(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<r farmer. Their eldest daughter, Susanna, was born in
O O '
May following ; but his latest biographer thinks there must
have been some preliminary espousals, in accordance with
a frequent custom of the time, as early as the summer of
1582. 1 After this date, his father appears to have fallen
into embarrassed circumstances. He was superseded in his
office of alderman, in 1586, for non-attendance, and was
presented as a recusant, in 1592, " for not coming to church
for feare of process for debt." There is indubitable evi-
dence that, for several years prior to 1587, different theat-
rical companies from London occasionally visited Stratford-
on-Avon (the native place of some of the actors), in some
instances, under the patronage of John Shakespeare and
other aldermen ; and it is highly probable that the son
William would be attracted to their company. There are
uncertain traditions also that, during this period, he had
been in the habit of drinking beer with the pot-house
clubs, hunting coneys for amusement, and poaching on the
neighboring deer-parks by way of romance, until he was
driven away from Stratford by the persecution of Sir
Thomas Lucy ; but whether from this cause, or driven by
stress of poverty, or merely drawn by the attractions of the
theatre, it appears that, about the year 1587. he went up to
London, carrying with him but a small stock of learning,
and became attached to the theatre in a very humble capac-
ity. Ben Jonson informs us that he had " but small Latin
i HalliwelL
4 EARLY LIFE.
and less Greek " ; and " rare Ben " must certainly have
known the truth of the matter. Indeed, it is plain his
learning must have been little enough, however obtained ;
and in this, all the traditions concur. Precisely how his
time was employed, during these nine years after leaving
the grammar-school, of course we cannot certainly know ;
but there is no intimation in anything that has come down
to us, that he was at all given to books, or to studies of any
kind. The employments in which it would seem to be
almost certain he must have been engaged, the circum-
stances which surrounded him, and the few details of his life
which have been preserved, would all go to exclude the
hypothesis of his having given any considerable attention
to letters or studies, in this period. There is no written
composition of his in existence, belonging to this time, and
no proof that there ever was any, except a mere tradition
of a lampoon upon Sir Thomas Lucy, of which no scrap
has been authentically preserved. The verses which later
traditions have attributed to him, whether as fragments of
this supposed lampoon, or as epitaphs and epigrams written
towards the close of his career, are, as any one may see,
but miserable doggerel at best, and might have been writ-
ten by the sorriest poetaster. With Halliwell and other
critics, though immaterial to our purpose, we may safely
reject them all as having no reliable basis of authenticity,
and as necessarily implying, on the supposition of such
basis, "a deterioration of power for which no one has
assigned a sufficient reason." l The critic who would find
a trace of the great poet in these performances, should
remember Bacon's caution to the interpreter of nature :
" If the sow with her snout should happen to imprint the
letter A upon the ground, wouldst thou, therefore, imagine
she could write out a whole tragedy as one letter ? " 2
1 Halliwell, 270.
2 Interp. of Nat., Works, by Montagu, (London), XV., 101 ; Temporis
Partus Mas., Works, by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, (Boston), VII., 30.
EMPLOYMENTS. 5
2. EMPLOYMENTS.
That his first employment, on coming to London, was
that of a link-boy, holding horses at the door of the theatre,
as some traditions represent, would seem to be very ques-
tionable ; but that it was not in any capacity above that of
a mere " servitor," or under-actor, his most careful biogra-
phers seem to admit as highly probable, if not quite cer-
tain. The first certain knowledge that we have of him
in London, however, is of the date of 1592, when there
seems to have been a distinct allusion to his name in
Greene's " Groatsworth of Wit," in which, apparently
speaking for himself and other writers for the stage against
the actors, " those Anticks garnisht in our colours," Greene
says : " Yes, trust them not ; for there is an upstart crow
beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart,
wrapt 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." l From this it may be
inferred that he was beginning to have some kind of repu-
tation as an author of plays, and, in 1593-4, the " Venus
and Adonis " and the " Rape of Lucrece " are dedicated to
the Earl of Southampton under his name. From this
time forward a few scattered notices of him have been
gathered up from contemporary records and documents
relating to purchases of lands, his money dealings with his
neighbors, and ordinary business transactions ; but, abating
all merely mythical traditions of uncertain origin, and the
impudent forgeries of these later times, no further authen-
tic reference to his position in the theatre occurs until
1598, when his name is mentioned by Meres as the reputed
author of several of these plays, and two of them are
printed with his name as author on the title-page, in that
year. That he was one of the inhabitants of Southwark,
l See Halliwell's Life, 144.
6 EMPLOYMENTS.
dwelling near the Bear Garden in 1596, seems to rest upon
very questionable authority; but, in 1597, he had purchased
New Place, in Stratford-on-Avon, where his family contin-
ued to reside until his death. In 1598, w.e find him lend-
ing money to his neighbors, and performing his part on the
stage ; and in 1599, he had succeeded in obtaining for his
father the grant of a coat of arms from the Herald's Col-
lege, which descended to himself in 1601. And in 1604,
when the perfected " Hamlet " had been produced, he had
become a leading manager and sharer in the Globe and
Blackfriars, and his name stood second only in the list of
patentees, " His Majesty's Servants." From this date until
1613, the personal notices that remain to us exhibit him as
being always very attentive to matters of business, rapidly
growing in estate, purchasing farms, houses, and tythes in
Stratford, bringing suits for small sums against various
persons for malt delivered, money loaned, and the like,
carrying on agricultural pursuits and other kinds of traffic,
with " a good grip o' the siller," and executing business
commissions in London for his Stratford neighbors, while
we are to suppose he was, at the same time, producing such
plays as the " Hamlet," the "Macbeth," the " Othello," the
" Lear," and the " Julius Caesar " ; whence it might cer-
tainly be concluded, that he had an excellent capacity for
business in addition to his other arts and superhuman gifts ;
but there is nowhere the slightest note or trace of his liter-
ary occupations.
He had now acquired a brilliant reputation and an ample
estate. It seems probable that he quit acting upon the
stage about the year 1608, and that, in 1610, he finally
retired from any active participation in the affairs of the
theatre, though he may have still continued to receive for a
time his share of the income as one of the largest proprie-
tors ; but how long, it is not certainly known. It would
seem probable, however, that he had parted with his inter-
est in the theatres sometime before the 30th of June, 1 613,
MANUSCRIPTS. 7
when the Globe theatre was destroyed by fire. It is known
that as late as March, 1613, he made the purchase of a
house in the Blackfriars ; and this is the last transaction in
which he is positively ascertained to have been concerned
in London. After this date, we hear of him only at Strat-
ford-on-Avon, attending to business and the ordinary affairs
of life, leisurely enjoying the social intercourse of his neigh-
bors and his family, until his death in 1616. Indeed,
throughout his life (as his most zealous biographer is
obliged to confess), "the best evidence we can produce
exhibits him as paying more regard to his social affairs
than to his profession." 1 And so, it would seem to be true,
as some still think, that, in the words of Pope,
" Shakespeare, whom you and every playhouse-bill
Style the divine, matchless, what you will,
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despight."
3. MANUSCRIPTS.
No original manuscript of any play, or poem, letter, or
other prose composition, in the handwriting of William
Shakespeare, has ever been discovered : none is known to
have been preserved within the reach of the remotest defi-
nite tradition. It does not appear by any direct proof that
the original manuscript of any one of the plays or poems
was ever seen, even in his own time, in his own handwrit-
ing, under such circumstances as to afford any conclusive
evidence, however probable, that he was the original author.
" I remember," says Ben Jonson, " the players have often
mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writ-
ing (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line."
We have only to suppose for a moment that the manu-
scripts may have been copied by him from some unknown
complete and finished originals, which were kept a secret
from the world, and this wonder of the players would be
i Halliwell, 194.
8 MANUSCRIPTS.
at once explained. Meres, in 1598, speaks of " his sugred
sonnets among his private friends," as if they had been cir-
culated in manuscript ; but even this does not exclude the
possibility of another having been the author, in the same
way, though in itself highly improbable at first view. That
he was universally reputed to be the author of these works,
in his own time, not merely by the public in general, but
by contemporary writers, his fellows of the theatre, the
printers and publishers, and some great personages, and
that the fact was never publicly questioned, in that age, nor
indeed until a very recent date, must be admitted, though
some evidence may be adduced herein, tending to show
that the contrary was known, or at least strongly suspected,
by some few persons at that day. It is enough here to
remark, that this reputation alone is not absolutely conclu-
sive of the question. No more is that other very pregnant
circumstance, the fact that the " Venus and Adonis " and
the " Rape of Lucrece " were dedicated to the Earl of
Southampton under the name of William Shakespeare ; for
it is clearly possible, however improbable at first view, that
even this may have been arranged and designed as a cover
for the real author. In short, there is no positive and
direct evidence in any contemporary record, fact, circum-
stance, or event, relating to Shakespeare, which is in itself
of such a nature that it must be accepted in his favor as
conclusive of the question of this authorship. He makes
no mention of his manuscripts, or literary property, in his
will ; nor is there a trace of evidence that they ever came
into the possession of his executors, or of any member of
his family. But for this there may have been the less occa-
sion, if we assume that the manuscript copies had all been
sold to the theatre, and that not a single duplicate copy
had ever been retained in his own possession. It might be
possible, indeed, that some of them may have been burnt
with the Globe theatre in 1613: when the Fortune was
burnt, in 1621, we know the play-books were all lost. It is
HIS LEARNING. 9
a wholly gratuitous assumption, however, though barely
possible, that they were heedlessly cast aside into old
chests, and suffered to be destroyed by fires, or that they
fell into the hands of ignorant persons to be used for waste
paper. If he had contemplated a revision of his works for
publication during his own life, from the accomplishment
of which he was prevented by sudden illness and death, it
is scarcely credible that he should not have given some
instructions to that end, either to his executors in his will,
or to some confidential friend on whom such injunction
would not have been lost. Heming and Condell give us
no intimation, in their Preface to the Folio of 1623, from
what source they had received " the true original copies " :
we are left to infer that they had gathered them up from
the theatres owned by the company.
4. HIS LEARNING.
Fpr the learning of Shakespeare, his knowledge of his-
tory and of the manners, customs, and literature of the
ancients, his acquaintance with foreign languages, his nat-
ural science and metaphysical philosophy, his skill in the
medical lore of his time, as also in the laws of England,
his familiarity with the manners of the Court and high
society, the vast range of his observation in all the realms
of nature and art, as well as in all that pertains to the civil
state, or to the affairs of private life, or to the characters,
passions, and affections of men and women, or to human
life and destiny, the subtle profundity of his intellect, and
his extraordinary insight into all the relations of things,
all this, and much more than can be stated, must wholly
depend upon the argument to be drawn from the internal
evidence contained in the writings themselves, not only
unsupported in any adequate manner, but for the most part
absolutely contradicted by the known facts of his personal
history It is apparent that this argument can have no
weight whatever in favor of William Shakespeare, until the
10 HIS LEARNING.
fact be established that he was really the autnor of these
works ; and this is the very question we have in hand.
The learning and philosophy of these plays of Shake-
speare, especially since the feeble attempt of Dr. Farmer
to make them appear to be possible for the supposed
author, have been a matter of wonder to editorial critics,
and a stumbling-block to all great writers, who have treated
of the subject. Even Dr. Johnson was willing to admit he
must have had " Latin enough to grammaticize his Eng-
lish," while conceding that Ben Jonson must have known,
and " ought to decide the controversy." 1 Pope, knowing
well enough that there was " certainly a vast difference
between learning and languages, thought it was " plain he
had much reading, at least," but was obliged, at last, to
declare that " he seems to have known the world by intui-
tion, to have looked through human nature at one glance,
and to be the only author that gives ground for a very new
opinion, that the philosopher and even the man of the
world may be born, as well as the poet." 2 Steevens and
Malone, after laborious research, undertook to produce a
list of the translations of ancient authors, known to have
existed in English in the time of Shakespeare, as the
source of all his classical erudition ; but it falls far short of
furnishing a satisfactory explanation of the matter, in our
day, and in the face of numerous instances to the contrary,
scarcely less decisive than this one, that the " Timon of
Athens " turns out to have been founded in great part upon
the untranslated Greek of Lucian ; 3 besides that it is now
clear enough to the attentive scholar, that this author drew
materials, ideas, and even expressions, from the tragedies
of Sophocles and Euripides, and even from Plato, no less
than from the Latin of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and
Tacitus, not to mention numerous others of the ancient
- 1 Johnson's Preface.
2 Pope's Preface.
3 Knight's Stud, of Shales. ,71; Luc. Opera (ed. Dindorf, Lipsise, 1858), I.
30-51.
HIS LEARNING. 11
classics, and apparently with the utmost indifference to the
question whether they had ever been translated into Eng-
lish or not.
Indeed, his learning took the widest range. Mr. Collier,
profoundly impressed by a certain frequency of legal terms
and expressions in the plays, is ready, thereupon, to add an
entire new passage to the known biography of William
Shakespeare, to the effect that, in his youth, he had studied
law in the office of an attorney, or, at least, a bailiff, at
Stratford ; and the learned essay of Lord Chief Justice
Campbell, 1 addressed to him upon the subject, comes to
this conclusion upon Shakespeare's juridical phrases and
forensic allusions : " On the retrospect I am amazed," says
his Lordship, " not only by their number, but by the accu-
racy and propriety with which they are uniformly intro-
duced." And he adds : " There is nothing so dangerous as
for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry."
He thought we might be "justified in believing the fact
that he was a clerk in an attorney's office at Stratford with-
out any direct proof of the fact," mainly relying, with Mr.
Collier, upon " the seemingly utter impossibility of Shake-
speare having acquired, on any other theory, the wonderful
knowledge of law which he undoubtedly displays." Never-
theless, his Lordship was constrained to warn his friend,
that he had not " really become an absolute convert " to his
side of the question ; nor did he fail to remark, that the
theory required us " implicitly to believe a fact, which, were
it true, positive and irrefragable evidence, in Shakespeare's
own handwriting " in the records of the courts, or in deeds
and wills written or witnessed by him, and preserved in the
archives at Stratford-on-Avon, might have been forthcom-
ing to establish it ; but, " after diligent search," none such
had been, or could be, discovered.
The argument might justify, but does not require, an
examination here into the special learning of this author in
l Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements (N. York, 1859), p. 132.
12 HIS LEARNING.
matters of law, or medicine. This work has already been
so far accomplished by distinguished members of these pro-
fessions as to convince them, if not the critical world, that
he had a very wonderful acquaintance with both. Let it
suffice to notice a single instance (cited by Lord Camp-
bell *) of his familiarity with Plowden, whose preface was
dated from the Middle Temple, in 1578, the same year in
which William Shakespeare is said to have been taken
from school by his father, at the age of fourteen. The dis-
cussion of the grave-diggers in the " Hamlet," as to whether
the drowned Ophelia was entitled to Christian burial,
" proves," says his Lordship, " that Shakespeare [he meant,
of course, the author of the play] had read and studied
Plowden's Report of the celebrated case of Hales v. Petit. 2
Sir James Hales, a Judge of the Common Pleas, having
been imprisoned for being concerned in the plot to place
Lady Jane Grey upon the throne, and afterwards pardoned,
was so affected in mind as to commit suicide by drowning
himself in a river. The coroner's inquest found a verdict
of felo de se, under which his body was to be buried at a
cross-road, with a stake thrust through it, and his goods
and estates were forfeited to the crown. A knotty ques-
tion arose upon the suit of his widow for an estate by sur-
vivorship in joint-tenancy, whether the forfeiture could be
considered as having taken place in the lifetime of Sir
James Hales ; for, if it did not, she took the estate by sur-
vivorship.
Sergeant Southcote argued for the lady, that as long as
he was alive he had not killed himself, and the moment
that he died, the estate vested in the plaintiff. " The felony
of the husband shall not take away her title by survivor-
ship, for in this manner of felony two things are to be con-
sidered : First, the cause of the death ; secondly, the death
ensuing the cause ; and these two make the felony, and
without both of them the felony is not consummate. And
1 Shakes. Leg. Acq., p. 104. 2 Plowden's Rep., 256-9.
HIS LEARNING. 13
the cause of the death is the act done in the party's life-
time, which makes the death to follow. And the act which
brought on the death here was the throwing himself volun-
tarily into the water, for this was the cause of his death.
And if a man kills himself by a wound which he gives
himself with a knife, or if he hangs himself, as the wound or
the hanging, which is the act done in the party's lifetime, is
the cause of his death, so is the throwing himself into the
water here. P"orasmuch as he cannot be attainted of his
own death, because he is dead before there is any time to
attaint him, the finding of his death by the coroner is by
necessity of law equivalent to an attainder in fact coming
after his death. He cannot be felo de se till the death is
fully consummate, and the death precedes the felony and
the forfeiture."
Sergeant Walsh, on the other side, argued that the for-
feiture had relation to the act done in the party's lifetime,
which was the cause of his death. " Upon this the parts
of the act are to be considered ; and the act consists of three
parts. The first is the imagination, which is a reflection or
meditation of the mind, whether or no it is convenient for
him to destroy himself, and what way it can be done. The
second is the resolution, which is a determination of the
mind to destroy himself, and to do it in this or that partic-
ular way. The third is the perfection, which is the execu-
tion of what the mind has resolved to do. And this per-
fection consists of two parts, viz., the beginning and the
end. The beginning is the doing of the act which causes
the death ; and the end is the death, which is only a sequel
to the act. And of all the parts the doing of the act is the
greatest in the judgment of our law, and it is in effect the
whole. The doing of the act is the only point which the law
regards ; for until the act is done it cannot be an offence
to the world, and when the act is done it is punishable.
Inasmuch as the person who did the act is dead, his person
cannot be punished, and therefore there is no way els V>
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. <S. It is written, they appear to men like angels of light : light is
an effect of fire, and fire will burn ; ergo, light wenches will burn." Ploy,
Act IV. Sc. 3.
" That your Excellency be not as a lamp that shineth to others and yet
seeth not itself, but as the Eye of the World, that both carrieth and useth
light." Masque.
"Dro. S. Marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench, and all grease; and I
know not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her and run from
her by her own light. I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them, will burn
a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she '11 burn a week longer than
the whole world." Play, Act 111. Sc. 2.
And the same ideas and imagery appear again, thus :
"Gaunt. My oil-dried lamps and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct with age and endless night:
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold Death not let me see my son."
Rich. If., Act I. Sc. 3.
And again, thus :
"Fal. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but
tis in the nose of thee: thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp. . . .
I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and Dives that lived in purple ;
for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given
to virtue, I would swear by thy face: my oath should be, By this fire, [that
God's angel] : but thou art altogether given over, and wert, indeed, but for
the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. ... 0, thou art a per-
petual triumph, an everlasting bonfire -light! " 1 Sen. IV. Act III. Sc. 3.
Again, says Bacon,
" The spirit of man is the Lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth th
inwardness of all secrets." Advancement.
224 GESTA GRAYORUM.
And one of the speeches in the Masque concludes
thus :
" Neither do I, excellent Prince, restrain my speeches to dead buildings
only, but intend it also to other foundations, institutions, and creations;
wherein I presume the more to speak confidently, because I am warranted
herein by your own wisdom, who have made the first fruits of your actions
of State to institute the Honourable Order of the Helmet."
Moreover, there are well-marked traces of the lawyer's
hand throughout the play itself: indeed, there is very good
internal evidence that the piece was written expressly for
this occasion. And it is evident that the writer of this
letter had not only invoked the aid of the " dozen young
gentlemen of Gray's Inn " and their renowned compeers of
the Inner Temple, but had also put in requisition the ser-
vices of his friend of the Globe theatre, in fulfilment of his
engagement, that although " the joint Masque of the Four
Inns of Court " had failed, at least Gray's Inn and the
courtly Francis Bacon would not fail, upon any occasion, to
make an adequate " demonstration of affection " to the
Queen, especially when expressly called upon from so high
a source as her Majesty's prime minister. And the follow-
ing passages, in particular, would seem to have been directly
aimed at the gowned and wigged assembly, before whom the
play was there first produced :
11 Ant. 8. By what rule, sir?
Dro. S. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father
Time himself.
Ant. S. Let 's hear it.
Dro. S. There 's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald
by nature.
Ant. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery ?
Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of
another man.
Ant. 8. "Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful
an excrement?
Dro. S. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts : and what he
hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.
Ant. 8. Why, but there 's many a man hath more hair than vrit.
GESTA GRAYORUM. 225
Dro. 8. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair."
Dro. S. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the
world's end, will have bald followers.
Ant. S. I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion." Act II. Be. 2.
The whole interest of the fourth act turns on lawsuits,
officers, and arrests. Angelo, the goldsmith, becomes litig-
ious:
"Ang. This touches me in my reputation.
Either consent to pay this sum for me,
Or I attach you by this officer.
Ant. E. Consent to pay thee that I never had ?
Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar'st.
Ang. Here is thy fee ; arrest him, officer.
I would not spare my brother in this case,
If he should scorn me so apparently.
Oft'. I do arrest you, sir : you hear the suit.
Ant. E. I do obey thee, till I give thee bail.
But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear,
As all the metal in your shop will answer.
Ang. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,
To your notorious shame, I doubt it not." Act IV. Sc. 1.
And Dromio's description of a " sergeant " (a bailiff), must
have been particularly edifying to such an audience :
"Adr. Where is thy master, Dromio ? is he well ?
D)-o. S. No, he 's in Tartar limbo, worse than Hell :
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him,
One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;
A fiend, a fairy pitiless and rough;
A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands
The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands :
A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well ;
One that, before the judgment, carries poor souls to Hell.
Adr. Why, man, what is the matter?
Dro. S. I do not know the matter: he is 'rested on the case."
Act IV. Sc. 2.
Of course, it is not impossible that William Shakespeare,
without any special learning in the law, should have had
some vague notion of what was meant by a "fine and
recovery," or an action "on the case"; but (what Lord
15
226 GESTA GRAYORUM.
Campbell has remarked generally on the legal acquire-
ments of this author) the entire accuracy of his use of
legal terms and phrases (a kind of free-masonry which it
would be dangerous for a novice to undertake to handle),
and the subtle continuity and fitness of the legal ideas,
analogies, imagery, and expression, which are woven into
the very texture of the discourse, in the many places in
these plays, where he has occasion to employ them, are of
such a nature as to show, beyond the reach of doubt, that
the mental habit of this writer was that of a professional
lawyer as well as that of the poet, the scholar, and the
philosopher.
Further, on Twelfth Night, the Prince ascended his
throne, the trumpets sounded, and six Knights of the Hel-
met entered, dragging three monsters as prisoners, announc-
ing that they had just returned from aiding the Emperor
of Russia against the Tartars, and with the help of Virtue
and Friendship had taken Envy, Malcontent, and Folly
prisoners ; and before the Masque concluded, the King at
Arms announced an ambassador from the Emperor with
letters thanking the Prince and his Knights for their aid in
driving away " an army of Bigarian thieves " and " a host
of Negro Tartars." 1 And doubtless, it was to the same
wit of invention that Dromio in the play was indebted for
his " Tartar limbo worse than Hell."
On the first of February following, there was a trium-
phal procession of fifteen barges on the Thames, with stand-
ards, pennants, flags, and streamers, music and trumpets,
and firing of ordnance, in honor of the return of the Prince
of Purpoole from Russia. The Queen invited him to land
and do homage at Greenwich ; but he sent two ambassa-
dors with an apologetic letter to decline the honor. At the
Tower, a volley of ordnance was fired by the Queen's desire,
and he was received at Gray's Inn with music and accla-
mations.
l Shales. Eng., by G. W. Thornbury (London), II. 359.
GESTA GRAYORDM. 227
At Shrovetide, the Prince and his train went to Court,
where another masque was performed before her Majesty.
The actors were an Esquire, a Tartar page, Proteus, and
two Tritons, Thamesis and Amphitrite ; and it began with
a hymn to Neptune. The Squire's speech contained these
lines in compliment to Elizabeth :
" Excellent Queen ! true adamant of hearts,
Out of that sacred garland ever grew
Garlands of virtues, beauties, and perfections,
That crowns your crown, and dims your fortune's beams."
The Queen was much pleased, and wished it had been
longer. Next day the gentlemen were presented to her by
the Lord Chamberlain : she gave them her hand to kiss,
commanding Gray's Inn to study such sports for her fre-
quent amusement. The same night, there was fighting in
the barriers, the Earl of Essex and the challengers against
the Earl of Cumberland and the defendants, the Prince of
Purpoole winning the prize, a jewel set with seventeen
diamonds and four rubies, which the Queen presented with
her own hand.
Surely, we need not wonder to find the young courtier,
Francis Bacon, as yet only Queen's Counsel, exerting all
the powers of his genius in the invention of these elegant,
refined, and intellectual entertainments, in which his great
patrons and friends, the Earls of Essex and Southampton,
took so large a share, and which received thus the signal
countenance and favor of their sovereign mistress. In
fact, his contributions to these royal amusements continued
far into the next reign and until he became Attorney-Gen-
eral, when, ceasing to be an author in them, he began him-
self to be the recipient of like honors on special occasions.
As a part of the festivities in honor of the nuptials of the
Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, during the
Christmas Revels of 1612-13, it came again "to Gray's Inn
and the Inner Temple's turn to come with their Masque
whereof Sir Francis Bacon was the chief contriver," and
228 FRAGMENTS.
Mr. Phineas Pette was employed, as he says, " by the Gen-
tlemen of Gray's Inn, whereof Sir Francis Bacon was chief,
to bring the Masque by water to Whitehall," and " safely
landed it at the Privy Stairs." The subject of this Masque,
which was written by Francis Beaumont, was " the Mar-
riage of the River of Thames to Rhine." * In the next year
(Dec. 9th, 1613), Sir Francis Bacon of his own motion,
having been made Attorney-General in October preceding,
prepares a Masque for his Majesty's entertainment, which,
says the account, " will stand him in 2000," declining to
accept a contribution towards it " of 500 from Gray's Inn
and Mr. Yelverton," and he also " feasts the whole Univer-
sity of Cambridge," at his own expense, now (as Chamber-
lain writes) " rivaling Woolsey in magnificence " ; and the
year after (1613-14) on Twelfth Night, the Gentlemen of
Gray's Inn, " under the patronage of Sir Francis Bacon "
and upon occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Somer-
set, exhibit a " Masque of Flowers," which was printed, and
dedicated by the authors " to the Very Honorable Sir
Francis Bacon, His Majesty's Attorney-General." 2
8. FRAGMENTS.
Still another Masque, or two fragments (for it breaks
into two pieces), has been lately brought to light by the
researches of Dixon and Spedding. 8 It comes from the same
bundle of the Lambeth MSS., in which were found the
speeches for the Essex Masque ; but it is a separate paper,
in a handwriting of that age, without date, title, heading, or
other mark of a strictly historical character, to indicate its
origin or purpose. Mr. Spedding evidently believes the
piece to have been written by Bacon ; and that such was the
fact, there is scarcely any room for doubt, for it bears the
impress of Bacon's mind and manner in every line of it.
1 Nichols' Progr. James /., II. 587.
Ibid. II. 734.
8 Pers. Hist, of Lord Bacm, 73; Letters and Life, I. 386-391.
FRAGMENTS. 229
There is nothing to show that it was originally designed as
a part of the Essex Masque, and the internal evidence is
very strong that it belonged to another occasion, as early
as 1594. One of the speakers is " the Squire " as usual,
and his master Erophilus (Essex) is supposed to be doubt-
ing in his love between the Queen and Philautia, the god-
dess of self-love ; and the fragment begins with the Squire's
speech, introducing "two wanderers," an "Indian youth,"
and " the attendant or conductor to the Indian prince,"
who is son of a mighty monarch in " the most retired part "
of the " West Indias, near unto the fountain of the great
river of the Amazons," whose " rare happiness in all things
else is only eclipsed in the calamity of his son, this young
prince, who was born blind." But there was " an ancient
prophecy that it should be he that should expel the C'astil-
ians, a nation of strangers, which as a scourge hath wound
itself about the body of that continent, though it hath not
pierced near the heart thereof." And this " fatal glory "
had caused the King his father " to visit his temples with
continual sacrifices, gifts, and observances, to solicit his
son's cure supernaturally." But at last an oracle was de-
livered " out of one of the holiest vaults," to the effect that
he should resort to her Majesty's court and person, and
make sacrifice to her, if he would be restored to his sight ;
and he comes with a "high conceit, aiming directly at" her
Majesty's self. Here the fragment breaks off. When it
begins again, her Majesty has " wrought the strangest in-
novation that ever was in the world": his blindness has
been supernaturally cured, and he has become " Seeing-
Love." Philautia is several times named in the piece ;
there are illusions in it to the Squire's master, which could
be no other than " Erophilus " ; and the whole tenor of the
story is strictly in keeping with the frame and character of
the Essex Masque. One Latin quotation appears in both,
"that which the poet saith was never granted Amare et
sapere " ; which is quoted also in the Essay on Love thus :
230 FRAGMENTS.
Amare et Sapere vix Deo conceditur ; a circumstance, from
which it might be inferred, that this portion had been for
some reason laid aside by the writer. And it is curious to
observe, that this ancient adage is introduced into the
" Troilus and Cressida " in these lines :
" Cres. But you are wise,
Or else you love not ; for to be wise and love
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above." Act 111. Sc. 2.
Mr. Douce thought Shakespeare must have gotten it from
Taverner's Translation of PuUius Syi-us; 1 but it is very
certain that this author had no occasion to go to Transla-
tions for his Latin proverbs.
This fragment does not in any way appear to have formed
a part of the Essex Masque as it was actually exhibited.
But whether it were written for this Masque, or some other,
the more important thing to be noted here is the fact, that,
in it, the Baconian poetical prose actually runs into Shake-
spearean rhymed verse, under our very eyes, thus :
"And at last, this present year, out of one of the holiest vaults was
delivered to him an oracle in these words :
Seated between the Old World and the New,
A land there is no other land may touch,
Where reigns a Queen in peace and honour true ;
Stories or fables do describe no such.
Never did Atlas such a burden bear,
As she, in holding up the world opprest;
Supplying with her virtue everywhere
Weakness of friends, errors of servants best.
No nation breeds a warmer blood for war,
And yet she calms them by her majesty:
No age hath ever wits refined so far,
And yet she calms them by her policy :
To her thy son must make his sacrifice,
If he will have the morning of his eyes.
This oracle hath been both our direction hitherto, and the cause of our
wearisome pilgrimage; we do now humbly beseech your Majesty that we
make experience whether we be at the end of our journey or not
Masque, Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 388.
1 See White's Shakespeare, IX., Notes, 153.
FRAGMENTS. 231
Now, if there be any trace of all this in the plays, we
shall expect to find it in one of those which were written
at about the same date, the " Midsummer Night's Dream "
(1594), or the " Romeo and Juliet " (1595), and while the
same ideas were fresh in the author's memory, and similar
visions of the Indies were still floating in his imagination.
Let us go, first, straight to the " Midsummer Night's Dream."
In the first act, we find no sign of it, but in the second, the
following passages come up in their order, in which the
careful listener will scarcely fail, at once, to recognize their
identities, and catch the ring of the same metal :
"Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fairy. Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
/ do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moony sphere ;
Puck. I am that merry wanderer of the night.
The King doth keep his revels here to-night
Take heed the Queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stofnfrom an Indian king:
She never had so sweet a changeling :
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.
Tit. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest steep of India,
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress and your warriour love,
To Theseus must be wedded ?
Ober. I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman.
Tit. Set your heart at rest:
The Fairy-land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a vot'ress of my order;
232 FRAGMENTS.
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full oft hath she gossip'd by my side.
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following her womb, (then rich with my young squire,)
Would imitate, and sail upon the land
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandize.
Puck. I remember.
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 fiery 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. 2.
It is plain we have here the same idea of the " wander-
ers," the " Indian youth " born blind, or Cupid, " the attend-
ant," and even "the Squire" (cropping out in a curious
way), coming from the same "most retired part " or "farthest
steep " of the Indies, near the fountains of the Amazon ;
and the same blind boy, Cupid, " armed after the Indian
manner with bow and arrows," or " Cupid all arm'd," in his
ordinary habit " an Indian naked," but now " for comeliness
clad," has arrived in that land,
" Where reigns a Queen in peace and honour true ;
Stories or fables do describe no such.
Never did Atlas such a burden bear,
As she, in holding up the world opprest;
Supplying with her virtue everywhere
Weakness of friends, errors of servants best; "
and, with " high conceit," he lets fly his love-shaft, " aim-
ing directly at " her Majesty ; for he has come to make his
sacrifice to " the fair vestal throned by the West," that he
may have " the morning of his eyes." And in that " fatal
glory " that was laid upon him by " an ancient prophecy,"
that he should rid his native India of that Castilian scourge,
FRAGMENTS. 233
which had " wound itself about the body of that continent,"
but had not " pierced near the heart thereof" we have another
touch of those same " principles more deep and fatal," de-
rived from " the ancient Cupid," which are of such potency
as to "pierce a hundred thousand hearts" or as when
"true lovers have been ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny." Act I. Sc. 1.
In the style and manner of the versified part, in the
Queen reigning " in peace and honour true," and in the
particular mention of her " virtue," her " majesty," and her
" policy," surpassing all " stories or fables," we are re-
minded, at once, of the compliment to her memory in the
" Henry VIII." ; the line ending with " everywhere" so often
repeated in this very play of "A Midsummer Night's
Dream," falls on the ear like the refrain of the same song ;
and one line is almost repeated from the third part of the
Henry VL,"
"Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight"; Act V. Sc. 1.
and another, from the " As You Like It,"
" That every eye, which in this print looks,
Shall see thy virtue witnessed everywhere; " Act HI. Sc. 2.
and the last line closes with a clear ring of the true Shake-
spearean metal. Certainly, both these oracles must have
been delivered out of one and the same holiest vault, or
cave, and that no other than Prospero's " full, poor cell."
And if this piece as a whole falls far below his higher
flights, it is at least equal, in the rhythm and swing of it, to
these lines from the " Titus Andronicus," which have been
cited by Mr. White as indubitably exhibiting the hand of
Shakespeare in that early play :
" Tit. In peace and honour rest you here, my sons;
Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest,
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps !
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned grudges ; here are no storms,
234 FRAGMENTS.
No voice, but silence and eternal sleep.
In peace and honour, rest you here, my sons ! " Act III. Sc. 2.
Or, to these, again, from the " Love's Labor 's Lost " :
" Bir. Who sees the heavenly Eosaline,
That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
Bows not her vassal head, and, stricken blind,
Kisses the bare ground with obedient breast ?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty? " Act IV. Sc. 3.
But we have a distinct repetition of almost the same
ideas and expression in the following lines from the
" Richard II.," written soon afterwards :
" K. Rich. We'll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you, your son." Act I. Sc. 1.
" Duch. To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere." Act I. Sc. 2.
" Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise ;
This fortress, built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands ;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous for their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son :
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out, (I die pronouncing it,)
Like to a tenement or pelting farm." Act II. Sc. 1.
" O, forbid it, God,
That, in a Christian climate, souls refin'd,
FRAGMENTS. 235
Should shew so heinous, black, obscene a deed !
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars." Act IV. Sc. 1.
Is not this the same land, seat, breed of men, wits refined,
majesty ? and the " stories or fables " are merely partic-
ularized in the play, with a greater amplification through-
out ; but the tone, style, and manner are the same. And
" the ancient fable of Atlas," says Bacon, " that stood fixed,
and bare up the heaven from falling," was " meant of the
poles or axletree of heaven ; so assuredly men have a desire
to have an Atlas or axletree within, to keep them from
fluctuation"; and the metaphor is repeated in the play,
thus :
" (Strong as the axletree
On which heaven rides)"; Troi. and Cr. Act I. Sc. 3.
and in the letter to Essex, thus :
" And this is the axletree whereupon I have turned and shall turn."
The Masque proceeds thus :
" Your Majesty's sacred presence hath wrought the strangest innovation
that ever was in the world. You have here before you Seeing-Love, a
Prince indeed, but of greater territories than all the Indies: armed after
the Indian manner with bow and arrow, and when he is in his ordinary habit
an Indian naked, or attired with feathers, though now for comeliness clad.
["Bur. If you would conjure in her you must make a circle; if conjure
up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can
you blame her, then, being a maid yet ros'd over with the virgin crimson
of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked
seeing self." Henry V., Act V. Sc. 2.]
To procure his pardon for the strategem which he hath used,
[" Alack, alack ! that Heaven should practice strategems
Upon so soft a subject as myself! " Rom. and J., Act III. Sc. 5.]
and to show his thankfulness for his sight which he hath by you received,
he presents your Majesty with all that is his ; his gift and jn-operty to be
ever young ;
[" Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
To take from thence all error with his might,
And make his eye-balls roll with wonted sight."
Mil. N. Dr., Act 111. Sc. 2.
236 FRAGMENTS.
" Is there not charms,
By which the, property of youth and maidhood
May be abused? " Oth, Act I. Sc. 1.]
his wings of liberty to fly from one to another; his bow and arrows to wound
where it pleaseth you ;
[" And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind :
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste." Act I. Sc. 1.
" And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings."
Mom. andJ., Act II. Sc. 5.]
and withal humbly desireth that, though Philautia hath hitherto so pre-
vailed with your Majesty, as you would never accept him while he was an
imperfect piece, yet now he is accomplished by your Majesty's grace and
means, that you will vouchsafe him entertainment. For all the challenge
that ever hath been made to Love or his band, hath been, if it be rightly
interpreted, only to his want of eyesight.
[" Nurse. Faith, here 't is. Romeo
Is banished ; and all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you."
Rom. and J., Act III. Sc. 5.]
Lovers are charged to aspire too high : it is as the poor dove, which when
her eyes are sealed still mounteth up into the air. They 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.
[" Her. O cross ! too high to be enthrall'd to low ! ...
spite ! too old to be engaged to young ! ...
O Hell! to choose love by another's eyes! ...
Lys. The jaws of darkness do devour it up."
Mid. N. Dr., Act T. Sc. 1.]
They are sometimes charged with presuming too far: it is as the blind
man, who looketh in humanity that any seeing man should give him way.
They are accused sometimes to be timorous : it is as the blind stalks and
lifts high when the way is smooth. They are taxed to be credulous : why
the blind are ever led. They are said at other times to be incredulous : the
blind must feel that which it sufficeth another to see. How can they know
times justly, that go by the clock and not by the sun? And how can they
know measure, that see as well a mote as a beam.
[" Bir. You found his mote ; the King your mote did see ;
But I a beam do find in each of thee."
Love's L. L., Act IV. Sc. 3.
" Nor dare I chide the world- without-end hour,
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you." Sonnet.']
FRAGMENTS. 237
This makes poor lovers used as blind horses, ever going round about in a
wheel : and this makes them ever unfortunate, for when blind love leads
blind fortune, how can they keep out of the ditch ?
[" Thisb. ! As truest horse, that yet would never tire.
Pyr. If I were fair Thisby, I were only thine :
Quin. O monstrous ! O strange ! we are haunted.
Pray, Masters ! fly, Masters ! help. [Exeunt Clownt.
Puck. I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire ;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."
Slid. N. Dr., Act III. Sc. 1.]
But now that Love hath gotten possession of his sight, there can be no
error in policy or dignity to receive him. Nay, Philautia herself will sub-
scribe to his admission. Then your Majesty shall first see your own inval-
uable value, and thereby discern that the favours you vouchsafe are pure
gifts and no exchanges. And if any be so happy as to have his affection
accepted, yet your prerogative is such as they stand bound, and your
Majesty is free: . . .
[In maiden meditation, fancy-free.]
Your Majesty shall obtain the curious window into hearts of which the
ancients speak ; thereby you shall discern protestation from fulness of heart,
ceremonies and fashions from a habit of mind that can do no other, affect-
ation from affection."
[" Evans. Why it is affectations.
But can you affection the 'oman ? " Mer. Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.
" Bir. Studies my lady? Mistress look on me:
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye." Love's L. L., Act V. Sc. 2.
" To thee I do commend my watchful soul,
Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes." Rich. HI. Act V, Sc. 3.]
Again he says :
" But contrariwise her Majesty, not liking to make windows int* men's
hearts and secret thoughts " 1
And this same window of the ancients, appears again
thus :
" Let the first precept then (on which the knowledge of others turns) be
set down as this: that we obtain (as far as we can) that window which
1 Letter drafted for Walsingham (1590), Spedd. Let. and Life, I. 98.
238 FRAGMENTS.
Momus required; who, seeing in the frame of man's heart such angles and
recesses, found fault that there was not a window to look into its mysteri-
ous and tortuous windings." *
It is very plain that this Masque was written to be ex-
hibited before the Queen. These extracts will be sufficient
for the purpose of comparison. William Shakespeare could
never have seen this Masque. The " Midsummer Night's
Dream," though not printed until 1600, may possibly have
been performed on the stage before the Masque was written ;
but it would be idle to imagine any other kind of plagiarism
or imitation to be possible here, than that which one and
the same full mind may unconsciously make upon itself;
and these outcroppings of the same ideas, words, and ex-
pressions, in compositions written at about the same time,
are altogether too numerous, striking, palpable, and peculiar
to admit of explanation on any supposition of the common
usage of the time, or accidental coincidence. And since
the " Midsummer Night's Dream " has been assigned, almost
by general consent of the critics, to the year 1594, these
resemblances to the Masque may be taken as some evidence
that these fragments belong to some occasion, which was
at least as early as 1594.
i Trans, of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 271.
CHAPTER IV.
MORE DIRECT PROOFS.
" Most true ; if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance ; that, which you hear,
you '11 swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs : . . . the majesty of the
creature in resemblance of the mother." Winter's Tale.
1. THE RICHARD II.
THE statements and allusions contained in Bacon's
" Apology " or defence against certain imputations con-
cerning his conduct towards the Earl of Essex, which was
addressed to the Earl of Devonshire, and published soon
after the death of Essex in 1601, made in relation to an
answer which he gave the Queen, towards the close of the
year 1599, as he tells us, in "a matter which had some
affinity " with Essex's cause, and also with a certain " sedi-
tious prelude " then lately dedicated to the factious Earl,
being Dr. Hay ward's story of the " First Yeare of King
Henry IV.," at which the Queen, thinking there was treason
in it, was " mightily incensed," when interpreted by the
light of the accompanying history and the personal relations
of the parties, will be seen to amount to nothing less than
a clear and express admission out of his own mouth that
he was himself the author of the play of Richard II. ; for it
will be made quite certain, that this tragedy was precisely
the "matter" alluded to, and no other. It will further
appear to be highly probable, that the Queen herself at
least strongly suspected, and that even the Lords of the
Privy Council had some inkling, that such was the fact.
If this be shown to be so, it will be equivalent of itself to
a final settlement of the question in hand, and it will re-
quire some attention.
240 THE RICHARD II.
That exquisite disgrace which the Queen had been con-
strained to put upon him, in 1595, had been comfortably
solaced in the consideration that her Majesty did but re-
serve and not reject him, in the princely entertainment and
masque at Essex's house, near the close of that year, and
in the munificent grant of Twickenham Park immediately
following. The tragedy of Richard II. was most probably
written after this date, and during the year 1596. There is
no mention on record of its existence before it was entered
and printed in 1597. Malone and some others have sup-
posed it might have been written as early as 1593-4, and,
proceeding upon the assumption that the mention made by
Camden and by Bacon of the tragedy of Richard II., in
their accounts of the trials of Essex and his co-conspiratrs,
as being an " out-dated " and an " old " play, must have
referred to some older play by another author, they were
also led to infer, both that some such old play existed, and
that it was that older play, and not this of Shakespeare,
which was there alluded to. But all this is evidently a
mistake ; for the Attorney-General, Coke, in his speech on
the trial of Merrick, expressly says, that " forty shillings
were given to Phillips the player" to play this tragedy
before Essex's men. This was no other than Augustine
Phillips of Shakespeare's company, and the manager at the
Globe and Blackfriars ; and it is altogether improbable
that any other play of that name would be in use by that
company, at that time, and none such is known to have
existed. During the year 1595, Daniel published a first
and second edition of his " Civil Wars," a poem on the
same subject Mr. White observes some incidents in this
second edition, which lead him to infer that Daniel may
have used the play to correct his piece ; but the inference
of Mr. Knight, that the resemblances are due to the fact
that the writer of the play had read Daniel's poem, in the
course of his preparations for his work, and so, that the
play was written after the poem, would seem to be more
THE RICHARD II. 241
probable ; or both writers may have drawn from the same
historical sources, independently of each other ; and this
view would limit the production of the play to the year
1596. In that year, Essex is burning the Spanish fleet at
Cadiz, and the Pope issues his Bull authorizing Queen
Elizabeth's subjects to depose her ; but it is not until about
1598, that the Irish kernes under Tyrone and O'Neil
begin to be troublesome, and wars arise, to which there
might seem to be some allusion in the play, as in these
lines :
" K. Rich. Now for our Irish wars:
We must supplant these rough rug-headed kernes ";
but there were just such rebels and wars in Ireland, in the
time of Richard II., and to these, as recorded in Holinshed,
it is much more probable, if not quite certain, the allusions
in the play were intended to refer : nor is there any.ground
on which it can safely be concluded that the play was
written before 1596. But, in 1594, machinations were on
foot among the Jesuits, having for their object the dethrone-
ment of Elizabeth, and looking to Essex as in the interest
of some successor ; for, in that year, a certain book was
dedicated to the Earl of Essex, under the sham-name of
Doleman (a Jesuit priest) ; but Parsons, Allen, and Ingle-
field were the true authors of it. 1 This book set up the
title of the Infanta of Spain, and perhaps also gave en-
couragement to some supposed right of Essex, derived from
Thomas of Woodstock, son of Edward TTI. ; and the pre-
tensions of Essex were already a subject of speculation in
the public mind. When Essex visited Bacon, at Twicken-
ham Park, in October 1595, and made him the gift of land
in requital of his services, he answered by telling the story
of the Duke of Guise, who " had turned all his estate into
obligations," and said : " My Lord, I see I must be your
homager and hold land of your gift ; but do you know the
i Camden's Ann. of Etiz. ; Kennett's Eng. II. 576.
16
242 THE RICHARD II.
manner of doing homage in law ? Always it is with a
saving of his faith to the king and his other lords ; and
therefore, my lord, I can be no more yours than I was, and
it must be with the ancient savings." There is no certain
evidence that the play was produced long before it was
printed, in 1597, and the appearance of such a play, on the
stage, at this time, could not fail to attract the public atten-
tion. Its bearing upon the incipient projects of Essex
(though not intended so to refer) could not fail to be per-
ceived ; and it is certain that the play received the counte-
nance of Essex, and excited the jealousy of the Queen.
"When first printed, no name of the author appeared on the
title-page, and the entire scene of deposing King Richard,
containing one hundred and fifty-four lines (says Malone),
was omitted. Malone attributes the omission to fear of the
Queen's displeasure, no doubt correctly ; but he falls into
the mistake of supposing that Dr. Hayward's book was the
cause of that fear ; whereas that book was not published
until the year 1599. Moreover, these lines would very
probably be interdicted by the Master of the Revels as
censor of the press.
In November 1595, the Queen had taken occasion to
show to Essex a certain book (probably that of Doleman)
in such manner as greatly to alarm him ; but somehow all
was made fair again, with the help of a splendid entertain-
ment and the dramatic genius of Bacon. And, in 1596,
after the return of Essex from Cadiz, Bacon wrote him an
urgent letter of advice " to divert her Majesty from this
impression of a martial greatness," for the reason that there
could not be " a more dangerous image than this repre-
sented to any monarch living, much more to a lady, and of
her Majesty's apprehension." In the latter part of 1597,
Essex's discontent about the matter of the Earl of Notting-
ham had been appeased with the office of Earl Marshal of
England, and in the next year, the question of sending a
general against the Irish rebels came up. The Queen
THE RICHARD II. 243
wished to appoint Sir William Knollys. Essex urged Sir
George Carew, and plainly wanted to go himself. In the
discussion which arose he was offended, and turned his
back on the Queen. Her Majesty marched up and boxed
his ears. He was exceedingly wroth, laid his hand on his
sword, and, swearing he would not have endured so much
from Henry VIII. himself, left the presence in high dudgeon.
This eclipse continued from July to October 1598, when
the affair was apparently reconciled, and he received the
chief command for Ireland, and was commissioned Lord
Lieutenant on the 12th of March 1598-9, the Queen re-
luctantly yielding. Whereupon, Bacon writes him a letter
of congratulation in which he says : " That your Lordship
is in statu quo pritis, no man taketh greater gladness than
I do ; the rather, because I assure myself that of your
eclipses, as this has been the longest, it shall be the last.
As the comical poet saith, Neque illam tu satis noveras,
neque te ilia ; hoc ubi jit, ibi non vivitur" And in con-
clusion, he takes care to express himself as bearing unto
his Lordship, " after her Majesty, of all public persons the
second duty." 1
Her disposition towards Essex had been kindly and for-
giving, but she was doubtful of him, and kept a watchful
eye upon his courses. As afterwards it became evident
enough, all his movements had reference to a scheme al-
ready formed in his mind to depose the Queen by the help
of the Catholic party and the Irish rebels. He goes to
Ireland in March, 1599, and after various doubtful pro-
ceedings and a treasonable truce with Tyrone, he suddenly
returns to London in October following, with a select
body of friends, without the command, and to the great
surprise and indignation of the Queen; and, a few days
afterwards, finds himself under arrest, and a quasi-prisoner
in the house of the Lord-Keeper. During this year, Dr.
Hayward's pamphlet appeared : it was nothing more than a
l Letters and Life by Spedding, II. 104.
244 THE RICHARD II.
history of the deposing of King Richard II., says Malone.
It was dedicated to the Earl of Essex, without the author's
name on the title-page ; but that of John Hayward was
signed to the dedication. This Hayward was a Doctor of
Civil Law, a scholar, and a distinguished historian of that
age, who afterwards held an office in Chancery under
Bacon. This pamphlet followed on the heels of the play,
and it may have been suggested by the popularity of the
play on the stage, or by the suppression of the deposing
scene in the printed copy. According to Mr. Dixon, "it
was a singular and mendacious tract, which, under ancient
names and dates, gives a false and disloyal account of
things and persons in his own age ; the childless sovereign ;
the association of defence ; the heavy burden of taxation ;
the levy of double subsidies ; the prosecution of an Irish
war, ending in a general discontent ; the outbreak of blood ;
the solemn deposition and final murder of the prince."
Bolingbroke is the hero of the tale, and the existence of a
title to the throne superior to that of the Queen is openly
affirmed in it. A second edition of the " Richard II." had
been printed in 1598, under the name of Shakespeare, but
with the obnoxious scene still omitted ; and it is not until
1608, in the established quiet of the next reign, that the
omitted scene is restored in print. It is plain that, during
the reign of Elizabeth, it would have been dangerous to
have printed it in full ; nevertheless, it had had a great run
on the stage during these years.
Now, Camden speaks of both the book of Hayward and
the tragedy of Richard II. He states that, on the first in-
formal inquiry, held at the Lord Keeper's house, in June
1600, concerning the conduct of Essex, besides the general
charges of disobedience and contempt, " they likewise
charged him with some heads and articles taken out of a
certain book, dedicated to him, about the deposing Richard
II." This was doubtless Hayward's book. But in his ac-
count of the trial of Merrick (commander at Essex's house),
THE RICHARD II. 215
he says, he was indicted also, among other things, " for
having procured the out-dated tragedy of Richard II. to be
publicly acted, at his own charge, for the entertainment of
the conspirators," on the day before the attack on the
Queen's palace. " This," he continues, " the lawyers con-
strued as done by him, with a design to intimate that they
were now giving the representation of a scene upon the
stage, which was the next day to be acted in reality upon
the person of the Queen. And the same judgment they
passed upon a book, which had been written sometime be-
fore, by one Hayward, a man of sense and learning, and
dedicated to the Earl of Essex, viz. : That 't was penned
on purpose as a copy and an encouragement for deposing
the Queen." He further informs us that the judges, in
their opinion, " produced likewise several instances from
the Chronicles of England, as of Edward II. and Richard
II., who, being once betrayed into the hands of their sub-
jects, were soon deposed and murdered." And when
Southampton asked the Attorney- General, on his trial,
what he supposed they intended to do with the Queen
when they should have seized her, Coke replied : " The
same that Henry of Lancaster did with Richard II., ....
when he had once got the King in his clutches, he robbed
him of his crown and life." This account of Camden may
be considered the more reliable in that, as we know from
a MSS. copy of his Annals, which (according to Mr.
Spedding) still remains in the Cottonian Library, contain-
ing additions and corrections in the handwriting of Bacon,
it had certainly passed under his critical revision before it
was printed in 1627. And this may help us to a more cer-
tain understanding of the allusions, which Bacon himself
makes to these same matters, in his Apology and in his ac-
count of the trial of Merrick ; for, while in the latter he
expressly names the tragedy of Richard II., in the former,
as also in the Apothegms, the book of Dr. Hayward only is
mentioned by name, while there is, at the same time, a
246 THE RICHARD II.
covert (yet very palpable) allusion in them both to the
tragedy also, and to his personal connection with it.
The lawyers as well as the judges, Bacon himself in-
cluded, appear to have made a great handle of this matter
of King Richard II. and the tragedy
"For the deposing of a rightful king." Rich. If., Act V. Sc. 1.
Coke says, in his speech on the trial of Blount, " The story
of Richard II., the act of 1 Henry IV., calling a Parlia-
ment, putting the king in Pomfret Castle, and the king's
death following, are dangerous precedents, and too fitting
these indictments " ; and again, on the trial of Merrick, he
says, " The story of Henry IV., being set forth in a play,
there being set forth the killing of the king upon a stage ;
the Friday before, Sir Gilly, and some others of the earl's
ti'ain, having an humour to see a play, they must needs
have the play of Henry IV. The players told them that
was stale : they should get nothing by playing of that ; but
no play else would serve ; and Sir Gilly gives forty shil-
lings to Phillips the player to play this, besides whatever
he could get." l The grave and crabbed Attorney- General,
who had probably never visited a theatre in his life, is
evidently more intent upon his points of law than upon
any accuracy of names and detail in these theatrical mat-
ters ; but, while it is clear from the whole context, that the
play spoken of was this same tragedy of Richard II., being
correctly styled in other places, the passage shows how easily
the names were confounded. Bacon makes no such mis-
take ; for, in his speech, it is called " the play of deposing
King Richard II." 2 And he further proceeds to cite the
example of Richard III., " who (though he were king in
possession, and the rightful inheritors but infants) would
never sleep quiet in his bed till they were made away ;
much less is it to be expected that a Catilinarian knot and
combination of rebels (who have made an insurrection
l HowelTs State Trials, 1422-5; 1411-2. 2 Ibid.
THE RICHARD II. 247
without so much as the fume of a title) would ever en-
dure that a queen, who had been their sovereign, and
had reigned so many years in such renown and policy,
should continue longer alive than should make in their own
turn." Which same " knot " appears again in the play
itself, thus :
" His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries." Act III. Sc. 1.
" Grey. A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers; " Ib. III. Sc. 3.
and thus, again :
" Will you unknit
This churlish knot of all-abhorred war? "
1 Henry IV., Act V. Sc. 1.
Again, he continues, u This construction is no mystery or
quiddity of law : the crown is not a garland or mere out-
ward ornament, but consists of preeminence and power ;
and therefore when the subject will take upon him to give
law to the king, and to make the sovereign and command-
ing power become subject and commanded, such subject
layeth hold of the crown, and taketh the sword out of the
king's hand " :
" K. Rich. Subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king? "
Act 1 1 1. Sc. 2.
" Bish. What subject can give sentence on his king ?
And who sits here that is not Richard's subject?
Thieves are not judged, but they are by to hear,
Although apparent guilt be seen in them.
And shall the figure of God's majesty,
His captain, steward, deputy-elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judged by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present?
I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr'd up by God thus boldly for his king."
Act IV. Sc. 1.
" King Rich. For I have given here my soul's consent
T' undeck the pompous body of a king :
248 THE RICHARD II.
Make glory base, and sovereignty a slave,
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant."
Act IV. Sc. 1.
" K. Rich. Or I '11 be buried in the king's highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head.
North. My lord, in the base court he doth attend
To speak with you : may it please you to come down ?
King Rich. Down, down, I come; like glistering Phteton,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court ? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors' calls, and do them grace.
In the base court ? Come down ? Down, court ! down King ! "
Act III. Sc. 3.
Here, we have, in Bacon, rightful inheritors, apparent
theft, and garland or ornament ; and in the play, rightful
king, apparent guilt, and undeck ; an identity in the use of
words particularly to be noted, as well as the thought,
style, and manner.
While Essex was yet in the custody of the Lord Keeper,
or Bunder arrest, between October of 1599 and the summer
of 1 600, and before his treasonable plot had come to a head,
or to a decisive and clear breach with the Queen, Bacon,
who had warned him against aspiring to a military great-
ness, who was not in the secret of his scheme, and doubt-
less believed his wayward courses were due to errors of
judgment rather than to any disloyalty at heart, had ex-
hausted all his wit and invention, and at last the patience
of the Queen, in his efforts to palliate the conduct of
Essex, to assure her of his loyalty, and to obtain for him a
restoration to her favor ; until, at length, about the month
of September of that year (1600), "Essex, drawing now
towards the catastrophe," says Bacon, " or last part of that
tragedy, for which he came upon the stage in Ireland, his
treasons grew to a farther ripeness," and the case became
desperate. The Queen, remembering the "continual, in-
cessant, and confident speeches and courses " that he had
held, became " utterly alienated " from him, turned her
THE RICHARD II. 249
back upon him, and would scarcely speak to him for three
months after, nor until he had made the most passionate
appeal to her justice and affection, that whereas he had lost
many friends on account of his opposition to Essex, he was
now to lose her favor on account of his friendship and zeal
in his behalf, and to find himself in the condition of what
" the Frenchmen call enfans perdus." Whereupon her
Majesty was " exceedingly moved," and willed him " to rest
upon this, ' gratia mea sufficit,' " and " a number of other
sensible and tender words and demonstrations, such as
more could not be " ; but, as touching Essex, " ne verbum
quidem" not a word more.
Meantime, this play of Richard II. has had a great run
upon the stage ; it has had the open countenance of Essex
and his crew, who have been constant auditors at the Globe
and Blackfriars ; the public mind has caught his drift and
understood the application that was being made of it ; and
even the groundlings have not failed to perceive its bearing
upon Essex's disloyal schemes. Hayward's book also comes
in, with its express dedication to Essex, its still clearer drift,
and its more palpable treason, to add to the general agita-
tion and " put in the people's heads boldness and faction,"
and still more to inflame the anger and excite the alarm of
the Queen. Hayward was seized and sent straight to the
Tower, and some months afterwards (August 4th, 160 1) 1
when Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waited upon her
Majesty at the palace, she exclaimed : " I am Richard,
know you not that ! " And referring to Essex, she con-
tinued : " He that will forget God will also forget his ben-
efactors : this tragedy was played forty times in open streets
and houses." 2 Plainly, this was the play, and not the
book.
Now, it was late in the year 1599, and as Bacon says,
" about the middle of Michaelmas term," (that is, about the
1 Pixon's Story of Lord Bacon's Life, (London, 1862), 156.
2 Knight's Biography of Shakespeare, 411.
250 THE RICHARD II.
middle of November,) while Essex was under arrest at the
Lord-Keeper's house, he himself having free access to her
Majesty, not only as courtier but as counsel in her legal
business, and not long after the time when her Majesty had
dined at his lodge at Twickenham Park, when, though pro-
fessing not to be a poet, he had prepared a sonnet " directly
tending and alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcile-
ment " with Essex, that he had the interviews of which he
speaks in this Apology and relates the anecdotes which fol-
low. After telling this story of the Sonnet, he proceeds
thus :
" But I could never prevail with her, though I am per-
suaded she saw plainly whereat I levelled ; and she plainly
had me in jealousy, that I was not hers entirely, but still
had inward and deep respect towards my lord, more than
stood at that time with her will and pleasure. About the
same time, "I remember an answer of mine in a matter
which had some affinity with my lord's cause, which, though
it grew from me, went after about in other's names. For
her Majesty being mightily incensed with that book which
was dedicated to my Lord of Essex, being a story of the
first year of King Henry IV., thinking it a seditious prel-
ude to put into the people's head boldness and faction,
said, she had an opinion that there was treason in it, and
asked me if I could not find any places in it which might
be drawn within case of treason : whereto I answered : For
treason, surely I found none ; but for felony, very many.
And when her Majesty hastily asked me, Wherein ? I told
her the author had committed very apparent theft ; for he
had taken most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and
translated them into English, and put them into his text."
In this Apology, Bacon is vindicating himself from unjust
aspersions touching his conduct towards Essex, and he is
giving here an account of his intercessions with the Queen
in his behalf; and this anecdote, as well as that which fol-
lows, is lugged in by way of showing his zeal for Essex, and
THE RICHARD II. 251
they are for the most part digressions ; and having related
them, he returns again to the main thread of his subject
After distinctly stating that the Queen plainly had himself
in jealousy, that he was not entirely hers, but still had more
inward and deep respect towards Essex than stood with her
will and pleasure, he introduces the anecdote as consisting
in an answer of his in a matter which had some affinity
with Essex's cause, and which, though it grew from himself,
went after about in others' names. He then turns upon
Dr. Hayward's book as the thing which had mightily in-
censed her Majesty ; but that was not the " matter " which
grew from him. That book went only in the name of Hay-
ward himself ; his name was signed to the dedication of it ;
he was sent to the Tower for it ; he confessed himself the
author of it, in an apologetical letter ; it was attributed to
no one else ; and there is no reason to doubt that he was
the author of it, nor that the fact was well known both to
Bacon and the Queen. Nor is it to be imagined that
Bacon himself could have been suspected of having written
such a book at that time or any other. But considering the
character of that book, its near affinity with the tragedy of
Richard II. as well as with Essex's cause, and the per-
sonal relations of Essex, -Bacon, and the Que.en, it becomes
highly probable, if not quite certain, that in thus bringing
up this matter against Bacon's intercession, with the sug-
gestion that there was treason in it, she either knew, or
strongly suspected, that Bacon himself was the author of
that play, and meant to throw it up at him in this manner.
Bacon sees her drift, and endeavors to parry the blow with
a jest. This is further manifest in the allusion to the theft
upon Tacitus. The play, as we have seen, was as notorious
in this same connection as Dr. Hayward's book ; but being
a mere historical drama, written without any reference to
Essex's treason, though perverted to his uses, it could not
so well be laid hold of. The play did grow from him, and
went about afterwards in others' names : Hayward's book
252 THE RICHARD II.
never went in any other name but his own. Bacon himself
also tells us, in this same tract, that " in the heat of all the
ill news from Ireland " and the agitations going on, while
the Council were in session concerning Essex, in November,
1599, " there did fly about in London streets and theatres
divers seditious libels, and Paul's and ordinaries were full
of bold and factious discourses," to the Earl's disadvantage ;
and yet the Queen, in her clemency, only " thought herself
of a mean to right her own honor, and yet spare the Earl's
ruin." The theatre is thus distinctly brought in for a share
in the business.
So capital a joke did this piece of wit appear to Bacon,
that he could not spare to record it among his Apothegms,
thus :
" 58. The book of deposing King Richard the Second, and the coming in
of Henry the Fourth, supposed to be written by Dr. Hayward, who was
committed to the Tower for it, had much incensed Queen Elizabeth ; and
she asked Mr. Bacon, being of her learned counsel, Whether there was any
treason contained in it? Mr. Bacon intending to do him a pleasure, anl to
take off the Queen's bitterness with a merry conceit, answered, ' No Madam,
for treason I cannot deliver an opinion that there is any, but very much
felony.' The Queen apprehending it gladly, asked, How ? and Wherein ?
Mr. Bacon answered, " Because he had stolen many of his sentences and
conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus."
The designation here given to the book comes much
nearer to a correct naming of the play than it does to the
title of Dr. Hayward's pamphlet, and the suggestion that
the Doctor was committed to the Tower for only being sup-
posed to be the author, and that he, in his answer, intended
to do the Doctor a pleasure, looks very much like an
attempt at a cover, and is, to say the least, a little curious
in itself. That Dr. Hayward had translated out of Tacitus
was, of course, a mere pretence ; but that the play drew
largely upon the " sentences and conceits of Cornelius
Tacitus." will be shown to be quite certain.
This was not the end of the matter : it came up again
upon a similar occasion, not long afterwards, for the Apol-
ogy proceeds thus :
THE RICHARD II. 253
" And another time, when the Queen could not be persuaded that it was
his writing whose name was to it, but that it had some more mischievous
author ; and said with great indignation, That she would have him racked
to produce his author: I replied; 'Nay, Madam, he is a doctor; never rack
his person, but rack his style; let him have pen, ink, and paper, and help
of books, and be enjoined to continue the story where it breaketh off, and I
will undertake, by collating the styles, to judge whether he were the author
or no."
Now, why this question of the authorship of Dr. Hay-
ward's book, when it was published under his own name,
and he was confessedly and notoriously the writer of it?
But of the author of this tragedy, though printed with the
name of William Shakespeare on the title-page, there
might have been more room for question ; and the racking
of his person to produce his author might have been more
suggestive to the wit of ifc Mr. Bacon " than he was willing
more openly to confess. The Queen suspected that this
matter which grew from him, but went after about in others'
names, here supposed to be Dr. Hayward's book (it not
being his intention to state more expressly what that " mat-
ter" was), had some more mischievous author than even Dr.
Hayward ; and who, then, was it ? certainly, not Essex, to
whom it was dedicated, for she doubtless knew very well
that he had employed the pen of Francis Bacon in all
lengthy papers which he had had occasion to write ; and
perhaps she thought, or intended to insinuate, if not that it
came from the same source as the play itself, at least that
it was countenanced by a patronage equally mischievous as
that which had encouraged the play ; and this threat, that
she would have the ostensible writer racked to produce
the real author, looks very much like a home thrust at
Bacon himself. Again, he averts the blow with a jest ; and
a very curious jest it was. It will be remembered that the
play had been printed in 1598 under the name of William
Shakespeare, and that the story of it, the history of the
Wars of the Roses, had already been continued in the
first and second parts of the " Henry IV." (the deposition
of Richard and the usurpation of Henry occurring in the
254 THE RICHARD II.
middle of the play of Richard II.) and in the " Henry
V.," which last must have been then (in 1599) actually in
hand, or but lately finished ; for the following lines of the
fifth chorus would seem to have been written before the
return of Essex from Ireland, in September of that year :
" Chor. As by a lower but loving likelihood,
Were now the General of our gracious Empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him." Act V. Chorus.
And the dancer in the epilogue to the second part of the
" Henry IV." is made to say, " our humble author will con-
tinue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry
with the fair Katherine of France " ; and in the concluding
chorus of the " Henry V.," the writer addresses himself to
the audience in these words :
" Chm: Thus far, with rough and all unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story";
that is to say, the story of the Wars of the Roses, which
began with the " Richard II."
" Containing the deposing of a king."
In like manner, the Prince Hal of the " Henry IV." is pre-
dicted in the " Richard II.," in the " unthrifty son " of
Bolingbroke, thus :
" Bol. Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For these, they say, he daily doth frequent,
With unrestrained loose companions;
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes,
And beat our watch, and rob our passengers;
While he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honour, to support
So dissolute a crew." Act V. Sc. 3.
But in these subsequent pieces, instead of the aspiring
Henry Bolingbroke usurping a throne, deposing an anointed
king, cherishing rebellion, putting in the people's head
boldness and faction, and furnishing a dangerous example,
THE RICHARD II. 255
" too fitting " to these times, of a tragedy which may be
transferred from the stage to the state, we have now the
facetious Sir John only treasonably corrupting the true
prince ; and at length the " fat knight " and his author
have so grown into favor with the offended Queen, that, as
the traditions say, she had herself commanded the story to
be continued in another piece ; which was done in this
same year 1599-1600, in the " Merry Wives of Windsor."
And if this tradition can be relied on, it may give still
further point to the wit of Bacon's answer. This sugges-
tion, that the reputed author should be required to continue
the story, and that he would himself undertake to judge,
by collating the styles, whether he were the author or no,
may possibly be understood to apply to Dr. Hay ward's his-
tory ; but it would thereby lose the best part of the wit :
certainly no one was better prepared than himself to judge,
by the styles, of the identity of the authorship, if it were
the play which he had in his mind. And upon this hint,
we also may undertake to judge, by collating the styles,
whether or no he were the author of these plays.
Nor was this all. But when the informal inquiry came
on, before the Lords Commissioners, in the summer of 1 600,
Bacon, in a letter to the Queen, desired to be spared from
taking any part in it as Queen's Counsel, out of consider-
ation of his personal obligations to his former patron and
friend. But the Queen would listen to no excuse, and his
request was peremptorily refused. It will be borne in mind
that the Queen's object in this inquiry was, to vindicate her
own course and the honor of the crown, without subjecting
Essex to the dangers of a formal trial for high treason, and
that her intention then was to check and reprove him, but
not to ruin his fortunes. Bacon made up his mind at once
to meet the issue thus intentionally forced upon him, and
he resolved to show to her, as he says, that he " knew the
degrees of duties " ; that he could discharge the highest
duty of the subject to the sovereign, against all obligations
256 THE RICHARD II.
of private friendship towards an erring friend ; wherein,
says Fuller, very justly, " he was not the worse friend for
being the better subject " ; ] and that if he must renounce
either, it should be Essex, rather than the Queen, who had
been, on the whole, personally, perhaps, the better friend
of the two to him : well knowing, doubtless, that conduct
is oftentimes explained equally well by the basest as by the
loftiest motives, and that the latter are generally the most
difficult of appreciation. The next thing he heard was, that
the Lords, in making distribution of the parts, had assigned
to him, " by the conclusion binding upon the Queen's
pleasure directly, nolens volens," that part of the charges
which related to this same " seditious prelude " ; at which
he was very much annoyed. And they determined, he says,
" that I should set forth some undutiful carriage of my lord,
in giving occasion and countenance to a seditious pamphlet,
as it was termed, which was dedicated unto him, which was
the book before-mentioned of King Henry IV. Where-
upon I replied to that allotment, and said to their Lordships,
that it was an old matter, and had no manner of coherence
with the rest of the charge, being matters of Ireland, and
thereupon that I having been wronged by bruits before,
this would expose me to them more ; and it would be said
I gave in evidence mine own tales." What bruits ? What
tales ? The Lords, evidently relishing the joke, insisted that
this part was fittest for him, as " all the rest was matter of
charge and accusation," but this only " matter of caveat
and admonition : " wherewith he was but " little satisfied,"
as he adds, " because I knew well a man were better to
be charged with some faults, than admonished of some
others." Evidently, here was an admonition which he did
not like, and it is plain that he took it as personal to him-
self. Nevertheless he did actually swallow this pill ; for
we learn from other history that on the hearing before the
Lords Commissioners " the second part of Master Bacon's
i Worthies of England, II. 422.
THE RICHARD II. 257
accusation was, that a certain dangerous seditious pamphlet
was of late put forth into print concerning the first year of
the reign of Henry the Fourth, but indeed the end of
Eichard the Second, and that my lord of Essex, who thought
fit to be patron of that book, after the book had been out a
week, wrote a cold formal letter to my lord of Canterbury
to call it in again, knowing belike that forbidden things are
most sought after." l
As to what these "bruits" were, some light may be
gained from certain letters 2 which were written about the
month of December 1599. Bacon himself informs us in
the Apology that he had several times dissuaded the Queen
from taking proceedings in the Star Chamber against
Essex, in consequence of which her Majesty's " face and
manner " had not been " so clear and open " to him as
before, and when he happened one day to be absent from
the Star Chamber, there was " a deep silence " from her to
him ; and, it seems, he addresses a letter to her, in which
he entreated her Majesty " not to impute his absence to
any weakness of mind or unworthiness," and complains that
all the world was against him, and that his " life had been
threatened and his name libelled." He also writes letters
to Lord Howard and Sir Robert Cecil, in which he defends
himself against certain false aspersions touching his con-
duct towards Essex, and says, " There is shaped a tale in
London's forge," that he had delivered opinion to the Queen
that Essex's cause came within case of prcemunire and high
treason; and he denounces these reports as "libels and
lies," having their " root in some light-headed envy at his
accesses," and suggests that " these courses and bruits hurt
Essex more than all." No doubt these were the " bruits,"
which had been raised against him before ; but there is
nowhere allusion to any tales, of which it could be said he
gave in evidence his own, unless it were this same " matter."
1 Morrison's Itinerary, Works XVI. (Mont.), Note 4c. Part II.
2 Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 160-3.
17
258 THE RICHARD II.
And so, as he had been wronged before by these bruits,
this part, now, would expose him still more to " libels and
lies " of the same kind, and it would also be said he gave
in evidence his own tales !
Thus we see how Essex had been compelled to disclaim
this dedication ; and Bacon was now made to swallow his
f / part in that business (whatever it was) by an express con-
clusion of the Queen's pleasure. His first objection to the
allotment is, that this part of the charge was an " old
matter." But this dedication was not so very old a matter,
not older than the matters of Ireland, being scarcely a year
old ; but the play was somewhat older, and he might very
well urge that this tragedy had nothing to do with Essex's
treason in Ireland, which was of later date than the play.
There had been bruits to his prejudice before, and this
" old matter " would expose him to them still more, and it
would be said he gave in evidence his own tales ! As to
these tales and this " matter " which grew from himself, he
still preferred to go about in others' names. According to
Mr. Tobie Matthew, it had been just so with the most pro-
digious wit in all England, whose name was Francis Bacon,
though known by another. And as some further proof that
this play of Richard II. made an equal figure with Hay-
ward's book in all these troubles and in the public mind,
and was precisely that very same " old matter," and none
other, we may take Bacon's own construction (wherein the
old matter becomes the old play} from his account of the
trial of Merrick, which runs thus :
"The afternoon before the rebellion, Merrick, with a
great number of others, that afterwards were all in the
action, had procured to be played before them the play of
deposing King Richard the Second ; neither was it casual,
but a play bespoken by Merrick, and not so only, but when
it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old,
and they should have loss in playing it, because few would
come to see it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given
THE RICHARD II. 259
to play, and so, thereupon, played it was. So earnest was
he to satisfy his eyes with the sight of that tragedy, which
he thought soon after his lordship should bring from the
stage to the state, but that God turned it upon their own
heads." l
Again, this account of the tragedy of Richard II. may
throw some light on the behaviour of the Queen towards
Bacon (and Essex) in the matter of his promotion. As we
have seen, the name of Essex had been used publicly in
connection with the schemes of the Jesuits as early as 1594.
Bacon was avowedly the confidential counsellor and a
known adherent of Essex and his party. Essex's counten-
ance of this play and of Hayward's book had been viewed
by her in the light of undutiful carriage toward his sov-
ereign ; and when an opportunity occurred, it was made a
ground of formal accusation against him. The unfortunate
subsidy speech may not have been the only objection to
Bacon's advancement. He had never actually repented of
that error, but rather justified his course ; an offence which
might easily be pardoned and forgotten. It had been so
far overlooked that she had continued to employ him in her
legal business, though without a regular appointment as
Queen's Counsel, and she had rewarded his services with
various gifts and grants, and bestowed upon him many
marks of her favor. But this matter of a persistent ad-
herence to the fortunes of Essex, even in his wayward
courses, while these machinations were abroad using his
name and his title from Edward III. in a way that tended to
her dethronement, being an affair of high political import
as well as personal to herself, was neither to be counte-
nanced nor forgotten, though it might be endured. It was
plain to the actors themselves, in the repeated efforts made
for his advancement, during these years, that some secret
and inexplicable quirk had got possession of her mind : she
held fast to the Cecils and resisted all solicitations in his
i Declaration of the Treason of Robert Earl of Essex, JForifc*(Philad.), 365.
260 THE RICHARD II.
behalf. During her whole reign, her mind had been dis-
turbed with anxieties about her title to the throne. The
several successive conspiracies of Campion, Throckmorton,
and Parry and Babington, down to the beheading of Mary
Queen of Scots, in 1587, had been contrived and suppressed ;
and still, in 1594, Parsons and Inglefield were at work.
Essex, though a kinsman and favorite, was a great noble
and the leader of a powerful party, which it was not safe to
allow to become too powerful. Her latest days were dis-
quieted by doubts of her own ministers ; and it need not
appear surprising that she was unwilling to place Essex's
confidential adviser in the line of promotion to the highest
offices in the State, nor that an apprehension so secret and
profound should not appear on the surface of things. So,
when the question of the Solicitorship came up, she was
in no haste " in determining of the place," as we learn from
the Letters. She answered Essex that " Bacon had a great
wit and much learning, but that in law he could show to
the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep " ; and
that had to be taken for an answer. It was not always the
jealousy of the Cecils that stood in his way ; both Lord
Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil now urged his suit. It was
laid to Lord- Keeper Puckering ; but the Queen was <l never
peremptory but to my lord of Essex." When Essex was
" passionate " for him, she was " passionate against him " ;
and bid Essex " go to bed, if he could think of nothing
else." She said to Essex, " she showed her mislike to the
suit " as well as he " his affection for it " ; and that " if
there were to be a yielding, it was fitter to be " of his side.
Did she fear that he would put in the people's head bold-
ness and faction, with his seditious preludes ? DM she
know that Essex was even aspiring to her crown, or, at
least, looking to be her successor ?
"And you that do abet him in this kind,
Cherish rebellion, and are rebels all." Rich. II., Act II. Sc. 3.
So, the honorable offender in the " Timon " had been' known
THE RICHARD II. 261
"to commit outrages,
And cherish factions;"
as Bacon says of M. Portius Cato, that " he had a bitter
tongue, and loved to cherish factions."
He writes to his brother Anthony : " This is Essex, and
she is more angry with him than with me. . . . My conceit
is, that I am the least part of my own matter ; ... for I
know her Majesty's nature, that she neither careth though
the whole surname of Bacons travelled, nor the Cecils
neither." And he adds, " But what the secret of it is,
oculus aquilce non penetravit" The secret of it, or at least
one rational explanation of it, and that not beyond the
reach of an eagle eye, would seem to be clearly revealed
in course of the progress of this Essex drama. In the very
next act of it, now in 1599-1600, Essex's schemes are
brought to a head and final issue. Bacon is forced de-
cisively and once for all to choose between him and her :
he cannot serve two masters. In the next act, he is com-
pelled to prosecute his old friend and patron, no excuse
admitted, on that particular part of the charge which related
to those " factious and seditious preludes which had been
flying about the streets and theatres of London," and which
had a near affinity with Essex's cause, including that tragedy,
which had been " played forty times in London streets and
houses," that very " matter " which grew from him, " and
went after about in others' names." And in the last
act, her Majesty's learned counsel adduces as proof of
treason against Merrick, late " Commander over Essex's
House," that he had specially procured the play of Richard
II. to be enacted before Essex's men, thinking his lordship
was about to bring that tragedy from the stage to the state,
even at the risk of giving in evidence his own tales !
After this significant hint from Bacon himself, that whole
" sentences and conceits " had been transferred from Tac-
itus into the play, it should be expected, if this interpreta-
tion be correct, that some traces of them would be found in
262 THE RICHARD II.
it ; and herein we have a remarkable confirmation of the
truth of the supposition. Tacitus was a favorite author
with Bacon. Much of the brevity and neatness of the
style of both Bacon and the plays may be due, in some de-
gree, to the model of Tacitus. " Of all stories," says he,
" I think Tacitus simply the best." And in the speech on
the King's Messages (1609), he alludes to Tacitus's ac-
count of Nerva and Nero, in these words :
" If the king's sovereignty receive diminution, or any de-
gree of contempt, we shall be a meteor, or ' cor.
pus imperfecte mistum,' which kind of bodies come speedily
to confusion and dissolution. And herein it is our happi-
ness, that we may make the same judgment of the king,
which Tacitus made of Nerva : ' Divus Nerva res olirn dis-
sociabiles miscuit, imperium et libertatem.' Nerva did tem-
per things that before were thought incompatible, or insoci-
able, sovereignty and liberty." And again, in the Advance-
ment : " What was the cause of Nero's fall or overthrow ?
Apollonius answered again : Nero could tune the harp
well ; but in government he always either wound up the
pins too high, and strained the strings too far ; or let them
down too low, and slackened the strings too much.
[" lago. [Aside.] ! you are well tun'd now ;
But I '11 set down the pegs that make this music."
Oth., Act II. Sc. 1.]
Here we see the difference between regular and able
princes, and irregular and incapable, Nerva and Nero. The
one tempers and mingles the sovereignty with the liberty
of the subject wisely ; and the other doth interchange it,
and vary it unequally and absurdly." In Tacitus we find
these words : " Nerva Caesar res olim dissociabiles miscuerit,
Principatum ac libertatem " ; and again : " Sed imperaturits
es hominibus, qui nee tolam servitutem pati possunt, nee totam
libertatem" l And the same ideas and imagery are clearly
discernible in the following passages from the play :
1 Tac. Hist. I. 16.
THE RICHARD II. 263
" K- Rich. For I have given here my soul's consent,
T' undeck the pompous body of a king;
Make glory base, and sovereignty a slave,
Proud Majesty a subject, state a peasant." Act IV. Sc. 1.
" Which so rous'd up with boisterous untun'd drums."
Act I. Sc. 3.
" North. His tongue is now a stringless instrument."
Act II. Sc. 1.
" Norf. And now my tongue's use is to me no more,
Than an unstringed viol, or a harp;
Or like a cunning instrument cae'd up
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony." Act I. Sc. 3.
" K. Rich. This music mads me : let it sound no more,
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad."
Act V. Sc. 5.
Wherewith the following sentences from Tacitus concern-
ing Nero and his devotion to music and the harp (cithera),
may also be compared :
" Vetus illi cum erat, curriculo quadrigarum insistere ; nee minus fcedum
studium. cithera ludicum in modum canere, cum coenaret; quid Regibus
et antiquis Ducibus factitatum memorabat." Tac. Ann. XIV. 14.
" Ingreditur theatrum, cum cither legere obtemperans." Ib. XVI. 4.
" Postremo ipse scenam incedit, multa cura tentans citheram." Jb.
XIV. 15.
" Quia est Nero cithera, ita Piso tragico ornatu, canebat" Ib. XV. 39.
In the letter of " Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his
Travels," written for Essex in 1596, the same year with
this play, there are some expressions which may remind
the reader of the character of Richard, and also of certain
lines of the play :
" But if there be not in nature some partner to this active strength, it
can never be obtained by any industry ; for the virtues which are proper
unto it are liberality or magnificence, and fortitude or magnanimity ; and
some are by nature so covetous or cowardly, as it is as much in vain to seek
to enlarge or inflame their minds as to go about to plough the rocks.
[" And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect
Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbor's swords."
Act I. Sc. 3.]
264 THE RICHARD II.
Clearness of judgment makes men liberal, for it teacheth men to esteem
of the goods of fortune not for themselves, for so they are but jailors to them,
but for their use, for so they are lords over them; and it makes us to know
that it is beatius dare, quam accipere, the one being a badge of sovereignty,
the other of subjection The observation of proportion or likeness
between one person or one thing and another makes nothing without ex-
ample, nor nothing new: and although exampla illustrant, non probant,
examples may make things plain that are proved, but prove not themselves ;
yet, when circumstances agree, and proportion is kept, that which is probable
in one case is probable in a thousand, and that which is reason once is
reason ever":
" Why should we in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Shewing, as in a model, our firm estate? "
Act HI. Sc. 4.
The judgment of Apollonius (an author much cited by
Bacon) upon the cause of Nero's fall, " that he could tune
the harp well," but, in government, " wound up the pins
too high," or " let them down too low," that is, " knew
no touch to tune the harmony," was an anecdote that had
been impressed upon Bacon's mind ; and this imagery, de-
rived from the tuning of instruments, and from the harp,
as well as the ideas, must have gone by the same road into
the play. Bacon could not have derived these stories from
the play, and there is not the remotest probability that
Shakespeare could have been familiar, at once, with the
writings of Tacitus and these sayings of Apollonius ; and
it is certain he could have borrowed nothing for this play
from the Speech, or from the Advancement. And the
same imagery shows itself again in the De Augmentis, thus :
" This variable and subtle composition and structure of man's body has
made it as a musical instrument of much and exquisite workmanship, which
is easily put out of tune. And therefore the poets did well to conjoin music
and medicine in Apollo ; because the genius of both these arts is almost the
same ; for the office of the physician is but to know how to stretch and tune
the harp of man's body, that the harmony may be without all harshness or
discord.' ' 1
Again he writes :
" And in music, I ever loved easy airs, that go full all the parts together;
and not these strange points of accord and discord."
1 Spedding's Tran. of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX., 25.
THE RICHARD H. 265
Compare, again, these " conceits " from Tacitus with the
lines cited from the play, as follows :
'' Prater multiplices rerurn huraanarum casus, coelo terroque prodigia
et fulminarum monitus et futurarum praesagia, Iseta, tristia, ambigua, man-
ifesta. 1 .... Prodigia, .... vis fulgarum, .... sidus cometes, sanguine,
.... vitulus cui caput in crure esset. 2 Vidisse civium moestos vultus. 8
Nero, .... rumor ipso tempore, flagrantis urbis, inesse cum domestic-am
scenam et cecinisse Trojanum excidium. 4 Finis Neronis, .... evulgato
Imperii arcano, posse Principem alibi, quam Romae fieri." 6
"Capt. 'T is thought the King is dead: we will not stay.
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven ;
The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the Earth,
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change:
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap :
These signs forerun the death or fall of Kings.
Sal. Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind,
I see thy glory, like a shooting star,
Fall to the base earth from the firmament." Act II. Sc. 4.
The identity of the ideas and imagery here is so clear
and palpable as to need no comment. Some trace may
also be observed in these lines of the author's reading of
Holinshed's history of Richard II., in which it is related
that " in this year (1399), in a manner throughout all the
realme of England, old baie-trees withered, and afterwards,
contrarie to all men's thinking, grew greene againe, a
strange sight, and supposed to impart some unknown
event " ; 6 but Holinshed makes no mention of meteors,
the fixed stars of heaven, the pale-faced moon, prophets
whispering fearful change, rich men looking sad, the un-
strung viol and the harp, nor ruffians dancing and leaping :
these come from Tacitus.
So, also, Bacon says in the Essay of Seditions and
Troubles :
" When discords, and quarrels, and factions, are carried openly and
audaciously, it is a sign the reverence of government is lost; for the
l Tac. Hist. I. 3. 2 Tac. Ann. XII. 47. /ft. XV. 36.
* Ib. XV. 39. Tac. Hist. I. 4. 6 Chron. of Eng. H. 850.
266 THE RICHARD II.
motions of the greatest persons in a government ought to be as the mo-
tions of the planets under primum mobile (according to the old opinion),
which is that every of them is carried swiftly by the highest motion, and
softly in their own motion; and therefore, when great ones in their own
particular motion move violently, and, as Tacitus expresseth it well, ' libe-
rius quam ut imperantium meminissent,' 1 it is a sign the orbs are out of
frame."
" K. Henry. Will you again unknit
This churlish knot of all abhorred war,
And move in that obedient orb again,
Where you did give a fair and natural light,
And be no more an exhal'd meteor,
A prodigy of fear, and a portent
Of broached mischief to the unborn times? "
I Hen. IV., Act V.Sc.l.
It will be borne in mind that this Essay first appeared in
the edition of 1625, and of course William Shakespeare
could never have borrowed anything from it for these plays,
otherwise than as they came through the mind of Bacon
himself. This Essay, like many others of them, is full of
quotations from Tacitus, and the ideas, imagery, and very
language of the Essay may be distinctly recognized by a
careful reader throughout the play. When the sentences
and conceits are wrenched from their contexts, the resem-
blances are less striking ; but a few instances will be suf-
ficient to show that there is ample ground for this asser-
tion:
" Libels and licentious discourses against the State, when they are frequent
and open; and in the like sort false news often running up and down, to the
disadvantage of the State, and hastily embraced, are among the signs of
troubles."
"Act III. Sc. 4. Duke of York's Garden.
" Queen. But stay, here come the gardeners :
Let 's step into the shadow of these trees.
My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They'll talk of State; for every one doth so
Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe."
" Shepherds of people had need to know the calendars and tempests in
State, which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality : "
" Card. Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays,
THE RICHARD II. 267
That look too lofty in our commonwealth :
All must be even in our government.
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 V "
The talk of the gardeners then goes on about Richard's
" disordered spring " and those " weeds," the Earl of Wilt-
shire, Bushy, Green, that he had suffered to grow up in his
untrimmed garden, and Bolingbroke, who had " seized the
wasteful king," ending thus :
" 1 Sent. What ! think you then, the King shall be depos'd?
Gard. Depress'd he is already; and depos'd,
'T is doubt, he will be."
" For high conceits do come streaming into the imaginations of base per-
sons ; especially when they are drunk with news and talk of the people."
History of Henry VII.
" Queen. 0, 1 am press'd to death, through want of speaking !
[ Coming forward.
Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh, rude tongue sound this unpleasing news ?
"What Eve, what serpent hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man ?
Why do'st thou say King Richard is depos'd ?
Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall ? Say, where, when, and how,
Cam'st thou by these ill-tidings ? Speak, thou wretch."
" Also, as Machiavel noteth, when princes that ought to be common
parents, make themselves as a party, and lean to one side, it is as a boat
that is overthrown by uneven weight on the one side."
" Gard. Pardon me, madam : little joy have I,
To breathe these news, yet what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold
Of Bolingbroke: their fortunes both are weigh'd:
In your lord's scale is nothing but himself.
And some few vanities that make him light;
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers,
And with that odds he weighs King Richard down."
" So when any of the four pillars of government are mainly shaken, or
THE RICHARD II.
weakened, (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure,) men had need
to pray for fair weather : "
"K. Hick. Away,
From Richard's night to Bolingbroke's fair day." Act III. Sc. 2.
" We '11 make foul weather with despised tears." Act III. Sc. 3.
" The causes and motions of seditions are innovation in religion, taxes,
alterations of laws and customs, breaking of privileges, general oppression,
advancement of unworthy persons, factions grown desperate: "
"North. Now, afore God, 't is shame such wrongs are borne
In him, a royal prince, and many more
Of noble blood in this declining land.
The King is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers. . _ .
fioss. The Commons hath he fill'd with grievous taxes,
And lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.
Wil. And daily new exactions are devis'd;
As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what.
Ross. The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.
Wil. The King's grown bankrupt, like a broken man.
North. Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.
Ross. He hath not money for these Irish wars,
His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,
But by the robbing of the banish'd Duke." Act II. Sc. 1.
"Bol. I see old Gaunt alive : O, then, my father,
Will you permit that I shall stand condemn' d
A wand'ring vagabond, my rights and royalties
Pluck'd from my arms perforce, and given away
To upstart unthrifts?
My father's goods are all distrain'd and sold;
And these, and all, are all amiss employ'd.
What would you have me do? I am a subject,
And challenge law : attornies are denied me,
And therefore personally I lay claim
To my inheritance of free descent.
Wil. Base men by his endowments are made great."
Act II. Sc. 3.
"Bol. If not, I '11 use the advantage of my power,
And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood,
Rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen :
The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke
It is, such crimson tempest should bedrench
The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land,
My stooping duty tenderly shall show." Act III. Sc. 3.
THE RICHARD II. 269
"And as there are -certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swelling of
seas before a tempest, so are there in states: "
" This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate." Act I. Sc. 3.
"Aum. How brooks your grace the air,
After late tossing on the breaking seas? " Act III. Sc. 2.
" For it is true that every vapour, or fume, doth not turn into a storm, so
it is nevertheless true, that storms, though they blow over divers times,
may come at last : "
"Scroop. Like an unseasonable stormy day,
Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears,
So high above his limits swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke, " Act III. Sc. 2.
"Sal. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,
Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest. " Act II. Sc. 4.
"North. But lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm." Act II. Sc. 1.
" Ille etiam caecos instare tumultus
Saepe monet, fraudesque operta tumescere bella." Essay xv.
" Were it, that before such great things, men's hearts of a secret instinct
of nature misgive them ; as the sea without wind swelleth of himself before
a tempest" Holinshed's History of Richard III., Vol. III., 379.
" 3 Cit. Before the days of change, still is it so.
By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger; as by proof we see
The water swell before a boist'rous storm."
. Richard III., Act II. Sc. 3.
" For when the authority of princes is made but an accessary to a cause,
and that there be other bands that tie faster than the band of sovereignty,
kings begin to be put almost out of possession : "
" Queen. I will despair, and be at enmity
With cozening hope : he is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper-back of death,
Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,
While false hope lingers in extremity." Act II. Sc. 2.
"Fits. there is my bond of faith
To tie thee to my strong correction." Act IV. Sc. 1.
" Certainly, the politic and artificial nourishing and entertainment of
hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the best antidotes
against the poison of discontents ; and it is a certain sign of a wise govern-
ment and proceeding, when it can hold men's hearts by hopes, when it
cannot by satisfaction; and when it can handle things in such manner as no
evil shall appear so peremptory but that it hath some outlet of hope : "
270 THE RICHARD II.
"K. Rich. What comfort have we now ?
By Heaven, I '11 hate him everlastingly
That bids me be of comfort any more.
Go to Flint Castle ; there I '11 pine away ;
A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
That power I have, discharge ; and let 'em go
To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,
For I have none." Act III. Sc. 2.
" To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate
(so it be without too great insolency or bravery), is a safe way. For he
that turneth the humors back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards
endangereth malign ulcers and pernicious imposthumations : "
"K. Rich. For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd
With that dear blood which it hath foster'd,
And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect
Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbour's swords : " Act I. Sc. 3.
"Aum. You holy clergymen, is there no plot
To rid the realm of this pernicious blot? " Act IV. Sc. 1.
"Gaunt. And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,
Fall like amazing thunder on the casque
Of thy amaz'd pernicious enemy." Act I. Sc. 3.
" This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shews no cause without
Why the man dies." Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 4.
" I understand a fit head to be one that hath greatness and reputation : "
" Gaunt. Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land,
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick." Act II. Sc. 1.
"JVor. The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation." Act I. Sc. 1.
"For I see sometimes the profounder sort of wits, in handling some par-
ticular argument, will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this well
for their present use ; but the spring-head thereof seemeth to me not to have
been visited." Adv. of Learning, II.
"Sol. That all the treasons for these eighteen years
Complotted and contrived in this land,
Fetch'd from false Mowbray their first head and spring."
Act I. Sc. 1.
"K. Rich. Now is this golden crown like a deep well,
That owes two buckets, filling one another ;
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water :
That bucket down, and full of tears, am I,
Drinking my grief, whilst you mount up on high."
Act IV. Sc. 1.
THE RICHARD II. 271
" Surely princes had need in tender matters and ticklish times to beware
what they say, especially in these short speeches, which fly abroad like
darts, and are thought to be shot out of their secret intentions: "
"K. Rich. And darts his light through every guilty hole."
Act HI. Sc. 2.
" York. While all tongues cried, ' God save thee, Bolingbroke ! '
You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their desiring eyes
Upon his visage." Act V. Sc. 2.
" Such men in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and ever
on the loading part ; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' sores, but
like flies that are still buzzing upon everything that is raw." Essay, xiii.
"K. Rich. 0, villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption !
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man ! " Act III. Sc. 2.
These passages may be left to speak for themselves. It
is also worthy of notice that the word instrument is much
used by both Bacon and Shakespeare, in a metaphorical
way, and peculiarly in the Latin sense of Tacitus ; as for
instance, we have, in Tacitus, " mathematicos, pessi-
mum Principalis matrimonii instrumentum" and " lit haberet
instrumenla servitutis et Reges" and "sect sola instrumenta
vitiorum " ; and in the plays, " the instruments of darkness,"
" the mortal instruments," " a serving man and instrument,"
and " that hath to instrument this lower world " ; and, in
Bacon, " the wicked instruments only of other men's malice,"
and " the actors and instruments," " the organs and instru-
ments," " the fittest instrument to do good to the state," and
" practised by subtile instruments to draw them on," and
" but as a divine instrument, though a mortal man." And
the favorite metaphor of both Bacon and the plays, derived
from instruments of music and the tuning of instruments,
appears in the Advancement, thus :
" Being at some pause looking back into that I have passed through, this
writing seemeth to me, ' si numquam fatt.it imago, 1 as far as a man can
judge of his own work, not much better than the noise, or sound, which
musicians make, while they are tuning their instruments, which is nothing
pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards : so
have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may
play that have better hands: "
272 THE RICHARD II.
" His tongue is now a stringless instrument." Rich. II.
It is true, the author of this play, in the historical part,
very closely followed the history of Holinshed ; as for one
instance, in Holinshed, the Earl of Arundel, turning to
Sir John Bushie, says, " not the King's faithful commons
require this, but thou, and what thou art I know " ; and in
the " Richard II.," it appears thus :
"Norf. No Bolingbroke : if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the Book of Life,
And I from Heaven banish'd, as from hence !
But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know." Act I. Sc. 3.
So Holinshed speaks of Richard lamenting his miserable
state, " when now it was too late : "
" One day too late, I fear, my noble lord,
Hath clouded all thy happy days on Earth." Act III. Sc. 2.
But the parallel ideas, expressions, and allusions in these
writings of Bacon, as well as that particular allusion to the
Salic law, in the Apothegms, in reference to which the
speech in the " Henry V." is almost literally versified out
of Holinshed, with a like allusion to the book of Num-
bers and to the French gloss as in the Apothegms, not
to mention many other similar instances, would seem to
furnish pretty satisfactory evidence that Holinshed was
transferred to the play, through the mind of Francis Bacon
and not of William Shakespeare. Indeed, the critical
reader, who shall diligently compare the entire play with
the writings of Bacon and Tacitus, can scarcely fail to dis-
cover translations and similitudes enough, not only to justify
the expectation of traces in it of the " sentences and con-
ceits of Cornelius Tacitus," but to convince him of the fact,
that they passed into the play through the limbec of Bacon's
brain ; thus confirming the otherwise very conclusive proof
of its identity with that matter which grew from him, and
went after about in other's names.
THE HENRY VIII. 273
2. THE HENRY VIII.
The tragedy of Henry VIII. has been supposed by some
critics to have been written as early as the year 1602,
but there is no evidence concerning it, nor any certain
trace of its existence, before it was produced in great
splendor at the Globe Theatre, on the 30th of June, 1613,
when the theatre took fire, during the performance, and
was burned down. Ben Jonson appears to have taken an
active part in bringing out the play ; and some have enter-
tained the opinion, on internal evidence merely, that the
prologue and the lines in compliment to King James were
written by him and added to the old play, at this time.
But there is no good ground for this supposition : on the
contrary, it is far more probable that the play was entirely
a new one, as Mr. "White believes, and that the speech of
Cranmer in praise of Elizabeth and James, as well as the
scenes in which Anne Bullen, the mother of Elizabeth, is
introduced in terms of high commendation, was intended
to be a special compliment to the King. It was never
entered, nor printed, until it appeared in the Folio of 1623.
It is true, however, that, in the year 1602, the kingdom was
agitated on the subject of abuses of the King's prerogative
in the matter of taxes, and that there were loud complaints
of oppressive exactions. The subject was debated in Par-
liament, and a petition of grievances was sent .up to the
King by the Commons. Bacon presented it, and made his
speech to the King touching purveyors ; in which allusion
is made to the fact, that similar grievances had existed in
the reign of Henry VIII., who had made " some laws or
law against this kind of offenders." And in this play, the
author makes Queen Katherine present to King Henry a
like petition of grievances. A comparison of this speech
with the second scene of the first act will scarcely leave
room for doubt in the mind of the critical reader, that
both proceeded from the same pen. Observe these pas-
sages, in particular :
18
274 THE HENRY VIII.
" Wherein it may please your majesty to vouchsafe me leave, first, to set
forth unto you the dutiful and respective carriage of our proceeding ; next
the substance of our petition " :
" Q. Kath. Thank your majesty.
That you would love yourself, and in that love
Not unconsidered leave your honour, nor
The dignity of your office, is the point
Of my petition.
K. Hen. Lady mine, proceed."
" For there is no grievance so sensible, and so bitter unto the common
subject, as this whereof we now speak The commissions they bring
down are against the law, and because they know so much they will not
show them For all these grievances are committed in your majesty's
name."
" Q,. Kath. I am solicited not by a few,
And those of true condition, that your subjects
Are in great grievance. There have been commissions
Sent down among 'em, which have flaw'd the heart
Of all their loyalties : wherein, although,
My good Lord Cardinal, they vent reproaches
Most bitterly on you, as putter-on
Of these exactions, yet the King our master,
Whose honour Heaven shield from soil, even he escapes not
Language unmannerly ; yea, such which breaks
The sides of loyalty, and almost appears
In loud rebellion."
" For instead of takers they become taxers. .... I do set apart these
commodities, wool, wool-fels, and leather, because the custom upon
them is antiqua costuma:" ["their spinners, carders, fullers, weavers."
Holin. III. 709],
" Norf. Not almost appears ;
It doth appear ; for upon these taxations,
The clothiers all, not able to maintain
The many to them 'longing, have put off
The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who,"
K. Ben. Taxation !
Wherein ? and what taxation ? My Lord Cardinal,
You that are blamed for it alike with us,
Know you of this taxation? "
" Again, they use a strange and unjust exaction, in causing the subjects
to pay poundage of their own debts, due from your majesty unto them."
" Q. Kath These exactions,
Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are
THE HENRY VIII. 275
Most pestilent to the hearing; and, to bear them,
The back is sacrifice to the load. . . .
K- Hen. Still exaction !
The nature of it? In what kind, let 'a know,
Is this exaction?"
" By law they ought to show their commission, and the form of commis-
sion is by law set down."
" For the second point, most gracious sovereign, touching the quantity
which they take, far above that which is answered by your majesty's use;
they are the only multipliers in the world; they have the art of multiplica-
tion. For it is true, that there is no pound profit, which redoundeth to your
majesty in this course, but induceth and begetteth three pounds damage
upon your subjects, besides this discontent."
" Q. Kath The subjects' grief
Comes through commissions, which compel from each
The sixth part of his substance, to be levied
Without delay ; and the pretence for this
Is nam'd your wars in France. This makes bold mouths:
Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze
Allegiance in them
K. Hen. Have you a precedent
Of this commission? I believe not any.
We must not rend our subjects from our laws,
And stick them in our will. Sixth part of each?
A trembling contribution ! Why, we take
From every tree, lop, bark, and part o' th' timber;
And, though we leave it with a root, thus hack'd,
The air will drink the sap. To every county
Where this is question'd, send our letters with
Free pardon to each man that has denied
The force of this commission."
" Again, the}' take trees, which by law they cannot do ; timber trees,
which are the beauty, countenance, and shelter of men's houses. . . . And
if a gentleman be too hard for them, while he is at home, they will watch
their time, when there is but a bailiff or servant remaining, and put the axe
to the root of the tree, ere ever the master can stop it " :
" We set the axe to thy usurping root." 3 Hen. VI., Act II. Sc. 2.
This speech was delivered in 1 604, and it is not impos-
sible that William Shakespeare may have known some-
thing about these exactions and complaints. The resem-
blances are not those of plagiarism, or direct imitation :
they are rather such as would naturally come from the
same mind, on a kindred subject, in writings so different in
276 THE HENRY VIII.
kind, and at some distance of time apart. At the same
time, the marks of the lawyer's hand are almost as visible
in the play as in the speech, and the style and language
are exceedingly alike in both.
In like manner, a comparison of Bacon's Discourse in
Praise of the Queen with Cranmer's speech in compliment
to King James, in the last scene of the play, will render it
next to certain that the speech came from the same source
as the Discourse itself. Some sentences may be introduced,
also, from other speeches and writings of nearly the same
date, and also, some passages from the Sonnets, as follows :
"Whose imperial virtues contend with the excellences of her person; both
virtues contend with her fortune, and both virtue and fortune contend with
her fame. . . . The other benefits of her politic, clement, and gracious
government towards the subjects are without number; the state of justice
good, . . the security of peace greater than can be described by that verse:
Tutus bos etinim rura perambulat :
Nutrit rura Ceres, almaque Faustitas :
Or that other,
Condit quisque diem collibus in suis.
The opulency of the peace such as, . . . These virtues and perfections,
with so great felicity, have made her the honour of her times, the admiration
of the world. . . . The excellences of her person do make so sweet a won-
der." . . .
[" The perfection of your majesty's learning, which as a phoenix may call
whole vollies of wits to follow you." (King James, in the Advancement. )]
" That she hath been as a star of most fortunate influence upon the age
wherein she hath shined."
[" The ancient fable of Atlas that stood fixed." Adv.]
" Cran. 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 : ....
Good grows with her.
In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants; and sing
The merry ways 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.
Nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden pbo3nix,
THE HENRY VIII. 277
Her ashes new create another' heir,
As great in admiration as herself,
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":
[" And burn the long-liv'd phoanix in her blood." Bonnet xix.]
" A prince whom we hold and behold as an excellent pattern and example
to imitate in many her royal virtues." Proclamation.
" She shall be
(But few now living can behold that goodness)
A pattern to all princes living with her,
And all that shall succeed."
[" For beauty's pattern to succeeding men." Sonnet xix.]
" I see your majesty is a star that hath benevolent aspect and gracious
influence upon all things that tend to a general good :
Astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo
Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem.
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." Letter to King.
" And maintain every several estate in a happy and flourishing condi-
tion." Proc.
[Solomon's] " natural history of all verdure from the mountain cedar to
the moss upon the wall." Adv.
" The sappy cedars tall like stately towers." Psalm.
" Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,
That were the servants to 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."
[" And when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which being
dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly
grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and
flourish in peace and plenty." Cyrnb., Act V. Sc. 4.]
" Time is her best commander, which never brought forth such a prince.
.... No praise of magnanimity, nor of love, nor of knowledge, can inter-
cept her praise."
273 THE HENRY VIII.
[" Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom." Sonnet lv.]
" Yea, both roses, white and red, do as well flourish in her nobility as in
her beauty." . . .
" For the beauty and many graces of her presence,"
" that which I did reserve for a garland of her honour," ....
" as he shall never cease to wonder at such a Queen."
[" So all their praises are but prophesies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring ;
And fbr they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing :
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise." Sonnet cvi.]
" Beauty and honour in her are so mingled." Act II. Sc. 3.
Further, that the author had a special intent to make
this play acceptable to King James, is also evident in the
studiously complimentary manner in which he speaks of
Anne Bullen in the several passages in which she is brought
upon the scene ; as for instance, in that of the maskers
habited like shepherds :
" K. Hen. The fairest hand I ever touch'd. 0, beauty !
'Till now I never knew thee
. . . . My Lord Chamberlain,
Pry'thee come hither. What fair lady 's that?
Chum. An't please your Grace, Sir Thomas Bullen's daughter,
The Viscount Rochford, one of her Highness' women.
K. Hen. By heaven, she is a dainty one. Sweetheart,
I were unmannerly to take you out,
And not to kiss you." Act I. Sc. 4.
And again, thus, after he has made her his queen :
" 2 Gent. Heaven bless thee ! [Looking on the QUEEN.
Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look'd on.
Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel :
Our King has all the Indies in his arms,
And more and richer when he strains that lady :
I cannot blame his conscience." Act IV. Sc. 1.
THE HEXRY VIIL 279
The story of the maskers habited like shepherds is taken
from Holinshed, whose account is pretty closely followed
in the play, but with the very notable exception, that in
Holinshed there is no allusion whatever to Anne Bullen,
while in the play, she makes a prominent figure in the
scene ; and in all these passages, her beauty and honor are
the subject of particular remark, very much after the style
of Bacon when speaking of Queen Elizabeth herself, in the
Felicities, thus :
" Now to pass to the excellences of her person : the view of them wholly,
and not severally, do make so sweet a wonder, as I fear to divide them.
Again nobility extracted out of the royal and virtuous line of the kings of
England; yea, both roses, white and red, do as well flourish in her nobility
as in her beauty. . . For the beauty and many graces of her presence, what
colours are tine enough for such a portraiture? "
" To speak of her fortune, that which I did reserve for a garland of her
honour; and that is, that she liveth a virgin, and hath no children: so it is
that which maketh all her other virtues and acts more sacred, more august,
more divine."
" As for her memory, it hath gotten such life in the mouths and hearts of
men, as that envy- being put out by her death, and her fame lighted, I can-
not say whether the felicity of her life, or the felicity of her memory be the
greater."
" Another principal thing I cast into Queen Elizabeth's felicity, was the
time and period of her reign; not only for that it was long, but because it
fell in that season of her life, which was most active and fittest for the sway-
ing of a sceptre, for she was fully five and twenty years old (at which age
the civil lawfreeth from a curator) when she came to the crown, and reigned
to the seventieth year of her life ; so that she never suffered the detriments
of pupilage and check of an overawing power, or the inconveniences of an
impotent and unwieldy old age; and old age is not without a competent
portion of miseries, even to private men ; but to kings, besides the common
burden of years, it brings for the most part a declining in the estates they
govern, and a conclusion of their lives without honour, . . . Contrariwise,
Queen Elizabeth's fortune was so constant and deeply rooted, that no disas-
ter in any of her dominions accompanied her indeed declining but still able
years."
And very like is the tone of the conclusion of Crammer's
prophetic speech :
" K. Henry. Thou speakest wonders.
Cran. She shall be, to the happiness of England,
An aged princess ; many days shall see her,
And yet no day without a deed to crown it.
280 THE HENRY VIII.
Would I had known no more ! but she must die,
She must, the saints must have her : yet a virgin,
A most unspotted lily shall she pass
To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her."
Act V. Sc. 4.
Another instance may be added here of those numerous
resemblances in thought and word, which, though not
amounting in themselves to any absolute certainty of proof,
yet strike the mind, as it were, like the sound of a voice
from the world of spirits. In the History of Henry VII.,
Bacon speaks of Queen Katherine thus :
" And the lady Katherine herself (a sad and religious woman), long after,
when King Henry the Eighth his resolution of a divorce from her was first
made known to her, used some words, that she had not offended, but it was
a judgment of God, for that her former marriage was made in blood;
meaning that of the Earl of Warwick." 1
And thus she is represented in the play :
" Q. Kaih. Alas, sir,
In what have I offended you ? . . . .
K. Hen. Go thy ways, Kate :
Thou art, alone
(If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
Obeying in commanding, and thy parts
Sovereign and pious else, would speak thee out,)
The queen of earthly queens." .... Act II. Sc. 4.
" Q. Kaih. Take thy lute, wench : my soul grows sad with troubles :
Sing, and disperse them, if thou canst. Leave working." Act III. Sc. 1.
" K. Hen. I' th' progress of the business,
Ere a determinate resolution, he
(I mean the bishop) did require a respite;
Wherein he might the king his lord advertise
Whether our daughter were legitimate,
Respecting this our marriage with the dowager,
Sometime our brother's wife
First, methought,
I stood not in the smile of heaven ; who had
Commanded nature, that my lady's womb,
If it conceived a male child by me, should
Do no more offices of life to 't than
The grave does to the dead ; for her male issue
* Works (Boston), XII. 306.
THE HENRY VIII. 281
Or died where they were made, or shortly after
This world had air'd them. Hence I took a thought,
This was a j udgment on me ; that my kingdom,
Well worthy the best heir o' th' world, should not
Be gladded in 't by me." Act II. Sc. 4.
This last circumstance of the judgment of God is men-
tioned by Holinshed ; but inasmuch as other particulars,
and among them, the fact of Katherine being a " saint-
like," " pious," and " sad " woman, or " a sad and religious
woman," are not noticed in Holinshed, there is the more
reason to infer, what the whole style and manner would
seem fully to warrant, that it was Bacon, rather than an-
other, who built upon that author. Neither could Shake-
speare have had any help from the History of Henry VII.,
nor from the Felicities of Queen Elizabeth, which were not
published until after the play appeared.
Whether or not the appearance of this play had any
bearing upon the expected vacancy in the Attorney-Gen-
eral's place, is only matter of probability ; but it is certain
that, during the preceding year, Bacon had written several
letters to the King, plaintively urging that he had served
" above a prenticehood," now " full seven years " in " one
of the painfullest places " in the kingdom (that of Solici-
tor), and entreating his majesty's "royal promise to suc-
ceed," if he lived, " unto the other place." And he said, " I
did conceive your majesty may think it rather a kind of
dullness, or want of faith, than modesty, if I should not
come with my pitcher to Jacob's well as others do " : like
the fault of Cordelia, it might be deemed " a tardiness in
nature." He went so far as to suggest, that " since God
had brought his own years to fifty-two, it were better for
him, otherwise, then, while he had "some little reputa-
tion in the world," to give over the course he was in, and
" make proof to do his majesty some honor by his pen" ;
and the boon prayed for had been granted " on the word
of a king." As the play was not printed until 1623, it is,
of course, impossible to ascertain with positive certainty,
282 THE HENRY VIII.
whether anything, or how much, may have been added to
it, after the date of its first appearance. Some critics have
observed such differences in the style and versification of
different parts of it as to raise a doubt whether it were all
the work of the same author. But in this matter of versi-
fication, it may be well to remember Bacon's remark, that
" some men's behaviour is like a verse, wherein every syl-
lable is measured ; how can a man comprehend great mat-
ters, that breaketh his mind too much to small observa-
tions ? " 1 And his remarks on verse, generally, in the De
Augmentis, may justly claim attention in any criticism of
the verse of Shakespeare :
" The ancients used hexameter for histories and eulogies; elegiac for com-
plaints; iambic for invectives; lyric for odes and hymns. Nor have the
modern poets been wanting in this wisdom, so far as their own languages
are concerned. The fault has been, that some of them, out of too much
zeal for antiquity, have tried to train the modern languages into the ancient
measures (hexameter, elegiac, saphic, etc.); measures incompatible with the
structures of the languages themselves, and no less offensive to the ear. In
these things the judgment of the sense is to be preferred to the precepts of
art, as the poet says,
Coense fercula nostrae
Mallem cotmyis quam placuisse cocis.
And it is not art, but abuse of art, when, instead of perfecting nature, it
perverts it."
Indeed, it is not improbable, that this play received some
considerable additions and emendations from the matured
experience of the master's hand, after his own fall from
power, when he had bidden farewell to all his "greatness,"
when he had " done with such vanities " as the House of
Lords, and had found, at last, " the blessedness of being
little." At least, this celebrated speech of Wolsey to Crom-
well is not to be found in Holinshed, from whose history the
matter of the play is chiefly taken, and much of it merely
turned into verse : it has been remarked, too, that a certain
twang of pulpit eloquence is audible in it ; and truly
enough, if it be understood that the preacher was this
i Essay, lii.
THE HENRY VIII. 283
same high priest of Nature, Justice, and Truth, on whom
the wall had fallen, though not the greatest sinner in
Israel, and who now confessed himself to have been " hum-
bled as a Christian, but not dejected as a worldling " :
" Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wrack, to rise in ;
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition :
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't ?
Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee.
Corrupticm wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues: be just and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and Truth's: then, if thou fall's!, Cromwell !
Thou fall's! a blessed martyr." Act III. Sc. 2.
And this conclusion sounds very much like the Essay on
Truth : -
" Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in char-
ity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth."
At any rate, it is a most positive and indubitable fact,
that on the fifth of September, 1621, whether he were then
engaged upon a revision of these plays or not, he writes a
letter to the King, from his retreat at Gorhambury, to which
he appends a remarkable postscript, by which it appears
that the similarity of his own case to that of the fallen
Cardinal in the play had very forcibly come to his mind ;
and he seems to have been struggling with his own con-
science to avert the parallel, thus :
" Cardinal Wolsey said that if he had pleased God as he pleased the king
he had not been ruined. My conscience 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." 1
The play reads thus :
l Letter to the King, Works (Mont), XII. 411; Works (Philad.), HI. 136.
284 THE HENRY VIII.
" Wol. Cromwell, Cromwell !
Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my King, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies." Act III. Sc. 2.
It is barely possible, here, that Bacon may have remem-
bered Shakespeare's play, though it had never been printed,
or that William Shakespeare, as well as Bacon, may have
followed the same historical account of Cardinal Wolsey, in
Holinshed, Hall, or Stowe ; but in the brevity and peculiar
turn of the expression, and in the use of the verb to have
and the word but, the manner of Bacon may be distinctly
recognized in the play. Again, Bacon uses the expression
" if he had pleased God as he pleased the King he had not
been ruined" The word ruined is not in Holinshed, but
it appears in the preceding line of the play :
" Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me."
It is evident that Holinshed had been consulted, and that
his account had, in general, been followed in the play ; but
it is also clear, that some other author, probably Cavendish,
from whom all the later historians drew their materials, had
also been consulted. Cavendish's " Life and Death of
Thomas Woolsey," written prior to 1557, remained in MSS.
until 1641 ; x but copies of it had been deposited in various
libraries at Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Hall and
Holinshed drew from the MSS., and John Stowe had bor-
rowed a copy. The story of Anne Bullen must have been
derived from Cavendish, or from some other copier than
Holinshed ; but the play varies considerably from Caven-
dish, in the scenes concerning Anne Bullen ; as for instance,
in the scene of the maskers, Wolsey makes a mistake and
selects Sir Edward Neville for the king, while in the play,
he makes a good hit, and finds the king. It is certain
that Bacon's studies for his Histories began at an early
date, and must have made him familiar with these histo-
rians ; and it is highly probable, if not quite certain, that he
i Harleian Misc., V. 123.
THE HENRY VIII. 285
would have an opportunity to consult one of the MSS. copies
of Cavendish. Holinshed's statement of this saying of the
dying Cardinal, drawn from Cavendish, is as follows :
" Sir, (quoth he,) I tarrie but the pleasure of God to render up my poore
soule into his hands. I see the matter, how it is framed : but if I had served
God as diligentlie as I have doone the King, he would not have given me
over in my greie haires: but it is the just reward that I must receive for the
diligent pains and studie that I have had to do him service, not regarding
my service to God, but onlie to satisfie his pleasure." 1
The word pleased is not used, nor is anything said, in the
play, about the king's " pleasure : " while in the letter of
Bacon, pleased is the leading word. This shows that Bacon
wrote rather from his remembrance of Holinshed than of
the play. At the same time, the word served is also used
by Bacon as in Holinshed, and it is made the leading word
in the play, as more suitable than pleased for the few lines
of verse which were required. And this tends strongly to
the conclusion, that the saying passed into the play through
the mind of Bacon. Furthermore, this word please is
much in iise, in the same manner, both in Bacon and the
plays ; as for instance, in the Julius Caesar, thus :
" Cass. I know not what you mean by that ; but I am sure, Caesar fell
down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according
as he pleased and displeased them, as they used to do the Players in the
theatre, I am no true man." Act I. Sc, 2.
And in the " Christian Paradoxes " of Bacon, we have
this :
" He knoweth if he please man, he cannot be the servant of Christ ; yet,
for Christ's sake, he pleaseth all men in all things."
In like manner, the story of King Henry the Sixth's
prophecy, about young Henry Earl of Richmond, passes
from Holinshed into the play of Henry VI., pretty certainly
through the head of Bacon ; for, in the Essay of Proph-
ecies, he says, " Henry the Sixth of England said of Henry
the Seventh, when he was a lad, and gave him water, This
is the lad that shall enjoy the crown for which we strive"
i Chron. of Eng. (Lond. 1808), III. 755.
286 JULIUS (LESAR.
And it is thus related in the play :
"K. Hen. My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that,
Of whom you seem to have so tender care ?
Som. My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.
K. Hen. Come hither, England's hope : if secret powers
[Lays his hand on his head.
Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,
This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss.
His looks are full of peaceful majesty;
His head by nature fram'd to wear a crown,
His hand to wield a sceptre ; and himself
Likely, in time, to bless a regal throne."
3 Hen. VI., Act IV. Sc. 6.
3. JULIUS CAESAR.
As we have seen, there is satisfactory evidence, that
Bacon had made a special study of the life and times of
Julius Caesar. The play of this name was not printed until
it appeared in the Folio, but it seems to have been written
about the year 1607, just when Bacon was engaged upon
his Characters of Julius and Augustus Caesar (written in
Latin), in which allusion is made to Caesar's ambition for a
crown, in these words of the translation :
" For aiming at a real power, he was content to pass by all vain pomp and
outward shows of power throughout his whole life; till at the last, Avhether
high-flown with the continual exercise of power, or corrupted with flatteries,
he affected the ensigns of power (the style and diadem of a king), which
was the bait which wrought his overthrow."
The Advancement contains a critical account of the
.merits of Julius Caesar as a writer, and also this passage,
which may be compared with the following lines of the
play :
" Csesar did extremely affect the name of king ; and some were set on, as
he passed by, in popular acclamation to salute him king; whereupon finding
the cry weak and poor, he put it off thus, in a kind of jest, as if they had
mistaken his surname: Non rex sum, sed Ccesar."
The play reads thus :
" Casca. Why, there was a crown offered him : and, being offered him,
he put it by with the back of his hand, thus ; and then the people fell a'
shouting.
JULIUS (LESAR. 287
Bru. What was the second noise for?
Case. Why, for that too.
Cos. They shouted thrice: what was the last cry fbrV
Case. Why tor that too.
Bru. Was the crown offered him thrice ?
Case. Ay, marry, was 't, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler than
the other; and at every putting by mine honest neighbors shouted.
Cos. Who offered him the crown?
Case. Why, Antony.
Bru. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
Case. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it : it was mere
foolery, I did not mark it. I saw Mark Anthony offer him a crown : yet
't was not a crown neither, 't was one of these coronets ; and, as I told you,
he put it by once ; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had
it Then he offered it to him again ; then he put it by again ; but, to my
thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it
the third time ; he put it the third time by : and still as he refused it, the
rabblenient shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their
sweaty uight-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Csesar
refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar; fur he swooned, and
fell down at it
Bru. What said he when he came unto himself?
Case. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd
was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet, and offered
them his throat to cut When he came to himself again, he said,
if he had done, or said, anything amiss, he desired their worships to think
it was his infirmity
Cos I will this night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings, all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name ; wherein obscurely
Caesar' s ambition shall be glanced at." Act L Sc. 2.
Here, it is not possible that Bacon could have followed
Shakespeare, the Advancement being older than the play ;
but, on the other hand, it is possible, so far as the date is
concerned, that Shakespeare may have seen the Advance-
ment as well as Plutarch's Antony (in North's translation J ),
from which some part of the story seems to have been
taken. But the play follows the ideas of Bacon rather
i Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, translated out of French into
English by Thomas North, Knight (dedicated to Q. Eliz. 16 Jan. 1579).
London ed. 1631, p. 917.
288 JULIUS CAESAR.
than those of Plutarch, and adopts the very peculiarities
of Bacon's expressions, wherein they differ from North's
Plutarch ; as, for instance, in these : " he put it by with the
back, of his hand, thus" in the play, and " he put it off thus"
in Bacon ; " what was that last cry for t " and "finding the
cry weak and poor " ; " it was mere foolery " and " in a kind
of jest"; "he was very loath to lay his fingers off it" and
" he put it off thus " ; while these particular expressions are
not used in North's Plutarch.
Again, North's Plutarch speaks of " a laurell crowne "
having " a royal band or diademe wreathed about it, which
in old time was the ancient inarke and token of a king " ;
in the play, it is called " a crown," or " one of these coro-
nets," but never a diadem ; while in Bacon, it is " the style
and diadem of a king " : whence it would seem clear that
Bacon followed Plutarch rather than the play.
Again, the phrase " tell us the manner of it " finds a
repetition in this from Bacon, " the bed we call a hot bed, and
the manner of it is this" Casca can " as well be hanged as
tell the manner of it " ; and then, they " uttered such a deal
of stinking breath" also not in Plutarch ; which sounds
very much like Bacon's saying of the crowd and throng
that attended the procession when he took his seat in
Chancery, that "there was much ado and a great deal of
world, hell to me, or purgatory, at least."
Indeed, the whole style and manner of the scene, and
the thought, expression, language, and manner of the whole
play, are so decidedly Baconian, that it is scarcely possible
to doubt, either that the story of Plutarch passed through
his pen into this scene, or that the play was written by
him ; a conclusion that is especially confirmed by the purely
classical character of the piece, and by the considera-
tion that William Shakespeare could have had but little
pretensions to learning and skill in that kind. But if there
be a lingering doubt in any mind, it must certainly be re-
moved by a comparison of these further passages from the
JULIUS CAESAR. 289
Essay of Friendship (first printed in 1612) with the second
act of the play :
" With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he
set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew. And
this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death.
For when Caesar would have discharged the Senate, in regard of some ill
presages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia; this man lifted him gently
by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he would not dismiss the
Senate till his wife had dreamt a better dream."
" Cos. But it is doubtful yet
Whether Caesar will come forth to-day, or no ;
For he is superstitious grown of late,
Quite from the main opinion he held once
Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.
It may be, these apparent prodigies,
The unaccustom'd terror of this night,
And the persuasion of his augurers,
May hold him from the Capitol to-day.
Dec. Never fear that: If he be so resolv'd,
I can o'ersway him. ....
Let me work ;
For I can give his humour the true bent;
And I will bring him to the Capitol." Act II. Sc. 1.
Cos. The cause is in my will ; I will not come:
That is enough to satisfy the Senate ;
But, for your private satisfaction,
Because I love you, I will let you know.
Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home :
She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,
Which, like a fountain with a hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood ; and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it.
And these does she apply for warnings and portents,
And evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day.
Dec. This dream is all amiss interpreted :
It was a vision, fair and fortunate.
Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,
In which so many smiling Romans bath'd,
Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck
Reviving blood : and that great men'shall press
For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance :
This by Calpurnia's dream is signified.
Cat. And this way you have well expounded it.
19
290 THE SOOTHSAYER.
Dec. I have, when you have heard what I can say :
And know it now. The Senate have concluded
To give this day a crown to mighty Csesar:
If you shall send them word you will not come,
Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock
Apt to be render' d, for some one to say,
' Break up the Senate till another time,
When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.' "
Act II. Sc. 2.
The Essay continues :
" And it seemeth his favor was so great, as Antonius in a letter which is
recited verbatim in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him venefica, witch ;
as if he had enchanted Caesar The like or more was between
Septimius Severus and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry
the daughter of Plautianus ; and would often maintain Plautianus in doing
affronts to his son ; and did write also in a letter to the Senate, by these
words : Hove the man so well, as / wish, he may over-live me."
And the same thing appears in the play thus :
" Cos. Decius, well urg'd. I think it is not meet,
Mark Antony, so well belov'd of Caesar,
Should outlive Caesar." Act If. Sc. 1.
4. THE SOOTHSAYER.
In the Natural History (Sylva Sylvarum), Bacon goes
into some curious investigations of " the force of imagina-
tion," and of the means whereby one mind may be affected
by another through the imagination ; and, in the course of
the work, he gives some illustrations of his experiments
" touching the emission of immateriate virtues from the
minds and spirits of men," as in jugglers, soothsayers,
witches, and the like.
He begins by saying that " imagination is of three kinds :
the first joined with belief of that which is to come " ; and
under this head he proceeds thus : " The problem therefore
is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that
such a thing shall be, it doth help anything to the
effecting of the thing itself. And here again one must warily
distinguish ; for it is not meant, as hath been partly said
before, that it should ;help by making a man more stout, or
THE SOOTHSAYER. 291
more industrious, in which kind a constant belief doth
much, but merely by a secret operation, or binding, or
changing the spirit of another; for whatsoever a
man imagineth doubtingly, or with fear, must needs do
hurt, if imagination hath any power at all." And of all
this we have an exemplification in the "Julius Caesar,"
where Caesar bids the soothsayer come forward and repeat
his warning, confronting him face to face, as if to try the
courage and faith of the soothsayer himself in his own
prophecy, thus :
" Sooth. Caesar !
Ccu. Ha! Who calls?
Casca. Bid every noise be still. Peace yet again !
[J/twic ceases.
Cces. Who is it in the press that calls on me ?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry, Caesar! Speak: Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Sooth. Beware the ides of March.
Cats. What man is that?
Bru. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
CCES. Set him before me; let me see his face.
Case. Fellow, come from the throng: look upon Caesar.
COBS. What say'st thou to me now ? Speak once again.
Sooth. Beware the ides of March.
Cas. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass."
Act 1. Sc. 2.
The resemblance here might appear to be somewhat far-
fetched, if it were not confirmed by the more direct allusion,
and more explicit identity, afforded in the play of Antony
and Cleopatra, in reference to this same overmastering
spirit and another soothsayer. In the Natural History
(not printed until after his death), he tells the story of
Cleopatra's soothsayer, thus :
"940. There was an Egyptian soothsayer, that made Antonius believe
that his genius (which otherwise was brave and confident) was, in the
presence of Octavianus Caesar, poor and cowardly; and therefore, he ad-
vised him to absent himself as much as he could and remove far from him.
This soothsayer was thought to be suborned by Cleopatra, to make him
live in Egypt, and other remote places from Rome. Howsoever, the con-
ceit of a predominant or mastering spirit of one man over another, is
ancient, and received still, even in vulgar opinion."
292 THE SOOTHSAYER.
And again, in the De Augmentis, he speaks of " those
conceits (now become as it were popular) of the mastering
spirit, of men unlucky and ill-omened, of the glances of
love, envy, and the like."
And the story reappears in the play, thus :
" Ant. Now, sirrah: you do wish yourself in Egypt?
Sooth. Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither !
Ant. If you can, your reason ?
Sooth. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue: but yet hie you
again to Egypt.
Ant. Say to me, whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine ?
Sooth. Caesar's.
Therefore, Antony ! stay not by his side :
Thy daemon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
"Where Caesar is not ; but near him, thy angel
Becomes a fear, as being o'erpower'd: therefore,
Make space enough between you.
Ant. Speak this no more.
Sooth. To none but thee ; no more, but when to thee.
If thou dost play with him at any game,
Thou 'rt sure to lose ; and, of that natural luck,
He beats thee 'gainst the odds : thy lustre thickens,
When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit
Is all afraid to govern thee near him.
But, he away, 't is noble.
Ant. Get thee gone." Act II. Sc. 3.
The " Antony and Cleopatra," first printed in the Folio,
was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1608, and was most
probably written not long before. Of course, Shakespeare
could not have borrowed this story from Bacon. There is
more in Bacon's story than is said by the soothsayer
in the play ; and this proves that Bacon drew from some
other source than the play. Bacon states that this sooth-
sayer was thought to have been suborned by Cleopatra to
make Antony live in Egypt, but this circumstance is not
mentioned in the play. A similar story was to be found in
North's translation of Plutarch's life of Antony, which
Shakespeare may have seen as well as Bacon ; and it is
true that some parts of it are very closely followed in the
THE SOOTHSAYER. 293
play. There is little doubt that the writer had read Plu-
tarch. But Plutarch makes the soothsayer a member of
the household of Antony at Rome : " With Antonius there
was a Soothsayer or Astronomer of Egypt, that could cast
a figure, and judge of men's nativities, to tell them what
should happen to them." 1 But the play, like Bacon's
story, makes him not only an Egyptian, but one of the
household of Cleopatra ; and in the play, he is sent by Cle-
opatra as one of her numerous messengers from Egypt
to Antony at Rome to induce him to return to Egypt ; and
in this he is successful ; all which is in exact keeping with
Bacon's statement that he was thought to be suborned by
Cleopatra to make Antony live in Egypt ; but of this there
is not the least hint in Plutarch. All this goes strongly to
show, that this story, together with the doctrine of a pre-
dominant or mastering spirit of one man over another,
went into the play through the Baconian strainer; for
it is next to incredible, that both Bacon and Shakespeare .
should make the same variations upon the common
original.
Again, in this same Natural History, considering of the
substances that produce death with least pain, he records
his conclusions upon the poison of the asp, in these
words :
" 643. The death that is most without pain, hath been noted to be upon the
taking of the potion of hemlock ; which in humanity was the form of exe-
cution of capital offenders in Athens. The poison of the asp, that Cleopatra
used, hath some affinity with it. The cause is, for that the torments of
death are chiefly raised by the strife of the spirits; and these vapours
quench the spirits by degrees; like to the death of an extreme old man.' I
conceive it is less painful than opium, because opium hath parts of heat
mixed."
And, that the writer of this play had the same scientific
knowledge and the same opinions of the quality and effect
of this poison, will be seen in these lines of the play :
" Cleo. Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
That kills and pains not ?
i North's Plutarch, 926.
29-i THE SOOTHSAYER.
Clown. Truly I have him ; but I would not be the party that should
desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal : those that do die of it,
do seldom or never recover.
Cleo. Kemember'st thou any that have died on't ?
Clo. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no longer
than yesterday ; a very honest woman, but something given to lie, as a
woman should not do, but hi the way of honesty; how she died of the
biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly, she makes a very good report o' the
Cleo. Farewell, kind Charmian ; Iras, long farewell.
[Kisses them. lR\sfalU and dies.
Have I the aspick in my lips ? Dost fall ?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desir'd
Come, thou mortal wretch,
[ To the asp, which she applies to her breast.
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie : poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and despatch
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep ?
Char. 0, break! 0, break!
Cleo. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,
O, Antony ! Nay, I will take thee too. [Another asp.
What should I stay [Falls and dies.
Char. In this wide world ? So, fare thee well.
Guard. This is an aspick's trail ; and these fig-leaves
Have slime upon them, such as the aspick leaves
Upon the caves of Nile.
Caes. Most probable,
That so she died ; for her physician tells me,
She hath pursued conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die." Act V. Sc. 2.
And there is no doubt, that she was somehow thoroughly
instructed in natural history, and well acquainted with " the
death that is most without pain," or as gentle " as a lovers
pinch," and those " vapours " that " quench the spirits by
degrees, like to the death of an extreme old man " ; nor
that the great Magician himself had " pursued conclusions
infinite of easy ways to die."
MACBETH. VISIONS. 295
Though the Natural History was chiefly composed dur-
ing the last five years of his life, yet we know that he had
been collecting materials for it for many years before ; and
it is very probable that he was making notes on the poison-
ous qualities of plants and animals, and on easy ways to
die, about the same time that he was engaged in writing
this play, and so the asp, that Cleopatra used, is noted with
the hemlock, and finds its way into the same section of this
work, in connection with the same subject, " the death that
is most without pain." This inference is still further con-
firmed by the actual out-cropping, in rather a singular
manner, of this same word vapour, a little above, in the
same scene of the play, thus :
" Cleo in their thick breaths,
Bank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
And forc'd to drink their vapour."
Bacon, as we know, towards the close of his career, col-
lected and digested the results of his observations and
studies, through many years, into a scientific history of
Life and Death ; and in such a man we may find a com-
prehensible source of the natural science of these plays,
without resorting to the childish and ridiculous notion that
a born genius can see through nature at one glance.
5. MACBETH. VISIONS.
The tragedy of Macbeth was certainly written between
1605 and 1610. The first notice that we have of it is, that
it was performed at the Globe in April 1610; and there
are some reasons to conjecture that it was written about
the year 1607, when Bacon was made Solicitor- General.
It may have followed the " Antony and Cleopatra " : at any
rate, we find in it an allusion to this same soothsayer,
together with some further illustration of the same conceit
of a predominant or mastering spirit of one man over an-
other, thus :
296 MACBETH. VISIONS.
" Macb. Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep ; and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'T is much he dares ;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none but he,
Whose being I do fear ; and under him
My genius is rebuk'd, as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Act III. Sc. 1.
And in the lines immediately following these, the same
conceit leads to a like use of this same word predominant,
thus :
" Macb. Do you find
Your patience so predominant in your nature
That you can let this go ? "
The same form of expression occurs again in what Bacon
writes concerning Henry VII. and his Queen : " But his
aversion towards the house of York was so predominant in
him, as it found place not only in his wars and counsels,
but in his chamber and bed " ; and again, in this same
History, he uses the expression, " and were predominant
in the King's nature and mind."
The incantation and vaticination of the witches, and the
prophetic visions also, in this play, bear unmistakable marks
of Bacon's inquiries into the natural history of charms and
witches, the poisonous plants and animals connected with
them in the popular superstitions, and the manner in which
the imagination is operated upon by immateriate virtues.
Speaking of his third kind of imagination, that which is
" of things not present as if they were present," and of the
power of it upon the spirits of men, he says :
" There be three means to fortify belief: the first is experience ; the second
is reason; and the third is authority; ... for authority, it is of two kinds,
belief in an art, and belief in a man. Therefore, if a man believes in astrol-
ogy, ... or believe in natural magic, and that a ring with such a stone,
or such a piece of living creature carried, will do good, it may help his
imagination. . . . And such are, for the most part, all witches and super-
stitious persons, whose beliefs, tied to their teachers and traditions, are no
MACBETH. VISIONS. 297
whit controlled either by reason or experience. Therefore if there be any
operation upon bodies in absence by nature, it is like to "be conveyed from
man to man as fame is; as if a witch, by imagination, should hurt any afar
off, it cannot be naturally; but by working upon the spirit of some that
cometh to the witch." Nat, Hist. c. x.
