The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Delia Bacon (page 3)

them;–these are the arts that we shall have need to master, if we would unlock the legacy they have left to us.

The proof of the existence of this special art of delivery and tradition, and the definition of the objects for which it was employed, has been derived thus far chiefly from sources of evidence exterior to the works themselves; but the inventors of it and those who made use of it in their own speech and writings, are undoubtedly the persons best qualified to give us authentic and lively information on this subject; and we are now happily in a position to appreciate the statements which they have been at such pains to leave us, for the sake of clearing up those parts of their discourse which were necessarily obscured at the time. Now that we have in our hands that key of _Times_ which they have recommended to our use, that knowledge of times which ‘gives great light in many cases to true interpretations,’ it is not possible any longer to overlook these passages, or to mistake their purport.

But before we enter upon the doctrine of Art which was published in the first great recognized work of this philosophy, it will be necessary to produce here some extracts from a book which was not originally published in England, or in the English language, but one which was brought out here as an exotic, though it is in fact one of the great original works of this school, and one of its boldest and most successful issues; a work in which the new grounds of the actual experience and life of men, are not merely inclosed and propounded for written inquiry, but openly occupied. This is not the place to explain this fact, though the continental relations of this school, and other circumstances already referred to in the life of its founder, will serve to throw some light upon it; but on account of the bolder assertions which the particular form of writing and publication rendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of the more lively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies and illustrates these assertions in this instance, it appears on the whole excusable to commence our study of the special Art for the delivery and tradition of knowledge in those departments which science was then forbidden on pain of death to enter, with that exhibition of it which is contained in this particular work, trusting to the progress of the extracts themselves to apologize to the intelligent reader for any thing which may seem to require explanation in this selection.

It is only necessary to premise, that this work is one of the many works of this school, in which a grave, profoundly scientific design is concealed under the disguise of a gay, popular, attractive form of writing, though in this case the audience is from the first to a certain extent select. It has no platform that takes in–as the plays do, with their more glaring attractions and their lower and broader range of inculcation,–the populace. There is no pit in this theatre. It is throughout a book for men of liberal culture; but it is a book for the world, and for men of the world, and not for the cloister merely, and the scholar. But this, too, has its differing grades of readers, from its outer court of lively pastime and brilliant aimless chat to that _esoteric_ chamber, where the abstrusest parts of sciences are waiting for those who will accept the clues, and patiently ascend to them.

The work is popular in its form, but it is inwoven throughout with a thread of lurking meanings so near the surface, and at times so boldly obtruded, that it is difficult to understand how it could ever have been read at all without occasioning the inquiry which it was intended to occasion under certain conditions, but which it was necessary for this society to ward off from their works, except under these limitations, at the time when they were issued. For these inner meanings are everywhere pointed and emphasized with the most bold and vivid illustration, which lies on the surface of the work, in the form of stories, often without any apparent relevance in that exterior connection–brought in, as it would seem, in mere caprice or by the loosest threads of association. They lie, with the ‘allegations’ which accompany them, strewn all over the surface of the work, like ‘trap’ on ‘sand-stone,’ telling their story to the scientific eye, and beckoning the philosophic explorer to that primeval granite of sciences that their vein will surely lead to. But the careless observer, bent on recreation, observes only a pleasing feature in the landscape, one that breaks happily its threatened dulness; the reader, reading this book as _books_ are wont to be read, finds nothing in this phenomenon to excite his curiosity. And the author knows him and his ways so well, that he is able to foresee that result, and is not afraid to trust to it in the case of those whose scrutiny he is careful to avoid. For he is one who counts largely on the carelessness, or the indifference, or the stupidity of those whom he addresses. There is no end to his confidence in that. He is perpetually staking his life on it. Neither is he willing to trust to the clues which these unexplained stories might seem of themselves to offer to the studious eye, to engage the attention of the reader–the reader whose attention he is bent on securing. Availing himself of one of those nooks of discourse, which he is at no loss for the means of creating when the purpose of his _essaie_ requires it, he beckons the confidential reader aside, and thus explains his method to him, outright, in terms which admit of but one construction. ‘Neither these stories,’ he says, ‘nor my allegations do always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them; they carry sometimes, _besides what I apply them to_, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes, _collaterally, a more delicate sound_, both to me myself,–who will say no more about it _in this place_’ [we shall hear more of it in another place, however, and where the delicate collateral sounds will not be wanting]–‘both to me myself, and _to others who happen to be of my ear_.’

To the reader, who does indeed happen to be of his ear, to one who has read the ‘allegations’ and stories that he speaks of, and the whole work, and the works connected with it, by means of that knowledge of the inner intention, and of the method to which he alludes, this passage would of course convey no new intelligence. But will the reader, to whom the views here presented are yet too new to seem credible, endeavour to imagine or invent for himself any form of words, in which the claim already made in regard to the style in which the great original writers of this age and the founders of the new science of the human life were compelled to infold their doctrine, could have been, in the case of this one at least, more distinctly asserted. Here is proof that one of them, one who counted on an _audience_ too, did find himself compelled to infold his richer and bolder meanings in the manner described. All that need be claimed at present in regard to the authorship of this sentence is, that it is written by one whose writings, in their higher intention, have ceased to be understood, for lack of the ‘_ear_’ to which his bolder and richer meanings are addressed, for lack of the _ear_, to which the collateral and more delicate sounds which his words sometimes carry with them are perceptible; and that it is written by a philosopher whose learning and aims and opinions, down to the slightest points of detail, are absolutely identical with those of the principal writers of this school.

But let us look at a few of the stories which he ventures to introduce so emphatically, selecting only such as can be told in a sentence or two. Let us take the next one that follows this explanation–the story in the very next paragraph to it. The question is _apparently_ of Cicero, of his style, of his vanity, of his supposed care for his _fame_ in future ages, of his _real disposition and objects_.

‘Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its _harmony_, that we should more study it than _things_’ [what new soul of philosophy is this, then, already?]–‘unless you will affirm that of _Cicero_ to be of so supreme perfection as to form _a body_ of itself. And of him, I shall further add one story we read of to this purpose, wherein _his nature_ will _much more manifestly be laid open to us_’ [than in that seeming care for his fame in future ages, or in that lower object of style, just dismissed so scornfully].

‘He was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened _in time_, to _fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do_, when _Eros_, one of his slaves, brought him word that the _audience was deferred_ till the next day, at which he was so ravished with joy that _he enfranchised him_.’

The word ‘time’–here admits of a double rendering whereby the _author’s_ aims are more manifestly laid open; and there is also another word in this sentence which carries a ‘delicate sound’ with it, to those who have met this author in other fields, and who happen to be of his counsel. But lest the stories of themselves should still seem flat and pointless, or trivial and insignificant to the uninstructed ear, it may be necessary to interweave them with some further ‘allegations on this subject,’ which the author assumes, or appears to assume, in his own person.

‘I write my book for _few men_, and for _few years_. Had it been _matter of duration_, I should have put it into a _better language_. According to the continual variation that ours has been subject to hitherto [and we know who had a similar view on this point], who can expect that the present _form of language_ should be in use fifty years hence. It slips every day through our fingers; and since I was born, is altered above one half. We say that it is now perfect: _every age says the same of the language it speaks_. I shall hardly trust to that so long as it runs away and _changes_ as it does.

”Tis for good and useful writings to nail and rivet it to them, and its reputation will go _according to the fortune of our state. For which reason, I am not afraid to insert herein several private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men now living_, AND THAT CONCERN THE PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE OF SOME WHO WILL SEE FURTHER INTO THEM THAN THE COMMON READER.’ But that the inner reading of these private articles–that reading which lay farther in–to which he invites the attention of those whom it concerns–was not expected to spend its use among the men then living, that which follows might seem to imply. It was that wrapping of them, it was that gross superscription which ‘the fortune of our state was likely to make obsolete ere long,’ this author thought, as we shall see if we look into his prophecies a little. ‘I will not, after all, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of _me_: “He _judged_, and LIVED SO and SO. Could he have spoken when he was dying, he would have said _so_ or _so_. I knew him better than any.”

‘So _our_ virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times,’

‘says the unfortunate Tullus Aufidius, in the act of conducting a Volscian army against the infant Roman state, bemoaning himself upon the conditions of his historic whereabouts, and beseeching the sympathy and favourable constructions of posterity–

So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times; And power unto itself most commendable
Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair To extol what it hath done.

‘The times,’ says Lord Bacon, speaking in reference to books particularly, though _he_ also recommends the same key for the reading of lives, ‘the times in many cases give _great light_ to true interpretations.’

‘Now as much as decency permits,’ continues the other, anticipating _here_ that speech which he might be supposed to have been anxious to make in defence of his posthumous reputation, could he have spoken when he was dying, and forestalling that criticism which he foresaw–that odious criticism of posterity on the discrepancy between _his life_ and _his judgment_–‘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 express I point out with my finger_.

‘There was never greater circumspection and _military prudence_ than sometimes is seen among US; can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, _that they reserve themselves to the end of the game_?’

‘There needs no more but to see a man promoted to dignity, though we knew him but three days before a man of no mark, yet an image of grandeur and ability insensibly steals into our opinion, and we persuade ourselves that growing in reputation and attendants, he is also increased in merit’:–

_Hamlet_. Do the boys carry it away?

_Ros_. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.

_Hamlet_. It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. ‘Sblood, there is something _in this, more_ than _natural_ [talking of the _super_natural], _if philosophy could find it out_.

‘But,’ our prose philosopher, whose mind is running much on the same subjects, continues ‘if it happens so that he [this favourite of fortune] falls again, and is mixed with the common crowd, every one inquires with wonder into the _cause_ of his having been hoisted so high. _Is it he_? say they: did he know no more than this _when he was in_ PLACE?’ [‘change _places_ … robes and furred gowns hide all.’] Do _princes_ satisfy _themselves_ with so little? _Truly we were in good hands_! That which I myself adore in kings, is [note it] _the crowd of the adorers_. All reverence and submission is due to them, _except that of the understanding_; my _reason_ is not to bow and bend, ’tis my _knees_’ ‘I will not do’t’ says another, who is in this one’s counsels,

I will not do’t
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my body’s action, teach my mind
A most inherent baseness. _Coriolanus_.

