Thus it appears that the period of time in which these plays and poems were produced corresponds exactly to that portion of Bacon's life in which we may most easily sup 1 First printed in the present form: an older form printed in 1594. 2 First in complete form: only first sketches before. 8 First in complete form: only a sketch before. pose they could have been written by him, being the period of thirty-one years between his coming to the bar, in 1582, and his elevation to the principal law-office of the crown, in 1613, and between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-two. During the first twenty-five years of this time, and until made Solicitor-General, in 1607, he was looking in vain for advancement in the state, getting none beyond a seat in Parliament, which came from the people, and the small employment of a Queen's (or King's) Counsel, both places. of honor rather than profit; and was a barrister, a close student, and a bachelor at his lodgings in Gray's Inn, with distressingly little professional business and much leisure for writing and for study, spending his vacations in the quiet retreats of Gorhambury and Twickenham Park; a constant attendant upon the Court, a friend and counsellor of the favorite Essex, and an intimate associate of his gay young compeers, Southampton, Rutland, Pembroke, and Montgomery, who were constant visitors of the theatre, some of them great patrons of learning, and themselves amateurs in poetry, and all of them patrons and lovers of the liberal arts. All the while, Francis Bacon was intent upon his legal studies, his parliamentary duties, his scientific inquiries, his civil and moral Essays, his "Wisdom of the Ancients," his "Advancement of Learning," and those philosophical speculations and instaurations which were his " graver studies," together with sundry unnamed "recreations" of his other studies; being thus, at the same time, engaged in writing various works in prose (if not in verse also) on subjects which, in a general view, and in their main matter and scope, are found to be essentially kindred and parallel with these very plays. In his dedication of the "Dialogue Touching a Holy War" (itself not without some touch of the Shakespearean faculty), addressed to the learned Bishop Andrews, in 1622, he tells us that these smaller works, such as the Essays, and “ some other particulars of that nature." being perhaps a part of those "particular exchanges" to which he had hitherto been given, had been and would continue to be "the recreations of his other studies; " but they must now give way to the more important philosophical labors and those "banks and mounts of perpetuity which will not break"; for on these he was henceforth to be more exclusively employed; "though I am not ignorant," says he, "that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand."1 Nor is there anything remarkable in the circumstance that a barrister of the Inns of Court should be a poet and write for the stage. John Ford of Gray's Inn, and Francis Beaumont of the Inner Temple, were both lawyers and eminent dramatic writers; the Christmas Revels at these Inns were celebrated with masques, triumphs, and stageplays; plays were written by eminent scholars and divines to be performed on festive occasions, even at the Universities; Thomas Sackville Lord Buckhurst, and Foulke Greville Lord Brooke, were poets, and wrote plays; Sir Henry Wotton, sometime secretary of the Earl of Essex, also wrote plays; William, Earl of Pembroke, like the celebrated Sir Philip Sidney, was a cultivator of the art of poetry; Dr. John Donne, a great philosopher and divine, as well as George Herbert, the "best judge of divinity and poesy met," and Sir John Davies, a distinguished lawyer and judge, are named as founders of the metaphysical school of poetry of that day; 2 and that great scholar and writer, John Selden of the Inner Temple, though not himself a poet, was such a critic, philosopher, and man, as to command the esteem and confidence of Lord Bacon, who named him in his will as one eminently fit to sit in judgment upon his unpublished manuscripts. Nor is it to be supposed that he contemplated in the writing of these poet1 Works (Boston), XIII. 188. 2 Craik's Hist. of Eng. Lit. I. 578. ical works merely "some lease of quick revenue," or any immediate advantage to himself, or personal fame, as many of the poets did, in those days. On the contrary, we may safely imagine for him the highest and most disinterested purpose which it is possible to conceive for any author, even for himself, who was seeking by the labors of a life to reform and advance the learning, science, philosophy, arts, morals, and the whole "practic part" of human life in this world; in which the personal interests of the writer, and even the lustre of fame and reputation, were with himself, perhaps, the least important considerations, when these "trifles" were in question. § 2. CIRCUMSTANCES. Francis Bacon was endowed by nature with the richest gifts and most extraordinary powers. His mother was a learned woman in those days when learning for either sex implied a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics; and we find her translating works of deep theology, after the example of Lady Jane Grey, who, according to Ascham, read "the Phædon Platonis in Greeke" with as much delight as if it had been "one of the tales of Boccase," or of the Queen herself, who is said to have translated Boethius "De Consolatione Philosophia" into her own English. This Boethius, it will be remembered, was a Christian philosopher and poet of the fifth century, and a writer that exhibited the highest order of Platonic genius and intellect, both in style and matter surpassing Cicero himself; and in the age of Elizabeth there were not a few scholars and divines, who, like Richard Hooker, George Herbert, John Selden, Dr. Donne, Bishop Andrews, and Lord Bacon himself, were by no means afraid of the philosophy of Plato. His father was not only Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, but an eminent scholar and a patron of learning and art, who had the reputation of uniting in him. 1 Opera Boethii (Class. Delph. Valpy), London, 1823. "2 66 self "the opposite characters of a witty and a weighty speaker," and was, says Sir Robert Naunton, an archpeece of wit and of wisdome," and "abundantly facetious; which tooke much with the queene." His palace of York House, in which this son was born, and his country-seat of Gorhambury, was well furnished with libraries, and adorned with works of art and whatever might please the taste of the scholar and gentleman. His father breeds him as the King did Leonatus in the play, — "Puts to him all the learnings that his time A glass that feated them; and to the graver, A child that guided dotards.". Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. 1. 66 We can easily imagine what must have been the early education of this notable youth, whom the Queen called her young Lord Keeper at ten, and whose "first and childish years," says Dr. Rawley, were not without some mark of eminency: at which time, he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were passages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterwards." We need not be surprised to find him entering the University of Cambridge, at a little more than twelve, discovering the deficiencies of Aristotle and outstripping his tutors before he was sixteen, going as an attaché to the Court of Paris, learning French, Italian, and Spanish, travelling with the French Court, and being intrusted with a mission to the Queen, before he was nineteen; an utter barrister at twenty-one, a member of Parliament at twenty-four, a Bencher at twenty-five, and doubtless a maturer man at twenty, in all learning and wisdom, than most graduates of the universities were at full thirty 1 Biogr. Britannica, I. 446. 2 Memoirs of Eliz., 75, London, 1824. |