My dearest Lord,-It is both in cares and kindness, that small ones float up to the tongue and great ones sink down into the heart in silence. Therefore I could speak little to your lordship to-day, neither had I fit time. But I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living,

part nothing worth: that is, they can judge well of the mode of attaining the end, but ill of the value of the end itself."

He would have warned ambition that "the seeled dove mounts and mounts because he is unable to look about him."

To the supposition" that worldly power is the means to do good," he would have said, “A man who spends his life in an impartial search after truth, is a better friend to mankind than any statesman or hero, whose merits are commonly confined within the circle of an age or a nation, and are not unlike seasonable and favouring showers, which, though they be profitable and desirable, yet serve for that season only wherein they fall, and for a latitude of ground which they water; but the benefices of the philosopher, like the Such is the nature of human delight; such the influences of the sun and the heavenly bodies, are nature of human foresight!

March 7, 1616-17.

FR. BACON, C.S.

As he must have known, what he has so beautifully taught, that a man of genius can seldom be permanently influenced by worldly distinction; as he well knew that his own happiness and utility consisted not in action but in contemplation; as he had published his opinion that "men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their person, nor in their actions, nor in their times," it is probable that he was urged to this and to every other step on the road to aggrandizement, either by the importunities of his family, or by his favourite opinion, that "knowledge is never so dignified and exalted as when contemplation and action are nearly and strongly conjoined together: a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action."

for time permanent, for place universal: those again are commonly mixed with strife and perturbation; but these have the true character of divine presence, and come in aura leni without noise or agitation."

The flattering illusion of good to result from the union of contemplation and action, would have been dissipated by the admonition, that the life and faculties of man are so short and limited that this union has always failed, and must be injurious both to the politician and to the philosopher. To the politician, as, from variety of speculation, he would neither be prompt in action nor consistent in general conduct; and as, from meditating upon the universal frame of nature, he would have little disposition to confine his views to the circle where his usefulness might be most beneficial. To the philosopher, as powers intended to enlarge the province of knowledge, and enlighten distant ages, would be wasted upon subjects of mere temporary interest, debates in courts of justice, and the mechanism of state business. That Bacon should have been doomed to such occupations, that he, who stood the lofty beacon of

It has been said by some of the ancient magicians, that they could see clearly all which was to befall others, but that of their own future life they could discern nothing. It might be a curi-science, evermore guiding the exploring scholar in ous speculation for any admirer of the works of this great man, to collect the oracles he would have delivered to warn any other philosopher of the probable danger and certain infelicity of accepting such an office in such times.

To the hope of wealth he would have said, "it diverts and interrupts the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which, while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take it up, the race is hindered.

"Declinat cursus aurumq. volubile tollit."

To the importunities of friends he would have answered by his favourite maxim, "You do not duly estimate the value of pleasures; for if you observe well, you shall find the logical part of some men's minds good, but the mathematical VOL. I.-(9)

voyages of discovery to improve and bless mankind, should voluntarily have descended to the shifting quicksands of politics, is a theme for wonder and pity. He could have pointed out to another the shoals, the sunken rocks, and the treacherous nature of the current; but he adventured,-and little minds can now point out where he was lost, and where the waters went over his soul.

Much as it is to be lamented that he should have accepted this office, the loss to science seems, in some sort, to have been compensated by his entire devotion to his professional and political duties: duties for which he possessed unrivalled powers.

It has been truly said by the biographer of Bacon's successor, that "the chancellorship of England is not a chariot for every scholar to get (F2)

As a Statesman, we have seen that he was cradled in politics; that his works abound with notices of his political exertions; that his advice to Sir George Villiers is an essay upon all the various duties of a statesman, with respect to religion, justice, the council table, foreign negotiations, peace and war, trade, the colonies, and the court; and of his parliamentary eloquence his friend Ben Jonson says, "There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."

