The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 10

'_As women succeeding to peerages_ had, notwithstanding their s.e.x, the right to a.s.sist and give their votes in the causes that appertain to the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers, _notwithstanding their profession_, were obliged to _a.s.sist our kings_ in their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their own persons. And he instances the Bishop of Beauvais, who took a gallant share in the battle of Bouvines, but did not think it _fit for him to partic.i.p.ate in the fruit and glory of that violent and b.l.o.o.d.y trade_. He, with his own hand, reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met, either to kill or to receive them to quarter, _referring that part to another hand_. As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de Neale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he would KILL, _but_ NOT WOUND _him_, and _for that reason_, fought only with a _mace_. And a certain person in my time, being reproached by the king that he had _laid hands_ on a _priest_, stiffly and positively denied it. The case was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.' And there the author abruptly, for that time, leaves the matter without any allusion to the case of still another kind of combatants, who, fighting with another kind of weapon, might also, from similar subtleties of conscience, perhaps think fit to devolve on others the glory of their successes.

But in a chapter on _names_, in which, if he has not told, he has _designed to tell all_; and what he could not express, he has at least pointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully developed. In this chapter, he regrets that such as write _chronicles in Latin_ do not leave our names as they find them, for in making of _Vaudemont_ VALLE-MONTa.n.u.s, and metamorphosing names to dress them out in Greek or Latin, we know not where we are, and with the _persons_ of _the men, lose_ the _benefit_ of the _story_: but one who tracks the inner thread of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be at no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently very trivial talk about _names_, he resumes his philosophic humour again, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recalls once more, the considerations with which philosophy sets at nought the loss of fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts to worthy deeds, the glory that should follow them.

'But this consideration--that is the consideration "that it is the custom in _France_, to call every man, even a stranger, by the name of any _manor_ or _seigneury_, he may chance to come in possession of, tends to the total confusion of descents, so that _surnames_ are no security,"--"for," he says, "a younger brother of a good family, having a _manor_ left him by his father, by the name of which he has been known and honoured, cannot handsomely leave it; ten years after his decease, it falls into the hand of a stranger, who does the same."

Do but judge whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these men. This consideration leads me therefore into another subject. Let us look a little more narrowly into, and examine upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation, for which the world is turned topsy-turvy. Wherein do we place this renown, that we hunt after with such infinite anxiety and trouble. It is in the end PIERRE or WILLIAM that bears it, takes it into his possession, and whom only it concerns. Oh what a valiant faculty is HOPE, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying her master's indigence, at her pleasure, with all things that he can imagine or desire. And this Pierre or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done, ("What's in a name?") or three or four dashes with a pen?'

And he has already written two paragraphs to show, that the name of William, at least, is not excepted from the general remarks he is making here on the vanity of names; while that of Pierre is five times repeated, apparently with the same general intention, and another combination of sounds is not wanting which serves with that free translation the author himself takes pains to suggest and defend, to complete what was lacking to that combination, in order to give these remarks their true point and significance, in order to redeem them from that appearance of flatness which is not a characteristic of this author's intentions, and in his style merely serves as an intimation to the reader that there is something worth looking for beneath it.

As to the name of William, and the amount of personal distinction which that confers upon its owners, he begins by telling us, that the name of Guienne is said to be derived from the Williams of our ancient Aquitaine, 'which would seem,' he says, rather far fetched, were there not as crude derivations in Plato himself, to whom he refers in other places for similar precedents; and when he wishes to excuse his enigmatical style--the t.i.tles of his chapters for instance. And by way of emphasizing this particular still further, he mentions, that on the occasion when Henry, the Duke of Normandy, the son of Henry the Second, of England, made a feast in France, the concourse of n.o.bility and gentry was so great, that for _sport's sake_ he divided them into _troops, according to their names_, and in the _first troop, which consisted of Williams_, there were found a hundred and ten knights sitting at the table of that name, without reckoning the simple gentlemen and servants.

And here he apparently digresses from his subject for the sake of mentioning the Emperor _Geta_, 'who distributed the several courses of his meats by the _first letters of the meats_ themselves, where those that began with _B_ were served up together; _as_ brawn, beef, beccaficos, and so of the others.' This appears to be a little out of the way; but it is not impossible that there may be an allusion in it to the author's own family name of _Eyquem_, though that would be rather farfetched, as he says; but then there is _Plato_ at hand, still to keep us in countenance.

