{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_8207/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_8207","id":"gutenberg_8207","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8207","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Authorship -- Baconian theory","Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Philosophy"],"text":"Produced by Eric Eldred, David King and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nPHILOSOPHY\n\nOF\n\nTHE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE\n\nUNFOLDED.\n\n\nBY DELIA BACON.\n\n\nWITH\n\nA PREFACE\n\nBY\n\nNATHANIAL HAWTHORNE\nAUTHOR OF 'THE SCARLET LETTER,' ETC\n\n\n  Aphorisms representing A KNOWLEDGE _broken_ do invite men to\n     inquire further                                       LORD BACON\n\nYou find not the apostophes, and so miss the accent.\n                                              LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST\n\nUntie the spell.--PROSPERO\n\n\nLONDON:\nGROOMBRIDGE AND SONS\nPATERNOSTER ROW.\n1857\n\nAMES PRESS\nNEW YORK\n\n\n\n\n\nHARVARD\nUNIVERSITY\nLIBRARY\nDEC 6, 1972\n\nReprinted from a copy in the collection\nof the Harvard College Library\nReprinted from the edition of 1857, London\nFirst AMS EDITION published 1970\nManufactured in the United States of America\n\nInternational Standard Book Number: 0-404-00443-1\n\nLibrary of Congress Card Catalog Number: 73-113547\n\nAMS PRESS, INC.\nNEW YORK, N.Y. 10003\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS.\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\nI. The Proposition\n\nII. The Age of Elizabeth, and the Elizabethan Men of Letters\n\nIII. Extracts from the Life of Raleigh.--Raleigh's School\n\nIV. Raleigh's School, continued.--The New Academy\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBOOK I\n\n[The HISTORICAL KEY to the ELIZABETHAN ART of TRADITION, which formed\nthe FIRST BOOK of this Work as it was originally prepared for the\nPress, is reserved for separate publication.]\n\nTHE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION.\n\nPART I.\n\nMICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'\n\nI. Ascent from Particulars to the 'Highest Parts of Sciences,' by the\nEnigmatic Method illustrated\n\nII. Further Illustration of 'Particular Methods of\nTradition.'--Embarrassments of Literary Statesmen\n\nIII. The Possibility of great anonymous Works,--or Works published\nunder an _assumed name_,--conveying under rhetorical Disguises the\nPrincipal Sciences,--re-suggested and illustrated\n\nPART II.\n\nTHE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.\n\nI. THE 'BEGINNERS.'--['Particular Methods of Tradition.'--\n   The Double Method of 'Illustration' and 'Concealment']\n\nII. INDEX to the 'Illustrated' and 'Concealed Tradition' of\n    the Principal and Supreme Sciences.--THE SCIENCE OF\n    POLICY\n\nIII. THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. Section I. The Exemplar of Good\n\nIV.  THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. Section II. The Husbandry thereunto,\n                                       or the Cure and Culture of\n                                          the Mind.--APPLICATION\n\nV.   THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.--ALTERATION\n\nVI. Method of Convoying the Wisdom of the Moderns\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBOOK II.\n\nELIZABETHAN 'SECRETS OF MORALITY AND POLICY'; OR, THE FABLES OF THE\nNEW LEARNING.\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\nI. The Design\nII. The Missing Books of the Great Instauration or 'Philosophy\n     itself'\n\nPART I.\n\nLEAR'S PHILOSOPHER;\n\n[OR, THE LAW OF THE 'SPECIAL AND RESPECTIVE DUTIES,' DEFINED AND\n'ILLUSTRATED' IN TABLES OF 'PRESENCE' AND 'ABSENCE.']\n\nI. Philosophy in the Palace\nII. Unaccommodated Man\nIII. The King and the Beggar\nIV. The Use of Eyes\nV. The Statesman's Note-Book--and the Play\n\nPART II.\n\nJULIUS CAESAR AND CORIOLANUS.\n\nTHE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL;\n\nOR,\n\n'THE COMMON DUTY OF EVERY MAN AS A MAN, OR MEMBER OF A STATE,' DEFINED\nAND ILLUSTRATED IN 'NEGATIVE INSTANCES' AND 'INSTANCES OF PRESENCE.'\n\nJULIUS CAESAR;\n\nOR, THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL EXAMINED.\n\nI. The Death of Tyranny; or, the Question of the Prerogative\nII. Caesar's Spirit\n\nCORIOLANUS.\n\nTHE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP; OR, THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE\nCOMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.\n\nI.    The Elizabethan Heroism\nII.   Criticism of the Martial Government\nIII.  'Insurrections Arguing'\nIV.   Political Retrospect\nV.    The Popular Election\nVI.   The Scientific Method in Politics\nVII.  Volumnia and her Boy\nVIII. Metaphysical Aid\nIX.   The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--New Definitions.\nX.    The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--New Constructions.\nXI.   The Cure.--Plan of Innovation.--'The Initiative'\nXII.  The Ignorant Election revoked.--A 'Wrestling Instance'.\nXIII. Conclusion\n\nPREFACE.\n\nThis Volume contains the argument, drawn from the Plays usually\nattributed to Shakspere, in support of a theory which the author of it\nhas demonstrated by historical evidences in another work. Having never\nread this historical demonstration (which remains still in manuscript,\nwith the exception of a preliminary chapter, published long ago in an\nAmerican periodical), I deem it necessary to cite the author's own\naccount of it:--\n\n'The Historical Part of this work (which was originally the principal\npart, and designed to furnish the historical key to the great\nElizabethan writings), though now for a long time completed and ready\nfor the press, and though repeated reference is made to it in this\nvolume, is, for the most part, omitted here. It contains a true and\nbefore unwritten history, and it will yet, perhaps, be published as it\nstands; but the vivid and accumulating historic detail, with which\nmore recent research tends to enrich the earlier statement, and\ndisclosures which no invention could anticipate, are waiting now to be\nsubjoined to it.\n\n'The INTERNAL EVIDENCE of the assumptions made at the outset is that\nwhich is chiefly relied on in the work now first presented on this\nsubject to the public. The demonstration will be found complete on\nthat ground; and on that ground alone the author is willing, and\ndeliberately prefers, for the present, to rest it.\n\n'External evidence, of course, will not be wanting; there will be\nenough and to spare, if the demonstration here be correct. But the\nauthor of the discovery was not willing to rob the world of this great\nquestion; but wished rather to share with it the benefit which the\ntrue solution of the Problem offers--the solution prescribed by those\nwho propounded it to the future. It seemed better to save to the world\nthe power and beauty of this demonstration, its intellectual stimulus,\nits demand on the judgment. It seemed better, that the world should\nacquire it also in the form of criticism, instead of being stupified\nand overpowered with the mere force of an irresistible, external,\nhistorical proof. Persons incapable of appreciating any other kind of\nproof,--those who are capable of nothing that does not 'directly fall\nunder and strike _the senses_' as Lord Bacon expresses it,--will have\ntheir time also; but it was proposed to present the subject first to\nminds of another order.'\n\nIn the present volume, accordingly, the author applies herself to the\ndemonstration and development of a system of philosophy, which has\npresented itself to her as underlying the superficial and ostensible\ntext of Shakspere's plays. Traces of the same philosophy, too, she\nconceives herself to have found in the acknowledged works of Lord\nBacon, and in those of other writers contemporary with him. All agree\nin one system; all these traces indicate a common understanding and\nunity of purpose in men among whom no brotherhood has hitherto been\nsuspected, except as representatives of a grand and brilliant age,\nwhen the human intellect made a marked step in advance.\n\nThe author did not (as her own consciousness assures her) either\nconstruct or originally seek this new philosophy. In many respects, if\nI have rightly understood her, it was at variance with her\npre-conceived opinions, whether ethical, religious, or political. She\nhad been for years a student of Shakspere, looking for nothing in his\nplays beyond what the world has agreed to find in them, when she began\nto see, under the surface, the gleam of this hidden treasure. It was\ncarefully hidden, indeed, yet not less carefully indicated, as with a\npointed finger, by such marks and references as could not ultimately\nescape the notice of a subsequent age, which should be capable of\nprofiting by the rich inheritance. So, too, in regard to Lord Bacon.\nThe author of this volume had not sought to put any but the ordinary\nand obvious interpretation upon his works, nor to take any other view\nof his character than what accorded with the unanimous judgment upon\nit of all the generations since his epoch. But, as she penetrated more\nand more deeply into the plays, and became aware of those inner\nreadings, she found herself compelled to turn back to the 'Advancement\nof Learning' for information as to their plan and purport; and Lord\nBacon's Treatise failed not to give her what she sought; thus adding\nto the immortal dramas, in her idea, a far higher value than their\nwarmest admirers had heretofore claimed for them. They filled out the\nscientific scheme which Bacon had planned, and which needed only these\nprofound and vivid illustrations of human life and character to make\nit perfect. Finally, the author's researches led her to a point where\nshe found the plays claimed for Lord Bacon and his associates,--not in\na way that was meant to be intelligible in their own perilous\ntimes,--but in characters that only became legible, and illuminated,\nas it were, in the light of a subsequent period.\n\nThe reader will soon perceive that the new philosophy, as here\ndemonstrated, was of a kind that no professor could have ventured\nopenly to teach in the days of Elizabeth and James. The concluding\nchapter of the present work makes a powerful statement of the position\nwhich a man, conscious of great and noble aims, would then have\noccupied; and shows, too, how familiar the age was with all methods of\nsecret communication, and of hiding thought beneath a masque of\nconceit or folly. Applicably to this subject, I quote a paragraph from\na manuscript of the author's, not intended for present publication:--\n\n'It was a time when authors, who treated of a scientific politics and\nof a scientific ethics internally connected with it, naturally\npreferred this more philosophic, symbolic method of indicating their\nconnection with their writings, which would limit the indication to\nthose who could pierce within the veil of a philosophic symbolism. It\nwas the time when the cipher, in which one could write '_omnia per\nomnia_,' was in such request, and when 'wheel ciphers' and 'doubles'\nwere thought not unworthy of philosophic notice. It was a time, too,\nwhen the phonographic art was cultivated, and put to other uses than\nat present, and when a '_nom de plume_' was required for other\npurposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty, or\nvanity, or caprice. It was a time when puns, and charades, and\nenigmas, and anagrams, and monograms, and ciphers, and puzzles, were\nnot good for sport and child's play merely; when they had need to be\nclose; when they had need to be solvable, at least, only to those who\n_should_ solve them. It was a time when all the latent capacities of\nthe English language were put in requisition, and it was flashing and\ncrackling, through all its lengths and breadths, with puns and quips,\nand conceits, and jokes, and satires, and inlined with philosophic\nsecrets that opened down \"into the bottom of a tomb\"--that opened into\nthe Tower--that opened on the scaffold and the block.'\n\nI quote, likewise, another passage, because I think the reader will\nsee in it the noble earnestness of the author's character, and may\npartly imagine the sacrifices which this research has cost her:--\n\n'The great secret of the Elizabethan age did not lie where any\nsuperficial research could ever have discovered it. It was not left\nwithin the range of any accidental disclosure. It did not lie on the\nsurface of any Elizabethan document. The most diligent explorers of\nthese documents, in two centuries and a quarter, had not found it. No\nfaintest suspicion of it had ever crossed the mind of the most recent,\nand clear-sighted, and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It\nwas buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep\nElizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever\nsounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning.\nIt was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan\nlearning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny and\nbaffled the sword of an old, suspicious, dying, military government--a\nknot that none could cut--a knot that must be untied.\n\n'The great secret of the Elizabethan Age was inextricably reserved by\nthe founders of a new learning, the prophetic and more nobly gifted\nminds of a new and nobler race of men, for a research that should test\nthe mind of the discoverer, and frame and subordinate it to that so\nsleepless and indomitable purpose of the prophetic aspiration. It was\n\"the device\" by which they undertook to live again in the ages in\nwhich their achievements and triumphs were forecast, and to come forth\nand rule again, not in one mind, not in the few, not in the many, but\nin all. \"For there is no throne like that throne in the thoughts of\nmen,\" which the ambition of these men climbed and compassed.\n\n'The principal works of the Elizabethan Philosophy, those in which the\nnew method of learning was practically applied to the noblest\nsubjects, were presented to the world in the form of AN ENIGMA. It was\na form well fitted to divert inquiry, and baffle even the research of\nthe scholar for a time; but one calculated to provoke the philosophic\ncuriosity, and one which would inevitably command a research that\ncould end only with the true solution. That solution was reserved for\none who would recognise, at last, in the disguise of the great\nimpersonal teacher, the disguise of a new learning. It waited for the\nreader who would observe, at last, those thick-strewn scientific\nclues, those thick-crowding enigmas, those perpetual beckonings from\nthe \"theatre\" into the judicial palace of the mind. It was reserved\nfor the student who would recognise, at last, the mind that was\nseeking so perseveringly to whisper its tale of outrage, and \"the\nsecrets it was forbid.\" It waited for one who would answer, at last,\nthat philosophic challenge, and say, \"Go on, I'll follow thee!\" It was\nreserved for one who would count years as days, for the love of the\ntruth it hid; who would never turn back on the long road of\ninitiation, though all \"THE IDOLS\" must be left behind in its stages;\nwho would never stop until it stopped in that new cave of Apollo,\nwhere the handwriting on the wall spells anew the old Delphic motto,\nand publishes the word that \"_unties_ the spell.\"\n\nOn this object, which she conceives so loftily, the author has\nbestowed the solitary and self-sustained toil of many years. The\nvolume now before the reader, together with the historical\ndemonstration which it pre-supposes, is the product of a most faithful\nand conscientious labour, and a truly heroic devotion of intellect and\nheart. No man or woman has ever thought or written more sincerely than\nthe author of this book. She has given nothing less than her life to\nthe work. And, as if for the greater trial of her constancy, her\ntheory was divulged, some time ago, in so partial and unsatisfactory a\nmanner--with so exceedingly imperfect a statement of its claims--as to\nput her at great disadvantage before the world. A single article from\nher pen, purporting to be the first of a series, appeared in an\nAmerican Magazine; but unexpected obstacles prevented the further\npublication in that form, after enough had been done to assail the\nprejudices of the public, but far too little to gain its sympathy.\nAnother evil followed. An English writer (in a 'Letter to the Earl of\nEllesmere,' published within a few months past) has thought it not\ninconsistent with the fair-play, on which his country prides itself,\nto take to himself this lady's theory, and favour the public with it\nas his own original conception, without allusion to the author's prior\nclaim. In reference to this pamphlet, she generously says:--\n\n'This has not been a selfish enterprise. It is not a personal concern.\nIt is a discovery which belongs not to an individual, and not to a\npeople. Its fields are wide enough and rich enough for us all; and he\nthat has no work, and whoso will, let him come and labour in them. The\nfield is the world's; and the world's work henceforth is in it. So\nthat it be known in its real comprehension, in its true relations to\nthe weal of the world, what matters it? So that the truth, which is\ndearer than all the rest--which abides with us when all others leave\nus, dearest then--so that the truth, which is neither yours nor mine,\nbut yours _and_ mine, be known, loved, honoured, emancipated, mitred,\ncrowned, adored--_who_ loses anything, that does not find it.' 'And\nwhat matters it,' says the philosophic wisdom, speaking in the\nabstract, 'what name it is proclaimed in, and what letters of the\nalphabet we know it by?--what matter is it, so that they _spell_ the\nname that is _good_ for ALL, and _good_ for _each_,'--for that is the\nREAL name here?\n\nSpeaking on the author's behalf, however, I am not entitled to imitate\nher magnanimity; and, therefore, hope that the writer of the pamphlet\nwill disclaim any purpose of assuming to himself, on the ground of a\nslight and superficial performance, the result which she has attained\nat the cost of many toils and sacrifices.\n\nAnd now, at length, after many delays and discouragements, the work\ncomes forth. It had been the author's original purpose to publish it\nin America; for she wished her own country to have the glory of\nsolving the enigma of those mighty dramas, and thus adding a new and\nhigher value to the loftiest productions of the English mind. It\nseemed to her most fit and desirable, that America--having received so\nmuch from England, and returned so little--should do what remained to\nbe done towards rendering this great legacy available, as its authors\nmeant it to be, to all future time. This purpose was frustrated; and\nit will be seen in what spirit she acquiesces.\n\n'The author was forced to bring it back, and contribute it to the\nliterature of the country from which it was derived, and to which it\nessentially and inseparably belongs. It was written, every word of it,\non English ground, in the midst of the old familiar scenes and\nhousehold names, that even in our nursery songs revive the dear\nancestral memories; those \"royal pursuivants\" with which our\nmother-land still follows and retakes her own. It was written in the\nland of our old kings and queens, and in the land of _our own_\nPHILOSOPHERS and POETS also. It was written on the spot where the\nworks it unlocks were written, and in the perpetual presence of the\nEnglish mind; the mind that spoke before in the cultured few, and that\nspeaks to-day in the cultured many. And it is now at last, after so\nlong a time--after all, as it should be--the English press that prints\nit. It is the scientific English press, with those old gags (wherewith\nour kings and queens sought to stop it, ere they knew what it was)\nchamped asunder, ground to powder, and with its last Elizabethan\nshackle shaken off, that restores, \"in a better hour,\" the torn and\ngarbled science committed to it, and gives back \"the bread cast on its\nsure waters.\"'\n\nThere remains little more for me to say. I am not the editor of this\nwork; nor can I consider myself fairly entitled to the honor (which,\nif I deserved it, I should feel to be a very high as well as a\nperilous one) of seeing my name associated with the author's on the\ntitle-page. My object has been merely to speak a few words, which\nmight, perhaps, serve the purpose of placing my countrywoman upon a\nground of amicable understanding with the public. She has a vast\npreliminary difficulty to encounter. The first feeling of every reader\nmust be one of absolute repugnance towards a person who seeks to tear\nout of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held\ndearest, and to substitute another name, or names, to which the\nsettled belief of the world has long assigned a very different\nposition. What I claim for this work is, that the ability employed in\nits composition has been worthy of its great subject, and well\nemployed for our intellectual interests, whatever judgment the public\nmay pass upon the questions discussed. And, after listening to the\nauthor's interpretation of the Plays, and seeing how wide a scope she\nassigns to them, how high a purpose, and what richness of inner\nmeaning, the thoughtful reader will hardly return again--not wholly,\nat all events--to the common view of them and of their author. It is\nfor the public to say whether my countrywoman has proved her theory.\nIn the worst event, if she has failed, her failure will be more\nhonorable than most people's triumphs; since it must fling upon the\nold tombstone, at Stratford-on-Avon, the noblest tributary wreath that\nhas ever lain there.\n\nNATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.\n\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE PROPOSITION.\n\n\n'One time will owe another.'--_Coriolanus_.\n\nThis work is designed to propose to the consideration, not of the\nlearned world only, but of all ingenuous and practical minds, a new\ndevelopment of that system of practical philosophy from which THE\nSCIENTIFIC ARTS of the Modern Ages proceed, and which has already\nbecome, just to the extent to which it has been hitherto opened, the\nwisdom,--the universally approved, and practically adopted, Wisdom of\nthe _Moderns_.\n\nIt is a development of this philosophy, which was deliberately\npostponed by the great Scientific Discoverers and Reformers, in whose\nScientific Discoveries and Reformations our organised advancements in\nspeculation and practice have their origin;--Reformers, whose\nscientific acquaintance with historic laws forbade the idea of any\nimmediate and sudden cures of the political and social evils which\ntheir science searches to the root, and which it was designed to\neradicate.\n\nThe proposition to be demonstrated in the ensuing pages is this: That\nthe new philosophy which strikes out from the Court--from _the Court_\nof that despotism that names and gives form to the Modern\nLearning,--which comes to us from the Court of the last of the Tudors\nand the first of the Stuarts,--that new philosophy which we have\nreceived, and accepted, and adopted as a practical philosophy, not\nmerely in that grave department of learning in which it comes to us\nprofessionally _as_ philosophy, but in that not less important\ndepartment of learning in which it comes to us in the disguise of\namusement,--in the form of fable and allegory and parable,--the\nproposition is, that this Elizabethan philosophy is, in these two\nforms of it,--not two philosophies,--not two Elizabethan philosophies,\nnot two new and wondrous philosophies of nature and practice, not two\nnew Inductive philosophies, but one,--one and the same: that it is\nphilosophy in both these forms, with its veil of allegory and parable,\nand without it; that it is philosophy applied to much more important\nsubjects in the disguise of the parable, than it is in the open\nstatement; that it is philosophy in both these cases, and not\nphilosophy in one of them, and a brutish, low-lived, illiterate,\nunconscious spontaneity in the other.\n\nThe proposition is that it proceeds, in both cases, from a reflective\ndeliberative, eminently deliberative, eminently conscious, _designing_\nmind; and that the coincidence which is manifest not in the design\nonly, and in the structure, but in the detail to the minutest points\nof execution, is _not_ accidental.\n\nIt is a proposition which is demonstrated in this volume by means of\nevidence derived principally from the books of this philosophy--books\nin which the safe delivery and tradition of it to the future was\nartistically contrived and triumphantly achieved:--the books of a new\n'school' in philosophy; books in which the connection with the school\nis not always openly asserted; books in which the true names of the\nauthors are not always found on the title-page;--the books of a\nschool, too, which was compelled to have recourse to translations in\nsome cases, for the safe delivery and tradition of its new learning.\n\nThe facts which lie on the surface of this question, which are\ninvolved in the bare statement of it, are sufficient of themselves to\njustify and command this inquiry.\n\nThe fact that these two great branches of the philosophy of\nobservation and practice, both already _virtually_ recognised as\nthat,--the one openly, subordinating the physical forces of nature to\nthe wants of man, changing the face of the earth under our eyes,\nleaving behind it, with its new magic, the miracles of Oriental dreams\nand fables;--the other, under its veil of wildness and spontaneity,\nunder its thick-woven veil of mirth and beauty, with its inducted\nprecepts and dispersed directions, insinuating itself into all our\npractice, winding itself into every department of human affairs;\nspeaking from the legislator's lips, at the bar, from the\npulpit,--putting in its word every where, always at hand, always\nsufficient, constituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible\nclaims and in the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the\ngreat practical, mysterious, but universally acknowledged, oracle of\nour modern life; the fact that these two great branches of the modern\nphilosophy make their appearance in history at the same moment, that\nthey make their appearance in the same company of men--in that same\nlittle courtly company of Elizabethan Wits and Men of Letters that the\nrevival of the ancient learning brought out here--this is the fact\nthat strikes the eye at the first glance at this inquiry.\n\nBut that this is none other than that same little clique of\ndisappointed and defeated politicians who undertook to head and\norganize a popular opposition against the government, and were\ncompelled to retreat from that enterprise, the best of of them\neffecting their retreat with some difficulty, others failing entirely\nto accomplish it, is the next notable fact which the surface of the\ninquiry exhibits. That these two so illustrious branches of the modern\nlearning were produced for the ostensible purpose of illustrating and\nadorning the tyrannies which the men, under whose countenance and\nprotection they are produced, were vainly attempting, or had vainly\nattempted to set bounds to or overthrow, is a fact which might seem of\nitself to suggest inquiry. When insurrections are suppressed, when\n'the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects are overthrown, then\nFAME, who is _the posthumous sister of the giants_,--the sister of\n_defeated_ giants springs up'; so a man who had made some political\nexperiments himself that were not very successful, tells us.\n\nThe fact that the men under whose patronage and in whose service 'Will\nthe Jester' first showed himself, were men who were secretly\nendeavouring to make political capital of that new and immense motive\npower, that not yet available, and not very easily organised political\npower which was already beginning to move the masses here then, and\nalready threatening, to the observant eye, with its portentous\nmovement, the foundations of tyranny, the fact, too, that these men\nwere understood to have made use of the stage unsuccessfully as a\nmeans of immediate political effect, are facts which lie on the\nsurface of the history of these works, and unimportant as it may seem\nto the superficial enquirer, it will be found to be anything but\nirrelevant as this inquiry proceeds. The man who is said to have\ncontributed a thousand pounds towards the purchase of the theatre and\nwardrobe and machinery, in which these philosophical plays were first\nexhibited, was obliged to stay away from the first appearance of\nHamlet, in the perfected excellence of the poetic philosophic design,\nin consequence of being immured in the Tower at that time for an\nattempt to overthrow the government. This was the ostensible patron\nand friend of the Poet; the partner of his treason was the ostensible\nfriend and patron of the Philosopher. So nearly did these philosophic\nminds, that were 'not for an age but for all time,' approach each\nother in _this_ point. But the _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_ and friend and well-nigh\nadoring admirer of the _Poet_, was also the _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_ and friend and\nwell-nigh adoring admirer of the Philosopher. The fact that these two\nphilosophies, in this so close juxta-position, always in contact,\nplaying always into each other's hands, never once heard of each\nother, know nothing of each other, is a fact which would seem at the\nfirst blush to point to the secret of these 'Know-Nothings,' who are\nmen of science in an age of popular ignorance, and therefore have a\n'secret'; who are men of science in an age in which the questions of\nscience are 'forbidden questions,' and are therefore of necessity\n'Know-Nothings.'\n\nAs to Ben Jonson, and the evidence of his avowed admiration for the\nauthor of these plays, from the point of view here taken, it is\nsufficient to say in passing, that this man, whose natural abilities\nsufficed to raise him from a position hardly less mean and obscure\nthan that of his great rival, was so fortunate as to attract the\nattention of some of the most illustrious personages of that time; men\nwhose observation of natures was quickened by their necessities; men\nwho were compelled to employ 'living instruments' in the\naccomplishment of their designs; who were skilful in detecting the\nqualities they had need of, and skilful in adapting means to ends.\nThis dramatist's connection with the stage of course belongs to this\nhistory. His connection with the author of these Plays, and with the\nplayer himself, are points not to be overlooked. But the literary\nhistory of this age is not yet fully developed. It is enough to say\nhere, that he chanced to be honored with the patronage of _three_ of\nthe most illustrious personages of the age in which he lived. He had\n_three_ patrons. One was Sir Walter Raleigh, in whose service he was;\none was the Lord Bacon, whose well nigh idolatrous admirer he appears\nalso to have been; the other was _Shakspere_, to whose favor he\nappears to have owed so much. With his passionate admiration of these\nlast two, stopping only 'this side of idolatry' in his admiration for\nthem both, and being under such deep personal obligations to them\nboth, why could he not have mentioned some day to the author of the\nAdvancement of Learning, the author of Hamlet--Hamlet who also 'lacked\nadvancement?' What more natural than to suppose that these two\nphilosophers, these men of a learning so exactly equal, might have\nsome sympathy with each other, might like to meet each other. Till he\nhas answered that question, any evidence which he may have to produce\nin apparent opposition to the conclusions here stated will not be of\nthe least value.\n\nThese are questions which any one might properly ask, who had only\nglanced at the most superficial or easily accessible facts in this\ncase, and without any evidence from any other source to stimulate the\ninquiry. These are facts which lie on the surface of this history,\nwhich obtrude themselves on our notice, and demand inquiry.\n\nThat which lies immediately below this surface, accessible to any\nresearch worthy of the name is, that these two so new extraordinary\ndevelopments of the modern philosophy which come to us without any\n_superficially_ avowed connexion, which come to us as _branches_ of\nlearning merely, do in fact meet and unite in one stem, 'which has a\nquality of entireness and continuance throughout,' even to the most\ndelicate fibre of them both, even to the 'roots' of their trunk, 'and\nthe strings of those roots,' which trunk lies below the surface of\nthat age, buried, carefully buried, for reasons assigned; and that it\nis the sap of this concealed trunk, this new trunk of sciences, which\nmakes both these branches so vigorous, which makes the flowers and the\nfruit both so fine, and so unlike anything that we have had from any\nother source in the way of literature or art.\n\nThe question of the authorship of the great philosophic poems which\nare the legacy of the Elizabethan Age to us, is an incidental question\nin this inquiry, and is incidentally treated here. The discovery of\nthe authorship of these works was the necessary incident to that more\nthorough inquiry into their nature and design, of which the views\ncontained in this volume are the result. At a certain stage of this\ninquiry,--in the later stages of it,--that discovery became\ninevitable. The primary question here is one of universal immediate\npractical concern and interest. The solution of this literary problem,\nhappens to be involved in it. It was the necessary prescribed,\npre-ordered incident of the reproduction and reintegration of the\nInductive Philosophy in its application to its 'principal' and\n'noblest subjects,' its 'more chosen subjects.'\n\nThe HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition, which formed\nthe first book of this work as it was originally prepared for the\npress, is not included in the present publication. It was the part of\nthe work first written, and the results of more recent research\nrequire to be incorporated in it, in order that it should represent\nadequately, in that particular aspect of it, the historical discovery\nwhich it is the object of this work to produce. Moreover, the\ndemonstration which is contained in this volume appeared to constitute\nproperly a volume of itself.\n\nThose who examine the subject from this ground, will find the external\ncollateral evidence, the ample historical confirmation which is at\nhand, not necessary for the support of the propositions advanced here,\nthough it will, of course, be inquired for, when once this ground is\nmade.\n\nThe embarrassing circumstances under which this great system of\nscientific practice makes its appearance in history, have not yet been\ntaken into the account in our interpretation of it. We have already\nthe documents which contain the theory and rule of the modern\ncivilisation, which is the civilisation of science in our hands. We\nhave in our hands also, newly lit, newly trimmed, lustrous with the\ngenius of our own time, that very lamp with which we are instructed to\nmake this inquiry, that very light which we are told we must bring to\nbear upon the obscurities of these documents, that very light in which\nwe are told, we must unroll them; for they come to us, as the\ninterpreter takes pains to tell us, with an 'infolded' science in\nthem. That light of '_times_,' that knowledge of the conditions under\nwhich these works were published, which is essential to the true\ninterpretation of them, thanks to our contemporary historians, is\nalready in our hands. What we need now is to explore the secrets of\nthis philosophy with it,--necessarily secrets at the time it was\nissued--what we need now is to open these books of a new learning in\nit, and read them by it.\n\nIn that part of the work above referred to, from which some extracts\nare subjoined for the purpose of introducing intelligibly the\ndemonstration contained in this volume, it was the position of the\nElizabethan Men of Letters that was exhibited, and the conditions\nwhich prescribed to the founders of a new school in philosophy, which\nwas none other than the philosophy of practice, the form of their\nworks and the concealment of their connection with them--conditions\nwhich made the secret of an Association of 'Naturalists' applying\nscience in that age to the noblest subjects of speculative inquiry,\nand to the highest departments of practice, a life and death secret.\nThe _physical_ impossibility of publishing at that time, anything\nopenly relating to the questions in which the weal of men is most\nconcerned, and which are the primary questions of the science of man's\nrelief, the opposition which stood at that time prepared to crush any\nenterprise proposing openly for its end, the common interests of man\nas man, is the point which it was the object of that part of the work\nto exhibit. It was presented, not in the form of general statement\nmerely, but in those memorable particulars which the falsified,\nsuppressed, garbled history of the great founder of this school\nbetrays to us; not as it is exhibited in contemporary documents\nmerely, but as it is carefully collected from these, and from the\n_traditions_ of 'the next ages.'\n\nThat the suppressed Elizabethan Reformers and Innovators were men so\nfar in advance of their time, that they were compelled to have\nrecourse to literature for the purpose of instituting a gradual\nencroachment on popular opinions, a gradual encroachment on the\nprejudices, the ignorance, the stupidity of the oppressed and\nsuffering masses of the human kind, and for the purpose of making over\nthe practical development of the higher parts of their science, to\nages in which the advancements they instituted had brought the common\nmind within hearing of these higher truths; that these were men whose\naims were so opposed to the power that was still predominant\nthen,--though the 'wrestling' that would shake that predominance, was\nalready on foot,--that it became necessary for them to conceal their\nlives as well as their works,--to veil the true worth and nobility of\nthem, to suffer those ends which they sought as means, means which\nthey subordinated to the noblest uses, to be regarded in their own age\nas their _ends_; that they were compelled to play this great game in\nsecret, in their own time, referring themselves to posthumous effects\nfor the explanation of their designs; postponing their honour to ages\nable to discover their worth; this is the proposition which is derived\nhere from the works in which the tradition of this learning is\nconveyed to us.\n\nBut in the part of this work referred to, from which the ensuing\nextracts are made, it was the life, and not merely the writings of the\nfounders of this school which was produced in evidence of this claim.\nIt was the life in which these disguised ulterior aims show themselves\nfrom the first on the historic surface, in the form of great\ncontemporaneous events, events which have determined and shaped the\ncourse of the world's history since then; it was the life in which\nthese intents show themselves too boldly on the surface, in which they\npenetrate the artistic disguise, and betray themselves to the\nantagonisms which were waiting to crush them; it was the life which\ncombined these antagonisms for its suppression; it was the life and\ndeath of the projector and founder of the liberties of the New World,\nand the obnoxious historian and critic of the tyrannies of the Old, it\nwas the life and death of Sir Walter Raleigh that was produced as the\nHistorical Key to the Elizabethan Art of Tradition. It was the Man of\nthe Globe Theatre, it was the Man in the Tower with his two\nHemispheres, it was the modern 'Hercules and his load too,' that made\nin the original design of it, the Frontispiece of this volume.\n\n  'But stay I see thee in the hemisphere\n  Advanced and made a _constellation_ there.\n  Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with _rage\n  Or influence_, chide or cheer the drooping stage,\n  Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,\n  And despairs day, but for thy Volume's light.\n\n  ['To draw no envy _Shake-spear_ on thy name,\n  Am I _thus ample_ to thy book and fame.'--BEN JONSON.]\n\nThe machinery that was necessarily put in operation for the purpose of\nconducting successfully, under those conditions, any honourable or\ndecent enterprise, presupposes a forethought and skill, a faculty for\ndramatic arrangement and successful plotting in historic materials,\nhappily so remote from anything which the exigencies of our time have\never suggested to us, that we are not in a position to read at a\nglance the history of such an age; the history which lies on the\nsurface of such an age when such men--men who are men--are at work in\nit. These are the _Elizabethan_ men that we have to interpret here,\nbecause, though they rest from their labours, their works do follow\nthem--the Elizabethan _Men_ of _Letters_; and we must know what that\ntitle means before we can read them or their works, before we can\n'_untie_ their _spell_.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE AGE OF ELIZABETH, AND THE ELIZABETHAN MEN OF LETTERS.\n\n\n  'The times, in many cases, give great light to _true_\n  interpretations.'\n  _Advancement of Learning_.\n\n  'On fair ground\n  I could beat forty of them.'\n\n  'I could myself\n  Take up a brace of the best of them, yea _the two tribunes_.'\n\n  'But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic,\n  And _manhood_ is called _foolery_ when it stands\n  Against a falling fabric.'--_Coriolanus_.\n\nThe fact that the immemorial liberties of the English PEOPLE, and that\nidea of human government and society which they brought with them to\nthis island, had been a second time violently overborne and suppressed\nby a military chieftainship,--one for which the unorganised popular\nresistance was no match,--that the English People had been a second\ntime 'conquered'--for that is the word which the Elizabethan historian\nsuggests--less than a hundred years before the beginning of the\nElizabethan Age, is a fact in history which the great Elizabethan\nphilosopher has contrived to send down to us, along with his\nphilosophical works, as the key to the reading of them. It is a fact\nwith which we are all now more or less familiar, but it is one which\nthe Elizabethan Poet and Philosopher became acquainted with under\ncircumstances calculated to make a much more vivid impression on the\nsensibilities than the most accurate and vivacious narratives and\nexpositions of it which our time can furnish us.\n\nThat this second conquest was unspeakably more degrading than the\nfirst had been, inasmuch as it was the conquest of a chartered,\nconstitutional liberty, recovered and established in acts that had\nmade the English history, recovered on battle-fields that were fresh,\nnot in oral tradition only; inasmuch as it was effected in violation\nof that which made the name of Englishmen, that which made the\nuniversally recognised principle of the national life; inasmuch, too,\nas it was an _undivided_ conquest, the conquest of _the single\nwill_--the will of the 'one only man'--not unchecked of commons only,\nunchecked by barons, unchecked by the church, unchecked by _council_\nof any kind, the pure arbitrary absolute will, the pure idiosyncrasy,\nthe crowned demon of the _lawless_, irrational will, unchained and\narmed with the sword of the common might, and clothed with the\ndivinity of the common right; that _this_ was a conquest unspeakably\nmore debasing than the conquest 'commonly so called,'--this, which\nleft no nobility,--which clasped its collar in open day on the\nproudest Norman neck, and not on the Saxon only, which left only one\nnation of slaves and bondmen--that _this_ was a _subjugation_--that\nthis was a government which the English nation had not before been\nfamiliar with, the men whose great life-acts were performed under it\ndid not lack the sensibility and the judgment to perceive.\n\nA more _hopeless_ conquest than the Norman conquest had been, it might\nalso have seemed, regarded in some of the aspects which it presented\nto the eye of the statesman then; for it was in the division of the\nformer that the element of freedom stole in, it was in the parliaments\nof that division that the limitation of the feudal monarchy had begun.\n\nBut still more fatal was the aspect of it which its effects on the\nnational character were continually obtruding then on the observant\neye,--that debasing, deteriorating, demoralising effect which such a\ngovernment must needs exert on _such_ a nation, a nation of\nEnglishmen, a nation with such memories. The Poet who writes under\nthis government, with an appreciation of the subject quite as lively\nas that of any more recent historian, speaks of 'the face of men' as a\n'motive'--a _motive_ power, a revolutionary force, which ought to be\nsufficient of itself to raise, if need be, an armed opposition to such\na government, and sustain it, too, without the compulsion of an oath\nto reinforce it; at least, this is one of the three motives which he\nproduces in his conspiracy as motives that ought to suffice to supply\nthe power wanting to effect a change in such a government.\n\n  'If not _the face_ of _men_,\n  The sufferance of our _souls, the time's abuse_,--\n  _If these be motives weak, break of betimes._'\n\nThere is no use in attempting a change where such motives are weak.\n\n  'Break off _betimes_,\n  And every man hence to his idle bed.'\n\nThat this political degradation, and its deteriorating and corrupting\ninfluence on the national character, was that which presented itself\nto the politician's eye at that time as the most fatal aspect of the\nquestion, or as the thing most to be deprecated in the continuance of\nsuch a state of things, no one who studies carefully the best writings\nof that time can doubt.\n\nAnd it must be confessed, that this is an influence which shows itself\nvery palpably, not in the degrading hourly detail only of which the\nnoble mind is, in such circumstances, the suffering witness, and the\nsecretly protesting suffering participator, but in those large events\nwhich make the historic record. The England of the Plantagenets, that\nsturdy England which Henry the Seventh had to conquer, and not its\npertinacious choice of colours only, not its fixed determination to\nhave the choosing of the colour of its own 'Roses' merely, but its\ninveterate idea of the sanctity of '_law_' permeating all the\nmasses--that was a very different England from the England which Henry\nthe Seventh willed to his children; it was a very different England,\nat least, from the England which Henry the Eighth willed to _his_.\n\nThat some sparks of the old fire were not wanting, however,--that the\nnation which had kept alive in the common mind through so many\ngenerations, without the aid of books, the memory of that 'ancestor'\nthat 'made its laws,' was not after all, perhaps, without a\nfuture--began to be evident about the time that the history of 'that\nlast king of England who was the ancestor' of the English Stuart, was\ndedicated by the author of the Novum Organum to the Prince of Wales,\nafterwards Charles I., not without a glance at these portents.\n\nCircumstances tending to throw doubt upon the durability of this\ninstitution--circumstances which seemed to portend that this monstrous\ninnovation was destined on the whole to be a much shorter-lived one\nthan the usurpation it had displaced--had not been wanting, indeed,\nfrom the first, in spite of those discouraging aspects of the question\nwhich were more immediately urged upon the contemporary observer.\n\nIt was in the eleventh century; it was in the middle of the Dark Ages,\nthat the Norman and his followers effected their successful landing\nand lodgement here; it was in the later years of the fifteenth\ncentury,--it was when the bell that tolled through Europe for a\ncentury and a half the closing hour of the Middle Ages, had already\nbegun its peals, that the Tudor 'came in by battle.'\n\nThat magnificent chain of events which begins in the middle of the\nfifteenth century to rear the dividing line between the Middle Ages\nand the Modern, had been slow in reaching England with its\nconvulsions: it had originated on the continent. The great work of the\nrestoration of the learning of antiquity had been accomplished there:\nItaly, Germany, and France had taken the lead in it by turns; Spain\nhad contributed to it. The scientific discoveries which the genius of\nModern Europe had already effected under that stimulus, without\nwaiting for the New Organum, had all originated on the continent. The\ncriticism on the institutions which the decaying Roman Empire had\ngiven to its Northern conquerors,--that criticism which necessarily\naccompanied the revival of _learning_ began there. Not yet recovered\nfrom the disastrous wars of the fifteenth century, suffering from the\ndiabolical tyranny that had overtaken her at that fatal crisis,\nEngland could make but a feeble response as yet to these movements.\nThey had been going on for a century before the influence of them\nbegan to be visible here. But they were at work here, notwithstanding:\nthey were germinating and taking root here, in that frozen winter of a\nnation's discontent; and when they did begin to show themselves on the\nhistoric surface,--here in this ancient soil of freedom,--in this\nnatural retreat of it, from the extending, absorbing, consolidating\nfeudal tyrannies,--here in this 'little world by itself'--this nursery\nof the genius of the North--with its chief races, with its union of\nraces, its 'happy breed of men,' as our Poet has it, who notes all\nthese points, and defines its position, regarding it, not with a\nnarrow English partiality, but looking at it on his Map of the World,\nwhich he always carries with him,--looking at it from his 'Globe,'\nwhich has the Old World and the New on it, and the Past and the\nFuture,--'a precious stone set in the silver sea,' he calls it, 'in a\ngreat pool, a _swan's nest_':--when that seed of all ages did at last\nshow itself above the ground here, here in this nursery of hope for\nman, it would be with quite another kind of fruit on its boughs, from\nany that the continent had been able to mature from it.\n\nIt was in the later years of the sixteenth century, in the latter half\nof the reign of Elizabeth, that the Printing press, and the revived\nLearning of Antiquity, and the Reformation, and the discovery of\nAmerica, the new revival of the genius of the North in art and\nliterature, and the Scientific Discoveries which accompanied this\nmovement on the continent, began to combine their effects here; and it\nwas about that time that the political horizon began to exhibit to the\nstatesman's eye, those portents which both the poet and the\nphilosopher of that time, have described with so much iteration and\namplitude. These new social elements did not appear to promise in\ntheir combination here, stability to the institutions which Henry the\nSeventh, and Henry the Eighth had established in this island.\n\nThe genius of Elizabeth conspired with the anomaly of her position to\nmake her the steadfast patron and promoter of these movements,--worthy\ngrand-daughter of Henry the seventh as she was, and opposed on\nprinciple, as she was, to the ultimatum to which they were visibly and\nstedfastly tending; but, at the same time, her sagacity and prudence\nenabled her to ward off the immediate result. She secured her\nthrone,--she was able to maintain, in the rocking of those movements,\nher own political and spiritual supremacy,--she made gain and capital\nfor absolutism out of them,--the inevitable reformation she herself\nassumed, and set bounds to: whatever new freedom there was, was still\nthe freedom of her will; she could even secure the throne of her\nsuccessor: it was mischief for Charles I. that she was nursing. The\nconsequence of _all_ this was--_the Age of Elisabeth_.\n\nThat was what this Queen meant it should be literally, and that was\nwhat it was apparently. But it so happened, that her will and humours\non some great questions jumped with the time, and her dire necessities\ncompelled her to lead the nation on its own track; or else it would\nhave been too late, perhaps, for that exhibition of the monarchical\ninstitution,--that revival of the heroic, and _ante_-heroic ages,\nwhich her reign exhibits, to come off here as it did at that time.\n\nIt is this that makes the point in this literary history. This is the\nkey that unlocks the secret of the Elizabethan Art of Delivery and\nTradition. Without any material resources to sustain it--strong in the\nnational sentiments,--strong in the moral forces with which the past\ncontrols the present,--strong in that natural abhorrence of change\nwith which nature protects her larger growths,--that principle which\ntyranny can test so long with impunity--which it can test with\nimpunity, till it forgets that this also has in nature its\nlimits,--strong in the absence of any combination of opposition, to\nthe young awakening England of that age, that now hollow image of the\npast, that phantom of the military force that had been, which seemed\nto be waiting only the first breath of the popular will to dissolve\nit, was as yet an armed and terrific reality; its iron was on every\nneck, its fetter was on every step, and all the new forces, and\nworld-grasping aims and aspirations which that age was generating were\nheld down and cramped, and tortured in its chains, dashing their eagle\nwings in vain against its iron limits.\n\nAs yet all England cowered and crouched, in blind servility, at the\nfoot of that terrible, but unrecognised embodiment of its own power,\narmed out of its own armoury, with the weapons that were turned\nagainst it. So long as any yet extant national sentiment, or\nprejudice, was not yet directly assailed--so long as that arbitrary\npower was yet wise, or fortunate enough to withhold the blow which\nshould make the individual sense of outrage, or the feeling of a class\nthe common one--so long as those peaceful, social elements, yet waited\nthe spark that was wanting to unite them--so long 'the laws of\nEngland' might be, indeed, at a Falstaff's or a Nym's or a Bardolph's\n'commandment,' for the Poet has but put into 'honest Jack's' mouth, a\nboast that worse men than he, made good in his time--so long, the\nfaith, the lives, the liberties, the dearest earthly hopes, of\nEngland's proudest subjects, her noblest, her bravest, her best, her\nmost learned, her most accomplished, her most inspired, might be at\nthe mercy of a woman's caprices, or the sport of a fool's sheer will\nand obstinacy, or conditioned on some low-lived 'favorites' whims. _So\nlong_: And how long was that?--who does not know how long it\nwas?--that was long enough for the whole Elizabethan Age to happen in.\nIn the reign of Elizabeth, and in the reign of her successor, and\nlonger still, that was the condition of it--till its last act was\nfinished--till its last word was spoken and penned--till its last mute\nsign was made--till all its celestial inspiration had returned to the\nGod who gave it--till all its Promethean clay was cold again.\n\nThis was the combination of conditions of which the Elizabethan\nLiterature was the result. The Elizabethan Men of Letters, the\norganisers and chiefs of the modern civilization were the result of\nit.\n\nThese were men in whom the genius of the North in its happiest union\nof developments, under its choicest and most favourable conditions of\nculture, in its yet fresh, untamed, unbroken, northern vigour, was at\nlast subjected to the stimulus and provocation which the ancient\nlearning brings with it to the northern mind--to the now unimaginable\nstimulus which, the revival of the ancient art and learning brought\nwith it to the mind of Europe in that age,--already secure, in its own\nindigenous development, already advancing to its own great maturity\nunder the scholastic culture--the meagre Scholastic, and the rich\nRomantic culture--of the Mediaeval Era. The Elizabethan Men of Letters\nare men who found in those new and dazzling stores of art and\nliterature which the movements of their age brought in all their\nfreshly restored perfection to them, only the summons to their own\nslumbering intellectual activities,--fed with fires that old Eastern\nand Southern civilizations never knew, nurtured in the depths of a\nnature whose depths the northern antiquity had made; they were men who\nfound in the learning of the South and the East--in the art and\nspeculation that had satisfied the classic antiquity--only the\ndefinition of their own nobler want.\n\nThe first result of the revival of the ancient learning in this island\nwas, a report of its 'defects.' The first result of that revival here\nwas a map--a universal map of the learning and the arts which the\nconditions of man's life require--a new map or globe of learning on\nwhich lands and worlds, undreamed of by the ancients, are traced. 'A\nmap or globe' on which 'the principal and supreme sciences,' the\nsciences that are _essential_ to the human kind, are put down among\n'the parts that lie fresh and waste, and not converted by the industry\nof man.' The first result of the revival of learning here was 'a plot'\nfor the supply of these deficiencies.\n\nThe Elizabethan Men of Letters were men, in whom the revival of 'the\nWisdom of the Ancients,' which in its last results, in its most select\nand boasted conservations had combined in vain to save antiquity,\nfound the genius of a happier race, able to point out at a glance the\ndefect in it; men who saw with a glance at those old books what was\nthe matter with them; men prepared already to overlook from the new\nheight of criticism which this sturdy insular development of the\npractical genius of the North created, the remains of that lost\ncivilization--the splendours rescued from the wreck of empires,--the\nwisdom which had failed so fatally in practice that it must needs\ncross from a lost world of learning to the barbarian's new one, to\nfind pupils--that it must needs cross the gulf of a thousand years in\nlearning--such work had it made of it--ere it could revive,--the\nwisdom rescued from the wreck it had piloted to ruin, _not_ to\nenslave, and ensnare, and doom new ages, and better races, with its\nfutilities, but to be hung up with its immortal beacon-light, to shew\nthe track of a new learning, to shew to the contrivers of the chart of\nnew ages, the breakers of that old ignorance, that old arrogant wordy\nbarren speculation. For these men were men who would not fish up the\nchart of a drowned world for the purpose of seeing how nearly they\ncould conduct another under different conditions of time and races to\nthe same conclusion. And they were men of a different turn of mind\nentirely from those who lay themselves out on enterprises having that\ntendency. The result of this English survey of learning was the\nsanctioned and organised determination of the modern speculation to\nthose new fields which it has already occupied, and its organised, but\nsecret determination, to that end of a true learning which the need of\nman, in its whole comprehension in _this_ theory of it, constitutes.\n\nBut the men with whom this proceeding originates, the Elizabethan Men\nof Letters, were, in their own time, 'the Few.' They were the chosen\nmen, not of an age only, but of a race, 'the noblest that ever lived\nin the tide of times;' men enriched with the choicest culture of their\nage, when that culture involved not the acquisition of the learning of\nthe ancients only, but the most intimate acquaintance with all those\nrecent and contemporaneous developments with which its restoration on\nthe Continent had been attended. Was it strange that these men should\nfind themselves without sympathy in an age like that?--an age in which\nthe masses were still unlettered, callous with wrongs, manacled with\nblind traditions, or swaying hither and thither, with the breath of a\ncommon prejudice or passion, or swayed hither and thither by the\nchangeful humours and passions, or the conflicting dogmas and conceits\nof their rulers. That is the reason why the development of that age\ncomes to us as a _Literature_. That is why it is on the surface of it\n_Elizabethan_. That is the reason why the leadership of the modern\nages, when it was already here in the persons of its chief\ninterpreters and prophets, could get as yet no recognition of its\nright to teach and rule--could get as yet nothing but _paper_ to print\nitself on, nothing but a _pen_ to hew its way with, nor that, without\ndeath and danger dogging it at the heels, and threatening it, at every\nturn, so that it could only wave, in mute gesticulation, its signals\nto the future. It had to affect, in that time, bookishness and wiry\nscholasticism. It had to put on sedulously the harmless old monkish\ngown, or the jester's cap and bells, or any kind of a tatterdemalion\nrobe that would hide, from head to heel, the waving of its purple.\n'_Motley's_ the only wear,' whispers the philosopher, peering through\nhis privileged garb for a moment. King Charles II. had not more to do\nin reserving _himself_ in an evil time, and getting safely over to the\nyear of his dominion.\n\nLetters were the only ships that could pass those seas. But it makes a\nnew style in literature, when such men as these, excluded from their\nnatural sphere of activity, get driven into books, cornered into\nparagraphs, and compelled to unpack their hearts in letters. There is\na new tone to the words spoken under such compression. It is a tone\nthat the school and the cloister never rang with,--it is one that the\nfancy dealers in letters are not able to deal in. They are such words\nas Caesar speaks, when he puts his legions in battle array,--they are\nsuch words as were heard at Salamis one morning, when the breeze began\nto stiffen in the bay; and though they be many, never so many, and\nthough they be musical, as is Apollo's lute, that Lacedemonian ring is\nin each one of them. There is great business to be done in them, and\ntheir haste looks through their eyes. In the sighing of the lover, in\nthe jest of the fool, in the raving of the madman, and not in\nHoratio's philosophy only, you hear it.\n\nThe founders of the new science of nature and practice were men\nunspeakably too far above and beyond their time, to take its bone and\nmuscle with them. There was no language in which their doctrines could\nhave been openly conveyed to an English public at that time without\nfatal misconception. The truth, which was to them arrayed with the\nforce of a universal obligation,--the truth, which was to them\nreligion, would have been, of course, in an age in which a single,\nnarrow-minded, prejudiced Englishwoman's opinions were accepted as the\nultimate rule of faith and practice, 'flat atheism.' What was with\nthem loyalty to the supremacy of reason and conscience, would have\nbeen in their time madness and rebellion, and the majority would have\nstarted at it in amazement; and all men would have joined hands, in\nthe name of truth and justice, to suppress it. The only thing that\ncould be done in such circumstances was, to _translate_ their doctrine\ninto the language of their time. They must take the current terms--the\nvague popular terms--as they found them, and restrict and enlarge\nthem, and inform them with their new meanings, with a hint to 'men of\nunderstanding' as to the sense in which they use them. That is the key\nto the language in which their books for the future were written.\n\nBut who supposes that these men were so wholly super-human, so devoid\nof mortal affections and passions, so made up of 'dry light,' that\nthey could retreat, with all those regal faculties, from the natural\nsphere of _their_ activity to the scholar's cell, to make themselves\nover in books to a future in which their mortal natures could have no\nshare,--a future which could not begin till all the breathers of their\nworld were dead? Who supposes that the 'staff' of Prospero was the\nfirst choice of these chiefs?--these 'heads of the State,' appointed\nof nature to the Cure of the Common-Weal.\n\nThe leading minds of that age are not minds which owed their\nintellectual superiority to a disproportionate development of certain\nintellectual tendencies, or to a dwarfed or inferior endowment of\nthose natural affections and personal qualifications which tend to\nlimit men to the sphere of their particular sensuous existence. The\nmind of this school is the representative mind, and all men recognise\nit as that, because, in its products, that nature which is in all men,\nwhich philosophy had, till then, scorned to recognise, which the\nabstractionists had missed in their abstractions,--that nature of\nwill, and sense, and passion, and inanity, is brought out in its true\nhistorical proportions, not as it exists in books, not as it exists in\nspeech, but as it exists in the actual human life. It is the mind in\nwhich this historical principle, this motivity which is not reason, is\nbrought in contact with the opposing and controlling element as it had\nnot been before. In all its earth-born Titanic strength and fulness,\nit _is_ dragged up from its secret lurking-places, and confronted with\nits celestial antagonist. In all its self-contradiction and cowering\nunreason, it is set face to face with its celestial umpire, and\nsubjected to her unrelenting criticism. There are depths in this\nmicrocosm which _this_ torch only has entered, silences which this\nspeaker only has broken, cries which he only knows how to articulate.\n\n'The soundest disclosing and expounding of men is by their _natures_\nand _ends_,' so the one who is best qualified to give us information\non this question tells us,--by their natures _and_ ends; 'the weaker\nsort by their natures, and the _wisest_ by their ends'; and '_the\ndistance_' of this wisest sort 'from the _ends_ to which they aspire,'\nis that 'from which one may take measure and scale of the rest of\ntheir actions and desires.'\n\nThe first end which these Elizabethan Men of Letters grasped at, the\nthing which they pursued with all the intensity and concentration of a\nmaster passion, was--_power_, political power. They wanted to rule\ntheir own time, and not the future only. 'You are hurt, because you do\nnot reign,' is the inuendo which they permit us to apply to them as\nthe key to their proceedings. 'Such men as this are never at heart's\nease,' Caesar remarks in confidence to a friend, 'whiles they behold a\ngreater than themselves.' 'Come on my right hand, for this ear is\ndeaf,' he adds, 'and tell me truly what thou think'st of him.' These\nare the kind of men that seek instinctively 'predominance,' not in a\nclique or neighbourhood only,--they are not content with a domestic\nreflection of their image, they seek to stamp it on the state and on\nthe world. These Elizabethan Men of Letters were men who sought from\nthe first, with inveterate determination, to rule their own time, and\nthey never gave up that point entirely. In one way or another,\ndirectly or indirectly, they were determined to make their influence\nfelt in that age, in spite of the want of encouragement which the\nconditions of that time offered to such an enterprise. But they sought\nthat end not instinctively only, but with the stedfastness of a\nrational, scientifically enlightened purpose. It was an enterprise in\nwhich the intense motivity of that new and so 'conspicuous'\ndevelopment of the particular and private nature, which lies at the\nroot of such a genius, was sustained by the determination of that not\nless superior development of the nobler nature in man, by the motivity\nof the intellect, by the sentiment which waits on _that_, by the\nmotive of 'the larger whole,' which is, in this science of it, 'the\nworthier.'\n\nWe do not need to apply the key of times to those indirectly\nhistorical remains in which the real history, the life and soul of a\ntime, is always best found, and in which the history of such a time,\nif written at all, must necessarily be inclosed; we do not need to\nunlock these works to perceive the indications of suppressed movements\nin that age, in which the most illustrious men of the age were\nprimarily concerned, the history of which has not yet fully\ntranspired. We do not need to find the key to the cipher in which the\nhistory of that time is written, to perceive that there was to have\nbeen a change in the government here at one time, very different from\nthe one which afterwards occurred, if the original plans of these men\nhad succeeded. It is not the Plays only that are full of that\nfrustrated enterprise.\n\nThese were the kind of men who are not easily baffled. They changed\ntheir tactics, but not their ends; and the enterprises which were\nconducted with so much secresy under the surveillance of the Tudor,\nbegan already to crown themselves as certainties, and compare their\n'olives of endless age' with the spent tombs of brass' and 'tyrant's\ncrests,' at that sure prospect which, a change of dynasties at that\nmoment seemed to open,--at least, to men who were in a position then\nto estimate its consequences.\n\nThat _this_, at all events, was a state of things that was not going\nto endure, became palpable about that time to the philosophic mind.\nThe transition from the rule of a sovereign who was mistress of 'the\nsituation,' who understood that it was a popular power which she was\nwielding--the transition from the rule of a Queen instructed in the\npolicy of a tyranny, inducted by nature into its arts, to the policy\nof that monarch who had succeeded to her throne, and whose 'CREST'\nbegan to be reared here then in the face of the insulted reviving\nEnglish nationality,--this transition appeared upon the whole, upon\ncalmer reflection, at least to the more patient minds of that age, all\nthat could reasonably at that time be asked for. No better instrument\nfor stimulating and strengthening the growing popular sentiment, and\nrousing the latent spirit of the nation, could have been desired by\nthe Elizabethan politicians at that crisis, 'for the great labour was\nwith the people'--that uninstructed power, which makes the sure basis\nof tyrannies--that power which Mark Antony takes with him so\neasily--the ignorant, tyrannical, humour-led masses--the masses that\nstill roar their Elizabethan stupidities from the immortal groups of\nCoriolanus and Julius Caesar. We ourselves have not yet overtaken the\nchief minds of this age; and the gulf that separated them from those\noverpowering numbers in their own time, to whose edicts they were\ncompelled to pay an external submission, was broad indeed. The\ndifficulty of establishing an understanding with this power was the\ndifficulty. They wanted that 'pulpit' from which Brutus and Mark\nAntony swayed it by turns so easily--that pulpit from which Mark\nAntony showed it Caesar's mantle. They wanted some organ of\ncommunication with these so potent and resistless rulers--some 'chair'\nfrom which they could repeat to them in their own tongue the story of\ntheir lost institutions, and revive in them the memory of '_the kings_\ntheir ancestors'--some school in which they could collect them and\ninstruct them in the scientific doctrine of the _commons_, the\ndoctrine of the common-_weal_ and its divine supremacy. They wanted a\nschool in which they could tell them stories--stories of various\nkinds--such stories as they loved best to hear--Midsummer stories, or\nWinter's tales, and stories of their own battle-fields--they wanted a\nschool in which they could teach the common people _History_ (and not\nEnglish history only), with illustrations, large as life, and a magic\nlantern to aid them,--'visible history.'\n\nBut to wait till these slow methods had taken effect, would be,\nperhaps, to wait, not merely till their estate in the earth was done,\nbut till the mischief they wished to avert was accomplished. And thus\nit was, that the proposal 'to go the beaten track of getting arms into\ntheir hands under colour of Caesar's designs, and _because the people\nunderstood them not_,' came to be considered. To permit the new\ndynasty to come in without making any terms with it, without insisting\nupon a definition of that indefinite power which the Tudors had\nwielded with impunity, and without challenge, would be to make\nneedless work for the future, and to ignore criminally the\nresponsibilities of their own position, so at least some English\nstatesmen of that time, fatally for their favour with the new monarch,\nwere known to have thought. 'To proceed by process,' to check by\ngradual constitutional measures that overgrown and monstrous power in\nthe state, was the project which these statesmen had most at heart.\nBut that was a movement which required a firm and enlightened popular\nsupport. Charters and statutes were dead letters till that could be\nhad. It was fatal to attempt it till that was secured. Failing in that\npopular support, if the statesman who had attempted that movement, if\nthe illustrious chief, and chief man of his time, who headed it, did\nsecretly meditate other means for accomplishing the same end--which\nwas to limit the prerogative--such means as the time offered, and if\nthe evidence which was wanting on his trial _had been_ produced in\nproof of it, who that knows what that crisis was would undertake to\nconvict him on it now? He was arrested on suspicion. He was a man who\nhad undertaken to set bounds to the absolute will of the monarch, and\ntherefore he was a dangerous man. [He (Sir Walter Raleigh), together\nwith the Lord Chobham, Sir J. Fortescue, and _others_, would have\nobliged the king to _articles_ before he was admitted to the throne,\nand thought the number of his countrymen should be\nlimited.--_Osborne's Memorials of King James_.] The charges that were\nmade against him on that shameless trial were indignantly repelled.\n'Do you mix, me up with these spiders?' (alluding, perhaps, more\nparticularly to the Jesuit associated with him in this charge). 'Do\nyou think I am a Jack Cade or a Robin Hood?' he said. But though the\nevidence on this trial is not only in itself illegal, and by\nconfession perjured, but the _report_ of it comes to us with a\nfalsehood on the face of it, and is therefore not to be taken without\ncriticism; that there was a movement of some kind meditated about that\ntime, by persons occupying chief places of trust and responsibility in\nthe nation--a movement not favourable to the continuance of 'the\nstanding departments' in the precise form in which they then\nstood--that the project of an administrative reform had not, at least,\nbeen wholly laid aside--that there was something which did not fully\ncome out on that trial, any one who looks at this report of it will be\napt to infer.\n\nIt was a project which had not yet proceeded to any overt act; there\nwas no legal evidence of its existence produced on the trial; but\nsuppose there were here, then, already, men 'who loved the\n_fundamental part of state_,' more than in such a crisis 'they\n_doubted_ the change of it'--men 'who preferred a noble life before a\nlong'--men, too, '_who were more discreet_' than they were\n'_fearful_,' who thought it good practice to 'jump a body with a\ndangerous medicine _that was sure of death_ without it;' suppose there\n_was_ a movement of that kind arrested here then, and the evidence of\nit were produced, what Englishman, or who that boasts the English\nlineage to-day, can have a word to say about it? Who had a better\nright than those men themselves, those statesmen, those heroes, who\nhad waked and watched for their country's weal so long, who had fought\nher battles on land and sea, and planned them too, not in the tented\nfield and on the rocking deck only, but in the more 'deadly breach' of\ncivil office, whose _scaling_-ladders had entered even the tyrant's\ncouncil chamber,--who had a better right than those men themselves to\nsay whether they would be governed by a government of laws, or by the\nwill of the most despicable 'one-only-man power,' armed with sword and\nlash, that ever a nation of Oriental slaves in their political\nimbecility cowered under? Who were better qualified than those men\nthemselves, instructed in detail in all the peril of that crisis,--men\nwho had comprehended and weighed with a judgment which has left no\nsuccessor to its seat, all the conflicting considerations and claims\nwhich that crisis brought with it,--who better qualified than these to\ndecide on the measures by which the hideous nuisances of that time\nshould be abated; by which that axe, that sword, that rack, that\nstake, and all those burglar's tools, and highwayman's weapons, should\nbe taken out of the hands of the mad licentious crew with which an\nevil time had armed them against the common-weal--those weapons of\nlawless power, which the people had vainly, for want of leaders,\nrefused before-hand to put into their hands. Who better qualified than\nthese natural chiefs and elected leaders of the nation, to decide on\nthe dangerous measures for suppressing the innovation, which the Tudor\nand his descendants had accomplished in that ancient sovereignty of\nlaws, which was the sovereignty of this people, which even the Norman\nand the Plantagenet had been taught to acknowledge? Who better\nqualified than they to call to an account--'the thief,' the 'cut-purse\nof the empire and the rule,' who 'found the precious diadem _on a\nshelf_, and stole and put it in his pocket'?\n\n['Shall the blessed _Sun_ of _Heaven_ prove a micher, and _eat\nblackberries_'? A question _not_ to be asked! Shall the blessed 'Son\nof England' prove a thief, and take purses? A question _to be asked_.\n'The _poor_ abuses of the time want _countenance_.'\n\n  _Lear_. Take that from me, my friend,\n  who have the power to _seal the accuser's_ lips.]\n\nWho better qualified could be found to head the dangerous enterprise\nfor the deliverance of England from that shame, than the chief in whom\nher Alfred arose again to break from her neck a baser than the Danish\nyoke, to restore her kingdom and found her new empire, to give her\ndomains, that the sun never sets on,--her Poet, her Philosopher, her\nSoldier, her Legislator, the builder of her Empire of the Sea, her\nfounder of new 'States.'\n\nBut then, of course, it is only by the rarest conjunction of\ncircumstances, that the movements and plans which such a state of\nthings gives rise to, can get any other than the most opprobrious name\nand place in history. Success is their only certificate of legitimacy.\nTo attempt to overthrow a government still so strongly planted in the\nendurance and passivity of the people, might seem, perhaps, to some\nminds in these circumstances, a hopeless, and, _therefore_, a criminal\nundertaking.\n\n'That _opportunity_ which then they had to take from us, to resume, we\nhave again,' might well have seemed a sufficient plea, so it could\nhave been made good. But it is not strange that some few, even then,\nshould find it difficult to believe that the national ruin was yet so\nentire, that the ashes of the ancient nobility and commons of England\nwere yet so cold, as that a system of despotism like that which was\nexercised here then, could be permanently and securely fastened over\nthem. It is not strange that it should seem to these impossible that\nthere should not be enough of that old English spirit which, only a\nhundred years before, had ranged the people in armed thousands, in\ndefence of LAW, against absolutism, enough of it, at least, to welcome\nand sustain the overthrow of tyranny, when once it should present\nitself as a fact accomplished, instead of appealing beforehand to a\ncourage, which so many instances of vain and disastrous resistance had\nat last subdued, and to a spirit which seemed reduced at last, to the\nmere quality of the master's will.\n\nThat was a narrow dominion apparently to which King James consigned\nhis great rival in the arts of government, but that rival of his\ncontrived to rear a 'crest' there which will outlast 'the tyrants,'\nand 'look fresh still' when tombs that artists were at work on then\n'are spent.' 'And when a soldier was his theme, my name--my _name_\n[namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons\nthis man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that\nthat pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He\ndid not know what strategical operations the scholar, who was 'an old\nsoldier' and a politician also, was capable of conducting under such\nconditions. Those were narrow quarters for 'the Shepherd of the\nOcean,' for the hero of the two hemispheres, to occupy so long; but it\nproved no bad retreat for the chief of this movement, as he managed\nit. It was in that school of Elizabethan statesmanship which had its\ncentre in the Tower, that many a scholarly English gentleman came\nforth prepared to play his part in the political movements that\nsucceeded. It was out of that school of statesmanship that John\nHampden came, accomplished for his part in them.\n\nThe papers that the chief of the Protestant cause prepared in that\nliterary retreat to which the Monarch had consigned him, by means of\nthose secret channels of communication among the better minds which he\nhad established in the reign of Elizabeth, became the secret manual of\nthe revolutionary chiefs; they made the first blast of the trumpet\nthat summoned at last the nation to its feet. 'The famous Mr. Hamden'\n(says an author, who writes in those 'next ages' in which so many\ntraditions of this time are still rife) '_a little before_ the civil\nwars was at the charge of transcribing three thousand four hundred and\nfifty-two sheets of Sir Walter Raleigh's MSS., as the amanuensis\nhimself _told me_, who had his _close chamber_, his fire and _candle_,\nwith an _attendant to deliver him the originals_ and _take his copies\nas fast as he could write them_.' That of itself is a pretty little\nglimpse of the kind of machinery which the Elizabethan literature\nrequired for its 'delivery and tradition' at the time, or near the\ntimes, in which it was produced. That is a view of 'an Interior'\n'before the civil wars.' It was John Milton who concluded, on looking\nover, a long time afterwards, one of the unpublished papers of this\nstatesman, that it was his duty to give it to the public. 'Having\nhad,' he says, 'the MS. of this treatise [\"The Cabinet Council\"]\nwritten by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it\nlately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof, I\nthought it _a kind of injury to withhold longer_ the work of so\neminent an author from the public; it being both answerable in style\nto other works of his already extant, as far as _the subject_ would\npermit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death,\nwho had collected several such pieces.'\n\n'_A kind of injury_.'--That is the thought which would naturally take\npossession of any mind, charged with the responsibility of keeping\nback for years this man's writings, especially his choicest\nones--papers that could not be published then on account of the\nsubject, or that came out with the leaves uncut, labouring with the\nrestrictions which the press opposed then to the issues of such a\nmind.\n\nThat great result which the chief minds of the Modern Ages, under the\ninfluence of the new culture, in that secret association of them were\nable to achieve, that new and all comprehending science of life and\npractice which they made it their business to perfect and transmit,\ncould not, indeed, as yet be communicated directly to the many. The\nscientific doctrines of the new time were necessarily limited in that\nage to the few. But another movement corresponding to that,\nsimultaneous in its origin, related to it in its source, was also in\nprogress here then, proceeding hand in hand with this, playing its\ngame for it, opening the way to its future triumph. This was that\nmovement of the new time,--this was that consequence, not of the\nrevival of learning only, but of the growth of the northern mind which\ntouched everywhere and directly the springs of government, and made\n'bold power look pale,' for this was the movement in 'the many.'\n\nThis was the movement which had already convulsed the continent; this\nwas the movement of which Raleigh was from the first the soldier; this\nwas 'the cause' of which he became the chief. It was as a youth of\nseventeen, bursting from those old fastnesses of the Middle Ages that\ncould not hold him any longer, shaking off the films of Aristotle and\nhis commentators, that he girded on his sword for the great\nworld-battle that was raging already in Europe then. It was into the\nthickest of it, that his first step plunged him. For he was one of\nthat company of a hundred English gentlemen who were waiting but for\nthe first word of permission from Elizabeth to go as volunteers to the\naid of the Huguenots. This was the movement which had at last reached\nEngland. And like these other continental events which were so slow in\ntaking effect in England when it did begin to unfold here at last;\nthere was a taste of 'the island' in it, in this also.\n\nIt was not on the continent only, that Raleigh and other English\nstatesmen were disposed to sustain this movement. It was not possible\nas yet to bring the common mind openly to the heights of those great\ndoctrines of life and practice which the Wisdom of the Moderns also\nembodies, but the new teachers of that age knew how to appreciate, as\nthe man of science only can fully appreciate, the worth of those\nmotives that were then beginning to agitate so portentously so large a\nportion of the English people. The Elizabethan politicians nourished\nand patronised in secret that growing faction. The scientific\npolitician hailed with secret delight, hailed as the partner of his\nown enterprise, that new element of political power which the changing\ntime began to reveal here then, that power which was already beginning\nto unclasp on the necks of the masses, the collar of the absolute\nwill--that was already proclaiming, in the stifled undertones of 'that\ngreater part which carries it,' another supremacy. They gave in secret\nthe right hand of a joyful fellowship to it. At home and abroad the\ngreat soldier and statesman, who was the first founder of the Modern\nScience, headed that faction. He fought its battles by land and sea;\nhe opened the New World to it, and sent it there to work out its\nproblem.\n\nIt was the first stage of an advancement that would not rest till it\nfound its true consummation. That infinity which was speaking in its\nconfused tones, as with the voice of many waters, was resolved into\nmusic and triumphal marches in the ear of the Interpreter. It gave\ntoken that the nobler nature had not died out under the rod of\ntyranny; it gave token of the earnestness that would not be appeased\nuntil the ends that were declared in it were found.\n\nBut at the same time, this was a power which the wise men of that age\nwere far from being willing to let loose upon society then in that\nstage of its development; very far were they from being willing to put\nthe reins into its hands. To balance the dangers that were threatening\nthe world at that crisis was always the problem. It was a very narrow\nline that the policy which was to save the state had to keep to then.\nThere were evils on both sides. But to the scientific mind there\nappeared to be a choice in them. The measure on one side had been\ntaken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses on the other no\nman had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,'--the dangers, too,\nof that unscanned swiftness that too late _ties leaden pounds to his\nheels_ were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan\nmovement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time\nleaned towards the monarchy, the monarchy that was, rather than the\nanarchy that was threatening them. The _will_ of the one rather than\nthe _wills_ of the many, the head of the one rather than 'the\nmany-headed.' To effect the change which the time required without\n'wrenching all'--without undoing the work of ages--without setting at\nlarge from the restraints of reverence and custom the chained tiger of\nan unenlightened popular will, this was the problem. The wisest\nstatesmen, the most judicious that the world has ever known were here,\nwith their new science, weighing in exactest scales those issues. We\nmust not quarrel with their concessions to tyranny on the one hand,\nnor with their determination to effect changes on the other, until we\nare able to command entirely the position they occupied, and the\nopposing dangers they had always to consider. We must not judge them\ntill they have had their hearing. What freedom and what hope there is\nof it upon the earth to-day, is the legacy of their perseverance and\nendurance.\n\nThey experienced many defeats. The hopes of youth, the hopes of\nmanhood in turn grew cold. That the 'glorious day' which 'flattered\nthe mountain tops' of their immortal morning with its sovereign eye\nwould never shine on them; that their own, with all its unimagined\nsplendours obscured so long, would go down hid in those same 'base\nclouds,' that for them the consummation was to 'peep about to find\nthemselves dishonourable graves' was the conviction under which their\nlater tasks were achieved. It did not abate their ardour. They did not\nstrain one nerve the less for that.\n\nDriven from one field, they showed themselves in another. Driven from\nthe open field, they fought in secret. 'I will bandy with thee in\nfaction, I will o'errun thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred\nand fifty ways,' the Jester who brought their challenge said. The\nElizabethan England rejected the Elizabethan Man. She would have none\nof his meddling with her affairs. She sent him to the Tower, and to\nthe block, if ever she caught him meddling with them. She buried him\nalive in the heart of his time. She took the seals of office, she took\nthe sword, from his hands and put a pen in it. She would have of him a\nMan of Letters. And a Man of Letters he became. A Man of Runes. He\ninvented new letters in his need, letters that would go farther than\nthe sword, that carried more execution in them than the great seal.\nBanished from the state in that isle to which he was banished, he\nfound not the base-born Caliban only, to _instruct_, and train, and\nsubdue to his ends, but an Ariel, an imprisoned Ariel, waiting to be\nreleased, able to conduct his masques, able to put his girdles round\nthe earth, and to 'perform and point' to his Tempest.\n\n'Go bring the RABBLE, o'er whom I give thee _power_, here to this\nplace,' was the New Magician's word.\n\n[Here is another version of it.\n\n'When Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper, lived, every room in\nGorhambury was served with a pipe of water from the pond distant about\na mile off. In the lifetime of Mr. Anthony Bacon the water ceased, and\nhis lordship coming to the inheritance could not recover the water\nwithout infinite charge. When he was Lord Chancellor, he built Verulam\nHouse _close by the pond yard, for a place of privacy_ when he was\ncalled upon to dispatch any urgent business. And being asked why he\nbuilt there, his lordship answered that, seeing _he could not carry\nthe water to_ his House, he _would carry his House_ to the water.]\n\nThis is not the place for the particulars of this history or for the\nbarest outline of them. They make a volume of themselves. But this\nglimpse of the circumstances under which the works were composed which\nit is the object of this volume to open, appeared at the last moment\nto be required, in the absence of the Historical Key which the proper\ndevelopment of them makes, to that Art of Delivery and Tradition by\nmeans of which the secrets of the Elizabethan Age have been conveyed\nto us.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nEXTRACTS FROM THE LIFE OF RALEIGH.--RALEIGH'S SCHOOL\n\n\n  'Our court shall be a little Academe,\n  Still and contemplative in _living_ Art.'\n  'What is the _end_ of study? let me know.'\n\n  _Love's Labour's Lost_.\n\nBut it was not on the New World wholly, that this man of many toils\ncould afford to lavish the revenues which the Queen's favour brought\nhim. It was not to that enterprise alone that he was willing to\ndedicate the _eclat_ and influence of his rising name. There was work\nat home which concerned him more nearly, not less deeply, to which\nthat new influence was made at once subservient; and in that there\nwere enemies to be encountered more formidable than the Spaniard on\nhis own deck, or on his own coast, with all his war-weapons and\ndefences. It was an enemy which required a strategy more subtle than\nany which the exigencies of camp and field had called for.\n\nThe fact that this hero throughout all his great public career--so\nfull of all kinds of excitement and action--enough, one would say, to\nabsorb the energies of a mind of any ordinary human capacity--that\nthis soldier whose name had become, on the Spanish coasts, what the\nname of '_Coeur de Lion_' was in the Saracen nursery, that this\nforeign adventurer who had a fleet of twenty-three ships sailing at\none time on his errands--this legislator, for he sat in Parliament as\nrepresentative of his native shire--this magnificent courtier, who had\nraised himself, without any vantage-ground at all, from a position\nwholly obscure, by his personal achievements and merits, to a place in\nthe social ranks so exalted; to a place in the state so _near_\nthat--which was chief and absolute--the fact that this many-sided man\nof deeds, was all the time a literary man, not a scholar merely, but\nhimself an Originator, a Teacher, the Founder of a School--this is the\nexplanatory point in this history--this is the point in it which\nthrows light on all the rest of it, and imparts to it its true\ndignity.\n\nFor he was not a mere blind historical agent, driven by fierce\ninstincts, intending only their own narrow ends, without any faculty\nof comprehensive survey and choice of intentions; impelled by thirst\nof adventure, or thirst of power, or thirst of gold, to the execution\nof his part in the great human struggle for conservation and\nadvancement; working like other useful agencies in the Providential\nScheme--like 'the stormy wind fulfilling his pleasure.'\n\nThere is, indeed, no lack of the instinctive element in this heroic\n'composition;' there is no stronger and more various and complete\ndevelopment of it. That '_lumen siccum_' which his great contemporary\nis so fond of referring to in his philosophy, that _dry light_ which\nis so apt, he tells us, in most men's minds, to get 'drenched' a\nlittle sometimes, in 'the humours and affections,' and distorted and\nrefracted in their mediums, did not always, perhaps, in its practical\ndeterminations, escape from that accident even in the philosopher's\nown; but in this stormy, world-hero, there was a latent volcano of\nwill and passion; there was, in his constitution, 'a complexion' which\nmight even seem to the bystanders to threaten at times, by its\n'o'ergrowth,' the 'very pales and forts of reason'; but the intellect\nwas, notwithstanding, in its due proportion in him; and it was the\nmajestic intellect that triumphed in the end. It was the large and\nmanly comprehension, 'the large discourse looking before and after,'\nit was the overseeing and active principle of 'the larger whole,' that\npredominated and had the steering of his course. It is the common\nhuman form which shines out in him and makes that manly demonstration,\nwhich commands our common respect, in spite of those particular\ndefects and o'ergrowths which are apt to mar its outline in the best\nhistorical types and patterns of it, we have been able to get as yet.\nIt was the intellect, and the sense which belongs to _that_ in its\nintegrity--it was the truth and the feeling of its obligation, which\nwas sovereign with him. For this is a man who appears to have been\noccupied with the care of the common-weal more than with anything\nelse; and that, too, under great disadvantages and impediments, and\nwhen there was no honour in caring for it truly, but that kind of\nhonour which he had so much of; for this was the time precisely which\nthe poet speaks of in that play in which he tells us that the end of\nplaying is 'to give to the very age and body of the time _its form and\npressure_.' This was the time when 'virtue of vice _must pardon beg_,\nand curb and beck for leave to do it good.' It was the relief of man's\nestate, or the Creator's glory, that he busied himself about; that was\nthe end of his ends; or if not, then was he, indeed, no hero at all.\nFor it was the doctrine of his own school, and 'the first human\nprinciple' taught in it, that men who act without reference to that\ndistinctly _human_ aim, without that _manly_ consideration and\n_kind_-liness of purpose, can lay no claim either to divine or human\nhonours; that they are not, in fact, men, but failures; specimens of\nan unsuccessful attempt in nature, at an advancement; or, as his great\ncontemporary states it more clearly, 'only a nobler kind of vermin.'\n\nDuring all the vicissitudes of his long and eventful public life,\nRaleigh was still persistently a scholar. He carried his books--his\n'trunk of books' with him in all his adventurous voyages; and they\nwere his 'companions' in the toil and excitement of his campaigns on\nland. He studied them in the ocean-storm; he studied them in his tent,\nas Brutus studied in his. He studied them year after year, in the dim\nlight which pierced the deep embrasure of those walls with which\ntyranny had thought to shut in at last his world-grasping energies.\n\nHe had had some chance to study 'men and manners' in that strange and\nvarious life of his, and he did not lack the skill to make the most of\nit; but he was not content with that narrow, one-sided aspect of life\nand human nature, to which his own individual personal experience,\nhowever varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under\ngreater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know\nthe history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how\nthat particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time,\nhad come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been\nin other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of its development\nin which the historic light first finds it. He was a man who wished\neven to know what it had been in _the Assyrian_, in _the Phenician_,\nin _the Hebrew_, in _the Egyptian_; he would see what it had been in\n_the Greek_, and in _the Roman_. He was, indeed, one of that clique of\nElizabethan Naturalists, who thought that there was no more curious\nthing in nature; and instead of taking a Jack Cade view of the\nsubject, and inferring that an adequate knowledge of it comes by\nnature, as reading and writing do in that worthy's theory of\neducation, it was the private opinion of this school, that there was\nno department of learning which a scholar could turn his attention to,\nthat required a more severe and thorough study and experiment, and\nnone that a man of a truly _scientific_ turn of mind would find better\nworth his leisure. And the study of antiquity had not yet come to be\nthen what it is now; at least, with men of this stamp. Such men did\nnot study it to discipline their minds, or to get a classic finish to\ntheir style. The books that such a man as this could take the trouble\nto carry about with him on such errands as those that he travelled on,\nwere books that had in them, for the eager eyes that then o'er-ran\nthem, the world's 'news'--the world's story. They were full of the\nfresh living data of his conclusions. They were notes that the master\nminds of all the ages had made for him; invaluable aid and sympathy\nthey had contrived to send to him. The man who had been arrested in\nhis career, more ignominiously than the magnificent Tully had been in\n_his_,--in a career, too, a thousand times more noble,--by a Caesar,\nindeed, but _such_ a Caesar;--the man who had sat for years with the\nexecutioner's block in his yard, waiting only for a scratch of the\nroyal pen, to bring down upon him that same edge which the poor\nCicero, with all his truckling, must feel at last,--such a one would\nlook over the old philosopher's papers with an apprehension of their\nmeaning, somewhat more lively than that of the boy who reads them for\na prize, or to get, perhaps, some classic elegancies transfused into\nhis mind.\n\nDuring the ten years which intervene between the date of Raleigh's\nfirst departure for the Continent and that of his beginning favour at\nhome, already he had found means for ekeing out and perfecting that\nliberal education which Oxford had only begun for him, so that it was\nas a man of rarest literary accomplishments that he made his brilliant\n_deb\u00fbt_ at the English Court, where the new Elizabethan Age of Letters\nwas just then beginning.\n\nHe became at once the centre of that little circle of highborn wits\nand poets, the elder wits and poets of the Elizabethan age, that were\nthen in their meridian there. Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Lord\nBuckhurst, Henry Lord Paget, Edward Earl of Oxford, and some others,\nare included in the contemporary list of this courtly company, whose\ndoings are somewhat mysteriously adverted to by a critic, who refers\nto the condition of 'the Art of Poesy' at that time. '_The gentleman\nwho wrote the late Shepherds' Calendar_' was beginning then to attract\nconsiderable attention in this literary aristocracy.\n\nThe brave, bold genius of Raleigh flashed new life into that little\nnucleus of the Elizabethan development. The new '_Round Table_,' which\nthat newly-beginning age of chivalry, with its new weapons and\ndevices, and its new and more heroic adventure had created, was not\nyet 'full' till he came in. The Round Table grew rounder with this\nknight's presence. Over those dainty stores of the classic ages, over\nthose quaint memorials of the elder chivalry, that were spread out on\nit, over the dead letter of the past, the brave Atlantic breeze came\nin, the breath of the great future blew, when the turn came for this\nknight's adventure; whether opened in the prose of its statistics, or\nset to its native music in the mystic melodies of the bard who was\nthere to sing it. The Round Table grew spheral, as he sat talking by\nit; the Round Table dissolved, as he brought forth his lore, and\nunrolled his maps upon it; and instead of it,--with all its fresh yet\nliving interests, tracked out by land and sea, with the great\nbattle-ground of the future outlined on it,--revolved the round world.\n'_Universality_' was still the motto of these Paladins; but 'THE\nGLOBE'--the Globe, with its TWO hemispheres, became henceforth their\ndevice.\n\nThe promotion of Raleigh at Court was all that was needed to make him\nthe centre and organiser of that new intellectual movement which was\nthen just beginning there. He addressed himself to the task as if he\nhad been a man of literary tastes and occupations merely, or as if\nthat particular crisis had been a time of literary leisure with him,\nand there were nothing else to be thought of just then. The relation\nof those illustrious literary partners of his, whom he found already\nin the field when he first came to it, to that grand development of\nthe English genius in art and philosophy which follows, ought not\nindeed to be overlooked or slightly treated in any thorough history of\nit. For it has its first beginning here in this brilliant assemblage\nof courtiers, and soldiers, and scholars,--this company of Poets, and\nPatrons and Encouragers of Art and Learning. Least of all should the\nrelation which the illustrious founder of this order sustains to the\nlater development be omitted in any such history,--'the prince and\nmirror of all chivalry,' the patron of the young English Muse, whose\nuntimely fate keeps its date for ever green, and fills the air of this\nnew 'Helicon' with immortal lamentations. The shining foundations of\nthat so splendid monument of the later Elizabethan genius, which has\nparalyzed and confounded all our criticism, were laid here. The\nextraordinary facilities which certain departments of literature\nappeared to offer, for evading the restrictions which this new poetic\nand philosophic development had to encounter from the first, already\nbegan to attract the attention of men acquainted with the uses to\nwhich it had been put in antiquity, and who knew what gravity of aim,\nwhat height of execution, that then rude and childish English Play had\nbeen made to exhibit under other conditions;--men fresh from the study\nof those living and perpetual monuments of learning, which the genius\nof antiquity has left in this department. But the first essays of the\nnew English scholarship in this untried field,--the first attempts at\noriginal composition here, derive, it must be confessed, their chief\ninterest and value from that memorable association in which we find\nthem. It was the first essay, which had to be made before those\nfinished monuments of art, which command our admiration on their own\naccount wholly, could begin to appear. It was 'the tuning of the\ninstruments, that those who came afterwards might play the better.' We\nsee, of course, the stiff, cramped hand of the beginner here, instead\nof the grand touch of the master, who never comes till his art has\nbeen prepared to his hands,--till the details of its execution have\nbeen mastered for him by others. In some arts there must be\ngenerations of essays before he can get his tools in a condition for\nuse. Ages of prophetic genius, generations of artists, who dimly saw\nafar off, and struggled after his perfections, must patiently chip and\ndaub their lives away, before ever the star of his nativity can begin\nto shine.\n\nConsidering what a barbaric age it was that the English mind was\nemerging from then; and the difficulties attending the first attempt\nto create in the English literature, anything which should bear any\nproportion to those finished models of skill which were then dazzling\nthe imagination of the English scholar in the unworn gloss of their\nfresh revival here, and discouraging, rather than stimulating, the\nrude poetic experiment;--considering what weary lengths of essay there\nare always to be encountered, where the standard of excellence is so\nfar beyond the power of execution; we have no occasion to despise the\nfirst bold attempts to overcome these difficulties which the good\ntaste of this company has preserved to us. They are just such works as\nwe might expect under those circumstances;--yet full of the pedantries\nof the new acquisition, overflowing on the surface with the learning\nof the school, sparkling with classic allusions, seizing boldly on the\nclassic original sometimes, and working their new fancies into it;\nbut, full already of the riant vigour and originality of the\nElizabethan inspiration; and never servilely copying a foreign\noriginal. The English genius is already triumphant in them. Their very\ncrudeness is not without its historic charm, when once their true\nplace in the structure we find them in, is recognised. In the later\nworks, this crust of scholarship has disappeared, and gone below the\nsurface. It is all dissolved, and gone into the clear intelligence;--\nit has all gone to feed the majestic current of that new, all-subduing,\nall-grasping originality. It is in these earlier performances that the\nstumbling-blocks of our present criticism are strewn so thickly.\nNobody can write any kind of criticism of the 'Comedy of Errors,'\nfor instance, without recognizing the Poet's acquaintance with the\nclassic model, [See a recent criticism in 'The Times.']--without\nrecognizing the classic treatment. 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'The\nTaming of the Shrew,' the condemned parts of 'Henry the VI.,' and\ngenerally the Poems which are put down in our criticism as doubtful,\nor as the earlier Poems, are just those Poems in which the Poet's\nstudies are so flatly betrayed on the surface. Among these are plays\nwhich were anonymously produced by the company performing at the\nRose Theatre, and other companies which English noblemen found\noccasion to employ in their service then. These were not so much as\nproduced at the theatre which has had the honor of giving its name to\nother productions, bound up with them. We shall find nothing to object\nto in that somewhat heterogeneous collection of styles, which even a\nsingle Play sometimes exhibits, when once the history of this\nphenomenon accompanies it. The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built\nthroughout, just at the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had\nattained its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye,\nperhaps, than those in which the story of its growth is told from the\nrude, massive Anglo-Saxon of the crypt or the chancel, to the last\nrefinement of the mullion, and groin, and tracery. But the antiquary,\nat least, does not regret the preservation. And these crude beginnings\nhere have only to be put in their place, to command from the critic,\nat least, a similar respect. For here, too, the history reports itself\nto the eye, and not less palpably.\n\nIt may seem surprising, and even incredible, to the modern critic,\nthat men in this position should find any occasion to conceal their\nrelation to those quite respectable contributions to the literature of\nthe time, which they found themselves impelled to make. The fact that\nthey did so, is one that we must accept, however, on uncontradicted\ncotemporary testimony, and account for it as we can. The critic who\npublished his criticisms when 'the gentleman who wrote the late\nShepherd's Calendar' was just coming into notice, however inferior to\nour modern critics in other respects, had certainly a better\nopportunity of informing himself on this point, than they can have at\npresent. 'They have writ excellently well,' _he_ says of this company\nof Poets,--this 'courtly company,' as he calls them,--' they have writ\nexcellently well, _if their doings could be found out and made public\nwith the rest_.' _Sir Philip Sidney, Raleigh,_ and the gentleman who\nwrote the late Shepherd's Calendar, are included in the list of Poets\nto whom this remark is applied. It is Raleigh's verse which is\ndistinguished, however, in this commendation as the most 'lofty,\ninsolent, and passionate;' a description which applies to the\nanonymous poems alluded to, but is not particularly applicable to\nthose artificial and tame performances which he was willing to\nacknowledge. And this so commanding Poet, who was at the same time an\naspiring courtier and meddler in affairs of state, and who chose, for\nsome mysterious reason or other, to forego the honours which those who\nwere in the secret of his literary abilities and successes,--the very\nbest judges of poetry in that time, too, were disposed to accord\nhim,--and we are not without references to cases in antiquity\ncorresponding very nearly to this; and which seemed to furnish, at\nleast, a sufficient precedent for this proceeding;--this so successful\npoet, and courtier, and great man of his time, was already in a\nposition to succeed at once to that chair of literary patronage which\nthe death of Sir Philip Sidney had left vacant. Instinctively\ngenerous, he was ready to serve the literary friends whom he attracted\nto him, not less lavishly than he had served the proud Queen herself,\nwhen he threw his gay cloak in her obstructed path,--at least, he was\nnot afraid of risking those sudden splendours which her favour was\nthen showering upon him, by wearying her with petitions on their\nbehalf. He would have risked his new favour, at least with his\n'Cynthia,'--that twin sister of Phoebus Apollo,--to make her the\npatron, if not the inspirer of the Elizabethan genius. 'When will you\ncease to be a beggar, Raleigh?' she said to him one day, on one of\nthese not infrequent occasions. 'When your Majesty ceases to be a most\ngracious mistress,' was this courtier's reply. It is recorded of her,\nthat 'she loved to hear his reasons to her demands.'\n\nBut though, with all his wit and eloquence, he could not contrive to\nmake of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh, a Pericles, or an\nAlexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus, or an encourager of anything\nthat did not appear to be directly connected with her own particular\nends, he did succeed in making her indirectly a patron of the literary\nand scientific development which was then beginning to add to her\nreign its new lustre,--which was then suing for leave to lay at her\nfeet its new crowns and garlands. Indirectly, he did convert her into\na patron,--a second-hand patron of those deeper and more subtle\nmovements of the new spirit of the time, whose bolder demonstrations\nshe herself had been forced openly to head. Seated on the throne of\nHenry the Seventh, she was already the armed advocate of European\nfreedom;--Raleigh had contrived to make her the legal sponsor for the\nNew World's liberties; it only needed that her patronage should be\nsystematically extended to that new enterprise for the emancipation of\nthe human life from the bondage of ignorance, from the tyranny of\nunlearning,--that enterprise which the gay, insidious Elizabethan\nliterature was already beginning to flower over and cover with its\ndevices,--it only needed _that_, to complete the anomaly of her\nposition. And that through Raleigh's means was accomplished.\n\nHe became himself the head of a little _Alexandrian_ establishment.\nHis house was a home for men of learning. He employed men in literary\nand scientific researches on his account, whose business it was to\nreport to him their results. He had salaried scholars at his table, to\nimpart to him their acquisitions, Antiquities, History, Poetry,\nChemistry, Mathematics, scientific research of all kinds, came under\nhis active and persevering patronage. Returning from one of his visits\nto Ireland, whither he had gone on this occasion to inspect a\n_seignorie_ which his 'sovereign goddess' had then lately conferred\nupon him, he makes his re-appearance at court with that so obscure\npersonage, the poet of the 'Faery Queene,' under his wing;--that same\ngentleman, as the court is informed, whose bucolics had already\nattracted so much attention in that brilliant circle. By a happy\ncoincidence, Raleigh, it seems, had discovered this Author in the\nobscurity of his clerkship in Ireland, and had determined to make use\nof his own influence at court to push his brother poet's fortunes\nthere; but his efforts to benefit this poor bard _personally_, do not\nappear to have been attended at any time with much success. The\nmysterious literary partnership between these two, however, which\ndates apparently from an earlier period, continues to bring forth\nfruit of the most successful kind; and the 'Faery Queene' is not the\nonly product of it.\n\nAll kinds of books began now to be dedicated to this new and so\nmunificent patron of arts and letters. His biographers collect his\npublic history, not from political records only, but from the eulogies\nof these manifold dedications. _Ladonnier_, the artist, publishes his\nSketches of the New World through his aid. Hooker dedicates his\nHistory of Ireland to him; Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work 'On\n_Friendship_' is dedicated to him; another 'On Music,' in which art he\nhad found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to\nthe poetic tributes to him,--some of them at least are familiar to us\nalready. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his haughty rivals were\nthen playing their deep games,--where there was no room for Spenser's\nmuse, and the worth of his 'Old Song' was grudgingly reckoned,--the\n'rustling in silks' is long since over, but the courtier's place in\nthe pageant of the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the\nlapse of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly, and\nfortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to diminish there\n'one dowle that's in his plume.' [He was also a patron of Plays and\nPlayers in this stage of his career, and entertained private parties\nat his house with very _recherch\u00e9_ performances of that kind\nsometimes.]\n\nIn the Lord Timon of the Shakspere piece, which was rewritten from an\n_Academic_ original after Raleigh's consignment to the Tower,--in that\nfierce satire into which so much Elizabethan bitterness is condensed,\nunder the difference of the reckless prodigality which is stereotyped\nin the fable, we get, in the earlier scenes, some glimpses of this\n'Athenian' also, in this stage of his career.\n\nBut it was not as a _Patron_ only, or chiefly, that he aided the new\nliterary development. A scholar, a scholar so earnest, so\nindefatigable, it followed of course that he must be, in one form or\nanother, an Instructor also; for that is still, under all conditions,\nthe scholar's destiny--it is still, in one form or another, his\nbusiness on the earth. But with that temperament which was included\namong the particular conditions of his genius, and with those special\nand particular endowments of his for another kind of intellectual\nmastery, he could not be content with the pen--with the Poet's, or the\nHistorian's, or the Philosopher's pen--as the instrument of his mental\ndictation. A Teacher thus furnished and ordained, seeks, indeed,\nnaturally and instinctively, a more direct and living and effective\nmedium of communication with the audience which his time is able to\nfurnish him, whether 'few' or many, whether 'fit' or unfit, than the\nbook can give him. He must have another means of 'delivery and\ntradition,' when the delivery or tradition is addressed to those whom\nhe would associate with him in his age, to work with him as one man,\nor those to whom he would transmit it in other ages, to carry it on to\nits perfection--those to whom he would communicate his own highest\nview, those whom he would inform with his patiently-gathered lore,\nthose whom he would _instruct_ and move with his new inspirations. For\nthe truth has become a personality with him--it is his nobler self. He\nwill live on with it. He will live or die with it.\n\nFor such a one there is, perhaps, no institution ready in his time to\naccept his ministry. No chair at Oxford or Cambridge is waiting for\nhim. For they are, of course, and must needs be, the strong-holds of\nthe past--those ancient and venerable seats of learning, 'the\nfountains and nurseries of all the humanities,' as a Cambridge\nProfessor calls them, in a letter addressed to Raleigh. The principle\nof these larger wholes is, of course, instinctively conservative.\nTheir business is to know nothing of the new. The new intellectual\nmovement must fight its battles through without, and come off\nconqueror there, or ever those old Gothic doors will creak on their\nreluctant hinges to give it ever so pinched an entrance. When it has\nonce fought its way, and forced itself within--when it has got at last\nsome marks of age and custom on its brow--then, indeed, it will stand\nas the last outwork of that fortuitous conglomeration, to be defended\nin its turn against all comers. Already the revived classics had been\nable to push from their chairs, and drive into corners, and shut up\nfinally and put to silence, the old Aristotelian Doctors--the Seraphic\nand Cherubic Doctors of their day--in their own ancient halls. It\nwould be sometime yet, perhaps, however, before that study of the dead\nlanguages, which was of course one prominent incident of the first\nrevival of a dead learning, would come to take precisely the same\nplace in those institutions, with their one instinct of conservation\nand 'abhorrence of change,' which the old monastic philosophy had\ntaken in its day; but that change once accomplished, the old monastic\nphilosophy itself, religious as it was, was never held more sacred\nthan this profane innovation would come to be. It would be some time\nbefore those new observations and experiments, which Raleigh and his\nschool were then beginning to institute, experiments and inquiries\nwhich the universities would have laughed to scorn in their day, would\ncome to be promoted to the Professor's chair; but when they did, it\nwould perhaps be difficult to convince a young gentleman liberally\neducated, at least, under the wings of one of those 'ancient and\nvenerable' seats of learning, now gray in Raleigh's youthful\nWest--ambitious, perhaps, to lead off in this popular innovation,\nwhere Saurians, and Icthyosaurians, and Entomologists, and\nChonchologists are already hustling the poor Greek and Latin Teachers\ninto corners, and putting them to silence with their growing\nterminologies--it would perhaps be difficult to convince one who had\ngone through the prescribed course of treatment in one of these\n'nurseries of humanity,' that the knowledge of the domestic habits and\nsocial and political organisations of insects and shell-fish, or even\nthe experiments of the laboratory, though never so useful and proper\nin their place, are not, after all, the beginning and end of a human\nlearning. It was no such place as that that this department of the\nscience of nature took in the systems or notions of its Elizabethan\nFounders. They were 'Naturalists,' indeed; but that did not imply,\nwith _their_ use of the term, the absence of the natural common human\nsense in the selection of the objects of their pursuits. 'It is a part\nof science to make _judicious_ inquiries and wishes,' says the speaker\nin chief for this new doctrine of nature; speaking of the particular\nand special applications of it which he is forbidden to make openly,\nbut which he instructs, and prepares, and charges his followers to\nmake for themselves.\n\nOne of those innovations, one of those movements in which the new\nground of ages of future culture is first chalked out--a movement\nwhose end is not yet, whose beginning we have scarce yet seen--was\nmade in England, not very far from the time in which Sir Walter\nRaleigh, began first to convert the eclat of his rising fortunes at\nhome, and the splendour of his heroic achievements abroad, and all\nthose new means of influence which his great position gave him, to the\nadvancement of those deeper, dearer ambitions, which the predominance\nof the nobler elements in his constitution made inevitable with him.\nEven then he was ready to endanger those golden opinions, waiting to\nbe worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon, and new-won\nrank, and liberty and life itself, for the sake of putting himself\ninto his true intellectual relations with his time, as a philosopher\nand a beginner of a new age in the human advancement. For 'spirits are\nnot finely touched but to fine issues.'\n\nIf there was no Professor's Chair, if there was no Pulpit or Bishop's\nStall waiting for him, and begging his acceptance of its perquisites,\nhe must needs institute a chair of his own, and pay for leave to\noccupy it. If there was no university with its appliances within his\nreach, he must make a university of his own. The germ of a new\n'universality' would not be wanting in it. His library, or his\ndrawing-room, or his 'banquet,' will be Oxford enough for him. He will\nbegin it as the old monks began theirs, with their readings. Where the\nteacher is, there must the school be gathered together. And a school\nin the end there will be: a school in the end the true teacher will\nhave, though he begin it, as the barefoot Athenian began his, in the\nstall of the artisan, or in the chat of the Gymnasium, amid the\ncompliments of the morning levee, or in the woodland stroll, or in the\nmidnight revel of the banquet.\n\nWhen the hour and the man are indeed met, when the time is ripe, and\none _truly sent_, ordained of that Power which _chooses_, not one\nonly--what uncloaked atheism is that, to promulgate in an age like\nthis!--_not_ the Teachers and Rabbis of _one race_ only, but _all the\nsuccessful_ agents of human advancement, the initiators of new eras of\nman's progress, the inaugurators of new ages of the relief of the\nhuman estate and the Creator's glory--when such an one indeed appears,\nthere will be no lack of instrumentalities. With some verdant\nhill-side, it may be, some blossoming knoll or 'mount' for his\n'chair,' with a daisy or a lily in his hand, or in a fisherman's boat,\nit may be, pushed a little way from the strand, he will begin new\nages.\n\nThe influence of Raleigh upon his time cannot yet be fully estimated;\nbecause, in the first place, it was primarily of that kind which\nescapes, from its subtlety, the ordinary historical record; and, in\nthe second place, it was an influence at the time _necessarily\ncovert_, studiously disguised. His relation to the new intellectual\ndevelopment of his age might, perhaps, be characterised as _Socratic_;\nthough certainly not because he lacked the use, and the most masterly\nuse, of that same weapon with which his younger contemporary brought\nout at last, in the face of his time, the plan of the Great\nInstauration. In the heart of the new establishment which the\nmagnificent courtier, who was a 'Queen's delight,' must now maintain,\nthere soon came to be a little 'Academe.' The choicest youth of the\ntime, 'the Spirits of the Morning Sort,' gathered about him. It was\nthe new philosophic and poetic genius of the age that he attracted to\nhim; it was on that philosophic and poetic genius that he left his\nmark for ever.\n\nHe taught them, as the masters taught of old, in dialogues--in words\nthat could not then be written, in words that needed the master's\nmodulation to give them their significance. For the new doctrine had\nneed to be clothed in a language of its own, whose inner meaning only\nthose who had found their way to its inmost shrine were able to\ninterpret.\n\nWe find some contemporary and traditional references to this school,\nwhich are not without their interest and historical value, as tending\nto show the amount of influence which it was supposed to have exerted\non the time, as well as the acknowledged necessity for concealment in\nthe studies pursued in it. The fact that such an Association\n_existed_, that it _began with Raleigh_, that young men of distinction\nwere attracted to it, and that in such numbers, and under such\nconditions, that it came to be considered ultimately as a '_School_,'\nof which he was the head-master--the fact that the new experimental\nscience was supposed to have had its origin in this association,--that\nopinions, differing from the received ones, were also secretly\ndiscussed in it,--that _anagrams_ and other devices were made use of\nfor the purpose of infolding the _esoteric_ doctrines of the school in\npopular language, so that it was possible to write in this language\nacceptably to the vulgar, and without violating preconceived opinions,\nand at the same time instructively to the initiated,--all this\nremains, even on the surface of statements already accessible to any\nscholar,--all this remains, either in the form of contemporary\ndocuments, or in the recollections of persons who have apparently had\nit from the most authentic sources, from persons who profess to know,\nand who were at least in a position to know, that such was the\nimpression at the time.\n\nBut when the instinctive dread of innovation was already so keenly on\nthe alert, when Elizabeth was surrounded with courtiers still in their\nfirst wrath at the promotion of the new 'favourite,' indignant at\nfinding themselves so suddenly overshadowed with the growing honours\nof one who had risen from a rank beneath their own, and eagerly\nwatching for an occasion against him, it was not likely that such an\naffair as this was going to escape notice altogether. And though the\nsecrecy with which it was conducted, might have sufficed to elude a\nscrutiny such as theirs, there was _another_, and more eager and\nsubtle enemy,--an enemy which the founder of this school had always to\ncontend with, that had already, day and night, at home and abroad, its\nArgus watch upon him. That vast and secret foe, which he had arrayed\nagainst him on foreign battle fields, knew already what kind of\nembodiment of power this was that was rising into such sudden favour\nhere at home, and would have crushed him in the germ--that foe which\nwould never rest till it had pursued him to the block, which was ready\nto join hands with his personal enemies in its machinations, in the\ncourt of Elizabeth, as well as in the court of her successor, that\nvast, malignant, indefatigable foe, in which the spirit of the old\nages lurked, was already at his threshold, and penetrating to the most\nsecret chamber of his councils. It was on the showing of _a Jesuit_\nthat these friendly gatherings of young men at Raleigh's table came to\nbe branded as 'a school of Atheism.' And it was through such agencies,\nthat his enemies at court were able to sow suspicions in Elizabeth's\nmind in regard to the entire orthodoxy of his mode of explaining\ncertain radical points in human belief, and in regard to the absolute\n'conformity' of his views on these points with those which she had\nherself divinely authorised, suspicions which he himself confesses he\nwas never afterwards able to eradicate. The matter was represented to\nher, we are told, 'as if he had set up for a doctor in the faculty and\ninvited young gentlemen into his school, where the Bible was jeered\nat,' and the use of profane anagrams was inculcated. The fact that he\nassociated with him in his chemical and mathematical studies, and\nentertained in his house, a scholar labouring at that time under the\nheavy charge of getting up 'a philosophical theology,' was also made\nuse of greatly to his discredit.\n\nAnd from another uncontradicted statement, which dates from a later\nperiod, but which comes to us worded in terms as cautious as if it had\nissued directly from the school itself, we obtain another glimpse of\nthese new social agencies, with which the bold, creative, social\ngenius that was then seeking to penetrate on all sides the\ncustom-bound time, would have roused and organised a new social life\nin it. It is still the second-hand hearsay testimony which is quoted\nhere. '_He is said_ to have set up an Office of Address, and it is\n_supposed_ that the office _might_ respect a _more liberal\nintercourse_--_a nobler mutuality of advertisement_, than would\nperhaps admit of _all sorts of persons_.' 'Raleigh set up a kind of\nOffice of Address,' says another, 'in the capacity of an agency for\nall sorts of persons.' John Evelyn, refers also to that long dried\nfountain of communication which _Montaigne_ first proposed, Sir Walter\nRaleigh put in practice, and Mr. Hartlib endeavoured to renew.\n\n'This is the scheme described by Sir W. Pellis, which is referred\ntraditionally to Raleigh and Montaigne (see Book I. chap. xxxiv.) An\nOffice of _Address_ whereby the wants of _all_ may be made known to\nALL (that painful and great instrument of this design), _where men may\nknow what is already done in the business of learning, what is at\npresent in doing, and what is intended to be done_, to the end that,\nby such a _general communication of design and mutual assistance, the\nwits and endeavours of the world_ may no longer be _as so many\nscattered coals_, which, for want of _union_, are soon quenched,\nwhereas being laid together they would have yielded _a comfortable_\nlight and heat. [This is evidently _traditional_ language] ... such as\nadvanced rather to the _improvement_ of _men_ themselves than their\nmeans.'--OLDYS.\n\n_This_ then is the association of which Raleigh was the chief; _this_\nwas the state, within the state which he was founding. ('See the reach\nof this man,' says Lord Coke on his Trial.) It is true that the honour\nis also ascribed to Montaigne; but we shall find, as we proceed with\nthis inquiry, that _all_ the works and inventions of this new English\nschool, of which Raleigh was chief, all its new and vast designs for\nman's relief, are also claimed by that same aspiring gentleman, as\nthey were, too, by another of these Egotists, who came out in his own\nname with this identical project.\n\nIt was only within the walls of a school that the great principle of\nthe new philosophy of fact and practice, which had to pretend to be\nprofoundly absorbed in chemical experiments, or in physical\nobservations, and inductions of some kind--though not without an\noccasional hint of a broader intention,--it was only in _esoteric_\nlanguage that the great principles of this philosophy could begin to\nbe set forth _in their true comprehension_. The very trunk of it, the\nprimal science itself, must needs be mystified and hidden in a shower\nof metaphysical dust, and piled and heaped about with the old dead\nbranches of scholasticism, lest men should see for themselves _how_\nbroad and comprehensive _must_ be the ultimate sweep of its\ndeterminations; lest men should see for themselves, how a science\nwhich begins in fact, and returns to it again, which begins in\nobservation and experiment, and returns in scientific practice, in\nscientific arts, in scientific re-formation, might have to do, ere all\nwas done, with facts not then inviting scientific investigation--with\narts not then inviting scientific reform.\n\nIn consequence of a sudden and common advancement of intelligence\namong the leading men of that age, which left the standard of\nintelligence represented in more than one of its existing\ninstitutions, very considerably in the rear of its advancement, there\nfollowed, as the inevitable result, a tendency to the formation of\nsome medium of expression,--whether that tendency was artistically\ndeveloped or not, in which the new and nobler thoughts of men, in\nwhich their dearest beliefs, could find some vent and limited\ninterchange and circulation, without startling the _ear_. Eventually\nthere came to be a number of men in England at this time,--and who\nshall say that there were none on the continent of this\nschool,--occupying prominent positions in the state, heading, it might\nbe, or ranged in opposite factions at Court, who could speak and write\nin such a manner, upon topics of common interest, as to make\nthemselves entirely intelligible to each other, without exposing\nthemselves to any of the risks, which confidential communications\nunder such circumstances involved.\n\nFor there existed a certain mode of expression, originating in some of\nits more special forms with this particular school, yet not altogether\nconventional, which enabled those who made use of it to steer clear of\nthe Star Chamber and its sister institution; inasmuch as the terms\nemployed in this mode of communication were not in the more obvious\ninterpretation of them actionable, and to a vulgar, unlearned, or\nstupid conceit, could hardly be made to appear so. There must be a\nHigh Court of Wit, and a Bench of Peers in that estate of the realm,\nor ever these treasons could be brought to trial. For it was a mode of\ncommunication which involved in its more obvious construction the\nnecessary submission to power. It was the instructed ear,--the ear of\na school,--which was required to lend to it its more recondite\nmeanings;--it was the ear of that new school in philosophy which had\nmade History the basis of its learning,--which, dealing with\n_principles_ instead of _words_, had glanced, not without some nice\nobservation in passing, at their more '_conspicuous_' historical\n'INSTANCES';--it was the ear of a school which had everywhere the\ngreat historical representations and diagrams at its control, and\ncould substitute, without much hindrance, particulars for generals, or\ngenerals for particulars, as the case might be; it was the ear of a\nschool intrusted with discretionary power, but trained and practised\nin the art of using it.\n\nOriginally an art of necessity, with practice, in the skilful hands of\nthose who employed it, it came at length to have a charm of its own.\nIn such hands, it became an instrument of literary power, which had\nnot before been conceived of; a medium too of densest ornament, of\nthick crowding conceits, and nestling beauties, which no style before\nhad ever had depth enough to harbour. It established a new, and more\nintimate and living relation between the author and his\nreader,--between the speaker and his audience. There was ever the\ncharm of that secret understanding lending itself to all the effects.\nIt made the reader, or the hearer, participator in the artist's skill,\nand joint proprietor in the result. The author's own glow must be on\nhis cheek, the author's own flash in his eye, ere that result was\npossible. The nice point of the skilful pen, the depth of the lurking\ntone was lost, unless an eye as skilful, or an ear as fine, tracked or\nwaited on it. It gave to the work of the artist, nature's own\nstyle;--it gave to works which had the earnest of life and death in\nthem the sport of the 'enigma.'\n\nIt is not too much to say, that the works of Raleigh and Bacon, and\nothers whose connection with it is not necessary to specify just here,\nare written throughout in the language of this school. 'Our glorious\nWilly'--(it is the gentleman who wrote the 'Faery Queene' who claims\nhim, and his glories, as 'ours'),--'our glorious Willy' was born in\nit, and knew no other speech. It was that 'Round Table' at which Sir\nPhilip Sydney presided then, that his lurking meanings, his\nunspeakable audacities first 'set in a roar.' It was there, in the\nkeen encounters of those flashing 'wit combats,' that the weapons of\ngreat genius grew so fine. It was there, where the young wits and\nscholars, fresh from their continental tours, full of the gallant\nyoung England of their day,--the Mercutios, the Benedicts, the Birons,\nthe Longuevilles, came together fresh from the Court of Navarre, and\nsmelling of the lore of their foreign 'Academe,' or hot from the\nbattles of continental freedom,--it was _there_, in those _r\u00e9unions_,\nthat our Poet caught those gracious airs of his--those delicate,\nthick-flowering refinements--those fine impalpable points of courtly\nbreeding--those aristocratic notions that haunt him everywhere. It was\nthere that he picked up his various knowledge of men and manners, his\nacquaintance with foreign life, his bits of travelled wit, that flash\nthrough all. It was there that he heard the clash of arms, and the\nocean-storm. And it was there that he learned 'his old ward.' It was\nthere, in the social collisions of that gay young time, with its bold\nover-flowing humours, that would not be shut in, that he first armed\nhimself with those quips and puns, and lurking conceits, that crowd\nhis earlier style so thickly,--those double, and triple, and quadruple\nmeanings, that stud so closely the lines of his dialogue in the plays\nwhich are clearly dated from that era,--the natural artifices of a\ntime like that, when all those new volumes of utterance which the lips\nwere ready to issue, were forbidden on pain of death to be 'extended,'\nmust needs 'be crushed together, infolded within themselves.'\n\nOf course it would be absurd, or it would involve the most profound\nignorance of the history of literature in general, to claim that the\nprinciple of this invention had its origin here. It had already been\nin use, in recent and systematic use, in the intercourse of the\nscholars of the Middle Ages; and its origin is coeval with the origin\nof letters. The free-masonry of learning is old indeed. It runs its\nmountain chain of signals through all the ages, and men whom times and\nkindreds have separated ascend from their week-day toil, and hold\ntheir Sabbaths and synods on those heights. They whisper, and listen,\nand smile, and shake the head at one another; they laugh, and weep,\nand complain together; they sing their songs of victory in one key.\nThat machinery is so fine, that the scholar can catch across the ages,\nthe smile, or the whisper, which the contemporary tyranny had no\ninstrument firm enough to suppress, or fine enough to detect.\n\n  'But for her father sitting still on hie,\n  Did warily still watch the way she went,\n  And eke from far observed with jealous eye,\n  Which way his course the wanton Bregog bent.\n\n  Him to deceive, for all his watchful ward,\n  The wily lover did devise this slight.\n  First, into many parts, his stream he shared,\n  That whilst the one was watch'd, the other might\n\n  Pass unespide, to meet her by the way.\n  And then besides, those little streams, so broken,\n  He under ground so closely did convey,\n  That of their passage doth appear no token.'\n\nIt was the author of the 'Faery Queene,' indeed, his fine, elaborate,\nfertile genius burthened with its rich treasure, and stimulated to new\nactivity by his poetical alliance with Raleigh, whose splendid\ninvention first made apparent the latent facilities which certain\ndepartments of popular literature then offered, for a new and hitherto\nunparalleled application of this principle. In that prose description\nof his great Poem which he addresses to Raleigh, the distinct avowal\nof a double intention in it, the distinction between a particular and\ngeneral one, the emphasis with which the elements of the ideal name,\nare discriminated and blended, furnish to the careful reader already\nsome superficial hints, as to the capabilities of such a plan to one\nat all predisposed to avail himself of them. And, indeed, this Poet's\nmanifest philosophical and historical tendencies, and his avowed view\nof the comprehension of the Poet's business would have seemed\nbeforehand to require some elbow-room,--some chance for poetic curves\nand sweeps,--some space for the line of beauty to take its course in,\nwhich the sharp angularities, the crooked lines, the blunt bringing up\neverywhere, of the new philosophic tendency to history would scarcely\nadmit of. There was no breathing space for him, unless he could\ncontrive to fix his poetic platform so high, as to be able to override\nthese restrictions without hindrance.\n\n'For the Poet thrusteth into the midst, even where it most concerneth\nhim, and then recoursing to the things fore-past, and _divining of\nthings to come_, he maketh a pleasing _analysis_ of ALL.'\n\nAnd it so happened that his Prince Arthur had dreamed the poet's\ndream, the hero's dream, the philosopher's dream, the dream that was\ndreamed of old under the Olive shades, the dream that all our Poets\nand inspired anticipators of man's perfection and felicity have always\nbeen dreaming; but this one '_awakening_,' determined that it should\nbe a dream no longer. It was the hour in which the genius of antiquity\nwas reviving; it was the hour in which the poetic inspiration of all\nthe ages was reviving, and _arming_ itself with the knowledge of\n'things not dreamt of' by old reformers--that knowledge of nature\nwhich is _power_, which is the true _magic_. For this new Poet had\nseen in a vision that same 'excellent beauty' which 'the divine' ones\nsaw of old, and 'the New Atlantis,' the celestial vision of _her_\nkingdom; and being also 'ravished with that excellence, and\n_awakening_, he determined to _seek her out_. And so being by _Merlin\narmed_, and by _Timon thoroughly instructed_, he went forth to seek\nher in _Fairy Land_.' There was a little band of heroes in that age, a\nlittle band of philosophers and poets, secretly bent on that same\nadventure, sworn to the service of that same Gloriana, though they\nwere fain to wear then the scarf and the device of another Queen on\n_their_ armour. It is to the prince of this little band--'the prince\nand mirror of all chivalry'--that this Poet dedicates his poem. But it\nis Raleigh's device which he adopts in the names he uses, and it is\nRaleigh who thus shares with Sydney the honour of his dedication.\n\n'In that Faery Queene, I mean,' he says, in his prose description of\nthe Poem addressed to Raleigh, 'in that Faery Queene, I mean Glory in\nmy general intention; but, in my particular, I conceive the most\nglorious person of our sovereign the Queen, and _her_ kingdom--in\n_Fairy Land_.\n\n'And yet, in some places, I do otherwise shadow her. For considering\nshe beareth _two persons, one_ of a most Royal _Queen_ or _Empress_,\nthe other of a most VIRTUOUS and BEAUTIFUL lady--the _latter part_ I\ndo express in BEL-PHEBE, fashioning her name according to your own\n_most excellent conceit_ of \"_Cynthia_,\" Phebe and Cynthia being both\nnames of _Diana_.' And thus he sings his poetic dedication:--\n\n  'To thee, that art the Summer's Nightingale,\n  Thy sovereign goddess's most dear delight,\n  Why do I send this rustic madrigal,\n  That may thy tuneful ear unseason quite?\n  _Thou, only fit this argument to write_,\n  In whose high thoughts _pleasure hath built her bower_,\n  And dainty love learn'd sweetly to indite.\n  My rhymes, I know, unsavoury are and soure\n  To taste the streams, which _like a golden showre_,\n  Flow from thy fruitful head of thy love's praise.\n  Fitter, perhaps, _to thunder martial stowre_,[Footnote]\n  When thee so list thy _tuneful_ thoughts to raise,\n  Yet _till that thou thy poem wilt make known_,\n  Let thy fair Cynthia's praises be thus rudely shown.'\n\n[Footnote:\n'Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with _rage_\n_Or influence chide_, or _cheer_ the drooping stage.'\n\nBEN JONSON.]\n\n'Of me,' says Raleigh, in a response to this obscure partner of his\nworks and arts,--a response not less mysterious, till we have found\nthe solution of it, for it is an enigma.\n\n  'Of me _no lines_ are loved, _no letters_ are of price,\n  Of all that speak the English tongue, but those of _thy device_.'\n\n[It was a '_device_' that symbolised _all_. It was a _circle_\ncontaining the alphabet, or the _A B C_, and the esoteric meaning of\nit was '_all_ in _each_,' or _all_ in _all_, the new doctrine of the\n_unity_ of science (the '_Ideas_' of the New '_Academe_'). That was\nthe token-name under which a great Book of this Academy was issued.]\n\nIt is to Sidney, Raleigh, and the Poet of the 'Faery-Queene,' and the\nrest of that courtly company of Poets, that the contemporary author in\nthe Art of Poetry alludes, with a special commendation of Raleigh's\nvein, as the 'most lofty, insolent, and passionate,' when he says,'\nthey have _writ_ excellently well, if their _doings_ could be found\nout and made public with the rest.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nRALEIGH'S SCHOOL, CONTINUED.--THE NEW ACADEMY.\n\nEXTRACT FROM A LATER CHAPTER OF RALEIGH'S LIFE.\n\n\n_Oliver_. Where will the old Duke live?\n\n_Charles_. They say _he is already_ in the forest of _Arden_, and a\nmany merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood\nof England: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and\nfleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.\n\nAs You Like It.\n\n  _Stephano_ [sings].\n  Flout 'em and skout'em; and skout'em and flout 'em,\n  _Thought_ is free.\n\n  _Cal_. That's not the tune.\n\n  [Ariel _plays the tune on a tabor and pipe_.]\n\n  _Ste_. What is this _same?_\n\n  _Trin_. This is the tune of our catch, played by--the picture\n  of--_Nobody_.\n\nBut all was not over with him in the old England yet--the present had\nstill its chief tasks for him.\n\nThe man who had 'achieved' his greatness, the chief who had made his\nway through such angry hosts of rivals, and through such formidable\nsocial barriers, from his little seat in the Devonshire corner to a\nplace in the state, so commanding, that even the jester, who was the\n'Mr. Punch' of that day, conceived it to be within the limits of his\nprerogative to call attention to it, and that too in 'the presence'\nitself [See 'the knave' _commands_ 'the queen.'--_Tarleton_]--a place\nof command so acknowledged, that even the poet could call him in the\near of England 'her _most_ dear delight'--such a one was not going to\ngive up so easily the game he had been playing here so long. He was\nnot to be foiled with this great flaw in his fortunes even here; and\nthough all his work appeared for the time to be undone, and though the\neye that he had fastened on him was 'the eye' that had in it 'twenty\nthousand deaths.'\n\nIt is this patient piecing and renewing of his broken webs, it is this\nsecond building up of his position rather than the first, that shows\nus what he is. One must see what he contrived to make of those\n'apartments' in the Tower while he occupied them; what before\nunimagined conveniencies, and elegancies, and facilities of\ncommunication, and means of operation, they began to develop under the\nsearching of his genius: what means of reaching and moving the public\nmind; what wires that reached to the most secret councils of state\nappeared to be inlaid in those old walls while he was within them;\nwhat springs that commanded even there movements not less striking and\nanomalous than those which had arrested the critical and admiring\nattention of Tarleton under the Tudor administration,--movements on\nthat same royal board which Ferdinand and Miranda were seen to be\nplaying on in Prospero's cell when all was done,--one must see what\nthis logician, who was the magician also, contrived to make of the\nlodging which was at first only 'the cell' of a condemned criminal;\nwhat power there was there to foil his antagonists, and crush them\ntoo,--if nothing but throwing themselves under the wheels of his\nadvancement would serve their purpose; one must look at all this to\nsee 'what manner of man' this was, what stuff this genius was made of,\nin whose hearts ideas that had been parted from all antiquities were\ngetting welded here then--welded so firmly that all futurities would\nnot disjoin them, so firmly that thrones, and dominions, and\nprincipalities, and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this\nworld might combine in vain to disjoin them--the ideas whose union was\nthe new 'birth of time.' It is this life in 'the cell'--this game,\nthese masques, this tempest, that the magician will command\nthere--which show us, when all is done, what new stuff of Nature's own\nthis was, in which the new idea of combining 'the part operative' and\nthe part speculative of human life--this new thought of making 'the\nart and practic part of life _the mistress_ to its theoric' was\nunderstood in this scholar's own time (as we learn from the secret\ntraditions of the school) to have had its first germination: this idea\nwhich is the idea of the modern learning--the idea of connecting\nknowledge generally and in a systematic manner with the human\nconduct--knowledge as distinguished from pre-supposition--the idea\nwhich came out afterwards so systematically and comprehensively\ndeveloped in the works of his great contemporary and partner in arts\nand learning.\n\nWe must look at this, as well as at some other demonstrations of which\nthis time was the witness, to see what new mastership this is that was\ncoming out here so signally in this age in various forms, and in more\nminds than one; what soul of a new era it was that had laughed, even\nin the boyhood of its heroes, at old Aristotle on his throne; that had\nmade its youthful games with dramatic impersonations, and caricatures,\nand travesties of that old book-learning; that in the glory of those\nyouthful spirits--'the spirits of youths, that meant to be of note and\nbegan betimes'--it thought itself already competent to laugh down and\ndethrone with its 'jests'; that had laughed all its days in secret;\nthat had never once lost a chance for a jibe at the philosophy it\nfound in possession of the philosophic chairs--a philosophy which had\nleft so many things in heaven and earth uncompassed in its old futile\ndreamy abstractions.\n\n  Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,\n  Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,\n  Hang up philosophy,\n\nwas the word of the poet of this new school in one of his 'lofty and\npassionate' moods, at a much earlier stage of this philosophic\ndevelopment. 'See what learning is!' exclaims the Nurse, speaking at\nthat same date from the same dictation, for there is a Friar 'abroad'\nthere already in the action of that play, who is undertaking to bring\nhis learning to bear upon practice, and opening his cell for\nscientific consultation and ghostly advice on the questions of the\nplay as they happen to arise; and it is his apparent capacity for\nsmoothing, and reconciling, and versifying, not words only, but facts,\nwhich commands the Nurse's admiration.\n\nThis doctrine of a practical learning, this part operative of the new\nlearning for which the founders of it beg leave to reintegrate the\nabused term of Natural Magic, referring to the Persians in particular,\nto indicate the extent of the field which their magical operations are\nintended ultimately to occupy; this idea, which the master of this\nschool was illustrating now in the Tower so happily, did not originate\nin the Tower, as we shall see.\n\nThe first heirs of this new invention, were full of it. The babbling\ninfancy of this great union of art and learning, whose speech flows in\nits later works so clear, babbled of nothing else: its Elizabethan\nsavageness, with its first taste of learning on its lips, with its new\nclassic lore yet stumbling in its speech, already, knew nothing else.\nThe very rudest play in all this collection of the school,--left to\nshow us the march of that 'time-bettering age,' the play which offends\nus most--belongs properly to this collection; contains _this_ secret,\nwhich is the Elizabethan secret, and the secret of that art of\ndelivery and tradition which this from the first inevitably\ncreated,--yet rude and undeveloped, but _there_.\n\nWe need not go so far, however, as that, in this not pleasant\nretrospect; for these early plays are not the ones to which the\ninterpreter of this school would choose to refer the reader, for the\nproof of its claims at present;--these which the faults of youth and\nthe faults of the time conspire to mar: in which the overdoing of the\nfirst attempt to hide under a cover suited to the tastes of the Court,\nor to the yet more faulty tastes of the rabble of an Elizabethan\nplay-house,--the boldest scientific treatment of 'the forbidden\nquestions,' still leaves so much upon the surface of the play that\nrepels the ordinary criticism;--these that were first sent out to\nbring in the rabble of that age to the scholar's cell, these in which\nthe new science was first brought in, in its slave's costume, with all\nits native glories shorn, and its eyes put out 'to make sport' for the\nTudor--perilous sport!--these first rude essays of a learning not yet\nmaster of its unwonted tools, not yet taught how to wear its fetters\ngracefully, and wreathe them over and make immortal glories of\nthem--still clanking its irons. There is nothing here to detain any\ncriticism not yet instructed in the secret of this Art Union. But the\nfaults are faults of execution merely; _the design_ of the Novura\nOrganum is not more noble, not more clear.\n\nFor these works are the works of that same 'school' which the Jesuit\nthought so dangerous, and calculated to affect unfavourably the\nmorality of the English nation--the school which the Jesuit contrived\nto bring under suspicion as a school in which doctrines that differed\nfrom opinions received on essential points were secretly\ntaught,--contriving to infect with his views on that point the lady\nwho was understood, at that time, to be the only person qualified to\nreflect on questions of this nature; the school in which Raleigh was\nasserted to be perverting the minds of young men by teaching them the\nuse of profane anagrams; and it cannot be denied, that anagrams, as\nwell as other 'devices in letters,' _were_ made use of, in involving\n'the bolder meanings' contained in writings issued from this school,\nespecially when the scorn with which science regarded the things it\nfound set up for its worship had to be conveyed sometimes in a point\nor a word. It is a school, whose language might often seem obnoxious\nto the charge of profanity and other charges of that nature to those\nwho do not understand its aims, to those who do not know that it is\nfrom the first a school of Natural Science, whose chief department was\nthat history which makes the basis of the '_living_ art,' the art of\n_man's_ living, the _essential_ art of it,--a school in which the use\nof words was, in fact, more rigorous and scrupulous than it had ever\nbeen in any other, in which the use of words is for the first time\nscientific, and yet, in some respects, more bold and free than in\nthose in which mere words, as words, are supposed to have some\ninherent virtue and efficacy, some mystic worth and sanctity in them.\n\nThis was the learning in which the art of a new age and race first\nspoke, and many an old foolish, childish, borrowed notion went off\nlike vapour in it at its first word, without any one's ever so much as\nstopping to observe it, any one whose place was within. It is the\nschool of a criticism much more severe than the criticism which calls\nits freedom in question. It is a school in which the taking of names\nin vain in general is strictly forbidden. That is the first\ncommandment of it, and it is a commandment with promise.\n\nThe man who sits there in the Tower, now, driving that same\n'goose-pen' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument for unfolding\npractical doctrines, with such patient energy, is not now occupied\nwith the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as he looks; though that,\ntoo, is a subject which his nautical experience and the indomitable\nbias of his genius as a western man towards calculation in general,\ntogether with his notion that the affairs of the world generally, past\nas well as future, belong properly to his _sphere_ as a _man_, will\nrequire him to take up and examine and report upon, before he will\nthink that his work is done. It is not a chapter in the History of the\nWorld which he is composing at present, though that work is there at\nthis moment on the table, and forms the ostensible state-prison work\nof this convict.\n\nThis is the man who made one so long ago in those brilliant 'Round\nTable' reunions, in which the idea of converting the new _belles\nlettres_ of that new time, to such grave and politic uses was first\nsuggested; he is the genius of that company, that even in such frolic\nmad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew,\nand Midsummer Night's Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad\nfarce and burlesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and\npompous rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most\nperilous secret of the new philosophy, only, but the secret of its\norgan of delivery and tradition, the secret of its use of letters, the\nsecret of its '_cipher in letters_,' and not its 'cipher in words'\nonly, the cipher in which the secret of the authorship of these works\nwas infolded, and in which it was _found_, but not found in these\nearlier plays,--plays in which these so perilous secrets are still\nconveyed in so many involutions, in passages so intricate with quips\nand puns and worthless trivialities, so uninviting or so marred with\ntheir superficial meanings, that no one would think of looking in them\nfor anything of any value. For it is always when some necessary, but\nnot superficial, question of the play is to be considered, that the\nClown and the Fool are most in request, for 'there be of them that\nwill themselves laugh to set on some _barren spectators_ to laugh\ntoo'; and under cover of that mirth it is, that the grave or witty\nundertone reaches the ear of the judicious.\n\nIt is in the later and more finished works of this school that the key\nto the secret doctrines of it, which it is the object of this work to\nfurnish, is best found. But the fact, that in the very rudest and most\nfaulty plays in this collection of plays, which form so important a\ndepartment of the works of this school, which make indeed the noblest\ntradition, the only adequate tradition, the 'illustrated tradition' of\nits noblest doctrine--the fact that in the very earliest germ of this\nnew union of 'practic and theoric,' of art and learning, from which we\npluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and Lears, and\nTempests, and the Novum Organum, already the perilous secret of this\nunion is infolded, already the entire organism that these great fruits\nand flowers will unfold in such perfection is contained, and clearly\ntraceable,--this is a fact which appeared to require insertion in this\nhistory, and not, perhaps, without some illustration.\n\n'It is not amiss to observe,' says the Author of the Advancement of\nLearning, when at last his great exordium to the science of nature in\nman, and the art of culture and cure that is based on that science is\nfinished--pausing to observe it, pausing ere he will produce his index\nto that science, to observe it: 'It is _not_ amiss to observe', he\nsays--(speaking of the operation of culture in general on young minds,\nso forcible, though unseen, as hardly any length of time, or\ncontention of labour, can countervail it afterwards)--'how small and\nmean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into _great\nmen, or great matters_, do work _great and important effects_; whereof\nwe see a notable example in _Tacitus_, of _two stage-players_,\nPercennius and Vibulenus, who, _by their faculty of playing_, put the\n_Pannonian_ armies _into an extreme tumult and combustion_; for,\n_there arising a mutiny_ among them, upon the death of _Augustus_\nCaesar, _Blaesus_ the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers,\n_which were suddenly rescued_; whereupon Vibulenus _got to be heard\nspeak_ [being a stage-player], which he did _in this manner_.\n\n'\"These poor _innocent_ wretches _appointed to cruel death_, you have\nrestored to behold the light: but who shall restore _my brother_ to\nme, or life to my brother, _that was sent hither in message from the\nlegions of Germany_ to treat of--THE COMMON CAUSE? And he hath\nmurdered him this last night by _some of his fencers and ruffians,\nthat he hath about him for his executioners_ upon soldiers. The\nmortalest enemies do not deny burial; _when I have performed my last\nduties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain\nbesides him_, so that these, my fellows, _for our good meaning_ and\nour _true hearts_ to THE LEGION, _may have leave to bury us_.\"\n\n'With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar;\nwhereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither was there any _such_\nmatter [in that case], but he played it merely _as if_ he had been\nupon the stage.'\n\nThis is the philosopher and stage critic who expresses a decided\nopinion elsewhere, that 'the play's the thing,' though he finds this\nkind of writing, too, useful in its way, and for certain purposes; but\nhe is the one who, in speaking of the original differences in the\nnatures and gifts of men, suggests that 'there _are_ a kind of men who\ncan, as it were, divide themselves;' and he does not hesitate to\npropound it as his deliberate opinion, that a man of wit should have\nat command a number of styles adapted to different auditors and\nexigencies; that is, if he expects to accomplish anything with his\nrhetoric. That is what he makes himself responsible for from his\nprofessional chair of learning; but it is the Prince of Denmark, with\nhis remarkable natural faculty of speaking to the point, who says,\n'_Seneca_ can not be _too heavy_, nor _Plautus_ too light,\nfor--[what?]--the _law of writ_--and--the _liberty_.' '_These_ are the\nonly _men_,' he adds, referring apparently to that tinselled gauded\ngroup of servants that stand there awaiting his orders.\n\n'My lord--you played once _in the university_, you say,' he observes\nafterwards, addressing himself to that so politic statesmen whose\noverreaching court plots and performances end for himself so\ndisastrously. 'That did I, my lord,' replies Polonius, '_and was\naccounted a good actor_.' 'And what did you enact?' 'I did enact\n_Julius Caesar_. I--was killed i' the Capitol [I]. Brutus killed me.'\n'It was a _brute_ part of him [collateral sounds--Elizabethan\nphonography] to kill so _capitol a calf_ there.--Be the players\nready?'(?). [That is the question.]\n\n'While watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells,' says\nthe dramatic critic of the 'Times,' in the criticism of the Comedy of\nErrors before referred to, directing attention to the juvenile air of\nthe piece, to 'the classic severity in the form of the play,' and\n'that _baldness_ of treatment which is a peculiarity of antique\ncomedy'--'while watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells,\n_we may almost fancy we are at St. Peter's College_, witnessing the\nannual performance of _the Queen's scholars_.' That is not surprising\nto one acquainted with the history of these plays, though the\ncriticism which involves this kind of observation is not exactly the\ncriticism to which we have been accustomed here. But any one who\nwishes to see, as a matter of antiquarian curiosity, or for any other\npurpose, how far from being hampered in the first efforts of his\ngenius with _this_ class of educational associations, that particular\nindividual would naturally have been, in whose unconscious brains this\ndepartment of the modern learning is supposed to have had its\naccidental origin,--any one who wishes to see in what direction the\nantecedents of a person in that station in life would naturally have\nbiased, _at that time_, his first literary efforts, if, indeed, he had\never so far escaped from the control of circumstances as to master the\nart of the collocation of letters--any person who has any curiosity\nwhatever on this point is recommended to read in this connection a\nletter from a professional contemporary of this individual--one who\ncomes to us with unquestionable claims to our respect, inasmuch as he\nappears to have had some care for _the future_, and some object in\nliving beyond that of promoting his own immediate private interests\nand sensuous gratification.\n\nIt is a letter of Mr. Edward Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich College),\npublished by the Shakspere Society, to which we are compelled to have\nrecourse for information on this interesting question; inasmuch as\nthat distinguished contemporary and professional rival of his referred\nto, who occupies at present so large a space in the public eye, as it\nis believed for the best of reasons, has failed to leave us any\nspecimens of his method of reducing his own personal history to\nwriting, or indeed any demonstration of his appreciation of the art of\nchirography, in general. He is a person who appears to have given a\ndecided preference to the method of oral communication as a means of\neffecting his objects. But in reading this truly interesting document\nfrom the pen of an Elizabethan player, who _has_ left us a specimen of\nhis use of that instrument usually so much in esteem with men of\nletters, we must take into account the fact, that _this_ is an\nexceptional case of culture. It is the case of a player who aspired to\ndistinction, and who had raised himself by the force of his genius\nabove his original social level; it is the case of a player who has\nbeen referred to recently as a proof of the position which it was\npossible for 'a stage player' to attain to under those particular\nsocial conditions.\n\nBut as this letter is of a specially private and confidential nature,\nand as this poor player who _did_ care for the future, and who founded\nwith his talents, such as they were, a noble charity, instead of\nliving and dying to himself, is not to blame for his defects of\neducation,--since his _acts_ command our respect, however faulty his\nattempts at literary expression,--this letter will not be produced\nhere. But whoever has read it, or whoever may chance to read it, in\nthe course of an antiquarian research, will be apt to infer, that\nwhatever educational bias the first efforts of genius subjected to\ninfluences of the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged\nupon the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of\nSt. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly the\nfaults that the instructed critic would look for.\n\nBut to ascertain the fact, that the controlling idea of that new\nlearning which the Man in the Tower is illustrating now in so grand\nand mature a manner, not with his pen only, but with his 'living art,'\nand with such an entire independence of classic models, is already\norganically contained in those earlier works on which the classic\nshell is still visible, it is not necessary to go back to the\nWestminster play of these new classics, or to the performances of the\nQueen's Scholars. Plays having a considerable air of maturity, in\nwhich the internal freedom of judgment and taste is already absolute,\nstill exhibit on the surface of them this remarkable submission to the\nancient forms which are afterwards rejected on principle, and by a\nrule in the new rhetoric--a rule which the author of the Advancement\nof Learning is at pains to state very clearly. The _wildness_ of which\nwe hear so much, works itself out upon the surface, and determines the\nform at length, as these players proceed and grow bolder with their\nwork. A play, second to none in historical interest, invaluable when\nregarded simply in its relation to the history of this school, one\nwhich may be considered, in fact, the Introductory Play of the New\nSchool of Learning, is one which exhibits very vividly these striking\ncharacteristics of the earlier period. It is one in which the\nvulgarities of the Play-house are still the cloak of the philosophic\nsubtleties, and incorporated, too, into the philosophic design; and it\nis one in which the unity of design, that one design which makes the\nworks of this school, from first to last, as the work of one man, is\nstill cramped with those other unities which the doctrines of Dionysus\nand the mysteries of Eleusis prescribed of old to _their_\ninterpreters. 'What is the _end_ of _study_? What is the _end_ of it?'\nwas the word of the New School of Learning. _That_ was its first\nspeech. It was a speech produced with dramatic illustrations, for the\npurpose of bringing out its significance more fully, for the purpose\nof pointing the inquiry unmistakeably to those ends of learning which\nthe study of the learned then had not yet comprehended. It is a speech\non behalf of a new learning, in which the extant learning is produced\non the stage, in its actual historical relation to those '_ends_'\nwhich the new school conceived to be the true ends of it, which are\nbrought on to the stage in palpable, visible representation, not in\nallegorical forms, but in instances, 'conspicuous instances,' living\nspecimens, after the manner of this school.\n\n'What is the end of study?' cried the setter forth of this new\ndoctrine, as long before as when lore and love were debating it\ntogether in that 'little Academe' that was yet, indeed, to be 'the\nwonder of the world, still and contemplative in _living_ art.' 'What\nis the end of study?' cries already the voice of one pacing under\nthese new olives. _That_ was the word of the new school; that was the\nword of new ages, and these new minds taught of nature--her priests\nand prophets knew it then, already, 'Let fame that all hunt after _in\ntheir lives_,' _they_ cry--\n\n  _Live_ registered upon our brazen _tombs_,\n  And then _grace us in the disgrace of death_;\n  When spite of cormorant devouring time,\n  The endeavour of _this present breath_ may buy\n  _That honour_ which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,\n  And make us HEIRS of _all eternity_--[of ALL].\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  _Navarre_ shall be the wonder of the world,\n  Our Court shall be _a little Academe_,\n  _Still and contemplative in_--LIVING _art_.\n\nThis is the Poet of the Woods who is beginning his 'recreations' for\nus here--the poet who loves so well to take his court gallants in\ntheir silks and velvets, and perfumes, and fine court ladies with all\ntheir courtly airs and graces, and all the stale conventionalitites\nthat he is sick of, out from under the low roofs of princes into that\ngreat palace in which the Queen, whose service he is sworn to, keeps\nthe State. This is the school-master who takes his school all out on\nholiday excursions into green fields, and woods, and treats them to\ncountry merry-makings, and not in sport merely. This is the one that\nbreaks open the cloister, and the close walls that learning had dwelt\nin till then, and shuts up the musty books, and bids that old droning\ncease. This is the one that stretches the long drawn aisle and lifts\nthe fretted vault into a grander temple. The Court with all its pomp\nand retinue, the school with all its pedantries and brazen ignorance,\n'High Art' with its new graces, divinity, Mar-texts and all, must\n'come hither, come hither,' and 'under the green-wood tree lie with\nme,' the ding-dong of this philosopher's new learning says, calling\nhis new school together. This is the linguist that will find\n'_tongues_ in trees,' and crowd out from the halls of learning the\nlore of ancient parchments with their verdant classics, their 'truth\nin beauty dyed.' This is the teacher with whose new alphabet you can\nfind 'sermons in stones, _books_ in the running brooks,' and\ngood,--good--his '_good_' the good of the New School, that broader\n'_good_' in every _thing_. 'The roof of _this_ court is too high to be\n_yours_,' says the princess of this out-door scene to the sovereignty\nthat claimed it then.\n\nThis is 'great Nature's' Poet and Interpreter, and he takes us always\ninto 'the continent of nature'; but man is his chief end, and that\nisland which his life makes in the universal being is the point to\nwhich that Naturalist brings home all his new collections. This is the\nPoet of the Woods, but man,--man at the summit of his arts, in the\nperfection of his refinements, is always the creature that he is\n'collecting' in them. In his wildest glades, this is still the species\nthat he is busied with. He has brought him there to experiment on him,\nand that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to\nimprove his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine\nhis coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the\nPoet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his\nshoulder. He will wake a continental forest with it and subdue it, and\nfill it with his music.\n\nFor this is the Poet who cries 'Westward Ho!' But he has not got into\nthe woods yet in this play. He is only on the edge of them as yet. It\nis under the blue roof of that same dome which is 'too high,' the\nprincess here says, to belong to the pygmy that this Philosopher likes\nso well to bring out and to measure under that canopy--it is 'out of\ndoors' that this new speech on behalf of a new learning is spoken. But\nthere is a close rim of conventionalities about us still. It is _a\nPark_ that this audacious proposal is uttered in. But nothing can be\nmore orderly, for it is 'a Park with a Palace in it.' There it is, in\nthe background. If it were the Attic proscenium itself hollowed into\nthe south-east corner of the Acropolis, what more could one ask. But\nit is the palace of the King of--_Navarre_, who is the prince of good\nfellows and the prince of good learning at one and the same time,\nwhich makes, in this case, the novelty. 'A Park with a Palace in it'\nmakes the first scene. 'Another part of the same' with the pavilion of\na princess and the tents of _her_ Court seen in the distance, makes\nthe second; and the change from one part of this park to another,\nthough we get into the heart of it sometimes, is the utmost license\nthat the rigours of the Greek Drama permit the Poet to think of at\npresent. This criticism on the old learning, this audacious proposal\nfor the new, with all the bold dramatic illustration with which it is\nenforced, must be managed here under these restrictions. Whatever\n'persons' the plot of this drama may require for its evolutions,\nwhatever witnesses and reporters the trial and conviction of the old\nlearning, and the definition of the ground of the new, may require,\nwill have to be induced to cross this park at this particular time,\nbecause the form of the new art is not yet emancipated, and the Muse\nof the Inductive Science cannot stir from the spot to search them out.\n\nHowever, that does not impair the representation as it is managed.\nThere is a very bold artist here already, with all his deference for\nthe antique. We shall be sure to have _all_ when he is the plotter.\nThe action of this drama is not complicated. The persons of it are\nfew; the characterization is feeble, compared with that of some of the\nlater plays; but that does not hinder or limit the design, and it is\nall the more apparent for this artistic poverty, anatomically clear;\nwhile as yet that perfection of art in which all trace of the\nstructure came so soon to be lost in the beauty of the illustration,\nis yet wanting; while as yet that art which made of its living\ninstance an intenser life, or which made with its _living_ art a life\nmore living than life itself, was only germinating.\n\nThe illustration here, indeed, approaches the allegorical form, in the\nobtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities represented, so\noverdone as to wear the air of a caricature, though the historical\ncombination is still here. These diagrams are alive evidently; they\nare men, and not allegorical spectres, or toys, though they are\n'painted in character.'\n\nThe entire representation of the extant learning is dramatically\nproduced on this stage; the germ of the 'new' is here also; and the\nunoccupied ground of it is marked out here as, in the Advancement of\nLearning, by the criticism on the deficiences of that which has the\nfield. Here, too, the line of the extant culture,--the narrow indented\nboundary of the _culture_ that professed to take all is always\ndefining the new,--cutting out the wild not yet visited by the art of\nman;--only here the criticism is much more lively, because here 'we\ncome _to particulars_,' a thing which the new philosophy--much insists\non; and though this want in learning, and the wildness it leaves, is\nthat which makes tragedies in this method of exhibition; it has its\ncomical aspect also; and this is the laughing and weeping philosopher\nin one who manages these representations; and in this case it is the\ncomical aspect of the subject that is seized on.\n\nOur diagrams are still coarse here, but they have already the good\nscientific quality of exhausting the subject. It is the New School\nthat occupies the centre of the piece. Their quarters are in that\npalace, but the _king_ of it is the _Royalty_ (Raleigh) that founded\nand endowed this School--that was one of his secret titles,--and under\nthat name he may sometimes be recognized in descriptions and\ndedications that persons who were not in the secret of the School\nnaturally applied in another quarter, or appropriated to themselves.\n'_Rex_ was a surname among the Romans,' says the Interpreter of this\nSchool, in a very explanatory passage, 'as well as _King_ is _with\nus_.' It is the New School that is under these boughs here, but hardly\nthat as yet.\n\nIt is rather the representation of the new classical learning,--the\nold learning newly revived,--in which the new is germinating. It is\nthat learning in its _first_ effect on the young, enthusiastic, but\nearnest practical English mind. It is that revival of the old\nlearning, arrested, _daguerr\u00e9otyped_ at the moment in which the new\nbegins to stir in it, in minds which are going to be the master-minds\nof ages.\n\n'Common sense' is the word here already. 'Common sense' is the word\nthat this new Academe is convulsed with when the curtain rises. And\nthough it is laughter that you hear there now, sending its merry\nEnglish peals through those musty, antique walls, as the first ray of\nthat new beam enters them; the muse of the new mysteries has also\nanother mask, and if you will wait a little, you shall hear that tone\ntoo. Cries that the old mysteries never caught, lamentations for\nAdonis not heard before, griefs that Dionysus never knew, shall yet\nring out from those walls.\n\nUnder that classic dome which still calls itself Platonic, the\nquestions and experiments of the new learning are beginning. These\nyouths are here to represent the new philosophy, which is science, in\nthe act of taking its first step. The subject is presented here in\nlarge masses. But this central group, at least, is composed of living\nmen, and not dramatic shadows merely. There are good historical\nfeatures peering through those masks a little. These youths are full\nof youthful enthusiasm, and aspiring to the ideal heights of learning\nin their enthusiasm. But already the practical bias of their genius\nbetrays itself. They are making a practical experiment with the\nclassics, and to their surprise do not find them 'good for life.'\n\nHere is the School, then,--with the classics on trial in the persons\nof these new school-men. That is the central group. What more do we\nwant? Here is the new and the old already. But this is the old\n_revived_--newly revived;--this is the revival of learning in whose\nstimulus the _new_ is beginning. There is something in the field\nbesides that. There is a 'school-master abroad' yet, that has not been\nexamined. These young men who have resolved themselves in their secret\nsittings into a committee of the whole, are going to have him up. He\nwill be obliged to come into this park here, and speak his speech in\nthe ear of that English 'common sense,' which is meddling here, for\nthe first time, in a comprehensive manner with things in general; he\nwill have to 'speak out loud and plain,' that these English parents\nwho are sitting here in the theatre, some of 'the wiser sort' of them,\nat least, may get some hint of what it is that this pedagogue is\nbeating into their children's brains, taking so much of their glorious\nyouth from them--that priceless wealth of nature which none can\nrestore to them,--as the purchase. But this is not all. There is a man\nwho teaches the grown-up children of the parish in which this Park is\nsituated, who happens to live hard by,--a man who professes the care\nand cure of minds. He, too, has had a summons sent him; there will be\nno excuse taken; and his examination will proceed at the same time.