BOOKS.

DIXON'S PERSONAL HISTORY OF LORD BACON.* WHEN Mr. G. H. Lewes published, in 1846, his excellent Biogra- phical History of Philosophy, so unquestioned was the correctness of the hostile verdict on the great Lord Bacon's character, that even this acute writer, notwithstanding his philosophical incredu- lity and his instinctive mental pugnacity, endorsed Lord Macau- lay's rhetorical elaboration of the stereotyped calumny, and dis- tributed it, with such added effieienoy of mischief as the authority of • his own accession to the libel could confer, over a fresh and increasingly wider circle. Since that period, however, we have begun to ask ourselves if one of the wisest of men was really one of the basest, the fidelity of the miniature drawn by the brilliant epigrauimatist, Pope, has been suspected, and the accuracy of the ftill-length portrait, produced in such a fine poetical frenzy by the eloquent historian, has been impeached. Mr. Lewes himself (if we rightly remember), by this omission of the libellous life of Bacon, and the explanation given of that omission in the library edition of his unique and even original work, has intimated that he at least considered that cause had been shown why fresh in- quiry should be instituted into the character of "the greatest of Lord Keepers." Meanwhile, the old verdict has been generally accepted as true ; and Lord Macaulay, Lord Campbell, Auguste Comte, and more recently, Mrs. Thomson, the author of The Life and Times of Lord Villiers, have all continued, through their writings, to circulate and confirm the belief in the moral baseness of this renowned philosopher.

At length, the desired investigation has been made ; fictions have been confronted with facts; facts have been reinterpreted, and fictions annihilated ; and the great Lord Chancellor has, after the lapse of more than two centuries, been rescued from the pil- lory of public opinion, and may henceforth be acknowledged, not only as "the first of those who know," but as holding no mean rank among those that love, as a good, brave, noble-hearted man, honouring and practising what is right.

As a vindication of Lord Bacon, always supposing that the evidence has not been misconstrued, we think Mr. Hepworth Dixon has pro- duced, in his personal history of this eminent man, an important and admirable work. There is scarcely a page in the book which is not interesting. On the style and composition of the volume we are disposed to say but little ; though for ourselves we like Mr. Dixon's argument better than his literary exhibition of it. The form of narrative which he has adopted, with its per- petual present tense, its often wearisomely monotonous sentences, and its occasionally gay style of verbal decoration, appears to us mechanical and affected, and even somewhat mimetic. We are far from thinking, however, that all our readers will agree with us ; and we are ourselves by no means blind to the beauty, clear- ness, eloquence, and concianity which may be found in Mr. Dixon's dramatic presentment. Still, our admiration of the artist is a very qualified admiration, and we should even have preferred a dif- ferent style of treatment. But ceasing to criticize the composi- tion of so undoubtedly able a writer that he can secure your attention to nearly every word that he has said, and looking only to the matter and result of the book, we can sincerely and cordially commend, admire, and applaud. We eventhink Mr. Dixon a man to be envied—a man deserving to be crowned with a civic wreath for saving one of the world's citizens from the prolonged death of infamy to which he had been sentenced by Welden the scandal-monger, Pope the wasp, and Macaulay the phrase-maker (though both the poet and the historian have, in our judgment, a characteristic greatness of their own). Mr. Dixon, though he has produced the first biographical vindi- cation of Lord Bacon, awards to Mr. Spedding ; "seven of whose princely volumes" of the great Chancellor's literary, legal, and philosophical works are already before the world "—the merit of priority in persuading contemporary men of letters to reconsider the evidence on which true judgment will have to run, modestly offering his own valuable labours as an assistance to this recon- sideration. We think we might add to Mr. Spedding's name that of Mr. Forster, who said a good word for Bacon, if we rightly remember, more than twenty years ago. But, however numerous, the partial vindicators of Bacon, Mr. Dixon, is, we believe, the first who has rewritten his history, and completely and success- fully vindicated the moral greatness of this " inheritor " of other- wise fulfilled "renown." The unpublished papers, on which Mr. Dixon has based his nar- rative, have been supplied by the Statepaper Office, the Lambeth and Wells libraries, and the manuscripts of the Duke of Man- chester and Sir John Pakington. Mr. Dixon's historical review of the times in which Bacon lived, will be found, incidental as it necessarily is, to be generally, as well as specially informing and illustrative, as in the case of the Essex conspiracy, and the un- happy Mary Stuart affair. In a recent notice in the Spectator, we referred to Mr. Dixon's estimate of certain letters, imputing to Qoneen Elizabeth the suggestion of assassination. Before we pro- ceed with Lord Bacon's defence, we shall give the remainder of the passage in which Mr. Dixon pronounces them "odious and Clumsy literary forgeries." "These letters have been adopted bv Linger& and have half imposed on the cautious Hallam. Yet the originals are nowhere to be found, the name of the pretended discoverer of them is unknown, and they have never been seen by any competent or reputable man! The circumstances of their pub- • Personal History of Lord Bacon. From Unpublished Papers. By William Hepworth Dixon, of the Inner Temple. Published by Murray. lication saggest forgery for a political end:While Ain iitile.ina-stateinifk of the letters prove them to be inventions of a later time aileged dis- covery of these papers, so damaging to the English Chutili, and Be fatal 4a the Protestant Queen, was made by partisans of the Papist Pretender in the hottest days of the Jacobite feud. The dates, the names, the facts adduced, establish the comparatively recent fraud."

