Part 5

These facts seem to have been well known to Mr. Smithson, for not only does he quote John Chamberlain’s letter in his _Nineteenth Century_ article, where he expresses the opinion that “Chronomastix” is “a caricature compounded in unequal proportions of George Wither and the Ovid Junior of Jonson’s _Poetaster_ (as to which see an interesting chapter in _Shakespeare-Bacon_, headed “A Caricature of some Notable Elizabethan Poet,” together with the chapter following), but among his manuscripts were found certain Notes with reference to George Wither which I cite lower down. It will be seen, however, that he was convinced that Jonson, while lampooning and ridiculing Wither, the scourger of the time, had for his main object the glorification of the Shakespearean drama under cover of a _Masque_--those glorious works wherein “Time,” which had been vilified by Wither, found its all-sufficient and splendid “Vindication.”[35]

The following are Mr. Smithson’s Notes to which I have made reference:

“Wither sends

Abroad a Satyr with a scourge; That to their shame for this abuse shall strip them, And being naked in their vices whip them. (_Abuses Stript and Whipt._ Ed. 1622, p. 305.)

He gives Justices of Peace a warning lest they be put out of the Commission for partiality (p. 318). Ruffling Cavaliars also are touched (p. 320).

In the address to the reader of _Shepheard’s Hunting_, Wither to some extent recants his disgust at Time--says he has been ‘persuaded to entertain a better opinion of the Times than I lately conceived, and assured myself, that Virtue had far more followers than I supposed.’ Curiously enough, therefore, Wither’s frame of mind in 1622[36] seems to have been similar to that of Jonson in _Time Vindicated_. The coincidence would help perhaps to mislead the judgment of the time, and may have so commended itself to Jonson.

I don’t think Wither knows why, or by whom he was persecuted. (See Philarate to Willy in Eclogue I, and last page but two of ‘Address to the Reader.’)

He calls Time ‘bald and ill-fac’d,’ ‘shameless time,’ speaks of his ‘deformities,’ ‘blockish age,’ that ‘truth’ in this age gets ‘hatred,’ ‘while love and charitie are fled to heaven.’

He took upon him to scourge Time, and he was certainly arrogant enough, in form at any rate, for Chronomastix.

I therefore take him to have been the stalking-horse or blind used by Jonson, the Prince, and some others, to conceal the true object.”

SHAKESPEARE--A THEORY

[_The Notes of this Essay (except those inserted by the Editor) which are denoted by Roman Numerals, will be found at the end of it._]

The recent discovery of an entry in a domestic expenses account book of the Mannours or Manners family has attracted some notice. According to Mr. Sidney Lee[37] the terms of the entry, under the head “Payments for household stuff, plate, armour,” etc., are: “1613. Item 31 Martii to Mr. Shakspeare in gold about my Lorde’s impreso [the terminal _o_ should be _a_] xliiij^{s}., to Richard Burbadge for paynting and making yt in gold xliiij^{s.}. [Total] iiij^{li}viij^{s.}” An impresa Camden describes as “a device in picture with his motto or word borne by noble and learned personages to notifie some particular conceit of their own,” its nearest modern analogue being the book-plate.[38] Burbage seems to have made, as well as painted, the thing. What there was for Mr. Shakespeare to do is by no means clear. The motto, if motto there were, would to a certainty be designated by the “noble and learned personage” himself. Moreover, some three years later (1616) Burbage appears to have executed a similar commission for the same Earl of Rutland, entirely without assistance. That the clerk who made the entry denied to Burbage the “prefix of gentility” which he bestowed upon “Mr. Shakespeare” is a fact of trivial import. If--to take an imaginary case--Nick Bottom had been living “on his means” at South Place, Stratford-at-the-Bow, this clerk would have dubbed him Mr. Bottom as a matter of course in the same circumstances. Mr. Lee is of opinion that “the recovered document discloses a capricious sign of homage on the part of a wealthy and cultured nobleman to Shakespeare.” If he had suggested that the two-guinea payment to “Mr. Shakespeare” may have been preceded by a hearty meal in the buttery, without exciting any feeling of resentment on the part of either recipient that the meal was not served in the dining-hall, I should have been more disposed to agree with him.

The situation is a curious one. But any serious discussion of it would be premature until we are actually in possession of the “rich harvest of new disclosures” which Mr. Lee teaches us to expect.[39] Meanwhile the Bacon theory regarded as a development of the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a pen-name of Bacon’s is certainly not crushed, if it be not actually encouraged, by this Belvoir disclosure, since no one in his senses would think of denying the existence of “Mr. Shakespeare” or his acquaintance with Richard Burbage.

