1626.] BACON'S CARELESS MANAGEMENT OF MONEY. 563 Whatever view he may take of the character, he will find in these records of the life much matter for instruction; some, I hope, for approval and imitation; and much also for warning. Under which latter head it may be worth while to draw attention to one lesson, which is so rarely needed that it may be easily overlooked, and yet is of so great importance to those who do need it-of whom Bacon was certainly one-that it deserves to be made conspicuous. And this is, to beware of undervaluing the possession of money when the possession of money means independence. Wiser for others than for himself, he could represent to Villiers the importance of having an income above his expenditure, and could put it upon the true ground,—namely that he might be in a condition "to despise money when it crossed reason of state or virtue." And if the narrowness of his own income during the first half of his life had made him a saver instead of a borrower, and (leaving his disposition otherwise unaltered) had taught him to keep and invest, to be sparing in expense, to look closely after his dues, and to require strict accounts from his servants, he would probably have left to posterity an unspotted name. Putting a higher value upon money, he would have been more careful whence it came; and the possession of an independent fortune would have enabled him always to choose the conditions of service and follow the course which he liked best. Unfortunately the continual delusive encouragements by which in his early years Elizabeth retained him in her service, made borrowing seem justifiable for the time, even as a matter of thrift and prudence, and at the same time made lenders easy to find and to deal with. Thus he contracted a habit of borrowing upon interest, of which it seems he never could cure himself, even when his income was ample for his wants; and to this expensive way of supplying himself with money was added not only a very easy liberality in the spending, but a carelessness in the keeping of it, which would be hardly credible if we did not know how extremely difficult it is to some men to call an inferior to account for offences against themselves. If the stories told are true, his money was kept in drawers from which his servants could help themselves at will. In the year 1655, a bookseller's boy heard some gentlemen talking in his master's shop; one of them, a grey headed man, was describing a scene which he had himself witnessed at Gorhambury. He had gone to see the Lord Chancellor on business, who received him in his study, and having occasion to go out, left him there for awhile alone. "Whilst his Lordship was gone, there comes " he said "into the study one of his Lordship's gentlemen, and opens 1 Vol. VI. p. 118. my Lord's chest of drawers wherein his money was, and takes it out in handfuls and fills both his pockets, and goes away without saying any word to me. He was no sooner gone but comes a second gentleman, opens the same drawers, fills both his pockets with money, and goes away as the former did, without speaking a word to me.' Bacon being told when he came back what had passed in his absence, merely "shook his head; and all that he said was, 'Sir I cannot help myself." This, it is true, is but the recollection in 1691, of a conversation overheard by a shop-boy in 1655, relating to a matter which took place not later than 1620; and as we know nothing about any of the parties, it does not rank high as evidence. But it is nevertheless told so naturally, and the answer attributed to Bacon seems so much more likely to have been remembered than invented, that I incline for my own part to believe the story; though I cannot accept the relator's comment,2 to whom Bacon's manner of receiving the information appeared so strange, that he thought his servants must have had some mysterious power over him. Had that been the case, I can hardly think that he would have betrayed it so it would have been so easy to pass it off as a thing done with his knowledge and approbation: whereas, if it was only a mournful acknowledgment of an infirmity which he was conscious of but could not conquer, the manuer of it was quite natural, and the only thing difficult to understand is the degree of the infirmity. In lesser degrees none is more common, but carried to this extent, it certainly draws hard upon the power of belief. And yet we have had since a very conspicuous instance of the very same infirmity exhibited in a degree scarcely less excessive by a man of as great a spirit, as capable a mind, a far more imperious will, an earlier training in the government and management of men, in the administration of great affairs, and especially in the raising and husbanding of money;—a man not brought up in any wasteful habits or troubled with any expensive tastes;-a younger son, of habits extremely retired and studious, who having entered life with a scanty provision of 3007. a year, and meant to make a fortune at the Bar, found himself before he was twenty-five in possession of an official income, wholly applicable to his private purposes, of more than twenty times the amount; and at the same time to a position in the state which placed at his disposal for public purposes the whole wealth of the nation;-a man so sensible of the importance and so tenacious of the reputation of pecuniary independence that 1 Preface to The Cries of the Oppressed,' published by M. Pitt in 1691. "He did agree with them in their opinion of my Lord Bacon, but my Lord had a fault, whatever it was he could not tell. But, saith he, I myself," etc., and then follows the story. 2 1626.] HIS CAREFUL MANAGEMENT OF TIME AND HEALTH. 565 no pressure of embarrassment would induce him to accept help either from the city of London or from the King himself, though pressed upon him by both in the most liberal and delicate manner; -who was nevertheless compelled to accept during his life from private friends a sum of 10,000l. to clear him of debt, and yet left at his death other debts to the amount of 40,000l. which was paid to his executors by Parliament, because his estate afforded no means of defraying them; and with nothing to show for it except an enormous and unjustifiable expenditure in the servants' hall. It seems impossible to account for the condition of William Pitt's private affairs during his life and at his death except by systematic dishonesty in some of the people about him; or for his continuing so long to endure it, except by some invincible disinclination to let it be investigated and detected. Yet no one ever suspected Pitt of having anything to fear on his own account from what the strictest enquiry into the proceedings of his servants might bring to light. He regarded it as a complaint about money, which he felt to be beneath him; forgetting that independence is forfeited by owing money which you cannot pay quite as much as by accepting money which you cannot claim. Had