Relation to Villiers. 147 wrong, he managed to give them fresh significance and dignity. His contributions to the pleas and arguments of the time belong to English literature as much as to the history of constitutional law. Whether engaged in soothing the Commons-battling for the prerogative-fencing the forests of the land from waste-giving judgment on the rights of the Irish Parliament-pressing, without respect of persons, the law against duels-or laying down his views about customs, merchandise, manufactures, agriculture,—we seldom fail to meet, on his pages, with some broad generalisation, some colour of fancy, apt ssical reference, or startling epigram. No man ever so illumined a mass of technical details with the light of genius. The obnoxious Coke removed from obstructing, he was now free to carry out his comprehensive plans for codifying, simplifying, and amending the law, and reconciling differences between parties and interests at home. Northampton's death and Somerset's dsigrace seemed to open the way for the reassertion of the policy abroad which he had always advocated, an attitude of well-armed defence, si vis pacem para bellum, the renewal (were the marriage negotiations to fall through) of the league against Spain, and the possible realisation of the Greater Britain; whose foundations were, indeed in another way than he dreamed, being then laid at Surat in the East and Virginia in the Indies of the West. As regards his relation with the throne, he thought, in his aftermath of hope and energy-how vainly, time alone could show -that he could coax, educate, and manage the young lion, now so high on its steps. That Bacon disapproved of Court favourites is attested by a passage in his "Essay on Counsel"; where, in reference to such Cabinet confidence as prevailed in Italy and France, he says it is a remedy for troubles of State" worse than the disease; which hath turned Metis the wife into Metis the mistress-that is, councils of State to which princes are married, to counsels of gracious persons recommended chiefly for flattery and affection." But as there must be a favourite in the house of James, he wished to make the best of him; and he set himself to court the courtier, whose character, as yet imperfectly displayed, he saw or read through rose-coloured clouds. The "new star" that had dawned on the horizon might, he thought, be induced to shine auspiciously on the framing of good laws and the prosecution of great designs. In this frame of mind, still assuming the attitude of a respectful Mentor, he addressed to Villiers the famous "Letter of Advice," which, in its two forms, remains, with its blending of wide views and illustrative detail, the best treatise on Government of the age. On the 6th of March 1617 the Chancellor Ellesmere, worn with infirmities, was permitted to deliver up the Great Seal; and on the following day it was placed in the hands of Bacon, who, under the title of Lord Keeper, post tot tantosque labores, at length succeeded to the first office of the realm. His letter of thanks to the favourite, now Earl of Buckingham, to whom he assigned his advance, is written with all the grace of the greatest master of compliment we have known :— "MY DEAREST LORD,-It is both in cares and kindnesses that small ones float upward to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with 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." The new Lord Keeper was inaugurated, after his fashion, with unusual pomp; with the applause, sincere and the reverse, of many; the ill omen of few, who said, "he comes so bravely in, he will go sadly out." 150 CHAPTER VI. BACON LORD KEEPER AND LORD CHANCELLOR. 1617-1621. OUR insular history, from the reign of the first and greatest of the Scotch Jameses to the ascendancy of Edmund Burke, has, to an unusual degree, been adorned by men illustrious alike in the field of letters and in that of action; but, says the best French critic of our author, " none of those whose names mark an epoch in human thought, ever rose so high as Bacon." He adds, "His elevation seemed to realise the wish of Plato that a philosopher should be a king, and showed that the realisation may be a calamity." M. de Rémusat's antitheses are, however, frequently open to the same charge as those of Pope or of Macaulay, the sacrifice of truth to concision; and here they approach their theme with a prejudgment. But the most impartial historian of those times, while contending that Bacon was too great a man to play other than a second part in the age in which he lived," admits that in his philosophy we may find "the key to his political life." In announcing his scheme of harmonious relations be Philosophy and Politics. 151 tween the Crown and Parliament, which, if carried out in its wholeness, might have averted the Civil War, he "showed that he had entered into the spirit of the future growth of the constitution, as completely as he showed in the 'Novum Organum' that he had entered into the spirit of the future growth of European science. Yet no man would have been more astonished than Bacon, if he had been told what changes would be required to realise the idea which he had so deeply at heart." This applies with equal force to the politician and to the philosopher. In both spheres we find the same breadth of conception with a similar incapacity for accurate detail, the same ignorance of new methods, the same over-sanguine expectations: nor is it too much to conjecture that his belief in the superiority of the few to the many may have been transferred from his study of reforms in science-never due to multitudes, but originating in the minds of often solitary thinkers-to his view of public affairs. In both spheres we have the spectacle, more strange than rare, of a man, by every art of argument and imagery, fortifying himself in vain. against the temptations to which he was most prone. The "anticipations of nature" denounced in the 'Organum' are replaced in his own "Instauration" by a series of assumptions often as hasty as those of the ancients he derides; while it is dominated by a love of system as great as that of Aristotle.1 Similarly in 1 It has been observed that his exaggerated trust in persons in authority may be traced in the absolute faith reposed in their ideal equivalents, the inspired prophets and directors of the 'New Atlantis.' |