should never fail or dry up; it was the life of a man who had high
thoughts of the ends and methods of law and government, and with whom
the general and public good was regarded as the standard by which the
use of public power was to be measured; the life of a man who had
struggled hard and successfully for the material prosperity and opulence
which makes work easy and gives a man room and force for carrying out
his purposes. All his life long his first and never-sleeping passion was
the romantic and splendid ambition after knowledge, for the conquest of
nature and for the service of man; gathering up in himself the spirit
and longings and efforts of all discoverers and inventors of the arts,
as they are symbolised in the mythical Prometheus. He rose to the
highest place and honour; and yet that place and honour were but the
fringe and adornment of all that made him great. It is difficult to
imagine a grander and more magnificent career; and his name ranks among
the few chosen examples of human achievement. And yet it was not only an
unhappy life; it was a poor life. We expect that such an overwhelming
weight of glory should be borne up by a character corresponding to it in
strength and nobleness. But that is not what we find. No one ever had a
greater idea of what he was made for, or was fired with a greater desire
to devote himself to it. He was all this. And yet being all this, seeing
deep into man's worth, his capacities, his greatness, his weakness, his
sins, he was not true to what he knew. He cringed to such a man as
Buckingham. He sold himself to the corrupt and ignominious Government of
James I. He was willing to be employed to hunt to death a friend like
Essex, guilty, deeply guilty, to the State, but to Bacon the most loving
and generous of benefactors. With his eyes open he gave himself up
without resistance to a system unworthy of him; he would not see what
was evil in it, and chose to call its evil good; and he was its first
and most signal victim.