PREFATORY NOTE. THE materials for the whole of Bacon's period are to be found in the work of that most brilliant author, Mr Froude, and in the pages of the fairest of living historians, Professor S. R. Gardiner. My obligations to the latter are even greater than may be inferred from my numerous acknowledgments. His Life of Bacon in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' confirming in almost every point my previous view, would have left me little to add had it not been obviously cramped in space. The scattered comments in his 'History' only require to be brought together to convey the most adequate representation yet offered to us of the great man's career. With this exception, Bacon's biography has been hitherto written by rival partisans. The duel between Mr Montague and Lord Macaulay has been renewed between Mr Spedding, inveterately bent on believing the best, and Dr Abbott, equally determined to believe the worst of the subject of their opposite portraitures. |