‘Antisthenes one day entreated _the Athenians to give orders that their asses might be employed in tilling the ground_,–to which it was answered, “that _those animals were not destined to such a service_.” “That’s all one,” replied he; “it only sticks at your command; for the most ignorant and incapable men you employ _in your commands of war_, immediately become worthy enough _because_–YOU EMPLOY THEM.”‘

There mightst thou behold the great image of authority. A dog’s obeyed in office.–Lear.

For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here, A very–very–_Peacock_.
Horatio. You might have rhymed. Hamlet.

‘to which,’ continues this political philosopher,–that is, to which preceding anecdote–containing such unflattering intimations with regard to the obstinacy of nature, in the limits she has set to the practical abilities of those _animals_, not enlarging their natural gifts out of respect to the Athenian selection (an anecdote which supplies a rhyme to Hamlet’s verse, and to many others from the same source)–‘_to which the custom of so many people_, who canonize the KINGS they have chosen _out of their own body_, and are not content only to honour, but adore them, _comes very near. Those of Mexico_ [for instance, it would not of course do to take any nearer home], after the ceremonies of _their_ king’s coronation are finished, _dare no more look him in the face_; but, as if they _deified_ him by his royalty, _among_ the oaths they make him take to _maintain their religion and laws_, to be valiant, just and mild; he moreover swears,–_to make the sun run his course in his wonted light,–to drain the clouds at a fit season,–to confine rivers within their channels,–and to cause all things necessary for his people to be borne by the earth_.’ ‘(They told me I was everything. But when the rain came to wet me once, when the wind would not peace at my bidding,’ says Lear, ‘there I found them, there I smelt them out.)’ This, in connection with the preceding anecdote, to which, in the opinion of this author, it comes properly so very near, may be classed of itself among the suggestive stories above referred to; but the bearing of these quotations upon the particular question of style, which must determine the selection here, is set forth in that which follows.

It should be stated, however, that in a preceding paragraph, the author has just very pointedly expressed it as his opinion, that men who are supposed, by common consent, to be so far above the rest of mankind in their single virtue and judgment, that they are permitted to govern them at their discretion, should by no means undertake to maintain that view, by exhibiting that supposed kingly and divine faculty in the way of _speech_ or _argument_; thus putting themselves on a level with their subjects, and by meeting them on their own ground, with their own weapons, giving occasion for comparisons, perhaps not altogether favourable to that theory of a superlative and divine difference which the doctrine of a divine right to rule naturally presupposes. ‘For,’ he says, ‘neither is it enough for those _who govern and command us, and have all the world in their hand_, to have a common understanding, and to be able to do what the rest can’ [their faculty of judgment must match their position, for if it be only a common one, the difference will make it despised]: ‘they are very much below us, if they be not _infinitely above us_. And, therefore, _silence_ is to them not only a countenance of respect and gravity, but very often of good profit and policy too; for, Megabysus going to see _Apelles_ in his _painting_ room, stood a great while without speaking a word, and at last began to talk of his paintings, for which he received this rude reproof. ‘_Whilst thou wast silent_, thou seemedst to be something great, by reason of thy chains and pomp; _but now that we have heard thee speak_, there is not the meanest boy in my shop that does not despise thee.’ But after the author’s subsequent reference to ‘those animals’ that were to be made competent by a vote of the Athenian people for the work of their superiors, to which he adds the custom of people who canonize the kings they have chosen out of their own body, which comes so near, he goes on thus:–_I differ from this common fashion_, and am more apt to suspect capacity when I see it accompanied with grandeur of fortune and _public applause_. We are to consider of what advantage it is, _to speak when one pleases, to choose the subject one will speak of_–[an advantage not common with authors then]–TO INTERRUPT OR CHANGE OTHER MEN’S ARGUMENTS, WITH A MAGISTERIAL AUTHORITY, to protect oneself from the opposition of others, by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the presence of an assembly that trembles with reverence and respect. _A man of a prodigious fortune_, coming to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that was foolishly set on foot at his _table_, began in these words:–‘It can only be a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than so and so.’ ‘_Pursue this philosophical point with a dagger in your hand_.’

Here is an author who does contrive to pursue his philosophical points, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they take him. By putting himself into the trick of singularity, and affecting to be a mere compound of eccentricities and oddities, neither knowing nor caring what it is that he is writing about, and dashing at haphazard into anything as the fit takes him,–‘Let us e’en fly at anything,’ says Hamlet,–by assuming, in short, the disguise of the elder Brutus; and, on account of a similar necessity, there is no saying what he cannot be allowed to utter with impunity. Under such a cover it is, that he inserts the passages already quoted, which have lain to this hour without attracting the attention of critics, unpractised happily, and unlearned also, in the subtleties which tyrannies–such tyrannies–at least generate; and under this cover it is, that he can venture now on those astounding political disquisitions, which he connects with the complaint of the restrictions and embarrassments which the presence of a man of prodigious fortune at the table occasions, when an argument, trivial or otherwise, happens to be going on there. Under this cover, he can venture to bring in here, in this very connection, and to the very table, even of this man of prodigious fortune, pages of the freest political discussion, containing already the finest analysis of the existing political ‘situation,’ so full of dark and lurid portent, to the eye of the scientific statesman, to whom, even then, already under the most intolerable restrictions of despotism, of the two extremes of social evil, that which appeared to be the most terrible, and the most to be guarded against, in the inevitable political changes then at hand, was–not the consolidation but the dissolution of the state.

For already the horizon of that political oversight included, not the eventualities of the English Revolutions only, but the darker contingencies of those later political and social convulsions, from whose soundless whirlpools, men spring with joy to the hardest sharpest ledge of tyranny; or hail with joy and national thanksgiving the straw that offers to land them on it. Already the scientific statesman of the Elizabethan age could say, casting an eye over Christendom as it stood then, ‘That which most threatens us is, not an _alteration_ in the entire and solid mass, but its _dissipation_ and _divulsion_.’

It is after pages of the freest philosophical discussion, that he arrives at this conclusion–discussion, in which the historical elements and powers are for the first time scientifically recognized and treated throughout with the hand of the new master. For this is a philosopher, who is able to receive into his philosophy the fact, that out of the most depraved and vicious social materials, by the inevitable operation of the universal natural laws, there will, perhaps, result a social adhesion and predominance of powers–a social ‘whole,’ more capable of maintaining itself than any that Plato or Aristotle, from the heights of their abstractions, could have invented for them. He ridicules, indeed, those ideal politics of antiquity as totally unfit for practical realisation, and admits that though the question as to that which is absolutely the best form of government might be of some value _in a new world_, the basis of all alterations in existing governments should be the fact, that we take a world already formed to certain customs, and do not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did theirs, and by what means soever we may have the privilege to rebuild and reform it anew, we can hardly _writhe it_ from its wonted bent, but we shall _break all_. For the subtlest principles of the philosophy of things are introduced into this discussion, and the boldest applications of the Shakspere muse are repeated in it.

‘That is the way to _lay all flat_,’ cries the philosophic poet in the Roman play, opposing on the part of the Conservatist, the violence of an oppressed people, struggling for new forms of government, and bringing out fully, along with their claims, the anti-revolutionary side of the question. ‘That which tempts me out on these journeys,’ continues this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous terms of his rambling excursive habits and eccentricities of proceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes–‘that which tempts me out on these journeys, is _unsuitableness to the present manners of_ OUR STATE. _I_ could easily console myself with this corruption in reference to the _public interest_, but not to _my own: I_ am _in particular_ too much oppressed:–for, _in my neighbourhood_ we are of late by _the long libertinage of our civil wars grown old_ in so _riotous a form of state_, that in earnest _’tis a wonder how it can subsist_. In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and held together _at what price soever; in what condition soever they are placed they will close and stick together_ [see the doctrine of things and their original powers in the “Novum Organum”]–_moving and heaping up themselves, as uneven bodies, that shuffled together without order, find of themselves means to unite and settle_. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them altogether in a city which he had built for that purpose, which bore their name; I believe that they, even from vices, erected a government among them, and a commodious and just society.’

‘Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation’; and let the reader note here, how the principle which has predominated historically in the English Revolution, the principle which the fine Frankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic faculty, could not strike instinctively or empirically, in its political experiments–it is well to note, how this distinctive element of the _English_ Revolution–that revolution which is still in progress, with its remedial vitalities–already speaks beforehand, from the lips of this foreign Elizabethan Revolutionist. ‘Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation; change only gives form to injustice and tyranny. WHEN ANY PIECE IS OUT OF ORDER IT MAY BE PROPPED, one may prevent and take care that the _decay and corruption_ NATURAL TO ALL THINGS, do not carry us too far from _our beginnings and principles_; but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do who to _make clean, efface_, who would reform particular defects by a universal confusion, and cure diseases by _death_.’ Surely, one may read in good Elizabethan English passages which savor somewhat of this policy. One would say that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance, in this case. ‘Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate counsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church of England, as would in effect make it _no church_, said thus to him:–‘Sir, the subject we talk of is the _eye_ of England, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.’ [And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very much the same view of the constitution and vitality of states, about these times:–

He’s a disease that must be cut away. Oh, he’s a limb that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.]

But our Gascon philosopher goes on thus, with his Gascon inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth which the last vintage of the Novum Organum yields on this point. ‘The world is unapt for curing itself; _it is so impatient of any thing that presses it_, that it thinks of nothing but _disengaging itself_, at what price soever. We see, by a thousand examples, that it generally cures itself to its cost. The _discharge of a present evil is no cure, if a general amendment of condition does not follow_; the surgeon’s end is _not only to cut away the dead flesh_,–that is but the progress of his cure;–he has a care over and above, _to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh_, and _to restore the member to its due state_. Whoever only proposes to himself to remove that which offends _him_, falls short; _for good_ does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, _and a worse, as it happened in Caesar’s killers_, who brought the republic to _such a pass, that they had reason to repent their meddling with it_.’ ‘I fear there will _a worse_ one come in his place,’ says a fellow in Shakespear’s crowd, at the first Caesar’s funeral; and that his speech made the moral of the piece, we shall see in the course of this study.

