al to him fell dead. Bacon sent the book
about to his friends with explanatory letters. To Sir T. Bodley he
writes:

"I think no man may more truly say with the Psalm, _Multum incola
fuit anima mea_ [Ps. 120] than myself. For I do confess since I was
of any understanding, my mind hath in effect been absent from that
I have done; and in absence are many errors which I willingly
acknowledge; and among them, this great one which led the rest:
that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book
than to play a part, I have led my life in civil causes, for which
I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by the preoccupation
of my mind. Therefore, calling myself home, I have now enjoyed
myself; whereof likewise I desire to make the world partaker."

To Lord Salisbury, in a note of elaborate compliment, he describes his
purpose by an image which he repeats more than once. "I shall content
myself to awake better spirits, _like a bell-ringer, which is first up
to call others to church_." But the two friends whose judgment he
chiefly valued, and who, as on other occasions, were taken into his most
intimate literary confidence, were Bishop Andrewes, his "inquisitor,"
and Toby Matthews, a son of the Archbishop of York, who had become a
Roman Catholic, and lived in Italy, seeing a good deal of learned men
there, apparently the most trusted of all Bacon's friends.

When Parliament met again in November, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot and its
consequences filled all minds. Bacon was not employed about it by
Government, and his work in the House was confined to carrying on
matters left unfinished from the previous session. On the rumour of
legal promotions and vacancies Bacon once more applied to Salisbury for
the Solicitorship (March, 1606). But no changes were made, and Bacon was
"still next the door." In May, 1606, he did what had for some time been
in his thoughts: he married; not the lady whom Essex had tried to win
for him, that Lady Hatton who became the wife of his rival Coke, but one
whom Salisbury helped him to gain, an alderman's daughter, Alice
Barnham, "an handsome maiden," with some money and a disagreeable
mother, by her second marriage, Lady Packington. Bacon's curious love of
pomp amused the gossips of the day. "Sir Francis Bacon," writes Carleton
to Chamberlain, "was married yesterday to his young wench, in Maribone
Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in pu