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think it is proved beyond doubt that he did all he could to help him in secret. Dr. Abbott in his Bacon and Essex, a severe but very able book, seems almost to suggest that Bacon's secret efforts were really designed, under pretence of help, to ruin the Earl, but I think this wholly wrong. It is very possible that they did, in fact, contribute to his ruin, but this was due to the fact that they were so lacking in judgment of men and common sense. As always in dealing with people, Bacon relied upon his faculty of expression on paper, and by imitating the Earl's style he committed him to writing ridiculous letters to the Queen, which, with the suspicions which she evidently entertained of his intentions, can only have had the effect of exasperating her more and more against him. And having spun this web about the Earl's feet, Bacon could not extricate him without ruining himself. It is, of course, possible-though I find it hard to believe-that Bacon did not know what the Queen's real grievance against Essex was, but he ought to have suspected it, as he had been privy to the earlier Scottish correspondence and he knew the methods of Cecil for whom, indeed, he was actually working. But the point to bear in mind is that Bacon was before all things an artist who took delight in presenting a case; and when he did so, whether in prose, verse or speech, he always identified himself with some character which had formed itself in his imagination, and for the time being became that character. To this I attribute his utter disregard of facts, which gives the reader of after times the impression that he was a most cunning and deliberate liar. At the same time he had the most exquisite powers of expression, combined with a prodigious memory and inventiveness, and when he was writing he was thinking far more of the particular purpose he had in view and of the effect which he wished to produce than of the fate of the persons concerned or the bearing of his words on reality.1

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1 A very good example of this may be seen in Bacon's account of 'Squire's treason," of which Spedding says a better specimen of the art of narration it would be difficult to find." But Goodman (Court of King James) says of that affair, " For Squire's treason, which was the poisoning of the pummel of the queen's saddle, it was a thing so incredible, that I took no heed of it, nor made any search for it." Whatever

He also had very strongly developed the sense common to all artists which desires instinctively to win admiration for its own performance.

It may be asked how these efforts of Bacon on the Earl's behalf can be reconciled with his action at the York House inquiry, and later at the final trial for treason. I have endeavoured to give a general answer to this above, but it may be supplemented by some further considerations. In the first place Bacon, like his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, had been brought up in the school of Burghley and Walsingham, where falsehood and forgery were recognised instruments of Government. And there was a good deal of excuse for this, for the times were exceedingly dangerous, and England was then a comparatively weak power, exposed to attack, and still more to intrigue, by powerful and unscrupulous enemies. There was also a large party at home on whose loyalty reliance could not be placed, as their religion bound them in political as well as in spiritual matters, to Rome; and Rome was in league with Spain. Bacon held no official position under Queen Elizabeth, but he was always employed by the Government in State causes, and his wonderful pen was in constant request. No doubt he need not have appeared against Essex, and a man with more sense of personal obligation would not have done so; but it must be said in fairness that, had he declined on this ground, he would have rendered himself suspect both to Cecil and the Queen of being in league with Essex, and there would have been an end to his prospects, and, as he himself alleges, of any chance of his being able to help the Earl. He had all the more reason to apprehend this owing to the fact that he had actually assisted Essex in his earlier

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may be the art of Bacon's narrative-and I do not deny its artistic merits it is, on the face of it, largely a fabrication. It was published anonymously early in 1599 as a letter written by a gentleman in England to a friend in Padua," and, being issued by the Queen's printer, it is probably an example of those "public writings of satisfaction" for which Bacon says his pen was used in Elizabeth's time. Its real object was evidently to justify the action of the English Government against the Jesuits and seminary priests. There are other examples of a similar character. See Spedding, Letters and Life; i. 271-287 and iii. 67.

correspondence with King James. A man with a higher sense of morality and more courage than Bacon possessed might have declined the task, but it would have been too much to have expected it of him, with his conviction of his mission in the world for which means and place were necessary, and his indifference to friendship in public life which was based on any other ground than that of common interest. To do Bacon justice he had always warned Essex that his services to him were based on these considerations,1 but

1 The following extracts illustrate this :

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(i) Bacon to Essex, 1596: Not to trust in him “ upon humour or election," but look about, even jealously, if you will; and consider whether I have not reason to think that your fortune comprehendeth mine." Compare the Essay, Of Followers and Friends, published in 1597: "There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals, which was wont to be magnified. That that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other."

(ii) Bacon to Essex, 1595, after the latter's failure to secure him the Solicitor's place, and when Bacon had resolved to follow letters: “For your Lordship, I do think myself more beholding to you than to any man. And I say I reckon myself as a common (not popular, but common); and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common so much your Lordship shall be sure to have."

