Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
enemies, it is said, estimated his illicit gains at a hundred thousand
pounds; a statement which, it is more than probable, is greatly
exaggerated.[17] “I never had,” said Bacon in his defence, “bribe or
reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced sentence or order.” This
is an acknowledgment of the fact, and perhaps an aggravation of the
offence. He then addressed “an humble submission” to the House, a kind
of general admission, in which he invoked as a plea of excuse _vitia
temporis_.
How widely different from this is his own language! It is fair justice
to appeal from the judge to the tribunal of the philosopher and
moralist; it is appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; unhappily
it is likewise
to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar.
He says, in his Essay of Great Place: “For corruption: do not only
bind thine own hands, or thy servant’s hands from taking, but bind
the hands of suitors from offering. For integrity used doth the one;
but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery,
doth the other; and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion.”[18]
He says again, in the same Essay: “Set it down to thyself, as well to
create good precedents as to follow them.”
But the allegation that it was a custom of the times requires
examination. It was a custom of the times in reality to make presents
to superiors. Queen Elizabeth received them as New Year’s gifts from
functionaries of all ranks, from her prime minister down to Charles
Smith, the dust-man (see note 1, page 7), and this custom probably
continued under her successor, and may have been applied to other high
functionaries, but it does not appear to have been in legitimate use
in the courts of judicature. Coke, himself Chief Justice, was Bacon’s
principal accuser; and, although an enemy, he has been said to have
conducted himself with moderation and propriety on this occasion only.
Lord Campbell, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, and author
of the _Lives of the Chancellors and Chief Justices of England_,
repels the plea, as inadmissible. It cannot be denied that if Bacon
extended the practice to the courts of justice, he has heaped coals
of fire on his head; for applied to his own case personally it would
be sufficiently odious; but what odium would not that man deserve who
should systematize, nay, legitimize a practice that must inevitably
poison the stream of justice at its fountain-head! What execration
could be too great, if that man were the most intelligent, the wisest
of his century, one of the most dignified in rank in the land, clad
in spotless ermine, the emblem of purity, in short, the Minister of
Justice!
The Lords resolved that Bacon should be called upon to put in a
particular answer to each of the special charges preferred against
him. The formal articles with proofs in support were communicated to
him. The House received the “confession and humble submission of me,
the Lord Chancellor.” In this document, Bacon acknowledges himself to
be guilty of corruption; and in reply to each special charge admits in
every instance the receipt of money or valuable things from the suitors
in his court; but alleging in some cases that it was after judgment,
or as New Year’s gifts, a custom of the times, or for prior services.
A committee of nine temporal and three spiritual lords was appointed
to ascertain whether it was he who had subscribed this document. The
committee repaired to his residence, were received in the hall where
he had been accustomed to sit as judge, and merely asked him if the
signature affixed to the paper they exhibited to him was his. He
passionately exclaimed: “My lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I
beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” The committee
withdrew, overwhelmed with grief at the sight of such greatness so
fallen.
Four commissioners dispatched by the King demanded the Great Seal of
the Chancellor, confined to his bed by sickness and sorrow and want of
sustenance; for he refused to take any food. He hid his face in his
hand, and delivered up that Great Seal for the attainment of which he
“had sullied his integrity, had resigned his independence, had violated
the most sacred obligations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered
the worthless, had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with judges,
had tortured prisoners, had plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry
intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed intellect
that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men.”[19]
All this he did to be Lord High Chancellor of England; and, had he not
been the unworthy minister of James, he might have been, to use the
beautiful language of Hallam, “the high-priest of nature.”
On the 3d of May, he was unanimously declared to be guilty, and he was
sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the
Tower during the King’s pleasure, to be incapable of holding any public
office, and of sitting in Parliament or of coming within the verge of
the court.[20] Such was the sentence pronounced on the man whom three
months before the King _delighted to honor_ for “his integrity in the
administration of justice.”
The fatal verdict affected his health so materially that the judgment
could not receive immediate execution; he could not be conveyed to
the Tower until the 31st of May; the following day he was liberated.
He repaired to the house of Sir John Vaughan, who held a situation in
the prince’s household.[21] He wished to retire to his own residence
at York House; but this was refused. He was ordered to proceed to his
seat at Gorhambury, whence he was not to remove, and where he remained,
though very reluctantly, till the ensuing spring.
