[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The Baconian quarrel between
Mr. Spedding and Dr. Abbott is too pretty a one, as it stands, for outsiders to interfere in, but Dr. Abbott's article in this month's Contemporary suggests a question.
Dr. Abbott says that Bacon was under great obligations to Essex, and that Essex having sinned against Queen and country, Bacon should have left it to others to arraign him before his countrymen, instead of being, as he was, his prosecutor, and in some sort his accuser. Bacon in thus acting was base.
Mr. Abbott is under deep literary obligations to Mr. Spedding, obligations such as he finds it difficult to express (see, inter alia, his preface to the " Essays "). Mr. Spedding rails against, not Queen and country, but Dr. Abbott, and forthwith Dr. Abbott arraigns Mr. Spedding before the public, with a vigour and a bitterness which Bacon never even approached, in either his speeches or his writings against Essex. In acting thus, is Dr. Abbott base ? If not, why not, if Dr. Abbott's theory is good ?
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