Chapter V: Part 5

Shelley saw and asserted that _Bacon was a poet_. But students of Bacon need no Shelley to inform them that Bacon was indeed a poet. His earlier work betrays him. Even the _Advancement of Learning_ (1605), tinctured as it is by the pedantic style then coming into fashion, holds just the same truth in solution. To many such students, apology is due for labouring the point. My excuse is the existence of a strong prepossession to the contrary. By what seems to have been an oversight on the part of Bacon, his executors and intimate friends, a letter of his to Sir J. Davies, also a poet, has come down to us, unedited for the public. In this letter Bacon confesses himself a poet, ranks himself in effect amongst _concealed poets_. Aubrey too, thanks probably to a similar oversight, lets us into the same secret that Bacon was a _concealed poet_. Of Bacon’s affection for poetry the product (Bacon himself calls it the _work or play_) of the imagination, there is no room for doubt. If other evidence were wanting, the _Sapientia Veterum_ (1609) would almost suffice to prove it. As Porphyry’s reverence for the elder gods is deducible from his attempt to extract philosophy out of the oracles of antiquity, so Bacon’s reverent affection for poetry manifests itself in that elaborate attempt of his to distil philosophy out of what is at bottom a medley of poetical fables. That Bacon, like Prospero, delighted in _poesis_ (making) is equally clear. _Poesy_, he says in the _De Augmentis_--_Poesy is a dream of knowledge_ (_or_ culture), _a thing sweet and varied and that would fain be held partly divine_.... _But now it is time for me to awake_ (ut evigilem) _and cleave the liquid ether of philosophy_, etc. This passage, written after 1605, obviously means more than affection for poetry the product. Only a poet who loved to dream, only a poet for whom the awaking was fraught with pain, however glorious the promise of the dawn, would have written that.

Bacon again, like Prospero, was a lover of books, and happy like him, in the possession of a well-filled library (at Gray’s Inn, or Gorhambury, or both). He was an omniverous reader, _tasting_ some books (mathematical and astronomical, for example), _swallowing_ others, _chewing and digesting a few_. His biographer says of him: _He was a great reader_, but _no plodder upon books_.

About 1607-9, Bacon (in one of his _impetus philosophici_) imagined that at last he really had hit upon an infallible Method of vastly enlarging man’s dominion over Nature. The problem was how to launch this Method to the best advantage. Knowing only too well that he would receive no encouragement from living experts in science--the scientists who had arrived as distinguished from those who had not yet started--he fixed his hopes on ingenuous, open-minded Youth. But this is a prosaic way of looking at the matter, and Bacon was a poet. To him the desideratum presented itself as a marriage, a marriage between his _darling philosophy_, as he was wont to call it, and an ideal husband. In the _Redargutio Philosophiarum_ men are exhorted to devote themselves to the task of bringing about _a chaste and legitimate wedlock between the mind and nature_. In the _Sapientia Veterum_ the same idea appears in a different form: _facultates illas duas Dogmaticam et Empiricam adhuc non bene conjunctas et copulatas fuisse_.[74] In the _Delineatio_ (c. 1607) he writes: _We trust we have constructed a bride-bed for the marriage of Man’s Mind with the Universe_. The same idea (hardly as yet an obsession) makes one of its earliest appearances in a _Speech in Praise of Knowledge_, forming part of a dramatic _jeu d’esprit_ entitled _A Conference of Pleasure_ (1592). In this _Speech_ several things are said to _have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments. And what the issue of so honourable a match may be it is not hard to consider._ With the actual merits of the Method we are but distantly concerned here. What is of importance here is the certainty that Bacon would lose no opportunity of repudiating every suggestion that his beloved child owed anything to the imagination. _It was an usual speech of his lordship’s_, says his biographer, _that his Natural History is the world as God made it, and not as men have made it, for it hath nothing of the imagination_.

By this time the inner meaning of _The Tempest_, and also the editorial reason for thrusting it into the leading place of the _First Folio_, may have become apparent. Miranda stands for Bacon’s _Darling Philosophy_, and the ingenuous young Ferdinand for the unsophisticated mind of man, the human intellect _cleared and delivered_ from _idols_, particularly _idols of the theatre_. The issue of so auspicious a match is left, in _The Tempest_, as in the _Conference of Pleasure_, to the imagination. Prospero’s ceremonious rejection of his magic robes is an adumbration of Bacon’s anxiety to preserve his Philosophy from being calumniated as a poetical dream, a thing _infected with the style of the poets_, as he once (in a fragmentary _Essay of Fame_) confessed himself to be. Devotion to Miranda again is the motive for Prospero’s resolve to dismiss Ariel from his service, at a time when Ariel could ill be spared, one feels, by his ageing master. The words _my dainty Ariel I shall miss thee_ are eloquent of pain, pain self-inflicted and unexplained, except by a promise wholly uncalled-for by anything that appears on the surface. Ariel on the other hand, tricksy Ariel, incapable of human affection, sick of expecting a long-promised freedom, feels no pain, no regret, nothing but joy at the prospect of slaving it no longer for a despotic master: _Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough_.

