The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION.

MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'

  And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
  With windlaces and with assays of bias,
  By indirections, find directions out;
  So by my former lecture and advice,
  Shall you, my son.—Hamlet.

CHAPTER I.

ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED.

Single, I'll resolve you.—Tempest.

Observe his inclination in yourself.—Hamlet.

For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words. Advancement of Learning.

The fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,' would not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the English nation.

And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of the world at the time in which this science,—which is the new practical science of the modern ages,—makes its first appearance in history,—any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs presupposes,—any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was as yet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world was still the learning of the cell and the cloister, when the practice of the world was still in all departments, unscientific,—any one at least who will stop to consider the nature of the 'preconceptions' which a science that is none other than the universal science of practice, must needs encounter in its principal and nobler fields, will hardly need to be told that if produced at all under such conditions, it must needs be produced covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a science would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground of its nobler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as the inevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the human affairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of its claim to dictate to the men of practice in any department of their proceedings.

That that little 'courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in which this great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was supposed in their own time to have had its origin, was composed of wits and men of learning who were known, in their own time, to have concealed their connection with the works on which their literary fame chiefly depended—that that 'glorious Willy,' who finds these forbidden fields of science all open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this company—that a style of 'delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed in part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent use of the middle ages, but largely modified and expressly adapted to this exigency, was employed in the compositions of this school, both in prose and verse, a style capable of conveying not merely a double, but a triple significance; a style so capacious in its concealments, so large in its 'cryptic,' as to admit without limitation the whole scope of this argument, and so involved as to conceal in its involutions, all that was then forbidden to appear,—this has been proved in that part of the work which contains the historical key to this delivery.

We have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact, that the man who was at the head of this new conjunction in speculation and practice in its more immediate historical developments,—the scholar who was most openly concerned in his own time in the introduction of those great changes in the condition of the world, which date their beginning from this time, was himself primarily concerned in the invention of this art. That this great political chief, this founder of new polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same time the founder of a new school in philosophy, was understood in his own time to have found occasion for the use of such an art, in his oral as well as in his written communications with his school;—that he was connected with a scientific association, which was known to have concealed under the profession of a curious antiquarian research, an inquiry into the higher parts of sciences which the government of that time was not disposed to countenance;—that in the opinion of persons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the facts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself beheaded, chiefly on account of the discovery of his use of it in one of his gravest literary works;—all this has been produced already, as matter of historic record merely. All this remains in the form of detailed contemporary statement, which suffices to convey, if not the fact that the forbidden parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions of this school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in their great published works,—if not that, at least the fact that such was the impression and belief of persons living at the time, whether any ground existed for it or not.

But the arts by which these new men of science contrived to evade the ignorance and the despotic limitations of their time, the inventions with which they worked to such good purpose upon their own time, in spite of its restrictions and oppositions, and which enable them to 'outstretch their span,' and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the advancement of their kind, and compel the future ages to work with them to the fulfilment of its ends;—the arts by which these great original naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired splendour and worth, the collections they had made in the nobler fields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use of 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.'

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 Lælius 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.'

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 Cæsar 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 connections with the higher writings of the great Elizabethan school, which form the main characteristic of this production. The fact, that this work was composed in the country in which the chief Elizabethan men attained their maturity, that it dates from the time in which Bacon was completing his education there, that it covers ostensibly not the period only, but the scenes and events of Raleigh's six years campaigning there, as well as the fact alluded to by this author himself, in a passage already quoted,—the fact that there was a family then in England, very well known, who bore the surname of his ancestors, a family of the name of Eyquem, he tells us with whom, perhaps, he still kept up some secret correspondence and relations, the fact, too, which he mentions in his chapter on Names, that a surname in France is very easily acquired, and is not necessarily derived from one's ancestors,—that same chapter in which he adduces so many instances of men who, notwithstanding that inveterate innate love of the honour of one's own proper name, which is in men of genius still more inveterate,—have for one reason or another been willing to put upon anagrams, or synonyms, or borrowed names, all their honours, so that in the end it is William or Pierre who takes them into his possession, and bears them, or it's the name of 'an African slave' perhaps, or the name of a 'groom' (promoted, it may be, to the rank of a jester, or even to that of a player,) that gets all the glory. All these facts, taken in connection with the conclusions already established, though insignificant in themselves, will be found anything but that for the philosophical student who has leisure to pursue the inquiry.

And though the latent meanings, in which the interior connections and identities referred to above are found, are not yet critically recognised, a latent national affinity and liking strong enough to pierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior, appears to have been at work here from the first. For though the seed of the richer and bolder meanings from which the author anticipated his later harvest, could not yet be reached, that new form of popular writing, that effective, and vivacious mode of communication with the popular mind on topics of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as fit subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world on its surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was on the English mind that it began to operate first. It was in England, that it began so soon to develop the latent efficacies it held in germ, in the creation of that new and widening department in letters—that so new, so vast, and living department of them, which it takes today all our reviews, and magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work itself has been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as heartily as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly distinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English nationality.

But it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the Mount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'—this 'Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this new ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to have been the first to master,—the unity of the universal man,—the historical unity,—the universal human form, collected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted,—the inducted Man of the new philosophy. 'Authors,' he says, 'have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark; I, the first of any by my universal being, as Michael de Montaigne, I propose a life mean and without lustre: all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire form of the human condition…I, the first of any by my universal being, as Michael,'—see the chapter on names,—'as Michael de Montaigne.' Let us leave him for the present, or attempt to, for it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand.

For, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, rambling old Gascon—it is from this outlandish looker-on of human affairs, that our Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers and Tattlers, trace their descent; and the Times, and the Examiners, and the Observers, and the Spectators, and the Tribunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies, and all the Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human affairs to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them have not been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how it came to pass, that a man of this particular turn of mind, who belonged to the old party, and the times that were then passing away, should have felt himself called upon to make this great signal for the human advancement, and how it happens that these radical connections with other works of that time, having the same general intention, are found in the work itself,—these are points which the future biographers of this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to look to. And a little of that more studious kind of reading which he himself so significantly solicited, and in so many passages, will inevitably tend to the elucidation of them.

THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.

'The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'

Troilus and Cressida.

'I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'

Falstaff.

CHAPTER I.

THE 'BEGINNERS.'

'PROSPERO.—Go bring THE RABBLE,

O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'

Tempest.

But though a foreign philosopher may venture to give us the clue to it, perhaps, in the first instance, a little more roundly, it is not necessary that we should go the Mayor of Bordeaux, in order to ascertain on the highest possible authority, what kind of an art of communication, what kind of an art of delivery and tradition, men, in such circumstances, find themselves compelled to invent;—that is, if they would not be utterly foiled for the want of it, in their noblest purposes;—we need not go across the channel to find the men themselves, to whom this art is a necessity,—men so convinced that they have a mission of instruction to their kind, that they will permit no temporary disabilities to divert them from their end,—men who must needs open their school, no matter what oppositions there may be, to be encountered, no matter what imposing exhibitions of military weapons may be going on just then, in their vicinity; and though they should find themselves straitened in time, and not able to fit their words to their mouths as they have a mind to, though they should be obliged to accept the hint from the master in the Greek school, and take their tone from the ear of those to whom they speak, though many speeches which would spend their use among the men then living would have to be inserted in their most enduring works with a private hint concerning that necessity, and a private reading of them for those whom it concerned; though the audience they are prepared to address should be deferred, though the benches of the inner school should stand empty for ages. We need not go abroad at all to discover men of this stamp, and their works and pastimes, and their arts of tradition;—men so filled with that which impels men to speak, that speak they must, and speak they will, in one form or another, by word or gesture, by word or deed, though they speak to the void waste, though they must speak till they reach old ocean in his unsunned caves, and bring him up with the music of their complainings, though the marble Themis fling back their last appeal, though they speak to the tempest in his wrath, to the wind and the rain, and the fire and the thunder,—men so impregnated with that which makes the human speech, that speak they will, though they have but a rusty nail, wherewith to etch their story, on their dungeon wall; though they dig in the earth and bury their secret, as one buried his of old—that same secret still; for it is still those EARS—those 'ears' that 'Midas hath' which makes the mystery.

They know that the days are coming when the light will enter their prison house, and flash in its dimmest recess; when the light they sought in vain, will be there to search out the secrets they are forbid. They know that the day is coming, when the disciple himself, all tutored in the art of their tradition, bringing with him the key of its delivery, shall be there to unlock those locked-up meanings, to spell out those anagrams, to read those hieroglyphics, to unwind with patient loving research to its minutest point, that text, that with such tools as the most watchful tyranny would give them, they will yet contrive to leave there. They know that their buried words are seeds, and though they lie long in the earth, they will yet spring up with their 'richer and bolder meanings,' and publish on every breeze, their boldest mystery.

For let not men of narrower natures fancy that such action is not proper to the larger one, and cannot be historical. For there are different kinds of men, our science of men tells us, and that is an unscientific judgment which omits 'the particular addition, that bounteous nature hath closed in each,'—her 'addition to the bill that writes them all alike.' For there is a kind of men 'whose minds are proportioned to that which may be dispatched at once, or within a short return of time, and there is another kind, whose minds are proportioned to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with length of pursuit,'—so the Coryphæus of those choir that the latter kind compose, informs us, 'so that there may be fitly said to be a longanimity, which is commonly also ascribed to God as a magnanimity.'

And our English philosophers had to light what this one calls a new 'Lamp of Tradition,' before they could make sure of transmitting their new science, through such mediums as those that their time gave them; and a very gorgeous many-branched lamp it is, that the great English philosopher brings out from that 'secret school of living Learning and living Art' to which he secretly belongs, for the admiration of the professionally learned of his time, and a very lustrous one too, as it will yet prove to be, when once it enters the scholar's apprehension that it was ever meant be lighted, when once the little movement that turns on the dazzling jet is ordered.

For we have all been so taken up with the Baconian Logic hitherto and its wonderful effects in the relief of the human estate, that the Baconian RHETORIC has all this time escaped our notice; and nobody appears to have suspected that there was anything in that worth looking at; any more than they suspect that there is anything in some of those other divisions which the philosopher himself lays so much stress on his proposal for the Advancement of Learning,—in his proposal for the advancement of it into all the fields of human activity. But we read this proposition still, as James the First was expected to read it, and all these departments which are brought into that general view in such a dry and formal and studiously scholastic manner, appear to be put there merely to fill up a space; and because the general plan of this so erudite performance happened to include them.

For inasmuch as the real scope and main bearing of this proposition, though it is in fact there, is of course not there, in any such form as to attract the particular attention of the monarch to whose eye the work is commended; and inasmuch as the new art of a scientific Rhetoric is already put to its most masterly use in reserving that main design, for such as may find themselves able to receive it, of course, the need of any such invention is not apparent on the surface of the work, and the real significance of this new doctrine of Art and its radical relation to the new science, is also reserved for that class of readers who are able to adopt the rules of interpretation which the work itself lays down. Because the real applications of the New Logic could not yet be openly discussed, no one sees as yet, that there was, and had to be, a Rhetoric to match it.

For this author, who was not any less shrewd than the one whose methods we have just been observing a little, had also early discovered in the great personages of his time, a disposition to moderate his voice whenever he went to speak to them on matters of importance, in his natural key, for his voice too, was naturally loud, and high as he gives us to understand, though he 'could speak small like a woman'; he too had learned to take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake, and he too had learned, that it was not enough merely to speak so as to make himself heard by those whom he wished to affect. He also had learned to speak according to the affair he had in hand, according to the purpose which he wished to accomplish. He also is of the opinion that different kinds of audiences and different times, require different modes of speech, and though he found it necessary to compose his works in the style and language of his own time, he was confident that it was a language which would not remain in use for many ages; and he has therefore provided himself with another, more to his mind which he has taken pains to fold carefully within the other, and one which lie thinks will bear the wear and tear of those revolutions that he perceives to be imminent.

But in consequence of our persistent oversight of this Art of Tradition, on which he relies so much, (which is as fine an invention of his, as any other of his inventions which we find ourselves so much the better for), that appeal to 'the times that are farther off,' has not yet taken effect, and the audience for whom he chiefly laboured is still 'deferred.'

This so noble and benign art which he calls, with his own natural modesty and simplicity, the Art of Tradition, this art which grows so truly noble and worthy, so distinctively human, in his clear, scientific treatment of it,—in his scientific clearance of it from the wildnesses and spontaneities of accident, or the superfluities and trickery of an art without science,—that stops short of the ultimate, the human principle,—this so noble art of speech or tradition is, indeed, an art which this great teacher and leader of men will think it no scorn to labour: it is one on which, even such a teacher can find time to stop; it is one which even such a teacher can stop to build from the foundation upwards, he will not care how splendidly; it is one on which he will spend without stint, and think it gain to spend, the wealth of his invention.

