Notwithstanding the sorrowfulness of the letter, there lurks within it a vein of the humour that rendered him so delightful a companion, and through it all can be perceived the indomitable spirit of the man, that, even in the bitterest moment of his shattered fortunes, rose superior to the ruin that had overtaken him.
The energy that had made him so powerful in his public career did not desert him in his retirement.
With all the ardour of his great heart, he loved his country home, his quiet lodgings in Gray's Inn, and the studies to which, during the last years of his life, he wholly devoted himself. It was at this period that he wrote some of his most important English and Latin works; and from these it is evident that his thoughts were as free, and as vigorous, as they had ever been during the earliest and most brilliant years of his career.
Although he had been unhappy in having had many false and unworthy friends, one, at least, loved him faithfully to the end; and it was by him, Sir Thomas Meanty, his secretary, that the monument was erected to his memory in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans.
Many have written the biography of this distinguished man, but the best evidences of his life are the works he has given to the world: works replete with noble thoughts; works so grand, that they make us the more regret that there should be even one flaw to tarnish the golden lustre that shines around the name of one so brilliant, so illustrious.
It was in chambers in Coney Court, now called Gray's Inn Square, that Bacon passed his last years, and where he wrote several of his greatest works.
The aspect of these old houses--indeed, of these old chambers--bears traces, not only of the storms and sunshine that have passed over them in all this lapse of time, but they also speak to us powerfully of the vicissitudes of human life, and of the changes that are taking place around us yearly, nay, hourly.
What anxiety and distress, what joy and what pain, have not these old walls witnessed.
How many hearts have beat high with hope, or have been racked with anguish in the thoughtful gloom of many of these shadowy rooms.
Bacon himself, though he bore so brave a front before the world, must have had many torturing recollections and regrets as he paced up and down these ancient chambers. But then, again, what noble thoughts came to cheer and support him as he overcame the keenness of his pain, and fixed his mind on objects higher and grander than the passing events of human life.