Coming now to the special object of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's im- portant work, the restoration of Bacon's fair fame, we find that the principal counts in the indictment against him are in- gratitude to Essex, a mercenary marriage, servility in the II( nie of Commons, and corruption on the judicial bench. Regretting that we cannot follow Mr. Dixon in the beautiful and touching story of Bacon's life, with its pure and lustrous youth, its noble manhood, and its dignified but tragical decline, we shall regard our present object as limited almost entirely to the refutation of these four charges.

The first accusation brought against Bacon is, that he was un- grateful to Essex. Let us first see what he had to be grateful for. The two brothers, Francis and Anthony Bacon, men of con- spicuous abilities, were retained by the Earl, the former as his lawyer and man of political business, the latter as his secretary. They worked day and night for their patron; and for all the la- bours required and deserved to be paid. Essex, with great want of temper and tact, pledged himself as it were to make Dacca's fortune, besieged the Queen to confer the Solicitorship cn her "Young Lord Keeper," as she used, in earlier days, to call Bacon, till he drove her mad. Burghley, Egerton, Fortescue, and Cecil, alike supported Bacon's claim ; but Essex, with his selfish im- portunity, undid all ; or, in Sir Robert Cecil's words, "cut the throat" of Bacon's "present access."

Lord Campbell tells us that "the Earl atoned to Bacon for his failure by a gift of Twickenham Park." Mr. Dixon shows, on the contrary, that Twickenham Park was not and never had been the Earl's to give. As far back as 1574, while Essex was a boy at Chartley, it had with other lands been granted by the Queen to Edward Bacon on lease. In 1595, this lease expired ; but Eliza- beth, who had already given Bacon undoubted and valuable proofs of her preference, made over to him, on the very day that Fleming got his commission as Solicitor-General, the reversion of Twickenham Park. Bacon had now spent four years in the Earl's service ; and, to reward him for the work he had done, Essex offered him a patch of land which, after certain improvements effected by himself, Bacon sold to Reynold Nicholas for 18001.; "less than the third of a year's income from the Solicitor- General's place." At the time when Bacon accepted it, "he shrank from incurring feudal obligations to one so weak and vain ;" and, he said, as if with a presentiment of evil—" My lord, I see I must be your homager, and hold land of your gift; but do you know the manner of doing homage in land ? Always, it is with saving of his faith to the King." This is the extent, we believe, of Bacon's obligations to Essex. Five years and three months nearly, after Fleming's inaugura- tion as Solicitor-General, occurred the famous Essex Plot with its overt expression of the Street fight. What the characteristics and preliminaries of this "open-eyed conspiracy" were, is clearly shown in Mr. Dixon's able volume. During his administration in Ireland in 1598, Essex, we are told, parted "more and more from the good cause and from those who loved it." Gangs of Popish conspirators, whose object was to dethrone the Queen, now began to gather in force round the Earl. The campaign of 1599 ended in "a corrupted army" and a traitorous truce. Essex, breaking up his camp at Drogheda, and leaving Ireland without a disciplined military force or government, followed by Lee, Danvers, Constable, discontented and disloyal Roman Catholics, crossed the sea; and, tutored by his evil genius, Blount, rode swiftly on to London, intending to surprise the Queen, oust her present counsellors, and put his own friends in power. Eliza- beth, who had already seen reason to repose less confidence in Essex, though loath to distrust him entirely, was not surprised. From her presence the Earl passed into custody. Pronounced, by a solemn act of the Privy Council, incompetent to discharge the important duties which had been devolved on him, he was next cited to answer for his suspicious dealings with O'Neile—a cita- tion which he thought proper to disregard. "Threads of the great conspiracy soon appeared." The evidence of Thomas Wood, a nephew of Lord Fitzmanrice, tended to incriminate Essex, in a case where guilt was nothing less than high treason. His friends fell off; Bacon and the Earl had met but once during two years. Their politics and prospects now lay far apart. Supposing Essex free from crime, however, Bacon, and Bacon alone, it would ap- pear, interceded for the offender, employing "wit, eloquence, and persuasion of the rarest power," to obtain his pardon. When about this time one of the Earl's friends published a seditious book, "openly affirming the existence of a title to the throne superior to that of the Queen," Bacon disarmed her anger; "Not treason, Madam but felony."—" Felony ? where?"—" Where, Madam, everywhere; the whole book is a theft from Cornelius Tacitus." At length, Essex is set at large ; but never ag.ain to "command armies or even to approach the Court." And now, once more, free to plot, "Essex, in the secrecy of his own house, and in open breach of loyalty and honour, renewed the intrigue with Rome." "The partners of his secret soul are those Papists, old and new, who have been and will be the terror and shame of England for twenty years ; " among them are Catesby, Winter, the two Wrighta ; in fact, nearly all the most guilty associates of the Powder Plot. Under cover of a design to free the Queen from enemies who hold her in thrall, they advanced towards their true

