"Your Lordship's most humbly,
"FR. BACON."

To this letter Essex returned an answer of dignified reserve, such as
Bacon might himself have dictated--

"MR. BACON,--I can neither expound nor censure your late actions,
being ignorant of all of them, save one, and having directed my
sight inward only, to examine myself. You do pray me to believe
that you only aspire to the conscience and commendation of _bonus
civis_ and _bonus vir_; and I do faithfully assure you, that while
that is your ambition (though your course be active and mine
contemplative), yet we shall both _convenire in codem tertio_ and
_convenire inter nosipsos_. Your profession of affection and offer
of good offices are welcome to me. For answer to them I will say
but this, that you have believed I have been kind to you, and you
may believe that I cannot be other, either upon humour or my own
election. I am a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else I
should say somewhat of your poetical example. But this I must say,
that I never flew with other wings than desire to merit and
confidence in my Sovereign's favour; and when one of these wings
failed me I would light nowhere but at my Sovereign's feet, though
she suffered me to be bruised with my fall. And till her Majesty,
that knows I was never bird of prey, finds it to agree with her
will and her service that my wings should be imped again, I have
committed myself to the mire. No power but my God's and my
Sovereign's can alter this resolution of

"Your retired friend,