The last words of one of Prospero’s closing speeches, _Every third thought shall be my grave_, followed up as they are by the thinly veiled pathos of his appeal in the Epilogue, perplex and distress the reader. _Prospero triumphans_, without one word of warning or explanation, has changed into _Misero supplicans_. Why this sudden revulsion? To my untutored mind it intimates a working-over of the play after Bacon’s fall, for the purpose of adapting it, not too obviously, to the altered circumstances of the original author, that _unfortunate_ Chancellor who, according to Ben Jonson, _hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome_. The date of this (last) working-over would probably synchronise with the first public or semi-public appearances of the _First Folio_ (of _Shakespeare_), of Bacon’s _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, and of Ben Jonson’s _Time Vindicated_, these four events--with perhaps a Court performance of the adapted _Tempest_ thrown in--being, I venture to think, intimately connected with what may be called an Apotheosis of Bacon.

“A remarkable story indeed”--an objector may say--“but do you seriously believe that Bacon can be proved to have been the Author, and _Shakespeare_ the pen-name? Besides, does it really matter--except to Stratford and Verulam--whether _Shakespeare_ hailed from this place or that? We have the poems and we have the plays, and that is enough. As for your reading of _The Tempest_, it may be ingenious, but it is not convincing. Patience, with a modicum of ingenuity, has probably never despaired of cajoling almost any given meaning out of any fable--fables, like dreams and Delphian utterances, being almost as plastic as wax. Moreover, the inner meaning you claim to have disclosed, involves the absurdity of supposing that a fable was invented for the express purpose of wrapping up the said meaning, so effectually as to ensure its being missed by all the world, a few esoteric contemporaries only excepted. The idea, to be quite candid, belongs rather to Bedlam than to Bacon.”

Strict proof, I reply, is hardly to be expected either now or hereafter. A high degree of probability, resting on evidence of various kinds and different degrees of cogency, is all that the writer has ever contended for. The history of literature abounds in instances of pseudonymity. Of these one of the most apposite that occurs to me is that of Aristophanes, who made use of the name Callistratus, a contemporary actor, to mask his (own) authorship of the _Birds_, _Lysistrata_, etc. There are differences, of course, between the two cases, one being that in that of Aristophanes there were no very obvious reasons for concealment, whereas in the case of Bacon there were several. Whether it really matters who the great poet was depends on the word “really.” It certainly does not matter in the sense in which the high price of coal, the low price of Consols, England’s relations with other Powers, etc., matter. It does matter for _The Tempest_, the symbolism of which probably extends beyond Miranda and Prospero, as far as Neapolis, and possibly further. It cannot fail to affect the interpretation of other plays of _Shakespeare_. It solves, or helps to solve, interesting problems in the life and acknowledged works of Bacon. It matters in short for all genuine admirers of English literature. As to plasticity--where the fable to be juggled is vague, undocumented, variously and incoherently documented, or frugal of features, the operation will be child’s play. With such a fable as _The Tempest_ the trick can only be brought off by singling out one or two features and shutting the eye to all the rest. One objection only remains to be dealt with. The reference to Bedlam with which it concludes might have been omitted, but no discussion of this question seems quite in order without some innuendo that the unorthodox person is mad or a crank. The objection itself (though the phrasing might be challenged as favouring the objector) is pertinent enough, and may be answered as follows: Bacon was an inveterate treasure-seeker. The unsunned treasures he sought were not material things like gold and silver, but gems of thought hidden away in the dreamlands of poetry. The genesis of this habit was no doubt closely related to his theory that poesy enables the artist in words to _retire_ and _obscure_ ... _secrets and mysteries_ by _involving_ them in _fables_ invented for the purpose, a practice by no means uncommon, he firmly believed, among the poets of antiquity when they wished to reserve information for _selected auditors_.

So far the discussion has been grave to the point of dullness. Would that I had been able to enliven it, if only because _The Tempest_ is a comedy--heads the file of the comedies in the _First Folio_. Possibly the following quotation from the work of an eminent critic may help to remedy the fault: _Miranda_ ... _and her fellow Perdita are idealizations of the sweet country maidens whom Shakspere_ (sic) _would see about him in his renewed family life at Stratford_.[75]

THE COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

Many years ago, when, not having bestowed a thought upon the subject, I was, naturally, of the orthodox Stratfordian faith, and knew nothing of the Baconian “heresy” except the time-honoured joke that “Shakespeare” was not written by Shakespeare, but by another gentleman of the same name (which I thought “devilish funny”) I happened to be reading Bacon’s _Essay on Gardens_. This passage at once arrested my attention: “In April follow, the double violet; the wall-flower; the stock-gilliflower; the cowslip; _flower-de-luces, and lillies of all natures_.” Why, thought I, those last words are almost identical with some used by Perdita at the conclusion of her lovely catalogue of flowers! I turned to the _Winter’s Tale_ (IV. 4) and there read:

lillies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.

For at least half a minute I thought, in my innocence, that I had made a discovery! But reflection of course, told me that so startling a parallelism must have been observed by hundreds before me. “Lillies of all kinds,” says Shakespeare; “lillies of all natures,” says Bacon; and each specifies “the flower-de-luce” as one of them! Surely, I said to myself, this is no mere coincidence! Surely one of these writers must have, consciously or unconsciously, taken the words from the other! On closer inspection, too, I found a remarkable resemblance between the two lists of flowers, Bacon’s and Shakespeare’s; that they are in fact substantially the same. Did then Shakspere borrow from Bacon? Very possibly, I thought; but on investigation I found that the _Essay on Gardens_ was first printed in 1625, nine years after player Shakspere’s death. Well, then, did Bacon borrow from Shakspere in this instance? Few, I think, would be inclined to adopt that hypothesis. The author of the _Essay_ had made a life-long study of gardens, and, as Mr. James Spedding writes (though I did not discover this till years afterwards), “it is not probable that Bacon would have anything to learn of William Shakespeare [i.e., Shakspere of Stratford] concerning the science of gardening.” “Moreover,” says the same writer, “the scene in _Winter’s Tale_ where Perdita presents the guests with flowers ... has some expressions which, if the _Essay_ had been printed somewhat earlier, would have made me suspect that Shakespeare had been reading it!”[76] Yes, indeed, and these “expressions,” almost identical in both, have made some persons “suspect” that the same pen wrote both the _Essay_ and the _Scene_.

