claimed to be, in
spite of the misgivings of Elizabeth and her ministers, as devoted to
public work and as capable of it as any of them. He was ready for
anything, for any amount of business, ready, as in everything, to take
infinite trouble about it. The law, if he did not like it, was yet no
by-work with him; he was as truly ambitious as the men with whom he
maintained so keen and for long so unsuccessful a rivalry. He felt
bitterly the disappointment of seeing men like Coke and Fleming and
Doddridge and Hobart pass before him; he could not, if he had been only
a lawyer, have coveted more eagerly the places, refused to him, which
they got; only, he had besides a whole train of purposes, an inner and
supreme ambition, of which they knew nothing. And with all this there is
no apparent consciousness of these manifold and varied interests. He
never affected to conceal from himself his superiority to other men in
his aims and in the grasp of his intelligence. But there is no trace
that he prided himself on the variety and versatility of these powers,
or that he even distinctly realized to himself that it was anything
remarkable that he should have so many dissimilar objects and be able so
readily to pursue them in such different directions.

It is doubtful whether, as long as Elizabeth lived, Bacon could ever
have risen above his position among the "Learned Counsel," an office
without patent or salary or regular employment. She used, him, and he
was willing to be used; but he plainly did not appear in her eyes to be
the kind of man who would suit her in the more prominent posts of her
Government. Unusual and original ability is apt, till it is generally
recognised, to carry with it suspicion and mistrust as to its being
really all that it seems to be. Perhaps she thought of the possibility
of his flying out unexpectedly at some inconvenient pinch, and
attempting to serve her interests, not in her way, but in his own;
perhaps she distrusted in business and state affairs so brilliant a
discourser, whose heart was known, first and above all, to be set on
great dreams of knowledge; perhaps those interviews with her in which he
describes the counsels which he laid before her, and in which his
shrewdness and foresight are conspicuous, may not have been so welcome
to her as he imagined; perhaps, it is not impossible, that he may have
been too compliant for her capricious taste, and too visibly anxious to
please. Perhaps, too, sh