. <
THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE
UNFOLDED.
By DELIA BACON.
WITH
A PREFACE
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
AUTHOB OF ' THE SCARLET LETTER,' ETC.
Aphorisms representing a knowledge broken do invite men to
inquire further. Loud Bacon.
You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Untie the spell— Prospero.
LONDON:
GROOMBRIDGE AND SONS,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1857.
V
LONDON :
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMEIt AND CO.
CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBUKY.
PR
/
///
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE iv
INTRODUCTION.
CHAP.
I. The Proposition xvii
JI. The Age of Elizabeth, and the Elizabethan Men of
Letters xxvii
III. Extracts from thp Lifc of -Ral^** _Pai«i«.v«, s~wi u
THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP; OR, THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE
COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.
I. The Elizabethan Heroism 333
II. Criticism of the Martial Government . . . . 352
III. ' Insurrections Arguing ' 36°
IV. Political Retrospect 372
V. The Popular Election 389
VI. The Scientific Method in PoHtics 4IQ
VII. Volumnia and her Boy N427
VIII. Metaphysical Aid 454
IX. The Cure.— Plan of Innovation.— New Definitions . -473
X. „ „ „ New Constructions . 497
XL „ „ „ 'The Initiative' 512
XII. The Ignorant Election revoked.— A ' Wrestling Instance' . 535
XIII. Conclusion 561
IV
CONTENTS.
PART II.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.
CHAP.
I. The ' Beginners.' — ['Particular Methods of Tradition.'— *'
The Double Method of 'Illustration ' and 'Concealment '] 63
II. Index to the ' Illustrated' and 'Concealed Tradition' of
the Principal and Supreme Sciences.— The Science of
Policy ....
III. The Science of Morality. § 1. The Exemplar of Good !
» » » § 11. The Husbandry thereunto,
or the Cure and Culture of
the Mind.— Application . izi
" " » Alteration . 143
VI. Method of Conveying the Wisdom of the Moderns . I5g
9z
100
CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBUKY.
PR
30 0
/
CONTENTS. V
PAKT II.
JULIUS CAESAR AND CORIOLANUS.
THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL;
OK,
' THE COMMON DUTY OF EVERY MAN AS A MAN, OR MEMBER OF A
STATE,' DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED IN 'NEGATIVE INSTANCES'
AND 'INSTANCES OF PRESENCE.'
JULIUS CAESAR ;
OR, THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL
EXAMINED.
PAGE
CHAP.
I. The Death of Tyranny ; or, the Question of the Prerogative 308
II. Caesar's Spirit • 32J
CORIOLANUS.
THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP; OR, THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE
COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.
I. The Elizabethan Heroism 333
II. Criticism of the Martial Government . . . • 35*
III. ' Insurrections Arguing ' 36°
IV. Political Retrospect 37*
V. The Popular Election 389
VI. The Scientific Method in Pohtics 4IQ
VII. Volumnia and her Boy N4*7
VIII. Metaphysical Aid 454
IX. The Cure.— Plan of Innovation.— New Definitions . -473
XNew Constructions . 497
n >? "
vt 'The Initiative 512
Al. 5J » »
XII. The Ignorant Election revoked.— A ' Wrestling Instance' . 535
XIII. Conclusion 5Sl
PREFACE.
HPHIS Volume contains the argument, drawn from the Plays
usually attributed to Shakspere, in support of a theory
which the author of it has demonstrated by historical evidences
in another work. Having never read this historical demonstra-
tion (which remains still in manuscript, with the exception of
a preliminary chapter, published long ago in an American
periodical), I deem it necessary to cite the author's own ac-
count of it: —
1 The Historical Part of this work (which was originally the
principal part, and designed to furnish the historical key to
the great Elizabethan writings), though now for a long time
completed and ready for the press, and though repeated refer-
ence is made to it in this volume, is, for the most part, omitted
here. It contains a true and before unwritten history, and
it will yet, perhaps, be published as it stands; but the vivid
and accumulating historic detail, with which more recent
research tends to enrich the earlier statement, and disclosures
which no invention could anticipate, are waiting now to be
subjoined to it.
* The internal evidence of the assumptions made at the
outset is that which is chiefly relied on in the work now first
presented on this subject to the public. The demonstration
will be found complete on that ground; and on that ground
alone the author is willing, and deliberately prefers, for the
present, to rest it.
vm PREFACE.
'External evidence, of course, will not be wanting; there
will be enough and to spare, if the demonstration here be
correct. But the author of the discovery was not willing to
rob the world of this great question; but wished rather to
share with it the benefit which the true solution of the
Problem offers — the solution prescribed by those who pro-
pounded it to the future. It seemed better to save to the
world the power and beauty of this demonstration, its intel-
lectual stimulus, its demand on the judgment. It seemed
better, that the world should acquire it also in the form of criti-
cism, instead of being stupified and overpowered with the mere
force of an irresistible, external, historical proof. Persons in-
capable of appreciating any other kind of proof, — those who
are capable of nothing that does not ' directly fall under and
strike the senses/ as Lord Bacon expresses it, — will have their
time also; but it was proposed to present the subject first to
minds of another order.'
In the present volume, accordingly, the author applies
herself to the demonstration and development of a system of
philosophy, which has presented itself to her as underlying
the superficial and ostensible text of Shakspere's plays. Traces
of the same philosophy, too, she conceives herself to have
found in the acknowledged works of Lord Bacon, and in those
of other writers contemporary with him. All agree in one
system; all these traces indicate a common understanding and
unity of purpose in men among whom no brotherhood has
hitherto been suspected, except as representatives of a grand
and brilliant age, when the human intellect made a marked
step in advance.
The author did not (as her own consciousness assures her)
either construct or originally seek this new philosophy. In
many respects, if I have rightly understood her, it was at
variance with her pre-conceived opinions, whether ethical,
religious, or political. She had been for years a student
PREFACE. IX
of Shakspere, looking for nothing in his plays beyond what
the world has agreed to find in them, when she began to see,
under the surface, the gleam of this hidden treasure. It was
carefully hidden, indeed, yet not less carefully indicated, as
with a pointed finger, by such marks and references as could
not ultimately escape the notice of a subsequent age, which
should be capable of profiting by the rich inheritance. So,
too, in regard to Lord Bacon. The author of this volume
had not sought to put any but the ordinary and obvious inter-
pretation upon his works, nor to take any other view of his
character than what accorded with the unanimous judgment
upon it of all the generations since his epoch. But, as she
penetrated more and more deeply into the plays, and became
aware of those inner readings, she found herself compelled to
turn back to the * Advancement of Learning' for information as
to their plan and purport; and Lord Bacon's Treatise failed
not to give her what she sought ; thus adding to the immortal
dramas, in her idea, a far higher value than their warmest ad-
mirers had heretofore claimed for them. They filled out the
scientific scheme which Bacon had planned, and which needed
only these profound and vivid illustrations of human life and
character to make it perfect. Finally, the author's researches
led her to a point where she found the plays claimed for Lord
Bacon and his associates, — not in a way that was meant to be
intelligible in their own perilous times, — but in characters
that only became legible, and illuminated, as it were, in the
light of a subsequent period.
The reader will soon perceive that the new philosophy,
as here demonstrated, was of a kind that no professor could
have ventured openly to teach in the days of Elizabeth
and James. The concluding chapter of the present work
makes a powerful statement of the position which a man,
conscious of great and noble aims, would then have occupied;
and shows, too, how familiar the age was with all methods
PliEFACE.
of secret communication, and of hiding thought beneath a
masque of conceit or folly. Applicably to this subject, I
quote a paragraph from a manuscript of the author's, not 'in-
tended for present publication : —
'It was a time when authors, who treated of a scientific
politics and of a scientific ethics internally connected with it,
naturally preferred this more philosophic, symbolic method of
indicating their connection with their writings, which would
limit the indication to those who could pierce within the veil of
a philosophic symbolism. It was the time when the cipher, in
which one could write ' omnia per omnia,3 was in such request,
and when < wheel ciphers' and ' doubles' were thought not un-
worthy of philosophic notice. It was a time, too, when the
phonographic art was cultivated, and put to other uses than at
present, and when a l nom de plume' was required for other
purposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty,
or vanity, or caprice. It was a time when puns, and charades^
and enigmas, and anagrams, and monograms, and ciphers, and
puzzles, were not good for sport and child's play merely; when
they had need to be close; when they had need to be solvable,
at least, only to those who should solve them. It was a time
when all the latent capacities of the English language were
put in requisition, and it was flashing and crackling, through
all its lengths and breadths, with puns and quips, and conceits,
and jokes, and satires, and inlined with philosophic secrets that
opened down < into the bottom of a tomb' — that opened into
the Tower — that opened on the scaffold and the block.'
I quote, likewise, another passage, because I think the
reader will see in it the noble earnestness of the author's cha-
racter, and may partly imagine the sacrifices which this
research has cost her : —
' The great secret of the Elizabethan age did not lie where
any superficial research could ever have discovered it. It was
not left within the range of any accidental disclosure. It did
PREFACE. XI
not lie on the surface of any Elizabethan document. The most
diligent explorers of these documents, in two centuries and a
quarter, had not found it. No faintest suspicion of it had ever
crossed the mind of the most recent, and clear-sighted, and
able investigator of the Baconian remains. It was buried in the
lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art ;
that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It
was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning. It
was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan
learning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny
and baffled the sword of an old, suspicious, dying, military
government — a knot that none could cut — a knot that must
be untied.
4 The great secret of the Elizabethan Age was inextricably
reserved by the founders of a new learning, the prophetic and
more nobly gifted minds of a new and nobler race of men, for
a research that should test the mind of the discoverer, and frame
and subordinate it to that so sleepless and indomitable pur-
pose of the prophetic aspiration. It was ' the device ' by which
they undertook to live again in the ages in which their achieve-
ments and triumphs were forecast, and to come forth and rule
again, not in one mind, not in the few, not in the many, but in
all. ' For there is no throne like that throne in the thoughts of
men/ which the ambition of these men climbed and compassed.
* The principal works of the Elizabethan Philosophy, those
in which the new method of learning was practically applied to
the noblest subjects, were presented to the world in the form
of AN enigma. It was a form well fitted to divert inquiry,
and baffle even the research of the scholar for a time ; but one
calculated to provoke the philosophic curiosity, and one which
would inevitably command a research that could end only
with the true solution. That solution was reserved for
one who would recognise, at last, in the disguise of the
great impersonal teacher, the disguise of a new learning. It
X11 PREFACE.
waited for the reader who would observe, at last, those thick-
strewn scientific clues, those thick-crowding enigmas, those
perpetual beckonings from the < theatre' into the judicial palace
of the mind. It was reserved for the student who would recog-
nise, at last, the mind that was seeking so perseveringly to
whisper its tale of outrage, and ' the secrets it was forbid/ It
waited for one who would answer, at last, that philosophic
challenge, and say, ' Go on, 1 11 follow thee !' . It was reserved
for one who would count years as days, for the love of the
truth it hid ; who would never turn back on the long road of
initiation, though all ' the idols' must be left behind in its
stages; who would never stop until it stopped in that new cave
of Apollo, where the handwriting on the wall spells anew the
old Delphic motto, and publishes the word that < unties the
spell.'
On this object, which she conceives so loftily, the author
has bestowed the solitary and self-sustained toil of many years.
The volume now before the reader, together with the histori-
cal demonstration which it pre-supposes, is the product of
a most faithful and conscientious labour, and a truly heroic
devotion of intellect and heart. No man or woman has ever
thought or written more sincerely than the author of this
book. She has given nothing less than her life to the work.
And, as if for the greater trial of her constancy, her theory
was divulged, some time ago, in so partial and unsatisfactory
a manner — with so exceedingly imperfect a statement of its
claims— as to put her at great disadvantage before the
world. A single article from her pen, purporting to be the
first of a series, appeared in an American Magazine ; but unex-
pected obstacles prevented the further publication in that form,
after enough had been done to assail the prejudices of the
public, but far too little to gain its sympathy. Another evil
followed. An English writer (in a ' Letter to the Earl of
Ellesmere,' published within a few months past) has thought
PREFACE. xiii
it not inconsistent with the fair-play, on which his country
prides itself, to take to himself this lady's theory, and favour
the public with it as his own original conception, without
allusion to the author's prior claim. In reference to this
pamphlet, she generously says : —
' This has not been a selfish enterprise. It is not a personal
concern. It is a discovery which belongs not to an individual,
and not to a people. Its fields are wide enough and rich
enough for us all; and he that has no work, and whoso will,
let him come and labour in them. The field is the world's;
and the world's work henceforth is in it. So that it be known
in its real comprehension, in its true relations to the weal of
the world, what matters it? So that the truth, which is dearer
than all the rest — which abides with us when all others leave
us, dearest then — so that the truth, which is neither yours
nor mine, but yours and mine, be known, loved, honoured,
emancipated, mitred, crowned, adored — who loses anything,
that does not find it.' * And what matters it,' says the
philosophic wisdom, speaking in the abstract, ' what name
it is proclaimed in, and what letters of the alphabet we
know it by? — what matter is it, so that they spell the name
that is good for all, and good for each? — for that is the
real name here?
Speaking on the author's behalf, however, I am not entitled
to imitate her magnanimity; and, therefore, hope that the
writer of the pamphlet will disclaim any purpose of assuming
to himself, on the ground of a slight and superficial perform-
ance, the result which she has attained at the cost of many
toils and sacrifices.
And now, at length, after many delays and discourage-
ments, the work comes forth. It had been the author's
original purpose to publish it in America; for she wished
her own country to have the glory of solving the enigma
of those mighty dramas, and thus adding a new and higher
XIV PREFACE.
value to the loftiest productions of the English mind. It
seemed to her most fit and desirable, that America — having
received so much from England, and returned so little — should
do what remained to be done towards rendering this great
legacy available, as its authors meant it to be, to all future
time. This purpose was frustrated; and it will be seen in
what spirit she acquiesces.
' The author was forced to bring it back, and contribute it
to the literature of the country from which it was derived,
and to which it essentially and inseparably belongs. It was
written, every word of it, on English ground, in the midst of
the old familiar scenes and household names, that even in our
nursery songs revive the dear ancestral memories; those ' royal
pursuivants' with which our mother-land still follows and re-
takes her own. It was written in the land of our old kings and
queens, and in the land of our own philosophers and poets
also. It was written on the spot where the works it unlocks
were written, and in the perpetual presence of the English
mind ; the mind that spoke before in the cultured few, and that
speaks to-day in the cultured many. And it is now at last,
after so long a time — after all, as it should be — the English
press that prints it. It is the scientific English press, with
those old gags (wherewith our kings and queens sought to stop
it, ere they knew what it was) champed asunder, ground to
powder, and with its last Elizabethan shackle shaken off, that
restores, ' in a better hour/ the torn and garbled science com-
mitted to it, and gives back 'the bread cast on its sure
waters/
There remains little more for me to say. I am not the
editor of this work ; nor can I consider myself fairly entitled
to the honor (which, if I deserved it, I should feel to be a very
high as well as a perilous one) of seeing my name associated
with the author's on the title-page. My object has been
merely to speak a few words, which might, perhaps, serve the
PREFACE. XV
purpose of placing my countrywoman upon a ground of
amicable understanding with the public. She has a vast pre-
liminary difficulty to encounter. The first feeling of every
reader must be one of absolute repugnance towards a person
who seeks to tear out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name
which for ages it has held dearest, and to substitute another
name, or names, to which the settled belief of the world has
long assigned a very different position. What I claim for
this work is, that the ability employed in its composition has
been worthy of its great subject, and well employed for our
intellectual interests, whatever judgment the public may pass
upon the questions discussed. And, after listening to the
author's interpretation of the Plays, and seeing how wide a
scope she assigns to them, how high a purpose, and what
richness of inner meaning, the thoughtful reader will hardly
return again — not wholly, at all events — to the common view
of them and of their author. It is for the public to say
whether my countrywoman has proved her theory. In the
worst event, if she has failed, her failure will be more
honorable than most people's triumphs ; since it must fling
upon the old tombstone, at Stratford-on-Avon, the noblest
tributary wreath that has ever lain there.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAYS
OF SHAKSPERE.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROPOSITION
• One time will owe another.' — Coriolanus.
THIS work is designed to propose to the consideration, not
of the learned world only, but of all ingenuous and prac-
tical minds, a new development of that system of practical
philosophy from which the SCIENTIFIC ARTS of the Modern
Ages proceed, and which has already become, just to the ex-
tent to which it has been hitherto opened, the wisdom, — the
universally approved, and practically adopted, Wisdom of the
Moderns.
It is a development of this philosophy, which was de-
liberately postponed by the great Scientific Discoverers and
Keformers, in whose Scientific Discoveries and Reformations
our organised advancements in speculation and practice have
their origin; — Reformers, whose scientific acquaintance with
historic laws forbade the idea of any immediate and sudden
cures of the political and social evils which their science
searches to the root, and which it was designed to eradicate. ;
The proposition to be demonstrated in the ensuing pages is
this: That the new philosophy which strikes out from the
Court — from the Court of that despotism that names and
gives form to the Modern Learning, — which comes to us
XV111 INTRODUCTION.
from the Court of the last of the Tudors and the first of the
Stuarts, — that new philosophy which we have received, and
accepted, and adopted as a practical philosophy, not merely in
that grave department of learning in which it comes to us
professionally as philosophy, but in that not less important
department of learning in which it comes to us in the disguise
of amusement, — in the form of fable and allegory and para-
ble, — the proposition is, that this Elizabethan philosophy is,
in these two forms of it, — not two philosophies, — not two
Elizabethan philosophies, not two new and wondrous phi-
losophies of nature and practice, not two new Inductive
philosophies, but one, — one and the same: that it is philosophy
in both these forms, with its veil of allegory and parable, and
without it; that it is philosophy applied to much more im-
portant subjects in the disguise of the parable, than it is in
the open statement; that it is philosophy in both these cases,
and not philosophy in one of them, and a brutish, low-lived,
illiterate, unconscious spontaneity in the other.
The proposition is that it proceeds, in both cases, from a
reflective deliberative, eminently deliberative, eminently con-
scious, designing mind; and that the coincidence which is
manifest not in the design only, and in the structure, but in the
detail to the minutest points of execution, is not accidental.
It is a proposition which is demonstrated in this volume by
means of evidence derived principally from the books of this
philosophy — books in which the safe delivery and tradition
of it to the future was artistically contrived and triumphantly
achieved: — the books of a new ' school' in philosophy; books
in which the connection with the school is not always openly
asserted; books in which the true names of the authors are
not always found on the title-page; — the books of a school, too,
which was compelled to have recourse to translations in some
cases, for the safe delivery and tradition of its new learning.
The facts which lie on the surface of this question, which
are involved in the bare statement of it, are sufficient of them-
selves to justify and command this inquiry.
The fact that these two great branches of the philosophy
THE PROPOSITION. XIX
of observation and practice, both already virtually recognised
as that, — the one openly subordinating the physical forces of
nature to the wants of man, changing the face of the earth
under our eyes, leaving behind it, with its new magic, the
miracles of Oriental dreams and fables; — the other, under its
veil of wildness and spontaneity, under its thick-woven veil
of mirth and beauty, with its inducted precepts and dispersed
directions, insinuating itself into all our practice, winding
itself into every department of human affairs; speaking from
the legislator's lips, at the bar, from the pulpit, — putting in its
word every where, always at hand, always sufficient, con-
stituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible claims and in
the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the great prac-
tical, mysterious, but universally acknowledged, oracle of our
modern life; the fact that these two great branches of the
modern philosophy make their appearance in history at the
same moment, that they make their appearance in the same
company of men — in that same little courtly company of
Elizabethan Wits and Men of Letters that the revival of the
ancient learning brought out here — this is the fact that strikes
the eye at the first glance at this inquiry.
But that this is none other than that same little clique of
disappointed and defeated politicians who undertook to head
and organize a popular opposition against the government,
and were compelled to retreat from that enterprise, the best of
of them effecting their retreat with some difficulty, others
failing entirely to accomplish it, is the next notable fact which
the surface of the inquiry exhibits. That these two so illus-
trious branches of the modern learning were produced for the
ostensible purpose of illustrating and adorning the tyrannies
which the men, under whose countenance and protection they
are produced, were vainly attempting, or had vainly attempted
to set bounds to or overthrow, is a fact which might seem of
itself to suggest inquiry. When insurrections are suppressed,
when ' the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects are
overthrown, then fame, who is the posthumous sister of the
giants , — the sister of defeated giants springs up'; so a man
62
XX INTRODUCTION.
who had made some political experiments himself that were
not very successful, tells us.
The fact that the men under whose patronage and in whose
service ' Will the Jester ' first showed himself, were men
who were secretly endeavouring to make political capital of
that new and immense motive power, that not yet available,
and not very easily organised political power which was
already beginning to move the masses here then, and already
threatening, to the observant eye, with its portentous move-
ment, the foundations of tyranny, the fact, too, that these men
were understood to have made use of the stage unsuccessfully
as a means of immediate political effect, are facts which lie on
the surface of the history of these works, and unimportant as
it may seem to the superficial enquirer, it will be found to be
anything but irrelevant as this inquiry proceeds. The man
who is said to have contributed a thousand pounds towards
the purchase of the theatre and wardrobe and machinery, in
which these philosophical plays were first exhibited, was
obliged to stay away from the first appearance of Hamlet, in the
perfected excellence of the poetic philosophic design, in con-
sequence of being immured in the Tower at that time for an
attempt to overthrow the government. This was the ostensi-
ble patron and friend of the Poet; the partner of his treason
was the ostensible friend and patron of the Philosopher. So
nearly did these philosophic minds, that were ' not for an age
but for all time,' approach each other in this point. But the
protege and friend and well-nigh adoring admirer of the Poet,
was also the protege and friend and well-nigh adoring admirer
of the Philosopher. The fact that these two philosophies, in
this so close juxta-position, always in contact, playing always
into each other's hands, never once heard of each other, know
nothing of each other, is a fact which would seem at the first
blush to point to the secret of these c Know-Nothings,' who
are men of science in an age of popular ignorance, and there-
fore have a 'secret'; who are men of science in an age in
which the questions of science are ' forbidden questions,' and
are therefore of necessity ' Know-Nothings.'
THE PROPOSITION. XXI
As to Ben Jonson, and the evidence of his avowed ad-
miration for the author of these plays, from the point of
view here taken, it is sufficient to say in passing, that this
man, whose natural abilities sufficed to raise him from a
position hardly less mean and obscure than that of his great
rival, was so fortunate as to attract the attention of some of
the most illustrious personages of that time ; men whose obser-
vation of natures was quickened by their necessities ; men who
were compelled to employ ' living instruments ■ in the accom-
plishment of their designs; who were skilful in detecting the
qualities they had need of, and skilful in adapting means to
ends. This dramatist's connection with the stage of course
belongs to this history. His connection with the author of
these Plays, and with the player himself, are points not to be
overlooked. But the literary history of this age is not yet
fully developed. It is enough to say here, that he chanced
to be honored with the patronage of three of the most illus-
trious personages of the age in which he lived. He had three
patrons. One was Sir Walter Kaleigh, in whose service he
was; one was the Lord Bacon, whose well nigh idolatrous
admirer he appears also to have been ; the other was Shakspere,
to whose favor he appears to have owed so much. With
his passionate admiration of these last two, stopping only
' this side of idolatry ' in his admiration for them both, and
being under such deep personal obligations to them both,
why could he not have mentioned some day to the author of
the Advancement of Learning, the author of Hamlet — Hamlet
who also ( lacked advancement?' What more natural than to
suppose that these two philosophers, these men of a learning
so exactly equal, might have some sympathy with each other,
might like to meet each other. Till he has answered that
question, any evidence which he may have to produce in
apparent opposition to the conclusions here stated will not
be of the least value.
These are questions which any one might properly ask, who
had only glanced at the most superficial or easily accessible facts
in this case, and without any evidence from any other source to
^to
XXll INTRODUCTION.
stimulate the inquiry. These are facts which lie on the surface
of this history, which obtrude themselves on our notice, and
demand inquiry.
That which lies immediately below this surface, accessible
to any research worthy of the name is, that these two so new
extraordinary developments of the modern philosophy which
come to us without any superficially avowed connexion, which
come to us as branches of learning merely, do in fact meet and
unite in one stem, 'which has a quality of entireness and
continuance throughout/ even to the most delicate fibre of
them both, even to the ' roots' of their trunk, * and the strings
of those roots/ which trunk lies below the surface of that age,
buried, carefully buried, for reasons assigned; and that it is
the sap of this concealed trunk, this new trunk of sciences,
which makes both these branches so vigorous, which makes
the flowers and the fruit both so fine, and so unlike anything
that we have had from any other source in the way of literature
or art.
The question of the authorship of the great philosophic
poems which are the legacy of the Elizabethan Age to us,
is an incidental question in this inquiry, and is incidentally
treated here. The discovery of the authorship of these works
was the necessary incident to that more thorough inquiry into
their nature and design, of which the views contained in this
volume are the result. At a certain stage of this inquiry, —
in the later stages of it, — that discovery became inevitable.
The primary question here is one of universal immediate
practical concern and interest. The solution of this literary
problem, happens to be involved in it. It was the necessary
prescribed, pre-ordered incident of the reproduction and re-
integration of the Inductive Philosophy in its application to its
'principal* and 'noblest subjects/ its ' more chosen subjects/
The historical KEY to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition,
which formed the first book of this work as it was originally
prepared for the press, is not included in the present pub-
lication. It was the part of the work first written, and the
results of more recent research require to be incorporated in
THE PROPOSITION. XXlll
it, in order that it should represent adequately, in that parti-
cular aspect of it, the historical discovery which it is the object
of this work to produce. Moreover, the demonstration which
is contained in this volume appeared to constitute properly a
volume of itself.
Those who examine the subject from this ground, will find
the external collateral evidence, the ample historical confirma-
tion which is at hand, not necessary for the support of the
propositions advanced here, though it will, of course, be in-
quired for, when once this ground is made.
The embarrassing circumstances under which this great
system of scientific practice makes its appearance in history,
have not yet been taken into the account in our interpretation
of it. We have already the documents which contain the
theory and rule of the modern civilisation, which is the civil-
isation of science in our hands. We have in our hands also,
newly lit, newly trimmed, lustrous with the genius of our
own time, that very lamp with which we are instructed to
make this inquiry, that very light which we are told we must
bring to bear upon the obscurities of these documents, that very
light in which we are told, we must unroll them ; for they come
to us, as the interpreter takes pains to tell us, with an * infolded '
science in them. That light of ' times,3 that knowledge of the
conditions under which these works were published, which
is essential to the true interpretation of them, thanks to our
contemporary historians, is already in our hands. What we
need now is to explore the secrets of this philosophy with
it, — necessarily secrets at the time it was issued — what we
need now is to open these books of a new learning in it, and
read them by it.
In that part of the work above referred to, from which
some extracts are subjoined for the purpose of introducing
intelligibly the demonstration contained in this volume, it was
the position of the Elizabethan Men of Letters that was ex-
hibited, and the conditions which prescribed to the founders
of a new school in philosophy, which was none other than the
philosophy of practice, the form of their works and the conceal-
XXIV INTRODUCTION.
ment of their connection with them — conditions which made
the secret of an Association of ' Naturalists ' applying science
in that age to the noblest subjects of speculative inquiry, and
to the highest departments of practice, a life and death
secret. The physical impossibility of publishing at that time,
anything openly relating to the questions in which the weal
of men is most concerned, and which are the primary ques-
tions of the science of man's relief, the opposition which stood
at that time prepared to crush any enterprise proposing openly
for its end, the common interests of man as man, is the point
which it was the object of that part of the work to exhibit.
It was presented, not in the form of general statement merely,
but in those memorable particulars which the falsified, sup-
pressed, garbled history of the great founder of this school
betrays to us; not as it is exhibited in contemporary docu-
ments merely, but as it is carefully collected from these, and
from the traditions of ' the next ages/
That the suppressed Elizabethan Reformers and Innovators
were men so far in advance of their time, that they were
compelled to have recourse to literature for the purpose of
instituting a gradual encroachment on popular opinions, a
gradual encroachment on the prejudices, the ignorance, the
stupidity of the oppressed and suffering masses of the human
kind, and for the purpose of making over the practical de-
velopment of the higher parts of their science, to ages in
which the advancements they instituted had brought the
common mind within hearing of these higher truths; that
these were men whose aims were so opposed to the power that
was still predominant then, — though the ' wrestling ' that
would shake that predominance, was already on foot, — that
it became necessary for them to conceal their lives as well as
their works, — to veil the true worth and nobility of them, to
suffer those ends which they sought as means, means which
they subordinated to the noblest uses, to be regarded in their
own age as their ends; that they were compelled to play this
great game in secret, in their own time, referring themselves
to posthumous effects for the explanation of their designs;
THE PROPOSITION. XXV
postponing their honour to ages able to discover their worth ;
this is the proposition which is derived here from the works
in which the tradition of this learning is conveyed to us.
But in the part of this work referred to, from which the
ensuing extracts are made, it was the life, and not merely the
writings of the founders of this school which was produced in
evidence of this claim. It was the life in which these dis-
guised ulterior aims show themselves from the first on the
historic surface, in the form of great contemporaneous events,
events which have determined and shaped the course of the
world's history since then; it was the life in which these in-
tents show themselves too boldly on the surface, in which
they penetrate the artistic disguise, and betray themselves to
the antagonisms which were waiting to crush them; it was
the life which combined these antagonisms for its suppression;
it was the life and death of the projector and founder of the
liberties of the New World, and the obnoxious historian and
critic of the tyrannies of the Old, it was the life and death of
Sir Walter Kaleigh that was produced as the Historical Key
to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition. It was the Man of the
Globe Theatre, it was the Man in the Tower with his two
Hemispheres, it was the modern ' Hercules and his load too/
that made in the original design of it, the Frontispiece of
this volume.
'But stay I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced and made a constellation there.
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy Volume's light.
[' To draw no envy Shake-spear on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame.' — Ben Jonson.]
The machinery that was necessarily put in operation for the
purpose of conducting successfully, under those conditions, any
honourable or decent enterprise, presupposes a forethought
and skill, a faculty for dramatic arrangement and successful
plotting in historic materials, happily so remote from anything
XXvi INTRODUCTION.
which the exigencies of our time have ever suggested to us,
that we are not in a position to read at a glance the history
of such an age; the history which lies on the surface of such
an age when such men — men who are men — are at work in
it. These are the Elizabethan men that we have to interpret
here, because, though they rest from their labours, their works
do follow them — the Elizabethan Men of Letters; and we
must know what that title means before we can read them or
their works, before we can ' untie their spelV
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xxvii
CHAPTER II.
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH AND THE ELIZABETHAN
MEN OF LETTERS.
The times, in many cases, give great light to true interpretations.*
Advancement of Learning.
'On fair ground
I could beat forty of them.'
1 1 could myself
Take up a brace of the best of them, yea the two tribunes*
1 But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic,
And manhood is called foolery when it stands
Against a falling fabric' — Coriolanus.
fTVHE fact that the immemorial liberties of the English People,
-*- and that idea of human government and society which
they brought with them to this island, had been a second time
violently overborne and suppressed by a military chieftainship,
— one for which the unorganised popular resistance was no
match, — that the English People had been a second time
1 conquered ' — for that is the word which the Elizabethan
historian suggests — less than a hundred years before the
beginning of the Elizabethan Age, is a fact in history which
the great Elizabethan philosopher has contrived to send down
to us, along with his philosophical works, as the key to the
reading of them. It is a fact with which we are all now more
or less familiar, but it is one which the Elizabethan Poet and
Philosopher became acquainted with under circumstances
calculated to make a much more vivid impression on the sen-
sibilities than the most accurate and vivacious narratives and
expositions of it which our time can furnish us.
That this second conquest was unspeakably more degrading
than the first had been, inasmuch as it was the conquest of a
chartered, constitutional liberty, recovered and established in
xxviii INTRODUCTION.
acts that had made the English history, recovered on battle-fields
that were fresh, not in oral tradition only; inasmuch as it was
effected in violation of that which made the name of English-
men, that which made the universally recognised principle of the
national life; inasmuch, too, as it was an undivided conquest, the
conquest of the single will — the will of the ' one only man' —
not unchecked of commons only, unchecked by barons, un-
checked by the church, unchecked by council of any kind, the
pure arbitrary absolute will, the pure idiosyncrasy, the crowned
demon of the lawless, irrational will, unchained and armed
with the sword of the common might, and clothed with the
divinity of the common right; that this was a conquest un-
speakably more debasing than the conquest 'commonly so
called,'— this, which left no nobility,— which clasped its collar
in open day on the proudest Norman neck, and not on the Saxon
only, which left only one nation of slaves and bondmen— that this
was a subjugation— that this was a government which the English
nation had not before been familiar with, the men whose great
life-acts were performed under it did not lack the sensibility
and the judgment to perceive.
A more hopeless conquest than the Norman conquest had
been, it might also have seemed, regarded in some of the
aspects which it presented to the eye of the statesman then ;
for it was in the division of the former that the element of
freedom stole in, it was in the parliaments of that division
that the limitation of the feudal monarchy had begun.
But still more fatal was the aspect of it which its effects on
the national character were continually obtruding then on the
observant eye, — that debasing, deteriorating, demoralising
effect which such a government must needs exert on such a
nation, a nation of Englishmen, a nation with such memories.
The Poet who writes under this government, with an appre-
ciation of the subject quite as lively as that of any more recent
historian, speaks of * the face of men' as a ' motive'— a motive
power, a revolutionary force, which ought to be sufficient of
itself to raise, if need be, an armed opposition to such a govern-
ment, and sustain it, too, without the compulsion of an oath
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXIX
to reinforce it; at least, this is one of the three motives which
he produces in his conspiracy as motives that ought to suffice to
supply the power wanting to effect a change in such a govern-
ment.
I If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse, —
If these be motives weak, break of betimes^
There is no use in attempting a change where such motives
are weak.
1 Break off" betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed.'
That this political degradation, and its deteriorating and
corrupting influence on the national character, was that which
presented itself to the politician's eye at that time as the most
fatal aspect of the question, or as the thing most to be depre-
cated in the continuance of such a state of things, no one who
studies carefully the best writings of that time can doubt.
And it must be confessed, that this is an influence which shows
itself very palpably, not in the degrading hourly detail only
of which the noble mind is, in such circumstances, the suffer-
ing witness, and the secretly protesting suffering participator,
but in those large events which make the historic record.
The England of the Plantagenets, that sturdy England which
Henry the Seventh had to conquer, and not its pertinacious
choice of colours only, not its fixed determination to have the
choosing of the colour of its own 'Roses' merely, but its inve-
terate idea of the sanctity of ' lav? permeating all the masses
— that was a very different England from the England which
Henry the Seventh willed to his children ; it was a very dif-
ferent England, at least, from the England which Henry the
Eighth willed to his.
That some sparks of the old fire were not wanting, however,
— that the nation which had kept alive in the common mind
through so many generations, without the aid of books, the
memory of that ' ancestor' that ' made its laws,' was not after
all, perhaps, without a future — began to be evident about the
time that the history of ' that last king of England who was
XXX INTRODUCTION.
the ancestor' of the English Stuart, was dedicated by the
author of the Novum Organum to the Prince of Wales, after-
wards Charles L, not without a glance at these portents.
Circumstances tending to throw doubt upon the durability
of this institution — circumstances which seemed to portend
that this monstrous innovation was destined on the whole to
be a much shorter-lived one than the usurpation it had dis-
placed — had not been wanting, indeed, from the first, in
spite of those discouraging aspects of the question which were
more immediately urged upon the contemporary observer.
It was in the eleventh century ; it was in the middle of the
Bark Ages, that the Norman and his followers effected their
successful landing and lodgement here; it was in the later
years of the fifteenth century, — it was when the bell that
tolled through Europe for a century and a half the closing
hour of the Middle Ages, had already begun its peals, that
the Tudor ' came in by battle.'
That magnificent chain of events which begins in the
middle of the fifteenth century to rear the dividing line
between the Middle Ages and the Modern, had been slow
in reaching England with its convulsions: it had originated
on the continent. The great work of the restoration of the
learning of antiquity had been accomplished there: Italy,
Germany, and France had taken the lead in it by turns;
Spain had contributed to it. The scientific discoveries which
the genius of Modern Europe had already effected under that
stimulus, without waiting for the New Organum, had all
originated on the continent. The criticism on the institutions
which the decaying Roman Empire had given to its Northern
conquerors, — that criticism which necessarily accompanied
the revival of learning began there. Not yet recovered from
the disastrous wars of the fifteenth century, suffering from the
diabolical tyranny that had overtaken her at that fatal crisis,
England could make but a feeble response as yet to these
movements. They had been going on for a century before
the influence of them began to be visible here. But they
were at work here, notwithstanding : they were germinating
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXXI
and taking root here, in that frozen winter of a nation's
discontent; and when they did begin to show themselves on
the historic surface, — here in this ancient soil of freedom, —
in this natural retreat of it, from the extending, absorbing,
consolidating feudal tyrannies, — here in this ( little world
by itself — this nursery of the genius of the North — with
its chief races, with its union of races, its ' happy breed
of men/ as our Poet has it, who notes all these points, and
defines its position, regarding it, not with a narrow English
partiality, but looking at it on his Map of the World, which
he always carries with him, — looking at it from his * Globe,'
which has the Old World and the New on it, and the Past and
the Future, — ' a precious stone set in the silver sea,' he calls it,
— * in a great pool, a swan's nest : — when that seed of all ages
did at last show itself above the ground here, here in this
nursery of hope for man, it would be with quite another kind
of fruit on its boughs, from any that the continent had been
able to mature from it.
It was in the later years of the sixteenth century, in the
latter half of the reign of Elizabeth, that the Printing press,
and the revived Learning of Antiquity, and the Reformation,
and the discovery of America, the new revival of the genius
of the North in art and literature, and the Scientific Dis-
coveries which accompanied this movement on the continent,
began to combine their effects here ; and it was about that
time that the political horizon began to exhibit to the states-
man's eye, those portents which both the poet and the
philosopher of that time, have described with so much
iteration and amplitude. These new social elements did not
appear to promise in their combination here, stability to the
institutions which Henry the Seventh, and Henry the Eighth
had established in this island.
The genius of Elizabeth conspired with the anomaly of her
position to make her the steadfast patron and promoter of
these movements, — worthy grand-daughter of Henry the
Seventh as she was, and opposed on principle, as she was,
to the ultimatum to which they were visibly and stedfastly
XXXU INTRODUCTION.
tending; but, at the same time, her sagacity and prudence
enabled her to ward off the immediate result. She secured
her throne, — she was able to maintain, in the rocking of
those movements, her own political and spiritual supremacy,—
she made gain and capital for absolutism out of them, — the
inevitable reformation she herself assumed, and set bounds to:
whatever new freedom there was, was still the freedom of her
will; she could even secure the throne of her successor: it
was mischief for Charles I. that she was nursing. The con-
sequence of all this was — the Age of Elizabeth.
That was what this Queen meant it should be literally, and
that was what it was apparently. But it so happened, that her
will and humours on some great questions jumped with the
time, and her dire necessities compelled her to lead the
nation on its own track ; or else it would have been too late,
perhaps, for that exhibition of the monarchical institution, —
that revival of the heroic, and <mte-heroic ages, which her
reign exhibits, to come off here as it did at that time.
It is this that makes the point in this literary history. This
is the key that unlocks the secret of the Elizabethan Art of
Delivery and Tradition. Without any material resources to
sustain it — strong in the national sentiments, — strong in the
moral forces with which the past controls the present, —
strong in that natural abhorrence of change with which nature
protects her larger growths, — that principle which tyranny
can test so long with impunity — which it can test with
impunity, till it forgets that this also has in nature its limits, —
strono- in the absence of any combination of opposition, to the
young awakening England of that age, that now hollow image
of the past, that phantom of the military force that had been,
which seemed to be waiting only the first breath of the
popular will to dissolve it, was as yet an armed and terrific
reality; its iron was on every neck, its fetter was on every
step, and all the new forces, and world-grasping aims and
aspirations which that age was generating were held down
and cramped, and tortured in its chains, dashing their eagle
wings in vain against its iron limits.
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXX111
As yet all England cowered and crouched, in blind ser-
vility, at the foot of that terrible, but unrecognised embodi-
ment of its own power, armed out of its own armoury, with
the weapons that were turned against it. So long as any
yet extant national sentiment, or prejudice, was not yet
directly assailed — so long as that arbitrary power was yet
wise, or fortunate enough to withhold the blow which should
make the individual sense of outrage, or the feeling of a class
the common one — so long as those peaceful, social elements,
yet waited the spark that was wanting to unite them — so
long ' the laws of England' might be, indeed, at a FalstafF's
or a Nym's or a Bardolph's * commandment,' for the Poet has
but put into ' honest Jack's' mouth, a boast that worse men
than he, made good in his time — so long, the faith, the lives,
the liberties, the dearest earthly hopes, of England's proudest
subjects, her noblest, her bravest, her best, her most learned,
her most accomplished, her most inspired, might be at the mercy
of a woman's caprices, or the sport of a fool's sheer will and
obstinacy, or conditioned on some low-lived ' favorites ' whims.
So long: And how long was that? — who does not know how
long it was? — that was long enough for the whole Eliza-
bethan Age to happen in. In the reign of Elizabeth, and in
the reign of her successor, and longer still, that was the con-
dition of it — till its last act was finished — till its last word
was spoken and penned — till its last mute sign was made —
till all its celestial inspiration had returned to the God who
gave it — till all its Promethean clay was cold again.
This was the combination of conditions of which the Eliza-
bethan Literature was the result. The Elizabethan Men of
Letters, the organisers and chiefs of the modern civilization
were the result of it.
These were men in whom the genius of the North in its
happiest union of developments, under its choicest and most
favourable conditions of culture, in its yet fresh, untamed,
unbroken, northern vigour, was at last subjected to the stimulus
and provocation which the ancient learning brings with
it to the northern mind — to the now unimaginable stimulus
XXXIV INTRODUCTION.
which the revival of the ancient art and learning brought
with it to the mind of Europe in that age, — already secure,
in its own indigenous development, already advancing to its
own great maturity under the scholastic culture — the meagre
Scholastic, and the rich Romantic culture- of the Mediaeval
Era. The Elizabethan Men of Letters are men who found
in those new and dazzling stores of art and literature which
the movements of their age brought in all their freshly re-
stored perfection to them, only the summons to their own
slumbering intellectual activities, — fed with fires that old
Eastern and Southern civilizations never knew, nurtured in
the depths of a nature whose depths the northern antiquity
had made; they were men who found in the learning of
the South and the East — in the art and speculation that had
satisfied the classic antiquity — only the definition of their
own nobler want.
The first result of the revival of the ancient learning in this
island was, a report of its < defects/ The first result of that
revival here was a map- a universal map of the learning and
the arts which the conditions of man's life require — anew
map or globe of learning on which lands and worlds, un-
dreamed of by the ancients, are traced. ' A map or globe' on
which 'the principal and supreme sciences/ the sciences that
are essential to the human kind, are put down among « the
parts that lie fresh and waste, and not converted by the
industry of man.' The first result of the revival of learning
here was ' a plot' for the supply of these deficiencies.
The Elizabethan Men of Letters were men, in whom the
revival of ' the Wisdom of the Ancients,' which in its last
results, in its most select and boasted conservations had com-
bined in vain to save antiquity, found the genius of a happier
race, able to point out at a glance the defect in it; men who
saw with a glance at those old books what was the matter with
them; men prepared already to overlook from the new height
of criticism which this sturdy insular development of the
practical genius of the North created, the remains of that lost
civilization — the splendours rescued from the wreck of em-
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXXV
pires, — the wisdom which -had failed so fatally in practice that
it must needs cross from a lost world of learning to the
barbarian's new one, to find pupils — that it must needs cross
the gulf of a thousand years in learning — such work had it
made of it — ere it could revive, — the wisdom rescued from
the wreck it had piloted to ruin, not to enslave, and ensnare,
and doom new ages, and better races, with its futilities, but to
be hung up with its immortal beacon-light, to shew the track
of a new learning, to shew to the contrivers of the chart of
new ages, the breakers of that old ignorance, that old arrogant
wordy barren speculation. For these men were men who would
not fish up the chart of a drowned world for the purpose of
seeing how nearly they could conduct another under different
conditions of time and races to the same conclusion. And
they were men of a different turn of mind entirely from those
who lay themselves out on enterprises having that tendency.
The result of this English survey of learning was the sanc-
tioned and organised determination of the modern speculation
to those new fields which it has already occupied, and its
organised, but secret determination, to that end of a true
learning which the need of man, in its whole comprehension
in this theory of it, constitutes.
But the men with whom this proceeding originates, the
Elizabethan Men of Letters, were, in their own time, * the
Few.' They were the chosen men, not of an age only, but
of a race, ' the noblest that ever lived in the tide of times ;' men
enriched with the choicest culture of their age, when that
culture involved not the acquisition of the learning of the
ancients only, but the most intimate acquaintance with all
those recent and contemporaneous developments with which
its restoration on the Continent had been attended. Was it
strange that these men should find themselves without
sympathy in an age like that? — an age in which the masses
were still unlettered, callous with wrongs, manacled with blind
traditions, or swaying hither and thither, with the breath of a
common prejudice or passion, or swayed hither and thither
by the changeful humours and passions, or the conflicting
c2
xxxvi INTRODUCTION.
dogmas and conceits of their rulers. That is the reason why
the development of that age comes to us as a Literature. That
is why it is on the surface of it Elizabethan. That is the
reason why the leadership of the modern ages, when it was
already here in the persons of its chief interpreters and pro-
phets, could get as yet no recognition of its right to teach and
rule -could get as yet nothing but paper to print itself on,
nothing but a pen to hew its way with, nor that, without
death and danger dogging it at the heels, and threatening it,
at every turn, so that it could only wave, in mute gesticulation,
its signals to the future. It had to affect, in that time,
bookishness and wiry scholasticism. It had to put on sedu-
lously the harmless old monkish gown, or the jester's cap and
bells or any kind of a tatterdemalion robe that would hide,
from head to heel, the waving of its purple. ' Motleys the only
wear,' whispers the philosopher, peering through his privi-
leged garb for a moment. King Charles II. had not more
to do in reserving himself in an evil time, and getting safely
over to the year of his dominion.
Letters were the only ships that could pass those seas. But
it makes a new style in literature, when such men as these,
excluded from their natural sphere of activity, get driven into
books, cornered into paragraphs, and compelled to unpack
their hearts in letters. There is a new tone to the words
spoken under such compression. It is a tone that the school
and the cloister never rang with, — it is one that the fancy
dealers in letters are not able to deal in. They are such words
as Caesar speaks, when he puts his legions in battle array, —
they are such words as were heard at Salamis one morning,
when the breeze began to stiffen in the bay; and though they
be many, never so many, and though they be musical, as is
Apollo's lute, that Lacedemonian ring is in each one of them.
There is great business to be done in them, and their haste
looks through their eyes. In the sighing of the lover, in the
jest of the fool, in the raving of the madman, and not m
Horatio's philosophy only, you hear it.
The founders of the new science of nature and practice were
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXXVll
men unspeakably too far above and beyond their time, to take
its bone and muscle with them. There was no language in
which their doctrines could have been openly conveyed to an
English public at that time without fatal misconception. The
truth, which was to them arrayed with the force of a universal
obligation, — the truth, which was to them religion, would
have been, of course, in an age in which a single, narrow-
minded, prejudiced Englishwoman's opinions were accepted as
the ultimate rule of faith and practice, ( flat atheism.' What
was with them loyalty to the supremacy of reason and con-
science, would have been in their time madness and rebellion,
and the majority would have started at it in amazement; and all
men would have joined hands, in the name of truth and justice,
to suppress it. The only thing that could be done in such
circumstances was, to translate their doctrine into the language
of their time. They must take the current terms — the vague
popular terms — as they found them, and restrict and enlarge
them, and inform them with their new meanings, with a hint
to • men of understanding ' as to the sense in which they use
them. That is the key to the language in which their books
for the future were written. .
But who supposes that these men were so wholly super-
human, so devoid of mortal affections and passions, so made
up of ' dry light,' that they could retreat, with all those regal
faculties, from the natural sphere of their activity to the
scholar's cell, to make themselves over in books to a future in
which their mortal natures could have no share, — a future
which could not begin till all the breathers of their world
were dead? Who supposes that the ' staff' of Prospero was
the first choice of these chiefs? — these l heads of the State/
appointed of nature to the Cure of the Common- Weal.
The leading minds of that age are not minds which owed
their intellectual superiority to a disproportionate development
of certain intellectual tendencies, or to a dwarfed or inferior
endowment of those natural affections and personal qualifica-
tions which tend to limit men to the sphere of their particular
sensuous existence. The mind of this school is the represen-
XXXVlli INTRODUCTION.
tative mind, and all men recognise it as that, because, in its
products, that nature which is in all men, which philosophy
had, till then, scorned to recognise, which the abstractionists
had missed in their abstractions, — that nature of will, and
sense, and passion, and inanity, is brought out in its true his-
torical proportions, not as it exists in books, not as it exists in
speech, but as it exists in the actual human life. It is the
mind in which this historical principle, this motivity which is
not reason, is brought in contact with the opposing and con-
trolling element as it had not been before. In all its earth-
born Titanic strength and fulness, it is dragged up from its
secret lurking-places, and confronted with its celestial an-
tagonist. In all its self-contradiction and cowering unreason,
it is set face to face with its celestial umpire, and subjected to
her unrelenting criticism. There are depths in this microcosm
which this torch only has entered, silences which this speaker
only has broken, cries which he only knows how to articulate.
* The soundest disclosing and expounding of men is by their
natures and ends,1 so the one who is best qualified to give us
information on this question tells us, — by their natures and
ends; 'the weaker sort by their natures, and the wisest by
their ends ' ; and ' the distance ' of this wisest sort * from the
ends to which they aspire,' is that ' from which one may take
measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires.'
The first end which these Elizabethan Men of Letters
grasped at, the thing which they pursued with all the in-
tensity and concentration of a master passion, was — power,
political power. They wanted to rule their own time, and
not the future only. ' You are hurt, because you do not
reign,' is the inuendo which they permit us to apply to them
as the key to their proceedings. ' Such men as this are never
at heart's ease,' Caesar remarks in confidence to a friend,
' whiles they behold a greater than themselves.' ' Come on
my right hand, for this ear is deaf,' he adds, * and tell me
truly what thou think'st of him.' These are the kind of men
that seek instinctively ' predominance,' not in a clique or
neighbourhood only, — they are not content with a domestic
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. XXXIX
reflection of their image, they seek to stamp it on the state
and on the woild. These Elizabethan Men of Letters were
men who sought from the first, with inveterate determination,
to rule their own time, and they never gave up that point
entirely. In one way or another, directly or indirectly, they
were determined to make their influence felt in that age, in
spite of the want of encouragement which the conditions of
that time offered to such an enterprise. But they sought that
end not instinctively only, but with the stedfastness of a
rational, scientifically enlightened purpose. It was an enter-
prise in which the intense motivity of that new and so f con-
spicuous' development of the particular and private nature,
which lies at the root of such a genius, was sustained by the
determination of that not less superior development of the
nobler nature in man, by the motivity of the intellect, by the
sentiment which waits on that, by the motive of ' the larger
whole/ which is, in this science of it, * the worthier.'
We do not need to apply the key of times to those indirectly
historical remains in which the real history, the life and soul
of a time, is always best found, and in which the history of
such a time, if written at all, must necessarily be inclosed ; we
do not need to unlock these works to perceive the indications
of suppressed movements in that age, in which the most illus-
trious men of the age were primarily concerned, the history of
which has not yet fully transpired. We do not need to find
the key to the cipher in which the history of that time is
written, to perceive that there was to have been a change in
the government here at one time, very different from the one
which afterwards occurred, if the original plans of these men
had succeeded. It is not the Plays only that are full of that
frustrated enterprise.
These were the kind of men who are not easily baffled.
They changed their tactics, but not their ends; and the enter-
prises which were conducted with so much secresy under the
surveillance of the Tudor, began already to crown themselves as
certainties, and compare their \ olives of endless age' with the
J spent tombs of brass' and ' tyrant's crests,' at that sure pro-
xl INTRODUCTION.
spect which a change of dynasties at that moment seemed to
open, — at least, to men who were in a position then to esti-
mate its consequences.
That this, at all events, was a state of things that was
not going to endure, became palpable about that time to
the philosophic mind. The transition from the rule of a
sovereign who was mistress of t the situation/ who un-
derstood that it was a popular power which she was wield-
ing— the transition from the rule of a Queen instructed
in the policy of a tyranny, inducted by nature into its arts,
to the policy of that monarch who had succeeded to her
throne, and whose ' CREST ' began to be reared here then in
the face of the insulted reviving English nationality, — this
transition appeared upon the whole, upon calmer reflection, at
least to the more patient minds of that age, all that could rea-
sonably at that time be asked for. No better instrument for
stimulating and strengthening the growing popular sentiment,
and rousing the latent spirit of the nation, could have been
desired by the Elizabethan politicians at that crisis, ' for the
great labour was with the people' — that uninstructed power,
which makes the sure basis of tyrannies — that power which
Mark Antony takes with him so easily — the ignorant, tyran-
nical, humour-led masses — the masses that still roar their
Elizabethan stupidities from the immortal groups of Coriolanus
and Julius Caesar. "We ourselves have not yet overtaken the
chief minds of this age; and the gulf that separated them from
those overpowering numbers in their own time, to whose
edicts they were compelled to pay an external submission, was
broad indeed. The difficulty of establishing an understanding
with this power was the difficulty. They wanted that * pulpit*
from which Brutus and Mark Antony swayed it by turns so
easily — that pulpit from which Mark Antony showed it
Caesar's mantle. They wanted some organ of communication
with these so potent and resistless rulers — some ' chair ' from
which they could repeat to them in their own tongue the story
of their lost institutions, and revive in them the memory of
'the kings their ancestors' —-some school in which they could
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xli
collect them and instruct them in the scientific doctrine of the
commons, the doctrine of the common-weal and its divine su-
premacy. They wanted a school in which they could tell them
stories — stories of various kinds — such stories as they loved
best to hear — Midsummer stories, or Winter's tales, and stories
of their own battle-fields — they wanted a school in which they
could teach the common people History (and not English
history only), with illustrations, large as life, and a magic
lantern to aid them, — ' visible history.'
But to wait till these slow methods had taken effect, would
be, perhaps, to wait, not merely till their estate in the earth was
done, but till the mischief they wished to avert was accom-
plished. And thus it was, that the proposal ' to go the beaten
track of getting arms into their hands under colour of Csesar's
designs, and because the people understood them not? came to
be considered. To permit the new dynasty to come in with-
out making any terms with it, without insisting upon a defini-
tion of that indefinite power which the Tudors had wielded
with impunity, and without challenge, would be to make
needless work for the future, and to ignore criminally the
responsibilities of their own position, so at least some
English statesmen of that time, fatally for their favour
with the new monarch, were known to have thought. * To
proceed by process,' to check by gradual constitutional mea-
sures that overgrown and monstrous power in the state, was
the project which these statesmen had most at heart. But
that was a movement which required a firm and enlightened
popular support. Charters and statutes were dead letters till
that could be had. It was fatal to attempt it till that was
secured. Failing in that popular support, if the statesman
who had attempted that movement, if the illustrious chief,
and chief man of his time, who headed it, did secretly
meditate other means for accomplishing the same end —
which was to limit the prerogative — such means as the
time offered, and if the evidence which was wanting on
his trial had been produced in proof of it, who that knows
what that crisis was would undertake to convict him on
xlii INTRODUCTION.
it now? He was arrested on suspicion. He was a
man who had undertaken to set bounds to the absolute
will of the monarch, and therefore he was a dangerous
man.* The charges that were made against him on that
shameless trial were indignantly repelled ? ' Do you mix
me up with these spiders?' (alluding, perhaps, more particu-
larly to the Jesuit associated with him in this charge). ' Do
you think I am a Jack Cade or a Kobin Hood ?' he said. But
though the evidence on this trial is not only in itself illegal,
and by confession perjured, but the report of it comes to us with
a falsehood on the face of it, and is therefore not to be taken
without criticism ; that there was a movement of some kind medi-
tated about that time, by persons occupying chief places of trust
and responsibility in the nation — a movement not favourable
to the continuance of ' the standing departments' in the precise
form in which they then stood — that the project of an admi-
nistrative reform had not, at least, been wholly laid aside — that
there was something which did not fully come out on that trial,
any one who looks at this report of it will be apt to infer.
It was a project which had not yet proceeded to any overt
act; there was no legal evidence of its existence produced on
the trial; but suppose there were here, then, already, men
' who loved the fundamental part of state/ more than in such
a crisis ' they doubted the change of it' — men ' who preferred a
noble life before a long' — men, too, ' who were more discreet1
than they were 'fearful? who thought it good practice to
* jump a body with a dangerous medicine that was sure of
death without it;' suppose there was a movement of that kind
arrested here then, and the evidence of it were produced,
what Englishman, or who that boasts the English lineage
to-day, can have a word to say about it? Who had a better
right than those men themselves, those statesmen, those heroes,
who had waked and watched for their country's weal so long,
* He (Sir Walter Kaleigh), together with the Lord Chobham, Sir
J. Fortescue, and others, would have obliged the king to articles before
he was admitted to the throne, and thought the number of his country-
men should be limited. — Osborne's Memorials of King James.
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xliii
who had fought her battles on land and sea, and planned
them too, not in the tented field and on the rocking deck only,
but in the more ? deadly breach ' of civil office, whose scaling-
ladders had entered even the tyrant's council chamber, — who
had a better right than those men themselves to say whether
they would be governed by a government of laws, or by the
will of the most despicable ' one-only-man power/ armed with
sword and lash, that ever a nation of Oriental slaves in their
political imbecility cowered under? Who were better qualified
than those men themselves, instructed in detail in all the peril
of that crisis, — men who had comprehended and weighed with
a judgment which has left no successor to its seat, all the con-
flicting considerations and claims which that crisis brought with
it, — who better qualified than these to decide on the mea-
sures by which the hideous nuisances of that time should
be abated; by which that axe, that sword, that rack, that
stake, and all those burglar's tools, and highwayman's weapons,
should be taken out of the hands of the mad licentious
crew with which an evil time had armed them against the
common- weal — those weapons of lawless power, which the
people had vainly, for want of leaders, refused before-hand
to put into their hands. Who better qualified than these
natural chiefs and elected leaders of the nation, to decide on
the dangerous measures for suppressing the innovation, which
the Tudor and his descendants had accomplished in that
ancient sovereignty of laws, which was the sovereignty of
this people, which even the Norman and the Plantagenet,
had been taught to acknowledge? Who better qualified than
they to call to an account—' the thief,' the ' cut-purse of the
empire and the rule,' who ' found the precious diadem on a
shelf, and stole and put it in his pocket' ?
[' Shall the blessed Sun of Heaven prove a micher, and eat
blackberries?' A question not to be asked ! Shall the blessed
' Son of England ' prove a thief, and take purses? A question
to be asked. ■ The poor abuses of the time want countenance.'
Lear. Take that from me, my friend, who have the power to
seal the accuser's lips.]
xliv INTRODUCTION.
Who better qualified could be found to head the dangerous
enterprise for the deliverance of England from that shame, than
the chief in whom her Alfred arose again to break from her
neck a baser than the Danish yoke, to restore her kingdom
and found her new empire, to give her domains, that the sun
never sets on, — her Poet, her Philosopher, her Soldier, her
Legislator, the builder of her Empire of the Sea, her founder
of new ' States.'
But then, of course, it is only by the rarest conjunction of
circumstances, that the movements and plans which such a
state of things gives rise to, can get any other than the most
opprobrious name and place in history. Success is their only
certificate of legitimacy. To attempt to overthrow a govern-
ment still so strongly planted in the endurance and passivity
of the people, might seem, perhaps, to some minds in these
circumstances, a hopeless, and, therefore, a criminal under-
taking.
' That opportunity which then they had to take from us, to
resume, we have again/ might well have seemed a sufficient
plea, so it could have been made good. But it is not strange
that some few, even then, should find it difficult to believe
that the national ruin was yet so entire, that the ashes of the
ancient nobility and commons of England were yet so cold,
as that a system of despotism like that which was exercised
here then, could be permanently and securely fastened over
them. It is not strange that it should seem to these impossible
that there should not be enough of that old English spirit which,
only a hundred years before, had ranged the people in armed
thousands, in defence of LAW, against absolutism, enough of
it, at least, to welcome and sustain the overthrow of tyranny,
when once it should present itself as a fact accomplished,
instead of appealing beforehand to a courage, which so many
instances of vain and disastrous resistance had at last subdued,
and to a spirit which seemed reduced at last, to the mere
quality of the master's will.
That was a narrow dominion apparently to which King
James consigned his great rival in the arts of government,
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xlv
but that rival of his contrived to rear a ' crest ' there which
will outlast 'the tyrants/ and 'look fresh still' when tombs that
artists were at work on then ' are spent/ 'And when a soldier
was his theme, my name — my name [nomme de plume] was
nor far off? King James forgot how many weapons this man
carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that
that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath
another. He did not know what strategical operations the
scholar, who was ' an old soldier * and a politician also, was
capable of conducting under such conditions. Those were
narrow quarters for ' the Shepherd of the Ocean/ for the hero
of the two hemispheres, to occupy so long; but it proved no
bad retreat for the chief of this movement, as he managed it.
It was in that school of Elizabethan statesmanship which had
its centre in the Tower, that many a scholarly English gentle-
man came forth prepared to play his part in the political
movements that succeeded. It was out of that school of states-
manship that John Hampden came, accomplished for his part
in them.
The papers that the chief of the Protestant cause prepared
in that literary retreat to which the Monarch had consigned
him, by means of those secret channels of communication
among the better minds which he had established in the reign
of Elizabeth, became the secret manual of the revolutionary
chiefs; they made the first blast of the trumpet that summoned
at last the nation to its feet. ' The famous Mr. Hamden ' (says
an author, who writes in those 'next ages' in which so many
traditions of this time are still rife) ' a little before the civil
wars was at the charge of transcribing three thousand four
hundred and fifty-two sheets of Sir Walter Kaleigh's MSS.,
as the amanuensis himself told me, who had his close chamber,
his fire and candle, with an attendant to deliver him the originals
and take his copies as fast as he could write them.1 That of itself
is a pretty little glimpse of the kind of machinery which the
Elizabethan literature required for its \ delivery and tradition '
at the time, or near the times, in which it was produced. That
is a view of ' an Interior ' ' before the civil wars.1 It was John
xlvi INTRODUCTION.
Milton who concluded, on looking over, a long time afterwards,
one of the unpublished papers of this statesman, that it was
his duty to give it to the public. * Having had,' he says,
'the MS. of this treatise ['The Cabinet Council'] written by
Sir Walter Ealeigh, many years in my hands, and finding it
lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading
thereof, I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the
work of so eminent an author from the public; it being both
answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as
far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy
by a learned man at his death, who had collected several
such pieces.'
' A kind of injury? — That is the thought which would
naturally take possession of any mind, charged with the re-
sponsibility of keeping back for years this man's writings,
especially his choicest ones — papers that could not be pub-
lished then on account of the subject, or that came out with the
leaves uncut, labouring with the restrictions which the press
opposed then to the issues of such a mind.
That great result which the chief minds of the Modern
Ages, under the influence of the new culture, in that secret
association of them were able to achieve, that new and all
comprehending science of life and practice which they made it
their business to perfect and transmit, could not, indeed, as yet
be communicated directly to the many. The scientific doctrines
of the new time were necessarily limited in that age to the
few. But another movement corresponding to that, simulta-
neous in its origin, related to it in its source, was also in pro-
gress here then, proceeding hand in hand with this, playing
its game for it, opening the way to its future triumph. This
was that movement of the new time, — this was that conse-
quence, not of the revival of learning only, but of the growth
of the northern mind which touched everywhere and directly
the springs of government, and made 4 bold power look pale,'
for this was the movement in ' the many.'
This was the movement which had already convulsed the
continent ; this was the movement of which Raleigh was from
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xlvii
the first the soldier; this was 'the cause' of which he
became the chief. It was as a youth of seventeen, bursting
from those old fastnesses of the Middle Ages that could not
hold him any longer, shaking off the films of Aristotle and
his commentators, that he girded on his sword for the great
world-battle that was raging already in Europe then. It was
into the thickest of it, that his first step plunged him.
For he was one of that company of a hundred English gen-
tlemen who were waiting but for the first word of permission
from Elizabeth to go as volunteers to the aid of the Huguenots.
This was the movement which had at last reached England.
And like these other continental events which were so slow
in taking effect in England when it did begin to unfold here
at last ; there was a taste of ' the island ' in it, in this also.
It was not on the continent only, that Kaleigh and other
English statesmen were disposed to sustain this movement.
It was not possible as yet to bring the common mind openly
to the heights of those great doctrines of life and practice
which the Wisdom of the Moderns also embodies, but the
new teachers of that age knew how to appreciate, as the man
of science only can fully appreciate, the worth of those
motives that were then beginning to agitate so portentously
so large a portion of the English people. The Elizabethan
politicians nourished and patronised in secret that growing
faction. The scientific politician hailed with secret delight,
hailed as the partner of his own enterprise, that new element
of political power which the changing time began to reveal
here then, that power which was already beginning to unclasp
on the necks of the masses, the collar of the absolute will —
that was already proclaiming, in the stifled undertones of ' that
greater part which carries it,' another supremacy. They gave
in secret the right hand of a joyful fellowship to it. At
home and abroad the great soldier and statesman, who was the
first founder of the Modern Science, headed that faction. He
fought its battles by land and sea ; he opened the New World
to it, and sent it there to work out its problem.
It was the first stage of an advancement that would not
xlviii INTRODUCTION.
rest till it found its true consummation. That infinity which
was speaking in its confused tones, as with the voice of many-
waters, was resolved into music and triumphal marches in the
ear of the Interpreter. It gave token that the nobler nature
had not died out under the rod of tyranny ; it gave token
of the earnestness that would not be appeased until the ends
that were declared in it were found.
But at the same time, this was a power which the wise men
of that age were far from being willing to let loose upon
society then in that stage of its development; very far were
they from being willing to put the reins into its hands. To
balance the dangers that were threatening the world at that
crisis was always the problem. It was a very narrow line that
the policy which was to save the state had to keep to then.
There were evils on both sides. But to the scientific mind there
appeared to be a choice in them. The measure on one side
had been taken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses
on the other no man had sounded. l The danger of stirring
things,' — the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that
too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were
always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining
and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned to-
wards the monarchy, the monarchy that was, rather than the
anarchy that was threatening them. The will of the one
rather than the wills of the many, the head of the one rather
than 'the many-headed/ To effect the change which the time
required without ' wrenching all' — without undoing the work
of ages — without setting at large from the restraints of
reverence and custom the chained tiger of an unenlightened
popular will, this was the problem. The wisest statesmen, the
most judicious that the world has ever known were here, with
their new science, weighing in exactest scales those issues.
We must not quarrel with their concessions to tyranny on the
one hand, nor with their determination to effect changes on
the other, until we are able to command entirely the position
they occupied, and the opposing dangers they had always to
consider. We must not judge them till they have had their
THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS. xlix
hearing. What freedom and what hope there is of it upon the
earth to-day, is the legacy of their perseverance and endurance.
They experienced many defeats. The hopes of youth, the
hopes of manhood in turn grew cold. That the ( glorious day'
which * flattered the mountain tops' of their immortal morning
with its sovereign eye would never shine on them; that their
own, with all its unimagined splendours obscured so long,
would go down hid in those same 'base clouds,' that for
them the consummation was to ' peep about to find themselves
dishonourable graves ' was the conviction under which their
later tasks were achieved. It did not abate their ardour. They
did not strain one nerve the less for that.
Driven from one field, they showed themselves in another.
Driven from the open field, they fought in secret. ' I will
bandy with thee in faction, I will o'errun thee with policy, I
will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways/ the Jester who
brought their challenge said. The Elizabethan England re-
jected the Elizabethan Man. She would have none of his
meddling with her affairs. She sent him to the Tower, and
to the block, if ever she caught him meddling with them.
She buried him alive in the heart of his time. She took the
seals of office, she took the sword, from his hands and put a
pen in it. She would have of him a Man of Letters. And a
Man of Letters he became. A Man of Runes. He invented
new letters in his need, letters that would go farther than the
sword, that carried more execution in them than the great
seal. Banished from the state in that isle to which he
was banished, he found not the base-born Caliban only, to
instruct, and train, and subdue to his ends, but an Ariel,
an imprisoned Ariel, waiting to be released, able to conduct
his masques, able to put his girdles round the earth, and to
* perform and point ' to his Tempest.
1 Go bring the rabble, o'er whom I give thee power, here
to this place,' was the New Magician's word.*
* Here is another version of it.
'When Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper, lived, every room in
Gorhambury was served with a pipe of water from the pond distant
d
1 INTRODUCTION.
This is not the place for the particulars of this history or
for the barest outline of them. They make a volume of
themselves. But this glimpse of the circumstances under
which the works were composed which it is the object of this
volume to open, appeared at the last moment to be required,
in the absence of the Historical Key which the proper de-
velopment of them makes, to that Art of Delivery and Tra-
dition by means of which the secrets of the Elizabethan Age
have been conveyed to us.
about a mile off. In the lifetime of Mr. Anthony Bacon the water
ceased, and his lordship coming to the inheritance could not recover
the water without infinite charge. When he was Lord Chancellor, he
built Verulam House close by the pond yard, for a place of privacy
when he was called upon to dispatch any urgent business. And being
asked why he built there, his lordship answered that, seeing he could
not carry the water to his House, he would carry his House to the
water.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE.
[EXTRACTS FROM THE LIFE OF RALEIGH.]
CHAPTER III.
RALEIGH'S SCHOOL.
* Our court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living Art.'
' What is the end of study ? let me know.'
Love's Labour's Lost.
"OUT it was not on the New World wholly, that this man
-*-* of many toils could afford to lavish the revenues which
the Queen's favour brought him. It was not to that enter-
prise alone that he was willing to dedicate the eclat and
influence of his rising name. There was work at home which
concerned him more nearly, not less deeply, to which that
new influence was made at once subservient; and in that
there were enemies to be encountered more formidable than the
Spaniard on his own deck, or on his own coast, with all his
war-weapons and defences. It was an enemy which required
a strategy more subtle than any which the exigencies of camp
and field had called for.
The fact that this hero throughout all his great public
career — so full of all kinds of excitement and action — enough,
one would say, to absorb the energies of a mind of any or-
dinary human capacity — that this soldier whose name had
become, on the Spanish coasts, what the name of ' Cceur de
Lion1 was in the Saracen nursery, that this foreign adventurer
who had a fleet of twenty-three ships sailing at one time on
his errands — this legislator, for he sat in Parliament as repre-
sentative of his native shire — this magnificent courtier, who
had raised himself, without any vantage-ground at all, from a
position wholly obscure, by his personal achievements and
merits, to a place in the social ranks so exalted; to a place in
c!2
lii INTRODUCTION.
the state so near that which was chief and absolute — the fact
that this many-sided man of deeds, was all the time a literary
man, not a scholar merely, but himself an Originator, a
Teacher, the Founder of a School — this is the explanatory
point in this history — this is the point in it which throws
light on all the rest of it, and imparts to it its true dignity.
For he was not a mere blind historical agent, driven by
fierce instincts, intending only their own narrow ends, with-
out any faculty of comprehensive survey and choice of inten-
tions ; impelled by thirst of adventure, or thirst of power, or
thirst of gold, to the execution of his part in the great human
struggle for conservation and advancement; working like
other useful agencies in the Providential Scheme — like ' the
stormy wind fulfilling his pleasure/
There is, indeed, no lack of the instinctive element in
this heroic 'composition;' there is no stronger and more
various and complete development of it. That 'lumen
siccum? which his great contemporary is so fond of referring
to in his philosophy, that dry light which is so apt, he tells us,
in most men's minds, to get ' drenched' a little sometimes, in
* the humours and affections/ and distorted and refracted in
their mediums, did not always, perhaps, in its practical deter-
minations, escape from that accident even in the philosopher's
own; but in this stormy, world-hero, there was a latent
volcano of will and passion; there was, in his constitution, ' a
complexion' which might even seem to the bystanders to
threaten at times, by its 'overgrowth,' the 'very pales and
forts of reason' ; but the intellect was, notwithstanding, in its
due proportion in him; and it was the majestic intellect that
triumphed in the end. It was the large and manly compre-
hension, * the large discourse looking before and after,' it was
the overseeing and active principle of * the larger whole,' that
predominated and had the steering of his course. It is the
common human form which shines out in him and makes that
manly demonstration, which commands our common respect, in
spite of those particular defects and o'ergrowths which are apt
to mar its outline in the best historical types and patterns of it,
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. Hii
we have been able to get as yet. It was the intellect, and the
sense which belongs to that in its integrity — it was the truth
and the feeling of its obligation, which was sovereign with
him. For this is a man who appears to have been occupied
with the care of the common-weal more than with anything
else; and that, too, under great disadvantages and impedi-
ments, and when there was no honour in caring for it truly,
but that kind of honour which he had so much of; for this was
the time precisely which the poet speaks of in that play in
which he tells us that the end of playing is ' to give to the
very age and body of the time its form and pressure.1 This
was the time when ' virtue of vice must pardon beg, and curb
and beck for leave to do it good.' It was the relief of man's
estate, or the Creator's glory, that he busied himself about;
that was the end of his ends; or if not, then was he, indeed,
no hero at all. For it was the doctrine of his own school, and
' the first human principle' taught in it, that men who act
without reference to that distinctly human aim, without that
manly consideration and foW-liness of purpose, can lay no
claim either to divine or human honours; that they are not, in
fact, men, but failures; specimens of an unsuccessful attempt
in nature, at an advancement ; or, as his great contemporayr
states it more clearly, t only a nobler kind of vermin.'
During all the vicissitudes of his long and eventful public
life, Raleigh was still persistently a scholar. He carried his
"books — his ' trunk of books' with him in all his adventurous
voyages ; and they were his * companions ' in the toil and
excitement of his campaigns on land. He studied them in
the ocean-storm ; he studied them in his tent, as Brutus studied
in his. He studied them year after year, in the dim light which
pierced the deep embrasure of those walls with which tyranny
had thought to shut in at last his world-grasping energies.
He had had some chance to study ' men and manners ' in
that strange and various life of his, and he did not lack the
skill to make the most of it; but he was not content with
that narrow, one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to
which his own individual personal experience, however varied,
liv INTRODUCTION.
must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater
varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know
the history of it; he would ' delve it to the root/ He would
know how that particular form of it, which he found on the
surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He
would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning,
or in that stage of its development in which the historic light
first finds it. He was a man who wished even to know what
it had been in the Assyrian, in the Phenician, in the Hebrew, in
the Egyptian-, he would see what it had been in the Greek, and
in the Roman. He was, indeed, one of that clique of Eliza-
bethan Naturalists, who thought that there was no more
curious thing in nature ; and instead of taking a Jack Cade
view of the subject, and inferring that an adequate know-
ledge of it comes by nature, as reading and writing do in
that worthy's theory of education, it was the private opinion of
this school, that there was no department of learning which a
scholar could turn his attention to, that required a more severe
and thorough study and experiment, and none that a man of
a truly scientific turn of mind would find better worth his
leisure. And the study of antiquity had not yet come to be
then what it is now ; at least, with men of this stamp. Such
men did not study it to discipline their minds, or to get a
classic finish to their style. The books that such a man as
this could take the trouble to carry about with him on such
errands as those that he travelled on, were books that had in
them, for the eager eyes that then o'er-ran them, the world's
i news ' — the world's story. They were full of the fresh living
data of his conclusions. They were notes that the master
minds of all the ages had made for him ; invaluable aid and
sympathy they had contrived to send to him. The man who
had been arrested in his career, more ignominiously than the
magnificent Tully had been in his, — in a career, too, a thou-
sand times more noble, — by a Caesar, .indeed, but such a
Caesar; — the man who had sat for years with the execu-
tioner's block in his yard, waiting only for a scratch of the
royal pen, to bring down upon him that same edge which the
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lv
poor Cicero, with all his truckling, must feel at last, — such a
one would look over the old philosopher's papers with an ap-
prehension of their meaning, somewhat more lively than that
of the boy who reads them for a prize, or to get, perhaps,
some classic elegancies transfused into his mind.
During the ten years which intervene between the date of
Raleigh's first departure for the Continent and that of his be-
ginning favour at home, already he had found means for ekeing
out and perfecting that liberal education which Oxford had only
begun for him, so that it was as a man of rarest literary accom-
plishments that he made his brilliant debut at the English Court,
where the new Elizabethan Age of Letters was just then
beginning.
He became at once the centre of that little circle of high-
born wits and poets, the elder wits and poets of the Elizabethan
age, that were then in their meridian there. Sir Philip Sidney
Thomas Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget, Edward Earl of
Oxford, and some others, are included in the cotemporary list
of this courtly company, whose doings are somewhat mys-
teriously adverted to by a critic, who refers to the condition of
1 the Art of Poesy ' at that time. ' The gentleman who wrote
the late Shepherds' Calendar' was beginning then to attract
considerable attention in this literary aristocracy.
The brave, bold genins of Raleigh flashed new life into that
little nucleus of the Elizabethan development. The new
* Round Table] which that newly-beginning age of chivalry,
with its new weapons and devices, and its new and more
heroic adventure had created, was not yet ' full' till he came
in. The Round Table grew rounder with this knight's pre-
sence. Over those dainty stores of the classic ages, over those
quaint memorials of the elder chivalry, that were spread out
on it, over the dead letter of the past, the brave Atlantic breeze
came in, the breath of the great future blew, when the turn
came for this knight's adventure; whether opened in the prose
of its statistics, or set to its native music in the mystic melodies
of the bard who was there to sing it. The Round Table grew
spheral, as he sat talking by it; the Round Table dissolved, as
M INTRODUCTION.
he brought forth his lore, and unrolled his maps upon it; and
instead of it, — with all its fresh yet living interests, tracked
out by land and sea, with the great battle-ground of the future
outlined on it, — revolved the round world. ' Universality' was
still the motto of these Paladins; but 'the Globe' — the
Globe, with its two hemispheres, became henceforth their
device.
The promotion of Ealeigh at Court was all that was needed
to make him the centre and organiser of that new intellectual
movement which was then just beginning there. He addressed
himself to the task as if he had been a man of literary tastes and
occupations merely, or as if that particular crisis had been a time
of literary leisure with him, and there were nothing else to be
thought of just then. The relation of those illustrious literary
partners of his, whom he found already in the field when he
first came to it, to that grand development of the English
genius in art and philosophy which follows, ought not indeed
to be overlooked or slightly treated in any thorough history of
it. For it has its first beginning here in this brilliant assem-
blage of courtiers, and soldiers, and scholars, — this company
of Poets, and Patrons and Encouragers of Art and Learning.
Least of all should the relation which the illustrious founder
of this order sustains to the later development be omitted in
any such history, — ' the prince and mirror of all chivalry,' the
patron of the y.oung English Muse, whose untimely fate keeps
its date" for ever green, and fills the air of this new * Helicon.'
with immortal lamentations. The shining foundations of that so
splendid monument of the later Elizabethan genius, which has
paralyzed and confounded all our criticism, were laid here.
The extraordinary facilities which certain departments of lite-
rature appeared to offer, for evading the restrictions which this
new poetic and philosophic development had to encounter from
the first, already began to attract the attention of men ac-
quainted with the uses to which it had been put in antiquity,
and who knew what gravity of aim, what height of execution,
that then rude and childish English Play had been made to
exhibit under other conditions; — men fresh from the study of
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lvii
those living and perpetual monuments of learning, which the
genius of antiquity has left in this department. But the first
essays of the new English scholarship in this untried field, —
the first attempts at original composition here, derive, it must
be confessed, their chief interest and value from that memor-
able association in which we find them. It was the first essay,
which had to be made before those finished monuments of art,
which command our admiration on their own account wholly,
could begin to appear. It was ' the tuning of the instruments,
that those who came afterwards might play the better.1 We
see, of course, the stiff, cramped hand of the beginner here,
instead of the grand touch of the master, who never comes till
his art has been prepared to his hands, — till the details of its
execution have been mastered for him by others. In some
arts there must be generations of essays before he can get his
tools in a condition for use. Ages of prophetic genius, gene-
rations of artists, who dimly saw afar off, and struggled after
his perfections, must patiently chip and daub their lives away,
before ever the star of his nativity can begin to shine.
Considering what a barbaric age it was that the English
mind was emerging from then; and the difficulties attending
the first attempt to create in the English literature, anything
which should bear any proportion to those finished models of
skill which were then dazzling the imagination of the English
scholar in the unworn gloss of their fresh revival here, and
discouraging, rather than stimulating, the rude poetic experi-
ment;— considering what weary lengths of essay there are
always to be encountered, where the standard of excellence is
so far beyond the power of execution ; we have no occasion to
despise the first bold attempts to overcome these difficulties
which the good taste of this company has preserved to us.
They are just such works as we might expect under those
circumstances ; — yet full of the pedantries of the new acqui-
sition, overflowing on the surface with the learning of the
school, sparkling with classic allusions, seizing boldly on the
classic original sometimes, and working their new fancies into
it; but, full already of the riant vigour and originality of the
lviii INTRODUCTION..
Elizabethan inspiration; and never servilely copying a foreign
original. The English genius is already triumphant in them.
Their very crudeness is not without its historic charm, when
once their true place in the structure we find them in, is
recognised. In the later works, this crust of scholarship has
disappeared, and gone below the surface. It is all dissolved,
and gone into the clear intelligence ; — it has all gone to feed
the majestic current of that new, all-subduing, all-grasping
originality. It is in these earlier performances that the
stumbling-blocks of our present criticism are strewn so
thickly. Nobody can write any kind of criticism of the
1 Comedy of Errors,' for instance, without . recognizing the
Poet's acquaintance with the classic model*, — without recog-
nizing the classic treatment. * Love's Labour's Lost,' ' The
Taming of the Shrew/ the condemned parts of * Henry
the VI. / and generally the Poems which are put down in our
criticism as doubtful, or as the earlier Poems, are just those
Poems in which the Poet's studies are so flatly betrayed on
the surface. Among these are plays which were anonymously
produced by the company performing at the Rose Theatre,
and other companies which English noblemen found occasion
to employ in their service then. These were not so much as
produced at the theatre which has had the honor of giving
its name to other productions, bound up with them. We shall
find nothing to object to in that somewhat heterogeneous col-
lection of styles, which even a single Play sometimes exhibits,
when once the history of this phenomenon accompanies it.
The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built throughout, just at
the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had attained
its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye, perhaps,
than those in which the story of its growth is told from the
rude, massive Anglo-Saxon of the crypt or the chancel, to the
last refinement of the mullion, and groin, and tracery. But
the antiquary, at least, does not regret the preservation. And
these crude beginnings here have only to be put in their place,
* See a recent criticism in ' The Times.'
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lix
to command from the critic, at least, a similar respect. For
here, too, the history reports itself to the eye, and not less
palpably.
It may seem surprising, and even incredible, to the modern
critic, that men in this position should find any occasion to
conceal their relation to those quite respectable contributions
to the literature of the time, which they found themselves
impelled to make. The fact that they did so, is one that we
must accept, however, on uncontradicted cotemporary testi-
mony, and account for it as we can. The critic who published
his criticisms when i the gentleman who wrote the late
Shepherd's Calendar' was just coming into notice, however
inferior to our modern critics in other respects, had certainly
a better opportunity of informing himself on this point, than
they can have at present. ' They have writ excellently well/
he says of this company of Poets,— this < courtly company/ as
he calls them, — ' they have writ excellently well, if their
doings could be found out and made public with the rest.' Sir
Philip Sidney, Raleigh, and the gentleman who wrote the
late Shepherd's Calendar, are included in the list of Poets to
whom this remark is applied. It is Raleigh's verse which is
distinguished, however, in this commendation as the most
4 lofty, insolent, and passionate;' a description which applies
to the anonymous poems alluded to, but is not particularly
applicable to those artificial and tame performances which he
was willing to acknowledge. And this so commanding Poet,
who was at the same time an aspiring courtier and meddler in
affairs of state, and who chose, for some mysterious reason or
other, to forego the honours which those who were in the secret
of his literary abilities and successes, — the very best judges of
poetry in that time, too, were disposed to accord him, — and
we are not without references to cases in antiquity ^correspond-
ing very nearly to this; and which seemed to furnish, at least,
a sufficient precedent for this proceeding ; — this so successful
poet, and courtier, and great man of his time, was already in
a position to succeed at once to that chair of literary pa-
tronage which the death of Sir Philip Sidney had left vacant.
lx INTRODUCTION.
Instinctively generous, he was ready to serve the literary
friends whom he attracted to him, not less lavishly than he
had served the proud Queen herself, when he threw his gay
cloak in her obstructed path, — at least, he was not afraid of
risking those sudden splendours which her favour was then
showering upon him, by wearying her with petitions on their
behalf. He would have risked his new favour, at least with
his ' Cynthia/ — that twin sister of Phoebus Apollo, — to make
her the patron, if not the inspirer of the Elizabethan genius.
' When will you cease to be a beggar, Raleigh?' she said to
him one day, on one of these not infrequent occasions. 'When
your Majesty ceases to be a most gracious mistress,' was this
courtier's reply. It is recorded of her, that ' she loved to hear
his reasons to her demands.'
But though, with all his wit and eloquence, he could not
contrive to make of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh,
a Pericles, or an Alexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus,
or an encourager of anything that did not appear to be
directly connected with her own particular ends, he did
succeed in making her indirectly a patron of the literary and
scientific development which was then beginning to add to
her reign its new lustre, — which was then suing for leave to
lay at her feet its new crowns and garlands. Indirectly, he
did convert her into a patron, — a second-hand patron of those
deeper and more subtle movements of the new spirit of the
time, whose bolder demonstrations she herself had been forced
openly to head. Seated on the throne of Henry the Seventh,
she was already the armed advocate of European freedom; —
Raleigh had contrived to make her the legal sponsor for the
New World's liberties; it only needed that her patronage
should be systematically extended to that new enterprise for
the emancipation of the human life from the bondage of
ignorance, from the tyranny of unlearning, — that enterprise
which the gay, insidious Elizabethan literature was already
beginning to flower over and cover with its devices, — it
only needed that, to complete the anomaly of her position.
And that through Raleigh's means was accomplished.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxi
He became himself the head of a little Alexandrian estab-
lishment. His house was a home for men of learning. He
employed men in literary and scientific researches on his
account, whose business it was to report to him their results.
He had salaried scholars at his table, to impart to him their
acquisitions, Antiquities, History, Poetry, Chemistry, Mathe-
matics, scientific research of all kinds, came under his active
and persevering patronage. Returning from one of his visits
to Ireland, whither he had gone on this occasion to inspect a
seignorie which his * sovereign goddess ' had then lately con-
ferred upon him, he makes his re-appearance at court with
that so obscure personage, the poet of the ' Faery Queen e,' under
his wing; — that same gentleman, as the court is informed,
whose bucolics had already attracted so much attention in
that brilliant circle. By a happy coincidence, Raleigh, it
seems, had discovered this Author in the obscurity of his
clerkship in Ireland, and had determined to make use of his
own influence at court to push his brother poet's fortunes there ;
but his efforts to benefit this poor bard personally, do not
appear to have been attended at any time with much success.
The mysterious literary partnership between these two, how-
ever, which dates apparently from an earlier period, con-
tinues to bring forth fruit of the most successful kind; and
the ' Faery Queene ' is not the only product of it.
All kinds of books began now to be dedicated to this new
and so munificent patron of arts and letters. His biographers
collect his public history, not from political records only, but
from the eulogies of these manifold dedications. Ladonnier,
the artist, publishes his Sketches of the New World through
his aid. Hooker dedicates his History of Ireland to him;
Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work * On Friendship ' is
dedicated to him ; another ' On Music,' in which art he had
found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to
the poetic tributes to him, — some of them at least are familiar
to us already. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his
haughty rivals were then playing their deep games, — where
there was no room for Spenser's muse, and the worth of his
lxii INTRODUCTION.
'Old Song' was grudgingly reckoned, — the 'rustling in silks'
is long since over, but the courtier's place in the pageant of
the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the lapse
of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly,
and fortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to
diminish there ' one dowle that's in his plume.'*
In the Lord Timon of the Shakspere piece, which was re-
written from an Academic original after Kaleigh's consignment
to the Tower, — in that fierce satire into which so much
Elizabethan bitterness is condensed, under the difference of
the reckless prodigality which is stereotyped in the fable, we
get, in the earlier scenes, some glimpses of this ' Athenian '
also, in this stage of his career.
But it was not as a Patron only, or chiefly, that he aided
the new literary development. A scholar, a scholar so earnest,
so indefatigable, it followed of course that he must be, in one
form or another, an Instructor also; for that is still, under all
conditions, the scholar's destiny — it is still, in one form or
another, his business on the earth. But with that tempera-
ment which was included among the particular conditions of
his genius, and with those special and particular endowments
of his for another kind of intellectual mastery, he could not be
content with the pen — with the Poet's, or the Historian's, or
the Philosopher's pen — as the instrument of his mental dicta-
tion. A Teacher thus furnished and ordained, seeks, indeed,
naturally and instinctively, a more direct and living and
effective medium of communication with the audience which
his time is able to furnish him, whether ' few' or many,
whether f fit' or unfit, than the book can give him. He must
have another means of ' delivery and tradition,' when the
delivery or tradition is addressed to those whom he would
associate with him in his age, to work with him as one
man, or those to whom he would transmit it in other ages, to
* He was also a patron of Plays and Players in this stage of his
career, and entertained private parties at his house with very recherche
performances of that kind sometimes.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxiii
carry it on to its perfection — those to whom lie would com-
municate his own highest view, those whom he would inform
with his patiently -gathered lore, those whom he would histruct
and move with his new inspirations. For the truth has
become a personality with him — it is his nobler self. He
will live on with it. He will live or die with it.
For such a one there is, perhaps, no institution ready in
his time to accept his ministry. No chair at Oxford or Cam-
bridge is waiting for him. For they are, of course, and must
needs be, the strong-holds of the past — those ancient and
venerable seats of learning, ' the fountains and nurseries of all
the humanities,' as a Cambridge Professor calls them, in a
letter addressed to Raleigh. The principle of these larger
wholes is, of course, instinctively conservative. Their business
is to know nothing of the new. The new intellectual move-
ment must fight its battles through without, and come off
conqueror there, or ever those old Gothic doors will creak on
their reluctant hinges to give it ever so pinched an entrance.
When it has once fought its way, and forced itself within —
when it has got at last some marks of age and custom on its
brow — then, indeed, it will stand as the last outwork of that
fortuitous conglomeration, to be defended in its turn against
all comers. Already the revived classics had been able to
push from their chairs, and drive into corners, and shut up
finally and put to silence, the old Aristotelian Doctors — the
Seraphic and Cherubic Doctors of their day — in their own
ancient halls. It would be sometime yet, perhaps, however,
before that study of the dead languages, which was of course
one prominent incident of the first revival of a dead learning,
would come to take precisely the same place in those insti-
tutions, with their one instinct of conservation and 'abhor-
rence of change,' which the old monastic philosophy had taken
in its day; but that change once accomplished, the old
monastic philosophy itself, religious as it was, was never held
more sacred than this profane innovation would come to be.
It would be some time before those new observations and ex-
periments, which Ealeigh and his school were then beginning
lxiv INTRODUCTION.
to institute, experiments and inquiries which the universities
would have laughed to scorn in their day, would come to be
promoted to the Professor's chair; but when they did, it would
perhaps be difficult to convince a young gentleman liberally
educated, at least, under the wings of one of those ' ancient
and venerable' seats of learning, now gray in Raleigh's youthful
West — ambitious, perhaps, to lead off in this popular innova-
tion, where Saurians, and Icthyosaurians, and Entomologists,
and Chonchologists are already hustling the poor Greek and
Latin Teachers into corners, and putting them to silence with
their growing terminologies — it would perhaps be difficult
to convince one who had gone through the prescribed course
of treatment in one of these ' nurseries of humanity,' that the
knowledge of the domestic habits and social and political
organisations of insects and shell-fish, or even the experiments
of the laboratory, though never so useful and proper in their
place, are not, after all, the beginning and end of a human
learning. It was no such place as that that this department of
the science of nature took in the systems or notions of its
Elizabethan Founders. They were ' Naturalists,' indeed ; but
that did not imply, with their use of the term, the absence of
the natural common human sense in the selection of the
objects of their pursuits. ' It is a part of science to make
judicious inquiries and wishes,' says the speaker in chief for
this new doctrine of nature; speaking of the particular and
special applications of it which he is forbidden to make openly,
but which he instructs, and prepares, and charges his followers
to make for themselves.
One of those innovations, one of those movements in which
the new ground of ages of future culture is first chalked out —
a movement whose end is not yet, whose beginning we have
scarce yet seen — was made in England, not very far from the
time in which Sir Walter Ealeigh began first to convert the
eclat of his rising fortunes at home, and the splendour of his
heroic achievements abroad, and all those new means of influ-
ence which his great position gave him, to the advancement of
those deeper, dearer ambitions, which the predominance of the
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxv
nobler elements in his constitution made inevitable with him.
Even then he was ready to endanger those golden opinions,
waiting to be worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so
soon, and new-won rank, and liberty and life itself, for the
sake of putting himself into his true intellectual relations with
his time, as a philosopher and a beginner of a new age in the
human advancement. For c spirits are not finely touched but
to fine issues.'
If there was no Professor's Chair, if there was no Pulpit or
Bishop's Stall waiting for him, and begging his acceptance of
its perquisites, he must needs institute a chair of his own, and
pay for leave to occupy it. If there was no university with
its appliances within his reach, he must make a university of
his own. The germ of a new c universality ' would not be
wanting in it. His library, or his drawing-room, or his
4 banquet,' will be Oxford enough for him. He will begin it
as the old monks began theirs, with their readings. Where
the teacher is, there must the school be gathered together.
And a school in the end there will be: a school in the end
the true teacher will have, though he begin it, as the barefoot
Athenian began his, in the stall of the artisan, or in the chat
of the Gymnasium, amid the compliments of the morning
levee, or in the woodland stroll, or in the midnight revel of
the banquet.
When the hour and the man are indeed met, when the time
is ripe, and one truly sent, ordained of that Power which
chooses, not one only — what uncloaked atheism is that, to
promulgate in an age like this ! — not the Teachers and
Kabbies of one race only, but all the successful agents of
human advancement, the initiators of new eras of man's pro-
gress, the inaugurates of new ages of the relief of the human
estate and the Creator's glory — when such an one indeed ap-
pears, there will be no lack of instrumentalities. With some
verdant hill-side, it may be, some blossoming knoll or ' mount'
for his * chair,' with a daisy or a lily in his hand, or in a
fisherman's boat, it may be, pushed a little way from the
strand, he will begin new ages.
e
Ixvi INTRODUCTION.
The influence of Raleigh upon his time cannot yet be fully
estimated; because, in the first place, it was primarily of that
kind which escapes, from its subtlety, the ordinary historical
record; and, in the second place, it was an influence at the
time necessarily covert, studiously disguised. His relation to
the new intellectual development of his age might, perhaps, be
characterised as Socratic; though certainly not because he
lacked the use, and the most masterly use, of that same weapon
with which his younger contemporary brought out at last, in
the face of his time, the plan of the Great Instauration. In
the heart of the new establishment which the magnificent
courtier, who was a ' Queen's delight/ must now maintain,
there soon came to be a little ' Academe.' The choicest youth
of the time, ' the Spirits of the Morning Sort,' gathered about
him. It was the new philosophic and poetic genius of the
age that he attracted to him ; it was on that philosophic and
poetic genius that he left his mark for ever.
He taught them, as the masters taught of old, in dialogues
— in words that could not then be written, in words that
needed the master's modulation to give them their significance.
For the new doctrine had need to be clothed in a language of
its own, whose inner meaning only those who had found their
way to its inmost shrine were able to interpret.
We find some contemporary and traditional references to
this school, which are not without their interest and historical
value, as tending to show the amount of influence which it
was supposed to have exerted on the time, as well as the ac-
knowledged necessity for concealment in the studies pursued
in it. The fact that such an Association existed, that it began
with Raleigh, that young men of distinction were attracted to
it, and that in such numbers, and under such conditions, that
it came to be considered ultimately as a ' School,1 of which he
was the head-master — the fact that the new experimental
science was supposed to have had its origin in this association,
— - that opinions, differing from the received ones, were also
secretly discussed in it, — that anagrams and other devices were
made use of for the purpose of infolding the esoteric doctrines of
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxvii
the school in popular language, so that it was possible to write
in this language acceptably to the vulgar, and without violating
preconceived opinions, and at the same time instructively to
the initiated, — all this remains, even on the surface of state-
ments already accessible to any scholar, — all this remains, either
in the form of contemporary documents, or in the recollections
of persons who have apparently had it from the most authentic
sources, from persons who profess to know, and who were at
least in a position to know, that such was the impression at the
time.
But when the instinctive dread of innovation was already
so keenly on the alert, when Elizabeth was surrounded with
courtiers still in their first wrath at the promotion of the new
1 favourite/ indignant at finding themselves so suddenly over-
shadowed with the growing honours of one who had risen
from a rank beneath their own, and eagerly watching for an
occasion against him, it was not likely that such an affair as
this was going to escape notice altogether. And though the
secresy with which it was conducted, might have sufficed to
elude a scrutiny such as theirs, there was another, and more
eager and subtle enemy, — an enemy which the founder of
this school had always to contend with, that had already, day
and night, at home and abroad, its Argus watch upon him.
That vast and secret foe, which he had arrayed against him
on foreign battle fields, knew already what kind of embodi-
ment of power this was that was rising into such sudden favour
here at home, and would have crushed him in the germ — that
foe which would never rest till it had pursued him to the
block, which was ready to join hands with his personal ene-
mies in its machinations, in the court of Elizabeth, as well as
in the court of her successor, that vast, malignant, indefatigable
foe, in which the spirit of the old ages lurked, was already at
his threshold, and penetrating to the most secret chamber of his
councils. It was on the showing of a Jesuit that these friendly
gatherings of young men at Raleigh's table came to be
branded as ' a school of Atheism/ And it was through such
agencies, that his enemies at court were able to sow suspicions
e 2
lxviii INTRODUCTION.
in Elizabeth's mind in regard to trie entire orthodoxy of his
mode of explaining certain radical points in human belief, and
in regard to the absolute ' conformity ' of his views on these
points with those which she had herself divinely authorised,
suspicions which he himself confesses he was never afterwards
able to eradicate. The matter was represented to her, we are
told, * as if he had set up for a doctor in the faculty and invited
young gentlemen into his school, where the Bible was jeered
at/ and the use of profane anagrams was inculcated. The
fact that he associated with him in his chemical and mathe-
matical studies, and entertained in his house, a scholar
labouring at that time under the heavy charge of getting up
* a philosophical theology,' was also made use of greatly to
his discredit.
And from another uncontradicted statement, which dates
from a later period, but which comes to us worded in terms
as cautious as if it had issued directly from the school itself,
we obtain another glimpse of these new social agencies, with
which the bold, creative, social genius that was then seeking
to penetrate on all sides the custom-bound time, would have
roused and organised a new social life in it. It is still the
second-hand hearsay testimony which is quoted here. ' He is
said to have set up an Office of Address, and it is supposed
that the office might respect a more liberal intercourse — a nobler
mutuality of advertisement, than would perhaps admit of
all sorts of persons.' ' Kaleigh set up a kind of Office of
Address/ says another, ' in the capacity of an agency for
all sorts of persons.' John Evelyn, refers also to that long
dried fountain of communication which Montaigne first
proposed, Sir Walter Raleigh put in practice, and Mr.
Hartlib endeavoured to renew.'
* This is the scheme described by Sir W. Pellis, which is
referred traditionally to Raleigh and Montaigne (see Book I.
chap, xxxiv.) An Office of Address whereby the wants of all
may be made known to all (that painful and great instru-
ment of this design), where men may know what is already done
in the business of learning , what is at present in doing, and what
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxix
is intended to be done, to the end that, by such a general com-
munication of design and mutual assistance, the wits and endeavours
of the world may no longer be as so many scattered coals, which,
for want of union, are soon quenched, whereas being laid to-
gether they would have yielded a comfortable light and heat.
[This is evidently, traditional, language] . . . such as advanced
rather to the improvement of men themselves than their means.'
— Oldys.
This then is the association of which Kaleigh was the
chief; this was the state, within the state which he was
founding. (' See the reach of this man,' says Lord Coke on
his Trial.) It is true that the honour is also ascribed to Mon-
taigne ; but we shall find, as we proceed with this inquiry, that
all the works and inventions of this new English school, of
which Raleigh was chief, all its new and vast designs for man's
relief, are also claimed by that same aspiring gentleman, as
they were, too, by another of these Egotists, who came out in
his own name with this identical project.
It was only within the walls of a school that the great
principle of the new philosophy of fact and practice, which
had to pretend to be profoundly absorbed in chemical
experiments, or in physical observations, and inductions
of some kind — though not without an occasional hint, of
a broader intention, — it was only in esoteric language that
the great principles of this philosophy could begin to be set
forth in their true comprehension. The very trunk of it, the
primal science itself, must needs be mystified and hidden in a
shower of metaphysical dust, and piled and heaped about with
the old dead branches of scholasticism, lest men should see for
themselves how broad and comprehensive must be the ultimate
sweep of its determinations; lest men should see for themselves,
how a science which begins in fact, and returns to it again, which
begins in observation and experiment, and returns in scientific
practice, in scientific arts, in scientific re-formation, might have
to do, ere all was done, with facts not then inviting scientific
investigation — with arts not then inviting scientific reform..
In consequence of a sudden and common advancement of
lxx
INTRODUCTION.
intelligence among the leading men of that age, which left
the standard of intelligence represented in more than one of
its existing institutions, very considerably in the rear of its
advancement, there followed, as the inevitable result, a ten-
dency to the formation of some medium of expression, —
whether that tendency was artistically developed or not, in
which the new and nobler thoughts of men, in which their
dearest beliefs, could find some vent and limited interchange
and circulation, without startling the ear. Eventually there
came to be a number of men in England at this time, — and
who shall say that there were none on the continent of this
school, — occupying prominent positions in the state, heading,
it might be, or ranged in opposite factions at Court, who could
speak and write in such a manner, upon topics of common
interest, as to make themselves entirely intelligible to each
other, without exposing themselves to any of the risks,
which confidential communications under such circumstances
involved.
For there existed a certain mode of expression, originating
in some of its more special forms with this particular school,
yet not altogether conventional, which enabled those who
made use of it to steer clear of the Star Chamber and its
sister institution; inasmuch as the terms employed in this
mode of communication were not in the more obvious inter-
pretation of them actionable, and to a vulgar, unlearned, or
stupid conceit, could hardly be made to appear so. There
must be a High Court of Wit, and a Bench of Peers in that
estate of the realm, or ever these treasons could be brought
to trial. For it was a mode of communication which in-
volved in its more obvious construction the necessary submission
to power. It was the instructed ear, — the ear of a school, —
which was required to lend to it its more recondite meanings ;
— it was the ear of that new school in philosophy which had
made History the basis of its learning, — which, dealing with
principles instead of words, had glanced, not without some
nice observation in passing, at their more * conspicuous' his-
torical f instances'; — it was the ear of a school which had
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxi
everywhere the great historical representations and diagrams
at its control, and could substitute, without much hindrance,
particulars for generals, or generals for particulars, as the
case might be; it was the ear of a school intrusted with
discretionary power, but trained and practised in the art of
using it.
Originally an art of necessity, with practice, in the skilful
hands of those who employed it, it came at length to have a
charm of its own. In such hands, it became an instrument of
literary power, which had not before been conceived of; a
medium too of densest ornament, of thick crowding conceits,
and nestling beauties, which no style before had ever had
depth enough to harbour. It established a new, and more
intimate and living relation between the author and his
reader, — between the speaker and his audience. There was
ever the charm of that secret understanding lending itself to
all the effects. It made the reader, or the hearer, participator
in the artist's skill, and. joint proprietor in the result. The
author's own glow must be on his cheek, the author's own
flash in his eye, ere that result was possible. The nice point
of the skilful pen, the depth of the lurking tone was lost,
unless an eye as skilful, or an ear as fine, tracked or waited on
it. It gave to the work of the artist, nature's own style; — it
gave to works which had the earnest of life and death in
them the sport of the ' enigma.'
It is not too much to say, that the works of Kaleigh and
Bacon, and others whose connection with it it is not necessary
to specify just here, are written throughout in the language of
this school. ' Our glorious Willy' — (it is the gentleman who
wrote the 'Faery Queene' who claims him, and his glories, as
i ours'), — 4 our glorious Willy' was born in it, and knew no
other speech. It was that < Round Table' at which Sir Philip
Sydney presided then, that his lurking meanings, his unspeak-
able audacities first ! set in a roar.' It was there, in the keen
encounters of those flashing < wit combats,' that the weapons
of great genius grew so fine. It was there, where the young
wits and scholars, fresh from their continental tours, full of the
gallant young England of their day,— the Mercutios, the
lxxii INTRODUCTION.
Benedicts, the Birons, the Longuevilles, came together fresh
from the Court of Navarre, and smelling of the lore of their
foreign * Academe/ or hot from the battles of continental
freedom, — it was there, in those reunions, that our Poet caught
those gracious airs of his — those delicate, thick-flowering
refinements — those fine impalpable points of courtly breeding
— those aristocratic notions that haunt him everywhere. It
was there that he picked up his various knowledge of men and
manners, his acquaintance with foreign life, his bits of travel-
led wit, that flash through all. It was there that he heard
the clash of aims, and the ocean-storm. And it was there
that he learned * his old ward.' It was there, in the social
collisions of that gay young time, with its bold over-flowing
humours, that would not be shut in, that he first armed
himself with those quips and puns, and lurking conceits, that
crowd his earlier style so thickly, — those double, and triple,
and quadruple meanings, that stud so closely the lines of his
dialogue in the plays which are clearly dated from that era, —
the natural artifices of a time like that, when all those new
volumes of utterance which the lips were ready to issue, were
forbidden on pain of death to be ' extended,' must needs ( be
crushed together, infolded within themselves.'
Of course it would be absurd, or it would involve the most
profound ignorance of the history of literature in general, to
claim that the principle of this invention had its origin here.
It had already been in use, in recent and systematic use, in
the intercourse of the scholars of the Middle Ages; and its
origin is coeval with the origin of letters. The free-masonry
of learning is old indeed. It runs its mountain chain of
signals through all the ages, and men whom times and kindreds
have separated ascend from their week-day toil, and hold
their Sabbaths and synods on those heights. They whisper,
and listen, and smile, and shake the head at one another;
they laugh, and weep, and complain together; they sing their
songs of victory in one key. That machinery is so fine,
that the scholar can catch across the ages, the smile, or the
whisper, which the contemporary tyranny had no instrument
firm enough to suppress, or fine enough to detect.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEJGH^ LIFE. lxxiii
* But for her father sitting still on hie,
Did warily still watch the way she went,
And eke from far observed with jealous eie,
Which way his course the wanton Bregog bent.
Him to deceive, for all his watchful ward,
The wily lover did devise this slight.
First, into many parts, his stream he shared,
That whilst the one was watch' d, the other might
Pass unespide, to meet her by the way.
And then besides, those little streams, so broken,
He under ground so closely did convey,
That of their passage doth appear no token?
It was the author of the 'Faery Queene,' indeed, his fine,
elaborate, fertile genius burthened with its rich treasure, and
stimulated to new activity by his poetical alliance with
Ealeigh, whose splendid invention first made apparent the
latent facilities which certain departments of popular literature
then offered, for a new and hitherto unparalleled application of
this principle. In that prose description of his great Poem
which he addresses to Raleigh, the distinct avowal of a double
intention in it, the distinction between a particular and general
one, the emphasis with which the elements of the ideal name,
are discriminated and blended, furnish to the careful reader
already some superficial hints, as to the capabilities of such a
plan to one at all predisposed to avail himself of them. And,
indeed., this Poet's manifest philosophical and historical ten-
dencies, and his avowed view of the comprehension of the
Poet's business would have seemed beforehand to require some
elbow-room, — some chance for poetic curves and sweeps, —
some space for the line of beauty to take its course in, which
the sharp angularities, the crooked lines, the blunt bringing
up everywhere, of the new philosophic tendency to history
would scarcely admit of. There was no breathing space for
him, unless he could contrive to fix his poetic platform so
high, as^'to be able to override these restrictions without
hindrance.
' For the Poet thrusteth into the midst, even where it most
concerneth him; and then recoursing to the things fore-past, and
lxxiv INTRODUCTION.
divining of things to come, he maketh a pleasing analysis of
ALL.'
And it so happened that his Prince Arthur had dreamed
the poet's dream, the hero's dream, the philosopher's dream,
the dream that was dreamed of old under the Olive shades, the
dream that all our Poets and inspired anticipators of man's
perfection and felicity have always been dreaming; but this
one ' awakening/ determined that it should be a dream no
longer. It was the hour in which the genius of antiquity
was reviving ; it was the hour in which the poetic inspiration
of all the ages was reviving, and arming itself with the know-
ledge of ' things not dreamt of by old reformers — that know-
ledge of nature which is power, which is the true magic. For
this new Poet had seen in a vision that same ' excellent beauty'
which * the divine' ones saw of old, and * the New Atlantis/
the celestial vision of her kingdom ; and being also ' ravished
with that excellence, and awakening, he determined to seek
her out. And so being by Merlin armed, and by Timon
thoroughly instructed, he went forth to seek her in Fairy
Land' There was a little band of heroes in that age, a little
band of philosophers and poets, secretly bent on that same
adventure, sworn to the service of that same Gloriana, though
they were fain to wear then the scarf and the device of
another Queen on their armour. It is to the prince of this
little band — ' the prince and mirror of all chivalry' — that this
Poet dedicates his poem. But it is Raleigh's device which he
adopts in the names he uses, and it is Raleigh who thus shares
with Sydney the honour of his dedication.
' In that Faery Queene, I mean,' he says, in his prose descrip-
tion of the Poem addressed to Raleigh, * in that Faery Queene,
I mean Glory in my general intention ; but, in my particular,
I conceive the most glorious person of our sovereign the
Queen, and her kingdom — in Fairy Land.
' And yet, in some places, I do otherwise shadow her. For
considering she beareth two persons, one of a most Royal Queen
or Empress, the other of a most virtuous and beautiful
lady — the latter part I do express in Bel-Phebe, fashioning
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxv
her name according to your own most excellent conceit of
< Cynthia,' Phebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.'
And thus he sings his poetic dedication : —
'To thee, that art the Summer's Nightingale,
Thy sovereign goddess's most dear delight,
Why do I send this rustic madrigal,
That may thy tuneful ear unseason quite 1
Thou, only fit this argument to write,
In whose high thoughts pleasure hath built her bower,
And dainty love learn'd sweetly to indite.
My rhymes, I know, unsavoury are and soure
To taste the streams, which like a golden showre,
Flow from thy fruitful head of thy love's praise.
Fitter, perhaps, to thunder martial stowre,*
When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise,
Yet till that thou thy poem wilt make known,
Let thy fair Cynthia's praises be thus rudely shown.'
* Of me/ says Raleigh, in a response to this obscure partner
of his works and arts, — a response not less mysterious, till we
have found the solution of it, for it is an enigma.
1 Of me no lines are loved, no letters are of price,
Of all that speak the English tongue, but those of thy device.' f
It is to Sidney, Raleigh, and the Poet of the ' Faery-Queene/
and the rest of that courtly company of Poets, that the co-
temporary author in the Art of Poetry alludes, with a special
commendation of Raleigh's vein, as the ' most lofty, insolent,
and passionate/ when he says, ' they have writ excellently well,
if their doings could be found out and made public with the
rest.'
* < Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence chide, or cheer the drooping stage.'
Ben Jonson.
t It was a < device' that symbolised all. It was a circle containing
the alphabet, or the ABC, and the esoteric meaning of it was ■ all in
each; or all in all, the new doctrine of the unity of science (the
< Ideas' of the New 'Academe'). That was the token-name under which
a great Book of this Academy was issued.
lxxvi INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW ACADEMY.
EXTRACT FROM A LATER CHAPTER OF RALEIGH'S LIFE.
Oliver. Where will the old Duke live?
Charles. They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many
merry men with him ; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of
England : they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day ;
and fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.
As You Like It.
Stephano [sings].
Flout 'em and skout'em-, and skout'em and flout 'em,
Thought is free.
Cal. That 's not the tune.
[Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe.
Ste. What is this same ?
Trin. This is the tune of our catch, played by — the picture of —
Nobody.
* * ■* *
BUT all was not over with him in the old England yet —
the present had still its chief tasks for him.
The man who had ' achieved ' his greatness, the chief who
had made his way through such angry hosts of rivals, and
through such formidable social barriers, from his little seat in
the Devonshire corner to a place in the state, so commanding,
that even the jester, who was the ' Mr. Punch' of that day,
conceived it to be within the limits of his prerogative to call
attention to it, and that too in ' the presence ' itself* — a place
of command so acknowledged, that even the poet could call
him in the ear of England ' her most dear delight' — such a
one was not going to give up so easily the game he had been
playing here so long. He was not to be foiled with this great
flaw in his fortunes even here; and though all his work
appeared for the time to be undone, and though the eye that
he had fastened on him was ' the eye' that had in it ' twenty
thousand deaths/
* See 'the knave' commands ' the queen.' — Tarleton.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxvii
It is this patient piecing and renewing of his broken webs,
it is this second building up of his position rather than the
first, that shows us what he is. One must see what he con-
trived to make of those ■ apartments ' in the Tower while he
occupied them; what before unimagined conveniencies, and
elegancies, and facilities of communication, and means of oper-
ation, they began to develop under the searching of his genius:
what means of reaching and moving the public mind; what
wires that reached to the most secret councils of state appeared
to be inlaid in those old walls while he was within them ; what
springs that commanded even there movements not less strik-
ing and anomalous than those which had arrested the critical
and admiring attention of Tarleton under the Tudor administra-
tion,— movements on that same royal board which Ferdinand
and Miranda were seen to be playing on in Prosperous cell
when all was done, — one must see what this logician, who
was the magician also, contrived to make of the lodging
which was at first only ' the cell ' of a condemned criminal ;
what power there was there to foil his antagonists, and crush
them too, — if nothing but throwing themselves under the
wheels of his advancement would serve their purpose; one
must look at all this to see ' what manner of man' this was,
what stuff' this genius was made of, in whose heats ideas that
had been parted from all antiquities were getting welded here
then — welded so firmly that all futurities would not disjoin
them, so firmly that thrones, and dominions, and principalities,
and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world might
combine in vain to disjoin them — the ideas whose union was
the new * birth of time/ It is this life in ' the cell ' — this
game, these masques, this tempest, that the magician will com-
mand there — which show us, when all is done, what new stuff
of Nature's own this was, in which the new idea of combining
1 the part operative ' and the part speculative of human life —
this new thought of making * the art and practic part of life
the mistress to its theoric' was understood in this scholar's
own time (as we learn from the secret traditions of the school)
to have had its first germination : this idea which is the idea
of the modern learning — the idea of connecting knowledge
lxxviil INTRODUCTION.
generally and in a sytematic manner with the human con-
duct — knowledge as distinguished from pre-supposition — the
idea which came out afterwards so systematically and compre-
hensively developed in the works of his great contemporary
and partner in arts and learning.
We must look at this, as well as at some other demonstra-
tions of which this time was the witness, to see what new
mastership this is that was coming out here so signally in this
age in various forms, and in more minds than one ; what soul
of a new era it was that had laughed, even in the boyhood of
its heroes, at old Aristotle on his throne; that had made its
youthful games with dramatic impersonations, and caricatures,
and travesties of that old book-learning ; that in the glory of
those youthful spirits — ' the spirits of youths, that meant to
be of note and began betimes' — it thought itself already com-
petent to laugh down and dethrone with its ' jests' ; that had
laughed all its days in secret; that had never once lost a
chance for a jibe at the philosophy it found in possession of
the philosophic chairs — a philosophy which had left so many
things in heaven and earth uncompassed in its old futile
dreamy abstractions.
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
Hang up philosophy,
was the word of the poet of this new school in one of his
* lofty and passionate' moods, at a much earlier stage of this
philosophic development. ' See what learning is !' exclaims the
Nurse, speaking at that same date from the same dictation,
for there is a Friar * abroad' there already in the action of
that play, who is undertaking to bring his learning to bear
upon practice, and opening his cell for scientific consultation
and ghostly advice on the questions of the play as they happen
to arise ; and it is his apparent capacity for smoothing, and re-
conciling, and versifying, not words only, but facts, which
commands the Nurse's admiration.
This doctrine of a practical learning, this part operative of
the new learning for which the founders of it beg leave to
reintegrate the abused term of Natural Magic, referring to the
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxiX
Persians in particular, to indicate the extent of the field which
their magical operations are intended ultimately to occupy ;
this idea, which the master of this school was illustrating now
in the Tower so happily, did not originate in the Tower, as
we shall see.
The first heirs of this new invention, were full of it. The
babbling infancy of this great union of art and learning, whose
speech flows in its later works so clear, babbled of nothing else:
its Elizabethan savageness, with its first taste of learning on its
lips, with its new classic lore yet stumbling in its speech,
already, knew nothing else. The very rudest play in all this
collection of the school, — left to show us the march of that
1 time-bettering age,' the play which offends us most — belongs
properly to this collection; contains this secret, which is the
Elizabethan secret, and the secret of that art of delivery and
tradition which this from the first inevitably created, — yet
rude and undeveloped, but there.
We need not go so far, however, as that, in this not pleasant
retrospect; for these early plays are not the ones to which the
interpreter of this school would choose to refer the reader, for
the proof of its claims at present ; — these which the faults of
youth and the faults of the time conspire to mar : in which
the overdoing of the first attempt to hide under a cover suited
to the tastes of the Court, or to the yet more faulty tastes of the
rabble of an Elizabethan play-house, — the boldest scientific
treatment of ■ the forbidden questions,' still leaves so much
upon the surface of the play that repels the ordinary criticism ;
— these that were first sent out to bring in the rabble of that
age to the scholar's cell, these in which the new science was
first brought in, in its slave's costume, with all its native
glories shorn, and its eyes put out * to make sport* for the
Tudor — perilous sport! — these first rude essays of a learning
not yet master of its unwonted tools, not yet taught how to
wear its fetters gracefully, and wreathe them over and make
immortal glories of them — still clanking its irons. There is
nothing here to detain any criticism not yet instructed in the
secret of this Art Union. But the faults are faults of execu-
Ixxx INTRODUCTION.
tion merely; the design of the Novum Organum is not more
noble, not more clear.
For these works are the works of that same ' school' which
the Jesuit thought so dangerous, and calculated to affect un-
favourably the morality of the English nation — the school
which the Jesuit contrived to bring under suspicion as a school
in wh'ch doctrines that differed from opinions received on
essential points were secretly taught, — contriving to infect
with his views on that point the lady who was understood, at
that time, to be the only person qualified to reflect on ques-
tions of this nature; the school in which Raleigh was asserted
to be perverting the minds of young men by teaching them
the use of profane anagrams; and it cannot be denied, that
anagrams, as well as other ' devices in letters/ were made use
of, in involving ' the bolder meanings' contained in writings
issued from this school, especially when the scorn with which
science regarded the things it found set up for its worship
had to be conveyed sometimes in a point or a word. It is a
school, whose language might often seem obnoxious to the
charge of profanity and other charges of that nature to those
who do not understand its aims, to those who do not know
that it is from the first a school of Natural Science, whose
chief department was that history which makes the basis of
the ' living art,' the art of man's living, the essential art of it,
— a school in which the use of words was, in fact, more
rigorous and scrupulous than it had ever been in any other, in
which the use of words is for the first time scientific, and yet,
in some respects, more bold and free than in those in which
mere words, as words, are supposed to have some inherent
virtue and efficacy, some mystic worth and sanctity in them.
This was the learning in which the art of a new age and
race first spoke, and many an old foolish, childish, borrowed
notion went off like vapour in it at its first word, without any
one's ever so much as stopping to observe it, any one whose
place was within. It is the school of a criticism much more
severe than the criticism which calls its freedom in question.
It is a school in which the taking of names in vain in general
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxxi
is strictly forbidden. t That is the first commandment of it,
and it is a commandment with promise.
The man who sits there in the Tower, now, driving that
same ' goose-pen ' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument
for unfolding practical doctrines, with such patient energy, is
not now occupied with the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as
he looks; though that, too, is a subject which his nautical
experience and the indomitable bias of his genius as a western
man towards calculation in general, together with his notion
that the affairs of the world generally, past as well as future,
belong properly to his sphere as a man, will require him to
take up and examine and report upon, before he will think that
his work is done. It is not a chapter in the History of the
World which he is composing at present, though that work
is there at this moment on the table, and forms the ostensible
state-prison work of this convict.
This is the man who made one so long ago in those brilliant
1 Eound Table' reunions, in which the idea of converting the
new belles let f res of that new time, to such grave and politic
uses was first suggested; he is the genius of that company,
that even in such frolic mad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost,
and the Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's
Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad farce and bur-
lesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and pompous
rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most perilous
secret of the new philosophy, only, but the secret of its organ
of delivery and tradition, the secret of its use of letters, the
secret of its * cipher in letters,1 and not its * cipher in words '
only, the cipher in which the secret of the authorship of these
works was infolded, and in which it was found, but not found
in these earlier plays, — plays in which these so perilous se-
crets are still conveyed in so many involutions, in passages so
intricate with quips and puns and worthless trivialities, so
uninviting or so marred with their superficial meanings, that
no one would think of looking in them for anything of any
value. For it is always when some necessary, but not super-
ficial, question of the play is to be considered, that the Clown
/
lxxxii
INTRODUCTION.
and the Fool are most in request, for ' there be of them that
will themselves laugh to set on some barren spectators to laugh
too'; and under cover of that mirth it is, that the grave or
witty undertone reaches the ear of the judicious.
It is in the later and more finished works of this school that
the key to the secret doctrines of it, which it is the object of
this work to furnish, is best found. But the fact, that in the
very rudest and most faulty plays in this collection of plays,
which form so important a department of the works of this
school, which make indeed the noblest tradition, the only
adequate tradition, the ' illustrated tradition' of its noblest
doctrine — the fact that in the very earliest germ of this new
union of ' practic and theoric,' of art and learning, from which
we pluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and
Lears, and Tempests, and the Novum Organum, already the
perilous secret of this union is infolded, already the entire
organism that these great fruits and flowers will unfold in such
perfection is contained, and clearly traceable, — this is a fact
which appeared to require insertion in this history, and not,
perhaps, without some illustration.
* It is not amiss to observe,' says the Author of the Advance-
ment of Learning, when at last his great exordium to the
science of nature in man, and the art of culture and cure
that is based on that science is finished — pausing to observe
it, pausing ere he will produce his index to that science, to
observe it : 'It is not amiss to observe* [here], he says —
(speaking of the operation of culture in general on young
minds, so forcible, though unseen, as hardly any length of
time, or contention of labour, can countervail it afterwards) —
f how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when
they fall into great men, or great matters, do work great and
important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus,
of two stage-players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, by their
faculty of playing, put the Pannonian armies into an extreme
tumult and combustion; for, there arising a mutiny among them,
upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blaesus the lieutenant had
committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued;
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. Ixxxiii
whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak [being a stage-
player] , which he did in this manner.
i ' These poor innocent wretches appointed to cruel death, you
have restored to behold the light: but who shall restore my
brother to me, or life to my brother, that was sent hither in
message from the legions of Germany to treat of — THE COMMON
CAUSE? And he hath murdered him this last night by some
of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his execu-
tioners upon soldiers. The mortalest enemies do not deny
burial ; ivhen I have performed my last duties to the corpse with
kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him, so that
these, my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to
THE legion, may have leave to bury us.3
c With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury
and uproar; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither
was there any such matter [in that case], but he played it
merely as if he had been upon the stage.'
This is the philosopher and stage critic who expresses a
decided opinion elsewhere, that ' the play 's the thing/ though
he finds this kind of writing, too, useful in its way, and for
certain purposes; but he is the one who, in speaking of the
original differences in the natures and gifts of men, suggests
that ' there are a kind of men who can, as it were, divide
themselves / and he does not hesitate to propound it as his
deliberate opinion, that a man of wit should have at command
a number of styles adapted to different auditors and exigencies ;
that is, if he expects to accomplish anything with his rhetoric.
That is what he makes himself responsible for from his pro-
fessional chair of learning; but it is the Prince of Denmark,
with his remarkable natural faculty of speaking to the point,
who says, ' Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too
light, for — [what? — ] the law of writ — and — the liberty.'
1 These are the only men,1 he adds, referring apparently to that
tinselled gauded group of servants that stand there awaiting
his orders.
* My lord — you played once in the university, you say/ he
observes afterwards, addressing himself to that so politic states-
/2
lxxxiv INTRODUCTION.
man whose overreaching court plots and performances end for
himself so disastrously. ' That did I, my lord,' replies Polo-
nius, ' and was accounted a good actor! ' And what did you
enact?' ' I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i' the Capi-
tol [I] . Brutus killed me.' * It was a brute part of him
[collateral sounds — Elizabethan phonography] to kill so
capitol a calf there. — Be the players ready? '( ?). [That is the
question.]
' While watching the progress of the action at Sadlers*
Wells,' says the dramatic critic of the ' Times,' in the criticism
of the Comedy of Errors before referred to, directing attention
to the juvenile air of the piece, to ' the classic severity in the
form of the play/ and ' that baldness of treatment which is a
peculiarity of antique comedy' — e while watching the progress
of the action at Sadlers* Wells, we may almost fancy we are at
St. Peters College, witnessing the annual performance of the
Queen's scholars.' That is not surprising to one acquainted
with the history of these plays, though the criticism which
involves this kind of observation is not exactly the criticism
to which we have been accustomed here. But any one who
wishes to see, as a matter of antiquarian curiosity, or for any
other purpose, how far from being hampered in the first efforts
of his genius with this class of educational associations, that
particular individual would naturally have been, in whose un-
conscious brains this department of the modern learning is
supposed to have had its accidental origin, — any one who
wishes to see in what direction the antecedents of a person in
that station in life would naturally have biassed, at that time,
his first literary efforts, if, indeed, he had ever so far escaped
from the control of circumstances as to master the art of the
collocation of letters — any person who has any curiosity what-
ever on this point is recommended to read in this connection
a letter from a professional cotemporary of this individual —
one who comes to us with unquestionable claims to our re-
spect, inasmuch as he appears to have had some care for the
future, and some object in living beyond that of promoting
his own immediate private interests and sensuous gratification.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. lxxxv
It is a letter of Mr. Edward Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich
College), published by the Shakspere Society, to which we are
compelled to have recourse for information on this interesting
question; inasmuch as that distinguished cotemporary and
professional rival of his referred to, who occupies at present so
large a space in the public eye, as it is believed for the best of
reasons, has failed to leave us any specimens of his method of
reducing his own personal history to writing, or indeed any
demonstration of his appreciation of the art of chirography, in
general. He is a person who appears to have given a decided
preference to the method of oral communication as a means of
effecting his objects. But in reading this truly interesting
document from the pen of an Elizabethan player, who has
left us a specimen of his use of that instrument usually so
much in esteem with men of letters, we must take into account
the fact, that this is an exceptional case of culture. It is the
case of a player who aspired to distinction, and who had raised
himself by the force of his genius above his original social
level ; it is the case of a player who has been referred to re-
cently as a proof of the position which it was possible for * a
stage player' to attain to under those particular social con-
ditions.