But, at the same time, it is with him a subordinate art. It has no worth or substance in itself; it borrows all its worth from that which masters and rigorously subdues it to its end. Here, too, we find ourselves coming down on all its old ceremonial and observance, from that new height which we found our foreign philosopher in such quiet possession of,—taking his way at a puff through poor Cicero's periods,—those periods which the old orator had taken so much pains with, and laughing at his pains:—but this English philosopher is more daring still, for it is he who disposes, at a word, without any comment, just in passing merely,—from his practical stand-point,—of 'the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks,' like the other making nothing at all in his theory of criticism of mere elegance, though it is the Gascon, it is true, who undertakes the more lively and extreme practical demonstrations of this theoretical contempt of it,—setting it at nought, and flying in the face of it,—writing in as loquacious and homely a style as he possibly can, just for the purpose for setting it at nought, though not without giving us a glimpse occasionally, of a faculty that would enable him to mince the matter as fine as another if he should see occasion—as, perhaps, he may. For he talks very emphatically about his poetry here and there, and seems to intimate that he has a gift that way; and that he has, moreover, some works of value in that department of letters, which he is anxious to 'save up' for posterity, if he can. But here, it is the scholar, and not the loquacious old gentleman at all, who is giving us in his choicest, selectest, courtliest phrase, in his most stately and condensed style, his views of this subject; but that which is noticeable is, that the art in its fresh, new upspringing from the secret of life and nature, from the soul of things, the art and that which it springs from, is in these two so different forms identical. Here, too, the point of its criticism and review is the same. 'Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its harmony that we should more study it than things'; but here the old Roman masters the philosopher, for a moment, and he puts in a scholarly parenthesis, 'unless you will affirm that of Cicero to be of so supreme perfection as to form a body of itself.'

But Hamlet, in his discourse with that wise reasoner, and unfortunate practitioner, who thought that brevity was the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, puts it more briefly still.

Polonius. What do you read, my lord? Hamlet. Words, words, words!

'More matter, and less art,' another says in that same treatise on art and speculation. Now inasmuch as this art and science derives all its distinction and lustre from that new light on the human estate of which it was to be the vehicle, somebody must find the trick of it, so as to be able to bring out that doctrine by its help, before we can be prepared to understand the real worth of this invention. It would be premature to undertake to set it forth fully, till that is accomplished. There must be a more elaborate exhibition of that science, before the art of its transmission can be fully treated; we cannot estimate it, till we see how it strikes to the root of the new doctrine, how it begins with its beginning, and reaches to its end: we cannot estimate it till we see its relation, its essential relation, to that new doctrine of the human nature, and that new doctrine of state, which spring from the doctrine of nature in general, which is the doctrine, which is the beginning and the end of the new science.

We find here on the surface, as we find everywhere in this comprehensive treatise, much apparent parade of division and subdivision, and the author appears to lay much stress upon this, and seems disposed to pride himself upon his dexterity in chopping up the subject as finely as possible, and keeping the parts quite clear of one another; and sometimes, in his distributions, putting those points the farthest apart which are the most nearly related, though not so far, that they cannot 'look towards each other,' though it may be, as the other says, 'obliquely.' He evidently depends very much on his arrangement, and seems, indeed, to be chiefly concerned about that, when he comes to the more critical parts of his subject. But it is to the continuities which underlie these separations, to which he directs the attention of those to whom he speaks in earnest, and not in particular cases only. 'Generally,' he says, 'let this be a rule, that all partitions of knowledge be accepted rather for LINES and VEINS, than for sections and separations, and that the continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved. For the contrary hereof,' he says, 'is that which has made PARTICULAR SCIENCES BARREN, SHALLOW, and ERRONEOUS, while they have not been nourished and maintained from the common fountain.' For this is the ONE SCIENCE, the deep, the true, the fruitful one, the fruitful because the ONE.

These lines, then, which he cautions us against regarding as divisions, which are brought in with such parade of scholasticism, with such a profound appearance of artifice, will always be found by those who have leisure to go below the surface, to be but the indications of those natural articulations and branches into which the subject divides and breaks itself, and the conducting lines to that trunk and heart of sciences, that common fountain from which all this new vitality, this sudden up-springing and new blossoming of learning proceeds, that fountain in which its flowers, as well as its fruits, and its thick leaves are nourished.

Here in this Art of Tradition, which comprehends the whole subject of the human speech from the new ground of the common nature in man—that double nature which tends to isolation on the one hand, and which makes him a part and a member of society on the other; we find it treated, first, as a means by which men come simply to a common understanding with each other, by which that common ground, that ground of community, and communication, and identity, which a common understanding in this kind makes, can be best reached; and next we find it treated as a means by which more than the understanding shall be reached, by which the sentiment, the common sentiment, which also belongs to the larger nature, shall be strengthened and developed,—by which the counteracting and partial sentiments shall be put in their place, and the will compelled; whereby that common human form, which in its perfection is the object of the human love and reverence shall be scientifically developed; by which the particular form with its diseases shall be artistically disciplined and treated. This Art of Tradition concerns, first, the understanding; and secondly, the affections and the will. As man is constituted, it is not enough to convince his understanding.

First, then, it is 'the organ' and 'method' of tradition; and next, it is what he calls the illustration of it. First, the object is, to bring truth to the understanding in as clear and unobstructed a manner as the previous condition—as the diseases and pre-occupations of the mind addressed will admit of, and next to bring all the other helps and arts by which the sentiments are touched and the will mastered. First, he will speak true, or as true as they will let him; but it is not enough to speak true. He must be able to speak sharply too, perhaps—or humorously, or touchingly, or melodiously, or overwhelmingly, with words that burn. It is not enough, perhaps, to reach the ear of his auditor: 'peradventure' he too 'will also pierce it.' It is not enough to draw diagrams in chalk on a black board in this kind of mathematics, where the will and the affections are the pupils, and standing ready to defy axioms, prepared at any moment to demonstrate practically, that the part is greater than the whole, and face down the universe with it, 'murdering impossibility to make what cannot be, slight work.' It is not enough to have a tradition that is clear, or as clear a one as will pass muster with the government and with the preconceptions of the people themselves. He must have a pictured one—a pictorial, an illuminated one—a beautiful one,—he must have what he calls an ILLUSTRATED TRADITION.

'Why not,' he says. He runs his eye over the human instrumentalities, and this art which we call art—par excellence, which he sees setting up for itself, or ministering to ignorance and error, and feeding the diseased affections with 'the sweet that is their poison,' he seizes on at once, in behalf of his science, and declares that it is her lawful property, 'her slave, born in her house,' and fit for nothing in the world but to minister to her; and what is more, he suits the action to the word—he brings the truant home, and reforms her, and sets her about her proper business. That is what he proposes to have done in his theory of art, and it is what he tells us he has done himself; and he has: there is no mistake about it. That is what he means when he talks about his illustrated tradition of science—his illustrated tradition of the science of HUMAN NATURE and its differences, original and acquired, and the diseases to which it is liable, and the artificial growths which appertain to it. It is very curious, that no one has seen this tradition—this illustrated tradition, or anything else, indeed, that was at all worthy of this new interpreter of mysteries, who goes about to this day as the inventor of a method which he was not able himself to put to any practical use; an inventor who was obliged to leave his machine for men of a more quick and subtle genius, or to men of a more practical turn of mind to manage, men who had a closer acquaintance with nature.

That which is first to be noted in looking carefully at this draught of a new Art of Tradition which the plan of the Advancement of Learning includes,—that which the careful reader cannot fail to note, is the fact, that throughout all this most complete and radical exhibition of the subject (for brief and casual as that exhibition seems on the surface, the science and art from its root to its outermost branches, is there)—throughout all this exhibition, under all the superficial divisions and subdivisions of the subject, it is still the method of PROGRESSION which is set forth here: under all these divisions, there is still one point made; it is still the Art of a Tradition which is designed to reserve the secrets of science, and the nobler arts of it, for the minds and ages that are able to receive them. This new art of tradition, with its new organs and methods, and its living and beautiful illustration, when once we look through the network of it to the unity within, this new rhetoric of science, is in fact the instrument which the philosopher would substitute, if he could, for those more cruel weapons which the men of his time were ready to take in hand; and it is the instrument with which he would forestall those yet more fearful political convulsions that already seemed to his eye to threaten from afar the social structures of Christendom; it is the beautiful and bloodless instrumentality whereby the mind of the world is to be wrenched insensibly from its old place without 'breaking all.'

For neither does this author, any more than that other, who has been quoted here on this point, think it wise for the philosopher to rush madly out of his study with his EUREKA, and bawl to the first passer by in scientific terms the last result of his science, 'lording it over his ignorance' with what can be to him only a magisterial announcement. For what else but that can it be, for instance, to tell the poor peasant, on his way to market, with his butter and eggs in his basket, planting his feet on the firm earth without any qualms or misgivings, and measuring his day by the sun's great toil and rejoicing race in heaven, what but this same magisterial teaching is it, to stop him, and tell him to his bewildered face that the sun never rises or sets, and that the earth is but a revolving ball? Instead of giving him a truth you have given him a falsehood. You have brought him a truth out of a sphere with which he is not conversant, which he cannot ascend to—whose truths he cannot translate into his own, without jarring all. Either you have told him what must be to him a lie, or you have upset all his little world of beliefs with your magisterial doctrine, and confounded and troubled him to no purpose.

But the Method of Progression, as set forth by Lord Bacon, requires that the new scientific truth shall be, not nakedly and flatly, but artistically exhibited; because, as he tells us, 'the great labour is with the people, and this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.' He will not have it exhibited in bare propositions, but translated into the people's dialect. He would not begin if he could—if there were no political or social restriction to forbid it—by overthrowing on all points the popular belief, or wherever it differs from the scientific conclusion. It is a very different kind of philosophy that proceeds in that manner. This is one which comprehends and respects all actualities. The popular belief, even to its least absurdity 'is something more than nothing in nature'; and the popular belief with all its admixture of error, is better than the half-truths of a misunderstood, untranslated science; better than these would be in its place. That truth of nature which it contains for those who are able to receive it, and live by it, you would destroy for them, if you should attempt to make them read it prematurely, in your language. Any kind of organism which by means of those adjustments and compensations, with which nature is always ready to help out anything really hers,—any organism that is capable of serving as the means of an historical social continuance, is already some gain on chaos and social dissolution; and is, perhaps, better than a series of philosophical experiments. The difficulty is not to overthrow the popular errors, but to get something better in their place, he tells us; and that there are men who have succeeded in the first attempt, and very signally failed in the second. Beautiful and vigorous unions grew up under the classic mythologies, that dissolved and went down for ever, in the sunshine of the classic philosophies. For there were more things in heaven and earth than were included in those last, or dreamt of in them.

In your expurgation, of the popular errors, you must be sure that the truth they contain, is in some form as strongly, as effectively composed in your text, or the popular error is truer and better than the truth with which you would replace it. This is a master who will have no other kind of teaching in his school. His scholars must go so far in their learning as to be able to come back to this popular belief, and account for it and understand it; they must be as wise as the peasant again, and be able to start with him, from his starting point, before they can get any diploma in this School of Advancement, or leave to practise in it. But when the old is already ruinous and decaying, and oppressing and keeping back the new,—when the vitality is gone out of it, and it has become deadly instead, when the new is struggling for new forms, the man of science though never so conservative from inclination and principle, will not be wanting to himself and to the state in this emergency. He 'loves the fundamental part of state more' than in such a crisis he will 'doubt the change of it,' and will not 'fear to jump a body with a dangerous physic, that's sure of death without it.'

First of all then, the condition of this lamp of tradition, that is to burn on for ages, is, that it shall be able to adapt itself to the successive stages of the advancement it lights. It is the inevitable condition of this school which begins with the present, which begins with the people, which descends to the lowest stage of the contemporary popular belief, and takes in the many-headed monster himself, without any trimming at all, for its audience,—it is the first condition of such a school, conducted by a man of science, that it shall have its proper grades of courts and platforms, its selecter and selectest audiences. There must be landing places in the ascent, points of rendezvous agreed on, where 'the delicate collateral sounds' are heard, which only those who ascend can hear. There is no jar,—there is no forced advancement in this school; there is no upward step for any, who have not first been taught to see it, who have not, indeed, already taken it. For it is an artist's school, and not a pedant's, or a vague speculator's, who knows not how to converge his speculation, even upon his mode of tradition.

The founders of this school trust much in their general plan of instruction and relief, to the gradual advancement of a common intelligence, by means of a scientific, but concealed historical teaching. They will teach their lower classes, their 'beginners,' as great nature teaches—insensibly;—as great nature teaches—in the concrete, 'in easy instances.' For the secret of her method is that which they have studied; that is the learning which they have mastered; the spirit of it, which is the poet's gift, the quickest, subtlest, most searching, most analytic, most synthetic spirit of it, is that with which great nature has endowed them. They will speak, as they tell us, as the masters always have spoken from of old to them who are without; they will 'open their mouths in parables,' they will 'utter their dark sayings on the harp.' They know that men are already prepared by nature's own instruction, to feel in a fact,—to receive in historical representations—truths which would startle them in the abstract, truths which they are not yet prepared to disengage from the historical combinations in which they receive them; though with every repetition, and especially with the pointed, selected, prolonged repetition of the teacher, where the 'ILLUSTRIOUS INSTANCE' is selected and cleared of its extraneous incident, and made to enter the mind alone, and pierce it with its principle,—with every such repetition, the step to that generalization and axiom becomes insensibly shorter and more easy. They know that men are already wiser than their teachers, in some—in many things; that they have all of them a great stock of incommunicative wisdom which all their teachers have not been able to make them give up, which they never will give up, till the strong man, who is stronger, enters with his larger learning out of the same book, with his mightier weapons out of the same armory, and spoils their goods, or makes them old and worthless, by the side of the new, resplendent, magic wealth he brings with him.

