Chapter 21

Mr. Ascham thus speaks of Elizabeth in a letter to Sir John Cheke: "It can scarcely be credited to what degree of skill in the Latin and Greek she might arrive, if she should proceed in that course of study wherein she hath begun by the guidance of Grindal." In 1548 she had the misfortune to lose her tutor, who died of the plague. At this time, it is observed by Camden, that she was versed in the Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian tongues, had some knowledge of the Greek, was well skilled in music, and both sung and played with art and sweetness.

After the death of her father, her brother, King Edward, who tenderly loved her, encouraged her in her studies and literary pursuits, while, without imposition or restraint, he left her to choose her own principles and preceptors. To supply the loss of her tutor she addressed herself to the celebrated Roger Ascham, who, at her solicitation, left Cambridge and consented to become her instructor. Under him she read the orations of AEschines, and Demosthenes' "On the Crown," in Greek, and understood at first sight not only the force and propriety of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole scheme of the laws, customs, and manners of the Athenians. By Doctor Grindal, professor of theology, she was initiated into the subtleties of polemic divinity, to which she gave assiduous application. Such, during the short reign of her brother, was the laudable and tranquil time of her life, and by these occupations and pursuits she was prepared for the great part she was to act on the theatre of Europe.

In July, 1553, Mary, after the death of Edward, succeeded to the throne; and having received from her sister many favors and testimonies of esteem, she treated her at first with a form of regard; but Elizabeth was afterward imprisoned and harshly treated, even to the hazard of her life. Her sufferings were, however, mitigated by the interposition of Philip, the husband of Mary, for which she was ever grateful.

The reign, the bigotry, and the butchery of Mary, who, _to do God service_, amused herself by burning and torturing her people, lasted five years and four months. She died, fortunately for the nation, November 17, 1558. A parliament had been assembled a few days previous to her death, to which the chancellor notified the event. "God save Queen Elizabeth," resounded in joyful acclamations through both houses, while by the people a transport still more general and fervent was expressed.

The commencement of her reign was not less auspicious than its duration was prosperous to the country and glorious to herself. It is observed by Bayle that to say only that no woman reigned with more glory would be saying little. "It must be added that there have been but few great kings whose reigns are comparable to hers, it being the most beautiful period of English history."

Elizabeth when informed of the death of her sister, was at Hatfield, whence, after a few days, she proceeded to London, through crowds of people, who contended with each other in testimonies of joy and attachment. On entering the Tower she was affected with the comparison of her past and present situation; once a captive, exposed to the bigotry and malignity of her enemies, now a sovereign, triumphant over her adversaries, and the hope and joy of the nation. Falling on her knees she expressed her gratitude to heaven for the deliverance she had experienced from her persecutors, a deliverance, she declared, not less miraculous than that of Daniel from the den of lions. With a magnanimity that did her honor, and a prudence that evinced her judgment, she threw a veil over every offence that had been committed against her, and received graciously and with affability the most virulent of her enemies.

On the death of her sister, Elizabeth had, by her ambassador, signified her accession to the Pope, whose precipitate temper, insolent reflections, and extravagant demands, determined her to persevere in the plan she had already secretly embraced. While, to conciliate the Catholics she retained in her cabinet eleven of her sister's counsellors, she took care to balance their power by adding to their number eight partisans of the Protestant faith; among whom were Sir Nicholas Bacon, whom she created lord keeper, and Sir William Cecil, made Secretary of State.

Cecil assured her that the greater part of the nation, since the reign of her father, inclined to the reformation, though constrained to conceal their principles by the cruelties practised under the late reign. These arguments, to which other considerations and reasonings were added, founded on policy and on a knowledge of mankind, had their just weight with Elizabeth, and determined her to adopt the party which education and political wisdom equally inclined to her favor. Yet she wisely resolved to proceed gradually by safe and progressive steps. As symptoms of her future intentions, and with a view of encouraging the Protestants, whom persecution had discouraged and depressed, she recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to those who had, on account of their religion, been confined in prison. She also altered the religious service, and gave orders that the Lord's prayer, the litany, the creed, and the gospels, should be read in the churches in the vulgar tongue; and she forbade the elevation of the host in her presence.