There are, as all those who have studied the two authors are aware, many other striking coincidences to be found in the writings of Shakespeare and Bacon. In this chapter I propose to consider some of them only, namely those which, nearly twenty years ago, formed the subject of a controversy between the late Judge Webb, and the late Professor Dowden.

In the year 1902 the late Judge Webb, then Regius Professor of Laws, and Public Orator in the University of Dublin, published a book which he called _The Mystery of William Shakespeare_.

The eighth chapter of that work treats “Of Shakespeare as a Man of Science,” and here the learned Judge put forward a number of parallelisms taken from Shakespeare’s plays and Bacon’s works (mainly from the _Natural History_, which was published eleven years after the death of Shakspere of Stratford), in order to show that “the scientific opinions of Shakespeare so completely coincide with those of Bacon that we must regard the two philosophers as one in their philosophy, however reluctant we may be to recognize them as actually one.”

To this the late Professor Dowden replied, in _The National Review_ of July, 1902, and brought forward an immense amount of learning to show that these coincidences really prove nothing, because “all which Dr. Webb regards as proper to Shakespeare and Bacon was, in fact, _the common knowledge or common error of the time_.” Whereunto the Judge, in a brief rejoinder (_National Review_, August, 1902), intimated that all he was concerned with was “the common knowledge and common error of Shakespeare and Bacon,” his case being that in matters of science these two, as a fact, show an extremely close agreement. The question for the reader, therefore, is whether or not that agreement is so remarkable that something more than “the common knowledge or common error _of the time_” is required to explain it.

Here the matter has been left, but I think it may be of interest to consider once more the points at issue between these two learned disputants. Let me premise that I do not write as a “Baconian.” The hypothesis that Bacon was the author of the plays of Shakespeare, or some of them, or some parts of them, may be mere “madhouse chatter,” as Sir Sidney Lee has styled it, or we may be content with more moderate language, and merely say that the hypothesis is “not proven.” I leave that _vexata quæstio_ on one side. But, whatever may be our opinion with regard to it, it must, I think, be admitted that some of the “parallelisms,” or “coincidences,” between Bacon and Shakespeare are really very remarkable, and the controversy between Judge Webb and Professor Dowden, which I here pass under review, has not, as it seems to me, so conclusively explained their existence as to leave nothing further for the consideration of an impartial critic.

Let me take an example. Bacon in his _Sylva Sylvarum_, or _Natural History_[77] (Cent. I, p. 98), speaks of “the spirits or pneumaticals that are in all tangible bodies,” and which, he says, “are scarce known.” They are not, he tells us, as some suppose, virtues and qualities of the tangible parts which “men see,” but “they are things by themselves,” i.e., entities. And again (Cent. VII, 601), he says, “all bodies have spirits, and pneumatical parts within them,” and he goes on to point out the differences between the “spirits” in animate, and those in inanimate things. Further on (Cent. VII, 693), Bacon writes: “It hath been observed by the ancients that much use of Venus doth dim the sight,” and the cause of this, he says, “is the expense of spirits.” Now in Sonnet 129 Shakespeare writes:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action.

Here we certainly seem to have a remarkable agreement between Shakespeare and Bacon. Both use the very same expression “the expense of spirit” and (which constitutes the real strength of the parallel) both use it in exactly the same application. What is Professor Dowden’s explanation? He says that “the mediæval theory of ‘spirits’ will be found in the _Encyclopædia of Bartholomew Anglicus on the Properties of Things_,” which he says was “a book of wide influence.” He says further: “The popular opinions of Shakespeare’s time respecting ‘spirits’ may be read in _Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy_, 1586, and _Burton’s Anatomy_, 1621, and in many another volume.... Bright, in his _Melancholy_, seems almost to anticipate the theory of Bacon, and possibly he was himself influenced by Paracelsus.” As to the expression “expense of spirit,” he says it may be found in this book of Bright’s (pp. 62, 237, and 244), and in Donne’s _Progress of the Soul_. I do not understand the Professor to suggest that the Stratford player had consulted these works (Burton, of course, is out of the question) for he writes: “The language of Shakespeare is popular, and connected probably neither with what Bright nor what Bacon wrote, but if a theory be required, it can be found as easily in a volume which Shakespeare might have read, as in a volume published after his death.” Bacon, however, we may say with confidence, knew these books, and had, in all probability, read them. The Professor, for instance, refers to Paracelsus, and subsequently, on another point, to Scaliger. Bacon, as we know, was familiar with both these writers, and makes reference to them (see, for instance, _Natural History_, Cent. IV, 354, and Cent. VII, 694), whereas it will, I suppose, hardly be suggested that the player had sought inspiration in the works of these scholars.