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goal, intending to sweep Essex to the throne by a street fight and an act of assassination. The confession of Blount on the scaffold removes all doubt as to the desperate nature of their enterprise. "I know and must confess," said the impenitent ruffian, "if we had failed in our end, we should even have drawn blood from herself." To prepare the popular mind for news of a royal de- position, the chiefs of the insurrection sent for the manager of the Blackfriars theatre to Essex House, and ordered him to play Shakespeare's then much-talked of tragedy, Richardthe Second.

Next morning, after the play, the arrival at Essex House of the great officers of State disconcerted the plans of the conspira- tors, just as they were about to rise. Putting the Ministers under guard, they resolved, notwithstanding, to strike at once, and Blount, Catesby, and others, rushed past Temple Bar, bidding the citizens arm and follow the Earl. The appeal was fruitless ; all London was against the insurgents ; and by sunset most of the leaders were safely lodged in gaol.

"Never," says Mr. Dixon, "had criminal fairer trial than the Berl." The most odious facts against him were withheld, "the Government wishing to spare his memory, though they cannot in honour, and dare not in policy, spare his life." Remarking that the girlish romance of the King, and the equally childish story of Elizabeth's vacillation, were "the idle mirage of the brain," Mr. Dixon proceeds to show us the part borne by Bacon in the great drama. Bacon spoke twice ; the two speeches are reported in this volume ; they are very short, and by no means intemperate. Unless, indeed, we are to suppose that Essex was innocent, and that Bacon knew him to be innocent, we cannot see anything to censure in these addresses. Or, is it meant that Bacon, believing in the reality of "this peculiarly hideous and unnatural plot," ought to have shirked "his part in this great act of justice ?" We protest against such a one-sided and sentimental morality as this opinion would establish. Bacon's friendship for Essex—a friendship the sincerity of which he had already proved—did not and could not exempt him from the discharge of the higher duties of allegiance to his country and to truth. And just in proportion to the strength of tender associations and the subjugatory influ- ence of private attachment is the Roman-hearted sense of patriotic duty and public right admirable, which enabled this magnificent mind to triumph over the treacheries and seductions of sentiment. Certainly, the conduct of Bacon here was not amiable ; but it was heroic, sublime, godlike. Such, too, notwithstanding Lord Camp- bell's assertion, seems to have been the verdict of Bacon's own age—an age of rough action and direct insight. What proof has Lord Campbell that, for some time after Essex's execution, "Bacon was looked upon with great aversion ? " So far from a decline in popularity, Bacon rose in the esteem of his countLywen. "Four years ago," says Mr. Dixon, "Bacon had been chosen to repre- sent Ipswich, and the chief town of Suffolk again ratifies its choice. But his public acts have won for him a second constitu- ency in St. Albans. Such a double return—always rare in the House of Commons—is the highest compliment that could have been paid to the purity and popularity of his political life."

