fors wearing all work, neglecting his own interests and even those of his friends; at one moment exulting in triumph, at another exclaiming Vanitas vanitatum, and despairing even of honour and safety, not to speak of success.

His instability more often injured himself than his friends; but on one occasion, at all events, a friend suffered from it. He would do anything for Francis Bacon; yet a curious story in the correspondence of Anthony Bacon tells us how, at a crisis when it was most important for Francis that Essex and Burghley should confer for a few minutes upon Bacon's proposed promotion, the proposed interview fell through because the Earl could not be induced to break off, at the moment, a game at tennis.1 (Half an hour afterwards, when the game was over, and the Earl ready, the Lord Treasurer was fast asleep and not to be disturbed.) But the consciousness of this impulsiveness and instability made the Earl desire only all the more earnestly the help of a trustworthy counsellor. More than once Francis Bacon, in his letters and writings, admits that the Earl's habit was to listen patiently to any counsel that he gave him, even though it might be distasteful... When he addresses the Earl plainly, he reminds him that it is "according to his charter.” And the Earl himself, in a letter to Puckering, bears witness to the terms of familiarity and plainness of speech with which he was in the habit of receiving counsel from Francis Bacon.

The willingness of Essex to hear counsel is illustrated by many incidents in his life. Carried to an excess, it was probably the cause of many of his military and political failures. In his last fatal and treasonable outbreak he complains piteously of "the confusion that his friends drew him into even in his own house that day he went into the city."2 We have heard above, his confession that the officers of his army on the Island voyage caused him more trouble than all the rest of the army put together. The fact was that he had not really a ruling nature, but rather, as Sir W. Monson expresses it, "a nature flexible to be overruled."

Bacon's testimony is strong on this point. Writing to a friend of his, a former agent of Walsingham, he says, "The more

1 April, 1594. See Birch or Add. MSS.

I have not the exact reference. 2 II. 320. This sentence is suppressed in the Government Declaration.

D

plainly and frankly you shall deal with my lord, not only in disclosing particulars, but in giving him caveats and admonishing him of any error which in this action he may commit, such is his Lordship's nature, the better he will take it." If a man would only give him righteous and honourable counsel, no man was more willing to listen to it than Essex. A curious instance of this is preserved in his early life. When he was barely twenty years old, after a stormy quarrel with the Queen at his own house, where she had heaped insults upon his mother, and had commanded his sister to keep her chamber,1 poor Essex flies from the Court in fury: "I will be this night at Margate, I will see Sluys lost or relieved; una bella morire is better than a disquiet life." But in the midst of these gaspings of passion he breaks out into a piteous lamentation over the absence of some wiser and older friend. "I would have given a thousand pounds to have had one hour's speech with you so much would I hearken to your counsel, and so greatly do I esteem your friendship." "

"2

A year or two after this letter to Mr. Edward Dyer, Essex falls in with a new friend and adviser of much greater ability than Mr. Dyer, and one who seemed shaped by nature to be the very counsellor to guide him in his perplexities and to supplement his defects. Francis Bacon was six years older than Essex. If Essex was impulsive and unstable, Bacon was no less cool and steadfast. He never changes his mind, and he appeals to the Earl to attest his steadfastness. "Consider," he asks, "whether I shift my counsel, and do not constare mihi."3 If Essex was too much given to military action, Francis Bacon was the "gownsman" who could keep these tendencies in check. If Essex was too passionate and destitute of the art of selfcontrol, he might learn sobriety and tact from the philosopher who was studying, or soon to study, how to master the arts of "plausible familiarity." If Essex offended the Queen by his early marriage, he might take warning from the wiser guide and friend, who regarded, or was soon to regard, love as the child of folly, wife and children as impediments to great enter

1 Lives of the Earls of Essex, vol. i. p. 186. Essex had told the Queen beforehand that his sister, Lady Rich, was at Northall. 3 II. 40.

