Francis Bacon, the subject of the following memoir, was the youngest son of highly remarkable parents. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was an eminent lawyer, and for twenty years Keeper of the Seals and Privy Counsellor to Queen Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas was styled by Camden sacris conciliis alterum columen; he was the author of some unpublished discourses on law and politics, and of a commentary on the minor prophets. He discharged the duties of his high office with exemplary propriety and wisdom; he preserved through life the integrity of a good man, and the moderation and simplicity of a great one. He had inscribed over the entrance of his hall, at Gorhambury, the motto, mediocria firma; and when the Queen, in a progress, paid him a visit there, she remarked to him that his house was too small for him. “Madam,” answered the Lord Keeper, “my house is well, but it is you that have made me too great for my house.” This anecdote has been preserved by his son,1 who, had he as carefully retained the lesson of practical wisdom it contained, might have avoided the misfortunes and sorrows of his checkered life.
Bacon’s mother, Anne Cooke, was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward the Sixth; like the young ladies of her time, like Lady Jane Grey, like Queen Elizabeth, she received an excellent classical education; her sister, Lady Burleigh, was pronounced by Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s preceptor, to be, with the exception of Lady Jane Grey, the best Greek scholar among the young women of England.2 Anne Cooke, the future Lady Bacon, corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and translated from the Latin this divine’s Apologia; a task which she performed so well that it is said the good prelate could not discover an