The bishops, foreseeing in these measures the impending change, refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was not without difficulty that the Bishop of Carlisle was at length prevailed upon to perform the ceremony. Amid the joyful acclamations of her subjects, as she was conducted through London, a boy, personating Truth, let down from a triumphal arch, presented to her a copy of the Bible. She received the present graciously, placed it near her heart, and declared that of all the costly testimonies of attachment given to her that day by the city, this was the most precious and acceptable. Elizabeth insinuated herself into the affections of the people by the most laudable art; frank in her address, and on all public occasions affable, conciliating, and easy of access, she appeared delighted with the concourse that crowded around her; entered, without forgetting her dignity, into the pleasures and amusements of her subjects, and acquired a popularity unknown to her predecessors. Her youth, her graces, her prudence, her fortitude, and her talents, attracted the admiration of one sex and afforded to the other a subject of pride and triumph. Individuals were captivated by her complacency, the public won by her services, while her authority, chastened by religion and law, appeared to be derived from its legitimate source, the choice and affections of the people.

The Commons entreated her, with all humility, that she would make choice of a husband to share with her the weight of government, a request which they hoped, from her sex and age, would not be displeasing or offensive. To this Elizabeth replied, that as their application was expressed in general terms, merely recommending marriage, without pretending to direct her choice, she could not be offended or regard their wishes otherwise than as a new instance of their attachment toward her; but that any farther interposition respecting this subject, on their part, it would ill become them as subjects to make, or her, as an independent princess, to endure. England was the husband which she had betrothed to her; Englishmen were her children; while employed in rearing and governing such a family, she could not deem herself sterile or her life useless. She desired, for her own part, no higher character, nor fairer remembrance of her to be transmitted to posterity, than to have this inscription, when she should pay the debt of nature, engraven on her tomb: "Here lies Queen Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden queen."

Misfortune threw the Queen of Scots into the power of Elizabeth, and she was denied those services to which the unfortunate are entitled. Driven beyond endurance, she openly and bitterly defied her more fortunate rival, who viewed her with jealousy as heir to the crown, and was fearful that her beauty and influence might supplant her own popularity. Mary was kept in prison eighteen years and then executed on the scaffold. This transaction will ever remain a foul blot on the character of Elizabeth.

Neither the cares of government nor the infirmities of approaching age weaned her from the love of letters, which at every interval of leisure were her great delight. When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated from Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophae." In 1598, when the disturbances in Ireland occupied a considerable share of her attention, she translated Sallust's "De bello Jugurthino," also the greater part of Horace's "De Arte Poetica," and Plutarch's book, "De Curiositate," all of which were written in her own hand.

But Elizabeth no longer took an interest in public concerns; her sun was setting, overshadowed by a dark cloud. Prosperity and glory palled upon her sense; an incurable melancholy had fixed itself on her heart. The anxiety of her mind made swift ravages upon her feeble frame; the period of her life visibly approached. The Archbishop of Canterbury advised her to fix her thoughts on God. She did so, she replied, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice and her senses soon after failing, she fell into a lethargic slumber, which having continued some hours, she expired gently, without a struggle, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign.

The character of Elizabeth appears to have been exalted by her friends and depreciated by her enemies, in nearly equal proportions. As a monarch, her activity and force of mind, her magnanimity, sagacity, prudence, vigilance, and address, have scarcely been surpassed in royal annals, and are worthy of the highest admiration. Pope Sixtus V. spoke of her on all occasions as "a woman with a strong head," and gave her a place among the three persons who only, in his opinion, deserved to reign; the remaining two were himself and Henry IV. of France. "Your queen," said he once to an Englishman, "is born fortunate; she governs her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me to give the world a second Alexander."

Her temper and her talents equally fitted her for government. Capable of self-command, and of controlling her own passions, she acquired an unlimited ascendency over those of her people. She possessed courage without temerity; spirit, resource, and activity in war, with the love of peace and tranquillity. Her frugality was exempt from avarice, it was the result rather of her love of independence than a passion for accumulation. She never amassed any treasures. Her friendships were uniform and steady, yet she was never governed by her favorites--a criterion of a strong mind. Her choice in her ministers gave proof of her sagacity, as her constancy in supporting them did of her firmness. If a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only method of disarming the turbulence of religious factions, she yet preserved her people, by her prudence and good sense, from those theological disputes which desolated the neighboring nations.

Beset with enemies, both at home and abroad, among the most powerful princes in Europe, the most enterprising and the least scrupulous, the vigor of her administration enabled her to defeat all their purposes, to annoy and plunder them in their own dominions, and to preserve her own dignity untouched and unimpaired. Few monarchs have succeeded to a throne in more difficult circumstances, nor have any ever reigned with more uniform success and prosperity.