But though the frantic absolutisms and irregularities of that ‘old riotous form of military government,’ which the long civil wars had generated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy dissolution, this old Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible fund of English shrewdness, and sound English sense, underlying all his Gasconading, by no means considers the state as past the statesman’s care: ‘after all, _we are not, perhaps, at the last gasp_,’ he says. ‘The conservation of states _is a thing that in all likelihood surpasses our understanding_: a civil government is, as Plato says, “a mighty and powerful thing, and hard to be dissolved.” “States, as great engines, move slowly,” says Lord Bacon; “and are not so soon put out of frame”;–that is, so soon as “the resolution of particular persons,” which is his reason for producing his moral philosophy, or rather his moral _science_, as _his_ engine for attack upon the state, a science which concerns the government of every man over himself; “for, as in Egypt, the seven good years sustained the seven bad; so governments, for a time well-grounded, do bear out errors following.”‘ But this is the way that this Gascon philosopher records _his_ conclusions on the same subject. ‘Every thing that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body holds by more nails than one. _It holds even by its antiquity_, like old buildings from which the foundations are worn away by time, without rough cast or cement, which yet live or support themselves by their own weight. Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work to reconnoitre only the flank and the fosse, to judge of the security of a place; it must be examined _which way approaches_ can be made to it, AND IN WHAT CONDITION THE ASSAILANT IS–that is the question. ‘_Few vessels sink with their own weight_, and without some exterior violence. Let us every way cast our eyes. Every thing about us totters. In all the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to us, if you will but look, you will there see evident threats of alteration and ruin. Astrologers need not go to heaven to foretell, as they do, GREAT REVOLUTIONS’ [this is the speech of the Elizabethan age–‘great revolutions’] ‘and _imminent mutations_.’ [This is the new kind of learning and prophecy; there was but one source of it open then, that could yield axioms of this kind; for this is the kind that Lord Bacon tells us the head-spring of sciences must be visited for.] ‘But _conformity is a quality antagonist to_ DISSOLUTION. For my part, I despair not, and _fancy I perceive ways to save us_.’

And _surely_ this is one of the inserted private articles, before mentioned, which may, or may not be, ‘designed to spend their use among the men now living’; but ‘which concern the particular knowledge of some who will see further into them than the common reader.’ If there had been a ‘London Times’ going then, and this old outlandish Gascon Antic had been an English statesman preparing this article as a leader for it, the question of the Times could hardly have been more roundly dealt with, or with a clearer northern accent.

But it is high time for him to bethink himself, and ‘draw his old cloak about him’; for, after all, this so just and profound a view of so grave a subject, proceeds from one who has no aims, no plan, no learning, no memory;–a vain, fantastic egotist, who writes only because he will be talking, and talking of himself above all; who is not ashamed to attribute to himself all sorts of mad inconsistent humours, and to contradict himself on every page, if thereby he can only win your eye, or startle your curiosity, and induce you to follow him. After so long and grave a discussion, suddenly it occurs to him that it is time for a little miscellaneous confidential chat about himself, and those certain oddities of his which he does not wish you to lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for another of those _stories_, which serve to divert the attention when it threatens to become too fixed, and break up and enliven the dull passages, besides having that other purpose which he speaks of so frankly. And although this whole discussion is not without a direct bearing upon that particular topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch as the political situation, which is so clearly exhibited, is precisely that of the Elizabethan scholar, it is chiefly this little piece of confidential chat with which it closes, and _its significance in that connection_, which gives the rest its insertion here.

For suddenly he recollects himself, and stops short to express the fear that he may have written _something similar to this elsewhere_; and he gives you to understand–not all at once–but by a series of strokes, that too bold a repetition _here_, of what he has said _elsewhere_ might be attended, to him, with serious consequences; and he begs you to note, as he does in twenty other passages and stories here and elsewhere, that his _style_ is all hampered with considerations such as these–that instead of merely thinking of making a good book, and presenting his subjects in their clearest and most effective form for the reader;–a thing in itself sufficiently laborious, as other authors find to their cost, he is all the time compelled to weigh his words with reference to such points as this. He must be perpetually on his guard that the identity of that which he presents here, and that which he presents elsewhere, under other and very different forms (in much graver forms perhaps, and perhaps in others not so grave), shall no where become so glaring as to attract popular attention, while he is willing and anxious to keep that identity or connection constantly present to the apprehension of the few, for whom he tells us his book–that is, this book within the book–is written.

‘I fear in these _reveries_ of mine,’ he continues, suspending at last suddenly this bold and continuous application to the immediate political emergency of those philosophical principles which he has exhibited in the abstract, in their _common_ and _universal form_, elsewhere; ‘I fear, in these reveries of the _treachery of my memory_, lest by inadvertence it should make me write the same thing twice. Now I here set down _nothing new_, these are _common_ thoughts, and having per-adventure conceived them a hundred times, _I am afraid_ I _have set them down somewhere else already_. Repetition is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer, _but ’tis ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory_ SHOW. I do not love inculcation, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca, and the practice of his Stoical school displeases me of _repeating upon every subject and at length_, THE PRINCIPLES and PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT SERVE IN GENERAL, and _always_ to re-allege anew;’ that is, under the particular divisions of the subject, _common and universal reasons_. ‘What I cannot express I point out with my finger,’ he tells you elsewhere, but it is thus that he continues here.

‘My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must _fain for the time to come_ (collateral sounds), for _hitherto, thank God, nothing has happened much amiss_, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To _be tied and bound to a thing_ puts _me_ quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story without being offended at it, with as it were _a personal_ and natural resentment.’ The reader will note that the question here is of _style_, or method, and of this author’s style in particular, and of his special embarrassments.

‘Lyncestes _accused of conspiracy against Alexander_, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a _studied speech_, of which, _haggling and stammering_, he pronounced _some words_. As he was becoming more perplexed and struggling with his memory, and _trying to recollect himself_, the soldiers that stood _nearest_ killed him with their spears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation, would astound a man _even though were there no object in his mind but to speak well_; but WHAT _when ’tis an harangue upon which his life depends_?’ You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my story.

‘_For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to loose me from it_’–that is the cause of his wandering–‘_The more I trust to my memory_, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so _much as to find it in my own countenance_, and have _sometimes been very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound_, whereas _my design is_ to manifest in speaking a _perfect nonchalance_, both of face and accent, and _casual and unpremeditated motions_, as rising from present occasions, _choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to show that_ I came _prepared to speak well_; a thing especially unbecoming _a man of my profession_. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further _than he would have done in his gown_.’ [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] ‘It is recorded of the orator Curio, that _when he proposed the division of his oration_ into three or four parts, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two more.’ A much more illustrious speaker, who spoke under circumstances not very unlike those in which the poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts at oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight; for, having invented a plan of universal science, designed for the relief of the human estate, he forgot the principal application of it. But this author says, _I_ have always avoided falling into this inconvenience, having always hated these promises and announcements, not only out of distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of the _artificial_. You will find no scientific plan _here_ ostentatiously exhibited; you will find such a plan elsewhere with all the works set down in it, but the works themselves will be missing; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be under the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it would be ruinous to produce the plan, ‘_I_ have always _avoided_ falling into this inconvenience. _Simpliciora militares decent_.’ But as he appears, after all, to have had no military weapon with which to sustain that straight-forwardness of speech which is becoming in a military power, and no dagger to pursue his points with, some artifice, though he professes not to like it, may be necessary, and the rule which he here specifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not altogether amiss. ”Tis enough that I have promised to myself never to take upon me to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that sort of speaking where a man _reads_ his speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who _naturally could give it a grace by action_, and to rely upon the mercy of the readiness of my invention, I will much less do it; ’tis heavy and perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important necessities.’

‘Speaking,’ he says in another place, ‘hurts and discomposes me,–my _voice_ is loud and high, so that when I have gone to whisper some great person about an affair of _consequence, they have often had to moderate my voice. This story deserves a place here_.

‘Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as _I do_. The master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak _lower_. “Tell him then, he must send me,” replied the other, “the tone he would have me speak in.” To which the other replied, “that he should take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake.” It was well said, if it be understood. Speak _according to the affair_ you are speaking about to the auditor,–(speak according to the business you have in hand, to the purpose you have to accomplish)–for if it mean, it is sufficient that he _hears_ you, I do not find it reason.’ It is a more artistic use of speech that he is proposing in his new science of it, for as Lord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this same subject, ‘the _proofs_ and _persuasions_ of _rhetoric_ ought to differ according to the auditors,’ and the Arts of Rhetoric have for their legitimate end, ‘not merely PROOF, but _much more_, IMPRESSION.’ ‘For many forms are _equal in signification_ which are _differing in impression_, as the difference is great in the piercing of that which is _sharp_, and that which is _flat_, though the _strength_ of the percussion be the same; for instance, there is no man but will be a little more raised, by hearing it said, “Your enemies will be glad of this,” than by hearing it said only, “This is evil for you.”‘ But it is thus that our Gascon proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we have interrupted. ‘There is a voice to _flatter_, there is a voice to _instruct_, and a voice to _reprehend_. _I_ would not only have my voice to reach my hearer, but peradventure _that it strike_ and _pierce_ him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone, it would be very fine for him to say, “Pray master, speak lower, for I hear you very well.” _Speaking_ is _half his that speaks_, and _half his that hears_; the last ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its motion, as with tennis players; he that receives the ball, shifts, draws back, and prepares himself to receive it, according as he sees him move, who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke itself.’ It is not, therefore, because this author has failed to furnish the rules of interpretation necessary for penetrating to the ultimate intention of this new kind of speaking, if all this affectation of simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory statements of his, have been suffered hitherto to pass unchallenged. It is the public mind he has to deal with. ‘That which he adores in kings is the _throng_ of _their adorers_.’ If he should take the public at once into his confidence, and tell them beforehand precisely what his own opinions were of things in general, if he should set before them in the outset the conclusions to which he proposed to drive them, he might indeed stand some chance to have his arguments interrupted, or changed with a magisterial authority; he would indeed find it necessary to pursue his philosophical points with a dagger in his hand.

And besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not appear to him to secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to rouse the human mind to activity, to compel it to think for itself, and put it on the inevitable road to his conclusions. He wishes the reader to strike out those conclusions for himself, and fancy himself the discoverer if he will. So far from being simple and straightforward, his style is in the profoundest degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art inspired it. He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the active world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths which men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign to them. ‘We want medicines to arouse the sense,’ says Lord Bacon, who proposed exactly the method of teaching which this philosopher had, as it would seem, already adopted. ‘I bring a trumpet to awake his _ear_, to set his _sense_ on the attentive bent, and _then_ to speak,’ says that poet who best put this art in practice.

