A

Even in their Zoology the Philosopher and the Poet are at one. If Bacon in his Experiments in consort touching emission of spirits' (s. 912) mentions' the tradition that the basilisk killeth by aspect' (s. 924), Shakespeare represents Gloster as saying, 'I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk.' If Bacon records an Experiment solitary touching chameleons' who are said to live on air (s. 360), Shakespeare feeds Hamlet with the chameleon's dish. If Bacon records an Experiment solitary touching the salamander,' who is said to live in fire (s. 860), Shakespeare takes the salamander as the type of Bardolph's nose. If in his Experiments in consort touching the influences of the moon (s. 889), Bacon observes that 'young cattle that are brought forth in the full of the moon are stronger and larger than those that are brought forth in the wane' (s. 897), Shakespeare adopts the idea, and calls Caliban a mooncalf. If Bacon records an Experiment solitary touching the glow-worm' (s. 712), and observes that the light of the worm is 'drowned' by that of the sun (s. 224), Shakespeare adopts the idea, and the Ghost in Hamlet observes that the glow-worm shows the matin to be near, and 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.' In his Experiments in consort touching the secret virtue of sympathy and antipathy' (s. 960) Bacon queries whether the stone taken out of a toad's head' be not available for the cooling of the spirits' (s. 967); and this incontinently

supplies Shakespeare with a metaphor, and the Duke in As You Like It with a moral :—

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

If Bacon records an 'Experiment solitary touching shell-fish,' and asks, 'how the shells of oysters are bred' (s. 875), he merely puts the question of the sapient Fool in Lear: Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?'

In the preface to the Natural History, Bacon's chaplain says, 'I have heard his Lordship discourse, that men, no doubt, will think many of the experiments contained in this collection to be vulgar and trivial, mean and sordid, curious and fruitless'; but his reply was that his object was the illumination of the understanding, and not the gratification of the fancy; and accordingly in Troilus and Cressida, the king of Ithaca exclaims:

Nature! what things there are,

Most abject in regard, and dear in use!
What things again most dear in the esteem,
And poor in worth!

Even in their phraseology, the poet and the philosopher agree. The Natural History gives 'arcuate' and 'adunque' for bent, exile' for slight, ingrate' for unpleasant, 'inutile' for useless, munite' and 'excern' for strengthen and remove; and in Troilus and Cressida we have such

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'deracinated' flowers of speech as 'concupy,' and 'convive,' and 'mirable,' and 'tortive,' and 'errant,' and constringed.' In the Natural History Bacon tells us that 'hair and nails are excrements' (s. 58); and the Queen in Hamlet adopts the extraordinary phrase and cries out to the Prince :

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up and stands on end!

Impressed with the vastness of the multitudinous sea' Bacon in his Henry the Seventh speaks of a sea of multitude'; in his Charge against Oliver St. John he uses the phrase a sea of matter'; in his Natural History he describes the alchemist as trying to turn a sea of baser metals into gold'; and in Hamlet when the Prince talks of taking up arms against 'a sea of troubles,' there surely is no necessity for the Irving annotator to fly off to Aristotle, or to Ælian, or to Nicholas of Damascus, for an explanation of the phrase.

True, the Wood of Woods is not the Forest of Arden, and the style of the Natural History is not the style of As You Like It. Neither for that matter is the style of the Argument to the Rape the same as that of the Poem. The style of the Tetrachordon and the Colasterium is not the style of Paradise Lost and Comus. The style of the Theory of Colours and the Metamorphosis of Plants is not the style of Faust and Egmont. Goethe has revealed the secret of this difference

of styles. In his correspondence with Schiller he remarks that he composed his early poetical pieces in prose, and then translated them into verse, but that when he proceeded to versify his prose he found himself in a different jurisdiction.' This explains the paradox and answers the objection. In passing from the jurisdiction of prose to the jurisdiction of poetry the mind rises to a higher level, it breathes a finer air, it views things in a fairer light, it brings a higher set of faculties into play. It stands as it were upon the mount of transfiguration, and the fashion of its face is changed. If the reader takes the trouble to compare the prosaic prose of the Göchhausen Transcript with the unearthly beauty of the finished Faust he will understand the effect of what Goethe calls the change of jurisdiction. And he will understand how the scientific experiments in consort touching flowers in the Natural History were idealised and transfigured in The Winter's Tale.

W

ix

Of certain Plays of Shakespeare

HILE these pages are passing through the press the Shakespearian Question has suddenly blazed into a conflagration and roused the literary world from its dogmatic slumber. This renders it expedient for any person who takes part in the discussion to define the precise position that he takes. In these pages, then, it is not proposed to prove that Bacon was a Rosicrucian; or that he was the son of Queen Elizabeth; or that he was the Shakespeare-Messiah; or that he was the author of the Plays of Marlowe and the Essays of Montaigne. It is merely proposed to examine the arguments that go to show that he was Shakespeare.

An examination of the Great Cryptogram and Bacon's Biliteral Cipher does not lie within the scope of this inquiry, which is exclusively concerned with the historical and literary aspect of the question. On this interesting question the positive evidence at our command, unfortunately, is but slight.