He would prove a rare firking satyrist
And draw the core forth of imposthumed sin.

MARSTON (Antonio and Mellida III. 3.) 1602. A surgeon here for this love wounded man ! How deep's your ulcer'd orifice? I pray you tell. MACHIN (Dumb Knight 11. 1.) 1608.

Well, wel, seeing the wound that bleedeth inwardly is most dangerous, that fyre kept close burneth most furious, that ye Oven dammed up, baketh soonest, that sores having

по

vent fester secretly, it is hyghe tyme to unfolde my secret love to my secret friend.

LYLY (Euphues) Arber, 63. 1578-1580. In his English Grammar we find Ben Jonson quoting from Sir John Cheke,

Sedition is an aposteam, which, when it breaketh inwardly, putteth the state in great danger of recovery; and corrupteth the whole commonwealth with the rotten fury, that it hath putrified with.

With minds evidently predisposed Bacon and the dramatists seized eagerly upon this unsavoury State metaphor.

Take away liberty of Parliament, the griefs of the subject will bleed inwards; sharp and eager humours will not evaporate, and then they must exulcerate, and so may endanger the sovereignty itself.

BACON (Speech) 1610.

The state is full of dangerous whispers

There's an imposthume swells it

Would 't were lanced.

FALKLAND (Marriage Night 111. 1.) 1664.

The people are up ! .........

What's the imposthume that swells them now? Ulcers of realms !

MIDDLETON (Mayor of Queenbro' 11. 3) 1661. My lord, my lord, you wrong not yourself only but your whole state to suffer such ulcers as these to gather head in your court.

CHAPMAN (Monsieur d'Olive v. 1.) 1606. The ulcers of an honest state, spite weavers That live on poison only like swoln spiders. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Wild Goose Chase III. 1.) 1632-1647.

Have we maladies, and such imposthumes Phantaste is, grow in our palace? We must lance these sores, or all will putrefy.

as

BEN JONSON (Cynthia's Revels v. 3) 1600.

Thou insolent imposthume!

BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Island Princess I. 3.) 1621-1647. Noble gentleman? A tumour, an imposthume he is, Madam.

CHAPMAN (Widows Tears 1. 2.) 1612. I have thought a cure for this great state imposthume. What? To lance it.

SHIRLEY (Traitor 11. 1.) 1631-1635.

We are here to search the wounds of the realm and not to skin them over.

BACON (Speech on Subsidy) 1593. Raking over antiquity Lyly finds and in Euphues revives an imposthume anecdote.

For as he that stroke Jason on the stomacke to kill him, brake his imposthume with ye blow, whereby he cured him so oftentimes it fareth with those that deale malitiously, who

in steed of a sword apply a salve, and thinking to be ones Priest, they become his Phisition. LYLY (Euphues) Arber p. 330. 1578-1580.

In Bacon's Promus (MS. 1594) we find him jotting down a note of this, "The launching (lancing) of ye imposthume by him that intended murder. And in 1623 the story reappears again in a dramatic form.

He is speechless, Sir, and we do find his wound
So festered near the vitals all our art
By warm drinks cannot clear th'imposthumation
And he's so weak to make incision
By the orifex were present death to him

[He is stabbed by an assassin]

Ha! Come hither, note a strange accident His steel has lighted in the former wound And made free passage for the congeal'd blood Observe in what abundance it delivers

The putrefaction.

WEBSTER (Devils Law Case III. 2.) 1623.

I have, I think, quoted enough examples of this subject. Was it a thought so deep, a conceit so alluring, that it was thus tossed from poet to poet and transferred successively from one great mind to another? Were the dramatists satisfied thus to play sedulous ape to each other? It is a question that must be frequently asked in connection with other subjects equally outrés. One of the playwrights actually tried to dramatise Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and introduces "Blood "Phlegm, "Choler" & "Melancholy" amongst his dramatis personae !

In passing, it is noteworthy that, when irrit

ated, the playwrights seem usually to have had diseases uppermost in their minds. "The red plague rid you, says Caliban; Prospero's retort is," I'll rack thee with old cramps; fill all thy bones with aches. " The dramatic poets seem to have had the whole gamut of human afflictions on their tongue-tips. Vide for instance Ford's Broken Heart (11. 3. 1633) "Aches, Convulsions, Imposthumes, Rheums, Gouts, Palsies, clog thy bones !"

Diseases desperate, says Shakespeare," by desperate appliance are relieved, in common with his fellows

a tenet held

Extreme diseases ask extreme remedies.

CHAPMAN (All Fools v. 1.) 1605.

Diseases desperate must find cures alike.

FORD (Broken Heart 111. 2.) 1633. In cases desperate there must be used medicines that are extreme.

LYLY (Campaspe 111. 5.) 1582-1584.

Apply desperate physic.

WEBSTER (Duchess of Malfi 11. 5.) 1616-1623. I strove to cure a desperate evil with a more violent remedy.

BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Laws of Candy V. I.) 1647. But though redolent of physic the drama maintained that it was wiser to hew and vex the root of illness than to tinker with external symptoms. "It is, as Bacon says, "in vain to cure the accidents of a disease except the cause be found and removed. "

"

I Hamlet. IV. 3.

2 (Letter to Buckingham) 1621.

Avoid th' occasion of the ill

For when the cause whence evil doth arise Removed is, th' effect surceaseth.

SPENSER (Fairy Queen vi. 6.) 1590-1609. Cut off the cause and then the effect will die. ANON (King John) 1591.

Remove the cause and then the effect will die. KYD (Soliman IV. 1.) 1599.

Lacy the cause.....

Take him away and then the effects will fail. GREENE (Friar Bacon) 1594. Kill the effect by cutting off the cause.

PORTER (Two Angry Women v. I.) 1599. Take away the cause the effect must follow. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Monsieur Thomas

I. 4.) 1639.

The dramatists were as keenly alive as Bacon to the importance of mental therapeutics and the necessity of mens sana in corpore sano.

The body's wounds by medicines may be eased But griefs of mind by salves are not appeased.

GREENE (James IV) 1598.

You may take sarza to open the liver, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend.

BACON (Essay: Friendship) 1625. This herb will purge the eye, and this the head Ah! but none of them will purge the heart No! theres no medicine left for my disease.

KYD (Spanish Tragedy 111. 9.) 1594-1602. The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonitions of a friend....