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relieved himself from the embarrassment of his debts by selling the reversion of his property and purchasing an annuity, and would then have abandoned a profession for which he had no love, and lived the life of a student. But he was kept in suspense during the summer of 1593, and the delay decided his future career.

In March, 1593-4, he drew up a report, not printed in his lifetime, ‘of the detestable treason, intended by Dr. Roderigo Lopez, a physician attending upon the person of the Queen’s Majesty,’ which had been traced out with great skill by Essex. The latter meanwhile was urging Bacon’s claims upon the Queen with a pertinacity and petulance which rather injured than furthered his cause. Heartsick with hope deferred, Bacon writes to his friend, ‘I will, by God’s assistance ..... retire myself with a couple of men to Cambridge, and there spend my life in my studies and contemplations, without looking back.’ On the 10th of April Coke’s patent as Attorney- General was made out and delivered. By this appointment the Solicitorship became vacant, and Essex renewed his importunities with the Queen, who disparaged Bacon in his legal capacity as one who was not deep, but rather showed to the utmost of his knowledge, while she admitted he had ‘a great wit and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning.’ On the 27th of July, 1594, being detained by illness at Huntingdon on his way north, he paid a visit to Cambridge, and received the honorary degree of Master of Arts. The Queen was still relentless, but had given way so far as to employ him on the 13th of June in the examination of two persons in the Tower, who were implicated in a conspiracy. In August and September he is again at work upon business of the same kind. Still the long hoped-for promotion did not come. In the Christmas vacation of this year he amused himself with beginning his ‘Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,’ and in writing speeches for an entertainment at Gray’s Inn. The suspense of more than a year and half was brought to an end by the appointment of Serjeant Fleming to the Solicitorship on the 5th of November, 1595. Essex was mor-