The new philosophy of nature has truths to teach which nature herself has already been teaching all men, with more or less effect, miscellaneously, and at odd hours, ever since they were born; and this philosopher gives a large place in his history, to that vulgar, practical human wisdom, which all the books till his time had been of too high a strain to glance at. But 'art is a second nature, and imitateth that dextrously and compendiously, which nature performs by ambages and length of time.' The scientific interpreter of nature will select, and unite, and teach continuously, and pointedly, in grand, ideal, representative fact, in 'prerogative instances,' that which nature has but faintly and unconsciously impressed with her method; for he has a scientific organum, and what is more,—a great deal more, a thousand times more,—he has the scientific genius that invented it. His soul is a Novum Organum—his mind is a table of rejections that sifts the historic masses, and brings out the instances that are to his purpose, the bright, bold instances that flame forth the doubtful truth, that tell their own story and need no interpreter, the high ideal instances that talk in verse because it is their native tongue and they can no other. He has found,—or rather nature lent it to him, the universal historic solvent, and the dull, formless, miscellaneous facts of the common human experience, spring up in magic orders, in beautiful, transparent, scientific continuities, as they arrange themselves by the laws of his thinking.

For the truth is, and it must be said here, and not here only, but everywhere, wherever there is a chance to say it,—that Novum Organum was not made to examine the legs of spiders with, or the toes of 'the grandfather-long-legs,' or any of their kindred; though of course it is susceptible of such an application, when it falls into the hands of persons whose genius inclines them in those directions; and it is a use, that the inventor would not have disdained to put it to himself, if he had had time, and if his attention had not been so much distracted by the habits and history of that 'nobler kind of vermin,' which he found feeding on the human weal in his time, and eating out the heart of it. This man was not a fool, but a man. He was a naturalist indeed, of the newest and highest style, but that did not hinder his being a man at the same time. He and his company were the first that set the example of going, deliberately, and on principle, out of the human nature for knowledge; but it was that they might re-return with better axioms for the culture, and nobility, and sway of that form, which, 'though it be but a part in the continent of nature,' is as this one openly declares, 'the end and term of NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, in the intention of MAN.' His science included the humblest and least agreeable of nature's performances; his Novum Organum was able to take up the smallest conceivable atom of existence, whether animate or not, and make a study of it. He has no disrespect for caterpillars or any kind of worm or insect; but he is not a caterpillar himself, or an insect of any kind, or a Saurian, or an Icthyosaurian, but a man; and it was for the sake of building up from a new basis a practical doctrine of human life, that he invented that instrument, and put so much fine work upon it.

With his 'PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' he will build height after height, the solid, but imperceptible stair-way to his summit of knowledges, so that men shall tread its utmost floors without knowing what heights they are—even as they tread great nature's own solidities, without inquiring her secret.

The shrewd unlearned man of practice shall take that great book of nature, that illustrated digest of it, on his knees, to while away his idle hours with, in rich pastime, and smile to see there, all written out, that which he faintly knew, and never knew that he knew before; he will find there in sharp points, in accumulations, and percussions, that which his own experience has at length wearily, dimly, worked and worn into him. It is his own experience, exalted indeed, and glorified, but it is that which beckons him on to that which is yet beyond it; he shall read on, and smile, and laugh, and weep, and wonder at the power; but never dream that it is science, the new science—the science of nature—the product of the new organum of it applied to human nature, and human life. The abstract statement of that which the concrete exhibition veils, is indeed always there, though it lie never so close, in never so snug a corner; but it is there so artistically environed, that the reader who is not ready for it, who has not learned to disengage the principle from the instance, who has had no hint of an illustrated tradition in it, will never see it; or if he sees it, he will think it is there by accident, or inspiration, and pass on.

Here, in this open treatise upon the art of delivering and teaching of knowledge, the author lays down, in the most impressive terms, the necessity of a style which shall serve as a veil of tradition, imperceptible or impenetrable to the uninitiated, and admitting 'only such as have by the help of a master, attained to the interpretation of dark sayings, or are able by their own genius to enter within the veil'; and after having distributed under many heads, the secret of this method of scientific communication, he asserts distinctly that there is no other mode of dealing with the popular belief and preconception, but the one just described—that same method which the teachers of the people have always instinctively adopted, whenever that which was new and contrary to the received doctrines, was to be communicated. 'For a man of judgment,' he says, 'must, of course, perceive, that there should be a difference in the teaching and delivery of knowledge, according to the presuppositions, which he finds infused and impressed upon the mind of the learner. For that which is new and foreign from opinions received, is to be delivered in ANOTHER FORM, from that which is agreeable and familiar. And, therefore, Aristotle, when he says to Democritus, "if we shall indeed dispute and not follow after similitudes," as if he would tax Democritus with being too full of comparisons, where he thought to reprove, really commended him.' There is no use in disputing in such a case, he thinks. 'For those whose doctrines are already seated in popular opinion, have only to dispute or prove; but those whose doctrines are beyond the popular opinions, have a double labour; the one to make themselves conceived, and the other to prove and demonstrate; so that it is of necessity with them to have recourse to similitudes AND TRANSLATIONS to express themselves. And, therefore, in the infancy of learning, and in rude times, when those conceptions which are now trivial, were then new, the world was full of parables and similitudes, for else would men either have passed over without mark, or else REJECTED FOR PARADOXES, that which was offered before they had understood or judged. So in divine learning, we see how frequent parables and tropes are, for it is a rule in the doctrine of delivery, that every science which is not consonant with presuppositions and prejudices, must pray in aid of similes and allusions.'

The true master of the art of teaching will vary his method too, he tells us according to the subject which he handles,—and the reader should note particularly the illustration of this position, the instance of this general necessity, which the author selects for the sake of pointing his meaning here, for it is here—precisely here—that we begin to touch the heart of that new method which the new science itself prescribed,—'the true teacher will vary his method according to the subject which he handles,' for there is a great difference in the delivery of mathematics, which are the most abstracted of sciences, and POLICY, which is the most immersed, and the opinion that 'uniformity of method, in multiformity of matter, is necessary,' has proved very hurtful to learning, for it tends to reduce learning to certain empty and barren—note it,—barren— 'generalities;'—(so important is the method as that; that it makes the difference between the fruitful and the barren, between the old and the new) 'being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expressed with the torture and press of the method; and, therefore, as I did allow well of particular topics for invention'—therefore—his science requires him to go into particulars, and as the necessary consequence of that, it requires freedom—'therefore'—as I did allow well of particular topics of invention, 'so do I allow likewise of particular methods of tradition.' Elsewhere,—in his Novum Organum—he quotes the scientific outlines and divisions of this very book, he quotes the very draught and outline of the new human science, which is the principal thing in it, and tells us plainly that he is perfectly aware that those new divisions, those essential differences, those true and radical forms in nature, which he has introduced here, in his doctrine of human nature, will have no practical effect at all, as they are exhibited here; because they are exhibited in this method which he is here criticising, that is, in empty and barren abstractions,— because it was impossible for him to produce here anything but the husks and shells of that principal science, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method. But, at the same time, he gives us to understand, that these same shells and husks may be found in another place, with the kernels and nuts in them, and that he has not taken so much pains to let us see in so many places, what new forms of delivery the new philosophy will require, merely for the sake of letting us see, at the same time, that when it came to practice, he himself stood by the old ones, and contented himself with barren abstractions, and generalities, the husks and shells of sciences, instead of aiming at particulars, and availing himself of these 'particular methods of tradition.'

He takes also this occasion to recommend a method which was found extremely serviceable at that time; namely, the method of teaching by aphorism, 'without any show of an art or method; not merely because it tries the author, since aphorisms being made out of the pith and heart of sciences, no man can write them who is not sound and grounded,' who has not a system with its trunk and root, though he makes no show of it, but buries it and shows you here and there the points on the surface that are apt to look as if they had some underlying connection—not only because it tries the author, but because they point to action; for particulars being dispersed, do best agree with dispersed directions; and, moreover, aphorisms representing a BROKEN KNOWLEDGE, invite men to inquire farther, whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men as if they were at farthest, and it is the advancement of learning that he is proposing.

He suggests again, distinctly here, the rule he so often claims he has himself put in practice, elsewhere, that the use of CONFUTATION in the delivery of science, ought to be very sparing; and to serve to remove strong preoccupations and prejudgments, and not to minister and excite disputations and doubts. For he says in another place, 'As Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight, so I like better that entry of truth which cometh peaceably, with chalk to mark up those minds, which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity and contention.'

He alludes here too, in passing, to some other distinctions of method, which are already received, that of ANALYSIS and synthesis, or CONSTITUTION, that of concealment, or CRYPTIC, which he says 'he allows well of, though he has himself stood upon those which are least handled and observed.' He brings out his doctrine of the necessity of a method which shall include particulars for practical purposes also, under another head: here it is the limit of rules,—the propositions or precepts of arts that he speaks of, and the degree of particularity which these precepts ought to descend to. 'For every knowledge,' he says, 'may be fitly said to have a latitude and longitude, accounting the latitude towards other sciences' (for there are rules and propositions of such latitude as to include all arts, all sciences)—'and the longitude towards action, that is, from the greatest generality, to the most particular precept: and as to the degree of particularity to which a knowledge should descend,' though something must, of course, be left in all departments to the discretion of the practitioner, he thinks it is a question which will bear looking into in a general way; and that it might be possible to have rules in all departments, which would limit very much the necessity of individual experiment, and not leave us so much at the mercy of individual discretion in the most serious matters. Philosophy, as he finds it, does not appear to be very helpful to practice, on account of its keeping to those general propositions, so much, as well as on some other accounts, and has fallen into bad repute, it seems, among men who find it necessary to make, without science, as they best can, rules of some sort;—rules that are capable of dealing with that quality in particulars which is apt to be called obstinacy in this aspect of it. 'For we see remote and superficial generalities do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice, than an Ortelius's universal map is to direct the way between London and York.' And what is this itself but a universal map, this map of the advancement of learning?

All this doctrine of the tradition of sciences, he produces under the head of the method of their tradition, but in speaking of the organ of it, he treats it exclusively as the medium of tradition for those sciences which require CONCEALMENT, or admit only of a suggestive exhibition. And as he makes, too, the claim that he has himself given practical proof, in passing, of his proficiency in this art, and appeals to the skilful for the truth of this statement, the passage, at least, in which this assertion is made, will be likely to repay the inquiry which it invites.

He begins by drawing our attention to the fact, that words are not the only representatives of things, and he says 'this is not an inconsiderable thing, for while we are treating of the coin of intellectual matters, it is pertinent to observe, that as money may be made of other materials besides gold and silver, so other marks of things may be invented besides words and letters.' And by way of illustrating the advantages of such a means of tradition, under certain disadvantages of position, he adduces as much in point, the case of Periander, who being consulted how to preserve a tyranny newly usurped, bid the messenger attend and report what he saw him do, and went into his garden and topped all the highest flowers; signifying that it consisted in the cutting off and keeping low of the nobility and grandees. And thus other apparently trivial, purely purposeless and sportive actions, might have a traditionary character of no small consequence, if the messenger were only given to understand beforehand, that the acts thus performed were axiomatical, pointing to rules of practice, that the forms were representative forms, whose 'real' exhibition of the particular natures in question, was much more vivid and effective, much more memorable as well as safe, than any abstract statement of that philosophic truth, which is the truth of direction, could be.

As to the 'accidents of words, which are measure, sound, and elevation of accent, and the sweetness and harshness of them,' even here the new science suggests a new rule, which is not without a remarkable relation to that 'particular method of tradition,' which the author tells us in another place, some parts of his new science required. 'This subject,' he says, 'involves some curious observations in rhetoric, but chiefly POESY, as we consider it in respect of the verse, and not of the argument; wherein, though men in learned tongues do tie themselves to the ancient measures, yet in modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make new measures of verses as of dances.' The spirit of the new philosophy had a chance to speak out there for once, without intending, of course, to transcend that particular limit just laid down, namely, the measure of verses, and with that literal limitation, to the form of the verse, the remark is sufficiently suggestive; for he brings out from it at the next step, in the way of formula, the new principle, the new Shaksperian principle of rhetoric: In these things the sense is better judge than the art. And of the servile expressing antiquity in an unlike and an unfit subject, it is well said:—'Quod tempore antiquum videtur, id incongruitate est maxime novum.''

But when he comes to speak specifically of writing as a means of tradition, he confines his remarks to that particular kind of writing, which is agreed on betwixt particular persons, and called by the name of cipher, giving excellent reasons for this proceeding, impertinent as it may seem, to those who think that his only object is to make out a list and 'muster-roll of the arts and sciences';—stopping to tell us plainly that he knows what he is about, and that he has not brought in 'these private and retired arts,' with so much stress, and under so many heads, in connection with 'the principal and supreme sciences,' and the mode of their tradition, without having some occasion for it.