But as this letter is of a specially private and confidential
nature, and as this poor player who did care for the future,
and who founded with his talents, such as they were, a noble
charity, instead of living and dying to himself, is not to blame
for his defects of education, — since his acts command our
respect, however faulty his attempts at literary expression, —
this letter will not be produced here. But whoever has read
it, or whoever may chance to read it, in the course of an anti-
quarian research, will be apt to infer, that whatever educa-
tional bias the first efforts of genius subjected to influences of
the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged upon
the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of
St. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly
the faults that the instructed critic would look for.
But to ascertain the fact, that the controlling idea of that
Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION.
new learning which the Man in the Tower is illustrating now
in so grand and mature a manner, not with his pen only, but
with his ' living art/ and with such an entire independence of
classic models, is already organically contained in those earlier
works on which the classic shell is still visible, it is not neces-
sary to go back to the Westminster play of these new classics,
or to the performances of the Queen's Scholars. Plays having
a considerable air of maturity, in which the internal freedom
of judgment and taste is already absolute, still exhibit on the
surface of them this remarkable submission to the ancient
forms which are afterwards rejected on principle, and by a
rule in the new rhetoric — a rule which the author of the
Advancement of Learning is at pains to state very clearly.
The mildness of which we hear so much, works itself out upon
the surface, and determines the form at length, as these players
proceed and grow bolder with their work. A play, second to
none in historical interest, invaluable when regarded simply
in its relation to the history of this school, one which may
be considered, in fact, the Introductory Play of the New
School of Learning, is one which exhibits very vividly these
striking characteristics of the earlier period. It is one in which
the vulgarities of the Play-house are still the cloak of the
philosophic subtleties, and incorporated, too, into the philo-
sophic design; and it is one in which the unity of design, that
one design which makes the works of this school, from first to
last, as the work of one man, is still cramped with those
other unities which the doctrines of Dionysus and * the
mysteries of Eleusis prescribed of old to their interpreters*
'What is the end of study? What is the end of it?' was
the word of the New School of Learning. That was its
first speech. It was a speech produced with dramatic illus-
trations, for the purpose of bringing out its significance more
fully, for the purpose of pointing the inquiry unmistake-
ably to those ends of learning which the study of the learned
then had not yet comprehended. It is a speech on behalf
of a new learning, in which the extant learning is produced
on the stage, in its actual historical relation to those 'ends'
lxxxvii
which the new school conceived to be the true ends of it,
which are brought on to the stage in palpable, visible re-
presentation, not in allegorical forms, but in instances,
1 conspicuous instances,' living specimens, after the manner of
this school.
* What is the end of study?' cried the setter forth of this
new doctrine, as long before as when lore and love were
debating it together in that ' little Academe' that was yet,
indeed, to be * the wonder of the world, still and contem-
plative in living art/ 'What is the end of study?' cries
already the voice of one pacing under these new olives. That
was the word of the new school ; that was the word of new
ages, and these new minds taught of nature — her priests and
prophets knew it then, already, ' Let fame that all hunt after
in their lives,1 they cry —
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death ;
When spite of cormorant devouring time,
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity — [of all].
* * * *
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world,
Our Court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in — living art.
This is the Poet of the Woods who is beginning his ' recrea-
tions' for us here — the poet who loves so well to take his
court gallants in their silks and velvets, and perfumes, and
fine court ladies with all their courtly airs and graces, and all
the stale conventionalitites that he is sick of, out from under
the low roofs of princes into that great palace in which the
Queen, whose service he is sworn to, keeps the State. This
is the school-master who takes his school all out on holiday
excursions into green fields, and woods, and treats them to
country merry-makings, and not in sport merely. This is the
one that breaks open the cloister, and the close walls that
learning had dwelt in till then, and shuts up the musty books,
lxxxviii INTRODUCTION.
and bids that old droning cease. This is the one that stretches
the long drawn aisle and lifts the fretted vault into a grander
temple. The Court with all its pomp and retinue, the school
with all its pedantries and brazen ignorance, * High Art' with
its new graces, divinity, Mar-texts and all, must ' come hither,
come hither,' and ' under the green- wood tree lie with me/ the
ding-dong of this philosopher's new learning says, calling his
new school together. This is the linguist that will find < tongues
in trees,' and crowd out from the halls of learning the lore of
ancient parchments with their verdant classics, their * truth in
beauty dyed.' This is the teacher with whose new alphabet
you can find < sermons in stones, books in the running brooks/
and good,— good— his 'good,' the good of the Xew School,
that broader 'good' in every thing. < The roof of this court is
too high to be yours,' says the princess of this out-door scene
to the sovereignty that claimed it then.
This is « great Nature's' Poet and Interpreter, and he takes
us always into ' the continent of nature '; but man is his chief
end, and that island which his life makes in the universal
being is the point to which that Naturalist brings home all his
new collections. This is the Poet of the Woods, but mad-
man at the summit of his arts, in the perfection of his refine-
ments, is always the creature that he is « collecting' in them.
In his wildest glades, this is still the species that he is busied
with. He has brought him there to experiment on him, and
that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him
there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savage-
ness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-
man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a
woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. He will wake a
continental forest with it and subdue it, and fill it with his
music.
For this is the Poet who cries ' Westward Ho ! ' But he
has not got into the woods yet in this play. He is only on
the edge of them as yet. It is under the blue roof of that
same dome which is < too high,' the princess here says, to be-
long to the pigmy that this Philosopher likes so well to
lxxxix
bring out and to measure under that canopy — it is ' out
of doors' that this new speech on behalf of a new learn-
ing is spoken. But there is a close rim of conventionalities
about us still. It is a Park that this audacious proposal
is uttered in. But nothing can be more orderly, for it is
* a Park with a Palace in it.' There it is, in the back-
ground. If it were the Attic proscenium itself hollowed into
the south-east corner of the Acropolis, what more could one
ask. But it is the palace of the King of — Navarre, who is
the prince of good fellows and the prince of good learning at
one and the same time, which makes, in this case, the novelty.
' A Park with a Palace in it' makes the first scene. 'Another
part of the same' with the pavilion of a princess and the tents
of her Court seen in the distance, makes the second; and the
change from one part of this park to another, though we get
into the heart of it sometimes, is the utmost license that the
rigours of the Greek Drama permit the Poet to think of at
present. This criticism on the old learning, this audacious
proposal for the new, with all the bold dramatic illustration
with which it is enforced, must be managed here under these
restrictions. Whatever ' persons ' the plot of this drama may
require for its evolutions, whatever witnesses and reporters
the trial and conviction of the old learning, and the definition
of the ground of the new, may require, will have to be in-
duced to cross this park at this particular time, because the
form of the new art is not yet emancipated, and the Muse of
the Inductive Science cannot stir from the spot to search
them out.
However, that does not impair the representation as it is
managed. There is a very bold artist here already, with all
his deference for the antique. We shall be sure to have all
when he is the plotter. The action of this drama is not com-
plicated. The persons of it are few; the characterization is
feeble, compared with that of some of the later plays; but
that does not hinder or limit the design, and it is all the more
apparent for this artistic poverty, anatomically clear; while as
yet that perfection of art in which all trace of the structure
XC INTRODUCTION.
came so soon to be lost in the beauty of the illustration, is
yet wanting; while as yet that art which made of its living
instance an intenser life, or which made with its living art a
life more living than life itself, was only germinating.
The illustration here, indeed, approaches the allegorical form,
in the obtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities
represented, so overdone as to wear the air of a caricature,
though the historical combination is still here. These dia-
grams are alive evidently; they are men, and not allegorical
spectres, or toys, though they are * painted in character.*
The entire representation of the extant learning is drama-
tically produced on this stage; the germ of the * new ' is here
also; and the unoccupied ground of it is marked out here as,
in the Advancement of Learning, by the criticism on the
deficiences of that which has the field. Here, too, the line of
the extant culture, — the narrow indented boundary of the
culture that professed to take all is always defining the new, —
cutting out the wild not yet visited by the art of man; — only
here the criticism is much more lively, because here ' we come
to particulars,' a thing which the new philosophy much insists
on; and though this want in learning, and the wildness it
leaves, is that which makes tragedies in this method of ex-
hibition ; it has its comical aspect also ; and this is the laughing
and weeping philosopher in one who manages these repre-
sentations; and in this case it is the comical aspect of the
subject that is seized on.
Our diagrams are still coarse here, but they have already
the good scientific quality of exhausting the subject. It is
the New School that occupies the centre of the piece. Their
quarters are in that palace, but the king of it is the Royalty
(Raleigh) that founded and endowed this School — that was one
of his secret titles, — and under that name he may sometimes
be recognized in descriptions and dedications that persons who
were not in the secret of the School naturally applied in
another quarter, or appropriated to themselves. lRex was a
surname among the Romans,' says the Interpreter of this
School, in a very explanatory passage, 'as well as King is
XC1
with us.' It is the New School that is under these boughs
here, but hardly that as yet.
It is rather the representation of the new classical learning,
— the old learning newly revived, — in which the new is
germinating. It is that learning in its first effect on the
young, enthusiastic, but earnest practical English mind. It
is that revival of the old learning, arrested, daguerreotyped
at the moment in which the new begins to stir in it, in minds
which are going to be the master-minds of ages.
'Common sense' is the word here already. 'Common
sense ' is the word that this new Academe is convulsed with
when the curtain rises. And though it is laughter that you
hear there now, sending its merry English peals through
those musty, antique walls, as the first ray of that new beam
enters them ; the muse of the new mysteries has also another
mask, and if you will wait a little, you shall hear that tone
too. Cries that the old mysteries never caught, lamentations
for Adonis not heard before, griefs that Dionysus never knew,
shall yet ring out from those walls.
Under that classic dome which still calls itself Platonic, the
questions and experiments of the new learning are beginning.
These youths are here to represent the new philosophy, which
is science, in the act of taking its first step. The subject is
presented here in large masses. But this central group, at
least, is composed of living men, and not dramatic shadows
merely. There are good historical features peering through
those masks a little. These youths are full of youthful
enthusiasm, and aspiring to the ideal heights of learning in
their enthusiasm. But already the practical bias of their
genius betrays itself. They are making a practical experi-
ment with the classics, and to their surprise do not find them
' good for life.'
Here is the School, then, — with the classics on trial in the
persons of these new school-men. That is the central group.
What more do we want? Here is the new and the old
already. But this is the old revived — newly revived ; — this
is the revival of learning in whose stimulus the new is begin-
XCli • INTRODUCTION.
ning. There is something in the field besides that. There is
a * school- master abroad' yet, that has not been examined.
These young men who have resolved themselves in their secret
sittings into a committee of the whole, are going to have him
up. He will be obliged to come into this park here, and
speak his speech in the ear of that English ' common sense,'
which is meddling here, for the first time, in a comprehensive
manner with things in general; he will have to ' speak out loud
and plain/ that these English parents who are sitting here in
the theatre, some of * the wiser sort ' of them, at least, may
get some hint of what it is that this pedagogue is beating into
their children's brains, taking so much of their glorious youth
from them — that priceless wealth of nature which none can
restore to them, — as the purchase. But this is not all. There
is a man who teaches the grown-up children of the parish in
which this Park is situated, who happens to live hard by, —
a man who professes the care and cure of minds. He, too,
has had a summons sent him; there will be no excuse taken;
and his examination will proceed at the same time. These
two will come into the Park together; and perhaps we shall
not be able to detect any very marked difference in their
modes of expressing themselves. They are two ordinary,
quiet-looking personages enough. There is nothing remark-
able in their appearance; their coming here is not forced.
There are deer in this Park; and ' book-men' as they are, they
have a taste for sport also it seems. Unless you should get a
glimpse of the type, — of the unit in their faces — and that
shadowy train that the cipher points to, — unless you should
observe that their speech is somewhat strongly pronounced for
an individual representation — merely glancing at them in
passing — you would not, perhaps, suspect who they are.
And yet the hints are not wanting; they are very thickly
strewn, — the hints which tell you that in these two men all
the extant learning, which is in places of trust and authority,
is represented ; all that is not included in that elegant learning
which those students are making sport of in those * golden
books ' of theirs, under the trees here now.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. xciii
But there is another department of art and literature which
is put down as a department of ' learning] and a most grave
and momentous department of it too, in that new scheme of
learning which this play is illustrating, — one which will also
have to be impersonated in this representation, — one which
plays a most important part in the history of this School. It
is that which gives it the power it lacks and wants, and in one
way or another will have. It is that which makes an arm for
it, and a long one. It is that which supplies its hidden arms
and armour. But neither is this department of learning as it
is extant, — as this School finds it prepared to its hands,
going to be permitted to escape the searching of this compre-
hensive satire. There is a ( refined traveller of Spain' haunting
the purlieus of this Court, who is just the bombastic kind of
person that is wanted to act this part. For this impersonation,
too, is historical. There are just such creatures in nature as
this. We see them now and then; or, at least, he is not
much overdone, — ' this child of Fancy, — Don Armado
hight/ It is the Old Komance, with his ballads and alle-
gories,— with his old 'lies' and his new arts, — that this
company are going to use for their new minstrelsy ; but first
they will laugh him out of his bombast and nonsense, and
instruct him in the knowledge of ' common things,' and teach
him how to make poetry out of them. They have him here
now, to make sport of him with the rest. It is the fashionable
literature, — the literature that entertains a court, — the lite-
rature of a tyranny, with his gross servility, with his courtly
affectations, with his arts of amusement, his ' vain delights,'
with his euphuisms, his ■ fire-new words,' it is the polite learn-
ing, the Elizabethan Belles Lettres, that is brought in here,
along with that old Dryasdust Scholasticism, which the other
two represent, to make up this company. These critics, who
turn the laugh upon themselves, who caricature their own
follies for the benefit of learning, who make themselves and
their own failures the centre of the comedy of Love's Labour's
Lost, are not going to let this thing escape ; with the heights
of its ideal, and the grossness of its real, it is the very fuel for
the mirth that is blazing and crackling here. For these are
XC1V INTRODUCTION.
the woodmen that are at work here, making sport as they
work; hewing down the old decaying trunks, gathering all
the nonsense into heaps, and burning it up and and clearing
the ground for the new.
' What is the end of study/ is the word of this Play. To
get the old books shut, but not till they have been examined,
not till all the good in them has been taken out, not till we
have made a stand on them; to get the old books in their
places, under our feet, and ' then to make progression' after
we see where we are, is the proposal here — here also. It is
the shutting up of the old books, and the opening of the new
ones, which is the business here. But that — that is not the
proposal of an ignorant man (as this Poet himself takes pains
to observe); it is not the proposition of a man who does not
know what there is in books — who does not know but there
is every thing in them that they claim to have in them, every
thing that is good for life, magic and all. An ignorant man
is in awe of books, on account of his ignorance. He thinks
there are all sorts of things in them. He is very diffident
when it comes to any question in regard to them. He tells
you that he is not { high learned? and defers to his betters.
Neither is this the proposition of a man who has read a little,
who has only a smattering in books, as the Poet himself ob-
serves. It is the proposition of a scholar, who has read them
all, or had them read for him and examined, who knows what
is in them all, and what they are good for, and what they are
not good for. This is the man who laughs at learning, and
borrows her own speech to laugh her down with. This, and
not the ignorant man, it is who opens at last ' great nature's'
gate to us, and tells us to come out and learn of her, because
that which old books did not ' clasp in,' that which old phi-
losophies have ' not dreamt of,' — the lore of laws not written
yet in books of man's devising, the lore of that of which man's
ordinary life consisteth is here, uncollected, waiting to be spelt
out.
King. How well he's read to reason against reading.
is the inference here.
JDumain. Proceeded well to stop all good proceeding.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. XCV
It is progress that is proposed here also. After trie survey of
learning * has been well taken, then to make progression is the
word. It is not the doctrine of unlearning that is taught here
in this satire. It is a learning that includes all the extant wis-
dom, and finds it insufficient. It is one that requires a new and
nobler study for its god-like ends. But, at the same time, the
hindrances that a practical learning has to encounter are pointed
at from the first. The fact, that the true ends of learning
take us at once into the ground of the forbidden questions, is
as plainly stated in the opening speech of the New Academy
as the nature of the statement will permit. The fact, that the
intellect is trained to vain delights under such conditions, be-
cause there is no earnest legitimate occupation of it permitted,
is a fact that is glanced at here, as' it is in other places, though
not in such a manner, of course, as to lead to a ' question*
from the government in regard to the meaning of the passages
in which these grievances are referred to. Under these em-
barrassments it is, we are given to understand, however, that
the criticism on the old learning and the plot for the new is
about to proceed.
Here it takes the form of comedy and broad farce. There
is a touch of * tart Aristophanes' in the representation here.
This is the introductory performance of the school in which
the student hopes for high words howsoever low the matter, em-
phasizing that hope with an allusion to the heights of learning,
as he finds it, and the highest word of it, which seems irre-
verent, until we find from the whole purport of the play how
far he at least is from taking it in vain, whatever implication
of that sort his criticism may be intended to leave on others,
who use good words with so much iteration and to so little
purpose. * That is a high hope for a low having' is the re-
joinder of that associate of his, whose views on this point
agree with his own so entirely. It is the height of the hope
and the lowness of the having — it is the height of the words
and the lowness of the matter, that makes the incongruity
here. That is the soul of all the mirth that is stirring here.
It is the height of ' the style9 that ' gives us cause to climb in the
XCV1 INTRODUCTION.
merriment' that makes the subject of this essay. It is litera-
ture in general that is laughed at here, and the branches of it
in particular. It is the old books that are walking about
under these trees, with their follies all ravelled out, making
sport for us.
But this is not all. It is the defect in learning which is
represented here — that same ' defect' which a graver work of
this Academy reports, in connection with a proposition for the
Advancement of Learning — for its advancement into the
fields not yet taken up, and which turn out, upon inquiry, to
be the fields of human life and practice; — it is that main
defect which is represented here. ' I find a kind of science of
* words' but none of ' things,' ' says the reporter. * What do
you read, my lord?' * Words, words, words,' echoes the
Prince of Denmark. ' I find in these antique books, in these
Philosophies and Poems, a certain resplendent or lustrous
mass of matter chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of
disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses,' says the other
and graver reporter; 'but as to the ordinary and common
matter of which life consisteth, I do not find it erected into an
art or science, or reduced to written inquiry.' * How low
soever the matter, I hope in God for high words? says a
speaker, who comes out of that same palace of learning on to
this stage with the secret badge of the new lore on him, which
is the lore of practice — a speaker not less grave, though he
comes in now in the garb of this pantomime, to make sport
for us with his news of learning. For l Seneca cannot be too
heavy, nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and the liberty.'
It is the high words and the low having that make the in-
congruity. But we cannot see the vanity of those heights of
words, till the lowness of the matter which they profess to
abstract has been brought into contrast with them, till the
particulars which they do not grasp, which they can not com-
pel, have been brought into studious contrast with them. The
delicate graces of those flowery summits of speech which the
ideal nature, when it energises in speech, creates, must over-
hang in this design the rude actuality which the untrained
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE. XCV11
nature in man, forgotten of art, is always producing. And it
is the might of nature in this opposition, it is the force of
' matter,' it is the unconquerable cause contrasted with the
vanity of the words that have not comprehended the cause,
it is the futility of these heights of words that are not 'forms1
that do not correspond to things which must be exhibited
here also. It is the force of the law in nature, that must be
brought into opposition here with the height of the word, the
ideal word, the higher, but not yet scientifically abstracted word,
that seeks in vain because it has no ' grappling-hook ' on the
actuality, to bind it. There already are the heights of learning
as it is, as this school finds it, dramatically exhibited on the
one hand; but this, too, — life as it is, — as this school finds it,
man's life as it is, unreduced to order by his philosophy, un-
reduced to melody by his verse, must also be dramatically
exhibited on the other hand, must also be impersonated. It
is life that we have here, the 'theoric' on the one side, the
* practic' on the other. The height of the books on the one
side, the lowness, the unvisited, ' unlettered ' lowness of the
life on the other. That which exhibits the defect in learning
that the new learning is to remedy, the new uncultured, un-
broken ground of science must be exhibited here also. But
that is man's life. That is the world. And what if it be?
There are diagrams in this theatre large enough for that. It
is the theatre of the New Academy which deals also in ideas,
but prefers the solidarities. The wardrobe and other pro-
perties of this theatre are specially adapted to exigencies of
this kind. The art that put the extant learning with those
few strokes into the grotesque forms you see there, will not be
stopped on this side either, for any law of writ or want of
space and artistic comprehension. This is the learning that
can be bounded in the nut-shell of an aphorism and include
all in its bounds.
There are not many persons here, and they are ordinary
looking persons enough. But if you lift those dominos a
little, which that ' refined traveller of Spain ' has brought in
fashion, you will find that this rustic garb and these homely
9
XCV111 INTRODUCTION.
country features hide more than they promised ; and the prin-
cess, with her train, who is keeping state in the tents yonder,
though there is an historical portrait there too, is greater than
she seems. This Antony Dull is a poor rude fellow ; but he is
a great man in this play. This is the play in which one
asks ' Which is the princess?' and the answer is, * The tallest
and the thickest.' Antony is the thickest, he is the acknow-
ledged sovereign here in this school ; for he is of that greater
part that carries it, and though he hath never fed of the
dainties bred in a book, these spectacles which the new ' book
men ' are getting up here are intended chiefly for him. And
that 'unlettered small knowing soul 'Me' — 'still me' — in-
significant as you think him when you see him in the form of
a country swain, is a person of most extensive domains and
occupations, and of the very highest dignity, as this philosophy
will demonstrate in various ways, under various symbols. You
will have that same me in the form of a Mountain, before you
have read all the books of this school, and mastered all its
' tokens' and ' symbols"
The dramatic representation here is meagre; but we shall
find upon inquiry it is already the Globe Theatre, with all its new
solidarities, new in philosophy, new in poetry, that the leaves
of this park hide — this park that the doors and windows of the
New Academe open into — these new grounds that it lets out
its students to play and study in, and collect their specimens
from — ' still and contemplative in living art.' It was all the
world that was going through that park that day haply, we
shall find. It is all the world that we get in this narrow
representation here, as we get it in a more limited representa-
tion still, in another place. * All the world knows me in my
book and my book in me,y cries the Egotist of the Mountain.
It is the first Canto of that great Epic, whose argument runs
through so many books, that is chaunted here. It is the war,
the unsuccessful war of lore and nature, whose lost fields have
made man's life, that is getting reviewed at last and reduced
to speech and writing. It is the school itself that makes the
centre of the plot in this case; these gay young philosophers
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE. XC1X
with 'the ribands' yet floating in their fcap of youth,' who
oppose lore to love, who ' war against their own affections and
THE HUGE ARMY OF THE WORLD'S DESIRES,' ere they know
what they are ; who think to conquer nature's potencies, her
universal powers and causes, with wordy ignorance, with
resolutions that ignore them simply, and make a virtue of
ignoring them, these are the chief actors here, who come out
of that classic tiring house where they have been shut up
with the ancients so long, to celebrate on this green plot,
which is life, their own defeat, and propose a better wisdom,
the wisdom of the moderns. And Holofernes, the school-
master, who cultivates minds, and Sir Nathaniel, the curate,
who cures them, and Don Armado or Don Adramadio, from
the flowery heights of the new Belles Lettres, with the last
refinement of Euphuism on his lips, and Antony Dull, and
the country damsel and her swain, and the princess and her
attendants, are all there to eke out and complete the philo-
sophic design, — to exhibit the extant learning in its airy
flights and gross descents, in its ludicrous attempt to escape
from those particulars or to grapple, without loss of grandeur,
those particulars of which man's life consisteth. It is the
vain pretension and assumption of those faulty wordy abstrac-
tions, whose falseness and failure in practice this school is
going to expose elsewhere; it is the defect of those abstrac-
tions and idealisms that the Novum Organum was invented to
remedy, which is exhibited so grossly and palpably here. It
is the height of those great swelling words of rhetoric and
logic, in rude contrast with those actualities which the history
of man is always exhibiting, which the universal nature in
man is always imposing on the learned and unlearned, the
profane and the reverend, the courtier and the clown, the
4 king and the beggar,' the actualities which the natural his-
tory of man continues perseveringly to exhibit, in the face of
those logical abstractions and those ideal schemes of man as he
should be, which had been till this time the fruit of learning;
— those actualities, those particulars, whose lowness the new
C INTRODUCTION.
philosophy would begin with, which the new philosophy
would erect into an art or science.
The foundation of this ascent is natural history. There
must be nothing omitted here, or the stairs would be unsafe.
The rule in this School, as stated by the Interpreter in Chief,
is, c that there be nothing in the globe of matter, which should
not be likewise in the globe of crystal or form;' that is, he
explains, ' that there should not be anything in being and
action, which should not be drawn and collected into contem-
plation and doctrine.1 The lowness of matter, all the capabili-
ties and actualities of speech and action, not of the refined
only, but of the vulgar and profane, are included in the
science which contemplates an historical result, and which
proposes the reform of these actualities, the cure of these
maladies, — which comprehends man as man in its intention,
— which makes the Common Weal its end.
Science is the word that unlocks the books of this School, its
gravest and its lightest, its books of loquacious prose and stately
allegory, and its Book of Sports and Kiddles. Science is the
clue that still threads them, that never breaks, in all their
departures from the decorums of literature, in their lowest
descents from the refinements of society. The vulgarity is not
the vulgarity of the vulgar — the inelegancy is not the spon-
taneous rudeness of the ill-bred — any more than its doctrine of
nature is the doctrine of the unlearned. The loftiest refine-
ments of letters, the courtliest breeding, the most exquisite
conventionalities, the most regal dignities of nature, are always
present in these works, to measure these abysses, flowering to
their brink. Man as he is, booked, surveyed, — surveyed
from the continent of nature, put down as he is in her book
of kinds, not as he is from his own interior isolated concep-
tions only, — the universal powers and causes as they are
developed in him, in his untaught affections, in his utmost
sensuous darkness, — the universal principle instanced where
it is most buried, the cause in nature found; — man as he is,
in his heights and in his depths, ' from his lowest note to the
top of his key/ — man in his possibilities, in his actualities, in
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE. CI
his thought, in his speech, in his book language, and in his
e very-day words, in his loftiest lyric tongue, in his lowest pit
of play-house degradation, searched out, explained, interpreted.
That is the key to the books of this Academe, who carry
always on their armour, visible to those who have learned
their secret, but hid under the symbol of their double wor-
ship, the device of the Hunters, — the symbol of the twin-gods,
— the silver bow, or the bow that finds all. ' Seeing that she
beareth two persons .... I do also otherwise shadow her.'
It is man's life, and the culture of it, erected into an art
or science, that these books contain. In the lowness of the
lowest, and in the aspiration of the noblest, the powers whose
entire history must make the basis of a successful morality and
policy are found. It is all abstracted or drawn into contem-
plation, ' that the precepts of cure and culture may be more
rightly concluded.' ' For that which in speculative philosophy
corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the
rule/
It is not necessary to illustrate this criticism in this case,
because in this case the design looks through the execution
everywhere. The criticism of the Novum Organum, the
criticism of the Advancement of Learning, and the criticism
of Kaleigh's History of the World, than which there is none
finer, when once you penetrate its crust of profound erudition,
is here on the surface. And the scholasticism is not more
obtrusive here, the learned sock is not more ostentatiously
paraded, than in some critical places in those performances;
while the humour that underlies the erudition issues from a
depth of learning not less profound.
As, for instance, in this burlesque of the descent of
Euphuism to the prosaic detail of the human conditions, not then
accommodated with a style in literature, a defect in learning
which this Academy proposed to remedy. A new department
in literature which began with a series of papers issued from
this establishment, has since undertaken to cover the ground
here indicated, the every-day human life, and reduce it to
written inquiry, notwithstanding ' the lowness of the matter.'
CU INTRODUCTION.
Letter from Don Armado to the King.
King [reads]. 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole
dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering
patron . ... So it is, — besieged with sable-coloured melan-
choly, I did commend the black, oppressing humour to the most
wholesome physick of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman,
betook myself to walk. The time when ? About the sixth hour :
when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that
nourishment which is called supper.'
[No one who is much acquainted with the style of the
author of this letter ought to have any difficulty in identi-
fying him here. There was a method of dramatic compo-
sition in use then, and not in this dramatic company only,
which produced an amalgamation of styles. < On a forgotten
matter,' these associated authors themselves, perhaps, could
not always ' make distinction of their hands/ But there are
places where Kaleigh's share in this ' cry of players ' shows
through very palpably].
1 So much for the time when. Now for the ground which ; which
I mean I walked upon : it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place
where ; where I mean I did encounter that obscene and most pre-
posterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-
coloured ink, which here thou beholdest, surveyest, or seest, etc. . . .
'Thine in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of
duty.
'Don Adriano de Armado.'
And in another letter from the same source, the dramatic
criticism on that style of literature which it was the intention
of this School f to reform altogether ' is thus continued.
. . . 'The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua,
set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon. And
it was he that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici ; which to anatomise
in the vulgar, (O base and obscure vulgar/) Videlicet, he came, saw,
and overcame . . . Who came ? the king. Why did he come 1 to
see. Why did he see? to overcome. To whom came he? to the
beggar. What saw he 1 the beggar. Who overcame he ? the beggar.
The conclusion is victory. On whose side ? etc.
' Thine in the dearest design of industry.'
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE. cill
[Dramatic comment.']
Boyet. 1 am much deceived but I remember the style.
Princess. Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile.
Jaquenetta. Good Master Parson, be so good as to read me this
letter — it was sent me from Don Armatho : I beseech you to read it.
Holof ernes. [Speaking here, however, not in character but for 'the
A cademe.'] Fauste precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra
Ruminat, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan ! I may speak
of thee as the traveller doth of Venice
Vinegia, Vinegia,
Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.
Old Mantuan ! Old Mantuan ! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee
not. — Ut re sol la mi fa. — Under pardon, Sir, what are the contents?
or, rather, as Horace says in his What, my soul, verses 1
Nath. Ay, Sir, and very learned [one would say so upon exami-
nation].
Hoi. Let me have a staff, a stanza, a verse ; Lege Domine.
Nath. [Eeads the 'verses.'] — ' If love make me forsworn,' etc.
Hoi. You find not the apostrophe, and so — miss the accent — [criticising
the reading. It is necessary to find the apostrophe in the verses of this
Academy, before you can give the accent correctly ; there are other
poiDts which require to be noted also, in this refined courtier's writings,
as this criticism will inform us]. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here
are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden
cadency of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed,
Naso ; but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of
invention. Imitari is nothing ; so doth the hound his master, the ape
his keeper, the tired horse his rider. [It was no such reading and
writing as that which this Academy was going to countenance, or
teach]. But, Damosella, was this directed to you 1
Jaq. Ay, Sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's
lords.
Hoi. I will over-glance the super-script. ' To the snow white hand of
the most beauteous lady Rosaline' I will look again on the intellect of
the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person
written unto {Rosaline). — [Look again. — That is the rule for the reading
of letters issued from this Academy, whether they come in Don Ar-
mado's name or another's, when the point is not to ' miss the accent.']
1 Your ladyship's, in all desired employment, Biron.' Sir Nathaniel,
this Biron is one of the votaries with the king, and here he hath
framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally
or by way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet ;
deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king. It may concern
much. Stay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty. Adieu.
CIV INTRODUCTION.
JVatk. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously ;
and as a certain father saith —
Hoi. Sir, tell me not of the father, I do fear colorable colors. But
to return to the verses. Did they please you, Sir Nathaniel ?
Nath. Marvellous well for the 'pen.
Hoi. I dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine, where,
if before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I
will, on my privilege I have with the parent of the foresaid child, or
pupil, undertake your ben venuto, where I will prove those verses to be
very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I
beseech your society.
Nath And thank you, too ; for society (saith the text) is the happi-
ness of LIFE.
Hoi. And, certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. — Siv, [to
Dull] I do invite you too, [to hear the verses ex-criticised] you shall not
say me nay : pauca verba. Away ; the gentles are at their games, and
we will to our recreation.
Another part of the same. After dinner.
Re-enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull.
Hoi. Satis quod safficit.
Nath. I praise God for you, Sir : your reasons at dinner have been
sharp and sententious ; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affec-
tion, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and
strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a com-
panion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called Don Adriano
de Armado.
Hoi. Novi hominem tanquam te. His manner is lofty, his discourse
peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, and his general be-
haviour, vain, ridiculous and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce,
too affected, too odd, and, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
Nath. A most singular and choice epithet ! [Takes out his table-
book.]
Hoi. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple
of his argument, ['More matter with less art,' says the queen in
Hamlet], I abhor such fantastical phantasms, such insociable and point
device companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak doubt
fine when he should say doubt, etc. This is abhominable which he
would call abominable ; it insinuateth me of insanie ; Ne intelligis,
domine ? to make frantic, lunatic.
Nath. Laus deo bone intelligo.
Hoi. Bone — bone for bene : Priscian, a little scratched ' 'twill serve.
[This was never meant to be printed of course ; all this is understood
to have been prepared only for a performance in ' a booth.']
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH'S LIFE. CV
Nath. Vide sue quis venit 1
Hoi. Video et gaudeo.
Arm. Chirra !
Eol. Quare Chirra not Sirrah !
But the first appearance of these two book-men, as Dull takes
leave them to call them in this scene, is not less to the pur-
pose. They come in with Antony Dull, who serves as a
foil to their learning; from the moment that they open their
lips they speak 'in character/ and they do not proceed far
before they give us some hints of the author's purpose.
Nath. Very reverent sport truly, and done in the testimony of a good
conscience.
Hoi. The deer was, as you know, in sanguis, ripe as a pomewater,
who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo, the sky, the welkin, the
heaven, and anonfalleth like a crab on the face of terra — the soil, the
land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights and depths of the in-
congruities which are the subject here.]
Nath. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like
a scholar at the least, but, etc
Hoi. Most barbarous intimation ! [referring to Antony Dull, who
has been trying to understand this learned language, and apply it to
the subject of conversation, but who fails in the attempt, very much
to the amusement and self-congratulation of these scholars]. Yet a
kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way of explication [a style
much in use in this school], facere, as it were, replication, or rather
ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, un-
polished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or
ratherest unconfirmed fashion, — to insert again my haud credo for a
deer. . . . Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus! O thou monster ignorance,
how deformed dost thou look !
Nath. [explaining]. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a
book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink ; his
intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal — only sensible in the
duller parts ;
And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be,
(Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts that do fructify
in us more than he.
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,
So were there a patch set on learning to see him in a school*
* That would be a new 'school,' a new ' learning,' patching the 'defect1
(as it would be called elsewhere) in the old.
CV1 INTRODUCTION.
Dull. You two are book-men. Can you tell me by your wit, etc.
Nath. A rare talent.
Bull. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.
Hoi. This is a gift that I have ; simple, simple; a foolish extrava-
gant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions,
motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute,
and I am thankful for it.
Nath. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and 50 may my parishioners;
for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very
greatly under you ; you are a good member of the Common-Wealth.
He is in earnest of course. Is the Poet so too?
' What is the end of study V — let me know.
1 0 they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is
the criticism on this learning with which this showman,
whoever he may be, explains his exhibition of it. And
surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and
never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see
what it is that is criticised here ; — that it is the learning of
an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous
debased, wretched time, that has been fed long— always from
' the alms-basket of words.1 And one who is acquainted already
with the style of this school, who knows already its secret signs
and stamp, would not need to be told to look again on the in-
tellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to
the person written to, in order to see what source this pastime
comes from, — what player it is that is behind the scene here.
1 Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting mind,' and beginning in the
lowness of the actual, and collecting the principles that are in
all actualities, the true forms that are forms in nature, and not
in man's speech only, the new ideas of the New Academy,
the ideas that are powers, with these « simples' that are causes,
he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his
poems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom
whose iron chain he wears.
' The gentles were at their games/ and the soul of new ages
was beginning its re-creations.
For this is but the beginning of that < Armada' that this
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGIl's LIFE. cvii
Don Armado — who fights with sword and pen, in ambush
and in the open field — will sweep his old enemy from the seas
with yet.
0 like a book of sports thou 'It read me o'er,
But there 's more in me than thou 'It understand.
Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue ; even so the race
Of Shake-spear's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well turrid and true filed lines,
In each of which he seems to shake a lance.
As brandished in the eyes of — [what ? — ] Ignorance !
Ben Jonson.
Ignorance ! — yes, that was the word.
It is the Prince of that little Academe that sits in the Tower
here now. It is in the Tower that that little Academe holds
its ( conferences' now. There is a little knot of men of
science who contrive to meet there. The associate of Kaleigh's
studies, the partner of his plans and toils for so many years,
Harlot y too scientific for his age, is one of these. It is in the
Tower that Raleigh's school is kept now. The English youth,
the hope of England, follow this teacher still. * Many young
gentlemen still resort to him.' Gilbert Harvey is one of this
school. * None but my father would keep such a bird in such
a cage,' cries one of them — that Prince of Wales through
whom the bloodless revolution was to have been accomplished ;
and a Queen seeks his aid and counsel there still.
It is in the Tower now that we must look for the sequel of
that holiday performance of the school. It is the genius that
had made its game of that old love's labour's lost that is at work
here still, still bent on making a lore of life and love, still
ready to spend its rhetoric on things, and composing its metres
with them.
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
He is building and manning new ships in his triumphant
fleet. But they are more warlike than they were. The
papers that this Academe issues now have the stamp of the
Tower on them. ' The golden shower/ that 'flowed from his
CV111 INTRODUCTION.
fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more. Fierce bitter
things are flung forth from that retreat of learning, while the
kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs.
The ' martial hand ' is much used in the compositions of this
school indeed for a long time afterwards.
Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower
"When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise,
said the partner of his verse long before.
With rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,
says his protege.
It was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation
sat amid his books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower,
or in the Tower of that Conqueror, * commonly so called/ that
the ' readers of the wiser sort' found, ' thrown in at their study
windows? writings, as if they came ' from several citizens,
wherein Caesar s ambition was obscurely glanced at? and thus
the whisper of the Roman Brutus ' pieced them out/
Brutus thou sleep'' st ; awake, and see thyself.
Shall Rome [soft — lthus must I piece it out.1]
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe 1 What Eome %
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.
Age, thou art shamed.
It was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player
who was bringing forth, on * the banks of Thames/ such
wondrous things out of his treasury then, first heard the
Eoman foot upon their stage, and the long-stifled, and pent-up
speech of English freedom, bursting from the old Eoman
patriot's lips.
Cassius. And let us swear our resolution.
Brutus. JVb, not an oath : If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse,
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed ;
So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery.
EXTRACTS FROM RALEIGH S LIFE. C1X
It was while lie sat there, that the player who did not write
his speeches, said —
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit ;
If / know this, know all the world beside.
That part of tyranny that / do bear,
i" can shake off at pleasure.
And why should Caesar be a tyrant then ?
Poor Man! I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep :
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
But I, perhaps, speak this
Before a willing bondman.
Hamlet. My lord, — you played once in the university, you say 1
Polonius. That did I, my lord ; and was accounted a good actor.
Hamlet. And what did you enact 1
Polonius. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i' the Capitol ;
Brutus killed me.
Hamlet. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.—
Be the players ready 1
Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of
writ, and the liberty. These are the only men.
Hamlet. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you
would drive me into a toil?
Guild. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too un-
mannerly.
Hamlet. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this
pipe ?
Guild. My lord, I cannot.
Hamlet. I pray you.
Guild. Believe me, I cannot.
Hamlet. I do beseech you.
Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord.
Hamlet. 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your
fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse
most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Guild. But these cannot /command to any utterance of harmony : i"
have not the skill.
CX INTRODUCTION.
Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me ?
You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you
would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from
my lowest note to the top of my key ; and there is much music, excel-
lent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood !
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me
what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play
upon me.
Hamlet. Why did you laugh when I said, Man delights not me ]
Guild. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten
entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on
the way, and thither are they coming to offer you — service.
'e*y
THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE
UNFOLDED.
BOOK I.
THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
PART I.
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S * PRIVATE AND
RETIRED ARTS.'
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlaces and with assays of bias,
By indirections, find directions out;
So by my former lecture and advice,
Shall you, my son. — Hamlet.
CHAPTER I.
ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS * TO THE HIGHEST PARTS OF
SCIENCES/ BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED.
Single, I'll resolve you.— Tempest.
Observe his inclination in yourself. — Hamlet.
For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words.
Advancement of Learning.
rpHE fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics
and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but
covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited
only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly
artistic methods of * delivery and tradition,' would not appear
to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the
peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the
English nation.
And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the con-
dition of the world at the time in which this science, — which
is the new practical science of the modern ages, — makes its
first appearance in history, — any one who knows what kind
of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common
B
6
2 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on
the stage of the human affairs presupposes, — any one who
will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such
a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine
for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the
ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was
as yet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world
was still the learning of the cell and the cloister, when the
practice of the world was still in all departments, unscientific,
— any one at least who will stop to consider the nature of the
' preconceptions' which a science that is none other than the
universal science of practice, must needs encounter in its prin-
cipal and nobler fields, will hardly need to be told that if pro-
duced at all under such conditions, it must needs be produced,
covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a science
would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground
of its nobler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as
the inevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the
human affairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of
its claim to dictate to the men of practice in any department
of their proceedings.
That that little ' courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in
which this great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was
supposed in their own time to have had its origin, was com-
posed of wits and men of learning who were known, in their
own time, to have concealed their connection with the works
on which their literary fame chiefly depended — that that
1 glorious Willy,' who finds these forbidden fields of science all
open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this company —
that a style of ' delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed in
part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent
use of the middle ages, but largely, modified and expressly
adapted to this exigency, was employed in the compositions of
this school, both in prose and verse, a style capable of convey-
ing not merely a double, but a triple significance ; a style so
capacious in its concealments, so large in its ' cryptic' as to
admit without limitation the whole scope of this argument,
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 3
and so involved as to conceal in its involutions, all that was
then forbidden to appear, — this has been proved in that part of
the work which contains the historical key to this delivery.
We have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact,
that the man who was at the head of this new conjunction in
speculation and practice in its more immediate historical deve-
lopments,— the scholar who was most openly concerned in his
own time in the introduction of those great changes in the
condition of the world, which date their beginning from this
time, was himself primarily concerned in the invention of this
art. That this great political chief, this founder of new
polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same
time the founder of a new school in philosophy, was under-
stood in his own time to have found occasion for the use of
such an art, in his oral as well as in his written communica-
tions with his school; — that he was connected with a scientific
association, which was known to have concealed under the
profession of a curious antiquarian research, an inquiry into 'the
higher parts of sciences' which the government of that time
was not disposed to countenance ; — that in the opinion of per-
sons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted
with the facts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself
beheaded, chiefly on account of the discovery of his use of
it in one of his gravest literary works ; — all this has been
produced already, as matter of historic record merely. All
this remains in the form of detailed cotemporary statement,
which suffices to convey, if not the fact that the forbidden
parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions of this
school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in
their great published works, — if not that, at least the fact that
such was the impression and belief of persons living at the
time, whether any ground existed for it or not.
But the arts by which these new men of science contrived
to evade the ignorance and the despotic limitations of their
time, the inventions with which they worked to such good
purpose upon their own time, in spite of its restrictions and
oppositions,, and which enable them to ' outstretch their span/
B 2
4 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the advancement of
their kind, and compel the future ages to work with them to the
fulfilment of its ends; — the arts by which these great original
naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired splen-
dour and worth, the collections they had made in the nobler
fields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use
of them; — these are the arts that we shall have need to
master, if we would unlock the legacy they have left to us.
The proof of the existence of this special art of delivery and
tradition, and the definition of the objects for which it was
employed, has been derived thus far chiefly from sources of
evidence exterior to the works themselves; but the inventors
of it and those who made use of it in their own speech and
writings, are undoubtedly the persons best qualified to give us
authentic and lively information on this subject; and we are
now happily in a position to appreciate the statements which
they have been at such pains to leave us, for the sake of
clearing up those parts of their discourse which were neces-
sarily o°bscured at the time. Now that we have in our hands
that key of Times which they have recommended to our use,
that knowledge of times which ' gives great light in many cases
to true interpretations,' it is not possible any longer to overlook
these passages, or to mistake their purport.
But before we enter upon the doctrine of Art which was
published in the first great recognized work of this philosophy,
it will be necessary to produce here some extracts from a book
which was not originally published in England, or in the
English language, but one which was brought out here as an
exotic, though it is in fact one of the great original works of
this school, and one of its boldest and most successful issues;
a work in which the new grounds of the actual experience and
life of men, are not merely inclosed and propounded for written
inquiry, but openly occupied. This is not the place to explain
this fact, though the continental relations of this school, and
other circumstances already referred to in the life of its founder,
will serve to throw some light upon it; but on account of the
bolder assertions which the particular form of writing and pub-
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 5
lication rendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of
the more lively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies
and illustrates these assertions in this instance, it appears on the
whole excusable to commence our study of the special Art for
the delivery and tradition of knowledge in those departments
which science was then forbidden on pain of death to enter,
with that exhibition of it which is contained in this particular
work, trusting to the progress of the extracts themselves to
apologize to the intelligent reader for any thing which may
seem to require explanation in this selection.
It is only necessary to premise, that this work is one of the
many works of this school, in which a grave, profoundly scien-
tific design is concealed under the disguise of a gay, popular,
attractive form of writing, though in this case the audience is
from the first to a certain extent select. It has no platform
that takes in — as the plays do, with their more glaring attrac-
tions and their lower and broader range of inculcation, — the
populace. There is no pit in this theatre. It is throughout a
book for men of liberal culture; but it is a book for the world,
and for men of the world, and not for the cloister merely, and
the scholar. But this, too, has its differing grades of readers,
from its outer court of lively pastime and brilliant aimless chat
to that esoteric chamber, where the abstrusest parts of sciences
are waiting for those who will accept the clues, and patiently
ascend to them.
The work is popular in its form, but it is inwoven through-
out with a thread of lurking meanings so near the surface, and
at times so boldly obtruded, that it is difficult to understand
how it could ever have been read at all without occasioning
the inquiry which it was intended to occasion under certain
conditions, but which it was necessary for this society to ward
off from their works, except under these limitations, at the
time when they were issued. For these inner meanings are
everywhere pointed and emphasized with the most bold and
vivid illustration, which lies on the surface of the work, in the
form of stories, often without any apparent relevance in that
exterior connection — brought in, as it would seem, in mere ca-
6 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
price or by the loosest threads of association. They lie, with
the * allegations' which accompany them, strewn all over the
surface of the work, like * trap' on ' sand-stone/ telling their
story to the scientific eye, and beckoning the philosophic ex-
plorer to that primeval granite of sciences that their vein will
surely lead to. But the careless observer, bent on recreation,
observes only a pleasing feature in the landscape, one that
breaks happily its threatened dulness ; the reader, reading this
book as books are wont to be read, finds nothing in this phe-
nomenon to excite his curiosity. And the author knows him
and his ways so well, that he is able to foresee that result, and
is not afraid to trust to it in the case of those whose scrutiny
he is careful to avoid. For he is one who counts largely on
the carelessness, or the indifference, or the stupidity of those
whom he addresses. There is no end to his confidence in that.
He is perpetually staking his life on it. Neither is he willing
to trust to the clues which these unexplained stories might seem
of themselves to offer to the studious eye, to engage the atten-
tion of the reader — the reader whose attention he is bent on
securing. Availing himself of one of those nooks of discourse,
which he is at no loss for the means of creating when the pur-
pose of his essaie requires it, he beckons the confidential reader
aside, and thus explains his method to him, outright, in terms
which admit of but one construction. ' Neither these stories/
he says, * nor my allegations do always serve simply for example,
authority, or ornament ; I do not only regard them for the use
I make of them; they carry sometimes, besides what I apply
them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and some-
times, collaterally, a more delicate sound, both to me myself, —
who will say no more about it in this place' [we shall hear more
of it in another place, however, and where- the delicate colla-
teral sounds will not be wanting] — ' both to me myself, and to
others who happen to be of my ear'
To the reader, who does indeed happen to be of his ear, to
one who has read the * allegations' and stories that he speaks of,
and the whole work, and the works connected with it, by means
of that knowledge of the inner intention, and of the method
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 7
to which he alludes, this passage would of course convey no
new intelligence. But will the reader, to whom the views here
presented are yet too new to seem credible, endeavour to ima-
gine or invent for himself any form of words, in which the
claim already made in regard to the style in which the great
original writers of this age and the founders of the new science
of the human life were compelled to infold their doctrine,
could have been, in the case of this one at least, more distinctly
asserted. Here is proof that one of them, one who counted
on an audience too, did find himself compelled to infold his
richer and bolder meanings in the manner described. All that
need be claimed at present in regard to the authorship of this
sentence is, that it is written by one whose writings, in their
higher intention, have ceased to be understood, for lack of the
' ear ' to which his bolder and richer meanings are addressed, for
lack of the ear, to which the collateral and more delicate sounds
which his words sometimes carry with them are perceptible ;
and that it is written by a philosopher whose learning and aims
and opinions, down to the slightest points of detail, are abso-
lutely identical with those of the principal writers of this
school.
But let us look at a few of the stories which he ventures to
introduce so emphatically, selecting only such as can be told
in a sentence or two. Let us take the next one that follows
this explanation — the story in the very next paragraph to it.
The question is apparently of Cicero, of his style, of his vanity,
of his supposed care for his fame in future ages, of his real
disposition and objects.
' Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its
harmony, that we should more study it than things' [what new
soul of philosophy is this, then, already ?]— 'unless you will affirm
that of Cicero to be of so supreme perfection as to form a body
of itself. And of him, I shall further add one story we read
of to this purpose, wherein his nature will much more manifestly
be laid open to us' [than in that seeming care for his fame
in future ages, or in that lower object of style, just dismissed
so scornfully.]
8 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
'He was to make an oration in public, and found himself a
little straitened in time, to fit his words to his mouth as he had a
mind to do, when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word
that the audience was deferred till the next day, at which he
was so ravished with joy that he enfranchised him.1
The word 'time' — here admits of a double rendering
whereby the author's aims are more manifestly laid open; and
there is also another word in this sentence which carries a
1 delicate sound • with it, to those who have met this au-
thor in other fields, and who happen to be of his counsel.
But lest the stories of themselves should still seem flat and
pointless, or trivial and insignificant to the uninstructed ear, it
may be necessary to interweave them with some further * alle-
gations on this subject/ which the author assumes, or appears
to assume, in his own person.
' 1 write my book for few men, and for few years. Had it
been matter of duration, I should have put it into a better lan-
guage. According to the continual variation that ours has been
subject to hitherto [and we know who had a similar view on this
point], who can expect that the present form of language should
be in use fifty years hence. It slips every day through our
fingers; and since I was born, is altered above one half. We
say that it is now perfect: every age says the same of the lan-
guage it speaks. I shall hardly trust to that so long as it runs
away and changes as it does.
' 'Tis for good and useful writings to nail and rivet it to
them, and its reputation will go according to the fortune of our
state. For which reason, I am not afraid to insert herein several
private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men now
living, AND THAT CONCERN THE PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE
OF SOME WHO WILL SEE FURTHER INTO THEM THAN THE
common reader.' But that the inner reading of these pri-
vate articles — that reading which lay farther in — to which
he invites the attention of those whom it concerns — was not
expected to spend its use among the men then living, that which
follows might seem to imply. It was that wrapping of them,
it was that gross superscription wbich ' the fortune of our
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. g
state ' was likely to make obsolete ere long, this author thought,
as we shall see if we look into his prophecies a little. ' I will
not, after all, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men
should say of me : ' He judged, and lived so and SO. Could
he have spoken when he was dying, he would have said so or
so. I knew him better than any/
1 So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times,'
says the unfortunate Tullus Aufldius, in the act of conducting
a Volscian army against the infant Eoman state, bemoaning
himself upon the conditions of his historic whereabouts, and
beseeching the sympathy and favourable constructions of
posterity —
So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times ;
And power unto itself most commendable
Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair
To extol what it hath done.
'The times,' says Lord Bacon, speaking in reference to
books particularly, though he also recommends the same key
for the reading of lives, 'the times in many cases give great
light to true interpretations.'
' Now as much as decency permits,' continues the other,
anticipating here that speech which he might be supposed to
have been anxious to make in defence of his posthumous repu-
tation, could he have spoken when he was dying, and fore-
stalling that criticism which he foresaw — that odious criticism
of posterity on the discrepancy between his life and his judg-
ment — ' Now as much as decency permits, I here discover
my inclinations and affections. If any observe, he will find
that / have either told or designed to tell ALL. What I cannot
express I point out with my finger.
' There was never greater circumspection and military pru-
dence than sometimes is seen among us ; can it be that men are
afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves
to the end of the gameV
10 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
' There needs no more but to Bee a man promoted to dignity,
though we knew him but three days before a man of no mark,
yet an image of grandeur and ability insensibly steals into our
opinion, and we persuade ourselves that growing in reputation
and attendants, he is also increased in merit' : —
Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away ?
Mos. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.
Hamlet. It is not very strange ; for my uncle is king of Denmark,
and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little.
'Sblood, there is something in this, more than natural [talking of the super-
natural], if philosophy could find it out.
fBut,' our prose philosopher, whose mind is running
much on the same subjects, continues ' if it happens so that
he [this favourite of fortune] falls again, and is mixed with
the common crowd, every one inquires with wonder into the
cause of his having been hoisted so high. Is it he ? say they :
did he know no more than this when he was in PLACE?'
[' change places .... robes and furred gowns hide all/] ' Do
princes satisfy themselves with so little? Truly we were in good
hands! That which I myself adore in kings, is [note it]
the crowd of the adorers. All reverence and submission is due
to them, except that of the understanding ; my reason is not to
bow and bend, 'tis my knees.1 ' I will not do Y says another,
who is in this one's counsels,
I will not do 't
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body's action, teach my mind
A most inherent baseness. Coriolanus.
1 Antisthenes one day entreated the Athenians to give orders
that their asses might be employed in tilling the ground, — to
which it was answered, ' that those animals were not destined to
such a service.' ' That's all one,' replied he ; ' it only sticks at your
command ; for the most ignorant and incapable men you
employ in your commands of war, immediately become worthy
enough because — you employ them/
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. II
There mightst thou behold the great image of authority. A dog's
obeyed in office. — Lear.
For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here,
A very — very — Peacock.
Horatio. You might have rhymed. Hamlet.
'to which/ continues this political philosopher, — that is, to
which preceding anecdote — containing such unflattering in-
timations with regard to the obstinacy of nature, in the limits
she has set to the practical abilities of those animals, not
enlarging their natural gifts out of respect to the Athenian
selection (an anecdote which supplies a rhyme to Hamlet's verse,
and to many others from the same source) — ' to which the custom
of so many people, who canonize the kings they have chosen out
of their own body, and are not content only to honour, but
adore them, comes very near. Those of Mexico [for instance,
it would not of course do to take any nearer home], after the
ceremonies of their king's coronation are finished, dare no more
look him in the face ; but, as if they deified him by his royalty,
among the oaths they make him take to maintain their religion
and laws, to be valiant, just and mild; he moreover swears, —
to make the sun run his course in his wonted light , — to drain the
clouds at a fit season, — to confine rivers within their channels, —
and to cause all things necessary for his people to be borne by
the earth/ ' (They told me I was everything. But when
the rain came to wet me once, when the wind would not
peace at my bidding/ says Lear, ' there I found them, there
I smelt them out.)' This, in connection with the preceding
anecdote, to which, in the opinion of this author, it comes
properly so very near, may be classed of itself among the
suggestive stories above referred to; but the bearing of these
quotations upon the particular question of style, which must de-
termine the selection here, is set forth in that which follows.
It should be stated, however, that in a preceding paragraph,
the author has just very pointedly expressed it as his opinion,
that men who are supposed, by common consent, to be so far
above the rest of mankind in their single virtue and judg-
12 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
rnent, that they are permitted to govern them at their dis-
cretion, should by no means undertake to maintain that view,
by exhibiting that supposed kingly and divine faculty in the
way of speech or argument', thus putting themselves on a level
with their subjects, and by meeting them on their own ground,
with their own weapons, giving occasion for comparisons,
perhaps not altogether favourable to that theory of a superla-
tive and divine difference which the doctrine of a divine
right to rule naturally presupposes. ' For/ he says, f neither
is it enough for those who govern and command us, and have all
the world in their hand, to have a common understanding, and
to be able to do what the rest can' [their faculty of judg-
ment must match their position, for if it be only a common
one, the difference will make it despised]: 'they are very
much below us, if they be not infinitely above us. And,
therefore, silence is to them not only a countenance of respect
and gravity, but very often of good profit and policy too;
for, Megabysus going to see Apelles in his painting room, stood
a great while without speaking a word, and at last began to
talk of his paintings, for which he received this rude reproof.
4 Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be something great,
by reason of thy chains and pomp; but now that we have heard
thee speak, there is not the meanest boy in my shop that does
not despise thee.' But after the author's subsequent reference
to 'those animals' that were to be made competent by a
vote of the Athenian people for the work of their superiors,
to which he adds the custom of people who canonize the
kings they have chosen out of their own body, which comes
so near, he goes on thus: — I differ from this common fashion,
and am more apt to suspect capacity when I see it accom-
panied with grandeur of fortune and public applause. We are
to consider of what advantage it is, to speak when one pleases,
to choose the subject one will speak of— [an advantage not com-
mon with authors then]— to interrupt or change other
men's arguments, with a magisterial authority, to
protect oneself from the opposition of others, by a nod, a
smile, or silence, in the presence of an assembly that trembles
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 1 3
with reverence and respect. A man of a prodigious fortune,
coming to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that
was foolishly set on foot at his table, began in these words: —
' It can only be a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than
so and so/ Pursue this philosophical point with a dagger in
your hand.'
Here is an author who does contrive to pursue his philo-
sophical points, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they
take him. By putting himself into the trick of singularity,
and affecting to be a mere compound of eccentricities and
oddities, neither knowing nor caring what it is that he is
writing about, and dashing at haphazard into anything as the
fit takes him, — ' Let us e'en fly at anything,' says Hamlet, —
by assuming, in short, the disguise of the elder Brutus; and,
on account of a similar necessity, there is no saying what he
cannot be allowed to utter with impunity. Under such a
cover it is, that he inserts the passages already quoted, which
have lain to this hour without attracting the attention of
critics, unpractised happily, and unlearned also, in the subtle-
ties which tyrannies — such tyrannies — at least generate; and
under this cover it is, that he can venture now on those as-
tounding political disquisitions, which he connects with the
complaint of the restrictions and embarrassments which the
presence of a man of prodigious fortune at the table occasions,
when an argument, trivial or otherwise, happens to be going
on there. Under this cover, he can venture to bring in here,
in this very connection, and to the very table, even of this
man of prodigious fortune, pages of the freest political dis-
cussion, containing already the finest analysis of the existing
political * situation,' so full of dark and lurid portent, to the eye
of the scientific statesman, to whom, even then, already under
the most intolerable restrictions of despotism, of the two ex-
tremes of social evil, that which appeared to be the most
terrible, and the most to be guarded against, in the inevitable
political changes then at hand, was — not the consolidation but
the dissolution of the state.
For already the horizon of that political oversight included,
14 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
not the eventualities of the English Revolutions only, but the
darker contingencies of those later political and social convul-
sions, from whose soundless whirlpools, men spring with joy-
to the hardest sharpest ledge of tyranny; or hail with joy and
national thanksgiving the straw that offers to land them on it.
Already the scientific statesman of the Elizabethan age could
say, casting an eye over Christendom as it stood then, ' That
which most threatens us is, not an alteration in the entire and
solid mass, but its dissipation and divulsion.'
It is after pages of the freest philosophical discussion, that he
arrives at this conclusion — discussion, in which the historical
elements and powers are for the first time scientifically recog-
nized and treated throughout with the hand of the new master.
For this is a philosopher, who is able to receive into his philoso-
phy the fact, that out of the most depraved and vicious social
materials, by the inevitable operation of the universal natural
laws, there will, perhaps, result a social adhesion and predomi-
nance of powers — a social ' whole,' more capable of maintaining
itself than any that Plato or Aristotle, from the heights of their
abstractions, could have invented for them. He ridicules,
indeed, those ideal polities of antiquity as totally unfit for prac-
tical realisation, and admits that though the question as to that
which is absolutely the best form of government might be of
some value in a new world, the basis of all alterations in existing
governments should be the fact, that we take a world already
formed to certain customs, and do not beget it, as Pyrrha or
Cadmus did theirs, and by what means soever we may have
the privilege to rebuild and reform it anew, we can hardly
writhe it from its wonted bent, but we shall break all. For
the subtlest principles of the philosophy of things are intro-
duced into this discussion, and the boldest applications of the
Shakspere muse are repeated in it.
' That is the way to lay all flat/ cries the philosophic poet
in the Roman play, opposing on the part of the Conservatist,
the violence of an oppressed people, struggling for new forms
of government, and bringing out fully, along with their
claims, the anti-revolutionary side of the question.
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 1 5
1 That which tempts me out on these journeys,' continues
this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous
terms of his rambling excursive habits "and eccentricities of
proceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes —
1 that which tempts me out on these journeys, is unsuitableness
to the present manners of OUR STATE. J could easily console
myself with this corruption in reference to the public interest,
but not to my own : I am in particular too much oppressed : —
for, in my neighbourhood we are of late by the long libertinage
of our civil wars grown old in so riotous a form of slate, that
in earnest His a wonder how it can subsist. In fine, I see by
our example, that the society of men is maintained and held
together at what price soever ; in what condition soever they are
placed they will close and stick together [see the doctrine of
things and their original powers in the ' Novum Organum'] —
moving and heaping up themselves, as uneven bodies, that shuffled
together without order, find of themselves means to unite and
settle. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked
and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them alto-
gether in a city which he had built for that purpose, which,
bore their name ; I believe that they, even from vices, erected
a government among them, and a commodious and just
society.'
* Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation' ; and let
the reader note here, how the principle which has predominated
historically in the English Revolution, the principle which the
fine Frankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic
faculty, could not strike instinctively or empirically, in its
political experiments — it is well to note, how this distinctive
element of the English Revolution — that revolution which
is still in progress, with its remedial vitalities — already
speaks beforehand, from the lips of this foreign Elizabethan
Revolutionist. ( Nothing presses so hard upon a state as inno-
vation; change only gives form to injustice and tyranny.
When any piece is out of order it may be propped,
one may prevent and take care that the decay and corruption
natural TO ALL THINGS, do not carry us too far from our
l6 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
beginnings and principles] but to undertake to found so great a
mass anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building,
is for them to do who to make clean, efface, who would reform
particular defects by a universal confusion, and cure diseases by
death.1 Surely, one may read in good Elizabethan English
passages which savor somewhat of this policy. One would say
that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance, in this
case. ' Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate coun-
sels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the
Church of England, as would in effect make it no church, said
thus to him: — ' Sir, the subject we talk of is the eye of Eng-
land, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour
to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull
out the eye.' *
But our Gascon philosopher goes on thus, with his Gascon
inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a
heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms
of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as
if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the
Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth
which the last vintage of the Novum Organum yields on this
point. ' The world is unapt for curing itself; it is so impa-
tient of any thing that presses it, that it thinks of nothing but
disengaging itself, at what price soever. We see, by a thousand
examples, that it generally cures itself to its cost. The dis-
charge of a present evil is no cure, if a general amendment of
condition does not follow ; the surgeon's end is not only to cut
away the dead flesh, — that is but the progress of his cure; —
he has a care over and above, to fill up the wound with better
and more natural flesh, and to restore the member to its due state.
Whoever only proposes to himself to remove that which offends
* And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point
and others, very much the same view of the constitution and vitality
of states, about these times : —
He's a disease that must be cut away.
Gh, he's a limb that has but a disease ;
Mortal to cut it off ; to cure it, easy.
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 1 7
him, falls short; for good does not necessarily succeed evil;
another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it happened in Ccesars
killers, who brought the republic to such a pass, that they had
reason to repent their meddliny with it.3 ' I fear there will a
worse one come in his place,' says a fellow in Shakespear's
crowd, at the first Caesar's funeral; and that his speech made
the moral of the piece, we shall see in the course of this
study.
But though the frantic absolutisms and irregularities of that
* old riotous form of military government,' which the long civil
wars had generated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy
dissolution, this old Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible
fund of English shrewdness, and sound English sense, under-
lying all his Gasconading, by no means considers the state as past
the statesman's care: ' after all, we are not, perhaps, at the last
gasp,' he says. ' The conservation of states is a thing that in all
likelihood surpasses our understanding : a civil government is, as
Plato says, * a mighty and powerful thing, and hard to be dis-
solved.' ■ States, as great engines, move slowly,' says Lord
Bacon ; • and are not so soon put out of frame' ; — that is, so soon
as ' the resolution of particular persons,' which is his reason for
producing his moral philosophy, or rather his moral science, as
his engine for attack upon the state, a science which concerns
the government of every man over himself ; ' for, as in Egypt,
the seven good years sustained the seven bad ; so governments,
for a time well-grounded, do bear out errors following.'
But this is the way that this Gascon philosopher records his
conclusions on the same subject. * Every thing that totters
does not fall. The contexture of so great a body holds by
more nails than one. It holds even by its antiquity, like old
buildings from which the foundations are worn away by time,
without rough cast or cement, which yet live or support them-
selves by their own weight. Moreover, it is not rightly to go
to work to reconnoitre only the flank and the fosse, to judge of
the security of a place ; it must be examined which way ap-
proaches can be made to it, and in what condition the
assailant is ' — that is the question. { Few vessels sink with
c
1 8 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
their own weight, and without some exterior violence. Let us
every way cast our eyes. Every thing about us totters. In
all the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that
are known to us, if you will but look, you will there see evi-
dent threats of alteration and ruin. Astrologers need not go
to heaven to foretell, as they do, great revolutions » [this
is the speech of the Elizabethan age — ' great revolutions ']
and imminent mutations: [This is the new kind of learning
and prophecy; there was but one source of it open then,
that could yield axioms of this kind ; for this is the kind that
Lord Bacon tells us the head-spring of sciences must be visited
for.] ' But conformity is a quality antagonist to dissolution.
For my part, I despair not, and fancy I perceive ways to
save us.'
And surely this is one of the inserted private articles, before
mentioned, which may, or may not be, ' designed to spend
their use among the men now living ' ; but ' which concern
the particular knowledge of some who will see further into
them than the common reader.' If there had been a ' London
Times ' going then, and this old outlandish Gascon Antic had
been an English statesman preparing this article as a leader
for it, the question of the Times could hardly have been more
roundly dealt with, or with a clearer northern accent.
But it is high time for him to bethink himself, and ' draw
his old cloak about him '; for, after all, this so just and pro-
found a view of so grave a subject, proceeds from one who has
no aims, no plan, no learning, no memory; — a vain, fantas-
tic egotist, who writes only because he will be talking, and
talking of himself above all; who is not ashamed to attribute
to himself all sorts of mad inconsistent humours, and to con-
tradict himself on every page, if thereby he can only win your
eye, or startle your curiosity, and induce you to follow him.
After so long and grave a discussion, suddenly it occurs to him
that it is time for a little miscellaneous confidential chat about
himself, and those certain oddities of his which he does not
wish you to lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for
another of those stories, which serve to divert the attention
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 19
when it threatens to become too fixed, and break up and
enliven the dull passages, besides having that other purpose
which he speaks of so frankly. And although this whole dis-
cussion is not without a direct bearing upon that particular
topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch as the
political situation, which is so clearly exhibited, is precisely
that of the Elizabethan scholar, it is chiefly this little piece of
confidential chat with which it closes, and its significance in
that connection, which gives the rest its insertion here.
For suddenly he recollects himself, and stops short to ex-
press the fear that he may have written something similar to
this elsewhere; and he gives you to understand — not all at
once — but by a series of strokes, that too bold a repetition here,
of what he has said elsewhere might be attended, to him, with
serious consequences; and he begs you to note, as he does in
twenty other passages and stories here and elsewhere, that his
style is all hampered with considerations such as these — that
instead of merely thinking of making a good book, and pre-
senting his subjects in their clearest and most effective form
for the reader; — a thing in itself sufficiently laborious, as
other authors find to their cost, he is all the time compelled to
weigh his words with reference to such points as this. He
must be perpetually on his guard that the identity of that
which he presents here, and that which he presents elsewhere,
under other and very different forms (in much graver forms
perhaps, and perhaps in others not so grave), shall no where
become so glaring as to attract popular attention, while he is
willing and anxious to keep that identity or connection con-
stantly present to the apprehension of the few, for whom he
tells us his book — that is, this book within the book — is
written.
( I fear in these reveries of mine/ he continues, suspending
at last suddenly this bold and continuous application to the
immediate political emergency of those philosophical princi-
ciples which he has exhibited in the abstract, in their common
and universal form, elsewhere ; f 1 fear, in these reveries of
mine, the treachery of my memory, lest by inadvertence it
C2
20 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
should make me write the same thing twice. Now I here set
down nothing new, these are common thoughts, and having per-
adventure conceived them a hundred times, I am afraid I have
set them down somewhere else already. Kepetition is every-
where troublesome, though it were in Homer, but 'tis ruinous
in things that have only a superficial and transitory SHOW. I
do not love inculcation, even in the most profitable things, as
in Seneca, and the practice of his Stoical school displeases me
of repeating upon every subject and at length, the principles
and presuppositions that serve in general, and al-
ways to re-allege anew ;' that is, under the particular divisions of
the subject, common and universal reasons. ' What T cannot ex-
press I point out with my finger,' he tells you elsewhere, but it
is thus that he continues here.
' My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must
fain for the time to come (collateral sounds), for hitherto, thank
God, nothing has happened much amiss, to avoid all preparation,
for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must
be forced to insist. To be tied and bound to a thing puts me
quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak
an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story
without being offended at it, with as it were a personal and
natural resentment.' The reader will note that the question
here is of style, or method, and of this author's style in par-
ticular, and of his special embarrassments.
' Lyncestes accused of conspiracy against Alexander, the day
that he was brought out before the army, according to the
custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a studied
speech, of which, haggling and stammering, he pronounced
some words. As he was becoming more perplexed and strug-
gling with his memory, and trying to recollect himself the
soldiers that stood nearest killed him with their spears, looking
upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt:
very fine, indeed ! The place, the spectators, the expectation,
would astound a man even though were there no object in his
mind but to speak well; but WHAT when 'tis an harangue
upon which his life depends?' You that happen to be of my
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 21
ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my
story.
* For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is
enough to loose me from if — that is the cause of his wander-
ing— *. The more I trust to my memory, the more do I put myself
out of my own power, so much as to find it in my own counte-
nance, and have sometimes been very much put to it to conceal
the slavery wherein I was bound, whereas my design is to mani-
fest in speaking & perfect nonchalance, both of face and accent,
and casual and unpremeditated motions, as rising from present
occasions, choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to
shoiv that I came prepared to speak well; a thing especially un-
becoming a man of my profession. The preparation begets a
great deal more expectation than it will satisfy ; a man very
often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further
than he would have done in his gown.y [Perhaps the reflecting
scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magni-
ficent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended
with similarly lame conclusions ; but, if he does not, the story
which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.]
' It is recorded of the orator Curio, that when he proposed the
division of his orution into three or four parts, it often hap-
pened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two
more.' A much more illustrious speaker, who spoke under
circumstances not very unlike those in. which the poor con-
spirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts at
oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight;
for, having invented a plan of universal science, designed for
the relief of the human estate, he forgot the principal appli-
cation of it. But this author says, I have always avoided
falling into this inconvenience, having always hated these
promises and announcements, not only out of distrust of my
memory, but also because this method relishes too much of
the artificial. You will find no scientific plan here ostenta-
tiously exhibited; you will find such a plan elsewhere with all
the works set down in it, but the works themselves will be
missing ; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be
22 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
under the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it
would be ruinous to produce the plan, '/have always avoided
falling into this inconvenience. Simpliciora militares decent.1
But as he appears, after all, to have had no military weapon
with which to sustain that straight-forwardness of speech
which is becoming in a military power, and no dagger to pur-
sue his points with, some artifice, though he professes not to
like it, may be necessary, and the rule which he here spe-
cifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not altogether amiss. ' Tis
enough that I have promised to myself never to take upon me
to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that sort of
speaking where a man reads his speech, besides that it is very
absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who naturally
could give it a grace by action, and to rely upon the mercy of
the readiness of my invention, I will much less do it; 'tis
heavy and perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in
sudden and important necessities.'
' Speaking/ he says in another place, ' hurts and discom-
poses me, — my voice is loud and high, so that when I have
gone to whisper some great person about an affair of conse-
quence, they have often had to moderate my voice. This story
deserves a place here.
1 Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as I
do. The master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak lower.
' Tell him then, he must send me,' replied the other, ' the tone
he would have me speak in.' To which the other replied,
' that he should take the tone from the ear of him to whom he
spake.' It was well said, if it be understood. Speak accord-
ing to the affair you are speaking about to the auditor, —
(speak according to the business you have in hand, to the
purpose you have to accomplish) — for if it mean, it is suffi-
cient that he hears you, I do not find it reason/ It is a more
artistic use of speech that he is proposing in his new science of
it, for as Lord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this
same subject, * the proofs and persuasions of rhetoric ought to
differ according to the auditors,' and the Arts of Rhetoric have
for their legitimate end, ( not merely proof, but much more,
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 23
IMPRESSION.' c For many forms are equal in signification which
are differing in impression, as the difference is great in the
piercing of that which is sharp, and that which is flat, though
the strength of the percussion be the same ; for instance, there
is no man but will be a little more raised, by hearing it said,
' Your enemies will be glad of this,' than by hearing it said
only, ' This is evil for you/ But it is thus that our Gascon
proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we have inter-
rupted. ' There is a voice to flatter, there is a voice to instruct,
and a voice to reprehend. I would not only have my voice to
reach my hearer, but peradventure that it strike and pierce
him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone,
it would be very fine for him to say, ' Pray master, speak
lower, for I hear you very well/ Speaking is half his that
speaks, and half his that hears; the last ought to prepare him-
self to receive it, according to its motion, as with tennis
players; he that receives the ball, shifts, draws back, and pre-
pares himself to receive it, according as he sees him move,
who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke itself/ It
is not, therefore, because this author has failed to furnish the
rules of interpretation necessary for penetrating to the ultimate
intention of this new kind of speaking, if all this affectation of
simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory statements of his,
have been suffered hitherto to pass unchallenged. It is the
public mind he has to deal with. \ That which he adores in
kings is the throng of their adorers? If he should take the
public at once into his confidence, and tell them beforehand
precisely what his own opinions were of things in general, if
he should set before them in the outset the conclusions to
which he proposed to drive them, he might indeed stand
some chance to have his arguments interrupted, or changed
with a magisterial authority; he would indeed find it ne-
cessary to pursue his philosophical points with a dagger in
his hand.
And besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not
appear to him to secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to
rouse the human mind to activity, to compel it to think for
24 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
itself, and put it on the inevitable road to his conclusions.
He wishes the reader to strike out those conclusions for him-
self, and fancy himself the discoverer if he will. So far from
being simple and straightforward, his style is in the profoundest
degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art inspired it.
He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the active
world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths
which men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign
to them. ' We want medicines to arouse the sense/ says Lord
Bacon, who proposed exactly the method of teaching which
this philosopher had, as it would seem, already adopted. ' 1
bring a trumpet to awake his ear, to set his sense on the
attentive bent, and then to speak/ says that poet who best put
-this art in practice.
But here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this
dull, stupid, custom-bound public on its own ground. He
would assume all its absurdities and contradictions in his own
person, and permit men to despise, and marvel, and laugh at
them in him without displeasure. For whoever will notice
carefully, will perceive that the use of the personal pronoun
here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech. Such an
one will find that this philosophical I is very broad; that it
covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under
this term, the term by which each man names himself, the
common term of the individual humanity, he finds it conveni-
ent to say many things. ( They that will fight custom with
grammar? he says, ' are fools. When another tells me, or
when I say to myself, This is a word of Gascon growth ; this a
dangerous phrase; this is an ignorant discourse; thou art too
full of figures ; this is a paradoxical saying ; this is a foolish
expression : thou makest thyself merry sometimes, and men will
think thou sayest a thing in good earnest, which thou only
speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults of inad-
vertence, not those of custom. I have done what I designed/
he says, in triumph. ' All the world knows ME in my book,
and my book in me/
And thus, by describing human nature under that term, or
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 25
by repeating and stating the common opinions as his own, he
is enabled to create an opposition which could not exist, so
long as they remain unconsciously operative, or infolded in
the separate individuality, as a part of its own particular
form.
* My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible,' he says;
I but the good which virtuous men do to the public in making
themselves imitated, /, perhaps, may do in making my manners
avoided. While I publish and accuse my own imperfections,
somebody will learn to be afraid of them. The parts that I
most esteem in myself, are more honoured in decrying than
in commending my own manners. Pausanias tells us of an
ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars
go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very
ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false
measures. The present time is fitting to reform us backward,
more by dissenting than agreeing ; by differing than consent-
ing.' That is his application of his previous confession. And
it is this present time that he impersonates, holding the mirror
up to nature, and provoking opposition and criticism for that
which was before buried in the unconsciousness of a common
absurdity, or a common wrong. ' Profiting little by good ex-
amples, I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see
others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as good as
I see others evil/
* There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does
not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. All
such whimsies as are in use amongst us, deserve at least to be
hearkened to; for my part, they only with me import inanity,
but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are
something more than nothing in nature.
1 If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who
presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up
mine. The contradictons of judgments do neither offend nor
alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself
to be rudely handled by my friends. ■ Thou art a fool ; thou
knowest not what thou art talking about.' When any one
26 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
contradicts me, lie raises my attention, not my anger. I ad-
vance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs
me. I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it,
and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered
arms ; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and accommodate
myself to my accusers [aside] (very often more by reason of
civility than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of ad-
monition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own
expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my
time to it. They have not the courage to correct, because they
have not the courage to be corrected, and speak always with
dissimulation in the presence of one another. 1 take so great
pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indiffer-
ent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagi-
nation does so often contradict and condemn itself, that it is
all one to me if another do it. The study of books is a languish-
ing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation
teaches and exercises at once.' But what if a book could be
constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of
conference — of the noblest kind of conference — so as to rouse
the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly human activity — so as to
bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality,
from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something
of that kind appears to be attempted here.
He cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however,
that his arguments require examination. * In conferences,' he
says, ' it is a rule that every word that seems to be good, is not
immediately to be accepted. One must try it on all points, to
see how it is lodged in the author : [perhaps he is not in earnest]
for one must not always presently yield what truth or beauty
soever seem to be in the argument/ A little delay, and op-
position, the necessity of hunting, or fighting, for it, will
only make it the more esteemed in the end. In such a style,
' either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is, whatsoever
beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order
to challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not
understanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 2J
it] or, sometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry-
it beyond its proper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct
him. This whole work is constructed on this principle] . As
when I contend with a vigorous man, I please myself with
anticipating his conclusions; I ease him of the trouble of
explaining himself; I strive to prevent his imagination, whilst
it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and pertinency
of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But as
to these, — and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no
antecedent in the text — as to these, I deal quite contrary
with them. I must understand and presuppose nothing but by
them Now, if you come to explain anything to them and
confirm them (these readers), they presently catch at it, and
rob you of the advantage of your interpretation. ' It was
what I was about to say; it was just my thought, and if I did
not express it so, it was only for want of language. Very
pretty ! Malice itself must be employed to correct this proud
ignorance — 'tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and set
him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for
it. I love to let him step deeper into the mire," — [luring
him on with his own confessions, and with my assumptions
of his case] ' and so deep that if it be possible, they may at
least discern their error. Folly and absurdity are NOT
TO be cured by bare admonition. What Cyrus an-
swered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon
the point of battle, ' that men do not become valiant and
warlike on a sudden, by a fine oration, no more than a man
becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song/ may properly
be said of such an admonition as this;' or, as Lord Bacon has
it, ' It were a strange speech, which spoken, or spoken oft,
should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature
subject; it is order, pursuit, sequence, and interchange of applica-
tion, which is mighty in nature.' But the other continues : —
' These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand
by a long continued education. We owe this care and this
assiduity of correction and instruction to our own, [that is
the school,] but to go to preach to the first passer-by, and to
28 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
lord it over the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a
thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in my own particular
conferences, and rather surrender my cause, than proceed to
these supercilious and magisterial instructions/ The clue to
the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also
condemns, as the magisterial method, — ' My humour is unfit,
either to speak or write for beginners-,' he will not shock or
bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last
conclusions of science; ( but as to things that are said in com-
mon discourse or amongst other things, I never oppose them
either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.'
1 Let none even doubt,' says the author of the Novum Or-
ganum, who thought it wisest to steer clear even of doubt on
such a point, ' whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish
the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use. On the
contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and
honour; for we by no means interfere to prevent the prevalent
system from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or
being employed serviceably in the chair of the Professor, or
the practice of common life, and being taken in short, by
general consent, as current coin. Nay, we plainly declare that
the system we offer will not be very suitable for such purposes,
not being easily adapted to vulgar apprehension except by
EFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our sincerity [hear] in pro-
fessing our regard and friendly disposition towards the received
sciences, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings,
especially our books on — the Advancement — [the Advance-
ment] of Learning ! And the reader who can afford time for
ea second cogitation/ the second cogitation which a super-
ficial and interior meaning, of course, requires, with the aid
of the key of times, will find much light on that point, here
and there, in the works referred to, and especially in those
parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is
treated. ' We will not, therefore,' he continues, ' endeavour
to evince it (our sincerity) any further by words, but content
ourselves with steadily, etc., professedly premising
that no great progress can be made by the present methods
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 29
in the theory and contemplation of science, and that they
can not be made to produce any very abundant effects? This
is the proof of his sincerity in professing his regard and
friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in connection
with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no
doubt it was sincere, and just to that extent to which these
statements, and the practice which was connected with them,
would seem to indicate; but the careful reader will perceive
that it was a regard, and friendliness of disposition, which
was naturally qualified by that doubly significant fact* last
quoted.
But the question of style is still under discussion here, and
no wonder that with such views of the value of the ' current
coin/ and with a regard and reverence for the received
sciences so deeply qualified; or, as the other has it, with a
humour so unfit either to speak or write for beginners, a style
which admitted of other efficacies than bare proofs, should
appear to be demanded for popular purposes, or for beginners.
And no wonder that with views so similar on this first and so
radical point, these two. men should have hit upon the same
method in Rhetoric exactly, though it was then wholly new.
But our Gascon goes on to describe its freedoms and
novelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new
vitalities.
{ May we not,' says the successful experimenter in this very
style, ' mix with the subject of conversation and communication,
the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity
introduce amongst friends pleasantly and wittingly jesting with
one another; an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders
me fit enough, if it be not so extended and serious as the other
I just spoke of, 'tis no less smart and ingenious, nor of less
utility as Lycurgus thought.1
30 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER II.
FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF ' PARTICULAR METHODS
OF TRADITION.' — EMBARRASSMENTS OF LITERARY
STATESMEN.
Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all,
and another storm brewing. I hear it sing in the wind. My
best way is to creep under his gaberdine ; there is no other
shelter hereabout : Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-
fellows. I will here shroud, till the dregs of the storm be
past. — Tempest.
HERE then, in the passages already quoted, we find the plan
and theory — the premeditated form of a new kind of So-
cratic performance ; and this whole work, as well as some others
composed in this age, make the realization of it; an inven-
tion which proposes to substitute for the languishing feeble
motion which is involved in the study of books — the kind
of books which this author found invented when he came —
for the passive, sluggish receptivity of another's thought,
the living glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash of self-
conviction.
It is a Socratic dialogue, indeed ; but it waits for the reader's
eye to open it ; he is himself the principal interlocutor in it ;
there can be nothing done till he comes in. Whatsoever beauty
or truth maybe in the argument; whatsoever jokes and re-
partees ; whatsoever infinite audacities of mirth may be hidden
under that grave cover, are not going to shine out for any
lazy book-worm's pleasure. He that will not work, neither
shall he eat of this food. ' Up to the mountains, for this is
hunters language, c and he that strikes the venison first shall be
lord of this feast.' It is an invention whereby the author will
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 3 1
remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is
long; whereby he will f outstretch his span/ and make over,
not his learning only but his living to the future ; — it is an in-
strumentality by which he will still maintain living relations
with the minds of men, by which he will put himself into the
most intimate relations of sympathy, and confidence, and
friendship, with the mind of the few; by which he will re-
produce his purposes and his faculties in them, and train them
to take up in their turn that thread of knowledges which is to
be spun on.
But if this design be buried so deeply, is it not lost then?
If all the absurd and contradictory developments — if all the
mad inconsistencies — all the many-sided contradictory views,
which are possible to human nature on all the questions of
human life, which this single personal pronoun was made to
represent, in the profoundly philosophic design of the author,
are still culled out by learned critics, and made to serve as the
material of a grave, though it is lamented, somewhat egotisti-
cal biography, is not all this ingenuity, which has success-
fully evaded thus far not the careless reader only, but the
scrutiny of the scholar, and the sharp eye of the reviewer
himself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little
purpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no
means. That disguise which was at first a necessity, has be-
come the instrument of his power. It is that broad / of his,
that I myself, with which he still takes all the world ; it is
that single, many-sided, vivacious, historical impersonation,
that ideal impersonation of the individual human nature as it
is — not as it should be — with all its ' weaved-up follies ravelled
out,' with all its before unconfessed actualities, its infinite ab-
surdities and contradictions, so boldly pronounced and assumed
by one laying claim to an historical existence, it is this his-
torical assumption and pronunciation of all the before unspoken,
unspeakable facts of this unexplored department of natural
history, it is this apparent confession with which this ma-
gician entangles his victims, as he tells us in a passage already
quoted, and leads them on through that objective representa-
32 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
tion of their follies in which they may learn to hate them, to
that globe mirror— that mirror of the age which he boasts to
have hung up here, when he says, ' I have done what I de-
signed : all the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.*
Who shall say that it is yet time to strip him of the disguise
which he wears so effectively? With all his faults, and all
his egotisms, who would not be sorry to see him taken to
pieces, after all? And who shall quite assure us, that it would
not still be treachery, even now, for those who have unwound
his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to the heart of his mys-
tery,—for those who have penetrated to the chamber of his
inner school, to come .out and blab a secret with which he still
works so potently; insensibly to those on whom he works,
perhaps, yet so potently? But there is no harm done. It
will still take the right reader to find his way through these
new devices in letters; these new and vivacious proofs of learn-
ing; for him, and for none other, they lurk there still.
To evade political restrictions, and to meet the popular
mind on its own ground, was the double purpose of the dis-
guise ; but it is a disguise which will only detect, and not baffle,
the mind that is able to identify itself with his, and able to
grasp his purposes; it is a disguise which will only detect the
mind that knows him, and his purposes already. The enig-
matical form of the inculcation is the device whereby that
mind will be compelled to follow his track, to think for itself
his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost secret of his
intention; for it is a school in whose enigmatical devices the
mind of the future was to be caught, in whose subtle exercises
the child of the future was to be trained to an identity that
should restore the master to his work again, and bring forth
anew, in a better hour, his clogged and buried genius.
But, if the fact that a new and more vivid kind of writing,
issuing from the heart of the new philosophy of things, designed
to work new and extraordinary effects by means of literary
instrumentalities,— effects hitherto reserved for other modes
of impression, — if the fact, that a new and infinitely artistic
mode of writing, burying the secrets of philosophy in the most
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 33
careless forms of the vulgar and popular discourse, did, in this
instance at least, exist; if this be proved, it will suffice for our
present purpose. What else remains to be established con-
cerning points incidentally started here, will be found more
pertinent to another stage of this enquiry.
From beginning to end, the whole work might be quoted,
page by page, in proof of this ; but after the passages already
produced here, there would seem to be no necessity for accu-
mulating any further evidence on this point. A passage or
two more, at least, will suffice to put that beyond question.
The extracts which follow, in connection with those already
given, will serve, at least, to remove any rational doubt on
that point, and on some others, too, perhaps.
' But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such
as I really am, T have my end ; neither will I make any ex-
cuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things
as these; the meanness of the subject compels me to it.' —
1 Human reason is a two-edged and a dangerous sword. Observe,
in the hand of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend,
how many points it has. Thus, I am good for nothing but to
follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the
crowd.' — ' 1 have this opinion of these political controversies :
Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as
your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to
jostle principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet,
'tis my notion, in public affairs [hear], there is no government so
ill, provided it be ancient, and has been constant, that is not
better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely
corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse : of our laws
and customs, there are many that are barbarous and monstrous :
nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the
danger of stirring things, if 1 could put something under to stay
the wheel, and keep it where it is, / would do so with all my
heart. It is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its
ancient observances ; never any man undertook, but he succeeded;
but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has
overthrown, many who have attempted this have foundered in the
D
34. THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
attempt. I very little consult my prudence [philosophic' pru-
dence'] in my conduct. I am willing to let it be guided by
public rule. ,, , 1
'In fine, to return to myself, the only things by which 1
esteem myself to be something, is that wherein never any man
thought himself to be defective. My recommendation is vulgar
and common; for whoever thought he wanted sense. It would
be a proposition that would imply a contradiction m itself ; |m
such subtleties thickly studding this popular work, the clues
which link it with other works of this kind are found — the
clues to a new practical human philosophy.-] ' Tis a disease that
never is where it is discerned; 'tis tenacious and strong; but
the first ray of the patient's sight does nevertheless pierce it
through and disperse it, as the beams of the sun do a thick
mist: to accuse ones self, would be to excuse ones self ^ this
case; and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter or
silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for their
need The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of
others, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way,
we should ourselves have found it out as well as they. Know-
ledge, style, and such parts as we see in other works we are
readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple pro-
ducts of the understanding, every one thinks he could have
found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and
difficulty, unless - and then with much ado -in an extreme
and incomparable distance; and whoever should be able clearly
to discern the height of another's judgment, would be also able
to raise his own to the same pitch; so that this is a sort oi
exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a
kind of composition of small repute. And, besides, for whom do
you writer— for he is merely meeting this common sense. His
object is merely to make his reader confess, 'That was just
what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if 1 did
not express it so, it was only for want of language; - lor
whom do you write? The learned, to whom the authority
appertains of judging books, know no other value but that oi
learning, and allow of no other process of wit but that ot eru-
V
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE.
35
dition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for
another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Who-
ever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in
some sort ignorant of himself. Heavy and vulgar souls can-
not discern the grace of a high and unfettered style. Now
these two sorts of men make the world. The third sort,
into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular, and
strong of themselves, is so rare, that it justly has neither name
nor place amongst us, and it is pretty well time lost to aspire
to it, or to endeavour to please it.' He will not content him-
self with pleasing the few. He wishes to move the world,
and its approbation is a secondary question with him.
'He that should record my idle talk, to the prejudice of the most
paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself
a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I war-
rant no other certainty, but 'tis what I had then in my thought,
a thought tumultuous and wavering. [' I have nothing with
this answer, Hamlet/ says the offended king. ( These words
are not mine.' Hamlet: 'Nor mine now''] All I say is by
way of discourse. I should not speak so boldly, if it were my
due to-be believed, and so I told a great man, who complained
to me of the tartness and contention of my advice' And, indeed,
he would not, in this instance, that is very certain; — for he
has been speaking on the subject of religious TOLERATION,
and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of
his time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these,
which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any
one is offended. ('These words are not mine, Hamlet.' ' Nor
mine now.') ' To kill men, a clear and shining light is re-
quired, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these
supernatural and fantastic accidents.' ' After all 'tis setting a
man's conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be
roasted alive upon them.' He does not look up at all, after
making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied
with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head
at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly
asleep than men usually are, became, according to certain grave
d2
36 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
authorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and
having mentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove
any unpleasant sensation or inquiry which his preceding allu-
sion might have occasioned, he resumes, ' If dreams can some-
times so incorporate themselves with effects of life, I cannot
believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice.
Which I say, as a man, who am neither judge nor privy coun-
sellor, nor think myself, by many degrees, worthy so to be,
but a man of the common sort, born and vowed to the obedience
of the public realm, both in words and acts.
< Thought is free ; — thought is free.'
Ariel.
1 Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I pro-
pose to you on the other, with all the care I can, to clear
your judgment, not to enforce it. Truly, / have not only a
great many humours, but also a great many opinions [which I
bring forward here, and assume as mine] that I would endeavour
to make my son dislike, if I had one. The truest, are not
always the most commodious to man ; he is of too wild a
composition. ' We speak of all things by precept and. resolu-
tion,' he continues, returning again to this covert question
of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the
method in his meridian. They make me hate things that
are likely, when they impose them on me for infallible.
'Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy' — (or, as Lord
Bacon expresses it, ' wonder is the seed of knowledge')— en-
quiry the progress — ignorance the end. Ay, but there is
a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in
honour and courage to knowledge, a knowledge, which to con-
ceive, requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself.'
* I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras,
a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print.'— [The vainT egotistical,
incoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic
French gentleman, who is understood to be the author of this
new experiment in letters, was not far from being a middle-
ao-ed man, when the pamphlet which he here alludes to was
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE.
37
first published ; but bis chronology, generally, does not bear a
very close examination. Some very extraordinary anachronisms,
which the critics are totally at a loss to account for, have some-
how slipped into his story. There was a young philosopher in
France in those days, of a most precocious, and subtle, and in-
ventive genius — of a most singularly artistic genius, combining
speculation and practice, as they had never been combined
before, and already busying himself with all sorts of things,
and among other things, with curious researches in regard to
ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time;
— there was a youth in France, whose family name was also
English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had
found occasion to invent a cipher of his own even then, into
whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first
appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally
have made the impression here recorded. But let us return
to the story.] — ll saw in my younger days, a report of
a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print,
of a strange accident of two men, who presented themselves the one
for the other. I remember, and I hardly remember anything
else, that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him
whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding
both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that / thought it a
very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. [That is the
point]. Let us take up SOME form of arrest, that shall
say, the court understands nothing of the matter, more freely
and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who ordered the
parties to appear again in a hundred years.1 We must not for-
get that these stories 'are not regarded by the author merely
for the use he makes of them, — that they carry, besides what
he applies them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter,
and sometjmes collaterally a more delicate sound, both to the
author himself who declines saying anything more about it in
that place, and to others who shall happen to be of his ear V One
already prepared by previous discovery of the method of com-
munication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in it, to
understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of
38 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the
story last quoted.
It is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to
the attention of the reader, ( who will, perhaps, see farther into
it than others/ in that chapter on toleration in which it is
suggested that considering the fantastic, and unscientific, and
unsettled character of the human beliefs and opinions, and that
even * the Fathers' have suggested in their speculations on the
nature of human life, that what men believed themselves
to be, in their dreams, they really became, it is after all setting
a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be
roasted alive on them ; the chapter in which it is intimated
that considering the natural human liability to error, a little
more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of
arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth
and advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole,
be likely to conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up
the human advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake
and rack, within the limits of doctrines which may have been,
perhaps, the very wisest, the most learned, of which the world
was capable, at the time when their form was determined. It
is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a chapter ' on cripples,'
into which this odd story about the two men who presented
themselves, the one for the other, in a manner ^0 remarkable,
is introduced, for lameness is always this author's grievance,
wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of devices
to overcome it ; for he is the person who came prepared to
speak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man
reads his speech, because he is one who could naturally give
it a grace by action, or as another has it, he is one who would
suit the action to the word.
But it was not the question of 'hanging' only, $r ( roasting
alive/ that authors had to consider with themselves in these
times. For those forms of literary production which an author's
literary taste, or his desire to reach and move and mould the
people, might incline him to select — the most approved
forms of popular literature, were in effect forbidden to men,
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 39
bent, as these men were, on taking an active part in the
affairs of their time. Any extraordinary reputation for excel-
lence in these departments, would hardly have tended to
promote the ambitious views of the young aspirant for honors
in that school of statesmanship, in which the 'Fairy Queen'
had been scornfully dismissed, as ' an old song.' Even that
disposition to the gravest and profoundest forms of philoso-
phical speculation, which one foolish young candidate for ad-
vancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit prematurely there,
was made use of so successfully to his disadvantage, that for
years his practical abilities were held in suspicion on that very
account, as he complains. The reputation of a Philosopher in
those days was quite as much as this legal practitioner was
willing to undertake for his part. That of a Poet might have
proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to sustain.
His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not
have been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen,
whose favour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily
relieved from any suspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases
of the Psalms for which he chose to make himself responsible,—
if those Hebrew melodies of his did not do the business for
him, and clear him effectually of any such suspicion in the
eyes of that generation, it is difficult to say what would. But
whether his devotional feelings were really of a kind to require
any such painful expression as that on their own account, may
reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted at all with his
general habits of thought and sentiment. These lyrics of the
philosopher appear on the whole to prove too much ; looked
at from a literary point of view merely, they remind one for-
cibly of the attempts of Mr. Silence at a Bacchanalian song.
{ I have a reasonable good ear in music,' says the unfortunate
Pyramus, struggling a little with that cerebral development
and uncompromising facial angle which he finds imposed on
him. ' I have a reasonable good ear in music : let us have the
tongs and the bones.'
1 A man must frame some probable cause, why he should not
do his best, and why he should dissemble his abilities,' says
4.0 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
this author, speaking of colour, or the covering of defects; and
that the prejudice just referred to was not peculiar to the
English court, the remarkable piece of dramatic criticism
which we are about to produce from this old Gascon philoso-
pher's pages, may or may not indicate, according as it is inter-
preted. It serves as an introduction to the passage in which
the author's double meaning, and the occasionally double sound
of his stories is noted. In the preceding chapter, it should be
remarked, however, the author has been discoursing in high
strains, upon the vanity of popular applause, or of any applause
but that of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with
quotations from the Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he
assumes as the precepts of a true and natural philosophy;
and among others the following passage was quoted : — *
1 Remember him who being asked why he took so much pains
in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few per-
sons, replied, ' A few are enough for me. I have enough with
one, I have enough with never a one.' He said true ; yourself
and a companion are theatre enough to one another, or you to
yourself. Let us be to you the whole people, and the whole
people to you but one. You should do like the beasts of chase
who efface the track at the entrance into their den.' But this
author's comprehensive design embraces all the oppositions in
human nature; he thinks it of very little use to preach to
men from the height of these lofty philosophic flights, unless
you first dive down to the platform of their actualities, and by
beginning with the secret of what they are, make sure that
you take them with you. So then the latent human vanity,
must needs be confessed, and instead of taking it all to himself
this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged up, the latter
very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand the
brunt of this philosophic shooting.
' But this exceeds all meanness of spirit in persons of such
quality as they were, to think to derive any glory from babbling
and prating, even to the making use of their private letters to
* Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a quotation from a
letter of Epicurus,, on the same subject.
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 4 1
their friends, ani so withal that though some of them were never
sent , the opportunity being lost, they nevertheless published
them ; with this worthy excuse, that they were unwilling to
lose their labour, and have their lucubrations thrown away. —
Was it not well becoming two consuls of Eome, sovereign
magistrates of the republic, that commanded the world, to spend
their time in patching up elegant missives, in order to gain
the reputation of being well versed in their own mother tongue?
What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got
his living by it? If the acts of Xenophon and Caesar had not
far transcended their eloquence, I don't believe they would
ever have taken the pains to write them. They made it their
business to recommend not their saying, but their doing. The
companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip, extolling
that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, De-
mosthenes said that those were commendations more proper
for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge. 'Tis not his prof ession
to know either how to hunt, or to dance well.
Orabunt causas alii, ccelique meatus
Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent,
Hie regere imperio populos sc:at.
Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these
less necessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man's
self, that he has spent his time and study ill, which ought to
have been employed in the acquisition of more necessary and
more useful things. Thus Philip, King of Macedon, having
heard the great Alexander, his son, sing at a feast to the wonder
and envy of the best musicians there. ' Art thou not ashamed,'
he said to him, * to sing so well?' And to the same Philip, a
musician with whom he was disputing about something con-
cerning his art, said, ' Heaven forbid, sir, that so great a mis-
fortune should ever befall you as to understand these things better
than I. Perhaps this author might have made a similar reply,
had his been subjected to a similar criticism. And Lord
Bacon quotes this story too, as he does many others, which
this author has first selected, and for the same purpose; for, not
content with appropriating his philosophy, and pretending to
42 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
invent his design and his method, he borrows all his most sig-
nificant stories from him, and brings them in to illustrate the
same points, and the points are borrowed also: he makes use,
indeed, of his common-place book throughout in the most
shameless and unconscionable manner. 'Rack his style,
Madam, rack his style,' he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he tells
us, when she consulted him— he being then of her counsel
learned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having
written < the book of the deposing of Richard the Second, and
the coming in of Henry the Fourth/ and sent to the Tower
for that offence. The queen was eager for a different kind of
advice. Racking an author's book did not appear to her
coarse sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the delicacy of an
author's susceptibilities, a process in itself sufficiently murderous
to satisfy her revenge. There must be some flesh and blood
in the business before ever she could understand it. She
wanted to have ' the question' put to that gentleman as to his
meaning in the obscure passages in that work under the most
impressive circumstances; and Mr. Bacon, himself an author,
being of her counsel learned, was requested to make out a case of
treason for her; and wishes from such a source were understood
to be commands in those days. Now it happened that one of
the managers and actors at the Globe Theatre, who was at
that time sustaining, as it would seem, the most extraordinary
relations of intimacy and friendship with the friends and
patrons of this same person, then figuring as the queen's ad-
viser, had recently composed a tragedy on this very subject;
though that gentleman, more cautious than Dr. Hayward, and
having, perhaps, some learned counsel also, had taken the pre-
caution to keep back the scene of the deposing of royalty
during the life-time of this sharp-witted queen, reserving its
publication for the reign of her erudite successor; and the
learned counsel in this case being aware of the fact, may have
felt some sympathy with this misguided author. ' No,
madam/ he replied to her inquiry, thinking to take off her
bitterness with a merry conceit, as he says, ' for treason I can
not deliver opinion that there is any, but very much felony/
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 43
The queen apprehending it gladly, asked, 'How?' and
'■ wherein ?' Mr. Bacon answered, ' Because he had stolen
many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus.'
It would do one good to see, perhaps, how many felonious
appropriations of sentences, and quotations, and ideas, the
application he recommends would bring to light in this case.
But the instances already quoted are not the only ones
which this free spoken foreign writer, this Elizabethan genius
abroad, ventures to adduce in support of this position of his,
that statesmen — men who aspire to the administration of re-
publics or other forms of government— if they cannot consent
on that account to relinquish altogether the company of the
Muses, must at least so far respect the prevailing opinion on
that point, as to be able to sacrifice to it the proudest literary
honours. Will the. .reader be pleased to notice, not merely
the extraordinary character of the example in this instance,
but the grounds of the assumption which the critic makes with
so much coolness.
f And could the perfection of eloquence have added any
lustre proportionable to the merit of a great person, certainly
Scipio and Lselius had never resigned the honour of their
comedies, with all the luxuriancies and delicacies of the Latin
tongue, to an African slave, for that the work was THEIKS its
beauty and excellency sufficiently prove:* besides Te-
rence himself confesses as much, and / should take it ill in
any one that would dispossess me of that belief.1 For, as he says
in another place, in a certain deeply disguised dedication which
he makes of the work of a friend, a poet, whose early death
he greatly lamented, and whom he is ' determined/ as he says,
' to revive and raise again to life if he can: 'As we often judge
of the greater by the less, and as the very pastimes of great
men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of the source
from which they spring, I hope you will, by this work of his,
rise to the knowledge of himself, and by consequence love and
* This is from a book in which the supposed autograph of Shakspere
is found ; a work from which he quotes incessantly, and from which he
appears, indeed, to have taken the whole hint of his learning.
44 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
embrace his memory. In so doing, you will accomplish what
he exceedingly longed for whilst he lived.' But here he con-
tinues thus, * I have, indeed, in my time known some, who,
by a knack of writing, have got both title and fortune, yet
disown their apprenticeship, purposely corrupt their style, and
affect ignorance of so vulgar a quality (which also our nation
observes, rarely to be seen in very learned hands), carefully seek-
ing a reputation by better qualities/
I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair :
but now it did me yeoman's service. — Hamlet.
And it is in the next paragraph to this, that he takes occasion
to mention that his stories and allegations do not always serve
simply for example, authority, or ornament; that they are not
limited in their application to the use he ostensibly makes of
them, but that they carry, for those who are in his secret, other
meanings, bolder and richer meanings, and sometimes collate-
rally a more delicate sound. And having interrupted the con-
sideration upon Cicero and Pliny, and their vanity and pitiful
desire for honour in future ages, with this criticism on the
limited sphere of statesmen in general, and the devices to
which Ladius and Scipio were compelled to resort, in order to
get their plays published without diminishing the lustre of
their personal renown, and 'having stopped to insert that most
extraordinary avowal in regard to his two-fold meanings in
his allegations and stories, he returns to the subject of this
correspondence again, for there is more in this also than meets
the ear; and it is not Pliny, and Cicero only, whose supposed
vanity, and regard for posthumous fame, as men of letters, is
under consideration. ' But returning to the speaking virtue/
he says, ' I find no great choice between not knowing to speak
anything but ill, and not knowing anything but speaking well.
The sages tell us, that as to what concerns knowledge there is
nothing but philosophy, and as to what concerns effects nothing
but virtue, that is generally proper to all degrees and orders.
There is something like this in these two other philosophers,
for they also promise eternity to the letters they write to
their friends, but 'tis after another manner, and by accommo-
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 45
dating themselves for a good end to the vanity of another ; for
they write to them that if the concern of making themselves
known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet detain
them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear
the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade
them; let them never trouble themselves more about it, for-
asmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to
assure them that, were there nothing else but the letters thus
writ to them, those letters will render their names as known
and famous as their own public actions themselves could do.
[And that — that is the key to the correspondence between two
other philosophers enigmatically alluded to here.] And be-
sides this difference,' for it is ' these two other philosophers/
and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus alone,
that we talk of here, ' and besides this difference, these are not
idle and empty letters, that contain nothing but a fine jingle of
well chosen words, and fine couched phrases; but replete and
abounding with grave and learned discourses, by which a man
may render himself — not more eloquent but more wise, and
that instruct us not to speak but to do well9; for that is the
rhetorical theory that was adopted by the scholars and states-
men then alive, whose methods of making themselves known
to future ages he is indicating, even in these references to the
ancients. LAway with that eloquence which so enchants us with
its harmony that we should more study it than things' '; for
this is the place where the quotation with which our investi-
gation of this theory commenced is inserted in the text, and
here it is, in the light of these preceding collections of hints
that he puts in the story first quoted, wherein he says, the
nature of the orator will be much more manifestly laid open
to us, than in that seeming care for his fame, or in that care
of his style, for its own sake. It is the story of Eros, the
slave, who brought the speaker word that the audience was
deferred, when in composing a speech that he was to make in
public, 'he found himself straitened in time, to fit his words to
his mouth as he had a mind to do.'
46 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER III.
THE POSSIBILITY OF GREAT ANONYMOUS WORKS, — OR
WORKS PUBLISHED UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME, — CON-
VEYING, UNDER RHETORICAL DISGUISES, THE PRINCIPAL
SCIENCES, RE-SUGGESTED, AND ILLUSTRATED.
Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf's
gaberdine for fear of the storm. — Tempest.
TYUT as to this love of glory which the stoics, whom this
*^ philosopher quotes so approvingly, have measured at its
true worth ; as to this love of literary fame, this hankering
after an earthly immortality, which he treats so scornfully in
the Roman statesman, let us hear him again in another chap-
ter, and see if we can find any thing whereby his nature and
designs will more manifestly be laid open to us. ' Of all the
foolish dreams in the world,' he says, ' that which is most
universally received, is the solicitude of reputation and glory,
which we are fond of to that degree as to abandon riches,
peace, life, and health, which are effectual and substantial
o-ood, to pursue this vain phantom. And of all the irrational
humours of men, it should seem that the philosophers them-
selves have the most ado, and do the least disengage themselves
from this the most restive and obstinate of all the follies.
There is not any one view of which reason does so clearly
accuse the vanity, as that; but it is so deeply rooted in us, that
I doubt whether any one ever clearly freed himself from it, or
no. After you have said all, and believed all that has been
said to its prejudice, it creates so intestine an inclination in
opposition to your best arguments, that you have little power
and firmness to resist it ; for (as Cicero says) even those who
controvert it, would yet that the booh they write should appear
before the world with their names in the title page, and seek
to derive glory from seeming to despise it. All other things are
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 47
communicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods —
[It irks me not that men my garments wear.]
and stake our lives for the necessities and service of our
friends; but to communicate one's honour, and to robe another
with one's own glory, is very rarely seen. And yet we have
some examples of that kind. Catulus Luctatius, in the
Cymbrian war, having done all that in him lay to make his
flying soldiers face about upon the enemy, ran himself at last
away with the rest, and counterfeited the coward, to the end that
his men might rather seem to follow their captain, than to fly
from the enemy ;' and after several anecdotes full of that inner
significance of which he speaks elsewhere, in which he ap-
pears, but only appears, to lose sight of this question of literary
honour, for they relate to military conflicts, he ventures to
approach, somewhat cautiously and delicately, the latent point
of his essay again, by adducing the example of persons, not
connected with the military profession, who have found them-
selves called upon in various ways, and by means of various
weapons, to take part in these wars; who have yet, in conse-
quence of certain ' subtleties of conscience,' relinquished the
honour of their successes; and though there is no instance ad-
duced of that particular kind of disinterestedness, in which an
author relinquishes to another the honour of his title page, as
the beginning might have led one to anticipate; on the
whole, the not indiligent reader of this author's performances
here and elsewhere, will feel that the subject which is an-
nounced as the subject of this chapter, ' Not to communicate
a man's honour or glory,' has been, considering the circum-
stance> sufficiently illustrated.
( As women succeeding to peerages had, notwithstanding their
sex, the right to assist and give their votes in the causes that
appertain to the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical
peers, notwithstanding their profession, were obliged to assist
our kings in their wars, not only with their friends and ser-
vants, but in their own persons. And he instances the Bishop
of Beauvais, who took a gallant share in the battle of Bouvines,
but did not think it fit for him to participate in the fruit and
48 THE ELIZABETHAN AKT OF TRADITION.
glory of that violent and bloody trade. He, with his own hand,
reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom he
delivered to the first gentleman he met, either to kill or to
receive them to quarter, referring that part to another hand.
As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de
Neale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he
would kill, but not wound him, and for that reason, fought
only with a mace. And a certain person in my time, being
reproached by the king that he had laid hands on a priest,
stiffly and positively denied it. The case was, he had cudgelled
and kicked him.' And there the author abruptly, for that time,
leaves the matter without any allusion to the case of still another
kind of combatants, who, fighting with another kind of weapon,
might also, from similar subtleties of conscience, perhaps think
fit to devolve on others the glory of their successes.
But in a chapter on names, in which, if he has not told, he
has designed to tell all ; and what he could not express, he has
at least pointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully
developed. In this chapter, he regrets that such as write
chronicles in Latin do not leave our names as they find them,
for in making of Vaudemont Valle-Montanus, and meta-
morphosing names to dress them out in Greek or Latin, we
know not where we are, and with the persons of the men, lose
the benefit of the story : but one who tracks the inner thread
of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be at
no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently
very trivial talk about names, he resumes his philosophic hu-
mour again, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recals
once more, the considerations with which philosophy sets at
nought the loss of fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts
to worthy deeds, the glory that should follow them.
' But this consideration — that is the consideration c that it
is the custom in France, to call every man, even a stranger, by
the name of any manor or seigneury, he may chance to come in
possession of, tends to the total confusion of descents, so that
surnames are no security/ — 'for/ he says, • a younger brother
of a good family, having a manor left him by his father, by
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 49
the name of which he has been known and honoured, cannot
handsomely leave it; ten years after his decease, it falls into
the hand of a stranger, who does the same. Do but judge
whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these
men. This consideration leads me therefore into another
subject. Let us look a little more narrowly into, and examine
upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation, for
which the world is turned topsy-turvy. Wherein do we place
this renown, that we hunt after with such infinite anxiety and
trouble. It is in the end Pierre or William that bears it,
takes it into his possession, and whom only it concerns. Oh
what a valiant faculty is Hope, that in a mortal subject, and
in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity,
eternity, and of supplying her master's indigence, at her pleasure,
with all things that he can imagine or desire. And this Pierre
or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done, [' What's
in a name?'] or three or four dashes with a pen?'
And he has already written two paragraphs to show, that
the name of William, at least, is not excepted from the
general remarks he is making here on the vanity of names;
while that of Pierre is five times repeated, apparently with
the same general intention, and another combination of sounds
is not wanting which serves with that free translation the
author himself takes pains to suggest and defend, to com-
plete what was lacking to that combination, in order to give
these remarks their true point and significance, in order to
redeem them from that appearance of flatness which is not a
characteristic of this author's intentions, and in his style
merely serves as an intimation to the reader that there is (
something worth looking for beneath it.
As to the name of William, and the amount of personal
distinction which that confers upon its owners, he begins by
telling us, that the name of Guienne is said to be derived from
the Williams of our ancient Aquitaine, ' which would seem, he
says, rather far fetched, were there not as crude derivations in Plato
himself, to whom he refers in other places for similar precedents ;
and when he wishes to excuse his enigmatical style — the titles
E
50 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
of his chapters for instance. And by way of emphasizing
this particular still further, he mentions, that on the occasion
when Henry, the Duke of Normandy, the son of Henry the
Second, of England, made a feast in France, the concourse of
nobility and gentry was so great, that for sport's sake he divided
them into troops, according to their names, and in the first troop,
which consisted of Williams, there were found a hundred and
ten knights sitting at the table of that name, without reckoning
the simple gentlemen and servants.
And here he apparently digresses from his subject for the
sake of mentioning the Emperor Geta, ' who distributed the
several courses of his meats by the first letters of the meats
themselves, where those that began with B were served up
together; as brawn, beef, beccaficos, and so of the others/
This appears to be a little out of the way; but it is not impos-
sible that there may be an allusion in it to the author's own
family name of Eyquem, though that would be rather far-
fetched, as he says; but then there is Plato at hand, still to
keep us in countenance.
But to return to the point of digression. * And this Pierre,
or William, what is it but a sound when all is done? Or
three or four dashes with a pen, so easy to be varied, that I
would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of so
many victories, to Guesquin, to Glesquin, or to Gueaguin. And
yet there would be something more in the case than in Lucian
that Sigma should serve Tau with a process, for ' He seeks
no mean rewards.' The quere is here in good earnest. The point
is, which of these letters is to be rewarded for so many sieges,
■ battles, wounds, imprisonment, and services done to the crown
of France by this famous constable. Nicholas Denisot never
concerned himself further than the letters of his name, of
which he has altered the whole contexture, to build up by ana-
gram the Count d'Alsinois whom he has endowed with the glory
of his poetry and painting. [A good precedent — but here is a
better one.] And the historian Suetonius looked only to the
meaning of his; and so, cashiering his father 's surname, Lenis
left Tranquillus successor to the reputation of his writings. Who
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 5 1
would believe that the Captain Bayard should have no honour
but what he derives from the great deeds of Peter (Pierre),
Terrail, [the name of Bayard — ' the meaning'] and that Antonio
Escalin should suffer himself, to his face, to be robbed of the
honour of so many navigations, and commands at sea and land,
by Captain Poulin and the Baron de la Garde. [The name of
Poulin was taken from the place where he was born, De la
Garde from a person who took him in his boyhood into his
service.] Who hinders my groom from calling himself Pom-
pey the Great? But, after all, what virtue, what springs are
there that convey to my deceased groom, or the other Pompey
( who had his head cut off in Egypt), this glorious renown, and
these so much honoured flourishes of the pen?' Instructive
suggestions, especially when taken in connection with the pre-
ceding items contained in this chapter, apparently so casually
introduced, yet all with a stedfast bearing on this question of
names, and all pointing by means of a thread of delicate
sounds, and not less delicate suggestions, to another instance,
in which the possibility of circumstances tending to counter-
vail the so natural desire to appropriate to the name derived
from one's ancestors, the lustre of one's deeds, is clearly demon-
strated.
"Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is
in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to shift
in time of danger, and to counterfeit bravely, when he has no
more heart than a chicken. There are so many ways to avoid
hazarding a man's own person* — * and had we the use of the
Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if
turned inwards towards the palm of the hand, it is to be feared
that a great many would often hide themselves, when they ought
most to appear.1 ' It seems that to be known, is in some sort to
have a man's life and its duration in another's keeping. I for
my part, hold that I am wholly in myself, and that other life
of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, considering
it nakedly and simply in itself, I know very well that I am
sensible of no fruit or enjoyment of it but by the vanity of a
fantastic opinion; and, when I shall be dead, I shall be much
E 2
■
52 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
less sensible of it, and shall withal absolutely lose the use of
those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it.
[That was Lord Bacon's view, too, exactly.] I shall have no
more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, or whereby
it may take hold of me: for to expect that my name should
receive it, in the first place, I have no name that is enough
my own. Of two that I have, one is common to all my race,
and even to others also: there is one family at Paris, and
another at Montpelier, whose surname is Montaigne; another
in Brittany, and Xaintonge called De la Montaigne. The
transposition of one syllable only is enough to ravel our affairs,
so that I shall peradventure share in their glory, and they
shall partake of my shame; and, moreover, my ancestors were
formerly surnamed Eyquem, a name wherein a family well
known in England at this day is concerned. As to my other
name, any one can take it that will, and so, perhaps, I may
honour a porter in my own stead. And, besides, though I
had a particular distinction myself, what can it distinguish
when I am no more. Can it point out and favour inanity?
But will thy manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from thy ashes grow 1
But of this I have spoken elsewhere.' He has— and to pur-
pose.
But as to the authority for these readings, Lord Bacon him-
self will give us that; for this is the style which he discrimi-
nates so sharply as ' the enigmatical,1 a style which he, too,
finds to have been in use among the ancients, and which he
tells us has some affinity with that new method of making over
knowledges from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil,
which he terms the method of progression — (which is the method
of essaie) — in opposition to the received method, the only
method he finds in use, which he, too, calls the magisterial.
And this method of progression, with which the enigmatical
has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases where
knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where
science is to be removed from one mind to another to grow
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE.
53
from the root, and not delivered as trees for the use of the
carpenter, where the root is of no consequence. In this
case, he tells us it is necessary for the teacher to descend
to the foundations of knowledge and consent, and so to transplant
it into another as it grew in his own mind, 'whereas as
knowledges are now delivered, there is a kind of contract of
en-or between the deliverer and the receiver, for he that
delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such a form as
may best be believed, and not as may best be examined: and he
that receiveth knowledge desireth rather present satisfaction
than expectant inquiry, and so rather not to doubt than not to
err, glory making the author not to lay open his weakness,
and sloth making the disciple not to know his strength' Now,
so very grave a defect as this, in the method of the delivery
and tradition of Learning, would of course be one of the first
things that would require to be remedied in any plan in which
' the Advancement ' of it was seriously contemplated. And this
method of the delivery and tradition of knowledges which
transfers the root with them, that they may grow in the mind
of the learner, is the method which this philosopher professes
to find wanting, and the one which he seems disposed to in-
vent. He has made a very thorough survey of the stores of
the ancients, and is not unacquainted with the more recent
history of learning ; he^knows exactly what kinds of methods
have been made use of by the learned in all ages, for the pur-
pose of putting themselves into some tolerable and possible
relations with the physical majority; he knows what devices
they have, always been compelled to resort to, for the purpose of
establishing some more or less effective communication between
themselves and that world to which they instinctively seek to
transfer their doctrine. But this method, which he suggests
here as the essential condition of the growth and advancement
of learning, he does not find invented. He refers to a method
which he calls the enigmatical, which has an affinity with it,
* used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients,' but dis-
graced since, ' by the impostures of persons, who have made it
as a false light for their counterfeit merchandises.' The pur-
54 THE ELIZABETHAN AKT OF TRADITION.
pose of this latter style is, as he defines it, * to remove the
secrets of knowledges from the penetration of the more vulgar
capacities, and to reserve them to selected auditors, or to wits
of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.' And that is a me-
thod, he tells us, which philosophy can by no means dispense
with in his time, and * whoever would let in new light upon
the human understanding must still have recourse to it/ But
the method of delivery and tradition in those ancient schools,
appears to have been too much of the dictatorial kind to suit
this proposer of advancement ; its tendency was to arrest know-
leges instead of promoting their growth. He is not pleased
with the ambition of those old masters, and thinks they aimed
too much at a personal impression, and that they sometimes
undertook to impose their own particular and often very
partial grasp of those universal doctrines and principles,
which are and must be true for all men, in too dogmatical and
magisterial a manner, without making sufficient allowance
for the growth of the mind of the world, the difference of
races, etc.
But if any doubt in regard to the use of the method de-
scribed, in the composition of the work now first produced as
AN example of the use of it, should still remain in any mind ;
or if this method of unravelling it should seem too studious,
perhaps the author's own word for it in one more quotation
may be thought worth taking.
* / can give no account of my life by MY ACTIONS, fortune
has placed them too low ; / must do it BY MY fancies. And
when shall I have done representing the continual agitation
and change of my thoughts as they come into my head,
seeing that Diomedes filled six thousand books upon the sub-
ject of grammar/ [The commentators undertake to set him
right here, but the philosopher only glances in his intention
at the voluminousness of the science of words, in opposition
to the science of things, which he came to establish.] f What
must prating produce, since prating itself, and the first be-
ginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load
of volumes. So many words about words only. They accused
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 55
one Galba, of old, of living idly; he made answer that every
one ought to give account of his actions, but not of his leisure.
He was mistaken, fox justice — [the civil authority] — has cogni-
zance and jurisdiction over those that do nothing, or only play
at working .... Scribbling appears to be the sign of a dis-
ordered age. Every man applies himself negligently to the
duty of his vocation at such a time and debauches in it.'
From that central wrong of an evil government, an infectious
depravity spreads and corrupts all particulars. Everything
turns from its true and natural course. Thus scribbling is the
sign of a disordered age. Men write in such times instead
of acting; and scribble, or seem to perhaps, instead of writing
openly to purpose.
And yet, again, that central, and so divergent, wrong is the
result of each man's particular contribution, as he goes on to
assert. ' The corruption of this age is made up by the par-
ticular contributions of every individual man/ —
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. — Cassius.
1 Some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny,
avarice and cruelty, according as they have power; the weaker
SORT CONTRIBUTE FOLLY, VANITY, and IDLENESS, and of
these I am one.'
Ccesar. — He loves no plays as thou dost, Antony.
Such men are dangerous.
Or, as the same poet expresses it in another Eoman play: —
This double worship,
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason ; where gentry, title, wisdom
Cannot conclude but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance, — it must omit
Real necessities — and give way the while
To unstable slightness ; purpose so barred,
It follows, nothing is done to purpose.
And that is made the plea for an attempt to overthrow the
popular power, and to replace it with a government contain-
ing the true head of the state, its nobility, its learning, its
gentleness, its wisdom.
56 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
But the essayist continues: — 'It seems as if it were the
season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time
when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what signifies
nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that /
shall be one of the last that shall be called in question, — for
it would be against reason to punish the less troublesome while
we are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one
who presented him his finger to dress, and who, as he per-
ceived, had an ulcer in his lungs. ' Friend, it is not now time
to concern yourself about your finger's ends/ And yet I saw
some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in very
great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when
there was neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate
that performed his office, — no more than there is now,— publish
I know not what pitiful reformations about clothes, cookery and
law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people
that are ill used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.
These others do the same, who insist upon stoutly defending
the forms of speaking, dances and games to a people totally
abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices— it is for the Spartans
only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are
just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme
danger of their lives.
For my part, I have yet a worse custom. I scorn to mend
myself by halves. If my shoe go awry, I let my shirt and my
cloak do so too: when I am out of order I feed on mischief.
1 abandon myself through despair, and let myself go towards
the precipice, and as the saying is, throw the helve after the
hatchet/ We should not need, perhaps, the aid of the ex-
planations already quoted, to show us that the author does not
confess this custom of his for the sake of commending it to
the sense or judgment of the reader, — who sees it here for the
first time it may be put into words or put on paper, who
looks at it here, perhaps, for the first time objectively, from
the critical stand-point which the review of another's con-
fession creates; and though it may have been latent in the
dim consciousness of his own experience, or practically de-
MICHAEL PE MONTAIGNE. 57
veloped, finds it now for the first time, collected from the
phenomena of the blind, instinctive, human motivity, and put
down on the page of science, as a principle in nature, in
human nature also.
But this is indeed a Spartan combing and curling, that the
author is falling to, in the introductory flourishes (' diversions'
as he calls them) of this great adventure, that his pen is out
for now : he is indeed upon the point of running headlong
into the fiercest dangers; — it is the state, the wretched, dis-
eased, vicious state, dying apparently, yet full of teeth and
mischief, that he is about to handle in his argument with
these fine, lightsome, frolicsome preparations of his, without
any perceptible ' mittens'; it is the heart of that political evil
that his time groans with, and begins to find insufferable,
that he is going to probe to the quick with that so delicate
weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all
the instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as
handsomely, and with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the
circumstances will admit of. But the political situation which
he describes so boldly (and we have already seen what it is)
affects us here in its relation to the question of style only,
and as the author himself connects it with the point of our
inquiry.
1 A man may regret,' he says, * the better times, but cannot
fly from the present, we may wish for other magistrates, but
we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and, perad-
venture, it is more laudable to obey the bad than the good.
So long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this
monarchy shall shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will
I be. If they happen, unfortunately, to thwart and contradict
one another, so as to produce two factions of doubtful choice '
And my soul aches
To know, [says Coriolanus] when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
— • in this contingency / will willingly choose,' continues the
58 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
other, * to withdraw from the tempest, and in the meantime,
nature or the hazards of war may lend me a helping hand.
Betwixt Csesar and Pompey, I should soon and frankly have
declared myself, but amongst the three robbers that came
after, a man must needs have either hid himself or have gone
along with the current of the time, which I think a man may
lawfully do, when reason no longer rules.3 ' Whither dost thou
wandering go?'
This medley is a little from my subject, I go out of my
way but 't is rather by licence than oversight. My fancies follow
one another, but sometimes at a great distance, and look towards
one another, but His with an oblique glance. I have read a
DIALOGUE of Plato of such a motley and fantastic compo-
sition. The beginning was about love, and all the rest about
rhetoric. They stick not (that is, the ancients) at these
variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves
to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or at least
to seem as if they were. The titles of my chapters do not
always comprehend the whole matter, they often denote it
by some mark only, as those other titles Andria Eunuchus, or
these, Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus. I love a poetic march, by
leaps and skips, 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and
a little demoniacal. There are places in Plutarch where he
forgets his theme, where the proposition of his argument is
only found incidentally, and stuffed throughout with foreign
matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of
Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions:
and then most of all,when they seem to be fortuitous, [hear] and
introduced for want of heed. 'Tis the indiligent reader that
loses my subject — not I. There will always be found some
words or other in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie
very close [that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indis-
creetly and tumultously: my style and my wit wander at the
same rate, [he wanders wittingly.'] A little folly is desirable in
him that will not be guilty of stupidity, say the precepts, and
much more the examples of our masters. A thousand poets
and languish after a prosaic manner ; but the best old
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 59
prose, and I strew it here up and down indifferently for verse,
shines throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and
represents some air of its fury. Certainly, prose must yield
the pre-eminence in speaking. * The poet,' says Plato, * when
set upon the muse's tripod, pours out with fury, whatever
comes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain, without
considering and pausing upon what he says, and things come
from him of various colors, of contrary substance, and with
an irregular torrent: he himself (Plato) is all over poetical,
and all the old theology (as the learned inform us) is poetry,
and the first philosophy, is the origiual language of the
gods.