\nThese two will come into the Park together; and perhaps we shall not\nbe able to detect any very marked difference in their modes of\nexpressing themselves. They are two ordinary, quiet-looking personages\nenough. There is nothing remarkable in their appearance; their coming\nhere is not forced. There are deer in this Park; and 'book-men' as\nthey are, they have a taste for sport also it seems. Unless you should\nget a glimpse of the type,--of the unit in their faces--and that\nshadowy train that _the cipher_ points to,--unless you should observe\nthat their speech is somewhat strongly pronounced for an individual\nrepresentation--merely glancing at them in passing--you would not,\nperhaps, suspect who they are. And yet the hints are not wanting; they\nare very thickly strewn,--the hints which tell you that in these two\nmen all the extant learning, which is in places of trust and\nauthority, is represented; all that is not included in that elegant\nlearning which those students are making sport of in those 'golden\nbooks' of theirs, under the trees here now.\n\nBut there is another department of art and literature which is put\ndown as a department of '_learning_,' and a most grave and momentous\ndepartment of it too, in that new scheme of learning which this play\nis illustrating,--one which will also have to be impersonated in this\nrepresentation,--one which plays a most important part in the history\nof this School. It is that which gives it the _power_ it lacks and\nwants, and in one way or another will have. It is that which makes _an\narm_ for it, and a _long_ one. It is that which supplies its hidden\n_arms_ and _armour_. But neither is this department of learning as it\nis extant,--as this School finds it prepared to its hands, going to be\npermitted to escape the searching of this comprehensive satire. There\nis a 'refined traveller of Spain' haunting the purlieus of this Court,\nwho is just the bombastic kind of person that is wanted to act this\npart. For this impersonation, too, is historical. There are just such\ncreatures in nature as this. We see them now and then; or, at least,\nhe is not much overdone,--'this child of Fancy,--Don Armado hight.' It\nis the Old Romance, with his ballads and allegories,--with his old\n'lies' and his new arts,--that this company are going to use for their\nnew minstrelsy; but first they will laugh him out of his bombast and\nnonsense, and instruct him in the knowledge of 'common things,' and\nteach him how to make poetry out of them. They have him here now, to\nmake sport of him with the rest. It is the fashionable literature,--\nthe literature that entertains _a court_,--the literature of _a\ntyranny_, with his gross servility, with his courtly affectations,\nwith his arts of amusement, his 'vain delights,' with his euphuisms,\nhis 'fire-new words,' it is the polite learning, the Elizabethan\n_Belles Lettres_, that is brought in here, along with that old\nDryasdust Scholasticism, which the other two represent, to make up\nthis company. These critics, who turn the laugh upon themselves, who\ncaricature their own follies for the benefit of learning, who make\nthemselves and their own failures the centre of the comedy of _Love's_\nLabour's Lost, are not going to let this thing escape; with the\nheights of its ideal, and the grossness of its real, it is the very\nfuel for the mirth that is blazing and crackling here. For these are\nthe woodmen that are at work here, making sport as they work; hewing\ndown the old decaying trunks, gathering all the nonsense into heaps,\nand burning it up and and clearing the ground for the new.\n\n'What is the end of study,' is the word of this Play. To get the old\nbooks shut, but _not_ till they have been examined, _not_ till all the\ngood in them has been taken out, not till we have made a _stand_ on\nthem; to get the old books in their places, under our feet, and\n'_then_ to make progression' after we see where we are, is the\nproposal here--_here_ also. It is the shutting up of the old books,\nand the opening of the new ones, which is the business here. But\n_that_--that is not the proposal of an ignorant man (as this Poet\nhimself takes pains to observe); it is not the proposition of a man\nwho does not know what there is in books--who does not know but there\nis every thing in them that they claim to have in them, every thing\nthat is good for life, _magic_ and all. An ignorant man is in awe of\nbooks, on account of his ignorance. He thinks there are all sorts of\nthings in them. He is very diffident when it comes to any question in\nregard to them. He tells you that he is not '_high learned_,' and\ndefers to his betters. Neither is this the proposition of a man who\nhas read _a little_, who has only a smattering in books, as the Poet\nhimself observes. It is the proposition of _a scholar_, who has read\nthem _all_, or had them read for him and examined, who knows what is\nin them _all_, and what they are good for, and what they are not good\nfor. This is the man who laughs at learning, and borrows her own\nspeech to laugh her down with. _This_, and _not the ignorant man_, it\nis who opens at last 'great nature's' gate to us, and tells us to come\nout and learn of her, _because_ that which old books did _not_ 'clasp\nin,' that which old philosophies have 'not _dreamt_ of,'--the lore of\nlaws not written yet in books of man's devising, the lore of _that_ of\nwhich man's ordinary life consisteth is _here_, uncollected, waiting\nto be spelt out.\n\n  _King_. _How well he's read_ to reason _against reading_.\n\nis the inference _here_.\n\n  _Dumain_. _Proceeded_ well to _stop_ all good _proceeding._\n\nIt is _progress_ that is proposed here also. After the survey of\nlearning 'has been well taken, _then_ to make _progession_' is the\nword. It is not the doctrine of unlearning that is taught here in this\nsatire. It is a learning that includes all the extant wisdom, and\nfinds it insufficient. It is one that requires a new and nobler study\nfor its god-like _ends_. But, at the same time, the hindrances that a\npractical learning has to encounter are pointed at from the first. The\nfact, that the true ends of learning take us at once into the ground\nof the forbidden questions, is as plainly stated in the opening speech\nof the New Academy as the nature of the statement will permit. The\nfact, that the intellect is trained to _vain delights_ under such\nconditions, because there is no earnest legitimate occupation of it\npermitted, is a fact that is glanced at here, as it is in other\nplaces, though not in such a manner, of course, as to lead to a\n'question' from the government in regard to the meaning of the\npassages in which these grievances are referred to. Under these\nembarrassments it is, we are given to understand, however, that the\ncriticism on the old learning and the plot for the new is about to\nproceed.\n\nHere it takes the form of comedy and broad farce. There is a touch of\n'tart Aristophanes' in the representation here. This is the\nintroductory performance of the school in which the student hopes for\n_high words howsoever low the matter_, emphasizing that hope with an\nallusion to the heights of learning, as he finds it, and the highest\nword of it, which seems irreverent, until we find from the whole\npurport of the play how far _he_ at least is from taking it _in vain_,\nwhatever implication of that sort his criticism may be intended to\nleave on others, who use good words with so much iteration and to so\nlittle purpose. 'That is a _high hope_ for a low having' is the\nrejoinder of that associate of his, whose views on this point agree\nwith his own so entirely. It is the height of the _hope_ and the\nlowness of the _having_--it is the height of the _words_ and the\nlowness of the _matter_, that makes the incongruity here. That is the\nsoul of all the mirth that is stirring here. It is the height of '_the\nstyle_' that '_gives us cause to climb in the merriment_' that makes\nthe subject of this essay. It is literature in general that is laughed\nat here, and the branches of it in particular. It is the old books\nthat are walking about under these trees, with their follies all\nravelled out, making sport for us.\n\nBut this is not all. It is the _defect_ in learning which is\nrepresented here--that same 'defect' which a graver work of this\nAcademy reports, in connection with a proposition for the Advancement\nof Learning--for its advancement into the fields not yet taken up, and\nwhich turn out, upon inquiry, to be the fields of human life and\npractice;--it is that main defect which is represented here. 'I find a\nkind of science of \"_words_\" but none of \"_things_,\"' says the\nreporter. 'What do you read, my lord?' 'Words, words, words,' echoes\nthe Prince of Denmark. 'I find in these antique books, in these\nPhilosophies and Poems, a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of\nmatter chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations, or\nto the eloquence of discourses,' says the other and graver reporter;\n'but as to the ordinary and common matter of which life consisteth, I\ndo _not_ find it erected into an art or science, or reduced to written\ninquiry.' 'How _low_ soever the matter, I hope in God for _high\nwords_,' says a speaker, who comes out of that same palace of learning\non to this stage with the secret badge of the new lore on him, which\nis the lore of practice--a speaker not less grave, though he comes in\nnow in the garb of this pantomime, to make sport for us with his news\nof learning. For 'Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light\nfor the law of writ and the liberty.'\n\nIt is the high _words_ and the low _having_ that make the incongruity.\nBut we cannot see the vanity of those heights of words, till the\nlowness of the matter which they profess to abstract has been brought\ninto contrast with them, till the particulars which they do _not_\ngrasp, which they can _not_ compel, have been brought into studious\ncontrast with them. The delicate graces of those flowery summits of\nspeech which the ideal nature, when it energises in speech, creates,\nmust overhang in this design the rude actuality which the untrained\nnature in man, forgotten of art, is always producing. And it is the\nmight of nature in this opposition, it is the force of 'matter,' it is\nthe unconquerable cause contrasted with the vanity of the words that\nhave not comprehended the _cause_, it is the futility of these heights\nof words that are not '_forms_' that do not correspond to things which\nmust be exhibited here also. It is the force of the _law_ in nature,\nthat must be brought into opposition here with the height of the\n_word_, the _ideal_ word, the _higher_, but not yet scientifically\nabstracted word, that seeks in vain because it has no 'grappling-hook'\non the actuality, to bind it. There already are the _heights of\nlearning_ as it is, as this school finds it, dramatically exhibited on\nthe one hand; but this, too,--_life_ as it is,--as this school finds\nit, man's life as it is, unreduced to order by his philosophy,\nunreduced to melody by his verse, must also be dramatically exhibited\non the other hand, must also be impersonated. It is life that we have\nhere, the 'theoric' on the one side, the 'practic' on the other. The\nheight of the books on the one side, the lowness, the unvisited,\n'unlettered' lowness of the life on the other. That which exhibits the\n_defect_ in learning that the new learning is to remedy, the new\nuncultured, unbroken ground of science must be exhibited here also.\nBut _that_ is man's life. That is the world. And what if it be? There\nare diagrams in this theatre large enough for that. It is the theatre\nof the New Academy which deals also in IDEAS, but prefers the\nsolidarities. The wardrobe and other properties of this theatre are\nspecially adapted to exigencies of this kind. The art that put the\nextant learning with those few strokes into the grotesque forms you\nsee there, will not be stopped on this side either, for any law of\nwrit or want of space and artistic comprehension. This is the learning\nthat can be bounded in the nut-shell of an aphorism and include all in\nits bounds.\n\nThere are not many persons here, and they are ordinary looking persons\nenough. _But_ if you _lift_ those dominos a little, which that\n'refined traveller of Spain' has brought in fashion, you will find\nthat this rustic garb and these homely country features hide more than\nthey promised; and the princess, with her train, who is keeping state\nin the tents yonder, though there is an historical portrait there too,\nis greater than she seems. This Antony _Dull_ is a poor rude fellow;\nbut he is a great man in this play. This is the play in which one asks\n'Which is the princess?' and the answer is, 'The tallest and the\nthickest.' Antony is the thickest, he is the acknowledged sovereign\nhere in this school; for he is of that greater part that carries it,\nand though he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book, these\nspectacles which the new 'book men' are getting up here are intended\nchiefly for him. And that unlettered small knowing soul 'Me'--'still\n_me_'--insignificant as you think him when you see him in the form of\na country swain, is a person of most extensive domains and\noccupations, and of the very highest dignity, as this philosophy will\ndemonstrate in various ways, under various symbols. You will have that\nsame _me_ in the form of a _Mountain_, before you have read all the\nbooks of this school, and mastered all its '_tokens_' and '_symbols_.'\n\nThe dramatic representation here is meagre; but we shall find upon\ninquiry it is already the Globe Theatre, with all its new\nsolidarities, new in philosophy, new in poetry, that the leaves of\nthis park hide--this park that the doors and windows of the New\nAcademe open into--these new grounds that it lets out its students to\nplay and study in, and collect their specimens from--'still and\ncontemplative in living art.' It was all the world that was going\nthrough that park that day haply, we shall find. It is all the world\nthat we get in this narrow representation here, as we get it in a more\nlimited representation still, in another place. 'All the world knows\n_me_ in my book and my book in _me_,' cries the Egotist of the\nMountain. It is the first Canto of that great Epic, whose argument\nruns through so many books, that is chanted here. It is the war, the\nunsuccessful war of lore and nature, whose lost fields have made man's\nlife, that is getting reviewed at last and reduced to speech and\nwriting. It is the school itself that makes the centre of the plot in\nthis case; these gay young philosophers with 'the ribands' yet\nfloating in their 'cap of youth,' who oppose lore to love, who 'war\nagainst _their own affections_ and THE HUGE ARMY OF THE WORLD'S\nDESIRES,' ere they know what they are; who think to conquer nature's\npotencies, her universal powers and causes, with wordy ignorance, with\nresolutions that ignore them simply, and make a virtue of ignoring\nthem, these are the chief actors here, who come out of that classic\ntiring house where they have been shut up with the ancients so long,\nto celebrate on this green plot, which is life, their own defeat, and\npropose a better wisdom, the wisdom of the moderns. And Holofernes,\nthe schoolmaster, who cultivates minds, and Sir Nathaniel, the curate,\nwho cures them, and Don Armado or Don A_drama_dio, from the flowery\nheights of the new Belles Lettres, with the last refinement of\nEuphuism on his lips, and Antony Dull, and the country damsel and her\nswain, and the princess and her attendants, are all there to eke out\nand complete the philosophic design,--to exhibit the extant learning\nin its airy flights and gross descents, in its ludicrous attempt to\nescape from those particulars or to grapple, without loss of grandeur,\nthose particulars of which man's life consisteth. It is the vain\npretension and assumption of those faulty wordy abstractions, whose\nfalseness and failure in practice this school is going to expose\nelsewhere; it is the defect of those abstractions and idealisms that\nthe Novum Organum was invented to remedy, which is exhibited so\ngrossly and palpably here. It is the height of those great swelling\nwords of rhetoric and logic, in rude contrast with those actualities\nwhich the history of man is always exhibiting, which the universal\nnature in man is always imposing on the learned and unlearned, the\nprofane and the reverend, the courtier and the clown, the 'king and\nthe beggar,' the actualities which the natural history of man\ncontinues perseveringly to exhibit, in the face of those logical\nabstractions and those ideal schemes of man as he should be, which had\nbeen till this time the fruit of learning;--those actualities, those\nparticulars, whose lowness the new philosophy would begin with, which\nthe new philosophy would erect into an art or science.\n\nThe foundation of this ascent is natural history. There must be\nnothing omitted here, or the stairs would be unsafe. The rule in this\nSchool, as stated by the Interpreter in Chief, is, 'that there be\n_nothing in the globe of matter_, which should not be likewise in the\nglobe of _crystal_ or _form_;' that is, he explains, 'that there\nshould not be anything in _being_ and _action_, which should not be\n_drawn_ and _collected_ into _contemplation_ and _doctrine_.' The\nlowness of matter, all the capabilities and actualities of speech and\naction, not of the refined only, but of the vulgar and profane, are\nincluded in the science which contemplates an historical result, and\nwhich proposes the _reform_ of these actualities, the cure of these\nmaladies,--which comprehends man as man in its intention,--which makes\nthe _Common Weal_ its end.\n\nScience is the word that unlocks the books of this School, its gravest\nand its lightest, its books of loquacious prose and stately allegory,\nand its Book of Sports and Riddles. Science is the clue that still\nthreads them, that never breaks, in all their departures from the\ndecorums of literature, in their lowest descents from the refinements\nof society. The vulgarity is not _the_ vulgarity of the vulgar--the\ninelegancy is not the spontaneous rudeness of the ill-bred--any more\nthan its doctrine of nature is the doctrine of the unlearned. The\nloftiest refinements of letters, the courtliest breeding, the most\nexquisite conventionalities, the most regal dignities of nature, are\nalways present in _these_ works, to measure these abysses, flowering\nto their brink. Man as he is, booked, surveyed,--surveyed from the\ncontinent of nature, put down as he is in her book of kinds, not as he\nis from his own interior isolated conceptions only,--the universal\npowers and causes as they are developed in him, in his untaught\naffections, in his utmost sensuous darkness,--the universal principle\ninstanced whereit is most buried, the cause in nature found;--man as\nhe is, in his heights and in his depths, 'from his lowest note to the\ntop of his key,'--man in his possibilities, in his actualities, in his\nthought, in his speech, in his book language, and in his every-day\nwords, in his loftiest lyric tongue, in his lowest pit of play-house\ndegradation, searched out, explained, interpreted. That is the key to\nthe books of this Academe, who carry always on their armour, visible\nto those who have learned their secret, but hid under the symbol of\ntheir double worship, the device of the Hunters,--the symbol of the\ntwin-gods,--the silver bow, or the bow that finds all. 'Seeing that\nshe beareth two persons ... I do also otherwise _shadow_ her.'\n\nIt is man's life, and the culture of it, erected into an art or\nscience, that these books contain. In the lowness of the lowest, and\nin the aspiration of the noblest, the powers whose entire history must\nmake the basis of a successful morality and policy are found. It is\nall abstracted or drawn into contemplation, 'that the precepts of cure\nand culture may be more rightly concluded.' 'For that which in\nspeculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical\nphilosophy becomes the rule.'\n\nIt is not necessary to illustrate this criticism in this case, because\nin this case the design looks through the execution everywhere. The\ncriticism of the Novum Organum, the criticism of the Advancement of\nLearning, and the criticism of Raleigh's History of the World, than\nwhich there is none finer, when once you penetrate its crust of\nprofound erudition, is here on the surface. And the scholasticism is\nnot more obtrusive here, the learned sock is not more ostentatiously\nparaded, than in some critical places in those performances; while the\nhumour that underlies the erudition issues from a depth of learning\nnot less profound.\n\nAs, for instance, in this burlesque of the descent of _Euphuism_ to\nthe prosaic detail of the human conditions, not then accommodated with\na style in literature, a defect in learning which this Academy\nproposed to remedy. A new department in literature which began with a\nseries of papers issued from this establishment, has since undertaken\nto cover the ground here indicated, the _every-day_ human life, and\nreduce it to written inquiry, notwithstanding 'the lowness of the\nmatter.'\n\nLETTER FROM DON ARMADO TO THE KING.\n\n_King_ [_reads_], 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole\ndominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering\npatron.... So it is,--besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did\ncommend the black, oppressing humour to the most wholesome physick of\nthy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to\nwalk. The time when? About the sixth hour: when beasts most graze,\nbirds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called\nsupper.'\n\n[No one who is much acquainted with the style of the author of this\nletter ought to have any difficulty in identifying him here. There was\na method of dramatic composition in use then, and not in _this_\ndramatic company only, which produced an amalgamation of styles. 'On a\nforgotten matter,' these associated authors themselves, perhaps, could\nnot always 'make distinction of their hands.' But there are places\nwhere Raleigh's share in this 'cry of players' shows through very\npalpably.]\n\n'So much for the time _when_. Now for the ground _which_; which I mean\nI walked upon: it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where\nI mean I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that\ndraweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou\nbeholdest, surveyest, or seest, etc....\n\n'Thine in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty.\n\n'DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.'\n\nAnd in another letter from the same source, the dramatic criticism on\nthat style of literature which it was the intention of this School 'to\nreform altogether' is thus continued.\n\n... 'The magnanimous and most illustrate King _Cophetua_, set eye upon\nthe pernicious and indubitate beggar _Zenelophon_. And it was he that\nmight rightly say, _Veni, vidi, vici_; which to _anatomise_ in the\nvulgar, (_O base and obscure vulgar_!) _Videlicet_, he came, saw, and\novercame... Who came? the king. Why did he come? to see. Why did he\nsee? to overcome. To whom came he? to the beggar. What saw he? the\nbeggar. Who overcame he? the beggar. The conclusion is victory. On\nwhose side? etc.\n\n'Thine in the dearest design of industry.'\n\n[_Dramatic comment_.]\n\n_Boyet. I am much deceived but I remember the style.\n\n_Princess_. Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile._\n\n_Jaquenetta_. Good Master Parson, be so good as to read me this\nletter--it was sent me from Don _Armatho_: I beseech you to read it.\n\n_Holofernes_. [Speaking here, however, not in character but for 'the\n_Academe_.'] _Fauste precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra\nRuminat_, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as\nthe traveller doth of Venice\n\n  --Vinegia, Vinegia,\n  Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.\n\nOld Mantuan! Old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, _loves thee\nnot.--Ut re sol la mi fa.--Under pardon_, Sir, what are THE CONTENTS?\nor, rather, as Horace says in his--What, my soul, _verses_?\n\n_Nath_. Ay, Sir, and _very learned_ [one would say so _upon\nexamination_].\n\n_Hol_. Let me have a _staff_, a stanza, a verse; _Lege Domine_.\n\n_Nath_. [Reads the 'verses.']--'If love make me forsworn,' etc.\n\n_Hol_. You _find not the apostrophe_, and _so--miss_ the\n_accent_--[criticising the reading. It is necessary to find the\n_apostrophe_ in the verses of this Academy, before you can give the\naccent correctly; there are other points which require to be noted\nalso, in this refined courtier's writings, as this criticism will\ninform us]. Let me _supervise_ the canzonet. Here _are only numbers_\nratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadency of poesy,\n_caret_. _Ovidius Naso_ was the man. And _why_, indeed, Naso; but for\n_smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy_, the _jerks of\ninvention_. _Imitari_ is nothing; so doth the hound his master, the\nape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. [It was no such reading and\nwriting as _that_ which this Academy was going to countenance, or\nteach.] But, Damosella, was this directed to you?\n\n_Jaq_. Ay, Sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's\nlords.\n\n_Hol_. I will _over-glance_ the _super-script_. 'To the snow white\nhand of the most beauteous lady _Rosaline_.' I will look again _on the\nintellect_ of the letter for the _nomination_ of the party writing,\n_to the person written unto_ (_Rosaline_).--[_Look again_.--That is\nthe rule for the reading of letters issued from this Academy, whether\nthey come in Don Armado's name or another's, when the point is _not_\nto 'miss the _accent_.'] 'Your ladyship's, in all desired employment,\nBIRON.' Sir Nathaniel, this Biron is one of the votaries with the\nking, and here he hath framed a _letter_ to a _sequent_ of the\nstranger queen's, which, _accidentally or by way of progression_, hath\nmiscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the _royal\nhand of the king. It may concern much_. Stay not thy compliment, I\nforgive thy duty. _Adieu_.\n\n_Nath_. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously;\nand as a certain father saith--\n\n_Hol_. Sir, tell me not of _the father_, I do fear colorable colors.\nBut to return to _the verses_. Did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?\n\n_Nath_. Marvellous well _for the pen_.\n\n_Hol_. I _dine_ to-day at the _father's _of a certain pupil of _mine_,\nwhere, if before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with\na grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parent of the\nforesaid child, or pupil, undertake your _ben venuto, where I will\nprove_ those _verses to be very unlearned_, neither savouring of\npoetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech _your society_.\n\n_Nath_. And thank you, too; for _society_ (saith the text) is _the\nhappiness of_ LIFE.\n\n_Hol_. And, _certes_, the text _most infallibly concludes it_.--Sir,\n[to Dull] I do _invite you too_, [to hear the verses ex-criticised]\nyou _shall not_ say me _nay: pauca verba. Away_; the _gentles are at\ntheir games_, and we will _to our recreation_.\n\n    Another part of the _same_. After dinner.\n\n    _Re-enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull_.\n\n_Hol. Satis quod sufficit_.\n\n_Nath_. I praise God for you, Sir: your _reasons_ at dinner have been\n_sharp and sententious_; pleasant without scurrility, witty without\naffection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and\nstrange without heresy. I did converse this _quondam_ day with a\ncompanion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called Don\nAdriano de Armado.\n\n_Hol_. _Novi hominem tanquam te_. His manner is lofty, his discourse\nperemptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, and his general\nbehaviour, vain, ridiculous and thrasonical. He is too picked, too\nspruce, too affected, too odd, and, as it were, too peregrinate, as I\nmay call it.\n\n_Nath_. A most singular and choice epithet! [Takes out his\ntable-book.]\n\n_Hol_. _He draweth out the thread of his verbosity_ finer than the\n_staple of his argument_, ['More matter with less art,' says the queen\nin Hamlet], I abhor such _fantastical phantasms_, such insociable and\n_point device_ companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak\ndoubt _fine_ when _he should say doubt_, etc. This is abhominable\nwhich he would call abominable; it insinuateth me of insanie; _Ne\nintelligis, domine_? to make frantic, lunatic.\n\n_Nath_. _Lans deo bone intelligo_.\n\n_Hol_. _Bone--bone for bene_: _Priscian, a little scratched 'twill\nserve_. [This was never meant to be printed of course; all this is\nunderstood to have been prepared only for a performance in 'a booth.']\n\n_Enter_ Armado, etc.\n\n_Nath. Videsne quis venit?_\n\n_Ho. Video et gaudeo._\n\n_Arm._ Chirra!\n\n_Hol. Quare_ Chirra not Sirrah!\n\nBut the first appearance of these two _book-men_, as _Dull_ takes\nleave them to call them in this scene, is not less to the purpose.\nThey come in with Antony Dull, who serves as a foil to their learning;\nfrom the moment that they open their lips they speak 'in character,'\nand they do not proceed far before they give us some hints of the\nauthor's purpose.\n\n_Nath_. Very _reverent sport_ truly, and done _in the testimony of a\ngood conscience_.\n\n_Hol_. The deer was, as you know, in _sanguis_, ripe as a pomewater,\nwho _now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo_, the sky, the\nwelkin, the heaven, and _anon falleth like a crab on the face of\nterra_--the soil, the land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights\nand depths of the incongruities which are the subject here.]\n\n_Nath_. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied,\nlike a scholar at the least, but, etc.....\n\n_Hol_. Most _barbarous_ intimation! [referring to Antony Dull, who has\nbeen trying to understand this learned language, and apply it to the\nsubject of conversation, but who fails in the attempt, very much to\nthe amusement and self-congratulation of these scholars]. Yet a _kind_\nof _insinuation_, as it were, _in via, in way of explication_ [a style\nmuch in use in this school], _facere_, as it were, replication, or\nrather _ostentare_, to show, as it were, _his inclination_, after his\nundressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather\nunlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my\n_haud credo_ for a deer.... Twice sod simplicity, _bis coctus!_ Oh\n_thou monster ignorance_, how deformed dost thou look!\n\n_Nath._ [explaining] Sir, _he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a\nbook_; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; _his\nintellect_ is not replenished; he is only an animal--only sensible in\nthe duller parts;\n\nAnd such _barren_ plants are set before us that we thankful should be,\n(Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts that do fructify\nin us more than he.\n\nFor _as it would ill become me_ to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So\nwere there _a patch set on learning_ to see HIM in a _school_. [That\nwould be a new 'school,' a new 'learning,' patching the 'defect' (as\nit would be called elsewhere) in the old.]\n\n_Dull_. You two are book-men. Can you tell me by your wit, etc.\n\n_Nath_. A rare talent.\n\n_Dull_. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.\n\n_Hol_. This is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish\nextravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas,\napprehensions, motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in\nwhom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.\n\n_Nath_. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners;\nfor their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit\nvery greatly under you; you are a good member of the COMMON-WEALTH.\n\n  He is in earnest of course. Is the Poet so too?\n  'What is the end of study?'--let me know.\n\n'O they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism\non this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains\nhis exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of\nAntony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does\nnot see what it is that is criticised here;--that it is the learning\nof an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous\ndebased, wretched time, that has been fed long--always from \"the\nalms-basket of words.\" And one who is acquainted already with the\nstyle of this school, who knows already its secret signs and stamp,\nwould not need to be told to look again on the intellect of the letter\nfor the nomination of the party writing, to the person written to, in\norder to see what source this pastime comes from,--what player it is\nthat is behind the scene here. 'Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting\nmind,' and beginning in the lowness of the actual, and collecting the\nprinciples that are in all actualities, the true forms that are forms\nin nature, and not in man's speech only, the new IDEAS of the New\nAcademy, the ideas that are powers, with these 'simples' that are\ncauses, he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his\npoems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom whose iron\nchain he wears.\n\n'The gentles were at their games,' and the soul of new ages was\nbeginning its re-creations.\n\nFor this is but the beginning of that 'Armada' that this Don\nArmado--who fights with sword and pen, in ambush and in the open\nfield--will sweep his old enemy from the seas with yet.\n\n  O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,\n  But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.\n\n  Look how the father's face\n  Lives in his issue; even so the race\n  Of Shake-spear's mind and _manners_ brightly _shines_\n  In his _well turn'd_ and _true filed lines_,\n  In each of which he seems to _shake_ a _lance_,\n  As _brandished_ in the eyes of--[what?--]_Ignorance!_\n\n  BEN JONSON.\n\n_Ignorance!_--yes, that was the word.\n\nIt is the Prince of that little Academe that sits in the Tower here\nnow. It is in the Tower that that little Academe holds its\n'conferences' now. There is a little knot of men of science who\ncontrive to meet there. The associate of Raleigh's studies, the\npartner of his plans and toils for so many years, _Hariot_, too\nscientific for his age, is one of these. It is in the Tower that\nRaleigh's school is kept now. The English youth, the hope of England,\nfollow this teacher still. 'Many young gentlemen still resort to him.'\nGilbert Harvey is one of this school. 'None but _my father_ would keep\nsuch a bird in such a cage,' cries _one_ of them--that Prince of Wales\nthrough whom the bloodless revolution was to have been accomplished;\nand a Queen seeks his aid and counsel there still.\n\nIt is in the Tower now that we must look for the sequel of that\nholiday performance of the school. It is the genius that had made its\ngame of that old _love's_ labour's lost that is at work here still,\nstill bent on making a lore of life and love, still ready to spend its\nrhetoric on things, and composing its metres with them.\n\n  Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,\n  When in eternal lines to _time_ thou growest.\n\nHe is building and manning new ships in his triumphant fleet. But they\nare more warlike than they were. The papers that this Academe issues\nnow have the stamp of the Tower on them. 'The golden shower,' that\n'flowed from his fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more.\nFierce bitter things are flung forth from that retreat of learning,\nwhile the kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs.\nThe 'martial hand' is much used in the compositions of this school\nindeed for a long time afterwards.\n\n  Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower\n  When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise,\n\nsaid the partner of his verse long before.\n\n  With _rage_\n  Or _influence chide_ or _cheer_ the drooping stage,\n\nsays _his_ proteg\u00e9.\n\nIt was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation sat amid\nhis books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of\nthat Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser\nsort' found, 'thrown in at their _study windows_,' writings, _as if_\nthey came 'from _several citizens_, wherein _Caesar's ambition was\nobscurely glanced at_' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus\n'pieced them out.'\n\n  Brutus _thou sleep'st_; awake, and _see thyself_.\n  Shall _Rome_ [soft--'_thus must I piece it out_.']\n  Shall _Rome_ stand under _one man's awe_? _What_ Rome?\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,\n  But in ourselves that we are underlings.\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  Age, _thou_ art shamed.\n\nIt was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player who was\nbringing forth, on 'the banks of Thames,' such wondrous things out of\nhis treasury then, first heard the Roman foot upon their stage, and\nthe long-stifled, and pent-up speech of English freedom, bursting from\nthe old Roman patriot's lips.\n\n  _Cassius_. And let us swear our resolution.\n\n  _Brutus_. _No_, not an oath: If not the face of men,\n  The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse,\n  If these be motives weak, break off betimes,\n  And every man hence to his idle bed;\n  _So_ let high-sighted tyranny range on,\n  Till _each man drop by lottery_.\n\nIt was while he sat there, that the player who did not _write_ his\nspeeches, said--\n\n  _Nor stony tower_, nor walls of beaten brass,\n  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,\n  Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;\n  If I know this, know _all the world beside_,\n  That part of tyranny that _I_ do bear,\n  _I_ can shake off at pleasure.\n\n  And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?\n  _Poor Man_! I know he would not be a wolf,\n  But that he sees the _Romans_ are but sheep:\n  _He_ were no lion, were not _Romans_ hinds.\n\n  But I, perhaps, speak _this_\n  Before a willing bondman.\n\n  _Hamlet_. My lord,--you played once in the university, you say?\n\n  _Polonius_. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.\n\n  _Hamlet_. And what did you enact?\n\n  _Polonius_. I did enact _Julius Caesar_. I was killed i'the Capitol;\n  Brutus killed me.\n\n  _Hamlet_. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf\n  there.--Be the players ready?\n\nSeneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of\nwrit, and the liberty. _These_ are the only _men_.\n\n  _Hamlet_. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you\n  would drive me into a toil?\n\n  _Guild_. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too\n  unmannerly.\n\n  _Hamlet_. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this\n  pipe?\n\n  _Guild_. My lord, I cannot.\n\n  _Hamlet_. I pray you.\n\n  _Guild_. Believe me, I cannot.\n\n  _Hamlet_. I do beseech you.\n\n  _Guild_. I know no touch of it, my lord.\n\n  _Hamlet_. 'Tis as _easy as lying. Govern_ these ventages with your\n  fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, _and it will\n  discourse most eloquent music_. Look you, _these are the stops_.\n\n  _Guild_. But _these_ cannot _I_ command to any _utterance of\n  harmony: I have not the_ SKILL.\n\n  _Hamlet. Why, look you now_, how _unworthy a thing_ you make of ME?\n  You would _play upon_ ME; _you would seem_ to know _my stops_; you\n  would pluck out the heart of MY MYSTERY; you would sound me from\n  my lowest note to the top of my key; and there is much _music_,\n  excellent voice in _this little organ, yet_ cannot you make it\n  speak. 'Sblood! do you think I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A\n  PIPE? Call me what _instrument_ you will, though you can _fret_\n  me, you cannot PLAY upon me.\n\n\n\n  _Hamlet_. Why did you laugh when I said, _Man_ delights not me?\n\n  _Guild_. To think, my lord, if you delight not in _man_, what\n  lenten entertainment THE PLAYERS shall receive from you. We\n  coted them on the way, and thither are they coming to offer\n  you--SERVICE.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK I.\n\nTHE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION.\n\n\nPART I.\n\nMICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'\n\n  And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,\n  With windlaces and with _assays_ of _bias_,\n  By _indirections_, find _directions out_;\n  So by my former lecture and advice,\n  Shall you, my son.--_Hamlet_.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE\nENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED.\n\n\nSingle, _I'll_ resolve you.--_Tempest_.\n\nObserve his inclination in yourself.--_Hamlet_.\n\nFor ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words.\n_Advancement of Learning_.\n\nThe fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the\nArts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole\nground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty\nof man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some\nspecial and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,'\nwould not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the\npeculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the\nEnglish nation.\n\nAnd certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of\nthe world at the time in which this science,--which is the new\npractical science of the modern ages,--makes its first appearance in\nhistory,--any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount\nof intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first\nappearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs\npresupposes,--any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public\nit was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when\nthat engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering\nthe ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was as\nyet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world was still\nthe learning of the cell and the cloister, when the practice of the\nworld was still in all departments, unscientific,--any one at least\nwho will stop to consider the nature of the 'preconceptions' which a\nscience that is none other than the universal science of practice,\nmust needs encounter in its principal and nobler fields, will hardly\nneed to be told that if produced at all under such conditions, it must\nneeds be produced covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a\nscience would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground\nof its nobler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as the\ninevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the human\naffairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of its claim\nto dictate to the men of practice in any department of their\nproceedings.\n\nThat that little 'courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in which\nthis great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was supposed in\ntheir own time to have had its origin, was composed of wits and men of\nlearning who were known, in their own time, to have concealed their\nconnection with the works on which their literary fame chiefly\ndepended--that that 'glorious Willy,' who finds these forbidden fields\nof science all open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this\ncompany--that a style of 'delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed\nin part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent use of\nthe middle ages, but largely modified and expressly adapted to this\nexigency, was employed in the compositions of this school, both in\nprose and verse, a style capable of conveying not merely a double, but\na triple significance; a style so capacious in its concealments, so\nlarge in its '_cryptic_,' as to admit without limitation the whole\nscope of this argument, and so involved as to conceal in its\ninvolutions, all that was then forbidden to appear,--this has been\nproved in that part of the work which contains the historical key to\nthis delivery.\n\nWe have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact, that the\nman who was at the head of this new conjunction in speculation and\npractice in its more immediate historical developments,--the scholar\nwho was most openly concerned in his own time in the introduction of\nthose great changes in the condition of the world, which date their\nbeginning from this time, was himself primarily concerned in the\ninvention of this art. That this great political chief, this founder\nof new polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same\ntime the founder of a new school in philosophy, was understood in his\nown time to have found occasion for the use of such an art, in his\noral as well as in his written communications with his school;--that\nhe was connected with a scientific association, which was known to\nhave concealed under the profession of a curious antiquarian research,\nan inquiry into the higher parts of sciences which the government of\nthat time was not disposed to countenance;--that in the opinion of\npersons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the\nfacts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself beheaded,\nchiefly on account of the discovery of his use of it in one of his\ngravest literary works;--all this has been produced already, as matter\nof historic record merely. All this remains in the form of detailed\ncontemporary statement, which suffices to convey, if not the fact that\nthe forbidden parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions\nof this school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in\ntheir great published works,--if not that, at least the fact that such\nwas the impression and belief of persons living at the time, whether\nany ground existed for it or not.\n\nBut the arts by which these new men of science contrived to evade the\nignorance and the despotic limitations of their time, the inventions\nwith which they worked to such good purpose upon their own time, in\nspite of its restrictions and oppositions, and which enable them to\n'outstretch their span,' and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the\nadvancement of their kind, and compel the future ages to work with\nthem to the fulfilment of its ends;--the arts by which these great\noriginal naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired\nsplendour and worth, the collections they had made in the nobler\nfields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use of\nthem;--these are the arts that we shall have need to master, if we\nwould unlock the legacy they have left to us.\n\nThe proof of the existence of this special art of delivery and\ntradition, and the definition of the objects for which it was\nemployed, has been derived thus far chiefly from sources of evidence\nexterior to the works themselves; but the inventors of it and those\nwho made use of it in their own speech and writings, are undoubtedly\nthe persons best qualified to give us authentic and lively information\non this subject; and we are now happily in a position to appreciate\nthe statements which they have been at such pains to leave us, for the\nsake of clearing up those parts of their discourse which were\nnecessarily obscured at the time. Now that we have in our hands that\nkey of _Times_ which they have recommended to our use, that knowledge\nof times which 'gives great light in many cases to true\ninterpretations,' it is not possible any longer to overlook these\npassages, or to mistake their purport.\n\nBut before we enter upon the doctrine of Art which was published in\nthe first great recognized work of this philosophy, it will be\nnecessary to produce here some extracts from a book which was not\noriginally published in England, or in the English language, but one\nwhich was brought out here as an exotic, though it is in fact one of\nthe great original works of this school, and one of its boldest and\nmost successful issues; a work in which the new grounds of the actual\nexperience and life of men, are not merely inclosed and propounded for\nwritten inquiry, but openly occupied. This is not the place to explain\nthis fact, though the continental relations of this school, and other\ncircumstances already referred to in the life of its founder, will\nserve to throw some light upon it; but on account of the bolder\nassertions which the particular form of writing and publication\nrendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of the more\nlively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies and illustrates\nthese assertions in this instance, it appears on the whole excusable\nto commence our study of the special Art for the delivery and\ntradition of knowledge in those departments which science was then\nforbidden on pain of death to enter, with that exhibition of it which\nis contained in this particular work, trusting to the progress of the\nextracts themselves to apologize to the intelligent reader for any\nthing which may seem to require explanation in this selection.\n\nIt is only necessary to premise, that this work is one of the many\nworks of this school, in which a grave, profoundly scientific design\nis concealed under the disguise of a gay, popular, attractive form of\nwriting, though in this case the audience is from the first to a\ncertain extent select. It has no platform that takes in--as the plays\ndo, with their more glaring attractions and their lower and broader\nrange of inculcation,--the populace. There is no pit in this theatre.\nIt is throughout a book for men of liberal culture; but it is a book\nfor the world, and for men of the world, and not for the cloister\nmerely, and the scholar. But this, too, has its differing grades of\nreaders, from its outer court of lively pastime and brilliant aimless\nchat to that _esoteric_ chamber, where the abstrusest parts of\nsciences are waiting for those who will accept the clues, and\npatiently ascend to them.\n\nThe work is popular in its form, but it is inwoven throughout with a\nthread of lurking meanings so near the surface, and at times so boldly\nobtruded, that it is difficult to understand how it could ever have\nbeen read at all without occasioning the inquiry which it was intended\nto occasion under certain conditions, but which it was necessary for\nthis society to ward off from their works, except under these\nlimitations, at the time when they were issued. For these inner\nmeanings are everywhere pointed and emphasized with the most bold and\nvivid illustration, which lies on the surface of the work, in the form\nof stories, often without any apparent relevance in that exterior\nconnection--brought in, as it would seem, in mere caprice or by the\nloosest threads of association. They lie, with the 'allegations' which\naccompany them, strewn all over the surface of the work, like 'trap'\non 'sand-stone,' telling their story to the scientific eye, and\nbeckoning the philosophic explorer to that primeval granite of\nsciences that their vein will surely lead to. But the careless\nobserver, bent on recreation, observes only a pleasing feature in the\nlandscape, one that breaks happily its threatened dulness; the reader,\nreading this book as _books_ are wont to be read, finds nothing in\nthis phenomenon to excite his curiosity. And the author knows him and\nhis ways so well, that he is able to foresee that result, and is not\nafraid to trust to it in the case of those whose scrutiny he is\ncareful to avoid. For he is one who counts largely on the\ncarelessness, or the indifference, or the stupidity of those whom he\naddresses. There is no end to his confidence in that. He is\nperpetually staking his life on it. Neither is he willing to trust to\nthe clues which these unexplained stories might seem of themselves to\noffer to the studious eye, to engage the attention of the reader--the\nreader whose attention he is bent on securing. Availing himself of one\nof those nooks of discourse, which he is at no loss for the means of\ncreating when the purpose of his _essaie_ requires it, he beckons the\nconfidential reader aside, and thus explains his method to him,\noutright, in terms which admit of but one construction. 'Neither these\nstories,' he says, 'nor my allegations do always serve simply for\nexample, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use\nI make of them; they carry sometimes, _besides what I apply them to_,\nthe seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes, _collaterally,\na more delicate sound_, both to me myself,--who will say no more about\nit _in this place_' [we shall hear more of it in another place,\nhowever, and where the delicate collateral sounds will not be\nwanting]--'both to me myself, and _to others who happen to be of my\near_.'\n\nTo the reader, who does indeed happen to be of his ear, to one who has\nread the 'allegations' and stories that he speaks of, and the whole\nwork, and the works connected with it, by means of that knowledge of\nthe inner intention, and of the method to which he alludes, this\npassage would of course convey no new intelligence. But will the\nreader, to whom the views here presented are yet too new to seem\ncredible, endeavour to imagine or invent for himself any form of\nwords, in which the claim already made in regard to the style in which\nthe great original writers of this age and the founders of the new\nscience of the human life were compelled to infold their doctrine,\ncould have been, in the case of this one at least, more distinctly\nasserted. Here is proof that one of them, one who counted on an\n_audience_ too, did find himself compelled to infold his richer and\nbolder meanings in the manner described. All that need be claimed at\npresent in regard to the authorship of this sentence is, that it is\nwritten by one whose writings, in their higher intention, have ceased\nto be understood, for lack of the '_ear_' to which his bolder and\nricher meanings are addressed, for lack of the _ear_, to which the\ncollateral and more delicate sounds which his words sometimes carry\nwith them are perceptible; and that it is written by a philosopher\nwhose learning and aims and opinions, down to the slightest points of\ndetail, are absolutely identical with those of the principal writers\nof this school.\n\nBut let us look at a few of the stories which he ventures to introduce\nso emphatically, selecting only such as can be told in a sentence or\ntwo. Let us take the next one that follows this explanation--the story\nin the very next paragraph to it. The question is _apparently_ of\nCicero, of his style, of his vanity, of his supposed care for his\n_fame_ in future ages, of his _real disposition and objects_.\n\n'Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its _harmony_, that\nwe should more study it than _things_' [what new soul of philosophy is\nthis, then, already?]--'unless you will affirm that of _Cicero_ to be\nof so supreme perfection as to form _a body_ of itself. And of him, I\nshall further add one story we read of to this purpose, wherein _his\nnature_ will _much more manifestly be laid open to us_' [than in that\nseeming care for his fame in future ages, or in that lower object of\nstyle, just dismissed so scornfully].\n\n'He was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little\nstraitened _in time_, to _fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind\nto do_, when _Eros_, one of his slaves, brought him word that the\n_audience was deferred_ till the next day, at which he was so ravished\nwith joy that _he enfranchised him_.'\n\nThe word 'time'--here admits of a double rendering whereby the\n_author's_ aims are more manifestly laid open; and there is also\nanother word in this sentence which carries a 'delicate sound' with\nit, to those who have met this author in other fields, and who happen\nto be of his counsel. But lest the stories of themselves should still\nseem flat and pointless, or trivial and insignificant to the\nuninstructed ear, it may be necessary to interweave them with some\nfurther 'allegations on this subject,' which the author assumes, or\nappears to assume, in his own person.\n\n'I write my book for _few men_, and for _few years_. Had it been\n_matter of duration_, I should have put it into a _better language_.\nAccording to the continual variation that ours has been subject to\nhitherto [and we know who had a similar view on this point], who can\nexpect that the present _form of language_ should be in use fifty\nyears hence. It slips every day through our fingers; and since I was\nborn, is altered above one half. We say that it is now perfect: _every\nage says the same of the language it speaks_. I shall hardly trust to\nthat so long as it runs away and _changes_ as it does.\n\n''Tis for good and useful writings to nail and rivet it to them, and\nits reputation will go _according to the fortune of our state. For\nwhich reason, I am not afraid to insert herein several private\narticles, which will spend their use amongst the men now living_, AND\nTHAT CONCERN THE PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE OF SOME WHO WILL SEE FURTHER\nINTO THEM THAN THE COMMON READER.' But that the inner reading of these\nprivate articles--that reading which lay farther in--to which he\ninvites the attention of those whom it concerns--was not expected to\nspend its use among the men then living, that which follows might seem\nto imply. It was that wrapping of them, it was that gross\nsuperscription which 'the fortune of our state was likely to make\nobsolete ere long,' this author thought, as we shall see if we look\ninto his prophecies a little. 'I will not, after all, as I often hear\ndead men spoken of, that men should say of _me_: \"He _judged_, and\nLIVED SO and SO. Could he have spoken when he was dying, he would have\nsaid _so_ or _so_. I knew him better than any.\"\n\n  'So _our_ virtues\n  Lie in the interpretation of the times,'\n\n'says the unfortunate Tullus Aufidius, in the act of conducting a\nVolscian army against the infant Roman state, bemoaning himself upon\nthe conditions of his historic whereabouts, and beseeching the\nsympathy and favourable constructions of posterity--\n\n  So our virtues\n  Lie in the interpretation of the times;\n  And power unto itself most commendable\n  Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair\n  To extol what it hath done.\n\n'The times,' says Lord Bacon, speaking in reference to books\nparticularly, though _he_ also recommends the same key for the reading\nof lives, 'the times in many cases give _great light_ to true\ninterpretations.'\n\n'Now as much as decency permits,' continues the other, anticipating\n_here_ that speech which he might be supposed to have been anxious to\nmake in defence of his posthumous reputation, could he have spoken\nwhen he was dying, and forestalling that criticism which he\nforesaw--that odious criticism of posterity on the discrepancy between\n_his life_ and _his judgment_--'Now as much as decency permits, I\n_here_ discover my inclinations and affections. _If any observe_, he\nwill find that _I have either told or designed to tell_ ALL. _What I\ncannot express I point out with my finger_.\n\n'There was never greater circumspection and _military prudence_ than\nsometimes is seen among US; can it be that men are afraid to lose\nthemselves by the way, _that they reserve themselves to the end of the\ngame_?'\n\n'There needs no more but to see a man promoted to dignity, though we\nknew him but three days before a man of no mark, yet an image of\ngrandeur and ability insensibly steals into our opinion, and we\npersuade ourselves that growing in reputation and attendants, he is\nalso increased in merit':--\n\n  _Hamlet_. Do the boys carry it away?\n\n  _Ros_. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.\n\n  _Hamlet_. It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark,\n  and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give\n  twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in\n  little. 'Sblood, there is something _in this, more_ than\n  _natural_ [talking of the _super_natural], _if philosophy could\n  find it out_.\n\n'But,' our prose philosopher, whose mind is running much on the same\nsubjects, continues 'if it happens so that he [this favourite of\nfortune] falls again, and is mixed with the common crowd, every one\ninquires with wonder into the _cause_ of his having been hoisted so\nhigh. _Is it he_? say they: did he know no more than this _when he was\nin_ PLACE?' ['change _places_ ... robes and furred gowns hide all.']\nDo _princes_ satisfy _themselves_ with so little? _Truly we were in\ngood hands_! That which I myself adore in kings, is [note it] _the\ncrowd of the adorers_. All reverence and submission is due to them,\n_except that of the understanding_; my _reason_ is not to bow and\nbend, 'tis my _knees_' 'I will not do't' says another, who is in this\none's counsels,\n\n  I will not do't\n  Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,\n  And by my body's action, teach my mind\n  A most inherent baseness.                    _Coriolanus_.\n\n'Antisthenes one day entreated _the Athenians to give orders that\ntheir asses might be employed in tilling the ground_,--to which it was\nanswered, \"that _those animals were not destined to such a service_.\"\n\"That's all one,\" replied he; \"it only sticks at your command; for the\nmost ignorant and incapable men you employ _in your commands of war_,\nimmediately become worthy enough _because_--YOU EMPLOY THEM.\"'\n\nThere mightst thou behold the great image of authority. A dog's obeyed\nin office.--Lear.\n\n  For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,\n  This realm dismantled was\n  Of Jove himself; and now reigns here,\n  A very--very--_Peacock_.\n  Horatio. You might have rhymed.      Hamlet.\n\n'to which,' continues this political philosopher,--that is, to which\npreceding anecdote--containing such unflattering intimations with\nregard to the obstinacy of nature, in the limits she has set to the\npractical abilities of those _animals_, not enlarging their natural\ngifts out of respect to the Athenian selection (an anecdote which\nsupplies a rhyme to Hamlet's verse, and to many others from the same\nsource)--'_to which the custom of so many people_, who canonize the\nKINGS they have chosen _out of their own body_, and are not content\nonly to honour, but adore them, _comes very near. Those of Mexico_\n[for instance, it would not of course do to take any nearer home],\nafter the ceremonies of _their_ king's coronation are finished, _dare\nno more look him in the face_; but, as if they _deified_ him by his\nroyalty, _among_ the oaths they make him take to _maintain their\nreligion and laws_, to be valiant, just and mild; he moreover\nswears,--_to make the sun run his course in his wonted light,--to\ndrain the clouds at a fit season,--to confine rivers within their\nchannels,--and to cause all things necessary for his people to be\nborne by the earth_.' '(They told me I was everything. But when the\nrain came to wet me once, when the wind would not peace at my\nbidding,' says Lear, 'there I found them, there I smelt them out.)'\nThis, in connection with the preceding anecdote, to which, in the\nopinion of this author, it comes properly so very near, may be classed\nof itself among the suggestive stories above referred to; but the\nbearing of these quotations upon the particular question of style,\nwhich must determine the selection here, is set forth in that which\nfollows.\n\nIt should be stated, however, that in a preceding paragraph, the\nauthor has just very pointedly expressed it as his opinion, that men\nwho are supposed, by common consent, to be so far above the rest of\nmankind in their single virtue and judgment, that they are permitted\nto govern them at their discretion, should by no means undertake to\nmaintain that view, by exhibiting that supposed kingly and divine\nfaculty in the way of _speech_ or _argument_; thus putting themselves\non a level with their subjects, and by meeting them on their own\nground, with their own weapons, giving occasion for comparisons,\nperhaps not altogether favourable to that theory of a superlative and\ndivine difference which the doctrine of a divine right to rule\nnaturally presupposes. 'For,' he says, 'neither is it enough for those\n_who govern and command us, and have all the world in their hand_, to\nhave a common understanding, and to be able to do what the rest can'\n[their faculty of judgment must match their position, for if it be\nonly a common one, the difference will make it despised]: 'they are\nvery much below us, if they be not _infinitely above us_. And,\ntherefore, _silence_ is to them not only a countenance of respect and\ngravity, but very often of good profit and policy too; for, Megabysus\ngoing to see _Apelles_ in his _painting_ room, stood a great while\nwithout speaking a word, and at last began to talk of his paintings,\nfor which he received this rude reproof. '_Whilst thou wast silent_,\nthou seemedst to be something great, by reason of thy chains and pomp;\n_but now that we have heard thee speak_, there is not the meanest boy\nin my shop that does not despise thee.' But after the author's\nsubsequent reference to 'those animals' that were to be made competent\nby a vote of the Athenian people for the work of their superiors, to\nwhich he adds the custom of people who canonize the kings they have\nchosen out of their own body, which comes so near, he goes on\nthus:--_I differ from this common fashion_, and am more apt to suspect\ncapacity when I see it accompanied with grandeur of fortune and\n_public applause_. We are to consider of what advantage it is, _to\nspeak when one pleases, to choose the subject one will speak of_--[an\nadvantage not common with authors then]--TO INTERRUPT OR CHANGE OTHER\nMEN'S ARGUMENTS, WITH A MAGISTERIAL AUTHORITY, to protect oneself from\nthe opposition of others, by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the\npresence of an assembly that trembles with reverence and respect. _A\nman of a prodigious fortune_, coming to give his judgment upon some\nslight dispute that was foolishly set on foot at his _table_, began in\nthese words:--'It can only be a liar or a fool that will say otherwise\nthan so and so.' '_Pursue this philosophical point with a dagger in\nyour hand_.'\n\nHere is an author who does contrive to pursue his philosophical\npoints, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they take him. By\nputting himself into the trick of singularity, and affecting to be a\nmere compound of eccentricities and oddities, neither knowing nor\ncaring what it is that he is writing about, and dashing at haphazard\ninto anything as the fit takes him,--'Let us e'en fly at anything,'\nsays Hamlet,--by assuming, in short, the disguise of the elder Brutus;\nand, on account of a similar necessity, there is no saying what he\ncannot be allowed to utter with impunity. Under such a cover it is,\nthat he inserts the passages already quoted, which have lain to this\nhour without attracting the attention of critics, unpractised happily,\nand unlearned also, in the subtleties which tyrannies--such\ntyrannies--at least generate; and under this cover it is, that he can\nventure now on those astounding political disquisitions, which he\nconnects with the complaint of the restrictions and embarrassments\nwhich the presence of a man of prodigious fortune at the table\noccasions, when an argument, trivial or otherwise, happens to be going\non there. Under this cover, he can venture to bring in here, in this\nvery connection, and to the very table, even of this man of prodigious\nfortune, pages of the freest political discussion, containing already\nthe finest analysis of the existing political 'situation,' so full of\ndark and lurid portent, to the eye of the scientific statesman, to\nwhom, even then, already under the most intolerable restrictions of\ndespotism, of the two extremes of social evil, that which appeared to\nbe the most terrible, and the most to be guarded against, in the\ninevitable political changes then at hand, was--not the consolidation\nbut the dissolution of the state.\n\nFor already the horizon of that political oversight included, not the\neventualities of the English Revolutions only, but the darker\ncontingencies of those later political and social convulsions, from\nwhose soundless whirlpools, men spring with joy to the hardest\nsharpest ledge of tyranny; or hail with joy and national thanksgiving\nthe straw that offers to land them on it. Already the scientific\nstatesman of the Elizabethan age could say, casting an eye over\nChristendom as it stood then, 'That which most threatens us is, not an\n_alteration_ in the entire and solid mass, but its _dissipation_ and\n_divulsion_.'\n\nIt is after pages of the freest philosophical discussion, that he\narrives at this conclusion--discussion, in which the historical\nelements and powers are for the first time scientifically recognized\nand treated throughout with the hand of the new master. For this is a\nphilosopher, who is able to receive into his philosophy the fact, that\nout of the most depraved and vicious social materials, by the\ninevitable operation of the universal natural laws, there will,\nperhaps, result a social adhesion and predominance of powers--a social\n'whole,' more capable of maintaining itself than any that Plato or\nAristotle, from the heights of their abstractions, could have invented\nfor them. He ridicules, indeed, those ideal politics of antiquity as\ntotally unfit for practical realisation, and admits that though the\nquestion as to that which is absolutely the best form of government\nmight be of some value _in a new world_, the basis of all alterations\nin existing governments should be the fact, that we take a world\nalready formed to certain customs, and do not beget it, as Pyrrha or\nCadmus did theirs, and by what means soever we may have the privilege\nto rebuild and reform it anew, we can hardly _writhe it_ from its\nwonted bent, but we shall _break all_. For the subtlest principles of\nthe philosophy of things are introduced into this discussion, and the\nboldest applications of the Shakspere muse are repeated in it.\n\n'That is the way to _lay all flat_,' cries the philosophic poet in the\nRoman play, opposing on the part of the Conservatist, the violence of\nan oppressed people, struggling for new forms of government, and\nbringing out fully, along with their claims, the anti-revolutionary\nside of the question. 'That which tempts me out on these journeys,'\ncontinues this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous\nterms of his rambling excursive habits and eccentricities of\nproceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes--'that\nwhich tempts me out on these journeys, is _unsuitableness to the\npresent manners of_ OUR STATE. _I_ could easily console myself with\nthis corruption in reference to the _public interest_, but not to _my\nown: I_ am _in particular_ too much oppressed:--for, _in my\nneighbourhood_ we are of late by _the long libertinage of our civil\nwars grown old_ in so _riotous a form of state_, that in earnest _'tis\na wonder how it can subsist_. In fine, I see by our example, that the\nsociety of men is maintained and held together _at what price soever;\nin what condition soever they are placed they will close and stick\ntogether_ [see the doctrine of things and their original powers in the\n\"Novum Organum\"]--_moving and heaping up themselves, as uneven bodies,\nthat shuffled together without order, find of themselves means to\nunite and settle_. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked\nand incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them altogether in\na city which he had built for that purpose, which bore their name; I\nbelieve that they, even from vices, erected a government among them,\nand a commodious and just society.'\n\n'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation'; and let the\nreader note here, how the principle which has predominated\nhistorically in the English Revolution, the principle which the fine\nFrankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic faculty,\ncould not strike instinctively or empirically, in its political\nexperiments--it is well to note, how this distinctive element of the\n_English_ Revolution--that revolution which is still in progress, with\nits remedial vitalities--already speaks beforehand, from the lips of\nthis foreign Elizabethan Revolutionist. 'Nothing presses so hard upon\na state as innovation; change only gives form to injustice and\ntyranny. WHEN ANY PIECE IS OUT OF ORDER IT MAY BE PROPPED, one may\nprevent and take care that the _decay and corruption_ NATURAL TO ALL\nTHINGS, do not carry us too far from _our beginnings and principles_;\nbut to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the\nfoundations of so vast a building, is for them to do who to _make\nclean, efface_, who would reform particular defects by a universal\nconfusion, and cure diseases by _death_.' Surely, one may read in good\nElizabethan English passages which savor somewhat of this policy. One\nwould say that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance,\nin this case. 'Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate\ncounsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church\nof England, as would in effect make it _no church_, said thus to\nhim:--'Sir, the subject we talk of is the _eye_ of England, and if\nthere be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but\nhe were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' [And here is\nanother writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very\nmuch the same view of the constitution and vitality of states, about\nthese times:--\n\n  He's a disease that must be cut away.\n  Oh, he's a limb that has but a disease;\n  Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.]\n\nBut our Gascon philosopher goes on thus, with his Gascon inspirations:\nand these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless\nintuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics,\nappear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the\nscientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the\nidentical truth which the last vintage of the Novum Organum yields on\nthis point. 'The world is unapt for curing itself; _it is so impatient\nof any thing that presses it_, that it thinks of nothing but\n_disengaging itself_, at what price soever. We see, by a thousand\nexamples, that it generally cures itself to its cost. The _discharge\nof a present evil is no cure, if a general amendment of condition does\nnot follow_; the surgeon's end is _not only to cut away the dead\nflesh_,--that is but the progress of his cure;--he has a care over and\nabove, _to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh_, and\n_to restore the member to its due state_. Whoever only proposes to\nhimself to remove that which offends _him_, falls short; _for good_\ndoes not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, _and a\nworse, as it happened in Caesar's killers_, who brought the republic\nto _such a pass, that they had reason to repent their meddling with\nit_.' 'I fear there will _a worse_ one come in his place,' says a\nfellow in Shakespear's crowd, at the first Caesar's funeral; and that\nhis speech made the moral of the piece, we shall see in the course of\nthis study.\n\nBut though the frantic absolutisms and irregularities of that 'old\nriotous form of military government,' which the long civil wars had\ngenerated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy dissolution, this\nold Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible fund of English shrewdness,\nand sound English sense, underlying all his Gasconading, by no means\nconsiders the state as past the statesman's care: 'after all, _we are\nnot, perhaps, at the last gasp_,' he says. 'The conservation of states\n_is a thing that in all likelihood surpasses our understanding_: a\ncivil government is, as Plato says, \"a mighty and powerful thing, and\nhard to be dissolved.\" \"States, as great engines, move slowly,\" says\nLord Bacon; \"and are not so soon put out of frame\";--that is, so soon\nas \"the resolution of particular persons,\" which is his reason for\nproducing his moral philosophy, or rather his moral _science_, as\n_his_ engine for attack upon the state, a science which concerns the\ngovernment of every man over himself; \"for, as in Egypt, the seven\ngood years sustained the seven bad; so governments, for a time\nwell-grounded, do bear out errors following.\"' But this is the way\nthat this Gascon philosopher records _his_ conclusions on the same\nsubject. 'Every thing that totters does not fall. The contexture of so\ngreat a body holds by more nails than one. _It holds even by its\nantiquity_, like old buildings from which the foundations are worn\naway by time, without rough cast or cement, which yet live or support\nthemselves by their own weight. Moreover, it is not rightly to go to\nwork to reconnoitre only the flank and the fosse, to judge of the\nsecurity of a place; it must be examined _which way approaches_ can be\nmade to it, AND IN WHAT CONDITION THE ASSAILANT IS--that is the\nquestion. '_Few vessels sink with their own weight_, and without some\nexterior violence. Let us every way cast our eyes. Every thing about\nus totters. In all the great states, both of Christendom and\nelsewhere, that are known to us, if you will but look, you will there\nsee evident threats of alteration and ruin. Astrologers need not go to\nheaven to foretell, as they do, GREAT REVOLUTIONS' [this is the speech\nof the Elizabethan age--'great revolutions'] 'and _imminent\nmutations_.' [This is the new kind of learning and prophecy; there was\nbut one source of it open then, that could yield axioms of this kind;\nfor this is the kind that Lord Bacon tells us the head-spring of\nsciences must be visited for.] 'But _conformity is a quality\nantagonist to_ DISSOLUTION. For my part, I despair not, and _fancy I\nperceive ways to save us_.'\n\nAnd _surely_ this is one of the inserted private articles, before\nmentioned, which may, or may not be, 'designed to spend their use\namong the men now living'; but 'which concern the particular knowledge\nof some who will see further into them than the common reader.' If\nthere had been a 'London Times' going then, and this old outlandish\nGascon Antic had been an English statesman preparing this article as a\nleader for it, the question of the Times could hardly have been more\nroundly dealt with, or with a clearer northern accent.\n\nBut it is high time for him to bethink himself, and 'draw his old\ncloak about him'; for, after all, this so just and profound a view of\nso grave a subject, proceeds from one who has no aims, no plan, no\nlearning, no memory;--a vain, fantastic egotist, who writes only\nbecause he will be talking, and talking of himself above all; who is\nnot ashamed to attribute to himself all sorts of mad inconsistent\nhumours, and to contradict himself on every page, if thereby he can\nonly win your eye, or startle your curiosity, and induce you to follow\nhim. After so long and grave a discussion, suddenly it occurs to him\nthat it is time for a little miscellaneous confidential chat about\nhimself, and those certain oddities of his which he does not wish you\nto lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for another of those\n_stories_, which serve to divert the attention when it threatens to\nbecome too fixed, and break up and enliven the dull passages, besides\nhaving that other purpose which he speaks of so frankly. And although\nthis whole discussion is not without a direct bearing upon that\nparticular topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch as the\npolitical situation, which is so clearly exhibited, is precisely that\nof the Elizabethan scholar, it is chiefly this little piece of\nconfidential chat with which it closes, and _its significance in that\nconnection_, which gives the rest its insertion here.\n\nFor suddenly he recollects himself, and stops short to express the\nfear that he may have written _something similar to this elsewhere_;\nand he gives you to understand--not all at once--but by a series of\nstrokes, that too bold a repetition _here_, of what he has said\n_elsewhere_ might be attended, to him, with serious consequences; and\nhe begs you to note, as he does in twenty other passages and stories\nhere and elsewhere, that his _style_ is all hampered with\nconsiderations such as these--that instead of merely thinking of\nmaking a good book, and presenting his subjects in their clearest and\nmost effective form for the reader;--a thing in itself sufficiently\nlaborious, as other authors find to their cost, he is all the time\ncompelled to weigh his words with reference to such points as this. He\nmust be perpetually on his guard that the identity of that which he\npresents here, and that which he presents elsewhere, under other and\nvery different forms (in much graver forms perhaps, and perhaps in\nothers not so grave), shall no where become so glaring as to attract\npopular attention, while he is willing and anxious to keep that\nidentity or connection constantly present to the apprehension of the\nfew, for whom he tells us his book--that is, this book within the\nbook--is written.\n\n'I fear in these _reveries_ of mine,' he continues, suspending at last\nsuddenly this bold and continuous application to the immediate\npolitical emergency of those philosophical principles which he has\nexhibited in the abstract, in their _common_ and _universal form_,\nelsewhere; 'I fear, in these reveries of the _treachery of my memory_,\nlest by inadvertence it should make me write the same thing twice. Now\nI here set down _nothing new_, these are _common_ thoughts, and\nhaving per-adventure conceived them a hundred times, _I am afraid_ I\n_have set them down somewhere else already_. Repetition is everywhere\ntroublesome, though it were in Homer, _but 'tis ruinous in things that\nhave only a superficial and transitory_ SHOW. I do not love\ninculcation, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca, and the\npractice of his Stoical school displeases me of _repeating upon every\nsubject and at length_, THE PRINCIPLES and PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT SERVE\nIN GENERAL, and _always_ to re-allege anew;' that is, under the\nparticular divisions of the subject, _common and universal reasons_.\n'What I cannot express I point out with my finger,' he tells you\nelsewhere, but it is thus that he continues here.\n\n'My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must _fain for the time\nto come_ (collateral sounds), for _hitherto, thank God, nothing has\nhappened much amiss_, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying\nmyself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To\n_be tied and bound to a thing_ puts _me_ quite out, and especially\nwhere I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I\nnever could read this story without being offended at it, with as it\nwere _a personal_ and natural resentment.' The reader will note that\nthe question here is of _style_, or method, and of this author's style\nin particular, and of his special embarrassments.\n\n'Lyncestes _accused of conspiracy against Alexander_, the day that he\nwas brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard\nin his defence, had prepared a _studied speech_, of which, _haggling\nand stammering_, he pronounced _some words_. As he was becoming more\nperplexed and struggling with his memory, and _trying to recollect\nhimself_, the soldiers that stood _nearest_ killed him with their\nspears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his\nguilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation,\nwould astound a man _even though were there no object in his mind but\nto speak well_; but WHAT _when 'tis an harangue upon which his life\ndepends_?' You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are\nspeaking of, and there is my story.\n\n'_For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to\nloose me from it_'--that is the cause of his wandering--'_The more I\ntrust to my memory_, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so\n_much as to find it in my own countenance_, and have _sometimes been\nvery much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound_,\nwhereas _my design is_ to manifest in speaking a _perfect\nnonchalance_, both of face and accent, and _casual and unpremeditated\nmotions_, as rising from present occasions, _choosing rather to say\nnothing to purpose, than to show that_ I came _prepared to speak\nwell_; a thing especially unbecoming _a man of my profession_. The\npreparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy;\na man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no\nfurther _than he would have done in his gown_.' [Perhaps the\nreflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this\nmagnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended\nwith similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which\nfollows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] 'It is recorded\nof the orator Curio, that _when he proposed the division of his\noration_ into three or four parts, it often happened either that he\nforgot some one, or added one or two more.' A much more illustrious\nspeaker, who spoke under circumstances not very unlike those in which\nthe poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts\nat oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight; for,\nhaving invented a plan of universal science, designed for the relief\nof the human estate, he forgot the principal application of it. But\nthis author says, _I_ have always avoided falling into this\ninconvenience, having always hated these promises and announcements,\nnot only out of distrust of my memory, but also because this method\nrelishes too much of the _artificial_. You will find no scientific\nplan _here_ ostentatiously exhibited; you will find such a plan\nelsewhere with all the works set down in it, but the works themselves\nwill be missing; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be\nunder the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it would\nbe ruinous to produce the plan, '_I_ have always _avoided_ falling\ninto this inconvenience. _Simpliciora militares decent_.' But as he\nappears, after all, to have had no military weapon with which to\nsustain that straight-forwardness of speech which is becoming in a\nmilitary power, and no dagger to pursue his points with, some\nartifice, though he professes not to like it, may be necessary, and\nthe rule which he here specifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not\naltogether amiss. ''Tis enough that I have promised to myself never to\ntake upon me to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that\nsort of speaking where a man _reads_ his speech, besides that it is\nvery absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who _naturally could\ngive it a grace by action_, and to rely upon the mercy of the\nreadiness of my invention, I will much less do it; 'tis heavy and\nperplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important\nnecessities.'\n\n'Speaking,' he says in another place, 'hurts and discomposes me,--my\n_voice_ is loud and high, so that when I have gone to whisper some\ngreat person about an affair of _consequence, they have often had to\nmoderate my voice. This story deserves a place here_.\n\n'Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as _I do_. The\nmaster of the ceremonies sent to him to speak _lower_. \"Tell him then,\nhe must send me,\" replied the other, \"the tone he would have me speak\nin.\" To which the other replied, \"that he should take the tone from\nthe ear of him to whom he spake.\" It was well said, if it be\nunderstood. Speak _according to the affair_ you are speaking about to\nthe auditor,--(speak according to the business you have in hand, to\nthe purpose you have to accomplish)--for if it mean, it is sufficient\nthat he _hears_ you, I do not find it reason.' It is a more artistic\nuse of speech that he is proposing in his new science of it, for as\nLord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this same subject,\n'the _proofs_ and _persuasions_ of _rhetoric_ ought to differ\naccording to the auditors,' and the Arts of Rhetoric have for their\nlegitimate end, 'not merely PROOF, but _much more_, IMPRESSION.' 'For\nmany forms are _equal in signification_ which are _differing in\nimpression_, as the difference is great in the piercing of that which\nis _sharp_, and that which is _flat_, though the _strength_ of the\npercussion be the same; for instance, there is no man but will be a\nlittle more raised, by hearing it said, \"Your enemies will be glad of\nthis,\" than by hearing it said only, \"This is evil for you.\"' But it\nis thus that our Gascon proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we\nhave interrupted. 'There is a voice to _flatter_, there is a voice to\n_instruct_, and a voice to _reprehend_. _I_ would not only have my\nvoice to reach my hearer, but peradventure _that it strike_ and\n_pierce_ him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone, it\nwould be very fine for him to say, \"Pray master, speak lower, for I\nhear you very well.\" _Speaking_ is _half his that speaks_, and _half\nhis that hears_; the last ought to prepare himself to receive it,\naccording to its motion, as with tennis players; he that receives the\nball, shifts, draws back, and prepares himself to receive it,\naccording as he sees him move, who strikes the stroke, and according\nto the stroke itself.' It is not, therefore, because this author has\nfailed to furnish the rules of interpretation necessary for\npenetrating to the ultimate intention of this new kind of speaking, if\nall this affectation of simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory\nstatements of his, have been suffered hitherto to pass unchallenged.\nIt is the public mind he has to deal with. 'That which he adores in\nkings is the _throng_ of _their adorers_.' If he should take the\npublic at once into his confidence, and tell them beforehand precisely\nwhat his own opinions were of things in general, if he should set\nbefore them in the outset the conclusions to which he proposed to\ndrive them, he might indeed stand some chance to have his arguments\ninterrupted, or changed with a magisterial authority; he would indeed\nfind it necessary to pursue his philosophical points with a dagger in\nhis hand.\n\nAnd besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not appear to him\nto secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to rouse the human mind to\nactivity, to compel it to think for itself, and put it on the\ninevitable road to his conclusions. He wishes the reader to strike out\nthose conclusions for himself, and fancy himself the discoverer if he\nwill. So far from being simple and straightforward, his style is in\nthe profoundest degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art\ninspired it. He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the\nactive world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths\nwhich men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign to them.\n'We want medicines to arouse the sense,' says Lord Bacon, who proposed\nexactly the method of teaching which this philosopher had, as it would\nseem, already adopted. 'I bring a trumpet to awake his _ear_, to set\nhis _sense_ on the attentive bent, and _then_ to speak,' says that\npoet who best put this art in practice.\n\nBut here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this dull, stupid,\ncustom-bound public on its own ground. He would assume all its\nabsurdities and contradictions in his own person, and permit men to\ndespise, and marvel, and laugh at them in him without displeasure. For\nwhoever will notice carefully, will perceive that the use of the\npersonal pronoun here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech.\nSuch an one will find that this philosophical _I_ is very broad; that\nit covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under this\nterm, the term by which each man names _himself_, the common term of\nthe individual humanity, he finds it convenient to say many things.\n'They that will fight _custom_ with _grammar_,' he says, 'are fools.\nWhen another tells me, or when I say to myself, _This_ is a word of\nGascon growth; _this_ a dangerous phrase; _this_ is an ignorant\ndiscourse; thou art too full of figures; _this_ is a paradoxical\nsaying; _this_ is a foolish expression: _thou makest thyself merry\nsometimes, and men will think_ thou sayest a thing in good earnest,\nwhich thou only speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults\nof _inadvertence, not those of custom_. I have done what I designed,'\nhe says, in triumph, '_All the world knows_ ME in my book, _and my\nbook in_ ME.'\n\nAnd thus, by describing human nature under that term, or by repeating\nand stating the common opinions as his own, he is enabled to create an\nopposition which could not exist, so long as they remain unconsciously\noperative, or infolded in the separate individuality, as a part of its\nown particular form.\n\n'My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible,' he says; 'but the\ngood which virtuous men do to the public in making themselves\nimitated, _I, perhaps, may do in making my manners avoided_. While I\npublish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be\nafraid of them. _The parts that I most esteem in myself_, are more\nhonoured in decrying than in commending _my own manners_. Pausanias\ntells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his\nscholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very\nill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures.\n_The present time_ is fitting to reform us _backward_, more by\n_dissenting_ than _agreeing_; by differing than consenting.' That is\nhis application of his previous confession. And it is this _present\ntime_ that he impersonates, holding the mirror up to nature, and\nprovoking opposition and criticism for that which was before buried in\nthe unconsciousness of a common absurdity, or a common wrong.\n'Profiting little by good examples, I endeavour to render myself as\nagreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others\nfickle; as good as I see others evil.'\n\n'There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to\nme a suitable product of the human mind. All such whimsies as are in\nuse amongst us, deserve at least to be hearkened to; for my part, they\nonly with me import _inanity_, but they import _that_. Moreover,\n_vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in\nnature_.\n\n'If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard\nupon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The\ncontradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only\nrouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by\nmy friends. \"Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking\nabout.\" When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my\nanger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that\ninstructs me. _I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find\nit, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered\narms_; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and _accommodate myself\nto my accusers_ [aside] (very often more by reason of _civility_ than\namendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my\nfacility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is\nhard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage _to\ncorrect_, because they have not the courage _to be corrected, and\nspeak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another_. I\ntake so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost\nindifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination\ndoes so often contradict and condemn itself, that _it is all one to me\nif another do it_. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion,\nthat heats not, whereas conversation _teaches_ and _exercises_ at\nonce.' But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so\nas to produce the effect of _conference_--of the noblest kind of\nconference--so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly\n_human_ activity--so as to bring out the common, human form, in all\nits latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual\nvarieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.\n\nHe cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however, that his\narguments require examination. 'In _conferences_,' he says, 'it is a\nrule that every word that _seems_ to be good, is not immediately to be\naccepted. One must try it on all points, to see _how it is lodged in\nthe author_: [perhaps he is not in earnest] _for_ one must not always\n_presently yield_ what truth or beauty soever seem to be in the\nargument.' A little delay, and opposition, the necessity of hunting,\nor fighting, for it, will only make it the more esteemed in the end.\nIn such a style, 'either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is,\nwhatsoever beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order\nto challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not\nunderstanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of it] or,\nsometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry it _beyond_ its\nproper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct him. This whole\nwork is constructed on this principle]. As when I contend with a\nvigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions; I\nease him of the trouble of explaining himself; I strive to prevent his\nimagination, whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and\npertinency of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But\nas to _these_,--and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no\nantecedent in the text--as to these, I deal quite contrary with them.\nI _must understand and presuppose nothing but by them_.... Now, if you\ncome to explain anything to them and confirm them (these readers),\nthey presently catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your\ninterpretation. \"It was what I was about to say; it was just _my_\nthought, _and if I did not express it so_, it was only for want of\n_language_.\" Very pretty! Malice itself must be employed to correct\nthis _proud ignorance_--'tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and\nset him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. _I\nlove_ to let him step deeper into the mire,'--[luring him on with his\nown confessions, and with my assumptions of his case] '_and so deep\nthat if it be_ possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY\nAND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus\nanswered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of\nbattle, \"that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, _by a\nfine oration_, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a\nfine song,\" may properly be said of such an admonition as this;' or,\nas Lord Bacon has it, 'It were a strange speech, which spoken, or\n_spoken oft_, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is _by\nnature_ subject; it is _order, pursuit, sequence_, and _interchange of\napplication_, which is mighty in nature.' But the other\ncontinues:--'These are apprenticeships that are to be served\nbeforehand by a long continued education. We owe this care and this\nassiduity of correction and instruction to _our own_, [that is the\nschool,] but to go to preach to the first passer-by, and to lord it\nover the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a thing that I\nabhor. I rarely do it, even in _my own particular conferences_, and\nrather surrender my cause, than proceed to these _supercilious_ and\n_magisterial_ instructions.' The clue to the reading of his inner\nbook. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the _magisterial_\nmethod,--'My _humour_ is unfit, either to speak or write for\n_beginners_;' he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them\nprematurely the last conclusions of science; '_but_ as to things that\nare said in _common discourse_ or _amongst other things_, I never\noppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.'\n\n'Let none _even doubt_,' says the author of the Novum Organum, who\nthought it wisest to steer clear _even_ of _doubt_ on such a point,\n'whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish _the philosophical\narts and sciences which are now in use_. On the contrary, we readily\ncherish their practice, cultivation, and honour; for we by no means\ninterfere to prevent _the prevalent system_ from encouraging\ndiscussion, adorning discourses, or being employed _serviceably_ in\nthe chair of the Professor, or the practice of common life, and being\ntaken in short, by general consent, _as current coin_. Nay, we plainly\ndeclare that the system we offer will not be very _suitable_ for such\npurposes, not being easily adapted to _vulgar apprehension, except_ by\nEFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our _sincerity_ [hear] in professing our\nregard and friendly disposition towards _the received sciences_, we\ncan refer to the evidence of our published writings, _especially_ our\nbooks on--the Advancement--[the _Advancement_] of Learning.' And the\nreader who can afford time for 'a second cogitation,' the second\ncogitation which a superficial _and_ interior meaning, of course,\nrequires, with the aid of the key of times, will find much light on\nthat point, here and there, in the works referred to, and especially\nin those parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is\ntreated. 'We will not, therefore,' he continues, 'endeavour to evince\nit (our sincerity) any further by _words_, but content ourselves with\nsteadily, etc., ... professedly premising that no great _progress_ can\nbe made by the present methods in the _theory_ and contemplation of\nscience, _and_ that they can _not_ be made to produce _any very\nabundant effects_.' This is the proof of his sincerity in professing\nhis regard and friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in\nconnection with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no doubt\nit was sincere, and just to that extent to which these statements, and\nthe practice which was connected with them, would seem to indicate;\nbut the careful reader will perceive that it was a regard, and\nfriendliness of disposition, which was naturally qualified by that\ndoubly significant fact last quoted.\n\nBut the question of style is still under discussion here, and no\nwonder that with _such_ views of the value of the 'current coin,' and\nwith a regard and reverence for the received sciences so deeply\nqualified; or, as the other has it, with a humour so unfit either to\nspeak or write for _beginners_, a style which admitted of other\nefficacies than bare _proofs_, should appear to be demanded for\npopular purposes, or for beginners. And no wonder that with views so\nsimilar on this first and so radical point, these two men should have\nhit upon the same method in _Rhetoric_ exactly, though it _was_ then\nwholly new. But our Gascon, goes on to describe its freedoms and\nnovelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new\nvitalities.\n\n'May we not,' says the successful experimenter in this very style,\n'mix with the subject of conversation and communication, the quick and\nsharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends\npleasantly and _wittingly_ jesting with one another; an exercise for\nwhich my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, if it be not so\nextended and serious as _the other I just spoke of_, 'tis no less\nsmart and ingenious, nor of less utility _as Lycurgus thought_.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nFURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF 'PARTICULAR METHODS OF\nTRADITION.'--EMBARRASSMENTS OF LITERARY STATESMEN.\n\n\nHere's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and\nanother storm brewing. I hear it sing in the wind. My, best way is to\ncreep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: Misery\nacquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud, till the\ndregs of the storm be past.--_Tempest_.\n\nHere then, in the passages already quoted, we find the plan and\ntheory--the premeditated form of a new kind of Socratic performance;\nand this whole work, as well as some others composed in this age, make\nthe realization of it; an invention which proposes to substitute for\nthe languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of\n_books_--the kind of books which this author found invented when he\ncame--for the passive, sluggish receptivity of another's thought, the\nliving glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash of self-conviction.\n\nIt is a Socratic dialogue, indeed; but it waits for the reader's eye\nto open it; he is himself the principal interlocutor in it; there can\nbe nothing done till he comes in. Whatsoever beauty or truth maybe in\nthe argument; whatsoever jokes and repartees; whatsoever infinite\naudacities of mirth may be hidden under that grave cover, are not\ngoing to shine out for any lazy book-worm's pleasure. He that will not\nwork, neither shall he eat of this food. 'Up to the _mountains_,' for\n_this is hunter's language_, 'and he that strikes the venison first\nshall be lord of this feast.' It is an invention whereby the author\nwill remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is\nlong; whereby he will 'outstretch his span,' and make over, not his\nlearning only but his _living_ to the future;--it is an\ninstrumentality by which he will still maintain living relations with\nthe minds of men, by which he will put himself into the most intimate\nrelations of sympathy, and confidence, and friendship, with the mind\nof the few; by which he will reproduce his purposes and his faculties\nin them, and train them to take up in their turn that thread of\nknowledges which is to be spun on.\n\nBut if this design be buried so deeply, is it not _lost_ then? If all\nthe absurd and contradictory developments--if all the mad\ninconsistencies--all the many-sided contradictory views, which are\npossible to human nature on all the questions of human life, which\nthis single personal pronoun was made to represent, in the profoundly\nphilosophic design of the author, are still culled out by learned\ncritics, and made to serve as the material of a grave, though it is\nlamented, somewhat egotistical biography, is not all this ingenuity,\nwhich has successfully evaded thus far not the careless reader only,\nbut the scrutiny of the scholar, and the sharp eye of the reviewer\nhimself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little\npurpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no means. That\ndisguise which was at first a necessity, has become the instrument of\nhis power. It is that broad _I_ of his, that _I myself_, with which he\nstill takes all the world; it is that single, many-sided, vivacious,\nhistorical impersonation, that ideal impersonation of the individual\nhuman nature as it is--not as it should be--with all its 'weaved-up\nfollies ravelled out,' with all its before unconfessed actualities,\nits infinite absurdities and contradictions, so boldly pronounced and\nassumed by one laying claim to an historical existence, it is this\nhistorical assumption and pronunciation of all the before unspoken,\nunspeakable facts of this unexplored department of natural history, it\nis this apparent confession with which this magician entangles his\nvictims, as he tells us in a passage already quoted, and leads them on\nthrough that objective representation of their follies in which they\nmay learn to hate them, to that globe mirror--that mirror of the age\nwhich he boasts to have hung up here, when he says, 'I have done what\nI designed: all the world knows _me in my book_, and my book in _me_.'\n\nWho shall say that it is yet time to strip him of the disguise which\nhe wears so effectively? With all his faults, and all his egotisms,\nwho would not be sorry to see him taken to pieces, after all? And who\nshall quite assure us, that it would not still be treachery, even now,\nfor those who have unwound his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to\nthe heart of his mystery,--for those who have penetrated to the\nchamber of his inner school, to come out and blab a secret with which\nhe still works so potently; insensibly to those on whom he works,\nperhaps, yet so potently? But there is no harm done. It will still\ntake the right reader to find his way through these new devices in\nletters; these new and vivacious proofs of learning; for him, and for\nnone other, they lurk there still.\n\nTo evade political restrictions, and to meet the popular mind on its\nown ground, was the double purpose of the disguise; but it is a\ndisguise which will only detect, and not baffle, the mind that is able\nto identify itself with his, and able to grasp his purposes; it is a\ndisguise which will only detect the mind that knows him, and his\npurposes already. The enigmatical form of the inculcation is the\ndevice whereby that mind will be compelled to follow his track, to\nthink for itself his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost\nsecret of his intention; for it is a school in whose enigmatical\ndevices the mind of the future was to be caught, in whose subtle\nexercises the child of the future was to be trained to an identity\nthat should restore the master to his work again, and bring forth\nanew, in a better hour, his clogged and buried genius.\n\nBut, if the fact that a new and more vivid kind of writing, issuing\nfrom the heart of the new philosophy of _things_, designed to work new\nand extraordinary effects by means of literary instrumentalities,--\neffects hitherto reserved for other modes of impression,--if the\nfact, that a new and infinitely artistic mode of writing, burying\nthe secrets of philosophy in the most careless forms of the vulgar\nand popular discourse, did, in this instance at least, exist; if\nthis be proved, it will suffice for our present purpose. What else\nremains to be established concerning points incidentally started\nhere, will be found more pertinent to another stage of this enquiry.\n\nFrom beginning to end, the whole work might be quoted, page by page,\nin proof of this; but after the passages already produced here, there\nwould seem to be no necessity for accumulating any further evidence on\nthis point. A passage or two more, at least, will suffice to put\n_that_ beyond question. The extracts which follow, in connection with\nthose already given, will serve, at least, to remove any rational\ndoubt on that point, and on some others, too, perhaps.\n\n'But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really\nam, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to\npaper such mean and frivolous things as these; the meanness of the\n_subject_ compels me to it.'--'_Human reason is a two-edged_ and a\n_dangerous sword_. Observe, in the hand of _Socrates_, her most\nintimate and familiar friend, _how many points it has. Thus_, I am\ngood for nothing but to follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried\naway with the crowd.'--'I have this opinion of _these political\ncontroversies_: Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to\nplay as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to\njostle _principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet,\n'tis_ my _notion, in public affairs_ [hear], _there is no government_\nso ill, _provided it be ancient_, and has been _constant_, that is not\nbetter than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely\ncorrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and\ncustoms, _there are many that are barbarous and monstrous:\nnevertheless_, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the\ndanger of stirring things, _if I could put something under to stay the\nwheel_, and keep it where it is, _I would do so with all my heart_. It\nis very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its ancient\nobservances; _never any man undertook, but he succeeded; but to\nestablish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has overthrown,\nmany who have attempted this have foundered in the attempt_. I very\nlittle consult _my prudence_ [philosophic 'prudence'] in my conduct. I\nam willing to let it be guided by _public rule_.\n\n'In fine, to return to myself, the only things by which _I_ esteem\n_myself_ to be something, is _that wherein never any man_ thought\nhimself to be defective. _My recommendation is vulgar and common_; for\nwhoever thought _he_ wanted sense. It would be a _proposition that\nwould imply a contradiction in itself_; [in such subtleties thickly\nstudding this popular work, the clues which link it with other works\nof this kind are found--the clues to a new _practical human\nphilosophy_.] 'Tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tis\ntenacious and strong; _but the first ray of the patient's sight_ does\nnevertheless pierce it through and disperse it, as the beams of the\nsun do a thick mist: to _accuse one's self_, would be to _excuse one's\nself_ in this case; and to _condemn_, to _absolve_. There never was\nporter, or silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for\ntheir need. The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of\nothers, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we\nshould ourselves have found it out as well as they. _Knowledge,\nstyle_, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware\nif they excel our own; but for the simple products of the\n_understanding_, every one thinks he could have found out the like,\nand is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless--and then\nwith much ado--in an extreme and incomparable distance; _and whoever\nshould be able clearly to discern_ the height of another's judgment,\nwould be also able _to raise his own to the same pitch_; so that this\nis a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little\npraise, a kind of composition of small repute. _And, besides, for whom\ndo you write_?'--for he is merely meeting this common sense. His\nobject is merely to make his reader confess, 'That was just what I was\nabout to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it so,\nit was only for want of language;'--'for whom do you write? _The\nlearned_, to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know no\nother value but that of learning, and allow of no other process of wit\nbut that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios\nfor another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Whoever is\nignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort\nignorant of himself. _Heavy and vulgar souls_ cannot discern the grace\nof a high and unfettered style. Now these two sorts of men make the\n_world_. The _third sort_, into whose hands you fall, of souls that\nare regular, and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it _justly_\nhas neither _name nor place amongst us_, and it is pretty well time\nlost to aspire to it, or to endeavour to please it.' He will not\ncontent himself with pleasing the few. He wishes to _move_ the world,\nand its approbation is a secondary question with him.\n\n'He that should record _my_ idle talk, to the prejudice of the most\npaltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great\ndeal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other\ncertainty, but 'tis what I _had then in my thought, a thought\ntumultuous and wavering_. [\"I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet,\"\nsays the offended king. \"These words are not mine.\" _Hamlet_: \"Nor\nmine _now_.\"] All I say is by way of discourse. _I should not speak so\nboldly, if it were my due to be believed, and so I told a great man,\nwho complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice_.'\nAnd, indeed, he would not, in this instance, that is very\ncertain;--for he has been speaking on the subject of RELIGIOUS\nTOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of\nhis time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these, which,\nof course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is\noffended. ('These words are not mine, Hamlet.' 'Nor mine now.') 'To\n_kill men_, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too\nreal and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic\naccidents.' 'After all 'tis setting a _man's conjectures_ at a very\nhigh price to _cause a man to be roasted alive upon them_.' He does\nnot look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too\nmuch occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into\nhis head at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly\nasleep than _men usually are_, became, according to certain grave\nauthorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and having\nmentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove any unpleasant\nsensation or inquiry which his preceding allusion might have\noccasioned, he resumes, 'If _dreams can sometimes so incorporate\nthemselves with effects of life_, I cannot believe that therefore our\nwill should be accountable to justice. _Which I say, as a man_, who am\nneither _judge nor privy counsellor_, nor think myself, by many\ndegrees, worthy so to be, but a _man of the common sort_, born and\nvowed to the obedience of the public realm, both in _words_ and\n_acts_.\n\n  '_Thought_ is free;--_thought_ is free.'\n                                                      _Ariel_.\n\n'Perceiving _you to be ready and prepared on one part_, I propose to\nyou on the other, with all the care I can, to _clear_ your judgment,\nnot to enforce it. Truly, _I_ have not only a great many humours, but\n_also a great many opinions_ [which I bring forward here, and assume\nas mine] that I would _endeavour_ to make _my son dislike_, if I had\none. The _truest_, are not always the most commodious to man; he is of\ntoo _wild_ a composition. \"We speak of all things by precept and\nresolution,\" he continues, returning again to this covert question of\ntoleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in\nhis meridian. They make me hate things that are _likely_, when they\nimpose them on me for _infallible_. \"Wonder is the foundation of all\nphilosophy\"--(or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, \"wonder is the seed of\nknowledge\")--enquiry the progress--ignorance the end. Ay, but there is\na sort of ignorance, _strong and generous_, that yields nothing _in\nhonour and courage to knowledge_, a knowledge, which to conceive,\nrequires _no less knowledge_ than knowledge itself.'\n\n'I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras, a\ncounsellor of Thoulouse, put in print.'--[The vain, egotistical,\nincoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic French\ngentleman, who is understood to be the author of this new experiment\nin letters, was not far from being a middle-aged man, when the\npamphlet which he here alludes to was first published; but his\nchronology, generally, does not bear a very close examination. Some\nvery extraordinary anachronisms, which the critics are totally at a\nloss to account for, have somehow slipped into his story. There _was_\na young philosopher in France in those days, of a most precocious, and\nsubtle, and inventive genius--of a most singularly artistic genius,\ncombining speculation and practice, as they had never been combined\nbefore, and already busying himself with all sorts of things, and\namong other things, with curious researches in regard to ciphers, and\nother questions not less interesting at that time;--there was a youth\nin France, whose family name was also English, living there with his\neyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion to _invent_ a cipher of\nhis own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have\nfallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very\nnaturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to\nthe story.]--'I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that\nCorras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident\nof _two men, who presented themselves the one for the other_. I\nremember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have\nrendered _the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so\nwonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the\njudge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be\nhanged_. [That is the point.] _Let us take up_ SOME FORM of ARREST,\nthat shall say, THE COURT _understands nothing of the matter_, more\nfreely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, _who ordered the\nparties to appear again in a hundred years_.' We must not forget that\nthese stories 'are not regarded by the author merely for the use he\nmakes of them,--that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the\nseeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally a\n_more delicate sound_, both to the author himself who declines saying\nanything more about it _in that place_, and to others who shall happen\nto be of his ear!' One already prepared by previous discovery of the\nmethod of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in\nit, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of\nthe critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story\nlast quoted.\n\nIt is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to the\nattention of the reader, 'who will, perhaps, see farther into it than\nothers,' in that chapter on toleration in which it is suggested that\nconsidering the fantastic, and unscientific, and unsettled character\nof the human beliefs and opinions, and that even 'the Fathers' have\nsuggested in their speculations on the nature of human life, that what\nmen believed themselves to be, in their dreams, they really became, it\nis after all setting a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause\na man to be roasted alive on them; the chapter in which it is\nintimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a\nlittle more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of\narriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and\nadvancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to\nconduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human\nadvancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the\nlimits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the\nmost learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their\nform was determined. It is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a\nchapter 'on _cripples_,' into which this odd story about the two men\nwho presented themselves, the one for the other, in a manner so\nremarkable, is introduced, for _lameness_ is always this author's\ngrievance, wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of\ndevices to overcome it; for he is the person who came prepared to\nspeak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man reads his\nspeech, because he is one who could naturally give it a grace by\naction, or as another has it, he is one who would suit the action to\nthe word.\n\nBut it was not the question of 'hanging' only, or 'roasting alive,'\nthat authors had to consider with themselves in these times. For those\nforms of literary production which an author's literary taste, or his\ndesire to reach and move and mould the people, might incline him to\nselect--the most approved forms of popular literature, were in effect\nforbidden to men, bent, as these men were, on taking an active part in\nthe affairs of their time. Any extraordinary reputation for excellence\nin these departments, would hardly have tended to promote the\nambitious views of the young aspirant for honors in that school of\nstatesmanship, in which the 'Fairy Queen' had been scornfully\ndismissed, as 'an old song.' Even that disposition to the gravest and\nprofoundest forms of philosophical speculation, which one foolish\nyoung candidate for advancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit\nprematurely there, was made use of so successfully to his\ndisadvantage, that for years his practical abilities were held in\nsuspicion on that very account, as he complains. The reputation of a\n_Philosopher_ in those days was quite as much as this legal\npractitioner was willing to undertake for his part. That of a _Poet_\nmight have proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to\nsustain. His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not\nhave been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen, whose\nfavour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily relieved from any\nsuspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases of the Psalms for which\nhe chose to make himself responsible,--if those Hebrew melodies of his\ndid not do the business for him, and clear him effectually of any such\nsuspicion in the eyes of that generation, it is difficult to say what\nwould. But whether his devotional feelings were really of a kind to\nrequire any such painful expression as that on their own account, may\nreasonably be doubted by any one acquainted at all with his general\nhabits of thought and sentiment. These lyrics of the philosopher\nappear on the whole to prove too much; looked at from a literary point\nof view merely, they remind one forcibly of the attempts of Mr.\n_Silence_ at a Bacchanalian song. 'I have a reasonable good ear in\nmusic,' says the unfortunate Pyramus, struggling a little with that\ncerebral development and uncompromising facial angle which he finds\nimposed on him. 'I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have\nthe tongs and the bones.'\n\n'A man must frame _some probable cause_, why he should not do his\nbest, and why he should dissemble his abilities,' says this author,\nspeaking of _colour_, or the covering of defects; and that the\nprejudice just referred to was not peculiar to the English court, the\nremarkable piece of dramatic criticism which we are about to produce\nfrom this old Gascon philosopher's pages, may or may not indicate,\naccording as it is interpreted. It serves as an introduction to the\npassage in which the author's double meaning, and the occasionally\ndouble sound of his stories is noted. In the preceding chapter, it\nshould be remarked, however, the author has been discoursing in high\nstrains, upon the vanity of popular applause, or of any applause but\nthat of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with quotations from\nthe Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he assumes as the precepts\nof a true and natural philosophy; and among others the following\npassage was quoted:--[Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a\nquotation from a letter of Epicurus, on the same subject.]--'Remember\nhim who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could\ncome to the knowledge of but few persons, replied, \"A few are enough\nfor me. I have enough with one, I have enough with never a one.\" He\nsaid true; yourself and a companion _are_ theatre enough to one\nanother, or _you_ to _yourself_. Let us be to you _the whole people_,\nand the whole people to you but _one_. You should do like the beasts\nof chase who _efface the track at the entrance into their den_.' But\nthis author's comprehensive design embraces all the oppositions in\nhuman nature; he thinks it of very little use to preach to men from\nthe height of these lofty philosophic flights, unless you first dive\ndown to the platform of their actualities, and by beginning with the\nsecret of what they are, make sure that you take them with you. So\nthen the latent human vanity, must needs be confessed, and instead of\ntaking it all to himself this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged\nup, the latter very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand\nthe brunt of this philosophic shooting.\n\n'But this exceeds all meanness of spirit in _persons of such quality\nas they were_, to think to derive any glory from babbling and prating,\n_even to the making use of their private letters to their friends, and\nso withal that_ though some of them _were never sent, the opportunity\nbeing lost_, they nevertheless published them; with this worthy\nexcuse, that they were unwilling to lose their labour, and have their\nlucubrations thrown away.'--Was it not well becoming two consuls of\nRome, _sovereign magistrates of the republic, that_ commanded the\nworld, to spend their time in patching up elegant missives, in order\nto gain the reputation of being well versed _in their own mother\ntongue_? What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got\nhis living by it? If the _acts_ of Xenophon and Caesar had not far\ntranscended their eloquence, I don't believe they would ever have\ntaken the pains to _write_ them. They made it their business to\nrecommend not their _saying_, but their _doing_. The companions of\nDemosthenes in the embassy to Philip, extolling that prince as\nhandsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those\nwere commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge.\n'Tis not _his profession_ to know either how to hunt, or to dance\nwell.\n\n  Orabunt causas alii, coelique meatus\n  Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent,\n  Hic regere imperio populos sciat.\n\nPlutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less\nnecessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man's self, that\nhe has spent his time and study ill, which ought to have been employed\nin the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things. Thus\nPhilip, King of Macedon, having heard _the great Alexander_, his son,\n_sing at a feast_ to the _wonder and envy of the best musicians_\nthere. 'Art thou not ashamed,' he said to him, 'to _sing so well_?'\nAnd to the same Philip, a musician with whom he was disputing about\nsomething concerning his art, said, '_Heaven forbid, sir, that so\ngreat a misfortune should ever befall you as to understand these\nthings better than I_.' Perhaps this author might have made a similar\nreply, had _his_ been subjected to a similar criticism. And Lord Bacon\nquotes this story too, as he does many others, which this author has\n_first selected_, and for the same purpose; for, not content with\nappropriating his philosophy, and pretending to invent his design and\nhis method, he borrows all his most significant stories from him, and\nbrings them in to illustrate the same points, and the points are\nborrowed also: he makes use, indeed, of his common-place book\nthroughout in the most shameless and unconscionable manner. 'Rack his\nstyle, Madam, _rack his style_?' he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he\ntells us, when she consulted him--he being then of her counsel\nlearned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having written 'the\nbook of the deposing of Richard the Second, and the _coming in_ of\nHenry the Fourth,' and sent to the Tower for that offence. The queen\nwas eager for a different kind of advice. Racking an author's book did\nnot appear to her coarse sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the\ndelicacy of an author's susceptibilities, a process in itself\nsufficiently murderous to satisfy her revenge. There must be some\nflesh and blood in the business before ever she could understand it.\nShe wanted to have 'the question' put to that gentleman as to his\nmeaning in the obscure passages in that work under the most impressive\ncircumstances; and Mr. Bacon, _himself_ an author, being of her\ncounsel learned, was requested to make out a case of treason for her;\nand wishes from such a source were understood to be commands in those\ndays. Now it happened that one of the managers and actors at the Globe\nTheatre, who was at that time sustaining, as it would seem, the most\nextraordinary relations of intimacy and friendship with the friends\nand patrons of this same person, then figuring as the queen's adviser,\nhad recently composed a tragedy on this very subject; though that\ngentleman, more cautious than Dr. Hayward, and having, perhaps, some\nlearned counsel also, had taken the precaution to keep back the scene\nof the deposing of royalty during the life-time of this sharp-witted\nqueen, reserving its publication for the reign of her erudite\nsuccessor; and the learned counsel in this case being aware of the\nfact, may have felt some sympathy with this misguided author. 'No,\nmadam,' he replied to her inquiry, thinking to take off her bitterness\nwith a merry conceit, as he says, 'for treason I can _not_ deliver\nopinion that there is any, but very much felony.' The queen\napprehending it gladly, asked, 'How?' and 'wherein?' Mr. Bacon\nanswered, 'Because he had stolen many of his sentences and conceits\nout of Cornelius Tacitus.' It would do one good to see, perhaps, how\nmany felonious appropriations of sentences, and quotations, and ideas,\nthe application he recommends would bring to light in this case.\n\nBut the instances already quoted are not the only ones which this free\nspoken foreign writer, this Elizabethan genius abroad, ventures to\nadduce in support of this position of his, that statesmen--men who\naspire to the administration of republics or other forms of\ngovernment--if they cannot consent on that account to relinquish\naltogether the company of the Muses, must at least so far respect the\nprevailing opinion on that point, as to be able to sacrifice to it the\nproudest literary honours. Will the reader be pleased to notice, not\nmerely the extraordinary character of the example in this instance,\nbut _the grounds_ of the assumption which the critic makes with so\nmuch coolness.\n\n'And could the perfection of eloquence have added any lustre\nproportionable to the merit of a great person, certainly Scipio and\nLaelius had never resigned the honour of their comedies, with all the\n_luxuriancies and delicacies of the Latin tongue_, to an African\nslave, for that the work was THEIRS _its beauty and excellency_\nSUFFICIENTLY PROVE.' [This is from a book in which the supposed\nautograph of Shakspere is found; a work from which he quotes\nincessantly, and from which he appears, indeed, to have taken the\nwhole hint of his learning.] 'Besides Terence himself confesses as\nmuch, and I should take it ill in any one that would _dispossess me_\nof that _belief_.' For, as he says in another place, in a certain\ndeeply disguised dedication which he makes of the work of a friend, a\npoet, whose early death he greatly lamented, and whom he is\n'determined,' as he says, 'to revive and raise again to life if he\ncan:' 'As we often judge of the greater by the less, and _as the very\npastimes_ of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted\n_of the source_ from which they spring, I hope you will, by this work\nof his, rise to the knowledge of himself, and by consequence love and\nembrace his memory. In so doing, you will accomplish what he\nexceedingly longed for whilst he lived.' But here he continues thus,\n'I have, indeed, in my time known some, who, by a knack of writing,\nhave got both title and fortune, yet disown their apprenticeship,\n_purposely corrupt their style,_ and affect ignorance of so vulgar a\nquality (which _also our nation observes_, rarely to be seen _in very\nlearned hands_), carefully seeking a reputation by better qualities.'\n\n  I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair:\n  but now it did me yeoman's service.--_Hamlet_.\n\nAnd it is in the next paragraph to _this_, that he takes occasion to\nmention that his stories and allegations do not always serve simply\nfor example, authority, or ornament; that they are not limited in\ntheir application to the use he ostensibly makes of them, but that\nthey carry, for those who are in his secret, other meanings, bolder\nand richer meanings, and sometimes collaterally a more delicate sound.\nAnd having interrupted the consideration upon Cicero and Pliny, and\ntheir vanity and pitiful desire for honour in future ages, with this\ncriticism on the limited sphere of statesmen in general, and the\ndevices to which _L\u00e6lius and Scipio_ were compelled to resort, in\norder to get _their_ plays published without diminishing the lustre of\ntheir personal renown, and having stopped to insert that most\nextraordinary avowal in regard to his two-fold meanings in his\nallegations and stories, he returns to the subject of this\ncorrespondence again, for there is more in this also than meets the\near; and it is not _Pliny_, and _Cicero_ only, whose supposed vanity,\nand regard for posthumous fame, as men of letters, is under\nconsideration. 'But returning to the _speaking virtue_;' he says, 'I\nfind _no great choice_ between not knowing to speak _anything but\nill_, and not knowing anything but _speaking well_. The sages tell us,\nthat as to what concerns _knowledge_ there is nothing but\n_philosophy_, and as to what concerns _effects_ nothing but _virtue_,\nthat is generally proper to all degrees and orders. There is something\nlike _this in these two other_ philosophers, for _they also promise_\nETERNITY to the letters they write to their friends, but 'tis _after\nanother manner_, and by accommodating themselves _for a good end_ to\nthe vanity of _another_; for they write to them that if the concern of\nmaking themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do\nyet _detain_ them in the management of public affairs, and make them\nfear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them;\nlet them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they\nshall have credit enough with posterity to assure them that, were\nthere nothing else but the _letters_ thus writ to them, those letters\nwill render their names as known and famous as their _own public\nactions_ themselves could do. [And that--_that_ is the key to the\ncorrespondence between _two other_ philosophers enigmatically alluded\nto here.] And besides this difference,' for it is 'these two other\nphilosophers,' and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus\nalone, that we talk of here, 'and besides _this difference, these_ are\nnot _idle_ and _empty_ letters, that contain nothing but a fine jingle\nof well chosen words, and fine couched phrases; but replete and\n_abounding with grave and learned discourses_, by which a man may\nrender himself--not more eloquent but more _wise_, and that instruct\nus not to _speak_ but _to do well_'; for that is the rhetorical theory\nthat was adopted by the scholars and statesmen then alive, whose\nmethods of making themselves known to future ages he is indicating,\neven in these references to the ancients. '_Away_ with that\n_eloquence_ which so enchants us with its _harmony_ that we should\nmore study it than _things_'; for this is the place where the\nquotation with which our investigation of this theory commenced is\ninserted in the text, and here it is, in the light of these preceding\ncollections of hints that he puts in the story first quoted, wherein\nhe says, the nature of the orator will be much more manifestly laid\nopen to us, than in that seeming care for his fame, or in that care of\nhis style, for its own sake. It is the story of Eros, the slave, who\nbrought the speaker word that the audience was _deferred_, when in\ncomposing a speech that he was to make in public, 'he found himself\nstraitened in _time_, to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind\nto do.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE POSSIBILITY OF GREAT ANONYMOUS WORKS,--OR WORKS PUBLISHED UNDER AN\nASSUMED NAME,--CONVEYING, UNDER RHETORICAL DISGUISES, THE PRINCIPAL\nSCIENCES,--RE-SUGGESTED, AND ILLUSTRATED.\n\n\n_Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine\nfor fear of the storm.--Tempest_.\n\nBUT as to this love of glory which the stoics, whom this philosopher\nquotes so approvingly, have measured at its true worth; as to this\nlove of literary fame, this hankering after an earthly immortality,\nwhich he treats so scornfully in the Roman statesman, let us hear him\nagain in another chapter, and see if we can find any thing whereby\n_his_ nature and designs will more manifestly be laid open to us. 'Of\nall the foolish dreams in the world,' he says, that which is most\nuniversally received, is the solicitude of reputation and glory, which\nwe are fond of to that degree as to abandon riches, peace, life, and\nhealth, which are effectual and substantial good, to pursue this vain\nphantom. And of all the irrational humours of men, it should seem that\nthe philosophers themselves have the most ado, and do the least\ndisengage themselves from this the most restive and obstinate of all\nthe follies. There is not any one view of which _reason_ does so\nclearly accuse the vanity, as that; but it is _so deeply rooted in\nus_, that I doubt whether any one ever clearly freed himself from it,\nor no. _After you have said all, and believed all_ that has been said\nto its prejudice, it creates so intestine an inclination _in\nopposition to your best arguments_, that you have little power and\nfirmness to resist it; _for_ (_as Cicero says_) even those who\ncontrovert it, would yet that _the books they write_ should appear\nbefore the world with _their names in the title page_, and seek to\nderive glory from seeming to despise it. All other things are\ncommunicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods--\n\n[It irks me not that men my garments wear.]\n\nand stake our lives for the necessities and service of our friends;\nbut to communicate one's honour, _and to robe another with one's own\nglory_, is very rarely seen. And yet we have some examples of that\nkind. Catulus Luctatius, in the Cymbrian war, having done all that in\nhim lay to make his flying soldiers face about upon the enemy, _ran\nhimself at last away with the rest, and counterfeited the coward_, to\nthe end that his men might rather seem to follow their captain, than\nto fly from the enemy; and after several anecdotes full of that inner\nsignificance of which he speaks elsewhere, in which he appears, but\nonly appears, to lose sight of this question of literary honour, for\nthey relate to _military_ conflicts, he ventures to approach, somewhat\ncautiously and delicately, the latent point of his essay again, by\nadducing the example of persons, _not_ connected with the military\nprofession, who have found themselves called upon in various ways, and\nby means of various weapons, to take part in these wars; who have yet,\nin consequence of certain '_subtleties of conscience_,' _relinquished_\nthe _honour_ of their successes; and though there is no instance\nadduced of that particular kind of disinterestedness, in which an\nauthor relinquishes to another the honour of his title page, as the\nbeginning might have led one to anticipate; on the whole, the not\nindiligent reader of this author's performances here and elsewhere,\nwill feel that the subject which is announced as the subject of this\nchapter, 'Not to communicate a man's honour or glory,' has been,\nconsidering the circumstance, sufficiently illustrated.\n\n'_As women succeeding to peerages_ had, notwithstanding their sex, the\nright to assist and give their votes in the causes that appertain to\nthe jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers,\n_notwithstanding their profession_, were obliged to _assist our kings_\nin their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their\nown persons. And he instances the Bishop of Beauvais, who took a\ngallant share in the battle of Bouvines, but did not think it _fit for\nhim to participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody\ntrade_. He, with his own hand, reduced several of the enemy that day\nto his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met, either\nto kill or to receive them to quarter, _referring that part to another\nhand_. As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de\nNeale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he would KILL,\n_but_ NOT WOUND _him_, and _for that reason_, fought only with a\n_mace_. And a certain person in my time, being reproached by the king\nthat he had _laid hands_ on a _priest_, stiffly and positively denied\nit. The case was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.' And there the\nauthor abruptly, for that time, leaves the matter without any allusion\nto the case of still another kind of combatants, who, fighting with\nanother kind of weapon, might also, from similar subtleties of\nconscience, perhaps think fit to devolve on others the glory of their\nsuccesses.\n\nBut in a chapter on _names_, in which, if he has not told, he has\n_designed to tell all_; and what he could not express, he has at least\npointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully developed. In\nthis chapter, he regrets that such as write _chronicles in Latin_ do\nnot leave our names as they find them, for in making of _Vaudemont_\nVALLE-MONTANUS, and metamorphosing names to dress them out in Greek or\nLatin, we know not where we are, and with the _persons_ of _the men,\nlose_ the _benefit_ of the _story_: but one who tracks the inner\nthread of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be\nat no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently\nvery trivial talk about _names_, he resumes his philosophic humour\nagain, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recalls once\nmore, the considerations with which philosophy sets at nought the loss\nof fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts to worthy deeds, the\nglory that should follow them.\n\n'But this consideration--that is the consideration \"that it is the\ncustom in _France_, to call every man, even a stranger, by the name of\nany _manor_ or _seigneury_, he may chance to come in possession of,\ntends to the total confusion of descents, so that _surnames_ are no\nsecurity,\"--\"for,\" he says, \"a younger brother of a good family,\nhaving a _manor_ left him by his father, by the name of which he has\nbeen known and honoured, cannot handsomely leave it; ten years after\nhis decease, it falls into the hand of a stranger, who does the same.\"\nDo but judge whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these\nmen. This consideration leads me therefore into another subject. Let\nus look a little more narrowly into, and examine upon what foundation\nwe erect this glory and reputation, for which the world is turned\ntopsy-turvy. Wherein do we place this renown, that we hunt after with\nsuch infinite anxiety and trouble. It is in the end PIERRE or WILLIAM\nthat bears it, takes it into his possession, and whom only it\nconcerns. Oh what a valiant faculty is HOPE, that in a mortal subject,\nand in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity,\neternity, and of supplying her master's indigence, at her pleasure,\nwith all things that he can imagine or desire. And this Pierre or\nWilliam, what is it but a sound, when all is done, (\"What's in a\nname?\") or three or four dashes with a pen?'\n\nAnd he has already written two paragraphs to show, that the name of\nWilliam, at least, is not excepted from the general remarks he is\nmaking here on the vanity of names; while that of Pierre is five times\nrepeated, apparently with the same general intention, and another\ncombination of sounds is not wanting which serves with that free\ntranslation the author himself takes pains to suggest and defend, to\ncomplete what was lacking to that combination, in order to give these\nremarks their true point and significance, in order to redeem them\nfrom that appearance of flatness which is not a characteristic of this\nauthor's intentions, and in his style merely serves as an intimation\nto the reader that there is something worth looking for beneath it.\n\nAs to the name of William, and the amount of personal distinction\nwhich that confers upon its owners, he begins by telling us, that the\nname of Guienne is said to be derived from the Williams of our ancient\nAquitaine, 'which would seem,' he says, rather far fetched, were there\nnot as crude derivations in Plato himself, to whom he refers in other\nplaces for similar precedents; and when he wishes to excuse his\nenigmatical style--the titles of his chapters for instance. And by way\nof emphasizing this particular still further, he mentions, that on the\noccasion when Henry, the Duke of Normandy, the son of Henry the\nSecond, of England, made a feast in France, the concourse of nobility\nand gentry was so great, that for _sport's sake_ he divided them into\n_troops, according to their names_, and in the _first troop, which\nconsisted of Williams_, there were found a hundred and ten knights\nsitting at the table of that name, without reckoning the simple\ngentlemen and servants.\n\nAnd here he apparently digresses from his subject for the sake of\nmentioning the Emperor _Geta_, 'who distributed the several courses of\nhis meats by the _first letters of the meats_ themselves, where those\nthat began with _B_ were served up together; _as_ brawn, beef,\nbeccaficos, and so of the others.' This appears to be a little out of\nthe way; but it is not impossible that there may be an allusion in it\nto the author's own family name of _Eyquem_, though that would be\nrather farfetched, as he says; but then there is _Plato_ at hand,\nstill to keep us in countenance.\n\nBut to return to the point of digression. 'And this Pierre, or\nWilliam, what is it but a sound when all is done? _Or_ three or four\ndashes with a pen, _so easy to be varied_, that I would fain know to\nwhom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, to\n_Guesquin_, to Glesquin, or to _Gueaguin_. And yet there would be\nsomething more in the case than in Lucian that Sigma should serve Tau\nwith a process, for \"He seeks no mean rewards.\" _The quere is here in\ngood earnest. The point is_, which of _these letters_ is to be\nrewarded for so many sieges, battles, wounds, imprisonment, and\nservices done to the crown of France by this famous constable.\n_Nicholas Denisot_ never concerned _himself_ further than _the letters\nof his name_, of which he has altered the _whole contexture, to build\nup by anagram_ the Count d'Alsinois _whom he has endowed with the\nglory of his poetry and painting_. [A good precedent--but here is a\nbetter one.] And the historian Suetonius looked only to the _meaning\nof his_; and so, cashiering his _fathers surname, Lenis_ left\nTranquillus _successor to the reputation of his writings_. Who would\nbelieve that the Captain Bayard should have no honour but what he\nderives from the great deeds of Peter (Pierre) Terrail, [the name of\nBayard--\"the meaning\"] and that Antonio Escalin should suffer himself,\nto his face, to be robbed of the honour of so many navigations, and\ncommands at sea and land, by Captain Poulin and the Baron de la Garde.\n[The name of Poulin was taken from the place where he was born, De la\nGarde from a person who took him in his boyhood into his service.] Who\nhinders my groom from calling himself Pompey the Great? But, after\nall, what virtue, what springs are there that convey to my deceased\ngroom, or the other Pompey (who had his head cut off in Egypt), this\nglorious renown, and these so much honoured flourishes of the pen?'\nInstructive suggestions, especially when taken in connection with the\npreceding items contained in this chapter, apparently so casually\nintroduced, yet all with a stedfast bearing on this question of names,\nand all pointing by means of a thread of delicate sounds, and not less\ndelicate suggestions, to another instance, in which the possibility of\ncircumstances tending to countervail the so natural desire to\nappropriate to the name derived from one's ancestors, the lustre of\none's deeds, is clearly demonstrated.\n\n''Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is in war;\nfor what is more easy to an old soldier than to shift in time of\ndanger, and to counterfeit bravely, when he has no more heart than a\nchicken. There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man's own\nperson'--'and had we the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those\ninvisible that wear it, if turned inwards towards the palm of the\nhand, it is to be feared that a great many would often hide\nthemselves, when they _ought to appear_.' 'It seems that to be known,\n_is in some sort to a man's life and its duration in another's\nkeeping_. I for my part, hold that I am wholly in myself, and that\nother life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends,\nconsidering it nakedly and simply in itself, I know very well that I\nam sensible of no fruit or enjoyment of it but by the vanity of a\nfantastic opinion; and, when I shall be dead, I shall be much less\nsensible of it, and shall withal absolutely lose the use of those real\nadvantages that sometimes accidentally follow it. [That was Lord\nBacon's view, too, exactly.] I shall have no more handle whereby to\ntake hold of reputation, or whereby it may take hold of me: for to\nexpect that my name should receive it, in the first place, I have no\nname that is enough my own. Of two that I have, one is common to all\nmy race, and even to others also: there is one family at Paris, and\nanother at Montpelier, whose surname is _Montaigne_; another in\nBrittany, and Xaintonge called _De la Montaigne_. The transposition of\n_one syllable only_ is enough to ravel our affairs, so that I shall\nperadventure share in their glory, and they shall partake of my shame;\nand, moreover, my ancestors were formerly surnamed _Eyquem_, a name\nwherein a _family well known in England_ at this day is concerned. As\nto my other name, any one can _take it that will_, and _so_, perhaps,\nI may honour _a porter_ in my own stead. And, besides, though I had a\nparticular distinction myself, what can it distinguish when I _am no\nmore_. Can it point out and favour inanity?\n\n  But will thy manes such a gift bestow\n  As to make violets from thy ashes grow?\n\n'But of this I have spoken elsewhere.' He has--and to purpose.\n\nBut as to the authority for these readings, Lord Bacon himself will\ngive us that; for this is the style which he discriminates so sharply\nas 'the _enigmatical_,' a style which he, too, finds to have been in\nuse among the ancients, and which he tells us _has some affinity_ with\nthat new method of making over knowledge from the mind of the teacher\nto that of the pupil, which he terms the method of _progression_--\n(which is the method of _essaie_)--in opposition to the received\nmethod, the only method he finds in use, which he, too, calls\nthe _magisterial_. And this method of progression, with which the\nenigmatical has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases\nwhere knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where science\nis to be removed from one mind to another _to grow from the root_, and\nnot delivered as trees for the use of the carpenter, where _the root_\nis of no consequence. In this case, he tells us it is necessary for\nthe teacher to descend to _the foundations of knowledge and consent_,\nand so to transplant it into another as it grew in his own mind,\n'whereas as knowledge is now delivered, there is a _kind of contract\nof error_ between the deliverer and the receiver, for he that\ndelivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such a form as may\n_best be believed_, and not as may best be _examined_: and he that\nreceiveth knowledge desireth rather _present satisfaction_ than\n_expectant inquiry_, and so rather _not to doubt than not to err,\nglory_ making the author not to lay open his weakness, and _sloth_\nmaking the disciple _not to know his strength_.' Now, so very grave a\ndefect as this, in the method of the delivery and tradition of\nLearning, would of course be one of the first things that would\nrequire to be remedied in any plan in which '_the Advancement_' of it\nwas seriously contemplated. And this method of the delivery and\ntradition of knowledge which transfers _the root_ with them, that they\nmay grow in the mind of the learner, is the method which this\nphilosopher professes to find wanting, and the one which he seems\ndisposed to invent. He has made a very thorough survey of the stores\nof the ancients, and is not unacquainted with the more recent history\nof learning; he knows exactly what kinds of methods have been made use\nof by the learned in all ages, for the purpose of putting themselves\ninto some tolerable and possible relations with the physical majority;\nhe knows what devices they have always been compelled to resort to,\nfor the purpose of establishing some more or less effective\ncommunication between themselves and that world to which they\ninstinctively seek to transfer their doctrine. But this method, which\nhe suggests here as the essential condition of the growth and\nadvancement of learning, he does _not_ find invented. He refers to a\nmethod which he calls the enigmatical, which has an affinity with it,\n'used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients,' but disgraced\nsince, 'by the impostures of persons, who have made it as a _false\nlight_ for their counterfeit merchandises.' The purpose of this latter\nstyle is, as he defines it, 'to remove the _secrets_ of knowledge from\nthe penetration of the more vulgar capacities, and to reserve them to\n_selected auditors_, or to wits of such sharpness as can pierce the\nveil.' And that is a method, he tells us, which philosophy can by no\nmeans dispense with in his time, and 'whoever would let in new light\nupon the human understanding must still have recourse to it.' But the\nmethod of delivery and tradition in those ancient schools, appears to\nhave been too much of the dictatorial kind to suit this proposer of\nadvancement; its tendency was to arrest knowledge instead of promoting\nits growth. He is not pleased with the ambition of those old masters,\nand thinks they aimed too much at a personal impression, and that they\nsometimes undertook to impose their own particular and often very\npartial grasp of those universal doctrines and principles, which are\nand must be true for all men, in too dogmatical and magisterial a\nmanner, without making sufficient allowance for the growth of the mind\nof the world, the difference of races, etc.\n\nBut if any doubt in regard to the use of the method described, in the\ncomposition of the work now first produced as AN EXAMPLE of the use of\nit, should still remain in any mind; or if this method of unravelling\nit should seem too studious, perhaps the author's own word for it in\none more quotation may be thought worth taking.\n\n'_I can give no account of my life by_ MY ACTIONS, fortune has placed\n_them_ too low; _I must do it_ BY MY FANCIES. And when shall I have\ndone representing the continual agitation and change of my thoughts as\nthey come into my head, seeing that Diomedes filled six thousand books\nupon the subject of grammar.' [The commentators undertake to set him\nright here, but the philosopher only glances in his intention at the\nvoluminousness of the science of _words_, in opposition to the science\nof _things_, which he came to establish.] 'What must prating\n_produce_, since prating itself, and the first beginning to speak,\nstuffed the world with such a horrible load of volumes. So many words\nabout _words_ only. They accused one Galba, of old, of living idly; he\nmade answer that every one ought to give account of his _actions_, but\n_not_ of his _leisure_. He was mistaken, for _justice_--[the civil\nauthority]--has cognizance and _jurisdiction_ over those that _do\nnothing_, or only PLAY _at_ WORKING.... Scribbling appears to be the\nsign of a disordered age. Every man applies himself negligently to the\nduty of his _vocation_ at such a time and debauches in it.' From that\ncentral wrong of an evil government, an infectious depravity spreads\nand corrupts all particulars. Everything turns from its true and\nnatural course. Thus _scribbling_ is the sign of a disordered age. Men\nwrite in such times instead of acting; and scribble, or seem to\nperhaps, instead of writing openly to purpose.\n\nAnd yet, again, that central, and so divergent, wrong is the result of\neach man's particular contribution, as he goes on to assert. 'The\ncorruption of this age is made up by the particular contributions of\nevery individual man,'--\n\n  He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.--_Cassius_.\n\n'Some contribute _treachery_, others _injustice_, irreligion,\n_tyranny_, _avarice_ and _cruelty, according as they have power; the_\nWEAKER SORT CONTRIBUTE FOLLY, VANITY, _and_ IDLENESS, and _of these_ I\nam one.'\n\n  _Caesar_ loves no plays as thou dost, Antony.\n  Such men are dangerous.\n\nOr, as the same poet expresses it in another Roman play:--\n\n  This _double worship_,\n  Where one part does _disdain with cause, the other\n  Insult without all reason_; where gentry, title, wisdom\n  Cannot conclude but by the _yea and no_\n  Of _general ignorance_,--it must omit\n  Real necessities--and give way the while\n  To unstable slightness; purpose _so barred_,\n  It follows, nothing is done to purpose.\n\nAnd that is made the plea for an attempt to overthrow the popular\npower, and to replace it with a government containing the true head of\nthe state, its nobility, its learning, its gentleness, its wisdom.\n\nBut the essayist continues:--'It seems as if it were the season for\n_vain things_ when _the hurtful oppress us_; in a time when doing ill\nis common, to do nothing but what _signifies nothing_ is a kind of\ncommendation. 'Tis _my_ comfort that _I_ shall be one of the last that\nshall be called in question,--for it would be against reason _to\npunish the less troublesome_ while we are _infested_ with the\n_greater_. _As the physician_ said to one who presented him his finger\nto dress, and who, as he perceived, had an ulcer _in his lungs_,\n\"Friend, it is not now time to concern yourself about your finger's\nends.\" _And yet_ I saw some years ago, _a person, whose name and\nmemory I have in very great esteem_, in the very height of our great\ndisorders, when there was _neither law nor justice put in execution,\nnor magistrate that performed his office_,--_no more than there is\nnow_,--publish I know not what _pitiful reformations_ about _clothes,\ncookery_ and _law chicanery_. _These are amusements_ wherewith _to\nfeed a people that are ill used, to show that they are not totally\nforgotten. These others_ do the same, who insist upon _stoutly\ndefending_ the _forms_ of _speaking_, dances and games to a people\ntotally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices--it is for the\nSpartans only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are\njust upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of\ntheir lives.\n\n'For _my part_, I have _yet a worse_ custom. I scorn to mend myself by\nhalves. If my _shoe_ go awry, I let my shirt and my cloak do so too:\nwhen I am out of order I feed on mischief. I abandon myself through\ndespair, and let myself go towards the precipice, and as the saying\nis, throw the helve after the hatchet.' We should not need, perhaps,\nthe aid of the explanations already quoted, to show us that the author\ndoes not confess this custom of his for the sake of commending it to\nthe sense or judgment of the reader,--who sees it here for the first\ntime it may be put into words or put on paper, who looks at it here,\nperhaps, for the first time objectively, from the critical stand-point\nwhich the review of another's confession creates; and though it may\nhave been latent in the dim consciousness of his own experience, or\npractically developed, finds it now for the first time, collected from\nthe phenomena of the blind, instinctive, human motivity, and put down\non the page of science, as a principle in nature, in human nature\nalso.\n\nBut this is indeed a Spartan combing and curling, that the author is\nfalling to, in the introductory flourishes ('diversions' as he calls\nthem) of this great adventure, that his pen is out for now: he is\nindeed upon the point of running headlong into the fiercest\ndangers;--it is the state, the wretched, discased, vicious state,\ndying apparently, yet full of teeth and mischief, that he is about to\nhandle in his argument with these fine, lightsome, frolicsome\npreparations of his, without any perceptible 'mittens'; it is the\nheart of that political evil that his time groans with, and begins to\nfind insufferable, that he is going to probe to the quick with that so\ndelicate weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all\nthe instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as handsomely,\nand with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the circumstances will\nadmit of. But the political situation which he describes so boldly\n(and we have already seen what it is) affects us here in its relation\nto the question of style only, and as the author himself connects it\nwith the point of our inquiry.\n\n'A man may regret,' he says, 'the better times, but cannot fly from\nthe present, we may wish for other magistrates, but we must,\nnotwithstanding, obey those we have; and, peradventure, it is more\nlaudable to obey the bad than the good, so long as the image of the\nancient and received laws of this monarchy shall shine in any corner\nof the kingdom. If they happen, unfortunately, to thwart and\ncontradict one another, so as to produce two factions of doubtful\nchoice,'--\n\n  And my soul aches\n  To know, [says Coriolanus] when two authorities are up,\n  Neither supreme, how soon confusion\n  May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take\n  The one by the other.\n\n--'in this contingency will willingly choose,' continues the other,\n'to withdraw from the tempest, and in the meantime, _nature or the\nhazards of war may lend me a helping hand_. Betwixt C\u00e6sar and Pompey,\nI should soon and frankly have declared myself, but amongst the three\nrobbers that came after, a man must needs _have either hid himself_,\nor have gone along with the current of the time, _which I think a man\nmay lawfully do, when reason no longer rules_.' '_Whither_ dost thou\nwandering go?'\n\n'This _medley_ is a little from my subject, I go out of my way but\n'tis rather _by licence than oversight_. My fancies _follow_ one\nanother, _but sometimes at a great distance_, and _look towards one\nanother_, but 'tis with an _oblique glance_. I have read a DIALOGUE of\nPLATO of such a _motley and fantastic_ composition. The _beginning was\nabout love_, and all the rest ABOUT RHETORIC. _They_ stick not (that\nis, the ancients) at these variations, and have a marvellous grace in\nletting themselves to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or\nat least to _seem_ as if they were. The titles of my chapters do not\nalways comprehend the whole matter, they often denote it _by some mark\nonly_, as those other titles _Andria Eunuchus_, or these, _Sylla,\nCicero, Torquatus_. I love _a poetic march_, by leaps and skips, 'tis\nan art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and _a little demoniacal_. There\nare places in _Plutarch_ where _he_ forgets his theme, where the\nproposition of _his_ argument is only found _incidentally_, and\nstuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in\nthe Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and\ndigressions; and then _most of all, when they seem to be_ fortuitous,\n[hear] and introduced _for want of heed. 'Tis the indiligent reader_\nthat loses my subject--_not I. There will always be found some words_\nor _other in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie very\nclose_ [that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indiscreetly and\ntumultously: my style and my _wit_ wander at the same rate, [he\nwanders _wittingly_]. A _little folly_ is _desirable_ in him _that\nwill not be guilty of stupidity_, say the precepts, and much more the\n_examples_ of our masters. A thousand poets flag and languish after a\n_prosaic manner_; but the best old prose, and I strew it here up and\ndown _indifferently_ for verse, shines throughout with the vigor and\nboldness of poetry, and represents some air of its fury. Certainly,\nprose must _yield_ the pre-eminence in speaking. \"The poet,\" says\nPlato, \"when set upon the muse's tripod, pours out with fury, whatever\ncomes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain, _without\nconsidering and pausing upon what he says_, and things come from him\nof _various colors_, of _contrary substance_, and with an irregular\ntorrent\": he himself (Plato) is all over poetical, and all the old\ntheology (_as the learned inform us) is poetry_, and the _first\nphilosophy_, is the origiual language of the gods.\n\n'I would have the matter _distinguish itself_; it sufficiently shows\n_where it changes_, where it concludes, _where it begins, and where it\nresumes, without interlacing it with words of connection_, introduced\nfor the relief of _weak or negligent ears_, and without commenting\nmyself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all, than after a\ndrowsy or _cursory_ manner? Seeing I cannot fix the reader's attention\nby the _weight_ of what I write, _maneo male_, if I should chance _to\ndo it by my intricacies_. [Hear]. I mortally hate obscurity and _would\navoid it if I could. In such an employment_, to whom you will not give\nan hour you will give nothing; _and you do nothing for him for whom\nyou only do, whilst you are doing something else_. To which may be\nadded, that I have, perhaps, some particular obligation to speak only\n_by halves_, to speak _confusedly and discordantly_.'\n\nBut this is, perhaps, enough to show, in the way of direct assertion,\nthat we have here, at least, a philosophical work composed in that\nstyle which Lord Bacon calls 'the enigmatical,' in which he tells us\nthe _secrets_ of knowledge are reserved for _selected auditors_, or\nwits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil; a style which he, too,\ntells us was sometimes used by the discretion of the ancients, though\nhe does not specify either Plutarch or Plato; in that place, and one\nwhich he introduces in connection with his new method of progression,\nin consequence of its having, as he tells us, _some affinity_ with it,\nand that we have here also a specimen of that new method itself, by\nmeans of which knowledge is to be delivered as a thread to be spun on.\n\nBut let us leave, for the present, this wondrous Gascon, though it is\nnot very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in\nhand,--this philosopher, whose fancies look towards one another at\nsuch long, such very long distances, sometimes, though not always,\nwith an _oblique_ glance, who dares to depend so much upon the eye of\nhis reader, and especially upon the reader of that 'far-off' age he\nwrites to. It would have been indeed irrelevant to introduce the\nsubject of this foreign work and its style in this connection without\nfurther explanation, but for the identity of political situation\nalready referred to, and but for those subtle, interior, incessant\nconnections with the higher writings of the great Elizabethan school,\nwhich form the _main characteristic_ of this production. The fact,\nthat this work was composed in the country in which the chief\nElizabethan men attained their maturity, that it dates from the time\nin which Bacon was completing his education there, that it covers\nostensibly not the period only, but the scenes and events of Raleigh's\nsix years campaigning there, as well as the fact alluded to by this\nauthor himself, in a passage already quoted,--the fact that there was\na family then in England, _very well known_, who bore the surname of\nhis ancestors, a family of the name of _Eyquem_, he tells us with\nwhom, perhaps, he still kept up some secret correspondence and\nrelations, the fact, too, which he mentions in his chapter on Names,\nthat a surname in France is very easily acquired, and is not\nnecessarily derived from one's ancestors,--that same chapter in which\nhe adduces so many instances of men who, notwithstanding that\ninveterate innate love of the honour of one's own proper name, which\nis in men of genius still more inveterate,--have for one reason or\nanother been willing to put upon anagrams, or synonyms, or borrowed\nnames, all their honours, so that in the end it is William or Pierre\nwho takes them into his possession, and bears them, or it's the name\nof 'an African slave' perhaps, or the name of a 'groom' (promoted, it\nmay be, to the rank of a jester, or even to that of a player,) that\ngets all the glory. All these facts, taken in connection with the\nconclusions already established, though insignificant in themselves,\nwill be found anything but that for the philosophical student who has\nleisure to pursue the inquiry.\n\nAnd though the latent meanings, in which the interior connections and\nidentities referred to above are found, are not yet critically\nrecognised, a latent national affinity and liking strong enough to\npierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior, appears to have been\nat work here from the first. For though the seed of the richer and\nbolder meanings from which the author anticipated his later harvest,\ncould not yet be reached, that new form of popular writing, that\neffective, and vivacious mode of communication with the popular mind\non topics of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as\nfit subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world on\nits surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was on the\nEnglish mind that it began to operate first. It was in England, that\nit began so soon to develop the latent efficacies it held in germ, in\nthe creation of that new and widening department in letters--that so\nnew, so vast, and living department of them, which it takes today all\nour reviews, and magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work\nitself has been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as\nheartily as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly\ndistinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English\nnationality.\n\nBut it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the\nMount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'--this 'Man of\nthe Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this\nnew ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he\nclaims to have been the first to master,--the unity of the universal\nman,--the historical unity,--the universal human form, collected from\nparticulars, not contemplatively abstracted,--the inducted Man of the\nnew philosophy. '_Authors_,' he says, 'have _hitherto_ communicated\nthemselves to the people by some _particular_ and _foreign_ mark; _I,\nthe first of any by my universal being_, as _Michael_ de Montaigne, I\npropose a life mean and without lustre: all moral philosophy is\napplied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest\nemployment. _Every man_ carries _the entire form of the human\ncondition_...I, the first of any by my universal being, as\n_Michael_,'--see the chapter on names,--'as _Michael_ de Montaigne.'\nLet us leave him for the present, or attempt to, for it is not very\neasy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand.\n\nFor, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, rambling old\nGascon--it is from this outlandish looker-on of human affairs, that\nour Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers and Tattlers, trace their\ndescent; and the Times, and the Examiners, and the Observers, and the\nSpectators, and the Tribunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies,\nand all the Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human\naffairs to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them have\nnot been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how it came to\npass, that a man of this particular turn of mind, who belonged to the\nold party, and the times that were then passing away, should have felt\nhimself called upon to make this great signal for the human\nadvancement, and how it happens that these radical connections with\nother works of that time, having the same general intention, are found\nin the work itself,--these are points which the future _biographers_\nof this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to look\nto. And a little of that more studious kind of reading which he\nhimself so significantly solicited, and in so many passages, will\ninevitably tend to the elucidation of them.\n\n\n\n\nPART II.\n\nTHE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.\n\n'The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'\n\n_Troilus and Cressida_.\n\n'I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'\n\n_Falstaff_.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE 'BEGINNERS.'\n\n\n'PROSPERO.--Go bring THE RABBLE,\n\nO'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'\n\n_Tempest_.\n\nBut though a foreign philosopher may venture to give us the clue to\nit, perhaps, in the first instance, a little more roundly, it is not\nnecessary that we should go the Mayor of Bordeaux, in order to\nascertain on the highest possible authority, what kind of an art of\ncommunication, what kind of an art of delivery and tradition, men, in\nsuch circumstances, find themselves compelled to invent;--that is, if\nthey would not be utterly foiled for the want of it, in their noblest\npurposes;--we need not go across the channel to find the men\nthemselves, to whom this art is a necessity,--men so convinced that\nthey have a mission of instruction to their kind, that they will\npermit no temporary disabilities to divert them from their end,--men\nwho must needs open their school, no matter what oppositions there may\nbe, to be encountered, no matter what imposing exhibitions of military\nweapons may be going on just then, in their vicinity; and though they\nshould find themselves straitened in time, and not able to fit their\nwords to their mouths as they have a mind to, though they should be\nobliged to accept the hint from the master in the Greek school, and\ntake their tone _from the ear of those to whom they speak_, though\nmany speeches which would spend their use among the men then living\nwould have to be inserted in their most enduring works with a private\nhint concerning that necessity, and a private reading of them for\nthose whom it concerned; though _the audience_ they are prepared to\naddress _should be deferred_, though the benches of the inner school\nshould stand empty for ages. We need not go abroad at all to discover\nmen of this stamp, and their works and pastimes, and their arts of\ntradition;--men so filled with that which impels men to speak, that\nspeak they must, and speak they will, in one form or another, by word\nor gesture, by word or deed, though they speak to the void waste,\nthough they must speak till they reach old ocean in his unsunned\ncaves, and bring him up with the music of their complainings, though\nthe marble Themis fling back their last appeal, though they speak to\nthe tempest in his wrath, to the wind and the rain, and the fire and\nthe thunder,--men so impregnated with that which makes the human\nspeech, that speak they will, though they have but a rusty nail,\nwherewith to etch their story, on their dungeon wall; though they dig\nin the earth and bury their secret, as one buried his of old--that\nsame secret still; for it is still those EARS--those 'ears' that\n'Midas hath' which makes the mystery.\n\nThey know that the days are coming when the light will enter their\nprison house, and flash in its dimmest recess; when the light they\nsought in vain, will be there to search out the secrets they are\nforbid. They know that the day is coming, when the disciple himself,\nall tutored in the art of their tradition, bringing with him the key\nof its delivery, shall be there to unlock those locked-up meanings, to\nspell out those anagrams, to read those hieroglyphics, to unwind with\npatient loving research to its minutest point, that text, that with\nsuch tools as the most watchful tyranny would give them, they will yet\ncontrive to leave there. They know that their buried words are seeds,\nand though they lie long in the earth, they will yet spring up with\ntheir 'richer and bolder meanings,' and publish on every breeze, their\nboldest mystery.\n\nFor let not men of narrower natures fancy that such action is not\nproper to the larger one, and cannot be historical. For there are\ndifferent _kinds_ of men, our _science_ of men tells us, and that is\nan unscientific judgment which omits 'the _particular addition_, that\nbounteous nature hath closed in each,'--her 'addition to the bill that\nwrites them all alike.' For there is a kind of men 'whose minds are\nproportioned to that which may be dispatched at once, or within a\nshort return of time, and there is another kind, whose minds are\nproportioned to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with\nlength of pursuit,'--so the Coryph\u00e6us of those choir that the latter\nkind compose, informs us, 'so that there may be fitly said to be a\n_longanimity_, which is commonly also ascribed to God as a\nmagnanimity.'\n\nAnd our English philosophers had to light what this one calls a new\n'Lamp of Tradition,' before they could make sure of transmitting their\nnew science, through such mediums as those that their time gave them;\nand a very gorgeous many-branched lamp it is, that the great English\nphilosopher brings out from that 'secret school of living Learning and\nliving Art' to which he secretly belongs, for the admiration of the\nprofessionally learned of his time, and a very lustrous one too, as it\nwill yet prove to be, when once it enters the scholar's apprehension\nthat it was ever meant be lighted, when once the little movement that\nturns on the dazzling jet is ordered.