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OBJECT OF THE PRESENT WORK.

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this good work of obtaining from men of letters and science a reconsideration of the evidence on which true judgment will have to run, the new facts, the new letters, the new documentary illustrations comprised in this Review of the Personal History of Lord Bacon are given to the world.

I. 18.

CHAPTER II.

1561. Jan. 22.

EARLY YEARS.

II. 1. 1. SWEET to the eye and to the heart is the face of Francis Bacon as a child. Born among the courtly glories of York House, nursed on the green slopes and in the leafy woods of Gorhambury; now playing with the daisies and forget-me-nots, now with the mace and seals; one. day culling posies with the gardener or coursing after the pigeons (which he liked, particularly, in a pie), the next day paying his pretty wee compliments to the Queen; he grows up into his teens a grave yet sunny boy; on this side of his mind in love with nature, on that side in love with art. Every tale told of him wins on the imagination whether he hunts the echo in St. James's Park, or eyes the juggler and detects his trick, or lisps wise saws to the Queen and becomes her young Lord Keeper of ten. Frail in health, as the sons of old men mostly are, his father's gout and stone, of which he will feel the twinge and fire to his dying day, only chain him to his garden or his desk. When thirteen years of age he goes to read books under Whitgift at Cambridge; when sixteen to read men under Paulett in France. If he is young, he is still more sage. A native grace of soul keeps off from him the rust of the cloister no less than the stain of the world. As Cambridge fails to dry him into Broughton, Paris and

1. Sir Amias Paulett's Despatches in the Cott. MSS., Calig. E. vii. 3, 8, 16, 31, 57; Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 54; Bacon to Lady Paulett, Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 214.

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1577.

Poictiers fail to melt him into Montjoy. The perils he II. 1. escapes are grave; the three years spent under Whitgift's hard, cold eye being no less full of intellectual snares than are the three years spent in the voluptuous court of Henri Trois, among the dames and courtiers of France, of moral snares. In the train of Sir Amias Paulett, he rides at seventeen with that throng of nobles who attend the King and the Queen-Mother down to Blois, to Tours, to Poictiers; mixes with the fair women on whose bright eyes the Queen relies for her success, even more than on her regiments and fleets; glides in and through the hostile camps, observes the Catholic and Hugonot intrigues, and sees the great men of either court make love and war. But Lady Paulett, kind to him as a mother, watches over his steps with care and love, a kindness he remembers and repays to the good lady, and to her kin, in later years. For him the d'Agelles sing their songs, the Tosseuses twine their curls in vain.

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2. No one lapse is known to have blurred the beauty of his youth. No rush of mad young blood ever drives him into brawls. To men of less temper and generosity than his own-to Devereux and Montjoy, to Percy and Vere, to Sackville and Bruce-he leaves the glory of Calais sands and Marylebone Park. If he be weak on the score of dress and pomp; if he dote like a young girl on flowers, on scents, on gay colours, on the trappings of a horse, the ins and outs of a garden, the furniture of a room; he neither drinks nor games, nor runs wild and loose in love. Armed with the most winning ways, the most glozing lip at court, he hurts no husband's peace, he drags no woman's name into the mire. He seeks no victories

2. Sylva Sylvarum, x. 946, 986.

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II. 2. like those of Essex; he burns no shame like Raleigh into the cheek of one he loves. No Lady Rich, as in Sydney's immortal line, has cause

1579.

To blush when he is named.

When the passions fan out in most men, poetry flowers out in him. Old when a child, he seems to grow younger as he grows in years. Yet with all his wisdom he is not too wise to be a dreamer of dreams; for while busy with his books in Paris he gives ear to a ghostly intimation of his father's death. All his pores lie open to external nature. Birds and flowers delight his eye; his pulse beats quick at the sight of a fine horse, a ship in full sail, a soft sweep of country; everything holy, innocent, and gay acts on his spirits like wine on a strong man's blood. Joyous, helpful, swift to do good, slow to think evil, he leaves on every one who meets him a sense of friendliness, of peace and power. The serenity of his spirit keeps his intellect bright, his affections warm; and just as he left the halls of Trinity with his mind unwarped, so he now, when duty calls him from France, quits the galleries of the Louvre and St. Cloud with his morals pure.

3. At the age of eighteen he fronts the world. The staff of his house being broken, as the dream has told him, he hies home from France to Lady Bacon's side. The Lord Keeper was not rich, and his lands have passed to his son by a former wife. Ann Lady Bacon is left Anthony and Francis, a

a young widow with two sons,
meek, brave heart, and a slender fortune; a little family
of three persons, who make up in love for each other all

3. Lord Bacon to Burghley, Lansdowne MSS., xliii. 48; Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, Lambeth MSS. 648, 649, 650. The portrait of Lady Bacon by Nathaniel is at Gorhambury.

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that they lack in pelf. Lady Ann, the Olympia Morata of Elizabeth's court, is one of five sisters, daughters of that fine old scholar who drugged King Edward with Latin verse, Sir Anthony Cook of Giddy Hall in Essex; all the five pious and learned as so many Muses, but unlike the Muses all made happy wives; Mildred by Lord Burghley, Ann by the late Lord Keeper, Katharine by Sir Henry Killigrew, Elizabeth first by Sir Thomas Hoby and next by John Lord Russell, Margaret, the youngest sister of the five, by Sir Ralph Rowlet. So Francis Bacon claims through his mother close cousinry with Sir Robert Cecil, with Elizabeth and Anne Russell, with the witty and licentious race of the Killigrews, and with the future statesman and diplomatist Sir Edward Hoby. Lady Ann is deep in Greek and in divinity; her translation of Jewell's 'Apology' is praised by the best critics, and has been printed for public use by orders from the Archbishop of Canterbury; yet the good mother is not more at home with Plato and Gregory than among her herbs, her game, her stewpans, and her vats of ale. Nathaniel Bacon, with hearty humour and a play upon her name and habits, paints a portrait of her dressed as a cook and standing in a litter of dead game. She is very pious: in the words of her son "a Saint of God." Not a Puritan herself, she feels a soft and womanish sympathy for men who live the gospel they proclaim; brings up her sons in charity with all Protestant creeds; hears the preachers with profit; and without any air of patronage or protection towards them, speaks to her great kinsman, the Lord Treasurer, the word which spoken in season is quick to save. A bright, keen, motherly lady; apt, as good women are, to give advice. To her, her famous children are always two little boys, who need to be corrected, physicked, and fed:

II. 3.

1579.

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