(we may observe in passing) in a diplomatic manner; he writing half the matter in his own letter, and Anthony being more explicit in a letter he sends at the same time. It is impossible not to remark that Bacon is grasping at the higher prizes of the profession before he has endured the heat and burden of a lawyer’s life. His friend Essex being unable to procure for him either the Attorney-Generalship or the Solicitor-Generalship, and feeling indebted for many services, gave him a small estate, worth, we are told, £1800 in the currency of these times. This was a gift which, in one sense of the word, Bacon may be said to have earned; but, if we may judge according to the present state of feeling on these matters, it was a gift which he could not have felt perfectly satisfied in accepting. Nothing but his debts, we venture to assert, persuaded him to accept it. The services he had rendered were not such as are paid by money—they were never rendered for money-payment. It would be a very coarse interpretation (and one which Mr Spedding has avoided) to call this gift a _fee_ for advice and assistance tendered to the Earl. It was not professional advice that he gave, whether he taught him how to rise at Court, or assisted him in the duties of a privy councillor. There was an interchange of good offices between the two men; but Bacon sinks from his rightful equality if he accepts money as an equivalent for any _balance_ of such good offices as might be in his favour. Mr Spedding suggests that the aid which Bacon rendered in certain masques or devices got up for the entertainment of the Queen must be included in the list of his services; but Mr Spedding would not certainly have counselled him to hold out his hand for a money-payment for what was doubtless entered into in the spirit of a literary amusement. If, indeed, the two speeches which are given us here on Knowledge and in Praise of the Queen were really delivered at these devices, Bacon must have made these entertainments subservient to certain graver purposes of his own. We should like to know if the audience felt thankful to the author for his eloquent but very long orations.