lieved that he was serving Essex. His
scheming imagination and his indefatigable pen were at work. He tried
strange indirect methods; he invented a correspondence between his
brother and Essex, which was to fall into the Queen's hands in order to
soften her wrath and show her Essex's most secret feelings. When the
Queen proposed to dine with him at his lodge in Twickenham Park, "though
I profess not to be a poet," he "prepared a sonnet tending and alluding
to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord." It was an awkward
thing for one who had been so intimate with Essex to be so deep in the
counsels of those who hated him. He complains that many people thought
him ungrateful and disloyal to his friend, and that stories circulated
to his disadvantage, as if he were poisoning the Queen's ear against
Essex. But he might argue fairly enough that, wilful and wrong-headed as
Essex had been, it was the best that he could now do for him; and as
long as it was only a question of Essex's disgrace and enforced absence
from Court, Bacon could not be bound to give up the prospects of his
life--indeed, his public duty as a subordinate servant of government--on
account of his friend's inexcusable and dangerous follies. Essex did not
see it so, and in the subjoined correspondence had the advantage; but
Bacon's position, though a higher one might be imagined, where men had
been such friends as these two men had been, is quite a defensible one:

"MY LORD,--No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship,
which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to
believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of
_bonus civis_, which with us is a good and true servant to the
Queen, and next of _bonus vir_, that is an honest man. I desire
your Lordship also to think that though I confess I love some
things much better than I love your Lordship--as the Queen's
service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the
good of my country, and the like--yet I love few persons better
than yourself, both for gratitude's sake and for your own virtues,
which cannot hurt but by accident or abuse. Of which my good
affection I was ever ready and am ready to yield testimony by any
good offices, but with such reservations as yourself cannot but
allow; for as I was ever sorry that your Lordship should fly with
waxen wings, doubting Icarus's for