speculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including _then_, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an historical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his rights,–a movement then already determined on,–would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences–the conviction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for the future.
But if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect–if one would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies, what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses, this science of _stability_, this science of the future STATE, is settled on,–such a one must explore this work yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it contains–that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and separating, one in which the historical solidities are already in solution, or struggling towards it–prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.
‘Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom, Hang up philosophy’–
wrote this Poet’s fire of old.
‘Canst thou not minister to a _mind_ diseased?’
it writes again. No?
‘Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.’
‘See now what _learning_ is,’ says the practical-minded nurse, quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence’s genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not _a Friar_ exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time–the idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious observation of nature in general,–and it is a very large and curious one which _this Friar_ betrays,–upon any of those ordinary questions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private solution. And though _this_ knowledge might seem to be ‘so variable as it falleth not under _precept_,’ the prose philosopher is of the opinion that ‘a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of _like nature_,’ is available for the particular instances which occur in this department. And the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no end to the precepts which he inducts from this ‘variable knowledge’ when he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural history, in ‘_prerogative cases_’ and ‘illustrious instances,’ cases cleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts–ideal cases. And though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this particular instance; if we take into account the fact that ‘the Tragedy was the thing,’ and that nothing but a tragedy would serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on that _effect_; if we take into account the fact that this is a scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the applicability of _learning_ to questions of this nature.
‘Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.’ But this is the philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides ‘reversing a prince’s doom’; for this is the one that takes into account those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of ‘_men_ of good composition,’ and who gives a recipe for composing _them_. ‘Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,’ is Romeo’s word. ‘See now what learning _is_,’ is the Nurse’s commentary; for that same _Friar_, demure as he looks now under his hood, talking of ‘simples’ and great nature’s latent virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse’s hearts from them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With his new art of ‘composition’ he will compose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.
Let us see now, then, what it is,–this ‘universal insight in the affairs of the world,’ this ‘wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered from cases of a _like nature_,’ with an observation that includes all _natures_,–let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of disorder–shaken, convulsed– wrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.
‘Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.’
‘If thou _couldst_, Doctor, cast
The water of MY LAND, _find her disease_, And purge it to a _sound_ and _pristine health_, I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.’
‘What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, Would scour _these English_ hence? Hear’st thou of _them_?’
‘Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand That chambers will be safe.’
Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men,–who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them,–who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it _pass_. Let us see what the learning is that is not ‘_words_,’ as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.
This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it ‘into something rich and strange,’–Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer’s heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, ‘in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,’ are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.
‘There is a history in all men’s lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which, _in their seeds_ And _weak beginnings_, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time.’
‘One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,’ says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many ‘buckets’ from ‘the headspring of sciences,’ to water his plants in this field in particular. ‘That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.’
This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare not unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether _a kind_, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which commands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to be besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment–this ‘godlike’ endowment–under culture.
There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and turmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth to draw ‘the next ages’ into the scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is _bare_. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without any disguise,–the man of the new learning, openly applying his ‘universal insight,’ and ‘wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,’ to this great question of ‘Policy,’ which was then hurrying on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.
He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this ‘Magician,’ when he ‘brings the rabble to his place,’ the reader who would know at last why it is that these old Roman graves ‘have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art’; and _why_ it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should read now–but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman’s hands, deserves to be read–this great revolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption, now that the storm appears to be ‘overblown,’ may safely reserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the COMMON-WEAL.
The reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe that the Poet avails himself of the _dialogue_ here, with even more than his usual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of the bolder passages, in the least objectionable manner,–interrupting the statement in critical points, and emphasizing it, by that interruption, to the careful reader ‘of the argument,’ but to the spectator, or to one who takes it as a _dialogue merely_, neutralizing it by that dramatic opposition. For the political criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by being merely _broken_, and put into the mouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion.
For the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and stupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their unfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true consulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the chair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely criticized by the true Tribune–the Tribune, whose Tribe is the Kind–on the other; and it was not necessary to produce, in any _more_ prominent manner, just then, the fact, that _both these offices_ and _relations_ were combined in that tottering estate of the realm,–that ‘old riotous form of military government,’ which held then only by the virtual election of the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and which, this Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for its _innovations_ in the government, and suppressions of the ancient estates of this realm,–for its suppression of the dignities and privileges of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered dignities and rights of the Commons.
_Scene_.–A Street. Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS with his two military friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars, and have but just returned from their campaign, COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS,–and with them the old civilian MENENIUS, who, patrician as he is, on account of his _honesty_,–a truly patrician virtue,–is in favour with the people. ‘_He’s_ an honest one. Would they were _all so_.’
The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,–the foreign wars: but the principle of _inroad_ and _aggression_ on the one hand, and _defence_ on the other, the arts of _subjugation_, and _reconciliation_, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene.
_Cor_. Tullus Aufidius then _had made_ NEW HEAD.
_Lart_. He had, my lord, and _that_ it was, which caused Our swifter COMPOSITION.
_Cor_. So then, the _Volsces_ stand but as at first, Ready, when _time_ shall _prompt_ them, to make _road_ Upon _us_ again.
_Com_. _They_ [Volsces?] _are worn_, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in _our ages_ see
_Their_ banners wave again.
* * * * *
[_Enter Sicinius and Brutus._]
_Cor_. Behold! these are the tribunes of the people, The _tongues_ o’ the _common mouth_. I do despise them; For they do prank them in authority,
Against all _noble_ sufferance.
_Sic_. Pass no further.
_Cor_. Ha! what is that?
_Bru_. It will be dangerous to
Go on: No further.
_Cor_. What makes this CHANGE?
_Men_. _The matter_?
_Com_. Hath he not passed the NOBLES and the COMMONS?
_Bru_. Cominius.–No.
_Cor_. Have I had _children’s voices_? [ _Yes._]
_Sen_. Tribunes, give way:–he shall to the market-place.
_Bru_. The people are incensed against him.
_Sic_. Stop.
Or _all will fall in broil_.
_Cor_. Are these _your herd_?
Must _these_ have voices that can yield them now, And straight disclaim their tongues?
_You, being their mouths_, why rule you not their teeth? _Have you not set them on?_
_Men_. Be calm, be calm.
_Cor._ It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the _nobility_:–
_Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Nor_ ever will be _ruled_.
_Bru_. Call’t not a _plot_:
The people cry you mocked them; and of late, When _corn_ was given them gratis, you repined; _Scandaled the suppliants for the people; called them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness._
_Cor_. Why, this was known before.