'Ciphers are commonly in letters, or alphabets, but may be in words,' he says, proceeding to enumerate the different kinds, and furnishing on the spot, some pretty specimens of what may be done in the way of that kind which he calls 'doubles,' a kind which he is particularly fond of; one hears again the echo of those delicate, collateral sounds, which our friend, over the mountains, warned us of, declining to say any more about them in that place. In the later edition, he takes occasion to say, in this connection, 'that as writing in the received manner no way obstructs the manner of pronunciation, but leaves that free, an innovation in it is of no purpose.' And if a cipher be the proper name for a private method of writing, agreed on betwixt particular persons, it is certainly the name for the method which he proposes to adopt in his tradition of the principal sciences; as he takes occasion to inform those whom it may concern, in an early portion of the work, and when he is occupied in the critical task of putting down some of the primary terms. 'I doubt not,' he says, by way of explanation, 'but it will easily appear to men of judgment, that in this and other particulars, wheresoever my conception and notion may differ from the ancient, I am studious to keep the ancient terms.' Surely there is no want of frankness here, so far as the men of judgment are concerned at least. And after condemning those innovators who have taken a different course, he says again, 'But to me on the other side that do desire as much as lieth in my pen, to ground a sociable intercourse between antiquity and proficience, it seemeth best to keep way with antiquity usque ad aras; and therefore to retain the ancient TERMS, though I sometimes alter the uses and definitions, according to the moderate proceeding in civil government, where, although there be some alteration, yet that holdeth which Tacitus wisely noteth 'eadem magistratuum vocabula.' Surely that is plain enough, especially if one has time to take into account the force and historic reach of that last illustration, 'eadem magistratuum vocabula.'

In the later and enlarged edition of his work, he lays much stress upon the point that the cipher 'should be free from suspicion,' for he says, 'if a letter should come into the hands of such as have a power over the writer or receiver, though the cipher itself be trusty and impossible to decipher, it is still subject to examination and question, and (as he says himself), 'to avoid all suspicion,' he introduces there a cipher in letters, which he invented in his youth in Paris, 'having the highest perfection of a cipher, that of signifying omnia per omnia;' and for the same reason perhaps, that of 'avoiding all suspicion,' he quite omits there that very remarkable passage in the earlier work, in which he treats it as a medium of tradition, and takes pains to intimate his reasons for producing it in that connection, with the principal and supreme sciences. If it was, indeed, any object with him to avoid suspicion, and recent disclosures had then, perhaps, tended to sharpen somewhat the contemporary criticism; he did well, unquestionably, to omit that passage. But at the time when that was written, he appears to be chiefly inclined to notice the remarkable facilities, which this style offers to an inventive genius. For he says, 'in regard of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters, are sometimes carried in the weakest ciphers.' And that there may be no difficulty or mistake as to the reading of that passage, he immediately adds, 'In the enumeration of these private and retired arts, it may be thought I seek to make a great muster-roll of sciences, naming them for show and ostentation, and to little other purpose. But'—note it—'But, let those which are skilful in them judge, whether I bring them in only for appearance, or whether, in that which I speak of them, though in few words, there be not some seed of proficience. And this must be remembered, that as there be many of great account in their countries and provinces, which, when they come up to the seat of the estate, are but of mean rank, and scarcely regarded; so these arts, ("these private and retired arts,") being here placed with the principal and supreme sciences, seem petty things, YET TO SUCH AS HAVE CHOSEN THEM TO SPEND THEIR LABOURS AND STUDIES IN THEM, THEY SEEM GREAT MATTERS. ("Let those which are skilful in them, judge (after that) whether I bring them in only for appearance" or to little other purpose).'

That apology would seem sufficient, but we must know what these labours and studies are, before we can perceive the depth of it. And if we have the patience to follow him but a step or two further, we shall find ourselves in the way of some very direct and accurate information, as to that. For we are coming now, in the order of the work we quote from, to that very part, which contains the point of all these labours and studies, the end of them,—that part to which the science of nature in general, and the secret of this art of tradition, was a necessary introduction. [For this Art of Tradition makes the link between the new Logic and the application of it to Human Nature and Human Life.]

Thus far, this art has been treated as a means of simply transferring knowledge, in such forms as the conditions of the Advancement of Learning prescribe,—forms adapted to the different stages of mental advancement, commencing with the lowest range of the common opinion in his time,—starting with the contemporary opinions of the majority, and reserving 'the secrets of knowledge,' for such as are able to receive them. Thus far, it is the Method, and the Organ of the tradition of which he has spoken. But it is when he comes to speak of what he calls the Illustration of it, that the convergency of his design begins to be laid open to us, for this work is not what it may seem on the surface, as he takes pains to intimate to us—a 'mere muster-roll of sciences.'

It is when he comes to tell us that he will have his 'truth in beauty dyed,' that he does not propose to have the new learning left in the form of argument and logic, or in the form of bare scientific fact, that he does not mean to appeal with it to the reason only; that he will have it in a form in which it will be able to attract and allure men, and make them in love with it, a form in which it will be able to force its way into the will and the affections, and make a lodgement in the hearts of men, long ere it is able to reach the judgment;—it is not till he begins to bring out here, his new doctrine of the true end of rhetoric, and the use to which it ought to be put in subordination to science, that we begin to perceive the significance of the arrangement which brings this theory of an Illustrated Art of Tradition into immediate connection with the new science of human nature and human life which the Author is about to constitute,—so as to serve as an introduction to it—the arrangement which interposes this art of Tradition, between the New Logic and its application to Human Nature and Human Life—to POLICY and MORALITY.

He will not consent to have this so powerful engine of popular influence, which the æsthetic art seems, to his eye, to offer, left out, in his scheme of scientific instrumentalities: he will not pass it by scornfully, as some other philosophers have done, treating it merely as a voluptuary art. He will have of it, something which shall differ, not in degree only, but in kind, from the art of the confectioner.

He begins by stating frankly his reasons for making so much of it in this grave treatise, which is what it professes to be, a treatise on Learning and its Advancement. 'For although,' he says, 'in true value, it is inferior to wisdom, as it is said by God to Moses, when he disabled himself for want of this faculty, "Aaron shall be thy speaker, and thou shalt be to him as God;" yet with people it is the more mighty, and it is just that which is mighty with the people—which he tells us in another place—is wanting. "For this people who knoweth not the law are cursed."' But here he continues, 'for so Solomon saith, "Sapiens corde appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis eloquio majora reperiet;" signifying that profoundness of wisdom will help a man to a name or admiration,'—(it is something more than that which he is proposing as his end)—'but that it is eloquence—which prevails in active life;' so that the very movement which brought philosophy down to earth, and put her upon reforming the practical life of men, was the movement which led her to assume, not instinctively, only, but by theory, and on principle, this new and beautiful apparel, this deep disguise of pleasure. She comes into the court with her case, and claims that this Art, which has been treated hitherto as if it had some independent rights and laws of its own, is properly a subordinate of hers; a chattel gone astray, and setting up for itself as an art voluptuary.

Works on rhetorics are not wanting, the author reports. Antiquity has laboured much in this field. Notwithstanding, he says, there is something to be done here too, and the Elizabethan æsthetics must be begun also in the prima philosophia. 'Notwithstanding,' he continues, 'to stir the earth a little about the roots of this science, as we have done of the rest; the duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of THE WILL; for we see reason is disturbed in the administration of the will by three means; by sophism, which pertains to logic; by imagination or impression, which pertains to rhetoric; and by passion or affection, which pertains to morality.' So in this negotiation within ourselves, men are undermined by inconsequences, solicited and importuned by impressions and observations, and transported by passions. Neither is the nature of man so unfortunately built, as that these powers and arts should have force to disturb reason and not to establish and advance it. For the end of logic is to teach a form of logic to secure reason, not to entrap it. The end of morality is to procure the affections to obey reason, and not to invade it. The end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination to second reason, and not to oppress it. For these abuses of arts come in but ex obliquo for caution.

That is the real original English doctrine of Art:—that is the doctrine of the age of Elizabeth, at least, as it stands in that queen's English, and though it may be very far from being orthodox at present, it is the doctrine which must determine the rule of any successful interpretation of works of art composed on that theory. 'And, therefore,' he proceeds to say, 'it was great injustice in Plato, though springing out of a just hatred of the rhetoricians of his time, to esteem of rhetoric but as a voluptuary art, resembling it to cookery that did mar wholesome meats, and help unwholesome, by variety of sauces to the pleasure of the taste.' 'And therefore, as Plato said eloquently, "That virtue, if she could be seen, would move great love and affection, so, seeing that she cannot be showed to the sense by corporal shape, the next degree is to show her to the imagination in lively representation": for to show her to reason only, in subtilty of argument was a thing ever derided in—Chrysippus and many of the Stoics—who thought to thrust virtue upon men by sharp disputations and conclusions, which have no sympathy with the will of man.'

'Again, if the affections in themselves were pliant and obedient to reason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions and injunctions to the will, more than of naked propositions and proofs; but in regard of the continual mutinies and seditions of the affections,

  Video meliora proboque
  Deteriora sequor;

'Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions did not practise and win the imagination from the affections part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and the imagination, against the affections; for the affections themselves carry ever an appetite to good, as reason doth. The difference is'—mark it—'the difference is, that the affection beholdeth merely the present; reason beholdeth the future and sum of time. And therefore the present filling the imagination most, reason is commonly vanquished; but after that force of eloquence and persuasion hath made things future and remote, appear as present, then, upon the revolt of the imagination reason prevaileth.' Not less important than that is this art in his scheme of learning. No wonder that the department of learning which he refers to the imagination should take that prime place in his grand division of it, and be preferred deliberately and on principle to the two others.

'Logic differeth from Rhetoric chiefly in this, that logic handleth reason exact and in truth, and rhetoric handleth it as it is planted in popular opinions and manners. And therefore Aristotle doth wisely place rhetoric as between logic on the one side, and moral or civil knowledge on the other, (and when we come to put together the works of this author, we shall find that that and none other is the place it takes in his system, that that is just the bridge it makes in his plan of operations.)' The proofs and demonstrations of logic are towards all men indifferent and the same: but the proofs and persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors.

Orpheus in sylvis inter delphinas Arion.

Which application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend so far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to several persons, he should speak to them all respectively, and several ways; and there was a great folio written on this plan which came out in those days dedicated 'to the Great Variety of Readers. From the most able to him that can but spell'; (this is just the doctrine, too, which the Continental philosopher sets forth we see);—though this 'politic part of eloquence in private speech,' he goes on to say here, 'it is easy for the greatest orators to want; whilst by observing their well graced forms of speech, they lose the volubility of APPLICATION; and therefore it shall not be amiss to recommend this to better inquiry, not being curious whether we place it here, or in that part which concerneth policy.'

Certainly one would not be apt to infer from that decided preference which the author himself manifests here for those stately and well-graced forms of speech, judging merely from the style of this performance at least, one would not be inclined to suspect that he himself had ever been concerned in any literary enterprises, or was like to be, in which that volubility of application which he appears to think desirable, was successfully put in practice. But we must remember, that he was just the man who was capable of conceiving of a variety of styles adapted to different exigencies, if we would have the key to this style in particular.

But we must look a little at these labours and studies themselves, which required such elaborate and splendid arts of delivery, if we would fully satisfy ourselves, as to whether this author really had any purpose after all in bringing them in here beyond that of mere ostentation, and for the sake of completing his muster-roll of the sciences. Above, we see an intimation, that the divisions of the subject are, after all, not so 'curious' but that the inquiry might possibly be resumed again in other connections, and in the particular connection specified, namely, in that part which concerneth Policy.

In that which follows, the new science of human nature and human life—which is the end and term of this treatise, we are told—is brought out under the two heads of Morality and Policy; and it is necessary to look into both these departments in order to find what application he was proposing to make of this art and science of Tradition and Delivery, and in order to see what place—what vital place it occupied in his system.

THE SCIENCE OF POLICY.

'Policy is the most immersed.'—Advancement of Learning.

Reversing the philosophic order, we glance first into that new department of science which the author is here boldly undertaking to constitute under the above name, because in this his own practical designs, and rules of proceeding, are more clearly laid open, and the place which is assigned in his system to that radical science, for which these arts of Delivery and Tradition are chiefly wanting, is distinctly pointed out.

And, moreover, in this department of Policy itself, in marking out one of the grand divisions of it, we find him particularly noticing, and openly insisting on, the form of delivery and inculcation which the new science must take here, that is, if it is going to be at all available as a science of practice.

