extreme ... —and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart." -2 Henry IV., Act IV. Sc. 3. Now, the spring-head, the fountain, and the ebb and flow of the sea, are frequent sources of metaphor, both with Bacon and the plays; as, for instance, this from a letter to the king: "Let your Majesty's grace, in this my desire, stream down upon me, and let it be out of the fountain and spring-head, and 'ex mero motu,' that, living or dying, the print of the goodness of King James may be in my heart."1 In the "Advancement" (1605), we have the results of Bacon's general survey of the state of medical learning down to his own time, in which he says of the anatomists, that "they inquire not of the diversities of the parts, the secrecies of the passages, and the seats or nestlings of the humours, nor much of the footsteps and impressions of diseases." So, Shakespeare seems to consider the heart as a seat, or court, into which the blood musters, or nestles, as it courses up and down, through the secret accesses and passages, through "the cranks and offices of man," "The natural gates and alleys of the body." "As to the diversity of parts," he continues, "there is no doubt but the facture or framing of the inward parts is as full of differences as the outward; . . As for the passages and pores, it is true, which was anciently noted, that the more subtle of them appear not in anatomies, because they are short and latent in dead bodies, though they be open and manifest in live; which being supposed, though the inhumanity of 'anatomia vivorum' was by Celsus justly reproved, yet in regard of the great use of this observation, the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether":2 "Laf. To be relinquished of the artists— Par. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus." 1 Letter of July 30, 1624, Works (Philad.) III. 24. 1 So he writes: "I ever liked the Galenists, that deal with good compositions, and not the Paracelsians, that deal with these fine separations." Again, he says: "In preparation of medicines, I do find strange, especially considering how mineral medicines have been extolled, and that they are safer for the outward than inward parts, that no man hath sought to make an imitation by art of natural baths and medicinable fountains"; and again, "while the life-blood of Spain went inward to the heart, the outward limbs and members trembled and could not resist." 2 The play says:"Death, having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them insensible." Here we have the same general and vague notions as to the structure of these inward and extreme parts, with a kind of repetition of the favorite words in the "natural baths," "mineral medicines," and "medicinable fountains"; which may also call to mind these lines from the "Othello": "the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." "Blood is stanched," he says again, "by drawing of the spirits and blood inwards; which is done by cold; as iron or a stone laid upon the neck doth stanch the bleeding of the nose." So, according to Falstaff, "the cold blood" of Prince Harry, which "he did naturally inherit of his father," was, by "drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris," become "very hot and valiant." He speaks also of "the sudden recess of the spirits,” and of "the recess of the blood by sympathy," and says, that "there is a fifth way also in use, to let blood in an adverse part for a revulsion." 8 This goes upon the idea of a flowing outward and a receding inward of the blood, 1 Letter to Cecil, Spedding's Let. and Life, I. 356. 2 Speech, Spedding's Let. and Life, II. 89. 8 Nat. Hist., § 66. a sort of "tickling up and down the veins"; and it is in exact keeping with Falstaff's notion of the effect of “sherris,” that "warms the blood, which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale," as well as with the blood of Lord Angelo, which was a very snow-broth." And here, also, in the iron laid upon the neck, that singular simile of a speech running "like iron through your blood," may find an explanation of its origin. 66 He continues: "But the cause is, for that all those diets do dry up humours, rheums, and the like: and they cannot dry up until they have first attenuated; and while the humour is attenuated, it is more fluid than it was before, and troubleth the body a great deal more until it be dried up and consumed." Here, we have a similar physiological idea as in the case of "The fountain from which my current runs, and probably, also, the source of the expression, — Dr. Bucknill assures us that "Shakespeare follows Hippocrates," and that he refers to a theory of that author, “that the veins, which were thought the only blood-vessels, had their origin in the liver. The Father of Medicine maintained that they came from the liver, the arteries from the heart"; and he adds, that "Rabelais expresses the doctrine of the function of the liver which is implied in Falstaff's disquisition," namely, "that the liver conveys blood through the veins for the good of the whole body." He cites further in support of his views these lines from the "Merchant of Venice": "and let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans." His conclusion is, that Shakespeare believed, indeed, in the flow of the blood, "the rivers of your blood,” which went even "to the court, the heart"; but he considered that it was the liver, and not the heart, which was the cause of the flow"; but he does not find in Shakespeare 66 a trace of any knowledge of the circulation of the blood," in the sense of Harvey.1 Now, as to whether or not William Shakespeare ever read these authors, we have not the least information; but we certainly know that Francis Bacon made apothegms out of this same Rabelais, and that he had studied Hippocrates," the Father of the Art," as well as Galen, Paracelsus, and the rest. And he concludes a letter addressed to the Scottish physician, Dr. Morison, in 1603, on the coming in of King James, in these words: "So not doubting to see you here with his Majesty, considering that it belongeth to your art to feel pulses, and I assure you Galen doth not set down greater variety of pulses than do vent here in men's hearts"; and the mind of the author of the "Romeo and Juliet" (1595) must have been running upon the very subject of these investigations : "through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keep His natural progress, but surcease to beat." Act IV. Sc. 1. And it may very well be taken here as one of those numerous and singular coincidences of thought and expression, which everywhere drop out in the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and especially in those which were written at about the same date and upon kindred subjects, that the phrase applied to Celsus," the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether," should reappear in his review of the labors of these same learned authors, and before that "rarest argument of wonder," which, in the play (written prior to 1594), was "to be relinquished of the artists, . . . . . both of Galen and Paracelsus," and "all the learned and authentic fellows," had as yet entirely passed out of his memory. Nor need there be any 2 Adv. of Learn. 1 Hackett's Notes, 292. wonder that the ideas, expressions, words, metaphors, and technical learning of the two writings, in medicine as in law, and in many other branches of learning besides, should be so exactly alike, if we once conceive (what will be further demonstrated) that Francis Bacon was the author of both. The German critic, Schlegel, equally amazed at the extent of the knowledge and the depth of the philosophy of these plays of Shakespeare, the author of which he could not but consider as one who had mastered "all the things and relations of this world," does not hesitate to declare the received account of his life to be "a mere fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error":1 this Shakespeare must have been another sort of man from what we know him. The Germans seem to have been the first to discover and appreciate the full depth of his philosophy, not excepting Gervinus, who appears to have had less difficulty about the author himself. That a single passage, which had never attracted the particular attention of an English critic, otherwise than as a brilliant figure of speech, should be capable of creating whole books in the soul of Jean Paul Richter, is, perhaps, not much to be wondered at; especially, if we consider that he, to whose great learning, deep philosophy, and divine vision, this universe became crystalline and transparent, did not fail to see that no one had "better pursued and illumined the actual truth of things, even into the deepest vales and the little worms therein, than those twin-stars of poesy, Homer and Shakespeare." 2 Indeed, the bare proposition, that this man, on his arrival in London, at the age of twenty-three, with only such a history as we possess of his previous life, education, studies, and pursuits, could have begun almost immediately to produce the matchless works which we know by his name, not 1 Lectures on Dram. Lit., by A. W. Schlegel, Tr. by John Black, (Philad. 1833,) p. 289. 2 Vorschule der Esthetik, Werke, I. 25. |