_Bru_. _Not to them all._
_Cor_. _Have you informed them since?_
_Bru_. How! _I_ inform them?
_Cor_. You are like to do _such business_.
_Bru_. Not unlike,
Each way to better _yours_.
_Cor_. Why _then_ should _I_ be consul? By yon clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me _Your fellow tribune_.
_Sic_. You show too much of _that_,
For which the people stir: If you will pass To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,– Which you are out of,–with a _gentler_ spirit; Or never be so noble as a consul,
Nor yoke with him for tribune.
_Men_. Let’s _be calm_.
_Com_. The people are abused;–set on–this paltering Becomes not Rome: nor has Coriolanus
Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely I’ the plain way of his merit.
_Cor_. Tell me of _corn_:
_This was my speech_, and I will speak’t _again_.
_Men. Not now, not now._
_First Sen_. Not in this heat, sir, _now_.
_Cor. Now_, as I live, I will.–My nobler friends I crave their pardons:–
For the _mutable_, rank scented _many_, let them _Regard me, as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves_: I say again, In soothing _them_, we nourish ‘gainst our _senate_, The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered, By mingling them with us, _the honoured number_. Who lack not _virtue, no_,–nor _power_, but _that_ _Which they have given to_–BEGGARS.
_Men. Well, no more._
_First Sen. No more words, we beseech you._
_Cor_. How, no more:
As for my country, I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, _so_ shall my lungs _Coin words_ till their decay against those meazels Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them.
_Bru_. You speak o’ the people,
As if you were a god to punish, not _A man of their infirmity_.
_Sic. ‘T were well_
_We let the people know’t._
_Men_. What, what? his _choler_.
_Cor. Choler_!
Were I _as patient_ as the _midnight sleep, By Jove,_ ‘t would be _my mind_.
_Sic_. It is a mind,
That shall remain a poison where it is, _Not poison any further_.
_Cor_. _Shall remain!_
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? _mark you_ _His absolute_ SHALL?
_Com_. _’Twas from the canon,_
_O good_, but most _unwise patricians_, why You _grave_, but _reckless senators_, have you thus _Given Hydra here to choose_ AN OFFICER, That with his _peremptory shall–being but The horn and noise o’ the monster_–wants not _spirit_ To say, he’ll turn _your current_ in _a ditch_, And make _your channel his? If he have power, Then_ veil your IGNORANCE:–[that let him have it.] –if _none, awake_
Your _dangerous_ LENITY.
[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it but a little, it is not the lost Roman weal and its danger that fires the passion of this speech. ‘Look at this player whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in his eyes.’ ‘What’s _Hecuba_ to him or he to _Hecuba_, that he should weep for her? _What would he do_, had he the motive and the cue for passion that _I_ have.’]
–if none, awake
Your dangerous _lenity. If_ you are _learned_, Be not as _common fools_; if you are _not_–
What do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you from the commons? If you are not, there’s no nobility. If you are not, what business have you in these chairs of state?
–if you are not,
_Let them have cushions by you_. You are plebeians, If _they_ be senators; and _they are no less_, When _both your voices blended_, the GREATEST TASTE Most palates _theirs_. _They choose_ their magistrate; And such a one as _he_, who puts his _shall_,–
[Mark it, his _popular shall_].
His _popular shall_, against a graver bench Than ever frown’d in Greece! By Jove himself, It makes the _consuls base_: and _my soul aches_, _To know_, when two authorities are up,
[Neither able to rule].
_Neither supreme_, how soon confusion May enter twixt the GAP of BOTH, and take The one by the other.
_Com._ Well,–on to the _market place_.
_Cor_. Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth The _corn o’ the store-house_ gratis, as ’twas used _Sometime in Greece_.
[It is not _corn_, but the _property_ of the _state_, and its appropriation, we talk of here. Whether the _absolute power_ be in the hands of the _people_ or ‘_their officer_.’ There had been a speech made on that subject, which had not met with the approbation of the absolute power then conducting the affairs of this realm; and in its main principle, it is repeated here. ‘That was my speech, and I will make it again.’ ‘Not now, not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.’ ‘Now, as I live, I will.’]
_Men_. Well, well, no more of that,
_Cor_. Though _there_ THE PEOPLE had more _absolute power_, I say they _nourished disobedience, fed_ The _ruin of the state_.
_Bru_. Why shall the people _give_
One that speaks thus their voice?
_Cor_. I’ll give my _reasons_,
More worthier than _their voices_. They know the corn Was not our RECOMPENSE; resting well assured _They ne’er did service for it_?
. . . Well, what then?
How shall _this bosom multiplied_, digest; The senate’s courtesy? Let _deeds_ express _What’s like to be their words_. We did request it, WE _are_ THE GREATER POLL, and in _true fear_ _They gave us our demands_. Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our _cares, fears:_ which will in time _break ope The locks o’ the senate_, and _bring in the crows To peck the eagles._
_Mem_. Come, enough.
_Bru_. Enough, with _over measure_.
_Cor_. No, take _more_;
What may be sworn by, _both divine and human_, Seal what I end withal! This _double_ worship,– Where _one part_ does _disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason_; where _gentry, title, wisdom_, Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no
Of _General Ignorance_–it _must omit Real necessities_, and _give way the while To unstable slightness_. PURPOSE so _barred_ it follows _Nothing is done to purpose: Therefore_ beseech you,–
[Therefore beseech you].
You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the _fundamental part_ of _state_, More than you doubt the _change_ of’t–
There was but one man in England then, able to balance this revolutionary proposition so nicely–so curiously; ‘that love the _fundamental_ part of state more than you doubt the change of it’; ‘You that are _less fearful_ than _discreet_’–not so _fearful_ as discreet.
that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic
_That’s sure_ of _death without it_,–at once _pluck out The multitudinous tongue_; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison; _your dishonour_ MANGLES _true_ JUDGMENT, and bereaves THE STATE Of that INTEGRITY which should _become it_: Not having the power to do the good it would, For the ill which doth control it.
_Bru_. He has said enough.
[One would think so].
_Sic_. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer _As traitors do_.
_Cor_. Thou wretch! despite o’erwhelm thee! What should the _people do_ with these bald tribunes? _On whom depending, their obedience fails To the greater bench_? In a rebellion,
When what’s not meet, but what must be was _law_ Then were they chosen: in a better hour, Let what _is meet_, be said it must be _meet_, And throw their power i’ the _dust_.
_Bru_. MANIFEST TREASON.
_Sic_. _This a Consul_? No.
_Bru_. The Aediles! ho! let him be apprehended.
