Had you been here, you should have been my inquisitor before it came forth; but I think the greatest inquisitor in Spain will allow it....

My great work goeth forward, and, after my manner, I alter ever when I add.
So that nothing is finished till all be finished.
"From Gray's Inn, the 17th of February, 1610." In the autumn of 1611 the Attorney-General was ill, and Bacon reminded both the King and Salisbury of his claim.

He was afraid, he writes to the King, with an odd forgetfulness of the persistency and earnestness of his applications, "that _by reason of my slowness to sue_, and apprehend occasions upon the sudden, keeping one plain course of painful service, I may _in fine dierum_ be in danger to be neglected and forgotten." The Attorney recovered, but Bacon, on New Year's Tide of 1611/12, wrote to Salisbury to thank him for his good-will.

It is the last letter of Bacon's to Salisbury which has come down to us.
"IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD LORDSHIP,--I would entreat the new year to answer for the old, in my humble thanks to your Lordship, both for many your favours, and chiefly that upon the occasion of Mr.
Attorney's infirmity I found your Lordship even as I would wish.
This doth increase a desire in me to express my thankful mind to your Lordship; hoping that though I find age and decays grow upon me, yet I may have a flash or two of spirit left to do you service.
And I do protest before God, without compliment or any light vein of mind, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that center.

But all this is no more than I am, which is not much, but yet the entire of him that is--" In the following May (May 24, 1612) Salisbury died.