he lived two centuries earlier, when the greatest persons saw no indignity in receiving presents of money, he might have been as careless about the receipts as the expenditure and then the parallel would have been nearly complete. As it was, he preserved the reputation of being superior to all pecuniary temptations, but it was at the expense of the friends and creditors who paid the money which he had spent but not possessed. But if Bacon was unjustifiably careless in all that related to money —that is, his own money; for in the service of the crown and in other men's affairs, he was a careful bargainer and administratorhe must have been in all that related to time a strict economist and an excellent manager. When we consider the delicacy of his constitution, his frequent illnesses, and the number of hours that must have been daily absorbed by official or professional business which has left no trace, it is wonderful to think how much work he got out of himself. This was mainly due no doubt to his natural gifts-the quickness of his apprehension, and the tenacity of his memory, which enabled him to carry his library in his head and pursue his studies in every vacant interval. Dr. Rawley, who had the nearest view of him in the studies of his later years, was at such a loss to account for the extent of his knowledge that he ascribed it to a kind of inspiration. "For though he was a great reader of books," says he, "yet he had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds and notions from within himself." And we now learn from Peter Boëner that he "seldom saw him take up a book. He only ordered his chaplain and me to look in such and such an author for a certain place, and then he dictated to us early in the morning what he had invented and composed during the night." But though a man who can remember and recall at will whatever he has once known will accumulate knowledge with a facility and rapidity wonderful to those of us who have to seek for it again as often as it is wanted, we must also suppose that the ever-increasing stores were so arranged as to lie conveniently together and be readily taken up: for then the broken intervals of time can be made available for the pursuit of connected thoughts. And as Bacon was a careful economist of his time, so was he also of the health and spirits which enabled him to make use of it. "He was no plodder upon books," says Rawley, "though he read much : : for he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies,-as walking or taking the air abroad in his coach," gentle exercise on horseback, playing at bowls, "or some other befitting recreation; and yet he would lose no time; inasmuch as upon his first and immediate return he would fall to reading again, and so suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement.” 2 He was also very careful about his diet, which the delicacy of his constitution had always obliged him to study and though I do not suppose that his pathology would be allowed by modern science, he found out how to keep himself fit for work by simple means. He had a recipe for the gout from which he always found speedy relief; and for the ordinary troubles of indigestion, against which nature had not armed him, he pursued a course of mild alteratives. His morning draught of three grains of nitre in thin warm broth, and his weekly dose of a drachm and half of rhubarb infused into a draught of mixed wine and beer, we knew from Rawley. And from the information recently supplied by Mr. Loffelt, we are now able to add the report of his domestic apothecary, who ought to be the best authority. 4 "Bacon was a great lover of physic, paying great attention to his health. Every morning he took for breakfast a scruple of cremor tartar in some chicken broth, which I brought him. Once a week, at 7 o'clock in the evening, he took a soft purgation; a quarter of an ounce of rhubarb, with some grains of Schoenanthi, together soaked in wine for an hour, then wrung out well and without using any fire. Having taken this, he awaited the result till eleven or twelve o'clock at night. During that period he 1 Athenæum, June 10, 1871. Rawley's 'Life of the Honourable Author.' Works, vol. i. p. 12 and note. 3 Ib. p. 17. 4 Sic. 1626.] HIS NATURAL DISPOSITION. 567 studied, when every one had gone to bed except his valet. For the rest he was very frugal."1 He could make nothing of a great dinner. He said "if he were to sup for a wager he would dine with a Lord Mayor." His personal character and disposition, though he writes very little about himself, comes out very distinctly in his correspondence ; and being quite in accordance with all the reports we have from those who saw him nearest and knew him best, I suppose there will be little difference of opinion about it. What difference there is will be rather as to the sentiments with which it should be regarded than as to the thing itself. All the evidence shows that he was a very sensitive man, who felt acutely both kindness and unkindness, but that he was at the same time remarkably free from the ordinary defect of sensitive natures,-irritability and aptness to take offence. Two or three letters of frank expostulation upon ill-usage remain to show that when he was ill-used he could feel it: but he never pursued or remembered any quarrel of that kind, or allowed it to influence his conduct. His official duties brought him now and then into rough collision with opponents or rivals, leading to sharp speeches : and he had occasionally to give his opinion upon the conduct or qualifications of a man whom he did not think well of. But I am not aware of any case in which he gave an opinion which he had not a perfect right to entertain, or which there is any reason to suppose that he did not honestly entertain, or which, if he did entertain it, he was any way forbidden to express. He has been accused of ill-will to Coke; and if to distrust a man's judgment, to dislike his ways, to apprehend mischief from his management, and to be treated by him with contempt, is to bear him ill-will, the charge cannot be denied. But to me the demeanour of either towards the other seems nothing more than the legitimate and indeed inevitable expression of the difference of character which nature had assigned to the two men. Being such as they were, and being engaged in the same work, what could they do but disagree? Each thought the other was marring it. But it would be as reasonable to infer ill-will to Bacon on the part of Coke because he said the Norum Organum was only fit for the Ship of Fools, as to infer ill-will to Coke on the part of Bacon because he said it would be a good thing to remove him from the Chief Justiceship, and a bad thing to restore him to the Council. It was not ill-will on either side: it was only a difference of opinion which under the circumstances could not express itself except in 1 Athenæum, 10 June, 1871. 2 Apophthegms from Rawley's commonplace book, vol. vii. p. 182. |