_Sic_. Go call the people; [_Exit Brutus_] _in whose name, myself_ Attach _thee_ [_thee_] as a traitorous INNOVATOR, A FOE to the PUBLIC WEAL. Obey, I charge thee, And follow to thine answer.
_Cor_. Hence, old goat!
_Senators and Patricians. We’ll surety him_.
_Cor_. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments.
_Sic_. Help, ye citizens.
[_Re-enter Brutus, with the Aediles, and a rabble of citizens._]
_Men_. _On both sides, more respect._
_Sic_. There’s HE that would
_Take from you all your power_.
_Bru_. _Seize him, Aediles_.
_Cit_. _Down with him. Down with him_.
[_Several speak_.]
_Second Sen_. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!
[_They all bustle about_ CORIOLANUS.]
Tribunes, patricians:–citizens:–what ho:– Sicinius, Brutus:–Coriolanus:–citizens:–
_Cit_. _Peace!–Peace!–Peace!–stay!–hold!–peace!_
_Men_. _What is about to be? I am out of breath: Confusion’s near! I cannot speak_: you tribunes To the people.–_Coriolanus_, patience:– Speak, good Sicinius.
_Sic_. Hear me, people;–_Peace_.
_Cit_. Let’s hear _our_ tribune:–Peace,–_Speak, speak, speak_.
_Sic_. _You are at point to lose your liberties_, Marcius _would have all from you_; Marcius Whom late you have named for consul.
_Men_. Fye, fye, fye.
That is the way to _kindle_, not to _quench_.
_Sen_. To _unbuild_ the _city and to lay all flat_.
_Sic_. What is the city, but _the people_.
_Cit_. TRUE,
The _people are_ the city.
_Bru_. By the consent of ALL, we were established The _people’s_ magistrates.
_Cit_. You so remain.
_Men_. And so are like to do.
_Cor_. That is the way to lay the city flat, To bring the _roof_ to the _foundation_; And bury all which yet _distinctly ranges, In heaps and piles of ruin_.
_Sic_. _This deserves death._
_Bru_. Or let us stand to our authority, Or let us lose it:–
Truly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing the history which is in all men’s lives, ‘Figuring the nature of the times deceased, a man _may prophesy_,’ as it would seem, ‘with a _near aim_,’–quite near–‘of the _main_ chance of things, as yet, not come to life, which in their weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of _time_,’ this Poet says; but art, it seems, anticipates that process. There appears to be more of the future here, than of the times deceased.
_Bru_. We do here pronounce
Upon the _part of the people, in whose power We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy_ Of _present death._
_Sic_. Therefore, lay hold of him;
Bear him to the rook Tarpeian, and from thence Into destruction cast him.
_Bru_. AEdiles, seize him.
_Cit_. Yield, Marcius, yield.
_Men_. Hear me, one word.
Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.
_AEdiles_. Peace, peace.
_Men_. Be that you _seem, truly your country’s friend_, And _temperately_ proceed to what you would Thus _violently_ redress.
_Bru_. Sir, those _cold ways_
That seem _like prudent helps_, are very _poisonous_. Where the _disease is violent_.–Lay hands upon him, And bear him to the rock.
_Cor_. No: I’ll die here. [_Drawing his sword_.] There’s some among you have beheld me fighting; Come _try upon yourselves_, what you have _seen_ me.
_Men_. DOWN with THAT SWORD; tribunes, withdraw awhile.
_Bru_. Lay hands upon him.
_Men_. Help, help, MARCIUS, help!
You that be NOBLE, help him, young and old.
_Cit_. DOWN WITH HIM! DOWN WITH HIM!
‘In this _mutiny, the Tribunes, the AEdiles, and the People, are all_ BEAT IN,’ so the stage direction informs us, which appears a little singular, considering there is but _one sword_ drawn, and the victorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in numbers. It is, however, only a temporary success, as the victors seem to be aware.
_Men_. Go, get you to _your houses, be gone away_, All will be nought else.
_Second Sen_. Get you gone.
_Cor_. _Stand fast,
We have as many friends as enemies._
_Men_. Shall it be put to _that_?
_Sen_. _The gods forbid!_
I pry’thee noble friend, home to thy house; _Leave us to_ CURE THIS CAUSE.
_Men_. _For_ ’tis a sore _upon us,
You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you._
_Com_. Come, Sir, along with us.
_Cor_. I would they were barbarians (as they are, Though in Rome _littered_) not Romans, (as they are _not_, Though _calved_ i’ the porch o’ the Capitol).
_Men_. Begone;
Put not _your worthy rage_ into your _tongue_; _One time_ will _owe another_. [_Hear_.]
_Cor_. On fair ground,
I could beat _forty_ of them.
_Men_. I could _myself_
Take up a _brace_ of the best of them; _yea, the two tribunes_.
_Com_. But now ’tis _odds_ beyond arithmetic: And MANHOOD is called FOOLERY, _when it stands Against a falling fabric_.–Will you hence, Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend Like interrupted waters, and _o’erbear
What they are used to bear_. [Change of ‘predominance.’]
_Men_. Pray you, begone:
I’ll _try_ whether _my_ old wit be in request With _those that have but little_; _this_ must be _patched_ With cloth of _any colour_.
_Com_. Nay, come away.
The features of that living impersonation of the heroic faults and virtues which ‘the mirror,’ that professed to give to ‘the very body of the time, its form and pressure,’ could not fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in ‘this ancient piece,’ and often shine out in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely the player’s intention. For ‘the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Calendar’ was not the only poet of this time, as it would seem, who found the scope of a double intention, in his poetic representation, not adequate to the comprehension of his design–who laid on another and another still, and found the complexity convenient. ‘The sense is the best judge,’ this Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining peremptorily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;–a rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, ‘to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing,’ he says, and ‘he had as lief not be read at all, as be read by a careless reader.’ So he thrusts in his meanings as thick as ever he likes, and those who don’t choose to stay and pick them out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he laid them in for,–that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will have readers enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait. There’s time enough.
_First Pat_. This man has marr’d his fortune.
_Men_. His nature is too noble for the world: _He_ would not _flatter_ Neptune for _his trident_, Or Jove for _his power_ to _thunder_. His heart’s his mouth; What his breast forges, _that_ his _tongue_ must vent; And being angry, does forget that _ever He heard the name of death_.
[_A noise within_.]
Here’s goodly work!
_Second Pat_. I would they were _a-bed_!
_Men_. I would they were in Tyber!–_What, the vengeance, Could he_ not _speak them fair_?
[_Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble_.]
_Sic_. WHERE IS THIS VIPER,
That would _depopulate_ the city, and BE EVERY MAN HIMSELF?
_Men_. You worthy tribunes–
_Sic_. _He_ shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands; _he hath resisted LAW_, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.
[‘When could they say till now that talked of Rome that _her_ wide walls encompassed but _one man_?’ ‘What trash is Rome, what rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so vile a thing as Caesar.’]
Than the severity of the PUBLIC POWER, _Which he so sets at nought_.
_First Cit_. He shall _well_ know
The noble _tribunes_ are the _people’s mouths_, And _we their hands_.
[Historical _principles throughout, with much of that kind of illustration in which his works are so prolific, an illustration which is not rhetorical, but scientific, based on the COMMON PRINCIPLES IN NATURE, which it is his ‘primary’ business to ascend to, and which it is his ‘second’ business to apply to each particular branch of art. ‘Neither,’ as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advancement, ‘neither are these only _similitudes_ as _men of narrow observation_ may conceive them to be, but the _same footsteps of nature_, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters,’ and the tracking of these historical principles to their ultimate forms, is that which he recommends for the _disclosing_ of _nature and_ the _abridging_ of Art.]
_Sic_. He’s a _disease_, that must be cut away.
_Men_. O he’s a _limb_, that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy. What has he done to Rome, that’s worthy death? _Killing our enemies?_ The blood he hath _lost_, (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath, _By many an ounce_), he dropped it for his country. And what _is left, to lose it by his country, Were to us all, that do’t and suffer it, A brand to the end o’ the world._
There’s a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom he says in another scene, ‘I cannot speak him home.’
_Bru_. _Merely awry_: when he did love his country, It honour’d him.
_Men_. The _service_ of the _foot_, Being once _gangren’d_, is not then respected _For what before it was_?
_Bru_. We’ll hear no more:– Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence; Lest his infection, being of catching nature, _Spread further_.
_Men_. One word more, one word.
This _tiger-footed_ rage, when it shall find _The harm_ of _unscann’d swiftness_, will, too late, _Tie leaden pounds to his_ HEELS. [Mark it, for it is a prophecy]
_Lest_ PARTIES (as he is _beloved_) _break out_, And sack great _Rome_ with _Romans_.
_Bru_. If it were so,–
_Sic. What_ do ye talk?
Have we not had a taste of his obedience? _Our AEdiles smote? Ourselves resisted?–Come:–_
_Men. Consider this; he has been bred i’ the wars_, Since he could draw a sword,–
That has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their rule, hitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what _schooling_ these statesmen have had, before you begin the enterprise of reforming them, and take your measures accordingly. They are not learned men, you see. How should they be? There has been no demand for learning. The law of the sword has prevailed hitherto. When what’s not meet but what must be was law, then were they chosen. Proceed by process.
_Consider_ this; he has been bred i’ the WARS Since he could draw a sword, and is _ill school’d_ In _boulted language_–
[That’s the trouble; but there’s been a little bolting going on in this play.]
–_Meal and bran, together_
He _throws without distinction. Give me leave_ I’ll go to him, and undertake to bring him Where he shall answer by a _lawful form_, (In peace) to his utmost peril.
_First Sen. Noble tribunes._
It is the _humane way_: the _other_ course Will prove too bloody; and–
[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].
–the END of it,
Unknown to the beginning.
_Sic_. Noble Menenius;
Be _you_ then as the People’s Officer: _Masters_,–[and they seem to be that, truly,]–lay down _your weapons_.
_Bru. Go not home_,
_Sic_. MEET on the MARKET-PLACE,–
[–that is where the ‘idols of the market’ are–]
_We’ll attend you there:
Where_, if you bring not Marcius, we’ll proceed In our _first way_.
_Men_. I’ll bring him to you.
Let me desire _your_ company [_To the Senators_] He _must_ come, Or what is worse will follow.
_Sen_. Pray you, let’s to him.
SCENE–THE FORUM.
_Enter Sicinius and Brutus_.
_Bru_. In this _point_ charge him _home_, that he affects TYRANNICAL POWER: if he evade us there, Enforce him with his envy to _the people_; And that the spoil, got on the Antiates, Was _ne’er distributed_.–
_Enter an AEdile_.
What, will he come?
_AEd_. He’s coming.
_Bru_. How accompanied?
_AEd_. _With old Menenius_, and those senators That always favour’d him.
_Sic_. Have you a _catalogue_
Of all the voices that we have procured, _Set down by_ THE POLL?
_AEd_. _I have; ’tis ready._
_Sic_. Have you collected them BY TRIBES?
_AEd_. I _have_.
_Sic_. Assemble presently the people hither: And when they hear _me_ say, _it shall be so_ _I_ the RIGHT and STRENGTH o’ the COMMONS, be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them, If I say _fine_, cry _fine_; if _death_, cry _death_; Insisting on the OLD _prerogative,
And power i’ THE TRUTH, o’ THE CAUSE.
[There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is the most immersed.–_Advancement_ of LEARNING.]
_AEd_. I shall inform them.
_Bru_. And when such time they have begun to cry, Let them not cease, but with a din confused Enforce the present execution
Of what we chance to sentence.
_AEd_. Very well.
_Sic_. Make them _be strong_, and _ready for this hint_. When we shall _hap_ to give’t them.
_Bru_. Go about it.
[_Exit AEdile_.]
Put him to choler straight. He hath been used Ever to conquer, and to have his worth
Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot Be rein’d again to temperance; then he speaks What’s in his heart; and _that_ is there, which looks _With me to break his neck_. [Prophecy–inductive.] Well, here he comes.
_Enter_ CORIOLANUS, _and his party_.
_Men_. Calmly, I do beseech you.
_Cor_. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour’d gods Keep _Rome in safety_, and the CHAIRS of JUSTICE _Supplied_ with WORTHY MEN! _plant_ LOVE _among us_. Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the _shows_ of PEACE, And _not_ our STREETS with WAR.
_First Sen_. _Amen, Amen! [Hear, Hear_!]
_Men_. A NOBLE _wish_.
_Re-enter AEdile with Citizens_.
_Sic_. Draw near, ye people.
_Cor_. First hear _me_ speak.
_AEdile_. List to your _tribunes_. Audience: _Peace_, I say.
_Both Tri_. Well, say,–Peace, ho.
_Cor_. Shall I be charged no further than this present? Must all determine here?
_Sic_. I do demand,
If you submit you to the _people’s_ voices, Allow their _officers_, and are content To suffer _lawful censure for such faults As shall be proved upon you_?
_Cor_. I am content.
_Men_. Lo, citizens, he says he is content–
_Cor_. What is the matter,
That being pass’d for consul, with full voice, I am so dishonour’d, that the very hour You take it off again?
_Sic_. _Answer to us_.
_Cor_. Say then,’tis true. _I ought so_.
Sic. WE CHARGE YOU, that you have contrived to take From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind Yourself into a_ POWER TYRANNICAL;
_For which_, you are A TRAITOR to the PEOPLE.
_Cor_. How! _Traitor_?
_Men_. Nay, temperately: Your promise.
_Cor_. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people! Call me _their traitor_!
_Cit_. To the rock, to the rock with him.
_Sic_. Peace.
We need not put _new matter_ to his charge: What you have _seen_ him do, and heard him speak, _Beating_ your _officers, cursing yourselves_, Opposing _laws_ with _strokes_, and here defying Those whose great power must try him; even THIS, So _criminal_, and in such CAPITAL _kind_, Deserves the extremest death….
For that he has,
As much as in him lies, from time to time, Envied against the people; _seeking means_ To _pluck away their power_: as now, at last, Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence Of dreaded justice, but on the _ministers_ _That do distribute it; in the name o’ the people_, And in the _power of us, the tribunes, we_, Even from _this instant_, banish him our city, In _peril of precipitation_
From off the rock Tarpeian, never more To enter _our_ Rome’s gates. I’ THE PEOPLE’S NAME _I say it shall be so_.
_Cit_. _It shall be so, it shall be so_: let him away, He’s banish’d, and it _shall be so_.
_Com_. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.
_Sic_. HE’S SENTENCED: no more hearing.
_Com_. Let me speak:–
_Bru_. THERE’S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED, _As_ ENEMY _to the_ PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY: IT SHALL BE SO.
_Cit_. IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.
And this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of ‘that last king of England who was his ancestor’ brought out; a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and distinguished–one who was taking so much pains to get the fresh red of that last ‘conqueror,’ who also ‘came in by battle,’ cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white and red from the old _Norman_ should not prove sufficient– sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle- -by battle with the English people _on those very questions_; who had ‘beaten them in’ in their mutinies with his single sword, ‘and taken all from them’; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties, and ‘the charters that they bore in the body of the weal’– that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little–while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir which might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not unlike to break some one’s neck.
‘Bid them home,’
says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.
‘Bid them home:
Say, _their great enemy is gone_, and THEY STAND _in their ancient strength_.’
But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way of ‘striking an awe into them,’ and removing any lurking opposition they might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this Poet’s account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his _special_ qualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was not attended with those happy results which appear to have been expected in the other instance.
‘_If_ you have writ _your annals true_, ‘t is there, That _like an_ EAGLE in a dove-cote, _I_ Flutter’d your Volsces in Corioli:
_Alone, I did it_.’
‘Why–
[The answer is, in this case,]
‘_Why_, noble lords,
_Will you be put in mind_ of his blind fortune, Which was _your shame_, by this unholy braggart, ‘Fore _your own eyes and ears_?
_Cons_. Let him die for’t. [Several speak at once.]
_Citizens_ [Speaking _promiscuously_]. Tear him to pieces; do it presently. He killed _my son_–_my daughter_;–he killed my cousin Marcus;–he killed _my father_…. O that I had him,
With six Aufidiuses, or more, _his tribe_, To use _my lawful sword_.
Insolent villain!
…Traitor!–how now?….
Ay, TRAITOR, Marcius.
_Marcius_?
Ay, _Marcius_, Caius Marcius. _Dost thou think_ I’ll grace thee with that ROBBERY–thy STOLEN NAME, _Coriolanus_, in CORIOLI?….
[…. Honest, my lord? ‘Ay, honest.’]
_Cons_. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.’ ‘Would you proceed especially against _Caius Marcius?_ Against him FIRST.’
Surely, if that ‘Heir apparent’ to whom the _History_ of HENRY THE SEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of the ‘_rare accidents_’ in that reign to the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon this yet more ‘ancient piece,’ he might have found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that the poet’s mode of handling the same historical question is much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely–a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to the received method–but a Show-man, also, an Historical Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician, who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, ‘with a near aim,’ an aim so _near_ that it might well seem ‘magical’; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, ‘which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.’ This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for acting–one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which is the Globe–one who had laid out all for his share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true ‘Phil-harmonus’ there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so ‘patient–patient as the midnight sleep,’ patient ‘as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume’–such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.
The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then ‘Fame, who is the posthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.’
‘O like a book of sports thou’lt read me o’er, But there’s more in me than thou’lt understand.’
‘Henceforth guard thee well,
For I’ll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there; But _by the forge_ that stithied Mars his helm, I’ll kill thee everywhere, yea o’er and o’er.’
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
‘How I have thought of this, and of these times, I shall recount hereafter, . . .
. . . . . and find a time
Both meet to hear and answer such high things. _Till then_, my noble friend, _chew upon this_; Brutus had rather he _a villager_,
Than _to repute himself_ a son of Rome, Under these hard conditions _as this time_ _Is like to lay upon us_.
Inasmuch as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured throughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view of the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is involved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning, it presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly opposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous preconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts sustained by unquestionable contemporary authority, and attested by public documents,–facts which history has graven with her pen of iron in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions of this man’s character, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly responsible;–not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him by authority,–not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious name that was not his to blast,–that was the property of men of learning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for ever, at the bidding of power,–not that only, but the voluntary exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged,–which he has gone out of his way to leave to us,–memorials of them which he has collected with his own hands, and sealed up, and sent down to posterity ‘this side up,’ with the most urgent directions to have them read, and examined, and considered deeply,–that posterity, too, to which he commends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the cure of his fame.
The demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must receive it. Because our criticism or our learning is not equal to the task of reconciling it with that which we know already, or with that which we _believed_, and thought we _knew_, we must not on that account reject it. That is to hurt ourselves. That is to destroy the principle of integrity at its source. We must take our facts and reconcile them, if we can; and let them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is greater than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of us, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts, for the sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never so plausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did require of any mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be dispensed with, or shorn, on either side to make it tenable, is not going to stand, let it come in what name, or with what authority it will; because the truth of history is, in its least particular, of a universal quality, and is much more potent than anything that the opinion and will of man can oppose to it.
To the mind which is able to receive under all conditions the demonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight,–to the mind to which truth is religion, this book is dedicated. The facts which it contains are able to assert themselves,–will be, at least, hereafter. They will not be dependent ultimately upon the mode of their exhibition here. For they have the large quality, they have the solidity and dimensions of historical truth, and are accessible on more sides than one.
But to those to whom they are already able to commend themselves in the form in which they are here set forth, the author begs leave to say, in conclusion, though it must stand for the present in the form of a simple statement, but a statement which challenges investigation, that so far from coming into any real collision with the evidence which we have on this subject from other sources, those very facts, and those very historical materials on which our views on this subject have been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the complete development of the views contained here.
It is the true history of these great events in which the hidden great men of this age played so deep a part; it is the true history of that great crisis in which the life-long plots of these hidden actors began to show themselves on the historic surface in scenic grandeur,–in those large tableaux which history takes and keeps,–which history waits for,–it is the very evidence which has supplied the principal basis of the received views on this subject,–it is the history of the initiation of that great popular movement,–that movement of new ages, with which the chief of popular development, and the leader of these ages, has been hitherto so painfully connected in our impressions; it is that very evidence,–that blasting evidence which the Learning of the Modern Ages has always carried in its stricken heart,–it is _that_ which is wanting here. That also is a part of the story which has begun to be related here.
And those very letters which have furnished ‘confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ’ of the impressions which the other historical evidence, as it stands at present, inevitably creates,–those very letters which have been collected by the party whose character was concerned in them, and preserved with so much diligence and caution,–which we have been asked with so much emphasis to read and ponder,–which have been recommended to our attention as the very best means, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic relations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete understanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance with his character and aims,–with his _natural dispositions_, as well as his deliberate scientific _aims_,–these letters, long as we have turned from them,–often as we have turned from them,–chilled, confounded, sick at heart,–unable, in spite of those recommendations, to find in them any gleam of the soul of these proceedings,–these very letters will have to be read, after all, and with that very diligence which the directions enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to take just that place in the development of this plot which the author, who always knows what he is about when he is giving directions, designed them to take. There is one very obvious reason why they should be studied–why they would have to be studied in the end. They have on the face of them a claim to the attention of the learned. There is nothing like them in the history of mankind. For, however mean and disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to words,–that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the identity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in the most private conferences,–there is usually an attempt to clothe the forlorn and shrinking actuality with the common human dignity, or to make it, at least, passably respectable, if the claim to the heroic is dispensed with,–even in oral speech. But in writing, in letters, destined to never so brief and limited an existence, who puts on paper for the eye of another, for the review of that criticism which in the lowest, basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared to detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on the least failure, or shadow of failure in the best–who puts in writing,–what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it comes to that, a deliberate display of meanness,–what convicted felon, but will undertake in that case to give some sort of heroic colour to his proceedings–some air of suffering virtue to his durance?
But a great man, consciously great, who knows that his most trifling letter is liable to publication; a great man, writing on subjects and occasions which insure publicity to his writing; a man of fame, writing letters expressly for publication, and dedicating them to the far-off times; a man of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest shades of moral differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur of aims–aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering, under the most difficult conditions, pursued to their successful issue; a man whose aim in life it was to advance, and ennoble, and enrich his kind; in whose life-success the race of men are made glad; such a one sending down along with the works, in which the nobility and the deliberate worth and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved, memorials of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them, by universal consent, the most odious character in history; this is the phenomenon which our men of learning have found themselves called upon to encounter here. To separate the man and the philosopher–to fly out upon the _man_, to throw him overboard with every expression of animosity and disgust, to make him out as bad as possible, to collect diligently every scrap of evidence against him, and set it forth with every conceivable aggravation–this has been the resource of an indignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest in some form; this has been the defence of learning, cast down from its excellency, and debased in all men’s eyes, as it seemed for ever, in the person of its high-priest.
The objection to the work here presented to the public is, that it does not go far enough. From the point of review that the research of which it is the fruit has now attained, this is the criticism to which it appears to be liable. From this point of view, the _complaint_ to be made against it is, that at the place where it stops it leaves, for want of that part of the evidence which contains it, the historical grandeur of our great men unrevealed or still obscured. For we _have_ had them, in the sober day-light of our occidental learning, in the actualities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past only–monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man’s divinity, demi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples, stalking through the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or in the twilight of a national popular ignorance, embalmed in the traditions of those who are always ‘beginners.’ We have had them; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own stock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in the searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them, we have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and ignorance confessed, with all their ‘weaved-up follies ravelled out,’ with all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion and will in man, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and wrong-doing, assumed and acknowledged in their own persons, symbolically, vicariously, assumed and confessed. ‘I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.’ We have them, _our_ Interpreters, _our_ Poets, _our_ Reformers, who start from the actualities–from the actualities of nature in general, and of the human nature in particular–who make the most careful study of man as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis of their innovation, the beginning of their advancement to the ideal or divine. We have them; and they, too, they also come to us, with that old garland of glory on their brows, with that same ‘crown’ of victory, which the world has given from of old to those who have taken her affairs to be their business.
That the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an age, like that age from which our modern philosophy proceeds, is of a kind to require, for its unravelling, a different species of criticism from that which suffices for the historical evidence which our own times and institutions produce, is a fact which would hardly seem to require any illustration in the present state of our historical knowledge, in the present state of our knowledge in regard to the history of this age in particular; when not the professed scholar only, but every reader, knows what age in the constitutional history of England, at least, that age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian only, with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are _caviare_ to the multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull prose and scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back to the peoples their own, to tell us what age this was. The inner history of this time is indeed still wanting to us; and the reason is, that we have not yet applied to the reading of its principal documents that key of times which our contemporary historians have already put into our hands–that key which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain cases, indispensable to the true interpretation.
That the direct contemporary testimony on which history depends is, in this case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and through all its details–that the documents are all of them, on the face of them, ‘suspicious,’ and not fit to be received as historical evidence without the severest scrutiny and re-examination–this is the fact which remains to be taken into the account here. For this is a case in which the witnesses come into court, making signs, seeking with mute gesticulation to attract our attention, pointing significantly to the difficulties of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting a second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mortally hate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could; intimating that if their testimony should be re-examined in a higher court, and when the Star Chamber and the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer in session, it might perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different reading. This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his finger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another _age_.
