CHAPTER IV.
BACON SOLICITOR-GENERAL.
The great thinker and idealist, the great seer of a world of knowledge to which the men of his own generation were blind, and which they could not, even with his help, imagine a possible one, had now won the first step in that long and toilsome ascent to success in life, in which for fourteen years he had been baffled.

He had made himself, for good and for evil, a servant of the Government of James I.He was prepared to discharge with zeal and care all his duties.

He was prepared to perform all the services which that Government might claim from its servants.

He had sought, he had passionately pressed to be admitted within that circle in which the will of the King was the supreme law; after that, it would have been ruin to have withdrawn or resisted.

But it does not appear that the thought or wish to resist or withdraw ever presented itself; he had thoroughly convinced himself that in doing what the King required he was doing the part of a good citizen, and a faithful servant of the State and Commonwealth.