In this so-called plan for the advancement of learning, the author proceeds, as we all know, by noticing the deficiencies in human learning as he finds it; and everywhere it is that radical deficiency, which leaves human life and human conduct in the dark, while the philosophers are busied with their controversies and wordy speculations. And in that part of his inventory where he puts down as wanting a science of practice in those every-day affairs and incidents, in which the life of man is most conversant, embodying axioms of practice that shall save men the wretched mistakes and blunders of which the individual life is so largely made up; blunders which are inevitable, so long as men are left here, to natural human ignorance, to uncollected individual experience, or to the shrewdest empiricism;—in this so original and interesting part of the work, he takes pains to tell us at length, that that which he has before put down under the head of 'delivery' as a point of form and method, becomes here essential as a point of substance also. It is not merely that he will have his axioms and precepts of direction digested from the facts, instead of being made out of the teacher's own brains, but he will have THE FACTS themselves, in all their stubbornness and opposition to the teacher's preconceptions, for the body of the discourse, and the precepts accommodated thereto, instead of having the precepts for the body of the discourse, and the facts brought in to wait upon them. That is the form of the practical doctrine.

He regrets that this part of a true learning has not been collected hitherto into writing, to the great derogation of learning, and the professors of learning; for from this proceeds the popular opinion which has passed into an adage, that there is no great concurrence between wisdom and learning. The deficiency here is well nigh total he says: 'but for the wisdom of business, wherein man's life is most conversant, there be no books of it, except some few scattered advertisements, that have no proportion to the magnitude of the subject. For if books were written of this, as of the other, I doubt not but learned men with mean experience would far excel men of long experience without learning, and outshoot them with their own bow. Neither need it be thought that this knowledge is too variable to fall under precept,' he says; and he mentions the fact, that in old Rome, so renowned for practical ability, in its wisest and saddest times, there were professors of this learning, that were known for GENERAL WISE MEN, who used to walk at certain hours in the place, and give advice to private citizens, who came to consult with them of the marriage of a daughter, for instance, or the employing of a son, or of an accusation, or of a purchase or bargain, and every other occasion incident to man's life. There is a pretty scheme laid out truly. Have we any general wise man, or ghost of one, who walks up and down at certain hours and gives advice on such topics? However that may be, this philosopher does not despair of such a science. 'So,' he says, commenting on that Roman custom, 'there is a wisdom of council and advice, even in private cases, arising out of a universal insight into the affairs of the world, which is used indeed upon particular cases propounded, but is gathered by general observation of cases of like nature.' And fortifying himself with the example of Solomon, after collecting a string of texts from the Sacred Proverbs, he adds, 'though they are capable, of course, of a more divine interpretation, taking them as instructions for life, they might have received large discourse, if he would have broken them and illustrated them, by deducements and examples. Nor was this in use with the Hebrews only, but it is generally to be found in the wisdom of the more ancient times, that as men found out any observation that they thought was good for life, they would gather it, and express it in parable, or aphorism, or fable.'

But for fables, they were vicegerents and supplies, where examples failed. Now that the times abound with history, THE AIM IS BETTER WHEN THE MARK IS ALIVE. And, therefore, he recommends as the form of writing, 'which is of all others fittest for this variable argument, discourses upon histories and examples: for knowledge drawn freshly, and in our view, out of particulars, knoweth the way best to particulars again; and it hath much greater life for practice, when the discourse attendeth upon the example, than when the example attendeth upon the discourse. For this is no point of order as it seemeth at first' (indeed it is not, it is a point as substantial as the difference between the old learning of the world and the new)—'this is no point of order, but of substance. For when the example is the ground being set down in a history at large, it is set down with all circumstances, which may sometimes control the discourse thereupon made, and sometimes supply it as a very pattern for action; whereas the examples which are alleged for the discourse's sake, are cited succinctly and without particularity, and carry a servile aspect towards the discourse which they are brought in to make good.'

The question of method is here, as we see, incidentally introduced; but it is to be noted, and it makes one of the rules for the interpretation of that particular kind of style which is under consideration, that in this casual and secondary introduction of a subject, we often get shrewder hints of the author's real intention than we do in those parts of the work where it is openly and distinctly treated; at least, these scattered and apparently accidental hints,—these dispersed directions, often contain the key for the 'second' reading, which he openly bespeaks for the more open and elaborate discussion.

And thus we are able to collect, from every part of this proposal for a practical and progressive human learning, based on the defects of the unpractical and stationary learning which the world has hitherto been contented with, the author's opinion as to the form of delivery and inculcation best adapted to effect the proposed object under the given conditions. This question of form runs naturally through the whole work, and comes out in specifications of a very particular and significant kind under some of its divisions, as we shall see. But everywhere we find the point insisted on, which we have just seen so clearly brought out, in the department which was to contain the axioms of success in private life. Whatever the particular form may be, everywhere we come upon this general rule. Whatever the particular form may be, everywhere it is to be one in which the facts shall have the precedence, and the conclusions shall follow; and not one in which the conclusions stand first, and the facts are brought in to make them good. And this very circumstance is enough of itself to show that the form of this new doctrine will be thus far new, as new as the doctrine itself; that the new learning will be found in some form very different, at least, from that which the philosophers and professed teachers were then making use of in their didactic discourses, in some form so much more lively than that, and so much less oracular, that it would, perhaps, appear at first, to those accustomed only to the other, not to be any kind of learning at all, but something very different from that.

But this is not the only point in the general doctrine of delivery which we find produced again in its specific applications. Through all the divisions of this discourse on Learning, and not in that part of it only in which the Art of its Tradition is openly treated, we find that the prescribed form of it is one which will adapt it to the popular preconceptions; and that it must be a form which will make it not only universally acceptable, but universally attractive; that it is not only a form which will throw open the gates of the new school to all comers, but one that will bring in mankind to its benches. Not under the head of Method only, or under the head of Delivery and Tradition, but in those parts of the work in which the substance of the new learning is treated, we find dispersed intimations and positive assertions, that the form of it is, at the same time, popular and enigmatical,—not openly philosophical, and not 'magisterial,'— but insensibly didactic; and that it is, in its principal and higher departments—in those departments on which this plan for the human relief concentrates its forces—essentially POETICAL. That is what we find in the body of the work; and the author repeats in detail what he has before made a point of telling us, in general, under this head of Delivery and Tradition of knowledge, that he sees no reason why that same instrument, which is so powerful for delusion and error, should not be restored to its true uses as an instrument of the human advancement, and a vehicle, though a veiled one—a beautiful and universally-welcome vehicle—for bringing in on this Globe Theatre the knowledges that men are most in need of.

The doctrine which is to be conveyed in this so subtle and artistic manner is none other than the Doctrine of Human Nature and Human Life, or, as this author describes it here, the Scientific Doctrine of MORALITY and POLICY. It is that new doctrine of human nature and human life which the science of nature in general creates. It is the light which universal science, collected from the continent of nature, gives to that insular portion of it 'which is the end and term of natural philosophy in the intention of man.' Under these heads of Morality and Policy, the whole subject is treated here. But to return to the latter.

The question of Civil Government is, in the light of this science, a very difficult one; and this philosopher, like the one we have already quoted on this subject, is disposed to look with much suspicion on propositions for violent and sudden renovations in the state, and immediate abolitions and cures of social evil. He too takes a naturalist's estimate of those larger wholes, and their virtues, and faculties of resistance.

'Civil knowledge is conversant about a subject,' he says, 'which is, of all others, most immersed in matter, and hardliest reduced to axiom. Nevertheless, as Cato, the censor, said, "that the Romans were like sheep, for that a man might better drive a flock of them than one of them, for, in a flock, if you could get SOME FEW to go right, the rest would follow;" so in that respect, MORAL PHILOSOPHY is more difficult than policy. Again, moral philosophy propoundeth to itself the framing of internal goodness, but civil knowledge requireth only an external goodness, for that, as to society, sufficeth. Again, States, as great engines, move slowly, and are not so soon put out of frame;' (that is what our foreign statist thought also) '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 the resolution of particular persons is more suddenly subverted. These respects do somewhat qualify the extreme difficulty of civil knowledge.'

This is the point of attack, then,—this is the point of scientific attack,—the resolution of particular persons. He has showed us where the extreme difficulty of this subject appears to lie in his mind, and he has quietly pointed, at the same time, to that place of resistance in the structure of the state, which is the key to the whole position. He has marked the spot exactly where he intends to commence his political operations. For he has discovered a point there, which admits of being operated on, by such engines as a feeble man like him, or a few such together, perhaps, may command. It is the new science that they are going to converge on that point precisely, namely the resolution of particular persons. It is the novum organum that this one is bringing up, in all its finish, for the assault of that particular quarter. Hard as that old wall is, great as the faculty of conservation is in these old structures that hold by time, there is one element running all through it, these chemists find, which is within their power, namely, the resolution of particular persons. It is the science of the conformation of the parts, it is the constitutional structure of the human nature, which, in its scientific development, makes men, naturally, members of communities, beautiful and felicitous parts of states,—it is that which the man of science will begin with. If you will let him have that part of the field to work in undisturbed, he will agree not to meddle with the state. And beside those general reasons, already quoted, which tend to prevent him from urging the immediate application of his science to this 'larger whole,' for its wholesale relief and cure, he ventures upon some specifications and particulars, when he comes to treat distinctly of government itself, and assign to it its place in his new science of affairs. If one were to judge by the space he has openly given it on his paper in this plan for the human advancement and relief, one would infer that it must be a very small matter in his estimate of agencies; but looking a little more closely, we find that it is not that at all in his esteem, that it is anything but a matter of little consequence. It was enough for him, at such a time, to be allowed to put down the fact that the art of it was properly scientific, and included in his plan, and to indicate the kind of science that is wanting to it; for the rest, he gives us to understand that he has himself fallen on such felicitous times, and finds that affair in the hands of a person so extremely learned in it, that there is really nothing to be said. And being thrown into this state of speechless reverence and admiration, he considers that the most meritorious thing he can do, is to pass to the other parts of his discourse with as little delay as possible.

It is a very short paragraph indeed for so long a subject; but, short as it is, it is not less pithy, and it contains reasons why it should not be longer, and why that new torch of science which he is bringing in upon the human affairs generally, cannot be permitted to enter that department of them in his time. 'The first is, that it is a part of knowledge secret and retired in both those respects in which things are deemed secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to know, and some because they are not fit to utter. Again, the wisdom of antiquity, the shadows whereof are in the Poets, in the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of rebellion, which was the giants offence, doth detest the crime of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant of particulars. Nevertheless, even unto the general rules and discourses of policy and government, [it extends; for even here] there is due a reverent handling.' And after having briefly indicated the comprehension 'of this science,' and shown that it is the thing he is treating under other heads, he concludes, 'but considering that I write to a king who is a master of it, and is so well assisted, I think it decent to pass over this part in silence, as willing to obtain the certificate which one of the ancient philosophers aspired unto; who being silent when others contended to make demonstration of their abilities by speech, desired it might be certified for his part that there was one that knew how to hold his peace.'

And having thus distinctly cleared himself of any suspicion of a disposition to introduce scientific inquiry and innovation into departments not then open to a procedure of that sort, his proposal for an advancement of learning in other quarters was, of course, less liable to criticism. But even that part of the subject to which he limits himself involves, as we shall see, an incidental reference to this, from which he here so modestly retires, and affords no inconsiderable scope for that genius which was by nature so irresistibly impelled, in one way or another, to the criticism and reformation of the larger wholes. He retires from the open assault, but it is only to go deeper into his subject. He is constituting the science of that from which the state proceeds. He is analyzing the state, and searching out in the integral parts of it, that which makes true states impossible. He has found the revolutionary forces in their simple forms, and is content to treat them in these. He is bestowing all his pains upon an art that will develop—on scientific principles, by simply attending to the natural laws, as they obtain in the human kind, royalties, and nobilities, and liege-men of all degrees—an art that will make all kinds of pieces that the structure of the state requires.

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.

Section I.—THE EXEMPLAR OF GOOD.

  'Nature craves
  All dues to be rendered to their owners.'

But this great innovator is busying himself here with drawing up a report of THE DEFICIENCIES IN LEARNING; and though he is the first to propose a plan and method by which men shall build up, systematically and scientifically, a knowledge of Nature in general, instead of throwing themselves altogether upon their own preconceptions and abstract controversial theories, after all, the principal deficiency which he has to mark—that to which, even in this dry report, he finds himself constrained to affix some notes of admiration—this principal deficiency is THE SCIENCE OF MAN—THE SCIENCE of human nature itself. And the reason of this deficiency is, that very deficiency before named; it is that very act of shutting himself up to his own theories which leaves the thinker without a science of himself. 'For it is the greatest proof of want of skill, to investigate the nature of any object in itself alone; and, in general, those very things which are considered as secret, are manifested and common in other objects, but will never be clearly seen if the contemplations and experiments of men be directed to themselves alone.' It is this science of NATURE IN GENERAL which makes the SCIENCE of Human Nature for the first time possible; and that is the end and term of the new philosophy,—so the inventor of it tells us. And the moment that he comes in with that new torch, which he has been out into 'the continent of nature' to light,—the moment that he comes back with it, into this old debateable ground of the schools, and begins to apply it to that element in the human life in which the scientific innovation appears to be chiefly demanded, 'most of the controversies,' as he tells us very simply—'most of the controversies, wherein moral philosophy is conversant, are judged and determined by it.'

