the glorious sun of Plato (not neglecting Aristotle), he was, with that illumination and the help of his own newer methods, exploring "the universal world," and endeavoring to instaurate, as it were in advance, not the experimental science merely, but the higher philosophy of the XIXth century. Without the help of such studies, there is no possibility, now, for any man to attain to this philosophy; much less William Shakespeare, or even Bacon himself, in that age. That Shakespeare had ever turned his attention at all to studies which lay in that direction, we have no other proof than what the plays themselves afford; but, on the contrary, we have pretty decisive evidence, in his personal history, that he could never have done so. There was no other man of that time but Bacon that we know of, who had done so to the same extent as he; for even that Platonic thinker and poet, George Herbert, is not to be excepted; or if there be any exception, he will be found to have been, like Sidney, Greville, Sackville, Raleigh, Herbert, Hooker, Selden, Donne, or Cudworth, a child of the University, that could bring to his work as an author the discipline and finish of accurate and thorough scholarship, the rich spoils of classic antiquity, and the fruits of years of learned research, in the course of which the depths of Plato must have been sounded. But no other man can be named, who is not, upon considerations of another kind, completely excluded from the question of this authorship; and hence a ground of argument of no little weight, that Bacon must have been the man.

The Wisdom of the Ancients, and the Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, may show the direction of his studies, and they disclose the source of that familiar acquaintance with the Grecian mythology and the Roman history, and with the ancient manners and customs, which is so distinctly displayed in these poetical works, and particularly in the "Troilus and Cressida," the "Timon of Athens," the "Antony and Cleopatra," the "Coriolanus," and the

"Julius Cæsar." The Memory and Discourse of Queen Elizabeth find a parallel in Cranmer's Speech in compliment to King James and "the maiden phoenix," his predecessor; the History of Henry VII. in the tragedy of Richard III. and the other plays founded on English history and the Wars of the Roses; the intended History of Henry VIII., in the tragedy of that name; the New Atlantis, in prose, in these types and models in verse; and the Essays, the Advancement, the Natural History, and the Novum Organum, may render the civil and moral maxims, the natural science, and the metaphysical philosophy of the plays possible for their author, if he be taken to have been Francis Bacon.

§ 2. BEN JONSON.

Ben Jonson must have been in the secret of this arrangement. Steevens thought the Dedication and Preface of Heming and Condell's Folio must have been written by him. He certainly took a large part in bringing this marvellous volume to light, and in parading in the frontispiece the stolid effigies of this mountebank, which probably needed no disguise from the burin of Droeshout to make it a veritable mask of Momus, in imperturbable mockseriousness, shaking his lance at the eyes of ignorance, "martial in the warlike sound of his surname, Hastivibrans," says garrulous old Fuller; while, at the same time, he slyly inserts, on the opposite page, that significant advice,

"1

"Reader, looke,

Not on his picture, but his booke."

The style, manner, and diction of this Dedication and Preface are much more nearly that of Bacon; but it may very well have been Jonson. The story of the players, that Shakespeare never blotted out a line, has already been alluded to; but when it is remembered that Ben Jonson

1 Worthies of England, III. 284.

was an intimate friend and great admirer of Bacon, deeming him "by his works one of the greatest of men and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages"; that he wrote a poem in honor of “ England's High Chancellor," for the festivities at York House on the anniversary of his sixtieth birthday, in which he speaks of him as

one

"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool; "

that he was certainly present, if he did not take an active part, in bringing out the "Henry VIII." at the Globe, in 1613; that he was one of those "good pens" whose learned service Bacon employed in the translation of his English works into Latin; that even "in his adversity," after his fall from power, he could not "condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest"; and that he was himself a scholar, a critic, and a judge of men; it can scarcely be doubted, either that this anecdote of the players would be in the possession of Bacon, and as likely to be used by him as by Jonson himself, or that Jonson would have the sagacity and the means to discover the secret of this authorship, as well as the honor and good faith to keep it. He knew the cast of Bacon's mind and character. He had read his prose compositions, had translated some of them into Latin, and must have been familiar with his mode of thinking and his style of writing. And it is scarcely credible that he should not have recognized in the plays of Shakespeare, the hand and genius of the master whom he so much admired. That he appreciated this poetry in as high a degree as the critics of later times, even down to our day, may be clearly seen in his poetical "Eulogy" on Shakespeare. It is carefully dedicated to the “ Memory” of Shakespeare "and what he hath left us ; and the whole tenor of it is such as to fix the attention of the reader more on the writings than on the man. It was certainly his

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opinion, that the great poet had not been merely born, but

"For a good poet's made as well as born,

And such wert thou. Look, how the father's face

Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines,
In his well-turned and true-filed lines;

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance."

And the concluding lines of this "Eulogy," in which the volume itself still makes the principal figure, may be applied with force and equal appropriateness to the other: :-"Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage,

Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,

Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,

And despairs day, but for thy Volumes' light."

-:

There are some vague traditions that Ben Jonson severely criticized the productions of Shakespeare, and was envious of his superiority and his fame. They seem to be founded on the writings of Jonson himself; and from these, it should rather be inferred that Jonson could not really have believed that William Shakespeare was the actual author of the works which were produced in his name. His account of the anecdote of the players runs thus: "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out line." Now, no man knew better than Jonson, not even Pope, the utter impossibility of such works as these dramas being dashed off, in a rapid first draught, at once finished and complete, without a line blotted. That the players thought so, must have been a fine joke for him and Bacon; that the players said so, may be taken as evidence that they thought it a pretty good jest themselves. Bacon transcribed the "Novum Organum" some twelve times, before it was finished to his satisfaction. Burke copied his "French Revolution" six times, before he would suffer it to receive the final stamp of the press. Smaller poems

may have been sometimes composed and written down at once complete. Goethe tells us, that, sometimes, when he had conceived a sonnet, or a song, he immediately ran to paper, and jotted it down, before it should vanish from his memory. Alfieri wrote his tragedies first in brief prose, then in extended form, and lastly, put them into verse; and Virgil, about to die, after many years of toil, is said to have commended the "Eneid" to the flames as not yet finished to his liking. Where is the record in all literary history of extended compositions like these dramas having been spun out in this Arachne-like fashion? The very proposition is well-nigh absurd. Common actors might possibly believe, or imagine, that their facetious manager, amidst the daily bustle of the theatre, and in the few hours of leisure which he could snatch from business, or from sleep, out of his miraculous invention, and with the inspired pen of born genius, could dash off a Hamlet, or a Lear, perfect to a syllable, as easily as twinkle his eye. But the learned and judicious critic, or any capable judge of the matter, will rather turn his search to the retired chambers of Gray's Inn, or to the embowered lodge of Twickenham Park, or to the blooming gardens of Gorhambury, where sat brooding in silence and in private the great soul that had taken all knowledge for his province, hopefully murmuring, "Sir, I lack advancement,” and “I eat the air, promise-crammed," yet diligently pursuing his "vast contemplative ends," with plenty of leisure and little business, leading a life "so private" that he had "had no means to do the Lord Burghley service," thin and pale with "inward secret grief," and .continually sickly "by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep"; and that onward, nearly so, for the space of thirty long years, publicly looking for promotion. in the state, while privately elaborating, and doubtless with the most scrupulous care, the great works in prose and verse, which were to carry his name and memory to foreign 1 Letter to Burghley.

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