I would have the matter distinguish itself; it sufficientiy
shows where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins, and
where it resumes, without interlacing it with words of connection,
introduced for the relief of weak or negligent ears, and without
commenting myself. Who is he that had not rather not be
read at all, than after a drowsy or cursory manner ? Seeing I
cannot fix the reader's attention by the weight of what I
write, maneo male, if I should chance to do it by my intricacies,
[Hear]. I mortally hate obscurity and would avoid it if I
could. In such an employment, to whom you will not give an
hour -you will give nothing; and you do nothing for him for
whom you only do, whilst you are doing something else. To
which may be added, that I have, perhaps, some particular
obligation to speak only by halves, to speak confusedly and
discordantly.1
But this is, perhaps, enough to show, in the way of direct
assertion, that we have here, at least, a philosophical work com-
posed in that style which Lord Bacon calls * the enigmatical,'
in which he tells us the secrets of knowledges are reserved for
selected auditors, or wit3 of such sharpness as can pierce the
veil; a style which he, too, tells us was sometimes used by
the discretion of the ancients, though he does not specify
either Plutarch or Plato; in that place, and one which he
introduces in connection with his new method of progression,
in consequence of its having, as he tells us, some affinity with
60 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
it, and that we have here also a specimen of that new method
itself, by means of which knowledges are to be delivered as a
thread to be spun on.
But let us leave, for the present, this wondrous Gascon,
though it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our
present subject in hand, — this philosopher, whose fancies look
towards one another at such long, such very long distances,
sometimes, though not always, with an oblique glance, who
dares to depend so much upon the eye of his reader, and
especially upon the reader of that ' far-off' age he writes to. It
would have been indeed irrelevant to introduce the subject
of this foreign work and its style in this connection without
further explanation, but for the identity of political situation
already referred to, and but for those subtle, interior, incessant
connections wijh the higher writings of the great Elizabethan
school, which form the main characteristic of this production.
The fact, that this work was composed in the country in
which the chief Elizabethan men attained their maturity, that
it dates from the time in which Bacon was completing his
education there, that it covers ostensibly not the period only,
but the scenes and events of Kaleigh's six years campaigning
there, as well as the fact alluded to by this author himself,
in a passage already quoted, — the fact that there was a family
then in England, very well known, who bore the surname of
his ancestors, a family of the name of Eyquem, he tells us
with whom, perhaps, he still kept up some secret corre-
spondence and relations, the fact, too, which he mentions in
his chapter on Names, that a surname in France is very
easily acquired, and is not necessarily derived from one's
ancestors, — that same chapter in which he adduces so many
instances of men who, notwithstanding that inveterate innate
love of the honour of one's own proper name, which is in men
of genius still more inveterate, — have for one reason or another
been willing to put upon anagrams, or synonyms, or borrowed
names, all their honours, so that in the end it is William or Pierre
who takes them into his possession, and bears them, or it's the
name of ' an African slave' perhaps, or the name of a ' groom '
MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 6 1
(promoted, it may be, to the rank of a jester, or even to that of a
player,) that gets all the glory. All these facts, taken in con-
nection with the conclusions already established, though insigni-
ficant in themselves, will be found anything but that for the phi-
losophical student who has leisure to pursue the inquiry.
And though the latent meanings, in which the interior
connections and identities referred to above are found, are not
yet critically recognised, a latent national affinity and liking
strong enough to pierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior,
appears to have been at work here from the first. For though
the seed of the richer and bolder meanings from which the
author anticipated his later harvest, could not yet be reached,
that new form of popular writing, that effective, and viva-
cious mode of communication with the popular mind on topics
of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as fit
subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world
on its surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was
on the English mind that it began to operate first. It was in
England, that it began so soon to develop the latent efficacies
it held in germ, in the creation of that new and widening
department in letters — that so new, so vast, and living de-
partment of them, which it takes to-day all our reviews, and
magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work itself has
been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as heartily
as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly
distinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English
nationality.
But it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new
f Michael of the Mount/ this man who is * consubstantial with
his book,' — this ' Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively
describes it> Let us yield him this new ascent, this new tri-
umphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to
have been the first to master, — the unity of the universal
man, — the historical unity, — the universal human form, col-
lected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted, — the
Inducted Man of the new philosophy. ' Authors,1 he says,
' have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some
62 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
particular and foreign mark ; I, the first of any by my universal
being, as Michael de Montaigne, I propose a life mean and
without lustre : all moral philosophy is applied as well to a
private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man
carries the entire form of the human condition. . . I, the first of
any by my universal being, as Michael, — see the chapter on
names, — ' as Michael de Montaigne.' ' Let us leave him for
the present, or attempt to, for it is not very easy to do so, so
long as we have our present subject in hand.
For, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, ram-
bling old Gascon — it is from this outlandish looker-on of
human affairs, that our Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers
and Tattlers, trace their descent; and the Times, and the Ex-
aminers, and the Observers, and the Spectators, and the Tri-
bunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies, and all the
Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human affairs
to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them
have not been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how
it came to pass, that a man of this particular turn of mind,
who belonged to the old party, and the times that were then
passing away, should have felt himself called upon to make
this great signal for the human advancement, and how it
happens that these radical connections with other works of
that time, having the same general intention, are found in the
work itself, — these are points which the future biographers of
this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to
look to. And a little of that more studious kind of reading
which he himself so significantly solicited, and in so many
passages, will inevitably tend to the elucidation of them.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC.
PAET II.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF
PROGRESSION.
* The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'
Troilus and Cressida.
' I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'
Falstaff.
CHAPTER I.
THE 'BEGINNERS.'
' Prospero. — Go bring the rabble,
O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'
Tempest.
T)UT though a foreign philosopher may venture to give us
" the clue to it, perhaps, in the first instance, a little more
roundly, it is not necessary that we should go the Mayor of
Bordeaux, in order to ascertain on the highest possible authority,
what kind of an art of communication, what kind of an art
of delivery and tradition, men, in such circumstances, find
themselves compelled to invent; — that is, if they would not
be utterly foiled for the want of it, in their noblest purposes; —
we need not go across the channel to find the men themselves,
to whom this art is a necessity, — men so convinced that they
have a mission of instruction to their kind, that they will
permit no temporary disabilities to divert them from their
end, — men who must needs open their school, no matter
what oppositions there may be, to be encountered, no matter
what imposing exhibitions of military weapons may be going
on just then, in their vicinity; and though they should find
themselves straitened in time, and not able to fit their words
to their mouths as they have a mind to, though they should
be obliged to accept the hint from the master in the Greek
school, and take their tone from the ear of those to whom they
64 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
speak, though many speeches which would spend their use
among the men then living would have to be inserted in their
most enduring works with a private hint concerning that
necessity, and a private reading of them for those whom it
concerned; though the audience they are prepared to address
should be deferred, though the benches of the inner school
should stand empty for ages. We need not go abroad at all
to discover men of this stamp, and their works and pastimes,
and their arts of tradition ; — men so filled with that which
impels men to speak, that speak they must, and speak they
will, in one form or another, by word or gesture, by word or
deed, though they speak to the void waste, though they must
speak till they reach old ocean in his unsunned caves, and
bring him up with the music of their complainings, though
the marble Themis fling back their last appeal, though they
speak, to the tempest in his wrath, to the wind and the rain,
and the fire and the thunder, — men so impregnated with that
which makes the human speech, that speak they will, though
they have but a rusty nail, wherewith to etch their story, on
their dungeon wall; though they dig in the earth and bury
their secret, as one buried his of old — that same secret still;
for it is still those ears — those 'ears' that 'Midas hath'
which makes the mystery.
They know that the days are coming when the light will
enter their prison house, and flash in its dimmest recess; when
the light they sought in vain, will be there to search out the
secrets they are forbid. They know that the day is coming,
when the disciple himself, all tutored in the art of their tradi-
tion, bringing with him the key of its delivery, shall be there
to unlock those locked-up meanings, to spell out those anagrams
to read those hieroglyphics, to unwind with patient loving
research to its minutest point, that text, that with such tools
as the most watchful tyranny would give them, they will yet
contrive to leave there. They know that their buried words
are seeds, and though they lie long in the earth, they will yet
spring up with their, 'richer and bolder meanings/ and publish
on every breeze, their boldest mystery.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 65
■ For let not men of narrower natures fancy that such action
is not proper to the larger one, and cannot be historical. For
there are different kinds of men, our science of men tells us,
and that is an unscientific judgment which omits 'the particu-
lar addition, that bounteous nature hath closed in each/ — her
'addition to the bill that writes them all alike/ For there is
a kind of men ■ whose minds are proportioned to that which
may be dispatched at once, or within a short return of time,
and there is another kind, whose minds are proportioned to
that which begins afar off, and is to be won with length of
pursuit,' — so the Coryphseus of those choir that the latter
kind compose, informs us, 'so that there may be fitly said to
be a longanimity, which is commonly also ascribed to God as a
magnanimity/
And our English' philosophers had to light what this one calls
a new f Lamp of Tradition/ before they could make sure of trans-
mitting their new science, through such mediums as those that
their time gave them; and a very gorgeous many-branched
lamp it is, that the great English philosopher brings out from
that 'secret school of living Learning and living Art' to which he
secretly belongs, for the admiration of the professionally learned
of his time, and a very lustrous one too, as it will yet prove to
be, when once it enters the scholar's apprehension that it was
ever meant be lighted, when once the little movement that
turns on the dazzling jet is ordered.
For we have all been so taken up with the Baconian Logic
hitherto and its wonderful effects in the relief of the human
estate, that the Baconian Rhetoric has all this time es-
caped our notice ; and nobody appears to have suspected that
there was anything in that worth looking at; any more than
they suspect that there is anything in some of those other
divisions which the philosopher himself lays so much stress on
in his proposal for the Advancement of Learning, — in his pro-
posal for the advancement of it into all the fields of human
activity. But we read this proposition still, as James the
First was expected to read it, and all these departments which
are brought into that general view in such a dry and formal
F
66 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
and studiously scholastic manner, appear to be put there
merely to fill up a space ; and because the general plan of this so
erudite performance happened to include them.
For inasmuch as the real scope and main bearing of this
proposition, though it is in fact there, is of course not there, in
any such form as to attract the particular attention of the
monarch to whose eye the work is commended; and inasmuch
as the new art of a scientific Rhetoric is already put to its
most masterly use in reserving that main design, for such as
may find themselves able to receive it, of course, the need of
any such invention is not apparent on the surface of the work,
and the real significance of this new doctrine of Art and its
radical relation to the new science, is also reserved for that
class of readers who are able to adopt the rules of interpreta-
tion which the work itself lays down. Because the real ap-
plications of the New Logic could not yet be openly discussed,
no one sees as yet, that there was, and had to be, a Rhetoric to
match it.
For this author, who was not any less shrewd than the one
whose methods we have just been observing a little, had also
early discovered in the great personages of his time, a dispo-
sition to moderate his voice whenever he went to speak to
them on matters of importance, in his natural key, for his
voice too, was naturally loud, and high as he gives us to under-
stand, though he 'could speak small like a woman'; he too had
learned to take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake,
and he too had learned, that it was not enough merely to
speak so as to make himself heard by those whom he wished
to affect. He also had learned to speak according to the affair
he had in hand, according to the purpose which he wished to
accomplish. He also is of the opinion that different kinds of
audiences and different times, require different modes of speech,
and though he found it necessary to compose his works in the
style and language of his own time, he was confident that it
was a language which would not remain in use for many ages;
and he has therefore provided himself with another, more to
his mind which he has taken pains to fold carefully within the
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 6j
other, and one which he thinks will bear the wear and tear of
those revolutions that he perceives to be imminent.
But in consequence of our persistent oversight of this Art of
Tradition, on which he relies so much, (which is as fine an in-
vention of his, as any other of his inventions which we find
ourselves so much the better for), that appeal to** the times that
are farther off,' has not yet taken effect, and the audience for
whom he chiefly laboured is still ' deferred.';;
This so noble and benign art which he calls, with his own
natural modesty and simplicity, the Art of Tradition, this art
which grows so truly noble and worthy, so distinctively human,
in his clear, scientific treatment of it, — in his scientific clearance
of it from the wildnesses and spontaneities of accident, or the
superfluities and trickery of an art without science, — that stops
short of the ultimate, the Human principle, — this so noble art
of speech or tradition is, indeed, an art which this great teacher
and leader of men will think it no scorn to labour : it is one on
which, even such a teacher, can find time to stop; it is one
which even such a teacher can stop to build from the founda-
tion upwards, he will not care how splendidly ; it is one on
which he will spend without stint, and think it gain to spend,
the wealth of his invention.
But, at the same time, it is with him a subordinate art. It
has no worth or substance in itself; it borrows all its worth
from that which masters and rigorously subdues it to its end.
Here, too, we find ourselves coming down on all its old cere-
monial and observance, from that new height which we found
our foreign philosopher in such quiet possession of, — taking
his way at a puff through poor Cicero's periods, — those periods
which the old orator had taken so much pains with, and laugh-
ing at his pains: — but this English philosopher is more daring
still, for it is he who disposes, at a word, without any comment,
just in passing merely, — from his practical stand-point,1 — of
1 the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks,' like the other making
nothing at all in his theory of criticism of mere elegance,
though it is the Gascon, it is true, who undertakes the more
lively and extreme practical demonstrations of this theoretical
f2
68 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OE TRADITION.
contempt of it,— setting .it at nought, and flying in the face of
it _ writing in as loquacious and homely a style as he possibly
can, just for the purpose for setting it at nought, though not
without giving us a glimpse occasionally, of a faculty that would
enable him to mince the matter as fine as another if he should
see occasion— as, perhaps, he may. For he talks very emphati-
cally about his poetry here and there, and seems to intimate that
he has a gift that way; and that he has, moreover, some works
of value in that department of letters, which he is anxious to
' save up ' for posterity, if he can. But here, it is the scholar,
and not the loquacious old gentleman at all, who is giving us
in his choicest, selectest, courtliest phrase, in his most stately
and condensed style, his views of this subject; but that which is
noticeable is, that the art in its fresh, new upspringing from the
secret of life and nature, from the soul of things, the art and
that which it springs from, is in these two so different forms
identical Here, too, the point of its criticism and review is
the same. ' Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with
its harmony that we should more study it than things' ; but here
the old Roman masters the philosopher, for a moment, and he
puts in a scholarly parenthesis, ' unless you will affirm that of
Cicero to be of so supreme perfection as to form a body of itself.'
But Hamlet, in his discourse with that wise reasoner, and
unfortunate practitioner, who thought that brevity was the soul
of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, puts
it more briefly still.
Polonius. What do you read, my lord 1
Hamlet. Words, word*, words !
' More matter, and less art,' another says in that same treatise
on art and speculation. Now inasmuch as this art and science
derives all its distinction and lustre from that new light on the
human estate of which it was to be the vehicle, somebody must
find 'the trick of it, so as to be able to bring out that doctrine
by its help, before we can be prepared to understand the real
worth of this invention. It would be premature to undertake
to set it forth fully, till that is accomplished. There must be
a more elaborate exhibition of that science, before the art of
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 69
its transmission can be fully treated ; we cannot estimate it, till
we see how it strikes to the root of the new doctrine, how it
begins with its beginning, and reaches to its end : we cannot
estimate it till we see its relation, its essential relation, to that
new doctrine of the human nature, and that new doctrine of
state, which spring from the doctrine of nature in general,
which is the doctrine, which is the beginning and the end of
the new science.
We find here on the surface, as we find everywhere in this
comprehensive treatise, much apparent parade of division and
subdivision, and the author appears to lay much stress upon
this, and seems disposed to pride himself upon his dexterity in
chopping up the subject as finely as possible, and keeping the
parts quite clear of one another; and sometimes, in his distribu-
tions, putting these points the farthest apart which are the most
nearly related, though not so far, that they cannot ' look to-
wards each other/ though it may be, as the other says, ' ob-
liquely.1 He evidently depends very much on his arrangement,
and seems, indeed, to be chiefly concerned about that, when he
comes to the more critical parts of his subject. But it is to
the continuities which underlie these separations, to which he
directs the attention of those to whom he speaks in earnest,
and not in particular cases only. ( Generally,' he says, ' let this
be a rule, that all partitions of knowledges be accepted rather
for lines and VEINS, than for sections and separations, and
that the continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved.
For the contrary hereof,3 he says, ' is that which has made par-
ticular SCIENCES BARREN, SHALLOW, and ERRONEOUS,
while they have not been nourished and maintained from the
common fountain.' For this is the ONE SCIENCE, the deep,
the true, the fruitful one, the fruitful because the ONE.'
These lines, then, which he cautions ns against regarding as
divisions, which are brought in with such parade of scholasti-
cism, with such a profound appearance of artifice, will always
be found by those who have leisure to go below the surface, to
be but the indications of those natural articulations and branches
into which the subject divides and breaks itself, and the con-
70 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
ducting lines to that trunk and heart of sciences, that common
fountain from which all this new vitality, this sudden up-
springing and new blossoming of learning proceeds, that foun-
tain in which its flowers, as well as its fruits, and its thick
embosoming leaves are nourished.
Here in this Art of Tradition, which comprehends the
whole subject of the human speeeh from the new ground of
the common nature in man — that double nature which tends to
isolation on the one hand, and which makes him a part and a
member of society on the other; we find it treated, first, as a
means by which men come simply to a common understanding
with each other, by which that common ground, that ground of
community, and communication, and identity, which a common
understanding in this kind makes, can be best reached; and
next we find it treated as a means by which more than the
understanding shall be reached, by which the sentiment, the
common sentiment, which also belongs to the larger nature,
shall be strengthened and developed, — by which the counter-
acting and partial sentiments shall be put in their place, and
the will compelled; whereby that common human form, which
in its perfection is the object of the human love and reverence
shall be scientifically developed; by which the particular
form with its diseases shall be artistically disciplined and
treated. This Art of Tradition concerns, first, the understand-
ing; and secondly, the affections and the will. As man is
constituted, it is not enough to convince his understanding.
First, then, it is 'the organ' and 'method' of tradition; and
next, it is what he calls the illustration of it. First, the object
is, to bring truth to the understanding in as clear and un-
obstructed a manner as the previous condition — as the diseases
and pre-occupations of the mind addressed will admit of, and
next to bring all the other helps and arts by which the senti-
ments are touched and the will mastered. First, he will
speak true, or as true as they will let him; but it is not
enough to speak true. He must be able to speak sharply too,
perhaps — or humorously, or touchingly, or melodiously, or
overwhelmingly, with words that burn. It is not enough,
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 7 1
perhaps, to reach the ear of his auditor : ' peradventure' he too
'will also pierce it.' It is not enough to draw diagrams in
chalk on a black board in this kind of mathematics, where the
will and the affections are the pupils, and standing ready to
defy axioms, prepared at any moment to demonstrate prac-
tically, that the part is greater than the whole, and face down
the universe with it. ' murdering impossibility to make what
cannot be, slight work.' It is not enough to have a tradition
that is clear, or as clear a one as will pass muster with the
government and with the preconceptions of the people them-
selves. He must have a pictured one — a pictorial, an illumi-
nated one — a beautiful one, — he must have what he calls an
Illustrated Tradition.
' Why not,' he says. He runs his eye over the human in-
strumentalities, and this art which we call art — par excellence,
which he sees setting up for itself, or ministering to ignorance
and error, and feeding the diseased affections with ■ the sweet
that is their poison/ he seizes on at once, in behalf of his
science, and declares that it is her lawful property, ' her slave,
born in her house/ and fit for nothing in the world but to
minister to her ; and what is more, he suits the action to the
word — he brings the truant home, and reforms her, and sets
her about her proper business. That is what he proposes to
have done in his theory of art, and it is what he tells us he
has done himself; and he has : there is no mistake about it.
That is what he means when he talks about his illustrated tra-
dition of science — his illustrated tradition of the science of
human nature and its differences, original? and acquired, and
the diseases to which it is liable, and the artificial growths
which appertain to it. It is very curious, that no one has
seen this tradition — this illustrated tradition, or anything else,
indeed, that was at all worthy of this new interpreter of mys-
teries, who goes about to this day as the inventor of a method
which he was not able himself to put to any practical use; an
inventor who was obliged to leave his machine for men of a more
quick and subtle genius, or to men of a more practical turn of
mind to manage, men who had a closer acquaintance with nature.
72 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
• That which is first to be noted in looking carefully at this
draught of a new Art of Tradition which the plan of the Ad-
vancement of Learning includes, — that which the careful reader
cannot fail to note, is the fact, that throughout all this most
complete and radical exhibition of the subject (for brief and
casual as that exhibition seems on the surface, the science and
art from its root to its outermost branches, is there) — through-
out all this exhibition, under all the superficial divisions and
subdivisions of the subject, it is still the method of Progres-
sion which is set forth here: under all these divisions, there is
still one point made ; it is still the Art of a Tradition which is
designed to reserve the secrets of science, and the nobler arts
of it, for the minds and ages that are able to receive them.
This new art of tradition, with its new organs and methods,
and its living and beautiful illustration, when once we look
through the network of it to the unity within, this new rhetoric
of science, is in fact the instrument which the philosopher
would substitute, if he could, for those more cruel weapons
which the men of his time were ready to take in hand; and it
is the instrument with which he would forestall those yet more
fearful political^ convulsions that already seemed to his eye to
threaten from afar the social structures of Christendom ; it is the
beautiful and bloodless instrumentality whereby the mind of
the world is to be wrenched insensibly from its* old place
without ' breaking all. '
For neither does this author, any more than that other, who
has been quoted here on this point, think it wise for the phi-
losopher to rush madly out of his study with his Eureka,
and bawl to the first passer by in scientific terms the last result
of his science, ' lording it over his ignorance' with what can
be to him only a magisterial announcement. For what else
but that can it be, for instance, to tell the poor peasant, on
his way to market, with his butter and eggs in his basket,
planting his feet on the firm earth without any qualms or mis-
givings, and measuring his day by the sun's great toil and re-
joicing race in heaven, what but this same magisterial teaching
is it, to stop him, and tell him to his bewildered face that the
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 73
sun never rises or sets, and that the earth is but a revolving
ball? Instead of giving him a truth you have given him a
falsehood. You have brought him a truth out of a sphere
with which he is not conversant, which he cannot ascend to—
whose truths he cannot translate into his own, without jarring
all. Either you have told him what must be to him a lie,
or you have upset all his little world of beliefs with your
magisterial doctrine, smd confounded and troubled him to no
purpose.
But the Method of Progression, as set forth by Lord Bacon,
requires that the new scientific truth shall be, not nakedly
and flatly, but artistically exhibited; because, as he tells us,
'the great labour is with the people, and this people who
knoweth not the law are cursed/ He will not have it ex-
hibited in bare propositions, but translated into the people's
dialect. He would not begin if he could — if there were no
political or social restriction to forbid it — by overthrowing
on aU points the popular belief, or wherever it differs from
the scientific conclusion. It is a very different kind of philo-
sophy that proceeds in that manner. This is one which com-
prehends and respects all actualities. The popular belief, even
to its least absurdity 'is something more than nothing in
nature ' ; and . the popular belief with all its admixture of
error, is better than the half-truths of a misunderstood, un-
translated science; better than these would be in its place.
That truth of nature which it contains for those who are able
to receive it, and live by it, you would destroy for them, if
you should attempt to make them read it prematurely, in your
language. Any kind of organism which by means of those
adjustments and compensations, with which nature is always
ready to help out anything really hers,— any organism that
is capable of serving as the means of an historical social con-
tinuance, is already some gain on chaos and social dissolution;
and is, perhaps, better than a series of philosophical experi-
ments. The difficulty is not to overthrow the popular errors,
but to get something better in their place, he tells us; and
that there are men who have succeeded in the first attempt, and
74 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
very signally failed in the second. Beautiful and vigorous
unions grew up under the classic mythologies, that dissolved
and went down for ever, in the sunshine of the classic phi-
losophies. For there were more things in heaven and
earth than were included in those last, or dreampt of in
them.
In your expurgation, of the popular errors, you must be
sure that the truth they contain, is in some form as strongly,
as effectively composed in your text, or the popular error is
truer and better than the truth with which you would replace
it. This is a master who will have no other kind of teaching
in his school. His scholars must go so far in their learning as
to be able to come back to this popular belief, and account for
it and understand it; they must be as wise as the peasant
again, and be able to start with him, from his starting point,
before they can get any diploma in this School of Advancement,
or leave to practise in it. But when the old is already
ruinous and decaying, and oppressing and keeping back the
neWj — when the vitality is gone out of it, and it has become
deadly instead, when the new is struggling for new forms,
the man of science though never so conservative from incli-
nation and principle, will not be wanting to himself and to
the state in this emergency. He 'loves the fundamental part
of state more ' than in such a crisis he will ' doubt the change
of it/ and will not ' fear to jump a body with a dangerous
physic, that's sure of death without it.'
First of all then, the condition of this lamp of tradition,
that is to burn on for ages, is, that it shall be able to adapt
itself to the successive stages of the advancement it lights.
It is the inevitable condition of this school which begins
with the present, which begins with the people, which de-
scends to the lowest stage of the cotemporary popular belief,
and takes in the many-headed monster himself, without any
trimming at all, for its audience, — it is the first condition of
such a school, conducted by a man of science, that it shall
have its proper grades of courts and platforms, its selecter
and selectest audiences. There must be landing places in the
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 75
ascent, points of rendezvous agreed on, where ' the delicate
collateral sounds' are heard, which only those who ascend can
hear. There is no jar, — there is no forced advancement in
this school; there is no upward step for any, who have not
first been taught to see it, who have not, indeed, already taken
it. For it is an artist's school, and not a pedant's, or a vague
speculator's, who knows not how to converge his speculation,
even upon his mode of tradition.
The founders of this school trust much in their general plan of
instruction and relief to the gradual advancement of a common
intelligence, by means of a scientific, but concealed historical
teaching. They will teach their lower classes, their ' beginners,'
as great nature teaches — insensibly; — as great nature teaches
— in the concrete, ' in easy instances.' For the secret of her
method is that which they have studied; that is the learning
which they have mastered ; the spirit of it, which is the poet's
gift, the quickest, subtlest, most searching, most analytic, most
synthetic spirit of it, is that with which great nature has
endowed them. They will speak, as they tell us, as the masters
always have spoken from of old to them who are without ; they
will ' open their mouths in parables,' they will f utter their dark
sayings on the harp. They know that men are already prepared
by nature's own instruction, to feel in a fact, — to receive in
historical representations — truths which would startle them in
the abstract, truths which they are not yet prepared to dis-
engage from the historical combinations in which they receive
them; though with every repetition, and especially with the
pointed, selected, prolonged repetition of the teacher, where
the * illustrious instance ' is selected and cleared of its
extraneous incident, and made to enter the mind alone, and
pierce it with its principle, — with every such repetition, the
step to that generalization and axiom becomes insensibly
shorter and more easy. They know that men are already wiser
than their teachers, in some — in many things; that they
have all of them a great stock of incommunicative wisdom
which all their teachers have not been able to make them give
up, which they never will give up, till the strong man, who
j6 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
is stronger, enters with his larger learning out of the same
book, with his mightier weapons out of the same armory,
and spoils their goods, or makes them old and worthless, by
the side of the new, resplendent, magic wealth he brings
with him.
The new philosophy of nature has truths to teach which
nature herself has already been teaching all men, with more
or less effect, miscellaneously, and at odd hours, ever since
they were born ; and this philosopher gives a large place in his
history, to that vulgar, practical human wisdom, whieh all the
books till his time had been of too high a strain to glance at.
But 'art is a second nature, and imitateth that dextrously and
compendiously, which nature performs by ambages and length
of time.' The scientific interpreter of nature will select, and unite,
and teach continuously, and pointedly, in grand, ideal, repre-
sentative fact, in ' prerogative instances/ that which nature has
but faintly and unconsciously impressed with her method;
for he has a scientific organum, and what is more, — a great
deal more, a thousand times more, — he has the scientific genius
that invented it. His soul is a Novum Organum — his mind is
a table of rejections that sifts the historic masses, and brings
out the instances that are to his purpose, the bright, bold in-
stances that flame forth the doubtful truth, that tell their own4
story and need no interpreter, the high ideal instances that
talk in verse because it is their native tongue and they can no
other. He has found, — or rather nature lent it to him,
the universal historic solvent, and the dull, formless, miscel-
laneous facts of the common human experience, spring up in
magic orders, in beautiful, transparent, scientific continuities,
as they arrange themselves by the laws of his thinking.
For the truth is, and it must be said here, and not here
only, but everywhere, wherever there is a chance to say it, —
that Novum Organum was not made to examine the legs of
spiders with, or the toes of 'the grandfather-long-legs/ or any
of their kindred; though of course it is susceptible of such an
application, when it falls into the hands of persons whose
genius inclines them in those directions; and it is a use, that
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 77
the inventor would not have disdained to put it to himself, if
he had had time, and if his attention had not been so much
distracted by the habits and history of that 'nobler kind of
vermin/ which he found feeding on the human weal in his
time, and eating out the heart of it. This man was not a fool,
but a man. He was a naturalist indeed, of the newest and
highest style, but that did not hinder his being a man at the
same time. He and his company were the first that set the
example of going, deliberately, and on principle, out of the
human nature for knowledge ; but it was that they might re-
return with better axioms for the culture, and nobility, and
sway of that form, which, 'though it be but a part in the con-
tinent of nature/ is as this one openly declares, * the end and
term of ' natural PHILOSOPHY,' in the intention of MAN."
His science included the humblest and least agreeable of na-
ture's performances; his Novum Organum was able to take
up the smallest conceivable atom of existence, whether animate
or not, and make a study of it. He has no disrespect for
caterpillars or any kind of worm or insect; but he is not a
caterpillar himself, or an insect of any kind, or a Saurian, or
an Icthyosaurian, but a man ; and it was for the sake of building
up from a new basis a practical doctrine of human life, that
he invented that instrument, and put so much fine work
upon it.
With his ' prerogative instances,' he will build height
after height, the solid, but imperceptible stair-way to his summit
of knowledges, so that men shall tread its utmost floors without
knowing what heights they are — even as they tread great
nature 's own solidities, without inquiring her secret.
The shrewd unlearned man of practice shall take that
great book of nature, that illustrated digest of it, on his knees,
to while away his idle hours with, in rich pastime, and smile
to see there, all written out, that which he faintly knew, and
never knew that he knew before; he will find there in sharp
points, in accumulations, and percussions, that which his own
experience has at length wearily, dimly, worked and worn into
him. It is his own experience, exalted indeed, and glorified,
78 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
but it is that which beckons him on to that which is yet be-
yond it; he shall read on, and smile, and laugh, and weep,
and wonder at the power; but never dream that it is science,
the new science — the science of nature — the product of the
new organum of it applied to human nature, and human
life. The abstract statement of that which the concrete
exhibition veils, is indeed always there, though it lie never
so close, in never so snug a corner; but it is there so artisti-
cally environed, that the reader who is not ready for it, who
has not learned to disengage the principle from the instance,
who has had no hint of an illustrated tradition in it, will never
see it ; or if he sees it, he will think it is there by accident, or
inspiration, and pass on.
Here, in this open treatise upon the art of delivering and
teaching of knowledge, the author lays down, in the most
impressive terms, the necessity of a style which shall serve as
a veil of tradition, imperceptible or impenetrable to the un-
initiated, and admitting l only such as have by the help of a
master, attained to the interpretation of dark sayings, or are
able by their own genius to enter within the veil'; and after
having distributed under many heads, the secret of this
method of scientific communication, he asserts distinctly that
there is no other mode of dealing with the popular belief and
preconception, but the one just described — that same method
which the teachers of the people have always instinctively
adopted, whenever that which was new and contrary to the
received doctrines, was to be communicated. ' For a man of
judgment/ he says, ' must, of course, perceive, that there
should be a difference in the teaching and delivery of know-
ledge, according to the presuppositions, which he finds infused
and impressed upon the mind of the learner. For that which is
new and foreign from opinions received, is to be delivered in
ANOTHER EORM, from that which is agreeable and familiar.
And, therefore, Aristotle, when he says to Democritus, * if we
shall indeed dispute and not follow after similitudes,' as if he
would tax Democritus with being too full of comparisons,
where he thought to reprove, really commended him/ There
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 79
is no use in disputing in such a case, he thinks. ' For those
whose doctrines are already seated in popular opinion, have
only to dispute or prove; but those whose doctrines are beyond
the popular opinions,, have a double labour ; the one to make
themselves conceived, and the other to prove and demonstrate ;
so that it is of necessity with them to have recourse to similitudes
and translations to express themselves. And, therefore, in
the infancy of learning, and in rude times, when those concep-
tions which are now trivial, were then new, the world was full
of parables and similitudes, for else would men either have
passed over without mark, or else rejected for paradoxes,
that which was offered before they had understood or judged.
So in divine learning, we see how frequent parables and
tropes are, for it is a rule in the doctrine of delivery, that every
science which is not consonant with presuppositions and preju-
dices, must pray in aid of similes and allusions.1
The true master of the art of teaching will vary his method
too, he tells us according to the subject which he handles, —
and the reader should note particularly the illustration of this
position, the instance of this general necessity, which the
author selects for the sake of pointing his meaning here, for
it is here — precisely here — that we begin to touch the heart
of that new method which the new science itself prescribed, —
\ the true teacher will vary his method according to the sub-
ject which he handles,' for there is a great difference in the
delivery of mathematics, which are the most abstracted of
sciences, and policy, which is the most immersed, and the
opinion that * uniformity of method, in multiformity of matter,
is necessary, has proved very hurtful to learning, for it tends
to reduce learning to certain empty and barren — note it, —
barren — { generalities;' — (so important is the method as that ;
that it makes the difference between the fruitful and the barren,
between the old and the new) ' being but the very husks and
shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expressed
with the torture and press of the method ; and, therefore, as I
did allow well of particular topics for invention' — therefore —
his science requires him to go into particulars, and as the neces-
80 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
sary consequence of that, it requires freedom — 'therefore* — as I
did allow well of particular topics of invention, 'so do I allow
likewise of particular methods of tradition.' Elsewhere, — in
his Novum Organum — he quotes the scientific outlines and
divisions of this very book, he quotes the very draught and
outline of the new human science, which is the principal thing
in it, and tells us plainly that he is perfectly aware that those
new divisions, those essential differences, those true and radical
forms in nature, which he has introduced here, in his doctrine
of human nature, will have no practical effect at all, as they
are exhibited here ; because they are exhibited in this method
which he is here criticising, that is, in empty and barren ab-
stractions,— because it was impossible for him to produce here
anything but the husks and shells of that principal science, all
the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and
press of the method. But, at the same time, he gives us to
understand, that these same shells and husks may be found in
another place, with the kernels and nuts in them, and that he
has not taken so much pains to let us see in so many places,
what new forms of delivery the new philosophy will require,
merely for the sake of letting us see, at the same time, that
when it came to practice, he himself stood by the old ones,
and contented himself with barren abstractions, and generali-
ties, the husks and shells of sciences, instead of aiming at
particulars, and availing himself of these 'particular methods of
tradition/
He takes also this occasion to recommend a method which
was found extremely serviceable at that time; namely, the
method of teaching by aphorism, ' without any show of an art
or method ; not merely because it tries the author, since
aphorisms being made out of the pith and heart of sciences, no
man can write them who is not sound and grounded,' who has not
a system with its trunk and root, though he makes no show of
it, but buries it and shows you here and there the points on
the surface that are apt to look as if they had some underlying
connection — not only because it tries the author, but because
they point to action ; for particulars being dispersed, do best
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 8 1
agree with dispersed directions; and, moreover, aphorisms
representing a broken knowledge, invite men to inquire
farther, whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do
secure men as if they were at farthest, and it is the advance-
ment of learning that he is proposing.
He suggests again, distinctly here, the rule he so often
claims he has himself put in practice, elsewhere, that the use
of confutation in the delivery of science, ought to be very
sparing; and to serve to remove strong preoccupations and
prejudgments, and not to minister and excite disputations and
doubts. For he says in another place, * As Alexander Borgia
was wont to say of the expedition of the French for Naples,
that they came with chalk in their hands, to mark up their
lodgings, and not with weapons to fight, so / like better that
entry of truth which cometh peaceably, with chalk to mark
up those minds, which are capable to lodge and harbour it,
than that which cometh with pugnacity and contention.'
He alludes here too, in passing, to some other distinctions
of method, which are already received, that of analysis and
synthesis, or constitution, that of concealment , or cryptic,
which he says ' he allows well of, though he has himself stood
upon those which are least handled and observed.' He brings
out his doctrine of the necessity of a method which shall in-
clude particulars for practical purposes also, under another
head: here it is the limit of rules, — the propositions or precepts
of arts that he speaks of, and the degree of particularity which
these precepts ought to descend to. ' For every knowledge/
he says, ' may be fitly said to have a latitude and longitude,
accounting the latitude towards other sciences' (for there are
rules and propositions of such latitude as to include all arts, all
sciences) — ' and the longitude towards action, that is, from
the greatest generality, to the most particular precept : and as
to the degree of particularity to which a knowledge should
descend/ though something must, of course, be left in
all departments to the discretion of the practitioner, he
thinks it is a question which will bear looking into in a
general way; and that it might be possible to have rules in
G
82 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
all departments, which would limit very much the necessity
of individual experiment, and not leave us so much at the
mercy of individual discretion in the most serious matters.
Philosophy, as he finds it, does not appear to be very helpful
to practice, on account of its keeping to those general propo-
sitions, so much, as well as on some other accounts, and has
fallen into bad repute, it seems, among men who find it ne-
cessary to make, without science, as they best can, rules of
some sort; — rules that are capable of dealing with that quality
in particulars which is apt to be called obstinacy in this aspect
of it. ' For we see remote and superficial generalities do but
offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more
aiding to practice, than an Ortelius's universal map is to direct
the way between London and York.' And what is this itself but
a universal map, this map of the advancement of learning?
All this doctrine of the tradition of sciences, he produces
under the head of the method of their tradition, but in speak-
ing of the organ of it, he treats it exclusively as the medium
of tradition for those sciences which require CONCEALMENT, or
admit only of a suggestive exhibition. And as he makes, too,
the claim that he has himself given practical proof, in passing,
of his proficiency in this art, and appeals to the skilful for the
truth of this statement, the passage, at least, in which this
assertion is made, will be likely to repay the inquiry which
it invites.
He begins by drawing our attention to the fact, that words
are not the only representatives of things, and he says ' this is
not an inconsiderable thing, for while we are treating of the
coin of intellectual matters, it is pertinent to observe, that as
money may be made of other materials besides gold and silver,
so other marks of things may be invented besides words and
letters. And by way of illustrating the advantages of such a
means of tradition, under certain disadvantages of position,
he adduces as much in point, the case of Periander, who being
consulted how to preserve a tyranny newly usurped, bid the
messenger attend and report what he saw him do, and went into
his garden and topped all the Highest flowers ; signifying that
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 83
it consisted in the cutting off and keeping low of the nobility
and grandees.' And thus other apparently trivial, purely
purposeless and sportive actions, might have a traditionary
character of no small consequence, if the messenger were
only given to understand beforehand, that the acts thus per-
formed were axiomatical, pointing to rules of practice, that
the forms were representative forms, whose ' real' exhibition
of the particular natures in question, was much more vivid
and effective, much more memorable as well as safe, than any
abstract statement of that philosophic truth, which is the
truth of direction, could be.
As to the ' accidents of words, which are measure, sound, and
elevation of accent, and the sweetness and harshness of them/
even here the new science suggests a new rule, which is not
without a remarkable relation to that 'particular method of tra-
dition^ which the author tells us in another place, some parts
of his new science required. ' This subject/ he says, ' in-
volves some curious observations in rhetoric, but chiefly
poesy, as we consider it in respect of the verse, and not of
the argument ; wherein, though men in learned tongues do tie
themselves to the ancient measures, yet in modern languages it
seemeth to me as free to make new measures of verses as of
dances? The spirit of the new philosophy had a chance to
speak out there for once, without intending, of course, to
transcend that particular limit just laid down, namely, the mea-
sure of verses, and with that literal limitation, to the form
of the verse, the remark is sufficiently suggestive; for he
brings out from it at the next step, in the way of formula,
the new principle, the new Shaksperian principle of rhetoric :
* In these things the sense is better judge than the art. And of
the servile expressing antiquity in an unlike and an unfit
subject, it is well said: — ' Quod tempore antiquum videtur, id
incongruitate est maxime novum.' '
But when he comes to speak specifically of writing as a
means of tradition, he confines his remarks to that particular
kind of writing, which is agreed on betwixt particular per-
sons, and called by the name of cipher, giving excellent
g2
84 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
reasons for this proceeding, impertinent as it may seem, to
those who think that his only object is to make out a list
and 'muster-roll of the arts and sciences'; — stopping to tell us
plainly that he knows what he is about, and that he has not
brought in 'these private and retired arts/ with so much
stress, and under so, many heads, in connection with 'the
principal and supreme sciences,' and the mode of their tradition,
without having some occasion for it.
' Ciphers are commonly in letters, or alphabets, but may be
in words/ he says, proceeding to enumerate the different
kinds, and furnishing on the spot, some pretty specimens of
what may be done in the way of that kind which he calls ' dou-
bles,' a kind which he is particularly fond of; one hears again
the echo of those delicate, collateral sounds, which our friend,
over the mountains, warned us of, declining to say any more
about them in that place. In the later edition, he takes occa-
sion to say, in this connection, ' that as writing in the received
manner no way obstructs the manner of pronunciation, but
leaves that/ree, an innovation in it is of no purpose.' And if
a cipher be the proper name for a private method of writing,
agreed on betwixt particular persons, it is certainly the name
for the method which he proposes to adopt in his tradition of
the principal sciences; as he takes occasion to inform those
whom it may concern, in an early portion of the work, and
when he is occupied in the critical task of putting down some of
the primary terms. ' I doubt not,' he says, by way of expla-
nation, ' but it will easily appear to men of judgment, that in
this and other particulars, wheresoever my conception and notion
may differ from the ancient, I am studious to keep the ancient
terms.1 Surely there is no want of frankness here, so far as the
men of judgment are concerned at least. And after condemn-
ing those innovators who have taken a different course, he
says again, ' But to me on the other side that do desire as
much as lieth in my pen, to ground a sociable intercourse
between antiquity and proficience, it seemeth best to keep way
with antiquity usque ad aras; and therefore to retain the ancient
terms, though I sometimes alter the uses and definitions,
according to the moderate proceeding in civil government,
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 85
where, although there be some alteration, yet that holdeth which
Tacitus wisely noteth ' eadem magistratuum vocabula.' Surely
that is plain enough, especially if one has time to take into
account the force and historic reach of that last illustration,
' eadem magistratuum vocabula.'
In the later and enlarged edition of his work, he lays much
stress upon the point that the cipher ' should be free from sus-
picion,' for he says, ' if a letter should come into the hands of
such as have a power over the writer or receiver, though the
cipher itself be trusty and impossible to decipher, it is still sub-
ject to examination and question, and (as he says himself), [ to
avoid all suspicion,1 he introduces there a cipher in letters, which
he invented in his youth in Paris, ' having the highest perfec-
tion of a cipher, that of signifying omnia per omnia;* and for
the same reason perhaps, that of * avoiding all suspicion,' he
quite omits there that very remarkable passage in the earlier
work, in which he treats it as a medium of tradition, and takes
pains to intimate his reasons for producing it in that connection,
with the principal and supreme sciences. If it was, indeed, any
object with him to avoid suspicion, and recent disclosures had
then, perhaps, tended to sharpen somewhat the contemporary
criticism; he did well, unquestionably, to omit that passage.
But at the time when that was written, he appears to be chiefly
inclined to notice the remarkable facilities, which this style
offers to an inventive genius. For he says, ' in regard of the
rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,
the greatest matters, are sometimes carried in the weakest
ciphers.1 And that there may be no difficulty or mistake as to
the reading of that passage, he immediately adds, f In the
enumeration of these private and retired arts, it may be
thought I seek to make a great muster-roll of sciences, naming
them for show and ostentation, and to little other purpose.
But' — note it — f But, let those which are skilful in them judge,
whether I bring them in only for appearance, or whether, in that
which I speak of them, though in few words, there be not
some seed of proficience. And this must be remembered, that
as there be many of great account in their countries and
86 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
provinces, which, when they come up to the seat of the estate,
are but of mean rank, and scarcely regarded; so these arts,
(' these private and retired arts,') being here placed with the
principal and supreme sciences, seem petty things, YET TO SUCH
AS HAVE CHOSEN THEM TO SPEND THEIR LABOURS
AND STUDIES IN THEM, THEY SEEM GREAT MATTERS.
(' Let those which are skilful in them, judge (after that)
whether I bring them in only for appearance ' or to little other
purpose ') .
That apology would seem sufficient, but we must know
what these labours and studies are, before we can perceive the
depth of it. And if we have the patience to follow him but
a step or two further, we shall find ourselves in the way of
some very direct and accurate information, as to that. For
we are coming now, in the order of the work we quote from,
to that very part, which contains the point of all these labours
and studies, the end of them, — that part to which the science
of nature in general, and the secret of this art of tradition,
was a necessary introduction.*
Thus far, this art has been treated as a means of simply
transferring knowledge, in such forms as the conditions of the
Advancement of Learning prescribe, — forms adapted to the
different stages of mental advancement, commencing with the
lowest range of the common opinion in his time, — starting
with the contemporary opinions of the majority, and reserving
' the secrets of knowledges,' for such as are able to receive
them. Thus far, it is the Method, and the Organ of the
tradition of which he has spoken. But it is when he comes
to speak of what he calls the Illustration of it, that the
convergency of his design begins to be laid open to us, for
this work is not what it may seem on the surface, as he takes
pains to intimate to us — a ' mere muster-roll of sciences.'
It is when he comes to tell us that he will have his ' truth
* For this Art of Tradition makes the link between the new
Logic and the application of it to Human Nature and Human
Life.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 87
in beauty dyed/ that he does not propose to have the new
learning left in the form of argument and logic, or in the form
of bare scientific fact, that he does not mean to appeal with it
to the reason only; that he will have it in a form in which it
will be able to attract and allure men, and make them in love
with it, a form in which it will be able to force its way into the
will and the affections, and make a lodgement in the hearts of
men, long ere it is able to reach the judgment; — it is not till
he begins to bring out here, his new doctrine of the true end
of rhetoric, and the use to which it ought to be put in sub-
ordination to science, that we begin to perceive the significance
of the arrangement which brings this theory of an Illustrated
Art of Tradition into immediate connection with the new
science of human nature and human life which the Author is
about to constitute, — so as to serve as an introduction to it — the
arrangement which interposes this art of Tradition, between
the New Logic and its application to Human Nature and
Human Life — to folicy and morality.
He will not consent to have this so powerful engine of
popular influence, which the aesthetic art seems, to his eye, to
offer, left out, in his scheme of scientific instrumentalities: he
will not pass it by scornfully, as some other philosophers have
done, treating it merely as a voluptuary art. He will have
of it, something which shall differ, not in degree only, but in
kind, from the art of the confectioner.
He begins by stating frankly his reasons for making so much
of it in this grave treatise, which is what it professes to be,
a treatise on Learning and its Advancement. ' For although,' he
says, ' in true value, it is inferior to wisdom, as it is said by
God to Moses, when he disabled himself for want of this
faculty, * Aaron shall be thy speaker, and thou shalt be to him
as God;3 yet with people it is the more mighty, and it is just
that which is mighty with the people — which he tells us in
another place — is wanting. ' For this people who knoweth
not the law are cursed.' ' But here he continues, ' for so Solomon
saith, ( Sapiens corde appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis eloquio
majora reperiet;' signifying that profoundness of wisdom will
88 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
help a man to a name or admiration/ — (it is something more
than that which he is proposing as his end) — ' but that it is
eloquence which prevails in active life;1 so that the very move-
ment which brought philosophy down to earth, and put her
upon reforming the practical life of men, was the movement
which led her to assume, not instinctively, only, but by theory,
and on principle, this new and beautiful apparel, this deep
disguise of pleasure. She comes into the court with her case,
and claims that this Art, which has been treated hitherto
as if it had some independent rights and laws of its own, is
properly a subordinate of hers; a chattel gone astray, and
setting up for itself as an art voluptuary.
Works on rhetorics are not wanting, the author reports.
Antiquity has laboured much in this field. Notwithstanding,
he says, there is something to be done here too, and the Eliza-
bethan aesthetics must be begun also in the prima philosophia.
1 Notwithstanding/ he continues, ' to stir the earth a little
about the roots of this science, as we have done of the rest;
the duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply reason to- imagination
for the better moving of the will ; for we see reason is dis-
turbed in the administration of the will by three means; by
sophism, which pertains to logic; by imagination or impres-
sion, which pertains to rhetoric; and by passion or affection,
which pertains to morality.' * So in this negotiation within
ourselves, men are undermined by inconsequences, solicited and
importuned by impressions and observations, and transported
by passions. Neither is the nature of man so unfortunately
built, as that these powers and arts should have force to disturb
reason and not to establish and advance it. For the end of
logic is to teach a form of logic to secure reason, not to entrap
it. The end of morality is to procure the affections to obey
reason, and not to invade it. The end of rhetoric is to fill the
imagination to second reason, and not to oppress it. For these
abuses of arts come in but ex obliquo for caution.'
That is the real original English doctrine of Art : — that is
the doctrine of the age of Elizabeth, at least, as it stands in
that queen's English, and though it may be very far from
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 89
being orthodox at present, it is the doctrine which must deter-
mine the rule of any successful interpretation of works of art
composed on that theory. ' And, therefore/ he proceeds to
say, ' it was great injustice in Plato, though springing out of a
just hatred of the rhetoricians of his time, to esteem of rhetoric
but as a voluptuary art, resembling it to cookery that did mar
wholesome meats, and help unwholesome, by variety of sauces
to the pleasure of the taste? i And therefore, as Plato said
eloquently, c That virtue, if she could be seen, would move
great love and affection, so, seeing that she cannot be showed
to the sense by corporal shape, the next degree is to show her
to the imagination in lively representation : for to show her to
reason only, in subtilty of alignment, was a thing ever derided
in — Chrysippus and many of the Stoics — who thought to thrust
virtue upon men by sharp disputations and conclusions, which
have no sympathy with the will of man*
1 Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant and
obedient to reason, it were true there should be no great use
of persuasions and injunctions to the will, more than of naked
propositions and proofs ; but in regard of the continual muti-
nies and seditions of the affections,
Video meliora proboque
Deteriora sequor ;
Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of per-
suasions did not practise and win the imagination from the
affections part, and contract a confederacy between the reason
and the imagination, against the affections ; for the affections
themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth. The
difference is — mark it — ' the difference is, that the affection
beholdeth merely the present ; reason beholdeth the future and
sum of time. And therefore the present filling the imagination
most, reason is commonly vanquished ; but after that force of
eloquence and persuasion hath made things future and remote,
appear as present, then, upon the revolt of the imagination reason
prevaileth.y Not less important than that is this art in his
scheme of learning. No wonder that the department of learning
90 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
which he refers to the imagination should take that prime
place in his grand division of it, and be preferred deliberately
and on principle to the two others.
'Logic differeth from Khetoric chiefly in this, that logic
handleth reason exact and in truth, and rhetoric handleth it
as it is planted in popular opinions and manners. And there-
fore Aristotle doth wisely place rhetoric as between logic on
the one side, and moral or civil knowledge on the other, (and
when we come to put'together the works of this author, we
shall find that that and none other is the place it takes in his
system, that that is just the bridge it makes in his plan of
operations.) 'The proofs and demonstrations of logic are
towards all men indifferent and the same : but the proofs and
persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors.
Orpheus in sylvis inter delphinas Arion.
Which application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so
far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to several per-
sons, he should speak to them all respectively, and several ways;1
and there was a great folio written on this plan which came
out in those days dedicated c to the Great Variety of Eeaders.
From the most able to him that can but spell' ; (this is just the
doctrine, too, which the Continental philosopher sets forth we
see); — though this c politic part of eloquence in private speech,'
he goes on to say here, ' it is easy for the greatest orators to
want ; whilst by observing their well graced forms of speech, they
lose the volubility of application ; and therefore it shall not
be amiss to recommend this to better inquiry, not being curious
whether we place it here, or in that part which concerneth
policy1
Certainly one would not be apt to infer from that decided
preference which the author himself manifests here for those
stately and well-graced forms of speech, judging merely from
the style of this performance at least, one would not be in-
clined to suspect that he himself had ever been concerned in
any literary enterprises, or was like to be, in which that volu-
bility of application which he appears to think desirable, was
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 9 1
successfully put in practice. But we must remember, that he
was just the man who was capable of conceiving of a variety
of styles adapted to different exigencies, if we would have the
key to this style in particular.
But we must look a little at these labours and studies them-
selves, which required such elaborate and splendid arts of
delivery, if we would fully satisfy ourselves, as to whether
this author really had any purpose after all in bringing them
in here beyond that of mere ostentation, and for the sake of
completing his muster-roll of the sciences. Above, we see an
intimation, that the divisions of the subject are, after all, not
so l curious' but that the inquiry might possibly be resumed
again in other connections, and in the particular connection
specified, namely, in that part which concerneth Policy.
In that which follows, the new science of human nature
and human life — which is the end and term of this trea-
tise, we are told — is brought out under the two heads of
Morality and Policy; and it is necessary to look into both
these departments in order to find what application he was
proposing to make of this art and science of Tradition and
Delivery, and in order to see what place — what vital place
it occupied in his system.
92 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
CHAPTER II.
THE SCIENCE OF POLICY.
'Policy is the most immersed.' — Advancement of Learning.
REVERSING the philosophic order, we glance first into
that new department of science which the author is here
boldly undertaking to constitute under the above name, be-
cause in this his own practical designs, and rules of proceeding,
are more clearly laid open, and the place which is assigned in
his system to that radical science, for which these arts of
Delivery and Tradition are chiefly wanting, is distinctly
pointed out.
And, moreover, in this department of Policy itself, in mark-
ing out one of the grand divisions of it, we find him particu-
larly noticing, and openly insisting on, the form of delivery
and inculcation which the new science must take here, that is,
if it is going to be at all available as a science of practice.
In this so-called plan for the advancement of learning, the
author proceeds, as we all know, by noticing the deficiencies
in human learning as he finds it; and everywhere it is that
radical deficiency, which leaves human life and human
conduct in the dark, while the philosophers are busied with
their controversies and wordy speculations. And in that part
of his inventory where he puts down as wanting a science of
practice in those every-day affairs and incidents, in which the
life of man is most conversant, embodying axioms of practice
that shall save men the wretched mistakes and blunders of
which the individual life is so largely made up; blunders
which are inevitable, so long as men are left here, to na-
tural human ignorance, to uncollected individual experience,
or to the shrewdest empiricism; — in this so original and in-
teresting part of the work, he takes pains to tell us at length,
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 93
that that which he has before put down under the head of
* delivery3 as a point of form and method, becomes here essen-
tial as a point of substance also. It is not merely that he will
have his axioms and precepts of direction digested from the
facts, instead of being made out of the teacher's own brains,
but he will have the facts themselves, in all their stub-
bornness and opposition to the teacher's preconceptions, for
the body of the discourse, and the precepts accommodated
thereto, instead of having the precepts for the body of the
discourse, and the facts brought in to wait upon them. That
is the form of the practical doctrine.
He regrets that this part of a true learning has not been
collected hitherto into writing, to the great derogation of
learning, and the professors of learning ; for from this proceeds
the popular opinion which has passed into an adage, that there
is no great concurrence between wisdom and learning. The
deficiency here is well nigh total he says : ' but for the wisdom
of business, wherein man's life is most conversant, there be no
books of it, except some few scattered advertisements, that
have no proportion to the magnitude of the subject. For if
books were written of this, as of the other, I doubt not but
learned men with mean experience would far excel men of long
experience without learning, and outshoot them with their own
bom. Neither need it be thought that this knowledge is too
variable to fall under precept,' he says; and he mentions the
fact, that in old Rome, so renowned for practical ability, in
its wisest and saddest times, there were professors of this learn-
ing, that were known for general wise men, who used to
walk at certain hours in the place, and give advice to private
citizens, who came to consult with them of the marriage of a
daughter, for instance, or the employing of a son, or of an accu-
sation, or of a purchase or bargain, and every other occasion
incident to man's life. There is a pretty scheme laid out truly.
Have we any general wise man, or ghost of one, who walks
up and down at certain hours and gives advice on such topics ?
However that may be, this philosopher does not despair of
such a science. ' So,' he says, commenting on that Eoman
custom, ' there is a wisdom of council and advice, even in
94 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
private cases, arising out of a universal insight into the affairs
of the world, which is used indeed upon particular cases pro-
pounded, but is gathered by general observation of cases of like
nature' And fortifying himself with the example of Solomon,
after collecting a string of texts from the Sacred Proverbs,
he adds, f though they are capable, of course, of a more divine
interpretation, taking them as instructions for life, they might
have received large discourse, if he would have broken them
and illustrated them, by deducements and examples. Nor was
this in use with the Hebrews only, but it is generally to be
found in the wisdom of the more ancient times, that as men
found out any observation that they thought was good for life,
they would gather it, and express it in parable, or aphorism, or
fable.
But for fables, they were vicegerents and supplies, where
examples failed. Now that the times abound with history,
THE AIM IS BETTER WHEN THE MARK IS ALIVE. And,
therefore, he recommends as the form of writing, ' which is of
all others fittest for this variable argument, discourses upon
histories and examples: for knowledge drawn freshly, and in
our view, out of particulars, knoweth the way best to particulars
again; and it hath much greater life for practice, when the
discourse attendeth upon the example, than when the example
attendeth upon the discourse. For this is no point of order
as it seemeth at first ' (indeed it is not, it is a point as sub-
stantial as the difference between the old learning of the world
and the new) — ' this is no point of order, but of substance.
For when the example is the ground being set down in a his-
tory at large, it is set down with all circumstances, which may
sometimes control the discourse thereupon made, and sometimes
supply it as a very pattern for action; whereas the examples
which are alleged for the discourse's sake, are cited succinctly
and without particularity, and carry a servile aspect towards the
discourse which they are brought in to make good.'
The question of method is here, as we see, incidentally in-
troduced; but it is to be noted, and it makes one of the rules
for the interpretation of that particular kind of style which is
under consideration, that in this casual and secondary intro-
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 95
duction of a subject, we often get shrewder hints of the
author's real intention than we do in those parts of the work
where it is openly and distinctly treated ; at least, these scat-
tered and apparently accidental hints, — these dispersed direc-
tions, often contain the key for the ' second ' reading, which he
openly bespeaks for the more open and elaborate discussion.
And thus we are able to collect, from every part of this
proposal for a practical and progressive human learning, based
on the defects of the unpractical and stationary learning which
the world has hitherto been contented with, the author's
opinion as to the form of delivery and inculcation best adapted
to effect the proposed object under the given conditions. This
question of form runs naturally through the whole work, and
comes out in specifications of a very particular and significant
kind under some of its divisions, as we shall see. But every-
where we find the point insisted on, which we have just seen
so clearly brought out, in the department which was to contain
the axioms of success in private life. Whatever the particular
form may be, everywhere we come upon this general rule.
Whatever the particular form may be, everywhere it is to be
one in which the facts shall have the precedence, and the con-
clusions shall follow; and not one in which the conclusions
stand first, and the facts are brought in to make them good.
And this very circumstance is enough of itself to show that
the form of this new doctrine will be thus far new, as new
as the doctrine itself; that the new learning will be found in
some form very different, at least, from that which the philo-
sophers and professed teachers were then making use of in their
didactic discourses, in some form so much more lively than that,
and so much less oracular, that it would, perhaps, appear at first,
to those accustomed only to the other, not to be any kind of
learning at all, but something very different from that.
But this is not the only point in the general doctrine of
delivery which we find produced again in its specific appli-
cations. Through all the divisions of this discourse on Learn-
ing, and not in that part of it only in which the Art of its
Tradition is openly treated, we find that the prescribed form
of it is one which will adapt it to the popular preconceptions;
96 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
and that it must be a form which will make it not only uni-
versally acceptable, but universally attractive; that it is not
only a form which will throw open the gates of the new school
to all comers, but one that will bring in mankind to its benches.
Not under the head of Method only, or under the head of
Delivery and Tradition, but in those parts of the work in
which the substance of the new learning is treated, we find
dispersed intimations and positive assertions, that the form of
it is, at the same time, popular and enigmatical, — not openly
philosophical, and not ' magisterial,' — but insensibly didactic;
and that it is, in its principal and higher departments — in those
departments on which this plan for the human relief concen-
trates its forces — essentially poetical. That is what we
find in the body of the work ; and the author repeats in detail
what he has before made a point of telling us, in general,
under this head of Delivery and Tradition of knowledge, that
he sees no reason why that same instrument, which is so
powerful for delusion and error, should not be restored to its
true uses as an instrument of the human advancement, and a
vehicle, though a veiled one — a beautiful and universally-
welcome vehicle — for bringing in on this Globe Theatre the
knowledges that men are most in need of.
The doctrine which is to be conveyed in this so subtle and
artistic manner is none other than the Doctrine of Human
Nature and Human Life, or, as this author describes it
here, the Scientific Doctrine of Morality and Policy. It
is that new doctrine of human nature and human life
which the science of nature in general creates. It is the
light which universal science, collected from the continent of
nature, gives to that insular portion of it ' which is the end
and term of natural philosophy in the intention of man.'
Under these heads of Morality and Policy, the whole subject
is treated here. But to return to the latter.
The question of Civil Government is, in the light of this
science, a very difficult one ; and this philosopher, like the one
we have already quoted on this subject, is disposed to look with
much suspicion on propositions for violent and sudden renova-
tions in the state, and immediate abolitions and cures of social
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 97
evil. He too takes a naturalist's estimate of those larger wholes,
and their virtues, and faculties of resistance.
' Civil knowledge is conversant about a subject,' he says,
1 which is, of all others, most immersed in matter, and hardliest
reduced to axiom. Nevertheless, as Cato, the censor, said,
( that the Romans were like sheep, for that a man might
better drive a flock of them than one of them, for, in a flock,
if you could get SOME few to go right, the rest would follow ;'
so in that respect, moral philosophy is more difficile than
policy. Again, moral philosophy propoundeth to itself the
framing of internal goodness, but civil knowledge requireth
only an external goodness, for that, as to society, sufficeth.
Again, States, as great engines, move slowly, and are not so
soon put out of frame;' (that is what our foreign statist thought
also) ' for, as in Egypt the seven good years sustained the
seven bad, so governments for a time, well grounded, do
bear out errors following. But the resolution of particular
persons is more suddenly subverted. These respects do somewhat
qualify the extreme difficulty of civil knowledge.'
This is the point of attack, then, — this is the point of
scientific attack, — the resolution of particular persons. He has
showed us where the extreme difficulty of this subject appears
to lie in his mind, and he has quietly pointed, at the same time,
to that place of resistance in the structure of the state, which
is the key to the whole position. He has marked the spot
exactly where he intends to commence his political operations.
For he has discovered a point there, which admits of being
operated on, by such engines as a feeble man like him, or a
few such together, perhaps, may command. It is the new
science that they are going to converge on that point precise-
ly, namely the resolution of particular persons. It is the
novum oryanum that this one is bringing up, in all its finish,
for the assault of that particular quarter. Hard as that old
wall is, great as the faculty of conservation is in these old
structures that hold by time, there is one element running all
through it, these chemists find, which is within their power,
namely, the resolution of particular persons. It is the science
h
98 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
of the conformation of the parts, it is the constitutional struc-
ture of the human nature, which, in its scientific development,
makes men, naturally, members of communities, beautiful and
felicitous parts of states,— it is that which the man of science
will begin with. If you will let him have that part of the
field to work in undisturbed, he will agree not to meddle with
the state. And beside those general reasons, already quoted,
which tend to prevent him from urging the immediate appli-
cation of his science to this ' larger whole,' for its wholesale
relief and cure, he ventures upon some specifications and
particulars, when he comes to treat distinctly of government
itself, and assign to it its place in his new science of affairs. If
one were to judge by the space he has openly given it on his
paper in this plan for the human advancement and relief, one
would infer that it must be a very small matter in his estimate
of agencies; but looking,a little more closely, we find that it is
not that at all in his esteem, that it is anything but a matter of
little consequence. It was enough for him, at such a time, to be
allowed to put down the fact that the art of it was properly
scientific, and included in his plan, and to indicate the kind of
science that is wanting to it; for the rest, he gives us to under-
stand that he has himself fallen on such felicitous times, and finds
that affair in the hands of a person so extremely learned in it,
that there is really nothing to be said. And being thrown
into this state of speechless reverence and admiration, he con-
siders that the most meritorious thing he can do, is to pass to
the other parts of his discourse with as little delay as possible.
It is a very short paragraph indeed for so long a subject;
but, short as it is, it is not less pithy, and it contains reasons
why it should not be longer, and why that new torch of
science which he is bringing in upon the human affairs gene-
rally, cannot be permitted to enter that department of them in
his time. f The first is, that it is a part of knowledge secret
and retired in both those respects in which things are deemed
secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to
know, and some because they are not fit to utter. Again, the
wisdom of antiquity ', the shadows whereof are in the Poets, in
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 99
the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of
rebellion, which was the giants' offence, doth detest the crime
of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant
of particulars. Nevertheless, even unto the general rules and
discourses of policy and government, [it extends ; for even here]
there is due a reverent handling/ And after having briefly
indicated the comprehension £ of this science,' and shown that
it is the thing he is treating under other heads, he con-
cludes, ' but considering that / write to a king who is a master
of it, and is so well assisted, I think it decent to pass over this
part in silence, as willing to obtain the certificate which one
of the ancient philosophers aspired unto; who being silent
when others contended to make demonstration of their
abilities by speech, desired it might be certified for his part
( that there was one that knew how to hold his peace.'
And having thus distinctly cleared himself of any suspicion
of a disposition to introduce scientific inquiry and innovation
into departments not then open to a procedure of that sort,
his proposal for an advancement of learning in other quarters
was, of course, less liable to criticism. But even that part of
the subject to which he limits himself involves, as we shall see,
an incidental reference to this, from which he here so modestly
retires, and affords no inconsiderable scope for that genius
which was by nature so irresistibly impelled, in one way or
another, to the criticism and reformation of the larger wholes.
Pie retires from the open assault, but it is only to go deeper
into his subject. He is constituting the science of that from
which the state proceeds. He is analyzing the state, and
searching out in the integral parts of it, that which makes true
states impossible. He has found the revolutionary forces in
their simple forms, and is content to treat them in these. He
is bestowing all his pains upon an art that will develop — on
scientific principles, by simply attending to the natural laws,
as they obtain in the human kind, royalties, and nobilities,
and liege-men of all degrees — an art that will make all kinds
of pieces that the structure of the state requires.
H 2
100 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER III.
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.
§ I. — THE EXEMPLAR OF GOOD.
' Nature craves
All dues to be rendered to their owners.'
BUT tins great innovator is busying himself here with
drawing up a report of THE DEFICIENCIES IN LEARN-
ING; and though he is the first to propose a plan and method
by which men shall build up, systematically and scientifically,
a knowledge of Nature in general, instead of throwing them-
selves altogether upon their own preconceptions and abstract
controversial theories, after all, the principal deficiency which
he has to mark — that to which, even in this dry report, he
finds himself constrained to affix some notes of admiration —
this principal deficiency is the Science of Man — the
SCIENCE of human nature itself. And the reason of this
deficiency is, that very deficiency before named; it is that
very act of shutting himself up to his own theories which
leaves the thinker without a science of himself. ' For it is the
greatest proof of want of skill, to investigate the nature of any
object in itself alone; and, in general, those very things which
are considered as secret, are manifested and common in other
objects, but will never be clearly seen if the contemplations and
experiments of men be directed to themselves alone.7 It is this
science of Nature in general which makes the science
of Human Nature for the first time possible; and that is
the end and term of the new philosophy, — so the inventor of
it tells us. And the moment that he comes in with that new
torch, which he has been out into f the continent of nature ' to
light, — the moment that he comes back with it, into this old
debateable ground of the schools, and begins to apply it to
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 10 1
that element in the human life in which the scientific inno-
vation appears to be chiefly demanded, ' most of the contro-
vies,' as he tells us very simply — 'most of the controversies,
wherein moral philosophy is conversant, are judged and deter-
mined by it.'
But here is the bold and startling criticism with which he
commences his approach to this subject; here is the ground
which he makes at the first step ; this is the ground of his
scientific innovation ; not less important than this, is the field
which he finds unoccupied. In the handling of this science he
says, (the science of ' the Appetite and Will of Man'), ' those
which have written seem to me to have done as if a man that
professed to teach to write did only exhibit fair copies of alpha-
bets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or direc-
tions for the carriage of the hand, or the framing of the letters;
so have they made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying
the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, duty , felicity ; pro-
pounding them, well described, as the true objects and scopes
of man's will and designs; but how to attain these excellent
marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to become
true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over alto-
gether, or slightly and unprofitably ; for it is not,' he says,
'certain scattered glances and touches that can excuse the
absence of this part of — science.
1 The reason of this omission/ he supposes, ' to be that
hidden rock, whereupon both this and many other barks of
knowledge have been cast away, which is, that men have
despised to be conversant in ordinary and common matters, the
judicious direction whereof, nevertheless, is the wisest doctrine;
for life consisteth not in novelties nor subtleties, but, contrari-
wise, they have compounded sciences chiefly of a certain re-
splendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give glory either
to the subtlety of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses.'
But his theory of teaching is, that 4 Doctrine should be such
as should make men in love with the lesson, and not with the
teacher ; being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the
author's commendation. Neither needed men of so excellent
102 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
parts to have despaired of a fortune which the poet Virgil
promised himself, and, indeed, obtained, who got as much
glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the
observations of husbandry as of the herokal acts of Mneas.
1 Nee sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum
Quam sit, et angustis hunc acldere rebus honorum.' '
Georg. iii. 289.
So, then, there is room for a new Virgil, but his theme is
here; — one who need not despair, if he be able to bring to his
subject those excellent parts this author speaks of, of getting
as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the express-
ing of the observations of this husbandry, as those have had
who have sketched the ideal forms of the human life, the
dream of what should be. The copies and exemplars of good,
— that vision of heaven, — that idea of felicit}', and beauty,
and goodness that the human soul brings with it, like a
memory, — those celestial shapes that the thought and heart
of man, by a law in nature, project, — that garden of delights
that all men remember, and yearn for, and aspire to, and will
have, in one form or another, in delicate air patterns, or
gross deceiving images, — that large, intense, ideal good which
men desire — that perfection and felicity, so far above the rude
mocking realities which experience brings them, — that, that
has had its poets. No lack of these exemplars the historian
finds, when he comes to make out his report of the con-
dition of his kind — where he comes to bring in his inventory
of the human estate: when so much is wanting, that good he
reports ' not deficient.' Edens in plenty, — gods, and demi-gods,
and heroes, not wanting; the purest abstract notions of virtue
and felicity, the most poetic embodiments of them, are put
down among the goods which the human estate, as it is,
comprehends. This part of the subject appears, to the critical
reviewer, to have been exhausted by the poets and artists that
mankind has always employed to supply its wants in this field.
No room for a poet here ! The draught of the ideal Eden is
finished; — the divine exemplar is finished; that which is
wanting is, — the husbandry thereunto.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 103
Till now, the philosophers and poetic teachers had always
taken their stand at once, on the topmost peak of Olympus,
pouring down volleys of scorn, and amazement, and reprehen-
sion, upon the vulgar nature they saw beneath, made out of
the dust of the ground, and qualified with the essential attri-
butes of that material, — kindled, indeed, with a breath of
heaven, but made out of clay, — different kinds of clay, —
with more or less of the .Promethean spark in it; but always
clay, of one kind or another, and always compelled to listen
to the laws that are common to the kinds of that substance.
And it was to this creature, thus bound by nature, thus doubly
bound, — • crawling between earth and heaven,' as the poet
has it, — that these winged philosophers on the ideal cliffs,
thought it enough to issue their mandates, commanding it to
renounce its conditions, to ignore its laws, and come up thither
at a word, — at a leap, — making no ado about it.
* I can call spirits from the vasty deep.'
' And so can I, and so can any man ; '
Says the new philosopher —
'But will they come 1
Will they come — when you do call for them 1 '
It was simply a command, that this dirty earth should con-
vert itself straight into Elysian lilies, and bloom out, at a word,
with roses of Paradise. Excellent patterns, celestial exemplars,
of the things required were held up to it ; and endless decla-
mation and argument why it should be that, and not the other,
were not wanting: — but as to any scientific inquiry into the
nature of the thing on which this form was to be superin-
duced, as to any scientific exhibition of the form itself which
was to be superinduced, these so essential conditions of the pro-
posed result, were in this case alike wanting. The position
which these reformers occupy, is one so high, that the question
of different kinds of soils, and chemical analyses and experi-
ments, would not come within their range at all; and 'the
resplendent or lustrous mass of matter,' of which their
sciences are compounded, chosen to give glory either to the
subtilty of disputations or to the eloquence of discourses, would
104 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
not bear any such vulgar admixture. It would make a terrible
jar in the rhythm, which those large generalizations naturally
flow in, to undertake to introduce into them any such points
of detail.
And the new teacher will have a mountain too ; but it will
be one that ' overlooks the vale,' and he will have a rock-cut-
stair to its utmost summit. He is one who will undertake this
despised unlustrous matter of which our ordinary human life
consists, and make a science of it, building up its generaliza-
tions from ils particulars, and observing the actual reality, —
the thing as it is, freshly, for that purpose ; and not omitting
any detail, — the poorest. The poets who had undertaken this
theme before had been so absorbed with the idea of what man
should be, that they could only glance at him as he is : the idea
of a science of him, was not of course, to be thought of. There
was but one name for the creature, indeed, in their vocabulary
and doctrine, and that was one which simply seized and embodied
the general fact, the unquestionable historic fact, that he has
not been able hitherto to attain to his ideal type in nature, or
indeed to make any satisfactory approximation to it.
But when the Committee of Inquiry sits at last, and the
business begins to assume a systematic form, even the science
of that ideal good, that exemplar and pattern of good, which
men have been busy on so long, — the science of it, — is put
down as f wanting,' and the science of the husbandry thereunto,
1 wholly deficient.^
And the report is, that this new argument, notwithstanding
its every-day theme, is one that admits of being sung also ; and
that the Virgil who is able to compose ' these Georgics of the
Mind,' may promise himself fame, though his end is one that
will enable him to forego it. Let us see if we can find any
further track of him and his great argument, whether in prose
or verse; — this poet who cares not whether he has his ' singing
robes' about him or not, so he can express and put upon record
his new ' observations of this husbandry.'
I. The exemplar of good. — ' And surely,' he continues,
' if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write at leisure that
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. IO5
which men may read at leisure1 — note it — that which men may-
read at leisure — 'but really to instruct and suborn action and
active life, these georgics of the mind, concerning the hus-
bandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical
descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity ; therefore the main and
primitive division of moral knowledge, seemeth to be into
the EXEMPLAR or PLATFORM of GOOD, and THE REGIMEN
or culture of THE mind, the one describing the nature
of good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply,
and ACCOMMODATE THE WILL OF MAN THEREUNTO.
As to l the nature of good, positive or simple/ the writers on
this subject have, he says, ' set it down excellently, in describ-
ing the forms of virtue and duty, with their situations, and
postures, in distributing them into their kinds, parts, pro-
vinces, actions, and administrations, and the like : nay, farther,
they have commended them to man's nature and spirit, with
great quickness of argument, and beauty of persuasions ; yea,
and fortified and entrenched them, as much as discourse can do,
against corrupt and popular opinions. And for the degrees
and comparative nature of good, they have excellently handled
it also.' — That part deserveth to be reported for ' excellently
laboured/
What is it that is wanting then? What radical, fatal defect
is it that he finds even in the doctrine of the nature of
GOOD? What is the difficulty with this platform and exemplar
of good as he finds it, notwithstanding the praise he has be-
stowed on it ? The difficulty is, that it is not scientific. It is
not broad enough. It is special, it is limited to the species,
but it is not properly, it is not effectively, specific, because it
is not connected with the doctrine of nature in general. It
does not strike to those universal original principles, those
simple powers which determine the actual historic laws and
make the nature of things itself. This is the criticism, there-
fore, with which this critic of the learning of the world as he
finds it, is constrained to qualify that commendation.
Notwithstanding, if before they had come to the popular and
received notions of ' vice1 and 'virtue] 'pleasure* and 'pain,1 and
106 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry con-
cerning the roots of GOOD and evil, and the strings to
those roots, they had given, in my opinion, a great light to
that which followed, and especially if they had consulted with
nature, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more pro-
found, which being by them in part omitted, and in part
handled with much confusion, we will endeavour to resume
and open in a more clear manner.' Here then, is the prepa-
ration of the Platform or Exemplar of Good, the scientific
platform of virtue and felicity; going behind the popular
notion of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like,
he strikes at once to the nature of good, as it is ' formed in
everything,' for the foundation of this specific science. He
lays the beams of it, in the axioms and definitions of his
' prima philosophia' 'which do not fall within the compass of
of the special parts of science, but are more common and of a
higher stage, for ' the distributions and partitions of know-
ledges are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and
so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree that
meet in a stem which hath a dimension and quantity of entire-
ness and continuance before it comes to discontinue and break
itself into arms and boughs/ and it is not the narrow and spe-
cific observation on which the popular notions are framed, but
the scientific, which is needed for the New Ethics, — the new
knowledge, which here too, is power. He must detect and
recognise here also, he must track even into the nature of man,
those universal ' footsteps ' which are but ' the same footsteps of
nature treading or printing in different substances.' ' There is
formed in everything a double nature of good, the one as every-
thing is a total or substantive in itself, and the other, as it is a
part or member of a greater body whereof the latter is in
degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the
conservation of a more general form This double nature
of good, and the comparison thereof, is much more engraven
upon MAN, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of
duty to the public, ought to be much more precious than the
conservation of life and being ;' and, by way of illustration, he
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 10 J
mentions first the case of Pompey the Great, 'who being in
commission of purveyance for a famine at Kome, and being dis-
suaded with great vehemency by his friends, that he should not
hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said
only to them, 'Necesse est ut earn, non ut vivam? \ But,' he adds,
\ it nmy be truly affirmed, that there was never any philosophy,
religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly
exalt the good which is communicative, and depress the good
which is private and particular, as the holy faith, well declaring
that it was the same Go^that gave the Christian law to men, who
gave those laws of nature to inanimate creatures that we spake
of before ; for we read that the elected saints of God have wished
themselves anathematised, and razed out of the book of life, in
an ecstasy of charity, and infinite feeling of communion.'
And having first made good his assertion, that this being
set down, and strongly planted, determines most of the contro-
versies wherein moral philosophy is conversant, he proceeds to
develop still further these scientific notions of good and evil,
which he has gone below the popular notions and into the
nature of things to find, these scientific notions, which, because
they are scientific, he has still to go out of the specific nature
to define; and when he comes to nail down his scientific plat-
form of the human good with them, when he comes to strike
their clear and simple lines, deep as the universal constitu-
tion of things, through the popular terms, and clear up the old
confused theories with them, we find that what he said of
them beforehand was true; they do indeed throw great light
upon that which follows.
To that exclusive, incommunicative good which inheres in
the private and particular nature, — and he does not call it any
hard names at all from his scientific platform; indeed in the
vocabulary of the Naturalist we are told, that these names are
omitted, ' for we call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of
fools their folly,' — that exclusive good he finds both passive
and active, and this also is one of those primary distinctions
which ' is formed in all things/ and so too is the subdivision
of passive good which follows. ' For there is impressed upon
108 THE ELIZABETHAN AET OF TRADITION.
all things a triple desire, or appetite, proceeding from love to
themselves^ one, of preserving and continuing their form;
another, of advancing and perfecting their form; and a third,
of multiplying and extending their form upon other things;
whereof the multiplying or signature of it upon other things,
is that which we handled by the name of active good.' But
passive good includes both conservation and perfection, or
advancement, which latter is the highest degree of passive
good. For to preserve in state is the less; to preserve with
advancement is the greater. As to man, his approach or
assumption to divine or angelical nature is the perfec-
tion of his form, the error or false imitation of which good is
that which is the tempest of human life.' So we have heard
before; but in the doctrine which we had before, it was the
dogma, — the dogma whose inspiration and divinity each soul
recognized; to whose utterance each soul responded, as deep
calleth unto deep, — it was the Law, the Divine Law, and not
the science of it, that was given.
And having deduced ' that good of man which is private
and particular, as far as seemeth fit/ he returns f to that good
of man which respects and beholds society,' which he terms
' Duty, because the term of duty is more proper to a mind
well framed and disposed towards others, as the term of Virtue
is applied to a mind well formed and composed in itself; though
neither can a man understand virtue, without some relation to
society, nor duty, without an inward disposition.
But he wishes us to understand and remember, now that he
comes out of the particular nature, and begins to look towards
society with this term of Duty, that he is still dealing with
{ the will of particular persons,' that it is still the science of
morals, and not politics, that he is meddling with. ' This part
may seem at first/ he says, ' to pertain to science civil and
politic, but not if it be well observed ; for it concerneth the
regiment and government of every man over himself } and not
over others. And this is the plan which he has marked out
in his doctrine of government as the most hopeful point in
which to commence political reformations; and one cannot but
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. IO9
observe, that if this art and science should be successfully cul-
tivated, the one which he dismisses so briefly would be cleared
at once of some of those difficulties, which rendered any more
direct treatment of it at that time unadvisable. This part of
learning concerneth then ' the regiment and government of
every man over himself, and not over others.' ' As in archi-
tecture the direction of the framing the posts, beams, and other
parts of building, is not the same with the manner of joining
them and erecting the building; and in mechanicals, the di-
rection how to frame an instrument or engine is not the
same with the manner of setting it on work, and employing it;
and yet, nevertheless, in expressing of the one, you incidentally
express the aptness towards the other [hear] so the doctrine of
the conjugation of men in society diflereth from that of their
conformity thereunto' The received doctrine of that conjuga-
tion certainly appeared to ; and the more this scientific doctrine
of the parts, and the conformity thereunto, is incidentally
expressed, — the more the scientific direction how to frame the
instrument or engine, is opened, the more this difference be-
comes apparent.
But even in limiting himself to the individual human
nature as it is developed in particular persons, regarding
society only as it is incidental to that, even in putting down
his new scientific platform of the good that the appetite and
will of man naturally seeks, and in marking out scientifically
its degrees and kinds, he gives us an opportunity to perceive in
passing, that he is not altogether without occasion for the use
of that particular art, with its peculiar ' organs' and ' methods'
and * illustration,' which he recommends under so many heads
in his treatise on that subject, for the delivery or tradition
of knowledges, which tend to innovation and advancement —
knowledges which are ( progressive' and ( foreign from opinions
received/
This doctrine of duty is sub-divided into two parts; the
common duty of every man as a man, or A member of A
STATE, which is that part of the platform and exemplar of
good, he has before reported as c extant, and well laboured/
110 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
the other is the respective or special duty of every man in his
PROFESSION, VOCATION and PLACE; and it is under this
head of the special and respective duties of places, vocations
and professions, where the subject begins to grow narrow and
pointed, where it assumes immediately, the most critical
aspects, — it is here that his new arts of delivery and tradition
come in to such good purpose, and stand him instead of other
weapons. For this is one of those cases precisely, which the
philosopher on the Mountain alluded to, where an argument is
set on foot at the table of a man of prodigious fortune, when
the man himself is present. Nowhere, perhaps, — in his freest
forms of writing, does he give a better reason, for that so
deliberate and settled determination, which he so openly
declares, and everywhere so stedfastly manifests, not to put
himself in an antagonistic attitude towards opinions, and
vocations, and professions, as they stood authorized in his
time. Nowhere does he venture on a more striking compari-
son or simile, for the purpose of setting forth that point
vividly, and impressing it on the imagination of the reader.
1 The first of these [sub-divisions of duty] is extant, and
well laboured, as hath been said. The second, likewise, I
may report rather dispersed than deficient ; which manner of
dispersed argument I acknowledge to be best; [it is one he is
much given to;] for who can take upon him to write of the
proper duty, virtue, challenge and right of EVERY several
vocation, profession and place? [ — truly? — ] For although
sometimes a looker on, may see more than a gamester, and
there be a proverb more arrogant than sound, ' that the vale
best discovereth the hill,7 yet there is small doubt, that men
can write best, and most really and materially of their own
professions,' and it is to be wished, he says, ' as that which
would make learning, indeed, solid and fruitful, that active
men would, or could, become writers.' And he proceeds to
mention opportunely in that connection, a case very much
in point, as far as he is concerned, but not on the face of it, so
immediately to the purpose, as that which follows. It will,
however, perhaps, repay that very careful reading of it, which
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. Ill
will be necessary, in order to bring out its pertinence in this
connection. And we shall, perhaps, not lose time ourselves,
by taking, as we pass, the glimpse which this author sees fit to
give us, of the facilities and encouragements which existed
then, for the scientific treatment of this so important question
of the duties and vices of vocations and professions.
'In which I cannot but mention, honoris causa, your majesty's
excellent book, touching the duty of A king' [and he goes on
to give a description which applies, without much f forcing/
to the work of another king, which he takes occasion to intro-
duce, with a direct commendation, a few pages further on]
— ' a work richly compounded of divinity, morality, and policy,
with great aspersion of all other arts; and being, in mine
opinion, one of the most sound and healthful writings that I
have read. Not sick of business, as those are who lose them-
selves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp
in matters impertinent; not savoring of perfumes and paintings
as those do, who seek to please the reader more than nature
beareth, and chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof, being
agreeable to truth, and apt for action? — [this passage contains
some hints as to this author's notion of what a book should be,
in form, as well as substance, and, therefore, it would not be
strange, if it should apply to some other books, as well] —
' and far removed from that natural infirmity, whereunto 1
noted those that write in their own professions, to be subject,
which is that they exalt it above measure; for your majesty hath
truly described, not a king of Assyria or Persia, in their external
glory, [and not that kind of king, or kingly author is he talking
of] but a Moses, or a David, pastors of their people.
' Neither can I ever lose out of my remembrance, what I
heard your majesty, in the same sacred spirit of government,
deliver in a great cause of judicature, which was, that kings
ruled by their laws, as God did by -the laws of nature, and
ought rarely to put in use their supreme prerogative, as God
doth his power of working miracles. And yet, notwithstanding,
in your book of a free monarchy, you do well give men to un-
derstand, that you know the plenitude of the power and right of
112 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
a king, as well as the circle of his office and duty. Thus have I
presumed to allege this excellent writing of your majesty, as a
prime or eminent example of Tractates, concerning special and
respective duties/ [It is, indeed, an exemplar that he talks of
here.] ' Wherein i" should have said as much, if it had been
written a thousand years since : neither am I moved with cer-
tain courtly decencies, which I esteem it flattery to praise in
presence ; no, it is flattery to praise in absence : that is, when
either the virtue is absent, or — the occasion is absent, and so the
praise is not natural, but forced, either in truth, or — in time.
But let Cicero be read in his oration pro Mar cello, which is
nothing but an excellent TABLE of Casar's virtue, and
made to his face ; besides the example of many other excellent
persons, wiser a great deal than such observers, and we will
never doubt upon a full occasion, to give just praises to present
or absent?
The reader who does not think that is, on the whole, a
successful paragraph, considering the general slipperiness of
the subject, and the state of the ice in those parts of it, in
particular where the movements appear to be the most free
and graceful; such a one has, probably, failed in applying to
it, that key of ' times,' which a full occasion is expected to
produce for this kind of delivery. But if any doubt exists in
any mind, in regard to this author's opinion of the rights of
his own profession and vocation, and the circle of its office and
duties, — if any one really doubts what only allegiance this
author professionally acknowledges, and what kingship it is to
which this great argument is internally dedicated, it may be
well to recall the statement on that subject, which he has
taken occasion to insert in another part of the work, so that
that point, at least, may be satisfactorily determined.
He is speaking of ' certain base conditions and courses/ in
his criticism on the manners of learned men, which he says,
' he has no purpose to give allowance to, wherein divers pro-
fessors of learning have wronged themselves and gone too far,' — -
glancing in particular at the trencher philosophers of the later
age of the Koman state, ' who were little better than parasites
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 113
in the houses of the great. But above all the rest,' he con-
tinues, ' the gross and palpable flattery, whereunto, many, not
unlearned, have abased and abused their wits and pens, turn-
ing, as Du Bartas saith, Hecuba into Helena, and Faustina
into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price and estima-
tion of learning. Neither is the modern dedication, of books
and writings as to patrons, to be commended : for that books —
such as are worthy the name of books, ought to have no patrons,
but — (hear) but — Truth and Reason. And the ancient custom
was to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or to
intitle the books with their names, or if to kings and great
persons, it was some such as the argument of the book was fit
and proper for: but these and the like courses may deserve
rather reprehension than defence.
* Not that I can tax,' he continues, however, ' or condemn
the morigeration or application of learned men to men in
fortune.' And he proceeds to quote here, approvingly, a
series of speeches on this very point, which appear to be full
of pertinence ; the first of the philosopher who, when he was
asked in mockery, ' How it came to pass that philosophers
were followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers,'
answered soberly, and yet sharply, ' Because the one sort knew
what they had need of, and the other did not'. And then the
speech of Aristippus, who, when some one, tender on behalf of
philosophy, reproved him that he would offer the profession of
philosophy such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at
a tyrant's feet, replied, ' It was not his fault, but it was the
fault of Dionysius, that he had his ears in his feet'; and,
lastly, the reply of another, who, yielding his point in disput-
ing with Csesar, claimed, ' That it was reason to yield to him
who commanded thirty legions,' and 'these,' he says, 'these, and
the like applications, and stooping to points of necessity and
convenience, cannot be disallowed; for, though they may have
some outward baseness, yet, in a judgment truly made, they are to
be accounted submissions to the occasion, and not to the person.1
And that is just Volumnias view of the subject, as will be
seen in another place.
I
114 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
Now, this no more dishonors you at all,
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
"Which else would put you to your fortune, and
The hazard of much blood. —
And you will rather show our general louts
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard
Of what that want might ruin.
But then, in the dramatic exhibition, the other side comes
in too: —
I will not do 't ;
Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
And by my body's action, teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.'
It is the same poet who says in another place: —
Almost my nature is subdued to that it works in.
4 But to return,' as our author himself says, after his compli-
mentary notice of the king's book, accompanied with that
emphatic promise to give an account of himself upon a full
occasion, and we have here, apparently, a longer digression to
apologize for, and return from ; but, in the book we are consi-
dering, it is, in fact, rather apparent than real, as are most of
the author's digressions, and casual introductions of imperti-
nent matter; for, in fact, the exterior order of the discourse is
often a submission to the occasion, and is not so essential as the
author's apparent concern about it would lead us to infer;
indeed he has left dispersed directions to have this treatise
broken up, and recomposed in a more lively manner, upon a
full occasion, and when time shall serve; for, at present, this
too is chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof.
And in marking out the grounds in human life, then lying
wTaste, or covered with superstitious and empirical arts and inven-
tions, in merely showing the fields into which the inventor of this
new instrument of observation and inference by rule, was then
proposing to introduce it, and in presenting this new report, and
this so startling proposition, in those differing aspects and shift-
ing lights, and under those various divisions which the art of
delivery and tradition under such circumstances appeared to
prescribe; having come, in the order of his report, to that
main ground of the good which the will and appetite of man
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 115
aspires to, and the direction thereto, — this so labored ground
of philosophy, — when it was found that the new scientific plat-
form of good, included — not the exclusive good of the indivi-
dual form only, but that of those ■ larger wholes/ of which
men are constitutionally parts and members, and the special
duty, — for that is the specific name of this principle of integ-
rity in the human kind, that is the name of that larger law, that
spiritual principle, which informs and claims the parts, and
conserves the larger form which is the worthier, — when it was
found that this part included the particular duty of every man
in his place, vocation, and profession, as well as the common
duty of men as men, surely it was natural enough to glance
here, at that particular profession and vocation of authorship,
and the claims of the respective places of king and subject in
that regard, as well as at the duty of the king, and the superior
advantages of a government of laws in general, as being more
in accordance with the order of nature, than that other mode
of government referred to. It was natural enough, since this
subject lies always in abeyance, and is essentially involved in
the work throughout, that it should be touched here, in its
proper place, though never so casually, with a glance at those
nice questions of conflicting claims, which are more fully
debated elsewhere, distinguishing that which is forced in time,
from that which is forced in truth, and the absence of the per-
son, from the absence of the occasion.
But the approval of that man of prodigious fortune, to
whom this work is openly dedicated, is always, with this
author, who understands his ground here so well, that he
hardly ever fails to indulge himself in passing, with a good
humoured, side-long, glance at ' the situation,' this approval is
the least part of the achievement. That which he, too, adores
in kings, is 'the throng of their adorers'. It is the sovereignty
which makes kings, and puts them in its liveries, that he
bends to ; it is that that he reserves his art for. And this pro-
posal to run the track of the science of nature through
this new field of human nature and its higher and highest
aims, and into the very field of every maris special place,
and vocation, and profession, could not well be made without
1 2
Il6 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
a glance at those difficulties, which the clashing claims of
authorship, and other professions, would in this case create;
without a glance at the imperious necessities which threaten
the life of the new science, which here also imperiously pre-
scribe the form of its tradition; he could not go by this
place, without putting into the reader's hands, with one bold
stroke, the key of its delivery.
For it is in the paragraph which follows the compliment to
the king in his character as an author, in pursuing still further
this subject of vocations and professions, that we find in the
form of 'fable' and ' allusion;— that form which the author
himself lays down in his Art of Tradition, as the form of in-
culcation for new truth,— the precise position, which is the
key to this whole method of new sciences, which makes the
method and the interpretation, the vital points, in the writing
and the reading of them.
< But, to return, there belongeth farther to the handling ot
this part, touching the Duties of Professions and Vocations, a
relative, or opposite, touching the frauds, cautels, impostures and
vices of every profession, which hath been likewise handled.
But how? Kather in a satire and cynically, than seriously and
wisely, for men have rather sought by wit to deride and tra-
duce m^/a of that which is good in professions, than with
judgment to discover and sever that which is corrupt. For,
as Solomon saith, he that cometh to seek after knowledge
with a mind to scorn and censure, shall be sure to find matter
for his humour, but no matter for his instruction. But the
managing of this argument with integrity and truth, which I
note as deficient, seemeth to me to be one of the best fortifica-
tions for honesty and virtue that can be planted. For, as the
fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first, you die for
it but if YOU SEE HIM first— he dieth; so it is with
deceits and evil arts, which if they be first espied lose their
life, but if they prevent, endanger.' [If they see you first,
you die for it; and not you only, but your science.
Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,
And throw it against the wind.]
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC.
II7
' So that we are much beholden/ he continues, ' to Machiavel
and others that write what men do, and not what they ought
to do, [perhaps he refers here to that writer before quoted, who
writes, 'others form men, — '/report him']; 'for it is not pos-
sible/ continues the proposer of the science of special duties
of place, and vocation, and profession, ' the critic of this
department, too, — it is not possible to join the serpentine
wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know ex-
actly all the conditions of the serpent, — that is, all forms and
natures of evil, for without this, virtue lieth open and un-
fenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that
are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge
of evil : for men of corrupted minds pre-suppose that honesty
groweth out of simplicity of manners, and believing of preachers,
schoolmasters, and meris exterior language ; so as, except you
can make them perceive that you know the utmost reaches of
their own corrupt .opinions, they despise all morality/ A
book composed for the express purpose of meeting the diffi-
culty here alluded to, has been already noticed in the prece-
ding pages, on account of its being one of the most striking
samples of that peculiar style of tradition, which the ad-
vancement of Learning prescribes, and here is another, in
which the same invention and discovery appears to be in-
dicated : — ' Why I can teach you/ — says a somewhat doubt-
ful claimant to supernatural gifts :
* Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil.'
' And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil ;
By telling truth ;
If thou hast power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence :
Oh, while you live, tell truth.'
But this is the style, in which the one before referred to,
falls in with the humour of this Advancer of Learning.
As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say, all
that I dare to do, and even thoughts that are not to be pub-
lished, displease me. The worst of my actions and qualities
II 8 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
do not appear to me so foul, as I find it foul and base
not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in
confession, but men ought to be so in action. I wish that this
excessive license of mine, may draw men to freedom above
these timorous and mincing pretended virtues, sprung from our
imperfections, and that at the expense of my immoderation, I
may reduce them to reason. A man must see and study his
vice to correct it, they who conceal it from others, commonly
conceal it from themselves and do not think it covered enough,
if they themselves see it ... . the diseases of the soul, the
greater they are, keep themselves the more obscure ; the most
sick are the least sensible of them : for these reasons they must
often be dragged into light, by an unrelenting and pitiless
hand ; they must be opened and torn from the caverns and se-
cret recesses of the heart/ ' To meet the Huguenots, who con-
demn our auricular and private confession, I confess myself in
public, religiously and purely, — others have published the
errors of their opinions, I of my manners. I am greedy of
making myself known, and I care not to how many, provided
it be truly; or rather, I hunger for nothing, but I mortally
hate to be mistaken by those Who happen to come across my
name. He that does all things for honor and glory [as some
great men in that time were supposed to,] what can he think
to gain by showing himself to the world in a mask, and by con-
cealing his true being from the people ? Commend a hunchback
for his fine shape, he has a right to take it for an affront: if
you are a coward, and men commend you for your valor, is it
of you that they speak? They take you for another. Ar-
chelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody
threw water on his head ; which they who were with him said
he ought to punish, ' Ay, but,' said the other, 'he did not throw
the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be.
Socrates being told that people spoke ill of him, ' Not at all/
said he, * there is nothing in me of what they say ! / am
content to be less commended provided I am bettei* known. I may
be reputed a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to
be folly/ Truly the Advancement of Learning would seem
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. Iig
to be not all in the hands of one person in this time. It
appears, indeed, to have been in the hands of some persons
who were not content with simply propounding it, and noting
deficiencies, but who busied themselves with actively carrying
out, the precise plan propounded. Here is one who does not
content himself with merely criticising 'professions and voca-
tions,' and suggesting improvements, but one who appears to
have an inward call himself to the cure of diseases. Whoever
he may be, and since he seems to care so very little for his
name himself, and looks at it from such a philosophical point
of view, we ought not, perhaps, to be too particular about it ;
whoever he may be, he is unquestionably a Doctor of the New
School, the scientific school, and will be able to produce his
diploma when properly challenged; whoever he may be, he
belongs to ' the Globe/ for the manager of that theatre is in-
cessantly quoting him, and dramatizing his philosophy, and
he says himself, ' I look on all men as my compatriots, and
prefer the universal and common tie to the national'
But in marking out and indicating the plan and method of
the new operation, which has for its end to substitute a scien-
tific, in the place of an empirical procedure, in the main
pursuits of human life, the philosopher does not limit him-
self in this survey of the special social duties to the special
duties of professions and vocations. c Unto this part,' he says,
* touching respective duty, doth also appertain the duties be-
tween husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant:
so likewise the laws of friendship and gratitude, the civil bond
of companies, colleges, and politic bodies, of neighbourhood, and
all other proportionate duties; not as they are parts of a
government and society, but as to the framing of the mind of
particular persons.'
The reader will observe, that that portion of moral philo-
sophy which is here indicated, contains, according to this index,
some extremely important points, points which require learned
treatment; and in our further pursuit of this inquiry, we
shall find, that the new light which the science of nature in
general throws upon the doctrine of the special duties and
120 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
upon these points here emphasized, has been most ably and
elaborately exhibited by a contemporary of this philosopher,
and in the form which he has so specially recommended, — with
all that rhetorical power which he conceives to be the natural
and fitting accompaniment of this part of learning. And the
same is true also throughout of that which follows.
' The knowledge concerning good respecting society, doth
handle it also not simply alone, but comparatively, whereunto
belongeth the weighing of duties between person and person,
case and case, particular and public: as we see in the proceed-
ing of Lucius Brutus against his own sons, which was so much
extolled, yet what was said?
Infelix utcunque ferent ea fata minores.
So the case was doubtful, and had opinion on both sides.
[So the philosopher on the mountain tells us, too, for his
common-place book and this author's happen to be the same.]
Again we see when M. Brutus and Cassius invited to a supper
certain whose opinions they meant to feel, whether they were
fit to be made their associates, and cast forth the question
touching the killing of a tyrant, — being an usurper, — they
were divided in opinion' ; [this of itself is a very good specimen
of the style in which points are sometimes introduced casually
in passing, and by way of illustration merely] some holding
that servitude was the extreme of evils, and others that tyranny
was better than a civil war-, and this question also our philo-
sopher of the mountain has considered very carefully from his
retreat, weighing all the pros and cons of it. And it is a ques-
tion which was treated also, as we all happen to know, in that
other form of writing for which this author expresses so de-
cided a preference, in which the art of the poet is brought in
to enforce and impress the conclusion of the philosopher.
Indeed, as we proceed further with the plan of this so radical
part of the subject, we shall find, that the ground indicated
has everywhere been taken up on the spot by somebody, and
to purpose.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 121
CHAPTER IV.
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.
§ II. — THE HUSBANDRY THEREUNTO; OR, THE CURE AND
CULTURE OF THE MIND.
' 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed '
Hamlet.
T>UT we have finished now with what he has to say here
wrf of the exemplar or science of GOOD, and its kinds, and
degrees, and the comparison of them , the good that is proper to
the individual, and the good that includes society. He has
found much fine work on that platform of virtue, and felicity,
— excellent exemplars, the purest doctrine, the loftiest virtue,
tried by the scientific standard. And though he has gone
behind those popular names of vice and virtue, pain and plea-
sure, and the like, in which these doctrines begin, to the more
simple and original forms, which the doctrine of nature in
general and its laws supplies, for a platform of moral science,
his doctrine is large enough to include all these works, in all
their excellence., and give them their true place. A reviewer
so discriminating, then, so far from that disposition to scorn
and censure, which he reprehends, so careful to conserve that
which is good in his scientific constructions and reformations,
so pure in judgment in discovering and severing that which is
corrupt, a reporter so clearly scientific, who is able to main-
tain through all this astounding report of the de Sciences in
human learning, a tone so quiet, so undemonstrative, such a
one deserves the more attention when he comes now to ' the
art and practic part' of this great science, to which all other
sciences are subordinate, and declares to us that he finds it, as
a part of science, ' WANTING !' not defective, but wanting.
' Now, therefore, that we have spoken of this fruit of life,
122 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
it remained to speak of the Husbandry that belongeth
thereunto, without which part the former seemeth to be no
better than a fair image or statue, which is beautiful to con-
template, but is without life and motion.'
But as this author is very far, as he confesses, from wishing
to clothe himself with the honors of an Innovator, — such
honors as awaited the Innovator in that time, — but prefers
always to sustain himself with authority from the past, though
at the expense of that lustre of novelty and originality, which
goes far, as he acknowledges, in establishing new opinions, —
adopting in this precisely the practices, and, generally, to save
trouble, the quotations of that other philosopher, so largely
quoted here, who frankly gives his reasons for his procedure,
confessing that he pinches his authors a little, now and then,
to make them speak to the purpose; and that he reads them
with his pencil in his hand, for the sake of being able to
produce respectable authority, grown gray in trust, with the
moss of centuries on it, for the views which he has to set
forth ; culling bits as he wants them, and putting them together
in his mosaics as he finds occasion ; so now, when we come to
this so important part of the subject, where the want is so
clearly reported — where the scientific innovation is so unmis-
takeably propounded — we find ourselves suddenly involved in
a storm of Latin quotations, all tending to prove that the
thing was perfectly understood among the ancients, and that
it is as much as a man's scholarship is worth to call it in ques-
tion. The author marches up to the point under cover of a
perfect cannonade of classics, no less than five of the most
imposing of the Greek and Latin authors being brought out,
for the benefit of the stunned and bewildered reader, in the
course of one brief paragraph, the whole concluding with a
reference to the Psalms, which nobody, of course, will under-
take to call in question; whereas, in cases of ordinary diffi-
culty, a proverb or two from Solomon is thought sufficient.
For this last writer, with his practical inspiration — with his
aphorisms, or ' dispersed directions,' which the author prefers
to a methodical discourse, as they best point to action — with
his perpetual application of divinity to matters of common
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 23
life, and to the special and respective duties, this, of all the
sacred writers, is the one which he has most frequent occasion
to refer to; and when, in his chapter on Policy, he brings out
openly his proposal to invade the every-day practical life of
men, in its apparently most unaxiomatical department, with
his scientific rule of procedure — a proposal which he might not
have been ' so prosperously delivered of,' if it had been made
in any less considerate manner — he stops to produce whole
pages of solid text from this so unquestionably conservative
authority, by way of clearing himself from any suspicion of
innovation.
First, then, in setting forth this so novel opinion of his, that
the doctrine of the fruit of life should include not the
scientific platform of good, and its degrees and kinds only, —
not the doctrine of the ideal excellence and felicity only, but
the doctrine — the scientific doctrine — the scientific art of the
Husbandry thereunto ; — in setting forth the opinion, that that
first part of moral science is but a part of it, and that as human
nature is constituted, it is not enough to have a doctrine of
good in its perfection, and the divinest exemplars of it; first
of all he produces the subscription of no less a person than
Aristotle, whose conservative faculties had proved so effectual
in the dark ages, that the opinion of Solomon himself could
hardly have been considered more to the purpose. \ In such
full words,' he says; and seeing that the advancement of
Learning has already taken us on to a place where the
opinions of Aristotle, at least, are not so binding, we need not
trouble ourselves with that long quotation now — ' in such full
words, and with such iteration, doth he inculcate this part, so
saith Cicero in great commendation of Cato the second, that
he had applied himself to philosophy — * Non it a disputandi
causa, sed ita vivendi.' And although the neglect of our times,
wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the re-
formation of their life, as Seneca excellently saith, ' De par-
tibus vitae, quisque deliberat, de summa nemo,' may make this
part seem superfluous, yet I must conclude with that aphorism
of Hippocrates, l Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores non sentiunt,
124 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
iis mens aegrotat'; they need medicines not only to assuage
the disease, but to awake the sense.
And if it be said that the cure of metis minds belongeth to
sacred divinity, it is most true; ' but yet Moral Philosophy' —
that is, in his meaning of the term, Moral Science, the new
science of nature — ( may be preferred unto her, as a wise ser-
vant and humble handmaid. For, as the Psalm saith, that
'the eye of the handmaid looketh perpetually towards the
mistress,' and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the discretion
of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress's will; so ought
moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of
divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits,
many sound and profitable directions/ That is the doctrine.
That is the position of the New Science in relation to divinity,
as defined by the one who was best qualified to place it — that
is the mission of the New Science, as announced by the new
Interpreter of Nature, — the priest of her ignored and violated
laws, — on whose work the seal of that testimony which he
challenged to it has already been set — on whose work it has
already been written, in the large handwriting of that Provi-
dence Divine, whose benediction he invoked, ' accepted ' —
accepted in the councils from which the effects of life proceed.
' This part, therefore,' having thus defined his position, he
continues, * because of the excellency thereof, I cannot but find it
exceeding STRANGE that it is not reduced to written inquiry;
the rather because it consisteth of much matter, wherein both
speech and action is often conversant, and such wherein the
common talk of men, which is rare, but yet cometh sometimes
to pass, is wiser than their books. It is reasonable, therefore,
that we propound it with the more particularity, both for the
worthiness, and because we may acquit ourselves for reporting it
deficient ' [with such ' iteration and fulness,' with all his discri-
mination, does he contrive to make this point] ; ' which seemeth
almost incredible, and is otherwise conceived — [note it] — and
is otherwise conceived and presupposed by those themselves
that have written.' [They do not see that they have missed
it.] * We will, therefore, enumerate some heads or points
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 25
thereof, that it may appear the better what it is, and whether it
be extant.
A momentous question, truly, for the human race. That
was a point, indeed, for this reporter to dare to make, and
insist on and demonstrate. Doctrines of the fruit of Life
— doctrines of its perfection, exemplars of it; but no science —
no science of the Culture or the Husbandry thereunto — though
it is otherwise conceived and presupposed by those who have
written! Yes, that is the position; and not taken in the
general" only, for he will proceed to propound it with more
particularity — he will give us the heads of it — he will pro-
ceed to the articulation of that which is wanting — he will
put down, before our eyes, the points and outlines of the new
human science, the science of the husbandry thereto, both for
the worthiness thereof, and that it may appear the better
what it is, and whether — whether it be extant. For
who knows but it may be? Who knows, after all, but the
points and outlines here, may prove but the track of that argu-
ment which the new Georgics will be able to hide in the play
of their illustration, as Periander hid his? Who knows but
the Naturalist in this field was then already on the ground,
making his collections? Who knows but this new Virgil,
who thought little of that resplendent and lustrous mass of
matter, that old poets had taken for their glory, who seized
the common life of men, and not the ideal life only, for his
theme — who made the relief of the human estate, and not
glory, his end, but knew that he might promise himself
a fame which would make the old heroic poets' crowns grow
dim, — who knows but that he — he himself — is extant, con-
templating his theme, and composing its Index — claiming as
yet its Index only ? Truly, if the propounder of this argument
can in any measure supply the defects which he outlines, and
opens here, — if he can point out to us any new and worthy
collections in that science for which he claims to break the
ground — if he can, in any measure, constitute it, he will de-
serve that name which he aspired to, and for which he was
willing to renounce his own, ' Benefactor of men/ and not of
an age or nation.
126 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
But let us see where this new science, and scientific art of
human culture begins, — this science and art which is to differ
from those which have preceded it, as the other Baconian arts
and sciences which began in the new doctrine of nature,
differed from those which preceded them.
' First, therefore, in this, as in all things which are practical,
we ought to cast up our account, what is in our power, and
what not ? For the one may be dealt with by way of
alteration, but the other by way of APPLICATION only.
The husbandman cannot command either the nature of the
earth or the seasons of the weather, no more can the physician
the constitution of the patient, and the variety of accidents. So
in the culture and cure of the mind of man two things
are without our command, points OF nature, and points
of fortune : for to the basis of the one, and the conditions
of the other, our work is limited and tied.' That is the first
step : that is where the NEW begins. There is no science or
art till that step is taken.
In these things, therefore, it is left unto us to proceed by
application. Vincenda est omnis fortuna ferendo : and so
likewise — Vincenda est omnis natura ferendo. But when we
speak of suffering, we do not speak of a dull neglected suffering,
but of a wise and industrious suffering, which draweth and con-
triveth use and advantage out of that which seemeth adverse and
contrary, which is that properly which we call accommodating
or applying.*
Now the wisdom of application resteth principally in the
exact and distinct knowledge of the precedent state or disposition,
unto which we do apply' — [This is the process which the
Novum Organum sets forth with so much care], * for we cannot
fit a garment, except we first take the measure of the body.'
So then THE FIRST ARTICLE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE is —
what ? — 'to set down sound and true distributions and descrip-
tions of THE SEVERAL CHARACTERS AND TEMPERS of MEN'S
d 'Sweet are the uses of it,' and 'blest' indeed 'are they who can
translate the stubbornness of fortune into so quiet and so sweet a style.'
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 27
natures and DISPOSITIONS, specially having regard to those
differences which are most radical, in being the fountains and
causes of the rest, or most frequent in concurrence or commix-
ture (not simple differences merely, but the most frequent con-
junctions), wherein it is not the handling of a few of them, in
passage, the better to describe the mediocrities of virtues, that
can satisfy this intention' ; and he proceeds to introduce a few
points, casually, as it were, and by way of illustration, but the
rule of interpretation for this digest of learning, in this press of
method is, that such points are never casual, and usually of
primal, and not secondary import; 'for if it deserve to be con-
sidered that there are minds which are proportioned to great
matters, and others to small, which Aristotle handle th, or
ought to have handled, by the name of magnanimity, doth it
not deserve as well to be considered, ' that there are minds
proportioned to intend many matters, and others to few? So
that some can divide themselves, others can perchance do exactly
well, but it must be in few things at once ; and so there cometh
to be a narrowness of mind, as well as a pusillanimity.
And again, f that some minds are proportioned to that which
may be despatched at once, or within a short return of time ;
others to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with
length of pursuit.
Jam turn tenditque fovetque.
So that there may be fitly said to be a longanimity, which is
commonly also ascribed to God as a magnanimity,1 Undoubt-
edly, he considers this one of those differences in the natures
and dispositions of men, that it is most important to note,
otherwise it would not be inserted here. ' So farther deserved
it to be considered by Aristotle that there is a disposition in
conversation, supposing it in things which do in no sort
touch or concern a man's self^ to soothe and please-, and a dis-
position contrary to contradict and cross' ; and deserveth it
not much better to be considered that there is a disposition,
not in conversation, or talk, but in matter of more serious
nature^ and supposing it still in things merely indifferent, to
128 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
take pleasure in the good of another, and a disposition con-
trariwise to take distaste at the good of another, which is that
properly which we call good-nature, or ill-nature, benignity or
malignity.' Is not this a field for science, then, with such dif-
ferences as these lying on the surface of it, — does not it begin
to open up with a somewhat inviting aspect? This so remark-
able product of nature, with such extraordinary ' differences '
in him as these, is he the only thing that is to go without a
scientific history, all wild and unbooked, while our philoso-
phers are weeping because * there are no more worlds to con-
quer,' because every stone and shell and flower and bird and
insect and animal has been dragged into the day and had its
portrait taken, and all its history to its secretest points scien-
tifically detected ?
' And therefore/ says this organizer of the science of nature,
who keeps an eye on practice, in his speculations, and recom-
mends to his followers to observe his lead in that respect, at
least, until the affairs of the world get a little straighter than
they were in his time, and there is leisure for mere speculation,
— 'And, therefore,' he resumes, having noted these remarkable
differences in the natural and original dispositions of men, —
and certainly there is no more curious thing in science than
the points noted, though the careful reader will observe that
they are not curious merely, but that they slant in one di-
rection very much, and towards a certain kind of practice.
c And, therefore,' he resumes, noticing that fact, * / cannot
sufficiently marvel, that this part of knowledge, touching the
several characters of natures and dispositions should be omitted
loth in MORALITY and POLICY, considering that it is of so
great ministry and suppeditation to them BOTH.* But in nei-
ther of these two departments, which he here marks out, as
the ultimate field of the naturalist, and his arts, in neither of
* < The several characters! The range of difference is limited. They
are comprehensible within a science, as the differences in other species
are. No wonder, then, 'that he cannot sufficiently marvel that this
part of knowledge should be omitted.'
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 120,
them unfortunately, has the practice of mankind, as yet so
wholly recovered from that ' lameness, ' which this critical ob-
server remarked in it in his own time, that these observations
have ceased to have a practical interest.
And having thus ventured to express his surprise at this
deficiency, he proceeds to note what only indications he ob-
serves of any work at all in this field, and the very quarters
he goes to for these little accidental hints and beginnings of
such a science, show how utterly it was wanting in those
grandiloquent schools of philosophic theory, and those magis-
terial chairs of direction, which the author found in possession
of this department in his time.
* A man shall find in the traditions of astrology, some
pretty and apt divisions of men's natures,' — so in the discussions
which occur on this same point in Lear, where this part of
philosophy comes under a more particular consideration, and
the great ministry* and suppeditation which it would yield to
morality and policy is suggested in a different form, this same
reference to the astrological observations repeatedly occurs.
The Poet, indeed, discards the astrological theory of these na-
tural differences in the dispositions of men, but is evidently
in favour of an observation, and inquiry of some sort, into the
second causes of these ' sequent effects,' and an anatomy of the
living subject is in one case suggested, by a person who is
suffering much from the deficiencies of science in this field,
as a means of throwing light on it. ' Then let Regan be
anatomised.' For in the Play, — in the poetic impersonation,
which has a scientific purpose for its object, the historical
extremes of these natural differences are touched, and brought
into the most vivid dramatic oppositions; so as to force from
the lips of the by-standers the very inquiries and suggestions
which are put down here; so as to wring from the broken
hearts of men — tortured and broken on the wheel, which ' blind
men' call fortune, — tortured and broken on the rack of an
unlearned and barbaric human society, — or, from hearts that do
not break with anything that such a world can do, the impe-
rious direction of the new science*
130 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
* Then let Regan be anatomised, and see what it is that
breeds about her heart.' He has asked already, ' What is the
cause of thunder?' But 'his philosopher' must not stop there.
' Is there any cause—- is there any cause in nature that makes
these hard hearts?' —
It is the stars !
The stars above us govern our conditions,
Else one self mate and mate could not beget
Such different issues.
< A man shall find in the traditions of astrology some pretty
and apt divisions of men's natures, ('let them be anatomised^
he, too, says,) 'according to the predominance of the planets;
(this is the ' spherical predominance,' which Edmund does not
believe in) — ' lovers of quiet, lovers of action, lovers of victory,
lovers of honour, lovers of pleasure, lovers of arts, lovers of
change, and so forth/ And here, also, is another very singu-
lar quarter to go to for a science which is so radical in mo-
rality; here is a place, where men have empirically hit upon
the fact that it has some relation to policy. ' A man shall find
in the wisest sorts of these relations which the Italians make
touching conclaves, the natures of the several Cardinals, hand-
somely and livelily painted forth';— and what he has already
said in the general, of this department, he repeats here under
this division of it, that the conversation of men in respect to it,
is in advance of their books; — 'a man shall meet with, in
every day's conference, the denominations of sensitive, dry,
formal, real, humorous, 'huomo di prima impressione, huomo
di ultima impressione, and the like ' : but this is no substitute
for science in a matter so radical,'—* and yet, nevertheless, this
observation, wandereth in words, but is not fixed in inquiry.
For the distinctions are found, many of them, but we conclude
no precepts upon them'; it is induction then that we want
here, after all — here also — here as elsewhere : the distinc-
tions are found, many of them, but we conclude no precepts upon
them : wherein our fault is the greater, because both HISTORY,
poesy, and daily EXPERIENCE, are as goodly fields where
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 131
these observations grow ; whereof we make a few poesies to
hold in our hands, but no man bringeth them to the confec-
tionary that receipts might be made of them for the use of
life.3 '
How could he say that, when there was a man then alive,
who was doing in all respects, the very thing which he puts
down here, as the thing which is to be done, the thing which
is of such radical consequence, which is the beginning of the
new philosophy, which is the beginning of the new reforma-
tion ; who is making this very point in that science to which
the others are subordinate ? — how could he say it, when there
was a man then alive, who was ransacking the daily lives of
men, and putting all history and poesy under contribution
for these very observations, one, too, who was concluding
precepts upon them, bringing them to the confectionary, and
composing receipts of them for the use of life ; a scholar who
did not content himself with merely reporting a deficiency
so radical as this, in the human life ; a man who did not think,
apparently, that he had fulfilled his duty to his kind, by com-
posing a paragraph on this subject.
And how comes it — how comes it that he who is the first
to discover this so fatal and radical defect in the human science,
has himself failed to put upon record any of these so vital
observations? How comes it that the one who is at last able
to put his finger on the spot where the mischief, where all the
boundless mischief, is at work here, — where the cure must
begin, should content himself with observations and collections
in physical history only ? How comes it that the man who
finds that all the old philosophy has failed to become operative
for the lack of this historical basis, who finds it so ' exceeding
strange, so incredible,7 who ' cannot sufficiently marvel/ that
these observations should have been omitted in this science,
heretofore, — the man who is so sharp upon Aristotle and
others, on account of this incomprehensible oversight in their
ethics, — is himself guilty of this very thing ? And how will this
defect in his work, compare with that same defect which he is
at so much pains to note and describe in the works of other3
k2
132 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
— others who did not know the value of this history? And
how can he answer it to his kind, that with the views he has
dared to put on record here, of the relation, the essential
relation, of this knowledge to human advancement and
relief, he himself has done nothing at all to constitute it, except
to write this paragraph.'
And yet, by his own showing, the discoverer of this field
was himself the man to make collections in it ; for he tells us
that accidental observations are not the kind that are wanted
here, and that the truth of direction must precede the severity
of observation. Is this so? Whose note book is it then, that
has come into our hands, with the rules and plummet of the
new science running through it, where all the observation
takes, spontaneously, the direction of this new doctrine of
nature, and brings home all its collections, in all the lustre of
their originality, in all their multiplicity, and variety, and
comprehension, in all the novelty and scientific rigour of
their exactness, into the channels of these defects of learning?
And who was he, who thought there were more things in
heaven and earth, than were dreamt of in old philosophies,
who kept his tables always by him for open questions? and
whose tablets — whose many-leaved tablets, are they then, that
are tumbled out upon us here, glowing with ' all saws, all
forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied
there.' And if aphorisms are made out of the pith and heart
of sciences, if ' no man can write good aphorisms who is not
sound and grounded,' what Wittenberg, what University was
he bred in?
Till now there has been no man to claim this new and
magnificent collection in natural science : it is a legacy that
came to us without a donor ; — this new and vast collection in
natural history, which is put down here, all along, as that
which is wanting — as that which is wanting to the science of
man, to the science of his advancement to his place in nature,
and to the perfection of his form, — as that which is wanting to
the science of the larger wholes, and the art of their conserva-
tion. There was no man to claim it, for the boast, the very boast
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 33
made on behalf of the thing for whom it was claimed — was —
he did not know it was worth preserving ! — he did not know that
this mass of new and profoundly scientific observation — this
so new and subtle observation, so artistically digested, with all
the precepts concluded on it, strewn, crowded everywhere with
those aphorisms, those axioms of practice, that are made out
of the pith and heart of sciences — he did not know it was of
any value ! That is his history. That is the sum of it, and
surely it is enough. Who, that is himself at all above the
condition of an oyster, will undertake to say, deliberately and
upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we have that
one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply disgraceful,
to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography.
There is enough of it and to spare. With that fact in our
possession, we ought to have been able to dispense long ago
with some, at least, of those details that we have of it. The
only fault to be found with the biography of this individual as
it stands at present is, that there is too much of it, and the
public mind is labouring under a plethora of information.
If that fact be not enough, it is our own fault and not the
author's. He was perfectly willing to lie by, till it was. He
would not take the trouble to come out for a time that had not
studied his philosophy enough to find it, and to put the
books of it together.
Many years afterwards, the author of this work on the
Advancement of Learning, saw occasion to recast it, and put it
in another language. But though he has had so long a time
to think about it, and though he does not appear to have
taken a single step in the interval, towards the supplying of this
radical deficiency in human science; we do not find that his
views of its importance are at all altered. It is still the first
point with him in the scientific culture of human nature, — the
first point in that Art of Human Life, which is the end and
term of Natural Philosophy, as he understands the limits of it.
We still find the first Article of the Culture of the Mind put
down, 'THE DIFFERENT NATURES OR DISPOSITIONS OF
men,' not the vulgar propensities to virtues and VICES — note
134 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
it — or perturbations and passions, but of such as are more
internal and radical, which are generally neglected.' ' This is
a study,' he says, which ' might afford great light TO THE
sciences.' And again he refers us to the existing supply,
such as it is, and repeats with some amplification, his previous
suggestions. ' In astrological traditions, the natures and dis-
positions of men, are tolerably distinguished according to the
influence of the planets, where some are said to be by nature
formed for contemplation, others for war, others for politics.
Apparently it would be ' great ministry and suppeditation to
policy,' if one could get the occult sources of such differences
as these, so as to be able to command them at all, in the
culture of men, or in the fitting of men to their places. ' But'
he proceeds, 'so likewise among the poets of all kinds, we
everywhere find characters of nature, though commonly drawn
with excess and exceeding the limits of nature?
Here, too, the philosopher refers us again to the common
discourse of men, as containing wiser observations on this
subject, than their books. * But much the best matter of all,'
he says, * for such a treatise, may be derived from the more
prudent historians, and not so well from eulogies or panegyrics,
which are usually written soon after the death of an illustrious
person, but much rather from a whole body of history, as often
as such a person appears, for such an inwoven account gives a
better description than panegyrics .... But we do not mean that
such characters should be received in ethics, as perfect civil
images/ They are to be subjected to an artistic process, which
will bring out the radical principles in the dispositions and
tempers of men in general, as the material of inexhaustible
varieties of combination. He will have these historic portraits
merely 'for outlines and first draughts of the images themselves,
which, being variously compounded and mixed, afford all kinds
of portraits, so that an artificial and accurate dissection may be
made of men's minds and natures, and the secret disposition
of each particular man laid open, that from the knowledge of the
whole, the precepts concerning the errors OF the mind
may be more rightly formed.' Who did that very thing?
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 35
Who was it that stood on the spot and put that design into
execution ?
But this is not all; this is only the beginning of the obser-
vation and study of differences. For he would have also
included in it, * those impressions of nature which are other-
wise imposed upon by the mind, by the sex, age, country,
state OF health, make of body, as of beauty and
deformity, and the like, which are inherent and not exter-
nal : and more, he will have included in it — in these practical
Ethics he will have included — e POINTS OF fortune,' and the
differences that they make ; he will have all the differences that
this creature exhibits, under any conditions, put down ; he will
have his whole nature, so far as his history is able to show it,
on his table; and not as it is exhibited accidentally, or sponta-
neously merely, but under the test of a studious inquiry, and
essay; he will apply to it the trials and vexations of Art, and
wring out its last confession. This is the practical doctrine of
this species ; this is what the author we have here in hand, calls
the science of it, or the beginning of its science. This is one
of the parts of science which he says is wanting. Let us follow
his running glimpse of the points here, then, and see whether
it is extant here, too, and whether there is anything to justify
all this preparation in bringing it in, and all this exceeding
marvelling at the want of it.
' And again those differences which proceed from fortune,
as SOVEREIGNTY, NOBILITY, OBSCURE BIRTH, RICHES,
WANT, MAGISTRACY, PRIVATENESS, PROSPERITY, ADVER-
SITY, constant fortune, variable fortune, rising per saltum, per
gradus, and the like.' These are articles that he puts down for
points in his table of natural history s points for the collection of
instances ; this is the tabular preparation for induction here ;
for he does not conclude his precepts on the popular, miscella-
neous, accidental history. That will do well enough for books.
It won't do to get out axioms of practice from such loose
material. They have to ring with the proof of another kind
of condensation. All his history is artificial, prepared history
more select and subtle and fit than the other kind, he says, —
I36 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
prepared on purpose; perhaps we shall come across his tables,
some day, with these very points on them, filled in with the
observations of one, so qualified by the truth of direction to
make them ' severe'. It would not be strange, for he gives us
to understand that he is not altogether idle in this part of his
Instauration, and that he does not think it enough to lay out
work for others, without giving an occasional specimen of his
own, of the thing which he notes as deficient, and proposes to
have done, so that there may be no mistake about it as to what
it really is ; for he appears to think there is some danger of that.
Even here, he produces a few illustrations of his meaning, that
it may appear the better what is, and whether it be extant.
