A "fatal impatience," as Bacon calls it, gave his rivals an advantage which, perhaps in self-defence, they could not fail to take; and that career, so brilliant, so full of promise of good, ended in misery, in dishonour, in remorse, on the scaffold of the Tower.
With this attractive and powerful person Bacon's fortunes, in the last years of the century, became more and more knit up.

Bacon was now past thirty, Essex a few years younger.

In spite of Bacon's apparent advantage and interest at Court, in spite of abilities, which, though his genius was not yet known, his contemporaries clearly recognised, he was still a struggling and unsuccessful man: ambitious to rise, for no unworthy reasons, but needy, in weak health, with careless and expensive habits, and embarrassed with debt.

He had hoped to rise by the favour of the Queen and for the sake of his father.

For some ill-explained reason he was to the last disappointed.