But to return to the point of digression. 'And this Pierre, or William, what is it but a sound when all is done? _Or_ three or four dashes with a pen, _so easy to be varied_, that I would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, to _Guesquin_, to Glesquin, or to _Gueaguin_. And yet there would be something more in the case than in Lucian that Sigma should serve Tau with a process, for "He seeks no mean rewards." _The quere is here in good earnest. The point is_, which of _these letters_ is to be rewarded for so many sieges, battles, wounds, imprisonment, and services done to the crown of France by this famous constable.

_Nicholas Denisot_ never concerned _himself_ further than _the letters of his name_, of which he has altered the _whole contexture, to build up by anagram_ the Count d'Alsinois _whom he has endowed with the glory of his poetry and painting_. [A good precedent--but here is a better one.] And the historian Suetonius looked only to the _meaning of his_; and so, cas.h.i.+ering his _fathers surname, Lenis_ left Tranquillus _successor to the reputation of his writings_. Who would believe that the Captain Bayard should have no honour but what he derives from the great deeds of Peter (Pierre) Terrail, [the name of Bayard--"the meaning"] and that Antonio Escalin should suffer himself, to his face, to be robbed of the honour of so many navigations, and commands at sea and land, by Captain Poulin and the Baron de la Garde.

[The name of Poulin was taken from the place where he was born, De la Garde from a person who took him in his boyhood into his service.] Who hinders my groom from calling himself Pompey the Great? But, after all, what virtue, what springs are there that convey to my deceased groom, or the other Pompey (who had his head cut off in Egypt), this glorious renown, and these so much honoured flourishes of the pen?'

Instructive suggestions, especially when taken in connection with the preceding items contained in this chapter, apparently so casually introduced, yet all with a stedfast bearing on this question of names, and all pointing by means of a thread of delicate sounds, and not less delicate suggestions, to another instance, in which the possibility of circ.u.mstances tending to countervail the so natural desire to appropriate to the name derived from one's ancestors, the l.u.s.tre of one's deeds, is clearly demonstrated.

''Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to s.h.i.+ft in time of danger, and to counterfeit bravely, when he has no more heart than a chicken. There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man's own person'--'and had we the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inwards towards the palm of the hand, it is to be feared that a great many would often hide themselves, when they _ought to appear_.' 'It seems that to be known, _is in some sort to a man's life and its duration in another's keeping_. I for my part, hold that I am wholly in myself, and that other life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, considering it nakedly and simply in itself, I know very well that I am sensible of no fruit or enjoyment of it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and, when I shall be dead, I shall be much less sensible of it, and shall withal absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it. [That was Lord Bacon's view, too, exactly.] I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, or whereby it may take hold of me: for to expect that my name should receive it, in the first place, I have no name that is enough my own. Of two that I have, one is common to all my race, and even to others also: there is one family at Paris, and another at Montpelier, whose surname is _Montaigne_; another in Brittany, and Xaintonge called _De la Montaigne_. The transposition of _one syllable only_ is enough to ravel our affairs, so that I shall peradventure share in their glory, and they shall partake of my shame; and, moreover, my ancestors were formerly surnamed _Eyquem_, a name wherein a _family well known in England_ at this day is concerned. As to my other name, any one can _take it that will_, and _so_, perhaps, I may honour _a porter_ in my own stead. And, besides, though I had a particular distinction myself, what can it distinguish when I _am no more_. Can it point out and favour inanity?

But will thy manes such a gift bestow As to make violets from thy ashes grow?

'But of this I have spoken elsewhere.' He has--and to purpose.

