8 APRIL 1922, Page 11

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTETOR."] SIR,—In your review

of Miss Violet Wilson's Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour you quote a story relating to Francis Bacon, and raise the question of its source. I find the anecdote in Francis Bacon's Apophthegms, New and Old, thus given :- "In eighty-eight, when the Queen went from Temple Bar along Fleet Street, the lawyers were ranked on one side, and the companies of the city on the other ; said Master Bacon to a lawyer that stood next him, Do but observe the courtiers; if they bow first to the citizens, they are in debt; if first to us, they are in law."