We will not say that Mr Spedding’s narrative is never coloured by an imagination which has received its unconscious prompting from his admiration of Bacon: one rather amusing instance of this colouring of the imagination we think we have detected, and shall have occasion to notice; but no admiring biographer of a great man has more studiously refrained from thrusting forward his own opinions or conceptions where the reader is merely desirous of obtaining a clear insight into the facts themselves. Mr Spedding has not yet completed his task, but he has given us in these two volumes more materials of interest than in the space of a single paper we shall have room to touch upon, and the main topic which occupies them is fully discussed and finally dismissed. That topic is the relation between Bacon and Essex. Of the splendid Essay of Lord Macaulay’s, which is still ringing in the ears of most English readers, no part was written with more force, or was more damaging to the character of Bacon, than that which treated of his conduct to the Earl of Essex. Many who could have forgiven the peccant Chancellor for being too ready to accept whatever was offered to him in the shape of present or gratuity, could not pardon the cold-blooded and faithless friend. Now it is precisely on this subject that Mr Spedding presents us with materials for forming a very different judgment from that which the eloquent pages of Macaulay had betrayed us into. Up to the period when Essex disappears from the scene, these two volumes give us their clear guidance. Of that guidance we very gladly avail ourselves.