this period Burleigh's help had been slight enough, and was never afterward heartily accorded to the too solicitous nephew.

Opposed to Burleigh and the Cecils was the great power of Leicester, and, after his death, that of his son-in-law, Robert Devereux, Lord Essex. The characters of all men are sufficiently complex and self-contradictory to make precise analysis impossible, even for the psychologist, and Essex, like Bacon himself, sometimes puzzles the biographer. He was a gentleman, a scholar, a soldier, a diplomat, a gallant. Before all, he was Essex, the lovable, impulsive autocrat of his own fortunes, and the generous comrade of Elizabeth's best imaginings. His was a spirit not made for crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee. He better liked to try the mettle of horse and foe, to challenge when her mood allowed the pride and will of Elizabeth herself, to turn her buffets into rewards, to cry scorn upon his enemies, and ardently to serve his friends. And he had many of both orders, himself, at least from the prudential viewpoint, too often numbered among the former. Of his friends Mr. Francis Bacon was very near him, the struggling young lawyer and philosopher who with his brother Anthony had early chosen to follow Essex's fortunes. Bacon must have felt the charm of that fine personality, must indeed have loved Essex as he could never have loved the Cecils, though to them he still continued to apply for advancement. Not quite unsuccessfully, for though Sir Robert seems to have considered him

"a speculative man indulging himself in philosophical reveries, and calculated more to perplex than to promote public business," yet the reversion of the Registrarship of the Star Chamber was now bestowed upon him, a position assuring a good income, but to which, unfortunately, Bacon did not actually attain until twenty years afterward.

His condition, therefore, remained much in need of improvement, and it must be said that his independent activity as the young member of Parliament for Middlesex in 1592 did not tend to modify Elizabeth's opinion of his "unsuitableness" as a public servant. There was in Bacon, indeed, a strain of inquiry, of large tolerance for truth, of catholic reasonableness, that made it hard for him to support at any time the character of a strictly limited servant and partisan in social or political affairs. For more than one reason, then, we cannot feel much surprise at his failure to secure the Attorney-General's place, when it became vacant in 1593, notwithstanding his persistent candidacy and Essex's cordial, even eager, support. In April, 1594, his rival, Sir Edward Coke, was given the place, and the disappointed suitor, after some petulance, pressed for the Solicitorship. This also he failed to obtain, after eighteen months of struggle. Elizabeth seemed to resent Essex's bold pleading for his friend, and Coke and the Lord Keeper Puckering strongly opposed Bacon's claims. In a letter on the result, written to Fulke Greville, Bacon manifests a feeling of sharp regret, almost of shame: "And

what though the Master of the Rolls, and my Lord of Essex, and yourself, and others, think my case without doubt, yet in the meantime I have a hard condition, to stand so that whatsoever service I do to Her Majesty, it shall be thought to be but servitium viscatum, lime-twigs and fetches to place myself; and so I shall have envy, not thanks. This is a course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt every man's nature. For to be, as I told you, like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infinitum, I am weary of it, as also of wearying my good friends."

But one good friend was not to be wearied. Essex, feeling keenly the blight that had come upon Bacon's prospects, and his own difficult position as unsuccessful mediator, undertook to relieve the situation in some measure by the gift of a handsome estate at Twickenham, worth about £1,800, which was gratefully accepted by his beneficiary. Essex was also behind Bacon's addresses to Lady Hatton, the rich widow of Sir William Hatton and daughter of Sir Thomas Cecil; but his warm espousal by letter of his friend's cause appears to have had as little influence with the perverse widow as the presence and dignity of Bacon himself, who was defeated in the lists of love, as in those of politics, by none other than Coke. The Attorney-General soon afterward married Lady Hatton.

Bacon now betook himself to his pen, and sought to

execute work planned for earlier fruition. In 1596 he completed a treatise upon the common law, which remained unpublished during his lifetime; and in the following year he put out the first edition of the Essays, then numbering ten, with "Religious Meditations" and "Of the Colours of Good and Evil." During these two years appeared also the last three Books of Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice. Two other slowly expanding editions of the Essays were published before Bacon's death, until in 1625 the original ten had become fifty-eight. Other literry tasks beguiled this early disappointment, and the man of letters was kept busy also as lawyer and parliamentarian.

Essex's growing popularity, after his return from the capture of Cadiz in 1596, sometimes gratified and sometimes angered the Queen, for whom her favourite continued to show a regard too self-reliant for his own ultimate good. It is interesting to notice Bacon's friendly but assiduous remonstrances with Essex in this respect, remonstrances received always goodtemperedly, but slightly and seldom heeded. In one of his Apophthegms Bacon tells us that "Aristippus was earnest suitor to Dionysius for somewhat, who would give no ear to his suit. Aristippus fell at his feet, and then Dionysius granted it. One that stood by said afterwards to Aristippus, 'You a philosopher, and to be so base as to throw yourself at the tyrant's feet to get a suit!' Aristippus

answered, 'The fault is not mine, but the fault is in Dionysius, that carries his ears in his feet."" This little story reflects light, in its way, upon the characters of both Bacon and Essex, the latter of whom "had a settled opinion," says Bacon, "that the Queen could be brought to nothing but by a kind of necessity and authority." Certainly, Essex easily realized his unfortunate desire in 1599, when he chose and was appointed to go as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to crush Tyrone's rebellion in that troublous land. There is something of conflict between Bacon's Apology, published early in the reign of James I., and his letters written to Essex at this time. In the former he asserts that "I did not only dissuade, but protest against his going," because "I did as plainly see his overthrow chained, as it were by destiny, to that journey, as it is possible for a man to ground a judgment upon future contingents. In the latter "some good spirit led his pen to presage to his Lordship success. The truth would seem

to be that Bacon entertained for his friend both hope and fear, and that after Essex's failure his fear loomed more largely in his memory than his hope.

For failure came, and Essex, lacking the patience and skill of an organizing general in a vexatious campaign, returned suddenly to the Court, at Nonsuch, and though at first received with surprised pleasure by Elizabeth, soon felt her coldness as willing tongues wagged against him and his proceedings, alleging political intrigue as well as miserable con