And Ben Jonson says of Bacon: His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. I need not cite many authorities to prove that the writer of the Shakespeare Plays was not only a great wit, but that his wit sometimes overmastered his judgment. Hudson says of Falstaff: I must add that, with Shallow and Silence for his theme, Falstaff's wit fairly grows gigantic, and this, too, without any abatement of its frolicsome agility. The strain of humorous exaggeration with which he pursues the theme is indeed almost sublime. Yet in some of his reflections thereon, we have a clear though brief view of the profound philosopher underlying the profligate humorist and makesport, for he there discovers a breadth and sharpness of observation and a depth of practical sagacity such as might have placed him [Shakespeare] in the front rank of statesmen and sages.1 XIV. GREAT AIMS. We know the grand objects Bacon kept continually before his mind's eye. The writer of the Plays declares, in sonnet cxxv, that he had Laid great bases for eternity. What were they? What "great bases for eternity" had the Stratford man built or attempted to build? Francis Bacon wrote The New Atlantis, an attempt to show to what perfections of civilization developed mankind might attain in a new land, an island; and we find Shakespeare also planning an improved commonwealth upon another island-the island that was the scene of The Tempest. And we find him borrowing therein from Montaigne. Gonzalo says in the play: Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, . No occupation; all men idle, all And women, too; but innocent and pure. No sovereignty: All things in common nature should produce 1 Shak. Life and Art, vol. ii, p. 94. Sword, pike, knife, gun or need of any engine, Would I not have, but nature should bring forth, Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people.1 Here, as in The New Atlantis, we see the philosopher-poet devising schemes to lift men out of their miseries-to "feed the innocent people." Coleridge says: XV. HIS GOODNESS. Observe the fine humanity of Shakespeare, in that his sneerers are all villains. Gerald Massey says of Shakespeare: There is nothing rotten at the root, nothing insidious in the suggestion. Vice never walks abroad in the mental twilight wearing the garb of virtue." Coleridge says: There is not one really vicious passage in all Shakespeare. We know that Bacon, in his acknowledged works, said nothing that could impair the power of goodness in the world. XVI. ANOTHER CURIOUS FACT. While the last pages of this work are going through the press, my friend Professor Thomas Davidson sends me a letter addressed to him by a correspondent (M. Le B. G.), in which occur these words: Please look at the 6th chapter of Peter Bayne's new Life of Luther, if you have not already read it. It is called The Century of Luther and Shakespeare. It is a glorification of Shakespeare, but, curiously enough, quotes from Brewer, about the correspondence in altitude between Bacon and Luther; and then goes on to show that Shakespeare was perfectly familiar not only with the Bible but with Luther's thought, and with special incidents of his history. Bayne says that all the main points in the theology of the Reformation could be pieced together from the dramas of Shakespeare. One would not naturally look in a Life of Luther for any testimony on the "Baconian Theory," so please (if it seems worth while to you) to call Mr. Donnelly's attention to this rather curious chapter. I quote this with pleasure, although a little out of place in this chapter, as another case where the indentations of the Baconian theory fit into all other related facts and, as an additional evidence that the Plays were not pumped out of ignorance by the handle of genius, under the pressure of a play-actor's necessities, but were the works of a broadly-learned man, who was fully abreast of all Sonnets of Shakespeare, p. 549. 1 Tempest, ii, 2. the affairs of his day, and who had read everything that was accessible in that age, in every field of thought. In short, each new addition to our information requires us to widen the shelves of the library of the man who wrote the Plays. XVII. CONCLUSIONS. When, therefore, we institute a comparison between the personal character and mental disposition of Francis Bacon and that of the man who wrote the Plays, we find that: 1. Both were poetical. 2. Both were philosophical. 3. Both were vastly industrious. 4. Both were students. 5. Both were profoundly wise. 6. Both possessed a universal grasp of knowledge. 7. Both had splendid tastes. 8. Both were tolerant of religious differences of opinion. 9. Both were benevolent. 10. Both were wits. 11. Both were possessed of great aims for the good of man. 12. Both were morally admirable. I cannot better conclude this chapter than with a comparison extracted from the work of Mr. William Henry Smith, the patriarch of the Baconian discussion in England. Mr. Smith quotes Archbishop Whately as follows: There is an ingenious and philosophical toy called "a thaumatrope," in which two objects painted on opposite sides of a card—for instance, a man and a horse, a bird and a cage, etc.