Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

90 FRANCIS BACON
H
to be, having had whatsoever nature or breeding could put
in him."
Sir Nicholas is described as " a stout, easy man, full of contrivance,
with an original and projective mind." The grounds
laid out by him at Gorkambury suggested to his son those ideas
of gardening which he himself afterwards put into practice,
and which, developed in his essays and other writings, i have
led to the foundation of an English style of gardening. 2
So with regard to cultivation of another kind. The scheme
which Sir Nicholas presented to Henry VIII. for the endowment
of a school of. law and languages in London, is thought to have
been, perhaps, the original germ of the New Atlantis, the
idea being transferred from statecraft to nature. In politics
the Lord Keeper held to the English party;
that party which set
its face against Rome, and those who represented Koine;
against
the Jesuits, the Spaniards, and the Queen of Scots. If ho felt
warm against any one, it was against the latter, whom he detested,
not ouly as
a wicked woman, but as a political tool in
the hands of France and Spain. By the help of his clear head
and resolute tongue, the great change of religion, which had
recently taken place, had been accomplished, and it may easily
be believed that " Burghley himself was scarcely more honoured
by invective from Jesuit pens." But on the bench he had
neither an equal nor an enemy. Calm, slow, cautious in his
dealings, he was at the same time merry, witty, and overflowing
with humour and repartee; qualities which recommended him
very highly to the irritable, clever Queen, who loved a jest
as well as he, and who seems to have appreciated the value of a
faithful minister imbued with so much strong common sense,
and with no dangerous qualities. Francis Bacon records a saying
concerning his father, which was, doubtless, to the point, or
he would not have entered it amongst his apophthegms: " Some
men look wiser than they are, — the Lord Keeper is wiser than
he looks.
1 There seeui to be many books of gardening and kindred subjects which
will some day be traced to Bacon.
2 Hepworth Dixon's Story of Bacon's Life, p. 17, from which we shall make
large extracts, the book being out of print.