X
The Rest of the Equipment
THE author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man
of his time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination,
capaciousness of mind, grace and majesty of expression. Every one
has said it, no one doubts it. Also, he had humor, humor in rich
abundance, and always wanting to break out. We have no evidence
of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford possessed any of these
gifts or any of these acquirements. The only lines he ever wrote,
so far as we know, are substantially barren of the— barren of all
of them.
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:
His language, where he could spare and pass by a jest,
was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke 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 (its) own graces. . . The fear of every man
that heard him was lest he should make an end.
From Macaulay:
He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament,
particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent
measure on which the King's heart was set—the union of
England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an
intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of
such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the Post Nati
in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the
judges—a decision the legality of which may be questioned,
but the beneficial effect of which must be
acknowledged—was in a great measure attributed to his
dexterous management.
Again:
While actively engaged in the House of Commons
and in the courts of law, he still found leisure for letters
and philosophy. The noble treatise on the Advancement of
Learning, which at a later period was expanded into the De
Augmentis, appeared in 1605.
The Wisdom of the Ancients, a work which if it had
proceeded from any other writer would have been
considered as a masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed
in 1609.
In the meantime the Novum Organum was slowly
proceeding. Several distinguished men of learning had been
permitted to see portions of that extraordinary book, and
they spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius.
Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the
Cogitata
et Visa, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves
out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made
up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and
plots in that
book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that
"it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound
with choice conceits of the present state of learning, and
with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it."
In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with
additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and
quality.
Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention
from a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the
most useful that even his mighty powers could have
achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his own
phrase, "of the laws of England."
To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney
General and Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of
any other man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast
literary industries just described, to satisfy his. He was a born
worker.
The service which he rendered to letters during the last five
years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations,
increase the regret with which we think on the many years which
he had wasted, to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such
study as was not worthy such a student."
He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History
of England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of
National History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive
and valuable additions to his Essays. He published the inestimable
treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum.
Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his
contentment, and quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:
The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain
and languor bore the mark of his mind. The best jestbook in the
world is that which he dictated from memory, without referring to
any book, on a day on which illness had rendered him incapable
of serious study.
Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which
throw light upon Bacon, and seem to indicate—and maybe
demonstrate—that he was competent to write the Plays and Poems:
With great minuteness of observation he had an
amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been
vouchsafed to any other human being.
The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice
feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a
house, a garden or court-masque, could escape the notice of
one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world
of knowledge.
His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy
Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a
toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the armies of
powerful Sultans might repose beneath its shade.
The knowledge in which Bacon excelled
all men was
a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of
knowledge.
In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to
his uncle, Lord Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all
knowledge to be my province."
Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the
weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the
richest decorations of rhetoric.
The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but
not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the
place of his reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man.
There are too many places in the Plays where this happens.
Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his
own name, is a pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is
Bacon's fault, but the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.
No imagination was ever at once so strong
and so thoroughly subjugated. It stopped at the first check from
good sense.
In truth much of Bacon's life was passed in a
visionary world—amid things as strange as any that are
described in the "Arabian Tales". . .amid buildings more
sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more
wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances
more rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more
formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more
efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his
magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild—nothing
but what sober reason sanctioned.
Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the
Novum Organum. . . .Every part of it blazes with wit, but
with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate
truth. No book ever made so great a revolution in the
mode of thinking, overthrew so many prejudices,
introduced so many new opinions.
But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that
intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the
domains of science—all the past, the present and the future,
all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging
signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the
coming age.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close
and rendering it portable.
His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a
high rank in literature.
It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental
gifts and each and every one of the acquirements that are so
prodigally displayed in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher
and richer degree than any other man of his time or of any
previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a prodigy not
matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not produce
two of
him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written
anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written
this:
The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be ye yt moves my bones.
When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd
towers, he ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend
for Iesus sake forbeare, because
he will find the transition from
poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a
shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, until
you bite into a layer of it in a pie.
