only to be
approached with "sweet meats" and elaborate courtesy. But it was no use.
His full pardon Bacon did not get, though earnestly suing for it, that
he might not "die in ignominy." He never sat again in Parliament. The
Provostship of Eton fell vacant, and Bacon's hopes were kindled. "It
were a pretty cell for my fortune. The College and School I do not doubt
but I shall make to flourish." But Buckingham had promised it to some
nameless follower, and by some process of exchange it went to Sir Henry
Wotton. His English history was offered in vain. His digest of the Laws
was offered in vain. In vain he wrote a memorandum on the regulation of
usury; notes of advice to Buckingham; elaborate reports and notes of
speeches about a war with Spain, when that for a while loomed before the
country. In vain he affected an interest which he could hardly have felt
in the Spanish marriage, and the escapade of Buckingham and Prince
Charles, which "began," he wrote, "like a fable of the poets, but
deserved all in a piece a worthy narration." In vain, when the Spanish
marriage was off and the French was on, he proposed to offer to
Buckingham "his service to live a summer as upon mine own delight at
Paris, to settle a fast intelligence between France and us;" "I have
somewhat of the French," he said, "I love birds, as the King doth."
Public patronage and public employment were at an end for him. His
petitions to the King and Buckingham ceased to be for office, but for
the clearing of his name and for the means of living. It is piteous to
read the earnestness of his requests. "Help me (dear Sovereign lord and
master), pity me so far as that I who have borne a bag be not now in my
age forced in effect to bear a wallet." The words are from a
carefully-prepared and rhetorical letter which was not sent, but they
express what he added to a letter presenting the _De Augmentis; "det
Vestra Majestas obolum Belisario_." Again, "I prostrate myself at your
Majesty's feet; I your ancient servant, now sixty-four years old in age,
and three years and five months old in misery. I desire not from your
Majesty means, nor place, nor employment, but only after so long a time
of expiation, a complete and total remission of the sentence of the
Upper House, to the end that blot of ignominy may be removed from me,
and from my memory and posterity, that I die not a condemned man, but
may be to your Majesty, as I am to God, _nova creatura_." But the pardon
ne