The first question, then, which suggests itself is this. Are we to conclude, because there is a theory of “spirits” (which Bacon says “are scarce known”) to be found in Bartholomew Anglicus, and Bright, and Paracelsus, that it was a matter of “popular” knowledge, a subject with which Shakspere of Stratford, as well as the philosopher of Gorhambury, would have been likely to be familiar? This question seems to me a very doubtful one, but if it is to be answered in the affirmative, then we have to ask: Is this assumed popular knowledge, or popular error, sufficient to account for the use by both Shakespeare and Bacon of exactly the same expression in exactly the same collocation? And in considering this question we must remember that the evidence is cumulative, i.e., this coincidence is not a solitary instance, but only one of many, and it is but fair, if we wish to come to a just decision, that all of them should be considered together.

But how far is it true, as Professor Dowden alleges it to be, that “Bright in his _Melancholy_ seems almost to anticipate the theory of Bacon?” The book is a scarce one. There is no copy in the London Library. However I have taken the trouble to examine it at the British Museum. Professor Dowden refers to pages 62, 237, and 244. In the edition which I examined, that of 1586, there is no reference to the “expense of spirits” at p. 237. Neither is there at p. 62. On page 63, however, I find the following. The author, one Timothy Bright, “Doctor of Phisicke,” is speaking of strong affections of the mind, and he says: “If it holde on long and release not, the nourishment will also faile, the increase of the body diminish, and the flower of beautie fade, and finally death take his fatall hold; which commeth to passe, not onely by _expence of spirit_, but by leaving destitute the parts, whereby declining to decay, they become at length unmeete for the entertainment of so noble an inhabitant as the soule,” etc. On p. 244 we read: “Now as all contention of the mind is to be intermitted, so especially that whereto the melancholicke person most hath given himself before the passion is chiefly to be eschued, for the recoverie of former estate and restoring the depraved conceit and fearefull affection. For there, if the affection of liking go withal, both hart and braine do over prodigally _spend their spirite_ and with them the subtilest parts of the naturall iuyce [juice] and humours of the bodie. If of mislike and the thing be by forcible constraint layd on, the distracting of the mind, from the promptness of affection, breedeth such an agonie in our nature that thereon riseth also great _expence of spirit_, and of the most rare and subtile humours of our bodies, which are as it were the seate of our naturall heate,” etc.

Now in both these passages we find, indeed, the expression the “expense of spirit,” but, except for that, it appears that they can hardly be cited as parallel passages with those of either Bacon or Shakespeare. It is not alleged that this expression is peculiar to these two writers--assuming the duality. The parallelism consists in this, that they both use the words in connection with what Bacon terms “the use of Venus.” I cannot see that the passages in Bright’s treatise, when they are carefully examined, make this parallelism at all less remarkable.

The Professor further tells us that the expression “expense of spirits” may be found in Donne’s _Progress of the Soul_[78] Stanza VI. I do not find it in that stanza, but in Stanza V the following occurs. The poet prays that he may be free,

From the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,
And all that calls from this, and t’ others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’ expence of brain, and spirit, that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.

And in Stanza XXI are the words quoted by Professor Dowden, concerning the sparrow:

Freely on his she friends
He blood, and spirit, pith and marrow spends.

This indeed proves, what nobody has ever denied, viz., that the expression “to spend the spirit” is not confined among writers of the Elizabethan age to Bacon and Shakespeare. To what extent it detracts from the force of the coincidence on which Judge Webb has laid stress, I must leave it to the reader to determine. The learned Judge laughs at the idea that citations from Bright’s _Treatise of Melancholy_ and Donne’s _Progress of the Soul_, are proof that the expression was one in common use.

There is another example of agreement between Bacon and Shakespeare in connection with this theory of “spirits.” Jessica says (_Merchant of Venice_, V. 1):

I am never merry when I heare sweet music.

To which Lorenzo replies:

The reason is your spirits are attentive.

Bacon writes (_Natural Hist._ Cent. VIII, 745): “Some noises help sleep; as the blowing of the wind, the trickling of water, humming of bees, _soft singing_, reading, etc. The cause is for that _they move in the spirits a gentle attention_.”

Upon this Professor Dowden tells us that Bright talks of music “alluring the spirites,” while “Burton quotes from Lemnius, who declares that music not only affects the ears, ‘but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits,’ and, again from Scaliger, who explains its power as due to the fact that it plays upon ‘the spirits about the heart,’ whereupon Burton, like Shakespeare’s Lorenzo, proceeds to speak of the influence of music upon beasts, and like Lorenzo, cites the tale of Orpheus.” But Burton’s _Anatomy_ was not published till 1621, about five years after Shakspere’s death, and we can hardly suppose that the player delved into “Lemnius” or “Scaliger!” But we shall doubtless be told that, whether Shakspere had read these books or not, the fact that Bright speaks of music alluring the spirits shows that this was a common expression, and that Lorenzo’s words are to be referred to “the common knowledge or the common error of the time.” But Lorenzo says, “your spirits are _attentive_,” and Bacon speaks of “a gentle _attention_” of the spirits. I do not see this expression in Bright, or Lemnius, or Scaliger, as quoted by Professor Dowden. Here, then, we have two expressions, “the expense of spirits” in connection with Venus, and “the attention of spirits” in connection with music, both in Shakespeare and Bacon. It will be for every reader who is interested in the question, taking these coincidences with many others of a similar character, to decide whether “the common knowledge of the time” affords a sufficient explanation. And let him remember two things--first, that it is, of course, impossible to find an agreement between Shakespeare and Bacon on a subject of which they two alone (if two they were) had exclusive knowledge, and secondly that though one, or two, or three threads may not suffice to bear a weight, a great many threads combined into a cord may do so. At any rate, it may be said of these two:

Utrumque vestrum incredibili modo
Consentit astrum.

