The law, if he did not like it, was yet no
by-work with him; he was as truly ambitious as the men with whom he
maintained so keen and for long so unsuccessful a rivalry. He felt
bitterly the disappointment of seeing men like Coke and Fleming and
Doddridge and Hobart pass before him; he could not, if he had been only
a lawyer, have coveted more eagerly the places, refused to him, which
they got; only, he had besides a whole train of purposes, an inner and
supreme ambition, of which they knew nothing. And with all this there is
no apparent consciousness of these manifold and varied interests. He
never affected to conceal from himself his superiority to other men in
his aims and in the grasp of his intelligence. But there is no trace
that he prided himself on the variety and versatility of these powers,
or that he even distinctly realized to himself that it was anything
remarkable that he should have so many dissimilar objects and be able so
readily to pursue them in such different directions.
It is doubtful whether, as long as Elizabeth lived, Bacon could ever
have risen above his position among the "Learned Counsel," an office
without patent or salary or regular employment.
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