body of English law, as well as shaping his more colossal plans for re-constituting the whole round of the sciences. Like the ways of all deep dreamers, his habits are odd, and vex Lady Ann's affectionate and methodical heart. The boy sits up late of nights, drinks his ale-posset to make him sleep, starts out of bed ere it is light, or may be, as the whimsy takes him, lolls and dreams till noon, musing, says the good lady with loving pity, on-she knows not what! Her own round of duty lies in saying her morning and evening prayers, in hearing nine or ten sermons in the week, in caring for her kitchen and hen-roost, in physicking herself, her maids, and her tenants, in making the rascals who would cheat her pay their rent, and in loving and counselling her two careless boys. Dear, admirable soul! How human and how humorous, too, the picture of this good mother, warm in her affections, scolding for us our broadbrowed awful Verulam!

LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON.

Gorhambury, 24th May, 1592.

Grace and health. That you increase in amending I am glad. God continue it every way. When you cease of your prescribed diet, you had need I think to be very wary both of your sudden change of quantity and of season of your feeding, specially suppers late or full; procure rest in convenient time, it helpeth much to digestion. I verily think your brother's weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing, I know not what, when he should sleep, and then, in consequence, by late rising and long lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful and himself continually sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to their mother's good counsel in time to prevent. The

II. 17.

1592.

May 24.

II. 17. Lord our heavenly Father heal and bless you both, as His sons in Christ Jesus!

1592.

I promise you, touching your coach, if it be so to your May 24. contentation, it was not wisdom to have it seen and known at the Court. You shall be so much pressed to lend, and your man for gain so ready to agree, that the discommodity thereof will be as much as the commodity. I would your health had been such as you needed not to have provided a coach but for a wife; but the will of God be done. You were best to excuse you by me, that I have desired the use of it, because, as I feel it too true, my going is almost spent, and must be fain to be bold with you. It is like Robert Bailey and his sons have been to seek some commodity of you; the father hath been but an ill tenant to the wood, and a wayward payer, and hath forfeited his bond, which I intend not to let slip; his son a dissolute young man, and both of them crafty. Likewise young Carpenter may sue to be your man. Be not hasty; you shall find such young men proud and bold, and of no service, but charge and discredit. Be advised. Overshoot not yourself undiscreetly. I tell you, plain folk in appearance will quickly cumber one here, and they will all seek to abuse your want of experience by so long absence. Be not hasty, but understand well first your own state. There was never less kindness in tenants commonly than now. Farewell in Christ.

Let not your men see my letters. I write to not to them.

you, and

Your mother,

A. BACON.

This coach which the two brothers, both of them sick, both racked with gout and ague, have set up, weighs

PROMINENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS.

33

1592.

heavily on her spirits. Again and again she returns to II. 17. the charge. "I like not your lending it to any lord or lady. It was not well it was SO soon seen at court. Tell your brother, I counsel you to send it no more. What had my Lady Shrewsbury to borrow your coach ?"

1593.

18. If the post of orator of the House of Commons is no easy one to win, it is one more difficult to hold. Wit, Feb. 19. sense, readiness, repartee, power, patience, mastery of men and books, are parts of the round of faculties and acquirements for one who is to seize the direction and sway the votes of an English House of Commons. At thirty-two, when Bacon, in the session of 1593, takes his seat for Middlesex, he finds on the benches right and left of him men the most renowned in English story. Coke is Speaker; Cecil leads for the Crown; Raleigh and Vere sit nigh him; Fulk Greville, the friend of Sydney, John Fortescue, Lawrence Hyde, Henry Yelverton, Edward Dyer, Henry Montagu, rival speakers and lawyers, are but six of a conspicuous crowd. The war continues, and events look grave. Battalions crowd Dunkerque and Calais; the flag of Leon and Castile flaps within sight of Dover-pier; London stands under arms; troops hurry for Flanders, Dublin, and Kinsale; the Sussex foundries cast guns; and fort on fort rises along the coast from Margate to Penzance. Yet the war without is not more harassing than the disease within. London gasps with plague. No lute or tabor sounds from the tavern-porch; no play draws dames and gallants to the Globe; no pageant crowds the Thames

18. Not. Parl., iii. 131; Council Reg., Jan. 28, July 19, 1593; Mem. of Men for Ireland, April 6, 1593, S. P. O.; Elizabeth to Godolphin, May 9, 1593, S. P. O.; Mem. by Burghley, May 9, 22, 31, 1593, S. P. O.; List of Parishes in London infested with Plague, Lamb. MSS. 648, fol. 152,

D

II. 18. with citizens and 'prentice boys. An order from the Lord

1593. Feb.

Feb. 26.

Mayor puts down all games-the bear-bait at Paris Garden, the sports of the inn-yards, the song and jollity of the ale-clubs. Yet, in the midst of woe and death, the recruiting-sergeant beats to arms. Henri the Fourth, who has mounted the throne of France, pressed by the victorious Spaniards, calls for help, and levies are being raised for him in London and in places usually exempt from such a tax.

While yielding the Queen's government support on her money bills, the feeders of the war, Bacon forces on the topic of reform, and defeats an extraordinary attempt at dictation by the ministers of the Crown.

Put

19. The House has not sat a week-not yet proved its returns-before he hints at his scheme for amending and condensing the whole body of English law. The House starts up. The tide might have come in from the Thames. Reform the code! Bacon tells a House full of Queen's serjeants and utter barristers that laws are made to guard the rights of the people, not to feed the lawyers. The laws should be read by all, known to all. them into shape, inform them with philosophy, reduce them in bulk, give them into every man's hand. So runs his speech. A noble thought-a need of every nation under the sun-a task to be wrought at by him through a long life-to be then left to successors, who, after revolutions and restorations, commissions and reports, have it still in hand-undone! The plan, of which this fragment of speech is the root, developed in his Maxims of the Law, and proposed as part of his great reform in the De Aug

a

19. Townshend's Historical Collection, 60; Bacon's Works, vii. 313; Les Aphorismes du Droit, traduits du Latin de Messire François Bacon, Grand Chancelier d'Angleterre, par J. Baudoin, 1646.

1593.

Feb.

mentis, has had more success abroad than it has found at II. 19. home. It has been universally read, and most of all in France. It was translated by Baudoin, and inscribed to Segrier, Chancellor of France. In that country it has blossomed and come to fruit. But a French revolution has alone had power to achieve this vast design against established things; and the Code Napoléon is even now, in 1860, the sole embodiment of Bacon's thought.

20. Ten days later he gives a check to the Government, which brings down upon his head those censures of Burghley and Puckering which are said to have represented in fact, if not in word, the personal anger of the Queen. The story of this speech has been so told as to rob Bacon of all credit for his daring, the ministers of all reason for their wrath.

Lord Campbell writes, that Bacon votes for the grants proposed by the Crown, but pleads for time in which the people shall be called to pay them; that Burghley and Puckering bully and threaten him; that he bows to this storm of indignation a penitential face. Lord Campbell pictures the young barrister as whining under the lash, kissing the rod that smites him, pledging the tears in his eyes that he will never, in that way, offend her Majesty again.

21. The offence lies deeper than Lord Campbell dreams: an offence of two parts; one of which parts has wholly escaped his sight.

The Government seeks from the House of Commons a

20. Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, art. 'Bacon,' iii. 15.

. 21. Inhibitions delivered to Coke from the Queen, Feb. 28, 1593, S. P. O.; Message from Coke to the House of Commons, Feb. 28, 1593, S. P. O.; Confession of Laton, Feb. 1593, S. P. O.

Mar.