(LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO FBANCISCUS BACON. BARO DE VERULAM, S'"ALBANI VTC' SXVNOTIORIBrS TITtTLIS SCIENTIARUM LUMEN TACUNDLE iEX SIC SEDEBAT. THE BY NATHANIEL HOLMES. Td -yap avro votiv EOTLV re KCU elvcu. Parmenides. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON, 459 BROOME STREET. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by HCRD AND HOUOHTON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOCGHTON AND COMPANY. TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE HONORABLE THOMAS C. FLETCHER, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AS A WORTHY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CIVIL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS OF THE AGE, WHEREIN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGIOUS CULTURE, ARE TO FIND FREE COURSE AND BE GLORIFIED, THIS HUMBLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE TIME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. IN these days, perhaps, there needs be no apology for writing a book. But a book without a preface, like a dinner without a grace, would seem to be un- civil. Let us have, at least, " so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter." This book must speak for itself : I did not see any good reason why it should not be printed. It may be, that the belles-letters critics will think little of it, or the trade still less, or the fixed orthodoxies, that it ought never to have been written at all, or the philosophers, that it is no great affair at best. But inasmuch as thought and knowledge among men lie stratified, as it were, like the densities of the ocean, or the air, in grada- tions infinite between the lower deeps and the higher realms, this book, like any other that is thrown into the flowing sea of things, may find its own level and so float somewhere ; howsoever that level should come near to measuring the weight of book, writer, and reader. It does not presume to contain anything that is positively new, or that was unknown before : it claims only to state things in its own way. I have sometimes thought I had hit upon a new idea, or discovered a new fact, but I was pretty sure to find the same thing stated, or glanced at, in a week or so, in some newspaper, or in some book, new or old, and for that matter (it might be) as old as the vi PREFACE. hieroglyphics. If some things in this book should be new to some readers, they will bear in mind the saying of Plato, that " what is strange is the result of ignorance in the case of all " ; and if, to others, some things should appear to be either not new, or, if new, not true, they will, of course, exercise the common privilege and judge for themselves. Doubtless there have been many who could never rest satisfied with the story of William Shakespeare, any more than a Coleridge, or a Schlegel ; nor attain to any clear solution of the problem, that the spon- taneous genius of a born poet, without the help of much learning, should come to see deeper into all the mysteries of God, Nature, and Man, and write better about the universal world, than the most ac- complished scholars, critics, and philosophers, and be himself still unaware that he had done anything re- markable, wholly indifferent to fame (what might be no great wonder), and even (what may be more to the point) utterly heedless of the preservation of works which the author, howsoever he might deem them to be but trifles idly cast from him, could not but know to be " the wanton burthen of the prime " and the best (in that kind) of the age in which he lived, or of many ages : as if he had been one, " whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe " ; an unparalleled mortal, indeed! nor of that other problem, that a common under -actor should turn poet, and, rummaging over the hereditary lumber of the play-house, should gather up the best of the traditional material, and through the limbec of his PREFACE. Vll capacious brain distil the quintessence of British genius from time immemorial, a truly representa- tive man, forsooth ! Incredulous men that have been born as well as poets, and perhaps never believed so much as the tale about Santa Glaus, not to speak of many other prodigious miracles, may have pre- ferred to disbelieve all the biographers, critics, and teachers ; or, if still believing them, to deny, flatly, in the outset, without further question, or any par- ticular search, that there could be, or was, anything so very great in this Shakespeare drama after all ; or they may even have tried to persuade themselves that this ingenious actor had, by frequent hearing, caught the manner of the stage, and learned like a parrot to imitate the tone, style, and diction of trag- edy and comedy alike ; still believing that no deep learning, no superior wisdom, no high art, and no divine revelation, beyond the natural flow of good native wit and sense, was to be found in these plays, and that what little learning the author had, was all borrowed, or picked up about the streets and theatres, allowing only that he was gifted with some sharp powers of observation, " a facetious grace in writing," and a pretty large amount of faculty in general. And so, not imagining that the highest and best things could spontaneously well up in such a man as from an original fountain of inspiration, they may have laid him up on a shelf, and never afterwards looked for such things in his works ; and the jewels that lay scattered within sight may have been passed by un- seen, as if they had been pearls cast before swine : " 'T is very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take 't, Viii PREFACE. Because we see it ; but what we do not see, We tread upon, and never think of it." Meas.for Meas., Act II. Be. 1. Bacon found it to be just so with the history of Winds ; for, says he, " it is evident, that the dullness of men is such and so infelicitous, that when things are put before their feet, they do not see them, unless admonished, but pass right on." It would stand to reason, that the most precious things would not be strewn abroad thus by a mere swine-herd, if they had not come into his possession in an accidental or some other way, and without his having much knowledge of their real value ; nor by a coney-catch- ing, beer-drinking idler, or a common play-actor, or even a prosperous stage-manager. It must be ad- mitted that learning does not come by instinct ; nor can sensible men be made to believe that high phi- losophy can come by fantastic miracle. There never was any royal road to mathematics, though there have been very royal mathematicians. An article appeared in Putnam's Magazine for January 1856 (afterwards known to have been writ- ten by Delia Bacon), in which some general consid- erations were set forth with much eloquence and ability, why William Shakespeare could not have written the plays which have been attributed to him ; and the opinion was also pretty distinctly in- timated, that Lord Bacon was the real author of them, or, at least, that he had had some hand in the work ; but no proofs were then adduced. Being much struck with this idea, and for my own satisfac- tion, I began to look for the evidence on which such a proposition might rest, and finding it very consid- erable, and indeed quite amazing, I had thrown my PREFACE. ix notes into some form, before the publication of Miss Bacon's work in 1857. 1 Her book not appearing to have satisfied the critical world of the truth of her theory, much more than the " Letter to Lord Elles- mere," by Mr. William Henry Smith, I have thought it worth while to give them the results of my studies also, which have been considerably extended, since that date ; and if enough be not found herein to settle the question on impregnable grounds, it may at least tend to exculpate them from any supposition of mental aberration in so far as they have ascribed this authorship to Francis Bacon. But I do not at all agree with her opinion that any other person had a hand in the work : on the contrary, I will endeavor to show that the whole genuine canon of Shake- speare was written by this one and the same author. It may be that some persons have been already convinced of this fact : but the critics appear to be agreed in rejecting the theory altogether. More direct and palpable proofs seem to be required ; for this " our Shakespeare " was not to be stripped of the peerless mantle he had worn unquestioned for above two centuries and a half, on mere generalities, how- ever conclusive to the mind of the philosophical thinker. Certainly, if he is to be put on trial for his name and reputation, he has a right to be confronted with the proofs in the high court of criticism ; and his jury, which is the great republic of fetters, will require the best and the most ample evidence to be produced, before they will agree to disrobe him of all his honors. On nothing less than proof, the most positive, direct, and complete, will those " foreign * Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. By Delia Bacon, with a Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne. London and Boston, 1857. X PREFACE. nations and next ages," to whom the final appeal was made, now consent (such is the tenacity of long adverse possession) to eject the ass from the lion's skin, and turn over the rich legacy they have so long accepted in his name to the credit of another, though that other be one who considered his name and memory worth bequeathing to them : " Blanch. 0, well did he become that lion's robe That did disrobe the lion of that robe ! Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him As great Alcides' shews upon an ass. But, ass, I '11 take that burthen from your back, Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack." K. John, Act II. Sc. 1. It should be understood, to what manner of man this authorship belongs ; for it is not only " a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd," but a positive injury done to learning and philosophy, and to every individual scholar and man, who shall be taught to believe the enormous impossibility that such works could be, and were, written by mere genius without learning, or by some more fantasti- cally supernatural inspiration. Does not any honest man feel an unutterable indignation, when he dis- covers (after long years of thought and study, perhaps), that he has been all the while misled by false instruction, and that, consequently, the primest sources of truth have been left lumbering his shelves in neglect, because he could not, or even because he could (for it would be much the same thing with him, if he could) be made to believe that anything more could come from a very common (or indeed a very uncommon) person, than such a man could PREFACE. Xi know, and that he has thus been drawn aside by false shadows from those paths which alone can lead to a comprehensible philosophy of the universe, the real basis at last of his everlasting accountabilities, and been put off and befooled with paltry child's fables ? By the help of the Eternal Power and such abilities as we possess, let the truth and the proof of it come forth as fast, and spread as wide, as it is possible to make it. There is no danger of its getting too far by any means whatever. The chief object of this work is, to do something toward making the truth of this matter appear, still more clearly, and on other and (if possible) quite unanswerable grounds. It was written under the supposition that no one else would undertake to do the same thing better ; and it is published because it is believed that the duty is not yet sufficiently done (and I know very well how inadequate is this attempt to do it), that sublime duty, which the great testator, by his last will, left to foreign nations and the next ages to perform, whenever they should be able like himself to comprehend "the universal world," and, with Plato, to recognize the Philosopher, the Poet, the Seer, and the Saviour of men, for all one, justice to his name and memory. For the quotations from the Plays of Shakespeare, I have preferred to make them conform to the text of the edition edited by Richard Grant White, and published in Boston, in 1859-1862, except in a very few instances in which his emendations, or previous readings, appeared to me to be so clearly erroneous that I could not accept them ; and I have done this the more readily, because this edition has Xii PREFACE. evidently been edited with great care, good critical judgment, and excellent scholarship, and especially for the reason that the editor has taken the Folio of 1623 as the basis of his text and his criticism. For the text of Bacon, I have used the edition of his works edited by Basil Montagu (London 1825), and the American republication of it (Philadelphia 1854), and also the excellent edition of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (since the republication of it in Boston, in 1860-1864), which has been edited with extraordinary learning and ability ; but as the larger part of my work was done before this edition ap- peared, I have not thought it worth while to under- take the labor of making the references conform to either one edition only. Wherever I have discovered an erroneous reading to have been corrected by the later and better edition, I have not failed to profit by it. In making quotations from the Latin works, I have not hesitated to give my own translations, when no better were at hand, but always with especial care to preserve as far as possible the style, manner, and diction of the author, and, at all events, the exact meaning of the original, as it would be ex- pressed in the language of modern philosophy. For the Letters of Bacon, I have had to depend mainly upon the edition of Montagu, but with the valuable assistance of the first two volumes of the " Letters and Life of Lord Bacon " by James Sped- ding (London 1861-2), which contain the letters and occasional works down to the year 1601, carefully edited and explained in chronological order ; and I have regretted exceedingly that the remaining vol- umes of this interesting and important work have not yet appeared. PREFACE. The Frontispiece, engraved and brought to life by Mr. Joseph Andrews of Boston, is taken from the engraving (in Montagu's edition) of the white mar- ble monument which was erected to the memory of Lord Bacon by " the care and gratitude " of Sir Thomas Meautys, within the precincts of old Veru- lam, " representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying," says Dr. Rawley, together with a part of the inscription composed by that " rare wit," Sir Henry Wotton. Without more, the work is submitted to the con- sideration and judgment of the general jury of candid readers ; and, as more than one author has said be- fore, if they shall find half the pleasure in reading it that I have had in writing it, they shall be welcome. N. HOLMES. ST. Louis, May 21st, 1866. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARIES. SHAKESPEARE. PAGE 1. EARLY LIFE 1 2. EMPLOYMENTS 5 3. MANUSCRIPTS 7 4. HIS LEARNING 9 5. HIS STUDIES 28 6. EARLY PLAYS 31 7. DOUBTFUL PLAYS 50 8. THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS .... 56 9. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES 65 CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARIES. BACON. 1. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS 81 2. CIRCUMSTANCES 110 3. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS 117 4. THE GREATER PLAYS 131 5. ASSOCIATES 136 CHAPTER HI. FURTHER PROOFS. 1. PARALLEL WORKS 148 2. BEN JON8ON . 165 3. MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT 172 4. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS 177 5. REASONS FOR CONCEALMEKT 179 6. BACON A POET 184 7. GE8TA GRAYORUM 207 8. FRAGMENTS 228 xvi CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. MOKE DIRECT PROOFS. PAGE 1. THE RICHARD II 239 2. THE HENRY VIII 273 3. JULIUS CAESAR 286 4. THE SOOTHSAYER 290 5. MACBETH. VISIONS 295 6. PARALLELISMS 303 CHAPTER V. MODELS. 1. " ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES " 828 2. THE AS YOU LIKE IT. A MODEL . . . 344 3. THE TIMON OF ATHENS. A MODEL . . . 354 CHAPTER VI. PHILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCES. 1. BACON A PHILOSOPHER 379 2. THE PHILOSOPHER A POET 393 3. UNIVERSALS 398 4. CUPID AND NEMESIS 409 5. SCIENCE OF MATTER 415 6. SCIENCE OF SOUL 426 7. ALL SCIENCE 438 8. SCIENCE IN POETRY 444 9. REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION .... 452 10. MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY .... 464 CHAPTER VII. SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION. 1. THE TRUE RELIGION 479 2. DESTINY 496 3. THE GREATER PROVIDENCE 523 4. THE LESSER PROVIDENCE 537 5. REVERENCE AND DEGREE 558 CHAPTER VHI. CONCLUSION. 1. REFORMATION OF ABUSES 576 2. PHILOSOPHER AND POET 589 CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARIES. SHAKESPEARE. " Do not inflate plain things into marvels, but reduce marvels to plain things." BACON. 1. EABLT LIFE. THE biography of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE may now be considered as in the main settled and fixed for all time. Modern research has explored every forgotten corner in search of new facts ; all discoverable archives and dusty repositories of lost books and derelict papers have been ransacked ; every known record, monument, and relic, of the age in which he lived, has been thoroughly questioned, even to the last trace and tradition of his name and family ; and, failing any further genuine data, the most ingenious and consummate forgeries have been attempted. And if all honest inquiry be not yet exhausted, it has been made sufficiently clear, at least, that but little more can be added hereafter to what is already known of his personal history, and nothing that can be expected materially to change the general scope and character of the latest received account of his life. He is thus delivered down to us as essentially an uneducated man, whether we are to speak of education in the sense of modern times, or of the sixteenth century, or of the ancient schools. True, there have been great self-educated men in all times ; as, indeed, who is not, at last, in one sense, a self-educated man ? That there is a 2 EARLY LIFE. vast difference, however, between the learning and philoso- phy which the same genius will attain to, in a given time, in any age, with the aid of all existing helps, and that which he may reach without such aid, no man needs to be informed. School, or no school, without books and studies, we know that learning is impossible. Beyond that primary instruction which could be obtained at the free grammar-school of Stratford-on-Avon, in which Latin was taught by one master, nearly three centuries ago, it is pretty certain that William Shakespeare had no learning from public institutions, or from private tuition. His father, John Shakespeare, a glover by trade, sometime wool-stapler and butcher, at different times constable, high bailiff, and alderman of Stratford-on-Avon, and, at last, a gentleman, by grant of a coat-of-arms from the Herald's College, in 1599, at the instance of his son William, when he had attained to prosperity, was no doubt a respectable burgher of that place, but certainly so illiterate that he could not write his own name, and executed written instru- ments by making his mark ; and the same was the case with his mother, notwithstanding that she was descended of an ancient family of goodly estate. From the manner in which the name was written by members of the family in Warwickshire, it is evident that it was usually pro- nounced Shaxper, though it seems to have had no fixed spelling among them, not even with William himself, for his autographic signatures to his will appear to have it both Shakspere and Shakspeare ; but it was printed in his life- time, and in the Folio of 1623, and passed into the con- temporary literature, as Shakespeare ; and so let it remain. 1 William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, on the 23d day of April, 1564, and according to what is known of his early life, he attended the free grammar-school of that place for some few years and until about the year 1578, when he was taken from school, his assistance being l Halliwell's Life of William Shakespeare, London, 1848. EARLY LIFE. 3 required by his father in his business at home. The occu- pations in which his father appears to have been engaged, at this time, were those of an ordinary yeoman, including the business of a glover, a wool-stapler, and, as some say, a butcher also ; and he was, at the same time, and down to the year 1586, an alderman of the corporation of Stratford. On the 28th day of November, 1582, the son William was married, at the age of eighteen, to Ann Hathaway, some years older than himself, and the daughter of a neighbor- in 14 HIS LEARNING. punish him but by the forfeiture of those things which were his own at the time of his death." Bendloe cited a case in which " a lunatic wounded him- self mortally with a knife, and afterwards became of sound mind, and had the rights of Holy Church, and after died of the said wound, and his chattels were not forfeited ; " and Cams cited another, " where it appears that one who had taken sanctuary in a church was out in the night, and the town pursued him, and the felon defended himself with clubs and stones, and would not render himself to the King's peace, and one struck off his head ; and the goods of the person killed were forfeited, for he could not be arraigned, because he was killed by his own fault, for which reason, upon the truth of the matter found, his goods were forfeited. Here, the inquiry before the coroner super visum corporis, is equivalent to a judgment given against him in his lifetime, and the forfeiture has relation to the act which was the cause of his death, viz. the throwing him- self into the water." Dyer, C. J., giving the opinion of the Court, said : " The forfeiture shall have relation to the act done by Sir James Hales in his lifetime, which was the cause of his death, viz. the throwing himself into the water." He made five points : " First, the quality of the offence ; secondly, to whom the offence was committed ; thirdly, what he shall forfeit ; fourthly, from what time ; and fifthly, if the term here shall be taken from the wife." As to the second point, it is an offence against nature, against God, and against the King. Against nature, for every living thing does by instinct of nature defend itself from destruction, and then to destroy one's self is contrary to nature, and a thing most horrible. Against God, in that it is a breach of his commandment, thou shall not kill; and to kill himself, by which he kills in presumption his own soul, is a greater offence than to kill another. Against the King, in that hereby he has lost a subject, and (as Brown termed it) he HIS LEARNING. 15 being the head, has lost one of his mystical members." It was agreed by all the Judges, " that he shall forfeit all his goods ; for Broicn said the reason why the King shall have the goods and chattels of a felo de se, is not because he is out of Holy Church, so that for that reason the Bishop will not meddle with them, but for the loss of his subject, and for the breach of his peace, and for the evil example given to his people, and not in respect that Holy Church will not -meddle with them, for he is adjudged none of the members of Holy Church." "As to the fourth point, viz., to what time the forfeiture shall have relation ; the forfeiture here shall have relation to the time of the original offence committed, which was the cause of the death, and that was the throwing himself into the water, which was done in his lifetime, and this act was felony So that the felony is attributed to the act, which is always done by a living man, and in his lifetime : for Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death ? By drowning. And who drowned him ? Sir James Hales. And when did he drown him ? In his lifetime. So that Sir James Hales being alive caused Sir James Hales to die ; and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. But how can he be said to be punished alive when the punishment comes after his death ? Sir, this can be done no other icay than by de vesting out of him his title and property, from the time of the act done which was the cause of his death, viz. the throwing himself into the water." Now, that this very report is plainly travestied in the " Hamlet," can admit of no possible doubt. Ophelia had not drowned herself voluntarily, but, like the lunatic who became of sound mind, and had " the rights of Holy Church," to the glassy stream, where " a willow grows aslant the brook," " There, with fantastic garlands, did she come," 16 HIS LEARNING, and " There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like, a while they bore her up ; Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes ; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indu'd Unto that element : but long it could not be, Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death." Act IV. Sc. 7. Otherwise, as the author well knew, the Coroner's inquest would have found her a "felo de se" and she must have been buried, as one " out of Holy Church," at a cross-road, where, says the Priest, " Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd As we have warrantise : her death was doubtful ; And but that great command o'ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd, Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her; Yet here she is allow'd her virgin rites, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial." Act V. Sc. 1. And in the same scene in which, with all technical skill in the use of the abstrusest terms of the law, he so easily emp- ties " the skull of a lawyer " of " his quiddits now, his quil- lets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks," his action of battery, his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries," now that " the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries " is, " to have his fine pate full of fine dirt," he makes the clowns discourse, on the question of the voluntary drown- ing and the right to Christian burial, thus : " 1st Clo.. Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that wilfully seeks her own salvation? Zd do. I tell thee, she is; and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath set on her, and finds it Christian burial. HIS LEARNING. 17 1st Clo. How can that be, unless she droim'd herself in her own de- fence f 2d Clo. Why, '/ is found so. 1st Clo. It must be se o/endendo ; it cannot be else. For here lies the point : if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches; it is, to act, to do, and to perform: argal, she drowned herself wit- tingly. Id Clo. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver. 1st Clo. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man ; good : if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes ; mark you that : but if the water come to him, and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. 2d Clo. But is this law? 1st Clo. Ay, marry, is 't; crowner's 'quest law. 2d Clo. Will you ha' the truth on '< ? If this had not been a gentle- woman, she should have been buried out of Christian burial. 1st Clo. Why, there thou say'st, and the more pity, that great folk shall have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian." Act V. Sc. 1. A careful comparison of these passages may satisfy the critical reader that the author of the play had certainly read this report of Plowden. They are not adduced here as amounting to proof that the author was any other than William Shakespeare, but rather as a circumstance bearing upon the antecedent probabilities of the case ; for there is not the slightest ground for a belief, on the facts which we know, that Shakespeare ever looked into Plowden's Re- ports ; while it is quite certain that Francis Bacon, who commenced his legal studies at Gray's Inn in the very next year after the date of Plowden's preface, did have occasion to make himself familiar with that work, some years before the appearance of the " Hamlet." And the mode of rea- soning, and the manner of the report, bordering so nearly upon the ludicrous, would be sure to impress the memory of Bacon, whose nature, as we know, was singularly capable of wit and humor. Not less curious is it to observe, that Mr. Hackett, as early as 1859, noticing the numerous metaphorical expres- 2 18 HIS LEARNING. sions in the plays, which relate to the flowing of the blood to and from the heart or liver, and which imply, when closely examined, a critical knowledge of the physiology of this subject, as understood by professional authors down to that day, has actually maintained the proposition that "Wil- liam Shakespeare had anticipated the celebrated Harvey in the discovery of the circulation of the blood. 1 And not much later, a distinguished English physician, following the example of Lord Campbell in the department of law, has undertaken to demonstrate that " the immortal dramatist," though he had not discovered the circulation of the blood, had nevertheless " paid an amount of attention to subjects of medical interest scarcely if at all inferior to that which has served as the basis of the learned and ingenious argu- ment, that this intellectual king of men had devoted seven good years of his life to the practice of law." 2 Moreover, this same writer, on diligent examination, was " surprised and astonished " at " the extent and exactness of the psy- chological knowledge displayed " in these plays, and very naturally came to the conclusion that " abnormal conditions of mind had attracted Shakespeare's diligent observation, and had been his favorite study." 3 He finds instances which amount " not merely to evidence, but to proof, that Shakespeare had read widely in medical literature," and continues thus : " For the honor of medicine, it would be difficult to point to any great author, not himself a physician, in whose works the healing art is referred to more frequently and more respectfully than in those of Shakespeare." Dr. Bucknill even ventures to suggest that the marriage of Shakespeare's eldest daughter, in 1607, with Dr. John Hall, the physician, who afterwards lived in the same house with him at Stratford-on-Avon, may have been the means of imparting to the mind of the poet some 1 Notes on Shakes. Plays and Actors (New York, 1863), p. 268. 2 Shakes. Med. Knowl., by John Charles Bucknill, M. D., London, 1860. 8 Psychology of Shakes., by John Charles Bucknill, M. D., London, 1859. HIS LEARNING. 19 degree of medical knowledge. But, unfortunately for this theory, nearly all the plays from which the most striking passages concerning the flow of the blood have been cited, were written prior to that date, and some of them long be- fore. Mr. Hackett seems to think there may have been some intimacy between the poet and the doctor, " long previous to the marriage," and so, that Shakespeare " may have made himself acquainted with every important fact or theory which had transpired in relation to the subject." This is indeed possible ; but it would be a more satisfactory explanation of this very special feature in the plays, if it did not require us to carry back his medical studies, at least, to the date of the " King John," and almost make them encroach upon those seven good years already de- manded for the study of law, especially in the absence of any positive evidence in his personal history that he had ever looked into a book of law or medicine. But Dr. Bucknill, as well as the American physician who controverted the views of Mr. Hackett, more thor- oughly versed in medical science, has successfully made it appear, not merely that the Shakespearian expressions do not imply a knowledge of the circulation of the blood, in the sense of Harvey, but that they are, in truth, in very exact accordance with the doctrines of Galen, Hippocrates, Rabelais, and others, who were, prior to Harvey, " the learned and authentic fellows" in this branch of knowl- edge, and with whose writings, as we certainly know, Sir Francis Bacon was quite familiar, for he cites and reviews these very authors, together with Aristotle, Celsus, Porta, Cardan, Fabricius, Servetus, Telesius, Paracelsus, and many more : " Parofles. Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times. Bertram. And so 't is. Lafleur. To be relinquished of the artists, Parolles. So I say ; both of Galen and Paracelsus. Lafltur. Of all the learned and authentic fellows, ParoUes. Right, so I say." All '3 Wett, Act II. Sc. 3. 20 HIS LEARNING. Harvey's discovery, though supposed to have been made known at the College of Physicians as early as 1615, was first publicly announced in his published work on the sub- ject, in 1619, three years after the death of Shakespeare. The plays from which Mr. Hackett cites his evidences were all written before 1610, and most of them several years earlier. It is quite possible that Bacon, however, may have heard something of Harvey's discovery, or even seen his book, before the publication of the Folio of 1623. So remarkable a fact should have awakened a profound inter- est in a mind like his ; but there is no intimation in any of his writings that he was at all acquainted with this discov- ery. Nor is it probable that any author would have occa- sion to alter and adapt his poetical metaphors to the scien- tific niceties of the latest announcement. Prior to Harvey, and as early as 1553, Michael Servetus of Geneva had discovered the flow of the blood from the right side of the heart, through valves opening towards the lungs, and from thence, through the pulmonary vein, to the left ventricle, whence he supposed it was diffused through the whole body ; and Fabricius of Padua had discovered the valves in the veins opening towards the heart. Harvey was his pupil, about the year 1 600, and from him learned the fact which first suggested the idea of the general circu- lation. 1 The most suggestive passage of all those cited from Shakespeare, in proof that he was in possession of the same idea, is that in which the ghost in " Hamlet " is made to say of " the blood of man," " That swift as quicksilver, it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body ' ' ; and this appears in the first printed editions of the " Ham- let" (1603 and 1604), that of 1603 reading "posteth" instead of " courses " ; but in the language and thought of all these passages, striking resemblances to the ideas, style, and diction of Sir Francis Bacon may be distinctly noted, as in these examples : l Craik's Eng. Lit., H. 149. HIS LEARNING. 21 " make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse." Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5. " Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, Making both it unable for itself, And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness ? " Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4. " The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea, Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, And flow henceforth in formal majesty." 2 Henry IV., Act V. Sc. 2. " Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick, (Which, else, runs tickling up and down the veins)." King John, Act III. Sc. 3. " my heart, . . . The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up." Othello, Act IV. Sc. 2. " Tune hath not yet so dried this blood of mine." Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 1. " The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd." Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 1. " Lord Angelo is precise ; Stands at a guard with envy ; scarce confesses That his blood flows," " a man whose blood Is a very snow-broth." Measure for Measure, Act 1. Sc. 4, 5. " Runs not this speech like iron through your blood? " Much Ado, Act V. Sc. 1. " I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to th' seat o' th' brain ; And through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live." Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 1. " The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood ; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, . . but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts 22 HIS LEARNING. extreme .... and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart." 2 Henry 1 V., Act 1 V. Sc, 3. Now, the spring-head, the fountain, and the ebb and flow of the sea, are frequent sources of metaphor, both with Bacon and the plays ; as, for instance, this from a letter to the king: "Let your Majesty's grace, in this my desire, stream down upon me, and let it be out of the fountain and spring-head, and ' ex mero motu,' that, living or dying, the print of the goodness of King James may be in my heart." 1 In the "Advancement" (1605), we have the results of Bacon's general survey of the state of medical learning down to his own time, in which he says of the anatomists, that " they inquire not of the diversities of the parts, the secrecies of the passages, and the seats or nest- lings of the humours, nor much of the footsteps and impressions of diseases." So, Shakespeare seems to con- sider the heart as a seat, or court, into which the blood musters, or nestles, as it courses up and down, through the secret accesses and passages, through " the cranks and offices of man," " The natural gates and alleys of the body." " As to the diversity of parts," he continues, " there is no doubt but the facture or framing of the inward parts is as full of differences as the outward ; . . As for the pas- sages and pores, it is true, which was anciently noted, that the more subtle of them appear not in anatomies, because they are short and latent in dead bodies, though they be open and manifest in live ; which being supposed, though the inhumanity of ' anatomia vivorum ' was by Celsus justly reproved, yet in regard of the great use of this observa- tion, the inquiry needed not by him so sliyhtly to have been relinquished altogether " : 2 "Laf. To be relinquished of the artists Par. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus." 1 Letter of July 30, 1624, Worlcs (Philad.) III. 24. 2 Adv. of Learn., Worlcs (Philad.) I. 204-5. HIS LEARNING. 23 So he writes : " I ever liked the Galenists, that deal with good compositions, and not the Paracelsians, that deal with these fine separations." 1 Again, he says : " In preparation of medicines, I do find strange, especially considering how mineral medicines have been extolled, and that they are safer for the outward than inward parts, that no man hath sought to make an imitation by art of natural baths and medicinable fountains " ; and again, " while the life-blood of Spain went inward to the heart, the outward limbs and members trembled and could not resist." 2 The play says : " Death, having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them insensible." Here we have the same general and vague notions as to the structure of these inward and extreme parts, with a kind of repetition of the favorite words in the " natural baths," " mineral medicines," and " medicinable foun- tains " ; which may also call to mind these lines from the "Othello": " the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." Othello, Act II. Sc. 1. " Blood is stanched," he says again, " by drawing of the spirits and blood inwards ; which is done by cold ; as iron or a stone laid upon the neck doth stanch the bleeding of the nose." So, according to Falstaff, " the cold blood " of Prince Harry, which " he did naturally inherit of his . father," was, by " drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris," become " very hot and valiant." He speaks also of " the sudden recess of the spirits," and of " the recess of the blood by sympathy," and says, that " there is a fifth way also in use, to let blood in an adverse part for a revulsion." * This goes upon the idea of a flowing outward and a receding inward of the blood, 1 Letter to Cecil, Spedding's Let. and Life, I. 356. 2 Speech, Spedding's Let. and Life, II. 89. Nat. Hist., 66. 24 HIS LEARNING. a sort of "tickling up and down the veins"; and it is in exact keeping with Falstaff's notion of the effect of " sherris," that " warms the blood, which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale," as well as with the blood of Lord Angelo, which was " a very snow-broth." And here, also, in the iron laid upon the neck, that singu- lar simile of a speech running " like iron through your blood," may find an explanation of its origin. He continues : " But the cause is, for that all those diets do dry up humours, rheums, and the like : and they cannot dry up until they have first attenuated ; and while the hu- mour is attenuated, it is more fluid than it was before, and troubleth the body a great deal more until it be dried up and consumed." Here, we have a similar physiological idea as in the case of " The fountain from which my current runs, Or else dries up;" and probably, also, the source of the expression, "Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine." Dr. Bucknill assures us that " Shakespeare follows Hippo- crates," and that he refers to a theory of that author, " that the veins, which were thought the only blood-vessels, had their origin in the liver. The Father of Medicine main- tained that they came from the liver, the arteries from the heart " ; and he adds, that " Rabelais expresses the doctrine of the function of the liver which is implied in Falstaff's disquisition," namely, " that the liver conveys blood through the veins for the good of the whole body." He cites further in support of his views these lines from the " Merchant of Venice " : " and let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans." His conclusion is, that Shakespeare believed, indeed, in the flow of the blood, " the rivers of your blood," which went even " to the court, the heart " ; but he considered that it was the liver, and not the heart, which was the cause of HIS LEARNING. 25 the flow " ; but he does not find in Shakespeare " a trace of any knowledge of the circulation of the blood," in the sense of Harvey. 1 Now, as to whether or not William Shakespeare ever read these authors, we have not the least information ; but we certainly know that Francis Bacon made apothegms out of this same Rabelais, and that he had studied Hippo- crates, 2 " the Father of the Art," as well as Galen, Para- celsus, and the rest. And he concludes a letter addressed to the Scottish physician, Dr. Morison, in 1603, on the coming in of King James, in these words : " So not doubt- ing to see you here with his Majesty, considering that it belongeth to your art to feel pulses, and I assure you Galen doth not set down greater variety of pulses than do vent here in men's hearts " ; 8 and the mind of the author of the " Romeo and Juliet" (1595) must have been running upon the very subject of these investigations : " through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize Each vital spirit ; for no pulse shall keep His natural progress, but surcease to beat." Act IV. Sc. 1. And it may very well be taken here as one of those numerous and singular coincidences of thought and expres- sion, which everywhere drop out in the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and especially in those which were writ- ten at about the same date and upon kindred subjects, that the phrase applied to Celsus, " the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether" should reap- pear in his review of the labors of these same learned authors, and before that " rarest argument of wonder," which, in the play (written prior to 1594), was " to be relin- quished af the artists, both of Galen and Paracel- sus" and " all the learned and authentic fellows" had as yet entirely passed out of his memory. Nor need there be any 1 Hackett's Notes, 292. 2 Adv. of Learn. 8 Letter, Works (Philad.) III. 197. 26 HIS LEARNING. wonder that the ideas, expressions, words, metaphors, and technical learning of the two writings, in medicine as in law, and in many other branches of learning besides, should be so exactly alike, if we once conceive (what will be further demonstrated) that Francis Bacon was the author of both. The German critic, Schlegel, equally amazed at the ex- tent of the knowledge and the depth of the philosophy of these plays of Shakespeare, the author of which he could not but consider as one who had mastered " all the things and relations of this world," does not hesitate to declare the received account of his life to be " a mere fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error " : 1 this Shakespeare must have been another sort of man from what we know him. The Germans seem to have been the first to discover and appre- ciate the full depth of his philosophy, not excepting Ger- vinus, who appears to have had less difficulty about the author himself. That a single passage, which had never attracted the particular attention of an English critic, other- wise than as a brilliant figure of speech, should be capable of creating whole books in the soul of Jean Paul Richter, is, perhaps, not much to be wondered at ; especially, if we consider that he, to whose great learning, deep philosophy, and divine vision, this universe became crystalline and transparent, did not fail to see that no one had " better pursued and illumined the actual truth of things, even into the deepest vales and the little worms therein, than those twin-stars of poesy, Homer and Shakespeare." 2 Indeed, the bare proposition, that this man, on his arri- val in London, at the age of twenty-three, with only such a history as we possess of his previous life, education, studies, and pursuits, could have begun almost immediately to pro- duce the matchless works which we know by his name, not l Lectures on Dram, Lit., by A. W. Schlegel, Tr. by John Black, (Philad. 1833,) p. 289. a Vorschule der ^Esthetik, Werke, I. 25. HIS LEARNING. 27 merely the most masterly works of art, and as such in the opinion of eminent critics, surpassing the Greek tragedy itself, but classical poems, and plays the most profoundly philosophical in the English language, or any other (for no less a critic than Goethe has awarded this high praise), may justly strike us in the outset as simply preposterous and absurd. " What ! " exclaims Coleridge, at this consequence of the traditional biography, " are we to have miracles in sport ? Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man ? " l Emerson, no less, considering that the Shakespeare Society had ascertained that this William Shakespeare was " a good-natured sort of man, a jovial actor, manager, and shareholder, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and managers," and that he was " a veritable farmer " withal, engaged in all sorts of traffic at Stratford, doing business commissions in London, and suing Philip Rogers for malt delivered, while writing a " Hamlet," or a " Lear," is apparently obliged to lay down the problem in despair, with this significant con- fession: "I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought ; but this man, in wide contrast." 2 In like manner, Jean Paul Richter " would have him buried, if his life were like his writings, with Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and the highest nobility of the human race, in the same best consecrated earth of our globe, God's flower-garden in the deep North." 8 Indeed, considering how this man should drop the theatre as an idle pastime, or as a trade that had filled his coffers, and should quietly sit him down for the remainder of life merely to talk and jest with the Stratford burghers, and, turning over his works to the spoiling hand of blundering printers and surreptitious traffic, regardless of his own reputation, heedless of the world around him, leaving his manuscripts to perish, taking i Notes on Shakes., Works, TV. 56. 2 Rep. Men, 215. Werke, I. 241. 28 HIS STUDIES. no thought of foreign nations, or the next ages, or as if not deeming he had written anything worthy of preservation, should " steal in silence to his grave," 1 beneath a doggerel epitaph reputed to have been written by himself, and cer- tainly suitable enough for his u bones," by the side of which the knowing friends who erected a monument over him caused to be inscribed a Latin memento, which might indeed do honor to the memory of the " Star of Poets " : " Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus mceret, Olympus habet " ; any man might wonder, if he did not laugh outright, to see this Son of Momus wearing thus his lion's skin even in his tomb. Carlyle, that other master-critic of our time, chew- ing the cud of this " careless mortal, open to the Universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himself; who, Prometheus-like, will scale Heaven (if it so must be), and is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London Play-house," as it were, with the imperturbability of Teu- felsdroch himself, simply breaks out, at last, with this brief exclamation : " An unparalleled mortal." 2 5. HIS STUDIES. There is no evidence on record other than that which is drawn from the works themselves, that during his connec- tion with the theatre in London, he was given to profound studies or much reading ; and it is evident that no man in his circumstances, conditions, and daily occupations, could have found time, means, and facilities, not merely for sup- plying the known deficiencies of his previous education, but to make extensive and thorough acquisitions in all depart- ments of human knowledge, and, at the same time, to carry on the work of inventing and writing these extraordinary compositions. If it were to be admitted that he was in fact the author of them, then of course, all the rest should be * Mem. of the Court of James 7., by Lucy Aiken. 2 Essays (Boston, 1861), III. 211. HIS STUDIES. 29 presumed, however miraculous and inconceivable. There are no certain proofs that he enjoyed the intimacy of liter- ary associates beyond the purlieus of the theatre and cer- tain small writers for the stage, Ben Jonson only excepted. Some of his earlier contemporaries, like Greene, made en- vious attacks upon him, significantly hinting at the incon- gruity between him and his supposed productions ; though numerous other writers and poets of later dates, following the general report, unquestionably recognized him as the admitted author of the works which were attributed to him. He certainly had the acquaintance and friendship of Ben Jonson, who was famous among the literary men of his time, received the countenance of the Court, and enjoyed the intimacy and favor of high literary characters, and par- ticularly of Lord Bacon, in whose service he was engaged for some years. Ben Jonson did not fail to discover " the Star of Poets " in these works ; but his description of the person, qualities, genius, and individual characteristics of William Shakespeare, not to speak of his criticisms upon him and the players, do not help to remove the manifest contradiction that exists between the man and the works. The traditions of his having been a member of Raleigh's Club, and his wit-combats at the " Mermaid " (some books say " wet-combats ") with Ben Jonson and the assembled wits, will not bear the test of critical examination: they rest, at last, on mere inference from the supposed relations, character, and genius of such an author, and are as baseless in reality as the conceit of worthy old Fuller, proceeding upon the indubitable fact that " his learning was very little," and the old saw, " Poeta non fit sed nascitur" that " as Cor- nish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art that was used upon him." l It was a shrewd conjecture of Dr. Maginn, that the reason why we know so little of him is, that " when his l Worthies of England, III. 284. 30 HIS STUDIES. business was over at the theatre, he did not mix with his fellow-actors, but stepped into his boat, and rowed up to Whitehall, there to spend his time with the Earl of South- ampton and the gentlemen about the Court." * There may be some truth in this suggestion ; but it will be necessary also to suppose an invisible boat and a further passage to Gray's Inn. If these plays had not begun to appear for a period of ten years or so after "William Shakespeare came to London, it might be possible to imagine, that, even in his employ- ments, he might have found time and means to prosecute to some extent those studies which every reasonable mind must acknowledge to have been absolutely necessary in order to fit the most luminous natural genius for the writ- ing of these dramas. But there was no such period : the plays began to appear at least as early as the year 1588, even if it be not satisfactorily proved, that the first sketches of several of them had been upon the stage for some years previous to that date, and before Shakespeare arrived in London. There were six years after this event in which the two principal poems may have been written, and before he was twenty-nine years of age. Doubtless, many poems of great merit have been produced at an earlier age than this : nothing need be objected on the score of age merely. Nor would it be anything remarkable that an actor should correct and amend, or even write or rewrite plays. Heming, or Condell, may have done as much as this. In fact, some plays were written by other actors and members of this same company ; but they appear to have been no better than such authors might reasonably be expected to pro- duce, and they speedily passed into oblivion. It might be admitted that William Shakespeare may have altered, amended, or rewritten, old plays to adapt them to his stage, without danger to the question of this authorship. The greater plays, it is true, were not produced until more than l Shakes. Papers (New York, 1856), p. 10. EARLY PLAYS. 31 ten years had elapsed. Of course, any author should be expected to grow in this time ; but there is exhibited, in the character and succession of these works, an order of growth quite other than any that can be ascribed to a mortal man with the personal history which must be assigned to William Shakespeare ; ascending, as it does, from the very gates of the university, upward and upward, into the highest spheres of human thought and culture. 6. EARLY PLAYS. Critical researches have demonstrated that this author gathered his materials from any quarry that was at hand, suitable to his purposes. Old ballads, poems, plays, novels, tales, histories, in English, French, Italian, Latin, or Greek, translated or untranslated, were made to yield their treas- ures of fact and fable. There had been an old play of " King John " in the reign of Edward VI. Some critics think that the " Troublesome Reign of King John," printed in 1591, and written in two parts, was an early work of this author, and the foundation of the " King John " of the Folio of 1 623 ; but later writers, no doubt correctly, have attrib- uted it to Marlowe, Greene, or Peele, or some other poet, though it was reprinted in 1611, and in 1622, with the ini- tials " W. Sh." on the title-page ; doubtless a trick of the booksellers to make it sell. The " King John " of Shake- speare is first mentioned by Meres in 1598 ; it was first printed in the Folio ; and, in the absence of any other data than the style and manner of the composition, on which to fix the date of its production, Mr. White places it in the year 1596, while admitting that the author must have had the older play before him, or in his head, when this was written, 1 and that the date of it may go back to 1591. The old play called the " Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth," which was acted on the stage prior to 1588, after having undergone a marvellous transformation, seems to i White's Shakes., VI. 15. 82 EARLY PLAYS. have grown into the two parts of the " Henry IV. " and the " Henry V." l The second and third parts of the " Henry VI." were first known by wholly different titles, and, accord- ing to Malone, before Shakespeare appeared in London, and certainly as early as 1587-8. These also have been attrib- uted by some critics to Marlowe, and by Mr. White to Mar- lowe, Greene, and Peele, in conjunction with Shakespeare ; 2 and the first part of the " Henry VI.," never printed until it appeared in the Folio, the " Taming of the Shrew," and the " Titus Andronicus," have been placed in the same cate- gory by him, though beyond question they will have to be assigned to this author ; and Malone believed them all to have been upon the stage at an earlier date than 1587. Mr. White concludes, however, that Shakespeare, in his subse- quent revisions of these joint works, merely reclaimed his own. That the rejected passages were inferior to the parts retained, or rewritten, and not above the powers of Mar- lowe, Greene, or Peele, may safely enough be admitted ; nor should it be at all surprising that these earliest efforts of a young author should be found to be somewhat inferior to his later works. The use in them of a single idiom which was then growing obsolete, and which more fre- quently occurs in Greene than in any of his contemporaries, but which was not often used, or was carefully eliminated by this author, together with some near equality of weight, rhythm, and style, may be allowed to have some considera- tion ; but this same idiom, on which so much stress is laid as an ear-mark of Greene, is found, five times, within twenty lines of one of Bacon's translations of the Psalms, 3 and occasionally, though not often, in the plays, as thus : " You may as well Forbid the sea /or to obey the moon " ; Winter's Tale, Act I. Sc. 2. 1 Knight's Studies of Shakes. 2 Essay on the " Henry VI.," White's Shakes., VII. 8 Psalm civ. EARLY PLATS. 33 and the whole argument would seem to be a weak founda- tion for so large a theory ; especially, if these plays be con- sidered as the first attempt of a young writer, and produced probably somewhere between 1582 and 1589. Mr. White believes that men have been hung on less evidence than that which he produces. It is indeed very formidable ; and it might carry the jury in the absence of better testi- mony ; it is nevertheless quite certain that men have been hung on proofs that seemed equally clear, who afterwards turned out to be innocent. The " Timon of Athens " has been supposed to have been founded, in some part, upon an older play of that name ; but the old play of " Timon," in manuscript, and apparently written by " a scholar," which was thought by Steevens to have been transcribed about the year 1600, and which came into the hands of Mr. Dyce, according to the opinion of Mr. Knight and other critics, was evidently never written by Shakespeare at all. Even in the face of facts like these, Malone could not persuade himself that Shakespeare could have begun to write before the year 1590 ; nor Mr. Collier, that he could have had any reputa- tion as an author before 1593. They suppose these older plays to have been written by other authors, and that they were only retouched by Shakespeare. Whether they were the work of this author, or another, it is certain, at least, that they were afterwards taken up by him, and carefully elaborated into the plays which we now have. The " Timon of Athens" of Shakespeare Was, doubtless, an original work of a much later date. A cloud of obscurity hangs over the origin and early his- tory of these older plays. These conclusions would seem to be sufficiently well warranted by the facts which we know : first, that some of these old plays were original first draughts of this author, and that some of them may have been based upon older plays of other authors ; and second, that, in either case, they were already upon the stage at the 34 EARLY PLAYS. date usually assigned for the arrival of William Shake- speare in London. But, as that date is not quite certain, and as it is not impossible that he may have sent plays to the theatre before that event, nothing more definite can be positively asserted than this, that, as Francis Bacon was by some three years the elder of the two, and had been snugly ensconced in Gray's Inn since 1579, with the aroma of a scholar of Trinity and the airs of the French Court still about him, it is at least more probable, in the first instance, that he should have been the author than the other. The " Hamlet " has been another of these enigmas. The first certain knowledge that we have of this play is, that it was performed at the Globe as early as 1602, having been entered, in July of that year, upon the Register of the Stationers' Company, as " lately acted by the Lord Cham- berlain's Servants." We may safely accept the conclusion of Mr. White, 1 that there was an older play of this name by another author, which was upon the stage in London prior to this date. It is mentioned in Henslowe's " Diary " in 1594. It was no doubt this older play that was alluded to, in 1596, by Dr. Lodge, who speaks of the ghost that cried in the theatre, " Hamlet, revenge ! " It is believed by White, Knight, and other critics, to have been the same play that was referred to, in 1589, by Nash, who says, " it is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a shifting sort of companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art," and that " English Seneca, read by candle-light, will afford you whole Hamlets ; I should say handfuls of tragi- cal speeches." In the " Hamlet " of Shakespeare, which was printed in 1604, we have these words : " Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light for the law of writ, and the liberty: these are the only men." 2 1 White's Shakes., XI. 8-9. 2 Devonshire Hamlets, (Lond. 1860), I. 41; II. 38. EARLY PLAYS. 35 But, as it is very probable that there was some trace of Seneca, also, in the older play of 1589, this allusion, in that of 1602, cannot be taken as any proof of its identity with the other. It is a curious circumstance, however, that, in w the year 1593-4, we find Francis Bacon diligently engaged in reading Seneca, Ovid, Virgil, Horace's "Art Poetic," the " Proverbs," and the " Adagia " of Erasmus, and taking notes; and, in 1595-6, he quotes Seneca, thus: " For it is Seneca's rule, multum non multa.'' l And in several of the earlier plays may be found very distinct traces of this clas- sical reading, in the form of allusions, imitations, and quo- tations ; as for instance, in the " Titus Andronicus," in which the story of Tereus and Philomela is worked into the texture of the tragedy out of Ovid's " Metamorphoses," together with quotations of whole lines of Latin verse out of Horace. In the " Love's Labor 's Lost," we have quo- tations from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, an irrepressible sprinkling of Latin erudition, with a pretty copious inter- spersion of sonnets and rhymed verse ; and the whole play exhibits unmistakable impressions of the author's late resi- dence at the French Court. In the " Taming of the Shrew," written before 1594, the author has already begun to add to his studies of the poets " that part of philosophy " which treats " of happiness By virtue 'specially to be achieved," and to mingle Aristotle with Ovid : " Tranio. Miperdonate, gentle master mine, I am in all affected as yourself; Glad that you thus continue your resolve To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy. Only, good master, while we do admire This virtue, and this moral discipline, Let 's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray, Or so devote to Aristotle's checks, As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured : Balk logic with acquaintance that you have, 1 Advice to Greville; Life and Letters, by Spedding, II. 23. 