Sir Tobie's delight, touched upon and referred to cunningly in the foregoing playful allusion. What a picture for a great artist that would make: Bacon and Sir Tobie alone in the chamber of Gray's Inn, with the door locked; and Bacon reading, with flashing eyes, to his enraptured auditor, Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Julius Cæsar. XI. OTHER STUDIES. But, in whatever direction we turn, we find the writer of the Plays and Francis Bacon devoting themselves to the same pursuits. Bacon in The New Atlantis discusses the possibility of there being discovered in the future "some perpetual motions”- a curious thought and a curious study for that age. Shakespeare makes Falstaff say to the Chief Justice: I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.' Bacon says: Snow-water is held unwholesome; inasmuch as the people that dwell at the foot of the snow mountains, or otherwise upon the ascent, especially the women, by drinking snow-water have great bags hanging under their throats.2 Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Shakespeare was familiar with the works of Machiavel, and alludes to him in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in 1st Henry VI. and in 3d Henry VI Bacon had studied his writings, and refers to him in The Advancement of Learning, book ii, and in many other places. Shakespeare was a great observer of the purity of the air. He says in Macbeth: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air And Bacon says: I would wish you to observe the climate and the temperature of the air; for so you shall judge of the healthfulness of the place. 12d Henry IV'., i, 2. 4 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in the name of the Earl of Essex - Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 19. Bacon also says: The heart receiveth benefit or harm most from the air we breathe, from vapors and from the affections.1 One has only to read the works of Francis Bacon to see that they abound in quotations from and references to the Bible. He had evidently made the Scriptures the subject of close and thorough study. On the other hand, the Rev. Charles Wordsworth says: Take the entire range of English literature, put together our best authors who have written upon subjects professedly not religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used as we have found in Shakespeare alone. We have already seen that both the author of the Plays and Francis Bacon had studied law, and had read even the obscure law-reports of Plowden, printed in the still more obscure blackletter and Norman French. In fact, I might swell this chapter beyond all reasonable bounds by citing instance after instance, to show that the writer of the Plays studied precisely the same books that Francis Bacon did; and, in the chapter on Identical Quotations, I have shown that he took out of those books exactly the same particular facts and thoughts which had adhered to the memory of Francis Bacon. It is difficult in this world to find two men who agree in devoting themselves not to one, but to a multitude of the same studies; and rarer still to find two men who will be impressed alike with the same particulars in those studies. But let us move forward a step farther in the argument. History of Life and Death. CHAPTER VI. IDENTICAL ERRORS. Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold. Hamlet, i, 5. HE list of coincident errors must necessarily be brief. THE We can not include the errors common to all men in that age, for those would prove nothing. And the mistakes of so accurate and profound a man as Francis Bacon are necessarily few in number. But if we find any errors peculiar to Francis Bacon repeated in Shakespeare, it will go far to settle the question of identity. For different men may read the same books and think the same thoughts, but it is unusual, in fact, extraordinary, if they fall into the same mistakes. I. BOTH MISQUOTE ARISTOTLE. Mr. Spedding noticed the fact that Bacon in The Advancement of Learning had erroneously quoted Aristotle as saying "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"; while, in truth, Aristotle speaks, in the passage referred to by Bacon, of "political philosophy." Mr. Spedding further noted that this precise error of confounding moral with political philosophy had been followed by Shakespeare. In Troilus and Cressida the two "young men," Paris and Troilus, had given their opinion that the Trojans should keep possession of the fair Helen. To which Hector replies: Paris and Troilus, you have both said well; And what reason did Bacon give why young men were not fit to hear moral philosophy? Because "they are not settled from the 1 Troilus and Cressida, i1, 2. boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience." And why does Hector think young men are “unfit to hear moral philosophy"? Because: The reasons you allege do more conduce To the hot passions of distempered blood, Than to make up a free determination 'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice Of any true decision. II. AN ERROR IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. Shakespeare had a curious theory about fire: it was that each fire was an entity, as much so as a stick of wood; and that one flame could push aside or drive out another flame, just as one stick might push aside or expel another. This of course was an error. He says: Even as one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another, Is by a newer object quite forgotten.' And the same thought is repeated in Coriolanus: One fire drives out another; one nail, one nail.? We turn to Bacon's Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, now preserved in the British Museum, and, in his own handwriting, we have, as one of the entries: Clavum clavo pellere—(To drive out a nail with a nail). This is precisely the expression given above: One nail by strength drives out another. One fire drives out another; one nail, one nail. But behind this was a peculiar and erroneous theory held by Bacon, concerning heat, which he records in the Sylva Sylvarum. He held that heat was a substance; some of his favorite fallacies were that "one flame within another quencheth not," and that "flame doth not mingle with flame, but remaineth contiguous." He speaks of one heat being "mixed with another," of its being "pushed farther," as if so much matter. This is precisely the erroneous theory which was held by the writer of the Plays. 1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii, 4. 2 Coriolanus, iv, 7. 3 Vol. I, p. 32. Mrs. Pott says: Knowing, as we now do, that these theories were as mistaken as they appear to have been original, it seems almost past belief that any two men should, at precisely the same period, have independently conceived the same theories and made the same mistakes.1 III. SPIRITS OF ANIMATE AND INANIMATE NATURE. Bacon had another peculiar theory which the world has refused to accept, at least in its broad significance. He believed that there is a living spirit, or life principle, in every thing in the created universe, which conserves its substance and holds it together, and thus that, in some sense, the stones and the clods of the earth possess souls; that without some such spiritual force, differing in kinds, there could be no difference in substances. For why should the arrangement of the molecules of foam, for instance, differ from that of the molecules of iron, if some external force has not been imposed upon them to hold them in their peculiar relation to each other, and thus constitute the difference between the light froth and the dense metal? This theory is akin to the expression which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the Duke, in As You Like It: And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything." And Prince Arthur says: My uncle's spirit is in these stones.3 Bacon says: All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body in the upper part of the earth without its spirit. The spirit which exists in all living bodies keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite—as metals rust, fluids turn sour. And Bacon sees a relationship between the spirit within the animal and the spirit of the objects, even inanimate, which act upon the senses of the animal; and he strikes out the curious thought that There might be as many senses in animals as there are points of agreement with inanimate bodies if the animated body were perforated, so as to allow the spirit to have access to the limb properly disposed for action, as a fit organ.1 That is to say, the spirit of the universe pervades all created 1 Promus, p. 33. As You Like It, ii, 1. 3 King John, iv, 3. 4 Novum Organum, book ii. |