But here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this dull, stupid, custom-bound public on its own ground. He would assume all its absurdities and contradictions in his own person, and permit men to despise, and marvel, and laugh at them in him without displeasure. For whoever will notice carefully, will perceive that the use of the personal pronoun here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech. Such an one will find that this philosophical _I_ is very broad; that it covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under this term, the term by which each man names _himself_, the common term of the individual humanity, he finds it convenient to say many things. ‘They that will fight _custom_ with _grammar_,’ he says, ‘are fools. When another tells me, or when I say to myself, _This_ is a word of Gascon growth; _this_ a dangerous phrase; _this_ is an ignorant discourse; thou art too full of figures; _this_ is a paradoxical saying; _this_ is a foolish expression: _thou makest thyself merry sometimes, and men will think_ thou sayest a thing in good earnest, which thou only speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults of _inadvertence, not those of custom_. I have done what I designed,’ he says, in triumph, ‘_All the world knows_ ME in my book, _and my book in_ ME.’

And thus, by describing human nature under that term, or by repeating and stating the common opinions as his own, he is enabled to create an opposition which could not exist, so long as they remain unconsciously operative, or infolded in the separate individuality, as a part of its own particular form.

‘My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible,’ he says; ‘but the good which virtuous men do to the public in making themselves imitated, _I, perhaps, may do in making my manners avoided_. While I publish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be afraid of them. _The parts that I most esteem in myself_, are more honoured in decrying than in commending _my own manners_. Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. _The present time_ is fitting to reform us _backward_, more by _dissenting_ than _agreeing_; by differing than consenting.’ That is his application of his previous confession. And it is this _present time_ that he impersonates, holding the mirror up to nature, and provoking opposition and criticism for that which was before buried in the unconsciousness of a common absurdity, or a common wrong. ‘Profiting little by good examples, I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as good as I see others evil.’

‘There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. All such whimsies as are in use amongst us, deserve at least to be hearkened to; for my part, they only with me import _inanity_, but they import _that_. Moreover, _vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature_.

‘If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The contradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends. “Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking about.” When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs me. _I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered arms_; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and _accommodate myself to my accusers_ [aside] (very often more by reason of _civility_ than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage _to correct_, because they have not the courage _to be corrected, and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another_. I take so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination does so often contradict and condemn itself, that _it is all one to me if another do it_. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation _teaches_ and _exercises_ at once.’ But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of _conference_–of the noblest kind of conference–so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly _human_ activity–so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.

He cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however, that his arguments require examination. ‘In _conferences_,’ he says, ‘it is a rule that every word that _seems_ to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. One must try it on all points, to see _how it is lodged in the author_: [perhaps he is not in earnest] _for_ one must not always _presently yield_ what truth or beauty soever seem to be in the argument.’ A little delay, and opposition, the necessity of hunting, or fighting, for it, will only make it the more esteemed in the end. In such a style, ‘either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is, whatsoever beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order to challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not understanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of it] or, sometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry it _beyond_ its proper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct him. This whole work is constructed on this principle]. As when I contend with a vigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions; I ease him of the trouble of explaining himself; I strive to prevent his imagination, whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and pertinency of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But as to _these_,–and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no antecedent in the text–as to these, I deal quite contrary with them. I _must understand and presuppose nothing but by them_…. Now, if you come to explain anything to them and confirm them (these readers), they presently catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your interpretation. “It was what I was about to say; it was just _my_ thought, _and if I did not express it so_, it was only for want of _language_.” Very pretty! Malice itself must be employed to correct this _proud ignorance_–’tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and set him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. _I love_ to let him step deeper into the mire,’–[luring him on with his own confessions, and with my assumptions of his case] ‘_and so deep that if it be_ possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY AND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus answered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of battle, “that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, _by a fine oration_, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song,” may properly be said of such an admonition as this;’ or, as Lord Bacon has it, ‘It were a strange speech, which spoken, or _spoken oft_, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is _by nature_ subject; it is _order, pursuit, sequence_, and _interchange of application_, which is mighty in nature.’ But the other continues:–‘These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand by a long continued education. We owe this care and this assiduity of correction and instruction to _our own_, [that is the school,] but to go to preach to the first passer-by, and to lord it over the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in _my own particular conferences_, and rather surrender my cause, than proceed to these _supercilious_ and _magisterial_ instructions.’ The clue to the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the _magisterial_ method,–‘My _humour_ is unfit, either to speak or write for _beginners_;’ he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last conclusions of science; ‘_but_ as to things that are said in _common discourse_ or _amongst other things_, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.’

‘Let none _even doubt_,’ says the author of the Novum Organum, who thought it wisest to steer clear _even_ of _doubt_ on such a point, ‘whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish _the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use_. On the contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and honour; for we by no means interfere to prevent _the prevalent system_ from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or being employed _serviceably_ in the chair of the Professor, or the practice of common life, and being taken in short, by general consent, _as current coin_. Nay, we plainly declare that the system we offer will not be very _suitable_ for such purposes, not being easily adapted to _vulgar apprehension, except_ by EFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our _sincerity_ [hear] in professing our regard and friendly disposition towards _the received sciences_, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings, _especially_ our books on–the Advancement–[the _Advancement_] of Learning.’ And the reader who can afford time for ‘a second cogitation,’ the second cogitation which a superficial _and_ interior meaning, of course, requires, with the aid of the key of times, will find much light on that point, here and there, in the works referred to, and especially in those parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is treated. ‘We will not, therefore,’ he continues, ‘endeavour to evince it (our sincerity) any further by _words_, but content ourselves with steadily, etc., … professedly premising that no great _progress_ can be made by the present methods in the _theory_ and contemplation of science, _and_ that they can _not_ be made to produce _any very abundant effects_.’ This is the proof of his sincerity in professing his regard and friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in connection with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no doubt it was sincere, and just to that extent to which these statements, and the practice which was connected with them, would seem to indicate; but the careful reader will perceive that it was a regard, and friendliness of disposition, which was naturally qualified by that doubly significant fact last quoted.

But the question of style is still under discussion here, and no wonder that with _such_ views of the value of the ‘current coin,’ and with a regard and reverence for the received sciences so deeply qualified; or, as the other has it, with a humour so unfit either to speak or write for _beginners_, a style which admitted of other efficacies than bare _proofs_, should appear to be demanded for popular purposes, or for beginners. And no wonder that with views so similar on this first and so radical point, these two men should have hit upon the same method in _Rhetoric_ exactly, though it _was_ then wholly new. But our Gascon, goes on to describe its freedoms and novelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new vitalities.

‘May we not,’ says the successful experimenter in this very style, ‘mix with the subject of conversation and communication, the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends pleasantly and _wittingly_ jesting with one another; an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, if it be not so extended and serious as _the other I just spoke of_, ’tis no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility _as Lycurgus thought_.’

CHAPTER II.

FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF ‘PARTICULAR METHODS OF TRADITION.’–EMBARRASSMENTS OF LITERARY STATESMEN.

Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing in the wind. My, best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud, till the dregs of the storm be past.–_Tempest_.

Here then, in the passages already quoted, we find the plan and theory–the premeditated form of a new kind of Socratic performance; and this whole work, as well as some others composed in this age, make the realization of it; an invention which proposes to substitute for the languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of _books_–the kind of books which this author found invented when he came–for the passive, sluggish receptivity of another’s thought, the living glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash of self-conviction.

It is a Socratic dialogue, indeed; but it waits for the reader’s eye to open it; he is himself the principal interlocutor in it; there can be nothing done till he comes in. Whatsoever beauty or truth maybe in the argument; whatsoever jokes and repartees; whatsoever infinite audacities of mirth may be hidden under that grave cover, are not going to shine out for any lazy book-worm’s pleasure. He that will not work, neither shall he eat of this food. ‘Up to the _mountains_,’ for _this is hunter’s language_, ‘and he that strikes the venison first shall be lord of this feast.’ It is an invention whereby the author will remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is long; whereby he will ‘outstretch his span,’ and make over, not his learning only but his _living_ to the future;–it is an instrumentality by which he will still maintain living relations with the minds of men, by which he will put himself into the most intimate relations of sympathy, and confidence, and friendship, with the mind of the few; by which he will reproduce his purposes and his faculties in them, and train them to take up in their turn that thread of knowledges which is to be spun on.

But if this design be buried so deeply, is it not _lost_ then? If all the absurd and contradictory developments–if all the mad inconsistencies–all the many-sided contradictory views, which are possible to human nature on all the questions of human life, which this single personal pronoun was made to represent, in the profoundly philosophic design of the author, are still culled out by learned critics, and made to serve as the material of a grave, though it is lamented, somewhat egotistical biography, is not all this ingenuity, which has successfully evaded thus far not the careless reader only, but the scrutiny of the scholar, and the sharp eye of the reviewer himself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little purpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no means. That disguise which was at first a necessity, has become the instrument of his power. It is that broad _I_ of his, that _I myself_, with which he still takes all the world; it is that single, many-sided, vivacious, historical impersonation, that ideal impersonation of the individual human nature as it is–not as it should be–with all its ‘weaved-up follies ravelled out,’ with all its before unconfessed actualities, its infinite absurdities and contradictions, so boldly pronounced and assumed by one laying claim to an historical existence, it is this historical assumption and pronunciation of all the before unspoken, unspeakable facts of this unexplored department of natural history, it is this apparent confession with which this magician entangles his victims, as he tells us in a passage already quoted, and leads them on through that objective representation of their follies in which they may learn to hate them, to that globe mirror–that mirror of the age which he boasts to have hung up here, when he says, ‘I have done what I designed: all the world knows _me in my book_, and my book in _me_.’

Who shall say that it is yet time to strip him of the disguise which he wears so effectively? With all his faults, and all his egotisms, who would not be sorry to see him taken to pieces, after all? And who shall quite assure us, that it would not still be treachery, even now, for those who have unwound his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to the heart of his mystery,–for those who have penetrated to the chamber of his inner school, to come out and blab a secret with which he still works so potently; insensibly to those on whom he works, perhaps, yet so potently? But there is no harm done. It will still take the right reader to find his way through these new devices in letters; these new and vivacious proofs of learning; for him, and for none other, they lurk there still.

