Bacon could no more have written the plays than Shakespeare could have prophesied the triumphs of natural philosophy.

So ended a career, than which no other in his time had grander and nobler aims--aims, however mistaken, for the greatness and good of England; aims for the enlargement of knowledge and truth, and for the benefit of mankind.

So ended a career which had mounted slowly and painfully, but resolutely, to the highest pinnacle of greatness--greatness full of honour and beneficent activity--suddenly to plunge down to depths where honour and hope were irrecoverable.

So closed, in disgrace and disappointment and neglect, the last sad chapter of a life which had begun so brightly, which had achieved such permanent triumphs, which had lost itself so often in the tangles of insincerity and evil custom, which was disfigured and marred by great misfortunes, and still more by great mistakes of his own, which was in many ways misunderstood not only by his generation but by himself, but which he left in the constant and almost unaccountable faith that it would be understood and greatly honoured by posterity.

With all its glories, it was the greatest shipwreck, the greatest tragedy, of an age which saw many.
But in these gloomy and dreary days of depression and vain hope to which his letters bear witness--"three years and five months old in misery," again later, "a long cleansing week of five years' expiation and more"-- his interest in his great undertaking and his industry never flagged.