r had
become so serious, that in speaking of books, papers, and documents
he would have recourse to any periphrasis rather than mention in his
master's hearing the name of the fallen angel. And yet Sir Thomas was
always talking to himself about Sir Francis Bacon, and was always
writing his life.

There are men who never dream of great work, who never realise to
themselves the need of work so great as to demand a lifetime, but who
themselves never fail in accomplishing those second-class tasks with
which they satisfy their own energies. Men these are who to the world
are very useful. Some few there are, who seeing the beauty of a great
work and believing in its accomplishment within the years allotted
to man, are contented to struggle for success, and struggling, fail.
Here and there comes one who struggles and succeeds. But the men are
many who see the beauty, who adopt the task, who promise themselves
the triumph, and then never struggle at all. The task is never
abandoned; but days go by and weeks; and then months and years,--and
nothing is done. The dream of youth becomes the doubt of middle life,
and then the despair of age. In building a summer-house it is so easy
to plant the first stick, but one does not know where to touch the
sod when one begins to erect a castle. So it had been with Sir Thomas
Underwood and his life of Bacon. It would not suffice to him to
scrape together a few facts, to indulge in some fiction, to tell a
few anecdotes, and then to call his book a biography. Here was a man
who had risen higher and was reported to have fallen lower,--perhaps
than any other son of Adam. With the finest intellect ever given to
a man, with the purest philanthropy and the most enduring energy, he
had become a by-word for greed and injustice. Sir Thomas had resolved
that he would tell the tale as it had never yet been told, that he
would unravel facts that had never seen the light, that he would let
the world know of what nature really had been this man,--and that
he would write a book that should live. He had never abandoned his
purpose; and now at sixty years of age, his purpose remained with
him, but not one line of his book was written.

And yet the task had divorced him in a measure from the world. He
had not been an unsuccessful man in life. He had made money, and had
risen nearly to the top of his profession. He had been in Parliament,
and was even now a member. But yet he had been divorced from
the world,