36 EARLY PLAYS. And practice rhetoric in your common talk : Music and poetry use to quicken you ; The mathematics, and the metaphysics, Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you ; No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en ; [n brief, sir, study what you most affect." Act 1. Sc. 1. Lord Campbell, 1 assuming that the " Hamlet " alluded to by Nash was the play of Shakespeare, endeavors to draw an argument from Nash's fling at the trade of Noverint (that of the lawyers) in support of the position that Wil- liam Shakespeare himself was considered as one of those who had abandoned that profession. We know from con- temporaneous history that it was not an uncommon thing, in those days, for members of the Inns of Court to be writ- ing for the stage, and it is scarcely to be doubted that there was then in fact a class of persons answering perfectly well to this description of Nash. But the inference, first, that Nash alluded to Shakespeare, and second, that Shakespeare had been a student at law at Stratford, finds little warrant here, or elsewhere, beyond the irresistible evidence, con- tained in the plays themselves, that their author was a law- yer. No more is it to be inferred that Francis Bacon was the person intended, though he was at that time Eeader, and for seven years had been an utter barrister, of Gray's Inn. Whether the play were the same or not, it is plain that Nash supposed it to have been written by a lawyer. This epistle of Nash had been appended to the " Mena- phon " of Robert Greene, who had been employed as a writer for the stage ; and Lord Campbell conjectures that the two friends, Nash and Greene, had been superseded by the appearance of a rival in the business, and thence, that this attack was aimed at William Shakespeare, as that other more express libel, which was contained in the " Groat's Worth of Wit," written by this same Greene, and published by Henry Chettle, in 1592, undoubtedly was. In this last, Greene addresses himself to his " Quondam l Shakes. Legal Acquirements, 30-36. EARLY PLAYS. 37 acquaintance that spend their wits in making Plays," and says, " Base-minded men, all three of you [Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele ?], if by my misery yee bee not warned : for unto none of you (like me) sought these burs to cleave : . those Puppets (I mean) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whome they all have bin beholding, is it not like that you, to whom they all have bin beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) be both of them at once for- saken ? Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart, ivrapt in a players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the only Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your admyred inventions." * This passage would seem to carry a direct insinuation that "William Shakespeare, a mere actor, antic, and ape, was undertaking to shine in borrowed feathers, or it may mean no more than that he was, in Greene's estimation, an up- start player that had presumed to usurp the writer's calling. Mr. White has noticed that it contains a sort of parody on the following line of the third part of the " Henry VI." : " Tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide ! " 2 Whence it would appear that Greene had that very play in mind : nothing more need be inferred, however, than that plays had begun to appear upon the stage, which, so far as known to these writers, were attributed to Shakespeare ; came through his hands, perhaps, and from a source other- wise unknown to them ; and that if they really took him to be the author (as it seems they did), they were unwilling to recognize him as one worthy to be admitted into their 1 Halliwell's Life of Shakes., 144. 2 Act I. Sc. 4; White's Shakes., VII. 411. 38 EARLY PLAYS. fraternity. Mr. White argues further, with much skill, that Greene meant to charge Shakespeare with plagiarism, also, from the rival poets, and cites as evidence of this hypoth- esis a sonnet from " Greene's Funerals by R. B. Gent " (1594), which says of Greene : " Nay more, the men that so eclipst his fame, Purloyned his Plumes, can they deny the same? " But this is a general charge, aimed at more than one, and not particularly at Shakespeare. The apology of Chettle, however, makes it clear, that in the above passage from Greene, a sneer was aimed especially at him in respect of his supposed authorship ; for it says : " I am as sorry as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have scene his demeanor no less civill than he excellent in the qualitie he professes ; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing which argues his hon- esty, and his facetious grace in writing that approoves his art." Now, whether these " divers of worship " were some great persons about the Court, who had taken Shakespeare under their especial protection, or were merely some respectable acquaintances who had certified to his merit and character, must be left to conjecture. Mr. White appeals to these passages in further proof of his theory, that Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, wrote some plays in conjunction with Shakespeare, and that Shakespeare, in resuming his own, had in some degree appropriated their labors, and purloined their plumes ; and he certainly makes a very plausible case of it. But k implies the assumption, both that William Shakespeare, in conjunction with those writers, in fact wrote the original draughts of those plays, and that it was he who afterwards re-wrote and completed them ; and against these assumptions, the whole mass of evidence to be presented herein must stand arrayed ; for it would be idle to imagine that Francis Bacon ever wrote a play in conjunction with either of them. On the supposition that these plays came from Gray's EARLY PLAYS. 39 Inn, and were the earlier attempts of a briefless young bar- rister, who did not desire to be known as a writer for the stage, and who meant to " profess not to be a poet," l but to whom any " lease of quick revenue " 2 might not be unacceptable, and some cover a practical necessity, it is not difficult to imagine, that this " absolute Johannes factotum " would be just the man to suit his purpose ; nor is it neces- sary to suppose that an express bargain was struck in terms between them, in the first instance, but rather that the arrangement came about gradually in the course of time and the actual progress of events. Nor would it be a matter of wonder that his sudden pretensions to dramatic authorship should be sneered at by a rival who saw him- self completely outdone (as he would suppose) by a mere under-actor, a puppet, an antic, and an ape. And when secret relations of this kind had once come to be estab- lished between the parties, the scheme of introducing to the public the two larger poems, a few years later, under the disguise of a dedication in his name as a closer cover for the real author, may have been the more practicable. How this was possible with so eminent a person as the Earl of Southampton, will be further considered hereinafter; observing, now, that Southampton was an intimate associate of the Earl of Essex, and of Francis Bacon, Essex's friend and counsellor, at this very time, and that there is not the least allusion to William Shakespeare in all the writings of Bacon, though, as we know from direct history, he was an intimate friend and patron of Ben Jonson, was a friend and admirer of George Herbert and other poets of the time, was familiar with the Greek and Latin poets, was an admir- able orator and wit, was " a poetic imaginator," a lover and student of poetry, and himself a poet. Prior to the date of these dedications (1593-4), the name of William Shakespeare had not appeared on the title-page of any printed play. It is not until 1598 that his name 1 Bacon's Apology concerning Essex. 2 Letter of Bacon. 40 EARLY PLAYS. begins to be printed on the title-page of the quartos. The author was not named on the title-page of the first printed editions of the " Richard II.," the " Richard III.," and the " Romeo and Juliet," in 1597 ; nor on that of the first part of the " Henry IV.," printed in 1598, nor on that of the " Henry V.," first printed in 1600. The "Love's Labor's Lost," " newly corrected and augmented," and the second editions of the " Richard H." and the " Richard in.," that were \ printed in 1598, bore the name of Shakespeare on the title- _ page ; and so did the sonnets and poems collected and published by Jaggard, in 1599, under the title of the " Pas- sionate Pilgrim." But, after this date, the quartos appear, in most instances, at least, as " written," or as " newly cor- rected and augmented," or " newly set forth and over- scene," by William Shakespeare. It is in 1598 that Meres, in the " Wit's Treasury," names " the mellifluous and honey- tongued Shakespeare," in whom " the sweete witty soul of Ovid lives," as " witness his ' Venus and Adonis,' his ' Lu- crece,' and his ' sugred sonnets ' among his private friends " ; and he mentions the " Gentlemen of Verona," the " Errors," the " Love's Labor 's Lost," the " Love's Labor 's Wonne," the " Midsummer's Night Dreame," the " Merchant of Venice," the " Richard II.," the " Richard III.," the " Henry IV.," the " King John," the " Titus Andronicus," and the " Romeo and Juliet." Of all the pieces named by Meres, the two poems only had been printed under the name of Shakespeare before that year. And it is in 1599 that Weever writes : " Honie-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them, and none other"; but he speaks only of the " fire hot Venus," the " chaste Lucretia," and "Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not." 1 In 1594, Willobie's "Avisa" alludes to the Rape of Lucrece : iLife, byHalliwell, 189. EARLY PLAYS. 41 " Yet Tarquyne pluct his glistering grape, And Shakespeare paints poor Lucrece rape." In the margin of the " Polimanteia " (1595), we find these words : " All praise, Lucretia sweet Shakespeare." And soon after the death of Elizabeth, in 1603, this same Chettle, silenced before, but evidently by no means satis- fied, noticing that, among many tributes to the virtues of the late Queen, none came from William Shakespeare, f ventured to break out anew in these lines : " Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert Drop from his honied muse one sable tear, To mourn her death that graced his desert, And to his laies open'd her royall eare : Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth, And sing her rape, done by that Tarquin, Death." 1 But down to the year 1598, nothing definite anywhere ap- pears, except these dedications to Southampton, and these allusions which followed them, on which to base the claim of this authorship for "William Shakespeare, beyond the bare fact that the plays were upon the stage in the theatres with which he was connected, and were generally attrib- uted to him. He had already become a principal sharer and manager, had purchased New Place at Stratford-on- Avon, and was able to loan money to his friends. His wealth had been derived from the theatres of his company, and his success was due, in no small degree, perhaps, to the superior excellence of these plays. After this dedi- cation of the poems under his name, an undiscriminating public might be very well warranted in taking him to be the author of the plays also. If the plays came to the theatre through his hands, his fellow-actors would, of course, presume that he was himself the author of them, however much they might wonder that he never blotted out a line. They had to be attributed to somebody, and William Shakespeare does not appear to have declined the honor of their paternity. Greene might sneer, Nash insin- 1 Mourning Garment, 1603. 42 EARLY PLAYS. uate, and Ben Jonson criticize ; but he was under the protec- tion of " divers of worship," and his reputation soon became established among the printers. It was Shakespeare's thea- tre, and naturally enough they were Shakespeare's plays. As to the sonnets, it is by no means improbable that a reputation might arise in a similar manner. We know that in that age, when the art of printing had not as yet entirely superseded the circulation of manuscript copies, it was a common thing for various writings to be pass- ing about from hand to hand in manuscript. Says John Florio, who translated Montaigne's Essays in 1600, and was tutor to Prince Charles, and must have known some- thing of Shakespeare, and was doubtless well acquainted with Francis Bacon, in his preface to the "World of Words," printed in 1598 : " There is another sort of leer- ing crows that rather snarl than bite, whereof I could in- stance in one, who, lighting on a good sonnet of a gentle- man's, a friend of mine, that loved better to be a poet than to be counted so, called the author a rhymer." This may not have been Francis Bacon, but we know that Bacon wrote sonnets : some of them were addressed to the Queen, and were " commended by the great." Sir Philip Sidney had written sonnets. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote sonnets. Thomas Carew, a gentleman of the Bedchamber under Charles I., was a noted writer of sonnets. It was probably not an uncommon thing for manuscript sonnets to be cir- culating among great persons at this time. Indeed, we positively know that Bacon's sonnets and essays did pass from hand to hand, in that manner. The researches of Mr. Hepworth Dixon have ascertained the fact, that " a few essays, a few Religious Meditations, with some other short pieces of his composition, were passing, as Shakes- peare's sugared sonnets and Raleigh's fugitive verses were at the same time passing, from hand to hand ; but a rogue of a printer being about to publish these scraps, their author, in fear of imperfect copies, put them with his own EARLY PLAYS. 43 hands to the press." 1 And thus the first edition of the Es- says came to be printed, under Bacon's own hand, in 1597. In 1599, Jaggard, printer of several editions of the Essays between 1606 and 1624, had somehow come into posses- sion of a collection of sonnets and smaller poems, which he published under the name of William Shakespeare ; and in 1609, a larger collection was dedicated to "Mr. "W. H., the only begetter of them," (on whom is invoked by the printer's preface "all happiness and that Eternity prom- ised by our ever-living poet"), believed by Mr. Collier, no doubt correctly, to have been William Herbert, son of Henry, Earl of Pembroke and his celebrated Countess, " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; " who succeeded to the earldom in 1601, at the age of twenty-one, and was himself a poet, a writer of sonnets, and " a great patron of learning ; "' 2 was an associate of Essex and Southampton, and is said to have been a rival, with Bacon and Coke, for the hand of the rich widow Hatton ; and was a friend of Bacon, a witness to his patent of peerage, and one of that " incomparable pair of breth- ren," to whom was dedicated the Folio of 1623 ; for, these plays, also, the author himself would take care to see pub- lished in authentic form, though in this instance under the name of another ; for he had determined not to be known as a poet ; yet, as he himself said of the first edition of the Essays, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his brother Anthony, 8 "like some that have an orchard ill-neighboured, that gather their fruit before it is ripe to prevent stealing," or rather, as we may suppose, in the case of the plays, to preserve the ripe fruit and prevent it from being corrupted by stolen and mangled copies, or from being by mere neglect wholly lost to the world. And this epistle con- 1 Story of Lord Bacon's Life, by W. Hepworth Dixon. London, 1862, p. 114. 2 Wood's Aihen. Oxon. II. 482 ; I. 523. 8 Works, (Boston,) XII. 289. 44 EARLY PLAYS. cerning the Essays may throw still further light on the whole subject, proceeding thus : " These fragments of my conceits were going to print : to labour the stay of them had been troublesome, and sub- ject to interpretation ; to let them pass had been to adven- ture the wrong they might receive by untrue copies, or by some garnishment, which it might please any that should set them forth to bestow upon them. Therefore I held it best discretion to publish them myself, as they passed long ago from my pen, without any further disgrace, than the weakness of the author. And as I did ever hold, there might be as great a vanity in retiring and withdrawing men's conceits (except they be of some nature) from the world, as in obtruding them : so in these particulars I have played myself the Inquisitor, and find nothing to my understanding in them contrary or infectious to the state of Religion, or manners, but rather (as I suppose) medi- cinable. Only I disliked now to put them out because they will be like the late new half-pence, which though the Silver were good, yet the pieces were small. But since they would not stay with their Master, but would needs travel abroad, I have preferred them to you that are next to myself, dedicating them, such as they are, to our love, in the depth whereof (I assure you) I sometimes wish your infirmities translated upon myself, that her Majesty might have the service of so active and able a mind, and I might be with excuse confined to these contemplations and studies for which I am fittest." And the circumstances under which the "Troilus and Cressida," that "remarkable and singular production," as it is styled by Mr. Verplanck, first made its appearance, in 1609, are worthy of note in this connection. It appears that an older play of this name, perhaps an earlier sketch of this very one (as Mr. Verplanck seems to think, though there is much reason to believe it was by another author altogether), had been entered upon the Stationers' Regis- EARLY PLAYS. 45 ter in 1602-3, but never printed; but before 1609, it must have been greatly enlarged and improved (if indeed this were not wholly a new play) in the most matured style of this master ; and it was first presented before the King's Majesty at Court, in that year, and thence sent directly to the printer, and was printed with a preface, and with the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page, before it had ever appeared at the theatre. 1 The printer's preface (and, of course, the printer would expect the author him- self to furnish the preface as well then as now) announces it thus : " A never writer to an ever reader. NEWES. Eternall reader [a "never writer" must have meant one never known to the public as a writer of plays, and could not well be William Shakespeare himself who was writing so much for the ever-reading public], you have heere a new play never stal'd with the stage, never clapper- clawed with the palmes of the vulger, and yet passing full of the palme comicall ; for it is a birth of your braine, that never undertooke any thing comicall vainely : and were but the vaine names of commedies changde for the titles of commodities, or of playes for pleas [mind still running on pleas], you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities [ ; 'we cannot but know their dig- nity greater, than to descend to the reading of these trifles," says the Dedication to the Folio, and "I have done with such vanities," says Bacon, in answer to a sum- mons to the House of Lords, some time afterwards] ; espe- cially this author's commedies, that are so fram'd to the life. [" Painter. It is a pretty mocking of the life ; " 2 and says Bacon, " I must do contrary to that that painters do ; 1 White's Shakes., IX. 1-16; Papers of the Shakes. Soc., III. 79. London. 2 Timon of Atfiens, Act I. Sc. 1. 46 EARLY PLAYS. for they desire to make the picture to the life, and I must endeavour to make the life to the picture," *] that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexteritie, and power of witte, that the most displeased with playes are pleased with his commedies, [says Bacon's letter to the King (1621), " Cardinal Wolsey said that if he had pleased God as he pleased the King, he had not been ruined. My con- science saith no such thing ; for I know not but in serving you, I served God in one. But it may be if I had pleased God, as I had pleased you, it would have been better for me "]. ... So much and such savord salt of witte is in his commedies, that they seem (for their height of pleasure [" it hath been the height of our care," says the Dedica- tion again]) to be borne in that sea that brought forth Venus, Amongst all there is none more witty than this ; and had I time, I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not, (for so much as will make you thinke your testern well bestow'd,) but for so much worth, as even poore I know to be stuft in it [certainly there can be no doubt of that, your worship.] It deserves such a labour, as well as the best commedy in Terence or Plautus: and believe this, that when hee is gone, and his commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English inquisition [some twelve years before, the Dedi- catory Epistle to the Essays had said, " so in these particu- lars I have played myself the Inquisitor "]. Take this for a warning, and at the perill of your pleasures losse, and judgments, refuse not, nor like this the lesse for not being sullied with the smoaky breath of the multitude ; but thanke fortune for the 'scape it hath made amongst you. Since by the grand possessors' wills, I believe, you should have prayd for them, rather than beene prayd. And so I leave all such to bee prayd for (for the states of their wits healths) that will not praise it Vale" i Letter, 1619. EARLY PLAYS. 47 It is positively asserted here, that the play was a new one, and that it had never been upon the stage, nor been sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude. The writer must have known this. It was first produced at Court, and was no doubt addressed rather to the refined and learned personages that would be there assembled to hear it, than to the unlettered multitude ; and these being " the grand possessors," and the play being such as he knew it to be, he did not hesitate to tell the public, that they might be thankful that they ever got it at all, and, if they knew what was good for themselves, they should rather pray to have it than be prayed to take it ; and this is as true to- day as it was then ; for as we know, it seldom appears upon the public stage, though full of the loftiest wisdom. But very soon after it was printed, it found its way to the theatre, and shortly after it had appeared upon the stage, and in the same year, a second edition was issued from the same type, only suppressing this preface, and announcing the play on the title-page " as it was acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at the Globe : Written by William Shakespeare." It had now come to be a Shakes- peare's play. From this significant allusion to the " grand possessors' wills," both Tieck and Knight have inferred that the manuscript came from the possession, or control, either of the King himself, or of some great personage about the Court, and that Shakespeare had written this " wonderful comedy " for that person and for the use of the revels at Court, and not for the public stage ; an in- ference, which would seem to carry upon its face the ap- pearance of a forced construction. In view of all that will be offered herein touching the question of this authorship, it may appear more probable, and these very facts may give us some intimation, that the great personage in ques- tion was himself the author of the play, being no other (as it will be shown) than Sir Francis Bacon, then lately become Solicitor-General. At least, not inconsistent with 48 EARLY PLAYS. this conclusion, is Mr. Verplanck's excellent appreciation of the play itself, in these words : " Its beauties are of the highest order. It contains pas- sages fraught with moral truth and political wisdom high truths, in large and philosophical discourse, such as re- mind us of the loftiest disquisitions of Hooker, or Jeremy Taylor, on the foundations of social law. Thus the com- ments of Ulysses (Act I. Sc. 3) on the universal obligation of the law of order and degree, and the confusion caused by rebellion to its rule, either in nature or in society, are in the very spirit of the grandest and most instructive elo- quence of Burke. The piece abounds too in passages of the most profound and persuasive practical ethics, and grave advice for the government of life ; as when in the third act, Ulysses (the great didactic organ of the play) im- presses upon Achilles the consideration of man's ingrati- tude 'for good deeds past,' and the necessity of perse- verance to ' keep honor bright.' " And in further confirmation of this view, we find in this play one of those numerous instances of similarity, not to say identity, of thought and language, which, independent of extraneous circumstances, though not absolutely con- clusive in themselves, are, nevertheless, scarcely less con- vincing than the most direct evidence when considered with all the rest ; for, in the " Advancement of Learning," treating of moral culture, Bacon quotes Aristotle as say- ing, " that young men are no fit auditors of moral philos- ophy," because " they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experi- ence." And in the " Troilus and Cressida," we have the same thing in these lines : " Not much Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought Unfit to hear moral philosophy." Act II. Sc. 2. Mr. Spedding notices that Aristotle speaks only of " polit- ical philosophy," and he observes that the error of Bacon, in ' EARLY PLAYS. 49 making him speak of " moral philosophy," had been followed by Shakespeare. The " Advancement " was published in 1605, and this appears to have been a new play in 1608, (if, indeed, that older play of 1602 were not a first sketch of the same piece,) and so, it is barely possible that William Shakespeare may have seen the " Advancement " before those lines were written. But the whole tenor of the argu- ment in the play is so exactly in keeping with Bacon's man- ner and mode of dealing with the subject, that it is hard to believe a mere plagiarist would have followed him so pro- foundly. Bacon expresses the same opinions somewhat more fully in the De Augmentis, (published in 1623,) that " young men are less fit auditors of policy than of morals, until they have been thoroughly seasoned in religion and the doctrine of morals and duties ; for, otherwise, the judgment is so depraved and corrupted that they are apt to think there are no true and solid moral differences of things, and they measure everything according to utility or success, as the poet says : " Prosperum et foelix scelus virtus vocatur." 1 Now, this is precisely the depraved judgment of young Paris, according to his speech in the play. He argued that it would be disgraceful to the Trojan leaders to give up Helen, " on terms of base compulsion " : he " would have the soil of her fair rape Wip'd off in honorable keeping her." To which Hector replies altogether too much in Bacon's own style, not to have participated in his studies : " Eect. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well ; And on the cause and question now in hand Have gloz'd, but superficially ; not much Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought Unfit to hear moral philosophy. The reasons you allege, do more conduce To the hot passion of distemper'd blood, Than to make up a free determination l De Aug. Lib. VII., Works (Boston), III. 45. 4 50 DOUBTFUL PLATS. 'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice Of any true decision. Nature craves All dues be render'd to their owners : now, What nearer debt in all humanity Than wife is to the husband ? if this law Of nature be corrupted through affection, And that great minds, of partial indulgence To their benumbed wills, resist the same, There is a law in each well-ordered nation, To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory. If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta's king, As it is known she is, these moral laws Of nature and of nations speak aloud To have her back return' d: thus to persist In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, But makes it much more heavy." Act II. Sc. 2. In addition to the similarity of idea in respect of the errors of young men as to the doctrine and foundation of morals, there is an outcropping of identical expression in such phrases as these : " not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience" and " to the hot passion of distemper 1 d blood " ; " the judg- ment is so depraved and corrupted" and " if this law of na- ture be corrupted through affection " ; " no true and solid moral differences of things" and " these moral laws of nature and of nations " ; " the soil of her fair rape wip'dojfin hon- orable keeping her" and " scelus virtus vocatur " ; which are altogether too special, palpable, and peculiar, to be acciden- tal, or to be due to any common usage of that or any age ; and there would seem to be no room left for the possibility of a doubt as to the identity of the authorship. 7. DOUBTFUL PLAYS. Not only these plays and poems, but six other plays, which did not appear in that Folio, and which have never been received into the genuine canon, were likewise pub- lished, in Shakespeare's lifetime, under his name, or initials, viz: the "Sir John Oldcastle " in 1600, the "London DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 51 Prodigal" in 1605, the "Yorkshire Tragedy" in 1608, (and the " Pericles " in 1609,) under his name in full ; and the " Locrine " in 1595, the " Thomas Lord Cromwell " in 1602, and the Puritan, or Widow of Watling Street" in 1607, under the initials " W. S.," which some critics have taken to mean William Shakespeare, while others, with Malone, have agreed that they meant William Smith, and, with Pope, that Shakespeare never wrote a single line of them. These plays were in the possession of his theatre, and doubtless came into the hands of the printers in like manner with many of the others, which were in like man- ner reputed to be his. And not only these, but still another list was imputed to him, in his own time and afterwards, viz : the " Arraignment of Paris," the " Arden of Fever- sham," the "Edward III.," the "Birth of Merlin," the " Fair Em ; the Miller's Daughter," and the " Mucedorus," as well as the " Merry Devil of Edmonton," acted at the Globe, and printed, in 1608, under the names of Shake- speare and Rowley, and the " Two .Noble Kinsmen," printed after the death of Shakespeare under his name and that of Fletcher ; most of which have been rejected by nearly all critics as not Shakespeare's. Of the three that were published under his name in full, in his lifetime, there is scarcely any room to doubt that they were written by other authors. According to Malone, the " Sir John Oldcastle " was written by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathwaye. The first and second parts of it were entered in the books of the Stationers' Company, in 1600 ; the first part was printed in the name of William Shakespeare, in that year, as performed at Henslowe's the- atre ; and an entry in Henslowe's diary shows that, in 1599, he paid those authors for both parts ; but the second part was never printed. Mr. Knight and other later critics con- cur in the judgment of Malone, that it is clearly not a play of Shakespeare. The " Yorkshire Tragedy " was entered and printed in 52 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 1608; the event on which the story is founded did not happen until 1604 ; and although there may be no decisive reasons, grounded on internal evidence merely, why it may not have been a careless and hasty production of this author, it is difficult to believe that he could have produced such a play at about the same time that he was writing the " Hamlet," the " Lear," the " Macbeth," and the " Julius Caesar." The best judges concur in rejecting it as not written by him. The "London Prodigal" was published in 1605, as played by the " King's Majesty's Servants " of the Globe, and as written by William Shakespeare ; but Malone, Knight, and White reject it altogether. And of the other three, while it appears that one of them, the " Lord Crom- well," was performed by his company, the evidence is still more satisfactory, that they were all written by some other person, and probably by William Smith. Concerning the other list, the evidence is more uncertain ; but while some critics have believed that Shakespeare might have written at least some of them, the weight of fact and opinion is pretty decidedly against them all. On the whole, it would seem to be very certain that plays were published in his name, in his own time, of which he was not the author. Nor does it appear that he ever took the least trouble to prevent this unwarrantable use of his name : no denial, or other vindication of his reputation, has come down to us. We know that it was not an unu- sual thing, in those days, for " sharking booksellers " to set a great name to a book " for sale-sake." The name of Sir Philip Sidney was used in this manner, and even that of Shakespeare was set to Heywood's translation of Ovid, by Jaggard, in 1612; but Mr. Halliwell finds some intimation, coming from Heywood himself, that Shakespeare was " much offended " with Jaggard for this liberty with his name : it is more probable, in this instance, that Heywood would be the most offended man of the two. It may be DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 53 taken as sufficiently established, that this good-natured actor and manager was in the habit of publishing, or suffering to be published, in his name or initials, the plays which were owned by his theatre, as they were produced on the stage, of some of which it is well ascertained that he was not the author ; that he was not particular about shining thus in borrowed feathers ; that he never took the least care of his reputation as an author, either before or after his retiring from the stage ; and so, that the simple fact, that the plays and poems appeared under his name, and being reputed to be his, in his own time, so passed into the traditional myth, must lose nearly all force of evidence as touching the ques- tion of the real authorship. In a word, he was just such a character as would naturally be hit upon as a convenient and necessary cover for an aspiring and prolific genius, an irrepressible wit, a poetic imaginator, a man of all knowl- edge, classical learning, and a world-wide soul, who was at the same time ambitious of promotion in the state, in which direction lay the plan of his life, though never basely obse- quious to power withal (as some have imagined), still suf- fering by neglect and " the meanness of his estate," solicit- ing in vain, lacking advancement, and " eating the air, promise-crammed " ; and who had determined to " profess not to be a poet," but felt that he had a mission beyond the exigencies of the hour, and what is more, that his light must shine, though he should conceal his name in a cloud, "And keep invention in a noted weed." Sonnet Ixxvi. But if any one shall deem it necessary to assign some of these doubtful plays to this author, he will consider that this argument loses nothing in strength or force on that account. Between the time of Bacon's becoming an utter barrister of Gray's Inn, in 1582, and the publication of the '" Venus and Adonis," there was a period of ten years, in which a number of such plays may much better have been written by him than by William Shakespeare. They were not admitted 54 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. into the Folio of 1623 ; the editors, whether Heming and Condell, or some other, either knew them to be spurious, or rejected them as youthful and inferior productions, and as unworthy to take a place among the greater works of the author before the tribunal of posterity ; and all critics seem to concur in that opinion of their relative merit. It may have been for the same reason that the " Pericles " was not included in the Folio, though undoubtedly a work of this author. It is quite possible, however, that the copyright had been sold, and could not be regained. The play appears to have been founded upon a very ancient and popular tale, and it is highly probable that it was an early work, though by no means a weak or an immature production. The best critics seem to agree that it had been retouched by the hand of the master in his better style before it was brought out anew in 1607-8, and printed in 1609, as " the late and rruich admired play called ' Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' " and " as it hath been divers and sundry times acted by his Maj- esty's Servants at the Globe on the Banckside," with the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page. The text (say Harness and White) is very corrupt and full of er- rors ; and the reason of this may lay precisely in the fact that it was not revised by the real editor of the Folio, nor printed under his supervision. The story is more ancient than the time and countries in which the scene is laid. It is a deeply interesting and touching dramatic romance, as addressed not to modern rose-water criticism merely, but to the human heart of the world's theatre, and rather as it was in the ancient than in the modern times; and the spirit of the Greek drama, and even much of the touching simplicity of the tales of the Odyssey, is preserved in it. The first scene of the fifth act, in particular, bears a close resemblance to the style and manner of the dramatic dia- logue of Euripides. So, likewise, the " Titus Andronicus " is, in some points of substance rather than in the form, a near imitation of the more serious Greek tragedy ; and it DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 55 furnishes indubitable evidence that the author was familiar with the ancient drama. The main topics of this history of the Prince of Tyre afford occasion, also, for those pro- found exhibitions of human nature in the opposite ex- tremes of vice and virtue w,hich came within the range of this author's studies. And after a manner which is at least not improbable for the younger hand of Francis Bacon, who, throughout his life, held knowledge and virtue to be superior to riches ; who, in his youth, had taken all knowl- edge to be his province, and, as he said himself, " rather referred and aspired to virtue than to gain ; " l who pursued that immortality which makes a man a god, confessing he was by nature " fitter to hold a book than play a part " ; and who made a study of all arts, and was particularly curious in his investigations into the medicinal virtues of plants and minerals, as well as into all the hidden mys- teries of Nature, being also much in the habit of turning over authorities ; Lord Cerimon speaks thus in the "Pericles": " I held it ever, Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches : careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend ; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god. 'T is known I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o'er authorities, I have (Together with my practice) made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; And I can speak of the disturbances That Nature works, and of her cures ; which gives A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the Fool and Death." Act III. Sc. 2. 1 Letter to Egerton. 56 THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. 8. THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. It will be unnecessary to undertake to demonstrate at large herein, from the internal evidence contained in the plays themselves, that their author was a classical scholar, was acquainted with several foreign languages, was an adept in natural science, was a lawyer by profession, was a pro- found metaphysical philosopher, and was in general a man of high and polished culture and extensive learning for his time in all branches of human knowledge, in addition to the largest amount of natural genius and intellectual power which may reasonably be allowed to any mortal. The most competent judges in these matters have so pronounced. The inference has been, not that any other man was in fact the author of these works (at least, until Miss Delia Bacon ventured so to declare 1 ), but that the received biography of William Shakespeare was a myth and a mis- take ; and so the chief critics have proceeded to imagine for him some unwritten and unknown biography. But we shall have to accept the known personal history as at last the true account (in the main) of the man William Shake- speare. The later inquiries of modern scholars, the Shake- speare Society included, have ended only in rendering the supposition still more extravagant and absurd than it was before ; for the results, which have been carefully summed up by Mr. Halliwell and later biographers, furnish no data on which the previous account of his life can be in any material degree modified in respect of this matter. On the contrary, the new facts (such as are not forgeries) only concur with what was known before in representing him to us as a man whose heart and soul were more intent upon business, social affairs, and (what Lord Coke took to be the chief end of man) industrious money-getting, than upon anything that pertained to the literary part of his profes- sion. The essential problem still remains. l Phil, of Shakes. Plays Unfolded. Boston, 1857. THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. 57 A few brief words only will be added under this topic. The writer was a classical scholar. Rowe found traces in him of the " Electra " of Sophocles ; Colman, of Ovid ; Pope, of Darius Phrygius and other Greek authors ; Far- mer, of Horace and Virgil ; Malone, of Lucretius, Statius, Catullus, Seneca, Sophocles, and Euripides ; Steevens, of Plautus ; Knight, of the "Antigone " of Sophocles ; White, of the "Alcestis " of Euripides ; and doubtless many re- semblances and imitations of the ancient authors have been noticed by other critics and scholars. For resem- blances with Euripides, certainly too striking to be alto- gether accidental, the curious reader may compare these passages: "Orestes," 1204-6, and "Electra," 693, with "Macbeth," I. 7 ; " Orestes," 1271, with Hamlet," HI. 4 ; "Orestes," 1291 and 1375, with "Macbeth," II. 2 ; and gen- erally the " Orestes " and " Electra " with " Hamlet " and "Macbeth"; "Medea," 1284-9, with "Hamlet," IV. 7; "Hellene," 270, with Sonnet CXXI; " Hellene," 512-14, with Richard II.," II. 1 ; Rhesus " with " 3 Henry VI.," IV. 2 ; and also the "Antigone " of Sophocles, 1344-5, with the " Timon of Athens," IV. 3, and the Timon of Lucian with the play of " Timon." Some have sought, with Dr. Farmer, to find the source of all this classical learning in sundry English translations, but it has been an idle undertaking ; for it appears that he drew, in fact, from the untranslated authors. The greater I part of the story of Timon was taken from the untranslated Greek of Lucian, an author that is several times quoted in the writings of Bacon. Ovid and Tacitus were favorite authors with Bacon, and frequent traces of both are to be found in the plays. The " Comedy of Errors " was little more than a reproduction (in a different dress) of the Me- noechmi of Plautus, also an author that is frequently quoted by Bacon. The first mention that we have of this play is, that it was performed during the twelve days of the Christ- mas Revels at Gray's Inn, in 1594, on which occasion it is 58 THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. now historically known that Francis Bacon furnished at least a masque, 1 and (as I will attempt to prove) this very (play also ; and there was no translation of the Menoechmi before 1595. Beginning the career of an actor with " small Latin and less Greek," William Shakespeare cannot be pre- sumed to have made himself acquainted with much of the Greek and Latin literature, and especially not with Soph- ocles, Euripides, and Plato, as this writer undoubtedly was ; for these had not been translated. The author was able to drink deep of the very spirit of the Greek tragedy, without danger of drowning in the bowl ; according to some great critics, he surpassed it altogether; and a thorough student may discover in the plays not only traces of Plato, but a wonderful approximation to the depth and breadth of the Platonic philosophy. Moreover, he was well versed in the ancient mythology, and in the history, manners, and cus- toms of antiquity : in short, he knew all the wisdom of the ancients. It is equally clear that he knew French and Italian. iThe story of Othello was taken from the Italian of Cinthio's " II Capitano Moro," of which no translation is known to have existed ; the tale of " Cymbeline " was drawn I from an Italian novel of Boccaccio, not known to have been translated into English ; and the like is true of some other plays. Several of the plays were founded upon stories taken from Belleforest's " Histoires Tragiques," of which some few were to be found in Painter's translation, of which one volume had been published in the time of Shakespeare, but others of them had not been translated. Francis Bacon had lived four years in Paris, and was mas- ter of the French, Italian, and Spanish languages ; and it is highly probable that, in 1580, he would be iu possession of the " Histoires Tragiques " as well as of the Essays of Montaigne in the original French. Florio's translation of Montaigne was published in 1603, and it has been said l Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon (London, 1861), I. 325-342. THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. 59 that an old copy had been found which contained an auto- graph of William Shakespeare ; but Mr. Halliwell is com- pelled to reject the story as not authentic. Nevertheless, it is reasonable enough to suppose that so notable a book as this was may have fallen into his hands. The author was skilled in natural science. He pursued a scientific rather than the common method of observation, though the scientific observation of that day had in it some- thing of poetic vagueness and generality as compared with modern methods. This is visible in the nature of his illus- trations, metaphors, and allusions ; and it is clear that he had made some study of the medical science and materia medico, of his time. Pope did not fail to notice that he had a taste for " natural philosophy and mechanics." He understood the whole machinery of astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, and sorcery, not merely as it stood in the popu- lar traditions, but in the sense of the written literature of that day ; and he had a philosophy of spirits, ghosts, witches, dreams, visions, and prophecies, so subtle and pro- found as to be beyond the reach of uninitiated and unin- structed genius. The spontaneous and merely natural man does not proceed in that manner. He will see things in a certain general, vague, and common way, as it were, in the gross and complex only, and rather in merely fanciful rela- tions than in that accurate manner of close and deep analy- sis, which also discovers the scientific form and real nature of things, as seen in all true poetry ; and such must have been the habit and manner of this author. This accords with the known history of Bacon's earlier as well as his later years ; for he was always a close observer of nature, and pursued in private his experimental researches, never losing sight of his great work, the instauration of natural history and physical science, as the surest foundation for philosophy itself, and the safest road into the higher realm of metaphysics. It would indeed be a wonder, as Pope said, if a man could know the world by intuition, and see through nature at one glance. 60 THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. He was a lawyer too. His use of legal terms and phrases, in the sonnets as well as the plays, and his representations of legal proceedings, are of such a kind and character, that it is at once apparent to the mind of a lawyer, that the writer had been educated to that profession. Mr. Collier and Lord Campbell were not the first to observe this very important fact Neither the long list of examples cited by Malone, 1 nor the learned essay of Lord Campbell, by any means contains them all ; they pervade these writings with that peculiar use which is familiar to the lawyer only, and they flow from him as unconsciously as his very soul. Such learning, most certainly, does not come by instinct, though we admit, with Dogberry, that " to read and write comes by nature " ; and no acquaintance which William Shake- speare could have had with the law, consistently with the known facts of his life, can reasonably account for this striking feature in the plays. It was not to be had in the office of a bailiff; and the considerations referred to by Lord Campbell, though of the nature of negative evidence, ought to be taken as satisfactory, that he could never have been a regular student at law at Stratford-on-Avon ; espe- cially since his Lordship did not become a convert to this unavoidable and very necessary theory of Mr. Collier. The speech of the Archbishop on the Salic law, in the " Henry V.," as Dr. Farmer observed, was evidently taken, and almost literally versified, from a passage in Holinshed's Chronicles, 2 together with a quotation from the Book of Numbers, to the effect that when a man dies without a son, the inheritance descends to the daughter. And it is at least singularly curious, that in the "Apothegms " of Bacon there are two anecdotes, based, the one upon the same doc- ' trine with regard to the Salic law as that maintained in this speech, viz., that in France itself males claimed by . women, with a repetition of the French " gloss " of Holin- shed ; and the other upon a quotation from Scripture, as in 1 Chron. Order of Shakes. Plays. 2 Chron. of Eng. III. 65. THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. 61 both Holinshed and the speech. It is, of course, possible that Shakespeare might make plays, and Bacon, apothegms, out of Holinshed ; but when numerous instances of the same kind occur (as will be shown), it may well furnish an indication that the transition took place through the same mind in both cases. He was in the habit of making apo- thegms of his own wit ; that concerning the " seditious prelude " of Dr. Hayward (as supposed) and his own facetious attempt to avert the anger of the Queen, who thought there was treason in it, may be taken as one in- stance ; and perhaps we have another in the apothegm of the fellow named Hogg, who importuned Sir Nicholas Bacon to save his life, claiming that there was kindred be- tween Hog and Bacon. " Aye," replied the judge, " you and I cannot be kindred, except you be hanged ; for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged." * And the same jest appears in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," thus : " Evans. Accusitivo, Mny, hang, hog. Quick. Hang hog is Latin for bacon, I warrant you." Act IV, 8c. 1. A passage in the second part of the " Henry IV." (Act III. Sc. 2) would seem to render it highly probable that the writer himself had seen somebody " fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray's Inn." There are allusions also in the first part of the " Henry IV.," from which it may be inferred that St. Albans was a familiar name and a favorite place with the author ; and Gorham- bury near St. Albans had been the country residence of his father, and, after his father's death, of his mother, and subsequently, his own country-seat. He was several times elected to Parliament for the borough of St Albans, which was the site of the ancient Verulamium, whence were taken his titles of Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans ; and he directed by his will that his remains should be buried in " St Michael's Church, near St Albans." And after his fall from power, when he had returned to his lodgings in l Bacon's Apothegm. 62 THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. Gray's Inn, and his " labours were now most set to have those works," which he had formerly published, "made more perfect," in a proposal which he was making to the King for a " Digest of the Laws," he says : " As for myself, the law was my profession, to which I am a debtor ; some little helps I have of other arts, which may give form to matter." Moreover, this writer was a philosopher. " He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher," says Coleridge. These words from such a man may be presumed to mean something. And when such judges of the matter as Schil- ler, Goethe, and Jean Paul Richter also agree in finding that he was a philosopher, no one need be amazed at the assertion, that he was master of all the learning of the Greeks, and had sounded the depths of Plato. For the mass of readers, it can no more be expected, that they should comprehend, in any adequate manner, what this really means, than that they should understand, without more, what was meant by the Philosophia Prima of Bacon, or " Philosophy itself." But it can never mean less than one who has carried his studies into the highest realms of human thought and culture ; and that was never the work of a day, nor often of a whole life. Nor was it ever the work of intuition merely. It is at least conceivable, that a man who was capable of taking a critical survey of all pre- vious learning, and pointing out the way for the advance- ment of human knowledge, who wrote civil and moral essays upon all phases of life and character, which still live as fresh as ever, and who could venture to undertake the instauration, not of physical science merely, but of philosophy itself, might, by possibility, be able to write such dramas as the "Romeo and Juliet," the "Midsummer Night's Dream," the " As You Like It," the " Measure for Measure," the " Cymbeline," the " Hamlet," the " Lear," the " Macbeth," the " Timon of Athens," the " Troilus and Cressida," and the " Tempest " ; but, for such a man as we THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. 63 know for William Shakespeare, it would appear to be a thing next to impracticable, if not wholly impossible. It would probably be of no sort of use or effect to declare here that this consideration, duly weighed, ought to be taken as conclusive of the whole matter. In fact, it will not ; and the inquiry must proceed. A well-marked difference may be looked for between the earlier and the later works of any writer. More striking evidence of growth does not exist in the works of Schiller, or Goethe, which were produced before, and those produced after, they respectively became initiated into the mysteries of the higher philosophy, than is manifest in the earlier and later plays of Shakespeare. In either case, the collegiate erudition of the tyro is, at length, lost in the comprehen- sive learning of the finished scholar, and the exuberant fancy of the spontaneous poet and inexperienced youth becomes subdued into the matured strength and breadth, the depth of feeling, and the prophetic insight of the seer and the philosopher. We know that Francis Bacon had practiced those " Georgics of the Mind " on which all criti- cal thinking and high art depend. He comprehended that " Exemplar or Platform of Good," the " Colours of Good and Evil," and that " Regiment or Culture of the Mind," l whereby alone the highest excellence may be reached ; and he had attained to that noble philosophy, whereby only the soul of man is to be " raised above the confusion of things " to that height of Plato, where, situate as upon a cliff, he may have " a prospect of the order of nature and the errours of men." 2 In Francis Bacon, we have a man three years older than William Shakespeare, and, when the latter came to Lon- don, already ten years from the University and some four years an utter barrister of Gray's Inn, and well prepared, by the best possible advantages of early education, finished classical scholarship, foreign travel, and residence at royal l Adv. of Learning. * Works (Montagu), I. 252. 64 THE AUTHOR'S ATTAINMENTS. courts, extraordinary natural gifts and learned acquisitions, for commencing and prosecuting such a work ; and in the situation of the briefless young barrister, in the midst of books, making slow progress in the profession, getting no advancement for a period of twenty-five years after his coming to the bar beyond the unproductive honor of a Queen's or King's Counsel and a seat in Parliament, labor- ing under the twofold embarrassment of an expensive mode of life and debt to the Lombards and Jews, casting about for " some lease of quick revenue " to relieve (as he says) " the meanness of my estate," enjoying the society of the theatre-going and masque-devising young courtiers, the dazzling favor of the Court, the ample leisure of Gray's Inn, and occasionally the Arcadian quiet of Gorhambury and Twickenham Park ; and in his known devotion to all manner of studies and the profoundest speculations, we may find the needful preparation, the time for writing and for study, and the means of growth and culture which the case requires. And his acknowledged prose compositions of that period, to say nothing of the sonnets which he addressed to the Queen, or the masques which he wrote for her entertainment, exhibit all the necessary qualities of the poet. He was " a poetic imaginator," says George Darley, " and dramatic poets are (or ought to be) philosophers." l Even Macaulay admitted that " the poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind ; but not, like his wit, so power- ful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason." 2 As early as 1610, Shakespeare, having some time before ceased to play his part as an actor upon the stage, had re- tired from the theatres in London, and resumed his perma- nent residence in Stratford-on-Avon. He is not known to , have had any further connection with the stage. But in 1611 were produced the " Winter's Tale " and the " Tem- pest." The " Lear " was first performed before the King 1 Introd. to Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, by George Darley. 2 Misc., II. 408. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 65 at Whitehall, in 1606, and the "Troilus and Cressida," in 1609 ; and the first notice that we have of the " Tempest" is, that it was performed before the King's Majesty at Whitehall, in November, 1611 ; and the "Winter's Tale," first acted at the Globe, in May, 1611, was performed be- fore the King at Whitehall, a few days after the " Tem- pest." Both were repeated at Court during the festivities attending the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, toward the close of the year 1612, and in the spring of 1613. And on the thirtieth day of June fol- lowing, and while these festivities were still proceeding, as it appears, the magnificent play of " Henry VIII." was for the first time produced in great splendor at the Globe, with the presence (if not the assistance) of Ben Jonson (Shake- speare having retired from London), containing a studied and special compliment to King James. On the twenty- seventh of October, thereafterwards, Sir Francis Bacon, Solicitor-General, having sometime before " come with his pitcher to Jacob's well, as others did," and obtained " the royal promise to succeed to the higher place," is raised to the laborious and lucrative position of Attorney- General, and the plays cease to appear. William Shakespeare con- tinues, a few years longer, to enjoy the social comforts of New Place, prosecuting at leisure his agricultural pursuits and miscellaneous traffic, and dies in April, 1616, leaving a handsome estate and a will. 9. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. Seven years after the death of Shakespeare, these last- ing memorials of the most transcendent genius were gath- ered up from the play-houses in London (as it would seem) by his surviving fellows, Heming and Condell, who appear to have assumed the function of editors ; and they were published in the Folio of 1623, as they say in the preface, from " the true original Copies." What and whence were these true original copies ? Let us consider of this. As 66 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. early as 1589, commissioners were appointed by the Queen to revise stage-plays; and after 1594, they had to be li- censed and entered at Stationers' Hall, before they could be printed, being prohibited, " except they bee allowed by such as have auctoritye." Nevertheless, some may have been printed without license. Before 1600, theatres had become so numerous and disorderly that all but two, the Globe and the Fortune, were suppressed by public order. Plays sold to a theatre were kept for its own exclusive use, and when they got abroad, as sometimes they did, through surreptitious copies, or when they found their way into the hands of the printers, other theatres, on appeal to the authorities, were prohibited from acting them. It appears by the entries in the Register of the Stationers' Company, that the publishers of plays claimed a right of property in the copy, which was considered assignable ; and when the Folio of 1623 was published by Jaggard and Blount, an entry was made at Stationers' Hall of the six- teen plays which had not been printed before, by their titles, as of " soe many of the said Copies as are not for- merly entered to other men," and these sixteen were as- signed by Jaggard and Blount, in 1630, to one of the pub- lishers of the Folio of 1632. But how the publishers of the first Folio had acquired the copyright of the rest of the plays from those " other men," does not appear : it is to be presumed they did so. It is probable that this right of property in the copy was not then so protected by law as to be a thing of much value, there being no effective remedy either at law or in equity : at least, none appears to have been sought in the courts. The chief object of this license and entry seems to have been to secure a strict censorship of the press ; a function that was exercised at first by com- missioners, and afterwards by the Master of the Revels. When a copy had been licensed to one publisher, a second license appears sometimes to have been granted to another, perhaps after a transfer of the copyright. The printing of THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 67 books was held to be a matter of state, to be regulated by Star- Chamber decrees, letters-patent, commissions, and the ordinances " set down for the good government of the Sta- tioners' Company." And though some right of property in the copy may have existed at common law, none was ever distinctly recognized by any legislation, nor by any reported judicial decision before the year 1640 ; l but in 1637, a de- cree of the Star-Chamber prohibited the printing of any book or copy which the Stationers' Company, or any other person, had obtained the sole right to print, by entry in their Register ; whence it may be inferred that previous to that date this right had been but little respected. Never- theless, it will be borne in mind that this right of property in a book was called the copy in those days, whence the term copyright came into use in the law. None of these plays were ever entered in the name of William Shakespeare, as owner of the copy, but all in the names of the several pub- lishers ; and there were different publishers of the several plays at dates not far apart. And after the publication of the Folio of 1623, there were, in like manner as before, separate entries of several of the plays for license to print by other publishers, at different dates. Whence it may be inferred that no well-recognized copyright existed in any owner of those plays, or that it was often and readily trans- ferred ; and so, that the publishers of the Folio could have had but little difficulty in obtaining the copyright from those " other men," if indeed there were any at all. It is barely possible that this difficulty may have been the reason why the " Pericles " was not included in the Folio, though it may have been rejected by the Editor. We know from Blackstone that stage-plays unlicensed were liable to indictment as public nuisances, 2 and inas- much as they had to be licensed before they could be printed, it is certain that complete manuscripts must have 1 Curtis on Copyright, 26; 1 Eden on Inj., cxli. 2 4 Comm., 168. 