Judge Webb, of course, refers to the well-known fact that both Shakespeare and Bacon held similar views on the relationship of Art to nature, both holding that art was not something different from nature, but a part of nature. All will remember the dialogue between Perdita and Polixenes in the _Winter’s Tale_:

_Per._: ... The fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards; of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren: and I care not
To get slips of them.

_Pol._: ... Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?

_Per._: ... For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

_Pol._: ... Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.

It certainly seems remarkable that the King of Bohemia should lecture the country girl on the essential identity of nature and art. It is not exactly what we should have expected. It is somewhat strange, too, to find Bacon waxing eloquent on the same subject, and to the same effect. Take the following from the _De Augmentis_ (Lib. II, Cap. ii.): “Libenter autem historiam artium, ut historiæ naturalis speciem, constituimus: quia inveteravit prorsus opinio, _ac si aliud quippiam esset ars a natura, artificialia a naturalibus_.... Sed et illabitur etiam animis hominum aliud subtilius malum; nempe, _ut ars censeatur solummodo tanquam additamentum quoddam, naturæ_, cujus scilicet ea sit vis, ut naturam, sane, vel inchoatam perficere, vel in deterius vergentem emendare, vel impeditam liberare; minime vero penitus vertere, transmutare, aut in imis concutere possit: quod ipsum rebus humanis præproperam desperationem intulit.”

That is to say, “we very willingly treat the history of art as a form of natural history; for an opinion has long been prevalent _that art is something different from nature_--things artificial from things natural.... There is likewise another and more subtle error which has crept into the human mind, namely, that of considering art as merely an assistant[79] to nature, having the power indeed to finish what nature has begun, to correct her when lapsing into error, or to set her free when in bondage, but by no means to change, transmute, or fundamentally alter nature. And this has bred a premature despair in human enterprises.” He goes on to point out that, on the contrary, there is no essential difference between art and nature, things artificial being simply things natural as affected by human agency, which is a part of nature, so that in the words of Shakespeare, “the art itself is nature.”[80]

Here it may be worth while to point out that these words are not to be found in the English _Advancement of Learning_, first printed in 1605, but are found in the enlarged Latin version made under Bacon’s supervision, and published in 1623, the very year in which the _Winter’s Tale_ also first saw the light in print, to wit in the _First Folio_. The play may, no doubt, have been written some ten years before that, but whether in its earlier form it contained all this not very appropriate philosophy concerning art and nature, it is of course impossible to say. It is said to have been written about 1611, and we find Bacon writing about the same time very much to the same effect as above quoted.[81]

Artificial selection is, therefore, after all only a form and part of natural selection, the _differentia_ being that it is human agency which brings it into play. And that Bacon had, by one of his luminous intuitions, which are really quite as remarkable as his inductive philosophy, a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution is undeniable, for we have it plainly stated in his _Natural History_ (Cent. VI, 525): “This work of the transmutation of plants one into another is _inter magnalia naturæ_; for the _transmutation of species_ is, in vulgar philosophy, pronounced impossible, and certainly it is a thing of difficulty, and requireth deep search into nature; but seeing there appear some manifest instances of it, the opinion of impossibility is to be rejected, and the means thereof to be found out.”[82]

As to the “streaked gillivors, which some call nature’s bastards,” we find that Bacon has much to say concerning experiments in the colouration and variation of these gillyflowers. In the _Natural History_ (Cent. VI, 506), he writes: “Amongst curiosities I shall place coloration, though it be somewhat better: for beauty in flowers is their pre-eminence. It is observed by some that gillyflowers ... that are coloured, if they be neglected, and neither watered, nor new molded, nor transplanted, will turn white.” Subsequently (510) we read: “Take gillyflower seed, of one kind of gillyflower, as of the clove gillyflower, which is the most common, and sow it, and there will come up gillyflowers some of one colour and some of another,” etc. Then, in 513, we come to the application of “art” to these flowers: “It is a curiosity also to make flowers double, which is effected by often removing them into new earth.... Inquire also whether _inoculating_ of flowers, as stock-gillyflowers ... doth not make them double.”

At any rate it must, I think, be admitted that we have here some very remarkable resemblances between Bacon and Shakespeare. First we have, as mentioned in the opening of this chapter, an almost complete verbal agreement, “lillies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one,” and “flower-de-luces and lillies of all natures”; then we have two very similar lists of flowers according to the seasons, whether of the year, or of human life; then we have a complete and, I think extraordinary agreement, as to the philosophy of “nature” and “art”--to wit, that the two are essentially one, since art is but part of nature. Moreover it seems that both writers, if two there were, were writing these things just about the same time. And finally we find that both writers are much concerned with the colours and varieties of “streaked gillyvors” or “stock-gillyvors.”[83]