up and ride in. Saving this one, perhaps it would or state above them :" and in his addresses to take a long day to find another. Our laws are the judges upon their appointment or promotion. the wisdom of many ages, consisting of a world he availed himself of every opportunity to explain of customs, maxims, intricate decisions, which them. are responsa prudentum. Tully could never have boasted, if he had lived amongst us, Si mihi vehementer occupato stomachum moverint, triduo me jurisconsultum profitebor. He is altogether deceived, that thinks he is fit for the exercise of our judicature, because he is a great rabbi in some academical authors; for this hath little or no copulation with our encyclopedia of arts and sciences. Quintilian might judge right upon the branches of oratory and philosophy, Omnes disciplinas inter se conjunctionem rerum, et communionem habere. But our law is a plant that grew alone, and is not entwined into the hedge of other professions; yet the small insight that some have into deep matters, cause them to think that it is no insuperable task for an unexpert man to be the chief arbiter in a court of equity. Bring reason and conscience with you, the good stock of nature, and the thing is done. Equitas optimo cuique notissima est, is a trivial saying, a very good man cannot be ignorant of equity; and who knows not that extreme right is extreme injury? But they that look no further than so, are shortsighted for there is no strain of wisdom more sublime, than upon all complaints to measure the just distance between law and equity; because in this high place, it is not equity at lust and pleasure that is moved for, but equity according to decrees and precedents foregoing, as the dewbeaters have trod the way for those that come

after them."

Of Bacon's fitness for this office, some estimate may be formed by a consideration of the four principal qualifications of a chancellor, as

A Lawyer,

A Judge,

A Statesman,

And the Patron of Preferment.

As a Lawyer he had for a series of years been engaged in professional life. He had been solicitor and attorney-general; had published upon diferent parts of the law; had deeply meditated upon the principles of equity, and had availed himself of every opportunity to assist in improvement of the law, in obedience to his favourite maxim," that every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament."

As a Judge, he, from his infancy, had seen the different modes in which judicial duties were discharged, had meditated deeply and published bis opinions upon the perfection of these duties "to the suitors, to the advocates, to the officers of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign

As a Patron, he considered preferment a sacred trust, to preserve and promote high feeling, encourage merit, and counteract the tendency of learning to dispose men to leisure and privateness.

In his advice to Villiers, as to the patrimony of the church, he says, " You will be often solicited, and perhaps importuned to prefer scholars to church livings; you may further your friends in that way, 'cæteris paribus;' otherwise remember, I pray, that these are not places merely of favour; the charge of souls lies upon them, the greatest account whereof will be required at their own hands; but they will share deeply in their faults who are the instruments of their preferment."

A few weeks after he was appointed lord keeper, he thus writes to a clergyman of Trinity College, Cambridge: "After my hearty commendations, I have heard of you, as a man well deserving, and of able gifts to become profitable in the church; and there being fallen within my gift the rectory of Frome St. Quintin, with the chapel of Evershot, in Dorsetshire, which seems to be a thing of good value, eighteen pounds in the king's books, and in a good country, I have thought good to make offer of it to you: the rather for that you are of Trinity College, whereof myself was some time and my purpose is to make choice of men rather by care and inquiry, than by their own suits and commendatory letters. So I bid you farewell.

From your loving friend,
FR. BACON, C. S."
From Dorset House, 23d April. 1617

This truth, necessarily attendant upon all knowledge, is not excluded from judicial know-instance of his virtue, that he had exemplary ledge. It has influenced all intelligent judges: Sir Thomas More; the Chancellor de l'Hôpital; Lord Somers, to whom he has been compared; D'Aguesseau; Sir Edward Coke, and Sir Matthew Hale. Bacon's favourite maxim therefore was, "Detur digniori: qui beneficium digno dat omnes obligat;" and in his prayer, worthy of a chancellor, he daily said, "This vine, which my right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever

abolished in France by the exertions of l'Hôpital, | practice was afterwards abolished; the amount of which abolition is thus stated by Mr. Butler, in his life of the chancellor:

"Another reformation in the administration of justice, which l'Hôpital wished to effect, was the abolition of the épices, or presents made, on some occasions, by the parties in a cause to the judges by whom it was tried.

"A passage in Homer, where he describes a compartment in the shield of Achilles, in which two talents of gold were placed between two judges, as the reward of the best speaker, is generally cited to prove that, even in the earliest times, the judges were paid for their administration of justice.