But as to the authority for these readings, Lord Bacon himself will give us that; for this is the style which he discriminates so sharply as 'the _enigmatical_,' a style which he, too, finds to have been in use among the ancients, and which he tells us _has some affinity_ with that new method of making over knowledge from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil, which he terms the method of _progression_-- (which is the method of _essaie_)--in opposition to the received method, the only method he finds in use, which he, too, calls the _magisterial_. And this method of progression, with which the enigmatical has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases where knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where science is to be removed from one mind to another _to grow from the root_, and not delivered as trees for the use of the carpenter, where _the root_ is of no consequence. In this case, he tells us it is necessary for the teacher to descend to _the foundations of knowledge and consent_, and so to transplant it into another as it grew in his own mind, 'whereas as knowledge is now delivered, there is a _kind of contract of error_ between the deliverer and the receiver, for he that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such a form as may _best be believed_, and not as may best be _examined_: and he that receiveth knowledge desireth rather _present satisfaction_ than _expectant inquiry_, and so rather _not to doubt than not to err, glory_ making the author not to lay open his weakness, and _sloth_ making the disciple _not to know his strength_.' Now, so very grave a defect as this, in the method of the delivery and tradition of Learning, would of course be one of the first things that would require to be remedied in any plan in which '_the Advancement_' of it was seriously contemplated. And this method of the delivery and tradition of knowledge which transfers _the root_ with them, that they may grow in the mind of the learner, is the method which this philosopher professes to find wanting, and the one which he seems disposed to invent. He has made a very thorough survey of the stores of the ancients, and is not unacquainted with the more recent history of learning; he knows exactly what kinds of methods have been made use of by the learned in all ages, for the purpose of putting themselves into some tolerable and possible relations with the physical majority; he knows what devices they have always been compelled to resort to, for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng some more or less effective communication between themselves and that world to which they instinctively seek to transfer their doctrine. But this method, which he suggests here as the essential condition of the growth and advancement of learning, he does _not_ find invented. He refers to a method which he calls the enigmatical, which has an affinity with it, 'used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients,' but disgraced since, 'by the impostures of persons, who have made it as a _false light_ for their counterfeit merchandises.' The purpose of this latter style is, as he defines it, 'to remove the _secrets_ of knowledge from the penetration of the more vulgar capacities, and to reserve them to _selected auditors_, or to wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.' And that is a method, he tells us, which philosophy can by no means dispense with in his time, and 'whoever would let in new light upon the human understanding must still have recourse to it.' But the method of delivery and tradition in those ancient schools, appears to have been too much of the dictatorial kind to suit this proposer of advancement; its tendency was to arrest knowledge instead of promoting its growth. He is not pleased with the ambition of those old masters, and thinks they aimed too much at a personal impression, and that they sometimes undertook to impose their own particular and often very partial grasp of those universal doctrines and principles, which are and must be true for all men, in too dogmatical and magisterial a manner, without making sufficient allowance for the growth of the mind of the world, the difference of races, etc.

But if any doubt in regard to the use of the method described, in the composition of the work now first produced as AN EXAMPLE of the use of it, should still remain in any mind; or if this method of unravelling it should seem too studious, perhaps the author's own word for it in one more quotation may be thought worth taking.

'_I can give no account of my life by_ MY ACTIONS, fortune has placed _them_ too low; _I must do it_ BY MY FANCIES. And when shall I have done representing the continual agitation and change of my thoughts as they come into my head, seeing that Diomedes filled six thousand books upon the subject of grammar.' [The commentators undertake to set him right here, but the philosopher only glances in his intention at the voluminousness of the science of _words_, in opposition to the science of _things_, which he came to establish.] 'What must prating _produce_, since prating itself, and the first beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of volumes. So many words about _words_ only. They accused one Galba, of old, of living idly; he made answer that every one ought to give account of his _actions_, but _not_ of his _leisure_. He was mistaken, for _justice_--[the civil authority]--has cognizance and _jurisdiction_ over those that _do nothing_, or only PLAY _at_ WORKING.... Scribbling appears to be the sign of a disordered age. Every man applies himself negligently to the duty of his _vocation_ at such a time and debauches in it.' From that central wrong of an evil government, an infectious depravity spreads and corrupts all particulars. Everything turns from its true and natural course. Thus _scribbling_ is the sign of a disordered age. Men write in such times instead of acting; and scribble, or seem to perhaps, instead of writing openly to purpose.

And yet, again, that central, and so divergent, wrong is the result of each man's particular contribution, as he goes on to a.s.sert. 'The corruption of this age is made up by the particular contributions of every individual man,'--

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.--_Ca.s.sius_.

'Some contribute _treachery_, others _injustice_, irreligion, _tyranny_, _avarice_ and _cruelty, according as they have power; the_ WEAKER SORT CONTRIBUTE FOLLY, VANITY, _and_ IDLENESS, and _of these_ I am one.'

_Caesar_ loves no plays as thou dost, Antony.

Such men are dangerous.

