And again he says,— "and become some sorry book-maker, or a true pioneer in that mine of truth, which, he said, lay so deep." 1 And again, in this History, speaking of the conditional treason of Sir William Stanley, who had said of Perkin Warbeck, "That if he were sure that that young man were King Edward's son, he would never bear arms against him,” Bacon continues thus: "But for the conditional, it seemeth the judges of that time (who were learned men, and the three chief of them of the privy counsel,) thought it was a dangerous thing to admit Iffs and Ands to qualify words of treason; whereby every man might express his malice, and blanch his danger." So in Richard's council on the Coronation, we have ar illustration of this same kind of treason, in these lines: "Iast. If they have done this deed, my noble lord,— Off with his head!"— Richard III., Act III. Sc. 4. But to make a special compliment to the throne and line of Henry VII., and to his present Majesty, King James, in particular, a last grand effort is made, just when it will at least express his gratitude for the royal promise to succeed. to the Attorney-General's place, and, at the same time, grace the nuptials of the Palatine branch in the Princess Elizabeth; and the "Henry VIII." deliberately honors and magnifies the King himself, by carefully weaving into the scenes the surpassing excellence and beauty of Anne Bullen (of whom there is nothing in Holinshed, from whom the rest of the story is almost literally taken), closing with the unrivalled virtues, fortune, and honor of her descendant, the virgin queen: "Nor shall this peace sleep with her: but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new create another heir, As great in admiration as herself, So shall she leave her blessedness to one (When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness) Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, This is doubtless the same star and vine that are spoken of in the letter to his Majesty, thanking him for "his gracious acceptance" of his book (the "Novum Organum”), in which he says: : "I see your majesty is a star that hath benevolent aspect and gracious influence upon all things that tend to a general good. "Daphni, quid antiquos signorum suspicis artus? Astrum, quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo [VIRG., Eclog. ix. 46-9.] "This work, which is for the bettering of men's bread and wine, which are the characters of temporal blessings and sacraments of eternal, I hope, by God's holy providence, will be ripened by Cæsar's Star." 1 "Henry the Fifth! thy ghost I invocate; Prospero, in the "Tempest," also had his star: "Pros. and by my prescience That Bacon had the subject of the History of England much in mind, having long contemplated undertaking to 1 Letter, 19 Oct. 1620; Works (Mont.), XII. 395. write it anew, we learn from his letter to the Lord Chancellor, written soon after the accession of King James, in which the following passage may be particularly cited here: "The act I speak of is the order given by his majesty for the erection of a tomb or monument for our late sovereign Queen Elizabeth; wherein I may note much, but this at this time, that as her majesty did always right to his majesty's hopes, so his highness doth, in all things, right to her memory; a very just and princely retribution. But from this occasion by a very easy ascent, I passed further, being put in mind, by this representative of her person, of the more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government. For as statues and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking pictures; wherein (if my affection be not too great, or my reading too small), I am of this opinion, that if Plutarch were alive to write lives by parallels, it would trouble him, for virtue and fortune both, to find for her a parallel amongst women. And though she was of the passive sex, yet her government was so active, as, in my simple opinion, it made more impression upon the several states of Europe than it received from thence." 1 All this, it is easy to see, not only harmonizes well with the view here taken of these dramatic histories or "speaking pictures," but rings peculiarly like the sonorous tribute to Queen Elizabeth in the "Henry VIII.," which reads thus: For Heaven now bids me; and the words I utter This royal infant, Heaven still move about her!- Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed: Saba was never 1 Letter, Works (Mont.), XII. 69. More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue Than this pure soul shall be: all princely graces, That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, Shall still be doubled on her: truth shall nurse her; Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless her: Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows with her. Under his own vine what he plants; and sing Act V. Sc. 4. And so King James is ingeniously represented, and with a certain degree of poetic truthfulness, as inheriting all this honor and virtue and greatness even from Henry VII, and from Anne Bullen, not by direct descent of blood, indeed, but through the ashes of this wonderful phoenix, as of that more true and more perfect representative which is of her life and government." At the same time, this illustrative example in a most dignified subject rounds out the historical series of those "actual types and models" which were "to place, as it were, before our eyes the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects selected for their variety and importance" (as I will endeavor to make appear); and this one should be 2 "Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." And having thus had occasion to make a study of this period of history, which he finds to be "wonderful, indeed, from the Union of the Roses to the Union of the Kingdoms," the preceding period having already been treated of, poetically, in the "speaking pictures," and so far as lay in "the potential mood"; and having the materials at hand for the work, as the first honors which he undertakes to do 1 Introd. to Nov. Org. 2 De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 7. his country and his king by his pen and the help of those "other arts which may give form to matter," he not only takes up again his former sketch of the "History of Henry VII.," laid aside since before 1603, and perfects and completes it into a tribute worthy to be submitted to "the file of his Majesty's judgment," and dedicated to Prince Charles as the first fruit of his banishment, which he accomplishes in one summer, but also, the "History of Henry VIII.," in whose reign began that great change in the Church, which was "such as had hitherto rarely been brought upon the stage,"1 long since contemplated, of which a beginning, likewise, has already been made that is "like a fable of the poets"; but deserves "all in a piece a worthy narration," and, time and health permitting, it is to be likewise dedicated to Prince Charles. But time fails him, and it is never done. § 4. THE GREATER PLAYS. Furthermore, it is to be observed, that the more philosophical and greater plays were written after 1600, when Bacon was more than forty years of age and in the maturity of his powers (as indeed William Shakespeare also must have been); when his philosophical and critical studies had become still more universal, exact, and profound; when his conceptions of nature and the constitution of the universe, his theories of practical sciences, civil institutions, and moral relations, his views of society and humanity, his experience in human affairs and his observation of human life and character in all ranks, phases, conditions, and degrees, had become more ample and perfect; when his new rhetoric, his critical survey of all the arts of delivery, and his study of the nature of "true art," and of the uses and proper function of true poetry, had been matured, and his whole culture had become more elaborate, deep, and complete; a kind of culture which it is difficult to imagine 1 De Aug. Scient., Lib. II. c. 7. |