In Gilbert Wats’ English version (1640) of Bacon’s _Instauratio Magna_, Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Vicont St. Alban, who is designated as “Tertius a Platone Philosophiæ Princeps,” is represented pen in hand, tall hat on head, a voluminous lace ruff round his neck, in the act of inditing: _Mundus Mens Connubio Jungam Stabili_.[40] On the opposite page two worlds, a _Mundus Visibilis_ and a _Mundus Intellectualis_ are shown clasping hands across space, in order, no doubt, to give emphasis to the idea of a world and mind _connubium_. The picture typifies the conception of Bacon which has prevailed ever since. A skater on his way to the Engadine declared he was at a loss to understand why anyone ever went to Switzerland in summer for _pleasure_. Some of us would have been tempted to smile at the remark. But the prevailing conception of Bacon is probably quite as inadequate as this skater’s conception of Switzerland. The age of Queen Elizabeth probably had no presage--not a hint--that Francis Bacon would ever develop into a “prince of philosophy.” In my opinion the Bacon known to it was not a natural philosopher{1} even in aspiration, but an artist--an artist in words, who, if circumstances, more especially family circumstances, had been favourable any time between 1580 and 1590 would have openly confessed that poetry was his ideal, and declared himself a poet. As it was, he took the line of least friction, and sooner or later acquired the title of “concealed poet.” How far the concealment extended in the early days it is impossible to discover. To Sir Philip Sidney,{2} Sir J. Harrington, and other accomplished young men of their class, the true state of the case was doubtless an open secret.

Professor Nichol (_Francis Bacon_, Part I), though he thinks that Bacon “did not write Shakespeare’s plays,” considers that “there is something startling in the like magnificence of speech in which they find voice for sentiments, often as nearly identical when they anticipate as when they contravene the manners of thought and standards of action that prevail in our country in our age. They are similar in this respect for rank,” etc. Shelley discerned that Bacon “was a poet,” and Macaulay perceived that the “poetical faculty” was “powerful” in Bacon. Taine held that Bacon “thought as artists and poets habitually think,” that he was one of the finest of a “poetic line,” that “his mental _procédé_ was that of the creator, not reasoning but intuition.” Bacon, then, was essentially a poet, belonged to the same race as Sidney for example. Sidney died young, and his poetic activity ceased some time before he died. Yet Sidney’s poetical achievement has come down to our day. What has become of Bacon’s poetical achievement? Was it also concealed?

Hallam, in the _Introduction to the Literature of Europe_, confessed he was unable to identify “the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear.” Emerson (_Representative Men_) declared: “The Egyptian verdict of Shakespearean societies comes to mind, that Shakespeare{3} was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man in wide contrast.” It would be easy to adduce other evidence pointing in the same direction. But Hallam and Emerson, unexceptionable witnesses, will serve the turn. On one side, then, we are brought into contact with a poet or maker whose poems elude us. On another side we are confronted with poems whose poet or maker eludes us--some of us. What if Shakespeare were to Bacon what Callisthenes, Aristophanes’ actor-friend, was to Aristophanes? Suppose by way of working hypothesis that such was the case, that Shakespeare was a pen-name of Bacon’s. In that case his ultimate intention as to dropping or retaining the mask of pseudonymity would be affected by various considerations extending far beyond the family circle. (a) To be “rewarded of” the stage-manager was probably nothing less than degrading to a man of good birth. (b) The conditions under which the hypothetical Shakespeare must have written, were unfavourable to careful work. A man who is half ashamed of what he is doing is hardly likely to do his best, especially when more or less concealed. Certainly many of the plays suffer from faulty construction, inconsistency, obscurity, bombast and so forth, and what is more important, Shakespeare himself{4} was probably quite as conscious of these blemishes as were any of his critics. (c) With us the daily paper exerts a certain influence on public opinion. In Bacon’s day the theatre was one of the most effective means of appeal to any considerable audience, and in that way the name Shakespeare probably got entangled in controversies with which Bacon felt no desire to meddle autonymously.{5} (d) The moral tendency of Shakespearean work published before 1609, _Venus and Adonis_ for example, was not such as to forward any of the hypothetical author’s schemes for place. (e) Early in the seventeenth century Bacon seems to have convinced himself that for purposes of moment Latin was destined to supplant English. He was haunted moreover by fear of impending civil commotions, and augured ill for that “fair weather learning which needs the nursing of luxurious leisure.” (f) Had there been no other considerations than these, Bacon, even after he became Solicitor-General, might have been induced himself to give to the world some at least of his hypothetical offspring really “perfect of their limbes as he conceived them.” It is not to be supposed that he would ever have claimed all or nearly all that passed for Shakespeare’s. Much would have been disavowed altogether, and many of the more inconvenient things would, quite fairly, have been ascribed to collaboration, misprints, inexperience, haste, carelessness, etc. But the action of the ill-conditioned group which in 1609 engineered the publication of the _Sonnets_ of Shakespeare, must have greatly reduced the chance that Bacon would ever consent to edit anything of Shakespeare’s. So far as intimate friends were concerned, the piratical publication, however irritating,{6} would be comparatively innocuous, and as for charitable strangers, they might be trusted to discover extenuating circumstances in the youth of the author and the fashion of the time. But the great indiscriminating public, unaccustomed to make allowances, and led by an enemy like Sir Edward Coke, would chortle over the self-revelations suggested by the book, and put the worst construction on everything. Rather than face such a prospect, Bacon would be willing to pay almost any price, and the price he may be supposed to have paid was to seem to know nothing and care nothing about “Shakespeare” or anything that was his. Adherence to this policy would not necessarily involve any visible change of attitude or conduct. On the contrary, the hypothetical Shakespeare would be urged to hold on his usual course by the fear that any sudden stoppage, of the supply of plays for instance, might arouse suspicions which otherwise would have slept. Parenthetically it may be observed that Bacon had already known what it was to give to the world things--the Essays of 1597--which he would rather have kept back, but was compelled to publish because “to labour the state of them had been troublesome and subject to interpretation.”

