invariably did with whatever he touched, were of an ornamental kind. But
he did more serious work. In the year 1592 a pamphlet had been published
on the Continent in Latin and English, _Responsio ad Edictum Reginæ
Angliæ_, with reference to the severe legislation which followed on the
Armada, making such charges against the Queen and the Government as it
was natural for the Roman Catholic party to make, and making them with
the utmost virulence and unscrupulousness. It was supposed to be written
by the ablest of the Roman pamphleteers, Father Parsons. The Government
felt it to be a dangerous indictment, and Bacon was chosen to write the
answer to it. He had additional interest in the matter, for the pamphlet
made a special and bitter attack on Burghley, as the person mainly
responsible for the Queen's policy. Bacon's reply is long and elaborate,
taking up every charge, and reviewing from his own point of view the
whole course of the struggle between the Queen and the supporters of the
Roman Catholic interest abroad and at home. It cannot be considered an
impartial review; besides that it was written to order, no man in
England could then write impartially in that quarrel; but it is not more
one-sided and uncandid than the pamphlet which it answers, and Bacon is
able to recriminate with effect, and to show gross credulity and
looseness of assertion on the part of the Roman Catholic advocate. But
religion had too much to do with the politics of both sides for either
to be able to come into the dispute with clean hands: the Roman
Catholics meant much more than toleration, and the sanguinary
punishments of the English law against priests and Jesuits were edged by
something even keener than the fear of treason. But the paper contains
some large surveys of public affairs, which probably no one at that time
could write but Bacon. Bacon never liked to waste anything good which he
had written; and much of what he had written in the panegyric in _Praise
of the Queen_ is made use of again, and transferred with little change
to the pages of the _Observations on a Libel_.