concludes with the words, "Uncertain, however, whether these reflections would occur to another

and observing that he had never met any person disposed to apply his mind to similar thoughts, he determined to publish whatsoever he found time to perfect. Nor is this the haste of ambition, but anxiety, that if he should die there might remain behind him some outline and determination of the matter his mind had embraced, as well as some mark of his sincere and earnest affection to promote the happiness of mankind."

There were, however, other men, seemingly all unknown to Bacon, who, simultaneously, were applying their minds to a similar outline and determination. One of these was the anonymous author who wrote some time about 1600 the unpublished play Timon from which I have made so many quotations. This manuscript, now lying in the Dyce collection, was printed for the first time by the Shakespere Society in 1842. It contains the following passage :

I with my right hand touch't the very clouds. Devouring gulfs nor quicksands of the sea Did e'er fright me. At Cadiz I wash't away

Non ultra writ with Hercules' own hand.

"Like Columbus," says Mr John M. Robertson of Bacon," he was the hero of an Idea and like so many heroes of fabulous quests he bore a magic sword, to wit, his unrivalled [in what respect "unrivalled" ?] powers of speech.

"There had," says Dean Church, "been nothing to compare in ardour of love, with Bacon's

I It is now obtainable in Cassell's National Library bound up with Shakespeare's Timon.

audacious scheme. It was the presence and the power of a great idea. "1 In 1594 however, eleven years before the publication of Bacon's 'unrivalled' and 'incomparable' Advancement of Learning, Michael Drayton published sixty-three sonnets entitled " IDEA, and I am driven to think that between these and Bacon's "Idea" there is some unsuspected relation. In order to emphasize the identities of sentiment and determination, I place side by side passages from the "ideas of the two writers.

DRAYTON

Like an adventur-
ous seafarer am I,
Who hath some long
and dangerous
voyage been,
And call'd to tell of
his discovery,
How far he sail'd,
what countries he
had seen,
Proceeding from the
port whence he
put forth,
Shows by his compass
how his course he
steer'd;

When east, when
west, when south,
and when by
north,

I Bacon p. 201.

BACON

We have committed ourselves to doubtful, difficult, and solitary ways; and relying on the Divine assistance, have supported our minds against the vehemence of opinions, our own internal doubts and scruples, and the darkness and fantastic images of the mind; that at length we might make more sure and certain discoveries for the benefit of posterity. In former ages, when men at sea, directing their course solely by the observation of the stars, might coast along the shores of the continent, but could not trust themselves to the wide ocean, or discover new worlds, until the

....

I This Navigation metaphor seems to have been in Shakespeare's mind when he referred to having "sounded all the depths and shoals of honour". Compare also Dekker, “In this black shore of mischief have I sailed along, and been a faithful discoverer of all the creeks, rocks, gulfs, and quicksands in and about it (Bellman of London 1608) " I will sail desperately and boldly along the shore of the Isle of Gulls and... make a true discovery of their wild (yet habitable) country. (Gull's Horn Book. 1609.)