Bacon was born in London, on the 22d of January, 1560-61, to an enviable social lot.  His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was for twenty years lord keeper of the great seal, and was eulogized by George Buchanan as “Diu Britannici regni secundum columen.”  His mother was Anne Cook, a person of remarkable acquirements in language and theology.  Francis Bacon was a delicate, attractive, and precocious child, noticed by the great, and kindly called by the queen “her little lord keeper.”  Ben Jonson refers to this when he writes, at a later day: 

    England’s high chancellor, the destined heir
    In his soft cradle to his father’s chair.

Thus, in his early childhood, he became accustomed to the forms and grandeur of political power, and the modes by which it was to be striven for.

In his thirteenth year he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, then, as now, the more mathematical and scientific of the two universities.  But, like Gibbon at Oxford, he thought little of his alma mater, under whose care he remained only three years.  It is said that at an early age he disliked the Logic of Aristotle, and began to excogitate his system of Induction:  not content with the formal recorded knowledge, he viewed the universe as a great storehouse of facts to be educed, investigated, and philosophically classified.

After leaving the university, he went in the suite of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador, to France; and recorded the observations made during his travels in a treatise On the State of Europe, which is thoughtful beyond his years.  The sudden death of his father, in February, 1579-80, recalled him to England, and his desire to study led him to apply to the government for a sinecure, which would permit him to do so without concern as to his support.  It is not strange—­considering his youth and the entire ignorance of the government as to his abilities—­that this was refused.  He then applied himself to the study of the law; and whatever his real ability, the jealousy of the Cecils no doubt prompted the opinion of the queen, that he was not very profound in the branch he had chosen, an opinion which was fully shared by the blunt and outspoken Lord Coke, who was his rival in love, law, and preferment.  Prompted no doubt by the coldness of Burleigh, he joined the opposition headed by the Earl of Essex, and he found in that nobleman a powerful friend and generous patron, who used his utmost endeavors to have Bacon appointed attorney-general, but without success.  To compensate Bacon for his failure, Essex presented him with a beautiful villa at Twickenham on the Thames, which was worth L2,000.

TREATMENT OF ESSEX.—­Essex was of a bold, eccentric, and violent temper.  It is not to the credit of Bacon that when Essex, through his rashness and eccentricities, found himself arraigned for treason, Bacon deserted him, and did not simply stand aloof, but was the chief agent in his prosecution.  Nor is this all:  after making a vehement and effective speech against him, as counsel for the prosecution—­a speech which led to his conviction and execution—­Bacon wrote an uncalled-for and malignant paper, entitled “A Declaration of the Treasons of Robert, Earl of Essex.”