his; and in seeking
and enjoying place, power, and wealth, still regarded them mainly as
aids in prosecuting his master purpose, and in introducing it to the
world. With this clearly in mind, it is easy to understand his
subsequent career. Its external details may be read in any of the score
of biographies which writers of all grades of merit and demerit have
devoted to him, and there is no space for them here. For our purpose it
is necessary to refer only to the principal crises in his public life.

Until the death of Elizabeth, Bacon had no place in the royal service
worthy of his abilities as a lawyer. Many who, even in the narrowest
professional sense, were far inferior to him, were preferred before him.
Yet he obtained a position recognized by all, and second only in legal
learning to his lifelong rival and constant adversary, Sir Edward Coke.
To-day, it is probable that if the two greatest names in the history of
the common law were to be selected by the suffrages of the profession,
the great majority would be cast for Coke and Bacon. As a master of the
intricacies of precedent and an authority upon the detailed formulas of
"the perfection of reason," the former is unrivaled still; but in the
comprehensive grasp of the law as a system for the maintenance of social
order and the protection of individual rights, Bacon rose far above him.
The cherished aim of his professional career was to survey the whole
body of the laws of England, to produce a digest of them which should
result in a harmonious code, to do away with all that was found obsolete
or inconsistent with the principles of the system, and thus to adapt the
living, progressive body of the law to the wants of the growing nation.
This magnificent plan was beyond the power of any one man, had his life
no other task, but he suggested the method and the aim; and while for
six generations after these legal giants passed away, the minute,
accurate, and profound learning of Coke remained the acknowledged chief
storehouse of British traditional jurisprudence, the seventh generation
took up the work of revision and reform, and from the time of Bentham
and Austin the progress of legal science has been toward codification.
The contest between the aggregation of empirical rules and formulated
customs which Coke taught as the common law, and the broad, harmonious
application of scientific reason to the definition and enforcement of
rights, still goes on; but with constan