pushed on at his Inn, where, in 1586, he was a Bencher; and in 1584 he came into Parliament for Melcombe Regis.  He took some small part in Parliament; but the only record of his speeches is contained in a surly note of Recorder Fleetwood, who writes as an old member might do of a young one talking nonsense.  He sat again for Liverpool in the year of the Armada (1588), and his name begins to appear in the proceedings.  These early years, we know, were busy ones.  In them Bacon laid the foundation of his observations and judgments on men and affairs; and in them the great purpose and work of his life was conceived and shaped.  But they are more obscure years than might have been expected in the case of a man of Bacon’s genius and family, and of such eager and unconcealed desire to rise and be at work.  No doubt he was often pinched in his means; his health was weak, and he was delicate and fastidious in his care of it.  Plunged in work, he lived very much as a recluse in his chambers, and was thought to be reserved, and what those who disliked him called arrogant.  But Bacon was ambitious—­ambitious, in the first place, of the Queen’s notice and favour.  He was versatile, brilliant, courtly, besides being his father’s son; and considering how rapidly bold and brilliant men were able to push their way and take the Queen’s favour by storm, it seems strange that Bacon should have remained fixedly in the shade.  Something must have kept him back.  Burghley was not the man to neglect a useful instrument with such good will to serve him.  But all that Mr. Spedding’s industry and profound interest in the subject has brought together throws but an uncertain light on Bacon’s long disappointment.  Was it the rooted misgiving of a man of affairs like Burghley at that passionate contempt of all existing knowledge, and that undoubting confidence in his own power to make men know, as they never had known, which Bacon was even now professing?  Or was it something soft and over-obsequious in character which made the uncle, who knew well what men he wanted, disinclined to encourage and employ the nephew?  Was Francis not hard enough, not narrow enough, too full of ideas, too much alive to the shakiness of current doctrines and arguments on religion and policy?  Was he too open to new impressions, made by objections or rival views?  Or did he show signs of wanting backbone to stand amid difficulties and threatening prospects?  Did Burghley see something in him of the pliability which he could remember as the serviceable quality of his own young days—­which suited those days of rapid change, but not days when change was supposed to be over, and when the qualities which were wanted were those which resist and defy it?  The only thing that is clear is that Burghley, in spite of Bacon’s continual applications, abstained to the last from advancing his fortunes.