To evade political restrictions, and to meet the popular mind on its own ground, was the double purpose of the disguise; but it is a disguise which will only detect, and not baffle, the mind that is able to identify itself with his, and able to grasp his purposes; it is a disguise which will only detect the mind that knows him, and his purposes already. The enigmatical form of the inculcation is the device whereby that mind will be compelled to follow his track, to think for itself his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost secret of his intention; for it is a school in whose enigmatical devices the mind of the future was to be caught, in whose subtle exercises the child of the future was to be trained to an identity that should restore the master to his work again, and bring forth anew, in a better hour, his clogged and buried genius.

But, if the fact that a new and more vivid kind of writing, issuing from the heart of the new philosophy of _things_, designed to work new and extraordinary effects by means of literary instrumentalities,– effects hitherto reserved for other modes of impression,–if the fact, that a new and infinitely artistic mode of writing, burying the secrets of philosophy in the most careless forms of the vulgar and popular discourse, did, in this instance at least, exist; if this be proved, it will suffice for our present purpose. What else remains to be established concerning points incidentally started here, will be found more pertinent to another stage of this enquiry.

From beginning to end, the whole work might be quoted, page by page, in proof of this; but after the passages already produced here, there would seem to be no necessity for accumulating any further evidence on this point. A passage or two more, at least, will suffice to put _that_ beyond question. The extracts which follow, in connection with those already given, will serve, at least, to remove any rational doubt on that point, and on some others, too, perhaps.

‘But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things as these; the meanness of the _subject_ compels me to it.’–‘_Human reason is a two-edged_ and a _dangerous sword_. Observe, in the hand of _Socrates_, her most intimate and familiar friend, _how many points it has. Thus_, I am good for nothing but to follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the crowd.’–‘I have this opinion of _these political controversies_: Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostle _principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet, ’tis_ my _notion, in public affairs_ [hear], _there is no government_ so ill, _provided it be ancient_, and has been _constant_, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and customs, _there are many that are barbarous and monstrous: nevertheless_, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, _if I could put something under to stay the wheel_, and keep it where it is, _I would do so with all my heart_. It is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its ancient observances; _never any man undertook, but he succeeded; but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has overthrown, many who have attempted this have foundered in the attempt_. I very little consult _my prudence_ [philosophic ‘prudence’] in my conduct. I am willing to let it be guided by _public rule_.

‘In fine, to return to myself, the only things by which _I_ esteem _myself_ to be something, is _that wherein never any man_ thought himself to be defective. _My recommendation is vulgar and common_; for whoever thought _he_ wanted sense. It would be a _proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself_; [in such subtleties thickly studding this popular work, the clues which link it with other works of this kind are found–the clues to a new _practical human philosophy_.] ‘Tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; ’tis tenacious and strong; _but the first ray of the patient’s sight_ does nevertheless pierce it through and disperse it, as the beams of the sun do a thick mist: to _accuse one’s self_, would be to _excuse one’s self_ in this case; and to _condemn_, to _absolve_. There never was porter, or silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for their need. The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of others, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found it out as well as they. _Knowledge, style_, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple products of the _understanding_, every one thinks he could have found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless–and then with much ado–in an extreme and incomparable distance; _and whoever should be able clearly to discern_ the height of another’s judgment, would be also able _to raise his own to the same pitch_; so that this is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a kind of composition of small repute. _And, besides, for whom do you write_?’–for he is merely meeting this common sense. His object is merely to make his reader confess, ‘That was just what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language;’–‘for whom do you write? _The learned_, to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other process of wit but that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself. _Heavy and vulgar souls_ cannot discern the grace of a high and unfettered style. Now these two sorts of men make the _world_. The _third sort_, into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular, and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it _justly_ has neither _name nor place amongst us_, and it is pretty well time lost to aspire to it, or to endeavour to please it.’ He will not content himself with pleasing the few. He wishes to _move_ the world, and its approbation is a secondary question with him.

‘He that should record _my_ idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but ’tis what I _had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering_. [“I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet,” says the offended king. “These words are not mine.” _Hamlet_: “Nor mine _now_.”] All I say is by way of discourse. _I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed, and so I told a great man, who complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice_.’ And, indeed, he would not, in this instance, that is very certain;–for he has been speaking on the subject of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of his time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these, which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is offended. (‘These words are not mine, Hamlet.’ ‘Nor mine now.’) ‘To _kill men_, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.’ ‘After all ’tis setting a _man’s conjectures_ at a very high price to _cause a man to be roasted alive upon them_.’ He does not look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly asleep than _men usually are_, became, according to certain grave authorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and having mentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove any unpleasant sensation or inquiry which his preceding allusion might have occasioned, he resumes, ‘If _dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects of life_, I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice. _Which I say, as a man_, who am neither _judge nor privy counsellor_, nor think myself, by many degrees, worthy so to be, but a _man of the common sort_, born and vowed to the obedience of the public realm, both in _words_ and _acts_.

‘_Thought_ is free;–_thought_ is free.’ _Ariel_.

‘Perceiving _you to be ready and prepared on one part_, I propose to you on the other, with all the care I can, to _clear_ your judgment, not to enforce it. Truly, _I_ have not only a great many humours, but _also a great many opinions_ [which I bring forward here, and assume as mine] that I would _endeavour_ to make _my son dislike_, if I had one. The _truest_, are not always the most commodious to man; he is of too _wild_ a composition. “We speak of all things by precept and resolution,” he continues, returning again to this covert question of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in his meridian. They make me hate things that are _likely_, when they impose them on me for _infallible_. “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy”–(or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, “wonder is the seed of knowledge”)–enquiry the progress–ignorance the end. Ay, but there is a sort of ignorance, _strong and generous_, that yields nothing _in honour and courage to knowledge_, a knowledge, which to conceive, requires _no less knowledge_ than knowledge itself.’

‘I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print.’–[The vain, egotistical, incoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic French gentleman, who is understood to be the author of this new experiment in letters, was not far from being a middle-aged man, when the pamphlet which he here alludes to was first published; but his chronology, generally, does not bear a very close examination. Some very extraordinary anachronisms, which the critics are totally at a loss to account for, have somehow slipped into his story. There _was_ a young philosopher in France in those days, of a most precocious, and subtle, and inventive genius–of a most singularly artistic genius, combining speculation and practice, as they had never been combined before, and already busying himself with all sorts of things, and among other things, with curious researches in regard to ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time;–there was a youth in France, whose family name was also English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion to _invent_ a cipher of his own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to the story.]–‘I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of _two men, who presented themselves the one for the other_. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have rendered _the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged_. [That is the point.] _Let us take up_ SOME FORM of ARREST, that shall say, THE COURT _understands nothing of the matter_, more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, _who ordered the parties to appear again in a hundred years_.’ We must not forget that these stories ‘are not regarded by the author merely for the use he makes of them,–that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally a _more delicate sound_, both to the author himself who declines saying anything more about it _in that place_, and to others who shall happen to be of his ear!’ One already prepared by previous discovery of the method of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in it, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story last quoted.

It is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to the attention of the reader, ‘who will, perhaps, see farther into it than others,’ in that chapter on toleration in which it is suggested that considering the fantastic, and unscientific, and unsettled character of the human beliefs and opinions, and that even ‘the Fathers’ have suggested in their speculations on the nature of human life, that what men believed themselves to be, in their dreams, they really became, it is after all setting a man’s conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be roasted alive on them; the chapter in which it is intimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a little more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the limits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the most learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their form was determined. It is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a chapter ‘on _cripples_,’ into which this odd story about the two men who presented themselves, the one for the other, in a manner so remarkable, is introduced, for _lameness_ is always this author’s grievance, wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of devices to overcome it; for he is the person who came prepared to speak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man reads his speech, because he is one who could naturally give it a grace by action, or as another has it, he is one who would suit the action to the word.

But it was not the question of ‘hanging’ only, or ‘roasting alive,’ that authors had to consider with themselves in these times. For those forms of literary production which an author’s literary taste, or his desire to reach and move and mould the people, might incline him to select–the most approved forms of popular literature, were in effect forbidden to men, bent, as these men were, on taking an active part in the affairs of their time. Any extraordinary reputation for excellence in these departments, would hardly have tended to promote the ambitious views of the young aspirant for honors in that school of statesmanship, in which the ‘Fairy Queen’ had been scornfully dismissed, as ‘an old song.’ Even that disposition to the gravest and profoundest forms of philosophical speculation, which one foolish young candidate for advancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit prematurely there, was made use of so successfully to his disadvantage, that for years his practical abilities were held in suspicion on that very account, as he complains. The reputation of a _Philosopher_ in those days was quite as much as this legal practitioner was willing to undertake for his part. That of a _Poet_ might have proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to sustain. His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not have been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen, whose favour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily relieved from any suspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases of the Psalms for which he chose to make himself responsible,–if those Hebrew melodies of his did not do the business for him, and clear him effectually of any such suspicion in the eyes of that generation, it is difficult to say what would. But whether his devotional feelings were really of a kind to require any such painful expression as that on their own account, may reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted at all with his general habits of thought and sentiment. These lyrics of the philosopher appear on the whole to prove too much; looked at from a literary point of view merely, they remind one forcibly of the attempts of Mr. _Silence_ at a Bacchanalian song. ‘I have a reasonable good ear in music,’ says the unfortunate Pyramus, struggling a little with that cerebral development and uncompromising facial angle which he finds imposed on him. ‘I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.’

‘A man must frame _some probable cause_, why he should not do his best, and why he should dissemble his abilities,’ says this author, speaking of _colour_, or the covering of defects; and that the prejudice just referred to was not peculiar to the English court, the remarkable piece of dramatic criticism which we are about to produce from this old Gascon philosopher’s pages, may or may not indicate, according as it is interpreted. It serves as an introduction to the passage in which the author’s double meaning, and the occasionally double sound of his stories is noted. In the preceding chapter, it should be remarked, however, the author has been discoursing in high strains, upon the vanity of popular applause, or of any applause but that of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with quotations from the Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he assumes as the precepts of a true and natural philosophy; and among others the following passage was quoted:–[Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a quotation from a letter of Epicurus, on the same subject.]–‘Remember him who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons, replied, “A few are enough for me. I have enough with one, I have enough with never a one.” He said true; yourself and a companion _are_ theatre enough to one another, or _you_ to _yourself_. Let us be to you _the whole people_, and the whole people to you but _one_. You should do like the beasts of chase who _efface the track at the entrance into their den_.’ But this author’s comprehensive design embraces all the oppositions in human nature; he thinks it of very little use to preach to men from the height of these lofty philosophic flights, unless you first dive down to the platform of their actualities, and by beginning with the secret of what they are, make sure that you take them with you. So then the latent human vanity, must needs be confessed, and instead of taking it all to himself this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged up, the latter very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand the brunt of this philosophic shooting.

