The Mystery of Francis Bacon Part 14

The collecting together of these books originated with that distinguished Baconian scholar, Mr. W. M. Safford. For years past he has been steadily engaged in reconst.i.tuting Bacon's Library. The writer has had the privilege of being a.s.sociated with him in this work during the past three years. A collection of nearly two thousand volumes has been gathered together. The annotations on the margins of these books are unquestionably the work of one man, and that man, or rather boy and man, was undoubtedly Francis Bacon. The books bear date from 1470 to 1620. It is impossible to enumerate them all here, but they include the works of Seneca, Aristotle, Plato, Horace, Alciat, Luca.n.u.s, Dionysius, Catullus, Lactinius, Plutarch, Pliny, Aristophanes, Plautus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cicero, Vitruvius, Euclid, Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Apuleius, Sal.u.s.t, Tibullus, Isocrates, and hundreds of other cla.s.sical writers; St.

Augustine, St. Jerome, Calvin, Beza, Beda, Erasmus, Martin Luther, J.

Cammerarius, Sir Thomas Moore, Machiavelli, and other more modern writers.

The handwriting varies,[52] but there is a particular hand which is found accompanied by a boy's sketches. There are drawings of full-length figures, heads of men and women, animals, birds, reptiles, s.h.i.+ps, castles, cathedrals, cities, battles, storms, etc. The writing is a strong, clerkly student's hand. There is a pa.s.sage in "Hamlet," Act V., scene ii., which is noteworthy. Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:--

"I sat me down Devised a new commission; wrote it fair; I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much How to forget that learning; but, Sir, now It did me yeomans service."

The nature of this statement is so personal that it could only have been written as the result of experience. Hamlet had been taught, when young, to write a hand so fair that he was capable of producing a fresh commission which would pa.s.s muster as the work of a Court copyist. The annotation of these books possessed the same qualification. In the margins of these books are abundant references in handwriting to the whole range of cla.s.sical authors.

A copy of the "Grammatice Compendium" of Lactus Pomponius, a very rare book printed by De Fortis in Venice in 1484, contains on the margins the boy's scribble and drawings, besides a number of ma.n.u.script notes. It bears traces of his reading probably at eight years of age. A large folio volume ent.i.tled "T. Livii Palvini Latinae Historiae Principis Decades Tres," published by Frobenius in 1535, is a treasure. It is most copiously annotated and embellished with sketches. The notes are usually in Latin, but interspersed with Greek and sometimes with English.

Obviously the writer thought in Latin, and the character of the drawings justifies the a.s.sumption that, at the time, his age would be from ten to fourteen years.

The most remarkable reference to these annotations is to be found in the "Rape of Lucrece." The fifteenth stanza is as follows:--

"But she that never cop't with straunger eies, Could picke no meaning from their parling lookes, _Nor read the subtle s.h.i.+ning secrecies Writ in the gla.s.sie margents of such bookes_, Shee toucht no unknown baits, nor feared no hooks, Nor could shee moralize his wanton sight More than his eies were opend to the light."

It would be difficult to conceive a more inappropriate simile for the l.u.s.tful looks in Tarquin's eyes than "the subtle s.h.i.+ning secrecies, writ in the gla.s.sie margents of such books." That this is lugged in for a purpose outside the object of the poem is manifest. How many readers of "Lucrece" would know of such a practice? Nay. If it did exist, was not its use very rare?

But the margin of the verse itself yields a subtle s.h.i.+ning secret! The initial letters of the lines are B, C, N, W, Sh, N, M. It is only necessary to supply the vowels--BACoN, W. Sh., NaMe. Sh is on line 103, which is the numerical value of the word Shakespeare. The numerical value of Bacon is 33. In view of this the line 33 is significant:--"Why is Colatine the publisher?" The use of the word _publisher_ here is quite inappropriate. It is introduced for some reason outside the purpose of the text.

The "Rape of Lucrece" commences with Bacon's monogram and, as the late Rev. Walter Begley pointed out, ends with his signature.

The theory now advanced is that when Bacon read a book he made marginal notes in it--the object being mainly to a.s.sist his memory, but the critical notes are numerous. It does not follow that all these books const.i.tuted his library. He would read a book and it having served his purpose he would dispose of it. Some books no doubt he would retain and these would form his library.

