And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?" Which wonder shall find an echo in his Prayers, thus: "The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart: I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men.” 1 § 4. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. A critical comparison of these poetical works with the writings of contemporary authors will result always in a complete exclusion of them all from any competition for this authorship. Question has been made by some critics as to some few of the earlier and less conspicuous plays, but of the greater ones, and especially of those which have a more philosophical character, as also of the sonnets and poems, no well-grounded doubt has ever been entertained, that they were all the work of one and the same writer. In these, as indeed in all the rest, the style and manner of the genuine Shakespeare are so distinctly marked and so peculiar as at once to distinguish them from the productions of any other writer of that or any other age. The style and genius of Shakespeare have ever been considered, if not unapproachable, at least perfectly sui generis. In this comparison, in respect of philosophic depth of insight, knowledge of art, and the fundamental principles of dramatic composition, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Marlowe, Drayton, and the rest, sink to the level of ordinary writers: their range in the world of thought and knowledge lay far below him. Bacon's prose, compared with that of other writers of his own or any other age, is no less distinguishable, nor less decidedly characteristic of the individual man. 1 Prayer, Works, (Philad.), II. 405 Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have been considered, by at least one writer,1 to have been equal to a share in this work. He was indeed a polished courtier, a learned man for that day, and a patron of learning and art, himself a distinguished author in prose and verse, a scientific investigator and a somewhat philosophical thinker. He was thirty-seven years of age when the "Titus Andronicus " appeared, in 1589. His youth was spent abroad in the wars; and, after his introduction at Court, in 1582, his time and attention must have been more or less exclusively occupied with his courtly company, his parliamentary duties, his military expeditions, his voyages of discovery, and his various business transactions, down to the death of the Queen and the beginning of his troubles in 1603; and the "History of the World" and other writings on which he is known to have been employed, while a prisoner in the Tower, will scarcely leave room for the prosecution of a work of this kind. Any theory that these works were the product of a society, or club, or partnership, of two or more individuals, will have to be given up as wholly untenable: it is utterly inadmissible. The earlier part of Raleigh's life was outwardly active, full of personal display, great exploit, and stirring events. He took trunks of books on his voyages, and experimented in chemistry at home; but, on the whole, his time for study must have been small, and his range of thought and knowledge limited, in comparison with Bacon. It is plain from his writings, that his studies in the ancient learning and philosophy, and his acquirements generally, were rather superficial than profound in this comparison. His "Treatise on the Soul" may be taken as a fair test of his philosophic depth; and, compared with Bacon and Shakespeare, it shrinks into the dimensions of a very small affair. And what is still more conclusive of him, as of the rest of his contemporaries, his writings, in prose and verse, exhibit another style and man altogether. 1 Phil. of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, by Delia Bacon, 1857. § 5. REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT. With Bacon himself, a desire to rise in the profession of the law, or his ambition for high place in the State, the plan of life he had chosen to follow, the low reputation of a play-writer, in that age, and the mean condition and estate of all poor poets, the need of a larger liberty and a more daring freedom of thought and expression than he could have ventured to take, without some danger to his fortunes, or even to his personal liberty, at times, if it had been known that he was the author of these plays, and more especially, perhaps, a desire that his reputation, both with his contemporaries and with after times, should finally rest upon his acknowledged writings and his philosophical works in particular, as of greater dignity and better becoming his station and the civil honors he sought to attain, in accordance with the ideas of that age, these, not to dwell upon other reasons of a philosophical and critical nature, and of a higher and more disinterested character, are of themselves, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of his wish to cover this authorship, and to remain a concealed poet, in his own time; and especially in the earlier part of his career, when the private arrangement, if it existed, must have been made. In his dedication of the "Colours of Good and Evil" to Lord Mountjoy, in 1595-7, he expressly tells us, that it was his "manner and rule to keep state in contemplative matters." Lord Coke was not alone among those in high places, at that day, whose opinion was, that play-writers and stage - players were fit subjects for the grand jury as vagrants," and that "the fatal end of these five is beggary, the alchemyst, the monopotext, the concealer, the informer, and the poetaster";1 and as it was, Coke and the like of him took "the liberty to disgrace and disable his law," and constantly sneered at his "book-learnEven the Queen herself seized upon it as an excuse ing." 1 66 1 Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, I. 279. for refusing him promotion, that "Bacon," as she said, “had a great wit, and much learning, but that in law he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep; " as if inferring the one thing from the other, or as if a man could not know law, and, at the same time, know anything else. In general, it may be admitted that he was in some degree unsuited for a life of executive activity in the administration of affairs. At a later day, he confessed as among the errors of his life "this great one which led the rest, that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than play a part I have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by preoccupation of mind.” 1 In the state of things that existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. (to be illustrated in the particular history of the play of Richard II.), it will not be difficult to see, that an open avowal of this authorship might have been fatal to all his prospects of elevation in the State, on which he considered the success of his efforts for the advancement of science and the benefit of mankind in a great measure to depend. "But power to do good," he says, "is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts (though God accept them), yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place as the vantage and commanding ground." 2 The Novum Organum by the Lord Verulam, Lord High Chancellor of England, magnificently dedicated to the King, (having passed "the file of his Majesty's judgment,” and been found to be "like the wisdom of God that passeth all understanding,") would attract the attention of Europe; but these plays, the "wanton burthen of the prime,” which could never pass the royal file, must be thrown upon the stage as "But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit." 1 Letter to Bodley. 2 Essay of Great Place. They had to take their place, and stand trial upon their own merits, in the open theatre; and this he knew they would do, safely enough, and work out their own salvation, at least for the present. Towards the close of his life, the scene would be changed, and the matter is to be considered as it would then stand in his view. He is now working in good earnest for the next ages. He will first revise, finish, and republish his former works, and then devote the remainder of life to his greater philosophical labors. He renounces all worldly honors, and mere fame with his contemporaries loses nearly all attraction for him. He seeks a full pardon of his sentence, and a restoration to his seat in the House of Lords, that " a cloud" may be lifted from his name; but when, finally, the summons comes, his answer is: "I have done with such vanities." We have a very distinct intimation in his own words as to what his opinion then was, in respect to fame of this kind; for in his dedicatory epistle to Bishop Andrews, his "ancient and private acquaintance," whom he held "in special reverence," prefixed to that Shakespearean "Dialogue touching Dialogue touching an Holy War," written in 1622, he gives an explicit account of his writings and purposes. He compares his fortunes to those of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca, and chooses for himself the example of Seneca, like himself, a learned poet, moralist, statesman and philosopher, who, being banished into a solitary island, "spent his time in writing books of excellent argument and use for all ages," having determined, as he says, " (whereunto I was otherwise inclined) to spend my time wholly in. writing; and to put forth that poor talent, or half talent, or what it is, that God hath given me, not as heretofore to particular exchanges, but to banks and mounts of perpetuity, which will not break. Therefore, having not long since set forth a part of my Instauration, which is the work, that in mine own judgment (si nunquam fallit imago) I do 'nost esteem, I think to proceed in some new parts thereof. |