Or, as the same poet expresses it in another Roman play:--

This _double wors.h.i.+p_, Where one part does _disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason_; where gentry, t.i.tle, wisdom Cannot conclude but by the _yea and no_ Of _general ignorance_,--it must omit Real necessities--and give way the while To unstable slightness; purpose _so barred_, It follows, nothing is done to purpose.

And that is made the plea for an attempt to overthrow the popular power, and to replace it with a government containing the true head of the state, its n.o.bility, its learning, its gentleness, its wisdom.

But the essayist continues:--'It seems as if it were the season for _vain things_ when _the hurtful oppress us_; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what _signifies nothing_ is a kind of commendation. 'Tis _my_ comfort that _I_ shall be one of the last that shall be called in question,--for it would be against reason _to punish the less troublesome_ while we are _infested_ with the _greater_. _As the physician_ said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, as he perceived, had an ulcer _in his lungs_, "Friend, it is not now time to concern yourself about your finger's ends." _And yet_ I saw some years ago, _a person, whose name and memory I have in very great esteem_, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was _neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office_,--_no more than there is now_,--publish I know not what _pitiful reformations_ about _clothes, cookery_ and _law chicanery_. _These are amus.e.m.e.nts_ wherewith _to feed a people that are ill used, to show that they are not totally forgotten. These others_ do the same, who insist upon _stoutly defending_ the _forms_ of _speaking_, dances and games to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices--it is for the Spartans only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their lives.

'For _my part_, I have _yet a worse_ custom. I scorn to mend myself by halves. If my _shoe_ go awry, I let my s.h.i.+rt and my cloak do so too: when I am out of order I feed on mischief. I abandon myself through despair, and let myself go towards the precipice, and as the saying is, throw the helve after the hatchet.' We should not need, perhaps, the aid of the explanations already quoted, to show us that the author does not confess this custom of his for the sake of commending it to the sense or judgment of the reader,--who sees it here for the first time it may be put into words or put on paper, who looks at it here, perhaps, for the first time objectively, from the critical stand-point which the review of another's confession creates; and though it may have been latent in the dim consciousness of his own experience, or practically developed, finds it now for the first time, collected from the phenomena of the blind, instinctive, human motivity, and put down on the page of science, as a principle in nature, in human nature also.

But this is indeed a Spartan combing and curling, that the author is falling to, in the introductory flourishes ('diversions' as he calls them) of this great adventure, that his pen is out for now: he is indeed upon the point of running headlong into the fiercest dangers;--it is the state, the wretched, discased, vicious state, dying apparently, yet full of teeth and mischief, that he is about to handle in his argument with these fine, lightsome, frolicsome preparations of his, without any perceptible 'mittens'; it is the heart of that political evil that his time groans with, and begins to find insufferable, that he is going to probe to the quick with that so delicate weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all the instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as handsomely, and with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the circ.u.mstances will admit of. But the political situation which he describes so boldly (and we have already seen what it is) affects us here in its relation to the question of style only, and as the author himself connects it with the point of our inquiry.

'A man may regret,' he says, 'the better times, but cannot fly from the present, we may wish for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and, peradventure, it is more laudable to obey the bad than the good, so long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall s.h.i.+ne in any corner of the kingdom. If they happen, unfortunately, to thwart and contradict one another, so as to produce two factions of doubtful choice,'--

And my soul aches To know, [says Coriola.n.u.s] when two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take The one by the other.

--'in this contingency will willingly choose,' continues the other, 'to withdraw from the tempest, and in the meantime, _nature or the hazards of war may lend me a helping hand_. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey, I should soon and frankly have declared myself, but amongst the three robbers that came after, a man must needs _have either hid himself_, or have gone along with the current of the time, _which I think a man may lawfully do, when reason no longer rules_.' '_Whither_ dost thou wandering go?'