* Aiid therefore we see, that Plautus maketh it a wonder to
see an old man beneficent. St. Paul concludeth that severity
of discipline was to be used to the Cretans, (' increpa eos dure'),
upon the disposition of their country. 'Cretenses semper
mendaces, malae bestiae, ventres pigri.' Sallust noteth that it is
usual with KINGS to desire contradictories) { Sed plerumque,
regies voluntates, ut vehementes sunt sic mobiles saepeque ipsae
sibi adversae.' Tacitus observeth how rarely the raising of
the fortune mendeth the disposition. ' Solus Vespasianus
mutatus in melius.' Pindar maketh an observation that great
and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth men. So the
Psalm showeth it more easy to keep a measure in the enjoying
of fortune, than in the increase of fortune; 'Divitiaa si affluant
nolite cor apponere.' i These observations, and the like,' — what
book is it that has so many of e the like3? — ' I deny not but
are touched a little by Aristotle as in passage in his Rhetorics,
and are handled in some scattered discourses/ One would think
it was another philosopher, with pretensions not at all inferior,
but professedly very much, and altogether superior to those of
Aristotle, whose short-comings were under criticism here; 'but
they (these observations) were never incorporated into moral
philosophy, to which they do ESSENTIALLY appertain, as THE
KNOWLEDGE of THE DIVERSITY of GROUNDS and MOULDS
doth to agriculture, and the knowledge of the diversity of
complexions and CONSTITUTIONS doth to the physician;
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 37
except' — note it — 'except we mean to follow the indiscretion
of empirics, which minister the same medicines to all patients, *
Truly this does appear to give us some vistas of a science,
and a * pretty one/ for these particulars and illustrations are
here, that we may see the better what it is, and whether it be
extant. That is the question. And it happens singularly
enough, to be a question just as pertinent now, as it was when
the philosopher put it on his paper, two hundred and fifty
years ago.
There is the first point, then, in the table of this scientific
history, with its subdivisions and articulations ; and here is the
second, not less essential. * Another article of this knowledge
is the inquiry touching the AFFECTIONS; for, as in medicin-
ing the body,' — and it is a practical science we are on here; it is
the cure of the mind, and not a word for show, — * as in medi-
cining the body, it is in order, first, to know the divers com-
plexions and constitutions; secondly, the diseases; and, lastly,
the cures; so in medicining of the mind, — after knowledge of
the divers characters of men's natures, it followeth, in order, to
know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no
other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections/
And we shall find, under the head of the medicining of the
body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which
could be better said there than here, because the wrath of pro-
fessional dignitaries, — the eye of the c basilisk,' was not perhaps
quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others.
For though f the Doctors ' in that department, did manage, in
the dark ages, to possess themselves of certain weapons of their
own, which are said to have proved, on the whole, sufficiently
formidable, they were not, as it happened, armed by the State
as the others then were; and it was usually discretionary with
the patient to avail himself, or not, of their drugs, and re-
ceipts, and surgeries; whereas, in the diseased and suffering
soul, no such discretion was tolerated. The drugs were in-
deed compounded by the State in person, and the executive
stood by, axe in hand, to see that they were taken, accompany-
ing them with such other remedies as the case might seem to
138 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OE TRADITION.
require ; the most serious operations being constantly per-
formed without ever taking ' the sense ' of the patient.
So we must not be surprised to find that this author who
writes under such liabilities ' ventures to bring out the pith of
his trunk of sciences, — that which sciences have in common,
— the doctrine of the nature of things, — what he calls * prima
philo sophia? when his learned sock is on — a little more strongly
and fully in that branch of it, with a glance this way, with a
distinct intimation that it is common to the two, and applies
here as well. There, too, he complains of the ignorance of
anatomy, which is just the complaint he has been making here,
and that, for want of it, ' they quarrel many times with the
humours which are not in fault, the fault being in the very
frame and mechanic of the part, which cannot be removed by
medicine alterative, but must be accommodated and palliated by
diet and medicines familiar' There, too, he reports the lack of
medicinal history, and gives directions for supplying it, just
such directions as he gives here, but that which makes the
astounding difference in the reading of these reports to-day, is,
that the one has been accepted, and the other has not ; nay,
that the one has been read, and the other has not: for how else
can we account for the fact, that men of learning, in our time,
come out and tell us deliberately, not merely that this man's
place in history, is the place of one who devoted his genius to
the promotion of the personal convenience and bodily welfare
of men, but, that it is the place of one who gave up the nobler
nature, deliberately, on principle, and after examination and
reflection, as a thing past help from science, as a thing lying
out of the range of philosophy ? How else comes it, that the
critic to-day tells us, dares to tell us, that this leader's word to
the new ages of advancement is, that there is no scientific ad-
vancement to be looked for hei*e ? — how else could he tell us,
with such vivid detail of illustration, that this innovator and
proposer of advancement, never intended his Novum Organum
to be applied to the cure of the moral diseases, to the subduing
of the will and the AFFECTIONS, — but thought, because the
old philosophy had failed, there was no use in trying the new;
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 39
— because the philosophy of words, and preconceptions, had
failed, the philosophy of observation and application, the philo-
sophy of ideas as they are in nature, and not as they are in the
mind of man merely, the philosophy of laivs, must fail also ; —
because argument had failed, art was hopeless ; — because
syllogisms, based on popular, unscientific notions were of no
effect, practical axioms based on the scientific knowledge of
natural causes, and on their specific developments, were going
to be of none effect also ? If the passages which are now under
consideration, had been so much as read, how could a learned
man, in our time, tell us that the author of the ' Advancement
of Learning ' had come with any such despairful word as that
to us, — to tell us that the new science he was introducing
upon this Globe theatre, the science of laws in nature, offered
to Divinity and Morality no aid, — no ministry, no service
in the cure of the mind ? And the reason why they have not
been read, the reason why this part of the ' Advancement of
Learning,' which is the principal part of it in the intention of
its author, has been overlooked hitherto is, that the Aj:t of
Tradition, which is described, here — the art of the Tradition,
and delivery of knowledges which are foreign from opinions
received, was in the hand of its inventor, and able to fulfil his
pleasure.
After the knowledge of the divers characters of men's
natures then, the next article of this inquiry is the diseases
and infirmities of the mind, which are no other than the
perturbations and distempers of the affections. For as
the ancient politicians in popular estates were wont to compare
the people to the sea, and the orators to the winds, because the
sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds did not move
and trouble it ; so the people would be peaceable and tractable, if
the seditious orators did not set them in working and agitation; so
it may be fitly said, that the mind, in the nature thereof, would
be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did not put
it into tumult and perturbation. And here, again, I find,
strange as before, that Aristotle should have written divers
volumes of Ethics, and never handled THE affections,
140 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
which is the principal subject thereof-, and yet, in his Rhetorics,
where they are considered but collaterally, and in a second
degree, as they may be moved by speech, he findeth place for
them, and handleth them well for the quantity, but where their
true place is, he pretermitteth them. (Very much the method
of procedure adopted by the philosopher who composes that
criticism ; who also finds a place for the affections in passing,
where they are considered collaterally, and in a second degree,
and for the quantity, he handleth them well, and who knows
how to bring his Rhetorics to bear on them, as well as the
politicians in popular estates did of old, though for a different
end; but where their true place is, he, too, pretermitteth. them;
and, in his Novum Organum, he keeps so clear of them, and
pretermits them so fully, that the critics tell us he never meant
it should touch them.) 'For it is not his disputations about
pleasure and pain that can satisfy this inquiry, no more than
he that should generally handle the nature of light can be said
to handle the nature of colours; for pleasure and pain are to
the particular affections as light is to the particular colours/
Is not this a man for particulars, then? And when he comes
to the practical doctrine, — to the art — to the knowledge,
which is power, — will he not have particulars here, as well as
in those other arts which are based on them ? Will he not
have particulars here, as well as in chemistry and natural phi-
losophy, and botany and mineralogy; or, when it comes to
practice here, will he be content, after all, with the old line of
argument, and elegant disquisition, with the old generalities
and subtleties of definition, which required no collection of
particulars, which were independent of observation, or for
which the popular accidental observation sufficed ? ' Better
travels, I suppose, had the Stoics taken in this argument, as far
as I can gather by that which we have at secondhand. But yet
it is like it was after their manner, rather in subtlety of defini-
tions, which, in a subject of this nature, are but curiosities, than
in active and ample descriptions and observations.
So, likewise, I find some particular writings of an elegant nature,
touching some of the affections; as of anger, of comfort upon
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 14I
adverse accidents, of tenderness of countenance, and others.'
And such writings were not confined to the ancients. Some
of us have seen elegant writings of this nature, published
under the name of the philosopher who composes this criticism,
and suggests the possibility of essays of a more lively and ex-
perimental kind, and who seems to think that the treatment
should be ample, as well as active.
* But the Poets and Writers of History are the best
Doctors of this knowledge, where we may find, painted forth
with great life, how affections are kindled and incited, and how
pacified and refrained'? — certainly, that is the kind of learning
we want here: — 'and how, again, contained from act and
further degreef — very useful knowledge, one would say, and it
is a pity it should not be \ diffused,' but it is not every poet
who can be said to have it ; — ' how they disclose themselves —
how they work — how they vary;' — this is the science of them
clearly, whoever has it; — how they gather and fortify — how
they are enwrapped one within another? — yes, there is one Poet,
one Doctor of this science, in whom we can find that also; —
1 and how they do fight and encounter one with another, and
other like particularities.' We all know what Poet it is, to
whose lively and ample descriptions of the affections and
passions — to whose particularities — that description best ap-
plies, and in what age of the world he lived ; but no one, who
has not first studied them as scientific exhibitions, can begin
to perceive the force — the exclusive force — of the reference.
1 Amongst the which, this last is of special use in moral and
CIVIL matters : how, I say, to set affection against affection, and
to master one by another, even as we used to hunt beast with
beast, and fly bird with bird, which otherwise, percase, we
could not so easily recover.' The Poet has not only exhibited
this with very voluminous and lively details, but he, too, has
concluded his precept ; —
' One fire burns out another's burning ' —
1 One desperate grief cures with another's languish '— •
1 Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.'
Romeo and Juliet
142 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
* As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity ;
And pity to the general wrong of Rome
Hath done this deed on Ccesar?
Jvlius Caesar.
for it is the larger form, which is the worthier, in that new
department of mixed mathematics which this philosopher was
cultivating.
' One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail :
Eights by rights fouler, strength by strengths do fail.'
Coriolanus.
And for history of cases, see the same author in Hamlet and
other plays*
* This philosopher's prose not unfrequently contains the key of the
poetic paraphrase ; and the true reading of the line, which has occa-
sioned so much perplexity to the critics, may, perhaps, be suggested by
this connection — 'to set affection against affection, and to master one
by another, even as we hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird.'
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 143
CHAPTER V.
ALTERATION.
Hast thou not learn'd me how
To make perfumes ? distil ? preserve ? yea, so,
That our great king himself doth woo me oft
For my confections ? Having thus far proceeded,
(Unless thou think'st me devilish,) is't not meet
That I did amplify my judgment in
Other conclusions ? Cymbeline.
npHUS far, it is the science of Man, as he is, that is pro-
-1- pounded. It is a scientific history of the Mind and its
diseases, built up from particulars, as other scientific histories
are; and having disposed, in this general manner, of that
which must be dealt with by way of application, those points
of nature and fortune, which he puts down as the basis and
conditions to which all our WORK is limited and tied, we come
now to that which is within our power — to those points which
we can deal with by way of alteration, and not of applu
cation merely ; and yet points which are operating perpetually
on the human character, changing the will and appetite, and
altering the conduct, by laws not less sure than those which
operate in the occult processes of nature, and determine dif-
ferences behind the scene, or out of the range of our volition.
And if after having duly weighed the hints we have already
received of the importance of the subject, we do not any
longer suffer ourselves to be put off the track, or bewildered by
the first rhetorical effect of the sentence in which these agencies
are introduced to our attention, — if we look at that rapid series
of words, as something else than the points of a period, if we
stop long enough to recover from the confusion which a mere
string of names, a catalogue or table of contents, crowded into
a single sentence, will, of necessity, create, — if we stop long
enough to see that each one of these words is a point in the
table of a new science, we shall perceive at once, that after
144 THE ELIZABETHAN AKT OF TRADITION.
having made all this large allowance, this new allowance for
that which is without our power, there is still a very, very large
margin of operation, and discovery, and experiment left; that
there is still a large scope of alteration left — alteration in man
as he is. For we shall find that these forces which are within our
power, are the very ones which are making, and always have been
making, man what he is. Kunning our eye along this table of
forces and supplies, with that understanding of its uses, we
shall perceive at once, that we have the most ample material
here, if it were but scientifically handled ; untried, inexhaustible
means and appliances for raising man to the height of his
pattern and original, to the stature of a perfect man.
It is not the material of this regimen of growth and
advancement, it is not the Materia Medica that is wanting, —
it is the science of it. It is the natural history of these forces,
with the precepts scientifically concluded on them, that is
wanting. The appliances are here; the scientific application
of them remains to be made, and until these have been tried,
it is too early to pronounce on the case ; until these have been
tried, just as other precepts of the new science have been,
it is too soon to say that that science of nature, — that know-
ledge of laws — that foreknowledge of effects, which operates so
remedially in all other departments of the human life, is
without application, is of no efficiency here ; until these have
been tried it is too soon to say that the science of nature is not
what the man who brought it in on this Globe theatre declared
it to be, the handmaid of Divinity, the intelligent handmaid and
minister of religion, to whose discretion in the economy of
Providence, much, much has evidently been left.
And it was no assumption in this man to claim, as he did
claim, a divine and providential authority for this procedure.
And those who intelligently fulfil their parts in this great en-
terprise for man's relief, and the Creator's glory, have just as
clear a right to say, as those of old who fulfilled with such
means and lights, and inspirations as their time gave them,
their part in the plan of the human advancement, • it is God
who worketh in us.'
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 145
' Now come we to those points which are within our com-
mand, and have force and operation upon the mind, to affect
the will and appetite, and to alter manners: wherein they
ought to have handled custom, exercise, habit, edu-
cation, EXAMPLE, IMITATION, EMULATION, COMPANY,
FRIENDS, PRAISE, REPROOF, EXHORTATION, FAME, LAWS,
books, studies: these, as they have determinate use in
moralities, from these the mind suffereth ; and of these are
such receipts and regiments compounded and described, as
may serve to recover or preserve the health and good estate of
the mind, as far as pertaineth to human medicine; of which
number we will insist upon some one or two, as an example of
the rest, because it were too long to prosecute all.9 But the
careful reader perceives in that which follows, that the treat-
ment of this so vital subject, though all that the author has to
say upon it here, is condensed into these brief paragraphs, is
not by any means so miscellaneous, as this introduction and
' the first cogitation' on it, might, perhaps, have prepared him
to find it.
To be permitted to handle these forces openly, in the form
of literary report, and recommendation, would, no doubt, have
seemed to this inventor of sciences, in his day no small
privilege. But there was another kind of experiment in them
which he aspired to. He wished to take these forces in hand
more directly, and compound recipes, with them, and other
* regiments ' and cures. For by nature and carefullest study
he was a Doctor in this degree and kind — and a man thus
fitted, inevitably seeks his sphere. Very unlearned in this
science of human nature which he has left us, — much wanting
in analysis must he be, who can find in the persistent determi-
nation of such a man to possess himself of places of trust and
authority, only the vulgar desire for courtly distinction, and
eagerness for the paraphernalia of office. This man was not
wanting in any of the common natural sentiments; the private
and particular nature was large in him, and that good to which
he gives the preference in his comparison of those exclusive
aims and enjoyments, is ' the good which is active, and not that
L
146 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
which is passive1; both as it tends to secure that individual
perpetuity which is the especial craving of men thus specially
endowed, and on account of f that affection for variety and pro-
ceeding ' which is also common to men, and specially developed
in such men, — an affection which the goods of the passive
nature are not able to satisfy. * But in enterprises, pursuits and
purposes of life, there is much variety whereof men are sensi-
ble with pleasure in their inceptions, progressions, recoils,
re-integration, approaches and attainings to their ends.' And he
gives us a long insight into his own particular nature and history
in that sentence. He is careful to distinguish this kind of
good from the good of society, ' though in some cases it hath
an incident to it. For that gigantine state of mind which
possesseth the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla,
and infinite other in smaller model, who would have all men
happy or unhappy, as they were their friends or enemies, and
would give form to the world according to their own humours,
which is the true theomachy, pretendeth and aspireth to active
good though it recedeth farthest from that good of society, which
we have determined to be the greater.1
In no troubler or benefactor of the world, on the largest
scale, in no theomachist of any age, whether intelligent and
benevolent, or demoniacal and evil, had this nature which he
here defines so clearly, ever been more largely incorporated,
or more effectively armed. But in him this tendency to per-
sonal aggrandisement was overlooked, and subordinated by the
larger nature, — by the intelligence which includes the whole,
and is able to weigh the part with it, and by the sentiments
which enforce or anticipate intelligent decision.
Both these facts must be taken into the account, if we would
read his history fairly. For he composed for himself a plan of
living, in which this naturally intense desire for an individual
perpetuity and renown, and this love of action and enterprise
for its own sake, was sternly subordinated to the noblest ends
of living, to the largest good of his kind, to the divine and
eternal law of duty, to the relief of man's estate and the
Creator's glory. And without making any claim on his
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 147
behalf, which it would be unworthy to make for one to whom
the truth was dearer than the opinions of men ; it may be
asserted, that whatever errors of judgment or passion, we may
find, or think we find in him, these ends were with him pre-
dominant, and shaped his course.
He was not naturally a man of letters, but a man of action,
intensely impelled to action, and it was because he was for-
bidden to fulfil his enterprise in person, because he had to
write letters of direction to those to whom he was compelled
to entrust it, because he had to write letters to the future, and
leave himself and his will in letters, that letters became, in his
hands, practical. He, too, knew what it was to be compelled
* to unpack his heart in words ' when deeds should have ex-
pressed it.
But even words are forbidden him here. After all the pains
he has taken to show us what the deficiency is which he is
reporting here, and what the art and science which he is pro-
posing, he can only put down a few paragraphs on the subject,
casually, as it were, in passing. Of all these forces which have
operation on the mind, and with which scientific appliances
for the human mind should be compounded, he can only e insist
upon some one or two as an example of the rest.'
That was all that a writer, who was at the same time a
public man, could venture on, — a writer who had once been
under violent political suspicion, and was still eagerly watched,
and especially by one class of public functionaries, who seemed
to feel, that with all his deference to their claims, there was
something there not quite friendly to them, this was all that
he could undertake to insist upon l in that place.' But a
writer who had the advantage of being already defunct — a
writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and
who was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his
place, could of course manage this part of the subject differ-
ently. He would not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps.
And if he had at the same time the advantage of a foreign
name and seignorie, he could come out in England at this verj'
crisis with the freest exhibitions of the points which are here
l2
148 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
only indicated. He could even put them down openly in his
table of contents, every one of them, and make them the titles
of his chapters.
There was a work published in England, in that age, in
which these forces, of which only the catalogue is inserted here,
these forces which are in our power, which we can alter, forces
from which the mind suffer eth, which have operation upon the
mind to affect the will and appetite, are directly dealt with in
the most subtle and artistic manner, in the form of literary
essay; and in the bolder chapters, the author's observations and
criticisms are clearly put down ; his scientific suggestions of
alterations and new compounds, his scientific doctrine of care-
ful alterations^ scientific doctrine of surgery, and adaptation
of regimen, and cure to different ages, and differing social con-
ditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the English public
swallows it without any difficulty at all, and perceives nothing
disagreeable or dangerous in it.
This work contains, also, some of those other parts of the
new science which have just been reported as wanting, parts
which are said by the inventor of this science, to have a great
ministry and suppeditation to policy, as well as morality, and
the natural history of the creature, which it is here proposed
to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever to con-
siderations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at
the subject from any less earnest and practical — from any less
elevated point of view.
Of course, it was perfectly competent for a Gascon whose
gasconading was understood to be without any motive beyond
that of vanity and egotism, and without any incidence to effects,
to say, in the way of mere foolery, many things which an
English statesman could not then so well endorse. And in
case his personality were called in question, there was the
mountain to retreat to, and the saint of the mount, in whose
behalf the goose is annually sacrificed by the English people,
the saint under whose shield and name the great English phi-
losopher sleeps. In fact, this personage is not so limited in his
quarters as the proper name might seem to imply. One does
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC.
149
not have to go to the south of France to find him. But it is
certainly remarkable, that a work in Natural History, com-
posed by the inventors of the science of observation, and the
first in the field, containing their observations in that part of
the field too, in which the deficiency appeared to them most
important, should have been able to pass so long under so thin
a disguise, under this merest gauze of egotism, unchallenged.
These essaies, however, have not been without result. They
have been operating incessantly, ever since, directly upon the
leading minds, and indirectly upon the minds of men in gene-
ral, (for many who had never read the book, have all their
lives felt its influence), and tending gradually to the clearing
up of the human intelligence in ' the practice part of life ' in
general, and to the development of a common sense on the
topics here handled, much more creditable to the species than
anything that the author could find stirring in his age. When
the works which the propounders of the Great Instauration
took pains to get composed by way of filling up their plan of
it, a little, come to be collected and bound, this one will have
to find its place among them.
But here, at home, in his own historical name and figure, in
his own person, instead of conducting his magnificent scientific
experiments on that scale which the genius of his activity, and
the largeness of his good will, would have prescribed to him,
instead of founding his House of Solomon as he would have
founded it, (as- that proximity to the throne, when it was the
throne of an absolute monarch might have enabled him to
found it, if the monarch he found there had been, indeed,
what he claimed to be, a lover of learning,) instead of such
large help and countenance as that of the king, to whom this
great proposition was addressed, the philosopher of that time
could not even venture on a literary essay in this field under
that protection ; it was as much as he could do, it was as much
as his favor with the king was worth, to slip in here, in this
conspicuous place, where it would be sure to be found, sooner
or later, the index of his essaies.
' It would be too long] he says, ' to inquire here into the
150 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
operation of all these social forces that are making men, that
are doing more to make them what they are, than nature her-
self is doing,' for, « know thou/ the Poet of this Philosophy says,
1 know thou MEN ARE as the TIME IS.' He has included here,
in these points which he would have scientifically handled, that
which makes times, that which can be altered, that which Ad-
vancements of Learning, however, set on foot at first, are sure
in the end to alter. ' We will insist upon some one or two as
an example of the rest/ And we find that the points he resumes
to speak of here, are, indeed, points of primary consequence;
social forces that do indeed need a scientific control, effects re-
ported, and precepts concluded. Custom and Habit, Books and
Studies, and then a kind of culture, which he says, * seemeth
to be more accurate and elaborate than the rest,' which we
find, upon examination, to be a strictly religious culture, and
lastly the method to which he gives the preference, as the most
compendious and summary in its formative or reforming influ-
ence, f the electing and propounding unto a man's self good and
virtuous ends of his life, such as may be in a reasonable sort
within his compass to attain.' He says enough under these
heads to show the difficulty of writing on a subject where the
science has been reported wanting, while the ' Art and Practice*
is prescribed.
He lays much stress on custom and habit, and gives some
few precepts for its management, ' made out of the pith and
heart of sciences,' but he speaks briefly, and chiefly for the
purpose of indicating the value he attaches to this point, for he
concludes his precepts and observations on it, thus. ' Many
other axioms there are, touching the managing of exercise and
custom, which being so conducted, — scientifically conducted —
do prove, iWeei another nature ['almost, can change the
stamp of nature,' — is Hamlet's word on this point] ; but being
governed by chance, doth commonly prove but AN APE of
nature, and bringeth forth that which is lame and counterfeit.'
For not less than that is the difference between the scientific
administration of these things, from which the mind suffereth,
and the blind, hap-hazard one.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 151
But in proceeding to the next point on which he ventures
to offer some suggestions, that of books and studies, we
shall do well to take with us that general doctrine of cure,
founded upon the nature of things, which he produces under
the head of the cure of the body, with a distinct allusion to
its proper application here. And it is well to observe how
exactly the tone of the criticism in this department, chimes in
with that of the criticism already reported here. * In the con-
sideration of the cures of diseases, I find a deficiency in the
receipts of propriety respecting the particular cures of diseases ;
for the physicians have frustrated the fruit of tradition, and
experience, by their magistracies in adding and taking out, and
changing quid pro quo in their receipts at their pleasure,
commanding SO OVER the medicine, as the medicine
cannot command over the disease? that is a piece of criticism
which appears to belong to the general subject of cure; and
here is one which he himself stops to apply to a different
branch of it.
'But, lest I grow more particular than is agreeable, either to
my intention or proportion, I will conclude this part with the
note of one deficiency more, which seemeth to me of greatest
consequence, which is, that the prescripts in use are too com-
pendious TO ATTAIN THEIR END; for, to my understanding,
it is a vain and flattering opinion to think any medicine can be
so sovereign, or so happy, as that the receipt or use of it can
work any great effect upon the body of man : it were a strange
speech, which spoken, or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from
a vice to which he were by nature subject; it is order, pursuit,
sequence, and interchange of application which is mighty in
nature,' (and it is power we are inquiring for here) ' which,
although it requires more exact knowledge in prescribing, and
more precise obedience in observing, yet it is recompensed with
the magnitude of effects/
Possessed now of his general theory of cure, we shall better
understand his particular suggestions in regard to these medi-
cines and alteratives of the mind and manners, which are here
under consideration.
152 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
' So if we should handle BOOKS and studies/ he con-
tinues,, having handled custom and habit a little and their
powers, in that profoundly suggestive manner, * so if we should
handle books and studies, and what influence and operation
they have upon manners, are there not divers precepts of
great caution and direction f ' A question to be asked. And
he goes on to make some further enquiries and suggestions
which have considerably more in them than meets the ear
They appear to involve the intimation that many of our books
on moral philosophy, come to us from the youthful and poetic
ages of the world, ages in which sentiment and spontaneous
conviction supplied the place of learning ; for the accumula-
tions of ages of experiment and conclusion, tend to maturity
and sobriety of judgment in the race, as do the corresponding
accumulations in the individual experience and memory.
'And the reason why books' (which are adapted to the popular
belief in these early and unlearned ages) 'are of so little effect
towards honesty of life, is that they are not read and re-
volved — revolved — as they should be, by men in mature years'
But unlearned people are always beginners. And it is dan-
gerous to put them upon the task, or to leave them to the task
of remodelling their beliefs and adapting them to the ad-
vancing stages of human development. He, too, thinks it
is easier to overthrow the old opinions, than it is to dis-
criminate that which is to be conserved in them. The hints
here are of the most profoundly cautious kind — as they have
need to be — but they point to the danger which attends
the advancement of learning when rashly and unwisely con-
ducted, and the danger of introducing opinions which are in
advance of the popular culture; dangers of which the history
of former times furnished eminent examples and warnings
then; warnings which have since been repeated in modern
instances. He proposes that books shall be tried by their
effects on manners. If they fail to produce HONESTY OF LIFE,
and if certain particular forms of truth which were once effec-
tive to that end, in the course of a popular advancement, or
change of any kind, have lost that virtue, let them be ex-
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 53
amined; let the translation of them be scientifically accom-
plished, so that the main truth be not lost in the process, so
that men be not compelled by fearful experience to retrace
their steps in search of it, even, perhaps, to the resuming of
the old, dead form again, with all its cumbrous inefncacies ;
for the lack of a leadership which should have been able
to discriminate for them, and forestall this empirical pro-
cedure.
Speaking of books of Moral science in general, and their
adaptation to different ages, he says — ' Did not one of the
fathers, in great indignation, call POESY ' vinum demonumj
because it increaseth temptations, perturbations, and vain
opinions'? Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be re-
garded, wherein he saith, ' That young men are no fit auditors
of moral philosophy,' because they are not settled from the
boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and
experience'?' [And our Poet, we may remark in passing,
seems to have been struck with that same observation ; for by
a happy coincidence, he appears to have it in his commonplace
book too, and he has not only made a note of it, as this one
has, but has taken the trouble to translate it into verse. He
does, indeed, go a little out of his way in time, to introduce
it; but he is a poet who is fond of an anachronism, when it
happens to serve his purpose —
1 Paris and Troilus, you have both said well ;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have glozed ; but, superficially, not much
Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy?]
The question is, then, as to the adaptations of forms, of
moral instruction to different ages of the human development.
For when a decided want of ■ honesty of life ' shows itself, in any
very general manner, under the fullest operation of any given
doctrine which is the received one, it is time for men of learn-
ing to begin to look about them a little ; and it is a time when
directions so cautious as these should not by any means be
154 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
despised by those on whom the responsibility of direction,
here, is in any way devolved.
1 And doth it not hereof come, that those excellent books
and discourses of the ancient writers, whereby they have per-
suaded unto virtue most effectually, by representing her in state
and majesty, and popular opinions against virtue in their
parasites1 coats, fit to be scorned and derided, are of so little
effect towards honesty of life —
[Polonius. — Honest, my lord 1
Hamlet. — Ay, honest.]
— because they are not read and revolved by men, in their ma-
ture and settled years, but confined almost to boys and beginners ?
But is it not true, also, that much less young men are fit
auditors of matters of policy till they have been thoroughly
seasoned in religion and morality, lest their judgments be cor-
rupted, and made apt to think that there are no true differ-
ences of things, but according to utility and fortune.'
By putting in here two or three of those f elegant sentences '
which the author has taken out from their connections in his
discourses, and strung together, by way of making more per-
ceptible points and stronger impressions with them, according
to that theory of his in regard to aphorisms already quoted,
we shall better understand this passage, for the connection in
which it is introduced here tends somewhat to involve and
obscure the meaning. * In removing superstitions,' he tells us,
then, in this so pointed manner, ' care should be had the good
be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done
when the people is the physician.1 ' Things will have their first
or second agitation.' [Prima Philosophia — pith and heart of
sciences: the author of this aphorism is sound and grounded.]
* If they be not tossed on the waves of counsel, they will be
tossed on the waves of fortune1 That last * tossing ' requires a
second cogitation. There might have been a more direct way
of expressing it; but this author prefers similes in such cases,
he tells us. But here is more on the same subject. * It were
good that men in their renovations follow the example of
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 155
time itself, which, indeed, innovateth greatly, but quietly, and
by degrees scarce to be perceived ;' and ' Discretion in speech
is more than eloquence.' These are the sentiments and
opinions of that man of science, whose works we are now
opening, not caring under what particular name or form we
may find them. One or two of these observations do not
sound at all like prescience now; but at the time when they
were given out as precepts of direction, it required that ac-
quaintance with the nature of things in general which is
derived from a large and studious observation of particulars, to
put them into a form so oracular.
But this general suggestion with regard to our books of
moral philosophy, and their adaptation to the largest effect on
the will and appetite under the given conditions of time —
conditions which involve the instruction of masses of men, in
whom affection predominates — men in whom judgment is not
yet matured — men not attempered with the time and experi-
ence of ages, by means of those preservations of it which the
traditions of learning make; beside this general suggestion in
regard to these so potent instrumentalities in manners, he has
another to make, one in which this general proposition to sub-
stitute learning for preconception in practical matters, — at least,
as far as may be, comes out again in the form of criticism, and
of a most specially significant kind. It is a point which he
touches lightly here; but one which he touches again and
again in other parts of this work, and one which he resumes
at large in his practical ethics.
1 Again, is there not a caution likewise to be given of the
doctrines of moralities themselves, some kinds of them, lest
they make men too precise, arrogant, incompatible, as Cicero
saith of Cato, in Marco Catone : ' Hsec bona quae videmus
divina et egregia ipsius scitote esse propria: quae nonnunquam
requirimus, ea sunt omnia non a natura, sed a magistro?'
And after glancing at the specific subject of remedial agen-
cies which are within the scope of our revision and renovation,
under some other heads, concluding with that which is of all
others the most compendious and summary, and again the
156 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
most noble and effectual to the reducing of the mind unto
virtue and good estate, he concludes this whole part, this part
in which the points and outlines of the new science — that
radical human science which he has dared to report deficient,
come out with such masterly grasp and precision, — he con-
cludes this whole part in the words which follow, — words
which it will take the author's own doctrine of interpretation
to open. For this is one of those passages which he com-
mends to the second cogitation of the reader, and he knew
if 'the times that were nearer ' were not able to read it, 'the
times that were farther off' would find it clear enough.
1 Therefore I do conclude this part of Moral Knowledge
concerning the culture and regiment of the Mind; wherein
if any man, considering the facts thereof which I have enumerated,
do judge that my labour is to COLLECT INTO AN ART OR
science, that which hath been pretermitted by others, as mat-
ters of common sense and experience, he judgeth well.' The
practised eye will detect on the surface here, some marks of
that style which this author recommends in such cases: es-
pecially where such strong pre-occupations exist; already we
perceive that this is one of those sentences which is addressed
to the skill of the interpreter; in which, by means of a careful
selection and collocation of words, two or more meanings are
conveyed under one form of expression. And it may not be
amiss to remember here, that this is a style, according to the
author's own description of it elsewhere, in which the more
involved and enigmatical passages sometimes admit of several
readings, each having its own pertinence and value, according
to the mental condition of the reader; and that it is a style
in which even the delicate, collateral sounds, that are distinctly
included in this art of tradition, must come in sometimes in
the more critical places, in aid of the interpretation. 'But
what if it be an harangue whereon his life depends?'
1. — If any man considering the parts thereof, which I have
enumerated, do judge that MY labour is to collect into an
art or science that which hath been preter-mitted by
others, he judgeth well.
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 157
2. — If any man do judge that my labour is to collect into an
art or science that which hath been pretermitted by others
AS MATTERS OF COMMON SENSE and EXPERIENCE, he
judgeth well.
3.— If any man considering the PARTS THEREOF WHICH I
have enumerated, do judge that my labor is to collect
into an art or science, that which hath been pretermitted
by others, as matters of common sense and experience, he
judgeth well.
But if there be any doubt, about the more critical of these
meanings, let us read on, and we shall find the criticism of
this great and greatest proposition, the proposition to substi-
tute learning for preconception, in the main department of
human practice, brought out with all the emphasis and signi-
ficance which becomes the close of so great a period in
sciences, and not without a little flowering of that rhetoric,
in which beauty is the incident, and discretion is more than
eloquence.
'But as Philocrates sported with Demosthenes you may
not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for
he drinketh water, and i" drink wine. And like as we read
of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep —
Sunt gemmae somni portse, quarum altera fertur
Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris :
Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
Sed falsa ad ccelum mittunt insomnia manes.
So if we put on sobriety and attention we shall find it a
sure maxim in knowledge, that the more pleasant liquor of wine
is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth
the falser dreams.'
158 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER VI.
It is a basilisk unto mine eyes, —
Kills me to look on't,
* * »
This fierce abridgment
Hath to it circumstantial branches, which
Distinction should be rich in.
Cymbeline.
fpHIS whole subject is introduced here in its natural and
inevitable connection with that special form of Delivery
and Tradition which it required. For we find that connection
indicated here, where the matter of the tradition, and that
part of it which specially requires this form is treated, and we
find the form itself specified here incidentally, but not less
unmistakeably, that it is in that part of the work where the
Art of Tradition is the primary subject. In bestowing on
1 the parts ' of this science, which the propounder of it is here
enumerating — that consideration which the concluding pa-
ragraph invites to them, we find, not only the fields clearly
marked out, in which he is labouring to collect into an art
and science, that which has hitherto been conducted without
art or science, and left to common sense and experience, the
fields in which these goodly observations grow, of which men
have hitherto been content to gather a poesy to carry in their
hands, — (observations which he will bring home to his con-
fectionery, in such new and amazing prodigality and selection),
but we find also the very form which these new collections,
with the new precepts concluded on them, would naturally
take, and that it is one in which these new parts of the new
science and its art, which he is labouring to constitute, might
very well come out, at such a time, without being recognised
as philosophy at all, — might even be brought out by other
men without science, as matters of common sense and expe-
rience; though the world would have to concede, and the
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 159
longer the study went on, the more it would be inclined to
concede, that the common sense and experience was upon the
whole somewhat uncommon, and some who perceived its
reaches, without finding that it was art or science, would even
be inclined to call it preternatural.
And when he tells us, that the first step in the New Science
is the dissection of character } and the production and exhibition
of certain scientifically constructed portraits, by means of
which this may be effected, portraits which shall represent
in their type-form by means of ' illustrious instances/ the seve-
ral characters and tempers of men's natures and dispositions
1 that the secret disposition of each particular man may be laid
open, and from a knowledge of the whole, the precepts concern-
ing the cures of the mind may be more rightly concluded,' —
surely here, to a man of learning, the form, — the form in
which these artistically composed diagrams will be found, is
not doubtfully indicated.
And when, at the next step, we come to the history of ' the
affections,' and are told distinctly that here philosophy, the
philosophy of practice, must needs descend from the abstrac-
tion, and generalities of the ancient morality, for those obser-
vations and experiments which it is the legitimate business of
the poet to conduct, though the poet, in conducting these ob-
servations and experiments, has hitherto been wanting in the
rigor which science requires, when we are told that philosophy
must inevitably enter here, that department of learning, of
which the true poet is * the doctor/ — surely here at least, we
know where we are. Certainly it is not the fault of the author
of the Great Instauration if we do not know what department
of learning the collections of the new learning which he claims
to have made will be found in — if found at all, must be found
in. It is not his fault if we do not know in what department
to look for the applications of the Novum Organum to those
' noblest subjects ' on which he preferred to try its powers, he
tells us. Here at least — the Index to these missing books — is
clear enough.
But in his treatment of Poetry, as one of the three grand
l6o THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
departments of Human Learning, for not less noble than that,
is the place he openly assigns to it, though that open and
primary treatment of it, is superficially brief, he contrives to
insert in it, his deliberate, scientific preference of it, as a means
of effective scientific exhibition, to either of the two graver
parts, which he has associated with it — to history on the one
hand, as corresponding to the faculty of memory, and to phi-
losophy or mere abstract statement on the other, as correspond-
ing to the faculty of Reason ; for it is that great radical de-
partment of learning, which is referred to the Imagination, that
constitutes in this distribution of learning the third grand divi-
sion of it. He shows us here, in a few words, under different
points and heads, what masterly facilities, what indispensable,
incomparable powers it has for that purpose. There is a form of
it, 'which is as A VISIBLE HISTORY, and is an image of actions
as if they were present, as history is, of actions that are past.'
There is a form of it which is applied only to express some
special purpose or conceit, which was used of old by philoso-
phers to express any point of reason more sharp and subtle
than the vulgar, and, nevertheless, now and at all times these
allusive parabolical poems do retain much life and vigour
because' — note it, — note that because, — that two-fold because,
because reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so
fit. And he adds, also, ' there remains another use of this
poesy, opposite to the one j ust mentioned, for that use tendeth
to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered ;
and this other to retire and obscure it : that is, when the
secrets and mysteries of religion, policy or philosophy are involved
in fables and parables.'
But under the cover of introducing the ' Wisdom of the
Ancients/ and the form in which that was conveyed, he ex-
plains more at large the conditions which this kind of exhi-
bition best meets ; he claims it as a proper form of learning, and
tells us outright, that the New Science must be conveyed in it.
He has left us here, all prepared to our hands, precisely the
argument which the subject now under consideration requires.
* Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is, that a
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. l6l
concealed instruction and allegory, was originally intended in
many of the ancient fables; observing that some fables discover a
great and evident similitude, relation, and connection with the
things they signify, as well in the structure of the fable, as in the
propriety of the names whereby the persons or actors are charac-
terised, insomuch that no one could positively deny a sense and
meaning to be from the first intended and purposely shadowed
out in them ■ ; and he mentions some instances of this kind ;
and the first is a very explanatory one, tending to throw light
upon the proceedings of men whose rebellions, so far as politi-
cal action is concerned, have been successfully repressed. And
he takes occasion to introduce this particular fable repeatedly
in similar connections. ' For who can hear that Fame, after
the giants were destroyed, sprung up as their posthumous sister,
and not apply it to the clamour of parties, and the seditious
rumours which commonly fly about upon the quelling of in-
surrectibns. Or who, upon hearing that memorable expedition
of the gods against the giants, when the braying of Silenus
ass greatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not
clearly conceive that this directly points to the monstrous enter-
prises of rebellious subjects, which are frequently disappointed
and frustrated by vain fears and empty rumours. Nor is it won-
der if sometimes a piece of history or other things are intro-
duced by way of ornament, or if the times of the action are
confounded, [the very likeliest thing in the world to happen ;
things are often 'forced in time' as he has given us to under-
stand in complimenting a king's book where the person was
absent but not the occasion], or if part of one fable be tacked
to another, for all this must necessarily happen, as the fables
were the invention of men who lived in different ages, and had
different views, some of them being ancient, others more mo-
dern, some having an eye to natural philosophy, others to
morality and civil policy?
This appears to be just the kind of criticism we happen to
be in need of in conducting our present inquiry, and the pas-
sage which follows is not less to the purpose.
For, having given some other reasons for this opinion he
M
l62 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
has expressed in regard to the concealed doctrine of the an-
cients, he concludes in this manner: * But if any one shall,
notwithstanding this, contend that allegories are always adven-
titious, and no way native or genuinely contained in them, we
might here leave him undisturbed in the gravity of that judgment,
though we cannot but think it somewhat dull and phlegmatic,
and, if it were worth the trouble, proceed to another hind of
argument/ And, apparently, the argument he proceeds to, is
worth some trouble, since he takes pains to bring it out so
cautiously, under so many different heads, with such iteration
and fulness, taking care to insert it so many times in his work
on the Advancement of Learning, and here producing it again
in his Introduction to the Wisdom of the Ancients, accom-
panied with a distinct assurance that it is not the wisdom of the
ancients he is concerning himself about, and their necessities
and helps and instruments; though if any one persists in think-
ing that it is, he is not disposed to disturb him in the gravity
of that judgment. He honestly thinks that they had indeed
such intentions as those that he describes; but that is a ques-
tion for the curious, and he has other work on hand; he
happens to be one, whose views of learning and its uses, do
not keep him long on questions of mere curiosity. It is with
the Moderns, and not with the Ancients that he has to deal;
it is the present and the future, and not the past that he
'breaks his sleeps' for. Whether the Ancients used those fables
for purposes of innovation, and gradual encroachment on error
or not, here is a Modern, he tells us, who for one, cannot
dispense with them in his teaching.
For having disposed of his #r«w?r readers— thoseof thedull and
phlegmatic kind — in the preceding paragraph, and not think-
ing it worth exactly that kind of trouble it would have cost then
to make himself more explicit for the sake of reaching their
apprehension, he proceeds to the following argument, which is
not wanting in clearness for * those who happen to be of his ear/
' Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary
ends by the use of Parables, for parables serve as well to
instruct and illustrate, as to wrap up and envelope: [and what
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 63
is more, they serve at once that double purpose] 1 so that for
the present we drop the concealed use, and suppose the ancient
fables to be vague undeterminate things formed for amusement,
still the other use must remain, and can never be given up.
And every man of any learning must readily allow that this
method of instruction is grave, sober, exceedingly useful,
and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and
familiar passage to the human understanding, IN all new
discoveries that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar
opinion. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and
conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common,
were rare and little known, all things abounded with fables,
parables, similes, comparisons, allusions, which were not in-
tended to conceal, but to inform and teach, whilst the minds of
men continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtlety and
speculation, and even impatient, and in a manner incapable of
receiving such things as did not directly fall under and strike the
senses, ff For as hieroglyphics were in use before writings, so
were parables in use before argument. And even to this day, if
any man would let NEW light in upon the human under-
standing, [who was it that proposed to do that?] and conquer
prejudices without raising animosities, opposition, or disturb-
ance— [who was it that proposed to do that precisely — ]he
must still [ — note it — ] he must still go in the same path, and
have recourse to the like method.' Where are they then ? Search
and see. Where are they? — The lost Fables of the New Phi-
losophy? * To conclude, the knowledge of the earlier ages was
either great or happy ; great, if by design they made use of
tropes and figures ; happy, if whilst they had other views they
afforded matter and occasion to such noble contemplations. Let
either be the case, our pains perhaps will not be misemployed,
whether we illustrate ANTIQUITY or [hear] THINGS THEM-
SELVES.
But he complains of those who have attempted such inter-
* And those ages were not gone by, it seems, for these are the very
men of whom Hamlet speaks, ' who for the most part are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.1 *
m2
164 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OP TRADITION.
pretations hitherto, that * being unskilled in nature, and their
learning no more than that of common-place, they have
applied the sense of the parables to certain general and vulgar
matters, without reaching to their real purport, genuine inter-
pretation and full depth ;' certainly it would not be that kind
of criticism, then, which would be able to bring out the
subtleties of the new learning from those popular embodiments,
which he tells us it will have to take, in order to make some
impression, at least, on the common understanding. ' Settle
that question, then, in regard to the old Fables as you will, our
pains will not perhaps be misemployed, whether we illustrate
antiquity or things themselves,' and to that he adds, ' for my-
self, therefore, I expect to appear new in THESE COMMON
THINGS, because, leaving untouched • such as are sufficiently
plain and open, I shall drive only those that are either deep or
rich/ • For myself ?'—I?—lI expect to appear new in these
common things/ But elsewhere, where he lays out the argu-
ment of them, by the side of that ' resplendent and lustrous
mass of matter/ those heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and
felicity, that others have got glory from, it is some Poet we
are given to understand that is going to be found new in them.
There, the argument is all— all— poetic, and it is a theme for
one who, if he know how to handle it, need not be afraid to
put in his modest claim, with those who sung of old, the wrath
of heroes, and their arms.
Any one who does not perceive that the passages here
quoted were designed to introduce more than ' the wisdom of
the ancients', the reader who is disposed to conclude after a
careful perusal of these reiterated statements, in regard to the
form in which doctrines differing from received opinions must
be delivered, taken in connexion, too, with that draught of
the new science of the human culture and its parts and points,
which has just been produced here,— the reader who concludes
that this is, after all, a science that was able to dispense with
this method of appeal to the senses and the imagination; that
it was not obliged to have recourse to that path ; — that the NEW
LEARNING, 'the new DISCOVERY,' had here no fables, no
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 65
particular topics, and methods of tradition; that it contented
itself with abstractions and generalities, with 'the husks and
shells of sciences/ — such an one ought, undoubtedly, to be left
undisturbed in that opinion. He belongs precisely to that
class of persons which this author himself deliberately proposed
to leave to such conclusions. He is one whom this philosopher
himself would not take any trouble at all to enlighten on such
points. The other reading, with all its gravity, was designed
for him. The time for such an one to adopt the reading here
produced, will be, when ' those who are incapable of receiving
such things as do not directly fall under and strike the senses/
have, at last, got hold of it; when * the groundlings, who, for
the most part are capable of nothing but dumb show and noise/
have had their ears split with it, it will be time enough for him.
This Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to
whom the appeal is made, this new learning which the Wise
Man and Innovator of the Modern Ages tells us must be
clothed in fable, and adorned with verse, this learning that
must be made to fall under and strike the senses; this dumb
show of science, that is but show to him who cannot yet
take the player's own version of what it means ; this illustrated
tradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of
Human Nature, — where is it? This historical collection,
this gallery that was to contain scientific draughts and por-
traitures of the human character, that should exhaust its
varieties, — where is it? These new Georgics of the mind
whose argument is here, — where are they? This new Virgil
who might promise himself such glory, — such new glory in
the singing of them, — where is he? Did he make so deep a
summer in his verse, that the track of the precept was lost in
it? Were the flowers, and the fruit, so thick, there; was the
reed so sweet that the argument of that great husbandry could
make no point, — could leave no furrow in it?
' Where souls do couch on flowers, we '11 hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze :
Dido and her iEneas shall want troops,
And all the haunt be ours.'
1 66 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
' The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing
this great argument, this new argument, of the application of
SCIENCE to the Culture and Cure of the Mind, « the neglect of
our limes, wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the
reformation of their lives, may make this part seem superfluous.
As Seneca excellently saith, ' De partibus vitae quisquae de-
liberat, de summa nemo.' And is that, after all, — is that the
trouble still? Is it, that that characteristic of Elizabeth's time
— that same thing which Seneca complained of in Nero's,— is
it that that is not yet obsolete? Is that the reason, this so
magnificent part, this radical part of the new discovery of the
Modern Ages, is still held ' superfluous?' 'De partibus vitae
quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo/ 'Now that we have
spoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it
remaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto/ That is the
scientific proposition which has waited now two hundred and
fifty years, for a scientific audience. The health of the soul,
the scientific promotion of it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the
observations of its husbandry. c And if it be said,' he con-
tinues, anticipating the first inconsiderate objection, 'if it
be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to sacred
divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be
preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid.
For as the Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look
perpetually towards the mistress, and yet, no doubt, many things
are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to disce?-n of the
mistress9 will; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant
attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may
yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable
directions/
For the times that were 'far off' when that proposition was
made, it is brought out anew and reopened. Oh, people of the
ages of arts and sciences that are called by this man's name,
shall we have the fruits of his new doctrine of knowledge,
brought to our relief in all other fields, and reject it in this,
which he himself laid out, and claimed as its only worthy field ?
Instructed now in the validity of its claims, by its ' magnitude
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, * 1 67
of effects' in every department of the human practice to
which it has yet been applied, shall we permit the department
of it, on which his labour was expended, to escape that appli-
cation? Shall we suffer that wild barbaric tract of the human
life, which the will and affections of man create,— that tract
which he seized, — which it was his labour to collect into an
art or science, to lie unreclaimed still?
Oh, Man of the new ages of science, will you have the
new fore-knowledge, the magical command of effects, which
the scientific inquiry into causes as they are actual in na-
ture, puts into our hands, in every other practice, in every
other -culture and cure, — will you have the rule of this know-
ledge imposed upon your fields, and orchards, and gardens,
to assist weak nature in her f conservations' and 'advancements'
in these, — to teach her to bring forth here the latent ideals,
towards which she struggles and vainly yearns, and can only
point to, and wait for, till science accepts her hints; — will you
have the Georgics of this new Virgil to load your table with
its magic clusters; — will you take the Novum Organum to pile
your plate with its ideal advancements on spontaneous nature
and her perfections,; — will you have the rule of that Organum
applied in its exactest rigors, to all the physical oppositions of
your life, to minister to your physical safety, and comfort, and
luxury, and never relax your exactions from it, till the last
conceivable degree of these has been secured; and in this de-
partment of art and science, — this, in which the sum of our
good and evil is contained, — in a mere oversight of it, in a dis-
graceful indifference] and carelessness about it, be content to
accept, without criticism, the machinery of the past — instru-
mentalities that the unlearned ages of the world have left to us,
— arts whose precepts were concluded ages ere we knew that
knowledge is power.
Shall we be content to accept as a science any longer,
a science that leaves human life and its actualities and
particulars, unsearched, uncollected, unreduced to scientific
nomenclature and axiom? Shall we be content any longer
with a knowledge that is power, — shall we boast ourselves
1 68 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
any longer of a scientific art that leaves human nature,—
that makes over human nature to the tampering of an un-
watched, unchecked empiricism, that leaves our own souls
it may be, and the souls in which ours are garnered up, all
wild and hidden, and gnarled within with nature's crudities
and spontaneities, or choked and bitter with artificial, but
unscientific, unartistic repression?
Will you have of that divinely appointed and beautiful
1 handmaid,' that was brought in on to this Globe Theatre,
with that upward look, — with eyes turned to that celestial
sovereignty for her direction, with the sum of good in her
intention, with the universal doctrine of practice in her pro-
gramme, with the relief ' of man's estate and the Creator's
glory ' put down in her role, — with her new song — with her
song of man's nature and life as it is, on her lips — will you
have of her, only the minister to your physical luxuries and
baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth which
is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction,
in the name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-
delivery and tradition, that will enable it to live again,
4 though all the earth o'erwhelm it to men's eyes/ while this
Book of the Advancemement of Learning stands, do not
charge on this man henceforth, that election.
The times of that ignorance in which it could be thus ac-
credited, are past; for the leader of this Advancement is
already unfolding his tradition, and opening his books; and
he bids us debase his name no longer, into a name for these
sordid fatuities. The Leader of ages that are yet to be, —
ages whose nobler advancements, whose rational and scientific
advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human
form, it was given to him and to his company to plan and
initiate, — he declines to be held any longer responsible for
the blind, demoniacal, irrational spirit, that would seize on
his great instrument of science, and wrest it from its nobler
object and intent, and debase it into the mere tool of the
senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than
any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 1 69
fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god
in the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in
the brick and the mortar. This * broken science ! that has
no end of ends, this godless science, this railway learning
that travels with restless, ever quickening speed, no whither,
— these dead, rattling * branches ' and slivers of arts and
sciences, these modern arts and sciences, hacked and cut away
from that tree of sciences, from which they sprang, whereon
they grew, are his no longer. He declines to be held any
longer responsible for a materialism that shelters itself under
the name of philosophy, and identifies his own name with it.
Call it science, if you will, though science be the name for
unity and comprehension, and the spirit of life, the spirit of
the largest whole ; call it philosophy if you will, if you think
philosophy is capable of being severed from that common
trunk, in which this philosopher found its pith and heart, —
call it science, — call it philosophy, — but call it not, he says,
— call it not henceforth 'Baconian.3
For his labor is to collect into an art or science the doctrine
of human life. He, too, has propounded that problem, —
he has translated into the modern speech, that problem,
which the inspired Leader of men, of old propounded. * What
is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and
lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange for his
soul?' He, too, has recognized that ideal type of human
excellence, which the Great Teacher of old revealed and ex-
emplified; he has found scientifically, — he has found in the
universal law, — that divine dogma, which was taught of old
by One who spake as having authority — One who also had
looked on nature with a loving and observant eye, and found
in its source, the Inspirer of his doctrine. In his study of
that old book of divinity which he calls the book of God's
Power this Modern Innovator has found the scientific version
of that inspired command ' Be ye therefore perfect/ This new
science of morality, which is f moral knowledge3 is able to recog-
nise the inspiration and divinity of that received platform and
exemplar of good, and pours in on it the light of a universal
170 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
illustration. And in his new scientific policy, in his scientific
doctrine of success, in his doctrine of the particular and pri-
vate good, when he brings out at last the rule which shall
secure it from all the blows of fortune, what is it but that
same old ' Primum quarite,' which he produces, — clothing it
with the authority and severe exaction of a scientific rule in
art, — that same ' Primum qucerite ' which was published of old
as a doctrine of faith only. ' But let men rather build,' he
says, 'upon that foundation, which is as a corner-stone of
divinity and philosophy, wherein they join close; namely, that
same 'Primum qucerite' For divinity saith, 'Seek first the
kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added to you ' ;
and philosophy saith, 'Primum quaerite bona animicsetera aut
aderunt, aut non oberunt.'
And who will now undertake to say that it is, indeed,
written in the Book of God,— in the Book of the Providential
Design, and Creative Law, or that it is written in the Keve-
lation of a divine good will to men ; that those who cultivate
and cure the soul — who have a divine appointment to the
office of its cure — shall thereby be qualified to ignore its
actual laws, or that they shall find in the scientific investiga-
tion of its actual history, or in this new — so new, this so
wondrous and beautiful science, which is here laid out in all
its parts and points on the basis of a universal science of
practice, — no 'ministry and suppeditation } to their end?
Who shall say that the Regimen of the mind, that its Educa-
tion and healthful culture, as well as its cure, shall be able to
accept of no instrumentalities from the advancement of learn-
ing? Who shall say that this department of the human life
— this alone, is going to be held back to the past, with bonds
and cramps of iron, while all else is advancing; that this is
going to be held forever as a place where the old Aristotelian
logic, which we have driven out of every other field, can keep
its hold unchallenged still, — as a place for the metaphysics of
the school- men, the empty conceits, the old exploded inanities
of the Dark Ages, to breed and nestle in undisturbed?
Who shall claim that this department is the only one,
THE BACONIAN RHETORIC. 17I
which that gift, that is the last gift of Creation and Provi-
dence to man is forbidden to enter?
Surely it is the authorised doctrine of a supernatural aid,
that it is never brought in to sanction indolence and the neg-
lect of means and instruments already in our power; and in
that book of these new ages in which the doctrine of a suc-
cessful human practice was promulgated, is it not written that
in no department of the human want, ' can those noble effects,
which God hath set forth to be bought as the price, of labour,
be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful observances?'
And who that looks on the world as it is at this hour, with
all our boasted aids and instrumentalities, — who that hears that
cry of sorrow which goes up from it day and night, — who that
looks at these masses of men as they are, — who that dares to
look at all this vice and ignorance and suffering which no in-
strumentality, mighty to relieve, has yet reached, shall think
to put back, — as if we had no need of it, — this great gift of
light and healing, — this gift of power , which the scientific ages
are bringing in; this gift which the ages of 'anticipation/ the
ages of inspiration and spontaneous affirmation, could only
divinely — diviningly — foresee and promise ; — this gift which
the knowledge of the creative laws, the historic laws, the laws of
kind, as they are actual in the human nature and the human
life, puts into our hands? Who shall think himself compe-
tent to oppose this benefaction ? Alas for such an one ! let us
take up a lamentation for him. He has stayed too long; he
is 'lated in the world/ The constitution of things, the uni-
versal laws of being, and the Providence of this world are
against him. The track of the advancing ages goes over
him. He is at variance with that which was and shall be.
The world's wheel goes over him. And whosoever falls on that
stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it falls it shall grind
him to powder.
It is by means of the scientific Art of Delivery and Tra-
dition, that this doctrine of the scientific Culture and Cure of
the Mind, which is the doctrine of the scientific ages, has been
made over to us in the abstract ; and it is by means of the rule
172 THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF TRADITION.
of interpretation, which this Art of Delivery prescribes, it is
by means of the secret of an Illustrated Tradition, or Poetic
Tradition of this science, that we are now enabled to unlock
at last those magnificent collections in it — those inexhaustible
treasures and mines of it — which the Discoverer, in spite of
the time, has contrived to leave us, in that form of Fable and
Parable in which the advancing truth has always been left, —
in that form of Poesy in which the highest truth has, from of
old, been uttered. For over all this ground lay extended,
then, in watchful strength all safe and unespied, the basilisk
of whom the Fable goes, if he sees you first, you die for it,
— but if YOU SEE HIM FIRST, HE DIES. And this is the
Bishop who fought with a mace, because he would kill his
enemy and not wound him.
BOOK II.
ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF MORALITY
AND POLICY;
OB,
THE FABLES OF THE NEW LEARNING.
Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit.
Advancement of Learning.
INTRODUCTORY.
I. THE DESIGN.
npHE object of this Volume is merely to open as a study, and a
-*- study of primary consequence, those great Works of the
Modern Learning which have passed among us hitherto, for
lack of the historical and scientific key to them, as Works of
Amusement, merely.
But even in that superficial acquaintance which we have
had with them in that relation, they have, all the time, been
subtly operating upon the minds in contact with them, and
perpetually fulfilling the first intention of their Inventor.
' For,' says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages, — the
author of the Novum Organum, and of the Advancement of Learn-
ing,— in claiming this department of Letters as the necessary
and proper instrumentality of a new science, — of a science at
least, ' foreign to opinions received/ — as he claims elsewhere
that it is, under all conditions, the inevitable essential form of
this science in particular. * Men have proposed to answer two
different and contrary ends by the use of parables, for they
serve as well to instruct and illustrate as to wrap up and envelope,
174 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OP POLICY.
so that, though for the present, we drop the concealed use, and
suppose them to be vague undeterminate things, formed for
amusement merely, still the other use remains. ' And
every man of any learning must readily concede/ he says, ' the
value of that use of them as a method of popular instruction,
grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in
the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the
human understandings in all new discoveries, that are abstruse
and out of the road of vulgar opinion. They were used of
old by philosophers to express any point of reason more sharp
and subtle than the vulgar, and nevertheless now, and at all
times, these allusive parabolical forms retain much life and
vigor, because reason cannot be so sensible nor examples so fit.3
That philosophic use of them was to inform and teach, whilst
the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in matters of
subtilty and speculation, and even impatient and in a manner
incapable of receiving anything that did not directly fall under
and strike the senses.' And, even to this day, if any man would
let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer
prejudices without raising animosities, opposition, or disturbance,
he must still go in the same path and have recourse to the like
method.'
That is the use which the History and Fables of the New
Philosophy have already had with us. We have been feeding
without knowing it, on the 'principal and supreme sciences' —
the 'Prima Philosophia' and its noblest branches. We have
been taking the application of the Inductive Philosophy to the
principal concerns of our human life, and to the phenomena of
of the human nature itself, as mere sport and pastime; though
the precepts concluded, the practical axioms inclosed with it
have already forced their way into our learning, for all our
learning is, even now, inlaid and glittering with those i dis-
persed directions/
We have profited by this use of them. It has not been
pastime merely with us. We have not spent our time in vain
on this first stage of an Advancing Learning, a learning that
will not cease to advance until it has invaded all our empiricisms,
INTRODUCTORY. — THE DESIGN. 1 75
and conquered all our practice ; a learning that will recompence
the diligence, the exactitude, the severity of observance which
it will require here also (when it comes to put in its claim here,
as Learning and not Amusement merely), with that same mag-
nitude of effects that, in other departments, has already
justified the name which its Inventor gave it — a Learning
which will give us here, also, in return for the severity of
observance it will require, what no ceremonial, however exact-
ing can give us, that control of effects, with which, even in
its humblest departments, it has already fulfilled, in the eyes of
all the world, the prophecy which its Inventors uttered when
they called it the New Magic >
That first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern
Learning, we have had already ; and it is not yet exhausted.
But in that rapid development of a common intelligence,
to which the new science of practice has itself so largely
contributed, even in its lower and limited developments, we
come now to that other and so important use of these Fables,
which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for the
time, in his argument — that use of them, in which they
serve ' to wrap up and conceal ' for the time, or to limit to the
few, who are able to receive them, those new discoveries which
are as yet too far in advance of the common beliefs and opinions
of men, and too far above the mental habits and capacities of the
masses of men, to be safely or profitably communicated to the
many in the abstract.
But in order to arrive at this second and nobler use of them,
it will be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of
study from any that we have naturally thought it worth while
to spend on them, so long as we regarded them as works of pas-
time merely; and especially while that insuperable obstacle to any
adequate examination of them, which the received history of
the works themselves created, was still operating on the criticism.
The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap
up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because
they are not those common-place truths which we usually look
for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to have
176 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
a moral or politic intention, — truths which we are understood
to be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance
is only designed to impress the sensibility with them anew,
and to reach the will that would not take them from the
reason, by means of the senses or the imagination. It is not
that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge, or those conventional
opinions, those unanalysed popular beliefs, which we usually
expect to find without any trouble at all, on the very surface
of any work that has morality for its object, it is not any such
coarse, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble our-
selvers to look for here. This higher intention in these works
( their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth/ has
not yet been found, because the science which is wrapped in
them, though it is the principal science in the plan of the
Advancement of Learning, has hitherto escaped our notice,
and because of the exceeding subtilty of it, — because the
truths thus conveyed or concealed are new, and recondite, and
out of the way of any casual observation, — because in this
scientific collection of the phenomena of the human life, de-
signed to serve as the basis of new social arts and rules of
practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the vague,
popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for pur-
poses of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which
are actual and historical, those simple radical forms and dif-
ferences on which the doctrine of power and practice must be
based.
It is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the
most profoundly earnest to which these works now invite us.
Let those who will, stay in the playground still, and make such
sport and pastime of it there, as they may ; and let those who
feel the need of inductive rules here also, — here on the ground
which this pastime covers — let those who perceive that we
have as yet, set our feet only on the threshold of the Great
Instauration, find here with diligent research, the ascent to the
axioms of practice, — that ascent which the author of the science
of practice in general , made it his labour to hew out here, for
he undertook ' to collect here into an art or science, that which
INTRODUCTORY — THE DESIGN. 1 77
had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense
and experience.*
It does not consist with the design of the present work to
track that draught of a new science of morality and policy,
that ■ table ' of an inductive science of human nature, and
human life, which the plan of the Advancement of Learning
contains, with all the lettering of its compartments put down,
into these systematic scientific collections, which the Fables of
the Modern Learning, — which these magnificent Parabolical
Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.
This work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to
remove that primary obstacle to the diligent study of these
works, which the present theory of them contains; since that
concealment of their true intention and history, which was
inevitable at the time, no longer serves the author's pur-
pose, and now that the times are ripe for the learning which
they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the illus-
trations which are here produced, are produced with reference
to that object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those
' secrets of policy? which are the necessary introduction to
that which follows.
N
178 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
II. THE MISSING BOOKS OF THE GREAT INSTALLATION ;
OR, PHILOSOPHY ITSELF.
DID it never occur to the student of the Novum Organum
that the constant application of that * New Machine '
by the inventor of it himself, to one particular class of sub-
jects, so constant as to produce on the mind of the careless
reader the common impression, that it was intended to be
applied to that class only, and that the relief of the human
estate, in that one department of the human want, constituted
its whole design: did it never occur to the curious inquirer,
or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning,
that this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications
in the hands of its author is — under all the circumstances —
a thing worthy of being inquired into? Considering who
the author of it is, and that it is on the face of it, a new
method of dealing with facts in general, a new method of
obtaining axioms of practice from history in general, and not
a specific method of obtaining them from that particular de-
partment of history from which his instances are taken; and,
considering, too, that the author was himself aware of the
whole sweep of its applications, and that he has taken pains
to include in his description of its powers, the assertion, —
the distinct, deliberate assertion — that it is capable of being
applied as efficiently, to those nobler departments of the hu-
man need, which are marked out for it in the Great Instau-
ration — those very departments in which he was known
himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been
all his life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it
never occur to the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it,
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. 1 79
then, himself to those very subjects, instead of keeping so
stedfastly to the physical forces in his illustration of its
powers. And has any one ever read the plan of this man's
works? Has any one seen the scheme of that great enterprize,
for which he was the responsible person in his own time —
that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these pub-
lished acknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce
in his own name, to show what parts of his ( labor? — what
part of chief consequence was not thus produced ? Has'any one
seen that plan of a new system of Universal Science, which was
published in the reign of James the First, under the patronage
of that monarch ? And if it has been seen, what is the reason
there has been no enquiry made for those works, in which the
author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to
these very subjects ; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us,
in reference to that undertaking, that he is 710/ a vain promisor.
There is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history,
which the new method of discovery and invention requires as
the first step towards its conclusions, which is put down as the
third part of the Instauration, though the natural history
which is produced for that purpose is very far from fulfilling
the description and promise of that division. But where is
the fourth part of the Great Instauration? Has anybody
seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for
which all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is
subsidiary? Where is that part which consists of examples,
that are nothing but a particular application of the SECOND;
that is, the Novum Organum, — * and to subjects of the noblest
kind?' Where is 'that part of our work which enters upon
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead of dealing any longer, or pro-
fessing to deal, with the method merely of finding that
which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting that
method any longer in the abstract ? Where are the works
in which he undertakes to show it in operation, with its new
* grappling hooks' on the matter of the human life — applied
by the inventor himself to 'the noblest subjects? ' Surely
that would be a sight to see. What is the reason that our
N 2
l80 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
editors do not produce these so important works in their
editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include
them in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars
do not quote them? Instead of stopping with that mere
report of the condition of learning and its deficiences, and
that outline of what is to be done, which makes the first
part or Introduction to this work ; or stopping with the de-
scription of the new method, or the Novum Organum, which
makes the SECOND ; why don't they go on to the ' new phi-
losophy itself,' and show us that as well, — the very object of
all this preparation? When he describes in the SECOND part
his method of finding true terms, or rather the method of his
school, when he describes this new method of finding ' ideas,'
ideas as they are in nature, powers, causes, the elements of
history, or forms, as he more commonly calls them, when he
describes this new method of deducing axioms, axioms that are
ready for practice, he does, indeed, give us instances; but it so
happens, that the instances are all of one kind there. They are
the physical powers that supply his examples in that part.
In describing this method merely, he produces what he
calls his Tables of Invention, or Tables of Review of In-
stances; but where is that part in which he tells us we shall
find these same tables again, with ' the nobler subjects' on
them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his second
part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He
shews them up very industriously, and is very particular to
direct the admiring attention of the reader to their adaptation
as means to an end. But certainly there is nothing in that
specimen of what can be done with them which he contents
himself with there, that would lead any one to infer that the
power of this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going
to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were
not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true
cause of heat, and the infallible means of producing that
under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be
trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in
that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. l8l
real impression made on any one's mind by that book, that
there is any other kind of invention or discovery intended in
the practical applications of this method ? The very free, but
of course not pedantic, use of the new terminology of a new-
school in philosophy, in which this author indulges — a ter-
minology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one
cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn
of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so
entirely, to construct; his continued preference for these new
scholastic terms, and his inflexible adherence to a most pro-
foundly erudite mode of expression whenever he approaches
* the part operative' of his work, is indeed calculated to awe
and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared to grapple
formally with those ' nobler subjects' to which allusion is made
in another place. King James was a man of some erudition
himself; but he declared frankly that for his part he could not
understand this book ; and it was not strange that he could not,
for the author did not intend that he should. The philosopher
drops a hint in passing, however, that all which is essential in
this method, might perhaps be retained without quite so much
formality and fuss in the use of it, and that the proposed result
might be arrived at by means of these same tables, without any
use of technical language at all, under other circumstances.
The results which have since been obtained by the use of
this method in that department of philosophy to which it is
specially applied in the Novum Organum, give to the inquirer
into the causes of the physical phenomena now, some advan-
tages which no invention could supply them. That was what
the founders of this philosophy expected and predicted. They
left this department to their school. The author of the Novum
Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis of the
induction in this department is as yef wanting; and the collec-
tions and experiments here require combinations of skill and
labour which they cannot at once command. They will do
what they can here too, in their small way, just to make a
beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing
they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this
1 82 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with
them ; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance.
But the man who has studiously created for himself a social
position which enables him to assume openly, and even osten-
tatiously, the position of an innovator — an innovator in the
world of letters, an advancer of — learning — is compelled to
introduce his innovation with the complaint that he finds the
mind of the world so stupified, so bewildered with evil, and so
under the influence of dogmas, that the first thing to be done
is to get so much as a thought admitted of the possibility of a
better state of things. ' The present system of philosophy,' he
says, * cherishes in its bosom certain positions or dogmas which
it will be found, are calculated to produce a full conviction
that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on
nature ought to be anticipated, through the means of art.' And,
therefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world
as he finds it, reporting as well as he can, — though he can find
no words, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in
regard to it — the deficiencies in its learning, he devotes a con-
siderable portion of the description of his new method to the
grounds of l hope' which he derives from this philosophic survey,
and that that hope is not a hope of a better state of things in
respect to the physical wants of man merely, that it is not a
hope of a renovation in the arts which minister to those
wants exclusively, any very careful reader of the first book of
the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer. But
the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another
place for particulars.
* Let us then speak of hope/ he says, 'especially as we are not
vain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judg-
ments ; but would rather lead them willingly forward. And al-
though we shall employ the most cogent means of enforcing
hope when we bring them TO particulars, and especially those
which are digested and arranged in our Tables of Invention, the
subject partly of the Second, but — principally -=- mark it,
principally of the FOURTH part of the Instauration, which are,
indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes than hope itself/
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. 183
Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection, that he is
not a vain promises when no such part as that to which he
refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings —
when this principal part of his promise remains unfulfilled.
i The fourth part of the Instauration/ he says again in his
formal description of it, ' enters upon philosophy itself, fur-
nishing examples of inquiry and investigation, according to our
own method, in certain subjects of the noblest kind, but greatly
differing from each other, that a specimen may be had
of every sort. By these examples, we mean not illustrations
of rules and precepts,* but perfect models, which will ex-
emplify the second part of this work, and represent, as
it were, to the eye the whole progress of the mind, and the
continued structure and order of invention in THE MORE
chosen subjects' — note it, in the more chosen subjects;
but this is not at all — * after the same manner as globes
and machines facilitate the more abstruse and subtile demonstra-
tions in mathematics.1 But in another place he tells us, that
the poetic form of demonstration is the form to which it is
necessary to have recourse on these subjects, especially when we
come to these more abstruse and subtle demonstrations, as it
opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding
in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of
vulgar opinion ; and that at the time he was writing out this
plan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the
human understanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising
animosity, opposition, or disturbance, had no choice — must go
in that same path, or none. Where are those diagrams? And
* He will show the facts in such order, in such scientific, select,
methodical arrangements, that rules and precepts will be forced from
them ; for he will show them, on the tables of invention, and rules and
precepts are the vintage that flows from the illustrious instances— the
prerogative instances — the ripe, large, cleared, selected clusters of facts,
the subtle prepared history which the tables of invention collect. The
definition of the simple original elements of history, the pure definition
is the first vintage from these ; but ' that which in speculative philo-
sophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the
rule,' and the axiom of practice, ready for use, is the final result.
184 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
what does he mean, when he tells us in this connection that he
is not a vain promiser? Where are those particular cases, in
which this method of investigation is applied to the noblest sub-
jects? Where are the diagrams, in which the order of the investi-
gation is represented, as it were, to the eye, which serve the same
purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the more abstruse and
subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all acquainted
with one poem, at least, published about that time, in which
some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in
progress, not without the use of diagrams, and very lively ones
too; but one in which the intention of the poet appears to be
to the last degree ' enigmatical/ inasmuch as it has engaged the
attention of the most philosophical minds ever since, and inas-
much as the most able critics have never been able to compre-
hend that intention fully in their criticism. And it is bound
up with many others, in which the subjects are not less care-
fully chosen, and in which the method of inquiry is the same;
in which that same method that is exhibited in the ' Novum
Organ urn ' in the abstract, or in its application to the investiga-
tion of the physical phenomena, is everywhere illustrated in the
most chosen subjects — in subjects of the noblest kind. This vo-
lume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the
third and FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether
this man who describes them here, and who forgot, it would seem,
to fulfil hi3 promise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.
That is the part of the Great Instauration that we want
now, and we are fairly entitled to it, because these are not * the
next ages,' or ' the times which were nearer,' and which this
author seldom speaks of without betraying his clear foresight
of the political and social convulsions that were then at hand.
These are the times, which were farther off, to which he ap-
peals from those nearer ages, and to which he expressly dedi-
cates the opening of his designs.
Now, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is
missing out of this philosophy? Nothing less than the \ prin-
cipal ' part of it. All that is good for anything in it, according
to the author's own estimate. The rest serves merely l to pass
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. 185
the time/ or it is good as it serves to prepare the way for this.
What is it that we have to look for? The * Novum Organum,'
that severe, rigorous method of scientific inquiry, applied to
the more chosen subjects in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and
James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that Logic
which is brought out in the doctrine of the prerogative
instances, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its en-
counter with fact in general, brought down to particulars, and
applied to the noblest subjects, and to every sort of subject
which the philosophic mind of that age chose to apply it to.
That is what we want to find.
* The prerogative instances ' in ' the more chosen subjects.'
The whole field which that philosophy chose for its field, and
called the noblest, the principal, the chosen, the more chosen
one. Every part of it reduced to scientific inquiry, put under
the rule of the ' Novum Organum' ; that is what we want to
find. We know that no such thing could possibly be found in
the acknowledged writings of this author. Nothing answering
to that description, composed by a statesman and a philosopher,
with an avowed intention in his writing — an intention to effect
changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn prac-
tice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by
any means have been got through the press then. No one who
studies the subject will think of looking for that fourth part
of the Instauration among the author's acknowledged writings.
Does he give us any hint as to where we are to look for it?
Is there any intimation as to the particular form of writing in
which we are to find it? for find it we must and shall, because
he is not a vain promiser. The subject itself determines the
form, he says; and the fact that the whole ground of the dis-
covery is ground already necessarily comprehended in the pre-
conceptions of the many — that it is ground covered all over with
the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact,
also, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation.
Who that knows what the so-called Baconian method of
learning really is, will need to be told that the principal books
of it will be — books of instances and particulars, spe-
J 86 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
CIMENS — living ones, and that these will occupy the pro-
minent place in the book; and that the conclusions and
precepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly
and on the spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use,
' knowing the way to particulars again?' Who would ever
expect to find the principal books of this learning -the books
in which it enters upon philosophy itself, and undertakes to
leave a specimen of its own method in the noblest subjects in
its own chosen field — who would ever expect to find these
books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with instances
or examples brought in, to illustrate or make them good?
For this is not a point of method merely, but a point of sub-
stance, as he takes pains to tell us. And who that has ever
once read his own account of the method in which he proposes
to win the human mind from its preconceptions, instead of
undertaking to overcome it with Logic and sharp disputations,
— who that knows what place he gives to Bhetoric, what place
he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of innovation, will
expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic learning?
Does the student know how many times, in how many forms,
under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the
bold assurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive
writing is the only form in which the higher applications of
his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who
would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work,
when he tells us expressly, * Reason cannot be so sensible, nor
examples so fit/ as the examples which his scientific termi-
nology includes in the department of Poesy ?
All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all
the first philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in
history and parable; and even to this day, he who would let
in new light upon the human understanding, without raising
opposition or disturbance, must still go in the same path, and
have recourse to the like method.
He was an innovator; he was not an agitator. And he
claims that mark of a divine presence in his work, that its
benefactions come, without noise or perturbation, in aura leni.
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. 1 87
Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which
he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There
was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted,
there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to
signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine
authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God.
It is the providential order of the world's history which is
revealed in it ; it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which
this new chief, laden with new gifts for men, openly an-
nounces.
* Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open
his ground of hope, after he has exposed the wretched con-
dition of men as he finds them, without any scientific know-
ledge of the laws and institutes of the universe they inhabit,
engaged in a perpetual and mad collision with them ; ' Let us
begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding
goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD
and Father of light. Now, in all divine works, the smallest
beginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in
spiritual matters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without
observation, is also found to be true in every great work of
Providence, so that everything glides in quietly, without
confusion or noise; and the matter is achieved before men
even think of perceiving that it is commenced.' * Men,' he
tells us, ' men should imitate Nature, who innovateth greatly
but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived,' who will
not dispense with the old form till the new one is finished and
in its place.
What is that we want to find? We want to find the new
method of scientific inquiry applied to the questions in which
men are most deeply interested — questions which were then
imperiously and instantly urged on the thoughtful mind. We
want to see it applied to politics in the reign of James the
First. We want to see it applied to the open questions of
another department of inquiry, — certainly not any less impor-
tant,— in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We
want to see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of
1 88 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
review, from which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, the legiti-
mate sovereignty, is to be inducted, and the scientific axioms
of government with it. We want to see the science of ob-
servation and experiment, the science of nature in general,
applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign of James
the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in which
it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that,
too, by the principal doctors in that profession, — men of the
very largest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their
work conscientiously, whether the patient objected or not.
But are there any such books as these? Certainly. You have
the author's own word for it. ' Some may raise this question,'
he says, 'this question rather than objection — [it is better
that it should come in the form of a question, than in the form
of an objection, as it would have come, if there had been no
room to ' raise the question^ — whether we talk of perfecting
natural philosophy [using the term here in its usual limited
sense], whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy alone,
according to our method, or, the other sciences — such as,
ethics, LOGIC, politics.' That is the question ' raised.'
' We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' That is
the authors answer to it. ' And as common logic which regu-
lates matters by syllogism, is applied, not only to natural, but
to every other science, so our inductive method likewise com-
prehends them all.' With such iteration will he think fit
to give us this point. It is put in here for those * who raise
the question ' — the question ' rather than objection.' The
other sort are taken care of in other places. * For,' he con-
tinues, ' we form a history and tables of invention, for anger,
fear, shame, and the like; and also for examples in civil life
[that was to be the principal part of the science when he laid
out the plan of it in the advancement of learning] and the
mental operations of memory, composition, division, judgment,
and the rest ; as well as for heat and cold, light and vegetation,
and the like! That is the plan of the new science, as the
author, sketches it for the benefit of those who raise questions
rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely,
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. 1 89
whenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satis-
faction of this class of readers. But this is that same fourth
part to which he refers us in the other places for the applica-
tion of his method to those nobler subjects, those more chosen
subjects; and that is just the part of his science which appears
to be wanting. How happens it? Did he get so occupied
with the question of heat and cold, light and vegetation, and
the like, that after all he forgot this part with its nobler
applications? How could that be, when he tells us expressly,
that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This
part which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philo-
sophy, unquestionably. These are the books of it which have
been missing hitherto; but in that Providential order of events
to which he refers himself, the time has come for them to be
inquired for; and this inquiry is itself a part of that movement,
in which the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some result.
For, ' let us begin from God,' he says, ' and show that our
pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, clearly proceeds from
Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of misery; the Father of
light, and not of darkness.'
Of course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine
of the human society, without coming 'at once in collision with
that doctrine of the divinity of arbitrary power which the
monarchs of England were then openly sustaining. Who
needs to be told, that he who would handle that argument
scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this inquirer
would, must indeed * pray in aid of similes' And yet a very
searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that institution,
which the new philosophy found in posession of the human
welfare, and asserting a divine right to it as a thing of private
property and legitimate family inheritance, — such a criticism
was, in fact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the
principles of a human subjection which appeared to this philo-
sopher to belong properly to the more chosen subjects of a
scientific investigation.
And notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the
extremely critical nature of the investigation, when it came
190 ELIZABETHAN SECRETS OF POLICY.
to touch those particulars, with which the personal observations
and experiments of the founders of this new school in philo-
sophy had tended to enrich their collections in this depart-
ment,— ' and the aim is better,' says the principal spokesman of
this school, who quietly proposes to introduce this method into
politics, l the aim is better when the mark is alive ; notwith-
standing the difficulties which appeared to lie then in the way
of such an investigation, the means of conducting it to the
entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment of
the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this
was one of those ' secrets of policy/ which have always re-
quired the aid of fable, and the idea of dramatising the fable
for the sake of reaching in some sort those who are incapable
of receiving any thing ' which does not directly fall under,
and strike the senses,' as the philosopher has it; those who are
capable of nothing but 'dumb shows and noise/ as Hamlet
has it; this idea, though certainly a very happy, was not with
these men an original one. Men, whose relations to the
state were not so different as the difference in the forms of
government would perhaps lead us to suppose, — men of the
gravest learning and enriched with the choicest accomplish-
ments of their time, had adopted that same method of in-
fluencing public opinion, some two thousand years earlier,
and even as long before as that, there were * secrets of morality
and policy/ to which this form of writing appeared to offer
the most fitting veil.
Whether 'the new' philosopher, — whether 'the new magi-
cian' of this time, was, in fact, in possession of any art which
enabled him to handle without diffidence or scruple the great
political question which was then already the question of the
time; whether 'the crown' — that double crown of military
conquest and priestly usurpation, which was the one estate of
the realm at that crisis in English history, did, among other
things in some way, come under the edges of that new analysis
which was severing all here then, and get divided clearly with
'the mind, that divine fire/ — whether any such thing as that
occurred here then, the reader of the following pages will
PHILOSOPHY ITSELF. I9I
be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they
contain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which
made its appearance about those days, will certainly have no
difficulty at all in deciding that question. For, first of all,
it is necessary to find that political key to the Elizabethan art
of delivery, which unlocks the great works of the Elizabethan
philosophy, and that is the necessity which determines the
selection of the Plays that are produced in this volume. They
are brought in to illustrate the fact already stated, and already
demonstrated, the fact which is the subject of this volume,
the fact that the new practical philosophy of the modern
ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the
plan of its founders, to * natural philosophy ' and 'the part
operative ' of that, — the fact that it comprehended, as its
principal department, the department in which its * noblest
subjects ' lay, and in which its most vital innovations were
included, a field of enquiry which could not then be entered
without the aid of fable and parable, and one which required
not then only, * but now, and at all times,' the aid of a vivid
poetic illustration ; they are brought in to illustrate the fact
already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the
new philosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work
under such conditions, able to work, if not for the times that
were nearer, for the times that were further off; men who
thought it little so they could fulfil and perfect their work
and make their account of it to the Work-master, to robe
another with their glory; men who could relinquish the
noblest works of the human genius, that they might save
them from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they
might make them over unharmed in their boundless freedom,
in their unstained perfection, to the farthest ages of the
advancement of learning, — that they might * teach them how
to live and look fresh ' still,
• When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent?
That is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book
is to demonstrate.
LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
' Thou 'dst shun a bear;
But if thy way lay towards the raging sea,
Thou 'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'
CHAPTER I.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE.
* I think the king is but a man, as I am.' — King Henry.
~*~"-~-j< They told me I was everything.' — Lear.
f\F course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be
^-^ openly dealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed,
scientifically examined, in the very presence of royalty itself,
except by persons endowed with extraordinary privileges and
immunities, persons, indeed, of quite irresponsible authority,
whose right to do and say what they pleased, Elizabeth herself,
though they should enter upon a critical analysis of the divine
rights of kings to her face, and deliberately lay bare the defects
in that title which she was then attempting to maintain, must
needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.
And such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the
retinue of that sovereignty which was working in disguise
here then, and laying the foundations of that throne in the
thoughts of men, which would replace old principalities and
powers, and not political dominions merely. To the creative
genius which waited on the philosophic mind of that age,
making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of its
exterior conditions, such persons, — persons of any amount or
variety of capacity which the necessary question of its play
might require, were not wanting: — f came with a thought.'
Of course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his
ill-got crown, and passing a sleepless night in spite of its sup-
posed exemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with
all his royal means and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea
boy in the storm enjoys, — and the poet appears, to have had
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. 1 93
some experience of this mortal ill, which inclines him to put
it down among those which ought to be excluded from a state
of supreme earthly felicity, — the poor guilty disgusted usurper,
discovering that this so blessed 'invention' was not included
in the prerogative he had seized, under the exasperation of the
circumstances, might surely be allowed to mutter to himself,
in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general reflec-
tions on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to
any extent, without expecting to be called to an account for
it, by any future son or daughter of his usurping lineage.
That extraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite
incontestable fact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still,
refused to recognize this artificial difference in men, but still
went on her way in all things, as if * the golden rigol ' were
not there, classing the monarch with his ' poorest subject;' —
the fact that this charmed ' round of sovereignty,' did not
after all secure the least exemption from the common individual
human frailty, and helplessness, — this would, of course, strike
the usurper who had purchased the crown at such an expense,
as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if it were
only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed
to embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the
moral was proper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and
ready to be produced, in case any serious inquiry should be
made for it; though the poet might seem, perhaps, to a se-
verely critical mind, disposed to pursue his philosophical inquiry
a little too curiously into the awful secrets of majesty, retired
within itself, and pondering its own position ; — openly search-
ing what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the Scriptures pro-
nounce to be inscrutable, namely, the hearts of kings, and au-
daciously laying bare those private passages, those confessions,
and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and reverence pre-
scribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play, indeed,
to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance
which, of course, was expected to modify the impression.
So, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose,
or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this
o
ig4 lear's philosopher.
sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion
which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been
literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of; and all
that thorough-going analysis of the trick and pageant of
majesty which follows it, would, of course, come only as a
graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of
royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own
< sovereignty of nature,1 under the mantle of his free and
princely humours, the brave and gentle hero of Agincourt.
' Though I speak it to you/ he says, talking in the disguise
of a ' private/ ' J think the King is but a man as I am, the
violet smells to him as it doth to me; all his senses, have but
human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness,
he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher
mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the
like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as we do, his
fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are'; and in
the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and
soliloquises on the same delicate question.
4 And what have kings that 'privates7 have not, too, save cere-
mony,— gave general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol
ceremony ? — What is thy soul of adoration ?
A grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind,
in those times : let us see how a Poet can answer it.
'Art thou aught else but 'place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein, thou art less happy, being feared,
Than they in fearing ?*
* Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he che-
rished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king ; and those who
know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had authorised,
and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and preparing the way
for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on that account ; but
this is what he means. He thinks that wretched victim of that most
irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose head the crown of
an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its responsibilities, in his infinite
unfitness for them, is, in fact, the one whose case most of all requires
relief. He is the one, in this theory, who suffers from this unnatural
state of things, not less, but more, than his meanest subject. 'Thou
art less happy being feared, than they in fearing.'
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. I95
What drink' st thou oft instead of homage sweet
But poison 'd flattery ? 0! be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure.
Thinkest thou the fiery fever will go out
"With titles blown from adulation ?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending V
Interesting physiological questions ! And though the author,
for reasons of his own, has seen fit to put them in blank verse
here, it is not because he does not understand, as we shall see
elsewhere, that they are questions of a truly scientific character,
which require to be put in prose in his time — questions of
vital consequence to all men. The effect of ' poisoned flattery/
and ' titles blown from adulation' on the minds, of those to
whose single will and caprice the whole welfare of the state,
and all the gravest questions for this life and the next, were
then entrusted, naturally appeared to the philosophical mind,
perseveringly addicted to inquiries, in which the practical
interests of men were involved, a question of gravest moment.
But here it is the physical difference which accompanies
this so immense human distinction, which he appears to be in
quest of; it is the control over nature with which these
1 farcical titles' invest their possessor, that he appears to be now
pertinaciously bent upon ascertaining. For we shall find, as
we pursue the subject, that this is not an accidental point
here, a casual incident of the character, or of the plot, a thing
which belongs to the play, and not to the author; but that
this is a poet who is somehow perpetually haunted with the
^impression that those who assume a divine right to control,
>and dispose of their fellow-men, ought to exhibit some sign of
^their authority ; some superior abilities ; some magical control ;
some light and power that other men have not. How he came
by any such notions, the critic of his works is, of course, not
bound to show ; but that which meets him at the first reading
is the fact, the incontestable fact, that the Poet of Shakspere's
stage, be he who he may, is a poet whose mind is in some way
deeply occupied with this question ; that it is a poet who is
infected, and, indeed, perfectly possessed, with the idea, that
the true human leadership ought to consist in the ability to
o2
196 LEAR'S philosopher.
extend the empire of man over nature, — in the ability to unite
and control men, and lead them in battalions against those com-
mon evils which infest the human conditions, — not fevers only
but c worser* evils, and harder to be cured, and to the conquest
of those supernal blessings which the human race have always
been vainly crying for. ' I am a king that find thee,' he says.
And having this inveterate notion of a true human regality
to begin with, he is naturally the more curious and prying in
regard to the claims of the one which he finds in possession;
and when by the mystery of his profession and art, he contrives
to get the cloak of that factitious royalty about him, he asks
questions under its cover which another man would not think
of putting.
4 Canst thou/ he continues, walking up and down the stage
in King Hal's mantle, inquiring narrowly into its virtues and
taking advantage of that occasion to ascertain the limits of the
prerogative — that very dubious question then, —
1 Canst thou when thou command' st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it 1 ' —
No? what mockery of power is it then? But, this in con-
nection with the preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of
titles on the progress of a fever, or the amenability of its pa-
roxysm, to flexure and low bending, might have seemed per-
haps in the mouth of a subject to savour somewhat of irony; it
might have sounded too much like a taunt upon the royal
helplessness under cover of a serious philosophical inquiry, or
it might have betrayed in such an one a disposition to pursue
scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps expedient. But
thus it is, that the king can dare to pursue the subject,
answering his own questions.
'No, thou proud dream
That play st so subtly with a king's repose ;
/am a king that find thee; and I know
'Tis not the the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The inter-tissued robe of gold and pearl.
The farced title—
What is that?— Mark it: — the farced title!— A bold
word, one would say, even with a king to authorise it.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. 197
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest crammed with distressful bread,
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But like a lackey from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus ; and all night
Sleeps in Elysium.
Yes, there we have him, at last. There he is exactly.
That is the scientific picture of him, 'poor man,' as this
poet calls him elsewhere. What malice could a philosophic
poet bear him ? That is the monarchy that men were e sanc-
tifying themselves with,' and 'turning up the white of the eye
to/ then. That is the figure that it makes when it comes to
be laid in its state -bed, upon the scientific table of review,
not in the formal manner of ' the second part ' of this philo-
sophy, but in that other manner which the author of the
Novum Organum, speaks of so frequently, as the one to be
used in applying it to subjects of this nature. That is the
anatomy of him, which * our method of inquiry and investiga-
tion/ brings out without much trouble * when we come to
particulars/ ■ Truly we were in good hands/ as the other one
says, who finds it more convenient, for his part, to discourse
on these points, from a distance.
That is the figure the usurping monarch's pretensions make
at the first blush, in the collections from which ' the vintage '
of the true sovereignty, and the scientific principles of govern-
ments are to be expressed, when the true monarchy, the legiti-
mate, ' one only man power,' is the thing inquired for. This
one goes to * the negative ' side apparently. A wretched
fellow that cannot so much as ' sleep o' nights,' that lies there
on the stage in the play of Henry the Fourth, in the sight of
all the people, with the crown on his very pillow, by way
of ' facilitating the demonstration/ pining for the * Elysium.'
that his meanest subject, — that the poor slave, ' crammed with
distressful bread/ commands; crying for the luxury that the
198 leak's philosopher.
wet seaboy, on his high and giddy couch enjoys; — and from
whose note-book came that image, dashed with the ocean
spray, — who saw that seaboy sleeping in that storm?
But, as for this KING, it is the king which the scientific
history brings out; whereas, in the other sort of history that
was in use then, he is hardly distinguishable at all from those
Mexican kings who undertook to keep the heavenly bodies in
their places, and, at the same time, to cause all things to be
borne by the earth which were requisite for the comfort and
convenience of man; a peculiarity of those sovereigns, of which
the Man on the Mountains, wrhose study is so well situated
for observations of that sort, makes such a pleasant note.
But whatever other view we may take of it, this, it must be
conceded, is a tolerably comprehensive exhibition, in the general,
of the mere pageant of royalty, and a pretty free mode of
handling it; but it is at the same time a privileged and entirely
safe one. For the liberty of this great Prince to repeat to him-
self, in the course of a solitary stroll through his own camp at
midnight, when nobody is supposed to be within hearing, cer-
tain philosophical conclusions which he was understood to have
arrived at in the course of his own regal experience, could
hardly be called in question. And as to that most extraordinary
conversation in which, by means of his disguise on this occasion,
he becomes a participator, if the Prince himself were too gene-
rous to avail himself of it to the harm of the speakers, it would
ill become any one else to take exceptions at it.
And yet it is a conversation in which a party of common
soldiers are permitted to * speak their minds freely ' for once,
though ' the blank verse has to halt for it,' on questions which
would be considered at present questions of * gravity/ It is a
dialogue in which these men are allowed to discuss one of the
most important institutions of their time from an ethical point
of view, in a tone as free as the president of a Peace Society
could use to-day in discussing the same topic, intermingling
their remarks with criticisms on the government, and personal
allusions to the king himself, which would seem to be more in
accordance with the manners of the nineteenth century, than
with those of the Poet's time.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. 199
But then these wicked and treasonous grumblings being for-
tunately encountered on the spot, and corrected by the king
himself in his own august person, would only serve for edifica-
tion in the end; if, indeed, that appeal to the national pride
which would conclude the matter, and the glory of that great
day which was even then breaking in the East, should leave
room for any reflections upon it. For it was none other than
the field of Agincourt that was subjected to this philosophic in-
quiry. It was the lustre of that immortal victory which was
to England then, what Waterloo and the victories of Nelson
are now, that was thus chemically treated beforehand. Under
the cover of that renowned triumph, it was, that these soldiers
could venture to search so deeply the question of war in gene-
ral ; it was in the person of its imperial hero, that the statesman
could venture to touch so boldly, an institution which gave to
one man, by his own confession no better or wiser than his
neighbours, the power to involve nations in such horrors.
But let us join the king in his stroll, and hear for ourselves,
what it is that these soldiers are discussing, by the camp-fires of
Agincourt] — what it is that this first voice from the ranks has
to say for itself. The king has just encountered by the way a
poetical sentinel, who, not satisfied with the watchword — ' a
friend,1 — requests the disguised prince ' to discuss to him, and
answer, whether he is an officer, or base, common, and popular/
when the king lights on this little group, and the discussion
which Pistol had solicited, apparently on his own behalf, ac-
tually takes place, for the benefit of the Poet's audience, and
the answer to these inquiries comes out in due order.
Court. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks
yonder ?
Bates. I think it be, but we have no great cause to desire the ap-
proach of day.
Will. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall
never see the end of it. Who goes there ?
King Henry. A friend.
Will. Under what captain serve you ?
King. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
Witt. A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman : I pray
you, what thinks he of our estate ?
200 LEAR'S philosopher.
King. Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed
off the next tide.
Bates. He hath not told his thought to the king ?
King. No ; nor it is not meet that he should ; for though I speak
it to you, I think the king is but a man as I am.
And it is here that he proceeds to make that important
disclosure above quoted, that all his senses have but human
conditions, and that all his affections, though higher mounted,
stoop with the like wing ; and therefore no man should in reason
possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it,
' should dishearten his army.'
Bates. He may show what outward courage he will ; but, / believe,
as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames, up to the
neck ; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we
were quit here.
King. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king. I think
he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
Bates. Then would he were here alone ; so should he be sure to be
ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
King. I dare say you love him not so ill as to wish him here alone ;
howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds : Me thinks I could not
die anywhere so contented as in the king's company ; his cause being
just, and his quarrel honorable.
Will. Thats more than we know.
Bates. Ay, or more than we should seek after ; for we know enough,
if we know we are the king's subjects ; if his cause be wrong, our
obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
Will. But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy
reckoning to make ; when all those legs and arms and heads chopped
off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all — We
died at such a place ; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some
upon their wives left poor behind them : some upon the debts they
owe ; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared that few die
well, that die in battle ; for how can they charitably dispose of any-
thing when blood is their argument ? Now if these men do not die well,
it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it ; whom to
disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
King. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise, do
sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your
rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him : or if a servant,
under his master's command, transporting a sum of money, be assailed
by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant's damnation.— But
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. 201
this is not so There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if
it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all un-
spotted soldiers.
But the king pursues this question of the royal responsibility
until he arrives at the conclusion that every subject's duty is
THE KING'S, BUT EVEKY SUBJECT'S SOUL IS HIS OWN,
until he shows, indeed, that there is but one ultimate sove-
reignty ; one to which the king and his subjects are alike
amenable, which pursues them everywhere, with its demands
and reckonings, — from whose violated laws there is no escape.
Will. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own
head — [no unimportant point in the theology or ethics of that time] —
the king is not to answer for it.
Bates. I do not desire the king should answer for me, and yet I
determine to fight lustily for him.
King. I, myself, heard the king say, he would not be ransomed.
Will. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our
throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne'er the wiser.
King. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
Will. Mass, you'll pay him then! That's a perilous shot out of an
elder gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch.
You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his
face with a peacock's feather.
And, indeed, thus and not any less absurd and monstrous,
appeared the idea of subjecting the king to any effect from
the subject's displeasure, or the idea of calling him to account —
this one, helpless, frail, private man, as he has just been con-
ceded by the king himself to be, for any amount of fraud or
dishonesty to the nation, for any breach of trust or honour.
For his relation to the mass and the source of this fearful
irresponsible power was not understood then. The soldier
states it well. One might, indeed, as well go about to turn the
sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.
* You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues.
' Come, 'tis a foolish saying.'
* Y' ar reproof is something too round,1 is the king's reply.
It is indeed round. It is one of those round replies that this
poet is so fond of, and the king himself becomes ' the private '
of it, when once the centre of this play is found, and the sweep of
202 LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
its circumference is taken. For the sovereignty of law, the
kingship of the universal law in whomsoever it speaks, awful
with God's power, armed with his pains and penalties is the
scientific sovereignty ; and in the scientific diagrams the pas-
sions, ' the poor and private passions/ and the arbitrary will,
in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sove-
reignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in
their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's
vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities,
has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might
of the universal nature. It is but the shot out of an ' elder gun;1
he might as well ' go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in
his face with a peacock's feather.' ' I should be angry with you/
continues the king, after noticing the roundness of that reply,
' I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.'
But as to the poet who composes these dialogues, of course
he does not know whether the time is convenient or not ;— he
has never reflected upon any of those grave questions which
are here so seriously discussed. They are not questions in which
he can be supposed to have taken any interest. Of course he
does not know or care what it is that these men are talking
about. It is only for the sake of an artistic effect, to pass away
the night, and to deepen for his hero the gloom which was to
serve as the foil and sullen ground of his great victory, that
his interlocutors are permitted to go on in this manner.
It is easy to see, however, what extraordinary capabilities
this particular form of writing offered to one who had any
purpose, or to an author, who wished on any account, to
* infold1 somewhat his meaning ;— that was the term used then
in reference to this style of writing. For certainly, many
things dangerous in themselves could be shuffled in under
cover of an artistic effect, which would not strike at the time,
amid the agitations, and the skilful checks, and counteractions,
of the scene, even the quick ear of despotism itself.
And thus King Lear — that impersonation of absolutism —
the very embodiment of purejvvill and tyranny in their most
frantic form, taken out all at once from that hot bath of flatteries
to which he had been so long accustomed, that his whole self-
PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE. 203
consciousness had become saturated, tinctured in the grain with
them, and he believed himself to be, within and without, inde-
structibly, essentially, — ( ay, every inch A KING;' with speeches
on his supremacy copied, well nigh verbatim, from those
which Elizabeth's courtiers habitually addressed to her, still
ringing in his ears, hurled out into a single-handed contest
with the elements, stripped of all his ' social and artificial
lendings,' the poor, bare, unaccommodated, individual man,
this living subject of the poet's artistic treatment, — this
* ruined Majesty ' anatomized alive, taken to pieces literally
before our eyes, pursued, hunted down scientifically, and robbed
in detail of all ' the additions of a king ' — must, of course, be
expected to evince in some way his sense of it; 'for soul and
body,' this poet tells us, ' rive not more in parting than great-
ness going off/
Once conceive the possibility of presenting the action, the
dumb show, of this piece upon the stage at that time, (there
have been times since when it could not be done,) and the
dialogue, with its illimitable freedoms, follows without any
difficulty. For the surprise of the monarch at the discoveries
which this new state of things forces upon him, - the speeches
he makes, with all the levelling of their philosophy, with all
the unsurpassable boldness of their political criticism, are too
natural and proper to the circumstances, to excite any sur-
prise or question.
Indeed, a king, who, nurtured in the flatteries of the palace,
was unlearned enough in the nature of things, to suppose that
the name of a king was anything but a shadow when the power
which had sustained its prerogative was withdrawn, — a king
who thought that he could still be a king, and maintain ' his
state ' and l his hundred knights,' and their prerogatives, and
all his old arbitrary, despotic humours, with their inevitable
encroachment on the will and humours, and on the welfare of
others, merely on grounds of respect and affection, or on
grounds of duty, when not merely the care of ' the state,' but
the revenues and power of it had been devolved on others —
such an one appeared, indeed, to the poet, to be engaging in
an experiment very similar to the one which he found in pro-
204 leak's philosopher.
gress in his time, in that old, decayed, riotous form of military
government, which had chosen the moment of its utter
dependance on the popular will and respect, as the fitting one
for its final suppression of the national liberties. It was an
experiment which was, of course, modified in the play by some
diverting and strongly pronounced differences, or it would not
have been possible to produce it then; but it was still the ex-
periment of the unarmed prerogative, that the old popular tale
of the ancient king of Britain offered to the poet's hands, and
that was an experiment which he was willing to see traced to
its natural conclusion on paper at least; while in the subse-
quent development of the plot, the presence of an insulted
trampled outcast majesty on the stage, furnishes a cover of which
the poet is continually availing himself, for putting the case of
that other outraged sovereignty, whose cause under one form
or another, under all disguises, he is always pleading. And in
the poet's hands, the debased and outcast king, becomes the
impersonation of a debased and violated state, that had given
all to its daughters, — the victim of a tyranny not less absolute,
the victim, too, of a blindness and fatuity on its own part,
not less monstrous, but not, not — that is the poet's word — not
yet irretrievable.
< Thou shalt find
I will resume that shape, which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever ; thou shalt, I warrant thee.'
'Do you mark that, my lord V
But the question of that prerogative, which has consumed,
in the poet's time, all the faculties of government constitutes
only a subordinate part of the action of that great play, into
which it is here incorporated ; a play which comprehends in
its new philosophical reaches, in its new and before-unimagined
subtilties of analysis, the most radical questions of a practical
human science ; questions which the practical reason of these
modern ages at the moment of its awakening, found itself
already compelled to grapple with, and master.
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 205
CHAPTER II.
UNACCOMMODATED MAN.
'Consider him well. — Three of us are sophisticated.'
, /C^OR this is the grand SOCIAL tragedy. It is the tragedy of an
A unlearned human society ; it is the tragedy of a civilization
in which grammar, and the relations of sounds and abstract
notions to each other have sufficed to absorb the attention of the
learned, — a civilization in which the parts of speech, and their
relations, have been deeply considered, but one in which the
social elements, the parts of life, and their unions, and their pro-
sody, have been left to spontaneity, and empiricism, and all
kinds of rude, arbitrary, idiomatical conjunctions, and fortui-
tous rules ; a civilization in which the learning of ' words '
is put down by the reporter — invented — and the learning of
* things ' — omitted.
And in a movement which was designed to bring the
human reason to bear scientifically and artistically upon those
questions in which the deepest human interests are involved,
the wrong and misery of that social state to which the New
Machine, with its new combination of sense and reason, must
be applied, had to be fully and elaborately brought out and
exhibited. And there was but one language in which the
impersonated human misery and wrong, — the speaker for
countless hearts, tortured and broken on the rude machinery
of unlearned social customs, and lawless social forces, could
speak ; there was but one tongue in which it could tell its
story. For this is the place where science becomes inevitably
poetical. That same science which fills our cabinets and her-
bariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute stones
and shells and plants and dead birds and insects — that same
science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures
206 leak's philosopher.
true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description— that
same science that anatomises the physical frame with micro-
scopic nicety, — in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that
which had most need of science; and his ' illustrated book' of it,
the book of his experiments in it, comes to us rilled with his
yet living, ' ever living ' subjects, and resounding with the
tragedy of their complainings.
It requires but a little reading of that book to find, that the
author of it is a philosopher who is strongly disposed to ascer-
tain the limits of that thing in nature, which men call fortune,
— that is, in their week-day speech, — they have another name
for it ' o' Sundays.' He is greatly of the opinion, that the
combined and legitimate use of those faculties with which man
is beneficently ' armed against diseases of the world,' would
tend very much \p limit those fortuities and accidents, those
wild blows, — those vicissitudes, that men, in their ignorance and
indolent despair, charge on Fate or ascribe to Providence,
while at the same time it would furnish the art of accommodat-
ing the human mind to that which is inevitable. It is not for-
tune who is blind, but man, he says, — a creature endowed of
nature for his place in nature, endowed of God with a godlike
faculty, looking before and after— a creature who has eyes,
eyes adapted to his special necessities, but one that will not
use them.
Acquaintance with law, as it is actual in nature, and inven-
tions of arts based on that acquaintance, appear to him to open
a large field of relief to the human estate, a large field of en-
croachment on that human misery, which men have blindly
and stupidly acquiesced in hitherto, as necessity. For this is
the philosopher who borrows, on another page, an ancient
fable to teach us that that is not the kind of submission which
is pleasing to God — that that is not the kind of * suffering '
that will ever secure his favour. He, for one, is going to
search this social misery to the root, with that same light
which the ancient wise man tells us, ' is as the lamp of God,
wherewith He searcheth the inwardness of all secrets.'
The weakness and ignorance and misery of the natural man,
— the misery too of the artificial man as he is, — the misery of
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 207
man in society, when that society is cemented with arbitrary /
customs, and unscientific social arts, and when the instinctive
spontaneous demoniacal forces of nature, are at large in it; the
dependence of the social Monad, the constitutional specific
human dependence, on the specific human law, — the exquisite
human liability to injury and wrong, which are but the natu-
ral indications of those higher arts and excellencies, those
unborn pre-destined human arts and excellencies, which man
must struggle through his misery to reach; — that is the scien-
tific notion which lies at the bottom of this grand ideal repre-
sentation. It is, in a word, the human social need, in all its
circumference, clearly sketched, laid out, scientifically, as the
basis of the human social art. It is the negation of that which
man's conditions, which the human conditions require; — it is
the collection on the Table of Exclusion and Kejection, which
must precede the practical affirmation.
King. Have you heard the argument 1 Is there no offence in it 1
Hamlet. None in the world. It's the image of a murder done in
Vienna.
In the poetic representation of that state of things which
was to be redressed, the central social figure must, of course,
have its place. For it is the Poet, the Experimental Poet,
unseen indeed, deep buried in his fable, his new movements
all hidden under its old garb, and deeper hidden still, in the
new splendours he puts on it — it is the Poet — invisible but not
the less truly, he, — it is the Scientific Poet, who comes upon
the monarch in his palace at noonday, and says, ' My business
is with thee, 0 king/ It is he who comes upon the selfish
arrogant old despot, drunk with Elizabethan flatteries, stuffed
with ' titles blown from adulation,' unmindful of the true ends
of government, reckless of the duties which that regal assump-
tion of the common weal brings with it — it is the Poet who
comes upon this Doctor of Laws in the palace, and prescribes
to him a course of treatment which the royal patient himself,
when once it has taken effect, is ready to issue from the
hovel's mouth, in the form of a general prescription and state
ordinance.
208 leak's philosopher.
1 Take physic, pomp ;
Expose thyself to fed what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
Oh, I have taken too little care of this !'
It is that same Poet who has already told us, confidentially,
under cover of King Hal's mantle, that * the king himself is
but a man ' and that * all his senses have but human conditions,
and that his affections, too, though higher mounted when they
stoop, stoop with the like wing ; that his ceremonies laid by,
in his nakedness he appears but a man' ; — it is that same Poet,
and, in carrying out the purpose of this play, it has come in
his way now to make good that statement. For it was neces-
sary to his purpose here, to show that the &tate_is composed
throughout, down to its most loathsome unimaginable depths
of neglect and misery, of individual men, social units, clothed
of nature with the same faculties and essential human dignities
and susceptibilities to good and evil, and crowned of nature
with the common sovereignty of reason, — down-trodden, per-
haps, and wrung and trampled out of them, but elected of
nature to that dignity ; it was necessary to show this, in order
that the wisdom of the State which sacrifices to the senses of
one individual man, and the judgment that is narrowed by the
one man's senses, the weal of the whole, — in order that the
wisdom of the State, which puts at the mercy of the arbitrary
will and passions of the one, the weal of the many, might be
mathematically exhibited, — might be set down in figures and
diagrams. For this is that Poet who represents this method
of inquiry and investigation, as it were, to thejeye. This is
that same Poet, too, who surprises elsewhere a queen in her
swooning passion of grief, and bids her murmur to us her
recovering confession.
1 No more, but e'en a woman ; and commanded
By such poor passion, as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares.'
So busy is he, indeed, in laying by this king's e ceremonies '
for him, beginning with the first doubtful perception of a most
faint neglect, — a falHng^off in the ceremonious affection due
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 200,
to majesty cas well in the general dependants as in the duke
himself and his daughter/ — so faint that the king dismisses it
from his thought, and charges it on his own jealousy till he is
reminded of it by another, — beginning with that faint begin-
ning, and continuing the process not less delicately, through
all its swift dramatic gradations, — the direct abatement of the
regal dignities, — the knightly train diminishing, — nay, * fifty
of his followers at a clap' torn from him, his messenger put in
the stocks, — and ' it is worse than murder,' the poor king cries
in the anguish of his slaughtered dignity and affection, * to do
upon respect such violent outrage,' — so bent is the Poet upon
this analytic process; so determined that this shaking out of a
' preconception,' shall be for once a thorough one, so absorbed
with the dignity of the scientific experiment, that he seems
bent at one moment on giving a literal finish to this process;
Nbut the fool's scruples interfere with the philosophical humour
of the king, and the presence of Mad Tom in his blanket, with
the king's exposition, suffices to complete the demonstration.
For not less lively than this, is the preaching and illustration,
from that new rostrum which this ' Doctor ' has contrived to
make himself master of. ' His ceremonies laid by, in his
nakedness he appears but a man,' says King Hal. ' Couldst
thou save nothing ?' says King Lear to the Bedlamite. ' Why
thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy un-
covered body this extremity of the skies.' eIs man/ — it is the
king who generalises, it is the king who introduces this level-
ling suggestion here in the abstract, while the Poet is content
with the responsibility of the concrete exhibition — ' fs man no
more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no
silk, the beast no hide, the cat no perfume: — Ha ! here's three £
of us are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself. Unac-
commodated MAN is no more but such a poor, bare, forked j
animal, as thou art. Off, off, you lendings.' But ' the fool I 5
is of the opinion that this scientific process of unwrapping the
artificial majesty, this philosophical undressing, has already
gone far enough.
'Pry'thee, Nuncle, be contented,' he says, * it is a naughty night to
swim in.'
P
210 LEAR S PHILOSOPHER.
For it is the great heath wrapped in one of those storms of
wind and rain and thunder and lightning, which this wizard
only of all the children of men knows how to raise, that he
chooses for his physiological exhibition of majesty, when the
palace-door has been shut upon it, and the last * additions of a
king ' have been subtracted. It is a night —
' Wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion, and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry ' —
into which he turns his royal patient * unbonneted?
For the tyranny of wild nature in her elemental uproar must
be added to the tyranny of the human wildness, the cruelty
of the elements must conspire, like pernicious ministers,
with the cruelty of arbitrary human will and passions, the
irrational, inhuman social forces must be joined by those
other forces that make war upon us, before the real purpose of
this exhibition and the full depth and scientific comprehension
of it can begin to appear. It is in the tempest that Lear finds
occasion to give out the Poet's text. Is man no more than
this ? Consider him well. Unaccommodated man in his
struggle with nature. Man without social combinations, man
without arts to aid him in his battle with the elements, or with
arts that fence in his body, and robe it, it may be, in delicate
and gorgeous apparelling, arts that roof his head with a
princely dome it may be, and add to his native dignity and
forces, the means and appliances of a material civilization, but
leave his nobler nature with its more living susceptibility to
injury, unsheathed, at the mercy of the brute forces that un-
scientific civilizations, with their coarse laws, with their cob-
webs of WORDY learning, with their science of abstractions,
unmatched with the subtilty of things, are compelled to
leave at large, uncaught, unentangled.
Yes, it is man in his relation to nature, man in his depend-
ence on artificial aid, man in his two-fold dependence on art,
that this tempest, this double tempest wakes and brings out,
for us to ' consider,' — to ' consider well ' ; — ' the naked crea-
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 211
ture,' that were better in his grave than to answer with his
uncovered body that extremity of the skies, and by his side,
with his soul uncovered to a fiercer blast, his royal brother
with ' the tempest in his mind, that doth from his senses take
all feeling else, save what beats there/
It is the personal weakness, the moral and intellectual as
well as the bodily frailty and limitation of faculty, and liability
to suffering and outrage, the liability to wrong from treachery,
as well as violence, which are f the common' specific human con- ( ^
ditions, common to the King in his palace, and Tom o' Bedlam
in his hovel ; it is this exquisite human frailty and suscepti-
bility, still unprovided for, that fills the play throughout, and
stands forth in these two, impersonated ; it is that which fills
all the play with the outcry of its anguish.
And thus it is, that this poor king must needs be brought
out into this wild uproar of nature, and stripped of his last
adventitious aid, reduced to the authority and forces that nature
gave him, invaded to the skin, and ready in his frenzy to
second the poet's intent, by yielding up the last thread of his
adventitious and artistic defences. All his artificial, social per-
sonality already dissolved, or yet in the agony of its dissolution,
all his natural social ties torn and bleeding within him, there
is yet another kind of trial for him, as the elected and royal
representative of the human conditions. For the perpetual,
the universal interest of this experiment arises from the fact,
that it is not as the king merely, dissolving like ( a mockery
king of snow ' that this illustrious form stands here, to undergo
this fierce analysis, but as the representative, ' the conspicuous
instance,' of that social name and figure, which all men carry
about with them, and take to be a part of themselves, that
outward life, in which men go beyond themselves, by means
of their affections, and extend their identity, incorporating
into their very personality, that floating, contingent material
which the wills and humours and opinions, the prejudices and
passions of others, and the variable tide of this world's fortunes
make — that social Name and Figure in which men may die
many times, ere the physical life is required of them, in whicn
p 2
212 leak's philosopher.
all men must needs live if they will live in it at all, at the
mercy of these uncontrolled social eventualities.
The tragedy is complicated, but it is only that same compli-
cation which the tragedy it stands for, is always exhibiting.
|The fact that this blow to his state is dealt to him by those to
.whom nature herself had so dearly and tenderly bound him,
>nay, with whom she had so hopelessly identified him, is that
il^Lov^yn^thoufferer. It is that which he seeks to'
understand in vain. He wishes to reason upon it, but his mind
cannot master it; under that it is that his brain gives way,— the
first mental confusion begins there. The blow to his state is a
subordinate thing with him. It only serves to measure the
wrong that deals it. The poet takes pains to clear this com-
plication in the experiment. It is the wound in the affections
which untunes the jarring senses of ' this child-changed father.'
It is that which invades his identity.
'Are you our daughter? Does anyone here know me?'
That is the word with which he breaks the silence of that
dumb amazement, that paralysis of frozen wonder which
Goneril's first rude assault brings on him. ' Why, this is not
Lear; Ha ! sure it is not so. Does any one here know me ?
Who is it that can tell me who I am ?'
But with all her cruelty, he cannot shake her off. He
curses her; but his curses do not sever the tie.
' But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter.
Or rather, a disease that's in my flesh
Which I must needs call mine.
Filial ingratitude !
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to it?'
^ For that is the poet's conception of the extent of this social
life and outgoing— that is the interior of that social whole, in
which the dissolution he represents here is proceeding,— and that
is the kind of new phenomenon which the science of man,
when it takes him as he is, not the abstract man of the schools,
not the logical man that the Eealists and the Nominalists went
to blows for, but < the thing itself,' exhibits. As to that other
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 213
4 man,' — the man of the old philosophy, — he was not c worth the
whistle,' this one thinks. ' His bones were marrowless, his blood
was cold, he had no speculation in those eyes that he did glare
with.' The New Philosopher will have no such skeletons in
a his system. He is getting his general man out of particular
cases, building him up solid, from a basis of natural history,
and, as far as he goes, there will be no question, no two words
about it, as to whether he is or is not. ' For I do take,' says
the Advancer of Learning, { the consideration in general, and at
large, of Human Nature, to be fit to be emancipated and made
a knowledge by itself.' No wonder if some new aspects of these
ordinary phenomena, these ' common things,' as he calls them,
should come out, when they too come to be subjected to a
scientific inquiry, and when the Poet of this Advancement,
this so subtle Poet of it, begins to explore them.
And as to this particujar point which he puts down with so
much care, this point which poor Lear is illustrating here, viz.
* that our affections carry themselves beyond us,' as the sage of
the ' Mountain ' expresses it, this is the view the same Poet
gives of it, in accounting for Ophelia's madness.
1 Nature is fine in love ; and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself,
After the thing it loves.'
* Your old kind father,' continues Lear, searching to the
quick the secrets of this ' broken-heartedness,' as people are
content to call it, this ill to which the human species is
notoriously liable, though philosophy had not thought it
worth while before ' to find it out;'
1 Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, —
O that way madness lies ; let me shun that,
No more of that.1
And it is while he is still undergoing the last extreme of
r the suffering which the human wrong is capable of inflicting
on the affections, that he comes in the Poet's hands to exhibit
also the unexplored depth of that wrong, — that monstrous,
. inhuman social error, that perpetual outrage on nature in her
) human law, which leaves the helpless human outcast to the
214
rough discipline of nature, which casts him out from the
family of man, from its common love and shelter, and leaves
him in his vices, and helplessness, and ignorance, to contend
alone with great nature and her unrelenting consequences.
' To wilful men
The injuries that they themselves procure,
Must be their school-masters,' —
is the point which the philosophic Kegan makes, as she bids
them shut the door in her father's face; but it is the common
human relationship that the Poet is intent on clearing, while
he notes the special relationship also; he does not limit his
humanities to the ties of blood, or household sympathies, or
social gradations.
But Regan's views on this point are seconded and sustained,
and there seems to be but one opinion on the subject among
those who happen to have that castle in possession; at least
the timid owner of it does not feel himself in a position to
make any forcible resistance to the orders which his illustrious
guests, who have * taken from him the use of his own house,'
have seen fit to issue in it. ' Shut up your doors, (says Cornwall),
1 Shut up your doors, my lord : 'tis a wild night.
My Kegan counsels well ; come out o' the storm.'
And it is because this representation is artistic and dramatic,
and not simply historical, and the Poet must seek to condense,
and sum and exhibit in dramatic appreciable figures, the un-
reckonable, undefinable historical suffering of years, and life-
times of this vain human struggle, — because, too, the wildest
threats which nature in her terrors makes to man, had to be
incorporated in this great philosophic piece; and because,
lastly, the Poet would have the madness of the human will
and passion, presented in its true scientific relations, that this
storm collects into itself such ideal sublimities, and borrows
from the human passion so many images of cruelty.
In all the mad anguish of that ruined greatness, and
wronged natural affection, the Poet, relentless as fortune
herself in her sternest moods, intent on his experiment only,
will bring out his great victim, and consign him to the wind
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 21$
and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, and bid his
senses undergo their ' horrible pleasure/
For_the_ senses, scorned as they had been in philosophy
hitherto, the senses in this philosophy, have their report also,
— their full, honest report, to make to us. And the design of
this piece, as already stated in the general, required in its
execution, not only that these two kinds of suffering, these
two grand departments of human need, should be included
and distinguished in it, but that they should be brought
together in this one man's experience, so that a deliberate
comparison can be instituted between them; and the Poet will
bid the philosophic king, the living * subject' himself, report
the experiment, and tell us plainly, once for all, whether the
science of the physical Arts only, is the science which is
wanting to man; or whether arts — scientific arts — that take
hold of the moral nature, also, and deal with that not less
effectively, can be dispensed with; whether, indeed, man is
in any condition to dispense with the Science and the Art
which puts him into intelligent and harmonious relations with
nature in general.
It was necessary to the purpose of the play to exhibit man's
dependence on art, by means of his senses and his sensibilities,
and his intellectual conditions, and all his frailties and liabili-
ties,— his dependence on art, based on the knowledge of,
natural laws, universal laws, — constitutions, which include the
human. It was necessary to exhibit the whole misery, the
last extreme of that social evil, to which a creature so naturally
frail and ignorant is liable, under those coarse, fortuitous,
inartistic, unscientific social conglomerations, which ignorant
and barbarous ages build, and under the tyranny of those
wild, barbaric social evils, which our fine social institutions,
notwithstanding the universality of their terms, and the
transcendant nature of the forces which they are understood
to have at their disposal, for some fatal reason or other, do not
yet succeed in reducing.
It is, indeed, the whole ground of the Scientific Human Art,
which is revealed here by the light of this great passion, and
2l6 LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
that, in this Poet's opinion, is none other than the ground of
the human want, and is as large and various as that. And
the careful reader of this play, — the patient searcher of its
subtle lore, — the diligent collector of its thick-crowding
philosophic points and flashing condensations of discovery,
will find that the need of arts, is that which is set forth in it,
with all the power of its magnificent poetic embodiment, and
in the abstract as well, — the need of arts infinitely more noble
and effective, more nearly matched with the subtlety of
nature, and better able to entangle and subdue its oppositions,
than any of which mankind have yet been able to possess
themselves, or ever the true intention of nature in the human
form can be realized, or anything like a truly Human Constitu-
tion-, or Common- Weal, is possible.
But let us return to the comparison, and collect the results
of this experiment.-— For a time, indeed, raised by that storm
of grief and indignation into a companionship with the wind
and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, the king
' strives in his little world of man/ — for that is the phrasing of
the poetic report, to out-scorn these elements. Nay, we our-
selves hear, as the curtain rises on that ideal representative
form of human suffering, the wild intonation of that human
defiance — mounting and singing above the thunder, and
drowning all the elemental crash with its articulation; for
this is an experiment which the philosopher will try in the
presence of his audience, and not report it merely. With
that anguish in his heart, the crushed majesty, the stricken
old man, the child-wounded father, laughs at the pains of the
senses; the physical distress is welcome to him, he is glad of it.
He does not care for anything that the unconscious, soulless
elements can do to him, he calls to them from their heights,
.f$8^ ^s tnem do their worst. Or it is only as they conspire
"with that wilful human wrong, and serve to bring home to him
anew the depth of it, by these tangible, sensuous effects, — it
is only by that means that they are able to wound him.
'Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters,'
that is the argimient.
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 217
1 1 tax you not, you elements, with unkindness.'
Surely that is logical; that is a distinction not without a dif-
ference, and appreciable to the human mind, as it is consti-
tuted,— surely that is a point worth putting in the arts and
sciences.
'I never gave you kingdoms, called you children;
You owe me no subscription ; why, then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure 1 Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man ;
But yet, I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters joined
Your high, engendered battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, O, 'tis/owJ.'
And in his calmer mood, when the storm has done its work
upon him, and all the strength of his great passion is exhausted,
— when his bodily powers are fast sinking under it, and like
the subtle Hamlet's ■ potent poison,' it begins at last to * o'er-
crow his spirit' — when he is faint with struggling with its
fury, wet to the skin with it, and comfortless and shivering,
he still maintains through his chattering teeth the argument;
he will still defend his first position —
'Thou thinkst 'tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin ; so 'tis to thee.
But where the greater malady is fixed,
The lesser is scarce felt.'
f The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
Save what beats there.'
1 In such a night
To shut me out ! Pour on, I will endure.
In such a night as this.''
And when the shelter he is at last forced to seek is found,
at the door his courage fails him ; and he shrinks back into
the storm again, because ' it will not give him leave to think
on that which hurts him more?
So nicely does the Poet balance these ills, and report the
swaying movement. But it is a poet who does not take
218 leak's philosopher.
common-place opinions on this, or on any other such subject. He
is one whose poetic work does not consist in illustrating these
received opinions, or in finding some novel and fine expression
for them. He is observing nature, and undertaking to report
it, as it is, not as it should be according to these preconceptions,
or according to the established poetic notions of the heroic
requisitions.
But there is no stage that can exhibit his experiment here
in its real significance, excepting that one which he himself
builds for us; for it is the vast lonely heath, and the Man, the
pigmy man, on it -and the KINO, the pigmy king, on it; -it
is all the wild roar of elemental nature, and the tempest in
that * little world of man,' that have to measure their forces,
that have to be brought into continuous and persevering
contest. It is not Gloster only, who sees in that storm what
' makes him think that a man is but a worm.1
Doubtless, it would have been more in accordance with the
old poetic notions, if this poor king had maintained his
ground without any misgiving at all; but it is a poet of a
new order, and not the old heroic one, who has the con-
ducting of this experiment; and though his verse is not without
certain sublimities of its own, they have to consist with the
report of the fact as it is, to its most honest and unpoetic, un-
heroic detail.
And notwithstanding all the poetry of that passionate de-
fiance, it is the physical storm that triumphs in the end. The
contest between that little world of man and the great out-
door world of nature was too unequal. Compelled at last to
succumb, yielding to * the tyranny of the open night, that is
too rough for nature to endure — the night that frightens the
very wanderers of the dark, and makes them keep their caves,'
while it reaches, with its poetic combination of horrors,
that border line of the human conception which great
Nature's pencil, in this Poet's hand, is always reaching and
completing, —
'Man's nature cannot carry
The affliction nor the fear*
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 210,
— Unable to contend arty longer with * the fretful element ' —
unable to * outscorn ' any longer ' the to and fro conflicting
wind and rain ' — weary of struggling with ' the impetuous
blasts,' that in their ■ eyeless rage ' and 'fury ' care no more for
age and reverence than his daughters do — that seize his white
hairs, and make nothing of them — * exposed to feel what
wretches feel' — he finds at last, with surprise, that art — the
wretch's art — that can make vile things precious. No longer
clamoring for * the additions of a king/ but thankful for the
basest means of shelter from the elements, glad to avail him-
self of the rudest structure with which art ' accommodates ' man
to nature, (for that is the word of this philosophy, where it is
first proposed) — glad to divide with his meanest subject that
shelter which the outcast seeks on such a night — ready to
creep with him, under it, side by side — \ fain to hovel with
swine and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw ' — surely
we have reached a point at last where the action of the piece
itself — the mere * dumb show ' of it — becomes luminous, and
hardly needs the player's eloquence to tell us what it means.
Surely this is a little like * the language ' of Periander's
message, when he bid the messenger observe and report what
he saw him do. It is very important to note that ideas may be
conveyed in this way as well as by words, the author of the
Advancement of Learning remarks, in speaking of the tradition
of the principal and supreme sciences. He takes pains to
notice, also, that a representation, by means of these 'transient
hieroglyphics,' is much more moving to the sensibilities, and
leaves a more vivid and durable impression on the memory,
than the most eloquent statement in mere words. fWhat is
sensible always strikes the memory more strongly, and sooner
impresses itself, than what is intellectual. Thus the memory
of brutes is excited by sensible, but not by intellectual things f
and thus, also, he proposes to impress that class which Corio-
lanus speaks of, ' whose eyes are more learned than their ears,'
to whom ' action is eloquence.' Here we have the advantage of
the combination, for there is no part of the dumb show, but
has its word of scientific comment and interpretation.
220 LEAK'S PHILOSOPHER.
'Art cold [to the Fool] ?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow '/
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Come, bring us to this hovel.'
For this is what that wild tragic poetic resistance and de-
fiance comes to — this is what the ' unaccommodated man '
comes to, though it is the highest person in the state, stripped
of his ceremonies and artificial appliances, on whom the ex-
periment is tried.
' Where is this straw, my fellow? Art cold? I am cold myself.
Come, your hovel. Come, bring us to this hovel'
When that royal edict is obeyed, -when the wonders of the
magician's art are put in requisition to fulfil it, — when the
road from the palace to the hovel is laid open, — when the
hovel, where Tom o' Bedlam is nestling in the straw, is pro-
duced on the stage, and the King — the King — stoops,
before all men's eyes, to creep into its mouth, — surely we do
not need ' a chorus to interpret for us ' — we do not need to
wait for the Poet's own deferred exposition to seize the more
obvious meanings.- Surely, one catches enough in passing, in
the dialogues and tableaux here, to perceive that there is
something going on in this play which is not all play, —
something that will be earnest, perhaps, ere all is done, —
something which » the groundlings' were not expected to get,
perhaps, in < their sixe-penn'orth ' of it at the first performance,
.— • something which that witty and splendid company, who
made up the Christmas party at Whitehall, on the occasion of
its first exhibition there, who sat there * rustling in silk,'
breathing perfumes, glittering in wealth that the alchemy of
the storm had not tried, were not, perhaps, all informed of;
though there might have been one among them, ' a gentleman
of blood and breeding,' who could have told them what it meant.
' We construct/ says the person who describes this method
of philosophic instruction, speaking of the subtle prepared
history which forces the inductions — - ' we construct tables and
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 221
combinations of instances, upon such a plan, and in such order,
that the understanding may be enabled to act upon them/
' They told me I was everything.'
* They told me I was everything,' says the poor king himself,
long afterwards, when the storm has had its ultimate effect
upon him.
' To say ay and no to everything that I said ! — [To say] ay and no
too was NO good divinity. They told me, I had white hairs in my
beard, ere the black ones were there. When the rain came to wet me
once, and the wind to make me chatter ; when the thunder would not
peace at my bidding ; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go
to, they are not men of their words : they told me I was everything ;
His a lie ; I am not ague-proof?
'/think the king is but a man, as I am' [says King Hal]. 'All his
senses have the like conditions ; and his affections, though higher
mounted, when they stoop, stoop with the like wing?
But at the door of that rude hut the ruined majesty pauses.
In vain his loving attendants, whom, for love's sake, this Poet
will still have with him, entreat him to enter. Storm-battered,
and wet, and shivering as he is, he shrinks back from the
shelter he has bid them bring him to. .He will not * in.
Why? Is it because ' the tempest will not give him leave to
ponder on things would hurt him more.' That is his excuse
at first; but another blast strikes him, and he yields to ' the to
and fro conflicting wind and rain/ and says —
'But I'll go in.'
Yet still he pauses. Why? Because he has not told us
why he is there ; — because he is in the hands of the Poet of
the Human Kind, the poet of ' those common things that our
ordinary life consisteth of/ who will have of them an argument
that shall shame that ' resplendent and lustrous mass of matter'
that old philosophers and poets have chosen for theirs; —
because the rare accident — the wild, poetic, unheard-of acci-
dent — which has brought a man, old in luxuries, clothed in
soft raiment, nurtured in king's houses, into this rude, unaided
222
collision with nature; — the poetic impossibility, which has
brought the one man from the apex of the social structure,
down this giddy depth, to this lowest social level; — the acci-
dent which has given the 'one man,' who has the divine
disposal of the common weal, this little casual experimental
taste of the weal which his wisdom has been able to provide
for the many — of the weal which a government so divinely
ordered, from its pinnacle of personal ease and luxury, thinks
sufficient and divine enough for the many, — this accident —
this grand poetic accident — with all its exquisite poetic effects,
is, in this poet's hands, the means, not the end. This poor
king's great tragedy, the loss of his social position, his broken-
heartedness, his outcast suffering, with all the aggravations of
this poetic descent, and the force of its vivid contrasts - — with
all the luxurious impressions on the sensibilities which the
ideal wonders of the rude old fable yield so easily in this Poet's
hands, — this rare accident, and moving marvel of poetic cala-
mity,—this 'one man's' tragedy is not the tragedy that this
Poet's soul is big with. It is the tragedy of the Many, and
not the One, - it is the tragedy that is the rule, and not the
exception, - it is the tragedy that is common, and not that
which is singular, .whose argument this Poet has undertaken
to manage.
' Come, bring us to your hovel.'
The royal command is obeyed ; and the house of that estate,
which has no need to borrow its title of plurality to establish
the grandeur of its claim, springs up at the New Magician's
word, and stands before us on the scientific stage in its colossal,
portentous, scientific grandeur; and the king — the king — is
at the door of it: the Monarch is at the door of the Many.
For the scientific Poet has had his eye on that structure, and
he will make of it a thing of wonder, that shall rival old
poets' fancy pieces, and drive our entomologists and concholo-
gists to despair, and drive them, off the stage with their cu-
riosities and marvels. There is no need of a Poet's going to
the supernatural for 'machinery,' this Poet thinks, while
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 223
there's such machinery as this ready to his hands unemployed.
1 There's something in this more than natural, if philosophy
could find it out.' There's no need of going to the antique
for his models ; for he is inventing the arts that will make of
this an antiquity.
The Monarch has found his meanest subject's shelter, but at
the door of it he is arrested — nailed with a nail fastened by
the Master of Assemblies. He has come down from that
dizzy height, on the Poet's errand. He is there to speak the
Poet's word, — to illustrate that grave abstract learning which
the Poet has put on another page, with a note that, as it stands
there, notwithstanding the learned airs it has, it is not learning,
but e the husk and shell ' of it. For this is the philosopher
who puts it down as a primary Article of Science, that
governments should be based on a scientific acquaintance with
1 the natures, dispositions, necessities and discontents of the
people') and though in his book of the Advancement of
Learning, he suggests that these points ' ought to be,' con-
sidering the means of ascertaining them at the disposal of the
government, ' considering the variety of its intelligences, the
wisdom of its observations, and the height of the station
where it keeps sentinel, transparent as crystal? — here he puts
the case of a government that had not availed itself of those
extraordinary means of ascertaining the truth at a distance,
and was therefore in the way of discovering much that was
new, in the course of an accidental personal descent into the
lower and more inaccessible regions of the Common Weal it
had ordered. This is the crystal which proves after all the
most transparent for him. This is the help for weak eyes
which becomes necessary sometimes, in the absence of the
scientific crystal, which is its equivalent.
The Monarch is at the hovel's door, but he cannot enter.
Why? Because he is in that school into which his own wise
Regan, that ' counsels' so f well ' — that Regan who sat at his
own council-table so long, has turned him ; and it is a school
in which the lessons must be learned ' by heart,1 and there is
no shelter for him from its pitiless beating in this Poet's
n i\
224 LEAKS PHILOSOPHER.
economy, till that lesson he was sent there to learn has been
learned; and it was a Monarch's lesson, and at the Hovel's
door he must recite it. He will not enter. Why? Because
the great lesson of state has entered his soul: with the sharp-
ness of its illustration it has pierced him: his spirit is dilated,
and moved and kindling with its grandeur: he is thinking of
< the Many,' he has forgotten < the One,'— the many, all whose
senses have like conditions, whose affections stoop with the
like wing. He will not enter, because he thinks it unregal,
inhuman, mean, selfish to engross the luxury of the hovel's
shelter, and the warmth of the ' precious' straw, while he
knows that he has subjects still abroad with senses like^ his
own, capable of the like misery, still exposed to its merciless
cruelties. It was the tenant of the castle, it was the man in
the house who said, ' Come, let's be snug and cheery here.
Shut up the door. Let's have a fire, and a feast, and a song,—
or a psalm, or a prayer, as the case may be; only let it be
within — no matter which it is' :
1 Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night,—
My Regan counsels well ; come out o' the storm.'
But here it is the houseless man, who is thinking of his
kindred,— his royal family, for whom God has made him re-
sponsible, out in this same storm unbonneted; and in the
tenderness of that sympathy, in the searching delicacy of that
feeling with which he scrutinizes now their case, they seem to
him less able than himself to resist its elemental ' tyranny?
For in that ideal revolution— in that exact turn of the wheel
of fortune— in that experimental ' change of places,' which
the Poet recommends to those who occupy the upper ones in
the social structure, as a means of a more particular and prac-
tical acquaintance with the conditions of those for whom they
legislate, new views of the common natural human relations;
new views of the ends of social combinations are perpetually
flashing on him ; for it is the fallen monarch himself, the late
owner "and disposer of the Common Weal, it is this strangely
philosophic, mysteriously philosophic, king — philosophic as
that Alfred who was going to succeed him— it is the king
UNACCOMMODATED MAN. 225
who is chosen by the Poet as the chief commentator and
expounder of that new political and social doctrine which the
action of this play is itself suggesting.
In that school of the tempest; in that one night's personal
experience of the misery that underlies the pompous social
structure, with all its stately splendours and divine pretensions;
in that New School of the Experimental Science, the king has
been taking lessons in the art of majesty. The alchemy of it
has robbed him of the external adjuncts and ' additions of a
king/ but the sovereignty of mercy, the divine right of pity,
the majesty of the human kindness, the grandeur of the
common weal, * breathes through his lips' from the Poet's
heart ' like man new made.'
'Kent. Good, my lord, enter here.
Lear. Prythee, go in thyself. Seek thine own ease.
. But, I'll go in.
In, boy, — go first — [To the Fool.]
You, houseless poverty'
He knows the meaning of that phrase now.
'Nay get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.'
[Fool goes in.]
'Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,'
There are no empty phrases in this prayer, the critic of it
may perceive : it is a learned prayer ; the petitioner knows the
meaning of each word in it : the tempest is the book in which
he studied it.
1 How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you
From seasons such as these ? 0, 1 have taken
Too little care of this. [Hear, hear]. Take physic, Pomp ; [Hear.]
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.
That thou mayest shale the swperflux to them,
And show the Heavens more just'
That is his prayer. To minds accustomed to the ceremonial
of a religious worship, ' with court holy water in a dry house'
only, or to those who have never undertaken to compose a
Q
226 lear's philosopher.
prayer for the king and all the royal family at the hovel's
mouth, and in such immediate proximity to animals of a
different species, it will not perhaps seem a very pious one.
But considering that it was understood to have been composed
during the heathen ages of this realm, and before Christianity
had got itself so comfortably established as a principle of
government and social regulations, perhaps it was as good a
prayer for a penitent king to go to sleep on, as could well be
invented. Certainly the spirit of Christianity, as it appeared
in the life of its Founder, at least, seems to be, by a poetic
anachronism incorporated in it.
But it is never the custom of this author to leave the dili-
gent student of his performances in any doubt whatever as to
his meaning. It is a rule, that everything in the play shall
speak and reverberate his purpose. He prolongs and repeats
his burthens, till the whole action echoes with them, till * the
groves, the fountains, every region near, seem all one mutual
cry/ He has indeed the Teacher's trick of repetition, but
then he is * so rare a wondered teacher/ so rich in magical
resources, that he does not often find it necessary to weary the
sense with sameness. He is prodigal in variety. It is a
Proteus repetition. But his charge to his Ariel in getting up
his Masques, always is, —
' Bring a corollary,
Bather than want a spirit.'
Nay, it would be dangerous, not wearisome merely, to make
the text of this living commentary continuous, or to bring too
near together ' those short and pithy sentences' wherein ' the
scanes of meaning' lie packed so closely, which the action
unwinds and fashions into its immortal groups. And the
curtain must fall and rise again, ere the outcast duke,— his
eyes gouged out by tyranny, turned forth to smell his way
to Dover,— can dare to echo, word by word, the thoughts of
the outcast king.
Led by one whose qualification for leadership is, that he
is * Madman and Beggar, too,' — for as Gloster explains it to
UNACCOMMODATED MAN.
227
us, explaining also at the same time much else that the scenic
language of the play, the dumb show, the transitory hiero-
glyphic of it presents, and all the criticism of it,
1 'T is the Time's Plague when Madmen lead the Blind' —
groping with such leadership his way to Dover — ' smelling it
out' — thus it is that his secret understanding with the king,
in that mad and wondrous philosophical humour of his, betrays
itself.
Oloster. Here, take this purse [to Tom o' Bedlam], thou whom ihe
heaven's plagues
Have humbled to all strokes : that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier : — Heavens, deal so still/
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not peel, feel your power quickly.,;
So distribution should undo excess.
And each man have enough.
Lear. O I have taken
Too little care of this. Take physic, Pomp ;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the Heavens more just.
Truly, these men would seem to have been taking lessons
in the same school. But it is very seldom that two men in
real life, of equal learning on any topic, coincide so exactly in
their trains of thought, and in the niceties of their expression
in discussing it. The emphasis is deep, indeed, when this
author graves his meaning with such a repetition. But Kegan's
stern school-master is abroad in this play, enforcing the philo-
sophic subtilties, bringing home to the senses the neglected
lessons of nature; full of errands to * wilful men,' charged with
coarse lessons to those who will learn through the senses only
great ^Nature's lore — that ' slave Heaven's ordinance — that
will not SEE, because they do not feel.'
Q 2
228 lear's philosopher.
CHAPTER III.
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR.
Armado. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?
Moth. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since :
but, I think, now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither
serve for the writing, nor for the tune.
Armado. I will have the subject newly writ over, that I may example my di-
gression by some mighty precedent. Love's Labour's Lost.
T>UT the king's philosophical studies are not yet completed;
■*-' for he is in fhe hands of one who does not rely on
general statements for his effects; one who is pertinaciously
bent on exploring those subterranean social depths, that the
king's prayer has just glanced at — who is determined to lay
bare to the utmost, to carry the torch of his new science into
the lowest recess of that wild, nameless mass of human neglect
and misery, which the regal sympathy has embraced for him
in the general; though not, indeed, without some niceties of
detail, which shew that the eye of a true human pity has
collected the terms in which he expresses it.
That vast, immeasurable mass of social misery, which has
no learned speech, no tragic dialect — no, or ' it would bear
such an emphasis,' that ' its phrase of sorrow might conjure
the wandering stars, and bid them stand like wonder-wounded
hearers' — that misery which must get a king's robe about
it, ere, in the Poet's time, it could have an audience, must
needs be produced here, ere all this play was played, in its
own native and proper shape and costume, daring as the
attempt might seem.
The author is not satisfied with the picturesque details of
that misery which he has already given us, with its ' looped
and windowed raggedness/ its ' houseless head/ its ' unfed
sides' ; it must be yet more palpably presented. It must be
embodied and dramatically developed; it must be exhibited
with its proper moral and intellectual accompaniments, too,
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 229
before the philosophic requisitions of this design can be
fulfilled.
To the lowest deeps of the lowest depths of the unfathomed
social misery of that time, the new philosopher, the Poet of
the Advancement of Learning, wijl himself descend; and
drag up to the eye of day, — undeterred by any scruple of
poetic sensibility, — in his own unborrowed habiliments, with all
the badges of his position in the state upon him, the creature
he has selected as one of the representatives of the social state
as he finds it ; — the creature he has selected as the repre-
sentative of those loathsome, unpenetrated masses of human life,
which the unscientific social state must needs generate.
For the design of this play, in its exhibition of the true
human need, in its new and large exhibition of the ground
which the Arts of a true and rational human civilization must
cover, could not but include the defects of that, which passed
for civilization then. It involved necessarily, indeed, the
most searching and relentless criticisms of the existing insti-
tutions of that time. That cry of social misery which per-
vades it, in which the natural, and social, and artificial evils
are still discriminated through all the most tragic bursts of/
of passion — in which the true social need, in all its compre-
hension, is uttered — that wild cry of human anguish, pro-
longed, and repeated, and reverberated as it is — is all one
outcry upon the social wisdom of the Poet's time. It con-
stitutes one continuous dramatic expression and embodiment of
that so deeply-rooted opinion which the New Philosopher is
known to have entertained, in regard to the practical knowledge
of mankind as he found it; his opinion of the real advances
towards the true human ends which had been made in his
time; an opinion which he has, indeed, taken occasion to
express elsewhere with some distinctness, considering the
conditions which hampered the expression of his philosophical
conclusions; but it is one which could hardly have been
produced from the philosophic chair in his time, or from the
bench, or at the council-table, in such terms as we find him
launching out into here, without any fear or scruple.
230 LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
For those who persuade themselves that it was any part of
this player's intention to bring out, for the amusement of his
audiences, an historical exhibition of the Life and Times of
that ancient Celtic king of Britain, whose legendary name and
chronicle he has appropriated so effectively, will be prevented
by that view of the subject from ever attaining the least
inkling of the matter here. For this Magician has quite other
work in hand. He does not put his girdles round the earth,
and enforce and harass with toil his delicate spirits,— he does
not get out his book and staff, and put on his Enchanter's
robe, for any such kind of effect as that. For this is not any
antiquary at all, but the true Prospero; and when a little
more light has been brought into his cell, his garments will
be found to be, like the disguised Edgar's — ' Persian.'
It is not enough, then, in the wild revolutionary sweep
of this play, to bring out the monarch from his palace, and set
him down at the hovel's door. It is not enough to open it,
and shew us, by the light of Cordelia's pity — that sunshine
and rain at once — the ' swine' in that human dwelling, and
' the short and musty-straw' there. For the poet himself will
enter it, and drag out its living human tenant into the day of
his immortal verse. He will set him up for all ages, on his
great stage, side by side with his great brother. He will put
the feet of these two men on one platform, and measure their
stature — for all their senses have the like conditions, as we
have heard already; and he will make the king himself own
the kindred, and interpret for him. For this group must
needs be completed ' to the eye' ; these two extremes in the
social scale must meet and literally embrace each other, before
this Teacher's doctrine of ' man ' — 'man as distinguished
from other species' — can be artistically exhibited. For it is
this picture of the unaccommodated man— 'unaccommodated'
still, with all his empiric arts, with all his wordy philosophy —
it is this picture of man ' as he is,1 in the misery of his
IGNORANCE, in his blind struggle with his law of KIND, which
is his law of ' BEING,'— unreconciled to his place in the universal
order, where he must live or have no life — for the beast,
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 23 1
obedient to his law, rejects from his kinds the degenerate man
— it is this vivid, condensed, scientific exhibition, this scientific
collection of the fact of man as he is, in his empiric struggle
with the law which universal nature enforces, and will
enforce on him with all her pains and penalties till he learns
it — it is this ' negation* which brings out the true doctrine of
man and human society in this method of inquiry. For the
scientific method begins with negations and exclusions, and
concludes only after every species of rejection; the other, the
common method, which begins with ' affirmation,' is the
one that has failed in practice, the one which has brought
about just this state of things which science is undertaking to
reform.
But this levelling, which the man of the new science, with
his new apparatus, with his '■ globe and his machines,' con-
trives to exhibit here with so much ' facility,1 is a scientific
one, designed to answer a scientific purpose merely. The
experimenter, in this case, is one who looks with scientific fore-
bodings, and not with hope only, on those storms of violent
political revolution that were hanging then on the world's
horizon, and threatening to repeat this process, threatening to
overwhelm in their wild crash, all the ancient social structures
— threatening ' to lay all flat' ! That is not the kind of change
he meditates. His is the subtle, all-penetrating Kadicalism of
the New Science, which imitates the noiseless processes of
Nature in its change and Re-formation.
There is a wild gibberish heard in the straw. The fool
shrieks, ' Nuncle, come not in here,' and out rushes ' Tom
©'Bedlam* — the naked creature, as Gloster calls him — with
his c elf locks,' his ' blanketed loins,' his ( begrimed face/ with
his shattered wits, his madness, real or assumed — there he
stands.
We know, indeed, in this instance, that there is gentle,
nay, noble blood, there, under that horrid guise. It is the
heir of a dukedom, we are told, but an out-cast one, who has
found himself compelled, for the sake of prolonging life, to
assume that shape, as other wretches were in the Poet's time
232 leak's philosopher.
for that same purpose, — men who had lost their dukedoms,
too, as it would seem, such as they were, in some way, and
their human relationships, too. But notwithstanding this
alleviating circumstance which enables the audience to endure
the exhibition in this instance, it serves not the less effectually
in the Poet's hand, as ' thI; conspicuous instance' of that
lowest human condition which this grand Social Tragedy
must needs include in its delineations.
Here are some of the prose English descriptions of this
creature, which we find already included in the commentaries
on this tragedy ; and which shew that the Poet has not exag-
gerated his portrait, and that it is not by way of celebrating
any Anglo-Saxon or Norman triumph over the barbarisms of
the joint reigns of Regan and Goneril, that he is produced
here.
' I remember, before the civil wars, Tom o' Bedlams went
about begging,' Aubrey says. Handle Holme, in his ' Academy
of Arms and Blazon,' includes them in his descriptions, as a
class of vagabonds ' feigning themselves mad.' l The Bedlam
is in the same garb, with a long staff,' etc., ' but his cloathing
is more fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is
madly decked and dressed all over with rubans, feathers, cuttings
of cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman, when he
is no other than a dissembling knave?
In the Bellman of London, 1640, there is another description
of him — ' He sweares he hath been in Bedlam, and will talk
frantickely of purpose ; you see pinnes stuck in sundry places of
his naked flesht especially in his armes, which paine he gladly puts
himself e to; calls himself by the name of Poore Tom; and
coming near anybody, cries out, ' Poor Tom's a coW Of these
Abraham men, some be exceeding merry, and doe nothing but
sing songs, fashioned out of their own braines; some will
dance; others will doe nothing but either laugh or weepe;
others are dogged, and so sullen, both in looke and speech, that
spying but a small company in a house, they bluntly and
boldly enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to give
them what they demand.'
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 233
This seems very wicked, very depraved, on the part of these
persons, especially the sticking of pins in their bare arms ; but
even our young dukeling Edgar says —
1 While I may scape,
I will preserve myself : and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape,
That ever penury, in contempt of man,
Brought near to beast : my face I'll grime with filth ;
Blanket my loins ; elf all my hair in knots ;
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds, and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numUd and mortified bare arms,
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary ;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity. — 'Poor Turlygood !' 'poor Tom V
Thais something yet. Edgar I nothing am.'
But the poet is not contented with the minuteness of this
description. This character appears to have taken his eye as
completely as it takes King Lear's, the moment that he gets a
glimpse of him ; and the poet betrays throughout that same
philosophical interest in the study, which the monarch expresses
so boldly; for beside the dramatic exhibition, and the philo-
sophical review of him, which King Lear institutes, here is
an autographical sketch of him, and of his mode of living —
' What are you there ? Your names 1 '
cries Gloster, when he comes to the heath, with his torch, to
seek out the king and his party; whereupon Tom, thinking
that an occasion has now arrived for defining his social outline,
takes it upon him to answer, for his part —
1 Poor Tom ; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the
wall-newt, and the water-[newt] ; that in the fury of his heart, when
the foul fiend rages, swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog ; drinks the
green mantle of the standing pool ; who is whipped from tything to
tything ' [this is an Anglo-Saxon institution one sees] ; c and stocked,
/
234 leak's philosophek.
punished, and imprisoned ; who hath had three suits to his back '
[fallen fortunes here, too], < six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and
weapon to wear.'
The Jesuits had beer^b*^^ at
work in Engl^^r^e^uring professedly to^ms^mLllhe
^Wri5m^ persons; and it appeared, to this
great practical philosopher, that this creature he has fetched
up here from the subterranean social abysses of his time, pre-
sented a very fitting subject for the operations of practitioners
professing any miraculous or superior influence over the demons
that infest human nature, or those that have power over
human fortunes. He has brought him out here thus dis-
tinctly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is any
exorcism which can meet his case, or that of the great human
multitude, that no man can number, of whose penury and vice
he stands here as the elected, pre-eminent, royal representative.
In that survey and report of human affairs, which this author
felt himself called upon to make, the case of this poor creature
had attracted his attention, and appeared to him to require
looking to; and, accordingly, he has made a note of it.
He is admirably seconded in his views on this subject, by the
king himself, who, in that fine philosophic humour which his
madness and his misery have served to develop in him, stands
ready to lend himself to the boldest and most delicate philo-
sophical inquiries. For the point to be noted here, — and it
is one of no ordinary importance, — is, that this mad humour
for philosophical investigation, which has seized so strangely
the royal mind, does not appear to be at all in the vein of
that old-fashioned philosophy, which had been rattling its ab-
stractions in the face of the collective human misery for so
many ages. For the helplessness of the human creature in his
struggle with the elements, and those conditions of his nature
which put him so hopelessly at the mercy of his own kind and
kindred, seem to suggest to the royal sufferer, who has the
advantage of a fresh experience to stimulate his apprehension,
that there ought to be some relief for the human condition
from this source, that is, from philosophy; and his inquiries
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 235
and discoveries are all stamped with the unmistakeable impress
of that fire new philosophy, which was not yet out of the
mint elsewhere — which was yet undergoing the formative
process in the mind of its great inventor ; — that philosophy,
which we are told elsewhere ' has for its principal object, to
make nature subservient to the wants and state of Man ' ; — and
which concerns itself for that purpose with ideas as they exist
in nature, as causes, and not as they exist in the mind of man
as words merely.
If there had been, indeed, any intention of paying a marked
compliment to the philosophy which still held all the mind
of the world in its grasp, at that great moment in history, in
which Tom o' Bedlam makes his first appearance on any stage,
it is not likely that that sage would have been just the person
appointed to hold the office of Philosopher in' Chi<vf, and
Councillor extraordinary to his Majesty.
The selection is indeed made on the part of the king,
in perfect good faith, whatever the Poet's intent may be; for
from the moment that this creature makes his appearance, he
has no eyes or ears for anything else. And he will not be
parted from him. For this startling juxtaposition was not
intended by the Poet to fulfil its effect as a mere passing
tableau vivant. The relation must be dramatically developed ;
that astounding juxtaposition must be prolonged, in spite of
the horror of the spectators, and the disgust and rude dis-
pleasure of the king's attendants. They seek in vain to part
these two men. The king refuses to stir without him. * He
will still keep with his philosopher.'' He has a vague idea that
his regal administration stands in need of some assistance, and
that philosophy ought to be able to give it, and that the Bed-
lamite is in some way connected with the subject, but confused
as the association is, it is a pertinacious one; and, in spite of
their disgust the king's friends are obliged to take this wretch
with them. For Gloster does not know, after all, it is ' his own
flesh and blood* he sees there. He cannot even recognize the
common kindred in that guise, as the king does, when he
philosophises on his condition. And the rough aristocratic
236 leak's philosopher.
contempt and indifference which is manifested by the king's
party, as a matter of course, for this poor human victim of
wrong and misfortune, is made to contrast with their bound-
less sympathy and tenderness for the king, while the poet,
aiming at broader relationships, finds the mantle of his human-
ity wide enough for them, both.
As for the king,— startled in the midst of those new views of
human wretchedness which his own sufferings have occa-
sioned, and while those desires to remedy it, with which his
penitence is accompanied, are still on his lip, by this wild
apparition and embodiment of his thought, in that new acces-
sion of his mental disorder, which the presence of this object
seems to occasion, that confounding of proximate conceptions,
which leads him to regard this man as a source of new light
on human affairs, is one of those exquisite physiological
exhibitions of which only this scientific artist is capable.
And, in fact, it must be confessed, that this ' learned Theban'
himself, notwithstanding the unexpected dignity of his pro-
motion, does not appear to be altogether wanting in a taste, at
least, for that new kind of philosophical investigation, which
seems to be looked for at his hands. The king's inquiries
appear to fall in remarkably with the previous train of his
pursuits. In the course of his experiments, he seems himself
to have struck upon that new philosophic proceeding, which
has been called ' putting philosophy upon the right road
again.'
Only the philosophic domain which that new road in philo-
sophy leads to, appears to be very considerably broader, as
1 Tom ' takes it, than that very vivid, but narrow limitation of
its fields, which Mr. Macaulay has set down in our time,
would make it. Indeed, this ' philosopher,' that Lear so much
inclines to, appears to have included in his investigations the
two extremes of the new science of practice. He has sounded
it apparently ' from its lowest note to the top of its key.'
' What is your study ? ' says the king to him, eyeing him
curiously, and apparently struck with the practical result —
anxious to have a word with him in private, but obliged to
conduct the examination on the stage.
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 237
' How to prevent the fiend,' is Tom's reply. * How to
prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.'
This is the Poet who says elsewhere, ' that without good
nature, men are themselves but a nobler kind of vermin.'
One cannot but observe, however, that Poor Tom's
researches in this quite new field of a practical philosophy, do
not appear to have been followed up since his time with any
very marked success. One of these departments of < his study'
has indeed been seized, and is now occupied by whole troops
of modern philosophers ; but their inquiries, though very in-
teresting and doubtlessly useful, do not appear to exhibit that
direct and palpable bearing on practice, to which Tom's pro^
gramme so severely inclines. For he is one who would make
' the art and practic part of life, the mistress to his theoric.'
And as to that other mysterious object of his inquiries,
Mr. Macaulay is not the only person who appears to think,
that that does not come within the range of anything human.
Many of our scholars are still of the opinion that, ' court holy
water' is the best application in the world for him ; and the fact
that he does not appear to get ■ prevented' with it; it is a fact
which of course has nothing to do with the logical result.
For our philosophers are still determined to reason it ' thus and
thus,' without taking into account the circumstance, that ' the
sequent effect' with which ' nature finds itself scourged,' is not
touched by their reasons.
King Lear's own inquiries seem also to include with great
distinctness, the two great branches of the new philosophical
inquiry. His mind is indeed very eagerly bent on the pursuit
of causes. And though in the paroxysms of his mental dis-
order, he is apt to confound them occasionally, this very con-
fusion, as it is managed, only serves to develop the breadth of
the philosophic conception beneath it.
* He hath no daughters, Sir.' ' Death, traitor! Nothing
could have subdued nature to such a lowness, but — his un-
kind daughters' It is, of course, his own new and terrible
experience which points the inquiry, and though the physical
causes are not omitted in it, it is not strange that the moral
238 LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
should predominate, and that his mind should seem to be very
curiously occupied in tracking the ethical phenomena to their
sources ' in nature?
In the midst of the uproar of the Tempest, he does indeed
begin with the physical investigation. He puts to his ' learned
Theban' the question, which no learned Theban had then
ever suspected of lying within the range of the scholar's
investigations — that question which has been put to some
purpose since — 'What is the cause of thunder?' But his
philosophic inquiry does not stop there,— where all the new
philosophy has stopped ever since, and where some of our
scholars declare it was meant to stop, notwithstanding the
plainest declarations of its inventor to the contrary — with the
investigation of physical causes.
For, after all, it is ' the tempest in his mind* that most con-
cerns him. His philosopher, his practical philosopher, must
be able to explore the conditions of that, and find the con-
ductors for its lightnings. ' For where the greater malady is
fixed, the lesser is scarce felt.' ' Nor rain, wind, thunder,
lire, are his daughters.' After all, it is Regan's heart that
appears to him to be the trouble — it is that which must first
be laid on the table; and as soon- as he decides to have a
philosopher among ' his hundred,' he gives orders to that
effect.
' Then let them anatomise Regan ; see what breeds about her heart :
Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts V
A very fair subject for philosophical inquiry, one would say;
and, on the whole, as profitable and interesting a one, per-
haps, as some of those that engage the attention of our men of
learning so profoundly at present. In these days of enlightened
scientific procedure, one would hardly undertake the smallest
practical affair with the aid of any such vague general notions
or traditional accounts of the properties to be dealt with, as
those which our learned Thebans appear to find all-sufficient
for their practices, in that particular department which Lear
seems inclined to open here as a field for scientific exploration.
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR. 239
And it is perfectly clear that the author, whoever he
may be, is very much of Lear's mind on this point, for he
does not depend upon Lear alone to suggest his views
upon it. There is never a person of this drama that does not
do it.
240 lear's philosopher.
CHAPTER IV.
THE USE OF EYES.
' All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but — blind men.'
fPHE Play is all strewn throughout, and tinctured in the
grain, with the finest natural philosophy, of that new
and very subtle and peculiar kind, which belongs to the earlier
stages of the physical inquiry, and while it was still in the
hands of its original inventors. Even in physics, there are
views here which have not been developed any further since
this author's time. It is not merely in the direct discourse on
questions of physical science, as in the physician's report of
the resources of his art, or in Cordelia's invocation to ' all the
blessed secrets — the unpublished virtues of the earth/ that the
track of the new physiological science, which this work
embodies, may be seen. It runs through it all; it betrays
itself at every turn. But the subtle and occult relations of
the moral and physical are noted here, as we do not find them
noted elsewhere, in less practical theories of nature.
That there is something in the design of this play which
equires an elaborate and systematic exhibition of the ' special'
human relationships, natural and artificial, political, social, and
domestic, almost any reading of it would show. And that
this design involves, also, a systematic exhibition of the social
consequences arising from the violation of the natural laws or
duties of these relationships, and that this violation is every-
where systematically aggravated, — carried to its last con-
ceivable extreme, so that all the play is filled with the uproar
THE USE OF EYES. 241
of one continued outrage on humanity ; this is not less evident
For the Poet is not content with the material which his
chronicle offered him, already invented to his hands for this
purpose, but he has deliberately tacked to it, and intricately
connected with it throughout,, another plot, bearing on the
surface of it, and in the most prominent statements, the
author's intention in this respect; which tends not only in the
most unequivocal manner to repeat and corroborate the im-
pressions which the story of Lear produces, but to widen the
dramatic exhibition, so as to make it capable of conveying the
whole breadth of the philosophic conception. For it is the
scientific doctrine of MAN that is taught here; and that is,
that man must be human in all his relations, or ' cease to be.7
It is the violation of the essential humanity. It is a
degeneracy which is exhibited here, and the ' sequent
effects' which belong naturally to the violation of a law
that has the force of the universe to sustain it. And it is not
by accident that the story of the illegitimate Edmund begins
the piece ; it is not for nothing that we are compelled to stop
to hear that, before even Lear and his daughters can make
their entrance. The whole story of the base and base-born one,
who makes what he calls nature — the rude, brutal, sponta-
neous nature — his goddess and his law, and ignores the
human distinction; this part was needed in order to supply
the deficiences in the social diagrams which the original plot
presented; and, indeed, the whole story of the Duke of
Gloster, which is from first to last a clear Elizabethan inven-
tion, and of which this of Edmund is but a part, was not less
essential for the same purpose.
Neither does one need to go very far beneath the surface, to
perceive a new and extraordinary treatment of the ethical
principle in this play throughout ; one which the new, artistic,
practical ' stand-point ' here taken naturally suggested, but one
which could have proceeded only from the inmost heart of the
new philosophy. It is just the kind of treatment which the
proposal to introduce the Inductive method of inquiry into
this department of the human practice inevitably involved.
R
24.2 lear's philosopher.
A disposition to go behind the ethical phenomena, to pursue
the investigation to its scientific conclusion, a refusal to accept
the facts which, to the unscientific observation, appear to be
the ultimate ones — a refusal to accept the coarse, vague,
spontaneous notions of the dark ages, as the solution of these
so essential phenomena, is everywhere betraying and declaring
itself. Cordelia's agonised invocation and summons to the
unpublished forces of nature, to be aidant and remediate to the
good man's distress, is continually echoed by the poet, but
with a broader application. It is not the bodily malady and in-
firmity only— it is not that kind of madness, only with which
the poor king is afflicted in the later stages of the play, which
appears to him to need scientific treatment— it is not for the cure
of these alone that he would open his Prospero book, ' nature's
infinite book of secresy,' as he calls it in Mark Antony — < the
true magic,' as he calls it elsewhere — the book of the un-
published laws — the scientific book of ' kinds ' — the book
of ' the historic laws' — 'the book of God's power.'^
All the interior phenomena which attend the violation of
duty are strictly omitted here. That psychological exhibition
of it belongs to other plays; and the Poet has left us, as we
all know, no room to suspect the tenderness of his moral sen-
sibility, or the depth of his acquaintance with these subjective
phenomena. The social consequences of the violation of duty
in all the human relationships, the consequence to others, and
the social reaction, limits the exhibition here. ^ The object on
which our sympathies are chiefly concentrated is, as he himself
is made to inform us —
' One more sinned against, than sinning.'
' Oh these eclipses do portend these divisions,'
says the base-born Edmund, sneeringly. ' Fa sol la mi; he
continues, producing that particular conjunction of sounds
which was forbidden by the ancient musicians, on account of
its unnatural discord. The monkish writers on music call it
diabolical. It is at the conclusion of a very long and elaborate
discussion on this question* that he treats us to this prohibited
piece of harmony; and a discussion in which Gloster refers to
THE USE OF EYES. 243
the influence of the planets, this unnaturalness in all the human
relations — this universal jangle — ' this ruinous disorder, that
hunts men disquietly to their graves.' But the 'base' Edmund
is disposed to acquit the celestial influences of the evil charged
on them. He does not believe in men being —
1 Fools, by heavenly compulsion ; knaves and thieves, by spherical
predominance ; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedi-
ence of planetary influence ; and all that they are evil in, by a divine
thrusting on.'
He has another method of accounting for what he himself is.
He does not think it necessary to go quite so far, to find the
origin of his own base, lawless, inhuman, unconscionable dispo-
sitions. But the inquiries, which are handled so boldly in the
soliloquies of Edmund, are started again and again elsewhere;
and the recurrence is too emphatic, to leave any room to doubt
that the author's intention in the play is concerned in it; and
that this question of * the several dispositions and characters of
men,' and the inquiry as to whether there be * any causes in
nature' of these degenerate tendencies, which he is at such pains
to exhibit, is, for some reason or other, a very important point
with him. That which in contemplative philosophy corresponds
to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule, the founder
of it tells us. But the play cannot be studied effectually without
taking into account the fact, that the author avails himself of
the date of his chronicle to represent that stage of human
development in which the mysterious forces of nature were still
blindly deified; and, therefore, the religious invocations with
which the play abounds, are not, in the modern sense of the
term, prayers, but only vague, poetic appeals to the unknown,
unexplored powers in nature, which we call second causes.
And when, as yet, there was no room for science in the narrow
premature theories which men found imposed on them — when
all the new movement of human thought was still ham-
pered by the narrowness of ? preconceived opinions,' the poet
was glad to take shelter under the date of his legend now and
then, here, as in Macbeth and other poems, for the sake of a
b2
244 leak's philosopher.
little more freedom in this respect. He is very far from con-
demning 'presuppositions ' and * anticipations,' but only wishes
them kept in their proper places, because to bring them into
the region of fact and induction, and so to falsify the actual
condition of things — to undertake to face down the powers of
nature with them, is a merely mistaken mode of proceeding;
because these powers are powers which do not yield to the
human beliefs, and the practical doctrine must have respect to
them. The great battle of that age — the battle of the
second causes, which the new philosophers were compelled
to fight in behalf of humanity at the peril of their lives
— the battle which they fought in the open field with
Aristotle and Plato — fills all this magnificent poetry with its
reverberations.
It must be confessed, that those terrible appeals to the
heavens, into which King Lear launches out in his anguish
now and then, are anything but pious; but the boldness which
shocks our modern sensibilities becomes less offensive, if we
take into account the fact that they are not made to the
object of our present religious worship, but are mere vague
appeals, and questioning addresses to the unknown, unexplored
causes in nature — the powers which lie behind the historical
phenomena.
For that divine Ideal of Human Nature to which ' our
large temples, crowded with the shows of peace/ are built
now, had not yet appeared at the date of this history, in that
form in which we now worship it, with its triumphant assu-
rance that it came forth from the heart of God, and declared
Him. Paul had not yet preached his sermon at Athens, in
the age of this supposed King of Britain; and though the
author was indeed painting his own age, and not that, it so
happened that there was such a heathenish and inhuman, and,
as he intimates, indeed, quite 'fiendish1 and diabolical state of
things to represent here then, that this discrepancy was not so
shocking as it might have been if he had found a divine
religion in full operation here.
' If it be you,' says Lear, falling back upon the theory,
THE USE OF EYES. 245
which Edmund has already discarded, of a divine thrusting
on —
1 If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely ; touch me with noble anger.'
And here is an echo of the * spherical predominance' which
Gloster goes into so elaborately in the outset, confessing, much
to the amusement of his graceless offspring, that he is disposed
to think, after all, there may be something in it. ' For/ he
says, * though the wisdom of nature [the spontaneous wisdom]
can reason IT thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged
by the sequent EFFECT;' and he is talking under the dic-
tation of a philosopher who, though he ridicules the preten-
sions of astrology in the next breath, lays it down as a principle
in the scientific Art, as a chief point in the science of Practice
and Kelief, that the sequent effects, with which nature finds
itself scourged, are a better guide to the causes which the
practical remedy must comprehend, than anything which the
wisdom of nature can undertake to reason out beforehand,
without any respect to the sequent effect — 'thus, and — thus.'
But here is the confirmation of Gloster's view of the subject,
which the sound-minded Kent, who is not at all metaphysical,
finds himself provoked to utter; and though this is in the
Fourth Act, and Gloster's opinions are advanced in the First,
the passages do, notwithstanding, * look towards each other.'
' It is the stars.
The stars above us govern our conditions,
Else one self mate and mate could not beget
Such different issues.'
Of course, it is not the astrological theory of the constitu-
tional original differences in the human dispositions which the
honest Kent is made to advocate here, literally and in earnest.
It is rather the absence of any known cause, and the necessity
of supposing one in a case where this difference is so obtrusive
and violent, which he expresses; the stars being the natural
resort of men in such circumstances, and when other solutions
fail ; though Poor Tom appears to be in possession of a much
/
246 leak's philosopher.
more orthodox theory for the peculiar disorders in his moral
constitution: but, at the same time, it must be conceded that
it is one which does not appear to have led, in his case, to any
such felicitous practical results as the supposed origin of it
might have seemed to promise.
For, indeed, this point of natural differences in the human
dispositions, though, of course, quite overlooked in the moral
regimen which. is based on a priori knowledge, and is able to
dispense with science, and ride over the actual laws; this
point of difference — not in the dispositions of individuals
only, but the differences which manifest themselves under the
varying conditions of age and bodily health, of climate, or
other physical differences in the same individual, as well as
under the varying moral conditions of differing social and
political positions and relations; this so essential point, over-
looked as it is in the ordinary practice, has seized the clear
eye of this great scientific practitioner, this Master of Arts,
and he is making a radical point of it in his new speculation ;
he is making collections on it, and he will make a main point
of it in « the part operative ' of his New Science, when he
comes to make out the outline of it elsewhere, referring us
distinctly to this place for his collections in it, for his collec-
tions on this point, as well as on others not less radical.
Lear himself, in his madness, appears, as we have seen
already, much disposed to speculate upon this same particular
question, which Gloster and Edmund and Kent have already
indicated as ' a necessary question of the play' ; namely, the
question as* to ' the causes in nature1 of the phenomena which
the social condition of man exhibits; that is, the causes of that
degeneracy, that violation of the essential human law to which
all the evil is tracked here ; and it is the scientific doctrine,
that the nature of a thing cannot be successfully studied in
itself alone. It is not in water or in air only, or in any other
single substance, that we find the nature of oxygen, or hydrogen,
or any other of those principles in nature, which the applica-
tion of this method to another department evolves from things
which present themselves to the unscientific experience as
THE USE OF EYES. 247
most dissimilar. ' It is the greatest proof of want of skill to
investigate the nature of any object in itself alone; for the
same nature which seems concealed and hidden in some in-
stances, is manifest and almost palpable in others; and, in
general, those very things which are considered as secret, are
manifest and common in other objects, but will never be
clearly seen if the experiments and conclusions of men be
directed to themselves alone': for it is a part of this doctrine, <__
that man is not omitted in the order of nature — that the term ^
human nature is not a misnomer. The doctrine of this
Play is, that those same powers which are at work in man's
life, are at work without it also; that they are powers which
belong, in their highest form, to the nature of things in
general; and that man himself, with all his special distinc-
tions, is under the law of that universal constitution. The
scientific remedy for the state of things which this play ex-
hibits is the knowledge of ' causes in nature,' which must be
found here, as in the other case, by scientific investigation —
the spontaneous method leading to no better result here than
in the other case. Under cover of the excitements of this
play, this inquiry is boldly opened, and the track of the new
science is clearly marked in it.
Poor Lear is, indeed, compelled to leave the practical im-
provement of his hints for another; and when it comes to the
open question of the remedy for this state of things, which is
the term of the inquiry, when he undertakes to put his
absolute power in motion for the avowed purpose of effecting
an improvement here, he appears indeed disposed to treat the
subject in the most savage and despairing manner — that is,
on his own account ; but the vein of the scientific inquiry still
runs unbroken through all this burst of passion. For in his
scorn for that failure in human nature and human life of
which society, as he finds it, stands convicted — that failure
to establish the distinctive law of the human kind — that
failure from which he is suffering so deeply — and in his
struggle to express that disgust, he proposes, as an improve-
ment on the state of things he finds, a law which shall oblite-
248 leak's philosopheb.
rate that human distinction; though certainly that is anything
but the Poet's remedy; and the poor king himself does not
appear to be in earnest, for the moral disgust in which the
distinctive sentiment of the nobler nature, and the knowledge
of human good and evil betrays itself, breaks forth in floods of
passion that overflow all the bounds of articulation before he
can make an end of it.
But the radical nature of this question of natural causes,
which the practical theory of the social arts must comprehend,
is already indicated in this play, in the very beginning of the
action.
This author is everywhere bent on graving the scientific
distinction between those instinctive affections in which men
degenerate, and tend to the rank of lower natures, and the
noble natural, distinctively human affections; and when, in
the first scene, the king betrays the selfishness of that fond
preference for his younger daughter, — tender, and paternal,
and deep as it was, — and the depth of those hopes he was
resting on her kind care and nursery, by the very height of
that frenzied paroxysm of rage and disappointment, which her
unflattering and, as it seems to him, her unloving reply,
creates; — when that l small fault, which showed,' he tells
us, 'so ugly' in her whom ' he loved most ' — which turned, in
a moment, all the sweetness of his love for her ' to gall, and like
an engine, wrenched his nature from its firm place' ; — these are
the terms in which he undertakes to annul the natural tie, and
disown her —
Lear. So young, and so untender ?
Cordelia. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so. — Thy truth then be thy dower :
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun ;
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night ;
By all the operations of the orbs,
From whom we do exist, and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
THE USE OF EYES. 249
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour 'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou, my sometime daughter.
And when
'This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of his poisoned chalice
To his own lips ' —
when his * dog-hearted daughters ! have returned to his own
bosom the cruel edge of that unnatural wrong which he
has impiously dared to summon nature herself — violated
nature - to witness, this is the greeting which the unnatural
Goneril receives, on her return to her husband, when she
complains to him of her welcome —
Goneril. I have been worth the whistle.
Albany. 0 Goneril !
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. — I fear your disposition :
That nature, which contemns its origin,
Cannot be bordered certain in itself ;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use.
[Prima Philosophia. Axioms which are not limited to the
particular parts of sciences, but 'such as are more common,
and of a higher stage.']
Goneril. No more ; the text is foolish.
Albany. Tigers, not daughters, —
[You have practised on yourself — you have destroyed in
yourself the nobler, fairer nature which the law of human
kind — the law of human duty and affection — would have
given you. Not daughters, — Tigers.']
'A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence the head-lugged bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate !' —
[degenerate — that is the point — most degenerate] —
'have you madded.
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
250 lear's philosopher.
Send quickly down, to tame these vile offences
'Twill come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.'
[the land refuses a parallel.]
And it is the scientific distinction between man and the
brute creation — it is the law of nature *in the human kind,
which the Poet is getting out scientifically here, in the face of
that terrific failure and degeneration in the kind — which he
paints so vividly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is
not, perhaps, after all, some more potent provisioning and
arming of man for his place in nature, than this state of things
would lead one to suppose — whether there are not, perhaps,
some more efficacious ' humanities ' than those mild ones
which appear to operate so lamely on this barbaric, degenerate
thing. f Milk-liver' d man!' replies Goneril, speaking not on
her own behalf only, for the words have a double significance;
and the Poet glances through them at that sufferance with
which the state of things he has just noted was endured — -
' Milk-liver'd man,
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs ;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honour from thy sufferance ; that not know'st,
Fools do those villains pity, who are punished
Before they have done their mischief Where's thy drum ?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land ;
With plumed helm thy slayer begins threats ;
Whilst thou, a Moral Fool, sit'st still, and cry'st,
Alack ! why does he so V
This is found to be an appeal of the Poet's own when all is
done, and one that goes far into the necessary questions of the
play.
But Albany, in his rejoinder, returns to the idea of the lost,
degenerate, dissolute Humanity again. He has talked of tigers,
and head-lugged bears (and it was necessary to combine the
proverbial sensitiveness of that animal to that particular mode
of treatment, with the natural amiability of his disposition in
general, in order to do justice to the Poet's conception here) ;
THE USE OF EYES. 25 1
— he has called upon ' the monsters of the deep,' and quoted
the laws of their societies, in illustration of the state of things
to which the unscientific human combination appears to him
to be visibly tending. But this human degeneracy and de-
formity, which the action of the play exhibits in diagrams —
the descent to the lower nature from the higher; the voluntary
descent; the voluntary blindness and narrowness ; the rejection
of the distinctive human law— of Virtue and Duty, as reason
and conscience interpret it — appears to the scientific mind to
require yet other terms and comparisons. These conceits and
comparisons, drawn from the habits of innocent, though not to
man agreeable, animals, who have no law but blind instinct,
do not suffice to convey the Poet's idea of this human dire-
liction; and, accordingly, he instructs this gentle and noble
man, whom this criticism best becomes, to complete this view
of the subject, in his attempt to express the disgust with
which this inhuman, this more than brutal conduct, in his
high-born, and gorgeously-robed, and delicately-featured
spouse, inspires him —
'See thyself, devil ft-
nay, he corrects himself —
Proper deformity [de-formity] seems not in the fiend
So horrid, as in woman.
Goneril. O vain fool !
Albany. Thou changed and self-covered thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were it my fitness' —
for here it is the human, and not the instinctive element — not
1 the blood' element that rules —
' Were it my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones'
Kather tiger-like impulses for so mild a gentleman to own
to ; but the process which he confesses his hands are already
inclined to undertake, is not half so cruel as the one which
this woman has practised on herself while she was meditating
252 LEAR'S philosopher.
only wrong to another, and pursuing her ' horrible pleasure'
at the expense of madness and death to another; not half so
cruel and injurious, for in that act she has trampled down, and
torn, and dislocated, she has slaughtered in cold blood, the
divine, angelic form of womanhood — that form of worth and
celestial aspiration which great nature stamped upon her, and
gave to her for her law in nature, her type, her essence, her
ORIGINAL. She has desecrated, not that common form of
humanity only which the common human sentiment of reason,
which the human sentiment of duty is everywhere struggling
to fulfil, but that lovelier soul of humanity —that softer, subtler,
more gracious, more celestial, more commanding spirit of it,
which the form of womanhood in its integrity must carry with
it — which the form of womanhood will carry with it, if it be
not counterfeit or degenerate, gone down into a lower range,
' be-monstered ' — ' a changed and self-covered thing.' That is
the Poet's reading.
' However,' the Duke of Albany concludes, after that strug-
gle with his hands he speaks of— chivalrously refusing to let
them obey that impulse of ' blood,' as a gentleman in such
circumstances, under any amount of provocation, should —
true to himself, true to his manliness and to his gentle breeding,
though his wife is false to hers, and i false to her nature' —
' Howe'er thou art & fiend,
A woman's shape doth shield thee.
Goneril. Marry ! your manhood now.'
This is indeed a discourse in which the reader must have
' the text,' or ever he can begin to catch the meaning of those
philosophic points with which this orator, who talks so ' pressly/
studs his lines.
For the passage which Goneril dismisses with such scorn is
indeed the text, or it will be, when the word which her com-
mentary on it contains has been added to it : for it is ' the
foolishness' of struggling with great Nature, and her LAW of
KINDS _ it is the folly of ignorance, the stupidity of living
without respect to nature and its sequent effects, as well as its
preformed decree —
THE USE OF EYES. 253
(' Perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use ' — )
which this discourse is intended to illustrate. And one who
has once tracked the dramatic development of this text,
through all this moving exhibition of human society, and
its violated rule in nature, will be at no loss to conjecture out
of what ' New' book it comes, if indeed that book has ever
been opened to him.
The whole subject is treated here scientifically — that is,
from without. The generalizations of the higher stages of
philosophy — the axioms of a universal philosophy — with all the
force of their universality, must be brought to bear upon it,
through all its developments. The universal historical laws,
in that modification of them which the speciality of the human
kind creates, must be impartially set forth here. The law of
duty, as the natural law of human society; the law of
humanity, as the law, nay, the form, of the HUMAN kind,
stamped on it with the Creator's stamp, that order from the
universal law of kinds that gives to all life its special bounds,
its 'border in itself' — that form so essential, that there is no
humanity or kind-ness where that is not — that law which we
hear so much of, in its narrower aspects, under various names,
in all men's speech, is produced here, in its broader relations,
as the necessary basis of a scientific social art. And it is this
author's deliberate opinion as a Naturalist, it is the opinion of
this School in Natural Science, from which this work pro-
ceeds, that those who undertake to compose human societies,
large or small, whether in families, or states, or empires, with-
out recognising this principle — those who undertake to com-
pose UNIONS, human unions and societies, on any other
principle - will have a diabolical jangle of it when all is done.
For this law of unity, which is written on the soul of man,
this law of CONSCIENCE within, is written without also ; and
to erase it within is to get the lesson from without in that
universal and downright .speech and language which the
axioms of nature are taught in — it is to get it in that fearful
school in which nature repeats the doctrine of her violated
254 lear's philosopher.
law, for those who are not able to solve and comprehend the
science of it as it is written — written beforehand — in the
natural law and constitutions of the human soul.
1 That nature which contemns its origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself?
[These are the mysteries of day and night, that Lear, in
his ignorance, vainly invokes, the operations of the orbs from
whom we do exist and cease to be.~]
1 She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use.'
' The text is — foolish.'
The teacher who takes it upon himself to get out this text
from the text-book of Universal Laws, for the purpose of
conducting it to its practical application in human affairs,
for the purpose of suggesting the true remedy for those great
human wants which he exhibits here, is not one of those
1 Milk-livered men/ those Moral Fools, that Goneril delicately
alludes to, who bear a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
who have not in their brows an eye discerning their honour
from their sufferance; who think it enough to sit still under
the murderous blows of what they call misfortune, fate, Pro-
vidence, when it is their own im-providence ; who think it is
enough to sit still, and cry, Alack ! without inquiring what it
is that makes that lack ; without ever putting the question in
earnest, ' Why does he so V His Play is all full of the practical
application of the text, the application of it which Gloster
sums up in a word —
* 'Tis the Time's plague when Madmen leaditfEi Blind.'*
The whole Play is one magnificent intimation, on the part
of the Poet, that eyes are made to see with ; and that there is
: I will preach to thee. Mark me : [says Lear]
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of Fools. [Mark me !']
THE USE OF EYES. 255
no so natural and legitimate use of them as that which
human affairs were crying for, through all their lengths and
breadths, in his time. It is that eye which is one of the
distinctive features of the human kind; that eye which
looks before and after, which extends human vision so far
beyond individual sensuous experience, which is able to
converge the light of universal truth upon particular ex-
perience, which is able to bring the infallible guidance of
universal axioms into all the particulars of human conduct
— that is the eye which he finds wanting in human affairs.
The play is pointing everywhere with the Poet's scorn of
1 Blind Men,' * who will not see because they do not feel/ —
who wait for the blows of ' fortune/ to teach them the lesson
of Nature's laws — who wait to be scourged, or dashed to
pieces with ' the sequent effect/ instead of making use of their
faculty of reason to ascend to causes, and so ' to trammel up
the consequence/
It is that same combination of human faculties, that
same combination of sense and reason, which the Novum
Organum provides for; it is that same scorn of abstract wordy
speculation, on the one hand, and blind experimental groping,
on the other, that is everywhere suggested here. But with the
aid of the persons of the Drama, and their suggestions, the
new philosophy is carried into departments which it would
have cost the Author of the Novum Organum and the
Advancement of Learning his head to look into. He might
as well have proposed to impeach the Government in Parlia-
ment outright, as to offer to advance his Novum Organum
into these fields; fields which it enters safely enough under
the cover of a spontaneous, inspired, dramatic philosophy,
though it is a philosophy which overflows continually with
those practical axioms, those aphorisms, which the Author of
the Advancement of Learning assures us ' are made of the
pith and heart of sciences' ; and that * no man can write who is
not sound and grounded/ But then, if they are only written
in * with a goose-pen/ they pass well enough for unconscious,
unmeaning, spontaneous felicities.
256 lear's philosopher.
' Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his
face?' says the Fool, in the First Act, by way of entertaining
his master, when the poor king's want of foresight and ' pru-
dence' begins to tell on his affairs a little. ' Canst thou tell
why one's nose stands in the middle of his face? fNo.'
< Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what a man
cannot smell out he may spy into.1
Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell V
Lear. No.
Fool. Nor I neither ; but I can tell why a snail has a house.
Lear. Why?
Fool. Why, to put his head in ; not to give it away to his daughters,
and leave his horns without a case.
Lear Be my horses ready 1
Fool. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars
are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight 1
Fool. Yes, indeed : Thou wouldest make a good— fool.
He cannot tell how an oyster makes his shell, but the nose
has not stood in the middle of his face for nothing. There has
been some prying on either side of it, apparently; and he has
pried to such good purpose, that some of the prime secrets of
the new philosophy appear to have turned up in his researches.
f To take it again perforce,' mutters the king. ' If thou wert
my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being OLD before thy
time.3 [This is a wit ' of the self-same colour' with that one
who discovered that the times from which the world's practical
wisdom was inherited, were the times when the world was
young. ' They told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the
black ones were there !'] ( I'd have thee beaten for being old
before thy time.'— < How's that?'— ' Thou shouldst not have
been OLD before thou hadst been WISE.'
And it is in the Second Act that poor Kent, in his misfortunes,
furnishes occasion for another avowal on the part of this same
learned critic, of a preference for a practical philosophy, though
borrowed from the lower species. He comes upon the object
of his criticism as he sits in the stocks, because he could not
adopt the style of his time with sufficient earnestness, though
THE USE OF EYES. 257
he does make an attempt ' to go out of his dialect,' but was not
more happy in it than some other men of his politics were, in
the Poet's time.
1 Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,
Under the allowance of your grand aspect,
Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phebui front —
Cornwall. * What mean'st by this V
Kent. ' To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much.
[Halting in his blank verse for the explanation] : — It is from
that seat, to which the plainness of this man, with the official
dignities of his time, has conducted him, that he puts the
inquiry to that keen observer, whose observations in natural
history have just been quoted, —
Kent. How chances that the king comes with so small a trainl
Fool. An thou had'st been set in the stocks for that question, thou
had'st well deserved it.
Kent. Why, fool?
Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there is no
labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes,
but— BLIND MEN.
Kent. Where learned'st thou that, fool 1
Fool. Not in the stocks, fool.
[Not from being punished with the sequent effect; not in
consequence of an improvidence, that an ant might have taught
me to avoid.]
' I have no way, and therefore want no eyes ; says another
duke, who is also the victim of that e absolute' authority which
is abroad in this play. * I stumbled when I saw/ and this is
his prayer.
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
That slaves your ordinance ; that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly.
' Thou seest how this world goes/ says the outcast king,
meeting this poor outcast duke, just after his eyes had been
taken out of his head, by the persons then occupying the
chief offices in the state. ' Thou seest how this world goes.'
' I see it feelingly,' is the duke's reply.
s
258 leak's philosopher.
Lear. What ! art inadl A man may see how this world goes with no
eyes. Look with thine ears.
And his account of how it goes, is — as we shall see —
one that requires to be looked at with ears, for it contains,
what one calls elsewhere in this play, — ear-kissing arguments.
— * Get thee glass eyes,' he says, in conclusion, f and like a
scurvy politician,' pretend to SEE, the things thou dost not/
And that was not the kind of politician, and that was not the
kind of political eye-sight, to which this statesman, and seer,
proposed to leave the times, that his legacy should fall on,
whatever he might be compelled to tolerate in his own.
' Upon the crown o' the cliff. What thing was that
Which parted from you V
1 A poor unfortunate beggar.' [Softly.]
1 As 1 stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons ; he had a thousand noses.
Horns welked and waved, like the enridged sea'
' Now, Sir, what are you?' says the poor outcast duke to
his true son, when in disguise he offers to attend him. ' A
most poor man,' is the reply, ' made lame by fortune's blows;
who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, am
pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand, I'll lead you to
some BIDING. Bear free and patient thoughts/ is his whisper
to him.
Surely this is a poet that has got an inkling, in some way,
of the new idea of an experimental philosophy, — of a combina-
tion of the human faculties of sense and reason in some
organum ; one, too, whose eye passes lightly over the architec-
tonic gifts of univalves and bivalves, and entomological develop-
ments of skill and forethought, intent on that great chrysalis,
which has never been able to publish yet its Creator's glory.
Here is a naturalist who would not think it enough to combine
reason with experiment, in wind, and rain, and fire, and thunder,
who would not think it enough to bring all the unpublished
virtues of the earth, to the relief of the bodily human maladies.
It is the Poet, who says elsewhere, * Can'st thou not minister to
THE USE OF EYES. 259
a mind diseased ? No ? Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of
it.' It is the poet who says, i Nor wind, rain, fire, thunder, are
my daughters.' * Nothing could have brought him to such a
lowness in nature, but his xm-kind daughters.' It is the natural-
ist who says, 4 Then let Regan's heart be anatomized, and see
what it is that breeds about it. Is there any cause in nature
that makes these hard hearts?'
In short, this play is from the hand of one who thinks that
the human affairs are of a kind to require scientific investiga-
tion, scientific foresight and conduct. He is much of Lear's
opinion on many points, and evidently judges that there would
be no harm in getting a philosopher enrolled among the king's
hundred. Not a logician, not a metaphysician, according to
the common acceptance of these terms; not merely a natural
philosopher, in the low and limited sense of that term, in.
which we use it; but a man of science — one who is able, by ^>
some method or other, to ascend to the actual principles of things,
and so to base his remedies for the social evils, on the forms which
are forms, which have efficacy in nature as such, instead of basing
them on certain chimeras, or so-called logical conclusions of the
human mind— conclusions which the logic of nature contradicts —
conclusions to which the universal consent of things is wanting.
Nature, in the sense in which Edmund uses that term, is not
this poet's goddess, or his law ; though he regards ' the plague
of CUSTOM ' and * the curiosity of nations,' and all their fan-
tastic and arbitrary sway in human affairs, with an eye
quite as critical — though he looks at ' that old Antic, the law,'
as he expresses it elsewhere, with an eye quite as severe, on
the world's behalf, as that which Edmund turns on it, on his
own ; he is very far from contending for the freedom of that
savage, selfish, unreclaimed, spontaneous nature, — that lawless
nature, to which the natural son of Gloster claims 'his ser-
vices are due.' The poet teaches that the true and successful
Social Art is, and must be scientific. That it must be based
on the science of nature in general, and on the science of
human nature in particular, on a science that recognizes the
double nature in man, that takes in, its heights as well as its
s 2
260 lear's philosopher.
depths, and its depths as well as its heights, that sounds it
* from its lowest note to the top of its key/ but it is one thing
to quarrel with the unscientific, imperfect social arts, and it is
another to prefer nature in man without arts. The picture of
1 the Unaccommodated Man,' which forms so prominent a part of
the representation here, — 'the thing itself,' stripped of its
social lendings, or setting at nought the social restraints, is
not by any means an attractive one, as this philosopher does it
for us. The scientific artist is no better pleased, than the king
is with this kind of ' nature.1 It is the imperfection of the
civilization which still generates, or leaves unchecked these
savage evils, that he exposes.
But it is impossible, that the true social arts should be smelt
out, or stumbled on, by accident, or arrived at by any kind of
empirical groping; just as impossible as it is, on the other
hand, that ' the wisdom of nature,' by throwing itself on its
own internal resources, and reasoning it ' thus and thus' with-
out taking into account the actual forces, should be able to
invent them. Those forces which enter into all the plot of
our human life, unworthy of philosophic note as they had
seemed hitherto, those terrific, unmeasured strengths, against
which the human kind are continually dashing themselves in
their blind experiments, — those engines on which the human
heart is racked, ' and stretched out so long,'— those rocky
structures on which its choicest treasures are so wildly wrecked,
these natural forces, — no matter what artificial combinations of
them may have been accomplished, — * the causes in nature,'
of the phenomena of human life, appeared to this philoso-
pher a very fitting subject for philosophy, and one quite too
important in its relation to human well-being and the
Arts that promote it, to be left to mere blundering experi-
ment ; quite too subtle to be reached by any kind of empirical
groping, quite too subtle to be entangled with the conclusions
of the philosophy which he found in vogue in his time, whose
social efficacies and gifts in exorcisms, he has taken leave to
connect in some way, with the appearance of Tom o' Bedlam
in his history; a philosophy which had built up its system in
THE USE OF EYES. 26 1
defiant scorn of the nature of things; as if ' by reasoning it
thus and thus,' without any respect to the actual conditions, it
could undertake to bridle the might of nature, and put a hook
in the nose of her oppositions.
It did not seem to this philosopher well, that men who have
eyes— -eyes that are great nature's gift to them, — her gift to
them in chief, — eyes that were meant to see with, should go on
in this groping, star-gazing, fatally-stumbling fashion any
longer.
Lear. [To the Bedlamite.] I do not like the fashion of your
garments. You will say that they are — Persian: — but let them be
ALTERED.
262 LEAR'S philosopher.
CHAPTER V.
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK — AND THE PLAY.
Brutus. How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter.
Hamlet. The Play 's the thing.
Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner
of it.
Posthumus. ' Shall's have a Play of this. —
rpHE fact that the design of this play, whatever it may be, is
•*■ one deep enough to go down to that place in the social sys-
tem which Tom o' Bedlam was then peacefully occupying, — think-
ing of anything else in the world but a social revolution on his
behalf— to bring him up for observation; and that it is high
enough to go up to that apex of the social structure on which
the crown was then fastened, to fetch down the impersonated
state itself, for an examination not less curious and critical;
the fact, too, that it was subtle enough to penetrate the retire-
ment of the domestic life, and bring out its innermost passages
for scientific criticism ; — the fact that the relation of the Parent
to the Child, and that of the Child to the Parent, the relation
of Husband and Wife, and Sister and Brother, and Master and
Servant, of Peasant and Lord, nay, the transient relation of
Guest and Host, have each their place and part here, and the
question of their duty marked not less clearly, than that pro-
minent relation of the King and his Subjects; — the fact that
these relations come in from the first, along with the political,
and demand a hearing, and divide throughout the stage with
them; the fact of the mere range of this social criticism, as it
appears on the surface of the play, in these so prominent
points, — is enough to show already, that it is a Radical of no
ordinary kind, who is at work behind this drop-scene.
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 263
It was evident, at a glance, that this so extensive bill of
grievances was not one which any immediate or violent poli-
tical revolution, or any social reformation which was then in
contemplation, would be able to meet; and that very circum-
stance gave to the whole essay its profoundly quiet, conserva-
tive air. It passed only for one of those common outcries on
the ills of human life, which men in general are expected, or
permitted to make, according to their several abilities; one of
those ' Alacks!' — * why does he so'? which, by relieving the
mind of the complainant, tend to keep things quiet on the
whole. This Poet, whoever he was, was making rather more
ado about it than usual, apparently : but Poets are useful for
that very purpose; they express other men's emotions for
them, in a higher key than they could manage it themselves.
It was the breadth then, — the philosophic comprehension
of this great philosophic design, which made it possible for
the Poet to introduce into it, and exhibit in it, so glaringly,
those evils of his time that were crying out to Heaven then,
for redress, and could not wait for philosophic revolutions and
reformations.
Tom o' Bedlam, strictly speaking, does appear, indeed, to
have been one of those Elizabethan institutions which were
modified or annulled, in the course of the political changes
that so soon followed this exhibition of his case. * Tom '
himself, in his own proper person, appears to have been left —
by accident or otherwise — on the other side of the Revolution-
ary gulf. * I remember,' says Aubrey, ' before the civil wars,
Tom o' Bedlams went about begging/ etc. — but one cannot
help remarking that a very numerous family connection of the
collateral branches of his house — bearing, on the whole, a
sufficiently striking family resemblance to this illustrious sub-
ject of the Poet's pencil, — appear to have got safely over all
the political and social gulfs that intervene between our time
and that. And, as to some of those other social evils which
are exhibited here in their ideal proportions, they are not,
perhaps, so entirely among the former things which have
passed away with our reformations, that we should have to go
264 LEAR'S philosophek.
to Aubrey's note book to find out what the Poet means. As
to some of these, at least, it will not be necessary to hunt up
an antiquary, who can remember whether any such thing ever
was really in existence here, ( before the civil vjarsJ And, not-
withstanding all our advancements in Natural Science, and in
the Arts which attend these advancements ; notwithstanding
the strong recommendations of the inventors of this Science, —
Eegan's heart, and that which breeds about it, appear, by a
singular oversight, to have escaped, hitherto, any truly scien-
tific inquiry; and the arts for improving it do not appear,
after all, to have been very materially advanced since the
time when this order was issued.
But notwithstanding that the subject of this piece appears
to be so general, — notwithstanding the fact, that the social
evils which are here represented include, apparently, the
universal human conditions, and include evils which are still
understood to be inherent in the nature of man, and, irre-
claimable, or not, at least a subject for Art, — and notwith-
standing the fact that this exhibition professes to borrow all
its local hues and exaggerations from the barbaric times of
the Ancient Britons — it is not very difficult to perceive that
it does, in fact, involve a local exhibition of a different kind ;
and that, under the cover of that great revolution in the
human estate, which the philosophic mind was then meditating,
— so broad, that none could perceive its project, — another
revolution, — that revolution which was then so near at hand,
was clearly outlined; and that this revolution, too, is, after
all, one towards which this Poet appears to ' incline] in a
manner which would not have seemed, perhaps, altogether
consistent with his position and assumptions elsewhere, if these
could have been produced here against him ; and in a manner,
perhaps, somewhat more decided than the general philosophic
tone, and the spirit of those large and peaceful designs to
which he was chiefly devoted, might have led us to anticipate.
This Play was evidently written at a time when the convic-
tion that the state of things which it represents could not
endure much longer, had taken deep hold of the Poet's mind ;
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 265
at a time when those evils had attained a height so unendura-
ble,— when that evil which lay at the heart of the commonweal,
poisoning all the social relations with its infection, had grown
so fearful, that it might well seem, even to the scientific mind,
to require the fierce ? drug* of the political revolution, — so
fearful as to make, even to such a mind, the rude surgery of
the civil wars at last welcome.
For, indeed, it cannot be denied that the state of things
which this Play represents, is that with which the author's
own experience was conversant; and that all the terrible tragic
satire of it, points — not to that age in the history of Britain
in which the Druids were still responsible for the national
culture, — not to that time when the Celtic Triads, clothed
with the sanctities of an unknown past, still made the standard
works and authorities in learning, beyond which there was no
going, — not to the time when the national morality was still
mystically produced at Stonehenge, in those national colleges,
from whose mysterious rites the awful sanctities of the oak
and the mistletoe drove back in confusion the sacrilegious
inquirer, —not to that time, but to the Elizabethan.
That instinctive groping and stumbling in all human
affairs, that pursuit of human ends without any science of
the natures to be superinduced, and without any science of
the natures that were to be subjected, — those eyes of moon-
shine speculation, those glass eyes with which the scurvy
politician affects to see the things he does not — those thou-
sand noses that serve for eyes, and horns welked and waved
like the enridged sea, and all the wild misery of that unlearned
fortuitous human living, that waits to be scourged with the
sequent effect, and knows not how to ascend to the cause
colossally exaggerated as it seems here — heightened every-
where, as if the Poet had put forth his whole power, and
strained his imagination, and availed himself of his utmost
poetic license, to give it, through all its details, its last con-
ceivable hue of violence, its pure ideal shape, is, after all, but
a copy, an historical sketch. The ignorance, the stupidity,
« the blindness; that this author paints, was his own * Time's
266 leak's philosopher.
plague'; ' the madness' that ' led it,' was the madness of which
he was himself a mute and manacled spectator.
By some singular oversight or caprice of tyranny, or on
account of some fastidious scruple of the imagination perhaps,
it does not appear, indeed, to have been the fashion, either^ in
the reigns of the Tudors or the Stuarts, to pluck out the living
human eye as Gloster's eyes were plucked out; and that of
itself would have furnished a reason why this poor duke
should have been compelled to submit to that particular opera-
tion, instead of presenting himself to have his ears cut off in a
sober, decent, civilized, Christian manner; or to have them
grubbed out, if it happened that the operation had been once
performed already; or to have his hand cut off, or his head,
with his eyes in it; or to be roasted alive some noon-day in the
public square, eyes and all, as many an honest gentleman was
expected to present himself in those times, without making any
particular demur or fuss about it. These were operations that
Englishmen of every rank and profession, soldiers, scholars,
poets, philosophers, lawyers, physicians, and grave and reverend
divines, were called on to undergo in those times, and for that
identical offence of which the Duke of Gloster stood convict-
ed, opposition to the will of a lawless usurping tyranny, —
to its merest caprice of vanity or humour, perhaps, —or on
grounds slighter still, on bare suspicion of a disposition to
oppose it.
But then that, of course, was a thing of custom; so much
so, that the victims themselves often took it in good part, and
submitted to it as a divine institution, part of a sacred legacy,
handed down to them, as it was understood, from their more
enlightened ancestors.
Now, if the Poet, in pursuance of his more general philo-
sophic intention, which involved a moving representation of
the helplessness of the Social Monad — that bodily as well as
moral susceptibility and fragility, which leaves him open to all
kinds of personal injury, not from the elements and from
animals of other species merely or chiefly, but chiefly from his
own kind, — if the Poet, in the course of this exhibition, had
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 267
caused poor Gloster to be held down in his chair on the stage,
for the purpose of having his ears pared off, what kind of sen-
sation could he hope to produce with that on the sensibility of
an audience, who might have understood without a commen-
tator an allusion to 'the tribulation of Tower Hill' — spectators
accustomed to witness performances so much more thrilling,
and on a stage where the Play was in earnest. And as to
that second operation before referred to, which might have
answered the poetic purpose, perhaps; who knows whether
that may not have been a refinement in civilization peculiar
to the reign of that amiable and handsome Christian Prince,
who was still a minor when this Play was first brought out at
Whitehall ? for it was in his reign that that memorable in-
stance of it occurred, which the subsequent events connected
with it chanced to make so notorious. It was a learned and
very conscientious lawyer, in the reign of Charles the First,
whose criticism upon some of the fashionable amusements of
the day, which certain members of the royal family were
known to be fond of, occasioned the suggestion of this mode
of satisfying the outraged Majesty of the State, when the
prying eye of Government discovered, or thought it did,
remains enough of those previously-condemned appendages on
this author's person, to furnish material for a second operation.
1 Methinks Mr. Prynne hath ears !' does not, after all, sound so
very different from — ' going to pluck out Gloster's other eye,'
as that the governments under which these two speeches are
reported, need to be distinguished, on that account only, by
any such essential difference as that which is supposed to exist
between the human and divine. Both these operations appear,
indeed to the unprejudiced human mind, to savour somewhat
of the diabolical — or of the Dark Ages, rather, and of the
Prince of Darkness. And, indeed, that 'fiend3 which haunts
the Play — which the monster, with his moonshine eyes, ap-
peared to have a vague idea of — seems to have been as busy
here, in this department, as he was in bringing about poor
Tom's distresses.
But in that steady persevering exhibition of the liabilities
268 leak's philosopher.
of individual human nature, the common liabilities which
throw it upon the COMMON, the distinctive law of humanity,
for its weal — in that continuous picture of the suffering,
and ignominy, and mutilation to which it is liable, moral and
intellectual, as well as physical, where that law of humanity is
not yet scientifically developed and scientifically sustained —
the Poet does not always go quite so far to find his details.
It is not from the Celtic Kegan's time that he brings out those
ancient implements of state authority into which the feet of
the poor Duke of Kent, travelling on the king's errands, are
ignominiously thrust; while the Poet, under cover of the
Fool's jests, shows prettily their relation to the human
dignity.
But then it is a Duke on whom this indignity is practised;
for it is to be remarked, in passing, that though this Poet is
evidently bent on making his exhibition a thorough one,
though he is determined not to leave out anything of im-
portance in his diagrams, he does not appear inclined to soil
his fingers by meddling with the lower orders, or to counte-
nance any innovation in his art in that respect. Whenever
he has occasion to introduce persons of this class into his
pieces, they come in and go out, and perform their part in his
scene, very much as they do elsewhere in his time. Even
when his Players come in, they do not speak many words on
their own behalf. They stand civilly, and answer questions,
and take their orders, and fulfil them. That is all that is
looked for at their hands. For this is not a Poet who has
ever given any one occasion in his own time, to distinguish
him as the Poet of the People. It is always from the
highest social point of observation that he takes those
views of the lower ranks, which he has occasion to introduce
into his Plays, from the mobs of ' greasy citizens' to the de-
tails of the sheep-shearing feast; and even in Eastcheap
he keeps it still.
There never was a more aristocratic poet apparently, and
though the very basest form of outcast misery 'that ever
penury in contempt of man brought near to beast,' though the
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 269
basest and most ignoble and pitiful human liabilities, are every
where included in his plan; he will have nothing but the rich
blood of dukes and kings to take him through with it — he
will have nothing lower and less illustrious than these to play
his parts for him.
It is a king to whom ' the Farm House? where both fire and
food are waiting, becomes a royal luxury on his return from
the HoveVs door, brought in chattering out of the tempest, in
that pitiful stage of human want, which had made him ready
to share with Tom o' Bedlam, nay, with the swine, their rude
comforts. 'Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this
straw, my fellow. Your hovel'. — come bring us to your
hoveV
It is a king who gets an ague in the storm, who finds the
tyranny of the night too rough for nature to endure; it is a king
on whose desolate outcast head, destitution and social wrongs
accumulate their results, till his wits begin to turn, till his
mind is shattered, and he comes on to the stage at last, a poor
bedlamite.
Nay, ' Tom' himself, is a duke's son, ws are told; though
that circumstance does not hinder him from giving, with much
frankness and scientific accuracy, the particulars of those per-
sonal pursuits, and tastes, and habits, incidental to that par-
ticular station in life to which it has pleased Providence to call
him.
And so by means of that poetic order, which is the Provi-
dence of this piece, and that design which ' tunes the harmony
of it,' it is a duke on whom that low correction, fsuch as
basest and most contemned wretches are punished with,' is
exhibited, in spite of his indignant protest.
Kent. Call not your stocks for me. I serve the king,
On whose employment I was sent to you.
You shall do small respect, show too bold malice
Against the grace and person of my master,
Stocking his messenger.
Cornwall. Fetch forth the stocks.
As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.'
Regan. Till noon, — till night my lord, and all night too.
270 leak's philosopher.
[In vain the prudent and loyal Gloster remonstrates]
— The king must take it ill
That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,
Should have him thus restrained.
Cornwall I'll answer that.
Regan. Put in his legs.
But then it must be confessed that the poet was not without
some kind of precedent for this bold dramatic proceeding.
He had, indeed, by means of the culture and diligent use of
that gift of forethought, with which nature had so largely en-
dowed him, been enabled thus far to keep his own person free
from any such tangible encumbrance, though the 'lameness9 with
which fortune had afflicted him personally, is always his personal
grievance; but he had seen in his own time, ancient men and
reverend,— men who claimed to be the ministers of heaven,
and travelling on its errands, arrested, and subjected to this
ludicrous indignity: he had seen this open stop, this palpable,
corporeal, unfigurative arrest put upon the activity of scholars
and thinkers in his time, conscientious men, between whose
master and the state, there was a growing quarrel then, a
quarrel that these proceedings were not likely to pacify. From
noon till night, they, too, had sat thus, and all night too, they
had endured that shameful lodging.
'When a man is over lusty at legs,' says the Fool, who
arrives in time to put in an observation or two on this topic,
and who seems disposed to look at it from a critical point of
view, concluding with the practical improvement of the subject,
already quoted — 'When a man is over lusty at legs '— (when
his will, or his higher intelligence, perhaps, is allowed to
govern them too freely,) 'he wears wooden nether stocks,' or
4 cruel garters,' as he calls them again, by way of bestowing on
this institution of his ancestors as much variety of poetic
imagery as the subject will admit of. ' Horses are tied by the
head, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and
men by the legs'; and having ransacked his memory to such
good purpose, and produced such a pile of learned precedents,
he appears disposed to rest the case with these; for it is a part
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 27 1
of the play to get man into his place in the scale of nature,
and to draw the line between him and the brutes, if there be
any such thing possible ; and the Fool seems to be particularly
inclined to assist the author in this process, though when we
last heard of him he was, indeed, proposing to send the prin-
cipal man of his time ' to school to an ant,' to improve his
sagacity; intimating, also, that another department of natural
science, even conchology itself, might furnish him with some
rather more prudent and fortunate suggestions than those
which his own brain had appeared to generate ; and it is to be
remarked, that in his views on this point, as on some others of
importance, he has the happiness to agree remarkably with
that illustrious yoke-fellow of his in philosophy, who was just
then turning his attention to the ' practic part of life' and its
1 theoric,' and who indulges himself in some satires on this point
not any less severe, though his pleasantries are somewhat more
covert. But the philosopher on this occasion, having pro-
duced such a variety of precedents from natural history,
appears to be satisfied with the propriety and justice of the
proceeding, inasmuch as beasts and men seem to be treated
with impartial consideration in it; and though a certain dis-
tinction of form appears to obtain according to the species, the
main fact is throughout identical.
* Then comes the time,' he says, in winding up that knotted
skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for
* he lives before his time,' as he takes that opportunity to tell us —
' Then comes the time, who lives to see't,
That going shall be used with feet.1
Yes, it is a duke who is put in the stocks ; it is a duke's son
who plays the bedlamite; it is a king who finds the hoveFs
shelter * precious ' ; and it is a queen — it is a king's wife, and
a daughter of kings — who is hanged; nay more, it is Cordelia
— it is Cordelia, and none other, whom this inexorable Poet,
primed with mischief, bent on outrage, determined to turn out
the heart of his time, and show, in the selectest form, the inmost
lining of its lurking humanities — it is Cordelia whom he will
hang. And we forgive him still, and bear with him in all
272 LEAKS PHILOSOPHER.
these assaults on our taste — in all these thick-coming blows
on our outraged sensibilities; we forgive him when at last the
poetic design flashes on us, — when we come to understand the
providence of this piece, at least, — when we come to see at
last that there is a meaning in it all, a meaning deep enough
to justify even this procedure.
' We are not the first who, with the best meaning, have in-
curred the worst? says the captive queen herself; nor was she
the last of that good company, as the Poet himself might have
testified ; —
Upon such sacrifices the gods themselves throw incense.
We forgive the Poet here, as we forgive him in all these
other pitiful and revolting exhibitions, because we know that
he who would undertake the time's cure — he who would un-
dertake the relief of the human estate in any age, must probe
its evil — must reach, no matter what it costs, its deadliest
hollow.
And in that age, there was no voice which could afford to
lack ' the courtier's glib and oily art.' ' Hanging was the word '
then, for the qualities of which this princess was the imper-
sonation, or almost the impersonation, so predominant were
they in her poetic constitution. There was no voice, gentle and
low enough, to speak outright such truth as hers; and ' banish-
ment' and 'the stocks' would have been only too mild a remedy
for ' the plainness ' to which Kent declares, even to the teeth
of majesty, ' honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly.'
The kind, considerate Gloster, with all his loyalty to the
powers which are able to show the divine right of possession,
and with all his disposition to conform to the times, is greatly
distressed and perplexed with the outrages which are perpe-
trated, as it were, under his own immediate sanction and
authority. He has a hard struggle to reconcile his duty as
the subject of a state which he is not prepared to overthrow,
with his humane impulses and designs. He goes pattering
about for a time, remonstrating, and apologizing, and trying
' to smooth down,' and ' hush up,' and mollify, and keep peace
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 2"7
between the offending parties. He stands between the blunt,
straightforward manliness of the honest Kent on the one hand,
and the sycophantic servility and self-abnegation, which knows
no will but the master's, as represented by the Steward, on
the other.
' I am sorry for thee,' he says to Kent, after having sought
in vain to prevent this outrage from being perpetrated in his
own court —
'I am sorry for thee, friend : tis the duke's pleasure,
Whose disposition all the world well knows,
Will not be rubbed or stopped7 —
as he found to his cost, poor man, when he came to have his
own eyes gouged out by it. He ' saw it feelingly ' then, as he
remarked himself.
* I'll entreat for thee/ he continues, in his conversation with
the disguised duke in the stocks. ' The duke 's to blame in
this. 'Twill be ill taken?
And when the king, on his arrival, kept waiting in the
court, in his agony of indignation and grief, is told that
Regan and Cornwall are ' sick/ * they are weary/ ' they have
travelled hard to-night/ denounces these subterfuges, and bids
Gloster fetch him a better answer, this is the worthy man's
reply to him —
1 My dear lord,
You know the fiery quality of the duke,
How unremovable and fixed he is
In his own course.'
But Lear, who has never had any but a subjective acquaint-
ance hitherto with reasons of that kind, does not appear able
to understand them from this point of view —
Lear. Vengeance ! plague ! death ! confusion !
Fiery ? — what quality ? Why Gloster, Gloster,
I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Gloster. Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.
Lear. Informed them 1 Dost thou understand me ?
Gloster. Ay, my good lord.
But though Gloster is not yet ready to break with tyranny,
T
274 lear's philosopher.
it is not difficult to see which way he secretly inclines; and
though he still manages his impulses cautiously, and contrives
to succour the oppressed king by stealth, his courage rises
with the emergency, and grows bold with provocation. For
he is himself one of the finer and finest proofs of the times
which the Poet represents; one, however, which he keeps
back a little, for the study of those who look at his work most
carefully. This man stands here in the general, indeed, as the
representative of a class of men who do not belong exclusively
to this particular time — men who do not stand ready, as Kent
and his class do, to fly in the face of tyranny at the first pro-
vocation ; they are not the kind of men who ' make mouths,'
as Hamlet says, ' at the invisible event;' — they are the kind
who know beforehand that to break with the powers that are,
single-handed, is to sit on the stage and have your eyes gouged
out, or to undergo some process of mutilation and disfigure-
ment, not the less painful and oppressive, by this Poet's own
showing, because it does not happen, perhaps, to be a physical
one, and not the less calculated, on that account, to impair
one's usefulness to one's species, it may be.
But besides that more general bearing of the representation,
the part and disposition of Gloster afford us from time to time,
glimpses of persons and things which connect the representa-
tion more directly with the particular point here noted. Men
who found themselves compelled to occupy a not less equivocal
position in the state, look through it a little now and then; and
here, as in other parts of the play, it only wants the right key
to bring out suppressed historical passages, and a finer history
generally, than the chronicles of the times were able to take
up.
' Alack, alack, Edmund,' says Gloster to his natural son,
making him the confidant of his nobler nature, putting what
was then the perilous secret of his humanity, into the danger-
ous keeping of the base-born one — for this is the Poet's own
interpretation of his plot; though Lear is allowed to intimate
on his behalf, that the loves and relations which are recognised
and good in courts of justice, are not always secured by that
THE STATESMAN^ NOTE-BOOK. 275
sanction from similar misfortune; that they are not secured
by that from those penalties which great Nature herself awards
in those courts in which her institutes are vindicated.
' Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing ! "When
I desired their leave that 1 might pity him, they took from me the use of
mine own house, and charged me on pain of their perpetual displeasure,
neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor in any way to sustain him.''
1 JiJdmund. Most savage and unnatural.*
1 Gloster. Go to, say you nothing.'
[And say you nothing, my cotemporary reader, if you per-
ceive that this is one of those passages I have spoken of else-
where, which carries with it another application besides that
which I put it to].
' There is division between the dukes — and a worse matter than that:
I have received a letter this night, — 'tis dangerous to be spoken ; —
I have locked the letter in my closet : these injuries the king now bears,
will be revenged at home' [softly — say you nothing]. \ There is part
of a power already footed : we must incline to the king. I will seek
him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the duke,
that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill,
and gone to bed. If I die for it, — as no less is threatened me, — the
king, my old master — must be relieved. There is some strange thing
toward, Edmund. Pray you be careful.'
Even Edmund himself professes to be not altogether with-
out some experience of the perplexity which the claims of
apparently clashing duties, and relations in such a time creates,
though he seems to have found an easy method of disposing of
these questions. Nature is his goddess and his law (that is,
as he uses the term, the baser nature, the degenerate, which is
not nature for man, which is unnatural for the human kind),
and in his own ' rat'-like fashion, * he bites the holy cords
atwain.'
1 How, my lord,' he says, in the act of betraying his father's
secret to the Duke of Cornwall, in the hope of 'drawing to
himself what his father loses* — ' how I may be censured that
NATURE, thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to
think of.9 And again, ' I will persevere in my course of loyalty,
though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.9
T 2
276 leak's philosopher.
1 Know thou this,1 he says afterwards, to the officer whom he
employs to hang Cordelia, ' that men are as the time is.
Thy great employment will not bear question. About it, I
say, instantly, and carry it so as I have set it down/ ' I can-
not draw a cart, nor eat dried oats,' is the officer's reply, who
appears to be also in the poet's secret, and ready to aid his
intention of carrying out the distinction between the human
kind and the brute, ' I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;
— if it be man's work I will do it/
But it is the steward's part, as deliberately explained by
Kent himself, which furnishes in detail the ideal antagonism
of that which Kent sustains in the piece; for beside those
active demonstrations of his disgust, which the poetic order
tolerates in him, though some of the powers within appear to
take such violent offence at it, besides these tangible demon-
strations, and that elaborate criticism, which the poet puts
into his mouth, in which the steward is openly treated as the
representative of a class, who seem to the poet apparently, to
require some treatment in his time, Kent himself is made to
notice distinctly this literally striking opposition.
' No contraries hold more antipathy than I, and such a
knave,' he says to Cornwall, by way of explaining his appa-
rently gratuitous attack upon the steward.
No one, indeed, who reads the play with any care, can
doubt the poet's intention to incorporate into it, for some
reason or other, and to bring out by the strongest conceivable
contrasts, his study of loyalty and service, and especially of
regal counsel, and his criticism of it, as it stood in his time m
its most approved patterns. * Such smiling rouges as these'
(' that bite the holy cords atwain').
i Smooth every passion
That in the nature of their lord rebels ;
Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods ;
Kevenge, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
As knowing nought like dogs but — following!
Such rouges as this would not, of course, be wanting in
THE STATESMAN S NOTE-BOOK.
277
such a time as that in which this piece was planned, if
Edmund's word was, indeed, the true one. ' Know thou this,
men are as the time is.'
And even amidst the excitement and rough outrage of that
scene — in which Gloster's trial is so summarily conducted,
even in that so rude scene — the relation between the guest
and his host, and the relation of the slave to his owner, is
delicately and studiously touched, and the human claim in
both is boldly advanced, in the face of an absolute authority,
and age and personal dignity put in their claims also, and
demand, even at such a moment, their full rights of reverence.
Regan.
Cornwall.
Gloster.
Cornwall.
Regan.
Gloster.
Cornwall.
Gloster.
Regan.
Gloster.
[Re-enter servants with Gloster.]
Ingrateful fox ! 'tis he.
Bind fast his corky arms.
What mean your graces 1 Good my friends, consider
You are my guests : do me no foul play, friends.
Bind him, I say.
Hard, hard : — 0 filthy traitor !
Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.
To this chair bind him : — Villain, thou shalt find —
[Regan plucks his beard].
By the kind gods [for these are the gods, whose ' Com-
mission' is sitting here] 'tis most ignobly done,
To pluck me by the beard.
So white, and such a traitor !
Naughty lady,
These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin,
Will quicken and accuse thee.
/ am your host :
With robber hands, my hospitable favours
You should not ruffle thus. * * *
Tied to the stake, questioned and cross-questioned, and in-
sulted, finally, beyond even his faculty of endurance, he breaks
forth, at last, in strains of indignation that overleap all arbi-
trary and conventional bounds, that are only the more terrible
for having been so long suppressed. Kent himself, when he
{ came between the dragon and his wrath/ was not so fierce.
278 LEAR'S philosopher.
Cornwall. Where hast thou sent the king 1
Gloster. To Dover.
Regan. Wherefore
To Dover, was't thou not charged at peril ? —
Cornwall. Wherefore to Dover ? Let him first answer that.
Regan. Wherefore to Dover ?
Gloster. Because I would not see thy cruel nails
Pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister
In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.
* * * *
Regan. One side will mock another ; the other too.
Cornwall. If you ' see vengeance.'
Servant. Hold your hand, my lord :
I have served you ever since 1 was a child ;
But better service have I never done you,
Than now to bid you hold.
Regan. How now, you dog ?
Servant. If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I'd shake it on this quarrel : What do you mean ?
[Arbitrary power called to an account, requested to explain itself.']
Cornwall. My villain !
Regan. A peasant stand up thus ?
Thus too, indeed, in that rude scene above referred to, in
which the king finds his messenger in the stocks, and Regan's
door, too, shut against him, the same ground of criticism had
already been revealed, the same delicacy and rigour in the
exactions had already betrayed the depth of the poetic design,
and the real comprehension of that law, whose violations are
depicted here, the scientific law, the scientific sovereignty, the
law of universal nature; commanding, in the human, that
specific human excellence, for the degenerate movement is in
violation of nature, that is not nature but her profanation and
undoing.
This is one of those passages, however, which admit, as the
modern reader will more easily observe than the contemporary
of the Poet was likely to of a second reading.
Goneril. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
From those that she calls servants, or from mine 1
* # * *
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
Ho follow in a house, where twice so many
Have a command to tend you ?
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 279
Regan. What need one ?
Lear. O reason not the need : our basest beggars
Are in the poorest things superfluous.
[Poor Tom must have his * rubans.']
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life were cheap as beasts [and that 's not ?iature].
Thou art a lady ;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. — But, for true need,
You heavens, give me that patience. — Patience I need.
It is, indeed, the doctrine of the * true need ' that is lurking
here, and all that puts man into his true place and relations in
the creative order, whether of submission or control is included
in it. It is the doctrine of the natural human need, and the
natural ground and limits of the arts, for which nature has
endowed man beforehand, with a faculty and a sentiment
corresponding in grandeur to his need, — large as he is little,
noble as he is mean, powerful as he is helpless, felicitous as he
is wretched; the faculty and the sentiment whereby the want
of man becomes the measure of his wealth and grandeur, —
whereby his conscious lowness becomes the means of his ascent
to his ideal type in nature, and to the scientific perfection of
his form.
And this whole social picture, — rude, savage as it is, —
savage as it shews when its sharp outline falls on that fair
ideal ground of criticism which the doctrine of a scientific
civilization creates, — is but the Poet's report of the progress
of human development as it stood in his time, and of the
gain that it had made on savage instinct then. It is his report
of the social institutions of his time, as he found them on his
map of human advancement. It is his report of the wild
social misery that was crying underneath them, with its
burthen of new advancements. It is the Poet's Apology for
his new doctrine of human living, which he is going to
publish, and leave on the earth, for ' the times that are far off.'
It is the negative, which is the first step towards that affirma-
tion, which he is going to establish on the earth for ever, or so
28o LEAR'S philosopher.
long as the species, whose law he has found, endures on it.
Down to its most revolting, most atrocious detail, it is still
the Elizabethan civility that is painted here. Even Goneril's
unscrupulous mode of disposing of her rival sister, though
that was the kind of murder which was then regarded with the
profoundest disgust and horror— (the queen in Cymbeline ex-
presses that vivid sentiment, when she says: ' If Pisanio have
given his mistress that confection which I gave him for a cor-
dial, she is served as I would serve a rat ')— even as to that we
all know what a king's favourite felt himself competent to un-
dertake then; and, if the clearest intimations of such men as
Bacon, and Coke, and Raleigh, on such a question, are of any
worth, the household of James the First was not without a
parallel even for that performance, if not when this play was
written, when it was published.
It is all one picture of social ignorance, and misery, and
frantic misrule. It is a faithful exhibition of the degree of
personal security which a man of honourable sentiments, and
humane and noble intentions, could promise himself in such a
time. It shows what chance there was of any man being
permitted to sustain an honourable and intelligent part in the
world, in an age in which all the radical social arts were yet
wanting, in which the rude institutions of an ignorant past
spontaneously built up, without any science of the natural
laws, were vainly seeking to curb and quench the Incarnate
soul of new ages, — the spirit of a scientific human advance-
ment; and, when all the common welfare was still openly
intrusted to the unchecked caprice and passion of one selfish,
pitiful, narrow, low-minded man.
To appreciate fully the incidental and immediate political
application of the piece, however, it is necessary to observe
that notwithstanding that studious exhibition of lawless and
outrageous power, which it involves, it is, after all, we are
given to understand, by a quiet intimation here and there, a
limited monarchy which is put upon the stage here. It is a
constitutional government, very much in the Elizabethan stage
of development, as it would seem, which these arbitrary rulers
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 28 1
affect to be administering. It is a government which professes
to be one of law, under which the atrocities of this piece are
sheltered.
And one may even note, in passing, that that high Judicial
Court, in which poor Lear undertakes to get his cause tried,
appears to have, somehow, an extremely modern air, consider-
ing what age of the British history it was, in which it was
supposed to be constituted, and considering that one of the
wigs appointed to that Bench had to leave his speech behind
him for Merlin to make, in consequence of living before his
time : at all events it is already tinctured with some of the more
•notorious Elizabethan vices — vices which onr Poet, not content
with this exposition, contrived to get exposed in another
manner, and to some purpose, ere all was done.
Lear. It shall be done, I will arraign them straight !
Come, sit thou here, most learned Justice.
[To the Bedlamite.]
Thou, sapient Sir, sit here. [ To the Fool].
And again,- —
I'll see their trial first. Bring in the evidence.
Thou robed man of justice take thy place.
[To Tom o' Bedlam].
And thou, his yokefellow of equity bench by his side.
To the Fool].
You are of ' the Commission ' — sit you too.
[To Kent].
Truly it was a bold wit that could undertake to constitute
that bench on the stage, and fill it with those speaking forms,
— speaking to the eye the unmistakeable significance, for these
judges, two of them, happened to be on the spot in full cos-
tume, — and as to the third, he was of ' the commission.7 ' Sit
you, too.' Truly it was a bold instructor that could under-
take f to facilitate' the demonstration of ' the more chosen
subjects/ with the aid of diagrams of this kind.
Arms ! Arms ! Sword, fire ! Corruption in the place !
False justicer, why hast thou let her scape 1
The tongues of these ancient sovereigns of Britain, ' tang '
282 leak's philosopher.
throughout with Elizabethan ' arguments of state/ and even
Goneril, in her somewhat severe proceedings against her father,
justifies her course in a very grave and excellent speech, en-
riched with the choicest phrases of that particular order of
state eloquence, in which majesty stoops graciously to a recog-
nition of the subject nation; — a speech from which we gather
that the ' tender of a wholesome weal ' is, on the whole, the
thing which she has at heart most deeply, and though the
proceeding in question is a painful one to her feelings, a state
necessity appears to prescribe it, or at least, render it ' discreet.1
Even in Gloster's case, though the process to which he is
subjected, is, confessedly, an extemporaneous one, it appears
from the Duke of Cornwall's statement, that it was only the
form which was wanting to make it legal. Thus he apologizes
for it. —
Though well we may not pass upon his life
Without the form of justice, yet our power
Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men
May blame, but not control.
Goneril, however, grows bolder at the last, and says out-
right, * Say if I do, the laws are mine NOT thine.' But it is
the law which is thine and mine, it is the law which is for Tom
o' Bedlam and for thee, that great nature speaking at last
through her interpreter, and explaining all this wild scene, will
have vindicated.
Most MONSTROUS, exclaims her illustrious consort ;but at
the close of the play, where so much of the meaning some-
times comes out in a word, he himself concedes that the
government which has just devolved upon him is an absolute
monarchy.
' For us,' he says, ' AVE will resign, during the life of this
old Majesty, our absolute power.'
So that there seems to have been, in fact, — in the minds, too,
of persons who ought, one would say, to have been best in-
formed on this subject, — just that vague, uncertain, contradic-
tory view of this important question, which appears to have
obtained in the English state, during the period in which the
THE PLAY. 283
material of this poetic criticism was getting slowly accumu-
lated. But of course this play, so full of the consequences of
arbitrary power, so full of Elizabethan politics, with its ' ear-
kissing arguments,' could not well end, till that word, too,
had been spoken outright; and, in the Duke of Albany's resig-
nation, it slips in at last so quietly, so properly, that no one
perceives that it is not there by accident.
This, then, is what the play contains; but those that follow
the story and the superficial plot only, must, of course, lose
track of the interior identities. It does not occur to these that
the Poet is occupied with principles, and that the change of
persons does not, in the least, confound his pursuit of them.
The fact that tyranny is in one act, or in one scene, repre-
sented by Lear, and in the next by his daughters; — the fact
that the king and the father is in one act the tyrant, and in
another, the victim of tyranny, is quite enough to confound
the criticism to which a work of mere amusement is subjected;
for it serves to disguise the philosophic purport, by dividing it
on the surface : and the dangerous passages are all opposed and
neutralised, for those who look at it only as a piece of drama-
tized, poetic history.
For this is a philosopher who prefers to handle his principles
in their natural, historical combinations, in those modified
unions of opposites, those complex wholes, which nature so
stedfastly inclines to, instead of exhibiting them scientifically
bottled up and labelled, in a state of fierce chemical abstrac-
tion.
His characters are not like the characters in the old ■ Moral-
ities,' which he found on the stage when he first began to turn
his attention to it, mere impersonations of certain vague, loose,
popular notions. Those sickly, meagre forms would not
answer his purpose. It was necessary that the actors in the
New Moralities he was getting up so quietly, should have
some speculation in their eyes, some blood in their veins, a
kind of blood that had never got manufactured in the Poet's
laboratory till then. His characters, no matter how strong the
predominating trait, though ' the conspicuous instance ' of it be
284 LEAR'S philosopher.
selected, have all the rich quality, the tempered and subtle
power of nature's own compositions. The expectation, the
interest, the surprise of life and history, waits, with its charm,
on all their speech and doing.
The whole play tells, indeed, its own story, and scarcely
needs interpreting, when once the spectator has gained the
true dramatic stand-point; when once he understands that
there is a teacher here,— a new one,— one who will not under-
take to work with the instrumentalities that his time offered to
him, who begins by rejecting the abstractions which lie at the
foundation of all the learning of his time, which are not
scientific, but vague, loose, popular notions, that have
been collected without art, or scientific rule of rejection, and
are, therefore, inefficacious in nature, and unavailable for ' the
art and practic part of life;' a teacher who will build up his
philosophy anew, from the beginning, a teacher who will begin
with history and particulars, who will abstract his definitions
from nature, and have powers of them, and not words only, and
make them the basis of his science and the material and instru-
ment of his reform. < I will teach you differences; says Kent
to the steward, alluding on the part of his author, for he does
not profess to be metaphysical himself to another kind of dis-
tinction, than that which obtained in the schools; and accom-
panying the remark, on his own part, with some practical
demonstrations, which did not appear to be taken in good
part at all by the person he was at such pains to instruct in
his doctrine of distinctions.
The reader who has once gained this clue, the clue which
the question of design and authorship involves, will find this
play, as he will find, indeed, all this author's plays, overflow-
ing every where with the scientific statement,— the finest
abstract statement of that which the action, with its moving,
storming, laughing, weeping, praying diagrams, sets forth in
the concrete.
But he who has not yet gained this point,— the critic who
looks at it from the point of observation which^ the tradi-
tionary theory of its origin and intent creates, is not in a
THE PLAY. 285
position to notice the philosophic expositions of its purport,
with which the action is all inwoven. No, — though the whole
structure of the piece should manifestly hang on them,
though the whole flow of the dialogue should make one
tissue of them, though every interstice of the play should
be filled with them, though the fool's jest, and the Bedlamite's
gibberish, should point and flash with them at every turn ; —
though the wildest incoherence of madness, real or assumed,
to its most dubious hummings, — its snatches of old ballads,
and inarticulate mockings of the blast, should be strung and
woven with them ; though the storm itself, with its wild ac-
companiment, and demoniacal frenzies, should articulate its
response to them; — keeping open tune without, to that human
uproar; and howling symphonies, to the unconquered demonia-
cal forces of human life,— for it is the Poet who writes in* the
storm continues,' — { the storm continues,' — ' the storm con-
tinues;'— though even Edmund's diabolical '/«, sol, lah, mi,'
should dissolve into harmony with them, while Tom's live
fiends echo it from afar, and ' mop and mow ' their responses,
down to the one that { since possesses chambermaids;' nobody
that takes the play theory, and makes a matter of faith of it
merely; nobody that is willing to shut his eyes and open his
mouth, and swallow the whole upon trust, as a miracle
simply, is going to see anything in all this, or take any
exceptions at it.
Certainly, at the time when it was written, it was not the
kind of learning and the kind of philosophy that the world
was used to. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. The
memory of man could not go far enough to produce any
parallel to it in letters. It was manifest that this was nature,
the living nature, the thing itself. None could perceive the
tint of the school on its robust creations; no eye could detect
in its sturdy compositions the stuff that books were made of;
and it required no effort of faith, therefore, to believe that it
was not that. It was easy enough to believe, and men were
glad, on the whole, to believe that it was not that — that it
was not learning or philosophy — but something just as far
286 leak's philosopher.
from that, as completely its opposite, as could well be con-
ceived of.
How could men suspect, as yet, that this was the new
scholasticism, the New Philosophy? Was it strange that they
should mistake it for rude nature herself, in her unschooled,
spontaneous strength, when it had not yet publicly transpired
that something had come at last upon the stage of human
development, which was stooping to nature and learning of
her, and stealing her secret, and unwinding the clue to the
heart of her mystery? How could men know that this was
the subtlest philosophy, the ripest scholasticism, the last proof
of all human learning, when it was still a , secret that the
school of nature and her laws, that the school of natural
history and natural philosophy, too, through all its lengths
and breadths and depths, was open ; and that ' the schools' —
the schools of old chimeras and notions — the schools where
the jangle of the monkish abstractions and the ' fifes and the
trumpets of the Greeks' were sounding — were going to get
shut up with it.
How should they know that the teacher of the New Philo-
sophy was Poet also — must be, by that same anointing, a
singer, mighty as the sons of song who brought their harmo-
nies of old into the savage earth — a singer able to sing down
antiquities with his new gift, able to sing in new eras?
But these have no clue as yet to track him with : they can-
not collect or thread his thick-showered meanings. He does
not care through how many mouths he draws the lines of his
philosophic purpose. He does not care from what long dis-
tances his meanings look towards each other. But these-
interpreters are not aware of that. They have not been in-
formed of that particular. On the contrary, they have been
put wholly off their guard. Their heads have been turned,
deliberately, in just the opposite direction. They have no
faintest hint beforehand of the depths in which the philosophic
unities of the piece are hidden : it is not strange, therefore,
that these unities should escape their notice, and that they
should take it for granted that there are none in it. It is not
THE PLAY. 287
the mere play-reader who is ever going to see them. It will
take the philosophic student, with all his clues, to master
them. It will take the student of the New School and the
New Ages, with the torch of Natural Science in his hand, to
track them to their centre.
Here, too, as elsewhere, it is the king himself on whom the
bolder political expositions are thrust. But it is not his
royalty only that has need to be put in requisition here, to
bring out successfully all that was working then in this Poet's
mind and heart, and which had to come out in some way. It
was something more than royalty that was required to protect
this philosopher in those astounding freedoms of speech in
which he indulges himself here, without any apparent scruple
or misgiving. The combination of distresses, indeed, which
the old ballad accumulates on the poor king's head, offers from
the first a large poetic license, of which the man of art — or
'prudence,' as he calls it — avails himself somewhat liberally.
With those daughters in the foreground always, and the
parental grief so wild and loud — with that deeper, deadlier,
infinitely more cruel private social wrong interwoven with all
the political representation, and overpowering it everywhere,
as if that inner social evil were, after all, foremost in the Poet's
thought — as if that were the thing which seemed crying to
him for redress more than all the rest — if, indeed, any thought
of ' giving losses their remedies' could cross a Player's dream,
when, in the way of his profession, ' the enormous state ' came
in to fill his scene, and open its subterranean depths, and let
out its secrets, and drown the stage with its elemental horror;
— with his daughters in the foreground, and all that magni-
ficent accompaniment of the elemental war without — with all
nature in that terrific uproar, and the Fool and the Madman
to create a diversion, and his friends all about him to hush up
and make the best of everything — with that great storm of
pathos that the Magician is bringing down for him — with the
stage all in tears, by their own confession, and the audience
sobbing their responses — what the poor king might say be-
tween his chattering teeth was not going to be very critically
288 lear's philosopher.
treated; and the Poet knew it. It was the king, in such cir-
cumstances, who could undertake the philosophical expositions
of the action ; and in his wildest bursts of grief he has to
manage them, in his wildest bursts of grief he has to keep
to them.
But it is not until long afterwards, when the storm, and all
the misery of that night, has had its ultimate effect — its
chronic effect — upon him, that the Poet ventures to produce,
under cover of the sensation which the presence of a mad king
on the stage creates, precisely that exposition of the scene
which has been, here, insisted on.
i They flattered me like a dog ; they told me I had white hairs in my
beard, ere the black ones were there. To say Ay and No to every-
thing 1 said ! — Ay and No too was no good divinity. When the rain
came to wet me once, and the wind made me chatter ; when the thunder
would not peace at my bidding, — there 1 found them, there I smelt them
out. Go to, they are not men of their words. They told me I was
everything : H is a lie. I am not ague-proof.
Gloster. The trick of that voice I do well remember :
Is 't not THE KING ?
Lear. Ay, every inch a king :
When / do stare, see, how the subject quakes?
But it is a subject he has conjured up from his brain that is
quaking under his regal stare. And it is the impersonation of
God's authority, it is the divine right to rule men at its plea-
sure, with or without laws, as it sees Jit, that stands there,
tricked out like Tom o' Bedlam, with A CROWN of noisome
weeds on its head, arguing the question of the day, taking up
for the divine right, denning its own position : —
' Is 't not the king 1
Ay every inch a king :
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.7
See ; yes, see. For that is what he stands there for, or that
you may see what it is at whose stare the subject quakes. He
is there to ' represent to the eye,' because impressions on the
senses are more effective than abstract statements, the divine
right and sovereignty, the majesty of the COMMON-weal, the
rule that protects each helpless individual member of it with
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 289
the strength of all, the rule awful with great nature's sanction,
enforced with her dire pains and penalties. He is there that
you may see whether that is it, or not; that one poor wretch,
that thing of pity, which has no power to protect itself, in
whom the law itself, the sovereignty of reason, is dethroned.
That was, what all men thought it was, when this play was
written; for the madness of arbitrary power, the impersonated
will and passion, was the state then. That is the spontaneous
affirmation of rude ages, on this noblest subject, — this chosen
subject of the new philosophy, — which stands there now to faci-
litate the demonstration, ' as globes and machines do the more
subtle demonstrations in mathematics.' It is the ' affirmation'
which the Poet finds pre-occupying this question; but this is
the table of review that he stands on, and this ' Instance ' has
been subjected to the philosophical tests, and that is the reason
that all those dazzling externals of majesty, which make that
1 idol ceremony' are wanting here ; that is the reason that his
crown has turned to weeds. This is the popular affirmative
the Poet is dealing with ; but it stands on the scientific ' Table
of Review ,' and the result of this inquiry is, that it goes to * the
table of negations.' And the negative table of science in
these questions is Tragedy, the World's Tragedy. ' Is 't not
the king?' ' Ay, every inch — a King. When I do stare, see
how the subject quakes.' But the voice within overpowers
him, and the axioms that are the vintage of science, the in-
ductions which are the result of that experiment, are forced
from his lips. ' To say ay and no to everything that / — that
J — said! To say ay and no too, was no GOOD divinity
They told me that I was everything. 'T IS A lie. I am
not ague proof.1 'T is A lie' — that is, what is called in other
places a ''negative.1
In this systematic exposure of * the particular and private
nature' in the human kind, and those SPECIAL susceptibilities
and liabilities which qualify its relationships; in this scientific
exhibition of its special liability to suffering from the violation
of the higher law of those relationships — its special liability to
injury, moral, mental, and physical — a liability from which
u
29O LEAR S PHILOSOPHER.
the very one who usurps the place of that law has himself no
exemption in this exhibition, — which requires that the king
himself should represent that liability in chief — it was not to
be expected that this particular ill, this ill in which the human
wrong in its extreme cases is so wont to exhibit its consum-
mations, should be omitted. In this exhibition, which was
designed to be scientifically inclusive, it would have been a
fault to omit it. But that the Poet should have dared to
think of exhibiting it dramatically in this instance, and that,
too, in its most hopeless form — that he should have dared to
think of exhibiting the personality which was then ' the state'
to the eye of ' the subject' labouring under that personal dis-
ability, in the very act, too, of boasting of its kingly terrors —
this only goes to show what large prerogatives, what boundless
freedoms and immunities, the resources of this particular
department of art could be made to yield, when it fell into the
hands of the new Masters of Arts, when it came to be selected
by the Art-king himself as his instrument.
But we are prepared for this spectacle, and with the Poet's
wonted skill ; for it is Cordelia, her heart bursting with its
stormy passion of filial love and grief, that, rebel- like,
seeks to be queen o'er her, though she queens it still, and
* the smiles on her ripe lips seem not to know what tears are
in her eyes,' for she has had her hour with her subject grief,
and l dealt with it alone,' — it is this child of truth and duty,
this true Queen, this impersonated sovereignty, whom her
Poet crowns with his choicest graces, on whom he devolves the
task of prefacing this so critical, and, one might think, per-
haps, perilous exhibition. But her description does not disguise
the matter, or palliate its extremity.
' Why, he was met even now,
Mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud ;'
Crowned —
1 Crowned with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds.
With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckow flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn'
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK.
29I
That is the crown; and a very extraordinary symbol of
sovereignty it is, one cannot help thinking, for the divine right
to get on its head by any accident just then. Surely that symbol
of power is getting somewhat rudely handled here, in the course
of the movements which the * necessary questions of this Play '
involve, as the critical mind might begin to think. In the
botanical analysis of that then so dazzling, and potent, and
compelling instrument in human affairs, a very careful ob-
server might perhaps take notice that the decidedly hurtful
and noxious influences in nature appear to have a prominent
place; and, for the rest, that the qualities of mildness and idle-
ness, and encroaching good-for-nothingness, appear to be
the common and predominating elements. It is when the
Tragedy reaches its height that this crown comes out.
A hundred men are sent out to pursue this majesty; not
now to wait on him in idle ceremony, and to give him the
'addition of a king*; but — to catch him — to search every
acre in the high-grown field, and bring him in. He has
evaded his pursuers: he comes on to the stage full of self-con-
gratulation and royal glee, chuckling over his prerogative : —
'No ; they cannot touch me for coining, lam the king himself?
' 0 thou side-piercing sight !' [Collateral meaning.]
' Nature 's above Art in that respect. [< So o'er that art which you say
adds to nature, is an art that Nature makes.'] There's your presfe
money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper : draw me a
clothier's yard.— Look, look, a mouse ! Peace, peace ; this piece of
toasted cheese will doH. — There's my gauntlet ; I'll prove it on a giant?
But the messengers, who were sent out for him, are on his
track.
Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants.
Gent. O here he is, lay hand upon him. Sir,
Your most dear daughter —
Lear. No rescue 1 What, a prisoner ? I am even
The natural fool of fortune ! Use me well ;
You shall have ransom. Let me have a surgeon,
I am cut to the brains.
Gent. You shall have anything.
Lear. No seconds ? All myself ? * * *
Gent. Good Sir, —
u 2
2Q2 LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER.
Lear. I will die bravely, like a bridegroom : "What %
I will be jovial. Come, come ; I am a Icing,
My masters ; know you that ?
Gent. You are, a royal one, and we obey you.
Lear. Then there's life in it. Nay, an you get it, you shall get it by
running. Sa, sa, sa, sa. [Exit, running ; Attendants follow.
['Transient hieroglyphic.']
Gent. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch ;
Past speaking of, in a king !
[not past exhibiting, it seems, however.]
But, of course, there was nothing that a king, whose mind
was in such a state, could not be permitted to say with im-
punity ; and it is in this very scene that the Poet puts into his
mouth the boldest of those philosophical suggestions which
the first attempt to find a theory for the art and practical part
of life, gave birth to : he skilfully reserves for this scene some
of the most startling of those social criticisms which the action
this play is everywhere throwing out.
For it is in this scene, that the outcast king encounters the
victim of tyranny, whose eyes have been plucked out, and
who has been turned out to beggary, as the penalty of having
come athwart that disposition in ' the duke,' that • all the
world well knows will not be rubbed or stopped'; — it is in
this scene that Lear finds him smelling his way to Dover, for
that is the name in the play — the play name — for the place
towards which men's hopes appear to be turning ; and that
conversation as to how the world goes, to which allusion has
been already made, comes off, without appearing to suggest to
any mind, that it is other than accidental on the part of the
Poet, or that the action of the play might possibly be con-
nected with it ! For notwithstanding this great stress, which
he lays everywhere on forethought and a deliberative rational
intelligent procedure, as the distinctive human mark, — the cha-
racteristic feature of a man, — the poor poet himself, does not
appear to have gained much credit hitherto for the possession
of this human quality. —
Lear. Thou seest how this world goes ?
Gloster. I see it feelingly.
Lear. "What, art mad 1 —
THE STATESMANS NOTE-BOOK. 293
[have you not the use of your reason, then? Can you not see
with that? That is the kind of sight we talk of here. It's
the want of that which makes these falls. We have eyes with
which to foresee effects,— eyes which outgo all the senses with
their range of observation, with their range of certainty and
foresight.]
1 What, art mad ? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.
Look with thine — ears : see how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief.
Hark, in thine ear : Change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice,
and which is the thief V [Searching social questions, as before.
* Thou robed man of justice (to the Bedlamite), take thy place ; and
thou, his yoke-fellow of equity (to the Fool), bench by his side. Thou,
sapient sir, sit here.']
So that it would seem, perhaps, as if wisdom, as well as
honesty, might be wanting there — the searching subtle wisdom,
that is matched in subtilty, with nature's forces, that sees true
differences, and effects true reformations. ' Change places.
Hark, in thine ear.1 Truly this is a player who knows how to
suit the word to the action, and the action to the word; for
there has been a revolution going on in this play which has
made as complete a social overturning — which has shaken
kings, and dukes, and lordlings out of their 'places,' as com-
pletely as some later revolutions have done. ' Change places !'
With one duke in the stocks, and another wandering blind in
the streets — with a dukeling, in the form of mad Tom, to
lead him, with a king in a hovel, calling for the straw, and
a queen hung by the neck till she is dead — with mad Tom
on the bench, and the Fool, with his cap and bells, at his side
— with Tom at the council-table, and occupying the position
of chief favourite and adviser to the king, and a distinct pro-
posal now that the thief and the justice shall change places
on the spot — with the inquiry as to which is the justice, and
which is the thief, openly started — one would almost fancy
that the subject had been exhausted here, or would be, if these
indications should be followed up. What is it in the way of
social alterations which the player's imagination could conceive
of, which his scruples have prevented him from suggesting
here?
294 leak's philosopher.
But the mad king goes on with those new and unheard-of
political and social suggestions, which his madness appears to
have had the effect of inspiring in him —
Lear. Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar ?
Gloster. Ay, sir.
Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There might'st thou
behold the great image of Authority : a dog's obeyed in office.
Through tattered robes small vices do appear ;
Robes, and furred gowns, hide all.
[Robes, — robes, and furred gowns !]
Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ;
Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.
But that was before Tom got his seat on the bench — that was
before Tom got his place at the council-table.
* None does offend, — none — '
[unless you will begin your reform at the beginning, and hunt
down the great rogues as well as the little ones; or, rather,
unless you will go to the source of the evil, and take away the
evils, of which these crimes, that you are awarding penalties
to, are the result, let it all alone, I say. Let's have no more
legislation, and no more of this JUSTICE, this EQUITY, that takes
the vices which come through the tattered robes, and leaves
the great thief in his purple untouched. Let us have no more
of this mockery. Let us be impartial in our justice, at least]
1 None does offend, i" sag none. I'll able 'em.' [I'll show
you the way. Soft. Hark, in thine ear.'] ' Take that of me,
ray friend, who have the power TO SEAL THE ACCUSER'S LIPS.'
[Soft, in thine ear.] —
1 Get thee glass eyes,
And like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not. — Now, now, now, NOW.
* * * #
I know thee well enough. Thy name is — Gloster.
Thou must be patient ; we came crying hither.
Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee ; mark me.
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 295
Gloster. Alack, alack, the day !
Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of — Fools.
[Mark me, for I preach to thee — of Fools.
I am even the natural fool of fortune.]
— ' 0 matter and impertinency, mixed
Reason in madness.' —
— is the Poet's concluding comment on this regal boldness, a
safe and saving explanation; 'for to define true madness,' as
Polonius says, ' what is it but to be nothing else but mad/ If
the c all licensed fool,' as Goneril peevishly calls him, under
cover of his assumed imbecility, could carry his traditional
privilege to such dangerous extremes, and carp and philosophize,
and fling his bitter jests about at his pleasure, surely downright
madness might claim to be invested with a privilege as large.
But madness, when conjoined with royalty, makes a double
privilege, one which this Poet finds, however, at times, none
too large for his purposes.
Thus, Hamlet, when his mind is once in a questionable state,
can be permitted to make, with impunity, profane suggestions
as to certain possible royal progresses, and the changes to
which the dust of a Caesar might be liable, without being re-
minded out of the play, that to follow out these suggestions
1 would be/ indeed, c to consider too curiously,' and that most
extraordinary humour of his enables him also to relieve his
mind of many other suggestions, ' which reason and sanity,' in
his time, could not have been ' so prosperously delivered of/
For what is it that men can set up as a test of sanity in any
age, but their own common beliefs and sentiments. And what
surer proof of the king's madness, — what more pathetic indi-
cation of its midsummer height could be given, than those
startling propositions which the poet here puts into his mouth,
so opposed to the opinions and sentiments, not of kings only,
but of the world at large; what madder thing could a poet
think of than those political axioms which he introduces under
cover of these suggestions, — which would lay the axe at the
root of the common beliefs and sentiments ou which the social
296 lear's philosopher.
structure then rested. How could he better show that this
poor king's wits had, indeed, 'turned;' how could he better
prove that he was, indeed, past praying for, than by putting
into his mouth those bitter satires on the state, those satires on
the 'one only man' power itself,— those wild revolutionary
proposals, 'hark! in thine ear,— change places. Softly, in
thine ear,— which is the justice, and which is THE thief?'
' Take that of me who have the power to seal the accuser's lips.
None does offend. I say none. Ill able 'em. Look when I
stare, see how the subject quakes.' These laws have failed, you
see. They shelter the most frightful depths of wrong. That
Bench has failed, you see; and that Chair, with all its adjunct
divinity. Come here and look down with me from this pinna-
cle, into these abysses. Look at that wretch there, in the form
of man. Fetch him up in his blanket, and set him at the
Council Table with his elf locks and begrimed visage and in-
human gibberish. Perhaps, he will be able to make some sug-
gestion there ; and those five fiends that are talking in him at
once, would like, perhaps, to have a hearing there. Make
him f one of your hundred.' You are of ' the commission,' let
him bench with you. Nay, change places, let him try your
cause, and tell us which is the justice, which is the thief, which
is the sapient Sir, and which is the Bedlamite. Surely, the
man who authorizes these suggestions must be, indeed, ' far
gone,' whether he be ' a king or a yeoman.' And mad indeed
he is. Writhing under the insufficiency and incompetency of
these pretentious, but, in fact, ignorant and usurping institu-
tions, his heart of hearts racked and crushed with their failure,
the victim of this social empiricism, cries out in his anguish,
under that safe disguise of the Robes that hide all. : ' Take
these away at least,— that will be something gained. Let us
have no more of this mockery. None does offend — none —
I say none.1 Let us go back to the innocent instinctive brutish
state, and have done with this vain disastrous struggle of nature
after the human form, and its dignity, and perfection. Let us
talk no more of law and justice and humanity and divinity
forsooth, divinity and the celestial graces, that divinity which
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 297
is the end and perfection of the human form. — Is not woman-
hood itself, and the Angel of it fallen— degenerate ?'— That is
the humour of it. — That is the meaning of the savage edicts,
in which this human victim of the inhuman state, the subject of
a social state which has failed in some way of the human end,
undertakes to utter through the king's lips, his sense of the
failure. For the Poet at whose command he speaks, is the true
scientific historian of nature and art, and the rude and strug-
gling advances of the human nature towards its ideal type,
though they fall never so short, are none of them omitted in
his note-book. He knows better than any other, what gain
the imperfect civilization he searches and satirizes and lays bare
here, has made, with all its imperfections, on the spontaneities
and aids of the individual, unaccommodated man: he knows
all the value of the accumulations of ages; he is the very phi-
losopher who has put forth all his wisdom to guard the state
from the shock of those convulsions, that to his prescient eye,
were threatening then to lay all flat.
'0 let him pass!' is the Poet's word, when the loving
friends seek to detain a little longer, the soul on whom this
cruel time has done its work, — its elected sufferer.
' 0 let him pass ! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world,
Stretch him out longer.'
[Tired with all these, he cries in his own behalf.]
' Tired with all these, for rest/id death I cry.
Thou seest how this world goes. I see it feelingly.'
Albany. The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,
The oldest hath borne most : we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
It needs but a point, a point which the Poet could not well
put in, — one of those points which he speaks of elsewhere so
significantly, to make the unmeaning line with which this
great social Tragedy concludes, a sufficiently fitting conclusion
for it; considering, at least, the pressure under which it was
written; and the author has himself called our attention to
that, as we see, even in this little jingle of rhymes, put in
298 leak's philosopher.
apparently, only for professional purposes, and merely to get
the curtain down decently. It is a point, which it takes the
key of the play — Lord Bacon's key, of ' Times/ to put m.
It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the
right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvar-
nished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that
Merlin was to make.
' The oldest hath borne most, we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.'
There were boys ' in England then a-bed ;' nay, Some of
them might have been present that day, for aught we know,
on which one of the Managers of the Surrey Theatre, the
owner of the wardrobe and stage-properties, and himself an
actor, brought out with appropriate decorations and dresses,
for the benefit of his audience on the Bankside, this little
ebullition of his genius; —there were boys present then, per-
haps, whose names would become immortal with the fulfil-
ment of that prophecy; — there was one at Whitehall, when
it was brought out there, whose name would be for ever linked
with it. < We that are young, — the oldest hath borne ^ most.
