The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 8

But let us look at a few of the stories which he ventures to introduce so emphatically, selecting only such as can be told in a sentence or two. Let us take the next one that follows this explanation--the story in the very next paragraph to it. The question is _apparently_ of Cicero, of his style, of his vanity, of his supposed care for his _fame_ in future ages, of his _real disposition and objects_.

'Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its _harmony_, that we should more study it than _things_' [what new soul of philosophy is this, then, already?]--'unless you will affirm that of _Cicero_ to be of so supreme perfection as to form _a body_ of itself. And of him, I shall further add one story we read of to this purpose, wherein _his nature_ will _much more manifestly be laid open to us_' [than in that seeming care for his fame in future ages, or in that lower object of style, just dismissed so scornfully].

'He was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened _in time_, to _fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do_, when _Eros_, one of his slaves, brought him word that the _audience was deferred_ till the next day, at which he was so ravished with joy that _he enfranchised him_.'

The word 'time'--here admits of a double rendering whereby the _author's_ aims are more manifestly laid open; and there is also another word in this sentence which carries a 'delicate sound' with it, to those who have met this author in other fields, and who happen to be of his counsel. But lest the stories of themselves should still seem flat and pointless, or trivial and insignificant to the uninstructed ear, it may be necessary to interweave them with some further 'allegations on this subject,' which the author a.s.sumes, or appears to a.s.sume, in his own person.

'I write my book for _few men_, and for _few years_. Had it been _matter of duration_, I should have put it into a _better language_.

According to the continual variation that ours has been subject to hitherto [and we know who had a similar view on this point], who can expect that the present _form of language_ should be in use fifty years hence. It slips every day through our fingers; and since I was born, is altered above one half. We say that it is now perfect: _every age says the same of the language it speaks_. I shall hardly trust to that so long as it runs away and _changes_ as it does.

''Tis for good and useful writings to nail and rivet it to them, and its reputation will go _according to the fortune of our state. For which reason, I am not afraid to insert herein several private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men now living_, AND THAT CONCERN THE PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE OF SOME WHO WILL SEE FURTHER INTO THEM THAN THE COMMON READER.' But that the inner reading of these private articles--that reading which lay farther in--to which he invites the attention of those whom it concerns--was not expected to spend its use among the men then living, that which follows might seem to imply. It was that wrapping of them, it was that gross superscription which 'the fortune of our state was likely to make obsolete ere long,' this author thought, as we shall see if we look into his prophecies a little. 'I will not, after all, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of _me_: "He _judged_, and LIVED SO and SO. Could he have spoken when he was dying, he would have said _so_ or _so_. I knew him better than any."

'So _our_ virtues Lie in the interpretation of the times,'

'says the unfortunate Tullus Aufidius, in the act of conducting a Volscian army against the infant Roman state, bemoaning himself upon the conditions of his historic whereabouts, and beseeching the sympathy and favourable constructions of posterity--

So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the times; And power unto itself most commendable Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair To extol what it hath done.

'The times,' says Lord Bacon, speaking in reference to books particularly, though _he_ also recommends the same key for the reading of lives, 'the times in many cases give _great light_ to true interpretations.'

'Now as much as decency permits,' continues the other, antic.i.p.ating _here_ that speech which he might be supposed to have been anxious to make in defence of his posthumous reputation, could he have spoken when he was dying, and forestalling that criticism which he foresaw--that odious criticism of posterity on the discrepancy between _his life_ and _his judgment_--'Now as much as decency permits, I _here_ discover my inclinations and affections. _If any observe_, he will find that _I have either told or designed to tell_ ALL. _What I cannot express I point out with my finger_.

'There was never greater circ.u.mspection and _military prudence_ than sometimes is seen among US; can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, _that they reserve themselves to the end of the game_?'

'There needs no more but to see a man promoted to dignity, though we knew him but three days before a man of no mark, yet an image of grandeur and ability insensibly steals into our opinion, and we persuade ourselves that growing in reputation and attendants, he is also increased in merit':--

_Hamlet_. Do the boys carry it away?

