order Fleetwood, who writes
as an old member might do of a young one talking nonsense. He sat again
for Liverpool in the year of the Armada (1588), and his name begins to
appear in the proceedings. These early years, we know, were busy ones.
In them Bacon laid the foundation of his observations and judgments on
men and affairs; and in them the great purpose and work of his life was
conceived and shaped. But they are more obscure years than might have
been expected in the case of a man of Bacon's genius and family, and of
such eager and unconcealed desire to rise and be at work. No doubt he
was often pinched in his means; his health was weak, and he was delicate
and fastidious in his care of it. Plunged in work, he lived very much as
a recluse in his chambers, and was thought to be reserved, and what
those who disliked him called arrogant. But Bacon was
ambitious--ambitious, in the first place, of the Queen's notice and
favour. He was versatile, brilliant, courtly, besides being his father's
son; and considering how rapidly bold and brilliant men were able to
push their way and take the Queen's favour by storm, it seems strange
that Bacon should have remained fixedly in the shade. Something must
have kept him back. Burghley was not the man to neglect a useful
instrument with such good will to serve him. But all that Mr.
Spedding's industry and profound interest in the subject has brought
together throws but an uncertain light on Bacon's long disappointment.
Was it the rooted misgiving of a man of affairs like Burghley at that
passionate contempt of all existing knowledge, and that undoubting
confidence in his own power to make men know, as they never had known,
which Bacon was even now professing? Or was it something soft and
over-obsequious in character which made the uncle, who knew well what
men he wanted, disinclined to encourage and employ the nephew? Was
Francis not hard enough, not narrow enough, too full of ideas, too much
alive to the shakiness of current doctrines and arguments on religion
and policy? Was he too open to new impressions, made by objections or
rival views? Or did he show signs of wanting backbone to stand amid
difficulties and threatening prospects? Did Burghley see something in
him of the pliability which he could remember as the serviceable quality
of his own young days--which suited those days of rapid change, but not
days when change was supposed to be over, and when the qualities which
were w