To witness this he calls the fools of time. What was it to him that he had "borne the canopy, with his externe the outward honouring"? Whilst living thus externally, as fortune forced him to do, as mere servant to greatness, a brilliant but reluctant hangeron at the court, he was meanwhile collecting materials, digging the foundations, calling in helpers to "lay great bases for eternity."

CHAPTER V.

PLAYWRIGHT AND POET-PHILOSOPHER.

"Playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere. the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

A

-Hamlet.

BOUT the year 1592 Bacon wrote a device entitled The Conference of Pleasure. 1 It was evidently prepared for some festive occasion, but whether or not it was ever performed in the shape in which it is seen in the existing manuscript, is not known.

The paper book which contained this device bore on its outside leaf a list of its original contents, but the stitches which fastened the sheets together have given way, or were intentionally severed, and the central pages are gone-a great loss, when we know that these pages included copies of the plays of Richard II. and Richard III., of which it would have been interesting to have seen the manuscript.

The Conference of Pleasure represents four friends meeting for intellectual amusement, when each in turn delivers a speech in praise of whatever he holds "most worthy." This explains the not very significant title given to this work in the catalogue which is found upon the fly-leaf of the paper book: "Mr. Fr. Bacon Of Giving Tribute, or that which is due."

The speeches delivered by the four friends are described as The Praise of the Worthiest Virtue, or Fortitude, "The Worthiest Affection, "- Love; "The Worthiest Power, "— Knowledge; and the fourth and last, "The Worthiest Person." This is the same that was afterwards printed and published under

1 This device was edited by Mr. Spedding (1867) from the manuscript, which he found amongst a quantity of paper belonging to the Duke of Northumberland.

the title of "Mr. Bacon in Praise of his Soveraigne." It bears many points of resemblance to Cranmer's speech in the last scene of Henry VIII.,1 and is ostensibly a praise of Queen Elizabeth. Covertly it is a praise of Bacon's sovereign lady, the Crowned Truth. The editor of the Conference observes, as so many others have done, that there is in the style of this piece a certain affectation and rhetorical cadence, traceable in Bacon's other compositions of this kind, and agreeable to the taste of the time. He does not, however, follow other critics in saying that this courtly affectation was Bacon's style, or that the fact of his having written such a piece is sufficient to disprove him the author of other compositions written more naturally and easily. On the contrary, he describes this stilted language as so alien to his individual taste and natural manner, that there is no single feature by which his own style is more specially distinguished, wherever he speaks in his own person, whether formally or familiarly, whether in the way of narrative, argument, or oration, than the total absence of it."

The truth is that the style of Francis Bacon was the best method, whatever that might be, for conveying to men's minds the knowledge or ideas which he was desirous of imparting. There should, he says, be "a diversity of methods according to the subject or matter which is handled." This part of knowledge of method in writing he considers to have been so weakly inquired into as, in fact, to be deficient. He explains that there must be, in this "method of tradition," first the invention or idea of that which is to be imparted; next, judgment upon the thing thought or imagined, and lastly, delivery, or imparting of the thought or idea. Then he shows that knowledge is not only for present use, but also for its own advancement and increase. With regard especially to present use, he points out that there are times and seasons for knowledges, as for other things. How to begin, to insinuate knowledge, and how to refrain from seeming to attempt to teach? "It is an inquiry of great wisdom, what kinds of wits

1 Further on we shall have occasion to show how in many of Bacon's poems, sonnets, etc., where "the Queen" is praised, the allusion is ambiguous, referring chiefly, though covertly, to Bacon's Sovereign Mistress, Truth.

He is

and natures are most apt and proper for most sciences." actually speaking of the use of mathematics in steadying the mind, "if a child be bird-witted and hath not the faculty of attention; " but he leads this argument into another which again brings before us his ideas about the immense importance of the stage. "It is not amiss to observe, also, how small and mean faculties, gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men and 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 talent for acting, put the Pannonian armies into extre:ne tumult and combustion. For, there arising a mutiny amongst them upon the death of Augustus Cæsar, Blæsas, the lieutenant, had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak (and charged Blæsas, in pathetic terms, with having caused his brother to be murdered) — 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; but he played it merely as if he had been on the stage.

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This anecdote is partly an illustration of what Bacon has previously been saying, that the duty of rhetoric is "to apply reason to imagination, for the better moving of the will." Rhetoric, therefore, may be made an aid to the morality whose end is to persuade the affections and passions to obey reason. He shows that "the vulgar capacities" are not to be taught by the same scientific methods which are useful in the delivery of knowledge as a thread to be spun upon, and which should, if possible, be insinuated" in the same method wherein it was invented. In short, matter, and not words, is the important thing; for words are the images of cogitations, and proper thought will bring proper words. It may in some cases be well to speak like the vulgar and think like the wise. This was an art in which Bacon himself is recorded to have been especially skilful: he could imitate and adopt the language of the person with whom he was conversing and speak in any style. If so, could he not equally well write in any style which best suited the matter in hand, which would most readily convey his

meaning to educated or uneducated ears, to minds prosaic or poetical, dull in spirit, and only to be impressed by plain and homely words, or not impressed at all, except the words were accompanied by gesture and action as if the speaker were upon the stage "?

And so Bacon was "content to tune the instruments of the muses," that they should be fit to give out melodies and harmonies of any pitch, and suited to every frame of mind. In his acknowledged writings (which seem to be an ingenious map of, or clue to, his whole body of works) we find, as it were, samples of many and varied styles of writing which he desires to see studied and more perfectly used; and although in his greatest productions he has built up a noble model of language which the least observant reader must recognise as Baconian, yet there are amongst his writings some so unlike what might be expected from his pen, and so very unlike each other, as to dispel the idea that his many-sided mind required, like ordinary men, merely a one-sided language and "style" in which to utter itself.

The manner of speaking or writing which pleases him best was plain and simple, "a method as wholesome as sweet." But, just as in the poems and plays which we attribute to him the styles are so various as to raise doubts, not only of the identity of the author, but even as to various portions of the same work, so the style of writing of the Gesta Grayorum or the Conference of Pleasure is totally unlike the New Atlantis or the Confession of Faith. Neither is there, at first sight, anything which would cause the casual reader to identify the author of any of these with the Wisdom of the Ancients, or Life's a Bubble, or the History of the Winds, or the Essay of Friendship, or many more widely different works or portions of works known to have been written by Bacon. Because this is known, no one is so bold or so foolish as to point to the immense differences in style as proof that one man could not have written all. One man did write them; no one can challenge the statement, and consequently no question has arisen about this particular group of works; yet they differ amongst themselves more than, individ