To LADY CLARKE

An offer of assistance

[London], 15 Jan. 1554.

Your remarkable love of virtue and zeal for learning, most illustrious lady, joined with such talents and perseverance, are worthy of great praise in themselves, and greater still because you are a woman, but greatest of all because you are a lady of the court; where there are many other occupations for ladies, besides learning, and many other pleasures besides the practice of the virtues.  This double praise is further enhanced by the two patterns that you have proposed to yourself to follow, the one furnished you by the court, the other by your family.  I mean our illustrious queen Mary, and your noble grandfather, Thomas More—­a man whose virtues go to raise England above all other nations....

I am led to write thus not altogether by my admiration of you, but partly by my own wish and more from the nature of my own office.  It was I who was invited some years ago from the University of Cambridge by your mother, Margaret Roper—­a lady worthy of her great father, and of you her daughter—­to the house of your kinsman, Lord Giles Alington, to teach you and her other children the Greek and Latin tongues; but at that time no offers could induce me to leave the University.  It is sweet to me to bear in mind this request of your mother’s, and I now not only remind you thereof, but would offer you, now that I am at court, if not to fulfil her wishes, yet to do my best to fulfil them, were it not that you have so much learning in yourself, and also the aid of those two learned men, Cole and Christopherson, so that you need no help from me, unless in their absence you make use of my assistance, and if you like, abuse it.

I write thus not because of any talents I possess (for I know they are very small) but because of my will (which I know is very great), and because of the opportunity long wished for and now granted me.  For by favour of that great bishop the Lord Stephen of Winchester, I have been fetched away from the University to serve our illustrious queen at court, and that too in such a post, that I can there follow the same mode of life for the discharge of my duties as I did at the University for study.  My office is to write Latin letters for the queen, and I hope I shall fulfil that office, if not with ability, yet faithfully, diligently, and unblameably ...  Farewell, most accomplished lady!

SIR FRANCIS BACON

1561-1626

To Sir Thomas Bodley

With a copy of his book

[Nov. 1605.]

SIR,