drudging at the work of the law or managing State prosecutions; whether
writing an opportune pamphlet against Spain or Father Parsons, or
inventing a "device" for his Inn or for Lord Essex to give amusement to
Queen Elizabeth; whether fulfilling his duties as member of Parliament
or rising step by step to the highest places in the Council Board and
the State; whether in the pride of success or under the amazement of
unexpected and irreparable overthrow, while it seemed as if he was only
measuring his strength against the rival ambitions of the day, in the
same spirit and with the same object as his competitors, the true motive
of all his eagerness and all his labours was not theirs. He wanted to be
powerful, and still more to be rich; but he wanted to be so, because
without power and without money he could not follow what was to him the
only thing worth following on earth--a real knowledge of the amazing and
hitherto almost unknown world in which he had to live. Bacon, to us, at
least, at this distance, who can only judge him from partial and
imperfect knowledge, often seems to fall far short of what a man should
be. He was not one of the high-minded and proud searchers after
knowledge and truth, like Descartes, who were content to accept a frugal
independence so that their time and their thoughts might be their own.
Bacon was a man of the world, and wished to live in and with the world.
He threatened sometimes retirement, but never with any very serious
intention. In the Court was his element, and there were his hopes. Often
there seems little to distinguish him from the ordinary place-hunters,
obsequious and selfish, of every age; little to distinguish him from the
servile and insincere flatterers, of whom he himself complains, who
crowded the antechambers of the great Queen, content to submit with
smiling face and thankful words to the insolence of her waywardness and
temper, in the hope, more often disappointed than not, of hitting her
taste on some lucky occasion, and being rewarded for the accident by a
place of gain or honour. Bacon's history, as read in his letters, is not