As one that wisheth you all increase of honour, and as one that cannot leave to love the state, what interest soever I have, or may come to have in it, and as one that now this dead vacation time have some leisure ‘ad aliud agendum,’ I will presume to propound unto you that which though you cannot but see, yet I know not whether you apprehend and esteem it in so high a degree that is, for the best action of importation to yourself, of sound honour and merit to her Majesty, and this crown, without ventosity or popularity, that the riches of any occasion, or the tide of any opportunity can possibly minister or offer. And that is, the causes of Ireland, if they be taken by the right handle: for if the wound be not ripped up again, and come to a festered sense, by new foreign succours, I think that no physician will go on much with letting blood ‘in declinatione morbi,’ but will intend to purge and corroborate. To which purpose I send you mine opinion, without labour of words in the inclosed, and sure I am, that if you shall enter into the matter according to the vivacity of your own spirit, nothing can make unto you a more gainful return; for you shall make the queen s felicity complete, which now (as it is) is incomparable; and for yourself, you shall make yourself as good a patriot as you are thought a politic, and to have no less generous ends than dexterous delivery of yourself towards your ends; and as well to have true arts and
This, I hope, I may in privateness write, either as a kinsman, that may be bold, or as a scholar, that hath liberty of discourse, without committing of any absurdity. If not, I pray your honour to believe, I ever loved her Majesty and the state, and now love yourself; and there is never any vehement love without some absurdity, as the Spaniard well saith, ‘desuario con la calentura.’
So, desiring your honour's pardon, I ever continue, etc.
Fr. Bacon