The angry exhalation, shut within
A prison of contrary quality,
Strives to be free and with the violent
Eruption through the grossness of that cloud,
Makes this noise we hear."

These extracts, of which the latter is from Tourneur's Atheists Tragedy, are taken almost at random. They are not an unfair type of the style of a large section of the Elizabethan drama.

It is a matter of some surprise to find a close relationship between the writings of Francis Bacon, and the stage plays of the despised dramatists. This intimate acquaintance is demonstrated by many direct instances, of which I will cite a few here, and others hereinafter :

Perfumes, the more

they are chafed, the more they render their pleasing scents; and so affliction expresseth virtue fully, whether true or else adulterate.

WEBSTER (White Devil) 1612.

Ambition, 'tis of vipers breed... Ambition, like a seelèd dove, mounts upward higher and higher still to perch on clouds. FORD (Broken Heart II. 2.). 1633.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue. BACON (Essay of Adversity). 1625.

Ambition is... malign and venomous... No man will take that part, except he be like a seeled dove, which mounts and mounts, because he cannot see about him.

BACON (Essay:
Ambition). 1625.

A peculiar demonstration of the manner in which the dramatists borrowed from the works of Bacon, occurs in connection with Duelling. This evil was one of the many which Bacon endeavoured to crush. In the year 1613 he drew up a "Proposition of Advice," to some extent adopted by the Government, for in the same year two duellists were arrested and brought up before the Star Chamber. On this occasion Bacon delivered a speech for the prosecution, subsequently printed and published under the title of A charge touching Duels, etc. Therein occurs the following:

1

"Nay, I should think, my Lords, that men of birth and quality will leave the practice when it begins to be villified, and come so low as to barber-surgeons and butchers and such base mechanical persons....

"Again, my Lords, it is a miserable effect when young men full of towardness and hope such as the poets call "Aurore Filii, " Sons of the Morning, in whom the expectation and comfort of their friends consisteth, shall be cast away and destroyed in such a vain manner. But much more it is to be deplored, when so much noble and gentle blood shall be spilt upon such follies, as, if it were adventured in the field in service of the King, were able to make the fortune of a day and to change the fortune of a kingdome....

"Nay, the French themselves, whence this folly seemeth chiefly to have flown, never had it but only in practice and toleration, but never as authorised by law."

To find this State document transmuted into poetry, we must turn to the plays of Philip Massinger, whom, in A Very Woman (v. 6.) 1634-1655, we find writing as follows :

"I would teach the world a better way For the recovery of a wounded honour Than with a savage fury, not true courage, Still to run headlong on."

In The Guardian (II. 1. 1633-1655) Massinger had previously attacked the evil. Therein he refers to :

"Revenge appearing in the shape of valour,
Which wise kings must distinguish. The defence
Of reputation, now made a bawd
To murder; every trifle falsely styled
An injury, and not to be determined
But by a bloody duel: though this vice
Hath taken root and growth beyond the mountains
(As France, and, in strange fashions, her ape,
England, can dearly witness with the loss
Of more brave spirits than would have stood the shock
Of the Turk's army), while Alphonso lives
It shall not here be planted."

Bacon's sentiments appear again with noticeable fidelity in The Little French Lawyer, (1647) of Beaumont and Fletcher. Act I opens with the following dialogue :

Dinant: "Persuade me not."

Claremont: "Twill breed a brawl."

Dinant: "I care not :

I wear a sword."

Claremont : "And wear discretion with it, Or cast it off; let that direct your arm, 'Tis madness else, not valour, and more base

Than to receive a wrong."

Dinant:" Would you have me

Sit down with a disgrace and thank the doer ?
We are not stoics. That passive courage
Is only now commendable in lacqueys,

Peasants, and tradesmen ; 1 not in men of rank

And quality as I am. Claremont: "Do not cherish

That daring vice for which the whole age suffers.
The blood of our bold youth that heretofore
Was spent in honourable action,

Or to defend or to enlarge the kingdom
For the honour of our country and our prince,
Pours itself out with prodigal expense
Upon our mother's lap-the earth, that bred us-
For every trifle. And these private duels
Which had their first original from the French,
And for which, to this day, we are justly censured,
Are banished from all civil governments.

I have heard that some of our late kings
Have lost us many gallant gentlemen,
As might have met the great Turk in the field,
With confidence of a glorious victory."

There are further and less conspicuous identities of thought and diction between the preceding passages and Bacon's Charge Touching Duels. Massinger's lines,

"Though this vice

Hath taken root and growth beyond the moun[tains,...

It shall not here be planted.

"

1 Compare Bacon's "barber-Surgeons, and butchers and such base mechanical persons.

"

are matched as follows in Bacon's Charge: "The root of this offence is stubborn... The course which we shall take is to hew and vex the root in the branches, which no doubt in the end will kill the root."

Beaumont and Fletcher's reference to Duelling as having been

"banished from all civil governments," is paralleled by Bacon's assertion that,

"In civil states... they had not this practice of duels."

Again, Beaumont and Fletcher's lament that,
"The blood of our bold youth
Pours itself out with prodigal expense
Upon our mother's lap,"

was, not improbably, suggested by Bacon's following appeal :

"Lastly, I have a petition to the noblesse and gentlemen of England, that they would learn to esteem themselves at a just price... Their blood is not to be spilt like water, or a vile thing, therefore that they would rest persuaded there cannot be a form of honour except it be upon a worthy matter."

(A Charge Touching Duels).

That there was some relationship between Bacon and the playwrights, is to be inferred by the fact that many of them seemingly had access to his private MSS. The identities cannot, I think be explained on any other hypothesis. It will be noticed that Massinger, in a play printed in 1636, apparently quotes from a private letter written by Bacon in 1616 to the Duke