If, as a woman, cut off by the peculiarities of her situation from the sympathies of nature and the charm of equal affections, Elizabeth, at times suffered under these privations, which even gave to her sensibility additional force and acuteness, the strength of her reason still triumphed over her passions, and the struggle which her victories cost her served but to display the firmness of her resolution and the loftiness of her mind.

The praises which have by some been bestowed upon Elizabeth for her regard for the constitution and tender concern for the liberties of the people, are wholly without foundation. Few princes have exerted with more arbitrary power the regal prerogatives which had been transmitted to her by her immediate predecessors; yet no censure belongs to her for this conduct, in the principles of which she had been trained and of the justice of which she was persuaded. What potentate, what man, has voluntarily resigned the power in which those beneath him quietly acquiesced? Compared with the reigns of her father and sister, that of Elizabeth might be termed a golden age.

FRANCIS BACON[14]

By HON. IGNATIUS DONNELLY

(1561-1626)

[Footnote 14: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

Francis Bacon was born in York House, London, on January 22, 1561. Of this building only the ancient water-gate, fronting the Thames, survives the waste of time. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was for twenty years Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth--a famous statesman, orator, and wit. His mother, Lady Ann Bacon, was the second daughter of the celebrated Sir Anthony Cooke, formerly tutor of King Edward VI., Henry VIII.'s short-lived son. She was a woman of great learning and many accomplishments, and of a strong, earnest, passionate, affectionate, and religious nature.

Francis was the youngest of eight children, six of whom were by the first wife of Sir Nicholas. He belonged to the aristocracy of England, but not to that ancient, warlike race of battle-crowned warriors, whose pedigree dated back beyond the Crusades. His father was a lawyer. Both his father's family and his mother's seem to have risen from the ranks on the great wave of the Reformation; they belonged to the intellectual new age, then dawning; rather than to the rude, fighting age which was about to pass away. Francis was no accident. We can see in him the two natures of his father and his mother--the commingling of the powerful, practical, sagacious politician and man of affairs, with the studious, contemplative, imaginative, affectionate, religious enthusiast.

His birthplace was a palace; the country seat of Gorhamsbury, near Saint Albans' village, is in the midst of the most charming rural scenery in England, or in the world. There a great part of his youth and early manhood was passed.

He came into this breathing world when the human race were upon the threshold of the tremendous development which now surrounds us. He was born sixty-nine years after Columbus had re-opened the long-closed pathway from the eastern to the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean; twenty-seven years after the French took possession of Canada; twelve years after the Portuguese settled in Brazil; and forty-six years before the first English colonists landed at Jamestown, Va. The degree of advancement of the mind of the age will be understood when it is remembered that it was only one hundred and twenty-five years, at the date of Bacon's birth, since Guttenberg had invented movable types, in Germany; and but eighty-seven years since Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster. No man has ever lived who did more than Bacon to change the opinions and condition of those who came after him.

It was a "day of little things." England contained less than five million inhabitants, and of these probably not one-tenth spoke a language which could be understood to-day by the English-using people of the world. The mass of the populace were steeped to the lips in brutality and ignorance. The houses of the peasants were built of "sticks and dirt;" many of them "without chimneys or glazed windows;" the habits of the people were "inconceivably filthy;" "scurvy and leprosy were endemic;" the schools did not, as a rule, teach English; the amusements of the populace were bear-baitings and dancing naked in barns; the people of one county could not understand the speech of the inhabitants of the next county; "the disputes about tithes and boundaries were usually settled by bands of armed men, and the records of the Star-Chamber swarm with such cases." Education was at a low ebb. "In one year, 1570 (Bacon was then nine years of age), the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed 2,250 barrels of beer." Many of the graduates became beggars; and so extensive was this evil that Parliament, by an act of 14th Elizabeth, declared that "all scholars of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge that go about begging, not being authorized under the seal of the said universities," are declared "vagabonds" and punished as such. But even this was an improvement on Henry VIII.'s time when three hundred men were hanged in London for soliciting alms.

The only illuminated spot in all this darkness was the Court in London. Here they talked something which we would to-day call English; here they caught, through France and Italy, a reflected light from the dying glories of the ancient Roman civilization; here the travelled wealthy, "the picked men of countries," brought home some of the culture of more refined races. Bacon says:

"Courts are but only superficial schools To dandle fools; The rural parts are turned into a den Of savage men; And where's the city, from foul vice so free, But may be termed the worst of all the three?"