_Ros_. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.

_Hamlet_. It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. 'Sblood, there is something _in this, more_ than _natural_ [talking of the _super_natural], _if philosophy could find it out_.

'But,' our prose philosopher, whose mind is running much on the same subjects, continues 'if it happens so that he [this favourite of fortune] falls again, and is mixed with the common crowd, every one inquires with wonder into the _cause_ of his having been hoisted so high. _Is it he_? say they: did he know no more than this _when he was in_ PLACE?' ['change _places_ ... robes and furred gowns hide all.']

Do _princes_ satisfy _themselves_ with so little? _Truly we were in good hands_! That which I myself adore in kings, is [note it] _the crowd of the adorers_. All reverence and submission is due to them, _except that of the understanding_; my _reason_ is not to bow and bend, 'tis my _knees_' 'I will not do't' says another, who is in this one's counsels,

I will not do't Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my body's action, teach my mind A most inherent baseness. _Coriola.n.u.s_.

'Antisthenes one day entreated _the Athenians to give orders that their a.s.ses might be employed in tilling the ground_,--to which it was answered, "that _those animals were not destined to such a service_."

"That's all one," replied he; "it only sticks at your command; for the most ignorant and incapable men you employ _in your commands of war_, immediately become worthy enough _because_--YOU EMPLOY THEM."'

There mightst thou behold the great image of authority. A dog's obeyed in office.--Lear.

For thou dost know, oh Damon dear, This realm dismantled was Of Jove himself; and now reigns here, A very--very--_Peac.o.c.k_.

Horatio. You might have rhymed. Hamlet.

'to which,' continues this political philosopher,--that is, to which preceding anecdote--containing such unflattering intimations with regard to the obstinacy of nature, in the limits she has set to the practical abilities of those _animals_, not enlarging their natural gifts out of respect to the Athenian selection (an anecdote which supplies a rhyme to Hamlet's verse, and to many others from the same source)--'_to which the custom of so many people_, who canonize the KINGS they have chosen _out of their own body_, and are not content only to honour, but adore them, _comes very near. Those of Mexico_ [for instance, it would not of course do to take any nearer home], after the ceremonies of _their_ king's coronation are finished, _dare no more look him in the face_; but, as if they _deified_ him by his royalty, _among_ the oaths they make him take to _maintain their religion and laws_, to be valiant, just and mild; he moreover swears,--_to make the sun run his course in his wonted light,--to drain the clouds at a fit season,--to confine rivers within their channels,--and to cause all things necessary for his people to be borne by the earth_.' '(They told me I was everything. But when the rain came to wet me once, when the wind would not peace at my bidding,' says Lear, 'there I found them, there I smelt them out.)'

This, in connection with the preceding anecdote, to which, in the opinion of this author, it comes properly so very near, may be cla.s.sed of itself among the suggestive stories above referred to; but the bearing of these quotations upon the particular question of style, which must determine the selection here, is set forth in that which follows.

It should be stated, however, that in a preceding paragraph, the author has just very pointedly expressed it as his opinion, that men who are supposed, by common consent, to be so far above the rest of mankind in their single virtue and judgment, that they are permitted to govern them at their discretion, should by no means undertake to maintain that view, by exhibiting that supposed kingly and divine faculty in the way of _speech_ or _argument_; thus putting themselves on a level with their subjects, and by meeting them on their own ground, with their own weapons, giving occasion for comparisons, perhaps not altogether favourable to that theory of a superlative and divine difference which the doctrine of a divine right to rule naturally presupposes. 'For,' he says, 'neither is it enough for those _who govern and command us, and have all the world in their hand_, to have a common understanding, and to be able to do what the rest can'