68 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. been furnished to the proper officer for examination. So Chettle said of Greene's " Groatsworth of Wit " : "I had only in the copy this share ; it was ill written, as sometime Greene's hand was none of the best ; licensed it must be ere it could be printed, which could never be if it might not be read." l Now, as to the " six true and genuine copies " (spoken of by Capell), of which only some meagre first draughts had been printed in quarto, and the sixteen plays that were first printed in the Folio, if not, in fact, as to all of them, the true original copies could only mean the perfected manuscripts : it is plain they were not the quartos. And then the proposition must be, that the complete and fin- ished manuscripts were in the possession of these editors as managers of the theatre. They were not committed to their charge by the will of Shakespeare, nor do they say anything in their preface of having received them from his \ executors. Of course, the author must have furnished a complete manuscript copy to the theatre, from which the separate parts for the use of the actors might be drawn off. The conjecture of Pope, upon a very superficial examina- tion, that the plays in the Folio were printed from such piecemeal parts, with all the interpolations, alterations, and mistakes of the actors, is effectually negatived by the more thorough studies and comparisons of later critics. No ! entry was made, nor any quarto printed, of any work of Shakespeare between 1609 and his death in 1616, but between this date and 1623 there were six reprints of quartos, besides the " Othello," of which the first quarto appeared in 1622. Whence came the manuscript of this " Othello " ? Was it furnished by the theatre, or by Hem- ing and Condell, or by the author himself? It appears, by an entry in the official accounts of the Revels at Court, that a play of the " Moor of Venise " was acted before King James at Whitehall, on the first day of November, iKind Heart's Dream, (Halliwell, 146.) THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 69 1604, by "his Majesty's Servants"; but Mr. White has given some very good reasons for believing that this was an older play by another author, and probably founded upon Cinthio's novel called " The Moor of Venice," espec- ially as the names of Othello and lago appear to have been taken from the " History of the Prince of Denmark," which was not printed until 1605, and that it was not the " Othello " of Shakespeare, which bears internal evidence of the matured hand of the master ; the composition of which he would place as late as 1611, or afterwards, mainly on the ground that it contains an unmistakable allusion to the creation of the order of baronets, which took place in that year, supported by the consideration of the rather extraordinary circumstance that it was not printed before 1622, thirteen years having then elapsed since the last quarto of a new play had appeared, and when there were nineteen other plays, which had never been printed, and were known to the public onfy upon the stage ; that is, such of them as were known at all ; for, of some of them, as the " Coriolanus," the " Antony and Cleopatra," and the " Timon of Athens," there is no evidence that they had ever appeared upon the stage, or were known to the public, before they were printed in the Folio. This is, indeed, very remarkable ; and, taking Mr. White's opinion to be well founded, since Mr. Collier's entry of the " Othello " in the Egerton Papers of the date of 1602 has been clearly shown to be a downright forgery, there remains on record no notice whatever of this " Othello " until it was entered at Stationers' Hall in October, 1621. But that this play should have made its first appearance at Court as so many others did, or even at the house of the Lord Keeper Eger- ton, a friend of Sir Francis Bacon, need not be considered as anything extraordinary in itself, and that it had not fallen into the hands of the printers before 1622, though it had been upon the stage some years before that date, Rich- ard Burbage, who died in 1619, having been famous in the 70 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. character of Othello, may be considered less surprising, when it is remembered that the same is true of several other of the later and greater plays of this author. 1 The previous quartos may be considered under three heads : first draughts, surreptitious editions of stolen copies, and completed plays. Of some of these first draughts and surreptitious copies, the completed and perfected plays appeared for the first time in the Folio of 1623 ; of others of them, as the " Hamlet " for instance, we have quartos nearly complete before 1604 ; and of nineteen of the plays, the first known editions are in the Folio. And of those which had previously appeared in quarto, it is found that some of them had been remodelled and rewritten, that others had undergone extensive revision, with important additions, alterations, omissions, and emendations, and that nearly all of them had received such critical correction and emendation as necessarily to imply that they were made by the hand of the master m"mself. The " Othello " of the Folio was printed at about the same time as the quarto, and, as Mr. Knight thinks, was probably struck off before it but from the original manuscript without reference to the quarto ; Mr. White agrees that it was printed from another and an improved text ; and it is regularly divided into acts and scenes, while the quarto is not, and contains one hundred and sixty-three lines, the most striking in the play, which are not found in the quarto, while the quarto does not contain ten lines which are not in the Folio ; 2 and both these critics agree that the additions and corrections are of such a nature as to indicate the agency of the author's own hand, as in the case of the " Hamlet," the Lear," the " Richard II.," the " Richard III.," the " Henry IV.," and, indeed, of nearly all the plays. Now, whence this difference in the manuscript copy ? According to Mr. White, the " Love's Labor 's Lost " of 1 White's Shakes., XI. 362-4. 2 Knight's Stud, of Shakes. ; White's Shakes., XI. 360-4. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 71 the Folio corrects a great many more errors than it makes, and has variations which must have come from some other source than the previous quarto. The " Henry V." of the j Folio contains ninetee'n hundred lines more than the quarto of 1600, and, according to Mr. Knight, is not only aug- mented by the addition of new scenes and characters, but there is scarcely a speech which is not elaborated. The " Merry Wives of Windsor " in the Folio contains nearly double the number of lines that are found in the quarto of 1602, and it is greatly remodelled, whole scenes rewritten, speeches elaborated and emended, and characters height- ened by the addition of new and distinctive features. Slen- der is a small affair in the quarto, and Shallow a different person altogether in the Folio. The " Titus Andronicus " appears in the Folio with a whole new scene added, and the " Much Ado About Nothing " in the Folio, according to White, has important corrections of a nature to indicate that they were made by authority ; and it is greatly supe- rior to the quarto in respect of editorial supervision. The "Lear" of the Folio, as compared with the quarto of 1608, contains large additions, corrections, and omissions. Some fifty lines of the Folio are not found in the quarto, and some two hundred and twenty-five lines of the quarto, comprising one whole scene and some striking passages, are omitted in the Folio. The omissions can no more be attributed to Heming and Condell than the additions, which, says Knight, " comprise several such minute touches as none but the hand of the master could have super- added." l The "Tempest," the "Winter's Tale," the " Measure for Measure," the " Cymbeline," the " Midsum- mer Night's Dream," the " Henry VIII.," the " Julius Cae- sar," the " Lear," the " Troilus and Cressida," and the " An- tony and Cleopatra," (according to both Knight and White), are among those which are printed with singular correctness in the Folio, some of them even to the niceties of punctua- i Stud, of Shakes., 337. 72 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. tion, furnishing the most decisive evidence of unusual care in the supervision of the press; while some few others appear to have had but little attention from editor or proof- reader. But here is enough, without dwelling further upon particular instances, to warrant the conclusion, not merely that the Folio of 1623 must be taken as the most authentic edition of the plays that we have, but that it had an edito- rial revision, as compared with all previous editions, far beyond anything that can safely be imagined for Heming and Condell. Indeed, as to the greater part of the correc- tions and all the additions and principal emendations, they can only be attributed, as they have been, to the author himself. And then the proposition for William Shake- speare must be, that they were all made before his death, if not before he retired from London ; and this (it is per- haps conceivably possible) he might have done as easily as he could write the " Tempest," the " Winter's Tale," and the "Henry VIIL," between 1610 and 1613, and the "Othello" before 1616. But the theory also requires us to believe that he furnished the new and amended manu- script copies to the theatre, which were " the true original copies" in the hands of Heming and Condell, seven years later, the " Othello " inclusive. Having no regard for his reputation and fame as an author, why should he take all this trouble and pains merely for the benefit of the theatres which he had left ? Or, having such regard, why should he wholly neglect to collect and publish them himself? Or if prevented by death, how should he fail to make any pro- vision for their preservation and publication afterwards? And finally, having furnished to the theatre the finished manuscript of the " Othello," before 1616, how should there be such a difference between the quarto and the folio, when the manuscript for both must have come from the theatre, if not from the hands of Heming and Condell ? And, in either case, how should an old and imperfect copy have been put into the hands of the printer, when the complete THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 73 and perfect manuscript had been in the actual use of the theatre for more than seven years ! But if the real author were still living to make these revisions himself, the whole mystery would be explained, and especially this enigma of the " Othello," which so much requires explanation ; and the comparison of a single pas- sage like the following is almost enough of itself to raise a strong suspicion that the fact was so. In the first scene of the second act, we find this expression " the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards " : and these lines, not found in the quarto of 1622, were inserted in the speech of Brabantio (Act I. Sc. 2) in the Folio: 1 " Judge me the world, if 't is not gross in sense, That thou hast practised on her with foul charms ; Abus'd her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals, That waken motion. I '11 have 't disputed on; 'T is probable, and palpable to thinking." All this is in exact keeping with Bacon's ideas of " mineral medicines," that were " safer for the outward than inward parts," and of the effects which they may produce ; as in a speech he uses the figure of " a certain violent and min- eral spirit of bitterness." It is possible, too, to suppose that these improved orig- inal manuscripts may have passed from the theatre into the hands of Heming and Condell ; that they were submitted to the Master of the Revels for license and then placed in the hands of the printers ; and that, being superseded in the use of the stage by the printed plays, they may have finally gone to destruction ; but it is extremely difficult, as , Mr. Halliwell observes, to account for their total disappear- ance. And it is certainly a little remarkable, that neither these editors, who took the pains to collect and publish ( these works, should have preserved a single manuscript as i White's Shakes., XL, Notes, 494. 74 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. a memorial of their departed fellow, nor any member of his family, as a memento in his own handwriting of so distin- guished a poet, their ancestor ; and that not a single paper of his writing should have been handed down within the reach of any tradition. But nothing definite can be founded on an argument of this kind. On the other hand, taking Francis Bacon for the author, we may suppose that the original manuscript copies would be kept a secret of his private cabinet ; and that transcripts only in the handwriting of William Shakespeare would come to the knowledge of the players. The remark that he never blotted out a line would seem to imply that the manuscripts which they saw were in his handwriting, with which they must have been acquainted. After his death, it would become necessary for the real author to find some other cover for the purpose of publication. His fellow- actors, Heming and Condell, might be selected to stand in his place as ostensible editors. Little more would be re- quired than the use of their names. The dedication and preface would be written by the author himself: they have been supposed to have been written by Ben Jonson. The proof-sheets could be privately sent to his chambers in Bedford House, or in Gray's Inn, or the matter of proof- reading may have been left to the printer. All this would imply that Heming and Condell became parties to the secret ; in such case, they would feel no interest in the manuscripts ; and the arrangement with them must have been made, if at all, as early as 1622, or soon after the date of Bacon's fall from the woolsack and his banishment to his books and private studies at Gorhambury, Bedford House, and Gray's Inn. The original manuscripts, of course, Bacon would take care to destroy, if determined that the secret should die with him. We know from Bacon's will, that he directed his servant, Henry Percy, to deliver to his brother, Sir John Constable, all his manuscript compositions and fragments, to be pub- THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 75 lished as he might see fit, taking " the advice of Mr. Selden and Mr. Herbert of the Inner Temple," and also desired his brother Constable and Sir William Boswell, presently after his decease, to take into their hands all his papers whatsoever, " which are either in cabinets, boxes, or presses, and them to seal up until they may at their leisure peruse them." * It would seem probable that all these manuscripts and papers remained locked up for some fourteen months after his death, when letters of administration were granted to Sir Thomas Rich and Mr. Thomas Meautys, and that afterwards the greater part (at least) of the manuscripts came into the custody of Dr. Rawley, his former chaplain and secretary ; though some of them appear to have been carried to Holland by Sir William Boswell, and placed in the hands of Isaac Gruter, who published a part of them at Amsterdam in 1653. Gruter's preface mentions certain moral and political pieces which were not published by him, and which, according to Mr. Spedding,' 2 remain to be ac- counted for, unless they were transferred to Dr. Rawley to be included in the Opuscula of 1658. As late as 1652-5, certain letters of Isaac Gruter state that there still remained, in the cabinet of Dr. Rawley, other manuscripts of the " Verulamian workmanship," which, being " committed to faithful privacy," were as yet " denied to the public." The actual character of these writings is not stated, but, from the whole tenor of the correspondence and the relations of the parties, it may be distinctly gathered that they were fragments of a philosophical, political, or moral nature in prose. There appears to be no ground whatever for any inference beyond this. Had the manuscripts of these plays been left in existence by Bacon, it is scarcely conceivable that we should never have heard of them, and that they should even have escaped the late thorough research of Mr. Spedding. He must have destroyed them before his i Baconiana, 203; Craik's Bacon, 223. Preface, Works (Boston), V. 187-195. 76 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. death, if this theory be true : any other supposition would seem to be wholly inadmissible. Why he should desire such a secret to be buried with him, may be considered in another place : at present, we must take the fact to be so. On the whole, nothing is made to appear, out of this critical comparison of copies and this modern research into the history of the Folio, necessarily to exclude, or essen- tially to contradict, the hypothesis, that this Folio may have been published at the secret instance and under the general direction of Lord Bacon himself; though it must be confessed that greater negligence would seem to be ex- hibited in some parts of it than is consistent with our ideas, at this day, of that particular and especial care, which the exquisite taste and personal feeling of such an author would lead us to expect in such a work. The credit due to the Folio for authenticity must be increased in the same degree that it is rendered probable that it was printed in this manner ; and it is very certain that Lord Bacon was exclusively engaged, at this very time, in contemplations and studies in close retirement, continuing his philosophical labors, completing his instaurations of all science, and care- fully preparing for the press new and improved editions of works already published. He was thus sedulously endeav- oring to put a fitting close to the labors of his life by care- fully transmitting to posterity what he deemed worthy of preservation. About the 22d of June, 1621, at the King's direction, he retired to his country-seat at Gorhambury, where he re- mained until sometime in the summer of 1622. On the 1st of September, 1621, he writes thus to Buckingham: " I am much fallen in love with a private life ; but yet I shall so spend my time as shall not decay my abilities for use." l In another letter from Gorhambury, dated Febru- ary 3d, 1621-2, 2 he expresses a desire to get back to Lon- 1 Letter, Works (Philad.), III. 135. 2 It will be borne in mind that the year began, in those days, on the 25th of March, and not as now on the 1st day of January. Letter to Bucking- ham, Works (Philad.), HI. 141. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. 77 don, where, as he says, " I could have helps at hand for my writings and studies, wherein I spend my time." In a memorandum made for an expected interview with the King, sometime in 1 622, he writes thus : " My story is proved : I may thank your Majesty ; for I heard him note of Tasso, that he could know which poem he made when he was in good condition, and which when he was a beg- gar : I doubt he could make no such observation of me." Perhaps not, your lordship. During the autumn of 1622, his letters are dated from Bedford House, in London, and by the 8th of March, 1623, he had returned to his old lodgings in Gray's Inn. In a letter dated thence, March 22, 1622-3, he says : " Myself for quiet and the better to hold out, am retired to Gray's Inn; for when my chief friends were gone so far off, it was time for me to go to a cell." 1 So Prospero, thrust from his dukedom, is again " master of a full poor cell," where, " neglecting worldly ends, all dedicate To closeness," he is " wrapt in secret studies " : ( Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.) " This cell's my court: here have I few attendants, And subjects none abroad: pray you look in." Ib. Act V. Sc. 1. And in June, 1623, he writes to Mr. Tobie Matthew: " It is true my labors are now most set to have those works I had formerly published, as that of Advancement of Learn- ing, that of Henry VII., that of the Essays, being retract- ate, and made more perfect, well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens, which forsake me not." 2 Of these " good pens " Ben Jonson was one, and George Herbert another. Again, in 1623, he writes to Prince Charles : " For Henry the VIII., to deal plainly with your highness, I did despair of my health this summer, as I was glad to choose some such work as I might compass within days ; so far was I from entering into a work of 1 Letter to Cottington, Works (Mont.), XII. 439; (Philad.), HI. 148. 2 Letter, Works (Philad.), III. 151. 78 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. length It began like a fable of the poets ; but it deserveth all in a piece a worthy narration." 1 In the thick crowding exigencies of this time, and in the long list of works given to the world during the five years next preced- ing his death, some explanation may be found, if it be required, for a somewhat negligent correction of the press, when " these trifles " were in question. Steevens and others have thought they could discover in the Dedication and Preface to the Folio some traces of the hand of Ben Jonson. But surely with more reason it may be said, that in the thought, style, and diction of both, there is exhibited the very soul of the real Shakespeare himself; as it were, ex pede Herculem. True, the story of the players in commendation of Shakespeare, that he never blotted out a line (" there never was a more groundless report," says Pope), is repeated in the Preface. But it is known that Ben Jonson was an intimate friend and great admirer of Bacon, and so fine a joke as this must have been for him would not fail to impress the mind of Bacon as well ; for, as Ben Jonson tells us, he could with difficulty " spare or pass by a jest." Jonson also writes of " my gentle Shake- speare," "that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses anvile." And so, according to the Dedication and Preface, " Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies " he would see published from "the true original copies (which he would know to be such), and dedicated to that " Most Noble and Incomparable Paire of Brethren," the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, patrons of learning and of the theatre, his particular friends, before he also should take his departure, and not have " the fate to be executor of his own writings,"* though he could not "but i Letter, Ibid. 152-3. THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. T9 know their dignity greater than to descend to the read- ing of these trifles." But the " Orphanes " should have " Guardians, without ambition either of selfe-profit or fame : onely to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fel- low alive as was our Shakespeare." These plays had " had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales," and they should " now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court than any purchased Letters of commendation " (exe- cutors, orphans, guardians, trials, appeals, and decrees of court were now ready on the tongue of the ex-chancellor), " cured and perfect of their limbes ; and all the rest, ab- solute in their numbers as he conceived them " (what no one could better certify, " quam historiam hgitimam et om- nibus numeris suis absolutam " 1 ) ; for he was " a happie imitator of Nature " (whereof the great " interpreter of Nature" might be sensible), and " a most gentle expresser of it. What he thought he uttered with that easinesse that wee have scarce received a blot in his papers " (what he could not spare to mention), and " his wit could no more lie hid than it could be lost " (as witness these records of it, which should not perish). He was to be read " againe and againe ; for if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him." So Heming and Condell would " leave you to other of his Friends, whom, if you need, can be your guides ; if you need them not, you can leade yourselves and others ; and such readers " they wished him. Indeed it is altogether such a dedication and preface as might be expected from this " Jupiter in a thatch'd house," this secret inquisitor of nature, learning, and art; who in his youth had taken " all knowledge to be his province " ; whose " vast contemplative ends " had embraced " the image of the universal world " ; but who, in respect of these trifles, still preferred to die with his mask on. And such readers would he wish to have, who knew the danger, perhaps felt l De Aug. Sclent., L. II. c. 5., Works (Boston), II. 202. 80 THE TRUE ORIGINAL COPIES. the certainty, that his own age would not fully understand him ; but he would take care that these same trifles should be secured to the possession of those " next ages " which might be able to comprehend him aright. And he has left us also, perhaps unwittingly, the guides to the knowledge of who as well as what this " our Shakespeare " was ; though " As one that had been studied in his death, To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd, As 't were a careless trifle " : Macbeth, Act 1. Sc. 4. or, as he himself says of Aristotle, " as one that had been a challenger of all the world, and raised infinite contradic- tion ; " J or as one that had been about to leave the shores of earth, and had cast a lingering look behind upon a thing known to be " immortal as himself" ; as the sonnet sings : " If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for fortune's bastard be unfather'd, As subject to Time's love, or to Time's hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd. No, it was builded far from accident, It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls: It fears not policy, that Heretic, Which works on leases of short number'd hoars, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for crime." Sonnet cxxiv. 2 1 Works (Boston), XII. 264. 2 Shakes. Sonnets, (Fac-simile of the ed. of 1609, entitled " Shake-speares Sonnets: Never before Imprinted,") London, 1862. CHAPTER H. PRELIMINARIES. BACON. " Thou shalt know the man By the Athenian garments he hath on." Mid. N. Dr., EL 2. 1. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. IN the outset of the inquiry, the contemporaneousness of the two men between whom the question in hand is sup- posed to lie, the comparative dates of their several works, and the leading facts and events of their lives, must come under special consideration, though briefly, as fundamental and very important. The general impression that has pre- vailed hitherto, or until very lately, respecting the character and genius of Lord Bacon and the scope of his philoso- phy, has been, and is, of itself, a huge stumbling-block in the way of the proposition that he could ever have been a poet at all. A more thorough study of the subject, under the light of judicious criticism, will effectually dispel this cloud of error. For the most part, all true notion of the man has been obscured in a murky atmosphere of political obfuscation, a kind of scientific haze, misunderstanding, misconception, and stupid mistake. Concerning him, as of many other men and things in the times long past, human villanies have been written into the semblance of illustri- ous history, wherein vice is put on a par with virtue, and the highest virtue below the par of vice ; in which soaring intellect is subordinated to common-place ability, imagina- tion held to be a species of folly or insanity, and metaphys- ics treated as synonymous with moonshine ; in which books are rated as fit food for worms, and to be " drowned in 6 82 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. book-learning " is incontinently reckoned as a disqualifica- tion for the duties of life, whilst a certain overplus of com- mon sense is supposed to be capable of all that is great or good ; in which much learning is deemed worse than use- less, philosophy a monomania or a crime, all poets vagrants, and the summum bonum no more nor less than Lord Coke's industrious money-getting chief end of man. 1 This inade- quate and altogether unsatisfactory account of the matter had its origin in the confusions of a tyrannical reign, in a court and time as corrupt as anything that is to be found in the Italian or the later Roman story, and in the general ignorance in an age that was on the whole very dark, though some bright stars twinkled in the firmament of it ; and it has been continued through the succeeding ages, which have been growing only less and less dark, down to our times. Basil Montagu's meagre sketch of Bacon's life began to throw some light into these scarcely penetra- ble obscurations. Lord Campbell's superficial view of the great Chancellor, 2 not attempting to get clear of the fogs, and taking Pope's epigram for basis and text, makes one half of his life and character as brilliant as sunlight, and the other as black as Erebus, and is, on the whole, more of a libel than a life. The diligent researches, however, of later scholars have given to the world an excellent and reliable edition of Lord Bacon's Works, and brought forth many new and interesting data concerning him, which may be said to bear the stamp of historic truth. 8 The " Personal History " and the " Story " of Mr. Dixon, 4 and the " Letters and Life " by Mr. Spedding, in a more complete detail of dates, rec- ords, facts, and circumstances, with due reverence for the genius and character of their hero, and in much nearer sym- 1 Campbell's Lives of the Chief Jus. (Philad., 1851), I. 279. 2 Lives of the Lord Chan. (Philad., 1851), II. 8 Bacon's Works, by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, Boston, 1860-1864; Let- ters and Life of Francis Bacon, by James Spedding, London, '1861- 2. 4 Personal History of Lord Bacon, Boston, 1861 ; Story of Lord Bacon's Life, London, 1862. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 83 pathy with the true nature and quality of the man, have pre- sented the great English orator, jurist, statesman, and phil- osopher, in a very new light ; but even these come far short of exhibiting a full and adequate picture of the learning, philosophy, purposes, and scope of this "learned Magician." Macaulay 1 could see nothing in him but a certain physical science of practical fruit ; Delia Bacon 2 discovered in him a great deal more than Macaulay ; Emerson, 8 more, per- haps, than Delia Bacon, finding that he ascended to the spring-head of all science ; and Prof. Craik is certainly not so very far wrong when he says : " Bacon belongs not to mathematical or natural science, but to literature and to moral science in its most extensive acceptation to the realm of imagination, of wit, of eloquence, of aesthetics, of history, of jurisprudence, of political philosophy, of logic, of metaphysics, and the investigation of the powers and operations of the human mind," 4 and (as he might have added) " the order, operation, and Mind of Nature." 5 Francis Bacon, son of the Lord-Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was born at York House in London, on the 22d day of January, 1561, and so was three years and three months older than William Shakespeare. In the thirteenth year of his age, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1577, after enrolling his name at Gray's Inn for the sake of " ancienty," went with Sir Amias Paulet to the Court of Paris, where he remained until 1579, when, his father hav- ing suddenly died before having made such ample provi- sion for this youngest son, as he had intended in due time, he was induced to return home, and began his terms at Gray's Inn, in June of that year, seeing now no better pros- pect before him than the profession of the law, with some 1 Essay on Bacon. *Phil. of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, Boston, 1857. 8 Representative Men. * Hist, of Eng. Lit. and Language, by George L. Craik, LL. D. (New York, 1862,) I. 615. 6 Novum Organum. 84 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. hope of preferment in the state ; and on the 27th of June, 1582, he was called to the Utter Bar at the age of twenty- one. While in Paris, we may presume he had made him- self master of the French language, and probably of the Italian and Spanish also, if not before, besides superadding to the manners of the English Court something of the polish of the French. On his return home, he was charged with bearing a diplomatic despatch to the virgin Queen, in which he was mentioned as " of great hope, and endued with many good and singular parts." In 1584, with the help of his uncle, Lord Burleigh, he is elected to Parlia- ment for two boroughs, and, not much later, ventures to undertake a " Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth ; " but in 1586, he is still living, " as it were, in umbra, and not in public or frequent action," and his bashful nature and studious seclusion are mistaken to his prejudice for pride and arrogance. 1 In 1587, when William Shakespeare is said to have come to London, Francis Bacon has become a Bencher, and sits at the Reader's table, in Gray's Inn, and, at the Christmas Revels of that year, he assists the Gentlemen of his Inn in getting up the tragedy of the " Misfortunes of Arthur," and certain masques and dumb- shows, for which he writes, at least, some "additional speeches," to be exhibited before the Queen at Green- wich, 2 while William Shakespeare is yet but a mere " ser- vitor" at the Blackfriars, and still unsuspected of being the author of anything. In 1588-9, he is a member of Parliament for Liverpool, having already acquired an as- cendency as an orator in the House of Commons, and writes a paper on Church Controversies, and a draft of a letter for Secretary Walsingham on the conduct of the Queen's government towards Papists and Dissenters, under the supervision of the Archbishop, his old tutor at Cam- bridge. About the year 1590, he makes the acquaintance 1 Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 59. 2 Collier's Hist. Dram. Poetry, I. 267; Knight's Biog. of Shakes., 326. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 85 of the rising young Earl of Essex, also a Cambridge scholar, whose literary abilities, varied accomplishments, comprehensive views, and love for the liberal arts, were much in accord with his own. He pursues his studies at Gray's Inn, making an occasional visit to his mother's country-seat of Gorhambury, and for the vacations and greater intervals of leisure from Law and the Court, he has his retired and comfortable lodge at Twickenham Park, an estate of his brother Edward, delightfully situated on the Thames, near Twickenham (a place afterwards famous as the residence of Pope), where, as early as 1592, through the interest of his friend, the Earl of Essex, he has the honor of a visit from the Queen herself, and presents her with a Sonnet in compliment to that "generous noble- man ; " 1 and here also, in after years, the Queen honors him with her presence, on various occasions, and frequent opportunities occur of addressing other Sonnets to his sovereign mistress's eyebrow, though professing (as he says in parenthesis) " not to be a poet." His habits are regular, frugal, and temperate, and his life pure, but he lives like a gentleman, a scholar, a member of Parliament and a courtier ; and with comparatively little ready money and means rather in prospect than in possession, and with these expensive ways, he is at length compelled to get help from the Lombards and Jews. The Queen grants him the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star-Chamber, which, not coming into possession before 1608, was but as " another man's ground buttailing upon his house ; which might mend his prospect but did not fill his barn." With little professional business, and no promotion coming, he ventures to address a letter (1592) to Lord Burghley, "the Atlas of this commonwealth," as he styles him, the " hon- our " of his house, and " the second founder " of his " poor estate," in which he says : " I wax now somewhat ancient ; one-and-thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour- l Nichols' Progresses of Q. tiz. (London, 1823), III. 190. 86 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed ; and I do not fear that action shall impair it, because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. I ever bear a mind (in some middle place that I could discharge) to serve her Majesty; not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business, (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly) ; but as a man born under an excellent Sovereign, that de- serveth the dedication of all men's abilities. . . Again the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me ; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends ; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province. . . This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favor- ably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. . . And if your Lordship will not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation to voluntary poverty ; but this I will do : I will sell the inheritance that I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (he said) lay so deep." 1 Not far from this time were written the speeches in Praise of the Queen and in Praise of Knowledge, doubtless in- tended for a Masque to be exhibited before her upon some occasion of which there is no record, further than that on the celebration of the Queen's day, in 1592, a Device was presented by Essex. 2 Not much later, we find him read- ing Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Seneca, the Psalms, the Prov- erbs, Erasmus' Adagia, and various French and Italian authors ; in short, taking a survey of all the ancient and l Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 108. 2 Jbid. 1. 120. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 87 modern learning, and making notes, abstracts, and a " Promus of Formularies and Elegancies." At the same time, Robert Greene discovers that a new poet has arisen, who is getting to be " the only Shake-scene in a countrey." He soon begins to be pestered with duns and Jews' bonds, and is " poor and sick, working for bread." His brother Anthony now occupies rooms in Gray's Inn, having re- turned in impaired health from his travels abroad, where he has even had a Papist in his service to the great horror of the good Lady Ann, his mother, a fiery, vehement, pious, grave, and affectionate soul, in creed a Calvinist, and in morals a Puritan of the stricter sect, who enjoins upon him to " use prayer twice in a day," and suggests that his brother Francis " is too negligent herein : " without relig- ion, there is little to be expected for either of them from the orthodox Lord Treasurer. The good mother also begins to observe that Francis is " continually sickly, . . by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep." We get only an occasional glimpse of his private and secret studies, or of the exigencies that made them private. In the mean time, he has made the acquaintance of the theatre-going young lords and courtiers, Essex, Southamp- ton, Rutland, Montgomery, and the rest, and on the 18th of July, 1593, the Earl of Essex is on a visit of " three hours to Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony, at Twickenham Park," where he promises "to set up his whole rest of favour and credit " with the Queen for " Mr. Francis Bacon's preferment before Mr. Edward Coke." 1 He becomes attached to the party and service of the Earl of Essex, and is made his confidential friend, political counsellor, and legal adviser, in September following ; and at the same time, his brother Anthony becomes Essex's Secretary. The " Venus and Adonis " was entered at Stationers' Hall in April, 1593, and was printed in the i Nichols' Prog, of Q. Eliz., III. 190, n. (2). 88 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. same year. The author (if it were Bacon) did not mean to profess to be a poet, and it is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, under the name of William Shakespeare; and the " Rape of Lucrece," entered in May, 1594, soon follows. Some eight or ten of the earlier plays are al- ready upon the stage, and are generally taken to be the work of "William Shakespeare, though none of them have been as yet printed under his name ; but Greene and Chettle have uttered their sharp protest against the pre- tensions of this " upstart crow beautified with our feathers," denouncing him as " an absolute Johannes factotum " and " the only Shake-scene in a countrey." It is in August, 1594, that we get some further insight into the more inti- mate relations of these theatre-loving associates, learning from the letters of Lady Ann Bacon, first made public by Mr. Dixon, that they are having plays performed at An- thony's house, near the Bull Inn, " very much to the de- light of Essex and his jovial crew " (of whom Southampton is, of course, one), but as the pious Lady Ann fears, " to the peril of her sons' souls ; " for plays and novels are burnt privately by the Bishops, and publicly by the Puri- tans. In the beginning of 1593, Bacon made that celebrated speech on the Subsidy, which boldly sustained the privi- lege of Parliament, but defeated Burghley, and so deeply offended the Queen, that he was denied access at Court for the next three years ; though after much solicitation of his friends, and being too great a favorite with her Majesty to be wholly cast off, she had so far relented by the month of June, 1594, as to employ him as her counsel (verbi reg. Eliz.') in some legal business. Nevertheless, Essex undertook to make good his engagement of his "whole rest of favour and credit" to secure his prefer- ment to the place of Attorney-General before " Mr. Ed- ward Coke." Cecil said it was useless to think of office, when he was denied access at the palace. Another ob- CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 89 jection was, that he had had but little or no practice in the courts; and to obviate this, he began to appear more frequently in court in the spring of 1594, arguing a number of causes with great learning and eloquence, so that Mr. Gosnold, who heard him, observing how he "spangled his speech" with "unusual words," was per- suaded that the " Bacon would be too hard for the Cook " ; but Coke, as Speaker of the House, had bowed to her Majesty's prerogative, taking care on nearly all occa- sions to give satisfaction, and not offence, and was made Attorney- General, the " Cook " proving too hard for the Bacon. The Solicitorship still remained. Essex, Eger- ton, Burghley, Cecil, Greville, and a host of friends, con- tinued to press his suit for this "second place," from March, 1594, until November, 1595 ; but the Queen was in " no haste to determine of the place." Bacon, whose " nature can take no evil ply," having been " voiced with great expectation," and "with the wishes of most men to the higher place." cannot but conclude with himself " that no man ever read a more exquisite disgrace." 1 He nearly resolves, " with this disgrace " of his fortune, to retire " with a couple of men to Cambridge," and there spend his life in "studies and contemplations, without looking back." Essex still presses the matter upon every opportunity. When the Queen visits him, she answers that " she did not come for that," and " stops his mouth ; " and when he visits her, she acknowledges he had a great wit, and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning, but in law she rather thought he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep ; and she shows " her mislike of the suit " as well as he his " af- fection in it," and thinks, " if there were a yielding, it was i Letter to Essex (1594), Works (Mont.), XII. 170. Here I prefer the reading of Montagu. Mr. Spedding, taking the word read to be the abbre- viation rec'd, writes received; but it is more probably the same Baconian idiom, which appears again in the Henry VIII. thus : " and read the per- fect ways of honour." Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 291. 90 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. fitter to be " of his side. 1 After July, however, he is em- ployed as Queen's counsel, but when the Solicitorship is named (says Essex), "she did fly the tilt," and would not see him. The unfortunate Subsidy Speech could not be forgiven, and the matter hangs for a long time undeter- mined. Bacon keeps his terms at Gray's Inn, but spends the greater part of his time at Twickenham Park, or at Essex's house, where he is rapt in secret studies and philosophic contemplations ; and at the same time, both Essex and himself are busy in all suitable ways, plying their arts to regain the Queen's favor. Though deeply in debt, at this time, Bacon offers her the present of a rich and costly jewel, which she declines to accept ; thus, thinks Greville, almost pronouncing sentence of despair. In December, 1594, the Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn come on. They are gotten up with extraordinary magnifi- cence, this year, and the whole Court are most sump- tuously and splendidly entertained with plays, masques, triumphs, and dumb shows. Lady Ann Bacon writes to Anthony, that she " trusts they will not mum, nor mask, nor sinfully revel" ; but Francis, as before in 1587, and on other later occasions, takes a leading part in the prepara- tions, writing a Masque, for one thing, which Mr. Sped- ding finds to be undoubtedly his work, and certain humor- ous Regulations for " the Heroical Order of the Helmet," and other pieces, which Mr. Spedding rather thinks not his work ; and upon this same occasion, the Shakespearean " Comedy of Errors " makes its first appearance upon any stage, pretty certainly also the work of Francis Bacon (as I will endeavor to show). In this year 1594, the " Titus Andronicus" is first entered at Stationers' Hall, and the second part of the " Henry VI." (then styled the " Con- tention of the Two Houses of York and Lancaster") is first printed, and the third part (then styled the "True Tragedy of the Duke of York") follows in 1595 ; but they had been written long before, i Essex to Bacon, (18 May, 1594). Letters and Life, by Spedding, 1. 297. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 91 Bacon continues to be assiduously engaged with his public avocations and his private studies. Whether from the mortification of disappointment or the effect of mid- night musings when he should be asleep, the good mother observes, again, that " inward secret grief hindereth his health," and "everybody saith he looks thin and pale." Moreover, when her ladyship is applied to for assistance in the way of meeting his pecuniary obligations, she breaks out furiously upon " that bloody Percy," and " that Jones," as " proud, profane, costly fellows, whose being about him," she verily believes, " the Lord God doth mislike." This was his servant Henry Percy, in whose charge he left his manuscripts by his will. The particular ground of Lady Ann's dislike of his men, more than that they were ex- pensive, does not appear ; but she insinuates that " he hath nourished most sinful proud villains wilfully." During the year 1595, he lives for the most part in the shady retirement of Twickenham Park, amidst his books and flower-gardens, abandoning the Court altogether. At length he concludes that he was taking " duty too exactly," and not " according to the dregs of this age," and fearing lest his unwonted seclusion should be interpreted to his prejudice at the palace, he addresses a letter to the Lord- Keeper Puckering, on the 25th of May, 1595, desiring him to apologize to her Majesty for the " nine days' wonder " of his absence ; for, as the letter proceeds, " it may be, when her Majesty hath tried others, she will think of him that she hath cast aside. For I will take it upon that which her Majesty hath often said, that she doth reserve me, and not reject me." l And in July, the Queen, as if to keep his courage up, or in recognition of his professional services, bestows on him the estate of Pitts ; but as to the Solicitorship, it is probable that the Cecils and the Lord- Keeper Puckering, having at their service any number of Brograves, Branthwaytes, and black-letter Flemings, not l Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 360. 92 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. connected with a rival party, have fixed all that, and she will hear no more of it. The jealousy of the Cecils, or Essex, or the Subsidy Speech which Burghley thinks to be the chief difficulty, and which Bacon still justifies rather than retracts, finally mars all, and it is decided, at last, that Sergeant Fleming, whose best qualification seems to have been the negative one of standing in nobody's way, though admitted by Bacon himself not to be any such " insufficient obscure idole man," as that his appointment could justly be taken as a personal affront, shall be made Solicitor ; and again, " no man ever read a more exquisite disgrace " than Francis Bacon. He cannot refrain from uttering a little indignation against the Lord Keeper for " failing him and crossing him now in the conclusion, when friends are best tried " ; but he takes care to give no offence to the Queen. In October, he writes to the Lord Keeper again : " I am now at Twicknam Park, where I think to stay ; for her Majesty placing a Solicitor, my travail shall not need in her causes ; though whensoever her Majesty shall like to employ me in any particular, I shall be ready to do her willing service." * Again he is almost persuaded to abandon a public life, to sell his inheritance, to spend some time in travels abroad, and finally to become a sorry book-maker, or a pioneer in Anaxagoras' deep mine. " For to be as I told you," he writes to Greville, " like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infinitum, I am weary of it," "Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win." Sonnet cxix. Among the objections urged against him, it was repre- sented that he was a man given to "speculations" rather than business, and that he had not devoted himself to the practice of law, and he himself believed that her Majesty's impression against him was due less to her remembrance of i Letter (11 Oct. 1595); Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 368. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 93 his Subsidy Speech than to " her conceit otherwise " of his " insufficiency : " 1 " then no more remains But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work." Measure for Measure, Act I. Sc. 1. It is plain that his time and attention were mainly given to philosophical and literary studies. In this same letter he admits to Burghley, " It is true, my life hath been so private as I have had no means to do your Lordship ser- vice." And in October, again, he writes in a letter to Essex, touching this matter of his promotion in the State : " For means I value that most ; and the rather because I am purposed not to follow the practice of the law : (If her Majesty command me in any particular, I shall be ready to do her willing service :) and my reason is only, because it drinketh too much time, which I have dedicated to better purposes. But even for that point of estate and means, I partly lean to Thales' opinion, That a philosopher may be rich if he will" 2 On the 5th of November 1595, Fleming receives his commission as Solicitor - General, and, some twelve days afterwards, the Queen further solaces the disappointment of Bacon with the grant of the reversion of Twickenham Park itself. He becomes fully reconciled to her favor, and his hopes revive. During the same month, Essex prepares a magnificent entertainment for her Majesty at his own house, and Bacon writes a Masque for the occasion. It is not far from this time that Essex bestows upon Bacon, in requital of his friendship and his personal services, an es- tate worth 1800, including, says Nichols, " a highly orna- mented mansion, particularly celebrated for its pleasure- grounds, which were called the Garden of Paradise." 8 And it was not long before this time that Southampton, according to a tradition handed down by Rowe from Sir 1 Letter to BurgMey (7 June, 1595); Letters and Life, by Spedding, 1.362. 2 Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 372. Prog. Q. Eliz., III. 191. 94 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. "William Davenant, is said to have bestowed upon Shake- speare the munificent gift of 1000, which might (with Halliwell) be deemed almost incredible, unless (as Collier supposes) the money (whatever the sum) was in fact a con- tribution for the building of the Globe Theatre, which was erected in 1594. In 1596, the "Romeo and Juliet" appears, and the " King John " had been written, not long before this date. "William Shakespeare had been for some time a sharer in the Globe and Blackfriars, and, as the traditions say, now kept his lodgings near the Bear Garden in Southwark. In the next year, he is able to purchase New Place at Strat- ford-on-Avon, and appears to have been quite extensively engaged in agricultural operations and various kinds of traf- fic, while the " Richard II.," the " Richard HI.," and the " Merchant of Venice," were getting ready for the stage. Bacon dedicates his " Maxims of the Law " to " Her Sa- cred Majesty," writes his Advice to Essex, and drafts for Essex the letters of Advice to Greville and to Rutland on his Travels. He is also regularly employed as Queen's Counsel, and, in the intervals of business in London, is dil- igently engaged " at Twicnam," on his " Colours of Good and Evil," and his " Meditationes Sacrae." His smaller works are the " recreations " of his other studies, and, as we learn from his letter to Mountjoy, it is now "his man- ner and rule to keep state in contemplative matters." l The first edition of the Essays, which had strayed from their master in manuscript, and were in danger of falling into the hands of the printers, is published by himself early in 1597, in anticipation of surreptitious copies ; but scarcely two years later, a collection of sonnets and minor poems, which appear to have strayed in like manner from their author, did happen to come into the hands of Jaggard, afterwards printer of the Essays, and got surreptitiously 1 Spedding's Preface to the Colours of Good and Evil, Works (Boston), XIII. 262. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 95 printed, as it would seem. Though now encouraged by the increasing favor of the Queen and his successes in Parlia- ment (in which he has become a powerful leader), he is still troubled on account of " the meanness " of his estate ; and his biographers suggest that it was for this reason, among others, that he sought the hand of the rich and beautiful Lady Hatton, now a lovely young widow, and a daughter of Sir Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley ; but the Cecils were still awake, and more set upon advancing a serviceable instrument of their own party than the friend and counsellor of Essex, who, if too far promoted in this direction, might at length rival the pretensions of his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, to the higher places in the state, and they prevailed on the young lady, much against her own inclination, to marry the crabbed Attorney- General Coke, a widower of forty-six, with a large practice, an im- mense fortune, and perhaps more than the eleven objec- tions, ten children and himself, " Was ever woman in this humour woo'd ? Was ever woman in this humour won ? " Jtichard HI., Act I. Sc. 2. Between 1596 and 1600, the "Richard II.," the "Rich- ard III.," the "Merchant of Venice," the "Much Ado About Nothing," the two parts of the " Henry IV.," the " Henry V.," and the " Merry Wives of "Windsor," make their appearance upon the stage ; and it is no wonder, per- haps, that we find it recorded in the history of the time, that Southampton, Rutland, and the rest of Essex's jovial crew, " pass away their time in London merely in going to plays every day." But Bacon himself, though his published works were gaining for him an eminent reputation at home and abroad, and his practice at the bar was increasing, and his prospects brightening, had the misfortune still to be arrested for debt by " the Lombard " ; and he was actually " confined in a spunging-hotise " (according to the taunt of Coke), before he could get out of the Shylock's clutches. 96 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. At the same time, he is making eloquent speeches in Par- liament, and carrying bills for " the increase of husbandry and tillage " and " the increase of people " ; and the Queen acknowledges his public services, and signifies her continu- ing personal favor by making him a liberal grant of the Rectory and Church of Cheltenham and the Chapel of Charlton Kings, with the lands and revenues thereto be- longing. Now comes on the affair of Ireland and the Essex treason. As early as 1597, Essex, receiving from Bacon wiser counsel than he liked, touching his military ambition and his sinister courses, ceases to come to Gray's Inn for advice ; but takes to the Jesuits and the scheme of going to Ireland, and at length deposing the Queen from her throne. He makes a treasonable truce with the rebel Ty- rone, and suddenly returns home without orders, in Sep- tember 1599, much to the surprise and indignation of the Queen ; and shortly afterwards he is put under arrest at the Lord Keeper's house. During these years, the play of " Richard II." has had a great run upon the stage, and re- ceived the special countenance of Essex, Southampton, and their associates ; and two editions have been printed, but with the scene " containing the deposing of a king " left out ; and in 1599, Dr. Hayward's pamphlet of the " First Yeare of King Henry the Fourth," which was a studied and treasonable adaptation of the story of Bolingbroke and King Richard the Second to the present state of affairs, being printed with a dedication to the Earl of Essex, arouses the anger of the Queen, and adds to the alarm al- ready awakened in her mind by the theatres and the play. Hayward is sent straight to the Tower. Essex makes all haste to call in the book, and to suppress the dedication ; but the forbidden thing was much sought after. Not long after this, and while Essex is under arrest, and Bacon, in sundry interviews with the Queen, is still interceding in his behalf, her Majesty brings up against him this affair of Dr. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 97 Hayward's book, and also, as it would seem, distinctly flings at Bacon himself about " a matter which grew from him, but went after about in others' names," being, in fact, no other than the play itself; but this will be made the subject of special notice below. From this time until he became Attorney-General in 1613, while pursuing his public labors, he is still continu- ing in private, like Prospero in the play, his secret studies and the liberal arts in his " poor cell " at Gray's Inn, or in his lodge at Twickenham Park, or at the charming coun- try-seat of Gorhambury, which fell to him on the death of his brother Anthony in 1604, where his taste for elegant studies, his delight in beautiful gardens, and his love for the Muses find ample gratification. Sometime after the death of the Queen in 1603, he takes pains to record her praises, signalizing her happy reign in the "In Felicem Memoriam Elizabethae " ; for this " silver-tongued Meli- cert " will surely not fail, like the ungrateful subject of Chettle's spleen, to " Drop from his honied muse one sable teare, To mourn her death that graced his desert, And to his laies open'd her royall eare " ; as witness also the numerous sonnets to her addressed, the masques written for her entertainment, the graceful com- pliment in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and that handsome tribute to her memory which is contained in the last act of the " Henry VIII." His speeches in Parliament have an eye to the welfare of the kingdom, and he is popular with the people, being sometimes elected for two or three boroughs at once ; and, on the coming in of the new sovereign, he is for the first time regularly appointed King's Counsel, is knighted by King James in 1604, and, in 1606, in the forty-sixth year of his age, having found a maiden to his mind, he marries the pretty Miss Barnham, with 220 a year, being now able to settle upon her 500 a year out of his own income, though 7 98 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. he has lately had in pawn " a Jewell of Susannah set with dia- monds and rubies." In 16056, certain acts of Parliament are passed against witches, and Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Marston are sent to jail by the sublime author of the trea- tise on " Dsemonologie and Witchcraft," for jesting on the Scots. William Shakespeare quits acting upon the stage, buys a lease of one half of the Tythes of Stratford-on- Avon, and is planting a mulberry-tree at New Place, when he should be writing the " Macbeth " and the " Lear." The " Macbeth," written somewhere in these years, takes a more flattering view of the Scots and of the doctrine of witches, and Shakespeare has the good fortune to escape the fate of his brother poets ; and the Christinas revels of the year 1606, at Whitehall, bring out the great play of " Lear," for his Majesty's special entertainment. Bacon again expects the Solicitor's place, but is defeated by a trick of Cecil ele- vating Coke and Hobart ; but, at last, in 1607, having made his great speech on the Union of Scotland, much to the satisfaction of the King, he is made Solicitor-General, in June, with " the promise of a place of profit " in due time. Not long after this event, the wonderful comedy of "Troilus and Cressida," in a rather surprising manner, makes its escape from the " grand possessors' wills," as we have already had occasion to notice. In 1607-8, Bacon is engaged upon his " Characters of Julius and Augustus Caesar" ; and, by some marvellous accident, the tragedy of " Julius Ca3sar " comes from the hand of Shakespeare very soon after, as if there were at least a " semblable cohe- rence " between the two men's spirits. Writing to Mr. Tobie Matthew, about this time, concerning his " Happy Memory of the late Queen," Bacon says : " I showed you some model, though at that time methought you were as willing to hear Julius Caesar as Queen Elizabeth com- mended." In 1610, Shakespeare finally retires to Stratford, and CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 99 takes to his old trade, suing John Addenbrook and Thomas Horneby for 24s. On the 20th of April in this year, the " Macbeth " is performed at the Globe for the first time that we know. The Earls of Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery, together with Sir Francis Bacon, are now fel- low-members of the Virginia Company, which sends out Somers's fleet to the West Indies, to be terribly vexed by storms on the voyage, and the good ship Admiral is wrecked upon the Bermudas ; of which a thrilling account soon after appeared in Jourdan's " Discovery of the Ber- mudas, otherwise called the Isle of Divels " ; and it is just after, in 1611, that we first hear of the " Tempest," the " born devil " Caliban, and " the still-vex'd Bermoothes," which, we are to believe, have occupied the leisure of Wil- liam Shakespeare in the intervals of his economical avoca- tions and his social converse with his Stratford neighbors. In 1612, on the death of his perfidious friend Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Bacon is named by the liberal party for Sec- retary of State. This failing, however, he desires to have the Mastership of the Wards ; but Sir Thomas Cope steps in, and buys the place at an enormous price. It is in this year, too, as is worthy of note, that Bartholomew Legate is burnt for Arian heresy, and King James in person writes a fulmination against the heretic Vorstius away over in Hol- land. With Bacon, business is now becoming more labo- rious, but the " Intellectual Globe " is written, and the " No- vum Organum " progresses : " My great work goeth for- ward." Toward the close of the year, the long-protracted festivities attending the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, shortly to become Queen of Bohemia, began with the per- formance at Court of the " Winter's Tale " and the " Tem- pest," and ended only with the magnificent tragedy of " Henry VIIL," in June 1613; and in October following, Sir Edward Coke is raised to the King's Bench, very little to his own satisfaction, and Sir Francis Bacon, having some- time before received the " royal promise to succeed," be- 100 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. , comes Attorney- General, at the age of fifty-two, and the ] plays certainly cease to appear : "All your doing, Mr. Attorney," says Coke. Bacon : " Your Lordship all this while has grown in breadth ; you must needs now grow in height, or you will be a monster." In these years also, the "Apology concerning Essex " (1604), the speeches touching Purveyors and on the King's Messages, the "Advancement of Learning" (1605), the 'Office of Constables" (1608), and the "Wisdom of the Ancients" (1609-10), were written, or finished, and some new editions of the Essays published ; and during the same period were written the greater plays of this author (these recreations of his other studies, perhaps) : the "As You Like it," the " Twelfth Night," the " Hamlet," the " Meas- ure for Measure," the " Lear," the " Julius Caesar," the " Troilus and Cressida," the " Macbeth," the " Othello," the "Cymbeline," the "Tempest," the "Winter's Tale," the " Henry VIII.," and lastly (if they were in fact finished before Bacon's fall from power), the " Coriolanus," the "Anthony and Cleopatra," and the " Timon of Athens." It may be briefly added further, that, between 1613 and 1621, Bacon was occupied with his graver philosophical labors and his public employments, in the full enjoyment of the royal favor, political power, and great fame. In 1616 the year of Shakespeare's death, the grand trial of the Judges on the question of the King's prerogative came up before the King in person. The Lord Chancellor (El- lesmere) and the King decide for Bacon's opinion against that of the Judges, who, all but Coke, finally yielded the point. Coke, overruled, has to eat his words, being for once " clearly in the wrong," says Blackstone, 1 and is sub- sequently deposed from the King's Bench. In reply to his many assaults, Bacon addresses him a letter expostulatory : "Like a true friend, though far unworthy to be counted so, to shew you your true shape in a glass, and that not in a 1 3 Black. Co"\m., 54. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 101 false one to flatter you, nor yet in one that should make you seem worse than you are." On taking his seat in Chancery (March 7, 1617), he delivers an admirable speech on the duties of the Chancel- lor, and there is immense parade on the occasion, of which he says afterwards, in a private letter, " There was much ado and a great deal of world, . . . hell to me, or purga- tory at least." Not long after, however, the indefatigable Coke, grim and fierce, but wise as a serpent, conceives the scheme of buying up the whole Villiers family by sacrificing his own daughter on the altar of court-favor and ambitious intrigue ; a scheme also by Lord Campbell (and all disci- ples of the Cokean doctrine of the industrious money-get- ting chief end of man) deemed to be " a masterly stroke of policy," * and one that would, as it were, hoist Bacon with his own petard ; but the Lady Coke, for whom Bacon feels some sympathy, runs away with the girl into the coun- try, and keeps her shut up in a castle. Coke applies to the Lord Keeper (Bacon) for a warrant to seize her, which Bacon properly enough refuses, and advises the King against the marriage, until, much to his amazement, he finds that both the King and Buckingham (or Bucking- ham, and of course the King) are deep in the plot. He is even " suffered to remain in an antechamber among lac- queys, seated on an old wooden box," holding the purse of the Great Seal in his hand, and is threatened with imme- diate downfall, until he will submit to the whims of the prime-favorite, and hold his peace about this iniquitous marriage, barely escaping with his office, while Coke be- comes a Privy Councillor. This thing over for the present, he is made Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, publishes the " Novum Organum " in 1 620, dedicated to the King, and becomes Viscount St Alban, January 27, 1621. Parliament met a few days afterwards all furious for re- form. Bacon himself had advised the calling of a parlia- i Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chan., II. 312. 102 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. ment as a remedy for the public evils ; and Coke, turned " flaming patriot," is a member, and immediately begins on " bribery and corruption " in high places, hitting at Bacon first of all ; and Buckingham, adventurer Cranfield, scent- hound Churchill, Dean Williams, high priest of the sum- mum bonum, and all the Villiers harpies, the mother of them inclusive, who already imagines she has the aforesaid Dean by the coat-tail, join the cry, and fall to work. Ba- con, warned to look about him, answers : " I look above." But seeing that there was no help for it now, he concluded to lean upon the King, and depend upon his personal friendship and sovereign power alone to save him from total ruin, or worse ; and so gave up the seals, and made a clear submission and a formal confession. In May follow- ing, he received sentence, was fined 40,000, disqualified from holding office, sent to the Tower during the King's pleasure (which was not long), and banished London (the verge of the Court). He retires to his books and gardens at Gorhambury, and, by the next October, the " History of Henry VII.," begun long before, is finished, and submitted to " the file of his Majesty's judgment." l In April 1622, a copy of the " History of Henry VII." is presented to the Queen of Bohemia, the fair Princess for whose nuptials the " Winter's Tale " had been written ; and the " History of Henry VIII.," beginning " like a fable of the poets," is commenced but never finished. In the mean time, Buckingham and Cranfield (now Lord Treasurer) are pressing for the spoils of their late victory, until by Novem- ber, the faithful Secretary Meautys begins to think they " have such a savage word among them as fleecing" 2 Buckingham is set upon having York House. At first, Bacon replies: "York House is the house wherein my father died, and Avherein I first breathed ; and there will I yield my last breath, if so please God, and the King will 1 Letter to the King, March 22, 1622. 2 Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 430; (Philad.),III. 146. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 103 give me leave ; though I be now by fortune (as the old prov- erb is) like a bear in a monk's hood." 1 But, seeing that the King would not give him leave against the favorite, York House had to go, in the end, and Bacon is left in debt, strug- gling with penury, until at length his fine is made over to him ; but he insists upon driving a showy equipage when he goes abroad, and, says Prince Charles, meeting him on the road in full trim, " will not go out in a snuff." During the autumn of 1622, his letters are addressed from Bedford House in London. Buckingham is still grasping after his " house at Gorhambury " and his " forest " there. At first, he had answered, " I will not be stripped of my feathers " ; but, by the 5th of February, 1623, he has made up his mind to submit to the necessities of his fate, and writes to Buck- ingham of that date : "And for my house at Gorhambury, I do infinitely desire your lordship should have it." 2 And having made this last sacrifice, about the first of March, 1623, he returns to his old lodgings in Gray's Inn, where he continues to be " shut up," says Lord Campbell, " like a cloistered friar." Tn October of the same year, the " De Augmentis " is published with a dedication to Buckingham, as if that might still further appease him ; and he ventures to solicit the Provostship of Eton, " a pretty cell for my for- tune " (as he expresses it), and is refused ; " for," he con- tinues, " I hope I shall be found a man humbled as a Christian, but not dejected as a worldling." 8 The " His- tory of Life and Death," written in Latin, is now pub- lished ; and it is sometime during this same year that the Folio edition of the Plays first sees the light. The entry on the Stationers' Register bears date the 8th November, 1623; but one copy is said to exist, having the date 1622 upon the title-page ; whence it may be inferred that the 1 Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 420, 436. 2 Letter, Works (Philad.), HI. 147. Letter to Oxford (Feb. 2, 1623-4); Works (Mont), XII. 456; (Philad.), III. 154. 10-i CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. work had been begun, if not entirely completed, in that year. Somewhere between 1623 and 1626, his sentence is fully pardoned ; and Coke, Cranfield, Williams, and others, disci- ples of the Cokean doctrine of the chief end of man, who had been instrumental in pulling Bacon down, now fall themselves, some with Coke himself into the Tower, and some into the lowest deeps. Bacon continues his labors at Gray's Inn (when not too sick to work) upon the " Great Instauration," the " Apothegms," the " Holy War," the "Natural History," the "New Atlantis," the Essays, and the Psalms, with the assistance, at times, of Meautys, Mat- thew, Rawley, Hobbes, Ben Jonson, and George Herbert ; for poets and philosophers and divines alike appear to have had a singular admiration and affection for this " Chancel- lor of Parnassus," of whom Ben Jonson never repented of having written these lines, nor ever recanted a word or syl- lable of them, characterizing him as " England's high Chancellor, the destined heir, In his soft cradle, to his father's chair, Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full Out of their choicest and their whitest wool." A new edition of the Essays, with twenty new ones added, and among them (as it may be well to note) the Essay of the " Vicissitude of Things," is printed in 1625 ; the " Metrical Versions of the Psalms of David " are dedi- cated to George Herbert, " as the best judge of Divinity and Poesy met;" and he dies on the 9th of April, 1626, saying in his will : " For my name and memory I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." There was less occasion, perhaps, than has been gener- ally supposed, that he should leave it by his will either to the one or to the other ; for his own contemporaries were not wholly blind to his superiority, whether in the powers of the intellect or of the imagination, in the extent of his CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 105 learning or in the nobility of his nature and character, in the splendor of his genius or in the greatness of his works. Though no account remains to tell us what unusual state attended his funeral, we know that his faithful secretary, Thomas Meautys, who erected a fitting monument over him in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albans, where he was buried by the side of his mother (as he had himself de- sired) " within the walls of Old Verulam," whereon he inscribed him the Light of Science and the Law of Elo- quence, whom he had worshipped living, and admired when dead, was by no means the only one to cast a flower upon his grave. Numerous tributes to his memory immediately appeared. Some of them have been preserved in the Har- leian Miscellanies, elegantly written in Latin, and though for the most part anonymous, evidently by men of learning and genius, who knew how to appreciate his worth even as a son of Apollo, as witness these few lines of extract : " Constat, Aprile uno te potuisse mori : Ut flos hinc lacrymis, illinc Philomela querelis Deducant linguae funera sola tua?. GEORGIUS HERBEET." " Crudelis nunquam veYe prius Atropos : orbem Totura habeas, Phcebum tu modo redde meum. Hei mihi ! nee ccelum, nee mors, nee musa (Bacone) Obstabant fatis, nee mea vota tuis." " Ah nunquam ve"re infoelix prius ipsus Apollo ! Unde illi qui sic ilium amet alter erit? Ah numerum non est habitum ; jamque necesse est, Contentus musis ut sit Apollo novem." Marmore Pieridum gelido Phoebique choragum Inhumane" patis, stultae viator? abi: Fallere: jam rutilo Verulamia fulget Olympo: Sidere splendet aper magne Jacobi tuo. 1 l Earl. Misc., X. 288-295. 106 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. We know when Bacon's acknowledged works were pub- lished, and also in what years many of them were chiefly written ; but some of them occupied his mind more or less during many years or nearly all his life, and materials were always accumulating on his hands ; and some of them were composed in whole or in part long before they were printed. But most of these plays were no doubt produced on the stage very soon after they were written ; and, although it may not be possible to fix with precision the exact dates at which they were composed, in all cases, the facts known concerning them enable us to assign a hither limit to their appearance with positive certainty in nearly every instance ; and this will be sufficient for the purpose in hand. The researches of later critics have considerably modified the chronological order of Malone and older writers, and they furnish data on which a near approximation to the date of composition, in the majority of instances, can be attained. On these and such other lights as we have, the following order, with the nearest dates, may be accepted, perhaps, as a very close approach to the truth. CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF THE PLAYS. I. PERIOD. 1582-1593. Titus Andronicus. Pericles (first sketch). Henry VI., 3 Parts (first sketches). Taming of the Shrew (first sketch). Two Gentlemen of Verona. Love's Labor 's Lost. All 's Well That Ends Well. (Venus and Adonis. Printed 1593.) (Rape of Lucrece. Printed 1594.) II. PERIOD. 1594-1600. Written Midsummer Night's Dream. .1594 Comedy of Errors 1594 Romeo and Juliet 1595 King John 1595 Richard II 1596 Richard III 1596-7 Merchant of Venice 1597 Written IHenrylV 1598 2 Henry IV 1598 Much Ado About Nothing. . .1599 Merry Wives of Windsor. . . .1599 Henry V 1599 As You Like It 1600 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 107 III. PERIOD. 1601-1613. Written Twelfth Night 1601 Hamlet 1602 Measure for Measure 1603-4 Lear 1606 Julius Caesar 1607 Troilus and Cressida 1608 Antony and Cleopatra 1608 Macbeth.. ..1605-1609 Written Coriolanus 1610 Cymbeline 1610 Winter's Tale 1611 Tempest 1611 Othello 1611-1613 Henry VIII 1612-13 Timon of Athens 1610-1623 PLAYS PRINTED BEFORE THE FOLIO OF 1623. Printed Romeo and Juliet 1597 Richard II 1597 Richard III 1597 Love's Labor 's Lost 1598 1 Henry IV 1598 Titus Andronicus 1600 Midsummer Night's Dream. .1600 Merchant of Venice 1600 Printed 2HenryIV 1600 Much Ado About Nothing. . .1600 Henry V 1600 Hamlet 1603-4 Lear 1608 Pericles (not in the Folio) . . .1609 Troilus and Cressida 1609 Othello . . ... .1622 PLAYS FIRST PRINTED IN THE FOLIO OF 1623. EARLIER WORKS. Taming of the Shrew. 1 Two Gentlemen of Verona. 1 Henry VI. 2 and 3 Henry VI.2 As You Like It. Twelfth Night. Measure for Measure. Julius Caesar. Antony and Cleopatra. Macbeth. All 's Well That Ends Well. Comedy of Errors. King John. Merry Wives of Windsor. 8 LATER WORKS. Coriolanus. Cymbeline. Winter's Tale. Tempest. Henry VIII. Timon of Athens. Thus it appears that the period of time in which these ( plays and poems were produced corresponds exactly to that j portion of Bacon's life in which we may most easily sup- j 1 First printed in the present form : an older form printed in 1594. 2 First in complete form: only first sketches before. 8 First in complete form : only a sketch before. 108 CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. pose they could have been written by him, being the period of thirty-one years between his coming to the bar, in 1582, and his elevation to the principal law-office of the crown, in 1613, and between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-two. During the first twenty-five years of this time, and until made Solicitor- General, in 1607, he was looking in vain for advancement in the state, getting none beyond a seat in Parliament, which came from the people, and the small employment of a Queen's (or King's) Counsel, both places of honor rather than profit ; and was a barrister, a close student, and a bachelor at his lodgings in Gray's Inn, with distressingly little professional business and much leisure for writing and for study, spending his vacations in the quiet retreats of Gorhambury and Twickenham Park ; a constant attendant upon the Court, a friend and counsellor of the favorite Essex, and an intimate associate of his gay young compeers, Southampton, Rutland, Pembroke, and Montgomery, who were constant visitors of the theatre, some of them great patrons of learning, and themselves amateurs in poetry, and all of them patrons and lovers of the liberal arts. All the while, Francis Bacon was intent upon his legal studies, his parliamentary duties, his scientific inquiries, his civil and moral Essays, his " Wisdom of the Ancients," his "Advancement of Learning," and those philosophical spec- ulations and instaurations which were his " graver studies," together with sundry unnamed " recreations " of his other studies ; being thus, at the same time, engaged in writing various works in prose (if not in verse also) on subjects which, in a general view, and in their main matter and scope, are found to be essentially kindred and parallel with these very plays. In his dedication of the " Dialogue Touch- ing a Holy War" (itself not without some touch of the Shakespearean faculty), addressed to the learned Bishop Andrews, in 1622, he tells us that these smaller works, such as the Essays, and " some other particulars of that nature," CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS. 109 being perhaps a part of those " particular exchanges " to which he had hitherto been given, had been and would con- tinue to be " the recreations of his other studies ; " but they must now give way to the more important philosophical labors and those " banks and mounts of perpetuity which will not break " ; for on these he was henceforth to be more exclusively employed ; " though I am not ignorant," says he, " that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand.' 1 1 Nor is there anything remarkable in the circumstance that a barrister of the Inns of Court should be a poet and write for the stage. John Ford of Gray's Inn, and Fran- cis Beaumont of the Inner Temple, were both lawyers and eminent dramatic writers ; the Christmas Revels at these Inns were celebrated with masques, triumphs, and stage- plays ; plays were written by eminent scholars and divines to be performed on festive occasions, even at the Universi- ties ; Thomas Sackville Lord Buckhurst, and Foulke Grev- ille Lord Brooke, were poets, and wrote plays ; Sir Henry Wotton, sometime secretary of the Earl of Essex, also wrote plays ; William, Earl of Pembroke, like the cele- brated Sir Philip Sidney, was a cultivator of the art of poe- try ; Dr. John Donne, a great philosopher and divine, as well as George Herbert, the " best judge of divinity and poesy met," and Sir John Davies, a distinguished lawyer and judge, are named as founders of the metaphysical school of poetry of that day ; 2 and that great scholar and writer, John Selden of the Inner Temple, though not him- self a poet, was such a critic, philosopher, and man, as to command the esteem and confidence of Lord Bacon, who named him in his will as one eminently fit to sit in judg- ment upon his unpublished manuscripts. Nor is it to be supposed that he contemplated in the writing of these poet- 1 Works (Boston), XIII. 188. 2 Craik's Hist, of Eng. Lit. I. 578. 110 CIRCUMSTANCES. ical works merely " some lease of quick revenue," or any immediate advantage to himself, or personal fame, as many of the poets did, in those days. On the contrary, we may safely imagine for him the highest and most disinterested purpose which it is possible to conceive for any author, even for himself, who was seeking by the labors of a life to re- form and advance the learning, science, philosophy, arts, morals, and the whole " practic part " of human life in this world ; in which the personal interests of the writer, and even the lustre of fame and reputation, were with himself, perhaps, the least important considerations, when these " trifles " were in question. 2. CIRCUMSTANCES. \ Francis Bacon was endowed by nature with the richest gifts and most extraordinary powers. His mother was a learned woman in those days when learning for either sex implied a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics ; and we find her translating works of deep theology, after the example of Lady Jane Grey, who, according to Ascham, read "the Phaedon Platonis in Greeke" with as much delight as if it had been " one of the tales of Boccase," or of the Queen herself, who is said to have translated Boe- thius " De Consolatione Philosophise " into her own Eng- lish. This Boethius, it will be remembered, was a Chris- tian philosopher and poet of the fifth century, 1 and a writer that exhibited the highest order of Platonic genius and intellect, both in style and matter surpassing Cicero him- self; and in the age of Elizabeth there were not a few scholars and divines, who, like Richard Hooker, George Herbert, John Selden, Dr. Donne, Bishop Andrews, and Lord Bacon himself, were by no means afraid of the phi- losophy of Plato. His father was not only Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, but an eminent scholar and a patron of learning and art, who had the reputation of uniting in him- i Opera Boethii (Class. Delph. Valpy), London, 1823. CIRCUMSTANCES. Ill self "the opposite characters of a witty and a weighty speaker," * and was, says Sir Robert Naunton, " an arch- peece of wit and of wisdome," and " abundantly facetious ; which tooke much with the queene." 2 His palace of York House, in which this son was born, and his country-seat of Gorhambury, was well furnished with libraries, and adorned with works of art and whatever might please the taste of the scholar and gentleman. His father breeds him as the King did Leonatus in the play, " Puts to him all the learnings that his time Could make him receiver of; which he took, As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd; and In his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court (Which rare it is to do) most prais'd, most lov'd; A sample to the youngest, to th' more mature, A glass that feated them ; and to the graver, A child that guided dotards." Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. 1. We can easily imagine what must have been the early education of this notable youth, whom the Queen called her young Lord Keeper at ten, and whose " first and childish years," says Dr. Rawley, " were not without some mark of eminency : at which time, he was endued with that preg- nancy and towardness of wit, as they were passages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterwards." We need not be surprised to find him enter- ing the University of Cambridge, at a little more than twelve, discovering the deficiencies of Aristotle and out- stripping his tutors before he was sixteen, going as an attache to the Court of Paris, learning French, Italian, and Spanish, travelling with the French Court, and being intrusted with a mission to the Queen, before he was nine- teen ; an utter barrister at twenty-one, a member of Par- liament at twenty-four, a Bencher at twenty-five, and doubt- less a maturer man at twenty, in all learning and wisdom, than most graduates of the universities were at full thirty 1 Biogr. Britannica, I. 446. 2 Memoirs of Eliz., 75, London, 1824. 112 CIRCUMSTANCES. Upon the death of his father, sitting down thus furnished, at Gray's Inn, in 1579, to the study of the law, a further survey of the Greek and Latin poets, and a thorough study of the philosophic wisdom and culture of the ancients, reviewing the patent deficiencies of his own age in matters civil, moral, and religious, in sciences, philosophy, and art, with the recollection about him, perhaps, of the plays that had been written and performed within the walls of the University while he was there, and with such example be- fore him as that of Sir Philip Sidney, and such encourage- ment for the cultivation of the art of poetry as was to be found in his writings as being not unworthy of the highest dignity, rank, ambition, or genius of any man, and with that boldness of self-conscious power that did not fear to grap- ple with Aristotle and Plato, nor even to undertake the renovation of all philosophy, it is not so very wonderful that he should also come to the conclusion that " true art is always capable of advancing," l and should even begin to spread his own wings in the sphere of Apollo. The " Ve- nus and Adonis " at once gets to the very essence and bot- tom of the pastoral Arcadia, and the " Rape of Lucrece " measures the height of the Roman virtue and dignity. Ancient lore furnishes material and story for a " Titus An- dronicus," or a " Pericles," in near imitation of the manner of the Greek tragedy, which he may send to the theatre, perhaps. The " Histoires Tragiques " of Belleforest, and the Italian novels of Cinthio, Bandello, Baccaccio, and the rest, which he has read in Paris, furnish hints of fable and incident for a few delightful and entertaining comedies of love, wit, and humor, which yet savor of the classic lore of the University, and bear traces of his Parisian French and his accomplishments in Italian and Spanish. The splendid entertainments at Court set the young imagination all in a blaze, and produce that extraordinary exhibition of love, wit, and fancy, the " Midsummer Night's Dream," in honor i Scafa Intellect, Works (Mont.), XIV. 426-7. CIRCUMSTANCES. 113 of the maiden Queen. The Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn call for a new " Comedy of Errors " out of Plautus, with sundry sharp hits at the gowned and wigged gentry there assembled, which may go to the theatre also, now that its special work is done. The English Histories of Holin- shed, Hall, Stow, Speed, and the rest, all compact with learning, imagination, and poetry, of which he has made some study, as well as Chaucer, the old ballads, and all the old plays, tales, proverbs, and chronicles, which he has found time to ransack, may furnish fable, story, moral pre- cept, and tragic incident enough for a few dramatic histo- ries in the new kind, of which some first specimens and youthful sketches, which will eventually grow into larger dimensions and more perfect form, may be thrown upon the stage at once, until they begin to attract the public atten- tion, and find their way into the hands of the printers, without the author's name, as they were lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain's or the Earl of Pembroke's servants. All this will be done in secret, or with the knowledge of a few friends only who can keep a secret ; for he well knows that the public opinion is much against poets and writers for the stage, and that to be known as a poet and a play- wright would be next to ruin to all his prospects for ad- vancement in the state, and in a profession in which the greatest lights were of opinion, with Lord Coke, that poet- asters and play-writers were to be ranked with "alche- mysts, monopotexts, concealers, and informers," whose " fatal end was beggary," being no better than " fit sub- jects for the grand jury as vagrants." He had not made up his mind yet to become " a sorry book-maker," nor quite to retire to Cambridge with a couple of men, there to de- vote his life to contemplations and studies, " without looking back." In the mean time, he is pushing his interest at Court, with the tardy support of his uncle, Lord Burghley, and the jealousy of the Cecils ; for he has chosen to follow a public, rather than a merely professional or literary career. 1 14 CIRCUMSTANCES. Giving an account of himself, in the latter part of his life, more particularly in reference to his philosophical labors, perhaps, but not wholly out of place in this connection, he says : " When I came to conceive of myself as born for the service of humanity, and to look upon state employment as amongst those things which are of public right and patent to all, like the wave or the breeze, I proceeded both to inquire what might most conduce to the benefit of men, and to deliberate for what special work I myself had been best fitted by nature. Thereupon I found that no other thing was of so great merit in reference to the human race as the discovery and authorship of new truths and arts, by which human life may be improved I judged, therefore, that my nature had a certain inherent intimacy and rela- tionship with truth. Yet, seeing that both by descent and education I had been imbued in civil affairs, and, inasmuch as I was still a young man, was sometimes shaken in my opinions, and thinking that I owed something peculiar to my country which was not equally due in all other cases, and hoping that, if I might obtain some honorable rank in the state, I should accomplish what I had designed with greater advantages in the exercise of my genius and my industry. I both applied myself to the acquirement of political knowl- edge, and, with such modesty as beseemed and in as far as it could be done without any disingenuousness, endeav- oured to commend myself to such friends as had it in their power to assist my advancement." l His compact learning, exact knowledge, and brilliant ora- torical powers soon begin to acquire for him an ascendency in Parliament and public affairs. He connects himself with the fortunes and party of the rising favorite, Essex, and, at the same time, makes the acquaintance of the young lords and courtiers, his adherents and followers, Southamp- ton among them, constant attendants and patrons of the l Proemium de Int. Nat., (Craik's Bacon, 611). CIRCUMSTANCES. 115 theatre ; who, as the friends and associates of Essex and himself, were no doubt frequent visitors at his chambers in Gray's Inn, or at his lodge at Twickenham. His brother Anthony and himself, the more effectually to push their fortunes in this direction, and to maintain this high estate and prospect of advancement, incur expense beyond their immediate means of living, and even keep a coach, which the good Lady Ann thinks a piece of extravagance ; and they give entertainments of stage-plays at Anthony's house to " cits and gentlemen, very much to the delight of Essex and his jovial crew," but, as Lady Ann thinks, also very much " to the peril of her sons' souls." l In the summer of 1593, Anthony has become secretary, and Francis, the legal and political adviser of the Earl of Essex ; and it is at this very time that the " Venus and Adonis " is dedi- cated to Southampton, and, in the next year, the " Rape of Lucrece," also, under the name of William Shakespeare. The plays have been performed at his theatre, and he has already acquired the reputation of being the author of them ; though as yet none of them have been printed under his name. Certainly it will require no great stretch of imagination to conceive that during these familiar visits of Essex and Southampton to his chambers in Gray's Inn, he may have taken the liberty to show them, or to read to them, the manuscripts of these poems. We may very well suppose they would urge him to publish them. But he does not desire to appear before the public in this charac- ter, and means to " profess not to be a poet." 2 This cover is easily suggested. Southampton will not object to the use of his name in a dedication ; and William Shakespeare will be as ready to appear as the author of these poems as he has been, or will be, to figure 'as author on the title- pages of divers and sundry quarto plays which he certainly never wrote. A mere possibility, it is true, or even a strong 1 Dixon's Pers. Hist., 68. 2 Apology concerning Essex. 116 CIRCUMSTANCES. probability, cannot be taken as any proof of the fact ; but if it be once established by other evidence that the plays and poems were actually written by Francis Bacon, then, of course, some such supposition as this must be admitted as absolutely necessary ; and of this fact there will be an ample sufficiency of other evidence. So extraordinary an arrangement, with so eminent a personage as the Earl of Southampton, is indeed a bold hypothesis ; especially in the face of that munificent largess of 1000, which he is said to have bestowed on Shakespeare, in recognition of the compliment and of his merit as a poet. But this story is itself a mere tradition, related with distrust by Rowe as handed down by Sir William Davenant ; and, as Mr. Hal- liwell observes, " considering the value of money in those days, such a gift is altogether incredible," * however prob- able it may be, otherwise, that some notice of the kind may have been taken of him. The Globe Theatre was erected somewhere in these years (1594-5), and it is by no means improbable that the Earl of Southampton should contribute a handsome sum towards this enterprise. And there may have been other reasons, more or less remotely connected with the history of these plays and their author, that were operative with these gay young courtiers in their patronage of the theatre, without the necessity of resorting (with Delia Bacon 2 ) to the hypothesis that they had, as a whole, or in any particular, a special bearing upon any schemes then impending for effecting changes in the state and gov- ernment, or any connection with any club of reformers ; especially if we consider that the Queen herself was willing to be wooed and to have sonnets addressed to her ; that she took great delight in the masques and plays, triumphs and dumb shows, which they got up for her amusement ; and that many of these very plays were performed before her at Court as they came out, and were " well liked of her Majesty." 1 Life of Shakes., 161. 2 Phil, of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, 1857. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 117 3. THE HISTORICAL PLATS. As the work proceeded, the plan would very soon be con- ceived of a connected and continuous series of historical dramas, which should embrace the entire period of the civil wars of the Roses, rich enough in tragic story and event, and affording ample materials for illustrative examples in the more dignified subjects of a civil and moral nature, beginning with the " King John," as it were by way of pre- lude, in which the legitimate heir to the throne is set aside, and the nation is plunged into civil war ; and contimung in subject and design, though not composed, or produced, in strict chronological order, with the weak and despotic reign of Richard II., whose imbecility leads to another usurpa- tion of the crown, with all the terrible consequences of disastrous civil war ; and extending through the two parts of the " Henry IV.," the " Henry V.," and the three parts of the " Henry VI.," to the coming in of Henry the Sev- enth in the " Richard III.," when the two Roses are finally united in one line, and a tragical history is brought to an end in the more peaceful times which followed : a scheme which may even have been suggested by Sackville's trag- edy of " Ferrex and Porrex " and the " Complaint of Buck- ingham." Speaking of Elizabeth Woodville, Dowager of Edward IV., Bacon says her history " was matter of trag- edy," * as it is very effectually made to appear in the ' Rich- ard III." The same historical subject was continued, in due time, in a plain prose history of the reign of Henry VIL, which contains a graphic and "speaking picture" of the false pretender, Perkin Warbeck, "a counterfeit of that Richard, Duke of York (second son to Edward the Fourth)," of whom there was divulged " a flying opin- ion " that " he was not murdered in the Tower " : where- fore, " this being one of the strangest examples of a per- sonation that ever was in elder or later times," it is also 1 Hist, of Henry VII. 118 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. given ; and it is written in the true Shakespearean vein, and, as any one may see that looks sharply enough, lacks nothing of the compactness, brevity, clearness, and beauty of his former style, dropping only the high tragic buskin and the blank verse. And here and there, ideas and ex- pressions inevitably crop out in it, all unconsciously to him- self, which strike upon the ear of the careful listener like the sound of an echo, as thus : " Neither was Perkin for his part wanting to himself either in gracious and princely behaviour, or in ready and apposite answers, or in contenting and caressing those that did apply themselves unto him, or in pretty scorns or dis- dains to those that seemed to doubt of him ; but in all things did notably acquit himself: insomuch as it was gen- erally believed (as well amongst great persons as amongst the vulgar) that he was indeed Duke Richard. Nay, him- self with long and continual counterfeiting and with often telling a lie, was turned (by habit) almost unto the thing he seemed to be, and from a liar to a believer." 1 And we have the same ideas and similar expressions, in a like connection, in the " Tempest," as follows : " Pros. I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicate To closeness, and the bettering of my mind With that, which but by being so retir'd O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother Awak'd an evil nature; and my trust, Like a good parent, did beget of him A falsehood, in its contrary as great As my trust was ; which had, indeed, no limit, A confidence sans bound. He, being thus lorded, Not only with what my revenue yielded, But what my power might else exact, like one, Who having, unto truth, by telling of it, 2 Made such a sinner of his memory, 1 Hist, of Hen. VII.; Worlcs (Boston), XI. 210. 2 So in the Folio, and in all editions I have seen ; but I believe these words are an error of the press. It should read oft: the metre requires it; the sense requires it ; and this authority from Bacon may be said to demand it. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 119 To credit his own lie he did believe He was indeed the Duke; out o' th' substitution, And executing th' outward face of royalty, With all prerogative : hence his ambition Growing, Dost thou hear? Miran. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. Prog. To have no screen between this part he play'd, And him he play'd it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan." Act 1. Sc. 2. The similarity of the thought, in this often telling a lie, is noticed by Mr. Spedding, 1 who remarks that the sugges- tion came from Speed. Shakespeare, it is true, as well as Bacon, may have gotten the idea from that author ; but the general tenor of both passages, and the peculiar expression he did believe he was indeed the Duke, which accompanies the idea, sounds wonderfully as if it had dropped from the same mint, in both cases. Even this might be considered accidental, if it stood alone ; but it is only one of a thou- sand instances of equal, or greater force, that everywhere pervade these writings. Nor is it at all probable that Ba- con would catch both the idea and expression from Shake- speare's play: in fact, it is far more probable that both came from Bacon ; for we learn from Mr. Spedding's pref- ace, that Bacon had formed the design of writing that his- tory, and had actually begun it, and sketched the character of Henry VII., before the death of Elizabeth, having doubtless collected materials for the purpose, and made a study of the subject and of the story of Perkin, at the time when he was studying the historical pictures for these same dramatic histories. This conjecture is confirmed by the circumstance that Prospero's " false brother," the pretender in the play, " confederates (So dry he was for sway) with the King of Naples." And the story itself seems well-nigh to have been sug- gested by the account, which is given in the " History of Henry VH.," of the French embassy, one topic of which l Notes to the Hist, of Hen. VII. 120 THE HISTOKICAL PLAYS. was, that the French King intended " to make war upon the kingdom of Naples, being now in the possession of a bastard slip of Aragon ; but appertaining unto his majesty by clear and undoubted right ; which, if he should not by just arms seek to recover, he would neither acquit his hon- our nor answer it to his people ; " and so, he had resolved to make " the reconquest of Naples." 1 Mention is made also of "Alphonso, Duke of Calabria, eldest son to Ferdinando, King of Naples " ; and among the characters in the play are "Alonso, King of Naples ; Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan ; Antonio, his brother, the usurping Duke," and " Ferdinand, son to the King of Naples " : " Pros. This King of Naples, being an enemy To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit; Which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises, Of homage, and I know not how much tribute, Should presently extirpate me and mine Out of the dukedom." Act I. Sc. 2. And so, the story in the play itself having been drawn from the same quarry of materials as the history, this idea, hav- ing been once written into the play, in 1611, (if not already written into his notes for the History before 1603), very naturally drops out again in the completed work of 1621 ; and that, too, at about the same time when we may suppose he was engaged in revising the plays themselves for the Folio of 1623. And further still, these same Italian and Spanish histo- ries, in the very next year (1612), are introduced into Bacon's speech in the Countess of Shrewsbury's case, in immediate connection with Henry VII. and Perkin War- beck ; and in such manner as to show that they were still fresh in his memory ; and, in the facts stated as well as in the style and manner of the narration, the critical reader will discover some very suggestive resemblances with a part of the story of the " Tempest." The Countess had refused l Hist of Hen. VII. ; Works (Boston), XI. 162, 199. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 121 to answer in the matter of Arabella Stuart, who had mar- ried Seymour, without the King's consent, and fled the kingdom. Bacon's speech proceeds thus : " And accordingly hath been the practice of the wisest and stoutest princes to hold for matter pregnant of peril, to have any near them in blood to fly into foreign parts. Wherein I will not wander ; but take example of King Henry the Seventh, a prince not unfit to be paralleled with his Majesty. I mean not the particular of Perkin "War- beck, for he was but an idol or a disguise ; but the exam- ple I mean is that of the earl of Suffolk, whom the king extorted from Philip of Austria. The story is memorable, that Philip, after the death of Isabella, coming to take pos- session of his kingdom of Castile, which was but matrimo- nial to his father-in-law Ferdinando of Aragon, was cast by weather upon the coast of Weymouth, where the Italian story saith, King Henry used him in all things else as a prince, but in one thing as a prisoner ; for he forced upon him to promise to restore the earl of Suffolk that was fled into Flanders." 1 Now, as King Henry VII. was deemed a prince " not unfit to be paralleled with his Majesty," so Prospero in the play was " the prime Duke," and ' "(so reputed In dignity) and, for the liberal arts, Without a parallel." Act I. Sc. 2. And as Philip, coming to his kingdom of Castile, " which was but matrimonial to his father-in-law Ferdinando," was " cast by weather upon the coast of Weymouth," so the King of Naples, sailing with Prince Ferdinand, his son, for Tunis, where his daughter Claribel was to find a husband, was cast away in a storm upon the coast of the imaginary Atlantic island ; and the fortunes of Prince Ferdinand, as well as the principal events and the leading interest of the story in the play, are made to turn upon matters matri- l 2 Howell's State Trials, 775. 122 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. raonial to his intended father-in-law, the rightful Duke of Milan. Prospero regains his dukedom; Ferdinand, like Philip, is restored to his kingdom of Naples, with Miranda for a wife, in due time " to be King and Queen there " ; and the King of Naples becomes the friend of the restored Duke of Milan; and, in order to accomplish the object, as King Henry VII. used Philip in the speech, so Ferdinand in the play is " used in all things else as a prince, but in one thing as a prisoner." In the shipwreck, Ferdinand is separated from the rest of the ship's company, and cast upon the shore alone ; the invisible spirit Ariel is specially sent to draw him on by means of charms and music towards Pros- pero's cell ; on the way, he falls in with Miranda, much to the surprise and admiration of both ; and, as the intent was, they forthwith fall in love. Prospero, seeing that his charm is working more than fast enough, suddenly puts on an air of severity towards Ferdinand : "Pros. [Aside.] They are both in cither's pow'rs ; but this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light." He denounces Ferdinand as a usurper and a spy, that has come upon the island to win it from him " the lord on 't." Ferdinand, after some show of resistance, befitting his princely quality, submits himself a prisoner, thus : " Proa. [ To Ferd.] Come on ; obey : Thy nerves are in their infancy again, And have no vigor in them. Ferd. So they are : My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, The wreck of all my friends, and this man's threats, To whom I am subdu'd, are but light to me, Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid. All corners else o' th' earth Let liberty make use of: space enough Have I in such a prison. Pros. [Aside.] It works." Act I. Sc. 2. There is no other prison, however, than the manner in THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 123 which he is used ; there is some temporary restraint for a purpose which is accomplished, the marriage and a restora- tion of friendship with Naples ; and so he is treated in one thing as a prisoner, but in all things else as a prince. He is even set to the drudgery of piling logs, in order to bring his sincerity to the final test. This apparent harshness awakens the sympathy of Miranda, and she offers to help him: "Ferd. I am in my condition A prince, Miranda; and for your sake, Am I this patient logman." Act III. Sc. 1. The same story is told more at length in the " History of Henry VII.," l in which King Philip is " surprised with a cruel tempest," and "the ship wherein the King and Queen were, with two other small barks only, torn and in great peril, to escape the fury of the weather, thrust into Weymouth. King Philip himself, having not been used as it seems to sea, all wearied and extreme sick, would needs land to refresh his spirits." And when King Henry asks for the return of " that same hare-brain wild fellow," his subject the earl of Suffolk, the King of Castile replies, That can I not do with my honour, and less with yours ; for you will be thought to have used me as a prisoner" The same style runs from his pen, whether in prose or verse: "Gon. "Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue Should become kings of Naples ? Pros. but, howsoe'er you have Been justled from your senses, know for certain, That I am Prospero, and that very duke Which was thrust forth of Milan; who most strangely Upon this shore, where you were wrack'd, was landed, To be the lord on't." Act V. Sc. 1. And the tale there ends with the same dream in which Ferdinand's spirits (in the play) were all bound up, thus : " So that as the felicity of Charles the Eighth was said i Works (Boston), XI. 342-348. 12-4 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. to be a dream, so the adversity of Ferdinando was said like- wise to be a dream, it passed over so soon." The earliest authentic notice that we have of the exist- ence of this play is the entry discovered by Cunningham in the accounts of the Revels at Court, in the Book for 1611-12, in which it is named as having been performed before his Majesty at Whitehall, on " Hallowmas night," which, falling on the first day of November, is presumed to have been November 1, 161 1. 1 It was also acted at Court, during the festivities attending the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth in the beginning of the year 1613. The best critics have assigned the composition of the play to the year 1611. Some incidents in it make it quite certain that it must have been written after the voyage of the "Admi- ral," and after the publication of Jourdan's account of it, in his " Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the He of Divels," in 1610; which islands are therein "supposed to be enchanted and inhabited with witches and devils, which grew by reason of accustomed monstrous thunder- storm and tempest near unto those islands " ; and the ship, " by God's divine providence, at a high water ran right between two strong rocks, where it stuck fast, without breaking," and all were saved. So, in the play, when Pros- pero is giving an account to Miranda how they were sent to sea in " a rotten carcass of a boat," to which " the sigh- ing winds did but loving wrong," until there in that island they arrived, we have a similar expression, thus : "Miran. How came we ashore ? Pros. By Providence divine." The Countess of Shrewsbury's case was heard at Trinity term (that is, in the beginning of summer) of 1612 ; 2 and taking the play to have been first produced in the preced- ing November, there would seem to be no occasion for 1 White's Shakes., II. p. 6. 2 7 Coke's Eep. 94. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 125 wonder that, at the date of this trial, these same Italian stories which had so lately served the purpose of the poet, should have been still floating in the imagination of the orator ; nor that they should have been thus reproduced in historic accuracy, not without some poetic effect, to illus- trate the legal argument. Critical editors have been perplexed to find the sources of the story of the "Tempest." Mr. White thinks the characters point to some old Italian or Spanish tale as its foundation ; Collins believed it was founded upon " a ro- mance called 'Aurelio and Isabella,' printed in Italian, Span- ish, French, and English, in 1588," which neither he nor any one else, it seems, has ever been able to find again ; others have traced its origin to Somers' "Voyage" and Jourdan's " Discovery " ; and probably the truth is, that suggestions were derived from a variety of sources, these included, and that the borrowed materials, mingled with the new creations, in passing through the limbec of his pow- erful brain, were distilled into an imaginary essence, alto- gether new and different as a whole, but still recognizable as the same in some parts and phases, which exhibit strik- ing ideal resemblances, close analogies, and even very pal- pable identities of thought, style, and diction. And here we may venture to make an application of the words of King Alonso in the play : "Alon. This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod ; And there is in this business more than Nature Was ever conduct of. Some oracle Must rectify our knowledge." This is not all. There are more instances of like kind in this same History, of which one or two may be cited. In the "Measure for Measure," written about the year 1603, we find this rather singular expression : " For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne'er issued from his blood." Act III. Sc. 1. And in the " History of Henry VII." Perkin Warbeck is 126 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. made to say, " And from that hand to the wide wilderness (as I may truly call it) for so the world hath been to me ; " * and again, King Henry says, " France is no wilderness." 2 And then we have this: "The King our master hath a purpose and determination to make war upon the kingdom of Naples, being now in the possession of a bastard slip of Aragon;" 8 which may remind us again of "the blind rascally boy " Cupid, in the "As You Like It," 4 " that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, con- ceived of spleen, and born of madness." In like manner, we find in the Essays the following : " True friends ; with- out which the world is but a wilderness," 5 and in the New Atlantis, " the greatest wilderness of waters in the world ; " 6 and in a speech, " you take pleasure in a wilder- ness of variety." 7 And again, we have it in the plays, thus : " Environed with a wilderness of sea ; " 8 and again, " Rome is but a wilderness of tigers ; " 9 and still again, " I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." 10 Can all this be accidental ? Still further, we have in the " Hamlet " these lines : " Ghost. [Beneath.] Swear by this sword. Ham. Well said, old mole ! canst work i' th' ground so fast ? A worthy pioneer! once more remove " : Act 1. Sc. 5. which crops out again in the " Henry VII." thus : "He had such moles perpetually working and casting to undermine him." 11 And it appears again in a masque which he wrote for Essex, thus : " They [lovers] are charged with descending too low : it is as the poor mole, which seeing not the clearness of the air, diveth into the darkness of the earth."! 2 1 Hist. Henry VII. ; Works (Boston), XI. 246. 2 Ibid. 181. 1 Works (Mont.), XIII. 121. 8 Ibid. 162. 8 Titus Andr., Act TIL Sc. 1. < Act IV. Sc. 1. 9 ibid., Act III. Sc. 1. * Works (Boston), XII. 166. 10 Merch. of Venice, Act III. Sc. 1. Works (Philad.), II. 323. Works (Boston), XI. 360. w Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 389. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 127 And again he says, " and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which, he said, lay so deep." * And again, in this History, speaking of the conditional treason of Sir William Stanley, who had said of Perkin Warbeck, " That if he were sure that that young man were King Edward 's son, he would never bear arms against him" Bacon continues thus : " But for the conditional, it seemeth the judges of that time (who were learned men, and the three chief of them of the privy counsel,) thought it was a dangerous thing to admit Iffs and Ands to qualify words of treason; whereby every man might express his malice, and blanch his danger." 2 So in Richard's council on the Coronation, we have ar illustration of this same kind of treason, in these lines : " Hast. If they have done this deed, my noble lord, Glos. If, thou protector of this damned strumpet, Talk'st thou to me of ' ifs ' ? Thou art a traitor: Off with his head ! " Richard ///., Act IIL Sc. 4. But to make a special compliment to the throne and line of Henry VII., and to his present Majesty, King James, in particular, a last grand effort is made, just when it will at least express his gratitude for the royal promise to succeed to the Attorney-General's place, and, at the same time, grace the nuptials of the Palatine branch in the Princess Eliz- abeth ; and the " Henry VIII." deliberately honors and magnifies the King himself, by carefully weaving into the scenes the surpassing excellence and beauty of Anne Bul- len (of whom there is nothing in Holinshed, from whom the rest of the story is almost literally taken), closing with the unrivalled virtues, fortune, and honor of her descend- ant, the virgin queen : " Nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new create another heir, As great in admiration as herself, I Letter. a Works (Boston), XL 228. 128 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. So shall she leave her blessedness to one (When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness) Who from the sacred ashes of her honour Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, And so stand fix'd. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, That were the servants of this chosen infant, Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him: Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, His honour and the greatness of his name Shall be, and make new nations : he shall flourish, And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches To all the plains about him." Act V. Sc. 4. This is doubtless the same star and vine that are spoken of in the letter to his Majesty, thanking him for " his gracious acceptance " of his book (the " JSTovum Organum "), in which he says: "I see your majesty is a star that hath benevolent aspect and gracious influence upon all things that tend to a general good. " ' Daphni, quid antiques signorum suspicis artus ? Ecce Dionxi processit Caesaris astrum ; Astrum, quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem.' [ViRG., Eclog. ix. 46-9.] " This work, which is for the bettering of men's bread and wine, which are the characters of temporal blessings and sacraments of eternal, I hope, by God's holy providence, will be ripened by Caesar's Star." 1 And it appears again, thus : " Henry the Fifth ! thy ghost I invocate ; Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils ! Combat with adverse planets in the heavens ! A far more glorious star thy soul will make Than Julius Csesar." 1 Henry VI., Act I. Sc. 1. Prospero, in the " Tempest," also had his star : " Pros. and by my prescience I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop." Act I. Sc. 2. That Bacon had the subject of the History of England much in mind, having long contemplated undertaking to l Letter, 19 Oct. 1620; Works (Mont.), XII. 395. THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. 129 write it anew, we learn from his letter to the Lord Chancel- lor, written soon after the accession of King James, in which the following passage may be particularly cited here : " The act I speak of is the order given by his majesty for the erection of a tomb or monument for our late sover- eign Queen Elizabeth ; wherein I may note much, but this at this time, that as her majesty did always right to his majesty's hopes, so his highness doth, in all things, right to her memory ; a very just and princely retribution. But from this occasion by a very easy ascent, I passed further, being put in mind, by this representative of her person, of the more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government. For as statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pictures ; wherein (if my affection be not too great, or my reading too small), I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives by parallels, it would trouble him, for virtue and for- tune both, to find for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more impres- sion upon the several states of Europe than it received from thence." 1 All this, it is easy to see, not only harmonizes well with the view here taken of these dramatic histories or " speak- ing pictures," but rings peculiarly like the sonorous trib- ute to Queen Elizabeth in the " Henry VIII.," which reads thus : " Cran. Let me speak, sir, For Heaven now bids me ; and the words I utter Let none think flattery, for they '11 find 'em truth. This royal infant, Heaven still move about her ! Though in her cradle, yet now promises Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be (But few now living can behold that goodness) A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed: Saba was never l Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 69. 9 130 THE HISTORICAL PLAYS. More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue Than this pure soul shall be : all princely graces, That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, With all the virtues that attend the good, Shall still be doubled on her : truth shall nurse her ; Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her : She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless her: Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow : good grows with her. In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants; and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours. God shall be truly known ; and those about her From her shall read the perfect ways of honour, And by those claim their greatness, not by blood." Act V. Sc. 4. And so King James is ingeniously represented, and with a certain degree of poetic truthfulness, as inheriting all this honor and virtue and greatness even from Henry VII., and from Anne Bullen, not by direct descent of blood, indeed, but through the ashes of this wonderful phoenix, as of that "more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government." At the same time, this illustrative example in a most dignified subject rounds out the historical series of those " actual types and models " which were " to place, as it were, before our eyes the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects selected for their variety and importance " * (as I will endeavor to make appear) ; and this one should be " Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." And having thus had occasion to make a study of this period of history, which he finds to be " wonderful, indeed, from the Union of the Roses to the Union of the King- doms," 2 the preceding period having already been treated of, poetically, in the " speaking pictures," and so far as lay in " the potential mood " ; and having the materials at hand for the work, as the first honors which he undertakes to do 1 Introd. to Nov. Org. 2 j) e ^ug. Scient.. Lib. II. c. 7. THE GREATER PLAYS. 