And yet friendship, too, has claims, at least on a man's memory.

Essex had been a dear friend, if words could mean anything.

He had done more than any man had done for Bacon, generously and nobly, and Bacon had acknowledged it in the amplest terms.

Only a year before he had written, "I am as much yours as any man's, and as much yours as any man." It is not, and it was not, a question of Essex's guilt.

It may be a question whether the whole matter was not exaggerated as to its purpose, as it certainly was as to its real danger and mischief.