We all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and dignities of a race–what age in the history of its recovered liberties, rescued from oppression and recognised and confirmed by statute, this was. We know it was an age in which the decisions of the Bench were prescribed to it by a power that had ‘the laws of England at its commandment,’ that it was an age in which Parliament, and the press, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had charge, diligent charge ‘of amusements also, and of those who only played at working.’ That this was a time when the Play House itself,–in that same year, too, in which these philosophical plays began first to attract attention, and again and again, was warned off by express ordinances from the whole ground of ‘the forbidden questions.’ We know that this was an age in which not the books of the learned only were subjected to ‘the press and torture which expulsed’ from them all those ‘particulars that point to action’–action, at least, in which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it was a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that same censorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and engines, which made then a regular part of the machinery of the press; when the most secret cabinet of the Statesman and the Man of Letters must be kept in order for that revision, when his most confidential correspondence, his private note-book and diary must be composed under these restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies of sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be–which might or might not be–put down for private purposes perhaps, and never intended to be preached–were produced by Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.
To the genius of a race in whose mature development speculation and action were for the first time systematically united, in the intensities of that great historical impersonation which signalises its first entrance upon the stage of human affairs, stimulated into preternatural activity by that very opposition which would have shut it out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those impossible, insufferable limits that the will of the one man prescribed to it then,–to that many-sided genius, bent on playing well its part even under those conditions, all the more determined on it by that very opposition–kept in mind of its manliness all the time by that all comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of every act–irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by the perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine of the human nature and its nobility in the school of that sovereignty which was keeping such a costly ‘crib’ here then; ‘Let a beast be lord of beasts,’ says Hamlet, ‘and your crib shall stand at the king’s mess;’ ‘Would you have me false to _my nature_? says another, ‘_rather_ say I _play_ the _man_ I am’; to that so conscious man, playing his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high; knowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in, how ‘_far_’ those long-drawn aisles extended; what ‘far-off’ crowding ages filled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was acting ‘even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to the ending doom’; to such a one studying out his part beforehand under such conditions, it was not one disguise only, it was not one secret literary instrumentality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That toy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends, with all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this speaker’s speech, ‘who came prepared to speak well,’ and ‘to give to his speech a grace by action.’
Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other forms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It offered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain plots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object, were necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that dramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, _not_ on the stage, but in these ‘plots’ in which the weal of the unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man’s estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and ‘badges’ and signals and private names, and a secret slang of their own.
The minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and who thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary communication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in their day.
The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not just as lawful for the moderns to ‘invent new measures in verses,’ at least, as in ‘dances,’ and why it was not just as competent for him to compose ‘supposititious’ letters for _his_ purposes, as it was for Thucydides to compose speeches for _his_; and though eloquence was, in this case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day prosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and business, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as it happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a comprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.
The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared without much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that kind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring and less ‘dangerous’ turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is opened, was conducted in that gentleman’s name, about those days.
But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and sanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when occasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing letters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished personages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request for that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was concerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he stopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of the Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that he could compose ‘a sonnet’ as well as a state paper, or a decision, or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any better than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department of song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities in general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of poetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so singular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have no other object in living, but to promote their ends,–one whose vast philosophic aims,–aims already propounded in all their extent and grandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole scheme of his life was to be–artistically–with the strong hand of that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm of devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to be the sovereign’s favourite; one whose great torch of genius and learning was lighted, as it was understood,–lighted and fed, to light them to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add any thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man, instructed by her instinct, that ‘such men were dangerous,’ was willing, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of this nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is, that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another, passed in consequence through this gentleman’s hands in both these reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional endowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically ‘active good,’ for the dispatch of business in which large and distant results were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference to his ulterior aims,–if, in writing letters for them, he wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part,–of his own immortal part that was to survive ‘when tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass were spent’ running through them–if, in composing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history which contained their solution, who that knows _what_ those times were, who that knows to what divine ends this man’s life was dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.
All these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were written for the future, but they were written in that same secret method, in that same ‘cipher’ which he has to stop to describe before he can introduce the subject of ‘the principal and supreme sciences,’ with the distinct assurance that as ‘matters stand then, it is an art of great use,’ though some may think he introduces it with its kindred arts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the sciences, and to _little_ other purpose, and that trivial as these may seem in such a connexion, ‘to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters,’ appealing to ‘those who are skilful in them’ to say whether he has not given, in what he has said of them, ‘though in few words,’ a proof of his proficiency. This was the method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences only, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be written then.
‘Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.’ Both these kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The reading of that which is ‘_in letters_,’ the one in which letters are secretly employed as ‘symbols’ of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is reserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers of this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the ‘Book of Sports and Riddles,’ which this school published, and who happen to have it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked _him_ to his last lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who have been in Prospero’s Island, and ‘untied his spell.’ This point gained,–the secret of the cipher ‘_in letters_,’–the secret of ‘the symbols,’ and other ‘devices’ and ‘conceits’ which were employed in this school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the characters in which these men struck through the works they could not own then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of universality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human kind, and with it–_in it_, their own particular ‘marks’ and private signatures,–this mastered,–with the secret of _this_ in our hands, the cipher ‘_in words_’ presents no difficulties, When we come to read the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid of that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means, when he says, that on ‘account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes carried in the weakest ciphers.’
It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival–the policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand points in the conditions of the chief courtiers’ policy at that time, to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for power under those same conditions–men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.
It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the ‘New Company and the Old’ to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important, were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the nation.
Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king’s household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance–in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and _their_ measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution–it was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, ‘Beggar and Madman,’ too, so freely,–consoling _the Monarch_ with the suggestion that _Essex_ was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their heads up.
Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing ambitions–under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual hostility–it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests under such conditions,–it was easy for politicians trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into each other’s hands, and to attain ends which in open league they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all know, to be also endowed. This courtier’s chief enemy, if he had been in his great rival’s secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them,–the over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.
While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show of a trial, to which ‘the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o’ the world’ was to be subjected–a trial in which the decision was known beforehand–‘though,’ says our Poet–
‘Though well, we may not pass upon _his life_, Without _the form of justice_;’–
it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart–for the tool of a Stuart’s favourite–to insert in such a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.
In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is ‘_supposititious_,’ to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose–supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious–is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author’s life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,–which he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin, never meant to serve as a cover with ‘men of understanding.’ Read which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, ‘here is his dry hand up and down.’