131 his country and his king by his pen and the help of those " other arts which may give form to matter," he not only takes up again his former sketch of the " History of Henry VII.," laid aside since before 1603, and perfects and com- pletes it into a tribute worthy to be submitted to " the file of his Majesty's judgment," and dedicated to Prince Charles as the first fruit of his banishment, which he ac- complishes in one summer, but also, the " History of Henry VIIL," in whose reign began that great change in the Church, which was "such as had hitherto rarely been brought upon the stage," 1 long since contemplated, of which a beginning, likewise, has already been made that is " like a fable of the poets " ; but deserves " all in a piece a wor- thy narration," and, time and health permitting, it is to be likewise dedicated to Prince Charles. But time fails him, and it is never done. 4. THE GREATER PLATS. Furthermore, it is to be observed, that the more philo- sophical and greater plays were written after 1600, when Bacon was more than forty years of age and in the maturity of his powers (as indeed William Shakespeare also must have been) ; when his philosophical and critical studies had become still more universal, exact, and profound ; when his conceptions of nature and the constitution of the universe, his theories of practical sciences, civil institutions, and moral relations, his views of society and humanity, his experience in human affairs and his observation of human life and character in all ranks, phases, conditions, and de- grees, had become more ample and perfect ; when his new rhetoric, his critical survey of all the arts of delivery, and his study of, the nature of " true art," and of the uses and proper function of true poetry, had been matured, and his whole culture had become more elaborate, deep, and con> plete ; a kind of culture which it is difficult to imagine i De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 7. 1S2 THE GREATER PLAYS. how William Shakespeare, under the conditions of life which environed him, could by any possibility have attained to. It is to be noted, also, that the first sketches of the three parts of the " Henry VI." (and perhaps, also, of the " King John "), the earliest plays of the historical series, written, it may be, before the entire plan was fully con- ceived, and before the first play in the historical order of the wars of the Roses, the " Richard II.," was produced, were taken up again, afterwards, and rewritten, greatly elaborated, and reproduced, in conformity with the rest of the series ; and, of the first part of the " Henry VI.," which exhibits greater care and maturity of judgment in the ex- ecution than the other parts, which, nevertheless, contain passages that may stand before the throne of the tragic muse beside the Greek tragedy itself without blushing, done in the finest lyric style of the ancients, and plainly intended to be, to some extent at least, in imitation of the classic model, we hear nothing, until it appears for the first time in the Folio of 1623, beyond the bare fact that such a play existed, in some form, with the other parts, at an early date. The " Romeo and Juliet," produced in 1595, though conceived on profoundly philosophical principles, bearing strong traces of the " Fable of Cupid " and the " Nemesis " of Francis Bacon (as will be shown), does not exhibit the same degree of matured strength and finish as the later productions, though one of the most attractive of the plays upon the stage. The " Midsummer Night's Dream," un- doubtedly written about the year 1594, though there ap- pears to be no certain mention of it before 1598, having been first printed in 1600, is a wonderful creation, indeed, and entirely fit to be performed, as it was, before the Queen's Majesty at Whitehall ; but the writer had not yet wholly freed himself from the shackles of rhyme, nor from the glowing fancy and " strong imagination " of " The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," THE GREATER PLAYS. 133 nor from the philosophy of Cupid and the allurements of the Court, as is evident in these lines : "Ober. That very time I saw (but thou could'st not), Flying between the cold moon and the Earth, Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : But I might see young Cupid's tiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon, And the imperial vot'ress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free." Act II. Sc. 1. Between 1594 and 1600, the " Romeo and Juliet," the "As You Like It," the " Richard III.," the Merchant of Venice," and the two parts of the " Henry IV.," may take rank, in many respects, with the greater plays ; but after 1600, come the " Twelfth Night," the Othello," the Ham- let," the " Measure for Measure," the " Lear," the " Mac- beth," the "Julius Caesar," the "Antony and Cleopatra," the " Troilus and Cressida," the." Coriolanus," the " Cym- beline," the " Winter's Tale," the " Tempest," the Henry VIII.," and the " Timon," splendid dramas all, the most masterly productions of their author, and, beyond all ques- tion, the work of a profound thinker, a critical philosopher, a practised writer, a learned scholar, and a polished culture, as well as of that artistic genius and high order of intel- lectual endowment, which nature might give to any man. Twelve of these fifteen plays were published, for the first time, in the Folio of 1623 : of some four or five of them it is not positively known that they had been performed at all on the stage ; and nearly all of them were of such a kind and character as to attract less the attention of the theatre and the public, though really among the greatest of the author's works ; and they were not printed. Some other of the more philosophical plays, as the " Romeo and Juliet," the " Midsummer Night's Dream," the " Hamlet," the " Lear," and the " Measure for Measure," had more 134 THE GREATER PLAYS. attractive qualities for the public eye and ear, perhaps, and they kept the stage and were printed. The " Troilus and Cressida," which was altogether too philosophically pro- found and stately, too learnedly abstruse and lofty, to be popular on the stage, was even printed first, and only went to the theatre afterwards, where its stay seems to have been short. Of the ten earlier plays which were first printed in the Folio, or first in complete form, some, it seems, had seldom appeared upon the stage, and others had been printed, at an early date, as first draughts, or as stolen copies. Of those which had been printed before 1623, there were, among the more attractive and popular plays on the stage, the " Richard II.," the " Richard III.," the " Merchant of Venice," the two parts of the " Henry IV.," the " Henry V.," the " Love's Labor 's Lost," and the " Much Ado About Nothing," and of these, printed editions had been more in demand. But this part of the subject is so dark, that it is difficult to arrive at any certain conclusion, or any clear notion, in what manner these plays came to be printed at all. Doubtless there were some stolen copies and surrep- titious editions, especially before. 1600. The "Titus An- dronicus " was entered as early as 1594, but it is not known to have been printed before 1 600. The first sketch of the second part of the " Henry VI.," printed in 1594 under the title of " The First Part of the Contention of the Two Fa- mous Houses of York and Lancaster," and that of the third part, printed in 1595 under the style of " The True Trag- edy of Richard. Duke of York," both without the name of the author, were very probably surreptitious copies of the early plays, which appear to have been upon the stage as early, at least, as 1587-88. The Merry Wives of Wind- sor," first printed in 1602, was so imperfect, even as a first sketch of the play, that it has been presumed by the critics to have been a stolen and mangled copy, as the " Hamlet " of 1603 most certainly was. So far as we have any posi- THE GREATER PLAYS. 135 live knowledge, the second edition of the " Richard II.," which was printed in 1598, with the scene of deposing King Richard left out, was the first one that bore the name of William Shakespeare on the title-page ; and there may have been some special reasons, as well for the publication of it at that time as for a close concealment of the real author's name (as we shall see below) ; especially when it is considered that, only one year later, Dr. Hayward was actually sent te the Tower for publishing the " First Yeare of King Henry the Fourth," which contained little else than the deposing of Richard II., which the Queen took to be a seditious and treasonable pamphlet ; and that the Earl of Essex was charged with " undutiful carriage " to- ward her Majesty, in that he allowed it to be dedicated to him ; though, on being warned of her anger, he had made all haste to have the book called in and suppressed. On the other hand, some of the previous quartos ap- proach so nearly to the more perfect copies of the Folio, and are so correctly printed, that it would seem to be highly probable that the author himself had had some hand in the supervision of the press. And when it is considered how many of those that had been printed in quarto were re- modelled, rewritten, enlarged, elaborated, corrected, or amended, before they appeared again in the Folio, and how many of the plays were published therein for the first time, and of what kind they were, we may easily believe, not only that the editors had much benefit from the pos- session of the " true original copies," but that even the true original copies themselves had undergone much revision and emendation, before they appeared for the last time in the finished and perfected form of the Folio of 1623 ; nor need we be surprised at the announcement of the Preface, that they had so published them "as where (before) you were abused with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious im- posters, that exposed them : even those are now offered to 136 ASSOCIATES. your view cured, and perfect of their limbes ; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them " : omnibus numeris suis absolulam ! And that such was the fact, the history of the " Timon of Athens" may furnish at least some slight confirmation. It has been observed that the old play of " Timon " was the work of some other author altogether ; and the studies of the later critics, especially Mr. Knight, have shown that the materials and the story of this play must have been drawn from other sources than that old play, or North's transla- tion of Plutarch ; and, in fact, that they came chiefly from the untranslated Greek of Lucian. There appears to be no mention on record of any performance of this play on the stage in those times, nor does tne existence of it appear to have been known, until it was published in this Folio ; and (as it will be shown) there is so much in the matter and style of it that so aptly accords with the external his- tory of Lord Bacon's life, and especially with his later years, and so many distinct traces of himself in it, that it is not difficult to believe it was the latest production of his dramatic muse. 5. ASSOCIATES. That Francis Bacon, during the earlier portion of the period in which these plays were produced, comprising also nearly the whole period of the sonnets and minor poems, was an intimate personal friend, acquaintance, and associate of the Earls of Essex, Southampton, Rutland, Pembroke, and Montgomery, and other young lords and courtiers, who were also, at the same time, the especial patrons and con- stant frequenters of Shakespeare's theatre, may be taken as an indubitable fact. Not only in the relations of these great personages, but in the manners of the court and time, there are many circumstances which tend strongly to con- firm the view here taken of this authorship. A few of them may be particularly noticed, even at the risk of some ASSOCIATES. 137 slight repetition. It was in 1609 that the first authentic edition of the sonnets was dedicated by the printer to " Mr. W. H.," the only begetter of them, (supposed by Mr. Col- lier and others, no doubt correctly, to mean William Her- bert, Earl of Pembroke,) as " never before imprinted " ; 1 the previous smaller edition having been in all probability surreptitiously published. Now it is worthy of mention, at least, that Pembroke, Rutland, and Montgomery, were witnesses to Bacon's patent of peerage in 1618, and were present at his investiture with the coronet of St. Alban in 1621 ; and to Pembroke and Montgomery was dedicated the Folio of 1623. It is historically known that Bacon wrote sonnets to the Queen, and masques and devices to be exhibited before her. Plays, masques, and triumphs were frequently gotten up, sometimes in great magnificence, by these young lords and courtiers, for her entertainment at Court, at the Universities, at the Inns of Court, or at their own private houses, in which her greatest favorites took the leading interest and the largest part. Companies of play- ers were kept enrolled among the servants of the greater nobles, or were licensed under their patronage. Shake- speare's theatres received the royal countenance and pro- tection. The " Lord Chamberlain's Servants " of the Globe and Blackfriars, in the reign of Elizabeth, became "His Majesty's Servants," in the time of King James. Nor is there anything improbable in the supposition that the courtly Francis Bacon, who was so notoriously given to the writing of masques and sonnets for the edification of the virgin Queen, should exert his genius in this same direction far more extensively than was publicly known, or even suspected by the Queen herself. It is quite certain that some of the plays were performed, for the first time, before her Majesty at Whitehall and other palaces ; and, according to certain traditions, she seems to have taken an i Shakes. Sonnets (Fac-simile of the ed. of 1609, from the Original in the Library of Bridgewater House), London, 1862. 138 ASSOCIATES. especial delight in the fantastic wit and superb drolleries of the fat knight in the " Henry IV." and the " Merry Wives of Windsor." King James appears to have taken equal pleasure in these dramatic entertainments. As we have seen, many of the plays were first performed before the King at Court, in his time. And the " Essay on Masques and Triumphs," and the several masques them- selves, which are certainly known to have been written by Bacon, afford proof enough that he had the ability, the Shakespearean wit, the same grace, brevity, and beauty of style, an imagination equally powerful, and a love for the sport r-tfr ^nun^c f*v<*> * 46* *W*U *U*a - King James, on his coming into England in 1603, was entertained with a play performed by Heming's company, at Wilton, the country-seat of the Earl of Pembroke. The " Macbeth " was evidently suggested by the change of dy- nasty and the Scottish superstitions concerning demonol- ogy and witchcraft, on which King James had himself written a book ; and the new sovereign is said to have acknowledged the compliment in an autograph letter ad- dressed to William Shakespeare, a document which seems never to have seen the light. " The system of Daemon- ologie," says Dr. Johnson's Preface, " was immediately adopted by all who desired either to gain preferment, or not to lose it." And it is worthy of notice, also, in this connection, that this play was written about the time that ^ Bacon was made Solicitor-General ; and that the " Henry VHI." was produced in great splendor, with a studied com- pliment to King James, just when he had obtained the royal v promise to succeed to the Attorney-General's place. Not that King James, or Queen Elizabeth, knew that Bacon was the author of these plays (though it might be difficult to name a reason why they should not have known), but that they may very well have understood, at least, that he, among other courtiers, was largely instrumental in getting up these magnificent entertainments for the royal amuse- ASSOCIATES. 139 ment. Both of them certainly knew that Bacon " had a great wit and much learning," and that he took a leading part in the actual composition of some of them. No more is it to be doubted, that the intimate personal relations which subsisted between Bacon and Essex ex- tended to Southampton as well. He was of Essex's part} 7 , and was his supporter in those wayward schemes which cul- minated in a treasonable attempt against the Queen's gov- ernment ; and he was a party accused in the prosecutions and trials which followed. Essex was beheaded ; South- ampton, only imprisoned in the Tower ; but soon after the accession of James, he was set at liberty. While yet in the Tower, Bacon addressed him the following letter : " It may please your Lordship, I would have been very glad to have presented my humble service to your Lordship by my attendance, if I could have foreseen that it should not have been uupleasing to you. And therefore, because I would commit no error, I chose to write ; assuring your Lordship how credible so- ever it may seem to you at first, yet it is as true as a thing that God knoweth ; that this great change hath wrought in me no other change towards your Lordship than this ; that I may safely be now that which I was truly before. And so craving no other pardon, than for troubling you with my letter, I do not now begin to be, but continue to be, " Your Lordship's humble and much devoted." 1 On the accession of King James, the friends and follow- ers of Essex were taken into especial favor, while those who had been the favorites of Elizabeth were, for a time, held at a distance, Bacon among the rest, though very soon afterwards formally appointed to the place of King's Coun- sel, the first that had ever been, " under the degree of ser- jeant, made so honoris causa" says Blackstone. 2 When the trials of Essex and Southampton for high treason came on, in the previous reign, Bacon, as one of the Queen's Coun- 1 Works (Mont.), XII. 115. 2 3 Black. Comm., 27. 140 ASSOCIATES. sel, was constrained to take a part in them, much against his will, and by the express command of the Queen, " no- lens volens" his request to be excused being peremptorily refused, and for very curious reasons, as we shall see ; and, during her reign, it would have been neither judi- cious, nor advantageous, for either party, that Bacon should have interposed in their behalf, beyond what he actually did; and this they both well knew. It is no matter of wonder, that in such times and under such circumstances, private friendships should be compelled to go somewhat under cover, or even be converted into temporary dislike, by the course of political events. But now that things were changed, and his offers of service might be of some value, and without danger to either of them, Bacon does not hesitate to come forward, though with some delicate saving of the possibility that the feelings of his old friend towards him may have become estranged under the trying events which had taken place, with this assurance of his continuing personal regard ; notwithstanding that he had been compelled by considerations of honor and duty of higher obligation than any bond of private friendship what- ever, and most certainly higher than any obligation to fol- low a friend into unwise and criminal courses, to take some share, officially, in the trial and condemnation of their offences. We know that while Essex was under arrest at the Lord Keeper's house, in the autumn of 1599, Bacon incurred the Queen's displeasure on account of his persist- ent efforts to palliate Essex's conduct, mitigate her anger, and procure his restoration to her favor, not then believing in any treasonable design ; and he succeeded at length, not without some risk to his own fortunes, in bringing about his enlargement in the spring of the next year. And then, he addresses a letter of somewhat like kind to Essex, who had now, for some two years past, ceased to take counsel at Gray's Inn. The letter, as given by Mr. Spedding from an original in Bacon's own hand, runs thus : ASSOCIATES. 141 "MY LORD, No man can better expound my doings than your Lordship, which maketh me need to say the less. Only I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of bonus civis. which with us is a wood and o true servant to the Queen, and next of bonus vir, that is an hon- est man. I desire your Lordship also to think that though I con- fess I love some things much better than I love your Lordship, as the Queen's service, her quiet and contentment, her honour, her favour, the good of my country, and the like, yet I love few per- sons better than yourself, both for gratitude's sake, and for your own virtues, which cannot hurt but by accident or abuse. Of which my good affection I was ever and am ready to yield testi- mony by any good offices but with such reservations as yourself cannot but allow : for as I was ever sorry that your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus' fortune, so for the growing up of your own feathers, specially ostrich's, or any other save of a bird of prey, no man shall be more glad. And this is the axletree whereupon I have turned and shall turn ; which to signify to you, though I think you are of yourself persuaded as much, is the cause of my writing ; and so I commend your Lord- ship to God's goodness. From Gray's Inn, this 20th day of July, 1600. Your Lordship's most humbly, FR. BACON." l To this letter Essex returns a very courteous and friendly answer, in which he says : " Your profession of affection, and offer of good offices, are welcome to me. For answer to them I will say but this : that you have believed I have been kind to you, and you may believe that I cannot be other, either upon humour or mine own election. I am a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else I should say some- what of your poetical example." 2 This same poetical conceit reappears more than once in the plays, as for instance in the third part of the " Henry VI.," thus : " Glos. Why what a peevish fool was that of Crete, That taught his son the office of a fowl ? l Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 190-1. Jbid, 192. 142 ASSOCIATES. And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown'd. K. Hen. I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus." Act V. Sc. 6. What answer Southampton returned, does not appear ; but considering that personal relations of a confidential and peculiar nature and of special interest to both must have subsisted between them, underlying these merely political connections and state affairs, and that he had no just reason whatever for being offended with Bacon for his course in the political business, it is to be presumed that this assurance of his continuing friendship was received in the same spirit in which it was given. At any rate, it is certain that, after his liberation (though he was imprisoned again for a short time in 1603, on account of a sudden quarrel and high words with Lord Gray in the Queen's presence, 1 ) he was very soon entirely restored to favor, with a full restoration of his titles, and was made Warden of the New Forest for life, in 1607, 2 the same year in which Bacon himself was made Solicitor- General. In 1609, he was one of the famous Virginia Company, organized under the royal auspices for the planting of new colonies and making " new nations," of which Sir Francis Bacon was also a member; and in 1610, he became reconciled with Philip, Earl of Montgomery, who, as well as his brother, the Earl of Pembroke, was also a member of this Com- pany. And the Company's fleet, which sailed from the Thames, under Somers, in 1609, "met on its voyage at sea those singular and poetic storms and trials," which added " the still vexed Bermoothes " to the British Empire, and the " Tempest " to the world's literature. 8 While this change in the state is taking place, we find Bacon making all reasonable efforts to gain a foothold with the new sovereign, and not without success in due time ; 1 Nichols' Prog. K. James /., 1. 198. 2 Mem. of the Court of James /., by Lucy Aiken, II. 230-243. 3 Pers. Hist, of Lord Bacon, by Dixon, 197-200. ASSOCIATES. 143 and for a beginning we have this very notable letter, ad- dressed by him to " Master Davis, then gone to the King, at his first entrance " : " MASTER DAVIS, Though you went on the sudden, yet you could not go before you had spoken with yourself to the purpose, which I will now write. And therefore I know it shall be alto- gether needless, save that I meant to show you that I was not asleep. Briefly, I commend myself to your love and the well using my name ; as well in repressing and answering for me, if there be any biting or nibbling at it in that place ; as by imprint- ing a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King (of whose favour I make myself comfortable assurance) ; as otherwise in that court. And not only so, but generally to perform to me all the good offices, which the variety of your wit can suggest to your mind, to be performed to one, with whose affection you have so great sympathy ; and in whose fortune you have so great inter- est. So desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue." 1 Now, this could be no other than Mr. John Davis of the Middle Temple (as the name is spelled by Nichols, or Davies, as it is written by Anthony Wood, Chalmers, and Craik), an Oxford scholar, and the distinguished poet, law- yer, judge, and statesman, already named as the author of " Nosce Teipsum, or the Immortality of the Soul," (pub- lished in 1599,) and one of the founders of the metaphysi- cal school of poetry of that day, who, having been expelled from the Middle Temple on account of a quarrel with Mr. Richard Martin, a brother wit and poet, who enjoyed the esteem of Selden and Ben Jonson, was restored to his chambers, in 1601, by the help of Lord Chancellor Eger- ton (Ellesmere), the friend of Bacon ; who went with Lord Hunsdon to meet the King in Scotland on his first entrance, and, on being presented to the king as the author of that poem, was embraced with great favor, and immediately " sworn his man," in March, 1603. He was soon after sent to Ireland as Solicitor-General, where he became a judge i Works (Mont.), VII. 114. 144 ASSOCIATES. of assize; was knighted in 1608, made a King's Serjeant in 1612, elected to Parliament in 1620, and was on the point of being raised to the King's Bench, when he died in 1626. According to Anthony Wood, he " was held in es- teem by the noted scholars of the time, as W. Cambden, Sir Jo. Harrington the poet, Ben Jonson, facete Hoskins," and others ; and at the date of this letter, which ' by the address' must have been written some time in March, 1603, it is evident that he was so intimate with Francis Bacon that it was presumed he would understand what was meant when he was desired " to be good to concealed poets " ! l Of this same metaphysical school was the learned poet, John Donne, a Cambridge man, who had been admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and accompanied the Earl of Essex on his expedition to Cadiz in 1596, and against the Islands in 1597, and, on his return to England, became the chief secretary of Lord Chancellor Egerton (Ellesmere), and an inmate of his family ; whence it is hardly possible he should not have been well acquainted with Francis Bacon. He afterwards took orders and became Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and subsequently Dean of St. Paul's ; but there seems to be no particular mention of his acquaintance with Bacon, beyond the statement of Nichols, that on the 24th of March 1617- 18, the Lord Chancellor Bacon (whom Ellesmere had rec- ommended for his successor), the Earl of Southampton, Secretary Winwood, and others, attended St. Paul's to hear a sermon from Dr. Donne. It is pretty certain, however, that, in the list of these associates, there were some other persons, Essex and South- ampton among them, who would have understood this letter equally well. In a familiar letter addressed to Essex, in January 1595, while the question of the Solicitorship was still pending, Bacon throws in a similar allusion, thus : " Desiring your good Lordship nevertheless not to con- i Nichols' Prog. K. James /., I. 52; II. 198 n. (1), London, 1828; Wood's Athen. Oxon., II. 400 ; Chalmers' Eng. Poets, V. 75. ASSOCIATES. 145 ceive out of this my diligence in soliciting this matter that 1 am either much in appetite or much in hope. For as for appetite, the waters of Parnassus are not like the waters of the Spaw, that give a stomach ; but rather they quench appetite and desires." 1 What had Francis Bacon to do with the waters of Parnassus ! or was it the writer of these very letters that put into the mouth of Rosalind in the play this expression also ? " One inch of delay more is a South- sea of discovery. I pr'ythee, tell me, who is it ? quickly, and speak apace : I would thou could'st stammer, that thou might'st pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow-necked bottle ; either too much at once, or none at all." 2 In general, the use of the same word, in a single instance, may be accidental, or common, and proves nothing ; but the peculiar use of a particular author may be such as to mark his individuality, as again in these lines : " Kent. Some dear cause Will in concealment wrap me up awhile." Lear, Act IV. Sc. 3. It has already been observed that there is a striking general resemblance between the style and manner of the Dedication and Preface to the Folio and that of Bacon and the plays themselves. The dedicatory epistles to Southamp- ton, prefixed to the " Venus and Adonis " and the " Rape of Lucrece," being very brief, not much can be founded on any critical comparison of the styles ; but there is here, again, a striking similitude to the manner of Bacon. The prop is a frequent source of metaphor in the plays, and it is a favorite word and figure, as also the word pillar, in the writings of Bacon. In one of his earlier works, he o says : " I remember in a chamber in Cambridge, that was something ruinous, a pillar of iron was erected for a prop ; " 8 and this same pillar and prop seem to have 1 Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 345. 2 As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2. Worlct (Mont.), XV. 232. 10 146 ASSOCIATES. lived in his imagination. It appears in the epistle dedica- tory of the " Venus and Adonis," thus : " I know not how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen." In a letter to the King, we find this expression : " For in that other poor prop of my estate, which is the farming of the petty writs ; " so, in Shakespeare, we have like expressions : "Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon." 3 Henry VI. " Two props of virtue for a Christian." Richard II I., Act II. Sc. 7. And again, " Gob. Marry, God forbid ! the boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop. Laun. [Aside.] Do I look like a cudgel, or a hovel-post, a staff, or a prop ? " Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 4. And again, " You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house." Ibid., Act IV. Sc. 1. And speaking of those " illustrative examples " and that " true art," in which there was to be some departure from "the customary fashion," Bacon remarks in the Scaling Ladder, that " the industry and happiness of man " are not to be " indissolubly bound, as it were, to a single pil- lar " ; and in his " Observations on a Libel," he uses the expression, " their ancient pillar of lying wonders being de- cayed" And this same pillar is a frequent figure in Shake- speare, as thus : " And call them pillars that will stand to us." 3 Henry VI., Act II. Sc. 5. And again, " I charge you by the law, Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, Proceed to judgment." Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1. By itself alone, this use of a single word, or figure, might very well be deemed a trivial coincidence, or the mere result of common use ; but when it is found that this is a ASSOCIATES. 147 favorite metaphor in both, and only one of innumerable similitudes of like or even much stronger kind in these writings, it may come to have some significance. In the Dedication to the " Rape of Lucrece," the writer says : " What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours ; being part in all I have devoted yours ; " a declaration which is at least consistent enough with the plan of the supposed arrangement. CHAPTER HI. FURTHER PROOFS. " Now for the Athenian question ; you discourse well, Quid igitur agendum est ? I will shoot my fool's bolt, since you will have it so." BACON TO ESSEX (1598). " Orl. You are the better at proverbs, by how much A fool's bolt is soon Bhot." Henry V., Act III. Sc. 7, (1599). 1. PARALLEL WORKS. FRANCIS BACON was engaged, during the same period and afterwards, in writing and publishing works in prose on kindred and parallel subjects, as for instance, in partic- ular, his Masques, the Essays, the Fable of Cupid, the Wisdom of the Ancients, the New Atlantis, the Happy Memory, the Discourse in Praise of the Queen, the Char- acters of Julius and Augustus Caesar, the Histories of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., the Advancement of Learn- ing, his Speeches, and the Great Instauration of Science and Philosophy ; indeed, the whole of his works may come into the comparison, not excepting the Novum Organum itself. He was sounding all the depths and hidden mys- teries of Nature, threading the labyrinth of all philosophy, and scaling with ladders the heights of the empyrean. A critical comparison of these writings with the plays and poems in question, it is firmly believed, will be sufficient to satisfy any reasonable mind, at all competent to judge of such a matter, not merely of that general resemblance which has been long ago frequently observed, and always attributed to the common usage and style of that age, but of such close similitudes in the thought, style, and diction as to leave no room for doubt of the absolute identity of the PARALLEL WORKS. 149 authorship. The Essays, the Wisdom of the Ancients, the Letters, the Advancement of Learning, the Henry VIL, and the New Atlantis, especially, abound in parallel topics, similar peculiarities of idea, like diction, and identical ex- pressions; and the same solidity, brevity, and beauty of style and manner, and a like power of imagination, pervades them all. It is scarcely possible to doubt, for instance, that the Essay on Masques and Triumphs came from the same mind as Hamlet's instructions to the players, nor that the " "Winter's Tale " came from the same source as the Essay on Gardens. The " New Atlantis " was written as one of his feigned histories, or natural stories, or types and models, and with a main purpose of illustrating the new doctrines and meth- ods, which the author was endeavoring to institute, and to present, as it were, a model of his idea of a College of the Universal Science. It is said to have given origin to the Royal Society of London, which is, however, an insti- tution of somewhat different kind and scope. On a general comparison of this work with the " Tem- pest," the similitude of the one to the other, in many points of the story, the leading ideas, the scene and conception of the whole, is very evident ; and some parts of it may be traced in the " Timon of Athens." Like the island of At- lantis, Prospero's isle is situated afar off in the midst of the ocean, somewhere near " the still vex'd Bermoothes," but hitherto remote from all visitation of civilized men. Prospero, in his " full poor cell," where all the mysteries of science and the secrets of Nature are unfolded to him, attended by his master-spirit, Ariel, the genius of knowl- edge, is but another Solomon, with "an aspect as if he pitied men," in his House or College of the Six Days Works, in the island of Atlantis. Prospero, like Democ- ritus and Anaxagoras, seems to have believed that " the truth of nature lieth hid in certain deep mines and caves," l i Adv. of Learning, Workt (Mont.), II. 131. 150 PARALLEL WORKS. and his oracles, like those delivered to the Indian Prince in the Masque, came out of " one of the holiest vaults " ; * as Polonius says, in the play : " If circumstances lead me, I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid 'indeed Within the centre." Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2. Bacon frequently alludes to that " feigned supposition that Plato maketh of the cave." 2 Indeed, the cave, as we know, was a traditional source of the divinest wisdom with the ancient philosophers and poets. Plato takes his disci- ple into a dark cave, in order to bring to light some of the abstrusest doctrines and innermost secrets of his divine philosophy. Tasso's learned magician, Ubaldo, who was born a Pagan, but was regenerated by divine grace, also had his secret seat in a hidden cave, wherein he was yet not far from heaven ; nor were his wonderful works done in virtue of infernal spirits, but of the study of Nature : " Ma spiando men vo da lor vestigi, Qual in se virtu cell o 1'erba o '1 fonte: E gli altri arcani di Natura ignoti Contemplo, e delle stelle i varii moti. XLIII. Perocche no ognor lunge dal' cielo Tra sotterranei chiostri e la mia stanza." Giur. Lib. XIV. 42-3. In the conception of Caliban, the author clearly intends to shadow forth his views of the savage island races, ethno- logically considered, and he discloses the idea, which was doubtless Bacon's opinion, as it was that of Plato, that these savages were indigenous to the soil on which they were found, and that the races of men, like the rest of the animal kingdom, were created in distinct centres, or had a separate development, on different continents, and on a grad- uated scale of ascending types of form, rising by degrees, 1 Masque ; Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 388. 2 Adv. of Learning., Bk. II. PARALLEL WORKS. 151 in the course of " a length and infinity of time," * from apes to savages, and from savages to the higher types of civil- ized men ; as the science of paleontology now more clearly demonstrates, according to the principles of zoology, and according to the Transcendental Architectonic of the Divine Idea ; of all which he had been able to obtain something more than a mere hint even from Plato. And so he writes down Caliban "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick." Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1. The " Midsummer-Night's Dream " is a work somewhat like in character, in which the writer evidently means to exhibit, not merely the invisible spirit of Nature under various forms of fable, but also the first dawnings of a human intelligence, even in the lower animals, and the effect of Orpheus' music and " universal philosophy " upon them, when " they all stood about him gently and sociably, as in a theatre, listening only to the concords of his lyre," which could " draw the wild beasts and the woods " ; for "Orpheus himself, a man admirable and truly divine, who being master of all harmony, subdued and drew all things after him by sweet and gentle measures, may pass by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified " ; 2 and also the universal nature of love, after the accounts which Bacon says are "given by the poets of Cupid or Love," which "are not properly applicable to the same person," the ancient Cupid being different from the younger Cupid, the son of Venus ; " yet the discrepancy is such that one may see where the confusion is and where the similitude, and reject the one and receive the other." 8 And so Titania says to " Bottom with an ass' head," " I '11 give thee fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou on pressed flowers doth sleep : 1 Plato. 2 Wisd. of the Anc. (Orpheus), Worlct (Boston), XIII. 110. Ibid. (Cupid), 122. 152 PARALLEL WORKS. And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, That thou shalt like an airy spirit go." Act III. Sc. 1. And again : u Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, sweet love? Hot. I have a reasonably good ear in music : let us have the tongs and bones. Tit. My Oberon ! what visions have I seen ! Methought I was enamour'd of an ass. Ober. There lies your love. Tit. How came these things to pass ? 0, how mine eyes do loath his visage now ! Ober. Silence, a while. Robin, take off his head. Titania, music call ; and strike more dead Than common sleep, of all these five, the sense. Tit. Music, ho ! music ! such as charmeth sleep." Act IV. Sc. 1. " For," continues Bacon, " as the works of wisdom surpass in dignity and power the works of strength, so the labours of Orpheus surpass the labours of Hercules And all this went on for some time with happy success and great admiration ; till at last certain Thracian women, under the stimulation and excitement of Bacchus, came where he was ; and first they blew such a hoarse and hideous blast upon a horn, that the sound of his music could no longer be heard for the din : whereupon the charm being broken that had been the bond of that order and good-fellowship, confusion began again ; the beasts returned each to his several nature and preyed one upon the other as before ; the stones and woods stayed no longer in their places : while Orpheus himself was torn to pieces by the women in their fury, and his limbs scattered about the fields: at whose death, Helicon (river sacred to the Muses) in grief and indignation buried his waters under the earth, to reappear elsewhere." 1 With which compare these allusions in the play, 2 in which Hercules, Bacchus, Orpheus, and the Thra- cian women crop out in the same order, thus : i Wild, of the Anc. (Orpheus), Works (Boston), XIII. 111. a The italics are those of the play. PARALLEL WORKS. 153 "Phil. There is a brief, how many sports are ripe ; Make choice of which your highness will see first. [ Giving a paper. Lys. [Reads.} ' The battle vrith the Centaurs, to be sung By an Athenian eunudi to the harp.' Thes. We '11 none of that: that have I told my love, In glory of my kinsman Hercules. Lys. ' The rial of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.' Thes. That is an old device; and it was play'd When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. Lys. ' The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary.' Thes. That is some satire, keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. Lys. 'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, And his love Thishe : very tragical mirth.' Thes. Merry and tragical ! Tedious and brief! That is, hot ice, and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord? " Act V. Sc. 1. How shall we discover " where the confusion is and where the similitude " ! The younger Cupid, however, according to Bacon, " ap- plied the appetite to an individual object. From Venus, therefore, conies the general disposition, from Cupid the more exact sympathy. Now the general disposition depends upon causes near at hand, the particular sympathy upon principles more deep and fatal, and as if derived from that ancient Cupid, who is the source of all exquisite sympathy." * And so, we have it in the play, thus : "Lys. [Hermia], for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth ; But, either it was different in blood, Her. O cross ! too high to be enthrall'd to low ! Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years ; Her. O spite ! too old to be engaged to young! Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of merit: Her. O Hell ! to choose love by another's eyes ! Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, i Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 125. 154 PARALLEL WORKS. Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, ' Behold ! ' The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. Her. If, then, true lovers have been ever crossed, It stands as an edict in destiny." Act I. Sc. 1. Wherein we have a repetition of this same confusion, this sympathy, and these principles more deep and fatal. And for this play, the scene shall be " Athens ; and a wood not far from it." It is very much such a scene as that of " the Forest of Arden," in the "As You Like It," or that of the " Timon," which was "Athens ; and the woods adjoin- ing"; but the object, in this play, is "the culture and cure of the mind," in respect of this matter of love, and not now " in points of fortune." And the subject compasses the entire scale of being, and stretches, in like manner as in the " Timon," from " the woodlands, as it were, of nature," even into the commonwealth of Athens, and endeavors " to climb by regular succession to the height of things, like so many tops of mountains." 1 At least, the writer will him- self view the subject from these tops and these "uppermost elevations of nature, where his station will be serene " and his " prospects delightful," as from that cliff of Plato, which, says Bacon, was " raised above the confusion of things : " "We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction. Hip I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder." Act IV. Sc. 1. But the scene is, for the most part, in " a wood near Athens," where fairies and spirits " do wander everywhere, for "Our intent Was to be gone from Athens, where we might 1 Scaling-ladder. PARALLEL WORKS. 155 Without the peril of the Athenian law Ege. Enough, enough ! my lord, you have enough. I beg the law, the law, upon his head." Act IV. Sc. 1. And we are now to be taken into the very region of this Love, which is " the appetite or instinct of primal matter," says Bacon, " or, to speak more plainly, the natural motion of the atom; which is indeed the original and unique force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter ; " as in the imagery of these lines of the " As You Like It," thus : "Phebe. . . . Thou tell'st me there is murther in my eye; 'T is pretty, sure, and very probable, That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things, Who shut their coward gates on atomies, Should be called tyrants, butchers, murtherers! " Act III. Sc. 5. " For," continues the philosopher, " the summary law of nature, that impulse of desire impressed by God upon the primary particles of matter which makes them come together, and which by repetition and multiplication pro- duces all the variety of nature, is a thing which mortal thought may glance at, but can hardly take in " : 1 " Tit. . . . Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. 8 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist ; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm." Act IV. Sc. 1. And again, in the " As You Like It " : "Ros. There's a girl goes before the priest: and, certainly, a woman's thought runs before her actions. Orl. So do all thoughts ; they are wing'd." Act IV. Sc. 1. Even the animals partake of the universal enchantment in this play : " When in that moment (so if came to pass), Titania wak'd, and straightway lov'd an ass." Act III. Sc. 2. 1 Wind, of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 123. 2 Mr. White reads, " be a while away," adopting one of Collier's forgeries, which is too tame: it was of the very nature of these fairies, representing the spirit of universal Nature, to be " all ways away." 156 PARALLEL WORKS. But, says the philosopher again, " the fable relates to the cradle and infancy of nature, and pierces deep," and we shall have a play, now, which shall be " As the remembrance of an idle gawd, Which in my childhood I did dote upon " ; and things " More strange than true: I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact " : Act V. Sc. 1. like a child ; for Cupid " is described with great elegance as a little child, and a child forever ; for things compounded are larger and are affected by age ; whereas the primary seeds of things, or atoms, are minute, and remain in per- rjetual infancy." l " Thes. Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity." Act V. Sc. 1. And therefore, we will have here a dumb show of " Wall and Moonshine," and a mere piece of child's play : "Hip. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. Thes. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worse are no worse, if imagination amend them." Act V. Sc. 1. "Dem. These things seem small, and undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. Her. Methinks I see things with parted eye, When every thing seems double. Hel. So methinks : And I have found Demetrius, like a jewel, , Mine own, and not mine own. Dem. It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream." Act IV. Sc. 1. Very like; but, nevertheless, "all compounds (to one that considers them rightly) are masked and clothed l Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 124. PARALLEL WORKS. 157 The blindness, likewise, of Cupid, has an allegorical mean- ing full of wisdom. For it seems that this Cupid, whatever he be, has very little providence ; but directs his course, like a blind man groping, by whatever he finds nearest; which makes the supreme divine Providence all the more to be admired, as that which contrives out of subjects pecu- liarly empty and destitute of providence, and as it were blind, to educe by a fatal and necessary law all the order and beauty of the universe " : l "Hel. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind: Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste : And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because iu choice he often is beguil'd. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjur'd everywhere." Act L Sc. 2. And, " When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision ; And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, With league, whose date till death shall never end." Act III. Sc. 2. And the whole thing, " Such tricks hath strong imagination," shall pierce so deep, that "it shall be called Bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom " ; for this Cupid is, " next to God, the cause of causes itself without a cause." 2 And such certainly is the judgment of the sacred philos- opher, when he says, " He hath made all things beautiful according to their seasons ; also he hath submitted the world to man's inquiry, yet so that men cannot find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end." * And again, we have a touch of this same deep-sounding philosophy, in the " As You Like It," thus : 1 Wind, of the Anc. (Cupid), 125. 2 Ibid. (Cupid), 123. Essay of the Vicissitude of Things. 158 PARALLEL WORKS. ".Ros. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love ! But it cannot be sounded ; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal. CeL Or rather, bottomless; that as you pour affection in, it runs out. Ros. No ; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness ; that blind rascally boy, that abuses every one's eyes, because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love." Act I V. Sc. 1. The object and purpose of these plays may receive some further illustration from the following account of Orpheus' Theatre, where, says Bacon, " all beasts and birds assembled, and forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listen- ing to the airs and accords of the harp ; the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every heart returned to his own nature: wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge ; which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and per- suasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained ; but if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion." * This last expression may call to mind the " Tempest," in which all things were to dissolve and "leave not a rack behind," and " deeper than did ever plummet sound," he would drown his book ; which word drown, having got much into use with the writer, will drop out occasionally even in much graver works : as when he speaks of the Lord Chan- cellor Morton, who proposed a law against conspiring the death of a King's Counsellor, as " drowning the envy of it in a general law." 2 And this same teaching, drawn from " Orpheus' Theatre,'' reappears more largely in the "Merchant of Venice," thus : 1 Adv. of Learn.; Works (Mont.), II. 177. 2 History of Henry VII. ; Works (Boston), XI. 131. PARALLEL WORKS. 159 " LOT. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank I Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica : look, how the floor of Heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Enter MUSICIANS. Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, And draw her home with music. [Music. Jess. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive : For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood ; If they but hear, perchance, a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand. Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music : therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils : The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music." Act V. Sc. 1. Here, we have not only the same general scope of thought, ideas, and imagery, but certain particular and unmistakable earmarks by which we may know the identity of the writer ; as for instance, in the use of the phrases " sweet power of music " and " concord of sweet sounds," " sweetly touched " and " sweetest touches," the words " savage " and " silent," the sound of " a trumpet " heard and a " hideous blast upon 160 PARALLEL WORKS. a horn," the " motions of his spirit " and " the natural mo- tion of the atom," and the discourse running on " the affections " ; and in the prose, when the music ceases, every heart returns " to his own nature " ; but in the poetry, " music for the time doth change his nature." And indeed the careful reader, who is familiar with his style and manner and diction, cannot fail to recognize him in every line. Similar ideas touching the history of the human race and the order of divine providence in the creation are con- tained elsewhere in the writings of Bacon. Concerning the countries of the New World, then lately discovered, he says, "the great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two : deluges and earthquakes." 1 He thought it probable that the people of the West Indies were "a newer and younger people than the people of the old world"; and he says, "it is much more likely that the destruction that hath heretofore been there was not by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon concerning the Island of Atlantis, that it was swallowed by an earth- quake), but rather that it was desolated by a particular deluge Their Andes, likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us ; whereby it seems that the remnants of generation of men [' reliquias stirpis hominum '] were in such a particular deluge saved": 2 "on. If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me ? If I should say, I saw such islanders, (For certes, these are people of the island) Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note, Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of Our human generation you shall find Many, nay. almost any. Pros. [Aside.] Honest lord, Thou hast said well ; for some of you there present, Are worse than devils." Tempest, Act III. Sc. 3. He thus distinctly intimates an opinion that the races of 1 Essay of the Vicissitude of Things. 2 ssays, Works (Mont.), I. 187-9 ; Works (Boston), XII. 274. PARALLEL WORKS. 161 mankind, on different continents, had been subjected in each to a distinct series of geological changes in the surface of the globe, implying that the history of their origin must be carried so far back into " the dark backward and abysm of time" as to exhaust the antiquity of all historical, archzeo- logical or ethnological data, reaching far beyond the remo- test tradition that has floated down on the stream of human memory even into purely geological time, and into the very "winding-sheets of oblivion," and that river of Lethe, which, he says, " runneth as well above ground as below " ; an opinion that is fully confirmed by the later and more certain scientific demonstrations. " But," he continues, " in the other two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is further to be noted, that the remnant of people which happen to be reserved, are commonly ignorant and moun- tainous people, that can give no account of the time past ; so that the oblivion is all one as if none had been left": " Gore. When we were boys, Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men, Whose heads stood in their breasts V which now we find Each putter-out on five for one will bring us Good warrant of." Tempest, Act III. Sc. 3. In these opinions we may discover traces, also, of Plato's account of the origin of the human race, which he con- ceived to be " from a length and infinity of time, and the mutations in it," and that there had been " frequent destruc- tions of the human race through deluges and diseases and many other events, in which some small family of mankind was left " ; and " that those who then escaped the destruc- tion, were nearly some hill-shepherds, preserved on the tops (of mountains) like some slight fire preserving (care- less) of the human race " ; l that is, saved not so much by human care as by the divine providence ; an opinion, by l Laws, Book III. ; Works of Plato (Bohn), V. 78. 11 162 PARALLEL WORKS. the way, that comes much nearer the truth of the matter than most modern inquiry. So Bacon seems to have believed that some time far back in the series of these particular deluges, one con- tinent or island may have been peopled from another, as when " the foul witch," Sycorax, with age and envy " grown into a hoop," mother of the " dull thing," Caliban, the born devil, on whose nature "nurture can never stick," came from Africa, banished " from Argier " to that uninhabited island which lay off somewhere toward "the still-vex'd Bermoothes " : " Then was this island, ( Save for the son that she did litter here, A freckled whelp, hag-born,) not honour'd with A human shape." Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2. He agreed also with Aristotle, that there was a difference between the races of men, inhabiting different parts of the earth, and between man and man, not unlike that which exists between man and animals. " But for my part," says he, " I take it neither for a brag nor for a wish, but for a truth as he limiteth it. For he saith if there be found such an inequality between man and man as there is between man and beast, or between soul and body, it investeth a right of government : which seemeth rather an impossible case than an untrue sentence. But I hold both the judg- ment true and the case possible ; and such as hath had, and hath a being, both in particular men and nations." And the play even ventures to go farther still, and to hint at a dif- ference as wide as a difference of species in the genus (wherein, again, our modern science is also not far behind him) thus: " 1 Mur. We are men, my liege. Mad). Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men, As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clep'd All by the name of dogs : the valued file Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, The house-keeper, the hunter, every one PARALLEL WORKS. 163 According to the gift which bounteous Nature Hath in him clos'd; whereby he does receive Particular addition, from the bill That writes them all alike: and so of men." Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1. These learned investigations, together with the Sum- mary (or Higher) Philosophy, of which Bacon had some knowledge, but of which such a man as William Shakes- peare could have had but little notion, might lead up the author of the " Tempest " and the " Midsummer Night's Dream," beyond the Scriptural allegories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden, to those more comprehensive and more profoundly philosophical conceptions of things, which are distinctly imaged forth in these beautiful dramas. At the same time, it will be borne in mind that the " Midsum- mer Night's Dream" was written as early as 1594, and the "Tempest" in 1611, while the "New Atlantis" was not written until after 1620, and the "Wisdom of the Ancients" was first printed (in Latin) in 1610 ; and this effectually excludes all possibility that William Shakespeare could have borrowed from Bacon in the writing of these plays. And the like is true in many other instances. On the other hand, like instances will be given to show, that Francis Bacon could not have borrowed from Shakespeare, other- wise than from himself. Furthermore, it may be observed, in this connection, that those remarkable passages, which are most frequently quoted by the great lights of modern literature in proof of the deep insight of Shakespeare and his superiority as a poet, may be taken as evidence that the writer had attained to those deeply metaphysical ideas concerning the constitu- tion of the universe and the nature and destiny of man in it, which have been entertained in any age, as they now are, by a small number of the profoundest thinkers and most rare and learned men only. The writings of Bacon, care- fully studied, will show that he was familiar with these heights and depths, and that, having lighted his torch at 164 PARALLEL WORKS. the glorious sun of Plato (not neglecting Aristotle), he was, with that illumination and the help of his own newer methods, exploring " the universal world," and endeavoring to instaurate, as it were in advance, not the experimental science merely, but the higher philosophy of the XlXth century. Without the help of such studies, there is no possibility, now, for any man to attain to this philosophy ; much less William Shakespeare, or even Bacon himself, in that age. That Shakespeare had ever turned his attention at all to studies which lay in that direction, we have no other proof than what the plays themselves afford ; but, on the contrary, we have pretty decisive evidence, in his personal history, that he could never have done so. There was no other man of that time but Bacon that we know of, who had done so to the same extent as he ; for even that Platonic thinker and poet, George Herbert, is not to be excepted ; or if there be any exception, he will be found to have been, like Sidney, Greville, Sackville, Raleigh, Her- bert, Hooker, Selclen, Donne, or Cudworth, a child of the University, that could bring to his work as an author the discipline and finish of accurate and thorough scholarship, the rich spoils of classic antiquity, and the fruits of years of learned research, in the course of which the depths of Plato must have been sounded. But no other man can be named, who is not, upon considerations of another kind, completely excluded from the question of this authorship ; and hence a ground of argument of no little weight, that Bacon must have been the man. The Wisdom of the Ancients, and the Characters of Julius and Augustus Caesar, may show the direction of his studies, and they disclose the source of that familiar acquaint- ance with the Grecian mythology and the Roman history, and with the ancient manners and customs, which is so distinctly displayed in these poetical works, and particu- larly in the "Troilus and Cressida," the "Timon of Athens," the " Antony and Cleopatra," the " Coriolanus," and the BEN JONSON. 