[their faculty of judgment must match their position, for if it be only a common one, the difference will make it despised]: 'they are very much below us, if they be not _infinitely above us_. And, therefore, _silence_ is to them not only a countenance of respect and gravity, but very often of good profit and policy too; for, Megabysus going to see _Apelles_ in his _painting_ room, stood a great while without speaking a word, and at last began to talk of his paintings, for which he received this rude reproof. '_Whilst thou wast silent_, thou seemedst to be something great, by reason of thy chains and pomp; _but now that we have heard thee speak_, there is not the meanest boy in my shop that does not despise thee.' But after the author's subsequent reference to 'those animals' that were to be made competent by a vote of the Athenian people for the work of their superiors, to which he adds the custom of people who canonize the kings they have chosen out of their own body, which comes so near, he goes on thus:--_I differ from this common fas.h.i.+on_, and am more apt to suspect capacity when I see it accompanied with grandeur of fortune and _public applause_. We are to consider of what advantage it is, _to speak when one pleases, to choose the subject one will speak of_--[an advantage not common with authors then]--TO INTERRUPT OR CHANGE OTHER MEN'S ARGUMENTS, WITH A MAGISTERIAL AUTHORITY, to protect oneself from the opposition of others, by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the presence of an a.s.sembly that trembles with reverence and respect. _A man of a prodigious fortune_, coming to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that was foolishly set on foot at his _table_, began in these words:--'It can only be a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than so and so.' '_Pursue this philosophical point with a dagger in your hand_.'

Here is an author who does contrive to pursue his philosophical points, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they take him. By putting himself into the trick of singularity, and affecting to be a mere compound of eccentricities and oddities, neither knowing nor caring what it is that he is writing about, and das.h.i.+ng at haphazard into anything as the fit takes him,--'Let us e'en fly at anything,'

says Hamlet,--by a.s.suming, in short, the disguise of the elder Brutus; and, on account of a similar necessity, there is no saying what he cannot be allowed to utter with impunity. Under such a cover it is, that he inserts the pa.s.sages already quoted, which have lain to this hour without attracting the attention of critics, unpractised happily, and unlearned also, in the subtleties which tyrannies--such tyrannies--at least generate; and under this cover it is, that he can venture now on those astounding political disquisitions, which he connects with the complaint of the restrictions and embarra.s.sments which the presence of a man of prodigious fortune at the table occasions, when an argument, trivial or otherwise, happens to be going on there. Under this cover, he can venture to bring in here, in this very connection, and to the very table, even of this man of prodigious fortune, pages of the freest political discussion, containing already the finest a.n.a.lysis of the existing political 'situation,' so full of dark and lurid portent, to the eye of the scientific statesman, to whom, even then, already under the most intolerable restrictions of despotism, of the two extremes of social evil, that which appeared to be the most terrible, and the most to be guarded against, in the inevitable political changes then at hand, was--not the consolidation but the dissolution of the state.

For already the horizon of that political oversight included, not the eventualities of the English Revolutions only, but the darker contingencies of those later political and social convulsions, from whose soundless whirlpools, men spring with joy to the hardest sharpest ledge of tyranny; or hail with joy and national thanksgiving the straw that offers to land them on it. Already the scientific statesman of the Elizabethan age could say, casting an eye over Christendom as it stood then, 'That which most threatens us is, not an _alteration_ in the entire and solid ma.s.s, but its _dissipation_ and _divulsion_.'

It is after pages of the freest philosophical discussion, that he arrives at this conclusion--discussion, in which the historical elements and powers are for the first time scientifically recognized and treated throughout with the hand of the new master. For this is a philosopher, who is able to receive into his philosophy the fact, that out of the most depraved and vicious social materials, by the inevitable operation of the universal natural laws, there will, perhaps, result a social adhesion and predominance of powers--a social 'whole,' more capable of maintaining itself than any that Plato or Aristotle, from the heights of their abstractions, could have invented for them. He ridicules, indeed, those ideal politics of antiquity as totally unfit for practical realisation, and admits that though the question as to that which is absolutely the best form of government might be of some value _in a new world_, the basis of all alterations in existing governments should be the fact, that we take a world already formed to certain customs, and do not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did theirs, and by what means soever we may have the privilege to rebuild and reform it anew, we can hardly _writhe it_ from its wonted bent, but we shall _break all_. For the subtlest principles of the philosophy of things are introduced into this discussion, and the boldest applications of the Shakspere muse are repeated in it.