\n\nFor we have all been so taken up with the Baconian _Logic_ hitherto\nand its wonderful effects in the relief of the human estate, that the\nBaconian RHETORIC has all this time escaped our notice; and nobody\nappears to have suspected that there was anything in _that_ worth\nlooking at; any more than they suspect that there is anything in some\nof those other divisions which the philosopher himself lays so much\nstress on his proposal for the Advancement of Learning,--in his\nproposal for the advancement of it into _all_ the fields of human\nactivity. But we read this proposition still, as James the First was\nexpected to read it, and all these departments which are brought into\nthat general view in such a dry and formal and studiously scholastic\nmanner, appear to be put there merely to fill up a space; and because\nthe general plan of this so erudite performance happened to include\nthem.\n\nFor inasmuch as the real scope and main bearing of this proposition,\nthough it is in fact _there_, is of course _not_ there, in any such\nform as to attract the particular attention of the monarch to whose\neye the work is commended; and inasmuch as the new art of a scientific\nRhetoric is already put to its most masterly use in reserving that\nmain design, for such as may find themselves able to receive it, of\ncourse, the need of any such invention is not apparent on the surface\nof the work, and the real significance of this new doctrine of Art and\nits radical relation to the new science, is also reserved for that\nclass of readers who are able to adopt the rules of interpretation\nwhich the work itself lays down. Because the real applications of the\nNew Logic could not yet be openly discussed, no one sees as yet, that\nthere was, and had to be, a Rhetoric to match it.\n\nFor this author, who was not any less shrewd than the one whose\nmethods we have just been observing a little, had also early\ndiscovered in the great personages of his time, a disposition to\nmoderate his voice whenever he went to speak to them on matters of\nimportance, in his natural key, for his voice too, was naturally loud,\nand high as he gives us to understand, though he '_could_ speak small\nlike a woman'; he too had learned to take the tone _from the ear of\nhim to whom he spake_, and he too had learned, that it was not enough\nmerely to speak so as to make himself heard by those whom he wished to\naffect. He also had learned to speak according to the affair he had in\nhand, according to the purpose which he wished to accomplish. He also\nis of the opinion that different kinds of _audiences_ and different\n_times_, require different modes of speech, and though he found it\nnecessary to compose his works in the style and language of his own\ntime, he was confident that it was a language which would not remain\nin use for many ages; and he has therefore provided himself with\nanother, more to his mind which he has taken pains to fold carefully\nwithin the other, and one which lie thinks will bear the wear and tear\nof those revolutions that he perceives to be imminent.\n\nBut in consequence of our persistent oversight of this Art of\nTradition, on which he relies so much, (which is as fine an invention\nof his, as any other of his inventions which we find ourselves so much\nthe better for), that appeal to 'the times that are farther off,' has\nnot yet taken effect, and the audience for whom he chiefly laboured is\nstill 'deferred.'\n\nThis so noble and benign art which he calls, with his own natural\nmodesty and simplicity, the Art of _Tradition_, this art which grows\nso truly noble and worthy, so distinctively human, in his clear,\nscientific treatment of it,--in his scientific clearance of it from\nthe wildnesses and spontaneities of accident, or the superfluities and\ntrickery of an art without science,--that stops short of the ultimate,\nthe human principle,--this so noble art of speech or tradition is,\nindeed, an art which this great teacher and leader of men will think\nit no scorn to labour: it is one on which, even such a teacher can\nfind time to stop; it is one which even such a teacher can stop to\nbuild from the foundation upwards, he will not care how splendidly; it\nis one on which he will spend without stint, and think it gain to\nspend, the wealth of his invention.\n\nBut, at the same time, it is with him a _subordinate_ art. It has no\nworth or substance in itself; it borrows all its worth from that which\nmasters and rigorously subdues it to its end. Here, too, we find\nourselves coming down on all its old ceremonial and observance, from\nthat new height which we found our foreign philosopher in such quiet\npossession of,--taking his way at a puff through poor Cicero's\nperiods,--those periods which the old orator had taken so much pains\nwith, and laughing at his pains:--but this English philosopher is more\ndaring still, for it is he who disposes, at a word, without any\ncomment, just in passing merely,--from his practical stand-point,--of\n'the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks,' like the other making nothing\nat all in his theory of criticism of _mere_ elegance, though it is the\nGascon, it is true, who undertakes the more lively and extreme\npractical demonstrations of this theoretical contempt of it,--setting\nit at nought, and flying in the face of it,--writing in as loquacious\nand homely a style as he possibly can, just for the purpose for\nsetting it at nought, though not without giving us a glimpse\noccasionally, of a faculty that would enable him to mince the matter\nas fine as another if he should see occasion--as, perhaps, he may. For\nhe talks very emphatically about his _poetry_ here and there, and\nseems to intimate that he has a gift that way; and that he has,\nmoreover, some works of value in that department of letters, which he\nis anxious to 'save up' for posterity, if he can. But here, it is the\nscholar, and not the loquacious old gentleman at all, who is giving us\nin his choicest, selectest, courtliest phrase, in his most stately and\ncondensed style, _his_ views of this subject; but that which is\nnoticeable is, that _the art_ in its fresh, new upspringing from the\nsecret of life and nature, from the soul of _things_, the art and that\nwhich it springs from, is in these two so different forms _identical_.\nHere, too, the point of its criticism and review is the same. 'Away\nwith that eloquence that so enchants us with _its harmony_ that we\nshould more study it than _things_'; but here the old Roman masters\nthe philosopher, for a moment, and he puts in a scholarly parenthesis,\n'unless you will affirm that of Cicero to be of so supreme perfection\nas to form _a body of itself_.'\n\nBut Hamlet, in his discourse with that wise reasoner, and unfortunate\npractitioner, who thought that brevity was the soul of wit, and\ntediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, puts it more briefly\nstill.\n\n  _Polonius_. What do you read, my lord?\n  _Hamlet_. Words, words, words!\n\n'More matter, and less art,' another says in that same treatise on art\nand speculation. Now inasmuch as this art and science derives all its\ndistinction and lustre from that new light on the human estate of\nwhich it was to be the vehicle, somebody must find the trick of it, so\nas to be able to bring out _that doctrine_ by its help, before we can\nbe prepared to understand the real worth of this invention. It would\nbe premature to undertake to set it forth fully, till that is\naccomplished. There must be a more elaborate exhibition of that\nscience, before the art of its transmission can be fully treated; we\ncannot estimate it, till we see how it strikes to the root of the new\ndoctrine, how it begins with its beginning, and reaches to its end: we\ncannot estimate it till we see its relation, its essential relation,\nto that new doctrine of the human nature, and that new doctrine of\nstate, which spring from the doctrine of nature in general, which is\n_the_ doctrine, which is the beginning and the end of the new science.\n\nWe find here on the surface, as we find everywhere in this\ncomprehensive treatise, much apparent parade of division and\nsubdivision, and the author appears to lay much stress upon this, and\nseems disposed to pride himself upon his dexterity in chopping up the\nsubject as finely as possible, and keeping the parts quite clear of\none another; and sometimes, in his distributions, putting those points\nthe farthest apart which are the most nearly related, though not so\nfar, that they cannot 'look towards each other,' though it may be, as\nthe other says, '_obliquely_.' He evidently depends very much on his\narrangement, and seems, indeed, to be chiefly concerned about that,\nwhen he comes to the more critical parts of his subject. But it is to\n_the continuities_ which underlie these separations, to which he\ndirects the attention of those to whom he speaks in earnest, and not\nin particular cases only. '_Generally_,' he says, '_let this be a\nrule_, that all partitions of knowledge be accepted rather for LINES\nand VEINS, than for _sections_ and _separations_, and that _the\ncontinuance and entireness of knowledge_ be preserved. For the\n_contrary hereof_,' he says, 'is that which has made PARTICULAR\nSCIENCES BARREN, SHALLOW, and ERRONEOUS, while they have not been\nnourished and maintained from the _common_ fountain.' For this is the\nONE SCIENCE, the deep, the true, the fruitful one, the fruitful\nbecause the ONE.\n\nThese lines, then, which he cautions us against regarding as\ndivisions, which are brought in with such parade of scholasticism,\nwith such a profound appearance of artifice, will always be found by\nthose who have leisure to go below the surface, to be but the\nindications of those natural articulations and branches into which the\nsubject divides and breaks itself, and the conducting lines to that\ntrunk and heart of sciences, that common fountain from which all this\nnew vitality, this sudden up-springing and new blossoming of learning\nproceeds, that fountain in which its flowers, as well as its fruits,\nand its thick leaves are nourished.\n\nHere in this Art of Tradition, which comprehends the whole subject of\nthe human speech from the new ground of the common nature in man--that\n_double_ nature which tends to isolation on the one hand, and which\nmakes him a part and a member of society on the other; we find it\ntreated, first, as a means by which men come simply to a common\nunderstanding with each other, by which that _common ground_, that\nground of _community_, and _communication_, and _identity_, which a\ncommon _understanding_ in this kind makes, can be best reached; and\nnext we find it treated as a means by which _more than the\nunderstanding_ shall be reached, by which _the sentiment_, the _common\nsentiment_, which also belongs to the larger nature, shall be\nstrengthened and developed,--by which the counteracting and partial\nsentiments shall be put in their place, and the _will_ compelled;\nwhereby that common human form, which in its perfection is the object\nof the human love and reverence shall be scientifically developed; by\nwhich the particular form with its diseases shall be artistically\ndisciplined and treated. This Art of Tradition concerns, first, the\nunderstanding; and secondly, the affections and the will. As man is\nconstituted, it is not enough to convince his understanding.\n\nFirst, then, it is 'the organ' and 'method' of tradition; and next, it\nis what he calls the _illustration_ of it. First, the object is, to\nbring truth to the understanding in as clear and unobstructed a manner\nas the previous condition--as the diseases and pre-occupations of the\nmind addressed will admit of, and next to bring all the other helps\nand arts by which the sentiments are touched and the will mastered.\nFirst, he will speak true, or as true as they will let him; but it is\nnot enough to speak true. He must be able to speak sharply too,\nperhaps--or humorously, or touchingly, or melodiously, or\noverwhelmingly, with words that burn. It is not enough, perhaps, to\nreach the ear of his auditor: 'peradventure' he too 'will also pierce\nit.' It is not enough to draw diagrams in chalk on a black board in\nthis kind of mathematics, where the will and the affections are the\npupils, and standing ready to defy axioms, prepared at any moment to\ndemonstrate practically, that the part is greater than the whole, and\nface down the universe with it, 'murdering impossibility to make what\ncannot be, slight work.' It is not enough to have a tradition that is\n_clear_, or as clear a one as will pass muster with the government and\nwith the preconceptions of the people themselves. He must have a\npictured one--a pictorial, an illuminated one--a beautiful one,--he\nmust have what he calls an ILLUSTRATED TRADITION.\n\n'Why not,' he says. He runs his eye over the human instrumentalities,\nand this art which we call _art--par excellence_, which he sees\nsetting up for itself, or ministering to ignorance and error, and\nfeeding the diseased affections with 'the sweet that is their poison,'\nhe seizes on at once, in behalf of his science, and declares that it\nis her lawful property, 'her slave, born in her house,' and fit for\nnothing in the world but to minister to her; and what is more, he\nsuits the action to the word--he brings the truant home, and reforms\nher, and sets her about her proper business. That is what he proposes\nto have done in his theory of art, and it is what he tells us he has\ndone himself; and he has: there is no mistake about it. That is what\nhe means when he talks about his illustrated tradition of science--his\nillustrated tradition of the science of HUMAN NATURE and its\n_differences_, _original_ and _acquired_, and the _diseases_ to which\nit is liable, and the artificial growths which appertain to it. It is\nvery curious, that no one has seen this tradition--this illustrated\ntradition, or anything else, indeed, that was at all worthy of this\nnew interpreter of mysteries, who goes about to this day as the\ninventor of a method which he was not able himself to put to any\npractical use; an inventor who was obliged to leave his machine for\nmen of a more quick and subtle genius, or to men of a more practical\nturn of mind to manage, men who had a closer acquaintance with nature.\n\nThat which is first to be noted in looking carefully at this draught\nof a new Art of Tradition which the plan of the Advancement of\nLearning includes,--that which the careful reader cannot fail to note,\nis the fact, that throughout all this most complete and radical\nexhibition of the subject (for brief and casual as that exhibition\nseems on the surface, the science and art from its root to its\noutermost branches, is there)--throughout all this exhibition, under\nall the superficial divisions and subdivisions of the subject, it is\nstill the method of PROGRESSION which is set forth here: under all\nthese divisions, there is still one point made; it is still the Art of\na Tradition which is designed to reserve the _secrets_ of science, and\nthe nobler arts of it, for the minds and ages that are able to receive\nthem. This new art of tradition, with its new organs and methods, and\nits living and beautiful illustration, when once we look through the\nnetwork of it to the unity within, this new rhetoric of science, is in\nfact the instrument which the philosopher would substitute, if he\ncould, for those more cruel weapons which the men of his time were\nready to take in hand; and it is the instrument with which he would\nforestall those yet more fearful political convulsions that already\nseemed to his eye to threaten from afar the social structures of\nChristendom; it is the beautiful and bloodless instrumentality whereby\nthe mind of the world is to be wrenched insensibly from its old place\nwithout 'breaking all.'\n\nFor neither does this author, any more than that other, who has been\nquoted here on this point, think it wise for the philosopher to rush\nmadly out of his study with his EUREKA, and bawl to the first passer\nby in scientific terms the last result of his science, 'lording it\nover his ignorance' with what can be to him only a _magisterial_\nannouncement. For what else but that can it be, for instance, to tell\nthe poor peasant, on his way to market, with his butter and eggs in\nhis basket, planting his feet on the firm earth without any qualms or\nmisgivings, and measuring his day by the sun's great toil and\nrejoicing race in heaven, what but this same magisterial teaching is\nit, to stop him, and tell him to his bewildered face that the sun\nnever rises or sets, and that the earth is but a revolving ball?\nInstead of giving him a truth you have given him a falsehood. You have\nbrought him a truth out of a sphere with which he is not conversant,\nwhich he cannot ascend to--whose truths he cannot translate into his\nown, without jarring all. Either you have told him what must be to him\na lie, or you have upset all his little world of beliefs with your\nmagisterial doctrine, and confounded and troubled him to no purpose.\n\nBut the Method of Progression, as set forth by Lord Bacon, requires\nthat the new scientific truth shall be, not nakedly and flatly, but\nartistically exhibited; because, as he tells us, 'the great labour is\nwith the people, and this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.'\nHe will not have it exhibited in bare propositions, but translated\ninto the people's dialect. He would not begin if he could--if there\nwere no political or social restriction to forbid it--by overthrowing\non all points the popular belief, or wherever it differs from the\nscientific conclusion. It is a very different kind of philosophy that\nproceeds in that manner. This is one which comprehends and respects\nall actualities. The popular belief, even to its least absurdity 'is\nsomething more than nothing in nature'; and the popular belief with\nall its admixture of error, is better than the half-truths of a\nmisunderstood, untranslated science; better than these would be in its\nplace. That truth of nature which it contains for those who are able\nto receive it, and live by it, you would destroy for them, if you\nshould attempt to make them read it _prematurely_, in your language.\nAny kind of organism which by means of those adjustments and\ncompensations, with which nature is always ready to help out anything\nreally hers,--any organism that is capable of serving as the means of\nan historical social continuance, is already some gain on chaos and\nsocial dissolution; and is, perhaps, better than a series of\nphilosophical experiments. The difficulty is not to overthrow the\npopular errors, but to get something better in their place, he tells\nus; and that there are men who have succeeded in the first attempt,\nand very signally failed in the second. Beautiful and vigorous unions\ngrew up under the classic mythologies, that dissolved and went down\nfor ever, in the sunshine of the classic philosophies. For there were\nmore things in heaven and earth than were included in those last, or\ndreamt of in them.\n\nIn your expurgation, of the popular errors, you must be sure that the\ntruth they contain, is in some form as strongly, as _effectively_\ncomposed in your text, or the popular error is truer and better than\nthe truth with which you would replace it. This is a master who will\nhave no other kind of teaching in his school. His scholars must go so\nfar in their learning as to be able to come back to this popular\nbelief, and account for it and understand it; they must be as wise as\nthe peasant again, and be able to start with him, from his starting\npoint, before they can get any diploma in this School of\n_Advancement_, or leave to practise in it. But when the old is already\nruinous and decaying, and oppressing and keeping back the new,--when\nthe vitality is gone out of it, and it has become deadly instead, when\nthe new is struggling for new forms, the man of science though never\nso conservative from inclination and principle, will not be wanting to\nhimself and to the state in this emergency. He 'loves the _fundamental\npart of state_ more' than in _such_ a crisis he will 'doubt the change\nof it,' and will not 'fear to jump a body with a dangerous physic,\nthat's sure of death without it.'\n\nFirst of all then, the condition of this lamp of tradition, that is to\nburn on for ages, is, that it shall be able to adapt itself to the\nsuccessive stages of the advancement it lights. It is the inevitable\ncondition of this school which begins with the present, which begins\nwith the people, which descends to the lowest stage of the\ncontemporary popular belief, and takes in the many-headed monster\nhimself, without any trimming at all, for its audience,--it is the\nfirst condition of such a school, conducted by a man of science, that\nit shall have its proper grades of courts and platforms, its selecter\nand selectest audiences. There must be landing places in the ascent,\npoints of rendezvous agreed on, where 'the delicate collateral sounds'\nare heard, which only those who ascend can hear. There is no\njar,--there is no forced advancement in this school; there is no\nupward step for any, who have not first been taught to see it, who\nhave not, indeed, already taken it. For it is an artist's school, and\nnot a pedant's, or a vague speculator's, who knows not how to converge\nhis speculation, even upon his mode of tradition.\n\nThe founders of this school trust much in their general plan of\ninstruction and relief, to the gradual advancement of a common\nintelligence, by means of a scientific, but _concealed_ historical\nteaching. They will teach their lower classes, their 'beginners,' as\ngreat nature teaches--insensibly;--as great nature teaches--in the\nconcrete, 'in easy instances.' For the secret of her method is that\nwhich they have studied; that is the learning which they have\nmastered; the spirit of it, which is the poet's gift, the quickest,\nsubtlest, most searching, most analytic, most synthetic spirit of it,\nis that with which great nature has endowed them. They will speak, as\nthey tell us, as the masters always have spoken from of old to them\nwho are without; they will 'open their mouths in parables,' they will\n'utter their dark sayings on the harp.' They know that men are already\nprepared by nature's own instruction, to feel in a fact,--to receive\nin historical representations--truths which would startle them in the\nabstract, truths which they are not yet prepared to disengage from the\nhistorical combinations in which they receive them; though with every\nrepetition, and especially with the pointed, selected, prolonged\nrepetition of the teacher, where the 'ILLUSTRIOUS INSTANCE' is\nselected and cleared of its extraneous incident, and made to enter the\nmind alone, and pierce it with its principle,--with every such\nrepetition, the step to that generalization and axiom becomes\ninsensibly shorter and more easy. They know that men are already wiser\nthan their teachers, in some--in many things; that they have all of\nthem a great stock of incommunicative wisdom which all their teachers\nhave not been able to make them give up, which they never will give\nup, till the strong man, who is stronger, enters with his larger\nlearning out of the same book, with his mightier weapons out of the\nsame armory, and spoils their goods, or makes them old and worthless,\nby the side of the new, resplendent, magic wealth he brings with him.\n\nThe new philosophy of nature has truths to teach which nature herself\nhas already been teaching all men, with more or less effect,\nmiscellaneously, and at odd hours, ever since they were born; and this\nphilosopher gives a large place in his history, to that vulgar,\npractical human wisdom, which all the books till his time had been of\ntoo high a strain to glance at. But 'art is a second nature, and\nimitateth that dextrously and compendiously, which nature performs by\nambages and length of time.' The scientific interpreter of nature will\nselect, and unite, and teach continuously, and pointedly, in grand,\nideal, representative fact, in 'prerogative instances,' that which\nnature has but faintly and unconsciously impressed with her method;\nfor he has a scientific organum, and what is more,--a great deal more,\na thousand times more,--he has the scientific genius that invented it.\nHis soul is a Novum Organum--his mind is a table of rejections that\nsifts the historic masses, and brings out the instances that are to\nhis purpose, the bright, bold instances that flame forth the doubtful\ntruth, that tell their own story and need no interpreter, the high\nideal instances that talk in verse because it is their native tongue\nand they can no other. He has found,--or rather nature lent it to him,\nthe universal historic solvent, and the dull, formless, miscellaneous\nfacts of the common human experience, spring up in magic orders, in\nbeautiful, transparent, scientific continuities, as they arrange\nthemselves by the laws of his thinking.\n\nFor the truth is, and it must be said here, and not here only, but\neverywhere, wherever there is a chance to say it,--that Novum Organum\nwas not made to examine the legs of spiders with, or the toes of 'the\ngrandfather-long-legs,' or any of their kindred; though of course it\nis susceptible of such an application, when it falls into the hands of\npersons whose genius inclines them in those directions; and it is a\nuse, that the inventor would not have disdained to put it to himself,\nif he had had time, and if his attention had not been so much\ndistracted by the habits and history of that 'nobler kind of vermin,'\nwhich he found feeding on the human weal in his time, and eating out\nthe heart of it. This man was not a fool, but a man. He was a\nnaturalist indeed, of the newest and highest style, but that did not\nhinder his being a man at the same time. He and his company were the\nfirst that set the example of going, deliberately, and on principle,\nout of the human nature for knowledge; but it was that they might\nre-return with better axioms for the culture, and nobility, and sway\nof _that form_, which, 'though it be but a part in the continent of\nnature,' is as this one openly declares, '_the end_ and _term_ of\nNATURAL PHILOSOPHY, _in the intention_ of MAN.' His science included\nthe humblest and least agreeable of nature's performances; his Novum\nOrganum was able to take up the smallest conceivable atom of\nexistence, whether animate or not, and make a study of it. He has no\ndisrespect for caterpillars or any kind of worm or insect; but he is\nnot a caterpillar himself, or an insect of any kind, or a Saurian, or\nan Icthyosaurian, but a man; and it was for the sake of building up\nfrom a new basis a practical doctrine of human life, that he invented\nthat instrument, and put so much fine work upon it.\n\nWith his 'PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' he will build height after height,\nthe solid, but imperceptible stair-way to his summit of knowledges, so\nthat men shall tread its utmost floors without knowing what heights\nthey are--even as they tread great nature's own solidities, without\ninquiring her secret.\n\nThe shrewd unlearned man of practice shall take that great book of\nnature, that illustrated digest of it, on his knees, to while away his\nidle hours with, in rich pastime, and smile to see there, all written\nout, that which he faintly knew, and never knew that he knew before;\nhe will find there in sharp points, in accumulations, and percussions,\nthat which his own experience has at length wearily, dimly, worked and\nworn into him. It is his own experience, exalted indeed, and\nglorified, but it is that which beckons him on to that which is yet\nbeyond it; he shall read on, and smile, and laugh, and weep, and\nwonder at the power; but never dream that it is science, the new\nscience--the science of nature--the product of the new organum of it\napplied to _human_ nature, and _human_ life. The abstract statement of\nthat which the concrete exhibition veils, is indeed always there,\nthough it lie never so close, in never so snug a corner; but it is\nthere so artistically environed, that the reader who is not ready for\nit, who has not learned to disengage the principle from the instance,\nwho has had no hint of an _illustrated tradition_ in it, will never\nsee it; or if he sees it, he will think it is there by accident, or\ninspiration, and pass on.\n\nHere, in this open treatise upon the art of delivering and teaching of\nknowledge, the author lays down, in the most impressive terms, the\nnecessity of a style which shall serve as a _veil_ of tradition,\nimperceptible or impenetrable to the uninitiated, and admitting 'only\nsuch as have by the help of a master, attained to the interpretation\nof dark sayings, or are able by their own genius to enter within the\nveil'; and after having distributed under many heads, the secret of\nthis method of scientific communication, he asserts distinctly that\nthere is no other mode of dealing with the popular belief and\npreconception, but the one just described--that same method which the\nteachers of the people have always instinctively adopted, whenever\nthat which was new and contrary to the received doctrines, was to be\ncommunicated. 'For a man of judgment,' he says, 'must, of course,\nperceive, that there should be a difference in the teaching and\ndelivery of knowledge, according to the _presuppositions, which he\nfinds infused and impressed upon the mind of the learner_. For _that\nwhich is new and foreign from opinions received_, is to be delivered\nin ANOTHER FORM, from that which is _agreeable and familiar_. And,\ntherefore, Aristotle, when he says to Democritus, \"if we shall indeed\n_dispute_ and _not_ follow after _similitudes_,\" as if he would tax\nDemocritus with being too full of _comparisons_, where he thought to\nreprove, really commended him.' There is no use in disputing in such a\ncase, he thinks. 'For those whose doctrines are already _seated_ in\npopular opinion, have only to dispute or prove; but those whose\ndoctrines are beyond the popular opinions, have a _double labour_; the\none to make themselves conceived, and the other to prove and\ndemonstrate; so that it is of _necessity with them to have recourse to\nsimilitudes_ AND TRANSLATIONS _to express themselves_. And, therefore,\nin the _infancy of learning_, and in rude times, when those\nconceptions which are now trivial, were then new, _the world was full\nof parables and similitudes_, for else would men either have passed\nover _without mark, or else_ REJECTED FOR PARADOXES, that which was\noffered _before they had understood or judged_. So in divine learning,\nwe see how frequent parables and tropes are, for it _is a rule in the\ndoctrine of delivery, that every science_ which is _not consonant with\npresuppositions and prejudices_, must pray in aid of _similes_ and\n_allusions_.'\n\nThe true master of the art of teaching will vary his method too, he\ntells us according to the _subject_ which he handles,--and the reader\nshould note particularly the illustration of this position, the\ninstance of this general necessity, which the author selects for the\nsake of pointing his meaning here, for it is here--precisely\nhere--that we begin to touch the heart of that new method which the\nnew science itself prescribed,--'the true teacher will vary his method\naccording to the subject which he handles,' for there is a great\ndifference in the delivery of _mathematics_, which are the most\nabstracted of sciences, and POLICY, which is the _most immersed_, and\nthe opinion that 'uniformity of method, in multiformity of matter, is\nnecessary,' has proved very hurtful to learning, for it tends to\nreduce learning to certain _empty_ and _barren_--note it,--_barren_--\n'generalities;'--(so important is the method as _that_; that it makes\nthe difference between the fruitful and the barren, between the old\nand the new) 'being but the very _husks_ and _shells_ of sciences,\nall the _kernel_ being forced out and expressed with the torture and\npress of the method; and, _therefore_, as I did allow well of\n_particular topics_ for invention'--_therefore_--his science requires\nhim to go into particulars, and as the necessary consequence of that,\nit requires freedom--_'therefore'_--as I did allow well of particular\n_topics of invention, 'so_ do I allow likewise of _particular methods\nof tradition_.' Elsewhere,--in his Novum Organum--he quotes the\nscientific outlines and divisions of this very book, he quotes the\nvery draught and outline of the new human science, which is the\nprincipal thing in it, and tells us plainly that he is perfectly aware\nthat those new divisions, those essential differences, those true and\nradical forms in nature, which he has introduced here, in his doctrine\nof _human_ nature, will have no practical effect at all, as they are\nexhibited _here_; because they _are_ exhibited in this method which he\nis here criticising, that is, in empty and barren abstractions,--\nbecause it was impossible for him to produce here anything but the\n_husks_ and _shells_ of that principal science, all the kernel being\nforced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.\nBut, at the same time, he gives us to understand, that these same\nshells and husks may be found in another place, with the kernels and\n_nuts_ in them, and that he has not taken so much pains to let us see\nin so many places, what new forms of delivery the new philosophy will\nrequire, merely for the sake of letting us see, at the same time, that\nwhen it came to _practice_, he himself stood by the old ones, and\ncontented himself with barren abstractions, and generalities, the\nhusks and shells of sciences, instead of aiming at particulars, and\navailing himself of these '_particular methods of tradition_.'\n\nHe takes also this occasion to recommend a method which was found\nextremely serviceable at that time; namely, the method of teaching by\naphorism, 'without any _show_ of an art or method; not merely because\nit tries the author, since aphorisms being made out of the _pith_ and\n_heart_ of sciences, _no man can write them who is not sound and\ngrounded_,' who has not a system with its trunk and root, though he\nmakes no show of it, but buries it and shows you here and there the\npoints on the surface that are apt to look as if they had some\nunderlying connection--not only because it tries the author, _but\nbecause they point to action_; for particulars being dispersed, do\nbest agree with dispersed directions; and, moreover, aphorisms\nrepresenting a BROKEN KNOWLEDGE, invite men _to inquire farther_,\nwhereas methods, _carrying the show of a total_, do secure men as _if\nthey were at farthest_, and it is the _advancement_ of learning that\nhe is proposing.\n\nHe suggests again, distinctly here, the rule he so often claims he has\nhimself put in practice, elsewhere, that the use of CONFUTATION in the\ndelivery of science, ought to be very sparing; and to serve to remove\nstrong _preoccupations_ and _prejudgments_, and not to minister and\nexcite disputations and doubts. For he says in another place, 'As\nAlexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for\nNaples, that they came with _chalk_ in their hands, _to mark up their\nlodgings_, and not with _weapons to fight_, so _I_ like better that\nentry of truth which cometh peaceably, with chalk to mark up those\nminds, which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which\ncometh with pugnacity and contention.'\n\nHe alludes here too, in passing, to some other distinctions of method,\nwhich are already received, that of ANALYSIS and _synthesis_, or\nCONSTITUTION, that of _concealment_, or CRYPTIC, which he says 'he\nallows well of, though he has himself stood upon those which are least\nhandled and observed.' He brings out his doctrine of the necessity of\na method which shall include _particulars_ for _practical_ purposes\nalso, under another head: here it is the limit of _rules_,--the\npropositions or precepts of _arts_ that he speaks of, and the _degree_\nof particularity which these precepts ought to descend to. 'For every\nknowledge,' he says, 'may be fitly said to have a latitude and\nlongitude, accounting the latitude towards _other sciences_' (for\nthere are rules and propositions of such latitude as to include all\narts, all sciences)--'and the longitude towards action, that is, from\nthe greatest generality, to the most particular precept: and as to the\ndegree of particularity to which a knowledge should descend,' though\nsomething must, of course, be left in all departments to the\ndiscretion of the practitioner, he thinks it is a question which will\nbear looking into in a general way; and that it might be possible to\nhave rules in all departments, which would limit very much the\nnecessity of individual experiment, and not leave us so much at the\nmercy of individual discretion in the most serious matters.\nPhilosophy, as he finds it, does not appear to be very helpful to\npractice, on account of its keeping to those general propositions, so\nmuch, as well as on some other accounts, and has fallen into bad\nrepute, it seems, among men who find it necessary to make, without\nscience, as they best can, rules of some sort;--rules that are capable\nof dealing with that quality in particulars which is apt to be called\n_obstinacy_ in this aspect of it. 'For we see remote and superficial\ngeneralities do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are\nno more aiding to practice, than an Ortelius's _universal map_ is to\ndirect the way between London and York.' And what is this itself but a\nuniversal map, this map of the advancement of learning?\n\nAll this doctrine of the tradition of sciences, he produces under the\nhead of the _method_ of their tradition, but in speaking of the\n_organ_ of it, he treats it _exclusively_ as the medium of tradition\nfor _those sciences which require_ CONCEALMENT, or admit only of a\nsuggestive exhibition. And as he makes, too, the claim that he has\nhimself given practical proof, in passing, of his proficiency in this\nart, and appeals to the skilful for the truth of this statement, the\npassage, at least, in which this assertion is made, will be likely to\nrepay the inquiry which it invites.\n\nHe begins by drawing our attention to the fact, that words are not the\nonly representatives of things, and he says 'this is not an\ninconsiderable thing, _for while we are treating of the coin of\nintellectual_ matters, _it is_ pertinent to observe, that as money may\nbe made of other materials besides gold and silver, so other marks of\nthings may be invented besides words and letters.' And by way of\nillustrating the advantages of such a means of tradition, under\ncertain disadvantages of position, he adduces as much in point, the\ncase of Periander, who being consulted how to preserve a tyranny\n_newly usurped_, bid the messenger _attend_ and _report what he saw\nhim do_, and went into his garden and _topped all the highest\nflowers_; signifying that it consisted in the cutting off and keeping\nlow of the nobility and grandees. And thus other apparently trivial,\npurely purposeless and sportive actions, might have a traditionary\ncharacter of no small consequence, if the messenger were only given to\nunderstand beforehand, that the acts thus performed were axiomatical,\npointing to rules of practice, that the forms were representative\nforms, whose '_real_' exhibition of the particular natures in\nquestion, was much more vivid and effective, much more memorable as\nwell as _safe_, than any abstract statement of that philosophic truth,\nwhich is the truth of direction, could be.\n\nAs to the '_accidents_ of words, which are measure, sound, and\nelevation of accent, and the sweetness and harshness of them,' even\nhere the new science suggests a new rule, which is not without a\nremarkable relation to _that 'particular method of tradition_,' which\nthe author tells us in another place, some parts of his new science\nrequired. 'This subject,' he says, 'involves some curious observations\nin rhetoric, but chiefly POESY, as we consider it in respect of the\nverse, and _not of the argument_; wherein, though men in learned\ntongues do tie themselves to _the ancient measures_, yet in modern\nlanguages it seemeth to me as free to make _new measures of verses as\nof dances_.' The spirit of the new philosophy had a chance to speak\nout there for once, without intending, of course, to transcend that\nparticular limit just laid down, namely, the measure of _verses_, and\nwith that literal limitation, to the form of the verse, the remark is\nsufficiently suggestive; for he brings out from it at the next step,\nin the way of formula, the new principle, the new Shaksperian\nprinciple of rhetoric: _In these things_ the sense is better judge\nthan the art. And of the servile expressing antiquity in an unlike and\nan unfit subject, it is well said:--'_Quod tempore antiquum videtur,\nid incongruitate est maxime novum_.''\n\nBut when he comes to speak specifically of _writing_ as a means of\ntradition, he confines his remarks to that particular kind of writing,\nwhich is agreed on betwixt particular persons, and called by the name\nof _cipher_, giving excellent reasons for this proceeding, impertinent\nas it may seem, to those who think that his only object is to make out\na list and 'muster-roll of the arts and sciences';--stopping to tell\nus plainly that he knows what he is about, and that he has not brought\nin '_these private and retired arts_,' with so much stress, and under\nso many heads, in connection with 'the principal and supreme\nsciences,' and _the mode of their tradition_, without having some\noccasion for it.\n\n'Ciphers are commonly in letters, or alphabets, but _may be_ in\nwords,' he says, proceeding to enumerate the different kinds, and\nfurnishing on the spot, some pretty specimens of what may be done in\nthe way of that kind which he calls 'doubles,' a kind which he is\nparticularly fond of; one hears again the echo of those delicate,\ncollateral sounds, which our friend, over the mountains, warned us of,\ndeclining to say any more about them in that place. In the later\nedition, he takes occasion to say, in this connection, 'that as\nwriting in the received manner no way obstructs the _manner of\npronunciation_, but leaves that _free_, an innovation in it is of no\npurpose.' And if a cipher be the proper name for a private method of\nwriting, agreed on betwixt particular persons, it is certainly the\nname for the method which he proposes to adopt in _his_ tradition of\nthe principal sciences; as he takes occasion to inform those whom it\nmay concern, in an early portion of the work, and when he is occupied\nin the critical task of putting down some of the primary terms. 'I\ndoubt not,' he says, by way of explanation, 'but it will easily appear\nto men of judgment, that in _this_ and _other particulars_,\nwheresoever _my conception and notion may differ from the ancient, I\nam studious to keep the ancient terms_.' Surely there is no want of\nfrankness here, so far as the men of judgment are concerned at least.\nAnd after condemning those innovators who have taken a different\ncourse, he says again, 'But to me on the other side that do desire as\nmuch as lieth in _my pen_, to ground a sociable intercourse between\nantiquity and _proficience_, it seemeth best to keep way with\nantiquity _usque ad aras_; and therefore to _retain the ancient_\nTERMS, though I sometimes alter the _uses and definitions_, according\nto the moderate proceeding in civil government, where, although there\nbe some alteration, yet that holdeth which Tacitus _wisely_ noteth\n'eadem magistratuum vocabula.' Surely that is plain enough, especially\nif one has time to take into account the force and historic reach of\nthat last illustration, 'eadem magistratuum vocabula.'\n\nIn the later and enlarged edition of his work, he lays much stress\nupon the point that the cipher 'should be free from suspicion,' for he\nsays, 'if a letter should come into the hands of such as have a power\nover the writer or receiver, though the cipher itself be trusty and\nimpossible to decipher, it is still subject to _examination_ and\n_question_, and (as he says himself), 'to _avoid all suspicion_,' he\nintroduces there a cipher in _letters_, which he invented in his youth\nin Paris, 'having the highest perfection of a cipher, that of\nsignifying _omnia per omnia_;' and for the same reason perhaps, that\nof 'avoiding all suspicion,' he quite omits there that very remarkable\npassage in the earlier work, in which he treats it as a medium of\n_tradition_, and takes pains to intimate his reasons for producing it\nin that connection, _with the principal and supreme sciences_. If it\nwas, indeed, any object with him to avoid suspicion, and recent\ndisclosures had then, perhaps, tended to sharpen somewhat the\ncontemporary criticism; he _did well_, unquestionably, to omit that\npassage. But at the time when _that_ was written, he appears to be\nchiefly inclined to notice the remarkable facilities, which this style\noffers to an inventive genius. For he says, 'in regard of the rawness\nand unskilfulness of _the hands through which they pass_, the greatest\nmatters, are sometimes carried in the _weakest ciphers_.' And that\nthere may be no difficulty or mistake as to the reading of that\npassage, he immediately adds, 'In the enumeration of these private and\nretired arts, it may be thought I _seek to make a great muster-roll of\nsciences_, naming them for _show_ and _ostentation_, and _to little\nother purpose_. But'--note it--'But, let those which are _skilful in\nthem judge, whether I bring them in only for appearance_, or whether,\nin that which I speak of them, though in few words, there be not _some\nseed of proficience_. And this must be remembered, that as there be\nmany of great account in their countries and provinces, which, when\nthey come up to the _seat of the estate_, are but of mean rank, and\nscarcely regarded; so these arts, (\"these private and retired arts,\")\nbeing here placed _with the principal and supreme sciences, seem_\npetty things, YET TO SUCH AS HAVE CHOSEN THEM TO SPEND THEIR LABOURS\nAND STUDIES IN THEM, THEY SEEM GREAT MATTERS. (\"Let those which are\nskilful in them, judge (after that) whether I bring them in only for\nappearance\" or to _little_ other purpose).'\n\nThat apology would seem sufficient, but we must know what these\nlabours and studies are, before we can perceive the _depth_ of it. And\nif we have the patience to follow him but a step or two further, we\nshall find ourselves in the way of some very direct and accurate\ninformation, as to that. For we are coming now, in the order of the\nwork we quote from, to that very part, which contains the point of all\nthese labours and studies, the _end_ of them,--that part to which the\nscience of nature in general, and the secret of this art of tradition,\nwas a necessary _introduction_. [For this Art of Tradition makes the\nlink between the new Logic and the application of it to _Human_ Nature\nand Human Life.]\n\nThus far, this art has been treated as a means of simply\n_transferring_ knowledge, in such forms as the conditions of the\nAdvancement of Learning prescribe,--forms adapted to the different\nstages of mental advancement, commencing with the lowest range of the\ncommon opinion in his time,--starting with the contemporary opinions\nof the majority, and reserving 'the secrets of knowledge,' for such as\nare able to receive them. Thus far, it is the Method, and the Organ of\nthe tradition of which he has spoken. But it is when he comes to speak\nof what he calls the _Illustration_ of it, that the convergency of his\ndesign begins to be laid open to us, for this work is not what it may\nseem on the surface, as he takes pains to intimate to us--a 'mere\nmuster-roll of sciences.'\n\nIt is when he comes to tell us that he will have his 'truth in beauty\ndyed,' that he does not propose to have the new learning left in the\nform of argument and logic, or in the form of bare scientific fact,\nthat he does not mean to appeal with it to the _reason_ only; that he\nwill have it in a form in which it will be able to attract and allure\nmen, and make them in love with it, a form in which it will be able to\nforce its way into the will and the affections, and make a lodgement\nin the hearts of men, long ere it is able to reach the judgment;--it\nis not till he begins to bring out here, his new doctrine of the true\nend of rhetoric, and the use to which it ought to be put in\nsubordination to science, that we begin to perceive the significance\nof the arrangement which brings this theory of an Illustrated Art of\nTradition into immediate connection with the new science of human\nnature and human life which the Author is about to constitute,--so as\nto serve as an introduction to it--the arrangement which interposes\nthis art of Tradition, between the New Logic and its application to\nHuman Nature and Human Life--to POLICY and MORALITY.\n\nHe will not consent to have this so _powerful_ engine of popular\ninfluence, which the \u00e6sthetic art seems, to his eye, to offer, left\nout, in his scheme of scientific instrumentalities: he will not pass\nit by scornfully, as some other philosophers have done, treating it\nmerely as a voluptuary art. He will have of it, something which shall\ndiffer, not in degree only, but in kind, from the art of the\nconfectioner.\n\nHe begins by stating frankly his reasons for making so much of it in\nthis grave treatise, which is what it professes to be, a treatise on\nLearning and its Advancement. 'For although,' he says, 'in true value,\nit is inferior to _wisdom_, as it is said by God to Moses, when he\ndisabled himself for want of this faculty, \"Aaron shall be thy\n_speaker_, and thou shalt be to him as God;\" _yet with people_ it is\nthe more _mighty_, and it is just that which is mighty with the\npeople--which he tells us in another place--is wanting. \"For this\npeople who knoweth not _the law_ are cursed.\"' But here he continues,\n'for so Solomon saith, \"Sapiens corde appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis\neloquio majora reperiet;\" signifying that profoundness of wisdom will\nhelp a man to a name or admiration,'--(it is something more than that\nwhich he is proposing as _his_ end)--'but that it is eloquence--which\nprevails in _active life_;' so that the very movement which brought\nphilosophy down to earth, and put her upon reforming the practical\nlife of men, was the movement which led her to assume, not\ninstinctively, only, but by theory, and on principle, this new and\nbeautiful apparel, this deep disguise of pleasure. She comes into the\ncourt with her case, and claims that this Art, which has been treated\nhitherto as if it had some independent rights and laws of its own, is\nproperly a subordinate of hers; a chattel gone astray, and setting up\nfor itself as an art voluptuary.\n\nWorks on rhetorics are not wanting, the author reports. Antiquity has\nlaboured much in this field. Notwithstanding, he says, there is\nsomething to be done here too, and the Elizabethan \u00e6sthetics must be\nbegun also in the _prima philosophia_. 'Notwithstanding,' he\ncontinues, 'to stir the earth a little about the _roots_ of this\nscience, as we have done of the rest; the duty and office of Rhetoric\nis to apply _reason to imagination for the better moving of_ THE WILL;\nfor we see reason is disturbed in the administration of the will by\nthree means; by sophism, which pertains to logic; by imagination or\nimpression, which pertains to rhetoric; and by passion or affection,\nwhich pertains to morality.' So in this negotiation within ourselves,\nmen are _undermined_ by inconsequences, _solicited and importuned_ by\nimpressions and observations, and _transported_ by _passions_. Neither\nis the nature of man so unfortunately built, as that these _powers and\narts_ should have force to _disturb_ reason and not to _establish_ and\n_advance_ it. For the end of logic is to teach a form of logic to\nsecure reason, not to entrap it. The end of morality is to procure the\naffections to obey reason, and not to invade it. The _end_ of rhetoric\nis to _fill the imagination_ to second reason, and not to _oppress_\nit. For these abuses of arts come in but _ex obliquo_ for caution.\n\nThat is the real original English doctrine of Art:--that is the\ndoctrine of the age of Elizabeth, at least, as it stands in that\nqueen's English, and though it may be very far from being orthodox at\npresent, it is the doctrine which must determine the rule of any\nsuccessful interpretation of works of art composed on that theory.\n'And, therefore,' he proceeds to say, 'it was great injustice in\nPlato, though springing out of a just hatred of the rhetoricians of\nhis time, to esteem of rhetoric but as a voluptuary art, resembling it\nto cookery that did mar wholesome meats, and help unwholesome, by\nvariety of sauces _to the pleasure of the taste_.' 'And therefore, as\nPlato said eloquently, \"That virtue, if she could be seen, would move\ngreat love and affection, so, seeing that she cannot be showed to the\nsense by corporal shape, the next degree is to show her to the\nimagination _in lively representation_\": _for_ to show her to _reason\nonly_, in _subtilty of argument_ was a thing ever derided\nin--_Chrysippus and many of the Stoics--who thought to thrust virtue\nupon men_ by _sharp disputations and conclusions, which have no\nsympathy with the will of man_.'\n\n'Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant and obedient to\nreason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions and\ninjunctions to the will, more than of _naked propositions and proofs;_\nbut in regard of the continual mutinies and seditions of the\naffections,\n\n  Video meliora proboque\n  Deteriora sequor;\n\n'Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions\ndid not practise and win the imagination from the affections part, and\ncontract a confederacy between the reason and the imagination, against\nthe affections; for _the affections themselves_ carry ever an appetite\nto _good_, as reason doth. _The difference is_'--mark it--'the\ndifference is, that the affection beholdeth merely _the present;\nreason_ beholdeth the future and _sum_ of time. And therefore the\npresent _filling the imagination most_, reason is commonly vanquished;\nbut after that force of eloquence and persuasion hath made things\nfuture and remote, _appear as present_, then, _upon the revolt of the\nimagination reason prevaileth_.' Not less important than that is this\nart in his scheme of learning. No wonder that the department of\nlearning which he refers to the imagination should take that prime\nplace in his grand division of it, and be preferred deliberately and\non principle to the two others.\n\n'Logic differeth from Rhetoric chiefly in this, that logic handleth\nreason exact and in truth, and rhetoric handleth it as it is planted\nin popular opinions and manners. And therefore _Aristotle_ doth\n_wisely_ place rhetoric as between logic on the one side, and moral or\ncivil knowledge on the other, (and when we come to put together the\nworks of this author, we shall find that _that_ and none other is the\nplace it takes in _his_ system, that that is just the bridge it makes\nin his plan of operations.)' The proofs and demonstrations of logic\n_are towards all men indifferent and the same_: but the proofs and\npersuasions of rhetoric _ought to differ according to the auditors_.\n\n  Orpheus in sylvis inter delphinas Arion.\n\nWhich application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so far, that\nif a man should speak of _the same thing to several persons_, he\nshould speak to them _all respectively, and several ways_; and there\nwas a great folio written on this plan which came out in those days\ndedicated 'to the Great Variety of Readers. From the most able to him\nthat can but spell'; (this is just the doctrine, too, which the\nContinental philosopher sets forth we see);--though this '_politic_\npart of eloquence in private speech,' he goes on to say here, 'it is\neasy for the greatest orators _to want; whilst by observing their well\ngraced forms of speech, they lose the volubility_ of APPLICATION; and\n_therefore_ it shall not be _amiss_ to recommend this _to better\ninquiry_, not being curious whether we place it here, or in that part\nwhich concerneth _policy._'\n\nCertainly one would not be apt to infer from that decided preference\nwhich the author himself manifests here for those stately and\nwell-graced forms of speech, judging _merely_ from the style of this\nperformance at least, one would not be inclined to suspect that he\nhimself had ever been concerned in any literary enterprises, or was\nlike to be, in which that _volubility_ of application which he appears\nto think desirable, was successfully put in practice. But we must\nremember, that he was just the man who was capable of conceiving of a\n_variety_ of _styles adapted to different exigencies_, if we would\nhave the key to this style in particular.\n\nBut we must look a little at these labours and studies themselves,\nwhich required such elaborate and splendid arts of delivery, if we\nwould fully satisfy ourselves, as to whether this author really had\nany purpose after all in bringing them in here beyond that of mere\nostentation, and for the sake of completing his muster-roll of the\nsciences. Above, we see an intimation, that the divisions of the\nsubject are, after all, not so 'curious' but that the inquiry might\npossibly be resumed again in other connections, and in the particular\nconnection specified, namely, in that part which concerneth _Policy_.\n\nIn that which follows, the new science of human nature and human\nlife--which is the end and term of this treatise, we are told--is\nbrought out under the two heads of Morality and Policy; and it is\nnecessary to look into _both_ these departments in order to find what\napplication he was proposing to make of this art and science of\nTradition and Delivery, and in order to see what place--what vital\nplace it occupied in his system.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE SCIENCE OF POLICY.\n\n\n  'Policy is the most immersed.'--_Advancement of Learning_.\n\nReversing the philosophic order, we glance first into that new\ndepartment of science which the author is here boldly undertaking to\nconstitute under the above name, because in this his own practical\ndesigns, and rules of proceeding, are more clearly laid open, and the\nplace which is assigned in his system to that radical science, for\nwhich these arts of Delivery and Tradition are chiefly wanting, is\ndistinctly pointed out.\n\nAnd, moreover, in this department of Policy itself, in marking out one\nof the grand divisions of it, we find him particularly noticing, and\nopenly insisting on, the form of delivery and inculcation which the\nnew science must take here, that is, if it is going to be at all\navailable as a science of practice.\n\nIn this so-called plan for the advancement of learning, the author\nproceeds, as we all know, by noticing _the deficiencies_ in human\nlearning as he finds it; and everywhere it is that radical deficiency,\nwhich leaves human life and human conduct in the dark, while the\nphilosophers are busied with their controversies and wordy\nspeculations. And in that part of his inventory where he puts down as\nwanting a science of practice in those every-day affairs and\nincidents, in which the life of man is most conversant, embodying\naxioms of practice that shall save men the wretched mistakes and\nblunders of which the individual life is so largely made up; blunders\nwhich are inevitable, so long as men are left here, to natural human\nignorance, to uncollected individual experience, or to the shrewdest\nempiricism;--in this so original and interesting part of the work, he\ntakes pains to tell us at length, that that which he has before put\ndown under the head of '_delivery_' as a point of form and method,\nbecomes here essential as a point of substance also. It is not merely\nthat he will have his axioms and precepts of direction digested from\nthe facts, instead of being made out of the teacher's own brains, but\nhe will have THE FACTS themselves, in all their stubbornness and\nopposition to the teacher's preconceptions, for the body of the\ndiscourse, and the precepts accommodated thereto, instead of having\nthe precepts for the body of the discourse, and the facts brought in\nto wait upon them. That is the form of the practical doctrine.\n\nHe regrets that this part of a true learning has not been collected\nhitherto into writing, to the great derogation of learning, and the\nprofessors of learning; for from this proceeds the popular opinion\nwhich has passed into an adage, that there is no great concurrence\nbetween wisdom and learning. The deficiency here is well nigh total he\nsays: 'but for the wisdom of business, wherein man's life is most\nconversant, there be no books of it, except some few scattered\nadvertisements, that have no proportion to the _magnitude of the\nsubject_. For if books were written of this, as of the other, I doubt\nnot but _learned men_ with _mean experience_ would far excel men of\n_long experience without learning_, and _outshoot them with their own\nbow_. Neither need it be thought that this knowledge is too variable\nto fall under precept,' he says; and he mentions the fact, that in old\nRome, so renowned for practical ability, in its wisest and saddest\ntimes, there were professors of this learning, that were known for\nGENERAL WISE MEN, who used to walk at certain hours in the place, and\ngive _advice_ to private citizens, who came to consult with them of\nthe _marriage_ of _a daughter_, for instance, or the _employing_ of _a\nson_, or of _an accusation_, or of a _purchase or bargain_, and _every\nother occasion incident to man's life_. There is a pretty scheme laid\nout truly. Have _we_ any general wise man, or ghost of one, who walks\nup and down at certain hours and gives advice on such topics? However\nthat may be, this philosopher does not despair of such a science.\n'So,' he says, commenting on that Roman custom, 'there is a wisdom of\ncouncil and advice, even in private cases, arising out of a universal\n_insight into the affairs_ of _the world_, which is _used_ indeed upon\n_particular cases propounded_, but is gathered by general\n_observation_ of _cases_ of _like nature_.' And fortifying himself\nwith the example of Solomon, after collecting a string of texts from\nthe Sacred Proverbs, he adds, 'though they are capable, of course, of\na more divine interpretation, taking them as instructions for life,\nthey might have received large discourse, if he would have _broken\nthem_ and _illustrated them_, by deducements and examples. Nor was\nthis in use with the Hebrews only, but it is generally to be found in\nthe wisdom of the more ancient times, that as men found out any\nobservation that they thought was _good for life_, they would gather\nit, and express it in _parable_, or _aphorism_, or _fable_.'\n\nBut for _fables_, they were vicegerents and supplies, _where examples\nfailed_. Now that the times abound with history, THE AIM IS BETTER\nWHEN THE MARK IS ALIVE. And, therefore, he recommends as the form of\nwriting, 'which is of all others fittest for this variable argument,\ndiscourses upon histories and examples: for knowledge drawn freshly,\n_and in our view_, out of particulars, _knoweth the way best to\nparticulars again_; and it hath much greater life _for practice_, when\n_the discourse attendeth upon the example_, than when the example\nattendeth upon the discourse. For this is no point of order as it\nseemeth at first' (indeed it is not, it is a point as substantial as\nthe difference between the old learning of the world and the\nnew)--'this is no point of order, but of substance. For when the\nexample is the _ground_ being set down in a history at large, it is\nset down with all circumstances, which may _sometimes control_ the\ndiscourse thereupon made, and sometimes supply it as _a very pattern\nfor action_; whereas the examples which are alleged _for the\ndiscourse's sake_, are cited succinctly and without _particularity_,\nand carry a _servile aspect_ towards the discourse which they are\nbrought in to make good.'\n\nThe question of method is here, as we see, incidentally introduced;\nbut it is to be noted, and it makes one of the rules for the\ninterpretation of that particular kind of style which is under\nconsideration, that in this casual and secondary introduction of a\nsubject, we often get shrewder hints of the author's real intention\nthan we do in those parts of the work where it is openly and\ndistinctly treated; at least, these scattered and apparently\naccidental hints,--these dispersed directions, often contain the key\nfor the 'second' reading, which he openly bespeaks for the more open\nand elaborate discussion.\n\nAnd thus we are able to collect, from every part of this proposal for\na practical and progressive human learning, based on the defects of\nthe unpractical and stationary learning which the world has hitherto\nbeen contented with, the author's opinion as to the form of delivery\nand inculcation best adapted to effect the proposed object under the\ngiven conditions. This question of form runs naturally through the\nwhole work, and comes out in specifications of a very particular and\nsignificant kind under some of its divisions, as we shall see. But\neverywhere we find the point insisted on, which we have just seen so\nclearly brought out, in the department which was to contain the axioms\nof success in private life. Whatever the particular form may be,\neverywhere we come upon this general rule. Whatever the particular\nform may be, everywhere it is to be one in which the facts shall have\nthe precedence, and the conclusions shall follow; and not one in which\nthe conclusions stand first, and the facts are brought in to make them\ngood. And this very circumstance is enough of itself to show that the\nform of this new doctrine will be thus far new, as new as the doctrine\nitself; that the new learning will be found in some form very\ndifferent, at least, from that which the philosophers and professed\nteachers were then making use of in their didactic discourses, in some\nform so much more lively than that, and so much less oracular, that it\nwould, perhaps, appear at first, to those accustomed only to the\nother, not to be any kind of learning at all, but something very\ndifferent from that.\n\nBut this is not the only point in the general doctrine of delivery\nwhich we find produced again in its specific applications. Through all\nthe divisions of this discourse on Learning, and not in that part of\nit only in which the Art of its Tradition is openly treated, we find\nthat the prescribed form of it is one which will adapt it to the\npopular preconceptions; and that it must be a form which will make it\nnot only universally acceptable, but universally attractive; that it\nis not only a form which will throw open the gates of the new school\nto all comers, but one that will bring in mankind to its benches. Not\nunder the head of Method only, or under the head of Delivery and\nTradition, but in those parts of the work in which the substance of\nthe new learning is treated, we find dispersed intimations and\npositive assertions, that the form of it is, at the same time, popular\nand enigmatical,--not openly philosophical, and not 'magisterial,'--\nbut insensibly didactic; and that it is, in its principal and\nhigher departments--in those departments on which this plan for\nthe human relief concentrates its forces--essentially POETICAL. That\nis what we find in the body of the work; and the author repeats\nin detail what he has before made a point of telling us, in general,\nunder this head of Delivery and Tradition of knowledge, that he\nsees no reason why that same instrument, which is so powerful for\ndelusion and error, should not be restored to its true uses as an\ninstrument of the human advancement, and a vehicle, though a veiled\n_one_--a beautiful and universally-welcome vehicle--for bringing in on\nthis Globe Theatre the knowledges that men are most in need of.\n\nThe doctrine which is to be conveyed in this so subtle and artistic\nmanner is none other than the Doctrine of Human Nature and Human Life,\nor, as this author describes it here, the Scientific Doctrine of\nMORALITY and POLICY. It is that new doctrine of human nature and human\nlife which the science of nature in general creates. It is the light\nwhich universal science, collected from the continent of nature, gives\nto that insular portion of it 'which is the end and term of natural\nphilosophy in the intention of man.' Under these heads of _Morality_\nand _Policy_, the whole subject is treated here. But to return to the\nlatter.\n\nThe question of Civil Government is, in the light of this science, a\nvery difficult one; and this philosopher, like the one we have already\nquoted on this subject, is disposed to look with much suspicion on\npropositions for violent and sudden renovations in the state, and\nimmediate abolitions and cures of social evil. He too takes a\nnaturalist's estimate of those larger wholes, and their virtues, and\nfaculties of resistance.\n\n'Civil knowledge is conversant about a subject,' he says, 'which is,\nof all others, _most immersed in matter_, and hardliest reduced to\naxiom. _Nevertheless_, as Cato, the censor, said, \"that the Romans\nwere like sheep, for that a man might better drive a flock of them\nthan one of them, for, in a flock, if you could get SOME FEW to go\nright, the rest would follow;\" _so_ in that respect, MORAL PHILOSOPHY\n_is more difficult than policy_. Again, moral philosophy propoundeth\nto itself the framing of _internal_ goodness, but civil knowledge\nrequireth only an _external_ goodness, for that, as to society,\nsufficeth. Again, States, as great engines, move slowly, _and are not\nso soon put out of frame_;' (that is what our foreign statist thought\nalso) 'for, as in Egypt the seven good years sustained the seven bad,\nso governments for a time, well grounded, do bear out errors\nfollowing. But _the resolution of particular persons_ is _more\nsuddenly subverted. These respects do somewhat qualify the extreme\ndifficulty of civil knowledge_.'\n\nThis is the point of attack, then,--this is the point of scientific\nattack,--the resolution of particular persons. He has showed us where\nthe extreme difficulty of this subject appears to lie in his mind, and\nhe has quietly pointed, at the same time, to that place of resistance\nin the structure of the state, which is the key to the whole position.\nHe has marked the spot exactly where he intends to commence his\npolitical operations. For he has discovered a point there, which\nadmits of being operated on, by such engines as a feeble man like him,\nor a few such together, perhaps, may command. It is the new science\nthat they are going to converge on that point precisely, namely the\nresolution of particular persons. It is the _novum organum_ that this\none is bringing up, in all its finish, for the assault of that\nparticular quarter. Hard as that old wall is, great as the faculty of\nconservation is in these old structures that hold by time, there is\none element running all through it, these chemists find, which _is_\nwithin their power, namely, the resolution of particular persons. It\nis the science of the conformation of the parts, it is the\nconstitutional structure of the human nature, which, in its scientific\ndevelopment, makes men, naturally, members of communities, beautiful\nand felicitous parts of states,--it is that which the man of science\nwill _begin_ with. If you will let him have that part of the field to\nwork in undisturbed, he will agree not to meddle with the state. And\nbeside those general reasons, already quoted, which tend to prevent\nhim from urging the immediate application of his science to this\n'larger whole,' for its wholesale relief and cure, he ventures upon\nsome specifications and particulars, when he comes to treat distinctly\nof government itself, and assign to it its place in his new science of\naffairs. If one were to judge by the space he has openly given it on\nhis paper in this plan for the human advancement and relief, one would\ninfer that it must be a very small matter in his estimate of agencies;\nbut looking a little more closely, we find that it is not that at all\nin his esteem, that it is anything but a matter of little consequence.\nIt was enough for him, at such a time, to be allowed to put down the\nfact that the art of it was properly scientific, and included in his\nplan, and to indicate the kind of science that is wanting to it; for\nthe rest, he gives us to understand that he has himself fallen on such\nfelicitous times, and finds that affair in the hands of a person so\nextremely learned in it, that there is really nothing to be said. And\nbeing thrown into this state of speechless reverence and admiration,\nhe considers that the most meritorious thing he can do, is to pass to\nthe other parts of his discourse with as little delay as possible.\n\nIt is a very short paragraph indeed for so long a subject; but, short\nas it is, it is not less pithy, and it contains reasons why it should\nnot be longer, and why that new torch of science which he is bringing\nin upon the human affairs generally, cannot be permitted to enter that\ndepartment of them in his time. 'The first is, that it is a part of\nknowledge secret and retired in _both_ those respects in which things\nare deemed secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to\nknow, and _some_ because they are not fit to utter. Again, the wisdom\nof _antiquity_, the _shadows whereof are in the Poets_, in the\ndescription of torments and pains, _next unto the crime of rebellion_,\nwhich was the _giants_ offence, doth detest _the crime of futility_,\nas in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant of _particulars_.\nNevertheless, _even unto the general rules and discourses_ of policy\nand government, [it extends; for even here] there is due a _reverent_\nhandling.' And after having briefly indicated the comprehension 'of\nthis science,' and shown that it is the thing he is treating under\nother heads, he concludes, 'but considering that _I write to a king_\nwho is a _master_ of it, and is _so well assisted_, I think it decent\nto pass over _this part_ in silence, as willing to obtain the\ncertificate which one of the ancient philosophers aspired unto; who\nbeing silent when others contended to make demonstration of their\nabilities by speech, desired it might be certified for _his part_ that\nthere was one that knew how to hold his peace.'\n\nAnd having thus distinctly cleared himself of any suspicion of a\ndisposition to introduce scientific inquiry and innovation into\ndepartments not then open to a procedure of that sort, his proposal\nfor an advancement of learning in other quarters was, of course, less\nliable to criticism. But even that part of the subject to which he\nlimits himself involves, as we shall see, an incidental reference to\nthis, from which he here so modestly retires, and affords no\ninconsiderable scope for that genius which was by nature so\nirresistibly impelled, in one way or another, to the criticism and\nreformation of the larger wholes. He retires from the open assault,\nbut it is only to go deeper into his subject. He is constituting the\nscience of that from which the state proceeds. He is analyzing the\nstate, and searching out in the integral parts of it, that which makes\ntrue _states_ impossible. He has found the revolutionary forces in\ntheir simple forms, and is content to treat them in these. He is\nbestowing all his pains upon an art that will develop--on scientific\nprinciples, by simply attending to the natural laws, as they obtain in\nthe human kind, royalties, and nobilities, and liege-men of all\ndegrees--an art that will make all kinds of pieces that the structure\nof the state requires.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.\n\nSection I.--THE EXEMPLAR OF GOOD.\n\n\n  'Nature craves\n  All dues to be rendered to their owners.'\n\nBut this great innovator is busying himself here with drawing up a\nreport of THE DEFICIENCIES IN LEARNING; and though he is the first to\npropose a plan and method by which men shall build up, systematically\nand scientifically, a knowledge of _Nature in general_, instead of\nthrowing themselves altogether upon their own preconceptions and\nabstract controversial theories, after all, the principal deficiency\nwhich he has to mark--that to which, even in this dry report, he finds\nhimself constrained to affix some notes of admiration--this principal\ndeficiency is THE SCIENCE OF MAN--THE SCIENCE of _human nature_\nitself. And the reason of this deficiency is, that very deficiency\nbefore named; it is that very act of shutting himself up to his own\ntheories which leaves the thinker without a _science_ of himself. 'For\nit is the greatest proof of want of skill, to investigate _the nature_\nof any object in itself alone; and, in general, those very things\nwhich are considered as secret, are manifested and common in other\nobjects, but will never be clearly seen if the contemplations and\nexperiments of men be directed _to themselves alone_.' It is this\nscience of NATURE IN GENERAL which makes the SCIENCE of _Human Nature_\nfor the first time possible; and that is the end and term of the new\nphilosophy,--so the inventor of it tells us. And the moment that he\ncomes in with that new torch, which he has been out into 'the\ncontinent of nature' to light,--the moment that he comes back with it,\ninto this old debateable ground of the schools, and begins to apply it\nto that element in the human life in which the scientific innovation\nappears to be chiefly demanded, 'most of the controversies,' as he\ntells us very simply--'most of the controversies, wherein moral\nphilosophy is conversant, are judged and determined by it.'\n\nBut here is the bold and startling criticism with which he commences\nhis approach to this subject; here is the ground which he makes at the\nfirst step; this is the ground of his scientific innovation; not less\nimportant than this, is the field which he finds unoccupied. In the\nhandling of this science he says, (the science of 'the Appetite and\nWill of Man'), 'those which have written seem to me to have done as if\na man that _professed to teach to write_ did only exhibit _fair\ncopies_ of alphabets _and_ letters joined, without giving any precepts\nor directions for the carriage of the hand, or the framing of the\nletters; so have they made good and fair _exemplars_ and _copies_,\ncarrying the _draughts_ and _portraitures_ of _good, virtue, duty,\nfelicity_; propounding them, well described, as the true _objects_ and\n_scopes_ of man's will and designs; _but how to attain these excellent\nmarks_, and _how_ to _frame_ and _subdue_ the _will_ of _man_ to\nbecome _true_ and _conformable_ to _these pursuits_, they _pass it\nover altogether_, or slightly and _unprofitably_; for it is not,' he\nsays, 'certain scattered glances and touches that can excuse the\n_absence_ of this _part_ of--SCIENCE.\n\n'The reason of this omission,' he supposes, 'to be that hidden rock,\nwhereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast\naway, which is, that men have despised to be conversant in _ordinary\nand common matters_, the _judicious direction whereof, nevertheless_,\nis the wisest doctrine; for life consisteth not in novelties nor\n_subtleties_, but, _contrariwise_, they have compounded sciences\n_chiefly_ of _a certain_ resplendent or lustrous mass of matter,\n_chosen to give glory_ either to the _subtlety_ of _disputations_, or\nto the _eloquence_ of _discourses_.' But his theory of teaching is,\nthat 'Doctrine should be such as should make men in love with the\n_lesson_, and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's\nbenefit, and not to the author's commendation.' _Neither_ needed men\nof so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune which the poet\nVirgil promised himself, and, indeed, obtained, who got as much glory\nof eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the observations\nof husbandry _as of the heroical acts of \u00c6neas_.\n\n  'Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum\n  Quam sit, et angustis hunc addere rebus honorum.'\n  _Georg_. iii. 289.\n\nSo, then, there is room for a new Virgil, but his theme is\n_here_;--one who need not despair, if he be able to bring to his\nsubject those excellent parts this author speaks of, of getting as\nmuch glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the\n_observations of this husbandry_, as those have had who have sketched\nthe ideal forms of the human life, the dream of what should be. The\ncopies and exemplars of good,--that vision of heaven,--that idea of\nfelicity, and beauty, and goodness that the human soul brings with it,\nlike a memory,--those celestial shapes that the thought and heart of\nman, by a law in nature, project,--that garden of delights that all\nmen remember, and yearn for, and aspire to, and will have, in one form\nor another, in delicate air patterns, or gross deceiving images,--that\nlarge, intense, ideal good which men desire--that perfection and\nfelicity, so far above the rude mocking realities which experience\nbrings them,--that, _that_ has had its poets. No lack of these\nexemplars the historian finds, when he comes to make out his report of\nthe condition of his kind--where he comes to bring in his inventory of\nthe human estate: when so much is wanting, that good he reports '_not_\ndeficient.' Edens in plenty,--gods, and demi-gods, and heroes, _not_\nwanting; the purest abstract notions of virtue and felicity, the most\npoetic embodiments of them, are put down among the goods which the\nhuman estate, as it is, comprehends. This part of the subject appears,\nto the critical reviewer, to have been exhausted by the poets and\nartists that mankind has always employed to supply its wants in this\nfield. No room for a poet here! The draught of the ideal Eden is\nfinished;--the divine exemplar is finished; that which is wanting\nis,--_the husbandry thereunto_.\n\nTill now, the philosophers and poetic teachers had always taken their\nstand at once, on the topmost peak of Olympus, pouring down volleys of\nscorn, and amazement, and reprehension, upon the vulgar nature they\nsaw beneath, made out of the dust of the ground, and qualified with\nthe essential attributes of that material,--kindled, indeed, with a\nbreath of heaven, but made out of clay,--different kinds of\nclay,--with more or less of the Promethean spark in it; but always\nclay, of one kind or another, and always compelled to listen to the\nlaws that are common to the kinds of that substance. And it was to\nthis creature, thus bound by nature, thus _doubly_ bound,--'crawling\nbetween earth and heaven,' as the poet has it,--that these winged\nphilosophers on the ideal cliffs, thought it enough to issue their\nmandates, commanding it to renounce its conditions, to ignore its\nlaws, and come up thither at a word,--at a leap,--making no ado about\nit.\n\n  'I can call spirits from the vasty deep.'\n  'And so can I, and so can any man;'\n\nSays the new philosopher--\n\n  'But will they _come?_\n  _Will they come_--when you do call for them?'\n\nIt was simply a command, that this dirty earth should convert itself\nstraight into Elysian lilies, and bloom out, at a word, with roses of\nParadise. Excellent patterns, celestial exemplars, of the things\nrequired were held up to it; and endless declamation and argument why\nit should be that, and not the other, were not wanting:--but as to any\nscientific inquiry into the nature of the thing on which this form was\nto be superinduced, as to any _scientific_ exhibition of the form\nitself which was to be superinduced, these so essential conditions of\nthe proposed result, were in this case alike wanting. The position\nwhich these reformers occupy, is one so high, that the question of\ndifferent kinds of soils, and chemical analyses and experiments, would\nnot come within their range at all; and 'the resplendent or lustrous\nmass of matter,' of which their sciences are compounded, chosen to\ngive glory either to the subtilty of disputations or to the eloquence\nof discourses, would not bear any such vulgar admixture. It would make\na terrible jar in the rhythm, which those large generalizations\nnaturally flow in, to undertake to introduce into them any such points\nof detail.\n\nAnd the new teacher will have a mountain too; but it will be one that\n'overlooks the vale,' and he will have a rock-cut-stair to its utmost\nsummit. He is one who will undertake this despised unlustrous matter\nof which our ordinary human life consists, and make a science of it,\nbuilding up its generalizations from its particulars, and observing\nthe actual reality,--the thing as it is, freshly, for that purpose;\nand not omitting any detail,--the poorest. The poets who had\nundertaken this theme before had been so absorbed with the idea of\nwhat man should be, that they could only glance at him as he is: the\nidea of a science of him, was not of course, to be thought of. There\nwas but one name for the creature, indeed, in their vocabulary and\ndoctrine, and that was one which simply seized and embodied the\ngeneral fact, the unquestionable historic fact, that he has not been\nable hitherto to attain to his ideal type in nature, or indeed to make\nany satisfactory approximation to it.\n\nBut when the Committee of Inquiry sits at last, and the business\nbegins to assume a systematic form, even the science of that ideal\ngood, that exemplar and pattern of good, which men have been busy on\nso long,--the _science_ of it,--is put down as 'wanting,' and the\n_science_ of the _husbandry thereunto_, '_wholly deficient_.'\n\nAnd the report is, that this new argument, notwithstanding its\nevery-day theme, is one that admits of being sung also; and that the\nVirgil who is able to compose 'these Georgies of the Mind,' may\npromise himself fame, though his end is one that will enable him to\nforego it. Let us see if we can find any further track of him and his\ngreat argument, whether in prose or verse;--this poet who cares not\nwhether he has his 'singing robes' about him or not, so he can express\nand put upon record his new 'observations of this husbandry.'\n\nTHE EXEMPLAR OF GOOD.--'And surely,' he continues, 'if the purpose be\nin good earnest, _not to write at leisure that which men may read at\nleisure_'--note it--that which men may read at leisure--'but really to\n_instruct_ and _suborn action and active life_, these GEORGICS of the\nMIND, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy\nthan _the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty_, and _felicity_;\ntherefore the _main and primitive division_ of MORAL KNOWLEDGE,\nseemeth to be into the EXEMPLAR or PLATFORM of GOOD, and THE REGIMEN\nor CULTURE OF THE MIND, the one describing the NATURE of GOOD, the\nother prescribing RULES _how_ to SUBDUE, APPLY, and ACCOMMODATE THE\nWILL OF MAN THEREUNTO.'\n\nAs to '_the nature of good_, positive or simple,' the writers on this\nsubject have, he says, 'set it down excellently, in describing the\nforms of virtue and duty, with their situations, and postures, in\ndistributing them into their kinds, parts, provinces, actions, and\nadministrations, and the like: nay, farther, they have commended them\nto man's nature and spirit, with great quickness of argument, and\nbeauty of persuasions; yea, and fortified and entrenched them, _as\nmuch as discourse can do_, against corrupt and popular opinions. And\nfor the degrees and comparative nature of good, they have excellently\nhandled it also.'--That part deserveth to be reported for 'excellently\nlaboured.'\n\nWhat is it that is wanting then? What radical, fatal defect is it that\nhe finds even in the doctrine of the NATURE OF GOOD? What is the\ndifficulty with this platform and exemplar of good as he finds it,\nnotwithstanding the praise he has bestowed on it? The difficulty is,\nthat it is not scientific. It is not broad enough. It is _special_, it\nis limited to the species, but it is not properly, it is not\neffectively, specific, because it is not connected with the doctrine\nof nature in general. It does not strike to those universal original\nprinciples, those simple powers which determine the actual historic\nlaws and make the nature of things itself. This is the criticism,\ntherefore, with which this critic of the learning of the world as he\nfinds it, is constrained to qualify that commendation.\n\n_Notwithstanding_, if before they had come to _the popular and\nreceived notions of 'vice'_ and _'virtue,' 'pleasure'_ and _'pain,'_\nand the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry\nconcerning THE ROOTS of GOOD and EVIL, and the strings to those roots,\nthey had given, in my opinion, _a great light to that which followed_,\nand especially _if they had consulted with nature_, they had made\ntheir doctrines less prolix and more profound, which being by them in\npart omitted, and in part handled with much confusion, we will\nendeavour to resume and open in a more clear manner. Here then, is the\npreparation of the Platform or Exemplar of Good, the scientific\nplatform of virtue and felicity; going behind the popular notion of\nvice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like, he strikes at once\nto the nature of good, as it is 'formed in everything,' for the\nfoundation of this specific science. He lays the beams of it, in the\naxioms and definitions of his '_prima philosophia_' 'which do not fall\nwithin the compass of the special parts of science, but are more\ncommon and of a higher stage, for the distributions and partitions of\nknowledge are _not_ like several lines that meet in one angle, and so\ntouch but in a point, but are like _branches of a tree that meet in a\nstem_ which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and\ncontinuance before it comes to discontinue and break itself into arms\nand boughs,' and it is not the narrow and specific observation on\nwhich the popular notions are framed, but the scientific, which is\nneeded for the New Ethics,--the new knowledge, which here too, is\nPOWER. He must detect and recognise here also, he must track even into\nthe nature of man, those universal 'footsteps' which are but 'the same\nfootsteps of nature treading or printing in different substances.'\n'There is formed in _everything_ a double nature of good, the one as\neverything is a total or substantive in itself, and the other, as it\nis a part or member of a greater body whereof the latter is in\n_degree_ the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the\nconservation of a more general form.... This double nature of good,\nand the comparison thereof, is much more engraven upon MAN, _if he\ndegenerate not_, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public\nought _to be much more precious_ than the conservation of _life and\nbeing_;' and, by way of illustration, he mentions first the case of\nPompey the Great, 'who being in commission of purveyance for a famine\nat Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency by his friends, that\nhe should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he\nsaid only to them, \"_Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam_.\"' But, he\nadds, 'it may be _truly_ affirmed, that there was never any\nphilosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and\nhighly _exalt_ the good which is _communicative_, and _depress_ the\ngood which is private and particular, as the _holy faith_, well\ndeclaring that it was the _same God_ that gave the _Christian law to\nmen_, who gave those laws of nature to inanimate creatures that we\nspake of before; for we read that the elected saints of God have\nwished themselves anathematised, and razed out of the book of life, in\nan ecstasy of charity, and infinite feeling of communion.'\n\nAnd having first made good his assertion, that this being set down,\nand _strongly planted_, determines most of the _controversies_ wherein\nmoral philosophy is conversant, he proceeds to develop still further\nthese scientific notions of good and evil, which he has gone below the\npopular notions and into the nature of things to find, these\nscientific notions, which, because they are scientific, he has still\nto go out of the specific nature to define; and when he comes to nail\ndown his scientific platform of the _human_ good with them, when he\ncomes to strike their clear and simple lines, deep as the universal\nconstitution of things, through the popular terms, and clear up the\nold confused theories with them, we find that what he said of them\nbeforehand was true; they do indeed throw great light upon that which\nfollows.\n\nTo that exclusive, incommunicative good which inheres in the private\nand particular nature,--and he does not call it any hard names at all\nfrom his scientific platform; indeed in the vocabulary of the\nNaturalist we are told, that these names are omitted, 'for we call a\nnettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools their folly,'--that\nexclusive good he finds both passive and active, and this also is one\nof those primary distinctions which 'is formed in all things,' and so\ntoo is the _subdivision_ of passive good which follows. 'For there is\nimpressed upon _all things_ a triple desire, or appetite, proceeding\nfrom _love to themselves_; one, of preserving and continuing their\nform; another, of _advancing_ and perfecting their form; and a third,\nof multiplying and extending their form upon other things; whereof the\nmultiplying or signature of it upon other things, is that which we\nhandled by the name of active good.' But passive good includes both\nconservation and perfection, or _advancement_, which latter is the\nhighest degree of passive good. For to preserve in state is the less;\nto preserve with advancement is the greater. As to _man_, his approach\nor assumption to DIVINE or ANGELICAL NATURE is the perfection of _his_\nform, the error or false imitation of which good is that which is the\ntempest of human life. So we have heard before; but in the doctrine\nwhich we had before, it was the dogma,--the dogma whose inspiration\nand divinity each soul recognized; to whose utterance each soul\nresponded, as deep calleth unto deep,--it was the Law, the Divine Law,\nand not the _science of it_, that was given.\n\nAnd having deduced 'that good of man which is private and particular,\nas far as seemeth fit,' he returns 'to that good of man which respects\nand beholds society,' which he terms DUTY, because the term of duty is\nmore proper to a mind well framed and disposed towards others, as the\nterm of VIRTUE is applied to a mind well formed and composed in\nitself; though neither can a man understand _virtue, without some\nrelation to society_, nor _duty, without an inward disposition_.\n\nBut he wishes us to understand and remember, now that he comes out of\nthe particular nature, and begins to look towards society with this\nterm of Duty, that he is still dealing with 'the will of particular\npersons,' that it is still the science of _morals_, and not\n_politics_, that he is meddling with. 'This part may seem at first,'\nhe says, 'to pertain to science civil and politic, but not if it be\nwell observed; for it concerneth the regiment and _government of every\nman over himself_, and not over others.' And this is the plan which he\nhas marked out in his doctrine of government as the most hopeful point\nin which to _commence_ political reformations; and one cannot but\nobserve, that if this art and science should be successfully\ncultivated, the one which he dismisses so briefly would be cleared at\nonce of some of those difficulties, which rendered any more direct\ntreatment of it at that time unadvisable. This part of learning\nconcerneth then 'the regiment and government of every man over\nhimself, and not over others.' '_As_ in architecture _the direction_\nof _the framing_ the _posts, beams_, and _other parts_ of _building_,\nis not the same with the manner of joining them and erecting the\nbuilding; and in mechanicals, the direction _how_ to _frame_ AN\nINSTRUMENT OR ENGINE is not the same with the manner of _setting it on\nwork_, and employing it; _and yet, nevertheless_, in expressing of the\none, you _incidentally_ express the _aptness_ towards the other [hear]\n_so_ the doctrine of the conjugation of men in society differeth from\n_that_ of _their conformity thereunto_.' The received doctrine of that\nconjugation certainly appeared to; and the more this scientific\ndoctrine of the parts, and the conformity thereunto, is incidentally\nexpressed,--the more the scientific direction _how to frame_ the\ninstrument or engine, is opened, the more this difference becomes\napparent.\n\nBut even in limiting himself to the individual human nature as it is\ndeveloped in particular persons, regarding society only as it is\nincidental to that, even in putting down his new scientific platform\nof the good that the appetite and will of man naturally seeks, and in\nmarking out scientifically its _degrees_ and _kinds_, he gives us an\nopportunity to perceive in passing, that he is not altogether without\noccasion for the use of that particular art, with its peculiar\n'organs' and 'methods' and 'illustration,' which he recommends under\nso many heads in his treatise on that subject, for the delivery or\ntradition of knowledges, which tend to _innovation_ and\n_advancement_--knowledge which is 'progressive' and 'foreign from\nopinions received.'\n\nThis doctrine of _duty_ is sub-divided into two parts; the _common_\nduty of every man as a MAN, or A MEMBER of A STATE, which is that part\nof the platform and exemplar of good, he has before reported as\n'extant, and well laboured.' The other is the _respective_ or\n_special_ duty of every man in his PROFESSION, VOCATION and PLACE; and\nit is under this head of the _special_ and _respective_ duties of\nplaces, vocations and professions, where the subject begins to grow\nnarrow and pointed, where it assumes immediately, the most critical\naspects,--it is here that his new arts of delivery and tradition come\nin to such good purpose, and stand him instead of other weapons. For\nthis is one of those cases precisely, which the philosopher on the\nMountain alluded to, where an argument is set on foot at the table of\na man of prodigious fortune, when the man himself is present. Nowhere,\nperhaps,--in his freest forms of writing, does he give a better\nreason, for that so deliberate and settled determination, which he so\nopenly declares, and everywhere so stedfastly manifests, not to put\nhimself in an antagonistic attitude towards opinions, and vocations,\nand professions, as they stood authorized in his time. Nowhere does he\nventure on a more striking comparison or simile, for the purpose of\nsetting forth that point vividly, and impressing it on the imagination\nof the reader.\n\n'The first of these [sub-divisions of duty] is extant, and well\nlaboured, as hath been said. The second, likewise, I may report rather\ndispersed than deficient; which _manner of dispersed argument I\nacknowledge to be best_; [it is one he is much given to;] for who can\ntake upon him to write of the proper duty, virtue, _challenge_ and\n_right_ of EVERY several vocation, profession and place? [--truly?--]\nFor although sometimes a looker on, may see more than a gamester, and\nthere be a proverb more arrogant than sound, 'that the _vale_ best\ndiscovereth _the hill_,' yet there is small doubt, that men can write\nbest, and most really and materially of their own professions,' and it\nis to be wished, he says, 'as that which would make learning, indeed,\nsolid and fruitful, that active men would, or could, become writers.'\nAnd he proceeds to mention opportunely in that connection, a case very\nmuch in point, as far as he is concerned, but not on the face of it,\nso immediately to the purpose, as that which follows. It will,\nhowever, perhaps, repay that very careful reading of it, which will be\nnecessary, in order to bring out its pertinence in this connection.\nAnd we shall, perhaps, not lose time ourselves, by taking, as we pass,\nthe glimpse which this author sees fit to give us, of the facilities\nand encouragements which existed then, for the scientific treatment of\nthis so important question of the duties and vices of vocations and\nprofessions.\n\n'In which I _cannot but_ mention, _honoris causa, your majesty's_\nexcellent book, touching the _duty_ of A KING' [and he goes on to give\na description which applies, without much 'forcing,' to the work of\nanother king, which he takes occasion to introduce, with a direct\ncommendation, a few pages further on]--'a work richly compounded of\ndivinity, morality, and policy, with great _aspersion_ of all other\narts; and being, in mine opinion, one of the most sound and healthful\nwritings that I have read. Not sick of business, as those are who lose\nthemselves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp in\nmatters impertinent; not savoring of perfumes and paintings as those\ndo, who seek to please the reader more than nature beareth, and\nchiefly _well disposed_ in the _spirits_ thereof, being _agreeable to\ntruth_, and _apt for action_;'--[this passage contains some hints as\nto this author's notion of what a book should be, in form, as well as\nsubstance, and, therefore, it would not be strange, if it should apply\nto some other books, as well]--'and far removed from _that natural\ninfirmity_, whereunto _I noted those that write in their own\nprofessions_, to be _subject_, which is that they _exalt it above\nmeasure_; for your majesty hath truly described, _not_ a king of\nAssyria or Persia, in their _external_ glory, [and not that kind of\nking, or kingly author is he talking of] but a _Moses_, or a _David,\npastors of their people_.\n\n'Neither can I _ever lose out of my remembrance_, what I heard your\nmajesty, in the same sacred spirit of government, deliver in a great\ncause of judicature, which was, that kings ruled by _their laws_, as\nGod did by the laws of nature, and ought rarely to put in use their\nsupreme prerogative, as God doth his power of working miracles. _And\nyet, notwithstanding_, in your book of _a free monarchy_, you do well\ngive men to understand, that you know the plenitude of the _power_ and\n_right_ of a king, as well as _the circle of his office and duty. Thus\nhave I presumed to _allege_ this excellent writing of your majesty,\n_as a prime_ or _eminent example_ of Tractates, concerning _special_\nand _respective_ duties.' [It is, indeed, an _exemplar_ that he talks\nof here.] 'Wherein _I should have said as much, if it had been written\na thousand years since_: neither am I moved with certain courtly\ndecencies, which I esteem it flattery to praise in presence; no, it is\nflattery to _praise in absence: that is_, when _either_ the virtue is\nabsent, _or--the occasion_ is absent, and so the praise is _not\nnatural_, but _forced_, either in truth, _or--in time_. But let Cicero\nbe read in his oration _pro Marcello_, which is nothing but an\nexcellent TABLE of _Caesar's_ VIRTUE, and _made to his face_; besides\nthe _example_ of many other excellent persons, _wiser a great deal\nthan such observers_, and we will never doubt upon a _full occasion_,\nto give _just_ praises to _present_ or _absent_.'\n\nThe reader who does not think that is, on the whole, a successful\nparagraph, considering the general slipperiness of the subject, and\nthe state of the ice in those parts of it, in particular where the\nmovements appear to be the most free and graceful; such a one has,\nprobably, failed in applying to it, that key of 'times,' which a _full\noccasion_ is expected to produce for this kind of delivery. But if any\ndoubt exists in any mind, in regard to this author's opinion of the\nrights of his own profession and vocation, and _the circle_ of _its_\noffice and duties,--if any one really doubts what only allegiance this\nauthor professionally acknowledges, and what kingship it is to which\nthis great argument is internally dedicated, it may be well to recall\nthe statement on that subject, which he has taken occasion to insert\nin another part of the work, so that that point, at least, may be\nsatisfactorily determined.\n\nHe is speaking of 'certain base conditions and courses,' in his\ncriticism on the manners of learned men, which he says 'he has no\npurpose to give allowance to, wherein divers professors of learning\nhave wronged themselves and gone too far,'--glancing in particular at\nthe trencher philosophers of the later age of the Roman state, 'who\nwere little better than parasites in the houses of the great. But\nabove all the rest,' he continues, 'the _gross_ and _palpable\nflattery_, whereunto, many, not unlearned, have abased and abused\ntheir wits and pens, turning, as Du Bartas saith, Hecuba into Helena,\nand Faustina into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price and\nestimation of learning. Neither is the _modern dedication_, of books\nand writings _as to patrons_, to be commended: for that books--such as\nare _worthy the name of books_, ought to have _no patrons,\nbut_--(hear) but--Truth and Reason. And the ancient custom was to\ndedicate them only to _private and equal friends_, or to _entitle_ the\nbooks with their names, or if to _kings_ and _great persons_, it was\n_some such_ as the argument of the book was fit and proper for: but\nthese and the like courses may deserve rather _reprehension_ than\ndefence.\n\n'Not that I can tax,' he continues, however, 'or condemn the\napplication of learned men to men in fortune.' And he proceeds to\nquote here, approvingly, a series of speeches on this very point,\nwhich appear to be full of pertinence; the first of the philosopher\nwho, when he was asked in mockery, 'How it came to pass that\nphilosophers were followers of rich men, and not rich men of\nphilosophers,' answered soberly, and yet sharply, 'Because the one\nsort knew what they had need of, and the other did not'. And then the\nspeech of Aristippus, who, when some one, tender on behalf of\nphilosophy, reproved him that he would offer the profession of\nphilosophy such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at a\ntyrant's feet, replied, 'It was not his fault, but it was the fault of\nDionysius, that he had his ears in his feet'; and, lastly, the reply\nof another, who, yielding his point in disputing with Caesar, claimed,\n'That it was reason to yield to him who commanded thirty legions,' and\n'these,' he says, 'these, and _the like_ applications, and stooping to\npoints of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for, though\nthey may have _some outward baseness_, yet, in a _judgment truly\nmade_, they are to be accounted submissions _to the occasion_, and\n_not to the person_.'\n\nAnd that is just _Volumnia's_ view of the subject, as will be seen in\nanother place.\n\n  Now, this no more dishonors you at all,\n  Than to take in a town with gentle words,\n  Which else would put you to your fortune, and\n  The hazard of much blood.--\n  And you will rather show our general louts\n  How you can frown, than spend a _fawn_ upon them,\n  For the inheritance of their loves, and _safeguard_\n  Of _what that want might ruin_.\n\nBut then, in the dramatic exhibition, the other side comes in too:--\n\n                        I will not do't;\n  Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,\n  And by my body's action, teach my mind\n  _A most inherent baseness._\n\nIt is the same poet who says in another place:--\n\n  Almost my nature is subdued to that it works in.\n\n'But to return,' as our author himself says, after his complimentary\nnotice of the king's book, accompanied with that emphatic promise to\ngive an account of himself upon a full occasion, and we have here,\napparently, a longer digression to apologize for, and return from;\nbut, in the book we are considering, it is, in fact, rather apparent\nthan real, as are most of the author's digressions, and casual\nintroductions of impertinent matter; for, in fact, the exterior order\nof the discourse is often a submission to the _occasion_, and is not\nso essential as the author's apparent concern about it would lead us\nto infer; indeed he has left dispersed directions to have this\ntreatise broken up, and recomposed in a more lively manner, upon a\nfull occasion, and when time shall serve; for, at present, this too is\nchiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof.\n\nAnd in marking out the grounds in human life, then lying waste, or\ncovered with superstitious and empirical arts and inventions, in\nmerely showing the fields into which the inventor of this new\ninstrument of observation and inference by rule, was then proposing to\nintroduce it, and in presenting this new report, and this so startling\nproposition, in those differing aspects and shifting lights, and under\nthose various divisions which the art of delivery and tradition under\nsuch circumstances appeared to prescribe; having come, in the order of\nhis report, to that main ground of the good which the will and\nappetite of man aspires to, and the direction thereto,--this so\nlabored ground of philosophy,--when it was found that the new\nscientific platform of good, included--not the exclusive good of the\nindividual form only, but that of those 'larger wholes,' of which men\nare _constitutionally_ parts and members, and the special DUTY,--for\nthat is the specific name of this principle of integrity in the\n_human_ kind, that is the name of that larger law, that spiritual\nprinciple, which informs and claims the parts, and conserves the\nlarger form which is the worthier,--when it was found that this part\nincluded the particular duty of every man in his _place, vocation_,\nand _profession_, as well as the common duty of men as men, surely it\nwas natural enough to glance here, at that _particular profession and\nvocation_ of authorship, and the claims of the respective _places_ of\n_king_ and _subject_ in that regard, as well as at the _duty_ of the\n_king_, and the superior advantages of a government of laws in\ngeneral, as being more in accordance with the order of nature, than\nthat other mode of government referred to. It was natural enough,\nsince this subject lies always in abeyance, and is essentially\ninvolved in the work throughout, that it should be touched here, in\nits proper place, though never so casually, with a glance at those\nnice questions of conflicting claims, which are more fully debated\nelsewhere, distinguishing that which is forced in _time_, from that\nwhich is forced in _truth_, and the absence of the person, from the\nabsence of the occasion.\n\nBut the approval of that man of prodigious fortune, to whom this work\nis openly dedicated, is always, with this author, who understands his\nground here so well, that he hardly ever fails to indulge himself in\npassing, with a good humoured, side-long, glance at 'the situation,'\nthis approval is the least part of the achievement. That which he,\ntoo, adores in kings, is 'the throng of their adorers'. It is the\nsovereignty which makes kings, and puts them in its liveries, that he\nbends to; it is that that he reserves his art for. And this proposal\nto run the track of the science of nature through this new field of\nhuman nature and its higher and highest aims, and into the very field\nof _every man's_ special place, and vocation, and profession, could\nnot well be made without a glance at those difficulties, which the\nclashing claims of authorship, and _other professions_, would in this\ncase create; without a glance at the imperious necessities which\nthreaten the life of the new science, which here also imperiously\nprescribe the form of its TRADITION; he could not go by this place,\nwithout putting into the reader's hands, with one bold stroke, the key\nof its DELIVERY.\n\nFor it is in the paragraph which follows the compliment to the king in\nhis character as an author, in pursuing still further this subject of\nvocations and professions, that we find in the form of '_fable_' and\n'_allusion_,'--that form which the author himself lays down in his Art\nof Tradition, as _the_ form of inculcation for new truth,--the precise\nposition, which is the key to this whole method of new sciences, which\nmakes the method and the interpretation, the vital points, in the\nwriting and the reading of them.\n\n'But, to return, there belongeth farther to the handling of this part,\ntouching the _Duties_ of Professions and Vocations, a relative, or\n_opposite_, touching the _frauds, impostures and vices of every\nprofession_, which hath been likewise handled. But how? Rather in _a\nsatire_ and _cynically_, than _seriously_ and _wisely_; for men have\nrather sought by _wit_ to deride and traduce _much of that which is\ngood in_ PROFESSIONS, than _with judgment to discover and sever that\nwhich is corrupt_. For, as Solomon saith, he that cometh to seek after\nknowledge with a mind to scorn and censure, shall be sure to find\nmatter for his humour, but no matter for his instruction. But _the\nmanaging of this argument_ with _integrity_ and _truth_, _which I note\nas deficient_, seemeth to me to be _one of the best fortifications for\nhonesty and virtue that can be planted_. _For_, as the fable goeth of\nthe _basilisk_, that if _he see you first_, you die for it, but if YOU\nSEE HIM FIRST--HE DIETH; _so_ it is with deceits and _evil arts_,\nwhich if they be first ESPIED _lose their life_, but if they\n_prevent_, endanger.' [If they see you first, you die for it; and not\nyou only, but your science.\n\n  Yet were there but this single plot to lose,\n  This _mould_ of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,\n  And throw it against the wind.]\n\n'So that we are much beholden' he continues, 'to Machiavel _and\nothers_ that write _what men do_, and not what they ought to do,\n[perhaps he refers here to that writer before quoted, who writes,\n\"others _form_ men,--_I_ report him\"]; for it is not possible,'\ncontinues the proposer of the science of special duties of _place_,\nand _vocation_, and _profession_, 'the _critic_ of this department,\ntoo,--it is not possible to join the serpentine wisdom with the\ncolumbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the\nserpent,--that is, _all forms_ and _natures of evil_, for without\nthis, _virtue_ lieth open and un-fenced. Nay, an honest man can do no\ngood upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of\nthe knowledge of evil: for men of corrupted minds pre-suppose that\nhonesty groweth out of simplicity of manners, and believing of\npreachers, schoolmasters, and _men's exterior language_; so as, except\nyou can make them perceive that you know the utmost reaches of their\nown corrupt opinions, they despise all morality.' A book composed for\nthe express purpose of meeting the difficulty here alluded to, has\nbeen already noticed in the preceding pages, on account of its being\none of the most striking samples of that peculiar style of\n_tradition_, which the advancement of Learning prescribes, and here is\nanother, in which the same invention and discovery appears to be\nindicated:--'Why I can teach you'--says a somewhat doubtful claimant\nto supernatural gifts:\n\n  'Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command\n  The devil.'\n  'And I can teach _thee_, coz, to shame the devil;\n  By telling truth;\n  If thou hast power to raise him, bring him hither,\n  And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence:\n  Oh, while you live, TELL TRUTH.'\n\nBut _this_ is the style, in which the one before referred to, falls in\nwith the humour of this Advancer of Learning. 'As to the rest, I have\nenjoined _myself_ to dare to _say_, all that I dare _to do_, and even\n_thoughts_ that are not to be published, displease me. The worst of my\nactions and qualities do not appear to me so foul, as I find it foul\nand base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in\n_confession_, but men ought to be so in _action_. I wish that this\nexcessive license of mine, may draw men to freedom _above these\ntimorous and mincing pretended virtues, sprung from our\nimperfections_, and that at the expense of my immoderation, I may\nreduce them to reason. A man must see and study his vice to correct\nit, they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it from\nthemselves and do not think it covered enough, if they themselves see\nit.... the diseases of the soul, the greater they are, keep themselves\nthe more obscure; the most sick are the least sensible of them: for\nthese reasons they must often be dragged into light, by an unrelenting\nand pitiless hand; they must be opened and torn from the caverns and\nsecret recesses of the heart.' 'To meet the Huguenots, who condemn our\nauricular and private confession, I confess myself in public,\nreligiously and purely,--others have published the errors of their\n_opinions_, I of my _manners_. I am greedy of making myself known, and\nI care not to how many, provided it be truly; or rather, I hunger for\nnothing, but I mortally hate to be _mistaken_ by those who happen to\ncome across _my name_. _He that does_ all things for honor and glory\n[as some great men in that time were supposed to], what can he think\nto gain by showing himself to the world _in a mask, and by concealing\nhis true being from the people_? Commend a hunchback for his fine\nshape, he has a right to take it for an affront: if you are a coward,\nand men commend you for your valor, is it of _you_ that they speak?\nThey take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along\nthe street, somebody threw water on his head; which they who were with\nhim said he ought to punish, \"Ay, but,\" said the other, \"he did not\nthrow the water upon _me_, but upon _him_ whom he took me to be.\"\nSocrates being told that people spoke ill of him, \"Not at all,\" said\nhe, \"there is nothing in me of what they say!\" _I am content to be\nless commended provided I am better known_. I may be reputed a wise\nman, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.' Truly the\nAdvancement of Learning would seem to be not all in the hands of one\nperson in this time. It appears, indeed, to have been in the hands of\nsome persons who were not content with simply propounding it, and\nnoting deficiencies, but who busied themselves with actively carrying\nout, the precise plan propounded. Here is one who does not content\nhimself with merely criticising '_professions_ and _vocations_' and\nsuggesting improvements, but one who appears to have an inward call\nhimself to the cure of diseases. Whoever he may be, and since he seems\nto care so very little for his name himself, and looks at it from such\na philosophical point of view, we ought not, perhaps, to be too\nparticular about it; whoever he may be, he is unquestionably a Doctor\nof the New School, the scientific school, and will be able to produce\nhis diploma when properly challenged; whoever he may be, he belongs to\n'the Globe' for the manager of that theatre is incessantly quoting\nhim, and dramatizing his philosophy, and he says himself, 'I look on\nall men as my compatriots, and prefer the _universal and common tie to\nthe national_.'\n\nBut in marking out and indicating the plan and method of the new\noperation, which has for its end to substitute a scientific, in the\nplace of an empirical procedure, in the main pursuits of human life,\nthe philosopher does not limit himself in this survey of the special\nsocial duties to the special duties of professions and vocations.\n'Unto this part,' he says, 'touching _respective_ duty, doth also\nappertain the duties between husband and wife, parent and child,\nmaster and servant: so likewise the laws of _friendship_ and\n_gratitude_, the civil bond of _companies, colleges_, and _politic\nbodies_, of _neighbourhood_, and all other proportionate duties; _not_\nas they are parts of a government and society, _but as to the framing\nof the mind of particular persons_.'\n\nThe reader will observe, that that portion of moral philosophy which\nis here indicated, contains, according to this index, some extremely\nimportant points, points which require learned treatment; and in our\nfurther pursuit of this inquiry, we shall find, that the new light\nwhich the science of nature in general throws upon the doctrine of the\nspecial duties and upon these points here emphasized, has been most\nably and elaborately exhibited by a contemporary of this philosopher,\nand in the form which he has so specially recommended,--with all that\nrhetorical power which he conceives to be the natural and fitting\naccompaniment of this part of learning. And the same is true also\nthroughout of that which follows.\n\n'The knowledge concerning good respecting society, doth handle it also\nnot simply alone, but _comparatively_, whereunto belongeth the\nweighing of duties _between person and person, case and case,\nparticular and public_: as we see in the proceeding of Lucius Brutus\nagainst his own sons, which was so much extolled, yet what was said?\n\nInfelix utcunque ferent ea fata minores.\n\n'So the case was doubtful, and had opinion on both sides. [So the\nphilosopher on the mountain tells us, too, for his common-place book\nand this author's happen to be the same.] Again we see when M. Brutus\nand Cassius _invited to a supper_ certain _whose opinions they meant\nto feel_, whether they were fit to be made their associates, and cast\nforth the question touching the killing of a tyrant,--being an\nusurper,--_they were divided in opinion_;' [this of itself is a very\ngood specimen of the style in which points are sometimes introduced\ncasually in passing, and by way of illustration merely] some holding\nthat _servitude_ was the _extreme_ of evils, and _others_ that tyranny\nwas _better than a civil war_; and this question also our philosopher\nof the mountain has considered very carefully from his retreat,\nweighing all the _pros_ and _cons_ of it. And it is a question which\nwas treated also, as we all happen to know, in that other form of\nwriting for which this author expresses so decided a preference, in\nwhich the art of the poet is brought in to enforce and impress the\nconclusion of the philosopher. Indeed, as we proceed further with the\nplan of this so radical part of the subject, we shall find, that the\nground indicated has everywhere been taken up on the spot by somebody,\nand to purpose.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.\n\nSection II.--THE HUSBANDRY THEREUNTO; OR, THE CURE AND CULTURE OF THE\nMIND.\n\n\n  'Tis an unweeded garden\n  That grows to seed--'\n\n  Hamlet.\n\nBut we have finished now with what he has to say here of the EXEMPLAR\nor science of GOOD, and its _kinds_, and _degrees_, and the comparison\nof them, the good that is proper to the individual, and the good that\nincludes society. He has found much fine work on that platform of\nvirtue, and felicity,--excellent exemplars, the purest doctrine, the\nloftiest virtue, tried by the scientific standard. And though he has\ngone behind those popular names of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure,\nand the like, in which these doctrines _begin_, to the more simple and\noriginal forms, which the doctrine of nature in general and its laws\nsupplies, for a platform of moral science, his doctrine is large\nenough to include all these works, in all their excellence, and give\nthem their true place. A reviewer so discriminating, then, so far from\nthat disposition to scorn and censure, which he reprehends, so careful\nto conserve that which is good in his scientific constructions and\nreformations, so pure in judgment in discovering and severing that\nwhich is corrupt, a reporter so clearly scientific, who is able to\nmaintain through all this astounding report of the deficiences in\nhuman learning, a tone so quiet, so undemonstrative, such a one\ndeserves the more attention when he comes now to 'the art and practic\npart' of this great science, to which all other sciences are\nsubordinate, and declares to us that he finds it, as a part of\nscience, 'WANTING!' not defective, but _wanting_.\n\n'Now, therefore, that we have spoken of this FRUIT of LIFE, it\nremaineth to speak of the HUSBANDRY that belongeth thereunto, without\nwhich part the former seemeth to be no better than a fair image or\nstatue, which is beautiful to contemplate, but is without life and\nmotion.'\n\nBut as this author is very far, as he confesses, from wishing to\nclothe himself with the honors of an Innovator,--such honors as\nawaited the Innovator in that time,--but prefers always to sustain\nhimself with authority from the past, though at the expense of that\nlustre of novelty and originality, which goes far, as he acknowledges,\nin establishing new opinions,--adopting in this precisely the\npractices, and, generally, to save trouble, the quotations of that\nother philosopher, so largely quoted here, who frankly gives his\nreasons for _his_ procedure, confessing that he pinches his authors a\nlittle, now and then, to make them speak to the purpose; and that he\nreads them with his pencil in his hand, for the sake of being able to\nproduce respectable authority, grown gray in trust, with the moss of\ncenturies on it, for the views which he has to set forth; culling bits\nas he wants them, and putting them together in his mosaics as he finds\noccasion; so now, when we come to this so important part of the\nsubject, where the want is so clearly reported--where the scientific\ninnovation is so unmistakeably propounded--we find ourselves suddenly\ninvolved in a storm of Latin quotations, all tending to prove that the\nthing was perfectly understood among the ancients, and that it is as\nmuch as a man's scholarship is worth to call it in question. The\nauthor marches up to the point under cover of a perfect cannonade of\nclassics, no less than five of the most imposing of the Greek and\nLatin authors being brought out, for the benefit of the stunned and\nbewildered reader, in the course of one brief paragraph, the whole\nconcluding with a reference to the Psalms, which nobody, of course,\nwill undertake to call in question; whereas, in cases of ordinary\ndifficulty, a proverb or two from Solomon is thought sufficient.\n\nFor this last writer, with his practical inspiration--with his\naphorisms, or 'dispersed directions,' which the author prefers to a\nmethodical discourse, as they best point to action--with his perpetual\napplication of divinity to matters of common life, and to the special\nand respective duties, this, of all the sacred writers, is the one\nwhich he has most frequent occasion to refer to; and when, in his\nchapter on Policy, he brings out openly his proposal to invade the\nevery-day practical life of men, in its apparently most unaxiomatical\ndepartment, with his scientific rule of procedure--a proposal which he\nmight not have been 'so prosperously delivered of,' if it had been\nmade in any less considerate manner--he stops to produce whole pages\nof solid text from this so unquestionably conservative authority, by\nway of clearing himself from any suspicion of innovation.\n\nFirst, then, in setting forth this so novel opinion of his, that the\ndoctrine of the FRUIT of LIFE should include not the scientific\nplatform of good, and its degrees and kinds only,--not the doctrine of\nthe ideal excellence and felicity only, but the doctrine--the\nscientific doctrine--the scientific art of the Husbandry\nthereunto;--in setting forth the opinion, that that first _part_ of\nmoral science is _but a part of it_, and that as human nature is\nconstituted, it is not enough to have a doctrine of good in its\nperfection, and the divinest exemplars of it; first of all he produces\nthe subscription of no less a person than Aristotle, whose\nconservative faculties had proved so effectual in the dark ages, that\nthe opinion of Solomon himself could hardly have been considered more\nto the purpose. 'In such full words,' he says; and seeing that the\nadvancement of Learning has already taken us on to a place where the\nopinions of Aristotle, at least, are not so binding, we need not\ntrouble ourselves with that long quotation now--'in such full _words_,\nand with such _iteration_, doth he inculcate this part, so saith\n_Cicero_ in great commendation of _Cato_ the second, that he had\napplied himself to philosophy--\"_Non ita disputandi causa, sed ita\nvivendi_.\" And although the neglect of our times, wherein few men do\nhold any consultations touching _the reformation of their_ LIFE, as\n_Seneca_ excellently saith, \"De partibus vitae, quisque deliberat, de\nsumma nemo,\" may make this part seem superfluous, yet I must conclude\nwith that aphorism of _Hippocrates_, \"Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores\nnon sentiunt, iis mens aegrotat\"; they need medicines not only to\nassuage the disease, but _to awake the sense_.\n\n'And if it be said _that the cure of men's minds belongeth to sacred\ndivinity_, it is most true; but _yet_ Moral Philosophy'--that is, in\n_his_ meaning of the term, Moral _Science_, the new science of\nnature--'may be _preferred unto her, as a wise servant_ and humble\nhandmaid. For, as _the Psalm saith_, that \"the eye of the handmaid\nlooketh perpetually towards the mistress,\" and yet, _no doubt, many\nthings are left to the discretion of the handmaid_, to discern of the\n_mistress's will_; so ought moral philosophy to give _a constant\nattention to the doctrines of divinity_, and yet so as it may yield of\nherself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.'\n_That_ is the doctrine. _That_ is the position of the New Science in\nrelation to divinity, as defined by the one who was best qualified to\nplace it--that is the mission of the New Science, as announced by the\nnew Interpreter of Nature,--the priest of her ignored and violated\nlaws,--on whose work the seal of that testimony which he challenged to\nit has already been set--on whose work it has already been written, in\nthe large handwriting of that Providence Divine, whose benediction he\ninvoked, 'accepted'--accepted in the councils from which the effects\nof life proceed.\n\n'This part, therefore,' having thus defined his position, he\ncontinues, 'because of the _excellency thereof_, I cannot but find it\nEXCEEDING STRANGE that it is not reduced _to written inquiry_; the\nrather because it consisteth of much matter, wherein _both speech and\naction is often conversant_, and such wherein the common talk of men,\n_which is rare_, but yet cometh sometimes to pass, is _wiser than\ntheir books_. It is reasonable, therefore, that we propound it with\nthe more particularity, both for the worthiness, and _because we may\nacquit ourselves for reporting it deficient_' [with such 'iteration\nand fulness,' with all his _discrimination_, does he contrive to make\n_this_ point]; 'which seemeth _almost incredible_, and is otherwise\nconceived--[note it]--and is otherwise conceived and _presupposed_ by\nthose themselves that have written.' [They do not see that they have\nmissed it.] 'We will, therefore, enumerate some HEADS or POINTS\n_thereof, that it may appear the better what it is_, and __whether it\nbe extant_.'\n\nA momentous question, truly, for the human race. That was a point,\nindeed, for this reporter to dare to make, and insist on and\ndemonstrate. Doctrines of THE FRUIT of LIFE--doctrines of its\nperfection, exemplars of it; but no science--no science of the Culture\nor the Husbandry thereunto--though it is otherwise conceived and\npresupposed by those who have written! Yes, that is the position; and\nnot taken in the general only, for he will proceed to propound it with\nmore particularity--he will give us the HEADS of it--he will proceed\nto the articulation of that which is wanting--he will put down, before\nour eyes, the points and outlines of the new human science, the\nscience of the husbandry thereto, both for the worthiness thereof, and\nthat it may appear the better WHAT IT IS, and whether--WHETHER IT BE\nEXTANT. For who knows but it may be? Who knows, after all, but the\npoints and outlines here, may prove but the track of that argument\nwhich the new Georgics will be able to hide in the play of their\nillustration, as Periander hid his? Who knows but the Naturalist in\nthis field was then already on the ground, making his collections? Who\nknows but this new Virgil, who thought little of that resplendent and\nlustrous mass of matter, that old poets had taken for their glory, who\nseized the common life of men, and not the ideal life only, for his\ntheme--who made the relief of the human estate, and not glory, his\nend, but knew that he might promise himself a fame which would make\nthe old heroic poets' crowns grow dim,--who knows but that _he_--he\nhimself--is extant, contemplating his theme, and composing its\nIndex--claiming as yet its INDEX only? Truly, if the propounder of\nthis argument can in any measure supply the _defects_ which he\noutlines, and opens here,--if he can point out to us any new and\nworthy collections in that science for which he claims to break the\nground--if he can, in any measure, constitute it, he will deserve that\nname which he aspired to, and for which he was willing to renounce his\nown, 'Benefactor of men,' and not of an age or nation.\n\nBut let us see where this new science, and scientific art of human\nculture begins,--this science and art which is to differ from those\nwhich have preceded it, as the other Baconian arts and sciences which\nbegan in the new doctrine of nature, differed from those which\npreceded them.\n\n'FIRST, therefore, in this, _as in all things which are practical_, we\nought to cast up our account, WHAT is IN OUR POWER, AND WHAT NOT? FOR\nthe one may be dealt with by way of ALTERATION, but the other by way\nof APPLICATION _only_. The husbandman cannot command either the\n_nature of the earth or the seasons_ of the weather, no more can the\nphysician _the constitution of the patient_, and the _variety of\naccidents._ So in the CULTURE and CURE of THE MIND of MAN _two things_\nare without our command, POINTS OF NATURE, and POINTS of FORTUNE: for\nto the basis of the one, and the conditions of the other, our work is\nlimited and tied.' That is the first step: that is where the NEW\nbegins. There is no science or art till that step is taken.\n\n'_In these things_, therefore, it is left unto us to proceed by\nAPPLICATION. Vincenda est omnis fortuna ferendo: and so\nlikewise--Vincenda est omnis natura ferendo. But when we speak of\nsuffering, we do not speak of a _dull neglected suffering_, but of _a\nwise and industrious suffering_, which draweth and contriveth _use and\nadvantage out of that which seemeth adverse and contrary_, which is\nthat properly which we call _accommodating_ or _applying_. [\"Sweet are\nthe uses of it,\" and \"blest\" indeed are they who can translate the\n_stubbornness_ of fortune into so quiet and so sweet a style.]\n\n'Now the wisdom of APPLICATION resteth _principally_ in the _exact and\ndistinct knowledge of the precedent state or disposition, unto which\nwe do apply_.'--[This is the process which the Novum Organum sets\nforth with so much care], 'for we cannot fit a garment, except we\nfirst take the measure of the body.'\n\nSo then THE FIRST ARTICLE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE is--what?--'to set down\n_sound_ and _true distributions_ and _descriptions_ of THE SEVERAL\nCHARACTERS AND TEMPERS of MEN'S NATURES and DISPOSITIONS, specially\nhaving regard to _those differences_ which are most _radical_, in\nbeing the fountains and causes of the rest, _or_ most frequent in\n_concurrence_ or commixture (not _simple_ differences merely, but the\nmost frequent conjunctions), wherein it is not the handling of a few\nof them, in passage, the better to describe the _mediocrities_ of\n_virtues_, that can satisfy this intention'; and he proceeds to\nintroduce a few points, casually, as it were, and by way of\nillustration, but the rule of interpretation for this digest of\nlearning, in this press of method is, that such points are _never_\ncasual, and usually of primal, and not secondary import; 'for if it\ndeserve to be considered that there _are_ minds which are proportioned\nto great matters, and _others_ to small, which Aristotle handleth, or\nought to have handled, by the name of _magnanimity_, doth it not\ndeserve as well to be considered, that there are minds proportioned to\nintend many matters, and _others to few_?' So that some can _divide\nthemselves_, others can perchance do exactly well, but it must be in\nfew things at once; and so there cometh to be a narrowness of mind,\n_as well as a_ PUSILLANIMITY. And again, 'that some minds are\nproportioned to that which may be despatched at once, or within a\n_short return of time_; others to that _which begins afar off_, and is\nto be won with length of pursuit.\n\n  Jam tum tenditque fovetque.\n\n'So that there may be fitly said to be a _longanimity_, which is\ncommonly also ascribed to God as a _magnanimity_.' Undoubtedly, he\nconsiders this one of those differences in the natures and\ndispositions of men, that it is most important to note, otherwise it\nwould not be inserted here. 'So farther deserved it to be considered\nby Aristotle that there is a disposition in conversation, supposing it\nin things which do in no sort touch or concern a man's self, _to\nsoothe and please_; and a disposition contrary to contradict and\ncross; and deserveth it not much better to be considered that there is\na disposition, not in conversation, or talk, but _in matter of more\nserious nature_, and supposing it still in things _merely\nindifferent_, to take pleasure in the good of another, and a\ndisposition contrariwise to take distaste at the good of another,\nwhich is that _properly_ which we call _good-nature_, or _ill-nature_,\nbenignity or malignity.' Is not this a field for science, then, with\nsuch differences as these lying on the surface of it,--does not it\nbegin to open up with a somewhat inviting aspect? This so remarkable\nproduct of nature, with such extraordinary 'differences' in him as\nthese, is he the only thing that is to go without a scientific\nhistory, all wild and unbooked, while our philosophers are weeping\nbecause 'there are no more worlds to conquer,' because every stone and\nshell and flower and bird and insect and animal has been dragged into\nthe day and had its portrait taken, and all its history to its\nsecretest points scientifically detected?\n\n'And therefore,' says this organizer of the science of nature, who\nkeeps an eye on practice, in _his_ speculations, and recommends to his\nfollowers to observe his lead in that respect, at least, until the\naffairs of the world get a little straighter than they were in his\ntime, and there is leisure for _mere_ speculation,--'And, therefore,'\nhe resumes, having noted these remarkable differences in the natural\nand original dispositions of men,--and certainly there is no more\ncurious thing in science than the points noted, though the careful\nreader will observe that they are not curious merely, but that they\nslant in one direction very much, and towards a certain kind of\npractice. 'And, therefore,' he resumes, noticing that fact, 'I _cannot\nsufficiently marvel_, that this part of knowledge, touching the\n_several characters_ of _natures_ and _dispositions_ should be omitted\n_both_ in MORALITY and POLICY, considering that it is of _so great_\nministry and suppeditation to them BOTH.' ['The _several characters_.'\nThe range of difference is limited. They are comprehensible within a\nscience, as the differences in other species are. No wonder, then,\n'that he cannot sufficiently marvel that this part of knowledge should\nbe omitted.'] But in neither of these two departments, which he here\nmarks out, as the ultimate field of the naturalist, and his arts, in\nneither of them unfortunately, lies the practice of mankind, as yet so\nwholly recovered from that 'lameness,' which this critical observer\nremarked in it in his own time, that these observations have ceased to\nhave a practical interest.\n\nAnd having thus ventured to express his surprise at this deficiency,\nhe proceeds to note what only indications he observes of any work at\nall in this field, and the very quarters he goes to for these little\naccidental hints and beginnings of such a science, show how utterly it\nwas wanting in those grandiloquent schools of philosophic theory, and\nthose magisterial chairs of direction, which the author found in\npossession of this department in his time.\n\n'A man shall find in the traditions of ASTROLOGY, some pretty and apt\n_divisions of men's natures_,'--so in the discussions which occur on\nthis same point in Lear, where this part of philosophy comes under a\nmore particular consideration, and the great ministry which it would\nyield to morality and policy is suggested in a different form, this\nsame reference to the astrological observations repeatedly occurs. The\nPoet, indeed, discards the astrological _theory _of these natural\ndifferences in the dispositions of men, but is evidently in favour of\nan observation, and inquiry of some sort, into the second causes of\nthese 'sequent effects,' and an anatomy of the living subject is in\none case suggested, by a person who is suffering much from the\ndeficiencies of science in this field, as a means of throwing light on\nit. 'Then let Regan be anatomised.' For in the _Play_,--in the poetic\nimpersonation, which has a scientific purpose for its object, the\nhistorical extremes of these natural differences are touched, and\nbrought into the most vivid dramatic oppositions; so as to force from\nthe lips of the by-standers the very inquiries and suggestions which\nare put down here; so as to wring from the broken hearts of\nmen--tortured and broken on the wheel, which 'blind men' call\nfortune,--tortured and broken on the rack of an unlearned and barbaric\nhuman society,--or, from hearts that do not break with anything that\nsuch a world can do, the imperious direction of the new science.\n\n'Then let Regan be anatomised, and _see_ what it is that breeds about\nher heart.' He has asked already, 'What is the cause of thunder?' But\n'_his_ philosopher' must not stop there. 'Is there any _cause_--is\nthere any cause _in nature_ that makes these hard hearts?'--\n\n                       It is _the stars_!\n  The stars above us govern our conditions,\n  Else one self mate and mate could not beget\n  Such different issues.\n\n'A man shall find in the traditions of astrology some pretty and apt\n_divisions of men's natures_,' ('let them be _anatomised_,' he, too,\nsays,) 'according to the _predominance_ of the _planets_;' (this is\nthe '_spherical predominance_,' which _Edmund_ does not believe\nin)--'_lovers_ of quiet, _lovers_ of action, _lovers_ of victory,\n_lovers_ of honour, _lovers_ of pleasure, _lovers_ of arts, _lovers_\nof _change_, and so forth.' And here, also, is another very singular\nquarter to go to for a science which is so radical in morality; here\nis a place, where men have empirically hit upon the fact that it has\nsome relation to policy. 'A man shall find in the wisest sorts of\nthese relations which the _Italians_ make touching conclaves, the\nnatures of the several _Cardinals_, handsomely and livelily painted\nforth';--and what he has already said in the general, of this\ndepartment, he repeats here under this division of it, that the\nconversation of men in respect to it, is in advance of their\nbooks;--'a man shall meet with, in every day's conference, the\ndenominations of sensitive, dry, formal, real, humorous, \"huomo di\nprima impressione, huomo di ultima impressione, and the like\": but\nthis is no substitute for science in a matter so radical,'--'and yet,\nnevertheless, _this observation, wandereth in words_, but is not\n_fixed in inquiry_. For the _distinctions_ are found, many of them,\nbut we conclude _no precepts_ upon them'; it is induction then that we\nwant here, after all--_here_ also--here as elsewhere: 'the\ndistinctions are found, many of them, but we _conclude no precepts_\nupon them: wherein our fault is the greater, because both HISTORY,\nPOESY, and DAILY EXPERIENCE, _are as goodly fields where these\nobservations grow_; whereof we make a few poesies to hold in our\nhands, but no man bringeth them to the confectionery that _receipts_\nmight be made of them for the use of life.'\n\nHow could he say _that_, when there was a man then alive, who was\ndoing in all respects, the very thing which he puts down here, as the\nthing which is to be done, the thing which is of such radical\nconsequence, which is the beginning of the new philosophy, which is\nthe beginning of the new _reformation_; who is making this very point\nin that science to which the others are subordinate?--how could he say\nit, when there was a man then alive, who was ransacking the daily\nlives of men, and putting all history and poesy under contribution for\nthese very observations, one, too, who was concluding precepts upon\nthem, bringing them to the confectionery, and composing receipts of\nthem for the use of life; a scholar who did not content himself with\nmerely _reporting_ a deficiency so radical as this, in the human life;\na man who did not think, apparently, that he had fulfilled _his_ duty\nto his kind, by composing a paragraph on this subject.\n\nAnd how comes it--how comes it that he who is the first to discover\nthis so fatal and radical defect in the human science, has himself\nfailed to put upon record any of these so vital observations? How\ncomes it that the one who is at last able to put his finger on the\nspot where the mischief, where all the boundless mischief, is at work\nhere,--where the cure must begin, should content himself with\nobservations and collections in physical history _only_? How comes it\nthat the man who finds that all the old philosophy has failed to\nbecome operative for the lack of this historical basis, who finds it\nso '_exceeding strange_, so _incredible_,' who 'cannot sufficiently\nmarvel,' that these observations should have been omitted in this\nscience, heretofore,--the man who is so sharp upon Aristotle and\nothers, on account of this incomprehensible oversight in their\nethics,--_is himself guilty of this very thing_? And how will this\ndefect in _his_ work, compare with that same defect which he is at so\nmuch pains to note and describe in the works of others--others who did\nnot know the value of this history? And how can he answer it to his\nkind, that with the views he has dared to put on record here, of the\nrelation, the _essential_ relation, of this knowledge to human\nadvancement and relief, _he himself has done nothing at all to\nconstitute it, except to write this paragraph_.\n\nAnd yet, by his own showing, the discoverer of this field was himself\nthe man to make collections in it; for he tells us that accidental\nobservations are not the kind that are wanted here, and that the truth\nof direction must precede the severity of observation. Is this so?\nWhose note book is it then, that has come into our hands, with the\nrules and plummet of the new science running through it, where all the\nobservation takes, spontaneously, the direction of this new doctrine\nof nature, and brings home all its collections, in all the lustre of\ntheir originality, in all their multiplicity, and variety, and\ncomprehension, in all the novelty and scientific rigour of their\nexactness, into the channels of these _defects_ of learning? And who\nwas he, who thought there were more things in heaven and earth, than\nwere dreamt of in old philosophies, who kept his tables always by him\nfor open questions? and whose tablets--whose many-leaved tablets, are\nthey then, that are tumbled out upon us here, glowing with 'all saws,\nall forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied\nthere.' And if aphorisms are made out of the pith and heart of\nsciences, if 'no man can write good aphorisms who is not sound and\ngrounded,' what Wittenberg, what University was he bred in?\n\nTill now there has been no man to claim this new and magnificent\ncollection in natural science: it is a legacy that came to us without\na donor;--this new and vast collection in natural history, which is\nput down here, all along, as _that which is wanting_--as that which is\nwanting to the science of man, to the science of his advancement to\nhis place in nature, and to the perfection of his form,--as that which\nis wanting to the science of the larger wholes, and the art of their\nconservation. There was no _man_ to claim it, for the _boast_, the\nvery boast made on behalf of the thing for whom it was claimed--was--\nhe _did not know it was worth preserving_!--he _did not know_ that\nthis mass of new and profoundly scientific observation--this so new\nand subtle observation, so artistically digested, with all the\nprecepts concluded on it, strewn, crowded everywhere with those\naphorisms, those axioms of practice, that are made out of the pith and\nheart of sciences--he did not know it was of any value! That is his\nhistory. That is the sum of it, and surely it is enough. Who, that is\nhimself at all above the condition of an oyster, will undertake to\nsay, deliberately and upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we\nhave that one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply\ndisgraceful, to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography.\nThere is enough of it and to spare. With that fact in our possession,\nwe ought to have been able to dispense long ago with some, at least,\nof those details that we have of it. The only fault to be found with\nthe biography of this individual as it stands at present is, that\nthere is too much of it, and the public mind is labouring under a\nplethora of information.\n\nIf that fact be not enough, it is our own fault and not the author's.\nHe was perfectly willing to lie by, till it was. He would not take the\ntrouble to come out for a time that had not studied his philosophy\nenough to find it, and to put the books of it together.\n\nMany years afterwards, the author of this work on the Advancement of\nLearning, saw occasion to recast it, and put it in another language.\nBut though he has had so long a time to think about it, and though he\ndoes not appear to have taken a single step in the interval, towards\nthe supplying of this radical deficiency in human science; we do not\nfind that his views of its importance are at all altered. It is still\nthe first point with him in the scientific culture of human\nnature,--the first point in that Art of Human Life, which is the end\nand term of _Natural Philosophy_, as _he_ understands the limits of\nit. We still find the first Article of the Culture of the Mind put\ndown, 'THE DIFFERENT NATURES OR DISPOSITIONS OF MEN,' _not the vulgar\npropensities_ to VIRTUES and VICES--note it--'or perturbations and\npassions, but of such as are _more internal and radical_, which are\ngenerally neglected.' 'This is a study,' he says, which 'might afford\nGREAT LIGHT TO THE SCIENCES.' And again he refers us to the existing\nsupply, such as it is, and repeats with some amplification, his\nprevious suggestions. 'In astrological traditions, the natures and\ndispositions of men, are tolerably _distinguished_ according to the\ninfluence of the planets, where _some_ are said to be by nature formed\nfor _contemplation, others_ for _war_, others for _politics_.'\nApparently it _would_ be 'great ministry to policy,' if one could get\nthe occult sources of such differences as these, so as to be able to\ncommand them at all, in the culture of men, _or_ in the fitting of men\nto their places. 'But' he proceeds, 'so likewise among the _poets_ of\nall kinds, we _everywhere find_ characters of nature, though\n_commonly_ drawn with excess and _exceeding the limits of nature_.'\n\nHere, too, the philosopher refers us again to the common discourse of\nmen, as containing wiser observations on this subject, than their\nbooks. 'But much the best matter of all,' he says, 'for such a\ntreatise, may be _derived from_ the more _prudent_ historians, and not\nso well from eulogies or panegyrics, which are usually written soon\nafter the death of _an illustrious person_, but much rather from a\nwhole body of history, as often as such a person appears, for such an\n_inwoven_ account gives a better description than _panegyrics_.... But\nwe do not mean that such characters should be received in ethics, as\nperfect civil images.' They are to be subjected to an artistic\nprocess, which will bring out the radical principles in the\ndispositions and tempers of men in general, as the material of\ninexhaustible varieties of combination. He will have these historic\nportraits merely 'for outlines and first draughts of the images\nthemselves, which, being variously compounded and mixed, afford all\nkinds of portraits, so that an _artificial and accurate dissection_\nmay be made of MEN'S MINDS AND NATURES, and the _secret disposition of\neach particular man laid open_, that from the knowledge of the\n_whole_, the PRECEPTS _concerning the_ ERRORS of THE MIND may be MORE\nRIGHTLY FORMED.' Who did that very thing? Who was it that stood on the\nspot and put that design into execution?\n\nBut this is not all; this is only the beginning of the observation and\nstudy of _differences_. For he would have also included in it, 'those\nimpressions of nature which are otherwise _imposed_ upon by the mind,\nby the SEX, AGE, COUNTRY, STATE OF HEALTH, MAKE OF BODY, as of beauty\nand deformity, and THE LIKE, which are inherent and not external:' and\nmore, he will have included in it--in these _practical Ethics_ he will\nhave included--'POINTS OF FORTUNE,' and the differences that they\nmake; he will have _all the differences_ that this creature exhibits,\nunder any conditions, put down; he will have his whole nature, so far\nas his history is able to show it, on his table; and not as it is\nexhibited accidentally, or spontaneously merely, but under the test of\na studious inquiry, and essay; he will apply to it the trials and\nvexations of Art, and wring out its last confession. This is the\npractical doctrine of this species; this is what the author we have\nhere in hand, calls the _science_ of it, or the beginning of its\nscience. This is one of the _parts of science_ which he says is\nwanting. Let us follow his running glimpse of the points here, then,\nand see whether it is extant here, too, and whether there is anything\nto justify all this preparation in bringing it in, and all this\nexceeding marvelling at the want of it.\n\n'And again _those differences_ which proceed from FORTUNE, as\nSOVEREIGNTY, NOBILITY, OBSCURE BIRTH, RICHES, WANT, MAGISTRACY,\nPRIVATENESS, PROSPERITY, ADVERSITY, constant fortune, variable\nfortune, rising _per saltum, per gradus_, and the like.' These are\narticles that he puts down for points in his _table of natural\nhistory_, points for the collection of instances; this is the tabular\npreparation for induction here; for he does not conclude his precepts\non the popular, miscellaneous, accidental history. That will do well\nenough for books. It won't do to get out axioms of practice from such\nloose material. They have to ring with the proof of another kind of\ncondensation. All _his_ history is artificial, prepared history more\n_select_ and _subtle_ and _fit_ than the other kind, he\nsays,--prepared on purpose; perhaps we shall come across his tables,\nsome day, with these very points on them, filled in with the\nobservations of one, so qualified by the truth of direction to make\nthem 'severe'. It would not be strange, for he gives us to understand\nthat he is not altogether idle in this part of his Instauration, and\nthat he does not think it enough to lay out work for others, without\ngiving an occasional specimen of his own, of the thing which he notes\nas deficient, and proposes to have done, so that there may be no\nmistake about it as to what it really is; for he appears to think\nthere is some danger of that. Even here, he produces a few\nillustrations of his meaning, that it may appear the better what is,\nand whether it be extant.\n\n'And therefore we see, that _Plautus_ maketh it a wonder to see an OLD\nman beneficent. _St. Paul_ concludeth that severity of _discipline_\nwas to be used to the _Cretans_, (\"increpa eos dure\"), upon _the\ndisposition_ of THEIR COUNTRY. \"Cretenses semper mendaces, mal\u00e6\nbestize, ventres pigri.\" _Sallust_ noteth that it is usual with KINGS\nto desire _contradictories_; \"Sed plerumque, regi\u00e6 voluntates, ut\nvehementes sunt sic mobiles saepeque ips\u00e6 sibi advers\u00e6.\" _Tacitus_\nobserveth how rarely THE RAISING OF THE FORTUNE mendeth the\ndisposition. \"Solus Vespasianus mutatus in melius.\" _Pindar_ maketh an\nobservation that great and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth\nmen. So _the Psalm_ showeth it more easy to keep a measure in the\nenjoying of fortune, than in the increase of fortune; \"Diviti\u00e6 si\naffluant nolite cor apponere.\"' '_These observations, and the\nlike_,'--what book is it that has so many of '_the like_'?--'I deny\nnot but are touched a little by Aristotle _as in passage_ in his\n_Rhetorics_, and are handled in some scattered discourses.' One would\nthink it was another philosopher, with pretensions not at all\ninferior, but professedly very much, and altogether superior to those\nof Aristotle, whose short-comings were under criticism here; 'but they\n(_these observations_) were never INCORPORATED _into moral\nphilosophy_, to which they do ESSENTIALLY appertain, as THE KNOWLEDGE\nof THE DIVERSITY of GROUND and MOULDS doth to _agriculture_, and the\nknowledge of the DIVERSITY of COMPLEXIONS and CONSTITUTIONS doth to\nthe _physician_; except'--note it--'except we mean to follow the\nindiscretion of empirics, which minister _the same medicines to all\npatients_.'\n\nTruly this does appear to give us some vistas of a _science_, and a\n'pretty one,' for these particulars and illustrations are here, that\nwe may see the better what it is, and whether it be extant. That is\nthe question. And it happens singularly enough, to be a question just\nas pertinent now, as it was when the philosopher put it on his paper,\ntwo hundred and fifty years ago.\n\n_There_ is the first point, then, in the table of this scientific\nhistory, with its subdivisions and articulations; and here is the\nsecond, not less essential. 'Another article of this knowledge is the\ninquiry touching THE AFFECTIONS; for, as in medicining the body,'--and\nit is a practical science we are on here; it is the cure of the mind,\nand not a word for show,--'as in medicining the body, it is in order,\n_first_, to know the divers complexions and constitutions; secondly,\nthe _diseases_; and, lastly, the _cures_; so in medicining of the\nmind,--after knowledge of the _divers characters_ of _men's natures_,\nit followeth, in order, to know the diseases and infirmities of the\nmind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of the\naffections.' And we shall find, under the head of the medicining of\nthe body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which\ncould be better said _there_ than _here_, because the wrath of\nprofessional dignitaries,--the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps\nquite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others. For\nthough 'the Doctors' in that department, did manage, in the dark ages,\nto possess themselves of certain weapons of their own, which are said\nto have proved, on the whole, sufficiently formidable, they were not,\nas it happened, armed by the State as the others then were; and it was\nusually discretionary with the patient to avail himself, or not, of\ntheir drugs, and receipts, and surgeries; whereas, in the diseased and\nsuffering soul, no such discretion was tolerated. The drugs were\nindeed compounded by the State in person, and the executive stood by,\naxe in hand, to see that they were taken, accompanying them with such\nother remedies as the case might seem to require; the most serious\noperations being constantly performed without ever taking 'the sense'\nof the patient.\n\nSo we must not be surprised to find that this author who writes under\nsuch liabilities ventures to bring out the pith of his trunk of\nsciences,--that which sciences have in common,--the doctrine of the\nnature of things,--what he calls '_prima philosophia_,' when his\nlearned sock is on--a little more strongly and fully in that branch of\nit, with a glance this way, with a distinct intimation that it is\ncommon to the two, and applies here as well. There, too, he complains\nof the ignorance of anatomy, which is just the complaint he has been\nmaking here, and that, for want of it, 'they quarrel many times with\nthe humours which are not in fault, the fault being in the very frame\nand mechanic of the part, which cannot be removed by medicine\n_alterative_, but must be _accommodated_ and palliated by diet and\nmedicines _familiar_.' There, too, he reports the lack of medicinal\nhistory, and gives directions for supplying it, just such directions\nas he gives here, but that which makes the astounding difference in\nthe reading of these reports to-day, is, that the one has been\naccepted, and the other has not; nay, that the one has been _read_,\nand the other has not: for how else can we account for the fact, that\nmen of learning, in our time, come out and tell us deliberately, not\nmerely that this man's place in history, is the place of one who\ndevoted his genius to the promotion of the personal convenience and\nbodily welfare of men, but, that it is the place of one who gave up\nthe nobler nature, deliberately, on principle, and after examination\nand reflection, as a thing past help from science, as a thing lying\nout of the range of philosophy? How else comes it, that the critic\nto-day tells us, dares to tell us, that this leader's word to the new\nages of advancement is, that there is no scientific advancement to be\nlooked for _here_?--how else could he tell us, with such vivid detail\nof illustration, that this innovator and proposer of advancement,\nnever intended his Novum Organum to be applied to the _cure_ of the\nmoral diseases, to the subduing of the WILL and the AFFECTIONS,--but\nthought, because the old philosophy had failed, there was no use in\ntrying the new;--because the philosophy of words, and preconceptions,\nhad failed, the philosophy of observation and application, the\nphilosophy of ideas as they are in nature, and not as they are in the\nmind of man merely, the philosophy of _laws_, must fail also;--because\nARGUMENT had failed, ART was hopeless;--because syllogisms, based on\npopular, unscientific notions were of no effect, _practical axioms_\nbased on the scientific knowledge of natural causes, and on their\nspecific developments, were going to be of none effect also? If the\npassages which are now under consideration, had been so much as\n_read_, how could a learned man, in our time, tell us that the author\nof the 'Advancement of Learning' had come with any such despairful\nword as that to us,--to tell us that the new science he was\nintroducing upon this Globe theatre, the science of _laws_ in nature,\noffered to _Divinity_ and Morality no aid,--no ministry, no service in\nthe _cure of the mind_? And the reason why they have not been read,\nthe reason why this part of the 'Advancement of Learning,' which is\nthe principal part of it in the intention of its author, _has_ been\noverlooked hitherto is, that the Art of Tradition, which is described,\nhere--the art of the Tradition, and delivery of knowledges which are\nforeign from opinions received, was in the hand of its inventor, and\nable to fulfil his pleasure.\n\nAfter the knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures then,\nthe next article of this inquiry is the DISEASES and INFIRMITIES of\nthe MIND, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of\nTHE AFFECTIONS. For as the ancient politicians in popular estates were\nwont to compare the people to the sea, and the _orators_ to the winds,\nbecause the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds did\nnot move and trouble it; _so_ the _people would be peaceable_ and\n_tractable_, if the _seditious orators did not set them in working and\nagitation_; so it may be fitly said, that the mind, in the nature\nthereof, would be _temperate_ and _stayed_, if _the affections_, as\nwinds, did not put it into tumult and perturbation. And _here, again_,\nI find, _strange as before_, that _Aristotle_ should have written\ndivers volumes of _Ethics_, and never handled THE AFFECTIONS, which is\nthe _principal subject thereof_; and yet, in his _Rhetorics_, where\nthey are considered but _collaterally_, and in a second degree, as\nthey may be moved by speech, he findeth place for them, and handleth\nthem well _for the quantity_, but where their _true place_ is, he\n_permitteth_ them. (Very much the method of procedure adopted by the\nphilosopher who composes that criticism; who also finds a place for\nthe affections in passing, where they are considered collaterally, and\nin a second degree, and for the quantity, he handleth them well, and\nwho knows how to bring his Rhetorics to bear on them, as well as the\npoliticians in popular estates did of old, though for a different end;\nbut where their true place is, he, too, _permitteth_ them; and, in his\nNovum Organum, he keeps so clear of them, and _permits_ them so fully,\nthat the critics tell us he never meant it should touch them.) 'For it\nis not his disputations about pleasure and pain that can satisfy this\ninquiry, no more than he that should _generally_ handle the nature of\nlight can be said to handle the nature of _colours_; for pleasure and\npain are to the particular affections as light is to the particular\ncolours.' Is not this a man for particulars, then? And when he comes\nto the practical doctrine,--to _the art_--to the knowledge, which is\n_power_,--will he not have particulars here, as well as in those other\narts which are based on them? Will he not have particulars here, as\nwell as in chemistry and natural philosophy, and botany and\nmineralogy; or, when it comes to practice here, will he be content,\nafter all, with the old line of argument, and elegant disquisition,\nwith the old generalities and subtleties of definition, which required\nno collection of particulars, which were independent of observation,\nor for which the popular accidental observation sufficed? 'Better\ntravels, I suppose, had the Stoics taken in this argument, as far as I\ncan gather by that which we have at secondhand. _But yet_ it is like\nit was after their manner, rather in subtlety of definitions, which,\nin a subject of this nature, are _but curiosities_, than _in_ ACTIVE\n_and_ AMPLE DESCRIPTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS. So, likewise, I find some\nparticular writings of _an elegant nature_, touching some of the\naffections; as of anger, of comfort upon adverse accidents, of\ntenderness of countenance, and others.' And such writings were not\nconfined to the ancients. Some of us have seen elegant writings of\nthis nature, published under the name of the philosopher who composes\nthis criticism, and suggests the possibility of essays of a more\nlively and _experimental_ kind, and who seems to think that the\ntreatment should be _ample_, as well as _active_.\n\n'_But_ the POETS and WRITERS of HISTORY are the best _Doctors_ of\n_this knowledge_, where we may find, painted forth with great _life_,\n_how affections are kindled and incited_, and _how pacified_ and\n_refrained_;'--certainly, that is the kind of learning we want\nhere:--'and how, again, contained from _act_ and _further\ndegree_'--very useful knowledge, one would say, and it is a pity it\nshould not be 'diffused,' but it is not every poet who can be said to\nhave it;--'_how_ they disclose themselves--_how_ they work--how they\nvary;'--this is the science of them clearly, _whoever_ has it;--'how\nthey gather and fortify--how they are _enwrapped one within\nanother_;'--yes, there is one Poet, one Doctor of this science, in\nwhom we can find _that_ also;--'and how they do fight and encounter\none with another, and other like _particularities_.' We all know what\nPoet it is, to whose lively and ample descriptions of the affections\nand passions--to whose _particularities_--that description best\napplies, and in what age of the world he lived; but no one, who has\nnot first studied them as scientific exhibitions, can begin to\nperceive the force--the exclusive force--of the reference. 'Amongst\nthe which, this last is of special _use_ in MORAL and CIVIL matters:\n_how_, I say, to _set affection against affection_, and to master one\nby another, even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird\nwith bird, which otherwise, percase, we could not so easily recover.'\nThe Poet has not only exhibited this with very voluminous and lively\ndetails, but he, too, has concluded his precept;--\n\n  'One fire burns out another's burning'--\n  'One desperate grief cures with another's languish'--\n  'Take thou some new infection to thine eye,\n  And the rank poison of the old will die.'\n                     _Romeo and Juliet_.\n\n  'As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity;\n  And pity to the _general wrong of Rome_\n  Hath, done this deed _on C\u00e6sar.'\n                                _Julius C\u00e6sar_.\n\nfor it is the _larger_ form, which is the worthier, in that new\ndepartment of mixed mathematics which this philosopher was\ncultivating.\n\n  'One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail:\n  Rights by rights fouler, strength by strengths do fail.'\n                                        _Coriolanus_.\n\nAnd for history of _cases_, see the same author in Hamlet and other\nplays. [This philosopher's prose not unfrequently contains the key of\nthe poetic paraphrase; and the true reading of the line, which has\noccasioned so much perplexity to the critics, may, perhaps, be\nsuggested by this connection--'to set affection against affection, and\nto master one by another, even as we hunt beast with beast, and fly\nbird with bird.']\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.--ALTERATION.\n\n\n          Hast thou not learn'd me how\n  To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so,\n  That our great king himself doth woo me oft\n  For my confections? Having thus far proceeded,\n  (Unless thou think'st me devilish,) is't not meet\n  That I did amplify my judgment in\n  Other conclusions?             _Cymbeline_.\n\nThus far, it is the science of Man, _as he is_, that is propounded. It\nis a scientific history of the Mind and its diseases, built up from\nparticulars, as other scientific histories are; and having disposed,\nin this general manner, of that which must be dealt with by way of\n_application_, those points of nature and fortune, which he puts down\nas the basis and conditions to _which all our_ WORK _is limited and\ntied_, we come now to that which IS within our power--to those points\nwhich we can deal with by way of ALTERATION, and not of _application_\nmerely; and yet points which are operating perpetually on the human\ncharacter, changing the will and appetite, and altering the conduct,\nby laws not less sure than those which operate in the occult processes\nof nature, and determine differences behind the scene, or out of the\nrange of our volition.\n\nAnd if after having duly weighed the hints we have already received of\nthe importance of the subject, we do not any longer suffer ourselves\nto be put off the track, or bewildered by the first rhetorical effect\nof the sentence in which these agencies are introduced to our\nattention,--if we look at that rapid series of words, as something\nelse than the points of a period, if we stop long enough to recover\nfrom the confusion which a mere string of names, a catalogue or table\nof contents, crowded into single sentence, will, of necessity,\ncreate,--if we stop long enough to see that each one of these words is\na point in the table of a new science, we shall perceive at once, that\nafter having made all this large allowance, this _new_ allowance for\nthat which is _without_ our power, there is still a very, very large\nmargin of operation, and discovery, and experiment left; that there is\nstill a large scope of _alteration_ left--alteration in man as he is.\nFor we shall find that these forces which _are_ within our power, are\nthe very ones which are making, and always have been making, man what\nhe is. Running our eye along this table of forces and supplies, with\nthat understanding of its uses, we shall perceive at once, that we\nhave the most ample material here, if it were but scientifically\nhandled; untried, inexhaustible means and appliances for raising man\nto the height of his pattern and original, to the stature of a perfect\nman.\n\nIt is not the material of this regimen of growth and advancement, it\nis not the Materia Medica that is wanting,--it is the science of it.\nIt is the natural history of these forces, with the precepts\nscientifically concluded on them, that is wanting. The appliances are\nhere; the scientific application of them remains to be made, and until\nthese have been tried, it is too early to pronounce on the case; until\nthese have been tried, just as other precepts of the new science have\nbeen, it is too soon to say that that science of nature,--that\nknowledge of laws--that foreknowledge of effects, which operates so\nremedially in all other departments of the human life, is without\napplication, is of no efficiency here; until these have been tried it\nis too soon to say that the science of nature is _not_ what the man\nwho brought it in on this Globe theatre _declared it_ to _be_, the\nhandmaid of Divinity, the intelligent handmaid and minister of\nreligion, to whose discretion in the economy of Providence, much, much\nhas evidently been left.\n\nAnd it was no assumption in this man to claim, as he did claim, a\ndivine and providential authority for this procedure. And those who\nintelligently fulfil their parts in this great enterprise for man's\nrelief, and the Creator's glory, have just as clear a right to say, as\nthose of old who fulfilled with such means and lights, and\ninspirations as their time gave them, their part in the plan of the\nhuman advancement, 'it is God who worketh in us.'\n\n'Now come we to those points which _are_ within our command, and have\n_force_ and _operation_ upon the mind, to _affect the will and\nappetite_, and to alter manners: wherein they ought to have handled\nCUSTOM, EXERCISE, HABIT, EDUCATION, EXAMPLE, IMITATION, EMULATION,\nCOMPANY, FRIENDS, PRAISE, REPROOF, EXHORTATION, FAME, LAWS, BOOKS,\nSTUDIES: these, as they have determinate use in moralities, from these\n_the mind_ SUFFERETH; and of these are such receipts and regiments\ncompounded and described, as may serve to recover or preserve the\nhealth and good estate of the mind, as far as pertaineth to human\nmedicine; of which number we will insist upon some one or two, _as an\nexample of the rest_, because it _were too long_ to prosecute _all_.'\nBut the careful reader perceives in that which follows, that the\ntreatment of this so vital subject, though all that the author has to\nsay upon it _here_, is condensed into these brief paragraphs, is not\nby any means so miscellaneous, as this introduction and 'the _first_\ncogitation' on it, might, perhaps, have prepared him to find it.\n\nTo be permitted to handle these forces openly, in the form of literary\nreport, and recommendation, would, no doubt, have seemed to this\ninventor of sciences, in his day no small privilege. But there was\nanother kind of experiment in them which he aspired to. He wished to\ntake these forces in hand more directly, and compound recipes, with\nthem, and other 'regiments' and cures. For by nature and carefullest\nstudy he was a Doctor in this degree and kind--and a man thus fitted,\ninevitably seeks his sphere. Very unlearned in this science of human\nnature which he has left us,--much wanting in analysis must he be, who\ncan find in the persistent determination of such a man to possess\nhimself of places of trust and authority, only the vulgar desire for\ncourtly distinction, and eagerness for the paraphernalia of office.\nThis man was not wanting in any of the common natural sentiments; the\nprivate and particular nature was large in him, and that good to which\nhe gives the preference in his comparison of those exclusive aims and\nenjoyments, is 'the good which is _active_, and not that which is\n_passive_'; both as it tends to secure that individual perpetuity\nwhich is the especial craving of men thus specially endowed, and on\naccount of 'that affection for variety and _proceeding_' which is also\ncommon to men, and specially developed in such men,--an affection\nwhich the goods of the passive nature are not able to satisfy. 'But in\n_enterprises_, pursuits and purposes of life, there is much variety\nwhereof men are sensible with pleasure in their inceptions,\nprogressions, recoils, re-integration, approaches and attainings to\ntheir ends.' And he gives us a long insight into his own particular\nnature and history in that sentence. He is careful to distinguish this\nkind of good from the good of society, 'though in some cases it hath\nan incident to it. For that gigantine state of mind which possesseth\nthe _troublers_ of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and _infinite\nother in smaller model_, who would have all men happy or unhappy, as\nthey were their friends or enemies, _and would give form to the world\naccording to their own humours_, which is the true _theomachy_,\npretendeth and aspireth to _active good_ though it _recedeth farthest_\nfrom that _good of society_, which we have determined to be _the\ngreater_.'\n\nIn no troubler or benefactor of the world, on the largest scale, in no\ntheomachist of any age, whether intelligent and benevolent, or\ndemoniacal and evil, had this nature which he here defines so clearly,\never been more largely incorporated, or more effectively armed. But in\nhim this tendency to personal aggrandisement was overlooked, and\nsubordinated by the larger nature,--by the intelligence which includes\nthe whole, and is able to weigh the part with it, and by the\nsentiments which enforce or anticipate intelligent decision.\n\nBoth these facts must be taken into the account, if we would read his\nhistory fairly. For he composed for himself a plan of living, in which\nthis naturally intense desire for an individual perpetuity and renown,\nand this love of action and enterprise for its own sake, was sternly\nsubordinated to the noblest ends of living, to the largest good of his\nkind, to the divine and eternal law of duty, to the relief of man's\nestate and the Creator's glory. And without making any claim on his\nbehalf, which it would be unworthy to make for one to whom the truth\nwas dearer than the opinions of men; it may be asserted, that whatever\nerrors of judgment or passion, we may find, or think we find in him,\nthese ends were with him predominant, and shaped his course.\n\nHe was not naturally a man of _letters_, but a man of action,\nintensely impelled to action, and it was because he was forbidden to\nfulfil his enterprise in person, because he had to write letters of\ndirection to those to whom he was compelled to entrust it, because he\nhad to write letters to the future, and leave himself and his will in\nletters, that letters became, in his hands, _practical_. He, too, knew\nwhat it was to be compelled 'to unpack his heart in words' when deeds\nshould have expressed it.\n\nBut even words are forbidden him here. After all the pains he has\ntaken to show us what the deficiency is which he is reporting here,\nand what the art and science which he is proposing, he can only put\ndown a few paragraphs on the subject, casually, as it were, in\npassing. Of all these forces which have operation on the mind, and\nwith which scientific appliances for the human mind should be\ncompounded, he can only 'insist upon some one or two as an example of\nthe rest.'\n\nThat was all that a writer, who was at the same time a public man,\ncould venture on,--a writer who had once been under violent political\nsuspicion, and was still eagerly watched, and especially by one class\nof public functionaries, who seemed to feel, that with all his\ndeference to their claims, there was something there not quite\nfriendly to them, this was all that he could undertake to insist upon\n'in that place.' But a writer who had the advantage of being already\ndefunct--a writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and\nwho was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his place,\ncould of course manage this part of the subject differently. _He_\nwould not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps. And if he had at\nthe same time the advantage of a foreign name and seignorie, he could\ncome out in England at this very crisis with the freest exhibitions of\nthe points which are _here_ only _indicated_. He could even put them\ndown openly in his table of contents, every one of them, and make them\nthe titles of his chapters.\n\nThere was a work published in England, in that age, in which these\nforces, of which only the _catalogue_ is inserted here, these forces\nwhich _are_ in our power, which we _can_ alter, forces from which the\nmind _suffereth_, which have operation upon the mind to affect the\nwill and appetite, are directly dealt with in the most subtle and\nartistic manner, in the form of literary _essay_; and in the bolder\nchapters, the author's observations and criticisms are clearly put\ndown; his scientific suggestions of alterations and new compounds, his\nscientific doctrine of _careful alterations_, his scientific doctrine\nof surgery, and adaptation of regimen, and cure to different ages, and\ndiffering social conditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the\nEnglish public swallows it without any difficulty at all, and\nperceives nothing disagreeable or dangerous in it.\n\n_This_ work contains, also, some of those other parts of the new\nscience which have just been reported as wanting, parts which are said\nby the inventor of this science, to have a great ministry to policy,\nas well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it\nis here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever\nto considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at\nthe subject from any less earnest and practical--from any less\n_elevated_ point of view.