The first great error which Bacon committed, the consequence of which pursued him all his life, was _the running into debt_. It was a life-long fault. It was his fault, not his misfortune. He received less, we know, from his father than he might reasonably have expected, less than his brothers had received, but no biographer has ventured to call him poor—so poor that he could not have held his ground as a student of the law without incurring debt. Whether it was mere carelessness and imprudence, or a wilful spending “according to his hopes, not his possessions,” we find him very early in debt; and as years advance we find the debts, of course, more and more onerous. No one knew better than Bacon that he who owes has to borrow, and that he who borrows will have, in some form, to beg, to sue—will be tempted to sordid actions—will lose his independence, his upright attitude amongst men. There is no greater slavery than debt. It bred in Bacon that “itching palm,” and that perpetual suing, which disgrace his career. He begins to sue from his very first entry into life. He puts his trust in the Lord Treasurer. And what is remarkable, the very nature of the first suit he makes is unknown. It was some office, _not_ of a legal character, as we should conjecture. Writing to Walsingham about it, he says that the delay in answering it “hinders me from taking a course of practice which, by the leave of God, if her Majesty like not of my suit, I must and will follow: _not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit sake_, which I know by living out of action will wear.” At this date, 25th August 1585, he does not plead absolute inability to live on his private fortune. Subsequently, when his debts have increased, he writes upon this subject in a very different strain. He is embarrassed by usurers; he is arrested; debt comes upon him, as he says, like an armed man. Of the earliest years of Bacon few memorials remain. But Mr Spedding brings together two conspicuous facts. The first is, that Bacon, at the age of fifteen, conceives his project of a reformation in philosophy; and the second is, that immediately on leaving college he accompanies Sir Amias Paulet on his embassy to France. Thus philosophy and diplomacy, speculation and state-craft, study and the world, take at once joint possession of Francis Bacon. Of the first of these facts, and the most important in his life, Mr Spedding speaks in a passage of much eloquence, glowing and chastened withal:—