165 "Julius Caesar." The Memory and Discourse of Queen Elizabeth find a parallel in Cranmer's Speech in com- pliment to King James and " the maiden phoenix," his predecessor ; the History of Henry VII. in the tragedy of Richard III. and the other plays founded on English history and the Wars of the Roses ; the intended History of Henry VIII., in the tragedy of that name ; the New Atlantis, in prose, in these types and models in verse; and the Essays, the Advancement, the Natural History, and the Novum Organum, may render the civil and moral max- ims, the natural science, and the metaphysical philosophy , of the plays possible for their author, if he be taken to have been Francis Bacon. 2. BEN JONSON. Ben Jonson must have been in the secret of this arrange- ment Steevens thought the Dedication and Preface of Heming and Condell's Folio must have been written by him. He certainly took a large part in bringing this marvellous volume to light, and in parading in the frontis- piece the stolid effigies of this mountebank, which probably needed no disguise from the burin of Droeshout to make it a veritable mask of Momus, in imperturbable mock- seriousness, shaking his lance at the eyes of ignorance, " martial in the warlike sound of his surname, Hasti- vibrans," 1 says garrulous old Fuller ; while, at the same time, he slyly inserts, on the opposite page, that significant advice, " Reader, looke, Not on his picture, but his booke." The style, manner, and diction of this Dedication and i Preface are much more nearly that of Bacon ; but it may ; very well have been Jonson. The story of the players, that Shakespeare never blotted out a line, has already been alluded to ; but when it is remembered that Ben Jonson l Worthies of England, III. 284. 166 BEN JOXSON. was an intimate friend and great admirer of Bacon, deem- ing him "by his works one of the greatest of men and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages " ; that he wrote a poem in honor of " England's High Chan- cellor," for the festivities at York House on the anniversary of his sixtieth birthday, in which he speaks of him as one " Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full, Out of their choicest and their whitest wool; " that he was certainly present, if he did not take an active part, in bringing out the " Henry VIIL" at the Globe, in 1613 ; that he was one of those " good pens " whose learned service Bacon employed in the translation of his English works into Latin ; that even " in his adversity," after his fall from power, he could not " condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest " ; and that he was him- self a scholar, a critic, and a judge of men ; it can scarcely be doubted, either that this anecdote of the players would be in the possession of Bacon, and as likely to be used by him as by Jonson himself, or that Jonson would have the sagacity and the means to discover the secret of this authorship, as well as the honor and good faith to keep it. He knew the cast of Bacon's mind and character. He had read his prose compositions, had translated some of them into Latin, and must have been familiar with his mode of thinking and his style of writing. And it is scarcely cred- ible that he should not have recognized in the plays of Shakespeare, the hand and genius of the master whom he so much admired. That he appreciated this poetry in as high a degree as the critics of later times, even down to our day, may be clearly seen in his poetical " Eulogy " on Shakespeare. It is carefully dedicated to the " Memory " of Shakespeare " and what he hath left us " ; and the whole tenor of it is such as to fix the attention of the reader more on the writings than on the man. It was certainly his BEN JONSON. 167 opinion, that the great poet had not been merely born, but made : " For a good poet 's made as well as born, And such wert thou. Look, how the father's face Lives in his issue ; even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines, In his well-turned and true-filed lines ; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish' d at the eyes of ignorance." And the concluding lines of this " Eulogy," in which the volume itself still makes the principal figure, may be ap- plied with force and equal appropriateness to the other : " Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage, Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night, And despairs day, but for thy Volumes' light." There are some vague traditions that Ben Jonson severely criticized the productions of Shakespeare, and was envious of his superiority and his fame. They seem to be founded on the writings of Jonson himself; and from these, it should rather be inferred that Jonson could not really have be- lieved that William Shakespeare was the actual author of the works which were produced in his name. His account of the anecdote of the players runs thus : "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakes- peare, that in writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out line." Now, no man knew better than Jonson, not even Pope, the utter impossibility of such works as these dramas being dashed off, in a rapid first draught, at once finished and complete, without a line blotted. That the players thought so, must have been a fine joke for him and Bacon ; that the players said so, may be taken as evidence that they thought it a pretty good jest themselves. Bacon tran- scribed the " Novum Organum " some twelve times, before it was finished to his satisfaction. Burke copied his " French Revolution " six times, before he would suffer it to receive the final stamp of the press. Smaller poems 168 BEN JONSON. may have been sometimes composed and written down at once complete. Goethe tells us, that, sometimes, when he had conceived a sonnet, or a song, he immediately ran to paper, and jotted it down, before it should vanish from his memory. Alfieri wrote his tragedies first in brief prose, then in extended form, and lastly, put them into verse ; and Virgil, about to die, after many years of toil, is said to have commended the ".^Eneid" to the flames as not yet finished to his liking. Where is the record in all literary history of extended compositions like these dramas having been spun out in this Arachne-like fashion ? The very proposition is well-nigh absurd. Common actors might possibly believe, or imagine, that their facetious manager, amidst the daily bustle of the theatre, and in the few hours of leisure which he could snatch from business, or from sleep, out of his mirac- ulous invention, and with the inspired pen of born genius, could dash off a Hamlet, or a Lear, perfect to a syllable, as easily as twinkle his eye. But the learned and judicious critic, or any capable judge of the matter, will rather turn his search to the retired chambers of Gray's Inn, or to the embowered lodge of Twickenham Park, or to the blooming gardens of Gorhambury, where sat brooding in silence and in private the great soul that had taken all knowledge for his province, hopefully murmuring, " Sir, I lack advance- ment," and " I eat the air, promise-crammed," yet diligently pursuing his " vast contemplative ends," with plenty of leisure and little business, leading a life " so private " that he had " had no means " to do the Lord Burghley " service," 1 thin and pale with " inward secret grief," and continually sickly " by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep " ; and that onward, nearly so, for the space of thirty long years, publicly looking for promotion in the state, while privately elaborating, and doubtless with the most scrupulous care, the great works in prose and verse, which were to carry his name and memory to foreign i Letter to Burghley. BEN JONSON. 169 nations and the next ages. No doubt, the original man- uscripts which came to the hands of William Shakespeare, or the copies that came into the hands of the players, would be clean and complete, with never a line blotted, a won- derful miracle, indeed, to the players ! And so, the sonnet sings : " How like a Winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year? What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen ? What old December's bareness everywhere ? And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, The teeming Autumn big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lord's decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me But hope of Orphans, and unfather'd fruit, For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute, Or, if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter 's near." Sonnet xcvii. l The remainder of Ben Jonson's account of Shakespeare is much in keeping with this hypothesis. He says further : " My answer hath been, Would he had blotted out a thousand ! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circum- stance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted, and to justify mine own candour, for I love the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility that some- times it was necessary he should be stopped : Sufflaminandw erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power ; would the rule of it had been so, too. Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to 1 Sonnets (Fac-simile of the ed. of 1609), London, 1862. 170 BEN JONSON. him, ' Caesar, thou dost me wrong,' he replied, ' Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause;' and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his vir- tues ; there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." 1 This line, it seems, is not correctly quoted from any known edition of the play ; the statement may refer to Shake- speare's mode of speaking the passage as an actor on the stage ; and the whole account carries with it an air of irony, and the appearance of a constrained vindication of himself from a malevolent and ridiculous complaint of ignorant persons. His observations relate, in part, to the person of Shakespeare, and, in part, to his supposed productions, perhaps ; though in this, he is equivocal and indefinite. If he knew the secret, he certainly meant to keep it. His intimation, that the rule of his wit was not sufficiently in his power, and that he sometimes made himself ridiculous, probably had some foundation in fact. He could not well refrain from rebuking the folly of the players, nor from vindicating himself from the charge of malevolence towards Shakespeare. With regard to the personal qualities of the man, his opinion may be taken as coming near the truth. These are the qualities of an agreeable companion, a face- tious fellow, and a prosperous manager ; but they do not account for these plays, nor for that excellent appreciation of their quality, which we find in Ben Jonson's " Eulogy." The traditions handed down by Fuller are of like import. " Jonson," says he, " was built far higher in learning, solid but slow ; but Shakespeare lesser in bulk, but lighter for sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take ad- vantage of all winds, by the quickness of his art and inven- tion." All this is a mere afterthought, and a tale of myth- ical growth, like his other old saw of Poeta nascitur, and his Cornish diamonds, that were not polished by any lapi- dary ; and they may illustrate how " Nature itself was all 1 Ben Jonson's Discoveries. BEN JOXSON. 171 the art which was used " upon William Shakespeare ; but they do not explain the origin of these very extraordinary compositions. Another traditionary document may be mentioned, which was published in 1643-5, and was believed by Sir Egerton Bridges to have been the work of George Withers, the poet. Withers was born in 1588, and died in 1667, and he may be considered as a contemporary. This document will show, that Lord Bacon, in the opinion of Withers, at least, was entitled to high rank among his contemporaries in the kingdom of Apollo. It is entitled " The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours, at which are arraigned Mercurius Brittanicus, Mercurius Aulicus," &c., (periodical publications of that time). It proceeds thus : " The Members of the Parnassian Court are as follows : APOLLO. THE LORD VERULAM, Chancellor of Parnassus. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, High Constable of Parnassus. WILLIAM BUD^EUS, High Treasurer. JOHN Picus, EARL OF MIRANDULA, High Chamberlaine. JULIUS CAESAR SCALIGER. ISAAC CASAUBON. ERASMUS ROTERODAM. JOHN SELDEN. JUSTUS LIPSIUS. HUGO GROTIUS. JOHN BARCKLAT. DANIEL HEINSIUS. JOHN BODINE. CONRADUS VORSTIUS. ADRIAN TURXEBUS. AUGUSTINE MASCARDUS. The Jurors. GEORGE WITHERS. MICHAEL DRAYTON. THOMAS CARY. FRANCIS BEAUMONT. THOMAS MAY. JOHN FLETCHER. WILLIAM DAVENANT. THOMAS HAYWOOD. JOSHUA SYLVESTER. WILLIAM SHAKESPEAKE. GEORGE SANDERS. PHILIP MASSINGER. The Malefactors [as in the title.] JOSEPH SCALIGER, the Censour of Manners in Parnassus. BEN JONSON, Keeper of the Trophonian Denne. JOHN TAYLOUR, Cryer of the Court. EDMUND SPENSER, Clerk of the Assizes." 172 MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. Then follows a poetical account of the empanelling of the jury, the arraignment of the malefactors, and the pro- ceedings generally, u soure Ben," all the while, having the culprits in custody in " the Trophonian Denne." x 3. MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. Another very remarkable piece of evidence is Mr. Tobie Matthew's postscript. It is appended to a letter to Bacon, which is itself without date, but is addressed to the Vis- count St. Alban, and must therefore necessarily have been subsequent to the 27th day of January, 1621, when his Lordship was invested with that title. The letter is found in the collection of Birch, and is placed by him among those " wanting both dates and circumstances to determine the date." 2 It appears to be in answer to a letter from Lord Bacon dated " the 9th of April " (year not given), ac- companying some " great and noble token " of his " Lord- ship's favour," which was, in all probability, a newly printed book ; for Bacon, as we know from the Letters, was in the habit of sending to Mr. Matthew a copy of his books as they were published; and much of their correspondence had relation more or less to the books and writings on which Bacon was at the time engaged. We know that the works published by Lord Bacon, after 1620, were the His- tory of Henry VII., in March, 1622; the De Augmentis, in October, 1623, the Apothegms, in December, 1624, and the Essays and Psalms, in 1625 ; and there is reason to believe that the Folio of 1623, which was entered at Sta- tioners' Hall in November of that year, was issued from the press in the spring of that year, there being a copy now in existence bearing the date of 1622 on the title-page, showing that a part of the edition was actually struck off before the end of 1622. In like manner, the first edition of the Apothegms bears date 1625, though in fact pub- 1 Bridges' Brit. Bibliographer, I. 513. 2 Works (Mont.) XII. 468; (Philad.) III. 160. MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. 173 lished in December, 1624. 1 We know, also, from the Let- ters, that Mr. Matthew resided in London in the years 1621-2, and down to the 18th day of April, 1623, the date of a letter of Bacon, which he was to carry with him into Spain to the Duke of Buckingham, in whose service he was to be there employed; and he returned to England with the Duke and the Prince in October, 1623, and re- ceived from the King at Royston the honor of knighthood on the 10th day of that month. 2 He remained a few years in London, and then went to Ireland. In a letter to the Duke, dated at Gorhambury, March 20th, 1621-2, Bacon says : " I am bold to present your Lordship with a book of my History of King Henry VII., and now that, in summer that was twelve months, I dedicated a book to his Majesty, and this last summer, this book to the Prince, your Lord- ship's turn is next ; and this summer that cometh, if I live to it, shall be yours." The Novum Organum had been dedicated to the King in 1620, and if we count the sum- mers, we shall see that the summer of 1621 was devoted to the History of Henry VII., and that of 1622 to the De Augmentis, which was to be dedicated to Buckingham, but was not published until October, 1623, just after the Duke's return from Spain. On the 20th of March, 1622, copies of the History of Henry VII. were presented to the King and Buckingham, and on the 20th of April fol- lowing, one to the Queen of Bohemia, as we see by the Letters. 3 And it is not improbable, that on the 9th of April of the same year, a copy may have been sent to Mr. Matthew also, and that this may have been the "noble token " referred to. Neither is there anything at all in the way of the supposition that this date may actually have been the 9th of April, 1623 ; and there was no publication of any work of Bacon, during that spring, which he would 1 Spedding's Pref. Works (Boston), XIII. 314. 2 Nichols' Prog. James /., III. 930 n. 8 Works (Mout.) XII. 430; XIII. 36, 39. 174 MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. be sending to Mr. Matthew, unless it were precisely this Folio of 1623 : nor does anything appear on record to indi- cate a later date than this for this very notable postscript. And considering that it was this same Mr. Tobie Matthew, who personated the " Squire " in the masque at Essex's house ; that he was " one of the most eccentric characters of that age," an intimate literary friend of Bacon, and a correspondent of long standing, to whom he was in the habit of sending his books as they came out, making him, too, sometimes, his critical " inquisitor " * beforehand ; that, at this very time, the closest relations of friendship and correspondence subsisted between them, " being," says Ba- con, not long after, in a letter to Cottington, " as true a friend as any you or I have ; " 2 and that he was himself a scholar, and a son of the Archbishop of York, with whom also Bacon corresponded, and was particularly familiar with Bacon's writings, mind, and character ; we shall be prepared not to be so greatly surprised at the intimation given in this postscript, that he knew a secret, respecting which he could not forbear to compliment his Lordship on this occasion ; and the more especially, if we may sup- pose that it was the new Folio that he had before him. The letter runs thus : " To ike Lord Viscount St. Alban: " MOST HONORED LORD, I have received your great and noble token and favour of the 9th of April, and can but return the humblest of my thanks for your Lordship's vouchsafing so to visit this poorest and unworthiest of your servants. It doth me good at heart, that, although I be not where I was in place, yet I am in the fortune of your Lordship's favour, if I may call that for- tune, which I observe to be so unchangeable. I pray hard that it may once come in my power to serve you for it ; and who can tell but that, as fortis imaginatio general casum, so strong desires may do as much V Sure I am that mine are ever waiting on your 1 Letter to Matthew. 2 Letter 1623, Works (Mont.), XII. 445. MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. 175 Lordship ; and wishing as much happiness as is due to your incom- parable virtue, I humbly do your Lordship reverence. " Your Lordship's most obliged and humble servant, "ToBiE MATTHEW. " P. S. The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my na- tion, and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another." (!) Now, who else but this same Shakespeare could have been considered by Mr. Matthew to be a cover for the most prodigious wit of all England, at that day? or what else could have more naturally prompted this unique postscript than the new History of Henry VII., all sparkling with Shakespearean diamonds, or indeed this Folio, all blazing with the Baconian wit, power, and beauty? It could not have been Bacon as philosopher, statesman, or eminent prose-writer ; for all his known works were published under his own name. Neither could the word wit have been used here in the more general sense of that day as meaning genius and ability in general ; for in this sense, it could only have been applied to these same acknowledged works. It must therefore have been intended in the special sense of the word as now used. That Bacon was a great wit in every sense of the word, needs no demonstration here. We have direct and satisfactory evidence of it in his own writings everywhere ; and it has been proverbial with all who have written concerning him, from Ben Jonson to O ' Macaulay. Queen Elizabeth said he " had a great wit and much learning " ; Ben Jonson, that he could not " spare or pass by a jest"; Sir Robert Naunton, a contemporary, says of Sir Nicholas Bacon, that he was " an arch-peece of wit, and of wisdome," and "abundantly facetious; which tooke much with the queene " ; and he adds that " he was father to that refined wit, which since hath acted a dis- astrous part on the publique stage, and of late sate in his i World (Mont), XII. 468; (III., Philad. 160). 176 MATTHEW'S POSTSCRIPT. father's roome as lord chancellor " ; 1 and this testimony of Mr. Matthew that he was a " most prodigious wit " may be taken as settling the question. Clearly, somebody was shining in borrowed feathers, which not only belonged to Bacon, but made him the most prodigious wit of that side of the sea ; and of this, Mr. Matthew was unquestionably a competent judge. It could have been no other than that " upstart crow beautified with our feathers," that the incred- ulous Greene knew for " a Johannes factotum " and " the only Shake-scene in a country." Mr. Matthew was much in the habit of adding post- scripts to his letters to Bacon. In one, he asks his lordship to send him * some of his philosophical labours " ; and in a letter to Mr. Matthew, Bacon writes : " I have sent you some copies of my book of the ' Advancement,' which you desired, and a little work of my recreation, which you desired not." 2 What this "little work" was, there is no intimation ; and it might be altogether too great a stretch of the imagination to suppose it may have been a quarto play. Nevertheless, it may not be unreasonable to believe that these little recreations of his other studies may have helped to furnish the key, by which the secret had been unlocked. In fact, it would be well-nigh incredible, that a scholar, who was so familiar with Bacon and his writings as Ben Jonson, or Sir Tobie Matthew, must have been, should not have discovered the hand and soul of Francis Bacon in these plays of Shakespeare as certainly as a Bernouilli the genius of Newton in the anonymous solution of a mathe- matical problem, ex ungue Leonem : especially, when he ventured to write in this manner in the Sonnets : " Why is my verse so barren of new pride ? So far from variation or quick change ? \ Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, 1 Fragmenta Regalia, 75, (London, 1824). 2 Letter, Works (Philad.), HI. 71; (Mont.), XVI., Note A A A. (1605). CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. 177* And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? " Sonnet Ixxvi. Which wonder shall find an echo in his Prayers, thus : " The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes : I have hated all cruelty and hard- ness of heart : I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men." l 4. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. A critical comparison of these poetical works with the writings of contemporary authors will result always in a complete exclusion of them all from any competition for this authorship. Question has been made by some critics as to some few of the earlier and less conspicuous plays, but of the greater ones, and especially of those which have a more philosophical character, as also of the sonnets and poems, no well-grounded doubt has ever been entertained, that they were all the work of one and the same writer. In these, as indeed in all the rest, the style and manner of the genuine Shakespeare are so distinctly marked and so peculiar as at once to distinguish them from the productions of any other writer of that or any other age. The style and genius of Shakespeare have ever been considered, if not unapproachable, at least perfectly sui generis. In this comparison, in respect of philosophic depth of insight, knowledge of art, and the fundamental principles of dra- matic composition, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Mas- singer, Ford, Marlowe, Drayton, and the rest, sink to the level of ordinary writers : their range in the world of thought and knowledge lay far below him. Bacon's prose, compared with that of other writers of his own or any other age, is no less distinguishable, nor less decidedly characteristic of the individual man. l Prayer, W&rkt, (Philad.), II. 405. 12 178 CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. Sir "Walter Ealeigh seems to have been considered, by at least one writer, 1 to have been equal to a share in this work. He was indeed a polished courtier, a learned man for that day, and a patron of learning and art, himself a distinguished author in prose and verse, a scientific inves- tigator and a somewhat philosophical thinker. He was thirty-seven years of age when the " Titus Andronicus " appeared, in 1589. His youth was spent abroad in the wars ; and, after his introduction at Court, in 1582, his time and attention must have been more or less exclusively occupied with his courtly company, his parliamentary duties, his military expeditions, his voyages of discovery, and his various business transactions, down to the death of the Queen and the beginning of his troubles in 1 603 ; and the " History of the World " and other writings on which he is known to have been employed, while a prisoner in the Tower, will scarcely leave room for the prosecution of a work of this kind. Any theory that these works were the product of a society, or club, or partnership, of two or more individuals, will have to be given up as wholly untenable : it is utterly inadmissible. The earlier part of Raleigh's life was outwardly active, full of personal display, great exploit, and stirring events. He took trunks of books on his voyages, and experimented in chemistry at home ; but, on the whole, his time for study must have been small, and his range of thought and knowledge limited, in comparison with Bacon. It is plain from his writings, that his studies in the ancient learning and philosophy, and his acquire- ments generally, were rather superficial than profound in this comparison. His " Treatise on the Soul " may be taken as a fair test of his philosophic depth ; and, compared with Bacon and Shakespeare, it shrinks into the dimensions of a very small affair. And what is still more conclusive of him, as of the rest of his contemporaries, his writings, in prose and verse, exhibit another style and man altogether. 1 Phil, of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, by Delia Bacon, 1857. REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 179 5. REASONS FOB CONCEALMENT. With Bacon himself, a desire to rise in the profession of the law, or his ambition for high place in the State, the plan of life he had chosen to follow, the low reputation of a play-writer, in that age, and the mean condition and estate of all poor poets, the need of a larger liberty and a more daring freedom of thought and expression than he could have ventured to take, without some danger to his fortunes, or even to his personal liberty, at times, if it had been known that he was the author of these plays, and more especially, perhaps, a desire that his reputation, both with his contemporaries and with after times, should finally rest upon his acknowledged writings and his philosophical works in particular, as of greater dignity and better becom- ing his station and the civil honors he sought to attain, in accordance with the ideas of that age, these, not to dwell upon other reasons of a philosophical and critical nature, and of a higher and more disinterested character, are of themselves, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of his wish to cover this authorship, and to remain a concealed poet, in his own time ; and especially in the earlier part of his career, when the private arrangement, if it existed, must have been made. In his dedication of the " Colours of Good and Evil " to Lord Mountjoy, in 1595-7, he expressly tells us, that it was his " manner and rule to keep state in contemplative matters." Lord Coke was not alone among those in high places, at that day, whose opinion was, that play -writers and stage - players were fit subjects for the grand jury as " vagrants," and that " the fatal end of these five is beggary, the alchemyst, the monopotext, the con- cealer, the informer, and the poetaster " ; J and as it was, Coke and the like of him took " the liberty to disgrace and disable his law," and constantly sneered at his " book-learn- ing." Even the Queen herself seized upon it as an excuse * Campbell's Lives of (he Chief Justices, I. 279. 180 REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. for refusing him promotion, that " Bacon," as she said, " had a great wit, and much learning, but that in law he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep ; " as if inferring the one thing from the other, or as if a man could not know law, and, at the same time, know anything else. In general, it may be admitted that he was in some degree unsuited for a life of executive activity in the administration of affairs. At a later day, he confessed as among the errors of his life " this great one which led the rest, that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than play a part I have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by preoccupation of mind." 1 In the state of things that existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. (to be illustrated in the particular history of the play of Richard II.), it will not be difficult to see, that an open avowal of this authorship might have been fatal to all his prospects of elevation in the State, on which he considered the suc- cess of his efforts for the advancement of science and the benefit of mankind in a great measure to depend. " But power to do good," he says, " is the true and lawful end of aspiring ; for good thoughts (though God accept them), yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act ; and that cannot be, without power and place as the vantage and commanding ground." 2 The Novum Organum by the Lord Verulam, Lord High Chan- cellor of England, magnificently dedicated to the King, (having passed " the file of his Majesty's judgment," and been found to be " like the wisdom of God that passeth all understanding,") would attract the attention of Europe ; but these plays, the " wanton burthen of the prime," which could never pass the royal file, must be thrown upon the stage as " But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit." 1 Letter to Bodley. 2 Essay of Great Place. REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 181 They had to take their place, and stand trial upon their own merits, in the open theatre ; and this he knew they would do, safely enough, and work out their own salvation, at least for the present. Towards the close of his life, the scene would be changed, and the matter is to be considered as it would then stand in his view. He is now working in good earnest for the next ages. He will first revise, finish, and republish his former works, and then devote the remainder of life to his greater philosophical labors. He renounces all worldly honors, and mere fame with his contemporaries loses nearly all attraction for him. He seeks a full pardon of his sen- tence, and a restoration to his seat in the House of Lords, that " a cloud " may be lifted from his name ; but when, finally, the summons comes, his answer is : "I have done with such vanities." We have a very distinct intimation in his own words as to what his opinion then was, in respect to fame of this kind ; for in his dedicatory epistle to Bishop Andrews, his " ancient and private acquaintance," whom he held "in special reverence," prefixed to that Shake- spearean " Dialogue touching an Holy War," written in 1622, he gives an explicit account of his writings and pur- poses. He compares his fortunes to those of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca, and chooses for himself the example of Seneca, like himself, a learned poet, moralist, statesman and philosopher, who, being banished into a solitary island, " spent his time in writing books of excellent argument and use for all ages," having determined, as he says, " (where- unto I was otherwise inclined) to spend my time wholly in writing ; and to put forth that poor talent, or half talent, or what it is, that God hath given me, not as heretofore to particular exchanges, but to banks and mounts of per- petuity, which will not break. Therefore, having not long since set forth a part of my Instauration, which is the work, that in mine own judgment (si nunquam fattit imago) I do most esteem, I think to proceed in some new parts thereof. 182 REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. I have a purpose therefore (though I break the order of time) to draw it down to the sense, by some pat- terns of a Natural Story or Inquisition." But besides these natural stories, which were probably to be something like the "New Atlantis," and some other works particularly named, there was still another class, for which the world might " scramble " and " set up a new English inquisition" and upon which he continues in these words : " As for my Essays and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them ; though I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand. But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him." 1 Again, speaking of his philosophy in general, he says : " For myself, nothing which is external to the establish- ment of its principles is of any interest to me. For neither am I a hungerer after fame, nor have I, after the manner of heresiarchs, any ambition to originate a sect ; and, as for deriving any private emolument from such labours, I should hold the thought as base as it is ridiculous. Enough for me the consciousness of desert, and that coming accom- plishment of real effects which fortune itself shall not be able to intercept." 2 He cares little now for any mere lustre of reputation. It is very possible, of course, that all these expressions had reference only to some other prose compositions of a pop- ular character. They do not necessarily amount to any positive allusion to these plays ; but when considered with reference to the entire mass of evidence, which will be pro- 1 Works (Boston), XIII. 188. 2 Proaemium, Craik's Bacon, 614. REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. 183 duced to prove the fact that he was the author of them, it must strike the mind of any reader with the force of a very pregnant suggestion, that he intended (in his own mind, at least,) to include them in the same category with the Essays as among those other unnamed particulars. The work of revising the Essays was continued, and the new and enlarged edition appeared, in 1625. If the Folio of 1623 were printed under his supervision, his part of the work must have been still in progress, if not entirely com- pleted, at the date of this epistle to Bishop Andrews. His poetical works were in the possession of the world as " Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," and as " Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems ; " and so he would let them remain. They had had their trial already and stood out all appeals, and the wit that was in them could no more be hid than it could be lost. These " feigned histories or speaking pictures," which had for one object, perhaps, "to draw down to the sense" of the theatre and the popular mind things which " flew too high over men's heads " in general, in other forms of delivery, would effectually do their own proper work ; and they might be left to take care of themselves. "And there we hope," says the Preface, " to your divers capacities, you will find enough, both to draw, and hold you." For him, not to be understood would be all the same as not to be known : " Read him, therefore, and again and again : And, if then, you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him." It is certainly conceivable, that a mind like his should care but little for any lustre that might be added to his name, or his memory, by these writings ; or, at least, that he should be willing to wait until it should shine forth with an illumination sufficiently brilliant and clear to reveal by its own light the soul and genius of him- self. In the mean time, he would take care to keep " the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive," as this " our Shakespeare " had come to be. The following son- 184 BACON A POET. net, perhaps, may represent the true state of his mind and feeling, near the close of his life : " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fool'd by these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge ? Is this thy body's end ? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross: Within be fed, without be rich no more, So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, there 's no more dying then." Sonnet cxlvi. 6. BACON A POET. Of course, if this theory be established, there will be no further question that Francis Bacon was a poet ; but the business here will be to consider of the extraneous evidences of the fact, and also of those further proofs out of the writings themselves, more immediately connected with this part of the inquiry, which go to establish that fact. "We have already seen in his personal history that he was, in the earlier part of his career, much in the habit of writing sonnets. Some of them were addressed to the Queen, some were written for Essex to be addressed to her in bis name, and one, at least, was commended by great persons ; for, as he writes in the Apology concerning Essex, " a little before that time, being about the middle of Michaelmas term [1599], her majesty had a purpose to dine at my lodge at Twickenham Park, at which time I had, though I profess not to be a poet, prepared a sonnet, directly tending and alluding to draw on her majesty's reconcilement to my lord ; which, I remember, also, I showed to a great person and one of my lord's nearest BACON A POET. 185 friends [Southampton ?], who commended it." l In the letter of advice addressed by the Earl of Essex to Sir Fulke Greville on his studies, first printed by Mr. Sped- ding as written by Bacon, and palpably one of the numer- ous papers drafted by him for his patron's use, the Earl is made to say : " For poets, I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stranger to them." 2 However this may have been intended to be seriously spoken in character by the Earl to the Knight (who was himself a poet), when considered with reference to the actual facts now known concerning them both, it may be taken as a pretty good joke. Nor need there be any wonder that his sonnets were commended by the great, when we know, by acknowledged specimens of his skill in the art, that he was capable of writing very excellent poetry. Upon a review of his poeti- cal works, Mr. Spedding ventures to express the opinion, that " Bacon was not without the fine phrensy of the poet," and that, if it had taken the ordinary direction, " it would have carried him to a place among the great poets." * His metrical versions of the Psalms of David, which were dedicated to his friend, the learned and pious poet, George Herbert, as " the best judge of Divinity and Poesy met," were the amusement of his idle hours, during a time of impaired health, in the spring of 1625, and within a year of his death. Certainly, nothing great, or very brilliant, should be looked for in these mere translations into verse. In idea and sentiment, he was absolutely limited to the original psalm : nor could he have much latitude in the expression ; besides that large allowance must be made for the necessary difference between the young and "strong imagination " of " The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," of the " Midsummer-Night's Dream " of the man of thirty- l Apology, Wvrkt (Phila.), II. 336. 3 Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 25. 8 Works (Boston), XIV. 113. 186 BACON A POET. three, and the more compounded age and the lassitude of the sick old man of sixty-five. Nevertheless, in elegance, ease of rhythmic flow, and pathetic sweetness, in many passages, they are not unworthy of the master himself, and in the expres- sion and use of words, there are many similitudes with Shakespeare, and some striking parallel passages may be found in them : as, for instance, this one from the transla- tion of the XCth Fsalm, " As a tale told, which sometimes men attend, And sometimes not, our life steals to an end : " which may be compared with the following lines from the " King John " : " Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." Act III. Sc. 4. And again, in the same Psalm, we have these lines : " Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly, And so hast always been from age to age : Before the hills did intercept the eye, Or that the frame was up of earthly stage, One God thou wert, and art, and still shall be ; The line of Time, it doth not measure thee. Both death and life obey thy holy lore, And visit in then- turns, as they are sent ; A thousand years with thee, they are no more Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent : Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep, And goes, and comes, un wares to them that sleep." * And in the CIVth Psalm, we have this line : " The greater navies look like walking woods." Now, compare this with the following lines from the "Macbeth": " Mess. I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move Mac. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time ; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 1 Wvrks (Boston), XIV. 125. BACON A POET. 187 Life 's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more : it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Act V. Sc. 5. It has scarcely ever been doubted, among critics, that the sonnets, smaller poems, and plays were the work of one and the same author ; though many have experienced insurmountable difficulties in the attempt to reconcile the sonnets with the life of the man, William Shakespeare. The similitudes of thought, style, and diction, are such as to put at rest all question on that head. Mr. Boswell doubted whether any true intimations could be drawn from the Sonnets of Shakespeare, respecting the life and feelings of the author : certainly no such doubt could have arisen in his mind, if he had considered them as the work of Francis Bacon. In respect of ideas, opinions, modes of thinking and feeling, style, manner, and language, they bear the impress of Bacon's mind, especially in the first half of his life ; and they exhibit states of mind and feeling, which will find an explanation nowhere better than in his personal history. Many of them show the strongest internal evidence of their having been addressed to the Queen, as they no doubt were. Bacon tells us, that " she was very willing to be courted, wooed, and to have sonnets made in her com- mendation " ; 1 and, as we know, he was himself notoriously given to the writing of sonnets to this " mistress' eyebrow." Some of them may have been addressed to his young friend, Mr. William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke), and others may find a fitting interpretation in the circumstances and events of his own actual life, in his own inward thought and feel- ing, and in his own enterprises of love, which continued to a late day, though this Petrarch worshipped no particular Laura. The first small collection of sonnets and minor poems was published by Jaggard, in 1599, under the title of the " Passionate Pilgrim," but the full edition of the i In Mem. iiz., Works (Mont.), HI- 477. 188 BACON A POET. Sonnets was dedicated to "Mr. W. H." in 1609, when Shakespeare was in his forty-sixth, and Bacon in the forty- ninth year of his age. Even the difficulty of Mr. Boswell, however, that a man of forty-five should write such sonnets as the LXXIIId, may disappear, when it is considered that Bacon was married in his forty-sixth year, and that even in 1609, when so nearly fifty, thoughts of love and "yellow leaves " may very well have come together. In 1594, the Solicitor's place having become vacant, Bacon's suit for it was urgently pressed by Essex and others of his friends. Without preferment at the age of thirty- three, and still hesitating whether he should not devote himself wholly to studies and a private life, he felt this to be an important crisis in his fortunes ; nearly all his hopes looking to a public career were staked upon it. The Queen had been personally well-disposed towards him, but she had conceived a high displeasure at his course in Parliament on the subsidies, and he was now excluded from her presence ; and the zeal of Essex in his behalf, insisting upon it as a special favor to himself, and as perhaps affording some countenance to his party, seems still further to have marred the whole business. She was determined not to yield her own will to the pride of Essex, and hesitated, perhaps, to raise to so high a place in the state the known adherent and friend of the great earl, who, although the grandson of her cousin, and a favorite thus far, was yet a descendant in the line of Edward III., whose ambitious head was capable of projects looking to her very throne. So, at last, when he had been " voiced with great expectation," and had had " the honorable testimony of so many counsellors," and " the wishes of most men " even for the higher place of Attorney- General, the Queen " did fly the tilt," says Essex, and it was fixed, that Serjeant Fleming should be made Solicitor ; and. as we learn from himself, " no man ever read a more exquisite disgrace " than Francis Bacon. No longer " able to endure the sun," he " fled into the shade " at Twicken- BACON A POET. 189 ham Park, the lovely country-seat of his brother Edward, on the banks of the Thames, where he kept his " lodge," his papers, and his books, and whither he was accustomed to retire whenever he could escape from Gray's Inn, and the bustle of the city, or desired to find the most favored retreat of the Muses. He had resolved thus, if rejected : " I will by God's assistance, with this disgrace of my fortune, and yet with the comfort of the good opinion of so many honorable and worthy persons, retire myself with a couple of men to Cambridge, and there spend my life in studies and contemplations, without looking back." l Something like this same voicing appears in the " Hamlet," thus : '' Eos. Good my Lord, what is your cause of distemper ? You do, surely, bar the door of your liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend. Ham. Sir, I lack advancement. Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark V Ham. Ay, sir, but ' while the grass grows,' the proverb is something musty." Act III. Sc. 2. Again, says the " Timon " : " Is this the Athenian minion whom the world Voiced so regardfully ? " Act IV. Sc. 3. The " Hamlet " continues : " King. How fares our cousin Hamlet? Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the cameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise- cramm'd. You cannot feed capons so." Act III. Sc. 2. So, says Bacon, of the chameleon : " He feedeth not only upon air, (though that be his principal sustenance,) yet some that have kept cameleons a whole year together, would never perceive that ever they fed upon anything else but air " ; 2 and this idea of the chameleon's feeding on air is found in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona," thus : " Sic. What, angry, Sir Thurio? do you change colour? Vol. Give me leave, madam ; he is a kind of cameleon. * Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 170; Spedding, I. 291. 2 Nat. Hist. 360. 190 BACON A POET. Thur. That hath more mind to feed on your blood, than live in your air." Act II. Sc. 4. The " Hamlet " continues : " Ham. My lord, you play'd once in the University, you say ? [To POLONIUS. Pol. That I did, my lord ; and was accounted a good actor. Ham. And what did you enact? Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar: I was kill'd i' the Capitol; Brutus kill'd me." Act III. Sc. 2. And there is something like the sound of a reminiscence in this expression of Bacon : " Nay, even two or three days ago, Bernardinus Telesius mounted the stage, and enacted a new play." 1 Further, when Hamlet had instructed the players how to speak the speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which he would set down and insert in the play, and the speech had taken effect, according to his expectation, the first re- mark that pops into his head is this very curious one : " Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me,) with two Provincial roses on my raz'd shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir? " Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2. Is it, then, so very wonderful, that these ideas of the University and a couple of men, and a fellowship with two Provincial roses in his shoes, and a forest of feathers, should be running in the same head, at times not far apart ? When Buckingham is about to fleece him of his " forest " at Gorhambury, he replies, " I will not be stripped of my feathers." In the mean time, the usual tenor of his thoughts had been seriously interrupted, and his whole heart saddened. Deep in debt and Jews' bonds, with his prospect for pro- motion thus fatally darkened, he was on the point of giving up in despair : even his studies failed to afford relief. It seemed to him, that " the old anthem might never be more truly sung : Totus mundus in maligno positus est " ; 2 and 1 Int. of Nat. Works (Mont.), XV. 100. 2 Letter. BACON A POET. 191 again he writes : " But casting the worst of my fortune with an honorable friend that had long used me privately, I told his Lordship of this my purpose to travel, accompanying it with these very words, that upon her Majesty's rejecting me with such circumstance, though my heart might be good, yet mine eyes would be sore that I should take no pleasure to look upon my friends ; for that I was not an impudent man, that could face out a disgrace ; and yet I hoped her Majesty would not be offended, if not being able to endure the sun, I fled into the shade." * And thus sings the son- net : " When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least." Sonnet xxix. After a short retirement at Essex's house, and within his own private lodge at Twickenham, where, as he says, he " once again enjoyed the blessings of contemplation in that sweet solitariness, which collecteth the mind, as shutting the eyes doth the sight," he began to see and acknowledge " the providence of God " towards him, and concluded that he had taken " duty too exactly " and not " according to the dregs of this age," finding it on the whole most wise and expedient to bear the yoke in his youth " tolerare jugum in juventute " ; 2 so that at length being called to some service by the Queen, in which he was detained by sickness at Huntingdon, he writes to her Majesty thus : " This present arrest of mine by his Divine Majesty from your Majesty's service, is not the least affliction I have proved ; and I hope your Majesty doth conceive, that nothing under mere impossibility could have detained me from earning so i Letter to Cecil (1594-5). Spedding's Let. and Life, I. 350. 3 Letter to the Queen ; Spedding's Let. and Life, I. 304. 192 BACON A POET. gracious a vail, as it pleased your Majesty to give me." 1 Again, from the same retreat on the Thames, he entreats her Majesty not to impute his " absence to any weakness of mind or unworthiness." 2 And much in the same spirit runs this sonnet : "Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour, When you have bid your servant once adieu. Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of naught, Save where you are, how happy you make those. So true a fool is love, that in your Will, (Though you do anything) he thinks no ill." Sonnet Ivii. And again, " I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, Nor blame your pleasure, be it ill or well." Sonnet Iviii. His comfort was, however, that he knew (as he had writ- ten to Essex) that her Majesty took " delight and content- ment in executing this disgrace upon him " ; nor did he think that " after a quintessence of wormwood " her Majesty would take " so large a draft of poppy " as to pass " many summers without all feeling of his sufferings " ; 8 "Ham. [Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? " Act II. Sc. 2. as when the king in the play threatened to let loose upon Bertram his revenge and hate, " Without all terms of pity." All ' Well, Act II. Sc. 3. And again the sonnet sings : " What potions have I drunk of siren tears, Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 1 Letter, July 20, 1594; Works (Mont.), XIII. 81. 2 Letter to the Queen; Works (Mont.), XII. 170. 8 Letter; Works (Mont.), XII. 167. BACON A POET. 193 Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win ? " Sonnet cxix. And thus, again : " for my sake do you with fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breeds. Thence conies it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd, Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysell, 'gainst my strong infection. No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance to correct correction." Sonnet cxi. " Your love and pity doth the impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow." Sonnet cxii. I told her," writes Essex to Bacon, (26th March, 1594,) " how much you were thrown down with the correction she had already given you." About this time (1595), we find him writing again : " For to be as I told you, like a child following a bird, which, when he is nearest, flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infini- tum ; I am weary of it." 1 So moaned the " tired seasick suitor," as he describes himself in another letter ; a and very like, again, is the tone of the sonnet, " Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trim'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, 1 Letter to Greville, Works (Mont.), XII. 161 ; Letters and Life, Spedding, I. 359. 2 Letter to Burghley (21 March, 1594-5), (Mont.), XII. 475; Spedding, 1.360. 13 194 BACON A POET. And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, And captive Good attending captain 111. Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone." Sonnet Ixvi. And the same expression creeps into the " Richard II.," written soon afterwards, thus : " Patience is stale, and I am weary of it." Act V. Sc. 5. But lest an unfavorable impression should get abroad, and even become fixed in her Majesty's mind, on account of his unwonted absence from court, in these years, he writes again an express letter to the Lord Keeper, dated May 25th, 1595, from his retreat at Twickenham Park, desiring his Lordship to explain matters in that quarter, which runs thus : " I thought good to step aside for nine days, which is the durance of a wonder, and not for any dislike in the world ; for I think her Majesty hath done me as great a favour in making an end of this matter, as if she had enlarged me from some restraint. And I humbly pray your Lordship, if it so please you, to deliver to her Majesty from me, that I would have been glad to have done her Majesty service now in the best of my years, and the same mind remains in me still ; and that it may be, when her Majesty hath tried others, she will think of him that she hath cast aside. For I will take it upon that which her Majesty hath often said, that she doth reserve me, and not reject me." l Which same wonder will appear again in the play, thus : " Glos. That would be ten days' wonder, at the least. Clar. That 's a day longer than a wonder lasts. Glos. By so much is the wonder in extremes." 3 Hen. VI., Act III. Sc. 2. And again, thus, in the " As You Like It " : "Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came." Act. III. Sc. 2. 1 Letter, Works (Mont), XIII. 53; Spedd. I. 360. BACON A POET. 195 By November following, this great grief is forgotten, and we find him returned to his better moods, and assisting o Essex in getting up a magnificent display, at his own house, for her Majesty's entertainment on the anniversary of her accession. Bacon puts in requisition all the powers of the Muses, and writes a Masque to be exhibited before her. Fleming had received his commission as Solicitor, on the 5th of this month, and twelve days afterwards, the Queen had granted to Bacon, under the Privy Seal, in addition to the princely gifts he had previously received at her hands, the reversion of the lease of Twickenham Park itself, delightfully situated on the banks of the Thames, within sight of her Majesty's palace of Whitehall, with an agree- able mansion, park, and garden, and a goodly expanse of lawn and pasture, lake and orchard, mead and field, "a home for a prince," says Mr. Dixon. 1 And hither her Majesty comes in person, upon occasion, to dine with her courtly admirer, and have a spice of his wit in his own Arcadian lodge. The speeches that were written for this Masque, as any one may see, are conceived in his own best manner and decidedly in the Shakespearean vein. This specimen from j the Hermit's speech in the presence will show his concep- tion of "the sweet travelling through universal variety," which will demand our particular attention : " For I wish him to leave turning over the book of for- tune, which is but a play for children, when there be so many books of truth and knowledge better worthy the revolving, and not fix his view only upon a picture in a little table, where there be so many tables of histories, yea to the life, excellent to behold and admire. Whether he believe me or no, there is no prison to the thoughts, which are free under the greatest tyrants. Shall any man make his conceit as an anchor, mured up within the compass of one beauty or person, that may have the liberty of all i Pert, Hist., 79, 108. 196 BACON A POET. contemplation? Shall he exchange the sweet travelling through the universal variety for one wearisome and end- less round or labyrinth ? Let thy master, Squire, offer his service to the Muses. It is long since they received any into their court. They give alms continually at their gate, that many come to live upon ; but few they have ever admitted into their palace. There shall he find secrets not dangerous to know, sides and parties not factious to hold, precepts and commandments not penal to disobey. The gardens of love wherein he now playeth himself are fresh to-day and fading to-morrow, as the sun comforts them or is turned from them. But the gardens of the Muses keep the privilege of the golden age ; they ever flourish and are in league with time. The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power : the verses of the poet endure with- out a syllable lost, while states and empires pass many periods. Let him not think he shall descend, for he is now upon a hill as a ship is mounted upon the ridge of a wave ; but that hill of the Muses is above tempests, always clear and calm ; a hill of the goodliest discovery that man can have, being a prospect upon all the errors and wanderings of the present and former times. Yea, in some cliff it leadeth the eye beyond the horizon of time, and giveth no obscure divination of times to come. So that if he will indeed lead vitam vitalem, a life that unites safety and dig- nity, pleasure and merit ; if he will win admiration without envy ; if he will be in the feast and not in the throng ; in the light and not in the heat ; let him embrace the life of study and contemplation. And if he will accept of no other reason, yet because the gift of the Muses will en- worthy him in his love, and where he now looks on his mis- tress' outside with the eyes of sense, which are dazzled and amazed, he shall then behold her high perfections and heav- enly mind with the eyes of judgment, which grow stronger by more nearly and more directly viewing such an object." 1 i Masque, Works (Philad.), II. 533 ; Letters and Life, by Spedding, 1. 379. BACON A POET. 197 "Watching closely, we shall discover traces of this same cliff and hill of the Muses, in several places, in both these writings. Indeed there are many considerations which favor the supposition, that Bacon was privately devoted to the Muses. The cast of his genius was poetical. His prose writings almost everywhere exhibit the highest qualities of the poet, a philosophic depth of insight, a luminous and powerful imagination, a bold and brilliant grasp of metaphor, a crystalline clearness, brevity, and beauty of expression, and such sovereignty in all the realms of thought and knowledge, and such command of language, as made all nature and the entire compass of the English tongue (which he enlarged from the Latin) tributary to his purposes ; and this is precisely what has always been recog- nized as one of the wonders of Shakespeare. From the very beginning of his career, he had taken all knowledge to be his province, and he had explored nearly every depart- ment of it that was open to him in his day. He had, more- over, attained to very correct ideas of the nature, objects, and uses of poetry : perhaps no man ever had better. In his Description of the Intellectual Globe, he says, " We adopt that division of human learning, which is cor- relative to the three faculties of the intellect. We there- fore set down its parts as three : History, Poesy, and Philosophy : history has reference to memory ; poesy to imagination ; philosophy to reason. By poesy, in this place, we mean nothing else than feigned history." 1 In the Ad- vancement, he makes three divisions of Poesy : Narrative, Representative, and Allusive. The Narrative is " a mere imitation of history, with the excesses before remembered ; choosing for subject commonly wars and love, rarely state, and sometimes pleasure or mirth." The Allusive, or para- bolical, applied to some special purpose or conceit, " was much more in use in ancient times, as by the fables of .^Esop, and the brief sentences of the Seven, and the l Works (Mont), XII. 150. 198 BACON A POET. use of hieroglyphics may appear." But the Representative " is as a visible history ; and is an image of actions as if they were present, as history is of actions in nature as they are, that is past ; " l and it is under this head, of course, that we may infer he would bring dramatic poetry : in the De Augmentis, he expressly designates the three kinds as " aut Narrativa, aut Dramatica, aut Parabolical 2 " Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies " are precisely such feigned histories, representa- tive visible histories, or speaking pictures, as are here sup- posed. Bacon's philosophical, political, and legal writings, were his labors : the Essays and certain " other unnamed particulars of that kind" (in which we may include his tributes to the Muses), were the recreations of his other studies ; for, says he, " all science is the labor and handi- craft of the mind : poetry can only be considered its recre- ation." 8 Of poesy in general, he says, " it is a part of learning in measure of words for the most part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the imagination ; which, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things : Pictoribus otque poetis, &c." So, we remember, " The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact." In respect of words, again, it is but " one of the arts of speech," but in respect of matter, " it is one of the principal portions of learning, and is nothing else but feigned history, which may be styled as well in prose as in verse. The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion 1 Adv. of Learn., Book II. 2 Lib. II. c. 13. Int. Globe, Works (Mont.), XV. 150. BACON A POET. 199 inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact good- ness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical : because true history propoundeth the suc- cesses and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence : because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alterna- tive variations : so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. And we see, that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbar- ous regions, where other learning stood excluded." 1 Surely, this is such an account of the true nature, scope, and use of poetry, as might be expected to come from the author of those illustrative and imperishable examples of these very doctrines, the plays of Shakespeare. The ex- cellent critical judgment of Professor Gervinus did not fail to discover, that " Shakespeare appears to have entertained the same views with Lord Bacon." a Delia Bacon made the same discovery. In fact, these plays constitute a new and altogether superior kind of dramatic writing. " They are," says Coleridge, " in the ancient sense, neither trag- edies, nor comedies, nor both in one, but a different genus, i Adv. of Learn., Book II. 2 Shaket. Com., II. 549. 200 BACON A POET. diverse in kind, and not merely different in degree. They may be called romantic dramas, or dramatic romances." l We may as well call them, at once, representative visible histories, or speaking pictures, illustrative examples, or types and models of the whole process of the mind and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular sub- jects, the most dignified, selected for their variety and im- portance, after the manner of Francis Bacon, and in the most consummate style of the art which mends nature. Verily, this critical exposition by Bacon himself would seem to furnish an explicit and satisfactory interpretation of his own actual meaning (first propounded by Delia Bacon), when he speaks, in the introduction to the Fourth Part of the Great Installation, of those " illustrative ex- amples " and " actual types and models " in immediate con- nection with the subject of that " true art " which " is always capable of advancing." He also understood that further use of poetry allusive or parabolical, one object of which was, " to retire and ob- scure," as well as " to demonstrate and illustrate," what is " to be taught or delivered ; " that is, " when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, or philosophy, are involved in fables or parables." This use of poetry is certainly not with- out ample illustration in the greater plays of Shakespeare. Some of them teach things never dreamed of in the ordinary philosophy, much less in any that can well be ascribed to William Shakespeare, or any man that ever lived with a per- sonal history like his ; not to speak of the many lesser here- sies, Arian or other, for which sundry Bartholomew Legates were burned at a stake, in those days, and, for the like of which, in plain prose, the Royal Thunderer would hurl his fulminations against Vorstius, even across the English Chan- nel. No man knew better than Bacon how few persons in his own age, or perhaps in almost any other, would be found capable of appreciating, or even understanding at all, the l Progress of the Drama, Works of Coleridge, IV. 35. BACON A POET. 201 Novum Organum and his deeper philosophical works. The secrets contained in these were sufficiently obscured from the vulgar by the very character of the writings themselves. But he was also, not only fully aware of the great value of the poetical form of delivery, but able to make good and effectual use of it, for the purpose of withdrawing opinions, doctrines, secrets, and mysteries from the reach of vulgar censure and public persecution, while yet communicating them with sufficient clearness to the initiated, who might have an eye to see, and, at the same time, with a certain prophetic indistinctness and general effect, to the common mind of the theatre, which might thereby be instructed, until, at length, it should find its old errors and superstitions undermined, without knowing that they had been attacked ; somewhat in the same manner as Euripides and other ancient poets, and even Dante, Milton, and Goethe, among the moderns, assailed the -superstitious mythology and erroneous popular notions of the ages in which they lived. Indeed, we learn from himself, that " born in an age when religion was in no very prosperous state," he had endeavored to rise to civil dignities, for one thing, in order that, by the exercise of his genius, he might the better " effect some- thing which would be profitable for the salvation of souls." He dreaded " no incursions of barbarians " in his time, but he foresaw that " civil wars " were about to arise, involving many countries, and " that from the malignity of religious sects, and from those compendious systems of artifice and caution " which had " crept into the place of erudition," no less " a tempest " was impending " over literature and science." 1 He kept this general purpose in view in all his writings. Speaking of the Great Instauration, he says, " yet, never theless, I have just cause to doubt, that it flies too high over men's heads ; have a purpose therefore, though I break the order of time, to draw it down to the sense, by some pat- l Procemium: Craik's Bacon, 612-13. 202 BACON A POET. terns of a Natural Story or Inquisition." l Towards the close of his life, was written the " New Atlantis " (published after his death), which was doubtless one of those patterns of a natural story, or feigned history, " devised," says Dr. Rawley, " to the end that he might exhibit therein a model or description of a College, instituted for the interpreting of nature, and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men, under the name of Solomon's House, or College of the Six Day's Works." 2 This was one kind ; but there may very well have been another class of patterns or models, and the order of time may have been broken, in respect of these, long before. Indeed, we are expressly told, in the introduction to the Novum Organum, that the Fourth Part of his great work was to have for its very object and intent to exhibit " some examples " of his method as applied to " the most dignified subjects " of inquiry ; " we mean," says he, " actual types and models, calculated to place, as it were, before our eyes, the whole process of the mind and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects, selected for their variety and impor- tance." It is certain that this Fourth Part never appeared as such : it lay under subjection, perhaps, to a fate as inex- orable as that Sixth Part itself, which, as he tells us, could not even be undertaken, in his day, though he hoped to be able to make a " no contemptible beginning " ; but which would have for its object, not only " contemplative enjoy- ment," but " the common affairs and fortune of mankind, and a complete power of action," and for its end, to raise, at last, upon those preliminary " foundations " which could then be instituted and established, and finally to complete, the superstructure of " Philosophy itself." 8 Nor is it necessary to suppose, that these plays were actually intended to constitute that contemplated Fourth Part, or that they were written with that immediate view ; 1 Ded. Epist. to Bishop Andrews. 2 Pref. to New Atlantis. 8 Intro, to Nov. Org. BACON A POET. 203 but that they were written upon the same philosophical theory, and with the same general purpose in view, and that they might finally have been considered as answering very well as a fitting substitute for one part of it, or that they may now be taken as illustrating the general scope, purpose, and intent of that Fourth Part, can scarcely be doubted. Certainly, it must be admitted, that they answer the purpose admirably well. It could not have been any systematic treatise of psychology that was intended : such a treatise would rather belong to the Sixth Part, the Phil- osophia Prima come full circle, or Philosophy itself. It is altogether more probable, that these "illustrative exam- ples " or " types and models " were to participate in that " sweet travelling through universal variety," of which we have a hint in the Hermit's Speech in the Masque. In another Masque, that which was performed at the Christmas Revels of Gray's Inn, in 1594, and in which he foreshadows something of the general scope of his phil- osophical schemes, and prefigures our modern scientific libraries, museums, laboratories, and zoological and botan- ical gardens, he gives us this hint of his conception of a model : " Next, a spacious, wonderful garden, wherein whatsoever plant the sun of divers climates, out of the earth of divers moulds, either wild or by the culture of man brought forth, may be with that care that appertain eth to the good pros- pering thereof set and cherished. This garden to be built about with rooms to stable in all rare beasts and to cage in all rare birds ; with two lakes adjoining, the one of fresh water, the other of salt, for like variety of fishes. And so you may have in small compass a model of universal nature made private." l These models were to have a wide range and compass in their application to particular subjects, which were by no means to be confined to physical science merely, but were to comprehend universal nature and all i Masque ; Letters and Life by Spedding, I. 335. 204 BACON A POET. philosophy. " And for myself," he says again, " I am not raising a capitol or pyramid to the pride of man, but laying a foundation in the human understanding for a holy temple after the model of the world " : 1 yet, he continues, again, " may God never permit us to give out the dream of our fancy as a model of the world." 2 And, in the play of Richard II., written a year or two after these Masques, we have from himself (perhaps), in the garden scene, an ex- emplification of his idea of a model as applied to the state and civil affairs, in these lines : " 1 Sent. Why should we, in the compass of a pale, Keep law and form, and due proportion, Shewing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-wall'd garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds? " Act III. Se. 4. And again, thus : " England ! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, . What might'st thoa do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural ! " Henry V., Act II., Oior. In short, the foundations were to be laid, not of physical science only, but of metaphysical science also. We were to have " a scaling-ladder of the intellect," which, pursuing " the thread of the labyrinth," should disclose " the several degrees of ascent," whereby only it was possible for men to climb up to the top of " the magnificent temple, palace, city, and hill " of the great man of the New Atlantis, who wore an aspect " as if he pitied men," as it had been a " ScaJa Codi " or " ladder to all high designs," 8 that hill of the Muses, " above tempests, always clear and calm ; a hill of the good- liest discovery that man can have, being a prospect upon all the errors and wanderings of the present and former l Trans, of the Nm. Org. by Spedding, Workt (Boston), VIII. 151. 8 Introd. to Nov. Org. Troiltu and Cressida. BACON A POET. 205 times : yea, in some cliff it leadeth the eye beyond the horizon of time, and giveth no obscure divination of times to come : " 1 "Gfo*. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in the confined deep: Bring me but to the very brim of it, And I '11 repair the misery thou dost bear, With something rich about me : from that place I shall no leading need: " Lear, Act IV. Sc. 1. that same " high and pleasant hill " of the " Timon " that was " conceiv'd to scope " : ' This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks, With one man beckon'd from the rest below, Bowing his head against the steepy mount To climb his happiness, would be well express'd In our condition : " Timon, Act I. Sc. 1. and once arrived at the " mountain tops " and " uppermost elevations of nature," 2 whence might be had some true glimpse of " the top of judgment " * and " spring-head " 4 of all science, we might then begin to comprehend " Phi- losophy itself : " " Glot. When shall we come to the top of that same hill ? " Lear,ActIV.Sc. 6. In the earlier part of his life, he found it safer and better, and perhaps more in accordance with the bent of his genius, to stand upon the hill of the Muses, where he could avail himself of his representative visible histories, speaking pictures, types and models, fables and parables, to demon- strate and illustrate, or retire and obscure, the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, or philosophy, after the man- ner of all ancient poetry, heathen or sacred, and in a style and form and essence that should equal, if not surpass it altogether. But in the later part of his life, when he had mounted l Essex's Masque. 2 Scaling-Ladder. * Measure for feature. * Adv. of Lear*. 206 BACON A POET. to the height of power in the state, and become the keeper of the King's conscience and his seals, when his faculties had become more " compounded," and " stiff with age," yet with matured power and vigor of intellect, he would more boldly enter " the judicial palace of the mind," and would venture, by the help of " new found methods and com- pounds strange " * to complete, and by the help of princely dedications to promulgate, a systematic renovation and instauration of science and philosophy ; for, as he himself says, this poesy, " being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind [of learning] : but to ascribe unto it that which is due, for the expressing of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are be- holden to poets more than to the philosopher's works ; and for wit and eloquence, not much less than to orators' harangues. But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre. Let us now pass to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention " : 2 " Pry'thee, speak : Falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look'st Modest as Justice, and thou seem'st a palace For the crown'd Truth to dwell in." Per., Act V. Sc. 1. For, as we remember, the Muses "give alms continually at their gate ; but few they have ever admitted into their palace." And in 1623, he opens the third book of the De Augmentis (taking the elegant and very literal version of Wats) thus : "All History, excellent King, treads upon the earth, and performs the office of a guide rather than of a light ; and Poesy is, as it were, the dream of Knowledge; a sweet pleasing thing, full of variations, and would be thought to be somewhat inspired with divine rapture ; which dreams l Sonnet. 2 Adv. of Learn., Book II. GESTA GRAYORUM. 207 likewise present. But it is time for me to awake, and to raise myself from the earth, cutting the liquid air of Phi- losophy and Sciences." 1 And the poet in the "Timon" expresses himself much in the same way : " My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax : no levell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold. But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on, Leaving no tract behind." Act I. Sc. 1. But here, it was "fastigia scilicet rerum tantummodo trac- tans" 2 And before finally taking leave of the stage, he adds, in the De Augmentis, the following very remarkable passage to what he had before said in the Advancement on this subject, viz. : " Dramatic poesy, which takes the theatre for the world, is of excellent use, if it be sane. For the discipline as well as the corruption of the theatre may be very great. And in mischiefs of this kind it abounds : the discipline is plainly neglected in our times. Although in modern states, play-acting is esteemed but as a ludicrous thing, except when it is too satirical and biting ; yet among the ancients, it became a means of forming the souls of men to virtue. Even the wise and prudent, and great philosophers, considered it to be, as it were, the plectrum of the mind. [ And most certainly, what is one of the secrets of nature, | the minds of men, when assembled together, are more open 1 to affections and impressions than when they are alone." 8 7. GESTA GRAYORUM. In December, 1594, less than a year before this Masque was written for Essex, Bacon had taken a principal part in the preparations for the Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn, 1 De Aug., (Craik's Bacon, 285). 2 De Aug. Scient., Lib. III. c. 1. 8 Ibid. II. c. 13. 208 GESTA GRAYORUM. which were celebrated with especial splendor in that year. A contemporary account of these Revels, drawn up by some unknown author, and entitled " Gesta Grayorum " (first printed in 1688), has been preserved also in Nichols' " Progresses of Queen Elizabeth," and it is cited by Mr. Spedding as worthy of credit ; 1 from which it appears that Francis Bacon was particularly active and zealous in his efforts to entertain the Queen and her courtiers as well as to sustain the ancient renown of that wor- shipful society in the field of wit and learned sports. " A still more sumptuous masque was intended," thinks Nichols, 2 " if we may judge from the following letter from the great Bacon," which (according to Spedding) was found in the Lansdown collection of Lord Burghley's papers, and was most probably addressed to him, though on what precise occasion it is not certainly ascertained. It reads thus : " It may please your good Lordship, I am sorry the joint Masque from the Four Inns of Court faileth ; wherein I conceive there is no other ground of that event but impossibility. Never- theless, because it faileth out that at this time Gray's Inn is well furnished of gallant young gentlemen, your Lordship may be pleased to know, that rather than this occasion shall pass without some demonstration of affection from the Inns of Court, there are a dozen gentlemen of Gray's Inn, that, out of the honour which they bear to your Lordship and my Lord Chamberlain, to whom at their last Masque, they were so much bounden, will be ready to furnish a Masque ; wishing it were in their power to perform it according to their mind, and so for the present I humbly take my leave, resting your Lordship's very humble and much bounden "FR. BACON." The letter is without date or address. Nichols connects it with the masque of 1594. Spedding thinks it might 1 Nichols' Prog. Q. Eliz. (London, 1823), III. 262; Letters and Life of Bacon, by Spedding, I. 325-342, (London, 1861). 2 Prog. Q. Eliz. I. p. xx ; Spedd. Letters and Life, II. 370. GESTA GRAYORUM. 209 possibly be referred to die year 1596, when Bacon wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury from Gray's Inn " to borrow a horse and armour " for some public show. Collier supposes it to have been addressed to Lord Burghley, not long after 1588. He finds that, during the Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn in 1587, a comedy, in which Catiline and the " Dominus de Purpoole " were leading characters, was exhibited by the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn, at their Hall, before Lord Burghley and other courtiers, on the 16th of January (1587-8) and that, on the 28th of February follow- ing, a tragedy of the " Misfortunes of Arthur " and certain " dumb-shews " in which " Mr. Francis Bacon " assisted, were presented before the Queen at Greenwich by the Gentlemen of this same Inn ; * and he assigns this letter to some subsequent occasion ; but neither he, nor Mr. Sped- ding, gives any data on which it can safely be referred to any other time than that supposed by Nichols. However this may be, it is certain that besides this tragedy of Arthur and " certain Devices and Shewes " by the Gentlemen of Gray ? s Inn, seven plays also were performed before the Queen by the Children of Paul's and " her Majesty's Ser- vants " of the theatre, during these Revels at Greenwich ; and the " dumb-shews and additional speeches were partly devised by William Fulbeck, Francis Flower, Christopher Yelverton, Francis Bacon, John Lancaster, and others, who with Master Penroodock and Lancaster directed these pro- ceedings at Court." 2 Here is incontestable proof that Francis Bacon was earnestly engaged in these dramatic entertainments in the same year in which William Shake- speare is supposed to have arrived in London to join the Blackfriars Company as an humble " servitor," as yet wholly unknown to fame as an actor or as an author, but (as some would have us believe) bringing with him pockets full of plays and poems already written. Mr. Knight presumes he l Collier's Hist. Dram. Poetry, I. 266-8; (London, 1831). Knight's Biog. of Shakes., 326-7; (London, 1843). 14 210 GESTA GRAYORUM. played his part, perhaps furnished plays, for these very Revels ; and he indulges in some highly poetic speculations upon this first meeting of the philosopher and the poet, but imagines that the high position of the courtier, Francis Bacon, would forbid him having any acquaintance with the humble actor, though as yet Bacon had no reputation as a philosopher, and Shakespeare none as a poet. We need not wonder at this letter, whether it belong to this time or to some other, nor that upon this occasion, nevertheless, a magnificent Masque and other superb enter- tainments were easily forthcoming. Gray's Inn was turned into the court and kingdom of " Henry Prince of Purpoole," with all needful officers of State, not forgetting a Master of the Revels, and the sports continued for twelve days and more. Besides triumphal processions by land and water and various burlesque performances by day, there were certain " grand nights " of plays, masques, dumb-shows, banquets, and dances. The Queen received them at her palace, and the whole court attended on the chief occasions. The account states (as reprinted by Nichols) that on the second night (December 28th) " a Comedy of Errors (like unto Plautus his Menoechmus) was played by the players." Mr. Spedding agrees with others before him that this must have been the Shakespeare play, as no doubt it was. On this occasion, there was a crowded attendance and such a press of ladies, lords, and gentlemen, whose dignity and sex privileged them from interference, that there was scarcely room on the stage for the actors, and when the Templarian ambassador and his train arrived, " at nine o'clock," there was some confusion for want of room, and they " would not stay longer at that time, but retired, in a sort, discontented and displeased ; " and so, as the account states, some other " inventions " intended " especially for the gracing the Tem- plarians " had to be dispensed with, but the " dancing and revelling with gentlewomen" proceeded, and after these sports, the night closed with the performance of this play ; GESTA GRATORUM. 211 so that, as the account continues, " that night begun and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors ; whereupon it was ever afterwards called the .Night of Errors." Mr. Spedding appears to think this play was regarded as " the crowning disgrace of this unfortunate Grand Night ; " but this would seem to be altogether a mistake, though it may be true enough, if it be understood that the offence taken was, after all, but a part of the sport, and, so far at least as the play was concerned, simply a mock-serious disgrace. It is plain it was not the play that offended the Templarians. In the fourth year of Eliza- beth's reign, a like round of Christmas Revels was cel- ebrated at the Inner Temple with equal splendor and magnificence, in which Lord Robert Dudley was elected "Mighty Palaphilos Prince of Sophie, High Constable, Marshall of the Knight Templars, and Patron of the Hon- ourable Order of Pegasus " ; and, on one night, there was a " Lord of Misrule " (a standing character on these occa- sions), and the banquet ended in mirth, minstrelsy, and wine, and, on the following night, there was a grand mock- trial at which the constable, marshal, and common-serjeant were arraigned for the " disorder " and humorously sent to the Tower. 1 And these later Revels at Gray's Inn seem to have been conducted much after the same model : in fact, this " Prince of Purpoole " appears to have been the standing prince of sports and " Lord of Misrule " at this Inn from 1587 until 1618, when the Students of Gray's Inn honored the Lord Chancellor Bacon with an exhibition before him of the " Tilt of Henry Prince of Purpoole " and the " Masque of Mountebanks," with an installation of the " Honourable Order of the Crescent " and a Song for his special "Entertainment" 2 At any rate, this "Night of Errors " was followed, on the very next night, with a mock- trial of the " sorcerer or conjurer that was supposed to be 1 Shakes. England, by G. W. Thornbury, II. 363-9; (London, 1856). 2 Nichols' Prog. James /., III. 466. 212 GESTA GRAYORUM. the cause of that confused inconvenience " ; and the in- dictment concluded thus : " And lastly, that he had foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up our disorders with a play of Errors and Confusions, and that night had gained to us discredit and itself a nickname of O O Errors : All which were against the crown and dignity of our Sovereign Lord the Prince of Purpoole." But the verdict was, that they " were nothing else but vain illusions, fancies, and enchantments, which might be compassed by means of a poor harmless wretch that had never heard of such great matters in all his life ; " and so, the " sorcerer or conjurer " was pardoned, and the Attorney, Solicitor, and Master of Requests sent to the Tower for making so much ado about law. Of course, this was all in jest, if not a set part of the programme : " Sure, these are but imaginary wiles, And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here." Com. of Errors, Act IV. Sc. 3. And the hint of this conjurer most probably came from the play itself : " Along with them They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune teller, A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch, A living dead man. This pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as 'twere, out-facing me, Cries out I was possess'd." Act V. Sc. 1. Some " graver conceits " were produced on a subsequent night, including a Masque and a formal induction of the Ambassador and twenty-four Templarians into the Honour- able Order of the Helmet, together with " divers plots and devices," beginning with a dumb-show, which represented the reconciliation of the offended Templarians ; for their displeasure was not so deep but that a grand procession of GESTA GRAYORUM. 213 all the heroic examples of friendship, Theseus and Per- ithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Pylades and Orestes, Scipio and Laelius, and lastly Graius and Templarius, "arm in arm," before the altar of the Arch-flamen of the Goddess of Amity, surrounded with singing nymphs and fairies, was sufficient to restore and cement the ancient " league of brotherhood and love between the two Inns." The reading of the Articles for the regulation of the Heroical Order of the Helmet was followed with a variety of music and a banquet served by the Knights of the Order. This being over, a table was set on the stage before the royal throne, around which sat six privy counsellors, and the Masque proceeded. The Prince asked their advice, and each an- swered in succession. The first advised war ; the second, the study of philosophy ; the third, the eternal fame to be acquired by building ; the fourth, the absoluteness of state and treasure ; the fifth praised virtue and a gracious government ; and the sixth, pastimes and sports. The Prince preferred the last ; and the evening ended with dancing. On this occasion, the Lord Keeper, Lord Treasurer, and numerous courtiers and great persons, and among them the Earls of Essex and Southampton, were present The speeches of the Masque are given by Mr. Spedding as unquestionably the work of Bacon ; and the presence of these great officers of state may explain why the matter of them is made to point more nearly to those great reforms and improvements which he was so diligently urging upon the attention of his time and country ; for he sought, on all occasions, to mingle instruction with amusement. Mr. Spedding also gives the Articles that were drawn up for the government of the new Order of the Helmet, but he seems to think that these were not written by Bacon ; and he tells the story of these Revels in such a manner as to exclude the idea that Bacon was the actual author of anything but the Masque ; though he admits, as a probable 214 GESTA GRAYORUM. conjecture, that he had a hand in the general design, as he had a taste in such things, and did sometimes take part in them. In fact, his hand is also distinctly visible, both in the articles and in the play. The wit of both is of the same order, and decidedly in the Baconian and Shake- spearean vein. Being written at nearly the same time and as distinct parts of one and the same series of performances, we should not expect any identity beyond the general style and manner and those minute out-croppings and remote echoes of the same ideas, images, and words, of which the author himself would be almost, if not quite unconscious ; but which, nevertheless, are enough to enable an attentive ear to mark bis individuality ; as in the following instances, compared with the Articles : ORDER OF THE HELMET. 1 " Imprimis. Every Knight of this Honourable Order, whether he be a natural subject or a stranger bora, shall promise never to bear arms against his Highness' sacred person, nor his state ; bat to assist him in all his lawful wars, and maintain all his just pretences and titles; especially his High- ness' title to the land of the Amazons and the Cape of Good Hope.'' "Ant, 8. Where America, the Indies? Dro. 8, O! sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished with rabies, car- buncles, saphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whok armadoes of carracks to be ballast at her nose." Act III. Sc. 2. " Item. Xo Knight of this Order, in point of order, shall resort to any grammar-Tales oat of the books De Duello, or such like ; but shall out of his own brave mind and natural courage deliver himself from scorns, as to his own discretion shall seem convenient. 1 ' u Tbudt. O sir, we quarrel in print by the book ; as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Cour- teous: the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome : the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance ; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these yon may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that, too, with an 1 It' " At To* Like It, ActV.Sc.*.* ' i Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 329. * Both passages doubtless allude to the same book " De Duello," or " Of Honour and Honourable Quarrels," by Vincentio Saviolo, printed in 1594. White's Skaket. (Notes), IV. 384. GESTA GRAYORUM. 215 " Laun. Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack ; ' Via ! ' says the fiend ; ' away ! ' says the fiend ; ' for the Heavens, rouse up a brave mind,' says the fiend, ' and run.' " Mer. of Fen., Act II. Sc. 2. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall be inquisitive towards any lady or gentleman, whether her beauty be English or Italian, or whether with care-taking she have added half a foot to her stature ; but shall take all to the best. Neither shall any Knight of the aforesaid order presume to affirm that faces were better twenty years ago than they are at this present time, except such knight have passed three climacteral years." " jye. My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care, At eighteen years became inquisitive After his brother." Com. of Err., Act I. Sc. 1. " To conclude: no man can by care-taking (as the Scripture saith) add a cubit to his stature, in this little model of a man's body." Essay xxix. This word " twenty " is used in this manner as an ex- pletive, times almost without number, in both Bacon and Shakespeare : it is one of his words. " Item. Every Knight of this Order is bound to perform aD requisite and manly service, be it night-service or otherwise, as the case requireth, to all ladies and gentlemen, beautiful by nature or art, ever offering his aid with- out any demand thereof, and if in case he fail so to do, he shall be deemed a match of disparagement to any of his Highness' widows or wards-female ; and his Excellency shall in justice forbear to make any tender of him to any such ward or widow." " But to our honour's great disparagement." Act I. Sc. 1. " Eva. ... If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you." Mer. Wives, Act I. Sc. 1. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall procure any letters from his High- ness to any widow or maid, for his enablement or commendation to be advanced in marriage ; but all prerogative, wooing set apart, shall forever cease as to any of those Knights, and shall be left to the common laws of this land, declared by the statute Quia electionet Kbertc eue debenL" " Dro. S. I am an ass ; I am a woman's man, and besides myself. Ant. S. What woman's man ? and how besides thyself? Dro. S. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman; one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me. Ant. S. What claim lays she to thee? Dro. 8. Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse ; and she would have me as a beast: not that, I being a beast, she would have me; but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me. Ant. S. What is she? Dro. S. A very reverend body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of, without he say, sir-reverence. I have but lean luck in the match, and yet she is a wondrous fat marriage." Act III. Sc. 2. 216 GESTA GRAYOKUM. " Item. No Knight of this Honourable Order, in case he shall grow into decay, shall procure from his Highness [for his] relief and sustentation any monopolies or privileges, except only these kinds following : that is to say, upon every tobacco-pipe, not being one foot wide. Upon every lock that is worn, not being seven foot long. Upon every health that is drunk, not being of a glass five foot deep. And upon every maid in his Highness' province of Islington, continuing a virgin after the age of fourteen years, contrary to the use and custom in that place always had and observed." " Dro. 8. ... he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men, and gives them suits of durance." Act IV. Sc. 3. " Against the laws and statutes of this town." Act V. Sc. 1. " the great reverence and formalities given to your laws and customs, in derogation of your absolute prerogatives." Masque. " And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fadom deep." Rom. andJul., Act I. Sc. 4. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall have any more than one mistress, for whose sake he shall be allowed to wear three colours. But if he will have two mistresses, then must he wear six colours ; and so forward, after the rate of three colours to a mistress." It is probable that in the mind of the writer, these " col- ours " had some kinship with the " Colours of Good and Evil." " Nath. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously ; and as a certain Father saith Hoi. Sir, tell not me of the Father; I do fear colourable colours." Lace's L. L., Act IV. Sc. 2. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall put out any money upon strange returns or performances to be made by his own person ; as to hop up the stairs to the top of St. Paul's without intermission ; or any such like agilities or endurances ; except it may appear that the same performances or prac- tices do enable him to some service or employment; as if he do undertake to go a journey backward, the same shall be thought to enable him to be an ambassador into Turkey." " King. This is the English, not the Turkish court ; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry, Harry." 2 Hen. IV., Act V. Sc. 2. " Eno. [Speaking of Cleopatra]. I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street." Ant. and Cleo. Act II. Sc. 2. " K. Hen. . . . Shall not thou and I, between St. Denis and St. George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople, and take the Turk by the beard? " Hen. V., Act V. Sc. 2. GESTA GRAYORUM. 217 " Such a man Might be a copy to these younger times ; Which, follow'd well, would demonstrate them now But goers backward." All '* Well, Act I. Sc. 2. " or I would send them to the Turk, to make eunuchs of." Ib. Act II. Sc. 3. " Item. No Knight of this Order that hath had any license to travel into foreign countries, be it by map, card, sea, or land, and hath returned from thence, shall presume upon the warrant of a traveller to report any extra- ordinary varieties ; as that he hath ridden through Venice on horseback post, or that in December he sailed up the Cape of Norway, or that he hath travelled over the most part of the countries of Geneva, or such like hyperboles, contrary to the statute Propterea quod diversot terrarwn ambitus errant et vagantur, etc." " Extraordinary varieties " is particularly Baconian. " Could all my travels warrant me they live." Act I. Sc. 1. " sweet travelling through the universal variety." Masque. " Ant. S. What 's her name ? Dro. S. Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that is, an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip. Ant. S. Then she bears some breadth ? Dro. S. No longer from head to foot, than from hip to hip : she is spherical, like a globe ; I could find out countries hi her." Act III. Sc. 2. And then, the countries are named much in the same style of hyperbole as in this article, and with even greater freedom of wit, as any one may see by reference to the play ; and in the " Love's Labor 's Lost," written a few years prior to this date, we find his mind running on the same key, as thus : " Taffata phrases, silken terms precise, Three pil'd hyperboles, spruce affection, Figures pedantical." Act V. Sc. 2. And it is Bacon who says, " That the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing bnt love." Essay x. " Bmi. Will your grace command me any service to the world's end ? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes, that you can devise to set me on ; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard ; do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy." Much Ado, Act II. Sc. 1. 218 GESTA GRAYORUM. " Item. Every Knight of this Order shall do his endeavour to be in the books of the worshipful citizens of the principal city next adjoining to the territories of Purpoole ; and none shall unlearnedly, or without booking, pay ready money for any wares or other things pertaining to the gallantness of his Honour's Court ; to the ill example of others, and utter subversion of credit betwixt man and man." " Mer. How is the man esteem' d here in the city? Aug. Of very reverend reputation, sir, Of credit infinite, highly belov'd, Second to none that lives here in the city." Act V. Sc. 3. " Alas, poor women ! make us but believe, Being compact of credit, that you love us." Act III. Sc. 2. " Jfm. Every Knight of this Order shall apply himself to some or other virtuous qualitv or ability of learning, honour, or arms : and shall not think it sufficient to come into his Honour's presence-chamber in good apparel only, or to be able to keep company at play or gaming. For such it is already determined that they be put and taken for implements of household, and are placed in his Honour's inventory." " Oliv. O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried ; and every particle, and utensil, labell'd to my will: as, item, too lips, indifferent red; item, two gray eyes with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.'' Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 5. " Item. Every Knight of this Order shall endeavour to add conference and experience to reading; and therefore shall not only read and peruse Guizo, the French Academy, Galiatto the Courtier, Plutarch, the Arcadia, and the Neoterical writers, from time to time ; but also frequent the theatre and such like places of experience ; and resort to the better sort of ordinaries for conference, whereby they may not only become accomplished with civil conversation and able to govern a table with discourse ; but also sufficient, if need be, to make epigrams, emblems, and other devices appertaining to his Honour's learned revels." " Once this, Your long experience of her wisdom, Her sober virtue, years, and modesty, Plead on her part some cause to you unknown." Act III. Sc. 1. " Adr. It was the copy of our conference." Act V. Sc. 1. " What ! nothing but tasks, nothing but working days ? No feasting, no music, no dancing, no triumphs, no comedies, no love, no ladies? Let other men's lives be as pilgrimages, because they are tied to divers necessities and duties ; but princes' lives are as progresses, dedicated only to variety and solace." Masque. " In the afternoon We will with some strange pastime solace them, Such as the shortness of the time can shape ; GESTA GRAYORUM. 219 For revels, dances, masques, and merry hours, Fore-run fail Love, strewing her way with flowers."' Love's Labor 's Lost, Act IV. Sc. 3. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall give out what gracious words the Prince hath given him, nor leave word at his chamber, in case any come to speak with him, that he is above with his Excellency, nor cause his man when he shall be in any public assembly to call him suddenly to go to the Prince, nor cause any packet of letters to be brought at dinner or supper- tune, nor say that he had the refusal of some great office, nor satisfy suitors to say his Honour is not in any good disposition, nor make any narrow observation of his Excellency's nature and fashions, as if he were inward privately with his Honour; contrary to the late inhibition of selling of smoke." " Adr. What observation mad'st thou in this case, Of his heart's meteors tilting in his face? " Act IV. Sc. 2. " Lucio. Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the Duke." Meas.for Men*., Act III. Sc. 2. " Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs." Rom. andJ., Act I. Sc. 1. " They shoot but calm words, folded up in smoke, To make a faithless error in your ears." K. John, Act II. Sc. 1. " Wherefore, first of all, most virtuous Prince, assure yourself of an inward peace." Masque " Bene. And though you know my inwardness and love Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio." Much Ado, Act IV. Sc. 1. " Opinion is a master-wheel in these cases : that courtier who obtained a boon of the emperor, that he might every morning at his coming into the presence merely whisper him in the ear, and say nothing, asked no un- profitable suit for himself." Advice to Villiers. " Fed. ... If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of being near their master." 2 Hen. I V. t Act V. Sc. 1. " A servant or a favourite, if he be inward and no apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption." Essay of Great Place. " Who is most inward with the Duke ? " Rich. III., Act III. Sc. 4. " Arm. Sweet smoke of rhetoric ! " Love's L. L., Act III. Sc. 1. " Arm. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure you, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let it pass. . . . By the world, I recount no fable : some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world; but let that pass." /xwe'g L. L., Act V. Sc. 1. " Item. No Knight of this Order shall be armed for the safeguard of his countenance with a poke in his mouth in the nature of a tooth-picker, or 220 GESTA GRAYOKUM. with any weapon in his hand, be it stick, plume, wand, or any such like. Neither shall he draw out of his pocket any book, or paper, to read, for the same intent; neither shall he retain any extraordinary shrug, nod, or any familiar motion or gesture, to the same end ; for his Highness of his gracious clemency is disposed to lend his countenance to all such Knights as are out of countenance." " Ant. E. And with no face, as 'twere, out-facing me." Act V. Sc. 1. " Hot. I will not be put out of countenance. Bir. Because thou hast no face. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now, forward ; for we have put thee in countenance. Hoi. You have put me out of countenance. Bir. False : we have given thee faces. Hoi. But you have out-fac'd them all." Love's L. L., Act V. Sc. 2. " Bast. . . . Now your traveller. He and his tooth-pick at my worship's mess; And when my knightly stomach is suffic'd, Why then I suck my teeth, and catechize My picked man of countries. . . . And talking of the Alps and Apennines, The Pyrenean and the river Po, It draws toward supper, in conclusion so. But this is worshipful society, And fits the mounting spirit, like myself; For he is but a bastard to the time, That doth not smack of observation ; And so am I, whether I smack, or no ; And not alone in habit and device, Exterior form, outward accoutrement, But from the inward motion to deliver Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth." K. John, Act 1. Sc. 1. " Item. No Knight of this Order that weareth fustian cloth, or such statute apparel, for necessity, shall pretend to wear the same for the new fashion's sake." " Luc. Your fellow Tranio here, to save my life, Puts my apparel and my count'nance on, And I for my escape have put on his. For in a quarrel, since I came ashore, I kill'd a man, and fear I was descried." Tarn, of the Shrew, Act I. Sc. 1. " Tran. 'Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion; Yet oftentimes he goes but mean apparell'd." Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2. GESTA GRAYOROI. 221 " hem. Xo Knight of this Order in walking the streets or other places of resort, shall bear his hands in his pockets of his great rolled hose with the Spanish wheel, if it be not either to defend his hands from the cold, or else to guard forty shillings sterling, being in the same pockets." " Ittni, No Knight of this Order shall lay to pawn his Collar of Knight- hood for an hundred pounds; and if he do, he shall be ipgo facto discharged; and it shall be lawful for any man whatsoever that will retain the same Collar for the term aforesaid, forthwith to take upon him the same Knight- hood, by reason of a secret virtue in the Collar; for in this order it is holden for a certain rule that the Knighthood followeth the Collar, and not the Collar the Knighthood." " OrL He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him. Con. By my faith, sir. but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey; 'tis a hooded valour, and when it appears it will bate." Henry V., Act III. Sc. 7. " Item. That no Knight of this Order shall take upon him the person of a malcontent, in going with a more private retinue than appertained! to his degree, and using but certain special obscure company, and commending none but men disgraced and out of office ; and smiling at good news, as if he knew something that were not true ; and making odd notes of his High- ness' reign, and former governments ; or saying that his Highness' sports were well sorted with a play of Errors ; and such like pretty speeches of jest, to the end that he may more safely utter his malice against his Excel- lency's happiness; upon pain to be present at all his Excellency's most glorious triumphs." Considering that these Revels were got up in imitation of the former occasion, when there was a " Lord of Mis- rule " and a mock-trial for the " disorders," it is altogether probable that these Articles were prepared beforehand, as the play certainly must have been, and that the humor of " a play of Errors " sorting with " his Highness' sports " was a part of the original programme, and not an afterthought. " the difficulties and errors in the conclusion of nature." Masque. "Ant. S. And thereupon these errors all arose." Act V. Sc. 1. "Lew. And, sure, unless you send some present help, Between them they will kill the conjurer." Act V. Sc. 1. " or in pretty scorns or disdains to those that seemed to doubt of him." Hist, of Hen. VI I. " an index and obscure prologue." Othello, Act II. Sc. 1. "certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Anna- do." Love't L. L., Act V. Sc. 1. 222 GESTA GRAYORUM. "Lastly. All the Knights of this Honourable Order and the renowned Sov- ereign of the same shall yield all homage, loyalty, unaffected admiration, and all humble service, of what name or condition soever, to the incomparable Empress of the fortunate Island." The Masque itself alludes both to the Articles and the play in such manner as rather to indicate that the three performances were all of one piece, and came from one and the same source ; especially if it be considered, that they must all have been written before the Revels began ; and this is further evident from the fact that among the titles of the Prince, on the first day, was that of " Knight and Sovereign of the Honourable Order of the Helmet," in like manner as before, when the Prince was named " Patron of the Honourable Order of Pegasus," and that in the em- blazonry of arms the Prince of Purpoole took "for his Highness' crest the glorious planet Sol, coursing through the twelve signs of the Zodiack or celestial globe, whereupon the nod fills Arctick and Antartick, with this motto : Dum totum peregravent orbem " ; of which there would seem to be a kind of reminiscence in these lines from the " Troilus and Cressida : " " Degree being vizarded, The unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order: And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other." Act I. Sc. 3. And the resemblances between the masque and the play, if less numerous than those between the play and the articles, are not less striking when they occur, as for in- stance these : " No conquest of Julius Caesar made him so renowned as the Calendar." Masque. "And you the calendars of their nativity." Play, Act V. Sc. 1. GESTA GRAYORUM. 223 " Have care that your intelligence, which is the light of your state, do not go out, or burn dim or obscure." Masque. As a part of the order of the sports, on the day of the Prince's coronation, it is stated that " Lucy Negro, Abbess of Clerkenwell, holdeth the nunnery of Clerken- well with the lands and privileges thereunto belonging of the Prince of Purpoole, by night service in caudd, and to find a choir of nuns, with burning lamps, to chaunt Placebo to the gentlemen of the Prince's Privy Chamber on the day of his Excellency's coronation." Nichols', III. 270: Geeta. "Z>ro. . He chid the sisters, When first they put the name of King upon me, And bade them speak to him ; then, prophet-like, They hail'd him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding." Act III. Sc. 1. The fourth act opens with the witches' incantation, which is immediately followed by the Vision of future history, with the prerogative of Deity stamped upon it of making all times one duration, thus : " Act IV. Sc. 1. A Dark Cave. [ Thunder. An Apparition of an armed Head rises.] Macb. Tell me thou unknown power, 1 Witch. He knows thy thought: Hear his speech, but say thou naught." The apparitions then rise in succession and deliver their prophetic speeches, when the play proceeds : "Macb. ... Tell me, (if your art Can tell so much,) shall Banquo's issue ever Reign in this kingdom ? Witch. Seek to know no more. Macb. I will be satisfied : deny me this, MACBETH. VISIONS. 299 And an eternal curse fall on you ! Let me know All. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart ! Come like shadows, so depart. [Eight Kings now appear in order. Macb. What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Another yet ? A seventh ? I '11 see no more : And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass, Which shows me many more ; and some I see, That two-fold balls and treble sceptres cany. Horrible sight! Ay, now, I see, 't is true; For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his. What ! is this so ? " Macb. Time, thou antitipafst my dread exploits : The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, Unless the deed go with it." Surely, this poetry was written to illustrate this philos- ophy, and that, too, by one who understood, that it belonged to the nature of dramatic poetry to illustrate it very well ; for, as Sir Philip Sidney had said, " the Poet is the Mon- arch of all sciences " : at bottom, the Philosopher and the Poet are one. In the tragedy of Henry VIII., there is another vision, in which another of this author's modes of affecting the imagination is exhibited and equally well illustrated. Com- pare the following passages : "955. The body passive and to be wrought upon, (I mean not of the imaginant,) is better wrought upon, as hath been partly touched, at some times than others: as if you should prescribe a sen-ant about a sick person, whom you have possessed, that his master shall recover, when his master is fast asleep, to use such a root, or such a root. For imagination is like to work better upon sleeping men than men awake ; as we shall show when we handle dreams. ... It is certain that potions, or things taken into the body; incenses and perfumes taken at the nostrils; and ointments of some parts do naturally work upon the imagination of him that taketh them." . . The second is the exposition of natural dreams, which discovered! the state of the body by the imaginations of the mind." Nat. Hi ft. 514. " Act IV. Sc. 2. Kimbolton. [Enter KATHERINE, Dowager, sick ; led between GRIFFITH and PATUESCE.] Grif. How does your Grace ? Kath. 0, Griffith, sick to death: . . . Patience, be near me still ; and set me lower : 800 MACBETH. VISIONS. I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith, Cause the musicians play me that sad note I nam'd my knell, whilst I sit meditating On that celestial harmony I go to. [Sad and solemn music. Grif. She is asleep : Good wench, let 's sit down quiet, For fear we wake her: Softly, gentle Patience. The Vision. Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six Personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces ; branches of bays, or palm, in their hands. They first congee vnto her, and then dance ; and at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head; at which the other four make reverend courtesies; then, the two that held the garland deliver the same to the other next tico, who observe the same order in their changes, and holding the garland over her head. Which done, they deliver the same garland to the last two, who likewise observe the same order ; at which (as it were by inspiration) she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to Heaven : and so in their dancing, they vanish, carrying the garland with them. The music continues. Kath. Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone, And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye i Grif. Madam, we are here. Kath. It is not you I call for. Saw ye none enter since I slept ? Grif. None, madam, Kath. No ? Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop Invite me to a banquet, whose bright faces Cast thousand beams upon me like the sun ? They promis'd me eternal happiness, And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel I am not worthy yet to wear : I shall Assuredly. Grif. I am most joyful, madam, such good dreams Possess your fancy." And so, the end turns upon dreams as in the extracts from Bacon. Here, as in many other instances, the similitude is more in the idea and matter than in the language ; and that similitude is just such as would be most likely to occur, if we suppose the author to have been engaged, at the same time, upon a scientific study of the same subjects. There should be strong resemblance without absolute identity ; and that we have, in the sick person, attended by a servant, in a weak and passive state of body and somewhat exalted state of mind, dwelling on the celestial harmonies, the vision MACBETH. VISIONS. 301 producing the effect on the imagination by the influence of the garlands and dancing, perfumes taken at the nostrils, and the tripping performances, as carefully directed ; not roots, this time, but branches of bays, or palm ; the im- agination more easily worked upon, sleeping than awake ; and the conclusion, in both cases, running upon dreams that possess the fancy. It is certain that Bacon was at work upon this portion of the great Instauration, and kindred topics were in his mind, during the period in which these particular plays were produced. And it may be said to be true, generally, (what is one of the most convincing kinds of proof,) that the most striking parallel passages found in any prose work of his, the date of which can be approximately fixed, are more especially confined to one or two plays, which must have been written, and were, in fact, produced, at about the same time at which that particular work may have been, or was in fact written, though not published until some years afterwards, as is true in some instances. Still another example may be cited from the " Macbeth." Compare the words and topics of the following sentences, which are to be found within the compass of two or three pages in the Natural History, touching " the secret virtue of sympathy and antipathy," 1 with the witches' incantation in the opening of the fourth act, thus : " There be many things that work upon the spirits of man by secret sympathy and antipathy: ... tail of a dog or cat; . . . the flesh of the hedge-hog is said to be a great drier " : "1 Witch. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. 2 W. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd. 3 W. Harpier cries, 'T is time, 't is time." " The blood-stone good for bleeding at the nose, by astriction and cooling of the spirits. Query, if the stone taken out of the toad's head be not of the like virtue ; for the toad loveth shade and coolness : for that being poison- ous themselves, they draw the venom to them from the spirits " : i Nat. Hiit., 964-998; Works, (Boston), V. 149-157. 802 MACBETH. VISIONS. " 1 Witch. Round about the cauldron go : In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under coldest stone, Days and nights hast thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' th' charmed pot All. Double, double toil and trouble ; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." " The writers of natural magic commend the wearing of the spoil of a snake ; . . . The writers of natural magic do attribute much to the virtues that come from the parts of li ving creatures ; so as they be taken from them, the creatures remaining still alive ; as if the creatures still living did infuse some immateriate virtue and vigour into the part severed " : " 2 W. Fillet of a fenny snake In the cauldron boil and bake : Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble. All. Double, double toil and trouble ; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." "The trochisk of vipers, . . . the guts or skin of a wolf, a beast of great edacity ; Mummy hath great force in staunching of blood ; ... the white of an egg, or blood, mingled with salt water, ... for all life hath a sympathy with salt, . . . rings of sea-horse teeth, . . . henbane, hemlock. The ointment that witches use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves, ... the moss upon the skull of a dead man unburied. So to procure easy travails of women, . . . the toad-stone likewise helpeth." " Pius Quintus, at the very time when that memorable victory was won by the Christians against the Turks, at the naval battle of Lepanto, being then hearing of causes in the consistory, brake off suddenly, and said to those about him, It is now more time we should give thanks to God for the great victory he has granted us against the Turks: it is true that victory had a sympathy with his spirit ; for it was merely his work to conclude that league. It may be that revelation was divine : but what shall we say 'then to a number of examples amongst the Grecians and Romans ? where the people being in theatres at plays, have had news of victories and over- throws some few days before any messenger could come." Essay. " 3 W. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf; Witches' mummy ; maw and gulf Of the ravin' d salt-sea shark; Root of hemlock, digg'd i' th' dark ; PARALLELISMS. 303 Liver of blaspheming Jew; Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse: Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips; Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab : Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. All. Double, double toil and trouble ; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." "The heart of an ape is said to make dreams also. . . . The skin of a sheep devoured by a wolf moveth itching; ... by working upon the spirit of some that cometh to the witch " : " 2 W. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good. 2 W. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes : Open locks, whoever knocks. [Enter MACBETH." So, in the " As You Like It," we have these lines : " Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." Act II. Sc. 1. And certainly, it is not possible to doubt that this charm was compounded, concocted, and constructed out of this same quarry of materials ; nor is it at all probable, if not quite impossible, that William Shakespeare could ever have had access to it. 6. PARALLELISMS. These parallelisms in topics and whole passages, in sub- ject, idea, and language, may furnish the most effective and satisfactory kind of proof ; for it is evidence that appeals to the most common standard of judgment. Higher and more general grounds of argument may be still more conclusive to minds that are able to appreciate them. To all such any further exhibition of this kind of evidence might seem to be superfluous ; but the demonstration must be made as 304 PARALLELISMS. ciear, perfect, and complete as possible, that every one may be satisfied. That this argument may have full force, all possibility of plagiarism, borrowing, or imitation, must be excluded. In the several instances which have already been stated, the fact has been made to appear, as it will be in many more, that the works of Bacon, in which the most evident parallelism is found, were not printed until after the plays in question had appeared ; and this, of course, excludes the possibility that Shakespeare could have drawn from Bacon, in these instances ; and this is enough effec- tually to establish the entire proposition. On the other hand, is it possible that Bacon may have borrowed from William Shakespeare ? The very question would seem to be next to absurd. But let us look at the matter. Francis Bacon had been four years at the bar, and was twenty-five years of age, when William Shakespeare is supposed to have come to London, and joined the theatre as an under- actor, in 1586-7, at the age of twenty-two. He was already a finished scholar, well stored in all the learning of the ancients, or of his own time, an accomplished master in English and Latin composition, a skilful observer and in- terpreter of Nature in all her departments, familiar with the manners of the highest society, and, in a word, well-furnished at all points for a beginning in this kind of writing ; and to suppose such a man would have any occasion to borrow resources of thought, art, style, manner, or diction, from an unlearned under-actor of the Globe Theatre, would be to conceive it possible for a rich man to be made richer by plundering a beggar. So, when, as in the story of the soothsayer, the story of Julius Caesar and the crown, Aris- totle's morals, the doctrine of witches, incantations, visions, prophecy, feigned history, and the immateriate virtues and secret sympathies and antipathies of things, in metaphysical ideas and scientific knowledge, in acquaintance with men and manners, with philosophy, history, and poetry, and in acquisitions of every sort, we find more in Bacon than is to PARALLELISMS. 305 be found in the plays themselves, and more than William Shakespeare could possibly have possessed, together with genius, art, wit, ability, and leisure enough to make the necessary use of his own in the way that pleased him best, it becomes utterly preposterous to imagine he was a plagiarist or an imitator of Shakespeare. Again, in several instances, as in the case of the " Macbeth " and the "Antony and Cleopatra" as compared with the Natural History and the Intellectual Globe, the " Romeo and Juliet " compared with the Fables of Cupid and Nemesis, the " Comedy of Errors" and " Midsummer Night's Dream" compared with the Masques, and many others, considering the dates of publication and approximate times of composi- tion, it is plain that the author must have been engaged upon the corresponding works, at about the same times, with scarcely a possibility of plagiarism either way ; and as more is found in Bacon's works than in the plays where the resemblances are greatest, it is a necessary conclusion, not only that Bacon did not borrow from Shakespeare, nor Shakespeare from him, otherwise than as Shakespeare was Bacon himself, but also, that he was himself the author of both the poetry and the prose. These works appeared from time to time, almost yearly, during a period of twenty-five years or more ; and it would be idle to imagine a continuous plagiarism of one another upon another, or a reciprocal exchange between them, for such a length of time, in works of the highest order like these. In both writings, the mode of thinking and the style of composition are incorporate with the man, and completely sui generis. No writer of the time, neither Ben Jonson, nor Marlow, nor Raleigh, nor Wotton, Donne, or Herbert, whose poetry approaches nearest, perhaps, of any. of that age to the Shakespearean vein, can be brought into any doubtful comparison with this author. Nor are these similitudes any merely borrowed gems set in a meaner gold. And what should be finally conclusive of the whole matter 306 PARALLELISMS. is, the profound reflection, with which the learned writer who, in fact, first made this discovery, sums up her verj luminous and eloquent view of the subject, namely, that ir him, we find " one, at least, furnished for that last anc ripest proof of learning, which the drama, in the unmiracu lous order of human development, must constitute ; thai proof of it, in which philosophy returns from history, fron: its noblest fields, and from her last analysis, with the secrei and the material of the creative synthesis, with the secrei and material of art." 1 The following instances of striking resemblances, in par ticular words and phrases, lying beyond the range of acci dental coincidence, or common usage, and not elsewhere made the subject of special comment, have been collated and will be given here in one body, by way of sample of the innumerable similitudes and identities that everywhere per vade these works ; for we, too, " will undertake, by collating the styles, to judge whether he were the author or no." " God hath framed the mind of man as a mirrour or glass, capable of the image of the universal world." Adv., II. 9. 2 " You do carry two glasses or mirrours of State." Speech, VII. 259. " If there be a mirrour in the world worthy to hold men's eyes, it is thai country." New Atlantis, II. 351. " Give me leave to set before you two glasses, such as certainly the like never met in one age; the glass of France, and the glass of England, . . . And my lords, I cannot let pass, but in these glasses which I speak of, . . . to show you two things." Charge, II. (Phil.) 389. " That which I have propounded to myself is, ... to show you youi true shape in a glass, . . . one made by the reflection of your own words and actions." Letter to Coke, V. 403. " whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirrour up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age .and body of the time his form and pressure." Sam., Act III. Sc. 2. 1 Delia Bacon ; Putnam's Magazine, Jan. 1856, p. 19. 2 The references by figures alone are to Montagu's Works of Bacon, Lond., 1825. PARALLELISMS. 307 " to make true direction of him his semblable is his mirrour." Ham. " Whose wisdom was a mirrour to the wisest." Hen. VI1L, Act 111. Sc. 8. " two mirrours of his princely semblance." Rich. 111., Act 111. Sc. 1. " You go not, till I set you up a glass Wherein you may see the inmost part of you." Ham., Act HI. Sc. 4. " Xor feels not what he owes but by reflexion." Tro. and Cr., Act III. t O " Good Lord, Madam, how wisely and aptly can you speak and discern of physic ministered to the body, and consider not that there is the like occa- sion of physic ministered to the mind." Apology. " the particular remedies which learning doth minister to all the dis- eases of the mind." II. 82. " Let that be a sleeping honour awhile and cure the Queen's mind in that point." Advice to Essex. " Macb. Cure her of that : Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd? Doct. .... Therein the patient Must minister to himself. Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I '11 none of it" Macb., Act V. Sc. 3. " But perhaps you will ask the question whether it be not better, ... Yet it is a greater dignity of mind to bear evils by fortitude and judgment, than by a kind of absenting and alienation of the mind from things present to things future, for that it is to hope. . . . For neither is there always mat- ter of hope, and if there be, yet if it fail but in part, it doth wholly over- throw the constancy and resolution of the mind; . . . that you have out of a watchful and strong discourse of the mind set down the better success, ... so that this be a work of the understanding and judgment. . . . You have not dwelt upon the very muse and forethought of the good to come." Mc'L Sac., I. 69. " He did now more seriously think of the world to come." Hen. VII. " Owing to the premature and forward haste of the understanding, and its jumping or flying to generalities." Nov. Org., 64. " And first of all it is more than time that there were an end and surcease made of this immodest and deformed manner of writing, whereby matter of religion is handled in the style of the stage." Church Contr., VII. 32. " Ham. To be, or not to be ; that is the question : Whether 't is nobler in the mind .... And makes us rather bear the ills we hare, Than fly to others that we know not of ? 308 PARALLELISMS. Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Ham., Act III. Sc. I. " and catch, With his surcease, success ; but that this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases, We still have judgment here." Macb., Act 1. Sc. 7. " the advancement of unworthy persons." Essay, XV. " and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes." Ham., Act III. Sc. 1. " Cardan saith that weeping and sighing are the chief purgers of grief." Sp. VII. 306. " If I could purge it of two sorts of errors, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils." Letter, 1591. " When the times themselves are set upon waste and spoil." XIII. 269. " let 's purge this choler." Rich. II., Act 1. Sc. 1. " The king is not at the palace ; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy, and ah- himself." Win. Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3. " To purge him of that humour." Win. Tale, Act II. Sc. 3. " I can purge myself of many." 1 Hen. IV., Act III. Sc. 2. " We shall be called purgers." Jul. Cces., Act 11. Sc. 1. " Are burnt and purg'd away." Ham., Act I. Sc. 5. " And make Time's spoils despised everywhere." Sonnet c. " Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if 'T were a perpetual spoil." Cor., Act II. Sc. 2. t: For this giant bestrideth the sea, and I would take and snare him by the foot on this side." Duels, VI. 123. " Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus." Jul. Cos., Act I. Sc. 2. "His legs bestrid the ocean." Ant. and Cleo., Act V. Sc. 2. " Nevertheless, since I do perceive that this cloud hangs over the House." h, VI. 15. PARALLELISMS. 309 " And all the clouds that lower'd upon our house. " Jtith. III., Act I. Sc. 1. - " times answerable, like waters after a tempest, full of working and swelling, though without extremity of storm." II. 110. - " secret swelling of seas before a tempest." - Essay, XV. " an unusual swelling in the state," Pel Q. EKz., in. 472. " in such a swelling season." Hen. VII. " to such a true and swelling greatness." Letter. " adorned and swelling." I. 269. " And all things answerable to this portion." Tarn. Shrew, Act II. Sc. 1. " Why now, blow wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark ! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard." JuL Get., Act V. Sc. 1. " the swelling scene." Hen. V., Act I. Chor. " upon the swelling tide." K. John, Act II. 8c. 1. " The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms." Tit. And., Act IV. Sc. 2. " The venomous malice of my swelling heart." Tit. And., Act V. Sc. 3. " Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens." 1 Hen. IV., Act HI. Sc. 1. " to the swelling act of the imperial theme." Atacb., Act I. Sc. 3. [A favorite word in both.] y "as if one should learn to weigh, or to measure, or to paint the wind." Adv., II. " That tears shall drown the wind." Macb., Act I. Sc. 7. " To gild refined gold, to paint the lily." K. John, Act IV. Sc. 2. " I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath, which if they be not taken in their due time, are seldom recovered." Adv.,11. 287. "In the third place, I set down character and reputation, the rather because they have certain tides and seasons, which if they be not taken in . due time, are difficult to be recovered, it being extremely hard to restore a falling reputation." De Aug. " There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and hi miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat ; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures." Jvl. Get., Act IV. Sc. 3. 810 PARALLELISMS. "in the jaws of death." New All., II. 333. "Even in the jaws of danger and of death." K. John, Act V. Sc. 2. " Another cause may be, because all kind of heat dilates and extends the air, which produces this breeze as the sun goes forward Seeing progression is always from some certain place or bound, inquire dil- igently, or as well as thou cans't, concerning the place of the first begin- ning, and, as it were, the spring of any wind For the wheeling of the air continues also in the night, but the heat of the sun does not, .... Surely, such winds are tired, as it were, that can scarcely break through the thickness of the night air; and thence, thunders and lightnings and storms, with falling of broken clouds." Nat. Hist, of Winds. "Sold. As whence the sun 'gins his reflexion Ship-wrecking storms and direful thunders break ; So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come, Discomfort swells." Macb., Act I. Sc. 1. " Another precept of this knowledge is, to imitate nature." Adv., II. 288. " and be not carried away with a whirlwind or tempest of ambition." Ibid. 291. " the giddy agitation and whirlwind of argument." \ "to the use, and, as I may term it, service of my Lord of Essex." II. 248. " We have taken the loud and vocal, and, as I may call it, streperous carriage." VII. 474. " Hominis non est apes imitari." De Ira, XII. 374. "Imitari is nothing." Love's Labor 's Lost, Act IV. Sc. 2. " they imitated humanity so abominably, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as \ I may say) whirlwind of your passion." Ham., Act III. Sc. 2. " that afterwards kindled such a fire and combustion." Henry VII., III. 126. " As dry combustions matter is to fire." Ven. and Adon. " for kindling such a combustion in the state." Henry VIII., Act V. Sc. 3. "transported to the mad degree of love." Essay of Love. " That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft." Ham., Act III. Sc. 4. " You are transported by calamity Thither, where more attends you." Cor., Act I. Sc. 1. PARALLELISMS. 311 "And lastly, to discontinue altogether." II. 132. " and so either break it altogether, or defer any other delay." Letter, XII. 245. " let a man either avoid the occasion altogether." II. 133. " 0, reform it, altogether." Ham., Act III. Sc. 2. "Not altogether, sir." Lear, Act II. Sc. 4. " This is not altogether fool, my lord." Lear, Act I. Sc. 4. " I perceive it was not altogether your brother's evil disposition." Lear, Act III. Sc. 5. " indisposed to actions of great peril and motion." Bacon. " Enterprises of great pith and moment." Ham., Act II. Sc. 1. " But when matter comes to be censured or decreed." Wisd. of the Anc., III. 94. " it was perused, weighed, censured, altered, and made almost a new writing." Apol., VI. 275. [A word in the use of the Star- Chamber, meaning to adjudge.] "Edm. How, my lord, I may be censured." Lear, Act HI. Sc. 5. " Censure me in your wisdom, And awake your senses that you may the better judge." Jul. C(Zsar,ActIJI.8c.2. " we will both our judgments join In censure of his seeming." Ham., Act III. Sc. 2. "Hath censur'd him Already ; and, as I hear, the provost hath A warrant for his execution." Afeas. for Meas., Act I. Sc. 5. " But enough of these toys." Essay. "But these things are but toys." Letter, XII. 292. [A word much used in both.] " And such like toys as these." Richard III., Act I. Sc. 1. "shall we fall foul for toys." 2 Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 4. " These antique fables, nor these fairy toys." Mid. NighVs Dream, Act V. Sc. L " the recreations of my other studies." Letter. " some lease of quick revenue." Letter to Burgh. "But is there no quick recreation granted? " Play. 312 PARALLELISMS. " There was much ado and a great deal of world ; but this matter of pomp, which is heaven to some men, is hell to me, or purgatory, at least" Letter to Buck., 1617. "I am in purgatory." Letter. " all the vain pomp and outward shows of honour." Char, of Cos. " That I have much ado to know myself." Mer. of Fen., Act I. Sc. 1. " What a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love." Rich. II., Act I. Sc. 3. " such a deal of wonder is broken out." Win. Tale, Act V. Sc. 2. " For there will be a world of water shed." 1 Hen. IV., Act III. Sc. 1. " I should venture purgatory for 't" Oth., Act IV. Sc. 3. " purgatory, torture, hell itself." Rom. and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 3. "Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate thee." Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2. "Illuminate the eyes of our mind." Prayer, VII. 6. " The sun, the eye of the world." Ibid. 107. " the eye of this kingdom." New All. " For everything depends upon fixing the mind's eye steadily." Intr. to Nov. Org. " mine eye is my mind." Sonnet. " In my mind's eye, Horatio." Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2. " This is the only justification which I will use." Sitim. XVI. 352. " I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver, This only is the witchcraft I have used." Othello, Act I. Sc. 3. " The states of Italy, they be like little quillets of freehold." Dis. ofEliz., VII. 163. " That it was no mystery or quiddity of the common law." Arraign., VI. 359. " This construction is no mystery or quiddity of law." Speech. " That hath been the sconce and fort of all Europe." Dis., VII. 164. " Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer ? Where be his quiddits, now, his quiHets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks ? why does he suffer this rude knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? " Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1. " For opening I commend beads or pieces of the roots of Carduus bene- dictus also " Nat. Hist., 963. " To use ale with a little enula campana, germander, Carduus, sage, &c., to beget a robust health." Med. Rent. PARALLELISMS. 813 " spodium, hartshorn, frankincense, dried bull's pistle, gum tragacairtn. 1 " Phys. Htm. " succory, liverwort, wormwood, fennel-root, hart's tongue, daffodilly, Indian nard, holy thistle, camomile, rue, cordials, rosemary, rind of citron, amber, balm, pimpernel, cardamon, flowers of heliotrope, penny-royal, seed of nettle, sesamum, olibanum, civet, juniper, fat of deer, thyme, marigold, sweet marjoram, violets, mallows, fennel-seeds, c." Mtd. Rem. [The chapters of the Nat. Hist are called " centuries"] " Get you some of this distill'd Carduns Benedictus, it is the only thing for a qualm." JfttcA Ado., Act III. Sc. 4. " Fal. You dried neat's tongue, bull's pizzle, you stockfish." 1 Henry, Act IV. Sc. 4. " purge thick amber and plumb-tree gum." Bam., Act II. Sc. 2. " eats conger and fennel." 2 Henry 1 V. " When daffodils begin to peer." Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 2. "nettles of India." Twelfth Night, Act IT. Sc. 5. " sow it with nettle-seed." Tempett, Act I. Sc. 2. " instead of oil and balm." Tni. and Ores., Act I. " For you there 's rosemary and rue." Winter't Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3. " There 's fennel for you, there 's rue, there 's rose- mary." Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 5. " And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernel, And twenty more such names as these, Which never were, nor no man ever saw." Tarn. Sh. Intr. II. " With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn a century send forth." Lear, Act IV. Sc. 4. " crow-flowers, nettles, daisies." Henry IV., Sc. 7. " sesa ! " Lear, Act III. Sc. 4, 6. " lavender, mints, savory, marjoram; The marigold that goes to bed " Winter'* Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3. " Give the word. Sweet marjoram." Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6. " Whereby concealed treasures shall be brought into use by the industry of converted penitents, whose wretched carcases the impartial laws have, or shall, dedicate, as untimely feasts, to the worms of the earth, in whose 314 PARALLELISMS. womb these mineral riches must ever be buried, as lost abortions, unless he made the active medicines to deliver them." Pltys. Hem., VII. 215. " Cor. Whose bones I prize As the dead carcases of unburied men." Cor., Act III. Sc. 3. " Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimely ripp'd." Macb., Act V. Sc. 7. " Abortive be it, prodigious, and untimely." Rich. HI., Act 1. Sc. 2. " food for worms." 1 Hen. IV., Act V. Sc. 4. " a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him." Ham., Act IV. Sc. 3. " Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rioting hag." Rich. III., Act I. Be. 3. " In the deep bosom of the ocean buried." Rich. III., Act I. Sc. 1. " If we simply looked to the fabric of the world." XII. 73. " For by this unchangeable way, my lords, have I prepared to erect the academical fabric of this island's Solomon's House, modelled in my New Atlantis." Phys. Hems., VII. " relations of harmony to the fabric and system of the universe." XV. 200. " the conformation and fabric of the universe." Nov. Org., II. 47. " seeing that both the matter and fabric of the world are most truly re- ferred to a Creator." Wis. of the Anc. " so to mingle the elements as may conserve the fabric." Sp., VII. 429. " You may as well Forbid the sea for to obey the moon, As, or by oath remove, or counsel, shake The fabric of his folly." Winter's Tale, Act 1. Sc. 2. " When it stands against a falling fabric." Cor., Act III. Sc. 1. " And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve." Temp., Act III. Sc. 1. "to the king's infinite honour." VII. 341. " and a finite creature shall possess an infi axes, VII. 27. " the infinite flight of birds." New All, II. 345. "and a finite creature shall possess an infinite happiness." Para- doxes, VII. 27. PARALLELISMS. 815 " hath cost such an infiiiite deal of blood and treasure of our realm of England." VII. 195. " sweet travelling through the universal variety." Masque, XIII. 16. " but her favour infinite." Gent, of Ver. t Act II. Sc. 1. " purchased at an infinite rate." Mer. Wives, Act II. Sc. 2. " these fellows of infinite tongue." Hen. V., Act V. Sc. 2. " nor custom stale her infinite variety." Ant. and Cleo. Act II. Sc. 2. " how infinite in faculties." Ham., Act II. Sc 2. "a fellow of infinite jest." Ham., Act V. Sc. 1. " discovery of the infinite flatteries." Tim., Act V. Sc. 1. " She hath pursued conclusions infinite Of easy ways to die." Ant. and Cleo., Act V. Sc. 2. " In Nature's infinite book of secrecy, A little I can read." Ant. and Cleo., Act I. Sc. 2. " Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice." Mer. of Ven., Act I. Sc. 1. " But to our children raise it many a stage, That all the world to thee may glory give." Psalm, VII. 103. " Or that the frame was up of earthly stage." Ib. 101. " While your life is nothing but a continued acting upon a stage." Masque, XIII. 121. " While states and empires pass many periods." Ib. 116. " All the world 's a stage, And all the men and women merely players : And one man in his time plays many parts." As You Like. It, Act II. Sc. 7. " Howsoever I be frail and partake of the abuses of the times." Letter to the King. " for the poor abuses of the times want countenance." 1 Hen. IV., Act I. Sc. 2. " All as the chaff, which to and fro Is toss'd at mercy of the wind." Psalm, VII. 98. " He is often toss'd and shaken." Psalm. " The word, the bread of life, they toss up and down." Oi. Con. VII. 56. " He tosseth his thoughts more easily." Estay. 316 PARALLELISMS. " to command down the winds of malicious and seditious rumours wherewith men's conceits may have been tossed to and fro." Jud. Proc. " Strives in his little world of man to outscorn The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain." Lear, Act III. Sc. 1. "After late tossing on the breaking seas." Rich. II., Act III. Sc. 2. " back do I toss their treasures." Lear, Act V. Sc. 3. " thou hadst been toss'd from wrong." Per., Act V. Sc. 1. [A word much used by both.] "the great storm of mighty invasion, not of preparation." Dis. Eliz., VII. 161. " never stained with the least note of ambition or malice." Ib. 167. "with strong and mighty preparation." 1 Hen. IV., Act IV. Sc. 1. " this most dreadful preparation." Hen. V., Act V. Sc. 2. " give dreadful note of preparation." Hen. V., Act IV. Chor. " but styed up in the schools and scholastic cells." Nat. H., IV. 122. " and here you sty me On this hard rock ; while you do keep from me The rest of the island." Temp., Act I. Sc. 2. "and did pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consum- mation of thy workmanship." Prayer, VII. 9. " for princes being at the top of human desires." Adv. " being at the top of all worldly bliss." Hist. Hen. VII. " And wears upon his holy brow the round And top of sovereignty." Macb., Act IV. Sc. 1. " the top of admiration." Temp., Act III. Sc. 1. " like eyases that cry out on the top of question." Ham., Act II. Sc. 2. "competitor in top of all design." Ant. and Cleo., Act V. Sc. 1. " If He, which is the top of judgment." Meas. for Meas., Act II. Sc. 2. " superstitions and fantastical arts." Adv., II. "fantastical estates." Sp., XIII. 268. " but a certain fantastical and notional fire." Fab. of Cup., XV. 56. PARALLELISMS. 317 " according to the fantastic notions of Apollonius." XV. 195. " a kind of fantastic matter." XV. 49. " and telling her fantastical lies." Oth., Act IT. Sc. 1. " that it alone is high fantastical." Tw. Night, Act I. Sc. 1. " It was a mad fantastical trick." Meat, for Meat., Act III. Sc. 2 " Are ye fantastical ? " Macb., Act I. Sc. 3. " Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven." Meat, for Meas., Act II. Sc. 2. " fantastic garlands did she make." Ham., Act IV. Sc. 7. " and that was by that battle quenched and ended." Sp., VI. 232. " This is the cause to quench all good spirits." Letter. " and these vapours quench the spirits by degrees." Nat. Hist. " What hath quenched them." Macb., Act II. Sc. 2. " And quench'd the stellar fires." Lear, III. Sc. 7. " to quench mine honour." Ben. VIII., Act V. Sc. 2. " The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky." Psalm, VII. 105. " and so this traitor Essex made his colour the scouring of some noble- men and counsellors from her Majesty's favour." XVI. n. 4 F. " What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence ? " Macb., Act V. Sc. 3. " The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust." Tim., Act V. Sc. 3. " that neither beareth the greatness of alteration." Dis., VII. 150. " but that is an altering of government" Speech. "in removing or alteration of servants." VII. 65. " the alteration of religion." VII. 149. "to make so main an alteration in the Church." VII. 70. "and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration." Oth., Act V. Sc. 2. " He 's full of alteration." Lear, Act V. Sc. 1. " And changes fill the cup of alteration." 2 Hen. IV., Ad III. Sc. L " What an alteration of honour has Desperate want made." Tim., Act IV. Sc. 3. 818 PARALLELISMS. " The Church of Rome, a donative cell of the King of Spain." VII. 162. " the obscure cells of solitary monks." Int. of Nat. " that part of learning which answereth to one of the cells, domicils, or offices, of the mind of man; which is that of Memory." Adv. II. " bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks.'* Adv., II. " Your beadsman, therefore, addresseth himself to your Majesty for a cell to retire to." Letter to the King. " for it was time for me to go to a cell." Letter. " It were a pretty cell for my fortune." Letter. " not that I am more better Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell." Temp., Act I. Sc. 2. " it is a cell of ignorance." Gym., Act IV. Sc. 2. " sweet cell of virtue and nobility." Tit. And., Act I. Sc. 2. " O, proud death ! Whaf feast is toward in thine eternal cell? " Ham., Act V. Sc. 2. " the vapours and fumes of law." Sp., VII. 268. " and these vapours quench the spirits by degrees." Nat. His. " By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours, that did seem to strangle him." 1 Hen. IV., Act I. Sc. 2. " the local centre and heart of the laws of this realm." Sp., VII. 268. " this foul swine Lies now even in the centre of this isle." Rich. ///., Act V. Sc. 2. " whereof he donbteth not they have heard by glimpses." Sp., VII. 310. " the fault and glimpse of newness." Measure for Measure, Act I. Sc. 3. " That thou, dead corse, in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon." Ham., Act I. Sc. 4. " I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart." Letter, 1620. " Our pleasure therefore is, who are the head and fountain of justice in our dominions." VII. 327. " For there are certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." Adv., II. 295. PARALLELISMS. 319 " his majesty who is the fountain of grace." Sp., VII. 252. " the ready fountain of her continual benignity." Dit. of EKz. VII. 156. " the most sacred fountain of all grace and goodness." VH. 6. " the spring-head thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited." Ado. " The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Is stopp'd. Macd. Your royal father 's murder'd." Macb., Act II. Sc. 3. " The fountain from which my current runs." Oth., Act IV. Sc. 2. " the fountain of our love." Tro. and Cress., Act III. Sc. 2. " those legions of spectres and worlds of shadows, which we see hor- ering over all the expanse of the philosophies." Int. Globe, XII. 155. " With many legions of strange fantasies." K. John, Act V. Sc. 7. " she hath legions of angels." M er. Wives, Act I. Sc. 3. " Methought a legion of foul fiends." Richard III., Act I. Sc. 4. " move always and be carried with the motion of your first mover, which is your sovereign." Sp., VII. 259. [This " first mover " conies from Aristotle, who treats of the Divine Spirit, or absolute cause of all movement, as the " First Mover " (rrpwrov " 0, thou eternal Mover of the heavens, Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch ! " 2 Hen. VI., Act III. Sc. 3. " I think that all this dust is raised by light rumours and buzzes." Speech. " Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings." Essay, XXXI. " For I will buzz abroad such prophecies." 3 Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6. " Glos. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence, and the king, In deadly hate the one against the other." Richard III., Act I. Sc. L " well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God' works: divinity or philosophy." Adv., Spedd., VI. 97. PARALLELISMS. " and so by degrees to read in the volumes of his creatures." Int. Nat., Ibid. 36. " when the book of hearts shall be opened." Letter, 1620. " laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be se- cured from error; first the Scriptures revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing his power." Int. Nat., Ibid. 33. " I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it; In a great pool, a swan's nest." Cymb., Act III. Sc. 4. "Jul. 0, Nature, Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? " Rom. and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 2. "In Nature's infinite book of secrecy, A little I can read." Ant. and Cleo., Act I. Sc. 2. " Within the book and volume of my brain." Hamkt, Act I. Sc. 5. " The leaf of barrage hath an excellent spirit to repress the fuliginous vapour of dusky melancholy, and so to cure madness ; it will make a sovereign drink for melancholy passions." Nat. Hist., 18. " sable colored melancholy." Love's Labor's Lost, Act I. Sc. 1. " and dusky vapours of night." 1 Henry VI., Act II. Sc. 2. " borne with black vapours." 2 Henry VI., Act II. Sc. 4. " the sovereign'st thing on earth Was parmaceti, for an inward bruise." 1 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 3. " Because the partition of sciences are not like several lines that meet m one angle, but rather like branches of trees that meet in one stem." XVI. n. 4, App. " As many arrows loos'd several ways Fly to one mark ; As many several ways meet in one town; As many fresh streams run in one self-sea ; As many lines close in the dial's centre." Henry V., Act I. Sc. 2. { a t5aras Marius was general of the Romans against the Cimbers, who came with such a sea of multitude upon Italy." Apoih. 242. " Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air? " Adv. " Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnardine, Making the green one red." Macb., Act II. Sc. 1 (2). PARALLELISMS. 321 " But my level is no farther but to do the part of a true friend." Letter, 1623. " As for all direct or indirect glances or levels at men's persons." VII. 59. "for the other do level point blank at the inventory of causes and axioms." Nat. Hist. [A favorite expression.] " Everything lies level to our wish." Henry IV. " We steal by line and level." Tempest. " And hold their level with thy princely heart." Henry IV. " Can thrust me from a level consideration." 2 Henry 1 V. "And therefore level not to hit their lives." Richard III. " For that 's the mark I know you level at." Perickt. " no levell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold." Timon. " and be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others." Ess., "Pol. To thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 3. " The poets make fame a monster. They describe her in part elegantly; and in part gravely and sententiously. They say look how many featheri she hath ; so many eyes she hath underneath ; so many tongues ; so many voices ; she pricks up so many ears. This is a flourish. There follow excel- lent parables; as that she gathereth strength in going; that she goeth upon the ground, and yet hideth her head in the clouds : that in the day time she sitteth in a watchtower, and flieth most by night : that she mingleth things done with things not done and that she is a terror to great cities. " But now, if a man can tame this monster, But we are infected with the style of the poets." Essay of Fame. "Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues. Rum. Open your ears ; fbr which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks ? I from the Orient to the drooping West, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of Earth : Upon my tmigues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures: And of so easy and so plain a stop, 21 322 PARALLELISMS. That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it." 2 Henry IV., Ind. " And as for Maximilian, upon twenty respects, he could not have been the man." Hist. Henry VII. "so that acts of this nature (if this were one) do more good than twenty bills of grace." Letter, 1617. [" Twenty " is an habitual expletive of this author.] "Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows." Richard II., Act II. Sc. 2. "And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl." Gent, of Ver. " Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns." 3 Henry VI., Act III. Sc. 2. "twenty times his worth." 2 Henry VI., Act, III. Sc. 2. " twenty thousand times." Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2. " twenty times so many faces." Ibid., Act II. Sc. 4. " twenty times their power." Ibid., Act II. Sc. 4. " With twenty thousand soul confirming oaths." Gent, of Ver., Act II. Sc. 6. " I am yours surer to you than your own life ; for as they speak of the turquoise stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces before you have the least fell." Letter to Essex, XII. 292. " Tub. One of them shewed me a ring, that he had of your daughter for a monkey. Shy. Out upon her ! Thou torturest me, Tubal ; it was my turquoise : I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor." Mer. of Fen., Act II. Sc. 1. " Yet evermore it must be remembered that the least part of knowledge, passed to man by this so large charter from God, must be subject to that use, for which God hath granted it, which is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man." Int. of Nat. " Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence ; But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor Both thanks and use." Measure for Measure, Act I. Sc. 2. " With regard to the countenance, be not influenced by the old adage, ' Trust not -to a man's face.' "-De Aug., (Boston), IX. 272. PARALLELISMS. 323 " There 'a no art To find the mind's construction in the face." Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 4. " Deformed persons are commonly even with nature ; for aa nature has done ill by them, so do they by nature, being for the most part (aa the Scripture saith) void of natural affection: and so they have their revenge of natures. Certainly there is a consent between the body and the mind, and where nature erreth in the one, she ventureth in the other : the curse that the Psalm speaketh of, That it shall be like the untimely fruit of a woman, brought furth before it came to perfection Whosoever hath anything fixed in his person, that doth induce contempt, hath also a per- petual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn ; therefore all deformed persons are extreme bold But because there ia in man an election, touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline and virtue." Ess., I. 46. " which had been the spur of this region." Fel. Q. Eliz., I. 400. " Glos. For I have often heard my mother say, I came into the world with my legs forward The midwife wondered ; and the women cried, ' O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth ! ' And so I was; which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. Then, since the Heavens have shap'd my body so, Let Hell make crook'd my mind to answer it." 3 Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6. "Glo$. I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable, That dogs bark at me as I halt by them ; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descant oil mine own deformity : And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days." Richard III., Act I. Sc. 1. "Glos. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York." Ibid., Act I. Sc. I. " I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent" Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7. 32 i PARALLELISMS. As this list must have an end, let it be closed with a comparison of Bacon's " Office of Constables " (published in 1608) with the scenes of the Watch in the " Much Ado About Nothing", (written in 1599,) thus : " 4 Ques. Of what rank or order of men are they? Ans. They be men as is now used, of inferior, yea, of base condition ; and that they be not aged or sickly, in respect of keeping watch and toil of their place : nor that they be in any man's livery intended and executed for con- servation of peace, and repression of all manner of disturbance and hurt of the people, and that as well by way of prevention as punishment. To take the ancient on th of allegiance of all males above twelve years The election of the petty constable is by the people." "Dogberry. Are you good men and true ? Verges. Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul. Dogb. Nay, that were a punishment too good for them ; if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the Prince's Watch First, who think you is the most desartless man to be Constable '? 1 Watch. Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacoal, for they can read and write. Dogb. Why you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman." " and that the statutes made for the punishment of sturdy beggars, vagabonds, rogues, and other idle persons coming within your office be truly executed and the offenders punished Likewise the additional power which is given by divers statutes, it is hard to comprehend in any brevity." "Dogb You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the Constable of the Watch ; therefore, bear you the lantern. This is your charge. You shall comprehend all vagrom men ; and you are to bid any man stand in the Prince's name." "6 Ques. What if they refuse to do their office? Command them in the king's name to keep peace, and depart, and forbear." " 2 Watch. How if he will not stand ? How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us ? Dogb. Why then, depart in peace, and let the child awake her with crying 1 Watch. We charge you in the Prince's name, stand." "5 Ques. What allowance have the constables? Ans. They have no allowance, but are bound by duty to perform their office gratis ; which may be endured, because it is but annual." "Dogb for, for the watch to babble and talk is most tolerable and not to be endured." " and to inquire of all default of officers, as constables, ahtaslers, and the like And so much for the peace." PARALLELISMS. 325 "Dogb Well, you are to call at all the alehouse*, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed This is the end of the charge." " The use of his office is rather for preventing or staying of mischief than for putiishinent of offences Likewise the power which is given by dicers statutes or when sudden matter ariseth upon his view, or notorious circumstances, to apprehend offender*, and to earn- them before the justices of peace, and generally to imprison in like cases of necessity, when the case will not endure the present carrying of the party before the j ustices. the jury being to present offenders, and offences are chiefly to take light from the constable and to resist and punish ail turbulent per- sons, whose misdemeanors may tend to the disquiet of the people That two sufficient gentlemen or yeomen shall be appointed constables of every hundred; the sheriff thereof shall nominate sufficient persons to be bailiffs." "Dogb. You, Constable, are to present the Prince's own person : if you meet the Prince in the night, you may stay him Five shillings to one on 't, with any man that knows the statues, he may stay him: marry, not without the Prince be willing ; for, indeed, the watch ought to offend no man, and it is an offence to stay a man against his will." Act III. Sc. 3. "Sex. But which are the offenders, that are to be examined? let them come before Master Constable." Act 1 V. Sc. 2. "Dogb. If there be any matter of weight chances, call up me : keep your fellows' counsels and your own and good night." Act HI. Sc. 3. "Dogb. One word, sir, our watch, sir, have, indeed, comprehended two auspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your worship. Leon. Take their examination yourself, and bring it me. Doyb. It shall be suffigance." Act III. Sc. 5. "And the constable ought to seize his goods, and inventory them in presence of honest neighbours. 1 '' "Dogb. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter: an old man, sir, but in faith, honest as the skin between his brows. Verg. Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man living, that is an old man, and no honester than I Leon. Neighbours, you are tedious Dogb. Well, one word more, honest neighbours." Act III. Sc. 5. " or do suspect him of murder or felony, he may declare it to the constable, and the constable ought, upon such declaration or complaint, to carry him before a justice of peace: and if by common voice or fame any man be suspected If any house be suspected " " Dogb. If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your office to be no true man 2 Watch. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on him ? 326 PARALLELISMS. . Doyb. Truly, by your office you may ; but, I think, they that touch pitch will be defiled." Act III. Sc. 3. "Dot/I. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years?" Act IV. Sc. 2. " You shall swear that you shall well and truly serve the king.' 1 '' "Dogb. Masters, do you serve God ? Bor. Yes, sir, we hope Dugb. Write down that they hope they serve God." Act IV. Sc. 2. " There is a clerk of the peace for the entering and engrossing all pro- ceedings before the said justices Others there are of that number called justices of peace and quorum The chief of them is called custos rotulorum." "Dogb. We will spare for no wit I warrant you; here 's that [touching his forehead] shall drive some of them to a non. com. : only get the learned writer to set down our excommunication, and meet me at the goal." Act HI. Sc. 5. " Slen. In the County of Gloster, justice of peace and cor am. Slial. Ay, cousin Slender, and cust-a-lorum. Slen. Ay, and rotolorum too." Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1. The list of these similitudes might be greatly extended, without loss to the force of evidence which they exhibit : indeed, the comparison would be almost without limit, if it could be carried, in this form, to all those individual pecu- liarities, minute resemblances, more delicate touches, and finer shades of meaning, which impress the mind of the critical reader no less palpably, but which must lose their force when wrenched from the context in this manner. Like the character of a handwriting, the identity can be distinctly seen and felt, while the particulars wherein it consists can scarcely be pointed out, or described. But surely, here is enough to establish such a correspondence, nay, absolute identity, in the thought, style, manner, and diction, and in the distinguishing peculiarities of these writ- ings, as was never known to exist in the compositions of any two different authors that ever lived. It is safe to say no such list can be produced from the writings of any two authors of that or any other age : no similarity of life, genius, or studies ever produced an identity like this. And PARALLELISMS. 827 here, the vast difference which is known to have existed between these men, in respect of their education, studies, and whole personal history, would seem to preclude all pos- sibility of mistake. The coincidences are not merely such as might be attributed to the style and usage of that age : they extend to the scope of thought, the particular ideas, the modes of thinking and feeling, the choice of metaphor, the illustrative imagery, and those singular peculiarities, oddities, and quaintnesses of expression and use of words, which everywhere and in all times mark and distinguish the individual writer. CHAPTER V. MODELS. " For true art is always capable of advancing." 1 BACON. 1. "ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES." IT has already been observed, that Bacon had a purpose, though he broke the order of time, to attempt to draw down to the senses things which flew too high over men's heads in general, in other forms of delivery, by means of patterns of natural stories, and feigned histories or speak- ing pictures ; and it would seem to be very clear, that he had a similar object in view in those " illustrative examples," which were to constitute the Fourth Part of the Great In- stauration, which was never published, nor indeed written, otherwise than as we may have some part of it, or at least some exemplification of what it was in part to be, in these very plays. First, premising that after the Second Philos- ophy, in the previous parts, had succeeded in furnishing the understanding with " the most surest helps and precautions," and had " completed, by a rigorous levy, a host of divine works," nothing would remain to be done but " to attack Philosophy herself," and that, in a matter " so arduous and doubtful," a few reflections must necessarily be inserted, " partly for instruction and partly for present use," he pro- ceeds : "The first of these is, that we should offer some ex- " (Join contra, artem veram adolescere statuimus." Scala Intettectus, Works (Boston), V. 181; Trans, of Bacon, (Mont), XIV. 426-7; (Phil.), III. 519. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 329 amples of our method and course of investigation and discovery, as exhibited in particular subjects ; preferring the most dignified subjects of our inquiry, and such as differ most from each other, so that in every branch we may have an example. Nor do we speak of those examples, which are added to particular precepts and rules by way of illustration (for we have furnished them abundantly in the Second Part of our work), but we mean actual types and models, calculated to place, as it were, before our eyes [" sub oculos "] the whole process of the mind, and the con- tinuous frame ["fabricam "] and order of discovery in par- ticular subjects selected for their variety and importance. For we recollect that in mathematics, with the diagram before our eyes, the demonstration easily and clearly fol- lowed, but without this advantage, everything appeared more intricate and more subtle than was really the case. We devote, therefore, the Fourth Part of our work to such examples, which is in fact nothing more than a particular and fully developed application of the Second Part." 1 As it is said in his letter to Fulgentius, the great Instau- ration began with the De Augmentis Scientiarum as the first part ; the Novum Organum was the second part ; the Natural History was the third part ; these Examples were to be the fourth part ; the Prodromus (or forerunner of the Second Philosophy) was to be the fifth part ; and the sixth part would complete philosophy itself, and " touch almost the universals of nature." In this consummation of the Second Philosophy, he would, of course, arrive again at the Philosophia Prima, by that road, and in that way ; and so, philosophy itself would necessarily include both the First and the Second Philosophy in one Universal Science, which would amount to "Sapience," or "the knowledge of all things divine and human." 2 In this letter, the subject of the Fourth Part is introduced in connection with certain l Distribution of the Work; Works (Mont.), XIV. 22; (Spedd., I. 225). a De Aug. Sclent. 330 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. portions of the Natural History, concerning winds, and touching life and death, which he mentions as " mixed writings composed of natural history, and a rude and im- perfect instrument, or help of the understanding." He then proceeds to say, that this Fourth Part should contain many examples of that instrument, more exact and much more fitted to rules of induction." From these expressions alone it might be inferred that these examples were to be confined strictly to matters of physical inquiry ; but when it is considered, that the scope of his system always em- braced the whole field of knowledge (however divided into parts), of which his principal divisions were God, Nature, and Man, it may not appear incredible that this instrument or help of the understanding, and these examples, were to find an application to man and human affairs as well as to mere physical nature. Indeed, all question of this would seem to be set at rest by his Thirteen Tables of the Thread of the Labyrinth ; for, in the paper entitled " Filum Labyrinthi sive Inquisitio Legitima de Motu" these tables are enumerated in like manner as a part of Natural Philosophy, and in the Novum Organum, they are spoken of as included in the Fourth Part. The only specimens of them actually found at- tempted in his works are certain fragments, under such titles as Heat and Cold, Sound and Hearing, Dense and Rare, the History of Winds, and the like ; but that the en- tire series was to have a much wider range, is evident from his own " Digest of the Tables," which is as follows : " The first are tables of motion ; the second, of heat and cold ; the third, of the rays of things and impressions at a distance ; the fourth, of vegetation and life ; the fifth, of the passions of the animal body ; the sixth, of sense and objects ; the seventh, of the affections of the mind ; the eighth, of the mind and its faculties. These pertain to the separation of nature, and concern Form ; but these which follow pertain to the construction of nature, and con- ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 331 cern Matter. Ninth, of the architecture of the world; tenth, of great relations, or the accidents of essence ; eleventh, of the composition of bodies or inequality of parts ; twelfth, of species or the ordinary fabric and com- binations of things ; and thirteenth, of small relations or properties. And so a universal inquisition may be com- pleted in thirteen tables." 1 It is not easy to understand exactly what his meaning was ; but he probably considered motion as a phenomenal effect of force ; and there is no motion without moving power. Addressing himself to an inquiry into the nature, laws, limitations, and modes of power, or forces, by experi- mental methods, and finding the subject presented in nature in the shape of phenomenal facts as effects, he would naturally begin with a table of motions. Indeed, he defined Heat as being nothing else but motion, or moving force ; a doctrine which our more modern science, from Rumford to Tyndall, confirms. Pursuing the study to the end, he would expect to arrive, in time, at a knowledge of " the last power and cause of nature." But, at first, he would begin with the secondary powers or forces, taking the phenomenal effects as facts, in such subjects as heat and cold, the radiating motions producing impressions at a distance (what are now treated of under the names of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and the like), sound and hear- ing, density and rarity, the ebb and flow of the sea, winds, &c. He then conies to the motions of vegetable and ani- mal life, the passions, the senses, the affections, or emotions, and, at last, to the mind itself and the mental faculties. In all this, the inquiry looks to the form or law. Bacon's idea of form would seem to have been identical with what we would now call law of power giving form to itself. 2 And so this portion of the Tables would span the whole field of sensible and visible motions in nature, beginning with the i Works (Boston), VII. 170. 3 Trans, of Nov. Org., II. 2; Works (Boston), VIII. 168; 206. 332 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. mind of nature, or thinking power in the Creator, and end- ing in mind, or finite thinking power in man. The other portion concerned rather the architectural structure of the universe, the greater accidents or relative qualities of essences, the composition of bodies, the species of things, whether vegetable, animal, or mineral, and finally, the lesser accidents, relative qualities or properties of material things ; and all this concerned matter as it is presented to observation in nature, as such. It is plain we were to have Tables of the passions, the senses, the emotions or affections, and the faculties of the mind. There was to be not only a contemplative science, but an active science pointing to practical uses. And these illustrative examples of the Fourth Part may very well have been intended to embrace all branches of this " universal inquisition." In fact, so much is expressly declared in the Novum Or- ganum, thus : u It may also be asked (in the way of doubt rather than objection) whether I speak of natural philosophy only, or whether I mean that the other sciences, logic, ethics, and politics, should be carried on by this method. Now I cer- tainly mean what I have said to be understood of them all ; and as the common logic, which governs by the syllogism, extends not only to natural but to all sciences ; so does mine also, which proceeds by induction, embrace every- thing. For I form a history and tables of discovery for anger, fear, shame, and the like ; for matters political ; and again for the mental operations of memory, composition, and division, judgment, and the rest ; not less than for cold, or light, or vegetation, or the like. But, nevertheless, since my method of interpretation (after the history has been prepared and duly arranged) regards not the working and discourse of the mind only (as the common logic does), but the nature of things also, I supply the mind with such rules and guidance that it may in every case ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 838 apply itself to the nature of things. And, therefore, I de- liver many and diverse precepts in the doctrine of Inter- pretation, which in some measure modify the method of invention according to the quality and condition of the subject of inquiry." * This Fourth Part, then, was not to be strictly a system of psychology, but it was to arrive at a knowledge of the actual nature of things, in a visible representation of the whole process of the mind in the continuous fabric and order of discovery in these special and very noble sub- jects. The method was to be according to the quality and condition of the subject. He intimates also, that his method cannot be brought down to common apprehension, save by effects and works only. He does not desire to pull down or destroy the philosophy, arts, and sciences "at present in use," but is glad to see them " used, cultivated, and honored." But he gives " constant and distinct warn- ing, that by the methods now in use, neither can any great progress be made in the doctrines and contemplative part of sciences, nor can they be carried out to any magnitude of works," and that if works of magnitude are to be ac- complished in this kind, it must be done in his way. Again, he says, " discoveries are, as it were, new creations and imitations of God's works, as well sang the poet : " To man's frail race great Athens long ago First gave the seed whence waving harvests grow, And re-created all our life below." 2 This same purpose is expressed, again, with a still more distinct and unmistakable reference to something of this kind, in that introduction or preface to the Fourth Part, which is styled the " Scaling Ladder of the Intellect, or Thread of the Labyrinth," 8 in which he states that these " illustrative examples" (" exemplaria ") were to be " in the 1 Nov. Org., Works (Boston), I. 333; (Trans., VIII. Jb. 159). 2 Works (Mont.), XIV. 426-7 (Philad. III. 519), trans, by F. W.; Workt (Boston), V. 177-181. Wvrks (Boston), VIII. 161. 334 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. form which we think most agreeable to truth, and regard as approved and authorized " [" ut probatam et electam "]. Nor would he regard " the customary fashion " [" more apud homines recepto "] as absolutely necessary in all the parts of this formula, as if they must be one and inviolable ; for he did not think the industry and happiness of men were to be bound, as it were, to " a single pillar " [" ad colum- nam "]. It vyould seem to be very plain from the whole context, as well as from the use of this figure of the " single pillar," and this reference to the one and inviolable custom hitherto received among men, that he meant to allude to that indispensable and inviolable law of unity, which had always been imperiously required as an absolute rule of composition in all dramatic writing, ancient and mod- ern ; especially when it is distinctly declared, in the con- cluding sentence, that the subject, of which he was speak- ing, was no other than " true art," thus : " Nothing, indeed, need prevent those who possess great leisure, or have sur- mounted the difficulties infallibly encountered in the be- ginning of the experiment, from carrying onward the pro- cess here pointed out [" rem monstratam "]. On the con- trary, it is our firm conviction that true art is always capa- ble of advancing." [" Quin contra, artem veram adolescere statuimus."] The translation of " F. W.," taken from the edition of Montagu, is here followed. Mr. Spedding, ap- parently unable to make out the meaning of this passage, or, perhaps, not looking for this sense of it, seems to think that " this can hardly be what Bacon wrote," l and that possibly the manuscript was imperfect at the end ; but cer- tainly, if understood with reference to this view of the sub- ject, it will be found to be in keeping with the main tenor and purport of the whole tract. And probably this was as much as he intended to say then, on that head, and so stopped short there. Certainly, after this distinct intimation of his intent, we l Worlcs (Boston), V. 181, n. (1). ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 335 need not be surprised to find the ancient unities almost wholly disregarded in these plays ; nor that Coleridge should find them to be a new kind of dramatic romance, differing in genus from the ancient drama ; nor that they should answer admirably well to Bacon's conception of a representative visible history, a speaking picture, or a type and model of the whole process of the mind, and the con- tinuous fabric and order of discovery in the most noble subjects ; nor that they should partake of that sweet travel- ling through universal variety, which was to be the lot of him who should be able to climb the hill of the Muses. The " Winter's Tale " and the " Tempest " were both writ- ten in 1611. Some critics have supposed that Shakespeare, in the u Tempest," had a special purpose of showing that he could write a play which should strictly observe the ancient unities ; while others, like Mr. White, have noticed that the " Winter's Tale " is written in utter defiance of the one and inviolable rule : in this instance, for certain, the author would not be bound to " a single pillar." He puts sixteen years between two acts. Inland countries are brought to the sea. The Delphic Oracle, the King of Sicily, the Em- peror of Russia, and psalm-singing Puritans, are made to figure upon the same stage. And the Chorus of the fourth act, in the name of Time, gives such reason for it as at once to remind us of the promised disregard of the received custom, thus : " Time. I that please some, try all, both joy and terror Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error, Now take upon me, in the name of Time, To use my wings. Impute it not a crime To me, or. my swift passage, that I slide O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untri'd, Of that wide gap ; since it is in my power To overthrow law, and in one self-born hour To plant and overwhelm custom. Let me pass The same I am, ere ancient' st order was, Or what is now received: I witness to The time.- that brought them in: so shall I do 336 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. The glistering of this present, as my tale Now seems to it. Your patience thus allowing, I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing As you had slept between." Here is identity in both the thought and the language ; and can it be due to accidental coincidence, rather than to the habitual expression of one and the same writer, that we have here, also, the same figure of art growing (" adoles- cere ") and a scene growing ? And considering what these models should be, that were to place the whole order and process of discovery in particular subjects before the eyes ("sub oculos"), it is, at least, not clear that it could be anything else than precisely what Hamlet demanded of the dramatic art, namely, that it should hold the mirror up to nature ; and, according to the interpretation of Professor Gervinus, " that it should give a representation of life, of men and their operating powers, by which means it works indeed morality, but in the purest poetic way, by image, by lively representation, and by imaginative skill. To perceive and to know the virtues and crimes of men, to reflect them as in a mirror, and to exhibit them in their sources, their nature, their workings, and their results, and in such a way as to exclude chance and to banish arbitrary fate, which can have no place in a well-ordered world, this is the task which Shakespeare has imposed upon the poet and upon himself." l The New Atlantis was written expressly as a pattern of a natural story, and it can scarcely be accounted an acci- dental circumstance, that this same figure of the " pillar " appears, again, in connection with a pretty comprehensive conception of human works, in that " great miracle " which 'brought the canonical books of Scripture to the island of Bensalem, " in a great pillar of light," rising from the sea toward heaven, and so approaching the shore ; on behold- ing which, one of the wise men of Solomon's House fell i Shakes. C