\n\nOf course, it was perfectly competent for a Gascon whose gasconading\nwas understood to be without any motive beyond that of vanity and\negotism, and without any incidence to effects, to say, in the way of\nmere foolery, many things which an English statesman could not then so\nwell endorse. And in case his personality were called in question,\nthere was the mountain to retreat to, and the saint of the mount, in\nwhose behalf the goose is annually sacrificed by the English people,\nthe saint under whose shield and name the great English philosopher\nsleeps. In fact, this personage is not so limited in his quarters as\nthe proper name might seem to imply. One does not have to go to the\nsouth of France to find him. But it is certainly remarkable, that a\nwork in Natural History, composed by the inventors of the science of\nobservation, and the first in the field, containing their observations\nin that part of the field too, in which the deficiency appeared to\nthem most important, should have been able to pass so long under so\nthin a disguise, under this merest gauze of _egotism_, unchallenged.\n\nThese _essaies_, however, have not been without result. They have been\noperating incessantly, ever since, directly upon the leading minds,\nand indirectly upon the minds of men in general, (for many who had\nnever read the book, have all their lives felt its influence), and\ntending gradually to the clearing up of the human intelligence in 'the\npractice part of life' in general, and to the development of a common\nsense on the topics here handled, much more creditable to the species\nthan anything that the author could find stirring in his age. When the\nworks which the propounders of the Great Instauration took pains to\nget composed by way of filling up their plan of it, a little, corn to\nbe collected and bound, this one will have to find its place among\nthem.\n\nBut here, at home, in his own historical name and figure, in his own\nperson, instead of conducting his magnificent scientific experiments\non that scale which the genius of his activity, and the largeness of\nhis good will, would have prescribed to him, instead of founding his\nHouse of Solomon as he would have founded it, (as that proximity to\nthe throne, when it was the throne of an absolute monarch might have\nenabled him to found it, if the monarch he found there had been,\nindeed, what he claimed to be, a lover of learning), instead of such\nlarge help and countenance as that of the king, to whom this great\nproposition was addressed, the philosopher of that time could not even\nventure on a literary essay in this field under that protection; it\nwas as much as he could do, it was as much as his favor with the king\nwas worth, to slip in here, in this conspicuous place, where it would\nbe sure to be found, sooner or later, the index of his _essaies_.\n\n'It would be too _long_,' he says, 'to inquire here into the operation\nof all these social forces that are making men, that are doing more to\nmake them what they are, than nature herself is doing,' for, 'know\nthou,' the Poet of this Philosophy says, 'know thou MEN ARE as the\nTIME IS.' He has included here, in these points which he would have\nscientifically handled, that which makes _times_, that which _can be\naltered_, that which Advancements of Learning, however, set on foot at\nfirst, are sure in the end to _alter_. 'We will insist upon some one\nor two as an example of the rest.' And we find that the points he\nresumes to speak of here, are, indeed, points of primary consequence;\nsocial forces that do indeed need a scientific control, effects\nreported, and precepts concluded. Custom and Habit, Books and Studies,\nand then a kind of culture, which he says, 'seemeth to be more\naccurate and elaborate than the rest,' which we find, upon\nexamination, to be a strictly religious culture, and lastly the method\nto which he gives the preference, as the most compendious and summary\nin its formative or reforming influence, 'the _electing_ and\npropounding unto a man's self _good and virtuous ends of his life_,\nsuch as may be in a _reasonable sort within his compass to attain_.'\nHe says enough under these heads to show the difficulty of writing on\na subject where the science has been reported wanting, while the 'Art\nand Practice' is prescribed.\n\nHe lays much stress on CUSTOM and HABIT, and gives some few precepts\nfor its management, 'made out of the pith and heart of sciences,' but\nhe speaks briefly, and chiefly for the purpose of indicating the value\nhe attaches to this point, for he concludes his precepts and\nobservations on it, thus: 'Many other axioms there are, touching the\nmanaging of exercise and custom, which being _so conducted_,--\nscientifically conducted--do prove, _indeed_ ANOTHER NATURE' ['almost,\ncan _change_ the stamp of nature,'--is Hamlet's word on _this_\npoint]; 'but being governed by _chance_, doth commonly prove but AN\nAPE of nature, and bringeth forth that which is _lame and\ncounterfeit_.' For not less than that is the difference between the\nscientific administration of these things, from which the mind\n_suffereth_, and the blind, hap-hazard one.\n\nBut in proceeding to the next point on which he ventures to offer some\nsuggestions, that of BOOKS and STUDIES, we shall do well to take with\nus that general doctrine of _cure_, founded upon the nature of things,\nwhich he produces under the head of the cure of the body, with a\ndistinct allusion to its proper application here. And it is well to\nobserve how exactly the tone of the criticism in _this department_,\nchimes in with that of the criticism already reported here. 'In the\nconsideration of the _cures of diseases_, I find a deficiency in the\nreceipts of _propriety_ respecting the _particular_ cures of diseases;\nfor the physicians _have frustrated the fruit of tradition, and\nexperience_, by their _magistralities_ in _adding and taking out_, and\nchanging _quid pro quo_ in their receipts _at their pleasure_,\nCOMMANDING SO OVER THE MEDICINE, as the medicine _cannot command over\nthe disease_:' that is a piece of criticism which appears to belong to\nthe general subject of cure; and here is one which he himself stops to\napply to a different branch of it.\n\n'But, lest I grow more particular than _is agreeable_, either to my\nintention or _proportion_, I will conclude this part with the note of\none deficiency more, which seemeth to me of GREATEST consequence,\nwhich is, that the _prescripts_ in use are too COMPENDIOUS TO ATTAIN\nTHEIR END; for, to my understanding, it is a vain and flattering\nopinion to think any _medicine_ can be so sovereign, or so happy, as\nthat the receipt or use of it can work any great effect upon the body\nof man: it were a strange _speech_, which spoken, or spoken oft,\nshould reclaim a man from a vice to which he were _by nature subject_;\nit is _order, pursuit, sequence, and interchange of application_ WHICH\nIS MIGHTY IN NATURE,' (and it is _power_ we are inquiring for here)\n'which, although it requires more exact _knowledge_ in prescribing,\nand more precise _obedience_ in observing, yet it is recompensed with\nthe magnitude of effects.'\n\nPossessed now of his general theory of cure, we shall better\nunderstand his particular suggestions in regard to these medicines and\nalteratives of the mind and manners, which are here under\nconsideration.\n\n'So if we should handle BOOKS and STUDIES,' he continues, having\nhandled custom and habit a little and their powers, in that profoundly\nsuggestive manner, 'so if we should handle books and studies, and what\ninfluence and operation _they_ have upon manners, are there not divers\nprecepts of _great caution_ and _direction_?' A question to be asked.\nAnd he goes on to make some further enquiries and suggestions which\nhave considerably more in them than meets the ear. They appear to\ninvolve the intimation that many of our books on moral philosophy,\ncome to us from the youthful and poetic ages of the world, ages in\nwhich sentiment and spontaneous conviction supplied the place of\nlearning; for the accumulations of ages of experiment and conclusion,\ntend to maturity and sobriety of judgment in the race, as do the\ncorresponding accumulations in the individual experience and memory.\n'And the reason why books' (which are adapted to the popular belief in\nthese early and unlearned ages) 'are of so little effect towards\n_honesty of life_, is that they are not read and\n_revolved_--revolved--as they should be, by _men in mature years_.'\nBut unlearned people are always beginners. And it is dangerous to put\nthem upon the task, or to leave them to the task of remodelling their\nbeliefs and adapting them to the advancing stages of human\ndevelopment. He, too, thinks it is easier to overthrow the old\nopinions, than it is to discriminate that which is to be conserved in\nthem. The hints here are of the most profoundly cautious kind--as they\nhave need to be--but they point to the danger which attends the\nadvancement of learning when rashly and unwisely conducted, and the\ndanger of introducing opinions which are in advance of the popular\nculture; dangers of which the history of former times furnished\neminent examples and warnings then; warnings which have since been\nrepeated in modern instances. He proposes that books shall be tried by\ntheir effects on manners. If they fail to produce HONESTY OF LIFE, and\nif certain particular forms of truth which were once effective to that\nend, in the course of a popular advancement, or change of any kind,\nhave lost that virtue, let them be examined; let the translation of\nthem be scientifically accomplished, so that the main truth be not\nlost in the process, so that men be not compelled by fearful\nexperience to retrace their steps in search of it, even, perhaps, to\nthe resuming of the old, dead form again, with all its cumbrous\ninefficacies; for the lack of a leadership which should have been able\nto discriminate for them, and forestall this empirical procedure.\n\nSpeaking of books of Moral science in general, and their adaptation to\ndifferent ages, he says--'Did not one of the _fathers_, in great\nindignation, call POESY \"_vinum demonum_,\" because it increaseth\n_temptations_, _perturbations_, and _vain opinions_? Is not the\nopinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, wherein he saith, \"That\n_young men_ are no fit _auditors_ of moral philosophy,\" because they\nare not settled from the boiling heat of their _affections_, nor\nattempered with _time_ and _experience_?' [And our Poet, we may remark\nin passing, seems to have been struck with that same observation; for\nby a happy coincidence, he appears to have it in his commonplace book\ntoo, and he has not only made a note of it, as this one has, but has\ntaken the trouble to translate it into verse. He does, indeed, go a\nlittle out of his way _in time_, to introduce it; but he is a poet who\nis fond of an anachronism, when it happens to serve his purpose--\n\n  'Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;\n  And on the cause and question now in hand\n  Have _glozed_; but, superficially, not much\n  Unlike _young men_ whom _Aristotle_ thought\n  Unfit to hear _moral philosophy_.']\n\nThe question is, then, as to the adaptations of forms, of moral\ninstruction to different _ages_ of the human development. For when a\ndecided want of 'honesty of life' shows itself, in any very general\nmanner, under the fullest operation of _any_ given doctrine which is\nthe received one, it is time for men of learning to begin to look\nabout them a little; and it is a time when directions so cautious as\nthese should not by any means be despised by those on whom the\nresponsibility of direction, here, is in any way devolved.\n\n'And doth it not hereof come, that those excellent books and\ndiscourses of the ancient writers, _whereby_ they have _persuaded unto\nvirtue most effectually_, by representing her in _state_ and\n_majesty_, and popular opinions against virtue in their _parasites'\ncoats_, fit to be scorned and derided, are of so little effect towards\nhonesty of life--\n\n  [_Polonius.--Honest_, my lord?\n   _Hamlet_.--Ay, honest.]\n\n'--because they are not read and _revolved_ by men, in their mature\nand settled years, but confined almost _to boys and beginners_? But is\nit not true, also, that _much less_ young men are fit auditors of\n_matters of policy_ till they have been _thoroughly seasoned_ in\n_religion and morality_, lest their judgments be corrupted, and made\napt to think that there are no true differences of things, but\naccording to utility and fortune.'\n\nBy putting in here two or three of those 'elegant sentences' which the\nauthor has taken out from their connections in his discourses, and\nstrung together, by way of making more perceptible points and stronger\nimpressions with them, according to that theory of his in regard to\naphorisms already quoted, we shall better understand this passage, for\nthe connection in which it is introduced here tends somewhat to\ninvolve and obscure the meaning. 'In removing superstitions,' he tells\nus, then, in this so pointed manner, 'care should be had _the good_ be\nnot taken away with the bad, which commonly is done _when the people\nis the physician_.' '_Things will have_ their _first_ or _second_\nagitation.' [Prima Philosophia--pith and heart of sciences: the author\nof this aphorism is sound and grounded.] 'If they be not tossed on the\nwaves of _counsel_, they will be _tossed on the waves of fortune_.'\nThat last 'tossing' requires a second cogitation. There might have\nbeen a more direct way of expressing it; but this author prefers\nsimiles in such cases, he tells us. But here is more on the same\nsubject. 'It were good that men in their RENOVATIONS follow the\nexample of time itself, which, indeed, innovateth greatly, but\nquietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived;' and 'Discretion in\nspeech is more than eloquence.' These are the sentiments and opinions\nof that man of science, whose works we are now opening, not caring\nunder what particular name or form we may find them. One or two of\nthese observations do not sound at all like prescience _now_; but at\nthe time when they were given out as precepts of direction, it\nrequired that acquaintance with the nature of things in general which\nis derived from a large and studious observation of particulars, to\nput them into a form so oracular.\n\nBut this general suggestion with regard to our books of moral\nphilosophy, and their adaptation to the largest effect on the will and\nappetite under the given conditions of time--conditions which involve\nthe instruction of masses of men, in whom _affection_ predominates--\nmen in whom judgment is not yet matured--men not attempered with the\ntime and experience of ages, by means of those preservations of it\nwhich the traditions of learning make; beside this general suggestion\nin regard to these so potent instrumentalities in manners, he has\nanother to make, one in which this general proposition to substitute\nlearning for preconception in _practical matters_,--at least, as far\nas may be, comes out again in the form of criticism, and of a most\nspecially significant kind. It is a point which he touches lightly\nhere; but one which he touches again and again in other parts of\nthis work, and one which he resumes at large in his practical ethics.\n\n'Again, is there not a caution likewise to be given of the doctrines\nof moralities themselves, some kinds of them, lest they make men too\n_precise, arrogant, incompatible_, as Cicero saith of Cato, in _Marco\nCatone_: \"Haec bona quae videmus divina et egregia ipsius scitote esse\npropria: quae nonnunquam requirimus, ea sunt omnia non a natura, sed a\nmagistro?\"'\n\nAnd after glancing at the specific subject of remedial agencies which\n_are_ within the scope of our revision and renovation, under some\nother heads, concluding with that which is of all others the most\ncompendious and summary, and again the most noble and effectual to the\nreducing of the mind unto virtue and good estate, he concludes this\nwhole part, this part in which the points and outlines of the new\nscience--that radical human science which he has dared to report\ndeficient, come out with such masterly grasp and precision,--he\nconcludes this _whole part_ in the words which follow,--words which it\nwill take the author's own doctrine of interpretation to open. For\nthis is one of those passages which he commends to the second\ncogitation of the reader, and he knew if 'the times that were nearer'\nwere not able to read it, 'the times that were farther off' would find\nit clear enough.\n\n'Therefore I do conclude this part of Moral _Knowledge_ concerning the\nculture and regiment of the Mind; wherein if any man, _considering the\nfacts thereof which I have enumerated_, do judge that _my labour is_\nto COLLECT INTO AN ART OR SCIENCE, that which hath been _pretermitted\nby others_, as matters of common sense and experience, he judgeth\nwell.' The practised eye will detect on the surface here, some marks\nof that style which this author recommends in such cases: especially\nwhere such strong pre-occupations exist; already we perceive that this\nis one of those sentences which is addressed to the skill of the\ninterpreter; in which, by means of a careful selection and collocation\nof words, two or more meanings are conveyed under one form of\nexpression. And it may not be amiss to remember here, that this is a\nstyle, according to the author's own description of it elsewhere, in\nwhich the more involved and enigmatical passages sometimes admit of\n_several_ readings, each having its own pertinence and value,\naccording to the mental condition of the reader; and that it is a\nstyle in which even the _delicate, collateral sounds_, that are\ndistinctly included in this art of tradition, must come in sometimes\nin the more critical places, in aid of the interpretation. 'But what\nif it be an harangue whereon his life depends?'\n\nl.--If any man considering the parts thereof, which I have enumerated,\ndo judge that MY LABOUR IS to _collect into an_ ART or SCIENCE that\nwhich hath been PRETER-MITTED by others, _he_ judgeth well.\n\n2.--If any man do judge that my labour is to collect into an ART or\nSCIENCE that which hath been pretermitted by others AS MATTERS OF\nCOMMON SENSE and EXPERIENCE, _he_ judgeth well.\n\n3.--If any man _considering_ the PARTS THEREOF WHICH I HAVE\nENUMERATED, do judge that my labor is to collect into an ART or\nSCIENCE, that which hath been pretermitted _by_ OTHERS, as matters of\ncommon sense and experience, _he_ judgeth well.\n\nBut if there be any doubt, about the more critical of these meanings,\nlet us read on, and we shall find the criticism of this great and\ngreatest proposition, the proposition to substitute learning for\npreconception, in the main department of human practice, brought out\nwith all the emphasis and significance which becomes the close of so\ngreat a period in sciences, and not without a little flowering of that\nrhetoric, in which beauty is the incident, and discretion is more than\neloquence.\n\n'But as Philocrates sported with Demosthenes you may not marvel,\nAthenians, that _Demosthenes_ and I do differ, for _he_ drinketh\nwater, and _I_ drink wine. And like as we read of an ancient parable\nof the two gates of sleep--\n\n  Sunt geminae somni portae, quarum altera fertur\n  Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris:\n  Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,\n  Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes.\n\n'So if we put on _sobriety and attention_ we shall find it a sure\nmaxim in knowledge, _that the more pleasant liquor of wine is the more\nvaporous_, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser\ndreams.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nMETHOD OF CONVEYING THE WISDOM OF THE MODERNS\n\n\n  It is a basilisk unto mine eyes,--\n  _Kills me to look_ on't,\n\n  This fierce abridgment\n  Hath to it circumstantial branches, which\n  Distinction should be rich in.\n\n  _Cymbeline_.\n\nThis whole subject is introduced here in its natural and inevitable\nconnection with that special form of Delivery and Tradition which it\nrequired. For we find that connection indicated here, where the matter\nof the tradition, and that part of it which specially requires this\nform is treated, and we find the form itself specified here\nincidentally, but not less unmistakeably, that it is in that part of\nthe work where the Art of Tradition is the primary subject. In\nbestowing on 'the parts' of this science, which the propounder of it\nis here enumerating--that consideration which the concluding paragraph\ninvites to them, we find, not only the fields clearly marked out, in\nwhich he is labouring to collect into an art and science, that which\nhas hitherto been conducted without art or science, and left to common\nsense and experience, the fields in which these goodly observations\ngrow, of which men have hitherto been content to gather a poesy to\ncarry in their hands,--(observations which he will bring home to his\nconfectionery, in such new and amazing prodigality and selection), but\nwe find also _the very form_ which these new collections, with the new\nprecepts concluded on them, would naturally take, and that it is one\nin which these new parts of the new science and its art, which he is\nlabouring to constitute, might very well come out, at such a time,\nwithout being recognised as philosophy at all,--might even be brought\nout by _other_ men without science, as matters of common sense and\nexperience; though the world would have to concede, and the longer the\nstudy went on, the more it would be inclined to concede, that the\ncommon sense and experience was upon the whole somewhat uncommon, and\nsome who perceived its reaches, without finding that it was _art or\nscience_, would even be inclined to call it preternatural.\n\nAnd when he tells us, that the first step in the New Science is _the\ndissection_ of _character_, and the production and exhibition of\ncertain scientifically constructed portraits, by means of which this\nmay be effected, portraits which shall represent in their type-form by\nmeans of 'illustrious instances,' the several characters and tempers\nof men's _natures_ and _dispositions_ 'that the _secret disposition of\neach particular man_ may be laid open, and from a knowledge of the\nwhole, the precepts concerning the cures of the mind may be more\nrightly concluded,'--surely _here_, to a man of learning, _the\nform_,--the form in which these artistically composed diagrams will be\nfound, is not doubtfully indicated.\n\nAnd when, at the next step, we come to the history of 'the\naffections,' and are told distinctly that _here_ philosophy, the\nphilosophy of practice, must needs descend from the abstraction, and\ngeneralities of the ancient morality, for those observations and\nexperiments which it is the legitimate business of the poet to\nconduct, though the poet, in conducting these observations and\nexperiments, has hitherto been wanting in the rigor which science\nrequires, when we are told that philosophy must _inevitably_ enter\nhere, that department of learning, of which the true poet is 'the\ndoctor,'--surely here at least, we know where we are. Certainly it is\nnot the fault of the author of the Great Instauration if we do _not_\nknow what department of learning the collections of the new learning\nwhich he claims to have made will be found in--if found at all, _must_\nbe found in. It is not his fault if we do not know in what department\nto look for the applications of the Novum Organum to those 'noblest\nsubjects' on which he preferred to try its powers, he tells us. Here\nat least--the Index to these missing books--is clear enough.\n\nBut in his treatment of Poetry, as one of the three grand departments\nof Human Learning, for not less noble than that is the place he openly\nassigns to it, though that open and primary treatment of it, is\nsuperficially brief, he contrives to insert in it, his deliberate,\nscientific preference of it, as a means of effective scientific\nexhibition, to either of the two graver parts, which he has associated\nwith it--to history on the one hand, as corresponding to the faculty\nof memory, and to philosophy or mere abstract statement on the other,\nas corresponding to the faculty of Reason; for it is that great\nradical department of learning, which is referred to the Imagination,\nthat constitutes in this distribution of learning the third grand\ndivision of it. He shows us here, in a few words, under different\npoints and heads, what masterly facilities, what indispensable,\nincomparable powers it has for that purpose. There is a form of it,\n'which is as A VISIBLE HISTORY, and is an image of actions as if _they\nwere present_, as history is, of actions that _are past_.' There is a\nform of it which is applied only to express some _special purpose_ or\n_conceit_, which was used of old by _philosophers_ to express any\npoint of _reason_ more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and,\nnevertheless, _now and at all times_ these _allusive parabolical_\npoems do retain much life and vigour because--note it,--note that\nbecause,--that _two-fold because_, because REASON CANNOT be so\nSENSIBLE, nor EXAMPLES SO FIT. And he adds, also, 'there remains\nanother use of this poesy, opposite to the one just mentioned, for\nthat use tendeth to _demonstrate_ and _illustrate_ that which is\ntaught or delivered; and this other to _retire_ and _obscure_ it: that\nis, when the secrets and mysteries of _religion, policy or philosophy_\nare involved in fables and parables.'\n\nBut under the cover of introducing the 'Wisdom of the Ancients,' and\nthe form in which that was conveyed, he explains more at large the\nconditions which this kind of exhibition best meets; he claims it as a\nproper form of _learning_, and tells us outright, that the New Science\n_must be_ conveyed in it. He has left us here, all prepared to our\nhands, precisely the argument which the subject now under\nconsideration requires.\n\n'Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is, that a _concealed\ninstruction_ and _allegory_, was originally intended in many of the\nancient fables; observing that some fables discover a great and\nevident similitude, relation, and connection with the things they\nsignify, as well in the _structure of the fable_, as in the _propriety\nof the names_ whereby _the persons or actors are characterised_,\ninsomuch that no one could positively deny a sense and meaning to be\nfrom the first intended and purposely shadowed out in them'; and he\nmentions some instances of this kind; and the first is a very\nexplanatory one, tending to throw light upon the proceedings of men\nwhose rebellions, so far as political action is concerned, have been\nsuccessfully repressed. And he takes occasion to introduce this\nparticular fable repeatedly in similar connections. 'For who can hear\nthat _Fame_, after the giants were destroyed, sprung up as their\n_posthumous sister_, and not apply it to the clamour of _parties_, and\nthe seditious rumours which commonly fly about upon the _quelling of\ninsurrections_. _Or_ who, upon hearing that memorable expedition of\nthe gods against the giants, when the braying of _Silenus' ass_\ngreatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not clearly\nconceive that this directly _points_ to the _monstrous_ enterprises of\n_rebellious subjects_, which are frequently disappointed and\nfrustrated by _vain fears and empty rumours_. Nor is it wonder if\nsometimes a _piece of history_ or other things are introduced by way\nof ornament, or if _the times_ of the action are confounded,' [the\nvery likeliest thing in the world to happen; things are often 'forced\nin _time_' as he has given us to understand in complimenting a king's\nbook where the person was absent but not the occasion], 'or if part of\none fable be tacked to another, for all this must necessarily happen,\nas the fables were the invention of men who lived in _different ages_,\nand had _different views_, some of them being _ancient_, others more\n_modern_, some having an eye to _natural philosophy_, _others_ to\n_morality_ and _civil policy_.'\n\nThis appears to be just the kind of criticism we happen to be in need\nof in conducting our present inquiry, and the passage which follows is\nnot less to the purpose.\n\nFor, having given some other reasons for this opinion he has expressed\nin regard to the concealed doctrine of the ancients, he concludes in\nthis manner: 'But if any one shall, notwithstanding this, contend that\nallegories are always adventitious, and no way native or _genuinely_\ncontained in them, we _might here leave him undisturbed in the gravity\nof that judgment_, though we cannot but think it somewhat dull and\nphlegmatic, and, _if it were worth the trouble_, proceed to another\n_kind_ of argument.' And, apparently, the argument he proceeds to, is\nworth some trouble, since he takes pains to bring it out so\ncautiously, under so many different heads, with such iteration and\nfulness, taking care to insert it so many times in his work on the\nAdvancement of Learning, and here producing it again in his\nIntroduction to the Wisdom of the Ancients, accompanied with a\ndistinct assurance that it is _not_ the wisdom of the _ancients_ he is\nconcerning himself about, and _their_ necessities and helps and\ninstruments; though if any one persists in thinking that it _is_, he\nis not disposed to disturb him in the gravity of that judgment. He\nhonestly thinks that they had indeed such intentions as those that he\ndescribes; but that is a question for the curious, and he has other\nwork on hand; he happens to be one, whose views of learning and its\nuses, do not keep him long on questions of mere curiosity. It is with\nthe Moderns, and not with the Ancients that he has to deal; it is the\npresent and the future, and not the past that he 'breaks his sleeps'\nfor. Whether the Ancients used those fables for purposes of\ninnovation, and gradual encroachment on error or not, here is a\nModern, he tells us, who for one, cannot dispense with them in _his_\nteaching.\n\nFor having disposed of his _graver_ readers--those of the dull and\nphlegmatic kind--in the preceding paragraph, and not thinking it worth\nexactly that kind of trouble it would have cost then to make himself\nmore explicit for the sake of reaching _their_ apprehension, he\nproceeds to the following argument, which is not wanting in clearness\nfor 'those who happen to be of his ear.'\n\n'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the\nuse of Parables, for parables serve as well to instruct and\nillustrate, as to wrap up and envelope:' [and what is more, they serve\nat once that double purpose] 'so that for _the present we drop the\nconcealed use_, and suppose the _ancient fables_ to be vague\nundeterminate things _formed for amusement, still the other use must\nremain_, and can never be given up. And every man of any learning must\nreadily allow that THIS METHOD of INSTRUCTION is grave, sober,\nexceedingly useful, and _sometimes necessary in the sciences_, as it\nopens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, IN ALL\nNEW DISCOVERIES that are abstruse and _out of the road of vulgar\nopinion_. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and\nconclusions of the human reason as are _now_ trite and common, were\nrare and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables,\nsimiles, comparisons, allusions, which were not intended to _conceal_,\nbut to _inform and teach_, whilst the minds of men continued rude and\nunpractised in matters of subtlety and speculation, and even\nimpatient, and in a manner _incapable of receiving such things as did\nnot directly fall under and strike the senses_.' [And those ages were\nnot gone by, it seems, for these are the very men of whom Hamlet\nspeaks, 'who for the most part are capable of nothing but\n_inexplicable dumb-shows_ and _noise_.'] 'For as hieroglyphics were in\nuse before writings, so were parables in use _before argument_. _And\neven to this day_, if any man would let NEW LIGHT IN upon the human\nunderstanding, [who was it that proposed to do that?] and _conquer\nprejudices without raising animosities_, OPPOSITION, or\nDISTURBANCE--[who was it that proposed to do that precisely]--he _must\nstill_--[note it]--he _must still go in the same path_, and have\nrecourse _to the like method_.' Where are they then? Search and see.\nWhere are they?--The lost Fables of the New Philosophy? 'To conclude,\nthe knowledge of the earlier ages was either great or happy; _great_,\nif _by design_ they made use of tropes and figures; happy, if whilst\n_they had other views_ they afforded _matter_ and _occasion_ to such\n_noble contemplations_. Let either be the case, _our_ pains perhaps\nwill not be misemployed, _whether we illustrate_ ANTIQUITY _or_ [hear]\nTHINGS THEMSELVES.\n\nBut he complains of those who have attempted such interpretations\nhitherto, that 'being _unskilled in nature_, and _their learning_ no\nmore than that of common-place, they have applied the sense of the\nparables to certain _general_ and _vulgar_ matters, without reaching\nto their real purport, genuine interpretation and full depth;'\ncertainly it would not be _that kind_ of criticism, then, which would\nbe able to bring out _the_ subtleties of the _new learning_ from those\npopular embodiments, which he tells us it will have to take, in order\nto make some impression, at least, on the common understanding.\n'Settle that question, then, in regard to the old Fables as you will,\n_our_ pains will not perhaps be misemployed, whether we illustrate\nantiquity or things themselves,' and to that he adds, 'for _myself,\ntherefore, I expect to appear_ NEW in THESE COMMON THINGS, because,\nleaving untouched such as are sufficiently plain and open, I _shall\ndrive only those_ that are either deep or rich.' 'For myself?'--I?--'I\nexpect to appear new in these common things.' But elsewhere, where he\nlays out the argument of them, by the side of that 'resplendent and\nlustrous mass of matter,' those _heroical_ descriptions of virtue,\nduty, and felicity, that _others_ have got glory from, it is some\n_Poet_ we are given to understand that is going to be found _new_ in\nthem. _There_, the argument is all--_all_--_poetic_, and it is a theme\nfor one who, if he know how to handle it, need not be afraid to put in\nhis modest claim, with those who sung of old, the wrath of heroes, and\ntheir arms.\n\nAny one who does not perceive that the passages here quoted were\ndesigned to introduce more than 'the wisdom of the ancients', the\nreader who is disposed to conclude after a careful perusal of these\nreiterated statements, in regard to the form in which doctrines\ndiffering from received opinions must be delivered, taken in\nconnexion, too, with that draught of the new science of the _human\nculture_ and its parts and points, which has just been produced\nhere,--the reader who concludes that _this_ is, after all, a science\nthat _was_ able to dispense with this method of appeal to the senses\nand the imagination; that it was _not_ obliged to have recourse to\nthat path;--that the NEW LEARNING, 'the NEW DISCOVERY,' had here no\nfables, no particular topics, and methods of tradition; that it\ncontented itself with abstractions and generalities, with 'the husks\nand shells of sciences,'--such an one ought, undoubtedly, to be left\nundisturbed in that opinion. He belongs precisely to that class of\npersons which this author himself deliberately proposed to leave to\nsuch conclusions. He is one whom this philosopher himself would not\ntake any trouble at all to enlighten on such points. The other\nreading, with all its _gravity_, was designed for him. The time for\nsuch an one to adopt the reading here produced, will be, when 'those\nwho are incapable of receiving such things as do not directly fall\nunder and strike the senses,' have, at last, got hold of it; when 'the\ngroundlings, who, for the most part are capable of nothing but dumb\nshow and noise,' have had their ears split with it, it will be time\nenough for him.\n\nThis Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to whom the\nappeal is made, this new learning which the Wise Man and Innovator of\nthe Modern Ages tells us must be clothed in fable, and adorned with\nverse, this learning that must be made to fall under and strike the\nsenses; this dumb show of science, that is but show to him who cannot\nyet take the player's own version of what it means; this illustrated\ntradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of Human\nNature,--where is it? This historical collection, this gallery that\nwas to contain scientific draughts and portraitures of the human\ncharacter, that should exhaust its varieties,--where is it? These new\nGeorgics of the mind whose _argument is here_,--where are they? This\nnew Virgil who might promise himself such glory,--such new glory in\nthe singing of them,--where is he? Did he make so deep a summer in his\nverse, that the track of the precept was lost in it? Were the flowers,\nand the fruit, so thick, there; was the reed so sweet that the\nargument of that great husbandry could no point,--could leave no\nfurrow in it?\n\n  'Where souls do couch, on flowers, we'll hand in hand,\n  And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:\n  Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,\n  And all the haunt be ours.'\n\n'The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing this great\nargument, this new argument, of the application of SCIENCE to the\nCulture and Cure of the Mind, 'the neglect of _our times_, wherein\n_few men do hold any consultations_ touching the _reformation of their\nlives, may_ make _this part_ seem superfluous. As Seneca excellently\nsaith, \"De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.\"' And is\nthat, after all,--is that the trouble still? Is it, that that\ncharacteristic of Elizabeth's time--that same thing which Seneca\ncomplained of in Nero's,--is it that _that_ is not yet obsolete? Is\nthat the reason, this so magnificent part, this radical part of the\nnew discovery of the Modern Ages, is still held 'superfluous?' 'De\npartibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.' 'Now that we have\nspoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it\nremaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto.' That is the scientific\nproposition which has waited now two hundred and fifty years, for a\nscientific audience. The health of the soul, the scientific promotion\nof it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the observations of its husbandry. 'And\nif it be said,' he continues, anticipating the first inconsiderate\nobjection, 'if it be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to\nsacred divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be\npreferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the\nPsalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards\nthe _mistress_, and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the\n_discretion_ of the handmaid, to _discern of the mistress' will_; so\nought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines\nof divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits,\nmany sound and profitable directions.'\n\nFor the times that were 'far off' when that proposition was made, it\nis brought out anew and reopened. Oh, people of the ages of arts and\nsciences that are called by this man's name, shall we have the fruits\nof his new doctrine of KNOWLEDGE, brought to our relief in all other\nfields, and reject it in this, which he himself laid out, and claimed\nas its only worthy field? Instructed now in the validity of its\nclaims, by its 'magnitude of effects' in every department of the human\npractice to which it has yet been applied, shall we permit the\ndepartment of it, on which _his_ labour was expended, to escape that\napplication? Shall we suffer that wild barbaric tract of the human\nlife which the will and affections of man create,--that tract which he\nseized,--which it was his labour to collect into an art or science, to\nlie unreclaimed still?\n\nOh, Man of the new ages of science, will you have the new\nfore-knowledge, the magical command of effects, which the scientific\ninquiry into causes as they are actual in nature, puts into our hands,\nin every other practice, in every other culture and cure,--will you\nhave the rule of this knowledge imposed upon your fields, and\norchards, and gardens, to assist weak nature in her 'conservations'\nand 'advancements' in these,--to teach her to bring forth here the\nlatent ideals, towards which she struggles and vainly yearns, and can\nonly point to, and wait for, till science accepts her hints;--will you\nhave the Georgics of this new Virgil to load your table with its magic\nclusters;--will you take the Novum Organum to pile your plate with its\nideal advancements on spontaneous nature and her perfections;--will\nyou have the rule of that Organum applied in its exactest rigors, to\nall the physical oppositions of your life, to minister to your\nphysical safety, and comfort, and luxury, and never relax your\nexactions from it, till the last conceivable degree of these has been\nsecured; and in this department of art and science,--this, in which\nthe sum of our good and evil is contained,--in a mere oversight of it,\nin a disgraceful indifference and carelessness about it, be content to\naccept, without criticism, the machinery of the\npast--instrumentalities that the unlearned ages of the world have left\nto us,--arts whose precepts were concluded ages ere we knew that\n_knowledge_ is power.\n\nShall we be content to accept as a science any longer, a science that\nleaves human life and its actualities and particulars, unsearched,\nuncollected, unreduced to scientific nomenclature and axiom? Shall we\nbe content any longer with a knowledge that is _power_,--shall we\nboast ourselves any longer of a scientific _art_ that leaves _human_\nnature,--that makes over human nature to the tampering of an\nunwatched, unchecked empiricism, that leaves our own souls it may be,\nand the souls in which ours are garnered up, all wild and hidden, and\ngnarled within with nature's crudities and spontaneities, or choked\nand bitter with artificial, but unscientific, unartistic repression?\n\nWill you have of that divinely appointed and beautiful 'handmaid,'\nthat was brought in on to this Globe Theatre, with that upward\nlook,--with eyes turned to that celestial sovereignty for her\ndirection, with the sum of good in her intention, with the universal\ndoctrine of practice in her programme, with the relief 'of man's\nestate and the Creator's glory' put down in her role,--with her _new\nsong_--with her song of man's nature and life _as it is,_ on her\nlips--will you have of her, only the minister to your physical\nluxuries and baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth\nwhich is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction, in\nthe name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-delivery and\ntradition, that will enable it to live again, 'though all the earth\no'erwhelm it to men's eyes,' while this Book of the Advancemement of\nLearning stands, do not charge on this man henceforth, that election.\n\nThe times of that ignorance in which it could be thus accredited, are\npast; for the leader of this Advancement is already unfolding his\ntradition, and opening his books; and he bids us debase his name no\nlonger, into a name for these sordid fatuities. The Leader of ages\nthat are yet to be,--ages whose nobler advancements, whose rational\nand scientific advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human\nform, it was given to him and to his company to plan and initiate,--he\ndeclines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal,\nirrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of\nscience, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it\ninto the _mere_ tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more\nbase and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a\nthousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god\nin the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in the brick and\nthe mortar. This '_broken science_' that has no end of ends, this\ngodless science, this railway learning that travels with restless,\never quickening speed, no whither,--these dead, rattling 'branches'\nand slivers of arts and sciences, these _modern_ arts and sciences,\nhacked and cut away from that tree of sciences, from which they\nsprang, whereon they grew, are _his_ no longer. He declines to be held\nany longer responsible for a materialism that shelters itself under\nthe name of philosophy, and identifies his own name with it. Call it\nscience, if you will, though science be the name for unity and\ncomprehension, and the spirit of life, the spirit of the largest\nwhole; call it philosophy if you will, if you think philosophy is\ncapable of being severed from that common trunk, in which this\nphilosopher found its pith and heart,--call it science,--call it\nphilosophy,--but call it not, he says,--call it not henceforth\n'_Baconian_.'\n\nFor _his_ labor is to collect into an art or science the doctrine of\n_human_ life. He, too, has propounded that problem,--he has translated\ninto the modern speech, that problem, which the inspired Leader of\nmen, of old propounded. 'What is a man profited if he should gain the\nwhole world and lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange\nfor his soul?' He, too, has recognized that ideal type of human\nexcellence, which the Great Teacher of old revealed and exemplified;\nhe has found scientifically,--he has found in the universal law,--that\ndivine dogma, which was taught of old by One who spake as having\nauthority--One who also had looked on nature with a loving and\nobservant eye, and found in its source, the Inspirer of his doctrine.\nIn his study of that old book of divinity which he calls the book of\nGod's Power this Modern Innovator has found the scientific version of\nthat inspired command 'Be ye therefore perfect.' This new science of\nmorality, which is '_moral knowledge_,' is able to recognise the\ninspiration and divinity of that received platform and exemplar of\ngood, and pours in on it the light of a universal illustration. And in\nhis new scientific policy, in his scientific doctrine of success, in\nhis doctrine of the particular and private good, when he brings out at\nlast the rule which shall secure it from all the blows of fortune,\nwhat is it but that same old '_Primum qu\u00e6rite_' which he\nproduces,--clothing it with the authority and severe exaction of a\nscientific rule in art,--that same '_Primum qu\u00e6rite_' which was\npublished of old as a doctrine of faith only. 'But let men rather\nbuild,' he says, 'upon that foundation, which is as a corner-stone of\ndivinity and _philosophy, wherein they join close; namely_, that _same\n'Primum qu\u00e6rite_.' For divinity saith, 'Seek first the kingdom of God,\nand all other things shall be added to you'; and philosophy saith,\n'Primum qu\u00e6rite bona animi c\u00e6tera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt.'\n\nAnd who will now undertake to say that it is, indeed, written in the\nBook of God,--in the Book of the Providential Design, and Creative\nLaw, or that it is written in the Revelation of a divine good will to\nmen; that those who cultivate and cure the soul--who have a divine\nappointment to the office of its cure--shall thereby be qualified to\nignore its actual laws, or that they shall find in the scientific\ninvestigation of its actual history, or in this new--so new, this so\nwondrous and beautiful science, which is here laid out in all its\nparts and points on the basis of a universal science of practice,--no\n'ministry' to their end? Who shall say that the Regimen of the mind,\nthat its Education and healthful culture, as well as its cure, shall\nbe able to accept of no instrumentalities from the _advancement_ of\nlearning? Who shall say that this department of the human life--_this_\nalone, is going to be held back to the past, with bonds and cramps of\niron, while all else is advancing; that this is going to be held\nforever as a place where the old Aristotelian logic, which we have\ndriven out of every other field, can keep its hold unchallenged\nstill,--as a place for the metaphysics of the school-men, the empty\nconceits, the old exploded inanities of the Dark Ages, to breed and\nnestle in undisturbed?\n\nWho shall claim that this department is the only one, which that gift,\nthat is the last gift of Creation and Providence to man is forbidden\nto enter?\n\nSurely it is the authorised doctrine of a supernatural aid, that it is\nnever brought in to sanction indolence and the neglect of means and\ninstruments already in our power; and in that book of these new ages\nin which the doctrine of a successful human practice was promulgated,\nis it not written that in no department of the human want, 'can those\nnoble effects, which God hath set forth to be bought as the price of\nlabour, be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful\nobservances?'\n\nAnd who that looks on the world as it is at this hour, with all our\nboasted aids and instrumentalities,--who that hears that cry of sorrow\nwhich goes up from it day and night,--who that looks at these masses\nof men as they are,--who that dares to look at all this vice and\nignorance and suffering which no instrumentality, mighty to relieve,\nhas yet reached, shall think to put back,--as if we had no need of\nit,--this great gift of light and healing,--this gift of _power_,\nwhich the scientific ages are bringing in; this gift which the ages of\n'anticipation,' the ages of inspiration and spontaneous affirmation,\ncould only divinely--diviningly--foresee and promise;--this gift which\nthe knowledge of the creative laws, the historic laws, the laws of\nkind, as they are actual in the human nature and the human life, puts\ninto our hands? Who shall think himself competent to oppose this\nbenefaction? Alas for such an one! let us take up a lamentation for\nhim. He has stayed too long. The constitution of things, the universal\nlaws of being, and the Providence of this world are against him. The\ntrack of the advancing ages goes over him. He is at variance with that\nwhich was and shall be. The world's wheel goes over him. And whosoever\nfalls on that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it falls it\nshall grind him to powder.\n\nIt is by means of the scientific Art of Delivery and Tradition, that\nthis doctrine of the scientific Culture and Cure of the Mind, which is\nthe doctrine of the scientific ages, has been made over to us in the\nabstract; and it is by means of the rule of interpretation, which this\nArt of Delivery prescribes, it is by means of the secret of an\nIllustrated Tradition, or Poetic Tradition of this science, that we\nare now enabled to unlock at last those magnificent collections in\nit--those inexhaustible treasures and mines of it--which the\nDiscoverer, in spite of the time, has contrived to leave us, in that\nform of Fable and Parable in which the advancing truth has always been\nleft,--in that form of Poesy in which the highest truth has, from of\nold, been uttered. For over all this ground lay extended, then, in\nwatchful strength all safe and unespied, the basilisk of whom the\nFable goes, if he sees you first, you die for it,--_but_ if YOU SEE\nHIM FIRST, HE DIES. And this is the Bishop who fought with a _mace_,\nbecause he would _kill_ his enemy and not _wound_ him.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK II.\n\nELIZABETHAN 'SECRETS OF MORALITY AND POLICY';\n\nOR,\n\nTHE FABLES OF THE NEW LEARNING.\n\n\nReason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit.\n_Advancement of Learning._\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE DESIGN.\n\n\nThe object of this Volume is merely to open _as a study_, and a study\nof primary consequence, those great Works of the Modern Learning which\nhave passed among us hitherto, for lack of the historical and\nscientific key to them, as Works of Amusement, merely.\n\nBut even in that superficial acquaintance which we have had with them\nin that relation, they have, all the time, been subtly operating upon\nthe minds in contact with them, and perpetually fulfilling the first\nintention of their Inventor.\n\n'For,' says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages,--the author of the\n_Novum_ Organum, and of the _Advancement_ of Learning,--in claiming\nthis department of Letters as the necessary and proper instrumentality\nof a new science,--of a science at least, 'foreign to opinions\nreceived,'--as he claims elsewhere that it is, under all conditions,\nthe inevitable essential form of this science in particular. 'Men have\nproposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of\nparables, for they serve as well to _instruct_ and _illustrate_ as to\n_wrap up and envelope_, so that, though for the present, we drop the\nconcealed use, and suppose them to be _vague undeterminate things_,\nformed for AMUSEMENT merely, still the other _use_ remains. 'And every\nman of _any_ learning must readily concede,' he says, 'the value of\nthat use of them as a method of popular instruction, grave, sober,\nexceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the _sciences_, as it\nopens an easy and _familiar_ passage to the human understandings in\n_all new_ discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar\nopinion. They were used of old by _philosophers_ to express any point\nof reason more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and nevertheless\n_now_, and _at all times_, these allusive parabolical forms retain\nmuch life and vigor, because _reason_ cannot be _so sensible_ nor\n_examples so fit_.' That philosophic use of them was to inform and\nteach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in\nmatters of subtilty and speculation, and even impatient and in a\nmanner incapable of receiving anything that did not directly fall\nunder and strike the senses. 'And, even to this day, if any man would\nlet new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudices\nwithout raising animosities, opposition, or _disturbance_, he must\nstill go in _the same path_ and have recourse to the like method.'\n\nThat is the use which the History and Fables of the New Philosophy\nhave already _had_ with us. We have been feeding without knowing it,\non the 'principal and supreme sciences'--the 'Prima Philosophia' and\nits noblest branches. We have been taking the application of the\nInductive Philosophy to the principal concerns of our human life, and\nto the phenomena of of the human nature itself, as mere sport and\npastime; though the precepts concluded, the practical axioms inclosed\nwith it have already forced their way into our learning, for all our\nlearning is, even now, inlaid and glittering with those 'dispersed\ndirections.'\n\nWe have profited by this use of them. It has not been pastime merely\nwith us. We have not spent our time in vain on this first stage of an\nAdvancing Learning, a learning that will not cease to advance until it\nhas invaded all our empiricisms, and conquered all our practice; a\nlearning that will recompence the diligence, the exactitude, the\nseverity of observance which it will require here also (when it comes\nto put in its claim here, as Learning and not Amusement merely), with\nthat same magnitude of effects that, in other departments, has already\njustified the name which its Inventor gave it--a Learning which will\ngive us here, also, in return for the severity of observance it will\nrequire, what no ceremonial, however exacting can give us, that\ncontrol of effects, with which, even in its humblest departments, it\nhas already fulfilled, in the eyes of all the world, the prophecy\nwhich its Inventors uttered when they called it the NEW MAGIC.\n\nThat first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern Learning, we\nhave had already; and it is not yet exhausted. But in that rapid\ndevelopment of a common intelligence, to which the new science of\npractice has itself so largely contributed, even in its lower and\nlimited developments, we come now to that other and so important use\nof these Fables, which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for\nthe time, in his argument--that use of them, in which they serve 'to\nwrap up and conceal' for the time, or to limit to the few, who are\nable to receive them, those new discoveries which are as yet too far\nin advance of the common beliefs and opinions of men, and too far\nabove the mental habits and capacities of the masses of men, to be\nsafely or profitably communicated to the many in the abstract.\n\nBut in order to arrive at this second and nobler use of them, it will\nbe necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any\nthat we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so\nlong as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially\nwhile that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them,\nwhich the received history of the works themselves created, was still\noperating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and\nAllusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed\nhitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we\nusually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to\nhave a moral or politic intention,--truths which we are understood to\nbe in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only\ndesigned to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the\nwill that would not take them from the reason, by means of the senses\nor the imagination. It is not that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge,\nor those conventional opinions, those unanalysed popular beliefs,\nwhich we usually expect to find without any trouble at all, on the\nvery surface of any work that has morality for its object, it is not\nany such coarse, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble\nourselves to look for here. This higher intention in these works\n'their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth,' has not\nyet been found, _because_ the science which is wrapped in them, though\nit is the principal science in the plan of the Advancement of\nLearning, has hitherto escaped our notice, and _because_ of the\nexceeding subtlety of it,--because the truths thus conveyed or\nconcealed are new, and recondite, and out of the way of any casual\nobservation,--because in this scientific collection of the phenomena\nof the human life, designed to serve as the basis of new social arts\nand rules of practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the\nvague, popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for\npurposes of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which are\nactual and historical, those simple radical forms and differences on\nwhich the doctrine of power and practice must be based.\n\nIt is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the most\nprofoundly earnest to which these works now invite us. Let those who\nwill, stay in the playground still, and make such sport and pastime of\nit there, as they may; and let those who feel the need of inductive\nrules here also,--here on the ground which this pastime covers--let\nthose who perceive that we have as yet, set our feet only on the\nthreshold of the Great Instauration, find here with diligent research,\nthe ascent to the axioms of practice,--that ascent which the author of\nthe science of practice in general, made it _his labour_ to hew out\n_here_, for _he_ undertook 'to collect here into an art or science,\nthat which had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense\nand experience.'\n\nIt does not consist with the design of the present work to track that\ndraught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an\ninductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of\nthe Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its\ncompartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections,\nwhich the Fables of the Modern Learning,--which these magnificent\nParabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.\n\nThis work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to remove\nthat primary obstacle to the diligent study of these works, which the\npresent theory of them contains; since that concealment of their true\nintention and history, which was inevitable at the time, no longer\nserves the author's purpose, and now that the times are ripe for the\nlearning which they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the\nillustrations which are here produced, are produced with reference to\nthat object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those\n'_secrets of policy_,' which are the necessary introduction to that\nwhich follows.\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE MISSING BOOKS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION;\nOR, PHILOSOPHY ITSELF.\n\n\nDid it never occur to the student of the _Novum Organum_ that the\nconstant application of that '_New Machine_' by the inventor of it\nhimself, to one particular class of subjects, so constant as to\nproduce on the mind of the careless reader the common impression, that\nit was intended to be applied to that class only, and that the relief\nof the human estate, in that one department of the human want,\nconstituted its whole design: did it never occur to the curious\ninquirer, or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning,\nthat this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications in the\nhands of its author is--under all the circumstances--a thing worthy of\nbeing inquired into? Considering who the author of it is, and that it\nis on the face of it, a new method of dealing with facts in general, a\nnew method of obtaining axioms of practice from history in general,\nand not a specific method of obtaining them from that particular\ndepartment of history from which his instances are taken; and,\nconsidering, too, that the author was himself aware of the whole sweep\nof its applications, and that he has taken pains to include in his\ndescription of its powers, the assertion,--the distinct, deliberate\nassertion--that it is capable of being applied as _efficiently_, to\nthose nobler departments of the human need, which are marked out for\nit in the Great Instauration--those very departments in which he was\nknown himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been all\nhis life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it never occur\nto the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it, then, himself to\nthose very subjects, instead of keeping so stedfastly to the physical\nforces in his illustration of its powers? And has any one ever read\nthe plan of this man's works? Has any one seen the scheme of that\ngreat enterprise, for which he was the responsible person in his own\ntime--that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these published\nacknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce in his own name,\nto show what parts of his '_labor_,'--what part of chief consequence\nwas _not_ thus produced? Has any one seen that plan of a new system of\nUniversal Science, which was published in the reign of James the\nFirst, under the patronage of that monarch? And if it has been seen,\nwhat is the reason there has been no enquiry made for those works, in\nwhich the author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to\nthese very subjects; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us, in\nreference to that undertaking, that he is _not_ a vain promiser.\n\nThere is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history, which the\nnew method of discovery and invention requires as the first step\ntowards its conclusions, which is put down as the THIRD PART of the\nInstauration, though the natural history which is produced for that\npurpose is very far from fulfilling the description and promise of\nthat division. But where is the FOURTH part of the Great Instauration?\nHas anybody seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for\nwhich all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is\nsubsidiary? Where is that part which consists of EXAMPLES, that are\nnothing but a _particular_ application of the SECOND; that is, the\nNovum Organum,--'and to _subjects of the noblest kind_?' Where is\n'that part of our work which enters upon PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead\nof dealing any longer, or professing to deal, with THE METHOD merely\nof finding that which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting\nthat method any longer _in the abstract_? Where are the works in which\nhe undertakes to show it in operation, with its new 'grappling hooks'\non the matter of the human life--applied by the inventor himself to\n'the noblest subjects?' Surely that would be a sight to see. What is\nthe reason that our editors do not produce these so important works in\ntheir editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include\nthem in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars do not\nquote them? Instead of stopping with that mere report of the condition\nof learning and its deficiences, and that outline of what is to be\ndone, which makes the FIRST PART or Introduction to this work; or\nstopping with the description of the new method, or the Novum Organum,\nwhich makes the SECOND; why don't they go on to the 'new philosophy\nitself,' and show us that as well,--the very object of all this\npreparation? When he describes in the SECOND part his _method_ of\nfinding true terms, or rather the method of his school, when he\ndescribes this new method of finding '_ideas_,' ideas as they are in\nnature, powers, causes, the elements of history, or _forms_, as he\nmore commonly calls them, when he describes this new method of\ndeducing axioms, axioms that are ready for practice, he does, indeed,\ngive us _instances_; but it so happens, that the instances are all of\n_one kind_ there. They are the physical powers that supply his\nexamples in that part.\n\nIn describing this method merely, he produces what he calls his Tables\nof Invention, or Tables of REVIEW OF INSTANCES; but where is that part\nin which he tells us we shall find these same tables again, with 'the\nnobler subjects' on them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his\nsecond part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He\nshews them up very industriously, and is very particular to direct the\nadmiring attention of the reader to their adaptation as means to an\nend. But certainly there is nothing in that specimen of what can be\ndone with them which he contents himself with there, that would lead\nany one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the\nnovelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or,\nindeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It\nis the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that\nunder the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be\ntrying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in\nany other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made\non any one's mind by that book, that there is any other kind of\ninvention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this\nmethod? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new\nterminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author\nindulges--a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one\ncannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of\nmind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to\nconstruct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms,\nand his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of\nexpression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is\nindeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared\nto grapple formally with those 'nobler subjects' to which allusion is\nmade in another place. King James was a man of some erudition himself;\nbut he declared frankly that for his part he could not understand this\nbook; and it was not strange that he could not, for the author did not\nintend that he should. The philosopher drops a hint in passing,\nhowever, that all which is essential in this method, might perhaps be\nretained without quite so much formality and fuss in the use of it,\nand that the proposed result might be arrived at by means of these\nsame tables, without any use of technical language at all, under other\ncircumstances.\n\nThe results which have since been obtained by the use of this method\nin that department of philosophy to which it is specially applied in\nthe Novum Organum, give to the inquirer into the causes of the\nphysical phenomena now, some advantages which no invention could\nsupply them. That was what the founders of this philosophy expected\nand predicted. They left this department to their school. The author\nof the Novum Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis\nof the induction in this department is as yet wanting; and the\ncollections and experiments here require combinations of skill and\nlabour which they cannot at once command. They will do what they can\nhere too, in their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do\nnot lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of\ntheir own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient\npurpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic\nimportance.\n\nBut the man who has studiously created for himself a social position\nwhich enables him to assume openly, and even ostentatiously, the\nposition of an innovator--an innovator _in the world of letters_, an\nadvancer of--_learning_--is compelled to introduce his innovation with\nthe complaint that he finds the mind of the world so stupified, so\nbewildered with evil, and so under the influence of dogmas, that the\nfirst thing to be done is to get so much as a thought admitted of the\npossibility of a better state of things. 'The present system of\nphilosophy,' he says, 'cherishes in its bosom certain positions or\ndogmas which it will be found, are calculated to produce a full\nconviction that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on\nnature _ought_ to be anticipated, through the means of art.' And,\ntherefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world as\nhe finds it, reporting as well as he can,--though he can find no\nwords, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in regard to\nit--_the deficiencies_ in its learning, he devotes a considerable\nportion of the description of his new method to the grounds of 'hope'\nwhich he derives from this philosophic survey, and that that hope is\nnot a hope of a better state of things in respect to the physical\nwants of man merely, that it is not a hope of a renovation in the arts\nwhich minister to those wants exclusively, any very careful reader of\nthe first book of the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer.\nBut the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another\nplace _for particulars_.\n\n'Let us then speak of _hope_' he says, '_especially_ as we are not\nvain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judgments;\nbut would rather lead them _willingly_ forward. And although we shall\nemploy the most cogent means of _enforcing hope when we bring them_ TO\nPARTICULARS, and _especially_ those which are digested and arranged in\nour Tables of Invention, the subject partly of the SECOND,\nbut--_principally_--mark it, _principally_ of the FOURTH part of the\nInstauration, which are, indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes\nthan hope itself.' Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection,\nthat he is _not_ a vain promiser, when no such PART as that to which\nhe refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings--when\nthis _principal_ part of his promise remains unfulfilled. 'The FOURTH\npart of the Instauration,' he says again in his formal description of\nit, 'enters upon philosophy itself, furnishing _examples of inquiry\nand investigation_, according to our own method, _in certain subjects\nof the noblest kind_, but greatly differing from each other, that a\nspecimen may be had of _every sort_. By these examples, we mean _not\nillustrations of rules and precepts_,' [He will show the facts in such\norder, in such scientific, select, methodical arrangements, that rules\nand precepts will be forced from them; for he will show them, on the\ntables of invention, and rules and precepts are the vintage that flows\nfrom the illustrious instances--the prerogative instances--the ripe,\nlarge, cleared, selected clusters of facts, the subtle prepared\nhistory which the tables of invention collect. The definition of the\nsimple original elements of history, the pure definition is the first\nvintage from these; but 'that which in speculative philosophy\ncorresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule'\nand _the axiom of practice_, ready for use, is the final result.] 'but\nperfect models, which will exemplify the SECOND PART of this work, and\nrepresent, as it were, to _the eye_ the whole progress of the mind,\nand _the continued structure and order of invention_ in THE MORE\nCHOSEN SUBJECTS'--note it, in the _more_ chosen subjects; but this is\nnot at all--'_after the same manner as globes and machines facilitate\nthe more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics_.' But in\nanother place he tells us, that the poetic form of demonstration is\nthe form to which it is necessary to have recourse on these subjects,\n_especially_ when we come to these more abstruse and subtle\ndemonstrations, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human\nunderstanding in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the\nroad of vulgar opinion; and that at the time he was writing out this\nplan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the human\nunderstanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising animosity,\nopposition, or disturbance, had no choice--_must go in that same\npath_, or none. Where are those diagrams? And what does he mean, when\nhe tells us in this connection that he is not a vain promiser? Where\nare those particular cases, in which this method of investigation is\napplied to the noblest subjects? Where are the diagrams, in which the\norder of the investigation is represented, as it were, to the eye,\nwhich serve the same purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the\nmore abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all\nacquainted with one poem, at least, published about that time, in\nwhich some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in\nprogress, _not_ without the use of diagrams, and very lively ones too;\nbut one in which the intention of the poet appears to be to the last\ndegree 'enigmatical,' inasmuch as it has engaged the attention of the\nmost philosophical minds ever since, and inasmuch as the most able\ncritics have never been able to comprehend that intention fully in\ntheir criticism. And it is bound up with many others, in which the\nsubjects are not less carefully chosen, and in which the method of\ninquiry is the same; in which that same method that is exhibited in\nthe 'Novum Organum' in the abstract, or in its application to the\ninvestigation of the physical phenomena, is everywhere illustrated in\nthe most chosen subjects--in subjects of the noblest kind. This\nvolume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the THIRD\nand FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether this man who\ndescribes them here, and who forgot, it would seem, to fulfil his\npromise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.\n\nThat is the part of the Great Instauration that we want now, and we\nare fairly entitled to it, because these are not 'the next ages,' or\n'the times which were nearer,' and which this author seldom speaks of\nwithout betraying his clear foresight of the political and social\nconvulsions that were then at hand. These are the times, which were\nfarther off, to which he appeals from those nearer ages, and to which\nhe expressly dedicates the opening of his designs.\n\nNow, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is missing out\nof this philosophy? Nothing less than the 'principal' part of it. All\nthat is good for anything in it, according to the author's own\nestimate. The rest serves merely 'to pass the time,' or it is good as\nit serves to prepare the way for this. What is it that we have to look\nfor? The 'Novum Organum,' that severe, rigorous method of scientific\ninquiry, applied to _the more chosen subjects_ in the reigns of Queen\nElizabeth and James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that\nLogic which is brought out in the doctrine of the PREROGATIVE\nINSTANCES, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its encounter with\nfact in general, brought down to particulars, and applied to the\nnoblest subjects, and to every sort of subject which the philosophic\nmind of that age _chose_ to apply it to. That is what we want to find.\n\n'The prerogative instances' in 'the _more_ chosen subjects.' The whole\nfield which that philosophy chose for its field, and called the\nnoblest, the principal, the chosen, the more chosen one. Every part of\nit reduced to scientific inquiry, put under the rule of the 'Novum\nOrganum'; that is what we want to find. We know that no such thing\ncould possibly be found in the acknowledged writings of this author.\nNothing answering to that description, composed by a statesman and a\nphilosopher, with an avowed intention in his writing--an intention to\neffect changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn\npractice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by any\nmeans have been got through the press then. No one who studies the\nsubject will think of looking for that FOURTH PART of the Instauration\namong the author's acknowledged writings. Does he give us any hint as\nto where we are to look for it? Is there any intimation as to the\nparticular form of writing in which we are to find it? for find it we\nmust and shall, because he is _not_ a vain promiser. The _subject_\nitself determines the form, he says; and the fact that the whole\nground of the discovery is ground already necessarily comprehended in\nthe preconceptions of the many--that it is ground covered all over\nwith the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact,\nalso, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation. Who that\nknows what the so-called Baconian method of learning really is, will\nneed to be told that the principal books of it will be--books of\nINSTANCES and PARTICULARS, SPECIMENS--living ones, and that these will\noccupy the prominent place in the book; and that the conclusions and\nprecepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly and on\nthe spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use, 'knowing the\nway to particulars again?' Who would ever expect to find the principal\nbooks of this learning--the books in which it enters upon philosophy\nitself, and undertakes to leave a specimen of its own method in the\nnoblest subjects in its own chosen field--who would ever expect to\nfind these books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with\ninstances or examples brought in, to illustrate or make them good? For\nthis is not a point of method merely, but a point of substance, as he\ntakes pains to tell us. And who that has ever once read his own\naccount of the method in which he proposes to _win_ the human mind\nfrom its preconceptions, instead of undertaking to overcome it with\nLogic and sharp disputations,--who that knows what place he gives to\nRhetoric, what place he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of\ninnovation, will expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic\nlearning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms,\nunder how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold\nassurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is\nthe _only_ form in which the higher applications of his discovery can\nbe made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part\nin any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly,\n'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples\nwhich his scientific terminology includes in the department of\n_Poesy?_\n\nAll the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first\nphilosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and\nparable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the\nhuman understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must\nstill go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.\n\nHe was an innovator; he was _not_ an agitator. And he claims that mark\nof a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without\nnoise or perturbation, _in aura leni_. Of innovations, there has been\nnone in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he\nstrive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red\nensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's\ndrum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine\nauthority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is\nthe providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it;\nit is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden\nwith new gifts for men, openly announces.\n\n'Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open his ground of\n_hope_, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds\nthem, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and institutes of\nthe universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision\nwith them; 'Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its\nexceeding goodness, _clearly_ proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD\nand Father of LIGHT. Now, _in all divine works_, the smallest\nbeginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual\nmatters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also\nfound to be true _in every great work of_ PROVIDENCE, so that\neverything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the\nmatter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is\ncommenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who\ninnovateth _greatly_ but _quietly_, and by degrees scarce to be\nperceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one\nis finished and in its place.\n\nWhat is that we want to find? We want to find the new method of\nscientific inquiry applied to the questions in which men are most\ndeeply interested--questions which were then imperiously and instantly\nurged on the thoughtful mind. We want to see it applied to POLITICS in\nthe reign of James the First. We want to see it applied to the open\nquestions of another department of inquiry,--certainly not any less\nimportant,--in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We want\nto see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of review,\nfrom which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, the _legitimate_ sovereignty,\nis to be inducted, and the scientific axioms of government with it. We\nwant to see the science of observation and experiment, the science of\nnature in general, applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign\nof James the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in\nwhich it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that,\ntoo, by the principal doctors in that profession,--men of the very\nlargest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their work\nconscientiously, whether the patient _objected_ or not. But are there\nany such books as these? Certainly. You have the author's own word for\nit. 'Some may raise this question,' he says, 'this _question_ rather\nthan _objection_'--[it is better that it should come in the form of a\n_question_, than in the form of _an objection_, as it would have come,\nif there had been no room to '_raise the question_']--'_whether we\ntalk_ of perfecting _natural philosophy_' [using the term here in its\nusual limited sense], 'whether we talk of perfecting natural\nphilosophy _alone_, according to our method, or, _the other_\nsciences--_such as_, ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' _That_ is the question\n'raised.' 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' _That_ is _the\nauthor's_ answer to it. 'And as _common logic_ which _regulates\nmatters by syllogism_, is applied, not only to natural, but to every\nother science, _so_ our inductive method _likewise_ comprehends them\nALL.' With such iteration will he think fit to give us this point. It\nis put in here for those 'who raise the question'--the question\n'rather than objection.' The other sort are taken care of in other\nplaces. '_For_,' he continues, 'we form a history and tables of\ninvention, for _anger, fear, shame,_ and _the like_; and _also for\nexamples in civil life_' [that was to be the principal part of the\nscience when he laid out the plan of it in the advancement of\nlearning] 'and the _mental_ operations of _memory, composition,\ndivision, judgment_, and the rest; _as well_ as for _heat_ and _cold,\nlight_ and _vegetation_, and _the like_.' That is the plan of the new\nscience, as the author sketches it for the benefit of those who raise\nquestions rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely,\nwhenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satisfaction of\nthis class of readers. But this is that same FOURTH PART to which he\nrefers us in the other places for the application of his method to\nthose nobler subjects, those more chosen subjects; and that is just\nthe part of his science which appears to be wanting. How happens it?\nDid he get so occupied with the question of _heat_ and _cold_, _light_\nand vegetation, and _the like_, that after all he forgot this part\nwith its nobler applications? How could that be, when he tells us\nexpressly, that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This\npart which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philosophy,\nunquestionably. These are the books of it which have been missing\nhitherto; but in that Providential order of events to which he refers\nhimself, the time has come for them to be inquired for; and this\ninquiry is itself a part of that movement, in which the smallest\nbeginnings lead assuredly to some result. For, 'let us begin from\nGod,' he says, 'and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding\ngoodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of\nmisery; the Father of LIGHT, and not of darkness.'\n\nOf course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine of the\nhuman society, without coming at once in collision with that doctrine\nof the divinity of arbitrary power which the monarchs of England were\nthen openly sustaining. Who needs to be told, that he who would handle\nthat argument scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this\ninquirer _would_, must indeed 'pray in aid of _similes_.' And yet a\nvery searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that\ninstitution, which the new philosophy found in possession of the human\nwelfare, and asserting a divine right to it as a thing of private\nproperty and legitimate family inheritance,--such a criticism was, in\nfact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the principles of a\n_human_ subjection which appeared to this philosopher to belong\nproperly to the more chosen subjects of a scientific investigation.\n\nAnd notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the extremely\ncritical nature of the investigation, when it came to touch those\nparticulars, with which the personal observations and experiments of\nthe founders of this new school in philosophy had tended to enrich\ntheir collections in this department,--'and the aim is better,' says\nthe principal spokesman of this school, who quietly proposes to\nintroduce this method into _politics_, 'the aim is better _when the\nmark is alive_;' notwithstanding the difficulties which appeared to\nlie then in the way of such an investigation, the means of conducting\nit to the entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment\nof the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this was one\nof those 'secrets of policy,' which have always required the aid of\nfable, and the idea of _dramatising_ the fable for the sake of\nreaching in some sort those who are incapable of receiving any thing\n'which does not directly fall under, and strike the senses,' as the\nphilosopher has it; those who are capable of nothing but 'dumb shows\nand noise,' as Hamlet has it; this idea, though certainly a very\nhappy, was not with these men an original one. Men, whose relations to\nthe state were not so different as the difference in the forms of\ngovernment would perhaps lead us to suppose,--men of the gravest\nlearning and enriched with the choicest accomplishments of their time,\nhad adopted that same method of influencing public opinion, some two\nthousand years earlier, and even as long before as that, there were\n'secrets of morality and policy,' to which this form of writing\nappeared to offer the most fitting veil.\n\nWhether 'the new' philosopher,--whether 'the new magician' of this\ntime, was, in fact, in possession of any art which enabled him to\nhandle without diffidence or scruple the great political question\nwhich was then already the question of the time; whether 'THE\nCROWN'--that double crown of military conquest and priestly\nusurpation, which was the one estate of the realm at that crisis in\nEnglish history, did, among other things in some way, come under the\nedges of that new analysis which was severing _all_ here then, and get\ndivided clearly with 'the mind, that divine fire,'--whether any such\nthing as that occurred here then, the reader of the following pages\nwill be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they\ncontain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which made its\nappearance about those days, will certainly have no difficulty at all\nin deciding that question. For, first of all, it is necessary to find\nthat political key to the Elizabethan art of delivery, which unlocks\nthe great works of the Elizabethan philosophy, and that is the\nnecessity which determines the selection of the Plays that are\nproduced in this volume. They are brought in to illustrate the fact\nalready stated, and already demonstrated, the fact which is the\nsubject of this volume, the fact that the new practical philosophy of\nthe modern ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the\nplan of its founders, to 'natural philosophy' and 'the part operative'\nof that,--the fact that it comprehended, as its principal department,\nthe department in which its 'noblest subjects' lay, and in which its\nmost vital innovations were included, a field of enquiry which could\nnot then be entered without the aid of fable and parable, and one\nwhich required not then only, 'but now, and at all times,' the aid of\na vivid poetic illustration; they are brought in to illustrate the\nfact already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the new\nphilosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work under such\nconditions, able to work, if not for the times that were nearer, for\nthe times that were further off; men who thought it little so they\ncould fulfil and perfect their work and make their account of it to\nthe Work-master, to robe another with their glory; men who could\nrelinquish the noblest works of the human genius, that they might save\nthem from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they might make\nthem over unharmed in their boundless freedom, in their unstained\nperfection, to the farthest ages of the advancement of learning,--that\nthey might 'teach them how to live and look fresh' still,\n\n  'When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent.'\n\nThat is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book is to\ndemonstrate.\n\n\n\n\nPART I.\n\nLEAR'S PHILOSOPHER\n\n                           'Thou'dst shun a bear;\n  But if thy way lay towards the raging sea,\n  Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nPHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE.\n\n\n  'I think the king is but a man, as I am.'--_King Henry_.\n  'They told me I was everything.'--_Lear_.\n\nOF course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly\ndealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed, scientifically\nexamined, in the very presence of royalty itself, except by persons\nendowed with extraordinary privileges and immunities, persons, indeed,\nof quite irresponsible authority, whose right to do and say what they\npleased, Elizabeth herself, though they should enter upon a critical\nanalysis of the divine rights of kings to her face, and deliberately\nlay bare the defects in that title which she was then attempting to\nmaintain, must needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.\n\nAnd such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the retinue of\nthat sovereignty which was working in disguise here then, and laying\nthe foundations of that throne in the thoughts of men, which would\nreplace old principalities and powers, and not political dominions\nmerely. To the creative genius which waited on the philosophic mind of\nthat age, making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of\nits exterior conditions, such persons,--persons of any amount or\nvariety of capacity which the necessary question of its play might\nrequire, were not wanting:--'came with a thought.'\n\nOf course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his ill-got\ncrown, and passing a sleepless night in spite of its supposed\nexemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with all his royal\nmeans and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea boy in the storm\nenjoys,--and the poet appears, to have had some experience of this\nmortal ill, which inclines him to put it down among those which ought\nto be excluded from a state of supreme earthly felicity,--the poor\nguilty disgusted usurper, discovering that this so blessed 'invention'\nwas not included in the prerogative he had seized, under the\nexasperation of the circumstances, might surely be allowed to mutter\nto himself, in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general\nreflections on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to\nany extent, without expecting to be called to an account for it, by\nany future son or daughter of his usurping lineage. That\nextraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite incontestable\nfact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still, refused to\nrecognize this artificial difference in men, but still went on her way\nin all things, as if 'the golden standard' were not there, classing\nthe monarch with his 'poorest subject;'--the fact that this charmed\n'round of sovereignty,' did not after all secure the least exemption\nfrom the common _individual_ human frailty, and helplessness,--this\nwould, of course, strike the usurper who had purchased the crown at\nsuch an expense, as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if\nit were only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed\nto embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the moral was\nproper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and ready to be\nproduced, in case any serious inquiry should be made for it; though\nthe poet might seem, perhaps, to a severely critical mind, disposed to\npursue his philosophical inquiry a little too curiously into the awful\nsecrets of majesty, retired within itself, and pondering its own\nposition;--openly searching what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the\nScriptures pronounce to be inscrutable, namely, _the hearts_ of\n_kings_, and audaciously laying bare those private passages, those\nconfessions, and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and\nreverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play,\nindeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance\nwhich, of course, was expected to modify the impression.\n\nSo, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a\nviolet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime\nposition, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the\nmouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a\nstar-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the\ntrick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come\nonly as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of\nroyalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty\nof nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the\nbrave and gentle hero of Agincourt.\n\n'Though _I_ speak it to you,' he says, talking in the disguise of a\n'private,' '_I think the King is but a man as I am_, the violet smells\nto him as it doth to me; all his senses, _have but human conditions_.\nHis ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness, he appears but a man; and\nthough his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they\nstoop, they stoop with the like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as\nwe do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are';\nand in the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and\nsoliloquises on the same delicate question.\n\n'And what have _kings_ that \"_privates_\" have not, too, save\nceremony,--save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou _idol\nceremony?_--_What is_ thy _soul_ of _adoration_?'\n\nA grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind, in those\ntimes: let us see how a Poet can answer it.\n\n  'Art thou aught else but _place, degree_ and _form_,\n  Creating awe and fear in _other men?_\n  Wherein, thou _art less happy, being feared_,\n  _Than they in fearing_?\n\n[Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he\ncherished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king; and\nthose who know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had\nauthorised, and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and\npreparing the way for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on\nthat account; but this is what he means. He thinks that wretched\nvictim of that most irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose\nhead the crown of an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its\nresponsibilities, in his infinite unfitness for them, is, in fact, the\none whose case most of all requires relief. He is the one, in this\ntheory, who suffers from this unnatural state of things, not less, but\nmore, than his meanest subject. 'Thou art less happy being feared,\nthan they in fearing.']\n\n  What drink'st thou oft _instead of homage sweet_\n  But _poison'd flattery_? O! be sick, great greatness,\n  And bid thy _ceremony_ give thee _cure_.\n  Thinkest thou the _fiery fever will go out_\n  With _titles blown from adulation_?\n  Will it give place to flexure and low bending?\n\nInteresting physiological questions! And though the author, for\nreasons of his own, has seen fit to put them in blank verse here, it\nis not because he does not understand, as we shall see elsewhere, that\nthey are questions of a truly scientific character, which require to\nbe put in prose in his time--questions of vital consequence to all\nmen. The effect of 'poisoned flattery,' and 'titles blown from\nadulation' on the minds, of those to whose single will and caprice the\nwhole welfare of the state, and all the gravest questions for this\nlife and the next, were then entrusted, naturally appeared to the\nphilosophical mind, perseveringly addicted to inquiries, in which the\npractical interests of men were involved, a question of gravest\nmoment.\n\nBut here it is the physical difference which accompanies this so\nimmense human distinction, which he appears to be in quest of; it is\nthe control over nature with which these '_farcical titles_' invest\ntheir possessor, that he appears to be now pertinaciously bent upon\nascertaining. For we shall find, as we pursue the subject, that this\nis not an accidental point here, a casual incident of the character,\nor of the plot, a thing which belongs to the play, and not to the\nauthor; but that this is a poet who is somehow perpetually haunted\nwith the impression that those who assume a divine right to control,\nand dispose of their fellow-men, ought to exhibit some sign of their\nauthority; some superior abilities; some magical control; some light\nand power that other men have not. How he came by any such notions,\nthe critic of his works is, of course, not bound to show; but that\nwhich meets him at the first reading is the fact, the incontestable\nfact, that the Poet of Shakspere's stage, be he who he may, is a poet\nwhose mind is in some way deeply occupied with this question; that it\nis a poet who is infected, and, indeed, perfectly possessed, with the\nidea, that the true human leadership ought to consist in the ability\nto extend the empire of man over nature,--in the ability to unite and\ncontrol men, and lead them in battalions against those common evils\nwhich infest the human conditions,--not fevers only but 'worser'\nevils, and harder to be cured, and to the conquest of those supernal\nblessings which the human race have always been vainly crying for. 'I\nam a king that find thee,' he says.\n\nAnd having this inveterate notion of a true human regality to begin\nwith, he is naturally the more curious and prying in regard to the\nclaims of the one which he finds in possession; and when by the\nmystery of his profession and art, he contrives to get the cloak of\nthat factitious royalty about him, he asks questions under its cover\nwhich another man would not think of putting.\n\n'Canst thou,' he continues, walking up and down the stage in King\nHal's mantle, inquiring narrowly into its virtues and taking advantage\nof that occasion to ascertain the limits of the prerogative--that very\ndubious question then,--\n\n  'Canst thou when thou command'st the beggar's knee,\n  _Command the health_ of it?'--\n\n_No_? what mockery of power is it then? But, this in connection with\nthe preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of titles on the\nprogress of a fever, or the amenability of its paroxysm, to flexure\nand low bending, might have seemed perhaps in the mouth of a subject\nto savour somewhat of irony; it might have sounded too much like a\ntaunt upon the royal helplessness under cover of a serious\nphilosophical inquiry, or it might have betrayed in such an one a\ndisposition to pursue scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps\nexpedient. But thus it is, that THE KING can dare to pursue the\nsubject, answering his own questions.\n\n  'No, thou proud dream\n  That _playst so subtly with a king's repose_;\n  _I_ am a king _that find thee_; and I know\n  'Tis not the THE BALM, THE SCEPTRE, and THE BALL,\n  THE SWORD, THE MACE, THE CROWN IMPERIAL,\n  _The inter-tissued_ ROBE of _gold and pearl_,\n  The FARCED TITLE--\n\nWhat is that?--Mark it:--the _farced_ TITLE!--A bold word, one would\nsay, even with _a king_ to authorise it.\n\n  'The farced TITLE running 'fore the king,\n  THE THRONE he sits on, nor _the tide_ of POMP\n  That beats upon the high shore of this world,\n  No, not all these, thrice gorgeous CEREMONY,\n  Not all these laid in BED MAJESTICAL,\n  Can _sleep so soundly_ as the wretched slave\n  Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,\n  Gets him to rest crammed with distressful bread,\n  Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,\n  But like a lackey from the rise to set\n  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus; and all night\n  Sleeps in Elysium.\n\nYes, there we have him, at last. There he is exactly. That is the\nscientific picture of him, 'poor man,' as this poet calls him\nelsewhere. What malice could a philosophic poet bear him? That is the\nmonarchy that men were 'sanctifying themselves with,' and 'turning up\nthe white of the eye to,' then. That is the figure that it makes when\nit comes to be laid in its state-bed, upon the scientific table of\nreview, not in the formal manner of 'the second part' of this\nphilosophy, but in that other manner which the author of the _Novum\nOrganum_, speaks of so frequently, as the one to be used in applying\nit to subjects of this nature. That is the anatomy of him, which\n'_our_ method of inquiry and investigation,' brings out without much\ntrouble 'when we come to particulars.' 'Truly we were in good hands,'\nas the other one says, who finds it more convenient, for his part, to\ndiscourse on these points, from a distance.\n\nThat is the figure the usurping monarch's pretensions make at the\nfirst blush, in the collections from which '_the vintage_' of the true\nsovereignty, and the scientific principles of governments are to be\nexpressed, when the true _monarchy_, the legitimate, 'one only man\npower,' is the thing inquired for. This one goes to 'the negative'\nside apparently. A wretched fellow that cannot so much as 'sleep o'\nnights,' that lies there on the stage in the play of Henry the Fourth,\nin the sight of all the people, with THE CROWN on his very pillow, by\nway 'facilitating the demonstration,' pining for the 'Elysium' at his\nmeanest subject,--that the poor slave, 'crammed with distressful\nbread,' commands; crying for the luxury that the wet seaboy, on his\nhigh and giddy couch enjoys;--and from whose note-book came that\nimage, dashed with the ocean spray,--who saw that seaboy sleeping in\n_that_ storm?\n\nBut, as for this KING, it is the king which the scientific history\nbrings out; whereas, in the other sort of history that was in use\nthen, lie is hardly distinguishable at all from those Mexican kings\nwho undertook to keep the heavenly bodies in their places, and, at the\nsame time, to cause all things to be borne by the earth which were\nrequisite for the comfort and convenience of man; a peculiarity of\nthose sovereigns, of which the Man on the Mountains, whose study is so\nwell situated for observations of that sort, makes such a pleasant\nnote.\n\nBut whatever other view we may take of it, this, it must be conceded,\nis a tolerably comprehensive exhibition, in the general, of the mere\npageant of royalty, and a pretty free mode of handling it; but it is\nat the same time a privileged and entirely safe one. For the liberty\nof this great Prince to repeat to himself, in the course of a solitary\nstroll through his own camp at midnight, when nobody is supposed to be\nwithin hearing, certain philosophical conclusions which he was\nunderstood to have arrived at in the course of his own regal\nexperience, could hardly be called in question. And as to that most\nextraordinary conversation in which, by means of his disguise on this\noccasion, he becomes a participator, if the Prince himself were too\ngenerous to avail himself of it to the harm of the speakers, it would\nill become any one else to take exceptions at it.\n\nAnd yet it is a conversation in which a party of common soldiers are\npermitted to 'speak their minds freely' for once, though 'the blank\nverse has to halt for it,' on questions which would be considered at\npresent questions of 'gravity.' It is a dialogue in which these men\nare allowed to discuss one of the most important institutions of their\ntime from an ethical point of view, in a tone as free as the president\nof a Peace Society could use to-day in discussing the same topic,\nintermingling their remarks with criticisms on the government, and\npersonal allusions to the king himself, which would seem to be more in\naccordance with the manners of the nineteenth century, than with those\nof the Poet's time.\n\nBut then these wicked and treasonous grumblings being fortunately\nencountered on the spot, and corrected by the king himself in his own\naugust person, would only serve for edification in the end; if,\nindeed, that appeal to the national pride which would conclude the\nmatter, and the glory of that great day which was even then breaking\nin the East, should leave room for any reflections upon it. For it was\nnone other than the field of _Agincourt_ that was subjected to this\nphilosophic inquiry. It was the lustre of that immortal victory which\nwas to England then, what Waterloo and the victories of Nelson are\nnow, that was thus chemically treated beforehand. Under the cover of\nthat renowned triumph, it was, that these soldiers could venture to\nsearch so deeply the question of war in general; it was in the person\nof its imperial hero, that the statesman could venture to touch so\nboldly, an institution which gave to one man, by his own confession no\nbetter or wiser than his neighbours, the power to involve nations in\nsuch horrors.\n\nBut let us join the king in his stroll, and hear for ourselves, what\nit is that these soldiers are discussing, by the camp-fires of\n_Agincourt_;--what it is that this first voice from the ranks has to\nsay for itself. The king has just encountered by the way a poetical\nsentinel, who, not satisfied with the watchword--'_a friend_,'--\nrequests the disguised prince 'to discuss to him, and answer, whether\nhe is an _officer_, or _base, common_, and _popular_,' when the king\nlights on this little group, and the discussion which Pistol had\nsolicited, apparently on his own behalf, actually takes place, for\nthe benefit of the Poet's audience, and the answer to these inquiries\ncomes out in due order.\n\n  _Court_. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks\n  yonder?\n\n  _Bates_. I think it be, _but we have no great cause to desire the\n  approach of day_.\n\n  _Will_. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall\n  never see the end of it. Who goes there?\n\n  _King Henry_. A friend.\n\n  _Will_. Under what captain serve you?\n\n  _King_. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.\n\n  _Will_.  A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman: I pray\n  you, what thinks he of our estate?\n\n  _King._ Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed\n  off the next tide.\n\n  _Bates_. _He hath not told his thought to the king_?\n\n  _King_. No; nor it is not meet that he should; for though _I speak\n  it to you_, I think the king is but a man as I am.\n\nAnd it is here that he proceeds to make that important disclosure\nabove quoted, that all his senses have but human conditions, and that\nall his _affections_, though _higher mounted, stoop with the like\nwing_; and therefore no man should in reason possess him with any\nappearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, 'should dishearten his\narmy.'\n\n  _Bates_. He may show what outward courage he will; but, _I_ believe,\n  as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the\n  Thames, up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by\n  him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.\n\n  _King_. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king. I\n  think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.\n\n  _Bates_. Then would he were here alone; so should he be\n  sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.\n\n  _King_. I dare say you love him not so ill as to wish him here\n  alone; _howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds_;\n  Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's\n  company; _his cause being just, and his quarrel honorable_.\n\n  _Will. That's more than we know._\n\n  _Bates_. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough,\n  if we know we are the king's subjects; if his cause be wrong, our\n  obedience to the _king_ wipes the crime of it out of us.\n\n  _Will_. But _if the cause be not good_, the _king himself hath a\n  heavy reckoning to make_; when all those legs and arms and heads\n  chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and\n  cry all--We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for a\n  surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon\n  the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am\n  afeared that few die well, that die in battle; for how can they\n  _charitably_ dispose of anything _when blood is their argument_?\n  Now if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for\n  the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were _against all\n  proportion of subjection_.\n\n  _King_. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise,\n  do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness,\n  by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or\n  if a servant, under his master's command, transporting a sum of\n  money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many irreconciled\n  iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of\n  the servant's damnation.--But this is not so.... There is no king,\n  be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of\n  swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.\n\nBut the king pursues this question of the royal responsibility until\nhe arrives at the conclusion that _every subject's_ DUTY is THE\nKING'S, BUT EVERY SUBJECT'S SOUL IS HIS OWN, until he shows, indeed,\nthat there is but one ultimate sovereignty; one to which the king and\nhis subjects are alike amenable, which pursues them everywhere, with\nits demands and reckonings,--from whose violated laws there is no\nescape.\n\n  _Will_. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his\n  own head--[no unimportant point in the theology or ethics of that\n  time]--THE KING is not to answer for it.\n\n  _Bates_. I do not desire the king should answer for me, and yet I\n  determine to fight lustily for him.\n\n  _King_. I, myself, heard the king say, he would not be ransomed.\n\n  _Will_. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our\n  throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne'er the wiser.\n\n  _King_. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.\n\n  _Will_. _Mass, you'll pay him then!_ That's a perilous shot out of\n  an _elder gun_, that a poor and _private_ displeasure can do against\n  a monarch. _You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice_, with\n  fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.\n\nAnd, indeed, thus and not any less absurd and monstrous, appeared the\nidea of subjecting the king to any effect from the subject's\ndispleasure, or the idea of calling him to account--this one,\nhelpless, frail, private man, as he has just been conceded by the king\nhimself to be, for any amount of fraud or dishonesty to the nation,\nfor any breach of trust or honour. For his relation to the _mass_ and\nthe source of this fearful irresponsible power was not understood\nthen. The soldier states it well. One might, indeed, as well go about\nto turn the sun to ice, _with fanning in his face_ with a peacock's\nfeather.\n\n  'You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues.\n  'Come, 'tis a foolish saying.'\n\n'Your reproof is something _too round_,' is the king's reply. It is\nindeed round. It is one of those round replies that this poet is so\nfond of, and the king himself becomes 'the private' of it, when once\nthe centre of this play is found, and the sweep of its circumference\nis taken. For the sovereignty of law, the kingship of the universal\nlaw _in whomsoever it speaks_, awful with God's power, armed with\n_his_ pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the\nscientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and\nthe arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols\nof sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in\ntheir struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid\nimagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on\nhere. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal\nnature. It is but the shot out of an '_elder gun_;' he might as well\n'go about to _turn the sun to ice_ with fanning in his face with a\n_peacock's_ feather.' 'I should be angry with you,' continues the\nking, after noticing the roundness of that reply, 'I should be angry\nwith you, if _the time_ were convenient.'\n\nBut as to the poet who composes these dialogues, of course he does not\nknow whether the time is convenient or not;--he has never reflected\nupon any of those grave questions which are here so seriously\ndiscussed. They are not questions in which he can be supposed to have\ntaken any interest. Of course he does not know or care what it is that\nthese men are talking about. It is only for the sake of an artistic\neffect, to pass away the night, and to deepen for his hero the gloom\nwhich was to serve as the foil and sullen ground of his great victory,\nthat his interlocutors are permitted to go on in this manner.\n\nIt is easy to see, however, what extraordinary capabilities this\nparticular form of writing offered to one who _had_ any purpose, or to\nan author, who wished on any account, to '_infold_' somewhat his\nmeaning;--that was the term used then in reference to this style of\nwriting. For certainly, many things dangerous in themselves could be\nshuffled in under cover of an artistic effect, which would not strike\nat the time, amid the agitations, and the skilful checks, and\ncounteractions, of the scene, even the quick ear of despotism itself.\n\nAnd thus King Lear--that impersonation of absolutism--the very\nembodiment of pure will and tyranny in their most frantic form, taken\nout all at once from that hot bath of flatteries to which he had been\nso long accustomed, that his whole self-consciousness had become\nsaturated, tinctured in the grain with them, and he believed himself\nto be, within and without, indestructibly, essentially,--'ay, every\ninch A KING;' with speeches on his supremacy copied, well nigh\nverbatim, from those which Elizabeth's courtiers habitually addressed\nto her, still ringing in his ears, hurled out into a single-handed\ncontest with the elements, stripped of all his 'social and artificial\nlendings,' the poor, bare, unaccommodated, individual man, this living\nsubject of the poet's artistic treatment,--this 'ruined Majesty'\nanatomized alive, taken to pieces literally before our eyes, pursued,\nhunted down scientifically, and robbed in detail of all 'the additions\nof a king'--must, of course, be expected to evince in some way his\nsense of it; 'for soul and body,' this poet tells us, 'rive not more\nin parting than greatness going off.'\n\nOnce conceive the possibility of presenting the action, the dumb show,\nof this piece upon the stage at that time, (there have been times\nsince when it could not be done), and the dialogue, with its\nillimitable freedoms, follows without any difficulty. For the surprise\nof the monarch at the discoveries which this new state of things\nforces upon him,--the speeches he makes, with all the levelling of\ntheir philosophy, with all the unsurpassable boldness of their\npolitical criticism, are too natural and proper to the circumstances,\nto excite any surprise or question.\n\nIndeed, a king, who, nurtured in the flatteries of the palace, was\nunlearned enough in the nature of things, to suppose that _the name_\nof a king was anything but a shadow when _the power_ which had\nsustained its prerogative was withdrawn,--a king who thought that he\ncould still be a king, and maintain 'his state' and 'his hundred\nknights,' and their prerogatives, and all his old arbitrary, despotic\nhumours, with their inevitable encroachment on the will and humours,\nand on the welfare of others, merely on grounds of respect and\naffection, or on grounds of duty, when not merely the care of 'the\nstate,' but the revenues and power of it had been devolved on\nothers--such a one appeared, indeed, to the poet, to be engaging in an\nexperiment very similar to the one which he found in progress in his\ntime, in that old, decayed, riotous form of military government, which\nhad chosen the moment of its utter dependence on the popular will and\nrespect, as the fitting one for its final suppression of the national\nliberties. It was an experiment which was, of course, modified in the\nplay by some diverting and strongly pronounced differences, or it\nwould not have been possible to produce it then; but it was still the\nexperiment of _the unarmed prerogative_, that the old popular tale of\nthe ancient king of Britain offered to the poet's hands, and that was\nan experiment which he was willing to see traced to its natural\nconclusion on paper at least; while in the subsequent development of\nthe plot, the presence of an insulted trampled outcast majesty on the\nstage, furnishes a cover of which the poet is continually availing\nhimself, for putting the case of that other outraged sovereignty,\nwhose cause under one form or another, under all disguises, he is\nalways pleading. And in the poet's hands, the debased and outcast\nking, becomes the impersonation of a debased and violated state, that\nhad given all to its daughters,--the victim of a tyranny not less\nabsolute, the victim, too, of a blindness and fatuity on its own part,\nnot less monstrous, but not, not--_that_ is the poet's word--_not_ yet\nirretrievable.\n\n  'Thou shalt find\n  I will resume that shape, which thou dost think\n  I have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.'\n  'Do you mark that, my lord?'\n\nBut the question of that prerogative, which has consumed, in the\npoet's time, all the faculties of government constitutes only a\nsubordinate part of the action of that great play, into which it is\nhere incorporated; a play which comprehends in its new philosophical\nreaches, in its new and before-unimagined subtilties of analysis, the\nmost radical questions of a practical human science; questions which\nthe practical reason of these modern ages at the moment of its\nawakening, found itself already compelled to grapple with, and master.\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nUNACCOMMODATED MAN.\n\n\n'Consider him well.--Three of us are sophisticated.'\n\nFor this is the grand SOCIAL tragedy. It is the tragedy of an\nunlearned human society; it is the tragedy of a civilization in which\ngrammar, and the relations of sounds and abstract notions to each\nother have sufficed to absorb the attention of the learned,--a\ncivilization in which the parts of speech, and their relations, have\nbeen deeply considered, but one in which the social elements, the\nparts of life, and their unions, and their prosody, have been left to\nspontaneity, and empiricism, and all kinds of rude, arbitrary,\nidiomatical conjunctions, and fortuitous rules; a civilization in\nwhich the learning of 'WORDS' is put down by the reporter--invented--\nand the learning of 'THINGS'--omitted.\n\nAnd in a movement which was designed to bring the human reason to bear\nscientifically and artistically upon those questions in which the\ndeepest human interests are involved, the wrong and misery of that\nsocial state to which the New Machine, with its new combination of\nsense and reason, must be applied, had to be fully and elaborately\nbrought out and exhibited. And there was but one language in which the\nimpersonated human misery and wrong,--the speaker for countless\nhearts, tortured and broken on the rude machinery of unlearned social\ncustoms, and lawless social forces, could speak; there was but one\ntongue in which it could tell its story. For this is the place where\nscience becomes inevitably poetical. That same science which fills our\ncabinets and herbariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute\nstones and shells and plants and dead birds and insects--that same\nscience that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true\nas life itself, and letter-press of prose description--that same\nscience that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic\nnicety,--in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that which had\nmost need of science; and his 'illustrated book' of it, the book of\nhis experiments in it, comes to us filled with his yet living, 'ever\nliving' _subjects_, and resounding with the tragedy of their\ncomplainings.\n\nIt requires but a little reading of that book to find, that the author\nof it is a philosopher who is strongly disposed to ascertain the\nlimits of that thing in nature, which men call fortune,--that is, in\ntheir week-day speech,--they have another name for it 'o' Sundays.' He\nis greatly of the opinion, that the combined and legitimate use of\nthose faculties with which man is beneficently 'armed against diseases\nof the world,' would tend very much to limit those fortuities and\naccidents, those wild blows,--those vicissitudes, that men, in their\nignorance and indolent despair, charge on Fate or ascribe to\nProvidence, while at the same time it would furnish the art of\n_accommodating_ the human mind to that which is inevitable. It is not\nfortune who is blind, but man, he says,--a creature endowed of nature\nfor his place in nature, endowed of God with a godlike faculty,\nlooking before and after--a creature who has eyes, eyes adapted to his\nspecial necessities, but one that will not use them.\n\nAcquaintance with law, as it is actual in nature, and inventions of\narts based on that acquaintance, appear to him to open a large field\nof relief to the human estate, a large field of encroachment on that\nhuman misery, which men have blindly and stupidly acquiesced in\nhitherto, as necessity. For this is the philosopher who borrows, on\nanother page, an ancient fable to teach us that that is not the kind\nof submission which is pleasing to God--that that is not the kind of\n'suffering' that will ever secure his favour. He, for one, is going to\nsearch this social misery to the root, with that same light which the\nancient wise man tells us, 'is as the lamp of God, wherewith He\nsearcheth the inwardness of all secrets.'\n\nThe weakness and ignorance and misery of the _natural_ man,--the\nmisery too of the _artificial man_ as he is,--the misery of man in\nsociety, when that society is cemented with arbitrary customs, and\nunscientific social arts, and when the instinctive spontaneous\ndemoniacal forces of nature, are at large in it; the dependence of the\nsocial Monad, the constitutional specific _human_ dependence, on the\nspecific _human_ law,--the exquisite human liability to injury and\nwrong, which are but the natural indications of those higher arts and\nexcellencies, those unborn pre-destined human arts and excellencies,\nwhich man must struggle through his misery to reach;--that is the\nscientific notion which lies at the bottom of this grand ideal\nrepresentation. It is, in a word, the human social NEED, in all its\ncircumference, clearly sketched, laid out, scientifically, as the\nbasis of the human social ART. It is the negation of that which man's\nconditions, which the _human_ conditions require;--it is the\ncollection on the Table of Exclusion and Rejection, which must precede\nthe _practical_ affirmation.\n\n  _King_. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?\n\n  _Hamlet_. None in the world. It's the image of a murder done in\n  Vienna.\n\nIn the poetic representation of that state of things which was to be\nredressed, the central social figure must, of course, have its place.\nFor it is the Poet, the Experimental Poet, unseen indeed, deep buried\nin his fable, his new movements all hidden under its old garb, and\ndeeper hidden still, in the new splendours he puts on it--it is the\nPoet--invisible but not the less truly, he,--it is the Scientific\nPoet, who comes upon the monarch in his palace at noonday, and says,\n'My business is with thee, O king.' It is he who comes upon the\nselfish arrogant old despot, drunk with Elizabethan flatteries,\nstuffed with '_titles blown_ from adulation,' unmindful of the true\nends of government, reckless of the duties which that regal assumption\nof the common weal brings with it--it is the Poet who comes upon this\nDoctor of Laws in the palace and prescribes to him a course of\ntreatment which the royal patient himself, when once it has taken\neffect, is ready to issure from the hovel's mouth, in the form of a\ngeneral prescription and state ordinance.\n\n  'Take physic, POMP;\n  Expose thyself to _feel_ what wretches _feel_,\n  That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,\n  And show the heavens more just.\n  Oh, I have taken _too little care_ of This!'\n\nIt is that same Poet who has already told us, confidentially, under\ncover of King Hal's mantle, that 'the king himself is but a man' and\nthat 'all his senses have but human conditions and that his\naffections, too, though higher mounted when they stoop, stoop with the\nlike wing; that his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears\nbut a man';--it is that same Poet, and, in carrying out the purpose of\nthis play, it has come in his way now to make good that statement. For\nit was necessary to his purpose here, to show that the State is\ncomposed throughout, down to its most loathsome unimaginable depths of\nneglect and misery, of individual men, social units, clothed of nature\nwith the same faculties and essential human dignities and\nsusceptibilities to good and evil, and crowned of nature with the\ncommon sovereignty of reason,--down-trodden, perhaps, and wrung and\ntrampled out of them, but elected of nature to that dignity; it was\nnecessary to show this, in order that the wisdom of the State which\nsacrifices to the senses of _one_ individual man, and the judgment\nthat is narrowed by the one man's senses, the weal of the whole,--in\norder that the wisdom of the State, which puts at the mercy of the\narbitrary will and passions of _the one_, the weal of _the many_,\nmight be mathematically exhibited,--might be set down in figures and\ndiagrams. For this is that Poet who represents this method of inquiry\nand investigation, as it were, to _the eye_. This is that same Poet,\ntoo, who surprises elsewhere _a queen_ in her swooning passion of\ngrief, and bids her murmur to us her recovering confession.\n\n  'No more, but e'en a woman; and _commanded_\n  By such poor passion, as the maid that milks,\n  And does the meanest chares.'\n\nSo busy is he, indeed, in laying by this king's 'ceremonies' for him,\nbeginning with the first doubtful perception of a most faint\nneglect,--a falling off in the ceremonious affection due to majesty\n'as well in the general dependents as in the duke himself and his\ndaughter,'--so faint that the king dismisses it from his thought, and\ncharges it on his own jealousy till he is reminded of it by\nanother,--beginning with that faint beginning, and continuing the\nprocess not less delicately, through all its swift dramatic\ngradations,--the direct abatement of the regal dignities,--the\nknightly train diminishing,--nay, 'fifty of his followers at a clap'\ntorn from him, his messenger put in the stocks,--and '_it is worse\nthan murder_,' the poor king cries in the anguish of his slaughtered\ndignity and affection, 'to do upon _respect_ such violent\noutrage,'--so bent is the Poet upon this analytic process; so\ndetermined that this shaking out of a '_preconception_,' shall be for\nonce a thorough one, so absorbed with the dignity of the scientific\nexperiment, that he seems bent at one moment on giving a literal\nfinish to this process; but the fool's scruples interfere with the\nphilosophical humour of the king, and the presence of Mad Tom in his\nblanket, with the king's exposition, suffices to complete the\ndemonstration. For not less lively than this, is the preaching and\nillustration, from that new rostrum which this 'Doctor' has contrived\nto make himself master of. 'His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness\nhe appears but a man,' says King Hal. 'Couldst thou save nothing?'\nsays King Lear to the Bedlamite. 'Why thou wert better in thy grave\nthan to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.'\n'_Is man_,'--it is _the king_ who generalises, it is the king who\nintroduces this levelling suggestion here in the _abstract_, while the\nPoet is content with the responsibility of the concrete\nexhibition--'_Is man no wore than this_? Consider him well. Thou owest\nthe worm no silk, the beast no hide, the cat no perfume:--Ha! here's\nthree of us are _sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself_.\nUNACCOMMODATED MAN is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal, as\nthou art. Off, off, you lendings.' But 'the fool' is of the opinion\nthat this scientific process of unwrapping the artificial majesty,\nthis philosophical undressing, has already gone far enough.\n\n'Pry'thee, Nuncle, be contented,' he says, 'it is a naughty night to\nswim in.'\n\nFor it is the great heath wrapped in one of those storms of wind and\nrain and thunder and lightning, which this wizard only of all the\nchildren of men knows how to raise, that he chooses for his\nphysiological exhibition of majesty, when the palace-door has been\nshut upon it, and the last 'additions of a king' have been subtracted.\nIt is a night--\n\n  'Wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,\n  The lion, and the belly-pinched wolf\n  Keep their fur dry'--\n\ninto which he turns his royal patient '_unbonneted_.'\n\nFor the tyranny of wild nature in her elemental uproar must be added\nto the tyranny of the human wildness, the cruelty of the elements must\nconspire, like pernicious ministers, with the cruelty of arbitrary\nHUMAN will and passions, the irrational, INHUMAN social forces must be\njoined by those other forces that make war upon us, before the real\npurpose of this exhibition and the full depth and scientific\ncomprehension of it can begin to appear. It is in the tempest that\nLear finds occasion to give out the Poet's text. Is _man_ no more than\nthis? Consider him well. Unaccommodated man in his struggle with\nnature. Man without social combinations, man without arts to aid him\nin his battle with the elements, or _with_ arts that fence in his\nbody, and robe it, it may be, in delicate and gorgeous apparelling,\narts that roof his head with a princely dome it may be, and add to his\nnative dignity and forces, the means and appliances of a material\ncivilization, but leave his nobler nature with its more living\nsusceptibility to injury, unsheathed, at the mercy of the brute forces\nthat unscientific civilizations, with their coarse laws, with their\ncobwebs of WORDY learning, with their science of abstractions,\nunmatched with the subtilty of THINGS, are compelled to leave at\nlarge, uncaught, unentangled.\n\nYes, it is man in his relation to nature, man in his dependence on\nartificial aid, man in his two-fold dependence on art, that this\ntempest, this double tempest wakes and brings out, for us to\n'consider,'--to 'consider well';--'the naked creature,' that were\nbetter in his grave than to answer with his uncovered body that\nextremity of the skies, and by his side, with his soul uncovered to a\nfiercer blast, his royal brother with 'the tempest in his mind, that\ndoth from his senses take all feeling else, save what beats there.'\n\nIt is the _personal_ weakness, the moral and intellectual as well as\nthe bodily frailty and limitation of faculty, and liability to\nsuffering and outrage, the liability to wrong from treachery, as well\nas violence, which are 'the common' specific _human_ conditions,\ncommon to the King in his palace, and Tom o'Bedlam in his hovel; it is\nthis exquisite human frailty and susceptibility, still unprovided for,\nthat fills the play throughout, and stands forth in these two,\nimpersonated; it is that which fills all the play with the outcry of\nits anguish.\n\nAnd thus it is, that this poor king must needs be brought out into\nthis wild uproar of nature, and stripped of his last adventitious aid,\nreduced to the authority and forces that nature gave him, invaded to\nthe skin, and ready in his frenzy to second the poet's intent, by\nyielding up the last thread of his adventitious and artistic defences.\nAll his artificial, social personality already dissolved, or yet in\nthe agony of its dissolution, all his natural social ties torn and\nbleeding within him, there is yet another kind of trial for him, as\nthe elected and royal representative of the human conditions. For the\nperpetual, the universal interest of this experiment arises from the\nfact, that it is not as _the king_ merely, dissolving like 'a mockery\nking of snow' that this illustrious form stands here, to undergo this\nfierce analysis, but as the representative, 'the conspicuous\ninstance,' of that social name and figure, which all men carry about\nwith them, and take to be a part of themselves, that outward life, in\nwhich men go beyond themselves, by means of their affections, and\nextend their identity, incorporating into their very personality, that\nfloating, contingent material which the wills and humours and\nopinions, the prejudices and passions of others, and the variable tide\nof this world's fortunes make--that social Name and Figure in which\nmen may die many times, ere the physical life is required of them, in\nwhich all men must needs live if they will live in it at all, at the\nmercy of these uncontrolled social eventualities.\n\nThe tragedy is complicated, but it is only that same complication\nwhich the tragedy it stands for, is always exhibiting. The fact that\nthis blow to his state is dealt to him by those to whom nature herself\nhad so dearly and tenderly bound him, nay, with whom she had so\nhopelessly identified him, is that which overwhelms the sufferer. It\nis that which he seeks to understand in vain. He wishes to reason upon\nit, but his mind cannot master it; under that it is that his brain\ngives way,--the first mental confusion begins there. The blow to his\nstate is a subordinate thing with him. It only serves to measure the\nwrong that deals it. The poet takes pains to clear this complication\nin the experiment. It is the wound in the affections which untunes the\njarring senses of 'this _child-changed father_.' It is that which\ninvades his identity.\n\n'Are you _our_ daughter? Does anyone here know me?' That is the word\nwith which he breaks the silence of that dumb amazement, that\nparalysis of frozen wonder which Goneril's first rude assault brings\non him. 'Why, _this is not Lear_; Ha! sure it is not so. Does any one\nhere know me? Who is it that can tell me _who I am_?'\n\nBut with all her cruelty, he cannot shake her off. He curses her; but\nhis curses do not sever the tie.\n\n  'But yet _thou art_ my flesh, my blood, _my daughter_.\n  Or rather, a disease that's in my flesh\n  Which I must needs call _mine_.\n  Filial ingratitude!\n  Is _it not as this mouth should tear this hand\n  For lifting food to it_?'\n\nFor that is the poet's conception of the extent of this social life\nand outgoing--that is the _interior_ of that social whole, in which\nthe dissolution he represents here is proceeding,--and that is the\nkind of new phenomenon which the science of man, when it takes him as\nhe is, not the abstract man of the schools, not the logical man that\nthe Realists and the Nominalists went to blows for, but 'the thing\nitself,' exhibits. As to that other '_man_,'--the man of the old\nphilosophy,--he was not 'worth the whistle,' this one thinks. 'His\nbones were marrowless, his blood was cold, he had no speculation in\nthose eyes that he did glare with.' The New Philosopher will have no\nsuch skeletons in his system. He is getting his _general_ man out of\nparticular cases, building him up solid, from a basis of natural\nhistory, and, as far as he goes, there will be no question, no two\nwords about it, as to whether he _is_ or _is not_. 'For I do take,'\nsays the Advancer of Learning, 'the _consideration_ in general, and at\nlarge, of _Human Nature_, to be fit to be emancipated and made a\nknowledge by itself.' No wonder if some new aspects of these ordinary\nphenomena, these 'common things,' as he calls them, should come out,\nwhen they too come to be subjected to a scientific inquiry, and when\nthe Poet of this Advancement, this so subtle Poet of it, begins to\nexplore them.\n\nAnd as to this particular point which he puts down with so much care,\nthis point which poor Lear is illustrating here, viz. 'that our\naffections carry themselves beyond us,' as the sage of the 'Mountain'\nexpresses it, this is the view the same Poet gives of it, in\naccounting for Ophelia's madness.\n\n  'Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,\n  It sends some precious instance of itself,\n  After the thing it loves.'\n\n'Your old kind father,' continues Lear, searching to the quick the\nsecrets of this 'broken-heartedness,' as people are content to call\nit, this ill to which the human species is notoriously liable, though\nphilosophy had not thought it worth while before 'to find it out;'\n\n  'Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--\n  O _that way_ madness lies; let me shun _that_,\n  No more of _that_.'\n\nAnd it is while he is still undergoing the last extreme of the\nsuffering which the human wrong is capable of inflicting on the\naffections, that he comes in the Poet's hands to exhibit also the\nunexplored depth of that wrong,--that monstrous, inhuman social error,\nthat perpetual outrage on nature in her _human_ law, which leaves the\nhelpless human outcast to the rough discipline of nature, which casts\nhim out from the family of man, from its common love and shelter, and\nleaves him in his vices, and helplessness, and ignorance, to contend\nalone with great nature and her unrelenting consequences.\n\n                         'To wilful men\n  The injuries that they themselves procure,\n  Must be their school-masters,'--\n\nis the point which the philosophic Regan makes, as she bids them shut\nthe door in her father's face; but it is the common human relationship\nthat the Poet is intent on clearing, while he notes the special\nrelationship also; he does not limit his humanities to the ties of\nblood, or household sympathies, or social gradations.\n\nBut Regan's views on this point are seconded and sustained, and there\nseems to be but one opinion on the subject among those who happen to\nhave that castle in possession; at least the timid owner of it does\nnot feel himself in a position to make any forcible resistance to the\norders which his illustrious guests, who have 'taken from him the use\nof his own house,' have seen fit to issue in it. 'Shut up your doors,\n(says Cornwall),\n\n  'Shut up your doors, my lord: 'tis a wild night.\n  _My_ REGAN COUNSELS _well_; COME OUT O' THE STORM.'\n\nAnd it is because this representation is artistic and dramatic, and\nnot simply historical, and the Poet must seek to condense, and sum and\nexhibit in dramatic appreciable figures, the unreckonable, undefinable\nhistorical suffering of years, aad lifetimes of this vain human\nstruggle,--because, too, the wildest threats which nature in her\nterrors makes to man, had to be incorporated in this great philosophic\npiece; and because, lastly, the Poet would have the madness of the\nhuman will and passion, presented in its true scientific relations,\nthat this storm collects into itself such ideal sublimities, and\nborrows from the human passion so many images of cruelty.\n\nIn all the mad anguish of that ruined greatness, and wronged natural\naffection, the Poet, relentless as fortune herself in her sternest\nmoods, intent on his experiment only, will bring out his great victim,\nand consign him to the wind and the rain, and the lightning, and the\nthunder, and bid his _senses_ undergo _their_ 'horrible pleasure.'\n\nFor the senses, scorned as they had been in philosophy hitherto, the\nsenses in this philosophy, have _their_ report also,--their full,\nhonest report, to make to us. And the design of this piece, as already\nstated in the general, required in its execution, not only that these\ntwo kinds of suffering, these two grand departments of human need,\nshould be included and distinguished in it, but that they should be\nbrought together in this one man's experience, so that a deliberate\ncomparison can be instituted between them; and the Poet will bid the\nphilosophic king, the living 'subject' himself, report the experiment,\nand tell us plainly, once for all, whether the science of the physical\nArts only, is the science which is wanting to man; or whether\narts--scientific arts--that take hold of the moral nature, also, and\ndeal with that not less effectively, can be dispensed with; whether,\nindeed, man is in any condition to dispense with _the_ Science and\n_the_ Art which puts him into intelligent and harmonious relations\nwith nature in general.\n\nIt was necessary to the purpose of the play to exhibit man's\ndependence on art, by means of his senses _and_ his sensibilities, and\nhis intellectual conditions, and all his frailties and liabilities,--\nhis dependence on art, based on the knowledge of natural laws,\nuniversal laws,--constitutions, which _include_ the human. It was\nnecessary to exhibit the whole misery, the last extreme of that\nsocial evil, to which a creature so naturally frail and ignorant is\nliable, under those coarse, fortuitous, inartistic, unscientific\nsocial conglomerations, which ignorant and barbarous ages build, and\nunder the tyranny of those wild, barbaric social evils, which our fine\nsocial institutions, notwithstanding the universality of their terms,\nand the transcendant nature of the forces which they are understood to\nhave at their disposal, for some fatal reason or other, do not yet\nsucceed in reducing.\n\nIt is, indeed, the whole ground of the Scientific Human Art, which is\nrevealed here by the light of this great passion, and that, in this\nPoet's opinion, is none other than the ground of the human want, and\nis as large and various as that. And the careful reader of this\nplay,--the patient searcher of its subtle lore,--the diligent\ncollector of its thick-crowding philosophic points and flashing\ncondensations of discovery, will find that the _need of arts_, is that\nwhich is set forth in it, with all the power of its magnificent poetic\nembodiment, and in the abstract as well,--the need of arts infinitely\nmore noble and effective, more nearly matched with the subtlety of\nnature, and better able to entangle and subdue its oppositions, than\nany of which mankind have yet been able to possess themselves, or ever\nthe true intention of nature in the human form can be realized, or\nanything like a truly Human Constitution, or Common-Weal, is possible.\n\nBut let us return to the comparison, and collect the results of this\nexperiment.--For a time, indeed, raised by that storm of grief and\nindignation into a companionship with the wind and the rain, and the\nlightning, and the thunder, the king 'strives in his little world of\nman,'--for that is the phrasing of the poetic report, to _out-scorn_\nthese elements. Nay, we ourselves hear, as the curtain rises on that\nideal representative form of human suffering, the wild intonation of\nthat human defiance--mounting and singing above the thunder, and\ndrowning all the elemental crash with its articulation; for this is an\nexperiment which the philosopher will try in the presence of his\naudience, and not report it merely. With that anguish in his heart,\nthe crushed majesty, the stricken old man, the child-wounded father,\nlaughs at the pains of _the senses_; the physical distress is welcome\nto him, he is glad of it. He does not care for anything that the\n_unconscious_, soulless elements can do to him, he calls to them from\ntheir heights, and bids them do their worst. Or it is only as they\nconspire with that _wilful human_ wrong, and serve to bring home to\nhim anew the depth of it, by these tangible, sensuous effects,--it is\nonly by that means that they are able to wound him.\n\n  'Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters,'\n\n_that_ is the argument.\n\n'I tax you _not_, you elements, with _unkindness_.'\n\nSurely that is logical; that is a distinction not without a\ndifference, and appreciable to the human mind, as it is\nconstituted,--surely that is a point worth putting in the arts and\nsciences.\n\n  'I never gave you kingdoms, called you _children_;\n  You _owe_ me no subscription; why, _then_, let fall\n  Your horrible pleasure? Here I stand _your_ slave,\n  A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man;\n  But _yet_, I call you _servile ministers_,\n  That have with two pernicious daughters _joined_\n  Your high, engendered battles 'gainst a head\n  _So old and white_ as this. O, O, '_tis foul_.'\n\nAnd in his calmer mood, when the storm has done its work upon him, and\nall the strength of his great passion is exhausted,--when his bodily\npowers are fast sinking under it, and like the subtle Hamlet's 'potent\npoison,' it begins at last to 'o'er-crow his spirit'--when he is faint\nwith struggling with its fury, wet to the skin with it, and\ncomfortless and shivering, he still maintains through his chattering\nteeth the argument; he will still defend his first position--\n\n  'Thou thinkst 'tis much that this _contentious_ storm\n  Invades _us_ to the skin; so 'tis to thee,\n  But where the greater _malady_ is fixed,\n  The _lesser_ is scarce felt.'\n\n  'The tempest in my mind\n  Doth from my senses take all feeling else,\n  Save what beats there.'\n\n  'In _such_ a night\n  _To shut me out! Pour on_, I will endure.\n  _In such a night as this_.'\n\nAnd when the shelter he is at last forced to seek is found, at the\ndoor his courage fails him; and he shrinks back into the storm again,\nbecause 'it will not give him leave to think on that _which hurts him\nmore_.'\n\nSo nicely does the Poet balance these ills, and report the swaying\nmovement. But it is a poet who does not take common-place opinions on\nthis, or on any other such subject. He is one whose poetic work does\nnot consist in illustrating these received opinions, or in finding\nsome novel and fine expression for them. He is observing nature, and\nundertaking to report it, as it is, not as it should be according to\nthese preconceptions, or according to the established poetic notions\nof the heroic requisitions.\n\nBut there is no stage that can exhibit his experiment here in its real\nsignificance, excepting that one which he himself builds for us; for\nit is the vast lonely heath, and the _Man_, the pigmy man, on it--and\nthe KING, the pigmy king, on it;--it is all the wild roar of elemental\nnature, and the tempest in that '_little world_ of man,' that have to\nmeasure their forces, that have to be brought into continuous and\npersevering contest. It is not Gloster only, who sees in that storm\nwhat 'makes him think that _a man_ is but _a worm_.'\n\nDoubtless, it would have been more in accordance with the old poetic\nnotions, if this poor king had maintained his ground without any\nmisgiving at all; but it is a poet of a new order, and not the old\nheroic one, who has the conducting of this experiment; and though his\nverse is not without certain sublimities of its own, they have to\nconsist with the report of the fact as it is, to its most honest and\nunpoetic, unheroic detail.\n\nAnd notwithstanding all the poetry of that passionate defiance, it is\nthe physical storm that triumphs in the end. The contest between that\nlittle world of man and the great outdoor world of nature was too\nunequal. Compelled at last to succumb, yielding to 'the tyranny of the\nopen night, that is _too rough_ for _nature to endure_--the night that\nfrightens the very wanderers of the dark, and makes _them_ keep their\ncaves, while it reaches, with its poetic combination of horrors, that\nborder line of the human conception which great Nature's pencil, in\nthis Poet's hand, is always reaching and completing,--\n\n  '_Man's_ nature cannot carry\n  The affliction nor _the fear_.'\n\n--Unable to contend any longer with 'the _fretful_ element'--unable to\n'_outscorn_' any longer 'the to and fro conflicting wind and\nrain'--weary of struggling with 'the _impetuous_ blasts,' that in\ntheir 'eyeless _rage_' and '_fury_' care no more for age and reverence\nthan his _daughters_ do--that seize his white hairs, and make nothing\nof them--'exposed to _feel_ what _wretches_ feel'--he finds at last,\nwith surprise, that art--the wretch's art--that can make vile things\n_precious_. No longer clamoring for 'the additions of a king,' but\nthankful for the basest means of shelter from the elements, glad to\navail himself of the rudest structure with which art '_accommodates_'\nman to nature, (for that is the word of this philosophy, where it is\nfirst proposed)--glad to divide with his meanest subject that shelter\nwhich the outcast seeks on such a night--ready to creep with him,\nunder it, side by side--'fain to hovel with _swine_ and rogues\nforlorn, in short and musty straw'--surely we have reached a point at\nlast where the _action_ of the piece itself--the mere 'dumb show' of\nit--becomes luminous, and hardly needs the player's eloquence to tell\nus what it means.\n\nSurely this is a little like 'the language' of _Periander's_ message,\nwhen he bid the messenger observe and _report what he saw him do_. It\nis very important to note that ideas may be conveyed in this way as\nwell as by words, the author of the Advancement of Learning remarks,\nin speaking of the tradition of the principal and supreme sciences. He\ntakes pains to notice, also, that a representation, by means of these\n'transient hieroglyphics,' is much more moving to the sensibilities,\nand leaves a more vivid and durable impression on the memory, than the\nmost eloquent statement in mere words. 'What is _sensible_ always\nstrikes the memory more strongly, and sooner impresses itself, than\nwhat is _intellectual_. Thus the memory of _brutes_ is excited by\nsensible, but not by intellectual things;' and thus, also, he proposes\nto impress that _class_ which Coriolanus speaks of, 'whose eyes are\nmore learned than their ears,' to whom 'action is eloquence.' Here we\nhave the advantage of the combination, for there is no part of the\ndumb show, but has its word of scientific comment and interpretation.\n\n  'Art cold [to the Fool]?\n  I am cold myself. _Where is this_ STRAW, _my fellow_?\n  The art of our necessities is strange,\n  That can make vile things _precious_. Come, _your hovel_.\n  Come, bring us to this _hovel_.'\n\nFor this is what that wild tragic poetic resistance and defiance comes\nto--this is what the 'unaccommodated man' comes to, though it is the\nhighest person in the state, stripped of his ceremonies and artificial\nappliances, on whom the experiment is tried.\n\n  'Where is this straw, my fellow? Art _cold_? I am cold _myself_.\n  Come, your hovel. Come, bring us to this _hovel_.'\n\nWhen that royal edict is obeyed,--when the wonders of the magician's\nart are put in requisition to fulfil it,--when the road from the\npalace to the hovel is laid open,--when the hovel, where Tom o' Bedlam\nis nestling in the straw, is produced on the stage, and THE KING--THE\nKING--stoops, before all men's eyes, to creep into its mouth,--surely\nwe do not need 'a _chorus_ to interpret for us'--we do not need to\nwait for the Poet's own deferred exposition to seize the more obvious\nmeanings. Surely, one catches enough in passing, in the dialogues and\ntableaux here, to perceive that there is something going on in this\nplay which is not all play,--something that will be earnest, perhaps,\nere all is done,--something which 'the groundlings' were not expected\nto get, perhaps, in 'their sixe-penn'orth' of it at the first\nperformance,--something which that witty and splendid company, who\nmade up the Christmas party at Whitehall, on the occasion of its first\nexhibition there, who sat there 'rustling in silk,' breathing\nperfumes, glittering in wealth that the alchemy of the storm had not\ntried, were not, perhaps, all informed of; though there might have\nbeen one among them, 'a gentleman of blood and breeding,' who could\nhave told them what it meant.\n\n'We construct,' says the person who describes this method of\nphilosophic instruction, speaking of the subtle prepared history which\nforces the inductions--'we construct tables and combinations of\ninstances, upon such a plan, and in such order, that the understanding\nmay be enabled to act upon them.'\n\n'They told me I was everything.'\n\n_They told me I was everything_,' says the poor king himself, long\nafterwards, when the storm has had its ultimate effect upon him.\n\n'To say ay and no to everything that I said!--[To say] ay and no _too_\nWAS NO GOOD DIVINITY. They told me, I had _white_ hairs in my beard,\nere the _black_ ones were there. When the rain came to wet me once,\nand the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at\n_my bidding_; there I found them, _there_ I smelt them out. Go to,\nthey are not men of their words: they told me I was everything; _'tis\na lie; I am not ague-proof_.'\n\n'_I_ think the king is but a man, as I am' [says King Hal], 'All his\n_senses_ have the like conditions; and his _affections_, though higher\nmounted, when they stoop, stoop with _the like wing_.'\n\nBut at the door of that rude hut the ruined majesty pauses. In vain\nhis loving attendants, whom, for love's sake, this Poet will still\nhave with him, entreat him to enter. Storm-battered, and wet, and\nshivering as he is, he shrinks back from the shelter he has bid them\nbring him to. He will not '_in_.' Why? Is it because 'the tempest will\nnot give him leave to ponder on things would hurt him more.' That is\nhis excuse at first; but another blast strikes him, and he yields to\n'the to and fro conflicting wind and rain,' and says--\n\n'_But_ I'll go in.'\n\nYet still he pauses. Why? Because he has not told us why he is\nthere;--because he is in the hands of the Poet of the Human Kind, the\npoet of 'those common things that our ordinary life consisteth of,'\nwho will have of them an argument that shall shame that 'resplendent\nand lustrous mass of matter' that old philosophers and poets have\nchosen for theirs;--because the rare accident--the wild, poetic,\nunheard-of accident--which has brought a man, old in luxuries, clothed\nin soft raiment, nurtured in king's houses, into this rude, unaided\ncollision with nature;--the poetic impossibility, which has brought\nthe one man from the apex of the social structure down this giddy\ndepth, to this lowest social level;--the accident which has given the\n'one man,' who has the divine disposal of the common weal, this little\ncasual experimental taste of the weal which his wisdom has been able\nto provide for the many--of the weal which a government so divinely\nordered, from its pinnacle of _personal_ ease and luxury, thinks\nsufficient and divine enough for _the many_,--this accident--this\ngrand poetic accident--with all its exquisite poetic effects, is, in\nthis poet's hands, the means, not the end. This poor king's great\ntragedy, the loss of his social position, his broken-heartedness, his\noutcast suffering, with all the aggravations of this poetic descent,\nand the force of its vivid contrasts--with all the luxurious\nimpressions on the sensibilities which the ideal wonders of the rude\nold fable yield so easily in this Poet's hands,--this rare accident,\nand moving marvel of poetic calamity,--this 'one man's' tragedy is not\nthe tragedy that this Poet's soul is big with. It is the tragedy of\nthe Many, and not the One,--it is the tragedy that is the rule, and\nnot the exception,--it is the tragedy that is common, and not that\nwhich is singular, whose argument this Poet has undertaken to manage.\n\n'Come, bring us to your hovel.'\n\nThe royal command is obeyed; and the house of that estate, which has\nno need to borrow its title of plurality to establish the grandeur of\nits claim, springs up at the New Magician's word, and stands before us\non the scientific stage in its colossal, portentous, scientific\ngrandeur; and the king--the king--is at the door of it: the _Monarch_\nis at the door of the _Many_. For the scientific Poet has had his eye\non that structure, and he will make of it a thing of wonder, that\nshall rival old poets' fancy pieces, and drive our entomologists and\nconchologists to despair, and drive them off the stage with their\ncuriosities and marvels. There is no need of a Poet's going to the\nsupernatural for 'machinery,' this Poet thinks, while there's such\nmachinery as this ready to his hands unemployed. 'There's something in\nthis more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.' There's no\nneed of going to the antique for his models; for he is inventing the\narts that will make of this an _antiquity_.\n\nThe Monarch has found his meanest subject's shelter, but at the door\nof it he is arrested--nailed with a nail fastened by the Master of\nAssemblies. He has come down from that dizzy height, on the Poet's\nerrand. He is there to speak the Poet's word,--to illustrate that\ngrave abstract learning which the Poet has put on another page, with a\nnote that, as it stands there, notwithstanding the learned airs it\nhas, it is _not_ learning, but 'the husk and shell' of it. For this is\nthe philosopher who puts it down as a primary Article of Science, that\ngovernments should be based on a scientific acquaintance with 'the\n_natures, dispositions, necessities_ and _discontents_ of _the\npeople_'; and though in his book of the Advancement of Learning, he\nsuggests that these points '_ought to be_,' considering the means of\nascertaining them at the disposal of the government, 'considering the\nvariety of its intelligences, the wisdom of its observations, and the\nheight of the station where it keeps sentinel, _transparent as\ncrystal,'--here_ he puts the case of a government that had not availed\nitself of those extraordinary means of ascertaining the truth at a\ndistance, and was therefore in the way of discovering much that was\nnew, in the course of an accidental personal descent into the lower\nand more inaccessible regions of the _Common_ Weal it had ordered.\nThis is the _crystal_ which proves after all the most transparent for\nhim. This is the help for weak eyes which becomes necessary sometimes,\nin the absence of the scientific crystal, which is its equivalent.\n\nThe Monarch is at the hovel's door, but he cannot enter. Why? Because\nhe is in that school into which his own wise REGAN, that '_counsels_'\nso 'well'--that _Regan_ who sat at his own council-table so long, has\nturned him; and it is a school in which the lessons must be learned\n'_by heart_,' and there is no shelter for him from its pitiless\nbeating in this Poet's economy, till that lesson he was sent there to\nlearn has been learned; and it was a Monarch's lesson, and at the\nHovel's door he must recite it. He _will_ not enter. Why? Because the\ngreat lesson of state has entered his soul: with the sharpness of its\nillustration it has _pierced_ him: his spirit is dilated, and moved\nand kindling with its grandeur: he is thinking of 'the Many,' he has\nforgotten 'the One,'--the many, all whose senses have like conditions,\nwhose affections stoop with the like wing. He will not enter, because\nhe thinks it unregal, inhuman, mean, selfish to engross the luxury of\nthe hovel's shelter, and the warmth of the 'precious' straw, while he\nknows that he has subjects still abroad with senses like his own,\ncapable of the like misery, still exposed to its merciless cruelties.\nIt was the tenant of the castle, it was the man in the house who said,\n'Come, let's be snug and cheery here. _Shut up the door_. Let's have a\nfire, and a feast, and a song,--or a psalm, or a prayer, as the case\nmay be; only let it be _within_--no matter which it is':\n\n  'Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night,--\n  _My Regan counsels_ well; come out o' the storm.'\n\nBut here it is the houseless man, who is thinking of his kindred,--his\nroyal family, for whom God has made him responsible, out in this same\nstorm unbonneted; and in the tenderness of that sympathy, in the\nsearching delicacy of that feeling with which he scrutinizes now their\ncase, they seem to him less able than himself to resist its elemental\n'_tyranny_.' For in that ideal revolution--in that exact turn of the\nwheel of fortune--in that experimental 'change of places,' which the\nPoet recommends to those who occupy the upper ones in, the social\nstructure, as a means of a more particular and practical acquaintance\nwith the conditions of those for whom they legislate, new views of the\ncommon natural human relations; new views of the ends of social\ncombinations are perpetually flashing on him; for it is the fallen\nmonarch himself, the late owner and disposer of the Common Weal, it is\nthis strangely _philosophic_, mysteriously philosophic,\nking--philosophic as that Alfred who was going to succeed him--it is\nthe king who is chosen by the Poet as the chief commentator and\nexpounder of that new political and social doctrine which the action\nof this play is itself suggesting.\n\nIn that school of the tempest; in that one night's personal experience\nof the misery that underlies the pompous social structure, with all\nits stately splendours and divine pretensions; in that New School of\nthe Experimental Science, the king has been taking lessons in the art\nof majesty. The alchemy of it has robbed him of the external adjuncts\nand 'additions of a king,' but the sovereignty of MERCY, the divine\nright of PITY, the majesty of the HUMAN KINDNESS, the grandeur of the\nCOMMON WEAL, 'breathes through his lips' from the Poet's heart 'like\nman new made.'\n\n  _Kent_. Good, my lord, enter here.\n\n  _Lear_. Prythee, go in thyself. _Seek thine own ease_.\n   .    .    .    .   But, I'll go in.\n  In, boy,--_go first--[To the Fool.]_\n  You, _houseless_ poverty'--\n\nHe knows the meaning of that phrase now.\n\n  'Nay get thee in. I'll PRAY, and then I'll sleep.'\n\n  [_Fool goes in_.]\n\n  'Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are\n  That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,'--\n\nThere are no empty phrases in this prayer, the critic of it may\nperceive: it is a learned prayer; the petitioner knows the meaning of\neach word in it: the tempest is the book in which he studied it.\n\n  'How shall your _houseless heads_ and _unfed sides_,\n  Your _looped_ and _windowed raggedness_ defend you\n  From _seasons such as these_? O, I have taken\n  _Too little care of_ THIS. [Hear, hear]. Take physic, POMP; [Hear.]\n  Expose thyself to _feel_ what wretches _feel_,\n  _That thou mayest shake the superflux to them_,\n  _And show the_ HEAVENS _more just_.'\n\nThat is his _prayer_. To minds accustomed to the ceremonial a\nreligious worship, 'with court holy water in a dry house' only, or to\nthose who have never undertaken to compose a prayer for the king and\nall the royal family at the hovel's mouth, and in such immediate\nproximity to animals of a different species, it will not perhaps seem\na very pious one. But considering that it was understood to have been\ncomposed during the heathen ages of this realm, and before\nChristianity had got itself so comfortably established as a principle\nof government and social regulations, perhaps it was as good a prayer\nfor a penitent king to go to sleep on, as could well be invented.\nCertainly the spirit of Christianity, as it appeared in the life of\nits Founder, at least, seems to be, by a poetic anachronism\nincorporated in it.\n\nBut it is never the custom of this author to leave the diligent\nstudent of his performances in any doubt whatever as to his meaning.\nIt is a rule, that everything in the play shall speak and reverberate\nhis purpose. He prolongs and repeats his burthens, till the whole\naction echoes with them, till 'the groves, the fountains, every region\nnear, seem all one mutual cry.' He has indeed the Teacher's trick of\nrepetition, but then he is 'so rare a wondered teacher,' so rich in\nmagical resources, that he does not often find it necessary to weary\n_the sense_ with sameness. He is prodigal in variety. It is a Proteus\nrepetition. But his charge to his Ariel in getting up his Masques,\nalways is,--\n\n                  'Bring a corollary,\n  Rather than want a spirit.'\n\nNay, it would be dangerous, not wearisome merely, to make the text of\nthis living commentary continuous, or to bring too near together\n'those short and pithy sentences' wherein the action unwinds and\nfashions into its immortal groups. And the curtain must fall and rise\nagain, ere the outcast duke,--his eyes gouged out by tyranny, turned\nforth to smell his way to Dover,--can dare to echo, word by word, the\nthoughts of the outcast king.\n\nLed by one whose qualification for leadership is, that he is 'Madman\nand Beggar, too,'--for as Gloster explains it to us, explaining also\nat the same time much else that the scenic language of the play, the\ndumb show, the transitory hieroglyphic of it presents, and _all_ the\ncriticism of it,\n\n  ''T IS THE TIME'S PLAGUE WHEN MADMEN LEAD THE BLIND'--\n\ngroping with such leadership his way to Dover--'smelling it out'--thus\nit is that his secret understanding with the king, in that mad and\nwondrous philosophical humour of his, betrays itself.\n\n  _Gloster_. Here, take this purse [to Tom o'Bedlam], _thou whom the\n  heaven's plagues\n  Have humbled to all strokes_: that I am wretched\n  Makes thee the happier:--_Heavens, deal so still_!\n  Let the _superfluous_ and lust-dieted man\n  That _slaves_ your ordinance, that will not SEE\n  _Because_ he doth not FEEL, feel your power quickly;\n  _So distribution should undo excess,\n  And each man have enough_.\n\n  _Lear_. O I have taken\n  _Too little care of this._ Take physic, Pomp;\n  Expose thyself to FEEL what wretches FEEL,\n  _That_ thou may'st shake the _superflux to them,\n  And show the Heavens more just_.\n\nTruly, these men would seem to have been taking lessons in the same\nschool. But it is very seldom that two men in real life, of equal\nlearning on any topic, coincide so exactly in their trains of thought,\nand in the niceties of their expression in discussing it. The emphasis\nis deep, indeed, when _this_ author graves his meaning with _such_ a\nrepetition. But Regan's stern school-master is abroad in this play,\nenforcing the philosophic subtleties, bringing home to the _senses_\nthe neglected lessons of nature; full of errands to '_wilful men_,'\ncharged with coarse lessons to those who will learn through the senses\nonly great Nature's lore--that '_slave_ Heaven's ordinance--that will\nnot SEE, because they do not FEEL.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE KING AND THE BEGGAR.\n\n\n  _Armado_. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?\n\n  _Moth_. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages\n  since: but, I think, now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it\n  would neither serve for the writing, _nor for the tune_.\n\n  _Armado_. I will have the subject newly writ over, _that I\n  may example my digression\n  by some mighty precedent_.\n             _Love's Labour's Lost._\n\nBut the king's philosophical studies are not yet completed; for he is\nin the hands of one who does not rely on general statements for his\neffects; one who is pertinaciously bent on exploring those\nsubterranean social depths, that the king's prayer has just glanced\nat--who is determined to lay bare to the utmost, to carry the torch of\nhis new science into the lowest recess of that wild, nameless mass of\nhuman neglect and misery, which the regal sympathy has embraced for\nhim in the general; though not, indeed, without some niceties of\ndetail, which shew that the eye of a true human pity has collected the\nterms in which he expresses it.\n\nThat vast, immeasurable mass of social misery, which has no learned\nspeech, no tragic dialect--no, or 'it would bear such an emphasis,'\nthat 'its phrase of sorrow might conjure the wandering stars, and bid\nthem stand like wonder-wounded hearers'--that misery which must get a\nking's robe about it, ere, in the Poet's time, it could have an\naudience, must needs be produced here, ere all this play was played,\nin its own native and proper shape and costume, daring as the attempt\nmight seem.\n\nThe author is not satisfied with the picturesque details of that\nmisery which he has already given us, with its 'looped and windowed\nraggedness,' its 'houseless head,' its 'unfed sides'; it must be yet\nmore palpably presented. It must be embodied and dramatically\ndeveloped; it must be exhibited with its proper moral and intellectual\naccompaniments, too, before the philosophic requisitions of this\ndesign can be fulfilled.\n\nTo the lowest deeps of the lowest depths of the unfathomed social\nmisery of that time, the new philosopher, the Poet of the Advancement\nof Learning, will himself descend; and drag up to the eye of\nday,--undeterred by any scruple of poetic sensibility,--in his own\nunborrowed habiliments, with all the badges of _his_ position in the\nstate upon him, the creature he has selected as one of the\nrepresentatives of the social state as he finds it;--the creature he\nhas selected as the representative of those loathsome, unpenetrated\nmasses of _human_ life, which the unscientific social state must needs\ngenerate.\n\nFor the design of this play, in its exhibition of the true human need,\nin its new and large exhibition of the ground which the Arts of a true\nand rational human civilization must cover, could not but include the\n_defects_ of that, which passed for civilization then. It involved\nnecessarily, indeed, the most searching and relentless criticisms of\nthe existing institutions of that time. That cry of social misery\nwhich pervades it, in which the natural, and social, and artificial\nevils are still discriminated through all the most tragic bursts of\npassion--in which the true social need, in all its comprehension, is\nuttered--that wild cry of human anguish, prolonged, and repeated, and\nreverberated as it is--is all one outcry upon the social wisdom of the\nPoet's time. It constitutes one continuous dramatic expression and\nembodiment of that so deeply-rooted opinion which the New Philosopher\nis known to have entertained, in regard to the practical knowledge of\nmankind as he found it; his opinion of the real advances towards the\ntrue human ends which had been made in his time; an opinion which he\nhas, indeed, taken occasion to express elsewhere with some\ndistinctness, considering the conditions which hampered the expression\nof his philosophical conclusions; but it is one which could hardly\nhave been produced from the philosophic chair in his time, or from the\nbench, or at the council-table, in such terms as we find him launching\nout into here, without any fear or scruple.\n\nFor those who persuade themselves that it was any part of this\nplayer's intention to bring out, for the amusement of his audiences,\nan historical exhibition of the Life and Times of that ancient Celtic\nking of Britain, whose legendary name and chronicle he has\nappropriated so effectively, will be prevented by that view of the\nsubject from ever attaining the least inkling of the matter here. For\nthis Magician has quite other work in hand. He does not put his\ngirdles round the earth, and enforce and harass with toil his delicate\nspirits,--he does not get out his book and staff, and put on his\nEnchanter's robe, for any such kind of effect as that. For this is not\nany antiquary at all, but the true Prospero; and when a little more\nlight has been brought into his cell, his garments will be found to\nbe, like the disguised Edgar's--'_Persian_.'\n\nIt is not enough, then, in the wild revolutionary sweep of this play,\nto bring out the monarch from his palace, and set him down at the\nhovel's door. It is not enough to open it, and shew us, by the light\nof Cordelia's pity--that sunshine and rain at once--the '_swine_' in\nthat human dwelling, and 'the short and musty-straw' there. For the\npoet himself will enter it, and drag out its living human tenant into\nthe day of his immortal verse. He will set him up for all ages, on his\ngreat stage, side by side with his great brother. He will put the feet\nof these two men on one platform, and measure their stature--for all\ntheir senses have the like conditions, as we have heard already; and\nhe will make the king himself own the KINDRED, and interpret for him.\nFor this group must needs be completed _'to the eye_'; these two\nextremes in the social scale must meet and literally embrace each\nother, before this Teacher's doctrine of 'MAN'--'man as distinguished\nfrom other species'--can be artistically exhibited. For it is this\npicture of the unaccommodated man--'unaccommodated' still, with all\nhis empiric arts, with all his wordy philosophy--it is this picture of\nman '_as he is_,' in the misery of his IGNORANCE, in his blind\nstruggle with his law of KIND, which is his law of 'BEING,'--\nunreconciled to his place in the universal order, where he must\nlive or have no life--for the beast, obedient to his law, rejects\nfrom his kinds the _degenerate_ man--it is this vivid, condensed,\nscientific exhibition, this scientific collection of the fact of man\nas he is, in his empiric struggle with the law which universal nature\nenforces, and will enforce on him with all her pains and penalties\ntill he learns it--it is this '_negation_' which brings out the true\ndoctrine of man and human society in this method of inquiry. For the\nscientific method begins with negations and exclusions, and concludes\nonly after every species of rejection; the other, the common method,\nwhich begins with 'AFFIRMATION,' is the one that has failed in\npractice, the one which has brought about just this state of things\nwhich science is undertaking to reform.\n\nBut this _levelling_, which the man of the new science, with his new\napparatus, with his 'globe and his machines,' contrives to exhibit\nhere with so much '_facility_,' is a scientific one, designed to\nanswer a scientific purpose merely. The experimenter, in this case, is\none who looks with scientific forebodings, and not with hope only, on\nthose storms of violent political revolution that were hanging then on\nthe world's horizon, and threatening to repeat this process,\nthreatening to overwhelm in their wild crash, all the ancient social\nstructures--threatening 'to lay all flat'! That is not the kind of\nchange he meditates. His is the subtle, all-penetrating Radicalism of\nthe New Science, which imitates the noiseless processes of Nature in\nits change and _Re-formation_.\n\nThere is a wild gibberish heard in the straw. The fool shrieks,\n'Nuncle, come not in here,' and out rushes 'Tom o Bedlam'--the naked\ncreature, as Gloster calls him--with his 'elf locks,' his 'blanketed\nloins,' his 'begrimed face,' with his shattered wits, his madness,\nreal or assumed--there he stands.\n\nWe know, indeed, in this instance, that there is gentle, nay, noble\nblood, there, under that horrid guise. It is the heir of a dukedom, we\nare told, but an out-cast one, who has found himself compelled, for\nthe sake of prolonging life, to assume that shape, as other wretches\nwere in the Poet's time for that same purpose,--men who had lost\n_their_ dukedoms, too, as it would seem, such as they were, in some\nway, and their human relationships, too. But notwithstanding this\nalleviating circumstance which enables the audience to endure the\nexhibition in this instance, it serves not the less effectually in the\nPoet's hand, as 'THE CONSPICUOUS INSTANCE' of that lowest human\ncondition which this grand Social Tragedy must needs include in its\ndelineations.\n\nHere are some of the prose English descriptions of this creature,\nwhich we find already included in the commentaries on this tragedy;\nand which shew that the Poet has not exaggerated his portrait, and\nthat it is not by way of celebrating any Anglo-Saxon or Norman triumph\nover the barbarisms of the _joint_ reigns of REGAN _and_ GONERIL, that\nhe is produced here.\n\n'I remember, before the civil wars, Tom o' Bedlams went about\nbegging,' Aubrey says. Randle Holme, in his 'Academy of Arms and\nBlazon,' includes them in his descriptions, as a class of vagabonds\n'feigning themselves mad.' 'The Bedlam is in the same garb, with a\nlong staff,' etc., 'but his cloathing is more fantastic and\nridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all\nover with _rubans, feathers, cuttings_ of _cloth,_ and what not, to\nmake him _seem_ a madman, when he is no other than a _dissembling\nknave_.'\n\nIn the Bellman of London, 1640, there is another description of\nhim--'He sweares he hath been in Bedlam, and will talk frantickely _of\npurpose; you see pinnes_ stuck in sundry places of his _naked flesh_,\nespecially in his armes, _which paine he gladly puts himselfe to_;\ncalls himself by the name of _Poore Tom_; and coming near anybody,\ncries out, '_Poor Tom's a cold_.' Of these Abraham men, _some be\nexceeding merry_, and doe nothing but sing songs, fashioned out of\ntheir own braines; some will dance; others will doe nothing but either\nlaugh or weepe; _others are dogged_, and so _sullen_, both in looke\nand speech, that spying but a small company in a house, they bluntly\nand boldly enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to them what\nthey demand.'\n\nThis seems very wicked, very depraved, on the part of these persons,\nespecially the sticking of pins in their bare arms; but even our young\ndukeling Edgar says--\n\n                           'While I may scape,\n  I _will preserve myself_: and am bethought\n  To take _the basest_ and _most poorest shape_,\n  That ever _penury_, in _contempt_ of MAN,\n  _Brought near to beast_: my face I'll grime with filth;\n  Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots;\n  And with presented nakedness outface\n  The winds, and _persecutions of the sky_.\n  The _country gives_ me PROOF and PRECEDENT\n  Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,\n  _Strike_ in _their numb'd and mortified bare arms,\n  Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary_;\n  And with this horrible object, from low farms,\n  Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills,\n  _Sometime with lunatic bans_, sometime with prayers,\n  Enforce their charity.--'Poor Turlygood!' 'poor Tom!'\n  _Thats something yet, Edgar I nothing am_.\n\nBut the poet is not contented with the minuteness of this description.\nThis character appears to have taken his eye as completely as it takes\nKing Lear's, the moment that _he_ gets a glimpse of him; and the poet\nbetrays throughout that same philosophical interest in the study,\nwhich the monarch expresses so boldly; for beside the dramatic\nexhibition, and the philosophical review of him, which King Lear\ninstitutes, here is an autographical sketch of him, and of his mode of\nliving--\n\n'_What_ are you there? Your _names_?'