‘But this exceeds all meanness of spirit in _persons of such quality as they were_, to think to derive any glory from babbling and prating, _even to the making use of their private letters to their friends, and so withal that_ though some of them _were never sent, the opportunity being lost_, they nevertheless published them; with this worthy excuse, that they were unwilling to lose their labour, and have their lucubrations thrown away.’–Was it not well becoming two consuls of Rome, _sovereign magistrates of the republic, that_ commanded the world, to spend their time in patching up elegant missives, in order to gain the reputation of being well versed _in their own mother tongue_? What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got his living by it? If the _acts_ of Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended their eloquence, I don’t believe they would ever have taken the pains to _write_ them. They made it their business to recommend not their _saying_, but their _doing_. The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip, extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge. ‘Tis not _his profession_ to know either how to hunt, or to dance well.

Orabunt causas alii, coelique meatus Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent, Hic regere imperio populos sciat.

Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less necessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man’s self, that he has spent his time and study ill, which ought to have been employed in the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things. Thus Philip, King of Macedon, having heard _the great Alexander_, his son, _sing at a feast_ to the _wonder and envy of the best musicians_ there. ‘Art thou not ashamed,’ he said to him, ‘to _sing so well_?’ And to the same Philip, a musician with whom he was disputing about something concerning his art, said, ‘_Heaven forbid, sir, that so great a misfortune should ever befall you as to understand these things better than I_.’ Perhaps this author might have made a similar reply, had _his_ been subjected to a similar criticism. And Lord Bacon quotes this story too, as he does many others, which this author has _first selected_, and for the same purpose; for, not content with appropriating his philosophy, and pretending to invent his design and his method, he borrows all his most significant stories from him, and brings them in to illustrate the same points, and the points are borrowed also: he makes use, indeed, of his common-place book throughout in the most shameless and unconscionable manner. ‘Rack his style, Madam, _rack his style_?’ he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he tells us, when she consulted him–he being then of her counsel learned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having written ‘the book of the deposing of Richard the Second, and the _coming in_ of Henry the Fourth,’ and sent to the Tower for that offence. The queen was eager for a different kind of advice. Racking an author’s book did not appear to her coarse sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the delicacy of an author’s susceptibilities, a process in itself sufficiently murderous to satisfy her revenge. There must be some flesh and blood in the business before ever she could understand it. She wanted to have ‘the question’ put to that gentleman as to his meaning in the obscure passages in that work under the most impressive circumstances; and Mr. Bacon, _himself_ an author, being of her counsel learned, was requested to make out a case of treason for her; and wishes from such a source were understood to be commands in those days. Now it happened that one of the managers and actors at the Globe Theatre, who was at that time sustaining, as it would seem, the most extraordinary relations of intimacy and friendship with the friends and patrons of this same person, then figuring as the queen’s adviser, had recently composed a tragedy on this very subject; though that gentleman, more cautious than Dr. Hayward, and having, perhaps, some learned counsel also, had taken the precaution to keep back the scene of the deposing of royalty during the life-time of this sharp-witted queen, reserving its publication for the reign of her erudite successor; and the learned counsel in this case being aware of the fact, may have felt some sympathy with this misguided author. ‘No, madam,’ he replied to her inquiry, thinking to take off her bitterness with a merry conceit, as he says, ‘for treason I can _not_ deliver opinion that there is any, but very much felony.’ The queen apprehending it gladly, asked, ‘How?’ and ‘wherein?’ Mr. Bacon answered, ‘Because he had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus.’ It would do one good to see, perhaps, how many felonious appropriations of sentences, and quotations, and ideas, the application he recommends would bring to light in this case.

But the instances already quoted are not the only ones which this free spoken foreign writer, this Elizabethan genius abroad, ventures to adduce in support of this position of his, that statesmen–men who aspire to the administration of republics or other forms of government–if they cannot consent on that account to relinquish altogether the company of the Muses, must at least so far respect the prevailing opinion on that point, as to be able to sacrifice to it the proudest literary honours. Will the reader be pleased to notice, not merely the extraordinary character of the example in this instance, but _the grounds_ of the assumption which the critic makes with so much coolness.

‘And could the perfection of eloquence have added any lustre proportionable to the merit of a great person, certainly Scipio and Laelius had never resigned the honour of their comedies, with all the _luxuriancies and delicacies of the Latin tongue_, to an African slave, for that the work was THEIRS _its beauty and excellency_ SUFFICIENTLY PROVE.’ [This is from a book in which the supposed autograph of Shakspere is found; a work from which he quotes incessantly, and from which he appears, indeed, to have taken the whole hint of his learning.] ‘Besides Terence himself confesses as much, and I should take it ill in any one that would _dispossess me_ of that _belief_.’ For, as he says in another place, in a certain deeply disguised dedication which he makes of the work of a friend, a poet, whose early death he greatly lamented, and whom he is ‘determined,’ as he says, ‘to revive and raise again to life if he can:’ ‘As we often judge of the greater by the less, and _as the very pastimes_ of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted _of the source_ from which they spring, I hope you will, by this work of his, rise to the knowledge of himself, and by consequence love and embrace his memory. In so doing, you will accomplish what he exceedingly longed for whilst he lived.’ But here he continues thus, ‘I have, indeed, in my time known some, who, by a knack of writing, have got both title and fortune, yet disown their apprenticeship, _purposely corrupt their style,_ and affect ignorance of so vulgar a quality (which _also our nation observes_, rarely to be seen _in very learned hands_), carefully seeking a reputation by better qualities.’

I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair: but now it did me yeoman’s service.–_Hamlet_.

And it is in the next paragraph to _this_, that he takes occasion to mention that his stories and allegations do not always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; that they are not limited in their application to the use he ostensibly makes of them, but that they carry, for those who are in his secret, other meanings, bolder and richer meanings, and sometimes collaterally a more delicate sound. And having interrupted the consideration upon Cicero and Pliny, and their vanity and pitiful desire for honour in future ages, with this criticism on the limited sphere of statesmen in general, and the devices to which _Laelius and Scipio_ were compelled to resort, in order to get _their_ plays published without diminishing the lustre of their personal renown, and having stopped to insert that most extraordinary avowal in regard to his two-fold meanings in his allegations and stories, he returns to the subject of this correspondence again, for there is more in this also than meets the ear; and it is not _Pliny_, and _Cicero_ only, whose supposed vanity, and regard for posthumous fame, as men of letters, is under consideration. ‘But returning to the _speaking virtue_;’ he says, ‘I find _no great choice_ between not knowing to speak _anything but ill_, and not knowing anything but _speaking well_. The sages tell us, that as to what concerns _knowledge_ there is nothing but _philosophy_, and as to what concerns _effects_ nothing but _virtue_, that is generally proper to all degrees and orders. There is something like _this in these two other_ philosophers, for _they also promise_ ETERNITY to the letters they write to their friends, but ’tis _after another manner_, and by accommodating themselves _for a good end_ to the vanity of _another_; for they write to them that if the concern of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet _detain_ them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them; let them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to assure them that, were there nothing else but the _letters_ thus writ to them, those letters will render their names as known and famous as their _own public actions_ themselves could do. [And that–_that_ is the key to the correspondence between _two other_ philosophers enigmatically alluded to here.] And besides this difference,’ for it is ‘these two other philosophers,’ and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus alone, that we talk of here, ‘and besides _this difference, these_ are not _idle_ and _empty_ letters, that contain nothing but a fine jingle of well chosen words, and fine couched phrases; but replete and _abounding with grave and learned discourses_, by which a man may render himself–not more eloquent but more _wise_, and that instruct us not to _speak_ but _to do well_’; for that is the rhetorical theory that was adopted by the scholars and statesmen then alive, whose methods of making themselves known to future ages he is indicating, even in these references to the ancients. ‘_Away_ with that _eloquence_ which so enchants us with its _harmony_ that we should more study it than _things_’; for this is the place where the quotation with which our investigation of this theory commenced is inserted in the text, and here it is, in the light of these preceding collections of hints that he puts in the story first quoted, wherein he says, the nature of the orator will be much more manifestly laid open to us, than in that seeming care for his fame, or in that care of his style, for its own sake. It is the story of Eros, the slave, who brought the speaker word that the audience was _deferred_, when in composing a speech that he was to make in public, ‘he found himself straitened in _time_, to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do.’

CHAPTER III.

THE POSSIBILITY OF GREAT ANONYMOUS WORKS,–OR WORKS PUBLISHED UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME,–CONVEYING, UNDER RHETORICAL DISGUISES, THE PRINCIPAL SCIENCES,–RE-SUGGESTED, AND ILLUSTRATED.

_Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf’s gaberdine for fear of the storm.–Tempest_.

BUT as to this love of glory which the stoics, whom this philosopher quotes so approvingly, have measured at its true worth; as to this love of literary fame, this hankering after an earthly immortality, which he treats so scornfully in the Roman statesman, let us hear him again in another chapter, and see if we can find any thing whereby _his_ nature and designs will more manifestly be laid open to us. ‘Of all the foolish dreams in the world,’ he says, that which is most universally received, is the solicitude of reputation and glory, which we are fond of to that degree as to abandon riches, peace, life, and health, which are effectual and substantial good, to pursue this vain phantom. And of all the irrational humours of men, it should seem that the philosophers themselves have the most ado, and do the least disengage themselves from this the most restive and obstinate of all the follies. There is not any one view of which _reason_ does so clearly accuse the vanity, as that; but it is _so deeply rooted in us_, that I doubt whether any one ever clearly freed himself from it, or no. _After you have said all, and believed all_ that has been said to its prejudice, it creates so intestine an inclination _in opposition to your best arguments_, that you have little power and firmness to resist it; _for_ (_as Cicero says_) even those who controvert it, would yet that _the books they write_ should appear before the world with _their names in the title page_, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it. All other things are communicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods–

[It irks me not that men my garments wear.]

and stake our lives for the necessities and service of our friends; but to communicate one’s honour, _and to robe another with one’s own glory_, is very rarely seen. And yet we have some examples of that kind. Catulus Luctatius, in the Cymbrian war, having done all that in him lay to make his flying soldiers face about upon the enemy, _ran himself at last away with the rest, and counterfeited the coward_, to the end that his men might rather seem to follow their captain, than to fly from the enemy; and after several anecdotes full of that inner significance of which he speaks elsewhere, in which he appears, but only appears, to lose sight of this question of literary honour, for they relate to _military_ conflicts, he ventures to approach, somewhat cautiously and delicately, the latent point of his essay again, by adducing the example of persons, _not_ connected with the military profession, who have found themselves called upon in various ways, and by means of various weapons, to take part in these wars; who have yet, in consequence of certain ‘_subtleties of conscience_,’ _relinquished_ the _honour_ of their successes; and though there is no instance adduced of that particular kind of disinterestedness, in which an author relinquishes to another the honour of his title page, as the beginning might have led one to anticipate; on the whole, the not indiligent reader of this author’s performances here and elsewhere, will feel that the subject which is announced as the subject of this chapter, ‘Not to communicate a man’s honour or glory,’ has been, considering the circumstance, sufficiently illustrated.

‘_As women succeeding to peerages_ had, notwithstanding their sex, the right to assist and give their votes in the causes that appertain to the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers, _notwithstanding their profession_, were obliged to _assist our kings_ in their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their own persons. And he instances the Bishop of Beauvais, who took a gallant share in the battle of Bouvines, but did not think it _fit for him to participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody trade_. He, with his own hand, reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met, either to kill or to receive them to quarter, _referring that part to another hand_. As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de Neale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he would KILL, _but_ NOT WOUND _him_, and _for that reason_, fought only with a _mace_. And a certain person in my time, being reproached by the king that he had _laid hands_ on a _priest_, stiffly and positively denied it. The case was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.’ And there the author abruptly, for that time, leaves the matter without any allusion to the case of still another kind of combatants, who, fighting with another kind of weapon, might also, from similar subtleties of conscience, perhaps think fit to devolve on others the glory of their successes.

But in a chapter on _names_, in which, if he has not told, he has _designed to tell all_; and what he could not express, he has at least pointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully developed. In this chapter, he regrets that such as write _chronicles in Latin_ do not leave our names as they find them, for in making of _Vaudemont_ VALLE-MONTANUS, and metamorphosing names to dress them out in Greek or Latin, we know not where we are, and with the _persons_ of _the men, lose_ the _benefit_ of the _story_: but one who tracks the inner thread of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be at no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently very trivial talk about _names_, he resumes his philosophic humour again, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recalls once more, the considerations with which philosophy sets at nought the loss of fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts to worthy deeds, the glory that should follow them.

‘But this consideration–that is the consideration “that it is the custom in _France_, to call every man, even a stranger, by the name of any _manor_ or _seigneury_, he may chance to come in possession of, tends to the total confusion of descents, so that _surnames_ are no security,”–“for,” he says, “a younger brother of a good family, having a _manor_ left him by his father, by the name of which he has been known and honoured, cannot handsomely leave it; ten years after his decease, it falls into the hand of a stranger, who does the same.” Do but judge whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these men. This consideration leads me therefore into another subject. Let us look a little more narrowly into, and examine upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation, for which the world is turned topsy-turvy. Wherein do we place this renown, that we hunt after with such infinite anxiety and trouble. It is in the end PIERRE or WILLIAM that bears it, takes it into his possession, and whom only it concerns. Oh what a valiant faculty is HOPE, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying her master’s indigence, at her pleasure, with all things that he can imagine or desire. And this Pierre or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done, (“What’s in a name?”) or three or four dashes with a pen?’

And he has already written two paragraphs to show, that the name of William, at least, is not excepted from the general remarks he is making here on the vanity of names; while that of Pierre is five times repeated, apparently with the same general intention, and another combination of sounds is not wanting which serves with that free translation the author himself takes pains to suggest and defend, to complete what was lacking to that combination, in order to give these remarks their true point and significance, in order to redeem them from that appearance of flatness which is not a characteristic of this author’s intentions, and in his style merely serves as an intimation to the reader that there is something worth looking for beneath it.

As to the name of William, and the amount of personal distinction which that confers upon its owners, he begins by telling us, that the name of Guienne is said to be derived from the Williams of our ancient Aquitaine, ‘which would seem,’ he says, rather far fetched, were there not as crude derivations in Plato himself, to whom he refers in other places for similar precedents; and when he wishes to excuse his enigmatical style–the titles of his chapters for instance. And by way of emphasizing this particular still further, he mentions, that on the occasion when Henry, the Duke of Normandy, the son of Henry the Second, of England, made a feast in France, the concourse of nobility and gentry was so great, that for _sport’s sake_ he divided them into _troops, according to their names_, and in the _first troop, which consisted of Williams_, there were found a hundred and ten knights sitting at the table of that name, without reckoning the simple gentlemen and servants.

And here he apparently digresses from his subject for the sake of mentioning the Emperor _Geta_, ‘who distributed the several courses of his meats by the _first letters of the meats_ themselves, where those that began with _B_ were served up together; _as_ brawn, beef, beccaficos, and so of the others.’ This appears to be a little out of the way; but it is not impossible that there may be an allusion in it to the author’s own family name of _Eyquem_, though that would be rather farfetched, as he says; but then there is _Plato_ at hand, still to keep us in countenance.

But to return to the point of digression. ‘And this Pierre, or William, what is it but a sound when all is done? _Or_ three or four dashes with a pen, _so easy to be varied_, that I would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, to _Guesquin_, to Glesquin, or to _Gueaguin_. And yet there would be something more in the case than in Lucian that Sigma should serve Tau with a process, for “He seeks no mean rewards.” _The quere is here in good earnest. The point is_, which of _these letters_ is to be rewarded for so many sieges, battles, wounds, imprisonment, and services done to the crown of France by this famous constable. _Nicholas Denisot_ never concerned _himself_ further than _the letters of his name_, of which he has altered the _whole contexture, to build up by anagram_ the Count d’Alsinois _whom he has endowed with the glory of his poetry and painting_. [A good precedent–but here is a better one.] And the historian Suetonius looked only to the _meaning of his_; and so, cashiering his _fathers surname, Lenis_ left Tranquillus _successor to the reputation of his writings_. Who would believe that the Captain Bayard should have no honour but what he derives from the great deeds of Peter (Pierre) Terrail, [the name of Bayard–“the meaning”] and that Antonio Escalin should suffer himself, to his face, to be robbed of the honour of so many navigations, and commands at sea and land, by Captain Poulin and the Baron de la Garde. [The name of Poulin was taken from the place where he was born, De la Garde from a person who took him in his boyhood into his service.] Who hinders my groom from calling himself Pompey the Great? But, after all, what virtue, what springs are there that convey to my deceased groom, or the other Pompey (who had his head cut off in Egypt), this glorious renown, and these so much honoured flourishes of the pen?’ Instructive suggestions, especially when taken in connection with the preceding items contained in this chapter, apparently so casually introduced, yet all with a stedfast bearing on this question of names, and all pointing by means of a thread of delicate sounds, and not less delicate suggestions, to another instance, in which the possibility of circumstances tending to countervail the so natural desire to appropriate to the name derived from one’s ancestors, the lustre of one’s deeds, is clearly demonstrated.

”Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to shift in time of danger, and to counterfeit bravely, when he has no more heart than a chicken. There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man’s own person’–‘and had we the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inwards towards the palm of the hand, it is to be feared that a great many would often hide themselves, when they _ought to appear_.’ ‘It seems that to be known, _is in some sort to a man’s life and its duration in another’s keeping_. I for my part, hold that I am wholly in myself, and that other life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, considering it nakedly and simply in itself, I know very well that I am sensible of no fruit or enjoyment of it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and, when I shall be dead, I shall be much less sensible of it, and shall withal absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it. [That was Lord Bacon’s view, too, exactly.] I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, or whereby it may take hold of me: for to expect that my name should receive it, in the first place, I have no name that is enough my own. Of two that I have, one is common to all my race, and even to others also: there is one family at Paris, and another at Montpelier, whose surname is _Montaigne_; another in Brittany, and Xaintonge called _De la Montaigne_. The transposition of _one syllable only_ is enough to ravel our affairs, so that I shall peradventure share in their glory, and they shall partake of my shame; and, moreover, my ancestors were formerly surnamed _Eyquem_, a name wherein a _family well known in England_ at this day is concerned. As to my other name, any one can _take it that will_, and _so_, perhaps, I may honour _a porter_ in my own stead. And, besides, though I had a particular distinction myself, what can it distinguish when I _am no more_. Can it point out and favour inanity?

But will thy manes such a gift bestow As to make violets from thy ashes grow?

‘But of this I have spoken elsewhere.’ He has–and to purpose.

But as to the authority for these readings, Lord Bacon himself will give us that; for this is the style which he discriminates so sharply as ‘the _enigmatical_,’ a style which he, too, finds to have been in use among the ancients, and which he tells us _has some affinity_ with that new method of making over knowledge from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil, which he terms the method of _progression_– (which is the method of _essaie_)–in opposition to the received method, the only method he finds in use, which he, too, calls the _magisterial_. And this method of progression, with which the enigmatical has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases where knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where science is to be removed from one mind to another _to grow from the root_, and not delivered as trees for the use of the carpenter, where _the root_ is of no consequence. In this case, he tells us it is necessary for the teacher to descend to _the foundations of knowledge and consent_, and so to transplant it into another as it grew in his own mind, ‘whereas as knowledge is now delivered, there is a _kind of contract of error_ between the deliverer and the receiver, for he that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such a form as may _best be believed_, and not as may best be _examined_: and he that receiveth knowledge desireth rather _present satisfaction_ than _expectant inquiry_, and so rather _not to doubt than not to err, glory_ making the author not to lay open his weakness, and _sloth_ making the disciple _not to know his strength_.’ Now, so very grave a defect as this, in the method of the delivery and tradition of Learning, would of course be one of the first things that would require to be remedied in any plan in which ‘_the Advancement_’ of it was seriously contemplated. And this method of the delivery and tradition of knowledge which transfers _the root_ with them, that they may grow in the mind of the learner, is the method which this philosopher professes to find wanting, and the one which he seems disposed to invent. He has made a very thorough survey of the stores of the ancients, and is not unacquainted with the more recent history of learning; he knows exactly what kinds of methods have been made use of by the learned in all ages, for the purpose of putting themselves into some tolerable and possible relations with the physical majority; he knows what devices they have always been compelled to resort to, for the purpose of establishing some more or less effective communication between themselves and that world to which they instinctively seek to transfer their doctrine. But this method, which he suggests here as the essential condition of the growth and advancement of learning, he does _not_ find invented. He refers to a method which he calls the enigmatical, which has an affinity with it, ‘used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients,’ but disgraced since, ‘by the impostures of persons, who have made it as a _false light_ for their counterfeit merchandises.’ The purpose of this latter style is, as he defines it, ‘to remove the _secrets_ of knowledge from the penetration of the more vulgar capacities, and to reserve them to _selected auditors_, or to wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.’ And that is a method, he tells us, which philosophy can by no means dispense with in his time, and ‘whoever would let in new light upon the human understanding must still have recourse to it.’ But the method of delivery and tradition in those ancient schools, appears to have been too much of the dictatorial kind to suit this proposer of advancement; its tendency was to arrest knowledge instead of promoting its growth. He is not pleased with the ambition of those old masters, and thinks they aimed too much at a personal impression, and that they sometimes undertook to impose their own particular and often very partial grasp of those universal doctrines and principles, which are and must be true for all men, in too dogmatical and magisterial a manner, without making sufficient allowance for the growth of the mind of the world, the difference of races, etc.