'That is the way to _lay all flat_,' cries the philosophic poet in the Roman play, opposing on the part of the Conservatist, the violence of an oppressed people, struggling for new forms of government, and bringing out fully, along with their claims, the anti-revolutionary side of the question. 'That which tempts me out on these journeys,'

continues this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous terms of his rambling excursive habits and eccentricities of proceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes--'that which tempts me out on these journeys, is _unsuitableness to the present manners of_ OUR STATE. _I_ could easily console myself with this corruption in reference to the _public interest_, but not to _my own: I_ am _in particular_ too much oppressed:--for, _in my neighbourhood_ we are of late by _the long libertinage of our civil wars grown old_ in so _riotous a form of state_, that in earnest _'tis a wonder how it can subsist_. In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and held together _at what price soever; in what condition soever they are placed they will close and stick together_ [see the doctrine of things and their original powers in the "Novum Organum"]--_moving and heaping up themselves, as uneven bodies, that shuffled together without order, find of themselves means to unite and settle_. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them altogether in a city which he had built for that purpose, which bore their name; I believe that they, even from vices, erected a government among them, and a commodious and just society.'

'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation'; and let the reader note here, how the principle which has predominated historically in the English Revolution, the principle which the fine Frankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic faculty, could not strike instinctively or empirically, in its political experiments--it is well to note, how this distinctive element of the _English_ Revolution--that revolution which is still in progress, with its remedial vitalities--already speaks beforehand, from the lips of this foreign Elizabethan Revolutionist. 'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation; change only gives form to injustice and tyranny. WHEN ANY PIECE IS OUT OF ORDER IT MAY BE PROPPED, one may prevent and take care that the _decay and corruption_ NATURAL TO ALL THINGS, do not carry us too far from _our beginnings and principles_; but to undertake to found so great a ma.s.s anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do who to _make clean, efface_, who would reform particular defects by a universal confusion, and cure diseases by _death_.' Surely, one may read in good Elizabethan English pa.s.sages which savor somewhat of this policy. One would say that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance, in this case. 'Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate counsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church of England, as would in effect make it _no church_, said thus to him:--'Sir, the subject we talk of is the _eye_ of England, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' [And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very much the same view of the const.i.tution and vitality of states, about these times:--

He's a disease that must be cut away.

Oh, he's a limb that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.]

But our Gascon philosopher goes on thus, with his Gascon inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth which the last vintage of the Novum Organum yields on this point. 'The world is unapt for curing itself; _it is so impatient of any thing that presses it_, that it thinks of nothing but _disengaging itself_, at what price soever. We see, by a thousand examples, that it generally cures itself to its cost. The _discharge of a present evil is no cure, if a general amendment of condition does not follow_; the surgeon's end is _not only to cut away the dead flesh_,--that is but the progress of his cure;--he has a care over and above, _to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh_, and _to restore the member to its due state_. Whoever only proposes to himself to remove that which offends _him_, falls short; _for good_ does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, _and a worse, as it happened in Caesar's killers_, who brought the republic to _such a pa.s.s, that they had reason to repent their meddling with it_.' 'I fear there will _a worse_ one come in his place,' says a fellow in Shakespear's crowd, at the first Caesar's funeral; and that his speech made the moral of the piece, we shall see in the course of this study.

