“Hear me, great Judges; if you have not lost For my sake all your charities, I beseech you Let the King know my heart is full of penitence; Calm his high-going sea, or in that tempest I ruin to eternity. O, my lords, Consider your own places and the helms You sit at; while with all your providence You steer, look forth and see devouring quicksands! My ambition now is punished, and my pride Of state and greatness falling into nothing; I, that had never time, through vast employments, To think of Heaven, feel His revengeful wrath Boiling my blood and scorching up my entrails. There’s doomsday in my conscience, black and horrid, For my abuse of justice; but no stings Prick with that terror as the wounds I made Upon the pious Admiral. Some good man Bear my repentance thither; he is merciful, And may incline the King to stay his lightning, Which threatens my confusion, that my free Resign of title, office, and what else My pride look’d at, would buy my poor life’s safety; Forever banish me the Court, and let Me waste my life far-off in some mean village.” After the Chancellor’s sentence, his secretary says:-- “I could have wished him fall on softer ground For his good parts.” Bacon’s monument, in St. Michael’s Church at St. Alban’s, was erected by _his_ secretary, Sir Thomas Meautys. Bacon did not appear at his trial; but there are several striking parallels between his letters of confession and the speech you have just heard. Another posthumously published tragedy of Chapman’s, the “Revenge for Honor,” is, in conception, the most original of them all, and the plot seems to be of his own invention. It has great improbabilities, but as the story is Oriental, we find it easier to forgive them. It is, on the whole, a very striking play, and with more variety of character in it than is common with Chapman.