But if any doubt in regard to the use of the method described, in the composition of the work now first produced as AN EXAMPLE of the use of it, should still remain in any mind; or if this method of unravelling it should seem too studious, perhaps the author’s own word for it in one more quotation may be thought worth taking.

‘_I can give no account of my life by_ MY ACTIONS, fortune has placed _them_ too low; _I must do it_ BY MY FANCIES. And when shall I have done representing the continual agitation and change of my thoughts as they come into my head, seeing that Diomedes filled six thousand books upon the subject of grammar.’ [The commentators undertake to set him right here, but the philosopher only glances in his intention at the voluminousness of the science of _words_, in opposition to the science of _things_, which he came to establish.] ‘What must prating _produce_, since prating itself, and the first beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of volumes. So many words about _words_ only. They accused one Galba, of old, of living idly; he made answer that every one ought to give account of his _actions_, but _not_ of his _leisure_. He was mistaken, for _justice_–[the civil authority]–has cognizance and _jurisdiction_ over those that _do nothing_, or only PLAY _at_ WORKING…. Scribbling appears to be the sign of a disordered age. Every man applies himself negligently to the duty of his _vocation_ at such a time and debauches in it.’ From that central wrong of an evil government, an infectious depravity spreads and corrupts all particulars. Everything turns from its true and natural course. Thus _scribbling_ is the sign of a disordered age. Men write in such times instead of acting; and scribble, or seem to perhaps, instead of writing openly to purpose.

And yet, again, that central, and so divergent, wrong is the result of each man’s particular contribution, as he goes on to assert. ‘The corruption of this age is made up by the particular contributions of every individual man,’–

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.–_Cassius_.

‘Some contribute _treachery_, others _injustice_, irreligion, _tyranny_, _avarice_ and _cruelty, according as they have power; the_ WEAKER SORT CONTRIBUTE FOLLY, VANITY, _and_ IDLENESS, and _of these_ I am one.’

_Caesar_ loves no plays as thou dost, Antony. Such men are dangerous.

Or, as the same poet expresses it in another Roman play:–

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.

And that is made the plea for an attempt to overthrow the popular power, and to replace it with a government containing the true head of the state, its nobility, its learning, its gentleness, its wisdom.

But the essayist continues:–‘It seems as if it were the season for _vain things_ when _the hurtful oppress us_; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what _signifies nothing_ is a kind of commendation. ‘Tis _my_ comfort that _I_ shall be one of the last that shall be called in question,–for it would be against reason _to punish the less troublesome_ while we are _infested_ with the _greater_. _As the physician_ said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, as he perceived, had an ulcer _in his lungs_, “Friend, it is not now time to concern yourself about your finger’s ends.” _And yet_ I saw some years ago, _a person, whose name and memory I have in very great esteem_, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was _neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office_,–_no more than there is now_,–publish I know not what _pitiful reformations_ about _clothes, cookery_ and _law chicanery_. _These are amusements_ wherewith _to feed a people that are ill used, to show that they are not totally forgotten. These others_ do the same, who insist upon _stoutly defending_ the _forms_ of _speaking_, dances and games to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices–it is for the Spartans only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their lives.

‘For _my part_, I have _yet a worse_ custom. I scorn to mend myself by halves. If my _shoe_ go awry, I let my shirt and my cloak do so too: when I am out of order I feed on mischief. I abandon myself through despair, and let myself go towards the precipice, and as the saying is, throw the helve after the hatchet.’ We should not need, perhaps, the aid of the explanations already quoted, to show us that the author does not confess this custom of his for the sake of commending it to the sense or judgment of the reader,–who sees it here for the first time it may be put into words or put on paper, who looks at it here, perhaps, for the first time objectively, from the critical stand-point which the review of another’s confession creates; and though it may have been latent in the dim consciousness of his own experience, or practically developed, finds it now for the first time, collected from the phenomena of the blind, instinctive, human motivity, and put down on the page of science, as a principle in nature, in human nature also.

But this is indeed a Spartan combing and curling, that the author is falling to, in the introductory flourishes (‘diversions’ as he calls them) of this great adventure, that his pen is out for now: he is indeed upon the point of running headlong into the fiercest dangers;–it is the state, the wretched, discased, vicious state, dying apparently, yet full of teeth and mischief, that he is about to handle in his argument with these fine, lightsome, frolicsome preparations of his, without any perceptible ‘mittens’; it is the heart of that political evil that his time groans with, and begins to find insufferable, that he is going to probe to the quick with that so delicate weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all the instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as handsomely, and with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the circumstances will admit of. But the political situation which he describes so boldly (and we have already seen what it is) affects us here in its relation to the question of style only, and as the author himself connects it with the point of our inquiry.

‘A man may regret,’ he says, ‘the better times, but cannot fly from the present, we may wish for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and, peradventure, it is more laudable to obey the bad than the good, so long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall shine in any corner of the kingdom. If they happen, unfortunately, to thwart and contradict one another, so as to produce two factions of doubtful choice,’–

And my soul aches
To know, [says Coriolanus] when two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter ‘twixt the gap of both, and take The one by the other.

–‘in this contingency will willingly choose,’ continues the other, ‘to withdraw from the tempest, and in the meantime, _nature or the hazards of war may lend me a helping hand_. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey, I should soon and frankly have declared myself, but amongst the three robbers that came after, a man must needs _have either hid himself_, or have gone along with the current of the time, _which I think a man may lawfully do, when reason no longer rules_.’ ‘_Whither_ dost thou wandering go?’

‘This _medley_ is a little from my subject, I go out of my way but ’tis rather _by licence than oversight_. My fancies _follow_ one another, _but sometimes at a great distance_, and _look towards one another_, but ’tis with an _oblique glance_. I have read a DIALOGUE of PLATO of such a _motley and fantastic_ composition. The _beginning was about love_, and all the rest ABOUT RHETORIC. _They_ stick not (that is, the ancients) at these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or at least to _seem_ as if they were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter, they often denote it _by some mark only_, as those other titles _Andria Eunuchus_, or these, _Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus_. I love _a poetic march_, by leaps and skips, ’tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and _a little demoniacal_. There are places in _Plutarch_ where _he_ forgets his theme, where the proposition of _his_ argument is only found _incidentally_, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions; and then _most of all, when they seem to be_ fortuitous, [hear] and introduced _for want of heed. ‘Tis the indiligent reader_ that loses my subject–_not I. There will always be found some words_ or _other in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie very close_ [that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indiscreetly and tumultously: my style and my _wit_ wander at the same rate, [he wanders _wittingly_]. A _little folly_ is _desirable_ in him _that will not be guilty of stupidity_, say the precepts, and much more the _examples_ of our masters. A thousand poets flag and languish after a _prosaic manner_; but the best old prose, and I strew it here up and down _indifferently_ for verse, shines throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and represents some air of its fury. Certainly, prose must _yield_ the pre-eminence in speaking. “The poet,” says Plato, “when set upon the muse’s tripod, pours out with fury, whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain, _without considering and pausing upon what he says_, and things come from him of _various colors_, of _contrary substance_, and with an irregular torrent”: he himself (Plato) is all over poetical, and all the old theology (_as the learned inform us) is poetry_, and the _first philosophy_, is the origiual language of the gods.

‘I would have the matter _distinguish itself_; it sufficiently shows _where it changes_, where it concludes, _where it begins, and where it resumes, without interlacing it with words of connection_, introduced for the relief of _weak or negligent ears_, and without commenting myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all, than after a drowsy or _cursory_ manner? Seeing I cannot fix the reader’s attention by the _weight_ of what I write, _maneo male_, if I should chance _to do it by my intricacies_. [Hear]. I mortally hate obscurity and _would avoid it if I could. In such an employment_, to whom you will not give an hour you will give nothing; _and you do nothing for him for whom you only do, whilst you are doing something else_. To which may be added, that I have, perhaps, some particular obligation to speak only _by halves_, to speak _confusedly and discordantly_.’

But this is, perhaps, enough to show, in the way of direct assertion, that we have here, at least, a philosophical work composed in that style which Lord Bacon calls ‘the enigmatical,’ in which he tells us the _secrets_ of knowledge are reserved for _selected auditors_, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil; a style which he, too, tells us was sometimes used by the discretion of the ancients, though he does not specify either Plutarch or Plato; in that place, and one which he introduces in connection with his new method of progression, in consequence of its having, as he tells us, _some affinity_ with it, and that we have here also a specimen of that new method itself, by means of which knowledge is to be delivered as a thread to be spun on.

But let us leave, for the present, this wondrous Gascon, though it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand,–this philosopher, whose fancies look towards one another at such long, such very long distances, sometimes, though not always, with an _oblique_ glance, who dares to depend so much upon the eye of his reader, and especially upon the reader of that ‘far-off’ age he writes to. It would have been indeed irrelevant to introduce the subject of this foreign work and its style in this connection without further explanation, but for the identity of political situation already referred to, and but for those subtle, interior, incessant