In this curious, primitive, rude, ensmalled age, grew up the great man who was to do so much to change it all.

From his early years he manifested that vastly active intellect "which knew no rest save in motion." He studied, as a child, the nature of echoes in a tunnel. At fifteen years of age (so his chaplain Rawley and his biographer Spedding assure us), he had realized the shallowness of the Aristotelian philosophy and had thought out those principles which have since revolutionized human society. There are reasons to believe that he was the child of fifteen, referred to by the Rosicrucians, who planned the foundation of their society, and, at that early age, wrote the "Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz," first published in 1616.

At about twelve years of age he went to Cambridge--to Trinity College--rooming with his brother Anthony, who was two years his senior. In June, 1576, he left the university and became an _ancient_ of the Gray's Inn law-society. On September 25, 1576, he accompanied Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador, to France. Here he witnessed the sixth civil war of the French people. He followed the court through several of the French provinces; he resided for three months at Poitiers. About February 17, 1579, he dreamed that his father's house in the country was all covered over with black mortar. At the same time his father was taken sick and died in three days thereafter. He returned home on March 20, 1579, to find himself poor. As he said, he could not "live to study," but had "to study to live." He became a practising lawyer, but he did not like the profession. He feared "the bar would be his bier;" it absorbed time which he thought should be dedicated to better ends. We think we find the expression of his heart in the lines of the so-called Shakespeare Sonnet:

"O, for my sake, do thou with fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breeds."

His pecuniary embarrassments were numerous, and continuous. Falstaff doubtless expresses a thought which often recurred to him: "I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable." More than once he was thrown into a "sponging-house" for debt. His brother Anthony loaned him money repeatedly. In 1592 a "hard Jew or Lombard" put him in confinement for a debt on a bond. Anthony mortgaged his property to pay his debts. In 1594 Malone believes the play of "The Merchant of Venice" was in existence, in which Bassanio, being in debt to a hard Jew, his friend, Antonius, mortgages his own flesh to help him out of his troubles; and the Jew money-lender is sent down through all the ages the terrible type and exemplar of the merciless usurer. Bacon continues a "briefless barrister," with much time at his disposal. He helps in the composition of the play called "The Misfortunes of Arthur." He writes a Sonnet to the Queen. About this time, 1592, the Shakespeare plays begin to appear. Bacon assists in the preparation of several "masks" and "revels," gotten up by Gray's Inn. "The Comedy of Errors" first appears in the hall of that society, which still stands in London. The "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" appear, dedicated to Bacon's intimate friend, Lord Southampton; and that nobleman in 1594 contributes a large sum to the construction of the _Globe_ play-house, Bacon having observed that the stage is a powerful instrumentality to "play on the minds" of the people; and on this stage a series of historical plays are put forth, everyone of which represents kings as monsters or imbeciles.

The Shakespeare plays continue to be poured forth, and Bacon suffers from a siege of "Jews and duns." He describes himself "as poor and sick, working for bread." "I am purposed," he says, "not to follow the practice of the law." "It is easier," says Mr. Spedding, Bacon's biographer, "to understand why Bacon was resolved not to devote his life to the ordinary practice of a lawyer, than what plan he had to clear himself of the difficulties which were now accumulating upon him, and to obtain the means of living and working. What course he betook himself to at the crisis at which we have now arrived, I cannot possibly say." We have here the time, the opportunity, the incentive, and the necessity for the composition of the Shakespeare plays; part of the fruits of the representation of which made Shakespeare very wealthy.

In January, 1597, the first acknowledged work of Bacon--his "Essays"--was published. They were ten in number. Bacon said of them he hoped they would be "like the late new half-pence, which, though the pieces are small, the silver is good."

Until he was forty-four years of age, Bacon was kept poor and out of office by his uncle Burleigh, and his cousin Cecil; during the life-time of Queen Elizabeth he was steadily passed over and suppressed; and even during the first years of the reign of King James I., the influence of Cecil, then the Earl of Salisbury, was sufficient to keep him out of office. In 1605, Bacon published his first great philosophical work, "The Advancement of Learning;" in 1607, he became Solicitor-General; and in 1612, Attorney-General, and member of the Privy Council. He was then fifty-one years of age, and Shakespeare forty-eight. After the appointment of Bacon as Attorney-General, no more of the Shakespeare plays appeared; the "Tempest," which is evidently the last of the series, for in it Prospero declares--