form which we think most agreeable to truth, and regard as approved and authorized" ["ut probatam et electam "]. Nor would he regard "the customary fashion" ["more apud homines recepto"] as absolutely necessary in all the parts of this formula, as if they must be one and inviolable; for he did not think the industry and happiness of men were to be bound, as it were, to "a single pillar” [“ad columnam"]. It would seem to be very plain from the whole context, as well as from the use of this figure of the "single pillar,” and this reference to the one and inviolable custom hitherto received among men, that he meant to allude to that indispensable and inviolable law of unity, which had always been imperiously required as an absolute rule of composition in all dramatic writing, ancient and modern; especially when it is distinctly declared, in the concluding sentence, that the subject, of which he was speaking, was no other than "true art," thus: "Nothing, indeed, need prevent those who possess great leisure, or have surmounted the difficulties infallibly encountered in the beginning of the experiment, from carrying onward the process here pointed out ["rem monstratam"]. On the contrary, it is our firm conviction that true art is always capable of advancing." ["Quin contra, artem veram adolescere statuimus."] The translation of "F. W.,” taken from the edition of Montagu, is here followed. Mr. Spedding, apparently unable to make out the meaning of this passage, or, perhaps, not looking for this sense of it, seems to think that "this can hardly be what Bacon wrote," "1 and that possibly the manuscript was imperfect at the end; but certainly, if understood with reference to this view of the subject, it will be found to be in keeping with the main tenor and purport of the whole tract. And probably this was as much as he intended to say then, on that head, and so stopped short there.

Certainly, after this distinct intimation of his intent, we 1 Works (Boston), V. 181, n. (1).

need not be surprised to find the ancient unities almost wholly disregarded in these plays; nor that Coleridge should find them to be a new kind of dramatic romance, differing in genus from the ancient drama; nor that they should answer admirably well to Bacon's conception of a representative visible history, a speaking picture, or a type and model of the whole process of the mind, and the continuous fabric and order of discovery in the most noble subjects; nor that they should partake of that sweet travelling through universal variety, which was to be the lot of him who should be able to climb the hill of the Muses.

The "Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest" were both written in 1611. Some critics have supposed that Shakespeare, in the "Tempest," had a special purpose of showing that he could write a play which should strictly observe the ancient unities; while others, like Mr. White, have noticed that the "Winter's Tale" is written in utter defiance of the one and inviolable rule: in this instance, for certain, the author would not be bound to "a single pillar." He puts sixteen years between two acts. Inland countries are brought to the sea. The Delphic Oracle, the King of Sicily, the Emperor of Russia, and psalm-singing Puritans, are made to figure upon the same stage. And the Chorus of the fourth act, in the name of Time, gives such reason for it as at once to remind us of the promised disregard of the received custom, thus:

"Time. I that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,

Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me, or my swift passage, that I slide

O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untri'd,
Of that wide gap; since it is in my power
To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour
To plant and overwhelm custom. Let me pass
The same I am, ere ancient'st order was,
Or what is now received: I witness to
The times that brought them in: so shall I do

The glistering of this present, as my tale

Now seems to it. Your patience thus allowing,

I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing
As you had slept between."

Here is identity in both the thought and the language; and can it be due to accidental coincidence, rather than to the habitual expression of one and the same writer, that we have here, also, the same figure of art growing (“adolescere") and a scene growing? And considering what these models should be, that were to place the whole order and process of discovery in particular subjects before the eyes ("sub oculos "), it is, at least, not clear that it could be anything else than precisely what Hamlet demanded of the dramatic art, namely, that it should hold the mirror up to nature; and, according to the interpretation of Professor Gervinus," that it should give a representation of life, of men and their operating powers, by which means it works indeed morality, but in the purest poetic way, by image, by lively representation, and by imaginative skill. To perceive and to know the virtues and crimes of men, to reflect them as in a mirror, and to exhibit them in their sources, their nature, their workings, and their results, and in such a way as to exclude chance and to banish arbitrary fate, which can have no place in a well-ordered world, - this is the task which Shakespeare has imposed upon the poet and upon himself." 1

وو

The New Atlantis was written expressly as a pattern of a natural story, and it can scarcely be accounted an accidental circumstance, that this same figure of the "pillar' appears, again, in connection with a pretty comprehensive conception of human works, in that "great miracle" which brought the canonical books of Scripture to the island of Bensalem, "in a great pillar of light," rising from the sea toward heaven, and so approaching the shore; on beholding which, one of the wise men of Solomon's House fell

1 Shakes. Comm. (London, 1863), I. 325. Trans. by F. E. Bunnett.

upon his knees and began to pray, thus: "Lord God of heaven and earth, thou hast vouchsafed of thy grace, to those of our order, to know the works of creation, and the secrets of them; and to discern as far as appertaineth to the generations of men, between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all sorts."

It will be remembered that Bacon's scheme of philosophy constituted a kind of intellectual globe, or full circle. In that collection of Antitheses, which he speaks of as a youthful labor, he expresses himself thus: "It is good to have the orb of the mind concentric with the universe." Starting from the Philosophia Prima with a summary partition of all the knowledge and learning which the human race was in possession of, in his time, it proceeded through the second or experimental and inductive philosophy, until the wheel was come full circle in philosophy itself, which was to be at once a knowledge of all science in a comprehensible theory of the universe, and an active science and an intelligent power of action; and the whole was to have a practical bearing and effect upon the business, uses, life, and happiness of man. Philosophy itself, the object of the Sixth Part, he says, was to have for its end, not only "contemplative enjoyment, but the common affairs and fortune of mankind, and a complete power of action." The Second Philosophy embraced his entire method, metaphysics included, but more especially, perhaps, as applied to physical science as such; but it was also to include the whole field of civil, industrial, and social affairs, and the practical life of the individual man, "whatever, indeed, might administer to the advantage and happiness of mankind." The Sixth Part, to which all the rest was to be subservient and auxiliary, was to culminate in a final and complete philosophy of the universe; and it was to embrace, so far at least as the power and faculty of the human mind could go, a complete knowledge of "the order, operation, and

mind of Nature." Nor was it to give out a dream of the fancy as a model of the world; but he would rather "pray to God, in his kindness, to vouchsafe to us the means of writing an apocalyptic revelation and true vision of the traces and stamps of the Creator upon his creatures [creations].1

But, doubtless, this Fourth Part, thus devoted to examples, was, in a manner, to span both hemispheres of the intellectual globe, and, springing from the physical as basis and starting ground, reach the height of things in the metaphysical region of universals. And so he tells us here, in this "Scaling Ladder," that he had described the introductory part of the progress in the second book (the Novum Organum), which expounded principles and rules for the right use of the understanding in the whole business, and, in the third, had “treated on the phenomena of the universe and on natural history, plunging into and traversing the woodlands, as it were, of Nature, here overshadowed (as by foliage) with the infinite variety of experiments; there perplexed and entangled (as by thorns and briers) with the subtlety of acute commentations." But now, he would advance " from the woods to the foot of the mountains," reaching a more disengaged, but a more arduous station." He should "proceed from [natural] history by a firm track, new, indeed, and hitherto unexplored, to universals." To these "paths of contemplation, in truth, might appositely be applied the celebrated and often. quoted illustration of the double road of active life, of which one branch, at first even and level, conducted the traveller to places precipitous and impassable; the other, though steep and rough at the entrance, terminated in perfect smoothness. In a similar manner he, who, in the very outset of his inquiries, lays firm hold of certain fixed principles in the science, and, with immovable reliance upon

1 Distribution (Plan) of the Work (Mont.), XIV. 24; Spedd. (Boston) I. 227.