What does Professor Dowden say to this? He quotes William Harrison’s _Description of England_: “How art also helpeth nature in the dailie colouring, dubling, and enlarging the proportion of our floures, it is incredible, to report,” etc. But Harrison does not say, as Shakespeare and Bacon say, that the art is part of nature (“The art itself is nature”). He merely speaks of art as an _additamentum quoddam naturæ_, which is just the proposition that Bacon (and Shakespeare, by implication) condemns as fallacious. Professor Dowden then tells us that this thought as to art and nature was prominent in the teaching of Paracelsus whom Bacon refuses to honour. But whether or not Bacon refuses to honour Paracelsus he was, at any rate, familiar with him, and makes frequent mention of him. So again as to Pliny, whom the Professor appeals to in this matter. Bacon cites him in the very passage of the _De Augmentis_ (Lib. II, Cap. ii), part of which I have quoted. It seems rather remarkable that the authors to whom the Professor makes his appeal should be, so frequently, writers such as Pliny, and Paracelsus, and Scaliger who certainly were well known to Bacon. I doubt if the Stratford player had included these in his (assumed) omnivorous reading; nor do I think “the common knowledge and common error of the time” explain these coincidences of thought and expression in an altogether satisfactory way. The lines,

... this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature,

really do seem to bear the Baconian stamp on the face of them. However those who think it sufficient to find that something similar (though certainly not the same) was said by somebody else somewhere about the same time will doubtless be satisfied with Professor Dowden’s hypothesis of a common origin in common knowledge, or error; and those who are “convinced against their will,” will, as usual, be “of the same opinion still.” They should note, however, that Mr. Spedding candidly admits that if the _Essay on Gardens_ had been published before 1616, he would have suspected that it had been read by Shakespeare!

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare speaks of plants as distinguished by sex difference. An old friend of mine, now, alas, gone to that bourne whence no traveller returns, who, like many others, used to maintain that “everything can be found in Shakespeare” (a proposition which if confined within reasonable limits I should be the last to dispute) was so struck by this fact that, in an article contributed by him to the _Saturday Review_, he expressed the opinion that “it can only be explained as a flash of genius hitting on an obscure truth by a great observer, as Shakespeare undoubtedly was.” And in a note to this article, when published with others in book form, he says: “I claim the discovery in the case of flowers for Shakespeare.”[84] But the conception of sex-difference in plants originated long before the days of Shakespeare. It is, if I remember rightly, to be found in Herodotus. But however that may be, it was certainly well known to Bacon who writes (_Nat. Hist._ Cent. VII, 608): “For the difference of sexes in plants they are oftentimes by name distinguished, as male-piony, female-piony, male-rosemary, female-rosemary, he-holly, she-holly,” etc. He goes on to notice the case of the he-palm and the she-palm, which were said to fall violently in love with one another, as to which further details may be found in Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Bacon adds: “I am apt enough to think that this same _binarium_ of a stronger and a weaker, like unto masculine and feminine, doth hold in all living bodies.”[85]

To return for a moment to Professor Dowden. I should be the last to deny that he states the case against Judge Webb, so far as regards these Shakespeare-Bacon parallelisms, with great force and learning, and what in an “orthodox” critic is, perhaps, best of all, with admirable temper. And in some cases, I am free to admit that he seems to me to have the best of the argument.

But let us take another example. Hamlet, in his letter to Ophelia, writes:

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

Upon this Judge Webb comments that Bacon, notwithstanding the teaching of Bruno, and of Galileo, maintained that “the celestial bodies, most of them, are fires or flames as the Stoics held,” and that, notwithstanding the teaching of Copernicus, he held the mediæval doctrine of “the heavens turning about in a most rapid motion.” And he adds, with a touch of sarcasm: “The marvel is that the omniscient Shakespeare with his superhuman genius maintained these exploded errors as confidently as Bacon.” Whereunto Professor Dowden replies that “it presses rather hardly upon Hamlet’s distracted letter to deduce from his rhyme ‘a theory of the celestial bodies,’” and he goes on to say that, “in fact Shakespeare repeats the reference to the stars as fires many times,” and that “references to the stars as fire and to the motion of the heavens are scattered over the pages of Shakespeare’s contemporaries as thickly as the stars themselves.”

Now all this about the stars might, as it seems to me, have been omitted altogether. To assert that the fixed stars are “fire” is surely not to be taken as a proof of scientific ignorance! The sun itself is but a star, and all of us have read of the “mighty flames,” as Sir Robert Ball calls them, that leap from the surface of the sun.[86] But to affirm “that the sun doth move” as one of the certainties of human knowledge was in Shakespeare’s time tantamount to a rejection of the heliocentric teaching of Copernicus and Bruno in favour of the old Ptolemaic system, or, at any rate, of a system in which the earth is supposed to be at rest.[87] Now, that Bacon had failed to profit by the teaching of Copernicus is certain, for in his _Descriptio Globi Intellectualis_ and _Thema Cœli_ (1612) he condemns all the then existing systems of Astronomy as unsatisfactory. His biographer, Dr. Abbott, who is very far from being an indulgent critic, finds much excuse for him here in the fact that Copernicus “himself advocated his own system merely as an hypothesis,” and that it was inconsistent and incomplete until Newton had discovered the Law of Gravitation. He adds: “It is creditable to Bacon’s faith in the uniformity of nature, that he predicted that future discoveries would rest ‘upon observation of the common passions and desires of matter’--an anticipation of Newton’s law of attraction.”[88]

But granting that Bacon and Shakespeare were at one in their rejection of the teaching of Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo, it seems to me that no argument on behalf of the Baconian theory can be safely founded upon that fact. For the “Stratfordian” answer is very simple, viz., that William Shakspere, the Stratford player and supposed author, very naturally was not abreast of the most advanced scientific teaching of his day. He, of course, conceived that the sun moved round the earth as Ptolemy taught, and not _vice versâ_. The argument therefore can only be effective (if at all) as against those Shakespeariolaters who conceive that player Shakspere was omniscient, or, at least, wrote, as it were, by plenary inspiration.