But here is the bold and startling criticism with which he commences his approach to this subject; here is the ground which he makes at the first step; this is the ground of his scientific innovation; not less important than this, is the field which he finds unoccupied. In the handling of this science he says, (the science of 'the Appetite and Will of Man'), 'those which have written seem to me to have done as if a man that professed to teach to write did only exhibit fair copies of alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions for the carriage of the hand, or the framing of the letters; so have they made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, duty, felicity; propounding them, well described, as the true objects and scopes of man's will and designs; but how to attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to become true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over altogether, or slightly and unprofitably; for it is not,' he says, 'certain scattered glances and touches that can excuse the absence of this part of—SCIENCE.

'The reason of this omission,' he supposes, 'to be that hidden rock, whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast away, which is, that men have despised to be conversant in ordinary and common matters, the judicious direction whereof, nevertheless, is the wisest doctrine; for life consisteth not in novelties nor subtleties, but, contrariwise, they have compounded sciences chiefly of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give glory either to the subtlety of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses.' But his theory of teaching is, that 'Doctrine should be such as should make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the author's commendation.' Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune which the poet Virgil promised himself, and, indeed, obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the observations of husbandry as of the heroical acts of Æneas.

'Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum Quam sit, et angustis hunc addere rebus honorum.' Georg. iii. 289.

So, then, there is room for a new Virgil, but his theme is here;—one who need not despair, if he be able to bring to his subject those excellent parts this author speaks of, of getting as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the observations of this husbandry, as those have had who have sketched the ideal forms of the human life, the dream of what should be. The copies and exemplars of good,—that vision of heaven,—that idea of felicity, and beauty, and goodness that the human soul brings with it, like a memory,—those celestial shapes that the thought and heart of man, by a law in nature, project,—that garden of delights that all men remember, and yearn for, and aspire to, and will have, in one form or another, in delicate air patterns, or gross deceiving images,—that large, intense, ideal good which men desire—that perfection and felicity, so far above the rude mocking realities which experience brings them,—that, that has had its poets. No lack of these exemplars the historian finds, when he comes to make out his report of the condition of his kind—where he comes to bring in his inventory of the human estate: when so much is wanting, that good he reports 'not deficient.' Edens in plenty,—gods, and demi-gods, and heroes, not wanting; the purest abstract notions of virtue and felicity, the most poetic embodiments of them, are put down among the goods which the human estate, as it is, comprehends. This part of the subject appears, to the critical reviewer, to have been exhausted by the poets and artists that mankind has always employed to supply its wants in this field. No room for a poet here! The draught of the ideal Eden is finished;—the divine exemplar is finished; that which is wanting is,—the husbandry thereunto.

Till now, the philosophers and poetic teachers had always taken their stand at once, on the topmost peak of Olympus, pouring down volleys of scorn, and amazement, and reprehension, upon the vulgar nature they saw beneath, made out of the dust of the ground, and qualified with the essential attributes of that material,—kindled, indeed, with a breath of heaven, but made out of clay,—different kinds of clay,—with more or less of the Promethean spark in it; but always clay, of one kind or another, and always compelled to listen to the laws that are common to the kinds of that substance. And it was to this creature, thus bound by nature, thus doubly bound,—'crawling between earth and heaven,' as the poet has it,—that these winged philosophers on the ideal cliffs, thought it enough to issue their mandates, commanding it to renounce its conditions, to ignore its laws, and come up thither at a word,—at a leap,—making no ado about it.

  'I can call spirits from the vasty deep.'
  'And so can I, and so can any man;'

Says the new philosopher—

'But will they come? Will they come—when you do call for them?'

It was simply a command, that this dirty earth should convert itself straight into Elysian lilies, and bloom out, at a word, with roses of Paradise. Excellent patterns, celestial exemplars, of the things required were held up to it; and endless declamation and argument why it should be that, and not the other, were not wanting:—but as to any scientific inquiry into the nature of the thing on which this form was to be superinduced, as to any scientific exhibition of the form itself which was to be superinduced, these so essential conditions of the proposed result, were in this case alike wanting. The position which these reformers occupy, is one so high, that the question of different kinds of soils, and chemical analyses and experiments, would not come within their range at all; and 'the resplendent or lustrous mass of matter,' of which their sciences are compounded, chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations or to the eloquence of discourses, would not bear any such vulgar admixture. It would make a terrible jar in the rhythm, which those large generalizations naturally flow in, to undertake to introduce into them any such points of detail.

And the new teacher will have a mountain too; but it will be one that 'overlooks the vale,' and he will have a rock-cut-stair to its utmost summit. He is one who will undertake this despised unlustrous matter of which our ordinary human life consists, and make a science of it, building up its generalizations from its particulars, and observing the actual reality,—the thing as it is, freshly, for that purpose; and not omitting any detail,—the poorest. The poets who had undertaken this theme before had been so absorbed with the idea of what man should be, that they could only glance at him as he is: the idea of a science of him, was not of course, to be thought of. There was but one name for the creature, indeed, in their vocabulary and doctrine, and that was one which simply seized and embodied the general fact, the unquestionable historic fact, that he has not been able hitherto to attain to his ideal type in nature, or indeed to make any satisfactory approximation to it.

But when the Committee of Inquiry sits at last, and the business begins to assume a systematic form, even the science of that ideal good, that exemplar and pattern of good, which men have been busy on so long,—the science of it,—is put down as 'wanting,' and the science of the husbandry thereunto, 'wholly deficient.'

And the report is, that this new argument, notwithstanding its every-day theme, is one that admits of being sung also; and that the Virgil who is able to compose 'these Georgies of the Mind,' may promise himself fame, though his end is one that will enable him to forego it. Let us see if we can find any further track of him and his great argument, whether in prose or verse;—this poet who cares not whether he has his 'singing robes' about him or not, so he can express and put upon record his new 'observations of this husbandry.'

THE EXEMPLAR OF GOOD.—'And surely,' he continues, 'if the purpose be in good earnest, not to write at leisure that which men may read at leisure'—note it—that which men may read at leisure—'but really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these GEORGICS of the MIND, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity; therefore the main and primitive division of MORAL KNOWLEDGE, seemeth to be into the EXEMPLAR or PLATFORM of GOOD, and THE REGIMEN or CULTURE OF THE MIND, the one describing the NATURE of GOOD, the other prescribing RULES how to SUBDUE, APPLY, and ACCOMMODATE THE WILL OF MAN THEREUNTO.'

As to 'the nature of good, positive or simple,' the writers on this subject have, he says, 'set it down excellently, in describing the forms of virtue and duty, with their situations, and postures, in distributing them into their kinds, parts, provinces, actions, and administrations, and the like: nay, farther, they have commended them to man's nature and spirit, with great quickness of argument, and beauty of persuasions; yea, and fortified and entrenched them, as much as discourse can do, against corrupt and popular opinions. And for the degrees and comparative nature of good, they have excellently handled it also.'—That part deserveth to be reported for 'excellently laboured.'

What is it that is wanting then? What radical, fatal defect is it that he finds even in the doctrine of the NATURE OF GOOD? What is the difficulty with this platform and exemplar of good as he finds it, notwithstanding the praise he has bestowed on it? The difficulty is, that it is not scientific. It is not broad enough. It is special, it is limited to the species, but it is not properly, it is not effectively, specific, because it is not connected with the doctrine of nature in general. It does not strike to those universal original principles, those simple powers which determine the actual historic laws and make the nature of things itself. This is the criticism, therefore, with which this critic of the learning of the world as he finds it, is constrained to qualify that commendation.

Notwithstanding, if before they had come to the popular and received notions of 'vice' and 'virtue,' 'pleasure' and 'pain,' and the rest, they had stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning THE ROOTS of GOOD and EVIL, and the strings to those roots, they had given, in my opinion, a great light to that which followed, and especially if they had consulted with nature, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more profound, which being by them in part omitted, and in part handled with much confusion, we will endeavour to resume and open in a more clear manner. Here then, is the preparation of the Platform or Exemplar of Good, the scientific platform of virtue and felicity; going behind the popular notion of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like, he strikes at once to the nature of good, as it is 'formed in everything,' for the foundation of this specific science. He lays the beams of it, in the axioms and definitions of his 'prima philosophia' 'which do not fall within the compass of the special parts of science, but are more common and of a higher stage, for the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance before it comes to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs,' and it is not the narrow and specific observation on which the popular notions are framed, but the scientific, which is needed for the New Ethics,—the new knowledge, which here too, is POWER. He must detect and recognise here also, he must track even into the nature of man, those universal 'footsteps' which are but 'the same footsteps of nature treading or printing in different substances.' 'There is formed in everything a double nature of good, the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, and the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form…. This double nature of good, and the comparison thereof, is much more engraven upon MAN, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being;' and, by way of illustration, he mentions first the case of Pompey the Great, 'who being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency by his friends, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, "Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam."' But, he adds, 'it may be truly affirmed, that there was never any philosophy, religion, or other discipline, which did so plainly and highly exalt the good which is communicative, and depress the good which is private and particular, as the holy faith, well declaring that it was the same God that gave the Christian law to men, who gave those laws of nature to inanimate creatures that we spake of before; for we read that the elected saints of God have wished themselves anathematised, and razed out of the book of life, in an ecstasy of charity, and infinite feeling of communion.'

And having first made good his assertion, that this being set down, and strongly planted, determines most of the controversies wherein moral philosophy is conversant, he proceeds to develop still further these scientific notions of good and evil, which he has gone below the popular notions and into the nature of things to find, these scientific notions, which, because they are scientific, he has still to go out of the specific nature to define; and when he comes to nail down his scientific platform of the human good with them, when he comes to strike their clear and simple lines, deep as the universal constitution of things, through the popular terms, and clear up the old confused theories with them, we find that what he said of them beforehand was true; they do indeed throw great light upon that which follows.

To that exclusive, incommunicative good which inheres in the private and particular nature,—and he does not call it any hard names at all from his scientific platform; indeed in the vocabulary of the Naturalist we are told, that these names are omitted, 'for we call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools their folly,'—that exclusive good he finds both passive and active, and this also is one of those primary distinctions which 'is formed in all things,' and so too is the subdivision of passive good which follows. 'For there is impressed upon all things a triple desire, or appetite, proceeding from love to themselves; one, of preserving and continuing their form; another, of advancing and perfecting their form; and a third, of multiplying and extending their form upon other things; whereof the multiplying or signature of it upon other things, is that which we handled by the name of active good.' But passive good includes both conservation and perfection, or advancement, which latter is the highest degree of passive good. For to preserve in state is the less; to preserve with advancement is the greater. As to man, his approach or assumption to DIVINE or ANGELICAL NATURE is the perfection of his form, the error or false imitation of which good is that which is the tempest of human life. So we have heard before; but in the doctrine which we had before, it was the dogma,—the dogma whose inspiration and divinity each soul recognized; to whose utterance each soul responded, as deep calleth unto deep,—it was the Law, the Divine Law, and not the science of it, that was given.

And having deduced 'that good of man which is private and particular, as far as seemeth fit,' he returns 'to that good of man which respects and beholds society,' which he terms DUTY, because the term of duty is more proper to a mind well framed and disposed towards others, as the term of VIRTUE is applied to a mind well formed and composed in itself; though neither can a man understand virtue, without some relation to society, nor duty, without an inward disposition.

But he wishes us to understand and remember, now that he comes out of the particular nature, and begins to look towards society with this term of Duty, that he is still dealing with 'the will of particular persons,' that it is still the science of morals, and not politics, that he is meddling with. 'This part may seem at first,' he says, 'to pertain to science civil and politic, but not if it be well observed; for it concerneth the regiment and government of every man over himself, and not over others.' And this is the plan which he has marked out in his doctrine of government as the most hopeful point in which to commence political reformations; and one cannot but observe, that if this art and science should be successfully cultivated, the one which he dismisses so briefly would be cleared at once of some of those difficulties, which rendered any more direct treatment of it at that time unadvisable. This part of learning concerneth then 'the regiment and government of every man over himself, and not over others.' 'As in architecture the direction of the framing the posts, beams, and other parts of building, is not the same with the manner of joining them and erecting the building; and in mechanicals, the direction how to frame AN INSTRUMENT OR ENGINE is not the same with the manner of setting it on work, and employing it; and yet, nevertheless, in expressing of the one, you incidentally express the aptness towards the other [hear] so the doctrine of the conjugation of men in society differeth from that of their conformity thereunto.' The received doctrine of that conjugation certainly appeared to; and the more this scientific doctrine of the parts, and the conformity thereunto, is incidentally expressed,—the more the scientific direction how to frame the instrument or engine, is opened, the more this difference becomes apparent.

But even in limiting himself to the individual human nature as it is developed in particular persons, regarding society only as it is incidental to that, even in putting down his new scientific platform of the good that the appetite and will of man naturally seeks, and in marking out scientifically its degrees and kinds, he gives us an opportunity to perceive in passing, that he is not altogether without occasion for the use of that particular art, with its peculiar 'organs' and 'methods' and 'illustration,' which he recommends under so many heads in his treatise on that subject, for the delivery or tradition of knowledges, which tend to innovation and advancement—knowledge which is 'progressive' and 'foreign from opinions received.'