'This _medley_ is a little from my subject, I go out of my way but 'tis rather _by licence than oversight_. My fancies _follow_ one another, _but sometimes at a great distance_, and _look towards one another_, but 'tis with an _oblique glance_. I have read a DIALOGUE of PLATO of such a _motley and fantastic_ composition. The _beginning was about love_, and all the rest ABOUT RHETORIC. _They_ stick not (that is, the ancients) at these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or at least to _seem_ as if they were. The t.i.tles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter, they often denote it _by some mark only_, as those other t.i.tles _Andria Eunuchus_, or these, _Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus_. I love _a poetic march_, by leaps and skips, 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and _a little demoniacal_. There are places in _Plutarch_ where _he_ forgets his theme, where the proposition of _his_ argument is only found _incidentally_, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions; and then _most of all, when they seem to be_ fortuitous, [hear] and introduced _for want of heed. 'Tis the indiligent reader_ that loses my subject--_not I. There will always be found some words_ or _other in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie very close_ [that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indiscreetly and tumultously: my style and my _wit_ wander at the same rate, [he wanders _wittingly_]. A _little folly_ is _desirable_ in him _that will not be guilty of stupidity_, say the precepts, and much more the _examples_ of our masters. A thousand poets flag and languish after a _prosaic manner_; but the best old prose, and I strew it here up and down _indifferently_ for verse, s.h.i.+nes throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and represents some air of its fury. Certainly, prose must _yield_ the pre-eminence in speaking. "The poet," says Plato, "when set upon the muse's tripod, pours out with fury, whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain, _without considering and pausing upon what he says_, and things come from him of _various colors_, of _contrary substance_, and with an irregular torrent": he himself (Plato) is all over poetical, and all the old theology (_as the learned inform us) is poetry_, and the _first philosophy_, is the origiual language of the G.o.ds.

'I would have the matter _distinguish itself_; it sufficiently shows _where it changes_, where it concludes, _where it begins, and where it resumes, without interlacing it with words of connection_, introduced for the relief of _weak or negligent ears_, and without commenting myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all, than after a drowsy or _cursory_ manner? Seeing I cannot fix the reader's attention by the _weight_ of what I write, _maneo male_, if I should chance _to do it by my intricacies_. [Hear]. I mortally hate obscurity and _would avoid it if I could. In such an employment_, to whom you will not give an hour you will give nothing; _and you do nothing for him for whom you only do, whilst you are doing something else_. To which may be added, that I have, perhaps, some particular obligation to speak only _by halves_, to speak _confusedly and discordantly_.'

But this is, perhaps, enough to show, in the way of direct a.s.sertion, that we have here, at least, a philosophical work composed in that style which Lord Bacon calls 'the enigmatical,' in which he tells us the _secrets_ of knowledge are reserved for _selected auditors_, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil; a style which he, too, tells us was sometimes used by the discretion of the ancients, though he does not specify either Plutarch or Plato; in that place, and one which he introduces in connection with his new method of progression, in consequence of its having, as he tells us, _some affinity_ with it, and that we have here also a specimen of that new method itself, by means of which knowledge is to be delivered as a thread to be spun on.

But let us leave, for the present, this wondrous Gascon, though it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand,--this philosopher, whose fancies look towards one another at such long, such very long distances, sometimes, though not always, with an _oblique_ glance, who dares to depend so much upon the eye of his reader, and especially upon the reader of that 'far-off' age he writes to. It would have been indeed irrelevant to introduce the subject of this foreign work and its style in this connection without further explanation, but for the ident.i.ty of political situation already referred to, and but for those subtle, interior, incessant connections with the higher writings of the great Elizabethan school, which form the _main characteristic_ of this production. The fact, that this work was composed in the country in which the chief Elizabethan men attained their maturity, that it dates from the time in which Bacon was completing his education there, that it covers ostensibly not the period only, but the scenes and events of Raleigh's six years campaigning there, as well as the fact alluded to by this author himself, in a pa.s.sage already quoted,--the fact that there was a family then in England, _very well known_, who bore the surname of his ancestors, a family of the name of _Eyquem_, he tells us with whom, perhaps, he still kept up some secret correspondence and relations, the fact, too, which he mentions in his chapter on Names, that a surname in France is very easily acquired, and is not necessarily derived from one's ancestors,--that same chapter in which he adduces so many instances of men who, notwithstanding that inveterate innate love of the honour of one's own proper name, which is in men of genius still more inveterate,--have for one reason or another been willing to put upon anagrams, or synonyms, or borrowed names, all their honours, so that in the end it is William or Pierre who takes them into his possession, and bears them, or it's the name of 'an African slave' perhaps, or the name of a 'groom' (promoted, it may be, to the rank of a jester, or even to that of a player,) that gets all the glory. All these facts, taken in connection with the conclusions already established, though insignificant in themselves, will be found anything but that for the philosophical student who has leisure to pursue the inquiry.