Mr. Edwin Reed, however, makes another use of these lines. He points out that in the Quarto of 1603 they do not run as above quoted, but as follows:

Doubt that in earth is fire,
Doubt that the stars do move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But do not doubt I love,

and he refers to Bacon’s _Cogitationes de Natura Rerum_, assigned to the latter part of 1603, or the early part of 1604, and quotes a passage from his _De Principiis atque Originibus_, in order to show that at that date Bacon had changed his mind in regard to the commonly accepted belief in the existence of a mass of molten matter at the centre of the earth, and maintained that, on the contrary, the terrestrial globe is cold to the core. He goes on to suggest that the substitution of “the sun” for “the stars,” giving us the line,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

in the 1604 edition, is indicative of a deliberate intention on the part of the writer to retain “the doctrine that the earth is the centre of the universe around which the sun and stars daily revolve.” So that, in spite of Copernicus, and Bruno, and Kepler and Galileo, Bacon and the author of the Plays “were agreed in holding to the cycles and epicycles of Ptolemy, after all the rest of the scientific world had rejected them, and they were also agreed in rejecting the Copernican theory after all the rest of the scientific world had accepted it.” And the same doctrine is, of course, retained in the Folio edition of _Hamlet_, published in 1623, in which same year Bacon wrote, in the third book of the _De Augmentis_, that the theory of the earth’s motion is absolutely false!

All this is ingenious, but how far it is convincing must be left for the reader’s consideration.

Let us take yet another example. Bacon in his _Natural History_ (s. 464) tells us that “as terebration doth meliorate fruit, so upon the like reason doth letting of plants blood,” the difference being that the blood-letting is only to be effected “at some seasons” of the year. And so also the gardener in Richard II says:

We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.

Here, as Professor Dowden admits, “the parallel is remarkably close,” but in order to show the “common knowledge of the time,” which is to account for it, he cites Holland’s _Pliny_ to the effect that trees “have a certain moisture in their barkes which we must understand to be their very blood,” and he further refers to Pliny (XVII. 24), to the effect that a fir or pine tree must not have its bark “pulled” during certain months, and adds that, “like Shakespeare, Pliny terms the bark the ‘skin’ of the tree.” Once more, it is remarkable that the reference should be to Pliny, an author with whom, as we know, Bacon was on very familiar terms.[89] However, there is a further illustration from Dekker, and a quotation as to “proudly-stirring” sap from Gervase Markham.

Here again, the only question, as it seems to me, is whether this “remarkably close parallelism,” considered as one among many, is satisfactorily explained by the fact that other contemporary writers spoke of wounding the bark of trees, and drawing blood. It would, certainly, be more satisfactory, from a Baconian point of view, if we could find in both Bacon and Shakespeare something which could only have been known to those two writers, or to that one writer. But as that is hardly possible we have to consider all the parallel passages together, and ask ourselves whether or not, taken as a whole, they raise the presumption of identity of authorship.

Judge Webb, while denying the allegation that “all that is proper to Shakespeare and to Bacon was the common knowledge or common error of the time,” writes as follows: “Whatever inferences may be deduced from the fact, it surely is a fact that the poet, like the philosopher, maintained the theory of pneumaticals, the theory of the transformation of species, the theory that the sun is the efficient cause of storms, the theory that flame is a fixed body, the theory that the stars are fires, and the theory that the heavens revolve around the earth. That the poet should have been as interested as the philosopher in scientific matters is surely a fact worth noting; and even if they resorted to the store of ‘the common knowledge or common error of the time,’ it surely is remarkable that they not only resorted to the same storehouse, but selected the same things, and incorporated the same things in their respective writings, and, so far as either their knowledge or their errors in matters of science were concerned, were in reality the same.”

And here, since I profess not to be compiling a new “brief for the plaintiff” in the great case of _Bacon v. Shakespeare_, I am content to leave this interesting controversy for further consideration.

RIGHT G. G.

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

In the year 1867 there was discovered at old Northumberland House in the Strand, in a box which had been for many years unopened, an Elizabethan manuscript volume containing, amongst other things, the transcripts of certain compositions admittedly the work of Francis Bacon. It commences with four speeches written by Bacon in 1592 for Essex’s _Device_, viz.: “The praise of the worthiest virtue”; “The praise of the worthiest affection”; “The praise of the worthiest power”; “The praise of the worthiest person.” These speeches were published in 1870 by Mr. James Spedding, with an introductory notice of the manuscript, and a facsimile of its much bescribbled outside page, or cover, of which more anon. The speech in praise of knowledge professes to have been spoken in “A conference of Pleasure,” and Mr. Spedding adopted this as the title of his little work. The manuscript book is thus described by him: “It is a folio volume of twenty-two sheets which have been laid one upon the other, folded double (as in an ordinary quire of paper) and fastened by a stitch through the centre. _But as the pages are not numbered and the fastening is gone, it may once have contained more, and if we may judge by what is still legible on the much bescribbled outside leaf which once served for a table of contents, there is some reason to suspect that it did._” In a note he adds: “One leaf, however--that which would have been the tenth--is missing; and one, which is the fourth, appears to have been glued or pasted in.” It is clear that he included this missing “tenth” leaf in his “twenty-two sheets.”