\n\ncries Gloster, when he comes to the heath, with his torch, to seek out\nthe king and his party; whereupon Tom, thinking that an occasion has\nnow arrived for defining his social outline, takes it upon him to\nanswer, for his part--\n\n'Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the\nwall-newt, and the water-[newt]; that in the fury of his heart, when\nthe _foul fiend rages_, swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog;\ndrinks the green mantle of the standing pool; _who is whipped_ from\n_tything_ to _tything_' [this is an Anglo-Saxon institution one sees];\n'and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who _hath had_ three suits to\nhis back' [fallen fortunes here, too] 'six shirts to his body, horse\nto ride, and weapon to wear.'\n\nThe Jesuits had been, then, recently and notoriously at work in\nEngland, endeavouring professedly to cast out '_the fiend_' from many\npossessed persons; and it appeared, to this great practical\nphilosopher, that this creature he has fetched up here from the\nsubterranean social abysses of his time, presented a very fitting\nsubject for the operations of practitioners professing any miraculous\nor superior influence over the demons that infest human nature, or\nthose that have power over human fortunes. He has brought him out here\nthus distinctly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is any\nexorcism which can meet his case, or that of the great human\nmultitude, that no man can number, of whose penury and vice he stands\nhere as the elected, pre-eminent, royal representative. In that survey\nand report of human affairs, which this author felt himself called\nupon to make, the case of this poor creature had attracted his\nattention, and appeared to him to require looking to; and,\naccordingly, he has made a note of it.\n\nHe is admirably seconded in his views on this subject, by the king\nhimself, who, in that fine philosophic humour which his madness and\nhis misery have served to develop in him, stands ready to lend himself\nto the boldest and most delicate philosophical inquiries. For the\npoint to be noted here,--and it is one of no ordinary importance,--is,\nthat this mad humour for philosophical investigation, which has seized\nso strangely the royal mind, does not appear to be at all in the vein\nof that old-fashioned philosophy, which had been rattling its\nabstractions in the face of the collective human misery for so many\nages. For the helplessness of the human creature in his struggle with\nthe elements, and those conditions of his nature which put him so\nhopelessly at the mercy of his own kind and kindred, seem to suggest\nto the royal sufferer, who has the advantage of a fresh experience to\nstimulate his apprehension, that there ought to be some relief for the\nhuman condition from _this source_, that is, from PHILOSOPHY; and his\ninquiries and discoveries are all stamped with the unmistakeable\nimpress of that fire new philosophy, which was not yet out of the mint\nelsewhere--which was yet undergoing the formative process in the mind\nof its great inventor;--that philosophy, which we are told elsewhere\n'has for its principal object, to make _nature subservient to the\nwants and state of Man_';--and which concerns itself for that purpose\nwith ideas as they exist in nature, as _causes_, and not as they exist\nin the mind of man as _words_ merely.\n\nIf there had been, indeed, any intention of paying a marked compliment\nto the philosophy which still held all the mind of the world in its\ngrasp, at that great moment in history, in which Tom o' Bedlam makes\nhis first appearance on any stage, it is not likely that _that_ sage\nwould have been just the person appointed to hold the office of\nPhilosopher in Chief, and Councillor extraordinary to his Majesty.\n\nThe selection is indeed made on the part of the king, in perfect good\nfaith, whatever the Poet's intent may be; for from the moment that\nthis creature makes his appearance, he has no eyes or ears for\nanything else. And he will not be parted from him. For this startling\njuxtaposition was not intended by the Poet to fulfil its effect as a\nmere passing _tableau vivant_. The relation must be dramatically\ndeveloped; that astounding juxtaposition must be prolonged, in spite\nof the horror of the spectators, and the disgust and rude displeasure\nof the king's attendants. They seek in vain to _part_ these two men.\nThe king refuses to stir without him. 'He will _still keep with his\nphilosopher_.' He has a vague idea that his regal administration\nstands in need of some assistance, and that philosophy ought to be\nable to give it, and that the Bedlamite is in some way connected with\nthe subject, but confused as the association is, it is a pertinacious\none; and, in spite of their disgust the king's friends are obliged to\ntake this wretch with them. For Gloster does not know, after all, it\nis 'his own flesh and blood' he sees there. He cannot even recognize\nthe common kindred in that guise, as the king does, when he\nphilosophises on his condition. And the rough aristocratic contempt\nand indifference which is manifested by the king's party, as a matter\nof course, for this poor human victim of wrong and misfortune, is made\nto contrast with their boundless sympathy and tenderness for the\n_king_, while the poet aiming at broader relationships, finds the\nmantle of _his_ humanity wide enough for them, _both_.\n\nAs for the king,--startled in the midst of those new views of human\nwretchedness which his own sufferings have occasioned, and while those\ndesires to _remedy it_, with which his penitence is accompanied, are\nstill on his lip, by this wild apparition and embodiment of his\nthought, in that new accession of his mental disorder, which the\npresence of this object seems to occasion, that confounding of\nproximate conceptions, which leads him to regard this man as a source\nof new light on human affairs, is one of those exquisite physiological\nexhibitions of which only this scientific artist is capable.\n\nAnd, in fact, it must be confessed, that this 'learned Theban'\nhimself, notwithstanding the unexpected dignity of his promotion, does\nnot appear to be altogether wanting in a taste, at least, for that new\nkind of philosophical investigation, which seems to be looked for at\nhis hands. The king's inquiries appear to fall in remarkably with the\nprevious train of his pursuits. In the course of his experiments, he\nseems himself to have struck upon that new philosophic proceeding,\nwhich has been called 'putting philosophy upon the right road again.'\n\nOnly the philosophic domain which that new road in philosophy leads\nto, appears to be very considerably broader, as 'Tom' takes it, than\nthat very vivid, but narrow limitation of its fields, which Mr.\nMacaulay has set down in our time, would make it. Indeed, this\n'philosopher,' that _Lear_ so much inclines to, appears to have\nincluded in his investigations the two _extremes_ of the new science\nof practice. He has sounded it apparently 'from its lowest note to the\ntop of its key.'\n\n'What is your study?' says the king to him, eyeing him curiously, and\napparently struck with the practical result--anxious to have a word\nwith him in private, but obliged to conduct the examination on the\nstage.\n\n'How to prevent THE FIEND,' is Tom's reply. 'How to prevent the fiend\n_and_ to kill vermin.'\n\nThis is the Poet who says elsewhere, 'that without _good_ nature,\n_men_ are themselves but a nobler kind of vermin.'\n\nOne cannot but observe, however, that Poor Tom's researches in this\nquite new field of a practical philosophy, do not appear to have been\nfollowed up since his time with any very marked success. _One_ of\nthese departments of 'his _study_' has indeed been seized, and is now\noccupied by whole troops of modern philosophers; but their inquiries,\nthough very interesting and doubtlessly useful, do not appear to\nexhibit that direct and palpable bearing on practice, to which Tom's\nprogramme so severely inclines. For he is one who would make 'the art\nand practic part of life, the mistress to his theoric.' And as to that\nother mysterious object of his inquiries, Mr. Macaulay is not the only\nperson who appears to think, that that does not come within the range\nof anything human. Many of our scholars are still of the opinion that,\n'court holy water' is the best application in the world for _him_; and\nthe fact that he does not appear to get '_prevented_' with it; it is a\nfact which of course has nothing to do with the logical result. For\nour philosophers are still determined to reason it 'thus and thus,'\nwithout taking into account the circumstance, that 'the sequent\neffect' with which 'nature finds itself scourged,' is not touched by\ntheir _reasons_.\n\nKing Lear's own inquiries seem also to include with great\ndistinctness, the two great branches of the new philosophical inquiry.\nHis mind is indeed very eagerly bent on the pursuit of _causes_. And\nthough in the paroxysms of his mental disorder, he is apt to confound\nthem occasionally, this very confusion, as it is managed, only serves\nto develop the breadth of the philosophic conception beneath it.\n\n'He hath no daughters, Sir.' '_Death, traitor_! Nothing could have\nsubdued nature to such a lowness, but--his UNKIND _daughters_.' It is,\nof course, his own new and terrible experience which points the\ninquiry, and though the physical causes are not omitted in it, it is\nnot strange that the moral should predominate, and that his mind\nshould seem to be very curiously occupied in tracking the _ethical_\nphenomena to their sources '_in nature_.'\n\nIn the midst of the uproar of the Tempest, he does indeed begin with\nthe physical investigation. He puts to his 'learned Theban' the\nquestion, which no learned Theban had then ever suspected of lying\nwithin the range of the scholar's investigations--that question which\nhas been put to some purpose since--'What is the cause of _thunder_?'\nBut his philosophic inquiry does not stop there,--where all the new\nphilosophy has stopped ever since, and where some of our scholars\ndeclare it was meant to stop, notwithstanding the plainest\ndeclarations of its inventor to the contrary--with the investigation\nof physical causes.\n\nFor, after all, it is 'the tempest in his _mind_' that most concerns\nhim. _His_ philosopher, his _practical_ philosopher, must be able to\nexplore the conditions of that, and find the conductors for its\nlightnings. 'For where the greater malady is fixed, the lesser is\nscarce felt.' 'Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are his daughters.'\nAfter all, it is _Regan's_ heart that appears to him to be the\ntrouble--it is that which must first be laid on the table; and as soon\nas he decides to have a philosopher among 'his hundred,' he gives\norders to that effect.\n\n'Then let them anatomise Regan; see what breeds about her heart: Is\nthere any CAUSE IN NATURE that makes _these hard hearts_?'\n\nA very fair subject for philosophical inquiry, one would say; and, on\nthe whole, as profitable and interesting a one, perhaps, as some of\nthose that engage the attention of our men of learning so profoundly\nat present. In these days of enlightened scientific procedure, one\nwould hardly undertake the smallest practical affair with the aid of\nany such vague general notions or traditional accounts of the\nproperties to be dealt with, as those which our learned Thebans appear\nto find all-sufficient for their practices, in that particular\ndepartment which Lear seems inclined to open here as a field for\nscientific exploration.\n\nAnd it is perfectly clear that the author, whoever he may be, is very\nmuch of Lear's mind on this point, for he does not depend upon Lear\nalone to suggest his views upon it. There is never a person of this\ndrama that does not do it.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE USE OF EYES.\n\n\n'All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but--_blind men_.'\n\nThe Play is all strewn throughout, and tinctured in the grain, with\nthe finest natural philosophy, of that new and very subtle and\npeculiar kind, which belongs to the earlier stages of the physical\ninquiry, and while it was still in the hands of its original\ninventors. Even in physics, there are views here which have not been\ndeveloped any further since this author's time. It is not merely in\nthe direct discourse on questions of physical science, as in the\nphysician's report of the resources of his art, or in Cordelia's\ninvocation to 'all the _blessed secrets_--the _unpublished_ virtues of\nthe earth,' that the track of the new physiological science, which\nthis work embodies, may be seen. It runs through it all; it betrays\nitself at every turn. But the subtle and occult relations of the moral\nand physical are noted here, as we do not find them noted elsewhere,\nin less practical theories of nature.\n\nThat there is something in the design of this play which requires an\nelaborate and systematic exhibition of the '_special_' human\nrelationships, natural and artificial, political, social, and\ndomestic, almost any reading of it would show. And that this design\ninvolves, also, a systematic exhibition of the social _consequences_\narising from the violation of the natural laws or duties of these\nrelationships, and that this violation is everywhere systematically\naggravated,--carried to its last conceivable extreme, so that all the\nplay is filled with the uproar of one continued outrage on _humanity_;\nthis is not less evident for the Poet is not content with the material\nwhich his chronicle offered him, already invented to his hands for\nthis purpose, but he has deliberately tacked to it, and intricately\nconnected with it throughout, another plot, bearing on the surface of\nit, and in the most prominent statements, the author's intention in\nthis respect; which tends not only in the most unequivocal manner to\nrepeat and corroborate the impressions which the story of Lear\nproduces, but to widen the dramatic exhibition, so as to make it\ncapable of conveying the whole breadth of the philosophic conception.\nFor it is the scientific doctrine of MAN that is taught here; and that\nis, that man must be _human_ in _all_ his relations, or '_cease to\nbe_.' It is the violation of the ESSENTIAL humanity. It is a\nDEGENERACY which is exhibited here, and the 'SEQUENT EFFECTS' which\nbelong naturally to the violation of a law that has the force of the\nuniverse to sustain it. And it is not by accident that the story of\nthe illegitimate Edmund begins the piece; it is not for nothing that\nwe are compelled to stop to hear that, before even Lear and his\ndaughters can make their entrance. The whole story of the _base_ and\nbase-born one, who makes what he calls _nature_--the rude, brutal,\nspontaneous nature--his goddess and his law, and ignores the human\ndistinction; this part was needed in order to supply the deficiences\nin the social diagrams which the original plot presented; and, indeed,\nthe whole story of the Duke of Gloster, which is from first to last a\nclear Elizabethan invention, and of which this of Edmund is but a\npart, was not less essential for the same purpose.\n\nNeither does one need to go very far beneath the surface, to perceive\na new and extraordinary treatment of the ethical principle in this\nplay throughout; one which the new, artistic, practical 'stand-point'\nhere taken naturally suggested, but one which could have proceeded\nonly from the inmost heart of the new philosophy. It is just the kind\nof treatment which the proposal to introduce the Inductive method of\ninquiry into this department of the human practice inevitably\ninvolved. A disposition to go behind the ethical phenomena, to pursue\nthe investigation to its scientific conclusion, a refusal to accept\nthe facts which, to the unscientific observation, appear to be the\nultimate ones--a refusal to accept the coarse, vague, spontaneous\nnotions of the dark ages, as the solution of these so essential\nphenomena, is everywhere betraying and declaring itself. Cordelia's\nagonised invocation and summons to the unpublished forces of nature,\nto be aidant and remediate to the good man's distress, is continually\nechoed by the poet, but with a broader application. It is not the\nbodily malady and infirmity only--it is not that kind of madness, only\nwith which the poor king is afflicted in the later stages of the play,\nwhich appears to him to need scientific treatment--it is not for the\ncure of these alone that he would open his Prospero book, 'nature's\ninfinite book of secresy,' as he calls it in Mark Antony--'the true\nmagic,' as he calls it _elsewhere_--the book of the unpublished\nlaws--the scientific book of 'KINDS'--the book of 'the historic\nlaws'--'the book of God's power.'\n\nAll the _interior_ phenomena which attend the violation of duty are\nstrictly omitted here. That psychological exhibition of it belongs to\nother plays; and the Poet has left us, as we all know, no room to\nsuspect the tenderness of his moral sensibility, or the depth of his\nacquaintance with these subjective phenomena. The _social_\nconsequences of the violation of duty in all the human relationships,\nthe consequence to _others_, and the _social reaction_, limits the\nexhibition here. The object on which our sympathies are chiefly\nconcentrated is, as he himself is made to inform us--\n\n  'One more sinned _against_, than sinning.'\n  'Oh, these eclipses do portend these divisions,'\n\nsays the base-born Edmund, sneeringly. '_Fa sol la mi_,' he continues,\nproducing that particular conjunction of sounds which was forbidden by\nthe ancient musicians, on account of its unnatural discord. The\nmonkish writers on music call it diabolical. It is at the conclusion\nof a very long and elaborate discussion on this question, that he\ntreats us to this prohibited piece of harmony; and a discussion in\nwhich Gloster refers to the influence of the _planets_, this\n_unnaturalness_ in all the human relations--this universal\njangle--'this ruinous disorder, that hunts men disquietly to their\ngraves.' But the 'base' Edmund is disposed to acquit the celestial\ninfluences of the evil charged on them. He does not believe in men\nbeing--\n\n  'Fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves and thieves, by spherical\n  predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced\n  obedience of planetary influence; and all that they are evil in,\n  by a divine thrusting on.'\n\nHe has another method of accounting for what _he_ himself is. He does\nnot think it necessary to go quite so far, to find the origin of his\nown base, lawless, _inhuman, unconscionable_ dispositions. But the\ninquiries, which are handled so boldly in the soliloquies of Edmund,\nare started again and again elsewhere; and the recurrence is too\nemphatic, to leave any room to doubt that the author's intention in\nthe play is concerned in it; and that this question of 'the several\ndispositions and characters of men,' and the inquiry as to whether\nthere be '_any causes in_ nature' of these _degenerate_ tendencies,\nwhich he is at such pains to exhibit, is, for some reason or other, a\nvery important point with him. That which in _contemplative\nphilosophy_ corresponds to the _cause_, in _practical philosophy_\nbecomes the _rule_, the _founder_ of it tells us. But the play cannot\nbe studied effectually without taking into account the fact, that the\nauthor avails himself of the date of his chronicle to represent that\nstage of human development in which the mysterious forces of nature\nwere still blindly deified; and, therefore, the religious invocations\nwith which the play abounds, are _not_, in the modern sense of the\nterm, _prayers_, but only vague, poetic appeals to the unknown,\nunexplored powers in nature, which we call _second causes_. And when,\nas yet, there was no room for science in the narrow premature theories\nwhich men found imposed on them--when the new movement of human\nthought was still hampered by the narrowness of 'preconceived\nopinions,' the poet was glad to take shelter under the date of his\nlegend now and then, here, as in Macbeth and other poems, for the sake\nof a little more freedom in this respect. He is very far from\ncondemning '_presuppositions_' and '_anticipations_' but only wishes\nthem kept in their proper places, because to bring them into the\nregion of fact and induction, and so to falsify the actual condition\nof things--to undertake to face down the powers of nature with them,\nis a merely mistaken mode of proceeding; because these powers are\npowers which do not yield to the human beliefs, and the _practical_\ndoctrine must have respect to them. The great battle of that age--the\nbattle of the second causes, which the new philosophers were compelled\nto fight in behalf of humanity at the peril of their lives--the battle\nwhich they fought in the open field with Aristotle and Plato--fills\nall this magnificent poetry with its reverberations.\n\nIt must be confessed, that those terrible appeals to the heavens, into\nwhich King Lear launches out in his anguish now and then, are anything\nbut pious; but the boldness which shocks our modern sensibilities\nbecomes less offensive, if we take into account the fact that they are\nnot made to the object of our present religious worship, but are mere\nvague appeals, and questioning addresses to the unknown, unexplored\ncauses in nature--the powers which lie behind the historical\nphenomena.\n\nFor that divine Ideal of Human Nature to which 'our large temples,\ncrowded with the shows of peace,' are built now, had not yet appeared\nat the date of this history, in that form in which we now worship it,\nwith its triumphant assurance that it came forth from the heart of\nGod, and declared Him. Paul had not yet preached his sermon at Athens,\nin the age of this supposed King of Britain; and though the author was\nindeed painting his own age, and not that, it so happened that there\nwas such a heathenish and inhuman, and, as he intimates, indeed, quite\n'_fiendish_' and diabolical state of things to represent here then,\nthat this discrepancy was not so shocking as it might have been if he\nhad found a divine religion in full operation here.\n\n'If it be you,' says Lear, falling back upon the theory, which Edmund\nhas already discarded, of a divine thrusting on--\n\n  'If it be _you_ that _stir these daughters' hearts_\n  Against their father, fool _me_ not so much\n  To bear it tamely; _touch me_ with noble anger.'\n\nAnd here is an echo of the 'spherical predominance' which Gloster goes\ninto so elaborately in the outset, confessing, much to the amusement\nof his graceless offspring, that he is disposed to think, after all,\nthere may be something in it. 'For,' he says, 'though the _wisdom_ of\n_nature_ [the spontaneous wisdom] can REASON IT _thus and thus, yet_\nnature _finds itself scourged_ by THE SEQUENT EFFECT;' and he is\ntalking under the dictation of a philosopher who, though he ridicules\nthe pretensions of astrology in the next breath, lays it down as a\nprinciple in the scientific Art, as a chief point in the science of\nPractice and Relief, that the _sequent effects_, with which nature\nfinds itself scourged, are a better guide to the _causes_ which the\n_practical_ remedy must comprehend, than anything which the wisdom of\nnature can undertake to reason out _beforehand_, without any respect\nto the sequent effect--'_thus_, and--_thus_.' But here is the\nconfirmation of Gloster's view of the subject, which the sound-minded\nKent, who is not at all metaphysical, finds himself provoked to utter;\nand though this is in the Fourth Act, and Gloster's opinions are\nadvanced in the First, the passages do, notwithstanding, 'look towards\neach other.'\n\n                'It is _the stars_.\n  The stars above us govern our conditions,\n  Else one self mate and mate could not beget\n  Such different issues.'\n\nOf course, it is not the astrological theory of the constitutional\noriginal differences in the human dispositions which the honest Kent\nis made to advocate here, literally and in earnest. It is rather the\nabsence of any known cause, and the necessity of supposing one in a\ncase where this difference is so obtrusive and violent, which he\nexpresses; the stars being the natural resort of men in such\ncircumstances, and when other solutions fail; though Poor Tom appears\nto be in possession of a much more orthodox theory for the peculiar\ndisorders in _his_ moral constitution: but, at the same time, it must\nbe conceded that it is one which does not appear to have led, in his\ncase, to any such felicitous practical results as the supposed origin\nof it might have seemed to promise.\n\nFor, indeed, this point of natural differences in the human\ndispositions, though, of course, quite overlooked in the moral regimen\nwhich is based on _a priori_ knowledge, and is able to dispense with\nscience, and ride over the actual laws; this point of _difference_--\nnot in the dispositions of individuals only, but the differences\nwhich manifest themselves under the varying conditions of age and\nbodily health, of climate, or other physical differences in the same\nindividual, as well as under the varying moral conditions of\ndiffering social and political positions and relations; this so\nessential point, overlooked as it is in the ordinary practice, has\nseized the clear eye of this great scientific practitioner, this\nMaster of Arts, and he is making a radical point of it in his new\nspeculation; he is making collections on it, and he will make a main\npoint of it in 'the part operative' of his New Science, when he comes\nto make out the outline of it elsewhere, referring us distinctly to\nthis place for his collections in it, for his collections on this\npoint, as well as on others not less radical.\n\nLear himself, in his madness, appears, as we have seen already, much\ndisposed to speculate upon this same particular question, which\nGloster and Edmund and Kent have already indicated as 'a necessary\nquestion of the play'; namely, the question as to '_the causes in\nnature_' of the phenomena which the social condition of man exhibits;\nthat is, the causes of that degeneracy, that violation of the\nessential human law to which all the evil is tracked here; and it is\nthe scientific doctrine, that the _nature_ of a thing cannot be\nsuccessfully studied in itself alone. It is not in water or in air\nonly, or in any other single substance, that we find the nature of\n_oxygen_, or _hydrogen_, or any other of those principles in nature,\nwhich the application of this method to another department evolves\nfrom things which present themselves to the unscientific experience as\nmost dissimilar. 'It is the greatest proof of want of skill to\ninvestigate _the nature_ of any object in itself alone; for _the same\nnature_ which seems concealed and hidden in some instances, is\nmanifest and almost palpable in others; and, in general, those very\nthings which are considered as secret, are manifest and common in\nother objects, but will never be clearly seen if the experiments and\nconclusions of men be directed to themselves alone': for it is a part\nof this doctrine, that man is not omitted in the order of nature--that\nthe term HUMAN NATURE is _not_ a misnomer. The doctrine of this Play\nis, that those same powers which are at work in man's life, are at\nwork without it also; that they are powers which belong, in their\nhighest form, to the nature of things in general; and that man\nhimself, with all his special distinctions, is under the law of that\nuniversal constitution. The scientific remedy for the state of things\nwhich this play exhibits is the knowledge of 'causes in nature,' which\nmust be found here, as in the other case, by scientific\ninvestigation--the spontaneous method leading to no better result here\nthan in the other case. Under cover of the excitements of this play,\nthis inquiry is boldly opened, and the track of the new science is\nclearly marked in it.\n\nPoor Lear is, indeed, compelled to leave the practical improvement of\n_his_ hints for another; and when it comes to the open question of the\nremedy for this state of things, which is the term of the inquiry,\nwhen he undertakes to put his absolute power in motion for the avowed\npurpose of effecting an improvement here, he appears indeed disposed\nto treat the subject in the most savage and despairing manner--that\nis, on his own account; but the vein of the scientific inquiry still\nruns unbroken through all this burst of passion. For in his scorn for\nthat failure in human nature and human life of which society, as he\nfinds it, stands convicted--that failure to establish the distinctive\nlaw of the human kind--that failure from which he is suffering so\ndeeply--and in his struggle to express that disgust, he proposes, as\nan improvement on the state of things he finds, a law which shall\nobliterate that human distinction; though certainly _that_ is anything\nbut the Poet's remedy; and the poor king himself does not appear to be\nin earnest, for the moral disgust in which the distinctive sentiment\nof the nobler nature, and the knowledge of _human_ good and evil\nbetrays itself, breaks forth in floods of passion that overflow all\nthe bounds of articulation before he can make an end of it.\n\nBut the radical nature of this question of _natural causes_, which the\npractical theory of the social arts must comprehend, is already\nindicated in this play, in the very beginning of the action.\n\nThis author is everywhere bent on graving the scientific distinction\nbetween those instinctive affections in which men degenerate, and tend\nto the rank of lower natures, and the noble natural, distinctively\nhuman affections; and when, in the first scene, the king betrays the\nselfishness of that fond preference for his younger daughter,--tender,\nand paternal, and deep as it was,--and the depth of those hopes he was\nresting on her kind care and nursery, by the very height of that\nfrenzied paroxysm of rage and disappointment, which her unflattering\nand, as it seems to him, her unloving reply, creates;--when that\n'small fault, which showed,' he tells us, 'so ugly' in _her_ whom 'he\nloved _most_'--which turned, in a moment, all the sweetness of his\nlove for her '_to gall_, and like an engine, wrenched his _nature from\nits firm place_';--these are the terms in which he undertakes to annul\nthe natural tie, and _disown_ her--\n\n  _Lear_. So young, and so untender?\n\n  _Cordelia_. So young, my lord, and true.\n\n  _Lear_. Let it be so.--Thy truth then be thy dower:\n  For, by the _sacred radiance of the sun_;\n  _The mysteries_ of _Hecate_, and _the night_;\n  _By all the operations_ of _the orbs,\n  From whom we do exist, and cease to be,\n  Here I disclaim all my paternal care_,\n  Propinquity and property of blood,\n  And as a stranger to my heart and me\n  Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,\n  Or he that makes his generation messes\n  To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom\n  Be _as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved_,\n  As thou, _my sometime daughter_.\n\nAnd when\n\n  'This even-handed justice\n  Commends the ingredients of his poisoned chalice\n  To his own lips'--\n\nwhen his 'dog-hearted daughters' have returned to his own bosom the\ncruel edge of that _unnatural_ wrong which he has impiously dared to\nsummon nature herself--violated nature--to witness, this is the\ngreeting which the _unnatural_ Goneril receives, on her return to her\nhusband, when she complains to him of her welcome--\n\n  _Goneril_. I have been worth the whistle.\n\n  _Albany_.       O Goneril!\n  You are not worth _the dust which the rude wind\n  Blows in your face_.--I fear your _disposition:\n  That nature, which contemns_ ITS ORIGIN,\n  CANNOT BE BORDERED CERTAIN IN ITSELF;\n  She that herself will _sliver and disbranch_\n  From her MATERIAL SAP, PERFORCE MUST WITHER,\n  _And come to deadly use_.\n\n[_Prima Philosophia_. Axioms which are not limited to the particular\nparts of sciences, but 'such as are more common, and of a higher\nstage.']\n\n  _Goneril_.  No more; _the text_ is foolish.\n  _Albany_.  Tigers, not daughters,--\n\n[You have practised on yourself--you have destroyed in yourself the\nnobler, fairer nature which the law of _human_ kind--the law of human\nduty and affection--would have given you. Not DAUGHTERS,--_Tigers_.]\n\n  'A _father, and a gracious aged man_,\n  Whose reverence the head-lugged bear would lick,\n  Most barbarous, most DEGENERATE!'--\n\n[_degenerate_--that is the point--most degenerate]--\n\n      'have you _madded_.\n  If that the _heavens_ do not _their_ visible spirits\n  Send quickly down, to _tame these vile offences_\n  'Twill come,\n  HUMANITY _must perforce prey on itself_,\n Like monsters of the deep.'\n\n[the land refuses a parallel.]\n\nAnd it is the scientific distinction between man and the brute\ncreation--it is the law of nature in the human kind, which the Poet is\ngetting out scientifically here, in the face of that terrific failure\nand degeneration in the kind--which he paints so vividly, for the\npurpose of inquiring whether there is not, perhaps, after all, some\nmore potent provisioning and arming of man for his place in nature,\nthan this state of things would lead one to suppose--whether there are\nnot, perhaps, some more efficacious 'humanities' than those mild ones\nwhich appear to operate so lamely on this barbaric, _degenerate_\nthing. 'Milk-liver'd man!' replies Goneril, speaking not on her own\nbehalf only, for the words have a double significance; and the Poet\nglances through them at that sufferance with which the state of things\nhe has just noted was endured--\n\n  '_Milk-livered man_,\n  That bear'st a _cheek for blows_, a HEAD _for_ WRONGS;\n  Who hast not _in thy brows an eye_ discerning\n  Thine honour from thy sufferance; that not know'st,\n  FOOLS do those villains pity, _who are punished\n  Before they have done their mischief_. Where's thy _drum_?\n  France spreads his banners in _our noiseless land;\n  With plumed helm_ thy _slayer_ begins threats;\n  _Whilst thou_, a _Moral Fool_, sit'st still, and _cry'st,\n  Alack_! why does he so?'\n\nThis is found to be an appeal of the Poet's own when all is done, and\none that goes far into the necessary questions of the play.\n\nBut Albany, in his rejoinder, returns to the idea of the lost,\n_degenerate_, dissolute _Humanity_ again. He has talked of tigers, and\n_head-lugged_ bears (and it was necessary to combine the proverbial\nsensitiveness of that animal to that particular mode of treatment,\nwith the natural amiability of his disposition in general, in order to\ndo justice to the Poet's conception here);--he has called upon 'the\nmonsters of the deep,' and quoted the laws of their societies, in\nillustration of the state of things to which the unscientific human\ncombination appears to him to be visibly tending. But this human\n_degeneracy_ and deformity, which the action of the play exhibits in\ndiagrams--the _descent_ to the _lower_ nature from the higher; the\n_voluntary_ descent; the voluntary blindness and narrowness; the\nrejection of the distinctive human law--of VIRTUE and DUTY, as reason\nand conscience interpret it--appears to the scientific mind to require\nyet _other_ terms and comparisons. These conceits and comparisons,\ndrawn from the habits of innocent, though not to man agreeable,\nanimals, who have no law but blind instinct, do not suffice to convey\nthe Poet's idea of this human failing; and, accordingly, he instructs\nthis gentle and noble man, whom this criticism best becomes, to\ncomplete this view of the subject, in his attempt to express the\ndisgust with which this _inhuman_, this _more_ than brutal conduct, in\nhis high-born, and gorgeously-robed, and delicately-featured spouse,\ninspires him--\n\n  'See thyself, devil!'--\n\nnay, he corrects himself--\n\n  _Proper deformity_ [DE-FORMITY] seems _not_ in the _fiend_\n  _So_ horrid, as in woman.\n\n  _Goneril_.  O vain fool!\n\n  _Albany_. Thou _changed_ and _self-covered thing_. For shame,\n  Be-monster not thy _feature_. Were it my FITNESS'--\n\nfor here it is the _human_, and not the instinctive element--not '_the\nblood_' element that rules--\n\n  'Were it my FITNESS\n  To _let_ these hands _obey_ my blood,\n  _They_ are _apt_ enough to _dislocate_ and _tear_\n  Thy _flesh_ and _bones_,'\n\nRather tiger-like impulses for so mild a gentleman to own to; but the\nprocess which he confesses his hands are already inclined to\nundertake, is not half so cruel as the one which this woman has\npractised on herself while she was meditating only wrong to another,\nand pursuing her 'horrible pleasure' at the expense of madness and\ndeath to another; not half so cruel and injurious, for in that act she\nhas trampled down, and torn, and dislocated, she has slaughtered in\ncold blood, the divine, angelic form of womanhood--that form of worth\nand celestial aspiration which great nature stamped upon her, and gave\nto her for her law in nature, her type, her essence, her ORIGINAL. She\nhas desecrated, not that common form of humanity only which the common\nhuman sentiment of reason, which the human sentiment of duty is\neverywhere struggling to fulfil, but that lovelier soul of\nhumanity--that softer, subtler, more gracious, more celestial, more\ncommanding spirit of it, which the form of womanhood in its integrity\nmust carry with it--which the form of womanhood will carry with it, if\nit be not counterfeit or degenerate, gone down into a lower range,\n'be-monstered'--'a changed and _self-covered_ thing.' That is the\nPoet's reading.\n\n'Howe'er,' the Duke of Albany concludes, after that struggle with his\nhands he speaks of--chivalrously refusing to let them obey that\nimpulse of 'blood,' as a gentleman in such circumstances, under any\namount of provocation, should--true to himself, true to his manliness\nand to his gentle breeding, though his wife is false to hers, and\n'false to her nature'--\n\n  'Howe'er thou _art_ a, _fiend,\n  A woman's shape doth shield thee.\n\n  Goneril_. Marry! YOUR MANHOOD NOW.'\n\nThis is indeed a discourse in which the reader must have '_the text_,'\nor ever he can begin to catch the meaning of those philosophic points\nwith which this orator, who _talks_ so 'pressly,' studs his lines.\n\nFor the passage which Goneril dismisses with such scorn is indeed the\ntext, or it will be, when the word which her commentary on it contains\nhas been added to it: for it is '_the foolishness_' of struggling with\ngreat Nature, and her LAW of KINDS--it is the folly of ignorance, the\nstupidity of living without respect to nature and its sequent effects,\nas well as its preformed decree--\n\n  (_'Perforce must_ wither,\n  And come to deadly use'--)\n\nwhich this discourse is intended to illustrate. And one who has once\ntracked the dramatic development of this text, through all this moving\nexhibition of human society, and its violated rule in nature, will be\nat no loss to conjecture out of what 'New' book it comes, if indeed\nthat book has ever been opened to him.\n\nThe whole subject is treated here scientifically--that is, from\nwithout. The generalizations of the higher stages of philosophy--the\naxioms of a universal philosophy--with all the force of their\nuniversality, must be brought to bear upon it, through all its\ndevelopments. The universal historical laws, in that modification of\nthem which the speciality of the human kind creates, must be\nimpartially set forth here. The law of DUTY, as the NATURAL LAW of\nhuman society; the law of humanity, as the law, nay, THE FORM, of the\nHUMAN kind, stamped on it with the Creator's stamp, that _order_ from\nthe universal law of kinds that gives to all life its SPECIAL bounds,\nits '_border_ in _itself_'--that form so _essential_, that there is no\n_humanity_ or _kind-ness_ where that is not--that law which we hear so\nmuch of, in its narrower aspects, under various names, in all men's\nspeech, is produced here, in its broader relations, as the necessary\nbasis of a scientific social art. And it is this author's deliberate\nopinion as a Naturalist, it is the opinion of this School in Natural\nScience, from which this work proceeds, that those who undertake to\ncompose human societies, large or small, whether in families, or\nstates, or empires, without recognising this principle--those who\nundertake to compose UNIONS, human unions and societies, on any other\nprinciple--will have a diabolical jangle of it when all is done. For\nthis law of _unity_, which is written on the soul of man, this law of\nCONSCIENCE _within, is written without also_; and to erase it _within_\nis to get the lesson from _without_ in that universal and downright\nspeech and language which the axioms of nature are taught in--it is to\nget it in that fearful school in which nature _repeats_ the doctrine\nof her violated law, for those who are not able to solve and\ncomprehend the science of it as it is _written_--written\nbeforehand--in the natural law and constitutions of the human soul.\n\n  'That nature which, contemns its ORIGIN\n  Cannot be _bordered_ certain _in itself_.'\n\n[These are the mysteries of day and night, that Lear, in his\nignorance, vainly invokes, the operations of the orbs from _whom we do\nexist and cease to be_.]\n\n  'She that herself will _sliver_ and _disbranch_\n  From her _material_ sap, _perforce must_ wither,\n  And come to _deadly_ use.'\n                         'The text is--FOOLISH.'\n\nThe teacher who takes it upon himself to get out this text from the\ntext-book of Universal Laws, for the purpose of conducting it to its\npractical application in human affairs, for the purpose of suggesting\nthe true remedy for those great human wants which he exhibits here, is\n_not_ one of those 'Milk-livered men,' those _Moral Fools_, that\n_Goneril_ delicately alludes to, who bear a cheek for blows, a _head_\nfor wrongs; who have not in their brows an _eye_ discerning their\n_honour_ from their sufferance; who think it enough to sit still under\nthe murderous blows of what they call misfortune, fate, _Providence_,\nwhen it is their own im-_providence_; who think it is enough to sit\nstill, and cry, _Alack_! without inquiring what it is that makes that\n_lack_; without ever putting the question in earnest, '_Why does he\nso_?' His Play is all full of the _practical application_ of the text,\nthe application of it which Gloster sums up in a word--\n\n  ''T is the Time's plague when MADMEN _lead_ THE BLIND.'\n\n\n  'I will preach to thee. Mark me: [says Lear]\n  When we are born, we cry that we are come\n  To this great stage of FOOLS. [Mark me!']\n\n\nThe whole Play is one magnificent intimation, on the part of the Poet,\nthat eyes are made to see with; and that there is no so natural and\nlegitimate use of them as that which human affairs were crying for,\nthrough all their lengths and breadths, in his time. It is that _eye_\nwhich is one of the distinctive features of the human kind; that eye\nwhich looks before and after, which extends human vision so far beyond\nindividual sensuous experience, which is able to converge the light of\nuniversal truth upon particular experience, which is able to bring the\ninfallible guidance of universal axioms into all the particulars of\nhuman conduct--that is the eye which he finds wanting in human\naffairs. The play is pointing everywhere with the Poet's scorn of\n'_Blind Men_,' 'who will not see because they do not feel,'--who wait\nfor the blows of 'fortune,' to teach them the lesson of Nature's\nlaws--who wait to be scourged, or dashed to pieces with 'the sequent\neffect,' instead of making use of their faculty of reason to ascend to\ncauses, and _so_ 'to trammel up the consequence.'\n\nIt is that same combination of human faculties, that same combination\nof sense and reason, which the Novum Organum provides for; it is that\nsame scorn of abstract wordy speculation, on the one hand, and blind\nexperimental groping, on the other, that is everywhere _suggested_\nhere. But with the aid of the persons of the Drama, and their\nsuggestions, the new philosophy is carried into departments which it\nwould have cost the Author of the Novum Organum and the Advancement of\nLearning his head to look into. He might as well have proposed to\nimpeach the Government in Parliament outright, as to offer to advance\nhis Novum Organum into these fields; fields which it enters safely\nenough under the cover of a spontaneous, inspired, dramatic\nphilosophy, though it is a philosophy which overflows continually with\nthose practical axioms, those aphorisms, which the Author of the\nAdvancement of Learning assures us 'are made of the pith and heart of\nsciences'; and that 'no man can write who is not sound and grounded.'\nBut then, if they are only written in 'with a goose-pen,' they pass\nwell enough for unconscious, unmeaning, spontaneous felicities.\n\n'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his face?'\nsays the Fool, in the First Act, by way of entertaining his master,\nwhen the poor king's want of foresight and 'prudence' begins to tell\non his affairs a little. 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the\nmiddle of his face?' 'No.' 'Why, to keep his eyes on either side of\nit, that what a man _cannot smell out_ he may _spy into_.'\n\n  _Fool_. Canst tell how _an oyster_ makes _his_ shell?'\n\n  _Lear_. No.\n\n  _Fool_. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.\n\n  _Lear_. Why?\n\n  _Fool_. Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his\n  daughters, and leave his horns without a case.\n\n  _Lear_. ... Be my horses ready?\n\n  _Fool_. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars\n  are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.\n\n  _Lear_. Because they are not eight?\n\n  _Fool_. Yes, indeed: Thou wouldest make a good--fool.\n\nHe cannot tell how an _oyster_ makes his shell, but the nose has not\nstood in the middle of _his_ face for nothing. There has been some\nprying on either side of it, apparently; and he has pried to such good\npurpose, that some of the prime secrets of the new philosophy appear\nto have turned up in his researches. 'To take it again _perforce_,'\nmutters the king. 'If thou wert my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten\n_for being_ OLD _before thy time_.' [This is a wit 'of the self-same\ncolour' with that one who discovered that the times from which the\nworld's practical wisdom was inherited, were the times when the world\nwas young. 'They told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black\nones were there!'] 'I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy\ntime.'--'_How's_ that?'--'Thou shouldst _not_ have been OLD _before\nthou hadst been_ WISE.'\n\nAnd it is in the Second Act that poor Kent, in his misfortunes,\nfurnishes occasion for another avowal on the part of this same learned\ncritic, of a preference for a practical philosophy, though borrowed\nfrom the lower species. He comes upon the object of his criticism as\nhe sits in the stocks, because he could not adopt the style of his\ntime with sufficient earnestness, though he does make an attempt 'to\ngo out of his dialect,' but was not more happy in it than some other\nmen of his politics were, in the Poet's time.\n\n  'Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,\n  _Under the allowance of your grand aspect,\n  Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire\n  On flickering Phebus' front--_\n\n  _Cornwall_. 'What mean'st by this?'\n\n  _Kent_. 'To go out of my dialect, _which you discommend so much_.\n\n[Halting in his blank verse for the explanation]:--It is from that\nseat, to which the plainness of this man, with the official dignities\nof his time, has conducted him, that he puts the inquiry to that keen\nobserver, whose observations in natural history have just been\nquoted,--\n\n  _Kent_. How chances that the _king comes with so small a train_?\n\n  _Fool_. An thou had'st been set in the stocks for that question,\n  _thou, had'st well deserved it_.\n\n  _Kent_. Why, fool?\n\n  _Fool_. We'll set thee _to school to an ant_, to teach thee there\n  is no labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are _led\n  by their eyes_, but--BLIND MEN.\n\n  _Kent_. Where learned'st thou _that_, fool?\n\n  _Fool_. Not in the stocks, _fool_.\n\n[Not from being punished with the sequent effect; not in consequence\nof an improvidence, that an _ant_ might have taught me to avoid.]\n\n'I have no _way_, and _therefore_ want no eyes,' says another duke,\nwho is also the victim of that '_absolute_' authority which is abroad\nin this play. 'I stumbled when I _saw_,' and this is _his prayer_.\n\n  Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man\n  That slaves your ordinance; that will not SEE\n  Because he doth not FEEL, _feel_ your power quickly.\n\n'Thou seest how this world goes,' says the outcast king, meeting this\npoor outcast duke, just after his eyes had been taken out of his head,\nby the persons then occupying the chief offices in the state. 'Thou\nseest how this world goes.' 'I SEE it FEELINGLY,' is the duke's reply.\n\n  _Lear_. What! art _mad_? A man may _see_ how this world goes with\n  _no_ eyes. Look with thine _ears_.\n\nAnd his account of how it goes is--as we shall see--one that requires\nto be looked at with _ears_, for it contains, what one calls elsewhere\nin this play,--_ear-kissing_ arguments.--'Get thee _glass_ eyes,' he\nsays, in conclusion, 'and like a scurvy _politician_ pretend to SEE,\nthe things thou dost not.' And that was not the kind of politician,\nand that was not the kind of political eye-sight, to which this\nstatesman, and seer, proposed to leave the times, that his legacy\nshould fall on, whatever he might be compelled to tolerate in his own.\n\n  'Upon _the crown_ o' the cliff. What _thing_ was that\n  Which parted from you?'\n\n           '_A poor unfortunate beggar_.' [Softly.]\n  '_As I stood here_ BELOW, methought his eyes\n  Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses.\n  Horns welked and waved, like the enridged _sea_.'\n\n'Now, Sir, what are you?' says the poor outcast duke to his true son,\nwhen in disguise he offers to attend him. 'A most poor man,' is the\nreply, 'made _lame_ by fortune's blows; who, by the ART of KNOWN AND\nFEELING SORROWS, am _pregnant_ to _good_ PITY. Give me your hand,\n_I'll_ lead you to some BIDING. Bear _free_ and _patient thoughts_,'\nis his whisper to him.\n\nSurely this is a poet that has got an inkling, in some way, of the new\nidea of an _experimental philosophy_,--of a combination of the human\nfaculties of sense and reason in some organum; one, too, whose eye\npasses lightly over the architectonic gifts of _univalves_ and\n_bivalves_, and _entomological_ developments of skill and forethought,\nintent on that great chrysalis, which has never been able to publish\nyet its Creator's glory. Here is a naturalist who would not think it\nenough to combine reason with experiment, in wind, and rain, and fire,\nand thunder, who would not think it enough to bring all the\nunpublished virtues of the earth, to the relief of the bodily human\nmaladies. It is the Poet, who says elsewhere, 'Can'st thou not\nminister to a _mind_ diseased? No? Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none\nof it.' It is the poet who says, 'Nor wind, rain, fire, thunder, are\nmy daughters.' '_Nothing_ could have brought him to such a lowness in\nnature, but his un-_kind_ daughters.' It is the naturalist who says,\n'Then let Regan's heart be anatomized, and see what _it_ is that\nbreeds about it. Is there any cause in NATURE that makes these hard\nhearts?'\n\nIn short, this play is from the hand of one who thinks that the human\naffairs are of a kind to require scientific investigation, scientific\nforesight and conduct. He is much of Lear's opinion on many points,\nand evidently judges that there would be no harm in getting a\nphilosopher enrolled among the king's hundred. Not a logician, not a\nmetaphysician, according to the common acceptance of these terms; not\nmerely a natural philosopher, in the low and limited sense of that\nterm, in which we use it; but a man of science--one who is able, by\nsome method or other, to ascend to the actual principles of things,\nand so to base his remedies for the social evils, on the forms which\nare _forms_, which have efficacy in nature as _such_, instead of\nbasing them on certain chimeras, or so-called logical conclusions of\nthe human mind--conclusions which the logic of nature contradicts--\nconclusions to which the universal consent of _things_ is wanting.\n\n_Nature_, in the sense in which _Edmund_ uses that term, is _not_ this\npoet's _goddess_, or his LAW; though he regards 'the plague of CUSTOM'\nand 'the curiosity of nations,' and all their fantastic and arbitrary\nsway in human affairs, with an eye quite as critical--though he looks\nat 'that old Antic, the law,' as he expresses it elsewhere, with an\neye quite as severe, on the world's behalf, as that which Edmund turns\non it, on his own; he is very far from contending for the freedom of\nthat savage, selfish, unreclaimed, spontaneous nature,--that lawless\nnature, to which the natural son of Gloster claims 'his services are\ndue.' The poet teaches that the true and successful Social Art is, and\nmust be scientific. That it must be based on the science of nature in\ngeneral, and on the science of human nature in particular, on a\nscience that recognizes the double _nature_ in man, that takes in, its\nheights as well as its depths, and its depths as well as its heights,\nthat sounds it 'from its lowest note to the top of its key;' but it is\none thing to quarrel with the unscientific, _imperfect_ social arts,\nand it is another to prefer nature in man _without_ arts. The picture\nof 'the Unaccommodated Man,' which forms so prominent a part of the\nrepresentation here,--'the _thing itself_,' stripped of its social\nlendings, or setting at nought the social restraints, is not by any\nmeans an attractive one, as this philosopher does it for us. The\nscientific artist is no better pleased, than the king is with this\nkind of '_nature_.' It is the imperfection of the civilization which\nstill generates, or leaves unchecked these savage evils, that he\nexposes.\n\nBut it is impossible, that the true social arts should be smelt out,\nor stumbled on, by accident, or arrived at by any kind of empirical\ngroping; just as impossible as it is, on the other hand, that 'the\nwisdom of nature,' by throwing itself on its own internal resources,\nand reasoning it '_thus and thus_,' without taking into account the\nactual forces, should be able to invent them. Those forces which enter\ninto all the plot of our human life, unworthy of philosophic note as\nthey had seemed hitherto, those terrific, unmeasured strengths,\nagainst which the human kind are continually dashing themselves in\ntheir blind experiments,--those engines on which the human heart is\nracked, 'and stretched out so long,'--those rocky structures on which\nits choicest treasures are so wildly wrecked, these natural\nforces,--no matter what artificial combinations of them may have been\naccomplished,--'the causes _in nature_,' of the phenomena of human\nlife, appeared to this philosopher a very fitting subject for\nphilosophy, and one quite too important in its relation to human\nwell-being and the Arts that promote it, to be left to mere blundering\nexperiment; quite too subtle to be reached by any kind of empirical\ngroping, quite too subtle to be entangled with the conclusions of the\n_philosophy_ which he found in vogue in his time, whose social\nefficacies and gifts in exorcisms, he has taken leave to connect in\nsome way, with the appearance of Tom o' Bedlam in his history; a\nphilosophy which had built up its system in defiant scorn of the\nnature of things; as if 'by reasoning it _thus_ and _thus_,' without\nany respect to the actual conditions, it could undertake to bridle the\nmight of nature, and put a hook in the nose of her oppositions.\n\nIt did not seem to this philosopher well, that men who have eyes--eyes\nthat are great nature's gift to them,--her gift to them in\nchief,--eyes that were meant to see with, should go on in this\ngroping, star-gazing, fatally-stumbling fashion any longer.\n\n_Lear_. [To the Bedlamite.] I do not like the fashion of your\ngarments. _You will say that they are--Persian:--but_ let them be\nALTERED.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK--AND THE PLAY.\n\n\n  _Brutus._ How I have thought of this, and of _these times_,\n  I shall recount _hereafter_.\n\n  _Hamlet_. The Play's the thing.\n\n  _Brutus_. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.\n  _Casca_. I can as well _be hanged_ as tell _the manner_\n  of it.\n\n  _Posthumus_. 'Shall's have _a Play of this_.--\n\nThe fact that the design of this play, whatever it may be, is one deep\nenough to go down to that place in the social system which Tom o'\nBedlam was then peacefully occupying,--thinking of anything else in\nthe world but a social revolution on his behalf--to bring him up for\nobservation; and that it is high enough to go up to that apex of the\nsocial structure on which the crown was then fastened, to fetch down\nthe impersonated state itself, for an examination not less curious and\ncritical; the fact, too, that it was subtle enough to penetrate the\nretirement of the domestic life, and bring out its innermost passages\nfor scientific criticism;--the fact that the relation of the Parent to\nthe Child, and that of the Child to the Parent, the relation of\nHusband and Wife, and Sister and Brother, and Master and Servant, of\nPeasant and Lord, nay, the transient relation of Guest and Host, have\neach their place and part here, and the question of their duty marked\nnot less clearly, than that prominent relation of the King and his\nSubjects;--the fact that these relations come in from the first, along\nwith the political, and demand a hearing, and divide throughout the\nstage with them; the fact of the mere range of this social criticism,\nas it appears on the surface of the play, in these so prominent\npoints,--is enough to show already, that it is a _Radical_ of no\nordinary kind, who is at work behind this drop-scene.\n\nIt was evident, at a glance, that this so extensive bill of grievances\nwas not one which any immediate or violent political revolution, or\nany social reformation which was then in contemplation, would be able\nto meet; and that very circumstance gave to the whole essay its\nprofoundly quiet, conservative air. It passed only for one of those\ncommon outcries on the ills of human life, which men in general are\nexpected, or permitted to make, according to their several abilities;\none of those 'Alacks!'--'why does he so'? which, by relieving the mind\nof the complainant, tend to keep things quiet on the whole. This Poet,\nwhoever he was, was making rather more ado about it than usual,\napparently: but Poets are useful for that very purpose; they express\nother men's emotions for them, in a higher key than they could manage\nit themselves.\n\nIt was the breadth then,--the philosophic comprehension of this great\nphilosophic design, which made it possible for the Poet to introduce\ninto it, and exhibit in it, so glaringly, those evils of his time that\nwere crying out to Heaven then, for redress, and could not wait for\nphilosophic revolutions and reformations.\n\nTom o' Bedlam, strictly speaking, does appear, indeed, to have been\none of those Elizabethan institutions which were modified or annulled,\nin the course of the political changes that so soon followed this\nexhibition of his case. 'Tom' himself, in his own proper person,\nappears to have been left--by accident or otherwise--on the other side\nof the Revolutionary gulf. 'I remember,' says Aubrey, '_before the\ncivil wars_, Tom o' Bedlams went about begging,' etc.--but one cannot\nhelp remarking that a very numerous family connection of the\ncollateral branches of his house--bearing, on the whole, a\nsufficiently striking family resemblance to this illustrious subject\nof the Poet's pencil,--appear to have got safely over all the\npolitical and social gulfs that intervene between our time and that.\nAnd, as to some of those other social evils which are exhibited here\nin their ideal proportions, they are not, perhaps, so entirely among\nthe former things which have passed away with our reformations, that\nwe should have to go to Aubrey's note book to find out what the Poet\nmeans. As to some of these, at least, it will not be necessary to hunt\nup an antiquary, who can remember whether any such thing ever was\nreally in existence here, '_before the civil wars_.' And,\nnotwithstanding all our advancements in Natural Science, and in the\nArts which attend these advancements; notwithstanding the strong\nrecommendations of the inventors of this Science,--Regan's heart, and\nthat which breeds about it, appear, by a singular oversight, to have\nescaped, hitherto, any truly scientific inquiry; and the arts for\nimproving it do not appear, after all, to have been very materially\nadvanced since the time when this order was issued.\n\nBut notwithstanding that the subject of this piece appears to be so\ngeneral,--notwithstanding the fact, that the social evils which are\nhere represented include, apparently, the universal human conditions,\nand include evils which are still understood to be inherent in the\nnature of man, and, irreclaimable, or not, at least a subject for\nArt,--and notwithstanding the fact that this exhibition professes to\nborrow all its local hues and exaggerations from the barbaric times of\nthe Ancient Britons--it is not very difficult to perceive that it\ndoes, in fact, involve a local exhibition of a different kind; and\nthat, under the cover of that great revolution in the human estate,\nwhich the philosophic mind was then meditating,--_so broad_, that none\ncould perceive its _project_,--another revolution,--that revolution\nwhich was then so near at hand, was clearly outlined; and that this\nrevolution, too, is, after all, one towards which this Poet appears to\n'_incline_,' in a manner which would not have seemed, perhaps,\naltogether consistent with his position and assumptions elsewhere, if\nthese could have been produced here against him; and in a manner,\nperhaps, somewhat more decided than the general philosophic tone, and\nthe spirit of those large and peaceful designs to which he was chiefly\ndevoted, might have led us to anticipate. This Play was evidently\nwritten at a time when the conviction that the state of things which\nit represents could not endure much longer, had taken deep hold of the\nPoet's mind; at a time when those evils had attained a height so\nunendurable--when that evil which lay at the heart of the commonweal,\npoisoning all the social relations with its infection, had grown so\nfearful, that it might well seem, even to the scientific mind, to\nrequire the fierce '_drug_' of the political revolution,--so fearful\nas to make, even to such a mind, the rude surgery of the civil wars at\nlast welcome.\n\nFor, indeed, it cannot be denied that the state of things which this\nPlay represents, is that with which the author's own experience was\nconversant; and that all the terrible tragic satire of it, points--not\nto that age in the history of Britain in which the Druids were still\nresponsible for the national culture,--not to that time when the\nCeltic Triads, clothed with the sanctities of an unknown past, still\nmade the standard works and authorities in learning, beyond which\nthere was no going,--not to the time when the national morality was\nstill mystically produced at Stonehenge, in those national colleges,\nfrom whose mysterious rites the awful sanctities of the oak and the\nmistletoe drove back in confusion the sacrilegious inquirer,--not to\nthat time, but to the _Elizabethan_.\n\nThat instinctive groping and stumbling in all human affairs, that\npursuit of human ends without any science of the natures to be\nsuperinduced, and without any science of the natures that were to be\nsubjected,--those eyes of moonshine speculation, those glass eyes with\nwhich the scurvy politician affects to see the things he does\nnot--those thousand noses that serve for eyes, and horns welked and\nwaved like the enridged sea, and all the wild misery of that unlearned\nfortuitous human living, that waits to be scourged with the sequent\neffect, and knows not how to ascend to the cause--colossally\nexaggerated as it seems here--heightened everywhere, as if the Poet\nhad put forth his whole power, and strained his imagination, and\navailed himself of his utmost poetic license, to give it, through all\nits details, its last conceivable hue of violence, its pure ideal\nshape, is, after all, but a copy an historical sketch. The ignorance,\nthe stupidity, 'the _blindness_,' that this author paints, was his own\n'Time's plague'; 'the madness' that 'led it,' was the madness of which\nhe was himself a mute and manacled spectator.\n\nBy some singular oversight or caprice of tyranny, or on account of\nsome fastidious scruple of the imagination perhaps, it does _not_\nappear, indeed, to have been the fashion, either in the reigns of the\nTudors or the Stuarts, to pluck out the living human eye as Gloster's\neyes were plucked out; and that of itself would have furnished a\nreason why this poor duke should have been compelled to submit to that\nparticular operation, instead of presenting himself to have his ears\ncut off in a sober, decent, civilized, Christian manner; or to have\nthem grubbed out, if it happened that the operation had been once\nperformed already; or to have his hand cut off, or his head, with his\neyes in it; or to be roasted alive some noon-day in the public square,\neyes and all, as many an honest gentleman was expected to present\nhimself in those times, without making any particular demur or fuss\nabout it. _These_ were operations that Englishmen of every rank and\nprofession, soldiers, scholars, poets, philosophers, lawyers,\nphysicians, and grave and reverend divines, were called on to undergo\nin those times, and for that identical offence of which the Duke of\nGloster stood convicted, opposition to the will of a lawless usurping\ntyranny,--to its merest caprice of vanity or humour, perhaps,--or on\ngrounds slighter still, on bare suspicion of a disposition to oppose\nit.\n\nBut then that, of course, was a thing of _custom_; so much so, that\nthe victims themselves often took it in good part, and submitted to it\nas a divine institution, part of a sacred legacy, handed down to them,\nas it was understood, from their more enlightened ancestors.\n\nNow, if the Poet, in pursuance of his more general philosophic\nintention, which involved a moving representation of the helplessness\nof the Social Monad--that bodily as well as moral susceptibility and\nfragility, which leaves him open to all kinds of personal injury, not\nfrom the elements and from animals of other species merely or chiefly,\nbut chiefly from his own kind,--if the Poet, in the course of this\nexhibition, had caused poor Gloster to be held down in his chair on\nthe stage, for the purpose of having his _ears_ pared off, what kind\nof sensation could he hope to produce with that on the sensibility of\nan audience, who might have understood without a commentator an\nallusion to 'the tribulation of Tower Hill'--spectators accustomed to\nwitness performances so much more thrilling, and on a stage where the\nPlay was in earnest. And as to that second operation before referred\nto, which might have answered the poetic purpose, perhaps; who knows\nwhether that may not have been a refinement in civilization peculiar\nto the reign of that amiable and handsome Christian Prince, who was\nstill a minor when this Play was first brought out at Whitehall? for\nit was in _his_ reign that that memorable instance of it occurred,\nwhich the subsequent events connected with it chanced to make so\nnotorious. It was a learned and very conscientious lawyer, in the\nreign of Charles the First, whose criticism upon some of the\nfashionable amusements of the day, which certain members of the royal\nfamily were known to be fond of, occasioned the suggestion of this\nmode of satisfying the outraged Majesty of the State, when the prying\neye of Government discovered, or thought it did, remains enough of\nthose previously-condemned appendages on this author's person, to\nfurnish material for a second operation. 'Methinks Mr. Prynne _hath_\nears!' does not, after all, sound so very different from--'going to\npluck out Gloster's _other_ eye,' as that the governments under which\nthese two speeches are reported, need to be distinguished, on that\naccount only, by any such essential difference as that which is\nsupposed to exist between the human and _divine_. Both these\noperations appear, indeed to the unprejudiced human mind, to savour\nsomewhat of the diabolical--or of the Dark Ages, rather, and of the\nPrince of Darkness. And, indeed, that '_fiend_' which haunts the\nPlay--which the monster, with his moonshine eyes, appeared to have a\nvague idea of--seems to have been as busy here, in this department, as\nhe was in bringing about poor Tom's distresses.\n\nBut in that steady persevering exhibition of the liabilities of\nindividual human nature, the COMMON liabilities which throw it upon\nthe COMMON, the distinctive law of humanity for its WEAL--in that\ncontinuous picture of the suffering and ignominy, and mutilation to\nwhich it is liable, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, where\nthat law of humanity is not yet scientifically developed and\nscientifically sustained--the Poet does not always go quite so far to\nfind his details. It is not from the Celtic Regan's time that he\nbrings out those ancient implements of state authority into which the\nfeet of the poor Duke of Kent, travelling on the king's errands, are\nignominiously thrust; while the Poet, under cover of the Fool's jests,\nshows prettily their relation to the human dignity.\n\nBut then it is a Duke on whom this indignity is practised; for it is\nto be remarked, in passing, that though this Poet is evidently bent on\nmaking his exhibition a thorough one, though he is determined not to\nleave out anything of importance in his diagrams, he does not appear\ninclined to soil his fingers by meddling with the lower orders, or to\ncountenance any innovation in his art in that respect. Whenever he has\noccasion to introduce persons of this class into his pieces, they come\nin and go out, and perform their part in his scene, very much as they\ndo elsewhere in his time. Even when his Players come in, they do not\nspeak many words on their own behalf. They stand civilly, and answer\nquestions, and take their orders, and fulfil them. That is all that is\nlooked for at their hands. For this is not a Poet who has ever given\nany one occasion in his own time, to distinguish him as the Poet of\nthe People. It is always from the highest social point of observation\nthat he takes those views of the lower ranks, which he has occasion to\nintroduce into his Plays, from the mobs of 'greasy citizens' to the\ndetails of the sheep-shearing feast; and even in Eastcheap he keeps it\nstill.\n\nThere never was a more aristocratic poet apparently, and though the\nvery basest form of outcast misery 'that ever penury in contempt of\nman brought near to beast,' though the basest and most ignoble and\npitiful human liabilities, are every where included in his plan; he\nwill have nothing but the rich blood of dukes and kings to take him\nthrough with it--he will have nothing lower and less illustrious than\nthese to play his parts for him.\n\nIt is a king to whom 'the _Farm House_,' where _both_ fire and food\nare waiting, becomes a royal luxury on his return from the _Hovel's_\ndoor, brought in chattering out of the tempest, in that pitiful stage\nof human want, which had made him ready to share with Tom o' Bedlam,\nnay, with the _swine_, their rude comforts. 'Art cold? I am cold\nmyself. Where is this straw, my fellow. Your _hovel_:--come bring us\nto your _hovel_.'\n\nIt is a king who gets an ague in the storm, who finds the tyranny of\nthe night too rough for nature to endure; it is a king on whose\ndesolate outcast head, destitution and social wrongs accumulate their\nresults, till his wits begin to turn, till his mind is shattered, and\nhe comes on to the stage at last, a poor bedlamite.\n\nNay, 'Tom' himself, is a duke's son, we are told; though that\ncircumstance does not hinder him from giving, with much frankness and\nscientific accuracy, the particulars of those personal pursuits, and\ntastes, and habits, incidental to that particular station in life to\nwhich it has pleased Providence to call _him_.\n\nAnd so by means of that poetic order, which is the Providence of this\npiece, and that design which 'tunes the harmony of it,' it is a duke\non whom that low correction, 'such as basest and most contemned\nwretches are punished with,' is exhibited, in spite of his indignant\nprotest.\n\n  _Kent_. Call not your stocks for me. _I_ serve the king,\n  On _whose employment_ I was sent to you.\n  You shall do small _respect_, show too bold malice\n  Against the _grace_ and _person_ of my master,\n  Stocking his messenger.\n\n  _Cornwall_. Fetch forth the stocks.\n  As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.'\n\n  _Regan_. Till noon,--till night my lord, and all night too.\n\n[In vain the prudent and loyal Gloster remonstrates]\n\n      --The king must take it ill\n  That _he_, so slightly valued in his messenger,\n  Should have him thus restrained.\n\n  _Cornwall_.         I'll answer that.\n\n  _Regan_. Put in his legs.\n\nBut then it must be confessed that the poet was not without some kind\nof precedent for this bold dramatic proceeding. He had, indeed, by\nmeans of the culture and diligent use of that gift of forethought,\nwith which nature had so largely endowed him, been enabled thus far to\nkeep his own person free from any such tangible encumbrance, though\nthe '_lameness_' with which fortune had afflicted him personally, is\nalways his personal grievance; but he had seen in his own time,\nancient men and reverend,--men who claimed to be the ministers of\nheaven, and travelling on its errands, arrested, and subjected to this\nludicrous indignity: he had seen this open stop, this palpable,\ncorporeal, unfigurative arrest put upon the activity of scholars and\nthinkers in his time, conscientious men, between whose master and the\nstate, there was a growing quarrel then, a quarrel that these\nproceedings were not likely to pacify. From noon till night, they,\ntoo, had sat thus, and all night too, they had endured that shameful\nlodging.\n\n'When a man is _over_ lusty at legs,' says the Fool, who arrives in\ntime to put in an observation or two on this topic, and who seems\ndisposed to look at it from a critical point of view, concluding with\nthe practical improvement of the subject, already quoted--'When a man\nis over lusty at legs'--(when his will, or his higher intelligence,\nperhaps, is allowed to govern them too freely,) 'he wears wooden\nnether stocks,' or 'cruel garters,' as he calls them again, by way of\nbestowing on this institution of his ancestors as much variety of\npoetic imagery as the subject will admit of. '_Horses_ are tied by the\nhead, _dogs_ and _bears_ by the neck, _monkeys_ by the loins, and\n_men_ by the legs'; and having ransacked his memory to such good\npurpose, and produced such a pile of learned precedents, he appears\ndisposed to rest the case with these; for it is a part of the play to\nget man into his place in the scale of nature, and to draw the line\nbetween him and the brutes, if there be any such thing possible; and\nthe Fool seems to be particularly inclined to assist the author in\nthis process, though when we last heard of him he was, indeed,\nproposing to send the principal man of his time 'to school to an ant,'\nto improve his sagacity; intimating, also, that another department of\nnatural science, even conchology itself, might furnish him with some\nrather more prudent and fortunate suggestions than those which his own\nbrain had appeared to generate; and it is to be remarked, that in his\nviews on this point, as on some others of importance, he has the\nhappiness to agree remarkably with that illustrious yoke-fellow of his\nin philosophy, who was just then turning his attention to the 'practic\npart of life' and _its_ 'theoric,' and who indulges himself in some\nsatires on this point not any less severe, though his pleasantries are\nsomewhat more covert. But the philosopher on this occasion, having\nproduced such a variety of precedents from natural history, appears to\nbe satisfied with the propriety and justice of the proceeding,\ninasmuch as beasts and men seem to be treated with impartial\nconsideration in it; and though a certain distinction of form appears\nto obtain according to the species, the main fact is throughout\nidentical.\n\n'Then comes the time,' he says, in winding up that knotted skein of\nprophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives\nbefore his time,' as he takes that opportunity to tell us--\n\n  'Then comes the time, who lives to see't,\n  That _going shall be used with feet_.'\n\nYes, it is a duke who is put in the stocks; it is a duke's son plays\nthe bedlamite; it is a king who finds the hovel's shelter 'precious';\nand it is a queen--it is a king's wife, and a daughter of kings--who\nis hanged; nay more, it is Cordelia--it is Cordelia, and none other,\nwhom this inexorable Poet, primed with mischief, bent on outrage,\ndetermined to turn out the heart of his time, and show, in the\nselectest form, the inmost lining of its lurking humanities--it is\nCordelia whom he will hang--And we forgive him still, and bear with\nhim in all these assaults on our taste--in all these thick-coming\nblows on our outraged sensibilities; we forgive him when at last the\npoetic design flashes on us,--when we come to understand the\nprovidence of this piece, at least,--when we come to see at last that\nthere is a meaning in it _all_, a meaning deep to justify even this\nprocedure.\n\n'We are not the _first_ who, with _the best_ meaning, have _incurred\nthe worst_,' says the captive queen herself; nor was she the last of\nthat good company, as the Poet himself might have testified;--\n\n    Upon such sacrifices the gods themselves _throw incense_.\n\nWe forgive the Poet here, as we forgive him in all these other pitiful\nand revolting exhibitions, because we know that he who would undertake\nthe time's cure--he who would undertake the relief of the human estate\nin any age, must probe its evil--must reach, no matter what it costs,\nits deadliest _hollow_.\n\nAnd in that age, there was no voice which could afford to lack 'the\ncourtier's glib and oily art.' 'Hanging was the word' then, for the\nqualities of which this princess was the impersonation, or almost the\nimpersonation, so predominant were they in her poetic constitution.\nThere was no voice, gentle and low enough, to speak outright such\ntruth as hers; and 'banishment' and 'the stocks' would have been only\ntoo mild a remedy for 'the plainness' to which Kent declares, even to\nthe teeth of majesty, 'honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly.'\n\nThe kind, considerate Gloster, with all his loyalty to the powers\nwhich are able to show the divine right of possession, and with all\nhis disposition to conform to the times, is greatly distressed and\nperplexed with the outrages which are perpetrated, as it were, under\nhis own immediate sanction and authority. He has a hard struggle to\nreconcile his duty as the subject of a state which he is not prepared\nto overthrow, with his humane impulses and designs. He goes pattering\nabout for a time, remonstrating, and apologizing, and trying 'to\nsmooth down,' and 'hush up,' and mollify, and keep peace between the\noffending parties. He stands between the blunt, straightforward\nmanliness of the honest Kent on the one hand, and the sycophantic\nservility and self-abnegation, which knows no will but the master's,\nas represented by the Steward, on the other.\n\n'I am sorry for thee,' he says to Kent, after having sought in vain to\nprevent this outrage from being perpetrated in his own court--\n\n  'I am sorry for thee, friend: _tis the duke's pleasure,\n  Whose disposition all the world well knows,\n  Will not be rubbed or stopped_'--\n\nas he found to his cost, poor man, when he came to have his own eyes\ngouged out by it. He 'saw it _feelingly_' then, as he remarked\nhimself.\n\n'I'll entreat for thee,' he continues, in his conversation with the\ndisguised duke in the stocks. 'The duke's to blame in this. '_Twill be\nill taken_.'\n\nAnd when the king, on his arrival, kept waiting in the court, in his\nagony of indignation and grief, is told that Regan and Cornwall are\n'sick,' 'they are weary,' 'they have travelled hard to-night,'\ndenounces these subterfuges, and bids Gloster fetch him a better\nanswer, this is the worthy man's reply to him--\n\n                        'My dear lord,\n  You know the fiery quality of the duke,\n  How unremovable and fixed he is\n  In his own course.'\n\nBut Lear, who has never had any but a subjective acquaintance hitherto\nwith reasons of that kind, does not appear able to understand them\nfrom this point of view--\n\n  _Lear_. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!\n  _Fiery_?--what _quality_?  Why Gloster, Gloster,\n  I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.\n\n  _Gloster_. Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.\n\n  _Lear_. Informed them?  Dost thou understand me?\n\n  _Gloster_. Ay, my good lord.\n\nBut though Gloster is not yet ready to break with tyranny, it is not\ndifficult to see which way he secretly inclines; and though he still\nmanages his impulses cautiously, and contrives to succour the\noppressed king by stealth, his courage rises with the emergency, and\ngrows bold with provocation. For he is himself one of the finer and\nfinest proofs of the times which the Poet represents; one, however,\nwhich he keeps back a little, for the study of those who look at his\nwork most carefully. This man stands here in the general, indeed, as\nthe representative of a class of men who do not belong exclusively to\nthis particular time--men who do not stand ready, as Kent and his\nclass do, to fly in the face of tyranny at the first provocation; they\nare not the kind of men who 'make mouths,' as Hamlet says, 'at the\ninvisible event;'--they are the kind who know beforehand that to break\nwith the powers that are, single-handed, is to sit on the stage and\nhave your eyes gouged out, or to undergo some process of mutilation\nand disfigurement, not the less painful and oppressive, by this Poet's\nown showing, because it does not happen, perhaps, to be a physical\none, and not the less calculated, on that account, to impair one's\nusefulness to one's species, it may be.\n\nBut besides that more general bearing of the representation, the part\nand disposition of Gloster afford us from time to time, glimpses of\npersons and things which connect the representation more directly with\nthe particular point here noted. Men who found themselves compelled to\noccupy a not less equivocal _position_ in the state, look through it a\nlittle now and then; and here, as in other parts of the play, it only\nwants the right key to bring out suppressed historical passages, and a\nfiner history generally, than the chronicles of the times were able to\ntake up.\n\n'Alack, alack, Edmund,' says Gloster to his natural son, making _him_\nthe confidant of his nobler nature, putting what was then the perilous\nsecret of his humanity, into the dangerous keeping of the base-born\none--for this is the Poet's own interpretation of his plot; though\nLear is allowed to intimate on his behalf, that the loves and\nrelations which are recognised and good in courts of justice, are not\nalways secured by that sanction from similar misfortune; that they are\nnot secured by that from those penalties which great Nature herself\nawards in those courts in which her institutes are vindicated.\n\n'Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not THIS UNNATURAL DEALING! When I\ndesired _their leave that I might pity him_, they took from me _the\nuse of mine own house_, and charged me on pain of their perpetual\ndispleasure, _neither to speak_ of him, _entreat for him, nor in any\nway to sustain him_.'\n\n  _Edmund_.  Most _savage and unnatural_.\n\n  _Gloster_. Go to, say you nothing.\n\n[And say you nothing, my contemporary reader, if you perceive that\nthis is one of those passages I have spoken of elsewhere, which\ncarries with it another application besides that which I put it to].\n\n'There is division between the dukes--and a worse matter than that: I\nhave received a letter this night,--'tis dangerous to be spoken;--I\nhave _locked_ the letter in my _closet: these injuries the king now\nbears_, will be revenged _at home_' [softly--say you nothing].\n'_There_ is _part of a power already footed_: we _must incline to the\nking. I_ will seek him and _privily relieve him_. _Go you and maintain\ntalk with the duke_, that my charity be not of him perceived. If he\nask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I die for it,--_as no less\nis threatened me_,--_the king, my old master_--MUST BE RELIEVED. There\nis some strange thing toward, Edmund. Pray you be careful.'\n\nEven Edmund himself professes to be not altogether without some\nexperience of the perplexity which the claims of apparently clashing\nduties, and relations in such a time creates, though he seems to have\nfound an easy method of disposing of these questions. _Nature_ is his\ngoddess and his law (that is, as _he_ uses the term, the baser nature,\nthe degenerate, which is not nature for man, which is _unnatural_ for\nthe human kind), and in his own 'rat'-like fashion, 'he bites the holy\ncords atwain.'\n\n'How, my lord,' he says, in the act of betraying his father's secret\nto the Duke of Cornwall, in the hope of 'drawing to himself what his\nfather loses'--'how I may be censured that NATURE, thus gives way to\nLOYALTY, _something fears me to think of_.' And again, 'I will\npersevere in my course of _loyalty_, though the conflict be sore\nbetween that and my _blood_.'\n\n'_Know thou this_,' he says afterwards, to the officer whom he employs\nto hang Cordelia, 'THAT MEN ARE AS THE TIME IS. Thy great employment\nwill not bear question. About it, I say, instantly, and carry it so as\nI have set it down.' 'I cannot _draw a cart_, nor _eat dried oats_,'\nis the officer's reply, who appears to be also in the poet's secret,\nand ready to aid his intention of carrying out the distinction between\nthe human kind and the brute, 'I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried\noats;--if it be MAN'S WORK I will do it.'\n\nBut it is the steward's part, as deliberately explained by Kent\nhimself, which furnishes in detail the ideal antagonism of that which\nKent sustains in the piece; for beside those active demonstrations of\nhis disgust, which the poetic order tolerates in him, though some of\nthe powers within appear to take such violent offence at it, besides\nthese tangible demonstrations, and that elaborate criticism, which the\npoet puts into his mouth, in which the steward is openly treated as\nthe representative of a class, who seem to the poet apparently, to\nrequire some treatment in his time, Kent himself is made to notice\ndistinctly this literally striking opposition.\n\n'No _contraries_ hold more _antipathy_ than I, and such a knave,' he\nsays to Cornwall, by way of explaining his apparently gratuitous\nattack upon the steward.\n\nNo one, indeed, who reads the play with any care, can doubt the poet's\nintention to incorporate into it, for some reason or other, and to\nbring out by the strongest conceivable contrasts, his study of loyalty\nand service, and especially of regal counsel, and his criticism of it,\nas it stood in his time in its most approved patterns. 'Such smiling\nrouges as these' ('that _bite_ the _holy cords atwain_').\n\n    'Smooth every _passion_\n  That in the _nature of their lord rebels_;\n  Bring oil to fire, snow _to their_ colder moods;\n  Revenge, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks\n  With every _gale_ and _vary_ of their masters,\n  As _knowing nought_ like _dogs_ but--_following_.'\n\nSuch ruses as this would not, of course, be wanting in such a _time_\nas that in which this piece was planned, if Edmund's word was, indeed,\nthe true one. 'Know thou this, _men_ are as the time is.'\n\nAnd even amidst the excitement and rough outrage of that scene--in\nwhich Gloster's trial is so summarily conducted, even in that so rude\nscene--the relation between the _guest_ and his _host_, and the\nrelation of the _slave_ to his _owner_, is delicately and studiously\ntouched, and the human claim in both is boldly advanced, in the face\nof an absolute authority, and _age_ and _personal dignity_ put in\ntheir claims also, and demand, even at such a moment, their full\nrights of reverence.\n\n  [_Re-enter servants with_ GLOSTER.]\n\n  _Regan_. Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.\n\n  _Cornwall_. Bind fast his _corky_ arms.\n\n  _Gloster_. What mean your graces?--Good my friends, _consider_.\n  _You are my guests_: do me no foul play, _friends_.\n\n  _Cornwall_. Bind him, I say.\n\n  _Regan_. Hard, hard:--O filthy traitor!\n\n  _Gloster_. Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.\n\n  _Cornwall_. To this chair bind him:--Villain, thou shalt\n  find--[REGAN _plucks his beard_].\n\n  _Gloster_. By the KIND gods [_for these are the gods, whose\n  'Commission' is sitting here_]'tis most _ignobly_ done,\n  To pluck me by the beard.\n\n  _Regan_. So white, and such a traitor!\n\n  _Gloster_.                  Naughty lady,\n  _These hairs_, which thou dost ravish from my chin,\n  Will quicken and accuse thee.\n                                _I am your host_:\n  With _robber hands_, my hospitable favours\n  You should not _ruffle_ thus.\n\nTied to the stake, questioned and cross-questioned, and insulted,\nfinally, beyond even his faculty of endurance, he breaks forth, at\nlast, in strains of indignation that overleap all arbitrary and\nconventional bounds, that are only the more terrible for having been\nso long suppressed. Kent himself, when he 'came between the dragon and\nhis wrath,' was not so fierce.\n\n  _Cornwall_. Where hast thou sent the king?\n\n  _Gloster_. _To Dover_.\n\n  _Regan_. Wherefore\n  To Dover, was't thou not charged at peril?--\n\n  _Cornwall. Wherefore to Dover?_ Let him first answer that.\n\n  _Regan_. Wherefore _to Dover?_\n\n  _Gloster_. Because I would not see thy cruel nails\n  Pluck out his poor old eyes, _nor thy fierce sister_\n  In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.\n\n  ...\n\n  _Regan_. One side will mock another; the other too.\n\n  _Cornwall_. If you 'see vengeance.'\n\n  _Servant_. Hold your hand, my lord:\n  _I have served you ever since I was a child_;\n  But _better service_ have I never done you,\n  Than now _to bid you hold_.\n\n  _Regan_. How now, you _dog_?\n\n  _Servant_. If you did wear a beard upon your chin,\n  I'd shake it on this quarrel: _What do you mean_?\n\n  [_Arbitrary power called to an account, requested to explain\n  itself_.]\n\n  _Cornwall. My_ villain!\n\n  _Regan_. A PEASANT _stand up thus_?\n\nThus too, indeed, in that rude scene above referred to, in which the\nking finds his messenger in the stocks, and Regan's door, too, shut\nagainst him, the same ground of criticism had already been revealed,\nthe same delicacy and rigour in the exactions had already betrayed the\ndepth of the poetic design, and the real comprehension of that _law_,\nwhose violations are depicted here, the scientific law, the scientific\nsovereignty, the law of universal nature; commanding, in the human,\nthat specific human excellence, for the _degenerate_ movement is in\nviolation of nature, that is not _nature_ but her profanation and\nundoing.\n\nThis is one of those passages, however, which admit, as the modern\nreader will more easily observe than the contemporary of the Poet was\nlikely to of a second reading.\n\n  _Goneril_. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance\n  From those that she calls servants, or from mine?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,\n  To _follow_ in a _house_, where twice so many\n  _Have a command to tend you_?\n\n  _Regan_. What need one?\n\n  _Lear_. O reason not the _need_: our basest beggars\n  Are in the poorest things superfluous.\n\n      [_Poor Tom must have his 'rubans_.']\n\n  Allow not NATURE more than NATURE needs,\n  MAN'S LIFE were cheap as BEASTS [_and that's not nature_]\n  Thou art _a lady_;\n  If only to go warm were _gorgeous_,\n  Why, _nature_ needs not what _thou gorgeous_ wear'st,\n  Which scarcely keeps thee warm.--But, for TRUE NEED,\n  You heavens, give me THAT patience.--_Patience I need_.\n\nIt is, indeed, the doctrine of the 'true need' that is lurking here,\nand all that puts man into his true place and relations in the\ncreative order, whether of submission or control is included in it. It\nis the doctrine of the natural human need, and the natural ground and\nlimits of the arts, for which nature has endowed man beforehand, with\na faculty and a sentiment corresponding in grandeur to his\nneed,--large as he is little, noble as he is mean, powerful as he is\nhelpless, felicitous as he is wretched; the faculty and the sentiment\nwhereby the _want_ of man becomes the measure of his wealth and\ngrandeur,--whereby his conscious _lowness_ becomes the means of his\nascent to his ideal type in nature, and to the scientific perfection\nof his form.\n\nAnd this whole social picture,--rude, savage as it is,--savage as it\nshews when its sharp outline falls on that fair ideal ground of\ncriticism which the doctrine of a scientific civilization creates,--is\nbut the Poet's report of the progress of human development as it stood\nin his time, and of the gain that it had made on savage instinct then.\nIt is his report of the social institutions of his time, as he found\nthem on his map of human advancement. It is his report of the wild\nsocial misery that was crying underneath them, with its burthen of new\nadvancements. It is the Poet's Apology for his new doctrine of human\nliving, which he is going to publish, and leave on the earth, for 'the\ntimes that are far off.' It is the negative, which is the first step\ntowards that affirmation, which he is going to establish on the earth\nfor ever, or so long as the species, whose law he has found, endures\non it. Down to its most revolting, most atrocious detail, it is still\nthe Elizabethan civility that is painted here. Even Goneril's\nunscrupulous mode of disposing of her rival sister, though _that_ was\nthe kind of murder which was then regarded with the profoundest\ndisgust and horror--(the queen in Cymbeline expresses that vivid\nsentiment, when she says: 'If Pisanio have given his mistress that\nconfection which I gave him for a cordial, she is served as I would\nserve a rat')--even as to that we all know what a king's favourite\nfelt himself competent to undertake then; and, if the clearest\nintimations of such men as Bacon, and Coke, and Raleigh, on such a\nquestion, are of any worth, the household of James the First was not\nwithout a parallel even for that performance, if not when this play\nwas written, when it was published.\n\nIt is all one picture of social ignorance, and misery, and _frantic_\nmisrule. It is a faithful exhibition of the degree of personal\nsecurity which a man of honourable sentiments, and humane and noble\nintentions, could promise himself in such a time. It shows what chance\nthere was of any man being permitted to sustain an honourable and\nintelligent part in the world, in an age in which all the radical\nsocial arts were yet wanting, in which the rude institutions of an\nignorant past spontaneously built up, without any science of the\nnatural laws, were vainly seeking to curb and quench the Incarnate\nsoul of new ages,--the spirit of a scientific human advancement; and,\nwhen all the common welfare was still openly intrusted to the\nunchecked caprice and passion of one selfish, pitiful, narrow,\nlow-minded man.\n\nTo appreciate fully the incidental and immediate political application\nof the piece, however, it is necessary to observe that notwithstanding\nthat studious exhibition of lawless and outrageous power, which it\ninvolves, it is, after all, we are given to understand, by a quiet\nintimation here and there, _a limited monarchy_ which is put upon the\nstage here. It is a constitutional government, very much in the\nElizabethan stage of development, as it would seem, which these\narbitrary rulers affect to be administering. It is a government which\nprofesses to be one of law, under which the atrocities of this piece\nare sheltered.\n\nAnd one may even note, in passing, that that high Judicial Court, in\nwhich poor Lear undertakes to get his cause tried, appears to have,\nsomehow, an extremely modern air, considering what age of the British\nhistory it was, in which it was supposed to be constituted, and\nconsidering that one of the wigs appointed to that Bench had to leave\nhis speech behind him for Merlin to make, in consequence of living\nbefore his time: at all events it is already tinctured with some of\nthe more notorious Elizabethan vices--vices which our Poet, not\ncontent with this exposition, contrived to get exposed in another\nmanner, and to some purpose, ere all was done.\n\n  _Lear_. It shall be done, I will arraign them straight!\n  Come, sit thou here, _most learned Justice_.\n\n[_To the_ BEDLAMITE_.]\n\n  Thou, _sapient_ Sir, sit here. [_To the_ FOOL.]\n\nAnd again,--\n\n  I'll see _their trial_ first. _Bring in the evidence_.\n  Thou _robed_ MAN of JUSTICE take _thy_ place.\n\n[_To_ TOM O'BEDLAM.]\n\n  And _thou_, his _yoke fellow_ of EQUITY _bench by his side_.\n\n[_To the_ FOOL.]\n\n  You are of '_the Commission_'--sit _you too_.\n\n[_To_ KENT.]\n\nTruly it was a bold wit that could undertake to constitute that bench\non the stage, and fill it with those speaking forms,--speaking to the\neye the unmistakeable significance, for these judges, two of them,\nhappened to be on the spot in full costume,--and as to the third, he\nwas of '_the commission_.' 'Sit you, too.' Truly it was a bold\ninstructor that could undertake 'to facilitate' the demonstration of\n'the more chosen subjects,' with the aid of diagrams of this kind.\n\nArms! Arms! Sword, fire! CORRUPTION IN THE PLACE! _False justicer, why\nhast thou let her scape_?\n\nThe tongues of these ancient sovereigns of Britain, 'tang' throughout\nwith Elizabethan 'arguments of state,' and even Goneril, in her\nsomewhat severe proceedings against her _father_, justifies her course\nin a very grave and excellent speech, enriched with the choicest\nphrases of that particular order of state eloquence, in which majesty\nstoops graciously to a recognition of the subject nation;--a speech\nfrom which we gather that the '_tender of a wholesome weal_' is, on\nthe whole, the thing which she has at heart most deeply, and though\nthe proceeding in question is a painful one to her feelings, a state\nnecessity appears to prescribe it, or at least, render it\n'_discreet_.'\n\nEven in Gloster's case, though the process to which he is subjected,\nis, confessedly, an extemporaneous one, it appears from the Duke of\nCornwall's statement, that it was only the _form_ which was wanting to\nmake it legal. Thus he apologizes for it.--\n\n  Though well we may not pass upon his life\n  Without the form of justice, yet our _power_\n  Shall do a _courtesy_ to _our wrath_, which men\n  May blame, _but not control_.\n\nGoneril, however, grows bolder at the last, and says outright, 'Say if\nI do, the _laws_ are _mine_ NOT THINE.' But it is the law which is\n_thine_ and _mine_, it is the law which is for Tom o' Bedlam and for\nthee, that great nature speaking at last through her interpreter, and\nexplaining all this wild scene, will have vindicated.\n\n_Most_ MONSTROUS, exclaims her illustrious consort; but at the close\nof the play, where so much of the meaning sometimes comes out in a\nword, he himself concedes that the government which has just devolved\nupon him is an _absolute_ monarchy.\n\n'For us,' he says, 'WE WILL RESIGN, during the life of this old\nMajesty, OUR ABSOLUTE POWER.'\n\nSo that there seems to have been, in fact,--in the minds, too, of\npersons who ought, one would say, to have been best informed on this\nsubject,--just that vague, uncertain, contradictory view of this\nimportant question, which appears to have obtained in the English\nstate, during the period in which the material of this poetic\ncriticism was getting slowly accumulated. But of course this play, so\nfull of the consequences of arbitrary power, so full of Elizabethan\npolitics, with its 'ear-kissing arguments,' could not well end, till\nthat word, too, had been spoken outright; and, in the Duke of Albany's\nresignation, it slips in at last so quietly, so properly, that no one\nperceives that it is not there by accident.\n\nThis, then, is what the play contains; but those that follow the\n_story_ and the superficial plot only, must, of course, lose track of\nthe interior identities. It does not occur to these that the Poet is\noccupied with principles, and that the change of _persons_ does not,\nin the least, confound his pursuit of them.\n\nThe fact that tyranny is in one act, or in one scene, represented by\nLear, and in the next by his daughters;--the fact that the king and\nthe father is in one act the tyrant, and in another, the victim of\ntyranny, is quite enough to confound the criticism to which a work of\nmere amusement is subjected; for it serves to disguise the philosophic\npurport, by dividing it on the surface: and the dangerous passages are\nall opposed and neutralised, for those who look at it only as a piece\nof dramatized, poetic history.\n\nFor this is a philosopher who prefers to handle his principles in\ntheir natural, historical combinations, in those modified unions of\nopposites, those complex wholes, which nature so stedfastly inclines\nto, instead of exhibiting them scientifically bottled up and labelled,\nin a state of fierce chemical abstraction.\n\nHis characters are not like the characters in the old 'Moralities,'\nwhich he found on the stage when he first began to turn his attention\nto it, mere impersonations of certain vague, loose, popular notions.\nThose sickly, meagre forms would not answer his purpose. It was\nnecessary that the actors in the New Moralities he was getting up so\nquietly, should have some speculation in their eyes, some blood in\ntheir veins, a kind of blood that had never got manufactured in the\nPoet's laboratory till then. His characters, no matter how strong the\npredominating trait, though '_the conspicuous instance_' of it be\nselected, have all the rich quality, the tempered and subtle power of\nnature's own compositions. The expectation, the interest, the surprise\nof life and history, waits, with its charm on all their speech and\ndoing.\n\nThe whole play tells, indeed, its own story, and scarcely needs\ninterpreting, when once the spectator has gained the true dramatic\nstand-point; when once he understands that there is a teacher here,--a\nnew one,--one who will not undertake to work with the\ninstrumentalities that his time offered to him, who begins by\nrejecting the abstractions which lie at the foundation of all the\nlearning of his time, which are not scientific, but vague, loose,\npopular notions, that have been collected without art, or scientific\nrule of rejection, and are, therefore, inefficacious in nature, and\nunavailable for 'the art and practic part of life;' a teacher who will\nbuild up his philosophy anew, from the beginning, a teacher who will\nbegin with history and particulars, who will abstract his definitions\nfrom nature, and have _powers_ of them, and not _words_ only, and make\n_them_ the basis of his science and the material and instrument of his\nreform. 'I will teach you _differences_,' says Kent to the steward,\nalluding on the part of his author, for he does not profess to be\nmetaphysical himself to another kind of distinction, than that which\nobtained in the schools; and accompanying the remark, on his own part,\nwith some practical demonstrations, which did not appear to be taken\nin good part at all by the person he was at such pains to instruct in\nhis doctrine of distinctions.\n\nThe reader who has once gained this clue, the clue which the question\nof design and authorship involves, will find this play, as he will\nfind, indeed, all this author's plays, overflowing every where with\nthe scientific statement,--the finest abstract statement of that which\nthe action, with its moving, storming, laughing, weeping, praying\ndiagrams, sets forth in the concrete.\n\nBut he who has not yet gained this point,--the critic who looks at it\nfrom the point of observation which the traditionary theory of its\norigin and intent creates, is not in a position to notice the\nphilosophic expositions of its purport, with which the action is all\ninwoven. No,--though the whole structure of the piece should\nmanifestly hang on them, though the whole flow of the dialogue should\nmake one tissue of them, though every interstice of the play should be\nfilled with them, though the fool's jest, and the Bedlamite's\ngibberish, should point and flash with them at every turn;--though the\nwildest incoherence of madness, real or assumed, to its most dubious\nhummings,--its snatches of old ballads, and inarticulate mockings of\nthe blast, should be strung and woven with them; though the storm\nitself, with its wild accompaniment, and demoniacal frenzies, should\narticulate its response to them;--keeping open tune without, to that\nhuman uproar; and howling symphonies, to the unconquered demoniacal\nforces of human life,--for it is the Poet who writes in 'the storm\ncontinues,'--'the storm continues,'--'the storm continues;'--though\neven Edmund's diabolical '_fa, sol, lah, mi_,' should dissolve into\nharmony with them, while Tom's five fiends echo it from afar, and 'mop\nand mow' their responses, down to the one that '_since possesses\nchambermaids_;' nobody that takes the play theory, and makes a matter\nof faith of it merely; nobody that is willing to shut his eyes and\nopen his mouth, and swallow the whole upon trust, as a miracle simply,\nis going to see anything in all this, or take any exceptions at it.\n\nCertainly, at the time when it was written, it was not the kind of\nlearning and the kind of philosophy that the world was used to. Nobody\nhad ever heard of such a thing. The memory of man could not go far\nenough to produce any parallel to it in letters. It was manifest that\nthis was _nature_, the living nature, the thing itself. None could\nperceive the tint of the school on its robust creations; no eye could\ndetect in its sturdy compositions the stuff that books were made of;\nand it required no effort of faith, therefore, to believe that it was\nnot that. It was easy enough to believe, and men were glad, on the\nwhole, to believe that it was not that--that it was not learning or\nphilosophy--but something just as far from that, as completely its\nopposite, as could well be conceived of.\n\nHow could men suspect, as yet, that this was the new scholasticism,\nthe New Philosophy? Was it strange that they should mistake it for\nrude nature herself, in her unschooled, spontaneous strength, when it\nhad not yet publicly transpired that something had come at last upon\nthe stage of human development, which was stooping to nature and\nlearning of her, and stealing her secret, and unwinding the clue to\nthe heart of her mystery? How could men know that this was the\nsubtlest philosophy, the ripest scholasticism, the last proof of all\nhuman learning, when it was still a secret that the school of nature\nand her laws, that the school of natural history and natural\nphilosophy, too, through all its lengths and breadths and depths, was\nopen; and that '_the schools_'--the schools of old chimeras and\nnotions--the schools where the jangle of the monkish abstractions and\nthe 'fifes and the trumpets of the Greeks' were sounding--were going\nto get shut up with it.\n\nHow should they know that the teacher of the New Philosophy was Poet\nalso--must be, by that same anointing, a singer, mighty as the sons of\nsong who brought their harmonies of old into the savage earth--a\nsinger able to sing down antiquities with his new gift, able to sing\nin new eras?\n\nBut these have no clue as yet to track him with: they cannot collect\nor thread his thick-showered meanings. He does not care through how\nmany mouths he draws the lines of his philosophic purpose. He does not\ncare from what long distances his meanings look towards each other.\nBut these interpreters are not aware of that. They have not been\ninformed of that particular. On the contrary, they have been put\nwholly off their guard. Their heads have been turned, deliberately, in\njust the opposite direction. They have no faintest hint beforehand of\nthe depths in which the philosophic unities of the piece are hidden:\nit is not strange, therefore, that these unities should escape their\nnotice, and that they should take it for granted that there are none\nin it. It is not the mere play-reader who is ever going to see them.\nIt will take the philosophic student, with all his clues, to master\nthem. It will take the student of the New School and the New Ages,\nwith the torch of Natural Science in his hand, to track them to their\ncentre.\n\nHere, too, as elsewhere, it is the king himself on whom the bolder\npolitical expositions are thrust. But it is not his royalty only that\nhas need to be put in requisition here, to bring out successfully all\nthat was working then in this Poet's mind and heart, and which had to\ncome out in some way. It was something more than royalty that was\nrequired to protect this philosopher in those astounding freedoms of\nspeech in which he indulges himself here, without any apparent scruple\nor misgiving. The combination of distresses, indeed, which the old\nballad accumulates on the poor king's head, offers from the first a\nlarge poetic license, of which the man of art--or '_prudence_,' as he\ncalls it--avails himself somewhat liberally.\n\nWith those _daughters_ in the foreground always, and the parental\ngrief so wild and loud--with that deeper, deadlier, infinitely more\ncruel _private_ social wrong interwoven with all the political\nrepresentation, and overpowering it everywhere, as if that inner\nsocial evil were, after all, foremost in the Poet's thought--as if\nthat were the thing which seemed crying to him for redress more than\nall the rest--if, indeed, any thought of 'giving losses their\nremedies' could cross a Player's dream, when, in the way of his\nprofession, 'the _enormous state_' came in to fill his scene, and open\nits subterranean depths, and let out its secrets, and drown the stage\nwith its elemental horror;--with his daughters in the foreground, and\nall that magnificent accompaniment of the elemental war without--with\nall nature in that terrific uproar, and the Fool and the Madman to\ncreate a diversion, and his friends all about him to hush up and make\nthe best of everything--with that great storm of pathos that the\nMagician is bringing down for him--with the stage all in tears, by\ntheir own confession, and the audience sobbing their responses--what\nthe poor king might say between his chattering teeth was not going to\nbe very critically treated; and the Poet knew it. It was the king, in\nsuch circumstances, who could undertake the philosophical expositions\nof the action; and in his wildest bursts of grief he has to manage\nthem, in his wildest bursts of grief he has to keep to them.\n\nBut it is not until long afterwards, when the storm, and all the\nmisery of that night, has had its ultimate effect--its chronic\neffect--upon him, that the Poet ventures to produce, under cover of\nthe sensation which the presence of a mad king on the stage creates,\nprecisely that exposition of the scene which has been, here, insisted\non.\n\n'They flattered me like a dog; they told me I had _white_ hairs in my\nbeard, ere the _black_ ones were there. To say _Ay_ and _No_ to\neverything _I_ said!--Ay and No too was no good DIVINITY. _When the\nrain came to wet me once_, and _the wind made me chatter; when the\nthunder would not peace at my bidding,--there_ I found them, _there I\nsmelt them out_. Go to, they are not men of their words. _They told me\nI was everything: 'tis a lie. I am not ague-proof_.'\n\n  _Gloster_. The trick of that voice I do well remember:\n\nIs't not THE KING?\n\n  _Lear_. _Ay_, every inch _a King_:\n\n  When _I_ do stare, _see, how the subject quakes_.\n\nBut it is a subject he has conjured up from his brain that is quaking\nunder his regal stare. And it is the impersonation of God's authority,\nit is the divine right to rule men at its pleasure, _with or without\nlaws, as it sees fit_, that stands there, tricked out like Tom\no'Bedlam, with A CROWN of noisome _weeds_ on its head, arguing the\nquestion of the day, taking up for the divine right, defining its own\nposition:--\n\n  _Is't not the king_?\n\n  Ay every inch a king:\n\n  _When I do stare, see how the subject quakes_.\n\n_See_; yes, _see_. For that is what he stands there for, or that you\nmay see _what it is_ at whose stare _the subject_ quakes. He is there\nto 'represent to the eye,' because impressions on the senses are more\neffective than abstract statements, the divine right and sovereignty,\nthe majesty of the COMMON-weal, the rule that protects each helpless\nindividual member of it with the strength of all, the rule awful with\ngreat nature's sanction, enforced with her dire pains and penalties.\nHe is there that you may see whether _that_ is it, or not; that one\npoor wretch, that thing of pity, which has no power to protect itself,\nin whom _the law_ itself, the sovereignty of reason, is dethroned.\nThat was, what all men thought it was, when this play was written; for\nthe madness of arbitrary power, the impersonated will and passion, was\nthe _state_ then. That is the spontaneous affirmation of rude ages, on\nthis noblest subject,--this chosen subject of the new\nphilosophy,--which stands there now to facilitate the demonstration,\n'as globes and machines do the more subtle demonstrations in\nmathematics.' It is the 'affirmation' which the Poet finds\npre-occupying this question; but this is the table of _review_ that he\nstands on, and this 'Instance' has been subjected to the philosophical\ntests, and that is the reason that all those dazzling externals of\nmajesty, which make that 'IDOL CEREMONY' are wanting here; that is the\nreason that his crown has turned to weeds. This is the popular\naffirmative the Poet is dealing with; but it stands on the scientific\n'Table of _Review_,' and the result of this inquiry is, that it goes\nto 'the table of NEGATIONS.' And the negative table of science in\nthese questions is Tragedy, the World's Tragedy. 'Is't not the king?'\n'Ay, every inch--_a King_. When I do stare, see how the subject\nquakes.' But the voice within overpowers him, and the axioms that are\nthe vintage of science, the inductions which are the result of that\nexperiment, are forced from his lips. 'To say ay and no to everything\nthat _I_--that _I_--said! To say _ay_ and _no_ too, was no GOOD\nDIVINITY. They told me that I was everything. 'T IS A LIE. I am not\n_ague proof_.' 'T is A LIE'--that is, what is called in other places a\n'_negative_.'\n\nIn this systematic exposure of 'the particular and private nature' in\nthe human kind, and those SPECIAL susceptibilities and liabilities\nwhich qualify its relationships; in this scientific exhibition of its\n_special_ liability to suffering from the violation of the higher law\nof those relationships--its _special_ liability to injury, moral,\nmental, and physical--a liability from which the very one who usurps\nthe place of that law has himself no exemption in this exhibition,--\nwhich requires that the king himself should represent that liability\nin chief--it was not to be expected that this particular ill, this\nill in which the human wrong in its extreme capes is so wont to\nexhibit its consummations, should be omitted. In this exhibition,\nwhich was designed to be scientifically inclusive, it would have\nbeen a fault to omit it. But that the Poet should have dared to\nthink of exhibiting it dramatically in this instance, and that,\ntoo, in its most hopeless form--that he should have dared to think\nof exhibiting the personality which was then 'the state' to the\neye of 'the subject' labouring under that personal disability, in the\nvery act, too, of boasting of its kingly terrors--this only goes to\nshow what large prerogatives, what boundless freedoms and immunities,\nthe resources of this particular department of art could be made to\nyield, when it fell into the hands of the new Masters of Arts, when it\ncame to be selected by the Art-king himself as his instrument.\n\nBut we are prepared for this spectacle, and with the Poet's wonted\nskill; for it is _Cordelia_, her heart bursting with its stormy\npassion of filial love and grief, that, REBEL-LIKE, seeks to be QUEEN\no'er her, though she queens it still, and 'the smiles on her ripe lips\nseem not to know what tears are in her eyes,' for she has had her hour\nwith her subject grief, and 'dealt with it alone,'--it is this child\nof truth and duty, this true Queen, this impersonated sovereignty,\nwhom her Poet crowns with his choicest graces, on whom he devolves the\ntask of prefacing this so critical, and, one might think, perhaps,\nperilous exhibition. But her description does not disguise the matter,\nor palliate its extremity.\n\n  'Why, he was met even now,\n  Mad as the _vexed sea_, singing aloud;'\n\n_Crowned_--.\n\n  'Crowned with _rank fumiter_, and _furrow weeds_,\n  With hardocks, _hemlock_, _nettles_, cuckow flowers,\n  _Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow\n  In our sustaining corn_.'\n\nThat is the crown; and a very extraordinary symbol of sovereignty it\nis, one cannot help thinking, for the divine right to get on its head\nby any accident just then. Surely that symbol of power is getting\nsomewhat rudely handled here, in the course of the movements which the\n'necessary questions of this Play' involve, as the critical mind might\nbegin to think. In the botanical analysis of that then so dazzling,\nand potent, and compelling instrument in human affairs, a very careful\nobserver might perhaps take notice that the decidedly hurtful and\nnoxious influences in nature appear to have a prominent place; and,\nfor the rest, that the qualities of _wildness_ and idleness, and\nencroaching good-for-nothingness, appear to be the common and\npredominating elements. It is when the Tragedy reaches its height that\nthis _crown_ comes out.\n\nA hundred men are sent out to pursue this majesty; not now to wait on\nhim in idle ceremony, and to give him the 'addition of a king';\nbut--to catch him--to search every acre in the high-grown field, and\nbring him in. He has evaded his pursuers: he comes on to the stage\nfull of self-congratulation and royal glee, chuckling over his\n_prerogative_:--\n\n'No; they cannot touch _me_ for COINING. _I am the king himself_.'\n\n'O thou side-piercing sight!' [Collateral meaning.]\n\n'_Nature's above Art_ in that respect.' ['So _o'er_ that art which you\nsay adds to nature, is an art that Nature makes.'] 'There's your press\nmoney. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a\nclothier's yard.--Look, look, a mouse! _Peace, peace_; this piece of\ntoasted cheese will do't.--There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it on a\ngiant_.'\n\nBut the messengers, who were sent out for him, are on his track.\n\n  _Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants_.\n\n  _Gent_. O here he is, lay hand upon him. Sir,\n  Your most dear daughter--\n\n  _Lear_. No rescue? What, a _prisoner_? I am even\n  _The natural fool of fortune_! Use me well;\n  You shall have ransom. Let me have a surgeon,\n  I am cut to the brains.\n\n  _Gent_. You shall have anything.\n\n  _Lear_. No seconds? All myself?\n\n  _Gent_. Good Sir,--\n\n  _Lear_. I will die bravely, like a bridegroom: What?\n  I will be _jovial_. Come, come; _I am a king,\n  My masters_; know you _that_?\n\n  _Gent_. _You are_, a royal one, _and we obey you_.\n\n  _Lear_. Then _there's life in it_. Nay, an you get it, you shall\n  get it by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa. [_Exit, running; Attendants_\n  FOLLOW.] ['Transient hieroglyphic.']\n\n  _Gent_. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch;\n  _Past speaking of, in_ A KING!\n\n  [not past exhibiting, it seems, however.]\n\nBut, of course, there was nothing that a king, whose mind was in such\na state, could not be permitted to say with impunity; and it is in\nthis very scene that the Poet puts into his mouth the boldest of those\nphilosophical suggestions which the first attempt to find a theory for\nthe art and practical part of life, gave birth to: he skilfully\nreserves for this scene some of the most startling of those social\ncriticisms which the action this play is everywhere throwing out.\n\nFor it is in this scene, that the outcast king encounters the victim\nof tyranny, whose eyes have been plucked out, and who has been turned\nout to beggary, as the penalty of having come athwart that disposition\nin 'the duke,' that 'all the world well knows will not be rubbed or\nstopped';--it is in this scene that Lear finds him smelling his way to\n_Dover_, for that is the name in the play--the play name--for the\nplace towards which men's hopes appear to be turning; and that\nconversation as to how the world goes, to which allusion has been\nalready made, comes off, without appearing to suggest to any mind,\nthat it is other than accidental on the part of the Poet, or that the\naction of the play might possibly be connected with it! For\nnotwithstanding this great stress, which he lays everywhere on\n_forethought_ and a deliberative _rational_ intelligent procedure, as\n_the distinctive human mark_,--the characteristic feature of _a\nman_,--the poor poet himself, does not appear to have gained much\ncredit hitherto for the possession of this human quality.--\n\n  _Lear_. Thou seest how this world goes?\n\n  _Gloster_. I see it feelingly.\n\n  _Lear_. What, art mad?--\n\n[have you not the use of your reason, then? Can you not _see_ with\nthat? _That_ is the kind of sight we talk of here. It's the want of\nthat which makes these falls. We have eyes with which to foresee\neffects,--eyes which outgo all the senses with their range of\nobservation, with their range of certainty and foresight.]\n\n'What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look\nwith thine--_ears: see_ how yon justice rails upon yon _simple thief_.\nHark, in thine ear: Change _places_, and, handy-dandy, _which is the\njustice, and which is_ THE THIEF?' [Searching social questions, as\nbefore. 'Thou robed man of _justice_ (to the Bedlamite), take thy\nplace; and thou, his yoke-fellow of _equity_ (to the Fool), _bench by\nhis side_. Thou, _sapient_ sir, sit here.']\n\nSo that it would seem, perhaps, as if wisdom, as well as honesty,\nmight be wanting there--the searching subtle wisdom, that is matched\nin subtlety, with nature's forces, that sees true differences, and\neffects true reformations. '_Change places. Hark, in thine ear_.'\nTruly this is a player who knows how to suit the word to the action,\nand the action to the word; for there has been a revolution going on\nin this play which has made as complete a social overturning--which\nhas shaken kings, and dukes, and lordlings out of their 'places,' as\ncompletely as some later revolutions have done. 'Change places!' With\none duke in the stocks, and another wandering blind in the\nstreets--with a dukeling, in the form of mad Tom, to lead him, with a\nking in a hovel, calling for the straw, and a queen hung by the neck\ntill she is dead--with mad Tom on the bench, and the Fool, with his\ncap and bells, at his side--with Tom at the council-table, and\noccupying the position of chief favourite and adviser to the king, and\na distinct proposal now that the thief and the justice shall change\nplaces on the spot--with the inquiry as to which is _the justice_, and\nwhich is the _thief_, openly started--one would almost fancy that the\nsubject had been exhausted here, or would be, if these indications\nshould be followed up. What is it in the way of social alterations\nwhich the player's imagination could conceive of, which his scruples\nhave prevented him from suggesting here?\n\nBut the mad king goes on with those new and unheard-of political and\nsocial suggestions, which his madness appears to have had the effect\nof inspiring in him--\n\n  _Lear_. Thou hast seen a farmer's _dog_ bark at a _beggar_?\n\n  _Gloster_. Ay, sir.\n\n  _Lear_. And the _creature_ run from the _cur? There_ might'st thou\n  behold _the great image of_ AUTHORITY: _a dog's obeyed in office_.\n  Through tattered robes _small vices_ do appear;\n  _Robes_, and _furred gowns, hide all_.\n    [_Robes,--robes_, and _furred gowns_!]\n                               Plate sin with gold,\n  And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;\n  Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.\n\nBut that was before Tom got his seat on the bench--that was before Tom\ngot his place at the council-table.\n\n                 'None does offend,--_none_--'\n\n[unless you will begin your reform at the beginning, and hunt down the\ngreat rogues as well as the little ones; or, rather, unless you will\ngo to the source of the evil, and take away the evils, of which these\ncrimes, that you are awarding penalties to, are the result, let it all\nalone, I say. Let's have no more legislation, and no more of _this_\nJUSTICE, _this_ EQUITY, that takes the vices which come through the\ntattered robes, and leaves the great _thief_ in his purple untouched.\nLet us have no more of this mockery. Let us be impartial in our\njustice, at least.] 'None does offend. _I say none. I'll_ able 'em.'\n[I'll show you the way. Soft. _Hark, in thine ear_.] 'Take that of\n_me_, my friend, _who have the power_ TO SEAL THE ACCUSER'S LIPS.'\n[Soft, _in thine ear_.]--\n\n                  'Get thee _glass_ eyes,\n  And like a scurvy _politician_, seem\n  To see the things thou dost not.--_Now, now, now_, NOW.\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  I know thee well enough. Thy name is--Gloster.\n  _Thou must be patient_; we came crying hither.\n  Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air\n  We wawl and cry. I will _preach_ to thee; _mark me_.\n\n  _Gloster. Alack, alack, the day!_\n\n  _Lear_. When we are born, we cry that we are come\n  To this great stage of--_Fools_.\n  [Mark me, for I _preach_ to thee--of _Fools_.\n  I am even the _natural fool of fortune_.]\n  --'O matter and impertinency, mixed\n  Reason in madness.'--\n\n--is the Poet's concluding comment on this regal boldness, a safe and\nsaving explanation; 'for to define true madness,' as Polonius says,\n'what is it but to _be_ nothing else but mad.' If the 'all licensed\nfool,' as Goneril peevishly calls him, under cover of his assumed\nimbecility, could carry his traditional privilege to such dangerous\nextremes, and carp and philosophize, and fling his bitter jests about\nat his pleasure, surely downright madness might claim to be invested\nwith a privilege as large. But madness, when conjoined with royalty,\nmakes a _double_ privilege, one which this Poet finds, however, at\ntimes, none too large for his purposes.\n\nThus, Hamlet, when his mind is once in a questionable state, can be\npermitted to make, with impunity, profane suggestions as to certain\npossible royal progresses, and the changes to which the dust of a\nC\u00e6sar might be liable, without being reminded out of the play, that to\nfollow out these suggestions 'would be' indeed, 'to consider too\ncuriously,' and that most extraordinary humour of his enables him also\nto relieve his mind of many other suggestions, 'which reason and\nsanity,' in his time, could not have been 'so prosperously delivered\nof.'\n\nFor what is it that men can set up as a test of _sanity_ in any age,\nbut their own common beliefs and sentiments. And what surer proof of\nthe king's madness,--what more pathetic indication of its midsummer\nheight could be given, than those startling propositions which the\npoet here puts into his mouth, so opposed to the opinions and\nsentiments, not of kings only, but of the world at large; what madder\nthing could a poet think of than those political axioms which he\nintroduces under cover of these suggestions,--which would lay the axe\nat the root of the common beliefs and sentiments on which the social\nstructure then rested. How could he better show that this poor king's\nwits had, indeed, 'turned;' how could he better prove that he was,\nindeed, past praying for, than by putting into his mouth those bitter\nsatires on the state, those satires on the 'one only man' power\nitself,--those wild revolutionary proposals, 'hark! in thine\near,--_change places_. Softly, in thine ear,-- _which is the_ JUSTICE,\nand which is THE THIEF?' 'Take that of _me_ who have the power to\n_seal the accuser's lips_. None does offend. I say none. I'll able\n'em. Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.' These laws have\nfailed, you see. They shelter the most frightful depths of wrong. That\nBench has failed, you see; and that Chair, with all its adjunct\ndivinity. Come here and look down with me from this pinnacle, into\nthese abysses. Look at that wretch there, in the form of man. Fetch\nhim up in his blanket, and set him at the Council Table with his elf\nlocks and begrimed visage and inhuman gibberish. Perhaps, he will be\nable to make some suggestion there; and those five fiends that are\ntalking in him at once, would like, perhaps, to have a hearing there.\nMake him 'one of your hundred.' You are of '_the commission_,' let him\nbench with _you_. Nay, change places, let him try your cause, and tell\nus which is the justice, which is _the thief_, which is the sapient\nSir, and which is the Bedlamite. Surely, the man who authorizes these\nsuggestions must be, indeed, 'far gone,' whether he be 'a king or a\nyeoman.' And mad indeed he is. Writhing under the insufficiency and\nincompetency of these pretentious, but, in fact, ignorant and usurping\ninstitutions, his heart of hearts racked and crushed with their\nfailure, the victim of this social empiricism, cries out in his\nanguish, under that safe disguise of the Robes that hide all: 'Take\nthese away at least,--that will be something gained. Let us have no\nmore of this mockery. None does offend--none--I say _none_.' Let us go\nback to the innocent instinctive brutish state, and have done with\nthis vain disastrous struggle of nature after the human form, and\n_its_ dignity, and perfection. Let us talk no more of law and justice\nand humanity and DIVINITY forsooth, _divinity_ and the celestial\ngraces, that divinity which is the end and perfection of the _human_\nform.--Is not womanhood itself, and the Angel of it\n_fallen_--degenerate?--That is the humour of it.--That is the meaning\nof the savage edicts, in which this _human_ victim of the _inhuman_\nstate, the subject of a social state which has failed in some way of\nthe human end, undertakes to utter through the king's lips, his sense\nof the failure. For the Poet at whose command he speaks, is the true\nscientific historian of nature and art, and the rude and struggling\nadvances of the _human_ nature towards its ideal type, though they\nfall never so short, are none of them omitted in his note-book. He\nknows better than any other, what gain the imperfect civilization he\nsearches and satirizes and lays bare here, _has made_, with all its\nimperfections, on the spontaneities and aids of the individual,\nunaccommodated man: he knows all the value of the accumulations of\nages; he is the very philosopher who has put forth all his wisdom to\nguard the state from the shock of those convulsions, that to his\nprescient eye, were threatening then to lay all flat.\n\n'O let him _pass_!' is the Poet's word, when the loving friends seek\nto detain a little longer, the soul on whom this cruel time has done\nits work,--its elected sufferer.\n\n  'O let him pass! _he hates him_\n  That would upon the rack of this tough world,\n  Stretch him out longer.'\n  [Tired with all these, he cries in his own behalf.]\n  'Tired with all these, for _restful death_ I cry.\n  Thou seest how this world goes. I see it _feelingly_.'\n\n  _Albany_.  The weight of this sad time _we must obey_,\n  _Speak_ WHAT WE FEEL, _not what we ought to say_,\n  The oldest hath borne most: we that are young\n  Shall never see so much, nor live so long.\n\nIt needs but a point, a point which the Poet could not well put\nin,--one of those points which he speaks of elsewhere so\nsignificantly, to make the unmeaning line with which this great social\nTragedy concludes, a sufficiently fitting conclusion to it;\nconsidering, at least, the pressure under which it was written; and\nthe author has himself called our attention to that, as we see, even\nin this little jingle of rhymes, put in apparently, only for\nprofessional purposes, and merely to get the curtain down decently. It\nis a point, which it takes the key of the play--Lord Bacon's key, of\n'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma\nin the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished\nEnglish, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that Merlin was to\nmake.\n\n  'The oldest hath borne most, we that are _young_\n  Shall never see so much, nor live so long.'\n\nThere were boys 'in England then a-bed;' nay, some of them might have\nbeen present that day, for aught we know, on which one of the Managers\nof the Surrey Theatre, the owner of the wardrobe and stage-properties,\nand himself an actor, brought out with appropriate decorations and\ndresses, for the benefit of his audience on the Bankside, this little\nebullition of his genius;--there were boys present then, perhaps,\nwhose names would become immortal with the fulfilment of that\nprophecy;--there was one at Whitehall, when it was brought out there,\nwhose name would be for ever linked with it. 'We that are young,--the\noldest hath _borne_ most. We that are young shall never _see_ so much'\n[I _see_ it feelingly],\n\n  'Shall never _see_ so much, nor live so _long_.'\n\nSo.\n\nBut there were evils included in that tragic picture, which those who\nwere young then, would _not_ outlive; evils which the times that were\nnear with their coarse, fierce remedies, would not heal; evils which\nthe Seer and Leader of the Times that were far off, would himself make\nover to _their_ cure;--evils in whose cure the Discoverer of the\nscience of Nature, and the inventor of the New Magic which is the part\noperative of it, expected to be called upon for an opinion, when the\ntime for that extension of his science, 'crushed together and infolded\nwithin itself in these books of Nature's learning,' should fully come.\n\nNothing almost sees MIRACLES _but_ MISERY, says poor Kent, in the\nstocks, waiting for the 'beacon' of the morning, by whose\n_comfortable_ beams, he might peruse his letter. 'I know,' he says,\n\n  ''Tis from Cordelia,\n  Who hath most fortunately been informed\n  Of my obscured course, and shall find _time\n  From this enormous state_--seeking--TO GIVE\n  LOSSES THEIR REMEDIES.'\n\nThere is no attempt to demonstrate that the work here proposed as a\nstudy, worthy the attention of the philosophical student, is not,\nnotwithstanding a Poem, and a Poet's gift, not to his contemporaries\nonly, but to his kind. What is claimed is, indeed, that it is a Poem\nwhich, with all its overpowering theatrical effects, does, in fact,\nreserve its true poetic wealth, for those who will find the springs of\nits inmost philosophic purport. There is no attempt to show that this\nplay belongs to the category of scientific works, according to our\npresent limitation of the term, or that there could be found any niche\nfor it, on those lower platforms and compartments of the new science\nof nature, which our modern works of natural science occupy.\n\nIt was inevitably a Poem. There was the essence of all Tragedy in the\npurely scientific exhibition, which the purpose of it required. The\nintention of the Poet to exhibit the radical idea of his plot\nimpressively, so as to reach the popular mind through its appeal to\nthe sensibilities, involved, of course, the finest series of\nconjunctions of artistic effects, the most exquisite characterization,\nthe boldest grouping, the most startling and determined contrasts,\nwhich the whole range of his art could furnish.\n\nBut that which is only the incident of a genuine poetic inspiration,\nthe effect upon the senses, which its higher appeals are sure to\ninvolve, becomes with those delighting in, and capable of\nappreciating, that sensuous effect merely, its sufficient and only\nend, and even a doctrine of criticism based on this inversion will not\nbe wanting. But the difficulty of unlocking the great Elizabethan\npoems with any such theory of Art, arises from the fact that it is not\nthe theory of Art, which the great Elizabethan Poets adopted, and\nwhether we approve of theirs or not, we must take it, such as it was,\nfor our torch in this exploration. As to that spontaneity, that\nseizure, that Platonic divination, that poetic 'fury,' which our prose\nphilosopher scans in so many places so curiously, which he defines so\ncarefully and strictly, so broadly too, as the _poetic_ condition that\nthing which he appears to admire so much, as having something a little\ndemoniacal in it withal, that same 'fine' thing which the Poet himself\nspeaks of by a term not any less questionable,--as to this poetic\ninspiration, it is not necessary to claim that it is a thing with\nwhich this Poet, the Poet of a new era, the Poet, the deliverer of an\nInductive Learning, has had himself, personally, no acquaintance. He\nknows what it is. But it is a Poet who is, first of all, a man, and he\ntakes his humanity with him into all things. The essential human\nprinciple is that which he takes to be the law and limit of the human\nconstitution. He is perfectly satisfied with 'the measure of a man,'\nand he gives the preference deliberately, and on principle to the\nsober and rational state in the human mind. All the elements which\nenter into the human composition, all the states, normal or otherwise,\nto which it is liable, have passed under his review, and this is his\nconclusion; and none born of woman, ever had a better chance to look\nat them, for all is alike heightened in him,--heightened to the ideal\nboundary of nature, in the human form; but that which seems to be\nheightened, most of all, that in which he stands preeminent and\nsingular in the natural history of man, would seem to be the\nproportion of this heightening. It is what we have all recognized it\nto be, Nature's largest, most prodigal demonstration of her capacities\nin the human form, but it is, at the same time, her most excellent and\nexquisite balance of composition--her most subdued and tempered work.\nAnd the reason is, that he is not a particular and private man, and\nthe deficiencies and personalities of those from whom he is\nabstracted, are studiously, and by method, kept out of him. For this\nis the 'Will' not of one man only; it is the scientific abstract of a\nphilosophic union. It is a will that has a rule in art as well as\nnature.\n\nCertainly he is the very coolest Poet; and the fullest of this common\nearth and its affairs, of any sage that has ever showed his head upon\nit, in prose or metre. The sturdiness with which he makes good his\nposition, as an inhabitant, for the time being, of this terrestrial\nball, and, by the ordinance of God, subject to its laws, and liable to\nits pains and penalties, is a thing which appears, to the careful\nreviewer of it, on the whole, the most novel and striking feature of\nthis demonstration. He objects, on principle, to seizures and\npossessions of all kinds. He refuses to be taken off his feet by any\nkind of solicitation. He is a man who is never ashamed to have a\nreason,--one that he can produce, and make intelligible to common\npeople, for his most exquisite proceedings; that is, if he chooses:\nbut, 'if reasons were plentiful as blackberries,' he is not the man to\ngive them on 'compulsion.' His ideas of the common mind, his notion of\nthe common human intelligence, or capacity for intelligence, appears\nto be somewhat different from that of the other philosophers. The\ncommon sense--the common form--is that which he is always seeking and\n_identifying_ under all the differences. It is _that_ which he is\nbringing out and clothing with the 'inter-tissued robe' and all the\nglories which he has stripped from the extant majesty. 'Robes and\nfurred gowns hide all' no longer.\n\nHe is not a bard who is careful at all about keeping his singing robes\nabout him. He can doff them and work like a 'navvy' when he sees\nreason. He is very fond of coming out with good, sober, solid prose,\nin the heart of his poetry. He can rave upon occasion as well as\nanother. Spontaneities of all kinds have scope and verge enough in his\nplot; but he always keeps an eye out, and they speak no more than is\nset down for them. His Pythoness foams at the mouth too, sometimes,\nand appears to have it all her own way, perhaps; but he knows what she\nis about, and there is never a word in the oracle that has not\nundergone his revision. He knows that Plato tells us 'it is in vain\nfor a sober man to knock at the floor of the Muses'; but he is one who\nhas discovered, scientifically, the human law; and he is ready to make\nit good, on all sides, against all comers. And, though the Muses\nknocked at his door, as they never had at any other, they could never\ncarry him away with them. They found, for once, a sober man within,\none who is not afraid to tell them, to their teeth, 'Judgment holds in\nme, always, a magisterial seat;'--and, with all their celestial graces\nand pretensions, he fetters them, and drags them up to that tribunal.\nHe superintends all his inspirations.\n\nThere never was a Poet in whom the poetic spontaneities were so\nabsolutely under control and mastery; and there never was one in whose\nnature all the spontaneous force and faculty of genius showed itself\nin such tumultuous fulness, ready to issue, at a word, in such\ninexhaustible varieties of creative energy.\n\nOf all the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts there is none to match\nthis so delicate and gorgeous Ariel of his,--this creature that he\nkeeps to put his girdles round the earth for him, that comes at a\nthought, and brings in such dainty banquets, such brave pageants in\nthe earth or in the air; there is none other that knows so well the\nspells 'to make this place Paradise.' But, for all that, he is the\nmerest tool,--the veriest drudge and slave. The magician's collar is\nalways on his neck; in his airiest sweeps he takes his chain with him.\nCaliban himself is not more sternly watched and tutored; and all the\ngorgeous masque has its predetermined order, its severe economy of\ngrace; through all the slightest minuti\u00e6 of its detail, runs the\ninflexible purpose, the rational _human_ purpose, the common human\nsense, the common human aim.\n\nYes, it is a Play; but it is the play of a mind sobered with all human\nlearning. Yes, it is spontaneous; but it is the spontaneity of a heart\nladen with human sorrow, oppressed with the burthen of the common\nweal. Yes, indeed, it is a Poet's work; but it is the work of one who\nconsciously and deliberately recognizes, in all the variety of his\ngifts, in all his natural and acquired power, under all the\ndisabilities of his position, the one, paramount, human law, and\nessential obligation. Of 'Art,' as anything whatever, but an\ninstrumentality, thoroughly subdued, and subordinated to _that_ end,\nof Art as anything in itself, with an independent tribunal, and law\nwith an ethic and ritual of its own, this inventor of the one Art,\nthat has for its end the relief of the human estate and the Creator's\nglory, knows nothing. Of any such idolatry and magnifying of the\ncreature, of any such worship of the gold of the temple to the\ndesecration of that which sanctifieth the gold, this Art-King in all\nhis purple, this priest and High Pontiff of its inner mysteries\nknows--will know--nothing.\n\nYes, it is play; but it is not child's play, nor an _idiot's_ play,\nnor the play of a 'jigging' Bacchanal, who comes out on this grave,\nhuman scene, to insult our sober, human sense, with his mad humour,\nmaking a Belshazzar's feast or an Antonian revel of it; a creature who\nshows himself to our common human sense without _any_ human aim or\npurpose, ransacking all the life of man, exploring all worlds,\npursuing the human thought to its last verge, and questioning, as with\nthe cry of all the race, the infinities beyond, diving to the lowest\ndepths of human life and human nature, and bringing up and publishing,\nthe before unspoken depths of human wrong and sorrow, wringing from\nthe hearts of those that died and made no sign, their death-buried\nsecrets, articulating everywhere that which before had no word--and\nall for an artistic effect, for an hour's entertainment, for the\nluxury of a harmonized impression, or for the mere ostentation of his\nfrolic, to feed his gamesome humour, to make us stare at his\nunconsciousness, to show what gems he can crush in his idle cup for a\ndraught of pleasure, or in pure caprice and wantonness, confounding\nall our notions of sense, and manliness, and human duty and respect,\nwith the boundless wealth and waste of his gigantic fooleries.\n\nIt is play, but let us thank God it is no such play as that; let our\ncommon human nature rejoice that it has not been thus outraged in its\nchief and chosen one, that it has not been thus disgraced with the\nboundless human worthlessness of the creature on whom its choicest\ngifts were lavished. It is play, indeed; but it is no such Monster,\nwith his idiotic stare of unconsciousness, that the opening of it will\nreveal to us. Let us all thank God, and take heart again, and try to\nrevive those notions of human dignity and common human sense which\nthis story sets at nought, and see if we cannot heal that great jar in\nour abused natures which this chimera of the nineteenth century makes\nin it--this night-mare of modern criticism which lies with its dead\nweight on all our higher art and learning--this creature that came in\non us unawares, when the interpretation of the Plays had outgrown the\nPlay-tradition, when '_the Play_' had outgrown '_the Player_.'\n\nIt is a play in which the manliest of human voices is heard sounding\nthroughout the order of it; it is a play stuffed to its fool's gibe,\nwith the soberest, deepest, maturest human sense; and 'the tears of\nit,' as we who have tested it know, 'the tears of it are wet.' It is a\nplay where the choicest seats, the seats in which those who see it\n_all_ must sit, are 'reserved;' and there is a price to be paid for\nthese: 'children and fools' will continue to have theirs for nothing.\nFor after so many generations of players had come and gone, there had\ncome at last on this human stage--on 'this great stage of fools,' as\nthe Poet calls it--this stage filled with 'the natural fools of\nfortune,' having eyes, but seeing not--there had come to it at last a\nMAN, one who was--take him _for all in all_--that; one who thought\nit--for a man, enough to be truly that--one who thought he was\nfulfilling his part in the universal order, in _seeking to be_\nmodestly and truly that; one, too, who thought it was time that the\n_human_ part on the stage of this Globe Theatre should begin to be\nreverently studied by man himself, and scientifically and religiously\nordered and determined through all its detail.\n\nFor it is the movement of the new time that makes this Play, and all\nthese Plays: it is the spirit of the newly-beginning ages of human\nadvancement which makes the inspiration of them; the beginning ages of\na rational, instructed--and not blind, or instinctive, or\ndemoniacal--human conduct.\n\nIt is such play and pastime as the prophetic spirit and leadership of\nthose new ages could find time and heart to make and leave to them, on\nthat height of vision which it was given to it to occupy. For an age\nin human advancement was at last reached, on whose utmost summits men\ncould begin to perceive that tradition, and eyes of moonshine\nspeculation, and a thousand noses, and horns welked and waved like the\nenridged sea, when they came to be jumbled together in one 'monster,'\ndid not appear to answer the purpose of human combination, or the\npurpose of human life on earth; appeared, indeed to be still far, 'far\nwide' of the end which human society is everywhere blindly pushing and\ngroping for, _en masse_.\n\nThere was a point of observation from which this fortuitous social\nconjunction did not appear to the critical eye or ear to be making\njust that kind of play and music which human nature--singularly\nenough, considering what kind of conditions it lights on--is\nconstitutionally inclined to expect and demand; not that, or indeed\nany perceptible approximation to a paradisaical state of things. There\n_was_, indeed, a point of view--one which commanded not the political\nmysteries of the time only, but the household secrets of it, and the\ndeeper secrets of the solitary heart of man, one which commanded alike\nthe palace and the hovel, to their blackest recesses--there was a\npoint of view from which these social agencies appeared to be making\nthen, in fact, whether one looked with eyes or ears, a mere diabolical\njangle, and '_fa, sol, la, mi_', of it, a demoniacal storm music; and\nfrom that height of observation all ruinous disorders could be seen\ncoming out, and driving men to vice and despair, urging them to\nself-destruction even, and hunting them disquietly to their graves.\n'Nothing almost sees miracles but misery;' and this was the Age in\nwhich the New Magic was invented.\n\nIt was the age in which that grand discovery was made, which the Fool\nundertakes to palm off here as the fruit of his own single invention;\nand, indeed, it was found that the application of it to certain\ndepartments of human affairs was more successfully managed by this\ngentleman in his motley, than by some of his brother philosophers who\nattempted it. It was the age in which the questions which are inserted\nhere so safely in the Fool's catechism, began to be started secretly\nin the philosophic chamber. It was the age in which the identical\nanswers which the cap and bells are made responsible for here, were\nwritten down, but with other applications, in graver authorities. It\nis the philosophical discovery of the time, which the Fool is\nundertaking to translate into the vernacular, when he puts the\nquestion, 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his\nface?' And we have all the Novum Organum in what he calls, in another\nplace, 'the boorish,' when he answers it; and all the choicest gems of\n'the part operative' of the new learning have been rattling from his\nrattle in everybody's path, ever since he published his digests of\nthat doctrine: 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of\nhis face?' 'No.' 'Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that\nwhat he cannot _smell out_ he may _spy into_.' And 'all that follow\ntheir noses are led by their eyes, but--_blind men_.' And 'the reason\nwhy the seven stars are seven, is because they are not eight;' and the\nking who makes that answer 'would have made a good--_fool_,' for it's\n'a very pretty reason.' And neither times nor men should be 'old\nbefore their time'; neither times nor men should be revered, or\nclothed with authority or command in human affairs, 'till they are\n_wise_.' ['Thou _sapient_ sir, sit _here_.'] And it is a mistake for a\nleader of men to think that he 'has _white_ hairs in his beard, before\nthe _black_ ones are there.' And 'ants,' and 'snails,' and 'oysters,'\nare wiser than men in their arts, and practices, and pursuits of ends.\nIt was the age in which it was perceived that 'to say ay and no to\neverything' that a madman says, 'is _no good divinity_,' and that it\nis 'the time's plague when Madmen lead the Blind;' and that, instead\nof good men sitting still, like 'moral fools,' and crying out on wrong\nand mischief, 'Alack, why does it so?' it would be wiser, and more\npious, too, to make use of the faculty of learning, with which the\nCreator has armed Man, 'against diseases of the world,' to ascend to\nthe cause, and _punish_ that--punish _that_, 'ere it has done its\nmischief.' It was the age in which it was discovered that 'the sequent\neffect, with which nature finds itself scourged,' is not in the least\ntouched by any kind of reasoning 'thus and thus,' except that kind\nwhich proceeds first by negatives, that kind which proceeds by a\nmethod so severe that it contrives to _exclude_ everything but the\n'the _cause in nature_' from its affirmation, which 'in practical\nphilosophy becomes _the rule_'--that is, the critical method,--which\nis for men, as distinguished from the spontaneous affirmation, which\nis for gods.\n\nIt is the beginning of these yet beginning Modern Ages, the ages of a\npractical learning, and scientific relief to the human estate, which\nthis Pastime marks with its blazoned, illuminated initial. It is the\nopening of the era in which a common human sense is developed, and\ndirected to the common-weal, which this Pastime celebrates; the\nopening of the ages in which, ere all is done, the politicians who\nexpect mankind to entrust to them their destinies, will have to find\nsomething better than 'glass eyes' to guide them with; in which it\nwill be no longer competent for those to whom mankind entrusts its\ndearest interests to go on in their old stupid, conceited, heady\ncourses, their old, blind, ignorant courses,--stumbling, and\nstaggering, and groping about, and smelling their way with their own\nnarrow and selfish instincts, when it is the common-weal they have\ntaken on their shoulders;--running foul of the nature of\nthings--quarrelling with eternal necessities, and crying out, when the\nwreck is made, 'Alack! why does it so?'\n\nThis Play, and all these plays, were meant to be pastime for ages in\nwhich state reasons must needs be something else than 'the pleasure'\nof certain individuals, 'whose disposition, all the world well knows,\nwill not be rubbed or stopped;' or 'the quality,' 'fiery' or\notherwise, of this or that person, no matter 'how unremoveable and\nfixed' he may be 'in his own course.'\n\nIt was to the 'far off times;' and not to the 'near,' it was to the\nadvanced ages of the Advancement of Learning, that this Play was\ndedicated by its Author. For it was the spirit of the modern ages that\ninspired it. It was the new Prometheus who planned it; the more\naspiring Titan, who would bring down in his New Organum a new and more\nradiant gift; it was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance\nthe rude kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial\nsummits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevitable\nadvancements of that new era of scientific 'prudence' and forethought\nwhich it was given to him to initiate, when all this sober historic\nexhibition, with its fearful historic earnest, would read, indeed,\nlike some old fable of the rude barbaric past--some Player's play,\nbent on a feast of horrors--some Poet's impossibility. And _that_--was\nthe Play,--that was the Plot. He knew that there would come a time\nwhen all this tragic mirth--sporting with the edged tools of\ntyranny--playing around the edge of the great axe itself--would be\nindeed safe play; when his Fool could open his budget, and unroll his\nbitter jests--crushed together and infolded within themselves so\nlong--and have a world to smile with him, and not the few who could\nunfold them only. And that--that was 'the humour of it.'\n\nYes, with all their philosophy, these plays are Plays and Poems still.\nThere's no spoiling the 'tragical mirth' in them. But we are told, on\nthe most excellent contemporaneous authority--on the authority of one\nwho was in the inmost heart of all this Poet's secrets--that 'as we\noften judge of the greater by the less, so the very pastimes of great\nmen give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of THE SOURCE FROM\nWHICH THEY SPRING.'\n\n\n\n\nPART II.\n\nJULIUS CAESAR;\n\nOR,\n\nTHE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL EXPLAINED.\n\nGood does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and\na worse, as it happened with Caesar's killers, who brought the\nrepublic to such a pass that they had reason to repent their meddling\nwith it.... It must be examined in what condition THE ASSAILANT\nis.--_Michael de Montaigne_.\n\n  _Citizen_. I fear there will a worse one come in his place.\n  _Cassius_. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE DEATH OF TYRANNY; OR, THE QUESTION OF THE PREROGATIVE.\n\n\n  _Casca_. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it _not_, Cassius?\n  _Cassius_. Let it be WHO IT is, for Romans _now_\n     Have thewes and limbs like to _their_ ancestors.\n\n     We all stand up against the _spirit_ of Caesar.\n                                       _Julius Caesar_.\n\nYes, when that Royal Injunction, which rested alike upon the\nPlay-house, the Press, the Pulpit, and _Parliament_ itself, was still\nthrottling everywhere the free voice of the nation--when a single\nindividual could still assume to himself, or to herself, the exclusive\nprivilege of deliberating on all those questions which men are most\nconcerned in--questions which involve all their welfare, for this life\nand the life to come, certainly '_the Play, the Play was the thing_.'\nIt was a vehicle of expression which offered incalculable facilities\nfor evading these restrictions. It was the only one then invented\nwhich offered then any facilities whatever for the discussion of that\nquestion in particular--which was already for that age the question.\nAnd to the genius of that age, with its new _historical,\nexperimental_, practical, determination--with its transcendant poetic\npower, nothing could be easier than to get possession of this\ninstrument, and to exhaust its capabilities.\n\nFor instance, if a Roman Play were to be brought out at all,--and with\nthat mania for classical subjects which then prevailed, what could be\nmore natural?--how could one object to that which, by the supposition,\nwas involved in it? And what but the most boundless freedoms and\naudacities, on this very question, could one look for here? What, by\nthe supposition, could it be but one mine of poetic treason? If Brutus\nand Cassius were to be allowed to come upon the stage, and discuss\ntheir views of government, deliberately and confidentially, in the\npresence of an English audience, certainly no one could ask to hear\nfrom their lips the political doctrine then predominant in England. It\nwould have been a flat anachronism, to request them to keep an eye\nupon the Tower in their remarks, inasmuch as all the world knew that\nthe corner-stone of that ancient and venerable institution had only\nthen just been laid by the same distinguished individual whom these\npatriots were about to call to an account for his military usurpation\nof a constitutional government at home.\n\nAnd yet, one less versed than the author in the mystery of theatrical\neffects, and their combinations--one who did not know fully what kind\nof criticism a mere _Play_, composed by a professional play-wright, in\nthe way of his profession, for the entertainment of the spectators,\nand for the sake of the pecuniary result, was likely to meet with;--or\none who did not know what kind of criticism a work, addressed so\nstrongly to the imagination and the feelings in any form, is likely to\nmeet with, might have fancied beforehand that the author was venturing\nupon a somewhat delicate experiment, in producing a play like this\nupon the English stage at such a crisis. One would have said\nbeforehand, that 'there were things in this comedy of Julius Caesar\nthat would never please.' It is difficult, indeed, to understand how\nsuch a Play as this could ever have been produced in the presence of\neither of those two monarchs who occupied the English throne at that\ncrisis in its history, already secretly conscious that its foundations\nwere moving, and ferociously on guard over their prerogative.\n\nAnd, indeed, unless a little of that same sagacity, which was employed\nso successfully in reducing the play of Pyramus and Thisbe to the\ntragical capacities of Duke Theseus' court, had been put in\nrequisition here, instead of that dead historical silence, which the\nworld complains of so much, we might have been treated to some very\nlively historical details in this case, corresponding to other details\nwhich the literary history of the time exhibits, in the case of\nauthors who came out in an evil hour in their own names, with\nprecisely the same doctrines, which are taught here word for word,\nwith impunity; and the question as to whether this Literary Shadow,\nthis Name, this Veiled Prophet in the World of Letters, ever had any\nflesh and blood belonging to him anywhere, (and from the tenor of his\nworks, one might almost fancy sometimes that that might have been the\ncase), this question would have come down to us experimentally and\nhistorically settled. For most unmistakeably, the claws of the young\nBritish lion are here, under these old Roman togas; and it became the\n'masters' to consider with themselves, for there is, indeed, 'no more\nfearful wild fowl living' than your lion in such circumstances; and if\nhe should happen to forget his part in any case, and 'roar too loud,'\nit would to a dead certainty 'hang them all.'\n\nBut it was only the faint-hearted tailor who proposed to 'leave out\nthe killing part.' Pyramus sets aside this cowardly proposition. He\nhas named the obstacles to be encountered only for the sake of\nmagnifying the fertility of his invention in overcoming them. He has a\ndevice to make all even. 'Write me a prologue,' he says, 'and let the\nprologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our _swords_; and for\nthe more assurance, tell them that _I, Pyramus, am not_ Pyramus, but\n_Bottom, the Weaver; that will put them out of fear_.' And as to the\nlion, there must not only be 'another prologue, to tell that he is not\na lion,' but 'you must name his name, and half his face must be seen\nthrough the lion's neck, and he himself must speak through, saying\nthus, or to the same _defect_, Ladies, or fair ladies, my life for\nyours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life.'\n\nTo such devices, in good earnest, were those compelled to resort who\nventured upon the ticklish experiment of presenting heroic\nentertainments for king's palaces, where 'hanging was the word' in\ncase of a fright; but, with a genius like this behind the scenes, so\nfertile in invention, so various in gifts, who could aggravate his\nvoice so effectually, giving you one moment the pitch of 'the sucking\ndove,' or 'roaring you like any nightingale,' and the next, 'the\nHercle's vein,'--with a genius who knew how to play, not 'the tyrant's\npart only,' but 'the lover's, which is more condoling,' and whose\nsuggestion that the audience should look to their eyes in that case,\nwas by no means a superfluous one; with a genius who had all passions\nat his command, who could drown, at his pleasure, the sharp critic's\neye, or blind it with showers of pity, or 'make it water with the\nmerriest tears, that the passion of loud laughter ever shed,' with\nsuch resources, prince's edicts could be laughed to scorn. It was vain\nto forbid such an one, to meddle with anything that was, or had been,\nor could be.\n\nBut does any one say--'To what purpose,' if the end were concealed so\neffectually? And does any one suppose, because no faintest suspicion\nof the true purpose of this play, and of all these plays, has from\nthat hour to this, apparently ever crossed the English mind, at home\nor abroad, though no suspicion of the existence of any purpose in them\nbeyond that of putting the author in easy circumstances, appears as\nyet to have occurred to any one,--does any one suppose that this play,\nand all these plays, have on that account, failed of their purpose;\nand that they have not been all this time, steadily accomplishing it?\nWho will undertake to estimate, for instance, the philosophical,\neducational influence of this single Play, on every boy who has\nspouted extracts from it, from the author's time to ours, from the\npalaces of England, to the log school-house in the back-woods of\nAmerica?\n\nBut suppose now, instead of being the aimless, spontaneous, miraculous\nproduct of a stupid, 'rude mechanical' bent on producing something\nwhich should please the eye, and flatter the prejudices of royalty,\nand perfectly ignorant of the nature of that which he had\nproduced;--suppose that instead of appearing as the work of\nStarveling, and Snout, and Nick Bottom, the Weaver, or any person of\nthat grade and calibre, that this play had appeared at the time, as\nthe work of an English scholar, as most assuredly it was, profoundly\nversed in the history of states in general, as well as in the history\nof the English state in particular, profoundly versed in the history\nof nature in general, as well as in the history of human nature in\nparticular. Suppose, for instance, it had appeared as the work of an\nEnglish statesman, already suspected of liberal opinions, but\nstedfastly bent for some reason or other, on advancement at court,\nwith his eye still intently fixed, however secretly, on those\ninsidious changes that were then in progress in the state, who knew\nperfectly well what crisis that ship of state was steering for;\n_query_, whether some of the passages here quoted would have tended to\nthat 'advancement' he '_lacked_.' Suppose that instead of Julius\nCaesar, 'looking through the lion's neck,' and gracefully rejecting\nthe offered prostrations, it had been the English courtier, condemned\nto these degrading personal submissions, who 'roared you out,' on his\nown account, after this fashion. Imagine a good sturdy English\naudience returning the sentiment, thundering their applause at this\nand other passages here quoted, in the presence of a Tudor or a\nStuart.\n\nOne might safely conclude, even if the date had not been otherwise\nsettled, that anything so offensive as this never was produced in the\npresence of Queen Elizabeth. King James might be flattered into\nswallowing even such treasonable stuff as this; but in her time, the\npoor lion was compelled to aggravate his voice after another fashion.\nNothing much above the sucking-dove pitch, could be ventured on when\nher quick ears were present. He 'roared you' indeed, all through her\npart of the Elizabethan time; but it was like any nightingale. The\nclash and clang of these Roman Plays were for the less sensitive and\nmore learned Stuart.\n\n  _Metellus Cimber_. Most high, most mighty,\n  And most puissant Caesar;\n  Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat\n  An humble heart:--[_Kneeling_.]\n\n  _Caesar_. I must prevent thee, Cimber.\n  _These couchings and these lowly courtesies:\n  Might_ fire the blood of ordinary men;\n  AND TURN PRE-ORDINANCE, and FIRST DECREE,\n  INTO THE LAW OF CHILDREN.\n  Be not fond\n  To think that CAESAR bears _such_ REBEL _blood_,\n  That will be thawed from the _true quality_,\n  With that which melteth FOOLS. (?) I mean, _sweet words,\n  Low, crooked curtsies_, and _base spaniel fawning.\n  Thy brother_ by _decree_ is banished;\n  If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for _him,\n  I spurn thee like a cur_, out of my way.\n  Know CAESAR DOTH NOT WRONG.\n\nTo appreciate this, one must recall not merely the humiliating\npersonal prostrations which the ceremonial of the English Court\nrequired then, but that base prostration of truth and duty and honour,\nunder the feet of vanity and will and passion, which they symbolized.\n\nThus far _Caesar_, but the subject's views on this point, as here set\nforth, are scarcely less explicit, but then it is a _Roman_ subject\nwho speaks, and the Roman costume and features, look savingly through\nthe lion's neck.\n\nOne of the radical technicalities of that new philosophy of the human\nnature which permeates all this historical exhibition, comes in here,\nhowever; and it is one which must be mastered before any of these\nplays can be really read. The radical point in the new philosophy, as\nit applies to the human nature in particular, is the pivot on which\nall turns here,--here as elsewhere in the writings of this\nschool,--the distinction of 'the double self,' the distinction between\nthe particular and private nature, with its unenlightened instincts of\npassion, humour, will, caprice,--that self which is changeful, at war\nwith itself, self-inconsistent, and, therefore, truly, no SELF,--since\nthe true self is the principle of identity and immutability,--the\ndistinction between that 'private' _nature_ when it is developed\ninstinctively as 'selfishness,' and that rational immutable self which\nis constitutionally present though latent, in all men, and one in them\nall; that noble _special_ human form which embraces and reconciles in\nits intention, the private good with the good of that worthier whole\nwhereof we are individually parts and members; 'this is the\ndistinction on which all turns here.' For this philosophy refuses, on\nphilosophical grounds, to accept this low, instinctive private nature,\nin any dressing up of accidental power as the god of its idolatry, in\nplace of that 'divine or angelical nature, which is the perfection of\nthe human form,' and the true sovereignty. Obedience to that\nnature,--'the approach to, or assumption of,' that makes, in this\nphilosophy, the end of the human endeavour, 'and the error and false\nimitation of that good, is that which is the tempest of the human\nlife.'\n\nBut let us hear the passionate Cassius, who is full of individualities\nhimself, and ready to tyrannize with them, but somehow, as it would\nseem, not fond of submitting to the 'single self' in others.\n\n  'Well, honour _is_ the subject of my story.--\n  I can not tell what you, and other men,\n  Think of this life; but for my _single self_,\n  I had as lief not BE, as live to be\n  In awe of such a thing _as I myself_.\n  I was _born_ free as Caesar; so were you.\n  We both have fed as well: and we can both\n  Endure the winter's cold as well as he.'--\n\nAnd the proof of this personal equality is then given; and it is\nprecisely the one which Lear produces, 'When the wind made me chatter,\nthere I found them,--there I smelt them out.'--\n\n  'For once upon a raw and gusty day,\n  The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, etc.\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  --Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink.\n  --And this man\n  Is now become a god, and Cassius is\n  A wretched creature, and _must bend his body_,\n  If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.\n  He had a fever when he was in Spain,\n  And when the fit was on him--_I did mark\n  How he did shake_: 'tis true, this god did shake.'\n\n[This was a pretty fellow to have about a king's privacy taking notes\nof this sort on his tablets. Among 'those saw and forms and pressures\npast, which youth and observatior copied there,' all that part\nreserved for _Caesar_ and his history, appears to have escaped the\nsponge in some way.\n\n  'They told me I was every thing, 'tis a lie! I am not _ague_\n  proof.'--_Lear_.\n\n  His coward lips did from their colour fly.\n  'And that same _eye whose bend doth awe the world,\n  Did lose his lustre!--Julius Caesar_.\n\n  '--When I do stare see how _the subject_ quakes.--'_Lear_.]\n\n                        I did hear him groan:\n  Aye, and that tongue of his _that bade the Romans\n  Mark him, and write his speeches in their books_.\n  Alas! it cried, '_Give me some drink_, Titinius,'\n  As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,\n  A man of _such a feeble temper should\n  So get the start of the majestic world_,\n  And bear the palm alone.\n\n  _Brutus_. Another _general shout_!\n  I do believe that these applauses are\n  For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.\n\n  _Cassius_. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world,\n  Like a Colossus: and we petty men\n  Walk under his huge legs; and peep about\n  To find ourselves DISHONOURABLE GRAVES.\n  Men, at _some time_, are _masters of their fates,\n  The fault, dear Brutus_, IS NOT _in our_ STARS,\n  But in ourselves that we are underlings.\n  _Brutus_ and _Caesar_: What should be in that _Caesar_?\n       *       *       *       *       *\n  Now in the names of all the gods at once,\n  _Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed\n  That he is grown so great_? AGE, thou art shamed:\n  _Rome, thou_ hast lost the breed of noble bloods!\n  When went there by an age, since the great flood,\n  But it was famed with more than with _One man_?\n  When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,\n  That her wide walls encompass'd but _One man_?\n  Now is it Home indeed, and room enough,\n  When there is in it but one only man.\n  [When there is in it (truly) but _One only_,--MAN].\n  O! you and I have heard our fathers say,\n  There _was a Brutus once_, that would have brook'd\n  The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome,\n  As easily as _a king_.\n\n  _Brutus_.     What you have said,\n  I will consider;--what you have to say\n  I will with patience hear: and _find a time_\n  Both _meet to hear, and answer such high things_.\n  Till then, my noble friend, CHEW UPON THIS;--\n  Brutus had rather be a _villager_,\n  Than to _repute_ himself a SON of ROME.\n  Under these hard conditions, as _this_ time\n  Is like to lay upon us. [Chew upon this].\n\n  _Cassius_. I am glad that my weak words\n  Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.\n      [Re-enter Caesar and his train.]\n\n  _Brutus_. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.\n\n  _Cassius_. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve;\n  And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you\n  What hath proceeded worthy note to-day.\n\n  _Brutus_. I will do so:--But look you, Cassius,\n  _The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow.\n  And all the rest look like a chidden train_:\n  Calphurnia's cheek is pale; and _Cicero_\n  Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes,\n  As we have seen him in the Capitol,\n  Being crossed in conference by some senators.\n\n  _Cassius_. Casca will tell us what the matter is.\n\n  _Caesar_. Antonius.\n\n  _Antony_. Caesar.\n\n  _Caesar_. Let me have men about me that are fat;\n  Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:\n  Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look.\n  _He thinks too much: such men are dangerous_.\n\n  _Antony_. Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous:\n  He is a noble Roman, and well given.\n\n  _Caesar_. Would he were fatter:--But I fear him not;\n  Yet if my name were liable to fear,\n  I do not know the man I should avoid\n  So soon as that spare Cassius. _He reads much:\n  He is a great observer, and he looks\n  Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,\n  As thou dost Antony_; he hears no music:\n  Seldom he smiles; and smiles _in such a sort,\n  As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit\n  That could be moved to smile at any thing_.\n  Such men as he are never at heart's ease,\n  Whiles they behold a _greater than themselves_;\n  And therefore are they very dangerous,\n  I rather tell thee _what is to be feared_,\n  Than what _I_ fear, FOR ALWAYS I AM CAESAR.\n  _Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf_,\n  And tell me _truly_ what thou think'st of him.\n\n      [_Exeunt Caesar and his train. Casca stays behind_.]\n\n  _Casca_. You pulled me by the _cloak_: would you speak with me?\n\n  _Brutus_. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced to-day,\n  That Caesar looks so sad.\n\n  _Casca_. Why you were with him. Were you not?\n\n  _Brutus_. I should not then ask Casca what hath chanced.\n\n  _Casca_. Why there was a crown offered him: and, being offered, he\n  put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell\n  a shouting.\n\n  _Brutus_. What was the second noise for?\n\n  _Casca_. Why for that too.\n\n  _Brutus_. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?\n\n  _Casca_. Why for that too.\n\n  _Brutus_. Was the crown offered him thrice?\n\n  _Casca_. Ay marry was't. And he put it by thrice, every time gentler\n  than the other; and at every putting by, mine honest neighbours\n  shouted.\n\n  _Cassius_. _Who offered him the crown_?\n\n  _Casca_. Why, Antony.\n\n  _Brutus_. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.\n\n  _Casca_. I can as well be _hanged_ as tell the manner of it. It was\n  mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw _Mark Antony_ offer him a\n  crown; yet 't was not a crown;--neither 't was one of these\n  coronets;--and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all\n  that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it\n  to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was\n  very both to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the\n  third time; he put it the third time by; and still, as he refused\n  it, the rabblement hooted, and clapped their chapped hands, and\n  threw up their sweaty night caps, and uttered such a deal of\n  stinking breath, because Caesar refused the crown, that it had\n  almost choked Caesar; for he swooned and fell down at it: and, for\n  mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and\n  receiving the bad air.\n\n  _Cassius_. But soft, I pray you: WHAT? DID CAESAR SWOON?\n\n  _Casca_. _He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth,\n  and was speechless_.\n\n  _Brutus_. 'Tis very like; he hath the falling sickness.\n\n  _Cassius_. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,\n  And honest Casca, _we have the falling sickness_.\n\n  _Casca_. _I know not what you mean by that_: but I am sure, Caesar\n  fell down. If the _tag-rag people_ did not clap him and hiss him,\n  _according as he pleased and displeased them_, as they use to do\n  the Players in the theatre, I am no true man.\n\n  _Brutus_. What said he, when he came unto himself.\n\n  _Casca_. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the _common\n  herd_ was glad when he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his\n  doublet, and offered them his throat to cut.--An I had been a man\n  of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word; I would\n  I might go to hell among the rogues: and so he fell. When he came\n  to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss,\n  he desired their worships to think it was _his infirmity_. Three or\n  four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!'--and forgave\n  him with all their hearts: But there's no heed to be taken of\n  them; _if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no\n  less_.\n\n  _Brutus_. And after that, he came thus sad away?\n\n  _Casca_. Ay.\n\n  _Cassius_. Did _Cicero say anything_?\n\n  _Casca_. Ay, _he spoke Greek_.\n\n  _Cassius_. To what effect?\n\n  _Casca_. _Nay, an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face\n  again. But those that understood him, smiled at one another, and\n  shook their heads_: but for mine own part, it was _Greek to me_. I\n  could tell you more news, too: Marullus and Flavius, for _pulling\n  scarfs off Caesar's images, are put to silence_. Fare you well.\n  There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.\n\nBrutus says of Casca, when he is gone, 'He was quick mettle _when he\nwent to school_'; and Cassius replies, '_So he is now_--however he\nputs on this _tardy form_. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,\nwhich gives men stomach _to digest_ his words with better appetite.'\n'_And so it_ is,' Brutus returns;--and so it is, indeed, as any one\nmay perceive, who will take the pains to bestow upon these passages\nthe attention which the author's own criticism bespeaks for them.\n\nTo the ear of such an one, the roar of the blank verse of Cassius is\nstill here, subdued, indeed, but continued, through all the humour of\nthis comic prose.\n\nBut it is Brutus who must lend to the Poet the sanction of his name\nand popularity, when he would strike home at last to the heart of his\nsubject. Brutus, however, is not yet fully won: and, in order to\nsecure him, Cassius will this night throw in at his window, '_in\nseveral hands--as if they came from several citizens_--writings, in\nwhich, OBSCURELY, CAESAR'S AMBITION SHALL BE GLANCED AT.' And, 'After\nthis,' he says,--\n\n                     'Let Caesar seat him sure,\n   For we will shake him, or worse days endure.'\n\nBut in the interval, that night of wild tragic splendour must come,\nwith its thunder-bolts and showers of fire, and unnatural horror. For\nthese elements have a true part to perform here, as in Lear and other\nplays; they come in, not merely as subsidiary to the 'artistic\neffect'--not merely because their wild Titanic play forms an imposing\nharmonious accompaniment to the play of the human passions and their\n'wildness'--but as a grand scientific exhibition of the element which\nthe Poet is pursuing under all its Protean forms--as a most palpable\nand effective exhibition to the sense of that identical thing against\nwhich he has raised his eternal standard of revolt, refusing to own,\nunder any name, its mastery.\n\nBut one can hear, in that wild lurid night, in the streets of Rome,\namid the cross blue lightnings, what could not have been whispered in\nthe streets of England then, or spoken in the ear in closets.\n\n  _Cicero_. [Encountering Casca in the street, with his sword drawn.]\n  Good-even, Casca; brought you Caesar home?\n  Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?\n\n  _Casca_. Are _you_ not moved, _when all the sway of earth\n  Shakes like a thing unfirm_? O Cicero,\n  I have seen tempests, when the _scolding winds_\n  Have rived the _knotty oaks_; and I have seen\n  The _ambitious ocean swell, and rage and foam_,\n  To be exalted with the threatening clouds;\n  But never till to-night, never till now,\n  Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.\n  Either there is a _civil strife in heaven_;\n  Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,\n  Incenses them to send destruction.