We that are young shall never see so much' [I see it feelingly],
1 Shall never see so much, nor live so, long:
But there were evils included in that tragic picture, winch
those who were young then, would not outlive; evils which
the times that were near with their coarse, fierce remedies,
would not heal; evils which the Seer and Leader of the Times
that were far off, would himself make over to their cure;— evils
in whose cure the Discoverer of the science of Nature, and the
inventor of the New Magic which is the part operative of it,
expected to be called upon for an opinion, when the time
for that extension of his science, < crushed together and infolded
within itself in these books of Nature's learning, should fully
come.
Nothing almost sees MIRACLES but misery, says poor Kent,
in the stocks, waiting for the ' beacon' of the morning, by
THE PLAY. 299
whose comfortable beams, he might peruse his letter. c I know/
he says,
' Tis from Cordelia,
Who hath most fortunately been informed
Of my obscured course, and shall find time
From this enormous state — seeking — to give
Losses their remedies.'
There is no attempt to demonstrate that the work here pro-
posed as a study, worthy the attention of the philosophical
student, is not, notwithstanding a Poem, and a Poet's gift,
not to his cotemporaries only, but to his kind. What is
claimed is, indeed, that it is a Poem which, with all its over-
powering theatrical effects, does, in fact, reserve its true
poetic wealth, for those who will find the springs of its in-
most philosophic purport. There is no attempt to show that
this play belongs to the category of scientific works, according
to our present limitation of the term, or that there could be
found any niche for it, on those lower platforms and compart-
ments of the new science of nature, which our modern works
of natural science occupy.
It was inevitably a Poem. There was the essence of all
Tragedy in the purely scientific exhibition, which the purpose
of it required. The intention of the Poet to exhibit the
radical idea of his plot impressively, so as to reach the popular
mind through its appeal to the sensibilities, involved, of
course, the finest series of conjunctions of artistic effects, the
most exquisite characterization, the boldest grouping, the
most startling and determined contrasts, which the whole
range of his art could furnish.
But that which is only the incident of a genuine poetic in-
spiration, the effect upon the senses, which its higher appeals
are sure to involve, becomes with those delighting in, and
capable of appreciating, that sensuous effect merely, its suffi-
cient and only end, and even a doctrine of criticism based on
this inversion will not be wanting. But the difficulty of un-
locking the great Elizabethan poems with any such theory of
Art, arises from the fact that it is not the theory of Art, which
300
lear's philosopher.
the great Elizabethan Poets adopted, and whether we approve
of theirs or not, we must take it, such as it was, for our torch
in this exploration. As to that spontaneity, that seizure, that
Platonic divination, that poetic ' fury/ which our prose philo-
sopher scans in so many places so curiously, which he defines
so carefully and strictly, so broadly too, as the poetic condition,
that thing which he appears to admire so much, as having
something a little demoniacal in it withal, that same ' fine'
thing which the Poet himself speaks of by a term not any less
questionable, — as to this poetic inspiration, it is not neceSfery
to claim that it is a thing with which this Poet, the Poet of a
new era, the Poet, the deliverer of an Inductive Learning, has
had himself, personally, no acquaintance. He knows what it
is. But it is a Poet who is, first of all, a man, and he takes
his humanity with him into all things. The essential human
principle is that which he takes to be the law and limit of the
human constitution. He is perfectly satisfied with * the mea-
sure of a man,' and he gives the preference deliberately, and
on principle to the sober and rational state in the human mind.
All the elements which enter into the human composition, all
the states, normal or otherwise, to which it is liable, have
passed under his review, and this is his conclusion; and none
born of woman, ever had a better chance to look at them, for
all is alike heightened in him, — heightened to the ideal boun-
dary of nature, in the human form; but that which seems to
be heightened, most of all, that in which he stands preeminent
and singular in the natural history of man, would seem to be
the proportion of this heightening. It is what we have all
recognized it to be, Nature's largest, most prodigal demonstra-
tion of her capacities in the human form, but it is, at the same
time, her most excellent and exquisite balance of composition
— her most subdued and tempered work. And the reason is,
that he is not a particular and private man, and the deficien-
cies and personalities of those from whom he is abstracted, are
studiously, and by method, kept out of him. For this is the
•Will' not of one man only; it is the scientific abstract of a phi-
losophic union. It is a will that has a rule in art as well as
nature.
THE PLAY. 3OI
Certainly he is the very coolest Poet; and the fullest of this
common earth and its affairs, of any sage that has ever showed
his head upon it, in prose or metre. The sturdiness with
which he makes good his position, as an inhabitant, for the
time being, of this terrestrial ball, and, by the ordinance of
God, subject to its laws, and liable to its pains and penalties,
is a thing which appears, to the careful reviewer of it, on the
whole, the most novel and striking feature of this demonstra-
tion. He objects, on principle, to seizures and possessions of
all kinds. He refuses to be taken off his feet by any kind of
solicitation. He is a man who is never ashamed to have a
reason,— one that he can produce, and make intelligible to
common people, for his most exquisite proceedings ; that is, if
he chooses: but, ' if reasons were plentiful as blackberries,' he
is not the man to give them on .« compulsion/ His ideas of
the common mind, his notion of the common human intelli-
gence, or capacity for intelligence, appears to be somewhat
different from that of the other philosophers. The common
sense— the common form— is that which he is always seeking
and identifying under all the differences. It is that which he
is bringing out and clothing with the ( inter-tissued robe' and
all the glories which he has stripped from the extant majesty.
' Eobes and furred gowns hide all ■ no longer.
He is not a bard who is careful at all about keeping his
singing robes about him. He can doff them and work like a
? navvy' when he sees reason. He is very fond of coming out
with good, sober, solid prose, in the heart of his poetry. He
can rave upon occasion as well as another. Spontaneities of all
kinds have scope and verge enough in his plot; but he always
keeps an eye out, and they speak no more than is set down
for them. His Pythoness foams at the mouth too, sometimes,
and appears to have it all her own way, perhaps; but he
knows what she is about, and there is never a word in the
oracle that has not undergone his revision. He knows that
Plato tells us ' it is in vain for a sober man to knock at the
door of the Muses'; but he is one who has discovered, scien-
tifically, the human law; and he is ready to make it good, on
302 leak's philosopher.
all sides, against all comers. And, though the Muses knocked
at his door, as they never had at any other, they could never
carry him away with them. They found, for once, a sober
man within, one who is not afraid to tell them, to their teeth,
'Judgment holds in me, always, a magisterial seat;'— and,
with all their celestial graces and pretensions, he fetters them,
and drags them up to that tribunal. He superintends all his
inspirations.
There never was a Poet in whom the poetic spontaneities
were so absolutely under control and mastery; and there never
was one in whose nature all the spontaneous force and faculty
of genius showed itself in such tumultuous fulness, ready to
issue, at a word, in such inexhaustible varieties of creative
energy.
Of all the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts there is none
to match this so delicate and gorgeous Ariel of his,— this
creature that he keeps to put his girdles round the earth for
him, that comes at a thought, and brings in such dainty ban-
quets, such brave pageants in the earth or in the air; there is
none other that knows so well the spells < to make this place
Paradise/ But, for all that, he is the merest tool,— the veriest
drudge and slave. The magician's collar is always on his
neck; in his airiest sweeps he takes his chain with him. Cali-
ban himself is not more sternly watched and tutored; and all
the gorgeous masque has its predetermined order, its severe
economy of grace; through all the slightest minutiae of its
detail, runs the inflexible purpose, the rational human purpose,
the common human sense, the common human aim.
Yes, it is a Play; but it is the play of a mind sobered
with all human learning. Yes, it is spontaneous; but it is the
spontaneity of a heart laden with human sorrow, oppressed
with the burthen of the common weal. Yes, indeed, it is a
Poet's work; but it is the work of one who consciously and
deliberately recognizes, in all the variety of his gifts, in all his
natural and acquired power, under all the disabilities of his
position, the one, paramount, human law, and essential obliga-
tion. Of ' Art,' as anything whatever, but an instrumentality,
THE PLAY.
303
thoroughly subdued, and subordinated to that end, of Art as
anything in itself, with an independent tribunal, and law with
an ethic and ritual of its own, this inventor of the one Art,
that has for its end the relief of the human estate and the
Creator's glory, knows nothing. Of any such idolatry and
magnifying of the creature, of any such worship of the gold
of the temple to the desecration of that which sanctifieth the
gold, this Art-King in all his purple, this priest and High
Pontiff of its inner mysteries knows — will know — nothing.
Yes, it is play; but it is not child's play, nor an idiot's play,
nor the play of a ' jigging ' Bacchanal, who comes out on this
grave, human scene, to insult our sober, human sense, with his
mad humour, making a Belshazzar's feast or an Antonian revel
of it; a creature who shows himself to our common human
sense without any human aim or purpose, ransacking all the life
of man, exploring all worlds, pursuing the human thought to its
last verge, and questioning, as with the cry of all the race, the
infinities beyond, diving to the lowest depths of human life
and human nature, and bringing up and publishing, the before
unspoken depths of human wrong and sorrow, wringing from
the hearts of those that died and made no sign, their death-
buried secrets, articulating everywhere that which before had
no word — and all for an artistic effect, for an hour's entertain-
ment, for the luxury of a harmonized timpression, or for the
mere ostentation of his frolic, to feed his gamesome humour,
to make us stare at his unconsciousness, to show what gems he
can crush in his idle cup for a draught of pleasure, or in pure
caprice and wantonness, confounding all our notions of sense,
and manliness, and human duty and respect, with the bound-
less wealth and waste of his gigantic fooleries.
It is play, but let us thank God it is no such play as that;
let our common human naturer ejoice that it has not been thus
outraged in its chief and chosen one, that it has not been thus
disgraced with the boundless human worthlessness of the
creature on whom its choicest gifts were lavished. It is play,
indeed ; but it is no such Monster, with his idiotic stare of un-
consciousness, that the opening of it will reveal to us. Let us^
304
leak's philosopher.
all thank God, and take heart again, and try to revive those
notions of human dignity and common human sense which
this story sets at nought, and see if we cannot heal that great
jar in our abused natures which this chimera of the nineteenth
century makes in it — this night-mare of modern criticism,
which lies with its dead weight on all our higher art and
learning — this creature that came in on us unawares, when
the interpretation of the Plays had outgrown the Play-tradi-
tion, when * the Play3 had outgrown ' the Player'
It is a play in which the manliest of human voices is heard
sounding throughout the order of it; it is a play stuffed to its
fool's gibe, with the soberest, deepest, maturest human sense;
and ' the tears of it,' as we who have tested it know, ' the
tears of it are wet.' It is a play where the choicest seats, the
seats in which those who see it all must sit, are ' reserved' ; and
there is a price to be paid for these : ' children and fools' will
continue to have theirs for nothing. For after so many gener-
ations of players had come and gone, there had come at
last on this human stage — on ' this great stage of fools/ as the
Poet calls it — this stage filled with * the natural fools of for-
tune,' having eyes, but seeing not — there had come to it at
last a man, one who was — take him for all in all — that; one
who thought it — for a man, enough to be truly that — one
who thought he was fulfilling his part in the universal order,
in seeking to be modestly and truly that; one, too, who thought
it was time that the human part on the stage of this Globe
Theatre should begin to be reverently studied by man him-
self, and scientifically and religiously ordered and determined
through all its detail.
For it is the movement of the new time that makes this
Play, and all these Plays: it is the spirit of the newly-begin-
ning ages of human advancement which makes the inspiration
of them ; the beginning ages of a rational, instructed — and
not blind, or instinctive, or demoniacal — human conduct.
It is such play and pastime as the prophetic spirit and leader-
ship of those new ages could find time and heart to make and
■ leave to them, on that height of vision which it was given to
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 305
it to occupy. For an age in human advancement was at last
reached, on whose utmost summits men could begin to perceive
that tradition, and eyes of moonshine speculation, and a
thousand noses, and horns welked and waved like the en-
ridged sea, when they came to be jumbled together in one
1 monster/ did not appear to answer the purpose of human
combination, or the purpose of human life on earth; appeared,
indeed to be still far, 'far wide' of the end which human
society is everywhere blindly pushing and groping for, en
masse.
There was a point of observation from which this fortuitous
social conjunction did not appear to- the critical eye or ear to
be making just that kind of play and music which human
nature — singularly enough, considering what kind of condi-
tions it lights on — is constitutionally inclined to expect and
demand ; not that, or indeed any perceptible approximation to
a paradisaical state of things. There was, indeed, a point of
view — one which commanded not the political mysteries of
the time only, but the household secrets of it, and the deeper
secrets of the solitary heart of man, one which commanded
alike the palace and the hovel, to their blackest recesses^ —
there was a point of view from which these social agencies ap-
peared to be making then, in fact, whether one looked with
eyes or ears, a mere diabolical jangle, and '/«, sol, la, mi,' of
it, a demoniacal storm music; and from that height of obser-
vation all ruinous disorders could be seen coming out, and
driving men to vice and despair, urging them to self-destruc-
tion even, and hunting them disquietly to their graves.
' Nothing almost sees miracles but misery;' and this was the
Age in which the New Magic was invented.
It was the age in which that grand discovery was made, which
the Fool undertakes to palm off here as the fruit of his own
single invention ; and, indeed, it was found that the application
of it to certain departments of human affairs was more success-
fully managed by this gentleman in his motley, than by some
of his brother philosophers who attempted it. It was the age
in which the questions which are inserted here so safely in the
X
306 leak's philosopher.
Fool's catechism, began to be started secretly in the philo-
sophic chamber. It was the age in which the identical answers
which the cap and bells are made responsible for here, were
written down, but with other applications, in graver authori-
ties. It is the philosophical discovery of the time, which the
Fool is undertaking to translate into the vernacular, when he
puts the question, ' Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in
the middle of his face?' And we have all the Novum Organum
in what he calls, in another place, ' the boorish/ when he
answers it; and all the choicest gems of ' the part operative' of
the new learning have been rattling from his rattle in every-
body's path, ever since he published his digests of that doc-
trine : ' Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of
his face?' ' No.' ' Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it,
that what he cannot smell out he may spy into.1 And * all
that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but — blind men.9
And ' the reason why the seven stars are seven, is because they
are not eight;' and the king who makes that answer e would
have made a good — fool,1 for it's 'a very pretty reason.' And
neither times nor men should be ' old before their time' ;
neither times nor men should be revered, or clothed with autho-
rity or command in human affairs, ( till they are wise1 [' Thou
sapient sir, sit here1] And it is a mistake for a leader of men
to think that he ' has white hairs in his beard, before the black
ones are there.' And 'ants,' and 'snails,' and * oysters,' are wiser
than men in their arts, and practices, and pursuits of ends. It
was the age in which it was perceived that ' to say ay and no
to everything' that a madman says, ' is no good divinity1 ; and
that it is ' the time's plague when Madmen lead the Blind';
and that, instead of good men sitting still, like ' moral fools,'
and crying out on wrong and mischief, * Alack, why does it
so?' it would be wiser, and more pious, too, to make use of the
faculty of learning, with which the Creator has armed Man,
1 against diseases of the world,' to ascend to the cause, and punish
that — punish that, ' ere it has done its mischief.' It was the
age in which it was discovered that ' the sequent effect, with
which nature finds itself scourged/ is not in the least touched
THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. 307
by any kind of reasoning * thus and thus,' except that kind
which proceeds first by negatives, that kind which proceeds
by a method so severe that it contrives to exclude everything
but the * the cause in nature' from its affirmation, which c in
practical philosophy becomes the rule ' — that is, the critical
method, — which is for men, as distinguished from the sponta-
neous affirmation, which is for gods.
It is the beginning of these yet beginning Modern Ages,
the ages of a practical learning, and scientific relief to the
human estate, which this Pastime marks with its blazoned,
illuminated initial. It is the opening of the era in which a
common human sense is developed, and directed to the common-
weal, which this Pastime celebrates; the opening of the ages in
which, ere all is done, the politicians who expect mankind to
entrust to them their destinies, will have to find something
better than * glass eyes' to guide them with ; in which it will
be no longer competent for those to whom mankind entrusts
its dearest interests to go on in their old stupid, conceited,
heady courses, their old, blind, ignorant courses, — stumbling,
and staggering, and groping about, and smelling their way
with their own narrow and selfish instincts, when it is the
common-weal they have taken on their shoulders; — running
foul of the nature of things — quarrelling with eternal neces-
sities, and crying out, when the wreck is made, * Alack ! why
does it so?'
This Play, and all these plays, were meant to be pastime for
ages in which state reasons must needs be something else than
' the pleasure* of certain individuals, ■ whose disposition, all the
world well knows, will not be rubbed or stopped;' or 'the
quality,' * fiery' or otherwise, of this or that person, no matter
* how unremoveable and fixed' he may be f in his own course.'
It was to the ' far off times;' and not to the * near,' it was to
the advanced ages of the Advancement of Learning, that this
Play was dedicated by its Author. For it was the spirit of the
modern ages that inspired it. It was the new Prometheus
who planned it; the more aspiring Titan, who would bring
down in his New Organum a new and more radiant gift; it
x 2
308 lear's philosopher.
was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance the rude
kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial
summits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevit-
able advancements of that new era of scientific * prudence' and
forethought which it was given to him to initiate, when all
this sober historic exhibition, with its fearful historic earnest,
would read, indeed, like some old fable of the rude barbaric
past — some Player's play, bent on a feast of horrors — some
Poet's impossibility. And that — was the Play, — that was the
Plot. He knew that there would come a time when all this tragic
mirth — sporting with the edged tools of tyranny — playing a
round the edge of the great axe itself — would be indeed safe
play; when his Fool could open his budget, and unroll his
bitter jests — crushed together and infolded within themselves
so long — and have a world to smile with him, and not the
few who could unfold them only. And that — that was ' the
humour of it.'
Yes, with all their philosophy, these plays are Plays and
Poems still. There 's no spoiling the ' tragical mirth' in them.
But we are told, on the most excellent contemporaneous
authority — on the authority of one who was in the inmost
heart of all this Poet's secrets — that 'as we often judge of
the greater by the less, so the very pastimes of great men
give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of THE SOURCE
JULIUS CAESAR;
OR,
THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE
COMMON-WEAL EXPLAINED.
Good does not necessarily succeed evil ; another evil may succeed,
and a worse, as it happened with Caesar's killers, who brought the
republic to such a pass that they had reason to repent their meddling
with it. * * * It must be examined in what condition the
assailant is. — Michael de Montaigne.
Citizen. I fear there will a worse one come in his place.
Cassius. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
CHAPTER I.
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY; OR, THE QUESTION OP THE
PREROGATIVE.
Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean : Is it not, Cassius?
Cassius. Let it be who it is, for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.
* * * *
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar.
Julius Caesar.
"VTES, when that Royal Injunction, which rested alike upon
-*- the Play-house, the Press, the Pulpit, and Parliament
itself, was still throttling everywhere the free voice of the
nation — when a single individual could still assume to himself,
or to herself, the exclusive privilege of deliberating on all
those questions which men are most concerned in — questions
which involve all their welfare, for this life and the life to
come, certainly ' the Play, the Play was the thing? It was a
vehicle of expression which offered incalculable facilities for
evading these restrictions. It was the only one then invented
which offered then any facilities whatever for the discussion
of that question in particular — which was already for that age
the question. And to the genius of that age, with its new
310 JULIUS CAESAR.
historical, experimental, practical, determination — with its
transcendant poetic power, nothing could be easier than to get
possession of this instrument, and to exhaust its capabilities.
For instance, if a Roman Play were to be brought out at
all} — and with that mania for classical subjects which then
prevailed, what could be more natural ? — how could one
object to that which, by the supposition, was involved in it?
And what but the most boundless freedoms and audacities, on
this very question, could one look for here? What, by the
supposition, could it be but one mine of poetic treason? If
Brutus and Cassius were to be allowed to come upon the stage,
and discuss their views of government, deliberately and confi-
dentially, in the presence of an English audience, certainly no
one could ask to hear from their lips the political doctrine then
predominant in England. It would have been a flat anachro-
nism, to request them to keep an eye upon the Tower in their
remarks, inasmuch as all the world knew that the corner-stone
of that ancient and venerable institution had only then just
been laid by the same distinguished individual whom these
patriots were about to call to an account for his military
usurpation of a constitutional government at home.
And yet, one less versed than the author in the mystery of
theatrical effects, and their combinations — one who did not
know fully what kind of criticism a mere Play, composed by
a professional play-wright, in the way of his profession, for
the entertainment of the spectators, and for the sake of the
pecuniary result, was likely to meet with ; — or one who did
not know what kind of criticism a work, addressed so strongly
to the imagination and the feelings in any form, is likely to
meet with, might have fancied beforehand that the author was
venturing upon a somewhat delicate experiment, in producing
a play like this upon the English stage at such a crisis. One
would have said beforehand, that ' there were things in this
comedy of Julius Caesar that would never please.' It is diffi-
cult, indeed, to understand how such a Play as this could ever
have been produced in the presence of either of those two
monarchs who occupied the English throne at that crisis in its
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY. 311
history, already secretly conscious that its foundations were
moving, and ferociously on guard over their prerogative.
And, indeed, unless a little of that same sagacity, which was
employed so successfully in reducing the play of Pyramus and
Thisbe to the tragical capacities of Duke Theseus' court, had
been put in requisition here, instead of that dead historical
silence, which the world complains of so much, we might
have been treated to some very lively historical details in this
case, corresponding to other details which the literary history
of the time exhibits, in the case of authors who came out in
an evil hour in their own names, with precisely the same doc-
trines, which are taught here word for word, with impunity;
and the question as to whether this Literary Shadow, this
Name, this Veiled Prophet in the World of Letters, ever had
any flesh and blood belonging to him anywhere, (and from the
tenor of his works, one might almost fancy sometimes that that
might have been the case), this question would have come down
to us experimentally and historically settled. For most un-
mistakeably, the claws of the young British lion are here,
under these old Koman togas; and it became the c masters ' to
consider with themselves, for there is, indeed, { no more fearful
wild fowl living ' than your lion in such circumstances ; and if
he should happen to forget his part in any case, and * roar too
loud,' it would to a dead certainty ' hang them all.'
But it was only the faint-hearted tailor who proposed to
* leave out the killing part.' Pyramus sets aside this cowardly
proposition. He has named the obstacles to be encountered
only for the sake of magnifying the fertility of his invention
in overcoming them. He has a device to make all even.
' Write me a prologue/ he says, e and let the prologue seem to
say, we will do no harm with our swords; and for the more
assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am. not Pyramus, but
Bottom, the Weaver; that will put them out oifear? And as to
the lion, there must not only be ' another prologue, to tell that
he is not a lion,' but ' you must name his name, and half his face
must be seen through the lion's neck, and he himself must
speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect, Ladies, or
312
JULIUS CAESAR.
fair ladies, my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a
lion, it were pity of my life.'
Te such devices, in good earnest, were those compelled to
resort who ventured upon the ticklish experiment of present-
ing heroic entertainments for king's palaces, where ' hanging
was the word' in case of a fright; but, with a genius like this
behind the scenes, so fertile in invention, so various in gifts,
who could aggravate his voice so effectually, giving you one
moment the pitch of ' the sucking dove,' or ' roaring you like
any nightingale,' and the next, f the Hercle's vein/ — with a
genius who knew how to play, not ' the tyrant's part only,'
but * the lover's, which is more condoling,' and whose sugges-
tion that the audience should look to their eyes in that case,
was by no means a superfluous one ; with a genius who had
all passions at his command, who could drown, at his pleasure,
the sharp critic's eye, or blind it with showers of pity, or
* make it water with the merriest tears, that the passion of loud
laughter ever shed,' with such resources, prince's edicts could
be laughed to scorn. It was vain to forbid such an one, to
meddle with anything that was, or had been, or could be.
But does any one say — ' To what purpose,' if the end were
concealed so effectually? And does any one suppose, because
no faintest suspicion of the true purpose of this play, and of
all these plays, has from that hour to this, apparently ever
crossed the English mind, at home or abroad, though no sus-
picion of the existence of any purpose in them beyond that of
putting the author in easy circumstances, appears as yet to
have occurred to any one, — does any one suppose that this
play, and all these plays, have on that account, failed of their
purpose; and that they have not been all this time, steadily
accomplishing it? Who will undertake to estimate, for in-
stance, the philosophical, educational influence of this single
Play, on every boy who has spouted extracts from it, from the
author's time to ours, from the palaces of England, to the log
school-house in the back-woods of America?
But suppose now, instead of being the aimless, spontaneous,
miraculous product of a stupid, ' rude mechanical' bent on
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY. 313
producing something which should please the eye, and flatter
the prejudices of royalty, and perfectly ignorant of the nature
of that which he had produced ; — suppose that instead of
appearing as the work of Starveling, and Snout, and Nick
Bottom, the Weaver, or any person of that grade and
calibre, that this play had appeared at the time, as the work
of an English scholar, as most assuredly it was, profoundly
versed in the history of states in general, as well as in the
history of the English state in particular, profoundly versed in
the history of nature in general, as well as in the history of
human nature in particular. Suppose, for instance, it had
appeared as the work of an English statesman, already sus-
pected of liberal opinions, but stedfastly bent for some reason
or other, on advancement at court, with his eye still intently
fixed, however secretly, on those insidious changes that were
then in progress in the state, who knew perfectly well what
crisis that ship of state was steering for; query, whether some
of the passages here quoted would have tended to that ' ad-
vancement' he 'lacked' Suppose that instead of Julius Caesar,
' looking through the lion's neck/ and gracefully rejecting the
offered prostrations, it had been the English courtier, con-
demned to these degrading personal submissions, who ' roared
you out,' on his own account, after this fashion. Imagine a
good sturdy English audience returning the sentiment, thun-
dering their applause at this and other passages here quoted, in
the presence of a Tudor or a Stuart.
One might safely conclude, even if the date had not been
otherwise settled, that anything so offensive as this never was
produced in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. King James
might be flattered into swallowing even such treasonable stuff
as this; but in her time, the poor lion was compelled to ag-
gravate his voice after another fashion. Nothing much above
the sucking-dove pitch, could be ventured on when her quick
ears were present. He ■ roared you' indeed, all through her
part of the Elizabethan time; but it was like any nightingale.
The clash and clang of these Roman Plays were for the less
sensitive and more learned Stuart.
314 JULIUS CAESAR.
Metellus Cimber. Most high, most mighty,
And most puissant Caesar;
Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat
An humble heart : — [Kneeling.']
Caesar. I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings and these lowly courtesies
Might fire the blood of ordinary men ;
And turn pre-ordinance, and first decree,
Into the law of children.
Be not fond
To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood,
That will be thawed from the true quality,
With that which melteth Fools. (?) I mean, sweet words,
Low, crooked curtsies, and base spaniel fawning.
Thy brother by decree is banished ;
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
1 spurn thee like a cur, out of my way.
Know Caesar doth not wrong.
To appreciate this, one must recall not merely the humilia-
ting personal prostrations which the ceremonial of the English
Court required then, but that base prostration of truth and
duty and honour, under the feet of vanity and will and pas-
sion, which they symbolized.
Thus far Caesar, but the subject's views on this point, as
here set forth, are scarcely less explicit, but then it is a Roman
subject who speaks, and the Roman costume and features,
look savingly through the lion's neck.
One of the radical technicalities of that new philosophy of
the human nature which permeates all this historical exhibi-
tion, comes in here, however; and it is one which must be
mastered before any of these plays can be really read. The
radical point in the new philosophy, as it applies to the human
nature in particular, is the pivot on which all turns here, —
here as elsewhere in the writings of this school, — the distinction
of 'the double self,' the distinction between the particular and
private nature, with its unenlightened instincts of passion,
humour, will, caprice, — that self which is changeful, at war
with itself, self-inconsistent, and, therefore, truly, no SELF, —
since the true self is the principle of identity and immutability,
— the distinction between that ■ private' nature when it is
THE DEATH OF TYKANNY. 315
developed instinctively as e selfishness/ and that rational im-
mutable self which is constitutionally present though latent,
in all men, and one in them all; that noble special human
form which embraces and reconciles in its intention, the
private good with the good of that worthier whole whereof
we are individually parts and members ; ' this is the distinction
on which all turns here.' For this philosophy refuses, on
philosophical grounds, to accept this low, instinctive private
nature, in any dressing up of accidental power as the god of
its idolatry, in place of that 'divine or angelical nature, which
is the perfection of the human form,' and the true sovereignty.
Obedience to that nature, — * the approach to, or assumption
of,' that, makes, in this philosophy, the end of the human
endeavour, * and the error and false imitation of that good,
is that which is the tempest of the human life/
But let us hear the passionate Cassius, who is full of indi-
vidualities himself, and ready to tyrannize with them, but
somehow, as it would seem, not fond of submitting to the
4 single self in others.
* Well, honour is the subject of my story. —
I can not tell what you, and other men,
Think of this life ; but for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar ; so were you.
We both have fed as well : and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.' —
And the proof of this personal equality is then given; and
it is precisely the one which Lear produces, ' When the wind
made me chatter, there I found them, — there I smelt them
out.'—
1 For once upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, etc.
* * * *
— Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink.
* * * And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body.
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
316 JULIUS CAESAR.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him — 1 did mark
How he did shake : 'tis true, this god did shake.'
[This was a pretty fellow to have about a king's privac)
taking notes of this sort on his tablets. Among ' those saw
and forms and pressures past, which youth and observatior
copied there/ all that part reserved for Caesar and his history,
appears to have escaped the sponge in some way.
1 They told me I was every thing, 'tis a lie ! I am not ague
proof.' — Lear.
His coward lips did from their colour fly.
' And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose his lustre! — Julius Caesar.
4 — When I do stare see how the subject quakes. — ' Lear.]
I did hear him groan :
Aye* and that tongue of his that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books.
Alas ! it cried, ' Give me some drink, Titinius,'
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.
Brutus. Another general shout !
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.
Cassius. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world,
Like a Colossus : and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs; and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men, at some time, are masters of their fates,
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar : What should be in that Caesar ?
* * * *
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great 1 Age, thou art shamed :
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble "bloods !
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with One man 1
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but One man 1
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY.
317
Brutus,
Cassias.
Brutus.
Cassius.
Brutus.
Cassius.
Caesar.
Antony.
Caesar.
Antony.
Caesar.
When there is in it but one only man.
[When there is in it (truly) but One only, — Man].
0 ! you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Borne,
As easily as a king.
What you have said,
1 will consider ; — what you have to say
I will with patience hear : and find a time
Both meet to hear, and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this ;
Brutus had rather be a villager,
Than to repute himself a Son of Bome.
Under these hard conditions, as this time
Is like to lay upon us. [Chew upon this].
I am glad that my weak words
Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.
[Re-enter Caesar and his train.]
The games are done, and Caesar is returning.
As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve ;
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you
What hath proceeded worthy note to-day.
I will do so : — But look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow.
And all the rest look like a chidden train :
Calphurnia's cheek is pale ; and Cicero
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes,
As we have seen him in the Capitol,
Being crossed in conference by some senators.
Casca will tell us what the matter is.
Antonius.
Caesar.
Let me have men about me that are fat ;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights :
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous.
Fear him not, Caesar ; he 's not dangerous :
He is a noble Boman, and well given.
Would he were fatter : — But I fear him not ;
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much :
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men : he loves no plays,
As thou dost Antony ; he hears no music :
Seldom he smiles ; and smiles in such a sorts
318 JULIUS CAESAR.
As if he mocked himself, and scored his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he are never at heart's ease,
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves ;
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be feared,
Than what /fear, for always I am Caesar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me indy what thou think'st of him.
[Exeunt Caesar and his train. Casca stays behind]
Casca. You pulled me by the cloak : would you speak with me 1
Brutus. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced to-day,
That Caesar looks so sad.
Casca. Why you were with him. Were you not ?
Brutus. 1 should not then ask Casca what hath chanced.
Casca. Why there was a crown offered him : and, being offered, he
put it by with the back of his hand, thus ; and then the people fell
a shouting.
Brutus. What was the second noise for 1
Casca. Why for that too.
Brutus. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for ?
Casca. Why for that too ?
Brutus. Was the crown offered him thrice 1
Casca. Ay marry was't. And he put it by thrice, every time gentler
than the other ; and at every putting by, mine honest neighbours
shouted.
Cassius. Who offered him the crown ?
Casca. Why, Antony.
Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was
mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a
crown ; yet 'twas not a crown ;— neither 'twas one of these coronets ;
—and, as I told you, he put it by once ; but, for all that, to my think-
ing, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again ; then
he 'put it by again : but, to my thinking, he was very loth to lay his
fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time ; he put it the
third time by ; and still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted, and
clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night caps, and
uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Caesar refused the
crown, that it had almost choked Caesar ; for he swooned and fell down
at it : 'and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my
lips and receiving the bad air.
Cassius. But soft, I pray you : What 1 did Caesar swoon ?
Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was
Brutus. 'T is very like ; he hath the falling sickness.
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY. 319
Cassius. No, Caesar hath it not ; but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.
Casca. I know not what you mean by that : but I am sure, Caesar fell
down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according
as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the Players in the
theatre, I am no true man.
Brutus. What said he, when he came unto himself.
Casca. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common
herd was glad when he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet,
and offered them his throat to cut. — An I had been a man of any occu-
pation, if I would not have taken him at a word ; I would I might go to
hell among the rogues : and so he fell. When he came to himself again,
he said, if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their wor-
ships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I
stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul ! — and forgave him with all their hearts :
But there's no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their
mothers, they would have done no less.
Brutus. And after that, he came thus sad away 1
Casca. Ay.
Cassius. Did Cicero say anything ?
Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius. To what effect ?
Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, I '11 ?ieier look you t the face again. But
those that understood him, smiled at one another, and shook their heads :
but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news,
too : Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Caesar's images, are put
to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could
remember it.
Brutus says of Casca, when he is gone, * He was quick
mettle when he went to school ' ; and Cassius replies, * So he is
now — however he puts on this tardy form. This rudeness is
a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his
words with better appetite.' * And so it is/ Brutus returns ; —
and so it is, indeed, as any one may perceive, who will take
the pains to bestow upon these passages the attention which
the author's own criticism bespeaks for them.
To the ear of such an one, the roar of the blank verse of
Cassius is still here, subdued, indeed, but continued, through
all the humour of this comic prose.
But it is Brutus who must lend to the Poet the sanction of
his name and popularity, when he would strike home at last
to the heart of his subject. Brutus, however, is not yet fully
32Q . JULIUS CAESAR.
won: and, in order to secure him, Cassius will this night throw
in at his window, ' in several hands — as if they came from
several citizens — writings, in which, OBSCURELY, CAESAR S
AMBITION SHALL BE GLANCED AT.' And, 'After this,' he
says, —
' Let Caesar seat him sure,
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.'
But in the interval, that night of wild tragic splendour
must come, with its thunder-bolts and showers of fire, and
unnatural horror. For these elements have a true part to per-
form here, as in Lear and other plays; they come in, not
merely as subsidiary to the ' artistic effect' — not merely because
their wild Titanic play forms an imposing harmonious accom-
paniment to the play of the human passions and their ' wild-
ness ' — but as a grand scientific exhibition of the element
which the Poet is pursuing under all its Protean forms - as a
most palpable and effective exhibition to the sense of that
identical thing against which he has raised his eternal standard
of revolt, refusing to own, under any name, its mastery.
But one can hear, in that wild lurid night, in the streets of
Rome, amid the cross blue lightnings, what could not have
been whispered in the streets of England then, or spoken in
the ear in closets.
Cicero. [Encountering Casca in the street, with his sword drawn.]
Good- even, Casca ; brought you Caesar home 1
Why are you breathless ? and why stare you so ?
Casca. Are you not moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks ; and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell, and rage and foam.
To be exalted with the threatening clouds ;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven ;
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.
But the night has had other spectacles, it seems, which, to
his eye, appeared to have some relation to the coming
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY.
321
struggle; in answer to Cicero's « Why, saw you anything more
wonderful?' Thus he describes them.
1 A common slave, — you know him well by sight.
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join 'd.
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by.'
[And he had seen, ' drawn on a head/]
' A hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fears ; who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting, and shrieking.'
An ominous circumstance, — that last. A portent sure as
fate. When such things begin to appear, ' men need not go to
heaven to predict imminent changes/
Cicero concedes that ' it is indeed a strange disposed time?'
and inserts the statement that ' men may construe things after
their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.'
But this is too disturbed a sky for him to walk in, so exit
Cicero, and enter one of another kind of mettle, who thinks
1 the night a very pleasant one to honest men f who boasts that
he has been walking about the streets ( unbraced, baring his
bosom to the thunder stone,' and playing with * the cross blue
lightning;' and when Casca reproves him for this temerity, he
replies,
1 You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman, you do want,
Or else you use not.'
For as to these extraordinary phenomena in nature, he says,
* If you would consider the true cause
Why all these things change, from their ordinance.
Their natures and fore-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality ; why, you shall find,
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear, and warning,
Unto some monstrous state.'
o22 JULIUS CAESAR.
Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night ;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol :
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action ; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean : Is it not, Cassius 1
Cassius. Let it be who it is : for Romans now
Have theives and limbs like to their ancestors ;
But, woe the while ! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers1 spirits ;
Our yoke and sufferance shows us womanish.
Casca. Indeed, they say, the senators to-morrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king.
And he shall wear his crown by sea, and land,
In every place, save here in Italy.
Cassius. I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius :
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong ;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat :
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny, that J do bear,
/ can shake off at pleasure.
Casca. So can I:
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
Cassius. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then 1
Poor man ! I know, he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,
Begin it with weak straws : What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar ? But, O grief !
Where hast thou led me 1 I, perhaps, speak this
Before a willing bondman ; then I know
My answer must be made : But I am arm'd
And dangers are to me indifferent.
Casca. You speak to Casca ; and to such a man,
That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold my hand :
Be factious for redress of all these griefs :
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY. 323
And I will set this foot of mine as far,
As who goes farthest.
Cassius. There's a bargain made.
This is sufficiently explicit, an unprejudiced listener would
be inclined to say — indeed, it is difficult to conceive how any
more positively instructive exhibition of the subject, could
well have been made. Certainly no one can deny that this
fact of the personal helplessness, the physical weakness of those
in whom this arbitrary power over the liberties and lives of
others is vested, seems for some reason or other to have taken
strong possession of the Poet's imagination. For how else,
otherwise should he reproduce it so often, so elaborately under
such a variety of forms? — with such a stedfastness and perti-
nacity of purpose?
The fact that the power which makes these personalities so
* prodigious/ so ' monstrous,' overshadowing the world, * sham-
ing the Age' with their ' colossaP individualities, no matter what
new light, what new gifts of healing for its ills, that age has
been endowed with, levelling all to their will, contracting all to
the limit of their stinted nature, making of all its glories but
'rubbish, offal to illuminate their vileness,' — the fact that
the power which enables creatures like these, to convulse na-
tions with their whims, and deluge them with blood, at their
pleasure, — which puts the lives and liberties of the noblest,
always most obnoxious to them, under their heel — the fact that
this power resides after all, not in these persons themselves, — -
that they are utterly helpless, pitiful, contemptible, in them-
selves ; but that it exists in the ' thewes and limbs' of those
who are content to be absorbed in their personality, who are
content to make muscles for them, in those who are content to
be mere machines for the ' only one man's' will and passion
to operate with, — the fact that this so fearful power lies all in
the consent of those who suffer from it, is the fact which this
Poet wishes to be permitted to communicate, and which he
will communicate in one form or another, to those whom it
concerns to know it.
It is a fact, which he is not content merely to state, how-
y2
^24 JULIUS CAESAR.
ever, in so many words, and so have done with it. He will |
impress it on the imagination with all kinds of vivid represen-
tation. He will exhaust the splendours of his Art in uttering
it. He will leave a statement on this subject, profoundly philo-
sophical, but one that all the world will be able to compre-
hend eventually, one that the world will never be able to
unlearn.
The single individual helplessness of the man whom the
multitude, in this case, were ready to arm with unlimited
power over their own welfare— that physical weakness, already
so strenuously insisted on by Cassius, at last attains its climax
in the representation, when, in the midst of his haughtiest
display of will and personal authority, stricken by the hands
of the men he scorned, by the hand of one ' he had just
spurned like a cur out of his path,' he falls at the foot of
Pompey's statue — or, rather, ' when at the base of Pompey's
statua he lies along' - amid all the noise, and tumult, and
rushing action of the scene that follows — through all its pro-
tracted arrangements, its speeches, and ceremonials — not un-
marked, indeed,— the centre of all eyes,— but, mute, motionless,
a thing of pity, ' A PIECE OF BLEEDING EARTH.'
That helpless cry in the Tiber, ' Save me, Cassius, or I
sink!'— that feeble cry from the sick man's bed in Spain,
' Give me some drink, Titinius !' — and all that pitiful display
of weakness, moral and physical, at the would-be coronation,
which Casca's report conveys so unsparingly - the falling down
in the street speechless, which Cassius emphasises with his
scornful ' What? did Caesar SWOON?' -all this makes but
a part of the exhibition, which the lamentations of Mark
Antony complete : —
< 0 mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low ?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure f
This f and ' the eye' of the spectator, more learned than
' his ear/ follows the speaker's eye, and measures it.
1 Fare thee well.
But yesterday the word of Caesar might
THE DEATH OF TYRANNY. 325
Have stood against the world : now lies he there.
And none so poor, to do him reverence?
The Poet's tone breaks through Mark Antony's ; the Poet's
finger points, * now lies he there9 — there !
That form which 'lies there,' with its mute eloquence
speaking this Poet's word, is what he calls 'a Transient
Hieroglyphic,' which makes, he says, ' a deeper impression on
minds of a certain order, than the language of arbitrary signs;'
and his ' delivery' on the most important questions will be
found, upon examination, to derive its principal emphasis
from a running text in this hand. 'For, in such business,' he
says, ' action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more
learned than the ears/
Or, as he puts it in another place : ? What is sensible always
strikes the memory more strongly, and sooner impresses itself,
than what is intellectual. Thus the memory of brutes is ex-
cited by sensible, but not by intellectual things. And there-
fore it is easier to retain the image of a sportsman hunting, than
of the corresponding notion of invention — of an apothecary-
ranging his boxes, than of the corresponding notion of dispo-
sition— of an orator making a speech, than of the term
Eloquence — or a boy repeating verses, than the term Memory
— or of A player acting his part, than the corresponding
notion of— ACTION.'
So, also, c Tom 0' Bedlam? was a better word for ' houseless
misery,' than all the king's prayer, good as it was, about
4 houseless heads, and unfed sides,' in general, and ( looped,
and windowed raggedness.'
' We construct,' says this author, in another place — reject-
ing the ordinary history as not suitable for scientific purposes,
because it is ' varied, and diffusive, and confounds and disturbs
the understanding, unless it be fixed and exhibited in due
order' — we construct ' tables and combinations of instances,
upon such a plan and in such order, that the understanding
may be enabled to act upon them.'
326 JULIUS CAESAR.
CHAPTER IT.
CAESAR'S SPIRIT.
I'll meet thee at Phillippi.
IN Julius Caesar, the most splendid and magnanimous repre-
sentative of arbitrary power is selected—' the foremost man
of all the world,'— even by the concession of those who condemn
him to death; so that here it is the mere abstract question as
to the expediency and propriety of permitting any one man to
impose his individual will on the nation. Whatever person-
alities are involved in the question here — with Brutus, at
least — tend to bias the decision in his favour. For so he
tells us, as with agitated step he walks his orchard on that
wild night which succeeds his conference with Cassius, revolv-
ing his part, and reading, by the light of the exhalations
whizzing in the air, the papers that have been found thrown
in at his study window.
1 It must be by his death : and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd : —
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder ;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him 1 That ;—
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power : And, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But 't is a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face :
But when he once attains the utmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend : So Caesar may ;
Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel,
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
\
327
Fashion it thus ; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these, and these extremities :
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatcKd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous ;
And kill him in the shell.'
Pretty sentiments these, to set before a king already engaged
in so critical a contest with his subjects; pleasant entertain-
ment, one would say, for the representative of a monarchy
that had contrived to wake the sleeping Brutus in its do-
minions, — that was preparing, even then, for its own death-
struggle on this very question, which this Brutus searches to
its core so untenderly.
* Have you heard the argument?' says the ' bloat king* in
Hamlet. ' Is there no offence in it ?'
Now, let the reader suppose, for one instant, that this work
had been produced from the outset openly, for what any reader
of common sense will perceive it to be, with all its fire, an
elaborate, scholarly composition, the product of the profoundest
philosophic invention, the fruit of the ripest scholarship of the
age; — let him suppose, for argument's sake, that it had been
produced for what it is, the work of a scholar, and a states-
man, and a courtier, — a statesman already jealously watched,
or already, perhaps, in deadly collision with this very power
he is defining here so largely, and tracking to its ultimate
scientific comprehensions; — and then let the reader imagine,
if he can, Elizabeth or James, but especially Elizabeth, listen-
ing entranced to such passages as the one last quoted, with an
audience disposed to make points of some of the * choice
Italian ' lines in it.
Does not all the world know that scholars, men of reverence,
men of world-wide renown, men of every accomplishment,
were tortured, and mutilated, and hung, and beheaded, in both
these two reigns, for writings wherein Caesar's ambition was
infinitely more obscurely hinted at — writings unspeakably
less offensive to majesty than this?
But, then, a Play was a Play, and old Romans would be
Romans; there was, notoriously, no royal way of managing
them; and if kings would have tragical mirth out of them,
328 JULIUS CAESAR.
they must take their treason in good part, and make them-
selves as merry with it as they could. The poor Poet was, of
course, no more responsible for these men than Chaucer was
for his pilgrims. He but reported them.
And besides, in that broad, many-sided view of the subject
which the author's evolution of it from the root involves, —
in that pursuit of tyranny in essence through all its disguises,
— other exhibitions of it were involved, which might seem, to
the careless eye, purposely designed to counteract the effect of
the views above quoted.
The fact that mere arbitrary will, that the individual humour
and bias, is incapable of furnishing a rule of action anywhere,
— the fact that mere will, or blind passion, whether in the
One, or the Few, or the Many, should have no part, above all,
in the business of the state, — should lend no colour or bias to
its administration, — the fact that ' the general good,' ' the
common weal,' which is justice, and reason, and humanity,
— the ' ONE ONLY MAN/ — should, in some way, under some
form or other, get to the head of that and rule, this is all which
the Poet will contend for.
But, alas, how? The unspeakable difficulties in the way
of the solution of this problem, — the difficulties which the
radical bias in the individual human nature, even under its
noblest forms, creates, — the difficulties which the ignorance,
and stupidity, and passion of the multitude created then, and
still create, appear here without any mitigation. They are
studiously brought out in their boldest colours. There's no
attempt to shade them down. They make, indeed, the
TRAGEDY.
And it is this general impartial treatment of his subjects
which makes this author's writings, with all their boldness,
generally, so safe; for it seems to leave him without any bias
for any person or any party — without any opinion on any
topic; for his truth embraces and resolves all partial views,
and is as broad as nature's own.
And how could he better neutralise the effect of these
patriotic speeches, and prove his loyalty in the face of them,
than to show as he does, most vigorously and effectively, that
CAESARS SPIRIT. 329
these patriots themselves, so rebellious to tyranny, so opposed
to the one-man power in others, so determined to die, rather
than submit to the imposition of the humours of any man,
instead of law and justice, — were themselves but men, and
were as full of will and humours, and as ready to tyrannise
with them, too, upon occasion, as Caesar himself; and were no
more fit to be trusted with absolute -power than he was, nor,
in fact, half so fit.
Caesar does, indeed, send word to the senate — ' The cause
is in MY WILL, i" will not come; {That is enough, he says, to
satisfy the senate.') And while the conspirators are exchanging
glances, and the daggers are stealing from their sheaths, he
offers the strength of his decree, the immutability ' of his abso-
lute shall,' to the suppliant for his brother's pardon.
But then Portia gives us to understand, that she, too, has
her private troubles; — that even that excellent man, Brutus,
is not without his moods in his domestic administrations, — for
on one occasion, when he treats her to ' ungentle looks,' and
* stamps his foot,' and angrily gesticulates her out of his pre-
sence, she makes good her retreat, thinking 'it was but the
effect of humour, which,' she says, ' sometime hath his hour
with every man ' ; and, good and patriotic as Brutus truly is,
Cassius perceives, upon experiment, that after all he too is but
a man, and, with a particular and private nature, as well as a
larger one f which is the worthier/ and not unassailable through
that ' single I myself : he, too, may be ' thawed from the true
quality with that which melteth fools,' — with words that
flatter ' his particular.' In his conference with him, Cassius ad-
dresses himself skilfully to this weakness ; — he poises the name
of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at the last, he clinches his
patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his personal sentiment, of
baffled, mortified emulation; for those writings, thrown in at
his window, purporting to come from several citizens, ' all
tended to the great opinion that Rome held of his name;' and,
alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not unconsciously
make, in that pure mind, the feather's-weight that was per-
haps needed to turn the scale.
330
JULIUS CAESAR.
And the very children know, by heart, what a time there
was between these two men afterwards, these men that had
* struck the foremost man of all the world/ and had congra-
tulated themselves that it was not murder, and that they were
not villains, because it was for justice. Precious disclosures
we have in this scene. It is this very Cassius, this patriot,
who had as lief not BE as submit to injustice; who brings his
avaricious humour, « his itching palm,' into the state, and ' sells
and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers/ Brutus does
indeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of
patriotic indignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy
of honest disgust at wrong in the abstract, in spite of the
partiality of friendship; but, when Cassius charges him, after-
wards, with exaggerating his friend's infirmities, he says,
frankly, ' I did not, till you practised them on ME.' And we find,
as the dialogue proceeds, that it is indeed a personal matter with
him : Cassius has refused him gold to pay his legions with.
And see, now, what kind of taunt it is, that Brutus throws
in this same patriot's face after it had been proclaimed, by his
order, through the streets of Rome, that Tyranny 'is dead':
after Cassius had shouted through his own lungs.
'Some to the common pulpits, and cry out Liberty, Freedom, En-
franchisement.' (Enfranchisement ?)
It would have been strange, indeed, if in so general and
philosophical a view of the question, that sacred, domestic insti-
tution, which, through all this sublime frenzy for equal rights,
maintained itself so peacefully under the patriot's roof, had
escaped without a touch.
Brutus says: —
' Hear me, for I will speak.
Must I give way and room to your rash choler 1
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares f
1 Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.'
This sounds, already, as if Tyranny were not quite dead.
1 Cassius. O ye gods, ye gods, must I endure all this 1
Brutus. All this 1 ay more : Fret till your proud heart break ;
Go, show your slaves how choleric you are,
caesar's spirit. 331
And bid your bondmen tremble. Must / budge 1
Must / observe you 1 Must / stand and crouch
Under your testy humour If By the gods,
You shall digest the venom of your spleen
Though it do split you.'
So it was a mistake, then, it seems; and, notwithstanding
that shout of triumph, and that bloody flourishing of knives,
Tyranny was not dead.
But one cannot help, thinking that that shout must have
sounded rather strangely in an English theatre just then, and
that it was a somewhat delicate experiment to give Brutus his
pulpit on the stage, to harangue the people from. But the
author knew what he was doing. That cold, stilted harangue,
that logical chopping on the side of freedom, was not going to
set fire to any one's blood; and was not there Mark Antony
that plain, blunt man, coming directly after Brutus,— f with his
eyes as red as fire with weeping,' with 'the mantle,' of the
military hero, the popular favourite, in his hand, with his
glowing oratory, with his sweet words, and his skilful appeal
to the passions of the people, under his plain, blunt profes-
sions,—to wipe out every trace of Brutus's reasons, and lead
them whither he would ; and would not the moral of it all be,
that with such A people,— with such a power as that, behind
the state, there was no use in killing Caesars — that Tyranny
could not die.
' I fear there will a worse one come in his place.'
But this is Kome in her decline, that the artist touches here
so boldly. But what now, if old Rome herself, — plebeian
Rome, in the deadliest onset of her struggle against tyranny,
Rome lashed into fury and conscious strength, rising from
under the hard heel of her oppressors ; what if Rome, in the
act of creating her Tribunes; or, if Rome, with her Tribunes
at her head, wresting from her oppressors a constitutional
establishment of popular rights,— what if this could be exhi-
bited, by permission; what bounds as to the freedom. of the
discussion would it be possible to establish afterwards? There
332 THE DEATH OP TYRANNY.
had been no National Latin Tragedy, Frederic Schlegel sug-
gests, — because no Latin Dramatist could venture to do this
very thing ; but of course Caesar or Coriolanus on the Tiber
was one thing, and Caesar or Coriolanus on the Thames was
another; and an English author might be allowed, then, to
say of the one, with impunity, what it would certainly have cost
him his good right hand, or his ears,, or his head, to say of the
other _what it did cost the Founder of this school in philo-
sophy his head, to be suspected of saying of the other.
Nevertheless, the great question between an arbitrary and a
constitutional government, the principle of a government which
vests the whole power of the state in the uncontrolled will of a
single individual member of it; the whole history and philoso-
phy of a military government, from its origin in the heroic
ages, — from the crowning of the military hero on the battle
field in the moment of victory, to the final consummation of
its conquest of the liberty of the subject, could be as clearly
set forth under the one form as the other; not without some
startling specialities in the filling up, too, with a tone in the
details now and then, to say the least, not exclusively antique,
for this was a mode of treating classical subjects in that
age, too common to attract attention.
And thus, whole plays could be written out and out, on this
very subject. Take, for instance, but these two, Coriolanus and
Julius Caesar, — plays in which, by a skilful distribution of the
argument and the action, with a skilful interchange of parts
now and then,— the boldest passages being put alternately
into the mouths of the Tribunes and Patricians, — that great
question, which was so soon to become the outspoken question
of the nation and the age, could already be discussed in all its
vexed and complicated relations, in all its aspects and bearings,
as deliberately as it could be to-day ; exactly as it was, in fact,
discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English pamphlets,
in harangues from English pulpits, in English parliaments and
on English battle-fields, — exactly as it was discussed when
that ' lofty Roman scene ' came ' to be acted over' here, with
the cold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English judicature.
CORIOLANUS.
THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;
OR,
THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL
PROPOUNDED.
* Well, march we on
To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:
Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,
And with him, pour we in our country's purge
Each drop of us.
Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign Flower, and drown the weeds.' — Macbeth.
' Have you heard the argument?'
CHAPTER I.
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM.
* Mildly is the word.'
' In a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet.
And throw their power in the dust.'
TT is the Military Chieftain of ancient Rome who pronounces
* here the words in which the argument of the Elizabethan
revolutionist is so tersely comprehended.
It is the representative of an heroic aristocracy, not one of an-
cient privilege merely, not one armed with parchments only, claim-
ing descent from heroes ; but the yet living leaders of the rabble
people to military conquest, and the only leaders who are
understood to be able to marshal from their ranks an effective
force for military defence.
But this is not all. The scope of the poetic design requires
here, under the sheath which this dramatic exhibition of an
ancient aristocracy offers it, the impersonation of another and
more sovereign difference in men ; and this poet has ends to
serve, to which a mere historical accuracy in the reproduction
334 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
of this ancient struggle of state-factions, in an extinct Euro-
pean common-wealth, is of little consequence; though he is
not wanting in that either, or indifferent to it, when occasion
serves.
From the speeches inserted here and there, we find that this is
at the same time an aristocracy of learning which is put upon
the stage here, that it is an aristocracy of statesmanship and
civil ability, that it is composed of the select men of the state,
and not its elect only ; that it is the true and natural head of
the healthful body politic, and not ' the horn of the monster '
only. This is the aristocracy which appears to be in session in
the back ground of this piece at least, and we are not without
some occasional glimpses of their proceedings, and this is the
element of the poetic combination which comes out in the dia-
logue, whenever the necessary question of the play requires it.
For it is the collision between the civil interests and the in-
terests which the unlearned heroic ages enthrone, that is
coming off here. It is the collision between the government
which uneducated masses of men create and confirm, and re-
create in any age, and the government which the enlightened
man ' in a better hour ' demands, which the common sense
and sentiment of man, as distinguished from the brute, de-
mands, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. — This is
the struggle which is getting into form and order here, — here
first. These are the parties to it, and in the reign of the last
of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts, they must be con-
tent to fight it out on any stage which their time can afford to
lease to them for that performance, without being over scrupu-
lous as to the names of the actors, or the historical correctness
of the costumes, and other particulars; not minding a little
shuffling in the parts, now and then, if it suits their
poet's convenience, who has no conscience at all on such points,
and who is of the opinion that this is the very stage which an
action of such gravity ought to be exhibited on, in the first place ;
and that a very careful and critical rehearsal of it here, ought
to precede the performance elsewhere; though a contrary opinion
was not then without its advocates.
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 335
It is as the mouth-piece of this intellectual faction in the
state, while it is as yet an aristocracy, contending with the
physical force of it, struggling for the mastery of it with its
numerical majority; it is the Man in the state, the new MAN
struggling with the chief which a popular ignorance has
endowed with dominion over him ; it is the hero who contends
for the majesty of reason and the kingdom of the mind, it is
the new speaker, the new, and now at last, commanding
speaker for that law, which was old when this myth was
named, which was not of yesterday when Antigone quoted
it, who speaks now from this Roman's lips, theie words of
doom, — the reflection on the * times deceased,' the prophecy of
4 things not yet come to life,' the word of new ages.
* In A REBELLION,
When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen : in a better hour
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'
Not in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome,
not where the Roman market-place joined the Capitoline hill
and began to ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither,
and began to obstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades of
the primeval hill of palaces, were the terms of this proposal
found. And not from the old logician's chair, was the sweep
of their comprehension made; not in any ancient school of
rhetoric or logic were they cast and locked in that conjunc-
tion. It was another kind of weapon that the old Roman Jove
had to take in hand, when amid the din of the Roman forum,
he awoke at last from his bronze and marble, to his empirical
struggle, his unlearned, experimental struggle with the wolf
and her nursling, with his own baptized, red-robed, usurping
Mars. It was not with any such subtlety as this, that the
struggle of state forces which, under one name or another,
sooner or later, in the European states is sure to come, had
hitherto been conducted.
And not from the lips of the haughty patrician chief, rising
336 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
from the dust of ages at the spell of genius, to encounter his
old plebeian vanquishers, and fight his long-lost battles o'er
again, at a showman's bidding, for a showman's greed — to be
stung anew into patrician scorn — to repeat those rattling
volleys of the old martial Latin wrath, * in states unborn ' and
1 accents then unknown,' for an hour's idle entertainment, for
' a six-pen'orth or shilling's worth ' of gaping amusement to a
playhouse throng, not — NOT from any such source came that
utterance.
It came from the council-table of a sovereignty that was
plotting here in secret then the empire that the sun shall not
set on ; whose beginning only, we have seen. It came from
the secret chamber of a new union and society of men, — a
union based on a new and, for the first time, scientific ac-
quaintance with the nature that is in men, with the sovereignty
that is in all men. It was the Poet of this society who put
those words together — the Poet who has heard all its pros and
cons, who reports them all, and gives to them all their exact
weight in the new balance of his decisions.
Among other things, it was understood in this association,
that the power, which was at that time supreme in England,
was in fact, though not in name, & popular power, — a power, at
least, sustained only by the popular will, though men had not,
indeed, as yet, begun to perceive that momentous circum-
stance, — a power which, being ' but the horn and noise o' the
monster,' .was able to oppose its * absolute shall' to the em-
bodied wisdom of the state, — not to its ancient immemorial
government only, but to ' its chartered liberties in the body of
the weal,' and ' to a graver bench than ever frowned in
Greece'; and the Poet has put on his record of debates on
those 'questions of gravity,' that were agitating then this
secret Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of
this ancient leadership, — the leadership of * the honoured
number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this
mass of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and inca-
pacity for rule, — this combination of mere instinctive force,
which the physical majority in unlearned times constitutes,
ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 337
which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and passivity, and
in its passionate admiration of heroism and love of leadership,
the ready material of tyranny, shall be annihilated, and cease
to have any leadership or voice in the state ; and this demand
is put by the Poet into the mouth of one who cannot see from
his point of observation — with his ineffable contempt for the
people — what the Poet sees from his, that the demand, as he
puts it, is simply ' the impossible.' For this is a question in
the mixed mathematics, and ' the greater part carries it.'
That instinctive, unintelligent force in the state — that
blind volcanic force — which foolish states dare to keep pent
Up within them, is that which the philosopher's eye is intent
on also; he, too, has marked this as the primary source of
mischief, — he, too, is at war with it, — he, too, would anni-
hilate it ; but he has his own mode of warfare for it ; he thinks
it must be done with Apollo's own darts, if it be done when
'tis done, and not with the military chieftain's weapon.
This work is one in which the question of heroism and
nobility is scientifically treated, and in the most rigid manner,
1 by line and level,' and through that representative form in
which the historical pretence of it is tried, — through that scien-
tific negation, with its merely instinctive, vulgar, unlearned am-
bition — with its monstrous ' outstretching ' on the one hand,
and its dwarfish limitations on the other, — through all that
finely drawn, historic picture of that which claims the human
subjection, the clear scientific lines of the true ideal type are
visible, — the outline of the true nobility and government is
visible, — towering above that detected insufficiency, into the
perfection of the human form, — into the heaven of the true
divineness, — into the chair of the perpetual dictatorship, —
into the consulship whose year revolves not, whose year is the
state.
Neither is this true affirmation here in the form of a scien-
tific abstraction merely. It is not here in the general merely.
' The Instance,' the particular impersonation of nobility and
heroism, which this play exhibits, is, indeed, the false heroism
and nobility. It is the hitherto uncriticised, and, therefore,
z
338 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
uncorrected, popular affirmation on this subject which is em-
bodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest
scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design,
and in all the labour of this piece, — in the steadfast purpose
that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite,
but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and
pointing it Avith its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, ap-
proving itself ' to the Workmaster ' only, — in this incessant
design, — in this veiled, mysterious authorship, — an historical
approximation to the true type of magnanimity and heroism is
always present. But there is more in it than this.
It is the old popular notion of heroism which fills the fore-
ground ; but the Elizabethan heroism is always lurking behind
it, watching its moment, ready to seize it; and under that
cover, it contrives to advance and pronounce many words,
which, in its own name and form, it could not then have been
so prosperously delivered of. Under the disguise of that his-
torical impersonation — under the mask of that old Roman
hero, other, quite other, heroic forms — historic forms — not
less illustrious, not less memorable, from time to time steal in;
and ere we know it, the suppressed Elizabethan men are on
the stage, and the Theatre is, indeed, the Globe; and it is
shaking and flashing with the iron heel and the thunder of
their leadership ; and the thrones of oppression are downfalling ;
and the ages that seemed ' far off,' the ages that were nigh, are
there — are there as they are here.
The historical position of the men who could entertain the
views which this Play embodies, in the age in which it was
written — the whole position of the men in whom this idea of
nobility and government was already struggling to become
historical — flashes out from that obscure back-ground into
the most vivid historical representation, when once the light —
' the great light' which ' the times give to true interpretations'
— has been brought to bear upon it. And it does so happen,
that that is the light which we are particularly directed to
hold up to this particular play, and, what is more, to this par-
ticular point in it. * So our virtues,' says the old Volscian
ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 339
captain, Tullus Aufidius, lamenting the limitations of his
historical position, and apologizing for the figure he makes in
history —
' So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times.'
[' The times, in many cases, give great light to true inter-
pretations,' says the other, speaking of books, and the method of
reading them ; but this one applies that suggestion particularly
to lives.']
'And power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair
To extol what it hath done.'
The spirit of the Elizabethan heroism is indeed here, and
under the cover of this old Koman story; and under cover of
those so marked differences in the positions which suffice to
detain the unstudious eye, through the medium of that which
is common under those differences, the history of the Eliza-
bethan heroism is here also. The spirit of it is here, not in
that subtler nature only — that yet, perhaps, subtler, calmer,
stronger nature, in which ' blood and judgment were so well
co-mingled' — so well, in such new degree and proportion, that
their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in
history — not in that one only, the one in whom this new
historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haugh-
tier and more unbending historic attitude, at least, of his great
* co-mate and brother in exile/ It is here in the form of the
great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found
himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed con-
test with the state and its whole physical strength, in his
contest with that personal power in whose single arm, in
whose miserable finger-joints, the state and all its force then
lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial cloak, — under the
safe disguise of martial tyranny in ' the few/ — whenever the
business of the play requires it, whenever ' his cue comes,' he
is there. Under that old, rusty Koman helmet, his smothered
speech, his ' speech of fire,' his passionate speech, * forbid so
long,' drops thick and fast, drops unquenched at last, and
z2
340 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
glows for ever. It is the headless Banquo — ' the blood-
boltered Banquo'— that stalks through that shadowy back-
ground all unharmed; his Fleance lives, and in him * Nature's
copy is eterne.'
His house of kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in
their hands, with two-fold balls and sceptres in their hands-
are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of
doom; and now he ' smiles/ he smiles upon his baffled foe,
* and points at them for His/
The whole difficulty of this great Elizabethan position, and
the moral of it, is most carefully and elaborately exhibited
here. No plea at the bar was ever more finely and eloquently
laboured. It was for the bar of ' foreign nations and future
ages' that this defence was prepared: the speaker who speaks
so ' pressly,' is the lawyer; and there is nothing left unsaid at
last. But it is not exhibited in words merely. .It is acted.
It is brought out dramatically. It is presented to the eye as
well as to the ear. The impossibility of any other mode of
proceeding under those conditions is not demonstrated in this
instance by a diagram, drawn on a piece of paper, and handed
about among the jury; it is not an exact drawing of the street,
and the house, and the corner where the difficulty occurred,
with the number of yards and feet put down in ink or pencil
marks; it is something much more lively and tangible than
that which we have here, under pardon of this old Roman
myth.
For the story, as to this element of it, is indeed not new.
The story of the struggle of the few with the many, of the one
with the many, of the one with ' the many-headed,' is indeed
an old one. Back into the days of demi-gods and gods it takes
us. It is the story of the celestial Titan, with his benefactions
for men, and force and strength, with art to aid them— reluct-
ant art - compelled to serve their ends, enringing his limbs,
and driving hard the stakes. Here, indeed, in the Fable,^ in
the proper hero of it, it is the struggle of the ' partliness' of
pride and selfish ambition, lifting itself up in the place of God,
and arraying itself against the common-weal, as well as the
ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 34 1
common-will; but the physical relation of the one to the
many, the position of the individual who differs from his time
on radical questions, the relative strength of the parties to this
war, and the weapons and the mode of warfare inevitably pre-
scribed to the minority under such conditions — all this is
carefully brought out from the speciality of this instance, and
presented in its most general form ; and the application of the
result to the position of the man who contends for the com-
mon-weal, against the selfish will, and passion, and narrowness,
and short-sightedness of the multitude, is distinctly made.
Yes, the Elizabethan part is here; that all-unappreciated
and odious part, which the great men of the Elizabethan time
found forced upon them ; that most odious part of all, which
the greatest of his time found forced upon him as the condition
of his greatness. It is here already, negatively denned, in this
passionate defiance, which rings out at last in the Roman
street, when the hero's pride bursts through his resolve, when
he breaks down at last in his studied part, and all considera-
tions of policy, all regard to that which was dearer to him
than ' his single mould? is given to the winds in the tempest of
his wrath, and he stands at bay, and confronts alone ' the beast
with many heads.'
It is thus that he measures the man he contends with,
the antagonist who is but ' the horn and noise of the
monster' : —
' Thou injurious Tribune !
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thy hands clenched as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free
As I do pray the gods' (?)
But there was a heroism of a finer strain than that at work
in England then, imitating the graces of the gods to better
purpose ; a heroism which must fight a harder field than that,
which must fight its own great battles through alone, without
acclamations, without spectators; which must come off vic-
torious, and never count its f cicatrices/ or claim * the war's
garland.'
342 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
If we would know the secret of those struggles, those hard
conflicts that were going on here then, in whose results all the
future ages of mankind were concerned, we must penetrate
with this Poet the secret of the Roman patrician's house; we
must listen, through that thin poetic barrier, to the great
chief himself, the chief of the unborn age of a new civilization
— the leader, and hero, and conqueror of the ages of Peace —
as he enters 'and paces his own hall, with the angry fire in
his eyes, and utters there the words for which there is no
utterance without — as he listens there anew to the argument
of that for which he lives, and seeks to reconcile himself
anew to that baseness which his time demands of him.
We must seek, here, not the part of him only who endured
long and much, but was, at last, provoked into a premature
boldness, and involved in a fatal collision with the state, but
that of him who endured to the end, who played his life-long
part without self-betrayal. We must seek, here, not the part
of the great martial chieftain only, but] the part of that heroic
chief and leader of men and ages, who discovered, in the
sixteenth century, when the chivalry of the sword was still
exalting its standard of honour as supreme, when the law of
the sword was still the world's law, that brute instinct was not
the true valour, that there was a better part of it than instinct,
though he knows and confesses, — though he is the first to
discover, that instinct is a great matter. We must seek, here,
the words, the very words of that part which we shall find
acted elsewhere, — the part of the chief who was determined,
for his part, * to live and fight another day,' who was not
willing to spend Azmself in such conflicts as those in which he
saw his most illustrious contemporaries perish at his side, on
his right hand and on his left, in the reign of the Tudor, and
in the reign of the Stuart. And he has not been at all sparing
of his hints on this subject over his own name, for those who
have leisure to take them.
* The moral of this fable is,' he says, commenting in a
certain place, on the wisdom of the Ancients, i that men should
not be confident of themselves, and imagine that a discovery of
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 343
their excellences will always render them acceptable. For this
can only succeed according to the nature and manners of the
person they court or solicit, who, if he be a man not of the
same gifts and endowments, but altogether of a haughty and
insolent behaviour — (here represented by the person of Juno) —
they must entirely drop the character that carries the least show
of worth or gracefulness; if they proceed upon any other
footing it is downright folly . Nor is it sufficient to act the
deformity of obsequiousness f unless they really change themselves,
and become abject and contemptible in their persons? This
was a time when abject and contemptible persons could .do
what others could not do. Large enterprises, new develop-
ments of art and science, the most radical social innovations,
were undertaken and managed, and very successfully, too, in
that age, by persons of that description, though not without
frequent glances on their part, at that little, apparently some-
what contradictory circumstance, in their history.
But the fables in which the wisdom of the Moderns, and
the secrets of their sages are lodged, are the fables we are un-
locking here. Let us listen to these f secrets of policy ' for
ourselves, and not take them on trust any longer.
A room in Coriolanuis house.
[Enter Coriolanus and Patricians.']
Cor. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me
Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels,
Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock
That the precipitation might down stretch
Below the beam of sight, yet will I still
Be thus to them.
[Under certain conditions that is heroism, no doubt.]
First Patrician. You do the nobler.
[For the question is of nobility.]
Cor. I muse my mother
Does not approve me further.
I talk of you. [To Volumnia].
344 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Why did you wish me milder ? Would you have me
False to my nature 1 Kather say I play
The man I am.
Vol. O sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on
Before you had worn it out.
Lesser had been
The thwarting of your dispositions, if
You had not showed them how you were disposed,
Ere they lacked power to cross you.
* * * *
[Enter Menenius and Senators.]
Men. Come, come, you have been too rough
Something too rough ;
You must return, and mend it.
1 Sen. There's no remedy,
Unless, by not so doing, our good city
Cleave in the midst and perish.
Vol. Pray be counselled :
/ have a heart as little apt as yours
But yet a brain [hear] that leads my use of anger
To better vantage.
Men. Well said, noble woman ;
Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that
The violent fit o' the time, craves it as PHYSIC
For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,
Which I can scarcely bear.
[It is the diseased common-weal whose case this Doctor
is undertaking. That is our subject.]
Cor. What must I do 1
Men. Keturn to the Tribunes.
Cor. Well,
What then ? what then 1
Men. Eepent what you have spoke.
Cor. For them ? I can not do it to the gods :
Must I then do't to them ?
Vol. You are too absolute ;
Though therein you can never be too noble
But when extremities speak. I have heard you say,
Honor and policy [hear] like unsevered friends
T the war do grow together : Grant that, and tell me.
In peace, what each of them by the other loses
That they combine not there ?
345
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. *
c°r- Tush ; tush I
Men. A good demand.
Vol. If it be honor, in your wars, to seem
The same you are not, (which for tour best ends
You adopt your policy,) how is it less, or worse
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honor, as in war; since that to both
It stands in like request ?
Gor- Why force you this? [Truly.]
Vol. Because that now, it lies on you to speak
To the people, not by your own instruction,
Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you to,
But with such words that are but roted in
Your tongue though but bastards and syllables
Of no allowance, to your bosom's truth.
Now this no more dishonors you at all,
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
Which else would put you to your fortune, and
The hazard of much blood. — [Hear.]
I would dissemble with my nature, where
My fortune and my friends at stake required
I should do so in honor, /am in this;
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,
And you will rather show our general lowts
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them.
For the inheritance of their loves, and safe-guard
Of what that want might ruin [hear]
Noble lady !
Come go with us. Speak fair : you may salve so,
[It is the diseased common- weal we talk of still.]
You may salve so,
Not what is dangerous present, but the loss
Of what is past.
[That was this Doctor's method, who was a Doctor of Laws
as well as Medicine, and very skilful in medicines 'palliative'
as well as ' alterative.']
Vol I pry'thee now, my son,
Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand,
And thus far having stretched it (here be with them),
Thy knee bussing the stones, for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears — waving thy head,
Which often thus, correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
346 THE CUKE OP THE COMMON WEAL.
That will not hold the handling : or say to them
Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,
Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess
Were Jit for thee to use, as they to claim,
In asking their good loves ; but thou wilt frame
Thyself forsooth hereafter theirs, so far
As thou hast power and person.'
' Pry'thee now
Go and be ruled : although 1 know thou hadst rather
Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
Than natter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.
\Enter Cominius.]
Com. I have been V the market-place, and, sir, His fit
You make strong party, or defend yourself
By calmness, or by absence. All' s in anger.
Men, Only fair speech.
I think 'twill serve, if he
Can thereto frame his spirit.
Vol. He must, and will.
Pry'thee now say you will and go about it.
Cor. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce 1 Must I
With my base tongue, give to my noble heart
A lie that it must bear ? Well, I will do't :
Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Marcius, they, to dust should grind it,
And throw it against the wind ; — to the market-place ;
You have put me now to such a part, which never
I shall discharge to the life.
Com. Come, come, we'll prompt you.
Vol. I pry'thee now, sweet son, as thou hast said,
My praises made thee first a soldier [ — Volumnia—], so
To have my praise for this, perform a part
Thou hast not done before.
Cor. Well, I must do't.
Away my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot's spirit ! My throat of war be turned,
Which quired with my drum into a pipe]
Small as an eunuch's or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep ! The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks ; and school-boy's tears take up
The glasses of my sight ! A beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees
Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms. I will not do't,
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 347
Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
And by my body's action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.
Vol. At thy choice, thenj
To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor
Than thou of them. Come all to ruin ; let
Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear
Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death
"With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list.
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
But owe thy pride thyself.
Cor. Pray be content.
Mother I am going to the market place,
Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
Cog their hearts from them, and come bach beloved
Of all the trades in Rome. — [That he will — ] Look I am going.
Commend me to my wife. I'll return Consul [ — That he will — ]
Or never trust to what my tongue can do,
T the way of flattery further.
Vol. Do your will. [Exit]
Com. Away, the tribunes do attend you : arm yourself
To answer mildly ; for they are prepared
With accusations as I hear more strong
Than are upon you yet.
Cor. The word is mildly : Pray you let us go,
Let them accuse me by invention, I
Will answer in mine honor.
Men. Ay, but mildly.
Cor. Well, mildly be it then, mildly.
[The Forum. Enter Coriolanus and his party^
Tribune. Well, here he comes.
Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.
Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece
Will bear the knave by the volume.
The honoured gods
Keep Pome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men ; plant love among us.
Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,
And not our streets with war.
Sen. Amen ! Amen !
Men. A noble wish.
Thus far the Poet : but the mask through which he speaks
is wanted for other purposes, for these occasional auto-biogra-
348 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
phical glimpses are but the side play of the great historical
exhibition which is in progress here, and are introduced in
entire subordination to its requisitions.
It is, indeed, an old story into which all this Elizabethan
history is crowded. That mimic scene in which the great
historic instances in the science of human nature and
human life were brought out with such scientific accuracy, and
with such matchless artistic power and splendour, was, in fact,
what the Poet himself, who ought to know, tells us it is; with
so much emphasis,— not merely the mirror of nature in gene-
ral, but the daguerreotype of the then yet living age, the
plate which was able to give to the very body of it, its form and
pressure. That is what it was. And what is more, it was the
only Mirror, the only Spectator, the only Times, in which the
times could get reflected and deliberated on then, with any
degree of freedom and vivacity. And yet there were minds
here in England then, as acute, as reflective, as able to lead the
popular mind as those that compose our leaders and reviews to-
day. There was a mind here then, reflecting not ( ages past '
only, but one that had taken its knowledge of the past from
the present, that found ' in all men's lives,' a history figuring
the nature of the times deceased; prophetic also: and this was
the mind of the one who writes ' spirits are not finely touched
but to fine issues/
They had to take old stories, — these sly, ambitious aspirants
to power, who were not disposed to give up their natural right
to dictate, for the lack of an organ, or because they found the
proper insignia of their office usurped : it was necessary that
they should take old stories, or invent new ones, ' to make those
slights upon the banks of Thames, that so did take ' not ' Eliza
and our James' only, but that people of whom ' Eliza and our
James ' were only ' the outstretched shadows,' ' the monster/ of
whose ' noise ' these sovereigns, as the author of this play took
it, were ' but the horn.'
They had to take old stories of one kind and another, as they
happened to find them, and vamp them up to suit their pur-
poses; stories, old or new, they did not much care which.
THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 349
Old and memorable ones, so memorable that the world herself
with her great faculty of oblivion, could not forget them, but
carried them in her mind from age to age, — stories so memor-
able that all men knew them by heart, — so the author could
find one to his purpose, — were best for some things, — for many
things; but for others new ones must be invented; and cer-
tainly there would be no difficulty as to that, for lack of gifts
at least, in the mind whence these old ones were coming out
so freshly, in the gloss of their new-coined immortality.
It is, indeed, an old story that we have here, a story of that
ancient Eome, whose ( just, free and flourishing state,' the author
of this new science of policy confesses himself, — under his universal
name, — so childishly enamoured of, that he interests himself in
it to a degree of passion, though he ■ neither loves it in its birth
or its decline? — [under its kings or its emperors.] — It is a story
of Republican Rome, and the difference, the radical difference,
between the civil magistracy which represented the Roman
people, and that unconstitutional popular power which the
popular tyranny creates, is by no means omitted in the exposi-
tion. That difference, indeed, is that which makes the repre-
sentation possible ; it is brought out and insisted on, ' theij
choose their officers f it is a difference which is made much of, for
it contains one of the radical points in the poetic intention.
But without going into the argument, the large and com-
prehensive argument, of this most rich and grave and splendid
composition, crowded from the first line of it to the last, with
the results of a political learning which has no match in letters,
which had none then, which has none now; no, or the world
would be in another case than it is, for it is a political learning
which has its roots in the new philosophy, it is grounded in
the philosophy of the nature of things, it is radical as the
Prima Philosophia, — without attempting to exhaust the mean-
ing of a work embodying through all its unsurpassed vigor
and vivacity of poetic representation, the new philosophic
statesman's ripest lore, the patient fruits of ' observation
strange,' — without going into his argument of the whole,
the reader who merely wishes to see for himself, at a glance,
350 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
in a word, as a matter of curiosity merely; whether the view
here given of the political sagacity and prescience of the
Elizabethan Man of Letters, is in the least chargeable with
exaggeration, has only to look at the context of that revolu-
tionary speech and proposal, that revolutionary burst of elo-
quence which has been here claimed as a proper historical issue of
the age of Elizabeth. He will not have to read very far to
satisfy himself as to that. It will be necessary, indeed, for
that purpose, that he should have eyes in his head, eyes not
purely idiotic, but with the ordinary amount of human specu-
lation in them, and, moreover, it will be necessary that he
should use them, — as eyes are ordinarily used in such cases, —
nothing more. But unfortunately this is just the kind of
scrutiny which nobody has been able to bestow on this work
hitherto, on account of those historical obstructions with
which, at the time it was written, it was found necessary to
guard such discussions, discussions running into such delicate
questions in a manner so essentially incomparably free.
For, in fact, there is no plainer piece of English extant,
when one comes to look at it. All that has been claimed in
the Historical part of this work,* may be found here without
any research, on the mere surface of the dialogue. Looking
at it never so obliquely, with never so small a fraction of an
eye, one cannot help seeing it.
The reader who would possess himself of the utmost mean-
ing of these passages, one who would comprehend their farthest
reaches, must indeed be content to wait until he can carry
with him into all the parts that knowledge of the author's
general intention in this work, which only a most thorough
and careful study of it will yield.
It is, indeed, a work in which the whole question of govern-
ment is seized at its source — one in which the whole difficulty
of it is grappled with unflinching courage and veracity. It
is a work in which that question of classes in the state, which
lies on the surface of it, is treated in a general, and not exclu-
* Not published in this volume.
ELIZABETHAN HEROISM. 35 I
sive manner; or, where the treatment is narrowed and pointed,
as it is throughout in the running commentary, it is narrowed
and pointed to the question of the then yet living age, and to
those momentous developments of it which, 'in their weak
beginnings,' the philosophic eye had detected, and not to a
state of things which had to cease before the first Punic war
could be begun.
The question of classes, and their respective claims in
governments, is indeed incidentally treated here, but in this
author's own distinctive manner, which is one that is sure to
take out, always — even in his lightest, most sportive handling
— the heart of his subject, so as to leave little else but glean-
ings to the author who follows in that track hereafter.
For this is one of those unsurpassably daring productions of
the Elizabethan Muse, which, after long experiment, encou-
raged by that protracted immunity from suspicion, and stimu-
lated by the hurrying on of the great crisis, it threw out
at last in the face and eyes of tyranny, Things which are but
intimated in the earlier plays — political allusions, which are
brought out there amid crackling volleys of conceits, under
cover of a battery of quips and jests — political doctrines, which
lie there wrapped in thickest involutions of philosophic sub-
tleties, are all unlocked and open here on the surface: he that
runs may take them if he will.
352 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
CHAPTEK II.
CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT.
1 Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?'
' Against him first : He 's a very dog to the commonalty.'
TN this exhibition of the social orders to which human society
■*- instinctively tends, and that so-called state into which
human combinations in barbaric ages rudely settles, the prin-
ciple of the combination — the principle of gradation, and
subjection, and permanence — is called in question, and ex-
posed as a purely instinctive principle, as, in fact, only a prin-
ciple of revolution disguised ; and a higher one, the distinctively
human element, the principle of KIND, is now, for the first
time, demanded on scientific grounds, as the essential principle
of any permanent human combination — as the natural princi-
ple, the only one which the science of nature can recognise as
a principle of STATE.
It is the peace principle which this great scientific war-
hater and captain of the ages of peace is in search of, with his
new organum ; though he is philosopher enough to know that, in
diseased states, wars are nature's own rude remedies, her bar-
barous surgery, for evils yet more unendurable. He has found
himself chosen a justice of the peace — the world's peace; and
it is the principle of permanence, of law and subjection — in a
word, it is the principle of state, as opposed to revolution and
dissolution — which he is judging of in behalf of his kind.
And he makes a business of it. He goes about in his own
fashion. He gets up this great war -piece on purpose to
find it.
He has got a state on his stage, which is ceasing to be a
state at the moment in which he shows it to us; a state
CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT. 353
which has the war principle — the principle of conquest within
no longer working in it insidiously as government, but de-
veloped as war; for it has just overstepped the endurable
point in its mastery. It is a revolution that is coming off when
the curtain rises. For the government has been gnawing the
Soman common- weal at home, with those same teeth it ravened
the Volscians with abroad, till it has reached the vitals at last,
and the common-weal has betaken itself to the Volscian's
weapons: — the people have risen. They are all out when
the play begins on an armed hunt for their rat-like, gnawing,
corn-consuming rulers. They are determined to * kill them,*
and have ' corn at their own price.' { If the wars eat us not,
they will,' is the word; f and there's all THE LOVE they bear
us.' * Rome and her rats are at the point of battle/ cries the
Poet. The one side shall have bale, is his prophecy. * Without
good nature, he says elsewhere, using the term good in its
scientific sense, 'men are only a nobler kind of vermin';
and he makes a most unsparing application of this principle in
his criticisms. Many a splendid historical figure is made to
show its teeth, and rat-like mien and propensities, through all
the splendour of its disguises, merely by the application of his
simple philosophical tests. For the question, as he puts it, is
the question between animal instinct, between mere appetite,
and reason; and the question incidentally arises in the course
of the exhibition, whether the common- weal, when it comes
to anything like common-sense, is going to stand being
gnawed in this way, for the benefit of any individual, or clique,
or party.
For the ground on which the classes or estates, and their
respective claims to the government, are tried here, is the
ground of the common- weal ; and the question as to the fitness
of any existing class in the state for an exclusive, unlimited
control of the welfare of the whole, is more than suggested.
That which stops short of the weal of the whole for its end,
is that which is under criticism here ; and whether it exist in
* the one,' or ( the few,' or * the many/ — and these are the
terms that are employed here, — whether it exist in the civil
A A
354
THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
magistracy, sustained by a popular submission, or in the power
of the victorious military chief, at the head of his still extant
and resistless armament, it is necessarily rejected as a principle
of sovereignty and permanence, in this purely scientific view of
the human conditions of it. It is a question which this author
handles with a thorough impartiality, in all his political treatises,
let them come in what name and form they will, with more or
less clearness, indeed, as the circumstances seem to dictate.
But nowhere is the whole history of the military government,
collected from the obscurity of the past, and brought out with
such inflexible design - with such vividness and strength of
historic exhibition, as it is here. It is traced to its beginnings
in the distinctions which nature herself creates, — those phy-
sical, and moral, and intellectual distinctions, with which she
crowns, in her happier moods, the large resplendent brows of
her born kings and masters. It is traced from its origin in the
crowning of the victorious chief on the field of battle, to the
moment in which the sword of military conquest is turned
back on the conquerors by the chief into whose hands they
gave it; and the sword of conquest abroad becomes, at home,
the sword of state.
Nay, this Play goes farther, and embraces the contingency
of a foreign rule — one, too, in which the conqueror takes his
surname from the conquest; it brings home ' the enemy of the
whole state,' as a king, in triumph to the capital, whose streets
he has filled with mourning; and though the author does not
tell us in this case, at he does in another, that the nation was
awed 'with an offertory of standards' in the temple, and that
' orisons and Te Deums were again sung,' — the victor 'not
meaning that the people should forget too soon that he came in
by battle'— points, not much short of that, in the way of speciality ,
are not wanting. More than one conqueror, indeed, looks out
from this old chieftain's Koman casque. ' There is a little touch
of Harry in the scene ' ; and though the author goes out of his
way to tell us that 'he must by no means say his hero is
covetous,' it will not be the Elizabethan Philosopher's fault,
if we do not know which Harry it is that says —
CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT. 355
' If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter'd your Volsces' in Corioli :
Alone, I did it.
* * * *
Auf. Read it, noble lords ;
But tell the traitor, in the highest degree
He hath abused your powers.
Cor. Traitor ! — How now ?
Auf. Ay, traitor, Marcius.
Cor. Marcius /
Auf. Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius ; Dost thou think
I'll grace thee with that robbery, thy stolen name
Coriolanus in Corioli ?' — [the conqueror in the conquest.]
Never, indeed, was ' the garland of war/ whether glistening
freshly on the hero's brow on the fresh battle-field, or whether
glittering, transmuted into civic gold and gems, on the brow of
his hereditary successor, subjected to such a searching process
before, as that with which the Poet, under cover of an aris-
tocrat's pretensions, and especially under cover of his preten-
sions to an elective magistracy, can venture to test it.
This hero, who ( speaks of the people as if he were a god to
punish, and not a man of their infirmity,' is on trial for that
pretension from the first scene of this Play to the last. The
author has, indeed, his own views of the fickle, ignorant,
foolish multitude, — such views as any one, who had occasion
to experiment on it personally, in the age of Elizabeth, would
not lack the means of acquiring; and amidst those ebullitions
of wrath, which he pours from his haughty hero's lips, one
hears at times a tone that sounds a little like some other things
from the same source, as if the author had himself, in some
way, been brought to look at the subject from a point of ob-
servation, not altogether unlike that from which his hero
speaks; or as if he might, at least, have known how to sym-
pathise with the haughty and unbending nature, that had been
brought into such deadly collision with it. But in the dramatic
representation, though it is far from being a flattering one, we
listen in vain for any echo of this sentiment. In its rich and
kindly humour there is no sneer, no satire. It is the loving
A A 2
356 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
eye of nature's own great pupil — it is the kindly human eye,
that comes near enough to point those jests, and paint so truly;
there is a great human heart here in the scene embracing
the lowly. It was the heart that was putting forth then
its silent but resistless energies into the ages of the human
advancement, to take up the despised and rejected masses of
men from their misery, and make of them truly one kind and
kindred.
And though he has had, indeed, his own private expe-
riences with the multitude, and the passions are, as he inti-
mates—at least as strong in him as in another, he has his own
view, also, of the common pitifulness and weakness of the
human conditions; and he has a view which is, in his time,
all his own, of the instrumentalities that are needed to reach
that level of human nature, and to lift men up from the mire
of these conditions, from the wrong and wretchedness into
which, in their unaided, unartistic, unlearned struggle with
nature, — within and without, — ^ kind are fallen. ^ And so
strong in him is the sense of this pitifulness, that it predo-
minates over the sharpness of his genius, and throws the
divinest mists and veils of compassion over the harsh, scientific
realities he is constrained to lay bare.
And, in fact, it takes this monstrous pretence, and claim to
human leadership, which he finds passing unquestioned in his
time, to bring him out on this point fairly. The statesman-
ship of the man who undertakes to make his own petty per-
sonality the measure of a world, who would make, not that
reason which is in us all, and embraces the world, and which
is not personal,— not that conscience which is the sensibility
to reason, and is as broad and impartial as that— which goes
with the reason, and embraces, like that, without bias, the
common weal,— but that which is particular, and private, and
limited to the individual,— his senses,— his passions, his pri-
vate affections— his mere caprice,— his mere will; the motive
of the public action;— the statesmanship of the man who
dares to offer these to an insulted world, as reasons of state;
who claims a divine prerogative to make his single will good
CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT. 357
against reason; who claims a divine right to make his private
interest outweigh the weal of the whole; who asks men to
obliterate, in their judgment, its essential principle, that which
makes them men, the eternal principle of the whole; — this is
the phenomenon which provokes at last, in this author, the
philosophic ire. The moment this thing shows itself on his
stage, he puts his pity to sleep. He will show up, at last,
without any mercy, in a purely scientific manner, as we see
more clearly elsewhere, the common pitifulness of the human
conditions, in the person of him who claims exemption from
them, — who speaks of the people as if he were a god to
punish, and not a man of their infirmity.
' There is formed in every thing a double nature; — this
author, who is the philosopher of nature, tells us on another
page, — ' there is formed in evert/ thing a double nature OF GOOD,
the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, the other
as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter
is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends
to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see
the iron in particular sympathy moving to the loadstone; but
yet, if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsakes the affection to
the loadstone, and, like a good patriot, moves to the earth.
This double nature of good is MUCH more (hear) — much more
engraven on man, if he ^generate not — (decline not
from the law of his kind — for that more is special) unto
whom the conservation of DUTY to the public onght to be
much more precious than the conservation of life and being,
according to that memorable speech of Pompey the Great,
[the truly great, for this is the question of greatness,] when
being in commission of purveyance for a famine at
Rome, and being dissuaded, with great vehemency and in-
stance, by his friends about him, that he should not hazard
himself to sea in an extremity of weather, answered, ' Necesse
est ut earn, non ut vivam.' '
But we happen to have set out here, in our play, at the very
beginning of it, the specific case alluded to, in this general
exhibition of the radical human law, viz., the case of a
358 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
famine in Rome, which we shall find differently treated, in
this instance, by the person who aspires to * the helm o' the
state.'
When the question is of the true nobility and greatness, of
the true statesmanship, of the personal fitness of an individual
to assume the care of the public welfare, the question, of
course, as to this double nature, comes in. We wish to know
— if any thing is going to depend upon his single will in the
matter, we must know, which of these two natures is SOVE-
REIGN in himself, — which good he supremely affects, — that of
his senses, passions, and private affections, that good which ends
in his private and particular nature, — a good which has its
due place in this system, and is not unnaturally mortified
and depressed, as it is in less scientific ones, — or that good
of the whole, which is each man's highest good; — whether
he is, in fact, a man, or whether, in the absence of that
perfection of the human form, which should be the end
of science and government, he approximates at all, — or
undertakes to approximate at all, to the true human type;
— whether he be, indeed, a man, in the higher sense of
that word, or whether he ranks in the scale of nature,
as ' only a nobler kind of vermin/ a man, a noble man,
a 'man with a divine ideal and ambition, degenerate into
that.
When it is a candidate for the chief magistracy, a candidate
for the supreme power in the state, who is on his trial, of
course that question as to the balance between the public and
private affections, which those who know how to trace this
author's hand, know he is so fond of trying elsewhere, is sure
to come up. The question is, as to whether there is any
affection in this claimant for power, so large and so noble,
that it can embrace heartily the common weal, and take
that to be its good. The trial will be a sharp one. The
trial of human greatness which is magnanimity, must
needs be. The question is, as to whether this is a nature
capable of pursuing that end for its own sake, without
respect to its pivate and merely selfish recompence; whe-
CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT.
359
ther it is one which has any such means of egress from
its particular self, any such means of coming out of its
private and exclusive motivity, that it can persevere in
its care of the Common Weal, through good and through
ill report, through personal wrong and ingratitude, — abandon-
ing its private claim, and ascending by that conquest to the
divineness.
360 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
CHAPTER III.
' insurrection's arguing/
' What ia granted them?'
' Five Tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms.'
1 The rabble should have first unroofed the city,
Ere so prevailed with me.'
HHHE common people themselves have some inkling of this.
This Roman who has established his claim to rule Romans
at home, by killing Volscians abroad, appears to their simple
apprehension, at the moment, at least, when they find them-
selves suffering the gnawings of hunger through his legisla-
tion, to have established but a questionable claim to their
submission.
And before ever he shows his head on the stage, this ques-
tion, which is the question of the play, is already started.
For it is the people who are permitted to come on first of all
and explain their wants, and discuss the military hero's quali-
fications for rule in that relation, and that, too, in a not alto-
gether foolish manner. For though the author knows how to
do justice to the simplicity of their politics, he knows how to
do justice also to that practical determination and straightfor-
wardness and largeness of sense, which even in the common
sense of uneducated masses, is already struggling a little to
declare itself.
^Theyhave ongjyreatjnece oLjxolitical learning which their -
lordlylegislators lack, and for h^ »f ■ spnsp and _comprehen-
sion cannot have. _, They are learned in the doctrine of their
own political and social want; they are full of the most accu-
rate and vivid impressions on that subject. Their notions of
it are altogether different from those vague general abstract
'insurrection's arguing.' 361
conceptions of it, which the brains of their refined lordly-
rulers stoop to admit. The terms which that legislation deals
with, are one thing in the patrician's vocabulary, and another
and quite different thing in the plebeian's; hunger means one
thing in the ' patrician's vocabulary,' and another and very-
different thing in the plebeian's. They know, too, f that meat
was made for mouths,' and ' that the gods sent not corn for the
rich men only.' They are under the impression that there
ought to be bread for them by some means or other, when the
storehouses that their toil has filled are overflowing, and
though they are not clear as to the process which should ac-
complish this result, they 'have come to the conclusion that
there must be some error somewhere in the legislation of those
learned few, to whom they have resigned the task of govern-
ing them. They are strongly of opinion that there must be
some mistake in the calculations by which those venerable wise
men and fathers, do so infallibly contrive to sweep the results
of the poor man's toil and privation into their own garners, — cal-
culations which enable the legislator to enjoy in lordly ease and
splendour, the sight of the plebeian's misery, which enable him to
lavish on his idlest whims, to give to his dogs that which
would save lifetimes of unreckoned human misery. These are
their views, and when the play begins, they have resolved
themselves into a committee of the whole, and are out on a
commission of inquiry and administrative reform, armed with
bats and clubs and other weapons, — such as came first to hand,
intending to make short work of it. This is their peace bud-
get, and as to war, they have some rude notions on that sub-
ject, too ; — some dim impression that nature intended them for
some other ends than to be sold in the shambles, as the pur-
chase of some lordly chieftain's title. There's an incipient
statesmanship struggling there in that rude mass, though it
does not as yet get fairly expressed. It will take the tribune-
ship and the refinements of the aristocratic leisure, to make the
rude wisdom of want and toil eloquent. But it has found
a tribune at last, who will be able to speak for it, through one
mouth or another, scientifically and to the purpose too, ere all
is done.
362 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
1 Before we proceed any further, hear me speak,' he cries,
through the Roman leader's lips; for his Rome, too, if it be
not yet ' at the point of battle,' is drifting towards it rapidly,
as he sees well enough when this speech begins.
But let us take the Play as we find it. Take the first scene
of it. The stage is filled with the people,— not with their repre-
sentatives,—but with the people themselves, in their own per-
sons, in the act of taking the government into their own
hands. They are hurrying sternly and silently through the
city streets. There has been no practising of ' goose step,' to
teach them that movement. They are armed with clubs,
staves and other weapons, peace weapons, but there is an edge
in them now, fine enough for their purpose. The word of the
play is the word that arrests that movement. The voice of
the leader rings out, — it is a HALT that is ordered.
* Before we proceed any further, hear me speak,'
cries one from the mass.
« Speak! speak!' is the reply. They are ready to hear
reason. They want a speaker. They want a voice, though
never so rude, to put their stern inarticulate purpose ' into
some frame.'
f You are all resolved rather TO die than TO famish,' con-
tinues the first speaker. Yes, that is it precisely; he has
spoken the word.
* Resolved! resolved!' is the common response; for
the revolutionary point is touched here.
< First, you know, Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the
pe0ple' — a rude grasp at causes. This captain will establish a
common intelligence in his company, before they proceed any
further ; that their acting may be one, and to purpose. For
there is no command but that here.
Cit. We know 't, we know 't.
First Cit Let us kill him, and we '11 have corn at our own price. Is 't
a verdict 1
Cit. No more talking on 't. Let it be done : away, away.
* One word, good citizens,' cries another, who thinks that
the thing will bear, perhaps, a little further discussion.
'INSURRECTION'S ARGUING.' nr
And this is the hint for the first speaker to produce his
cause more fully. ' Good citizens,' is the word he takes up.
* We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians GOOD.'
[That is the way the account stands, then.] < What AUTHO-
RITY surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but
the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they
relieved us humanely ; but they think we are too dear.1 [They
lpvejis_as we are too_well. . They want poor people to reflect
their riches. It ^ajce^pjebekn^^ it takes
our valleys to make their heights/]^
'The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inven-
tory to particularize their abundance. Our sufferance is a gain to them.
Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes : for the gods
know, I speak this in hunger for bread, and not in thirst for revenge.
Second Cit Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius ?
First Cit. Against him first ; — he 's a very dog to the commonalty.
Second Cit. Consider you what services he has done for Aw country ?
[That is one of the things which are about to be ' con-
sidered.']
First Cit. Very well, and could be content to give him good report
for 'it, but that he pays himself with being proud.
Second Cit. Nay, but speak not maliciously.
First Cit I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to
that end: though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for
his country, he did it to please his mother, and to he partly proud ; which
he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.
Second Cit. What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice
in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.
First Cit. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations ; he hath
faults with surplus to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts
are these 1 The other side o' the city is risen. Why stay we prating
here? To the Capitol !
Cit. Come, come.
First Cit. Soft ; who comes here ?
[Enter Menenius Agrippa.]
Second Cit. Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always loved
the people.
First Cit. He's one honest enough [ — honest — a great word in the
Shakspere philosophy] ; would all the rest were so.
[That is a good prayer when it comes to be understood.]
364 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
Men. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you,
With bats and clubs ? The matter 1 Speak, I pray you.
First Cit Our business is not unknown to the Senate [Hear]; they
have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we '11
show 'em in deeds. They say, poor suitors have strong breaths ; they
shall know we have strong arms, too.
Men. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours,
Will you undo yourselves f
First Cit. We cannot, sir; we are undone already. [Revolution.']
Men. I tell you, friends, most charitable care
Have the patricians of you. For your wants —
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well
Strike at the heavens with your staves, as lift them
Against the Roman State, whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder, than can ever
Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,
The gods, not the patricians, make it ; and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help.* Alack !
You are transported by calamity,
Thither where more attends you ; and you slander
The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers,
When you curse them as enemies.
First Cit. Care for us ! True, indeed ! They ne'er cared for us yet.
Suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain !
Make edicts for usury, to support usurers ! Repeal daily any wholesome
act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily
to chain up and restrain the poor ! If the wars eat us not up, they
will ; and there 's all the love they bear us.
Menenius attempts to counteract these impressions; but his
story and his arguments appear to have some applications
which he is not aware of, and are much more to the purpose
of the party in arms than they are to his own. For it is a
story in which the natural subordination of the parts to the
whole in the fabric of human society is illustrated by that
natural instance and symbol of unity and organization
* This sounds very pious, but it is not the piety of the new school.
The doctrine of submission and suffering is indeed taught in it, and scien-
tifically reinforced ; but then it is the patient suffering of the harm 'which
is not within our power' which is commendable, according to its tenets,
and ' a wise and industrious suffering' of it, too. It is a wise ' accommo-
dating of the nature of man to those points of nature and fortune whieh
we cannot control,' that is pleasing to God, according to this creed.
'insurrection's arguing.' 365
which the single human form itself presents; and that condi-
tion of the state which has just been exhibited — one in which
the body at large is dying of inanition that a part of it may
surfeit — is a condition which, in the light of this story, ap-
pears to need help of some kind, certainly.
But the platform is now ready. It is the hero's entrance
for which we are preparing. It is on the ground of this sullen
want that the author will exhibit him and his dazzling: mili-
tary virtues. It is as the doctor of this diseased common-weal
that he brings him in with his sword;
1 Enter Caius Marcius.'
and that idea — the idea of the diseased commonwealth, which
Menenius has already set forth — that notion of parts and
partiality, and dissonance and dissolution, which is a radical
idea in the play, and runs into its minutest points of phraseo-
logy* breaks out at once in his rough speech.
Men. Hail, noble Marcius !
Mar. Thanks. What 's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs.
[It is the common-weal that must be made whole and comely.
Opinion ! your opinion:]
First Cit. We have ever your good word.
Mar. In that will give good words to thee, will flatter
Beneath abhorring. — What would you have, you curs,
That like nor peace, nor war ? the one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts you,
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares.
Where foxes, geese / You are no surer, no
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hail-stone in the sun. Your virtue is,
To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,
And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate : and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. Be that depends
Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye ! Trust ye ?
With every minute you do change a mind ;
[This is not the principle of state, whether in the many or
the one].
366 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
And call him noble, that was now your hate,
Him vile, that was your garland. What's the matter,
That in these several places of the city
You cry against the noble senate, who,
Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
Would feed on one another ? — What's their seeking ?
Men. For corn at their own rates ; whereof, they say,
The city is well stor'd.
Mar. Hang 'em ! They say ?
They'll sit by the fire, and presume to know
What's done f the Capitol [: who's like to rise,
Who thrives, and who declines : side factions, and give out
Conjectural marriages ; making parties strong,
And feebling such as stand not in their liking,
Below their cobbled shoes. They say, there ys grain enough ?
Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
And let me use my sword, Td make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter d slaves, as high
As / could prick my lance.
[The altitude of his virtue; — the measure of his greatness.
That is the tableau of the first scene, in the first act of the
play of the cure of the Common-weal and the Consulship.]
Men. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded ;
For though abundantly they lack discretion,
Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you,
What says the other troop ?
Mar. They are dissolved: Hang 'em !*
They said, they were an hungry; sigh" d forth proverbs ; —
That hunger broke stone walls ; that, dogs must eat ;
That meat was made for mouths ; that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only : — With these shreds
They vented their complainings ; which being answer' d,
And a petition granted them, a strange one,
(To break the heart of generosity, [—to leave it nothing to give—]
And make bold power look pale,) they threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o'the moon,
Shouting their emulation.
Men. What is granted them.
Mar. Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,
Of their own choice : One's Junius Brutus,
* 'The History of Henry VII.,' produced in the Historical Part of
this work, but omitted here. [Foot-note contains the key to these
readings].
'insurrection's arguing.' 367
Sicinius Velutus, and I know not — 'Sdeath !
The rabble should have first unroofd the city ;
Ere so prevail'd with me ; it will in time
Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes
For insurrection's arguing.
[Yes, surely it will. It cannot fail of it.]
Men. This is strange.
Mar. Go, get you home, you fragments ! [fragments."]
[Enter a Messenger.]
Mes. Where's Caius Marcius ? j
Mar. Here : What's the matter 1
Mes. The news is, Sir, the Voices are in arms. y
Mar. I am glad on't ; then we shall have means to vdnt
Our musty superfluity: — See, our best elders. ,V
[The procession from the Capitof is entering'with two of the
new officers of the commonwealth, and the two chief men of
the army, with other senators.]
First Sen. Marcius, 'tis true, that you have lately told us ;
The Volsces are in arms.
Mar. They have a leader,
Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to't.
I sin in envying his nobility :
And were I anything but what I am,
I would wish me only he.
Com. You have fought together.
Mar. Were half to half the world by the ears, and he
Upon my party, Td revolt, to make
Only my wars with him [Hear, hear].
He is a lion.
That I am proud to hunt.
First Sen. Then, worthy Marcius,
Attend upon Cominius to these wars.
It is the relation of the spirit of military conquest, the rela-
tion of the military hero, and his government, to the true
human need, which is subjected to criticism here; a criticism
which is necessarily an after-thought in the natural order of
the human development.
The transition \ from the casque to the cushion/ that so
easy step in the heroic ages, whether it be ' an entrance by
conquest,' foreign or otherwise, or whether the chieftain's own
368 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
followers bring him home in triumph, and the people, whose
battle he has won, conduct him to their chair of state, in either
case, that transition appears, to this author's eye, worth going
back, and looking into a little, in an age so advanced in civi-
lization, as the one in which he finds himself.
For though he is, as any one who will take any pains to
inquire, may easily satisfy himself, — the master in chief of
the new science of nature, — and the deepest in its secrets of
any, his views on that subject appear to be somewhat broader,
his aspirations altogether of another kind, from those, to which
his school have since limited themselves. He does not con-
tent himself with pinning butterflies and hunting down beetles;
his scientific curiosity is not satisfied with classifying ferns and
lichens, and ascertaining the proper historical position of pud-
ding-stone and sand- stone, and in settling the difference be-
tween them and their neighbours. Nature is always, in all
her varieties wonderful, and all ' her infinite book of secrecy,'
that book which all the world had overlooked till he came,
was to his eye, from the first, a book of spells, of magic lore, a
Prospero book of enchantments. He would get the key to
her cipher, he would find the lost alphabet of her unknown
tongue; there is no page of her composing in which he would
scorn to seek it — none which he would scorn to read with
it: but then he has, notwithstanding, some choice in his
studies. He is of the opinion that some subjects, are nobler
than others, and that those which concern specially the human
kind, have a special claim to their regard, and the secret of
those combinations which result in the varieties of shell-fish,
and other similar orders of being, do not exclusively, or chiefly,
engage his attention.
There is another natural curiosity, which strikes the eye of
the founder of the Science of Nature, as quite the most curious
and wonderful thing going, so far, at least, as his observation
has extended, though he is willing to make, as he takes pains
to state, philosophical allowance for the partiality of species in
determining this judgment, and is perfectly willing to concede,
that if any particular species of shell-fish, for instance, were to
' insurrection's arguing.' 369
undertake a science of things in general, that particular species
would, no doubt, occupy the principal place in that system;
especially if arts, tending to the improvement and elevation of
it, were necessarily based on this larger specific knowledge.
Men, and their proceedings and organisms, men, and their
habits and modes of combining, did appear to the eye of this
scientific observer quite as well worth observing and noting,
also, as bees and beavers, for instance, and their societies; and,
accordingly, he made some observations himself, and notes,
too, in this particular department of his general science. For,
as he tells us elsewhere, he did not wish to map out the large
fields of the science of observation in general, and exhibit to
the world, in bare description, the method of it, without
leaving some specimens of his own, of what might be done
with it, in proper hands, under favourable circumstances,
selecting for his experiments the principal and noblest subjects
— those of the most immediate human concern. And he has
not only very carefully laboured a few of these; but he has
taken extraordinary pains to preserve them to us in their
proper scientific form, with just as little of the ligature of the
time on them as it was possible to leave.
It is no kind of beetle or butterfly, then, that this philo-
sopher comes down upon here from the heights of his universal
science — his science of the nature of things in general, but
that great Spenserian monstrosity, — that diseased product
of nature, which individual human nature, in spite of its
natural pettiness and helplessness, under certain favourable
conditions of absorption and accretion, may be made to yield.
It is that dragon of lawless power which was overspreading,
in his time, all the common human affairs, and infolding in its
gaudy, baleful wings all the life of men, — it is that which
takes from the first the speculative eye of this new speculator,
— this founder of the science of things, and not of words
instead of them. Here is a man of science, a born naturalist,
who understands that this phenomenon lies in his department,
and takes it to be his business, among other things, to ex-
amine it.
B B
370 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
It looks, indeed, somewhat formidable at a distance, but this
philosopher has had some extraordinary facilities of approach
to it; and after a very patient study of it, with the aid of his
newly-invented instrument, he is prepared to show, that, after
all, it is, at least, ' no good divinity,' and that there is, in fact,
nothing but a man at the bottom of it. f There's a differency
between a grub and a butterfly,' he observes, in reference to
this point, ' yet your butterfly was a grub.' And though it
has already * grown from man to dragon,' ere he takes his ob-
servation, though he perceives at a glance that it has ' wings,'
and other faculties abnormal in the species, he is not afraid to
undertake its natural history, though he proceeds very modestly,
and evidently does not propose to himself any immediate return
for his labour. But if you will follow him quietly, he will
undertake to show you, that there is no more harmless thing
in nature, when men once get the science of it. He has a
table in his anatomical theatre long enough to lay those
dragon wings on. He will take them to pieces before men's
eyes, and show them in detail the mechanism, and lecture
on the principle, for those who are able to hear it. He has
studied the subject carefully. He has found the composition
of that huge growth. He has found the combining principle
in his prima philosophia.
It was, indeed, a formidable phenomenon, as it presented
itself to his apprehension; and his own words are always the
best, when one knows how to read them —
' He sits in state, like a thing made for Alexander.' ' When
he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks
before his treading.' * He talks like a knell, his hum is a
battery ; what he bids be done, is finished at his bidding. He
wants nothing of a god but eternity, and a heaven to throne
in.' 'Yes,' is the answer; 'yes, mercy, if you paint him
truly.' ' I paint him in character.'
1 Is it possible that so short a time can alter the conditions
of a man?1 inquires the speculator upon this phenomenon, and
then comes the reply — ' There's a differency between a grub
and a butterfly, yet your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius
insurrection's arguing. 371
is grown from man TO DRAGON; he has wings, he is more
than a creeping thing.'
This is Coriolanus at the head of his army ; but in Julius
Caesar, it is nature in the wildness of the tempest — it is a
night of unnatural horrors, that is brought in by the Poet to
illustrate the enormity of the evil he deals with, and its un-
natural character — * to serve as instrument of fear and warn-
ing unto some monstrous state.'
' Now could /, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night ;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol :
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. Tis Caesar that you mean : Is it not, Cassius ?
[I paint him in character.]
Cassius. Let it be — who it is : For Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.'
B B 2
372 THE CUKE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
CHAPTER IV.
POLITICAL RETROSPECT.
1 1 think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.'
4 Flower of Warriors.'
rpHE poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his
-*- time. He finds it ' in the civil streets/ ' talking plain can-
non/ ' humming batteries ' in the most unmistakeable manner,
with no particular account of its origin to give, without, in-
deed, appearing to recollect exactly how it came there, retain-
ing only a general impression, that a descent from the celestial
regions had, in some way, been effected during some undated
period of human history, under circumstances which the
memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail,
and a certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was under-
stood to be included among its properties, though it does not
appear to have been, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive
as to render a little logical demonstration, on the part of
royalty itself, superfluous.
It was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal
servant of the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal
memory on this delicate point ; and, though the details of that
historical representation, and the manner of it, are, of course,
quite different from those of the Play, it will be found, upon
careful examination, not so dissimilar in purport as the exterior
would have seemed to imply. The philosopher does not feel
called upon, in either case, to begin by contradicting flatly, in
so many words, the theory which he finds the received one on
that point. Even the poet, with all his freedom, is compelled
to go to work after another fashion.
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 373
' And thus do we, of wisdom, and of reach,
With windlasses, and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.'
He has his own way of creating an historical retrospect.
No one need know that it if a retrospect; no one will know
it, perhaps, who has not taken the author's clue elsewhere.
The crisis is already reached when the play begins. The
collision between the civil want and the military government
is at its height. It is a revolution on which the curtain rises.
It is a city street filled with dark, angry swarms of men, who
have come forth to seek out this government, in the person of
its chief, who stop only to conduct their summary trial of it,
and then hurry on to execute their verdict.
But the poet arrests this revolution. Before we proceed
any further, ■ Hear me speak,' he cries, through the lips of the
plebeian leader. The man of science demands a hearing,
before this movement proceed any further. He has a longer
story to tell than that with which Menenius Agrippa appeases
his Romans. There is a cry of war in the streets. The obscure
background of that portentous scene opens, and the long vista
of the heroic ages, with all its pomp and stormy splendours,
scene upon scene, grows luminous behind it. The foreground
is the same. The arrested mutineers stand there still, with
the frown knit in their angry brows, with the weapons of their
civil warfare in their hands; there is no stage direction for a
change of costume, and none perceives that they have grown
older as they stand, and that the shadow of the elder time is
on them. But the manager of this stage is one who knows
that the elder time of history is the childhood of his kind.
There is a cry of war in that ancient street. The enemy of
the infant state is in arms. The people rush forth to conflict
with the leader of armies at their head. But this time, for
the first time in the history of literature, the philosopher goes
with him. The philosopher, hitherto, has been otherwise
occupied. He has been too busy with his fierce war of words;
he has had too much to do with his abstract generals, his
logical majors and minors, to get them in squadrons and right
374 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
forms of war, to have any eye for such vulgar solidarities.
'All men are. mortal. Peter and John are men. Therefore
Peter and John are mortal,' he concludes; but that is his
nearest and most vivacious approach to historical particulars,
and his cell is broad enough to contain all that he needs for
his processes and ends. He finds enough and to spare, ready
prepared to his hands, in the casual, rude, unscientific obser-
vations and spontaneous distinctions of the vulgar. His gene-
ralizations are obtained from their hasty abstractions. It has
never occurred to him, till now, that he must begin with criti-
cising these terms ; that he must begin by making a new and
scientific terminology, which shall correspond to terms in
nature, and not be air-lines merely; — that he must take pains
to collect them himself, from severest scrutiny of particulars,
before ever he can arrive at ' the notions of nature/ the uni-
versal notions, which differ from the spontaneous specific
notions of men, and their ^chimeras; before ever he can put
man into his true relations with nature, before ever he can
teach him to speak the word which she responds to, — the
words of her dictionary — the word which is power.
This is, in fact, the first time that the philosopher has under-
taken to go abroad. It is the first time he has ever been in
the army. Softly, invisibly, he goes. There is nothing to
show that he is there. As modestly, as unnoticed, as the
Times * own correspondent,' amid all the clang and tumult, the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war, he goes. But he is
there notwithstanding. There is no breath of scholasticism,
no perfume of the cell, that the most vigorous and robust can
perceive, in his battle. The scene unwinds with a,ll its fierce
reality, undimmed by the pale cast of thought : the shout is as
wild, the din as fearful, the martial fury rises, as if the old
heroic poet had it still in hand.
But it is not the poet's voice that you hear, bursting forth
into those rhythmical ecstasies of heroic passion, — unless that
faint tone of exaggeration,— that slight prolonging of it, be
his. That mad joy in human blood, that wolfish glare, that
lights the hero's eye, gets no reflection in his : those fiendish
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 375
boasts are not from his lips. Through all the frenzy of that
demoniacal scene, he is still himself, with all his human sense
about him. Through all the crowded incidents of that day of
blood — into which he condenses, with dramatic license, the
siege and assault of the city, the conquest and plunder of it,
and the conflict in the open field, — he is keeping watch on his
hero. Jtle is eyeing him, and sketching him, as critically as if
he were indeed an entomological or botanical specimen. He
is making a specimen of him, for scientific purposes, — not * a
preservation/ — he does not think much of dried specimens in
science. He proposes to dismiss the logical Peter and John,
and the logical man himself, that abstract notion which the
metaphysicians have been at loggerheads about so long. It is
the true heroism, — it is the sovereign flower which he is in
search of. This specimen that he is taking here will, indeed, go
by the board. He is taking him on his negative table. But
for that purpose, — in order to get him on his ' table of rejec-
tions,' it is necessary to take him alive. The question is of
government, of supreme power, and universal suffrage, of the
abnegation of reason, of the annihilation of judgment, in
behalf of a superiority which has been understood, heretofore,
to admit of no question. The question is of awe and rever-
ence, and worship, and submission. The Poet has to put his
sacrilegious hand through the dust that lies on antique time,
through the sanctity of prescription and time-honoured usage,
through ' mountainous error ' * too highly heaped for truth to
overpeer/ in order to make this point in his scientific table.
And he wishes to blazon it a little. He will pin up this old
exploded hero — this legacy of barbaric ages, to the ages of
human advancement — in all his actualities, in all the heroic
splendours of his original, without ' diminishing one dowle
that 's in his plume.'
But this retrospect has not yet reached its limit. It is not
enough to go back, in the unravelling of this business, to the
full-grown hero on the field of victory. 'For that which, in
speculative philosophy, corresponds to the cause in practical
philosophy becomes the rule ;' and it is the Cure of the Common
376 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Weal, which the poet is proposing, and having determined
to proceed specially against Caius Marcius, or against him
first, he undertakes now to ' delve him to the root.' We are
already on the battle field; but before ever a stroke is struck
there, before he will attempt to show us the instinct of the
warrior in his game, — ' he is a lion that I am proud to hunt/
— when all is ready and just as the hunt is going to begin, he
steals softly back to Rome; he unlocks the hero's private
dwelling, he lays open to us the secrets of that domestic
hearth, the secrets of that nursery in which his hero had had
his training ; he shows us the breasts from which he drew that
martial fire; he produces the woman alive who sent him to
that field.* In that exquisite relief which the natural graces of
youth and womanhood provide for it, in the young, gentle,
feminine wife,' desolate in her husband's absence, starting at the
rumour of news from the camp, and driving back from her
appalled conception, the images which her mother-in-law's fear-
ful speech suggests to her, — in that so beautiful relief, comes
out the picture of the Roman matron, the woman in whom the
martial instincts have been educated and the gentler ones
repressed, by the common sentiments of her age and nation,
the woman in whom the common standard of virtue, the conven-
tional virtue of her time, has annihilated the wife and the mother.
Virgilia. Had he died in the business, madam, what then 1
Volumnia. Then his good report should have been my son, I therein
would have found issue.
It is the multiplied force of a common instinct in the nation,
it is the pride of conquest in a whole people, erected into the
place of virtue and usurping all its sanctity, which has entered
this woman's nature and reformed its yielding principles. It
is the Martial Spirit that has subdued her, for she is virtuous
and religious. It is her people's god to whom she has borne
her son, and in his temple she has reared him.
But the poet is not satisfied with all this. It is not enough
* Act 1, Scene 3. An apartment in the martial chieftain's house ; two
women, 'on two low stools, sewing' 'There is where your throne begins,
whatever it be.'
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 377
to introduce us to the hero's mother and permit us to listen to
her confidential account of his birth and training. He will
produce the little Coriolanus himself — Coriolanus in germ — he
will show us the rudiments of those instincts, which his unscien-
tific education has stimulated into such monstrous 'o'ergrowth'
(but not enlightened), so that the hero on the battle-field who
is winning there the oaken crown, which he will transmit if he
can to his posterity, is only, after all, a boy overgrowu*==a_boj
with hh boyishness unnaturally prolon^e^^Ms jvulfurp^ — the
impersonation of the childishness of a childish time, — the
crowned impersonation of the instinct which is sovereign in
an age of instinct. He shows us the drum and the sword in
the nursery, and the boy who would rather look at the mili-
tary parade than his schoolmaster; — he shows us the little
viperous egg of a hero torturing and tearing the butterfly,
with his 'confirmed countenance, in one of his father's moods.'
Surely we have reached « the grub ' at last, ' the creeping
thing ' that will have one day imperial armies in its wings.
And we return from this little excursion to the field again, in
time for the battle; and when we see the tiger in the man let
loose there , and the boy's father comes out in one of his own
moods, that we may note it the better; we begin to observe
where we are in the human history, and what age of the Ad-
vancement of Learning it is that this poet is driving at so
stedfastly, and trying to get dated; and whether it is indeed
one from which the advancing ages of Learning can accept
the bourne of the human wisdom, the limit of that advance.
* And to speak truly [and that after all is the best way of
speaking] Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.1
'Those times are the ancient times, when the world is an-
cient and not those we account ancient by a computation back-
ward from ourselves.' — Advancement of Learning. But that
was put down in a book in which we have only general state-
ments, very wise indeed, and both new and true, most exactly
true, but not ready for practice, as the author stops to tell us,
and it is practice he is aiming at. That is from a book in
which we have only ■ the husks and shells of sciences, all the
378 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
kernel being forced out/ as the author informs us, 'by the torture
and press of the method.' But it was a method which saved
them, notwithstanding. This is the book that contains the
' nuts/ and this is the kernel that goes in that particular shell
or a corner of it, e Antiquitas seculi juventus mundV
There, on the spot, he shows us the process by which a king,
— an historic king, — is made. He detects and brings out
and blazons, the moment in which the inequality of fortune
begins, in the division of the spoils of victory. His hero is
not, as he takes pains to tell us, covetous, — unless it be a sin to
covet honour, if it be, he is the most offending soul alive; —
it is because he is not mercenary, that his soldiers will enrich
him. The poet shows us where the throne begins, and the
machinery of that engine which the earth shrinks from when
it moves. On his stage, it is the moment in which the soldiers
raise their victorious leader from his feet, and carry him in
triumph above them. We are there at the ceremony, for this
is selected, illuminated history; this, too, is what he calls
4 visible history,' but amid all those martial acclamations and
plaudits, the philosopher contrives to get in a word.
1 He that has effected his good will, has o'ertaken my act.'
From the field he tracks his hero to the chair of state. First
we have the news of the victory in the city, and its effect: —
4 I'll report it
"Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles ;
Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug;
T the end admire ; where ladies shall be frighted,
And, gladly quaked, hear more ; where the dull tribunes.
That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours,
Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods
Our Rome hath such a soldier.'
Then we have the hero's return — the conqueror's recep-
tion; first in the city whose battle he has won, and afterwards
his reception in the city he has conquered. Here is the
latter : —
1 Your native town you entered like a post,
And had no welcomes home ; but he returns,
\
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 379
Splitting the air with noises.
And patient fools,
Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear
With giving him glory.'
' A goodly city is this Antium ! City,
'T is 1 that made thy widows ; many an heir
Of these fair edifices, fore my wars
Have 1 heard groan and droop. Then know me not,
Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,
In puny battle slay me! [ — know me not — lest —
* Let us kill him, and we will have corn at our own price.']
But the Poet does not forget that it is the proof of the
military virtue, as well as the history of the military power,
that he has undertaken ; ' the touch of its nobility,' as he him-
self words it. He is trying it by his own exact scientific
standard; he is putting the test to it which the new philosophy,
which is the philosophy of nature, authorises.
For, in truth, this philosopher, this civilian, is a little jealous
of this simple virtue of valour, which he finds in his time, as
in the barbaric ages, still in such esteem, as 'the chiefest
virtue, and that which most dignifies the haver.' He is of
opinion, that there may be some other profession, beside that
of the sword, worth an honest man's attention; that, if the
world were more enlightened, there would be another kind of
glory, that would make 'the garland of war' shrivel. He
thinks that Jupiter, and not Mars, should reign supreme : that
there is another kind of distinction and leadership, better
worth the public esteem, better deserving the popular gratitude
and reverence.
And when he has once taken an analysis of this kind in
hand, he is not going to permit any scruples of delicacy to im-
pair the operation. He will invade that graceful modesty in
the hero, who shrinks from hearing his exploits narrated. He
will analyse that blush, and show us chemically what its hue
is made of. He will bring out those retiring honours from the
haze and mist which the vague, unanalytic, popular notions,
have gathered about them. Tucked up in scarlet, braided
with gold, under its forest of feathers, through all its pomp
380 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
and blazonry, through all its drums, and trumpets, and cla-
rions, undaunted by the popular cry, undaunted by that so
potent word of ' patriotism' which guards it from invasion, he
will search it out.
For this purpose he will go a little nearer to it than is the
heroic poet's wont. When the city is wild with the news of
this great victory, and the streets are swarming at the tidings
of the hero's approach, he will take his stand with the family
party, and beckon us to a place where we can listen to what is
going on there, though the heroics and the blank verse must
halt for it.
The glee and fluster might appear to a cool spectator a little
undignified ; but then we are understood to be, like Menenius,
old friends of the family, and too much carried away with the
excitement of the moment to be very critical.
Volumnia. Honourable Menenius, my boy, Marcius, approaches. For
the love of Juno, let 's go.
Men. Ha ! Marcius coming home !
Vol. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.
Men. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo ! Marcius coming
home 1
Two Ladies. Nay, 't is true.
Vol. Look ! Here 's a letter from him ; the state hath another, his
wife another, and I think there 's one at home for you.
Men. I will make my very house reel to night : — A letter for me ?
The Wife. Yes, certainly, there 's a letter for you ; I saw it.
Men. A letter for me ! It gives me an estate of seven years' health ;
in which time I will make a lip at the physician ... Is he not wounded?
He was wont to come home wounded.
The Wife. Oh, no, no, no !
The Mother. Oh, he is wounded. I thank the gods for 't.
Men. So do I, too, if it be not too much : — Brings 'a victory in his
pocket : The wounds become him.
Vol. On '* brow, Menenius : he comes the third time home with the
oaken garland.
Men. ... Is the senate possessed of this !
Vol. Good ladies, let's go ! Yes, yes, yes : the senate has letters from
the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war.
Valeria. In truth, there 's wondrous things spoke of him.
Men. Wondrous, ay, I warrant you . . .
Vir. The gods grant them true !
Vol. True 1 Pow wow !
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 38 1
Men. True ? I '11 be sworn they are true. Where 's he wounded ?
[To the Tribunes, who come forward.] Marcius is coming home : he
has — more cause to be — proud. — Where is he wounded 1
Vol. I' the shoulder, and i' the left arm : There will be large cicatrices
to shew the people, when he shall stand for his place. He received in
the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i' the body.
Men. One in the neck, and two in the thigh, — there 's nine that /
know.
Vol. He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon
him.
Men. Now it 's twenty-seven :* every gash was an enemy's grave.
But now we come to the blank verse again ; for at this
moment the shout that announces the hero's entrance is heard;
and, mingling with it, the martial tones of victory.
f A shout and flourish!
Hark ! the trumpets !
Vol. These are the ushers of Marcius : before him
He carries noise ; behind him he leaves tears.