The heavy fine was remitted. But as he had lived in great pomp, he had
economized naught from his legitimate or ill-gotten gains. As he was
now insolvent, a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was bestowed
on him; from his estate and other revenues he derived thirteen hundred
pounds per annum more. On the 17th of October, his remaining penalties
were remitted. It cannot but strike the reader as a most remarkable
circumstance that, within eighteen months of the condemnation, all the
penalties were successively remitted. Would this induce the belief
that he was but the scape-goat of the court, that the condemnation was
purely political? It is, we believe, to be explained ostensibly by the
advanced age of Bacon, but really by the circumstance that the King’s
favorite, Buckingham, was an accomplice.
Bacon discovered, alas! when it was too late, that the talent God had
given him he had “misspent in things for which he was least fit;” or as
Thomson has beautifully expressed it:[22]—
Hapless in his choice,
Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,
And through the smooth barbarity of courts,
With firm, but pliant virtue, forward still
To urge his course; him for the studious shade
Kind Nature form’d; deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,
Plato, the Stagyrite and Tully join’d.
The great deliverer he!
It is gratifying to turn from the melancholy scenes exhibited by the
political life of Bacon, to behold him in his study in the deep search
of truth; no contrast is more striking than that between the chancellor
and the philosopher, or, as Macaulay has well termed it, “Bacon seeking
for truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals—Bacon in speculation, and
Bacon in action.” From amidst clouds and darkness we emerge into the
full blaze and splendor of midday light.
We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which
nature adapted him, and from which no extent of occupation could
entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher
and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption.
Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair.
Here the writer yielded not to _vitia temporis_; but combated them with
might and main, with heart and soul.
In 1623, he published the _Life of Henry VII._ In a letter addressed
to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: “’Time was
I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor.”
But his honor without leisure had precipitated him into “bottomless
perdition;” his leisure without honor retrieved his name, and raised
him again to an unattainable height.
In the following year, he printed his Latin translation of the
_Advancement of Learning_, under the title of _De Dignitate et
Augmentis Scientiarum_.
This was not, however, a mere translation; for he made in it omissions
and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter;
in short, he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful
imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted
in France in 1624, one year after its appearance in England. It was
immediately translated into French and Italian, and was published in
Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 1645, 1650, and 1662.
In 1624, he solicited of the King a remission of the sentence, to the
end, says he, “that blot of ignominy may be removed from me and from
my memory with posterity.” The King granted him a full pardon. But he
never more took his seat in the House of Lords. When the new Parliament
met, after the accession of Charles the First, age, infirmity, and
tardy wisdom had extinguished the ambition of Baron Verulam, Viscount
St. Albans. When the writ of summons to the Parliament reached him, he
exclaimed: “I have done with such vanities!”
But the philosopher pursued his labor of love. He published new
editions of his writings, and translated them into Latin, from the
mistaken notion that in that language alone could they be rescued from
oblivion. His crabbed latinity is now read but by few, or even may be
said to be nearly forgotten; while his noble, majestic English is read
over the whole British empire, on which the sun never sets, is studied
and admired throughout the old world and the new, and it will be so by
generations still unborn; it will descend to posterity in company with
his contemporary, Shakspeare (whose name he never mentions), and will
endure as long as the great and glorious language itself; indeed, as he
foretold of his Essays, it “will live as long as books last.”
In the translation of his works into Latin, he was assisted by Rawley,
his future biographer, and his two friends, Ben Jonson, the poet, and
Hobbes, the philosopher.
He wrote for his “own recreation,” amongst very serious studies, a
_Collection of Apophthegms, New and Old_, said to have been dictated in
one rainy day, but probably the result of several “rainy days.” This
contains many excellent jocular anecdotes, and has been, perhaps, with
too much indulgence, pronounced by Macaulay to be the best jest-book in
the world.
He commenced a _Digest of the Laws of England_, but he soon
discontinued it, because it was “a work of assistance, and that which
he could not master by his own forces and pen.” James the First had not
sufficient elevation of mind to afford him the means of securing the
assistance he required.
He wrote his will with his own hand on the 19th of December, 1625. He
directs that he shall be interred in St. Michael’s Church, near St.
Albans: “There was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of
my mansion-house at Gorhambury.... For my name and memory, I leave it
to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next
ages.” This supreme act of filial piety towards his gifted mother is
affecting. Let no “uncharitable” word be uttered over his last solemn