Francis Bacon was a delicate, attractive, and precocious child, noticed by the great, and kindly called by the queen "her little lord keeper." Ben Jonson refers to this when he writes, at a later day: England's high chancellor, the destined heir In his soft cradle to his father's chair.
Thus, in his early childhood, he became accustomed to the forms and grandeur of political power, and the modes by which it was to be striven for.
In his thirteenth year he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, then, as now, the more mathematical and scientific of the two universities.

But, like Gibbon at Oxford, he thought little of his alma mater, under whose care he remained only three years.

It is said that at an early age he disliked the Logic of Aristotle, and began to excogitate his system of Induction: not content with the formal recorded knowledge, he viewed the universe as a great storehouse of facts to be educed, investigated, and philosophically classified.
After leaving the university, he went in the suite of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador, to France; and recorded the observations made during his travels in a treatise _On the State of Europe_, which is thoughtful beyond his years.

The sudden death of his father, in February, 1579-80, recalled him to England, and his desire to study led him to apply to the government for a sinecure, which would permit him to do so without concern as to his support.

It is not strange--considering his youth and the entire ignorance of the government as to his abilities--that this was refused.