Mr. Spedding, therefore, carefully examined the volume in the condition in which it was when found at Northumberland House, and, as his accuracy is well known, we may be content to rely upon his evidence in this matter. At any rate it is the best that we can now get, for as Mr. Frank Burgoyne, the Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries (who in 1904 edited and published a transcript and colotype facsimile of the whole of the contents of the volume) informs us: “Since Mr. Spedding wrote, the manuscript has been taken to pieces and each leaf carefully inlaid in stout paper, and these have been bound up with a large paper copy of his pamphlet entitled ‘A conference of Pleasure.’ The manuscript in its present condition contains 45 leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to have included the outside page in his enumeration. The pages are not numbered, and there are no traces of stitching, or sewing; _it is therefore quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume_.”[90]

This statement will be found not unimportant when we come to consider yet another work on these old manuscripts, also published in 1904, by Mr. T. Le Marchant Dowse. Mr. Dowse is anxious to limit the original volume to a quire of 24 sheets. Spedding, he says, “tells us it was a quire of 22 sheets, [Spedding however, only says it was folded double “as in an ordinary quire of paper”] but he omits to take into account the outer sheet, which was of the same fold of paper and served as a cover; this made 23 sheets. Moreover he tells us leaf 10 was missing (the written matter, however runs on without a break); but as leaf 10 must have formed one half of a sheet, the other half, in the latter part of the MS., should also have been missing, consequently the ‘quire’ was originally a full and proper quire of 24 sheets.”

But as I have already pointed out, Spedding evidently includes the missing leaf, which he numbers “the tenth,” in his twenty-two sheets, equally with the leaf which, as he says, “appears to have been glued or pasted in.” Mr. Dowse’s ingenious attempt to limit the volume to 24 sheets therefore fails, and, in the present condition of the manuscripts, the only safe conclusion is that stated by Mr. Burgoyne, viz., that “it is quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume.” But of this more presently.

On the outside page or cover, besides a number of very interesting scribblings, we find a list which has been generally looked upon as a table of contents of the volume as it originally existed. It runs as follows:

(1) Mr. ffrancis Bacon.
Of tribute or giving what is dew. [With the four “praises” above
mentioned.]

(2) Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen.

(3) Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt.

(4) A speach for my lord of Sussex tilt.

(5) Leycester’s Common Wealth. Incerto autore.

(6) Orations at Graies Inne revells.

(7) ... Queenes Ma^{te} [Probably Letters to the Queen’s Majesty]. By
Mr. ffrancis Bacon.

(8) Essaies by the same author.

(9) Rychard the Second.

(10) Rychard the Third.

(11) Asmund and Cornelia.

(12) Ile of dogs frmnt [i.e. fragment] by Thomas Nashe.

But, as Mr. Spedding points out, just above the writing, “Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen,” stand the words “Philipp against Mounsieur,” a title which he says seems to have been inserted afterwards, and is imperfectly legible.”[91] This evidently refers to Sir Philip Sydney’s letter to the Queen dissuading her from marrying the Duke of Anjou, which is part of the contents of the volume as it has come down to us. The Gray’s Inn Revels are, no doubt, those of 1594-5 of which the history is related in the _Gesta Grayorum_.

Now of this list, besides the four Discourses or “Praises,” only four items are found in the volume as it at present exists, viz., the “Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt”; the “Speach for my lord of Sussex at the tilt”; “Leycester’s Common Wealth,” and Sir Philip Sydney’s letter. The actual contents of the volume in its present condition are as follows:[92]

(1) _Of Tribute, or giving what is due_. By Bacon (1592).

(2) Of Magnanimitie or heroicall vertue. By Bacon.

(3) An Advertisement touching private censure. By Bacon.

(4) An Advertisement touching the controversies of the church of
England. By Bacon (written 1589).

(5) A letter to a French gent: touching ye proceedings in Engl.: in
Ecclesiasticall causes translated out of French into English by W.
W. By Bacon.[93]

(6) _Speeches for my lord of Essex at the tylt_, viz., five
speeches spoken in a _Device_ presented by Essex, and performed
before Queen Elizabeth in 1595. By Bacon.

(7) _For the Earl of Sussex at the tilt_. By Bacon (1596).

(8) _Sir Philip Sydney’s letter to the Queen_, dissuading her from
marrying the Duke of Anjou. (1580).

(9) _Leycester’s Common Wealth_, imperfect both at beginning and
end (printed 1584).

On comparing these two lists we find also that four of the articles now contained in the volume are not mentioned in the list on the outer page, viz.:

No. 2. Of Magnanimitie.
No. 3. Advertisement touching private censure.
No. 4. Advertisement touching the controversies of the Church.
No. 5. Letter to a French gent, etc.

On the other hand if this list was really a list of the original contents of the volume then eight articles have disappeared from the book, besides the missing portions of _Leycester’s Commonwealth_, viz.:

(1) The Earle of Arundell’s letter to the Queen.
(2) The Orations at Gray’s Inn revels.
(3) An address or letter to the Queen, by Bacon.
(4) Essays by Bacon.
(5) and (6) Shakespeare’s plays of Richard II and Richard III.
(7) Asmund and Cornelia (of which nothing is known).
(8) The Ile of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe.