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know their dignity greater than to descend to the reading 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 Fellow 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" (executors, 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, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them" (what no one could better certify, "quam historiam legitimam et omnibus 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 1 De Aug. Scient., L. II. c. 5., Works (Boston), II. 202.

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 I. Sc. 4.

or, as he himself says of Aristotle, "as one that had been a challenger of all the world, and raised infinite contradiction; "" 1 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 hours,

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."

1 Works (Boston), XII. 264.

Sonnet cxxiv.2

2 Shakes. Sonnets, (Fac-simile of the ed. of 1609, entitled "Shake-speares Sonnets: Never before Imprinted,") London, 1862.

CHAPTER II.

PRELIMINARIES.-BACON.

"Thou shalt know the man

By the Athenian garments he hath on."-Mid. N. Dr., II. 2.

§ 1. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS.

IN the outset of the inquiry, the contemporaneousness of the two men between whom the question in hand is supposed 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 prevailed hitherto, or until very lately, respecting the character and genius of Lord Bacon and the scope of his philosophy, 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 illustrious 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, imagination held to be a species of folly or insanity, and metaphysics treated as synonymous with moonshine; in which books are rated as fit food for worms, and to be "drowned in

;

book-learning" is incontinently reckoned as a disqualification for the duties of life, whilst a certain overplus of common sense is supposed to be capable of all that is great or good; in which much learning is deemed worse than useless, 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 inadequate 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 penetrable obscurations. Lord Campbell's superficial view of the great Chancellor, 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. The "Personal History" and the "Story" of Mr. Dixon, and the "Letters and Life" by Mr. Spedding, in a more complete detail of dates, records, 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; Letters 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.

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pathy with the true nature and quality of the man, have presented the great English orator, jurist, statesman, and philosopher, 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." Macaulay1 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, more, perhaps, than Delia Bacon, finding that he ascended to the spring-head of all science; and Prof. Craik is certainly not so very far when he says: wrong "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 æsthetics, of history, of jurisprudence, of political philosophy, of logic, of metaphysics, and the investigation of the powers and operations of the human mind," 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 having suddenly died before having made such ample provision 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 prospect before him than the profession of the law, with some 1 Essay on Bacon.

2 Phil. of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, Boston, 1857.

& Representative Men.

+ Hist. of Eng. Lit. and Language, by George L. Craik, LL. D. (New York, 1862,) I. 615.

5 Novum Organum.

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