And though the latent meanings, in which the interior connections and ident.i.ties referred to above are found, are not yet critically recognised, a latent national affinity and liking strong enough to pierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior, appears to have been at work here from the first. For though the seed of the richer and bolder meanings from which the author antic.i.p.ated his later harvest, could not yet be reached, that new form of popular writing, that effective, and vivacious mode of communication with the popular mind on topics of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as fit subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world on its surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was on the English mind that it began to operate first. It was in England, that it began so soon to develop the latent efficacies it held in germ, in the creation of that new and widening department in letters--that so new, so vast, and living department of them, which it takes today all our reviews, and magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work itself has been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as heartily as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly distinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English nationality.

But it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the Mount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'--this 'Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this new ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to have been the first to master,--the unity of the universal man,--the historical unity,--the universal human form, collected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted,--the inducted Man of the new philosophy. '_Authors_,' he says, 'have _hitherto_ communicated themselves to the people by some _particular_ and _foreign_ mark; _I, the first of any by my universal being_, as _Michael_ de Montaigne, I propose a life mean and without l.u.s.tre: all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. _Every man_ carries _the entire form of the human condition_...I, the first of any by my universal being, as _Michael_,'--see the chapter on names,--'as _Michael_ de Montaigne.'

Let us leave him for the present, or attempt to, for it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand.

For, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, rambling old Gascon--it is from this outlandish looker-on of human affairs, that our Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers and Tattlers, trace their descent; and the Times, and the Examiners, and the Observers, and the Spectators, and the Tribunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies, and all the Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human affairs to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them have not been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how it came to pa.s.s, that a man of this particular turn of mind, who belonged to the old party, and the times that were then pa.s.sing away, should have felt himself called upon to make this great signal for the human advancement, and how it happens that these radical connections with other works of that time, having the same general intention, are found in the work itself,--these are points which the future _biographers_ of this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to look to. And a little of that more studious kind of reading which he himself so significantly solicited, and in so many pa.s.sages, will inevitably tend to the elucidation of them.

PART II.

THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.

'The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'

_Troilus and Cressida_.

'I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'

_Falstaff_.

CHAPTER I.

THE 'BEGINNERS.'

'PROSPERO.--Go bring THE RABBLE,

O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'

_Tempest_.

But though a foreign philosopher may venture to give us the clue to it, perhaps, in the first instance, a little more roundly, it is not necessary that we should go the Mayor of Bordeaux, in order to ascertain on the highest possible authority, what kind of an art of communication, what kind of an art of delivery and tradition, men, in such circ.u.mstances, find themselves compelled to invent;--that is, if they would not be utterly foiled for the want of it, in their n.o.blest purposes;--we need not go across the channel to find the men themselves, to whom this art is a necessity,--men so convinced that they have a mission of instruction to their kind, that they will permit no temporary disabilities to divert them from their end,--men who must needs open their school, no matter what oppositions there may be, to be encountered, no matter what imposing exhibitions of military weapons may be going on just then, in their vicinity; and though they should find themselves straitened in time, and not able to fit their words to their mouths as they have a mind to, though they should be obliged to accept the hint from the master in the Greek school, and take their tone _from the ear of those to whom they speak_, though many speeches which would spend their use among the men then living would have to be inserted in their most enduring works with a private hint concerning that necessity, and a private reading of them for those whom it concerned; though _the audience_ they are prepared to address _should be deferred_, though the benches of the inner school should stand empty for ages. We need not go abroad at all to discover men of this stamp, and their works and pastimes, and their arts of tradition;--men so filled with that which impels men to speak, that speak they must, and speak they will, in one form or another, by word or gesture, by word or deed, though they speak to the void waste, though they must speak till they reach old ocean in his unsunned caves, and bring him up with the music of their complainings, though the marble Themis fling back their last appeal, though they speak to the tempest in his wrath, to the wind and the rain, and the fire and the thunder,--men so impregnated with that which makes the human speech, that speak they will, though they have but a rusty nail, wherewith to etch their story, on their dungeon wall; though they dig in the earth and bury their secret, as one buried his of old--that same secret still; for it is still those EARS--those 'ears' that 'Midas hath' which makes the mystery.