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my mind is known; I am against all inclosures, and especially inclosed justice."

In 1588, when queen Elizabeth went to St. Paul's to return thanks after the defeat of the Spanish armada, the citizens were ranged on one side of Fleet-street, and the lawyers on the other, to pay their respects as she passed. Said Mr. Bacon to the person next to him-' Do but observe the courtiers, if they bow first to the citizens, they are in debt; if first to us, they are in law.'

He was wont to say of an angry man, who suppressed his passion, that he thought worse than he spoke;' and of one who expressed himself very quickly and sharply, that he spoke worse than he thought.'

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When the attorney-general Coke, in the Exchequer, made use of haughty language with respect to Bacon, and stood much upon his superior rank, the other keenly replied, Mr. Attorney, the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I shall think of it; and the more, the less.'

A relation of his, who filled a high office without much credit, being dead, king James asked him- Now mon tell me truly what say you of your cousin that is gone?' Bacon replied, 'Sir, since your majesty doth charge me, I'll e'en deal plainly with you, and give you such a character of him as I would if I were to write his story. I do think he was no fit counsellor to make your affairs better ; but yet he was fit to keep them

from growing worse.' The king pleasantly said, 'On my saul, mon, in the first thou speakest like a true mon, and in the latter like a kinsman.'

Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, sent him his compliments in Passion week, wishing him a good Easter. His lordship thanked the messenger, and in return wished the Count a Pass-over.'

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Though queen Elizabeth had so high an opinion of his extraordinary abilities, she did not pay a proper respect to them, by calling their possessor into that sphere of action for which he was so admirably fitted. A grant was indeed given him of the reversion of the Register's office in the Star Chamber, but the person who held it living twenty years after, Bacon in the mean time used to say, 'that it was like another man's ground buttalling upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn.'

When he was only Mr. Bacon, he happened to be walking on the side of the Thames near Chelsea, just as some fishermen were about to draw the river. He offered them ten shillings for their draught, but they demanded thirty. On drawing their nets, they contained nothing, which made Bacon say to them 'Are you not mad fellows, who might have had an angel in your purse to have made merry withal, and to have warmed you thoroughly, and now you must go home with nothing?'Aye, but,' said the fishermen, we were in hopes to have made a better bargain of it.'--

Said he, my masters, then I will tell you, hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.',

When he was made attorney-general, Sir Edward Coke was advanced from being chief justice of the common pleas to the chief justiceship of the king's bench, which removal he disliked, and attributing it to Bacon, he said to him "Mr. At torney, this is all your doing; it is you that have made this stir.' Bacon answered- Ah, my lord, your lordship all this while hath grown in breadth; you must needs now grow in height, or else you would be a monster.'

In the life-time of his father, every room in Gorhambury was served with a pipe of water from the ponds, distant about a mile off, but afterwards the water ceased; and when his lordship came to the inheritance, he could not recover it, without being at a great expense.After he was lord chancellor, he built Verulamhouse close by the pond-yard, for a private place when he was called upon to dispatch urgent business. And being asked why he had built a house there; his answer was, 'that since he could not carry the water to his house, he would carry his house to the water.'

When some person was speaking in favour of a reformation of the Church of England; or in other words, for a total subversion of it, Sir Francis Bacon said, 'Sir, the subject we talk of is the eye of England; and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off;

but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.'

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His lordship, who was slow in his experiments in philosophy, said to some persons who were for more speed, Gentlemen, nature is a labyrinth, in which the very haste you move with, will make you lose your way.'

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The modesty of this great man was equal to the vast depth of his understanding, and the extent of his acquirements. Speaking of his golden treatise on the advancement of learning in a letter to the earl of Salisbury, he says, that in this book he was contented to awake better spirits, being himself like a bell-ringer, who is first up to call others to church.' The humility displayed in this remarkable passage discovers, however, that peculiar penetration, which was a prominent quality in our author's mind; for what is here in a manner predicted came to pass, and by the clue which he gave in this work, a new and rational, because experimental philosophy, succeeded to the metaphysical subtleties of Aristotle and the schoolmen. In the composition of this work, Bacon was materially assisted by Dr. Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester, one of the best scholars and most eloquent preachers of that age. Bishop Andrews is hardly noticed but as a polemic against Bellarmine; but this was by far the least of his merit; to have co-operated with Bacon in the greatest of his works, and to be conşulted by him on the publication of them, raises

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the bishop to a higher station than the rank of a polemic. The sermons of Andrews, though now scarcely ever read, abound with beauties and uncommon ideas. They were highly esteemed by bishop Horne, whose judgment on such subjects no one will question. Bishop Andrews was a man of great wit, as well as of great piety and learning, of which we have an instance in an anecdote related by Waller, the poet. Waller going to see the king at dinner, overheard a very extraordinary conversation between his majesty and two prelates, Andrews, bishop of Winchester, and Neile, bishop of Durham, who were standing behind the king's chair. James asked the bishops: My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality in parliament? The bishop of Durham readily answered, God forbid, sir, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils.' Whereupon the king turned, and said to the bishop of Winchester, 'Well, my lord, what say you?' 'Sir,' replied the bishop, I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases.' The king answered, no put-offs, my lord, answer me presently.' Then, sir,' said he, I think it lawful for

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you to take brother Neile's money, for he offers it.' Mr. Waller said, the company was pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the king.'

To return to Bacon, the great cause of his fall lay, not as Pope says, in the meanness, but in the generosity of his temper. He had a magnificent

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