Francis Bacon - The Essays

Bacons life, to adapt one of his own phrases, is a dark saying: concealed, reaching deeply within for its wisdom, and not a little dangerous. Even more, it is not yet expounded. It ought to be otherwise, if his long and considerable public career meant anything, for (as is not the case with so many Elizabethan writers) scores of his letters have survived, along with his personal papers, deeds, parliamentary reports, and accounts of his rise to and fall from great office. The documents fill seven volumes of the standard Victorian edition, besides the same number for his writings, literary, historical, scientific, philosophical and legal. Surely, of all the artists and writers who were lucky enough to begin their creative lives with one another in England in the 1590s, we should know most about Francis Bacon. Yet he still awaits his biographer, though many have told his life. Rather out of favour now, or simply more difficult to obtain, is the late-nineteenth-century life, Francis Bacon by E. A. Abbott. This is a well-written and well-documented study. Abbott can certainly be sniffy about the Jacobean court, and Bacons venial and cardinal sins, but his prejudices are evident, and he is not an unfair critic. The biography by C. D. Bowen (1963) is quite a good modern one. Other lives, political and scientific, are listed in the primer by Vickers (see below, p. ).

1561 Born, 22 January, at York House in the Strand, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and Anne Cooke (his second wife). Bacon was the youngest of eight children, six of whom were by Sir Nicholass first marriage.

1573 April. Goes up to Trinity College, Cambridge, with his elder brother, Anthony.

1576 June. Admitted to Grays Inn (again with Anthony).

September. Goes to Paris with Sir Amias Paulet, ambassador to France.

1579 February. His father dies, and (in June) he returns to England. Left with only a small inheritance, he is forced to seek a career in the law.

Anthony Bacon sets out on a long tour of the continent.

1582 June. Admitted Utter Barrister at Grays Inn.

1584 November. First appearance in Parliament, representing Melcombe Regis in Dorset. (He remains in the Commons, representing various constituencies, until 1618, when he is made a peer.)

c. 1585 Writes Advice to Queen Elizabeth, concerned chiefly with the recusants, and The Greatest Birth of Time.

1586 Becomes a Bencher of Grays Inn.

1592 Writes four speeches* for an entertainment, A Conference of Pleasure, celebrating Queen Elizabeths accession day. Anthony Bacon returns from abroad and notes that his brother is bound and in deep arrearages to Robert, Earl of Essex.

1593 In Parliament, speaks against a government proposal for subsidies, and as a consequence is forbidden to come into the Queens presence.

With support from Essex, he begins his (unsuccessful) petition for the offices of Attorney-, and then Solicitor-General.

1594 Writes six speeches* for the Grays Inn Christmas masque Gesta Grayorum. Begins to compile Formularies and Elegancies, a notebook of quotations and ideas; and writes legal and state pieces.

1595 Essex gives Bacon an estate (Twickenham) to console him on his failure to gain office.

Writes part of the device presented by Essex to celebrate the Queens accession day (Of Love and Self-Love).

1596 Advises Fulke Greville on his studies and the Earl of Rutland on his travels.

1597 Publishes the Essays,* with Colours of Good and Evil and Meditationes Sacrae. Writes Maxims of the Law.

Proposes marriage to Lady Hatton, who refuses and then marries his rival and enemy, Sir Edward Coke.

1598 Arrested for debt, but soon released.

Writes a pamphlet about a Jesuit conspiracy against the Queen.

1600 June. Takes part in proceedings against Essex after the Irish dbcle (in which the Earl, close to defeat by the Irish, abandoned his command and returned to England without the Queens permission).

July. Offers his services to Essex, a fortnight after the Earl has been released but not restored to the Queens favour.