(iii) Bacon to Lord Keeper Pickering, on the same occasion: "But his Lordship may go on in his affection, which nevertheless myself have desired him to limit."

(iv) Bacon's account of the conversation on his receiving a gift of land from Essex as a consolation for the Earl's failure to secure him office : "" My Lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in law? always it is with a saving of his faith to the King and his other Lords; and therefore my Lord (said I), I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be with the ancient savings." Apology.

(v) Generally, Bacon's remarks about his relations with Essex: "It is well known, how I did many years since dedicate my travels and studies to the use and (as I may term it) service of my Lord of Essex, which, I protest before God, I did not, making election of him as the likeliest means of my own advancement, but out of the humour of a man, that ever, from the time I had any use of reason (whether it were reading upon good books, or upon the example of a good father, or by nature) I loved my country more than was answerable to my fortune, and I held at that time my Lord to be the fittest instrument to do good to the State; and therefore I applied myself to him in a manner which I think happeneth rarely amongst men. ." Apology.

Essex, with his simple and generous nature, and his admiration for Bacon's qualities, had, of course, failed to understand this. In the performance of his official task at the Essex trial, Bacon at once becomes a different man. He was playing in a different part and he played it in exactly the same way as, in my belief, he had seen himself under the character of " Zele in the Faerie Queene conducting the prosecution for treason of Duessa. 1 A dangerous man to his friends! Well, I admit that.

The view has been expressed that Bacon was mainly instrumental in getting a verdict against the Earl, and Dr. Abbott contemplates the effect on the Peers of Bacon's charges of long-standing and systematic treason, seeing that he had been the Earl's intimate companion for many years. But to my mind the effect would have been the opposite, as the charge from such a source would react on the man who made it, and Bacon did, in fact, meet with a most damaging retort from the Earl on another point (the Earl's alleged "enemies ") who reminded him of the letters which Bacon had "framed" for him which actually confuted Bacon's own statement at the trial. Moreover, it is evident from two contemporary letters that Bacon's effort at York House was regarded not only as disloyal to Essex but as rather affected and absurd, and the nonsense in his speech at the later trial about Cain and Pisistratus can have made little impression on a body of average Englishmen. It seems as extravagant and inappropriate as his story from Livy with which he tried

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1 Faerie Queene, V. ix. Duessa in this scene of course represents the Queen of Scots. Burghley is even introduced.

* See what Bacon has to say about this in his Apology.

3" My Lord was charged by the Sergeant, Attorney, the Solicitor, and Mr. Bacon-who was very idle and I hope will have the reward of that sooner [?honour] in the end." Sir Gilly Meyrick to Southampton, 11th June 1600.

"On Thursday last my Lord of Essex was at York House before the Lords of the Council and other Lords, as four Earls, two Barons, two Sergeants at Law, the Queen's Attorney, and Bacon, who showed himself a pretty fellow." Ralph Adderley to Walter Bagot, 9th June, 1600.

Devereux, Lives, ii. 107.

to conciliate the House of Lords in his submission in 1621. These were examples of his flowers of rhetoric, produced without judgment or correct appreciation of the characters of the men with whom he had to deal. In short, he was thinking of the artistic effect under the mistaken impression that men were more influenced by that than by facts. And subtle and cruel as his charges appear when read, it is quite certain, to my mind, that they were made without animus and that the speaker was as indifferent to the Earl and his affairs as if he had not existed. He was thinking of Cecil, the Queen and himself. But behind this play-acting in public I believe he had the confident expectation in his own mind that he would be able, in private, to get the Earl out of trouble. He tried his utmost to do so after the York House inquiry, and from what he says in his Apology it would appear that he did not understand why he failed.1 The reason, as I have said, was, evidently, the fears and anger of the Queen. At the treason trial I have no doubt he was equally sanguine, and that he assumed, almost as a matter of course, that the Queen would never sign the warrant for Essex's execution. Why she did so is a mystery, as she was most averse from shedding the blood of anyone she knew, and had only been prevailed upon to sign the warrant for the execution of the Queen of Scots (a far more critical case) with the greatest difficulty, and then ruined the unfortunate man who delivered it.

Let us now turn to the doings of Essex after his return from Ireland. It is necessary first to get certain dates clear, because they have an important bearing on the letters which we have examined. Essex was put under arrest on 28th September, 1599. He was committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper at York House on 1st October. On 19th March, 1600, he was removed to Essex House, to remain with two keepers, and none to visit him but with the Queen's leave. A declaration had been made in the Star Chamber of the charges

1 "The truth is, that the issue of all his dealing grew to this, that the Queen, by some slackness of my Lord's as I imagine, liked him worse and worse, and grew more incensed towards him. Then she became utterly alienated from me, and for the space of at least three months would not as much as look on me."