L. L, I. 8 ; Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacon's Life, pp. 218,

219, and same in Personal Life ; Bacon's Will, Dec. 19th. 1624.)
His patient, conciliating, pliable nature blamed as weakness and servility.
" He bore with a patience and serenity which, we fear, bordered on meanness, the morose humours of his uncle . . . the sneering reflections . . . cast on him " [as a " speculative " man]. (Macaulay, p. 301.)
" There was in Bacon an invariable pliancy, in the presence of great persons, which disqualified him for the task of giving wise and effectual counsel. In part this obsequiousness arose
54 FEANCIS BACON
from his mental and moral constitution, in part it was a habit deliberately adopted, as one among many means by which a man may make his way in the world . . . that he must 'avoid repulse.'" (Abbott, Life of Bacon, p. 21.) Compare the passage quoted before on Bacon as "no flatterer " from the same author's Introduction to the Essays.)
His patient, conciliating, pliable nature praised as excellent and admirable.
" A man most sweet in his conversation and ways ; an enemy to no man." (Sir Tobie Matthew's character of Bacon.)
"He was no dashing man, . . . but ever a countenances and fosterer of other men's parts. ... He contemned no man's observations, but would light his candle at every man's torch." (Dr. Eawley's character of Bacon.)
"Eetiring, nervous, sensitive, unconventional, modest," etc. (Spedding, L. L. VII. 567-8.)
" The habit of self-assertion was not at his command. . . . When a man who is naturally modest attempts to put on the air of audacity, he only makes himself offensive. The pliancy or submissive attitude toward his official superiors ... is generally blamed in him as an unworthy condescension, . . . but I am not so sure that he would have acknowledged it as a fault. As the world was in Bacon's time, and as it still is, if you want a man to help you in your work, you must beware of affronting him, and must show him the respect to which he thinks himself entitled." (lb. 368-9.)
His faith in his own cause, his self-confidence, and his sanguine, hopeful spirit, blamed as arrogance and pride.
"To an application to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, to entitle him to come within bars," " he received a churlish answer ; the old Lord taking the opportunity to read Francis a sharp lecture on his ' arrogancy and overweening.' " (Campbell, 15 ; and Macaulay, 301.)
Campbell, throughout his "Life of Bacon," clings to the " evil opinion of them that do misaffect " Bacon, and treats his natural gentleness as mere hypocrisy. "A touch of vanity, even, is to be found in this composition — a quality he hardly ever betrays elsewhere, although he had an inward conscious-
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 55
ness of his extraordinary powers. Boasting of his great influence, etc., ... in three days Bacon was obliged hypo- critically to write," etc. ..." The following is Bacon's boastful account," etc. (Campbell's Bacon, pp. Ill, 152.)
"Bacon's overweening self-confidence," etc. (Storr, Essays, Introduction.)
His self-confidence, fixed purposes, and hopeful spirit praised.
" I find that such persons as are of nature bashful as myself is . . . are often mistaken for proud. But I know well . . . that arrogancy and overweening is so far from my nature, as if I think well of myself in anything, it is this, that I am free from that vice." (Reply by F. B. to Ld. B.'s letter.)
" A hopeful, sensitive, bashful, amiable boy . . . glowing with noble aspirations." (Spedding, L. L. I. 6.)
" Even as a philosopher ... he thought that he had struck into the right path by accident, and that his merit lay in endeavouring to keep in it. The qualities for which he gave himself credit were only patience and faith, and love of truth, carrying with it confidence in the power of truth. . . . Bacon had by nature a large faculty of hope ; but it was hope from things that lay out of and beyond himself ; ... he attached little importance to himself except as an instrument for their accomplishment. No correct notion can be formed of Bacon's character till this suspicion of self-conceit is scattered to the winds." (Abbott, Introduction to Essays, XXXVI.) (lb. VII. 568.)
Averse to details.
" A nature indifferent to details." (Abbott, Introduction to Essays, XIX.)
" Lord Macaulay speaks in admiration of the versatility of Bacon's mind as equally well adapted for exploring the heights of philosophy, or for the minute inspection of the pettiest detail. But he has been imposed upon by Bacon's parade of detail?"1 etc. (lb. LXXXVII.)