The annotations are chiefly in Latin, but some are in Greek, some in Hebrew, French and Spanish. When these have been examined and translated the meaning of the phrase that he had taken all knowledge to be his province will be better understood. Rawley says: "He read much and that with great judgment and rejection of impertinences incident to many authors."

The writer having examined annotations, many and varied, of books in his library, and having enjoyed the privilege of free access to those collected by Mr. Safford, ventures to a.s.sert that much of the ripe learning of the Shakespeare plays can be traced therein to its proper origin. Amongst the former is a copy of Alciat's Emblems, 1577, in the early part profusely annotated. Ben Jonson in his "Discoveries" has incorporated the translation of a portion of one of the Emblems and _has also incorporated a portion of the annotations from this very book_.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] Edwin A. Abbot, in his work, "Francis Bacon," p. 447, writes, "Bacon's style (as a writer) varied almost as much as his handwriting."

CHAPTER XXII.

TWO GERMAN OPINIONS ON SHAKESPEARE AND BACON.

Dr. G. G. Gervinus, the eminent German Historian and Professor Extraordinary at Heidelberg, published in 1849 his work, "Shakespeare Commentaries." This was years before any suggestion had been made that Bacon was in any way connected with the authors.h.i.+p of the Shakespearean dramas.

In the Prospectus of "The New Shakespeare Society," written in 1873, Dr.

F. J. Furnivall says:--

"The profound and generous 'Commentaries' of Gervinus--an honour to a German to have written, a pleasure to an Englishman to read--is still the only book known to me that comes near the true treatment and the dignity of its subject, or can be put into the hands of the student who wants to know the mind of Shakespeare."

The book abounds with references to Bacon. From the Preface to the last chapter Gervinus appears to have Bacon continually suggested to him by the thoughts and words of Shakespeare.

In the Preface, after speaking of the value accruing to German literature by naturalizing Shakespeare "even at the risk of casting our own poets still further in the shade," he says:--

"A similar benefit would it be to our intellectual life if his famed contemporary, Bacon, were revived in a suitable manner, in order to counterbalance the idealistic philosophy of Germany. For both these, the poet as well as the philosopher, having looked deeply into the history and politics of their people, stand upon the level ground of reality, notwithstanding the high art of the one and the speculative notions of the other. By the healthfulness of their own mind they influence the healthfulness of others, while in their most ideal and most abstract representations they aim at a preparation for life _as it is_--for _that_ life which forms the exclusive subject of all political action."

In the chapter on "His Age," written prior to 1849, the Professor pours out the results of a profound study of the writings attributed to both men in the following remarkable sentences:--

"Judge then how natural it was that England, if not the birthplace of the drama, should be that of dramatic legislature. Yet even this instance of favourable concentration is not the last. Both in philosophy and poetry everything conspired, as it were, throughout this prosperous period, in favour of two great minds, Shakespeare and Bacon; all compet.i.tors vanished from their side, and they could give forth laws for art and science which it is inc.u.mbent even upon present ages to fulfil. As the revived philosophy, which in the former century in Germany was divided among many, but in England at that time was the possession of a single man, so poetry also found one exclusive heir, compared with whom those later born could claim but little.

"That Shakespeare's appearance upon a soil so admirably prepared was neither marvellous nor accidental is evidenced even by the corresponding appearance of such a contemporary as Bacon. Scarcely can anything be said of Shakespeare's position generally with regard to mediaeval poetry which does not also bear upon the position of the renovator Bacon with regard to mediaeval philosophy.