The second charge against Bacon is, that he married Alice Burnham, an orphan daughter of a merchant of Cheapside, from mercenary motives ; an enormity which, in this disinterested cen- tury, when a fair face is never sold for a "strawberry leaf" or purchased with an " establishment ; " when Law, Physic, and Di- vinity, all form romantic attachments with beauty in (pecuniary) distress, can scarcely be conceived, much less forgiven. The crime, however, in Bacon's case, was never perpetrated. In the first place, he loved Alice Branham; and, in the second place, he did not love her money. Mr. Dixon's summary statement contains the whole case in a nutshell.

"Alice brings to her husband two hundred and twenty pounds a year, with a further claim, on her mother's death, of one hundred and forty pounds a year. As lady Pakington long outlived Bacon, that increase never came into his hands. Two hundred and twenty pounds a year is his wife's whole fortune. What is not spent in lace and satins for her bridal dress, he allows her to invest for her separate use. From his own estate he settles on her five hundred pounds a year. Now, in what sense can a marriage in which there seems to be a good deal of love, and in which there certainly is no great flush of money, be called, on Bacon's side, a mercenary match ?"

The third count in the indictment against Bacon is that of ser- vility in the Lower Chamber of the Great Council of the Nation. And, here again, we shall summon Mr. Hepworth Dixon to plead the cause of his wise and magnanimous client.

"At twenty-five, he has won the ear of that fastidious house. Wit so radiant, thought so fresh, and lore so prompt, had not before, and have never since, been heard within those famous walla. Yet his hold on the men of his generation is due less to an intellectual than to a moral cause. They trust him, for he represents what is beat in each. The slave of Whitgift, the clupe of Brown, can each give ear to a churchman who seeks reform of the Church, a lawyer eager to amend the law, a friend of the Crown who pleads against feudal privileges and unpopular powers. When a colleague proposes some change in the Church which would destroy it, he replies to him : 'Sir, the subject we talk of is the eye of England; if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; he would be a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' Of no sect, he represents in Parliament the patriotic spirit of all the sects. Not himself a Puritan, he pleads with Hastings for reform ; not a Roman Catholic, he lifts his voice against per- secution for concerns of faith ; not a courtier, he votes with Cecil for sup- plies. In one word, he is English. To sustain the Queen in her great strife with Spain, to guard the Church from abuse and from destruction, are as much his objects as to break the bonds of science and lead inquiry back from clouds to earth. When he strikes at corruptions in the State, when he resists the usurpations of the Peers, when he saps the privi- leges of the Crown, he speaks in the name of English progress and English strength. Re fights for reform of the law, for increase of till- age, for union with the Scots. for plantations in Ulster, for discovery and defence in Virginia, for free Parliaments and for ample grants, because he • sees that increase, union, freedom, and a rich executive are each and an essential to the growth and grandeur tithe realm."

