The two lives, the two currents of purpose and effort, were still there.

Behind all the wrangle of the courts and the devising of questionable legal subtleties to support some unconstitutional encroachment, or to outflank the defence of some obnoxious prisoner, the high philosophical meditations still went on; the remembrance of their sweetness and grandeur wrung more than once from the jaded lawyer or the baffled counsellor the complaint, in words which had a great charm for him, _Multum incola fuit anima mea_--"My soul hath long dwelt" where it would not be.

But opinion and ambition and the immense convenience of being great and rich and powerful, and the supposed necessities of his condition, were too strong even for his longings to be the interpreter and the servant of nature.

There is no trace of the faintest reluctance on his part to be the willing minister of a court of which not only the principal figure, but the arbiter and governing spirit, was to be George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
The first leisure that Bacon had after he was appointed Solicitor he used in a characteristic way.

He sat down to make a minute stock-taking of his position and its circumstances.