He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion ...

the fear of every man that heard him was that he should make an end." He notices one feature for which we are less prepared, though we know that the edge of Bacon's sarcastic tongue was felt and resented in James's Court.

"His speech," says Ben Jonson, "was nobly censorious when he could _spare and pass by a jest_." The unpopularity which certainly seems to have gathered round his name may have had something to do with this reputation.
Yet as an English writer Bacon did not expect to be remembered, and he hardly cared to be.

He wrote much in Latin, and his first care was to have his books put into a Latin dress.

"For these modern languages," he wrote to Toby Matthews towards the close of his life, "will at one time or another play the bank-rowte with books, and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad if God would give me leave to recover it with posterity." He wanted to be read by the learned out of England, who were supposed to appreciate his philosophical ideas better than his own countrymen, and the only way to this was to have his books translated into the "general language." He sends Prince Charles the _Advancement_ in its new Latin dress.