Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 103
which were supposed to explain the fact of the comparative retirement
in which he lived at home and abroad. Francis seems
chiefly to have suffered from those nervous disorders— toothache,
sleeplessness, and " vapours, " " clouds and melancholy "
which too often beset the body where the spirit over-crows it.
In later life, looking back, he speaks of having had good health
in his youth; so the ,!
puddering with the potigarie " was probably
entailed by the overstrain of such unremitting and exciting
work as he undertook. -His natural constitution must have been
singularly good, and his strength unusual, for to the labours of
Hercules he added those of Atlas, cleansing and restoring the
world, and bearing the weight of the whole tremendous work
upon his own shoulders.
But for the present we may look on Francis Bacon as free from
care or anxiety. " We must picture him as in the season of allembracing
hope, dreaming on things to come, and rehearsing
his life to himself in that imaginary theatre where all things go
right; for such was his case when—hopeful, sensitive, bashful,
amiable, wise and well-informed for his age, and glowing
with noble aspirations— he put forth into the world with happy
auspices in his sixteenth year. " l
What a change of scene, what a revulsion of ideas, what an
upsetting of habits, opinions and prejudices, for a boy to be sent
forth from the quiet college life under the supervision of Whitgift,
and from the still more strict routine of a Puritan home, into the
gaiety, frivolity, dissipation of the life of courts and camps!
True, Sir Amias and Laily Margaret Paulet, in whose suite
Francis was to travel, were kind and good, and, if young in
years, Francis was old in jndgment. But all the more, let us
picture to ourselves the effect on that lively imagination, and
keenly observant mind, of the scenes into which he was now
precipitated. For the English Ambassador was going on a mission
to the court of Henri III. at Paris, and from thence with the
throng of nobles who attended the King of France and the Queen
Mother. The English embassy, with Francis in its train, went in
1 Spedding, Letters and Life, i. 6.