Accordingly, at the close of the first witch scene, Mac-
beth comes to the witches, thus :
" 3 Witch. A drum ! a drum !
Macbeth doth come." Act I. Sc. 3.
And at the close of the great incantation of the fourth act,
thus :
" 2 Witch. By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open locks, whoever knocks. [Enter MACBETH.
" Hec. . . . Get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i' -th' morning : thither he
Will come to know his destiny." Act HI. Sc. 5.
And in the apparition scene immediately following, Bacon's
ideas of the nature of prophecy are repeated almost in his
own language. The Intellectual Globe must have been
written not far from the time when the " Macbeth " first ap-
peared, though not published until afterwards; and it is
manifest that Shakespeare could have derived nothing from
this work. In the first chapter, he defines his notions of
the three several streams of history, poesy, and philosophy,
and after giving his meaning of poesy as nothing else but
" feigned history," he proceeds to distinguish history from
prophecy in the following passage which may be compared
with the play :
" Wherefore we assert that history itself either consists of sacred history,
or divine precepts and doctrines, which are, so to speak, an every day phi-
losophy. And that part which seems to fall without this division, prophecy,
is itself a species of history, with the prerogative of deity stamped upon it
of making all times one duration, so that the narrative may anticipate the
fact; thus also the mode of promulgating vaticination by vision, or the
heavenly doctrines by parables, partakes of the nature of poetry " :
" War. There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd;
298 MACBETH. VISIONS.
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds,
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time ;
And, by the necessary form of this,
King Richard might create a perfect guess."
2 Hen. IV., Act HI. Sc. 1.
And again, in the Advancement, he says : " Prophecy is
but divine history ; which hath that prerogative over human,
as the narration may be before the fact as well as after."
We may note also that this word anticipate re-appears in
the " Precursors or Anticipations of the Second Philosophy."
And in the play, this doctrine of prophecy is introduced in
these lines :
" Mad>. 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<mm. (London, 1863), I. 325. Trans, by F. E. Bunnett.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 337
upon his knees and began to pray, thus : " Lord God of
heaven and earth, thou hast vouchsafed of thy grace, to
those of our order, to know the works of creation, and the
secrets of them ; and to discern as far as appertaineth to
the generations of men, between divine miracles, works of
nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all
sorts."
It will be remembered that Bacon's scheme of philos-
ophy constituted a kind of intellectual globe, or full circle.
In that collection of Antitheses, which he speaks of as a
youthful labor, he expresses himself thus : " It is good to
have the orb of the mind concentric with the universe."
Starting from the Philosophia Prima with a summary par-
tition of all the knowledge and learning which the human
race was in possession of, in his time, it proceeded through
the second or experimental and inductive philosophy, until
the wheel was come full circle in philosophy itself, which
was to be at once a knowledge of all science in a compre-
hensible theory of the universe, and an active science and
an intelligent power of action ; and the whole was to have
a practical bearing and effect upon the business, uses, life,
and happiness of man. Philosophy itself, the object of the
Sixth Part, he says, was to have for its end, not only " con-
templative enjoyment, but the common affairs and fortune
of mankind, and a complete power of action." The Sec-
ond Philosophy embraced his entire method, metaphysics
included, but more especially, perhaps, as applied to phys-
ical science as such ; but it was also to include the whole
field of civil, industrial, and social affairs, and the practical
life of the individual man, " whatever, indeed, might ad-
minister to the advantage and happiness of mankind."
The Sixth Part, to which all the rest was to be subservient
and auxiliary, was to culminate in a final and, complete
philosophy of the universe ; and it was to embrace, so far
at least as the power and faculty of the human mind could
go, a complete knowledge of "the order, operation, and
22
338 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES.
mind of Nature." Nor was it to give out a dream of the
fancy as a model of the world ; but he would rather " pray
to God, in his kindness, to vouchsafe to us the means of
writing an apocalyptic revelation and true vision of the
traces and stamps of the Creator upon his creatures "
[creations]. 1
But, doubtless, this Fourth Part, thus devoted to ex-
amples, was, in a manner, to span both hemispheres of the
intellectual globe, and, springing from the physical as basis
and starting ground, reach the height of things in the
metaphysical region of universals. And so he tells us
here, in this " Scaling Ladder," that he had described the
introductory part of the progress in the second book (the
Novum Organum), which expounded principles and rules
for the right use of the understanding in the whole busi-
ness, and, in the third, had " treated on the phenomena of
the universe and on natural history, plunging into and
traversing the woodlands, as it were, of Nature, here over-
shadowed (as by foliage) with the infinite variety of exper-
iments ; there perplexed and entangled (as by thorns and
briers) with the subtlety of acute commentations." But
now, he would advance " from the woods to the foot of the
mountains," reaching " a more disengaged, but a more ar-
duous station." He should " proceed from [natural] his-
tory by a firm track, new, indeed, and hitherto unexplored,
to universals." To these " paths of contemplation, in
truth, might appositely be applied the celebrated and often
quoted illustration of the double road of active life, of
which one branch, at first even and level, conducted the
traveller to places precipitous and impassable; the other,
though steep and rough at the entrance, terminated in per-
fect smoothness. In a similar manner he, who, in the very
outset of his inquiries, lays firm hold of certain fixed prin-
ciples in the science, and, with immovable reliance upon
l Distribution (Plan) of the Work (Mont.), XIV. 2-4; Spedd. (Boston),
I. 227.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 339
them, disentangles (as he will with little effort) what he
handles, if he advances steadily onward, not flinching out
of excess either of self-confidence, or of self-distrust, from
the object of his pursuit, will find that he is journeying in
the first of these two tracks ; and if he can endure to sus-
pend his judgment, and to mount gradually, and to climb
by regular succession the height of things, like so many
tops of mountains, with persevering and indefatigable
patience, he will in due time attain the very uppermost
elevations of nature [" ad summitates et vertices natures "],
where his station will be serene, his prospect delightful,
and his descent to all the practical arts by a gentle slope
perfectly easy." 1
The patience and resolution here required may remind
us, again, of the saying of Plato, that " the whole of nature
being of one kindred, and the soul having before known
all things [*'. e. the Divine Soul, or Mind of Nature], there
is nothing to prevent a person [i. e. a human soul], who
remembers what men call learning only one thing,
from again discovering all the rest ; if he has but courage,
and seeking faints not." 2 In short, it must be borne in
mind, that the Philosophia Prima, as it were, in advance,
dealt with the whole state of knowledge previously existing,
in which was included both the metaphysical philosophy of
Plato, which, proceeding by the dialectic method of pure
scientific thinking, learning all things from one, and arriving
at a philosophy of the universe by that way, and also the
philosophy of Democritus, Leucippus, and Aristotle, which
rather from the beginning turned round and confronted
nature face to face, and began to search out a philosophy
of the universe, in that direction, by pursuing the paths
and methods of physical inquiry. And so, Bacon having
for himself arrived, in the first instance, at a philosophy of
the universe, in his own mind, by the Platonic method, and,
1 ScaKng Ladder, Ib. XIV. 426; Spedd., V. 180.
2 Meno, Works of Plato, (Bohn), HI. 20.
340 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES.
after the example of Plato's great disciple, Aristotle, seeing
that the best way for the advancement of knowledge, the
invention of new sciences, arts, and instruments, for the
instruction, benefit, and uses of mankind in general, was,
to follow that example, to begin where Democritus left off,
and pursue the same direction and course of investigation,
confronting Nature face to face, as it were, diligently set
himself to work in good earnest to revive, correct, purify,
renew, instaurate, and re-invigorate, both the degenerated
and perverted Platonism, and the degenerated and per-
verted Aristotelianism of his own time and all the later
ages next preceding. But now, having in the second and
third parts plunged into and traversed the woodlands of
mere physical nature, amidst foliage, thorns, and briers,
and having begun to advance from the woods to the foot
of the mountains and that same hill of the Muses, he would,
in this Fourth Part, begin to ascend by the double road of
active and actual human life, and climbing with scaling
ladders of the intellect, and threading the labyrinth of the
civil, social, and moral fabric, would endeavor, at last, to
reach the uppermost elevations and highest tops of things,
in the magnificent temple, palace, city, and hill of the fabled
descendants of Neptune, the vertex of Pan's Pyramid, and
the cliff of Plato ; from which height, no man should any
further leading need.
So much we learn from himself concerning this curious
Fourth Part. It is difficult to conceive what else was meant
than something of this kind, by these examples or types
and models ; and considering what the entire scope of his
philosophical scheme was, the nature of the whole discus-
sion in these particular fragments, and the express declara-
tion that true art was always capable of advancing, the
conclusion would seem to be well warranted, that at the
date at which the Scaling Ladder was written, something
of this kind was running in his mind, and that we actually
have in these plays what he had himself done towards this
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 341
important part of the Great Installation of all philos-
ophy.
At the same time, it is not necessarily to be inferred that
the plays, when written, were designed actually to form this
Fourth Part. It may be, that, in his original plan, this part
of the systematic Instauration was to have been written in
prose with something of the same rigid investigation and
scientific precision as the other parts, but upon the same
general subject of the passions and affections, the mental
powers and faculties, human character, civil and social
affairs, and man and humanity in general ; but that for
want of time to complete it in that form, he had, later in
life, concluded to publish this Folio of 1623, together with
the Essays and other writings of a civil and moral nature,
and leave them to fill up this gap in the Great Instauration,
in such manner and with such effect as they could. The
Instauration was indeed the work of his whole life ; but the
finished parts of it rather belong to his later years. The
Advancement was in some measure a preliminary work,
and it took the form of the De Auymentis before becoming
a part of the Great Instauration in 1623, and all the other
parts were wholly, or chiefly, written after the period of the
plays, and towards the close of his career. So, while the
plays may have been written, as they doubtless were, under
a natural and genuine poetic feeling and impulse, and even
with a design to rival the ancient poets in the field of
dramatic art, and with the general purpose of veiling his
braver instruction to mankind under the poetic form of
delivery, after the manner of all great poets, they are, in
fact, at the same time, found to be pervaded with the whole
spirit and scope of his philosophy ; and they may be safely
taken as actual models and true illustrative examples of his
method in that kind.
This view may find some special confirmation in the
following passages from the De Augmentis, which are de-
serving of careful study in reference to certain prominent
342 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES.
features in the character of these plays ; for in their general
nature and scope they more especially concern the regimen,
discipline, culture, and cure of the mind in respect of indi-
vidual, social, moral, and civil or public good ; and truth to
human nature and human character has always been noted
as a peculiar excellence in them. Upon " the different
characters of natures and dispositions" this work proceeds
thus :
" And we are not here speaking of the common inclina-
tions either to virtues or vices, but of those which are more
profound and radical. And in truth I cannot sometimes but
wonder that this part of knowledge should for the most
part be omitted both in Morality and Polity, considering it
might shed such a ray of light on both sciences. In the
traditions of astrology men's natures and dispositions are
not unaptly distinguished according to the predominances
of the planets ;
[' a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences
That dost this habitation where thou keep'st
Hourly inflict.' Meas.for M., Act III. Sc. 1.]
For some are naturally formed for contemplation, others
for business, others for war, others for advancement of
fortune, others for love, others for the arts, others for a
varied kind of life; so among the poets (heroic, satiric,
tragic, comic) are everywhere interspersed representations
of characters, though generally exaggerated and surpassing
the truth. . . .
" Not however that I would have these characters pre-
sented in ethics (as we find them in history or poetry or
even in common discourse), in the shape of complete indi-
vidual portraits, but rather the several features and simple
lineaments of which they are composed, and by the various
combinations and arrangements of which all characters
whatever are made up, showing how many, and of what
nature these are, and how connected and subordinate one
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES. 343
to another ; that so we may have a scientific and accurate
dissection of minds and characters, and the secret dispositions
of particular men may be revealed ; and that from the knowl-
edge thereof better rules may be framed for the treatment
of the mind.
"And not only should the characters of dispositions which
are impressed by nature be received into this treatise, but
those also which are imposed on the mind by sex, by age,
by region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity,
and the like ; and again, those which are caused by fortune,
as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magis-
tracy, privacy, prosperity, adversity, and the like. For we
see that Plautus makest it a wonder to see an old man
beneficent : His beneficence is that of a young man."
And so, in the " Measure for Measure," in which these
ideas and doctrines are in part and very admirably exem-
plified, the Duke says :
" Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath made an
assay of her virtue, to practise his judgment with the disposition of natures. . .
The assault that Angelo hath made to you, fortune hath conveyed to my
understanding ; and, but that frailty hath examples for his falling, / should
wonder at Angelo." Act 111. Sc. 1.
He next proceeds to those " affections and perturbations
of the mind, which are, as I have said, the diseases of the
mind " :
" Claud. Has he affections in him,
That thus can make him bite the law by th' nose,
When he would force it? " Act HI. Sc. 1.
" But to speak the real truth," he continues, " the poets
and writers of history are the best doctors of this knowl-
edge, where we may find painted forth with great life and
dissected, how affections are kindled and excited, and how
pacified and restrained, and how again contained from act
and further degree :
O
[" J*ib. Ay! just: perpetual durance: a restraint
Though all the world's vastidity you had
To a determin'd scope." Ib. Act 111. Sc. 1.]
344 THE AS YOU LIKE IT.
hovr they disclose themselves though repressed and con-
cealed ; how they work ; how they vary ; how they are en-
wrapped one within another ; how they fight and encounter
one with another ; and many other particularities of this
kind ; amongst which this last is of special use in moral
and civil matters ; how I say, to set affection against affec-
tion, and to use the aid of one to master another ; like
hunters and fowlers who use to hunt beast with beast, and
catch bird with bird :" 1 as we may find it illustrated in
this same play, and, indeed, in many others of this author,
in such style, manner, and diction as to leave no room for
doubt of his identity.
It is not the purpose of this work to undertake by any
complete analysis, or anything like a thorough exposition
of the nature, scope, and drift of the several plays, to
show in what manner and to what extent the object and
intent of these illustrative examples, or models, have been
accomplished in them ; nor to consider of their merits as
works of art In the two sections following, some demon-
stration will be given out of the "As You Like It," and the
" Timon of Athens," as models and instances, first, that these
plays were in fact written by Francis Bacon ; and second,
that they do really answer the purpose supposed, in a very
admirable manner. More than this might require another
book.
2. THE AS YOU LIKE IT A MODEL.
The comedy of " As You Like It " appears to have been
written about the year 1600, and before any of the works
of Bacon with which it will be compared were published,
viz. : the Advancement, the Intellectual Globe, the Natural
History, the History of Life and Death, and the De Aug-
mentis. Shakespeare could have drawn nothing for this
play from these works of Bacon : nor would Bacon have
i Trant. of De Aug., by Spedding, Works (Boston), IX. 219-221.
THE AS YOU LIKE IT. 345
need to learn anything from William Shakespeare, touching
the parts of philosophy therein illustrated.
In the main, this play is a story of love and friendship,
with some slight exhibition of the accidents of fortune, into
which the more important matters and topics are, as it were,
collaterally and incidentally interwoven. The plot is taken
from Dr. Lodge's novel of " Rosalynd, or Euphues' Golden
Legacy," but nothing of the more distinguishing features,
or more notable instruction, is drawn from that source ; and
the characters of Jaques, Audrey, and the Clown, are wholly
new. The author himself speaks more especially in the
melancholy Jaques, in Touchstone, the motley-minded gen-
tleman, and in Rosalind, instructed of the " great magician" ;
and the old man Adam furnishes occasion for the discourse
of Jaques on the Seven Ages, with a distinct touch of the
History of Life and Death. In the garb of the motley fool,
Touchstone, who is but another specimen of a " Jove in a
thatch'd house," that
" hath strange places cramin'd
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms,"
lies concealed and (as it were in ambush) the " natural phi-
losopher " himself, with his instances ; and with the help of
Audrey, a mere " country wench," he will get pretty deep
into the philosophy of imagination and the true nature of
poetry as " imaginations feigned." Rosalind, in the disguise
of a boy, has conversed with a magician, since he was three
years old :
" Orl. But. my good lord, this boy is forest-born,
And hath been tutor'd in the rudiments
Of many desperate studies by his uncle,
Whom he reports to be a great magician,
Obscured in the circle of this forest." Act V. Sc. 4.
And in Jaques, we have a man, who has got well out of
" the woodlands of nature," and not only reached the foot
of the mountain, but actually ascended nearly to the upper-
most elevations, where his station is serene, and his prospect
346 THE AS YOU LIKE IT.
delightful ; and though his " often rumination " has gained
him, among others, the title of " the melancholy Jaques,"
it only wraps himself in " a most humourous sadness." The
matter lies, for the most part, upon " a more disengaged
but a more arduous station," and in that part of " the double
road of active life," which, though " steep and rough " at
the entrance, becomes " even and level " at the end, ter-
minating in " perfect smoothness " ; but the scene, though
not actually in " the woods," now, is still " partly in the
Forest of Arden." Rosalind is banished by the envious
Duke ; Celia, his daughter, her loving friend, determines
to escape with her cousin, and they persuade the fool
Touchstone to go with them ; and so, disguised, Rosalind
in boy's clothes, Celia in the dress of a shepherdess, and
Touchstone as servant, they become travellers in the
woods :
" Ros. Well, this is the Forest of Arden.
" Touch. Ay, now am I in Arden : the more fool I ! When I was at
home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content." Act II.
Sc. 4.
Remembering that the road traversing " the woodlands "
was overshadowed as by foliage, and perplexed and en-
tangled with thorns and briers, and that one branch of the
double road conducted the traveller to places precipitous
and impassable, we may just notice, that the dialogue be-
tween Celia and Rosalind, in the beginning, turns upon the
condition of their estates ; but, says Rosalind, " Fortune
reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature ;"
and they soon discover that these " paths of contemplation "
are beset with thorns and briers, thus :
" Ros. O, how full of briars is this working-day world !
Cel. They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery ; if
we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch them."
Act L Sc. 3.
So Bacon says :
" Diligence and careful preparation remove the obstacles against which
the foot would otherwise stumble, and smooth the path before it is entered ;
THE AS YOU LIKE IT. 347
but he who is sluggish and defers everything to the last moment of execu-
tion must needs walk every step as it were amidst briars and thorns, which
catch and stop him." Tr. of De Aug., IX. Spedd. (Boston), 257.
And Orlando, groping with old Adam in this " uncouth
forest," almost dead " for food," meeting the Duke, speaks
thus :
" Orl. Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you:
I thought that all things had been savage here ;
And therefore put I on the countenance
Of stern commandment. But whate'er you are
That in this desert inaccessible,
Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
Lose and ntgltct the creeping hours of time ;
You tonch'd my vein at first: the thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the shew
Of smooth civility: yet am I inland bred,
And know some nurture." Act II. Sc. 7.
Things here were steep, rough, thorny, overshadowed
with foliage and melancholy boughs, and rather precipitous
and impassable to the traveller.
Orlando introduces the old man Adam thus :
" There is an old poor man,
Who after me hath many a weary step
Limp'd in pure love; till he be first sufBc'd,
(Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger,)
I will not touch a bit." Act 11. Sc. 1.
And while he is gone to find him out, the Duke and Jaques
enter into that famous and very sage discourse upon the
Seven Ages of the life of man, taking a wide and deep view
of the subject. The Duke begins thus :
" Duke S. Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in."
Jaques, who has already climbed by regular succession the
height of things to a station serene, where he has a prospect
of the order of nature and the errors of men. on this uni-
versal theatre, and has been a traveller through the univer-
sal variety, proceeds to deliver himself of his latest con-
THE AS YOU LIKE IT.
templation on the ages of man, in the following manner,
which may be compared with the Essay of the Vicissitude
of Things (first printed in 1625), which was derived in part
from the History of Life and Death, namely :
" In the youth of a state arms do flourish ; in the middle age of a state,
learning ; and then both of them together for a time ; in the declining age
of a state, mechanical arts and merchandize. Learning hath its infancy,
when it is almost childish; then its youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile ;
then its strength of years, when it is solid and reduced [" soluliores et
exactiores "] ; and lastly, its old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust
[" postremo senectus earum obrepit, cum siccte et exhaustce Jlunt, mmiKnte
tamen garrulitate"~\ ; but it is not good to look too long upon these turning
wheels of vicissitude, lest we become giddy."
Take, now, the speech of Jaques, with the passages in-
terspersed by way of commentary, thus :
" Jaq. All the world 's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances ;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His Acts being seven ages."
[There were four ages of a state. " Meanwhile, the mind also hath cer-
tain periods, but they cannot be described by years." Hist, of Life and
Death.
" While states and empires pass many periods." Masque.
" While your life is nothing but a continual acting upon a stage." Ibid.}
" At first, the Infant,
Mewling and pnking in his nurse's arms:
And then, the whining School-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school " :
[" Learning, too, hath its infancy " ; . . . " then its youth, when it is
luxuriant and juvenile."
" The ladder of man's body is this, to be conceived, ... to suck, to be
weaned, to feed upon pap." Hist, of Life and Death.]
" And then the Lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow : Then a Soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard ;
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble Reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth : And then the Justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd ;
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
THE AS YOU LIKE IT. 349
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part " :
[ " then succeeds the manly age, when it becomes more solid and ex-
act," says the Latin.]
" The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ;
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound " :
[ " and lastly, its old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust," or, as the
Latin reads, " Lastly, its old age creeps on, when it becomes dry and ex-
haust, garrulity only remaining."]
"Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion ;
Sans teeth, ^ans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Act II. Sc. 7.
[" But it is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissi-
tude, lest we become giddy."]
Here, there is resemblance in the thought, manner, and
word, but not any absolute identity : the similitude is rather
distant and remote, as we should expect to find it in writings
so different in character, even the subject being not the
same. As will be seen, the Latin translation comes nearer
to the very language of the poetry than the English original
of the Essay ; and upon a close study, it is pretty evident
that, in the scientific study of the " Differences of Youth
and Old Age," and in the " History of Life and Death,"
may be found the actual first origin of both the poetry and
the prose. The general ideas are certainly very similar,
the difference of the subject in the Essay necessarily occa-
sioning some variations and omissions of particulars. The
manner is nearly the same in both, and the turn of expres-
sion, and use of words, is alike in both ; as for instance, the
words creep, manly voice and manly age, severe and exact,
garrulity and childish treble, this strange eventful history and
the turning wheels of vicissitude. And then we have the
same order and succession of the like ideas as far as they
850 THE AS YOU LIKE IT.
go, with that difference of diction, and greater amplitude,
which the nature of the subject, the exigencies of verse, and
the poetic style demanded.
Jaques exhibits a very remarkable liking for the fool
Touchstone,
" Who laid him down, and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool ; "
but when he heard him moralize upon the time, he laughed
a whole hour by his dial,
" That Fools should be so deep-contemplative."
And well he might ; for this fool's brain is crammed with
observation, his head is full of instances, and he appears,
like many of this author's fools, to have much knowledge
in many arts, though " ill-inhabited " :
"Jaq. This is the motley-minded gentleman, that I have so often met in
the forest: he hath been a courtier he swears.
Touch. If any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation."
Then follows a sharp piece of satirical criticism upon Vin-
centio Saviolo's code of honor ; but what is more particularly
to be noted in this connection is, that the moralizing Jaques,
who understands so well the many parts which man plays
on the universal theatre, considering the wisdom " which he
vents in mangled forms," is ready to exclaim :
" Jaq. O, that I were a Fool !
I am ambitious for a motley coat.
Duke S. Thou shalt have one.
Jaq. It is my only suit :
Provided that you weed your better judgments
Of all opinion that grows rank in them,
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please : for so fools have." Act II. Sc. 7.
Here is certainly a very good reason why this author should
be so much in the habit of putting the profoundest conclu-
sions of his philosophy into the mouths of his clowns and
fools ; and in a larger view, it may have been for a some-
THE AS YOU LIKE IT. 351
what similar reason that such a writer should choose the
dramatic form of delivery for the purpose of communicat-
ing his braver instruction to mankind. In that age,
especially, he needed liberty ; and his Genius must have
the air of Freedom :
"Jaq. Give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine." Act If. Sc. 7.
Touchstone proceeds with the shepherd, Corin, thus :
" Touch. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd ?
Cor. No more, but that I know, the more one sickens, the more at ease
he is ; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is without three
good friends : That the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn : That
good pasture makes fat sheep ; and that a great cause of the night is lack
of the sun : That he that hath learned no wit by Nature, nor Art, may com-
plain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred.
Touch. Such a one is a natural philosopher." Act III. Sc. 2.
Next, the dispute on good manners and the manners of
courtiers and shepherds winds up with a challenge for
instances :
" Touch. Instance, briefly; come, instance." Act III. Sc. 2.
And this is followed by a call for " a better instance," " a
more sounder instance," and "a mended instance," very
much after the manner of our natural philosopher him-
self:
"Jaq. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? he 's as good at anything, and
yet a Fool.
Duke S. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presenta-
tion of that, he shoots his wit."
So says Bacon to Essex, " You discourse well Quid igitur
agendum est ? I will shoot my fool's bolt, since you will
have it so."
Jaques had been a traveller, too, and his sadness was of
a peculiar kind :
"Ros. They say yon are a melancholy fellow.
Jaq. I am so: I do love it better than laughing."
352 THE AS YOU LIKE IT.
Rosalind thinks all such must be " abominable fellows," but
Jaques, that it is " good to be sad and say nothing " :
"Ros. Why then it is good to be a post." Act IV. Sc. 1.
This may remind the critical reader of Bacon's discussion
of individual good or happiness, which might consist in a
certain " equality " of things, or in " variety and vicissi-
tude," or in both ; and he alludes to the controversy
between Socrates and the Sophist, in which Socrates main-
tained that happiness consisted in a constant peace of
mind and tranquillity ; but the Sophist, that it consisted in
having an appetite for much and in enjoying much. The
Sophist said, that Socrates' happiness was that of " a post
or a stone " (" stipitis vel lapidis ") l ; and Socrates, that the
Sophist's happiness was that of a man that had the itch
(" scabiosi "), who was perpetually itching and scratching;
and this last breaks out, again, in another place, thus :
"Marcius. What 's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs ? Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate ; and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil." Cor., Act L Sc. 1.
Jaques answers :
" I have neither the Scholar's melancholy, which is emulation ; nor the
Musician's, which is fantastical; nor the Courtier's, which is proud; nor
the Soldier's, which is ambitious ; nor the Lawyer's, which is politic ; nor
the Lady's, which is nice; nor the Lover's, which is all these: but it is a
melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from
many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in
which my often rumination wraps me in a most humourous sadness.
Itos. A traveller !
Jaq. Yes; I have gained my experience." Act IV. Sc. 1.
Very like the philosopher, who had found " the different
characters of natures " omitted in " Morality and Policy,"
but thought there might be something of truth in the tradi-
tions of astrology and the predominances of the planets :
for, as we remember, " some are naturally formed for con-
i De Aug., Lib. VII. ; (Boston), III. 24.
THE AS YOU LIKE IT. 353
templation, others for business, others for war, others for
advancement of fortune, others for love, others for the arts,
others for a varied kind of life " ; as had been represented
among the poets, heroic, satiric, tragic, and comic.
And a traveller he was, no doubt, this " Monsieur Trav-
eller," through the universal variety, to whom, in his ele-
vated station on the mountain top, the common affairs and
most ordinary compliments of mankind below, were so sadly
amusing, that, on the whole, they might even be compared
to " the encounter of two dog-apes." Nevertheless, he had
a fellow-feeling for the
" poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,"
and came to languish by
" the brook that brawls along this wood;
and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase : and thus the hairy fool,
Much mark'd of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.
Duke S. But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle ?
1 Lord. 0, yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping into the needless stream ;
' Poor deer, 1 quoth he, ' thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy mm of more
To that which had too much.'' Then, being there alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;
" T is right, 1 quoth he ; ' this misery doth part
The flux of company.' Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him. ' Ay, 1 quoth Jaques,
'/Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ;
' T is just the fashion : Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there 1 '
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Tea, and of this our life." Act II. Sc. 1.
23
354 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
But the road, in this model, is to come out " even and
level " at the end, being the one of " the two moral ways "
of the old parable, beginning with incertainty and difficulty
and ending in plainness and certainty " ( Voter. Term. ch.
19) ; and so, all terminates in perfect smoothness by the
skill of the great magician :
"Ros. I have promised to make all this matter even.
Keep you your word, Duke, to give your daughter;
You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter:
Keep you your word, Phebe, that you '11 marry me,
Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd :
Keep your word, Silvius, that you '11 marry her,
If she refuse me : and from hence I go,
To make these doubts all even
Hymen. Then is there mirth in Heaven,
When earthly things made even
Atone together." Act V. Sc. 4.
At last, the usurping Duke
" hath put on a religious life,
And thrown into neglect the pompous Court.
Jaq. To him will I : out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned." Act V. Sc. 4.
This final disposition of the melancholy Jaques, whose
prospect had become so sadly humorous and so serenely
delightful, is in fair keeping with Bacon's vision of the
highest state of things in the island of Bensalem, in the
New Atlantis, on beholding which the Strangers, who had
arrived there, imagined they saw before their eyes " a
picture of their own salvation in heaven " ; and his betak-
ing himself, at last, to " these convertites," and devoting
himself to a religious life, may recall to mind what has been
reported of one of the rarest and most humorously sad
men of learning of our time, that now, in his later days, he
finds his chiefest solace in the " Ada Sanctorum.'"
3. THE TIMON OF ATHENS A MODEL.
Of the " Timon of Athens," nothing appears to be known,
until it was printed in the Folio of 1623. The story of
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 355
Timon was one of the traditional popular tales of ancient
times. It is briefly alluded to, in Plutarch's Life of Antony ;
but scarcely anything more than the circumstance of the
inscription upon the tomb of Timon and the bare names of
Alcibiades and Apemantus, which are not found in Lucian,
appear to have been taken from Plutarch ; while the char-
acter of Apemantus was evidently founded upon the
Thrasycles of Lucian's dialogue. Shakespeare could have
derived but little help from North's Plutarch, and Bacon
was undoubtedly well acquainted with both Plutarch and
Lucian in the original Greek. In the Essay of Goodness,
he alludes to the anecdote of the tree as told in Plutarch,
and speaks of " misanthropi, that make it their practice to
bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree for the
purpose in their gardens, as Timon had." Plutarch refers
to the comedies of Aristophanes and to Plato for the story
of Timon ; but the larger part of the borrowed materials
for this play was certainly drawn from Lucian. In Aris-
tophanes, 1 as in Plato, there is no more than a bare allusion
to the story. Bacon is known to have been familiar with
these authors, neither of which had been translated (so far
as known at this day) until after the time of Shakespeare.
The similitudes with his writings are most apparent in those /
parts of the story which vary from the account of Plutarch,
or were not derived from him. The circumstance of Timon's
finding great sums of gold, while digging with a spade,
must have been taken from Lucian. It is pretty certain
that the play never made any figure upon the stage, in the
lifetime of Shakespeare, if indeed it had ever appeared at
all before it was printed ; for there is no certain mention
of it on record prior to that date. Yet it is one of the most
masterly works of the great poet, not so much for display
upon the stage, but as implying the largest wisdom, a
matured experience, and a most profound philosophy of
human life. Even on the supposition that the old play of
l AwaMrrpcm), 805828.
356 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
that name was an early sketch of this author, it would
necessarily follow, that it had been taken up again at a
later period of his life, and had been carefully re-written in
the maturity of his powers. This play, more strongly than
almost any other in the series, bears upon its face the im-
press and character of Bacon's mind. It is even probable
that, in respect of the sentiments and feeling exhibited in
some parts of it, something may have been derived from
the later experience and fortunes of his own life ; when he
was himself a fallen lord, abandoned by troops of trencher-
friends, yet attended by faithful stewards even in his worst
misfortunes ; when he had gone to a cell, and become a
cloistered friar in Gray's Inn, and was gathering up the
wrecks and remnants of his ruined estates, but when he
appeared in public, still showing a handsome equipage and
a numerous retinue, " scorning to go out in a snuff," said
Prince Charles, when he met him in full trim on the road ;
when he had been fleeced (according to Mr. Meautys), first,
of York House, and then of one valuable estate after
another ; but to a proposal for the sale of his forest at
Gorhambury, indignantly answering, " I will not be stript
of my feathers," like another Lear, insisting upon his full
hundred,
" 0, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous ;
Allow not nature more than nature needs ;
Man's life is cheap as beast's; "
when he had himself become an experienced witness of the
vanities of great place, the iniquities of " the yellow slave,"
gold, the hollowness of all outward show of worldly great-
ness, and the essential worthlessness of all these to a great
soul, as Lucian says : " Nothing of all this being at all
necessary to a good man and one able to see the wealth of
philosophy " ; and when he had become still more pro-
foundly sensible of the dark clouds of error and superstition
and all manner of false opinion and belief, which like that
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 357
old incubus, " the brooding wing of Night," hung lowering
as ever over society and all human affairs. He had been
a learned critic in literature, a scientific student of nature,
and a comprehensive and very profound philosopher, and
he had now become a wise man, a seer, a prophet, and
certainly one of the greatest of poets.
Still bearing in mind what has been said of these illus-
trative examples, we shall have occasion, also, to remember
that pattern of a natural story, and model of an institution
" for the interpreting of nature, and the production of great
and marvellous works for the benefit of men," in the New
Atlantis. Solomon's House, which was instituted " for the
finding out of the true nature of all things, whereby God
might have the more glory in the workmanship of them,"
and which was to be " the noblest foundation that ever was
upon the earth," and " the eye " and " the lantern of this
kingdom," is introduced with an allusion to the poetical
fable of " the inhabitants of the great Atlantis," who were
" the descendants of Neptune," with their " magnificent
temple, palace, city, and hill ; and the manifold streams of
goodly navigable rivers, which, as so many chains, environed
the same site and temple ; and the several degrees of
ascent, whereby men did climb up the same, as if it had
been a Scala Coeli." This island, moreover, was " a land
of magicians." There was in it, too, " something super-
natural, but yet rather as angelical than magical." And it
is further said : " God surely is manifested in this land."
Said the Strangers, on arriving there, " It seemed to us,
that we were come into a land of angels."
Let it be observed, also, that there was, in this island,
" a most natural, pious, and reverend custom of the feast
of the family," showing the nation to be " compounded of
all goodness." The strangers who had arrived there, went
abroad to see " the city and places adjacent," and made
the acquaintance of many " not of the meanest quality."
The people were full of " piety and humanity," and for
858 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
" chastity," this nation was " the virgin of the world." In
their own country, " such humanity " was never seen. There
was no " confusion " among this people. Their " manners
and conditions " were well-ordered. Indeed, " if there be
a mirrour of the world worthy to hold men's eyes, it is that
country." It was granted to the father of a family of thirty
persons, called the Tirsan, to make " a feast " at the cost
of the state. He is assisted by " the governor," and also
" taketh three of such friends as he liketh to choose." The
persons of the family are summoned to attend. Two days
the Tirsan sits in " consultation concerning the good estate
of the family." Order is taken for the relief of the dis-
tressed and decayed, and " competent means to live " are
provided for them. Vice and ill-courses are censured.
They have " no stews, no dissolute houses, no courtezans,
nor anything of that kind." Direction is given " touching
marriages." Marriage, " without consent of parents," they
" mulct in the inheritors." There is not " such chastity in
any people " : and they say, " That whosoever is unchaste
cannot reverence himself" : and they say, " That the rev-
erence of a man's self is, next religion, the chiefest bridle
of all vices." The " orders and decrees " of the Tirsan are
obeyed : " such reverence and obedience they give to the
order of nature."
At the feast, the Tirsan comes forth from divine service
into " the large room where the feast is celebrated," and
takes his chair of state on a raised " half-pace," at the upper
end. All the lineage place themselves around " against the
wall," and the room below the half-pace is full of company,
" the friends of the family." On the sides are tables for the
guests that are bidden. A herald takes in his hand a scroll,
which is the king's charter containing gift of revenue, and
many privileges, exemptions, and points of honor, directed
" To such a one our well beloved friend and creditor." And
there is an acclamation, " Happy are the people of Ben-
salem ! " Toward the end of dinner, hymns of " excellent
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 359
poesy " are sung ; and " dinner being done," the Tirsan
calls out two of his " sons of eminent merit and virtue,"
and bestows on each " a jewel," which they ever after
' wear in the front of their turban or hat." This done,
" they fall to music and dances and other recreations." So
much for the feast, which may be compared a little, below,
with " the feast of Lord Timon."
Now, turning to the play, the scene is " Athens ; and
the woods adjoining." For, in this model, we are to emerge
from the woods, again, to " the foot of the mountains," and
thence, to ascend toward the height of things in " the com-
monwealth of Athens " ; in which we shall see, also, " how
the culture and cure of the mind of man " depend upon
" points of nature " and " points of fortune." l The first act
opens with a scene, in which the poet, the painter, the
merchant, the jeweller, and the philosopher, are brought
upon the stage together, and the principal topic seems to
be our very subject here, namely, " true art." Each one
brings an offering of service to the great Lord Timon. In
the beginning of the dialogue, the ideas and expressions
which are used so forcibly call to mind, not only the teach-
ings of Bacon on poesy, nature, and art, but also the man-
ner and diction of the Dedication and Preface to the Folio
of 1623, as to raise a strong suspicion, at least, that both
were written by the same hand and at about the same time.
Compare the sentences as follows :
"Act I. Sc. 1. Athens. A Hall in TIMON' s House.
Poet. How goes the world ?
Paint. It wears, sir, as it grows.
Poet. Ay, that 's well known ;
But what particular rarety ? what strange,
Which manifold record not matches ?
[" Whilst we study to be thankful in our particular." Ded.]
Mer. O, 't is a worthy lord.
Jew. Nay, that's most nx'd.
l Ado. of Learn., Bk. n.
360 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
Mer. A most incomparable man; breath' d, as it were,
To an untirable and continuate goodness :
[" To the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren, and
our singular good lords." Ded.
" A king of incomparable clemency, and whose heart is inscrutable for
wisdom and goodness." Submission.]
Paint. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication
To the great lord."
[" And while we name them trifles, we have deprived ourselves of the
defence of our dedication." Ded.]
Poet. A thing slipp'd idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 't is nourished: The fire i' the flint
Shews not, till it be struck ; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like a current, flies
Each bound it chafes. What have you there ?
[" Country hands reach forth milke, creame, fruits, as what they have ;
and many Nations (we have heard) that had not gummes and incense,
obtained their request with a leavened cake." Ded.
Lucian's Timon reads :
"I come to bring you a new song of the lately-taught dithyrambics." 1
" There were under the Law (excellent King) both daily sacrifices and
free-will offerings." Ded. of the Adv.]
Paint. A picture, sir. And when comes your book forth ?
Poet. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.
Let 's see your piece.
[" It hath been the highest of our care, who are the Presenters, to make
the present worth}' of your Highnesses by the perfection." Ded.
" In like manner there belongeth to kings from their servants both tribute
of duty and presents of affection." Ded. of the Adv.]
Paint. 'T is a good piece.
Poet. So 't is ; this comes off well, and excellent.
Paint. Indifferent.
Poet. Admirable! How this grace
Speaks his own standing ; what a mental power
This eye shoots forth ; how big imagination
Moves in this lip; to the dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.
[If he were a good " interpreter of nature " : and " if it be true that the
principal part of beauty is in decent motion." Essay.]
1 Luciani Opera (Tauchnitz, Lipsiae, 1858,) I. 30.
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 361
Paint. It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Here is a touch; Is 't good?
Poet. I '11 say of it,
It tutors nature : artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
[ "(for I must ascribe your commendation to affection, being above my
merit,) as I must do contrary to that that painters do; for they desire to
make the picture to the life, and I must endeavour to make the life to the
picture." Letter, 1619.
"as if art were some different thing from nature, and artificial from
natural." Adv.
" But because there be so many good painters, both for hand and colours,
it needeth but encouragement and instructions to give life unto it"
Letter to Chan.
" Who, as he was a happie imitator of nature, was a most gentle ex-
presser of it." Ded.]
Tim. Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus ! "
There are some indications in this play that the " gentle
Apemantus," under the covert garb of a " churlish philos-
opher," was rather intended to speak, under cover, for the
" gentle Shakespeare " himself. " What Shakespeare's
thoughts on God, Nature, and Art, would have been," says
Carlyle, " especially had he lived to number fourscore
years, were curious to know." Most certainly so ; but,
in the course of this play, assuredly, something may be
gathered, by close inspection, as to what were the ideas
of the author on some points in art and philosophy ; and
they seem to have a remarkable agreement, in respect of
some particulars of idea and expression, with Bacon's
notions on the subject, as may be seen in this passage from
the Essay of Beauty (1612) :
" In beauty, that of favour is more than that of colour ;
and that of decent and gracious motion more than that of
favour. That is the best part of beauty, which a picture
cannot express ; nor the first sight of life. There is no
excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the
proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Al-
bert Durer were the more trifler ; whereof the one would
362 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
make a personage by geometrical proportions ; the other,
by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one
excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody
but the painter that made them. Not but I think a painter
may make a better face than ever was ; but he must do it
by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excel-
lent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces,
that if you examine them part by part, you shall find never
a good ; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the
principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is
no marvel though persons in years seem many times more
amiable."
Understanding that Apemantus contemplated the uni-
verse, as it is herein supposed that Bacon himself did, as
the actual thought of a Creative Thinker, and as essentially
and to the very bottom Artist-Mind work, and that the
highest beauty is in life and motion, there may be dis-
covered in this scene a profound opinion of the true nature
of the highest art :
" Tim. How likest them this picture, Apemantus V
Apem. The best, for the innocence.
Tim. Wrought he not -well, that painted it?
Apem. He wrought better that made the painter ;
And yet he 's but a filthy piece of work." Act I. Sc. 1.
This remark, apparently so very cynical, and perhaps
intended so to appear on the surface, may find a deeper
interpretation by the light of another very cynical philoso-
pher : " Do you think those who make senseless and mo-
tionless statues are more to be wondered at than those \vho
make active and intelligent living animals ? No, by Ju-
piter ; since these are made, not by chance, but by intel-
lect." l Other poets followed the " customary fashion " and
men's opinions : he followed the order of divine provi-
dence, the truth of nature, that true art which is always
capable of advancing, and his own opinions :
1 Xen. Mem. Socralis, Lib. I. c. 4.
THE TIMOX OF ATHENS.
"Apem. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy labor: he that
loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer. Heavens, that I were a lord ! "
Here, too, is his opinion of the mere man of traffic :
" Apem. Traffic confound thee, if the gods do not !
Mer. If traffic do it, the gods do it.
Apem. Traffic 's thy god, and thy god confound thee ! "
This merchant may remind us of the merchant Jew in
the New Atlantis, with this difference, that, here, it is the
man whose god is traffic, but there, it is " the good Jew."
The play continues thus :
" Tim. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus?
Apem. Not so well as plain dealing, which will not cost a man a doit.
Tim. What dost thou think 't is worth ?
Apem. Not worth my thinking." Act I. Sc. 1.
Timon has not yet emerged from those mines and caves,
where gold and jewels are the chief treasure. Apemantus
would seem to have reached the uppermost elevations of
nature and those " tops of mountains," where the serenity
'of his contemplations was not to be disturbed by any con-
sideration of such low things. And here, again, we have
this philosopher's judgment on ostentatious piety and
prayer :
" Apem. Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;
I pray for no man but myself."
To some, this might appear to be in the highest degree
impious, as Timon thought another saying of the churlish
philosopher to be " a lascivious apprehension " ; to which
Apemautus replies :
" So thou apprehend'st it. Take it for thy labour."
Or, by possibility, it might put them in mind of another
more modern philosopher, likewise suspected of being
somewhat cynical, who seems to have apprehended many
things differently from the common way ; for, being of the
same opinion, doubtless, that this author was, when he made
the Duke in the disguise of " power divine " say, " there is
so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must
364 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
cure it," so he says : " There is no odor so bad as that
which arises from goodness tainted. If I knew for a cer-
tainty that a man was coming to my house with the con-
scious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." 1
So Apemantus seems to have thought a man had enough
to do to pray for himself; and perhaps, also, he had that
reverence for himself, which is, " next religion, the chiefest
bridle of all vices," and such chastity as was never seen
anywhere else than in the island of Bensalem.
All this is made subservient to the introduction of the
main subject of the play, the character of Lord Timon and
the changes of fortune, which the poet is made to an-
nounce as the subject of that very work which he had
come to dedicate to the great lord ; as if the author himself
would speak in character. And we may say of this piece
as the poet said to the picture,
" to the dumbness of the gesture,
One might interpret"
It is announced thus :
"Poet. I have in this rough work shap'd out a man,
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment
Paint. How shall I understand you ?
Poet. I '11 unbolt to you.
You see how all conditions, how all minds
(As well of glib and slippery creatures, as
Of grave and austere quality) tender down
Their services to Lord Timon : his large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts ;
[" A noble man and of much worth," says Lucian.]
yea from the glass-fac'd flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself: even he drops down
The knee before him, and returns in peace
Most rich in Timon's nod." Act J. Sc. 1.
There is to be some " steep and rough " work in the
1 Thoreau's Walden, 80.
THE TIMOX OF ATHENS. 365
woods among " thorns and briers," not levelled particularly ;
but a survey is to be taken of " all conditions " ; and even
Apemantus is constrained to drop the knee before the
great lord, as did the other philosopher, who said : " I come
with my pitcher to Jacob's well as others do."
The poet continues :
" Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill,
Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: the base o' the mount
Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinds of natures,
[that is to say, all u characters of natures and dispositions,"
hitherto too much omitted in Morality and Policy,]
That labour on the bosom of this sphere
To propagate their states : amongst them all,
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd,
One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame ;
Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants
Translates his rivals.
Paint. 'T is 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 sleepy mount
To climb his happiness, would be well express'd
In our condition
Poet. When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood,
Spurns down her late belov'd, all his dependants,
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top.
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot.
Paint. 'T is common :
A thousand moral paintings I can show
That shall demonstrate these quick blows of fortune,
More pregnantly than words."
Surely, this " high and pleasant hill," this " steepy
mount," ranked with all deserts and all kinds of natures at
the base, and " this mountain's top," which all that labor on
the bosom of this sphere seek to climb in search of happi-
ness, can be no other than that same hill of the Muses,
and those " tops of mountains," which the traveller, on " the
steep and rough," or " the even and level," road of active
366 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
life, was to " climb by regular succession, with persevering
and indefatigable patience," and by the " several degrees
of ascent, as if it had been a Scala Coeli," before he should
reach a serene station on the height of things ; and these
" paths of contemplation," placed thus visibly before the
eyes in a kind of representative speaking picture, exhibit-
ing " the whole process of the mind and the continuous
frame and order of discovery " in the given subject, may-
be taken as an example of the new method, which those
" types and models " were to illustrate ; and this is that use
of poetry that " tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that
which is taught or delivered," as by " a thousand moral
paintings."
Timon was not one of those who had reached the moun-
tain's top, but only " a more disengaged and arduous
station " towards the foot, and was still bowing his head
against the steepy mount. But the poet himself had at-
tained that uppermost elevation, and was able to look down
upon him from that high cliff and platform, which is more
amply sketched in the Essay of Truth, thus :
" The poet that beautified the sect that was otherwise
inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well : ' It is a plea-
sure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the
sea ; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see
a battle and the adventures thereof below : but no pleasure is
comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth,
(a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always
clear and serene,) and to see the errors and wanderings, and
mists, and tempests, in the vale below' ; so always that this
'prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride." And
so that it be done by a Solomon of the New Atlantis, who
wears " an aspect as if he pitied men."
The scene next shifts upon the marriage of the old
Athenian's daughter, a fair maid, bred " in qualities of the
best " ; and Lord Timon, like the Tirsan, takes due care
that it shall be a chaste marriage, with due consent of
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 367
parents, and ample provision is made for Lucilius " to build
his fortune " and make him " an equal husband "; all which
has a certain close resemblance to the manner of proceed-
ing in the island of Bensalem, where, also, there were
many, " not of the meanest quality."
Next comes the feast, which is such a feast as could be
given by the Lord Timon in the commonwealth of Athens,
rather than exactly a " feast of the family " of the Tirsan ;
but in many traits, they exhibit a near relationship of the
one to the other. Humanity is a leading topic in both :
" 2 Lord. Thou art going to Lord Timon's feast.
Ape.ni. Ay; to see meat fill knaves, and wine heat fools
1 Lord. He 's opposite to humanity. Come, shall we in,
And taste Lord Timon's bounty ? he outgoes
The very heart of kindness.
2 Lord. He pours it out ; Plutus, the god of gold,
Is but his steward
1 Lord. The noblest mind he carries,
That ever govern'd man." Act I. Sc. 1.
Timon addresses his company of friends in a strain and
temper worthy of that " divine instrument," the " governor "
of the society and brotherhood of Solomon's House, Ape-
mantus (one chosen from amongst the rest " to live in the
house with him," like " the Son of the Vine " in the New
Atlantis.) having a table by himself at one side " against
the wall," thus :
" 0, no doubt, my good friends, but the gods themselves have provided
that I shall have much help from you : how had you been my friends else ?
why have you that charitable title from thousands, did not you chiefly
belong to my heart ? O, you gods, think I, what need we have
any friends, if we should ne'er have need of 'em V they were the most need-
less creatures living, should we ne'er have use for 'em : and would most
resemble sweet instruments hung up in cases, that keep their sounds to
themselves We are born to do benefits ; and what better or properer
can we call our own than the riches of our friends ? O, what a precious
comfort 'tis, to have so many like brothers, commanding one another's
fortunes ! " Act I. Sc. 2.
Here we may note a slight resemblance to the language
of the New Atlantis ; for in Solomon's House there were
368 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
to be " divers instruments of music, sweeter than any you
have " and " bells and rings that are dainty and sweet."
The feast being over, Cupid enters with " a masque of
ladies," and the entertainment ends with music and danc-
ing, much after the manner of the Tirsan's feast. And
the whole is closed, in like manner, with a gift of jewels,
thus:
" Tim. The little casket bring me hither.
Flav. Yes, my lord. [Aside.] More jewels yet!
Tim 0, my friends !
I have one word to say to you. Look you, my good lord,
I must entreat you, honour me so much,
As to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it,
Kind my lord."
" Apem. No, I '11 nothing ; for if I should be brib'd, too, there would be
none left to rail upon thee, and then thou would'st sin the faster
What needs these feasts, pomps, and vain glories ?
Tim. Nay, an you begin to rail on society once, I am sworn not to give
regard to you
Apem. So ; thou wilt not hear me now ; thou shalt not then. I '11
lock thy Heaven from thee.
O, that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery ! " Act 1. Sc. 2.
The Tirsan's feast was a feast of "consultation" and
counsel ; Timon's, a feast of flattery ; in which Apemantus,
however, had " the liberty of a friend," according to what
is said in the Essay of Friendship : " So, as there is much
difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and
that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel
of a friend and a flatterer ; for there is no such flatterer as
a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery
of a man's self as the liberty of a friend."
There are some further traces of the New Atlantis in
\the third act, and particularly in Timon's second feast.
"Without dwelling upon the faithful steward, Flavius, the
" one honest man," who, like Bacon's own faithful steward
and secretary, Meautys, never deserted him, let us stop only
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 369
to observe, that in the second scene Lucius enters with
" three strangers." In the New Atlantis, much is said of
the mode of entertaining strangers in that island and of the
" Stranger's House," in which all the sick were treated with
such " rare humanity " and success, that they thought them-
selves " cast into some divine pool of healing." The same
subject recurs, at the end of the first scene, with a some-
what different application, the opposite view of humanity
being exhibited in the play, thus :
"Flam. 0, may diseases only work upon 't!
And when he is sick to death, let not that part of nature,
Which my lord paid for, be of any power
To expel sickness, but prolong his hour! " Act III. Sc 2.
And when the strangers offered to pay for the many
favours which had left them " confused with joy and kind-
ness," the answer was : " What, twice paid ! " for they called
him " that taketh rewards twice-paid." So Apemantus con-
sidered Timon's bounty to his friends as mere bribery ; but
he would not himself be " brib'd too." Furthermore, one
of these "three strangers" would almost seem to have
been acquainted with the father Tirsan, when he speaks
thus:
" 1 Sir. Why this
Is the world's soul; and just of the same piece
Is every flatterer's spirit. Who can call him
His friend, that dips in the same dish? for in
My knowing, Timon has been this lord's father,
And kept his credit with his purse,
Supported his estate; nay, Timon's money
Has paid his men their wages : he ne'er drinks
But Timon's silver treads upon his lips ;
["having oftentimes drank whole cups with me," says Lucian.]
3 'Str. Religion groans at it.
1 Str But I perceive,
Men must learn now with pity to dispense :
For policy sits above conscience." Act III. Sc. 2.
The Tirsan's feast was in some sort a public one, and
was made at the cost of the state ; and it was attended by
24
370 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
the governor. The same idea recurs in Timon's welcome
to his friends at the feast of covered dishes :
" Make not a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon
the first place You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with
thankfulness."
These were not the " wise men of the Society of Solomon's
House," but Timon's curse upon them savors strongly of
the " Stranger's House," and of the healing of the sick
therein, though in quite the opposite manner, thus :
" Tim. This is Timon's last;
Who, stuck and spangled you with flatteries,
Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces
[ Throwing water in their faces.
Your reeking villainy. Live loath'd, and long,
Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,
Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears ;
You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time's flies,
Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks !
[" Again therefore I depart, and will deliver you up to parasites and flat-
terers and courtezans; . . . rewarding you as flatterers and wolves,"
reads Lucian.]
Of man and beast the infinite malady
Crust you quite o'er! what, dost thou go?
Soft, take thy physic first thou too, and thou.
[ Throws the dishes at them.
Henceforth, be no feast,
Whereat a villain 's not a welcome guest.
Burn, house ! sink, Athens ! henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man and all humanity. 1 ' 1
[" For I will hate all gods and men at once," Timon says, in Lucian.]
And at the close of the scene, the lord, who had advanced
the jewel to his " turban or hat" (as it appears) as in the
New Atlantis, speaks thus :
" 3 Lord. He gave me a jewel the other day, and now he has beat it out
of my hat : Did you see my jewel ? " Act 111. Sc. 6.
Here, let it be noted, also, that, in the Advancement,
Bacon speaks of " the gross and palpable flattery, whereunto
.many not unlearned have abased and abused their wits and
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 371
pens," and of " those trencher-philosophers, which in the
later age of the Roman State were usually in the houses
of great persons, being little better than solemn parasites ;
of which kind Lucian maketh a merry description " ; and
this is certainly decisive evidence that Bacon as well as the
author of the play had studied Luciau.
In Timon we have the man, who, having traversed the
woodlands of nature, and emerged into the more disengaged
but more arduous paths of contemplation, pursues that
branch of the double road of active life, which is at first
" even and level," but conducts to " places precipitous and
impassable." In Apemantus, on the other hand, is repre-
sented the man, who rather chooses the way which is " steep
and rough at the entrance," but with certain " fixed princi-
ples " and " indefatigable patience," enduring to suspend his
judgment, will mount gradually, and "climb by regular
succession " the height of things in the commonwealth of
Athens. Timon, having met with a precipitous fall, takes
back to the region of thorns and briers, " without the walls
of Athens," breaking forth in a terrible outburst of wrath
upon the " confusions " of society, thus :
" Piety and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night rest, and neighborhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And let confusion live ! " Act IV. Sc. 1.
Confusion is a favorite idea and word with this writer.
" Is there any such happiness," says Bacon, " as for a man's
mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he
may have a prospect of the order of nature and the errors
of men ? " and again, " as nothing doth derogate from the
dignity of a state more than confusion of degrees." And
Timon says again, " Would'st thou have thyself fall in the
confusion of men ? " He concludes his diatribe on society
372 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
with this desperate resolution : " Timon will to the woods ! "
But, in Lucian, " he only leaves the city in disgust, and
works for hire on a farm, brooding darkly over his evils."
The third scene opens in " the woods." Timon is in close
communion with physical nature. Among thorns and briers,
the path is far from being even and level, or straight and
smooth :
" Tim, All is oblique ;
There 's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villainy." Act IV. Sc. 3.
" By reason of the ways of nature being partly straight,
and partly oblique," says the De Augmentis ; and the ex-
pression seems to have been borrowed from Sophocles :
Kpewi'. . . . navTa. yap
Aexpca. Antigone, 1344-5.
He digs for roots and finds gold. While cutting up roots,
he throws up treasure with his spade, "digging, I think,
where it had been buried," says Lucian. He prefers roots,
but will take " some gold " for his purposes :
" Tim. " Earth, yield me roots ! . . . [Digging.
I am misanthropes, and hate mankind." Act IV. Sc. 3.
" And let Misanthropos be the most agreeable name," says
Timon in Lucian.
The first to present himself is " Captain Alcibiades with
his women." There was no war in Bensalem ; but mention
is made of a holy hermit to whom " the spirit of fornication "
appeared as " a little foul ugly ^thiop " ; but " the spirit
of chastity " is described " in the likeness of a fair beautiful
cherubin." Timon addresses Alcibiades, thus :
" Follow thy drum ;
With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules:
Religious canons, civil laws are cruel ;
Then what should war be ? This fell whore of thine
Hath in her more destruction than thy sword,
For all her cherubin look." Act IV. Sc. 3.
In the New Atlantis, " the scroll was signed with a stamp
of cherubin's wings."
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 373
While yet digging the earth in the woods of nature, his
pride unsubdued, he is made to utter forth that fine view
of all-producing Nature, which might certainly have been
inspired by the Second Philosophy :
" Common mother, thou,
Whose womb immeasurable, and infinite breast,
Teems, and feeds all ; whose self-same mettle,
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff 'd,
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm,
With all th' abhor' d births below crisp heaven
Whereon Hyperion's quickening fire doth shine,
Yield him, who all the human sons doth hate,
From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!
Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb ;
Let it no more bring out ingrateful man !
Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears ;
Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face
Hath to the marbled mansion all above
Never presented ! O, a root, dear thanks !
Dry up thy marrowy vines, and plough-torn leas;
Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts,
And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,
That from it all consideration slips." Act IV. Sc. 3.
Next appears Apemantus, who complains, that
Thou dost i
But he tells him,
" This is in thee a nature but infected ;
A poor unmanly melancholy, sprung
From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place?
[" What a change! . . . bearing thus this heavy spade," says Lucian.]
Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper,
'T is most just
That thou turn rascal ; had'st thou wealth again,
Rascals should have 't Do not assume my likeness."
Apemantus teaches him that he is " a madman " to ex-
pect relief for his miseries in these " woods,'' which
" To the conflicting elements exposed,
Answer mere nature."
" Men report,
Thou dost affect my manners, and dost use them."
374 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
For no help is to be had there :
" Apem. If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on
To castigate thy pride, 't were well."
But the lesson, which this philosopher, who had come to
understand things as they are in themselves, and took them
for just what they were, no more, no less, himself having
reached the serene and delightful station on the height of
things, whence he could look down, " with pity, and not
with swelling or pride," had to give this proud misanthrope,
that never knew " the middle of humanity," but only " the
extremity of both ends," and that therefore, in his death,
" all living men did hate," was this :
" Apem. Willing misery
Outlives incertain pomp, is crown'd before :
The one is filling still, never complete,
The other, at high wish : best state, contentless,
Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.
Thou should'st desire to die, being miserable." Act IV. Sc. 3.
Timon is furnished from " the woodlands " of nature with
a certain rude imagery corresponding to the crude percep-
tion which he had come to have of that necessary " differ-
ence of degrees/' which is discoverable everywhere, and he
launches into a discourse on the comparative evils of con-
flicting qualities in natures, as of the lion, the fox, the ass,
the wolf, the leopard, and the rest, concluding that, " all
thy safety were remotion ; and thy defence, absence " :
" Apem. If thou could'st please me with speaking to me, thou might'st
have hit upon it here : the commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of
beasts."
It was not so, in " the feigned commonwealth " of the
island of Bensalem, of which the governor was a man
" comely of person, and had an aspect as if he pitied men,"
and in which, reverence and obedience were given to " the
order of nature." Of such a man as Apemantus, or the
Governor of Solomon's House, this Timon had never any
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 875
just conception, and they ended as such men are apt to do,
in all cases, by calling each other hard names :
"Apem. Beast!
Tim. Slave!
Apem. Toad !
Tim. Rogue, rogue, rogue ! "
u Sick of this false world," Timon would love naught
" But even the mere necessities upon 't."
He retires to his " cave," taking with him his gold, the
" visible god,
That solder'st close impossibilities
And mak'st them kiss,"
finding in his natural philosophy of the mere necessities of
nature, that the sun, the moon, the sea, the earth,
" each thing 's a thief;
and he advises all thieves, thus :
" Steal not less, for this
I give you ; and gold confound you howsoe'er ! " Act 1 V. Sc. 3.
This cave scene, like the rest, shows some traces of the
Solomon's House of the New Atlantis ; for there were to
be therein certain " large and deep mines and caves, digged
under great hills and mountains," which were to be called
" the lower region," and were to be used for " the imitation
of natural mines and the producing of new and artificial
metals." In some of them, " hermits," that chose to live
there, were to be well accommodated with all things neces-
sary, and indeed live very long." But in the play, the
poets and painters, who had turned " alchemysts," to make
gold, were summarily driven out of the presence even of
Timon.
For a commonwealth of Athens become a forest of beasts,
Timon had no remedy to propose, but dire and utter destruc-
tion ; and, indeed, the poet himself would seem to have had
no other than " Alcibiades and the Forces " :
" Tim. Come not to me again ; but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
376 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ;
Who, once a day with his emboss'd froth,
The turbulent surge shall cover : thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle." Act V. Sc. 2.
This poet was able to make good interpretation and use
of the ancient fable of Timon, Misanthropos, taking care to
follow the story of Lucian, in having him
" Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea " ;
that metaphysical and mysterious line, which serves as well
to bound the horizon of time out of the great ocean of
eternity, as to mark the limit of the ascent of " the steepy
mount " toward the angelical supernatural heights of things
in the everlasting mansions beyond. And Alcibiades, at
the head of repentant Athens, should be able to see thus
much of thee, O Timon :
" yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon ; of whose memory
Hereafter more." Act V. Sc. 5.
Again, Bacon, when his fall came, induced by the per-
suasion of Buckingham and the King, if not commanded by
some more forcible appeal, or, perhaps, foreseeing that his
only hope was in the King, made a general confession and
submission to the House of Lords, with the expectation
that they would weigh his fault in a liberal spirit, and pass
it over with some slight censure only, that they would
be content to deprive him of the seals, and, sparing " any
further sentence," would recommend him to " his majesty's
grace and pardon." Protesting he had not " the fountain
of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards
to pervert justice," howsoever he might " be frail and par-
take of the abuses of the times," he nobly resolved not " to
trick up an innocency by cavillations," but to make a clear
confession of the facts as they were, being willing that they
should speak for themselves and himself, and so threw
himself upon the magnanimity of the British Senate ; and
THE TIMON OF ATHENS. 377
in that submission, he invoked the example of Quintus
Maximus : " who being upon the point to be sentenced, by
the intercession of some principal persons of the Senate,
was spared " ; in which " the discipline of war was no less
established by the questioning of Quintus Maximus, than
by the punishment of Titus Manlius." But the Lords would
not relent : a victim was demanded. In like manner, in
this play, Alcibiades, a principal senator, becomes " an
humble suitor " to the " virtues " of the Athenian Senate
for the pardon of a friend of his, who had
" stepp'd into the law, which is past depth
To those that without heed do plunge into 't.
He is a man, setting his fate aside,
Of comely virtues :
Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice ;
(An honour in him which buys out his fault)
But, with a noble fury, and fair spirit,
Seeing his reputation touch'd to death,
He did oppose his foe
1 Sen. You cannot make gross sins look clear:
To revenge is no valour, but to bear.
Alcib. My lords, then, under farour, pardon me,
If I speak like a captain :
and after pleading the soldier's valor and noble spirit in
extenuation of his offence, he declares the felon,
Loaden with irons, wiser than the judge,
If wisdom be in suffering. O, my lords !
As you are great, be pitifully good.
.... In vain ? his service done
At Lacedaemon and Byzantium
Were a sufficient briber for his life. . . .
2 Sen. He hath been known to commit outrages,
And cherish factions. 'T is inferr'd to us,
His days are foul, and his drink dangerous.
1 Sen, He dies.
Alcib. Hard fate ! he might have died in war.
My lords, if not for any parts in him,
Though his right arm might purchase his own time,
And be in debt to none, yet, more to move you,
Take my deserts to his, and join 'em both: . . .
If by this crime he owes the law his life,
Why, let the war receive 't in valiant gore;
S78 THE TIMON OF ATHENS.
The law is strict, and war is nothing more. . . .
1 Sen. We are for law : he dies ; urge it no more,
On height of our displeasure. . . .
Alcib. Call me to your remembrances.
2 Sen. What!
Alcib. I cannot think but your age has forgot me ;
It could not else be, I should prove so base,
To sue, and be deni'd such common grace.
My wounds ache at you.
1 Sen. Do you dare our anger?
'T is in but few words, but spacious in effect :
We banish thee forever.
Alcib. Banish me !
Banish your dotage, banish usury,
That makes the Senate ugly.
1 Sen. If, after two days' shine Athens contain thee,
Attend our weightier judgment. . . .
Alcib. Now the gods keep you old enough ; that you may live
Only in bone, that none may look on you ! . . .
Banishment!
It comes not ill ; I hate not to be banish'd :
It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury,
That I may strike at Athens." Act III. Sc. 5.
There is nothing here, perhaps, that can be specially
noted, more than the allusion to " the discipline of war" as
in Bacon's " Submission," which is certainly not a little
remarkable, together with the general tenor of the ideas
and sentiment, especially if they can be considered as hav-
ing been imparted to this play, after his own fall and ban-
ishment from London. At any rate, it may be truly said
of himself, that his own banishment came not ill ; for be-
sides that he had struck, it is true that he continued to
strike, at Athens, in a way scarcely to be dreamed of in
Athens itself for a long time to come ; nor felt otherwise
than as the blows travelled along down and transverberated
the ages as they rolled up, with scarcely diminishing force
of vibration, and so to continue until they shall be lost,
if ever, in ' the deeper concussions of still more powerful
strokes ; and every vibration still sweeps some part of the
old Athens into oblivion and mere fossil bone.
CHAPTER VI.
PHILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCES.
" God hath framed the mind of man as a mirrour or glass, capable of the image
of the universal world." BACON.
1. BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
FRANCIS BACON had surveyed with the eye of a master
the whole field of the Greek Philosophy, and had carried
his studies, beyond almost any other of his time and country,
mto the deepest profundities of human thought. Standing
where Plato stood, long before him, and Des Cartes and
Leibnitz, immediately after him, essentially, on the solid
platform of fact and universal method, he endeavored to
instaurate, revive, and renew the higher philosophy as well
as physical science. He attempted, not without great effect,
to organize the experimental and inductive method of in-
quiry and a true method of interpreting Nature, and urged
them upon the consideration of the world of science as the
best, if not the only, means of obtaining that broad and
sure " foundation " in observed and ascertained fact, on
which alone he considered it possible to raise, in an
adequate manner, the eternal superstructure of philosophy
itself, which he was also undertaking, as the chiefest con-
cern, to erect and constitute, or at least to initiate ; and to
this end, he would begin at the fountain head, and constitute
one Universal Science as the science of sciences and mother
of all the rest, which was to be as the trunk to the branches
of the tree. This science he called Philosophia Prima, or
indeed " Sapience," which had been " anciently defined as
the knowledge of all things divine and human " :
380 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
" What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end. withal." Cor., Act HI. Sc. 1.