\n\nBut the night has had other spectacles, it seems, which, to his eye,\nappeared to have some relation to the coming struggle; in answer to\nCicero's '_Why_, saw you anything more wonderful?' Thus he describes\nthem.\n\n  '_A common slave,--you know him, well by sight_,\n  Held up his _left hand_, which did flame and burn\n  _Like twenty torches join'd.\n  Against the Capitol_ I met a lion,\n  Who glared upon me, and went _surly by_.'\n\n  [And he had seen, 'drawn on a head,']\n\n  'A hundred ghastly _women,\n  Transformed with their fears_; who swore they saw\n  Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.\n  And, yesterday, the _bird_ of _night_ did sit,\n  Even _at noon-day, upon the market-place_,\n  Hooting, and shrieking.'\n\nAn ominous circumstance,--that last. A portent sure as fate. When such\nthings begin to appear, 'men need not go to heaven to predict imminent\nchanges.'\n\nCicero concedes that 'it is indeed a strange disposed time?' and\ninserts the statement that 'men may construe things after _their_\nfashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.' But this is\ntoo disturbed a sky for _him_ to walk in, so exit Cicero, and enter\none of another kind of mettle, who thinks 'the night a very pleasant\none to honest men;' who boasts that he has been walking about the\nstreets 'unbraced, baring his bosom to the thunder stone,' and playing\nwith 'the cross blue lightning;' and when Casca reproves him for this\ntemerity, he replies,\n\n  'You are dull, Casca, and those _sparks of life_\n  That should be in a Roman, you do want,\n  Or else you use not.'\n\nFor as to these extraordinary phenomena in nature, he says, 'If you\nwould consider the true cause\n\n  Why all these things change, from their _ordinance_,\n  Their _natures_ and _fore-formed faculties_,\n  To _monstrous_ quality; why, you shall find,\n  That heaven hath _infused_ them with these spirits,\n  To make them instruments of fear, and warning,\n  Unto _some_ MONSTROUS STATE.\n  Now could _I_, Casca,\n  Name to _thee_ a man _most like this dreadful night_;\n  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars\n  As doth the lion in the Capitol:\n  _A man no mightier than thyself_, or _me_,\n  _In personal action_; yet _prodigious grown_,\n  And _fearful_, as these _strange eruptions are_.\n\n  _Casca_. 'Tis _Caesar_ that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?\n\n  _Cassius_. LET IT BE WHO IT is: for Romans _now_\n  Have _thewes_ and _limbs_ like to their ancestors;\n  But, woe the while! our fathers' _minds_ are dead,\n  And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;\n  Our yoke and sufferance shows us womanish.\n\n  _Casca_. Indeed, they say, the senators to-morrow\n  Mean to establish Caesar as a king.\n  And he shall wear his crown by sea, and land,\n  In every place, save here in Italy.\n\n  _Cassius_. I know where I will wear this dagger then;\n  Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:\n  Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;\n  Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:\n  Nor STONY TOWER, nor walls of beaten brass,\n  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,\n  Can be _retentive to the strength of spirit_.\n  If I know this, know all the world besides,\n  That part of tyranny, that _I_ do bear,\n  _I_ can shake off at pleasure.\n\n  _Casca_. So can _I_;\n  So every bondman _in his own hand bears_\n  The power to cancel his captivity.\n\n  _Cassius_. _And_ why _should Caesar be a tyrant_ then?\n  Poor man! I know, _he would not be a wolf,\n  But that he sees the Romans are but sheep\n  He were no lion, were not Romans hinds_.\n  Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,\n  Begin it with weak straws: _What trash is Rome,\n  What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves\n  for the base matter to illuminate\n  So vile a thing as Caesar_? But, O grief!\n  _Where_ hast thou led me?  _I_ perhaps, _speak this_\n  BEFORE A WILLING BONDMAN: But I am arm'd\n  And dangers are to me indifferent.\n\n  _Casca_. You speak to Casca; and to such a man,\n  That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold my hand:\n  _Be factious for redress of all these griefs_:\n  And _I will set this foot of mine as far,\n  As who goes farthest_.\n\n  _Cassius_. There's a bargain made.\n\nThis is sufficiently explicit, an unprejudiced listener would be\ninclined to say--indeed, it is difficult to conceive how any more\npositively instructive exhibition of the subject, could well have been\nmade. Certainly no one can deny that this fact of the personal\nhelplessness, the physical weakness of those in whom this arbitrary\npower over the liberties and lives of others is vested, seems for some\nreason or other to have taken strong possession of the Poet's\nimagination. For how else, otherwise should he reproduce it so often,\nso elaborately under such a variety of forms?--with such a\nstedfastness and pertinacity of purpose?\n\nThe fact that the power which makes these personalities so\n'prodigious,' so 'monstrous,' overshadowing the world, '_shaming the\nAge_' with their 'colossal' individualities, no matter what new light,\nwhat new gifts of healing for its ills, that age has been endowed\nwith, levelling all to their will, contracting all to the limit of\ntheir stinted nature, making of all its glories but 'rubbish, offal to\nilluminate their vileness,'--the fact that the power which enables\ncreatures like these, to convulse nations with their whims, and deluge\nthem with blood, at their pleasure,--which puts the lives and\nliberties of the noblest, always most obnoxious to them, under their\nheel--the fact that this power resides after all, _not in these\npersons themselves_,--that they are utterly helpless, pitiful,\ncontemptible, in themselves; but that it exists in the 'thewes and\nlimbs' of those who are content to be absorbed in their personality,\nwho are content to make muscles for them, in those who are content to\nhe mere machines for the 'only one man's' will and passion to operate\nwith,--the fact that this so fearful power lies all in the consent of\nthose who suffer from it, is the fact which this Poet wishes to be\npermitted to communicate, and which he will communicate in one form or\nanother, to those whom it concerns to know it.\n\nIt is a fact, which he is not content merely to state, however, in so\nmany words, and so have done with it. He will impress it on the\nimagination with all kinds of vivid representation. He will exhaust\nthe splendours of his Art in uttering it. He will leave a statement on\nthis subject, profoundly philosophical, but one that all the world\nwill be able to comprehend eventually, one that the world will never\nbe able to unlearn.\n\nThe single individual helplessness of the man whom the multitude, in\nthis case, were ready to arm with unlimited power over their own\nwelfare--that physical weakness, already so strenuously insisted on by\nCassius, at last attains its climax in the representation, when, in\nthe midst of his haughtiest display of will and personal authority,\nstricken by the hands of the men he scorned, by the hand of one 'he\nhad just spurned like a cur out of his path,' he falls at the foot of\nPompey's statue--or, rather, 'when at the base of Pompey's statue he\nlies along'--amid all the noise, and tumult, and rushing action of the\nscene that follows--through all its protracted arrangements, its\nspeeches, and ceremonials--not unmarked, indeed,--the centre of all\neyes,--but, mute, motionless, a thing of pity, 'A PIECE OF BLEEDING\nEARTH.'\n\nThat helpless cry in the Tiber, 'Save me, Cassius, or I sink!'--that\nfeeble cry from the sick man's bed in Spain, 'Give me some drink,\nTitinius!'--and all that pitiful display of weakness, moral and\nphysical, at the would-be coronation, which Casca's report conveys so\nunsparingly--the falling down in the street speechless, which Cassius\nemphasises with his scornful '_What? did_ CAESAR SWOON?'--all this\nmakes but a part of the exhibition, which the lamentations of Mark\nAntony complete:--\n\n  'O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?\n  Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,\n  Shrunk to _this little measure_?'\n\n_This_? and 'the eye' of the spectator, more learned than 'his ear,'\nfollows the speaker's eye, and measures it.\n\n                            '_Fare thee well_.\n  But yesterday the word of Caesar might\n  Have stood against the world: now lies he _there_.\n  And _none so poor, to do him reverence_.'\n\nThe Poet's tone breaks through Mark Antony's; the Poet's finger\npoints, '_now lies he there'--there_!\n\nThat form which 'lies there,' with its mute eloquence speaking this\nPoet's word, is what he calls 'a Transient Hieroglyphic,' which makes,\nhe says, 'a deeper impression on minds of a certain order, than the\nlanguage of arbitrary signs;' and his 'delivery' on the most important\nquestions will be found, upon examination, to derive its principal\nemphasis from a running text in this hand. '_For_, in such business,'\nhe says, '_action_ is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more\n_learned_ than the ears.'\n\nOr, as he puts it in another place: 'What is sensible always strikes\nthe memory more strongly, and sooner _impresses_ itself, than what is\nintellectual. Thus the memory of _brutes_ is excited by sensible, but\nnot by intellectual things. And therefore it is easier to retain the\nimage of a _sportsman hunting_, than of the corresponding notion of\n_invention_--of an apothecary ranging his boxes, than of the\ncorresponding notion of _disposition_--of an orator making a speech,\nthan of the term Eloquence--or _a boy repeating verses_, than the term\n_Memory_--_or_ of A PLAYER acting his part, than the corresponding\nnotion of--ACTION.'\n\nSo, also, '_Tom o' Bedlam_' was a better word for 'houseless misery,'\nthan all the king's prayer, good as it was, about 'houseless heads,\nand unfed sides,' in general, and 'looped, and windowed raggedness.'\n\n'We construct,' says this author, in another place--rejecting the\nordinary history as not suitable for scientific purposes, because it\nis 'varied, and diffusive, and confounds and disturbs the\nunderstanding, unless it be fixed and exhibited in due order'--we\nconstruct 'tables and _combinations_ of _instances_, upon such a plan\nand in such order, that the understanding be enabled to act upon\nthem.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nCAESAR'S SPIRIT.\n\n\n_I'll_ meet thee at Phillippi.\n\nIn Julius Caesar, the most splendid and magnanimous representative of\narbitrary power is selected--'the foremost man of all the\nworld,'--even by the concession of those who condemn him to death; so\nthat here it is the mere abstract question as to the expediency and\npropriety of permitting _any one man_ to impose his individual will on\nthe nation. Whatever personalities are involved in the question\n_here_--with Brutus, at least--tend to bias the decision in his\nfavour. For so he tells us, as with agitated step he walks his orchard\non that wild night which succeeds his conference with Cassius,\nrevolving his part, and reading, by the light of the exhalations\nwhizzing in the air, the papers that have been found thrown in at his\nstudy window.\n\n  'It must be by his death: and, _for my part_,\n  I know _no personal cause_ to spurn at him,\n  BUT FOR THE GENERAL. He would be crown'd:--\n  How _that might change his nature, there's the question.\n  It is the bright day that brings forth the adder_;\n  And that _craves wary walking_. Crown him? That;--\n  And then, _I grant_, we put a sting in him,\n  That _at his will_ he may do danger with.\n  The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins\n  _Remorse from power_: And, to speak truth of _Caesar_,\n  I have not known when _his affections_ sway'd\n  More than his _reason_. But 't is a common proof,\n  That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,\n  Whereto the climber upward turns his face:\n  But when he once attains _the utmost round_,\n  He then unto the ladder turns his back,\n  Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees\n  By which he did ascend: So Caesar may;\n  Then, lest he may, PREVENT. And, since the quarrel,\n  Will bear no colour for the thing he is,\n  Fashion it thus; that _what he is, augmented_,\n  Would run to _these, and these extremities_:\n  And _therefore_ think him as a serpent's egg,\n  Which, _hatch'd_, would, AS HIS KIND, grow mischievous;\n  AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'\n\nPretty sentiments these, to set before a king already engaged in so\ncritical a contest with his subjects; pleasant entertainment, one\nwould say, for the representative of a monarchy that had contrived to\nwake the sleeping Brutus in its dominions,--that was preparing, even\nthen, for its own death-struggle on this very question, which _this_\nBrutus searches to its core so untenderly.\n\n'Have you heard the argument?' says the 'bloat king' in Hamlet. 'Is\nthere no offence in it?'\n\nNow, let the reader suppose, for one instant, that this work had been\nproduced from the outset openly, for what any reader of common sense\nwill perceive it to be, with all its fire, an elaborate, scholarly\ncomposition, the product of the profoundest philosophic invention, the\nfruit of the ripest scholarship of the age;--let him suppose, for\nargument's sake, that it had been produced for what it is, the work of\na scholar, and a statesman, and a courtier,--a statesman already\njealously watched, or already, perhaps, in deadly collision with this\nvery power he is defining here so largely, and tracking to its\nultimate scientific comprehensions;--and then let the reader imagine,\nif he can, Elizabeth or James, but especially Elizabeth, listening\nentranced to such passages as the one last quoted, with an audience\ndisposed to make points of some of the 'choice Italian' lines in it.\n\nDoes not all the world know that scholars, men of reverence, men of\nworld-wide renown, men of every accomplishment, were tortured, and\nmutilated, and hung, and beheaded, in both these two reigns, for\nwritings wherein Caesar's ambition was infinitely more obscurely\nhinted at--writings unspeakably less offensive to majesty than this?\n\nBut, then, a Play was a Play, and old Romans would be Romans; there\nwas, notoriously, no royal way of managing them; and if kings would\nhave tragical mirth out of them, they must take their treason in good\npart, and make themselves as merry with it as they could. The poor\nPoet was, of course, no more responsible for these men than Chaucer\nwas for his pilgrims. He but reported them.\n\nAnd besides, in that broad, many-sided view of the subject which the\nauthor's evolution of it from the root involves,--in that pursuit of\ntyranny in essence through all its disguises,--other exhibitions of it\nwere involved, which might seem, to the careless eye, purposely\ndesigned to counteract the effect of the views above quoted.\n\nThe fact that mere arbitrary will, that the individual humour and\nbias, is incapable of furnishing a _rule_ of _action_ anywhere,--the\nfact that mere will, or blind passion, whether in the _One_, or the\n_Few_, or the _Many_, should have no part, above all, in the business\nof the STATE,--should lend no colour or bias to its\nadministration,--the fact that 'the general good,' 'the common weal,'\nwhich is justice, and reason, and humanity,--the 'ONE ONLY\nMAN,'--should, in some way, under some form or other, get to the head\nof that and _rule_, this is all which the Poet will contend for.\n\nBut, alas, HOW? The unspeakable difficulties in the way of the\nsolution of this problem,--the difficulties which the radical bias in\nthe individual human nature, even under its noblest forms,\ncreates,--the difficulties which the ignorance, and stupidity, and\npassion of the multitude created then, and still create, appear here\nwithout _any mitigation_. They are studiously brought out in their\nboldest colours. There's no attempt to shade them down. They make,\nindeed, the TRAGEDY.\n\nAnd it is this general impartial treatment of his subjects which makes\nthis author's writings, with all their boldness, generally, so safe;\nfor it seems to leave him without any bias for any person or any\nparty--without any _opinion_ on any topic; for his truth embraces and\nresolves all partial views, and is as broad as nature's own.\n\nAnd how could he better neutralise the effect of these patriotic\nspeeches, and prove his loyalty in the face of them, than to show as\nhe does, most vigorously and effectively, that these patriots\nthemselves, so rebellious to tyranny, so opposed to the one-man power\nin others, so determined to die, rather than submit to the imposition\nof the humours of any man, instead of law and justice,--were\nthemselves but men, and were as full of will and humours, and as ready\nto tyrannise with them, too, upon occasion, as Caesar himself; and\nwere no more fit to be trusted with absolute power than he was, nor,\nin fact, half so fit.\n\nCaesar does, indeed, send word to the senate--'_The cause is in_ MY\nWILL, _I will not come_; (_That_ is enough,' he says, '_to satisfy the\nsenate_.') And while the conspirators are exchanging glances, and the\ndaggers are stealing from their sheaths, he offers the strength of his\ndecree, the immutability 'of his absolute shall,' to the suppliant for\nhis brother's pardon.\n\nBut then Portia gives us to understand, that she, too, has her private\ntroubles;--that even that excellent man, Brutus, is not without his\nmoods in his domestic administrations,--for on one occasion, when he\ntreats her to 'ungentle looks,' and 'stamps his foot,' and angrily\ngesticulates her out of his presence, she makes good her retreat,\nthinking 'it was but the effect of humour, which,' she says, 'sometime\nhath his hour with every man'; and, good and patriotic as Brutus truly\nis, Cassius perceives, upon experiment, that after all _he_ too is but\na man, and, with a particular and private nature, as well as a larger\none 'which is the worthier,' and not unassailable through that 'single\nI myself': he, too, may be 'thawed from the true quality with that\nwhich melteth fools,'--with words that flatter 'his particular.' In\nhis conference with him, Cassius addresses himself skilfully to this\nweakness;--he poises the name of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at\nthe last, he clinches his patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his\npersonal sentiment, of baffled, mortified emulation; for those\nwritings, thrown in at his window, purporting to come from several\ncitizens, 'all tended to the great opinion that Rome held of _his_\nname;' and, alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not\nunconsciously wake, in that pure mind, the feather's-weight that was\nperhaps needed to turn the scale.\n\nAnd the very children know, by heart, what a time there was between\nthese two men afterwards, these men that had 'struck the foremost man\nof all the world,' and had congratulated themselves that it was not\nmurder, and that they were not villains, because it was for justice.\nPrecious disclosures we have in this scene. It is this very Cassius,\nthis patriot, who had as lief _not_ BE as submit to injustice; who\nbrings his avaricious humour, 'his itching palm,' into the state, and\n'sells and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers.' Brutus does\nindeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of patriotic\nindignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy of honest\ndisgust at wrong in the abstract, in spite of the partiality of\nfriendship; but, when Cassius charges him, afterwards, with\nexaggerating his friend's infirmities, he says, frankly, 'I did not,\n_till you practised them on_ ME.' And we find, as the dialogue\nproceeds, that it is indeed a personal matter with him: Cassius has\nrefused him gold to pay his legions with.\n\nAnd see, now, what kind of taunt it is, that Brutus throws in this\nsame patriot's face after it had been proclaimed, by his order,\nthrough the streets of Rome, that Tyranny 'is dead': after Cassius had\nshouted through his own lungs.\n\n'Some to the common pulpits, and cry out LIBERTY, FREEDOM,\nENFRANCHISEMENT.' (_Enfranchisement_?)\n\nIt would have been strange, indeed, if in so general and philosophical\na view of the question, that sacred, domestic institution, which,\nthrough all this sublime frenzy for equal rights, maintained itself so\npeacefully under the patriot's roof, had escaped without a touch.\n\nBrutus says:--\n\n  'Hear me, for I will speak.\n  Must I give way and room to your rash choler?\n  Shall I be frighted _when a madman stares_?'\n\n  'Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.'\n\nThis sounds, already, as if Tyranny were not quite dead.\n\n  '_Cassius_. O ye gods, ye gods, must I endure all this!\n\n  _Brutus_. All this? ay more: Fret till your proud heart break;\n  _Go, show_ YOUR SLAVES _how choleric you are_,\n  And bid YOUR BONDMEN tremble. Must _I_ budge?\n  Must _I_ observe _you_? Must _I stand_ and _crouch\n  Under your testy humour_? By the gods,\n  You shall digest the venom of your spleen\n  Though it do split you.'\n\nSo it was a mistake, then, it seems; and, notwithstanding that shout\nof triumph, and that bloody flourishing of knives, Tyranny _was not_\ndead.\n\nBut one cannot help thinking that that shout must have sounded rather\nstrangely in an English theatre just then, and that it was a somewhat\ndelicate experiment to give Brutus his pulpit on the stage, to\nharangue the people from. But the author knew what he was doing. That\ncold, stilted harangue, that logical chopping on the side of freedom,\nwas not going to set fire to any one's blood; and was not there Mark\nAntony that plain, blunt man, coming directly after Brutus,--'with his\neyes as red as fire with weeping,' with 'the mantle,' of the military\nhero, the popular favourite, _in his hand_, with his glowing oratory,\nwith his sweet words, and his skilful appeal to the passions of the\npeople, under his plain, blunt professions,--to wipe out every trace\nof Brutus's _reasons_, and lead them whither he would; and would not\nthe moral of it all be, that with such A PEOPLE,--with such a power as\nthat, behind the state, there was no use in killing Caesars--that\nTyranny could not die.\n\n  'I fear there will a worse one come in his place.'\n\nBut this is Rome in her decline, that the artist touches here so\nboldly. But what now, if old Rome herself,--plebeian Rome, in the\ndeadliest onset of her struggle against tyranny, Rome lashed into fury\nand conscious strength, rising from under the hard heel of her\noppressors; what if Rome, in the act of creating her Tribunes; or, if\nRome, with her Tribunes at her head, wresting from her oppressors a\nconstitutional establishment of popular rights,--what if this could be\nexhibited, by permission; what bounds as to the freedom of the\ndiscussion would it be possible to establish afterwards? There had\nbeen no National Latin Tragedy, Frederic Schlegel suggests,--because\nno Latin Dramatist could venture to do this very thing; but of course\nCaesar or Coriolanus on the Tiber was one thing, and Caesar or\nCoriolanus on the Thames was another; and an English author might be\nallowed, then, to say of the one, with impunity, what it would\ncertainly have cost him his good right hand, or his ears, or his head,\nto say of the other,--what it did cost the Founder of this school in\nphilosophy his head, to be suspected of saying of the other.\n\nNevertheless, the great question between an arbitrary and a\nconstitutional government, the principle of a government which vests\nthe whole power of the state in the uncontrolled will of a single\nindividual member of it; the whole history and philosophy of a\nmilitary government, from its origin in the heroic ages,--from the\ncrowning of the military hero on the battle field in the moment of\nvictory, to the final consummation of its conquest of the liberty of\nthe subject, could be as clearly set forth under the one form as the\nother; not without some startling specialities in the filling up, too,\nwith a tone in the details now and then, to say the least, not\nexclusively antique, for this was a mode of treating classical\nsubjects in that age, too common to attract attention.\n\nAnd thus, whole plays could be written out and out, on this very\nsubject. Take, for instance, but these two, Coriolanus and Julius\nCaesar,--plays in which, by a skilful distribution of the argument and\nthe action, with a skilful interchange of parts now and then,--the\nboldest passages being put alternately into the mouths of the Tribunes\nand Patricians,--that great question, which was so soon to become the\noutspoken question of the nation and the age, could already be\ndiscussed in all its vexed and complicated relations, in all its\naspects and bearings, as deliberately as it could be to-day; exactly\nas it was, in fact, discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English\npamphlets, in harangues from English pulpits, in English parliaments\nand on English battle-fields,--exactly as it was discussed when that\n'lofty Roman scene' came 'to be acted over' here, with the\ncold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English judicature.\n\n\n\nCORIOLANUS\n\nTHE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;\n\nOR,\n\nTHE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.\n\n              'Well, march we on\n  To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:\n  Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,\n  And _with him_, pour we in our country's purge\n  _Each drop of us_.\n                     Or so much as it needs\n  To dew the sovereign Flower, _and drown the weeds_'--_Macbeth_.\n\n  'Have you heard the argument?'\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM.\n\n\n  'Mildly is the word.'\n                  'In a better hour,\n  Let what _is meet_ be said it must be _meet_,\n  And throw their power in the dust.'\n\nIt is the Military Chieftain of ancient Rome who pronounces here the\nwords in which the argument of the Elizabethan revolutionist is so\ntersely comprehended.\n\nIt is the representative of an heroic aristocracy, not one of ancient\nprivilege merely, not one armed with parchments only, claiming descent\nfrom heroes; but the yet living leaders of the rabble people to\nmilitary conquest, and the only leaders who are understood to be able\nto marshal from their ranks an effective force for military defence.\n\nBut this is not all. The scope of the poetic design requires here,\nunder the sheath which this dramatic exhibition of an ancient\naristocracy offers it, the impersonation of another and more sovereign\ndifference in men; and this poet has ends to serve, to which a mere\nhistorical accuracy in the reproduction of this ancient struggle of\nstate-factions, in an extinct European common-wealth, is of little\nconsequence; though he is not wanting in that either, or indifferent\nto it, when occasion serves.\n\nFrom the _speeches_ inserted here and there, we find that this is at\nthe same time an aristocracy of learning which is put upon the stage\nhere, that it is an aristocracy of statesmanship and civil ability,\nthat it is composed of the select men of the state, and not its elect\nonly; that it is the true and natural head of the healthful body\npolitic, and not 'the horn of the monster' only. This is the\naristocracy which appears to be in session in the background of this\npiece at least, and we are not without some occasional glimpses of\ntheir proceedings, and this is the element of the poetic combination\nwhich comes out in the _dialogue_, whenever the necessary question of\nthe play requires it.\n\nFor it is the collision between the civil interests and the interests\nwhich the unlearned heroic ages enthrone, that is coming off here. It\nis the collision between the government which uneducated masses of men\ncreate and confirm, and recreate in any age, and the government which\nthe enlightened man 'in a better hour' demands, which the common sense\nand sentiment of man, as distinguished from the brute, demands,\nwhether in the one, or the few, or the many.--This is the struggle\nwhich is getting into form and order here,--here _first_. These are\nthe parties to it, and in the reign of the last of the Tudors and the\nfirst of the Stuarts, they must be content to fight it out on any\nstage which their time can afford to lease to them for that\nperformance, without being over scrupulous as to the names of the\nactors, or the historical correctness of the costumes, and other\nparticulars; not minding a little shuffling in the parts, now and\nthen, if it suits their poet's convenience, who has no conscience at\nall on such points, and who is of the opinion that this is the very\nstage which an action of such gravity ought to be exhibited on, in the\nfirst place; and that a very careful and critical rehearsal of it\nhere, ought to precede the performance elsewhere; though a contrary\nopinion was not then without its advocates.\n\nIt is as the mouth-piece of this intellectual faction in the state,\nwhile it is as yet an _aristocracy_, contending with the physical\nforce of it, struggling for the mastery of it with its numerical\nmajority; it is the Man in the state, the new MAN struggling with the\nchief which a popular ignorance has endowed with dominion over him; it\nis the HERO who contends for the majesty of reason and the kingdom of\nthe mind, it is the new speaker, the new, and now at last, commanding\nspeaker for that law, which was old when this myth was named, which\nwas not of yesterday when Antigone quoted it, who speaks now from this\nRoman's lips, these words of doom,--the reflection on the 'times\ndeceased,' the prophecy of 'things not yet come to life,' the word of\nnew ages.\n\n                     'In A REBELLION,\n  When what's not MEET, but what must be, was law,\n  THEN WERE THEY CHOSEN: in a better hour\n  Let what _is meet_ be said it must be _meet_,\n  And throw their power in the dust.'\n\n_Not_ in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome, _not_\nwhere the _Roman_ market-place, joined the Capitoline hill and began\nto ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither, and began to\nobstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades of the primeval hill of\npalaces, were the terms of this proposal found. And not from the old\nlogician's chair, was the sweep of their comprehension made; not in\nany ancient school of rhetoric or logic were they cast and locked in\nthat conjunction. It was another kind of weapon that the old _Roman_\nJove had to take in hand, when amid the din of the Roman forum, _he_\nawoke at last from his bronze and marble, to his empirical struggle,\nhis unlearned, experimental struggle with the wolf and her nursling,\nwith his own baptized, red-robed, usurping Mars. It was not with any\nsuch subtlety as this, that the struggle of state forces which, under\none name or another, sooner or later, in the European states is sure\nto come, had hitherto been conducted.\n\nAnd not from the lips of the haughty patrician chief, rising from the\ndust of ages at the spell of genius, to encounter his old plebeian\nvanquishers, and fight his long-lost battles o'er again, at a\nshowman's bidding, for a showman's greed--to be stung anew into\npatrician scorn--to repeat those rattling volleys of the old martial\nLatin wrath, 'in states unborn' and 'accents then unknown,' for an\nhour's idle entertainment, for 'a six-pen'orth or shilling's worth' of\ngaping amusement to a playhouse throng, not--NOT from any such source\ncame that utterance.\n\nIt came from the council-table of a sovereignty that was plotting here\nin secret then the empire that the sun shall not set on; whose\nbeginning only, we have seen. It came from the secret chamber of a new\nunion and society of men,--a union based on a new and, for the first\ntime, scientific acquaintance with the nature that is in men, with the\nsovereignty that is in all men. It was the Poet of this society who\nput those words together--the Poet who has heard all its _pros_ and\n_cons_, who reports them all, and gives to them all their exact weight\nin the new balance of his decisions.\n\nAmong other things, it was understood in this association, that the\npower, which was at that time supreme in England, was in fact, though\nnot in name, a _popular_ power,--a power, at least, sustained only by\nthe popular will, though men had not, indeed, as yet, begun to\nperceive that momentous circumstance,--a power which, being 'but the\nhorn and noise o' the monster,' was able to oppose its '_absolute\nshall_' to the embodied wisdom of the state,--not to its ancient\nimmemorial government only, but to 'its _chartered_ liberties in the\nbody of the weal,' and 'to a graver bench than ever frowned in\nGreece'; and the Poet has put on his record of debates on those\n'questions of gravity,' that were agitating then this secret Chamber\nof Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient\nleadership,--the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable\nand right honourable few, that this mass of ignorance, and stupidity,\nand blind custom, and incapacity for rule,--this combination of mere\ninstinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times\nconstitutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and\npassivity, and in its passionate admiration of heroism and love of\nleadership, the ready material of tyranny, shall be annihilated, and\ncease to have any leadership or voice in the state; and this demand is\nput by the Poet into the mouth of one who cannot see from his point of\nobservation--with his ineffable contempt for the people--what the Poet\nsees from his, that the demand, as he puts it, is simply 'the\nimpossible.' For this is a question in the mixed mathematics, and 'the\n_greater part_ carries it.'\n\nThat instinctive, unintelligent force in the state--that blind\nvolcanic force--which foolish states dare to keep pent up within them,\nis that which the philosopher's eye is intent on also; he, too, has\nmarked this as the primary source of mischief,--he, too, is at war\nwith it,--he, too, would annihilate it; but he has his own mode of\nwarfare for it; he thinks it must be done with Apollo's own darts, if\nit be done when 'tis done, and not with the military chieftain's\nweapon.\n\nThis work is one in which the question of heroism and nobility is\nscientifically treated, and in the most rigid manner, 'by line and\nlevel,' and through that representative form in which the historical\npretence of it is tried,--through that scientific negation, with its\nmerely instinctive, vulgar, unlearned ambition--with its monstrous\n'outstretching' on the one hand, and its dwarfish limitations on the\nother,--through all that finely drawn, historic picture of that which\nclaims the human subjection, the clear scientific lines of the true\nideal type are visible,--the outline of the true nobility and\ngovernment is visible,--towering above that detected insufficiency,\ninto the perfection of the _human_ form,--into the heaven of the true\ndivineness,--into the chair of the perpetual dictatorship,--into the\nconsulship whose year revolves not, whose year is _the state_.\n\nNeither is this true affirmation here in the form of a scientific\nabstraction merely. It is not here in the general merely. 'The\nInstance,' the particular impersonation of nobility and heroism, which\nthis play exhibits, is, indeed, the false heroism and nobility. It is\nthe hitherto uncriticised, and, therefore, uncorrected, popular\naffirmation on this subject which is embodied here, and this turns out\nto be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be\ninvented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece,--in\nthe steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with\nits so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving\nit and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever,\napproving itself 'to the Workmaster' only,--in this incessant\ndesign,--in this veiled, mysterious authorship,--an historical\napproximation to the true type of magnanimity and heroism is always\npresent. But there is more in it than this.\n\nIt is the old popular notion of heroism which fills the foreground;\nbut the Elizabethan heroism is always lurking behind it, watching its\nmoment, ready to seize it; and under that cover, it contrives to\nadvance and pronounce many words, which, in its own name and form, it\ncould not then have been so prosperously delivered of. Under the\ndisguise of that historical impersonation--under the mask of that old\nRoman hero, other, quite other, heroic forms--historic forms--not\n_less_ illustrious, not less memorable, from time to time steal in;\nand ere we know it, the suppressed Elizabethan men are on the stage,\nand the Theatre is, indeed, the Globe; and it is shaking and flashing\nwith the iron heel and the thunder of their leadership; and the\nthrones of oppression are downfalling; and the ages that seemed 'far\noff,' the ages that were nigh, are there--are there as they are\n_here_.\n\nThe historical position of the men who could entertain the views which\nthis Play embodies, in the age in which it was written--the whole\nposition of the men in whom this idea of nobility and government was\nalready struggling to become historical--flashes out from that obscure\nback-ground into the most vivid historical representation, when once\nthe light--'the great light' which 'the times give to _true_\ninterpretations'--has been brought to bear upon it. And it does so\nhappen, that _that_ is the light which we are particularly directed to\nhold up to this particular play, and, what is more, to this particular\npoint in it. 'So _our_ virtues,' says the old Volscian captain, Tullus\nAufidius, lamenting the limitations of his historical position, and\napologizing for the figure he makes in history--\n\n  'So _our virtues_\n  Lie in the interpretation of THE TIMES.'\n\n['THE TIMES, in many cases, give great light to true\n_interpretations_,' says the other, speaking of books, and the method\nof reading them; but this one applies that suggestion particularly to\n_lives_.]\n\n  'And power, unto itself most commendable,\n  Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair\n  To extol what it hath done.'\n\nThe spirit of the Elizabethan heroism is indeed here, and under the\ncover of this old Roman story; and under cover of those so marked\ndifferences in the positions which suffice to detain the unstudious\neye, through the medium of that which is common under those\ndifferences, the history of the Elizabethan heroism is here also. The\nspirit of it is here, not in that subtler nature only--that yet,\nperhaps, subtler, calmer, stronger nature, in which 'blood and\njudgment were so well co-mingled'--so well, in such new degree and\nproportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative\nforce, in history--not in that one only, the one in whom this new\nhistoric form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier\nand more unbending historic _attitude_, at least, of his great\n'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great\nmilitary chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with\nall his strategy, involved in a single-handed contest with the state\nand its whole physical strength, in his contest with that personal\npower in whose single arm, in whose miserable finger-joints, the state\nand all its force then lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial\ncloak,--under the safe disguise of martial tyranny in 'the\nfew,'--whenever the business of the play requires it, whenever 'his\ncue comes,' _he_ is there. Under that old, rusty Roman helmet, his\nsmothered speech, his 'speech of fire,' his passionate speech, 'forbid\nso long,' drops thick and fast, drops unquenched at last, and glows\nfor ever. It is the headless Banquo--'the blood-boltered Banquo'--that\nstalks through that shadowy background all unharmed; _his Fleance_\nlives, and in him 'Nature's copy _is_ eterne.'\n\nHis house of kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their\nhands, with _two-fold_ balls and sceptres in their hands--are here\nfilling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he\n'smiles,' he _smiles_ upon his baffled foe, 'and points at them for\nHIS.'\n\nThe whole difficulty of this great Elizabethan position, and the moral\nof it, is most carefully and elaborately exhibited here. No plea at\nthe bar was ever more finely and eloquently laboured. It was for the\nbar of 'foreign nations and future ages' that this defence was\nprepared: the speaker who speaks so 'pressly,' is the lawyer; and\nthere is nothing left unsaid at last. But it is not exhibited in words\nmerely. It is acted. It is brought out dramatically. It is presented\nto the eye as well as to the ear. The impossibility of any other mode\nof proceeding under those conditions is not demonstrated in this\ninstance by a diagram, drawn on a piece of paper, and handed about\namong the jury; it is not an exact drawing of the street, and the\nhouse, and the corner where the difficulty occurred, with the number\nof yards and feet put down in ink or pencil marks; it is something\nmuch more lively and tangible than that which we have here, under\npardon of this old Roman myth.\n\nFor the story, as to this element of it, is indeed not new. The story\nof the struggle of the few with the many, of the one with the many, of\nthe one with 'the many-headed,' is indeed an old one. Back into the\ndays of demi-gods and gods it takes us. It is the story of the\ncelestial Titan, with his benefactions for men, and force and\nstrength, with art to aid them--reluctant art--compelled to serve\ntheir ends, enringing his limbs, and driving hard the stakes. Here,\nindeed, in the Fable, in the proper hero of it, it is the struggle of\nthe 'partliness' of pride and selfish ambition, lifting itself up in\nthe place of God, and arraying itself against the common-_weal_, as\nwell as the common-will; but the physical relation of the one to the\nmany, the position of the individual who differs from his time on\nradical questions, the relative strength of the parties to this war,\nand the weapons and the mode of warfare inevitably prescribed to the\nminority under such conditions--all this is carefully brought out from\nthe speciality of this instance, and presented in its most general\nform; and the application of the result to the position of the man who\ncontends _for_ the common-weal, against the selfish will, and passion,\nand narrowness, and short-sightedness of the multitude, is distinctly\nmade.\n\nYes, the Elizabethan part is here; that all-unappreciated and odious\npart, which the great men of the Elizabethan time found forced upon\nthem; that most odious part of all, which, the greatest of his time\nfound forced upon _him_ as the condition of his greatness. It is here\nalready, negatively defined, in this passionate defiance, which rings\nout at last in the Roman street, when the hero's pride bursts through\nhis resolve, when he breaks down at last in his studied part, and all\nconsiderations of policy, all regard to that which was dearer to him\nthan 'his _single mould_,' is given to the winds in the tempest of his\nwrath, and he stands at bay, and confronts _alone_ 'the beast with\nmany heads.'\n\nIt is thus that he measures the man he contends with, the antagonist\nwho is but 'the horn and noise of the monster':--\n\n                    'Thou injurious TRIBUNE!\n  Within thine eyes sat _twenty thousand_ deaths,\n  In thy hands clenched _as many millions_, in\n  Thy lying tongue _both numbers_, I would say,\n  Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free\n  As I do pray the gods.'\n\nBut there was a heroism of a finer strain than that at work in England\nthen, imitating the graces of the gods to better purpose; a heroism\nwhich must fight a harder field than that, which must fight its own\ngreat battles through alone, without acclamations, without spectators;\nwhich must come off victorious, and never count its 'cicatrices,' or\nclaim 'the war's garland.'\n\nIf we would know the secret of those struggles, those hard conflicts\nthat were going on here then, in whose results all the future ages of\nmankind were concerned, we must penetrate with this Poet the secret of\nthe Roman patrician's house; we must listen, through that thin poetic\nbarrier, to the great chief himself, the chief of the unborn age of a\nnew civilization--the leader, and hero, and conqueror of the ages of\nPeace--as he enters and paces his own hall, with the angry fire in his\neyes, and utters there the words for which there is no utterance\nwithout--as he listens there anew to the argument of that for which he\nlives, and seeks to reconcile himself anew to that baseness which his\ntime demands of him.\n\nWe must seek, here, not the part of him only who endured long and\nmuch, but was, at last, provoked into a premature boldness, and\ninvolved in a fatal collision with the state, but that of him who\nendured to the end, who played his life-long part without\nself-betrayal. We must seek, here, not the part of the great martial\nchieftain only, but the part of that heroic chief and leader of men\nand ages, who discovered, in the sixteenth century, when the chivalry\nof the sword was still exalting its standard of honour as supreme,\nwhen the law of the sword was still the world's law, that brute\ninstinct was not the true valour, that there was a better part of it\nthan instinct, though he knows and confesses,--though he is the first\nto discover, that instinct is a great matter. We must seek, here, _the\nwords_, the very words of that part which we shall find _acted_\nelsewhere,--the part of the chief who was determined, for his part,\n'to live and fight another day,' who was not willing to spend\n_him_self in such conflicts as those in which he saw his most\nillustrious contemporaries perish at his side, on his right hand and\non his left, in the reign of the Tudor, and in the reign of the\nStuart. And he has not been at all sparing of his hints on this\nsubject over his own name, for those who have leisure to take them.\n\n'The moral of this fable is,' he says, commenting in a certain place,\non the wisdom of _the Ancients_, 'that men should not be confident of\nthemselves, and imagine that a discovery of their excellences will\nalways render them acceptable. _For this can only succeed_ according\nto _the nature_ and _manners_ of the person they _court or_ solicit,\nwho, if he be a man not of the same gifts and endowments, but\naltogether of a haughty and insolent behaviour--(_here_ represented by\n_the person of Juno_)--_they must entirely drop the character_ that\ncarries the least show of worth or gracefulness; if they proceed upon\n_any other_ footing it is _downright folly. Nor_ is it sufficient to\n_act_ the deformity of _obsequiousness_, unless they _really change\nthemselves_, and _become_ abject and contemptible _in their persons_.'\nThis was a time when abject and contemptible _persons_ could do what\nothers could not do. Large enterprises, new developments of art and\nscience, the most radical social innovations, were undertaken and\nmanaged, and very successfully, too, in that age, by persons of that\ndescription, though not without frequent glances on their part, at\nthat little, apparently somewhat contradictory circumstance, in their\nhistory.\n\nBut the fables in which the wisdom of the Moderns, and the secrets of\n_their_ sages are lodged, are the fables we are unlocking here. Let us\nlisten to these 'secrets of policy' for ourselves, and not take them\non trust any longer.\n\n  _A room in Coriolanus's house_.\n\n  [_Enter Coriolanus and Patricians_.]\n\n  _Cor_. Let them _pull all about mine ears_, present me\n  _Death on the wheel_, or at wild horses' heels,\n  Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock\n  That the precipitation might down stretch\n  Below the beam of sight, yet will I still\n  _Be thus to them_.\n\n  [Under certain conditions that is heroism, no doubt.]\n\n  _First Patrician.          You do the nobler_.\n\n  [For the question is of NOBILITY.]\n\n  _Cor_.              I muse my mother\n  Does not approve me further.\n  I talk of _you_.  [_To Volumnia_.]\n  Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me\n  _False to my nature_? Rather say _I play\n  The man I am_.\n\n  _Vol_.          O sir, sir, sir,\n  I _would have had you put your power well on\n  Before you had worn it out_.\n                               Lesser had been\n  The thwarting of your dispositions, if\n  You had _not show'd them how you were disposed,\n  Ere they lacked power to cross you_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  [_Enter Menenius and Senators_.]\n\n  _Men_. Come, come, you have been too rough\n  Something too rough;\n  You must return, and mend it.\n\n  _1 Sen_.                      _There's no remedy,\n  Unless_, by _not_ so doing, _our good city\n  Cleave in the midst and perish_.\n\n  _Vol_.                           Pray be counselled:\n  _I_ have a _heart_ as little apt as yours\n  But yet _a brain_ [hear] that leads my use of anger\n  To better _vantage_.\n\n  _Men_.               Well said, _noble_ woman;\n  _Before he should thus stoop to the_ herd, but that\n  The VIOLENT PIT O' THE TIME, _craves it as_ PHYSIC\n  For the WHOLE STATE, _I_ would put _mine_ armour on,\n  Which I can scarcely bear.\n\n  [It is the diseased common-weal whose case this Doctor\n  is undertaking. _That_ is our subject.]\n\n  _Cor_. What must I do?\n\n  _Men_.                   Return to the Tribunes.\n\n  _Cor_. Well,\n  What then? what then?\n\n  _Men_.                Repent what you have spoke.\n\n  _Cor_. For them? I _can not do it to the gods_:\n  Must I then do't to _them_?\n\n  _Vol_.                        You are too _absolute_;\n  _Though_ therein you can never be _too noble\n  But when extremities speak_. I have heard you say,\n  HONOR _and_ POLICY [hear] like unsevered friends\n  _I' the war_ do grow together: _Grant that_, and tell me.\n  In peace, what _each_ of them by the other loses\n  That they combine not there?\n\n  _Cor_. Tush; tush!\n\n  _Men_. _A good demand_.\n\n  _Vol_. If _it be honor_, in your wars, to seem\n  The same you are not, (which FOR YOUR BEST ENDS\n  _You adopt your policy_), how is it _less_, or _worse_\n  That it shall hold companionship in peace\n  With honor, as in war; _since that to both\n  It stands in like request_?\n\n  _Cor_. Why _force you this_? [Truly.]\n\n  _Vol_. _Because_ that _now_, IT LIES ON YOU to speak\n  _To the people, not_ by _your own instruction_,\n  Nor by the _matter which your heart prompts you_ to,\n  But with such words that are but rated _in_\n  _Your tongue_ though but bastards and syllables\n  _Of no_ allowance, to _your bosom's truth_.\n  Now this no more dishonors you at all,\n  Than to take in _a town_ with _gentle words_,\n  Which else would put you to your fortune, and\n  THE HAZARD of MUCH BLOOD.--[Hear.]\n  I would dissemble _with my nature_, where\n  _My fortune and my friends at stake_ required\n  _I should do so in honor_. _I am_ in this;\n  Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,\n  And you will rather show our _general lowts_\n  How you can frown, than spend a _fawn_ upon them.\n  For the _inheritance_ of their loves, and _safe-guard_\n  Of _what that want might ruin_ [hear]\n  NOBLE lady!\n\n  _Come go with us_. Speak fair: you may salve so,\n\n  [It is the diseased common-weal we talk of still.]\n\n  You may salve so,\n\n  Not what is dangerous present, _but_ the _loss_\n  Of what is past.\n\n  [That was this Doctor's method, who was a Doctor of Laws\n  as well as Medicine, and very skilful in medicines 'palliative'\n  as well as 'alterative.']\n\n  _Vol_. I pry'thee now, my son,\n  Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand,\n  And thus far having stretched it (_here_ be with them),\n  Thy _knee bussing the stones_, for in such business\n  _Action_ is eloquence, and the _eyes_ of _the ignorant_\n  More _learned_ than the _ears_--waving thy head,\n  Which often thus, correcting thy stout heart,\n  Now humble as the ripest mulberry\n  That will not hold the handling: or say to them:\n  Thou art _their_ soldier, and _being bred in broils_,\n  Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess\n  _Were fit for thee to use_, as _they to claim_,\n  In asking _their good_ loves; but thou wilt frame\n  Thyself _forsooth hereafter theirs_, so far\n  As thou hast power and person.\n\n  Pry'thee now\n  _Go and be ruled: although I know_ thou hadst rather\n  Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf\n  Than flatter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.\n\n  [_Enter Cominius_.]\n\n  _Com. I have been i' the market-place_, and, sir, _'tis fit_\n  You make STRONG PARTY, _or_ defend yourself\n  By CALMNESS, or by ABSENCE. ALL's in anger.\n\n  _Men. Only fair speech.\n  I think 'twill serve, if he\n  Can thereto frame his spirit_.\n\n  _Vol_. He must, and will.\n  Pry'thee now _say_ you will _and go about it_.\n\n  _Cor_. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce? _Must I_\n  With _my base tongue, give to my noble heart\n  A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do't:\n  Yet were there but this single plot to lose,\n  This mould of Marcius_, they, to dust should grind it,\n  And throw it against the wind;--to the market-place;\n  You have put me now to such a part, which never\n  _I_ shall discharge _to the life_.\n\n  _Com_. Come, come, we'll prompt you.\n\n  _Vol_. I pry'thee now, sweet son, as thou hast said,\n  _My_ praises made thee first a soldier [--_Volumnia_--], so\n  To have my praise for this, _perform a part\n  Than hast not done before_.\n\n  _Cor_. Well, I must do't.\n  _Away my disposition_, and possess me\n  Some harlot's spirit! _My throat_ of _war_ be turned,\n  Which quired with my _drum_ into a pipe!\n  Small as an eunuch's or the virgin voice\n  That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of _knaves_\n  Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up\n  The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue\n  Make _motion through my lips_; and my _arm'd knees\n  Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his_\n  That _hath received an alms_. I will not do't,\n  Lest I _surcease_ to _honor mine own truth_,\n  And _by my body's action teach my mind_\n  A most _inherent baseness_.\n\n  _Vol_. At thy choice, then;\n  To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor\n  Than thou of them. Come _all to ruin_; let\n  _Thy mother_ rather _feel thy pride_, than fear\n  Thy dangerous stoutness, for _I_ mock at death\n  With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list.\n  Thy _valiantness was mine_, thou suck'dst it from me,\n  But _owe thy pride thyself_.\n\n  _Cor_. Pray be content.\n  _Mother_ I _am going to the market place_,\n  Chide me no more. I'll _mountebank their loves_,\n  Cog their hearts from them, _and come back beloved_\n  _Of all the trades in Rome_.--[That he will--] Look I am going.\n  Commend me to my wife. I'll return Consul [--That he will--]\n  Or never trust to what my tongue can do,\n  _I' the way of flattery further_.\n\n  _Vol. Do your will. [Exit_.]\n\n  _Com_. Away, the tribunes do attend you: _arm yourself_\n  To answer _mildly_; for they are prepared\n  With accusations as I hear more strong\n  Than are upon you yet.\n\n  _Cor_. _The word is mildly_: Pray you let us go,\n  Let them accuse me by _invention_, I\n  Will answer in mine honor.\n\n  _Men_. _Ay, but mildly_.\n\n  _Cor_. Well, mildly be it then, mildly.\n\n  [_The Forum. Enter Coriolanus and his party_.]\n\n  _Tribune_. Well, here he comes.\n\n  _Men_. _Calmly_, I do beseech you.\n\n  _Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece\n  Will bear the knave by the volume_.\n  The honoured gods\n  Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of _justice_\n  Supplied with WORTHY MEN; _plant_ LOVE among us.\n  _Throng_ OUR LARGE TEMPLES _with the shows_ of PEACE,\n  _And_ NOT _our_ STREETS _with_ WAR.\n\n  _Sen_. AMEN! AMEN!\n\n  _Men_. A NOBLE wish.\n\nThus far the Poet: but the mask through which he speaks is wanted for\nother purposes, for these occasional auto-biographical glimpses are\nbut the side play of the great historical exhibition which is in\nprogress here, and are introduced in entire subordination to its\nrequisitions.\n\nIt is, indeed, an old story into which all this Elizabethan history is\ncrowded. That mimic scene in which the great historic instances in the\nscience of human nature and human life were brought out with such\nscientific accuracy, and with such matchless artistic power and\nsplendour, was, in fact, what the Poet himself, who ought to know,\ntells us it is; with so much emphasis,--not merely the mirror of\nnature in general, but the daguerreotype of the then yet living age,\nthe plate which was able to give to the very _body_ of it, its _form\nand pressure_. That is what it was. And what is more, it was the only\nMirror, the only Spectator, the only Times, in which the times could\nget reflected and deliberated on then, with any degree of freedom and\nvivacity. And yet there were minds here in England then, as acute, as\nreflective, as able to lead the popular mind as those that compose our\nleaders and reviews today. There was a mind here then, reflecting not\n'ages past' only, but one that had taken its knowledge of the past\nfrom the present, that found 'in all men's lives,' a history figuring\nthe nature of the times deceased; prophetic also: and this was the\nmind of the one who writes 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine\nissues.'\n\nThey had to take old stories,--these sly, ambitious aspirants to\npower, who were not disposed to give up their natural right to\ndictate, for the lack of an organ, or because they found the proper\ninsignia of their office usurped: it was necessary that they should\ntake old stories, or invent new ones, 'to make those slights upon the\nbanks of Thames, that so did take' not 'Eliza and our James' only, but\nthat people of whom 'Eliza and our James' were only 'the outstretched\nshadows,' 'the monster,' of whose 'noise' these sovereigns, as the\nauthor of this play took it, were 'but the horn.'\n\nThey had to take old stories of one kind and another, as they happened\nto find them, and vamp them up to suit their purposes; stories, old or\nnew, they did not much care which.\n\nOld and memorable ones, so memorable that the world herself with her\ngreat faculty of oblivion, could not forget them, but carried them in\nher mind from age to age,--stories so memorable that all men knew them\nby heart,--so the author could find one to his purpose,--were best for\nsome things,--for many things; but for others new ones must be\ninvented; and certainly there would be no difficulty as to that, for\nlack of gifts at least, in the mind whence these old ones were coming\nout so freshly, in the gloss of their new-coined immortality.\n\nIt is, indeed, an old story that we have here, a story of that ancient\nRome, whose 'just, free and flourishing state,' the author of this new\nscience of policy confesses himself,--under his _universal_ name,--so\nchildishly enamoured of, that he interests himself in it to a degree\nof passion, though he 'neither loves it in its _birth_ or its\n_decline_,'--[under its kings or its emperors.]--It is a story of\n_Republican_ Rome, and the difference, the radical difference, between\nthe civil magistracy which represented the Roman people, and that\nunconstitutional popular power which the popular tyranny creates, is\nby no means omitted in the exposition. That difference, indeed, is\nthat which makes the representation possible; it is brought out and\ninsisted on, '_they_ choose their officers;' it is a difference which\nis made much of, for it contains one of the radical points in the\npoetic intention.\n\nBut without going into the argument, the large and comprehensive\nargument, of this most rich and grave and splendid composition,\ncrowded from the first line of it to the last, with the results of a\npolitical learning which has no match in letters, which had none then,\nwhich has none now; no, or the world would be in another case than it\nis, for it is a political learning which has its roots in the new\nphilosophy, it is grounded in the philosophy of the nature of things,\nit is radical as the _Prima Philosophia_,--without attempting to\nexhaust the meaning of a work embodying through all its unsurpassed\nvigor and vivacity of poetic representation, the new philosophic\nstatesman's ripest lore, the patient fruits of 'observation\nstrange,'--without going into his argument of the whole, the reader\nwho merely wishes to see for himself, at a glance, in a word, as a\nmatter of curiosity merely; whether the view here given of the\npolitical sagacity and prescience of the Elizabethan Man of Letters,\nis in the least chargeable with exaggeration, has only to look at the\ncontext of that revolutionary speech and proposal, that revolutionary\nburst of eloquence which has been here claimed as a proper historical\nissue of the age of Elizabeth. He will not have to read very far to\nsatisfy himself as to that. It will be necessary, indeed, for that\npurpose, that he should have eyes in his head, eyes not purely\nidiotic, but with the ordinary amount of human speculation in them,\nand, moreover, it will be necessary that he should use them,--as eyes\nare ordinarily used in such cases,--nothing more. But unfortunately\nthis is just the kind of scrutiny which nobody has been able to bestow\non this work hitherto, on account of those historical obstructions\nwith which, at the time it was written, it was found necessary to\nguard such discussions, discussions running into such delicate\nquestions in a manner so essentially incomparably free.\n\nFor, in fact, there is no plainer piece of English extant, when one\ncomes to look at it. All that has been claimed in the Historical part\nof this work, [not published in this volume] may be found here without\nany research, on the mere surface of the dialogue. Looking at it never\nso obliquely, with never so small a fraction of an eye, one cannot\nhelp seeing it.\n\nThe reader who would possess himself of the utmost meaning of these\npassages, one who would comprehend their farthest reaches, must indeed\nbe content to wait until he can carry with him into all the parts that\nknowledge of the authors general intention in this work, which only a\nmost thorough and careful study of it will yield.\n\nIt is, indeed, a work in which the whole question of government is\nseized at its source--one in which the whole difficulty of it is\ngrappled with unflinching courage and veracity. It is a work in which\nthat question of classes in the state, which lies on the surface of\nit, is treated in a general, and not exclusive manner; or, where the\ntreatment is narrowed and pointed, as it is throughout in the running\ncommentary, it is narrowed and pointed to the question of the then yet\nliving age, and to those momentous developments of it which, 'in their\nweak beginnings,' the philosophic eye had detected, and not to a state\nof things which had to cease before the first Punic war could be\nbegun.\n\nThe question of _classes_, and their respective claims in governments,\nis indeed incidentally treated here, but in this author's own\ndistinctive manner, which is one that is sure to take out,\nalways--even in his lightest, most sportive handling--the heart of his\nsubject, so as to leave little else but gleanings to the author who\nfollows in that track hereafter.\n\nFor this is one of those unsurpassably daring productions of the\nElizabethan Muse, which, after long experiment, encouraged by that\nprotracted immunity from suspicion, and stimulated by the hurrying on\nof the great crisis, it threw out at last in the face and eyes of\ntyranny, Things which are but intimated in the earlier plays--\npolitical allusions, which are brought out there amid crackling\nvolleys of conceits, under cover of a battery of quips and jests--\npolitical doctrines, which lie there wrapped in thickest involutions\nof philosophic subtleties, are all unlocked and open here on the\nsurface: he that runs may take them if he will.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nCRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT.\n\n\n  'Would you proceed _especially_ against _Caius_ MARCIUS?'\n  'Against him FIRST: He's a _very dog_ to THE COMMONALTY.'\n\nIn this exhibition of the social orders to which human society\ninstinctively tends, and that so-called _state_ into which human\ncombinations in barbaric ages rudely settles, the _principle_ of the\ncombination--the principle of gradation, and subjection, and\npermanence--is called in question, and exposed as a purely instinctive\nprinciple, as, in fact, only a principle of revolution disguised; and\na higher one, the distinctively human element, the principle of KIND,\nis now, for the first time, demanded on scientific grounds, as the\nessential principle of any permanent human combination--as the natural\nprinciple, the only one which the science of nature can recognise as a\nprinciple of STATE.\n\nIt is the PEACE principle which this great scientific war-hater and\ncaptain of the ages of peace is in search of, with his new _organum_;\nthough he is philosopher enough to know that, in diseased states, wars\nare nature's own rude remedies, her barbarous surgery, for evils yet\nmore unendurable. He has found himself chosen a justice of the\npeace--the world's peace; and it is the principle of permanence, of\nlaw and subjection--in a word, it is the principle of _state_, as\nopposed to revolution and dissolution--which he is judging of in\nbehalf of his kind. And he makes a business of it. He goes about in\nhis own fashion. He gets up this great war-piece on purpose to find\nit.\n\nHe has got a state on his stage, which is ceasing to be a _state_ at\nthe moment in which he shows it to us; a state which has the war\nprinciple--the principle of conquest within no longer working in it\ninsidiously as government, but developed as war; for it has just\noverstepped the endurable point in its mastery. It is a revolution\nthat is coming off when the curtain rises. For the government has been\ngnawing the Roman common-weal at home, with those same teeth it\nravened the Volscians with abroad, till it has reached the vitals at\nlast, and the common-weal has betaken itself to the Volscian's\nweapons:--the people have risen. They are all out when the play begins\non an armed hunt for their rat-like, gnawing, corn-consuming rulers.\nThey are determined to 'kill them,' and have 'corn at their own\nprice.' 'If the _wars_ eat us not, _they_ will,' is the word; 'and\nthere's all THE LOVE _they_ bear us.' '_Rome_ and _her rats_ are at\nthe point of battle,' cries the Poet. The _one_ side _shall have\nbale_, is his prophecy. 'Without _good nature_,' he says elsewhere,\nusing the term _good_ in its scientific sense, '_men_ are only a\nNOBLER kind of VERMIN'; and he makes a most unsparing application of\nthis principle in his criticisms. Many a splendid historical figure is\nmade to show its teeth, and rat-like mien and propensities, through\nall the splendour of its disguises, merely by the application of his\nsimple philosophical tests. For the question, as he puts it, is the\nquestion between animal instinct, between mere appetite, and reason;\nand the question incidentally arises in the course of the exhibition,\nwhether the common-weal, when it comes to anything like common-sense,\nis going to stand being gnawed in this way, for the benefit of any\nindividual, or clique, or party.\n\nFor the ground on which the classes or estates, and their respective\nclaims to the government, are tried here, is the ground of the\n_common_-weal; and the question as to the fitness of any existing\nclass in the state for an exclusive, unlimited control of the welfare\nof the whole, is more than suggested. That which stops short of the\nweal of the whole for its end, is that which is under criticism here;\nand whether it exist in 'the one,' or 'the few,' or 'the many,'--and\nthese are the terms that are employed here,--whether it exist in the\ncivil magistracy, sustained by a popular submission, or in the power\nof the victorious military chief, at the head of his still extant and\nresistless armament, it is necessarily rejected as a principle of\nsovereignty and permanence, in this purely scientific view of the\nhuman conditions of it. It is a question which this author handles\nwith a thorough impartiality, in all his political treatises, let them\ncome in what name and form they will, with more or less clearness,\nindeed, as the circumstances seem to dictate.\n\nBut _nowhere_ is the whole history of the military government,\ncollected from the obscurity of the past, and brought out with such\ninflexible design--with such vividness and strength of historic\nexhibition, as it is _here_. It is traced to its beginnings in the\ndistinctions which nature herself creates,--those physical, and moral,\nand intellectual distinctions, with which she crowns, in her happier\nmoods, the large resplendent brows of her born kings and masters. It\nis traced from its origin in the crowning of the victorious chief on\nthe field of battle, to the moment in which the sword of military\nconquest is turned back on the conquerors by the chief into whose\nhands they gave it; and the sword of conquest abroad becomes, at home,\nthe sword of state.\n\nNay, this Play goes farther, and embraces the contingency of a foreign\nrule--one, too, in which the _conqueror_ takes his surname from the\n_conquest_; it brings home 'the enemy of the whole state,' as a king,\nin triumph to the capital, whose streets he has filled with mourning;\nand though the author does not tell us in this case, at he does in\nanother, that the nation was awed 'with an offertory of standards' in\nthe temple, and that 'orisons and Te Deums were again sung,'--the\nvictor 'not meaning that the people _should forget_ too soon _that he\ncame in by battle_'--points, not much short of that, in the way of\nspeciality, are not wanting. More than one conqueror, indeed, looks\nout from this old chieftain's Roman casque. 'There is a little touch\nof _Harry_ in the scene'; and though the author goes out of his way to\ntell us that 'he must by no means say his hero is _covetous_,' it will\nnot be the Elizabethan Philosopher's fault, if we do not know _which_\nHarry it is that says--\n\n  _If you have writ your annals true_,'tis there,\n  That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I\n  Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli:\n  _Alone_, I did it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  _Auf_.              Read it, noble lords;\n  But tell _the traitor_, in the _highest degree_\n  He hath abused your powers.\n\n  _Cor_. Traitor!--How now?\n\n  _Auf_.                   Ay, _traitor_, Marcius.\n\n  _Cor_.                                         _Marcius_!\n\n  _Auf_. AY, _Marcius, Caius_ Marcius; Dost thou think\n  I'll grace thee with THAT ROBBERY, _thy_ STOLEN NAME\n  CORIOLANUS in CORIOLI?'--[_the conqueror in the conquest_.]\n\nNever, indeed, was 'the garland of war,' whether glistening freshly on\nthe hero's brow on the fresh battle-field, or whether glittering,\ntransmuted into civic gold and gems, on the brow of his hereditary\nsuccessor, subjected to such a searching process before, as that with\nwhich the Poet, under cover of an _aristocrat's_ pretensions, and\nespecially under cover of his pretensions to an elective magistracy,\ncan venture to test it.\n\nThis _hero_, who 'speaks of the people as if he were a _god_ to\npunish, and not a man of their infirmity,' is on trial for that\npretension from the first scene of this Play to the last. The author\nhas, indeed, his own views of the fickle, ignorant, foolish\nmultitude,--such views as any one, who had occasion to experiment on\nit personally, in the age of Elizabeth, would not lack the means of\nacquiring; and amidst those ebullitions of wrath, which he pours from\nhis haughty hero's lips, one hears at times a tone that sounds a\nlittle like some other things from the same source, as if the author\nhad himself, in some way, been brought to look at the subject from a\npoint of observation, not altogether unlike that from which his hero\nspeaks; or as if he might, at least, have known how to sympathise with\nthe haughty and unbending nature, that had been brought into such\ndeadly collision with it. But in the dramatic representation, though\nit is far from being a flattering one, we listen in vain for any echo\nof this sentiment. In its rich and kindly humour there is no sneer, no\nsatire. It is the loving eye of nature's own great pupil--it is the\nkindly human eye, that comes near enough to point those jests, and\npaint so truly; there is a great human heart here in the scene\nembracing the lowly. It was the heart that was putting forth then its\nsilent but resistless energies into the ages of the human advancement,\nto take up the despised and rejected masses of men from their misery,\nand make of them truly one _kind_ and kindred.\n\nAnd though he has had, indeed, his own private experiences with the\nmultitude, and the passions are, as he intimates--at least as strong\nin him as in another, he has his own view, also, of the common\npitifulness and weakness of the human conditions; and he has a view\nwhich is, in his time, all his own, of the instrumentalities that are\nneeded to reach that level of human nature, and to lift men up from\nthe mire of these conditions, from the wrong and wretchedness into\nwhich, in their unaided, unartistic, unlearned struggle with\nnature,--within and without,--_the kind_ are fallen. And so strong in\nhim is the sense of this pitifulness, that it predominates over the\nsharpness of his genius, and throws the divinest mists and veils of\ncompassion over the harsh, scientific realities he is constrained to\nlay bare.\n\nAnd, in fact, it takes this monstrous pretence, and claim to _human\nleadership_, which he finds passing unquestioned in his time, to bring\nhim out on this point fairly. The statesmanship of the man who\nundertakes to make his own petty personality the measure of a _world_,\nwho would make, not that reason which is in us _all_, and embraces the\n_world_, and which is _not_ personal,--not that conscience which is\nthe sensibility to reason, and is as broad and impartial as\nthat--which goes with the reason, and embraces, like that, without\nbias, the common weal,--but that which is particular, and private, and\nlimited to the individual,--his senses,--his passions, his private\naffections,--his mere caprice,--his mere will; the motive of the\npublic action;--the statesmanship of the man who dares to offer these\nto an insulted world, as reasons of state; who claims a divine\nprerogative to make his single will good against reason; who claims a\ndivine right to make his private interest outweigh the weal of the\nwhole; who asks men to obliterate, in their judgment, its essential\nprinciple, that which makes them men, the eternal principle of the\nwhole;--this is the phenomenon which provokes at last, in this author,\nthe philosophic ire. The moment this thing shows itself on his stage,\nhe puts his pity to sleep. He will show up, at last, without any\nmercy, in a purely scientific manner, as we see more clearly\nelsewhere, the common pitifulness of the human conditions, in the\nperson of him who claims exemption from them,--who speaks of the\npeople as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of their\ninfirmity.\n\n'There is formed in every thing a _double nature_';--this author, who\nis the philosopher of _nature_, tells us on another page,--'there is\nformed in _every thing_ a double nature OF GOOD, the one as everything\nis a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a _part_ or\n_member_ of a greater body; whereof the _latter_ is in degree the\ngreater and the worthier, because it _tends to the conservation of a\nmore general form_. Therefore we see the iron in _particular sympathy_\nmoving to the loadstone; but yet, if _it exceed a certain quantity_,\nit forsakes the affection to the loadstone, and, like a good patriot,\nmoves to the earth. This double nature of good is MUCH MORE\n(hear)--much _more_ ENGRAVEN on MAN, if he _de_GENERATE not--(decline\nnot from the law of his _kind_--for that _more_ is SPECIAL) unto whom\nthe conservation of DUTY to the PUBLIC ought to be much more\n_precious_ than the conservation of life and being, according to that\nmemorable speech of Pompey THE GREAT, [the truly great, for this is\nthe question of greatness,] when BEING IN COMMISSION OF PURVEYANCE FOR\nA FAMINE AT ROME, and being dissuaded, with great vehemency and\ninstance, by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself\nto sea in an extremity of weather, answered, 'Necesse est ut eam, non\nut vivam.'\n\nBut we happen to have set out here, in our play, at the very beginning\nof it, the specific case alluded to, in this general exhibition of the\nradical human law, viz., the case of a famine in Rome, which we shall\nfind differently treated, in this instance, by the person who aspires\nto 'the helm o' the state.'\n\nWhen the question is of the true nobility and greatness, of the true\nstatesmanship, of the personal fitness of an individual to assume the\ncare of the public welfare, the question, of course, as to this double\nnature, comes in. We wish to know--if any thing is going to depend\nupon his single _will_ in the matter, we must know, which of these two\nnatures is SOVEREIGN in himself,--which good he supremely\naffects,--that of his senses, passions, and private affections, that\ngood which ends in his private and particular nature,--a good which\nhas its _due_ place in this system, and is not unnaturally mortified\nand depressed, as it is in less scientific ones,--or that good of the\n_whole_, which is each man's highest good;--whether he is, in fact, a\n_man_, or whether, in the absence of that perfection of the human\nform, which should be the end of science and government, he\napproximates at all,--or undertakes to approximate at all, to the true\nhuman type;--whether he be, indeed, a man, in the higher sense of that\nword, or whether he ranks in the scale of nature, as 'only a _nobler_\nkind of vermin,' a _man_, a _noble man_, a man with a divine ideal and\nambition, _degenerate_ into that.\n\nWhen it is a candidate for the chief magistracy, a candidate for the\nsupreme power in the state, who is on his trial, of course that\nquestion as to the balance between the public and private affections,\nwhich, those who know how to trace this author's hand, know he is so\nfond of trying elsewhere, is sure to come up. The question is, as to\nwhether there is any affection in this claimant for power, so large\nand so noble, that it can embrace heartily the common weal, and take\n_that_ to be _its_ good. The trial will be a sharp one. The trial of\nhuman greatness which is magnanimity, must needs be. The question is,\nas to whether this is a nature capable of pursuing that end for its\nown sake, without respect to its pivate and merely selfish recompence;\nwhether it is one which has any such means of egress from its\nparticular self, any such means of coming out of its private and\nexclusive motivity, that it can persevere in its care of the Common\nWeal, through good and through ill report, through personal wrong and\ningratitude,--abandoning its private claim, and ascending by that\nconquest to the divineness.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nINSURRECTION'S ARGUING.\n\n\n                      'What is granted them?'\n  'Five Tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms.'\n\n  'The rabble should have first unroofed the city,\n   Ere so prevailed with me.'\n\nThe common people themselves have some inkling of this. This Roman who\nhas established his claim to rule Romans at home, by killing Volscians\nabroad, appears to their simple apprehension, at the moment, at least,\nwhen they find themselves suffering the gnawings of hunger through his\nlegislation, to have established but a questionable claim to their\nsubmission.\n\nAnd before ever he shows his head on the stage, this question, which\nis the question of the play, is already started. For it is the people\nwho are permitted to come on first of all and explain their wants, and\ndiscuss the military hero's qualifications for rule in that relation,\nand that, too, in a not altogether foolish manner. For though the\nauthor knows how to do justice to the simplicity of their politics, he\nknows how to do justice also to that practical determination and\nstraightforwardness and largeness of sense, which even in the common\nsense of uneducated masses, is already struggling a little to declare\nitself.\n\nThey have one great piece of political learning which their lordly\nlegislators lack, and for lack of sense and comprehension cannot have.\nThey are learned in the doctrine of their own political and social\nwant; they are full of the most accurate and vivid impressions on that\nsubject. Their notions of it are altogether different from those vague\ngeneral abstract conceptions of it, which the brains of their refined\nlordly rulers stoop to admit. The terms which that legislation deals\nwith, are one thing in the patrician's vocabulary, and another and\nquite different thing in the plebeian's; hunger means one thing in the\n'patrician's vocabulary,' and another and very different thing in the\nplebeian's. They know, too, 'that meat was made for mouths,' and 'that\nthe gods sent not corn for the rich men only.' They are under the\nimpression that there ought to be bread for them by some means or\nother, when the storehouses that their toil has filled are\noverflowing, and though they are not clear as to the process which\nshould accomplish this result, they have come to the conclusion that\nthere must be some error somewhere in the legislation of those learned\n_few_, to whom they have resigned the task of governing them. They are\nstrongly of opinion that there must be some mistake in the\ncalculations by which those venerable wise men and _fathers_, do so\ninfallibly contrive to sweep the results of the poor man's toil and\nprivation into their own garners,--calculations which enable the\nlegislator to enjoy in lordly ease and splendour, the sight of the\nplebeian's misery, which enable him to lavish on his idlest whims, to\ngive to his dogs that which would save lifetimes of unreckoned human\nmisery. These are their views, and when the play begins, they have\nresolved themselves into a committee of the whole, and are out on a\ncommission of inquiry and administrative reform, armed with bats and\nclubs and other weapons,--such as came first to hand, intending to\nmake short work of it. This is their peace budget, and as to war, they\nhave some rude notions on that subject, too;--some dim impression that\nnature intended them for some other ends than to be sold in the\nshambles, as the purchase of some lordly chieftain's title. There's an\nincipient statesmanship struggling there in that rude mass, though it\ndoes not as yet get fairly expressed. It will take the tribuneship and\nthe refinements of the aristocratic leisure, to make the rude wisdom\nof want and toil eloquent. But it has found a tribune at last, who\nwill be able to speak for it, through one mouth or another,\nscientifically and to the purpose too, ere all is done.\n\n'Before we proceed any further, _hear me speak_,' he cries, through\nthe Roman leader's lips; for his Rome, too, if it be not yet 'at the\npoint of battle,' is drifting towards it rapidly, as he sees well\nenough when this speech begins.\n\nBut let us take the Play as we find it. Take the first scene of it.\nThe stage is filled with the people,--not with their representatives,\n--but with the people themselves, in their own persons, in the act of\ntaking the government into their own hands. They are hurrying sternly\nand silently through the city streets. There has been no practising of\n'goose step,' to teach them that movement. They are armed with clubs,\nstaves and other weapons, peace weapons, but there is an edge in them\nnow, fine enough for their purpose. The word of the play is the word\nthat arrests that movement. The voice of the leader rings out,--it is\na HALT that is ordered.\n\n'BEFORE WE PROCEED ANY FURTHER, HEAR ME SPEAK,' cries one from the\nmass.\n\n'Speak! speak!' is the reply. They are ready to hear reason. They want\na speaker. They want a voice, though never so rude, to put their stern\ninarticulate purpose 'into some frame.'\n\n'You are all resolved rather TO DIE than TO FAMISH,' continues the\nfirst speaker. Yes, that is it precisely; he has spoken the word.\n\n'RESOLVED! RESOLVED!' is the common response; for the revolutionary\npoint is touched here.\n\n'FIRST, _you know_, Caius Marcius is CHIEF ENEMY to the people'--a\nrude grasp at causes. This captain will establish a common\n_intelligence_ in his company _before they proceed any further_; that\ntheir acting may be one, and to purpose. For there is no command but\nthat here.\n\n_Cit._ We know't, we know't.\n\n_First Cit._ Let us _kill him_, and we'll have corn at our own price.\nIs't a verdict?\n\n_Cit. No _more talking on't_.  Let it bone done: away, away.\n\n'_One word_, good citizens,' cries another, 'who thinks that the thing\nwill bear, perhaps, a little further discussion. And this is the hint\nfor the first speaker to produce his cause more fully. 'GOOD\nCITIZENS,' is the word he takes up. \"_We_ are _accounted_ POOR\nCITIZENS; the patricians GOOD.' [That is the way the account stands,\nthen.] 'What AUTHORITY _surfeits_ on would relieve us. If they would\nyield us _but the superfluity_ while it were _wholesome_, we might\nguess they relieved us _humanely_; but they think we are _too dear_.'\n[They love us as we are too well. They want poor people to reflect\ntheir riches. It takes plebeians to make patricians; it takes our\nvalleys to make their heights.]\n\n'The leanness that _afflicts us_, the object of _our_ misery, is as an\n_inventory_ to particularize _their abundance_. _Our_ sufferance is a\ngain to _them_.--Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become\nrakes: for the gods know, I speak this in _hunger_ for bread, and not\nin _thirst_ for _revenge_.\n\n_Second Cit_. Would you proceed _especially_ against Caius Marcius?\n\n_First Cit_. Against him _first_;--he's a _very dog_ to the\ncommonalty.\n\n_Second Cit_. Consider you what _services_ he has done for _his\ncountry_?\n\n[That is one of the things which are about to be 'considered.']\n\n_First Cit. Very well_, and could be content to give him good report\nfor'it, but that he _pays himself_ with _being proud_.\n\n_Second Cit_. Nay, but speak not maliciously.\n\n_First Cit_. I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he _did it to\nthat end_: though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was\nfor HIS COUNTRY, he did it to _please his mother_, and to be _partly_\nproud; which he is, even to the _altitude of his virtue_.\n\n_Second Cit_. What he _cannot help_ IN HIS NATURE, you account a\n_vice_ in him. You _must in no way_ say he is covetous.\n\n_First Cit. If I must not_, I need not be barren of accusations; he\nhath faults with surplus to tire _in repetition_. [_Shouts within_.]\nWhat shouts are these? The other side o' the city is risen. Why stay\nwe prating here? _To the Capitol_!\n\n_Cit_. Come, come.\n\n_First Cit_. Soft; who comes here?\n\n[_Enter Menenius Agrippa_.]\n\n_Second Cit_. Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always _loved the\npeople_.\n\n_First Cit_. He's one _honest_ enough [--_honest_--a great word in the\nShakspere philosophy]; would _all the rest_ were so.\n\n[That is a good prayer when it comes to be understood.]\n\n_Men_. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you, With bats\nand clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.\n\n_First Cit. Our business is not unknown to_ THE SENATE [Hear]; they\nhave had _inkling_ this fortnight what we intend to do, which now\nwe'll show 'em in deeds. They say, poor suitors have strong breaths;\nthey shall know we have _strong arms, too_.\n\n_Men_. Why, _masters_, my good friends, mine honest neighbours, Will\nyou undo yourselves_?\n\n_First Cit. We cannot, sir; we are undone already_. [Revolution.]\n\n  _Men_. I tell you, friends, _most charitable care_\n  Have the _patricians_ of you. For your WANTS,--Your\n  suffering in this dearth, you may as well\n  _Strike at the heavens_ with your staves, as lift them\n  Against the Roman State, whose course _will on\n  The way it takes_, cracking ten thousand curbs\n  Of more strong link asunder, than can ever\n  Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,\n  The _gods, not_ the _patricians_, make it; and\n  _Your knees_ to them, _not arms, must_ help.\n\n[This sounds very pious, but it is not the piety of the new school.\nThe doctrine of submission and suffering is indeed taught in it, and\nscientifically reinforced; but then it is the patient suffering of the\nharm 'which is not within our power' which is commendable, according\nto its tenets, and 'a wise and industrious suffering' of it, too. It\nis a wise 'accommodating of the nature of man to those points of\nnature and fortune which we cannot control,' that is pleasing to God,\naccording to this creed.]\n\n  Alack!\n  You are transported by calamity,\n  Thither where more attends you; and you slander\n  The helms o' the state, who care for you like _fathers_,\n  When you curse them as enemies.\n\n_First Cit_. CARE FOR us! _True_, INDEED! They ne'er cared for us yet.\nSUFFER us TO FAMISH, and _their_ store-houses CRAMMED WITH GRAIN!\n_Make edicts for usury, to support usurers_! Repeal daily any\nWHOLESOME ACT _established against the rich_, and provide more\npiercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor! If the WARS\neat us not up, THEY WILL; and there's _all the love_ they bear us.\n\nMenenius attempts to counteract these impressions; but his story and\nhis arguments appear to have some applications which he is not aware\nof, and are much more to the purpose of the party in arms than they\nare to his own. For it is a story in which the natural subordination\nof the parts to the whole in the fabric of human society is\nillustrated by that natural instance and symbol of unity and\norganization which the single human form itself present; and that\ncondition of the state which has just been exhibited--one in which the\nbody at large is dying of inanition that a part of it may\n_surfeit_--is a condition which, in the light of this story, appears\nto need help of some kind, certainly.\n\nBut the platform is now ready. It is the hero's entrance for which we\nare preparing. It is on the ground of this sullen want that the author\nwill exhibit him and his dazzling military virtues. It is as the\ndoctor of this _diseased common-weal_ that he brings him in with his\nsword;\n\n'_Enter_ CAIUS MARCIUS.'\n\nand that idea--the idea of the diseased commonwealth, which Menenius\nhas already set forth--that notion of _parts_ and _partiality_, and\ndissonance and dissolution, which is a radical idea in the play, and\nruns into its minutest points of phraseology, breaks out at once in\nhis rough speech.\n\n  _Men_. Hail, noble Marcius!\n\n  _Mar_. Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,\n  That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,\n  Make _yourselves_ scabs.\n\n[It is the _common-weal_ that must be made _whole_ and comely.\nOPINION! your opinion.]\n\n  _First Cit_. We have ever your good word.\n\n  _Mar_. In that will give good words to _thee_, will flatter\n  Beneath abhorring.--What would you have, you _curs_,\n  That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you,\n  The other makes you proud. _He_ that trusts you,\n  _Where he should find you lions, finds you hares_.\n  _Where foxes, geese_! You are no surer, no\n  Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,\n  Or hail-stone in the sun. Your _virtue_ is,\n  To make _him worthy_ whose _offence subdues him_,\n  And curse that _justice_ did it. Who deserves greatness\n  Deserves your hate: and your affections are\n  A sick man's appetite, who desires most that\n  Which would increase his evil. _He_ that _depends_\n  Upon your favours, _swims with_ fins of lead,\n  And hews down _oaks_ with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?\n  With every minute you do change a mind;\n\n[This is not the principle of _state_, whether in the many or the\none].\n\n  And call _him_ noble, that was now your hate,\n  _Him_ vile, that was your garland. _What's the matter_,\n  That in these several places of the city\n  You cry against the noble senate, who,\n  Under the gods, keep you in awe, _which else\n  Would feed on one another_?--What's their seeking?\n\n  _Men_. For corn at their own rates; _whereof, they say,\n  The city is well stor'd_.\n\n  _Mar_. HANG 'EM! THEY SAY?\n  THEY'LL SIT BY THE FIRE, and PRESUME to KNOW\n  WHAT'S DONE I' THE CAPITOL: who's like to rise,\n  Who thrives, and who declines: side factions, and give out\n  _Conjectural marriages; making parties strong_,\n  And _feebling_ such _as stand not in their liking_,\n  Below their cobbled shoes. _They say, there's grain enough_?\n  Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,\n  And let me use my sword, _I'd make a quarry\n  With thousands of these quartered slaves_, AS HIGH\n  As I could _prick my lance_.\n\n[The _altitude_ of his virtue;--the _measure_ of his greatness. That\nis the tableau of the first scene, in the first act of the play of the\ncure of the Common-weal and the Consulship.]\n\n  _Men_. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;\n  For though abundantly they lack discretion,\n  Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you,\n  What says the other troop?\n\n  _Mar_. They are _dissolved_: Hang 'em! [Footnote]\n  _They said, they were an hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs_;--\n  That _hunger broke stone walls_; that, _dogs_ must eat;\n  That _meat was made for mouths_; THAT THE GODS SENT NOT\n  CORN FOR THE RICH MEN ONLY:--With these shreds\n  They vented their complainings; which being answer'd,\n  And a petition granted them, _a strange one_,\n  (To break the _heart of generosity_,\n  _And make bold power look pale_,) they threw their caps\n  As they would hang them on the horns o'the moon,\n  _Shouting their emulation_.\n\n[Footnote: 'The History of Henry VII.,' produced in the Historical\nPart of this work, but omitted here, contains the key to these\nreadings.]\n\n  _Men_. What is granted them.\n\n  _Mar_. Five tribunes _to defend their vulgar wisdoms_,\n  Of their own choice: One's Junius Brutus,\n  Sicinius Velutus, and I know not--'Sdeath!\n  The rabble should have first unroof'd the city;\n  Ere so prevail'd with me; _it will in time\n  Win upon POWER, and throw forth greater themes_\n  For INSURRECTION'S arguing.\n\n  [Yes, surely it will. It cannot fail of it.]\n\n  _Men_. This is strange.\n  _Mar_. Go, get you _home_, you _fragments_!     [_fragments_.]\n\n  [_Enter a Messenger_.]\n\n  _Mes_. Where's Caius Marcius?\n  _Mar_. Here; What's the matter?\n  _Mes_. The news is, Sir, the Volces are in arms.\n  _Mar_. I am glad on't; then we shall have means _to vent\n  Our musty superfluity:_--See, our best elders.\n\n  [The procession from the Capitol is entering with two of the\n  new officers of the commonwealth, and the two chief men of\n  the army, with other senators.]\n\n  _First Sen_. Marcius, 'tis true, that you have lately told us;\n  The Volsces are in arms.\n\n  _Mar_. They have a leader,\n  Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to't.\n  I sin in envying _his nobility_:\n  And were I anything but what I am,\n  I would wish me only he.\n\n  _Com_. You have fought together.\n\n  _Mar_. Were half to half the world by the ears, and _he\n  Upon my party, I'd revolt, to make\n  Only my wars with him_ [Hear, hear].\n  He is a lion.\n  That I am proud to _hunt_.\n\n  _First Sen_. _Then_, WORTHY _Marcius_,\n  Attend upon Cominius to these wars.\n\nIt is the relation of the spirit of military conquest, the relation of\nthe military hero, and his government, to the true human need, which\nis subjected to criticism here; a criticism which is necessarily an\nafter-thought in the natural order of the human development.\n\nThe transition 'from the casque to the cushion,' that so easy step in\nthe heroic ages, whether it be 'an entrance by conquest,' foreign or\notherwise, or whether the chieftain's own followers bring him home in\ntriumph, and the people, whose battle he has won, conduct him to their\nchair of state, in either case, that transition appears, to this\nauthor's eye, worth going back, and looking into a little, in an age\nso advanced in civilization, as the one in which he finds himself.\n\nFor though he is, as any one who will take any pains to inquire, may\neasily satisfy himself,--the master in chief of the new science of\nnature,--and the deepest in its secrets of any, his views on that\nsubject appear to be somewhat broader, his aspirations altogether of\nanother kind, from those, to which his school have since limited\nthemselves. He does not content himself with pinning butterflies and\nhunting down beetles; his scientific curiosity is not satisfied with\nclassifying ferns and lichens, and ascertaining the proper historical\nposition of pudding-stone and sand-stone, and in settling the\ndifference between them and their neighbours. Nature is always, in all\nher varieties wonderful, and all 'her infinite book of secrecy,' that\nbook which all the world had overlooked till he came, was to his eye,\nfrom the first, a book of spells, of magic lore, a Prospero book of\nenchantments. He would get the key to her cipher, he would find the\nlost alphabet of her unknown tongue; there is no page of her composing\nin which he would scorn to seek it--none which he would scorn to read\nwith it: but then he has, notwithstanding, some _choice_ in his\nstudies. He is of the opinion that some subjects are nobler than\nothers, and that those which concern specially the human kind, have a\nspecial claim to their regard, and the secret of those combinations\nwhich result in the varieties of shell-fish, and other similar orders\nof being, do _not_ exclusively, or chiefly, engage his attention.\n\nThere is another natural curiosity, which strikes the eye of the\nfounder of the Science of Nature, as quite the most curious and\nwonderful thing going, so far, at least, as his observation has\nextended, though he is willing to make, as he takes pains to state,\nphilosophical allowance for the partiality of species in determining\nthis judgment, and is perfectly willing to concede, that if any\nparticular species of shell-fish, for instance, were to undertake a\nscience of things in general, that particular species would, no doubt,\noccupy the principal place in that system; especially if arts, tending\nto the improvement and elevation of it, were necessarily based on this\nlarger specific knowledge.\n\nMen, and their proceedings and organisms, men, and their habits and\nmodes of combining, did appear to the eye of this scientific observer\nquite as well worth observing and noting, also, as bees and beavers,\nfor instance, and their societies; and, accordingly, he made some\nobservations himself, and notes, too, in this particular department of\nhis general science. For, as he tells us elsewhere, he did not wish to\nmap out the large fields of the science of observation in general, and\nexhibit to the world, in bare description, the method of it, without\nleaving some specimens of his own, of what might be done with it, in\nproper hands, under favourable circumstances, selecting for his\nexperiments the principal and noblest subjects--those of the most\nimmediate human concern. And he has not only very carefully laboured a\nfew of these; but he has taken extraordinary pains to preserve them to\nus in their proper scientific form, with just as little of the\nligature of the time on them as it was possible to leave.\n\nIt is no kind of beetle or butterfly, then, that this philosopher\ncomes down upon here from the heights of his universal science--his\nscience of the nature of things in general, but that great Spenserian\nmonstrosity,--that diseased product of nature, which individual human\nnature, in spite of its natural pettiness and helplessness, under\ncertain favourable conditions of absorption and accretion, may be made\nto yield. It is that dragon of lawless power which was overspreading,\nin his time, all the common human affairs, and infolding in its gaudy,\nbaleful wings all the life of men,--it is that which takes from the\nfirst the speculative eye of this new speculator,--this founder of the\nscience of things, and not of words instead of them. Here is a man of\nscience, a born naturalist, who understands that _this_ phenomenon\nlies in his department, and takes it to be his business, among other\nthings, to examine it.\n\nIt was, indeed, a formidable phenomenon, as it presented itself to his\napprehension; and his own words are always the best, when one knows\nhow to read them--\n\n'He sits in state, like a thing made for Alexander.' 'When he walks,\nhe moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading.'\n'He talks like a knell, his hum is a battery; what he bids be done, is\nfinished at his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity, and\n_a heaven_ to throne in.' 'Yes,' is the answer; 'yes, _mercy_, if you\npaint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'\n\n'Is it possible that so short a time can alter the conditions of a\n_man_?' inquires the speculator upon this phenomenon, and then comes\nthe reply--'There's a differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet\n_your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from_ MAN TO DRAGON;\nhe has wings, he is more than a creeping thing.'\n\nThis is Coriolanus at the head of his army; but in Julius Caesar, it\nis nature in the wildness of the tempest--it is a night of unnatural\nhorrors, that is brought in by the Poet to illustrate the enormity of\nthe evil he deals with, and its unnatural character--'to serve as\ninstrument of fear and warning unto _some_ MONSTROUS STATE.'\n\n        'Now could _I_, Casca,\n  Name to _thee_ a man most like this dreadful night;\n  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars\n  As doth the lion in the Capitol:\n  A _man no mightier_ than thyself, or me,\n  In _personal action, yet prodigious grown_,\n  And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.\n\n  _Casca_. Tis _Caesar_ that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?\n\n  [I paint him in character.]\n\n  _Cassius_. Let it be--WHO IT IS: _For Romans now_\n  Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nPOLITICAL RETROSPECT.\n\n\n          'I think he'll be to Rome\n  As is the osprey to the fish, who _takes_ it\n  By sovereignty of nature.'\n\n  FLOWER OF WARRIORS\n\nThe poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his time. He\nfinds it 'in the civil streets,' 'talking plain cannon', 'humming\nbatteries' in the most unmistakeable manner, with no particular\naccount of its origin to give, without, indeed, appearing to recollect\nexactly how it came there, retaining only a general impression, that a\ndescent from the celestial regions had, in some way, been effected\nduring some undated period of human history, under circumstances which\nthe memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail, and\na certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was understood to\nbe included among its properties, though it does not appear to have\nbeen, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive as to render a\nlittle logical demonstration, on the part of royalty itself,\nsuperfluous.\n\nIt was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal servant\nof the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal memory on this\ndelicate point; and, though the details of that historical\nrepresentation, and the manner of it, are, of course, quite different\nfrom those of the Play, it will be found, upon careful examination,\nnot so dissimilar in purport as the exterior would have seemed to\nimply. The philosopher does not feel called upon, in either case, to\nbegin by contradicting flatly, in so many words, the theory which he\nfinds the received one on that point. Even the _poet_, with all his\nfreedom, is compelled to go to work after another fashion.\n\n  'And _thus_ do we, of wisdom, and of reach,\n  With _windlasses_, and with ASSAYS of BIAS,\n  By indirections find directions out.'\n\nHe has his own way of creating an historical retrospect. No one need\nknow that it _is_ a retrospect; no one will know it, perhaps, who has\nnot taken the author's clue elsewhere. The crisis is already reached\nwhen the play begins. The collision between the civil want and the\nmilitary government is at its height. It is a revolution on which the\ncurtain rises. It is a city street filled with dark, angry swarms of\nmen, who have come forth to seek out this government, in the person of\nits chief, who stop only to conduct their summary trial of it, and\nthen hurry on to execute their verdict.\n\nBut the poet arrests this revolution. Before we proceed any further,\n'Hear _me_ speak,' he cries, through the lips of the plebeian leader.\nThe man of science demands a hearing, before this movement proceed any\nfurther. He has a longer story to tell than that with which Menenius\nAgrippa appeases his Romans. There is a cry of war in the streets. The\nobscure background of that portentous scene opens, and the long vista\nof the heroic ages, with all its pomp and stormy splendours, scene\nupon scene, grows luminous behind it. The foreground is the same. The\narrested mutineers stand there still, with the frown knit in their\nangry brows, with the weapons of their civil warfare in their hands;\nthere is no stage direction for a change of costume, and none\nperceives that they have grown older as they stand, and that the\nshadow of the elder time is on them. But the manager of this stage is\none who knows that the elder time of history is the childhood of his\nkind.\n\nThere is a cry of war in that ancient street. The enemy of the infant\nstate is in arms. The people rush forth to conflict with the leader of\narmies at their head. But this time, for the first time in the history\nof literature, the philosopher goes with him. The philosopher,\nhitherto, has been otherwise occupied. He has been too busy with his\nfierce war of words; he has had too much to do with his abstract\ngenerals, his logical majors and minors, to get them in squadrons and\nright forms of war, to have any eye for such vulgar solidarities. 'All\nmen are mortal. Peter and John are men. Therefore Peter and John are\nmortal,' he concludes; but that is his nearest and most vivacious\napproach to historical particulars, and his cell is broad enough to\ncontain all that he needs for his processes and ends. He finds enough\nand to spare, ready prepared to his hands, in the casual, rude,\nunscientific observations and spontaneous distinctions of the vulgar.\nHis generalizations are obtained from their hasty abstractions. It has\nnever occurred to him, till now, that he must begin with criticising\nthese _terms_; that he must begin by making a new and scientific\nterminology, which shall correspond to _terms in nature_, and not be\nair-lines merely;--that he must take pains to collect them himself,\nfrom severest scrutiny of particulars, before ever he can arrive at\n'the notions of nature,' the universal notions, which differ from the\nspontaneous specific notions of men, and their chimeras; before ever\nhe can put man into his true relations with nature, before ever he can\nteach him to speak the word which she responds to,--the words of her\ndictionary--the word which is _power_.\n\nThis is, in fact, the first time that the philosopher has undertaken\nto go abroad. It is the first time he has ever been in the army.\nSoftly, invisibly, he goes. There is nothing to show that he is there.\nAs modestly, as unnoticed, as the Times 'own correspondent,' amid all\nthe clang and tumult, the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, he\ngoes. But he is there notwithstanding. There is no breath of\nscholasticism, no perfume of the cell, that the most vigorous and\nrobust can perceive, in his battle. The scene unwinds with all its\nfierce reality, undimmed by the pale cast of thought: the shout is as\nwild, the din as fearful, the martial fury rises, as if the old heroic\npoet had it still in hand.\n\nBut it is not the poet's voice that you hear, bursting forth into\nthose rhythmical ecstasies of heroic passion,--unless that faint tone\nof exaggeration,--that slight prolonging of it, be his. That mad joy\nin human blood, that wolfish glare, that lights the hero's eye, gets\nno reflection in his: those fiendish boasts are not from _his_ lips.\nThrough all the frenzy of that demoniacal scene, he is still himself,\nwith all his _human_ sense about him. Through all the crowded\nincidents of that day of blood--into which he condenses, with dramatic\nlicense, the siege and assault of the city, the conquest and plunder\nof it, and the conflict in the open field,--he is keeping watch on his\nhero. He is eyeing him, and sketching him, as critically as if he were\nindeed an entomological or botanical specimen. He is making a specimen\nof him, for scientific purposes,--not 'a preservation,'--he does not\nthink much of dried specimens in science. He proposes to dismiss the\nlogical Peter and John, and the logical man himself, that abstract\nnotion which the metaphysicians have been at loggerheads about so\nlong. It is the true heroism,--it is the sovereign flower which he is\nin search of. This specimen that he is taking here will, indeed, go by\nthe board. He is taking him on his negative table. But for _that_\npurpose,--in order to get him on his 'table of rejections,' it is\nnecessary to take him _alive_. The question is of government, of\nsupreme power, and universal _suffrage_, of the abnegation of reason,\nof the annihilation of judgment, in behalf of a superiority which has\nbeen understood, heretofore, to admit of _no_ question. The question\nis of awe and reverence, and worship, and submission. The Poet has to\nput his sacrilegious hand through the dust that lies on antique time,\nthrough the sanctity of prescription and time-honoured usage, through\n'mountainous error' 'too highly heaped for truth to overpeer,' in\norder to make this point in his scientific table. And he wishes to\nblazon it a little. He will pin up this old exploded hero--this legacy\nof barbaric ages, to the ages of human advancement--in all his\nactualities, in all the heroic splendours of his original, without\n'diminishing one dowle that's in his plume.'\n\nBut this retrospect has not yet reached its limit. It is not enough to\ngo back, in the unravelling of this business, to the full-grown hero\non the field of victory. 'For that which, in speculative philosophy,\ncorresponds to the cause in practical philosophy becomes the rule;'\nand it is the Cure of the Common Weal, which the poet is proposing,\nand having determined to proceed specially against Caius Marcius, or\nagainst him _first_, he undertakes now to 'delve him to the root.' We\nare already on the battle field; but before ever a stroke is struck\n_there_, before he will attempt to show us the instinct of the warrior\nin his _game_,--'he is a lion that I am proud to hunt,'--when all is\nready and just as the hunt is going to begin, he steals softly back to\nRome; he unlocks the hero's private dwelling, he lays open to us the\nsecrets of that domestic hearth, the secrets of that nursery in which\nhis hero had had his training; he shows us the breasts from which he\ndrew that martial fire; he produces the woman alive who sent him to\nthat field. [Act 1, Scene 3. _An apartment in the martial chieftain's\nhouse; two women, 'on two low stools, sewing_.' 'There is where your\nthrone begins, whatever it be.'] In that exquisite relief which the\nnatural graces of youth and womanhood provide for it, in the young,\ngentle, feminine wife, desolate in her husband's absence, starting at\nthe rumour of news from the camp, and driving back from her appalled\nconception, the images which her mother-in-law's fearful speech\nsuggests to her,--in that so beautiful relief, comes out the picture\nof the Roman matron, the woman in whom the martial instincts have been\neducated and the gentler ones repressed, by the common sentiments of\nher age and nation, the woman in whom the common standard of virtue,\nthe conventional virtue of her time, has annihilated the wife and the\nmother.\n\n  _Virgilia_. Had he died in the business, madam, what then?\n\n  _Volumnia_. Then his good report should have been my son,\n  _I therein would have found issue_.\n\nIt is the multiplied force of a common instinct in the nation, it is\nthe pride of conquest in a whole people, erected into the place of\nvirtue and usurping all its sanctity, which has entered this woman's\nnature and reformed its yielding principles. It is the _Martial_\nSpirit that has subdued her, for she is virtuous and religious. It is\nher people's god to whom she has borne her son, and in his temple she\nhas reared him.\n\nBut the poet is not satisfied with all this. It is not enough to\nintroduce us to the hero's mother and permit us to listen to her\nconfidential account of his birth and training. He will produce the\nlittle Coriolanus himself--Coriolanus in germ--he will show us the\nrudiments of those instincts, which his unscientific education has\nstimulated into such monstrous 'o'ergrowth' (but _not_ enlightened),\nso that the hero on the battle-field who is winning there the oaken\ncrown, which he will transmit if he can to his posterity, is only,\nafter all, a boy overgrown,--a boy with his _boyishness unnaturally\nprolonged by his culture_,--the impersonation of the childishness of a\nchildish time,--the crowned impersonation of the instinct which is\nSOVEREIGN in an age of instinct. He shows us the drum and the sword in\nthe nursery, and the boy who would rather look at the military parade\nthan his schoolmaster;--he shows us the little viperous egg of a hero\ntorturing and tearing the butterfly, with his 'confirmed countenance,\nin one of his father's moods.'\n\nSurely we have reached 'the grub' at last, 'the creeping thing' that\nwill have one day imperial armies in its wings. And we return from\nthis little excursion to the field again, in time for the battle; and\nwhen we see the tiger in the man let loose _there_, and the boy's\nfather comes out in one of his _own_ moods, that we may note it the\nbetter; we begin to observe where we are in the human history, and\nwhat age of the Advancement of Learning it is that this poet is\ndriving at so stedfastly, and trying to get dated; and whether it is\nindeed one from which the advancing ages of Learning can accept the\nbourne of the human wisdom, the limit of that advance.\n\n'And to speak _truly_ [and that after all _is_ the best way of\nspeaking] _Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi_.'\n\n'Those times are the ancient times, when the _world_ is ancient and\nnot those we account ancient by a computation _backward_ from\n_ourselves_.'--_Advancement of Learning_. But that was put down in a\nbook in which we have only general statements, very wise indeed, and\nboth new and true, most exactly true, but not ready for practice, as\nthe author stops to tell us, and it is practice he is aiming at. That\nis from a book in which we have only 'the husks and shells of\nsciences, _all the kernel_ being forced out,' as the author informs\nus, 'by the _torture and press_ of the method.' But it was a method\nwhich saved them, notwithstanding. This is the book that contains the\n'nuts,' and _this_ is the kernel that goes in that particular shell or\na corner of it, '_Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi_.'\n\nThere, on the spot, he shows us the process by which a king,--an\nhistoric king,--is made. He detects and brings out and blazons, the\nmoment in which the inequality of fortune begins, in the division of\nthe spoils of victory. His hero is _not_, as he takes pains to tell\nus, covetous,--_unless_ it be a sin to covet honour, if it be, he is\nthe most offending soul alive;--it is because he is not mercenary,\nthat his soldiers will enrich him. The poet shows us where the throne\nbegins, and the machinery of that engine which the earth shrinks from\nwhen it moves. On his stage, it is the moment in which, the soldiers\nraise their victorious leader from his feet, and carry him in triumph\nabove them. We are there at the ceremony, for this is selected,\nilluminated history; this, too, is what he calls 'visible history,'\nbut amid all those martial acclamations and plaudits, the philosopher\ncontrives to get in a word.\n\n  'He that has effected his _good will_, has o'ertaken my act.'\n\nFrom the field he tracks his hero to the chair of state. First we have\nthe news of the victory in the city, and its effect:--\n\n                                        'I'll report it\n  Where _senators_ shall mingle tears with smiles;\n  Where great _patricians_ shall attend, and _shrug_;\n  I' the end admire; where ladies shall be frighted,\n  And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the _dull tribunes_,\n  That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours,\n  Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods\n  _Our Rome_ hath such a soldier.'\n\nThen we have the hero's return--the conqueror's reception; first in\nthe city whose battle he has won, and afterwards his reception in the\ncity he has conquered. Here is the latter:--\n\n  'Your native town _you_ entered _like a post_,\n  And had no welcomes home; but he returns,\n  Splitting the air with noises.\n  And _patient fools_,\n  _Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear_\n  WITH GIVING HIM GLORY.'\n\n  'A goodly city is this Antium! City,\n  'Tis _I_ that made thy widows; many an heir\n  Of _these fair edifices, 'fore my wars_\n  Have I heard groan and droop. Then know me not,\n  Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,\n  In _puny battle slay me_.' [--_know me not--lest_--'\n  'Let us kill him, and we will have _corn_, at our own price.']\n\nBut the Poet does not forget that it is the proof of the military\nvirtue, as well as the history of the military power, that he has\nundertaken; 'the touch of its nobility,' as he himself words it. He is\ntrying it by his own exact scientific standard; he is putting the test\nto it which the new philosophy, which is the philosophy of nature,\nauthorises.\n\nFor, in truth, this philosopher, this civilian, is a little jealous of\nthis simple virtue of valour, which he finds in his time, as in the\nbarbaric ages, still in such esteem, as 'the chiefest virtue, and that\nwhich most dignifies the haver.' He is of opinion, that there may be\nsome other profession, beside that of the sword, worth an honest man's\nattention; that, if the world were more enlightened, there would be\nanother kind of glory, that would make 'the garland of war' shrivel.\nHe thinks that _Jupiter_, and _not Mars_, should reign supreme: that\nthere is another kind of distinction and leadership, better worth the\npublic esteem, better deserving the popular gratitude and reverence.\n\nAnd when he has once taken an analysis of this kind in hand, he is not\ngoing to permit any scruples of delicacy to impair the operation. He\nwill invade that graceful modesty in the hero, who shrinks from\nhearing his exploits narrated. He will analyse that blush, and show us\nchemically what its hue is made of. He will bring out those retiring\nhonours from the haze and mist which the vague, unanalytic, popular\nnotions, have gathered about them. Tucked up in scarlet, braided with\ngold, under its forest of feathers, through all its pomp and blazonry,\nthrough all its drums; and trumpets, and clarions, undaunted by the\npopular cry, undaunted by that so potent word of 'patriotism' which\nguards it from invasion, he will search it out.\n\nFor this purpose he will go a little nearer to it than is the heroic\npoet's wont. When the city is wild with the news of this great\nvictory, and the streets are swarming at the tidings of the hero's\napproach, he will take _his_ stand with _the family party_, and beckon\nus to a place where we can listen to what is going on _there_, though\nthe heroics and the blank verse must halt for it.\n\nThe glee and fluster might appear to a cool spectator a little\nundignified; but then we are understood to be, like Menenius, old\nfriends of the family, and too much carried away with the excitement\nof the moment to be very critical.\n\n  _Volumnia_. Honourable Menenius, _my boy, Marcius_, approaches. For\n  the love of _Juno_, let's go.\n\n  _Men_. Ha! Marcius coming home!\n\n  _Vol_. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous _approbation_.\n\n  _Men. Take my cap, Jupiter_, and I thank thee. _Hoo_! Marcius coming\n  home?\n\n  _Two Ladies_. Nay, 't is true.\n\n  _Vol_. Look! Here's a letter from him; _the state_ hath another,\n  _his wife_ another, and I think there's one at home for _you_.\n\n  _Men_. I will make my very house reel to night:--A letter for me?\n\n  _The Wife_. Yes, certainly, there a letter for you; I saw it.\n\n  _Men_. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years'\n  health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician ... Is he\n  not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.\n\n  _The Wife_. Oh, no, no, no!\n\n  _The Mother_. Oh, he is wounded. I thank the gods for 't.\n\n  _Men_. So do I, too, if it be not too much:--_Brings a victory in\n  his pocket_: The wounds become him.\n\n  _Vol. On's brow_, Menenius: he comes the third time home with _the\n  oaken garland_.\n\n  _Men_.... Is the senate possessed of this?\n\n  _Vol_. Good ladies, let's go! Yes, yes, yes: the senate has letters\n  from the general, wherein he gives _my son_ the whole name of the\n  war.\n\n  _Valeria_. In truth, there's wondrous things spoke of him.\n\n  _Men_. Wondrous, ay, I warrant you...\n\n  _Vir_. The gods grant them true!\n\n  _Vol_. True? Pow wow!\n\n  _Men_. True? I'll be sworn they are true. Where's he wounded?\n  [To the Tribunes, who _come forward_.] Marcius is coming home: he\n  has--_more cause to be_--PROUD.--Where is he wounded?\n\n  _Vol_. I' the shoulder, and i' the left arm: _There will be large\n  cicatrices to shew the people_, when he shall stand FOR HIS PLACE.\n  He received in the repulse of _Tarquin_ seven hurts i' the body.\n\n  _Men. One_ in the neck, and _two_ in the thigh,--there's _nine_\n  that _I_ know.\n\n  _Vol_. He had, before this last expedition, _twenty-five_ wounds\n  upon him.\n\n  _Men_. Now it's _twenty-seven_: every gash was an enemy's grave.\n\n[Of course there is no satire intended here at all. This is a Poet who\ndoes not know what he is about.]\n\nBut now we come to the blank verse again; for at this moment the shout\nthat announces the hero's entrance is heard; and, mingling with it,\nthe martial tones of victory.\n\n  _shout and flourish._\n  Hark! the trumpets!\n\n  _Vol. These are the ushers of Marcius: before him_\n  He carries noise; _behind him he leaves tears_.\n  Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie;\n  Which being advanced, declines, and _then men die_.\n\nThen comes the imposing military pageant. A sennet. Trumpets sound,\nand enter the hero, '_crowned_' with his _oaken_ garland, sustained by\nthe generals on either hand, with the victorious soldiers, and a\nherald proclaiming before him his victory.\n\n  _Herald_. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight\n  Within Corioli's gates: where he hath won\n  With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these\n  In honour follows Coriolanus:\n  Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!\n\nBut while Rome is listening to this great story, and the people are\nshouting his name, the demi-god catches sight of his mother and of his\nwife; and full of private duty and affection, he forgets his state,\nhis garland stoops, the conqueror is on his knee, in filial\nsubmission. The woman had said truly, '_my boy_ Marcius is coming\nhome.' And when he greets the weeping Virgilia, who cannot speak but\nwith her tears, these are the words with which he measures that\n_private joy_--\n\n  Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home,\n  That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,\n  _Such eyes_ the _widows_ in Corioli wear,\n  And _mothers_ that lack _sons_.\n\nNo; these are the Poet's words, rather--'such eyes.'\n\n_Such_ eyes. It was the Poet who could look through the\nbarriers--those hitherto impervious barriers of an _enemy's town_, and\nsee in it, at that moment, eyes as beautiful--eyes that had been\n'dove's eyes,' too, to those who had loved them, wet with other\ntears,--mothers that loved _their_ sons, and 'lacked them'; it was the\nPoet to whose _human_ sense those hard hostile walls dissolved and\ncleared away, till he could see the Volscian wives clasping _their_\nloves, as they 'came coffined home'; it was the Poet who dared to\nstain the joy and triumph of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of\nthat triumphal entry, with those _human_ thoughts; it was he who heard\nabove the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and\ntrumpets, and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's\nvoice--the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of human\nsorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the\ngreetings of wives whose loves '_came coffined home_.' And he does not\nmind aggravating the intense selfishness, and narrowness, and\nstolidity of these private passions and affections of the individual\nto a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity, by charging on poor\nVolumnia and Marcius his own reminiscences; as if they could have\ndared to heighten their joy at that moment by counting its cost--as if\nthey could have looked in the face--as if they could have\ncomprehended, in its actual dimensions, the theme of their vulgar,\n_narrow_, unlearned exultation. But this is a trick this author is\nmuch given to, we shall find, when we come to study him carefully. He\nis not scrupulous on such points. He has a tolerable sense of the\nfitness of things, too. His dramatic conscience is as nice as another\nman's; but he is always ready to sin against it, when he sees reason.\nHe is much like his own Mr. Slender in one respect, 'he will do\nanything in reason'; and his theory of the Chief End of Man appears to\ndiffer essentially from the one which our modern Doctors of '_Art_'\npropound incidentally in their criticisms. It is the mother who cries,\nwhen she catches the swell of the trumpets that announce her son's\napproach--'_These_ are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries\nnoise.' It is the Poet who adds, _sotto voce, 'behind him he leaves\nTEARS_.'\n\n'You are three,' says Menenius, after some further prolongation of\nthese private demonstrations, addressing himself to the three\nvictorious generals--\n\n    You are three,\n  That Rome _should_ dote on: yet, _by the faith_ of _men_,\n  We _have_ some old crab-trees here at home, that will _not_\n  Be grafted to your relish. Yet WELCOME, WARRIORS:\n  We call a _nettle_ but a _nettle_; and\n  The _faults_ of fools, but _folly_.\n\nBut the herald is driving on the crowd; and considering how very\npublic the occasion is, and how very, very private and personal all\nthis chat is, it does appear to have stopped the way long enough. Thus\nhurried, the hero gives hastily a hand 'to HIS WIFE and MOTHER' [stage\ndirection], but stops to say a word or two more, which has the merit\nof being at least to the POET'S purpose, though the common-weal may\nappear to be lost sight of in the HERO'S a little; and that delicacy\nand reserve of manner, that modesty of nature, which is the\ncharacteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere, to\ndisguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The careless\neye will not track it in these finer touches. 'Where some\nstretched-mouth rascal' would have roared you out his prescribed\nmoral, 'outscolding Termagant' with it, the Poet, who is the poet of\ntruth, and who would have such fellows 'whipped' out of the sacred\nplaces of Art, with a large or small cord, as the case may be, is\ncontent to bring in his '_delicate burdens_,' or to keep sight of\nthem, at least, with some such reference to them as this--\n\n  'Ere in _our own house_ I do shade my head,\n  The good patricians must be visited;\n  From whom I have received not only greetings\n  But with them change of honours'--[_change_.]\n\nThat is his visit to the state-house which he is speaking of. It is\nthe Capitol which is put down in _his_ plan of the city on his way to\nhis own house. 'The state has a letter from him, and his wife another;\nand I think there is one for you, too.'\n\nVolumnia understands that delicate intimation as to _the change_ of\nhonours, and in return, takes occasion to express to him, on the spot,\nher views about the consulship, and the use to which the new\ncicatrices are to be converted.\n\nCoriolanus replies to this in words that admit, as this Poet's words\noften do, of a double construction; for the Poet is, indeed, lurking\nunder all this. He is always present, and he often slips in a word for\nhimself, when his characters are busy, and thinking of their own parts\nonly. He is very apt to make use of occasions for emphasis, to put in\n_one word_ for his speakers, and _two_ for himself. It is irregular,\nbut he does not stand much upon precedents; it was the only way he had\nof writing his life then--\n\n  'Know, good mother,\n  I had rather be _their servant in my way_,\n  Than _sway with them in theirs_.\n  _Cominius. On, to_ THE CAPITOL.'\n  [_Flourish Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes\n  remain._]\n\nAnd when the great pageant has moved on 'in state, as before'--when\nthe shouts of the people, and the triumphal swell and din, have died\naway, this is the manner in which our two tribunes look at each other.\nThey know their voices would not make so much as a ripple, at that\nmoment, in the tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it\nis their business to sway,--the tide which is setting all one way\nthen, in one of _its_ monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing\nwith it,--the tide which is taking the military hero '_On to_ THE\nCAPITOL.' But though they cannot then oppose it, they can note it. And\nit is thus that they register that popular confirmation at home, of\nthe soldier's vote on the field.\n\nIt is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its living\noutline, composed in that 'charactery' which lays the past and future\nopen. It is a picture good for the Roman hero's entry; 'and were now\nthe general of our gracious empress, as in _good time he may_, from\nIreland coming, bringing _rebellion_ broached _on his sword_'--would\nit, or would it not, suit him?\n\nIt is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its main\nfeature, for all the ages, at least of a brutish popular ignorance, of\na merely instinctive human growth and formation; but it is a picture\ntaken from the life,--caught,--detained with the secret of that\npalette, whose secret none has yet found, and the detail is all, not\n_Roman_, but, _Elizabethan_. Those '_variable complexions_,' that one\nsees, 'smothering the stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and\nroofs, even to the 'ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are\nElizabethan. It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some\nway, and it is worth noting if it were only for that. There goes 'the\nseld shown flamen, _puffing_ his way to _win a vulgar station_,' here\nis a 'veiled dame' who lets us see that 'war of white and damask in\nher nicely gawded cheeks,' a moment;--look at that 'kitchen malkin,'\npeering over the wall there with 'her richest lockram' 'pinned on her\nreechy neck,' eyeing the hero as he passes; and look at this poor baby\nhere, this Elizabethan baby, saved, conserved alive, crying himself\n'into a _rapture_' while his 'prattling nurse' has ears and eyes for\nthe hero only, as 'she chats him.' Look at them all, for every\ncreature you see here, from 'the seld shown flamen' to the 'kitchen\nmalkin,' belongs soul and body to 'our gracious Empress,' and Essex\nand Raleigh are still winning their garlands of the war,--that is when\nthe scene is taken, but not when it was put in its place and framed in\nthis composition; for their game was up ere then. England preferred\nold heroes and their claims to new ones. 'I fear there will a worse\ncome in his place,' was the cautious instinct.\n\n  _Bru_. All tongues speak of him, and the _bleared sights\n  Are spectacled to see him_: Your _prattling_ nurse\n  _Into a rapture lets her baby cry_,\n  While she chats him: the kitchin malkin pins\n  Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.\n  _Clambering the walls_ to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,\n  Are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed\n  With _variable complexions; all agreeing\n  In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens\n  Do press among the popular throng, and puff\n  To win a vulgar station_: our veil'd dames\n  Commit the war of white and damask, in\n  Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil\n  Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother,\n  As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,\n  Were slyly crept into his human powers,\n  And gave him graceful posture.\n\n  _Sic_. On the sudden,\n  I warrant him consul.\n\n  _Bru. Then our office may,\n  During his power, go sleep._\n\n  _Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours\n  .... but will\n  Lose that he hath won._\n\n  _Cru. In that there's comfort._\n\n  _Sic_. Doubt not, the _commoners, for whom we stand_,--\n\n[While they resolve upon the measures to be taken, which we shall note\nelsewhere, a messenger enters.]\n\n  _Bru_. What's the matter?\n\n  _Mess_. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought,\n  That _Marcius_ shall be consul: I have seen\n  The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind\n  To hear him speak: The matrons flung their gloves,\n  _Ladies_ and _maids_ the _scarfs_ and _handkerchiefs_,\n  Upon him as he passed: _the nobles bended,\n  As to Jove's statue; and the commons made\n  A shower, and thunder_, with their _caps, and shouts_:\n  I never saw the like.\n\n  _Bru. Lets to the Capitol;\n  And carry_ with us _ears and eyes for_ THE TIME,\n  _But hearts_ for the EVENT.\n\n[And let us to the Capitol also, and hear the civic claim of the oaken\ngarland, the military claim to dispose of the _common-weal_, as set\nforth by one who is himself a general 'commander-in-chief' of Rome's\narmies, and see whether or no the Poet's own doubtful cheer on the\nbattle-field has any echo in this place.]\n\n  _Com. It is held,\n  That valour is the chiefest virtue_, and\n  _Most dignifies the haver_: IF IT BE,\n  _The man I speak_ of cannot in the world\n  Be _singly_ counterpois'd.\n\n[If it be? And he goes on to tell a story which fits, in all its\npoints, a great hero, a true chieftain, brave as heroes of old\nromance, who lived when this was written, concluding thus--]\n\n  _Com_. He _stopped the fliers_;\n  And, by his rare example, made the coward\n  Turn terror into sport: _as waves before\n  A vessel under sail_, SO MEN OBEY'D,\n  _And fell below his stem_: his sword, (death's stamp.)\n  Where it did mark, it took; _from face to foot\n  He was a thing of blood, whose every motion\n  Was timed with dying cries_: alone he enter'd\n  The mortal gate o'the city, which he painted\n  With shunless destiny, aidless came off,\n  And with a sudden re-enforcement struck\n  Corioli, like a planet: now, ALL'S HIS:\n  When by and by the din of war 'gan pierce\n  His ready sense: then straight _his doubled spirit_\n  Re-quicken'd what in flesh was fatigate,\n  And to the battle came he; where he did\n  _Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if\n  'Twere a perpetual spoil_: and _till we call'd\n  Both field and city ours, he never stood\n  To ease his breast with panting_.\n\n  _Men_. WORTHY MAN!\n\n  _First Sen. He cannot but with measure fit the honours\n  Which we devise him._\n\n[One more quality, however, his pleader insists on, as additional\nproof of this '_fitness_' for though it is a negative one, its\nopposite had not been reckoned among the kingly virtues, and the poet\ntakes some pains to bring that opposite quality into relief,\nthroughout, by this negative.]\n\n  _Com_. Our _spoils_ he kicked at;\n  And look'd upon things precious, as they were\n  The common muck o' the world.\n\n  _Men_. HE'S RIGHT NOBLE;\n  _Let him be call'd for._\n\n  _First Sen. Call for Coriolanus._\n\n  _Off. He doth appear._\n\nAt the opening of this scene, two officers appeared on the stage,\n'_laying cushions_,' for this is one of those specimens of the new\nmethod of investigation applied to the noblest subjects, 'which\nrepresents, as it were, _to the eye_, the whole order of the\ninvention,' and into the Capitol stalks now the casque, for this is\nthat 'step from the casque to the cushion' which the Poet is\nconsidering in the abstract; but it does not suit his purpose to treat\nof it in these abstract terms merely, because 'reason cannot be so\nsensible.' This, too, is one of those grand historic moments which\nthis new, select, prepared history must represent to the eye in all\nits momentous historic splendour, for this is the kind of popular\ninstruction which reproduces the past, which represents the historic\nevent, not in perspective, but as present. And this is the 'business,'\nand this is the play in which we are told 'action is eloquence, and\nthe eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'\n\nThe seats of state are prepared for him. 'Call _Coriolanus_,' is the\nsenate's word. The conqueror's step is heard. 'He does appear.'\n\n  _Men_. The senate, Coriolanus, are well pleased\n  To make thee consul.\n\n  _Cor_. I do owe them still\n  My life, and services.\n\n  _Men_. IT THEN REMAINS,\n  THAT YOU DO SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE.\n\n  _Cor_. I do beseech you,\n  _Let me overleap that custom_.\n\n  _Sic. Sir, the people\n  Must have their voices; neither will they bate\n  One jot of their ceremony._\n\n  _Men. Put them not to't_:--[his friendly adviser says.]\n  Pray you, go fit you _to the custom_; and\n  Take to you, _as your predecessors have_,\n  Your honour, with _your form_.\n\n  _Cor_. It is a part\n  That I shall blush in acting, _and might well\n  Be taken from the people_.\n\n  _Bru. Mark you that!_\n\n  _Cor_. To brag unto them,--_Thus I did, and thus_;--\n  Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,\n  As if I had received _them for the hire_\n  Of _their breath only_.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE POPULAR ELECTION.\n\n\n  'The greater part carries it.\n  If he would but incline to the people,\n  There never was a worthier man.'\n\nAnd yet, after all, that is what he wants for them, and must have or\nhe is nothing; for as the Poet tells us elsewhere, 'our monarchs and\nour outstretched heroes are but the beggar's shadows.' The difficulty\nis, that he wishes to take his 'hire' in some more quiet way, without\nbeing rudely reminded of the nature of the transaction.\n\nBut the Poet's toils are about him. The man of science has caught the\nhero, the king in germ; the dragon wings are not yet spread. He wishes\nto exhibit the embryo monarch in this particular stage of his\ndevelopment, and the scientific process proceeds with as little regard\nto the victim's wishes, as if he were indeed that humble product of\nnature to which the Poet likens him. 'There's a differency between a\ngrub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub.' Just on that\nstep between 'the casque and the cushion,' the philosopher arrests\nhim.\n\nFor this history denotes, as we have seen, a foregone conclusion. The\nscholar has privately anatomized in his study the dragon's wings, and\nthis theatrical synthesis is designed to be an instructive one. He\nwishes to show, in a palpable form, what _is_ and what is _not_,\nessential to the mechanism of that greatness which, though it presents\nitself to the eye in the contemptible physique, and moral infirmity\nand pettiness of the human individual, is yet clothed with powers so\nmonstrous, so real, so terrific, that all men are afflicted with\nthem;--this thing in which 'the conditions of a man are so altered,'\nthis thing which 'has grown from man to dragon, which is more than a\ncreeping thing.' He will show that after all it is nothing in the\nworld but the _popular power_ itself, the power of the people\ninstinctively, unscientifically and unartistically exercised.\n\nThe Poet has analysed that so potent name by which men call it, and he\nwill show upon his stage, by that same method which his followers have\nmade familiar to us, in other departments of investigation, the\nelements of its power. He will let us see how it was those despised\n'mechanics,' those 'poor citizens,' with their strong arms and voices,\nwho were throwing themselves,--in their enthusiasm,--en-masse into\nthat engine, and only asking to be welded in it; that would have made\nof this citizen a thing so terrific. He will show how, after all, it\nwas the despised _commons_ who were making of that citizen a king, of\nthat soldier a monarch,--who were changing with the alchemy of the\n'shower and thunder they made with their caps and voices,' his oak\nleaves and acorns, into gold and jewels.\n\nHe will show it on the platform of a state, where that vote is\nformally and constitutionally given, and not in a state where it is\nonly a virtual and tacit one. He will show it in detail. He will cause\nthe multitude to be _represented_, and pass by _twos_ and _threes_\nacross his stage, and compel the haughty chief, the would be ruler, to\nbeg of them, individually, their suffrages, and show them his\nclaim,--such as it is, the '_unaching scars that he should hide_.'\n\nIt is to this Poet's purpose to exhibit that despised element in the\nstate, which the popular submission creates, that unnoticed element of\nthe common suffrage which looks so smooth on its surface, which seems\nto the haughty chief so little worth his notice, when it goes his way\nand bears him on its crest. But the experimenter will undertake to\nshow what it is by ruffling it, by instigating this chief to put\nhimself in the madness of his private affections, in the frenzy of his\npride, into open opposition with it. He will show us what it is by\nplaying with it. He will wake it from its unvisited depths, and bid\nhis hero strive with it.\n\nHe will show what that popular consent, or the consent of 'the\ncommons' amounts to, in the king-making process, by _omitting it_ or\nby _withdrawing it_, before it is too late to withdraw it;--according\nto the now well-known rules of that new art of scientific\ninvestigation, which was then getting worked out and cleared, from\nthis author's own methods of investigation. For it was because this\nfaculty was in him, so unlike what it was in others, that he was able\nto write that science of it, by which other men, stepping into his\narmour, have been able to achieve so much.\n\nHe will show how those dragon teeth and claws, that were just getting\nthe steel into them, which would have armed that single will against\nthe whole, and its _weal_, crumble for the lack of it; he will show us\nthe new-fledged wings, with all their fresh gauds, collapsing and\ndissolving with that popular withdrawal. He will continue the process,\ntill there is nothing left of all that gorgeous state pageant, which\ncame in with the flourish of trumpets and the voice of the herald long\nand loud, and the echoing thunder of the commons, but a poor grub of a\nman, in his native conditions, a private citizen, denied even the\ncommon privilege of citizenship,--with only his wife and his mother\nand a friend or two, to cling to him,--turned out of the city gates,\nto seek his fortune.\n\nBut that is the moment in which the Poet ventures to bring out a\nlittle more fully, in the form of positive statement, that latent\naffirmation, that definition of the true nobility which underlies all\nthe play and glistens through it in many a fine, but hitherto,\nunnoticed point; that affirmation which all these negatives conclude\nin, that latent idea of the true personal greatness and its essential\nrelation to the common-weal and the state, which is the predominant\nidea of the play, which shapes all the criticism and points all the\nsatire of it. It is there that the true hero speaks out for a moment\nfrom the lips of that old military heroism, of a greatness which does\nnot cease when the wings of state drop off from it, of an honour that\ntakes no stain though all the human voices join to sully it,--the\ndignity that rises and soars and gains the point of immutability, when\nall the world would have it under foot. But in that nobility men need\ntraining,--_scientific training_. The instinctive, unartistic human\ngrowth, or the empirical unscientific arts of culture, give but a\nvulgar counterfeit of it, or at best a poor, sickly, distorted,\nconvulsive, unsatisfactory type of it, for 'being gentle,\nwounded,'--(and it is gentility and nobility and the true aristocracy\nthat we speak of here,)--'craves a NOBLE CUNNING;' so the old military\nchieftain tells us. It is a _cunning_ which his author does not put\n_him_ upon practising personally. Practically he represents another\nschool of heroes. It is the _word_ of that higher heroism in which he\nwas himself wanting, it is the criticism on his own part, it is the\naffirmation which all this grand historic negative is always pointing\nto, which the author borrows his lips to utter.\n\nThe result in this case, the overthrow of the military hero on his way\nto the chair of state, is occasioned by the _premature_ arrogance to\nwhich his passionate nature impels him. For his fiery disposition\nrefuses to obey the decision of his will, and overleaps in its\npassion, all the barriers of that policy which his calmer moments had\nprescribed. The result is occasioned by his open display of his\ncontempt for the people, before he had as yet mastered the\norganizations which would make that display, in an unenlightened age,\nperhaps, a safe one.\n\nThis point of time is much insisted on, and emphasized.\n\n'Let them pull all about mine ears,' cries the hero, as he enters his\nown house, after his first encounter with the multitude in their\nwrath.\n\n  'Let them pull all about mine ears, present me\n  _Death on the wheel_, or at wild horses' heels,\n  Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock\n  That the precipitation might down stretch\n  Below the beam of sight, yet will I still--\n  _Be_ THUS _to them_.'\n\n[For that is the sublime conclusion of these heroics.]\n\n'You do the _nobler_,' responds the Coryph\u00e6us of that chorus of\npatricians who accompany him home, and who ought, of course, to be\njudges of nobility. But there is another approbation wanted. Volumnia\nis there; but she listens in silence. 'I muse,' he continues--\n\n  'I muse my mother\n  Does not approve me further--who was wont\n  To call them woollen vassals, _things created\n  To buy and sell with groats_; to show bare heads\n  In _congregations_, to YAWN, be STILL, AND WONDER,\n  When one but of my _ordinance_ stood up\n  To speak of PEACE or WAR. I talk of you [_to Volumnia_.]\n  Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me\n  _False to my nature_? [_Softly_] Either say I _play_\n  The man I am.\n\n  _Vol_. O sir, sir, sir,\n  I would have had you _put your power well on_,\n  Ere you had worn it out.\n\n  _Cor_. Let go.\n\n  _Vol_. Lesser had been\n  The _thwarting of  your dispositions_, IF\n  You had not shown them _how_ you were _disposed_\n  Ere they lacked _power_ to cross you.\n\n  _Cor_. Let them HANG!\n\n  _Vol_. _Ay, and_ BURN _too_!\n\nFor that was the '_disposition_' which these Commons, if they had\nwaited but a little longer, might have 'lacked _power to cross_.' That\nwas the disposition they had thwarted.\n\nBut then it is necessary to our purpose, as it was to the author's, to\nnotice that the collision in this case is a _forced_ one. It grows by\nplot. The people are _put up to it_. For there are men in that\ncommonwealth who are competent to instruct the Commons in the doctrine\nof the _common weal_, and who are carefully and perseveringly applying\nthemselves to that task; though they are men who know how to bide\ntheir time, and they will wait till the soaring insolence of the hero\nis brought into open collision with that enlightened popular will.\n\nThey will wait till the military hero's quarrel with the commonwealth\nbreaks out anew. For they know that it lies in the nature of things,\nand cannot but occur. The \u00e9clat of his victory, and the military pride\nof the nation, films it over for a time; but the quarrel is a radical\none, and cannot be healed.\n\nFor this chief of soldiers, and would-be head and ruler of the state\nknows no _commonwealth_. His soul is not large enough to admit of that\nconception. The walls of ignorance, that he shuts himself up in,\ndarken and narrow his world to the sphere of his own _microcosm_,--\nand, therefore, there is a natural war between the world and him. The\n_state_ of universal subjection, on the part of others, to his single\nexclusive passions and affections, the state in which the whole is\nsacrificed to the part, is the only state that will satisfy him. That\nis the peace he is disposed to conquer; that is the consummation with\nwhich he would _stay_; that is _his_ notion of _state_. When that\nconsummation is attained, or when such an approximation to it as he\njudges to be within his reach, is attained, then, and not till then,\nhe is for _conservation_;--_revolution then_ is sin; but, till then he\nwill have change and overturning--he will fill the earth with rapine,\nand fire, and slaughter. But this is just the peace and war principle,\nwhich this man, who proposes a durable and solid peace, and the true\nstate, a state constructed with reference to true definitions and\naxioms,--this is the peace and war principle which the man of science,\non scientific grounds, objects to. 'He likes nor peace nor war' on\nthose terms. The conclusions he has framed from those solid premises\nwhich he finds in the nature of things, makes him the leader of the\nopposition in both cases. In one way or another he will make war on\nthat peace; he will kindle the revolutionary fires against that\nconservation. In one way or another, in one age or another, he will\nsilence that war with all its pomp and circumstance, with all the din\nof its fifes, and drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the\nignominy of ignorant and barbaric ages,--'for we call a nettle but a\nnettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early,\ninstinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that\ntriumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He\nwill undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute\nforce, till men shall grow sick, at last, of the old, rusty, bygone\ntrumpery of its insignia, and say, 'Take away those baubles.'\n\nBut the hero that we deal with here, is but the pure negation of that\nheroism which his author conceives of, aspires to, and will have,\nhistorical, which he defines as the pattern of man's nature in all\nmen. This one knows no _common_-wealth; the wealth that is wealth in\nhis eyes, is all his own; the weal that he conceives of, is the weal\nthat is warm at his own heart only. At best he can go out of his\nparticular only as far as the limits of his own hearthstone, or the\nlimits of his clique or caste. And in his selfish passion, when that\ndemands it, he will sacrifice the nearest to him. As to the Commons,\nthey are 'but things to buy and sell with groats,' a herd, a mass, a\nmachine, to be informed with his single will, to be subordinated to\nhis single wishes; in peace enduring the gnawings of hunger, that the\ngarners their toil has filled may overflow for him,--enduring the\nbadges of a degradation which blots out the essential humanity in\nthem, to feed his pride;--in war offered up in droves, to win the\ngarland of the war for him. That is the old hero's commonwealth. His\nsmall brain, his brutish head, could conceive no other. The ages in\nwhich he ruled the world with his instincts, with his fox-like\ncunning, with his wolfish fury, with his dog-like ravening,--those\nbrute ages could know no other.\n\nBut it is the sturdy European race that the hero has to deal with\nhere; and though, in the moment of victory, it is ready always to\nchain itself to the conqueror's car, and, in the exultation of\nconquest, and love for the conqueror, fastens on itself, with joy, the\nfetters of ages, this quarrel is always breaking out in it anew: it\ndoes not like being governed with the edge of the sword;--it is not\nfond of martial law as a permanent institution.\n\nTwo very sagacious tribunes these old Romans happen to have on hand in\nthis emergency: birds considerably too old to be caught with this\nchaff of victory and military virtue, which puts the populace into\nsuch a frenzy, and very learnedly they talk on this subject, with a\nslight tendency to anachronisms in their mode of expression, in\nlanguage which sounds a little, at times, as if they might have had\naccess to some more recent documents, than the archives of mythical\nRome could just then furnish to them.\n\nBut the reader should judge for himself of the correctness of this\ncriticism.\n\nRefusing to join in the military procession on its way to the Capitol,\nand stopping in the street for a little conference on the subject,\nwhen it has gone by, after that vivid complaint of the universal\nprostration to the military hero already quoted, the conference\nproceeds thus:--\n\n  _Sic_. On the sudden,\n  I warrant him consul.\n\n  _Bru_. Then _our office_ may,\n  _During his power_, go sleep.\n\n  _Sic_. He cannot temperately transport his honours\n  From where he should begin, and end; but will\n  Lose those that he hath won.\n\n  _Bru_. In _that_ there's comfort.\n\n  _Sic_. Doubt not, the commoners, _for whom we stand_.\n  But _they, upon their ancient malice_, will\n  Forget, with the least cause, these _his new honours_;\n  Which that he'll give them, make as little question\n  As he is proud to do't.\n\n  _Bru_. I heard him swear,\n  Were _he_ to stand for consul, never would he\n  Appear i'the market-place, nor on him put\n  The napless vesture of humility;\n  Nor, showing (as the _manner is_) his wounds\n  To the people, beg their stinking breaths.\n\n  _Sic_. _'Tis right_.\n\n  _Bru_. It was his word: O, he would miss it, rather\n  Than _carry it, but by the suit o'the gentry to him_,\n  And the _desire of the nobles_.\n\n  _Sic_. _I wish no better_,\n  Than have him hold _that_ purpose, and to put it\n  In execution.\n\n  _Bru_. 'Tis most like he will.\n\n  _Sic_. It shall be to him then, as our good wills\n  A sure destruction.\n\n  _Bru_. So it must fall out\n  To him, or our authorities. For an end,\n  We must suggest the people, in what hatred\n  He still hath held them; that to his power he would\n  _Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders_, and\n  DISPROPERTIED THEIR FREEDOMS: [--note the expression--]\n  holding them,\n  IN HUMAN ACTION AND CAPACITY,\n  Of no more soul _nor fitness for_ THE WORLD\n  Than CAMELS in their war; who have their provand\n  _Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows\n  For sinking under them_.\n\n  _Sic_. _This as you say, suggested\n  At some time, when his soaring insolence\n  Shall teach the people_ (which time shall not want)\n  _If he be put upon't_; and that's as easy\n  As to set dogs on sheep; will be HIS FIRE\n  _To_ KINDLE THEIR DRY STUBBLE; AND THEIR BLAZE\n  SHALL DARKEN HIM FOR EVER.\n\n  [There is a history in all men's lives,\n  Figuring the nature of the times deceased,\n  The which observed a man may prophesy,\n  With a near aim of the main chance of things,\n  As yet not come to life, which in their seeds\n  And weak beginnings, lie intreasured:\n  Such things become the hatch and brood of time.--_Henry IV_.]\n\nCoriolanus, elected by the Senate to the consulship, proposes, in his\narrogance, as we have already seen, to dispense with the usual form,\nwhich he understands to be a form merely, of asking the consent of the\npeople, and exhibiting to them his claim to their suffrages. The\ntribunes have sternly withstood this proposition, and will hear of 'no\njot' of encroachment upon the dignity and state of the Commons. After\nthe flourish with which the election in the Senate Chamber concludes,\nand the withdrawal of the Senate, again they stop to discuss,\nconfidentially, 'the situation.'\n\n  _Bru_. You _see_ how he intends to use the people.\n\n  _Sic_. May _they perceive his intent_; he will require them\n  As if he did contemn what they requested\n  Should be in their power to give.\n\n  _Bru_. Come, we'll inform them\n  Of our proceedings here: on the market-place\n  I know they do attend us.\n\nAnd to the market-place we go; for it is there that the people are\ncollecting in throngs; no bats or clubs in their hands now, but still\nfull of their passion of gratitude and admiration for the hero's\npatriotic achievements, against the common foe; and, under the\ninfluence of that sentiment, wrought to its highest pitch by that\naction and reaction which is the incident of the common sentiment in\n'the greater congregations,' or 'extensive wholes,' eager to sanction\nwith their 'approbation,' the appointment of the Senate, though the\ngraver sort appear to be, even then, haunted with some unpleasant\nreminiscences, and not without an occasional misgiving as to the\nwisdom of the proceeding. There is a little tone of the former meeting\nlurking here still.\n\n  _First Cit_. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to\n  deny him.\n\n  _Second Cit_. We may, Sir, if we will.\n\n  _Third Cit_. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is\n  a power that we have no power to do. Ingratitude is _monstrous_:\n  and for the multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of\n  the multitude,--\n\n[There are scientific points here. This term 'monstrosity' is one of\nthe radical terms in the science of nature; but, like many others, it\nis used in the popular sense, while the sweep and exactitude of the\nscientific definition, or '_form_' is introduced into it.]\n\n  --of the which, we, being members, should bring ourselves to be\n  monstrous members.\n\n  _First Cit_. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will\n  serve: for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck\n  not to call us the _many_-headed multitude.\n\n  _Third Cit_. We have been called so _of many_; not that our heads\n  are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, _but that our\n  wits are so diversely coloured_: and truly I think, if ALL _our\n  wits_ were to issue out of ONE skull, they would fly east, west,\n  north, south; and _their consent_ of _one direct_ way should be at\n  once to ALL the points o'the compass.\n\n[An enigma; but the sphinx could propound no better one. Truly this\nman has had good teaching. He knows how to translate the old priestly\nEtruscan into the vernacular.]\n\n  _Second Cit_. Think you so? Which way, do you judge, my wit\n  would fly?\n\n  _Third Cit_. Nay, _your wit_ will not so soon out as _another\n  man's_ WILL, 'tis _strongly wedged up_ in a block-head: _but if\n  it were at liberty_ ...\n\n  _Second Cit_. You are never without your tricks:--...\n\n  _Third Cit_. Are you _all_ resolved to give your voices? _But that's\n  no matter. The greater part carries it_. I say, if he would _incline\n  to the people_, there was never a worthier man.\n\n  [_Enter Coriolanus and Menenius_.]\n\n  Here he comes, and in the _gown_ of _humility_; mark his behaviour.\n  We are not to stay _all_ together, but to come by him where he\n  stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He's to make his _requests\n  by particulars_: wherein _every one of us has a single honour_, in\n  giving him our own voices with our own tongues: _therefore_ FOLLOW\n  ME, and I'LL DIRECT YOU HOW YOU SHALL GO BY HIM.\n\n  [The voice of the true leader is lurking here, and all through\n  these scenes the '_double_' meanings are thickly sown.]\n\n  _All_. _Content, content!_\n\n  _Men_. O Sir, you are not right: have you not known\n  The worthiest men have done it?\n\n  _Cor_. What must I say?--\n  I pray, Sir?--Plague upon't! I cannot bring\n  My tongue to such a pace:--Look, Sir,--my wounds;--\n  I got them in my country's service, _when\n  Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran\n  From the noise of_ OUR OWN DRUMS.\n\n  _Men_. O me, the gods!\n  _You must not speak of that_; you must desire them\n  To think upon you.\n\n  _Cor_. Think upon _me? Hang 'em!_\n  I would they would forget me, _like the virtues_\n  Which our _divines lose_ by them.\n\n  _Men_. _You'll mar all_;\n  I'll leave you: Pray you, speak to them, I pray you,\n  In _wholesome_ manner.\n\n  [And now, instead of being thronged with a mob of\n  citizens--instructed how they are to go by him with the honor of\n  their _single_ voices they enter 'by twos' and 'threes.']\n\n  [Enter two Citizens.]\n\n  Cor. Bid them wash their faces,\n  And keep their teeth clean._--So, here comes a _brace_,\n  You know the cause, Sir, of my standing here.\n\n  _First Cit_. We do, Sir; _tell us what hath brought you to't_,\n\n  _Cor. Mine own desert._--[The would-be consul answers.]\n\n  _Second Cit_. Your own desert?\n\n  _Cor_. Ay, not\n  Mine own desire.\n\n  [His _own_ desert has brought him to the consulship; his _own_\n  desire would have omitted the conciliation of the people, and\n  the deference to their will, that with all his desert somehow he\n  seems to find expected from him.]\n\n  _First Cit_. How! not your own desire!\n\n  _Cor_. No, Sir.\n  'Twas never my desire yet,\n  _To trouble the poor with begging_.\n\nHe desires what the poor have to give him however; but he desires to\ntake it, without begging. But it is the heart of the true hero that\nspeaks in earnest through that mockery, and the reference is to a\nstate of things towards which the whole criticism of the play is\nsteadfastly pointed, a state in which sovereigns were reluctantly\ncompelled to beg from the poor, what they would rather have taken\nwithout their leave, or, at least, a state in which the _form_ of this\nbegging was still maintained, though there lacked but little to make\nit a form only, a state of things in which a country gentleman might\nbe called on to sell 'his brass pans' without being supplied, on the\npart of the State, with what might appear, to him, any respectable\nreason for it, putting his life in peril, and coming off, with a\nhair's-breadth escape, of all his future usefulness, if he were bold\nenough to question the proceeding; a state of things in which a poor\nlaw-reader might feel himself called upon to buy a gown for a lady,\nwhose gowns were none of the cheapest, at a time when the state of his\nfinances might render it extremely inconvenient to do so.\n\nBut to return to the Roman citizen, for the play is written by one who\nknows that the human nature is what it is in all ages, or, at least,\nuntil it is improved with better arts of culture than the world has\nyet tried on it.\n\n  _First Cit. You must think, if we give you anything,\n  We hope to gain by you._\n\n  _Cor. Well then_, I pray, YOUR PRICE O'THE CONSULSHIP?\n\n  _First Cit_. The price is, Sir, to ask it _kindly_.\n\n  _Cor. Kindly_?\n  Sir, I pray let me ha't: I have wounds to show you,\n  Which shall be yours in private.--Your good voice, Sir;\n  What say you?\n\n  _Second Cit_. You shall have it, _worthy_ Sir.\n\n  _Cor_. A _match_, Sir:\n  There is in all two worthy voices begg'd:--\n  _I have your alms_; adieu.\n\n  _First Cit_. But this is something _odd_.\n\n  _Second Cit. An 'twere to give again_,--But 'tis no matter.\n\n  [_Exeunt two Citizens_.]\n\n  [_Enter two other Citizens_.]\n\n  _Cor_. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices,\n  that I may be consul, I have here _the customary gown_.\n\n  _Third Cit_. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have\n  not deserved nobly.\n\n  _Cor. Your enigma_?\n\n  _Third Cit_. You have been a _scourge to her enemies_, you _have\n  been a rod to her friends_; you have _not_ INDEED, loved the COMMON\n  PEOPLE.\n\n  _Cor_. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been\n  common in my love. I will, Sir, flatter my sworn brother the people,\n  to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition _they account_\n  GENTLE: and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my\n  hat than my heart, _I will practise_ the _insinuating nod_, and be\n  _off to them most counterfeitly_; that is, Sir, I will counterfeit\n  the bewitchment of _some popular man, and give it bountifully to\n  the desirers_. Therefore, beseech you, I may be consul.\n\n  _Fourth Cit_. We hope to find you _our friend_; and _therefore_\n  give you our voices heartily.\n\n  _Third Cit_. You have received many wounds for your country.\n\n  _Cor_. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make\n  much of your voices, and so trouble you no further.\n\n  _Both Cit_. The gods give you joy, Sir, heartily!  [_Exeunt_.]\n\n  _Cor_. Most sweet voices!--\n  Better it is to die, better to starve,\n  ...Rather than fool it so,\n  Let the high office and the honour go\n  To one that would do thus.--I am half through;\n  _The one part suffer'd, the other will I do_.\n\n  [_Enter three other Citizens._]\n\n  Here come more voices,--\n  Your Voices: _for your_ voices _I have fought_:\n  _Watch'd_ for _your voices; for your voices, bear\n  Of wounds two dozen odd_; battles thrice six,\n  I have seen and heard of; _for your voices_,\n  Done many things, _some less, some more_: your voices:\n  _Indeed, I would be consul_.\n\n  _Fifth Cit_. He has done _nobly_, and _cannot go without any honest\n  man's voice_.\n\n  _Sixth Cit_. Therefore let him be consul: The gods give him joy, and\n  make him _good friend to the people_.\n\n  _All_. Amen, Amen.--\n  _God save thee, noble_ consul! [_Exeunt Citizens_.]\n\n  _Cor_. WORTHY VOICES!\n\n  [_Re-enter Menenius, with the tribunes Brutus, and Sicinius._]\n\n  _Men_. You have stood your limitation; and the tribunes\n  Endue you with the people's voice: _Remains_,\n  That in the _official marks_ invested, you\n  _Anon_ do meet the senate.\n\n  _Cor_. Is this done?\n\n  _Sic_. The _custom_ of _request_ you have discharged:\n  _The people do admit you_; and are _summon'd_\n  To meet anon, _upon your approbation_.\n\n  _Cor_. Where? At the senate-house?\n\n  _Sic. There_ Coriolanus.\n\n  _Cor. May I change these garments_?\n\n  _Sic_. You may, Sir.\n\n  _Cor_. That I'll straight do, and _knowing myself again_,\n  Repair to the senate house.\n\n  _Men_. I'll keep you company.--Will you along.\n\n  _Bru. We stay here for the people_.\n\n  _Sic_. Fare you well.\n\n  [_Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius_.]\n\n  _He has it now_; and by his looks, methinks,\n  'Tis warm at his heart.\n\n  _Bru. With a proud heart he wore\n  His humble weeds_: Will you dismiss the people?\n\n[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the review, the\ncritical review, is that which must follow, for this is not the same\npeople we had on the stage when the play began. They are the same in\nperson, perhaps; but it is no longer a mob, armed with clubs,\nclamouring for bread, rushing forth to kill their chiefs, and have\ncorn at their own price. It is a people conscious of their political\npower and dignity, an organised people; it is a people with a\nconstituted head, capable of instructing them in the doctrine of\npolitical duties and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this\nreview of the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned\nTribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom, this\ngreat, popular veto, this deliberate 'rejection' of the popular\naffirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, 'a _negative_\ninstance.']\n\n  [_Re-enter Citizens_.]\n\n  _Sic_. How now, _my masters?_ HAVE YOU CHOSE THIS MAN?\n\n  _First Cit_. He has our _voices_, Sir.\n\n  _Bru_. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.\n\n  _Second Cit_. Amen, Sir: To my poor unworthy notice,\n  _He mocked us when he begg'd our voices_.\n\n  _Third Cit_. Certainly\n  He flouted us downright.\n\n  _First Cit_. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.\n\n  _Second Cit_. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says,\n  He used us _scornfully_: he should have show'd us\n  His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.\n\n  _Sic_. Why, so he did, I am sure.\n\n  _Cit_. No; no man saw 'em. [_Several speak_.]\n\n  _Third Cit_. He said he _had_ wounds which he could show in private;\n  And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,\n  'I _would be consul_,' says he,' AGED CUSTOM,\n  BUT BY YOUR VOICES, WILL NOT SO PERMIT ME;\n  _Your voices_ THEREFORE:' When we granted that,\n  Here was,--'I thank you for your voices,--thank you,--\n  Your most sweet voices:--_now you have left your voices,\n  I have no further with you:'--Was not this mockery?_\n\n  _Sic_. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't?\n  Or, seeing it, of such _childish friendliness\n  To yield your voices?_\n\n  _Bru_. Could you not have told him\n  As you were lesson'd--when he had no power,\n  But was a petty servant to the state,\n  He was your enemy; ever spake _against_\n  _Your_ LIBERTIES, and the CHARTERS that you bear\n  _I'_ THE BODY of the WEAL: and now arriving\n  A _place of potency, and sway_ o' the state,\n  If he should still malignantly remain\n  _Fast foe_ to the plebeii, _your voices might\n  Be_ CURSES _to_ YOURSELVES.\n\n  _Sic_.               Thus to have said\n  As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit,\n  And _tried_ his inclination; from him plucked,\n  Either his gracious promise, which _you might,\n  As cause had called you up, have_ HELD HIM TO;\n  _Or else_ it would have galled his surly nature,\n  _Which easily endures, not article\n  Tying him to aught_;--so putting him to rage,\n  You should have ta'en advantage of his choler,\n  And so left him unelected.\n\n[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old _Roman_ statesmen to\ngive, and not so very unlike those which English Commons found\noccasion to put in execution not long after.]\n\n  _Bru_. Did you perceive he did solicit you _in free contempt_,\n  When he did need your loves; and do you think\n  That his contempt shall not be bruising to you,\n  When, he hath _power to crush_? Why had your bodies\n  _No heart among you_, or had you tongues\n  To cry against THE RECTORSHIP of--_judgment_?\n\n  _Sic_.                       Have you\n  Ere now, _deny'd the asker_, and now again,\n  On him that _did not ask, but mock_, [with a pretence of asking,]\n  bestow Your sued for tongues?\n\n  _Third Cit_. HE'S NOT CONFIRMED, _we may deny him_ YET.\n\n  _Second Cit. And will deny him:\n  I'll have five hundred voices of that sound_.\n\n  _First Cit. I_, twice five hundred, and their friends to _piece\n  'em_.\n\n  _Bru_. Get you hence instantly, and _tell those friends_,\n  They have chose a consul that will from them\n  _Take their liberties_, MAKE THEM OF NO MORE VOICE\n  THAN DOGS, that are as often BEAT for barking,\n  As KEPT TO DO SO.\n\n  _Sic_.        Let them assemble,\n  And on a safer judgment, ALL REVOKE\n  Your IGNORANT ELECTION.\n\n  _Bru_.             Lay\n  A fault on _us, your tribunes_; that WE LABOURED\n  NO IMPEDIMENT BETWEEN, but that you _must_\n  Cast your election on him.\n\n  _Sic_. Say, you chose him\n  More after our commandment, than as guided\n  By your own true affections, and that your minds,\n  _Pre-occupied_ with what you rather _must_ do,\n  Than what you _should_, made you _against the grain_\n  To voice _him_ consul: lay the fault _on us_.\n\n  _Bru_. Ay, SPARE us NOT. _Say_ WE READ LECTURES TO YOU,\n  How youngly _he began to serve his country_,\n  How long continued, and what _stock_ he springs of;\n  The noble house o' the _Marcians_, from whence came,\n  That Ancus Martius, _Numa's_ daughter's son,\n  Who, after _great Hostilius_, here was _king_:\n  Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,\n  _That our best water brought by conduits hither_;\n  And Censoriuus, _darling of the people_,\n  And nobly named so, being _censor twice_,\n  Was his great ancestor.\n\n[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at all. His\nreading and writing comes by nature.]\n\n  _Sic. One thus_ descended,\n  That hath _beside well in his person wrought_,\n  To be set _high in place, we_ did commend\n  To your remembrances; but _you have found,\n  Scaling his present bearing with his past_,\n  That _he's_ your fixed _enemy_, and REVOKE\n  _Your sudden approbation_.\n\n  _Bru._. Say you ne'er had done't,--\n  _Harp on that still_,--but by _our putting on_,\n  And _presently_ when you have drawn your number,\n  Repair to the Capitol.\n\n  _Citizens_. [_Several speak_.] We will so. Almost all\n  Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens.]\n\n  _Bru_. Let them go on.\n  This mutiny were better put in hazard,\n  Than stay, past doubt, for greater;\n  If, as his nature is, he fall in rage\n  With their refusal, both observe and answer\n  The vantage of his anger.\n\n  _Sic_. To the Capitol:\n  Come, _we'll be there before the stream_ o' the people,\n  _And this shall seem, as partly'tis, their own\n  Which_ WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.\n\n[See the Play of Henry the _Seventh_, Founder of the Elizabethan\nTyranny, by the same author.]\n\nWe have witnessed the popular election on the scientific boards: we\nhave seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil confirmation\nof the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have seen it in the\nsenate-chamber and in the market-place, and we saw it in 'the\nsmothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and on 'the leads and\nridges': we have seen and heard it, not in the shower and thunder that\nthe commons made with their caps and voices only, but in the scarfs,\nand gloves, and handkerchiefs, which 'the ladies, and maids, and\nmatrons threw.' We have seen each single contribution to this great\npublic act put in by the Poet's selected representative of classes.\n'The kitchen malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck,\nclambering the wall to eye him,' spake for hers; 'the seld-shown\nflamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to\nrecord the vote of his; 'the veiled dame, exposing the war of white\nand damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of Phebus' burning\nkisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distribution of the\ntribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; 'the prattling nurse' who\nwill give her baby that is 'crying itself into a rapture there, while\nshe chats him' her reminiscence of this scene by and by, was there to\ngive the nurses' approbation.\n\nFor this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up and count,\nwhen he comes to review at last, 'in a better hour,' these spontaneous\npublic acts--these momentous acts that seal up the future, and bind\nthe unborn generations of the advancing kind with the cramp of their\nfetters. Not less careful than this is the analysis when he undertakes\nto track to its historic source one of those practical axioms, one of\nthose received beliefs, which he finds determining the human conduct,\nlimiting the human history, moulding the characters of men,\ndetermining beforehand what they shall be. This is the process when he\nundertakes, to get one of these rude, instinctive, spontaneous\naffirmations--one of those idols of the market or of the\nTribe--reviewed and criticised by the heads of the Tribe, at least,\n'in a better hour,'--criticised and rejected. 'Proceeding by negatives\nand exclusion first': this is the form in which this Tribune puts on\nrecord his scientific veto of that 'ignorant election.'\n\nAnd in this so carefully selected and condensed combination of\nhistorical spectacles--in this so new, this so magnificently\nillustrated political history--there is another historic moment to be\nbrought out now; and in this same form of 'visible history,' one not\nless important than those already exhibited.\n\nIn the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement, the\ngreat historic spectacle of a people 'REVOKING THEIR IGNORANT\nELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of those same remarkable\nleaders, whose voice had been wanting (as they are careful to inform\nus) till then in the business of the state; leaders who contrive at\nlast to inform the people, in plain terms, that they 'are at point to\nlose their liberties,' that 'Marcius will have all from them,' and who\napologise for their conduct afterwards by saying, that 'he affected\none sole throne, _without assistance_'; for the time had come when the\nTribune could repeat the Poet's whisper, 'The _one_ side shall have\n_bale_.'\n\nThis so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited here in\nall its actual historical detail. It is produced by one who is able to\ninclude in his dramatic programme the whole sweep of its\neventualities, the whole range of its particulars, because he has made\nhimself acquainted with the forces, he has ascended, by scientifically\ninclusive definition, to the 'powers' that are to be 'operant' in it;\nand he who has that 'charactery' of nature, may indeed 'lay the future\nopen.' We talk of prophecy; but there is nothing in literature to\ncompare at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction.\nThere is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars, in\nits comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.\n\nBut this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make before that\nrevolutionary movement, which in its weak beginnings in his time lay\nintreasured, should proceed any further--this preliminary speech, with\nits so vivid political illustration, is not yet finished. The true\ndoctrine of an instructed scientific election and government, that\n'vintage' of politics--that vintage of scientific definitions and\naxioms which he is getting out of this new kind of history--that new\nvintage of the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted\nhistory, will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with\nthe popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that _it\nbegins with affirmation_--but that is the method for gods, and not\nmen--men must begin with negations; they must have tables of _review_\nof instances, tables of negation, tables of rejection; and _divide_\nnature, not with fire, but with the mind, that divine fire. 'If the\nmind attempt this affirmation from the first,' he says, '_which it\nalways will when left to itself_ there will spring up _phantoms, mere\ntheories_, and _ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring daily\ncorrection_. These will be better or worse, according to the power and\nstrength of the understanding which creates them. But it is only for\nGod to recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of\ncontemplation; _men_ can only proceed first by negatives, and then to\nconclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection.' And\nthough he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed with the nature of\nHEAT, at the moment in which he first produces these new scientific\ninstruments, which he calls tables of _review_, and explains their\n'facilities,' he tells us plainly, that they are adapted to _other\nsubjects_, and that those affirmations which are most essential to the\nwelfare of man, will in due time come off from them, practical axioms\non matters of universal and incessant practical concern, that will not\nwant _daily correction_, that will not want revolutionary correction,\nto fit them to the exigency.\n\nThe question here is not of 'heat,' but of SOVEREIGNTY; it is the\nquestion of the _consulship_, regarded from the ground of the\ntribuneship. It is not Coriolanus that this tribune is spending so\nmuch breath on. The _instincts_, which unanalytic, barbaric ages,\nenthrone and mistake for greatness and nobility, are tried and\nrejected here; and the business of the play is, to get them excluded\nfrom the chair of state. The philosopher will have those instincts\nwhich men, in their 'particular and private natures,' share with the\nlower orders of animals, searched out, and put in their place in human\naffairs, which is _not_, as he takes it, THE HEAD--the head of the\nCOMMON-weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all\nagainst him--he is partial to him, rather; it is not _Coriolanus_ but\nthe instincts that are on trial here, and the man--the so-called\n_man_--of instinct, who has no principle of state and sovereignty, no\nprinciple of true _man_liness and nobility in his soul; and the trial\nis not yet completed. The author would be glad to have that revolution\nwhich he has inserted in the heart of this play deferred, if that were\npossible, though he knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a\nsaving of trouble if it could be deferred until some true and\nscientifically prepared notions, some practical axioms, which would\nnot need in their turn fierce historical correction--revolutionary\ncorrection--could be imparted to the _common mind_.\n\nBut we must follow him in this process of _division_ and exclusion a\nlittle further, before we come in our plot to the revolution. That\nrevolution which he foresees as imminent and inevitable, he has put on\npaper here: but there is another lurking within, for which we are not\nyet ripe. This locked-up tribune will have to get abroad; he will have\nto get his limits enlarged, and find his way into some new\ndepartments, before ever _that_ can begin.