The parting between Prospero and Ariel has been thought to adumbrate the farewell of Shakespeare, whoever he was, to Poetry--a view that is plausible enough. It would explain the position assigned to _The Tempest_ in the First Folio, and suggest an interesting answer to the question why Prospero, who “prized his books above his dukedom” threatened--only threatened--to drown a particular “book.” But no one knows within several years when _The Tempest_ was written. Nor is it at all certain that the poem was wholly Shakespeare’s.[41] For anything we know to the contrary, the editor of the First Folio may have interpolated the striking invocation--to mention one passage only--which begins: “Ye elves of hills.”{7} _The Tempest_ then, does not enable us to fix the date of Shakespeare’s practical renunciation of poetry. I say, _practical_ renunciation, because certain passages in _Henry the Eighth_ which feelingly represent the insecurity of greatness might _ex hypothesi_ have been contributed by Bacon just after his fall, though his practical renunciation could hardly have taken place later than 1612.[42] But whether the date were 1612 or somewhat earlier, the hypothetical Shakespeare was amply provided with other interests and pursuits. (a) Rhetoric had long held a high place in his affections. “Rhetoric and Logic,” says he, “these two, rightly taken, are the gravest of the sciences, being the arts of arts,”{8} and what excellence he attained in the former of these arts we know from Ben Jonson. (b) Though poesy, the recreation of his leisure--Bacon would never have allowed that it was anything but a recreation--were denied him, prose, splendid inimitable prose was his to command. (c) The delightful days and months and years which he had spent with poets both ancient and modern, particularly Ovid,{9} might be turned to philosophical account. (d) Historical projects allured him. In the _Advancement of Learning_, a history--a prose history no doubt--of England from the “Wars of the Roses” downwards is noted as a desideratum, and seems to have been begun. _The History of the Reign of King Henry VII_ (1622), however, is the only portion of the desiderated history which reached completeness. (e) Legislative projects also attracted him, less strongly no doubt than historical. (f) But at this time the _Great Instauration_ had possessed itself of the chief place in his affection: “Of this I can assure you that though many things of great hope decay with youth,{10} yet the proceeding in that work doth gain upon me, upon affection and desire,” he writes, about 1609, to his bosom friend Matthew. The instauration, say rather transfiguration, of human knowledge--that was the vision which now fascinated him. When the spell began to work it is difficult to determine. Early in the seventeenth century his conception of human “learning” or “knowledge” or “science”--three words to which he attached practically the same meaning--included Poetry, not as an appendix, but as one of three fundamental constituents. Perhaps the word “culture,” with “barbarism” for antithesis, would now come nearest to what he then meant by learning. The _Advancement of Learning_ is the work not of a scholar in the technical sense, but of an omnivorous apprehensive imaginative reader. It is the expression by an artist in words of the serried thoughts of a mind steeped in poetry, deep versed in human nature, but certainly not versed in natural philosophy as understood by his contemporaries--Galileo for example, Gilbert and others. A passage in the first of its two books runs: “No man that wadeth in learning or contemplation thoroughly but will find printed in his heart _nil novi super terram_.” It is incredible that Bacon can at this time have caught so much as a glimpse of the “New Logic,” “New Art,” or--to give its latest name--_Novum Organum_, which he afterwards declared was “quite new, totally new in every kind.”[11] But though the _Advancement_ was in fact a plea for culture, in Bacon’s intention it was a serious attempt to grapple with philosophy, an attempt so serious that he afterwards declared the _Novum Organum_ itself to be the “same argument sunk deeper.” Moreover, in my opinion, it was his first serious attempt in that direction, hence its importance to any right apprehension of his genius.{12}

