with your servants, use prayer twice in a day"; and "The Lord direct you both with his holy spirit.".

1

Bacon was a precocious genius from his earliest years. At the age of ten Rawley tells us, "That he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that Her Majesty would often term him 'The young Lord Keeper.

It is a suggestive fact that his bust was made before he was twelve years of age and his portrait painted before the age of eighteen. Anthony Bacon, a most promising youth, and older than Francis, was never honored by bust or portrait.

Under the rigid tuition of Lady Bacon he was able to enter Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of twelve years and three months, where he studied under the stern Whitgift; three years later he was admitted with Anthony "de societate Magistorum" at Gray's Inn. Rawley tells us that about this time he had discarded the philosophy of Aristotle, because of its "unfruitfulness," though he had a high regard for the intellectual ability of its author.2 At sixteen he was sent by the Queen to France, where, under the diplomatic tutelage of Sir Amias Paulet, he spent several years in the splendid but corrupt court of Henry III, having ample opportunity, of which he availed himself, to study the political craft of Catholic and Huguenot, visiting their camps, and acquainting himself with their leaders and their motives, all the while subject to the wiles of the beautiful and frail women of Henry's licentious court, who took delight in striving to make conquest of the witty and virile young Englishman, who, living in the pure atmosphere of Lady Paulet's English home, which she had transplanted into that rank soil, was, like another Adonis, proof against the glamour of illicit love, though it would not be strange, if it were true, that he lost his heart to Margaret of

1 James Spedding, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, vol. 1, pp. 113, 119. London, 1861.

2 Spedding, The Works, etc., vol. 1, pp. 37 et seq.

Valois, the young queen of this court of beauty, for it has been said that no man could resist her fascinations.

Paulet arrived at Calais, September 25, 1576, proceeding with his entourage directly to the French Court, and Bacon, then in his seventeenth year, with an intellect of abnormal activity, a mind stored with the learning of the age, confident in himself, and fearless in expressing his opinions though they failed to coincide with scholastic precedents, came at once into an atmosphere wholly novel to him except in dreams. He had come from a court where the vehicles of thought were cumbersome and unwieldy, in which the best educated and most polished courtiers surrounding royalty held poetry and art in light esteem.

In a work which has been ascribed to Bacon we find this:—

It is hard to find in these days of noblemen or gentlemen any good mathematician, or excellent musician, or notable philosopher, or else a cunning poet. I know very many notable gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and suppressed it again, or suffered it to be published without their own names to it, as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned, and to show himself amorous of any good art. The scorn and ordinary disgrace offered unto poets in these days is cause why few gentlemen do delight in the art.1

Sidney about the same time speaks of "Idle England which now can scarce endure the pain of a pen," and "poetry is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children." This may seem exaggerated, but it is certainly significant of the intellectual condition of England in the sixteenth century, especially in its application to belles-lettres.

In the Court of France Bacon found a life vibrant with the spirit imparted to it by Ronsard, chief of that tuneful fellowship, the Pléïade, whose ambition it was to rival Homer and Virgil, but whose seat of honor in public esteem was then being shared by Du Bartas, then in the zenith of his fame; in

1 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, p. 4 et seq. London, 1869. 2 Sir Philip Sidney, Defense of Poesie, pp. 110, 62. London.

fact, the soul of this English youth, upon whom Rawley says, "there was a beam of knowledge derived from God," responded to the music of the sonnets and hymns, and odes of the "Immortals" who dominated France, and inspired him to bear to his own countrymen that torch, which, first lighted in Italy, was now irradiating France.

In Du Bartas, Baïf, D'Aubigné, and others of that type, he found congenial spirits. Ronsard was still living, but his rival, Du Bellay, was no more. His works, however, survived, and it is a suggestive fact that in 1591 appeared the "Ruines of Rome" ascribed to Spenser. This was a translation of Du Bellay's "Antiquités de Rome," and it is said had been circulating anonymously in manuscript according to a common custom of the time.1

Bacon has shared with others the honor of being a leader in the literary awakening of England in the later years of the sixteenth, and the early years of the seventeenth centuries. Says Ben Jonson, "About his time were all the wits born that could honour a language." It is true that already some beams of the quickening light of the Renaissance had found their way across the Channel, but of late, as his life has been more closely studied, it is coming to be acknowledged that Bacon was the Ariosto who bore aloft the torch which ushered its fuller glories into England. It is this which we must bear in mind whenever we undertake to study the so-called secret of his life.

