No public glory vainly I pursue, All that I seek is to eternise you. Whilst thus my pen strives to eternise thee, Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face, Where, in the map of all my misery, Is modell'd out the world of my disgrace; Whilst in despair of tyrannising times, Medea-like, I make thee young again, Proudly thou scorn'st my worldout-wearing rhy I was not without hope (the condition of religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold office in the State, I might get something done too for the good of men's souls. souls. When I found, however, that my zeal was mistaken for ambition, and my life had already reached the turning-point, and my breaking health reminded me how ill I could afford to be so slow, and I reflected moreover that in leaving undone the good that I could do myself alone, and applying myself to that which could not be done without the help and consent of others, I was by no means discharging the duty that lay upon me, I put all those thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. (Proem Great Instauration) (Spedding's translation.) Up to my pitch no common judgment flies My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat, Also the idea that human brutes were to be tamed by the insinuating sweetness of poetical philosophy. Oh, why should Nature niggardly restrain That foreign nations relish not our tongue! Else should my lines glide on the waves of Rhine, And crown the Pyrens with my living song : But bounded thus, to Scotland get you forth, Thence take you wing unto the Orcades, There let my verse get glory in the North, Making my sighs to thaw the frozen seas: And let the bards within that Irish isle, And when my flowing numbers they rehearse, Let wolves and bears be charmed with my verse. The relations between the dramatists and Bacon seem to have been systematically most intimate aud subtle; I will give one more case in point. In or about the year 1594 Bacon, discouraged by fruitless applications for employment, wrote to his friend Fulke Greville : "What though the Master of the Rolls, and my Lord of Essex, and yourself think my case without doubt, yet in the meantime I have a hard condition, to stand so that whatsoever service I do to her Majesty, it shall be thought to be but servitium viscatum, lime-twigs and fetches to place myself; and so I shall have envy, not thanks. This is a course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt every man's nature;.... I am weary of it; as also of wearying my good friends. In the same year (1594), there was published an anonymous play The Spanish Tragedy, subsequently attributed to Thomas Kyd. Simultaneously with Bacon "this penny-a-liner Kyd" (I quote this expression from Marlowes apologist Mr C. W. Ingram) was passing through an identical phase of emotions which he expressed as follows: This fits our former policy, And thus experience bids the wise to deal; Thus hopeful men that mean to hold their own Must look like fowlers to their dearest friends. (Spanish Tragedy III. 4.) 1594. 1 The accordance here is highly remarkable. Bacon, a hopeful man desiring to hold his own, lays the plot by looking to and soliciting his dearest friends; they prosecute his point, but Bacon fears that Her Majesty will perceive the limed twigs. I I have been surprised on correcting these pages for the press to perceive what a large proportion of the passages quoted are assignable to the year 1594, see especially pages 118 and 307. In this year not only was the princely intellect of Francis Bacon fretting at its enforced idleness but the scriptorium at Twickenham seems equally to have been in want of occupation, see ante p. 243. CHAPTER XIV TRAITS AND IDIOSYNCRACIES Carlyle observes of Shakespeare, "His works are so many windows through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him." Applying this axiom to the Elizabethan drama in general we perceive that the dramatists had a personality in common. Further, that distinction between the plebeian Dramatic Soul of the playwrights and the patrician Philosophic Soul of Francis Bacon is, so far as we can judge, non-existent. In whims, sympathies and antipathies the accord is to the minutest detail and the faintest nuance. Cosmetics, Funeral rites, Beer, Money, Wealth, Landed possessions, Aristotle, and the 'beastly plebeians' their scathing hostility has already been noted and I will here instance a few more similar cases. "Guard, To In says Bacon," against a melancholy and stubborn silence, for this either turns the fault upon you, or impeaches your inferior. the Drama stubborn silence generally, if not invariably, spells Disaster. "I am resolved, says Massinger, "to put on an an obstinate silence. The consequence is a fatal stab to the words, 1 Advancement of Learning. 1605. . |