Lord Campbell, assuredly the most competent of judges, passes a high encomium.

At length, in 1617, Sir Francis Bacon attained the end of the ambition of his life, he became Lord Keeper of the Seals, with the functions, though not the title, of Lord High Chancellor of England. His promotion to this dignity gave general satisfaction; his own university, Cambridge, congratulated him; Oxford imitated the example; the world expected a perfect judge, formed from his own model in his Essay of Judicature. He took his seat in the Court of Chancery with the utmost pomp and parade.

The Lord Keeper now endeavored to "feed fat the ancient grudge" he bore Coke. He deprived him of the office of Chief Justice, and erased his name from the list of privy councillors. Coke imagined a plan of raising his falling fortunes; he projected a marriage between his daughter by his second wife, a very rich heiress, and Sir John Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, the King's favorite. Bacon was alarmed, wrote to the King, and used expressions of disparagement towards the favorite, his new patron, to whom he was indebted for the Seals he held. The King and his minion were equally indignant; and they did not conceal from him their resentment. On the return of the court, Bacon hastened to the residence of Buckingham; being denied admittance, he waited two whole days in the ante-chamber with the Great Seal of England in his hand. When at length he obtained access,

the Lord Keeper threw himself and the Great Seal on the ground, kissed the favorite's feet, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven! It must after this have been difficult indeed for him to rise again in the world's esteem or his own.

Bacon was made to purchase at a dear price his reinstatement in the good graces of Buckingham. The favorite constantly wrote to the judge in behalf of one of the parties, and in the end, says Lord Campbell, intimated that he was to dictate the decree. Nor did Bacon once remonstrate against this unwarrantable interference on the part of the man to whom he had himself recommended "by no means to interpose himself, either by word cr letter in any cause depending on any court of justice." The Lord Keeper received soon after, in 1618, the reward of his "many faithful services" by the higher title of Lord High Chancellor of England, and by the peerage with the name of Baron of Verulam.

The new Minister of Justice lent himself with his wonted complaisance to a most outrageous act of injustice, which Macaulay stigmatizes as a "dastardly murder," that of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, under a sentence pronounced sixteen years before; Sir Walter having been in the interval invested with the high command of Admiral of the fleet. Such an act it was the imperative duty of the first magistrate of the realm not to promote, but to resist to the full extent of his power; and the Chancellor alone could issue the warrant for the execution!

In 1620, he published what is usually considered his greatest work, his Novum Organum (New Instrument or Method), which forms the second part of the Instauratio Magna (Great Restoration of the Sciences). This work had occupied Bacon's leisure for nearly thirty years. Such was the care he bestowed on it, that Rawley, his chaplain and biographer, states that he had seen about twelve autograph copies of it, corrected and improved until it assumed the shape in which it appeared. Previous to the publication of the Novum Organum, says the illustrious Sir John Herschel, "natural philosophy, in any legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could hardly be said to exist."1

It cannot be expected that a work destined completely to change the state of science, we had almost said of nature, should not be assailed by that prejudice which is ever ready to raise its loud but unmeaning voice against whatever is new, how great or good soever it may be. Bacon's doctrine was accused of being calculated to produce "dangerous revolutions," to "subvert governments and the authority of religion." Some called on the present age and posterity to rise high in their resentment against "the Bacon-faced generation," for so were the experimentalists termed. The old cry of irreligion, nay, even of atheism, was raised against the man who had said: "I would rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that

1 Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy.

this universal frame is without a mind.”1 But Bacon had to encounter the prejudices even of the learned. Cuffe, the Earl of Essex's secretary, a man celebrated for his attainments, said of the Instauratio Magna, "a fool could not have written such a book, and a wise man would not." King James said, it was "like the peace of God, that surpasseth all understanding." And even Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, said to Aubrey: "Bacon is no great philosopher; he writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." Rawley, his secretary and his biographer, laments, some years after his friend's death, that "his fame is greater and sounds louder in foreign parts abroad than at home in his own nation; thereby verifying that divine sentence: A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house." Bacon was for some time without honor "in his own country and in his own house." But truth on this, as on all other occasions, triumphs in the end. Bacon's assailants are forgotten; Bacon will be remembered with gratitude and veneration forever.

He was again, in 1621, promoted in the peerage to be Viscount Saint-Albans; his patent particularly celebrating his "integrity in the administration of justice."

In this same year the Parliament assembled. The House of Commons first voted the subsidies demanded by the Crown, and next proceeded, as was

1 Essay xvi.

66

usual in those times, to the redress of grievances. A committee of the House was appointed to inquire into the abuses of Courts of Justice." A report of this committee charged the Lord Chancellor with corruption, and specified two cases; in the first of which Aubrey, a suitor in his court, stated that he had presented the Lord Chancellor with a hundred pounds; and Egerton, another suitor in his court, with four hundred pounds in addition to a former piece of plate of the value of fifty pounds; in both cases decisions had been given against the parties whose presents had been received. (Lord Campbell asserts that in the case of Egerton both parties had made the Chancellor presents.)1 His enemies, it is said, estimated his illicit gains at a hundred thousand pounds; a statement which, it is more than probable, is greatly exaggerated.2 "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

1 Decisions being given against the parties is no proof of uncorruptness; it is always the party who loses his suit that complains ; the gainer receives the price of his bribe, and is silent.

2 The exactions of his servants appear to have been very great; their indulgence in every kind of extravagance, and the lavish profuseness of his own expenses, were the principal causes of his ruin. Mallet relates that one day, during the investigation into his conduct, the Chancellor passed through a room where several of his servants were sitting; as they arose from their seats to greet him, “Sit down, my masters," exclaimed he, “your rise hath been my fall."