Letter to Mr. Edward Dyer, Ibid.

prises, and who carried his precepts into effect by deferring his own marriage to the ripe age of forty-five. Again, if Essex is guilty of wearing his love or hatred on his brow, and is deficient in the virtue described by Clarendon as "aulical comparity," here is a philosopher skilled, or soon to be skilled, in the arts of simulation and dissimulation, who will teach him to flatter in face and feature as well as in word;' who will caution him against passing too soon from simulation to verity; and who will inculcate upon him the lesson that "the best composition and temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit, dissimulation in reasonable use; and a power to feign if there is no remedy." 3

If Essex could assimilate these lessons of Francis Bacon, is it not possible that he might yet escape the perils that encompass him? It is possible. But if he tries to assimilate them and fails; if, while trying to mend the defects in his own truthful and impulsive nature with patches of Baconian simulation and dissimulation, he proves untrue to himself, and yet reveals his own clumsy attempts at imposture to his enemies, then is it not also possible that, instead of escaping, Essex may precipitate, the hour of ruin? And besides political ruin, he will be in danger of forfeiting his self-respect. His thoughtless selfishness and his youthful ambition will become tinged with a darker shade; and dissimulation and simulation will prepare the way for treason.

And if the hour of ruin should fall on Essex, what will be the conduct of the two friends: can this also be predicted? Certainly it can. If we trust the accounts given by the two friends of the origin of their friendship, Essex could give no satisfactory reason of his friendship for Francis Bacon. cannot be other than your friend," he writes to him, after a long silence on Bacon's part, "either upon humour or mine own election." A poor and illogical explanation, not worthy of a philosopher! But Bacon is more logical. He "applied" himself to Essex-so he writes in the Apology—not because he liked Essex, nor because Essex liked him, but because he considered "my lord the fittest instrument to do good to the State." Perhaps this explanation may fairly be supplemented 3 Essays, vi. 1. 110.

1 II. 42.

2 II. 99.

if

1

by the writer's other definitions and illustrations of friendship. Writing to Essex in 1596, he calls on Essex not to trust in him “upon humour or upon election," but for much more logical reasons. "Look about," he writes to the Earl, "even jealously, you will; and consider whether I have not reason to think that your fortune comprehendeth mine." This phrase is not an accident. The "comprehension" of one friend's fortune within the fortune of the other was, in Bacon's judgment, a sine quâ non for genuine friendship. If we doubted it, we might find confirmation of the letter of 1596 in the Essay of 1597, where the self-same phrase occurs in the definition of the basis of friendship. "There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals, which was wont to be magnified. That that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other."

Thus, then, in 1588, or a few months afterwards, begins the friendship between the Earl of Essex and Francis Bacon, a friendship on the one side illogical, and based upon no basis except that the Earl finds "he cannot be other;" but on the other side strictly logical, and based, partly perhaps on the services to the State likely to be rendered by Essex under the guidance of Bacon, but more certainly-if we trust Bacon's own account of the origin of friendships-on the fact that the fortunes of Essex-in 1588 or thereabouts-comprehended the fortunes of Bacon.

1 II. 40. A letter written in 1596,

CHAPTER IV.

BACON SUING FOR OFFICE.

THE first extant letter from Francis Bacon to Essex speaks of some course imparted to your lordship touching mine own fortune," and, with scarcely an exception, the whole of Bacon's correspondence with the Earl during the years 1593-1595 turned on the same subject-Bacon's own fortune." The contrast between the letters of Francis and those of Anthony is, in this respect, very striking. Throughout the whole of the elder brother's voluminous correspondence with the Earl there is scarcely a single mention made of any favour asked by Anthony for himself: but the letters of Francis during the first three years of his friendship with Essex contain scarcely anything but requests for favours.

This may be partially explained by the different motives which had induced the two brothers to attach themselves to Essex. Anthony had been moved by simple gratitude-so he himself tells us-for the many kindnesses bestowed by Essex on his brother Francis. Francis, on the other hand- as we saw above-had applied himself to the Earl as being "the fittest instrument to do good to the State." We shall not be doing Francis an injustice if we assume that he considered that his own fortunes to some extent "comprehended" those of the State, and that by "doing good" to him (Francis Bacon), the Earl would be indirectly doing good to the State, which would gain by his promotion. Be this as it may, the fact remains. that, whereas the letters of Anthony exhibit him indefatigably labouring as secretary and procurer of foreign intelligence for his adopted patron, the letters of Francis exhibit him, no less