But though the frantic absolutisms and irregularities of that 'old riotous form of military government,' which the long civil wars had generated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy dissolution, this old Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible fund of English shrewdness, and sound English sense, underlying all his Gasconading, by no means considers the state as past the statesman's care: 'after all, _we are not, perhaps, at the last gasp_,' he says. 'The conservation of states _is a thing that in all likelihood surpa.s.ses our understanding_: a civil government is, as Plato says, "a mighty and powerful thing, and hard to be dissolved." "States, as great engines, move slowly," says Lord Bacon; "and are not so soon put out of frame";--that is, so soon as "the resolution of particular persons," which is his reason for producing his moral philosophy, or rather his moral _science_, as _his_ engine for attack upon the state, a science which concerns the government of every man over himself; "for, as in Egypt, the seven good years sustained the seven bad; so governments, for a time well-grounded, do bear out errors following."' But this is the way that this Gascon philosopher records _his_ conclusions on the same subject. 'Every thing that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body holds by more nails than one. _It holds even by its antiquity_, like old buildings from which the foundations are worn away by time, without rough cast or cement, which yet live or support themselves by their own weight. Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work to reconnoitre only the flank and the fosse, to judge of the security of a place; it must be examined _which way approaches_ can be made to it, AND IN WHAT CONDITION THE a.s.sAILANT IS--that is the question. '_Few vessels sink with their own weight_, and without some exterior violence. Let us every way cast our eyes. Every thing about us totters. In all the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to us, if you will but look, you will there see evident threats of alteration and ruin. Astrologers need not go to heaven to foretell, as they do, GREAT REVOLUTIONS' [this is the speech of the Elizabethan age--'great revolutions'] 'and _imminent mutations_.' [This is the new kind of learning and prophecy; there was but one source of it open then, that could yield axioms of this kind; for this is the kind that Lord Bacon tells us the head-spring of sciences must be visited for.] 'But _conformity is a quality antagonist to_ DISSOLUTION. For my part, I despair not, and _fancy I perceive ways to save us_.'

And _surely_ this is one of the inserted private articles, before mentioned, which may, or may not be, 'designed to spend their use among the men now living'; but 'which concern the particular knowledge of some who will see further into them than the common reader.' If there had been a 'London Times' going then, and this old outlandish Gascon Antic had been an English statesman preparing this article as a leader for it, the question of the Times could hardly have been more roundly dealt with, or with a clearer northern accent.

But it is high time for him to bethink himself, and 'draw his old cloak about him'; for, after all, this so just and profound a view of so grave a subject, proceeds from one who has no aims, no plan, no learning, no memory;--a vain, fantastic egotist, who writes only because he will be talking, and talking of himself above all; who is not ashamed to attribute to himself all sorts of mad inconsistent humours, and to contradict himself on every page, if thereby he can only win your eye, or startle your curiosity, and induce you to follow him. After so long and grave a discussion, suddenly it occurs to him that it is time for a little miscellaneous confidential chat about himself, and those certain oddities of his which he does not wish you to lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for another of those _stories_, which serve to divert the attention when it threatens to become too fixed, and break up and enliven the dull pa.s.sages, besides having that other purpose which he speaks of so frankly. And although this whole discussion is not without a direct bearing upon that particular topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch as the political situation, which is so clearly exhibited, is precisely that of the Elizabethan scholar, it is chiefly this little piece of confidential chat with which it closes, and _its significance in that connection_, which gives the rest its insertion here.

For suddenly he recollects himself, and stops short to express the fear that he may have written _something similar to this elsewhere_; and he gives you to understand--not all at once--but by a series of strokes, that too bold a repet.i.tion _here_, of what he has said _elsewhere_ might be attended, to him, with serious consequences; and he begs you to note, as he does in twenty other pa.s.sages and stories here and elsewhere, that his _style_ is all hampered with considerations such as these--that instead of merely thinking of making a good book, and presenting his subjects in their clearest and most effective form for the reader;--a thing in itself sufficiently laborious, as other authors find to their cost, he is all the time compelled to weigh his words with reference to such points as this. He must be perpetually on his guard that the ident.i.ty of that which he presents here, and that which he presents elsewhere, under other and very different forms (in much graver forms perhaps, and perhaps in others not so grave), shall no where become so glaring as to attract popular attention, while he is willing and anxious to keep that ident.i.ty or connection constantly present to the apprehension of the few, for whom he tells us his book--that is, this book within the book--is written.