Careful about details.
" The secret of Bacon's proficiency was that, in the smallest matters, no less than in the greatest, he took a great deal of
56 FRANCIS BACON
pains." (Spedding, Works, VII. 197.) See the evidence of this in Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, his collections of Proverbs and Quotations, the Sylva Sylvarum, the History of Winds, and other collections of minute particulars and jottings. See, also, an excellent page in Macaulay's Essay, 417.
Without elevation of sentiment — His philosophy low and utili- tarian.
" The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man ; . . . his faults were . . . coldness of heart, and meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of feeling strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great sacrifices. His desires were set on things below, etc. (Macaulay, pp. 320 — 327, etc.)
"There is nothing that savours of the divine in Bacon's philosophy ; ... it began in observation and ending in arts ; ... a low object." (See lb., 373—396.)
Lofty in sentiment — Truly great.
" Greatness he could not want." (Ben Jonson, Dominus
Verulamius.)
" That mind lofty and discursive ... as a politician no less grand and lofty in theory, than as a philosopher." (Dr. Abbott, Introduction to Essays.)
" In his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild; . . . he loved to picture to himself the world. . . . Cowley, in one of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah, . . . the great lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse," etc. (Macaulay, 423, 429.)
Commenting on Bacon's observation that " assuredly the very contemplation of things ... is more worthy than the fruits of inventions," etc. (Nov. Org. I. 129.) Spedding says, in a foot- note to the Latin edition : " This is one of the passages which show how far Bacon was from what is now called a utilitarian." (Spedding's Works, I. 222.)
His statements about himself not to be credited.
" We have this account only from himself, and it is to be regarded with great suspicion." (Campbell, p. 53.)
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 57
His statements, even against himself, always candid and accurate.
" Never was a man franker in committing to paper his defects and infirmities." (Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 317.) Dr. Abbott enters at some length into Bacon's " habit of thinking with a pen in his hand," and reviews the Essays as being documentary evidence of Bacon's own mental experiences. " Perhaps no man ever made such a confidantx>f paper as he did," and, note, he compares him to Montaigne. (See Essays, pp. xvii. — xxi.)
He was cold, calculating, without any strong affections or feelings.
" His fault . . . coldness of heart . . . not malignant, but wanted warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment." (Macaulay, p. 321.) " It was as the ministers or tools of science that Bacon regarded his friends ; ... it was an affection of a subdued kind, kept well under control, and duly subordinated to the interests of the Kingdom of Man. Bacon could not easily love friends or hate enemies, though he himself was loved by many of his inferiors with the true love of friendship. . . . He liked almost everybody with whom he was brought into close intercourse, . . . but he loved and could love no one." (Abbott's Introduction to Essays, XXVIII.) " Instinct and emotion were in him unduly subordinated to reason. ... No one of ordinary moral instinct would accept Bacon's oft-repeated precept of Bias — ' Love as if you were sometime to hate, and hate as if you were sometime to love." (Abbott's Francis Bacon, 326.)
Affectionate — A firm friend — Peculiarly sensitive to kindnesses.
" But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love ; ... it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. . . . Whosoever, in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. . . . It was a sparing speech of the ancients to say that a friend is another himself, for that a friend is far more than him- self," etc. (Bacon's Essay of Friendship.) Bacon places the love of friends, or true sympathy of souls, far above the mere
E
58 FKANCIS BACON
love or passion of "the Ancient Cupid." The "more close spmpathy of the younger Cupid . . . depends upon deeper, more necessitating and more uncontrollable principles, as if they proceeded from the Ancient Cupid, on whom all exquisite sympathies depend." (Wisdom of the Ancient Cupid.) "A very sensitive man, who felt accutely both kindness and unkindness." (Spedding, L. L. VII. 567.)
A faithless, time-serving friend — Ungrateful. (Chiefly regarding Essex.)
" The person on whom, during the decline of [Essex's] influ- ence, he chiefly depended, to whom he confided his perplexities, . . . whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. . . . This friend, so loved, so trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the Earl's fortunes, in shedding his blood, and in blackening his memory. But let us be just to Bacon ; ... to the last he had no wish to injure Essex. Nay, we believe that he sincerely exerted himself to save Essex, as long as he thought that he could serve Essex without injuring himself" etc. (Macaulay, p. 311.) This miserable view, exhibiting Francis Bacon as an utterly selfish creature, is repeated by Campbell and others.