He was not a man of physics merely, but understood
metaphysics to be one part even of natural philosophy, in
theory necessarily preceding physics, and in time and prac-
tice necessarily following on physics, the other part, " as a
branch or descendant of natural science," x and as afford-
ing the only safe passage into that Summary or Higher
Philosophy, which he recognized as reigning supreme over
sciences as " the parent or common ancestor to all knowl-
edge." He divided all philosophy into three divisions, con-
cerning God, Nature, and Man ; and he said there was
a " three-fold ray of things ; for Nature strikes the intellect
by a direct ray ; but God, by a ray refracted, by reason of
the unequal medium (the creation) ; and Man as shown
and exhibited to himself, by a ray reflected." 2 He seemed
also, in accordance with the ideas and spirit of that age, in
some measure to admit " Divinity or Inspired Theology,"
resting on Scriptural authority, as a department of inquiry
distinct from philosophy ; and he spoke of divinity as " the
book of God's word," and of philosophy as " the book of
God's works." " Physique," says he, " inquireth and hand-
leth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which
is Metaphysique, handleth the formal and final causes, that
which supposes in nature a reason, understanding, and
platform " ; that is to say, something like the vous or intel-
lect of Anaxagoras and Plato. And again he says, " let the
investigation of forms, which (in reasoning at least and
after their own laws) are eternal and immutable, constitute
metaphysics, and let the investigation of the efficient cause
of matter, latent process, and latent conformation (which
all relate merely to the ordinary course of nature, and not
to the eternal and fundamental laws) constitute physics." 8
1 Adv. of Learn., Works (Mont), II. 134
2 De Aug. Sclent., L. III. c. 1.
Nov. Org., II. 9.
BACON A PHILOSOPHER. 381
He was able to see through physics into metaphysics, and
he drew the line between them distinctly enough. Since
the giant Kant grappled with these " forms " or laws of
the understanding or reason, and began to make a clearer
opening into the true nature of Time and Space, his students
and successors, more profoundly penetrating the subject,
and, especially, Cousin, more thoroughly studying the critical
method of scientific thinking taught by Plato, in a masterly
elimination of the errors of Locke and Kant, have con-
tributed much toward making Kant's " narrow foot-path "
to be in truth " a high road of thought " ; and since all
together have still further cleared up these " fundamental
and eternal laws " of all thinking, divine or human, it has
become easier for others to grasp the profound conceptions
of Bacon, which, however obscurely expressed, were never-
theless distinctly defined in the vast comprehension of his
mighty intellect. " It is best," he says. " to consider matter,
its conformation, and the changes of that conformation, its
own action, and the laws of this action or motion ; for forms
are a mere fiction of the human mind, unless you will call
the laws of action by that name." 1 That he referred these
laws of action to the one thinking substance or essence,
" the Mind of Nature," and considered them as eternal and
immutable laws of the Divine Mind, thinking a universe,
if a little uncertain here, is made plain enough in other
parts of his writings. He says again : " Those which refer
all things to the glory of God are as the three acclamations :
Sancte ! Sancte ! Sancte ! holy in the description or dilata-
tion of his works ; holy in the connection or concatenation
of them ; and holy in the union of them in a perpetual and
uniform law. And therefore the speculation was excellent
in Parmenides and Plato, although but a speculation in
them, that all things by scale did ascend to unity " : in him-
self, it was an absolute belief, and in this author's Malcolm
l Nov. Org., I. 51.
382 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
declining to be King, we may discover some inverse and
oblique appreciation of the same doctrine :
" Nay, had I power, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on Earth." Macb., Act IV. Sc. 3.
And so, "in the entrance of philosophy," he continues,
" when the second causes, which are next unto the senses,
do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay
there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause ;
but when a man passeth on further, and seeth the depend-
ence of causes, and the works of Providence, then, accord-
ing to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that
the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the
foot of Jupiter's chair." The same doctrine is more dis-
tinctly expressed in his interpretation of the fable of Pan,
thus :
" The Horns represent the world as broader below, but
sharp at the vertex. For the whole of nature is pointed
like a pyramid. Inasmuch as the individual things, in
which the basis of nature is extended, are infinite ; these
are gathered into species which are themselves manifold ;
species again rise iuto genera, and these also in ascending
are contracted more and more into generals ; so that, at
length, nature appears to pass into unity ; which is the
signification of that pyramidal figure of Pan's horns. In-
deed, it is no wonder that the horns of Pan even touch
the heavens ; since the highest parts of nature, or universal
ideas, do in a certain manner pertain to divine things.
Therefore, that chain (of natural causes), which Homer
sung, is said to be fastened to the foot of Jupiter's throne ;
and every one (as it would seem), who has withdrawn his
mind for a while from particulars and the flow of things,
and treated of metaphysic and the eternal and immutable
in nature, has at once fallen into Natural Theology ; so near
BACON A PHILOSOPHER. 383
and ready is the transition from that top of the pyramid to
things divine." 1
To his Summary Philosophy he had assigned the " prin-
ciples and axioms " which were common to the several sci-
ences, and u likewise the inquiry touching the operation of
the relative and adventitious characters of essences, as quan-
tity, similitude, diversity, possibility and the rest " (which,
he said, might be called " Transcendental "), as being the
common ancestor to all knowledge ; but to Metaphysic, the
inquiry of the formal and final causes, as being the descend-
ant of natural science ; whence it would seem that the
two, so far as different, stood, in his scheme, in the relation
to one another of the beginning to the end, which was to be
philosophy itself, when the wheel should come full circle.
But these matters were to be " handled as they have
efficacy in nature, and not logically " ; that is, as they really
exist and operate in nature, and not syllogistically only, as
if a world could be made out of categories ; for it was man-
ifest to him " that Plato, as one that had a wit of elevation
situate as upon a cliff, did descry, That forms [laws] were
the true object of knowledge, but lost the reed fruit of his opinion
by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter
and not confined and determined by matter, and so turning his
opinion upon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy
is infected." 2 Here, in respect of forms abstracted from
matter, and not determined by matter, there is probably
some misconception of Plato's doctrine, though in accord-
ance with some received interpretations of his philosophy ;
and this seems to have been the great error of Kant ; but
Bacon knew that " there was no small difference between
the idols of the human mind, and the ideas of the divine
mind, that is to say, between certain idle dogmas and the
real stamp and impression of created objects as they are
found in nature." 8 Plato, he said, " was without doubt a
i De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 13.
a Adv. of Learn. Nov. Org., II. 23.
384 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
man of loftier genius " than Aristotle, and " aimed also at
the knowledge of forms, and used induction universally, not
for principles only, but also for middle propositions ; and
these things were truly divine ; but he grasped at abstract
forms, drew his matter of induction from common and
obvious things only, and, on the whole, adulterated nature
as much with theology as Aristotle with logic, and, to say
the truth, approached as near to the province of the poet
as the other to that of the sophist." 1 His opinion of Aris-
totle and the Greek philosophers generally was, on the
whole, " that such systems and theories were like the dif-
ferent arguments of dramatic pieces, moulded into a certain
keeping with nature." But he agreed with Empedocles
and Democritus, " who complain, the first madly enough,
but the second soberly, that all things are hidden away
from us, that we know nothing, that truth is drowned in
deep wells, and that the true and the false are strangely
joined and twisted together ; and therefore, let all men
know that the preferring of complaints against nature and
the arts [i. e. making strict inquiry and examination] is a
thing well pleasing to the gods, and draws down new alms
and bounties from the divine goodness." 2
It was not the dialectic method of Plato in itself, which
was nothing less than critical and scientific thinking, and
used induction universally, that is, as an actual interpreta-
tion of nature, nor his metaphysical theory of the universe,
that Bacon objected to in him, but the too exclusively
metaphysical phase of his philosophy and the theological
direction which it had given to the studies and contempla-
tions of men, to the utter neglect of any scientific study of
nature. It relied too much on " discourse and doctrine " :
Plato, he says, " extolleth too much the understanding of
man in the inward light thereof." 8 But besides this royal
1 Int. of Nat., Works (Mont), XV. 26-7.
2 Prometheus, Works (Boston), XIII. 150.
8 Filum Labyrinthi (Boston), VI. 427.
BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
metaphysical road to a knowledge of God and the universe,
which only such men as Plato, if indeed they, could pursue
with safety, he saw that there was another path, more prac-
ticable and certain for the minds of men in general, more
abounding in practical fruit, more powerful for progress, and
more sure to furnish in good time a solid foundation for the
higher metaphysical philosophy, and more certain to lead
finally to the same end, a true knowledge of the universe
and of the order of Divine Providence in it. Plato had
' subjected the world to his contemplations, and Aristotle,
his contemplations to ierms," and the studies of men, verg-
ing toward ' logomachies and disputations," had left "the
way of the severer investigation of truth." Some of the
ancients had penetrated more deeply and acutely into
nature than Aristotle. This was the very thing to be done.
Democritus, by reason of his skill in nature, had been
deemed a Magician. His townsmen, taking him to be in-
sane, sent for the great physician, Hippocrates, who found
him to be, after all, the most sane man in all Abdera. Men
should return to the other and better path. He would fix
their attention upon the atoms of Democritus, " who more
openly than any one else asserted the eternity of matter,
while he denied the eternity of the world." 1 In short, at
that point in the history of philosophy, this path had been
abandoned. Democritus seemed to ascribe to atoms "a
heterogeneous motion," not less than "a heterogeneous
body and power " ; but in reality, he did not ; on the con-
trary, he distinctly intimated that atoms " were like nothing
that falls under the observation of sense," and he held them
" to be of a dark and secret nature," and invisible, needing
further investigation. Democritus himself had got no fur-
ther on, and had terminated his inquiries in some vague
idea of necessity. For Bacon, in this same direction lay
the true line of search for " the last and positive power and
law of nature," and the continuity of that chain of causes,
i Fable of Cupid (Phil.), I., 438.
25
386 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
which must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. At
bottom, there is a near resemblance, an essential identity of
doctrine, between these invisible atoms of Democritus and
Bacon and the monads or invisible points of Leibnitz ; only
that the conception is further cleared up in Bacon and
Leibnitz, and the analysis attempted to be carried on to the
end in the last and positive power and cause of nature ;
that is, as they both understood, in the thinking power of
God. Democritus had not been understood, and he " had
been ridiculed by the vulgar ; but neither the opposition
of Aristotle (who was solicitous that posterity should not
doubt his dogmas) could effect by violence, nor the majesty
of Plato effect by reverence, the demolition of this philos-
ophy " ; but Genseric, Attila, and the barbarians had been
the ruin of it.
It was not so much the philosophy of Democritus as he
left it, as his method, the direction of his search, that Bacon
commended. As to the origin and cause of nature itself,
he agreed with the ancient Fable of Cupid rather than with
Democritus. He interprets this fable as an allegorical
representation of the first matter and cause of all things.
Cupid, that is, the ancient Cupid or Love, " the most ancient
of the gods," born of an egg over which Night brooded, and
coeval with Chaos, was " introduced," he says, " without a
parent, that is, without a cause." J The fable relates to
" the cradle and infancy of nature, and pierces deep."
" This Love I understand," he continues, " to be the appetite
or instinct of primal matter ; 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. Now this is entirely without parent ; that is,
without cause. For cause is as it were parent of effect." 2
And the parent, first cause, and primal essence of things,
must be a self-subsistent person and a finality as the one
1 Fable of Cupid. De Aug. Scient., L. III. c. 4.
2 Wisdom of the Ancients ; Works (Boston), XIII. 122.
BACON A PHILOSOPHER. 337
and.all of being, God ; "for," says he, "there cannot be in
nature (for we always except God) any cause of the first
matter, and of its proper influence and action, for there is
nothing prior in time to the first matter." The first matter
is the thinking essence or power of God, and, as such, is
older than time itself. This person, and first essence of all
things, is represented in the fable as born of an egg. This
birth was a mere figure of speech, and it had reference to
" the proofs," the mode of thinking out the fact of the
existence of such person. The egg was the whole problem.
Night represented " the negatives and exclusions " ; Light,
" the affirmatives " ; the brooding, " the mature incubation,"
was the true method and process of philosophical inquiry ;
and Cupid was to be at last the hatched conception of the
all of being, God, in the complete antithesis of light against
darkness ; affirmation against negation ; being against non-
entity ; all actuality against all possibility ; that is to say,
an essential living power of the nature of the power of
thought itself, a thinking essence, a thinking person, and
the All.
In Plato, the same conception, dropping somewhat of the
poetical dress of the fable, stands forth in the more naked
form of philosophical expression. According to him, the
Divine Soul, the primal existence, comprehending under
itself " motion and standing " all in one, is " that which
moves itself," is " the beginning of motion," is " the oldest
and most divine of all things," is " nothing else but power "
(of the nature of thinking power), and " imparts an ever-
flowing existence," in the perpetual work of creating a
universe. 1 " The mode of this thing which is uncaused,"
continues Bacon, in the Fable of Cupid, " is likewise very
obscure, which indeed the fable elegantly hints in Cupid
being hatched beneath the brooding wing of Night" The
inspired philosopher had felt the same difficulty, when he
i rhcedms, Works of Plato (Bohn), I. 321 ; Sophist, Ib. III. 151-6; Lawt,
Ib. V. 543.
388 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
said, " God hath made all things beautiful in their seaspns :
He hath also set the world in their heart, yet so that no
man can find out the work that God worketh from the be-
ginning unto the end. For the great law of essence and
nature cuts and runs through the vicissitudes of things,
(which law seems to be described in the compass of the
words, the icork ichich God wrought from the beginning even
to the end,) the power lodged by God in the primitive par-
ticles, from the multiplication of which, the whole variety
of things might spring forth and be composed, may indeed
just strike, but cannot enter deeply the mind of man."
But the philosopher must constantly bear in mind that
Cupid is without parents, and endeavor to grasp the whole
fact as a universal perception and conception and the final
all, not permitting " his understanding to turn aside to
empty questions," and must therewith rest satisfied ; for, as
he says again, " it would argue levity and inexperience in a
philosopher to require or imagine a cause for the last and
positive power and law of nature." Precisely herein lies
the difficulty, that in attempting to grasp " universal per-
ceptions of this kind, the human mind becomes diffusive,
and departs from the right use of itself and of its objects,
and whilst it tends toward things more distant, falls back
upon those that are nearer." And when, through its own
limited capacity, " it stretches itself toward those things,
which, according to experience, are for the most part uni-
versal, and, nevertheless, is unwilling to rest satisfied, then,
as if desiring something more within the reach of its
knowledge, it turns itself to those things which have most
affected or allured it, and imagines them to be more cau-
sative and palpable than those universals." And in the
Wisdom of the Ancients, he says again : " Nor need we
wonder that Pan's horns touch heaven ; since the sum-
mits, or universal forms of nature, do in a manner reach
up to God ; the passage from metaphysic to natural theol-
ogy being ready and short " ; that is to say, these universal
BACOX A PHILOSOPHER. 389
forms, or conceptions, and laws of thought, must be referred
to the Divine Mind itself. Again, interpreting this same
myth, he says, that Pan, as the name itself imports, repre-
sents the Universe or All of Things ; and after giving the
threefold narration of the ancients concerning the creation
of Pan, he concludes by saying, that " the story might ap-
pear to be true, if we rightly distinguished times and things ;
for this Pan (as we now see and comprehend him) has his
origin from the Divine Word, through the medium of con-
fused Matter, (which is yet itself the work of God.) Sin
(" Prevaricatio ") creeping in, and through it Corruption." l
So also Plato taught that God created, first, the primary
forms of matter ; though it would seem that Bacon here
supposed that Plato, like Aristotle, believed in a primal
matter " wholly waste, formless, and indifferent to forms "
(a sort of dead substratum ?) on which God worked ; an
opinion, to which the Phaedo alone might seem to give some
countenance, if it did not distinctly appear otherwise in other
parts of his writings ; and perhaps they all three really con-
templated this waste and formless matter, as being, like the
Scriptural matter that was " without form and void," the
secondary condition of matter only, which was then under
consideration.
But returning to the method of Democritus, we should
proceed in a rigidly scientific manner by negatives and
exclusions on the one hand, and by affirmatives on the other,
until both should be exhausted, when the all of truth would
stand forth clear to the comprehension as bounded over,
as it were, against sheer blank nothingness ; the whole
actuality against all possibility. But until Cupid should be
thus fully " sprung from Night," some degree of ignorance
must attend the side of exclusions, and to us it would con-
tinue to be " a kind of night " as to what of actual truth
remained included still under that ignorance. Democritus
had remarked " that it is requisite that the elements in the
l De Aug. Sdent., L. II. c. 13.
390 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
work of creation should put forth a secret and dark nature,
lest any contrarious and opposing principle should arise."
But when the elements should be brought out of ignorance
into the light of truth, that " secret and dark nature " would
be reduced to nothing, would vanish and disappear, leaving
only a certain blank region of mere possibility beyond ; and
it would then be seen, that no " contrarious and opposing
principle " actually existed other than such blank possibility.
Democritus was still struggling with the heterogeneous
character of atoms, almost like another Dalton, and vainly
endeavoring to ascend to " the primitive motion " and cause
of all atoms ; but he had not attained to it, and his philos-
ophy had been overwhelmed by the barbarians. Bacon
would still pursue it with " the parable." Night was not
to brood over the egg forever : the inquiry must not stop.
But, he continues, " it is certainly proper to the Deity, that
in an inquiry into his nature by means of the senses, ex-
clusions should not terminate in affirmatives " ; that is,
should not stop short in any incomplete body of affirmations,
but " that after due exclusions and negations something
should be affirmed and settled, and that the egg should be
produced by a seasonable and mature incubation ; riot only
that the egg should be brought forth by Night, but also
that the person of Cupid should be delivered of the egg :
that is, that not only should an obscure notion upon this
subject be originated, but one that is distinct." And he
adds : " I think in accordance with the parable."
It is clear enough that to the mind of Bacon the Cupid
of the fable represented the First Cause and essence of all
things, the one substance, neither an abstract matter nor a
dead substratum, but a living, thinking essence and power, a
personal God and Creator of the Universe, as cause running
through the links of Nature's chain, as essence cutting and
nmning through the vicissitudes of things, in the creation
which God works from the beginning to the end, not
stopping with any six days' works ; cause eternally passing
BACON A PHILOSOPHER. 391
into effect and subsisting in it as unity in variety ; the one
and the many ; the particulars and the whole ; being against
nonentity ; actuality against possibility ; thinking on the one
hand, and forgetting on the other ; creation and destruction ;
remembrance and oblivion; for, as he says, again, "it is
most evident that the elements themselves, and their prod-
ucts, have a perpetuity not in individuo, but by supply
and succession of parts. For example, the vestal fire, that
was nourished by the virgins at Rome, was not the same
fire still, but was in perpetual waste, and in perpetual
renovation." 1 And so, it would seem that he had arrived
at that last outcome of all philosophy, ancient or modern,
wherein it is found that God exists as a necessary fact, and
a truth which is to be intellectually observed and seen by
all those having eyes to see, resting for proof, not on any
few petty Paley-evidences merely, but on all evidence at
once, not as learning, but as " sapience," and as a power
of the nature of the power of thought, eternally thinking a
universe, and being thus the first cause of all created things
and the ultimate fact of all actuality, bounded over, as it
were, against all possibility, motion and standing in one ;
beyond which it would be absurd to inquire for a further
cause, or a more ultimate fact : there being no need of
another gun to shoot this gun.
In this Fable of Cupid, he speaks of three opinions con-
cerning the nature of matter: first, that which held an
original chaos of unformed matter, " stripped and passive,"
but subsisting of itself from the beginning. This kind of
matter he considered as " altogether an invention of the
human mind " : and next, a second, that " forms existed
more than matter or action," so that the primitive and com-
mon matter seemed as it were an accessary, and to be in
the place of a support to them ; but every sort of action
only an emanation from the form, thus wholly separating
action or power from matter as something distinct from it ;
l Works (Boston), XV. 39.
392 BACON A PHILOSOPHER.
and hence, also, a third, which " derived the kingdom of
forms and ideas in essences by the addition of a kind of
fantastic matter," an " abstract matter," together with
" abstract ideas and their powers." This last was a mere
" superstition," and this " troop of dreamers had nearly
overpowered the more sober class of thinkers." But in his
view, " these assertions respecting abstract matter were as
absurd as it would be to say the universe and nature were
made out of categories and such dialectic notions." He
agreed with the more ancient philosophy, that " the prim-
itive matter (such as can be the origin of things "), the first
entity, " ought no less to possess a real existence than those
which flow from it ; rather more. For it has its own
peculiar essence, and from it come all the rest." In a word,
there was no matter distinct from the causative thinking
essence itself; and this only had a real existence. " Almost
all the ancients," says he, " Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anax-
imines, Heraclitus, Democritus, though disagreeing in other
respects upon the prime matter, joined in this, that they
held an active matter with a form, both arranging its own
form, and having within itself the principle of motion."
Thus it clearly appears, that matter was to be considered
as power of the nature of the power of thought in perpetual
activity, producing motion, moving itself, giving form, and
being the only real substance, a thinking essence ; all
matter else being a mere figment of the brain.
But cloudy logomachies and visionary mystifications were
to cease. Empty categories and syllogistic sophistries were
to be swept away. Theological haze was to be cleared up.
As touching Aristotle and the Church, the question between
him and the ancient was not of " the virtue of the race, but
of the Tightness of the way " : it was only " part of the
same thing more large." He would have men return to
the study of nature in a scientific manner, well knowing,
doubtless, whither that course would lead them in the end.
Physics and metaphysics were to go hand in hand together
THE PHILOSOPHER A POET. 393
as inseparable parts of natural philosophy. And when, in
the course of time, a sufficiently ample foundation should
be laid in a thorough knowledge of nature, the loftier super-
structure of the Philosophia Prima, the Science of Sciences,
Philosophy itself, might be raised and completed. He
seems to have contemplated some statement of the final
result in the Sixth Part of the Great Installation ; but he
tells us that it was " both beyond his power and expectation
to perfect and conclude it." He might make " no con-
temptible beginning " ; and " men's good fortune would
furnish the result ; such as men could not easily compre-
hend, or define, in the present state of things and the mind."
Nor was it to treat " only of contemplative enjoyment, but
of the common affairs and fortune of mankind, and of a
complete power of action." This part was not written,
but enough appears in his writings to show, that it would
have been no materialistic science of dead substratum, no
economic science of practical fruit merely, nor any sort of
machine philosophy.
2. THE PHILOSOPHER A POET.
In the midst of these abstruse considerations of the
nature of cause and form, we fall upon this passage in his
discussion of the opinion of Parmenides, in this same Fable
of Cupid, " That the first forms and first entities are active,
and that so the first substances also, cold and heat ; that
these, nevertheless, exist incorporeally, but that there is
subjoined to them a passive and potential matter, which
has a corporeal magnitude," and that " there are four co-
essential natures, and conjoined, . . . light, heat, rarity, and
motion ; ... for a true philosopher will dissect, not sever
nature (for they, who will not dissect, must pull her asunder),
and the prime matter is to be laid down joined with the
primitive form, as also with the first principle of motion, as
it is found." And so, in the play, Hamlet is made to say
of the ghost :
39-4 THE PHILOSOPHER A POET.
" His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable." Act III. Sc. 4.
A commixture of studies as of law, nature, poetry, phi-
losophy, may sometimes very curiously introduce similar
ideas, illustrations, and language into very different writings
of the same author, and that, too, perhaps all unconsciously
to himself. In his dedication of his " Arguments of Law "
to the Society of Gray's Inn, this idea of severing nature is
introduced thus : " Nevertheless, thus much I may say with
modesty, that these arguments which I have set forth
(most of them) are upon subjects not vulgar, and there-
withal, in regard of the commixture that the course of my
life hath made of law with other studies, they may have
the more variety and perhaps the more depth of reason :
for the reasons of municipal laws severed from the grounds
of nature, manners, and policy, are like wall-flowers, which,
though they grow high upon the crests of states, yet they
have no deep roots." Again, he lays it down as a rule in
physics, " that the connexion of things should not be sev-
ered," as it " tends to preserve the fabric of the universe."
And so Albany is made to say of the unnatural daughters
of Lear :
" That nature which contemns its origin
Cannot be border'd certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use." Act IV. Sc. 2.
And the same idea underlies these beautiful lines of the
"Othello":
" but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning's! pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat,
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again ;
It needs must wither." Act V. Sc. 2.
And Lear himself may very well be supposed to hold this
colloquy with the designing Gloster and the good Edgar,
THE PHILOSOPHER A POET. 395
without being considered positively mad, only mad in craft,
thus :
" Lear. First, let me talk with this philosopher.
What is the cause of thunder ?
Kent. Good my lord, take his offer: go into th' house.
Lear. I '11 talk a word with this same learned Theban.
What is your study ?
dg. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. . . .
Glos. I do beseech your grace,
Lear. 0, cry you mercy, sir !
Noble philosopher, your company.
Edg. Tom 's a-cold. . . .
Kent. This way, my lord.
Lear. With him :
I will keep still with my philosopher." Act III. Sc. 4.
The philosopher, in the age of Shakespeare, had to sail
sometimes under a cloud as dark as the disguise of Edgar,
or the madness of Lear, or the world might be as dangerous
to him as was that awful night of cataracts and hurricanoes,
" Sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak -cleaving thunderbolts,"
to the singed white head of Lear. Nevertheless, would
Francis Bacon, in his more private and secret studies, still
keep company with his first and last love, the Noble Phil-
osopher. And he says, in the Essay on Goodness and
Goodness of Nature, " This of all virtues and dignities of
the mind is the greatest ; being the character of the Deity :
and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing ;
no better than a kind of vermin." And surely this must
have been the same philosopher that founded the College
of Universal Science, or Solomon's House, the very end of
which was " the knowledge of Causes " ; which question of
the cause appears frequently in the plays, as again thus :
" Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her
heart. Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard hearts?"
Act III. Sc. 6.
Bacon had studied the works of Plato, which, as they had
never been translated into English, must have been for the
396 THE PHILOSOPHER A POET.
most part a sealed book to William Shakespeare. There
are distinct traces of this study, in both the writings of
Bacon and the plays, not merely in the idea and doctrine,
but sometimes even in the expression. Plato relates a
story of a learned philosopher of the ancient Thebes, who
was consulted for his wisdom by the king of Egypt ; and in
the Phaedo of Plato, the learned Simmias is addressed in
the dialogue as " my Theban friend." It is, of course, not
at all certain, but very easy to believe, that the writer of
the play had this story in mind, when he put these words
into the mouth of Lear :
" I '11 talk a word with this same learned Theban."
For another instance, take this from Bacon : " Plato
casteth his burden and saith, That he will revere him as
a God, that can truly divide and define : which cannot be
but by true forms and differences, wherein I join hands
with him, confessing as much, as yet assuming to myself
little." x And thus it stands in the " Hamlet " :
" Osr. Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes ; believe me, an absolute
gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great
showing
Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know,
to divide him inventorially, would dizzy the arithmetic of memory." Act
V. Sc. 2.
And again says Bacon, in the same work :
" But I found myself constructed more for the contemplations of truth
than for aught else, as having a mind sufficiently mobile for recognizing
(what is most of all) the similitude of things, and sufficiently fixed and in-
tent for observing the subtleties of differences, and possessing love of inves-
tigation, patience in doubting, pleasure in meditating, delay in asserting,
facility in returning to wisdom, and neither affecting novelty, nor admiring
antiquity, and hating all imposture."
Plato alludes to the " weaving a kind of Penelope's web
the reverse way " ; Bacon, several times, uses the same
simile of " Penelope's web doing and undoing " ; and in
the second part of the " Henry VI." there is an allusion to
l Int. of Nat., Works (Phil.), I. 90.
THE PHILOSOPHER A POET. 397
this same untwining of " Parca's fatal web." Toss is a
favorite word with Bacon and Shakespeare, and it is used
by Plato in the same way. " And I often tossed myself
upwards and downwards," says Plato ; " the word, the
bread of life, they toss up and down," says Bacon. Plato's
" prop of a state," appears oftentimes in Bacon, and fre-
quently again in the plays. Top, as " tops of judgment,"
'" tops of mountains," is a favorite metaphor in both writ-
ings ; and Bacon quotes Pindar's " tops of all virtues."
The simile of the mirror or glass, several times occurring
in Plato, is a favorite one with Bacon, and it is often re-
peated in the plays. Plato speaks of " seeing nothing with
the mind's eye " ; Bacon, of " fixing the mind's eye stead-
ily " ; and Hamlet answers : " In my mind's eye, Horatio."
In Plato's " Laws," we find this expression, " while beget-
ting and rearing children, and handing in succession from
some to others life, like a torch, and ever paying, accord-
ing to law, worship to the gods " ; to which Bacon probably
alludes, when he calls his method of delivery to posterity
" the Handing on of the Lamp." So, in the " Measure for
Measure," it is said :
" Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do,
Not light them for ourselves."
In the " Cratylus " of Plato, there is an allusion to the
JEsopo-Socratic fable of the ass in the lion's skin, thus :
" But, however, since I have put on the lion's skin, I must
not act the coward " ; and the same reappears in the " King
John," thus :
" Const. Thou wear a lion's hide ! doff it for shame,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."
In the " Banquet " of Plato, we have this passage :
" Thus, Phaedrus, Love appears to me to be, in the first
place, himself the most beautiful and the best, in the next,
to be the cause of such like beautiful things in other be-
ings " ; Bacon says of the tuning of instruments, that it is
398 UXIVERSALS.
not pleasant to hear, " but yet is a cause why the music is
sweeter afterwards " ; and so, Falstaff: " I am not only
witty in myself, but a cause that wit is in other men."
Not much can be safely founded on resemblances of this
kind, standing alone ; but even straws may show which
way the wind blows ; and when these authors are read to-
gether and compared, in respect of their whole thought
and manner, remembering that Bacon derived not a little
of his deeper philosophy from the study of Plato, even
these and the like similitudes may be admitted to have
some significance. But he was himself one of those im-
perial thinkers that recognize no master but one ; for he
was accustomed, not merely " now and then to draw a
bucket of water " out of " a deep well," as some others had
done, but habitually to visit " the spring-head thereof."
3. UNIVERSALS.
There are many passages in the writings of Bacon, which
indicate that his opinion was, that the primal cause or
essence itself gives the form of things ; and this can
scarcely be conceived otherwise than as the essential
power of thought, in creation, giving both the substance
and the form to particular things, the active power being
the only substance or matter, and being of itself by its own
nature self-acting and self-directing cause : wherefore it
had been laid down, that the first essence, or Cupid, was
without parents. He then proceeds to the discussion of
the " mode of this thing which is uncaused " ; for, as he
says in the Advancement, " one must seek the dignity of
knowledge in the archetype, or first platform, which is in
the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed
to man, and may be observed with sobriety, not
by the name of learning, but by that of wisdom or sapi-
ence, for in God all knowledge is original." Lear,
in his madness, supposed his philosopher, Edgar, to pos-
sess something of this sapience :
UNIVERSALS. 399
" Lear. I will arraign them straight.
Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer; [To EDGAR.
Thou sapient sir, sit here." Act ///. Sc. 6.
It was likewise very obscure. Not so much with any
idea of making the matter more clear, as for the better
understanding, if possible, of the general scope and result
to which his views and doctrines tended, let us suppose him
to have expounded, in more modern phrase and in some-
what fuller outline, the following
APHORISMS OF UNIVERSALS.
1. God is to be conceived as an eternally continuing
Power of Thought, and, as such, the only essence, sub-
stance, or matter, the last power and cause of all Nature,
a Divine Artist-Mind, eternally thinking, that is, creating,
a Universe ; being, in fact, no other than " the order,
operation, and Mind of Nature." 1
2. The existence of such Power of Thought, in an
eternal state of living activity, as self-acting and self-direct-
ing cause, is an ultimate and final fact, beyond which, to
inquire after, or to attempt to imagine, a further cause, or a
more ultimate fact, would be contradictory to the laws of
all thinking, and to the fact itself, which stands forth self-
evident to the mental vision, whenever it is looked for,
comprehended, and seen, by the true Interpreter of Na-
ture having eyes to see ; and therefore, any attempt at such
further inquiry would be in itself absurd, as it would be
an inquiry after a non-existent fact, and an inconceivable
thing. 2
3. The Infinity of God consists in the exhaustless pos-
sibility of his continuous existence as such Power of
Thought.
4. The Eternity of God consists in his ever-continuous
activity as such existent Power of Thought, in thinking,
conceiving, remembering, and forgetting (voluntarily ceas-
l Nov. Org., Introd. 2 Nov. Org. I. 48.
400 UNIVERSALS.
ing to remember) ; that is, in creating, upholding, and de-
stroying, and continuing to uphold and create, a universe
in Time and Space.
5. His Omnipotence consists in the unlimited possibility
of his own continuous existence as a Power of Thought in
such continuous activity, and not in any power to transcend,
or contradict, the nature of his own being as such existent
actuality, or the necessary laws of all thought, under which
alone existence and thinking, that is God and creation, are
at all possible ; nor in his limited power, in accordance
with the nature of his being and under the necessary laws
of thought, so to create, uphold, and destroy, and continue
to uphold and create, a universe in Time and Space.
6. His Omniscience consists in his knowing his own ex-
istence, nature, power, necessary laws, and possibilities,
his self-consciousness, and the whole present state of his
thought, existing in that consciousness as the present ex-
istent universe in Time and Space.
7. With God, to think and know is to create ; and his
thought is reality ; and therefore, any foreknowlege of
what is yet unthought and uncreated, or any foreordained
plan of the creation, beyond this extent of his omniscience,
is an inconceivable thing, an impossibility, and an absurdity.
8. The Providential order and plan in the creation, so
far as it has existed, now exists, or ever may exist, or can
be conceived to exist, consists, and must consist, in the
existence, nature, power, laws, and possibilities of God, to-
gether with the actual order and plan of the present exist-
ent created universe in time and space, so far only ; and
hence the only possible foreground for us of what the cer-
tain, the possible, and the probable continuation thereof
will be, in any future or other Time and Space.
9. What the plan will actually be, in the future conti-
nuity of time, in respect of the particular details and total
order thereof, is impossible to be foreknown, or to be con-
ceived by man to be foreknown, to God himself; for, with
UNIVERSALS. 401
him, to conceive and know it, would be, to bring it into
present actual existence as a part of the existent universe
of fact and reality.
10. The Freedom of God consists in the dependence of
the existent created and remembered universe, and of any
future universe, for what it shall be, in time and space, in
the particular details and total plan thereof, upon his Free
Will, which is Liberty.
11. With God, in the continuity of his thought, is the
continuity of Time and Space, that is of ideas ; and as the
whole present state of his thought is, in each successive
instant, present to his consciousness, being held, and, as it
were, carried forward in his remembrance so far as it is
remembered, and so sustained in the continuity of time :
therefore, with him, it is an everlasting Now and Here,
bounded only by the eternal possibilities of his thinking
existence ; that is, of creating, remembering, and forgetting
(ceasing to remember).
12. The Perfection of God consists in his absolute
wisdom, justice, goodness, and love, and in the beauty of
his nature and being, as such existent Power of Thought,
and not in any perfection of the created universe merely,
wherein there can be no more perfection, goodness, and
beauty possible in the particulars than as much as may con-
sist with the total order and plan of the whole given crea-
tion, as a universe of variety in unity ; nor more in the
total plan thereof than what may possibly consist with the
existence, nature, power, laws, and possibilities of God
himself.
13. The Immortality of any finite soul, or the endless
continuity of its existence in future time and space (for in
time and space only can a created soul possibly exist), is a
possibility, and a probability, only, depending for the fact,
like the rest of any future universe, on the divine nature
and free-will in the future order of his providence.
14. Therefore, the Immortality of any given soul can
26
402 UNIVERSALS.
neither be foreknown to God, nor revealed to man, nor in
any manner predicated for certain fact.
15. Oblivion (or Nonentity) is the possibility of God's
forgetting (ceasing to remember), that is, destroying and
annihilating the created forms and substances of particular
things as such by change of his thought in the same time
and the same space, totally withdrawing the power of
his thought from that thing ; the reality of oblivion as
such possibility being necessarily subsumed and included
in the existent fact of a First Cause of the nature of a
Power of Thought in action, thinking a universe ; and not
in any possibility of forgetting, totally annihilating, the cre-
ation and himself; which would be an inconceivable thing,
an impossibility, and an absurdity.
16. The Infinity of Substance as the activity of such
Power of Thought consists in the endless possibility of
finite forms of substance, that is the possibility of the
power of thought being exerted in special particular ways
under the limitations of Time and Space, which are in
themselves merely necessary laws of all thought, divine or
human, giving form ; and thence the particular substances
of all created things and their forms, and the modes of
power, and motion, absolute or relative, wMch is produced
by the power of thought in active movement, the possi-
bility of difference in totality.
17. That Will Absolute consists in the possibility of the
Divine Existence in fact as such self-moving Power of
Thought and self-directing cause, or Soul, measuring the
total fact, the total amount of power, which, as such, is not
absolutely free, but a fixed fact and a necessity : unlimited
freedom for such Power of Thought could take place only
at the exact point of total rest, wherein would be utter
extinction and annihilation of all existence ; which is im-
possible, a contradiction, and an inconceivable absurdity.
18. Free-Will, or Liberty, when distinguished from self-
moving power, is only one of the possibilities of thought,
UNIVERSALS. 403
and consists in the limited possibility of the total amount
of power being exerted under all the necessary laws or
principles of thought in co-action with one another, in
special ways and particular directions (in Time and Space) ;
that is, the possibility of self-moving Power, or Soul, giving
law and limitation to itself in the process of creation of
conceptions or things, and in the determination of acts,
in thinking and doing ; wherein is the possibility of Time,
Space, and Position, or times, spaces, and places, giving the
forms and places of conceptions or things, or of acts and
doings, in all creation or thinking, the possibility of
duality, plurality, multiplicity, diversity, change, and differ-
ence ; opposition, co-ordination, and involution of particu-
lars. ideas, conceptions, things, or acts ; that is, of the
involution, as it were, of the Divine Soul upon itself in
thinking ; giving thus a progressive and flowing universe
of variety and change in the unity of totality.
19. Eternity consists merely in the possibility of time,
or times in succession.
20. Immensity consists merely in the possibility of space,
or spaces in succession.
21. Infinity, in reference to Time, Space, and Place,
consists merely in the possibility of time, space, and posi-
tion, or times, spaces, and places.
22. Time, Space, and Position are in themselves merely
necessary principles or laws of all possible thinking, giving
the forms of ideas, conceptions, things, or acts, and their
place and the correlation of places.
23. Place, position, or mathematical point, expresses the
exact point of beginning of creation of an idea, conception,
thing, or act, where the finite begins to be bounded out of
the infinite, into time, space, and position ; these three laws
of thought giving thus the form and the place of the idea
or thing or act.
24. Personality is constituted in the totality of the think-
ing subject : neither Time, Space, nor Position can be at
404 UNIVERSALS.
all predicated of the absolute thinking subject, or Divine
Soul, otherwise than as such laws of thought, but only of
the finite thinking person, among other created things,
whether as an individual, physical object, or as a metaphys-
ical subject.
25. The Continuity of Time, for us, consists in the per-
manence and persistence of created things, which may be
eternal, or have an end, at the will of the Creator ; or
rather, in the continuity of the work of creation in the
Divine Mind.
26. Mobility consists in the possibility of change of direc-
tion of the power of thought in thinking, that is, of move-
ment in creating and forgetting, and in changing the order
of relation of ideas or things to one another.
O
27. Motion consists in a change in fact of the power of
thought, producing change of form, or change of relative
place, or relative mode of power, that is, change of the
power of thought exerted in time and space, whether imme-
diately, or through mediate instrumentation ; continuous
change, if in successive times and through successive spaces ;
sudden, if in one time, producing change of space ; instan-
taneous and total, if in the same time and the same space,
as in oblivion or annihilation by forgetting, passing from
activity to rest in that particular thing ; as also in total new
creation, passing from rest into activity in that particular
thing; and partial and progressive in continuous change
of relative place and mode, in the gradual and continu-
ous change of old idea into new ; and at the precise point
where the annihilation of the forgotten old conception, or
creation, begins and ends, in the old time and space, there
begins also necessarily at the same point and in the same
instant of time, and continues, the creation of the new con-
ception, or the new creation, in the new time and space ;
and so on, through the successive instants of change in the
perpetual flow of creation.
28. Speed measures the amount of change of the power
UN1VERSALS. 405
of thought, giving the extent of change of form, or of rel-
ative place, or mode, in a given time, in the work of
change in the creation of new or in the destruction of the
old forms, or order of things.
29. Equilibrium measures that degree of exertion of the
power of thought in the same space and in one time, or
through a continuous series of times in the same space or
series of spaces, which is necessary in order to keep the
thought continuously in one and the same state for any
given length of time, in respect of the whole, or any part
of it ; and this is Remembrance, wherein is the stability of
the universe so far as it is stable, and its permanence in so
far as it is permanent : and equilibrium takes place at the
exact point of median stationary balance between movement
and rest, between creating and forgetting ; and hence that
law of gravitation of all bodies toward each other with a
degree of force directly proportional to the mass, and in-
versely proportional to the square of the distance, whereby
in conjunction with a projectile impulse giving orbits of
revolution, the heavenly bodies are held in their places and
orbits in more or less permanent universal stability, in the
perpetual flow of the Providential order.
30. Absolute or Total Rest would take place only at the
exact point wherein the activity of the divine thought
should wholly cease, ending in a flat contradiction to the
necessary and self-evident fact of an existent Power of
Thought eternally in action without rest : any such supposi-
tion would be an inconceivable thing, an impossibility, and
an absurdity.
31. Necessity consists in the fact of the existence of
God as such Power of Thought eternally thinking a
universe ; and the term Power comprises under it what
Cousin denominates " a triplicity in unity " ; that is, Cause,
Effect, and the Relation of causality subsisting between
them.
32. Causality consists in the power of thought passing
406 UNIVEESALS.
into movement and a creation in time and space as the
actual thought of the Divine Thinker or Creator, the term
Relation merely expressing the fact of the sustained con-
tinuity of the activity of this power, which is in itself by
its own nature a self-acting and self directing cause of the
nature of the power of thought (it being of the very nature
of Soul to move itself), and, as such, the ultimate fact of
all actuality.
33. The truth of this necessary Fact, and the actual ex-
istence of such Being as all actuality bounded over, as it
were, against all possibility, as Cupid bounded out of the
brooding Night, can no more be denied than a man cau
deny his own existence, or that of the universe around
him; and it is the last miracle that disappears from the
mind of the philosopher, when he comes to discover and
see, with Bacon, " that the knowledge of causes only can
resolve the miracle of the thing, and clear up the mental
astonishment " ; 1 and indeed that all things are alike mi-
raculous and not miraculous, at once and alike natural and
supernatural ; that it is the last fact of all science and a
credible object of firm belief, not an imaginary faith in
an incredible dogma and an inconceivable vision of the un-
critical fancy, but the undoubting faith of direct and im-
mediate knowledge, or Sapience, and the final ha-ven of rest
for the soul ; as when the explorer, ascending the meridian
from the equator, reaches the highest actual and possible
verge at the pole, he rests, and is satisfied, seeing and
knowing that no higher is, or can be, but that all attempt
to go further must needs descend again toward whence he
came.
34. The Mind or Soul of man, or animal, as far down in
the zoological scale as any appearance of a self-directing
cause, moving itself, can be traced by the eye of science, is
to be considered as a special exhibition of the same divine
power of thought exerted in a special way and in a particu-
i Delineatio, Works (Boston), VII. 46.
UNIVEESALS. 407
lar direction under limitations greater or less, but identical
in fundamental essence, differing only by limitation ; itself
likewise by virtue of such identical nature self-acting and
self-directing cause so far, coming in from the direction of
the supernatural, and rising by gradations in amount of
power from the lowest point and last dividing line of mere
instinct to the highest grade of human intelligence ; and
the body of man, or animal, is but a structure-built exhibi-
tion of the same power, proceeding from the opposite
direction, as it were, of the physical and natural, and
ascending by corresponding gradations of structure from
the lowest to the highest type of animal organization, in-
vesting and closing in the soul, which 'also comes in from
underneath and within the physical web itself as a special
stream of power of the nature of the power of thought
Thus, in this convolution of soul and body, is constituted
the individuality of the man as physical object, and his
personality as metaphysical subject, and between these fold-
ings in of the divine thought upon itself in the special con-
stitution of a finite soul, there arises therein a certain
limited sphere of practical action and effect on the physical
and other world external to the soul, and a certain possi-
bility of thinking existence for the soul itself, which is yet
that same all possibility in which the universe itself is cre-
ated ; in which limited sphere the finite soul has a certain
narrow range of liberty, creative play, and scope of free
will, or choice, and a certain given amount of power of
thinking and doing, under a special consciousness of its
own ; all beyond this sphere of liberty and limitation being
the order of divine providence in the universe, and, as
such, absolute fate (which is also Providence, says Bacon)
for this soul : and in the collision of the external powers or
forces coming in through the senses against the soul, so
constituted, as a power acting in an opposite direction
against and upon the physical phenomena in these external
powers, takes place all sense-perception ; and in the crea-
408 DNIVERSALS.
tive play of the soul as a special power of thought and a
special creator, within its given sphere of liberty and with
its given amount of power, take place all its own intellect-
ual conceptions and artistic creations, its inner thought
and knowledge, and all its own doings, under its own
consciousness, and on its own personal responsibility so
far, with a certain definite and proportionate accountability
for consequences both to itself and to the Higher Power ;
first, physical, then juridical, then moral, then aesthetical,
and lastly, religious ; proceeding in this in the direct order
of necessity and in the inverse order of dignity and ex-
cellence to the highest perfection of a finite soul ; all its
acts^ and doings being the work of the power as cause,
done under the direction and in the conscious presence of
the thinking person, within the constituted sphere of his
liberty ; at one time, or in one instance, shrinking down to
the instinctive point of bare existence as soul, and at
another time, or in another instance, swelling and expand-
ing to a faculty of comprehension, capable of conceiving
the known worlds and all conceivable worlds, being in
its highest exhibition in man, according to Bacon, " as
a mirrour or glass, capable of the image of the universal
world."
And so it is actually true, that in soul and body,
" We are such stuff
As dreams are made of." Temp., Act I V. Be. 1.
The difference is not so much in the stuff as in the dreamer.
The universe itself is but the best waking dream of Him
that never sleeps ; while our dreams are nothing but the
fantastic creations of a soul half awake ; and for the most
part our waking dreams are not much better :
" True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air."
Horn. andJul., Act I. Sc. 4.
CDPID AND NEMESIS. 409
All that which is past, says Bacon, " is as a dream ; and he
that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking."
And Poesy, we remember, was " the dream of knowledge,"
and " was thought to be somewhat inspired with divine
rapture ; which dreams likewise present." And thus speaks
Imogen in the play :
" Imo. I hope I dream ;
For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,
And cook to honest creatures ; but 't is not so :
'T was but a bolt of nothing, shot of nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgments blind
The dream 's here still : even when I wake, it is
Without me, as within me: not imagin'd, felt"
Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2.
4. CUPID AND NEMESIS.
In Bacon's discussion of the Fables of Cupid and Nem-
esis, is to be found the whole philosophical foundation of
the " Romeo and Juliet." One main object of the play was,
to exhibit as in a model, under the dramatic form of ar-
tistic creation, the essential nature and character of love,
and that Juliet that was u the perfect model of eternity," as
being the executive beneficence of the creative power ; for,
says he, " love is nothing but goodness put in motion or
applied," * or again, " the original and unique force that
constitutes and fashions all things out of matter, it being,
next to God, the cause of causes, itself without cause " ; a
or, as a more modern philosopher states it, love is " the
essence of God," and " the idealism of Jesus " is but " a
crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid
efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself"; 8 the
Platonic and Christian love, or Milton's
" Bright effluence of bright essence increate " ;
1 Int. of Nature.
2 Wisd. of the Ancients, Works (Boston), XIII. 122.
8 Emerson's Essayt, 1. 183, 281.
410 CUPID AND NEMESIS.
and the same that turns Dante's heaven, and rains its virtue
down :
" E questo Cielo non ha altro dove,
Che la mente divina, in che s' accende
L' amor che 1' volge e la virtu ch' ei piove " ;
or, as Romeo defines it :
" O, anything, of nothing first create ! "
and Juliet, thus :
" Jul. And yet I wish but for the thing I have :
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep ; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite." Act II. Sc. 2.
Not only the philosophy, but even the very language and
imagery of these Fables of Cupid and Nemesis, as related
by Bacon, are distinctly traceable in the play, as in this
passage :
" Jul. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night !
Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle ; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night, come Romeo, come thou day in night;
For thou will lie upon the wings of night,
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back." Act 111. Sc. 2.
This is the same brooding wing of Night under which
Cupid was hatched and born, in the complete antithesis of
something and nothing, affirmative and negative, light and
darkness ; and the same ideas and imagery pervade the
following lines :
" Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for Earth too dear !
So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shews." Act L Sc. 5.
CUPID AND NEMESIS. 411
And again, thus :
" King. 0, paradox ! Black is the badge of Hell,
The hue of dungeons, and the shade of night ;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well."
Love's L. L., Act IV. Sc. 3.
And thus the Sonnet, with a color of the same inspira-
tion :
" Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited : and they mourners seem
At such, who not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem :
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says, beauty should do so." cxxvii.
In like manner, the language and imagery as well as the
leading ideas of the fable of Nemesis may be traced in
many passages toward the end of the play : the following
instances will explain themselves without further comment.
In the interpretation of this fable, in the Wisdom of the
Ancients, Bacon says :
" They say she was the daughter of Night and Ocean. She is represented
with wings and a crown : an ashen spear in her right hand : a phial with
Ethiops in it, in her left ; sitting upon a stag The parents of this
goddess were Ocean and Night ; that is, the vicissitude of things, and the
dark and secret judgment of God. For the vicissitude of things is aptly
represented by the Ocean, by reason of its perpetual flowing and ebbing;
and secret providence is rightly set forth under the image of Night."
And thus it begins to appear in the play :
" Rom. Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs ;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears." Act /. Sc. 1.
Cap. How now ! a conduit, girl ? What ! still in tears ?
Evermore showering ? In a little body
Thou counterfeit's! a bark, a sea, a wind.
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears ; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood ; the winds, thy sighs ;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-toss'd body." Act III. Sc. 5.
412 CUPID AND NEMESIS.
Again :
" Nemesis is described as wing'd ; because of the sudden and unforeseen
revolutions of things " :
and in the play, this sudden revolution and change of
things is introduced in these lines :
" Cap. All things, that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral,
Our instruments, to melancholy bells ;
Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change ;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary." Act IV, Sc. 5.
And again, the story continues :
" Nemesis is distinguished also with a crown ; in allusion to the envious
and malignant nature of the vulgar; for when the fortunate and the power-
ful fall, the people commonly exult and set a crown upon the head of
Nemesis " ;
which shows itself in the play, thus :
" Nurse. Shame come to Romeo !
JuL Blister'd be thy tongue,
For such a wish ! He was not born to shame :
Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit;
For 't is a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal Earth." Act III. Sc. 2.
The story proceeds :
" The spear in her right hand relates to those whom she actualty strikes
and transfixes. And if there be any whom she does not make victims of
calamity and misfortune, to them she nevertheless exhibits that dark and
ominous spectre, in her left : for mortals must needs be visited, even when
they stand at the summit of felicity, with images of death, diseases, mis-
fortunes, perfidies of friends, plots of enemies, changes of fortune and the
like; even like those Ethiops in the phial."
And the play makes use of all this even to the phial full
of Ethiops, spectres, and images of death, thus :
" Jul. Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,
O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls ;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud ;
Things that to hear them told have made me tremble ;
CUPID AND NEMESIS. 418
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love. . . .
Fri. Take thou this phial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease :
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes ; thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life ;
Each part, depriv'd of supple government,
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:
And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Act IV. Sc. 1.
Jul. My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, phial.
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd ;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud ; where as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort." Act IV. Sc. 3.
" And certainly." continues Bacon with the fable, " when I have read
that chapter of Caius Plinius in which he has collected the misfortunes and
miseries of Augustus Caesar, him whom I thought of all men the most
fortunate, and who had moreover a certain art of using and enjoying his
fortune, and in whose mind were no traces of swelling, of tightness, of soft-
ness, of confusion, or of melancholy, (insomuch that once he had detennined
to die voluntarily,) great and powerful must this goddess be, I have
thought, when such a victim was brought to the altar."
And of this swelling, tightness, softness, confusion, melan-
choly, and voluntary dying, and the splendid victim of this
powerful goddess brought to the altar, we have some un-
mistakable exhibition in this play ; and these misfortunes
and miseries of Nemesis appear again in Romeo's speech
to the Apothecary, all these several topics falling in at the
proper time and place, and in such form as the course of
the drama requires :
414 CUPID AND NEMESIS.
" Rom. Art thou so base and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die V famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back. 1
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law:
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this." Act V. Sc. 1.
But Nemesis more particularly represents the dark and
secret judgment of God ; and, continues Bacon, in the
fable :
" This Nemesis of the Darkness (the human not agreeing with the divine
judgment) was matter of observation even among the heathen.
Ripheus fell too,
Than whom a juster and truer man
In all his dealings was not found in Troy.
But the gods judged not so : "
which difference of the divine and human judgment creeps
into the end of the play thus :
" Fri. Lady, come from that nest
Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.
A greater Power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents : come, come away.
Prince. See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love."
Act V. Sc. 3.
" Fri. Peace, ho ! for shame ! confusion's cure lives not
In these confusions. Heaven and yourself
Had part in this fair maid ; now Heaven hath all ;
And all the better is it for the maid :
Your part in her you could not keep from death,
But Heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse : and, as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to the church ;
1 This play seems to have undergone considerable emendation subse-
quently to the quarto of 1597, which, in place of this and the preceding line,
reads as follows :
" Upon thy back hangs ragged miserie,
And starved famine dwelleth in thy cheeks."
See White's Shakes., X. 132 ; Notes, 189.
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 415
For though fond Nature bids us all lament,
Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment." Act IV. Sc. 5.
5. SCIENCE OF MATTER.
The general scope of Bacon's theory of universals was
essentially and at bottom the same with that of the higher
modern philosophy : its end was to be Philosophy itself.
His discussions concerning the nature of cause and form
make it clear that he had arrived, substantially, at the
transcendental conceptions of both. Forms, as anything
separate and distinct from the real essence of things and
those fundamental and eternal laws of thought under which
essence takes form, were mere fictions of the imagination ;
and matter, as anything distinct from the last and positive
power and cause of nature, was simply a fantastic super-
stition. " His form and cause conjoined " in the ghost
exactly illustrate the metaphysical conception of the true
nature of matter and form, cause and effect, noumena and
phenomena, and the mode and manner of action and opera-
tion of that uncaused power that creates all things ; that is
to say, that it is, in fact and reality, a power of the nature
of the power of thought, wholly, as the only actual sub-
stance, essence, or matter, eternally in activity, under laws
which are necessary laws of all possible thinking, divine or
human, and in reference to the divine mind, identical with
the laws of nature or physics so far, and in the modes of
thought only, giving therein the substances of all created
things and their forms, together with the order, particular
distribution, movement, and total plan, moral fitness, per-
fection, and artistic beauty, exhibited in the entire provi-
dential scheme and purpose in the creation of any universe,
past, present, or future : whence comes for us, in the study
and contemplation of the past and present universe that
lies open before us as the book of God's works so far, a
foreground and promise of the certain (so far as certain),
the possible, and the probable continuation thereof in
416 SCIEXCE OF MATTER.
the future ; an uncreated thinking Power, thinking His
universe. And so he imagined it possible for the Creator
to bring the disembodied spirit or ghost into view of the
physical eye of Hamlet. Not that this was possible in
actual human experience, but that by a certain poetic
license, the thing might be conceived in the mind as possi-
ble in the artistically creative manner in which the imagi-
nation works. A strictly scientific observation of facts in
external nature clearly proves that it would be utterly im-
possible for the human eye, organized and constructed as
it is, actually to see and perceive any object, substance, or
thing whatever so thin and ethereal in its nature as the
spiritual form of a disembodied soul must be ; though such
a spiritual creation, on the metaphysical principles which
Bacon had laid down and expounded, and in accordance
with exact scientific thinking, too, might have a real exist-
ence in nature as a finite created object, or subject, and a
substantial thing, existing in time and space as a part of the
existent universe, though invisible to mortal eyes :
"Ham. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you." Act I. Sc. 5.
Nevertheless, even Hamlet himself was not quite sure of
him:
"Ham. The spirit that I have seen
May be the Devil: and the Devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness and melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits)
Abuses me to damn me. I '11 have grounds
More relative than this : the play 's the thing,
Wherein I '11 catch the conscience of the King." Act II. Sc. 2.
The natural eye, when the sunlight streams in at a
window, or some small crevice, can see very fine particles
of dust floating in the air, which are wholly invisible
beyond the stream of light : yet this dust is a gross cloud
of solid particles, compared with the air itself, which, though
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 417
a fluid mass of atoms, is yet utterly invisible to human
sight, even with the aid of the most powerful microscope.
The blue sky that we see is not so much the air as the
totality of a stratum forty five miles thick ; whilst the sub-
stance of any spiritual body must be infinitely more subtil
than the air, else it might be bottled like a gas, and ex-
amined by the chemist. Nevertheless, we can easily imag-
ine an eye to be so constituted as to be capable of seeing
such an object ; but it would necessarily be a superhuman
eye. Such an eye and such a form are supposed in the
' Tempest," when the supernatural magician, Prospero,
says to his invisible Genius, Ariel
" Go, make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea;
Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible
To every eye-ball else." Act I. Sc. 2.
In truth, modern science ascertains that all matter that
we know of, even the most solid rocks of the mountains,
can be melted down and resolved into gases more invisible
than the air we breathe. Some gases are so thin as to be
scarcely ponderable in any balance that can be constructed
by human art. The ether that fills interplanetary space,
retards comets, is the medium of transmission of the radi-
ating waves of light and heat, and is supposed to pervade,
or to traverse, the most solid bodies, escapes all scrutiny of
scientific instruments and experimentation. Electricity,
though appearing in some respects to act like a fluid, and
imagined by some to consist of infinitesimal globules, is
certainly so subtil and ethereal as to be utterly impondera-
ble by any means yet known ; but, if a stroke of lightning
could be caught in a pair of scales, its weight, that is, the
degree and measure of force with which it struck, in that
particular instance, might be exactly ascertained and set
down in figures ; and it is questionable whether electricity
can come under any scientific theory of atoms, or equiv-
alents, at least, otherwise than as just so many strokes of it
as have been so weighed and set down : in short, whether it
27
418 SCIENCE OF MATTER.
be not some more direct exhibition of the creative power,
and itself a pure totality of power, with only a certain
polarity and a certain duality of positive and negative.
And motion, a something still further removed from what
is commonly understood by matter, may be the mere result
and consequence of a more or less immediate and direct
exhibition of that same pure power.
One year, an astronomer raises a new telescope to the
heavens, that sweeps nine or ten times as much space as
the largest one did, the year before, and while he and his
telescope are whirling through the circumference of the
earth, in a day, and the earth, through its orbit, in a year,
and the solar system itself is making 17,000 miles or so, in
an hour, on a circle of the heavens so immeasurable that the
length of the arc travelled over since the beginning of
astronomy cannot be distinguished from a straight line, he
looks across the astronomical history in time and space of
whole solar systems, and sees, at the remotest reach of his
new sight, what appears to be a vast nebulous cloud gather-
ing to a centre, catches it, perhaps, in the first half turn of
its spiral winding, and reveals a new wonder of creation to
the eye of physical science. The true philosopher beholds
with awe this work of the creative power, proceeds with
reverence to observe and study the mode, manner, and
method of the proceeding, searches for the cause and law
of it, and endeavors to penetrate even to the point of origin
of the new phenomenon ; for he sees it to be at all events
the work of Him whose thought is reality. A machine
philosopher resorts to new observation, calculation, and
experimentation, seeking only to find out the physical laws
and forces and " the properties of matter," whereby this
apparent ethereal cloud may condense itself into a solar
system of revolving globes, thinking, perhaps, that physical
laws and forces and a cloud of matter should explain the
whole affair without more. Empedocles had got as far as
.this about twenty-three centuries ago.
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 419
The microscope resolves all vegetable and animal struc-
tures into architectural compactions of cells, globules, and
particles ; and it discovers that whole strata of the earth's
crust are made up of the dead shells of microscopic mol-
luscs. The geologist takes the earth itself to pieces, layer
by layer, as an antiquarian would unroll a mummy, down to
the " flinty ribs " and molten lavas of the inner bowels ; a
Gregory Watt will hew a block of basalt out of a mountain,
melt it back into lava, and, in the cooling, by various man-
ipulation, crystallize it again into all sorts of primitive rock ;
and the chemist will take all the rocks and minerals of the
earth and blow them into invisible and imponderable airs,
until " the great globe itself" under our feet would seem to
dissolve,
" melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,"
or into a nebulous cloud, under our very eyes, and
" Leave not a rack behind,"
not a reek, not so much as an ethereal cometary vapor,
through which a telescopic star might shine with undimin-
ished lustre, or even into an invisible, intangible, imponder-
able, all-pervading ethereal medium ; or rather, not into a
dew, nor a cloud, nor a reek, nor an ethereal medium, but
into inconceivable " airy nothing," unless we are to take
laws and forces, power and law, cause and effect, and living,
thinking soul, to be something worth investigation also, and
study metaphysics as well as physics.
Scientific men consider it established, that light is an
electrical phenomenon of a luminous body (or another
mode or degree of one and the same force) ; but electric
action must be taken as the mediate instrument rather
than as the primal source of the power. The spherical
concentric waves travel throughout this undulating ethereal
medium which is so thin as to be, not only invisible, and
unexaminable by scientific instruments, but not even to
420 SCIENCE OF MATTER.
reflect light ; but nothing travels but motion or power : the
medium merely vibrates in place, and the motion which
travels on the waves is merely transmitted power, as if it
were a flash of thought travelling along a telegraphic wire.
That travelling force strikes the eye, pursues the optic
nerve, reaches the mind, and in the collision, delivers its
message in a sense-perception ; and the modifications of the
vibration, as breadth of wave, or rapidity of stroke, the
differences, are recognized by the perceiving soul for
difference of brightness, or of color, or of heat, or of chem-
ical force, or mechanical power ; for the lighting, heating,
chemical, and mechanical properties of the sun's rays would
seem to depend, in like manner, upon certain merely instru-
mental modifications and differences in the mode of action
of the one active power. So of sound and hearing, touch,
taste, and smell : indeed, all sense-perception is of like
nature.
It is said, that the French astronomers resisted for a
time the Newtonian theory of the celestial mechanics, for
the reason that he was supposed to maintain the idea of
attraction at a distance, and used that term, instead of grav-
itation or weight. The objection, as M. Auguste Comte
thought, was doubtless a good one ; but gravitation, or
weight, as a last cause, or as any final account of the mat-
ter, would seem to be no better than attraction ; for gravi-
tation supposes one body to have the faculty of pushing
itself toward another body, while attraction supposes one
body to have the power of pulling another toward itself
from a distance, whenever it should happen to come suf-
ficiently within its reach. And so many seem to think.
Mr. Faraday, however, more lately, recognizing the princi-
ple of the conservation of force, claims to be on the side of
Newton himself in rejecting the idea of attraction at a dis-
tance, and seems willing to include gravitation in the same
category with light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and other
modes of force, as being probably but another modification
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 421
of one and the same total force, or original active cause,
proceeding from a common centre of unity ; * and Berkeley,
long ago, as well as Bacon and others before him as far
back as Plato at least, clearly saw, that the manner of this
tendency was not (in the language of Berkeley) " by the
mutual drawing of bodies," but rather by " their being
impelled or protruded," and that it might as well be termed
" impulse or protrusion as attraction " : rather better ; for
the doctrine of protrusion may admit of a single protrud-
ing power, or unity in the first moving cause. Bacon pro-
posed to determine this thing by experiment : " whether
the gravity of bodies to the earth arose from an attraction
of the parts of matter towards each other, or was a ten-
dency towards the centre of the earth." (Nov. Org.) Again
he says, in the " Intellectual Globe " : " For as to what is
asserted of a motion to the earth's centre [on the theory of
attraction], that would be a sort of potent nothing dragging
to itself such large masses ; whereas body cannot be affected
except by body." Nevertheless, the commonly received
notion would do well enough for poetic metaphor :
" Cress. Time, force, and death,
Do to this body what extremes you can,
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the Earth,
Drawing all things to it." Tro. and Cress., Act IV. Sc. 2.
But while denying that mere empty place, or an imaginary
mathematical point, could be supposed to have any power
to draw a distant body toward itself, he seems to have con-
jectured, at least, that " a dense and compact mass, at a
great distance from the Earth, would hang like the Earth
itself, and not fall, unless thrust down " ; that is to say. if it
moved at all, it would necessarily have to be moved by
some protruding force. Indeed, it is wholly inconceivable
how the heavenly bodies, or any other, can be drawn towards
l Correlation and Consenxition of Forces, by Youmans. New York, 1865,
p. 378-381.
422 SCIENCE OF MATTER.
each other by any force going forth out of one to lay hold
of another at a distance, and draw it toward itself: the very
idea would seem to be absurd, and fit only for the depart-
ment of theological incomprehensibilities. They gravitate
toward each other, undoubtedly, and by virtue of a power
acting from within, or from a common centre, outwardly,
a pushing, not a pulling power. In fact, all powers in
nature would seem to act from within outwards, as Herder
observed.
Prof. Airy, it is said, has ascertained, by the experiment
of weighing a body at the depth of 1260 feet in a coal-pit,
that this gravitating tendency of one body toward another
(according to the law of inverse proportion to the square
of the distance) was greater by the T^o^tf P ar ^ when the
centres of gravity of the two bodies were thus brought so
much nearer together than they were at the surface :
whereas on the pulling theory, it should have been less.
Those who still follow the supposed doctrine of Newton,
imagine this attracting power to be " always existing around
the sun and thence reaching forth through space to lay hold
of any body that may come within its reach ; and not only
around the sun, but around each particle of matter that has
existence." l As this is a fundamental point in our whole
business, let us stop to consider it.
Now, if this were true, the attracting power that so goes
forth from around all the particles of matter which com-
pose that portion of earth 1260 feet thick, that lies above
the body weighed at that depth, and which, on this theory,
must draw toward themselves from all directions, would
tend to lift up the weighed body, counteracting so far the
pulling force of the mass on the other side of it ; and it
would weigh less than at the surface : whereas by the
experiment it actually weighs more.
On the other theory, that of a power acting from within
outwards in every body and in every particle of matter, and
1 Annual of Sci. Dis., by Wells, 1856.
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 423
tending to drive or approach them toward each other, at all
distances, but still directly as the mass and inversely as the
square of the distance, we have a power the effect of which
is, necessarily, to keep all the particles of a body compacted
together toward the centre of gravity of the body with a
force sufficient to maintain the particular form and consti-
tution of the body itself, while increasing in each particle
with proximity, and tending to produce greater density
toward the centre ; but this tendency toward the centre is
at the same time restrained, resisted, and limited by that
power from within each particle which gives it existence as
a particular form of substance; thus producing an equi-
librium of stationary balance among all the particles of the
body, wherein is the stability and permanence of the body
as a whole, and the actual density and form of the body :
hence every variety of form.
Certain experiments of M. Mosotti on the Epinian
theory would seem to prove the existence of a force in
bodies, as he says, " repulsive at the smallest distances, a
little on, vanishing, afterwards attractive " [or, as he might
as well have said, protrusive] " and at all sensible distances
attracting [protruding] in proportion to the inverse square
of the distance " ; as when a comet is driving toward the
sun, a repulsive force in the sun, at a certain distance,
drives back the ethereal vapor into a long tail or streamer,
while nucleus and tail still hold a course together toward
the sun. But over and above that exhibition of force which
is necessary in order to constitute the given body itself,
there must still be exerted from within the whole body, or
upon it, outwardly, that certain overplus of force, which is
necessary in order to give the body its motion of transla-
tion, or change of relative place, and which moves or drives
it toward another distant body. This force, as well as the
other, may always be inversely proportional to the square
of the distance, and may always be taken, mathematically,
as a force acting at and from the centre of gravity only :
424 SCIENCE OF MATTER.
and hence the stability of a body, a sun, a solar system, a
stellar system, and an entire universe of systems.