These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another’s; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no _such_ mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;–the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,–the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the interpretations of the lives of men whose ‘impediments’ are such, and whose ‘_natures_ and _ends_’ are so ‘differing and dissonant from the general state of the times in which they live,’ that it is necessary for them to avoid ‘disclosing themselves,’ ‘to be _in the whole course_ of their lives _close, retired_, reserved, as we see in Tiberius, _who was never seen at a play_,’ men who are compelled, as it were, ‘to act their lives as in a theatre.’ ‘The _soundest disclosing_,’ he says, ‘and _expounding_ of MEN is by their NATURES _and_ ENDS. The _weaker_ sort of men are best interpreted by their _natures_, the _wisest_ by their _ends_.’ ‘Princes are best _interpreted_ by their _natures_, private persons by their _ends_, because princes being at the top of human desires, _they_ have, for the most part, no particular ends _whereto they aspire, by distance from which_ a man _might take measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires_’ ‘_Distance_ from which,’–that is the key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions ‘good and reasonable ends, and such as are within _their_ power to attain.’ As to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements which make the modern ages–the discoverers of its science of sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an enemy’s camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already received at their hands,–the benefits we have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us _with_ the works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,–in which the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly pursued,–it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends are _accomplished_, to the times that have found in their experience _what_ they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he made these sacrifices,–aims which he constantly propounded as the end of his large activity, to note the ‘dissonance’ between that life which the surface of these documents exhibits,–between that historic form, too, which the surface of that time’s history exhibits,–and the nature which is revealed in this life-act,–the soul, the never-shaken soul of this proceeding.
‘The god of soldiers,
With the consent of _supreme Jove_, inform Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may’st prove _The shame_ UNVULNERABLE, and stick i’ the war Like a _great sea-mark_, standing every flaw, And saving those that _eye thee_.’
‘I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of _me_, he _judged_, and _lived_ so and so; I knew him better than any. Now, as much as decency permits, I _here_ discover my inclinations and affections. If any _observe_, he will find that I have either told, or _designed_ to tell all. What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.’ ‘There was never greater circumspection and _military_ prudence than is sometimes seen among us’ [‘Naturalists’]. ‘_Can it be_ that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves to the end of the game?’
‘I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my _name_. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can _he_ think to gain by showing himself to the world in _a mask_, and by concealing _his true being_ from the people? If you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish: “Ay, _but_,” said the other, “he did not throw the water upon _me_, but upon _him_ whom he took me to be.” _Socrates_ being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him, “Not at all,” said he; “there is nothing _in me_ of what they say. _I_ am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man, in _such a sort of wisdom_ as I take to be folly.”‘–[‘_The French Interpreter_.’]
This is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre, content to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to the true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends, propounding deliberately his _duty_ as a man, his duty to his kind, his obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant end,–but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private nature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement,–at large in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great fruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all impediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over ‘death and all oblivious enmity,’ and finding, ‘in the consciousness of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the provision that can be made for security and repose,’–not reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own time,–his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with it,–always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always the ‘nobler’ solution. ‘The one part have I suffered, the other will I do,’–demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such conditions, a ‘life sublime.’
‘All places that the eye of heaven visits Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.’
There is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so irreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man in the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them;–this is the account, in the general, which will be found to be, upon investigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even by the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the truth of this statement will become apparent.
But though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded here, it cannot well close, without one word as to _the points_ in this part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on us.
No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was possible for this scientific propounder of the law of human _kind_-ness to avert and protect him from–this anticipator and propounder of a _human_ civilization. He was far in advance of our times in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of social experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a beetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which was great nature’s gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature’s pang. To anticipate the sovereign’s wishes, seeking to divert them first ‘with a merry conceit’ perhaps; for, so light as that were, the motives on which _such_ consequences might depend then–to forestall the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed. The men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination against tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its existence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and authority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the calumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue–the virtue of it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal _slavery_ could be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and manliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of an ‘underground railway’ being suggested for the relief of its victims? ‘I will seek him and _privily_ relieve him. Go _you_ and _maintain talk with the Duke_ that my charity be not of him _perceived_. If he ask for _me_, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes–[between the Dukes]–and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night. It is _dangerous to be spoken_. I have _locked the letter_ in my _closet_. There is _part_ of _a power already_ FOOTED. We must incline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, _my old master_, must be relieved.’ _That_ when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which ‘charities’ of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable.
_Cassius_. And let us awear our resolution.
_Brutus_. No, not an oath: If not _the face_ of _men, The sufferance_ of _our souls_, THE TIMES ABUSE,– If _these_ be motives weak, _break off betimes_, And _every man_ hence to his _idle_ bed; _So_ let high-sighted tyranny _range on_, Till _each man_ drop _by_ lottery. But if THESE,– _As I am sure they do_,–bear fire enough To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women, _then, countrymen_, What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE To prick us to redress? what other bond Than _secret Romans_, that have spoken the word, And will not falter….
Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous, Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain The _even_ virtue of our enterprise,
_Nor_ the insuppressive mettle of our spirits, To think that, or _our cause_, or our _performance_, Did need an oath.’
[Doctrine of the ‘_secret Romans_.’]
As to the rest, it was this man–this man of a scientific ‘prudence’ with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought–it was this man who gave at last _the signal_ for change; not for war. ‘Proceed by process’ was his word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have attained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he proposed–this was the _move_ which he was willing, for his part, to _initiate_.–‘We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see ways to save us.’–The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned him were studiously arranged beforehand by himself,–he wrote the programme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the greatest in history. [”Tis the indiligent reader that loses my subject, not I,’ says the ‘foreign interpreter’ of this style of writing. ‘There will always be found some word or other, _in a corner_, though it lie very close.’ That is the rule for the reading of the evidence in this case. The word is there, though _it lies very close_, as it had need to, to be available.]
It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works, through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and courtier–all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest–all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a _courtier_ still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled the king, for _life_ and _liberty_; and careful still not to assert any independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be his _ends_; it was in this character that he brought out at last the Novum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect and republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character too that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history which comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical writings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred, a Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want of leaders and organization–overborne by the genius of a military chief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his contemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which was dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch’s approval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of superintending its publication. It is the History of _the Founding_ of the Tudor Dynasty: prepared,–as were the rest of these works,–under the patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary ‘entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of _truth or gracefulness_,’ and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient ‘for persons of superior gifts and endowments to _act_ the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their persons.’
‘_I_ am in this (_Volumnia_)
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles, And you will rather show our general lowts, How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them, For the _inheritance_ of their loves, and _safeguard_, Of what that want might ruin.
Away my _disposition_!
When you do find him, or alive or dead, He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.
‘Yet country-men, _O yet_, hold up your heads. I will proclaim my name about the field. I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO!
A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country’s friend.
‘And _I_ am Brutus, Marcus Brutus _I_, Brutus, MY COUNTRY’S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.’
FINIS.