norance, this sequestration of the tabernacle, and these subtle doctrines and riddles of Lethe and oblivion, and some other notable things, in the great play of "Troilus and Cressida"; of which a few instances only may be specially noticed :

"Cal.

Appear it to your mind,
That, through the sight I bear in things to Jove,
I have abandon'd Troy, left my possession,
Incurr'd a traitor's name; exposed myself,
From certain and possess'd conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes: sequestering from me all
That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,
Made tame and most familiar to my nature;
And here, to do you service, am become
As new into the world, strange, unacquainted."
Act III. Sc. 3.

At the suggestion of Ulysses, Agamemnon and the princes all "put on a form of strangeness" as a trick upon Achilles to humble his pride; and Achilles discourses very sagely, thus:

:

"Achil.

This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face,
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes: nor doth the eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye oppos'd
Salutes each other with each other's form:
For speculation turns not to itself,

Till it hath travell'd, and is married 1 there

Where it may see itself: this is not strange at all.”

Act III. Sc. 3.

This seems to be very much like that "marriage of the human mind to the universe," in which the divine goodness was to be "bridesmaid.”

"Ulys. I do not strain at the position,

It is familiar, but at the author's drift;

So read the Folio and Quarto; but Mr. White, with Singer, adopting Collier's forgery on the Folio of 1632, substitutes the word mirror'd; which I think he would not have done, if he had understood the profound metaphysical meaning of Bacon's marriage " of the mind to things, and his use of the word; for, that the true reading is married, as the Baconian sense requires, I have no doubt. See White's Shakes., IX., Notes, 155.

66

Who in his circumstance expressly proves,
That no man is the lord of anything,

(Though in and of him there be much consisting,)
Till he communicate his parts to others:

Nor doth he himself know them for aught

Till he behold them form'd in th' applause

Where they're extended; who, like an arch, reverberates

The voice again; or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back

His figure and his heat.” — Act III. Sc. 3.

"It is an excellent invention," says Bacon, expounding the fable of Pan, "that Pan, or the world, is said to make choice of Echo only above all other speeches or voices for his wife; for that alone is true philosophy which doth faithfully render the very words of the world; and it is written no otherwise than the world doth dictate, it being nothing else but the image and reflection thereof, not adding anything of its own, but only iterates and resounds"; - [ Iterat et resonat"]-which may just as well be translated renders back and reverberates. And this subtle doctrine of reverberation and echo, as well as the marriage of the mind to the universe, must needs go into the piece, though the verse should halt for it. Again Ulysses continues :

66

Ulys.

A strange fellow here
Writes me, that man — how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in-

Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver."- Act III. Sc. 3.

After this touch of sequestration, strangeness, marriage of the mind to things, or of Pan to Echo, and this reverberation and reflection of the world's image, he proceeds to fold up and veil, “as with a drawn curtain," his doctrine of oblivion, thus:

"Achil.

What! are my deeds forgot?

Ulys. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, —

A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery."— Act III. Sc. 3.

And the discourse winds up thus:

"For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the new comer."- Act III. Sc. 3.

And again, thus: —

66 Agam...... Understand more clear,

What 's past, and what 's to come, is strew'd with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion." Act IV. Sc. 5.

The verdict of the Shakespeare Society upon the whole traditional biography of William Shakespeare is, that he was a jovial actor and manager, not much differing from other actors and managers. "I cannot marry this fact to his verse," says the learned critic and philosopher. No; nor anybody else. This marriage of mind to the universe, this deep river of Lethe, running as well above ground as below, this perpetual flux of remembrance and oblivion, in which all that appears is like the foam on the roaring waterfall, every instant born, and every instant dead, living only in the flow, these subtle riddles running underneath will marry to nothing but the truth of Nature, or to the prose and verse of Francis Bacon:

the two writings,

"Take the instant way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast."

§ 10. MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.

With the skill of a god to conceal what it may be the glory of a king to find out, and with infinite art and beauty, the deep-seeing genius of Goethe endeavors to shadow forth the manner in which the myths of tradition have

grown into miracles of divine revelation; and, at the same time, by sounding through the latest depths of science, to exhibit all Nature as no less than miraculous. With the aid of science and the keys of Kant, more potent than the keys of St. Peter, he was able to unlock and explore the inner secrets of the universe, and to attain to that "wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff," where Plato, Bacon, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and the like of them, had stood more or less clearly before him, upon that "topmost summit" which affords 66 room only for a single person"1 in an age, and

"Where one but goes abreast."

In like manner, Bacon has much to say of this uppermost height and narrow strait:—

"Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and the errours of men?"

And again he says: "Science rightly interpreted is a knowledge of things through their causes"; and that knowledge, he continues, "constantly expands and by gradual and successive concatenation rises, as it were, to the very loftiest parts of nature"; but "the man, who, in the very outset of his inquiries, lays firm hold of certain fixed principles in the science, and with immovable reliance upon them, disentangles (as he will with little effort) what he handles, if he advances steadily onward, not flinching out of excess either of self-confidence, or of self-distrust, from the object of his pursuit," — if he has but courage and seeking faints not, may "mount gradually" and "climb. by regular succession the height of things like so many tops of mountains." Lear's philosopher standing on the top of this same high cliff, and looking into the abysmal depths below, exclaims: :

"How fearful,

And dizzy 't is to cast one's eyes so low."

1 Carlyle's Wilhelm Meister's Travels, ch. xiv.

"

And the blind Gloster, after the fearful leap had been taken, though "ten masts at each " made not "the altitude which he "perpendicularly fell," was yet not clearly certain whether he had "fallen or no"; but one thing ne did certainly know, the fiend was gone:

แ 'Therefore, thou happy father,

Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours

Of men's impossibilities, have preserv'd thee."

And so he learned the lesson:

"I do remember now: henceforth I 'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself

'Enough, enough'! and die. That thing you speak of,
I took it for a man; often 't would say,

The fiend, the fiend': he led me to that place,"

Act IV. Sc. 6.

that height above the confusion of things, whence the fall is so deep, perpendicularly down, to him, who shall be too blind to see and keep his step, or be unable to distinguish a man from a visionary personification of evil; or who has no way, and therefore wants no eyes, having stumbled when he saw; but to the open eyes of the wise man and the seer, it is the clear safe sunshine of the empyrean, and the highest happiness of a human soul, wherein men's impossibilities become divine possibilities: that is to say, if he shall, with Bacon, deeply study and "intentively observe the appetences of matter and the most universal passions, which are in either globe exceeding potent, and transverberate the universal nature of things, he shall receive clear information concerning celestial matters from the things seen here with us"; as when the veil of wildness was lifted from Prince Hal as he became more and more crescive in his faculty, and (as King Henry V.) became "a true lover of the Holy Church," and

"Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,

1 Works (Mont.), XVI., Note 22.