as discouraging,
when his friendship with Essex opened to him a more hopeful prospect.

In the year 1593 the Attorney-General's place was vacant, and Essex, who
in that year became a Privy Councillor, determined that Bacon should be
Attorney-General. Bacon's reputation as a lawyer was overshadowed by his
philosophical and literary pursuits. He was thought young for the
office, and he had not yet served in any subordinate place. And there
was another man, who was supposed to carry all English law in his head,
full of rude force and endless precedents, hard of heart and voluble of
tongue, who also wanted it. An Attorney-General was one who would bring
all the resources and hidden subtleties of English law to the service of
the Crown, and use them with thorough-going and unflinching resolution
against those whom the Crown accused of treason, sedition, or invasion
of the prerogative. It is no wonder that the Cecils, and the Queen
herself, thought Coke likely to be a more useful public servant than
Bacon: it is certain what Coke himself thought about it, and what his
estimate was of the man whom Essex was pushing against him. But Essex
did not take up his friend's cause in the lukewarm fashion in which
Burghley had patronised his nephew. There was nothing that Essex pursued
with greater pertinacity. He importuned the Queen. He risked without
scruple offending her. She apparently long shrank from directly refusing
his request. The Cecils were for Coke--the "_Huddler_" as Bacon calls
him, in a letter to Essex; but the appointment was delayed. All through
1593, and until April, 1594, the struggle went on.

When Robert Cecil suggested that Essex should be content with the
Solicitor's place for Bacon, "praying him to be well advised, for if his
Lordship had spoken of that it might have been of easier digestion to
the Queen," he turned round on Cecil--

"Digest me no digesting," said the Earl; "for the Attorneyship is
that I must have for Francis Bacon; and in that I will spend my
uttermost credit, friendship, and authority against whomsoever, and
that whosoever went about to procure it to others, that it should
cost both the mediators and the suitors the setting on before they
came by it. And this be you assured of, Sir Robert," quoth the
Earl, "for now do I fully declare myself; and for your own part,
Sir Robert, I do think much and strange both of my Lord your father
and you, that