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truth, when they were grown up into men, full of the experience of travel, the knowledge of books, she continued to feed them from her own barn and cellars; to look sharp after their pills and confections; to send them game from her own larder, and beer from her own vats; to lecture them soundly on what they should eat and drink, when purge or let blood, how far they might ride or walk, when safely to take supper, and at what hour of the morning to rise up from bed."

Believing that "the child is father of the man," the world is always eager to collect anecdotes of the early intelligence of its great men. We possess but few of Francis Bacon; those we have, however, may be taken as confirmatory of the popular belief. Queen Elizabeth, who, in allusion to the precocious gravity of his demeanour, was wont to call him her "young lord-keeper," once asked him, "How old are you?" A veteran minister might have envied the adroit reply: "Just two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign." His bias for inquiry comes out in the circumstance that on one occasion he abandoned the society of his playmates in order to investigate the source of a curious echo which he had discovered in a vault in St. James's Fields; and he was but twelve when his attention was drawn to the recondite secrets of the art of legerdemain.

In his thirteenth year, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, then under the rule of the learned and devout Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. He remained there for three years, with the exception of those considerable intervals when outbreaks of the plague compelled his removal. All that was taught he did not fail to learn; but the curriculum in those days was pitifully narrow, and wholly unsuited to a strong, keen intellect like Bacon's. He detected at once the weakness of the

Aristotelian philosophy, and "disliked" it heartily. "Not for the worthlessness of its author," says his earliest biographer, "to whom he would even ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way-being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations, but barren of the production of works for the life of man. In which mind he continued to his dying day."

The next three years he spent in France; at first residing in Paris under the charge of Sir Amias Paulet, Queen Elizabeth's able ambassador to the French court. For a youth of Bacon's parts no better education could have been devised. It opened up to him all the pomp and splendour of French royalty, all the arts and subtle intrigues of courtiers and diplomatists. It brought him into contact with the bright, quick ladies who sunned their charms in the train of the queen-herself a woman of great loveliness and rare mental gifts; with the glittering nobles of chivalrous France; with the astute leaders of the rival factions of Huguenot and Catholic. Thus his powers of observation and reflection were early developed, and he gained that wide and varied knowledge of the world which is an important part of a statesman's education. When Sir Amias was recalled to England, Bacon went on a tour through the western and southern provinces, the results of which seem to be gathered up in his "Notes on the State of Europe."

On the death of his father, in 1579, he returned to England. The lord-keeper's end was sudden and unexpected. The winter had been sharp and severe; but a genial thaw succeeding to the frost, the portly Sir Nicolas, at all times afflicted with a difficulty of breathing, seated himself by an open window while his barber

trimmed his hair and beard.

During the process he fell and a fit of shivering, he

asleep. Waking with a chill inquired of his servant, "Why did you let me sleep?" "Why, my lord," was the answer, "I durst not wake your lordship." "Then you have killed me with kindness," retorted the asthmatic judge; and, taking to his bed, he died on the 20th of February.

At his father's death, Francis Bacon found himself inadequately provided for, and could no longer hope to enter public life as the equal and companion of men of good estate. "He had to think how to live, instead of living but to think." At first he solicited some public office; and, as the son of the late lord-keeper and a nephew of Lord Burleigh, might reasonably have hoped for success. But his application to Lord Burleigh was made in vain. The Cecils had a strong dread of able men, and Bacon had already earned a reputation for ability. So that he was left to derive what consolation he could from his studies, and to starve on his mother's slender means, or on the small advances he obtained from the Jewish usurers. The sole source of a livelihood which seemed available was the profession of the law; and, in 1580, in his twentieth year, he began to keep his terms in Gray's Inn, where he had entered himself as a member as early as November, 1576. At this time he lived at No. 1 Gray's Inn Square, one of the "historic places" of Old London, which to this day retains much of its ancient character, and by Bacon's admirers must always be regarded as a shrine full worthy of a pilgrimage. In depth of interest it is second only to the old timbered house at Stratfordon-Avon, just as Bacon in largeness and grasp of intellect is second only to Shakespeare.

That he applied himself with all his powers of mind,

all his subtle acumen and rare patience, to the literature of his profession is not to be doubted, for he certainly became not only a great philosopher, but "learned in the law." On that point we may take the evidence of a lawyer, who, if incompetent to measure at its full extent the genius of Francis Bacon, was unquestionably capable of pronouncing a fair estimate of his legal acquirements.

"There can be no doubt," says Lord Campbell,* "that he now diligently and doggedly sat down to the study of his profession, and that he made very great progress in it, although he laboured under the effect of the envious disposition of mankind, who are inclined to believe that a man of general accomplishments cannot possibly be a lawyer, and e converso, if a man has shown himself beyond all controversy to be deeply embued with law, that he is a mere lawyer without any other accomplishment. A competent judge who peruses Francis Bacon's legal treatises, and studies his forensic speeches, must be convinced that these were not the mere result of laboriously getting up a title of law pro re nata, but that his mind was thoroughly familiar with the principles of jurisprudence, and that he had made himself complete master of the common law of England, while there might be serjeants and apprentices who had never strayed from Chancery Lane to 'the Solar Walk or Milky Way,' better versed in the technicalities of pleading and the practice of the courts. He must have sedulously attended the 'readings' and 'mootings' of his time, and abstracted many days and nights from his literary and philosophical pursuits to the perusal of Littleton and Plowden."

Bacon was always a "sociable" man, and one who affected the amenities of life; and in the intervals of his studies he found leisure to join in the revels and pastimes of the period. He laid out walks in his garden, having, as one of his pleasantest essays proves, a strong love of

* Lord Campbell, "Lives of the Lord Chancellors," ii. 274.

gardening, and planted numerous trees, some of which, on a slight eminence named "Lord Bacon's Mount," were standing as late as the reign of William IV.

On the 27th of June, 1582, he was called to the bar; and immediately, according to use and wont, walked in Fleet Street in his serge and bands, to intimate his willingness to practise for fees. In 1584, he had made so much progress as to obtain a seat in the House of Commons, having been elected member for the Dorsetshire port of Melcombe Regis. The House at that time was graced by many illustrious statesmen and brilliant speakers, men whose names are now enrolled on the list of "the immortals," whose deeds are part and parcel of English history; but, after a brief interval of preparation, Bacon stood forward among them as equal to the brightest and best in the keenness of his wit, the felicity of his humour, the force of his reasoning, and the scope of his sagacity. A critic so complete as Ben Jonson bears the fullest testimony to his exalted oratorical powers.

"There happened in my time," he says, "one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, when he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No number 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 (that is, at his will). No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."

Bacon was early admitted to the inner bar, and immediately afterwards was elected a Bencher of the Society. Within two years he was made Lent Reader;

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