( ?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness, pride, and rudeness." (And then follows a long list of matters of business to be attended to.) These arts of a court were not new; it was not new for men to observe them in their neighbours and rivals.

What was new was the writing them down, with deliberate candour, among a man's private memoranda, as things to be done and with the intention of practising them.

This of itself, it has been suggested, shows that they were unfamiliar and uncongenial to Bacon; for a man reminds himself of what he is apt to forget.

But a man reminds himself also of what seems to him, at the moment, most important, and what he lays most stress upon.

And it is clear that these are the rules, rhetorical and ethical, which Bacon laid down for himself in pursuing the second great object of his life--his official advancement; and that, whatever we think of them, they were the means which he deliberately approved.
As long as Salisbury lived, the distrust which had kept Bacon so long in the shade kept him at a distance from the King's ear, and from influence on his counsels.