But this is what Bacon had not.

He did not mind being rebuffed; he knew that he was right, and did not care.

But to stand up against the King, to contradict him after he had spoken, to press an opinion or a measure on a man whose belief in his own wisdom was infinite, to risk not only being set down as a dreamer, but the King's displeasure, and the ruin of being given over to the will of his enemies, this Bacon had not the fibre or the stiffness or the self-assertion to do.

He did not do what a man of firm will and strength of purpose, a man of high integrity, of habitual resolution, would have done.

Such men insist when they are responsible, and when they know that they are right; and they prevail, or accept the consequences.
Bacon, knowing all that he did, thinking all that he thought, was content to be the echo and the instrument of the cleverest, the foolishest, the vainest, the most pitiably unmanly of English kings.
FOOTNOTES: [3] _Calendar of State Papers_ (domestic), March 24, 1621.
[4] _Commons' Journals_, March 17, April 27; iii.