At court, though no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal affairs.
Before the English visit Voltaire had been an elegant trifler, an adept in the forms of literature popular in French society, a sort of superior Dorat or Boufflers of earlier growth.
While, therefore, it is a profound mistake to regard Bacon as a great constructive philosopher, or even as a lonely pioneer of modern thought, it is quite unfair to speak of him as a trifler.