'I fear in these _reveries_ of mine,' he continues, suspending at last suddenly this bold and continuous application to the immediate political emergency of those philosophical principles which he has exhibited in the abstract, in their _common_ and _universal form_, elsewhere; 'I fear, in these reveries of the _treachery of my memory_, lest by inadvertence it should make me write the same thing twice. Now I here set down _nothing new_, these are _common_ thoughts, and having per-adventure conceived them a hundred times, _I am afraid_ I _have set them down somewhere else already_. Repet.i.tion is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer, _but 'tis ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory_ SHOW. I do not love inculcation, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca, and the practice of his Stoical school displeases me of _repeating upon every subject and at length_, THE PRINCIPLES and PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT SERVE IN GENERAL, and _always_ to re-allege anew;' that is, under the particular divisions of the subject, _common and universal reasons_.

'What I cannot express I point out with my finger,' he tells you elsewhere, but it is thus that he continues here.

'My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must _fain for the time to come_ (collateral sounds), for _hitherto, thank G.o.d, nothing has happened much amiss_, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To _be tied and bound to a thing_ puts _me_ quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story without being offended at it, with as it were _a personal_ and natural resentment.' The reader will note that the question here is of _style_, or method, and of this author's style in particular, and of his special embarra.s.sments.

'Lyncestes _accused of conspiracy against Alexander_, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a _studied speech_, of which, _haggling and stammering_, he p.r.o.nounced _some words_. As he was becoming more perplexed and struggling with his memory, and _trying to recollect himself_, the soldiers that stood _nearest_ killed him with their spears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation, would astound a man _even though were there no object in his mind but to speak well_; but WHAT _when 'tis an harangue upon which his life depends_?' You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my story.

'_For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to loose me from it_'--that is the cause of his wandering--'_The more I trust to my memory_, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so _much as to find it in my own countenance_, and have _sometimes been very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound_, whereas _my design is_ to manifest in speaking a _perfect nonchalance_, both of face and accent, and _casual and unpremeditated motions_, as rising from present occasions, _choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to show that_ I came _prepared to speak well_; a thing especially unbecoming _a man of my profession_. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further _than he would have done in his gown_.' [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] 'It is recorded of the orator Curio, that _when he proposed the division of his oration_ into three or four parts, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two more.' A much more ill.u.s.trious speaker, who spoke under circ.u.mstances not very unlike those in which the poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts at oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight; for, having invented a plan of universal science, designed for the relief of the human estate, he forgot the princ.i.p.al application of it. But this author says, _I_ have always avoided falling into this inconvenience, having always hated these promises and announcements, not only out of distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of the _artificial_. You will find no scientific plan _here_ ostentatiously exhibited; you will find such a plan elsewhere with all the works set down in it, but the works themselves will be missing; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be under the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it would be ruinous to produce the plan, '_I_ have always _avoided_ falling into this inconvenience. _Simpliciora militares decent_.' But as he appears, after all, to have had no military weapon with which to sustain that straight-forwardness of speech which is becoming in a military power, and no dagger to pursue his points with, some artifice, though he professes not to like it, may be necessary, and the rule which he here specifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not altogether amiss. ''Tis enough that I have promised to myself never to take upon me to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that sort of speaking where a man _reads_ his speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who _naturally could give it a grace by action_, and to rely upon the mercy of the readiness of my invention, I will much less do it; 'tis heavy and perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important necessities.'

'Speaking,' he says in another place, 'hurts and discomposes me,--my _voice_ is loud and high, so that when I have gone to whisper some great person about an affair of _consequence, they have often had to moderate my voice. This story deserves a place here_.

'Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as _I do_. The master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak _lower_. "Tell him then, he must send me," replied the other, "the tone he would have me speak in." To which the other replied, "that he should take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake." It was well said, if it be understood. Speak _according to the affair_ you are speaking about to the auditor,--(speak according to the business you have in hand, to the purpose you have to accomplish)--for if it mean, it is sufficient that he _hears_ you, I do not find it reason.' It is a more artistic use of speech that he is proposing in his new science of it, for as Lord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this same subject, 'the _proofs_ and _persuasions_ of _rhetoric_ ought to differ according to the auditors,' and the Arts of Rhetoric have for their legitimate end, 'not merely PROOF, but _much more_, IMPRESSION.' 'For many forms are _equal in signification_ which are _differing in impression_, as the difference is great in the piercing of that which is _sharp_, and that which is _flat_, though the _strength_ of the percussion be the same; for instance, there is no man but will be a little more raised, by hearing it said, "Your enemies will be glad of this," than by hearing it said only, "This is evil for you."' But it is thus that our Gascon proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we have interrupted. 'There is a voice to _flatter_, there is a voice to _instruct_, and a voice to _reprehend_. _I_ would not only have my voice to reach my hearer, but peradventure _that it strike_ and _pierce_ him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone, it would be very fine for him to say, "Pray master, speak lower, for I hear you very well." _Speaking_ is _half his that speaks_, and _half his that hears_; the last ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its motion, as with tennis players; he that receives the ball, s.h.i.+fts, draws back, and prepares himself to receive it, according as he sees him move, who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke itself.' It is not, therefore, because this author has failed to furnish the rules of interpretation necessary for penetrating to the ultimate intention of this new kind of speaking, if all this affectation of simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory statements of his, have been suffered hitherto to pa.s.s unchallenged.

It is the public mind he has to deal with. 'That which he adores in kings is the _throng_ of _their adorers_.' If he should take the public at once into his confidence, and tell them beforehand precisely what his own opinions were of things in general, if he should set before them in the outset the conclusions to which he proposed to drive them, he might indeed stand some chance to have his arguments interrupted, or changed with a magisterial authority; he would indeed find it necessary to pursue his philosophical points with a dagger in his hand.

And besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not appear to him to secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to rouse the human mind to activity, to compel it to think for itself, and put it on the inevitable road to his conclusions. He wishes the reader to strike out those conclusions for himself, and fancy himself the discoverer if he will. So far from being simple and straightforward, his style is in the profoundest degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art inspired it. He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the active world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths which men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign to them.

'We want medicines to arouse the sense,' says Lord Bacon, who proposed exactly the method of teaching which this philosopher had, as it would seem, already adopted. 'I bring a trumpet to awake his _ear_, to set his _sense_ on the attentive bent, and _then_ to speak,' says that poet who best put this art in practice.

But here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this dull, stupid, custom-bound public on its own ground. He would a.s.sume all its absurdities and contradictions in his own person, and permit men to despise, and marvel, and laugh at them in him without displeasure. For whoever will notice carefully, will perceive that the use of the personal p.r.o.noun here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech.

Such an one will find that this philosophical _I_ is very broad; that it covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under this term, the term by which each man names _himself_, the common term of the individual humanity, he finds it convenient to say many things.

'They that will fight _custom_ with _grammar_,' he says, 'are fools.

When another tells me, or when I say to myself, _This_ is a word of Gascon growth; _this_ a dangerous phrase; _this_ is an ignorant discourse; thou art too full of figures; _this_ is a paradoxical saying; _this_ is a foolish expression: _thou makest thyself merry sometimes, and men will think_ thou sayest a thing in good earnest, which thou only speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults of _inadvertence, not those of custom_. I have done what I designed,'

he says, in triumph, '_All the world knows_ ME in my book, _and my book in_ ME.'