floors for the honour of having been the
residence of Bacon. As the seven towns
contended for the honour of the birthplace of
Homer, nearly all the chambers of Number
One contest the honour of the company of
Bacon. I knocked at one of the doors on
the ground-floor, and petitioned for permission
to look at the apartments. A fair-haired,
red-faced clerk—pen in hand,
uncombed, unbrushed, and brusque—answered:
"You may see the room, but you must be
quick." Modern ceilings and alterations
induced the question: "You are quite sure
this is the room occupied by Lord Bacon?"
—"Quite sure, sir. This is classic ground; it
is mentioned in the lease." The courteous
gentleman on the first-floor entertained decided
opinions respecting the pretensions of the
ground-floor. Certainly the noble rooms of
the first-floor, with their ancient oak panelings,
appear worthy to have been the scene
of the greatest compositions of Bacon. During
his residence in Gray's Inn, the needy,
although highly connected Mr. Francis Bacon,
had to support the different pretensions of
the student, of Sir Francis Bacon, of Lord
Verulam, of Viscount St. Alban's, a youth of
twenty of slender means, a successful
barrister, an attorney-general, a lord chancellor
in retirement and disgrace. Probably he
occupied different chambers during his
residence in the Inn, and there cannot be a
doubt but that in his prosperous days, when
gentlemen lived in his service, his magnificent
and extravagant tastes made him occupy
the best apartments, if not the whole house.
There is internal evidence in favour of the
first-floor rooms, overlooking the garden and
the trees he had planted, being the rooms
in which he worked at his maturest works.

Never were moral and intellectual things
in greater contrast in one man than in Bacon
and the life he spent in Gray's Inn Square.
He went to live in the Inn a lad who had
lived to think, and who was henceforth
compelled to think to live. He vowed himself to
do great things in philosophy. Partus
Temporis Maximus was the title the aspiring boy
gave to his first draft of his great work. He
gave it his best thoughts for forty years.
He wrote it out in a dozen different shapes.
It is still the most eloquent exposition in
existence of the portion he knew of the science
of investigation. Socially, Lord Bacon
became the most successful talker of his day.
Noblemen asked to meet him at dinner,
brought their secretaries with them to note
down his apothegms and his anecdotes. At
the bar, his auditors on special occasions
could neither cough nor look aside while he
spoke. He gained the highest place in his
profession. He occupied the chair of his
king at the council board during the absence
of James in Scotland; and he made the
throne of Philosophy his own, to reign for
ages.

To all this mental greatness his moral
career was a most pitiful contrast. As York
House was the place of the birth, fame, and
shame of Francis Bacon, Gray's Inn was the
workshop of the lawyer, philosopher, and
historian.

York House was in the Strand, and its
gardens gently sloping towards the clear
Thames, commanded beautiful views of Surrey.
An anecdote is told of Lord Bacon
which recals the aspect of the Thames at
York House, and its gardens, when he was
chancellor towards the end of the reign of
King James the First. One summer afternoon
he had returned earlier than usual from
the Court of Chancery, and was walking in
his garden between his house and the river.
It was his custom to walk here attended by
his secretary, who, with his inkhorn at his
girdle, was ready to write down any sentences
he might choose to dictate. Of all his amanuenses he preferred Thomas Hobbes, who,
though only about twenty years of age when
Bacon was sixty, understood him best. In
this way the author of the Organon braced
the intellect of the author of the Leviathan.
On this particular afternoon, the fishermen
were busy rowing their boats and spreading
out their nets in the river to catch fish.
Lord Bacon advanced towards them when
they were pulling the net upon the beach,
asking, "How much will you take for all the
fish in your net?" What they said they
would take he said he would not give. The
net was pulled in completely and there was
no fish in it. "Ah!" said the Lord
Chancellor, "Hope may be a good reversion, but
it is a bad estate."

The palatial residence of the Chancellors
of England displayed unusual magnificence
on the sixtieth birthday of Bacon. He
celebrated by a grand entertainment the
successes of his life, his attainment of the
Chancellorship, and the publication of his
greatest work. Among the daily visitors at
his residence were Thomas Hobbes, his
amanuensis, William Harvey, his physician, the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and
Ben Jonson, who celebrated his merits in
prose and verse. I have often observed them
all in animated conversation in York
Gardens, walking along the alleys of wild
thyme and water-mint.

A walk from Leicester Square to York
Gate sufficed to conjure up before me the
ghosts of most of the greatest men of English
growth. At York Gardens I witnessed the
attempts of Harvey to interest Bacon in the
greatest and grandest discoveries respecting
the organisation of life--the revelation of the
secrets of the systems for the preservation of
the individual and of the species. I read in
the cynical face of young Thomas Hobbes the
fact that he was learning, from the contemplation
in Bacon of the union of mental
splendour with moral squalor, his philosophy
of Selfishness. Whenever I chose to look
across the river from the gardens of York