"_Auctori consilium_. Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum: Instaura leges justitiamque prius." He added, with allusion to the ship in the frontispiece of the _Novum Organum_, "It deserveth not to be read in schools, But to be freighted in the ship of Fools." CHAPTER VII. BACON'S LAST YEARS. [1621-1626.] The tremendous sentences of those days, with their crushing fines, were often worse in sound than in reality. They meant that for the moment a man was defeated and disgraced. But it was quite understood that it did not necessarily follow that they would be enforced in all their severity. The fine might be remitted, the imprisonment shortened, the ban of exclusion taken off. At another turn of events or caprice the man himself might return to favour, and take his place in Parliament or the Council as if nothing had happened. But, of course, a man might have powerful enemies, and the sentence might be pressed. His fine might be assigned to some favourite; and he might be mined, even if in the long run he was pardoned; or he might remain indefinitely a prisoner. Raleigh had remained to perish at last in dishonour. Northumberland, Raleigh's fellow-prisoner, after fifteen years' captivity, was released this year. The year after Bacon's condemnation such criminals as Lord and Lady Somerset were released from the Tower, after a six years' imprisonment. Southampton, the accomplice of Essex, Suffolk, sentenced as late as 1619 by Bacon for embezzlement, sat in the House of Peers which judged Bacon, and both of them took a prominent part in judging him.