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.\n\n\n'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he\ndoth not consider that all professions are _from thence_ served and\nsupplied.'\n\n_Advancement of Learning_.\n\n'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it\nis a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'\n\n_Novum Organum_.\n\nAs to the _method_ of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is\nbrought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions,\nat a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal\nOrdinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them--in an age, too, when\nParliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for\ncontumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of _state_--in an\nage in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the\nmidst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the\npresence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their\nown business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on\na day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person,\nin her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be\nin her pew;--as to the _method_ of the philosophical investigations\nwhich were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there\nwas no harm in displaying _that_ in the abstract, as a _method_\nmerely. As a method of _philosophical_ inquiry, there was no harm in\npresenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying\nthe exhibition with careful, and _apparently specific_, directions as\nto the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm,\nindeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the\nattention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to\nit in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable\nblowing of trumpets. As a method of _philosophical inquiry_, merely,\nwhat earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing\nin nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were\nconcerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or\na queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods\nthe philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old\none, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern\nSolomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not--that it\nwas beyond his depth; whereas the history of _Henry the Seventh_, by\nthe same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite\nwithin his range, and to _that_ he gave his own personal approbation.\nThe other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world,\nand promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign,\nand make it illustrious in future ages.\n\nThere was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his _method_\nthen, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its\napplications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did\nwith it himself--that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's\nbusiness but his own just then, as it happened.\n\nSo totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and\ngreatest innovation in its practice--so totally unaccustomed were men\nthen to look for anything like _power_ in the quarter from which this\nseemed to be proceeding--so impossible was it for this single book to\nremove that previous impression--that the Author of the Novum Organum\ncould even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its\nspecific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent\nallusions to the comprehensive nature--the essentially comprehensive\nnature--of '_the Machine_' whose application to these _certain\ninstances_ he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce\nit with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of\nit.\n\nNay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over\nhis own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, _the\nassertion_ that this new method of inquiry _does apply_, directly and\nprimarily, to those questions in which the human race are _primarily\nconcerned_; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions,\nand was invented to that end.\n\nSuch a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the\nhands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the\nhuman use--when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the\ntimes that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains\nto tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the\nNOVUM ORGANUM with the key of '_Times_' does not need to be told--can\nsee for himself--that in his _description of the method_ he has\nalready contrived to _make the application_, the _universal_ practical\n_application_.\n\nIn his PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, the mind of man is brought out already\nfrom its SPECIFIC narrowness, from its own abstract logical conceits\nand arrogant prenotions, into that collision with fact--the broader\nfact, the universal fact--and subjected to that discipline from it\nwhich is the intention of this logic. It is a 'machine' which is meant\nto serve to Man as a '_New' Mind_--the scientific mind, which is in\nharmony with nature--a mind informed and enlarged with the universal\nlaws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind,\ninstead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with\nits own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with\nuniversal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with _that_, priding\nitself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those\nhuman faculties which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments\nof his welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is\na Machine in which _the senses_, those hitherto despised instruments\nin _philosophy_, by means of a scientific rule and oversight, and with\nthe aid of scientific instruments, are made available for philosophic\npurposes. It is a Machine in which that organization whereby the\nuniversal nature _impresses_ itself on us--reports itself to\nus--striking its incessant telegraphs on us, whether we read them or\nnot, is for the first time brought to the philosopher's aid; and it is\na Machine, also, by which _speculation_, that hitherto despised\ninstrument in _practice_, is for the first time, brought to the aid of\nthe man of practice. It is doubly 'New': it is a Machine in which\nspeculation becomes practical--it is a Machine in which practice\nbecomes scientific.\n\n [_Fool_. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his\n  face?\n\n  _Lear_. No.\n\n  _Fool_. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he\n  cannot smell out, he may spy into.]\n\nIn 'THE PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' the universal matter of _fact_ is\nalready taken up and disposed of in grand masses, under these\nheadships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous, but scientific\nmanner. The Nature of Things is all there; for this is a Logic which\nbows the mind of man to the law of the universal nature, and _informs_\nand enlarges it with that. It is not a Logic merely in the old sense\nof that term. The old Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew\nout of it, are the things which this Machine is going to puff away,\nwith the mere whiff and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse\nfor ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been limited,\nbut a philosophy. A logic in which the general 'notions of nature'\nwhich are _causes_, powers, simple powers, elemental powers, true\ndifferences, are substituted for those spontaneous, rude, uncorrected,\n_specific_ notions,--_pre_-notions of men, which have in that form, as\nthey stand thus, no correlative in nature, and are therefore\nimpotent--not true _terms_ and _forms_, but air-words, air-lines,\nmerely. It is a logic which includes the Mind of NATURE, and her laws;\nand not one which is limited to the mind of _Man_, and so fitted to\nits _incapacity_ as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate\nhim in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by rule,\nand set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.\n\nThe universal history, all of it that the mind of man is constituted\nto grasp, is here in the general, under these PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,\nin the luminous order of the Inventor of this science, blazing\nthroughout with his genius, and the mind that has abolished its\nprenotions, and renounced its rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies,\nand has taken this scientific Organum instead; has armed itself with\nthe Nature of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all\nspecifications and particulars.\n\nThe author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic\narrangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in this\ngreat work of his, the work in which he openly introduces HIS\nINNOVATION,--as that--will fall off by and by, when there is no longer\nany need of them. They are but the natural guards with which great\nNature, working in the instinct of the philosophic genius, protects\nher choicest growth,--the husk of that grain which must have times,\nand a time to grow in,--the bark which the sap must stop to build, ere\nits delicate works within are safe. They are like the sheaths with\nwhich she hides through frost and wind and shower, until their hour\nhas come, her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning,\nher struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial\ntriumphs.\n\nIn the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this complicated\nnetwork of superficial divisions, the man of humour, who is always not\nfar off and ready to assist in the priestly ministrations as he sees\noccasion, gently directs our attention to those more simple and\nnatural divisions of the subject, and those more immediately practical\nterms, which it might be possible to use, under certain circumstances,\nin speaking of the _same subjects_, into which, however, _these_ are\neasily resolvable, as soon as the right point of observation is taken.\nThrough all this haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the\noutline of those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly\nproduced--under their scholastic names, indeed,--in his book of the\nAdvancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly continue, in a\nwork produced professedly, as a practical instrument fit for\napplication to immediate use, and where the true application is\nconstantly entering the vitals of subjects too delicate to be openly\nglanced at then.\n\nBut he gives us to understand, however, that he _has_ made the\napplication of this method to practice, in a much more _specific,\ndetailed_ manner, in another place, that he _has_ brought it down from\nthose more general forms of the Novum Organum, into 'the nobler'\ndepartments, 'the more chosen' departments of that universal field of\nhuman practice, which the Novum Organum takes up in its great outline,\nand boldly and clearly claims in the general, though when it comes to\nspecific applications and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike,\nor appear to strike, into that one track of practice, which was the\nonly one left open to it then,--which it keeps still as rigidly as if\nit had no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk\nof 'universality,' and carried it with his own hand into the minutest\npoints and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres, those\nliving articulations in which the grand natural divisions he indicates\nhere, naturally terminate; the divisions which the philosopher who\n'makes the Art and Practic part of life, the _mistress_ to his\nTheoric,' must of course follow. He tells us that he _has_ applied it\nto PARTICULAR ARTS, to those departments of the human experience and\npractice in which the need of a _rule_ is most felt, and where things\nhave been suffered to go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous\nmanner, and that his axioms of practice in these departments have been\nso scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they\nwill be apt to know their way to particulars again;--that their\nspecifications are at the same time so comprehensive and so minute,\nthat he considers them fit for immediate use, or at least so far forth\nfitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the\npractitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process\nbeing, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice,\nnecessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the\nold wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal\nup his meanings, in his _professedly_ scientific works, and especially\nin his professedly _practical_ scientific work.\n\nBut these so important applications of his philosophy to practice, of\nwhich he issues so fair a prospectus, though he frequently _refers_ to\nthem, could not then be published. The time had not come, and\npersonally, he was obliged to leave, before it came. He was careful,\nhowever, to make the best provision which could be made, under such\ncircumstances, for the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a\nwill. These works of _practice_ could not then be published; and if\nthey could have been, there was no public then ready for them. They\ncould not be _published_; but there was nothing to hinder their being\nput under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in packing\nthem up in a portable form, under lids and covers of one sort and\nanother, so unexceptionable, that all the world could carry them\nabout, for a century or two, and not perceive that there was any harm\nin them. Very curiously wrought covers they might be too, with some\ntaste of the wonders of mine art pressing through, a little here and\nthere. They might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in\none case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another; but in\nsuch a manner as to command, in both cases, the admiration and wonder\nof men, so as to pique perpetually their curiosity and provoke\ninquiry, until the time had come and the key was found.\n\n'Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes\nin the historical plural of his philosophic chair,--'_this question,\nrather than objection_,'--[it was much to be preferred in that form\ncertainly]--'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone,\naccording to our method, or _the other sciences such as_--ETHICS,\nLOGIC, POLITICS.' A pretty _question_ to raise just then, truly,\nthough this philosopher sees fit to take it so demurely. 'Whether we\ntalk of _perfecting politics_ with our method,' Elizabethan\npolitics,--and not politics only, but whether we talk of _perfecting\n'ethics'_ with it also, and 'logic,--common logic,' which last is as\nmuch in need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of\nperfecting of that is the reform in the others. 'We certainly\nintend,'--the emphasis here is on the word '_certainly_,' though the\nreader who has not the key of the times may not perceive it; 'We\ncertainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' For this is the author whose\nwords are most of them emphatic. We must read his sentences more than\nonce to get all the emphasis. We certainly INTEND to comprehend them\nall. 'We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing _that_ word in\nanother place, and putting this intention into the shape of a\n_promise_.\n\nAnd as _common logic which regulates matters_ by syllogism is applied,\nnot only to natural, but to every other science, so our inductive\nmethod _likewise_, comprehends them _all_.--Again--[he thinks this\nbears repeating, repeating in this connection, for now he is measuring\nthe claims of this new method, this _new logic_, with the claims of\nthat which he finds in possession, regulating matters by syllogism,\nnot producing a very logical result, however:] 'For we form a history,\nand tables of invention, for ANGER, FEAR, SHAME, and the like,' [that\nis--we _form_ a _history_ and tables of _invention_ for the passions\nor affections,] 'and _also_ for EXAMPLES IN CIVIL LIFE, and the MENTAL\nOPERATIONS ... as well as for HEAT, COLD, LIGHT, VEGETATION and THE\nLIKE,' and he directs us to the Fourth Part of the Instauration, which\nhe reserves for his noblest and more chosen subjects for the\nconfirmation of this assertion.\n\n'_But_ since our method of interpretation, after preparing and\narranging a history, does not content itself with examining _the\nopinions and desires_ of THE MIND--[hear]--like common logic, but also\ninspects THE NATURE of THINGS, we so regulate the mind that it may be\nenabled to _apply itself_, in every respect, correctly to _that\nnature_.' Our _examples_ in this part of the work, which is but a\nsmall and preparatory part of it, are limited, as you will observe, to\n_heat, cold, light, vegetation_, and _the like_; but this is the\nexplanation of the general intention, which will enable you to\ndisregard that circumstance in your reading of it.--Those examples\nwill serve their purpose with the minds that they detain. They are\npreparatory, and greatly useful, if you read this new logic from the\nheight of this explanation, you will have a mind, formed by that\nprocess, able to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to the\nsubjects omitted here by name, but so clearly claimed, not as the\nproper subjects only, but as the _actual_ subjects of the new\ninvestigation. But lest you should not understand this explanation, he\ncontinues--'_On this account_ we deliver _necessary_ and _various_\nprecepts in _our doctrine of interpretation_, so that we may apply, in\nsome measure, to the method of discovering _the quality and condition\nof the subject matter of investigation_.' And this is the apology for\nomitting here, or _seeming_ to omit, _such sciences as_ Ethics,\nPolitics, and that science which is alluded to under the name of\n_Common Logic_.\n\nThis is, indeed, a very instructive paragraph, though it is a\ngratuitous one for the scholar who has found leisure to read this work\nwith the aid of that doctrine of _interpretation_ referred to,\nespecially if he is already familiar with its particular applications\nto the noble subjects just specified.\n\nAmong the prerogative instances--'suggestive instances' are\nincluded--'such as _suggest or_ point out _that_ which is\n_advantageous to mankind_; for _bare power_ and _knowledge_ in\n_themselves exalt_, rather than _enrich_, human nature. _We shall have\na better opportunity of discovering these, when we treat of the\napplication to practice._ BESIDES, in the WORK of INTERPRETATION, we\nLEAVE ROOM ON EVERY SUBJECT for the _human or optative_ part; FOR IT\nis A PART OF SCIENCE, to make JUDICIOUS INQUIRIES and WISHES.' 'The\n_generally_ useful instances. They are such as relate to various\npoints, and _frequently occur_, sparing by that means _considerable\nlabour_ and _new trials_. The proper place for speaking of\n_instruments_, and _contrivances_, will be that in which we speak of\n_application to practice_, and the _method_ of EXPERIMENT. _All that\nhas hitherto been ascertained and made use of_, WILL BE APPLIED in the\nPARTICULAR HISTORY of EACH ART.' [We certainly intend to _include_\nthem ALL, such as Ethics, Politics, and Common Logic.]\n\n'We have now, therefore, exhibited the species, or _simple elements_\nof the _motions_, _tendencies_, and _active powers_, which are most\nuniversal in nature; and no small portion of NATURAL, _that is_,\nUNIVERSAL SCIENCE, has been _sketched out_. We do _not_, however, deny\n_that_ OTHER INSTANCES can, _perhaps, be added_' (he has confined\nhimself chiefly to the physical agencies under this head, with a\nsidelong glance at others, now and then), 'and our _divisions changed_\nto some _more natural order_ of _things_ [hear], and also reduced to a\n_less number_ [hear], in which respect we do _not_ allude to any\n_abstract_ classification, as if one were to say,'--and he quotes\nhere, in this apparently disparaging manner, his own grand, new-coined\nclassification, which he has drawn out with his new method from the\nheart of nature, and applied to the human,--which he had to go into\nthe universal nature to find, that very classification which he has\nexhibited _abstractly_ in his Advancement of Learning--_abstractly_,\nand, therefore, without coming into any dangerous contact with any\none's preconceptions,--'as if one were to say, that bodies desire the\n_preservation, exaltation_, propagation, or fruition of their natures;\nor, that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the\nUNIVERSE, as in the case of the motions of _resistance_ and\n_connection_--those two _universal_ motions and tendencies--or of\nEXTENSIVE WHOLES, as in the case of those of the _greater\ncongregation_.' These are phrases which look innocent enough; there is\nno offensive approximation to particulars here, apparently; what harm\ncan there be in the philosophy of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger\ncongregations'? Nobody can call that meddling with 'church and state.'\nSurely one may speak of the nature of things in general, under such\ngeneral terms as these, without being suspected of an intention to\ninnovate. 'Have you heard the argument?' says the king to Hamlet. 'Is\nthere no offence in it?' 'None in the world.' But the philosopher goes\non, and does come occasionally, even here, to words which begin to\nsound at little suspicious in such connexions, or would, if one did\nnot know how _general_ the intention must be in this application of\nthem. They are _abstract_ terms, and, of course, nobody need see that\nthey are a different kind of abstraction from the old ones, that the\ngrappling-hook on all particulars has been abstracted in them. Suppose\none were to say, then, to resume, 'that motion tends to the\npreservation and benefit, either of _the universe_, as in the case of\nthe motions of _resistance_ and _connection_, or of _extensive\nwholes_, as in the case of the motions of _the greater congregation_--\n[what are these motions, then?]--REVOLUTION and ABHORRENCE of CHANGE,\nor of _particular forms_, as in the case of _the others_.' This looks\na little like growing towards a point. We are apt to consider these\nmotions in certain _specific_ forms, as they appear in those extensive\nwholes and larger congregations, which it is not necessary to name\nmore particularly in this connection, though they are terms of a\n'suggestive' character, to borrow the author's own expression, and\nbelong properly to subjects which this author has just included in\nhis system.\n\nBut this is none other than his own philosophy which he seems to be\ncriticising, and rating, and rejecting here so scornfully; but if we\ngo on a little further, we shall find what the criticism amounts to,\nand that it is only the limitation of it to _the general\nstatement_--that it is _the abstract_ form of it, which he complains\nof. He wishes to direct our attention to the fact, that he does not\nconsider it good for anything in that general form in which he has put\nit in his Book of Learning. This is the deficiency which he is always\npointing out in that work, because this is the deficiency which it has\nbeen his chief labour to supply. Till that defect, that grand defect\nwhich his philosophy exhibits, as it stands in his books of abstract\nscience, is supplied--that defect to which, even in these works\nthemselves, he is always directing our attention--he cannot, without\nself-contradiction, propound his philosophy to the world as a\npractical one, good for human relief.\n\nIn order that it should accomplish the ends to which it is addressed,\nit is not enough, he tells us in so many words, to exhibit it in the\nabstract, in general terms, for these are but 'the husks and shells of\nsciences.' It must be brought down and applied to those artistic\nreformations which afflicted, oppressed human nature demands--to those\nartistic constructions to which human nature spontaneously,\ninstinctively tends, and empirically struggles to achieve.\n\n'For _although_,' he continues,'_such remarks_--those last\nquoted--_be_ just, _unless they terminate in_ MATTER AND CONSTRUCTION,\n_according to the_ TRUE DEFINITIONS, _they are_ SPECULATIVE, and of\nLITTLE USE.' But in the Novum Organum, those more natural divisions\nare reduced to a form in which it IS _possible to commence practice_\nwith them at once, in certain departments, where there is no objection\nto _innovation_,--where the proposal for the relief of the human\nestate is met without opposition,--where the new scientific\nachievements in the conquest of nature are met with a universal,\nunanimous human plaudit and gratulation.\n\n'_In the meantime_,' he continues, after condemning those abstract\nterms, and declaring, that unless they terminate in _matter and\nconstruction, according_ to _true definitions_, they are\n_speculative_, and of _little use_--'_In the meantime, our\nclassification will suffice_, and be of much use in the consideration\nof the PREDOMINANCE of POWERS, and examining the WRESTLING INSTANCES,\nwhich constitute our PRESENT SUBJECT.' [The subject that was _present_\nthen. The question.]\n\nSo that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages,\nonly as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with\nthe nature of things, in particular instances, which are _not_ there\ninstanced,--for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the\nscientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the\nhigher departments of human want will constitute,--those _wrestling_\ninstances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which\nconcerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance\nof powers--the philosophy which includes in its programme the\npractical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence\nof change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes,' as well\nas the principles of _motion_ in 'particular forms'--shall come to be\napplied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects. That is the philosophy\nwhich dismisses its technicalities, which finds such words as these\nwhen the question of the predominance of powers, and the question of\nrevolution and abhorrence of change in the greater congregations and\nextensive wholes, comes to be practically handled. This is the way we\nphilosophise 'when we come to particulars.'\n\n                              'In _a rebellion_,\n  When what's _not meet_, but what must be, was law,\n  Then were they chosen. In a better hour,\n  Let what _is meet_ be said it must be _meet_,\n  And _throw their power in the dust_.'\n\nThat is what we should call, in a _general_ way, 'the motion of\nrevolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment in which\nit _predominates_ over 'the abhorrence of change,' if not in the\nextensive whole--if not in _the whole_ of the greater congregation, in\nthat part of it for whom this one speaks; and this is the critical\nmoment which the man of science makes so much of,--brings out so\nscientifically, so elaborately in this experiment. But this is a part\nof science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for\ninstance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to\nthe aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which\nthese petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the\nminds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the\nscale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its\nantagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it.\n\n               'But for my single self,\n  I had as lief not be, as live to be\n  In awe of such a thing as _I_ myself.\n  I was born free as Caesar; so were you.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world\n  _Like a Colossus_; and we, petty men,\n  Walk under his huge legs, and peep about\n  To find ourselves _dishonorable graves_.\n  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,\n  But in ourselves, that we are underlings.\n  _Brutus_ and _Caesar_. What should be in _that Caesar_?\n  Why should that name be sounded more than yours?\n                               Conjure with them;\n  _Brutus_ will start a spirit as soon as _Caesar_.\n  _Now in the name_ of _all the gods at once_,\n  _Upon what meat doth this our_ CAESAR _feed,\n  That he is grown so great_? AGE, _thou_ art shamed:\n  Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods.\n  When went there by an AGE, since the great flood,\n  But it was famed with more than with ONE MAN?\n  When could they say, till now, that talked of _Rome_,\n  That _her wide walls_ encompassed _but One Man_?\n  _Now_ is it _Rome indeed_, and _room enough_,\n  When there is in it but _One Only Man_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  What you would work me to, I have some aim;\n  _How I have thought of this_, and of _these times_,\n  I shall recount hereafter.\n  Now could _I_, Casca,\n  _Name_ to thee a man most like this dreadful night;\n  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars\n  As doth the lion in the Capitol,\n  A man no mightier than thyself, or me,\n  In PERSONAL ACTION; yet _prodigious_ grown,\n  And _fearful as these strange eruptions are_.'\n  ''T is Caesar _that you mean_: Is it _not_, Cassius?'\n  'Let it be--WHO IT is: for Romans now\n  Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf,\n  But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.\n  _He_ were no _lion, were not Romans hinds.\n  Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,\n  Begin it_ with--WEAK STRAWS. What _trash_ is--Rome\n  What rubbish, and what offal, _when it serves\n  for the base matter to illuminate\n  So vile a thing as_--Caesar. But--\n  _I_ perhaps _speak this_\n  Before a willing bondman.\n\nAnd here is another case where the question of the predominance of\npowers arises. In this instance, it is the question of _British_\nfreedom that comes up; and the _tribute_--not the tax--that a\nCaesar--the first Caesar himself, had exacted, is refused 'in a better\nhour,' by a people kindling with ancestral recollections, throwing\nthemselves upon their ancient rights, and '_the natural bravery of\ntheir isle_,' and ready to re-assert their ancient liberties.\n\nThe Ambassador of Augustus makes his master's complaint at the British\nCourt. The answer of the State runs thus, king, queen and prince\ntaking part in it, as the Poet's convenience seems to require.\n\n'This tribute,' complains the Roman; 'by thee, lately, is left\nuntendered.'\n\n  _Queen_. And, to kill the marvel,\n  Shall be so ever.\n\n  _Prince Cloten_.  _There be many Caesars_,\n  Ere such another Julius. Britain is\n  _A world by itself_; and we will nothing pay,\n  For wearing our own noses. [_General principles_.]\n\n  _Queen_. That opportunity\n  _Which then they had to take from us, to resume\n  We have again._ Remember, sir, my liege,\n\n  [It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]\n\n  _The kings your ancestors_; together with\n  The natural bravery of your isle; which stands\n  As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in\n  With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;\n  With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,\n  But suck them up to the top-mast.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  _Cloten_. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: _Our kingdom\n  is stronger_ than it was at that time; and, as _I said_, there is\n  no more _such_ Caesars: _other_ of them _may have crooked noses_;\n  but, to owe _such straight arms_, none.\n\n  _Cymbeline_. Son, let your mother end.\n\n  _Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan_:\n  I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.--Why tribute? Why\n  should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a\n  blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute\n  for light; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.\n\n  _Cymbeline_. You must know,\n  Till the _injurious Romans_ did extort\n  This tribute from us, _we were free: Caesar's ambition_\n  .... against all colour, here\n  Did put the yoke upon us; which to _shake off_,\n  Becomes a warlike people, _whom we reckon_\n  _Ourselves to be_. We do say then to Caesar,\n  _Our_ ancestor was that Mulmutius, _which\n  Ordained_ OUR LAWS, whose use THE SWORD OF CAESAR\n  _Hath too much mangled_; whose REPAIR and FRANCHISE,\n  Shall, by the power we hold, be _our good deed_.\n  Mulmutius _made our laws_,\n  Who was the first of BRITAIN which did put\n  His brows within a golden crown, and called\n  _Himself_ a KING.\n\nThat is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a people who have\nsuch an ancestor to refer to; no matter what costume he comes in. This\nis Caesar in Britain; and though Prince Cloten appears to incline\nnaturally to prose, as the medium best adapted to the expression of\nhis views, the blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus\nand Cassius, and seems to run in their vein very much.\n\nIt is in some such terms as these that we handle those universal\nmotions on whose balance the welfare of the world depends--'the\nmotions of _resistance_ and _connection_,' as the Elizabethan\nphilosopher, with a broader grasp than the Newtonian, calls them--when\nwe come to the diagrams which represent particulars. This is the kind\nof language which this author adopts when he comes to the\nmodifications of those motions which are incident to extensive wholes\nin the case of the greater congregations; that is, '_revolution_' and\n'_abhorrence of change_,' and to those which belong to _particular\nforms_ also. For it is the science of life; and when the universal\nscience touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious\nthan this. It will have the _particular of life_ here also. It will\nnot have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have abstract\nbutterflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the kind of 'loud'\ntalk that one is apt to hear in this man's school; and the clash and\nclang that this very play now under review is full of, is just the\nnoise that is sure to come out of his laboratory, whenever he gets\nupon one of these experiments in 'extensive wholes,' which he is so\nfond of trying. It is the noise that one always hears on his stage,\nwhenever the question of 'particular forms' and _predominance of\npowers comes_ to be put experimentally, at least, _in this class_ of\n'wrestling instances.'\n\nFor we have here a form of composition in which that more simple and\nnatural order above referred to is adopted--where those clear\nscientific classifications, which this author himself plainly exhibits\nin another scientific work, though he disguises them in the Novum\nOrganum, are again brought out, no longer in the abstract, but\ngrappling the matter; where, instead of the scientific technicalities\njust quoted--instead of those abstract terms, such as 'extensive\nwholes,' 'greater congregation,' 'fruition of their natures,' and the\nlike--we have terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but\nmore living--words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific\ncondensations--reddening with the glow, or whitening with the calm, of\nits ideal intensities--pursuing it everywhere--everywhere, to the last\nheight of its poetic fervors and exaltations.\n\nAnd it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue from\nthis 'source'--it is because it proceeds from this scientific centre,\non the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and\nrefrangibilities of the universal beam--it is because all this\ninexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded with\nthe fibre of the universal science--it is because all these\nthick-flowering imaginations, these 'mellow hangings,' are hung upon\nthe stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the _prima\nphilosophia_--it is because of this that men find it so prophetic, so\ninclusive, so magical; _this_ is the reason they find _all_ in it. 'I\nhave either told, or designed to tell, _all_,' says the expositor of\nthese plays. 'What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' For\nall the building of this genius is a building on that scientific\nground-plan he has left us; and that is a plan which includes all _the\nhuman_ field. It is the plan of the _Great Instauration_.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nVOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.\n\n\n  'My boy _Marcius_ approaches.'\n\n  'Why should I war without the walls of Troy,\n  That find such cruel battle here within?\n  Each Trojan that is master of his heart,\n  Let him to field.'\n\n  Is not the ground which _Machiavel_ wisely and largely discourseth\n  concerning governments, that the way to establish and _preserve_\n  them, is to reduce them _ad principia_; a rule in religion and\n  nature, _as well as_ in civil administration? [Again.] Was not\n  _the Persian_ magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of the\n  _principles_ and _architectures_ of nature to the rules and policy\n  of governments?'--['_Questions to be asked_.']--_Advancement of\n  Learning_.\n\nIt is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which\nthe tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to\ncomplete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his\ntime 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver';\nthe virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of\nnobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal\nfame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human\nwelfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom--no matter what\n'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.\n\nHe makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is\neffecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions,\nand received and unquestioned axioms of practice--that separation of\nthe instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called\nheroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility,\nthe true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual\nhuman nature and in the common-weal.\n\nThat _martial_ virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the\nbeginning of this action. It was shown from the first--from that\nground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased\ncommon-weal made for it--in no favourable light. It was branded in the\nfirst scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.'\nIt is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that\ntitle for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively\nonly, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that--eating\nthe poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his\nvitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up\nfrom the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was\nbrought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart\nof the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the\ncivil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men\nenthrone. It was brought out from the first--it came tramping on in\nthe first act, in the first scene--with its sneer at the commons'\ndistress, longing to make 'a quarry of the _quartered_ slaves, as\nhigh' as the plumed hero of it 'could prick his lance'; and that, too,\nbecause they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the\ncommon notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle\nof new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable\nteacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their\nrulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive\nwholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.'\nAnd it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the\nthreat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry\ninto effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an\ninsurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to\nknow.\n\nBut the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle,\nwhich shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home,\nbecomes with the change of circumstances--patriotism. But the Poet\ndoes not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that\nlooks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so\nhaughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the\nprice of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian\ngates--this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons\nat home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the\n_common_ enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind\nof _love_, to say the least of it.\n\nIn that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of\nhis story offers him--this quality which the hostilities of nations\ndeify--he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that\nvirtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a\nlarger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own\npersonality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a\nperpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric\nages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of\nit--the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out\nto; while in the name of _country_ it shows itself 'from face to foot\na thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,'\nundaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts\nit, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and\nnobility which he has already exhibited at home.\n\nThat sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the\nincident; it is the principle of _acquisition_, it is the natural\nprinciple of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of,\nthat nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with,\ntoo--at war with in the parts--one that she is forever opposed to, and\nconquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms--with her law\nof the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation';\nit is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the\nstate to set bounds to in the human constitution--which gets branded\nwith _other_ names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp\nand absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle\nwhich predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the\ncommonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth\nthat preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish\non the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the\ncaptured city--those matchless deeds of valor--the consummation for\n_Coriolanus_ in _Corioli_, for 'the _conqueror_ in the _conquest_,'\nis--'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is--'He never\nstopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field\nand city--OURS.'\n\nThe Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of\nthis LOVE, he will have the heart out of it--this love that stops so\nshort with geographic limits,--that changes with the crossing of a\nline into a demon from the lowest pit.\n\nBut it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified,\n'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has\nseized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when\nhe brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood\nundried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors\nof the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless\ngrace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while _his_\nCoriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in _his_ Corioli, gives\norders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally--the poor man\nat whose house he lay--shall be saved, when he is so weary with\nslaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak\nhis poor friend's name.\n\nHe tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply\nthan ever--this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town.\nCORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. _Marcius_, plain _Caius Marcius_, now no more.\nHe will think it treason--even in the conquered city he will resent\nit--if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or\nforget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town--the\ntown, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries--that,\nwith that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he\nscorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'--has clothed him with his\npurple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear\nany longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty\ncomplexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal\nunscientific _opinion_ of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms,\nwhich the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with\nhis new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew--not here\nonly--which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his\nparticular more near'--with all its fresh, recent historic detail,\nwith all its hideous, barbaric detail.\n\nHe is jealous,--this new Poet of his kind,--he is jealous of this love\nthat makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons,\nunder this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes\nto.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even\n_narrower_ than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he\ncontrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce\nits triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering\npageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base\nand _avaricious_, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its\nhire on its brows.\n\n  _Menenius_. Brings a victory in his pocket.\n  _Volumnia_. On's brows Menenius.\n\nHe surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the\ncavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those\nprivate whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol\nstand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.'\nNay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him\non his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that\n_he should hide_, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And\nthough he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this\nreturn, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people\nto set them down, to a disinterested love for his _country_, it is to\nthis Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to\nhis purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds\nconfounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding\nhere, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the\npopulace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal\ndifferences, the original differences, the difference of things, the\nsimplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them,\ntwo,--not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here,\nwhich he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such\nmischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it--he is\nseparating the martial virtue--from the true heroism, 'with the mind,\nthat divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that\ncover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it\nmakes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.\n\nHe is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that\nprinciple which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own,\nthat principle which enters into and constitutes each man's own\nnoblest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which\nneeds a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give\nit, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages--wanting in all the\nscientific arts--could not give it.\n\nHe will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism\namounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while\nthere is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the\nlower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He\nwill show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the\nhire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this\npoint too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic,\ntheatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires,\nand which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his\n'transient hieroglyphics,' his _tableaux vivants_, his 'dumb-shows' to\naid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators--this,\ntoo, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.\n\nIt is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who\nis merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in\nhis face which men love--_authority_.' 'As waves before a vessel under\nsail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have\nstripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the\nheroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He\ncarries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him\ntheir victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility\nof nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so\nlong as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and\nnobility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He\nwill have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will\n_forge_ himself a new and _better_ name, for 'the patricians are\ncalled _good_ citizens.' He will forget Corioli; _Coriolanus_ now no\nmore, he will conquer _Rome_, and incorporate that henceforth in his\nname. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true\ncitizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private\nsubjection to it,--not by emerging from his particular into the self\nthat comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the\nwhole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the\npart. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a\nnew garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if\nthey will not let him have it within. He will turn against that\ncountry, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian\nhearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have _beheld_ me\nfighting,' he says. 'Come, _try upon yourselves_ what you have _seen\nme_?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he\nalways was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman\nlegions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single\nwrong, or because the people would not let him have _all_ from them,\nhe comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down,\nCaptain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.\n\n'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for\nten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is\nonly the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to\nmake a quarry of _thousands of the quartered slaves_, as high as he\ncould prick his lance! That was 'the altitude of his virtue' _then_.\nIt is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.\n\nSo well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work\nthroughout--so completely has he filled the Roman story with his\n'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which\nmakes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the\nrepresentation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own\ninvention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the\npiece, when this hero, in his conflicting passions and instincts,\ngives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he\nwould have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling\ninanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a\nshade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's\nscolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the\ngods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities, with\nall its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking\nholocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the\ncitizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this\nplay was written.\n\n  'He was a kind of nothing, _titleless_,--\n  Till he had forged himself _a name_ i' the fire\n  _Of burning Rome_.'\n\nThat is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to\nspare the city.\n\n'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say _it was for his\ncountry_, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'\n\nSurely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of\nthis play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in\ndanger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after\nall, in his surmise as to the principles of _the heroic statesmanship_\nand _warfare_, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The\nState banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army\nto make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel\nthan his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had\nvoted for. '_Let them hang_,' ay--(_ay_) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the\ndisposition' they had 'thwarted',--measuring 'the quarry of _the\nquartered slaves_,' which it _would_ make, 'would the nobility but lay\naside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance,\nthe blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had\nthwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on\npain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single\nimpotence, and it came back '_armed_;' for this was one of rude\nnature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.\n\nYet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without\nso long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its\nwarfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and\nslain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both\nsides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the\nred-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a\ncost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city\nlies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is\nsteel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For\nthere is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to\nput down the conflict of changeful, _warring selfs_, to suppress the\nmutiny of mutually opposing, mutually _annihilating_ selfish dictates.\n\nIn vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single passion\nhas its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the passion\nchanges, and the purpose that is _passionate_ must alter with it,\nunless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled\ndictate. For _such_ purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells\nus--one who had had some dramatic experience in it,--\n\n  'is but _the slave to memory_,\n  Of violent birth, and poor validity,\n  Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree,\n  But fall unshaken when they mellow be.\n  What to ourselves _in passion_ we propose,\n  _The passion ending doth the purpose lose_.'\n\nThat is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce\nhis philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of\nhis lines quietly into the court performance: that is his _verbal_\naccount of it; but _his_ action, too, speaks louder and more\neloquently than his words.\n\nThe principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this\nso-called _self_-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace\nprinciple, the principle of _state_ within and without.\n\n             '_To thine own self be true,\n  And it must follow as_ the night the day,\n  _Thou canst not then be false to any man_'\n\nThat is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the\npassionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his\nresolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of _conscientious_\nthought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man\nwho aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world,\nin whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.\n\nHe steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against\nMenenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, '_his eye red_ as\n'twould burn Rome'--a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a\ncity. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,'\nis the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked\nheart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered\nin him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this\nsuperhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in\nthe Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of\nphilosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and\nshow the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no _man_ at all,\nbut, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, '_passion's slave_,'\n'a pipe for fortune's finger _to sound what stop she please_.' For\nthat _state_,--that command--depends on that which '_changes_,'--\nfortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution\nwithin it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot\nengross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various\nin motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys--the single\npassion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning\npassion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come.\nYou cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make\nit look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned\nalone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal\nred. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would\nannul all worlds but that one which it was god of.\n\nThis is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to\ninterpret to us _the thinker's_ inaction, the thinker's irresolution,\nfor 'it is _conscience_ that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man\nwho is resolute enough. _His will_ is not 'puzzled.' _His_ thoughts,\n_his_ scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. _Here_ is THE\nUNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his\nfather. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the\nchurch.'\n\n  'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.\n  Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.\n  I _dare_ damnation. To this point I stand\n  That both the worlds _I_ give to negligence,\n  Let come what comes, _only_ I'll be revenged\n  Most thoroughly for _my_ father.' [_Only_.]\n\nThat is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the\nprinciple of vindictiveness said when it was _you_, when it mastered\nyou, and called _itself_ by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many\nlips; but it is always _one_. That was what it said an hour ago; and\nnow it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you\nare there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery,\nbelying the identity which your visible form--which your _human_ form,\nwas made to promise,--a slave,--a pipe for _fortune's_ finger. This is\nthe kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and\n'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections,\n'after every species of rejection,'--the _affirmation_ is, that there\nis but one principle that is _human_, and that is GOOD yesterday,\nto-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human\nform, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to\nhis yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he\ncannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in\nus all--that is the self of _reason_ and conscience, not passion.\n\nBut as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of\nthis scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'--this poor\nand private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its\nhead, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'--this passion of\nthe petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its\nmonstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on\nthese hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly\nfangs--those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture\nand rend our daily lives--exposed in this great solar microscope,\nstriking the _common-weal_,--as for this petty, usurping passion,\nthere is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.\n\nOut of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which\nyesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had\noffended him,' that was his word,--which yesterday he would have burnt\nin it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that\nbeleaguers Rome it comes--towards the pavilion where the Volscian\ncaptain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course.\nTo other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad\nin mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them;\nbut, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain\ntrembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and\ndoom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic\ninfinity of mastery triumphant in him,--he could _think_ of them and\ndoom them; but the impressions of _the senses_ are more vivid, and the\npassions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the\nlight of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien\nand modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a\n'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as\none might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,--much such\na one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian\nroofs.\n\nBut to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection,\nand not reason--this man of private and particular motives only, and\nblind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it\noutweighs Rome and all her weal--'it is worth of senators and\npatricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land\nfull'--it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.\n\nHis reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as\nthat little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its\nmagnetic sphere.\n\nFor this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and\ninstinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a\nsphere which does not embrace plebeians,--which crushes Volscians with\nclarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its\nexultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are\nexquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in\nthe finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and\nprivate nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial\nconquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine\nambition fired to have _all_. It is instinct, but it is the instinct\nof the human; it is 'conservation with _advancement_' that he is\nblindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights\nthat reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities\nthat affection borrows from it.\n\nAnd the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,'\nscientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as\nno philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on\nthis sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he\nwill not cramp its utterance--he will give it leave to speak, in all\nits tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its\npoetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at\nthe moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive,\nundrenched in humours and affections--for the motive of the weal that\nis common, and not for the motive of that which is private and\nexclusive.\n\nIn vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and seeks to\nretain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself\ndescribes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain\nhe rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it be _virtuous_ to be\n_obstinate_'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of\nhimself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail,\naged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts;\nbut to him it is 'as if _Olympus_ to _a mole-hill_ stooped in\nsupplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature\nspeaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of\nthe beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the\nPoet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach\nthe 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is\nhis young boy's father--he is his fair young wife's beloved.\n\n  'O a kiss, long _as_ my exile, sweet _as_ my revenge.'\n\nThere's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another\nthere, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy--his own\nmother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons\nhim; it is she that conquers him. It _was_ 'her boy,' after all--it\nwas her boy still, that was 'coming home.'\n\nWell might Menenius say--\n\n  '_This Volumnia_ is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,\n  A city full; of tribunes _such as you_,\n  A sea and land full.'\n\nBut let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find\nit; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its\nconnections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find\nanything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still\n'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is\nunder criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play\nalready, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a\nplay in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation\nwas yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should\nbe considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so that _the\nprinciple of 'the election_' need never again be called in question,\nso that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the\nprinciple of revolution.\n\n  'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mould\n  Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand\n  The grand-child to her blood. But, out, _affection_!\n  All bond and privilege of nature, break!\n  _Let it be virtuous to be obstinate_.--\n  What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes,\n  Which can _make gods forsworn_?\n\n['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man\nof infirmity.']\n\n      'I melt, _and am not_\n  Of STRONGER EARTH than others.--My mother bows;\n  As if Olympus to a molehill should\n  In supplication nod: and my young boy\n  Hath an aspect of intercession, which\n  Great Nature cries, 'Deny not!'--Let the Volsces\n  Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll never\n  Be such a GOSLING to obey INSTINCT; but stand,\n  As if a MAN were author of himself,\n  And knew no other kin.\n  These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.\n\n  _Vir_.\n  The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,\n  Makes you think so.\n\n[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with\nsorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame\nof his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not\nprovided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that\nfierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his\npart--the words he was to speak are wanting.]\n\n  _Cor_.          Like a dull actor now,\n  I have forgot my part, _and I am out_,\n  _Even to a full disgrace_. Best of my flesh,\n  Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,\n  For that, Forgive our Romans.--O, a kiss\n  Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!\n  Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss\n  I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip\n  Hath virgin'd it e'er since.--You gods! I prate,\n  And the _most noble mother of the world_\n  Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [_Kneels_.]\n  Of _the deep duty_ more _impression_ show\n  _Than that of common sons_.\n\n  _Vol_.               O, stand up bless'd!\n  Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint,\n  I kneel before thee; and unproperly\n  _Show duty, as mistaken_--\n\n[Note it--'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described\nelsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore,\npray in aid of similes.]\n\n                     --and improperly\n  Show DUTY, as mistaken all the while\n  Between the child and parent.\n\n[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented\nin the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this\nhieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the\nrebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for\npardon.]\n\n  _Cor_.               What is this?\n  Your knees to me? to _your corrected son_?\n  _Then_ let the pebbles on the hungry beach\n  Fillip the stars; _then_ let the _mutinous_ winds\n  Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun;\n  _Murdering impossibility, to make\n  What cannot be, slight work_.\n\n  _Vol_.              Thou _art my warrior;\n  I holp to frame thee_.\n\n[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero--the Roman hero in\ngerm--that she speaks--there is more than her Roman part _here_, when\nshe adds--]\n\n  _Vol_. This is a poor epitome of yours,\n  Which _by the interpretation_ of _full time_\n  May show, _like all, yourself_.\n\n[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what\nprayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering,\nfluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever god who led\nhim' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and\nfro, and darkening him for ever.]\n\n  _Cor._  'The god of soldiers\n  _With the consent of_ SUPREME JOVE,'--[the Capitolian, the\n                                    god of state]--'inform\n  _Thy thoughts_ with NOBLENESS;'--[_inform thy thoughts._]\n                                  'that thou may'st prove\n  _The shame_ unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars\n  Like a great sea-mark, _standing every flaw_,\n  And saving those that eye thee.'\n\n[But _this_ hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature\nis--]\n\n  'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,\n  Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.\n  I have sat too long.'\n\nBut the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes\nthe conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.\n\nYes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief\nsumming up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is\nvery potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her\nfirst literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether\nyou take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which\nthe emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the\nnurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the\nformer of its nobility, who _in_-forms their thoughts with nobleness,\nsuch nobleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them\nfor the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.\n\nMenenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance\nof _this_ figure among those which the dumb-show of this play\nexhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased\ncommon-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its\nCURE is the question of the Play--in that great crowd of forms, in\nthat moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and\ntribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene--there are\nnone more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on\ntwo low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother--the\ncommanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'\n\n'This Volumnia'--yes, let her school him, for it is from her school\nthat he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of\nthis harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound\nof consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to God and\nman for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and\npatricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her,\nare powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of\nit, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her\nconquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is\nthe Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and\nwhether the assault be from within or without, this woman must undo\nher work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth\nwithout shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she\ntrained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of\nhim, but that craved a noble cunning; she was not instructed in it;\nshe must pay the penalty of her ignorance--the penalty of her\ntraditions--and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has\nmade with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.\n\nWoe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has\nreared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her!\nWoe for the _common_-weal, for _her_ boy approaches! The land is\ngroaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing\nof arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are\nblazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is\ncoming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the\nson of her RELIGION, is _coming home_.\n\n  'O mother, mother!\n  What hast thou done?....\n  O my mother, mother! O,\n  You have won _a happy victory to Rome_,--\n  But for your son--'\n\nAlas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and his\npatrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made\nhim great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's\ngreatness and his, must needs contend together--that 'Rome's happy\nvictory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!\n\nYet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness;\nand yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he\nwas, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have\nlearned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic\ndeeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-_divine_\ninfirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's\nsuppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!--of what? He\nis but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook _the state_! He is but\nA SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting\non the purple. He is but 'a _dog_ to the commonalty,' and he was\nsitting in the place of God.\n\nAufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular\nand private affections. When Coriolanus turns to him after that appeal\nfrom Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:--\n\n  'Now, good Aufidius,\n  Were _you in my stead_, say, would _you_ have heard\n  A mother _less_, or granted _less_, Aufidius?'\n\nHe answers, guardedly, 'I was moved _withal_.' But the philosopher has\nhis word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's,\ncovertly, 'I was _moved_ with-_all_.' [It is the Play of the\nCommon-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of\nexclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the\nwhole? In his noblest conditions, what business has he in the state?\nand who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of\nVolscian armies, that he may say of Rome, _all's mine_, and give it to\nhis wife or mother? Who shall follow in _his_ train, to plough Rome\nand harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's\nfeet, and turns back at her word?\n\n  _Aufidius_. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiously\n  Has he betrayed _your business_, and given up\n  For certain drops of salt, _your city_ Rome--\n  I say, _your city_--to _his wife and mother:\n  Breaking his oath and resolution like\n  A twist of rotten silk; never admitting\n  Counsel of the war_, but _at his nurse's tears_\n  He whined and roar'd away your victory,\n  That pages blushed at him, and men of heart\n  _Looked wondering at each other_.\n\n  [There is a look which has come down to us. That is\n  Elizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]\n\n  _Cor_. Hear'st thou, _Mars_?\n\n  _Auf_. Name not _the god_ thou _Boy_ of tears.\n\n  _Cor_. _Ha_!\n\n  _Auf_. No MORE. [You are no more.]\n\n  _Cor_. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart\n  Too great for what contains it. _Boy? O Slave_!\n  .... Boy? False _hound_!\n\n[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial\nchiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they\ngo.]\n\n  '_Boy? O slave_!\n  ... Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']\n  Alone I did it. BOY?\n\nBut it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of\nthis boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine passion she\nwishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his\nun_manly_, ungracious, ignoble purpose:--\n\n  'Speak to me, son.\n\n  Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR,\n  To imitate the graces of the gods;\n  To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,\n  And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt\n  That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?\n  Think'st thou it honourable for a NOBLE MAN\n  Still to remember wrongs?\n\nFor that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other\nwas, in scientific language, its 'anticipation.' He wants nothing of a\ngod but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in\na god already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in\ncharacter.'\n\nNOBILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM,\nDIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here,\nvague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared,\ndestined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally\ndifferent things in the popular apprehension no more--when once this\nscience is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was\ndelivered--no more for ever.\n\nThere is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal\nnobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false\naffirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and\nexamined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show--and\nvery much to his purpose to show, sometimes--what is not the true\naffirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the\ntrue definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all\nhands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce\nit; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he\nbe indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to pronounce it;\nfor the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and\npronounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle\nwounded craves a noble cunning,' is the word of the noble, who comes\nback with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand\nhieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that nobility.\n\nBut it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly\nantagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo\nthat popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at\nlast, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who\nstrikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this\naffectation of the graces of the gods,--this assumption of nobility,\nand manliness, and the fine strains of _honour_,--in one who is led\nonly by the blind demon gods, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our\nheads,'--in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of\nhis own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of soul\nwhich forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in which those\n_strictly_ human terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates\nall his glorious _special_ human gifts on the pursuit of ends for\nwhich the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine\nstrains of honour, and the graces of the gods. Look at that Volscian\narmy there.\n\n  'To tear with thunder _the wide cheeks o' the air,\n  And yet_ to charge thy sulphur with a bolt\n  That should but rive an oak.\n  _Why dost not speak_?'\n\nHe can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bear _review_.\n\n  'Why dost not speak?\n  Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man\n  _Still_ to remember wrongs?'\n\n'Let it be _virtuous_ to be _obstinate_,' let there be no better\nprinciple of that identity which we insist on in men, that firmness\nwhich we call manliness, and the cherished _wrong_ is honour.\n\nIt is but an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is\ntaken with it. It is a figure of speech and _intensifies_ the\naffirmative with its irony.\n\n  'This a consul? No.'\n\n  'No more, but e'en a woman, and COMMANDED\n  By such _poor_ passion as the maid that milks,\n  And does the meanest chares.' [QUEEN.]\n\n 'Give me that _man_ that is not _passion's slave_.\n\n  Since my dear soul _was mistress of her choice,\n  And could of men distinguish her election_,\n  She hath seal'd thee for herself: _for_ thou hast been\n  As one, in suffering _all_, that _suffers_ nothing.\n\nBut the man who rates so highly 'this single mould of Marcius,' and\nthe wounded name of it, that he will _forge_ another for it 'i' the\nfire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world to ease the rankling of\nhis single wrong, who will plough Rome and harrow Italy to cool the\nfever of his thirst for vengeance; this is not the man, this is not\nthe hero, this is not THE GOD, that the scientific review accepts.\nWhoso has put him in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must\n'revoke that ignorant election.' Whatever our 'perfect example in\ncivil life' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly\nin the form of an historic '_composition_' on this author's stage,\nwhatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evidently is\nnot it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the present from this\nPoet's boards. This curule chair that stands here empty yet, for aught\nthat we can see, and this crown of 'olives of endless age,' is not for\nhim.\n\n  'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?\n  Against him first.\n\n  'We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after every\n  species of rejection.'\n\nOn the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of the\nCommon-Weal, in its relation to the good that is private and\nparticular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in proportion,--as\nthe question of the whole against the part,--of the greater against\nthe less,--nay, as the question of that which is against that which is\nnot. For it is a treatment which throws in passing, the shadow of the\nold metaphysical suspicion and scepticism on that chaotic\nunaxiomatical condition of things which the scientific eye discovers\nhere, for the new philosophy with all its new comprehension of the\nactual, with all its new convergency on practice, is careful to inform\nus that it observes, notwithstanding the old distinction between\n'being and becoming.' This is an IDEAL philosophy also, though the\nnotions of nature are more respected in it, than the spontaneous\nunconsidered notions of men.\n\nIt is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole and the\nfaculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and\nobligation to it, as the highest historic law,--the _formal_, the\n_essential law_ of _kind_ in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is\nthe circumference of conscience, it is the _grandeur_ of duty which\nthis author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and\nignoring of the _whole_, that forgetfulness of the world, and the\nuniversal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the\nnarrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the\none, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against the\nwill of the part, no matter where the limit of that partiality, or\n'partliness,' as the '_poor_ citizen' calls it, is fixed whether it be\nthe selfishness of the single self, or whether the household tie\nenlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or faction,\nor the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geographic\nlimits, the question of the play, the question of the whole, of the\nworthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It is the\nconflict with axioms which is represented here, and not with wordy\naxioms only, not with abstractions good for the human mind only, in\nits abstract self-sustained speculations, but with historical axioms,\naxioms which the universal nature knows, laws which have had the\nconsent of things since this nature began, laws which passed long ago\nthe universal commons.\n\nIt is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with abstract\nspeculation merely, but with the nature of things and the received\nlogic of the universe, which this man of a practical science wishes to\ncall attention to. It is the crowning and enthroning of that which is\nprivate and particular, it is the anointing of passion and instinct,\nit is the arming of the absolute--the demon--will; it is the putting\ninto the hands of the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which\nstrikes the scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by\nway of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey to\nothers the impression which this state of things makes upon his own\nmind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those general\nintentions which determine his proceedings and the conditions which\nlimit them, and he is by no means timid in availing himself of the\ncapabilities of his story to that end. The true spectacle of the\nplay,--the principal hieroglyphic of it,--the one in which this\nhieroglyphic criticism approaches the metaphysical intention most\nnearly, is one that requires interpretation. It does not report itself\nto the eye at once. The showman stops to tell us before he produces\nit, that it _is_ a symbol,--that this is one of the places where he\n'prays in aid of similes,'--that this is a specimen of what he calls\nelsewhere 'allusive' writing. The true spectacle of the play,--the\ngrand hieroglyphic of it,--is that view of the city, and the woman in\nthe foreground kneeling _for it_, 'to her _son_, her _corrected_ son,'\nbegging for pardon of her corrected rebel--hanging for life on the\nchance of his changeful moods and passions. It is _Rome_ that lies\nstretched out there upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and\nclaims to reverence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from\nwhich the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the\nflint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels '_to show_'--as she\ntells us--to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition allow\nit to be exhibited, DUTY as mistaken,--'_as_ mistaken,'--_all the\nwhile_ between _the child_ and _parent_.\n\nIt is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to the\nmole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law--the _formal_ law\nin man--that is prostrate and suppliant in her person; and the Poet\nexhausts even his own powers of expression, and grows inarticulate at\nlast, in seeking to convey his sense of this ineffable, impossible,\nhistorical pretension. It is as 'if Olympus to a mole-hill should _in\nsupplication nod_; it is as if _the pebbles_ on the hungry beach\nshould _fillip the stars_; as if _the mutinous winds_ should strike\nthe proud cedars against the fiery sun, _murdering impossibility_, to\nmake what _can not be_, slight work,'--what can not _be_.\n\nThat was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's spectacle\nwhen the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousandfold more wild and\npitiful, and confounding to the intellect, and revolting to its\nsensibilities, was the spectacle that the State offered then to the\nphilosophic eye. The Poet has all understated his great case. He has\ntaken the pattern-man in the private affections, the noble man of mere\ninstinct and passion, and put _him_ in the chair of state;--the man\nwhom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly\ngraces.\n\n  'As waves before a vessel under sail\n  So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,'\n\n  'If he would but incline to the people, there never was a\n  worthier man.'\n\nNot to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the\nnobility of human sense,--not to the loyalty of the husband,--not to\nthe filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and\npersonal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the\npatrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe\nher _weal_--such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and\nruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his\nbrow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and\naction,--and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg\nher welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife,\nwith her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could\nsay then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'\n\nCrimes that the historic pen can only point to,--not record,--low,\nilliterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton\nextravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations--_these_\nwere the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the\nsovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the\nvices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and _their_\nkindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To _these_,--men who\nmeddled with affairs of State,--who took, even at such a time, the\nState to be _their_ business,--must address themselves; for these were\nthe councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and\nthe Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His _veto_ could not\nget spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and\ncircumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the\nsoul of power be reached and conquered then--the soul of him 'within\nwhose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions,\nto whom this _argument_ must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,'\nbasest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter,\npersonal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind\na most inherent baseness,' _these_ were the weapons,--the required\nweapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the\ncommonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold\nin the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift,\ndeliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the\ndays when _England's_ victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in\nsuch a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked\nwondering at each other.'\n\nAnd, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose\nto herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the\nscientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself\nexpected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself\ncalled upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform\nit--she must produce first her doctrine of '_true_ forms,' her\nscientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of\nconstructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could\ncriticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes\nnecessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new\nlight upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the\ngrand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its\nfinger' that which was unspeakable,--her scorn of it. She could borrow\nthe freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new\ndialect,--not their anticipation of her _veto_ only, but her eternal\naffirmation,--the word of her consulship, the rule of her\nnobility,--the nobility of being,--being in the human,--the nobility\nof manliness,--_the divinity of State_, the _true_ doctrine of\nit;--and, to speak _truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi._'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nMETAPHYSICAL AID.\n\n\n  'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they\n  are _Persian_ attire; but let them be changed.'--\n      _The King to Tom o' Bedlam._\n\n  'Would you proceed especially against _Caius Marcius_?\n  Against him _first_.'\n\nIt is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken,\nfor he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the\nworld's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural,\nhistorical order, in the chronological order,--and not here only, but\nin that play of which this is a part,--of which this is the play\nwithin the Play,--in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's\ntheatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.\n\nHe begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and\nweariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that\nhuman condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his\nhuman eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is _that_ which\nmakes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute\nlanguage, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement\noperations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to\nhave corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his\ntongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back\nbeloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from\nthem,' and get elected _consul_ yet, with all their voices.\n\n'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the\nphilosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about\nthese days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when\nthe hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do\nnothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my\ncomfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question;\nand, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have\nleisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish _the less\ntroublesome_, whilst we are infested with _the greater_. As the\nphysician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who,\nhe perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, \"Friend,\" said he, \"it is not\nnow time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends\". And\n_yet_--[_and yet_]--I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and\nmemory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great\ndisorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution,\n_nor magistrate_ that performed _his office--no more than there is\nnow_--publish, I know not what pitiful _reformations_, about _clothes,\ncookery, and law chicanery_. These are amusements wherewith to feed a\npeople that are ill-used, _to show that they are not totally\nforgotten_.'\n\nThat is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation,\nbeginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and\ncookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used\npeople that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at\nwork already. '_What I say of physic generally_, may serve AS AN\nEXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says _this same_ scribbler, under his\nscribbling cognomen. 'We certainly _intend_ to comprehend them _all_,'\nsays the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'\n\nThat is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance,\nwhich was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for\nthis candidate for the chief magistracy is the _Aedile_ also, and\nwhile he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.\n\nIt is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins\nwith here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens\nhis argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already;\ndumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and\nwild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's\ncommon gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which\na diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset,\nthat _this_ claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw\nforth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'\n\nThough all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial\ntreasure, with imperial luxury and splendour--though all the arts\nwhich are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in\nrequisition to relieve their need--though the scientific discoveries\nand inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of\nscientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated\ntheir golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself--though\nthat scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has\nreached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the\ngoods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries\nand artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home--that\ngood which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the\nconstitutional human _end_, that good, that formal and essential good,\nwhich it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not\nnecessarily be realised.\n\nFor _that_, and nothing short of that, the '_advancement_' of the\nspecies to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping\nfor--its form in nature, its ideal perfection--the advancement of it\nto something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of\nvermin--a state which involves another kind of individual growth and\ngreatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human\nprinciple' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate\nintention of this philosophy.\n\nThe organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in\nwhich the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more\nextensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but\nthe complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity,\nwhich the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so\ndifficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination,\nlabouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered,\nthreatened, convulsed, asking aid of _art_, is the subject; the cure\nof it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.\n\nAnd it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of\nyour natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art of\n_healing_, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and\nprofession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find\nhim, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running\non the structure of _bodies_, the means of their conservation and\ngrowth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and\nantagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and\nincurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in\ngeneral; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the\nqualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of\ntheir compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing\nnew ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he\nwishes 'to have a hand in everything.'\n\nBut he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative\nprescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's\nname, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,'\non the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human\nconstitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that\ndistinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual\nhuman frame in itself constitutes.\n\nMenenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and\nputting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to\nthe purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate of _seven years'_\nhealth, _during which time I will make a lip at the physician_.' A\nlip--_a lip_--and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when\nonce you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with\nadvancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to\nwhich all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are\npointing; and thus he continues: 'The _most sovereign prescription_ in\n_Galen_ is but empiricutic, and to _this_ preservative of no better\nreport than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try\nit--_this_ preservative,--this conservation.\n\nThis Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the\nphysician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort,\nand be able to make prescriptions of _them_, instead of making them\nout of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure a\n_conceit_ also.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no\nmean, but she herself hath made that mean;'--\n\n                     'So o'er that art\n  Which you say adds to nature, is an art\n  That nature makes...\n                     ...This is an art\n  Which does _mend nature_, _change_ it rather: but\n  _The art itself_ is nature.'\n\nThat is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion.\n'Man while _operating_ can only _apply or withdraw_ natural bodies,\nnature internally _performs_ the rest.' Those who become _practically_\nversed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist,\nand _the magician_, but _all_, as matters now stand with faint efforts\nand meagre success.'... 'The syllogism forces _assent_ and not\n_things_.'\n\n'_The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the\nunderstanding._ The syllogism consists of propositions, these of\nwords, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If\nour notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground;\nbut they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced from\n_things_.'\n\nThere is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very\napt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the\nshell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the\nmethod,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the\npress, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel,\nperhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular\naphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a _knowledge broken_, do\n_invite_ men to inquire further;' so _this_ writer of them tells us.\n\nWith all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the\nimpracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of\nthe quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He\nwill not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of\nnature, that laboured fruit of time,--her most subtle and efficacious\nagent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art,\n--he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived\ninterior adaptations,--with so much of nature's own work in it,\n--hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it\nwithout learning,--to undertake its cure with blind ignorant\nexperiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure,\nwith drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before\nwe proceed any further, _hear me speak_.' He will inquire beforehand\nthe nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle\nwith, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will\ntake him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in\nnature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a\ncomparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the\nsocial unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will\ncomprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his\nanalysis of _this_ complexity till he comes to that which precedes all\ncombination, and survives it--the original simplicity of nature. He\nwill come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will\nhave all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his\nhands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have\nthe doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, but _in all the\nkinds_;--those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship--\nsuch wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the\nprimitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He\nwill inquire of art,--the empiric art,--and rude accident, what latent\nefficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers\nthey have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the\nfarmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only,\ninserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of\nthe rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships,\nappears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little,\nand the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their\norganizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of\nnobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another\ncourt, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For\nthe principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the\nhuman conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger\ntreatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.\n\nAnd this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge\nhis preference for 'good _compositions_'--who thinks so much of good\n_natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or\nbetraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results,\nthe luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself\nillustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great\nvolume of examples in the Arts.\n\nFirst it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the\nvariety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for\nall--that which is always the same in all the difference, that which\nis always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of\n'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the\nalphabet are not many, _the degrees and co-ordinations_ whereof make\nall this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of _their\ncombinations_,--the combinations which nature has herself\naccomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which\nare possible, which have _not_ been accomplished,--those which the\nuniversal nature working in the human, working in each, from the\nplatform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of\nspecies, dictates now, demands,--divinely orders,--divinely instructs\nus in.\n\nThis, and nothing short of this,--this so radical knowledge, reaching\nfrom the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of\nnature,--to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,--to the\nindissoluble laws of being,--the laws of being in the species,--the\nlaw with which the specific law is convertible,--the law which cannot\nbe broken in the species, which involves loss of species,--loss of\nbeing in the species,--this so large and rich and various knowledge,\ncomprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all\nnature under contribution for its results, this--this is the knowledge\nwith which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.\n\nThe reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in\nthe original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science,\nimpressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and\nintentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to\nfind that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted\non by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the\nconceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that\nthe knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that\nrelief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end\nof science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics,\nwhich he is everywhere propounding to that end,--openly, and with all\nthe latent force of his new rhetoric.\n\nIt is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic\nlawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of\none who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,--the priest\nof nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from\nhis long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his\nhands--with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to\npluck from her, and did not--with the gift of the new and nobler\nmiracles of science as the witness of his anointing--with the reading\nof 'God's book of power'--with the alphabet of its mystery, as the\nproof of his ordaining--with the key of it, hid from the foundation of\nthe world until now.\n\nThe first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics\nthat ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical.\nIt carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes\nthat are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all\npractice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it\ndares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows\nyou what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but\na little, and new ages have begun.\n\nIt is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to\nforbid abstractions--your abstractions. It sets out from that which is\n'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant,\neternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is\nfixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: '_forms_' not\n'_ideas_.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which\nthe historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are\nthe terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific\nexperience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the\ncauses 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms\nwhich the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and\ncomprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all\nthe multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible\nterms--the _practically_ convertible terms of the known--practically\n--that is the difference.\n\nIn that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes;\nin that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of\nnature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base--the\nscience of Natural History--beginning with the basis of the historical\ncomplexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and\nsolid pyramid, which the Inductive science--which the inquiry into\ncauses that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop,\neither on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which\nis the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the\nplatform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to\nour experience--the causes, which are variable and many, do not\nsatisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds\nthat even a diligent inquiry and observation _there_ would result in\nmany new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these\ncauses 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the\nfounding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions,\nsecures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means.\nHe refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his\nphilosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn\non all the possible arts and solutions which lie on _that_ platform,\nwhen the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and\npractice _there_. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field\nof observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and _re-integrate_\nthe misapplied and abused name of _natural magic_, which, in the true\nsense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'\n\nHe can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that\nfield _does_ yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is\nuplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical\nmetaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent\nalways on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to\nthe sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning\nwith the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will\nfound a new metaphysics--an _objective_ metaphysics--the metaphysics\nof induction. His logic is but a preparation for _that_. He is going\nto collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all\nspecies, the principles that are in _all things_; and he is going to\nbuild, on the basis of those _inducted_ principles,--on the sure basis\nof that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the\nsure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic,\nthe inductive method comprehends '_all_.' That same simplicity, which\nthe abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, _it_ aspires\nto and _attains_, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of\nobservation and experiment.\n\nHe is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most\nstudious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality\nof style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of\nsciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to\nany but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing\npeak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific\ndivinity, frowning off--warding off, as with the sword of the\ncherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the\ngods, restored again,--the simple powers of nature, recovered from the\nGreek abstractions,--not 'the idols'--not the impersonated\nabstractions, the false images of the mind of man--not the logical\nforms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic\ncontent--but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our\nepics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build\naltars to them or not. This is that summit of the _prima philosophia_\nwhere the axioms that command all are found--where the observations\nthat are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on\nthese, grow. This is that height where the _same_ footsteps of nature,\ntreading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference\nbelow, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms\nof the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man\nonly, but as it is in all matters or substances.\n\nHe does not care to tell us,--he _could not_ well tell us, in\n_popular_ language, what the true name of that height of learning is:\nhe could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a\nscientific abstraction makes,--an abstraction that attains simplicity\nwithout destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains\nas its result only a higher history,--a new and more intelligible\nreading of it,--a solution of it--that which is fixed and constant and\naccounts for it,--an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest,\nthe universal history, that which accounts for all,--the\nequivalent,--the scientific equivalent of it.\n\nBut whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of\nthe unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is\nsomething that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent\nspeculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to\nbind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned\nignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the\nuniversal laws of God and nature,--laws that no dogma or conceit can\nalter,--all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it\nbe, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air\npalace of the vain conceits of men;--it is going straight up, through\nthat old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human\nignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in\nnature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,--the unity of which\nthe mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is\nbut an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always\nseeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience\noffers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will\nmake for itself if it cannot find it, which it _does_ make in ignorant\nages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic\nreality,--which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by\nignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of\ntheir nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new\nlearning also--but it is going to be henceforth the unity of\nknowledge--not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not\nbelief merely,--knowledge, and not opinion, is _power_.\n\nThat man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this\nphilosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of\nspecies, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence\nof their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within\nthe human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,--to show the\nabsurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe\nbeforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the\nreports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which\ngreat nature has herself supplied us,--to correct the arrogance and\nspecific bias of the human learning,--was the first attempt of the new\nlogic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and\nit has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble,\nindeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the\nuniversal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the\nwhole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice\nfor us is _human_; but there are other dialects of the divine\nalso,--there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us;\nwith larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities.\nThere is no speech or language where _their_ voice is not heard. Their\nline is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the\nend of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy\nand the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two\nfor a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy--the\nphilosophy of science--the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of\nthe nature that is one in them,--the metaphysics of history.\n\n'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies,\nexhibiting distinct individual _effects, according to individual_\nLAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,--_its\ninvestigation, discovery and development_--are the foundation _both of\ntheory and practice_; this law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each\n_science_, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'\n\nThat is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists.\nBefore that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in\nrequisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first.\nThe inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'--that so\npernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.\n\n'There exists nothing in nature except _individual_ bodies, exhibiting\ndistinct _individual_ effects, according to _individual laws_.' The\nconcrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious\nhabit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the\nexpense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstract _those_\nlaws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on\nthem. They are in their proper place; they are in the things\nthemselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can\ndo is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly\ncorresponds with them. That _correspondence_ is the point in the new\nmetaphysics, and in the new logic;--_that_ was what was wanting in the\nold. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in\n_every branch of learning_, are the foundation both of theory and\npractice. This law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each science, is\nwhat _we_ understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very\ncarefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which\n_corresponds_ to it, in the human mind, the _parallel_ to it in the\nsciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are\nextremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions\nwithout any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made\nabstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of\nno efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.\n\nThere is one term in use here which represents at the same time the\ncause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of\nman--the parallel to it in the sciences. When these _exactly\ncorrespond_, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that\npurpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions\nof the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to\nsignalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of\nthe old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are '_the idols_' of\nthe new--the false deceiving images--which must be destroyed ere that\nwhich is fixed and constant _in nature_ can establish its own\nparallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a\nrecess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this\ncriticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is\nmanifest that Plato, in his opinion of _ideas_, as one that had a wit\nof elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the\ntrue object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by\nconsidering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not\n_confined_ and _determined_ by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that\nopinion'--this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand\nyears of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two\nthousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain\ntheory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, _unsuccessful_ groping\nin all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues,\nconcluding that summary criticism with a little further development of\nthe subject, 'and _so_, turning _his opinion_ upon theology, wherewith\nall his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected\nwith 'opinion,'--no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it\ncomes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice.\nAnd this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice.\n'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in\npractical philosophy becomes the rule.'\n\nBut that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the\nphilosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields,\nin speculation _and_ practice. The black intolerable wall, which those\nwho stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge\nbrought us up with so soon--that blank wall with which the inquiry for\nthe physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation--has\nno place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which\nthe knowledge of true forms creates--this true ground of _the\nunderstanding_, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason\nof things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of\nnature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.'\nNeither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of\nphysical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human\nrelief, found here. For this is the _prima philosophia_, where the\nuniversal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the\nprecepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the\nphilosopher himself--openly speaking from this summit--will venture to\nintimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its\nbase, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the\nground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel\nwisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to\nestablish and _preserve_ them is to reduce them _ad principia_, a rule\nin _religion_ and _nature, as well as in civil administration_?' There\nis the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that\nwaits for the science of _forms_ and constructions. But he proceeds:\n'Was not the _Persian_ magic' [and that is the term which he proposes\nto restore for '_the part operative_' of this knowledge of forms],\n'was not the Persian magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of _the\nprinciples_ and _architecture_ of _nature_ to the _rules_ and _policy_\nof _governments_?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry;\nbut the student of the _Zenda-vesta_ will be able to get, perhaps,\nsome intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will\nunderstand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term\n_magic_ is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground\nof _science_. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after\nextending these significant inquiries into other departments of\npractice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which\nall other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these only\n_similitudes_, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be,\nbut _the same_ footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several\nsubjects or matters.'\n\n'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which\nconsiders nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first\nof any, by my _universal being_.' _Michael de Montaigne_.] 'sets out\nfrom what is constant, eternal, and universal _in nature_; and opens\nsuch _broad_ paths to human _power_, as the thought of man can in the\npresent state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'\n\nYes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form,\nthe limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit\nof the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.\n\nThe control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers\nus--this knowledge of what she is beforehand--the practical certainty\nwhich this _interior_ acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that\nidentifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to\ncommand--that _comprehensive_ command of results which the knowledge\nof _the true causes_ involves--the causes which are always present in\nall effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under\nall the difference--the '_power_' of _this knowledge_, its power to\nrelieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on\nmost in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that\n'wonder'--that is, 'the seed of knowledge'--brought forth _this_\nplant, was _not_ one to overlook or make light of that want in the\nhuman soul, which only knowledge can appease--that love which leads it\nto the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is\nher life.\n\n'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity\nbetween the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of\nthe pernicious and inveterate habit of _dwelling_ upon abstractions,\nit is by far _the safest_ method to commence and build up sciences\nfrom those foundations which bear a relation to the practical\ndivision, _and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical_.'\nSomething like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke\nof making 'the art and practic part of life, _the mistress_ to its\ntheoric;'--'let _that_ mark out and limit the theoretical.'\n\nThat inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the\nsafest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning,\nas that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to\nreduce it to certain _empty_ and barren generalities, the mere husks\nand shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless\nthey serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of\nthem, by the torture and _press_ of the method,--the mere outlines and\nskeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of\npractical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of\nthis universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map\nis, to direct the way between London and York.'\n\nThe way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which\ndo but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says,\nto begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing\nhere now in this question of the consulship,--that so practical and\nimmediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out\nevery other from the human consideration. If learning _had_ anything\nto offer on that subject, which would _not_ excite the scorn of\npractical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.\n\nWe begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly\nlimited to that which the question of the play requires,--the\npractical question marks it out,--we have just as much as is required\nfor the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark\nthe expression:--'it is by far the safest method to commence and build\nup sciences'--the particular sciences,--the branches of science--from\n_those foundations which bear a relation_ to the practical division.\nWe begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is\nin a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than\ninstruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it\nin the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a\nlearned treatise,--a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The\nscorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of\npretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to\npractice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin\nwith the practical question, with its most sharply practical details,\nwe begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the\nfoundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin\nwith. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima\nphilosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the\nknowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,--the solid\ncontinuity--that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build\nthis practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is\ncontinued:--that trunk of universality which we are forbidden\nhenceforth to _scorn_, because all the professions are nourished from\nit. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since\nthey have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single\nbough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within\ntheir reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the\ndivinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept\nthe good wine until now.' Clasping on the _magic_ robes for which they\nhave not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,--not of\nfifties,--not of hundreds,--not of thousands--sitting down by myriads,\nto this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in\nwhose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them\nfaint and weary still, and without a shepherd,--sitting down to this\nfeast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived,\nrejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in,\nthey cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's\nquestion: _This_, so far as it goes at least, this is _truth_. And the\nrod of that enchantment was _plucked_ here. It is but a branch from\nthis same trunk--this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of\npractice _will_ scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous\nboughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the\nmore chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.\n\nContinued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops now _this_\nbranch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,--time mellowed,--ready to fall\nunshaken. Built on _that_ 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure,\nthe doctrine of _the state_. That knowledge of nature in general, that\n_interior_ knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled\nwith her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word,\nas from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets\nus at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly.\nIt is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter\nour--_Persian_. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is\nNature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we are _within_, and\nthe light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude\nwind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and\nthe poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our\n'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract\nhas laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is\nvisible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked\nto the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time\ncleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced\nspeech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart\nof nature, is _not_ the ventriloquist's artifice, is _not_ a poor\nshowman's trick. It is great nature's voice--her own; and the magician\nwho has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the\npriest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart\nof her mystery--is 'the Interpreter.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nTHE CURE--PLAN OF INNOVATION--NEW DEFINITIONS.\n\n\n        'Swear by thy double self\n  And that's an oath of credit.'\n\n        'Having thus far proceeded\n                 ... Is it not meet\n  That I did amplify my judgment in\n  Other conclusions?'\n\nIt is the trunk of the _prima philosophia_ then which puts forth these\nnew and wondrous boughs, into all the fields of human speculation and\npractice, filling all our outdoor, penetrating all our indoor life,\nwith their beauty and fragrance; overhanging every roof, stooping to\nevery door, with their rich curtains and clusters of ornament and\ndelight, with their ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of\npractice--brought down to particulars, ready for use--with their\ndispersed directions overhanging every path,--with their aphorisms\nmade out of the pith and heart of sciences, 'representing a broken\nknowledge, and, _therefore_, inviting the men of speculation to\ninquire farther.'\n\nIt is from this trunk of a _scientific_ universality, of a useful,\npractical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality, to\nwhich the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to their\nsimple forms and '_causes in nature_,' conducts the scientific\nexperimenter,--it is from this primal living trunk and heart of\nsciences, to which the new method of learning conducts us, that this\ngreat branch of scientific practice comes, which this drama with its\n'transitory shows' has brought safely down to us;--this two-fold\nbranch of ethics and politics, which come to us--conjoined--as ethics\nand politics came in other systems then not scientific,--making in\ntheir junction, and through all their divergencies, 'the forbidden\nquestions' of science.\n\nThe _science_ of this essentially conjoined doctrine is that which\nmakes, in this case, the novelty. 'The nature _which is formed_ in\neverything,' and not in man only, and the faculty, in man, of\ncomprehending that wider nature, is that which makes the higher\nground, from which a _science_ of his own specific nature, and the\nexplanation of its phenomenon, is possible to man. Except from this\nheight of a _common nature_, there is no such thing as a scientific\nexplanation of these phenomena possible. And this explanation is what\nthe specific nature in man, with its _speculative_ grasp of a larger\nwhole--with its speculative grasp of a universal whole,--with its\ninstinctive _moral_ reach and comprehension corresponding to\nthat,--constitutionally demands and 'anticipates.'\n\nAnd the knowledge of this nature which is formed in everything, and\nnot in man only, is the beginning, not of a speculative science of the\nhuman nature merely,--it is the beginning,--it is the indispensable\nfoundation of the arts in which a successful artistic advancement of\nthat nature, or an artistic cure or culture of it is propounded. The\nfact that the 'human nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a\n'_nature_,' the fact that the human species is _a species_,--the fact\nthat the human kind is but a _kind_, neighboured with many others from\nwhich it is isolated by its native walls of ignorance,--neighboured\nwith many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more or less\n_kind_-ly, more or less hostile,--species, kinds, whose dialects of\nthe universal laws, man has not found,--the fact that the universal,\nhistoric principles are operant in all the specific modifications of\nhuman nature, and control and determine them, the fact that the human\nlife admits of a scientific analysis, and that its phenomena require\nto be traced to their true forms,--this is the fact which is the key\nto the new philosophy,--the key which unlocks it,--the key to the part\nspeculative, and the part operative of it.\n\nAnd this is the secret of the difference between this philosophy and\nall other systems and theories of man's life on earth that had been\nbefore it, or that have come after it. For this new and so solid\nheight of natural philosophy,--solid,--historical,--from its base in\nthe divergency of natural history, to its utmost peak of unity,--this\nscientific height of a common nature, whose summit is 'prima\nphilosophia,' with its new universal terms and axioms,--this height\nfrom which man, as a species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous\nnotions and theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with\nwhich history itself is always flying in the face of them,--from which\nthe specific bias in them is everywhere detected,--this new 'pyramid'\nof knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces the conflict of\n_views_, the clash of man's _opinions_ shall not sound: this is the\nsystem which has had, and shall have, no rival.\n\nAnd this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human\nnature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human\nnotions--specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or\nnarrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of\npractice they produce,--powers, true forms, original agencies in\nnature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal\nform.\n\nTo abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the\ntribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Man _as man_, is\nnot a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder\nand greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes\nlittle of his mere conceits and dogmas.\n\nFrom the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has\ngained--not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure\ncontemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to the _\u00e0 priori_\nsources of knowledge and belief in man,--which it has gained, too, by\na wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply--with\nthe torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic\ncomplexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in\neverything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life\nand practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled\ntrunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries,\nstop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play\nexposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are\nhid.\n\nThe radical universal fact--the radical universal distinction of the\n_double_ nature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man\nonly, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one,\nas everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its\ncorresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war\nin nature--the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and\nthe dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the\nfoolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the\nphenomena of his own nature to their _causes_,--who has no bridge from\nthe natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the\ncontinent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it\nwere;--this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or\nsubstantive in itself, the other as it is, _a part_ or _member_ of a\ngreater body, whereof the latter is in degree _the greater_ and _the\nworthier_, as it tends to the conservation of a more general\nform'--this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid\ndown in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species,\nwith a recommendation that it should be _strongly planted_, which he\nhas planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and\npolicy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the\nhuman nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the\nscientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most\nimmediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great\n'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning,\nwith the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the\nuniversally actual and active principles are tracked to their _proper_\nspecific modifications in man, and not to their development in his\nactual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human\nkind--the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser\nkinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail,\nfrom the bosom of the universal law--is brought down from its barren\nheight of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in\nthe universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as\nit is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is\nnot limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his\naffections,--this double nature of good, as it is developed in man,\nwith his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger\nwhole than his particular and private nature can comprehend--with his\nlarge discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his\nblind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other--with\nthat distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in\nsome sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only--that\nnature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind\nonly--that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of\nhis form, he struggles to ascend to--that, on the one hand, and that\nwhereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a\ngosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest\nkinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied\nwith species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars,\nwho cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed\nand walled in,--these two universal natures of good, and all the\npassion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where\nthey blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their\nconfusion,--this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its\ntrue specific human development, whereby man is man, and not\ndegenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all\ntheir wealth of observation, through all their characterization,\nthrough all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a\nline so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have\ngraven it.\n\nOf all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the\nhardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is\nconstant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to\nundertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless\nthose universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much\npains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate in\n_matter_ and _construction according_ to _the true_ definitions, they\nare speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter,\nand the new construction according to true definitions, is the\nbusiness here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any,\nis that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of\nall that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which\nis the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our\neyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the\ncause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'\n\nHe starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political\nphilosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has _the true\ndefinition_ in his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile\nnotions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to\ncomprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals\nthat the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its\nfaculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with,\nthe causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all\nthe historical phenomena are convertible,--the motives from which all\nmovement proceeds, the true original simple powers,--the unknown, into\nwhich all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known\ninto which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms\n'which are always present _when the particular nature_ is present, and\nuniversally attest that presence; which are always absent when the\nparticular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence;\nwhich always increase as the particular nature increases; which always\ndecrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of\ndefinitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform\nwith; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down\nfor the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit\nthe turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does\nfull justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose\nspeculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the\npractical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from\nwhat height of _genius_ they achieved their command; but that was two\nthousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of\nEurope; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was\nfound that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found\nthat the _English_ notions at least, and the _Greek_ notions of things\nin general differed very materially--essentially--when they came to be\nput on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of\nEurope, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human\nadvancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and\ncompare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable\ndifferences, indeed, began to be _perceptible_ at once, though the\nworld has not yet begun to _appreciate_ them. It was a difference that\nwas expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in\nits '_effects_.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands\nnow, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions\nwere issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of\nthose former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new\ncourse. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of\nelevation _situate upon a cliff_, did descry that _forms_ are the true\nobject of knowledge,' that was his discovery,--'_but_ lost the fruit\nof that opinion by'--shutting himself up, in short, in his own\nabstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out\nhis theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of\napplying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that\nuniverse, in which man's part is _so_ humble. 'Vain man,' says our\noldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's\ncolt.'\n\nBut let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of\nthe New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new\nkind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in\nsome of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not\ndreampt of in the others,--which were not included in the 'idols.' He\ntells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to\nunravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain\nhis immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying\nthem, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things\nfirst. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has\ndone, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his\ninstances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:--'We do\nnot, however, deny that other instances _can perhaps be added_.' In\norder to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins\nafter the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of\nactions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general.\nBy observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common\nto them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the\n'elementary motions,'--outlined, and enriched with such observations\nas he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of\nthat beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded,\ndecomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he\ndirects the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice,\nwith great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of\npredominance,'--'instances which point out the predominance and\nsubmission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in\naction,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in\naction,]--'which is the more _energetic_ and _superior_, or more weak\nand inferior.'\n\n'These \"elementary notions\" direct and are directed by each other,\naccording to their strength,--quantity, _excitement, concussion_, or\nthe assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance, _some\nmagnets_ support iron sixty times their own weight; _so far_ does the\nmotion of _lesser congregation_ predominate over _the greater_, but if\nthe weight be increased _it yields_.'\n\n[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions,\ntendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for\nthe purpose of suggesting rules of practice which apply _as widely_;\nthough he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this\nclass of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given\nweight, and _so far_ the notion of _liberty_ predominates over that of\n_the greater congregation_; but if the weight be _greater_, the former\nmotion _yields_. A piece of leather, stretched _to a certain point_,\ndoes not break, and _so far_ the motion of continuity _predominates_'\n[for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and\ndomineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another,\nthat he is handling]--'_so far_ the motion of continuity\n_predominates_ over that of tension; but if the tension be _greater_,\nthe leather breaks, and the motion of continuity _yields_. _A certain\nquantity_ of water flows through a chink, and _so far_ the motion of\ngreater congregation _predominates_ over that of continuity; but if\nthe chink be _smaller, it yields_. If a musket be charged with ball\nand powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not\ndischarged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes\nthat of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in\nthe sulphur _predominates_, being _assisted_ by that motion, and the\nmotion of avoidance in the nitre; and _so of the rest_.'\n\nOur more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise\nthat explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and\nit answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there,\nand for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative\nof the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the\n'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the\npredominance of _powers, compared with each other_, and which of them\nis _the more energetic and_ SUPERIOR, or more _weak_ and INFERIOR';\nand though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its\nillustration of another in this system of learning, where things are\nvalued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as\nsimilitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the\nsame footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and\nleaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is a _class_ of\ninstances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling\ninstances, which show _the predominance of powers_, and in _what\nmanner_ and _proportion_ they predominate and yield, must be searched\nfor with active and industrious diligence.'\n\n'The _method and nature_ of this yielding' [of _this\nyielding_--SUBJECTION is the question] 'must also be diligently\nexamined; as, _for instance_, whether the motions' ['of liberty']\n'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained; for in\nall bodies with which we are acquainted, _there is no real, but an\napparent rest, either in the whole, or in the parts_. This apparent\nrest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the case of Hamlet,\nas well as in that of some others whose acts were suspended, and whose\nwills were arrested then, by considerations not less comprehensive\nthan his]--'either by equilibrium, _or by the absolute predominance_\nof motions. By equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, which\n_rest if the weight be equal_. By predominance, as in perforated jars,\nin which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the\npredominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'\n\n'It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before), _how far the\nyielding motions exert themselves_. _For_, if _a man_ be held\nstretched out on the ground _against his_ WILL, with arms and legs\nbound down, _or_ otherwise confined'--[as the Duke of Kent's were, for\ninstance]--'and yet strive with all his power to get up, the struggle\nis not the less, though ineffectual. The _real state of the case_'\n[namely, whether the yielding motion be, as it were, annihilated _by\nthe predominance_, or there be rather a continued, though an invisible\neffort] '_will perhaps appear_ in the CONCURRENCE of MOTIONS, although\nit escape our notice in _their conflict_.' So delicately must\nphilosophy needs be conveyed in a certain stage of a certain class of\nwrestling instances, where _a combination_ of powers hostile to\nscience produces an '_absolute predominance_' of powers, and it is\nnecessary that the yielding motion should at least appear to be 'as it\nwere, annihilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the\ninvisible effort at all. 'For on account of the rawness and\nunskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no\ndifficulty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the\naxioms which these particular instances adduced here, and 'others\nwhich might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield. This is an\ninstance of the freedom with which philosophical views on certain\nsubjects are continually addressed in these times, to that immediate\naudience of the few 'who will perhaps see farther into them than the\ncommon reader,' and to those who shall hereafter apply to the\nphilosophy issued under such conditions--the conditions above\ndescribed, that key of 'Times,' which the author of it has taken pains\nto leave for that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which\nmakes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated. There\nare more and less powerful motives concerned in _this_ wrestling\ninstance, as he goes on to demonstrate.\n\n'THE RULES of _such instances_ of _predominance as occur_ should be\n_collected, such as_ the following'--and the rule which he gives, by\nway of a specimen of these _rules_, is a very important one for a\nstatesman to have, and it is one which the philosopher has himself\n'_collected_' from _such_ instances as occurred--'The more _general_\nthe desired advantage is, the _stronger_ will be _the motive_. The\nmotion of _connection_, for instance, which relates to _the\nintercourse of the parts of the universe_, is more powerful than that\nof _gravity_, which relates to the intercourse of _dense_ bodies.\nAgain; the desire of a private good does not, _in general_, prevail\nagainst that of a public one, except where the _quantities are small_'\n[it is the general _law_ he is propounding here; and the exception,\nthe anomaly, is that which he has to note]; 'would that such were the\ncase in civil matters.'\n\nBut that application to 'civil matters,' which the statesman,\npropounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge of the\nactual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source of relief to\nthe human estate,--that application, which he could only make here in\nthese side-long glances, is made in the Play without any difficulty at\nall. These instances, which he produces here in his professed work of\nscience, are produced as illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he\nis going to bring to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his\ngenius, on the powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human\nnature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it tends--those\nlarger wholes and greater congregations, which parliaments, and\npulpits, and play-houses, and books, were forbidden then, on pain of\ndeath and torture and ignominy, to meddle with. _Here_, he tells us,\nhe finds it to the purpose to select '_suggestive_ instances, such as\n_point out_ that which is advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part\nof science to make _judicious_ inquiries and wishes.'\n\nThese instances, which he produces here, are searching; but they are\nnone too searching for his purpose. They do not come any nearer to\nnature than those others which he is prepared to add to them. The\ntreatment is not any more radical and subtle here than it is in those\ninstances in which 'he comes to particulars,' under the pretence of\nplay and pastime, in other departments,--those in which the judicious\ninquiry into the laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules\n'the most generally useful to mankind.'\n\nThis is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this Play,--this\nPlay, in which the great question, not yet ready for the handling of\nthe unlearned, but ripe already for scientific treatment,--the\nquestion of the wrestling forces,--the question of the subjection and\npredominance of powers,--the question of the combination and\nopposition of forces in those _arrested motions_ which make _states_,\nis so boldly handled. Those arrested motions, where the rest is only\napparent, not real--where the 'yielding' forces are only, _as it\nwere_, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute\npredominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and\nrenew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,'\nbut predominators--not as states, but revolutions. The science 'that\nends in matter and new constructions'--new construction, 'according to\ntrue definitions,' is what these citizens, whom this Poet has called\nup from their horizontal position by way of anticipation, are already,\nunder his instructions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which\nthese very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken\ninto the account, are what these men, whom this Magician has set upon\ntheir feet here, whose lips he has opened and whose arms he has\nunbound with the magic of his art, are going to have before they lie\ndown again, or, at least, before they make a comfortable state for any\none to trample on, though they _may_, perhaps, for a time seem, 'as it\nwere, annihilated.'\n\nThese true _forms_, these _real_ definitions, this new kind of\n_ideas_, these new motions, new in philosophy, new in _human_ speech,\nold in natures,--written in her book ere man was,--these universal,\nelementary, original motions, which he is exhibiting here in the\nphilosophic treatise, under cover of a certain class of instances, are\nthe very ones which he is tracking _here_ in the Play, into all the\nbusiness of the state. This is that same new thread which we saw there\nin the grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space\nfilled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however, to\nshow that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,--how.\nBut here it is the more chosen substance; and every point of this\nillustrious web is made of its involutions,--is a point of\n'illustration.'\n\nYes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised field of\nhis labours,--that field of 'noblest subjects,' for the culture of\nwhich he will have all nature put under contribution; here he is at\nlarge, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from\nhis chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' and _their_\nunions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious,\nunknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles\ntogether, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it _ceases_,\nor _seems to cease_; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is\nvanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in 'water,'\narrested 'in perforated jars,' or 'flowing through a chink,' or\nresisting gravity, _if_ the chink be smaller, or in the balanced\n'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of all\nnature,--the weaker enslaved, but _there_,--_not_ annihilated; he who\nsaw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those dense palpable\nmasses, or in the lever, assisted by human hands, vanquishing its\nmighty opposite, things that old philosophies had not dreamt\nof,--reports of mysteries,--revelations for those who have the\nkey,--words from that book of creative power, words from that living\nWord, which _he_ must study who would have his vision of God\nfulfilled, who would make of his 'good news' something more than a\nPoet's prophecy. He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless\nsulphur, in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of\nfire and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the\nresisting ball,--not less real to his eye, because not apparent,--or\nin the _villanous_ compound itself, while yet the spark is\nwanting,--'rules' for other 'wrestling instances,' for _other_\ncombinations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome;\nrequiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of forces,\nnot less but _more_ scientifically artistic,--rules for the\nenlargement of forces, waiting but _their_ spark, then, to\ndemonstrate, with more fearful explosions, _their_ expansibility,\nthreatening 'to lay all flat.'\n\nFor here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the unreported\nactualities, are working still, in obedience to their orders, which\nthey had not from man, and taking no note of his. 'For man, as the\n_interpreter_ of nature, _does_, and _understands_ as much as his\nobservations ON THE ORDER OF THINGS, _or_ THE MIND, _permits_ him, and\nneither _knows_ nor _is capable_ of more.' 'Man, while _operating_,\ncan only apply or withdraw natural bodies. NATURE INTERNALLY PERFORMS\nTHE REST'; and 'the syllogism forces _assent_, but _not_ things.'\n\nGreat things this Interpreter promises to man from these observations\nand interpretations, which he and his company are ordering; great\nthings he promises from the application of this new method of learning\nto _this_ department of man's want; because those vague popular\nnotions--those spontaneous but deep-rooted beliefs in man--those\nconfused, perplexed terms, with which he seeks to articulate them, and\nnot those acts which make up his life only--are out of nature, and all\nresolvable into higher terms, and require to be returned into _these_\nbefore man can work with them to purpose.\n\nGreat _news_ for man he brings; the powers which are working in the\nhuman life, and _not_ those which are working without it only, are\nworking in obedience _to laws_. Great things he promises, because the\nfacts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific\ndefinition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things\nhe promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their\nmost artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and\nstruggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific\nsolution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and\nwaiting and watching for her coming.\n\nGood news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good\nnews for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports\nindited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of\nthe revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law\nof the greater whole, which is the worthier--that law of the\ncommon-weal, which is the human law--that law which in man is reason\nand conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only--nay,\n_not_ in man as yet, but prefigured only--his ideal; his true\nform--not in man, who 'IS' not, but '_becoming_.'\n\nBut in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of\nthings in general into the human constitution--in tracing these\nuniversal definitions into the specific terms of human life--the\nclearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of\nman shut up to itself yields--the criticism on the terms which\npre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or\nnot, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a\nphilosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are\nsomething more than nothing in nature.'\n\nThis Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the\nquestion of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is\nindeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man\nwhich we find on another page--that constitution whereby man, as man,\nis part and member of a common-weal--that constitution whereby his\nrelation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his\nindividual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation\nwith advancement--that constitution whereby the highest good of the\nparticular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows\nof fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its\nintention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation\nto society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the\nreason that the question of 'the government of every man over\nhimself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in\n'the little state of man'--the question as to which is 'nobler'--comes\nto be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That\nis the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us\nconjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the\nconsulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the\nquestion of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the\nPlay of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its\ncure.\n\n'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The\ndefinition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such\nconstructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not\navail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and\nculture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this\nenterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin\nwith. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for\nempirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;--we are\nperishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of\nostriches, or something of that nature--or threatened with becoming\nmere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved,\nperhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with\nbetter faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of\nsome sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by\na social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for\nbutter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs\ngive the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,'\nand sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of\n'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative\nphilosophy at present is--\n\n  'Why all these things change from their ordinance,\n  Their natures, and _pre_-formed faculties,\n  To monstrous quality.'\n\n  --'There's something in this _more_ than _natural_,\n  --if _philosophy could find it out_!\n\nAnd what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a\nnew kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up\nthese, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians.\nThat was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will\nanswer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable\nonly, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner,\nthe revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We\ncannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our\nthroats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried\nhere also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do\nnot expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we\nmay apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on\nthem, it is time to see what _gen_, or _genus_ it is, that proceeds in\nthese departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard\nto our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a\ngeneral way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for\nthat has been thoroughly tried already.\n\nThe experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been\na very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces\nassent, and _not_ things.\n\nThe question here is _not_ of divinity, as some might suppose. There\nis no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does\nnot depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true\ndivinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its\nfoundations are laid,--its perennial source is found, not in the soul\nof man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the\nnature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true\ndivinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built\non 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven\nand earth may pass, but not that.\n\nThe question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and\nAristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation\nand practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their\nsuffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this\nmost vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these\ndemoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet--on both\nsides of it--going about with 'tickets of _leave_,' of one kind and\nanother; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though\nit has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude\nsystems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these\nthings. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about\nthem. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon\nconcedes;--they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty\nis, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that\nresult which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when\ndeveloped within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and\nnature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon\nhis own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to\nthe universe. The difficulty is just this;--here we have it in a\nnut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.\n\n'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the\nsigns of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then]--'if\n_our notions_ are _fantastical_, the whole structure falls to the\nground. But [they _are_] they are, for the most part, _improperly\nabstracted_, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty\nwhich this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this\nso radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there\nare just _two_ methods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with\nincreasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down\nfrom the very outset some abstract and _useless_ generalities,--_the\nother_, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most\ncommon in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist\nin the discovery of _new effects_, for the subtlety of nature is\nvastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly\nabstracted from particulars, easily _point out and define_ NEW\nPARTICULARS, and _impart activity to the sciences_.'\n\n'We are wont to call _that human reasoning_ which we apply to nature,\nTHE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that\nwhich is properly _deduced from_ THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF\nNATURE.'--(A radical distinction, which it is the first business of\nthe new machine of the mind to establish). '_Anticipations_ are\nsufficiently powerful in producing _unanimity_; for if men were all to\nbecome even _uniformly mad_, they might agree tolerably well _with\neach other_,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that is _the\nassent_ that is wanting).\n\n'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use\nof anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, and _not_\nthings.'\n\nThe difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude\ntheories of the nature of things,--the difference between the\npreconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards\nthe attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are\nproperly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their\nnatures, is the difference in which science begins.\n\nAnd we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it,\nwhich makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of\nthe road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old\nmethod of learning, as those truths with which science has already\noverpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in\nwhich its powers have been already tested.\n\nThese rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is\nyet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in\ntheir broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are\ntherefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and\nnatural beliefs of men, through all their range, from the _a priori_\nconceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar\n_preconceptions_ and _prejudices_ of the unlearned, the author of the\n'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and\ndexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly\nfanciful,--but, considering the time, none too fanciful,--designation\nof 'the Idols';--(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would\nsuggest to the scholar a more literal reading),--'the Idols of the\nTribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees\nreason--scientific, as well as rhetorical reason,--for dividing and\ndistinguishing them. But under that common designation of _images_,\nand false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf\nof that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all\nparticulars--which is more universal than the notions of men, and\ntranscends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments;--that\nuniversal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their\ndoing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful.\nThat _universal_, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto\nset aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth\ntaking into the account,--that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that\nis able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative\npre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all\nthe learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn\nineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised\nname which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new\nperceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.\n\nWe cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions\nincluded in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of\nthose airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a\nfalse metaphysics must needs nurture,--none of those apples of Sodom\nwhich these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on\nthese boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace\nthose terms in the popular dialect _here_, any more than the chemist\nor the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men\nwith _their_ truer language in the fields they occupy. The new\nLogician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these\nsame terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the\nsense in which he uses them.\n\nIncorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has\nbeen bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under\ncertain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful\nfor adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material.\nAbove all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists,\nand the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these\nfields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them.\nHe leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the\nvulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics,\nwhose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of\npractice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is\nwanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake\nto teach.\n\nWhen it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist\nand the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine\nexpressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned\nout in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to\nquarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have\nnone of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine\nthem, and analyze them; and all,--_all_ that is in them,--all, and\nmore, will be in his; _but_ scientifically cleared, 'divided with the\nmind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.\n\nAnd it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief\nwhich the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end,\nshould ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our\nmetaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of\nprofessional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser\nreforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary\nterms, earth, fire, air, water,--terms which antiquity thought fine\nenough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without\nsuspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.\n\nIt is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic\ntelegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all\nthe new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms\nwhich were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had\nnever been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with\nits divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least\nelementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose\nthat the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long\nas the powers that are _actual_ in our human life, which are still at\nlarge in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength _there_,\nwhich still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science _there_,\nwhile we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,--so long as\nthese still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in\nthe freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,--\nso long as a mere _human_ word-ology is suffered to remain here,\nclogging all with its deadly impotence,--keeping out the true\ngeneralizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars,\n--the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom,\n--the word to which rude nature bows anew,--the word which is Power.\n\nBut while the world is resounding with those new relations to the\npowers of nature which the science of nature has established in other\nfields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the\nend and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that\ndepartment of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given\nover to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions\nand theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have\nleft to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested\naffirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption.\nHere we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as\nscience, without any attempt to find their genera,--to trace them to\nthat which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically\nwith the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of\npractice present.\n\nWe have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and\nthe virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and\nundertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite\nbook of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent\norder there.\n\nAnd thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still,\nimpervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature\nwhich are included in the human nature,--the powers which in this\n_specific_ form of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar\ngeneralizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic--these\npowers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than\nthey are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach\nthem with another vocabulary.\n\nThe forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to\nthe names by which we call them _here_, any more than the lightning\nwould answer to the old Magician's incantation,--any more than it\nwould have come if the old Logician had called it by _his_\nname,--which was just as good as the name--and no better, than the\nname, which the priest of Baal gave it,--any more than it would have\ncome, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness\nof his syllogism.