"Plutarch mentions, that, under the administration of Pericles, the Athenian magistrates were first authorized to require a remuneration from the suitors of their courts. In ancient Rome, the magistrates were wholly paid by the public; but Justinian allowed some magistrates of an inferior description to receive presents, which he limited to a certain amount, from the suitors before them. "Montesquieu observes, that, in the early ages of the feudal law, when legal proceedings were short and simple, the lord defrayed the whole expense of the administration of justice in his court. In proportion as society became refined, a more complex administration of justice became necessary; and it was considered that not only the party who was cast should, on account of his having instituted a bad cause, but that the successful party should, on account of the benefit which he had derived from the proceedings of the court, contribute, in some degree, to the expenses attending them; and that the public, on account of the general benefit which it derived from the administration of justice, should make up the deficiency.'

the épices was regulated; and, in many cases, the taking of them was absolutely forbidden. Speaking generally, they were not payable till final judgment; and if the matter were not heard in court, but referred to a judge for him to hear, and report to the court upon it, he was entitled to a proportion only of the épices, and the other judges were entitled to no part of them. Those among the magistrates who were most punctual and diligent in their attendance in court, and the discharge of their duty, had most causes referred to them, and were therefore richest in épices; but the superior amount of them, however it might prove their superior exertions, added little to their fortune, as it did not often exceed £50, and never £100 a year. The judges had some other perquisites, and also some remuneration from government; but the whole of the perquisites and remuneration of any judge, except those of the presidents, amounted to little more than the èpices. The presidents of the parliament had a higher remuneration; but the price which they paid for their offices was proportionably higher, and the whole amount received by a judge for his épices, perquisites, and other remunerations, fell short of the interest of the money which he paid for the charge; so that it is generally true, that the French judges administered justice not only without salary, but even with some pecuniary loss. Their real remuneration was the rank and consideration which their office gave them in society, and the respect and regard of their fellow-citizens. How well does this illustrate Montesquieu's aphorism, that the principle of the French monarchy was honour! It may be truly said, that the world has not produced a more learned, enlightened, or honourable order in society, than the French magistracy.

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families and protectors, and by any other person whom the suitors thought likely to influence the decision of the causes in their favour. But it all amounted to nothing:-to all these solicitations the judges listened with equal external reverence and internal indifference; and they availed themselves of the first moment when it could be done with decency, to bow the parties respectfully out of the room: it was a corvée on their time which they most bitterly lamented."

Englishmen are much scandalized, when they "To secure to the judges the proportion which are informed that the French judges were perthe suitors were to contribute towards the ex-sonally solicited by the suitors in court, their penses of justice, it was provided, by an ordonnance of St. Louis, that, at the commencement of a suit, each party should deposit in court the amount of one-tenth part of the property in dispute that the tenth deposited by the unsuccessful party should be paid over to the judges on their passing sentence; and that the tenth of the successful party should then be returned to him. This was varied by subsequent ordonnances. Insensibly it became a custom for the successful party to wait on the judges, after sentence was passed, and, as an acknowledgment of their attention to the cause, to present them with a box of sweetmeats, which was then called épices, or spices. By degrees, this custom became a legal perquisite of the judges; and it was converted into a present of money, and required by the judges before the cause came to hearing: Non deliberetur donec solventur species, say some of the ancient registers of the parliaments of France.

Bacon had scarcely been an hour appointed lord keeper, when these presents of gold and of furniture, and of other costly articles, were showered upon him by various persons, and, amongst others, by the suitors of the court.

Immediately after his appointment as lord keeper, he waited upon the late lord chancellor, to acquit himself of the debt of personal gratitude which he owed to that worthy person, and to acThat quaint him with his master's gracious intentions

Again, because justice is a sacred thing, and the end for which I am called to this place, and therefore is my way to heaven; and if it be shorter, it is never a whit the worse, I shall, by the grace of God, as far as God will give me strength, add the afternoon to the forenoon, and some fourth night of the vacation to the term, for the expediting and clearing of the causes of the court; only the depth of the three long vacations I would reserve in some measure free from business of estate, and for studies, arts, and sciences, to which in my own nature I am most inclined.

which resteth much in myself, and that is in my "There is another point of true expedition, manner of giving orders. For I have seen an affectation of despatch turn utterly to delay at length: for the manner of it is to take the tale out of the counsellor at the bar his mouth, and to give a cursory order, nothing tending or conducing to the end of the business. It makes me remember what I heard one say of a judge that sat in chan cery; that he would make forty orders in a morning out of the way, and it was out of the way indeed; for it was nothing to the end of the busi