It is instructive to note how closely the enthusiastic youth followed the rules of the Pléïade: "They are to accustom themselves to long and weary studies, to imitate good authors, not merely in Greek and Latin, but in Italian, Spanish, or any other tongue where they may be found"; nor did he fail to remember that striking phrase in the rules, "Car ces sont les

We are aware of the claim, often repeated, that the translator of the Ruins of Rome was identical with the translator from the Antiquités, of The Theatre for Worldlings in 1569, but there is no evidence of this.

ailes dont les escripts des hommes volent aux ciels,” which later appeared in the drama of Henry VI, "For knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." So closely did he follow the rules we have quoted that he was obliged to deny himself to friends who called upon him at Gray's Inn because of his close application to study. We know how he appeared at this time, for it was on his return from France that his portrait was painted by Hilliard bearing the inscription, "Si tabula dignat animum mallem" ("If we could but paint his mind"), a sentiment which long after Ben Jonson used in his lines on the Droeshout portrait of the Stratford actor. Was it not natural for this splendid youth, who saw in progress with his own eyes what Saintsbury saw completed later, that "The whole literature of the French nation, at a time when it was wonderfully abundant and vigorous," was being "Ronsardised," to ask, Why should not the literature of the English nation be Baconized? Here is the secret of Bacon's life, and we shall see how by methods, often indirect, he accomplished his purpose, though insurmountable obstacles lay across his path.

That he was the moving and directing spirit in that advancement of learning in England in the sixteenth century which has been entitled the Renaissance, there is constantly accumulating evidence. It is strikingly significant that this movement was spanned by his life, and, unlike the Renaissance elsewhere in Europe, was confined to literature, his favorite field of activity. Neither in architecture, painting, nor sculpture did it find expression by native genius in any degree conmensurate with that which it found in literature. Where is there a single great name to prove the contrary? When genius was wanted in these arts it was imported. Each of them needed a Bacon of whom Garnett has said: "Even more than Milton's 'his soul was like a star and dwelt apart.

1 Richard Garnett, C.B., LL.D., et al., English Literature, vol. II, p. 7. New York, 1912.

It may be well here to speak of the significant fact that North, the pioneer translator into English of "Plutarch's Lives," was with Bacon when attached to Paulet's embassy at the Court of France, and was then about to publish his work. With this undertaking Bacon must have been familiar. It is from Plutarch that so much material was drawn for the "Shakespeare" Works.

His sojourn abroad was terminated by the death of Sir Nicholas Bacon, whose principal estate passed to children of a former marriage, and Anthony who received a considerable inheritance. So small was the amount received by Francis that he was straitened for means of subsistence. Equipped as he was, and possessing a facile knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish, one might well wonder why the all-powerful Burghley did not avail himself of his talents, but preferred to leave him to his own resources, thereby, to use his own words, driving him against the "bent of his genius" to the humdrum of the law for a livelihood.

The reason for this is not far to seek. In the reign of Elizabeth ambition and jealousy of a virulent type flourished without let; indeed, they seem to have been esteemed virtues by the mass of men. Never was the political game played for higher stakes, too often involving life and death. The "Great Burghley," Elizabeth's Bismarck, directed all the movements with relentless persistence. Even the Queen, wilful, fickle, revengeful, and jealous of her royal prerogatives, was guided by him in all her moves, and though on several occasions she attempted to act independently, she was ever brought to see that the wiser part was to follow the lead of a better player than herself. Never were the gates to political preferment more strongly barred. Burghley and his sickly, crafty son held the keys, and only those whom they favored could hope to pass; thus it happened that some of the honorably ambitious and able young men, whom the Queen perhaps smiled upon, failed to obtain preferment, being for various reasons, known only