—are, by a quick rotary motion, made so to impress the eye in combination as to form one picture — of the man on the horse's back, the bird in the cage, etc. As soon as the card is allowed to remain at rest, the figures, of course, appear as they really are, separate and on opposite sides.1 Mr. Smith continues: Bacon and Shakespeare we know to be distinct individuals, occupying positions as opposite as the man and the horse, the bird and the cage; yet, when we come to agitate the question, the poet appears so combined with the philosopher, and the philosopher with the poet, we cannot but believe them to be identical. 1 Bacon and Shak., p. 89. WE CHAPTER IX. IDENTITIES OF STYLE. I replied, "Nay, Madam, rack him not; . . . rack his style."-Bacon. E come now to an interesting branch of our subject, to-wit: Bacon and that of the writer of the Plays? I. THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE. And first let us ask ourselves, what are the distinguishing features of the writings which go by the name of Shakespeare? In other words, what is his style? It might be described as the excess of every great faculty of the soul. Reason, the widest and most profound; imagination, the most florid and tropical; vivacity, the most sprightly and untiring; passion, the most burning and vehement; feeling, the most earnest and intense. In other words, it is a human intellect, multiplied many hundred-fold beyond the natural standard. Behind the style and the works we see the man:- a marvelous, many-sided, gigantic soul; a monster among thinkers;-standing with one foot upon the bare rocks of reason, and the other buried ankle-deep in the flowers of the imagination; spanning time and accomplishing immortality. Behind the tremendous works is a tremendous personality. Not from a weak or shallow thought His mighty Jove young Phidias wrought. His was a ponderous, comprehensive, extraordinary intelligence, inflamed as never man's was, before or since, by genius; and filled with instincts and purposes which we cannot but regard as divine. Every part of his mind was at white heat-it flamed. He has left all mankind to repeat his expressions, because never before did any one so captivate and capture words, or crush them into subjection, as he did. The operations of his mind-its greed, its spring, its grasp, its domination—were, so to speak, ferocious. It 481 is no wonder that his body showed the marks of premature age; it is a surprise that this immense, vehement and bounding spirit did not tear the flesh into disorganization long before his allotted time. And yet, high aloft in the charioteer's seat, above the plunging, rebellious, furious Passions, sat the magnificent Reason of the man; curbing, with iron muscles, their vehemence into measured pace, their motion into orderly progression. Hear what the great Frenchman, H. A. Taine, says of Shakespeare: I am about to describe an extraordinary species of mind, perplexing to all the French modes of analysis and reasoning, all-powerful, excessive, master of the sublime as well as of the base; the most creative mind that ever engaged in the exact copy of the details of actual existence, in the dazzling caprice of fancy, in the profound complications of superhuman passions; a nature poetical, immortal, inspired, superior to reason by the sudden revelations of its seer's madness; so extreme in joy and grief, so abrupt of gait, so agitated and impetuous in its transports, that this great age alone could have cradled such a child.1 And, speaking of the imagination of the great poet, Taine says: Shakespeare imagines with copiousness and excess; he scatters metaphors profusely over all he writes; every instant abstract ideas are changed into images; it is a series of paintings which is unfolded in his mind." And the same writer says: This exuberant fecundity intensifies qualities already in excess, and multiplies a hundred-fold the luxuriance of metaphor, the incoherence of style, and the unbridled vehemence of expression. And Richard Grant White speaks to much the same purpose: Akin to this power in Shakespeare is that of pushing hyperbole to the verge of absurdity; of mingling heterogeneous metaphors and similes which, coldly examined, seem discordant; in short, of apparently setting at naught the rules of rhetoric.4 And again White says: Never did intellectual wealth equal in degree the boundless riches of Shakespeare's fancy. He compelled all nature and all art, all that God had revealed, and all that man had discovered, to contribute materials to enrich his style and enforce his thought; so that the entire range of human knowledge must be laid under contribution to illustrate his writings. This inexhaustible mine of fancy, furnishing metaphor, comparison, illustration, impersonation, in ceaseless alternation, often intermingled, so that the one cannot be severed from the other, . . is the great distinctive intellectual trait of Shakespeare's style. In his use of simile, imagery and impersonation he exhibits a power to which that of any other 1 Taine's History of English Literature, pp. 204 and 205. 2 Ibid., p. 211. Ibid., p. 213. Life and Genius of Shak., p. 229. |