They were not of easy solution, and great mischief would follow if they were solved wrongly.

Bacon turned his attention to them.

He addressed a discourse to the King on the union of the two kingdoms, the first of a series of discussions on the subject which Bacon made peculiarly his own, and which, no doubt, first drew the King's attention and favour to him.
But for the first year of James's reign he was unnoticed by the King, and he was able to give his attention more freely to the great thought and hope of his life.

This time of neglect gave him the opportunity of leisurely calling together and examining the ideas which had long had hold of his mind about the state of human knowledge, about the possibilities of extending it, about the hopes and powers which that new knowledge opened, and about the methods of realising this great prospect.

This, the passion of his life, never asleep even in the hottest days of business or the most hopeless days of defeat, must have had full play during these days of suspended public employment.