Neither knew nor mentioned the other, although Bacon was almost called upon to have done so in his remarks upon the theatre of his day. It may be presumed that Shakespeare liked Bacon but little, if he knew his writings and life; that he liked not his ostentation, which, without on the whole interfering with his modesty, recurred too often in many instances; that he liked not the fault-finding which his ill-health might have caused, nor the narrow-mindedness with which he p.r.o.nounced the histrionic art to be infamous, although he allowed that the ancients regarded the drama as a school for virtue; nor the theoretic precepts of worldly wisdom which he gave forth; nor, lastly, the practical career which he lived. Before his mind, however, if he had fathomed it, he must have bent in reverence. For just as Shakespeare was an interpreter of the secrets of history and of human nature, Bacon was an interpreter of lifeless nature. Just as Shakespeare went from instance to instance in his judgment of moral actions, and never founded a law on single experience, so did Bacon in natural science avoid leaping from one experience of the senses to general principles; he spoke of this with blame as antic.i.p.ating nature; and Shakespeare, in the same way, would have called the conventionalities in the poetry of the Southern races an antic.i.p.ation of human nature. In the scholastic science of the middle ages, as in the chivalric poetry of the romantic period, approbation and not truth was sought for, and with one accord Shakespeare's poetry and Bacon's science were equally opposed to this. As Shakespeare balanced the one-sided errors of the imagination by reason, reality, and nature, so Bacon led philosophy away from the one-sided errors of reason to experience; both with one stroke, renovated the two branches of science and poetry by this renewed bond with nature; both, disregarding all by-ways, staked everything upon this 'victory in the race between art and nature.' Just as Bacon with his new philosophy is linked with the natural science of Greece and Rome, and then with the latter period of philosophy in western Europe, so Shakespeare's drama stands in relation to the comedies of Plautus and to the stage of his own day; between the two there lay a vast wilderness of time, as unfruitful for the drama as for philosophy. But while they thus led back to nature, Bacon was yet as little of an empiric, in the common sense, as Shakespeare was a poet of nature. Bacon prophesied that if hereafter his commendation of experience should prevail, great danger to science would arise from the other extreme, and Shakespeare even in his own day could perceive the same with respect to his poetry; Bacon, therefore, insisted on the closest union between experience and reason, just as Shakespeare effected that between reality and imagination. While they thus bid adieu to the formalities of ancient art and science, Shakespeare to conceits and taffeta-phrases, Bacon to logic and syllogisms, yet at times it occurred that the one fell back into the subtleties of the old school, and the other into the constrained wit of the Italian style. Bacon felt himself quite an original in that which was his peculiar merit, and so was Shakespeare; the one in the method of science he had laid down, and in his suggestions for its execution, the other in the poetical works he had executed, and in the suggestions of their new law. Bacon, looking back to the waymarks he had left for others, said with pride that his words required a century for their demonstration and several for their execution; and so too it has demanded two centuries to understand Shakespeare, but very little has ever been executed in his sense. And at the same time we have mentioned what deep modesty was interwoven in both with their self-reliance, so that the words which Bacon liked to quote hold good for the two works:--'The kingdom of G.o.d cometh not with observation.' Both reached this height from the one starting point, that Shakespeare despised the million, and Bacon feared with Phocion the applause of the mult.i.tude. Both are alike in the rare impartiality with which they avoided everything one-sided; in Bacon we find, indeed, youthful exercises in which he endeavoured in severe contrasts to contemplate a series of things from two points of view. Both, therefore, have an equal hatred of sects and parties; Bacon of sophists and dogmatic philosophers, Shakespeare of Puritans and zealots. Both, therefore, are equally free from prejudices, and from astrological superst.i.tion in dreams and omens. Bacon says of the alchemists and magicians in natural science that they stand in similar relation to true knowledge as the deeds of Amadis to those of Caesar, and so does Shakespeare's true poetry stand in relation to the fantastic romance of Amadis.

Just as Bacon banished religion from science, so did Shakespeare from Art; and when the former complained that the teachers of religion were against natural philosophy, they were equally against the stage. From Bacon's example it seems clear that Shakespeare left religious matters unnoticed on the same grounds as himself, and took the path of morality in worldly things; in both this has been equally misconstrued, and Le Maistre has proved Bacon's lack of Christianity, as Birch has done that of Shakespeare. Shakespeare would, perhaps, have looked down just as contemptuously on the ancients and their arts as Bacon did on their philosophy and natural science, and both on the same grounds; they boasted of the greater age of the world, of more enlarged knowledge of heaven, earth, and mankind. Neither stooped before authorities, and an injustice similar to that which Bacon committed against Aristotle, Shakespeare _perhaps_ has done to Homer. In both a similar combination of different mental powers was at work; and as Shakespeare was often involuntarily philosophical in his profoundness, Bacon was not seldom surprised into the imagination of the poet. Just as Bacon, although he declared knowledge in itself to be much more valuable than the use of invention, insisted throughout generally and dispa.s.sionately upon the practical use of philosophy, so Shakespeare's poetry, independent as was his sense of art, aimed throughout at bearing upon the moral life. Bacon himself was of the same opinion; he was not far from declaring history to be the best teacher of politics, and poetry the best instructor in morals. Both were alike deeply moved by the picture of a ruling Nemesis, whom they saw, grand and powerful, striding through history and life, dragging the mightiest and most prosperous as a sacrifice to her altar, as the victims of their own inward nature and destiny. In Bacon's works we find a mult.i.tude of moral sayings and maxims of experience, from which the most striking mottoes might be drawn for every Shakespearian play, aye, for every one of his princ.i.p.al characters (we have already brought forward not a few proofs of this), testifying to a remarkable harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature. Both, in their systems of morality rendering homage to Aristotle, whose ethics Shakespeare, from a pa.s.sage in Troilus, may have read, arrived at the same end as he did--that virtue lies in a just medium between two extremes. Shakespeare would also have agreed with _him_ in this, that Bacon declared excess to be 'the fault of youth, as defect is of age;' he accounted 'defect the worst, because excess contains some sparks of magnanimity, and, like a bird, claims kindred of the heavens, while defect, only like a base worm, crawls upon the earth.' In these maxims lie at once, as it were, the whole theory of Shakespeare's dramatic forms and of his moral philosophy."