Death, that dark spirit, in 's nervy arm doth lie ;
Which being advanced, declines, and then men die.
Then comes the imposing military pageant. A sennet.
Trumpets sound, and enter the hero, 'crowned9 with his oaken
garland, sustained by the generals on either hand, with the
victorious soldiers, and a herald proclaiming before him his
victory.
Herald. Know, Eome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli's gates : where he hath won
With fame, a name to Caius Marcius ; these
In honour follows Coriolanus :
Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus !
But while Rome is listening to this great story, and the
people are shouting his name, the demi-god catches sight of
his mother and of his wife; and full of private duty and af-
fection, he forgets his state, his garland stoops, the conqueror
is on his knee, in filial submission. The woman had said
truly, 6my boy Marcius is coming home.' And when he greets
* Of course there is no satire intended here at all. This is a Poet
who does not know what he is about.
382 THE CURE OP THE COMMON-WEAL.
the weeping Virgilia, who cannot speak but with her tears,
these are the words with which he measures that private joy —
* Would' st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home,
That weep'st to see me triumph 1 Ah, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,
And mothers that lack sons.'
No; these are the Poet's words, rather—' such eyes.'
Such eyes. It was the Poet who could look through the
barriers — those hitherto impervious barriers of an enemy's
town, and see in it, at that moment, eyes as beautiful — eyes
that had been ' dove's eyes/ too, to those who had loved them,
wet with other tears, — mothers that loved their sons, and
1 lacked them ' ; it was the Poet to whose human sense those hard
hostile walls dissolved and cleared away, till he could see the
Volscian wives clasping their loves, as they 'came coffined
home' ; it was the Poet who dared to stain the joy and triumph
of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of that triumphal
entry, with those human thoughts; it was he who heard above
the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and trumpets,
and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's
voice — the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of
human sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked
sons, the greetings of wives whose loves ' came coffined home'
And he does not mind aggravating the intense selfishness, and
narrowness, and stolidity of these private passions and affections
of the individual to a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity,
by charging on poor Volumnia and Marcius his own reminis-
cences; as if they could have dared to heighten their joy at
that moment by counting its cost — as if they could have
looked in the face — as if they could have comprehended, in
its actual dimensions, the theme of their vulgar, narrow, un-
learned exultation. But this is a trick this author is much
given to, we shall find, when we come to study him carefully.
He is not scrupulous on such points. He has a tolerable sense
of the fitness of things, too. His dramatic conscience is as
nice as another man's; but he is always ready to sin against it,
when he sees reason. He is much like his own Mr. Slender
in one respect, 'he will do anything in reason'; and his theory
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 383
of the Chief End of Man appears to differ essentially from the
one which our modern Doctors of ' ArV propound incidentally
in their criticisms. It is the mother who cries, when she
catches the swell of the trumpets that announce her son's ap-
proach — ' These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he
carries noise.' It is the Poet who adds, sotto voce, ' behind him
he leaves tears.'
' You are three,' says Menenius, after some further pro-
longation of these private demonstrations, addressing himself
to the three victorious generals —
v l You are three,
That Rome should dote on : yet, by the faith of men,
We have some old crab-trees here at home, that will not
Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors :
We call a nettle but a nettle ; and
The faults of fools, but folly!
But the herald is driving on the crowd ; and considering
how very public the occasion is, and how very, very private
and personal all this chat is, it does appear to have stopped the
way long enough. Thus hurried, the hero gives hastily a
hand t to his wife and mother ' [stage direction], but stops
to say a word or two more, which has the merit of being at
least to the Poet's purpose, though the common-weal may
appear to be lost sight of in the hero's a little ; and that de-
licacy and reserve of manner, that modesty of nature, which
is the characteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere,
to disguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The
careless eye will not track it in these finer touches. * Where
some stretched-mouth rascal ' would have roared you out his
prescribed moral, ' outscolding Termagant' wiJi it, the Poet,
who is the poet of truth, and who would have such fellows
f whipped ' out of the sacred places of Art, with a large or
small cord, as the case may be, is content to bring in his 'de-
licate burdens,' or to keep sight of them, at least, with some
such reference to them as this —
1 Ere in our own house I do shade my head,
The good patricians must be visited ;
From whom I have received not only greetings
But with them change of honours'— [change.]
384 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
That is his visit to the state-house which he is speaking of. It
is the Capitol which is put down in his plan of the city on his
way to his own house. ' The state has a letter from him, and
his wife another; and I think there is one for you, too.'
Volumnia understands that delicate intimation as to the
change of honours, and in return, takes occasion to express to
him, on the spot, her views about the consulship, and the use
to which the new cicatrices are to be converted.
Coriolanus replies to this in words that admit, as this Poet's
words often do, of a double construction; for the Poet is,
indeed, lurking under all this. He is- always present, and he
often slips in a word for himself, when his characters are busy,
and thinking of their own parts only. He is very apt to make
use of occasions for emphasis, to put in one word for his
speakers, and two for himself. It is irregular, but he does not
stand much upon precedents ; it was the only way he had of
writing his life then —
1 Know, good mother,
I had rather be their servant in my way,
Than sway with them in theirs.
Cominius. On, to the Capitol.'
[Flourish Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes remain.']
And when the great pageant has moved on * in state, as
kefore ' — when the shouts of the people, and the triumphal
swell and din, have died away, this is the manner in which our
two tribunes look at each other. They know their voices
would not make so much as a ripple, at that moment, in the
tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it is their
business to sway, — the tide which is setting all one way then,
in one of its monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing
with it, — the tide which is taking the military hero ' On to
the Capitol.' But though they cannot then oppose it, they
can note it. And it is thus that they register that popular
confirmation at home, of the soldier's vote on the field.
It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its
living outline, composed in that ' charactery ' which lays the
past and future open. It is a picture good for the Koman
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 385
hero's entry; ' and were now the general of our gracious em-
press, as in good time he may, from Ireland coming, bringing
rebellion broached on his sword ' — would it, or would it not,
suit him ?
It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its
main feature, for all the ages, at least of a brutish popular
ignorance, of a merely instinctive human growth and forma-
tion; but it is a picture taken from the life, — caught, —
detained with the secret of that palette, whose secret none has
yet found, and the detail is all, not Roman, but, Elizabethan.
Those ( variable complexions,' that one sees, ' smothering the
stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and roofs, even to
the ' ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are Elizabethan.
It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some
way, and it is worth noting if it were only for that. There
goes * the seld shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar
station,' here is a ' veiled dame' who lets us see that ' war of
white and damask in her nicely gawded cheeks,' a moment;
look at that * kitchen malkin,' peering over the wall there
with 'her richest lockram' 'pinned on her reechy neck,' eyeing
the hero as he passes; and look at this poor baby here, this
Elizabethan baby, saved, conserved alive, crying himself ' into
a rapture' while his ' prattling nurse' has ears and eyes for the
hero only, as ' she chats him.' Look at them all, for every crea-
ture you see here, from ' the seld shown flamen' to the ' kitchen
malkin,' belongs soul and body to ' our gracious Empress/
and Essex and Raleigh are still winning their garlands of the
war, — that is when the scene is taken, but not when it was
put in its place and framed in this composition; for their game
was up ere then. England preferred old heroes and their
claims to new ones. ' I fear there will a worse come in his
place/ was the cautious instinct.
Brut All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him : Your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
While she chats him : the kitchin malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.
Clambering the walls to eye him : stalls, bulks, windows,
c c
386 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Are smother' d up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed
With variable complexions ; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him : seld-shown Jlamens
Do press among the popular throng, and puff
To win a vulgar station : our veil'd dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil
Of Phoebus' burning kisses : such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slyly crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.
Sic. On the sudden,
I warrant him consul.
Bru, Then our office may,
During his power, go sleep.
Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours
but will
Lose that he hath won.
Cru. In that there's comfort.
Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand, —
[While they resolve upon the measures to be taken, which
we shall note elsewhere, a messenger enters.]
Bru. What's the matter 1
Mess. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought,
That Marcius shall be consul : I have seen
The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind
To hear him speak : The matrons flung their gloves,
Ladies and maids the scarfs and handkerchiefs,
Upon him as he passed : the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue ; and the commons made
A shower, and thunder, with their caps, and shouts :
I never saw the like.
Bru. Let's to the Capitol ;
And carry with us ears and eyes for the time,
But hearts for the event.
[And let us to the Capitol also, and hear the civic claim of
the oaken garland, the military claim to dispose of the com-
mon-weal, as set forth by one who is himself a general * com-
mander-in-chief of Rome's armies, and see whether or no the
Poet's own doubtful cheer on the battle-field has any echo in
this place.]
Com. It is held,
That valour is the chief est virtue, and
Most dignifies the haver : IF it be,
POLITICAL RETROSPECT. 387
The man I speak of cannot in the world
Be singly counterpois'd.
[If it be? And lie goes on to tell a story which fits, in all its
points, a great hero, a true chieftain, brave as heroes of old
romance, who lived when this was written, concluding thus — ~]
Com. He stopped the fliers-,
And, by his rare example, made the coward
Turn terror into sport : as waves before
A vessel under sail, so men obey'd,
And fell below his stem : his sword, (death's stamp.)
Where it did mark, it took ; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries : alone he enter'd
The mortal gate o'the city, which he painted
With shunless destiny, aidless came off,
And with a sudden re-enforcement struck
Corioli, like a planet : now, all's his :
When by and by the din of war 'gan pierce
His ready sense : then straight his doubled spirit
Re-quicken' d what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he ; where he did
Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if
1 T were a perpetual spoil : and till we calVd
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting.
Men. Worthy man !
First Sen. He cannot but with measure fit the honours
Which we devise him.
[One more quality, however, his pleader insists on, as addi-
tional proof of this l fitness,1 for though it is a negative one,
its opposite had not been reckoned among the kingly virtues,
and the poet takes some pains to bring that opposite quality
into relief, throughout, by this negative.]
Com. Our spoils he kicked at ;
And look'd upon things precious, as they were
The common muck o' the world.
Men. He's right noble ;
Let him be calVdfor.
First Sen. Call for Coriolanus.
Off. He doth appear.
At the opening of this scene, two officers appeared on the
stage, ' laying cushions,' for this is one of those specimens of
cc 2
388 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
the new method of investigation applied to the noblest subjects,
< which represents, as it were, to the eye, the whole order of the
invention,' and into the Capitol stalks now the casque, for this
is that ' step from the casque to the cushion' which the Poet
is considering in the abstract; but it does not suit his purpose
to treat of it in these abstract terms merely, because < reason
cannot be so sensible.' This, too, is one of those grand historic
moments which this new, select, prepared history must repre-
sent to the eye in all its momentous historic splendour, for
this is the kind of popular instruction which reproduces the
past, which represents the historic event, not in perspective,
but as present. And this is the 'business,' and this is the play
in which we are told < action is eloquence, and the eyes of the
ignorant more learned than the ears.'
The seats of state are prepared for him. < Call Corioknus,1
is the senate's word. The conqueror's step is heard. * He
does appear/
Men. The senate, Coriolanus, are>ell pleased
To make thee consul.
(yor$ I do owe them still
My life, and services.
]£en% It then remains,
That you do speak to the people.
Cor> I do beseech you, \\
Let me overleap that custom. \
SiCt Sir, the people
Must have their voices ; neither will they bate
One jot of their ceremony.
Menr, Put them not to% : — [his friendly adviser says.]
Pray you, go fit you to the custom; and
Take to you, as your predecessors have,
Your honour, with your form.
(jor% It is a part
That I shall blush in acting, and might well
Be taken from the people.
j5m Marie you that !
Cor. To brag unto them, — Thus I did, and thus ; —
Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only.
389
CHAPTER V.
THE POPULAR ELECTION.
' The greater part carries it.
If he would but incline to the people,
There never was a worthier man.'
A ND yet, after all, that is what he wants for them, and must
■^ have or he is nothing; for as the Poet tells us elsewhere,
' our monarchs and our outstretched heroes are but the beg-
gar's shadows.' The difficulty is, that he wishes to take his
'hire' in some more quiet way, without being rudely reminded
of the nature of the transaction.
But the Poet's toils are about him. The man of science has
caught the hero, the king in germ; the dragon wings are
not yet spread. He wishes to exhibit the embryo monarch in
this particular stage of his development, and the scientific pro-
cess proceeds with as little regard to the victim's wishes, as if he
were indeed that humble product of nature to which the Poet
likens him. ' There's a differency between a grub and a but-
terfly; yet your butterfly was a grub.' Just on that step
between ' the casque and the cushion,' the philosopher arrests
him.
For this history denotes, as we have seen, a foregone conclu-
sion. The scholar has privately anatomized in his study the
dragon's wings, and this theatrical synthesis is designed to be
an instructive one. He wishes to show, in a palpable form,
what is and what is not, essential to the mechanism of that
greatness which, though it presents itself to the eye in the con-
temptible physique, and moral infirmity and pettiness of the
human individual, is yet clothed with powers so monstrous, so
real, so terrific, that all men are afflicted with them; — this
thing in which ' the conditions of a man are so altered/ this
390 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL
thing which * has grown from man to dragon, which is more
than a creeping thing/ He will show that after all it is noth-
ing in the world but the popular power itself, the power
of the people instinctively, unscientifically and unartistically
exercised.
The Poet has analysed that so potent name by which men
call it, and he will show upon his stage, by that same method
which his followers have made familiar to us, in other depart-
ments of investigation, the elements of its power. He will let
us see how it was those despised ' mechanics/ those ' poor citi-
zens/ with their strong arms and voices, who were throwing
themselves, — in their enthusiasm, — en-masse into that engine,
and only asking to be welded in it; that would have made of
this citizen a thing so terrific. He will show how, after all, it
was the despised commons who were making of that citizen a
king, of that soldier a monarch, — who were changing with
the alchemy of the ; shower and thunder they made with their
caps and voices/ his oak leaves and acorns, into gold and
jewels.
He will show it on the platform of a state, where that
vote is formally and constitutionally given, and not in a
state where it is only a virtual and tacit one. He will
show it in detail. He will cause the multitude to be re-
presented, and pass by twos and threes across his stage,
and compel the haughty chief, the would be ruler, to beg
of them, individually, their suffrages, and show them his
claim, — such as it is, the ( unaching scars that he should
hide.3
It is to this Poet's purpose to exhibit that despised element
in the state, which the popular submission creates, that un-
noticed element of the common suffrage which looks so smooth
on its surface, which seems *to the haughty chief so little
worth his notice, when it goes his way and bears him on its
crest. But the experimenter will undertake to show what it
is by ruffling it, by instigating this chief to put himself in the
madness of his private affections, in the frenzy of his pride,
into open opposition with it. He will show us what it is by
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 39 1
playing with it. He will wake it from its unvisited depths,
and bid his hero strive with it.
He will show what that popular consent, or the consent of
1 the commons ' amounts to, in the king-making process, by
omitting it or by withdrawing it, before it is too late to with-
draw it ; — according to the now well-known rules of that new
art of scientific investigation, which was then getting worked
out and cleared, from this author's own methods of investiga-
tion. For it was because this faculty was in him, so unlike
what it was in others, that he was able to write that science of
it, by which other men, stepping into his armour, have been
able to achieve so much.
He will show how those dragon teeth and claws, that were
just getting the steel into them, which would have armed that
single will against the whole, and its weal, crumble for the
lack of it; he will show us the new-fledged wings, with all
their fresh gauds, collapsing and dissolving with that popular
withdrawal. He will continue the process, till there is nothing
left of all that gorgeous state pageant, which came in with the
nourish of trumpets and the voice of the herald long and loud,
and the echoing thunder of the commons, but a poor grub of
a man, in his native conditions, a private citizen, denied even
the common privilege of citizenship, — with only his wife and
his mother and a friend or two, to cling to him, — turned out
of the city gates, to seek his fortune.
But that is the moment in which the Poet ventures to bring
out a little more fully, in the form of positive statement, that
latent affirmation, that definition of the true nobility which
underlies all the play and glistens through it in many a fine,
but hitherto, unnoticed point; that affirmation which all these
negatives conclude in, that latent idea of the true personal
greatness and its essential relation to the common- weal and the
state, which is the predominant idea of the play, which shapes
all the criticism and points all the satire of it. It is there that
the true hero speaks out for a moment from the lips of that old
military heroism, of a greatness which does not cease when
the wings of state drop off from it, of an honour that takes
392 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
no stain though all the human voices join to sully it,— the
dignity that rises and soars and gains the point of immuta-
bility, when all the world would have it under foot. But
in that nobility men need training,— scientific training. The
instinctive, unartistic human growth, or the empirical un-
scientific arts of culture, give but a vulgar counterfeit of it, or
at best a poor, sickly, distorted, convulsive, unsatisfactory
type of it, for ' being gentle, wounded/— (and it is gentility
and nobility and the true aristocracy that we speak of here,)
— 'craves a noble cunning;' so the old military chieftain
tells us. It is a cunning which his author does not put him
upon practising personally. Practically he represents another
school of heroes. It is the word of that higher heroism in
which he was himself wanting, it is the criticism on his own
part, it is the affirmation which all this grand historic negative
is always pointing to, which the author borrows his lips to
utter.
The result in this case, the overthrow of the military hero
on his way to the chair of state, is occasioned by the premature
arrogance to which his passionate nature impels him. For his
fiery disposition refuses to obey the decision of his will, and
overleaps in its passion, all the barriers of that policy which his
calmer moments had prescribed. The result is occasioned by
his open display of his contempt for the people, before he had
as yet mastered the organizations which would make that
display, in an unenlightened age, perhaps, a safe one. ^
This point of time is much insisted on, and emphasized.
< Let them pull all about mine ears,' cries the hero, as he
enters his own house, after his first encounter with the multi-
tude in their wrath.
'Let them pull all about mine ears, present me
Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels,
Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock
That the precipitation might down stretch
Below the beam of sight, yet will I still—
Be thus to them.'
[For that is the sublime conclusion of these heroics.]
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 393
' You do the nobler? responds the Coryphseus of that chorus
of patricians who accompany him home, and who ought, of
course, to be judges of nobility. But there is another appro-
bation wanted. Volumnia is there ; but she listens in silence.
' I muse/ he continues —
■ I muse my mother
Does not approve me further — who was wont
To call them woollen vassals, things created
To buy and sell with groats ; to show bare heads
In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder,
When one but of my ordinance stood up
To speak of peace or war. I talk of you [to Volumnia.
Why did you wish me milder 1 Would you have me
False to my nature ? [Softly] Kather say I play
The man I am.
Vol. 0 sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on,
Ere you had worn it out.
Cor. Let go.
Vol. Lesser had been
The thwarting of your dispositions, if
You had not shown them how you were disposed
Ere they lacked power to cross you.
Cor. Let them hang I 1
Vol. Ay, and burn too \
For that was the 'disposition' which these Commons, if
they had waited but a little longer, might have * lacked power
to cross! That was the disposition they had thwarted.
But then it is necessary to our purpose, as it was to the
author's, to notice that the collision in this case is a forced one.
It grows by plot. The people are put up to it. For there are
men in that commonwealth who are competent to instruct the
Commons in the doctrine of the common weal, and who are
carefully and perseveringly applying themselves to that task;
though they are men who know how to bide their time, and
they will wait till the soaring insolence of the hero is brought
into open collision with that enlightened popular will.
They will wait till the military hero's quarrel with the
commonwealth breaks out anew. For they know that it lies
394 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
in the nature of things, and cannot but occur. The eclat of
his victory, and the military pride of the nation, films it over
for a time; but the quarrel is a radical one, and cannot be
healed.
For this chief of soldiers, and would-be head and ruler of
the state knows no commonwealth. His soul is not large
enough to admit of that conception. The walls of ignorance,
that he shuts himself up in, darken and narrow his world to
the sphere of his own microcosm, — and, therefore, there is a
natural war between the world and him. The state of uni-
versal subjection, on the part of others, to his single exclusive
passions and affections, the state in which the whole is sacrificed
to the part, is the only state that will satisfy him. That is the
peace he is disposed to conquer; that is the consummation
with which he would stay ; that is his notion of state. When
that consummation is attained, or when such an approximation
to it as he judges to be within his reach, is attained, then,
and not till then, he is for conservation; — revolution then is sin;
but, till then he will have change and overturning — he will
fill the earth with rapine, and fire, and slaughter. But this is
just the peace and war principle, which this man, who pro-
poses a durable and solid peace, and the true state, a state
constructed with reference to true definitions and axioms, —
this is the peace and war principle which the man of science,
on scientific grounds, objects to. ' He likes nor peace nor war'
on those terms. The conclusions he has framed from those
solid premises which he finds in the nature of things, makes
him the leader of the opposition in both cases. In one way
or another he will make war on that peace ; he will kindle the
revolutionary fires against that conservation. In one way or
another, in one age or another, he will silence that war with
all its pomp and circumstance, with all the din of its fifes, and
drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the ignominy of
ignorant and barbaric ages, — ' for we call a nettle but a nettle/
he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, in-
stinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity,
that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 395
Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the
ethics and religion of brute force, till men shall grow sick, at
last, of the old, rusty, bygone trumpery of its insignia, and
say, { Take away those baubles/
But the hero that we deal with here, is but the pure nega-
tion of that heroism which his author conceives of, aspires to,
and will have, historical, which he defines as the pattern of
man's nature in all men. This one knows no common-wealth ;
the wealth that is wealth in his eyes, is all his own ; the weal
that he conceives of, is the weal that is warm at his own heart
only. At best he can go out of his particular only as far as
the limits of his own hearthstone, or the limits of his clique
or caste. And in his selfish passion, when that demands it, he
will sacrifice the nearest to him. As to the Commons, they
are ' but things to buy and sell with groats,' a herd, a mass,
a machine, to be informed with his single will, to be subordi-
nated to his single wishes ; in peace enduring the gnawings of
hunger, that the garners their toil has filled may overflow for
him, — enduring the badges of a degradation which blots out
the essential humanity in them, to feed his pride ; — in war
offered up in droves, to win the garland of the war for him.
That is the old hero's commonwealth. His small brain, his
brutish head, could conceive no other. The ages in which he
ruled the world with his instincts, with his fox-like cunning,
with his wolfish fury, with his dog-like ravening, — those brute
ages could know no other.
But it is the sturdy European race that the hero has to deal
with here; and though, in the moment of victory, it is ready
always to chain itself to the conqueror's car, and, in the exul-
tation of conquest, and love for the conqueror, fastens on
itself, with joy, the fetters of ages, this quarrel is always
breaking out in it anew : it does not like being governed with
the edge of the sword; — it is not fond of martial law as a per-
manent institution.
Two very sagacious tribunes these old Romans happen to
have on hand in this emergency : birds considerably too old to
be caught with this chaff of victory and military virtue, which
396 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
puts the populace into such a frenzy, and very learnedly they
talk on this subject, with a slight tendency to anachronisms in
their mode of expression, in language which sounds a little,
at times, as if they might have had access to some more recent
documents, than the archives of mythical Kome could just
then furnish to them.
But the reader should judge for himself of the correctness
of this criticism.
Refusing to join in the military procession on its way to the
Capitol, and stopping in the street for a little conference on
the subject, when it has gone by, after that vivid complaint of
the universal prostration to the military hero already quoted,
the conference proceeds thus : —
Sic. On the sudden,
I warrant him consul.
Bru. Then our 'office may,
During his power, go sleep.
Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours
From where he should begin, and end ; but will
Lose those that he hath won.
Bru. In that there's comfort.
Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand.
But they, upon their ancient malice, will
Forget, with the least cause, these his new honours ;
Which that he'll give them, make as little question
As he is proud to do't.
Bru. I heard him swear,
Were he to stand for consul, never would he
Appear i'the market-place, nor on him put
The napless vesture of humility ;
Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds
To the people, beg their stinking breaths.
Sic. 'Tis right.
Bru. It was his word : O, he would miss it, rather
Than carry it, but by the suit dthe gentry to him,
And the desire of the nobles.
Sic. I wish no better,
Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it
In execution.
Bru. 'Tis most like he will.
Sic. It shall be to him then, as our good wills
A sure destruction. , ^
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 397
Bru. So it must fall out
To him, or our authorities. For an end,
We must suggest the people, in what hatred
He still hath held them ; that to his power he would
Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders, and
Dispropertied their freedoms : [— note the expression — ]
holding them,
In human action and capacity,
Of no more soul nor fitness for the world
Than Camels in their war ; who have their provand
Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows
For sinking under them.
Sic. This as you say, suggested
At some time, when his soaring insolence
Shall teach the people (which time shall not want)
If he be put uporit ; and that's as easy
As to set dogs on sheep ; will be his fire
to kindle their dry stubble ; and their blaze
Shall darken him for ever.
[There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased,
The which observed a man may prophesy,
With a near aim of the main chance of things,
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured :
Such things become the hatch and brood of time. — Henry IV.]
Coriolanus, elected by the Senate to the consulship, proposes,
in his arrogance, as we have already seen, to dispense with the
usual form, which he understands to be a form merely, of
asking the consent of the people, and exhibiting to them his
claim to their suffrages. The tribunes have sternly withstood
this proposition, and will hear of fno jot' of encroachment
upon the dignity and state of the Commons. After the flourish
with which the election in the Senate Chamber concludes, and
the withdrawal of the Senate, again they stop to discuss, con-
fidentially, ' the situation.'
Bru. You see how he intends to use the people.
Sic. May they perceive his intent ; he will require them
As if he did contemn what they requested
Should be in their power to give.
39 8 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Bru. Come, we'll inform them
Of our proceedings here : on the market-place
I know they do attend us.
And to the market-place we go; for it is there that the
people are collecting in throngs; no bats or clubs in their
hands now, but still full of their passion of gratitude and
admiration for the hero's patriotic achievements, against the
common foe; and, under the influence of that sentiment,
wrought to its highest pitch by that action and reaction which
is the incident of the common sentiment in f the greater con-
gregations,' or ( extensive wholes,' eager to sanction with their
* approbation/ the appointment of the Senate, though the
graver sort appear to be, even then, haunted with some un-
pleasant reminiscences, and not without an occasional mis-
giving as to the wisdom of the proceeding. There is a little
tone of the former meeting lurking here still.
First Cit. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny
him.
Second Cit. We may, Sir, if we will.
Third Cit. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power
that we have no power to do. Ingratitude is monstrous : and for the
multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude, —
[There are scientific points here. This term * monstrosity ' is
one of the radical terms in the science of nature; but, like
many others, it is used in the popular sense, while the sweep
and exactitude of the scientific definition, or ' form ' is intro-
duced into it.]
— of the which, we, being members, should bring ourselves to be mon-
strous members.
First Cit. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will
serve : for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck
not to call us the wcmy-headed multitude.
Third Cit. We have been called so of many ; not that our heads are
some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits
are so diversely coloured : and truly I think, if all our wits were to issue
out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south ; and their
consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o'the
compass*
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 399
[An enigma; but the sphinx could propound no better one.
Truly this man has had good teaching. He knows how to
translate the old priestly Etruscan into the vernacular.]
Second Cit. Think you so ? Which way, do you judge, my wit
would fly 1
Third Cit. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's will,
'tis strongly wedged up in a block-head : but if it were at liberty . . .
Second Cit. You are never without your tricks : — ...
Third Cit. Are you all resolved to give your voices 1 But that's no
matter. The greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the
people, there was never a worthier man.
{Enter Coriolanus and Menenius.]
Here he conies, and in the gown of humility ; mark his behaviour.
We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands,
by ones, by twos, and by threes. He's to make his requests by parti-
culars : wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving him our
own voices with our own tongues : therefore follow me, and I'll direct
YOU HOW YOU SHALL GO BY HIM.
[The voice of the true leader is lurking here, and all through
these scenes the ' double ' meanings are thickly sown.]
All. Content, content !
Men. 0 Sir, you are not right : have you not known
The worthiest men have done it ?
Cor. What must I say ? —
I pray, Sir ? — Plague upon't ! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace : Look, Sir, my wounds ; —
I got them in my country's service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran
From the noise of our own drums.
Men. O me, the gods !
You must not speak of that ; you must desire them
To think upon you.
Cor. Think upon me ? Jiang 'em !
I would they would forget me, like the virtues
Which our divines lose by them.
Men. You'll mar all 1
I'll leave you : Pray you, speak to them, I pray you,
In wholesome manner.
[And now, instead of being thronged with a mob of citi-
zens— instructed how they are to go by him with the honor of
their single voices they enter f by twos ' and * threes.']
400 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
[Enter two Citizens.]
CJorm Bid them wash their faces,
And keep their teeth clean.— So, here comes a brace,
You know the cause, Sir, of my standing here.
First Cit. We do, Sir ; tell us what hath brought you to\
Cor. Mine own desert.— [The would-be consul answers.]
Second Cit. Your own desert 1
Cor. Ay, not
Mine own desire.
[His own desert has brought him to the consulship; his own
desire would have omitted the conciliation of the people, and
the deference to their will, that with all his desert somehow he
seems to find expected from him.]
First Cit. How ! not your own desire !
Cor. No, Sir.
'Twas never my desire yet,
To trouble the poor with begging.
He desires what the poor have to give him however; but he
desires to take it, without begging. But it is the heart of the
true hero that speaks in earnest through that mockery, and the
reference is to a state of things towards which the whole criti-
cism of the play is steadfastly pointed, a state in which sove-
reigns were reluctantly compelled to beg from the poor, what
they would rather have taken without their leave, or, at least,
a state in which the form of this begging was still maintained,
though there lacked but little to make it a form only, a state
of things in which a country gentleman might be called on to
sell 'his brass pans' without being supplied, on the part of the
State, with what might appear, to him, any respectable reason
for it, putting his life in peril, and coming off, with a hair's-
breadth escape, of all his future usefulness, if he were bold
enough to question the proceeding; a state of things in which
a poor law-reader might feel himself called upon to buy a
gown for a lady, whose gowns were none of the cheapest, at a
time when the state of his finances might render it extremely
inconvenient to do so.
But to return to the Roman citizen, for the play is written
by one who knows that the human nature is what it is in all
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 401
ages, or, at least, until it is improved with better arts of culture
than the world has yet tried on it.
First Cit. You must think, if we give you anything.
We hope to gain by you.
Cor. Well then, I pray, your price o'thb consulship 1
First Cit. The price is, Sir, to ask it kindly.
Cor. Kindly 1
Sir, I pray let me ha't : I have wounds to show you,
Which shall be yours in private. — Your good voice, Sir ;
What say you ?
Second Cit. You shall have it, worthy Sir.
Cor: A match, Sir :
There is in all two worthy voices begg'd : —
I have your alms ; adieu.
First Cit. But this is something odd.
Second Cit. An 'twere to give again, — But 'tis no matter.
[Exeunt two Citizens.]
[Enter two other Citizens.]
Cor. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices,
that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.
Third Cit. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have
not deserved nobly.
Cor. Your enigma ?
Third Cit. You have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a
rod to her friends ; you have not indeed, loved the common people.
Cor. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been
common in my love. I will, Sir, natter my sworn brother the people,
to earn a dearer estimation of them ; 'tis a condition they account
gentle : and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my
hat than my heart, 1 will practise the insinuating nod, and be off to
them most counterfeitly ; that is, Sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment
of some popular man, and give it bountifully to the desirers. Therefore,
beseech you, I may be consul.
Fourth Cit. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you
our voices heartily.
Third Cit. You have received many wounds for your country.
Cor. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make
much of your voices, and so trouble you no further.
Both Cit. The gods give you joy, Sir, heartily ! [Exeunt.
Cor. Most sweet voices ! —
Better it is to die, better to starve,
Rather than fool it so,
Let the high office and the honour go
D D
402 THE CURE OF THE COMMON WEAL.
To one that would do thus. — I am half through ;
The one part suffer* d, the other will I do.
[Enter three other Citizens.]
Here come more voices, —
Your voices : for your voices 1 have fought :
Watch' d for your voices ; for your voices, bear
Of wounds two dozen odd ; battles thrice six,
I have seen and heard of; for your voices.
Done many things, some less, some more : your voices :
Indeed, I would be consul.
Fifth Cit. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's
voice.
Sixth Cit. Therefore let him be consul: The gods give him joy, and
make him good friend to the people.
All. Amen, Amen.
God save thee, noble consul ! [Exeunt Citizens]
Cor. Worthy voices !
[Re-enter Menenius, with the tribunes Brutus, and Sicinius.]
Men. You have stood your limitation ; and the tribunes
Endue you with the people's voice : Remains,
That in the official marks invested, you
Anon do meet the senate.
Cor. Is this done 1
Sic. The custom of request you have discharged :
The people do admit you ; and are summoned
To meet anon, upon your approbation.
Cor. Where 1 At the senate-house ?
Sic. There Coriolanus.
Cor. May I change these garments ?
Sic. You may, Sir.
Cor. That I'll straight do, and knowing myself again,
Repair to the senate house.
Men. I'll keep you company. — Will you along.
Bru. We stay here for the people.
Sic. Fare you well.
[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]
Be has it now; and by his looks, methinks,
'Tis warm at his heart.
Bru. With a proud heart he wore
His humble weeds : Will you dismiss the people 1
[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the
review, the critical review, is that which must follow, for this
THE POPULAR ELECTION.
403
is not the same people we had on the stage when the play-
began. They are the same in person, perhaps; but it is no
longer a mob, armed with clubs, clamouring for bread, rushing
forth to kill their chiefs, and have corn at their own price.
It is a people conscious of their political power and dignity,
an organised people ; it is a people with a constituted head,
capable of instructing them in the doctrine of political duties
and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this review of
the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned
Tribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom,
this great, popular veto, this deliberate ' rejection ' of the
popular affirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, ' a
negative instance/]
[Re-enter Citizens.]
Sic. How now, my masters ? have you chose this man 1
First Cit. He has our voices, Sir.
Bru. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.
Second Cit. Amen, Sir : To rny poor unworthy notice,
He mocked us when he hegcfd our voices.
Third Cit. Certainly
He flouted us downright.
First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech ; he did not mock us.
Second Cit. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says,
He used us scornfully : he should have show'd us
His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.
Sic. Why, so he did, I am sure.
Cit. No ; no man saw 'em. [Several speak.
Third Cit. He said he had wounds which he could show in private ;
And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,
1 1 would he consul? says he, ' aged custom,
But bt tour voices, will not so permit me ;
Your voices therefore :' When we granted that,
Here was, — ' I thank you for your voices, — thank you, —
Your most sweet voices : — now you have left your voices,
I have no further with you ;' Was not this mockery ?
Sic. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't 1
Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness
To yield your voices ?
Bru. Could you not have told him
As you were lesson'd — when he had no power,
But was a petty servant to the state,
He was your enemy ; ever spake against
dd2
404 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Your liberties, and the charters that you bear
T the body of the weal : and now arriving
A place of potency, and sway o' the state,
If he should still malignantly remain
Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might
£e CURSES tO YOURSELVES.
£iCt Thus to have said
As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit,
And tried his inclination ; from him plucked,
Either his gracious promise, which you might,
As cause had called you up, have held him to ;
Or else it would have galled his surly nature,
Which easily endures, not article
Tying him to aught;— so putting him to rage,
You should have ta'en advantage of his choler,
And so left him unelected.
[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old Roman states-
men to give, and not so very unlike those which English
Commons found occasion to put in execution not long after.]
Bru. Did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt,
When he did need your loves ; and do you think
That his contempt shall not be bruising to you,
When he hath power to crush ? Why had your bodies
No heart among you, or had you tongues
To cry against the rectorship of— judgment?
sic. Have y°u
Ere now, deny'd the asker, and now again,
On him that did not ask, but mock, [with a pretence of
asking,] bestow
Your sued for tongues 1
Third Cit He's not confirmed, we may deny him yet.
Second Cit. And will deny him :
Til have five hundred voices of that sound.
First Cit. J, twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.
Bru. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends,
They have chose a consul that will from them
Take their liberties, make them op no more voice
Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking,
As KEPT TO DO SO.
^•c# Let them assemble,
And on a safer judgment, all revoke
Your ignorant election.
Bru. W
A fault on us, your tribunes ; that we laboured,
No impediment between, but that you must
Cast your election on him.
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 405
fife Say, you chose him
More after our commandment, than as guided
By your own true affections, and that your minds,
Pre-oceupied with what you rather must do,
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul : lay the fault on us.
Bru. Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you,
How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued, and what stock he springs of ;*
The noble house o' the Marcians, from whence came,
That Ancus Martius, Numds daughter's son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king :
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our best water brought by conduits hither ;
And Censorinus, darling of the people,
And nobly named so, being censor twice,
Was his great ancestor.
[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at
all. His reading and writing comes by nature.]
wi One thus descended,
That hath beside well in his person wrought,
To be set high in place, we did commend
To your remembrances ; but you have found,
Scaling his present bearing with his past,
That he's your fixed enemy, and revoke
Your sudden approbation.
Bru. Say you ne'er had done't, —
Harp on that still, — but by our putting on,
And presently when you have drawn your number,
Repair to the Capitol.
Citizens. [Several speak.] We will so. Almost all
Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens
Bru. Let them go on.
This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater ;
If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger.
Sic. To the Capitol:
Come, we'll be there before the stream o' the people,
And this shall seem, as partly 'tis, their own
Which WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.
* See the Play of Henry the Seventh, Founder of the Elizabethan
Tyranny, by the same author.
406 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
We have witnessed the popular election on the scientific
boards: we have seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil
confirmation of the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have
seen it in the senate-chamber and in the market-place, and we
saw it in ' the smothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and
on ' the leads and ridges* : we have seen and heard it, not in
the shower and thunder that the commons made with their
caps and voices only, but in the scarfs, and gloves, and handker-
chiefs, which ' the ladies, and maids, and matrons threw.' We
have seen each single contribution to this great public act put
in by the Poet's selected representative of classes. ' The kitchen
malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck, clamber-
ing the wall to eye him/ spake for hers ; ' the seld-shown flamen,
purring his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to
record the vote of his ; ( the veiled dame, exposing the war of
white and damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of
Phebus' burning kisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distri-
bution of the tribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; ' the
prattling nurse/ who will give her baby that is ' crying itself
into a rapture there, while she chats him ' her reminiscence of
this scene by and by, was there to give the nurses' appro-
bation.
For this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up
and count, when he comes to review at last, fin a better hour/
these spontaneous public acts — these momentous acts that
seal up the future, and bind the unborn generations of the
advancing kind with the cramp of their fetters. Not less care-
ful than this is the analysis when he undertakes to track to its
historic source one of those practical axioms, one of those
received beliefs, which he finds determining the human con-
duct, limiting the human history, moulding the characters of
men, determining beforehand what they shall be. This is the
process when he undertakes, to get one of these rude, instinc-
tive, spontaneous affirmations — one of those idols of the
market or of the Tribe — reviewed and criticised by the heads
of the Tribe, at least, ' in a better hour/ — criticised and re-
jected. ' Proceeding by negatives and exclusion first' : this is
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 407
the form in which this Tribune puts on record his scientific
veto of that c ignorant election.'
And in this so carefully selected and condensed combination
of historical spectacles — in this so new, this so magnificently
illustrated political history — there is another historic moment
to be brought out now ; and in this same form of * visible
history/ one not less important than those already exhibited.
In the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement,
the great historic spectacle of a people ' revoking their
IGNORANT ELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of
those same remarkable leaders, whose voice had been wanting
(as they are careful to inform us) till then in the business of
the state; leaders who contrive at last to inform the people, in
plain terms, that they ' are at point to lose their liberties,' that
' Marcius will have all from them/ and who apologise for their
conduct afterwards by saying, that \ he affected one sole throne,
without assistance' ; for the time had come when the Tribune
could repeat the Poet's whisper, ' The one side shall have
bale:
This so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited
here in all its actual historical detail. It is produced by one
who is able to include in his dramatic programme the whole
sweep of its eventualities, the whole range of its particulars,
because he has made himself acquainted with the forces, he
has ascended, by scientifically inclusive definition, to the
* powers' that are to be l operant' in it ; and he who has that
1 charactery' of nature, may indeed ' lay the future open.' We
talk of prophecy ; but there is nothing in literature to compare
at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction.
There is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars,
in its comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.
But this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make
before that revolutionary movement, which in its weak begin-
nings in his time lay intreasured, should proceed any further
— this preliminary speech, with its so vivid political illustra-
tion, is not yet finished. The true doctrine of an instructed
scientific election and government, that * vintage' of politics —
408 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
that vintage of scientific definitions and axioms which he is
getting out of this new kind of history — that new vintage of
the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted history,
will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with
the popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that
it begins with affirmation — but that is the method for gods,
and not men — men must begin with negations; they must
have tables of review of instances, tables of negation, tables of
rejection ; and divide nature, not with fire, but with the mind,
that divine fire. If the mind attempt this affirmation from
the first,' he says, 'which it always will when left to itself
there will spring up phantoms, mere theories, and ill-defined
notions, with axioms requiring daily correction. These will be
better or worse, according to the power and strength of the
understanding which creates them. But it is only for God to
recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of contempla-
tion; men can only proceed first by negatives, and then to
conclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection/
And though he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed
with the nature of heat, at the moment in which he first
produces these new scientific instruments, which he calls tables
of review, and explains their 'facilities,' he tells us plainly,
that they are adapted to other subjects, and that those affirma-
tions which are most essential to the welfare of man, will in
due time come off from them, practical axioms on matters of
universal and incessant practical concern, that will not want
daily correction, that will not want revolutionary correction, to
fit them to the exigency.
The question here is not of * heat,' but of sovereignty;
it is the question of the consulship, regarded from the ground
of the tribuneship. It js_jiot _Coriolanus that this tribunejs^
^s^ej^n^j^inuch/breath on. The instincts, which unanalytic,
barbaric ages, enthrone anoTmistake for greatness_and nobility,
are tried and rejected here; and the business of the playis^jp,
jyeCthem excluded jrom~tne ^chair of Ttate. The philosopher
will have those instincts which men7in~~their ' particular and
private natures/ share with the lower orders of animals,
THE POPULAR ELECTION. 409
searched out, and put in their place in human affairs, which is
not, as he takes it, the head — the head of the common-
weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all
against him — he is partial to him, rather; it is not Coriolanus
but the instincts that are on trial here, and the man — the so-
called man — of instinct, who has no principle of state and
sovereignty, no principle of true ma/iliness and nobility in his
soul; and the trial is not yet completed. The author would
be glad to have that revolution which he has inserted in the
heart of this play deferred, if that were possible, though he
knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a saving of trouble
if it could be deferred until some true and scientifically pre-
pared notions, some practical axioms, which would not need in
their turn fierce historical correction — revolutionary correction
— could be imparted to the common mind.
But we must follow him in this process of division and ex-
clusion a little further, before we come in our plot to the
revolution. That revolution which he foresees as imminent
and inevitable, he has put on paper here : but there is another
lurking within, for which we are not yet ripe. This locked-up
tribune will have to get abroad ; he will have to get his limits
enlarged, and find his way into some new departments, before
ever that can begin.
4lO THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.
'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he
doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and sup-
plied.' A dvancemen t of Learning.
* We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part;
for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'
Novum Organum.
AS to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry,
which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the
most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was
expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolu-
tion, to touch them — in an age, too, when Parliaments were
lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for con-
tumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state —
in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the
pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday dis-
course, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold
their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to
touch upon ' questions of church,' on a day when the Head of
the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest
ruff, and ' rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew;
— as to the method of the philosophical investigations which
were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there
was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method
merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no
harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner,
accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently spe-
cific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects.
There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little,
and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 411
of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary man-
ner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets.
As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly
harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing
in nature than * your philosophy/ then, so far as any overt
acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the
world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about
then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking,
or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men
of letters could understand it ? The modern Solomon was fain
to confess that, for his part, he could not — that it was be-
yond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh,
by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and
lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own
personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was
making so much noise in the world, and promising to go
down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make
it illustrious in future ages.
. There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his
method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in
regard to its applications to i certain subjects.' As to what
the Author of it did with it himself — that, of course, was
another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as
it happened.
So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this
great and greatest innovation in its practice — so totally un-
accustomed were men then to look for anything like power in
the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding — so im-
possible was it for this single book to remove that previous
impression — that the Author of the Novum Organum could
even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its
specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infre-
quent allusions to the comprehensive nature — the essentially
comprehensive nature — of ' the Machine,' whose application to
these certain instances he is at such pains to specify ; he could,
indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this
so portentous quality of it.
412 THE CURE OP THE COMMON -WEAL.
Nay, lie could go farther than that, and venture to assert
openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit
of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does
apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which
the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at
once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that
end.
Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was
put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when
he dedicated it to the human use — when he appealed in its
behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those
that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us ; he tells us
in that same moment, what one who studies the Novum
Organum with the key of ' Times' does not need to be told —
can see for himself — that in his description of the method he
has already contrived to make the application, the universal
practical application.
In his prerogative INSTANCES, the mind of man is
brought out already from its SPECIPIC narrowness, from its
own abstract logical conceits and arrogant prenotions, into
that collision with fact — the broader fact, the universal fact
— and subjected to that discipline from it which is the
intention of this logic. It is a ' machine' which is meant to
serve to Man as a * New1 Mind — the scientific mind, which is
in harmony with nature — a mind informed and enlarged with
the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the sponta-
neous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind
of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions
and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly
pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making
a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties
which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments of his
welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is a
Machine in which the senses, those hitherto despised instru-
ments in philosophy, by means of a scientific rule and oversight,
and with the aid of scientific instruments, are made available
for philosophic purposes. It is a Machine in which that or-
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 413
ganization whereby the universal nature impresses itself on us
— reports itself to us — striking its incessant telegraphs on us,
whether we read them or not, is for the first time brought to
the philosopher's aid; and it is a Machine, also, by wThich
speculation, that hitherto despised instrument in practice, is for
the first time, brought to the aid of the man of practice. It
is doubly 4 New* : it is a Machine in which speculation be-
comes practical — it is a Machine in which practice becomes
scientific.*
In * the prerogative instances/ the universal matter
of fact is already taken up and disposed of in grand masses,
under these headships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous,
but scientific manner. The Nature of Things is all there ; for
this is a Logic which bows the mind of man to the law of the
universal nature, and informs and enlarges it with that. It is
not a Logic merely in the old sense of that term. The old
Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew out of it,
are the things which this Machine is going to puff" away, with
the mere whifF and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse
for ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been
limited, but a philosophy. A logic in which the general
'notions of nature ' which are causes, powers, simple powers,
elemental powers, true differences, are substituted for those
spontaneous, rude, uncorrected, specific notions, — jore-notions
of men, which have in that form, as they stand thus, no
correlative in nature, and are therefore impotent — not true
terms and forms, but air-words, air-lines, merely. It is a logic
which includes the Mind of Nature, and her laws; and not
one which is limited to the mind of Man, and so fitted to its
incapacity as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate
him in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by
rule, and set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.
* Fool. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his
face 1
Lear. No.
Fool. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot
smell out, he may spy into.
414 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
The universal history, all of it that the mind of man is
constituted to grasp, is here in the general, under these PRE-
ROGATIVE INSTANCES, in the luminous order of the Inventor
of this science, blazing throughout with his genius, and the
mind that has abolished its prenotions, and renounced its
rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies, and has taken this
scientific Organ um instead; has armed itself with the Nature
of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all specifications
and particulars.
The author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic ar-
rangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in
this great work of his, the work in which he openly introduces
his innovation, — as that — will fall off by and by, when
there is no longer any need of them. They are but the natural
guards with which great Nature, working in the instinct of the
philosophic genius, protects her choicest growth,— the husk of
that grain which must have times, and a time to grow in, — the
bark which the sap must stop to build, ere its delicate works
within are safe. They are like the sheaths with which she hides
through frost and wind and shower, until their hour has come,
her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning, her
struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial
triumphs.
In the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this com-
plicated network of superficial divisions, the man of humour,
who is always not far off' and ready to assist in the priestly minis-
trations as he sees occasion, gently directs our attention to those
more simple and natural divisions of the subject, and those
more immediately practical terms, which it might be possible to
use, under certain circumstances, in speaking of the same sub-
jects, into which, however, these are easily resolvable, as soon as
the right point of observation is taken. Through all this
haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the outline of
those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly pro-
duced— under their scholastic names, indeed, — in his book of
the Advancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly
continue, in a work produced professedly, as a practical instru-
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 415
ment fit for application to immediate use, and where the true
application is constantly entering the vitals of subjects too deli-
cate to be openly glanced at then.
But he gives us to understand, however, that he has made
the application of this method to practice, in a much more spe-
cific, detailed manner, in another place, that he has brought it
down from those more general forms of the Novum Organum,
into ' the nobler ' departments, ' the more chosen* departments
of that universal field of human practice, which the Novum
Organum takes up in its great outline, and boldly and clearly
claims in the general, though when it comes to specific appli-
cations and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike, or appear to
strike, into that one track of practice, which was the only one
left open to it then, — which it keeps still as rigidly as if it had
no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk
of 'universality/ and carried it with his own hand into the
minutest points and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres,
those living articulations in which the grand natural divisions
he indicates here, naturally terminate ; the divisions which the
philosopher who ■ makes the Art and Practic part of life, the
mistress to his Theoric,' must of course follow. He tells us
that he has applied it to particular arts, to those depart-
ments of the human experience and practice in which the need
of a rule is most felt, and where things have been suffered to
go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous manner, and that
his axioms of practice in these departments have been so
scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they
will be apt to know their way to particulars again; — that
their specifications are at the same time so comprehensive and
so minute, that he considers them fit for immediate use, or at
least so far forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part
of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice.
The process being, of course, in this application to the exigen-
cies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technical-
ities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he
was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his pro-
fessedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly prac-
tical scientific work,
4 1 6 THE CURE OP THE COMMON-WEAL.
But these so important applications of his philosophy to
practice, of which he issues so fair a prospectus, though he
frequently refers to them, could not then be published. The
time had not come, and personally, he was obliged to leave,
before it came. He was careful, however, to make the best
provision which could be made, under such circumstances, for
the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a will. These
works of practice could not then be published ; and if they could
have been, there was no public then ready for them. They could
not be published-, but there was nothing to hinder their being
put under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in
packing them up in a portable form, under lids and covers of
one sort and another, so unexceptionable, that all the world
could carry them about, for a century or two, and not perceive
that there was any harm in them. Very curiously wrought
covers they might be too, with some taste of the wonders of
mine art pressing through, a little here and there. They
might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in
one case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another ;
but in such a manner as to command, in both cases, the ad-
miration and wonder of men, so as to pique perpetually their
curiosity and provoke inquiry, until the time had come and
the key was found.
1 Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does some-
times in the historical plural of his, philosophic chair, — ' this
question, rather than objection' — [it was much to be preferred
in that form certainly] — whether we talk of perfecting natu-
ral philosophy alone, according to our method, or the
other sciences such as— ethics, logic, politics.' A pretty
question to raise just then, truly, though this philosopher sees
fit to take it so demurely. * Whether we talk of perfecting
politics with our method,' Elizabethan politics,-- and not poli-
tics only, but whether we talk of perfecting ' ethics ' with it
also, and ' logic, — common logic,' which last is as much in
need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of perfect-
ing of that. is the reform in the others. fWe certainly in-
tend,'— the emphasis here is on the word ' certainly,' though
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 417
the reader who has not the key of the times may not perceive
it; * We certainly intend to comprehend them all/ For
this is the author whose words are most of them emphatic.
We must read his sentences more than once to get all the em-
phasis. We certainly intend to comprehend them all.
* We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing that word
in another place, and putting this intention into the shape of a
promise.
And as common logic which regulates matters by syllogism is
applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, so our
inductive method likewise, comprehends them all. — Again —
[he thinks this bears repeating, repeating in this connection, for
now he is measuring the claims of this new method, this new
logic, with the claims of that which he finds in possession, re-
gulating matters by syllogism, not producing a very logical
result, however :] c For we form a history, and tables of inven-
tion, for ANGER, FEAR, SHAME, and the like, [that is we form
a history and tables of invention for the passions or affections,]
and also for examples in civil life, and the mental
OPERATIONS as well as for HEAT, COLD, LIGHT,
vegetation and the like; and he directs us to the
Fourth Part of the Instauration, which he reserves for his
noblest and more chosen subjects for the confirmation of this
assertion.
* But since our method of interpretation, after preparing and
arranging a history, does not content itself with examining
the opinions and desires of the mind — [hear] — like common
logic, but also inspects the nature of things, we so regulate
the mind that it may be enabled to apply itself, in every respect,
correctly to that nature^ Our examples in this part of the work,
which is but a small and preparatory part of it, are limited, as
you will observe, to heat, cold, light, vegetation, and the like;
but this is the explanation of the general intention, which will
enable you to disregard that circumstance in your reading of
it. Those examples will serve their purpose with the minds
that they detain. They are preparatory, and greatly useful.
But if you read this new logic from the height of this ex-
E E
41 8 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
planation, you will have a mind, formed by that process, able
to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to the subjects
omitted here by name, but so clearly claimed, not as the
proper subjects only, but as the actual subjects of the new
investigation. But lest you should not understand this ex-
planation, he continues—' On this account we deliver necessary
and various precepts in our doctrine of interpretation, so that we
may apply, in some measure, to the method of discovering the
quality and condition of the subject matter of investigation.1
And this is the apology for omitting here, or seeming to omit,
such sciences as Ethics, Politics, and that science which is
alluded to under the name of Common Logic.
This is, indeed, a very instructive paragraph, though it is a
gratuitous one for the scholar who has found leisure to read
this work with the aid of that doctrine of interpretation referred
to, especially if he is already familiar with its particular
applications to the noble subjects just specified.
Among the prerogative instances — ' suggestive instances '
are included— 'such as suggest or point out that which is advan-
tageous to mankind; for hare power and knowledge in themselves
exalt, rather than enrich, human nature. We shall have a better
opportunity of discovering these, when we treat of the application
to practice. Besides, in the work of interpretation, we
leave ROOM ON eyery subject for the human or optative
part; FOR IT IS A PART OF SCIENCE, to make JUDICIOUS
inquiries and wishes.' 'The generally useful instances.
They are such as relate to various points, and frequently occur,
sparing by that means considerable labour and new trials. The
proper place for speaking of instruments, and contrivances, will
be that in which we speak of application to practice, and the
method of experiment. All that has hitherto been ascertained
and made use of, will be applied in the particular his-
tory of each art.' [We certainly intend to include them
ALL, such as Ethics, Politics, and Common Logic]
' We have now, therefore, exhibited the species, or simple
elements of the motions, tendencies, and active powers, which are
most universal in nature; and no small portion of natural,
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 419
that is, universal science, has been sketched out. We do
not, however, deny that other instances can, perhaps, be
added ' (he has confined himself chiefly to the physical agencies
under this head, with a sidelong glance at others, now and
then), ' and our divisions changed to some more natural order of
things [hear], and also reduced to a less number [hear], in
which respect we do not allude to any abstract classification, as
if one were to say,' — and he quotes here, in this apparently
disparaging manner, his own grand, new-coined classification,
which he has drawn out with his new method from the heart
of nature, and applied to the human, — which he had to go into
the universal nature to find, that very classification which he
has exhibited abstractly in his Advancement of Learning — ab-
stractly, and, therefore, without coming into any dangerous
contact with any one's preconceptions, — 'as if one were to
say, that bodies desire the preservation, exaltation, propagation,
or fruition of their natures; or, that motion tends to the pre-
servation and benefit, either of the universe, as in the case
of the motions of resistance and connection — those two universal
motions and tendencies — or of extensive wholes, as in
the case of those of the greater congregation.9 These are
phrases which look innocent enough; there is no offensive
approximation to particulars here, apparently ; what harm can
there be in the philosophy of ( extensive wholes,' and \ larger
congregations'? Nobody can call that meddling with \ church
and state.' Surely one may speak of the nature of things in
general, under such general terms as these, without being sus-
pected of an intention to innovate. ' Have you heard the ar-
gument?' says the king to Hamlet. ' Is there no offence in it?'
' None in the world.' But the philosopher goes on, and does come
occasionally, even here, to words which begin to sound a little
suspicious in such connexions, or would, if one did not know
how general the intention must be in this application of them.
They are abstract terms, and, of course, nobody need see that
they are a different kind of abstraction from the old ones, that
the grappling-hook on all particulars has been abstracted in
them. Suppose one were to say, then, to resume, ' that motion
E E 2
420 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the universe, as
in the case of the motions of resistance and connection, or of
extensive wholes, as in the case of the motions of the greater
congregation — [what are these motions, then?] — REVOLU-
TION and ABHORRENCE of CHANGE, or of particular forms, as
in the case of the others? This looks a little like growing
towards a point. We are apt to consider these motions in
certain specific forms, as they appear in those extensive wholes
and larger congregations, which it is not necessary to name
more particularly in this connection, though they are terms of
a ' suggestive' character, to borrow the author's own expression,
and belong properly to subjects which this author has just
included in his system.
But this is none other than his own philosophy which he
seems to be criticising, and rating, and rejecting here so scorn-
fully; but if we go on a little further, we shall find what the
criticism amounts to, and that it is only the limitation of it to
the general statement — that it is the abstract form of it, which
he complains of. He wishes to direct our attention to the fact,
that he does not consider it good for anything in that general
form in which he has put it in his Book of Learning. This
is the deficiency which he is always pointing out in that work,
because this is the deficiency which it has been his chief
labour to supply. Till that defect, that grand defect which
his philosophy exhibits, as it stands in his books of abstract
science, is supplied — that defect to which, even in these works
themselves, he is always directing our attention — he cannot,
without self-contradiction, propound his philosophy to the
world as a practical one, good for human relief.
In order that it should accomplish the ends to which it is
addressed, it is not enough, he tells us in so many words, to
exhibit it in the abstract, in general terms, for these are but
« the husks and shells of sciences.' It must be brought down
and applied to those artistic reformations which afflicted,
oppressed human nature demands — to those artistic construc-
tions to which human nature spontaneously, instinctively
tends, and empirically struggles to achieve.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 42 1
'For although? he continues, l such remarks — those last
quoted — be just, unless they terminate in matter and con-
struction, according to the true definitions, they are
speculative, and of little USE.' But in the Novum Or-
ganum, those more natural divisions are reduced to a form in
which it IS possible to commence practice with them at once, in
certain departments, where there is no objection to innovation,
— where the proposal for the relief of the human estate is met
without opposition, — where the new scientific achievements
in the conquest of nature are met with a universal, unanimous
human plaudit and gratulation.
' In the meantime? he continues, after condemning those
abstract terms, and declaring, that unless they terminate in
matter and construction, according to true definitions, they are
speculative, and of little use — ' In the meantime, our classification
will suffice, and be of much use in the consideration of the
predominance of powers, and examining the wrestling
INSTANCES, which constitute our PRESENT SUBJECT.' [The
subject that was present then. The question.]
So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these
passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a
closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular in-
stances, which are not there instanced, — for those more critical
1 WRESTLING INSTANCES ' which the scientific re-constructions,
according to true definitions, in the higher departments of
human want will constitute, — those wrestling instances, which
will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns
itself experimentally with the question of the predominance
of powers — the philosophy which includes in its programme
the practical application of the principles of revolution and
abhorrence of change, in ' greater congregations ' and * exten-
sive wholes,' as well as the principles of motion in ' particular
forms ' — shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest
subjects. That is the philosophy which dismisses its techni-
calities, which finds such words as these when the question of
the predominance of powers, and the question of revolution
and abhorrence of change in the greater congregations and
422 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
extensive wholes, comes to be practically handled. This is
the way we philosophise ' when we come to particulars.'
1 In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen. In a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'
That is what we should call, in a general way, ' the motion
of revolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment
in which it predominates over ' the abhorrence of change,' if not
in the extensive whole — if not in the whole of the greater
congregation, in that part of it for whom this one speaks; and
this is the critical moment which the man of science makes so
much of,— brings out so scientifically, so elaborately in this ex-
periment. But this is a part of science which he is mainly
familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion
of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger
motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty
motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the
minds of the leaders of it, and with their feathers weight
turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely
balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of
powers without it.
'But for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as 1 myself.
I was born free as Caesar ; so were you.
* * *
Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus ; and we, petty men,
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar. What should be in that Caesar ?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours 1
Conjure with them ;
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now in the name of all the gods at once,
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 423
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great ? Age, thou art shamed :
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods.
When went there by an Age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man ?
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompassed but One Man ?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough.
When there is in it but One Only Man.
* * *
What you would work me to, I have some aim ;
How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter.
Now could 1, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night ;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol,
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action ; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful as these strange eruptions are?
1 'T is Caesar that you mean : Is it not, Cassius V
1 Let it be — who it is : for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.
* * *
Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,
Begin it with — weak straws. What trash is — Rome (?)
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as — Caesar. But —
1 perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman.'
And here is another case where the question of the pre-
dominance of\ powers arises. In this instance, it is the
question of British freedom that comes up; and the tribute —
not the tax — that a Caesar — the first Caesar himself, had
exacted, is refused l in a better hour,' by a people kindling
with ancestral recollections, throwing themselves upon their
ancient rights, and ' the natural bravery of their isle,1 and
ready to re-assert their ancient liberties.
The Ambassador of Augustus makes his master's complaint
424 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
at the British Court. The answer of the State runs thus,
king, queen and prince taking part in it, as the Poet's con-
venience seems to require.
'This tribute,' complains the Eoman; * by thee, lately, is
left untendered.'
Queen. And, to kill the marvel,
Shall be so ever.
Prince Cloten. There be many Caesars,
Ere such another Julius. Britain is
A world by itself ; and we will nothing pay
For wearing our own noses. [General principles.
Queen. That opportunity
Which then they had to take from us, to resume
We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,
[It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]
The kings your ancestors ; together with
The natural bravery of your isle ; which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
"With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters ;
With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast.
# # *
Cloten. Come, there 's no more tribute to be paid : Our kingdom
is stronger than it was at that time ; and, as I said, there is no more
such Caesars : other of them may have crooked noses ; but, to owe
such straight arms, none.
Cymbeline. Son, let your mother end.
Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan :
I do not say, 1 am one ; but 1 have a hand. — ^hy tribute ? Why
should we pay tribute ? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a
blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute
for light ; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.
Cymbeline. You must know,
Till the injurious Romans did extort
This tribute from us, we were free : Caesar's ambition
against all colour, here
Did put the yoke upon us ; which to shake off,
Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon
Ourselves to be. We do say then to Caesar,
Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which
Ordained our laws, whose use the sword of Caesar
Hath too much mangled ; whose repair and franchise,
Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS. 425
Mulmutius made our laws,
Who was the first of Britain which did put
His brows within a golden crown, and called
Himself a king.
That is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a
people who have such an ancestor to refer to ; no matter what
costume he comes in. This is Caesar in Britain ; and though
Prince Cloten appears to incline naturally to prose, as the
medium best adapted to the expression of his views, the
blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus and
Cassius, and seems to run in their vein very much.
It is in some such terms as these that we handle those
universal motions on whose balance the welfare of the world
depends — ' the motions of resistance and connection,' as the
Elizabethan philosopher, with a broader grasp than the New-
tonian, calls them — when we come to the diagrams which
represent particulars. This is the kind of language which this
author adopts when he comes to the modifications of those
motions which are incident to extensive wholes in the case of
the greater congregations ; that is, * revolution* and * abhorrence
of change,' and to those which belong to particular forms also.
For it is the science of life ; and when the universal science
touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious
than this. It will have the particular of life here also. It will
not have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have
abstract butterflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the
kind of * loud' talk that one is apt to hear in this man's school;
and the clash and clang that this very play now under review
is full of, is just the noise that is sure to come out of his labora-
tory, whenever he gets upon one of these experiments in ' exten-
sive wholes/ which he is so fond of trying. It is the noise
that one always hears on his stage, whenever the question of
' particular forms' and predominance of powers comes to be put
experimentally, at least, in this class of * wrestling instances.'
For we have here a form of composition in which that more
simple and natural order above referred to is adopted — where
those clear scientific classifications, which this author himself
426 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
plainly exhibits in another scientific work, though he disguises
them in the Novum Organum, are again brought out, no
longer in the abstract, but grappling the matter; where, in-
stead of the scientific technicalities just quoted — instead of
those abstract terms, such as f extensive wholes/ ' greater con-
gregation,' ' fruition of their natures/ and the like — we have
terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but more
livino- — words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific
condensations — reddening with the glow, or whitening with
the calm, of its ideal intensities — pursuing it everywhere —
everywhere, to the last height of its poetic fervors and ex-
altations.
And it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue
from this { source' — it is because it proceeds from this scientific
centre, on the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and
refrangibilities of the universal beam — it is because all this
inexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded
with the fibre of the universal science — it is because all these
thick-flowering imaginations, these * mellow hangings/ are
hung upon the stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the
prima philosophia — it is because of this that men find it so
prophetic, so inclusive, so magical; this is the reason they find
all in it. ' I have either told, or designed to tell, all,' says the
expositor of these plays. * What I cannot speak, I point out
with my finger.' For all the building of this genius is a
building on that scientific ground-plan he has left us; and that
is a plan which includes all the human field. It is the plan of
the Great Instauration.
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 427
CHAPTER VII.
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.
4 My boy Marcius approaches.'
4 Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field.'
Is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth
concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them,
is to reduce them ad principia ; a rule in religion and nature, as well
as in civil administration? [Again.] Was not the Persian magic a
reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature
to the rules and policy of governments?' — [_* Questions to be asked.y
— Advancement of Learning.
TT is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims,
■*■ which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is
enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which
he finds in his time * chiefest among men, and that which
most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his
time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust,
with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and
dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the
entail of it to the crack of doom — no matter what ' goslings'
the law of entail may devolve it on.
He makes use of this incident to complete that separation
he is effecting in the hitherto un analysed, ill-defined, popular
notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice —
that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the
principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true prin-
ciples of heroism and nobility, the true principle of subjection
and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the
common-weal.
That martial virtue has been under criticism and suspicion
from the beginning of this action. It was shown from the
first — from that ground and point of observation which the
428 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
sufferings of the diseased common- weal made for it — in no
favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the
person of its Hero, as ' a dog to the commonalty.' It is one, of
the wretched ' commons' who invents, in his distress, that title
for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only,
but dramatically, as something more brutish than that — eat-
ing the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and
gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, ' tooth and
fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men
share with ' rats'. It was brought out from the first, and ex-
hibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The
Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of
that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone.
It was brought out from the first — it came tramping on in
the first act, in the first scene — with its sneer at the commons'
distress, longing to make ' a quarry of the quartered slaves, as
high* as the plumed hero of it ' could prick his lance'; and
that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do
sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to
instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so
impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down
to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to
induct them experimentally into the doctrine of l extensive
wholes,' and ' larger congregations,' and ' the predominance of
powers.' And it so happened, that the threat above quoted
was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning
house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years
before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this
author chanced to be the man to know.
But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same
principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love
at home, becomes with the change of circumstances — patriot-
ism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its identity under
this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Eoman
streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn,
and the price of ' coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves
Rome so madly at the Volscian gates — this love, that sneers
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 429
at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it
makes such frantic demonstrations against the common enemy
abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of love,
to say the least of it.
In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the
hero of his story offers him — this quality which the hostilities
of nations deify — he undertakes to sift it a little. While in
the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of com-
prehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive
whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking
o'er the lives of men, as 't were a perpetual spoil' ; while under
cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human
virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it — the
bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come
out to ; while in the name of country it shows itself ' from face
to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with
dying cries,' undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene,
this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same
principle of state and nobility which he has already exhibited
at home.
That .sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes
is but t-hft incident; it is the principle of acquisition, it is the
natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is
full of, that nature is alive with ; but the one that she is at war
with , too — at war with in the parts — one that she is for
ever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her
mathematical axioms — with her law of the whole, of c the
worthier whole/ of ' the greater congregation' ; it is that prin-
ciple of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set
bounds to in the human constitution — which gets branded
with other names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of
grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the
principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The
leashed ' dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in
the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Koman
weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian
fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured
430 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
city — those matchless deeds of valor — the consummation for
Coriolanus in Corioli, for ' the conqueror in the conquest,1 is —
' Now all 's his/ And the story of the battle without is —
* He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could
call both field and city -— OURS.'
The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the
secret of this love, he will have the heart out of it — this
love that stops so short with geographic limits, — that changes
with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest
pit.
But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly- qualified,
' illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has
seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and
even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battle-
field, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his
harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this
Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of modera-
tion, will have us pause and listen while his Coriolanus, ere he
will take food or wine in his Corioli, gives orders that the
Volscian who was kind to him personally — the poor man at
whose house he lay — shall be saved, when he is so weary
with slaying Volscians that « his very memory is tired,' and he
cannot speak his poor friend's name.
He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him
more sharply than ever — this man, whose new name is bor-
rowed from his taken town. CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI.
Marcius, plain Caius Marcius, now no more. He will think
it treason — even in the conquered city he will resent it — if
any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or
forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town
— the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and
dying cries — that, with that ' painting' which he took from it
so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took ' spoons'
— has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours
which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in
the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the
unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOYS. 43 1
opinion of the many- headed many; that old coat of arms, which
the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only)
with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew —
not here only — which he will fill on another page also, ' ap-
proaching his particular more near' — with all its fresh, recent
historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.
He is jealous, — this new Poet of his kind, — he is jealous
of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in
Volscian mother's sons, under this name, ' that men sanctify,
and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspi-
cions on the way home, that it is even narrower than it claims
to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet ajar into
the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry;
he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the
suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and
avaricious, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its
hire on its brows.
Menenius. Brings a victory in his pocket.
Volumnia. On's brows Menenius.
He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He
arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us
note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the
Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on
the road to ' our own house.' Nay, he will bring out the
haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, stand-
ing in his ' wolfish gown/ showing the scars that he should hide,
and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he
does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this
return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the
people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his country,
it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to
that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different
things which he finds confounded under one name and notion
in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all,
in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and
not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the
432 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
original differences, the difference of things, the simplicity of
nature herself divides them, makes two of them, two, — not
one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here,
which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which
make such mischief in the human life, and he is severely
separating it— he is separating the martial virtue— from the
true heroism, ( with the mind, that divine fire.' He is sepa-
rating this kind of heroism from that cover under which it
insinuates itself into governments, with which it makes its
most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.
He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal,
that principle which recognises and embraces the weal of
others as its own, that principle which enters into and consti-
tutes each man's own noblest life, is a thing of another growth
and essence, a thing which needs a different culture from any
that the Koman Volumnia could give it, a culture which un-
alytic, barbaric ages — wanting in all the scientific arts— could
not give it.
He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of^
/patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to ' the helm o'
/the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the
/ mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway
I and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism
J amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so dis-
dainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this point too,
as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic, theatric,
illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires, and
which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will
have his 'transient hieroglyphics,' his tableaux vivants, his
' dumb-shows ' to aid him here also, because this, too, is for
the spectators — this, too, is for the audience whose eyes are
\nore learned than their ears.
It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not
one who is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 7
'He has that in his face which men love— authority: ' As_
waves before a vessel under sail, so men obey him and fall
below his stern.' The Romans have stripped off his wings
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 433
and turned him out of the city gates, but the heroic instinct
of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He carries
with him that which will collect new armies, and make him
their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and
hostility of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation
is nat-gon&_s_Q long asjhe. unscientific ages last The principle
of his heroism and nobility has only been developed in new
force by this opposition. He will have a new degree ; he will
purchase a new patent of it ; he will forge himself a new and
better name, for ' the patricians are called good citizens.' He
will forget Corioli ; Coriolanus now no more, he will conquer
Home, and incorporate that henceforth in his name. He will
make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true citizenship,
and membership of the larger whole, in his private subjection
to it, — not by emerging from his particular into the self that
comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by sub-
duing the whole to his_pjTticjular^jJie-^^ejjer_to the less, the
whole_tojhe part. He will triumph over the Common- weal,
and bind his brow with a new garland. That is his magna-
nimity. He will take it from without, if they will not let
him have it within. He will turn against that country, which
he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian hearts
have felt so long. ' There's some among you have beheld me
fighting,' he says. ' Come, try upon yourselves what you have
seen me? He is only that same narrow, pet ty^jpiti fill .private,
man he always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of
the Roman legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right
his single wrong, or because the people would not let him have
all from them, he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel,
and sits down, Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.
* This morning/ says Menenius, after the reprieve, ' this
morning for ten thousand of your throats, I 'd not have given
a doit.' But this is only the same ' good citizen ' we saw in the
first scene, who longed to make a quarry of thousands of the
quartered slaves, as high as he could prick his lance ! That was
* the altitude of his virtue' then. It is the same citizenship
with its conditions altered.
F F
434 THE CURE 0F THE COMMON-WEAL.
So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work
throughout— so completely has he filled the Koman story with
his ' richer and bolder meanings/ that when the old, familiar
scene, which makes the denouement of the Roman myth,
comes out at last in the representation, it comes as the crown-
ing point of this Poet's own invention. It is but the felici-
tous artistic consummation of the piece, when this hero, in his
conflicting passions and instincts, gives at last, to one private
affection and impulse, the State he would have sacrificed to
another; when he gives to his boy's prattling inanities, to his
wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a shade less on
her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's scolding
eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the
gods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities,
with all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reek-
ing, smoking holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the
principle of the citizenship that was ' accounted GOOD ' when
i this play began, when this play was written.
' He was a kind of nothing, titleless, —
Till he had forged himself a name i' the fire
Of burning Romel
That is his modest answer to the military friend who en-
treats him to spare the city.
' Though soft-conscienced mejijnjiy^beconj^^
for hisliowUwj^^
Purely that starving citizen who found himself at the
beginning of this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legis-
lation, and in danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide
of the truth, after all, in his surmise as to the principles of the_
heroic statesmamM^ he ventured thus early
"^rrthat^uggestion^ The State banished him, as an enemy,
and he came back with a Yolscian army to make good that
verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel than his
law had been within. It was not starving only that he had
voted for. ' Let them hang? ay— (ay) and burn TOO,' was
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOT. 435
' the disposition ' they had ' thwarted/ — measuring ' the quarry
of the quartered slaves,' which it would make, 'would the
nobility but lay aside their ruth.' That was the disposition,
that was the ignorance, the blind, brutish, demon ignorance,
that ' in good time ' they had thwarted. They had ruled it
out and banished it from their city on pain of death, forever;
they had turned it out in its single impotence, and it came
back ' armed;' for this was one of rude nature's monarchs, and
outstretched heroes.
Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has
made war without so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in
such confusion, has its warfare within also, and it is there that
the hero is beaten and slain. For there is no state or fixed
sovereignty in his soul. Both sides of the city rise at once;
there is a fearful battle, and the red-eyed Mars is dethroned.
The end which he has pursued at such a cost is within his
reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city lies there
before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is steel
enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it.
For there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general
within to put down the conflict of changeful, warring selfs, to
suppress the mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually annihi-
lating selfish dictates.
In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single
passion has its hour, this * would-do' changes. With the im-
pression the passion changes, and the purpose that is passionate
must alter with it, unless pure obstinacy remain in its place,
and fulfil the annulled dictate. For such purpose, one person
of the scientific drama tells us — one who had had some dramatic
experience in it, —
' is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, and poor validity,
Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree,
But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending doth the purpose lose.*
That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes
f p 2
436 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
to reduce his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert
some sixteen of his lines quietly into the court performance :
that is his verbal account of it; but his action, too, speaks
louder and more eloquently than his words.
The principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this
so-called se^-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace
principle, the principle of state within and without.
c To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.1
That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not
the passionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood,
with his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of conscien-
tious thought ; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet,
but the man who aspires to make his single humours the law
of the universal world, in whom the poet will show now this
want of state and sovereignty.
He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against
Menenius. c He sits in gold/ Cominius reports, ( his eye red as
'twould burn Rome' — a small flambeau the poet thinks for
so large a city. ' He no more remembers his mother than an
eight year old horse,' is the poor old Menenius querulous
account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and
reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him : but
while he is making that already-quoted report of this super-
human growth and assumption of a divine authority and
honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting
a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out
that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hjdde^under
it, for it is no man at all, but, in very deed, a sUvft, as Hfl.m]et
calls it/ ' passior^s jhvej ' a pipe for fortune's finger to sound
what stopUhe pleaseT^rov that state, — that command — de-
pends on that which * changes,1 — fortuities, impressions, nay,
it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to
change. The single passion cannot engross the large, many-
passioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 437
large and comprehensive in its surveys — the single passion
seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning
passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master
come. You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday;
you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it
looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of reso-
lution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough
to defy God and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds
but that one which it was god of.
This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes
in to interpret to us the thinkers inaction, the thinker's irreso-
lution, for * it is conscience that makes cowards of us all/
Here is a man who is resolute enough. His will is not
4 puzzled.' His thoughts, his scruples will not divide and
destroy his purpose. Here is the unity which precedes
action. This man is going to be revenged for his father.
* What would you undertake to do T ' To cut his throat i' the
church.'
' To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.
I dare damnation. To this*point I stand
That both the worlds /give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.' [Only.']
That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That
was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it was you,
when it mastered you, and called itself hy your name. Ay, it
has many names, and many lips; but it is always one. That
was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you
know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there con-
founded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the
identity which your visible form — which your human form, was
made to promise, — a slave, — a pipe for fortune's finger. This
is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama,
and ' rejected ' ; and the conclusion after these reviews and
rejections, * after every species of rejection,' — the affirmation
is, that there is but one principle that is human, and that is
GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whoso is true to
438 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and
will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or to-
morrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be
false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all —
that is the self of reason and conscience, not passion.
But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the
diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, ' as it were, to the
eye/ this poor and private passion, that sits here, with its
imperial crown on its head, in the place of God, but lacking
His ' mercy,' - this passion of the petty man, that has made
itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that
lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon
coils unwound, with its deadly fangs — those little fangs, that
crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives
— exposed in this great solar microscope, striking the common-
weal, — as for this petty, usurping passion, there is a spectacle
approaching that will undo it.
Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms,
which yesterday this hero ' could not stay to pick out of that
pile which had offended him,' that was his word, — which
yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple.
Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Kome it
comes — towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits
in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course. To
other eyes, it is but a group of Koman ladies, two or three,
clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child
with them ; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great
chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could
think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering passion
of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in
him, — he could think of them and doom them; but the im-
pressions of the senses are more vivid, and the passions wait on
them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of
this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien
and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with
a * confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a
group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Pala-
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 439
tinus, — much such a one as one might find anywhere under
those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.
But to this usurping ' private/ to this man of passion and
affection, and not reason — this man of private and particular
motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than
Rome and all her claims ; it outweighs Rome and all her weal
— fit is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes
and plebeians a sea and land full ' — it outweighs all the
Volscians, and their trust in him.
His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects,
as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within
its magnetic sphere.
For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression
and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though
it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians, — which crushes
Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets'
voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his
sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy.
He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the nobler affections
of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal
man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden
spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to have all.
It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human ; it is ' con-
servation with advancement' that he is blindly pursuing, for
this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason
lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that
affection borrows from it.
And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of ■ this
particular,' scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its
laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to
pronounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a
subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its
utterance — he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness
and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wild-
ness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the
moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational
motive, undrenched in humours and affections — for the motive
440 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that
which is private and exclusive.
In vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and
seeks to retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment
which he himself describes as « a gosling's instinct,' and seeks
to subdue it. In vain he rallies his pride, and says, ' Let it be
virtuous to be obstinate ' ; and determines to stand « as if a man
were author of himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother
kneels. It is but a frail, aged woman kneeling to the victorious
chieftain of the Yolscian hosts; but to him it is ' as if Olympus
to a mole-hill stooped in supplication.' His boy looks at him
with an eye in which great Nature speaks, and says, ' Deny
not ' ; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of the beloved, he
hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the Poet's art,
in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach
the ' grub ' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt
from him. He is his young boy's father— he is his fair young
wife's beloved.
' O a kiss, long as my exile, sweet as my revenge.'
There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there
is another there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a
boy — his own mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that
schools and lessons him; it is she that conquers him. It was
< her boy,' after all — it was her boy still, that was ' coming
home.'
Well might Menenius say —
1 This Volumnia is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,
A city full ; of tribunes such as you,
A sea and land full.'
But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as
we find it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in
its connections, when once we ' have heard the argument,' we
shall not find anything in it to spare. But we must not forget
that this is still ' the election,' the ignorant election of the
common-weal which is under criticism, and though this elec-
tion has been revoked in the play already, and this is a banished
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 44 1
man we are trying here, there was a play in progress when
this play was played, in which that revocation was yet to
come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should
be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so
that the principle of l the election ' need never again be called in
question, so that the revolution should end in the state, and
not in the principle of revolution.
1 My wife comes foremost ; then the honoured mould
Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
The grand-child to her blood. But, out, affection !
All bond and privilege of nature, break !
Let it be virtuous to be obstinate. —
What is that curtsey worth 1 or those doves' eyes.
Which can make gods forsworn ? —
['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish,
and not a man of infirmity/]
1 1 melt, and am not
Of stronger earth than others. — My mother bows ;
As if Olympus to a molehill should
In supplication nod : and my young boy
Hath an aspect of intercession, which
Great Nature cries, * Deny not !' — Let the Volsces
Plough Rome, and harrow Italy ; I'll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct ; but stand,
As if a man were author of himself,
And knew no other kin.
These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.
Vir. The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,
Makes you think so.
[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed.
But it is with sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and
puts upon it the blame of his loss of love. But that is just
the kind of battery he is not provided for. His resolution
wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that fierce revengeful man
is gone already, and forgot to leave his part — the words he
was to speak are wanting.]
Cor Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
442 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Forgive my tyranny ; but do not say,
For that, Forgive our Romans. — 0, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge !
Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear ; and my true lip
Hath virgin'd it e'er since. — You gods ! I prate,
And the most noble mother of the world
Leave unsaluted : Sink, my knee, Hike earth ; [Kneels.]
Of the deep duty* more impression show
Than that of common sons.
Vol. O, stand up bless' d !
Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint,
I kneel before thee ; and unproperly
Show duty, as mistaken —
[Note it — « as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning de-
scribed elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and
must, therefore, pray in aid of similes.]
— and unproperly
Show duty, as mistaken all the while
Between the child and parent.
[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is
represented in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points
us to this hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in
her person, and the rebel interprets for us. It is the violated
law that stoops for pardon.]
Cor. What is this 1
Your knees to me ? to your corrected son 1
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillip the stars ; then let the mutinous winds
Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun ;
Murdering impossibility, to make
What cannot be, slight work.
Vol. Thou art my warrior ;
I holp to frame thee.
[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero — the
Roman hero in germ — that she speaks — there is more than
her Roman part here, when she adds — ]
* This is the Poet who says, \ instinct is a great matter.'
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 443
Vol. This is a poor epitome of yours,
Which by the interpretation of full time
May show, like all, yourself.
[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to
utter, what prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through
this faltering, fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, ' that what-
soever god who led him ' is failing him, and the flaws of im-
pulse are swaying him to and fro, and darkening him for
ever.]
Cor. * The god of soldiers
With the consent of supreme Jove/ — [the Capitolian, the
god of state] ' inform
Thy thoughts with nobleness ;' — [inform, thy thoughts.']
' that thou may'st prove
The shame unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars
Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye thee.'
[But this hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive
nature is — ]
'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.
I have sat too long.'
But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy elo-
quence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had
before well nigh achieved.
Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction
and brief summing up of ' this Volumnia' and her history, is the
true one. She is very potent in the business of the state,
whether you take her in her first literal acceptation, as the
representative mother, or whether you take her in that sym-
bolical and allusive comprehension, to which the emphasis on
the name is not unfrequently made to point, as ' the nurse
and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the
former of its nobility, who ira-forms their thoughts with
nobleness, such nobleness, and such notions of it as they have,
and who fits them for the place they are to occupy in the
body of the common-weal.
444 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative
importance of this figure among those which the dumb-show
of this play exhibits. Among the ' transient hieroglyphics'
which the diseased common-weal produces on the scientific
stage, when the question of its CURE is the question of the
Play — in that great crowd of forms, in that moving, porten-
tous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and tribunes,
and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene — there are none
more significant than these two, whom we saw at first * seated
on two low stools, sewing' ; these two of the wife and mother
— the commanding mother, and the ' gracious silence/
1 This Volumnia' — yes, let her school him, for it is from
her school that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is
the conserver of this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradi-
tion. To its utmost bound of consequences, she is the mother
of it, and accountable to God and man for its growth and con-
tinuance. Consuls, and senators, and patricians, and tribunes,
such as we have, are powerless without her, are powerless
against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of it,
she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her
conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now.
This play is the Cure of the Common- weal, the convulsed and
dying Common-weal; and whether the assault be from within
or without, this woman must undo her work. The tribunes
have sent for her now : she must go forth without shrinking,
and slay her son. She was the true mother; she trained him
for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of
him, but that craved a noble cunning ; she was not instructed
in it ; she must pay the penalty of her ignorance — the penalty
of her traditions — and slay him now. There is no help for
it, for she has made with her traditions a thing that no com-
mon-weal can bear.
Woe for this Volumnia ! Woe for the common-weal whose
chiefs she has reared, whose great men and ' GOOD CITIZENS '
she has made! Woe for her! Woe for the common-weal, for
her boy approaches ! The land is groaning and shaken ; the
faces of men gather blackness; the clashing of arms is heard
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 445
in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are blazing. Great
Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is coming
home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the
son of her religion, is coming home.
1 0 mother, mother !
What hast thou done 1 . . . .
O my mother, mother ! 0,
You have won a happy victory to Rome, —
But for your son '
Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and
his patrician greatness ! Woe for the unlearned mother's son,
who has made him great with such a training, that Rome's
weal and his, Rome's greatness and his, must needs contend
together — that * Rome's happy victory' must needs be the
blaze that shall darken him for ever !
Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician
fierceness; and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler
and tamer than he was, and he says himself, * It is the first
time that ever I have learned to scold'; but he is stung, even
to boasting of his old heroic deeds, when Aufidius taunts him
with his un-martial, \m-divine infirmity, and brings home to
him in very words, at last, the Poet's suppressed verdict, the
Poet's deferred sentence, Guilty! — of what? He is but
A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook the state ! He is
but A slave, and he was caught climbing to the imperial
chair, and putting on the purple. He is but ' a dog to the
commonalty,' and he was sitting in the place of God.
Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these
particular and private affections. When Coriolanus turns to
him after that appeal from Volumnia has had its effect, and
' Now, good Aufidius,
Were you in my stead, say, would you have heard
A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius V
He answers, guardedly, ' I was moved withal.1 But the philo-
sopher has his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in
under the Poet's, covertly, * I was moved with-a//.' [It is the
446 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Play of the Common-weal.] And what should the single
private man, the man of exclusive affections and changeful
humours, do with the weal of the whole? In his noblest con-
ditions, what business has he in the state? and who shall vote
to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of Volscian
armies, that he may say of Rome, all's mine, and give it to his
wife or mother? Who shall follow in his train, to plough
Rome and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at
his mother's feet, and turns back at her word?
Aufidius. You lords and heads of the state, perfidiously
Has he betrayed your business, and given up
For certain drops of salt, your city Rome —
I say, your city — to his wife and mother :
Breaking his oath and resolution like
A twist of rotten silk; never admitting
Counsel of the war, but at his nurse's tears
He whined and roar'd away your victory,
That pages blushed at him, and men of heart
Looked wondering at each other*
Cor. Hear'st thou, Mars?
Auf Name not the god thou Boy of tears.
Cor. Ha !
Auf. No more. [You are no more.]
Cor. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
Too great for what contains it. Boy ? O Slave !
.... Boy 1 False hound P
[These are the names that are flying about here, now that
the martial chiefs are criticising each other : it is no matter
which side they go.]
1 Boy ? 0 slave !
. . . Boy 1 False hound ! [' He is a very dog to the com-
mon alty.']
Alone I did it. Boy?'
But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the
principle of this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the un-
divine passion she wishes to unseat. It is thus that she
upbraids the hero with his unmanly, ungracious, ignoble
purpose : —
* There is a look which has come down to us. That is Elizabethan.
That is the suppressed Elizabethan.
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 447
* Speak to me, son.
Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,
To imitate the graces of the gods ;
To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak 1
Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
Still to remember wrongs V
For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the
other was, in scientific language, its ' anticipation.' He wants
nothing of a god but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in
(slight deficiences in a god already). ' Yes, mercy, if you paint
him truly.' * I paint him in character/
Nobility, honour, manliness, heroism, good citizen-
ship, freedom, divinity, patriotism. We are getting a
number of definitions here, vague popular terms, scientifically
fixed, scientifically cleared, destined to waver, and be con-
fused and mixed with other and fatally different things, in the
popular apprehension no more — when once this science is
unfolded for that whole people for whom it was delivered —
no more for ever.
There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the
true ideal nobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity.
This is the false affirmation which is put upon the stage here,
to be tried, and examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's
purpose to show — and very much to his purpose to show,
sometimes — what is not the true affirmation. His method is
critical, but his rejection contains the true definition. The
whole play is contrived to shape it here; all hands combine to
frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce it;
the world is against this ' one man' and his part-liness, though
he be indeed ' every man.' He himself has been compelled to
pronounce it; for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in
each of us, and pronounces his sentences on ourselves with our
own lips. ' Being gentle wounded craves a noble cunning,' is
the word of the noble, who comes back with a Volscian army
to exhibit upon the stage this grand hieroglyphic, this grand
dramatic negative of that nobility.
448 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this
deadly antagonism with the manliness she has trained, com-
pelled now to echo that popular rejection, that the Poet can
venture to speak out, at last, from the depths of his true hero-
ism. It is this Volumnia who strikes now to the heart of the
play with her satire on this affectation of the graces of the
gods, — this assumption of nobility, and manliness, and the
fine strains of honour, — in one who is led only by the blind de-
mon gods, ' that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,' —
in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of
his own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of
soul which forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in
which those strictly human terms can be only affectations, one
who concentrates all his glorious special human gifts on the
pursuit of ends for which the lower natures are also furnished.
Honour, forsooth ! the fine strains of honour, and the graces
of the gods. Look at that Volscian army there.
* To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak.
Why dost not speak ? '
He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not
bear review.
1 Why dost not speak 1
Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
Still to remember wrongs ? '
* Let it be virtuous to be obstinate,1 let there be no better
principle of that identity which we insist on in men, that firm-
ness which we call manliness, and the cherished wrong is
honour.
— ? It is but an interrogative point, but the height of our
affirmation is taken with it. It is a figure of speech and inten-
sifies the affirmative with its irony.
1 This a consul 1 No.'
' No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares.' [Queen.]
' Give me that man that is not passion's slave.
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 449
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.
But the man who rates so highly c this single mould of Mar-
cius/ and the wounded name of it, that he will forge another
for it ' 1 the fire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world
to ease the rankling of his single wrong, who will plough
Rome and harrow Italy to cool the fever of his thirst for ven-
geance; this is not the man, this is not the hero, this is not the
god,. that the scientific review accepts. Whoso has put him
in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must * revoke that
ignorant election/ Whatever our 'perfect example in civil
life ' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly
in the form of an historic ' composition ' on this author's stage,
whatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evi-
dently is not it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the pre-
sent from this Poet's boards. This curule chair that stands
here empty yet, for aught that we can see, and this crown of
( olives of endless age,' is not for him.
'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
Against him first.
' We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after every
species of rejection.'
On the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of
the Common- Weal, in its relation to the good that is private
and particular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in propor-
tion,— as the question of the whole against the part, — of the
greater against the less, — nay, as the question of that which is
against that which is not. For it is a treatment which throws
in passing, the shadow of the old metaphysical suspicion and
scepticism on that chaotic unaxiomatical condition of things
which the scientific eye discovers here, for the new philosophy
with all its new comprehension of the actual, with all its new
convergency on practice, is careful to inform us that it ob-
serves, notwithstanding the old distinction between ' being
and becoming/ This is an ideal philosophy also, though the
G G
450 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
notions of nature are more respected in it, than the sponta-
neous unconsidered notions of men. <
It is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole
and the faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense
of relation and obligation to it, as the highest historic law -
the formal, the essential law of kind in him, it is the breadth ol
reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is the grandeur
of duty which this author arrays here scientifically against
that oblivion and ignoring of the whole, that forgetfulness of the
world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided
sense and the narrowness of passion and private affection create,
whether in the one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the
whole against the will of the part, no matter where the limit ol
that partiality, or < partliness,' as the 'poor citizen ' calls it, is fixed
whetherit be theselfishness of the single self, or whether the house-
hold tie enlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or
faction,or the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geo-
graphic limits, the question of the play, the question of the whole,
of the worthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It
is the conflict with axioms which is represented here, and not
with wordy axioms only, not with abstractions good for the
human mind only, in its abstract self-sustained speculations, but
with historical axioms, axioms which the universal nature knows,
laws which have had the consent of things since this nature
began, laws which passed long ago the universal commons.
It is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with
abstract speculation merely, but with the nature of things and
the received logic of the universe, which this man of a practi-
cal science wishes to call attention to. It is the crowning and
enthroning of that which is private and particular, it is the
anointing of passion and instinct, it is the arming of the abso-
lute— the demon — will; it is the putting into the hands of
the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which strikes the
scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by
way of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey
to others the impression which this state of things makes upon
his own mind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY. 45 1
general intentions which determine his proceedings and the
conditions which limit them, and he is by no means timid in
availing himself of the capabilities of his story to that end.
The true spectacle of the play, — the principal hieroglyphic of
it, — the one in which this hieroglyphic criticism approaches the
metaphysical intention most nearly, is one that requires inter-
pretation. It does not report itself to the eye at once. The show-
man stops to tell us before he produces it, that it is a symbol, —
that this is one of the places where he ' prays in aid of similes,' —
that this is a specimen of what he calls elsewhere 'allusive' writing.
The true spectacle of the play, — the grand hieroglyphic of it, —
is that view of the city, and the woman in the foreground kneeling
for it, ' to her son, her corrected son/ begging for pardon of her
corrected rebel — hanging for life on the chance of his changeful
moods and passions. It is Rome that lies stretched out there
upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and claims to rever-
ence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from which
the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the
flint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels ' to show ' — as she
tells us — to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition
allow it to be exhibited, duty as mistaken, — ' as mistaken/
— all the while between the child and parent.7
It is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to
the mole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law — the
formal law in man — that is prostrate and suppliant in her
person; and the Poet exhausts even his own powers of ex-
pression, and grows inarticulate at last, in seeking to convey
his sense of this ineffable, impossible, historical pretension.
It is as ' if Olympus to a mole-hill should in supplication nod;
it is as if the pebbles on the hungry beach should fillip the stars;
as if the mutinous winds should strike the proud cedars against
the fiery sun, murdering impossibility, to make what can not be,
slight work,' — what can not be.
That was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's
spectacle when the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousand-
fold more wild and pitiful, and confounding to the intellect,
and revolting to its sensibilities, was the spectacle that the
G G 2
452 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
State offered then to the philosophic eye. The Poet has all
understated his great case. He has taken the pattern-man in
the private affections, the noble man of mere instinct and
passion, and put him in the chair of state; — the man whom
nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with
kingly graces.
1 As waves before a vessel under sail
So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern.'
' If he would but incline to the people, there never was a
worthier man.'
Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched
with the nobility of human sense, — not to the loyalty of the
husband, — not to the filial reverence and duty of the son,
true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to
the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patrician-
ship also, must England owe her weal — such weal as she
could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not
from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow,
and the command of the god who led him in his speech and
action, — and not from his lineal successor merely, must
England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable
mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make
gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, * The laws of
England are at my commandment.'
Crimes that the historic pen can only point to, — not re-
cord,— low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and
wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersona-
tions,— these were the gods that England, in the majesty of her
State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase
herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions
and their companions, and their kindred, the State must
cringe and kneel then. To these, — men who meddled with
affairs of State, — who took, even at such a time, the State to
be their business, — must address themselves ; for these were the
councils in which England's peace and war were settled then,
and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His veto
could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in
METAPHYSICAL AID. 453
under-tones. and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent,
human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and con-
quered then — the soul of him ' within whose eyes sat twenty
thousand deaths/ the man of the thirty legions, to whom this
argument must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest
flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal
humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach ' the mind a
most inherent baseness,' these were the weapons, — the required
weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these ' dogs
of the commonalty/ men who were indeed * noble,' whose
'fame' did indeed 'fold in the orb o' the world/ must take
then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical re-
straint, and life itself. These were the days when England's
victories were ' blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that
'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at
each other/
And, when science began first to turn her eye on history,
and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her
end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle
she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of
things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve.
She could not immediately reform it — she must produce first
her doctrine of ' true forms/ her scientific definitions and pre-
cepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She
could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and
reject it by means of that method which is ' sometimes neces-
sary in the sciences/ and to which ' those who would let in new
light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could
seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it
f point with its finger ' that which was unspeakable, — her
scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman
lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect, — not their anti-
cipation of her veto only, but her eternal affirmation, — the
word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility, — the nobility
of being, — being in the human,— the nobility of manliness, —
the divinity of State, the true doctrine of it; — 'and, to speak
truly, lAntiquitas seculi, juventus mundV
454 THE CURE 0F THE COMMON WEAL.
CHAPTER VIII.
METAPHYSICAL AID.
' I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they
are Persian attire; but let them be changed.'*-
The King to Tom o' Bedlam.
1 Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius ?
Against him first.'
IT is the cure of the Common -weal which this author has
undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care
of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles
his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological
order, — and not here only, but in that play of which this is a
part, — of which this is the play within the Play, — in that
grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it
was given to the author of this play to institute.
He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger,
and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and
destitution of that human condition which is the condition of
the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient
eloquence, and it is that which makes the starting point of his
revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its
word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended
to make ' coals cheap' ; he proposes to have corn at his own
price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do
in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of
all the trades in Rome. He will ' cog their hearts from them,'
and get elected consul yet, with all their voices.
f Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the
philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art
about these days. ' It seems as if it were the season for vain
things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill
METAPHYSICAL AID. 455
is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind
of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall be one of the
last that are called in question; and, whilst the greater offend-
ers are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend ; for it
would be unreasonable to punish the less troublesome, whilst we
are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one
who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived,
had an ulcer in his lungs, ' Friend/ said he, J it is not now
time to concern yourself about your fingers'-ends'. And yet
— [and yet] — I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and
memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of
our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put
in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office — no more
than there is now — publish, I know not what pitiful reforma-
tions, about clothes, cookery, and law chicanery. These are
amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to
show that they are not totally forgotten.1
That is the account of it. That is the history of this inno-
vation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations
in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve
to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them
stirring, some tribuneship at work already. ' What I say of
physic generally, may serve AS AN example of all other
SCIENCES,' says this same scribbler, under his scribbling cog-
nomen. ' We certainly intend to comprehend them all,1 says
the graver authority, ' such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'
That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining per-
formance, which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-
used people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is the
AZdile also, and while he stands for his place these spectacles
will continue.
It is that physical suffering of { the poor citizens' that he
begins with. here. Is is the question of the price of corn with
which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people
are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but
clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the
few ; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men,
456 THE CUKE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased
state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset,
that this claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to
* throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'
Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with
imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour — though
all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical
causes should be put in requisition to relieve their need —
though the scientific discoveries and inventions which are
pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry
which our men of science have already cultivated their
golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself —
though that scientific movement now in progress should pro-
ceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and
surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular
nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and
refinements of the lordliest home — that good which is the
distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional
human end, that good, that formal and essential good, which
it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not
necessarily be realised.
For that, and nothing short ot that, the ' advancement ' of
the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully
groping for — its form in nature, its ideal perfection — the
advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility
of a nobler kind of vermin — a state which involves another
kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves
a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of con-
gregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this
philosophy.
The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in
nature, in which the many are united in ' the greater congrega-
tion'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each,
not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex,
and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of
man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's
combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, strug-
METAPHYSICAL AID. 457
gling towards its consummation, but disordered, threatened,
convulsed, asking aid of art, is the subject; the cure of it, the
cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.
And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time ;
one of your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the
art of healing } instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery
and profession, and appointed of her to that ministry.
Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will
find that his mind is running on the structure of bodies, the
means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for
their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and
within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural
bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general;
he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the
qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding
the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his
purposes, or inventing new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom
he refers for a precedent, he wishes ( to have a hand in every-
thing/
But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old autho-
ritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they
come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe
upon ' the empiricutics,' on the other hand, and he objects to
1 a horse- drench' for the human constitution in the greater con-
gregation, as much as he does in that distinctively complex and
delicate structure which the single individual human frame in
itself constitutes.
Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told
him of, and putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is
not very much to the purpose on his own] says, * It gives me
an estate of seven years1 health, during which time I will make a
lip at the physician/ A lip — a lip — and ' what a deal of scorn
looks beautiful on it,' when once you get to see it. But this
is the play of ' conservation with advancement.' It is the cure
and preservation of the common-weal, to which all lines are
tending, to which all points and parentheses are pointing ; and
thus he continues: f The most sovereign prescription in Galen
458 - THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
is but empiricutic, and to this preservative of no better report
than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try
it — this preservative, — this conservation.
This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that
' the physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last
resort, and be able to make prescriptions of them, instead of
making them out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not
have of his cure a conceit also.' His opinion is, that f nature
is made better by no mean, but she herself hath made that
mean ;' —
'So o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes
This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather : but
The art itself is nature.'
That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same
opinion. ' Man while operating can only apply or withdraw natu-
ral bodies, nature internallyjoer/brms the rest.' Those who become
practically versed in nature are the mechanic, the mathema-
tician, the alchemist, and the magician, but all, as matters now
stand with faint efforts and meagre success.' ' The
syllogism forces assent and not things.'
1 The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the
understanding. The syllogism consists of propositions, these of
words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things.
If our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the
ground; but they are for the most part improperly abstracted
and deduced from things'
There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we
are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms;
there is the shell of it at least. And considering * the torture
and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then
in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions,
there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be
looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and ' aphorisms re-
presenting a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire fur-
ther;' so this writer of them tells us.
METAPHYSICAL AID. 459
With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn
of the impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he
finds it, and of the quackeries that are practised in its name, this
is no empiric. He will not approach that large, complex, ela-
borate combination of nature, that laboured fruit of time, —
her most subtle and efficacious agent, so prolific in results that
amaze and confound our art, — he will not approach this great
structure with all its unperceived interior adaptations, — with
so much of nature's own work in it, — he has too much respect
for her own ' cunning hand/ to approach it without learning,
— to undertake its cure with blind ignorant experiments. He
will not go to work in the dark on this structure, with drug or
surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. ' Before we
proceed any further, hear me speak? He will inquire before-
hand the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to
meddle with, and get its normal state defined at the outset.
But that will take him into the question of structures in gene-
ral, as they appear in nature, and the intention of nature in
them. He will have a comparative anatomy to help him.
This analysis will not stop with the social unit, he will ana-
lyze him. It will not stop with him. It will comprehend the
principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his analy-
sis of this complexity till he comes to that which precedes all
combination, and survives it — the original simplicity of nature.
He will come to this cure armed with the universal ' simples f he
will have all the original powers of nature, ' which are not
many,' in his hands, to begin with; and he will have more
than that. He will have the doctrine of their combinations,
not in man only, but in all the kinds', — those despised kinds,
that claim such close relationship — such wondrous relation-
ship with man ; and he will not go to the primitive instinctive
nature only for his knowledge on this point. He will inquire
of art, — the empiric art, — and rude accident, what latent effi-
cacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers
they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and
the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's
only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles'
460 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign
relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen
his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the ' old crab
trees ' to lend their organizations, such as they are, to the fruc-
tification of a bud of nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a
decision of nature in another court, on this same question,
which is one of the questions here. For the principle of con-
servation as well as the other principles of the human conduct,
appears to this philosopher to require a larger treatment than
our men of learning have given it hitherto.
And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to
acknowledge his preference for ' good compositions'— who
thinks so much of good natural compositions and their virtues,
who is always expressing or betraying his respect for the happy
combinations, the sound results, the luxuriant and beautiful
varieties with which nature herself illustrates the secret of her
fertility, and publishes her own great volume of examples in
the Arts.
First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all
the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which ac-
count for all — that which is always the same in all the differ-
ence, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it
is the doctrine of ' those simple original forms, or differences of
things, which like the alphabet are not many, the degrees and
co-ordinations whereof make all this variety,' and then it is the
doctrine of their combinations,— the combinations which nature
has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accom-
plished, and those which are possible, which have not been ac-
complished,—those which the universal nature working in
the human, working in each, from the platform of the human,
from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates
now, demands,— divinely orders,— divinely instructs us in.
This, and nothing short of this,— this so radical knowledge,
reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the pri-
maeval depths of nature,— to the simplicity of the nature that
is one in all,— to the indissoluble laws of being,— the laws of
being in the species,— the law with which the specific law is
METAPHYSICAL AID. 46 1
convertible, — the law which cannot be broken in the species,
which involves loss of species,, — loss of being in the species, — this
so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the
varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contri-
bution for its results, this — this is the knowledge with which
the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.
The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first
time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Mo-
dern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to
its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised
and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others,
most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person,
next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no corre-
spondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the
physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the
condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of
science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new meta-
physics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end, —
openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.
It is * metaphysical aid ' that he offers us; it is magic, but,
' magic lawful as eating ' ; it is a priestly aid that he offers us,
the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of
the law, — the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind
and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her,
with her own ' great seal ' in his hands — with the rod of her
enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her,
and did not — with the gift of the new and nobler miracles of
seience as the witness of his anointing — with the reading of
1 God's book of power ' — with the alphabet of its mystery, as
the proof of his ordaining — with the key of it, hid from the
foundation of the world until now.
The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the
metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that
it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the sim-
plicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all
motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so ; over and over
again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that
462 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
closed palm a little, and shows you what is there ; it bids you
look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages
have begun.
It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech
is to forbid abstractions — your abstractions. It sets out from
that which is ' constant, eternal, and universal ' ; but from that
which is ' constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets
out from that which is fixed ; but it is from the fixed and con-
stant causes : 'forms,' not ' ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks
is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are re-
solvable ; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not
come within the range of the unscientific experience; they
are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes
' which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms
which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and
comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms
of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are
the convertible terms — the practically convertible terms of the
known — practically — that is the difference.
In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things
constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity
and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which
makes its base — the science of Natural History— beginning with
the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that
pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the
Inductive science — which the inquiry into causes that are
operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on
that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is
the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the
platform of ' the physical causes ' makes. The causes which
lie next to our experience — the causes, which are variable
and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and
looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and
observation there would result in many new inventions bene-
ficial to men ; but the knowledge of these causes ' takes men
in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of
his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures
METAPHYSICAL AID. 463
the result, which gives the widest possible command of means.
He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of
his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great
human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie
on that platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy
of speculation and practice there. It is not for the scientific
arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave
to revive and re-integrate the misapplied and abused name of
natural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom,
or ' PRUDENCE.'
He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture
of that field does yield for the relief of the human estate. His
eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an
historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds.
His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge
where that which is common to the sciences is found. He
takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of
a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new
metaphysics — an objective metaphysics — the metaphysics of
induction. His logic is but a preparation for that. He is
going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature,
from all species, the principles that are in all things; and he is
going to build, on the basis of those inducted principles, — on
the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and uni-
versal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice;
for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends
' alV That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations
of men aspire to, and create, it aspires to and attains, by
the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and
experiment.
He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in
a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no
means the quality of style most in request, when we come to
these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds,
and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also
the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height
of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning
464 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
off— warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the un-
bidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the gods, re-
stored again, — the simple powers of nature, recovered from the
Greek abstractions, — not f the idols '—not the impersonated ab-
stractions, the false images of the mind of man — not the
logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of
their poetic content — but the strong gods that make our
history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies,
whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This
is that summit of the prima philosophia where the axioms that
command all are found — where the observations that are
common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on
these, grow. This is that height where the same footsteps of
nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the
difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the
height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the
reason ; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or
substances.
He does not care to tell us, — he could not well tell us, in
popular language, what the true name of that height of learn-
ing is : he could not well name without circumlocution, that
height which a scientific abstraction makes, — an abstraction
that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality,
an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,
— a new and more intelligible reading of it, — a solution of it —
that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it, — an
abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal
history, that which accounts for all, — the equivalent, — the
scientific equivalent of it.
But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the
place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and prac-
tice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the
vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific specula-
tion, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an
enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas
to an eternal collision with the universal laws of God and na-
ture,— laws that no dogma or conceit can alter, — all the
METAPHYSICAL AID. 465
unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be,
it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air
palace of the vain conceits of men ; — it is going straight up,
through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of
the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to
which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct
tend, — the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its
sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that
unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart
to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it,
which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make
for itself if it cannot find it, which it does make in ignorant
ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the
historic reality, — which it builds up without any solid objec-
tive basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-
sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to
have its place in the new learning also — but it is going to be
henceforth the unity of knowledge — not of dogmas, not of belief
merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely, — knowledge,
and not opinion, is power.
That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery
of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were
a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a cer-
tain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent
for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate
the arrogance of the species, — to show the absurdity and
ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe beforehand
within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports
of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which
great nature has herself supplied us, — to correct the arrogance
and specific bias of the human learning, — was the first
attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal
Father that we dwell in, and it has ' many mansions,' and ' man
is not the best lodged in it.' Noble, indeed, is his form in
nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in
his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in
the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us is
H H
466 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
human ; but there are other dialects of the divine also, — there
are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with
larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their
words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we
tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the
sparrows that are going ' two for a farthing,' come in for then-
place also in this philosophy — the philosophy of science —
the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that
is one in them,— the metaphysics of history.
' Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except indivi-
dual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to
individual LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very
LAW; __ its investigation, discovery and development — are the
foundation both of theory and practice ; this law, therefore,
and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the
term, eorm.
That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstraction-
ists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be
put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dis-
missed first. The inveterate and * pernicious habit of abstrac-
tion,' — that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must
be overawed first.
< There exists nothing in nature except individual bodies,
exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual
laws.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against
that ' pernicious habit ' ; it is saved at the expense of the human
species, at the expense of its arrogance. Nobody need under-
take to abstract those laws, whatever they may be, for this
master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper
place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken
out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a
scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds
with them. That correspondence is the point in the new
metaphysics, and in the new logic; — that was what was want-
ing in the old. ' The investigation, discovery, and development
METAPHYSICAL AID. 467
of this law, in every braneh of learning, are the foundation
both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and its
parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term
form.' The distinction is very carefully made between the
' cause in nature,' and that which corresponds to it, in the
human mind, the parallel to it in the sciences; for the notions
of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ
when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific
rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which
do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy
m the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.
There is one term in use here which represents at the same
time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in
the mind of man — the parallel to it in the sciences. When
these exactly correspond, one term suffices. The term * form'
is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which
was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a
little modification, is made to signalise the difference between
the old and the new. The ' ideas' of the old philosophy, the
hasty abstractions of it, are ' the idols' of the new — the false
deceiving images — which must be destroyed ere that which
is fixed and constant in nature can establish its own parallels
in our learning. • Too untimely a departure, and too remote
a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this
criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is
manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a
wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms
were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of
that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted
from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.'
' Lost the fruit of that opinion' — this is the author who talks
so f pressly/ Two thousand years of human history are sum-
med up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of
barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two
thousand years of blind, empirical, unsuccessful groping in all
the fields of human practice. ' And so/ he continues, con-
cluding that summary criticism with a little further develop-
HH 2
468 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
ment of the subject, ' and so, turning his opinion upon theology,
wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural
philosophy infected with < opinion,'— no matter whose opinion
it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is
good for, is not good for practice. And this is the philosophy
which includes both theory and practice. 'That which in
speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical
philosophy becomes the rule.'
But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is
the philosophy of ' hope'; and that is the name for it in both
its fields, in speculation and practice. The black intolerable
wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of
this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon —
that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes
in nature limits and insults our speculation — has no place
here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which
the knowledge of true forms creates— this true ground of the
understanding, the understanding of nature, and the universal
reason of things. < He who is acquainted with forms, compre-
hends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct
from each other/ Neither is that base and sordid limit, with
which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific
arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is
the prima philosophia, where the universal axioms, the axioms
that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal
practice are formed on them. ' Even the philosopher himself
— openly speaking from this summit — will venture to inti-
mate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of
its base, and the field of practice which it commands. ' Is not
the ground/ he inquires, modestly, ' is not the ground which
Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning govern-
ments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to reduce
them ad principia, a rule in religion and nature, as well as in
civil administration?1 There is the ' administrative reform'
that will not need reforming, that waits for the science of
forms and constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not the
Persian magic [and that is the term which he proposes to
restore for 'the part operative' of this knowledge of forms],
METAPHYSICAL AID. 469
was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the
principles and architecture of nature to the rules and policy of
governments V There is no harm, of course, in that timid in-
quiry ; but the student of the Zenda-vesta will be able to get,
perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here,
and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with
which the term magic is employed to indicate the part opera-
tive of this new ground of science. ' Neither are these only
similitudes/ he adds, after extending these significant inquiries
into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this
is the universality from which all other professions are nou-
rished : ' Neither are these only similitudes, as men of narrow
observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of
nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters/
* It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating
[which considers nature as simple, though in a concrete body] *
sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universal in nature ;
and opens such broad paths to human power, as the thought of
man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or
figure to itself,'
Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the
human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its
practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the
limit of its speculation.
The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature
offers us — this knowledge of what she is beforehand — the
practical certainty which this interior acquaintance with her,
this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of
her manifestations, is able to command — that comprehensive
command of results which the knowledge of the true causes
involves — the causes which are always present in all effects,
which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all
the difference — the 'power' of this knowledge, its power to
relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it
insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in
which that ? wonder' — that is, \ the seed of knowledge' —
* ' I the first of any, by my universal being?
Michael de Montaigne.
470 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
brought forth this plant, was not one to overlook or make light
of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can
appease _ that love which leads it to the truth, not for the
sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.
' Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost
an identity between the ways of human power and human
knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate
habit of dwelling upon abstractions, it is by far the safest
method to commence and build up sciences from those founda-
tions which bear a relation to the practical division, and to let
them mark out and limit the theoretical. Something like that
the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of
making 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to its
theoric;' — « let that mark out and limit the theoretical.'
That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course
the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of
Learning, as that which has been of ' such ill desert towards
learning,' as ' to reduce it to certain empty and barren generali-
ties, the mere husks and shells of sciences/ good for nothing
at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels
that have been forced out of them, by the torture and press of
the method, — the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges,
1 that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and
are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal
skeleton confesses, ' than an Ortelius's universal map is, to
direct the way between London and York.'
The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generali-
ties, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of
practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is
just what we are doing here now in this question of the con-
sulship, — that so practical and immediately urgent question
which was, threatening then to drive out every other from
the human consideration. If learning had anything to offer
on that subject, which would not excite the scorn of practical'
men, then certainly was the time to produce it.
We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we
are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play re-
quires .-— the practical question marks it out, — we have just
METAPHYSICAL AID. 47 I
as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so
much as a 'jot* more. But mark the expression: — 'it is by
far the safest method to commence and build up sciences' —
the particular sciences, — the branches of science — from those
foundations which bear a relation to the practical division. We
begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise
is in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than
instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer
it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form
of a learned treatise, — a tissue of barren and empty generali-
ties. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only
by its want of pretension ; and the fact that it does not offer
itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into
that position. We begin with the practical question, with its
most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but
that which is to be noted is, ' the foundations' of the universal
philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step
we are on the platform of the prima philosophia ; the last
conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the
nature of things, is the ground, — the solid continuity — that
we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this
practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of
sciences is continued : — that trunk of universality which we
are forbidden henceforth to scorn, because all the professions
are nourished from it. That universality which the men of
practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs,
since they have reached that, single bough of it, which
stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach.
Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the
divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, ' Thou
hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on the magic
robes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by
companies, — not of fifties, — not of hundreds, — not of thou-
sands — sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the
man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a
divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary
still, and without a shepherd, — sitting down to this feast, for
which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, re-
472 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
joicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring
in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part
Pilate's question: This, so far as it goes at least, this is truth.
And the rod of that enchantment was plucked here. It is but
a branch from this same trunk — this trunk of 'univer-
sality,' which the men of practice will scorn no more, when
once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of
miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the
new science, are hidden still.
Continued from that ' trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops
now to branch ; its golden * hangings' mellowed, — time mel-
lowed, — ready to fall unshaken. Built on that ' foundation,'
rises now this fair structure, the doctrine of the state. That
knowledge of nature in general, that interior knowledge of her,
that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign
aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within,
in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at
the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is
priestly. It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter
our — Persian. We are walking on the pavements of Art ; but
it is Nature's temple still; it is her ' pyramid,' and we are within,
and the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust
' that the rude wind blows in our face/ and ' the poor beetle
that we tread on,' and the poor ' madman and beggar too/ are
glorious in it, and of our 'kin.' Those universal forms which the
book of science in the abstract has laid bare already, are run-
ning through all; the cord of them is visible in all the detail.
Their foot-prints, which have been tracked to the height
where nature is one, are seen for the first time cleared, un-
covered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced speech,
that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart
of nature, is not the ventriloquist's artifice, is not a poor show-
man's trick. It is great nature's voice — her own; and the
magician who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of
'the one in all' the priest who has unlocked her inmost
shrine, and plucked out the heart of her mystery — is 'the
Interpreter.'
PLAN OF INNOVATION— NEW DEFINITIONS. 473
CHAPTER IX.
THE CURE — PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS.
' Swear by thy double self
And that's an oath of credit.'
' Having thus far proceeded
Is it not meet
That I did amplify my judgment in
Other conclusions?'
TT is the trunk of the prima philosophia then which puts
■*■ forth these new and wondrous boughs, into all the fields
of human speculation and practice, filling all our outdoor,
penetrating all our indoor life, with their beauty and fragrance ;
overhanging every roof, stooping to every door, with their
rich curtains and clusters of ornament and delight, with their
ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of practice — brought
down to particulars, ready for use — with their dispersed
directions overhanging every path, — with their aphorisms
made out of the pith and heart of sciences, * representing a
broken knowledge, and, therefore, inviting the men of specu-
lation to inquire farther.'
It is from this trunk of a scientific universality, of a useful,
practical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality,
to which the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to
their simple forms and ' causes in nature? conducts the scien-
tific experimenter, — it is from this primal living trunk and
heart of sciences, to which the new method of learning con-
ducts us, that this great branch of scientific practice comes,
which this drama with its f transitory shows ' has brought
safely down to us; — this two-fold branch of ethics and politics,
which come to us — conjoined — as ethics and politics came in
474 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
other systems then not scientific, — making in their junction,
and through all their divergencies, ' the forbidden questions '
of science.
The. science of this essentially conjoined doctrine is that
which makes, in this case, the novelty. ' The nature which is
formed in everything/ and not in man only, and the faculty, in
man, of comprehending that wider nature, is that which makes
the higher ground, from which a science of his own specific
nature, and the explanation of its phenomenon, is possible to
man. Except from this height of a common nature, there is no
such thing as a scientific explanation of these phenomena
possible. And this explanation is what the specific nature in
man, with its speculative grasp of a larger whole — with its
speculative grasp of a universal whole, — with its instinctive
moral reach and comprehension corresponding to that, — con-
stitutionally demands and * anticipates.'
And the knowledge of this nature which is formed in every-
thing, and not in man only, is the beginning, not of a specu-
lative science of the human nature merely, — it is the begin-
nings— it is the indispensable foundation of the arts in which
a successful artistic advancement of that nature, or an artistic
cure or culture of it is propounded. The fact that the * human
nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a 'nature? the fact that
the human species is a species, — the fact that the human kind
is but a kind, neighboured with many others from which it is
isolated by its native walls of ignorance, — neighboured with
many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more
or less kind-\y, more or less hostile, — species, kinds, whose
dialects of the universal laws, man has not found, — the fact
that the universal, historic principles are operant in all the
specific modifications of human nature, and control and deter-
mine them, the fact that the human life admits of a scientific
analysis, and that its phenomena require to be traced to their
true forms, — this is the fact which is the key to the new philo-
sophy,— the key which unlocks it, — the key to the part
speculative, and the part operative of it.
And this is the secret of the difference between this philo-
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 475
sophy and all other systems and theories of man's life on earth
that had been before it, or that have come after it. For this
new and so solid height of natural philosophy, — solid, — his-
torical,— from its base in the divergency of natural history, to
its utmost peak of unity, — this scientific height of a common
nature, whose summit is ' prima philosophia,' with its new uni-
versal terms and axioms, — this height from which man, as a
species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous notions and
theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with which
history itself is always flying in the face of them, — from which
the specific bias in them is everywhere detected, — this new
' pyramid ' of knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces
the conflict of views, the clash of man's opinions shall not sound :
this is the system which has had, and shall have, no rival.
And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches
human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for
abstract human notions — specific human notions that are pow-
erless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained
and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce, — powers,
true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure
as nature herself, and her universal form.
To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow ' the
idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning.
Man as man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in
nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires
him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and
dogmas.
From the height of that new simplicity which this philo-
sophy has gained — not as the elder philosophies had gained
theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat
to the a priori sources of knowledge and belief in man, —
which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts
of the human nature can supply — with the torch of these
universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with
the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters
here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice,
this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks,
476 THE CURB OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries,
stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of
this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out
to the day, are hid.
The radical universal fact — the radical universal distinction
of the double nature of GOOD which is formed in everything,
and not in man only, and the two universal motions which
correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substan-
tive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the
principle of selfishness and war in nature — the principle
which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution
of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish,
unscientific man, who does not know how to track the pheno-
mena of his own nature to their causes, — who has no bridge
from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness
into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason
of it as if it were; — this double nature of good, ' the one, as a
thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is, apart
or member of a greater body, whereof the latter is in degree the
greater and the worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more
general form' — this distinction, which the philosopher of this
school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement
of the human species, with a recommendation that it should be
strongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the
root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the
heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this
play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the common-
weal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious,
practical application. In all these great ' illustrated ' scientific
works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of
science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally
actual and active principles are tracked to their proper specific
modifications in man, and not to their development in his
actual history merely ; and the distinctive essential law of the
human kind — the law whereby man is man, as distinguished
from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and un-
folded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law — is
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 477
brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted
in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds
and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically
developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited
to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affec-
tions, — this double nature of good, as it is developed in man,
with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a
larger whole than his particular and private nature can com-
prehend— with his large discourse looking before and after,
on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow
isolating senses on the other — with that distinctive human
nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, com-
prehend the world, and not intellectually only — that nature
whereby ' the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind
only — that nature which by the law of advancement to the
perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to — that, on the
one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower
natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down
to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to
his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no
such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp
the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and
walled in, — these two universal natures of good, and all the
passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line
where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the
tragedy of their confusion, — this two-fold nature, and its
tragic blending, and its true specific human development,
whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in
all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation,
through all their characterization, through all their mirth,
through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that
only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.
* Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter,
and the hardliest reduced to axiom ' ; but setting out from
that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher
is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is
bent on ; for unless those universal, historical principles, which
478 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their
abstract form, * terminate in matter and construction according
to the true definitions, they are speculative and of little use.'
The termination of them in matter, and the new construction
according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which
is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies
collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that in-
terferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is
the f second vintage ' of the New Machine, is expressed before
our eyes. * For that which in speculative philosophy corre-
sponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'
He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other
political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has
the true definition in his hands to begin with ; not the specific
and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up
within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all,
but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the
combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to
ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that
are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical
phenomena are convertible, — the motives from which all move-
ment proceeds, the true original simple powers, — the unknown,
into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather
theknowninto which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable ;
the forms ' which are always present when the particular nature
is present, and universally attest that presence; which are
always absent when the particular nature is absent, and uni-
versally attest that absence; which always increase as the par-
ticular nature increases ; which always decrease as the particu-
lar nature decreases; ' that is the kind of definitions which this
philosopher will undertake his moral reform with ; that is the
kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the
basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the
turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does
full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers,
whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only,
but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 479
his. He saw from what height of genius they achieved their
command; but that was two thousand years before, and that
was in the south east corner of Europe ; and when the Modern
Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks
could not give the law any longer. It was found that the
English notions at least, and the Greek notions of things in
general differed very materially — essentially — when they came
to be put on paper. When the ' representative men \ of those
two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated
ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together
from their ' cliffs ' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser
minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to be
perceptible at once, though the world has not yet begun to
appreciate them. It was a difference that was expected to tell
on the common mind, for a time, principally in its ' effects'
Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now,
that after the modern survey was taken, new practical direc-
tions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immedi-
ate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the
ship was laid on a new course. ' Plato,' says the new philoso-
pher, ( as one that had a wit of elevation situate upon a cliff \ did
descry that forms are the true object of knowledge,' that was his
discovery, — ' but lost the fruit of that opinion by' — shutting him-
self up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little
world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before
hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and
modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's
part is so humble. ' Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, ' vain
man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'
But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the pro-
pounder of the New Ideal Philosophy ' comes to particulars,'
with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they
were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and
earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others, — which
were not included in the ' idols/ He tells us plainly that
these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most
delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate
480 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them,
or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things
first. He does not pride himself very much on anything
which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of
inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says,
in this connection:— ' We do not, however, deny that other in-
stances can perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of
practice in general, he begins af er the scientific method, not
with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by
collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of
species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them.
And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the
'elementary motions,' — outlined, and enriched with such ob-
servations as he and his school have been able to make under
the disadvantages of that beginning. « The motions of bodies,'
he observes, ' are compounded, decomposed and combined, no
less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention
of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great empha-
sis, to those instances which he calls ' instances of predomi-
nance,'—' instances which point out the predominance and
submission of powers, compared [not in abstract contemplation
but in action,] compared with each other, and which, [not in
books but in action,] — which is the more energetic and supe-
rior, or more weak and inferior.
' These 'elementary notions,' direct and are directed by each
other, according to their strength,— quantity, excitement, con-
cussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For
instance, some magnets support iron sixty times their own
weight; so far does the motion of lesser congregation predomi-
nate over the greater, but if the weight be increased it yields'
[We must observe, that he is speaking here of ' the motions,
tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in
nature/ for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which
apply as widely ; though he keeps, with the intimation above
quoted, principally to this class of instances.] ■ A lever of a
certain strength will raise a given weight, and so far the notion
of liberty predominates over that of the greater congregation ;
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 48 1
but if the weight be greater, the former motion yields. A
piece of leather, stretched to a certain point, does not break,
and so far the motion of continuity predominates3 [for it is the
question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering,
and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that hets
handling] — * so far the motion of continuity predominates over
that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather
breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quan-
tity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of
greater congregation predominates over that of continuity ; but
if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with
ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the
ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater
congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder
is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being
assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the
nitre; and so of the rest.1
Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to
criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better
than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which
it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here
also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into ' the
wrestling instances,' and the « instances of predomi-
nance' in general, < such as point out the predominance of
powers, compared with each other, and which of them is the
more energetic and superior, or more weak and inferior1'
and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its
illustration of another in this system of learning, where things
are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not
sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one
who regards them as ' the same footsteps of nature, treading in
different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal
axioms; and this is a class of instances which he particularly
recommends to inquiry. < For wrestling instances, which
show the predominance of powers, and in what manner and pro-
portion they predominate and yield, must be searched for with
active and industrious diligence.'