In short, there being no such thing as an attracting or
pulling power in the stratum of earth above the weighed
body, in this experiment, but only a protrusive power and
motion in the whole Earth as one body, the body weighed
is left free to tend toward the centre of the Earth by the
same force and law as at the surface ; and the Earth as a
whole body has a tendency toward the weighed body, by
virtue of that controlling overplus of protrusive force which
is to be taken as acting, on the whole, from the centre of
gravity of the Earth ; and so the body weighs more be-
cause the two centres of gravity, the two bodies, are nearer
to each other, and by virtue of one and the same original
impelling power.
This unphilosophical idea of attraction as a pulling
power has tended to perpetuate a narrow and perverted
use of the inductive method, and almost to blind the eye
of science to any true vision, or comprehension, of the
Baconian induction, which was to be a rational method for
the true interpretation of Nature. The ancients had con-
cluded that nothing could be certainly known ; Bacon, that
nothing could be certainly known, without the right use of
the senses and the intellect ; and the disciples of attrac-
tion and of the properties of dead substratum have assumed
that nothing can be known but by the senses, sensible ex-
perience, and instrumental experimentation, without much
help from the intellect. The inductive method as used by
them is good enough for certain purposes and within limits ;
but it can never arrive at a philosophy of the universe,
until it be used " universally " with Plato and Bacon, and
for the actual interpretation of all Nature ; for all the par-
ticular facts and phenomena together, that are within the
possible reach of the senses and experimental observation,
can never constitute a universe, but only, at best, a sort of
Humboldtian cosmos. By that way alone, the inquirer
SCIENCE OF MATTER. 425
can never arrive at any conception of the unity of the
whole creation ; at least, not until his observation should be
extended to all the facts of the universe, metaphysical as
well as physical, and be made to comprehend intellectual
as well as sensible truth, ascending by the scaling ladder of
the intellect into the very loftiest parts of nature, and dil-
igently and perseveringly pursuing the thread of the laby-
rinth. To the man of mere physical science the universe
will always be the particular mass of facts, which have
been observed by the senses and experiment, together
with some sort of hazy and superstitious theology, or what
is worse, some kind of materialistic atheism ; and for such
a man, the idea of a pulling power, or a self-driving power,
in each heavenly body, and in every particle of matter, will
explain the observed phenomena well enough for all his
purposes, and perhaps sufficiently answer the received
mathematical formulas. The real mathematician, however,
has, in all ages, come nearest to being a philosopher ; for
his field lies in the world of pure reason, mathematics
being, at bottom, a science of the laws of thought and of
the dynamics of thinking power. The mere physicist, like
Democritus, is apt to stop short with atoms ; as if atoms
were some self-existent living monads, in a state of univer-
sal disintegration, and endowed each with a sort of long
feeler and claw, wherewith to reach forth into immensity
and seize upon whatever came within its reach, in order to
drag it to itself; or as if each particle of matter were an
independent self-acting cause, capable of driving itself to-
ward any other particle, of its own mere motion : u nay,"
says Bacon, " even that school which is most accused of
atheism doth most demonstrate religion ; that is, the school
of Leucippus, and Democritus, and Epicurus : for it is a
thousand times more credible that four mutable elements,
and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed,
need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions,
or seeds, unplaced, should have produced this order and
426 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
beauty without a divine marshal." And when the true phi-
losopher has once found these atoms to be merely secondary
forms of substance, deriving their own existence as such
as well as all the powers that are active within them from
the primary and total substance of all substances and
power of all powers, lying underneath, behind, and within,
all forms of substance of whatever kind, then is it seen,
that all power must proceed, and go forth, from one centre
of unity, as a pushing, driving, developing, sustaining, up-
holding, and creating power ; and so, that power is not
primarily exerted from as many original and distinct
centres as there are bodies, or atoms, in nature, as so many
drawing, or as so many driving, ultimate forces ; as if all
being began and ended with atoms ! " Ac si quicquam in
Universo esse possit instar insulce, quod a rerum nexu separe-
tur " J l or, as if some imaginary being, outside the uni-
verse, had, in some inconceivable way, created the atoms
out of nothing, endowed each with a special power of its
own, and then left them to push, or pull, for themselves !
Berkeley exposed the absurdity of this sort of science long
ago : " Patet igitur gravitatem aut vim frustra poni pro
principio motus" 2 So says the Phaedrus of Plato : " The
beginning of motion is that which moves itself;
and this is the very essence and true notion of soul " ;
or, as St. Austin (according to Burton 8 ) expounded out
of Plato, " a spiritual substance moving itself."
6. SCIENCE OF SOUL.
The motions of the planets and of the sidereal spheres,
as far into the depths of immensity as the remotest visible
nebula, and down to the slightest irregularity of motion, so
far as yet observed and studied, are found to be reducible
to a geometric science of the dynamics of power and the
1 De Aug. Sdent., L. II. c. 13.
2 De Motu, Works (Dublin, 1784), II. 125.
8 Anat. of Mel. (Boston, 1862), I. 219.
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 427
statics of equilibrium, in exact accordance with mathemati-
cal laws. The phenomena of electricity, magnetism, light,
heat, sound, chemistry, and indeed all physics, art, design,
and beauty, admit of numerical expression and a mathe-
matical nomenclature, in accordance with the laws and for-
mulas of mathematical science ; for mathematics is nothing
else but a science of the laws of thought, divine or human,
so far as these laws have ever fallen within the special do-
main of any mathematician. Nothing is more moral than
science ; and all science is mathematical. All possible
creation must be, and is, mathematical : even miracles are
mathematical. That all bodies should be gravitated,
weighed, or impelled, toward each other, directly as the
mass and inversely as the square of the distance, is evi-
dently necessary to the stability of the universe, in order
that there may be a Cosmos, instead of a Chaos, or rather
a total oblivion and nonentity of all things, if that were
conceivably possible ; for, as in the play,
" 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 " ;
[Tro. and Cr., Act I. Sc. 3.]
as Bacon says of true justice in the law, that it is " suum
cuique tribuere, the law guiding all things with line of
measure, and proportion " :
" Mar. Suum cuique is our Roman justice:
This prince in justice seizeth but his own."
Tit. And., Act 1. Sc. 2.
Apply any other law, and the planets would
" In evil mixture, to disorder wander." Tro. and Cr., Act I. Sc. 8.
Chaos is a negative term, expressive of the absence of
that order which is necessary to produce a cosmos ; that is,
a partial absence of form and order, not a total negation of
all form and substance, in the whole, or in any particular
thing ; for that would be oblivion or annihilation of that
428 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
whole, or of that particular. The popular idea of matter
as a sort of dead substratum, possessing of itself certain
inherent and essential qualities, properties, and laws of its
own, and, as such, being self-subsistent from eternity, as
a something distinct from the thinking essence of God,
though co-eternal with Him, or as subsisting without God,
and thereby moulding itself into a universe, as if it were
unnecessary to have any other Creator at all, is a mere
illusion of unscientific knowledge and uncritical thinking.
Take a solid block of ice, for instance, and (what is equally
true in general of a block of basalt, granite, porphyry, or
any other solid in nature, though every solid may not ad-
mit of all the stages of form), apply heat, and it becomes
liquid water, without any change in the quantity of matter ;
wherein we see that solidity is not an essential quality of
matter, but an accidental quality, that is, merely a certain
temporary state of equilibrium of stationary balance in the
atoms of the mass, at a given temperature. Raising the
temperature, that equilibrium is overcome, by the applied
force of heat, and the solid takes on the liquid form. Ap-
ply a greater degree of heat, and the liquid water be-
comes an invisible gaseous vapor: wherein we see again
that liquidity is not an essential, but an accidental, quality
of matter, being only another state of temporary equilib-
rium of stationary balance in the atoms of the mass, though
having a less degree of fixity and permanence of form than
the solid ice, and an equilibrium, as a whole, which is dis-
turbed on application of the slightest degree of external
force. Apply a higher degree of heat to this invisible
vapor, and it is resolved into two distinct gases, without any
change again in the quantity of matter. There is a great
variety of these gases, or gaseous forms of substance, nat-
ural or artificial, each having its own peculiar properties
and qualities as such, which are doubtless neither less
accidental, nor more essential than solidity, liquidity, gas-
eousness ; but are merely so many other forms of tempo-
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 429
rary equilibrium of stationary balance in the given quantity
of matter, in the whole and in the parts ; until, at last, we
arrive at the stage in the forms of substance, in which it
presents itself to our senses and to all our instruments of
observation no otherwise than as invisible force, or power
in activity, under laws which are reducible to a mathemati-
cal science of the dynamics of force, laws of motion, and sta-
tics of equilibrium ; at which point all our common notions
of dead substratum have absolutely vanished, and science
is compelled to drop the expression " indestructibility of
matter" and to substitute in its place that of " the conserva-
tion of force ; " mathematics, again, in reference to all exter-
nal nature, being, at bottom, a science of the laws and
power of Thought, and a metaphysics of creation, remem-
brance, and oblivion, in the Divine Mind. And so, ac-
cording to science, as Plato said, 1 matter in itself is without
Figure, without Quality, and without Species ; it is neither
a body nor without body, but is the total substance, where-
in is the possibility of substances or bodies ; and solids,
liquids, gases, particular minerals, plants, and animals (in
respect of their bodies), are but temporary and transient
forms of " stored force," more or less fixed and permanent
Let new conditions happen, and other forces, or new chem-
ical reactions, overcome that fixity, or let the vital or sus-
taining power be withdrawn, and this stored force is with-
drawn, or is set free, and passes into other forms of sub-
stance, reaching therein again, perhaps, a temporary equi-
librium of stationary balance ; but the mineral, plant, or
animal, that was, thereby vanishes into oblivion, and ceases
to be as such. So force ascends, or rather descends,
through all the stages of form and equilibrium, from think-
ing power 'to atom, nebula, solar system, globe, stratum,
mineral, spore, cell ; and from spore to tree and fruit, and
from germ-cell to full-grown animal ; and thence back
again from animal to plant, to mineral, to nebula, to atom,
l Works of Plato (Bohn), VI. 260.
430 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
to thinking power, in the eternal cycle of creation ; for, as
in the play :
" Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion."
Tro. and Cr., Act III. Sc. 2.
This hypothetical chaos of matter without form and order,
presenting nothing but a certain amount of dead substratum
and mathematical physics, is that same fantastical super-
stition which Bacon attributed to the ancients, and that
same " stupid thoughtless somewhat " and " unthinking sub-
stratum," which Berkeley, that " altogether fine and rare
man," as Herder called him, than whom a greater philos-
opher has not lived in England, perhaps, since Bacon down
to our time, endeavored to exorcise as a visionary phantasm
(and it ought to have been effectually and forever) out of
all philosophy. Like Bacon himself, Berkeley was not so
much a visionary idealist as a Platonic realist. This same
fantastic superstition still beclouds the imaginations of men
of science as well as theologians. Nor will any system of
dynamics and statics ever account for a universe which is
a cosmos, until it shall rise to a comprehension of the
dynamics of the Divine Power of Thought thinking a
cosmos, and those statics of equilibrium, which amount to
the Divine Remembrance, wherein is the stability of the
universe so far as stable, and its permanence in so far as
it is permanent. But over and above the mathematical
dynamics and statics of mere physicists and "positive "
science, there is seen by all that look, having eyes to see,
that order, plan, purpose, artistic design, and divine beauty
in the creation, which are nowhere in nature, nor anywhere
else but in the absurd fantasies of men, the work of any-
thing but artistically creative thought.
Humboldt, setting forth the Aspects of Nature with
scientific reference to physical laws and forces, and noting
everywhere a certain conformity of the vegetable and
animal kingdoms to existing physical conditions, dwells
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 431
with the admiration of the poet upon the singular beauty
of the palm, towering far above the surrounding forest, hi
the valley of the Amazon ; and he enters into an elaborate
consideration of the physical forces acting from within the
plant, outwardly, against the opposing external forces, under
natural laws and physical conditions, and in accordance
with mathematics, in the exact balance of which, the tree
at length stands forth a Palm. But there is observable
here, also, what is apparent in that balance of forces, this
striking . fact, that the tree with its foliage, flowers, and
fruit, (which might have taken many other and perhaps
ugly shapes, under these same conditions, and in an exact
balance of forces, too.) in fact, comes forth in just that
outline which makes it an object of exquisite beauty, ex-
hibiting an artistic form and a design so admirable that the
most skilful human artist is unable to surpass it, in his
conception, or on the canvas. And at the same time, under
the same general laws and conditions, and in varying par-
ticular conditions, come forth, also, all the artistic variety
and beauty of an Amazonian forest ; as if not a mere
mathematician, much less a blind, accidental balance of
forces, but a mathematical artist, had done it ; for it is
essentially, from the first germ-cell to the full-grown tree,
Artist-Mind work.
If an artist will sculpture an Apollo, he first conceives
the idea, or image, of an Apollo in his mind. If another
man were endowed with a faculty of vision to see into his
mind, as he actually sees into the mind of the Creator, he
would behold the Apollo standing therein as a fact as in-
dubitable as the palm on the banks of the Amazon. The
artist can hold the imaged conception there as long as he
can keep his mind fixed on thinking the object ; that is, as
long as he can actually remember it. If he change his
thought, and let the conception vanish, he may by recol-
lection re-create it, or he may create another in its place ;
or, if he please, he may, with his chisel, transfer and fix his
432 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
creation upon a block of marble. The absolute Artist-Mind
needs no marble, nor other substance, on which to stamp
and maintain his creations, than the divine Remembrance
and that same stuff, of which the human artist's Apollo was
made, when it stood forth, like a dream, in his conception
only, the power of thought in action, which is substance
giving form to itself, and material enough for the works of
the Creator.
There is a difference between Remembrance and Memory,
as there is, also, between Memory and Recollection. All
created things, that is, all ideas or conceptions, must be
coordinated in Time and Space. Coordination in reference
to space is in one space, or in a series of spaces, out of all
possibility of space. Coordination in reference to time is
in one time, or in a serial succession of times, out of all
possibility of time. There may be a space, or a series of
spaces, in one time ; and a time, or a succession of times,
in one space. By no possibility can there be a serial suc-
cession of spaces in one and the same space and time, nor
a succession of times in one and the same time and space ;
in either case, there would continue to be exact identity,
with no possibility of change or difference. As touching
the divisibility of any conceivable space, or time, however
small, the possibility of such supposed divisibility would
cease precisely at the point where the given space and
time (for there can be no space without a time, nor any
time without a space,) should begin to be bounded out of
immensity and eternity, the possibilities of space and time ;
that is to say, at the point of no space and time, or non-
existence of the conception, which is exactly the point of
commencement of the activity of the power of thought in
giving existence to the conception as a creation in time and
space, in the work of thought in the creation of a particular
thing, or of a variety of things coordinated in the unity of
the creating power. But a succession which was in many
successive times, and in one and the same space, or series
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 433
of spaces, or in a changing series of spaces, may be trans-
ferred, shifted round, as it were, in the mind into a
serial successive order of as many spaces, or series of spaces,
in this one time, now, as there were times and their spaces
in any past time, or in the whole succession of times ; and
this is Memory. All the facts and events, perceptions and
conceptions the whole thought of a man's life, have
had existence in space, either in his mind alone, or in
external nature and his mind, and succession in time in his
consciousness. If he bring them up in his mind in one
view, at this one time, now, the series will stand in his
conception as a serial order of as many spaces as there were
times of the facts and events, perceptions and conceptions,
and their spaces, in the succession of time in the course of
his life ; and his mental vision will see the whole in one
view. Remembrance proper is the power to do this effec-
tually and continuously ; a power, which no finite mind
fully possesses. In the work of memory, we conceive or
create a space, or series and successions of spaces, in the
mind, in the present time, corresponding to those which
were in nature and fact, or in our previous thought, in a
past time, or times in succession, and contemplate them
anew ; for Time and Space are but laws of thought giving
the forms and outlines of conceived, created, and remem-
bered conceptions or things. If a space, or series of spaces,
which was in any past time, as a house seen twenty years
ago, be merely thus re-called, re-created, and re-produced
in the mind, in this present time, the space or series of
spaces, giving or constituting the form of the house, which
existed then as a part of the phenomena of the existent
universe external to himself, (or if, of his own thought and
in his own mind only, as his former ideas,) will now stand
in his conception as so many corresponding ideal spaces in
his present view ; and this is simple Recollection.
Now, if, in either case, the mental view be directed upon
the whole series at once, the mind sees and remembers the
28
434 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
whole as such ; and if the attention, that is, the finite and
particular power of thought, which constitutes the soul, be
directed upon any particular portion of the series, out of
the whole field of the finite thought and knowledge, he
remembers, or recollects, that portion only ; the rest stands
not re-created, not seen, and therefore, forgotten, and, for
the time being, as if it never had been. The want of power
to bring up the whole array, or any particular portion of it,
is a want of memory of that whole, or that portion, which
has thereby passed into irretrievable oblivion. And herein
lies the strength, or weakness, of the memory : it depends
upon the habit and continuous intensity of the power of
thought itself, first, in observing, that is, perceiving and
conceiving accurately and distinctly the things to be remem-
bered ; secondly, on frequent re-creation, re-production, and
contemplation of them, with the aid of association and all
other aids ; and, thirdly, on the given power of thought
itself, wherein, at last, is the faculty of re-creation of con-
ceptions, and recognition of their correspondence and iden-
tity with what has been in the mind before, and perhaps
never lost entirely out of remembrance. In total oblivion,
all is absolute nonentity and as if it had never been ; being
vanished into " airy nothing." If this faculty of memory
were as powerful in man as in God, human memory would
rise to the absolute power and continuity of the Divine
Remembrance, and all things which he should desire and
determine to remember and keep in existence in his thought
and contemplation, out of all the facts and events, percep-
tions and conceptions, the thought and knowledge of his
life, would be ever present and clear to his conscious-
ness. Omniscience belongs only to the Creator.
The mastodon has ceased to exist : his bones only re-
main. They, only, continue to be remembered, and so held
and carried forward in the divine remembrance, in a certain
changing permanency, as fit material for the construction
of a rind of globe, while at the same time furnishing a suffi-
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 435
cient record for our reading. The animal that was is other-
wise vanished utterly into oblivion. We may gather up the
remembered relics of him, together with the remaining
traces of his time and country, and, out of these materials
and such analogies as can be drawn from whatever else we
know, re-create him in our own minds as nearly as we can,
as a Cuvier approximately re-constructs and restores an
extinct fauna of a buried age. The difference between the
pictured human creation as restoration and the living reality
of past time, being a sort of imperfect reminiscence, may
help us to realize how vast, and of what nature, is the
difference between the human and the divine creator.
Again, let superficial science take the animal kingdom
now existent on the surface of the globe, and arrange the
whole on a horizontal base-line, in a linear branching series,
according to the order of ascent and succession in the scale
of being of the ideal types, in a true and complete zoological
classification (and it will be all the same, whether embry-
ology, with Agassiz, or the nervous system, with Owen, be
taken as basis), from the lowest cell-animalcule up to man,
placing the animal cell toward the horizon ; and then let
deep science turn the distal end of the series downward
to a right angle in the direction of a radius to the Earth's
centre ; suppose it to reach through a complete series of
all the geological formations that have anywhere been laid
down, so as to represent a continuous zoological province,
even from that lowest fossiliferous stratum in which the
first animal cell came into existence (and you may be sure
there is such a stratum, though no geological observer has
ever yet found in it any fossil remains of such primitive
animalcules) ; and you will find, on comparison, that there
is a very exact correspondence, if not absolute identity, in
the order of succession, or setting in, of the more general
ideal types (as of Branch, Class, Order,) between the super-
ficial series of zoological classification and the fossil branch-
ing series of actual nature in geological time ; that is,
436 SCIENCE OF SOUL.
between the series of this one time now, and its serial suc-
cession of spaces, and that of the serial succession of times
past, and their accompanying spaces on the successively
existent surfaces of the globe. So we have in space here,
now, what was in time there, then ; and this, for us, is
a kind of reminiscence after the manner of Plato and
Bacon.
You will observe, also, a general correspondence, or
resemblance, in the more general types themselves, but
with differences increasing in amount, more and more, in
the direction of the lesser and subordinate types (as of
genera and species), distributed throughout the whole
branching series, and running out into final extinction in
the lesser types of genera, species, and individuals. The
identity or resemblance may be said to measure the con-
tinuity of the divine remembrance, in respect of these ideal
types. The differences exhibit the amount of change in the
divine mind, or oblivion of old and creation of new, in that
vast series of times and in that almost infinite series of
terrestrial spaces successively existing in these times ; in
which, a few of the more general types, many of the lesser,
and nearly all genera and species down to the later periods,
have, from time to time, vanished into oblivion, while many
new types, especially the lesser, have come into existence.
Indeed, only one, the most general type of all, the cell,
wherein is the unity and starting-point of the whole, spans
the entire series in absolute continuity; for, in that, the
divine remembrance has been continuous from the very
beginning. And it matters not, that the work of creating
new cells, or that new (sometimes called " spontaneous ")
generation of new individuals of the lowest forms of animal
life, has continued to run along down the base of the pyramid
of the animal kingdom from the beginning of animal life
to the present day ; for the ideal type in them, for the most
part, continues the same, and the innermost laboratory of
God and Nature is never closed. And so have continued
SCIENCE OF SOUL. 437
the types of branches since they once began, or of classes,
or orders, or, it may be, of some genera, and even of some
species, in a continuous and unbroken line of linear descent
An exact and complete natural history, that should be, like
that contemplated by Bacon, " a high kind of natural
magic," 1 would exhibit to our view the actual course of the
divine thought in the creation of an animal kingdom : and
this, again, would be a kind of reminiscence in us.
In like manner, let superficial science take the existing
human races, down to the anthropoid apes, and arrange
them in one linear branching series, somewhat as in a lineal
tree of family descent, according to ideal type and rank in
the scale of being, as if you should place in line a large
family of children in the order of their ages, from the man
of twenty -one down to the child creeping on all fours ; and
the deep science of actual nature will show that the series
truly represents in general the order of succession and dis-
tribution in which the several races or types of men have
come into existence on the earth ; for, the races, like the
children of a family, and indeed the whole animal king-
dom, may be said, at last, to be strung on the great um-
bilical cord or branching ideal thread of embryological
evolution ; along which takes place the gradual transition
of type, or what Bacon calls " a transmutation of species." 2
The Apes begin to appear in the Eocene ; Man has been
found near the beginning of the Pleistocene, and doubtless
existed in the Pliocene, and may possibly yet be found as
far back as the Miocene. Actually observed facts are not
yet sufficient to enable us to assign the exact order of the
fossil succession in actual nature, but enough is known,
already, to warrant the conclusion, on the whole, which is
also borne out by the analogies of all the rest of the fossil
zoology and the known principles of living zoology, that the
race which is lowest in the scale of creation, on the present
surface of the earth, is likewise the oldest in geological
l Nat. Hist. 93. 2 Nat. Hist. 525.
438 ALL SCIENCE.
time. The older and inferior races run out into extinction
and disappear, as the newer and superior come forward : in
the order of divine providence, the old passes into oblivion
as the new appears.
Says Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, " I take care not to lend to
God any intention : I pretend only to the character of the
historian of what is" It is not probable that the Creator
has occasion to borrow intentions from any mortal. It may
be, that in searching for " final causes " men have looked,
as it were, through the wrong end of the telescope : through
the direct scope of intellectual vision (Sapience), the pri-
mal efficient and essential cause is seen to be intelligent,
divine, and enough. What we have to do, is, undoubtedly,
to observe the fact, and to open our eyes that we may see ;
for, as Bacon says, " the Wisdom of God shines forth the
more wonderfully, when Nature does one thing, and Prov-
idence elicits another, as if the character of Providence
were stamped upon all forms and natural motions." 1
7. ALL SCIENCE.
Physical science cannot help being also metaphysical
science. Most scientific methods and men seem to ignore
metaphysics altogether ; and but few scientific societies
admit a department of metaphysics into their constitu-
tion ; as if metaphysics and moonshine were synonymous
terms. But in all ages as now the greatest men of science
have been also metaphysicians, who have recognized the
truth, more or less clearly, that all physical inquiry leads
directly into that realm of universals and pure metaphysics,
wherein the universe has to be contemplated as the actual
thought of a Divine Thinker. Says one of these (not
among the least distinguished of our time) : " The true
thought of the created mind must have had its origin from
the Creator ; but with him, thought is reality ; " 2 and again,
1 De Aug. Sclent., L. III. c. 4.
2 Address of Prof. Peirce, 1854.
ALL SCIENCE. 439
" It seemed to him the only way for us to understand the
organization of the universe was that by which we must un-
derstand any human work. We would not understand a play
of Shakespeare, until we tried to construct it over again for
ourselves. Then and then only could we understand how
all the parts of the play belonged together. So with regard
to the work of the Deity ; it was not possible for us to
understand this as an organization, until we looked at it
from the point of view of the Creator." x Another distin-
guished light of science discourses concerning animals,
thus : " The very nature of these beings and their relations
to one another and to the world in which they live exhibit
thought, and can therefore be referred only to the imme-
diate action of a thinking being, even though the manner
in which they were called into existence remains for
the present a mystery ; " and again, " This growing coin-
cidence between our systems and that of nature shows
further the identity of the operations of the human mind
and the Divine Intellect" 2 Again, speaking of the entire
animal kingdom, " When we came to the conviction that this
whole was the combination of these facts in a logical man-
ner, and as whatever intelligence we had was derived from
Him and in His image, that coincidence made it possible
for us to understand his objects." 8
That coincidence must be considered, of course, as ex-
tending to all the fundamental and eternal laws of artisti-
cally creative thought. These laws and modes of action
being the same for all thought, and soul or thinking power
being everywhere essentially identical in nature, created
objects in nature are transferred to our minds as copied
conceptions, as it were ; and the copy is formed in the mind,
on the data given in sensation, by a power of the same
nature, acting under the same laws and in the same modes
1 Prof. Peirce on Analytic Morphology, Ann. Sci. Disc. 1856.
a Agassiz ; Contrib. to Nat. Hist, of tf. Amer., 1. 13-23.
8 Agassiz (Ann. Sci. Disc. 1856).
440 ALL SCIENCE.
as that by which the original is itself conceived and created,
differing only in degree of power and in extent and scope
of conscious intellectual vision, as the finite and special
must differ from the infinite and absolute ; and the copied
conception will be as accurate, true, and complete as the
observation is thorough, particular, and exact, and the sense-
perception distinct, and no more so. And these concep-
tions will be as lasting and permanent as the power of
memory is intense and the will strong. Hamlet must have
understood the matter much in the same way, when he
said:
" Remember thee ?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I '11 wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix' d with baser matter." Act II. Sc. 5.
Observation by the senses and by instruments in aid of
the senses, actual sensible experience, necessarily has a
limit ; but that limit by no means ascertains and fixes the
bounds of all certain and scientific knowledge. The mind,
by its own original power of thought, is able not only to
grasp the laws and modes of its own special activity, in a
critical analysis of the mental phenomena as facts, and in a
sound psychology, but also to arrive at a knowledge therein
of the true nature of cause or power, of matter or sub-
stance, of thought itself, and by that means to transcend
that limit of sensible experience, and to advance beyond
the field of physical inquiry into the region of purely met-
aphysical fact and universal laws, and by the study of these
further facts and laws as a matter of intellectually observed
truth, to attain to a rational comprehension of the true
nature of that uncaused power that creates the universe ;
and, at last, to see, that the whole must, and does, exist as
the actual thought of a Divine Thinker, and not otherwise.
ALL SCIENCE. 441
As Bacon expresses it, " all learning is knowledge acquired,
and all knowledge in God is original " ; that is, with him,
thought and knowledge are one ; and so, that " the truth
of being and the truth of knowing is all one." 1 Plato,
I'hilo Judaeus, Bb'ethius, Thomas Aquinas, Bruno, Spinoza,
Hooker, Berkeley, Swedenborg, and many others of the
olden times as well as of these later days, seem to have con-
ceived the matter much in the same way. So Bacon must
have understood the creation : in fact, this is precisely what
he meant, when he said he trusted his philosophy, when
fully unfolded, " would plainly constitute a Marriage of the
Human Mind to the Universe, having the Divine Goodness
for bridesmaid." 2 In no other way, perhaps, was it ever
possible for any man to arrive at any comprehensible phi-
losophy of the universe. Without such a philosophy, the
observed facts of experimental science can present nothing
to human intelligence but an incongruous, heterogeneous,
and incomprehensible mass of particulars a world of
facts tumbled together pell-mell ; and hence all those ab-
surd systems, theological, or atheistical, which have, in all
times, beclouded the understandings of men. The English
Astronomer Royal reports his magnetical and meteorologi-
cal observations as obtained " with the utmost completeness
and exactitude " ; but he is absolutely " stopped from mak-
ing further progress by the total absence of even empiri-
cal theory." His case may be hopeless ; but he is certainly
entitled to credit for not undertaking to make headway in
that business by the help of any theory to be derived from
Biblical theology, the properties of dead substratum, Com-
tean positivism, or any Queckett-figuring of probabilities, or
other sort of Babbage-machine philosophy, however useful
such machinery may be in other matters.
Even the sixty-two or more simple " undecomposable
substances," of which, thus far, the globe appears to chem-
1 Praise of Knmrl., Wvrkt (Mont.), I. 251.
2 Ddineatio, Works (Boston), VII. 55.
442 ALL SCIENCE.
istry to be constructed, being to the eye of mere physical
science more or less dense compactions and crystallizations
of the supposed final elementary atoms into certain mathe-
matical forms, proportions, and equivalents, called bodies,
under the processes of analysis, are increasing in number
in the chemical catalogue, or sometimes diminishing, some
of them being from time to time resolved into other ele-
ments, as nitrogen is reported to have been, lately ; thus
diminishing, or increasing, the number of simples, until we
are left in absolute uncertainty whether the sum total will
finally diminish to unity, or increase to infinity ; and all
these simple substances, if no further resolvable into kinds,
are yet divisible into parts, as some electricians decompose
electricity into infinitely little spheres, that spontaneously
take on a motion of rotation on an axis, and divide each
sphere into axis, poles, equator, centre, circumference,
tropics, parallels, meridians, hemispheres ; 1 but, admitting
the spheres, we have only arrived at a more primary stage
of the proximate materials of construction, being as yet
only secondary forms and modes of substance, even in the
invisible, imponderable, indecomposable, indivisable ethers.
And here ends, it would seem, the entire scope of physical
science, for the present, as to these materials. But then we
have, further, light, heat, electricity (according to some),
magnetism, nervous force, gravitation, and mechanical
power, which are neither ethers, gases, nor clouds of ethe-
real spheres, at all, but, as it seems, merely correlated and
convertible forces " exponents of different forms of
force," 2 say the Academicians, that is, we may suppose,
degrees and modes of power, which yet acts under laws
which are found to be mathematical, and, for that matter,
identical with the laws of power as thought ; and the power
itself would seem to be identical in nature with the power
of thought as cause. And so, in the last physical analysis,
1 De La Rive's Treatise on Electricity, by Walker, London, 1856.
2 Trans. Roy. Soc., Lond. 1850, p. 62.
ALL SCIENCE. 443
and at the last stage of the forms and modes of substance, the
resolvability, as well as the divisibility, of matter is found
passing into an actual totality of power, at the point of be-
ginning of creation, at the very top of Pan's pyramid, where
the transition is so easy to things divine ; and that power,
into which all matter is thus resolved, is found to be of the
nature wholly and absolutely of the power of thought as the
primal thinking essence and cause of all created things.
An actual experimental resolution of these simple elements
into this next stage of degrees and modes of power, and
these, again, into the still further and last stage of the
totality of all power, has not as yet been quite effected, per-
haps, by physical science alone ; though some late experi-
mentation would seem to amount almost to a sensible dem-
onstration that the fact must be so. The demonstration
is rather by the methods of metaphysical science, which
transcends the limits of sensible experience, rises into the
region of this totality of all power, and beholds the subject
from the point of view of the one Eternal Power of Thought ;
for man can do this, being the image of his Maker, and his
soul being so framed as to be " capable of the image of the
universal world."
And so, going out with Bacon through physics into met-
aphysics, we arrive, at last, in the unity and continuity of
all science, at Philosophy itself, and at the Divine Soul of
the universe, in an eternal state of living activity in the per-
petual distribution of variety in the total unity of the creation,
in the universal flow of the Providential order ; for, says
Bacon, " the matter is in a perpetual flux," or as Plato
says, again, " Soul is the oldest and most divine of all
things, of which a motion, by receiving the generation
[taking on generation], imparts an ever flowing existence." 1
Certainly, nothing less than this can give any rational and
conceivable philosophy of the universe. All science leads
directly to such a philosophy ; all facts prove its truth ; and
l Laws, Works (Bohn), V. 543.
444 SCIENCE IX POETRY.
this comprehensible conception is, at least, better than any
incomprehensible absurdity that ever was, or can be, in-
vented. The Baconian caution is a good one : that we are
not to give out " a dream of our fancy for an exemplar of
the world," but rather, " under divine favor, an apocalyptic
revelation and true vision of the tracks and ways of the
Creator in Nature and His creatures." l
8. SCIENCE IN POETRY.
That the author of these plays had arrived at a similar
view of the constitution of the universe, is made clear in
many passages. How else can we understand those re-
markable lines of the " Tempest," in which, having brought
upon the stage a scene among the gods, and made Juno,
Ceres, and Iris enact a play before mortal eyes, when all at
once they vanish at the bidding of the magician, Prospero,
he makes him say :
" These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
Tne solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Tea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep." Act IV. Sc. 1.
For, this vision of a world and this vision of the stage
' O
are made essentially in the same manner and of the same
stuff, are both alike substantial ; and yet, they may vanish,
like an insubstantial pageant, into oblivion, at the bidding
of the Great Magician, when his time shall come.
O '
Again, says Bacon, in the De Augmentis, " This Janus
of the imagination has too different faces ; for the face
towards reason hath the print of truth, but the face towards
action hath the print of goodness " ; an expression, which
i Lectori, Works (Boston), VII. 161.
SCIENCE IX POETRY. 445
appears again in a letter, in which he prays that, living or
dying, " the print of the goodness of King James " may be
in his heart ; l but all Calibans, or other human monsters,
" turn'd to barnacles, or to apes
With foreheads villainous low,"
and all Stephanos and Trinculos, " abhorred slaves," that
" steal by line and level," and
" Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill,"
this magician, by the help of his invisible Ariel, would
soundly hunt out of his kingdom, when his " Genius " should
have " the air of freedom " ; and his labors would not cease
until all his enemies were laid at his feet. And he was able
to make this speech :
" Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him,
When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid
(Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt : the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake ; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
Have wak'd their sleepers ; oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music, (which even now I do,)
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I '11 break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I '11 drown my book." Act V. Sc. 1.
The "Tempest" was nearly the last play written, or perhaps
l Letter of July 30, 1624, Wvrka (Philad.), III. 24.
4-46 SCIENCE IN POETRY.
the last but one or two ; and his book would seem to have
been drowned for a long time, and buried so deep as to be
beyond the reach of any but a " Delian diver." *
"Well might these deep-sounding revelations and true
visions of the traces and stamp of the Creator on his
creations wake up whole books in the soul of Jean Paul
Richter ! These all-comprehending conceptions could come
only from the philosopher, the student of Nature as well as
of Plato, whose thought had fathomed the depths and
hidden mysteries of the universe, and discovered that " God
hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable
of the image of the universal world." For, as he says,
again, " that alone is true philosophy, which doth faithfully
render the very words of the world, and it is written no
otherwise than the world doth dictate, it being nothing else
but the image or reflection of it, not adding anything of its
own, but only iterates and resounds." 2 In his scheme,
philosophy is the text, and the universe is the book of
plates, the illustration and the proof so far ; that is, as
far as it is visible and knowable to observation and ex-
perience : beyond all the scopes of physical science, it is,
as it were, the book without the plates, and for illustration,
the reader must, like the mathematician, construct his own
models, charts, and diagrams. Some men, like children,
see nothing but the plates, and continue all their lives to
be dazzled with the pictures, scarcely conceiving that there
is any text at all ; being capable of nothing but miraculous
child's fables, mystic revelations, airy charms, and various
kinds of spirit-playing and spirit-rapping. Things which
fly too high over their heads must be drawn down to their
senses. Some others advance to the end of the plates and
stop there, finding no more proof of any fact, and so think-
ing that they have arrived at the land's end, because all
around appears to be open sea ; while some others, again,
1 Timaus of Plato, 71; De Aug. Trans., Works (Boston), IX. 22.
a Wisd. of the Ancts., Works (Mont), II. 2.
SCIENCE IN POETRY. 447
stretch onward, constructing their own plates, charts, com-
passes, scopes, being born pilots, and finding no end to the
universe of fact but in the limits of their own lives and
labors ; sometimes too safely denying more land than they
can discover. Still others, by the light of superior genius
shining within them and reflected in the world without
them, industriously, perseveringly, and fainting not, hold
still onward, believing yet with such as Bacon, or Columbus,
that " they are but ill discoverers who think there is no
land, when they can see nothing but sea " ; until they run
against Fate :
" Othello. Who can control his fate? . . .
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail." Act V. Sc. 2.
Bacon understood how " knowledge is a double of that
which is," and that " the truth of being and the truth of
knowing is all one." He considered that " the sovereignty
of man lieth hid in knowledge," as it is beautifully pre-
figured in the Prospero of the " Tempest," and he recog-
nized " the happy match between the mind of man and the
nature of things, and the science or providence comprehend-
ing all things " ; as Hamlet saw, that there was " a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow." He looked upon the
universe as the book of God's works, and he frequently
quotes Solomon as saying, " That it is the glory of God to
conceal a thing, but the glory of a king to find it out, as if,
according to the innocent play of children, the Divine
Majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have
them found out " ; 1 and he says, again, " The spirit of man
is the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the inwardness
of all secrets." 2 And so says the Soothsayer in the play :
" In Nature's infinite book of secrecy,
A little I can read." Ant. and Cfco., Act I. Se. 2.
Nor did he think it was, in Nature,
"A juggling trick, to be secretly open." Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 2.
l Advancement. a Works (Mont.), XVI. Note 66.
448 SCIENCE IN POETRY.
It is no wonder that Goethe, finding that his own " open
secret," as well as many other things, for the means of
comprehending which, he was, as he in some degree ac-
knowledges, much indebted to the philosophies of Plato,
Spinoza, and Kant, had been known to Shakespeare as
well, should pronounce this wonderful Bard of Avon the
greatest of modern poets. Modern transcendental moralists
and poets have discovered many new wonders in Shake-
speare. They have much to say about man being " a
microcosm," though not always particular to mention that
the doctrine is as old as Plato, or the fable of Pan, nor that
Bacon fully comprehended the meaning of that wise saw,
as any one may see in his interpretation of that fable ; but
he frequently speaks of the " ancient opinion that man was
microcosmus" and of " the spirit of man, whom they call
the microcosm " ; and we have it in the play thus :
" Men. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it, that I
am known well enough, too? " Cor., Act II. Sc. 1.
In the style of poetry, but not less according to the truth
of philosophy, Goethe images forth the visible universe as
the " garment " of God :
" Spirit. Thus, at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave the garment which thou see'st him by."
Bacon, in like manner, interpreting the Fable of Cupid, as
being intended to shadow forth some conception of the
Divine Person under the image of Cupid born of the
egg, hatched beneath the brooding wing of Night, and co-
eval with Chaos, speaks of the primary visible matter as
being " the vest of Cupid " ; and a like philosophy seems
to underlie this passage from the Othello :
" Cos. Most fortunately : he hath achiev'd a maid
That paragons description and wild fame ;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
And in th' essential vesture of creation
Does bear all excellency." Act II. Sc. 1.
and this, again, from the " Merchant of Venice " :
SCIENCE IN POETRY. 449
" Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But, whils-t- this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." Act V. Sc. 1.
And the same idea appears in plain prose thus :
" For though we Christians do continually aspire and pant after the land
of promise, yet it will be a token of God's favour towards us in our jour-
neyings through this world's wilderness, to have our shoes and garments (I
mean those of our frail bodies) little worn or impaired." A
And surely the author of the " Cymbeline " was not far
from the same conception, when he wrote concerning Ju-
piter's tablet, delivered down out of his " radiant roof,"
thus :
" [Ghosts vanish. POSTHUMUS wakes, andjinds the Tablet.]
Poslh. What fairies haunt this ground ? A book ? 0, rare one !
Be not, as is our tangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers
[Reads the Tablet.}
'T is still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue, and brain not ; either both, or nothing :
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
I '11 keep, if but for sympathy." Act V. Sc. 4.
Again, Prospero says to Miranda in the " Tempest " :
" Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me. So :
Lie there, my art." Act 1. Sc. 2.
Materialistic science, on the one hand, and unphilosophi-
cal theology, on the other, have, in all times, come equally
short of comprehending the great truth here indicated.
One thinks there is nothing but the garment, or, at least,
that the garment covers nothing: the other thinks like-
wise that the garment covers nothing nobler than itself;
but that the Maker of it, when it was finished and pro-
nounced good, plucked it from him and hung it in the
heavens, and that he has ever since sat apart on a throne
above his " radiant roof," contemplating and judging his
1 Dedication to the Hist, of Life and Death.
29
450 SCIENCE IN POETRY.
handiwork, only occasionally delivering down a miraculous
tablet; but that his art lasted six days, and ceased alto-
gether some six thousand years ago. As that book, that
" rare one." has been more worshipped, in our " new-
fangled mansions," l than what of truth it contains and
reveals, so, on the other hand, has the physical garment
been held nobler than that it covers. The ancients knew
better than this ; for they held with Bacon, Shakespeare's
plays, Berkeley, Goethe, Jean Paul, and many more mod-
ern disciples of the Higher Philosophy, that the visible
world was but the vest of Cupid, the visible manifestation
of the Invisible Essence, which is eternally weaving the
web of His physical garment, in the Roaring Loom of
Time and Space. Indeed, the hieroglyphic Sacred Books of
the ancient Egyptians seem to read much to the same
effect, as deciphered by SeyfTarth : "I am that I am. I
weave the garments (bodies) of men. I am the shining
garment of the sky. I have fashioned the verdure of the
earthly pasture. I have woven the hosts of worlds, the
High and Holy God. Songs and anthems of praise to the
Master Architect, who made the world, who made it for the
habitation of man, the Creator's image." 2 As the highest
ancient, so the highest modern voice, still exclaims : "0
thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwelling-place
of the Unnamed; and thou articulate-speaking Spirit of
Man, who mouldest and modellest that Unfathomable Un-
nameable even as we see, is not there a miracle ! " 8
Time and Space, as necessary laws of thought, divine or
human, as fundamental principles or conditions of ideas
or things, and those complex keys which alone unlock the
door of the inner sanctuaries, have tasked the brains of the
deepest thinkers from Plato and his cave down to Kant, or
Cousin ; and this author, too, seems to have understood
1 Bacon's Theory of the Firmament.
2 Summary (N. York, 1857), p. 65-8.
* Carlyle's French Rev., I. 344.
SCIENCE IN POETRY. 451
something of their nature. He knew that Time carried a
wallet at his back wherein he put alms for oblivion ; and
Imogen, at the departure of Posthumus, watched him,
" till the diminution
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle ;
Nay, followed him, till he had melted from
The smallness of a gnat to air." Cymb., Act 1. Sc. 4.
And Belarius, leaving his companions at the cave, to as-
cend the mountains, says to them :
" Consider
When you above perceive me like a crow,
That it is place which lessens and seta off."
Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.
He understood, too, how things appear great or small to
mortal eyes, without much reference to what they really
are in themselves, and that the truest greatness is some-
times scarcely visible at all to common senses ; as when
Belarius says to his boys of the forest and mountain :
" And often, to our comfort, shall we find
The sharded beetle in a safer hold
Than is the full-winged eagle." lb., Act 111. Sc. 3.
Which may remind the reader of Jean Paul in search of
happiness, now soaring above the clouds of life, and again
sinking down under a leaf in a furrow of his garden, or
rather, again, alternating between the two ; or of Emerson,
who says :
" There is no great and no small
To the soul that maketh all."
But unto " poor unfledged " boys of the forest, that have
" never wing'd from view o' the nest," it is
" A cell of ignorance, travelling abed,
A prison for a debtor, that dares not
To stride a limit." Ib., Act III. Sc. 3.
" The common people," says Bacon, " understand not
many excellent virtues ; the lowest virtues draw praise
from them ; the middle virtues work in them astonishment
or admiration ; but of the highest virtues they have no
452 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
sense or perceiving at all ; but shows and species virtutibus
similes serve best with them " ; and so, according to Ham-
let, the groundlings were, for the most part, " capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise."
9. REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
The doctrine of Plato, that human knowledge is but
reminiscence, seems to have taken strong hold of Bacon's
mind. In the way in which this doctrine is generally stated
and received, it would appear that Plato conceived the
human soul to have had an existence, as such, previous to
its birth into this world, and that, in that former state of
existence, it was in possession of all knowledge ; and so, that
the acquisition of knowledge in this world was simply a
process of recollection or reminiscence of what had been
better known before. So Origen and some learned fathers
of the Church seem to have understood him. Burton ex-
pounds him thus : " Plato in Timaeo and in his Phaedon
(for aught I can perceive) differs not much from this opinion,
that it [the soul] was from God at first, and knew all, but
being inclosed in the body, it forgets, and learns anew,
which he calls reminiscentia, or recalling, and that it was
put into the body for a punishment." 1 It may be doubted
whether Plato has been correctly interpreted in this : his
expression is somewhat obscure. Bacon states the doctrine
a little differently, thus : " That all knowledge is but remem-
brance, and that the mind of man by nature knoweth all
things, and hath but her own native and original motions
(which by the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle
of the body are sequestered) again revived and restored." 2
Here the idea is, that it is the nature of the mind to know
all things, and what is wanting is, that its native and origi-
nal powers, for a time overshadowed and repressed, should
be restored to activity, whereby the strangeness and dark-
1 Anat. of Mel., I. 217 (Boston, 1862).
2 Adv. of Learn., W&rks (Mont.), H. 4.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVIOX. 453
ness of the tabernacle might be cleared up and io-norance
disappear. Something of the sound and quality of this
statement may be discovered as a sort of ground-swell
rolling underneath the dialogue of the Bishops concerning
young Henry V., the late wicked Prince Hal, who had all
at once begun to reason in divinity, and debate of common-
wealth affairs, war, and any cause of policy :
" Cant. Since his addiction was to courses vain ;
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.
Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighbour' d by fruit of baser quality :
And so the Prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness ; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
Cant. It must be so ; for miracles are ceas'd ;
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How things are perfected." Hen. V., Act 1. Sc. 1.
And when Prospero is sounding the youthful Miranda as to
her remembrance of her origin, we have this dialogue :
"Pros. Canst thou remember
A time before we came into this cell ?
I do not think thou canst; for then thou wast not
Out three years old.
Mir. Certainly, sir, I can.
Pros. By what ? by any other house, or person ?
Of any thing the image tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.
Mir. 'T is far off,
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me ?
Pro*. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it,
That this lives in thy mind ? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time '?
If thou remember'st aught, ere thou cam'st here,
How thou cam'st here, thou may'st.
Mir. But that I do not." Act I. Sc. 2.
454 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
This is more in keeping with Bacon's statement, and con-
tains an implied negation of the received interpretation as
teaching a former existence of the human soul as such ; for,
certainly, if a man could remember anything before he
came here, he might also remember how he came. There
is a certain ambiguity in Plato himself as well as in Bacon,
Berkeley, and some more modern writers, on this point,
which arises from the circumstance that they do not always
clearly and expressly distinguish, when treating of the soul,
whether they intend to speak of the human soul, or of the
Divine Soul ; and hence comes the misconception. The
dialectic method of Plato, pursuing the logical path and
process of scientific thinking, endeavored to arrive at all
science in a critical exegesis of those fundamental laws of all
thought, divine or human, which are the same for all souls.
All science can be in the divine mind alone ; but the
human mind as partaker of the universal reason, and being
endowed with a certain scope of intellectual vision and a
certain power of thinking, might, by the exercise of that
power, its native and original motion, in a critical analysis
of that reason, and in a thorough contemplation of nature,
approach, if not quite attain to all science, by coming thus
to a conscious knowledge of all Nature and of the laws and
modes of creative thought, so be only it were crescive in its
faculty ; and this method of attaining, or rather reviving,
knowledge in the soul, was a mere process of recollection
or reminiscence of what had been known before, not by
any means by the human soul in any previous state of
finite existence, but by the divine mind itself, in which is
all knowledge always ; as when, in another place, speaking
of the finite mind only, Plato says, that " recollection is the
influx of thoughts which had left us." 1 Again, he says,
" The whole of nature being of one kindred, and the soul
[i. e. the Divine Soul] having heretofore known all things,
there is nothing to prevent a person [i. e. a human soul],
i Laws, Works (Bohn), V. 151.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION. 455
who remembers what men call learning only one thing,
from again discovering all the rest ; if he has but courage
and seeking faints not For to search and to learn is rem-
iniscence all." 1 And so, he says, again, " This is a recollec-
tion of those things which our soul formerly saw, when
journeying with deity [z. e. when identical with the Divine
Soul itself, and previous to any existence as a special soul],
despising the things which we now say are, and looking up
to that which really is " ; 2 for while the divine mind con-
templates only real existence and the actual truth of things,
the human soul, sequestered as it is under the veil of wild-
ness in the darkness of the tabernacle, in the short-sighted-
ness of weak intellectual vision, and in the half-delusive
purblindness of sense-perception, is, on all sides, limited,
baffled, deceived, confused, and confounded, by mere ap-
pearances and illusions, and still more, by the fantasies of
its own creation. Not, by any means, that it is impossible
for the human mind, by pursuing in a scientific manner
either the dialectic method of pure metaphysics, or the
experimental, inductive, and interpretative method of phys-
ical science by travelling either road to compass, at
length, " the order, operation, and Mind of Nature," and to
arrive, at last, at a scientific knowledge of the actual con-
stitution of the universe and of the order of divine Prov-
idence in it, in a sound and true philosophy, which shall
amount to universal science, or Sapience. But in this the
inductive method must be understood in Bacon's way ; for,
with him, it was not any form of syllogism, nor any system
of logic, nor any mere experimentation, observation, or
experience of isolated and heterogeneous facts, with endless
descriptions and catalogues, but a method for the actual
interpretation of nature, using both the senses and the
intellect, by the help of which the observer should get to
see the facts, whether by the senses, instruments, experi-
1 Meno, Wvrks (Bohn), III. 20.
2 Phatdnu, Workt (Bohn), I. 325.
456 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
ments, analyses, scopes, or in any other way, and then
should be enabled to read, conceive, understand, compre-
hend, and know, what they are, and what they mean ; in
which he would have need of the faculty of intellectual
vision and metaphysical insight, if he would expect to
become a true Interpreter of Nature. He takes especial
care to make the distinction everywhere between nature
considered in reference to the human observer, and nature
in reference to the divine mind creating nature :
" There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating Nature " ;
and he cautions the student against " that grand deception
of the senses, in that they draw the lines of nature with
reference to man and not with reference to the universe ;
and this is not to be corrected except by reason and uni-
versal philosophy." 1
But in either way, illusions must be distinguished from
realities, appearance from essence, sophism from logical
thinking, truth from falsehood, external fact and eternal
truth from the visionary creations of the uncritical fancy,
until the intellectual eye shall come to see all science cor-
rectly, or until the eye of science and sense-perception, by
thorough and complete observation, searching matter and
phenomena to the bottom, shall come to see all the differ-
ence between reality and appearance, cause and effect,
living substance and dead substratum (the last illusion that
will vanish), and arrive at last by that road at a true knowl-
edge of " the last and positive power and cause of nature,"
that self-existent and uncaused power that creates the whole
and is all in all ; when these physical eyes shall discover
that they have been, or can be, nothing more than helps to
the intellectual vision, which alone can clearly see, with
Plato, that " all existences are nothing else but power," and
power of the nature wholly of that power of thought, or
l Works (Boston), VIII. 283.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION. 457
soul, which moves itself, and imparts an overflowing exist-
ence, thinking a universe.
And here it is, upon this common platform, that the two
roads meet. Royal Societies and National Institutes are
beginning to find, after some centuries of busy search and
experimentation, that there is nothing left of matter but
" laws and forces " ; that these are mathematical ; and that
the great powers in nature are but " exponents of different
forms of force," or modes of power : wherein the swelling
waters of our sea of science begin to approach the same
level to which they had risen in Plato, with a fair prospect
that they may finally reach, with Bacon, the spring-head
and fountain source of all philosophy. For physicists and
metaphysicians are like two ships' companies sailing on a
great circle around Bacon's Intellectual Globe, starting off
in opposite directions, but sure to meet at the antipodes in
one and the same land of promise, when
" The wheel is come full circle." Lear, Act V. Sc. 8.
Nor did either Bacon, or Plato, imagine it was possible
for all men, by either method of procedure, to attain to a
complete understanding of all science, much less to a per-
fect knowledge of God and divine things. " A matter of
that kind," says Plato, " cannot be expressed by words, like
other things to be learnt, but by a living intercourse with
the subject, and living with it a light is kindled on a sud-
den, as if from a leaping fire, and being engendered in the
soul, feeds itself upon itself." l No more would Bacon re-
peat the offence of Prometheus against Minerva, and incur
danger of the penalty of a perpetual gnawing of his liver,
being no other, says he, than " that into which men not
unfrequently fall when puffed up with arts and much
knowledge, of trying to bring the divine wisdom itself
under the dominion of sense and reason : from which at-
l Epistle to Dionysius, Works (Bohn), VII. 524.
458 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
tempt inevitably follows laceration of the mind and vexation
without end or rest." 1
At any rate, the statement of Bacon would seem to ad-
mit of a construction something like this : that previous to
the first appearance of the soul in a finite body and form,
(at whatever precise point in the flow of the physical
stream, that may take place,) it was identical with the in-
finite soul itself, and, as such, possessed of all knowledge :
in other words, the finite soul is a special exhibition of the
one divine power of thought itself, invested for the time being
in a visible physical body, or as it may very well be, also,
hereafter, in a spiritual or ethereal invisible physical body,
and limited in that manner on the physical side so far only
as to give the exact objective individuality of body, and in
a special way on the side of its own origin, and in such
manner as to give the exact subjective speciality, " soul
and body compounded " ; the definite personality arising in
the concurrence of the two kinds of limitation. Then, as
to the divine power of thought itself (for, says Bacon, speak-
ing of this power, " knowledge is a power whereby he
knoweth "), remembrance would be co-extensive with the
existent creation and identical with knowledge in God;
and ceasing to remember and know would be oblivion, or
annihilation of what was so forgotten. And so, likewise,
says Plato, " do we not call this oblivion, Simmias,
the loss of knowledge ? " 2 What the finite mind could
remember and know would be its own creations and ac-
quired knowledge, whether it were acquired by the dialectics
of scientific thinking, or by observation and experience ;
and so, what the human mind can come to know, would be,
for the man himself, acquired knowledge, though, when
speaking in relation to the universal soul, it might be called
a kind of reminiscence. So far, then, as human knowledge
may go, it may be called knowledge, or reminiscence, as
i Prometheus, Works (Boston), XIII. 155.
a Ptuedon, Works (Bohn), I. 77.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION. 459
we speak with reference to the one mind or the other. All
knowledge is, and must be, in remembrance. Beyond this
extent of human knowledge, all is oblivion, and as if it
were not, for the finite man ; and beyond the whole pres-
ent state of the divine thought, which is the existent uni-
verse, and beyond the eternal continuity of the divine
Existence and his power to think and create, all is oblivion
and utter nonentity. " It is an effect of one and the same
omnipotency," says Bacon, " to make nothing of somewhat
as to make somewhat of nothing " ; that is, to think some-
thing into existence which did not exist before as such
thing, or to let it vanish again into oblivion, according to
the " twin propositions : nothing is produced from nothing,
and nothing is reduced to nothing." But in this, we must
all the while keep in view the essence, the very substance,
of the thing, and not merely the temporary form : the sub-
stance is withdrawn, and the form vanishes.
The acquiring of knowledge, then, in man, is not exactly
a process of reminiscence or recollection of what he ever
knew before as a special soul : more strictly, for him, it is
a process of getting to see, understand, and know, so
far, what is remembered, thought, and done, in the divine
mind ; and, if possible, that he himself exists, and how, and
that God and the universe exist, and in what manner ; all
which, by the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle
of the body, has been very much sequestered. As to the
finite mind, its own remembered creations constitute a part
of its knowledge, and they are created in that same blank
region of All Possibility, in which the universe itself is
created, and its forgettings are added to that same dark
blank of oblivion into which all forgotten things go, and
which the ancients endeavored to figure to their imagina-
tions under the form of that boundless shadow, the brood-
ing wing of Night.
That something like this was Bacon's conception of the
nature of remembrance and oblivion, is evident in numer-
460 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
ous passages in his writings. Here is one : " Solomon
saith, Tliere is no new thing upon the earth. So that as
Plato had an imagination, That all knowledge was but remem-
brance, so Solomon giveth this sentence, That all novelty is
but oblivion. Whereby you may see that the river of
Lethe runneth as well above ground as below." He cites
further the opinion of " an abstruse astrologer," that " if it
were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that
the fixed stars ever stand, and never come nearer together,
nor go farther asunder ; the other, that the diurnal motion
perpetually keeps time), no individual would last one mo-
ment " ; and, he adds, " certain it is that the matter is in a
perpetual flux, and never at a stay." In the Pythagorean
doctrine of Palingenesia, souls went from one body into
another, first having drunk of the water of Lethe,
" epota prius Lethes undo,"
This same Lethean doctrine of strangeness, darkness,
and oblivion appears very often in the plays also. The
ghost coming up from below, where the river of Lethe
runs under ground, says to Hamlet :
"I find thee apt;
And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed
That roots Itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Would'st thou not stir in this: now Hamlet, hear."
Act I. Sc. 5.
And this saying of Solomon may be traced in the fol-
lowing lines from the Sonnets :
" If there be nothing new, but that which is.
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,
Which laboring for invention bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child? " Son. lix.
And again, in these :
" No ! Tune, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange ;
They are but dressings of a former sight."
Son. cxxiii.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION. 461
The strangeness as well as the darkness of the taber-
nacle seems to have been borrowed from Plato, who says,
" what is strange is the result of ignorance in the case of
all " ; and the play repeats it thus :
" Clo. Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance;
in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog." Twdflh
Night, Act IV. Sc. 2.
And the forest home of Belarius's boys was to them
" A cell of ignorance."
And this -same doctrine of novelty and oblivion under-
lies, no less subtly, these passages from the " Measure for
Measure " :
" Escal. What news abroad i' the world?
Duke. [In disguise.] None, but that there is so great a fever on good-
ness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and
it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be
constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make
societies secure, but .security enough to make fellowships accursed. Much
upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough,
yet it is every day's news." Act III. Sc. 2.
" Duke. [In person.] O, your desert speaks loud ; and I should wrong it,
To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,
When it deserves with characters of brass
A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time,
And razure of oblivion." Act V. Sc. 1.
Again, it appears thus :
" Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist,
Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd."
Son. cxxii.
It must have suggested the imagery of these lines :
" When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When water-drops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty States characterless are prated
To dusty nothing." Tro. and Cr., Act III. Sc. 2.
And the careful student will discover numerous and very
significant traces of this strangeness and darkness of ig
462 REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION.
norance, this sequestration of the tabernacle, and these
subtle doctrines and riddles of Lethe and oblivion, and
some other notable things, in the great play of " Troilus and
Cressida " ; of which a few instances only may be specially
noticed :
" Cal. Appear it to your mind,
That, through the sight I bear in things to Jove,
I have abandon' d Troy, left my possession,
Incurr'd a traitor's name ; exposed myself,
From certain and possess'd conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes : sequestering from me all
That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,
Made tame and most familiar to my nature ;
And here, to do you service, am become
As new into the world, strange, unacquainted."
Act III. Sc. 3.
At the suggestion of Ulysses, Agamemnon and the princes
all " put on a form of strangeness " as a trick upon Achil-
les to humble his pride; and Achilles discourses very
sagely, thus :
" Achil. This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face,
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes : nor doth the eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye oppos'd
Salutes each other with each other's form :
For speculation turns not to itself,
Till it hath travell'd, and is married 1 there
Where it may see itself: this is not strange at all."
Act III. Sc. 3.
This seems to be very much like that " marriage of the
human mind to the universe," in which the divine goodness
was to be " bridesmaid."
" Ulys. I do not strain at the position,
It is familiar, but at the author's drift;
1 So read the Folio and Quarto ; but Mr. White, with Singer, adopting
Collier's forgery on the Folio of 1632, substitutes the word mirrored;
which I think he would not have done, if he had understood the profound
metaphysical meaning of Bacon's " marriage " of the mind to things, and
his use of the word ; for, that the true reading is married, as the Baconian
sense requires, I have no doubt. See White's Shakes., IX., Notes, 155.
REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION. 463
Who in his circumstance expressly proves,
That no man is the lord of anything,
(Though in and of him there be much consisting,)
Till he communicate his parts to others :
Nor doth he himself know them for aught
Till he behold them form'd in th' applause
Where they 're extended ; who, like an arch, reverberates
The voice again ; or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat." Act Iff. Sc. 3.
" It is an excellent invention," says Bacon, expounding
the fable of Pan, " that Pan, or the world, is said to make
choice of Echo only above all other speeches or voices for
his wife ; for that alone is true philosophy which doth faith-
fully render the very words of the world ; and it is written
no otherwise than the world doth dictate, it being nothing
else but the image and reflection thereof, not adding any-
thing of its own, but only iterates and resounds " ; \Iterat
et resonat"~\ which may just as well be translated renders
back and reverberates. And this subtle doctrine of rever-
beration and echo, as well as the marriage of the mind to
the universe, must needs go into the piece, though the verse
should halt for it. Again Ulysses continues :
" Ulys. A strange fellow here
Writes me, that man how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection ;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver." Act III. Sc. 3.
After this touch of sequestration, strangeness, marriage
of the mind to things, or of Pan to Echo, and this rever-
beration and reflection of the world's image, he proceeds to
fold up and veil, " as with a drawn curtain," his doctrine
of oblivion, thus :
" Achil. What! are my deeds forgot?
Ulys. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
464 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour' d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright : to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery." Act III. Sc. 3.
And the discourse winds up thus :
" For Time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch' d, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the new comer." Act III. Sc. 3;
And again, thus :
" Agam Understand more clear,
What 's past, and what 's to come, is strew'd with husks
And formless ruin ef oblivion." Act IV. Sc. 5.
The verdict of the Shakespeare Society upon the whole
traditional biography of William Shakespeare is, that he
was a jovial actor and manager, not much differing from
other actors and managers. " I cannot marry this fact to
his verse," says the learned critic and philosopher. No ;
nor anybody else. This marriage of mind to the universe,
this deep river of Lethe, running as well above ground as
below, this perpetual flux of remembrance and oblivion, in
which all that appears is like the foam on the roaring
waterfall, every instant born, and every instant dead, living
only in the flow, these subtle riddles running underneath
the two writings, will marry to nothing but the truth of
Nature, or to the prose and verse of Francis Bacon :
" Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast."
10. MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
With the skill of a god to conceal what it may be the
glory of a king to find out, and with infinite art and beauty,
the deep-seeing genius of Goethe endeavors to shadow
forth the manner in which the myths of tradition have
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 465
grown into miracles of divine revelation ; and, at the same
time, by sounding through the latest depths of science, to
exhibit all Nature as no less than miraculous. With the
aid of science and the keys of Kant, more potent than the
keys of St. Peter, he was able to unlock and explore the
inner secrets of the universe, and to attain to that " wit
of elevation situate as upon a cliff," where Plato, Bacon,
Leibnitz, Berkeley, and the like of them, had stood more or
less clearly before him, upon that " topmost summit " which
affords " room only for a single person " 1 in an age, and
" Where one but goes abreast"
In like manner, Bacon has much to say of this uppermost
height and narrow strait :
" Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the
confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature
and the errours of men ? "
And again he says : " Science rightly interpreted is a
knowledge of things through their causes " ; and that knowl-
edge, he continues, " constantly expands and by gradual
and successive concatenation rises, as it were, to the very
loftiest parts of nature " ; but " the man, who, in the very
outset of his inquiries, lays firm hold of certain fixed prin-
ciples in the science, and with immovable reliance upon
them, disentangles (as he will with little effort) what he
handles, if he advances steadily onward, not flinching out
of excess either of self-confidence, or of self-distrust, from
the object of his pursuit," if he has but courage and
seeking faints not, may " mount gradually " and " climb
by regular succession the height of things like so many
tops of mountains." Lear's philosopher standing on the
top of this same high cliff, and looking into the abysmal
depths below, exclaims :
" How fearful,
And dizzy 't is to cast one's eyes so low."
i Carlyle's Wilhelm Jtfeister't Travels, ch. xiv.
30
466 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
And the blind Gloster, after the fearful leap had been
taken, though " ten masts at each " made not " the altitude "
which he " perpendicularly fell," was yet not clearly certain
whether he had " fallen or no " ; but one thing he did
certainly know, the fiend was gone :
" Therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities, have preserv'd thee."
And so he learned the lesson :
" I do remember now : henceforth I '11 bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself
' Enough, enough ' / and die. That thing you speak of,
I took it for a man ; often 't would say,
' The fiend, thejiend' : he led me to that place,"
Act IV. Sc. 6.
that height above the confusion of things, whence the fall
is so deep, perpendicularly down, to him, who shall be too
blind to see and keep his step, or be unable to distinguish
a man from a visionary personification of evil ; or who has
no way, and therefore wants no eyes, having stumbled when
he saw ; but to the open eyes of the wise man and the seer,
it is the clear safe sunshine of the empyrean, and the
highest happiness of a human soul, wherein men's impos-
sibilities become divine possibilities : that is to say, if he
shall, with Bacon, deeply study and " intentively observe
the appetences of matter and the most universal passions,
which are in either globe exceeding potent, and transver-
berate the universal nature of things, he shall receive clear
information concerning celestial matters from the things
seen here with us " ; * as when the veil of wildness was
lifted from Prince Hal as he became more and more
crescive in his faculty, and (as King Henry V.) became
" a true lover of the Holy Church," and
" Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
l Works (Mont.), XVI., Note 22.
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 467
Leaving his body as a paradise
T' envelop and contain celestial spirits."
Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1.
And he must proceed upon those physical reasons " which
make inquiry into the universal appetites and passions of
matter, and the simple and genuine motions of bodies.
For upon these wings we ascend most safely to these
celestial material substances." * In short, he must be able
not only to see through this globe, but even to penetrate
" the globe above." 2 It was just so, in the " Lear " :
" Old Man. Alack, sir ! you cannot see your way.
Glos. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:
I stumbled when I saw. 8 Full oft 't is seen,
Our means secure us ; and our mere defects
Prove our commodities
/."'/'/. .... Bless thee, master!
Glos. Is that the naked fellow?
Old M. Ay, my lord.
Glos. Then, pry'thee, get thee gone. If, for my sake,
Thou wilt o'ertake us, hence a mile or twain,
I' the way to Dover, do it for ancient love ;
And bring some covering for this naked soul,
Whom I '11 entreat to lead me. . . .
Here, take this purse, thou whom the Heaven's plagues
Have humbled to all strokes : that I am wretched,
Makes thee the happier: Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution shall undo excess,
And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?
Edg. Aj', master.
Glos. 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.
Edg. Give me thy arm :
Poor Tom shall lead thee." Act IV. Sc. 1.
l Works (Boston), VIII. 497.
Speech, Works (Phil.), II. 274.
Soph. Antigone, 1341-3; (Ed. Tyranmu, 1334-5.
468 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
This Gloster is on the road that conducts the traveller
" to places precipitous and impassable " ; but once arrived
at the brink of the precipice, he will need no further lead-
ing from fiend or philosopher ; for, at that point, a man
shall rise, or fall, by his own weight in the universal scheme
of things. And when he has ceased to swear by devil, or
by demigod, he will be ready to exclaim, with Gloster :
" you mighty gods !
This world I do renounce." Act 1 V. Sc. 6.
For, this height is " above tempests, always clear and
calm ; a hill of the goodliest discovery that man can have,
being a prospect upon all the errours 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." Surely, this Lear was written
by a man, who was, as Bacon says of Solomon, " truly one
of those clearest burning lamps, whereof himself speaketh,
in another place, when he saith, The spirit of man is as the
lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth all inwardness" Heming
and Condell say, in the Preface to the Folio, speaking for
the author, that they would " leave you to others of his
friends, whom, if you need, can be your guides : if you
need them not, you can lead yourselves and others." Doubt-
less the writer of this well knew, that there was a height
of human culture, from which the reader would " no lead-
ing need," being himself one of those
" clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities."