DR. KUNO FISCHER, the distinguished German critic and historian of philosophy, in a volume on Bacon, published in 1856, writes:--

The same affinity for the Roman mind, and the same want of sympathy with the Greek, we again find in Bacon's greatest contemporary, whose imagination took as broad and comprehensive a view as Bacon's intellect.

Indeed, how could a Bacon attain that position with respect to Greek poetry that was unattainable by the mighty imagination of a Shakspeare?

For in Shakspeare, at any rate, the imagination of the Greek antiquity could be met by a h.o.m.ogeneous power of the same rank as itself; and, as the old adage says, "like comes to like." But the age, the spirit of the nation--in a word, all those forces of which the genius of an individual man is composed, and which, moreover, genius is least able to resist--had here placed an obstacle, impenetrable both to the poet and the philosopher. Shakspeare was no more able to exhibit Greek characters than Bacon to expound Greek poetry. Like Bacon, Shakspeare had in his turn of mind something that was Roman, and not at all akin to the Greek.

He could appropriate to himself a Coriola.n.u.s and a Brutus, a Caesar and an Antony; he could succeed with the Roman heroes of Plutarch, but not with the Greek heroes of Homer. The latter he could only parody, but his parody was as infelicitous as Bacon's explanation of the "Wisdom of the Ancients." Those must be dazzled critics indeed who can persuade themselves that the heroes of the Iliad are excelled by the caricatures in "Troilus and Cressida." The success of such a parody was poetically impossible; indeed, he that attempts to parody Homer shows thereby that he has not understood him. For the simple and the nave do not admit of a parody, and these have found in Homer their eternal and inimitable expression. Just as well might caricatures be made of the statues of Phidias. Where the creative imagination never ceases to be simple and nave, where it never distorts itself by the affected or the unnatural, there is the consecrated land of poetry, in which there is no place for the parodist. On the other hand, where there is a palpable want of simplicity and nature, parody is perfectly conceivable; nay, may even be felt as a poetical necessity. Thus Euripides, who, often enough, was neither simple nor nave, could be parodied, and Aristophanes has shown us with what felicity. Even aeschylus, who was not always as simple as he was grand, does not completely escape the parodising test. But Homer is safe. To parody Homer is to mistake him, and to stand so far beyond his scope that the truth and magic of his poetry can no longer be felt; and this is the position of Shakespeare and Bacon. The imagination of Homer, and all that could be contemplated and felt by that imagination, namely, the cla.s.sical antiquity of the Greeks, are to them utterly foreign. We cannot understand Aristotle without Plato; nay, I maintain that we cannot contemplate with a sympathetic mind the Platonic world of ideas, if we have not previously sympathised with the world of the Homeric G.o.ds. Be it understood, I speak of the _form_ of the Platonic mind, not of its logical matter; in point of doctrine, the Homeric faith was no more that of Plato than of Phidias. But these doctrinal or logical differences are far less than the formal and aesthetical affinity. The conceptions of Plato are of Homeric origin.