This doctrine of duty is sub-divided into two parts; the common duty of every man as a MAN, or A MEMBER of A STATE, which is that part of the platform and exemplar of good, he has before reported as 'extant, and well laboured.' The other is the respective or special duty of every man in his PROFESSION, VOCATION and PLACE; and it is under this head of the special and respective duties of places, vocations and professions, where the subject begins to grow narrow and pointed, where it assumes immediately, the most critical aspects,—it is here that his new arts of delivery and tradition come in to such good purpose, and stand him instead of other weapons. For this is one of those cases precisely, which the philosopher on the Mountain alluded to, where an argument is set on foot at the table of a man of prodigious fortune, when the man himself is present. Nowhere, perhaps,—in his freest forms of writing, does he give a better reason, for that so deliberate and settled determination, which he so openly declares, and everywhere so stedfastly manifests, not to put himself in an antagonistic attitude towards opinions, and vocations, and professions, as they stood authorized in his time. Nowhere does he venture on a more striking comparison or simile, for the purpose of setting forth that point vividly, and impressing it on the imagination of the reader.

'The first of these [sub-divisions of duty] is extant, and well laboured, as hath been said. The second, likewise, I may report rather dispersed than deficient; which manner of dispersed argument I acknowledge to be best; [it is one he is much given to;] for who can take upon him to write of the proper duty, virtue, challenge and right of EVERY several vocation, profession and place? [—truly?—] For although sometimes a looker on, may see more than a gamester, and there be a proverb more arrogant than sound, 'that the vale best discovereth the hill,' yet there is small doubt, that men can write best, and most really and materially of their own professions,' and it is to be wished, he says, 'as that which would make learning, indeed, solid and fruitful, that active men would, or could, become writers.' And he proceeds to mention opportunely in that connection, a case very much in point, as far as he is concerned, but not on the face of it, so immediately to the purpose, as that which follows. It will, however, perhaps, repay that very careful reading of it, which will be necessary, in order to bring out its pertinence in this connection. And we shall, perhaps, not lose time ourselves, by taking, as we pass, the glimpse which this author sees fit to give us, of the facilities and encouragements which existed then, for the scientific treatment of this so important question of the duties and vices of vocations and professions.

'In which I cannot but mention, honoris causa, your majesty's excellent book, touching the duty of A KING' [and he goes on to give a description which applies, without much 'forcing,' to the work of another king, which he takes occasion to introduce, with a direct commendation, a few pages further on]—'a work richly compounded of divinity, morality, and policy, with great aspersion of all other arts; and being, in mine opinion, one of the most sound and healthful writings that I have read. Not sick of business, as those are who lose themselves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp in matters impertinent; not savoring of perfumes and paintings as those do, who seek to please the reader more than nature beareth, and chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof, being agreeable to truth, and apt for action;'—[this passage contains some hints as to this author's notion of what a book should be, in form, as well as substance, and, therefore, it would not be strange, if it should apply to some other books, as well]—'and far removed from that natural infirmity, whereunto I noted those that write in their own professions, to be subject, which is that they exalt it above measure; for your majesty hath truly described, not a king of Assyria or Persia, in their external glory, [and not that kind of king, or kingly author is he talking of] but a Moses, or a David, pastors of their people.

'Neither can I ever lose out of my remembrance, what I heard your majesty, in the same sacred spirit of government, deliver in a great cause of judicature, which was, that kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of nature, and ought rarely to put in use their supreme prerogative, as God doth his power of working miracles. And yet, notwithstanding, in your book of a free monarchy, you do well give men to understand, that you know the plenitude of the power and right of a king, as well as _the circle of his office and duty. Thus have I presumed to allege this excellent writing of your majesty, as a prime or eminent example of Tractates, concerning special and respective duties.' [It is, indeed, an exemplar that he talks of here.] 'Wherein I should have said as much, if it had been written a thousand years since: neither am I moved with certain courtly decencies, which I esteem it flattery to praise in presence; no, it is flattery to praise in absence: that is, when either the virtue is absent, or—the occasion is absent, and so the praise is not natural, but forced, either in truth, or—in time. But let Cicero be read in his oration pro Marcello, which is nothing but an excellent TABLE of Caesar's VIRTUE, and made to his face; besides the example of many other excellent persons, wiser a great deal than such observers, and we will never doubt upon a full occasion, to give just praises to present or absent.'

The reader who does not think that is, on the whole, a successful paragraph, considering the general slipperiness of the subject, and the state of the ice in those parts of it, in particular where the movements appear to be the most free and graceful; such a one has, probably, failed in applying to it, that key of 'times,' which a full occasion is expected to produce for this kind of delivery. But if any doubt exists in any mind, in regard to this author's opinion of the rights of his own profession and vocation, and the circle of its office and duties,—if any one really doubts what only allegiance this author professionally acknowledges, and what kingship it is to which this great argument is internally dedicated, it may be well to recall the statement on that subject, which he has taken occasion to insert in another part of the work, so that that point, at least, may be satisfactorily determined.

He is speaking of 'certain base conditions and courses,' in his criticism on the manners of learned men, which he says 'he has no purpose to give allowance to, wherein divers professors of learning have wronged themselves and gone too far,'—glancing in particular at the trencher philosophers of the later age of the Roman state, 'who were little better than parasites in the houses of the great. But above all the rest,' he continues, 'the gross and palpable flattery, whereunto, many, not unlearned, have abased and abused their wits and pens, turning, as Du Bartas saith, Hecuba into Helena, and Faustina into Lucretia, hath most diminished the price and estimation of learning. Neither is the modern dedication, of books and writings as to patrons, to be commended: for that books—such as are worthy the name of books, ought to have no patrons, but—(hear) but—Truth and Reason. And the ancient custom was to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or to entitle the books with their names, or if to kings and great persons, it was some such as the argument of the book was fit and proper for: but these and the like courses may deserve rather reprehension than defence.

'Not that I can tax,' he continues, however, 'or condemn the application of learned men to men in fortune.' And he proceeds to quote here, approvingly, a series of speeches on this very point, which appear to be full of pertinence; the first of the philosopher who, when he was asked in mockery, 'How it came to pass that philosophers were followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers,' answered soberly, and yet sharply, 'Because the one sort knew what they had need of, and the other did not'. And then the speech of Aristippus, who, when some one, tender on behalf of philosophy, reproved him that he would offer the profession of philosophy such an indignity, as for a private suit to fall at a tyrant's feet, replied, 'It was not his fault, but it was the fault of Dionysius, that he had his ears in his feet'; and, lastly, the reply of another, who, yielding his point in disputing with Caesar, claimed, 'That it was reason to yield to him who commanded thirty legions,' and 'these,' he says, 'these, and the like applications, and stooping to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for, though they may have some outward baseness, yet, in a judgment truly made, they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion, and not to the person.'

And that is just Volumnia's view of the subject, as will be seen in another place.

  Now, this no more dishonors you at all,
  Than to take in a town with gentle words,
  Which else would put you to your fortune, and
  The hazard of much blood.—
  And you will rather show our general louts
  How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
  For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard
  Of what that want might ruin.

But then, in the dramatic exhibition, the other side comes in too:—

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

It is the same poet who says in another place:—

Almost my nature is subdued to that it works in.

'But to return,' as our author himself says, after his complimentary notice of the king's book, accompanied with that emphatic promise to give an account of himself upon a full occasion, and we have here, apparently, a longer digression to apologize for, and return from; but, in the book we are considering, it is, in fact, rather apparent than real, as are most of the author's digressions, and casual introductions of impertinent matter; for, in fact, the exterior order of the discourse is often a submission to the occasion, and is not so essential as the author's apparent concern about it would lead us to infer; indeed he has left dispersed directions to have this treatise broken up, and recomposed in a more lively manner, upon a full occasion, and when time shall serve; for, at present, this too is chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof.

And in marking out the grounds in human life, then lying waste, or covered with superstitious and empirical arts and inventions, in merely showing the fields into which the inventor of this new instrument of observation and inference by rule, was then proposing to introduce it, and in presenting this new report, and this so startling proposition, in those differing aspects and shifting lights, and under those various divisions which the art of delivery and tradition under such circumstances appeared to prescribe; having come, in the order of his report, to that main ground of the good which the will and appetite of man aspires to, and the direction thereto,—this so labored ground of philosophy,—when it was found that the new scientific platform of good, included—not the exclusive good of the individual form only, but that of those 'larger wholes,' of which men are constitutionally parts and members, and the special DUTY,—for that is the specific name of this principle of integrity in the human kind, that is the name of that larger law, that spiritual principle, which informs and claims the parts, and conserves the larger form which is the worthier,—when it was found that this part included the particular duty of every man in his place, vocation, and profession, as well as the common duty of men as men, surely it was natural enough to glance here, at that particular profession and vocation of authorship, and the claims of the respective places of king and subject in that regard, as well as at the duty of the king, and the superior advantages of a government of laws in general, as being more in accordance with the order of nature, than that other mode of government referred to. It was natural enough, since this subject lies always in abeyance, and is essentially involved in the work throughout, that it should be touched here, in its proper place, though never so casually, with a glance at those nice questions of conflicting claims, which are more fully debated elsewhere, distinguishing that which is forced in time, from that which is forced in truth, and the absence of the person, from the absence of the occasion.

But the approval of that man of prodigious fortune, to whom this work is openly dedicated, is always, with this author, who understands his ground here so well, that he hardly ever fails to indulge himself in passing, with a good humoured, side-long, glance at 'the situation,' this approval is the least part of the achievement. That which he, too, adores in kings, is 'the throng of their adorers'. It is the sovereignty which makes kings, and puts them in its liveries, that he bends to; it is that that he reserves his art for. And this proposal to run the track of the science of nature through this new field of human nature and its higher and highest aims, and into the very field of every man's special place, and vocation, and profession, could not well be made without a glance at those difficulties, which the clashing claims of authorship, and other professions, would in this case create; without a glance at the imperious necessities which threaten the life of the new science, which here also imperiously prescribe the form of its TRADITION; he could not go by this place, without putting into the reader's hands, with one bold stroke, the key of its DELIVERY.

For it is in the paragraph which follows the compliment to the king in his character as an author, in pursuing still further this subject of vocations and professions, that we find in the form of 'fable' and 'allusion,'—that form which the author himself lays down in his Art of Tradition, as the form of inculcation for new truth,—the precise position, which is the key to this whole method of new sciences, which makes the method and the interpretation, the vital points, in the writing and the reading of them.

'But, to return, there belongeth farther to the handling of this part, touching the Duties of Professions and Vocations, a relative, or opposite, touching the frauds, impostures and vices of every profession, which hath been likewise handled. But how? Rather in a satire and cynically, than seriously and wisely; for men have rather sought by wit to deride and traduce much of that which is good in PROFESSIONS, than with judgment to discover and sever that which is corrupt. For, as Solomon saith, he that cometh to seek after knowledge with a mind to scorn and censure, shall be sure to find matter for his humour, but no matter for his instruction. But the managing of this argument with integrity and truth, which I note as deficient, seemeth to me to be one of the best fortifications for honesty and virtue that can be planted. For, as the fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first, you die for it, but if YOU SEE HIM FIRST—HE DIETH; so it is with deceits and evil arts, which if they be first ESPIED lose their life, but if they prevent, endanger.' [If they see you first, you die for it; and not you only, but your science.

  Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
  This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,
  And throw it against the wind.]

'So that we are much beholden' he continues, 'to Machiavel and others that write what men do, and not what they ought to do, [perhaps he refers here to that writer before quoted, who writes, "others form men,—I report him"]; for it is not possible,' continues the proposer of the science of special duties of place, and vocation, and profession, 'the critic of this department, too,—it is not possible to join the serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent,—that is, all forms and natures of evil, for without this, virtue lieth open and un-fenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil: for men of corrupted minds pre-suppose that honesty groweth out of simplicity of manners, and believing of preachers, schoolmasters, and men's exterior language; so as, except you can make them perceive that you know the utmost reaches of their own corrupt opinions, they despise all morality.' A book composed for the express purpose of meeting the difficulty here alluded to, has been already noticed in the preceding pages, on account of its being one of the most striking samples of that peculiar style of tradition, which the advancement of Learning prescribes, and here is another, in which the same invention and discovery appears to be indicated:—'Why I can teach you'—says a somewhat doubtful claimant to supernatural gifts:

  'Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
  The devil.'
  'And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil;
  By telling truth;
  If thou hast power to raise him, bring him hither,
  And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence:
  Oh, while you live, TELL TRUTH.'