And it is further not improbable that Gloster's idea of
precipitating himself over the cliff of Dover was partly
suggested by the story, which Bacon relates in his " Exper-
ment Solitary touching flying in the Air," thus: "It is
reported that amongst the Leucadians, in ancient time,
upon a superstition, they did use to precipitate a man from
a high cliff into the sea ; tying about him with strings, at
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 469
some distance, many fowls ; and fixing unto his body divers
feathers, spread, to break the fall." 1
Again, says the Essay on Death : " The soul, having
shaken off her flesh, doth then set up for herself, and con-
temning things that are under, shows what Finger hath
enforced her." This rather singular metaphorical use of
the word finger makes its appearance again in the Cymbe-
line, thus :
" Sooth. The fingers of the powers above do tune
The harmony of this peace." Act V. Sc. 5.
And Hamlet, considering of the subject, very much after
the manner of both Plato and Bacon, soliloquizes thus:
" To be, or not to be ; that is the question :
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them ? To die : to sleep,
No more : and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep:
To sleep ! perchance to dream : ay, there 's the rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled of this mortal coil,
Must give us pause." Act III. Sc. 1.
And when he comes to his sudden end, which Horatio
announces " to the yet unknowing world " as an upshot
" Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads,"
his last words are,
"The rest is silence."
Thus ended the pause ; and in such manner as to leave
room for doubt, whether his final conclusion may not have
been something like that of the Socratic poet, Euripides,
when he says :
l Natural History, 886.
470 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
" The souls of dying men indeed live not,
But surely have immortal knowledge all,
Into th' immortal ether falling: " Helene, 1014-6.
or, as in Clarence's dream,
" but still the envious flood
Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air."
Richard III., Act I. Sc. 4
or, as again, in the " Measure for Measure," thus :
" Claudio. Death is a fearful thing.
Isab. And shamed life a hateful.
Clau. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribb'd ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world ; or to be, worse than worst,
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine, howling! 't is too horrible.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death." Act HI. Sc. 1.
But silence is not necessarily death for the soul. That
the soul may still live, after the dissolution of the body, on
the soundest logical and scientific principles, must be con-
sidered as metaphysically possible ; but if so, necessarily
in time and space, and therefore necessarily under some
form of its own, with or without a bodily investment, how-
ever thin and ethereal it may be, and in some place where-
soever in the boundless universe of God. And it must
have continuity in time, which may have an end, or be
eternal. But identity with the infinite soul must be the
extinction and end of the finite soul. The indestructibility
of the fundamental essence of the soul is one thing ; that of
the finite soul, as such, is quite another thing. In view of the
entire course of Providence, as it may be gathered from the
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 471
scientific history of the past and present universe, sacred
scriptures, all the records of tradition, and what little we
can read
"In Nature's infinite book of secrecy,"
or in " the infinite and secret operations of Nature," accord-
ing to Bacon's " Cogitations concerning Human Knowl-
edge," on all that we can get to see and know of the
ends of Providence in the universal order, and according
to what we are able to discover and understand and com-
prehend of the total plan and probable continuation thereof
in the future purposes of the Creator, we may believe with
Plato, Jesus, Paul, Cicero, Boethius, Bacon, and many
others of the most learned and wise, greatest and best, and
most divine men of all ages, that the immortality, that is,
the eternal continuity of the soul, in time, is in the highest
degree probable ; but for the fact, whether any given soul
will be thus immortal or not, that must, from the very
nature of the thing, rest in the divine will of the Eternal
Father, in the future course of his providence. Therefore
must it be forever impossible to be foreknown to God, or
revealed to man, for certain fact. And whether any finite
soul will be continued in that eternally continuing provi-
dence as a fit part of the divine plan, whether it will be
saved or lost, remembered or forgotten, may depend, at
last, very much on the fact, when the time shall come, or
indeed at any time, whether such soul be worth remem-
bering and saving, or not :
" How would you be
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are ? O, think on that ! "
Measure for Measure, Act II. 3c. 2.
From this same elevation, Goethe's wanderer in the
mountains descends all at once into a microscopic com-
munity of common human affairs ; or sees, in a sort of
magical perspective, a world of transactions in a small box ;
or looks across a vast chasm, and beholds a fellow-being so
472 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
far removed, that communication would seem to be, as it
were, between two souls in different worlds,
" Like one that stands upon a promontory,
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye."
3 Hen. VL, Act HI. Sc. 2.
So intent, for the moment, was this wanderer on his dear
object, that he was just on the point of jumping sheer over
the gulf between, when a wiser companion, seizing him by
the skirts of conscience, drew him back. Macbeth, looking
another way, hesitated and considered,
" that but 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." Act I. Sc. 7.
With Goethe as with Bacon, raised upon this high cliff,
all the miracles of tradition, verbal or written, sink into
painted walls and tapestries for the edification of children
of the mountains, with their new Joseph and Virgin Mary,
in comparison with the boundless miracle of the actual
universe, that lay an " open secret " to them, though for the
most part invisible to the eyes of men in general. Says
Bacon : " I had rather believe all the fables of the legend,
and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this univer-
sal frame is without a mind ; and therefore God never
wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary
works convince it." 1 But, he continues again, there were
some also that stayed not here ; but went further, and held
that if the spirit of man, whom they call the microcosm, do
give a fit touch to the spirit of the world, by strong imagi-
nations and beliefs, it might command nature ; for Para-
celsus and some darksome authors of magic do ascribe to
imagination exalted, the power of miracle-working faith.
With these vast and bottomless follies men have been in
part entertained." Yea ; and so they still are, vastly, and
i Nat. Hist., Works (Mont.), IV. 488.
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 473
in many respects most perniciously entertained ; for the
truth is, as Bacon declares in his Sacred Meditations, thus :
" Now every miracle is a new creation, and not according
to the first creation " ; and he says, again, " as for the nar-
rations touching the prodigies and miracles of religions,
they are either not true, or not natural ; and therefore, im-
pertinent for the story of nature." Very like was the
opinion of Von Hardenberg, that " miracles, as contradic-
tions of Nature, are amathematical. But there are no
miracles in that sense. What we so term is intelligible
precisely by means of mathematics ; for nothing is miracu-
lous to mathematics "; that is, to the science of the laws
of creative thought. So Bacon says, again, " that kings
ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of nature, and
ought rarely to put in use their supreme prerogative, as God
doth his power of working miracles." 1 Nothing but the
power of Heaven could command nature; as when King
Henry's conscience
" fir8t receiv'd a tenderness,
Scruple, and prick, in certain speeches utter'd
By th' Bishop of Bayonne,"
and the question, whether his daughter were legitimate,
entered the region of his heart " with a splitting power,"
he is made to say,
" First, methought,
I stood not in the smile of Heaven ; who had
Commanded nature, that my lady's womb,
If it conceiv'd a male child by me, should
Do no more offices of life to 't than
The grave does to the dead." Hen. VIII., Act II. Sc. 4.
Nevertheless, Bacon's elevation to the woolsack was, in
the style of popular eloquence, at that day, as seen in his
speeches, " the immediate work of God " and the King, and
" their actions were no ordinary effects, but extraordinary
miracles ; " and the plays adopt the same style : " Exceed-
ing miracles ! " "A most most high miracle ! " though
i Adv. of Learn., Book II.
474 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
even a Bishop ventures to say, in the play, " miracles are
ceased." And the idea seems to have become so common
and popular as to get into the comedy of " All 's Well that
Ends Well," thus :
"Laf. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical per-
sons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless.
Hence is it we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming
knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.
Par. Why 't is the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our
latter times.
Ber. And so 't is.
Laf. To be relinquish'd of the artists,
Par. So I say ; both of Galen and Paracelsus.
Laf. Of all the learned and authentic fellows
Par. Right, so I say.
Laf. That gave him out incurable
Par. Why, there 'tis; so say I too.
Laf. Not to be help'd,
Par. Right as 't were a man assur'd of a
Laf. Uncertain life and sure death.
Par. Just, you say well ; so would I have said.
Laf. I may truly say it is a novelty to the world.
Par. It is indeed : if you will have it in shewing, you shall read it in
What do you call these ?
Laf. A shewing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.
Par. That 's it: I would have said the very same.
Laf. Why your dolphin is not lustier: 'fore me I speak in respect
Par. Nay, 't is strange, 't is very strange ; that is the brief and tedious
of it ; and he 's of a most facinorous spirit, that will not acknowledge it to be
the
Laf. Very hand of heaven." Act II. Sc. 3.
And as early as 1594, we find the philosopher writing a
Masque for the Christmas Revels of Gray's Inn, in which
he makes the second counsellor, " advising the study of
philosophy," address himself to the Prince of Purpoole in
these words :
" Thus, when your Excellency shall have added depth of knowledge to
the fineness of your spirits and greatness of your power,
[" Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution." Tro. and Cres., Act I. Sc. 3.]
then indeed shall you be a Trismegistus ; and then when all other miracles
and wonders shall cease by reason that you shall have discovered their natu-
ral causes, yourself shall be left the only miracle and wonder of the world."
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 475
The fault still is, not so much in inflating plain things
into marvels, or in making modern and familiar, things that
are supernatural and causeless, as in attempting to con-
ceive of things both natural and supernatural, not only as
not naturally caused at all, but as supernatural ly caused
in a sense contradictory to all reason, the known laws of
thought, the very nature of things, and what we know of
the divine nature and the order of divine providence in
the universe ; as for instance, considerable question is
made, as well by men of science as theologians, of what
is called the Development Theory as against various theo-
logical theories of the Six Days Works : whereas the
true theory might be better stated thus : The whole is,
visibly, to the eye of the philosopher, a compound order of
development, evolution, and new creation, in radiated linear
branching descent, in directions in time from centre to
circumference, on which is the distribution in space at a
spheroidal right angle to a universal radius, in zoological
provinces, which are ever carried forward on the line of
lapsing time over changing surfaces in space, with succes-
sive evolution and continuous new creation of artistic type
of form in the continuous destruction and extinction of old
types of form (individuals, species, genera), giving, coor-
dinated always in time and space (which, we must remem-
ber, are merely laws of thought creative or destructive), in
variable succession of creative progression and destructive
retrogression, under perpetual geological oscillation and
almost constant change of physical condition, under the
laws of physics (also those same laws of thought creative or
destructive) sea, shore, and land ; water, air, earth, and
tree ; hot, tropical, temperate, and cold ; first, the funda-
mental unity of type in the primordial cell, and thence the
kingdom, sub-kingdoms, branches, classes, orders, families,
genera, species, individuals, unity and difference, ac-
cording to the Transcendental Architectonic of the Divine
Idea ; at once, a natural and a supernatural order, the two
476 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
being so far one and identical ; for it is a work of thought
in the order of "immortal providence." And so of the
vegetable kingdom, and indeed of all forms of matter,
down to the last atoms of the atomic theories ; and thence
further on, with the metaphysician and philosopher, who is
able to see through physics into metaphysics, quite through
the last forms and modes of substance, light, heat, elec-
tricities, motions, powers, into the totality of all sub-
stance as the Divine Power of Thought itself in activity
by the necessary fact of existence, artistically thinking,
creating, the universe ; and who is able to grasp all that,
reducing at once the greatest, of all marvels to a plain
thing. And so, whether the phenomena of creation be to
be called natural and caused, or supernatural and causeless,
depends mainly on this : whether we look at it from the
physical or the metaphysical side, and with the natural or
supernatural eye. In reality, it is all the same thing in
either case ; "a natural perspective that is, and is
not " ; 1 or like " perspectives that show things inward
when they are but paintings"; 1 except that the whole
materialism of dead substratum, and a great deal of the
old theological fog and mere moonshine, should be cleared
at once from our minds and swept sheer off into oblivion,
whither it is fast going, and there an end of it ; for, " as
the poet said of the creation of the world," according to
Bacon's speech : " Materiam noli queer ere, nulla fuit."
This dark cloud of superstition may never be entirely
swept away. It is as old as the human race ; and, in vari-
ous changing shapes, it has hung over mankind like an in-
curable incubus, laden for the most part with awful terrors
and diabolical horrors, and with severe but perhaps neces-
sary discipline, for the poor children of men. And it
seems destined to be as perpetual as that dismal cloud-belt
that perennially overhangs the equatorial ocean. But the
skilful navigator, if he cannot disperse the cloud, may yet
i Nat. Hist.
MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY. 477
escape from underneath its dark and tearful shadow. He
will inevitably sleep in equatorial dead calms, or dance his
weary life out in the lugubrious doldrums of the Horse-
Latitudes, if he do not Happier winds may take him
more prosperously on his life-voyage, if he can but reach
them ; and, if he can also keep clear of the Arctic night of
un metaphysical physics and orthodox theology, he may
have temperate sailing, on an endless parallel, in the eter-
nal radiance of the true Pole-star of the universe ; but
otherwise, never.
Nor need there be any fear of anything being done, in
the entire universe, without a cause ; nor that all mankind
will adopt the phrenologico-biology and perpetual-motion
machine theories of M. Auguste Comte, Harriet Martineau,
and George Henry Lewes, nor the childish vagaries of
dreamy spiritual rappers ; at least, until all shall have
sunk into that degree of intellectual stupidity, or super-
stitious folly, wherein the knowledge of causes, the true
nature of cause, and the mode of that thing which is un-
caused, is completely ignored, and all attempt to know it
summarily renounced. On the contrary, a very large por-
tion of mankind may be presumed to be still capable of
appreciating what Bacon made the first and foremost article
of his plan of Solomon's House, or a College of the Uni-
versal Science, thus : " The End of our Foundation is
the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things ;
and the enlarging the bounds of Human Empire to the
effecting all things possible " ; or, as he says, again, the
true end of knowledge " is a discovery of all operations and
possibilities of operations from immortality (if that were
possible) to the meanest mechanical practice." 1 He well
knew, that " in the entrance of philosophy, when the second
causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves
to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may in-
duce some oblivion of the highest cause." There were
l Valerius Terminus,
478 MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.
also to be in this Solomon's House, " houses of deceits of
the senses ; where we represent all manner of feats of jug-
gling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions ; and their
fallacies. And surely you will easily believe that we that
have so many things truly natural, which induce admira-
tion, could, in a world of particulars, deceive the senses, if
we could disguise those things, and labor to make them
seem more miraculous. But we do hate all impostures and
lies. These are, my son, the riches of Solomon's
House." 1
1 New Atlantic
CHAPTER VII.
SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION.
THepl rbv iravriav BacrUta itavr ei, xat exc'ifou eVexa irdtra, Kai ixtivo amo? airav-
riav Tutv xaAui/. Concerning the King of all, all things are, and for his sake are
all things, and he is the cause of all the beautiful. Plato's Epist. IT. to Dionysius.
" The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sens* ;
the last was the light of reason ; and his Sabbatn work ever since to the illumina-
tion of his Spirit." Bacon's Essay of Truth,.
1. THE TRUE RELIGION.
BENJAMIN CONSTANT, setting out upoa an investigation
into the origin and progress of all religions, with a purpose
of showing that Christianity was only one of the many
superstitions of the world's history, becomes himself con-
vinced that there is such a thing as religion in itself, rest-
ing on an eternal foundation of divine truth, and recog-
nized more or less distinctly in all phases of human expe-
rience, and in all forms of human society, from the lowest
barbarisms up to the highest degree of civilization ; and
Goethe, no less learned in historical criticism, and perhaps
a still deeper philosopher, finds that there are at least
" three Reverences " and " one true Religion," which stand
upon such eternal foundation. Morell, writing a philoso-
phv of religion, finds, also, that all religious opinion and
belief must come to man through his own reason only ;
and that there can be no revelation to men of things alto-
gether above their comprehension. These and many other
learned writers and scholars, both ancient and modern, take
religion to be something universal and necessary, founded
in the very nature and constitution of the soul of man,
4.80 THE TRUE RELIGION.
wherein he is made sensible of his dependence upon " some
Higher Powers." Lord Bacon had attained to a like com-
prehension of the true nature of religion. " The true re-
ligion," he says, " is built upon the rock ; the rest are tossed
upon the waves of time." This metaphor appears again in
the plays :
" Wol. Though perils did
Abound as thick as thought could make them, and
Appear in forms more horrid, yet my duty
(As doth a rock against the chiding flood)
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours."
Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2.
And again, thus :
" Tit. For now I stand as one upon a rock,
Environ'd with a wilderness of sea;
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him."
Tit. And., Act in. Sc. 1.
The same metaphors upon the same subject appear again
in a letter drafted by Bacon for Essex, thus :
" Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favours be cast
upon the waters, and my honours be committed to the wind, yet standeth
surely built upon the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and
unattempted." 1
And in the same Essay (of the Vicissitude of Things),
he observes, that " there be three manner of plantation of
new sects : by the power of signs and miracles ; by the
eloquence and wisdom of speech and persuasion ; and by
the sword " :
" Gent. This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else, make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow." Win. Tale, Act V. Sc. 1.
Christianity in itself is perhaps not a sect, nor any man's
creed of belief, whether that of Channing, Edwards, Wes-
i Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 193.
THE TRUE RELIGION. 481
ley, Penn, Cranmer, Luther, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St
Peter, or even of Jesus of Nazareth, nor the decree of any
Church council, but rather the true religion of holy men.
It is not exactly philosophy ; but it presumes a true philos-
ophy of the universe to be already established in the mind
of the true believer. Christianity would seem to proclaim
the fact by authority of miracle, all the miracles of the
universe, no less than some few, and the universal revela-
tion therein, that God, the creator and preserver of all
created things, reigns in and over all His universe, judges
the quick and the dead, and raises, if He will, the soul to
life, light, and immortality. Philosophy unfolds the past
and present order of His providence in the known and
knowable universe of fact and truth, and endeavors to ex-
plain, as far as man can comprehend, how it is possible for
God and Nature and Man to exist as they have existed,
and do in fact exist, and in what manner, and how it is
conceivable and credible that He can create and destroy,
remember and forget, govern, judge, and make souls im-
mortal. Christianity is religious culture and worship :
philosophy is the science of sciences, the Universal Science.
Philosophy is to Christianity what Plato was to Jesus
Christ. There must -be a Plato before there can be a
Jesus, and a philosophy before there can be a Christianity.
Every man's Christianity will be according to his philos-
ophy, whether he knows it or not. And when he has ad-
vanced his philosophy and his Christianity together to a
knowledge of God and His providence in the universe, he
will be sure to find them one, but two names for " the
same thing more large." Religion is the live worship of
the living God. "It is not without cause," says Bacon,
" that the Apostle calls Religion the Rational Worship of
God ; " * and again he says, " As to seek divinity in philos-
ophy is to seek the living amongst the dead, so to seek pbi-
i De Aug. Scient., Lib. IX.
31
482 THE TRUE RELIGION.
losophy in divinity is to seek the dead amongst the liv
ing":-
" There 's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will."
Hamkt, Act V. Sc. 2.
He was one of the men, or rather the man of that age,
for whom " this approaching and intruding into God's
secrets and mysteries" had no terrors; nor, as it is even
now with some, was he " unjustly jealous that every reach
and depth of knowledge, wherewith their conceits have not
been acquainted, should he too high an elevation of man's
wit, and a searching and ravelling too far into God's
secrets " ; on the contrary, his spirit was rather that of
Lear in the play :
" Lear. So we '11 live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of Court news ; and we '11 talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins ; who 's in, who 's out ;
And take upon us the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies : and we '11 wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th' moon." Act V. Sc. 3.
But, in a Latin fragment, never printed until lately, he
takes care to distinguish the true limits of sobriety in the
approach of sense-perception merely to things divine ; " for
if we attempt an impudent flight, on the ill-glued wings of
sense, as if audaciously to explore more nearly the nature,
ways, will, rule, and other mysteries of God, certain downfall
awaits us. The summary law of Nature, which is like the
vertical point of the Pyramid, in which all things come to-
gether into unity, this, I say, and nothing else, is with-
drawn from the human intellect .... Nor let any one
fear that the Faith can be more diametrically opposed by
Sense than by what is now believed by virtue of divine in-
spiration [" afflatus "] ; such as the creation of the world
out of nothing ; the incarnation of God ; the resurrection
of the body. But for me it is perfectly clear, that Natural
THE TRUE RELIGION. 483
Philosophy, which is (next after the word of God) the most
certain remedy for superstition, is also (what may seem
wonderful) the most approved aliment of faith; and the
more deeply it penetrates, the more profoundly is the
human mind imbued with religion." 1
O
Allusion is frequently made in the plays to the ebb and
flow of the sea and the action of the moon ; this was a new
theory of the tides, at that day, and Bacon had particularly
studied the subject ; and he wrote a treatise " Of the Ebb
and Flow of the Sea," in which the action of the moon is
curiously discussed, and the doctrine laid down very much
as in the play :
" P. Hen. Thou say'st well, and it holds well, too; for the fortune of us
that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea; being governed,
as the sea is, by the moon." 1 Ben. IV., Act I. Sc. 2.
Having lived in a world-prison, taking all knowledge for
his province, from the beginning, when walled prisons were
not far off, he was fully aware of the dangers which a phi-
losophical writer had to incur from these same " packs and
sects of great ones." They appear to have infested all ages :
Anaxagoras had to flee from them ; they made Socrates
drink hemlock, and sold Plato into slavery ; Aristotle had
to escape through a back door into Thessaly ; Jesus was
crucified, Bruno burnt, Ramus massacred, and Campanella
tortured ; John Selden had to apologie, and Des Cartes, to
hide his book ; Spinoza was terribly excommunicated, and
Locke banished ; Kant had to stalk, Fichte, to resign, and
even Cousin, to take refuge in Germany. Bacon, remem-
bering that one of the uses of poetry was ' to retire and
obscure what is taught or delivered," and that " the secrets
and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy " might be
involved in fables, chose a more cunning way, and got safely
through by wearing a mask. But the Great Instauration
itself, strictly scientific in character, and steering as clear as
possible of any direct conflict with them, and full of paren-
i Cogitationes, Works (Boston), V. 435.
484 THE TRUE RELIGION.
thetical savings of the established theologies, even though it
flew too high over men's heads in general to be understood
by them, drew down on him some animadversion from the
current orthodoxies ; so much so, that his friend, Mr. Tobie
Matthew, deemed it worth while to give him an early
caution on that head ; to which Bacon replied : " For your
caution of churchmen and church matters, as for any im-
pediment it may be to the applause and celebrity of my
work, it moveth me not But the truth is, that I at
all have no occasion to meet them in any way, except it be
as they will needs confederate with Aristotle, who, you
know, is intemperately magnified by the schoolmen
Nay, it doth more fully lay open, that the question between
me and the ancient is not of the virtue of the race, but of
the Tightness of the way. And to speak truth, it is to the
other but as Palma to Pugnus, part of the same thing more
large." 1 In the Advancement, he gives a general view of
his scheme of all knowledge, which he divides into Divinity
and Philosophy. By Divinity, he appears to have under-
stood, or at least to have included in it, " Inspired Theology,"
or the revealed religion of the Bible : it might not have
been safe for him altogether to have omitted it, at that day.
This department of inquiry, however, he places beyond the
pale of philosophy, and being thus summarily disposed of,
it no longer disturbs his philosophical investigations. In
the Novtim Organum, he ventures to say, that the cor-
ruption of philosophy, by the mixing of it up with super-
stition and theology, is of a much wider extent, and is most
injurious to it, both as a whole and in its parts
Against it, we must use the greatest caution ; for the
apotheosis of error is the greatest evil of all, and when
folly is worshipped, it is, as it were, a plague-spot upon the
understanding. Yet some of the moderns have indulged
this folly, with such consummate inconsiderateness, that
they have endeavored to build a system of natural philos-
1 Letter to Matthew.
THE TRUE RELIGION. 485
ophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and
other parts of Scripture, seeking thus " the dead amongst
the living." He is considering the Scriptures here, in the
popular way, as the source of that living divinity, compared
with which philosophy is, as it were, dead science. Doubt-
. less if he had written in another age, or even in this, though
to a wide extent still, the authority of Prophets, Law-givers,
Kings, Messiahs, Apostles, Teachers and Workers of
Miracles, and even the very letter and text of what they
said, or wrote, the old poetic genesis of creation, books of
ancient Law, Histories, Chronicles, Prophecies, Proverbs,
Lamentations, Songs, Psalms, Gospels, Acts, and Epistles,
in prose and verse, in Hebrew and Greek, are allowed to
have more weight, and are more devoutly reverenced, than
living divinity itself,
" and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words," Ham., Act III. Sc. 4.
he would have reversed the order of the expression, without
changing his own meaning, and said, seeking thus the living
amongst the dead ! But " to turn religion into a comedy
or satire ... is a thing far from the devout reverence of a
Christian " ; and so long as " the church is situate as it were
upon a hill, no man maketh question of it, or seeketh to
depart from it" ; but " there be as icell schismatical fashions
as opinions" and some appropriate " to themselves the
names of zealous, sincere, and reformed ; as if all others
were cold minglers of holy things and profane, and friends
of abuses. Yea, be a man endued with great virtues and
fruitful in good works, yet if he concur not with them, they
term him (in derogation) a civil and moral man, and com-
pare him to Socrates or some heathen philosopher : whereas
the wisdom of the Scriptures teacheth us contrariwise to
judge and denominate men according to their works of the
second table ; because they of the first are often counter-
feited and practised in hypocrisy. . . . And St. James saith,
486 THE TRUE RELIGION.
This is true religion, to visit the fatherless and the widow, etc.
So as that which is with them but philosophical and moral,
is, in the phrase of the Apostle, true religion and Chris-
tianity." 1 Indeed, when it is considered with what des-
perate pertinacity and dire perversion of all reason and
sense the modern mind still persists in looking for living
light only in the dead works of past history, taking old
phosphorescent gleams for the veritable divine fire of the
universe, one might almost be persuaded it would be a
thing scarcely to be regretted, if a certain African Society
of London should actually succeed in carrying the Bible
into Africa.
In what is expressed in his writings concerning the re-
vealed religion of Biblical theology, it appears that his
views were of a liberal, comprehensive, and elevated char-
acter. The Prayers and Confession of Faith, which he put
in writing, exhibit a sublime conception of the Divine
Nature, the subtlest metaphysical theism, and a profound
reverence for divine things. Nowhere does he descend to
the level of a narrow bigotry, a contracted dogma, or any
childish superstition. On the one hand, distinguishing " the
faith " from science, he handed it over to the ministers of
inspired theology : while on the other, he took care that
God and religion should not by his aid be narrowed down
to the set formula of any established church, dwarfed into
the compass of any extant orthodox reason, nor circum-
scribed within the limits of any present state of knowledge.
" Out of the contemplation of nature, or ground of human
knowledge, to induce any verity or persuasion concerning
the points of faith," was, in his judgment, " not safe ; " nor
ought we to attempt to draw down or submit the mysteries
of God to our reason ; but, contrariwise, to raise and ad-
vance our reason to the divine truth." 2 And so, also, '* in
the true inquisition of nature, men should accustom theni-
1 Controversies of the Church, I. Spedd. Letters and Life, 80-91.
2 Adv. of Learn., Works (Mont), II., 129.
THE TRUE RELIGION. 487
selves by the light of particulars to enlarge their minds to
the amplitude of the world, and not reduce the world to the
narrowness of their minds." * On the contrary, the inter-
preter of nature rising from particulars and expanding his
mind to the breadth of the universal world, and the human
reason, searching into the mysteries of the Divine Being
by the light of faith, and, with sapience, advancing to the
full comprehension thereof, must both at length arrive at
the same spring-head and fountain of all science, and find
themselves standing together, at last, upon the same uni-
versal platform.
In philosophy, he considered that "the contemplations
of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumfered in
nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself" ; whence
he divided knowledge into three kinds ; first, Divine Phi-
losophy or Natural Theology ; second, Natural Philosophy,
including Metaphysics ; and third, Human Philosophy or
Humanity, including all that pertains to the mind and the
practical life of man. But over and above all, he thought
" it was good to erect and constitute one universal science,
by the name of Philosophia Prima, or Summary Philosophy,
or as he sometimes calls it, Philosophy itself. The grounds
and scope of this Summary Philosophy are merely indicated,
rather than systematically and at large expounded in his
works. Enough, however, appears, to show that he com-
prehended it in the full depth, breadth, and significance of
a universal philosophy ; and it was nothing less than realism
and idealism all in one, an identity-philosophy. The fun-
damental difference between cause and effect, substance
and phenomena, being and appearance, universals and par-
ticulars, degrees and differences, unity and variety, he
draws as clearly and in almost the same language as the
best of the moderns. " Logic," says he, " considereth of
many things as they are in notion, and this philosophy as
they are in nature ; the one in appearance, the other in
1 Nat. Hist, 290.
488 THE TRUE RELIGION.
existence " ; but he had found this difference " better made
than pursued." l He comprehended the necessary relation
of cause and effect as consisting in essential continuous
activity, or living power ; and he had some adequate con-
ception of the true nature of the First Cause, as " the last
and positive power and cause in nature," and of " the mode
of this thing which is uncaused." There is no extended
exposition of this Higher Philosophy in his writings, and it
may be admitted that his expressions are somewhat general
and vague ; but the outlines are there. He did not dwell
here. Metaphysical thinking, from the time of Plato down
to his own time, and especially in the centuries next pre-
ceding him, had degenerated into mere cloudy logomachies
and dreamy mystical vagaries, and the great need was, then,
that the human mind should be turned about and con-
fronted with actual Nature, and drawn into the surer
methods and safer paths of physical inquiry as the best, if
not the only, means of escape from the bewilderment of
mysticism, the wordy stupidities of scholastic logic, super-
stitious ignorance, and the all-deadening torpidities of ortho-
dox theology. Nor is it to be supposed that mere begin-
ners in the study would very easily make it out in his
writings alone. But such as have been made masters in
this hidden science by the study of the great transcendental
teachers of it, from Plato downward to our time, will be
apt to conclude, that the whole view lay open to him, and
that he was at least able to be a master in poetry, which,
according to a great modern critic and philosopher, is " the
essence of all science, and requires the purest of all study
for knowing it." 1
In the general upshot, divine philosophy ascends up to
God ; natural philosophy is circumfered in nature ; and
human philosophy, or humanity, comprises all possible
human culture, in which philosophy itself has its end and
use for man, whose life begins in the sphere of physical
l Advancement. 2 Carlyle's Misc., I. 321.
THE TRUE RELIGION. 489
nature, in the midst of the woods, thorns, and briers of the
earth and the mere necessities upon it, and ascends upward
by the several and successive degrees of ascent to the high-
est tops of mountains and uppermost elevations of nature,
reaching, at last, " the magnificent temple, palace, city, and
hill " of the Muses, through the entire range of human
culture, from the fundamental plain of nature up to the
height of the divine philosophy, taking for " rule and guide,"
that " all knowledge is to be limited by religion, and to be
referred to use and action." Philosophy itself, however,
having its source at the spring-head of the highest cause,
and beginning at one pole, as it were, of the Intellectual
Globe, descends through the metaphysics of universals
downward into actual nature ; but the most successful way
of studying it is, to begin in the field and sphere of physi-
cal nature itself, and, as it were, at the other pole of the
Intellectual Globe, and to proceed by the paths, methods,
and instruments of natural philosophy, taking metaphysic
as handmaid and guide, until this second philosophy shall
reach the height of the first philosophy, and the two
become one, when the globe is completed, in a thorough
comprehension of God, Man, and Nature, and in a per-
fect knowledge of the universal science and all philosophy.
Then, the descent to all the practical arts would be per-
fectly easy, and the highest human culture would be at-
tainable ; but the end was not to be merely " contemplative
enjoyment," but " a complete power of action." And so,
in a true sense,
" the art and practic part of life
Must be mistress to this theoric." 1 Henry VI., Act I. Sc. 1.
For it is laid down, that " nothing can be found in the
material globe, which has not its parallel in the crystalline
globe or Intellect ; that is, nothing can come into practice,
of which there is not some doctrine or theory." 1
i De Aug., Sclent., Lib. VIII., Works (Boston), III. 90.
490
THE TRUE RELIGION.
And so, Jupiter, in the " Cymbeline," descends, sitting
upon an eagle, and ends his speech thus :
" Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline." Act V. Sc. 4.
As touching the moral order in this business, it is (as it
were) reverted on itself, the necessary practical order of
progress for man ascending ever upward, while the actual
order of elevation, excellence, and degree, stands eternally
fixed and immovable ; and in the course of human culture,
the soul, seeking " to climb Heaven " by the Hill of the
Muses, or the Pyramid of Pah, in this Intellectual World,
must proceed in a sort of inverted tunnel, thus :
JUSTICE.
Civil Law: The State.
Physical Necessities: Property: Family.
For, according to Bacon, " knowledges are as pyramids,
whereof history and experience are the basis. And so of
Natural Philosophy the basis is Natural History : the stage
next the basis is Physic ; the stage next the vertical point
is Metaphysic. As for the cone and vertical point (the
work which God worketh from the beginning unto the end,
namely, the summary law of nature) it may fairly be
doubted whether man's inquiry can attain to it. But these
THE TRUE RELIGION. 491
three are the true stages of knowledge ; which to those
that are puffed up with their own knowledge and rebellious
against God, are indeed no better than the giant's three
hills :
Ter sunt conati imponsre Pelio Ossam,
Scilicet atque Ossse frondosum involvere Olympum :
(Mountain on mountain thrice they strove to heap,
Olympus, Ossa, piled on Pelkm's steep;)
but to those who abasing themselves refer all things to the
glory of God, they are as the three acclamations : Holy !
Holy ! Holy ! For God is holy in the multitude of his
works, holy in the order or connexion of them, and holy in
the union of them. And therefore the speculation was
excellent in Parmenides and Plato (although in them it
was but a bare speculation) that all things by a certain scale
ascend to unity" l
But a divine man must needs have more faces than
Vishnu, and be able to see all ways at once ; not forgetting
that there is higher law for higher regions, and lower law
for lower regions. One face must look to physical nature,
that he may make sure of life and health ; another face
must look to property and family, that life may be comfort-
able here, with a hope of posterity coming after ; another
face must look to justice and the civil law, that he may
have safety in civilization, and keep his life, his liberty, his
property, and his family ; another must see to good morals,
that the soul may have rest and be at peace with the world
and itself; another must have an eye to the beautiful, that
he may find heaven and be glad he is alive ; and another
must pierce deep, quite through the natural into the super-
natural world beyond, reaching even unto God and relig-
ion, in such manner as to see, that all, anywhere, now or
hereafter, must necessarily depend upon the all-seeing
divine providence, himself helping, or at his peril not help-
ing, with all his might. For no man need expect to see
l Trans, by Spedding; Works (Boston), VIII. 507.
492 THE TRUE RELIGION.
God, before being able to see the beautiful ; nor the beau-
tiful, before good morals ; nor good morals, before justice ;
nor even justice, before being clear of physical necessities.
Nevertheless, it will not do, to look after physical comforts,
this year ; justice, the next ; morals, the next ; and religion,
on the death-bed. The vision of the mind's eye must
stretch always and at once from top to bottom, from equa-
tor to pole, and take all latitudes into one view. Until a
man reach this height, and begin to lead a divine life in
heaven, he may be sure he is not yet out of hell : through
being of the elect the days of affliction are cut short : be-
ing once clear, he will then be also ready, either to go or
to stay. But concerning the day and the hour, no man
knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but
the Father only. Be therefore awake. And then, " we
defy augury : there is a special providence in the fall of a
sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come ; if it be not to
come, it will be now ; if it be not now, yet it will come :
the readiness is all." 1
For the rest, it may be left, with Bacon, to " God's provi-
dence, that (as the Scripture saith) reacheth even to the
falling of a sparrow." 2
The mind is the man. His power of thought, and the
doings of his thought are himself. His material limitations
and bodily investment are changing in every instant, in the
constant flow of the physical stream : the soul only is his
continuous self. "A man is but what he knoweth," says
Bacon. So, too, God is the eternal mind of nature, con-
tinually thinking a universe. His power of thought and
the acts and creations of his thought are himself; the
eternal course of his thought measures the perpetual flow
of the providential order ; and so, the student of nature
and philosophy, ascending, or rather, as it may be, descend-
ing, through particulars to the knowledge of the present
existent universe and all its past states and conditions, so
l Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2. 2 Jf a t. Hist. 737.
THE TRUE RELIGION. 493
far as ascertainable and knowable, comes thereby to know
Him so far, and by the contemplation of the entire scien-
tific order and whole history of nature, in all its kingdoms,
and man in all the streams and phases of his development,
civilization, and culture, and the order of necessity, jus-
tice, good, beauty, and purpose therein, to comprehend
something of the mystery of his providence. But He is
something over and above and beyond any existent uni-
verse, or present state of his thought : He is the eternally
continuing Power of Thought and "Immortal Providence," 1
whose mind's eye sees all things ; as when, in the " Measure
for Measure," the reigning Duke, being about to absent
himself from his dominions, devolves the government upon
his substitute, but immediately returns himself in the secret
disguise of a friar, in order to see how things will be
managed by his deputy; and then, a chapter in human
affairs is enacted in his presence, as if to draw down to the
senses of the theatre some conception of an all-seeing eye.
And when, on his return in person, it became apparent
to the delinquent and erring deputy, that the Duke had
been " a partaker of God's theatre," and that all his acts
were known to him, he submits thus :
"Angela. 0, my dread lord !
I should be guiltier than my guiltiness,
To think I can be undiscernible,
When I perceive your Grace, like power divine,
Hath look'd upon my passes." Act V. Sc. 1.
" For," says Bacon, " if a man can be partaker of God's
theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest ; " and
again, that " men ought to look up to the eternal provi-
dence and divine judgment " :
" Miranda. How came we ashore ?
Pros. By providence divine." Temp., Act I. Sc. 2.
This is that same " Deity, which is the author, by power
and providence, of strange wonders."* And again he
i Tempest, Act V. Sc. 1. Nat. Hist., 720.
494 THE TRUE RELIGION.
says : " Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's
mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the
poles of truth " :
" arming myself with patience,
To stay the providence of some high powers,
That govern us below." Jul. Ccesar, Act V. Sc. 1.
And the strangers, that arrived in the island of Bensalem,
in the New Atlantis, finding that the Governor knew all
about them and their country, while they had never before
heard of him or his island, were lost in wonder, not know-
ing what to make of it ; for that it seemed to them " a con-
dition and propriety of divine powers and beings, to be
hidden and unseen of others, and yet to have others open
and as in a light to them." Among other very admirable
observations upon the ideal in Shakespeare, Gervinus
makes this happy remark : " This ideality shows itself, also,
in the high moral spirit, which in Shakespeare's plays con-
trols the complications of fate and the issues of human
actions, in that spirit, which develops before us that higher
order, which Bacon required in poetry, indicating the eter-
nal and uncorrupted justice in human things, the finger of
God, which our dull eyes do not perceive in reality." 1 In-
deed, throughout both these writings, the universe, human
affairs included, is contemplated as being moved, governed,
and directed by an all-pervading and immanent divine
providence ; a fact, of which the mere materialist, or poli-
tician, who imagines that states and peoples, lives and for-
tunes, are to be manipulated by cunning and manoeuvre, like
machines that go by wire-pulling and money, is not sup-
posed to take much note, any more than certain politic
church-building priests, but of which Hamlet seems to
have been fully aware ; as when, at the grave, taking up
the skull that had been " knocked about the mazzard with
a sexton's spade," he specxilates thus :
" This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches ;
one that would circumvent God, might it not? " Act V. Sc. 1.
i Shakes. Comm., by Prof. Gervinus, II. 582 (Lond. 1863).
THE TRUE RELIGION. 495
The world known to us may be but a small part of the
whole existent creation : as far as we may come to see and
know it, we may know Him and no further. So far as we
are able thus to discover and see the course and ends of
providence in the known and knowable universe of mind
within us and mind without us, extending our view around
us, and with the eye of prevision forward into the certain,
the possible, and the probable future, as well as with the
eye of science backward into " the abysm of time," back
through the whole historical and traditional line, and thence
backward through the archaeological and ethnological lines,
extending far into geological epochs ; and thence still back-
ward through the entire zoological scale of ascending types
of created forms and the stratified leaves of the geological
record to the cooling crust of the molten globe ; and thence
still backward, through the astronomical order, even to the
time when the first forms of substance began to be created
and gathered by the creative power into a spiral nebula,
perhaps, to form a world, when time and chronology for
a solar system, or a globe, began, being bounded, out of eter-
nity, which is the possibility of time, and out of immensity,
which is the possibility of space ; and taking even so
much of the past order of creation into view, and learn-
ing to comprehend the present and ever continuous order,
with due perception of the actual and eternal, and with
due prevision and anticipation of the possible and probable
in the future continuation thereof, we may come not only
to understand something of the mystery of His providence,
but even to possess a certain degree and measure of fore-
knowledge ; but not otherwise. This law is never dead,
nor asleep :
" Now, 't is awake ;
Takes note of what is done ; and, like a prophet,
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
(Either now, or by remissness new-conceiv'd,
And so in progress to be hatch'd and bom,)
496 DESTINY.
Are now to have no successive degrees,
But ere they live to end."
Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 2.
So much may be revealed to man ; no more can be re-
vealed to him in any way ; for nothing streams into man
from the supernatural world, in the direction in which the
thinking soul conies, but his existence as such and the
power to perceive, conceive, remember, think, know, and
do. Thoughts, ideas, or knowledge of what the ideas and
purposes of the Creator are, or have been, or foreknowl-
edge of what they will be, do not, nor can, by any conceiv-
able possibility, enter into the mind of man from that direc-
tion, nor by that road.
2. DESTINY.
Men have tried to believe, that some Daemon, or
Genius, or Angel, or some other kind of spiritual phan-
tasm, stood behind their inmost selves, pouring into them,
as it were, from the supernatural world, thoughts, ideas,
revelations, divinations, prophecies, auguries, and fore-
knowledge ; and that they had nothing to do but to put
themselves into an attitude of passive receptivity, and to
let these supernatural communications flow into them, as it
were by the divine grace, or some kind of spiritual teleg-
raphy. The idea is as old as Socrates, at least ; and it has
made a large figure among the poets, both ancient and
modern. Even Goethe must have a Daemon, and a spirit
must tell his Mignon who was the father of Felix. Our
author had need of the same conception for his poetical
purposes, and he makes good use of it thus :
" Macb. And under him,
My Genius is rebuk'd." Act III. Sc. 1.
and again :
" Sooth. Thy dsemon, that 's thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar is not; but near him, thy angel
Becomes a fear." Ant. and Cko., Act II. Sc. 3.
DESTIXY. 497
and still again :
" Duke. One of these men is Genius to the other;
And so of these: which is the natural man,
And which the spirit? " Com. of Errors, Act V. Sc. 1.
and still again :
" Tro. Hark ! you are call'd : some say the Genius so
Cries, ' Come! ' to him that instantly must die."
Tro. and Cr., Act IV. Sc. 4.
and thus, again, in the " Julius Caesar " :
" Brut. Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream :
The Genius, and the mortal instruments
Are then in council ; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection." Act If. Sc. 1.
And thus guardian angels, guiding geniuses, good daemons,
and spirits good and bad, have, from the earliest times,
haunted the imaginations of men. The Chaldaean astrol-
ogy, the Hebrew inspiration, the divinations of the Grecian
oracles, and the Roman auguries, were little else than more
or less gross forms of this same superstitious conceit Even
in the days of St. Paul the order of dignities in the Church
was such, that prophecy and divination held only the
second place, and miracle-working, only the fourth rank ;
for, says St Paul, " God hath set some in the church,
first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after
that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments,
diversities of tongues. Are all apostles ? Are all proph-
ets ? Are all teachers ? Are all workers of miracles ?
Have all the gifts of healing ? Do all speak with tongues ?
Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts.
And yet shew I unto you a more excellent way." l Bacon
treated all these imaginary supernatural powers, spirits, and
gifts, with little more ceremony than he did those powers
l 1 Cor. xii. 28-31.
32
498 DESTINY.
of miracle-working faith, that presumed to command na-
ture, those " vast arid bottomless follies," which were to
be driven back into the limbo of Paracelsus and " the
darksome authors of magic."
But, for the substance of the soul, he believed it was not
" extracted out of the mass of heaven and earth," but was
" a spirit newly inclosed in a body of earth." 1 He was
not of the school of those who look upon mind, or soul, as
a mere secretion of the brain, or as a simple result of some
kind of arterial brain-flow and consumption of neurine, as
light comes of the burning of a candle ; for he says, " the
nature of man (the special and peculiar work of prov-
idence) includes mind and intellect, which is the seat of
providence ; and since to derive mind and reason from
principles brutal and irrational would be harsh and incred-
ible, it follows almost necessarily that the human spirit was
endued with providence not without the precedent and in-
tention and warrant of the greater providence " ; and in
reference to final causes, he thought it was to be regarded
as " the centre of the world." 2 Again he says, " the soul
on the other side is the simplest of substances ; as is well
expressed,
purumque reliquit
^Ethereum sensum, atque aural simplicis ignem.
Whence it is no marvel that the soul so placed enjoys no
rest : according to the axiom that the motion of things out
of their place is rapid, and in their place calm." s It was
not a product of dead substratum, but " was breathed im-
mediately from God ; so that the ways and proceedings of
God with spirits [souls] are not included in Nature, that is,
in the laws of heaven and earth : but are reserved to the
law of his secret will and grace : wherein God worketh
still and resteth not from the work of redemption, as he
1 Valerius Terminus, Works (Boston), VI. 28.
2 Prometheus, Works (Boston), XIII. 147.
Trans, of the De Aug., Works ( Boston), IX. 25.
DESTINY. 499
resteth from the work of creation ; but continueth workin^
O
to the end of the world ; what time that work also shall be
accomplished, and an eternal Sabbath shall ensue." 1 Again,
in the Advancement, he expresses the opinion that the soul
of man " was immediately inspired from God ; and
therefore the true knowledge of the nature and state of the
soul must come by the same inspiration that gave the sub-
stance." This passage in a work intended for the general
reader, and dedicated to an orthodox king, as well as some
others, in popular works, might admit of an interpretation
in accordance with some views of inspired theology ; but
whether his idea of the mode and manner of this inspira-
tion of a soul into the body was that of Gratiano, when he
was almost made to waver in his faith, and
" To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men,"
Mer. of Ken., Act IV. Sc. 1.
or whatever precise signification may be attributed to the
very common words, inspired, breathed into, or infused, it is
plainly the substance of the soul that he considers as com-
ing from that source, and in this way ; and any true knowl-
edge of its nature and state, its origin and constitution as a
speciality of thinking essence, must be sought in that same
source, " the greater providence " itself; that is, we may
suppose, in ontology or the science of all being. Having
thus got a soul, we must look into it in order to see what it
is ; and a sound psychology will begin with the actual fact,
and proceed with an exact analysis of its operations as a
thinking power. In his interpretation of the Fable of Pan,
he gives us some further light, with some more definite ex-
pression, on this subject, and proceeds thus :
" The Nymphs, that is, souls, please Pan : for the souls of the living are the
delight of the world. But he is deservedly the commander of them, since
they follow, each her own nature as leader, and, with infinite variety, each as
i Confession of Faith, Works (Boston), XIV. 147.
500 DESTINY.
if in her own native manner, leap and dance about him, with never ceasing
motion. And so, some acute one of the moderns has reduced all the facul-
ties of the soul to Motion, and noted the conceit and precipitation of some
of the ancients, who, considering of the memory, the imagination, and the
reason, and, with careless eye, hastily viewing the subject, overlooked the
Thinking Power, which holds the first place. For whoever remembers, or
even recollects, thinks : and whoever imagines, likewise thinks ; and who-
ever reasons, also thinks: indeed the soul, whether prompted by sense, or
acting by its own permission, whether in the functions of the intellect, or
in those of the affections and will, leaps to the modulation of thoughts ; and
this is what was meant by the leaping of the Nymphs." l
And in the following passage from the " Othello," we may
discover a similar course of reasoning upon the will, and
the thinking power acting by its own permission, thus :
" logo. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners ; so
that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce : set hyssop, and weed up
thyme ; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many ; either
to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry ; why the power
and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives
had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and
baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions :
but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our un-
bitted lusts, whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion.
Bod. It cannot be.
lago. It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will."
Act I. Sc. 3.
A learned interpreter of the Sonnets, bringing the light
of the " Hermetic Philosophy " to bear upon them, with
an excellent appreciation of their quality, scope, and pur-
pose in general, very justly remarks upon the 135th and
136th, in particular, that " far from being a play upon the
poet's name, as many suppose," they " contain the poet's
metaphysical view of God as Power " 2 or Will ; an inter-
pretation which may find additional warrant in the Baco-
nian distinction between the human and the divine soul,
fatally separated from each other (as our Hermetic philoso-
pher profoundly conceives) by the mystic Wall of the flesh
or material nature, as illustrated in the *' Midsummer Night's
Dream " ; for, between this poet and the philosopher, there
l De Aug. Scient., L. II. c. 13.
* Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakes., (New York, 1865,) p. 50.
DESTINY. 501
is everywhere a remarkable concurrence of idea, and his
doctrine of the will is made the burden of these singular
sonnets, running thus :
" Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Witt,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus ;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine ?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine ?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Witt
One will of mine to make thy large Witt more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill ;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,
And will thy soul knows is admitted there,
Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.
Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
I fill it full with wills, and my will one,
In things of great receipt with ease we prove,
Among a number one is reckon'd none.
Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy store's account I one must be,
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me a something sweet to thee :
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lov'st me for my name is Wilt." *
When Pyramus and Thisbe both die on the stage, in the
Midsummer Night's Dream," the play proceeds thus :
" Thes. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.
Dem. Ay, and Wall too.
Sot. No, I assure you ; the wall is down that parted their fathers."
Mid. Night's Dr., Act V. Sc. 1.
There is here most certainly an influx, inspiration, or
infusion of a power to think ; a power to perceive, conceive,
i See also Shakes. Sonnets, (Facsimile of ed. of 1609,) London, 1862;
which uses italics and capital letters as here printed.
502 DESTINY.
remember, and act ; a reason and a power of will that, by its
own permission, leaps to the modulation of thought. That
power contains under it the whole content of the term soul,
a self-acting, self-directing thinking power ; and the analy-
sis of that content gives the faculties of the soul, or those
modes of operation, which are called the mental powers.
This influx of the substance of the soul, as such thinking
power, is all that comes from that source ; and the conceit
of a genius, daemon, angel, or any other kind of soul or
spirit, accompanying it, lying in behind it, and guiding and
directing its operations, other than perhaps " the secret will
and grace " of " the greater providence " itself, he would
seem to have considered as a visionary invention of the
imaginations of men. " Divination by influxion " was a
notion of like nature, "grounded upon this other conceit,
that the mind, as a mirrour or glass, receives a kind of sec-
ondary illumination from the foreknowledge of God and
spirits." l And surely, any supposition of revelations of
the thoughts, ideas, will, and purposes of God being poured,
inspired, or breathed, into this soul from this same direc-
tion, and in addition to the soul itself, like a "flowing
river," of which the receptive soul is only a sort of " pen-
sioner " and a " surprised spectator," 2 as some think, or as
any kind of secondary illumination out of the foreknowl-
edge of God and spirits, can be no less superstitious and
absurd than the fantastical vagaries of divination. Soul,
indeed, streams into man from a source which is hid-
den, but his thoughts and visions are his own work. No
knowledge of the supernatural world, nor of the ideas,
thoughts, purposes, foreknowledge, and providence of God
in the universe ever did come, nor ever can come, to man
directly in that way, nor by that road ; though behind this
soul there may continue to be " the law of his secret will
and grace," as in the play :
1 Trans, of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 53.
2 Emerson's Essays, First Series (Boston, 1854), p. 244.
DESTINY. 503
" K. Rich. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.
Q. Eliz. True, when avoided grace makes destiny."
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 4.
And the witch says of Macbeth,
" He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear." Act III. Sc. 5.
And again, the operation of this same grace may be dis-
tinctly seen in the following lines :
"Mai. Conies the King forth, I pray you?
Doc. Ay, sir : there are a crew of wretched souls,
That stay his cure : their malady convinces
The great assay of art ; but at his touch,
Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand,
They presently amend.
Mai. I thank you, Doctor. [Exit DOCTOR.
Macd. What 's the disease he means?
Mai. 'T is call'd the evil:
A most miraculous work in this good king,
Which often, since my here remain in England,
I have seen him do. How he solicits Heaven,
Himself but knows; but strangely-visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers : and 't is spoken,
To th' succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace." Macb., Act IV. Sc. 3.
And in the end, when he has been proclaimed King of
Scotland, he concludes his speech thus :
"Mai. This, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time, and place." Act V. Sc. 7.
" For we see," says Bacon, " that in matters of faith and
religion our imagination raises itself above our reason ; not
that divine illumination resides in the imagination ; its seat
being rather in the very citadel of the mind and under-
standing ; but that the divine grace uses the motions of the
imagination as an instrument of illumination, just as it
504 DESTINY.
uses the motions of the will as an instrument of virtue ;
which is the reason why religion ever sought access to the
mind by similitudes, types, parables, visions, dreams " : l
"Ang. I did but smile till now :
Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice;
My patience here is touched. I do perceive,
These poor informal women are no more
But instruments of some more mightier member.
That sets them on." Meets, for Meets., Act V. Sc. 1.
Bacon clearly saw, that over and above " this part of
knowledge touching the soul," there were " two appendices,"
divination and fascination, under which he appears to have
included all the imaginations, vagaries, and waking dreams
of oracles, auguries, prophecies, visions and apocalyptic
revelations, astrology, divination, natural magic, incanta-
tions, and miracle-working (spiritual-rapping having died
out for once with the old Montanist schism long before his
time) ; " for," says he, " they have exalted the power of
imagination to be much one with miracle-working faith,"
and " have rather vapoured forth fables than kindled truth."
All this was grounded on the conceit " that the mind, as a
mirrour or glass, should take illumination from the fore-
knowledge of God and spirits " (as stated in the Advance-
ment) ; and the retiring of the mind within itself was the
state which is most susceptible of these " divine influxions,
save that it is accompanied, in this case, with a fervency
and elevation, which the ancients noted for fury." But in
his opinion, this divination by influxion, or any direct com-
munication to man out of the foreknowledge of God, or
spirits, was a mere superstitious conceit, such as had filled
the heated fancies of the ancient Furies. But this part, he
continues, " touching angels and spirits I may rather chal-
lenge as fabulous and fantastical : "
" This is the very coinage of your brain :
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in." Ramlet, Act III. Sc. 4.
l Translation of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 61.
DESTINY. 505
Not by this way comes the knowledge of God, his thought,
his purposes, his will, or his providence in the universe, nor
of the duties, ways to happiness, destiny, or future life of
man. If he would seek that knowledge, he must address
himself to the fore-front view of the boundless universe of
God's thought and providence, and by the light to be
derived from the study of the laws and nature of thought
in his own soul, and by the power of thought which is given
him, and the light which it creates and lets be within him,
both see and read, in that infinite book of revelation that
lies wide open before him, as much as it may be in his
power to comprehend and contain. It would certainly be
idle for him to attempt to read any more, and absurd to
imagine that more could be imparted to him in any way.
No further revelation is, or ever was, possible to be made
to any man. No greater revelation can be necessary for
his use ; for, if he will but open his eyes and look into it,
if he can but see far enough and deep enough, he may see
the whole reflected in his own mind, which " God hath
framed as a mirrour or glass, capable of the image of the
universal world."
According to Bacon's interpretation, besides Mercury,
who was the ordinary messenger, Pan, or the universe, was
" the other messenger of the gods [" alter Deorum Num-
cius "] ; and this was plainly a divine allegory ; since, next
after the word of God [the usual salvo to the Biblical
orthodoxies], the image of the world, itself, is the herald of
the divine power and wisdom ; as the Psalmist also sung,
" The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
showeth his handiwork"
But it is idle for man,
" proud man !
Drest in a little brief authority ;
Most ignorant of what he "s most assur'd,
His glassy essence,"
to look for the image, or the reality, in the back of the mir-
506 DESTINY.
ror ; for, in this way, he merely makes a fool of himself,
and
" like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep."
Measure for Measure, Act II. Be. 2.
For nothing can be seen there but that " deceiving and
deformed imagery," which the mind of man, in any age,
has been, and is, capable of imagining and representing to
itself, with or without the help of teacher, prophet, or mes-
siah ; book, bible, gospel, sermon, speech, or other mode of
communicating the thoughts and visions of men to one
another. Nevertheless, men will persist in looking for light
and knowledge from within and behind the mirror, deceived
by the miraculous reflection ; for, as Bacon says again, " the
mind of man (dimmed and clouded as it is by the covering
of the body), far from being a smooth, clear, and equal
glass (wherein 'the beams of things reflect according to
their true incidence), is rather like an enchanted glass, full
of superstition and imposture." 1 But in truth and reality,
" man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, does, and
understands as much as he has observed of the order, ope-
ration, and mind of nature ; and neither knows nor is able
to do more." 2 And " every thing depends upon our fixing
the mind's eye steadily in order to receive their images
exactly as they exist, and may God never permit us to give
out the dream of our fancy as a model of the world, but
rather in his kindness vouchsafe to us the means of writing
a revelation and true vision of the traces and stamps of the
Creator on his creatures " [creations]. And in the plays,
we have this same metaphorical use of the stamp, thus :
"Ang. It were as good
To pardon him that hath from Nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin Heaven's image
1 Translation of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 98.
2 Notum Organum.
DESTINY. 507
In stamps that are forbid. 'T is all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put metal in restrained means,
To make a false one.
Isab. 'T is set down so in Heaven, but not in Earth."
Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4.
And again thus :
"Z/ear. Hear, Nature ! hear, dear goddess, hear !
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful !
If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen ; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth."
Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.
And thus again :
" Posth. We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamped." Cymb., Act II. Sc. 5.
And in the same play thus :
" Cym. Guiderius had
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star :
It was a mark of wonder.
Bd. This is he,
Who hath upon him still that natural stamp.
It was wise Nature's end in the donation,
To be his evidence now." Ad V. Sc. 5.
Nothing real \p to be discovered in the back of the mirror :
on the contrary, with all due reverence, " that angel of the
world," * or with the " three reverences " of Goethe, rev-
erence for what is above us, reverence for what is around
us, and reverence for what is under us, or Shakespeare's
reverence for Nature as it stands " in all line of order and
authentic place," and Bacon's reverence for ourselves, which
is, " next religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices," a and that
true religion which is founded upon a rock, wherein, accord-
ing to Goethe, man attains " the highest elevation of which
he is capable, that of being justified in reckoning himself
l Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2. a New Atlantis.
508 DESTINY.
the best that God and Nature have produced," let us turn
about and front the world, with all our faculties, perceptive,
reflective, creative, intuitive, those first and last God-given
guides to our steps, our hands, and our souls, with any
help, indeed, that may come of such as are wiser, better,
and more able to see than ourselves, whether poet, seer,
philosopher, or divine, whatever Saviour may be able to
save and keep us from falling ; but never losing sight of
the mind of Nature and that Immortal Providence, which
alone is most able to save : " So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him." There-
fore must he work and be vigilant, thoughtful, reverential,
prayerful, hopeful, cheerful, all the days of his life, and
" fling away ambition ;
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't? "
Hen. VIII., Act III. Sc. 2.
So, Goethe made the eternal " droning roar " of the universe
sing through the " huge bass " of the son of Anak,
" Life's no resting, but a moving,
Let thy life be Deed on Deed." Meist. Trav., ch. xv.
And according to Shakespeare, " whatever praises itself but
in the deed, devours the deed in the praise ; " * or as Doctor
Faust expounded out of the sacred original, " In the be-
ginning was the Deed " ; or as Macbeth became thoroughly
convinced,
" The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
Unless the Deed go with it." Act IV. Sc. 1.
or as Philo Judaeus interpreted out of the Old Testament,
man being created in the image of Him, whose Word is his
Deed ; or, according to the old Bactrian Zoroaster's
Ormuzdian Trinity of Thought, Word, and Deed, as taught
by him in the year 6350 B. C. 2
The final consummation of all philosophy, in that in-
i Tro. and Or., Act IT. Sc. 3.
3 Bunsen's Egypt's Place in Univ. Hist., III. 472.
DESTINY. 509
tended Sixth Part of the Great Instauration, was to have
for its end and object, not merely " contemplative enjoy-
ment," but " a complete power of action " ; for in activity
is our life and being and our greatest happiness,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will ;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awn-,
And lose the name of action." Ham., Act 111. Sc. 1.
And Troilus, the youngest son of Priam, was
"a true knight;
Not yet matured, yet matchless ; firm of word,
Speaking in deeds, and deedless in his tongue ;
Nor dignifies an impure thought with breath,
Manly as Hector, but more dangerous ;
For Hector, in his blaze of wrath, subscribes
To tender objects ; but he, in heat of action,
Is more vindicative than jealous love."
Tr. and Cr., Act IV. Sc. 5.
Indeed, as the last outcome of the philosophy of life, all
men find, with Bacon, that " it is pleasanter to be doing
than to be enjoying," or, with the play, that
" Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing."
Tro. and Or., Act I. Sc. 2.
But as for the perfect intuition of divine things, as Berkeley
delivers out of Plato, that must be " the lot of pure souls,
beholding by a pure light, initiated, happy, free and unre-
strained from these bodies, wherein we are imprisoned like
oysters. ... It is Plato's remark in his Thteatetus, that
while we sit still we are never the wiser, but going into the
river and moving up and down, is the way to discover its
depths and shallows. If we exercise and bestir ourselves,
510 DESTINY.
we may even here discover something." 1 As Bacon also
teaches, " much natural philosophy and wading deep into
it, will bring about men's minds to religion." There is
need, too, of great care and an all-seeing vigilance ; for in
this world-stream in which we swim, there is always some
danger of drowning.
While we contemplate the universe as the present state
of the divine thought, and all objects and things in nature
as the actual ideas, conceptions, or special creations of the
divine mind, as form and cause conjoined, infinite par-
ticulars compacted, combined, compounded, crystallized,
moulded, and constructed into the universal variety of
things, all bearing the stamp of the Master Architect, and
the whole full of movement and motion, from infinitely
rapid to infinitely slow, an ever-flowing stream in which we
float, as it stands forth for the time being to the perception
of our senses and faculties, it must be remembered, also,
that into this physical body of ours, existent at any and
every instant of time as a part of those creations and a part
of the streaming flow, there is inspired 'or breathed, or
rather, specially exhibited within us, from underneath and
within the physical web. but really from the same creative
source, and in the same plane, as the physical creation
itself, this finite metaphysical manifestation of that same
infinite power of thought itself, and in essence identical with
it so far, which, under its special limitations in this finite
form, constitutes the soul as a special power of thought of
the same nature, and therefore in itself self-acting and self-
directing cause so far, and, as such, a self-moving soul ;
but limited thus in degree of power and in mode of activity
and in manner of exhibition of itself, invested as it is with
the surrounding web and fabric of the whole physical
universe, the rest of creation ; and so, coming to have a
certain specific total constitution as a created object and a
special subject combined in one a man ; because it is
i Berkeley's Siris, Works (Dublin), II. 627.
DESTINY. 511
most true, says Bacon, " that of all things comprehended
within the compass of the universe, man is a thing most
mixed and compounded, insomuch that he was well termed
by the ancients a little world " (microcosmus) :
" Jtos. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Bam. Compounded it with dust whereto 't is kin " ;
and Mark Antony, describing the virtues of the " great
Caesar," says :
" His life was gentle ; and the elements
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, This was a man ! "
Jul. Get., Act V. Sc. 5.
And so of Imogen, in the " Cymbeline," Cloten says :
" I love and hate her, for she 's fair and royal ;
And that she hath all courtly parts, more exquisite
Than lady, ladies, woman : from every one
The best she hath ; and she, of all compounded,
Outsells them all." Act III. Sc. 5.
For while, in this, we have at bottom merely two man-
ifestations, or exertions, of one and the same creative power
of thought, meeting from opposite directions, and, as it
were, a convolution of the divine thought upon itself, or of
one conception, or thing, upon another, there is this dif-
ference, nevertheless, to be observed, that the exhibition
of the creative power, on the physical side, is more limited
and in some measure fixed, more or less permanently, and
so carried forward in time in the divine remembrance,
wherein is .the equilibrium of stationary balance and the
stability and permanence of the whole universe in so fur as
it is ever stable and permanent : while that exhibition or ex-
ertion of the same power, which comes in the opposite di-
rection (so to speak), and constitutes the essence of the soul,
has a greater degree of liberty, though still limited in extent
and sphere of activity, and in amount of power, by the very
nature and mode of its constitution as a speciality of think-
ing essence, acting under the necessary laws of all thought,
512 DESTINY.
and being in itself an exertion or exhibition, in a special
way, of the one causative and creative power itself; as a
wave of the ocean is, and is not ocean. And thus the soul
comes to have a certain special existence as a special caus-
ative and creative power of thought, when considered by
itself, together with a special consciousness of its own, and
a certain limited sphere of liberty, free-will, and power of
choice, beyond which and the farthest range thereof, and
beyond the possible extent of practical effect of the soul's
own action, all is the order of divine providence in the rest
of the universe, and, as such, absolute fate for this soul,
(being that fate which is providence, according to Bacon,)
except in so far as the order of that providence may be
changed in any instant (if it so please the Divine Majesty)
to help and save such soul from its own follies and the
innumerable traps into which it may blunder ; and, as con-
sequent upon that liberty, a certain degree of moral ac-
countability, proportionate to the sphere of liberty and the
given amount of power, and no further, on pain of imme-
diate, ultimate, and inevitable consequences just so far.
The unavoidable, irresistible, and terrible nature of fate, at
once scourge of the vicious, heedless, reckless, and unwise,
and affliction of the wisest and best, wherein " unaccom-
modated man " may find himself no more but " a poor,
forked animal," or even worse, is portrayed in awful sub-
limity in the great play of Lear :
" Lear. Now, all the plagues, that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o'er men's faults, light on thy daughters !
Kent. He hath no daughters, sir.
Lear. Death, traitor ! nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness, but his unkind daughters.
Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh ?
Judicious punishment ! 't was this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters." Act HI. Sc. 4.
This author seems to have had very clear conceptions of
the nature of providence and fate, and of that fate which
DESTINY. 513
is also providence ; and he was able to illustrate by ex-
amples in the grandest style of the dramatic art in what
manner the blind man, or the man with eyes which do not
see, though wide open and looking square into the universe
around him, nevertheless, goes blundering on all sides into
the traps of inevitable fate : not that it is possible for the
farthest-sighted seer wholly to avoid them ; but that, if this
lesser providence will take due note of the Greater Provi-
dence, and accommodate himself to the majestic onward
flow of the divine plan, he may have some chance of keep-
ing clear of the Juggernautic wheels ; and at all events, it
will be so much the better for him. And if, like Macbeth,
he will seek ' metaphysical aid," he must take care to look
in the right direction for it. Macbeth had faith in it, but
mistook the way :
" Lady 'M. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal." Act I. Sc. 5.
Macbeth thought to find it in the vaticinations of witches,
as many others have sought to find it in natural magic,
Dodonian oracles, pontifical auguries, Hebrew prophecies,
gospel inspirations, mystical spirit-rappings, and such other
bottomless follies as should rather be swept into the limbo
of Paracelsus, and only discovered his mistake when it was
too late :
" Macb. Accursed be the tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man :
And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,
That palter with us in a double sense ;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope." Act V. Sc. 7.
There were to be, in Solomon's House, " houses of deceits
of the senses, where we represent all manner of feats of
juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions ; and
their fallacies."
