pretences, but only and chiefly for that purpose. And on the other side, I did not forbear to give my Lord from time to time faithful advertisement what I found and what I wished." The fact is that he exerted himself to the uttermost on behalf of his old friend." And I drew for him, by his appointment, some letters to her Majesty; which though I knew well his Lordship's gift and style was far better than mine own, yet because he required it, alleging that by his long restraint he was grown almost a stranger to the queen's present conceits, I was ready to perform it and sure I am, that for the space of six weeks or two months, it prospered so well, as I expected continually his restoring to his attendance. And I was never better welcome to the queen, nor more made of, than when I spake fullest and boldest for him." The reader will find the letters referred to, as "two letters framed, the one as from Mr. Antony Bacon to the Earl of Essex; the other as the earl's answer thereunto,' being the substance of a letter he wished his Lordship should write to her Majesty. Afterwards the earl plunged into treasonable projects and practices, and Bacon determined to meddle no more in the matter. But he was made to "meddle" as a counsel for the crown; and on the trial, which was a more serious affair than the last, Essex actually flung in Bacon's face the letters we have alluded to,—the letters drawn by Bacon, with his privity and by his appointment. Bacon never sought the service, either of evidence or examination ; it was imposed upon him " with the rest of his fellows;" and though he was but once with the queen, between the sentence and its execution, he " took hardiness to extenuate not the fact," says he," for that I durst not, but the danger, telling her that if some base or cruelminded persons had entered into such an action, it might have caused much blood and combustion; but it appeared well, they were such as knew not how to play the malefactors.