frightened herself; that the stinging injustice which led a proud man to expect, only to see how he would behave when refused, deserved to be brought to reason by a counter-buffet as rough as her own insolent caprice.  He drifted into discontent, into disaffection, into neglect of duty, into questionable schemings for the future of a reign that must shortly end, into criminal methods of guarding himself, of humbling his rivals and regaining influence.  A “fatal impatience,” as Bacon calls it, gave his rivals an advantage which, perhaps in self-defence, they could not fail to take; and that career, so brilliant, so full of promise of good, ended in misery, in dishonour, in remorse, on the scaffold of the Tower.

With this attractive and powerful person Bacon’s fortunes, in the last years of the century, became more and more knit up.  Bacon was now past thirty, Essex a few years younger.  In spite of Bacon’s apparent advantage and interest at Court, in spite of abilities, which, though his genius was not yet known, his contemporaries clearly recognised, he was still a struggling and unsuccessful man:  ambitious to rise, for no unworthy reasons, but needy, in weak health, with careless and expensive habits, and embarrassed with debt.  He had hoped to rise by the favour of the Queen and for the sake of his father.  For some ill-explained reason he was to the last disappointed.  Though she used him “for matters of state and revenue,” she either did not like him, or did not see in him the servant she wanted to advance.  He went on to the last pressing his uncle, Lord Burghley.  He applied in the humblest terms, he made himself useful with his pen, he got his mother to write for him; but Lord Burghley, probably because he thought his nephew more of a man of letters than a sound lawyer and practical public servant, did not care to bring him forward.  From his cousin, Robert Cecil, Bacon received polite words and friendly assurances.  Cecil may have undervalued him, or have been jealous of him, or suspected him as a friend of Essex; he certainly gave Bacon good reason to think that his words meant nothing.  Except Essex, and perhaps his brother Antony—­the most affectionate and devoted of brothers—­no one had yet recognised all that Bacon was.  Meanwhile time was passing.  The vastness, the difficulties, the attractions of that conquest of all knowledge which he dreamed of, were becoming greater every day to his thoughts.  The law, without which he could not live, took up time and brought in little.  Attendance on the Court was expensive, yet indispensable, if he wished for place.  His mother was never very friendly, and thought him absurd and extravagant.  Debts increased and creditors grumbled.  The outlook was discouraging, when his friendship with Essex opened to him a more hopeful prospect.