I 1
482 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
* The method and nature of this yielding' [of this yielding —
SUBJECTION is the question] * must also be diligently exa-
mined; as, for instance, whether the motions' ['of liberty']
'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained;
for in all bodies with which we are acquainted, there is no real,
but an apparent rest, eithei' in the whole, or in the parts. This
apparent rest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the
case of Hamlet, as well as in that of some others whose acts
were suspended, and whose wills were arrested then, by con-
siderations not less comprehensive than his] — ' either by
equilibrium, or by the absolute predominance of motions. By
equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, which rest if the
weight be equal By predominance, as in perforated jars, in
which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the
predominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'
1 It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before),
how far the yielding motions exert themselves. For, if a man be held
stretched out on the ground against his WILL, with arms and
legs bound down, or otherwise confined— [as the Duke of Kent's
were, for instance] — and yet strive with all his power to get
up, the struggle is not the less, though ineffectual. The real
state of the case' [namely, whether the yielding motion be, as
it were, annihilated by the predominance, or there be rather a
continued, though an invisible effort] e will perhaps appear in
the concurrence of MOTIONS, although it escape our notice
in their conflict.' So delicately must philosophy needs be con-
veyed in a certain stage of a certain class of wrestling instances,
where a combination of powers hostile to science produces an
* absolute predominance' of powers, and it is necessary that the
yielding motion should at least appear to be ' as it were, anni-
hilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the invisible
effort at all. ' For on account of the rawness and unskilful-
ness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no diffi-
culty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the
axioms which these particular instances adduced here, and
* others which might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield.
This is an instance of the freedom with which philosophical
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 483
views on certain subjects are continually addressed in these
times, to that immediate audience of the few ' who will per-
haps see farther into them than the common reader,' and to
those who shall hereafter apply to the philosophy issued under
such conditions — the conditions above described, that key of
6 Times,' which the author of it has taken pains to leave for
that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which
makes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated.
There are more and less powerful motives concerned in this
wrestling instance, as he goes on to demonstrate.
1 The rules of such instances of predominance as occur
should be collected, such as the following ' - and the rule which
he gives, by way of a specimen of these rules., is a very im-
portant one for a statesman to have, and it is one which the
philosopher has himself ' collected ' from such instances as oc-
curred - ' The more general the desired advantage is, the
stronger will be the motive. The motion of connection, for in-
stance, which relates to the intercourse of the parts of the uni-
verse, is more powerful than that of gravity , which relates to
the intercourse of dense bodies. Again; the desire of a private
good does not, in general, prevail against that of a public one,
except where the quantities are small [it is the general law he
is propounding here; and the exception, the anomaly, is that
which he has to note] ; would that such were the case in civil
matters.'
But that application to * civil matters,' which the statesman,
propounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge
of the actual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source
of relief to the human estate, — that application, which he could
only make here in these side-long glances, is made in the Play
without any difficulty at all. These instances, which he pro-
duces here in his professed work of science, are produced as
illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he is going to bring
to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his genius, on the
powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human
nature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it
tends — those larger wholes and greater congregations, which
11 2
484 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
parliaments, and pulpits, and play-houses, and books, were
forbidden then, on pain of death and torture and ignominy,
to meddle with. Here, he tells us, he finds it to the purpose
to select ' suggestive instances, such as point out that which is
advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part of science to
make judicious inquiries and wishes.'
These instances, which he produces here, are searching; but
they are none too searching for his purpose. They do not
come any nearer to nature than those others which he is pre-
pared to add to them. The treatment is not any more radical
and subtle here than it is in those instances in which 'he comes
to particulars,' under the pretence of play and pastime, in other
departments, — those in which the judicious inquiry into the
laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules 'the most
generally useful to mankind.'
° This is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this
Play, — this Play, in which the great question, not yet ready
for the handling of the unlearned, but ripe already for scien-
tific treatment,— the question of the wrestling forces, — the
question of the subjection and predominance of powers, — the
question of the combination and opposition of forces in those
arrested motions which make states, is so boldly handled.
Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not
real __ where the ' yielding' forces are only, as it were, anni-
hilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute pre-
dominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds
and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as
< subjects,' but predominators — not as states, but revolutions.
The science * that ends in matter and new constructions'—
new construction, ' according to true definitions,' is what these
citizens, whom this Poet has called up from their horizontal
position by way of anticipation, are already, under his instruc-
tions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which these
very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken
into the account, are what these men. whom this Magician has
set upon their feet here, whose lips he has opened, and whose
arms he has unbound with the magic of his art, are going to
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 485
have before they lie down again, or, at least, before they make
a comfortable state for any one to trample on, though they
may, perhaps, for a time seem, ' as it were, annihilated.'
These true forms, these real definitions, this new kind of
ideas, these new motions, new in philosophy, new in human
speech, old in natures, — written in her book ere man was, —
these universal, elementary, original motions, which he is ex-
hibiting here in the philosophic treatise, under cover of a
certain class of instances, are the very ones which he is
tracking here in the Play, into all the business of the state.
This is that same new thread which we saw there in the
grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space
filled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however,
to show that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,
— how. But here it is the more chosen substance ; and every
point of this illustrious web is made of its involutions, — is
a point of 'illustration.'
Yes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised
field of his labours, — that field of ' noblest subjects,' for the
culture of which he will have all nature put under contri-
bution ; here he is at large, ' making what work he pleases.'
He who is content to talk from his chair of professional
learning of * pieces of leather,' and their unions, and bid his
pupil note and * consider well ' that mysterious, unknown, un-
explored power in nature, which holds their particles together,
in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it ceases, or seems
to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is
vanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in
• water,' arrested ■ in perforated jars,' or ' flowing through a
chink,' or resisting gravity, ' if the chink be smaller, or in the
balanced 'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of
all nature, — the weaker enslaved, but there, — not annihilated;
he who saw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those
dense palpable masses, or in the lever, assisted by human
hands, vanquishing its mighty opposite, things that old philo-
sophies had not dreamt of, — reports of mysteries,— revelations
for those who have the key, — words from that book of creative
486 THE CURE OF THE COMMON -WEAL.
power, words from that living Word, which he must study
who would have his vision of God fulfilled, who would make
of his { good news ' something more than a Poet's prophecy.
He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless sulphur,
in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of fire
and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the
resisting ball, — not less real to his eye, because not apparent,
or in the villanous compound itself, while yet the spark is
wanting, — ' rules' for other e wrestling instances,' for other com-
binations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome;
requiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of
forces, not less but more scientifically artistic,— rules for the en-
largement of forces, waiting but their spark, then, to demon-
strate, with more fearful explosions, their expansibility, threat-
ening ' to lay all flat.'
For here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the
unreported actualities, are working still, in obedience to their
orders, which they had not from man, and taking no note of
his. ' For man, as the interpreter of nature, does, and under-
stands as much as his observations ON THE order of things,
or the mind, permits him, and neither knows nor is capable of
more.' ' Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw
natural bodies. Nature internally performs the
rest'; and 'the syllogism forces assent, but not things.'
Great things this Interpreter promises to man from these
observations and interpretations, which he and his company
are ordering; great things he promises from the application of
this new method of learning to this department of man's want;
because those vague popular notions — those spontaneous but
deep-rooted beliefs in man — those confused, perplexed terms,
with which he seeks to articulate them, and not those acts
which make up his life only — are out of nature, and all re-
solvable into higher terms, and require to be returned into
these before man can work with them to purpose.
Great news for man he brings ; the powers which are working
in the human life, and not those which are working without it
only, are working in obedience to laws. Great things he pro-
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 487
mises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces
which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being
reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these dis-
tinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial com-
plication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling *
already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solu-
tion, already ' anticipating' science, and invoking her, and
waiting and watching for her coming.
Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in
also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirma-
tions of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the
universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the
human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole,
which is the worthier — that law of the common-weal, which
is the human law — that law which in man is reason and con-
science, is in the nature of things, and not in man only — nay,
not in man as yet, but prefigured only — his ideal ; his true
form — not in man, who ' IS* not, but ' becoming. ,'
But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitu-
tion of things in general into the human constitution — in
tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of
human life — the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and
beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields — the
criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of
course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no
unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in
which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something
more than nothing in nature.'
This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in
which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought
throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the
constitution of man which we find on another page — that
constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a
common-weal — that constitution whereby his relation to the
common- weal is essential to the perfection of his individual
nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with
advancement — that constitution whereby the highest good of
488 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to
the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the
whole in its intention. (' For neither can a man understand
virtue without relation to society, nor DUTY without an
. inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question
of ( the government of every man over himself/ and the pre-
dominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in ' the little
state of man' — the question as to which is ' nobler' — comes
to be connected with the question of civil government so
closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and
state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find
this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism
and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, form-
ing so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal,
inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.
' Constructions according to true definitions' make the end
here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary
to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere
science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific insti-
tutions of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential
conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the
light of ' the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use
in revolutions till we have it ; and as for empirical institutions,
mankind has seen the best of them ; — we are perishing in
their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches,
or something of that nature — or threatened with becoming
mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been,
preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future
species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It
is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better,
when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk,
brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one
kind and another for bread ; when our drugs give the lie to
science ; when mustard refuses to ' counter-irritate,' and sugar
has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of ' ginger'
is no longer ' hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative
philosophy at present is —
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 489
1 Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures, and pre-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality.'
— 'There's something in this more than natural, — if philo-
sophy could find it out.'
And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to
this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large
enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed
up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority ;
and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose;
when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself
is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary
point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay
to reason it thus and thus with ' the garotte ■ about our throats :
the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried
here also. Now that we have ' found out ' oxygen and
hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding
by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of
hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see
what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments
in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to
our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate
in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is
of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.
The experiment in the ' common logic/ as Lord Bacon calls
it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result
is, that it forces assent, and not things.
The question here is not of divinity, as some might suppose.
There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled
about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's argu-
ments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of
that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid, — its
perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the
constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of
things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity
strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on
490 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
1 that rock where philosophy and divinity join close ; ' and
heaven and earth may pass, but not that.
The question here is of logic. The question is between
Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones
and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are
disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most
vital department of human practice, in this most vital com-
mon human concern and interest. The question is of these
demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet —
on both sides of it — going about with ' tickets of leave, of
one kind and another ; for the logic that we employ in this
department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out
of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it
sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no
attention to our present method of reasoning about them.
There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes; —
they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is,
that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that
result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature,
when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind
of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for
him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of
ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The
difficulty is just this; — here we have it in a nut-shell, as we
are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.
'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words.
Words are the signs of notions : notions represent things : [If
these last then] — if our notions are fantastical, the whole
structure falls to the ground. But [they are] they are, for
the most part, improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,'
and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning,
propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the
old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are just two methods
of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but
cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from
the very outset some abstract and useless generalities, — the
other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 49 1
most common in nature/ ' Axioms determined on in argu-
ment, can never assist in the discovery of new effects, for the
subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But
axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars,
easily point out and define new particulars, and impart
activity to the sciencts.
* We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply
to nature, the anticipation of nature (as being rash
and premature), and that which is properly deduced from
THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.— (A radical
distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine
of the mind to establish). l Anticipations are sufficiently
powerful in producing unanimity; for if men were all to
become even uniformly mad, they might agree tolerably well
with each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble;
that is the assent that is wanting).
* In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is rio-ht
to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force
assent, and not things.'
The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions
and rude theories of the nature of things, — the difference
between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the
human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those con-
ceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things,
and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in
which science begins.
And we shall find that the truths of science in this depart-
ment of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new,
quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as
unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths
with which science has already overpowered the popular
notions and theories in those departments in which its powers
have been already tested.
These rude natural products of the human understanding,
while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in
general, which in their broadest range proceed from the
human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior
492 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men,
through all their range, from the a priori conceptions of the
schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions
and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 4 Novum
Organum,' and of the ' Advancement of Learning,' by a bold
and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under
the seemingly fanciful, — but, considering the time, none too
fanciful, — designation of * the Idols'; — (he knew, indeed,
that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a
more literal reading), — * the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den,
of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason — scien-
tific, as well as rhetorical reason, — for dividing and dis-
tinguishing them. But under that common designation of
images, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common
criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, un-
sought, universality, which is all particulars — which is more
universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp
of their beliefs and pre-judgments; — that universal fact which
men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all
their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. That universal,
actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in
favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into
the account, — that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is
able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-
notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience,
all the learning of the world had till then made over with a
scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under
that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in
its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all
sail thither.
We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and
definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is
science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches
which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nur-
ture,— none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked
us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The
man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in
PLAN OP INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 493
the popular dialect here, any more than the chemist or the
botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men
with their truer language in the fields they occupy. The new
Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of
these same terms, with a hint to ' men of understanding/ per-
haps, as to the sense in which he uses them.
Incorporated into a system of learning on which much
human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some
good practical purposes under certain conditions of social
advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning
discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above
all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and
the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in
these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision
with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He
makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned
schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun
out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is
another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here.
That is the word which in his school he will undertake to
teach.
When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the
botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He
has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms
are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature
of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in
the way of his profession, he will have none of those old con-
fused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and
analyze them ; and all, — all that is in them, — all, and more,
will be in his; but scientifically cleared, ' divided with the
mind, that divine fire/ and clothed with power.
And it is just as impossible that those changes for the
human relief which the propounder of the New Logic pro-
pounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of
the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed
to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it
would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this lo^ic
494 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL. •
has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth,
fire, air, water, — terms which antiquity thought fine enough;
which passed the muster of the ancient schools without sus-
picion, had never to this hour been analyzed.
It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our
magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia
Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for
man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the
vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with
the edge of the New Machine,, and divided with its divine
fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least
elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to sup-
pose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be
attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human
life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive
demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed,
unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and
send it on our errands, — so long as these still slip through the
ring of our airy * words/ still riot in the freedom of our large
generalizations, our sublime abstractions, — so long as a mere
human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with
its deadly impotence, — keeping out the true generalizations
with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, — the creative
word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, —
the word to which rude nature bows anew, — the word which
is Power.
But while the world is resounding with those new relations
to the powers of nature which the science of nature has
established in other fields, in that department of it, which its
Founder tells us is ' the end and term of Natural Science in
the intention of man/ in that department of it to which his
labor was directed ; we are still given over to the inventions
of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of
the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to
us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested
affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assump-
tion. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human
PLAN OF INNOVATION — NEW DEFINITIONS. 495
speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find
their genera, — to trace them to that which is more known to
nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity
and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice
present.
We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet.
The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by
which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those
are not the names in that ' infinite book of secresy' which they
were taught in. They find a more potent order there.
And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here
still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The
powers of nature which are included in the human nature, —
the powers which in this specific form of them we are under-
taking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked
together with the Aristotelian logic — these powers are no
more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they
are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach
them with another vocabulary.
The foices which are developed in the human life will not
answer to the names by which we call them here, any more
than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incan-
tation,— any more than it would have come if the old Logi-
cian had called it by his name, — which was just as good as
the name — and no better, than the name, which the priest of
Baal gave it, — any more than it would have come, if the old
Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his
syllogism.
But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician,
came, with ' the part operative ' of his speculation, with his
* New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the
staff of his genera and species, — when the right name was
found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and
came. It came fast enough then. It was * asleep,' but it
awaked. It was ' taking a journey ' but it came. There was
no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new inter-
preter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order
496 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp
or ceremony, or ' windy suspiration of forced breath,' and
fetched it.
But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race
who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing
in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who
are called in this system ' Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish
them from those who * rashly anticipate ' it. He did not make
faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a pre-
scribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was
no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew
that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or it,
peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such
process.
But the metaphysicians who have this field in their hands do
not appear to perceive as yet that the logic of ( preconceptions
is just as good-for-nothing for practical purposes in this field
as in any other, and that mankind, accustomed now to effects
from speculation in other departments, are beginning to look
gravely this way, and wonder what the difficulty is with this
science in particular, claiming such special aids, and yet so
singularly deficient in that which modern science confesses a
leaning to, — power, effects, remedies, reliefs, cures, advance-
ments.
And the farther the world proceeds on that ' new road ' it is
travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in
this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the
advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civili-
zation, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the
occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical
genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advance-
ment proceeds.
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 497
CHAPTER X.
PLAN OF INNOVATION. — NEW CONSTRUCTIONS.
' Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true
definitions, they are speculative, and of little use.' — Novum Organum.
"P^IFFICULT, then, as the problem of Civil Government
**£ appeared to the eye of the scientific philosopher, and
threatening and appalling as were those immediate aspects
of it which it presented at that moment, he does not despair of
the State. Even on the verge of that momentous political
and social crisis, ' though he does not need to go to heaven to
predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' ' he thinks
he sees ways to save us/ and he finds in his new science of
Man the ultimate solution of that problem.
That particular and private nature which is in all men, let
them re-name themselves by what names they will, that par-
ticular and private nature which intends always the individual
and private good, has in itself ' an incident towards the good
of society/ which it may use as means, — which it must use, if
highly successful, — as means to its end. Even in this, when
science has enlightened it, and it is impelled by blind and un-
successful instinct no longer, the man of science finds a place
where a pillar of the true state can be planted; even here the
scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the human con-
stitution, a foundation-stone, — a stone that does not crumble — -
a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand must
rest on.
Even that ' active good,' which impels ' the troublers of the
world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller
model/ — that principle which impels the particular nature to
leave its signature on other things, — on the state, on the
K K
498 THE CUKE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
world, if it can, — though it is its own end, and though it is
apt, when armed with those singular powers for ' effecting its
good will,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to
lead to results of the kind which this piece represents, — this
is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality,
and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and
selectest means.
But that is not all. The bettering of itself, the perfection
of its own form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, a
motive, an actual ' power in everything that moves.' This is
one of the primal, universal, natural motions. It is in the
universal creative stamp of things; and strong as that is, the
rock on which here, too, the hope of science rests — strong as
that is, the pillar of the state, which here, too, it will rear.
For to man the highest ' passive good,' and this, too, is of the
good which is ' private and particular,' is, constitutionally, that
whereby ' the conscience of good intentions, however suc-
ceeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the
provision — the most luxurious provision — which can be made
for security and repose, — whereby the mere empirical experi-
menter in good will count it a higher felicity to fail in good
and virtuous ends towards the public, than to attain the most
envied success limited to his particular.
Thus, even in these decried 'private ' motives, which actuate
all men — these universal natural instincts, which impel men
yet more intensely, by the concentration of the larger sensi-
bility, and the faculty of the nobler nature of their species, to
seek their own private good, — even in these forces, which, un-
enlightened and uncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and
social dissolution, or * monstrous ' social combination, — even in
these, the scientific eye perceives the basis of new structures,
' constructions according to true definitions,' in which all the
ends that nature in man grasps and aspires to, shall be artis-
tically comprehended and attained.
But this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's
1 hope.' This is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance.
This is the place on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 499
pile he will rear. There is an unborrowed foundation, there
is an internal support for the state in man. For along with
that particular and private nature of good, there is another in
all men; — there is another motive, which respects and beholds
the good of society, not mediately, but directly as its end, —
which embraces in its intention ' the form of human nature,
whereof we are members and portions, and not — not — our
own proper, individual form ' ; and this is the good ( which is
in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the
conservation and advancement of a more general form.' And
this, also, is an actual force in man, proceeding from the uni-
versal nature of things and original in that, not in him. This,
also, is in the primeval creative stamp of things; and here,
also, the science of the interpretation of nature finds in the
constitution of man, and in the nature of things, the founda-
tions of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all hewn
and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand
ere man was, the everlasting pillars of the common- weal.
But in man this law, also, — this law chiefly, — has its special,
essentially special, development. c It is much more impressed
on man, if he de-generate not.' Great buildings have been
reared on this foundation already; great buildings, old and
time-honoured, stand on it. The history of human nature is
glorious, even in its degeneracy, with the exhibition of this
larger, nobler form of humanity asserting itself, triumphing
over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It is a species
in which the organic law transcends the individual, and
embraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which
those who seek the good of the kind, and subordinate the
private nature to that, are noble, and chief. It is a species
in which the law of the common-weal is for ever present
to the private nature, as the law of its own being, requiring,
under the pains and penalties of the universal laws of being,
subjection.
Science cannot originate new forces in nature. * Man, while
operating, can only apply or withdraw natural forces. Xature,
internally, performs the rest/ But here are the very forces
K K 2
500 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitu-
tionally, that mere species of ' vermin ' which, under certain
modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would
be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could
not undertake the common-weal in that case. If natures word
had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the
parts and members of that body that science sought to frame,
what word of creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of
life could she find, what breath of God could she boast, that
she should think to frame of such material the body politic,
the organic whole, the living, free, harmonious, triumphant
common-weal.
But here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving,
moving in the dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature
had provided reason, and required science and scientific art.
That has not been tried. And that is why this question
of the state, dark as it is, portentous, hopeless as its aspects are,
if we limit the survey to our present aids and instrumentalities,
is already, to the eye of science, kindling with the aurora of
unimagined change, advancements to the heights of man's
felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of poets' visions,
that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams with its
scientific reality.
There has been no help from science in this field hitherto.
The proceeding of the world has been instinctive and em-
pirical thus far, in the attainment of the ends which the com-
plex nature of man requires him to seek. Men have been
driven, and swayed hither and thither, by these different and
apparently contradictory aims, without any science of the
forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces will seek,
— ' it is their nature to,'— whether in man, or in any other
form in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of
declamation that is ever going to stop them. The power that
is in everything that moves, the forces of universal nature are
concerned in the acts that we deprecate and cry out upon. It
is the original constitution of things, as it was settled in that
House of Commons, to whose acts the memory of Man runneth
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 501
not, that is concerned in these demonstrations; and philosophy
requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by all
means, coming into any collision with those statutes. * We
must so order it/ says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in
this case from antiquity — ' we must so order it, as by no
means to contend with universal nature.' '. To attempt to
kick against natural necessity,' he says in his own name, and
in his own peculiar and more impressive method of philosophic
instruction — ' to attempt to kick against natural necessity, is
to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to outkick
his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing \ what is in our
power, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of
Learning, applying that universal rule of practice to our
present subject.
Here, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive
form, traced to the height of universal nature, and brought
down to the specific nature in man — here, as they lie on the
ground of the common nature in man, for the first time scien-
tifically abstracted — are the powers which science has to begin
with in this field. The varieties in the species, and the indivi-
dual differences so remarkable in this kind, are not in this place
under consideration. But here is the common nature in this
kind, which must make the basis of any permanent universal
social constitution for it. Different races will require that
their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their
social constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for
the better, look for change. But this is the universal plat-
form that science is clearing here. This is the world that she
is concerning herself with here, in the person of that High
Priest of hers, who, also, took that to be his business.
Here are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is
this universal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist,
merely, and maintain his form — which is nature's first law,
they tell us — but to 'better himself in some way. As
Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks advancement'; and advance-
ment he will have, or strive to have, if not 'formal and essen-
tial,' then ■ local/ He is instinctively impelled to it; and in
502 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature has
prescribed to him, the f tempest of human life' arises.
The scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these uni-
versal forces, and undertake to found society on their annihila-
tion. Science will count that structure unsafe which is founded
on the supposed annihilation of these forces in anything that
moves. The man of science knows, that though by the pre-
dominance of powers, or by the equilibrium of them, they may
be for a time, ' as it were, annihilated,' they are in every crea-
ture; and nature in the instincts, though blind, is cunning,
and finds ways and means of overcoming barriers, and evading
restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself when once she
finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these forces,
the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in
the constitution of man, overlooking them from that height,
will thankfully accept them, and make much of them. These
are just the motive powers that science has need of; she could
not compose her structure without them, which is only the
perfecting of the structure which the great Creating Wisdom
had already outlined and pre-ordered — not a machine, but a
living organic whole.
Science takes this ' piece of work' as she finds him, ready,
waiting for the hand of art — imperfect, unfinished, but with
the proceeding of nature incorporated in him — with the crea-
tive, advancing, perfecting motion, incorporated in him as his
essence and law; — imperfect, but with nature working within
him for the rest, urging him to self-perfection. She takes
him as she finds him, a creature of instinct, but with his large,
rich, undeveloped, yet already active nature of reason, and
conscience, and religion, already struggling for the mastery,
counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check,
with nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in
man, because eyes were included in nature's definition of him,
as it was written beforehand in her book, her universal book
of types and orders — eyes, and not instinct only — 4 that
what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.' ' O'er that art,
which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.'
PLAN OP INNOVATION. 503
The want of this pre-ordered art is the want here still. The
war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here still. That
is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of investigation
with which science has pursued and found out nature else-
where— that same intense, indefatigable concentration of en-
deavour, which has been rewarded with such ' magnitude of
effects' in other fields — that same, in a higher degree, in
more powerful combinations, proportioned to the magnitude
and common desirableness of the object, is what is wanting
here. It is the instincts that are at fault here, — c the blind
instincts, that seeing reason' should ' guide.'
That is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm
begins, that ' continues still/ and blasts our lives, in spite of all
the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic
that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. ' Meagre suc-
cess,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the
storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder that the
world is full of the uproar of this arrested work, this violated
intent of nature. She will storm on till we hear her. Woe
to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who think
to violate her intent and prosper ! * The storm continues/
and it will continue, pronounce on it what incantations we
may, so long as the elemental forces of all nature are meeting
in our lives, and dashing in blind elemental strength against
each other, and the brooding spirit of the social life, the com-
posing spirit of the larger whole, cannot reconcile them,
because the voices that are filling the air with the discord of
their controversy, and out-toning the noise of this battle with
theirs, are crying in one key, ' Let there be darkness here';
because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is
held back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away;
because the night of human ignorance still covers all this
battle-ground, and hides the combatants.
Science is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages
has spoken it, ' and now the times give it proof; the times in
which the methods of earlier ages, in the rapid advancement
of learning in other fields, are losing their vitalities, and leav-
504 THE CUKE OE THE COMMON-WEAL.
ing us without those means of social combination, without
those social bonds which the rudest ages of instinct and intui-
tion, which the most barbaric peoples have been able to com-
mand. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific proof,
when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their
power to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving
faith of earlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in
its stiuggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its
divine realities, because they have not been translated into
their speech and language, and think there is no such thing;
and under all the exterior splendours of a material civilization
advanced by science, society tends to internal decay, and the
primal war of atoms.
To meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it is not enough
to call these powers that are actual in the human nature, but
which are not yet reconciled and reduced to their true and
natural order — it is not enough at this age of the world, at
this stage of human advancement in other fields— to call these
forces by some general names which include their oppositions,
and to require for want of skill that a part of them shall be
annihilated; it is not enough to express a strong disapproba-
tion of the result as it is, and to require, in never-so-authorita-
tive manner, that it shall be otherwise. No matter what
names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter under
what pains and penalties we require it, the result — whatever we
may say to the contrary — the result does not follow. That
is not the way. Those who try it, and who continue to try
it in the face of no matter what failures, may think it is; but
there is a voice mightier than theirs, drowning all their speech,
telling us in thunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments
that brutes might understand, telling us that it is not!
It is, indeed, no small gain in the rude ages of warring
instincts and intuitions, when there is as yet no science to
define them, and compare them, and pronounce from its calm
height its eternal axioms here — when the world is a camp,
and hostilities are deified, and mankind is in arms when all
the moral terms are still wrapped in the confusion of the first
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 505
outgoing of the perplexed, unanalysed human motivity — it is
no small gain to get the word of the nobler intuitions out-
spoken, to get the word of the divine law of man's nature, his
essential law pronounced — even in rudest ages overawing,
commanding with its awlul divinity the intenser motivity of
the lesser nature — able to summon, in rudest ages, to its ideal
heights, those colossal heroic forms, that cast their long sha-
dows over the tracts of time, to tell us what type it is that
humanity aspires to. It is no small gain to get these nobler
intuitions outspoken in some voice that commands with its
authority the world's ear, or illustrated in some exemplar that
arrests the world's eye, and draws the human heart unto it.
It is no small advance in human history, to get the divine
authority of those nobler intuitions, which, in man, anti-
cipate speculation, and their right to command the par-
ticular motives, recognised in the common speech of men,
incorporated in their speculative belief, incorporated in their
books of learning, and embalmed in institutions that keep
the divine exemplar of the human form for ever in our
eyes. It if something. The warring nations war on. The
world is in arms still. The rude instincts are not stayed in
their intent. They pause, it maybe; ' but a roused passion
sets them new a-work.' The speckled demons, that the dege-
nerate angelic nature breeds, put on the new livery, and go
abroad in it rejoicing. New rivers of blood, new seas of
carnage, are opened in the new name of peace; new engines
of torture, of fiendish wrong, are invented in the new name of
love. But it if some gain. There is a new rallying-place on
the earth for those who seek truly the higher good ; at the foot
of the new symbol they recognise each other, they join hand in
hand, and the bands of those who wait and watch amid the
earth's darkness for the promise, cheer us with their songs.
Truths out of the Eternal Book, truths that all hearts lean on
in their need, are spoken. Words that shall never pass away,
sweet with the immortal hope and perennial joy of life, are
always in our ears.
The nations that have contributed to this result in any
506 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
degree, whether primarily or secondarily, whether they be
Syrians or Assyrians, Arabs or Egyptians, wandering or settled,
wild or tame; whether they belong to the inferior unanalysing
Semitic races, or whether they come of the more richly en-
dowed, but yet youthful, Indo-European stock ; whether
they be Hebrews or Persians, Greeks or Romans, will always
have the world's gratitude. Those to whose intenser concep-
tions and bolder affirmations, in the rude ages of instinct and
spontaneous allegation, it was given to pronounce and put on
everlasting record, these primal truths of inspiration, — truths
whose divinity all true hearts respond to, may be indeed by
their natural intellectual characteristics, — if Semitic must be
— totally disqualified by ethnological laws, — hopelessly dis-
qualified — so hopelessly that it is to lose all to put it on them
— for the task of commanding, in detail, our modern civiliza-
tion ; — a civilization which has made, already, the rude ethics
of these youthful races, when it comes to details, so palpably
and grossly inapplicable, that it is an offence to modern sensi-
bility to name — to so much as name — decisions which stand
unreversed, without comment, in our books of learning. But
that is no reason why we should not take, and thankfully ap-
propriate as the gift of God, all that it was their part to con-
tribute to the great plot of human advancement. We cannot
afford to dispense with any such gain. The movement which
respects the larger whole, the divine intent incorporates it
all.
' Japhet shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' for they are
world wide ; but wo to him if, in his day, he refuse to build
the temple which, in his day, his God will also require of him.
Wo to him, if he think to put upon another age and race the
tasks which his Task-Master will require of him,— which,
with his many gifts, with his chief gifts, with his ten talents,
will surely be required of him. More than his fathers' woe
upon him — more than that old-world woe, which he, too, re-
members, if he think to lean on Asia, the youthful Asia, when
his own great world noon-day has come.
' There was violence on the earth in those days, and it
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 507
repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth.'
' Twill come,' says our own poet, prefacing his proposal for a
scientific art in the attainment of the chief human ends, and
giving his illustrated reasons for it, —
'Twill come [at this rate]
Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.
But what are these? — these new orders, — these new species
of nature, defying nature, that we are generating with our
arts here now ? What are these new varieties to which our
kind is tending now? Look at this kind for instance. What
are these? Define them. Destroyers, not of their own
image in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their
kind only, — sacred by natural universal laws, — but of the
chosen image of it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the
natural love of their kind was by the law of nature concentred,
— the wife and the mother, — destroyed not as the wolf des-
troys its prey, but with ferocity, or with prolonged and stu-
dious harm, that it required the human brain to plan and per-
petrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of
their victims. We must look at it. It will never go by till
we do. We shall have to look at it, and consider it well; it
will lengthen, it will widen till we do:— ghastly, bruised,
bleeding, trampled,— trampled it may be, with nailed, booted
heel, mother and child together into one grave. But these are
common drunkard's wives; — we are inured to this catastrophe,
and do not think much of it. But who are these, whom the
grave cannot hold; that by God's edict break its bonds and
come back, making day hideous, to tell us what the earth
could not, would not keep,— to tell us of that other band who
died and made no sign? But this is nothing. Here are
more. Here are others. What are these? These are not
spectres. Their cheeks are red enough. What loathsome
thing is this, that we are bringing forth here now with the
human face upon it, in whom the heart of the universal nature
has expired. These are murderers,— count them — they are
508 THE CURE OF THE COMMOX-WEAL.
all murderers, wholesale murderers, perhaps,— but of what?
Of their own helpless, tender, loving, trusting little ones.
The wretched children of our time, — alone in wretchedness,—
alone in the universe of nature, — who found, where nature
promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel
agonizing drug of death. "Was there any cause in nature for
it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee/ perhaps, or for
some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our
naturalists throw their learning ' to the dogs,' and come this
way, and tell us what this means. Nay, let them bring their
books with them, and example us with its meaning if they
can. Let them tell us what ' depth ' in which nature hides
her failures, or yet unperfected hideous germinations, — what
formation in which she buries the kinds she repents that she has
made upon the earth, or what 'deep' — what ocean cave of
* monsters ' we shall drag to find our kindred in these species.
Let our wise men tell us vvhether there be, or whether there
ever was, any such thing as this in nature before. If * such
things are,' or have been in any other kind, let them produce
the instances, and keep us in countenance and console us for
our own.
Let them look at that murderer too, and interpret him for
us. For he too is waiting to be interpreted, and he will
wait till we understand his signs. He is speaking mute
nature's language to us ; we must get her key. Look at him
as he stands there in the dark, subordinating that faculty
which comprehends the whole, which recognises the divinity
of his neighbour's right, to his fiendish end : preparing with
the judgment of a man his little piece of machinery, with
which he will take, as he would take a salmon, or a rat,
his fellow-man. Look at him as he stands there now, listening
patiently for your steps, waiting to strangle you as you go by
him unarmed to-night, confiding in your fellow-man ; waiting
to drag you down from all the hopes and joys of life, for the
sake of the loose coin, gold or silver, which he thinks he
may find about you, — perhaps? ' How to KILL vermin and
how to prevent the fiend? was Tom's study. How to
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 509
dispatch in the most agreeable and successful manner, crea-
tures whose notions of good are constitutionally and diametri-
cally opposed to the good of the larger whole, who have no
sensibility to that, and no faculty whereby they perceive it to
be the worthier; that is no doubt one part of the problem.
The scientific question is, whether this creature be really what
it seems, a new and more horrid kind of beast — a demoral-
ization and deterioration of the human species into that. If
it be, let our naturalists come to our aid here also, and teach
us how to hunt him down and despatch him, with as much
respect to the natural decencies which the fact of the external
human form would seem still to exact from us, as the circum-
stances will admit of! Is it the beast, or is it * the fiend?' —
that is the question. The fiend which tells us that the angelic
or divine nature is there — there still — overborne, trampled on,
' as it were, annihilated/ but lighting that gleam of ' wicked-
ness/— making of it, not instinct, but crime. Ah ! we need
not ask which it is. This one has told his own story, if we
could but read it. He has left — he is leaving all the time,
contributions, richest contributions to our natural history of
man, — that history which must make the basis of our arts of
cure. He was a wolf when you took him ; but in his cell you
found something else in him — did you not ? — something
that troubled and appalled you, with its kindred and likeness,
and its exaction on your sympathy. When you hung him as
you would not hang a dog ; — when you put him to a death
which you would think it indecent and inhuman to award to
a creature of another species, you did not find him that.
The law of the nobler nature lay in him as it were annihi-
lated; he thought there was no such thing; but when nature's
great voice was heard without also, and those * bloody instruc-
tions he had taught returned to him' ; when that voice of the
people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its
doom the voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine
appeals — 'a rhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second
that great argument, — the blind instincts were overpowered
in him, the lesser usurping nature wras dethroned, — the angelic
510 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
nature arose, and had her hour, and shed parting gleams of
glory on those fleeting days and nights; and he came forth to
die at last, not dragged like a beast — with a manly step —
with heroic grandeur, vindicating the heroic type in nature,
of that form he wore, — vindicating the violated law, accept-
ing his doom, bowing to its ignominy, a man, a member of
society, — a reconciled and accepted member of the common-
weal.
How to prevent the fiend? is the question. Ah I what un-
lettered forces are these, unlearned still, with all our learning,
that the dark, unaided wrestling hour ' in the little state of
man,' leaves at the head of affairs there, seated in its chair of
state, crowned, * predominant,' to speak tne word of doom for
us all. * He poisons him in the garden for his estate.'
' Lights, lights, lights ! ' is the word here. There is a cause in
nature for these hard hearts, but it is not in the constitution
of man. There is a cause; it is nature herself, crying out
upon our learning, asking to be — interpreted.
Woe for the age whose universal learning is in forms that
move and command no longer; that move and bind no longer
with fear, or hope, or love, ' the common people.' Woe for the
people who think that the everlasting truths of being — the
eternal laws of science — are things for saints, and school-
masters, and preachers only, — the people who carry about
with them in secret, for week-day purposes, Edmund's creed,
to whom nature is already ' their goddess, and their law,' ere
they know her or her law — ere the appointed teacher has
instructed them in it, — ere they know what divinity she, too,
holds to, — ere the interpreter has translated into her speech,
and evolved from her books, the old truths which shall not —
though their old ' garments ' should ' be changed ' — which shall
not pass away. Woe for the nations in whom that greater
part that carries it, are godless, or whose vows are paid in
secret to Edmund's goddess, — whose true faith is in appetite, —
who have no secret laws imposed on that. * Woe to the people
who are in such a case,' no matter on which side of the ocean
they may dwell, in the old world, or a new one; no matter
PLAN OF INNOVATION. 51I
1
under what political constitutions. No matter under what
favourable external conditions, the national development that
has that hollow in it, may proceed ; no matter under what
glorious and before unimagined conditions of a healthful,
noble human development that development may proceed.
Alas ! for such a people. The rulers may cry f,Peace P but there
is none. And, alas ! for the world in which such a power is
growing up under new conditions, and waxing strong, and
preparing for its leaps.
As a principle of social or political organisation, there is no
religion, — there never has been any, — so fatal as none.
That is a truth of which all history is an illustration. It is
one which has been illustrated in the history of modern states,
not less vividly than in the history of antiquity. And it will
continue to be illustrated, on the same grand scale, in those
terrific evils which the dissolution, or the dissoluteness of the
larger whole creates, whenever the appointed teachers of a
nation, the inductors of it into its highest learning, lag behind
the common mind in their interpretations, and leave it to the
people to construct their own rude ' tables of rejections' ; when-
ever the practical axioms, which are the inevitable vintage of
these undiscriminating and fatally false rejections, are suffered
to become history.
' Woe to the land when its king is a child'; but thrice woe
to it, when its teacher is a child. Alas ! for the world, when
the pabulum of her youthful visions and anticipations of learn-
ing have become meat for men, the prescribed provision for
that nature in which man must live, or ' cease to be,' amid the
sober realities of western science.
* Thou shouldst not have been old before thy time'
' The glow- worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'
512 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
CHAPTER XL
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE.
Pyramus. — ' Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say,
we will do no harm with our swords [spears] . . . and for the more bet-
ter assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom
the weaver. This will put them out of fear.' — Shake-spear.
' Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his
who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows
another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.
* Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by
some particular and foreign mark, J, the first of any, by my univer-
sal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human con-
dition.
' And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself what
can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor
inanity f
* But will thy manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from thy ashes grow ? '
Michael de Montaigne.
Hamlet. — • To thine own self be true,
And it doth follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
4 To know a man well, were to know him-self.'
THE complaint of the practical men against the philosophers
who make such an outcry upon the uses and customs of
the world as they find it, that they do not undertake to give us
anything better in the place of them ; or if they do, with their
terrible experiments they leave us worse than they find us,
does not apply in this case. Because this is science, and not
philosophy in the sense which that word still conveys, when
applied to subjects of this nature. We all kfnow that the
scientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most
unspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and
his arts to the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we
have had in this field, with their rash anticipations, — with
their unscientific pre-conceptions, — with a pre-conception, in-
stead of a fore-knowledge of the power they deal with, com-
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 513
manding results which do not, — there is the point, — which
do not follow.
Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who
expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve
it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and
jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is
no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He
is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone
till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves, with-
out science. ' That is the way to lay all flat/
He is not one of those, f who to make clean, efface, and
who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as
the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and
undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of
work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus,
declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the ques-
tion were of ' a new world,' and not ' a world already formed
to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some import-
ant suggestions to make as to the original structure. And
yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded
here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is
propounded ; the greatest that was ever propounded, — total,
absolute, but not sudden. It is a remedy for the world as it
is, that this reformer is propounding.
New constructions according to true definitions, scientific
institutions, — institutions of culture and regimen and cure,
based on the recognition of the actual human constitution and
laws, — based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and
precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of
any other form in nature, — that is the proposition. ' It were a
strange speech which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a
man from a vice to which he is by nature subject/ ' Folly is not
to be cured by bare admonition/ This plan of culture and cure
involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men
only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all
the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history
of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the
L L
c 14 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this his-
tory, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make
the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure
will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man
laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted,
by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human na-
ture, which every man carries with him, and a solar-miscro-
Bcopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of
men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them,
where the particular disposition and temper is < predominant/
as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the
persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more
or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of
disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human
business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of
the human life, must come under observation here, and the
whole nature of the passions also, and a science of ' the will/
very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphy-
sicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the
light of science, all the power of the new method brought to
bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not
less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their
necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we
must deal with ' by way of application, and to these all our
labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except
we take a measure of the form we would fit it to/ Nothing
short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of
human education.
But this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness
that is the end, and that ' craves/ as the noble who is found
wanting in it tells us, « a noble cunning.' It is no single in-
strumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and
cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history
of those forces which are within our power, which < we can
deal with by way of alteration/ forces ■ from which the mind
suffereth,' which have operation on it, so potent that ' they
can almost change the stamp of nature/— that they can make
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 515
indeed, f another nature/ — these are the engines, — this is the
machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends.
These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to
take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds
such need of. This is the machinery to ' prevent the fiend/
which the scientific statesman is propounding.
' I would we were all of ONE mind, and one mind good,1
says our Poet. * 0 there were desolation of gallowses and
gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds, — he
was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a gaoler,'] ' I speak
against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in it.'
(A preferment ?) — That is the solution propounded by science,
of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with
such violent appeals, its solution. * I would we were all of one
mind, and one mind good. My wish hath a preferment in it.'
' Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' ■ It were a
strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man
of a vice to which he is by nature subject ,' — subject — by na-
ture.— That is the Philosopher. ( What he cannot help in his
nature you account a vice in him,' says the poor citizen, putting
in a word on the Poefs behalf for Coriolanus whose educa-
tion, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scienti-
fic, or calculated to reduce that ' partliness,' that disorganizing
social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so
much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding,
and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs, habit, edu-
cation in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation, praise,
blame,' all the agencies ' from which the mind suffereth/—
which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded re-
cipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and
not prescribed only, but enforced, - these make the state
machinery — these are the engines that are going to
( prevent the fiend,' and educate the \ one mind,' — the
one mind good, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,
— * my wish hath a preferment in it,'— the one only man who,
will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but room enough
for us all, — who will make when he is crowned such desola-
L L 2
rX6 THE CURE OP THE COMMON WEAL.
tion of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies lor the
diseases of the state, when the scientific practitioner is
called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he
will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has
no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business.
The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth, —
the gradual adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to
this common end,— this end which all truly enlightened
minds will conspire for,— find to be their own,— this is the
plan;— this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Ke-
former; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist.
This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot. This is the
cure of the state which he is undertaking.
We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to
find causes; and we must find them according to the new
method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result
is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not
reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the
difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present,
which this philosopher calls ' common logic' Life goes on,
life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes
on in the dark ; the phenomena are on the surface in the form
of effects, and all our weal and woe is in them ; but the
causes are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us
certain impressions of their natures ; they strike us, and blast
us, it may be, by way of teaching us something of their
powers; but we do not know them; they are within our own
souls and lives, and we do not know them; not because they
lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but because we will
not apply to them the scientific method; because the old method
of f preconception' here is still considered the true one.
The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which
embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal.
It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts
and members of the social state, from the king on his throne
to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately,
and educate in every member of society that entire and noble
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 517
form of human nature which 'each man carries with him,'
and whereby the individual man is naturally and constitu-
tionally a member of the common-wTeal. Its proposition was
to develop ultimately and educate — successfully edu-
cate— in each integer of the state, the integral principle —
the principle whereby in man the true conservation and
integrity of the part — the virtue, and felicity, and perfection,
of the part, tend to the weal of the whole — tend to perfect
and advance the whole.
* To thine own self be true,
And it doth follow as the night the day, \ 3
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
' Know thy-SELP. Know thy-self.'
This enterprise was not the product of a single individual
mind, and it is important that this fact should be fully
and unmistakeably enunciated here; because the illustrious
statesman, and man of letters, who assumed, in his own name
and person, that part of it which could then be openly
exhibited, the one on whom the great task of perfecting and
openly propounding the new method of learning was de-
volved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been
principally insisted on in this volume.
The history of this great philanthropic association — an
association of genius, a combination of chief minds, from
which the leadership and direction of the modern ages pro-
ceeds, the history of this ' society/ as it was called, when the
term was still fresh in that special application; at least, when it
was not yet qualified by its application to those very different
kinds of voluntary individual combinations — 'bodies of
neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to which that move-
ment has given rise; the history of this society, — this first
'Shake-spear Society' — much as it is to our purpose, and
much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume, can only
be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally
prepared for publication in the Historical Key to the
Elizabethan Tradition which formed the first Book of it,
it was the part of that great Political and Military Chief, and
5l8 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
not less illustrious Man of Letters, who was recognised, in his
own time, as the beginner of this movement and the founder
of English philosophy, which was chiefly developed.
And it is the history of that ' great unknown' — that great
Elizabethan unknown, for whose designs there was needed
then a veil of a closer texture — of a more cunning pattern
than any which the exigencies of modern authorship tend
to fabricate, which must make the key to this tradition ; —
it is the history of that great unknown, whose incog, was a
closed vizor, — that it was death to open, — a vizor that did
open once, and — , the sequel is in our history, and will leave
' a brand ' upon the page which that age makes in it, — ' the age
that did it, and suffered it, to the end of the world.1 So says
the Poet of that age, ('Age, thou are shamed/ 'And peep about
to find ourselves dishonourable graves'). It is the history of the
Tacitus who could not wait for a better Caesar. It is the
history of the man who was sent to the block, they tell us,
who are able to give us those little secret historic motives that
do not get woven always into the larger story; it is the
history of the man who (if his family understood it) was sent
to the block for the repetition, in his own name, of the words
— the very words which he had written with his ' goose-pen/
as he calls it, years before — which he had written under
cover of the ' spear' that was ' shaken' in sport, or that shook
with fear, — under cover of ' the well turned and true filed
lines in each of which he seems to shake a lance as brandished
in the eyes of Ignorance/ without suspicion — without chal-
lenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that
crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, un-
honoured Father of the Modern Age that unlocks this
tradition.
It is the secret friend and ' brother ' of the author of the Novum
Organum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall
the friendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and
build its ' eternal summer5 in our common things? When shall a
'marriage of true minds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in
the lives of men again ?' It is the friend and literary partner of
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 519
our great recognised philosopher — his partner in his f private
and retired arts,' and in his cultivation of 'the principal
and supreme sciences/ in whose history the key to this locked
up learning is hidden.
It was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen
Elizabeth, in that little company of wits, and poets, and
philosophers, which was the first-fruit of the new development
of the national genius, that followed the revival of the learning
of antiquity in this island — the fruit which that old stock began
manifestly to bud and blossom with, about the beginning of
the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it was the old
northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival of the
learning of antiquity only, but of that accumulated influence
which its previous revival on the Continent brought with it
here; under the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which
began so soon to colour and insulate English history; — 'Britain
is a world by itself,' says Prince Cloten, ' and we will nothing
pay,' etc. — it was the old northern genius nurtured in the cra-
dle of that ' bravery' which had written its page of fire in the
Koman Caesar's story — which had arrested the old classic his-
torian's pen, and fired it with a poet's prophecy, and taught
him too how to pronounce from the old British hero's lip the
burning speech of English freedom ; — it was that which began to
show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the
c Elizabethan.1 It was that which could not fit its words to its
mouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was
glad to know that 'the audience was deferred.' That was
the thing which found itself so much embarrassed by the pre-
sence of ■ a man of prodigious fortune at the table,' who had
leave f to change its arguments with a magisterial authority/
It was that which was expected to produce its speech to * serve
as the base matter to illuminate ' — not the Caesar — but the
Tudor — the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the Tudors and
the first of the Stuarts. * Age, thou art shamed/ It was the
true indigenous product of the English nationality under that
great stimulus, which made that age; and the practical deter-
mination of the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient
520 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
English liberties, trie recognition of the common dignity of
that form of human nature which each man carries entire with
him — the sentiment of a common human family and brother-
hood, which this race had brought with it from the forests of
the North, and which it had conserved through ages of
oppression, went at once into the new speculation, and deter-
mined its practical bent, and shaped this enterprise.
It was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations
an immediate influence upon the popular mind — the most
direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which
could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the
habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound masses of
men; — those masses which are, in all their ignorance and un-
fitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, ' that
greater part which carries it' — those wretched statesmen,
under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about
clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions
with which the new movement begins to attract attention — a
universally favourable attention — towards its beneficent pur-
poses, and to that new command of ' effects' which arms them.
But this is only ' to show an abused people that they are not
wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition of men,
to 'accommodate 'man to those exterior natural forces, of which
he had been, till then, the ' slave,' — to minister to the need
and add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and ' Tom '
in his hovel, — this was the first scientific move. This was a
movement which required no concealment. Its far-reaching
consequences, its elevating power on the masses, its educational
power, its revolutionary power, did not lie within the range of
any observation which the impersonated state was able to bring
to bear at that time upon the New Organum and its reaches.
But this was not the only scientifically educational agency
which this great Educational Association was able to include,
even then, in its scheme for the culture and instruction of the
masses — for the culture and instruction of that common social
unit, which makes the masses and determines political predo-
minance. Quite the most powerful instrumentality which it
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 521
is possible to conceive of, for purposes of direct effect in the
way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that stage of a
popular development, was then already in process of pre-
paration here; the 'plant 'of a wondrous and inestimable ma-
chinery of popular influence stood offering itself, at that
very moment, to the politicians with whom this movement
originated, urging itself on their notice, begging to be pur-
chased, soliciting their monopoly, proposing itself to their
designs.
A medium of direct communication between the philosophic
mind, in its more chosen and noblest field of research, and the
minds of those to whom the conventional signs of learning are
not yet intelligible, — one in which the language of action and
dumb show was, by the condition of the representation, pre-
dominant, — that language which is, as this philosophy ob-
served, so much more powerful in its impression than words,
— not on brutes only, but on those ' whose eyes are more
learned than their ears, — a medium of communication which
was one tissue of that ' mute ' language, whereby the direction,
' how to sustain a tyranny newly usurped' was conveyed once,
stood prepared to their hands, waiting the dictation of the
message of these new Chiefs and Teachers, who had taken
their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the arts of govern-
ment, and who thought it well enough that the people should
know how to preserve tyrannies newly usurped.
Those ' amusements,' with which governments that are
founded and sustained, * by cutting off' and keeping low the
grandees and nobility ' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate
and divert the popular mind, — those amusements which the
peoples who sustain tyrannies are apt to be fond of— * he loves
no plays as thou dost, Antony ,' — that ' pulpit,' from which the
orator of Caesar stole and swayed the hearts of the people
with his sugared words; and his dumb show of the stabs in
Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new conspirators,
an engine which those old experimenters lacked, — an engine
which the lean and wrinkled Cassius, with his much reading
and ' observation strange ' and dangerous, looking through of
522 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
the thoughts of men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with
his logic and his stilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts,
afford to lack. It was this which supplied the means of that
'volubility of application' which those 'Sir Oracles/ those
'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing their well -graced forms of
speech,' it is intimated, f might easily want.'
By means of that ' first use of the parable/ whereby (while
for the present we drop ' the argument ') it serves to illustrate,
and bring first under the notice of the senses, the abstruser
truths of a new learning, — truths which are as yet too far out
of the road of common opinion to be conveyed in other forms,
— these amusements became, in the hands of the new Teachers
and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of the Moderns had
its beginning, the* means of an insidious, but most ' grave and
exceedingly useful/ popular instruction.
But the immediate influence on the common mind was not
the influence to which this association trusted for the fulfil-
ment of its great plan of social renovation and advancement.
That so aspiring social position, and that not less commanding
position in the world of letters, built up with so much labour,
with such persistent purpose, with a pertinacity which accepted
of no defeat, — built up expressly to this end, — that position
from which a new method of learning could be openly pro-
pounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the Univer-
sities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning then,
was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which
this political association was compelled to include in the plot
of its far-reaching enterprise.
That trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which sum-
moned the scholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from
the endless battles of the human dogmas and conceits, into the
field of true knowledges, — that summons which recalled, and
disciplined, and gave the word of command to the genius of
the modern ages, that was already tumultuously rushing
thither, — that call which was able to command the modern
learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New Ma-
chine of Learning, — that Machine which, even in its employ-
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 523
ment in tlie humblest departments of observation, has already
formed, ere we know it, the new mind, which has disciplined
and trained the modern intelligence, and created insidiously
new habits of judgment and belief, — created, too, a new stock
of truths, which are accepted as a part of the world's creed,
and from which the whole must needs be evolved in time, —
this, in itself, was no small step towards securing the great
ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly in
a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till
the nobler applications of this Method begin to be made. It
has cost us something while we have waited for these. The
letter to Sir Henry Savile, on f the Helps to the Intellectual
Powers,' which is referred to with so much more iteration and
emphasis than anything which the surface of the letter exhibits
would seem to bear, in its brief hints, points also this way,
though the effect of mental exercises, by means of other in-
strumentalities, on the habits of a larger class, is also compre-
hended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in
men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those
larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which,
in ' the hour-glass ' of that first movement, could be, as yet,
only prophecy and anticipation. The perfection of the Human
Science, then first propounded, the filling up of f the Antici-
pations ' of Learning, which the Philosophy of Science also
included in its system, — not rash and premature, however,
and not claiming the place of knowledge, but kept apart in a
place by themselves, — put down as anticipations, not interpre-
tations, — the filling up of this outline was what was expected
as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department of
speculative philosophy.
But in that great practical enterprise of a social and political
renovation — that enterprise of 'constructions' according to
true definitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and
never ceases to contemplate — it was not the immediate effect
on the popular mind, neither was it the gradual effect on the
speculative habits of men of learning and men of intelligence in
general, that was chiefly relied on. It was the secret tradition,
524 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
the living tradition of that intention; it was the tradition
whereby that association undertook to continue itself across
whatever gulfs and chasms in social history ' the fortunes of
our state' might make. It was that second use of the fable,
which is ' to wrap up and conceal'; it was that * enigmatic'
method, which reserves the secrets of learning for those ' who
by the aid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to
pierce the veil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the
power of that tradition, its generative power, its power to repro-
duce 'in a better hour' the mind and will of that f company' —
it was its power to develop and frame that identity which was
the secret of this association, and its new principle of UNION
— that identity of the ' one mind, and one mind good,' which
is the human principle of union — that identity which made a
common name, a common personality, for those who worked
together for that end, and whose WILL in it was * one.' A
name, a personality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance
we have basked so long — a name, a personality whose secret
lies heavy on all our learning — whose secret of power, whose
secret of inclusiveness and inexhaustible wealth of knowledge,
has paralysed all our criticism, 'made marble' — as Milton him-
self confesses — ' made marble with too much conceiving.' ' Write
me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say [in dumb
action], we will do no harm with our swords.' ' They all
flourish their swords.' ' There is but one mind in all these
men, and that is bent against Caesar' — Julius Caesar.
1 Even so the race
Of Shake-spear's mind and manners (?) brightly shines,
In his well turned and true filed — lines ;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of — Ignorance,'
[We will do no harm with our — WORDS [it seems to say.]
— Prologue^]
It was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that
was relied on here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to repro-
duce this Institution, through whatever fatal eventualities the
movement which these men were seeking then to anticipate,
and organize, and control, might involve; and though the
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 525
Parent Union should be overborne in those disastrous, not un-
foreseen, results — overborne and forgotten — and though other
means employed for securing that end should fail.
It is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here.
It is the Leonatus Post humus who must fulfil this oracle.
* Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes ;
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes ;
And thou in this shall find thy monument,
When tyrants'' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'
* Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [Elizabethan Age.]
Of Princes shall outlive this power-ful rhyme.'
[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his
poems are worth printing, or that they are going to get printed
— who does not know or care whether they are or not.]
1 But you shall shine more bright in these contents,
Than unswept stone besmear' d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn [iconoclasm],
And broils [civil war] root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory?
[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on ? Is it a
manuscript ? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he
is celebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many
lyrics ? Here, for instance : — ]
* His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.'
And here —
1 O where, alack !
Shall timers best jewel from time's chest lie hid 1
Or what strong hand cao hold his swift foot back ?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid 1
O none, unless this miracle [this miracle] have might,
That in black ink '
Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's
book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be
* yellowed with age/ scattered about no one knew where, that
some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps
take it into his head to save?
526 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
* 0 none, unless this miracle'— this miracle, the rejoicing
scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all
time, cries — defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts,
reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of
civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and
singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and
tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration in
public, and found himself a little straitened in time to fit his
words to his mouth as he had a mind to do, when Eros, one of
his slaves, brought him word that the audience was deferred
till the next day ; at which he was so ravished with joy, that he
enfranchised him. { This miracle.9 He knows what miracles
are, for he has told us; but none other knew what miracle
this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of
symphonies.
' 0 none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright!
[' My love/ — wait till you know what it is, and do not
think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that
are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, ob-
trusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is that Eros who
was enfranchised, emancipated.]
' But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest [thou owest\
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to — thee!
But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to
read with the aid of this collation : —
* When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry ;
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,
Shall you pace forth. Your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes [collateral sounds] of all posterity,
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise [till then],
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 527
See the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if
there be any doubt as to this reading.
' In lover's eyes?
Leonatus Posthumus. Shall 's have a Play of this ? Thou scornful Page,
There lie thy part. [To Imogen disguised as Fidelei]
The consideration which qualified, in the mind of the
Author of the Advancement of Learning, the great difficulty
which the question of civil government presented at that
time, is the key to this ' plot/ For men, and not ' Romans'
only, ( are like sheep / and if you can but get some few to go
right, the rest will follow. That was the plan. To create a
better leadership of men, — to form a new order and union of
men, — a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine
of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to
seize the ' thoughts ' of those whose law is the law of the
larger activity, and ' inform them with nobleness/ — was the
plan.
For these the inner school was opened ; for these its ascend-
ing platforms were erected. For these that ' closet ' and
1 cabinet/ where the * simples ' of the Shake-spear philosophy
are all locked and labelled, was built. For these that secret
1 cabinet of the Muses/ where the Delphic motto is cut anew,
throws out its secret lures, — its gay, many-coloured, deceiving
lures, — its secret labyrinthine clues, — for all lines in this
building meet in that centre. All clues here unwind to that.
For these — for the minds on whom the continuation of this
enterprize was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet —
the historical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic
mysteries, was carefully laboured and left, — pointed to —
pointed to with immortal gesticulations, and left (4 What I
cannot speak, I point out with my finger'); the key to
that * Verulamian cabinet/ which we shall hear of when
the fictitious correspondence in which the more secret his-
tory of this time was written, comes to be opened. That
cabinet where the subtle argument that was inserted in the
Poem or the Play, but buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is
laid bare in prose as subtle (' I here scatter it up and down
528 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
indifferently for verse'); where the new truth that was spoken
in jest, as well as in parables, to those who were without, is
unfolded, — that truth which moved unseen amid the gambols
of the masque, —preferring to raise questions rather than
objections, — which stalked in, without suspicion, in * the
hobby-horse ' of the clown, — which the laugh of the ground-
lings was so often in requisition' to cover, — that ' to beguile the
time looked like the time,3 — that * looked like the flower, and
was the serpent under it/
For these that secret place of confidential communication
was provided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is
opened without respect to the ' offence in it,' — to its utmost
reach of abstruseness and subtilty — in its utmost reach of
departure from ' the road of common opinion/ — where the
Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and Policy and Keligion,
which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are unrolled,
at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that ' wrapped up'
intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we
resume that dropped argument, — dropped for that time,
while Caesar still commanded his thirty legions; and when
the question, ' How long to philosophise?' being started in the
schools again, the answer returned still was, ' Until our armies
cease to be commanded by fools.' This is that second use of
the Fable where we find the moral of it at last, — that moral
which our moralists have missed in it, — that moral which
is not ' vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the
road of common opinion, — that moral in which the Moral
Science, which is the Wisdom of the Moderns, lurks.
It is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for
we have him, — we do not wait for him), in the act of dis-
playing a little, and folding up for the future, his plan of
a Scientific Human Culture ; it is to these that he speaks when
he says, with a little of that obscurity which ' he mortally
hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As Philocrates sported
with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians, that
Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and /
drink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 529
two gates of sleep ... so if we put on sobriety and attention,
we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the pleasant
liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of
ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams/*
And in his general proposal to lay open ■ those parts of
learning which lie fresh and waste, and not improved and
converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a
plot, made and committed to memory, may both minister
light to any public designation, and also serve to excite
voluntary endeavours/ he says, < I do foresee that of those
things which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and
omissions, many will conceive and censure that some of them
are already done, and extant, others to be but curiosities and
things of no great use [such as the question of style, for
instance, and those 'particular' arts of tradition to which this
remark is afterwards applied] — and others to be of too great
difficulty — and almost impossibility — to be compassed and
effected; but for the two first, I refer myself to particulars;
for the last, — touching impossibility, — I take it those things
are to be held possible, which may be done by some person,
though not by every one; and which may be done by many,
though not by any one; and which may be done in succession
of ages, though not within the hour-glass of one man's life;
and which may be done by public designation, though not by
private endeavour.
That was < the plot'— that was the plan of the Elizabethan
Innovation.
The Enigma of Leonatus Posthumus.
'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without
seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air ; and
when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which,
being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the
old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his '
miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and
plenty.' *
* '/,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of 'sobriety' and critical
upon excesses of all kinds, </ have ever observed, that super- celestial
theories and ™&-terranean manners are in singular accordance.'
M M
530 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
The Verulamian Cabinet, and its Workmanship.
Here, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which
scholars who write about these times, allude to the reserved
parts of this philosophy, and to those ' richer and bolder
meanings/ which could not then be inserted in the acknow-
ledged writings of so great a person. This is a specimen of
the manner in which a posthumous collection and reintegration
of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it, is
referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent some-
where about these days. Whether the date of the writing be
a little earlier or a little later, — some fifty years or so, — it
does not seem to make much difference as to the general intent
and purport of it.
Here is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this
planet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect
the posthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose,
he has established a literary intimacy, quite the most remark-
able one on record — at least, between scholars of different
and remote nationalities — between himself and two English
gentlemen, a Mr. Smith, and the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes
from the Hague but he appears to have acquired in some way
a most extraordinary insight into this business.
' Though I thought that I had already sufficiently showed
what veneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I
shall take such care for the future, that it may not possibly be
denied, that I endeavoured most zealously to make this thing
known to the learned world. But neither shall this design, of
setting forth in one volume all the Lord Bacon's works, proceed
without consulting you [This letter is addressed to the Rev.
Dr. Rawley, and is dated a number of years after Lord Bacon's
death] — without consulting you, and without inviting you to
cast in your symbol, worthy such an excellent edition : that so the
appetite of the reader [It was a time when symbols of various
kinds — large and small — were much in use in the learned
world] — that so the appetite of the reader, provoked already
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 53 1
by his published works, may be further gratified by the pure
novelty of so considerable an appendage.
\ For the French interpreter, who patched together his
things I know not whence, and tacked that motley piece to
him ; they shall not have place in this great collection. But
yet I hope to obtain your leave to publish a-part, as an appendix
to the Natural History, — that exotic work, — gathered together
from this and the other place (of his lordship's writings) , [that
is the true account of it] and by me translated into — Latin.
For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are
already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the
foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the
texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is
in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the
reader, so stupidly write of you.
* My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words into
Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, havino>
some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will,
in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity
animadvert upon them : that they, into whose hands that work
comes, may know it to be supposititious, or rather patched up
of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears
himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps,
I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words
were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and
rashness should any way blemish the fame of so eminent a
person.
' If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes,
I would fly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever
remaineth in your Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and
at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the
merchandise be yet denied to the public. At present I will
support the wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing,
one day, those (issues) which being committed to faithful privacy,
wait the time till they may safely see the light, and not be
stifled in their birth.
* 1 wish, in the mean time, I could have a sight of the copy of
M M 2
532 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
the Epistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the
Intellectual Powers: for I am persuaded, as to the other Latin
remains, that I shall not obtain, for present use, the removal of
them from the place in which they now are.'
Extract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the
beginning of it: —
' To the Rev. Wm. Rawley, D.D.
Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.
* Reverend Sir, — It is not just to complain of the slowness
of your answer, seeing that the difficulty of the passage, in the
season in which you wrote, ivhich was towards winter, might easily
cause it to come no faster ; seeing likewise there is so much
to be found in it which may gratify desire, and perhaps so
much the more, the longer it was ere it came to my hands.
And although I had little to send back, besides my thanks for
the little Index, yet that seemed to me of such moment that I
would no longer suppress them : especially because I accounted
it a crime to have suffered Mr. Smith to have been without an
answer : Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose care, in
my matters, I owe all regard and affection, yet without diminu-
tion of that (part and that no small one neither) in which
Dr. Rawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so
throughly agreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a
triga!
It is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims
of the Rev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or
even of Mr. Smith himself, who would no doubt be able to
substantiate himself, in case a particular inquiry were made
for him; and it would involve a serious departure from the
method of invention usually employed in this association,
which did not deal with shadows when cotemporary instru-
mentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac
Gruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The pre-
cautions of this secret, but so powerful league, — the skill with
which its instrumentalities were selected and adapted to its
NEW CONSTRUCTIONS — THE INITIATIVE. 533
ends, is characterised by that same matchless dramatic power,
which betrays * the source from which it springs ' even when
it ' only plays at working.'
But if any one is anxious to know who the third person of
this triga really was, or is, a glance at the Directory would
enable such a one to arrive at a truer conclusion than the
first reading of this letter would naturally suggest. For this
is none other than the person whom the principle of this triga,
and its enlightened sentiment and bond of union, already
symbolically comprehended, whom it was intended to compre-
hend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his
historical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan
for reducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and re-
storing him to the use of his one only mind. For though the
name of this person is often spelt in three letters, and oftener
in one, it takes all the names in the Directory to spell it in
full. For this is none other than the person that \ Michael'
refers to so often and with so much emphasis, glancing always
at his own private name, and the singular largeness and com-
prehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All
the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' 1 7,
the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries
with him the entire form of human condition.'
But the name of Mr. Isaac Gruter was not less compre-
hensive, and could be made to represent the whole triga in an
emergency, as well as another ; [' I take so great pleasure in
being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me in
which of the two forms I am so'] though that does not hinder
him from inviting Dr. Rawley to cast in his symbol, which
was ' so considerable an appendage' For though the very
smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other than
the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illus-
trated works of this school were first exhibited; the theatre
which hung out for its sign on the outer wall, ' Hercules and
his load too.' At a time when ■ conceits' and ' devices in
letters,' when anagrams and monograms, and charades, and all
kinds of ' racking of orthography ' were so much in use, not as
534 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of ' racking/ a
cipher referred to in this philosophy as the ' wheel cipher/
which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a
circle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some
of these symbols. The first three letters of the alphabet repre-
senting the whole in the circle, formed a character or symbol
which was often made to stand as a ' token' for a proper name,
easily spelt in that way, when phonography and anagrams were
in such lively and constant use, — while it made, at the same
time, a symbolical representation of the radical doctrine of
the new school in philosophy, — a school then so new, that its
'Doctors' were compelled to 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in
affixing their names to their own works, in some cases. And that
same letter which was capable of representing in this secret lan-
guage either the microcosm, or l the larger whole,' as the case
required (either with, or without the eye or 1 in it, sending
rays to the circumference) sufficed also to spell the name of
the Grand Master of this lodge, — ' who also was a man, take
him for all in all? — the man who took two hemispheres for
1 his symbol.1 That was the so considerable appendage which
his friend alludes to, — though * the natural gaiety of dispo-
sition/ of which we have so much experience in other places,
and which the gravity of these pursuits happily does not
cloud, suggests a glance in passing at another signification,
which we find alluded to also in another place in Mrs.
Quickly's 'Latin.1 Mere frivolities as these conceits and private
and retired arts seem now, the Author of the Advancement of
Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their labours
and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring par-
ticularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write omnia
per omnia, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his ' index '
of 'the principal and supreme sciences/ — those sciences
* which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time
when they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in
their birth.'
New constructions, according to true definitions, was the
plan,— this triga was the initiative.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 535
CHAPTER XII.
THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED. — A WRESTLING
INSTANCE.
* For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome,
which, either being consuls, inclined to the people' [' If he would but
incline to the people, there never was a worthier man'], 'or being tri-
bunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which we handle now
[doctrine of Cure], they be the best physicians which, being learned,
incline to the traditions of experience ; or, being empirics, incline to
the methods of learning.' Advancement of Learning.
13 UT while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast
scientific changes — vast, but noiseless and beautiful as
the movements of God in nature — there was another kind of
revolution brewing. All that time there was a cloud on his poli-
tical horizon—' a huge one, a black one'— slowly and steadfastly
accumulating, and rolling up from it, which he had always an
eye on. He knew there was that in it which no scientific ap-
paratus that could be put in operation then, on so short a
notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able
to divert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-
cloud would have to burst, and get overblown, before any
chance for those peace operations, those operations of a solid
and lasting peace, which he was bent on, could be had —
before any space on the earth could be found broad enough for
his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the central levers
of it could begin to stir.
That revolution which ' was singing in the wind' then to
his ear, was one which would have to come first in the chrono-
logical order; but it was easy enough to see that it was not
going to be such a one, in all respects, as a man of his turn
of genius would care to be out in with his works.
He knew well enough what there was in it. He had not
536 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
been so long in such sharp daily collision with the elements of
it — he had not been so long trying conclusions with them
under such delicate conditions, conditions requiring so nice an
observation — without arriving at some degree of assurance in
regard to their main properties, without attaining, indeed, to
what he calls knowledge on that subject — knowledge as dis-
tinguished from opinion — so as to be able to predict ' with a
near aim' the results of the possible combinations. The con-
clusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary move-
ments then at hand were not, on the whole, likely to be
conducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.
The spectacle of a people violently ' revoking their ignorant
election? and empirically seeking to better their state under
such leaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and
that, too, when the old military government was still so strong
in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state — of a faction
of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which
would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation
the unholy innovation — that would stand on the last plank of
the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to
restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under
such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagi-
nation in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done
to a philosopher of a less rigidly inductive, turn of mind.
His canvass, with its magic draught of the coming event,
includes already some contingencies which the programme of
the theoretical speculator in revolutions would have been
far enough from including then, when such movements were
yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to
go back to mythical Eome to borrow an historical frame of
one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the
crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the
existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject
to his rights, — a movement then already determined on, —
would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences — the con-
viction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction
with which he made his arrangements for the future.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 537
But if any one would like to see now for himself what
vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state
involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of
history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of
prenotions it is in this respect — if one would see what breadth
of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was
able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings
from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies,
what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary
abysses, this science of stability, this science of the future
state, is settled on, — such a one must explore this work
yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolu-
tionary picture which it contains — that scientific exhibition
which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it
of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and
separating, one in which the historical solidities are already
in solution, or struggling towards it — prematurely, perhaps,
and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new com-
binations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.
* Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
Hang up philosophy' —
wrote this Poet's fire of old.
1 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased V
it writes again. No?
1 Throw physic to the dogs, I '11 none of it.'
' See now what learning is,' says the practical-minded nurse,
quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which
has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the
readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to
her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence's
genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea
which another student, who was not a Friar exactly, was un-
dertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time — the
idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious ob-
servation of nature in general, — and it is a very large
538 THE CURE OP THE COMMON-WEAL.
and curious one which this Friar betrays, — upon any of
those ordinary questions, of domestic life, which are constantly
recurring for private solution. And though this knowledge
might seem to be ' so variable as it falleth not under precept,'
the prose philosopher is of the opinion that ' a universal insight,
and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general
observation of cases of like nature/ is available for the par-
ticular instances which occur in this department. And the
philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is
no end to the precepts which he inducts from this ' variable
knowledge' when he gets it on his table of review, in the
form of natural history, in 'prerogative cases1 and l illus-
trious instances/ cases cleared from their accidental and
extraneous adjuncts — ideal cases. And though this poor
Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this par-
ticular instance ; if we take into account the fact that * the
Tragedy was the thing/ and that nothing but a tragedy would
serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on
that effect', if we take into account the fact that this is a
scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for
the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps
appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this
new theory of the applicability of learning to questions of this
nature.
* Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the
philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a
Hamlet also, besides ' reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the
one that takes into account those very things in heaven and
earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this
is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of
* men of good composition,' and who gives a recipe for com-
posing them. ' Unless philosophy can make a Juliet/ is
Borneo's word. * See now what learning is/ is the Nurse's
commentary; for that same Friar, demure as he looks now
under his hood, talking of ' simples ' and great nature's latent
virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse's hearts from
them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 539
his new art of ' composition' he will compose, not Juliets nor
Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will
dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation ; for
the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.
Let us see now, then, what it is, — this l universal insight in
the affairs of the world,' this ' wisdom of counsel and advice,
gathered from cases of a like nature,1 with an observation that
includes all natures, — let us see what this new wisdom of
counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of
the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of
disorder — shaken, convulsed — wrapped in elemental horror,
and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.
'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'
* If thou couldsf, Doctor, cast
The water of my LAJ$i>,Jind her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.'
'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence ? Hear'st thou of them 1 '
f Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.'
Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who
criticises so severely the learning of other men, — who disposes
so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of
the schools as he finds them, — who daffs the learning of the
world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is
that is not i words,7 as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading
in his book.
This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections,
and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain
new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced
in those connections. Time has changed it ' into something
rich and strange,' — Time has framed it, and poured her illus-
tration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this
aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors,
540 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
that are fighting here upon the clouds, * in ranks, and squad-
rons, and right forms of war/ are but the marvels of that
science that lays the future open.
' There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased ;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'
' One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes
and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on
this same subject about these days in such an entertaining
manner, and who brings so many ' buckets ' from { the head-
spring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in par-
ticular. ' That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the
whole mass.'
This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind
of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for.
And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the
distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this
seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the
prophecy, appears to compare not unfavourably with others
which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful
and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive
prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether d
kind, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which com-
mands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near
and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes,
ought to be besieging Heaven for a supernatural gift, and
questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the
coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment
— this * godlike ' endowment — under culture.
There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat
and turmoil of this great act, the Muse of the Inductive
Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again.
The hand that is put forth to draw ' the next ages ' into the
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 541
scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is
bare. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without
any disguise, — the man of the new learning, openly applying
his ' universal insight,' and e wisdom of counsel and advice,
gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to
this great question of ' Policy,' which was then hurrying
on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical
solution.
He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this
* Magician/ when he { brings the rabble to his place,' the reader
who would know at last why it is that these old Koman graves
* have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so
potent art ' ; and why it is, that at this great crisis in English
history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely
in the English ear, should read now — but read as a work of
natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman's hands,
deserves to be read — this great revolutionary scene, which
the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of
this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless
skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake
of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption,
now that the storm appears to be \ overblown,' may safely reserve
for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and
criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the
Common-weal.
The reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe
that the Poet avails himself of the dialogue here, with even
more than his usual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of
the bolder passages, in the least objectionable manner, — inter-
rupting the statement in critical points, and emphasizing it, by
that interruption, to the careful reader * of the argument,' but
to the spectator, or to one who takes it as a dialogue merely,
neutralizing it by that dramatic opposition. For the political
criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by
being merely broken, and put into the mouths of opposing
factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon
the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion.
542 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
For the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and
stupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their
unfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true con-
sulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the
chair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely
criticized by the true Tribune — the Tribune, whose Tribe is
the Kind — on the other; and it was not necessary to produce,
in any more prominent manner, just then, the fact, that both
these offices and relations were combined in that tottering
estate of the realm, — that ' old riotous form of military
government,' which held then only by the virtual election of
the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and which, this
Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for its innova-
tions in the government, and suppressions of the ancient estates
of this realm, — for its suppression of the dignities and privileges
of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered dignities
and rights of the Commons.
jScene.—A Street. Cornets. Enter Coriolanus with bis two military
friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars,
and have but just returned from their campaign, Cominius and Ti-
tus La rtius, — and with them the old civilian Meneni us, who, patri-
cian as he is, on account of his honesty, — a truly patrician virtue, — is
in favour with the people. 'He's an honest one. Would they
were all so.'
The military element predominates in this group of citi-
zens, and of course, they are talking of the wars, — the foreign
wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one
hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and re-
conciliation, the arts of war and government in their most
general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked,
under the specifications of the scene.
€or. Tullus Aufidius then had made new head.
Lart. He had, my lord, and that it was, which caused
Our swifter composition.
Cor. So then, the Volsces stand but as at first,
Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road
Upon us again.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE.
543
^om" They [Volsces ?] are worn, lord consul, so
That we shall hardly in our ages see
Their banners wave again.
* * * *
[Enter Sicinius and Brutus.]
Cor. Behold ! these are the tribunes of the people,
The tongues o' the common mouth. I do despise them ;
For they do prank them in authority,
Against all noble sufferance.
S™' Pass no further.
Cor. Ha I what is that ?
Bru. It will be dangerous to
Go on : No further.
Oor. What makes this change ?
Men- The matter 1
Com. Hath he not passed the nobles and the commons ?
Bru. Cominius. — No.
Cor- Have 1 had children's voices 1 [Yes.]
Sen. Tribunes, give way :— he shall to the market-place.
Bru. The people are incensed against him.
Sic- Stop.
Or all will fall in broil.
C°r' Are these your herd ?
Must these have voices that can yield them now, [offices ?
And straight disclaim their tongues ? What are tour
Tou, being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth?
Have you not set them on t
Men- Be calm, be calm.
Cor. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot,
To curb the will of the nobility : —
Sufer it, and live with such as cannot rule,
Nor ever will be ruled.
■Bru. Call'tnota^o*:
The people cry you mocked them ; and of late,
When com was given them gratis, you repined ;
Scandaled the suppliants for the people ; called them
Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.
Cor. Why, this was known before.
Bru- Not to them all.
Cor. Have you informed them since ?
Bru. How! /inform them?
Cor. You are like to do such business,
^u. Not unlike,
Each way to better yours.
Cor. Why then should / be consul 1 By yon clouds,
544 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me
Your fellow tribune.
Sic. You show too much of that,
For which the people stir : If you will pass
To where you are bound, you must inquire your way, —
Which you are out of, — with a gentler spirit ;
Or never be so noble as a consul,
Nor yoke with him for tribune.
Men. Let's be calm.
Com. The people are abused ; — set on — this paltering
Becomes not Rome : nor has Coriolanus
Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely
I' the plain way of his merit.
Cor. Tell me of corn :
This was my speech, and I will speak' t again.
Men. Not now, not now.
First Sen. Not in this heat, sir, now.
Cor. Now, as I live, I will. — My nobler friends
I crave their pardons : —
For the mutable, rank scented many, let them
Regard me, as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves : I say again,
In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate,
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered,
By mingling them with us, the honoured number.
Who lack not virtue, no, — nor power, but that
Which they have given to — beggars.
Men. Well, no more.
First Sen. No more words, we beseech you.
Cor. How, no more :
As for my country, I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay against those meazels
Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them.
Bru. You speak o' the people,
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.
Sic, 'T were well
We let the people know't.
Men. What, what ? his choler.
Cor. Choler !
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, 't would be my mind.
Sic. It is a mind.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 545
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.
Cor. Shall remain !
Hear you this Triton of the minnows ? mark you
His absolute shall 1
Com. 'Twasfrom the canon,
shall !
0 good, but most unwise patricians, why
You grave, but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory shall — being but
The horn and noise d the monster — wants not spirit
To say, he '11 turn your current in a ditch,
And make your channel his ? If he have power,
Then veil your ignorance : — [that let him have it.]
— if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity.
[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it
but a little, it is not the lost Eoman weal and its danger that
fires the passion of this speech. * Look at this player whether
he has not turned his colour, and has tears in his eyes.' * What's
Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her ?
What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion
that / have.']
— if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
Be not as common fools ; if you are not —
What do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you
from the commons? If you are not, there's no nobility. If
you are not, what business have you in these chairs of
state?
— if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators ; and they are no less,
When both your voices blended, the greatest taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate ;
And such a one as he, who puts his shall, —
[Mark it, his popular shall] .
His popular shall, against a graver bench
Than ever frown'd in Greece ! By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base : and my soul aches,
N N
546 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
To know, when two authorities are up,
[Neither able to rule] .
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
(j07rit "Well, — on to the market place.
Cor. Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth
The corn 0' the store-house gratis, as 'twas used
Sometime in Greece.*
Men. Well, well, no more of that,
Cor. Though there the people had more absolute power,
I say they nourished disobedience, fed
The ruin of the state.
j]ru. Why shall the people give
One that speaks thus their voice 1
(jort I'll give my reasons,
More worthier than their voices. They know the corn
Was not our recompense ; resting well assured
They ne'er did service for it?
. ' Well, what then ?
How shall this bosom multiplied, digest ;
The senate's courtesy ? Let deeds express
What's like to be their words. We did request it,
We are the greater poll, and in true fear
They gave us our demands. Thus we debase
The nature of our seats, and make the rabble
Call our cares, fears: which will in time break ope
The locks 0' the senate, and bring in the croivs
To peck the eagles.
Mem. Come, enough.
Bru. Enough, with over measure.
(j0Tt No, take more ;
What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end withal ! This double worship, —
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason ; where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no
* It is not corn,hut the property of the state, and its appropriation, we
talk of here. Whether the absolute power be in the hands of the people
or 'their officer' There had been a speech made on that subject, which
had not met with the approbation of the absolute power then conduct-
ing the affairs of this realm ; and in its main principle, it is repeated
here. 'That was my speech, and I will make it again.' * Not now,
not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.' ' Now, as I live, I will.'
THE WKESTLING INSTANCE.
547
Of General Ignorance — it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred it follows
Nothing is done to purpose : Therefore beseech you, —
[Therefore beseech you].
You that will be less fearful than discreet ;
That love the fundamental part of state.
More than you doubt the change of 't —
There was but one man in England then, able to balance
this revolutionary proposition so nicely — so curiously; 'that
love the fundamental ^vt of state more than you doubt the
change of it'; < You that are less fearful than discreet'— not
so fearful as discreet.
that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That's sure of death without it,— at once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison ; your dishonour
Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state
Of that integrity which should become it :
Not having the power to do the good it would,
For the ill which doth control it.
Bru. He has said enough.
[One would think so] .
Sic. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer
As traitors do.
Cor. Thou wretch ! despite o'erwhelm thee !
What should the people do with these bald tribunes ?
On whom depending, their obedience fails
To the greater bench ? In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be was law
Then were they chosen : in a better hour,
Let what is meet, be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i' the dust.
Bru, Manifest treason.
Sic. This a Consul 1 No.
Bru. The iEdiles ! ho ! let him be apprehended.
Sic. Go call the people ; [Exit Brutus'] in whose name, myself
Attach thee [thee] as a traitorous innovator
A foe to the public weal. Obey, I charge thee,
And follow to thine answer.
Cor. Hence, old goat !
N N 2
548 THE CURE OP THE COMMON-WEAL.
Senators and Patricians. We'll surety him.
Cor. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones
Out of thy garments.
Sic. Help, ye citizens.
[Re-enter Brutus, with 'the JEdiles, and a rabble of citizens.
Men. On both sides, more respect.
$iCt There's he that would
Take from you all your power.
]$ru Seize him, JEdiles.
Cit. Down with him. Down with him.
[Several speak.
Second Sen. Weapons ! Weapons ! Weapons !
[They all bustle about Coriolanus.
Tribunes, patricians : — citizens : — what ho : —
Sicinius, Brutus : — Coriolanus : — citizens: —
Cit. Peace /—Peace /—Peace /—stay /—hold /—peace /
Men. What is about to be ? 1 am out of breath :
Confusion's near! I cannot speak : you tribunes
To the people. — Coriolanus, patience : — ■
Speak, good Sicinius.
giCt Hear me, people ; — Peace.
Cit. Let's hear our tribune :— Peace, — Speak, speak, speak.
Sic. You are at point to lose your liberties,
Marcius would have all from you ; Marcius
Whom late you have named for consul.
Men. Fye, fye, fye.
That is the way to kindle, not to quench.
Sen. To unbuild the city and to lay all fiat.
Sic. What is the city, but the people.
Cit. True,
The people are the city.
Bru. By the consent of all, we were established
The people's magistrates.
dt. You so remain.
Men. And so are like to do.
Cor. That is the way to lay the city flat,
To bring the roof to the foundation ;
And bury all which yet distinctly ranges,
In heaps and piles of ruin.
SiCt This deserves death.
Bru. Or let us stand to our authority,
Or let us lose it : —
Truly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing
the history which is in all men's lives, * Figuring the nature of
the times deceased, a man may prophesy,1 as it would seem,
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 549
* with a near aim,1 — quite near — ' of the main chance of
things, as yet, not come to life, which in their weak beginnings
lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of
time,' this Poet says; but art, it seems, anticipates that process.
There appears to be more of the future here, than of the times
deceased.
«rifc "We do here pronounce
Upon the part of the people, in whose power
We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy
Of present death.
Sic. Therefore, lay hold of him ;
Bear him to the rock Tarpeian, and from thence
Into destruction cast him.
A*. iEdiles, seize him.
Cit. Yield, Marcius, yield.
Men. Hear me, one word.
Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.
^diles. Peace, peace.
Men. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend,
And temperately proceed to what you would
Thus violently redress.
Bru. Sir, those cold ways
That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous.
Where the disease is violent. — Lay hands upon him,
And bear him to the rock.
fl»ft No: I'll die here. [Drawing his sword.
There's some among you have beheld me fighting ;
Come try upon yourselves, what you have seen me.
Men. Down with that sword j tribunes, withdraw awhile.
Bru. Lay hands upon him.
Men. Help, help, Marcius, help !
You that be noble, help him, young and old.
Cit. Down with him ! Down with him !
' In this mutiny, the Tribunes, the Mdiles, and the People, are
all beat IN,' so the stage direction informs us, which appears
a little singular, considering there is but one sword drawn, and
the victorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in
numbers. It is, however, only a temporary success, as the vic-
tors seem to be aware.
Men. Go, get you to your houses, be gone away,
All will be nought else.
Second Sen. Get you gone.
550 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Cor. Stand fast,
We have as many friends as enemies.
Men. Shall it be put to that 1
Sen. The gods forbid !
I pr/thee noble friend, home to thy house ;
Leave us to cure this cause.
Men. For 'tis a sore upon us,
Ton cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you.
Com. Come, Sir, along with us.
Cor. I would they were barbarians (as they are,
Though in Rome littered) not Romans, (as they are not,
Though calved i' the porch o' the Capitol).
Men. Begone ;
Put not your worthy rage into your tongue ;
One time will owe another. [Hear.
Cor. On fair ground,
I could beat forty of them.
Men. I could myself
Take up a brace of the best of them ; yea, the two
tribunes.
Com. But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic :
And manhood is called foolery, when it stands
Against a falling fabric. — Will you hence,
Before the tag return ? whose rage doth rend
Like interrupted waters, and overbear
What they are used to bear. [Change of 'predominance.']
Men. Pray you, begone :
I'll try whether my old wit be in request
With those tliat have but little ; this must be patched
With cloth of any colour.
Com. Nay, come away.
The features of that living impersonation of the heroic
faults and virtues which ' the mirror,' that professed to give to
4 the very body of the time, its form and pressure,' could not
fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in * this ancient
piece/ and often shine out in the more critical passages, with
such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diver-
sion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely
the player's intention. For * the gentleman who wrote the
late Shepherd's Calendar ' was not the only poet of this time,
as it would seem, who found the scope of a double intention, in
his poetic representation, not adequate to the comprehension
of his design — who laid on another and another still, and found
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE.
55*
the complexity convenient. ' The sense is the best judge/
this Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining perempt-
orily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste ;— a
rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of
interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary
mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through
all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him.
It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics.
But, ' to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing/
he says, and ' he had as lief not be read at all, as be read by a
careless reader.' So he thrusts in his meanings as thick as ever
he likes, and those who don't choose to stay and pick them
out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he laid them
in for, — that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will have readers
enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait. There's
time enough.
First Pat. This man has marr'd his fortune.
Men. His nature is too noble for the world :
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident.
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth ;
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent ;
And being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
[A noise within.
Here's goodly work !
Second Pat. I would they were a-bed !
Men. I would they were in Tyber ! — What, the vengeance,
Could he not speak them fair 1
[Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble.
JSic. Where is this viper,
That would depopulate the city,* and
Be every man himself ?
Men. You worthy tribunes —
JSic. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock
With rigorous hands ; he hath insisted law,
And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.
* ' When could they say till now that talked of Home that her wide
walls encompassed but one man V 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish,
and what ofi'al, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so
vile a thing as Caesar.'
552 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Than the severity of the public power,
Which he so sets at nought.
First Cit. He shall well know
The noble tribunes are the people's mouths,
And we their hands.
[Historical principles — newly put. There's a cue
for action in them] .
Cit. He shall sure orit. [Several speak together.
Men. Sir
Sic. Peace.
Men. Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt
With modest warrant.
Sic. Sir, how comes it, that you
Have holp to make this rescue ?
Men. Hear me speak. —
As I do know the Consul's worthiness,
So can I name his faults.
Sic. Consul J — what Consul 1
Men. The Consul Coriolanus.
Bru. He a Consul !
CitS. No, NO, NO, NO, NO. [A 'NEGATIVE' — REVOCATION],
Men. If, by the tribune's leave, and yours, good people,
I may be heard, 1' d crave a word or two ;
The which shall turn you to no further harm,
Than so much loss of time.
Sic. Speak briefly then ;
For we are peremptory, to despatch
This viperous traitor : to eject him hence
Were but one danger ; and to keep him here, —
[All the questions have to come up here it seems],
and to keep him here,
Our certain death ; therefore it is decreed
He dies to-night.
Men. Now the good gods forbid,
That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude
Towards her deserved children is enrolled
In Jove's own book, like an unnatural dam
Should now eat up her own !
Sic. He 's a disease that must be cut away.
The analogy of physical disease which in the first scene of
this play is applied with such scientific detail, in the story
of Menenius Agrippa, to the convulsed and labouring organi-
zation of the body politic, continues to furnish the author,
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 553
throughout, with much of that kind of illustration in which
his works are so prolific, an illustration which is not rhetorical,
but scientific, based on the common principles in nature,
which it is his ' primary' business to ascend to, and which it
is his ' second' business to apply to each particular branch of
art. ' Neither/ as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advance-
ment, * neither are these only similitudes as men of narrow
observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of
nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters,'
and the tracking of these historical principles to their ultimate
forms, is that which he recommends for the disclosing of nature
and the abridging of Art.
Sic. He 's a disease, that must be cut away.
Men. O he 's a limb, that has but a disease ;
Mortal to cut it off ; to cure it, easy.
What has he done to Eome, that's worthy death ?
Killing our enemies ? The blood he hath lost,
(Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath,
By many an ounce), he dropped it for his country.
And what is left, to lose it by his country,
Were to us all, that doH and suffer it,
A brand to the end 0' the world.
Sic. This is clean kam,
There's a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom
he says in another scene, ' I cannot speak him home.'
Bru. Merely awry : when he did love his country,
It honour'd him.
Men. The service of the foot,
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what before it was ?
Bru. We '11 hear no more : —
Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence ;
Lest his infection, being of catching nature,
Spread further.
Men. One word more, one word.
This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find
The harm of unscanrfd swiftness, will, too late,
Tie leaden pounds to his heels. [Mark it, for it is a
prophecy.] Proceed by Process ;
Lest parties (as he is beloved) break out,
And sack great Rome with Romans.
554 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Bru. If it were so, —
Sic. What do ye talk ?
Have we not had a taste of his obedience ?
Our JSdiles smote ? Ourselves resisted 1 — Come : —
Men. Consider this ; he has been bred V the wars,
Since he could draw a sword, —
That has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their
rule, hitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what
schooling these statesmen have had, before you begin the
enterprise of reforming them, and take your measures accord-
ingly. They are not learned men, you see. How should
they be ? There has been no demand for learning. The law
of the sword has prevailed hitherto. When what's not meet
but what must be was law, then were they chosen. Proceed
by process.
Consider this ; he has been bred i' the wars
Since he could draw a sword, and is ill schooVd
In boulted language —
[That's the trouble ; but there's been a little bolting going
on in this play] .
— Meal and bran together
He throws without distinction. Give me leave
I '11 go to him, and undertake to bring him.
Where he shall answer by a lawful form,
(In peace) to his utmost peril.
First Sen. Noble tribunes.
It is the humane way : the other course
Will prove too bloody ; and —
[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].
— the end of it,
Unknown to the beginning.
Sic. Noble Menenius ;
Be you then as the People's Officer :
Masters, — [and they seem to be that, truly,]— lay down your
Bru. Go not home,
Sic. Meet on the market-place, —
[ — that is where the ' idols of the market' are—]
We'll attend you there :
Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed
In out first way.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 555
Men. I'll bring him to you.
Let me desire your company [To the Senators] He must come,
Or what is worse will follow.
Sen. Pray you, let 's to him.
Scene — The Forum.
Enter Sicinius and Brutus.
Bru. In this point charge him koine, that he affects
Tyrannical power : if he evade us there,
Enforce him with his envy to the people ;
And that the spoil, got on the Antiates,
Was ne'er distributed. —
Enter an JEdile.
What, will he come 1
JEd. He 's coming.
Bru. How accompanied 1
uEd. With old Menenius, and those senators
That always favour'd him.
Sic. Have you a catalogue
Of all the voices that we have procured,
Set down by the poll t*
JEd. I have ; His ready.
Sic. Have you collected them by tribes 1
JEd. I have.
Sic. Assemble presently the people hither :
And when they hear me say, it shall be so
T the right and strength d the commons, be it either
For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them,
If /say fine, cry fine ; if death, cry death;
Insisting jon the old prerogative,
And power $ the truth, 0' the cause.+
JEd. I shall inform them.
Bru. And when such time they have begun to cry,
Let them not cease, but with a din confused
Enforce the present execution
Of what we chance to sentence.
JEd. Very well.
Sic. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint.
When we shall hap to give't them.
Bru. Go about it.
[Exit JEdile.
* This can not be the book that Hamlet was reading. ' What do you
read, my lord V 'Words, words, words.'
t There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics,
which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is the
most immersed. — Advancement of Learning.
556 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Put him to choler straight. He hath been used
Ever to conquer, and to have his worth
Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot
Be rein'd again to temperance ; then he speaks
"What's in his heart ; and that is there, which looks
With me to break his neck. [Prophecy — inductive.]
Well, here he comes.
Enter Coriolanus, and his party.
Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.
Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece
Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour'd gods
Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men ! plant love among us.
Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,
And not our streets with war.
First Sen. Amen, Amen ! [Hear, Hear !
Men. A noble wish.
Re-enter JEdile with Citizens.
Sic. Draw near, ye people.
Cor. First hear me speak.
Mdile. List to your tribunes. Audience : Peace, I say.
Both Tri. Well, say, — Peace, ho.
Cor. Shall I be charged no further than this present ?
Must all determine here ?
Sic. I do demand,
If you submit you to the people's voices,
Allow their officers, and are content
To suffer lawful censure for such faults
As shall be proved upon you ?
Cor. I am content.
Men. Lo, citizens, he says he is content
Cor. What is the matter,
That being pass'd for consul, with full voice,
I am so dishonour'd, that the very hour
You take it off again 1
Sic. Answer to us.
Cor. Say then, 'tis true. / ought so.
Sic. We charge you, that you have contrived to take
From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind
Yourself into a power tyrannical ;
For which, you are A traitor to the people.
Cor. How! Traitor?
Men. Nay, temperately : Your promise.
Cor. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people !
Call me their traitor !
Cit. To the rock, to the rock with him.
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 557
Sic. Peace.
We need not put new matter to his charge :
What you have seen him do, and heard him speak,
Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,
Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying
Those whose great power must try him ; even this,
So criminal, and in such capital kind,
Deserves the extremest death.
For that he has,
As much as in him lies, from time to time,
Envied against the people ; seeking means
To pluck away their power : as now, at last,
Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence
Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers
That do distribute it ; in the name o' the people,
And in the power of us, the tribunes, we,
Even from this instant, banish him our city,
In peril of precipitation
From off the rock Tarpeian, never more
To enter our Rome's gates. 1' the people's name
/ say it shall be so.
Cit. It shall be so, it shall be so : let him away,
He's banish'd, and it shall be so.
Com. Hear me, my masters, and my common friends.
Sic. He's sentenced : no more hearing.
Com. Let me speak : —
Bru. There's no more to be said, but he is banished,
As enemy to the people, and his country :
It shall be so.
Cit. It shall be so, it shall be so.
And this is the story that was set before a king! One,
too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of
' that last king of England who was his ancestor' brought out;
a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath
of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and
distinguished — one who was taking so much pains to get the
fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in by battle,'
cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white
and red from the old Norman should not prove sufficient —
sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and
that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and
their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A
55^ THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the
one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated him-
self and his line by battle — by battle with the English people
on those very questions; who had * beaten them in' in their
mutinies with his single sword, 'and taken all from them';
who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties,
and ' the charters that they bore in the body of the weal' —
that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little —
while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal
occupant and his heir which might have looked to the pre-
scient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not
unlike to break some one's neck.
1 Bid them home,'
says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the
uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever;
charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation
from the Tarpeian Eock.
{ Bid them home :
Say, their great enemy is gone, and they
Stand in their ancient strength?
But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the
deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one
could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the
whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English
people, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate
criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal
English people themselves, in the way of ' striking an awe
into them,' and removing any lurking opposition they might
have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government ;
but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this
Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on
the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his
special qualifications for government happened to be passing
under review, was not attended with those happy results which
appear to have been expected in the other instance.
' If you have writ your annals true, 't is there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, /
THE WRESTLING INSTANCE. 559
Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli :
Alone, I did it.'
' Why
[The answer is, in this case,]
1 Why, noble lords,
Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,
Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,
'Fore your own eyes and ears ?
Cons. Let him die for 't. [Several speak at once.]
Citizens [Speaking promiscuously]. Tear him to pieces ; do
it presently. He killed my son — my daughter; — he killed my
cousin Marcus ; — he killed my father
O that I had him,
With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe,
To use my lawful sword.
Insolent villain !
.... Traitor ! — how now ? . . . .
Ay, traitor, Marcius.
Marcius ?
Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius. Dost thou think
I'll grace thee with that robbery — thy stolen name,
Coriolanus, in Corioli ? . . . .
[. . . . Honest, my lord 1 * Ay, honest.']
Cons. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.'
* Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius ?
Against him first.'
Surely, if that \ Heir apparent' to whom the History of
Henry the Seventh was dedicated by the author, with an
urgent recommendation of the 4 rare accidents9 in that reign to
the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but
chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon
this yet more ( ancient piece/ he might have found here, also,
some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that
the poet's mode of handling the same historical question is
much more bold and clear than that of the professed philo-
sopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his
father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian,
merely — a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the
past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to
the received method — but a Show-man, also, an Historical
560 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician,
who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of
revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future,
1 with a near aim/ an aim so near that it might well seem
* magical' ; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, ' which
drizzled blood upon the Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did
not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their
court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable
passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for acting —
one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that
theatre which is the Globe — one who had laid out all for his
share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately
for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic
Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a
true ' Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of
scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in
that servant of the crown, so supple, so f patient — patient as
the midnight sleep/ patient ' as the ostler that for the poorest
piece will bear the knave by the volume' — such a born
aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne,
one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did
not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never
lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it;
who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for
his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he
who was intriguing to such purpose with the Players.
The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed : then ' Fame,
who is the posthumous sister of rebellion , sprang up.'
' 0 like a book of sports thou 'It read me o'er,
But there 's more in me than thou It understand.'
' Henceforth guard thee well,
For I '11 not kill thee there, nor there, nor there ;
But by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
I '11 kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'
CONCLUSION. 561
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
« How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter,
and find a time
Both meet to hear and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this;
Brutus had rather be a villager,
Than to repute himself a son of Rome,
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.
TNASMUCH as the demonstration contained in this volume
has laboured throughout under this disadvantage, that
however welcome that new view of the character and aims
of the great English philosopher, which is involved in it, as
welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning, it presents
itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly opposed, not
merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous precon-
ceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most
notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts
sustained by unquestionable cotemporary authority, and attested
by public documents, — facts which history has graven with her
pen of iron in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions
of this man's character, not less, but more painful, for which
he is himself singly responsible; — not the forced exhibition
of a confession wrung from him by authority, — not the
craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious name that was
not his to blast, — that was the property of men of learning in
all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for ever,
at the bidding of power, — ■ not that only, but the voluntary
exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged, —
which he has gone out of his way to leave to us, — memorials
o o
562 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
of them which he has collected with his own hands, and
sealed up, and sent down to posterity ' this side up/ with
the most urgent directions to have them read, and examined,
and considered deeply, — that posterity, too, to which he com-
mends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the
cure of his fame.
The demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must
receive it. Because our criticism or our learning is not equal
to the task of reconciling it with that which we know already,
or with that which we believed, and thought we knew, we must
not on that account reject it. That is to hurt ourselves. That
is to destroy the principle of integrity at its source. We
must take our facts and reconcile them, if we can; and let
them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is greater
than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of
us, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts,
for the sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never
so plausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did
require of any mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be
dispensed with, or shorn, on either side to make it tenable,
is not going to stand, let it come in what name, or with
what authority it will; because the truth of history is, in its
least particular, of a universal quality, and is much more
potent than anything that the opinion and will of man can
oppose to it.
To the mind which is able to receive under all conditions
the demonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight, — to
the mind to which truth is religion, this book is dedicated.
The facts which it contains are able to assert themselves, —
will be, at least, hereafter. They will not be dependent ulti-
mately upon the mode of their exhibition here. For they
have the large quality, they have the solidity and dimen-
sions of historical truth, and are accessible on more sides
than one.
But to those to whom they are already able to commend
themselves in the form in which they are here set forth, the
author begs leave to say, in conclusion, though it must stand
CONCLUSION. 563
for the present in the form of a simple statement, but a state-
ment which challenges investigation, that so far from coming
into any real collision with the evidence which we have on
this subject from other sources, those very facts, and those
very historical materials on which our views on this subject
have been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the
complete development of the views contained here.
It is the true history of these great events in which the
hidden great men of this age played so deep a part; it is the
true history of that great crisis in which the life-long plots of
these hidden actors began to show themselves on the historic
surface in scenic grandeur, — in those large tableaux which
history takes and keeps, — which history waits for, — it is the
very evidence which has supplied the principal basis of the
received views on this subject, — it is the history of the
initiation of that great popular movement, — that movement
of new ages, with which the chief of popular development,
and the leader of these ages, has been hitherto so painfully
connected in our impressions; it is that very evidence, — that
blasting evidence which the Learning of the Modern Ages
has always carried in its stricken heart, — it is that which is
wanting here. That also is a part of the story which has
begun to be related here.
And those very letters which have furnished ' confirmations
strong as proofs of holy writ' of the impressions which the
other historical evidence, as it stands at present, inevitably
creates, — those very letters which have been collected by the
party whose character was concerned in them, and preserved
with so much diligence and caution, — which we have been
asked with so much emphasis to read and ponder, — which
have been recommended to our attention as the very best
means, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic
relations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete
understanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance
with his character and aims, — with his natural dispositions, as
well as his deliberate scientific aims, — these letters, long as we
have turned from them, — often as we have turned from them,
oo2
564 THE CUKE OP THE COMMON-WEAL.
— chilled, confounded, sick at heart, — unable, in spite of
those recommendations, to find in them any gleam of the soul
of these proceedings, — these very letters will have to be read,
after all, and with that very diligence which the directions
enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to take just
that place in the development of this plot which the author,
who always knows what he is about when he is giving direc-
tions, designed them to take. There is one very obvious
reason why they should be studied — why they would have
to be studied in the end. They have on the face of them a
claim to the attention of the learned. There is nothing like
them in the history of mankind. For, however mean and
disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to words,
— that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the
identity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in
the most private conferences, — there is usually an attempt to
clothe the forlorn and shrinking actuality with the common
human dignity, or to make it, at least, passably respectable, if
the claim to the heroic is dispensed with, — even in oral
speech. But in writing, in letters, destined to never so brief
and limited an existence, who puts on paper for the eye of
another, for the review of that criticism which in the lowest,
basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared
to detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on
the least failure, or shadow of failure in the best — who puts in
writing, — what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it
comes to that, a deliberate display of meanness, — what con-
victed felon, but will undertake in that case to give some sort
of heroic colour to his proceedings — some air of suffering
virtue to his durance?
But a great man, consciously great, who knows that his
most trifling letter is liable to publication; a great man,
writing on subjects and occasions which insure publicity to
his writing; a man of fame, writing letters expressly for
publication, and dedicating them to the far-off times; a man
of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest shades of moral
differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur of
CONCLUSION. 565
aims — aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering,
under the most difficult conditions, pursued to their suc-
cessful issue; a man whose aim in life it was to advance,
and ennoble, and enrich his kind; in whose life-success the
race of men are made glad ; such a one sending down along
with the works, in which the nobility and the deliberate worth
and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved, memorials
of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them,
by universal consent, the most odious character in history;
this is the phenomenon which our men of learning have found
themselves called upon to encounter here. To separate the
man and the philosopher — to fly out upon the man, to throw
him overboard with every expression of animosity and disgust,
to make him out as bad as possible, to collect diligently every
scrap of evidence against him, and set it forth with every con-
ceivable aggravation — this has been the resource of an in-
dignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest in
some form ; this has been the defence of learning, cast down
from its excellency, and debased in all men's eyes, as it seemed
for ever, in the person of its high -priest.
The objection to the work here presented to the public is,
that it does not go far enough. From the point of review that
the research of which it is the fruit has now attained, this is
the criticism to which it appears to be liable. From this point
of view, the complaint to be made against it is, that at the
place where it stops it leaves, for want of that part of the
evidence which contains it, the historical grandeur of our great
men unrevealed or still obscured. For we have had them, in
the sober day -light of our occidental learning, in the actua-
lities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past only —
monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man's divinity,
demi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples,
stalking through the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or
in the twilight of a national popular ignorance, embalmed in
the traditions of those who are always ' beginners.' We have
had them ; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for
them ; we have them, fruit of our own stock ; we have had them,
566 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in the searching noon-
day glare of our western science. We have had them, we have
them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and
ignorance confessed, with all their ' weaved-up follies ravelled
out,' with all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion
and will in man, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and
wrong-doing, assumed and acknowledged in their own per-
sons, symbolically, vicariously, assumed and confessed. ' I
am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to
give them shape, or time to act them in/ We have them,
our Interpreters, our Poets, our Keformers, who start from the
actualities — from the actualities of nature in general, and of
the human nature in particular — who make the most careful
study of man as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis
of their innovation, the beginning of their advancement to the
ideal or divine. We have them; and they, too, they also
come to us, with that old garland of glory on their brows,
with that same ' crown' of victory, which the world has given
from of old to those who have taken her affairs to be their
business.
That the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an
age, like that age from which our modern philosophy proceeds,
is of a kind to require, for its unravelling, a different species of
criticism from that which suffices for the historical evidence
which our own times and institutions produce, is a fact which
would hardly seem to require any illustration in the present
state of our historical knowledge, in the present state of our
knowledge in regard to the history of this age in particular;
when not the professed scholar only, but every reader, knows
what age in the constitutional history of England, at least, that
age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian only,
with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are caviare to the
multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull
prose and scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back
to the peoples their own, to tell us what age this was. The
inner history of this time is indeed still wanting to us; and
CONCLUSION. 567
the reason is, that we have not yet applied to the reading of
its principal documents that key of times which our contem-
porary historians have already put into our hands — that key
which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain cases,
indispensable to the true interpretation.
That the direct contemporary testimony on which history
depends is, in this case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and
through all its details — that the documents are all of them,
on the face of them, ' suspicious,' and not fit to be received as
historical evidence without the severest scrutiny and re-exami-
nation — this is the fact which remains to be taken into the
account here. For this is a case in which the witnesses come
into court, making signs, seeking with mute gesticulation to
attract our attention, pointing significantly to the difficulties
of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting a
second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mor-
tally hate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could ; inti-
mating that if their testimony should be re-examined in a
higher court, and when the Star Chamber and the Court of
Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer in session, it might
perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different reading.
This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his
finger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another
age.
We all know what age in the history of the immemorial
liberties and dignities of a race — what age in the history of
its recovered liberties, rescued from oppression and recognised
and confirmed by statute, this was. We know it was an age
in which the decisions of the Bench were prescribed to it by a
power that had ' the laws of England at its commandment,'
that it was an age in which Parliament, and the press, and
the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had
charge, diligent charge ' of amusements also, and of those who
only played at working.' That this was a time when the Play
House itself, — in that same year, too, in which these philoso-
phical plays began first to attract attention, and again and
again, was warned off by express ordinances from the whole
568 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
ground of ' the forbidden questions.' We know that this was
an age in which not the books of the learned only were
subjected to ' the press and torture which expulsed' from them
all those ' particulars that point to action' — action, at least, in
which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it
was a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that
same censorship and question, and corrected with those same
instruments and engines, which made then a regular part of
the machinery of the press; when the most secret cabinet of
the Statesman and the Man of Letters must be kept in order
for that revision, when his most confidential correspondence,
his private note-book and diary must be composed under these
restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the
secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to
the power then predominant; when the private desk and
drawers of the poor obscure country clergyman were ran-
sacked, and his half- formed studies of sermons, his rude
sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be — which
might or might not be — put down for private purposes
perhaps, and never intended to be preached — were produced
by Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities
and cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent
and the Duke of Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.
To the genius of a race in whose mature development specu-
lation and action were for the first time systematically united,
in the intensities of that great historical impersonation which
signalises its first entrance upon the stage of human affairs,
stimulated into preternatural activity by that very opposition
which would have shut it out from its legitimate fields, and
shut it up within those impossible, insufferable limits that the
will of the one man prescribed to it then, — to that many-sided
genius, bent on playing well its part even under those condi-
tions, all the more determined on it by that very opposition —
kept in mind of its manliness all the time by that all com-
prehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of
every act — irritated all the time into a protesting human
dignity by the perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, in-
CONCLUSION. 569
structed in the doctrine of the human nature and its nobility
in the school of that sovereignty which was keeping such a
costly ' crib' here then ; ' Let a beast be lord of beasts,* says
Hamlet, f and your crib shall stand at the king's mess ;'
* Would you have me false to my nature?9 says another, 'rather
«ay I play the man I am'; to that so conscious man, playing
his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high;
knowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in,
how 'far' those long-drawn aisles extended; what 'far-off'
crowding ages filled them, watching his slightest movements;
who knew that he was acting ' even in the eyes of all posterity
that wear this world out to the ending doom' ; to such a one
studying out his part beforehand under such conditions, it was
not one disguise only, it was not one secret literary instrumen-
tality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That toy stage
which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends, with
all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this speaker's
speech, 'who came prepared to speak well/ and 'to give to
his speech a grace by action.'
Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented
itself to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to
which other forms of writing did not admit then of being so
readily adapted. It offered itself to this invention as a means
of conducting certain plots, which inasmuch as they had the
weal of men for their object, were necessarily conducted with
secresy then. The whole play of that dramatic genius which
shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, not on the stage,
but in these ' plots' in which the weal of the unborn genera-
tions of men was the end ; those plots for the relief of man's
estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway
robberies, then, by a banditti that had watch -words, and ' badges'
and signals and private names, and a secret slang of their own.
The minds that conducted this enterprise under these con-
ditions, were minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to
those of the Greeks, and who thought they had as good a
right to invent new methods of literary communication, or to
convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in their day.
57° THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it
was not just as lawful for the moderns to ( invent new measures
in verses/ at least, as in e dances/ and why it was not just as
competent for him to compose * supposititious' letters for his
purposes, as it was for Thucydides to compose speeches for his;
and though eloquence was, in this case, for the most part,
dispensed with, these little every-day prosaic unassuming,
apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and business, shewing
it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as it happened
in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a com-
prehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an
invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.
The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the
name of Sir Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr.
Francis Bacon appeared without much attempt at disguise,
were not the only documents of that kind for which the
name of the elder brother, with his more retiring and less
1 dangerous ' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the
least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will
tend to throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things
when it is opened, was conducted in that gentleman's name,
about those days.
But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the
genius of this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend
their names and sanction to these little unobtrusive perform-
ances of his, when occasion served. This was a gentleman
who was in the habit of writing letters and arranging plots,
for quite the most distinguished personages of his time. In
fact, his powers were greatly in request for that purpose. For
so far as the question of mere ability was concerned, it was found
upon experiment, that there was nothing he stopped at. Under a
sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of the Play
required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that he
could compose e a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision,
or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex,
addressed to Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion.
If it was not any better than those attempts at lyrical expres-
CONCLUSION. 571
sion in another department of song, which he has produced as
a specimen of his poetical abilities in general, it is not
strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of poetry,
should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that
effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not
Essex and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail them-
selves of these so singular gifts, devoted to their use by one
who was understood to have no other object in living, but to
promote their ends, — one whose vast philosophic aims, — aims
already propounded in all their extent and grandeur, pro-
pounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole scheme
of his life was to be — artistically — with the strong hand of
that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were
supposed to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepres-
sible enthusiasm of devotion to the wishes of the person who
happened, at the time, to be the sovereign's favourite; one
whose great torch of genius and learning was lighted, as it was
understood, — lighted and fed, to light them to their desires.
Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add any thing to the
powers with which nature had crowned this man, instructed
by her instinct, that ' such men were dangerous,' was willing,
notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of this
nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is,
that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and an-
other, passed in consequence through this gentleman's hands
in both these reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better quali-
fied by constitutional endowments, and by a predominant ten-
dency to what he calls technically * active good,' for the dis-
patch of business in which large and distant results were
comprehended. And if in managing plots for these illustrious
personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference
to his ulterior aims, — if, in writing letters for them, he wrote
them always with the under-tones of his own part, — of his own
immortal part that was to survive ' when tyrants' crests and
tombs of brass were spent' running through them — if, in com-
posing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal deci-
sions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to
57 2 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
point to the secret history which contained their solution, who
that knows what those times were, who that knows to what
divine ends this mans life was dedicated, shall undertake to
blame him for it.
All these papers were written with an eye to publication;
thay were written for the future, but they were written in
that same secret method, in that same ' cipher' which he has
to stop to describe before he can introduce the subject of * the
principal and supreme sciences,' with the distinct assurance that
as ( matters stand then, it is an art of great use, though some
may think he introduces it with its kindred arts, in that place,
for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the sciences, and
to little other purpose, and that trivial as these may seem in
such a connexion, ' to those who have spent their labours
and studies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to
1 those who are skilful in them' to say whether he has not
given, in what he has said of them, ' though in few words,'
a proof of his proficiency. This was the method of writing
in which not the principal and supreme sciences only, but
every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be
written then.
1 Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.'
Both these kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of
this school. The reading of that which is ' in letters,' the one
in which letters are secretly employed as * symbols ' of esoteric
philosophic subtleties, is reserved for those who have found
their way into the esoteric chambers of this learning. It is
reserved for those who have read the ' Book of Sports and
Kiddles,' which this school published, and who happen to have
it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved
for those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked him to his
last lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery;
for those who have been in Prospero's Island, and ' untied his
spell.' This point gained,— the secret of the cipher <in letters'—
the secret of ' the symbols,' and other ' devices ' and ' conceits y
which were employed in this school as a medium of secret
philosophic correspondence, the characters in which these men
conclusion. 573
struck through the works they could not own then, the grand
colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of universality, large
as the world, enduring as the ages of the human kind, and
with it — in it, their own particular ' marks ■ and private signa-
tures,— this mastered, — with the secret of this in our hands,
the cipher • in words ' presents no difficulties, When we come
to read the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters,
with the aid of that discovery, we shall know what one of the
partners of it means, when he says, that on ' account of the
rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they
pass, the greatest matters are sometimes carried in the weakest
ciphers/
It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the
favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending
a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely
to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under
those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking
umbrage at the advancement of a rival — the policy of the
position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sus-
taining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal
suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government
regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a
military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in mark-
ing out those grand points in the conditions of the chief
courtiers' policy .at that time, to glance at the position of other
men in that same court, seeking for power under those same
conditions — men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate
welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages
were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that
of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the
letter.
It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims
of the ' New Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the
manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at
the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly
of another public interest, not less important, were coming
forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their
574 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the
nation.
Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's
household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extrava-
gance — in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the
embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of
the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief,
were fast urging on the revolution — it was easy to indicate
a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a
glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the
man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was
impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which
writes elsewhere, "Beggar and Madman,' too, so freely,— con-
soling the Monarch with the suggestion that Essex was also
greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after
and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who
had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold
their heads up.
Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and
opposing ambitions — under cover, it might be, of an out-
rageous personal mutual hostility — it was easy for public men
belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to
conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own
private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests
under such conditions,— it was easy for politicians trained in
such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into
each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league
they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be,
which it would have been vain and fatal for those most con-
cerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seek-
ing advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view,
the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for
practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after
all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time,
so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention,
already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical
gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all
conclusion. 575
know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he
had been in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at
all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hosti-
lities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its
friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them, — the
over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.
While indicating the legal method of proceeding in con-
ducting the show of a trial, to which ' the man whose fame
did indeed fold in the orb o' the world' was to be subjected —
a trial in which the decision was known beforehand — ' though/
says our Poet —
* Though well, we may not pass upon his life,
Without the form of justice f —
it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a
Stuart — for the tool of a Stuart's favourite — to insert in such
a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages,
interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not
yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the
partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise
his case, or meddle with it.
In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of
our great philosopher, there are included many important state
papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief
personages and actors of that age, which performed their part
at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every
one of them written with an inner reference to the position of
the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the
key of that position. But along with this authentic historical
matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is ' supposi-
titious? to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to
his purpose — supposititious in the same sense in which the
speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are supposi-
tious — is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious
correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this
author's life and times which the authentic letters left un-
finished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to
57b THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
transmit to posterity, — which he was forbidden to transmit
in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscella-
neous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series
of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both
sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but
under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly
thin, never meant to serve as a cover with ' men of under-
standing.' Read which side of the correspondence you will in
these cases, ' here is his dry hand up and down.'
These .fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own
name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations,
ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the imperso-
nated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and
act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven,
impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own
name and person is attached ; — the man whom the Tudor and
the Stuart admitted to their secrets, — the man whom the Tudor
tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules
of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the
interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are
such, and whose 'natures and ends' are so 'differing and
dissonant from the general state of the times in which they
live,' that it is necessary for them to avoid ' disclosing them-
selves,' ' to be in the whole course of their lives close, retired,
reserved, as we see in Tiberius, who was never seen at a play,3
men who are compelled, as it were, ' to act their lives as in a
theatre.' ' The soundest disclosing,' he says, ' and expounding
of men is by their natures and ends. The weaker sort
of men are best interpreted by their natures, the wisest by
their ends,1 < Princes are best interpreted by their natures,
private persons by their ends, because princes being at the
top of human desires, they have, for the most part, no
particular ends whereto they aspire, by distance from which a
man might take measure and scale of the rest of their
actions and desires' ' Distance from which,' — that is the
key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of
certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves
conclusion. 577
under such conditions ' good and reasonable ends, and such as
are within their power to attain.' As to the worthiness of
these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in
our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements
which make the modern ages — the discoverers of its science of
sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in
an enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means
by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits
we have already received at their hands, — the benefits we
have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter
is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design.
But it is sent down to us with the works in which the nobility
of his nature is all laid open, — in which the end of his ends
is constantly declared, and constantly pursued, — it is sent
down to us along with the works in which his ends are accom-
plished, to the times that have found in their experience what
they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages ex-
perimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which
he made these sacrifices, — aims which he constantly pro-
pounded as the end of his large activity, to note the ' dis-
sonance' between that life which the surface of these documents
exhibits, — between that historic form, too, which the surface
of that time's history exhibits, — and the nature which is re-
vealed in this life-act, — the soul, the never-shaken soul of
this proceeding.
' The god of soldiers,
With the consent of supreme Jove, inform
Thy thoughts with nobleness ; that thou may'st prove
The shame unvulnerable, and stick i' the war
Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye thee'
? I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men
should say of me, he judged, and lived so and so; I knew him
better than any. Now, as much as decency permits, I here
discover my inclinations and affections. If any observe, he will
find that I have either told, or designed to tell all. What I
cannot speak, I point out with my finger. ■ ' There was never
P P
57^ THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
greater circumspection and military prudence than is some-
times seen among us [' Naturalists']. Can it be that men are
afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve them-
selves to the end of the game?'
* I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to
come across my name. He that does all things for honor and
glory, what can he think to gain by showing himself to the
world in a mask, and by concealing his true being from the
people? If you are a coward, and men commend you for
your valour, is it of you that they speak ? They take you for
another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the
street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who
were with him said he ought to punish : * Ay, but/ said the
other, ' he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him
whom he took me to be/ Socrates being told by the people,
that people spoke ill of him, ' Not at all,' said he ; ' there is
nothing in me of what they say. / am content to be less
commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed
a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.'
— [' The French Interpreter.^
This is the man who never in all his life came into the
theatre, content to work behind the scenes, scientifically
enlightened as to the true ends of living, and the means of at-
taining those ends, propounding deliberately his duty as a man,
his duty to his kind, his obedience to the law of his higher
nature, as his predominant end, — but not to the' harm or
oppression of his particular and private nature, but to its
most felicitous conservation and advancement, — at large in its
new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great fruition,
happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all impedi-
ments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over
' death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the conscious-
ness of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all
the provision that can be made for security and repose,' — not
reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own
time, — his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with
it, — always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical ques-
conclusion. 579
tions it involved, and seeking always the ( nobler ' solution.
* The one part have I suffered, the other will I do/ — demon-
strating the possibility of making, even under such conditions,
a ' life sublime/
1 All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'
There is no room here for details; but this is the account of
this so irreconcileable difference between the Man of these
Works and the Man in the Mask, in which he triumphantly
achieved them ; — this is the account, in the general, which
will be found to be, upon investigation, the true one. And
the more the subject is studied, even by the light which this
work brings to bear upon it, the more the truth of this state-
ment will become apparent.
But though the details are, by the limits of this volume,
excluded here, it cannot well close, without one word as to the
points in this part of the evidence, which have made the
deepest impression on us.
No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or out-
rage of any kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of
learning, that it was possible for this scientific propounder of
the law of human kind-ness to avert and protect him from —
this anticipator and propounder of a human civilization. He
was far in advance of our times in his criticism of the bar-
barisms which the rudest ages of social experiment have
transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a beetle, without
feeling through all that exquisite organization which was great
nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's pang.
To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them
first ' with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were,
the motives on which such consequences might depend then —
to forestall the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the
powers he needed. The men who were protected and
relieved by that secret combination against tyranny, which
required, as the first condition of its existence, that its chiefs
should occupy places of trust and authority, ought to come
580 THE CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL.
out of their graves to testify against the calumnies that blast
our modern learning, and the virtue — the virtue of it, at its
source. Does any one think that a universal slavery could be
fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and man-
liness are at their height here, without so much as the project
of an * under-ground rail-way' being suggested for the relief of
its victims? ' I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go
you and maintain talk with the Duke that my charity be not of
him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed.
Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the
Dukes — [between the Dukes] — - and a worse matter than
that. I have received a letter this night. It is dangerous to
be spoken. I have locked the letter in my closet. There is part
of a power already footed. We must incline to the King.
If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, my old
master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found
to contain some hints as to the manner in which ' charities'
of this kind have need to be managed, under a government
armed with powers so indefinable.
Cassius. And let us swear our resolution.
Brutus. No, not an oath : If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our souls, the times abuse, —
If these be motives weak, break of betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed ;
So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery. But if these —
As I am sure they do, — bear fire enough
To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour
The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,
What need we any spur but our own cause
To prick us to redress ? what other bond
Than secret Romans, that have spoken the word,
And will not palter
Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,
Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs ; unto bad causes swear
Such creatures as men doubt ; but do not stain
The even virtue of our enterprise,
Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,
To think that, or our cause, or our performance,
Did need an oath.'
[Doctrine of the ' secret Ramans?]
CONCLUSION. 581
As to the rest, it was this man — this man of a scientific
* prudence' with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct
of the larger whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought — it
was this man who gave at last the signal for change; not for
war. f Proceed by process' was his word. Constitutional
remedies for the evils which appeared to have attained at last
the unendurable point, were the remedies which he proposed —
this was the move which he was willing, for his part, to
initiate. — ' We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I
see ways to save us.' — The proceedings of the Parliament
which condemned him were studiously arranged beforehand
by himself, — he wrote the programme of it, and the part he
undertook to perform in it was the greatest in history.*
It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure
to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble
works, through which we have already learned to love and
honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a dis-
graced and baffled statesman and courtier — all lurking
jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest — all possibility of a
political future precluded; but as a courtier still hanging on
the king and on the power that controlled the king, for life
and liberty, and careful still not to assert any independence
of those same ends, which had always been taken to be his
ends-, it was in this character that he brought out at last the
Novum Organum ; it was in this character that he ventured
to collect and republish his avowed philosophical works; it
was in this character too that he ventured at last to produce
that little piece of history which comes down to us loosely
appended to these philosophical writings. A history of the
Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred, a Conquest which
they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want of 'leaders
and organization — overborne by the genius of a military chief
* ' T is the indiligent reader that loses my subject, not I,' says the
1 foreign interpreter' of this style of writing. ' There will always be
found some word or other, in a corner, though it lie very close.' That
is the rule for the reading of the evidence in this case. The word is
there, though it lies very close, as it had need to, to be available.
582 THE CURE OF THE COMMON- WEAL.
whom this historian compares in king-craft with his cotempo-
raries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XL It is a history which
was dedicated to Charles L, which was corrected in the manu-
script by James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to
that monarch's approval of it, permission to come to town for
the purpose of superintending its publication. It is the History
of the Founding of the Tudor Dynasty: prepared, — as were the
rest of these works, — under the patronage of an insolent favou-
rite with whom it was necessary ' entirely to drop the character
that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness *
and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not
sufficient ' for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act
the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed
themselves and became abject and contemptible in their
persons/
1 1 am in this ( Volumnia)
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,
And you will rather show our general lowts,
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard,
Of what that want might ruin.
Away my disposition !
When you do find him, or alive or dead,
He will be found like Brutus, like himself.
' Yet country-men, 0 yet, hold up your heads.
I will proclaim my name about the field.
T am the son of Marcus Cato, ho !
A foe to tyrants, and my country's friend.
1 And / am Brutus, Marcus Brutus 7,
Brutus, my country's friend, know me for Brutus.'
FINIS.
WERTHEIMER AND CO., PRINTERS, CIRCUS PLACE, FIMSBURY.
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