" No one who reads his anxious letters about preferment and the Queen's favour, about his disappointed hopes, about his straitened means and distress for money, . . . can doubt that the question was between his own prospects and his friend ; and that to his own interest he sacrificed his friend and his own honour." (Dr. Church, Bacon, p. 57.)
See also Dr. Abbott's Francis Bacon, p. 277, of Yelverton's trial : " Bacon's behaviour was peculiarly cold-blooded and ungrateful."
"A friend unalterable to his friends." (Sir Tobie Matthew's character of Bacon.)
"No man knew better, or felt more deeply, the duties of friendship." (Basil Montagu.)
See also the whole subject argued in Spedding's Evenings with a Reviewer, Vol. I., and Letters and Life, I. 104—106, 250—254, 295, 370—375 ; II. 69—105, 123—132, 105, 367.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 59
" The fictitious biography paints him as bound by the sacred ties of gratitude and affection to the Earl of Essex, who, after striving, in the most disinterested spirit, to procure for him a great office and a wealthy wife, had, failing in these efforts, generously bestowed upon him Twickenham Park ; as helping and advising that Earl, so long as he could do it safely and with profit, but as going over to his enemies when the hour of danger came ; and when tKe Earl's rash enterprise gave those enemies a legal advantage over him, as straining his utmost skill as an advocate and a writer, to take away the life and to damn the memory of a noble and confiding friend. A plain story of the times will show that the connexion of Bacon with Essex was one of politics and business ; that this connexion was in the highest degree injurious to Bacon and to Bacon's family ; that Essex caused him to lose for fourteen years the post of Solicitor ; that Twickenham Park had never been the property of Essex, and was not given by him to Bacon ; that the connexion between them ceased with Essex's own acts ; . . . that ' the rash enterprise ' for which Essex suffered on the block was treason of so black a shade, — so odious in the con- ception, so revolting in the details, as to arm against him every honest man ; . . . that while Essex was yet free from overt and unpardonable crimes, Bacon went beyond the extremest bounds of chivalry to save him. That in acting against Essex, when Essex had stained his hands with blood and his soul with treason, Bacon did no more than he was bound to do as a public man ; that, though he could not save the guilty chief, he strove, and not in vain, to rescue from the gallows his misled accom- plices ; finally, that to the generous suppressions of the State Paper, which he drew up under her Majesty's command, was due to the fact that Essex's name should be pronounced without a, curse, and that his son could one day be restored in blood." (Hep worth Dixon, Story, I., 6. See the same book, pp. 46 — 186.)
Unloved as he was unloving, he had but few friends and was little reverenced.
This is the impression conveyed by most of Bacon's anti- pathetic biographers — a view of his character which Dr. Abbott tries hard to reconcile with "the spirit of genuine affection which breathes" through the records of his friends and con-
60 FRANCIS BACON
temporaries, and, we may add, through all the letters which refer to him, written to him or of him, where his personal relations with intimate friends and acquaintances are touched upon. (See infra.) It is difficult, sometimes, to decide whether to place the criticisms upon Bacon's character on the side of the goats or of the sheep. They are often so self-contradictory and neutralising that the writers appear to be writing against their own convictions — rejecting the evidence patent and unchallenged of eye-witnesses, in favour of theories and personal antipathies found long after their great subject had passed away. As to forming a judgment upon detached expressions, notes or senti- ments, culled from Bacon's works with a special purpose, and with special glosses attached, to suit certain theories, we protest that no author's private character can be rightly so judged ; and with regard to Bacon, in particular, passages to prove the exact opposite to everything so advanced could be produced.
"All icho were good and great loved and honoured Mm." (John Aubrey.)
* My conceit of his person was never increased towards him by his place or honours ; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest of men, and most worthy of admiration, that hath been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident can happen to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." (Ben Jonson, Dominus Verulamius.)
The same is echoed by Dr. Rawley, Osborne, Peter B6ener> and Sir Tobie Matthew, all personal friends. (See Spedding,