CHAPTER V.
BACON ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND CHANCELLOR.
Thus, at last, at the age of fifty-two, Bacon had gained the place which Essex had tried to get for him at thirty-two.

The time of waiting had been a weary one, and it is impossible not to see that it had been hurtful to Bacon.

A strong and able man, very eager to have a field for his strength and ability, who is kept out of it, as he thinks unfairly, and is driven to an attitude of suppliant dependency in pressing his claim on great persons who amuse him with words, can hardly help suffering in the humiliating process.

It does a man no good to learn to beg, and to have a long training in the art.

And further, this long delay kept up the distraction of his mind between the noble work on which his soul was bent, and the necessities of that "civil" or professional and political life by which he had to maintain his estate.
All the time that he was "canvassing" (it is his own word) for office, and giving up his time and thoughts to the work which it involved, the great _Instauration_ had to wait his hours of leisure; and his exclamation, so often repeated, _Multum incola fuit anima mea_, bears witness to the longings that haunted him in his hours of legal drudgery, or in the service of his not very thankful employers.