\n\nBut when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the\npart operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the\nrod of his new definition, with the staff of _his_ genera and\nspecies,--when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard\nafar, it heard in its heaven and _came_. It came fast enough then. It\nwas 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came.\nThere was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new\ninterpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of\nInterpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or\nceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.\n\nBut that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to\nsee effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid\nit. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system\n'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly\nanticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and\nlances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though\nthere was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew\nthat that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if,\nperadventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.\n\nAnd the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling\nat present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an\nadaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of\nmodern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting\ngenius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and\npractical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this\nadvancement proceeds.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nTHE CURE--PLAN OF INNOVATION--NEW CONSTRUCTIONS.\n\n\n'Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true\ndefinitions, they are speculative, and of little use.'--_Novum\nOrganum_.\n\nDifficult, then, as the problem of Civil Government appeared to the\neye of the scientific philosopher, and threatening and appalling as\nwere those immediate aspects of it which it presented at that moment,\nhe does not despair of the State. Even on the verge of that momentous\npolitical and social crisis, 'though he does not need to go to heaven\nto predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' 'he thinks he sees\nways to save us,' and he finds in his new science of Man the ultimate\nsolution of that problem.\n\nThat particular and private nature which is in all men, let them\nre-name themselves by what names they will, that particular and\nprivate nature which intends always the individual and private good,\nhas in itself 'an incident towards the good of society,' which it may\nuse as means,--which it must use, if highly successful,--as means to\nits end. Even in this, when science has enlightened it, and it is\nimpelled by blind and unsuccessful instinct no longer, the man of\nscience finds a place where a pillar of the true state can be planted;\neven here the scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the\nhuman constitution, a foundation-stone,--a stone that does not\ncrumble--a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand\nmust rest on.\n\nEven that 'active good,' which impels 'the troublers of the world,\nsuch as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller model,'--that\nprinciple which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on\nother things,--on the state, on the world, if it can,--though it is\nits own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular\npowers for 'effecting its _good_ will,' which are represented in the\nhero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece\nrepresents,--this is the principle in man which seeks an individual\nimmortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and\nselectest means.\n\nBut that is not all. The bettering of _itself_, the perfection of its\nown form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, a _motive_, an\n_actual_ 'power in everything that moves.' This is one of the primal,\nuniversal, natural motions. It is in the universal creative stamp of\nthings; and strong as that is, the rock on which here, too, the hope\nof science rests--strong as that is, the pillar of the state, which\nhere, too, it will rear. For to man the highest '_passive_ good,' and\nthis, too, is of the good which is 'private and particular,' is,\nconstitutionally, that whereby 'the conscience of good intentions,\nhowever succeeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the\nprovision--the most luxurious provision--which can be made for\nsecurity and repose,--whereby the mere empirical experimenter in good\nwill count it a higher felicity to fail in good and virtuous ends\ntowards the public, than to attain the most envied success limited to\nhis particular.\n\nThus, even in these decried '_private_' motives, which actuate all\nmen--these universal natural instincts, which impel men yet more\nintensely, by the concentration of the larger sensibility, and the\nfaculty of the nobler nature of their species, to seek their own\nprivate good,--even in these forces, which, unenlightened and\nuncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and social dissolution, or\n'monstrous' social combination,--even in these, the scientific eye\nperceives the basis of new structures, 'constructions according to\ntrue definitions,' in which _all_ the ends that nature in man grasps\nand aspires to, shall be artistically comprehended and attained.\n\nBut this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's 'hope.'\nThis is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance. This is the\nplace on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the pile he will rear.\nThere is an unborrowed foundation, there is an internal support for\nthe state in man. For along with that particular and private nature of\ngood, there is another in all men;--there is another motive, which\nrespects and beholds the good of society, not mediately, but directly\nas _its_ end,--which embraces in its intention 'the form of human\nnature, whereof we are members and portions, and _not_--not--our own\nproper, individual form'; and this is the good 'which is in degree the\ngreater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation and\nadvancement of a more general form.' And this, also, is an _actual_\nforce in man, proceeding from the universal nature of things and\noriginal in that, not in him. This, also, is in the primeval creative\nstamp of things; and here, also, the science of the interpretation of\nnature finds in the constitution of man, and in the nature of things,\nthe foundations of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all\nhewn and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand ere\nman was, the everlasting pillars of the common-weal.\n\nBut in man _this_ law, also,--this law chiefly,--has its _special_,\nessentially special, development. 'It is much _more_ impressed on man,\nif he de-_generate_ not.' Great buildings have been reared on this\nfoundation already; great buildings, old and time-honoured, stand on\nit. The history of human nature is glorious, even in its degeneracy,\nwith the exhibition of this larger, nobler form of humanity asserting\nitself, triumphing over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It\nis a species in which the organic law transcends the individual, and\nembraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which those who\nseek the good of the kind, and subordinate the private nature to that,\nare noble, and chief. It is a species in which the law of the\ncommon-weal is for ever present to the private nature, as the law of\nits own being, requiring, under the pains and penalties of the\nuniversal laws of being, subjection.\n\nScience cannot originate new forces in nature. 'Man, while operating,\ncan only apply or withdraw natural forces. Nature, internally,\nperforms the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man\nwere, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of\n'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he\nbecomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject.\nScience could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's\nword had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the\nparts and members of that body that science sought to frame, what word\nof creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of life could she\nfind, what breath of God could she boast, that she should think to\nframe of such material the body politic, the organic whole, the\nliving, free, harmonious, triumphant common-weal.\n\nBut here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving, moving in\nthe dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature had provided\nreason, and required science and scientific art. That has not been\ntried. And that is why this question of the state, dark as it is,\nportentous, hopeless as its aspects are, if we limit the survey to our\npresent aids and instrumentalities, is already, to the eye of science,\nkindling with the aurora of unimagined change, advancements to the\nheights of man's felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of\npoets' visions, that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams\nwith its scientific reality.\n\nThere has been no help from science in this field hitherto. The\nproceeding of the world has been instinctive and empirical thus far,\nin the attainment of the ends which the complex nature of man requires\nhim to seek. Men have been driven, and swayed hither and thither, by\nthese different and apparently contradictory aims, without any\n_science_ of the forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces\nwill seek,--'it is their nature to,'--whether in man, or in any other\nform in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of declamation\nthat is ever going to stop them. The power that is in everything that\nmoves, the forces of universal nature are concerned in the acts that\nwe deprecate and cry out upon. It is the original constitution of\nthings, as it was settled in that House of Commons, to whose acts the\nmemory of Man runneth not, that is concerned in these demonstrations;\nand philosophy requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by\nall means, coming into any collision with those statutes. 'We must so\norder it,' says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in this case from\nantiquity--'we must so order it, as by no means to contend with\nuniversal nature.' 'To attempt to kick against natural necessity,' he\nsays in his own name, and in his own peculiar and more impressive\nmethod of philosophic instruction--'to attempt to kick against natural\nnecessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to\noutkick his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing 'what is in our\npower, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of Learning,\napplying that universal rule of practice to our present subject.\n\nHere, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive form, traced\nto the height of universal nature, and brought down to the specific\nnature in man--here, as they lie on the ground of the common nature in\nman, for the first time scientifically abstracted--are the powers\nwhich science has to begin with in this field. The varieties in the\nspecies, and the individual differences so remarkable in this kind,\nare not in this place under consideration. But here is the _common_\nnature in this kind, which must make the basis of any permanent\nuniversal social constitution for it. Different races will require\nthat their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their\nsocial constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for the\nbetter, look for change. But this is the universal platform that\nscience is clearing here. This is the WORLD that she is concerning\nherself with here, in the person of that High Priest of hers, who,\nalso, took that to be his business.\n\nHere are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is this\nuniversal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist, merely, and\nmaintain his form--which is nature's first law, they tell us--but to\n'better himself' in some way. As Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks\nadvancement'; and advancement he will have, or strive to have, if not\n'_formal_ and _essential_,' then 'local.' He is instinctively impelled\nto it; and in his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature\nhas prescribed to him, the 'tempest of human life' arises.\n\nThe scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these universal\nforces, and undertake to found society on their annihilation. Science\nwill count that structure unsafe which is founded on the supposed\nannihilation of these forces in anything that moves. The man of\nscience knows, that though by the predominance of powers, or by the\nequilibrium of them, they may be for a time, '_as it were_,\nannihilated,' they are in every creature; and nature in the instincts,\nthough blind, is cunning, and finds ways and means of overcoming\nbarriers, and evading restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself\nwhen once she finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these\nforces, the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in\nthe constitution of man, overlooking them from that height, will\nthankfully accept them, and make much of them. These are just the\nmotive powers that science has need of; she could not compose her\nstructure without them, which is only the perfecting of the structure\nwhich the great Creating Wisdom had already outlined and\npre-ordered--not a machine, but a living organic whole.\n\nScience takes this 'piece of work' as she finds him, ready, waiting\nfor the hand of art--imperfect, unfinished, but with the proceeding of\nnature incorporated in him--with the creative, advancing, perfecting\nmotion, incorporated in him as his essence and law;--imperfect, but\nwith nature working within him for the rest, urging him to\nself-perfection. She takes him as she finds him, a creature of\ninstinct, but with his large, rich, undeveloped, yet already active\nnature of reason, and conscience, and religion, already struggling for\nthe mastery, counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check,\nwith nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in man,\nbecause eyes were included in nature's definition of him, as it was\nwritten beforehand in her book, her universal book of types and\norders--eyes, and not instinct only--'that what he cannot smell out,\nhe may spy into.' 'O'er that art, which you say adds to nature, is an\nart that nature makes.' The want of this pre-ordered art is the want\nhere still. The war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here\nstill. That is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of\ninvestigation with which science has pursued and found out nature\nelsewhere--that same intense, indefatigable concentration of\nendeavour, which has been rewarded with such 'magnitude of effects' in\nother fields--that same, in a higher degree, in more powerful\ncombinations, proportioned to the magnitude and common desirableness\nof the object, is what is wanting here. It is the instincts that are\nat fault here,--'the blind instincts, that seeing reason' should\n'guide.'\n\nThat is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm begins,\nthat 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the\nspells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all\nour magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is\nstill the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such\nconditions. No wonder that the world is full of the uproar of this\narrested work, this violated intent of nature. She will storm on till\nwe hear her. Woe to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who\nthink to violate her intent and prosper! 'The storm continues,' and it\nwill continue, pronounce on it what incantations we may, so long as\nthe elemental forces of all nature are meeting in our lives, and\ndashing in blind elemental strength against each other, and the\nbrooding spirit of the social life, the composing spirit of the larger\nwhole, cannot reconcile them, because the voices that are filling the\nair with the discord of their controversy, and out-toning the noise of\nthis battle with theirs, are crying in one key, 'Let there be darkness\nhere'; because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is\nheld back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away; because\nthe night of human ignorance still covers all this battle-ground, and\nhides the combatants.\n\nScience is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages has spoken it,\n'and now the times give it proof'; the times in which the methods of\nearlier ages, in the rapid advancement of learning in other fields,\nare losing their vitalities, and leaving us without those means of\nsocial combination, without those social bonds which the rudest ages\nof instinct and intuition, which the most barbaric peoples have been\nable to command. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific\nproof, when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their\npower to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving faith of\nearlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in its\nstruggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its divine\nrealities, because they have not been translated into their speech and\nlanguage, and think there _is_ no such thing; and under all the\nexterior splendours of a material civilization advanced by science,\nsociety tends to internal decay, and the primal war of atoms.\n\nTo meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it is _not_ enough to\ncall these powers that are actual in the human nature, but which are\nnot yet reconciled and reduced to their true and natural order--it is\nnot enough at this age of the world, at this stage of human\nadvancement in other fields--to call these forces by some general\nnames which include their oppositions, and to require for want of\nskill that a part of them shall be annihilated; it is not enough to\nexpress a strong disapprobation of the result as it is, and to\nrequire, in never-so-authoritative manner, that it shall be otherwise.\nNo matter what names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter\nunder _what_ pains and penalties we require it, the result--whatever\nwe may say to the contrary--the result does not follow. That is not\nthe way. Those who try it, and who continue to try it in the face of\nno matter what failures, may think it is; but there is a voice\nmightier than theirs, drowning all their speech, telling us in\nthunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments that brutes might\nunderstand, telling us that it is not!\n\nIt is, indeed, no small gain in the rude ages of warring instincts and\nintuitions, when there is as yet no science to define them, and\ncompare them, and pronounce from its calm height its eternal axioms\nhere--when the world is a camp, and hostilities are deified, and\nmankind is in arms when all the moral terms are still wrapped in the\nconfusion of the first outgoing of the perplexed, unanalysed human\nmotivity--it _is_ no small gain to get the word of the nobler\nintuitions outspoken, to get the word of the divine law of man's\nnature, his _essential_ law pronounced--even in rudest ages overawing,\ncommanding with its awful divinity the intenser motivity of the lesser\nnature--able to summon, in rudest ages, to its ideal heights, those\ncolossal heroic forms, that cast their long shadows over the tracts of\ntime, to tell us what type it is that humanity aspires to. It is no\nsmall gain to get these nobler intuitions outspoken in some voice that\ncommands with its authority the world's ear, or illustrated in some\nexemplar that arrests the world's eye, and draws the human heart unto\nit.\n\nIt is no small advance in human history, to get the divine authority\nof those nobler intuitions, which, in man, anticipate speculation, and\ntheir right to command the particular motives, recognised in the\ncommon speech of men, incorporated in their speculative belief,\nincorporated in their books of learning, and embalmed in institutions\nthat keep the divine exemplar of the human form for ever in our eyes.\nIt _is_ something. The warring nations war on. The world is in arms\nstill. The rude instincts are not stayed in their intent. They pause,\nit may be; 'but a roused passion sets them _new_ a-work.' The speckled\ndemons, that the degenerate _angelic _nature breeds, put on the new\nlivery, and go abroad in it rejoicing. New rivers of blood, new seas\nof carnage, are opened in the new name of peace; new engines of\ntorture, of fiendish wrong, are invented in the new name of love. But\nit _is_ some gain. There is a new rallying-place on the earth for\nthose who seek truly the higher good; at the foot of the new symbol\nthey recognise each other, they join hand in hand, and the bands of\nthose who wait and watch amid the earth's darkness for the promise,\ncheer us with their songs. Truths out of the Eternal Book, truths that\nall hearts lean on in their need, are spoken. Words that shall never\npass away, sweet with the immortal hope and perennial joy of life, are\nalways in our ears.\n\nThe nations that have contributed to this result in any degree,\nwhether primarily or secondarily, whether they be Syrians or\nAssyrians, Arabs or Egyptians, wandering or settled, wild or tame;\nwhether they belong to the inferior unanalysing Semitic races, or\nwhether they come of the more richly endowed, but yet youthful,\nIndo-European stock; whether they be Hebrews or Persians, Greeks or\nRomans, will always have the world's gratitude. Those to whose\nintenser conceptions and bolder affirmations, in the rude ages of\ninstinct and spontaneous allegation, it was given to pronounce and put\non everlasting record, these primal truths of inspiration,--truths\nwhose divinity all true hearts respond to, may be indeed by their\nnatural intellectual characteristics,--if _Semitic_ must be--totally\ndisqualified by ethnological laws,--hopelessly disqualified--so\nhopelessly that it is to lose all to put it on them--for the task of\ncommanding, in detail, our modern civilization;--a civilization which\nhas made, already, the rude ethics of these youthful races, when it\ncomes to details, so palpably and grossly inapplicable, that it is an\noffence to modern sensibility to name--to so much as name--decisions\nwhich stand unreversed, without comment, in our books of learning. But\nthat is no reason why we should not take, and thankfully appropriate\nas the gift of God, all that it was their part to contribute to the\ngreat plot of human advancement. We cannot afford to dispense with any\nsuch gain. The movement which respects the larger whole, the divine\nintent incorporates it all.\n\n'Japhet shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' for they are world wide;\nbut woe to him if, in his day, he refuse to build the temple which, in\nhis day, his God will also require of him. Woe to him, if he think to\nput upon another age and race the tasks which his Task-Master will\nrequire of him,--which, with his many gifts, with his chief gifts,\nwith his ten talents, will surely be required of him. More than his\nfathers' woe upon him--more than that old-world woe, which he, too,\nremembers, if he think to lean on Asia, the youthful Asia, when his\nown great world noon-day has come.\n\n'There was violence on the earth in those days, and it repented the\nLord that he had made man on the earth.' 'Twill come,' says our own\npoet, prefacing his proposal for a scientific art in the attainment of\nthe chief human ends, and giving his illustrated reasons for it,--\n\n  'Twill come [at this rate]\n  Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself,\n  Like _monsters_ of the _deep_.\n\nBut what are _these_?--these new orders,--these new species of nature,\ndefying nature, that we are generating with our arts here now? What\nare these new varieties to which our kind is tending now? Look at this\nkind for instance. What are these? Define them. Destroyers, not of\ntheir own image in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their\nkind only,--sacred by natural universal laws,--but of the chosen image\nof it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the natural love of their kind\nwas by the law of nature concentred,--the wife and the mother,--\ndestroyed not as the wolf destroys its prey, but with ferocity, or\nwith prolonged and studious harm, that it required the human brain to\nplan and perpetrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of\ntheir victims. We must look at it. It will never go by till we do. We\nshall have to look at it, and consider it well; it will lengthen, it\nwill _widen_ till we do:--ghastly, bruised, bleeding, trampled,--\ntrampled it may be, with nailed, booted heel, mother and child\ntogether into one grave. But _these_ are common drunkard's wives;--we\nare inured to this catastrophe, and do not think much of it. But who\nare _these_, whom the grave cannot hold; that by God's edict break its\nbonds and come back, making day hideous, to tell us what the earth\ncould not, would not keep,--to tell us of that other band who died and\nmade no sign? But this is nothing. Here are more. Here are others.\nWhat are these? These are not spectres. _Their_ cheeks are red enough.\nWhat loathsome thing is this, that we are bringing forth here now with\nthe human face upon it, in whom the heart of the universal nature has\nexpired. These are murderers,--count them--they are all murderers,\nwholesale murderers, perhaps,--but of what? Of their own helpless,\ntender, loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of _our\ntime_,--alone in wretchedness,--alone in the universe of nature,--who\nfound, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the\nmore cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for\nit? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other\ncause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw\ntheir learning 'to the dogs,' and come this way, and tell us what this\nmeans. Nay, let them bring their books with them, and example us with\nits meaning if they can. Let them tell us what 'depth' in which nature\nhides her failures, or yet unperfected hideous germinations,--what\nformation in which she buries the kinds she repents that she has made\nupon the earth, or what 'deep'--what ocean cave of 'monsters' we shall\ndrag to find our kindred in _these_ species. Let our wise men tell us\nwhether there be, or whether there ever was, any such thing as this in\nnature before. If 'such things are,' or have been in any other kind,\nlet them produce the instances, and keep us in countenance and console\nus for our own.\n\nLet them look at that murderer too, and interpret _him_ for us. For he\ntoo is waiting to be interpreted, and he will wait till we understand\nhis signs. He is speaking mute nature's language to us; we must get\nher key. Look at him as he stands there in the dark, subordinating\nthat faculty which comprehends the whole, which recognises the\ndivinity of his neighbour's right, to his fiendish end: preparing with\nthe judgment of a man his little piece of machinery, with which he\nwill take, as he would take a salmon, or a rat, his fellow-man. Look\nat him as he stands there now, listening patiently for your steps,\nwaiting to strangle you as you go by him unarmed to-night, confiding\nin your fellow-man; waiting to drag you down from all the hopes and\njoys of life, for the sake of the loose coin, gold or silver, which he\nthinks he may find about you,--_perhaps_. 'How to KILL _vermin_ and\nhow to PREVENT the _fiend_,' was Tom's study. How to dispatch in the\nmost agreeable and successful manner, creatures whose notions of\n_good_ are constitutionally and diametrically opposed to the good of\nthe larger whole, who have no sensibility to that, and no faculty\nwhereby they perceive it to be the worthier; that is no doubt one part\nof the problem. The scientific question is, whether this creature be\nreally what it seems, a new and more horrid kind of beast--a\ndemoralization and deterioration of the human species into that. If it\nbe, let our naturalists come to our aid here also, and teach us how to\nhunt him down and despatch him, with as much respect to the natural\ndecencies which the fact of the external human form would seem still\nto exact from us, as the circumstances will admit of. Is it the beast,\nor is it 'the fiend?'--that is the question. The fiend which tells us\nthat the angelic or divine nature is there--there still--overborne,\ntrampled on, '_as it were_, annihilated,' but lighting that gleam of\n'wickedness,'--making of it, not instinct, but crime. Ah! we need not\nask which it is. This one has told his own story, if we could but read\nit. He has left--he is leaving all the time, contributions, richest\ncontributions to our natural history of man,--that history which must\nmake the basis of our arts of cure. He was a wolf when you took him;\nbut in his cell you found something else in him--did you\nnot?--something that troubled and appalled you, with its kindred and\nlikeness, and its exaction on your sympathy. When you hung him as you\nwould _not_ hang a dog;--when you put him to a death which you would\nthink it indecent and inhuman to award to a creature of another\nspecies, you did not find him _that_. The law of the nobler nature lay\nin him as it were annihilated; _he_ thought there was no such thing;\nbut when nature's great voice was heard without also, and those\n'bloody instructions he had taught returned to him'; when that voice\nof the people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its doom\nthe voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine appeals--'a\nrhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second that great\nargument,--the blind instincts were overpowered in him, the lesser\nusurping nature was dethroned,--the angelic nature arose, and had\n_her_ hour, and shed parting gleams of glory on those fleeting days\nand nights; and he came forth, to die at last, not dragged like a\nbeast--with a manly step--with heroic grandeur, vindicating the heroic\ntype in nature, of that form he wore,--vindicating the violated law,\naccepting his doom, bowing to its ignominy, a man, a member of\nsociety,--a reconciled and accepted member of the commonweal.\n\nHow to _prevent_ the fiend? _is_ the question. Ah! what unlettered\nforces are these, unlearned still, with all our learning, that the\ndark, unaided wrestling hour 'in the little state of man,' leaves at\nthe head of affairs there, seated in its chair of state, crowned,\n'predominant,' to speak the word of doom for us all. 'He poisons him\nin the garden for his estate.' 'Lights, lights, lights!' is the word\nhere. There _is_ a cause in nature for these hard hearts, but it is\nnot in the constitution of man. There _is_ a cause; it is nature\nherself, crying out upon our learning, asking to be--interpreted.\n\nWoe for the age whose universal learning is in forms that move and\ncommand no longer; that move and bind no longer with _fear_, or\n_hope_, or _love_, 'the common people.' Woe for the people who think\nthat the everlasting truths of being--the eternal laws of science--are\nthings for saints, and schoolmasters, and preachers only,--the people\nwho carry about with them in secret, for week-day purposes, Edmund's\ncreed, to whom nature is already 'their goddess, and their law,' ere\nthey know her or her law--ere the appointed teacher has instructed\nthem in it,--ere they know what divinity she, too, holds to,--ere the\ninterpreter has translated into her speech, and evolved from her\nbooks, the old truths which shall not--though their old '_garments_'\nshould '_be changed_'--which _shall not_ pass away. Woe for the\nnations in whom that greater part that carries it, are godless, or\nwhose vows are paid in secret to Edmund's goddess,--whose true faith\nis in appetite,--who have no secret laws imposed on that. 'Woe to the\npeople who are in such a case,' no matter on which side of the ocean\nthey may dwell, in the old world, or a new one; no matter under what\npolitical constitutions. No matter under what favourable external\nconditions, the national development that has that hollow in it, may\nproceed; no matter under what glorious and before unimagined\nconditions of a healthful, noble human development that development\nmay proceed. Alas! for such a people. The rulers may cry 'Peace!' but\nthere is none. And, alas! for the world in which such a power is\ngrowing up under new conditions, and waxing strong, and preparing for\nits leaps.\n\nAs a principle of social or political organisation, there is no\nreligion,--there never has been any,--so fatal as none. That is a\ntruth of which all history is an illustration. It is one which has\nbeen illustrated in the history of modern states, not less vividly\nthan in the history of antiquity. And it will continue to be\nillustrated, on the same grand scale, in those terrific evils which\nthe dissolution, or the dissoluteness of the larger whole creates,\nwhenever the appointed teachers of a nation, the inductors of it into\nits highest learning, lag behind the common mind in their\ninterpretations, and leave it to the people to construct their own\nrude 'tables of rejections'; whenever the practical axioms, which are\nthe inevitable vintage of these undiscriminating and fatally false\nrejections, are suffered to become history.\n\n'Woe to the land when its _king_ is a child'; but thrice woe to it,\nwhen its teacher is a child. Alas! for the world, when the pabulum of\nher youthful visions and anticipations of learning have become meat\nfor men, the prescribed provision for that nature in which man must\nlive, or 'cease to be,' amid the sober realities of western science.\n\n  'Thou shouldst not have been OLD _before thy time_.'\n\n  'The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,\n  And 'gins to pale his _ineffectual_ fire.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nTHE CURE--NEW CONSTRUCTIONS--THE INITIATIVE.\n\n\n_Pyramus_.--'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue _seem to say,\nwe will do no harm_ with our _swords_ [spears]... and for the more\nbetter assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but\nBottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'--_Shake-spear_.\n\n'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who\nspoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another\nfollows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.'\n\n'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some\n_particular_ and _foreign_ mark. _I_, the first of any, by my\n_universal being. Every man_ carries with him _the entire form_ of\nhuman condition.'\n\n'And besides, though I had a _particular_ distinction _by myself_,\nwhat can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor\n_inanity_?'\n\n  '_But_ will thy manes such a gift bestow\n  _As to make violets from thy ashes grow_?'\n        _Michael de Montaigne_.\n\n  _Hamlet_.--'To thine own self be true,\n              And it doth follow as the night the day\n              Thou canst not then be false to any man.'\n             'To know a man well, were to know him-self.'\n\nThe complaint of the practical men against the philosophers who make\nsuch an outcry upon the uses and customs of the world as they find it,\nthat they do not undertake to give us anything better in the place of\nthem; or if they do, with their terrible experiments they leave us\nworse than they find us, does not apply in this case. Because this is\nscience, and not philosophy in the sense which that word still\nconveys, when applied to subjects of this nature. We all know that the\nscientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most\nunspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and his arts\nto the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we have had in this\nfield, with their rash anticipations,--with their unscientific\npre-conceptions,--with a _pre-conception_, instead of a fore-knowledge\nof the power they deal with, commanding results which do not,--there\nis the point,--which do not follow.\n\nLet no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our\nmiserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one\nof those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave\nus no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all\nthat we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let\nit alone till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves,\nwithout science. '_That_ is the way to lay all flat.'\n\nHe is not one of those, 'who to _make clean, efface_, and who cure\ndiseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to\ndissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose\nit as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist,\nafter a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly\nadmits, that if the question were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world\nalready formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some\nimportant suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet\nfor all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It\nis a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the\ngreatest that was ever propounded,--total, absolute, but not sudden.\nIt is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is\npropounding.\n\nNew constructions according to true definitions, scientific\ninstitutions,--institutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on\nthe recognition of the actual human constitution and laws,--based on\nan observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those\nwhich we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,--that is\nthe proposition. 'It were a strange _speech_ which, spoken or spoken\noft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature\nsubject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of\nculture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in\nall men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of\nall the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history\nof those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most\nprofound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most\nthoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this\nenterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the\nsecret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of\nhuman character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form\nof that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a\nsolar-microscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers\nof men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where\nthe particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the\ncharacterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the\ndrama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in\nall men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so\nincessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of\nnature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come\nunder observation here, and the whole nature of the passions also, and\na science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it\nwhich our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will\nhave all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought\nto bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less\nscientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary\neffects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with\n'by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and\ntied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form\nwe would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a\nscientific system of human education.\n\nBut this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness that is\nthe end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it\ntells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that\nmakes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of\nappliances based on the history of those forces which _are_ within our\npower, which 'we _can_ deal with by way of alteration,' forces 'from\nwhich the _mind suffereth_,' which have operation on it, so potent\nthat 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,'--that they can make\nindeed, 'another nature,'--these are the engines,--this is the\nmachinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These\nare the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place\nof that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This\nis the machinery to 'prevent the fiend,' which the scientific\nstatesman is propounding.\n\n'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind _good_' says our Poet.\n'O _there_ were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against\nmy present profit,' [he adds,--he was speaking not as a judge or a\nlawyer, but as a _gaoler_,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my\nwish hath a _preferment_ in it.'\n\n(A _preferment_?)--That is the solution propounded by science, of the\nproblem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent\nappeals, its solution. 'I would we were all of one _mind_, and one\nmind _good_. My wish hath a _preferment_ in it.'\n\n'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange\nspeech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of _a vice_ to\nwhich he is _by nature subject_,'--_subject_--by _nature_.--That is\nthe _Philosopher_. 'What _he cannot help in his nature_ you account _a\nvice_ in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the\n_Poet's_ behalf for Coriolanus whose education, whatever Volumnia may\nthink about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that\n'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent\ndemonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching\nand scolding, and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs,\nhabit, education in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation,\npraise, blame,' all the agencies 'from which the mind suffereth,'--\nwhich have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and\nregimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but\nenforced,--_these_ make the state machinery--these are the engines\nthat are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the 'one mind,'--\n_the one mind good_, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,--'my\nwish hath a preferment in it,'--the one only man who will make when he\nis crowned, not Rome, but _room_ enough for us all,--who will make\nwhen he is crowned such desolation of gallowses and gaolers. These are\nthe remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific\npractitioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his\ncure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He\nhas no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The\nconcentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,--the _gradual_\nadaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,--\nthis end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,--find to\nbe _their own_,--this is the plan;--this is the sober day-dream of\nthe Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan\nRevolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot.\nThis is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.\n\nWe want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes;\nand we must find them according to the new method, and not by\nreasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this\nphilosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but\nsome other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in\nuse here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life\ngoes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it\ngoes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of\nEFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are\nbeneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of\ntheir _natures_; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of\nteaching us _something_ of their powers; but _we do not know them_;\nthey are within our own souls and lives, and we do not _know_ them;\nnot because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but\n_because_ we will not apply to them _the scientific method_; because\nthe old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true\none.\n\nThe plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced,\nfrom the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself\nimmediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social\nstate, from the king on his throne to the beggar in his straw. Its aim\nwas to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society\nthat entire and noble form of human nature which 'each man carries\nwith him,' and whereby the individual man is naturally and\nconstitutionally a member of the common-weal. Its proposition was to\ndevelop ultimately and educate--successfully educate--in each integer\nof the state, the integral principle--the principle whereby in man the\ntrue conservation and integrity of the part--the virtue, and felicity,\nand perfection, of the part, tend to the weal of the whole--tend to\nperfect and advance the whole.\n\n  'To thine own self be true,\n  And it doth follow as the night the day,\n  Thou canst not then be false to any MAN.'\n  'Know thy-SELF. Know thy-self.'\n\nThis enterprise was not the product of a single individual mind, and\nit is important that this fact should be fully and unmistakeably\nenunciated here; because the illustrious statesman, and man of\nletters, who assumed, in his own name and person, that part of it\nwhich could then be openly exhibited, the one on whom the great task\nof perfecting and openly propounding the new method of learning was\ndevolved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been\nprincipally insisted on in this volume.\n\nThe history of this great philanthropic association--an association of\ngenius, a combination of chief minds, from which the leadership and\ndirection of the modern ages proceeds, the history of this\n'_society_,' as it was called, when the term was still fresh in that\nspecial application; at least, when it was not yet qualified by its\napplication to those very different kinds of voluntary individual\ncombinations--'bodies of neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to\nwhich that movement has given rise; the history of _this_\nsociety,--this first 'Shake-spear Society'--much as it is to our\npurpose, and much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume,\ncan only be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally\nprepared for publication in the HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan\nTradition which formed the FIRST BOOK of it, it was the part of that\ngreat Political and Military Chief, and not less illustrious Man of\nLetters, who was recognised, in his own time, as the beginner of this\nmovement and the founder of English philosophy, which was chiefly\ndeveloped.\n\nAnd it is the history of that 'great unknown'--that great Elizabethan\nunknown, for whose designs there was needed then a veil of a closer\ntexture--of a more cunning pattern than any which the exigencies of\nmodern authorship tend to fabricate, which must make the key to this\ntradition;--it is the history of that great unknown, whose incognito\nwas a closed vizor,--that it was death to open,--a vizor that _did_\nopen once, and--the sequel is in our history, and will leave 'a brand'\nupon the page which that age makes in it,--'the age that _did_ it, and\n_suffered_ it, _to the end of the world_.' So says _the Poet_ of that\nage, ('Age, thou are shamed.' 'And peep about to find ourselves\n_dishonourable graves_'). It is the history of the Tacitus who could\nnot wait for a better Caesar. It is the history of the man who was\nsent to the block, _they_ tell us, who are able to give us those\nlittle secret historic motives that do not get woven always into the\nlarger story; it is the history of the man who (if his family\nunderstood it) was sent to the block for the repetition, in his own\nname, of the words--the very words which he had written with his\n'goose-pen,' as he calls it, years before--which he had written under\ncover of the 'spear' that was 'shaken' in sport, or that shook with\nfear,--under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each\nof which he seems to _shake a lance as brandished_ in the eyes of\n_Ignorance_,' without suspicion--without challenge, from the crowned\nIgnorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this\nunknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern Age that _unlocks_\nthis tradition.\n\nIt is the secret friend and 'brother' of the author of the Novum\nOrganum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall the\nfriendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and build its\n'eternal summer' in our common things? When shall a 'marriage of true\nminds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in the lives of men\nagain? It is the friend and literary partner of our great recognised\nphilosopher--his partner in his 'private and retired arts,' and in his\ncultivation of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' in whose history\nthe key to this locked up learning is hidden.\n\nIt was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen Elizabeth,\nin that little company of wits, and poets, and philosophers, which was\nthe first-fruit of the new development of the national genius, that\nfollowed the revival of the learning of antiquity in this island--the\nfruit which that old stock began manifestly to bud and blossom with,\nabout the beginning of the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it\nwas the old northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival\nof the learning of antiquity only, but of that accumulated influence\nwhich its previous revival on the Continent brought with it here;\nunder the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which began so soon\nto colour and insulate English history;--'Britain is a world by\nitself,' says Prince Cloten, 'and we will nothing pay,' etc.--it was\nthe old northern genius nurtured in the cradle of that 'bravery' which\nhad written its page of fire in the Roman Caesar's story--which had\narrested the old classic historian's pen, and fired it with a poet's\nprophecy, and taught _him_ too how to pronounce from the old _British_\nhero's lip the burning speech of _English_ freedom;--it was that which\nbegan to show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the\n'_Elizabethan_.' It was that which could not fit its words to its\nmouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was glad to\nknow that 'the audience was deferred.' That was the thing which found\nitself so much embarrassed by the presence of 'a man of prodigious\nfortune at the table,' who had leave 'to change its arguments with a\nmagisterial authority.' It was that which was expected to produce its\nspeech to 'serve as the base matter to illuminate'--not the\n_Caesar_--but the Tudor--the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the\nTudors and the first of the Stuarts. 'AGE, _thou_ art shamed.' It was\nthe true indigenous product of the English nationality under that\ngreat stimulus, which made that age; and the practical determination\nof the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient English liberties,\nthe recognition of the common dignity of that form of human nature\nwhich each man carries entire with him--the sentiment of a common\nhuman family and brotherhood, which this race had brought with it from\nthe forests of the North, and which it had conserved through ages of\noppression, went at once into the new speculation, and determined its\npractical bent, and shaped this enterprise.\n\nIt was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations an\nimmediate influence upon the popular mind--the most direct, immediate,\nand radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear,\nunder those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the\nignorant, custom-bound masses of men;--those masses which are, in all\ntheir ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age\nperceived, 'that greater part which carries it'--those wretched\nstatesmen, under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about\nclothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions with which\nthe new movement begins to attract attention--a universally favourable\nattention--towards its beneficent purposes, and to that new command of\n'effects' which arms them. But this is only 'to show an abused people\nthat they are not wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition\nof men, to 'accommodate' man to those exterior natural forces, of\nwhich he had been, till then, the 'slave,'--to minister to the need\nand add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and 'Tom' in his\nhovel,--this was the first scientific move. This was a movement which\nrequired no concealment. Its far-reaching consequences, its elevating\npower on the masses, its educational power, its revolutionary power,\ndid not lie within the range of any observation which the impersonated\nstate was able to bring to bear at that time upon the New Organum and\nits reaches.\n\nBut this was not the only scientifically educational agency which this\ngreat Educational Association was able to include, even then, in its\nscheme for the culture and instruction of the masses--for the culture\nand instruction of that common social unit, which makes the masses and\ndetermines political predominance. Quite the most powerful\ninstrumentality which it is possible to conceive of, for purposes of\ndirect effect in the way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that\nstage of a popular development, was then already in process of\npreparation here; the 'plant' of a wondrous and inestimable machinery\nof popular influence stood offering itself, at that very moment, to\nthe politicians with whom this movement originated, urging itself on\ntheir notice, begging to be purchased, soliciting their monopoly,\nproposing itself to their designs.\n\nA medium of direct communication between the philosophic mind, in its\nmore chosen and noblest field of research, and the minds of those to\nwhom the conventional signs of learning are not yet intelligible,--one\nin which the language of action and dumb show was, by the condition of\nthe representation, predominant,--that language which is, as this\nphilosophy observed, so much more powerful in its impression than\nwords,--not on brutes only, but on those 'whose eyes are more learned\nthan their ears,'--a medium of communication which was one tissue of\nthat 'mute' language, whereby the direction, 'how to _sustain_ a\ntyranny _newly usurped_,' was conveyed once, stood prepared to their\nhands, waiting the dictation of the message of these new Chiefs and\nTeachers, who had taken their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the\narts of government, and who thought it well enough that the people\n_should_ know how to _preserve_ tyrannies _newly usurped_.\n\nThose 'amusements,' with which governments that are founded and\nsustained, 'by cutting off and _keeping low_ the grandees and\nnobility' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate and divert the\npopular mind,--those amusements which the peoples who sustain\ntyrannies are apt to be fond of--'he loves no plays as _thou_ dost,\n_Antony_,'--that 'pulpit,' from which the orator of Caesar stole and\nswayed the hearts of the people with his sugared words; and his dumb\nshow of the stabs in Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new\nconspirators, an engine which those old experimenters lacked,--an\nengine which the lean and wrinkled Cassius, with his much reading and\n'observation strange' and dangerous, looking through of the thoughts\nof men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with his logic and his\nstilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts, afford to lack. It was\nthis which supplied the means of that 'volubility of application'\nwhich those 'Sir Oracles,' those 'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing\ntheir well-graced forms of speech,' it is intimated, 'might easily\nwant.'\n\nBy means of that 'first use of the parable,' whereby (while for the\npresent we drop 'the argument') it serves to illustrate, and bring\nfirst under the notice of the senses, the abstruser truths of a new\nlearning,--truths which are as yet too far out of the road of common\nopinion to be conveyed in other forms,--these amusements became, in\nthe hands of the new Teachers and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of\nthe Moderns had its beginning, the means of an insidious, but most\n'grave and exceedingly useful,' popular instruction.\n\nBut the immediate influence on the common mind was not the influence\nto which this association trusted for the fulfilment of its great plan\nof social renovation and advancement. That so aspiring _social_\nposition, and that not less commanding position in the world of\nletters, built up with so much labour, with such persistent purpose,\nwith a pertinacity which accepted of no defeat,--built up _expressly_\nto this end,--that position from which a new method of learning could\nbe openly propounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the\nUniversities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning\nthen, was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which this\npolitical association was compelled to include in the plot of its\nfar-reaching enterprise.\n\nThat trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which summoned the\nscholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from the endless battles\nof the human dogmas and conceits, into the field of true\nknowledge,--that summons which recalled, and disciplined, and gave the\nword of command to the genius of the modern ages, that was already\ntumultuously rushing thither,--that call which was _able_ to command\nthe modern learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New\nMachine of Learning,--that Machine which, even in its employment in\nthe humblest departments of observation, has already formed, ere we\nknow it, the new mind, which has disciplined and trained the modern\nintelligence, and created insidiously new habits of judgment and\n_belief_,--created, too, a new stock of truths, which are accepted as\na part of the world's creed, and from which the whole must needs be\nevolved in time,--this, in itself, was no small step towards securing\nthe great ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly\nin a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till the\nnobler applications of this Method begin to be made. It has cost us\nsomething while we have waited for these. The letter to Sir Henry\nSavile, on 'the Helps to the Intellectual Powers,' which is referred\nto with so much more iteration and emphasis than anything which the\nsurface of the letter exhibits would seem to bear, in its brief hints,\npoints also this way, though the effect of mental exercises, by means\nof other instrumentalities, on the habits of a larger class, is also\ncomprehended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in\nmen liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger\nfruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the\nhour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy\nand anticipation. The perfection of the Human Science, then first\npropounded, the filling up of 'the Anticipations' of Learning, which\nthe Philosophy of _Science_ also included in its system,--not rash and\npremature, however, and not claiming _the place_ of _knowledge_, but\nkept apart in a place by themselves,--put down as anticipations, _not\ninterpretations_,--the filling up of this outline was what was\nexpected as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department\nof speculative philosophy.\n\nBut in that great practical enterprise of a social and political\nrenovation--that enterprise of 'constructions' according to true\ndefinitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and never ceases\nto contemplate--it was not the immediate effect on the popular mind,\nneither was it the gradual effect on the speculative habits of men of\nlearning and men of intelligence in general, that was chiefly relied\non. It was the secret tradition, the living tradition of that\nintention; it was the tradition whereby that association undertook to\ncontinue itself across whatever gulfs and chasms in social history\n'the fortunes of our state' might make. It was that _second_ use of\nthe fable, which is 'to wrap up and conceal'; it was that 'enigmatic'\nmethod, which reserves the secrets of learning for those 'who by the\naid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to pierce the\nveil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the _power_ of that\ntradition, its generative power, its power to reproduce 'in a better\nhour' the mind and will of that 'company'--it was its power to develop\nand frame that _identity_ which was the secret of this association,\nand its new principle of UNION--that identity of the 'one mind, and\none mind good,' which is the human principle of union--that identity\nwhich made a common name, a common personality, for those who worked\ntogether for that end, and whose WILL in it was '_one_.' A name, a\npersonality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance we have\nbasked so long--a name, a personality whose secret lies heavy on all\nour learning--whose secret of power, whose secret of inclusiveness and\ninexhaustible wealth of knowledge, has paralysed all our criticism,\n'made marble'--as Milton himself confesses--'made marble with _too\nmuch conceiving_.' 'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue _seem_\nto say [in dumb action], we will do no harm with our swords.' 'They\nall flourish their swords.' 'There is but _one mind_ in all these men,\nand that is bent against Caesar'--Julius Caesar.\n\n                 'Even so the race\n  Of SHAKE-SPEAR's mind and _manners brightly shines_,\n  In his _well turned_ and _true filed_--lines;\n  In each of which he seems to SHAKE a LANCE,\n  As _brandished_ at the eyes of--Ignorance,'\n\n[We will do _no harm_, with our--WORDS [it _seems_ to\nsay.]--_Prologue_.]\n\nIt was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that was relied\non here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to reproduce this\nInstitution, through whatever fatal eventualities the movement which\nthese men were seeking then to anticipate, and organize, and control,\nmight involve; and though the Parent Union _should be_ overborne in\nthose disastrous, not unforeseen, results--overborne and\nforgotten--and though other means employed for securing that end\nshould fail.\n\nIt is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here. It is\nthe _Leonatus Posthumus_ who must fulfil this oracle.\n\n  'Now with the drops of this most balmy time\n  My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes;\n  Since, spite of him, I'LL live in this poor rhyme,\n  While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;\n  And _thou_ in this shall find thy monument,\n  When _tyrants' crests and tombs of brass_ are spent.'\n\n  'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [_Elizabethan_ AGE.]\n  Of _Princes_ shall outlive this _power_-ful rhyme.'\n\n[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his poems are\nworth printing, or that they are going to get printed--who does not\nknow or care whether they are or not.]\n\n  'But you shall shine more bright in these contents,\n  Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.\n  When wasteful war _shall statues_ overturn [iconoclasm],\n  And _broils_ [civil war] root out the work of masonry,\n  Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn\n  The _living record_ of _your memory_.'\n\n[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on? Is it a\nmanuscript? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he is\ncelebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many lyrics?\nHere, for instance:--]\n\n  'His _beauty_ shall in _these black lines_ be seen,\n  And _they_ shall live, and he in them still green.'\n\nAnd here--\n\n                                             'O where, alack!\n  Shall _time's best jewel_ from _time's chest_ lie hid?\n  Or what _strong hand_ can hold his swift foot back?\n  Or _who_ his spoil of beauty can forbid?\n  O none, unless _this_ miracle [this _miracle_] have might,\n  that in _black ink_--'\n\nIs this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the\nfading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,'\nscattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had\nnothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?\n\n'_O none_, unless this miracle'--THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar\nand man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time,\ncries--defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his\nown great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his\nfeet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the\nspent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to\nmake an oration _in public_, and found himself a little straitened in\n_time_ to fit his words to his mouth _as he had a mind to do_, when\n_Eros_, one of his _slaves_, brought him word that the audience was\ndeferred till the next day; at which he was so _ravished with joy_,\nthat he _enfranchised him_. '_This miracle_.' He knows what miracles\nare, for he has told us; but none other knew _what_ miracle this was\nthat he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.\n\n  'O _none_, unless this miracle have might,\n  That in black ink _my_ love may still _shine bright_.'\n\n['My love,'--wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know\nwith the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of\nthem scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps,\nafter all, it is _that_ Eros who was _enfranchised_, emancipated.]\n\n 'But thy eternal summer shall not fade,\n  Nor lose possession of that _fair_ thou _owest_ [thou _owes_!],\n  Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,\n  When in _eternal lines_ to time thou growest.\n  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,\n  So _long_ lives _this_, and this _gives life_ to--thee!\n\nBut here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the\naid of this collation:--\n\n 'When wasteful war shall statues overturn,\n  And broils root out the work of masonry;\n  Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn\n  The _living_ record of your memory.\n  'Gainst death, _and_ all _oblivious enmity_,\n  _Shall_ YOU _pace forth_. _Your_ praise shall still find room,\n  Even _in the eyes_ [collateral sounds] _of all posterity_,\n  That wear this world out to the ending doom.\n  _So_, till _the_ JUDGMENT that YOURSELF _arise_ [_till_ then],\n  You live in _this_, and dwell in _lovers_' eyes.'\n\nSee the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if there be any\ndoubt as to this reading.\n\n  'In lover's _eyes_.'\n\n  _Leonatus Posthumus_. Shall's have a Play of _this_? Thou scornful Page,\n  There lie _thy part_. [To _Imogen_ disguised as _Fidele_.]\n\nThe consideration which qualified, in the mind of the Author of the\nAdvancement of Learning, the great difficulty which the question of\ncivil government presented at that time, is the key to this 'plot.'\nFor men, and not 'Romans' only, 'are like sheep;' and if you can but\nget some _few_ to go right, the _rest will follow_. That was the plan.\nTo create a better leadership of men,--to form a new order and union\nof men,--a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their\nown nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize _the\n'thoughts_' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and\n'_inform_ them with nobleness,'--was the plan.\n\nFor these the inner school was opened; for these its ascending\nplatforms were erected. For these that 'closet' and 'cabinet,' where\nthe 'simples' of the Shake-spear philosophy are all locked and\nlabelled, was built. For these that secret 'cabinet of the Muses,'\nwhere the Delphic motto is cut anew, throws out its secret lures,--its\ngay, many-coloured, deceiving lures,--its secret labyrinthine\nclues,--for all lines in this building meet in that centre. All clues\nhere unwind to that. For these--for the minds on whom the continuation\nof this enterprise was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet--the\nhistorical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic mysteries, was\ncarefully laboured and left,--pointed to--pointed to with immortal\ngesticulations, and left ('What I cannot speak, I point out with my\nfinger'); the key to that '_Verulamian_ cabinet,' which we shall hear\nof when the _fictitious_ correspondence in which the more secret\nhistory of this time was written, comes to be opened. That cabinet\nwhere the subtle argument that was inserted in the Poem or the Play,\nbut buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is laid bare in prose as\nsubtle ('I here scatter it up and down indifferently for verse');\nwhere the new truth that was spoken in jest, as well as in parables,\nto those who were without, is unfolded,--that truth which moved unseen\namid the gambols of the masque,--preferring to raise questions rather\nthan _objections_,--which stalked in, without suspicion, in 'the\nhobby-horse' of the clown,--which the laugh of the groundlings was so\noften in requisition to cover,--that 'to _beguile_ the time looked\n_like the time_,'--that 'looked like _the flower_, and _was_ the\nserpent under it.'\n\nFor these that secret place of confidential communication was\nprovided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is opened without\nrespect to the 'offence in it,'--to its utmost reach of abstruseness\nand subtlety--in its utmost reach of departure from 'the road of\ncommon opinion,'--where the Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and\nPolicy and Religion, which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are\nunrolled, at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that 'wrapped\nup' intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we resume\nthat dropped argument,--dropped for that time, while Caesar still\ncommanded his thirty legions; and when the question, 'How long to\nphilosophise?' being started in the schools again, the answer returned\nstill was, 'Until our armies cease to be commanded by fools.' This is\nthat second use of the Fable where we find the moral of it at\nlast,--that moral which our moralists have missed in it,--that moral\nwhich is not 'vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the\nroad of common opinion,--that moral in which the Moral Science, which\nis _the Wisdom of the Moderns_, lurks.\n\nIt is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for we have\nhim,--we do not wait for him), in the act of displaying a little, and\nfolding up for the future, his plan of a Scientific Human Culture; it\nis to these that he speaks when he says, with a little of that\nobscurity which 'he mortally hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As\nPhilocrates sported with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians,\nthat Demosthenes and I do differ, for _he_ drinketh water, and _I_\ndrink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates\nof sleep '... so if we put on _sobriety_ and _attention_, we shall\nfind it _a sure maxim in knowledge_, that the pleasant liquor of wine\nis the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the\nfalser dreams.' ['_I_,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of\n'sobriety,' and critical upon excesses of all kinds, '_I_ have ever\nobserved, that _super_-celestial theories and _sub_-terranean\n_manners_ are in singular accordance.']\n\nAnd in his general proposal to lay open 'those parts of learning which\nlie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of\nman, to the end that such _a plot_, made and committed to memory, may\nboth minister light to any public designation, and also serve to\nexcite _voluntary_ endeavours,' he says, 'I do foresee that of those\nthings which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and omissions,\nmany will conceive and censure that some of them are already done, and\nextant, _others to be but curiosities_ and things of no _great use_'\n[such as the question of style, for instance, and those 'particular'\narts of tradition to which this remark is afterwards applied]--and\nothers to be of too great difficulty--and almost impossibility--to be\ncompassed and effected; but for _the two first, I refer myself to\nparticulars_; for the last,--touching impossibility,--I take it those\nthings are to be held possible, which may be done by _some person_,\nthough not _by every one_; and which may be done by _many_, though not\nby _any_ one; and which may be done in succession of ages, though\n_not_ within the hour-glass of one man's life; and which may be done\nby _public designation_, though not by private endeavour.\n\nThat was 'the plot'--that was the plan of the Elizabethan Innovation.\n\n  THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.\n\n  'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without\n  seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and\n  when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which,\n  being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the\n  old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his\n  miseries, Britain be _fortunate_, and flourish in peace and\n  plenty.'\n\nTHE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP.\n\nHere, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which scholars who\nwrite about these times, allude to the reserved parts of this\nphilosophy, and to those 'richer and bolder meanings,' which could not\nthen be inserted in the acknowledged writings of so great a person.\nThis is a specimen of the manner in which a posthumous collection and\nreintegration of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it,\nis referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent somewhere\nabout these days. Whether the date of the writing be a little earlier\nor a little later,--some fifty years or so,--it does not seem to make\nmuch difference as to the general intent and purport of it.\n\nHere is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this\nplanet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect the\nposthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose, he has\nestablished a literary intimacy, quite the most remarkable one on\nrecord--at least, between scholars of different and remote\nnationalities--between himself and two English gentlemen, a Mr. Smith,\nand the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes from _the Hague_ but he appears to\nhave acquired in some way a most extraordinary insight into this\nbusiness.\n\n'Though I thought that I had already _sufficiently showed_ what\nveneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I shall take\nsuch care for _the future_, that it may not possibly be denied, that I\nendeavoured most zealously to make this thing known to _the learned\nworld_. But neither shall this design of setting forth _in one volume\nall the Lord Bacon's works, proceed without consulting you_'--[This\nletter is addressed to the Rev. Dr. _Rawley_, and is dated a number of\nyears after Lord Bacon's death]--'without consulting you, and without\ninviting _you_ to cast in _your symbol_, worthy such an excellent\nedition: that so the _appetite_ of the reader'--[It was a time when\nsymbols of various kinds--large and small--were much in use in the\nlearned world]--'that so the _appetite_ of the reader, provoked\nalready by his _published_ works, may be further gratified _by the\npure novelty of so considerable an appendage_.\n\n'For the _French interpreter_, who patched together his things I know\nnot whence, and tacked that motley piece to him; they shall not have\nplace in this great collection. But _yet_ I hope to obtain your leave\nto publish a-part, as _an appendix_ to _the Natural History_,--_that\nexotic work_,--_gathered together_ from _this and the other place_\n(_of his lordship's writings_), [that is the true account of it] and\nby me translated into--_Latin_.\n\n'For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are already extant,\nand in many hands, it is necessary that _the foreign reader_ be given\nto understand _of what threads the texture of that book consists_, and\nhow much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does,\nin his preface to the reader, so stupidly write of you.\n\n'My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words _into Latin_, in the\nFirst Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the\nfidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat\nthem, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into\nwhose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of\nmany distinct pieces; how much soever the author _bears himself upon\nthe specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps_, I should particularly\nsuggest _in your name_, that these words were _there inserted_, by way\nof _caution_; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish\nthe fame of so eminent a person.\n\n'If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes, I would\nfly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth in\nyour Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and at least make my eyes\nwitnesses of it, if the possession of the merchandise be yet denied to\nthe public. At present I will support the wishes of my impatient\ndesire, _with hope of seeing, one day, those_ (_issues_) which _being\ncommitted to faithful privacy, wait the time till they may safely see\nthe light_, and not be _stifled_ in their birth.\n\n'I wish, _in the mean time_, I could have a sight of the copy of the\nEpistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the Intellectual\nPowers: for I am persuaded, as to the _other Latin_ remains, that I\nshall not obtain,_for present use_, the removal of _them_ from the\nplace in which they now are.'\n\nExtract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the beginning of\nit:--\n\n'TO THE REV. WM. RAWLEY, D.D.\n\n'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.\n\n'Reverend Sir,--It is not just to complain of the slowness of your\nanswer, seeing that _the difficulty of the passage_, in the season in\nwhich you wrote, _which was towards winter_, might _easily_ cause it\nto come _no faster_; seeing _likewise_ there is so much to be found in\nit which may gratify desire, and _perhaps so much the more, the longer\nit was ere it came to my hands_. And although I had little to send\nback, besides my thanks for _the little Index_, yet _that seemed to me\nof such moment_ that I would no longer _suppress_ them: especially\nbecause I accounted it a crime to have suffered _Mr. Smith_ to have\nbeen without an answer: Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose\ncare, in my matters, I owe _all regard_ and affection, yet without\ndiminution of that (part and that no small one neither) in which Dr.\nRawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so throughly\nagreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a _triga_.'\n\nIt is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims of the\nRev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or even of Mr.\nSmith himself, who would no doubt be able to substantiate himself, in\ncase a particular inquiry were made for him; and it would involve a\nserious departure from the method of invention usually employed in\nthis association, which did not deal with shadows when contemporary\ninstrumentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac\nGruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The precautions of\nthis secret, but so powerful league,--the skill with which its\ninstrumentalities were selected and adapted to its ends, is\ncharacterised by that same matchless dramatic power, which betrays\n'the source from which it springs' even when it 'only plays at\nworking.'\n\nBut if any one is anxious to know who the _third person_ of this triga\nreally was, or is, a glance at the Directory would enable such a one\nto arrive at a truer conclusion than the first reading of this letter\nwould naturally suggest. For this is none other than the person whom\nthe principle of this triga, and its enlightened sentiment and bond of\nunion, already _symbolically_ comprehended, whom it was intended to\ncomprehend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his\nhistorical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan for\nreducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and restoring him to the\nuse of his one only mind. For though the name of this person is often\nspelt in three letters, and oftener in one, it takes all the names in\nthe Directory to spell it in full. For this is none other than the\nperson that '_Michael_' refers to so often and with so much emphasis,\nglancing always at his own private name, and the singular largeness\nand comprehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All\nthe world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' '_I_, the first of\nany, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form\nof human condition.'\n\nBut the name of Mr. _Isaac Gruter_ was not less comprehensive, and\ncould be made to represent the whole _triga_ in an emergency, as well\nas another; ['I take so great pleasure in being judged and known that\nit is almost indifferent to me in _which of the two forms_ I am so']\nthough that does not hinder him from inviting Dr. Eawley to cast in\n_his symbol_, which was 'so _considerable an appendage_.' For though\nthe very smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other\nthan the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illustrated\nworks of this school were first exhibited; the theatre which hung out\nfor its sign on the outer wall, 'Hercules and his load too.' At a time\nwhen 'conceits' and 'devices in letters,' when anagrams and monograms,\nand charades, and all kinds of 'racking of orthography' were so much\nin use, not as curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of\n'racking,' a cipher referred to in this philosophy as the 'wheel\ncipher,' which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a\ncircle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some of\nthese symbols. _The first three letters_ of the alphabet representing\nthe whole _in_ the circle, formed a character or symbol which was\noften made to stand as a 'token' for a proper name, easily spelt in\nthat way, when phonography and anagrams were in such lively and\nconstant use,--while it made, at the same time, a symbolical\nrepresentation of the radical doctrine of the new school in\nphilosophy,--a school then _so_ new, that its 'Doctors' were compelled\nto 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in affixing their names to their\nown works, in some cases. And that same letter which was capable of\nrepresenting in this secret language either the _microcosm_, or 'the\nlarger whole,' as the case required (either with, or without the _eye_\nor _I_ in it, sending rays to the circumference) sufficed also to\nspell the name of the Grand Master of this lodge,--'who also was a\n_man_, take him for _all in all_,'--the man who took two hemispheres\nfor '_his symbol_.' That was the so considerable appendage which his\nfriend alludes to,--though 'the natural gaiety of disposition,' of\nwhich we have so much experience in other places, and which the\ngravity of these pursuits happily does not cloud, suggests a glance in\npassing at another signification, which we find alluded to also in\nanother place in Mrs. Quickly's '_Latin_.' Mere frivolities as these\nconceits and private and retired arts seem now, the Author of the\nAdvancement of Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their\nlabours and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring\nparticularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write _omnia\nper omnia_, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his 'index' of\n'the principal and supreme sciences,'--those sciences 'which being\ncommitted to _faithful_ privacy, wait the time when they may safely\nsee the light, and not be stifled in their birth.'\n\nNew constructions, according to true definitions, was _the\nplan_,--this _triga_ was the initiative.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nTHE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED.--A WRESTLING INSTANCE.\n\n\n  'For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome,\n  which, either being consuls, _inclined to the people_' ['If he\n  would but _incline to the people_, there never was a worthier man'],\n  'or being tribunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which\n  we handle now [doctrine of _Cure_], they be the best physicians\n  which, being learned, incline to the traditions of experience; or,\n  being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.'\n                                    _Advancement of Learning._\n\nBut while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast scientific\nchanges--vast, but noiseless and beautiful as the movements of God in\nnature--there was another kind of revolution brewing. All that time\nthere was a cloud on his political horizon--'a huge one, a black\none'--slowly and steadfastly accumulating, and rolling up from it,\nwhich he had always an eye on. He knew there was that in it which no\nscientific apparatus that could be put in operation then, on so short\na notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able to\ndivert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-cloud would\nhave to burst, and get overblown, before any chance for those peace\noperations, those operations of a solid and lasting peace, which he\nwas bent on, could be had--before any space on the earth could be\nfound broad enough for his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the\ncentral levers of it could begin to stir.\n\nThat revolution which 'was singing in the wind' then to his ear, was\none which would have to come first in the chronological order; but it\nwas easy enough to see that it was not going to be such a one, in all\nrespects, as a man of his turn of genius would care to be out in with\nhis works.\n\nHe knew well enough what there was in it. He had not been so long in\nsuch sharp daily collision with the elements of it--he had not been so\nlong trying conclusions with them under such delicate conditions,\nconditions requiring so nice an observation--without arriving at some\ndegree of assurance in regard to their main properties, without\nattaining, indeed, to what he calls _knowledge_ on that\nsubject--knowledge as distinguished from opinion--so as to be able to\npredict 'with a near aim' the results of the possible combinations.\nThe conclusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary\nmovements then at hand were _not_, on the whole, likely to be\nconducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.\n\nThe spectacle of a people violently '_revoking_ their _ignorant\nelection_,' and empirically seeking to better their state under such\nleaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and that, too, when\nthe _old_ military government was still so strong in moral forces, so\nsure of a faction in the state--of a faction of the best, which would\ncleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's\nfire unto blood and desperation the _unholy_ innovation--that would\nstand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of\nslaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation,\nunder such circumstances, did _not_ present itself to this Poet's\nimagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to\na philosopher of a less rigidly _inductive_, turn of mind.\n\nHis canvas, with its magic draught of the coming event, includes\nalready some contingencies which the programme of the theoretical\nspeculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including\n_then_, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and\nthe philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an\nhistorical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction\nthat the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the\nexisting usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his\nrights,--a movement then already determined on,--would perhaps involve\nthese so tragic consequences--the conviction that the revolution was\nat hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for\nthe future.\n\nBut if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp\nof particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear,\ncomprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how\ntotally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect--if\none would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the\npeace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what\nupheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies,\nwhat upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses,\nthis science of _stability_, this science of the future STATE, is\nsettled on,--such a one must explore this work yet further, and be\nable to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it\ncontains--that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman\nhas contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are\nalready cleaving and separating, one in which the historical\nsolidities are already in solution, or struggling towards\nit--prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and\novertaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific\nthan the old.\n\n  'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,\n   Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,\n   Hang up philosophy'--\n\nwrote this Poet's fire of old.\n\n  'Canst thou not minister to a _mind_ diseased?'\n\nit writes again. No?\n\n  'Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.'\n\n'See now what _learning_ is,' says the practical-minded nurse, quite\ndazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been\nbrought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest\nterms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the\npractical bent of Friar Laurence's genius; who seems to be doing his\nbest to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not _a\nFriar_ exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about\nthat time--the idea of the possibility of converging a large and\nstudious observation of nature in general,--and it is a very large and\ncurious one which _this Friar_ betrays,--upon any of those ordinary\nquestions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private\nsolution. And though _this_ knowledge might seem to be 'so variable as\nit falleth not under _precept_,' the prose philosopher is of the\nopinion that 'a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice,\ngathered by general observation of cases of _like nature_,' is\navailable for the particular instances which occur in this department.\nAnd the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no\nend to the precepts which he inducts from this 'variable knowledge'\nwhen he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural\nhistory, in '_prerogative cases_' and 'illustrious instances,' cases\ncleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts--ideal cases.\nAnd though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very\nsuccessful in this particular instance; if we take into account the\nfact that 'the Tragedy was the thing,' and that nothing but a tragedy\nwould serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on\nthat _effect_; if we take into account the fact that this is a\nscientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the\nsake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so\nquestionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the\napplicability of _learning_ to questions of this nature.\n\n'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the philosophy that\ndid that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides\n'reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the one that takes into\naccount those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had\nomitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks\nfrom his philosophic chair of '_men_ of good composition,' and who\ngives a recipe for composing _them_. 'Unless philosophy can make a\nJuliet,' is Romeo's word. 'See now what learning _is_,' is the Nurse's\ncommentary; for that same _Friar_, demure as he looks now under his\nhood, talking of 'simples' and great nature's latent virtues, is the\none that will cog the nurse's hearts from them, and come back beloved\nof all the trades in Rome. With his new art of 'composition' he will\ncompose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will\ncompose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater\ncongregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are\nnot many.\n\nLet us see now, then, what it is,--this 'universal insight in the\naffairs of the world,' this 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered\nfrom cases of a _like nature_,' with an observation that includes all\n_natures_,--let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it\ncomes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of\nthe ages; and in its great crisis of disorder--shaken, convulsed--\nwrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its\nprimal warring atoms.\n\n  'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'\n\n  'If thou _couldst_, Doctor, cast\n  The water of MY LAND, _find her disease_,\n  And purge it to a _sound_ and _pristine health_,\n  I would applaud thee to the very echo,\n  That should applaud again.'\n\n  'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,\n  Would scour _these English_ hence? Hear'st thou of _them_?'\n\n  'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand\n  That chambers will be safe.'\n\nLet us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises\nso severely the learning of other men,--who disposes so scornfully,\nright and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he\nfinds them,--who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it\n_pass_. Let us see what the learning is that is not '_words_,' as\nHamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.\n\nThis part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and\nreserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and\npeculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those\nconnections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and\nstrange,'--Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it\nis history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the\nseer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here\nupon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,'\nare but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.\n\n  'There is a history in all men's lives,\n  Figuring the nature of the times deceased;\n  The which observed, a man may prophesy,\n  With a near aim, of the main chance of things\n  As yet not come to life, which, _in their seeds_\n  And _weak beginnings_, lie intreasured.\n  Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'\n\n'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and\nrevolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same\nsubject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who\nbrings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water\nhis plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us\nis a divulsion of the whole mass.'\n\nThis part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of\nprophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful\nreader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of\nany supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank\nexplanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare\nnot unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher\nclaims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed,\nthis inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises,\nwhether _a kind_, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which\ncommands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and\nsufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to\nbe besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the\nancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of\nputting this immediate endowment--this 'godlike' endowment--under\nculture.\n\nThere is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and\nturmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her\nmask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth\nto draw 'the next ages' into the scene, when the necessary question of\nthe play requires it, is _bare_. It is the Man of Learning here\neverywhere, without any disguise,--the man of the new learning, openly\napplying his 'universal insight,' and 'wisdom of counsel and advice,\ngathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to this\ngreat question of 'Policy,' which was then hurrying on, with such\nportentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.\n\nHe who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this\n'Magician,' when he 'brings the rabble to his place,' the reader who\nwould know at last why it is that these old Roman graves 'have waked\ntheir sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art'; and\n_why_ it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise\nof the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should\nread now--but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the\nscientific statesman's hands, deserves to be read--this great\nrevolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has\nburied in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his\nown matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for\nthe sake of pursuing that general intention with the less\ninterruption, now that the storm appears to be 'overblown,' may safely\nreserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history,\nand criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the\nCOMMON-WEAL.\n\nThe reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe that the\nPoet avails himself of the _dialogue_ here, with even more than his\nusual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of the bolder passages, in\nthe least objectionable manner,--interrupting the statement in\ncritical points, and emphasizing it, by that interruption, to the\ncareful reader 'of the argument,' but to the spectator, or to one who\ntakes it as a _dialogue merely_, neutralizing it by that dramatic\nopposition. For the political criticism, which is of the boldest,\npasses safely enough, by being merely _broken_, and put into the\nmouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to\nblows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of\ncollusion.\n\nFor the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and\nstupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their\nunfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true\nconsulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the\nchair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely\ncriticized by the true Tribune--the Tribune, whose Tribe is the\nKind--on the other; and it was not necessary to produce, in any _more_\nprominent manner, just then, the fact, that _both these offices_ and\n_relations_ were combined in that tottering estate of the realm,--that\n'old riotous form of military government,' which held then only by the\nvirtual election of the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and\nwhich, this Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for\nits _innovations_ in the government, and suppressions of the ancient\nestates of this realm,--for its suppression of the dignities and\nprivileges of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered\ndignities and rights of the Commons.\n\n  _Scene_.--A Street. Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS with his two military\n  friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars,\n  and have but just returned from their campaign, COMINIUS and TITUS\n  LARTIUS,--and with them the old civilian MENENIUS, who, patrician\n  as he is, on account of his _honesty_,--a truly patrician\n  virtue,--is in favour with the people. '_He's_ an honest one. Would\n  they were _all so_.'\n\nThe military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of\ncourse, they are talking of the wars,--the foreign wars: but the\nprinciple of _inroad_ and _aggression_ on the one hand, and _defence_\non the other, the arts of _subjugation_, and _reconciliation_, the\narts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always\ncleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the\nscene.\n\n  _Cor_. Tullus Aufidius then _had made_ NEW HEAD.\n\n  _Lart_. He had, my lord, and _that_ it was, which caused\n  Our swifter COMPOSITION.\n\n  _Cor_.  So then, the _Volsces_ stand but as at first,\n  Ready, when _time_ shall _prompt_ them, to make _road_\n  Upon _us_ again.\n\n  _Com_. _They_ [Volsces?] _are worn_, lord consul, so\n  That we shall hardly in _our ages_ see\n  _Their_ banners wave again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  [_Enter Sicinius and Brutus._]\n\n  _Cor_. Behold! these are the tribunes of the people,\n  The _tongues_ o' the _common mouth_. I do despise them;\n  For they do prank them in authority,\n  Against all _noble_ sufferance.\n\n  _Sic_. Pass no further.\n\n  _Cor_. Ha! what is that?\n\n  _Bru_. It will be dangerous to\n  Go on: No further.\n\n  _Cor_. What makes this CHANGE?\n\n  _Men_. _The matter_?\n\n  _Com_. Hath he not passed the NOBLES and the COMMONS?\n\n  _Bru_. Cominius.--No.\n\n  _Cor_. Have I had _children's voices_? [ _Yes._]\n\n  _Sen_. Tribunes, give way:--he shall to the market-place.\n\n  _Bru_. The people are incensed against him.\n\n  _Sic_. Stop.\n  Or _all will fall in broil_.\n\n  _Cor_. Are these _your herd_?\n  Must _these_ have voices that can yield them now,\n  And straight disclaim their tongues?\n  _You, being their mouths_, why rule you not their teeth?\n  _Have you not set them on?_\n\n  _Men_. Be calm, be calm.\n\n  _Cor._ It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot,\n  To curb the will of the _nobility_:--\n  _Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule,\n  Nor_ ever will be _ruled_.\n\n  _Bru_. Call't not a _plot_:\n  The people cry you mocked them; and of late,\n  When _corn_ was given them gratis, you repined;\n  _Scandaled the suppliants for the people; called them\n  Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness._\n\n  _Cor_. Why, this was known before.\n\n  _Bru_. _Not to them all._\n\n  _Cor_. _Have you informed them since?_\n\n  _Bru_. How! _I_ inform them?\n\n  _Cor_. You are like to do _such business_.\n\n  _Bru_. Not unlike,\n  Each way to better _yours_.\n\n  _Cor_. Why _then_ should _I_ be consul? By yon clouds,\n  Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me\n  _Your fellow tribune_.\n\n  _Sic_. You show too much of _that_,\n  For which the people stir: If you will pass\n  To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,--\n  Which you are out of,--with a _gentler_ spirit;\n  Or never be so noble as a consul,\n  Nor yoke with him for tribune.\n\n  _Men_. Let's _be calm_.\n\n  _Com_. The people are abused;--set on--this paltering\n  Becomes not Rome: nor has Coriolanus\n  Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely\n  I' the plain way of his merit.\n\n  _Cor_. Tell me of _corn_:\n  _This was my speech_, and I will speak't _again_.\n\n  _Men. Not now, not now._\n\n  _First Sen_. Not in this heat, sir, _now_.\n\n  _Cor. Now_, as I live, I will.--My nobler friends\n  I crave their pardons:--\n  For the _mutable_, rank scented _many_, let them\n  _Regard me, as I do not flatter, and\n  Therein behold themselves_: I say again,\n  In soothing _them_, we nourish 'gainst our _senate_,\n  The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,\n  Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered,\n  By mingling them with us, _the honoured number_.\n  Who lack not _virtue, no_,--nor _power_, but _that_\n  _Which they have given to_--BEGGARS.\n\n  _Men. Well, no more._\n\n  _First Sen. No more words, we beseech you._\n\n  _Cor_. How, no more:\n  As for my country, I have shed my blood,\n  Not fearing outward force, _so_ shall my lungs\n  _Coin words_ till their decay against those meazels\n  Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought\n  The very way to catch them.\n\n  _Bru_. You speak o' the people,\n  As if you were a god to punish, not\n  _A man of their infirmity_.\n\n  _Sic. 'T were well_\n  _We let the people know't._\n\n  _Men_. What, what? his _choler_.\n\n  _Cor. Choler_!\n  Were I _as patient_ as the _midnight sleep,\n  By Jove,_ 't would be _my mind_.\n\n  _Sic_. It is a mind,\n  That shall remain a poison where it is,\n  _Not poison any further_.\n\n  _Cor_. _Shall remain!_\n  Hear you this Triton of the minnows? _mark you_\n  _His absolute_ SHALL?\n\n  _Com_. _'Twas from the canon,_\n  _O good_, but most _unwise patricians_, why\n  You _grave_, but _reckless senators_, have you thus\n  _Given Hydra here to choose_ AN OFFICER,\n  That with his _peremptory shall--being but\n  The horn and noise o' the monster_--wants not _spirit_\n  To say, he'll turn _your current_ in _a ditch_,\n  And make _your channel his? If he have power,\n  Then_ veil your IGNORANCE:--[that let him have it.]\n  --if _none, awake_\n  Your _dangerous_ LENITY.\n\n[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it but a\nlittle, it is not the lost Roman weal and its danger that fires the\npassion of this speech. 'Look at this player whether he has not turned\nhis colour, and has tears in his eyes.' 'What's _Hecuba_ to him or he\nto _Hecuba_, that he should weep for her? _What would he do_, had he\nthe motive and the cue for passion that _I_ have.']\n\n  --if none, awake\n  Your dangerous _lenity. If_ you are _learned_,\n  Be not as _common fools_; if you are _not_--\n\nWhat do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you from the\ncommons? If you are not, there's no nobility. If you are not, what\nbusiness have you in these chairs of state?\n\n  --if you are not,\n  _Let them have cushions by you_. You are plebeians,\n  If _they_ be senators; and _they are no less_,\n  When _both your voices blended_, the GREATEST TASTE\n  Most palates _theirs_. _They choose_ their magistrate;\n  And such a one as _he_, who puts his _shall_,--\n\n  [Mark it, his _popular shall_].\n\n  His _popular shall_, against a graver bench\n  Than ever frown'd in Greece! By Jove himself,\n  It makes the _consuls base_: and _my soul aches_,\n  _To know_, when two authorities are up,\n\n  [Neither able to rule].\n\n  _Neither supreme_, how soon confusion\n  May enter twixt the GAP of BOTH, and take\n  The one by the other.\n\n  _Com._ Well,--on to the _market place_.\n\n  _Cor_.  Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth\n  The _corn o' the store-house_ gratis, as 'twas used\n  _Sometime in Greece_.\n\n[It is not _corn_, but the _property_ of the _state_, and its\nappropriation, we talk of here. Whether the _absolute power_ be in the\nhands of the _people_ or '_their officer_.' There had been a speech\nmade on that subject, which had not met with the approbation of the\nabsolute power then conducting the affairs of this realm; and in its\nmain principle, it is repeated here. 'That was my speech, and I will\nmake it again.' 'Not now, not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.' 'Now,\nas I live, I will.']\n\n  _Men_. Well, well, no more of that,\n\n  _Cor_. Though _there_ THE PEOPLE had more _absolute power_,\n  I say they _nourished disobedience, fed_\n  The _ruin of the state_.\n\n  _Bru_. Why shall the people _give_\n  One that speaks thus their voice?\n\n  _Cor_. I'll give my _reasons_,\n  More worthier than _their voices_. They know the corn\n  Was not our RECOMPENSE; resting well assured\n  _They ne'er did service for it_?\n  .         .         . Well, what then?\n  How shall _this bosom multiplied_, digest;\n  The senate's courtesy? Let _deeds_ express\n  _What's like to be their words_. We did request it,\n  WE _are_ THE GREATER POLL, and in _true fear_\n  _They gave us our demands_. Thus we debase\n  The nature of our seats, and make the rabble\n  Call our _cares, fears:_ which will in time _break ope\n  The locks o' the senate_, and _bring in the crows\n  To peck the eagles._\n\n  _Mem_. Come, enough.\n\n  _Bru_. Enough, with _over measure_.\n\n  _Cor_. No, take _more_;\n  What may be sworn by, _both divine and human_,\n  Seal what I end withal! This _double_ worship,--\n  Where _one part_ does _disdain with cause, the other\n  Insult without all reason_; where _gentry, title, wisdom_,\n  Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no\n  Of _General Ignorance_--it _must omit\n  Real necessities_, and _give way the while\n  To unstable slightness_. PURPOSE so _barred_ it follows\n  _Nothing is done to purpose: Therefore_ beseech you,--\n\n  [Therefore beseech you].\n\n  You that will be less fearful than discreet;\n  That love the _fundamental part_ of _state_,\n  More than you doubt the _change_ of't--\n\nThere was but one man in England then, able to balance this\nrevolutionary proposition so nicely--so curiously; 'that love the\n_fundamental_ part of state more than you doubt the change of it';\n'You that are _less fearful_ than _discreet_'--not so _fearful_ as\ndiscreet.\n\n                        that prefer\n  A noble life before a long, and wish\n  To jump a body with a dangerous physic\n  _That's sure_ of _death without it_,--at once _pluck out\n  The multitudinous tongue_; let them not lick\n  The sweet which is their poison; _your dishonour_\n  MANGLES _true_ JUDGMENT, and bereaves THE STATE\n  Of that INTEGRITY which should _become it_:\n  Not having the power to do the good it would,\n  For the ill which doth control it.\n\n  _Bru_. He has said enough.\n\n  [One would think so].\n\n  _Sic_. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer\n  _As traitors do_.\n\n  _Cor_. Thou wretch! despite o'erwhelm thee!\n  What should the _people do_ with these bald tribunes?\n  _On whom depending, their obedience fails\n  To the greater bench_? In a rebellion,\n  When what's not meet, but what must be was _law_\n  Then were they chosen: in a better hour,\n  Let what _is meet_, be said it must be _meet_,\n  And throw their power i' the _dust_.\n\n  _Bru_. MANIFEST TREASON.\n\n  _Sic_. _This a Consul_? No.\n\n  _Bru_. The Aediles! ho! let him be apprehended.\n\n  _Sic_. Go call the people; [_Exit Brutus_] _in whose name, myself_\n  Attach _thee_ [_thee_] as a traitorous INNOVATOR,\n  A FOE to the PUBLIC WEAL. Obey, I charge thee,\n  And follow to thine answer.\n\n  _Cor_. Hence, old goat!\n  _Senators and Patricians. We'll surety him_.\n\n  _Cor_. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones\n  Out of thy garments.\n\n  _Sic_. Help, ye citizens.\n\n  [_Re-enter Brutus, with the Aediles, and a rabble of citizens._]\n\n  _Men_. _On both sides, more respect._\n\n  _Sic_. There's HE that would\n  _Take from you all your power_.\n\n  _Bru_. _Seize him, Aediles_.\n\n  _Cit_. _Down with him. Down with him_.\n\n  [_Several speak_.]\n\n  _Second Sen_. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!\n\n  [_They all bustle about_ CORIOLANUS.]\n\n  Tribunes, patricians:--citizens:--what ho:--\n  Sicinius, Brutus:--Coriolanus:--citizens:--\n\n  _Cit_. _Peace!--Peace!--Peace!--stay!--hold!--peace!_\n\n  _Men_. _What is about to be? I am out of breath:\n  Confusion's near! I cannot speak_: you tribunes\n  To the people.--_Coriolanus_, patience:--\n  Speak, good Sicinius.\n\n  _Sic_.  Hear me, people;--_Peace_.\n\n  _Cit_.  Let's hear _our_ tribune:--Peace,--_Speak, speak, speak_.\n\n  _Sic_. _You are at point to lose your liberties_,\n  Marcius _would have all from you_; Marcius\n  Whom late you have named for consul.\n\n  _Men_. Fye, fye, fye.\n  That is the way to _kindle_, not to _quench_.\n\n  _Sen_. To _unbuild_ the _city and to lay all flat_.\n\n  _Sic_. What is the city, but _the people_.\n\n  _Cit_. TRUE,\n  The _people are_ the city.\n\n  _Bru_. By the consent of ALL, we were established\n  The _people's_ magistrates.\n\n  _Cit_. You so remain.\n\n  _Men_. And so are like to do.\n\n  _Cor_. That is the way to lay the city flat,\n  To bring the _roof_ to the _foundation_;\n  And bury all which yet _distinctly ranges,\n  In heaps and piles of ruin_.\n\n  _Sic_. _This deserves death._\n\n  _Bru_. Or let us stand to our authority,\n   Or let us lose it:--\n\nTruly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing the history\nwhich is in all men's lives, 'Figuring the nature of the times\ndeceased, a man _may prophesy_,' as it would seem, 'with a _near\naim_,'--quite near--'of the _main_ chance of things, as yet, not come\nto life, which in their weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things\nbecome the hatch and brood of _time_,' this Poet says; but art, it\nseems, anticipates that process. There appears to be more of the\nfuture here, than of the times deceased.\n\n  _Bru_. We do here pronounce\n  Upon the _part of the people, in whose power\n  We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy_\n  Of _present death._\n\n  _Sic_. Therefore, lay hold of him;\n  Bear him to the rook Tarpeian, and from thence\n  Into destruction cast him.\n\n  _Bru_. \u00c6diles, seize him.\n\n  _Cit_. Yield, Marcius, yield.\n\n  _Men_. Hear me, one word.\n  Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.\n\n  _\u00c6diles_. Peace, peace.\n\n  _Men_. Be that you _seem, truly your country's friend_,\n  And _temperately_ proceed to what you would\n  Thus _violently_ redress.\n\n  _Bru_. Sir, those _cold ways_\n  That seem _like prudent helps_, are very _poisonous_.\n  Where the _disease is violent_.--Lay hands upon him,\n  And bear him to the rock.\n\n  _Cor_. No: I'll die here. [_Drawing his sword_.]\n  There's some among you have beheld me fighting;\n  Come _try upon yourselves_, what you have _seen_ me.\n\n  _Men_. DOWN with THAT SWORD; tribunes, withdraw awhile.\n\n  _Bru_. Lay hands upon him.\n\n  _Men_. Help, help, MARCIUS, help!\n  You that be NOBLE, help him, young and old.\n\n  _Cit_. DOWN WITH HIM! DOWN WITH HIM!\n\n'In this _mutiny, the Tribunes, the \u00c6diles, and the People, are all_\nBEAT IN,' so the stage direction informs us, which appears a little\nsingular, considering there is but _one sword_ drawn, and the\nvictorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in numbers.\nIt is, however, only a temporary success, as the victors seem to be\naware.\n\n  _Men_. Go, get you to _your houses, be gone away_,\n  All will be nought else.\n\n  _Second Sen_. Get you gone.\n\n  _Cor_. _Stand fast,\n  We have as many friends as enemies._\n\n  _Men_. Shall it be put to _that_?\n\n  _Sen_. _The gods forbid!_\n  I pry'thee noble friend, home to thy house;\n  _Leave us to_ CURE THIS CAUSE.\n\n  _Men_. _For_ 'tis a sore _upon us,\n  You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you._\n\n  _Com_. Come, Sir, along with us.\n\n  _Cor_. I would they were barbarians (as they are,\n  Though in Rome _littered_) not Romans, (as they are _not_,\n  Though _calved_ i' the porch o' the Capitol).\n\n  _Men_. Begone;\n  Put not _your worthy rage_ into your _tongue_;\n  _One time_ will _owe another_.    [_Hear_.]\n\n  _Cor_. On fair ground,\n  I could beat _forty_ of them.\n\n  _Men_. I could _myself_\n  Take up a _brace_ of the best of them; _yea, the two\n  tribunes_.\n\n  _Com_. But now 'tis _odds_ beyond arithmetic:\n  And MANHOOD is called FOOLERY, _when it stands\n  Against a falling fabric_.--Will you hence,\n  Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend\n  Like interrupted waters, and _o'erbear\n  What they are used to bear_. [Change of 'predominance.']\n\n  _Men_. Pray you, begone:\n  I'll _try_ whether _my_ old wit be in request\n  With _those that have but little_; _this_ must be _patched_\n  With cloth of _any colour_.\n\n  _Com_. Nay, come away.\n\nThe features of that living impersonation of the heroic faults and\nvirtues which 'the mirror,' that professed to give to 'the very body\nof the time, its form and pressure,' could not fail to show, are\nglimmering here constantly in 'this ancient piece,' and often shine\nout in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness,\nas to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should\nundertake to fathom prematurely the player's intention. For 'the\ngentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was not the only\npoet of this time, as it would seem, who found the scope of a double\nintention, in his poetic representation, not adequate to the\ncomprehension of his design--who laid on another and another still,\nand found the complexity convenient. 'The sense is the best judge,'\nthis Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining peremptorily\nto accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;--a rule in art\nwhich requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In\nfact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to\ntrack the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which\nhis art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that\npurpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, 'to whom you will not give\nan hour, you give nothing,' he says, and 'he had as lief not be read\nat all, as be read by a careless reader.' So he thrusts in his\nmeanings as thick as ever he likes, and those who don't choose to stay\nand pick them out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he\nlaid them in for,--that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will\nhave readers enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait.\nThere's time enough.\n\n  _First Pat_. This man has marr'd his fortune.\n\n  _Men_. His nature is too noble for the world:\n  _He_ would not _flatter_ Neptune for _his trident_,\n  Or Jove for _his power_ to _thunder_. His heart's his mouth;\n  What his breast forges, _that_ his _tongue_ must vent;\n  And being angry, does forget that _ever\n  He heard the name of death_.\n\n  [_A noise within_.]\n\n  Here's goodly work!\n\n  _Second Pat_. I would they were _a-bed_!\n\n  _Men_. I would they were in Tyber!--_What, the vengeance,\n  Could he_ not _speak them fair_?\n\n  [_Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble_.]\n\n  _Sic_. WHERE IS THIS VIPER,\n  That would _depopulate_ the city, and\n  BE EVERY MAN HIMSELF?\n\n  _Men_. You worthy tribunes--\n\n  _Sic_. _He_ shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock\n  With rigorous hands; _he hath resisted LAW_,\n  And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.\n\n['When could they say till now that talked of Rome that _her_ wide\nwalls encompassed but _one man_?' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish,\nand what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so\nvile a thing as Caesar.']\n\n  Than the severity of the PUBLIC POWER,\n  _Which he so sets at nought_.\n\n  _First Cit_. He shall _well_ know\n  The noble _tribunes_ are the _people's mouths_,\n  And _we their hands_.\n\n[Historical _principles throughout, with much of that kind of\nillustration in which his works are so prolific, an illustration which\nis not rhetorical, but scientific, based on the COMMON PRINCIPLES IN\nNATURE, which it is his 'primary' business to ascend to, and which it\nis his 'second' business to apply to each particular branch of art.\n'Neither,' as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advancement,\n'neither are these only _similitudes_ as _men of narrow observation_\nmay conceive them to be, but the _same footsteps of nature_, treading\nor printing upon several subjects or matters,' and the tracking of\nthese historical principles to their ultimate forms, is that which he\nrecommends for the _disclosing_ of _nature and_ the _abridging_ of\nArt.]\n\n  _Sic_. He's a _disease_, that must be cut away.\n\n  _Men_. O he's a _limb_, that has but a disease;\n  Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.\n  What has he done to Rome, that's worthy death?\n  _Killing our enemies?_ The blood he hath _lost_,\n  (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath,\n  _By many an ounce_), he dropped it for his country.\n  And what _is left, to lose it by his country,\n  Were to us all, that do't and suffer it,\n  A brand to the end o' the world._\n\nThere's a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom he says in\nanother scene, 'I cannot speak him home.'\n\n  _Bru_. _Merely awry_: when he did love his country,\n  It honour'd him.\n\n  _Men_.                 The _service_ of the _foot_,\n  Being once _gangren'd_, is not then respected\n  _For what before it was_?\n\n  _Bru_.                       We'll hear no more:--\n  Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence;\n  Lest his infection, being of catching nature,\n  _Spread further_.\n\n  _Men_. One word more, one word.\n  This _tiger-footed_ rage, when it shall find\n  _The harm_ of _unscann'd swiftness_, will, too late,\n  _Tie leaden pounds to his_ HEELS. [Mark it, for it is a\n                                     prophecy]\n  _Lest_ PARTIES (as he is _beloved_) _break out_,\n   And sack great _Rome_ with _Romans_.\n\n  _Bru_. If it were so,--\n\n  _Sic. What_ do ye talk?\n  Have we not had a taste of his obedience?\n  _Our \u00c6diles smote? Ourselves resisted?--Come:--_\n\n  _Men. Consider this; he has been bred i' the wars_,\n  Since he could draw a sword,--\n\nThat has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their rule,\nhitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what _schooling_ these\nstatesmen have had, before you begin the enterprise of reforming them,\nand take your measures accordingly. They are not learned men, you see.\nHow should they be? There has been no demand for learning. The law of\nthe sword has prevailed hitherto. When what's not meet but what must\nbe was law, then were they chosen. Proceed by process.\n\n  _Consider_ this; he has been bred i' the WARS\n  Since he could draw a sword, and is _ill school'd_\n  In _boulted language_--\n\n[That's the trouble; but there's been a little bolting going on in\nthis play.]\n\n  --_Meal and bran, together_\n  He _throws without distinction. Give me leave_\n  I'll go to him, and undertake to bring him\n  Where he shall answer by a _lawful form_,\n  (In peace) to his utmost peril.\n\n  _First Sen. Noble tribunes._\n  It is the _humane way_: the _other_ course\n  Will prove too bloody; and--\n\n[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].\n\n  --the END of it,\n  Unknown to the beginning.\n\n  _Sic_. Noble Menenius;\n  Be _you_ then as the People's Officer:\n  _Masters_,--[and they seem to be that, truly,]--lay down _your\n  weapons_.\n\n  _Bru. Go not home_,\n\n  _Sic_. MEET on the MARKET-PLACE,--\n\n[--that is where the 'idols of the market' are--]\n\n  _We'll attend you there:\n  Where_, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed\n  In our _first way_.\n\n  _Men_. I'll bring him to you.\n  Let me desire _your_ company [_To the Senators_] He _must_ come,\n  Or what is worse will follow.\n\n  _Sen_. Pray you, let's to him.\n\n  SCENE--THE FORUM.\n  _Enter Sicinius and Brutus_.\n\n  _Bru_. In this _point_ charge him _home_, that he affects\n  TYRANNICAL POWER: if he evade us there,\n  Enforce him with his envy to _the people_;\n  And that the spoil, got on the Antiates,\n  Was _ne'er distributed_.--\n\n  _Enter an \u00c6dile_.\n  What, will he come?\n\n  _\u00c6d_. He's coming.\n\n  _Bru_. How accompanied?\n\n  _\u00c6d_. _With old Menenius_, and those senators\n  That always favour'd him.\n\n  _Sic_. Have you a _catalogue_\n  Of all the voices that we have procured,\n  _Set down by_ THE POLL?\n\n  _\u00c6d_. _I have; 'tis ready._\n\n  _Sic_. Have you collected them BY TRIBES?\n\n  _\u00c6d_. I _have_.\n\n  _Sic_. Assemble presently the people hither:\n  And when they hear _me_ say, _it shall be so_\n  _I_ the RIGHT and STRENGTH o' the COMMONS, be it either\n  For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them,\n  If I say _fine_, cry _fine_; if _death_, cry _death_;\n  Insisting on the OLD _prerogative,\n  And power i' THE TRUTH, o' THE CAUSE.\n\n  [There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics,\n  which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is\n  the most immersed.--_Advancement_ of LEARNING.]\n\n  _\u00c6d_. I shall inform them.\n\n  _Bru_. And when such time they have begun to cry,\n  Let them not cease, but with a din confused\n  Enforce the present execution\n  Of what we chance to sentence.\n\n  _\u00c6d_. Very well.\n\n  _Sic_. Make them _be strong_, and _ready for this hint_.\n  When we shall _hap_ to give't them.\n\n  _Bru_. Go about it.\n\n  [_Exit \u00c6dile_.]\n\n  Put him to choler straight. He hath been used\n  Ever to conquer, and to have his worth\n  Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot\n  Be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks\n  What's in his heart; and _that_ is there, which looks\n  _With me to break his neck_. [Prophecy--inductive.]\n  Well, here he comes.\n\n  _Enter_ CORIOLANUS, _and his party_.\n\n  _Men_.               Calmly, I do beseech you.\n\n  _Cor_. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece\n  Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour'd gods\n  Keep _Rome in safety_, and the CHAIRS of JUSTICE\n  _Supplied_ with WORTHY MEN! _plant_ LOVE _among us_.\n  Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the _shows_ of PEACE,\n  And _not_ our STREETS with WAR.\n\n  _First Sen_. _Amen, Amen! [Hear, Hear_!]\n\n  _Men_. A NOBLE _wish_.\n\n  _Re-enter \u00c6dile with Citizens_.\n\n  _Sic_. Draw near, ye people.\n\n  _Cor_. First hear _me_ speak.\n\n  _\u00c6dile_. List to your _tribunes_. Audience: _Peace_, I say.\n\n  _Both Tri_. Well, say,--Peace, ho.\n\n  _Cor_. Shall I be charged no further than this present?\n  Must all determine here?\n\n  _Sic_. I do demand,\n  If you submit you to the _people's_ voices,\n  Allow their _officers_, and are content\n  To suffer _lawful censure for such faults\n  As shall be proved upon you_?\n\n  _Cor_. I am content.\n\n  _Men_. Lo, citizens, he says he is content--\n\n  _Cor_. What is the matter,\n  That being pass'd for consul, with full voice,\n  I am so dishonour'd, that the very hour\n  You take it off again?\n\n  _Sic_. _Answer to us_.\n\n  _Cor_. Say then,'tis true. _I ought so_.\n\n  Sic. WE CHARGE YOU, that you have contrived to take\n  From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind\n  Yourself into a_ POWER TYRANNICAL;\n  _For which_, you are A TRAITOR to the PEOPLE.\n\n  _Cor_. How! _Traitor_?\n\n  _Men_. Nay, temperately: Your promise.\n\n  _Cor_. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people!\n  Call me _their traitor_!\n\n  _Cit_. To the rock, to the rock with him.\n\n  _Sic_. Peace.\n  We need not put _new matter_ to his charge:\n  What you have _seen_ him do, and heard him speak,\n  _Beating_ your _officers, cursing yourselves_,\n  Opposing _laws_ with _strokes_, and here defying\n  Those whose great power must try him; even THIS,\n  So _criminal_, and in such CAPITAL _kind_,\n  Deserves the extremest death....\n                               For that he has,\n  As much as in him lies, from time to time,\n  Envied against the people; _seeking means_\n  To _pluck away their power_: as now, at last,\n  Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence\n  Of dreaded justice, but on the _ministers_\n  _That do distribute it; in the name o' the people_,\n  And in the _power of us, the tribunes, we_,\n  Even from _this instant_, banish him our city,\n  In _peril of precipitation_\n  From off the rock Tarpeian, never more\n  To enter _our_ Rome's gates. I' THE PEOPLE'S NAME\n  _I say it shall be so_.\n\n  _Cit_. _It shall be so, it shall be so_: let him away,\n  He's banish'd, and it _shall be so_.\n\n  _Com_. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.\n\n  _Sic_. HE'S SENTENCED: no more hearing.\n\n  _Com_. Let me speak:--\n\n  _Bru_. THERE'S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED,\n  _As_ ENEMY _to the_ PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY:\n  IT SHALL BE SO.\n\n  _Cit_. IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.\n\nAnd this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was\njust then bestirring himself to get the life of 'that last king of\nEngland who was his ancestor' brought out; a king who was taking so\nmuch pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all\nthe lines in it laid out and distinguished--one who was taking so much\npains to get the fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in\nby battle,' cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of\nwhite and red from the old _Norman_ should not prove sufficient--\nsufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and\nthat of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and\ntheir pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A pretty\nscene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he\ndirectly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle-\n-by battle with the English people _on those very questions_; who had\n'beaten them in' in their mutinies with his single sword, 'and taken\nall from them'; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed\nliberties, and 'the charters that they bore in the body of the weal'--\nthat chair which was even then beginning to rock a little--while there\nwas that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir\nwhich might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as\nthey were going then, not unlike to break some one's neck.\n\n  'Bid them home,'\n\nsays the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen\npeople, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never\nmore to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.\n\n  'Bid them home:\n  Say, _their great enemy is gone_, and THEY\n  STAND _in their ancient strength_.'\n\nBut it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of\nthe military power is completed. Of course one could not tell\nbeforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous,\nexhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at\nthe suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might\nhave with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way\nof 'striking an awe into them,' and removing any lurking opposition\nthey might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in\ngovernment; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to\nthis Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on\nthe part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his _special_\nqualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was\nnot attended with those happy results which appear to have been\nexpected in the other instance.\n\n  '_If_ you have writ _your annals true_, 't is there,\n  That _like an_ EAGLE in a dove-cote, _I_\n  Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli:\n  _Alone, I did it_.'\n  'Why--\n\n[The answer is, in this case,]\n\n  '_Why_, noble lords,\n  _Will you be put in mind_ of his blind fortune,\n  Which was _your shame_, by this unholy braggart,\n  'Fore _your own eyes and ears_?\n\n  _Cons_. Let him die for't. [Several speak at once.]\n\n  _Citizens_ [Speaking _promiscuously_]. Tear him to pieces; do\n  it presently. He killed _my son_--_my daughter_;--he killed my\n  cousin Marcus;--he killed _my father_....\n                           O that I had him,\n  With six Aufidiuses, or more, _his tribe_,\n  To use _my lawful sword_.\n                              Insolent villain!\n  ...Traitor!--how now?....\n  Ay, TRAITOR, Marcius.\n                         _Marcius_?\n  Ay, _Marcius_, Caius Marcius. _Dost thou think_\n  I'll grace thee with that ROBBERY--thy STOLEN NAME,\n  _Coriolanus_, in CORIOLI?....\n  [.... Honest, my lord? 'Ay, honest.']\n\n  _Cons_. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.'\n  'Would you proceed especially against _Caius Marcius?_\n  Against him FIRST.'\n\nSurely, if that 'Heir apparent' to whom the _History_ of HENRY THE\nSEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of\nthe '_rare accidents_' in that reign to the royal notice and\nconsideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly\nthoughtful mood to light upon this yet more 'ancient piece,' he might\nhave found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be\ndenied, that the poet's mode of handling the same historical question\nis much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher.\nBut probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at\nWhitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely--a Book-maker, able\nto compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic\nmanner, according to the received method--but a Show-man, also, an\nHistorical Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician,\nwho had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of\nrevealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, 'with a\nnear aim,' an aim so _near_ that it might well seem 'magical'; and\nthat a cloud was flaming in it, even then, 'which drizzled blood upon\nthe Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his\nfather did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar,\nwith such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided\nturn for acting--one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in\nthat theatre which is the Globe--one who had laid out all for his\nshare in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us,\nthat they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager,\nsuch a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus'\nthere, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They\ndid not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so\n'patient--patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that\nfor the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'--such a born\naspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who\nhad always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they\nhad a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or\nfaltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for\nhis actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and\nthat it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.\n\nThe Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then 'Fame, who is the\nposthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.'\n\n  'O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,\n  But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.'\n\n  'Henceforth guard thee well,\n  For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;\n  But _by the forge_ that stithied Mars his helm,\n  I'll kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\n\n  'How I have thought of this, and of these times,\n  I shall recount hereafter, .    .     .\n  .     .     .     .     .  and find a time\n  Both meet to hear and answer such high things.\n  _Till then_, my noble friend, _chew upon this_;\n  Brutus had rather he _a villager_,\n  Than _to repute himself_ a son of Rome,\n  Under these hard conditions _as this time_\n  _Is like to lay upon us_.\n\nInasmuch as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured\nthroughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view\nof the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is\ninvolved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning,\nit presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly\nopposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous\npreconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most\nnotable in the history of this country; and not only to facts\nsustained by unquestionable contemporary authority, and attested by\npublic documents,--facts which history has graven with her pen of iron\nin the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions of this man's\ncharacter, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly\nresponsible;--not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him\nby authority,--not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious\nname that was not his to blast,--that was the property of men of\nlearning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for\never, at the bidding of power,--not that only, but the voluntary\nexhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged,--which he\nhas gone out of his way to leave to us,--memorials of them which he\nhas collected with his own hands, and sealed up, and sent down to\nposterity 'this side up,' with the most urgent directions to have them\nread, and examined, and considered deeply,--that posterity, too, to\nwhich he commends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the\ncure of his fame.\n\nThe demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must receive it.\nBecause our criticism or our learning is not equal to the task of\nreconciling it with that which we know already, or with that which we\n_believed_, and thought we _knew_, we must not on that account reject\nit. That is to hurt ourselves. That is to destroy the principle of\nintegrity at its source. We must take our facts and reconcile them, if\nwe can; and let them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is\ngreater than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of\nus, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts, for\nthe sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never so\nplausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did require of\nany mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be dispensed with, or\nshorn, on either side to make it tenable, is not going to stand, let\nit come in what name, or with what authority it will; because the\ntruth of history is, in its least particular, of a universal quality,\nand is much more potent than anything that the opinion and will of man\ncan oppose to it.\n\nTo the mind which is able to receive under all conditions the\ndemonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight,--to the mind to\nwhich truth is religion, this book is dedicated. The facts which it\ncontains are able to assert themselves,--will be, at least, hereafter.\nThey will not be dependent ultimately upon the mode of their\nexhibition here. For they have the large quality, they have the\nsolidity and dimensions of historical truth, and are accessible on\nmore sides than one.\n\nBut to those to whom they are already able to commend themselves in\nthe form in which they are here set forth, the author begs leave to\nsay, in conclusion, though it must stand for the present in the form\nof a simple statement, but a statement which challenges investigation,\nthat so far from coming into any real collision with the evidence\nwhich we have on this subject from other sources, those very facts,\nand those very historical materials on which our views on this subject\nhave been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the complete\ndevelopment of the views contained here.\n\nIt is the true history of these great events in which the hidden great\nmen of this age played so deep a part; it is the true history of that\ngreat crisis in which the life-long plots of these hidden actors began\nto show themselves on the historic surface in scenic grandeur,--in\nthose large tableaux which history takes and keeps,--which history\nwaits for,--it is the very evidence which has supplied the principal\nbasis of the received views on this subject,--it is the history of the\ninitiation of that great popular movement,--that movement of new ages,\nwith which the chief of popular development, and the leader of these\nages, has been hitherto so painfully connected in our impressions; it\nis that very evidence,--that blasting evidence which the Learning of\nthe Modern Ages has always carried in its stricken heart,--it is\n_that_ which is wanting here. That also is a part of the story which\nhas begun to be related here.\n\nAnd those very letters which have furnished 'confirmations strong as\nproofs of holy writ' of the impressions which the other historical\nevidence, as it stands at present, inevitably creates,--those very\nletters which have been collected by the party whose character was\nconcerned in them, and preserved with so much diligence and\ncaution,--which we have been asked with so much emphasis to read and\nponder,--which have been recommended to our attention as the very best\nmeans, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic\nrelations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete\nunderstanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance with his\ncharacter and aims,--with his _natural dispositions_, as well as his\ndeliberate scientific _aims_,--these letters, long as we have turned\nfrom them,--often as we have turned from them,--chilled, confounded,\nsick at heart,--unable, in spite of those recommendations, to find in\nthem any gleam of the soul of these proceedings,--these very letters\nwill have to be read, after all, and with that very diligence which\nthe directions enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to\ntake just that place in the development of this plot which the author,\nwho always knows what he is about when he is giving directions,\ndesigned them to take. There is one very obvious reason why they\nshould be studied--why they would have to be studied in the end. They\nhave on the face of them a claim to the attention of the learned.\nThere is nothing like them in the history of mankind. For, however\nmean and disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to\nwords,--that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the\nidentity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in the\nmost private conferences,--there is usually an attempt to clothe the\nforlorn and shrinking actuality with the common human dignity, or to\nmake it, at least, passably respectable, if the claim to the heroic is\ndispensed with,--even in oral speech. But in writing, in letters,\ndestined to never so brief and limited an existence, who puts on paper\nfor the eye of another, for the review of that criticism which in the\nlowest, basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared\nto detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on the\nleast failure, or shadow of failure in the best--who puts in\nwriting,--what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it comes to\nthat, a deliberate display of meanness,--what convicted felon, but\nwill undertake in that case to give some sort of heroic colour to his\nproceedings--some air of suffering virtue to his durance?\n\nBut a great man, consciously great, who knows that his most trifling\nletter is liable to publication; a great man, writing on subjects and\noccasions which insure publicity to his writing; a man of fame,\nwriting letters expressly for publication, and dedicating them to the\nfar-off times; a man of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest\nshades of moral differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur\nof aims--aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering, under the\nmost difficult conditions, pursued to their successful issue; a man\nwhose aim in life it was to advance, and ennoble, and enrich his kind;\nin whose life-success the race of men are made glad; such a one\nsending down along with the works, in which the nobility and the\ndeliberate worth and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved,\nmemorials of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them,\nby universal consent, the most odious character in history; this is\nthe phenomenon which our men of learning have found themselves called\nupon to encounter here. To separate the man and the philosopher--to\nfly out upon the _man_, to throw him overboard with every expression\nof animosity and disgust, to make him out as bad as possible, to\ncollect diligently every scrap of evidence against him, and set it\nforth with every conceivable aggravation--this has been the resource\nof an indignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest\nin some form; this has been the defence of learning, cast down from\nits excellency, and debased in all men's eyes, as it seemed for ever,\nin the person of its high-priest.\n\nThe objection to the work here presented to the public is, that it\ndoes not go far enough. From the point of review that the research of\nwhich it is the fruit has now attained, this is the criticism to which\nit appears to be liable. From this point of view, the _complaint_ to\nbe made against it is, that at the place where it stops it leaves, for\nwant of that part of the evidence which contains it, the historical\ngrandeur of our great men unrevealed or still obscured. For we _have_\nhad them, in the sober day-light of our occidental learning, in the\nactualities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past\nonly--monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man's divinity,\ndemi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples, stalking\nthrough the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or in the twilight of\na national popular ignorance, embalmed in the traditions of those who\nare always 'beginners.' We have had them; we need not look to a\nforeign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own\nstock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in\nthe searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them,\nwe have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and\nignorance confessed, with all their 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,'\nwith all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion and will in\nman, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and wrong-doing,\nassumed and acknowledged in their own persons, symbolically,\nvicariously, assumed and confessed. 'I am very proud, revengeful,\nambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put\nthem in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.' We\nhave them, _our_ Interpreters, _our_ Poets, _our_ Reformers, who start\nfrom the actualities--from the actualities of nature in general, and\nof the human nature in particular--who make the most careful study of\nman as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis of their\ninnovation, the beginning of their advancement to the ideal or divine.\nWe have them; and they, too, they also come to us, with that old\ngarland of glory on their brows, with that same 'crown' of victory,\nwhich the world has given from of old to those who have taken her\naffairs to be their business.\n\nThat the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an age, like\nthat age from which our modern philosophy proceeds, is of a kind to\nrequire, for its unravelling, a different species of criticism from\nthat which suffices for the historical evidence which our own times\nand institutions produce, is a fact which would hardly seem to require\nany illustration in the present state of our historical knowledge, in\nthe present state of our knowledge in regard to the history of this\nage in particular; when not the professed scholar only, but every\nreader, knows what age in the constitutional history of England, at\nleast, that age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian\nonly, with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are _caviare_ to\nthe multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull prose\nand scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back to the peoples\ntheir own, to tell us what age this was. The inner history of this\ntime is indeed still wanting to us; and the reason is, that we have\nnot yet applied to the reading of its principal documents that key of\ntimes which our contemporary historians have already put into our\nhands--that key which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain\ncases, indispensable to the true interpretation.\n\nThat the direct contemporary testimony on which history depends is, in\nthis case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and through all its\ndetails--that the documents are all of them, on the face of them,\n'suspicious,' and not fit to be received as historical evidence\nwithout the severest scrutiny and re-examination--this is the fact\nwhich remains to be taken into the account here. For this is a case in\nwhich the witnesses come into court, making signs, seeking with mute\ngesticulation to attract our attention, pointing significantly to the\ndifficulties of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting\na second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mortally\nhate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could; intimating that if\ntheir testimony should be re-examined in a higher court, and when the\nStar Chamber and the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer\nin session, it might perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different\nreading. This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his\nfinger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another\n_age_.\n\nWe all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and\ndignities of a race--what age in the history of its recovered\nliberties, rescued from oppression and recognised and confirmed by\nstatute, this was. We know it was an age in which the decisions of the\nBench were prescribed to it by a power that had 'the laws of England\nat its commandment,' that it was an age in which Parliament, and the\npress, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had\ncharge, diligent charge 'of amusements also, and of those who only\nplayed at working.' That this was a time when the Play House\nitself,--in that same year, too, in which these philosophical plays\nbegan first to attract attention, and again and again, was warned off\nby express ordinances from the whole ground of 'the forbidden\nquestions.' We know that this was an age in which not the books of the\nlearned only were subjected to 'the press and torture which expulsed'\nfrom them all those 'particulars that point to action'--action, at\nleast, in which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it was\na time when the private manuscript was subjected to that same\ncensorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and\nengines, which made then a regular part of the machinery of the press;\nwhen the most secret cabinet of the Statesman and the Man of Letters\nmust be kept in order for that revision, when his most confidential\ncorrespondence, his private note-book and diary must be composed under\nthese restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the\nsecrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the\npower then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor\nobscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies\nof sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to\nbe--which might or might not be--put down for private purposes\nperhaps, and never intended to be preached--were produced by\nGovernment as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and\ncruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke\nof Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.\n\nTo the genius of a race in whose mature development speculation and\naction were for the first time systematically united, in the\nintensities of that great historical impersonation which signalises\nits first entrance upon the stage of human affairs, stimulated into\npreternatural activity by that very opposition which would have shut\nit out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those\nimpossible, insufferable limits that the will of the one man\nprescribed to it then,--to that many-sided genius, bent on playing\nwell its part even under those conditions, all the more determined on\nit by that very opposition--kept in mind of its manliness all the time\nby that all comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of\nevery act--irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by\nthe perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine\nof the human nature and its nobility in the school of that sovereignty\nwhich was keeping such a costly 'crib' here then; 'Let a beast be lord\nof beasts,' says Hamlet, 'and your crib shall stand at the king's\nmess;' 'Would you have me false to _my nature_? says another,\n'_rather_ say I _play_ the _man_ I am'; to that so conscious man,\nplaying his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high;\nknowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in, how\n'_far_' those long-drawn aisles extended; what 'far-off' crowding ages\nfilled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was\nacting 'even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to\nthe ending doom'; to such a one studying out his part beforehand under\nsuch conditions, it was not one disguise only, it was not one secret\nliterary instrumentality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That\ntoy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends,\nwith all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this\nspeaker's speech, 'who came prepared to speak well,' and 'to give to\nhis speech a grace by action.'\n\nUnder these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself\nto this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other\nforms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It\noffered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain\nplots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object,\nwere necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that\ndramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, _not_\non the stage, but in these 'plots' in which the weal of the unborn\ngenerations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's\nestate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies,\nthen, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and\nprivate names, and a secret slang of their own.\n\nThe minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were\nminds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and\nwho thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary\ncommunication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in\ntheir day.\n\nThe speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not\njust as lawful for the moderns to 'invent new measures in verses,' at\nleast, as in 'dances,' and why it was not just as competent for him to\ncompose 'supposititious' letters for _his_ purposes, as it was for\nThucydides to compose speeches for _his_; and though eloquence was, in\nthis case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day\nprosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and\nbusiness, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as\nit happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a\ncomprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an\ninvention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.\n\nThe letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir\nAntony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared\nwithout much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that\nkind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring\nand less 'dangerous' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the\nleast objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to\nthrow some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is\nopened, was conducted in that gentleman's name, about those days.\n\nBut much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of\nthis dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and\nsanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when\noccasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing\nletters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished\npersonages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request\nfor that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was\nconcerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he\nstopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of\nthe Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that\nhe could compose 'a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision,\nor a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to\nQueen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any\nbetter than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department\nof song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities\nin general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of\npoetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that\neffusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex\nand Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so\nsingular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have\nno other object in living, but to promote their ends,--one whose vast\nphilosophic aims,--aims already propounded in all their extent and\ngrandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole\nscheme of his life was to be--artistically--with the strong hand of\nthat mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed\nto be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm\nof devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to\nbe the sovereign's favourite; one whose great torch of genius and\nlearning was lighted, as it was understood,--lighted and fed, to light\nthem to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add\nany thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man,\ninstructed by her instinct, that 'such men were dangerous,' was\nwilling, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of\nthis nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is,\nthat an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another,\npassed in consequence through this gentleman's hands in both these\nreigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional\nendowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically\n'active good,' for the dispatch of business in which large and distant\nresults were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these\nillustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast\nreference to his ulterior aims,--if, in writing letters for them, he\nwrote them always with the under-tones of his own part,--of his own\nimmortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of\nbrass were spent' running through them--if, in composing state papers\nand concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to\ninsert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history\nwhich contained their solution, who that knows _what_ those times\nwere, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was\ndedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.\n\nAll these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were\nwritten for the future, but they were written in that same secret\nmethod, in that same 'cipher' which he has to stop to describe before\nhe can introduce the subject of 'the principal and supreme sciences,'\nwith the distinct assurance that as 'matters stand then, it is an art\nof great use,' though some may think he introduces it with its kindred\narts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the\nsciences, and to _little_ other purpose, and that trivial as these may\nseem in such a connexion, 'to those who have spent their labours and\nstudies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to 'those who are\nskilful in them' to say whether he has not given, in what he has said\nof them, 'though in few words,' a proof of his proficiency. This was\nthe method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences\nonly, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be\nwritten then.\n\n'Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.' Both these\nkinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The\nreading of that which is '_in letters_,' the one in which letters are\nsecretly employed as 'symbols' of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is\nreserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers\nof this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the 'Book of\nSports and Riddles,' which this school published, and who happen to\nhave it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for\nthose who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked _him_ to his last\nlurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who\nhave been in Prospero's Island, and 'untied his spell.' This point\ngained,--the secret of the cipher '_in letters_,'--the secret of 'the\nsymbols,' and other 'devices' and 'conceits' which were employed in\nthis school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the\ncharacters in which these men struck through the works they could not\nown then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of\nuniversality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human\nkind, and with it--_in it_, their own particular 'marks' and private\nsignatures,--this mastered,--with the secret of _this_ in our hands,\nthe cipher '_in words_' presents no difficulties, When we come to read\nthe philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid\nof that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means,\nwhen he says, that on 'account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the\nhands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes\ncarried in the weakest ciphers.'\n\nIt was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite\nin the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a\nmilitary greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity\nand suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending\nthat so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival--the\npolicy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and\nsustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal\nsuspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards\nits favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military\nchieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand\npoints in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time,\nto glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for\npower under those same conditions--men whose position, inasmuch as the\nimmediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future\nages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of\nthe person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.\n\nIt was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New\nCompany and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of\nwoollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose\nclaims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important,\nwere coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging\ntheir respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the\nnation.\n\nOr in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and\nfor reducing its wanton waste and extravagance--in exhibiting the\ndetail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just\nthen, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and\n_their_ measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution--it\nwas easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to\navoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the\nman who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to\navoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and\nMadman,' too, so freely,--consoling _the Monarch_ with the suggestion\nthat _Essex_ was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much\nsought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers\nwho had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their\nheads up.\n\nUnder the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing\nambitions--under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual\nhostility--it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in\npolitics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the\nstate, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most\nsacred interests under such conditions,--it was easy for politicians\ntrained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to\nplay into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league\nthey would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which\nit would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them\nopenly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with\ncertain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a\nscholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with\nstate affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be\ncomplained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to\ndirect attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable\npractical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all\nknow, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been\nin his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might\nhave done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are\nno more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated\nexpressions of them,--the over-doing sometimes points to another\nmeaning.\n\nWhile indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show\nof a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o'\nthe world' was to be subjected--a trial in which the decision was\nknown beforehand--'though,' says our Poet--\n\n  'Though well, we may not pass upon _his life_,\n  Without _the form of justice_;'--\n\nit was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart--for\nthe tool of a Stuart's favourite--to insert in such a paper, if not\nprivate articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing\nto a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy\nfor such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have\nhad no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.\n\nIn this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our\ngreat philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and\nmuch authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of\nthat age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state\npapers, though they were every one of them written with an inner\nreference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded\neventually with the key of that position. But along with this\nauthentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that\nis '_supposititious_,' to borrow a term which this writer found\nparticularly to his purpose--supposititious in the same sense in which\nthe speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are\nsuppositious--is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious\ncorrespondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's\nlife and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which\nhe was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,--which\nhe was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good\ndeal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found\nwhole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on\nboth sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but\nunder a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin,\nnever meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read\nwhich side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his\ndry hand up and down.'\n\nThese fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name,\nas often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and\nmodern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the\nmodern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no\n_such_ mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that\nhistorical figure to which his own name and person is attached;--the\nman whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,--the man\nwhom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his\nrules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the\ninterpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and\nwhose '_natures_ and _ends_' are so 'differing and dissonant from the\ngeneral state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary\nfor them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be _in the whole\ncourse_ of their lives _close, retired_, reserved, as we see in\nTiberius, _who was never seen at a play_,' men who are compelled, as\nit were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The _soundest\ndisclosing_,' he says, 'and _expounding_ of MEN is by their NATURES\n_and_ ENDS. The _weaker_ sort of men are best interpreted by their\n_natures_, the _wisest_ by their _ends_.' 'Princes are best\n_interpreted_ by their _natures_, private persons by their _ends_,\nbecause princes being at the top of human desires, _they_ have, for\nthe most part, no particular ends _whereto they aspire, by distance\nfrom which_ a man _might take measure and scale of the rest of their\nactions and desires_' '_Distance_ from which,'--that is the key for\nthe interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual\nendowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and\nreasonable ends, and such as are within _their_ power to attain.' As\nto the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them\nalready in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements\nwhich make the modern ages--the discoverers of its science of\nsciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an\nenemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they\ncould preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already\nreceived at their hands,--the benefits we have yet to receive from\nthem. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by\naccident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us _with_ the\nworks in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,--in which\nthe end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly\npursued,--it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends\nare _accomplished_, to the times that have found in their experience\n_what_ they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages\nexperimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he\nmade these sacrifices,--aims which he constantly propounded as the end\nof his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life\nwhich the surface of these documents exhibits,--between that historic\nform, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits,--and the\nnature which is revealed in this life-act,--the soul, the never-shaken\nsoul of this proceeding.\n\n  'The god of soldiers,\n  With the consent of _supreme Jove_, inform\n  Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove\n  _The shame_ UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war\n  Like a _great sea-mark_, standing every flaw,\n  And saving those that _eye thee_.'\n\n'I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say\nof _me_, he _judged_, and _lived_ so and so; I knew him better than\nany. Now, as much as decency permits, I _here_ discover my\ninclinations and affections. If any _observe_, he will find that I\nhave either told, or _designed_ to tell all. What I cannot speak, I\npoint out with my finger.' 'There was never greater circumspection and\n_military_ prudence than is sometimes seen among us' ['Naturalists'].\n'_Can it be_ that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that\nthey reserve themselves to the end of the game?'\n\n'I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my\n_name_. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can _he_\nthink to gain by showing himself to the world in _a mask_, and by\nconcealing _his true being_ from the people? If you are a coward, and\nmen commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They\ntake you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the\nstreet, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him\nsaid he ought to punish: \"Ay, _but_,\" said the other, \"he did not\nthrow the water upon _me_, but upon _him_ whom he took me to be.\"\n_Socrates_ being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him,\n\"Not at all,\" said he; \"there is nothing _in me_ of what they say. _I_\nam content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be\nreputed a wise man, in _such a sort of wisdom_ as I take to be\nfolly.\"'--['_The French Interpreter_.']\n\nThis is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre,\ncontent to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to\nthe true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends,\npropounding deliberately his _duty_ as a man, his duty to his kind,\nhis obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant\nend,--but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private\nnature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement,--at\nlarge in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great\nfruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all\nimpediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over\n'death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the consciousness\nof good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the\nprovision that can be made for security and repose,'--not reconciled\nto the part he was compelled to play in his own time,--his fine, keen\nsensibilities perpetually at war with it,--always balancing and\nreviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always\nthe 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I\ndo,'--demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such\nconditions, a 'life sublime.'\n\n  'All places that the eye of heaven visits\n  Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'\n\nThere is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so\nirreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man\nin the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them;--this is the\naccount, in the general, which will be found to be, upon\ninvestigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even\nby the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the\ntruth of this statement will become apparent.\n\nBut though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded\nhere, it cannot well close, without one word as to _the points_ in\nthis part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on\nus.\n\nNo man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any\nkind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was\npossible for this scientific propounder of the law of human\n_kind_-ness to avert and protect him from--this anticipator and\npropounder of a _human_ civilization. He was far in advance of our\ntimes in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of\nsocial experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a\nbeetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which\nwas great nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's\npang. To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them\nfirst 'with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were, the\nmotives on which _such_ consequences might depend then--to forestall\nthe inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed.\nThe men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination\nagainst tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its\nexistence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and\nauthority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the\ncalumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue--the virtue\nof it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal _slavery_\ncould be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and\nmanliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of\nan 'underground railway' being suggested for the relief of its\nvictims? 'I will seek him and _privily_ relieve him. Go _you_ and\n_maintain talk with the Duke_ that my charity be not of him\n_perceived_. If he ask for _me_, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say\nyou nothing. There is division between the Dukes--[between the\nDukes]--and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this\nnight. It is _dangerous to be spoken_. I have _locked the letter_ in\nmy _closet_. There is _part_ of _a power already_ FOOTED. We must\nincline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the\nking, _my old master_, must be relieved.' _That_ when all is done will\nbe found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities'\nof this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with\npowers so indefinable.\n\n  _Cassius_. And let us awear our resolution.\n\n  _Brutus_. No, not an oath: If not _the face_ of _men,\n  The sufferance_ of _our souls_, THE TIMES ABUSE,--\n  If _these_ be motives weak, _break off betimes_,\n  And _every man_ hence to his _idle_ bed;\n  _So_ let high-sighted tyranny _range on_,\n  Till _each man_ drop _by_ lottery. But if THESE,--\n  _As I am sure they do_,--bear fire enough\n  To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour\n  The melting spirits of women, _then, countrymen_,\n  What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE\n  To prick us to redress? what other bond\n  Than _secret Romans_, that have spoken the word,\n  And will not falter....\n  Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,\n  Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls\n  That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear\n  Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain\n  The _even_ virtue of our enterprise,\n  _Nor_ the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,\n  To think that, or _our cause_, or our _performance_,\n  Did need an oath.'\n\n[Doctrine of the '_secret Romans_.']\n\nAs to the rest, it was this man--this man of a scientific 'prudence'\nwith the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger\nwhole, confirmed by a scientific forethought--it was this man who gave\nat last _the signal_ for change; not for war. 'Proceed by process' was\nhis word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have\nattained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he\nproposed--this was the _move_ which he was willing, for his part, to\n_initiate_.--'We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see\nways to save us.'--The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned\nhim were studiously arranged beforehand by himself,--he wrote the\nprogramme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the\ngreatest in history. [''Tis the indiligent reader that loses my\nsubject, not I,' says the 'foreign interpreter' of this style of\nwriting. 'There will always be found some word or other, _in a\ncorner_, though it lie very close.' That is the rule for the reading\nof the evidence in this case. The word is there, though _it lies very\nclose_, as it had need to, to be available.]\n\nIt was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to\ncomplete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works,\nthrough which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the\nface of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and\ncourtier--all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to\nrest--all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a\n_courtier_ still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled\nthe king, for _life_ and _liberty_; and careful still not to assert\nany independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be\nhis _ends_; it was in this character that he brought out at last the\nNovum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect\nand republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character\ntoo that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history\nwhich comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical\nwritings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred,\na Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want\nof leaders and organization--overborne by the genius of a military\nchief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his\ncontemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which\nwas dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by\nJames I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch's\napproval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of\nsuperintending its publication. It is the History of _the Founding_ of\nthe Tudor Dynasty: prepared,--as were the rest of these works,--under\nthe patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary\n'entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of\n_truth or gracefulness_,' and under the patronage of a monarch with\nwhom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and\nendowments to _act_ the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they\nreally changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their\npersons.'\n\n  '_I_ am in this (_Volumnia_)\n  Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,\n  And you will rather show our general lowts,\n  How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,\n  For the _inheritance_ of their loves, and _safeguard_,\n  Of what that want might ruin.\n\n  Away my _disposition_!\n\n  When you do find him, or alive or dead,\n  He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.\n\n  'Yet country-men, _O yet_, hold up your heads.\n  I will proclaim my name about the field.\n  I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO!\n  A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country's friend.\n\n  'And _I_ am Brutus, Marcus Brutus _I_,\n  Brutus, MY COUNTRY'S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.'\n\n  FINIS.","title":"The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":246600}