The second is, that Bacon's Declaration of the Treasons of Essex, instead of being a "strictly and scrupulously veracious narrative," has been far more accurately described by Lord Clarendon as "a pestilent libel." My third proposition is, that Bacon himself is not (as he has been painted by his most recent biographer) a man who "all his life long thought more of his duty than of his fortune," and "all his life long had been studying to know and speak the truth," but a man whose character still awaits a careful, consistent, and impartial analysis. Towards that future analysis, the following sketch is intended as a slight contribution. In quoting from Bacon's letters or other works I have of course used Mr. Spedding's edition, and in such cases I have not thought it necessary always to append a reference: but whenever I have used Mr. Spedding's quotations from other original authorities, without myself verifying them, references have been in each case given. I must express my obligations to Professor Brewer for transcripts of three or four important letters from the MSS. of Hatfield House, not before printed. For the purposes of reference, Bacon's Apology and Declaration of the Treasons of Essex are printed at the end of the book. BACON AND ESSEX. CHAPTER I. THE COURT OF ELIZABETH. SOMEWHERE in the correspondence of Anthony Bacon, Francis Bacon's brother, there occurs the following description of the Four Arts, without which no one could hope to succeed at Court in the later days of Queen Elizabeth : “Cog, lie, flatter and face, Four ways in Court to win you grace. If you be thrall to none of these, Away, good Piers! Home, John Cheese!"1 Criticism in verse is generally too epigrammatic to be accurate : but certainly the doggerel just quoted will not seem very overstrained to any one who turns over Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth or the MS. of Anthony Bacon's correspondence. In the nation at large there was no lack of moral health; but the Court breathed an atmosphere of falsehood and intrigue. Intellect had free play, literature throve, the English language was in such perfection that it seemed impossible for the men and women of those days to write weakly or nervelessly; but truthfulness seemed extinct at Court. The old religion was dead, and the new religion had taken no hold of the Court circle. Greece and Rome were recognized as the model states, and Machiavelli as the great authority on politics. As 1 I am not sure of the spelling of "Piers," and have lost the exact reference. B for applying the principles of Christianity to politics, we in these days cannot be surprised that the Elizabethan politicians did not dream of doing it: but they went far beyond us in their consistent disregard for truthfulness. For the untruthfulness of the Court the Queen seems to have been, to some extent, responsible. We may admire, as it deserves, her calm courage, her common sense, her knowledge of human nature, and her intuition into the feelings of her subjects; we may make all due allowance for the dangers and necessities of this, and for the then low standard of political note: ill scarcely be denied that the example of th favourable to the raising of that low A himself, though naturally one of the bluntest of men, confesses that, in order to serve her, he is forced, "like the waterman, to look one way and row another." Walsingham is recorded to have outdone the Jesuits in their own arts and overreached them in equivocation and mental reservation. The history, now generally accepted, of the famous Casket letters, convicts the leading statesmen of England of an attempt to bring Mary Stuart to the block by forgeries. Sir Robert Cecil urges his intimate friend Carew to entrap the young Earl of Desmond into a conspiracy for the purpose of getting rid of him. To be a politician meant in those days to be an adept in suspecting and lying. "Envious and malignant dispositions," says Bacon, "are the very errors of human nature, and yet they are the fittest natures to make great politiques of." To the same effect is Hamlet's pithy description of the politician-" one that would circumvent God." The rival politicians Foreign policy was the principal, but by no means the only, sphere for the evil arts of the "politique." Untruthfulness, on a pettier scale, was the basis of Court life. of the Essexian faction and the Cecilian faction entirely distrusted one another. Anthony Bacon accuses Sir Robert Cecil of intercepting his letters. Bacon advises Essex to take care to flatter the Queen in face as well as in word, and to imitate the craft of the former favourite Leicester, in taking up measures (which he never intended to carry out,) for the mere purpose of appearing to bend to the royal will by dropping them in compliance with the Queen's command. S E h t de pa ou of par ond ing the of bot sad |