This want of ability to take an historical survey of the world is to be found alike in Bacon and Shakspeare, together with many excellencies likewise common to them both. To the parallel between them--which Gervinus, with his peculiar talent for combination, has drawn in the concluding remarks to his "Shakespeare," and has ill.u.s.trated by a series of appropriate instances--belongs the similar relation of both to antiquity, their affinity to the Roman mind, and their diversity from the Greek. Both possessed to an eminent degree that faculty for a knowledge of human nature that at once pre-supposes and calls forth an interest in practical life and historical reality. To this interest corresponds the stage, on which the Roman characters moved; and here Bacon and Shakspeare met, brought together by a common interest in these objects, and the attempt to depict and copy them. This point of agreement, more than any other argument, explains their affinity. At the same time there is no evidence that one ever came into actual contact with the other. Bacon does not even mention Shakspeare when he discourses of dramatic poetry, but pa.s.ses over this department of poetry with a general and superficial remark that relates less to the subject itself than to the stage and its uses. As far as his own age is concerned, he sets down the moral value of the stage as exceedingly trifling. But the affinity of Bacon to Shakspeare is to be sought in his moral and psychological, not in his aesthetical views, which are too much regulated by material interests and utilitarian prepossessions to be applicable to art itself, considered with reference to its own independent value. However, even in these there is nothing to prevent Bacon's manner of judging mankind, and apprehending characters from agreeing perfectly with that of Shakspeare; so that human life, the subject-matter of all dramatic art, appeared to him much as it appeared to the great artist himself, who, in giving form to this matter, excelled all others. Is not the inexhaustible theme of Shakspeare's poetry the history and course of human pa.s.sion? In the treatment of this especial theme is not Shakspeare the greatest of all poets--nay, is he not unique among them all? And it is this very theme that is proposed by Bacon as the chief problem of moral philosophy. He blames Aristotle for treating of the pa.s.sions in his rhetoric rather than his ethics; for regarding the artificial means of exciting them rather than their natural history. It is to the natural history of the human pa.s.sions that Bacon directs the attention of philosophy. He does not find any knowledge of them among the sciences of his time. "The poets and writers of histories," he says, "are the best doctors of this knowledge; where we may find painted forth with great life how pa.s.sions are kindled and incited; and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they work; how they vary; how they gather and fortify; how they are inwrapped one within another; and how they do fight and encounter one with another; and other the like particularities."[53] Such a lively description is required by Bacon from moral philosophy. That is to say, he desired nothing less than a natural history of the pa.s.sions--the very thing that Shakspeare has produced. Indeed, what poet could have excelled Shakspeare in this respect? Who, to use a Baconian expression, could have depicted man and all his pa.s.sions more _ad vivum_? According to Bacon, the poets and historians give us copies of characters; and the outlines of these images--the simple strokes that determine characters--are the proper objects of ethical science. Just as physical science requires a dissection of bodies, that their hidden qualities and parts may be discovered, so should ethics penetrate the various minds of men, in order to find out the eternal basis of them all. And not only this foundation, but likewise those external conditions which give a stamp to human character--all those peculiarities that "are imposed upon the mind by the s.e.x, by the age, by the region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity, and the like, which are inherent and not external; and, again, those which are caused by external fortune"[54]--should come within the scope of ethical philosophy. In a word, Bacon would have man studied in his individuality as a product of nature and history, in every respect determined by natural and historical influences, by internal and external conditions. And exactly in the same spirit has Shakespeare understood man and his destiny; regarding character as the result of a certain natural temperament and a certain historical position, and destiny as a result of character.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] "Advancement of Learning," II. "De Augment. Scient.," VII. 3.

[54] "Advancement of Learning," II. For the whole pa.s.sage compare "De Augment. Scient.," VII. 3.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TESTIMONY OF BACON'S CONTEMPORARIES.

A distinguished member of the Bench in a recent post-prandial address referred to Bacon as "a shady lawyer." Irresponsible newspaper correspondents, when attacking the Baconian theory, indulge in epithets of this kind, but it is amazing that any man occupying a position so responsible as that of an English judge should, either through ignorance or with a desire to be considered a wit, make use of such a term.

Whatever may have been Francis Bacon's faults, one fact must stand unchallenged--that amongst those of his contemporaries who knew him there was a consensus of opinion that his virtues overshadowed any failings to which he might be subject.

The following testimonies establish this fact:--

Let BEN JONSON speak first:

"Yet there happened in my time one n.o.ble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pa.s.s a jest) was n.o.bly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member 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 that heard him was, lest he should make an end," and, after referring to Lord Ellesmere, Jonson continues:--

"But his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor, (_i.e._, Bacon) is he who hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece, or haughty Rome. In short, within his view, and about his times, were all the wits born, that could honour a language, or help study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downward, and eloquence grows backward: so that he may be named, and stand as the mark and [Greek: akoe] of our language.