to you than to any man.  And I say, I reckon myself as a common (not popular but common); and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so much your Lordship shall be sure to have.—­Your Lordship’s to obey your honourable commands, more settled than ever.”

It may be that, as Bacon afterwards maintained, the closing sentences of this letter implied a significant reserve of his devotion.  But during the brilliant and stormy years of Essex’s career which followed, Bacon’s relations to him continued unaltered.  Essex pressed Bacon’s claims whenever a chance offered.  He did his best to get Bacon a rich wife—­the young widow of Sir Christopher Hatton—­but in vain.  Instead of Bacon she accepted Coke, and became famous afterwards in the great family quarrel, in which Coke and Bacon again found themselves face to face, and which nearly ruined Bacon before the time.  Bacon worked for Essex when he was wanted, and gave the advice which a shrewd and cautious friend would give to a man who, by his success and increasing pride and self-confidence, was running into serious dangers, arming against himself deadly foes, and exposing himself to the chances of fortune.  Bacon was nervous about Essex’s capacity for war, a capacity which perhaps was not proved, even by the most brilliant exploit of the time, the capture of Cadiz, in which Essex foreshadowed the heroic but well-calculated audacities of Nelson and Cochrane, and showed himself as little able as they to bear the intoxication of success, and to work in concert with envious and unfriendly associates.  At the end of the year 1596, the year in which Essex had won such reputation at Cadiz, Bacon wrote him a letter of advice and remonstrance.  It is a lively picture of the defects and dangers of Essex’s behaviour as the Queen’s favourite; and it is a most characteristic and worldly-wise summary of the ways which Bacon would have him take, to cure the one and escape the other.  Bacon had, as he says, “good reason to think that the Earl’s fortune comprehended his own.”  And the letter may perhaps be taken as an indirect warning to Essex that Bacon must, at any rate, take care of his own fortune, if the Earl persisted in dangerous courses.  Bacon shows how he is to remove the impressions, strong in the Queen’s mind, of Essex’s defects; how he is, by due submissions and stratagems, to catch her humour—­

“But whether I counsel you the best, or for the best, duty bindeth me to offer to you my wishes.  I said to your Lordship last time, Martha, Martha, attendis ad plurima, unum sufficit; win the Queen:  if this be not the beginning, of any other course I see no end.”

Bacon gives a series of minute directions how Essex is to disarm the Queen’s suspicions, and to neutralize the advantage which his rivals take of them; how he is to remove “the opinion of his nature being opiniastre and not rulable;” how, avoiding the faults of Leicester and Hatton, he is, as far as he can, to “allege them for authors and patterns.”  Especially, he must give up that show of soldier-like distinction, which the Queen so disliked, and take some quiet post at Court.  He must not alarm the Queen by seeking popularity; he must take care of his estate; he must get rid of some of his officers; and he must not be disquieted by other favourites.