The fourth accusation brought against the great Lord Keeper is that of corruption on the judicial bench. Such a charge was easily framed in days when there was no Civil List, and officials in Church and State " had to make ' their ' fortune out of fees and gifts." The Kin,. the Archbishop, the Rural Dean, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls,—all the functionaries of law and justice,—took fees. So did the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Admiral, the Secretary of State, the Warden of the Cinque Ports, and the Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber. These fees were not bribes ; they were wages. In 1604, "judi- cial corruption was not a grievance." In 1606, an attempt to re- duce certain fees in the Chancery Court was rejected by the popu- lar party in the House of Commons. In the same year, Bacon opposed a Jobbing Bill for the reduction of other fees arising out of the usages of the Court of Record. "A few years later, mainly through the speeches and writings of Bacon himself, a feeling began to show itself against the payment of judges, registrars, and clerks by uncertain fees!" The old order was changing, and the new order dawning, under which "the system of various and precarious fees" was to "be wisely abandoned for a system of payments by the State." And now came Yelverton's case. Yel- verton had exceeded his powers in the London Charter business. He admitted his indiscretion, and Bacon, who could not deny his fault, endeavoured to soften his judges. Coke, on the other hand, was furious, demanding imprisonment for life and a fine of 60001.; but the Star Chamber refused to go this length, and condemned the offender to a fine of 4000/. only. In 1620, the plot against Bacon was matured in the anteroom of Villiers. The conspirators were Williams, an ex-chaplain to the Lord Chancellor, who was to have the Seals if Bacon could be ruined ; Sir Lionel Cranfield, a Master of the Court of Wards, ready to do any dirty work for the Buckingham faction and his own interest; the old Chief Justice Coke, whom we know ; and, as their instrument, the miscreant John Churchill, whom Bacon had detected in an act of forgery and extortion, and had expelled from his office in the Court of Chancery. In February, 1621, Coke, re- cently returned for Liskeard, in Cornwall, and the champion of every fanatical cry, suggested, as a branch of "the Grievances," that inquiry should be made into abuses in the courts of law ; and Bacon, though distrustine. Coke, met the inquiry with open heart. Cranfield, on the second distrusting of the ensuing month, attacked Bacon, Yelverton, and Montagu by name, admitting, when pressed, the existence of abuses in his own court; but impudently declaring that the corruptions of the Court of Chancery far exceeded the corruptions in the Court of Wards. Ultimately, the instances of corruption alleged against Bacon proved to be twenty-two in num- ber, of which thirteen were of daily occurrence in every court of law, being "common fees, paid in the usual way," when judg- ment had been given. Of the remaining cases, after a rigorous and vindictive scrutiny, not one fee, says Mr. Dixon, "can by any fair construction be called a bribe. Not one appears to be given on a promise ; not one appears to have been given in secret ; not one is alleged to have corrupted justice."

The Villiers faction now exhibited their strength in a prelimi- nary fight ; and the King, in a private interview, urged the Chan- cellor to trust in him ; to offer no defence, and submit himself to the Peers. Weary of greatness, and brought low by illness, Bacon confessed to the receipt of the several fees and gifts, and to a trust in the servants of his court often most unwise.

"Nor can he say that these complaints against the courts of law, against the Court of Chancery, are untimely or unjust. So far as they attack the court, and not the judge, they are in the spirit of all his writings, and of all his votes. In his soul he can find no fault with the House of Commons, though the accidents of time and the machinations of powerful enemies have made him, the reformer, a sacrifice to a false cry for reform. Bacon (resumes Mr. Dixon) makes no complaint. He feels that he is made a sa- crifice, an innocent sacrifice, for what he hopes may turn out to be the pub- lic good. The court is corrupt, though the judge is pure. In a few brave words he states the case—' I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years ; but it was the justest censure that was in Parliament these two hundred years,'" More magnanimous words perhaps, were never uttered ; words they are whose "echo is endless.'

We have now disposed of the four cardinal impeachments of Bacon's honour and integrity. For the case of Peacham and some minor cases, we must refer to Mr. Dixon's narrative. This Peacham libel seems to be thoroughly and triumphantly disproved by Bacon's new biographer. Indeed, we think all the accusations

against our " great-browed Verulam," are metamorphosed, under the touch of the Ithmiel spear of the vindicator of his fame, in- to the ugly toadlike inveracities that they originally were.

On the other hand, Bacon's character comes out in this new

"Life," in fair colours and noble outline. In addition to the lofty speculative genius, usually recognized in the father of the

inductive philosophy, of one whose conception of morals and poli- tics stands before that of most educated men, even in our own day, Bacon is now shown to have been distinguished by the sin- cerity of his patriotism, his enlightened toleration, his fraternal and sin- cerity affection, the disinterestedness of his love, and the loyalty of his friendship. We trust that we shall now hear no

more of the contrast "between the soaring angel and the creep- ing snake ; " but that he who was so great in intellect, will be acknowledged to have been correspondingly great in his more), nature. For the completed redemption from ignominy of the name and memory which this illustrious thinker left "to men'5. charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the meat seek"

WO are indebteddo the- anther of the volume before us—Mr. Hep- worth Dixon,—the recognition of whose valuable services in the cause of truth, by the unanimous voice of a fit audience among his countrymen, will no doubt be willingly accepted by him, as the appropriate substitute for the ancient crown that bore the proud motto " Ob Civem Servatum."