In his soft cradle, to his father's chair,"

and little prescient of the coming storm, spoke of his host as one

"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool."

Even at the present day lawyers have reason to be grateful to Bacon for
the promptitude with which, on taking possession of the Marble Chair, he
revived the ancient usages of earlier holders of the seal, and set an
example of courteous hospitality to the bar, which no subsequent
Chancellor has been able to disregard without loss of respect and
_prestige_. Though a short attack of gout qualified the new pleasure of
his elevation--an attack attributed by the sufferer to his removal "from
a field air to a Thames air," _i.e._, from Gray's Inn to the south side
of the Strand--Lord Keeper Bacon lost no time in summoning the judges
and most eminent barristers to his table; and though the gravity of his
indisposition, or the dignity of his office, forbade him to join in the
feast, he sat and spoke pleasantly with them when the dishes had been
removed. "Yesterday," he wrote to Buckingham, "which was my weary day, I
bid all the judges to dinner, which was not used to be, and entertained
them in a private withdrawing chamber with the learned counsel. When the
feast was past I came amongst them and sat me down at the end of the
table, and prayed them to think I was one of them, and but a foreman."
Nor let us, whilst recalling Bacon's bounteous hospitalities, fail in
justice to his great rival, Sir Edward Coke---who, though he usually
held himself aloof from frivolous amusements, and cared but little for
expensive repasts, would with a liberal hand place lordly dishes before
lordly guests; and of whom it is recorded in the 'Apophthegmes,' that
when any great visitor dropped in upon him for pot-luck without notice
he was wont to say, "Sir, since you sent me no notice of your coming,
you must dine with me; but if I had known of it in due time I would have
dined with you."

From such great men as Lord Nottingham and Lord Guildford, who
successively kept high state in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to
fat _puisnes_ occupying snug houses in close proximity to the Inns of
Court, and lower downwards to leaders of the bar and juniors sleeping as
well as working in chambers, the Restoration lawyers were conspicuous
promoters of the hilarity which was one of the most prominent and least
offensive characteristics of Ch