Sir Nicholas Bacon's Death

Sometime in February, 1579, Francis Bacon dreamt that Sir Nicholas Bacon's house was plastered with black mortar, and he awoke with a feeling that something had happened to a member of the family. A few days later he learned that his father had died suddenly on the 20th Frebruary.

At least seven years or more after Bacon's return from the French Court we know little or nothing of him or his pursuits, by traditional biography, beyond being baldly told that on the 27th June, 1582, on the completion of three years' terms, when he was 21, he was called to the Bar and made an utter barrister, and that in 1584 he was elected a Member of Parliament by the burgesses of Melcombe in Dorsetshire, and also returned for the pocket constituency of Gatton.

Bacon's literary efforts

On his return from France, Francis Bacon plunged actively into writing books to add to English Literature, which was most deficient both in quality and quantity. He published the first edition of Euphues Anatomy of Wit which he had written in France in 1576 anonymously. The second edition was published as by John Lyly, Master of Arts. He also published The Shcool of Abuse in the name of Stephen Gosson; also two poems at the end of The Pleasant History of the Conquest of West India, also in the name of Gosson.

• On 15th December, 1579, Francis brought out an Emblem Calendar and called it The Shepheards Calendar and dedicated it to his friend and cousin, Sir Philip Sidney, signing himself Immerito.
• In July 1580, a clerk named Edmund Spenser, who was in the Earl of Leicester's service, left for employment in Ireland, but, before going, Francis made a bargain with him for the use of his name on books. Immediately after Spenser's departure, Francis printed five letters which had passed between himself and his tutor Grabriel Harvey on the subject of the reform of English verse, and signed the letters Immerito.
• In a letter to Burghley dated 18th October, 1580, Francis duly thanked the Queen for providing him with a maintenance allowance. In this year he published Euphues and his England in the name of John Lyly, Master of Arts. He also writes a tale Mamillia and enters it in the Stationers' Register.
• 1581 Francis prints a book called Don Simonides, an account of his travel in Italy and Spain, title-paged to one Barnaby Rich. He also does a translation from Greek into Latin of the Antigone of Sophocles in the name of Thomas Watson, who is a biographical myth.
• 1583 He published Mamillia, which he wrote in 1580, in the name of Robert Greene who had been one of the Queen's Chapel Choristers, and obtained a post in the Chapel-Royal in charge of the boys. He also publishes in the name of Greene Morando, Arblasto, Myrrour of Modesty, Carde of Fancie and Debate between Folly and Love.
• 1584 He publishes Forbonius and Prisceria, title-paged to Thomas Lodge, a servant of the Earl of Leicester, and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. He arranges with the Queen to make Robert Greene vicar of Tollesbury in Essex and publishes in Greene's name a serious tretise on Astronomy called Planetomachia, dedicating it to his father, the Earl of Leicester. Francis prints two Court Comedies Compaspe and Sapho and Phao in the name of Lyly. Another play The Arraignment of Paris, afterwards ascribed to Geroge Peele, he printed anonymously.
• 1585 He publishes under the name of Watson a translation into Latin of Tasso's Pastoral Drama Amyntas.
• Queen Elizabeth commissions Francis to write a book on The Art of Poetry which would give the Queen an opportunity of publishig some of her own verses and at the same time enable Francis to expound the rules of Poetry which he had studied.
• He writes the play of Hamlet perfermond by Players in the employ of the Earl of Leicester. Wm. Shaksper was still at stratford and did not come to London until 1586.
• 1586 March, sends his father's (Leicester) unemployed assistant Goffrey Whitney to Leyden to see the new book through the plantin Press called the Choice of Emblems. In May the book is published in the name of Whitney and dedicated to the Earl of Leicester: also a booklet Discourse of English Poetrie in the name of William Webbe. He also publishes a Treatise of Melancholy by T. Bright, Doctor of Phisicke. In 1621, Francis revised and extended the treatise, and published it in the name of his then assitant Robert Burton. Penelope's Webb dedicated to his aunt, the Countess of Warwick and her sister the Countess of Cumberland, he published in the name of Greene. In this name he also published a story Euphues' Censure to Philautus dedicating it to his brother the Earl of Essex.
• 1587 in Watson's name he published a translation into Latin of a short Greek poem by Coluthus called The Rape of Helen. In this year he commenced to write Love's Labour's Lost, a comedy about the Court Life of Navarre with minute details of French History which could have only been gained by access to recors in France. Three of the characters are the names of real men - Longueville, Dumain and Boyet; the two last names appear on Anthony Bacon's French Passport now in the British Museum.