About the year 1609, the philosophical enthusiasm reached a climax. _Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturæ_, _Redargutio Philosophiarum_, _Sapientia Veterum_, and other pieces, some of which Boswell, one of his executors, seems to have called _impetus philosophici_, were thrown off in rapid succession. As early as 1610, however, he solicits the King to employ him in writing a history of his Majesty’s “Time,” a hint surely that the philosophical impetus had begun to abate. The change, whether it began that year, or a year or two later, is intelligible enough. Science had not claimed him her deliverer. Harvey is reported to have sneered at his philosophy. Gilbert and Napier may have started the sneer; for Bacon obviously undervalued mathematics, and spoke almost contemptuously of Gilbert (whom Galileo fully appreciated). About this time, too, he probably began to suspect that somewhere in the _New Art_, there lurked a defect which would have to be cured before the apparatus would work. The truth is that in the philosophical work published or privately circulated by Bacon before 1610, though there was much to appeal to the æsthetic side of the human mind, much to stimulate the cultivated layman’s admiration for knowledge, for the devoted student of science there was very little help of a constructive kind, the only kind of help he really needed.{13}

The _Sapientia Veterum_, 1609, is based on a number of myths selected from the poets and fabulists of antiquity in virtue of a certain congruity with Bacon’s intuitions and predilections. _The Sylva Sylvarum or Natural History_, his latest work, is based on an assemblage of what by way of distinction might be called facts. The dissonance between the two works is amazing. The _Sapientia_, which was intended to bespeak a favourable hearing for the New Art, busies itself with venerable fictions. From the _Natural History_ on the other hand, poetry and fable were to have been rigorously excluded. Bacon’s biographer, Rawley, wrote for the first edition of the work (1627), an address “To the Reader,” which winds up: “I will conclude with an usual speech of his lordship’s; that this work of his Natural History is the world as God made it, and not as man made it; for it hath nothing of imagination.”

Several years before the _Sylva_ was written, Galileo had censured as paper philosophers certain contemporaries of his, who set about the investigation of nature as if she were a “book like the Æneid or the Odyssey.” One at least of Bacon’s intimate friends, Sir Tobie Mathew, was no stranger to Padua and Florence, and it is quite possible that he may have informed Bacon of these strictures of Galileo’s not long after they were uttered. But, be this as it may, a momentous change must have taken place after 1609, not in Bacon’s aspiration to be the greatest of human benefactors to man, but in his conception of the means by which his vast expectations were to be realised. Had the change been less than “fundamental,” “a good and well ordered Natural History” would not have been described in the _Phenomena Universi_ (1622), as holding the “keys both of sciences and of operations.” After 1612 Bacon became for some eight or nine years so immersed in affairs, as Attorney-General, Privy Councillor--no sinecure then--Lord Chancellor, etc., that it must have been impossible for him to give to his New Logic a tithe of the attention it required. “At this period,” says Dr. Abbott: “there is a great gap in the series of Bacon’s philosophical works. In 1613 he was appointed Attorney-General, and from that time till 1620 no literary work of any kind published or unpublished is known to have issued from his pen. All that he did was apparently to rewrite repeatedly and revise the _Novum Organum_.{14} The _Organum_ made its appearance in 1620 with a dedication to the King by no means confident of either the worth or the use of his offering. But as he says in the _proemium_ that “all other ambition whatsoever was in his opinion lower than the work in hand,” one would infer that his zeal for philosophy had begun to revive even before the tragedy of 1621. The remaining five years of the great man’s life--“a long cleansing week of five years’ expiation and more,” he calls it--were more or less distracted with anxieties in no way connected with philosophy. He hoped, nevertheless, to present the old King with a “good history of England, and a better digest” of the laws, and the young King with a history of the “time and reign of King Henry the Eighth.”{15} But after the most distressful _sequelæ_ of his fall had been relieved, his grandiose, imposing scheme for the renovation or transfiguration of philosophy must have regained the position it had held some ten or a dozen years earlier. Without it, life for him would have been a mean and melancholy failure. “God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof ... and not delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out the ordinances which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed.”{16} This capacity, this wonder-working exaltation of the mind had been neglected, and all but lost, by reason of the interference of Aristotle and other insolent dictators, and Bacon imagined himself destined to rehabilitate it, to usher in a new era, to endow the human race, not with knowledge alone, but with legions of beneficent arts,{17} and for reward to go down to the ages as pre-eminently the Friend of man.{18} Compared with a vision so magnificent, his youthful dream of a poet’s immortality would seem paltry, stale, and unprofitable. No wonder the old love, poetry, was forsaken. The wonder would have been if for the sake of the old love he had done or permitted or countenanced anything which he thought might possibly prejudice posterity against the new love, his “darling philosophy.”{19}