33
514 DESTINY.
Hence we have, added to the creations and doings of the
divine mind, as such, the special creations, perceivings, and
doings of the finite soul, as such ; and in true statement,
the universe is the thought of God, the uncreated thinker,
plus the thought of all finite created thinkers ; for the ani-
mal kingdom is to be included, down to the last point where
a self-directing cause appears in action under a special con-
sciousness, however limited ; where conscious mind passes
into mere unconscious instinctive function, existing and
being moved under the divine consciousness alone ; where,
as Bacon expresses it, " art or man is added to the uni-
verse " ; and " it must almost necessarily be concluded,"
he continues, " that the human soul is endued with provi-
dence, not without the example, intention, and authority of
the greater providence." 1 This art has as wide a range in
nature as the special creator : in man, it becomes a kind of
lesser providence. " Man, too," says another philosopher,
" creates and conquers kingdoms from the barren realms
of Darkness, to increase the happiness, and dignity, and
power of all men." 2 All art is creation, as Plato said :
" For that which is the cause of anything coming out of
non-existence into existence is altogether a creation. So
that all the operations effected by all the arts are creations ;
and all the makers of them are creators, are poets
(TTOITJTCU.)" 8
This art may begin in a microscopic animalcule, or if not
there, in the least ganglioned structure in which the eye of
science can detect a self-acting and self-directing cause. It
may live the life of an encrinite, and find its whole scope
of activity in a stony cup. It may rule on the bosom of
a swarm of organic instincts in the bee. It may have the
eyes, fins, ink-bag, and hydraulic apparatus of the cuttle-
fish, and swim the ocean, being to some extent its own
1 De Sap. Vet., Works (Boston), XIII. 44.
2 Carlyle's Life of Schiller, 239.
8 Banquet, Works (Bohn), III. 539.
DESTINY. 515
pilot and protector ; or it may have a higher organization,
a greater amount of power, and a greater range of think-
ing faculty, in the fish, reptile, bird, mammal, ape, or oldest
Tertiary, or Quaternary, inventor of the flint axe, or ear-
liest Papuan, Negro, or Titicacan, even up to the highest
intelligence, widest range of liberty, and largest amount of
power of thought and action in the latest and best Cauca-
sian man ; and, in each degree of the great scale of being,
have its own appropriate share in the management of its
own affairs, and, in some sort, the affairs of the universe ;
acting so far on its own responsibility, and helping, or as it
may be, not helping, God create a world of order, art, ex-
cellence, and beauty. So, from the beginning, man has
been a creator, according to his ability, of stone axe, bronze
axe, iron axe ; bow and arrow, canoe, and skin-tent ; hut,
plough, and shop ; picture-writing, hieroglyphics, alphabets ;
house, temple, and city ; civil polity, sacred scripture, and
jurisprudence ; poetry, history, literature ; science, arts,
commerce ; philosophy and religious culture ; and the sum
total of human civilization on this globe ; for all is the
work of his art, invention, and industry, and a creation of
his thought. There is no end to his creative function ; and
his highest happiness, and his greatest good, is in being
a creator. Carlyle agrees with the old monks, that " work
is worship ; " and, certainly, Plato was not far from the
same teaching, when he said : " But I will lay this down,
that the things which are said to be made by nature, are
(made) by divine art ; but that the things, which are com-
posed from these by men, are produced by human art ; and
that according to this assertion, there are two kinds of the
making art, one human, and the other divine." l
Bacon appears to have entertained the same opinion ;
and carrying this philosophy of art into his own studies of
nature, he concludes, after much consideration, " to assign
the Natural History of Arts as a branch of Natural History,
l Sophist, Works (Bohn), HI. 180.
516 DESTINY.
because an opinion hath a long time gone current as if art
were some different thing from nature, and artificial from nat-
ural." 1 But he has ascertained that " nature is either free,
unfolding itself in its own accustomed course as in the heav-
ens, in animals and plants, and in the whole apparatus of
the universe ; or, by the perverse and intractable qualities
of matter and the violence of impediments, it is detruded
from its own proper state, as in monstrosities ; or, again, it
is constrained, fashioned, and, as it were, made anew, by
the art and work of man, as in artificial productions " ; that
these, again, differ from the natural, not in " the form and
essence " of the thing itself, but only in respect of " the
efficient cause," or the " restrained means " ; that man has
no power over the nature of things, beyond a power of
moving, so as to apply, or remove, natural bodies ; and
therefore, when natural bodies are applied, or removed,
conjoining (as they say) the active with the passive, man
can do everything : where this is not granted, nothing.
Nor does it matter, if things are placed in order for a cer-
tain effect, whether it be done by man or without man."
And so we see, that " while Nature governs all, these three
things are in subordination, the course of Nature, the de-
viation of Nature, and art or man added to things." So
far the De Aug mentis ; and in the Advancement, he lays
down, also, that " it is the duty of art to perfect and exalt
nature " :
" so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes." Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3.
As we learn from the Wisdom of the Ancients, the story
of Atalanta was " an excellent allegory, relating to the con-
test of Art and Nature ; for Art, which is meant by Ata-
lanta, is in itself, if nothing stand in the way, far swifter
than Nature, and as we may say, the better runner, and
conies sooner to the goal. For this may be seen in almost
l De Aug. Scient., II. c. 2.
DESTINY. 517
everything ; you see, that fruit grows slowly from the ker-
nel, swiftly from the graft : "
" You see, sweet maid, we many
A gentler scion to the wildest stock " ;
but, " it is no wonder if Art cannot outstrip Nature, but
according to the agreement and condition of the contest,
put her to death or destroy her; but, on the contrary. Art
remains subject to Nature as the wife is subject to the
husband." And, with but a slight change of the word out-
strip for outwent, we may discover the same idea in these
lines of the " Cymbeline " :
"Inch. The chimney
Is south the chamber; and the chimney-piece,
Chaste Dian bathing: never saw I figures
So likely to report themselves : the cutter
Was another nature dumb, outwent her,
Motion and breath left out." Acl II. Sc. 4.
Darwin, prying into this subject from a merely geological
point of view, and with the help of all that science had
done for him since Bacon's time, discovers only that, by a
certain kind of manipulation and tampering, he can pro-
duce all manner of domestic breeds and varieties, and, in
short, almost, if not quite, an actual difference of species :
whence he concludes, that what creates a difference of species
in nature is, not any art in nature, but a certain blind mani-
pulation of mere circumstances and conditions, variation,
divergence, inheritance, natural selection, struggle for life,
and the like, on a basis of dead substratum and the
properties thereof, " laws acting " x included ; as if, these
being given, an animal could create himself as easily as
wink. It seems never to have occurred to him, that any
efficient and essential cause, or creative power, was at all
necessary in the business ; much less, that he should under-
take to inquire what that cause is, or the nature of it,
though so plainly in action there under his very eyes. Much
l Darwin's Oriyin of Species (New York, 1860), 424.
518 DESTINY.
better and decidedly more Baconian, is the philosophy of
the poet, Cowper :
" But how should matter occupy a charge,
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
So vast in its demands, unless impell'd
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause ?
The Lord of all, himself through all dift'us'd,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God." Task, Book VI.
Darwin reasons thus : A species can be made to vary :
therefore species is not immutable. Good. But Agassiz
will not agree that Mr. Darwin can manipulate a new
species into being ; but only a transient variety, though
presenting differences as wide as a difference of species,
not a permanent species in nature ; and he thinks the logic
should run thus : Man manipulates a temporary variety into
being ; ergo, God created the permanent species. Good,
again. But what if the temporary variety should continue
permanent for a thousand years ? or what if the permanent
species should actually continue to change through the next
geological period ? According to Bacon, this art of ma-
nipulation, or placing things in order for a certain effect,
whether by man, or without man, is not, after all, anything
different from nature, nor artificial from natural, in respect
of the form and essence of the thing : the art itself is in
the " order, operation, and Mind of Nature." Man, with
his manipulation, can only help a little.
Now, in the year 1611, we find Sir Francis Bacon in full
possession of Gorhambury and the beautiful gardens there,
always a student and lover of Nature and a curious ob-
server of her ways, in gardens or elsewhere, now diligently
experimenting upon the natures of plants, flowers, and
fruits, marshalling in their proper seasons rosemary and
rue, primrose, violets, cowslips, hyssop and germander,
" Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed with th' sun,
And with him rises, weeping; ''
DESTINY. 519
practising in the art of grafting and the art of manipula-
tion for producing new varieties, " carnations of several
stripes " * and " streak'd gilliflowers " ; 2 trying " what
natures do accomplish what colours, for by that you shall
have light how to induce colours by producing those
natures ; " grafting " several scions upon several boughs of
a stock " ; gathering " the excellent dew of knowledge, dis-
tilling and contriving it out of particulars natural and
artificial, as the flowers of the field and garden." 8 He has
lately published the Wisdom of the Ancients, and learned
from the fable of Atalanta as well as from his own ex-
perience, that art is swifter than nature, yet cannot out-
strip nature, but must remain subject to her, as the wife is
subject to the husband.
The nuptials of the young Princess Elizabeth, afterwards
Queen of Bohemia, are about to be celebrated at Court,
with masques, triumphs, and stage-plays for many months.
The succession to the Attorney- General's place as well as
fables and gilliflowers, the art of politics as well as the art
of nature, is constantly running in his mind. He is now in
the mood for attempting another model, and the " Winter's
Tale " shortly makes its appearance. As usual he snatches
up any old romance that will serve for the germ of the story,
so much the better if it be well-known and popular ; and
the popular tale of " Dorastus and Fawnia " is laid hold of
for the present occasion. Perdita, the lost child of the King
of Sicily, is cast away upon " the deserts of Bohemia,"
his Bohemia will have shores if need be ; why not ? and
the young Perdita shall be brought up in a cottage among
clowns as the daughter of an old shepherd ; and this " gent-
ler scion," growing upon " the wildest stock," will furnish a
happy instance of the grafting art in the higher kind. But
1 Natural History, 501, 507, 510.
2 Winter's Tale, Act I V. Sc. 3. Mr. White reads " gillivon" which is the
old form of the word.
s Advancement, Book II.
520 DESTINY.
at sweet sixteen, this " bud of nobler race " shall be clearly
distinguishable still from " a bark of baser kind," at least
to a king's son Florizel ; but " the rule is certain, that plants
for want of culture degenerate to be baser in the same
kind," though
" Wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality." Sonnet.
As is his wont, he will himself put on the mask, and slip
into the scene in all characters, more especially, here, in the
character of Polixenes, King of Bohemia, and, into the
mouth of this blooming child of nature, returned fresh from
her " rustic garden," with whole handfuls of the " fairest
flowers o' the season," rosemary and rue,
" Carnations, and streak'd gilliflowers,
Which some call Nature's bastards,"
he will put the best results of his latest meditations upon
the art and mystery of Nature. For even Perdita had
" heard it said
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating Nature.
Pol. Say there be ;
Yet Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean : so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art,
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock ;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend Nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is Nature.
Per. So it is.
Pol. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers,
And do not call them bastards." Act IV. Sc. 3.
In the " Natural History," identical ideas, words, and ex-
pressions occur, if indeed any possible doubt could remain
of the identity of the philosopher and the poet here ; as for
instance :
" First, therefore, you must make account, that if you will have one plant
change into another, you must have the nourishment overrule the seed :"....
DESTINY. 521
" This I conceive also, that all esculent and garden herbs, set upon the
tops of hills, will prove more medicinal, though less esculent than they were
before."
" The second rule shall be, to bury some few seeds of the herb you would
change amongst other seeds ; "
" In which operation the process of nature still will be (as I conceive), not
that the herb you work upon should draw the juice of the foreign herb (for
that opinion we have formerly rejected), but there will be a new confection
of mould, which perhaps will alter the seed, and yet not to the kind of the
former herb."
" The sixth rule shall be, to make plants grow out of the sun or open air ;
for that is a great mutation in nature, and may induce a change in the
seed."
" Some experiment would be made, how by art to make plants more last-
ing than their ordinary period." Nat. Hist., 527, 531, 587.
Here, the identity of the idea is clear enough, and the
same use of the words change, baser kind, and art, is quite
palpable ; and especially the outcropping of the same word
conceive is one of those singular instances of the manner in
which the vocabulary of the same author will pass into
writings of a very different nature, but upon kindred topics,
all unconsciously, perhaps, to the author himself.
We know from many parts of Bacon's writings, as well
as from his personal biography, that he took great delight
in gardens and flowers. The Essay on Gardens is alone
sufficient to show that he had a delicate appreciation of
this kind of beauty, as well as an exquisite taste in the art,
of which he was himself a great master. He begins by
saying, " God Almighty first planted a garden ; " and he
speaks of it as " the purest of human pleasures." He holds
that " there ought to be gardens for all the months of the
year ; in which severally things of beauty may be then in
season " ; and he proceeds to name the flowers proper to
each month and season. Now, the flowers named in the
cottage-scene of the fourth act of the " Winter's Tale "
appear to have been drawn from one and the same cal-
endar, and in about the same order as those of the Essay,
as thus :
" For December, and January, and the latter part of November, you must
522 DESTINY.
take such things as are green all winter: holly, ivy; rosemary;
lavender; germander; and myrtles, if they be stored; and sweet
marjoram warm set: "
"Per. Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue ; these keep
Seeming and savour all the Winter long :
Pol. Shepherdess,
(A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages
With flowers of Winter."
" And trial would be made of grafting of rosemary, and bays, and box,
upon a holly-stock; because they are plants that come all winter." Nat.
Hist., 592.
" There followeth, for the latter part of January and February, the meze-
reon-tree, which then blossoms; primroses; anemones; the earl}'
tulippa; For March, there come violets, specially the single blue,
which are the earliest ; the yellow daffodil ; the daisy ; sweet briar.
In April follow the double white violet; the wall-flower; the stock gilli-
flower; the cowslip; Jlower-de-luces, and lilies of all natures; rosemary-flow-
ers ; the tulippa ; the double piony ; the pale daffodil ; "
"Per. Out, alas !
You 'd be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' th' Spring, that might
Become your time of day ; and yours ; and yours ;
daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one /" Act IV. Sc. 3.
" In May and June come pinks of all sorts, specially the bluish pink :
roses of all kinds, except the musk which comes later : the French
marigold ; lavender in flowers In July come gilliflowers
of all varieties ;
"Per. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on Summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling Winter, the fairest fiowers o 1 tK 1 season
Are our carnations, and streak'd gilliflowers,
Which some call Nature's bastards : of that kind
Our rustic garden 's barren ; and I care not
To get slips of them
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 523
Here 's flowers for you ;
Hot lavender, mint, savory, marjoram ;
The marigold, that goes to bed with th' sun:
And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers
Of middle Summer, and I think they 're given
To men of middle age." Act IV. "Sc. 3.
And as another instance of the source of Bacon's met-
aphors, it may be noted that in a letter to Burghley he uses
this expression : " though it bear no fruit, yet it is one of
the fairest flowers of my poor estate ; " * which is repeated
in another letter of the same year thus : " I will present
your Lordship with the fairest flower of my estate, though
it yet bear no fruit." 2
Mr. Spedding notices these resemblances, and observes,
that if this Essay had been contained in the earlier edition,
some expressions would have made him suspect that Shake-
speare had been reading it 8 : and well they might. But it
was not printed until 1625, and, of course, William Shake-
speare could never have seen it. Nor is it at all probable
that Bacon would have anything to learn of William Shake-
speare concerning the science of gardening. In short,
when the Essay and the play are read together, written as
they both are, in that singular style of elegance, brevity,
and beauty, and depth of science, which is so markedly
characteristic of this author, whether in verse or prose, it
becomes next to impossible to doubt of his identity.
3. THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
Whence it may be understood how it must be impossible
that any knowledge out of the foreknowledge of God, or
through angels, daemons, or spirits, or any information of
his actual thoughts, intentions, purposes, or future prov-
idence, through divination, influxion, inspiration, or any
kind of special illumination, can be imparted, or directly
l Letter (1597), II. Spedding, 52.
Letter to Egerton (1597), Ibid. 62.
Works (Boston), XII. 235.
524 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
communicated, to man from within, behind, and beyond the
origin and source of his own soul. Indeed, in this sense
of foreknowledge, there is none possible with God himself,
within the power of human conception ; for, with him, to
think and know is to create and bring into actual existence
what is thought and known. The actual present state of
his thought, in any instant, is the real universe that lies
before us and around us. His purposes therein are re-
vealed to us only in the providential order and scientific
history of the past and present universe. The future con-
tinuity of the creation must depend, for the actual details
thereof, upon his future thought and the plan and purpose
that may be therein, in the freedom of his power or will ;
and it must be forever impossible to be foreknown to Him,
or revealed to us. Man premeditates : God creates. His
thought, his word, is his deed. Though man's thought be
his deed, in respect of his own creative thinking, and his
imaginations, his conceptions, according to Spinoza, i re-
garded in themselves, contain no error," it is not always so,
when regarded with reference to things external to them,
nor in his execution of his thought into outward act, nor
in his judgment of the works of other men ; much less, in
his conceptions of the works and providence of God. The
difference between the human mind and the divine mind
must no more be lost sight of than their identity, in so far
as identical. The common conception of Deity as of a
being who reasons, deliberates, premeditates, and thinks
within himself, before acting and creating ; who frames
ideals, types, and archetypes in his mind, first, and then
moulds the chaos of dead matter into some decree of con-
O
formity with them, and gradually builds up a universe upon
a preconceived and well-considered plan, like a common
carpenter, who is angry and pleased, is offended and pro-
pitiated, and rewards and punishes, after the manner of
men, is a weak invention, a mere waking dream, and the
offspring of superficial and uncritical thinking.
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 525
Nor much better is that other view, that takes the
universe, indeed, to have been " the free conception of the
Almighty Intellect," but as having been " matured in his
thought before it was manifested in tangible forms," as if
there had been "premeditation prior to the act of creation," 1
and concludes from a consideration of the entire order of
the animal kingdom, that " the whole was devised in order
to place man at the head," and that " millions of ages ago,
his coming was seen as the culmination of the thought,
which devised the fishes and the lowest radiata." 2 For,
duly considered, there is here no other anticipation neces-
sarily, or logically, to be inferred than this : that when the
first ideal type, for instance, the cell, wherein is the funda-
mental unity of type of the whole animal kingdom, was
conceived and executed as one act in the actual creation
of the first animal cell that was created, the entire ideal
architectonic of the whole kingdom, man included, was then,
as it may truly be said, merely within the bounds of the
possible for the creative power, acting under the necessary
laws of thought and in accordance with the divine nature
and in consistency with his attributes of wisdom and good-
ness, within the scope and scheme of that most general
type, whenever it should please the Divine Majesty further
to conceive and execute other less general types in other
actual details (still falling under that most general type, if
it should so please him), in the order of his providence in
the work of creating an animal kingdom. But until so
actually conceived and brought into existence as a part of
his thought, for the rest uncreated, it need be considered
only as being as yet in possibility, and still lying in all the
possibilities of his thinking existence, not yet thought out
of non-existence even into the divine contemplation in any
sense of preliminary premeditation ; for He is that absolute
Power of Thought, with whom " being and knowing " are
l Agassiz's Contrib. to Nat. Hist, of N. Amer., I. 9.
3 Agassiz's Remarks, (Am. Sri. Disc. 1856.)
526 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
one, whose knowledge is that Sapience which is at once
both knowledge and wisdom in all that is, or will be,
created, and with whom, to think is to create just so far
and no further ; and so, in like manner, of any secondary
and subordinate type, or less general ideal plan, in any
branching direction, in time and space, of Branch, Class,
Order, Genus, Species, or Individual, even to the minutest
details, in the actual order of their creation and succession,
existence and disappearance, in geological consecutiveness
and progression ; individuals, only, having actual existence
in time and space, form and cause conjoined, so as to
present " tangible forms " and physical existence in nature,
recognizable to human senses, scopes, instruments, and all
the methods of experimental science, and copyable and
conceivable to the human mind, no less and no more than
those intangible ideal and more general forms, types, and
archetypes, which fall within the scope of the intellectual
vision and metaphysical science only ; for this science alone
can discover, or see, the transcendental architectonic of the
universe. And we have on the geological tablets and in
living nature a record sufficient, when thoroughly studied,
to enable us to penetrate the mystery, to see through nature
up to nature's author, and finally to grasp a true science
of the whole creation by that way, whenever we shall have
arrived with Bacon at a knowledge of " the order, operation,
and Mind of Nature " and that truth which, by the oath of
Lear, was to be Cordelia's dower :
"Lear. So young, and so untender?
Cor. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so: thy truth, then, be thy dower:
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs,
From whom we do exist, and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me,
Hold thee from this forever." Lear, Act I. Sc. 1.
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 527
But we should take care, also, with Geoffroy Saint-IIilaire,
not to lend to God any intentions, but to observe and study
the fact, and read the plan and intent therein, as a " rev-
elation and true vision " of the actual thought of the Creator
as it is found presented to us in the existent creation, or in
what remains of any past creation, resting assured, all the
while, that no thought, nor creation, is at all possible with-
out plan and purpose therein. Nor need we expect to find
any record, fossil or other, of any past creation that had no
plan in it, nor imagine that any future creation will be
given without a plan therein ; though there has certainly
been, and doubtless there will be, more or less of continuous
change of plan in respect of the details, parts, or even whole
of any given creation. And in respect of the fossil order
and succession of animals, through the changing surfaces
of past time, as in respect of the existing order and succes-
sion of them, in space, on the present surface of the globe,
still as ever changing, when we collect, arrange, and classify
the facts in a scientific manner, according to the ideal
architectonic which our minds are capable of discovering
in them, we may then find revealed to us therein what was
the plan and purpose of the Creator in them so far, and
what was the actual course of change of plan and purpose
in them as they successively came into existence and dis-
appeared, without need of any supposed premeditation
further concerning them.
And herein, also, we may see how the thought of the
Creator is indeed simultaneous in respect of any whole
present state thereof, and also consecutive, no less than
human thought, in respect of all change therein ; inasmuch
as it is continually streaming into time and space in nature,
and continually vanishing out, or not vanishing, into ob-
livion, according as it may, or may not, be held in existence
for the time being in the continuity of the Divine Remem-
brance. And of all this Plato had some knowledge, though
not in that more exact and particular detail of natural laws
528 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
and physical facts in which our modern science also dis-
covers it ; for he, at least, among the ancients, taught much
the same doctrine, when he said that " that which is the
cause of anything coming out of non-existence into existence
is altogether a creation ; " that all creation is a work of art,
divine or human ; and that a destructive change of thought
whereby something vanishes out of existence into non-
existence, " do we not call this oblivion, Simmias, the
loss of knowledge " ?
The fact of the Divine Existence, his nature, power,
laws, wisdom, goodness, love, and perfection, being eternal
facts, or unalterable necessities, or unchangeable attributes
of his being, must be always known to him ; and they may
be always known, foreknown, and predicted by us with un-
erring certainty ; and likewise even the general stability of
the universe, the revolution of the heavenly bodies, an
eclipse, or other like natural phenomena, so far as neces-
sarily involved in that nature, those laws, and those attri-
butes, and so far as necessarily implied in that general
stability. So far as these things depend upon the necessary
laws of thought and those unchanging attributes, and so
far as in respect of them the Divine Remembrance is ever
continuous, our knowledge of them may amount to definite
and certain prevision ; for of these things knowledge is
foreknowledge always :
" Imog. Who ? thy lord ? that is my lord : Leonatus.
0, learn'd, indeed, were that astronomer,
That knew the stars, as I his characters ;
He'd lay the future open." Cym., Act III. Sc. 2.
But over and above and beyond these eternal facts and
' necessary laws, the particular changes that may take place
in the existent creation, or the particular details that may
be given in any new creation in future time and space, can
only be matter of probability and conjecture to man,
grounded on his knowledge of God, and on what he may
come to know of the past and present providential order,
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 529
plan, and purpose as disclosed in a scientific history and
true knowledge of the universe so far ; for all this must
depend upon his free will, which must remain forever free.
Absolute foreknowledge in this would reduce God and his
universe to mere necessity, fixed fate, and foreordination
absolute, and the order of his providence to a blind, im-
movable, inevitable fatality, and world-machine. There is
no conceivable possibility of such foreknowledge, and any
attempt to conceive it, or state it, must always end in con-
tradiction and absurdity : therefore no revelation out of any
such foreknowledge can possibly be made to man in any
way, and none such ever was made.
We should not attempt to conceive of God as a being
outside the universe itself, and simply operating upon a
self-subsistent dead matter as a something coeternal with
him and distinct from his own thinking essence, substance,
or power, but rather as the Master Architect, who works
with his own materials, indeed, in the structure-building
process of construction of a universe, but who is, at the
same time, that absolute and sovereign architect, who first
forms his own materials in whatever infinitesimal atoms, or
thinnest imponderable ethers, and, as it were, Arachne-
like, spins his material out of the one substance of all sub-
stances, himself, and builds ether upon ether, atom upon
atom, crystal upon crystal, cell upon cell, and structure upon
structure, throughout the fabric of nature, beginning the
work at the point of beginning of all creation, where infin-
ite passes into finite, and is bounded out of all the possi-
bilities of a thinking power ; as when the sixty-two simple
substances (more or less) were created ; or as when this
evolving and constructing power, starting at the germinal
dot, or innermost centre of the innermost vesicle of the
seed, or the egg, spins the thread and weaves the tissue out
of existing materials, and builds up a shoot, or an embryo,
breathing into it, or exhibiting within it, at the same time,
as much life, or as much soul, as it needs, or can have.
34
530 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
And it is precisely at such point, always, that a mathemati-
cal science of force, motion, revolution, number, magnitude?
quantity, proportion, and instrumentation, begins to be
possible ; for mathematics is the science of the laws of
thought, creative or destructive, under which the actual
given creation comes forth into existence, and alone can
come : of which science of laws, again, knowledge is fore-
knowledge always, just so far. But for the rest, it must be
left to the fabled three, Clotho, the spinner, Nemesis, the
fate which is judicial providence, and Atropos, whose tear-
less shears are necessity and death.
What is given in the origin of the finite soul, is the special
thinking power. That power is simply a specialization of
the total divine power of thought ; and it is of the very
essence and nature of that power to be self-acting and
self-directing cause, and self-moving soul ; or nearly what
Bacon calls " the highest generality of motion or summary
law of nature," which God would " still reserve within his
own curtain." ] There is a difference between power and
will, and between will and free-will. Will is that which
measures the given amount of power, and the totality of all
power ; and it is not free. It is a necessary fact : it merely
expresses the fact of the existence of the power in its act-
ual totality. The power as such totality is by its own
nature necessarily in activity as self-acting and self-direct-
ing cause : this is a part of the fundamental fact of its
existence. Free-will, again, is not the active, choosing,
and directing cause, or power itself, but only the freedom
of the power as choosing cause, and that which admits of
difference of direction of the power which exists already as
self-acting and self-directing cause. Free-will expresses
only that necessary law and condition of all thinking,
wherein is the possibility of duality, plurality, difference,
variety, coordination, opposition, and involution of particu-
lars, in the creation of conceptions : it is merely freedom
as one of the possibilities of a thinking existence.
1 Valerius Termimts,
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 531
But besides the freedom which exists under this inner
law of thought, there is another kind of freedom for a finite
soul ; and that is freedom of practical action and effect,
or operation, upon the body and the rest of the external
world ; for which the limitations are the order of divine
providence in the rest of the universe external to the soul,
and which, beyond the extent to which it may be modified
or changed, by the action of the soul upon it as causative
power, must exist as absolute fate for the soul. In that
change, there is necessarily a certain concurrence in the
mind of the Creator, ending in an equilibrium of stationary
balance, depending on the necessary general stability of the
whole and the essential natures of particular things, the
providential plan in the distribution of particulars in the
universal variety, the amount of power given and exerted
in the twofold direction, and the extent and scope of lib-
erty allowed to the finite soul as a practical free agent.
The direction cannot precede the power. Some direc-
tion must follow, of necessity, the activity of the power. A
point cannot move without creating a line, straight, or
curved, nor create a line without moving ; nor move with-
out causative power. Movement, that is, creation, begins
at a mathematical point ; and on this fundamental truth
Newton based the Calculus." 1 The direction must begin at
exactly the same point in time and space as the activity of
the power. Free-will is that freedom or liberty on all
sides, in which is determined the direction of the power in
action as self-directing cause, within the given range of
liberty, one way rather than another, giving the straight
line, or the curve, and what line, and what curve. "Will is
that which necessitates some direction, and some line, or
some curve, the power being in activity as an ultimate fact
The range of free-will for the finite soul is circumscribed
o
by the limitations of its own specially constituted sphere of
activity, consisting of the given limited amount of power
i Princifia, Bk. I., 1, Lemma II.
532 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
and the inner laws of power as thought, on the one side,
and of the outer world, the external order of providence,
or fate, on the other side ; within which arise and exist all
the external and foreign limiting determinators of the self-
directing power, the inner metaphysical and necessary, the
external physical, whether fixed, or variable, the judicial,
the moral, the aesthetical, and the religious ; and the range
of liberty is given in the whole sphere thus constituted.
Will, measuring the total amount of power, the inner limit
of freedom on that side, expresses the fact of its existence
and the necessity of some action and some direction, if
there be a living soul ; even though it should be no more
than is necessary in order to maintain a stationary equili-
brium of bare existence as an active power. This neces-
sary some direction is given with the power itself, at the
same time and from the same source : it is a part of the
ultimate fact of existence. As self-directing cause, this
soul may give direction, that is, choose, within the given
range of liberty, or it may not: if it do not so act and
choose, then the direction of the power must be deter-
mined by necessity ; and the soul will act in the direction
taken by the choice, if any be so taken, or if not, then by
mere necessity and blind chance ; or it will move by virtue
of that more inward and original direction, which it has
received and possesses with its primal existence : wherein
may consist that guiding and controlling guardianship, or
" secret will and grace " of the Greater Providence, which
may sometimes determine the direction and the choice,
when the self-directing specialty, as such, is unable to de-
cide and determine for itself, being for the time in a cer-
tain unresolvable quandary ; which guardianship, again,
may be that which is sometimes called Luck, and some-
times Destiny, being that same
" destiny
(That hath to instrument this lower world,
And what is in 't " ) : Temp., Act III. <Sc. 3.
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 533
or, as Holinshed wrote, " the divine providence and appoint-
ment of God, as St. Augustine saith ; for of other destiny, it
is impossible to dream." 1 In like manner writes Hooker,
about 1594, in the "Ecclesiastical Polity'' (which this
author may have read), " that the natural generation and
process of all things receiveth order of proceeding from the
settled stability of the divine understanding. This ap-
pointeth unto them their kinds of working ; the disposition
whereof in the purity of God's own knowledge and will is
rightly termed by the name of Providence. The same
being referred unto the things themselves here disposed by
it, was wont by the ancient to be called natural Destiny
Nature therefore is nothing else but God's instrument" 2
And Hamlet was not far from this same doctrine, when he
said :
"Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep : methought, I lay
Worse than the routines in the bilboes. Rashly,
And prais'd be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There 's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
Hor. That is most certain."
Act V. Sc. 2.
And so, this soul must act upon something out of the
whole range and field of view, and either remain fixed in
stupid equilibrium in one direction and upon the same
thing, or it must shift upon the chosen things, or upon the
destined things ; as when a child first opens its eyes to the
light, then needing much guidance and guardianship ; and
it will perceive, conceive, or act and do, something, or
remain in stationary equilibrium ; and that, too, by the
determination of voluntary choice, sheer necessity, blind
chance, or the all-seeing Destiny, out of the whole possi-
1 Chron. of Eng., I. 49.
2 Hooker's Works (Oxford, 1850,) I. 158.
53-1 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
bility of thinking and doing, even downward in the scale
to the low grade of a mere instinctive consciousness of bare
existence, and down to that narrow sphere of liberty, which
is given, say, to the crinoid star-fish, fixed by his stem to
the bottom of the ocean. Growth and development of
body and increase of the power of the soul in the ascend-
ing scale of types of organization, experience, discipline,
practical skill, knowledge, wisdom, culture, insight, may
follow, in their degrees, even up to the highest human
wisdom and intelligence, wherein is the divine light of the
soul. But the thought, which this special soul will have,
must depend upon what it acts against and perceives, or
what it acts upon and creates within itself as conceptions
of its own ; and its acts and doings will depend upon the
thought and the direction taken by the power of the soul ;
and all its knowledge, wisdom, and culture must be acquired.
But the fundamental power to perceive, conceive, think,
understand, judge, and know, and do, is given, in whatever
swelling measure, and is not acquired ; though acquired
skill, in many things, may be equivalent in practical effect
to an increase of power. We have, in the " Cymbeline,"
some illustration of this kind of power and the degree of
faculty and difference of quality, which Nature may give,
with the birth of the individual. The two sons of the king
are stolen from their cradle by Belarius, and brought up in
a forest cave that was " a cell of ignorance " as hunters,
knowing nothing of their origin. And when Imogen ap-
pears at the cave in the disguise of an unknown boy, the
brothers conceive a greater liking for him than they have
for their supposed father, Belarius :
"Bel. [Aside.} noble strain !
worthiness of nature ! breed of greatness !
Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base :
Nature hath meal and bran ; contempt and grace.
1 am not their father; yet who this should be,
Doth miracle itself, lov'd before me.
thou goddess,
THE GREATER PROVIDENCE. 535
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys ! They are as gentle
As zephyrs, blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head ; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafd, as the rud'st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th' vale. 'T is wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearn'd, honor untaught,
Civility not seen from other, valour
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sow'd ! " Act 1 V. Sc. 2.
Thus is the soul constituted a special thinker and cre-
ator by itself, under a special consciousness of its own ; and
all its perceptions, conceptions, thought, ideas, knowledge,
wisdom, culture, and insight, even to a knowledge of God
and the universe and the order of his providence in it, must
be exclusively its own, and arise out of its own special
activity as such given power of thought, with whatever helps
it may have. All the while, man must remember, that he
lives in a world-prison as close as that in which the fallen
King Richard meditated :
U K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world :
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet still I '11 hammer 't out.
My brain I '11 prove the female to my soul ;
My soul, the father; and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples, and do set the Word itself
Against the Word:
As thus, ' Come little ones ' ; and then again,
4 It is as hard to come, as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
536 THE GREATER PROVIDENCE.
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls ;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride !
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars,
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have, and others must sit there :
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endur'd the like.
But whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleas'd till he be eas'd
With being nothing." Rich. II., Act V. Sc. 5.
What is given, here, from the original fountain of all
existence being a thinking power, all its thinking, its special
consciousness, its identity and personality, its ideas, thoughts,
knowledge, wisdom, and culture, and all its acts and doings,
must necessarily be the effect, work, and result of the activ-
ity of the power as original cause, under the whole special
constitution of the soul as such. In like manner, the
thought of God must be the work and effect of the activity
of the divine power of thought in its whole unity and total-
ity ; and his thought, knowledge, and purposes must exist
under the divine consciousness alone, being as boundless as
the universe and himself. His thought and action, being
the actual universe, is presented as such effect and as re-
ality directly to the fore-front view of this special thinker,
seer, knower, and doer, whether he shall see much or little
of it, whether he shall heed, or not, its laws, facts, and les-
sons. But, to suppose the thought, ideas, knowledge, or
purposes of the divine mind, could be directly made known,
immediately imparted, to this special thinker from behind,
underneath, and beyond the origin and source of the soul
itself, as so constituted, by any conceivable sort of direct
illumination, inspiration, or other kind of spiritual commu-
nication, angelic, dasmoniac, or super-telegraphic, would be
in effect, either to imagine an inconceivable and absurd
impossibility, or to suppose the soul to lose its specializa-
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 537
tion and to fall back (as a wave falls to the level of the sea)
into total identity with the " oversoul," the Greater Provi-
dence itself; a supposition, which would necessarily involve
the logical and inevitable destruction and utter extinction
of the special soul, as such ; and it would vanish into silence
and oblivion. True, this might happen, or it might not, at
the will of the Creator : if the ocean covered the globe, a
wave might roll eternally on a given circle. Says Jean Paul
Eichter, " I believe in a harmonious, an eternal ascent, but
in no created culmination." 1
4. TIIE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
Returning to the question of the origin and nature of the
Lesser Providence, it is to be considered that the soul, so
constituted, must exist as an object and a fact of the divine
consciousness, in like manner as the body. The power
given and specialized in that particular way in the creation
of the soul in the universal distribution of variety in the
totality of the universe, under that consciousness, must
depend, always, for the amount of power, on the divine
power in its freedom as self-acting and self-directing cause
in the whole providential order and plan of the divine
thought ; and so, the capability of any soul to think to
perceive, conceive, see, understand, judge, know, and do,
must depend at bottom upon the amount of power so given ;
and just so, from the lowest self-conscious animal up to the
highest human intelligence. But nothing but the power
and the specialization of it are given from that direction
and on that side. Identity with the divine Existence ex-
tends no further than to this fundamental essence of the
soul as a finite power of thought. By virtue of that identity
it is power in fact of the nature of the power of thought, in
a state of activity, and that " sparkle of our creation light
whereby men acknowledge a Deity burneth still within,"
and, as such, self-acting, self-directing cause so far. Dif-
i Kampaner Thai, Werke, XIII. 44.
538 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
ference from the universal soul consists in the special con-
stitution of the finite thinking sphere, so far as the special-
ization goes ; and it embraces the whole specialization and
no more, the limitations being, on one side, the physical
organization and the outward world, and on the other, the
given amount of power and the necessary laws of thought ;
and between the two sides or halves of the sphere (as it
were) is, in fact, not a hollow sphere, nor a blank-sheet
sensorium, but only that invisible sheet-plane which is yet
neither a substance, nor a space, but a mere region of pos-
sibility of thinking, action, and sense-perception, and that
same All Possibility in which God himself exists and creates
the universe as His thought. In this unbounded possibility,
in which lies the whole outer world and field of sensible
experience, however undiscoverable its limits to us, as well
as our own inner world of intellectual conception, there is
no end to the creations of God and man : art and science
have no bounds in this direction, being limited, in this
respect, in man, or animal, only in the exhaustion of his
power to act, to discover, and to create, but being, in God,
as boundless as all the worlds of his creation, that are, or
have been, and as inexhaustible as the eternal continuity
of his existence and power to think and create.
But it is in the special constitution and by virtue of the
specialization, only, that special thinking and a particular
consciousness arise. The whole individual identity of the
soul as a thinking personality depends upon the specialties,
and it must cease if and when they cease. The soul so
specialized, and bounded like a wave out of the whole ocean
of soul, stands as a created object and a thought in the
divine consciousness, in the same manner as a tree, or a
microscopic cell of a tree ; but while it is such object in the
divine mind, it is also a special subject for itself. But a
tree, or a cell, is not, any more than is a body without a
soul. The inner powers active in a cell are in motion under
the divine consciousness alone, like all the powers of phys-
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 539
ical nature, to which we give no higher name than mechan-
ical, chemical, electrical, or, in general, physical forces. But
when we come to a self-acting, self-directing, self-conscious
power, a new name is necessary in all science and in all
languages to designate this new fact and peculiar phe-
nomenon ; and it is called a mind or a soul. As Plato says,
and it cannot well be better said, " the beginning of motion
is that which moves itself; and this can neither perish, nor
be created, or all heaven and all creation must collapse
and come to a standstill, and never again have any means
whereby it might be moved and created " ; and again, he
says, " every body which is moved from without is soulless,
but that which is moved from within, of itself, possesses a
soul, since this is the very nature of soul." l And so, says
Bacon, " all spirits and souls of men came forth out of one
divine limbus " :
" Porter. I have some of 'em in Limbo Patrwn, and there they are like
to dance these three days." Hen. VIII., Act V. Sc. 3.
It has become as difficult in science to draw the dividing
line between the vegetable and animal kingdoms in respect
of organization as it has been, in metaphysics, to mark the
line of division between instinct and intelligence. There
is a large class of animalcular cell-like bodies, with refer-
ence to which naturalists of the highest distinction differ in
opinion as to whether they belong to the animal or to the
vegetable kingdom ; and of many species, even an Ehren-
berg cannot determine with his microscope whether they
are to be classed with animals, or with plants. Science is
every day shifting some species from the one kingdom into
the other. That they have an apparently voluntary motion,
vibratory, or oscillatory, or revolving, is not sufficient to
determine the question ; for in this they are all alike. And
Lankester finally resolves the essential organic difference
between the two kingdoms into a difference of merely
1 I'fuedrus, Works (Bohn), I. 321.
540 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
chemical operations. ^Nevertheless, it is easy to distinguish
a mere excito-motory instinctive motion, whether of a sensi-
tive plant, or a sensitive animal, which is a mechanical or a
physiological result of organization and applied forces, from
an independent self-moving, self-directing cause and a self-
conscious power. The most delicate water-creeper, the
most infinitesimal rotifer, starts and stops, goes and comes,
as he wills. A loom, be it ever so ingeniously constructed,
presents only a certain mechanical practicability of cloth
being woven : it has not, nor can it have, a self-moving
power to weave cloth, as the spider has, to spin and weave
his web. Applied power, as of water or steam, may put
the instrumental machine in motion ; but even then, it
weaves nothing, and only runs as an empty mill. The
power that actually weaves cloth is only in the soul of the
weaver. It is clear, that the fly-catching movement of the
leaf of Dionaea, or the vibrating motion of the leaflet of
Hydesarum, or the life-like motion of the sensitive Mimosa,
is a mere result of organization and of the action of external
or internal physical forces or both together, though a
Schleiden cannot discover the " causes " with his micro-
scope. 1 Indeed, all nature is, in one sense, alive :
" All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being ; to our mind,
In their ascent and cause " : Herbert.
or as another poet sings :
" L'anima di ogni bruto e delle piante
Di complession potenziata tira
Lo raggio e il moto delle luci sante." Dante, Par. c. vii.
The eye of science has not yet discovered, in all cases,
the exact stage in the scale of organized being, whether in
the Kingdom, or in the Branch, or in the individual, where
this kind of power first distinctly appears in a special form :
the exact point of its first appearance in the flow of the
physical stream may not be very essential. Nor is it at all
1 Schleiden's Prin. of Botany, p. 554 (London, 1849).
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 541
necessary that this fact should be taken as a criterion of
distinction between an animal and a plant, or between one
Branch, or Class, of the animal kingdom and another, but
only, for that matter, between an excito-motory, or merely
instinctive function and a self-conscious power or will, be-
tween an animal that has, and one that has not, a self-
moving soul, though it be so limited and diminutive in
amount of power of thought and action in the particular
instance as to be sometimes rather called an instinct than
a soul. But it is necessary critically to distinguish between
a true soul and that structural, physiological, excito-motory
function of motion and even apparent self-activity which is
properly called an instinct ; that is, between a movement
which is due to the Greater Providence and one that is the
work of the lesser providence as such.
It was an opinion of Bacon, that even insects had some
small amount of mind. " The insecta," he writes, " have
voluntary motion, and therefore imagination ; and whereas
some of the ancients have said that their motion is inde-
terminate and their imagination indefinite, it is negligently
observed ; for ants go right forward to their hills ; and
bees do (admirably) know the way from a flowery heath
two or three miles off to their hives. It may be, gnats and
flies have their imagination more mutable and giddy, as
small birds likewise have And though their spirit
[soul] be diffused, yet there is a seat of their senses in the
head." 1
It is evident that all mental manifestation or exhibition
of psychical power in man or animals is immediately con-
nected with, and somehow dependent upon, the brain and
nervous structures. At the base of the kingdom, Owen finds
the Protozoic Acrita without a nervous system. With the
Nematoneura, a mere thread-nerve appears. The next
ascending type (Radiata) is characterized by an cesophageal
nervous ring; the next (Articulala) has two ganglia in
i Nat. Hi$t., 698.
542 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
this ring, one above and one below the oesophagus ; and as
we ascend in the scale, this upper ganglion becomes a true
cerebrum, and the lower, a cerebellum ; that is, they will
be found to correspond in ganglionic function. In the next
type (Mollusca), we have three ganglia in the oesophageal
ring, the third and additional one corresponding in nervous
function with the medulla oblongata of the higher Branch
( Vertebrata.) In the cuttle-fish (Sepia), the highest type
of mollusc, these three ganglia are already well concen-
trated into the head, and the cerebral ganglion has now
become a well-defined cerebrum, and begins to be enclosed
in a cartilaginous brain-case. In the first class of Verte-
brates (Fishes), the second ganglion, too, has become a
distinctly rounded nodule and a well marked cerebellum ;
and the whole brain begins to be enclosed in a brain-case,
cartilaginous, at first, and afterwards and higher in the
scale, in a bony cranium. In these Fishes, the three ganglia,
now become a distinct triplex brain, lie extended on a
horizontal line, with the cerebrum in front, then the cere-
bellum, and last, the medulla oblongata ; and the cerebellum
is smallest in comparative size, the cerebrum larger, and
the medulla oblongata, largest. In the Amphibia, the next
higher type, the cerebellum has become larger than the
cerebrum, the medulla oblongata being still the largest. In
the next higher, the Reptiles, the cerebrum is still smallest,
and the other two have become nearly equal in size. In
the Birds, the next higher still, the cerebrum is largest, the
other two remaining nearly equal in size. And in the
Mammals, the cerebrum has become still larger in com-
parison, and the cerebellum larger than the other. And
with the relative and comparative size goes, in general, the
increase in development and complication of the brain
structure. And still further, with the Birds the cerebrum,
moving backward in position, already begins to be placed
partly above the other parts of the brain ; in the Mammals,
it covers them still more ; in the Lemurs, the first family
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 543
of the Ape tribe, it is placed nearly on top of the other
parts, not yet quite covering them : in the higher Apes, it
fully covers them, and in Man, still more completely ; and
this progress, on the whole, appears to exhibit an ever
increasing development and perfection in respect of the
extent, depth, complication, and distinctive prominence of
the convolutions of the brain, and, as it would seem, with a
corresponding degree of fineness and delicacy in the most
' intimate and inward organization and structure of the
microscopic cell-tissues ; and the whole ascending order of
development, arrangement, evolution, and new creation
of artistic form, is thus completed in the erect stature and
commanding presence of the lord of creation. Not that
this progress consists in any mere development along one
continuous line of linear descent ; for such is not wholly
the fact ; but it takes place along several divergent and
consecutively branching lines of linear descent, travelling
over different surfaces in space in concurrent times, the
concurrent spaces and times giving the distribution in time
and space, and the true ascent is in respect of the ideal
type alone, executed in material form in the individual,
wherein it is seen how the whole is an ideal and real
creation in time and space, or times and spaces, and a work
of thought only. Herder, as well as Agassiz, was able to
see this gradual approximation to the erect posture and the
right angle of highest perfection in this direction, and that
all further ascent must needs be exclusively in the intel-
lectual and moral order, in power of soul, knowledge, dis-
cipline, and culture.
Throughout the scale, taking the nervous system and the
brain in particular as basis of the comparison (with Owen),
as is just, mind and the order of exhibition of psychical
power being the most fundamental and important thing of
all, the correspondence of the psychical powers and faculties
with the organic structures, from the thread-nerve to the
full human brain, is clearly manifest In the thread-nerve,
544 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
it is scarcely more than a physiological function ; in the
nerve-ring, it is no more than a mere excito-motory instinc-
tive function ; in the homogangliate duplex brain of the
Articulates, a self-conscious, self-directing psychical power
becomes more decidedly evident, with an increased amount
and variety of sensational phenomena ; the heterogangliate
triplex brain, in the molluscous cuttle-fish, reaches a still
higher degree of mental manifestation and power ; and in
the Vertebrate Branch, with still greater concentration into
the head and a more rapidly increasing development and
evolution and new creation of brain structure, in compara-
tive relation to the whole body and to the Class, or Branch,
the whole psychical and sensational endowment advances
by ascending steps and degrees, as the animal procession,
in the order of creative divine providence, advances in
geological time from out of the sea into the air, from sea
and air to shore and land, to island, to continent ; and it
becomes difficult (though it may yet be possible) to say,
exactly when and where finite mind, or soul, first began ;
for as we trace backward the order of the ascent in past
time, just as when we attempt to trace it in the order of
ascent in the scale of classification in present space, we find
it dwindling by degrees from the highest intellectual power
in man down to a mere instinct, to a simple function of
motion, or even to merely physiological, mechanical, and
general physical powers or forces.
A fabulous opinion is still quite prevalent, that man only
(and some would even leave out the lowest races of men
as well as the higher apes) has a soul. It is based upon
certain foggy, mystical, and obscure notions of the Biblical
i revelation, and means only that man alone has such a soul
as can be saved and go to Heaven. Dr. Carpenter thinks
there is no mind, or soul, below the Vertebrates. "What
his idea of mind or soul is, it would be difficult to determine
or define. The phrenologists begin by assuming at once a
whole psychology, wherein the human mind appears to be
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 545
an agglomeration of some forty distinct faculties and powers,
which they as readily proceed to locate within the skull
from the outside. Carpenter works from the inside, but
ends in finding a " Sensorium " in the Sensory Ganglia
(ihalami optici and corpora striata), wherein he seats what
he calls " Sensation," " Ideation," and " Consciousness " ;
and he discovers " internal senses " in the commissural
fibres, and locates the will and intelligence in the cortical
substance of the cerebral hemispheres. This, too, is psy-
chology with " a splitting power."
The work of creation of an individual seems to proceed
in a manner closely analogous to the mode of procedure in
the creation of an animal kingdom. Descending by the
light of science and the help of the microscope into the
inner laboratory of God and Nature, wherein the work of
creation never ceases, we arrive at length at the germinal
vesicle with its central dot, or point of beginning of the
creation of the new individual, being nearly that same
mathematical point at which all creation, divine or human,
always and everywhere begins. From this centre proceeds
the formation and evolution of new cells as materials of
construction. All sorts of powers are evidently at work
here, mechanical, physiological, chemical, electrical, or other,
and, underneath these, the creative thinking power itself,
wielding all these other and secondary forces as means and
instruments, under the laws and conditions thereof, and
using the existing forms of substance and modes of force,
solid, liquid, gaseous, or ethereal, as materials and instru-
ments at hand ready made for the work ; and the artistic
operation begins. How do you know this ? Know it !
When we see a Homer's Iliad, do we not know it came
from the soul of a Homer ? or a St. Paul's, a St. Peter's, a
watch, or a world, do we not know it came from the mind
of the architect and artist ? for, surely, of all things else we
know anything about, nothing but mind works and creates
in that way.
35
546 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
But this work does not proceed beyond a certain stage,
it seems, according to the nearest scientific exploration,
until the male seminal cells actually reach the outside of
the initiative egg-cell, containing this germinal vesicle, and
there deliquesce in contact (and M. Tulasne finds it to be
just so, in the vegetable kingdom,) the fluid contents of
these cells being taken into actual mixture with those of the
egg-cell by imbibition or endosmose through the cell-walls.
So much science has settled for us ; and this is called im-
pregnation. Reinforced thus, the work of producing new
cell-material starts anew and proceeds with renewed vigor.
By a wonderful process of segmentation, it seems, a single
cell, or a whole mass of cells, is made by halving to chop
itself into a million portions, each containing a part of the
contents of the parent cell, or mass of cells, and a share of
the cell-producing power, which appears, in some measure,
to continue throughout the life of the new animal, living in
all the tissues, and not exhausted even in the hardest bone ;
and so, the work of new creation continually runs along the
interior basis of the individual structure, in like manner as
it runs along the base of the entire animal pyramid and
of the entire vegetable pyramid. Materials enough being
ready, the Architect (so be the work be not detruded by
the intractable and perverse nature of matter, and by fatal
intervening impediments, and thereby deviated from the
ordinary course,) distributes them into layers ; out of one
he fashions an alimentary canal system and reproductive
organs, and this we may call the first story of the building ;
out of a second layer, he unfolds a whole vascular system
of heart, lungs, arteries, veins, for a second story ; and for
the third, out of the other layer, (which is first begun.) he
moulds the skeleton (to serve as basement) and the muscles,
tendons, tissues, nerves, and brain, for frame-work and
inside finish of the whole fabric ; and the brain is pushed
up, as it were, into the very top and dome of the living
temple. But, by the time this embryonic process of evolu-
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 547
tion and construction is completed, there begins to be
exhibited from within the cerebrum, at whatever exact
point in time and space, the psychological phenomenon of
an actual thinking soul and a specialized manifestation of
that same creative thinking power that built the embryo ;
and thus a veritable incarnation of the Word is accom-
plished :
" E tutti li altri modi erano scarsi
Alia giustizia, se il figlio di dio
Non foase umiliato ad incarnarsi."
Paradiso di Dante, c. vii.
[And all the other modes were insufficient
For justice, if the son of God did not
Humiliate himself, and be incarnate.]
Nutrition ascends from the first story into the second,
and from thence into the third, and even down into the
basement, and upward into the dome, and so keeps the
animal alive. That the work proceeds, in each individual,
through nearly all the ascending steps and grades of cell-
development and embryological evolution as exhibited in
the graduated ascent of the entire animal kingdom as a
whole, or in the Vertebrate Branch, in particular, in respect
of type, passing through fish, reptile, bird, mammal, monkey,
up to man ; or, that the construction proceeds by stories,
somewhat as in the entire kingdom of organic nature, with
mineral structures in the first or basement story, with
reproductive organs only in the second, as in Protozoa, with
a nutritive system, only, in the third, as in some lower orders
of animals and in the vegetable kingdom also, and then
a vascular system superadded in a fourth story, and a
nervous system in a fifth and last, with an internal skeleton
and a true and perfect brain in the uppermost loft of all ;
all this is only to be taken as another evidence that the
Divine Architect takes his own simplest and perhaps near-
est way in all his works : all which not only seems to be
true, according to exact science, but agrees remarkably well
with that divine revelation, which the shade of the poet
548 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
Statius made to Dante, when under the guidance of the
soul of Virgil, he had reached the seventh hill in Purgatory,
concluding in these words :
" Ma come di animal divegna fante,
Non vedi tu an cor : questo e tal punto,
Che pui savio di te gia fece errante,
Si, che per sua dottrina fe disgiunto
Dall' anima il possibile intelletto,
Per che da lui non vide organo assunto.
Apri alia verita, che viene, il petto
E sappi che, si tosto come al feto
Lo articolar del cerebro e perfetto,
Lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto
Sovra tant' arte di natura, e spira
Spirito novo di virtu repleto,
Che cio, che trova attivo quivi, tira
In sua sustanza, e fassi un' alma sola,
Che vive, e sente, e se in se rigira." Purg-, c. xxv.
[But how an infant of the animal
Doth come, thou see'st not yet: this is such point,
That wiser men than thou have err'd therein,
They, who by their own doctrine have disjoin' d
From soul the possible intelligence,
Because they saw no organ by 't assum'd.
Open thy heart to th' very truth which comes,
And know thou, that as soon as in the foetus
Th' articulated brain is once perfected,
Himself kindly to 't the First Mover turns,
On so much art of Nature, and inspires
A new spirit, with virtue all replete ;
So that you see, what 's found there active, shoots
His essence in, and makes a soul distinct,
Which lives, and feels, and rules itself in self.]
The ascent from the bottom of the animal kingdom up
to the top, as from the vesicular cell up to the full-grown
man, is by a wide scale of steps and degrees. Until a nerve
is reached, there can be no pretence that any special psy-
chical power exists in any particular structure. In certain
microscopic animalcules in which fine nervous threads, in-
finitesimal ganglia, and some appearance of senses, seem to
be discernible, if really so, as also in the Nematoneura and
the Radiata, there is little or no ground of probability that
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 549
there exists anything more than that kind of physiological
movement and excito-motory and reflex nervous action in
obedience to external, or internal, sensational impressions,
which may properly be called instinct, and in which there is
otherwise no distinct self-moving, self-conscious power. The
ganglia of the oesophageal ring in Articulates and Molluscs,
though in part subservient to certain senses and to the
functions of sensation and motion, must be, for the most
part, (if not entirely), like the other ganglia of these animals,
confined to the same kind of excito-motory and reflex
activity, which is to be considered as purely physiological in
its nature, with the addition, perhaps, in the upper or cere-
bral ganglion, of that very small degree of psychical power,
which is necessary to give a faculty of choice in the direc-
tion of the muscular movements and the motions of the
animal, in obedience to actually present sensations, deter-
mining the animal to one direction, or to one act, rather
than another, but not amounting to such a degree of this
power as to be capable of conceiving ideas, ideal images,
conceptions of imagination, or dreams ; much less, of car-
rying on any continued, or connected, process of rational
thinking. Indeed, it is conceivable, if not probable, or
even very certain, that the highest power of soul in man,
under special circumstances, as when in sound sleep, or as
when stunned by a blow on the head, or under the suffoca-
tion of carbonic acid gas, or the influence of chloroform, or
in any comatose state of the brain, or in disease when near
the point of unconscious insensibility, or death, or when as
yet unborn, may sink, or only rise, for the time being, to a
like diminutive degree of psychical power, and yet be a dis-
tinct living soul. It must be admitted that insects and
molluscs, say, for instance, the bee, with his skilful in-
stincts and industrial economy in the composite organic
structure of the swarm, or the cuttle-fish, with his larger
cerebral ganglion, his great powers of motion, and his cun-
ning arts of self-protection, possess the power and faculty
550 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
of voluntary motion, at least ; but this, perhaps, need not
argue more of psychical power, or self-directing will, than a
simple power of choice between present conflicting sensa-
tions, in conformity also with the mechanical, physiological,
and other physical conditions, which result from their organ-
ization and the state of existence in which they live. If
the act of the bee in returning straight to his hive when
laden with honey from the flowery mead, wherein he seems
to have something of the faculty of the wild Indian in the
deep woods, if the act of the cuttle-fish in darkening the
waters with his ink when danger threatens, necessarily im-
plies some degree of memory as well as an act of will,
or choice, we may as easily allow the memory as the
choice, and also such small degree of psychical power, or
soul, as is therein necessarily implied ; and in this memory,
there is also necessarily implied some small faculty of im-
agination, that is, a capability of framing ideal conceptions
in a thinking soul, however limited in amount and degree
of power. In general, nerves and ganglia are plainly
subservient to the physiological processes of the animal
economy merely. The three great ganglia, which gradu-
ally become concentrated into the head, are as clearly
subservient, in the first instance, and excepting only the
cerebral, first and last, to those functions of sensation and
muscular motion, for which an excito-motory and reflex
activity of a merely physiological nature may be considered
as sufficient. But this cerebral ganglion, even in these
Articulates and Molluscs, as later among the Vertebrates,
would seem to be the seat, also, of some small degree of
that higher kind of power, which can only be designated as
psychical power, or soul that thinks and moves itself.
As we ascend the scale in the Vertebrate Branch, we
find an increased development of these same ganglia, cor-
responding with the increased faculties of sensation and the
increased power and complexity of muscular motion ; and
with the enlargement of the cerebral sensory ganglia into
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 551
expanded cerebral hemispheres, with an ever increasing
proportion in size, convolution, and fineness of texture
therein as the scale mounts, we find this same psychics!
power exhibited, everywhere and throughout, in a very
nearly, if not an exactly, corresponding proportion ; so that
no one can deny, for instance, that the psychical powers of
the higher apes, as in the Orang, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla,
approach as much more nearly to those of man, on the
whole, than do those of the other inferior orders of ani-
mals, as the structure and development of their cerebral
hemispheres, and indeed all the rest of their organization
and structure, approximate more nearly than the other to
the human type. Nor does the scale stop here : it still
continues to ascend, only with a proportionately less degree
of difference in the advance upward through the ascending
races or species of men. The result of all ethnological
study goes to establish this fact ; and though there be a
wide gulf between the highest living species of ape, and the
lowest existing species of man, it is nevertheless true, that
some human tribes, lowest in the living scale, and only not
yet quite extinct, (and many species, or distinct tribes, liave
doubtless long since become extinct in the lapse of im-
mense geological ages since the Pliocene man lived,) for
instance, the Papuas of the East Indian Islands and Aus-
tralia, are found to be utterly incapable of abstract notions,
that is, general rational ideas or conceptions, or any kind
of abstruse reasoning. It is just so with the American In-
dian and other inferior races, the African Negro inclusive, in
greater or less degree only. Thoreau found it to be so with
the civilized Indians of the Maine woods ; and he was a
good observer of such facts. The Gorilla, or Chimpanzee,
may have sensation, voluntary motion, will, and understand-
ing enough to come down from his tree and warm himself
by a deserted camp-fire, but not reason, foresight, or
rational thinking power enough to put on more wood when
the fire burns down, as the naturalists say ; and yet he
552 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
may have a very considerable amount of self-conscious, self-
directing power or will, with memory and imagination ;
some not inconsiderable degree of thinking soul. The wild
naked Papuas, or the Hottentots, four feet and a half in
height, may have reason enough to do acts of this kind, but
scarcely more ; for they have never had understanding,
invention, power of thought, or skill and sense enough, in
the course of long ages, to raise themselves above the con-
dition of wild men of the woods, nor sufficient intelligence
or rational thinking power, to be able to comprehend, by
the help of any teaching, the general ideas, the higher
reasonings, and more comprehensive conceptions, nor the
arts and sciences, of the superior races of men. The
lower races are scarcely more than grown up children :
they represent the several stages of the childhood of the
human race. The American Indian, though somewhat
more capable, is still but little better than a natural-born
Caliban,
" A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nurture can never stick ; on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;
And as with age his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers." Temp., Act IV. Sc. 1.
With them, all progress is, and must be, slow and
gradual, and for the most part in their own best way. John
Elliot's converted Naticks are extinct, and their agglutinate,
polysynthetic Bible is a dead tongue. In the course of
unnumbered geological aeons, the white type is reached.
In the lapse of untold centuries, the Turanian grows into a
Chinese straight-jacket ; the Gangetic Malay, into a Hindu ;
the Nilotic African, into an Egyptian ; the American In-
dian, into an Aztec, or Inca-Peruvian ; the Caucasian, into
a Bactrian, Assyrian, Chaldaean, Hebrew, Grecian, Roman,
European. Within the gently stretching envelope, each
lives, grows, expands, improves, and is transmuted. Take
either suddenly out of it, and he suffers, or perishes, as
when you wrench a turtle out of his shell. Boat-heads,
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 553
flat-heads, and pigmy dwarfs, become fossil, before the ad-
vance of more gigantic long-heads and high-heads. The
westward-flowing white streams of the temperate zones
overwhelm the inferior indigenes, or sweep them aside into
bogs and mountain fastnesses, or strand them upon remote,
inhospitable shores. Guanches, Tasmanians, Tahitians, In-
dians, Negroes, vanish into utter darkness, before the burn-
ing face of European civilization ; or the civilization, flow-
ing backward upon the tropical zones, is itself extinguished
in the dark multitude, as a light goes out in carbonic acid.
Thfc difference is not so much a difference in kind, or in
essence, as a difference of degree; but as the pyschical
power increases in degree, as we mount in the scale, there
is exhibited that ever-enlarging scope, and that conse-
quently increasing number and variety of capabilities and
faculties which, in the new and varied applications and
uses that arise out of and go along with this increase in
amount of power, present themselves to a superficial appre-
hension as new, additional, and distinct mental powers or
faculties ; and hence the illusion of the phrenologists, the
mental physiologists, and all those materialistic philoso-
phers, who try to imagine that all the phenomena of mind
are a mere result of the physical organization and a direct
effect produced by the organic machine ; that memory con-
sists merely in an accumulated volume and mass of sensa-
tional impressions stamped and recorded, one set above
another (with Sir Benjamin Brodie), upon the gossamer
tissues of the cortical layers of the brain ; and that all
thought is a product of nervous electricity, or some kind of
arterial brain-flow and consumption of neurine, as light
comes of the burning of a candle, or time-keeping from
the running of a clock.
The necessary laws of thought, constituting the imper-
sonal reason (as defined by Cousin), exist absolutely ;
that is, as necessary fact, and are common to all thinking
souls, from insect to man, and from man to his Maker.
554 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
Hence, the only difference there can be, in respect of pure
reason, between one created soul and another, whatever
the place of either in the scale of existence, is a difference
in the extent and measure in which each finite soul may be
able to share, partake, use, employ, and exercise these
laws and this reason in perceiving, conceiving, thinking,
and knowing ; for these operations of the mind, as far as
they go, must necessarily be, and always are, carried on in
exact accordance with these laws, whether the special
thinker himself be aware of it or not. This measure may be
large or small in the given instance, and the use ma*de of
it may be in some degree more or less, much or little,
good or bad, logical or illogical, wise or unwise. The soul
in itself is active choosing cause and thinking power, the
" sparkle of our creation light," the " lamp of God "
shining within us, and the light of the understanding
whereby the mind intellectually and spiritually sees, knows,
perceives, conceives, understands, comprehends, and is
self-conscious, and the power whereby it acts, wills, and
creates ; and its existence as such is an ultimate and final
fact. Any man may deny the fact, not see it, and dis-
believe it ; yet the fact still exists and remains so. Such
being the nature of it, it is plain that neither soul, nor
thinking, can be the result or effect of the physical organi-
zation, nor a simple product of the working of the physio-
logical machine, though a finite soul may never exist at all
without an organic body; that brain and mind, speaking of
the finite creature, do not stand in the relation to one
another of cause and effect ; that mind and brain, speaking
of the divine mind, and the created brain, do stand in the
relation to one another of cause and effect ; but that the
true relation of the finite mind, or soul, to the brain and
general structure of the body, is one of correspondence and
adaptation only, as Swedenborg said. And the specializa-
tion of the soul is made to correspond with the special
organic body: the larger and better the receiving basin,
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 555
the more powerful will be the swell of ocean that streams
into it ; and the more soul, the nearer to God.
As a special subject, the activity of any given soul, and
its power as thinking cause, is as primary, original, funda-
mental, and immortal, as the Divine Soul itself, the totality
of all power and cause : it is only in so far as it is a speci-
alty, that a finite soul is secondary and a creation. But the
thought and consciousness of God must necessarily be in
the unity and totality of his being, as such, wherein is the
Divine Personality. The personality of the special thinker,
in like manner, must be only in the unity and totality of the
special soul, as such. Consciousness is the fact of being
and knowing ; and it can by no possibility be more extensive
than the thinking personality. And the finite soul being
thus bounded off, as it were, into a separate and distinct
sphere of consciousness of its own, there can be no possibil-
ity of its being or becoming directly conscious, that is, know-
ing, of the thought, knowledge, purposes, or foreordination
of God, nor any conceivable possibility of an intermediate
flow of thoughts, ideas, conceptions, or revelations, out of
the one mind into the other, whether that of a Moses, an
Isaiah, a Jesus, or a Pope. A man may become conscious,
indirectly, of some part of the divine thought and provi-
dence, by discovering and seeing it in the fore-front view of
the universe, an infinite phantasmagoria, as it were, capable
of being reflected in the mirror of his mind's eye, which is
always able to find therein as much revelation as it can dis-
cover, see, or in any way receive and comprehend, or have
need to know ; but never any more. There can be no
back-door passage from the one consciousness ?nto the
other, and it is of no use to look in the back of the mirror :
it can be conceived only in the heated fancies of uncritical
thinkers and mystical dreamers. The open passages are
all in front : we stand face to face with our God. It should
be left to spiritual-rapping doctors only, to believe that
knowledge, foreknowledge, revelation, divination, prophe-
556 THE LESSER PROVIDENCE.
cies, auguries, gifts of healing, helps, and diversities of
tongues, are, or can be, poured into the human soul, as it
were, through an imaginary hole in the back of the head.
Since the invention of the electric telegraph, certain
visionary dreamers, possessing souls only half awake, have
abandoned the theory of influxions, and imagined that dis-
embodied souls or spirits could send communications from
the spirit-world by some sort of telegraphic rapping. That
a departed soul may live in a spiritual form may be very
possible, if not highly probable, or indeed quite certain.
Some persons have believed that they walked the upper
air, like the spectral ghosts that poets, superstitious persons,
and diseased minds have created in their wandering fan-
cies ; but since it has become scientifically demonstrable,
that no such vision of a ghost could possibly be visible to
any human eye, telegraphic rappings from imaginary in-
visible spirits have been substituted in the place of the vis-
ible spectres. As a living power of thought, a soul can
act, directly, in its own inner sphere of self only ; and in-
directly, upon the world external to itself and upon human
senses, only by means of organic physical instruments, and
through the agency of material means. A human soul, as
we see, has power to move an arm of flesh and bone, and
so to produce great effects on solid bodies. But here,
we have the necessary gradation of organized material
structures and instruments, rising by degrees of solidity
and strength from the most ethereal invisible particles, mi-
croscopic cells, finest" conceivable fibres and gossamer tis-
sues of the brain, through the infinite ascending complica-
tion of ganglionic, nervous, vascular, muscular, and bony
structures up to that completed complex and substantial
instrument, the arm, with its terminal, ingeniously con-
structed hand, capable of great power. And so, too, we
may imagine a spirit soul to have a spiritual body, with a
corresponding and similar structure of brain, nerve, muscle,
bone, arm and hand, made of forms of spiritual substance
THE LESSER PROVIDENCE. 557
(as indeed all substance is spiritual) ; but whatever power
or force such an organization of body might be able to ex-
ercise upon other spiritual bodies of like nature and con-
stitution, it is clear that if it be so thin and ethereal as to
be invisible to the microscope, and wholly imperceptible to
the most delicate scientific tests of the presence of matter
or force, it would be utterly absurd to imagine it could, by
any conceivable possibility, so rap a table at the will of a
spirit soul as to produce a vibration in solid wood, or in so
dense a fluid as the air, which is the only medium of sound
to the ear, any more than could the imaginary hand of an
impossibly visible ghost. Both our eyes and our ears are
forever closed to any such agency, and our souls and our
senses alike are happily inaccessible to all such communi-
cations : so says Hamlet :
" And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself? "
Honest ghosts have scarcely been suspected of such im-
possibilities : even the ghost of Hamlet's father, that " per-
turbed spirit," old truepenny, " the fellow i' the cellar-
age," that was " hie et ubique," and could " work i' the
earth " like a mole, knew better than to undertake to rap
anything. He only ventured to speak aloud ; and even
that voice was never heard by mortal ear until uttered by
some living medium under the stage. Even when poeti-
cally visible, face to face with Hamlet, he cut a long story
short with this sensible speech :
" But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood." Act I. Sc. 5.
And all spiritual rappers will know better, when they
558 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
have learned more, than to undertake any such perform-
ance : that work belongs only to poets. In the mean time,
all may rest assured, that in literal truth this " eternal
blazon " must not be, and, in the order of Divine Provi-
dence in the known world, cannot be, to " ears of flesh and
blood." The universe is neither made nor governed so, nor
are men to be instructed here in that way ; and the sooner
all rappers find this out, the better it may be for them, both
here and hereafter. There should be established for their
use " houses of deceits of the senses, all manner of feats of
juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions, and
their fallacies ; " and they should beware of the fate and
the curse of Macbeth.
5. REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
That sprightly antithesis of Pope, straining a truth to
point his wit,
" The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,"
like much other wit and many old saws, contains more point
than truth ; and as is usual, when vulgar satire flings its
envenomed shafts at what is nobler than itself, the slander
is apt to stick better than the truth. Bacon was not the
meanest of mankind. He was not mean at all, unless by
some mean standard of meanness, but one of the loftiest
and noblest of his time, as well as one of the wisest and
brightest of all time. That he partook in some measure of
the abuses of the time, and shared the faults of good men
in all times, need not be denied. He was not a martyr, nor
a hero, in any ordinary sense ; but in a very extraordinary
sense, he might be found to have been both. He did not
attempt impracticabilities, nor absurd impossibilities ; but
he was certainly one of those " clearest burning lamps," l
and
" clearest gods, who make them honors
Of men's impossibilities " ;
1 Bacon.
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 559
" which, nevertheless," says he, " it seemeth they propound
rather as impossibilities and wishes than as things within
the compass of human comprehension." 1
Without stopping, now, to extenuate his faults, such as
they were (and they have been enormously magnified), it
may be remembered here, that he was wiser than to break
his own head against the dead stone walls and brazen idols
of the age in which he lived. He knew it was better to set
the slow hand of all-conquering Time at work upon them,
and he did more than any other of his time toward con-
triving the plans, indicating the ways, inventing the means,
and constructing the ideal engines and instruments for
their demolition. He made a virtue of necessity, perhaps,
and adapted himself as well as he could to the medium in
which his life was cast ; and he made use of the materials
and instruments that were at hand for such uses as they
were fit for, and for objects, ends, and aims, far higher,
nobler, and better, than was dreamed of by many in his
own time, or even by a large portion of posterity down to
this day. Comparatively speaking, he lived in an age of
darkness and despotism, not in an age of light and liberty.
His " Genius " could not have " the air of freedom " ; and
this he well knew. Hamlet gives sage advice :
" Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : . . .
No, in despite of sense, and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down." Act III. Sc. 4.
Sovereignty, in that age, resided in the king, not in the
people, and if he may be judged by his writings, it was
certainly not Bacon's fault, if the reigning sovereign were
not really as wise as Solomon and a true vicegerent of the
Divine Majesty ; for he taught that kings " be live gods on
earth," as the play also teaches :
l Valeriut Terminut.
560 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
'* Kings are earth's gods ; in vice their law 's their will,
And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill? "
Per., Act I. Sc. 1.
And again thus, in the " Richard II. " :
"Baling. With all my heart
I pardon him.
Ditch. A god on Earth thou art." Act V. Sc. 3.
And again in the " Rape of Lucrece " :
" Thou seemest not what thou art, a god, a king,
For kings like gods should govern everything."
He had to take " the age and body of the time, his form
and pressure," for what it was, as he found it, believing,
perhaps, with the play, again, that
" All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus ;
There is no virtue like necessity." Rich. //., Act I. Sc. 3.
In Euripides, the same doctrine stands thus :
"Wise men have said, (it is no speech of mine,)
There 's nothing stronger, or more terrible
Than dire necessity." Helene, 512-14.
Probably, Bacon alluded to this very passage, when he said,
" It was said among the ancients, ' Necessitatem ex omnibus
rebus esse fortissimum ' " l (Necessity is the strongest of all
things). And it is repeated in this same play, thus :
"K. Rich. I am sworn brother, sweet,
To grim necessity ; and he and I
Will keep a league till death." Act V. Sc. 1.
And again, the same idea appears in the second part of the
" Henry IV.," thus :
"K. Hen. Are these things, then, necessities ?
Then let us meet them like necessities." Act III. Sc. 1.
And there may be some truth in the sonnet, as applied to
himself:
" 'T is better to be vile, than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
l De Aug. Stient., Lib. VIII.
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 561
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd,
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyea
Give salutation to my sportive blood ?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own :
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shewn,
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign." Son. cxxi.
And this, again, would seem to echo almost the very words
of Helene in Euripides, which, being interpreted, run
nearly thus :
" Being no way unjust, I am disgrac'd ;
And this, to whomsoever comes reproach
Of evil deeds, belonging not to him,
Is worse than all the vileness of the truth." Helene, 270-3.
Even victorious Caesar, in the play, could speak in praise
of the fallen Antony, admire his greatness, and lament his
fate ; and Antony could think the Egyptian Cleopatra
" thrice nobler " than himself, when, forgetting all her
human frailties, he exclaimed, as he imitated her example,
and fell upon his own sword,
" My queen and Eros
Have, by their brave instruction, got upon me
A nobleness in record." Ant. and Cleo., Act IV. 8c. 12.
As Bacon says, " at best, nobleness is never lost, but re-
warded in itself." 1 And reading the " Antony and Cleo-
patra " from the high philosophic point of view of Plato's
Republic, some touch of this same nobleness may be dis-
covered in it :
" Ant. Let Rome in Tyber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang'd empire fall ! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay : our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man : the nobleness of life
Is to do thus ; when such a mutual pair,
l Letter, 1623.
562 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
And such a twain can do 't, in which I bind
On pain of punishment, the world to wit
We stand up peerless.
Cleo. Excellent falsehood !
Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her? " Act 1. Sc. 1.
Nor would Cleopatra stay in this world, Antony being in
the other :
" Cleo. O Antony ! Nay, I will take thee too.
[Applying another asp.
What should I stay [Dies.
Char. In this wide world ? So fare thee well. *
Now, boast thee, death ! in thy possession lies
A lass uuparallel'd." Act V. Sc. 2.
This author's breadth of view, his greatness of soul, his
lofty standards of moral judgment, and his deep insight
into the confusions of men and things, whereby the most
precious jewels are discovered where least looked for, even
in the toad's head, and purified and redeemed from the
rubbish of affairs, life, and opinion, which had long con-
cealed them from the sight of most men, this brave instruc-
tion, this nobleness in record, and these unparalleled mor-
tals, all together, reveal to our apprehension a genius and
a soul which readily suggests but few living parallels. For
style and diction, depth and breadth, and all-sided clearness
of vision, the " Cymbeline " and the " Troilus and Cressida "
may compare with the best of the moderns. The open
secret is therein laid more open ; but the world will not see
it, howsoever open : they will rather stay under the clouds,
and mope still in theological fog, believing only
" The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus,
All turn' d to heresy? Away, away,
Corrupters of my faith ! You shall no more
Be stomachers to my heart. Thus may poor fools
Believe fahe teachers, though those that are betray'd,
Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
Stands in worse case of woe." Act 111. Sc. 4.
1 Mr. White reads " in this wild world," after the Folio of 1623, which
reads " wilde world " ; a misprint, as I believe, for wide rcorld, the true
reading. See White's Shakes., XII. 128 ; Notes, 147.
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 563
Bacon would have the true interpreter of nature pry more
deeply into this open secret, and write a new Scripture :
" We desire," he says, " this primary history to be con-
scientiously collected, and as if upon solemn oath of its
verity in every particular ; since it is the volume of God's
works, and (so far as a similitude between the majesty of
divine things and the lowness of the terrene, may be al-
lowed), as it were another Scripture " ; 1 for, as he con-
tinues again, " this writing of our Sylva Sylvarum is, to
speak properly, not a natural history, but a high kind of
natural magic " ; and according to Dr. Rawley, it was " a
usual speech of his lordship," that it was to be " the world
as God made it " ; that is, not a work of the imaginations
of men, but the work of the divine mind ; and such being
the nature of it, we need not wonder that he should call it
a high kind of natural magic and an actual Holy Scripture.
So he says that Homer " was made a kind of Scripture by
the latter schools of the Grecians " ; and his fables " seemed
to be like a thin rarefied air, which, from the traditions of
more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the Grecians " ;
as the celestial spirits, in " The Tempest," " melted into air,
into thin air."
According to Goethe, out of the three reverences, rev-
erence for what is above us, reverence for what is around
us, and reverence for what is under us, springs the highest
reverence, the reverence for one's self and that true re-
ligion, wherein a man is "justified in reckoning himself
the best that God and Nature have produced," as in the
play :
" though mean and mighty, rotting
Together, have one dust, yet reverence
(That angel of the world) doth make distinction
Of place 'tween high and low." Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2.
And again :
" The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander
Left his to the worthiest : so his successor
Was like to be the best." Winter's Tale, Act V. Sc. 1.
i Parasceve, Works (Boston), II. 57.
564 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
And again, thus :
" Those that I reverence, those I fear, the wise :
At fools I laugh, not fear them." Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2.
So, we may remember, Bacon says, that " the reverence of
a man's self -is, next religion, the chiefest bridle of all
vices," and that, ' whosoever is unchaste cannot reverence
himself" ; and we find the same sentiment nearly repeated
in idea (though not in words), and enforced with all the
powers of rhetoric, and in a splendid amplitude of meta-
phorical expression, all drawn from the common language
of the Christian religion, in this fine passage from the
" Troilus and Cressida : "
" Tro. This she ? no ; this is Diomed's Cressida.
If beauty have a soul, this is not she:
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bi-fold authority ! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt. This is, and is not, Cressid !
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Cf this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth ;
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifice for a point, as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof, to enter.
Instance, instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of Heaven :
Instance, instance ! strong as Heaven itself;
The bonds of Heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and loos'd;
And with another knot, five-finger tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy reliques
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed."
Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 2.
Bacon comprehended " the nature of this great city of
the world," as he expresses it. So Carlyle says of Shake-
speare, that ' k in his mind the world is a whole ; he figures
it as Providence governs it ; a world of earnest-
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 565
ness and sport, of solemn cliff and gay plain " ; or as
Bacon also says, again, comparing poetry with history as
a mode of representing acts, or events, " poesy feigns them
more just in retribution and more according to revealed
providence." And what Schlegel said of Shakespeare may
be said as well, nay, rather better, of Bacon himself,
that he had " deeply reflected on character and passion, on
the progress of events and human destinies, on the human
constitution, on all the things and relations of the world " ;
and again, that " the world of spirits and nature have laid
all their treasures at his feet ; in strength a demi-god, in
profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a pro-
tecting spirit of the higher order, he lowers himself to mor-
tals as if unconscious of his superiority, and is as open and
unassuming as a child." 1 But of most men, who will not,
or who cannot, " so by degrees learn to read in the vol-
umes " of God's universe,
" 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.
for they will continue to believe with the fool, Thersites,
that it is, in God and Nature as in Cressida,
" A juggling trick, to be secretly open." Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 4.
They will
" rather think this not Cressid " ;
and so thinking, they will proceed to create for themselves
an ideal Cressid, after such pattern as they have; for
" they have ever left the oracles of God's works, and
adored the deceiving and deformed imagery, which the un-
equal mirrours of their own minds have represented unto
them." But having so created the human ideal idol, they
must find, sooner or later, that
" this is, and is not, Cressid."
And hence, losing sight of all just reverences, the highest
i Lectures on Dram. Lit., by A. W. Schlegel, p. 290-298 (Philad., 1333).
566 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
wisdom, the true religion, and all just conception of the due
line of order and authentic place of things in this universe,
there reigns in the minds of men, for the most part, a con-
fusion of ideas and opinions, and a moral disorder, which is
not merely a
" musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction,"
but an appalling chaos, equal to that of Agamemnon's
Grecian camp :
" Degree being vizarded,
Th' 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; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
"What plagues, and what portents ! what mutiny !
What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture ! O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place ?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe :
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead :
Force should be right ; or, rather, right and wrong
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 567
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite ;
And appetite, a universal wolf,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking." Act 1. Sc. 3.
So says Bacon, " It is owing to justice that man is a god
to man, and not a wolf; l and "when the judgment-seat
takes the part of injustice, there succeeds a state of general
robbery, and men turn wolves to each other, according to
the adage " ; 2 and
" Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves." Meat, for Meat., Act 11. Sc. 2.
And again, he says, " If to be just be not to do that to
another which you would not have another do to you, then
is mercy justice " :
" And earthly power doth then shew likest God's
When mercy seasons justice." Mer. of Ven., Ad IV. Sc. 1.
Indeed, the careful reader, who will diligently compare the
" Antitheses of Justice," a mere example of a collection of
common places under the head of " Promptuary or Pre-
paratory Store." thrown into that very notable Book VII.
of the De Augmentis, on the Examplar of Good, the Colors
of Good and Evil, moral knowledge concerning the Georgics
of the mind, and the " Antitheses of Things," with the
first scene of the fourth act of the " Merchant of Venice,"
can scarcely fail to see, that the fine exposition of the
quality of mercy and justice, there given, is but an amplifi-
cation in verse of these very antitheses ; and by comparing
also the Aphorisms on " Universal Justice or the Fountains
of Equity " in civil society, in the Vlllth Book,* with the
"Measure for Measure," he will discover therein a still
further illustration of these same doctrines of justice and the
l Trans, of the De Aug.. Work* (Boston), IX. 166.
* Trans, of the De Aug. 259; Eratmiaf Adayia, I. 70.
Workt (Boston), IX. 31L
568 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
" three fountains of Injustice," namely, mere force, a ma-
licious ensnarement under color of law, and hardness of
the law itself, until Escalus exclaims :
" Which is the wiser here? Justice, or Iniquity? " Act II. Sc. 1.
The antitheses of justice and injustice, chastity and lewd-
ness, are therein exhibited as in a model, after his own
usual manner, by contrast of opposites, whereby the limits,
or antinomies, of the passions and moral laws, are more
easily represented, more distinctly defined, and better illus-
trated by example. The same " commission " for the re-
form of obsolete laws appears in both. " For," says the
Aphorism, " since an express statute is not regularly abol-
ished by disuse, it comes to pass that through this contempt
of obsolete laws the authority of the rest is somewhat im-
paired. And from this ensues a torment like that of
Mezentius, whereby the living laws are stifled in the em-
braces of the dead." ..." For though it has been well said,
' that no one should be wiser than the laws,' yet this must
be understood of waking and not of sleeping laws" l And
so says the Duke (disguised as the Friar) in the play :
" My business in this State
Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,
Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble
Till it o'errun the stew : laws for all faults,
But faults so countenanc'd that the strong statutes
Stand, like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
As much in mock as mark." Act V. Sc. 1.
And again :
" Duke. We have strict statutes, and most biting laws,
(The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds,)
Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep,
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threat' n ing twigs of birch
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd, than fear'd ; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
l Works (Boston), IX. 328.
REVEREXCE AND DEGREE. 569
And liberty plucks justice by the nose,
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.'' . . . . Act I. Sc. 4.
" The law hath not been dead, though it hath tkpt."
Act II. Sc. 2.
The treatise of Universal Justice begins by saying that
it rather belongs to statesmen to write concerning laws than
to philosophers, who lay down " precepts fair in argument,
but not applicable to use," or to lawyers, who "talk in
bonds " ; but " statesmen best understand the condition of
civil society, welfare of the people, natural equity, custom
of nations, and different forms of government" He rec-
ommends Pretorian Courts, which shall have power "by
the judgment and discretion of a conscientious man, ....
to abate the rigour of the law and to supply defects," but
not to be allowed " to swell and overflow, so as under
colour of mitigating the rigour of the law to break its
strength and relax its sinews, by drawing everything to be
a matter of discretion." He observes that " there are no
worse snares than legal snares, especially in penal laws, if,
being infinite in number, and useless through the lapse
of time, instead of being as a lantern to the feet they are
as nets to the path." And thus continues the play on this
same subject of the conscientious man and the rigor of the
laws :
" Fri. It rested in your Grace
To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas'd,
And it in you more dreadful would have seein'd
Than in Lord Angelo.
Duke. I do fear, too dreadful :
Sith 't was my fault to give the people scope,
'T would be my tyranny to strike and gall them
For what I bid them do : for we bid this be done,
When evil deeds have their permissive pass,
And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, r.iy Father,
I have on Angelo impos'd the office,
Who may, in th' ambush of my name, strike home,
And yet my nature never in the fight,
To do in slander
Lord Angelo is precise ;
570 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
Stands at a guard with envy ; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone : hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be." Act I. Sc. 4.
And again, thus :
" Lucio. This is the point.
The Duke is very strangely gone from hence ;
Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
In hand, and hope of action ; but we do learn
By those that know the very nerves of State,
His givings-out were of an infinite distance
From his true-meant design. Upon his place
And with full line of his authority,
Governs Lord Angelo ; a man whose blood
Is very snow-broth ; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study, and fast.
He (to give fear to use and liberty,
Which have, for long, run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions) hath pick'd out an Act,
Under whose heavy sense your brother's life
Falls into forfeit : he arrests him on it,
And follows close the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example." Act I. Sc. 5.
The 55th Aphorism alludes to the Athenian custom of
appointing " commissioners " to revise obsolete and con-
tradictory laws ; and it is worthy of special notice that the
play opens with the delivery of a like commission to this
same Athenian statesman, who is to determine " by the
judgment and discretion of a conscientious man," in these
words :
" Duke. Of government the properties to unfold,
Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse ;
Since I am put to know, that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you ; then no more remains
But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,
And let them work. The nature of our people,
Our city's institutions, and the terms
For common justice, y' are as pregnant in
As art and practice hath enriched any
That we remember. There is our commission,
From which we would not have you warp." Act 1. Sc. 1.
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 571
In this same Book, the author dwells on " character and
reputation " as one of the necessary means, together with
the amendment of the mind, of raising and advancing a
man's own fortune in life, and begins the treatise with these
words : " Wherefore let it be my present object to go to the
fountains of justice and public expediency, and endeavour
with reference to the several provinces of law to exhibit a
character and idea of justice [" character quidam et Idea
Justi "] in general comparison with which the laws of par-
ticular states and kingdoms may be tested and amended."
Again, the play proceeds thus :
"Duke. Angelo,
There is a land of character in thy life,
That, to th' observer, doth thy history
Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do ;
Not light them for ourselves ; for if our virtue*
Did not go forth of its, 't wtre all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues ; nor 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. But I do bend my speech
To one that can my part in him advertise :
Hold, therefore, Angelo, [our place and power:]
In our remove, be thou at full ourself :
Mortality and mercy in Vienna
Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,
Though first in question, is thy secondary:
Take thy commission. 1 ' .
So fare you well :
To th' hopeful execution do I leave you
Of your commissions." Act I. Sc. 1.
Here, we are again reminded of that saying of Bacon, that
"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." * And in this passage,
l Essay of Great Place.
572 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
Mr. White's restoration of the words " our place and power"
in brackets, may find additional warrant, as well as in the
following line (which he notices), from the next scene but
one:
" My absolute power and place here in Vienna; "
except that he has transposed the order of the words, while,
doubtless, the author himself used them in the same order,
in all three instances ; 1 and there can be scarcely any
doubt that the line originally stood thus :
" Hold, therefore, Angelo, our power and place."
In like manner, he proceeds to discuss the Evil Arts as
well as the Good Arts, and enumerates " the depraved and
pernicious doctrines " and principles of Machiavelli, of
which one was, " That virtue itself a man should not trouble
himself to obtain, but only the appearance thereof to the world,
because the credit and reputation of virtue is a help, but the
use of it is an impediment" He vigorously combats " such
kind of corrupt wisdom " and " such dispensations from all
the laws of charity and virtue," and lays it down, that " men
ought to be so far removed from devoting themselves to
wicked arts of this nature, that rather (if they are only
in their own power, and can bear and sustain themselves
without being carried away by a whirlwind or tempest of
ambition) they ought to set before their eyes not only that
general map of the world, " that all things are vanity and
vexation of spirit" but also that more particular chart,
namely, " that being without well-being is a curse, and the
greater being the greater curse" and that " all virtue is most
rewarded, and all wickedness most punished in itself; " as the
poet excellently says :
" Quae vobis, qua digna, viri, pro laudibus istis
Prsemia posse rear solvi ? pulcherrima primum
Dii moresque dabunt vestri."
And so, on the other hand, it is no less truly said of the
wicked, " His own manners will be his punishment." 2
1 White's Shakes., III., p. 14: Note, p. 112.
2 Trans, of the De Aug., Wvrks (Boston), IX. 295.
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 573
An attentive study of these passages can scarcely fail to
penetrate the subtle identity of thought and doctrine that
pervades them both, and it will be observed that the close
of the Duke's speech runs upon the same idea of justice
and mercy, which has been already quoted from the " An-
titheses," the word mortality being used for the verse, in-
stead of justice ; that is, the power of life and death in civil
justice.
" And thus," he tells us, in the conclusion of this Book,
" have I intended to employ myself in tuning the harp of
the muses and reducing it to perfect harmony, that here-
after the strings may be touched by a better hand or a
better quill." He then felicitates himself upon the con-
dition of learning in his time, alludes to the excellence and
O '
perfection of his Majesty's learning, which called "whole
flocks of wits " around him, " as birds around a phoenix,"
and, lastly, points out the inseparable property of time,
ever more and more to disclose Truth : "
" for truth is truth
To the end of reckoning." Act V. Sc. 1.
If there be any one thing for which these plays as a
whole are preeminently remarkable, it is a profound recog-
nition everywhere of an immanent world-streaming Di-
vine Providence. In this fine play, in particular, it may
be seen in the Duke being made a partaker of God's
theatre and of " power divine," and in the " gentle Isabella,"
the nun, of whom Lucio is made to say :
" I hold you as a thing ensky'd, and sainted ;
By your renouncement an immortal spirit;
And to be talk'd with in sincerity,
As with a saint." Act I. Sc. 5.
And there is perhaps nothing loftier, or more impressive,
in any teaching, sacred or profane, than her final appeal to
Lord Angelo :
"7n6. Alas, alas!
Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once ;
674 REVERENCE AND DEGREE.
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy : How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are ? 0, think on that ;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made." Act II. Sc. 2.
And not less pious, noble, and true, whether as applied to
the De Augmentis alone, or to these dramas also, both in-
clusive, as twin products of the labors of a life, written
chiefly in the earlier part of it, but enlarged, amended,
elaborated, and finished in his later years, and finally given
to the world together in the same year 1623, not openly as
twins, but as utter strangers to each other, the one heralded
to mankind under favor of a princely dedication and high-
sounding titles, the other carefully hidden, though secretly
open, under a mask of Momus, and set to parade the
universal theatre on its own merits in the name of a " noted
weed," is the conclusion of this Advancement of Learn-
ing, an almost equally superb monument of his piety, his
learning, his genius, and his intellect, in these words :
" And certainly it may be objected to me with truth, that
my words require an age ; a whole age perhaps to prove
them, and many ages to perfect them. But yet as even the
greatest things are owing to their beginnings, it will be
enough for me to have sown a seed for posterity and the
Immortal God ; whose Majesty I humbly implore through
his Son our Saviour that He will vouchsafe favorably to
accept these and the like offerings of the human intellect,
seasoned with religion as with salt, and sacrificed to His
Glory."
Finally, this order of degree, justice, and authentic place
of things, from the glorious planet Sol, enthroned like the
commandment of a king, down through states, communities,
and brotherhoods in cities, sounds very much like this pas-
sage from a Speech of Lord Bacon : " We see the degrees
and differences of duties in families, between father and
son, master and servant ; in corporate bodies, between
REVERENCE AND DEGREE. 575
commonalties and their officers, recorders, stewards, and
the like ; yet all these give place to the king's command-
ments." The planets, too, were a favorite source of meta-
phor with him, as thus in the " Pericles " :
" The senate-house of planets all did sit,
To knit in her their best perfections." Act I. Sc. 2.
And thus it appears in another speech of Bacon : " You
that are the judges of circuits are, as it were, the planets
of the kingdom," and again, " it will indeed dignify and
exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more
nearly and strongly united together than they have been ; a
conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn,
the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet
of civil society and action." And here, again, we may
remember "the magnificent palace, city, and hill " of the
wise and good man of the New Atlantis, who wore "an
aspect as if he pitied men," and " the several degrees
of ascent whereby men did climb up the same, as if it had
been a Scala Coeli." This is " the ladder to all high de-
signs " Heaven's Ladder ! And doubtless for this reason,
the intended Fourth Part of the Great Instauration was to
be called " Scala Intellectus : The Scaling Ladder of the In-
tellect, or Thread of the Labyrinth." Holinshed speaks of
" the palpable blindness of that age wherein King John
lived, as also the religion which they reposed in a rotten
ray, esteeming it as a Scala Creli, or ladder to life." * Pos-
sibly, this passage may have been seen by William Shake-
speare ; but here, also, we have distinct and indubitable
proof of the fact, that it had become imprinted in the
memory of Francis Bacon.
l Chron. of Eng., II. 338.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION.
" I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men." BACON.
1. REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
How such a man could fall into the actual guilt of bribery
to pervert justice, would be difficult to conceive, if that
were really true in the full sense in which we understand
the judicial offence of bribery and corruption ; for this
would necessarily imply, not only a direct contradiction to
the tenor and spirit of all his writings, but such absolute
want of moral principle and such Machiavellian baseness
and utter worthlessness of character as would be wholly
irreconcilable, as he himself said, when speaking of the
Machiavellian Bad Arts, with any just notion of virtue,
nobleness, or honor. A candid view of all the facts and
circumstances, of which it is not improbable that we now
know more, and can judge better, than the partial his-
torians and personal enemies who have written against him,
will certainly not justify this sweeping conclusion. We
must take into view the state and condition of things in
that age and the actual nature of the case ; the character
of the government as practically an absolute despotism, in
which the most capricious favoritism was supreme arbiter
of individual fortunes about the court ; money a necessary,
or the best, passport to place and power ; abject subser-
viency a common condition of favor with the monarch and
his greater favorites ; and the most vile and corrupt prac-
tices a general thing among the principal courtiers, and
REFORMATION OF ABUSKS. oTT
the custom notorious among nearly all the higher officers
of state, judicial and other, the chancellor included, of
receiving, not bribes as they understood them, but unlimited
fees, customary gifts, gracious presents, and bountiful lar-
gesses, as well as the " ancient and known perquisites " of
office. Many grew rich and great by sheer knavery, cor-
rupt intrigue, and merciless plunder ; and no man was
quite safe in the possession of a lucrative and splendid
office. All this is clearly exhibited in the history of such
miscreants as Churchill, Cranfield, Williams, and the Vil-
lierses, not altogether omitting Buckingham himself. The
Lord Chancellor was not merely a judge, but a high State
functionary, next to royalty itself, and keeper of the King's
conscience, which would not always be kept, in an age of
princely magnificence, absolute prerogative, and unlimited
power, and in a bottomless whirlpool of avarice, intrigue
and ambition. Political rivalries, common enough in any
age, were hugely grim and fierce in this reign, as witness
the life-long struggle of Coke and Bacon for the ascendency
in the State and over each other. Coke gained honor in
being deposed from the King's Bench, and his defence of
Magna Charta and his great merits in the law have made
his name illustrious with posterity. Bacon, greatly his
superior in knowledge, learning, genius, science and arts,
if not his equal in law, and with a reputation and character
far more illustrious than his, in his own time, is suddenly
tumbled from the woolsack into eternal disgrace, and comes
down to posterity a very by-word of infamy and meanness.
But looking to the whole life and conduct of these men,
and comparing the nobleness, disinterestedness, and purity
of Bacon's life with the coarse ferocity, the inappeasable
malignity, and the really unutterable meanness of Coke in
many things, old Escalus might inquire, " Which is the
wiser here ? Justice, or Iniquity ? " Not that all these
things together can extenuate a crime, or a guilt confessed,
nor that badness in others can be any excuse for baseness
37
578 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
in him ; but that considerations like these may help to
explain the fact of Bacon's fall from power, without the
necessity of imputing to him the moral guilt of actual
bribery and corruption, or any degree of meanness ; much
less a total want of moral sense, and an habitual baseness
of character, as some of his biographers have ignorantly
done.
Only some three years before the attack on Bacon, we
find Buckingham and Coke fomenting charges of the like
nature, and with the same corrupt and wicked purpose of
creating a vacancy to be filled by some new minion, and
putting up the same pretence of corruption in taking bribes,
of money, a ring, a cabinet, a piece of plate, and the like,
against the Lord Chancellor Egerton (Ellesmere), nearly
breaking the old man's heart ; and it might have been as
successful with him as it was with Bacon, afterwards, had
not the King himself come to his relief, and defeated the
scheme by giving an earldom to Egerton and the Seals to
Bacon. The real truth of the matter was, that the age
began to discover that an ancient custom needed to be
reformed, because it began to be felt as a grievance and
an abuse. Old blackletter laws, fallen obsolete, practically
superseded by custom almost equally ancient, and now
lying more dead than asleep, were suddenly revived and
put in force, and all at once what had been a lantern to the
feet became a net in the path.
In like manner, long afterwards, in the reign of George
I., the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield was arraigned before
the House of Lords for " the sale of offices " in chancery.
He had followed the custom and practice of his predeces-
sors in office, time out of mind, and received presents from
newly appointed officers as " the ancient and known per-
quisites of the Great Seal." Being a little avaricious,
perhaps, he had carried the thing to a pretty high figure.
The Masters had fallen into the practice of paying the pres-
ents out of the funds of the suitors in their hands and then
REFORMATION OF ABUSES. 579
speculating in stocks to make them good again. Suddenly,
the great South Sea Bubble burst, and there was a great
loss. Masters and suitors were ruined ; and a loud cry for
reform became the rage of the day. The brunt of the
storm fell on the head of the Lord Chancellor. Against
the custom were paraded certain old obsolete Statutes of
Richard II. and Edward VI., in unreadable law French,
" several hundred years " forgotten, within the letter of
which his case happened to fall, and did not happen to fall
within the exception, as that of the Judges of the Law
Courts did ; and so Macclesfield was condemned to ever-
lasting infamy for doing about the same thing that the
Judges were doing, and had a right to do, without any
thought of wrong. But it was all wrong, undoubtedly :
offices never ought to have been sold at all, nor presents
taken. On the trial, a witness was asked, if the Lord
Chancellor Cowper, and Harcourt, had not done the same
thing, in their times. " yes," answered the witness.
But, breaks in Lord Harcourt from his seat on the
benches, " Did I ever haggle for more ? " and " Didn't they
pay me out of their own money ? " a In modern times, a
rational remedy for such evils would be found in a new
Statute, giving an ample fixed salary, with utter prohibition
of all fees, perquisites, and presents, any custom to the con-
trary notwithstanding ; but in these more ancient days, it was
by summary outbreak Off with the Chancellor's head !
hurl his name and reputation into the bottomless pit !
and let the bursting of South Sea bubbles forever cease !
In the reign of James I., the Lord Chancellor had no
fixed salary, or a merely nominal one, and yet his income
was expected to be some 15,000 a year: it came from
ancient perquisites and customary fees, not regulated by
other law than the custom. But to such a pitch had grown
all manner of abuses, in this reign, in monopolies, patents,
prerogative exactions, fees, presents, and largesses, reaching
i 16 Howell's State Trials, 1151.
580 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
all the Courts of Justice and nearly all the offices of State,
that every Parliament opened with a thundering demand
for reform and a redress of grievances, and was immediately
prorogued and sent home because it did so, until at last
reform had to come. Buckingham, the prime favorite,
whose frown was fatal to all lesser dependants, did not
scruple to write letters to the Lord Chancellor, urging upon
him a favorable consideration of particular suitors in his
court. Here was indeed danger that justice might be per-
verted, if the judge were really dishonest. There is no
charge that Bacon was ever swerved under this pressure ;
and it is certain that he counselled in eloquent terms against
a practice which he had no power to correct. And is it
any matter of wonder that, yielding to the necessities of
his actual condition, and unconscious of any dereliction
of duty, or any falling from virtue and honor, he should
adopt and continue the customs and usages of former
Chancellors, or even slide into the common practices and
abuses of the Court and time and throng in which he had
to live and move ? Birth-day presents, New Year's gifts,
splendid offerings on various occasions, largesses of money,
and magnificent favors, were common, and Bacon seems
to have participated in these things in some small degree
with the rest. Transition from the State functionary to the
judge in the same person, or from the courtier to the
suitor, was but a short distance to travel, and the distinc-
tion between a fee, a present, and a bribe was not well
marked by any law, and more easily lost sight of than in
our day. Practically, hardly any distinction existed, then.
According to the researches of Mr. Dixon, the compensa-
tion of all the great officers of State, including the Chancel-
lor, Judges, and Bishops, from the King down to the King's
Sergeant, was derived from these indefinite fees, gifts, and
perquisites, there being no such thing as a civil list, and
such fixed salaries as there were being merely nominal. 1
i Pers. Hist, of Lord J3acon, 290.
REFORMATION OF ABUSES. 581
Most of the charges against Bacon were founded upou
gifts accepted as usual after the cases had been determined,
as a compensation justly due in the absence of fees fixed
by law, of which there were none. Some were received by
his servants, or under-officers, without his personal knowl-
edge, before the cases had been decided ; and in some of
these instances, the money was ordered to be returned as
improper, when reported to him. In other cases, he was
not actually aware that the donors had causes pending in
his court. In nearly all cases, the gifts were presented
through eminent counsel and persons of high standing, and
in most cases, openly, and with the knowledge of all con-
cerned ; and as Coke himself admitted, as it were, in the
presence of witnesses. In general, they were received by
his clerks and the officers whose business it was to collect
and receive the fees and emoluments of his office. The
grievance of the chief complainants was, that their cases had
been decided against them, notwithstanding the gifts ; nor
does it appear that his judgments were at all affected by
these alleged bribes. None of the cases were reversed on
appeal ; but appeals were not common in those days, says
Lord Campbell. After a thorough scrutiny into the whole
matter, Mr. Dixon comes to the conclusion, that there is
no fair and just ground for supposing that Bacon " had
done wrong, knowing it to be wrong," in a single instance ;
that " not a single fee or remembrance traced to the Chan-
cellor can, by any fair construction, be called a bribe. 2sot
one appears to have been given upon a promise ; not one
appears to have been given in secret ; not one is alleged to
have corrupted justice." This conclusion would almost
bring the case within the precedent of the play, in which
Bassanio offers the judge, after judgment pronounced, the
" three thousand ducats due unto the Jew " for his " courte-
ous pains withal " :
" Ant. And stand indebted, over and above,
In love and service to you evermore.
582 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
Por. He is well paid that is well satisfied:
And I, delivering you, am satisfied,
And therein do account myself well paid.
My mind was never yet more mercenary.
Bass. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you farther :
Take some remembrance of us as a tribute,
Not as a fee
Por. You press me far, and therefore I will yield.
Give me your gloves ; I '11 wear them for your sake ;
And, for your love, I '11 take this ring from you."
Mer. of Fen., Act IV. Sc. 1.
All this may be true ; and yet it would seem to be clear
from the recorded facts and his own admissions, that the
gifts were too large, in some instances, to come under the
head of ordinary fees, and the circumstances such as to
make him, at least, a partaker in the abuses of the time.
Indeed, the actual facts as formally confessed by himself
would, undoubtedly, by strict legal construction, bring the
case, in some instances, within the judicial offence of
bribery as technically defined by law, where the intent
would have to be inferred from the facts. Said Lord Mac-
clesfield, " If you are to judge me by the strict rigor of the
statute, all my fees were bribes ; for the fees were no more
lawful than the presents." And yet it would be absurd to
charge the judge with the moral guilt of base corruption, in
such case and under such circumstances. Considering the
imperial nature of Bacon's mind, habitually soaring aloft
amidst the highest contemplations, and intending, as he said,
to move " in the true straight line of nobleness," and more
or less constantly preoccupied, as he was, with other mat-
ters than the business of the court and the watching of
servants, clerks, and chancery suitors, and blinded in some
degree, perhaps, by the splendor of state which attended
him, and never particularly attentive to money affairs, and
always rather munificent than avaricious or griping, it is
easy to see how he might insensibly fall into a somewhat
negligent and inconsiderate indulgence in the common
REFORMATION OF ABUSES. 583
practices and abuses, especially with the example of illus-
trious predecessors before him to justify them, even to the
extent of all the facts necessary to make out a case of brib-
ery, in strict legal construction, without his conscience being
aroused, though sensible to all honor and virtue, to any
sense of wrong, much less to a consciousness of corrupt
guilt in the perversion of justice at the fountain head, as it
must be admitted, would, and should, be the case with any
honest judge in our time, under any similar circumstances
which could now take place. But no such case could now
arise. Though it be difficult to make such " gross sins
look clear," or wholly to justify or excuse them, on the
highest moral grounds, when the whole matter is duly con-
sidered, it is perhaps still possible to believe that no cor-
rupt intent, or thought, ever entered into his mind in these
matters, and that what he said for himself may have been
really true : " And for the briberies and gifts wherewith
I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, I
hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of
a corrupt heart in a depraved habit of taking rewards to
pervert justice ; howsoever I may be frail and partake of
the abuses of the times."
In a draft of a paper to be delivered to the King, before
the formal proceedings in the House of Lords, and in
which he appears carefully to have considered the real
state of the case, he distinguished cases of gifts received
into three degrees : 1. Of bargain or contract for reward
to pervert justice ; 2. Where the judge conceives the law
to be at an end, by the information of the party, or other-
wise, and useth not such diligence as he ought, to inquire
into it ; 3. When the cause is really ended, and the gift is
sine fraude without relation to any precedent promise.
Of the first, he declared his entire innocence ; of the
second, he doubted in some instances he might have been
faulty ; and of the third, he considered it to be no fault ;
but in this respect he desired to be better informed, that
584 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
he might be twice penitent, once for the fact, and again for
the error. After a critical examination of the particulars
of the charge, which were admitted to be true in fact, and
constituted the whole foundation of the confession that he
was therein technically " guilty of corruption," Mr. Dixon
fairly and justly concludes, that most of the cases fall
tinder Bacon's third division ; one or two under the second ;
but not one under the first. 1
In our day, when judges receive compensation by ade-
quate fixed salaries, no such thing as the receiving of
presents of money, or other things of value, before or after
judgment, with or without the party having a cause then
pending in his court, would be countenanced at all : it
would justly be taken as evidence of a fraudulent and cor-
rupt character. But it was quite a different thing in that
age, when there was not only no salary, but no fees that
were definitely fixed by law, and the revenues of the office
were notoriously understood to be derived from the custom-
ary, ancient, and known perquisites, presents included. In
this indefinite state of the thing, there was necessarily large
room and a pretty wide range for the exercise of discretion.
In the upshot, the truth would seem to be, that ancient
practice, at first strictly against law, had so grown into use,
in the course of time, that it might well be matter of doubt
whether the custom, or the ancient statute, was to have the
force of law. In this way, small fees had grown into large
fees ; perquisites into presents, and presents into bountiful
largesses ; until the practice finally came to be felt as an
enormous abuse. The Commons had determined, long
before, to have a reform of these abuses, and a redress of
grievances generally. Complaint being made of the Lord-
Chancellor, they struck at him first. Bacon, finding him-
self suddenly confronted with this movement and the strict
law of the subject, probably saw at once that he must be
made a victim to the rigor of the statute, and that the facts
l Story of Lord Bacon's Life, 443.
REFORMATION OF ABUSES. 585
taken literally and by strict legal construction would bring
him within the technical definition of bribery and corrup-
tion ; though he had never imagined that he could be
charged with anything criminal or corrupt in what he was
doing. And so, the literal facts he freely admitted and
confessed as they were :
" Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice,
(An honour in him which buys out his fault) " ;
while at the same time solemnly protesting that he had
never had " the fountain of a corrupt heart in a depraved
habit of taking bribes to pervert justice." And this may
be very true. His confession, too, must be taken with
some allowance for the nature of the case. He was in effect
as good as forbidden to make any formal defence to the
charge ; and perhaps no successful defence could have
been made against the technical offence. He must either
make a defence, or confess the full scope of the charge, the
intent and guilt included : technically, he was guilty, if the
corrupt intent were to be an inference of law from the facts
admitted, or if the House of Lords should so find, sitting
as a jury. But even this need not prevent us from con-
sidering the real nature of the case, nor (in reference to
his character) from viewing it in a just and true light
We may bear in mind, also, that the character of Lord
Bacon was of that Christian quality as to be loudest of all
in the confession of his own sins.
It is evident, on a review of the contemporaneous his-
tory, that the action of the Commons was taken mainly in
pursuance of the general measures of political reform in
the State, which had been previously determined on ;
while on the part of the immediate and prime movers in this
instance, it was as plainly a mere intrigue, and a base plot
and contrivance, to create a vacancy for a new minion of the
favorite. The knavish insinuations and open charges of
Churchill, Cranfield, and Williams, secretly fomented by
Buckingham, and publicly supported by the vigorous malig-
&&6 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
nity of Coke, his old enemy, gave the movement a par-
ticular direction against Bacon ; and upon him the 'wall
fell, though he was far from being the greatest offender in
Israel. "Whether he was actually constrained by the power
of Buckingham and the King to abandon his defence, or
not, it is plain he saw that his only hope was in the favor
of the King, and he certainly expected that the King would
pardon any sentence that might be pronounced upon him,
and save him from total ruin. Buckingham controlled the
King, and Bacon knew it very well, and therefore avoided
as much as possible any breach with him. As soon as the
harpies had made sure of his office, they began to strip
him of his estates. Buckingham insisted upon having
York House. At first, Bacon positively refused to part
with it : " York Plouse," he said, " is the house wherein my
father died, and wherein I first breathed ; and there will I
yield my last breath, if so please God, and the King will
give me leave." But the King would not give him leave
against Buckingham, and York House had to go. Buck-
ingham was so incensed at his refusal, that he caused him
to be sent immediately to the Tower, four weeks after the
sentence, and in open violation of the King's promise ;
though by the King's own order, he was discharged the
same day. 1 Next, they demanded Gorhambury, with its
forests and gardens, until it seemed to his friend Meautys
that they had such a word as ''fleecing " 2 in their vocabu-
lary : "I will not be stripped of my feathers," roars the
lion at bay. The King did not allow him to be made quite
a beggar : he gave him his fine, which, it seems, barely en-
abled him to satisfy his creditors and make a will. " Thank
God," says the fallen Chancellor, " I can now make a will."
While he was yet determined to defend himself against the
charges, and after the wily and intriguing Dean Williams
had suggested to Buckingham and the King the project of
1 Dixon's Per. Hist, of Lord Bacon.
2 Letter to Bacon.
REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
a submission and full pardon for Bacon as the only sacri-
fice that could save them, being summoned to an inter-
view with the King, he prepares some minutes for the con-
ference, in which he says : " The law of nature teaches me
to speak in my own defence. With respect to the charge
of bribery, I am as innocent as any born upon St. Inno-
cent's day : I never had bribe or reward in my eye or
thought when pronouncing sentence or order. If, however,
it is absolutely necessary, the King's will shall be obeyed.
I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King, in
whose hands I am as clay, to be made a vessel of honour
or dishonour." The King advised (that is, commanded) a
submission, and gave " his princely word he would then
restore him again," if the Lords " in their honours should
not be sensible of his merits." Bacon answered : " I
see my approaching ruin ; there is no hope of rnercy in a
multitude, if I do not plead for myself, when my enemies
are to give fire. Those who strike at your Chancellor
will strike at your crown." But he acquiesced, at last,
with these words : u I am the first ; I wish I may be the
last sacrifice." 1
But when Coke, at the head of the Commons, sounding
the trumpet of reform, had made an oblation necessary,
and the first stroke fell upon the head of his hated rival ;
when Bacon discovered that a venal, corrupt, and perfid-
ious crew of upstart minions, Churchill, Cranfield, Dean
"Williams, and the widow Villiers, following in the slimy
train of Buckingham, and conspiring deeper than he knew,
or could imagine, for the spoils of place and his ruin, had
involved him and the King, too, in the inextricable meshes
of an invisible net, and that his fall was inevitable ; when
he saw that he had
' stepp'd into the law, which is past depth
To those that, without heed, do plunge into it,"
and found himself caught in the fatal trap, and the sen-
i Life, by Montagu, I. xciii.
588 REFORMATION OF ABUSES.
tence came with utter ruin to his fortunes, for which he
cared less, his titles of honor and nobility being barely
saved, under mercy of Buckingham, with the help of the
Prince of Wales, the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery,
and others of the most illustrious peers, together with the
whole bench of Bishops, yet with some loss of that " sweet
odour of honour and reputation throughout the world,"
which he prized more, " honour," as he said to the Lords,
" being above life," or as it is said, elsewhere :
" The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation : that away,
Men are but guilded loam or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten times barr'd up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
Mine honour is my life ; both grow in one ;
Take honour from me, and my life is done " ;
[Rich. //, Act I. Sc. 1.]
when he saw the dark cloud lowering across the future
ages, casting its shadow upon his credit, name, and mem-
ory, and obscuring his light to unborn generations ; he was
overwhelmed with the keenest anguish. He appealed to
the magnanimity of the British Senate to make his fault
no greater than it really was, and his sentence no more
than was " for reformation's sake fit " ; not " heavy to
my ruin, but gracious, and mixed with mercy " :
" 0, my lords,
As you are great, be pitifully good." Tim., Act HI. Sc. 5.
When the committee of the House waited upon him to
know if his submission and confession were genuine, he
answered in deep distress : u My Lords, it is my act,
my hand, and my heart. I beseech your Lordships to
be merciful to a broken reed." Lord Campbell seems to
take this touching humility as the last proof of baseness
and guilt : is there any wonder that his distress was deep,
and his affliction great,
" Seeing his reputation touch'd to death? " Tim., Act III. Sc. 5.
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 58ft
Rather, when the whole matter is duly weighed, charitable
minds may be inclined to lend an ear to rare Ben Jonson,
who says : " In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would
give him strength, for greatness he could not want; neither
could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing
no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to
make it manifest : "
" mighty love ! Man is one world
And hath another to attend him."
All men see the world without, after a certain fashion ; but
each man only can see his own world within. We are
accustomed (safely enough in general) to judge the soul of
another by the relations which it may seem to sustain to
the moving world of things without. But inasmuch as the
best soul has to swim on the bosom of the stream, it may,
in spite of itself, fall into the strangest apparent relations to
the whirl of things that float together upon the surface : it
is still possible for a pure soul to swim unstained in very
guilty looking company. What if it were possible for a
great soul to be able to administer justice to a school of
bribers ! A certain other, for doing the like of this, was
nailed up between two thieves as if he had been no better
than they ; for to the nailors he appeared to steal corn on
Sunday. Temples of Jerusalem, and Ephesus, and St.
Peter, and St. Paul ! What sums have not been expended
in attempting to bribe the Supreme Judge to pass in goats
among the sheep ! So much may be permitted, and justice
be administered, nevertheless, at " the top of judgment."
2. PHILOSOPHER AND POET.
Shakespeare has long been considered by all that speak
the English tongue, and by the learned of other nations like-
wise, as the greatest of dramatic poets. The ancients had
but one Homer : the moderns have but one Shakespeare.
And these two have been fitly styled " the Twin Stars of
Poesy " in all the world. These plays have kept the stage
590 PHILOSOPHER AND POET.
better than any other for nearly three centuries. They
have been translated into several foreign languages ; a vast
amount of critical erudition has been expended upon them ;
and numerous editions have been printed, and countless
numbers of copies have been distributed, generation after
generation, increasing in a kind of geometrical progression,
through all ranks and classes of society from the metropoli-
tan palace to the frontier cabin, until it may almost be said,
that if there be anywhere a family possessing but two only
books, the one may be the Bible, but the other is sure to be
Shakespeare.
Nevertheless, the plays have been understood and appre-
ciated rather according to existing standards of judgment
than according to all that was really in them. In general,
our English minds seern to have been aware that their poet
was more or less philosophical, or rather that he was a kind
of universal genius ; but that he was a Platonic thinker, a
transcendental metaphysician and philosopher, an idealist
and a realist all in one, not many seem to have discovered.
Coleridge certainly had some inkling of this fact, and to
Carlyle, it stood perfectly clear, that Shakespeare " does not
look at a thing, but into it, through it ; so that he con-
structively comprehends it, can take it asunder, and put it
together again ; the thing melts, as it were, into light under
his eye, and anew creates itself before him. That is to
say, he is a Thinker in the highest of all senses : he is a
Poet. For Goethe, as for Shakespeare, the world lies all
translucent, all fusible we might call it, encircled with
WONDER ; the Natural in reality the Supernatural, for to
the seer's eyes both become one." * And so also Gervinus
concludes upon the question of " the realistic or ideal treat-
ment," that " he is sometimes the one, sometimes the other,
but in reality neither, because he is both at once." 2 Deep
searching criticism, on this side of the sea, has been able
to sound the depths and scale the heights of the Higher
l Essays, III. 209. 2 Shakespeare Comm. (London, 1803), II. 569.
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 591
Philosophy of Bacon, and it is almost equally clear that it
has discovered in it the world-streaming providence of
Shakespeare. " The English shrink from a generalization,"
says Emerson. " They do not look abroad into universality,
or they draw only a bucket-full at the fountain of the First
Philosophy for their occasion, and do not go to the spring-
head. Bacon, who said this, is almost unique among his
countrymen in that faculty, at least among the prose-writers.
Milton, who was the stair or high table-land to let down the
English genius from the summits of Shakespeare, used this
privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in prose. For a
long interval afterwards, it is not found." 1 We know how
Bacon attained to these heights ; but it is not explained
how the unlearned William Shakespeare reached these
same " summits " of all philosophy, otherwise than by a
suggestion of " the specific gravity " of inborn genius.
Have we any evidence outside of these plays, that this
" dry light " of nature was greater in William Shakespeare
than in Francis Bacon ? In Bacon, as hi the plays, we
have not only the inborn genius, but a life of study, knowl-
edge, science, philosophy, art, and the wealth of all learn-
ing. Are these things to be counted as nothing ? Then
we may as well abolish the universities, burn the libraries,
and shut up the schools, as of no use :
" Hang up philosophy :
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a Prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more."
Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 3.
For the most part, all that has been seen in Shakespeare
has been considered as the product of some kind of natural
genius or spontaneous inspiration. The reason has been
nearly this, that since Bacon, if Berkeley be excepted,
England, or the English language, has never had a phi-
losophy at all : we have had nothing but a few sciences and
a theology. Bacon's Summary Philosophy, or Philosophy
l English Traits, 244.
592 PHILOSOPHER AND POET.
itself, seems to have fallen still-born from his delivery, a
dead letter to our English mind. It was not grasped, and
the existence of it in his works seems to have been for-
gotten. No English, or American, philosopher has yet
appeared to review, expound, and complete it, in any sys-
tematic manner : this work has been left to those who are
said to hold dominion of the air. Some there have been,
doubtless, as capable as any of undertaking to give a com-
plete systematic statement of all philosophy ; but they
probably knew too well what kind of an undertaking that
would be, when a perfect work might require not only a
divine man, but a book as large as the Book of God's
Works. The men that are called philosophers among us
are occupied with physical science only. What Bacon en-
deavored to re-organize, and constitute anew, as methods
and instruments for obtaining a broader and surer " foun-
dation " for a higher metaphysical philosophy, they appear
to have mistaken for the whole of science and the sum total
of all certain knowledge, excepting only a fantastical kind
of traditional supernatural knowledge, for the most part,
completely ignoring metaphysics ; and, as a matter of
course, they have given us as little conception of a phi-
losophy of the universe, and, with all their physical science,
have had as little to give, as a Humboldt's Cosmos, or that
prodigious Frenchman, M. Auguste Comte.
Besides a physical science we have had only a theology,
taking old Hebrew and some later Greek literature for all
divine revelation ; the Mosaic cosmogony for the constitu-
tion of the universe ; Usher's chronology for an account of
all time on this earth ; Adamic genealogy for an ethnology
of the human race ; Jesus of Nazareth for the creator of
the whole world and sole saviour of mankind ; and some
five or six fantastic miracles for all the boundless and eter-
nal wonders of the creation. These old ones are nearly
worn out, and are fast becoming obsolete : indeed, they are
already well-nigh extinct. It is high time they were laid
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 593
up on a shelf, and labelled to be studied hereafter as fossils
of the theological kingdom ; and preachers, opening their
eyes, should cast about for a new set, at least, out of all the
universe of miracles that surround them, and henceforth
found thier preaching on them. There would then be
much less trouble about faith, and infidelity to myths and
superstitions might become fidelity to God and his truth.
And so, having no philosophy, and no conception of the
possibility of any, and nothing to give the name to, our
English mind has appropriated the word as a superfluous
synonym for physical science, and scarcely allowed free
scope to that ; and among us, the Newtons, Franklins,
Faradays, Brewsters, and Darwins, are called philosophers,
as Hegel said. These men are certainly to be ranked
among the master minds of the world as original inventors
and discoverers in physics, as philosophical observers and
excellent writers on physical science, with the addition, in
some instances, of a considerable sprinkling of orthodox
theology, and in some others, as in Newton, the younger
Herschel, Agassiz, Peirce, with the addition of not a few
remarkable deep-soundings into the fundamental depths
of things and the hidden mysteries of creation ; as it were,
some prophetic flashes of the most exalted intellect across
the darkness of their own age and time in dim anticipation
of a coming century ; as when Newton says, " Only what-
ever light be, I would suppose it consists of successive rays
differing from one another in contingent circumstances, as
bigness, force, or vigor, like as the sands of the shore, the
waves of the sea, the faces of men, and all other natural
things of the same kind differ, it being almost impossible
for any sort of things to be formed without some contingent
variety." And again, " Every soul that has perception is,
though in different times and in different organs of sense
and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are
given successive parts in duration, co-existent parts in space,
but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man,
38
594 PHILOSOPHER AND POET.
or his thinking principle ; and much less can they be found
in the thinking substance of God. Every man so far as he
is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man
during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense.
God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is
omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially ; for
virtue cannot subsist without substance." l This is Berke-
ley's philosophy of a thinking substance, existing as reality,
and not at all as any ideal vision of a mystical dreamer.
Auguste Comte, ignoring theology and metaphysics together,
calls his huge book of physical science a " Positive Phi-
losophy " : it is indeed positive enough, and in the total
upshot as unphilosophical as positive ; as if a universe
could be constituted and carried on by mere physics and
phrenologico-biology on a basis of dead substratum, or could
be conceived to go of itself as a blind perpetual-motion
machine ! But how shall any one, not having eyes to see,
be able to see, that it goes only as the power of thought
could make it go, and not otherwise ? If the light within
you be dark, how great is that darkness.
Among the theologians, we have had a class of writers,
who have been sometimes called metaphysicians, but who
were, in truth, merely metaphysical theologians, swimming,
like Jean Paul's fish, in a box, and the box tied to the
shore of church or state with a given length of rope ; or
materialistic anti-theologians, and in either case, no more
metaphysicians than philosophers. Of the one sort were
Locke, Reid, Brown, Stewart, and Hamilton ; and of the
other, Hobbes, Halley, Hume, Mill, Lewes, and Harriet
Martineau. Not one of either sort appears ever to have
been able to cross the threshold of that Higher Philosophy,
which Bacon, following the dim light of Plato, but mainly
by the help of his own Boanergic genius, endeavored to
erect and constitute as the one universal science, and in
which he was followed, in their own way, by Berkeley and
i Principuz, (ed. Chittenden, N. Y. 1848,) p. 505.
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 595
Swedenborg. After these, Kant seems to have been the
next to make a clear breach over that threshold, when
prying off into the palpable obscure of the previous dark-
ness, as a Vulcanian miner drifts into the bowels of the
earth after unknown ores, or as a Columbus launches upon
an unexplored ocean, believing with such as Bacon and all
high philosophic genius, that beyond the pillars of Hercules
there may be lands yet undiscovered, he began to make
that darkness visible to some few, through the Transcen-
dental ^Esthetic of Time and Space. It has been easier,
since, even for lesser lights, to follow and enlarge and clear
the drift, thus roughly cut into solid darkness by the life-
labor of all powerful thought ; and hence that modern
school of philosophy, which has done something toward a
critical exegesis of the fundamental and eternal laws of
thought, the true nature of substance or matter, a true
knowledge of cause and " the mode of that thing which is
uncaused," a sound and rational psychology, and some more
scientific, intelligible, and satisfactory account of the con-
stitution of this universe, and of the order of divine prov-
idence and the destiny of man in it : in fine, a Universal
Philosophy.
German scholars of this modern school, whether special
students of this philosophy, or debtors to its results for
their ideas and methods, have been filled with admiration
of the super-eminent genius of Shakespeare. " The poetry
of Shakespeare," says Frederick Schlegel, " has much ac-
cord with the German mind." Goethe, despairing to excel
him, ranks him first among modern poets, and honors
Hamlet with a place in the Wilhelm Meister ; and Richter,
no less, discovering at once the amazing depth of his phi-
losophy, makes him rule sovereign in the heart of his
Albano, " not through the breathing of living characters,
but by lifting him up out of the loud kingdom of earth into
the silent realm of infinity." l How wonderful, indeed, is
l Titan, by Brooks, I. 154.
596 PHILOSOPHER AND POET.
all this ! Is it, then, that we have here a born genius, to
whose all-seeing vision schools and libraries, sciences and
philosophies, were unnecessary, were an idle waste of
time, forsooth ? whose marvellous intuition grasped all
the past and saw through all the present ? whose prophetic
insight spans the future ages as they roll up, measures the
highest wave of the modern learning and philosophy, and
follows backward the tide of civilization, arts, and letters,
to the very borders of the barbaric lands ? before whose
almost superhuman power, time and place seem to vanish
and disappear, as if it had become with him " an everlasting
Now and Here"? or, as if it had pleased the Divine
Majesty to send another Messiah upon our earth, knowing
all past, all present, and all future, to be leader, guide,
and second Saviour of mankind ? What greater miracle
need be !
Being translated into German. Shakespeare became " the
father of German literature," says Emerson. But it so
happens, that the parts of him, which have been more
especially quoted as the basis of this German appreciation,
are precisely those, which have been least noticed at home,
or if seen, appreciated on quite other grounds. Those trans-
parent characters, which, said Goethe, are " like watches
with crystalline plates and cases," where the whole frame
and order of discovery are placed, as it were sub oculos,
under the very eye, and those most pregnant passages,
which are written, like the Faust, or the Meister, with a
double aspect, whether because it was then dangerous to
write otherwise, or because the highest art made such
writing necessary and proper, being the highest wisdom as
well as that true poetry which requires the science of
sciences and " the purest of all study for knowing it,"
making these plays magic mirrors like " the universal
world " itself, in which any looker may see as much as he
is able to see and no more, have passed in the general
mind for little more than ingenious poetical conceptions,
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 597
powerful strokes of stage eloquence, or merely fanciful
turns of expression ; or if, sometimes, anything deeper may
have been half discovered in them, some suspected smack
of infidelity may have thrown the trammelled reader, all of
a sudden, into a grim silence a sort of moody astonish-
ment, very much as if he had accidentally laid his hand
upon an electric eel ; as if a true man should fear to be
infidel to anything but God and the eternal truth of things,
or as if more credence were due to a traditional mythology
of the Egyptianized, or the Grecianized, Hebrews than to
the best teachings of the wisest living men and the most en-
lightened philosophy. It has been said, that the " Hamlet "
was not discovered to be anything wonderful till within the
Nineteenth Century. In truth, these new wonders of
Shakespeare are precisely the parts, qualities, and charac-
teristics of him, wherein the higher philosophy of Bacon is
displayed, and which are to be understood and compre-
hended in their full meaning and drift by those only, who
stand upon the same high cliff and platform whereon he
stood alone of all his contemporaries, that topmost height
and narrow strait, " where one but goes abreast " in an age,
and almost without an English rival down to our time.
German scholars, as well as some later English, by the
help of this same higher philosophy, in the new Kantian
instauration of it, have been enabled to ascend to this
elevated platform ; and being there, they discover the
transcendent genius of Shakespeare in the philosophy,
culture, science, and true art, which belonged only to Bacon.
And therein and thereby is it further proven, that this
" our Shakespeare " was no other than Francis Bacon him-
self; and William Shakespeare ceases to be that "unpar-
elleled mortal" he has been taken for, that title being
justly transferred to the man to whom it more properly
pertains. So, for the most part, in all times, has the phi-
losopher been robbed of his glory. We worship in Jesus
what belongs to Plato ; in Shakespeare, what belongs to
595 PHILOSOPHER AXD POET.
Bacon ; and in many others, what belongs to the real phi-
losopher, the actual teacher, the true saviour, and to Phi-
losophy Herself.
AH that gives peculiarity and preeminence to these plays
is to be found in Bacon ; vast comprehension, the profound-
est philosophic depth, the subtle discrimination of differences
and resemblances, matured wisdom, vigor and splendor
of imagination, accurate observation of nature, extensive
knowledge of men and manners, the mighty genius arid
the boundless wit, the brevity of expression and pregnant
weight of matter, a fine aesthetic appreciation of the beauti-
ful, the classical scholarship, familiarity with law. courts,
and legal proceedings, with the metaphysic of jurisprudence,
with statesmen and princes, ladies and courtiers, and that
proper sense (which belonged to the age) of the dignity,
sovereign duties, power and honor of the throne and king,
the sovereign power in the State ; all this, and more than
can be named, belongs to both writings, and therefore to
one author. Here was a man that could be a Shakespeare.
Coleridge, Schlegel, Goethe, Jean Paul Richter, Carlyle,
Emerson, Delia Bacon, Gervinus, and, doubtless, many
more, clearly saw that the real Shakespeare must have
been such a man, in spite of all the biographies. ~ Ask
your own hearts," says Coleridge, " ask your own common
sense, to conceive the possibility of this man being . . . the
anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily crit-
icism ! What ! are we to have miracles in sport ? Or, I
speak reverently, does God choose idiots by whom to con-
vey divine truths to man?" l And yet, even Coleridge failed
to discover, that " the morning star, the guide, the pioneer
of true philosophy," was not William Shakespeare, but
Francis Bacon.
The last and most conclusive proof of all is that general,
inwrought, and all-pervading identity, which is to be found
in these writings, when carefully studied, and which, when
* Notao* Odbqpeor*, HVfa, IV. 56.
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 599
it is looked for and seen, is appreciated and convinces, like
the character of a handwriting, by an indescribable genuine-
ness and an irresistible force of evidence. In the words
of A. W. Schlegel, speaking of Shakespeare, " On all the
stamp of his mighty spirit is impressed." l The distin-
guishing qualities of Bacon's prose style are precisely those
which belong to the poet, namely, breadth of thought, depth
of insight, weight of matter, brevity, force, and beauty of
expression, brilliant metaphor, using all nature as a symbol
of thought, and that supreme power of imagination that is
necessary to make him an artistic creator, adding man to
the universe ; qualities, which mark that mind only which
God hath framed " as a mirrour or glass, capable of the
image of the universal world." His speeches display these
qualities. The oratorical style of that day seems to have
been more close and weighty than in our times : it was full
of strength and earnestness. Lord Coke spoke in thunder-
bolts, huge, Cyclopean, tremendous : he went to the very
pith and heart of the matter, at once, and his speech was
always " multuni in parvo." But in him, it was vigor with-
out grace, power without splendor, or beauty, and ability
unillumined by the divine light of genius. When we know
that Bacon had been such a poet, it ceases to be a wonder
that he was such an orator as he was. The mind that had
been conceiving dramatic speeches, at this rate, during a
period of thirty years or more, could never address a court,
a parliament, or a king, otherwise than in the language,
style, and imagery of poetry. In short, Bacon's prose is
Shakespearean poetry, and Shakespeare's poetry is Baco-
nian prose. Nor did these qualities altogether escape the
recognition of one, who had an eye to see, an ear to hear,
and a soul to comprehend : says Ben Jonson, " There hap-
pened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of
gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could
spare, or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever
l Lecturet on Dram. Lit., 302.
600 PHILOSOPHER AXD POET.
spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or offered
less emptiness, less idleness, in what he ottered. No mem-
ber of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His
hearers could not cough or look aside from him without
loss. He commanded where he spoke and had his judges
angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their
affections more in his power. The fear of every man who
heard him was lest he should make an end." And again
he says, " My conceit of his person was never increased
toward him by his place or honors; but I have and do
reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to
himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his works one of
the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration that had
been in many ages. 9 Howell, another contemporary, says
of him, likewise, that a he was the eloquentest that was
born in this isle."
What manner of man, then, hare we here for our Shakes-
peare ? A child well born, a highly educated youth, a pre-
cocious manhood, and an all-comprehending intelligence ;
a retired and most diligent student, who felt that he was
" fitter by nature to hold a book than play a part," and
whose studies, like Plato's, or Cicero's, ended only with life ;
an original thinker always ; a curious explorer into every
branch, and a master in nearly all parts, of human learning
and knowledge ; a brilliant essayist, an ingenious critic, a
scientific inventor, a subtle, bold, and all-grasping philos-
opher ; an accurate and profound legal writer ; a leading
orator and statesman, a counsellor of sovereigns and princes,
a director in the affairs of nations, and, in spite of all faults,
whether his own, or of his time, or of servants whose rise
was his fidl, * the justest Chancellor that had been in the
five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time," and though
frafl, not having " the fountain of a corrupt heart," but being
one to whose known virtue " no accident could do harm,
but rather help to make it manifest " ; a prodigious wit, a
poetic imaginator, an artistic creator, an mstitutor of the
PHILOSOPHER AND POET. 601
art of arts and the science of sciences ; a seer into the
Immortal Providence, and the veritable author of the
Shakespeare Drama : in truth, not (as Howell supposed) a
rare exception to the fortune of an orator, a lawyer, and a
philosopher, as he was, but true still to " the fortune of all
poets commonly to die beggars," dying as a philosopher
and a poet, " poor out of a contempt of the pelf of fortune
as also out of an excess of generosity " ; his life, on the
whole, and to the last, a sacrifice for the benefit of all
science, all future ages, and all mankind. Surely, we
may exclaim with Coleridge, not without amazement still :
" Merciful, wonder-making Heaven ! What a man was
this Shakespeare ! Myriad-minded, indeed, he was."
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With two Steel Engravings, and 113 Wood-cuts from the
Author's own Designs. 1 vol. crown 8vo. Price, $2.00.
From the Literary Gazette.
"In the whole range of his Works there is not a single line of un-
moral tendency, or calculated to pain an individual."
UP THE RHINE. By Thomas Hood. With two Steel
Engravings, and all the original Designs of the Author.
1 vol. crown 8vo. Price, $2.00.
From the London Athenerum.
" The master-spirit of modern whim and drollery."
TALES AND EXTRAVAGANZAS. By Thomas Hood.
1 vol. crown 8vo. Price, $2.25.
From the N. Y. Christian Advocate.
" A collection of some stories of this funniest of the famous wits."
~l
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