oped," and he afterwards asked for something more. It was rather under
the value of Essex's gift to him in 1594. But she still refused him all
promotion. He was without an official place in the Queen's service, and
he never was allowed to have it. It is clear that the "Declaration of
the Treason of the Earl of Essex," if it justified the Government, did
not remove the odium which had fallen on Bacon. Mr. Spedding says that
he can find no signs of it. The proof of it is found in the "Apology"
which Bacon found it expedient to write after Elizabeth's death and
early in James's reign. He found that the recollection of the way in
which he had dealt with his friend hung heavy upon him; men hesitated to
trust him in spite of his now recognised ability. Accordingly, he drew
up an apology, which he addressed to Lord Mountjoy, the friend, in
reality half the accomplice, of Essex, in his wild, ill-defined plan for
putting pressure on Elizabeth. It is a clear, able, of course _ex parte_
statement of the doings of the three chief actors, two of whom could no
longer answer for themselves, or correct and contradict the third. It
represents the Queen as implacable and cruel, Essex as incorrigibly and
outrageously wilful, proud, and undutiful, Bacon himself as using every
effort and device to appease the Queen's anger and suspiciousness, and
to bring Essex to a wiser and humbler mind. The picture is indeed a
vivid one, and full of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and merciless
mistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit
of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply
offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the
calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerous game, not without
personal interest, but with undisturbed presence of mind, and doing his
best to avert an irreparable and fatal breach. How far he honestly did
his best for his misguided friend we can only know from his own report;
but there is no reason to think that he did Essex ill service, though
he notices in passing an allegation that the Queen in one of her angry
fits had charged him with this. But his interest clearly was to make up
the quarrel between the Queen and Essex. Bacon would have been a greater
man with both of them if he had been able to do so. He had been too
deeply in Essex's intimacy to make his new position of mediator, with a
strong bias on the Queen's side, quite safe and easy fo