But this is the style, in which the one before referred to, falls in with the humour of this Advancer of Learning. 'As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say, all that I dare to do, and even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me. The worst of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so foul, as I find it foul and base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in confession, but men ought to be so in action. I wish that this excessive license of mine, may draw men to freedom above these timorous and mincing pretended virtues, sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my immoderation, I may reduce them to reason. A man must see and study his vice to correct it, they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it from themselves and do not think it covered enough, if they themselves see it…. the diseases of the soul, the greater they are, keep themselves the more obscure; the most sick are the least sensible of them: for these reasons they must often be dragged into light, by an unrelenting and pitiless hand; they must be opened and torn from the caverns and secret recesses of the heart.' 'To meet the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely,—others have published the errors of their opinions, I of my manners. I am greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or rather, I hunger for nothing, but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my name. He that does all things for honor and glory [as some great men in that time were supposed to], what can he think to gain by showing himself to the world in a mask, and by concealing his true being from the people? Commend a hunchback for his fine shape, he has a right to take it for an affront: if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valor, is it of you that they speak? They take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head; which they who were with him said he ought to punish, "Ay, but," said the other, "he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be." Socrates being told that people spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he, "there is nothing in me of what they say!" I am content to be less commended provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.' Truly the Advancement of Learning would seem to be not all in the hands of one person in this time. It appears, indeed, to have been in the hands of some persons who were not content with simply propounding it, and noting deficiencies, but who busied themselves with actively carrying out, the precise plan propounded. Here is one who does not content himself with merely criticising 'professions and vocations' and suggesting improvements, but one who appears to have an inward call himself to the cure of diseases. Whoever he may be, and since he seems to care so very little for his name himself, and looks at it from such a philosophical point of view, we ought not, perhaps, to be too particular about it; whoever he may be, he is unquestionably a Doctor of the New School, the scientific school, and will be able to produce his diploma when properly challenged; whoever he may be, he belongs to 'the Globe' for the manager of that theatre is incessantly quoting him, and dramatizing his philosophy, and he says himself, 'I look on all men as my compatriots, and prefer the universal and common tie to the national.'

But in marking out and indicating the plan and method of the new operation, which has for its end to substitute a scientific, in the place of an empirical procedure, in the main pursuits of human life, the philosopher does not limit himself in this survey of the special social duties to the special duties of professions and vocations. 'Unto this part,' he says, 'touching respective duty, doth also appertain the duties between husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant: so likewise the laws of friendship and gratitude, the civil bond of companies, colleges, and politic bodies, of neighbourhood, and all other proportionate duties; not as they are parts of a government and society, but as to the framing of the mind of particular persons.'

The reader will observe, that that portion of moral philosophy which is here indicated, contains, according to this index, some extremely important points, points which require learned treatment; and in our further pursuit of this inquiry, we shall find, that the new light which the science of nature in general throws upon the doctrine of the special duties and upon these points here emphasized, has been most ably and elaborately exhibited by a contemporary of this philosopher, and in the form which he has so specially recommended,—with all that rhetorical power which he conceives to be the natural and fitting accompaniment of this part of learning. And the same is true also throughout of that which follows.

'The knowledge concerning good respecting society, doth handle it also not simply alone, but comparatively, whereunto belongeth the weighing of duties between person and person, case and case, particular and public: as we see in the proceeding of Lucius Brutus against his own sons, which was so much extolled, yet what was said?

Infelix utcunque ferent ea fata minores.

'So the case was doubtful, and had opinion on both sides. [So the philosopher on the mountain tells us, too, for his common-place book and this author's happen to be the same.] Again we see when M. Brutus and Cassius invited to a supper certain whose opinions they meant to feel, whether they were fit to be made their associates, and cast forth the question touching the killing of a tyrant,—being an usurper,—they were divided in opinion;' [this of itself is a very good specimen of the style in which points are sometimes introduced casually in passing, and by way of illustration merely] some holding that servitude was the extreme of evils, and others that tyranny was better than a civil war; and this question also our philosopher of the mountain has considered very carefully from his retreat, weighing all the pros and cons of it. And it is a question which was treated also, as we all happen to know, in that other form of writing for which this author expresses so decided a preference, in which the art of the poet is brought in to enforce and impress the conclusion of the philosopher. Indeed, as we proceed further with the plan of this so radical part of the subject, we shall find, that the ground indicated has everywhere been taken up on the spot by somebody, and to purpose.

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.

Section II.—THE HUSBANDRY THEREUNTO; OR, THE CURE AND CULTURE OF THE MIND.

  'Tis an unweeded garden
  That grows to seed—'

Hamlet.

But we have finished now with what he has to say here of the EXEMPLAR or science of GOOD, and its kinds, and degrees, and the comparison of them, the good that is proper to the individual, and the good that includes society. He has found much fine work on that platform of virtue, and felicity,—excellent exemplars, the purest doctrine, the loftiest virtue, tried by the scientific standard. And though he has gone behind those popular names of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like, in which these doctrines begin, to the more simple and original forms, which the doctrine of nature in general and its laws supplies, for a platform of moral science, his doctrine is large enough to include all these works, in all their excellence, and give them their true place. A reviewer so discriminating, then, so far from that disposition to scorn and censure, which he reprehends, so careful to conserve that which is good in his scientific constructions and reformations, so pure in judgment in discovering and severing that which is corrupt, a reporter so clearly scientific, who is able to maintain through all this astounding report of the deficiences in human learning, a tone so quiet, so undemonstrative, such a one deserves the more attention when he comes now to 'the art and practic part' of this great science, to which all other sciences are subordinate, and declares to us that he finds it, as a part of science, 'WANTING!' not defective, but wanting.

'Now, therefore, that we have spoken of this FRUIT of LIFE, it remaineth to speak of the HUSBANDRY that belongeth thereunto, without which part the former seemeth to be no better than a fair image or statue, which is beautiful to contemplate, but is without life and motion.'

But as this author is very far, as he confesses, from wishing to clothe himself with the honors of an Innovator,—such honors as awaited the Innovator in that time,—but prefers always to sustain himself with authority from the past, though at the expense of that lustre of novelty and originality, which goes far, as he acknowledges, in establishing new opinions,—adopting in this precisely the practices, and, generally, to save trouble, the quotations of that other philosopher, so largely quoted here, who frankly gives his reasons for his procedure, confessing that he pinches his authors a little, now and then, to make them speak to the purpose; and that he reads them with his pencil in his hand, for the sake of being able to produce respectable authority, grown gray in trust, with the moss of centuries on it, for the views which he has to set forth; culling bits as he wants them, and putting them together in his mosaics as he finds occasion; so now, when we come to this so important part of the subject, where the want is so clearly reported—where the scientific innovation is so unmistakeably propounded—we find ourselves suddenly involved in a storm of Latin quotations, all tending to prove that the thing was perfectly understood among the ancients, and that it is as much as a man's scholarship is worth to call it in question. The author marches up to the point under cover of a perfect cannonade of classics, no less than five of the most imposing of the Greek and Latin authors being brought out, for the benefit of the stunned and bewildered reader, in the course of one brief paragraph, the whole concluding with a reference to the Psalms, which nobody, of course, will undertake to call in question; whereas, in cases of ordinary difficulty, a proverb or two from Solomon is thought sufficient.

For this last writer, with his practical inspiration—with his aphorisms, or 'dispersed directions,' which the author prefers to a methodical discourse, as they best point to action—with his perpetual application of divinity to matters of common life, and to the special and respective duties, this, of all the sacred writers, is the one which he has most frequent occasion to refer to; and when, in his chapter on Policy, he brings out openly his proposal to invade the every-day practical life of men, in its apparently most unaxiomatical department, with his scientific rule of procedure—a proposal which he might not have been 'so prosperously delivered of,' if it had been made in any less considerate manner—he stops to produce whole pages of solid text from this so unquestionably conservative authority, by way of clearing himself from any suspicion of innovation.

First, then, in setting forth this so novel opinion of his, that the doctrine of the FRUIT of LIFE should include not the scientific platform of good, and its degrees and kinds only,—not the doctrine of the ideal excellence and felicity only, but the doctrine—the scientific doctrine—the scientific art of the Husbandry thereunto;—in setting forth the opinion, that that first part of moral science is but a part of it, and that as human nature is constituted, it is not enough to have a doctrine of good in its perfection, and the divinest exemplars of it; first of all he produces the subscription of no less a person than Aristotle, whose conservative faculties had proved so effectual in the dark ages, that the opinion of Solomon himself could hardly have been considered more to the purpose. 'In such full words,' he says; and seeing that the advancement of Learning has already taken us on to a place where the opinions of Aristotle, at least, are not so binding, we need not trouble ourselves with that long quotation now—'in such full words, and with such iteration, doth he inculcate this part, so saith Cicero in great commendation of Cato the second, that he had applied himself to philosophy—"Non ita disputandi causa, sed ita vivendi." And although the neglect of our times, wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the reformation of their LIFE, as Seneca excellently saith, "De partibus vitae, quisque deliberat, de summa nemo," may make this part seem superfluous, yet I must conclude with that aphorism of Hippocrates, "Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores non sentiunt, iis mens aegrotat"; they need medicines not only to assuage the disease, but to awake the sense.

'And if it be said that the cure of men's minds belongeth to sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet Moral Philosophy'—that is, in his meaning of the term, Moral Science, the new science of nature—'may be preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For, as the Psalm saith, that "the eye of the handmaid looketh perpetually towards the mistress," and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress's will; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.' That is the doctrine. That is the position of the New Science in relation to divinity, as defined by the one who was best qualified to place it—that is the mission of the New Science, as announced by the new Interpreter of Nature,—the priest of her ignored and violated laws,—on whose work the seal of that testimony which he challenged to it has already been set—on whose work it has already been written, in the large handwriting of that Providence Divine, whose benediction he invoked, 'accepted'—accepted in the councils from which the effects of life proceed.

'This part, therefore,' having thus defined his position, he continues, 'because of the excellency thereof, I cannot but find it EXCEEDING STRANGE that it is not reduced to written inquiry; the rather because it consisteth of much matter, wherein both speech and action is often conversant, and such wherein the common talk of men, which is rare, but yet cometh sometimes to pass, is wiser than their books. It is reasonable, therefore, that we propound it with the more particularity, both for the worthiness, and because we may acquit ourselves for reporting it deficient' [with such 'iteration and fulness,' with all his discrimination, does he contrive to make this point]; 'which seemeth almost incredible, and is otherwise conceived—[note it]—and is otherwise conceived and presupposed by those themselves that have written.' [They do not see that they have missed it.] 'We will, therefore, enumerate some HEADS or POINTS thereof, that it may appear the better what it is, and __whether it be extant_.'

A momentous question, truly, for the human race. That was a point, indeed, for this reporter to dare to make, and insist on and demonstrate. Doctrines of THE FRUIT of LIFE—doctrines of its perfection, exemplars of it; but no science—no science of the Culture or the Husbandry thereunto—though it is otherwise conceived and presupposed by those who have written! Yes, that is the position; and not taken in the general only, for he will proceed to propound it with more particularity—he will give us the HEADS of it—he will proceed to the articulation of that which is wanting—he will put down, before our eyes, the points and outlines of the new human science, the science of the husbandry thereto, both for the worthiness thereof, and that it may appear the better WHAT IT IS, and whether—WHETHER IT BE EXTANT. For who knows but it may be? Who knows, after all, but the points and outlines here, may prove but the track of that argument which the new Georgics will be able to hide in the play of their illustration, as Periander hid his? Who knows but the Naturalist in this field was then already on the ground, making his collections? Who knows but this new Virgil, who thought little of that resplendent and lustrous mass of matter, that old poets had taken for their glory, who seized the common life of men, and not the ideal life only, for his theme—who made the relief of the human estate, and not glory, his end, but knew that he might promise himself a fame which would make the old heroic poets' crowns grow dim,—who knows but that he—he himself—is extant, contemplating his theme, and composing its Index—claiming as yet its INDEX only? Truly, if the propounder of this argument can in any measure supply the defects which he outlines, and opens here,—if he can point out to us any new and worthy collections in that science for which he claims to break the ground—if he can, in any measure, constitute it, he will deserve that name which he aspired to, and for which he was willing to renounce his own, 'Benefactor of men,' and not of an age or nation.

But let us see where this new science, and scientific art of human culture begins,—this science and art which is to differ from those which have preceded it, as the other Baconian arts and sciences which began in the new doctrine of nature, differed from those which preceded them.

'FIRST, therefore, in this, as in all things which are practical, we ought to cast up our account, WHAT is IN OUR POWER, AND WHAT NOT? FOR the one may be dealt with by way of ALTERATION, but the other by way of APPLICATION only. The husbandman cannot command either the nature of the earth or the seasons of the weather, no more can the physician the constitution of the patient, and the variety of accidents. So in the CULTURE and CURE of THE MIND of MAN two things are without our command, POINTS OF NATURE, and POINTS of FORTUNE: for to the basis of the one, and the conditions of the other, our work is limited and tied.' That is the first step: that is where the NEW begins. There is no science or art till that step is taken.

'In these things, therefore, it is left unto us to proceed by APPLICATION. Vincenda est omnis fortuna ferendo: and so likewise—Vincenda est omnis natura ferendo. But when we speak of suffering, we do not speak of a dull neglected suffering, but of a wise and industrious suffering, which draweth and contriveth use and advantage out of that which seemeth adverse and contrary, which is that properly which we call accommodating or applying. ["Sweet are the uses of it," and "blest" indeed are they who can translate the stubbornness of fortune into so quiet and so sweet a style.]

'Now the wisdom of APPLICATION resteth principally in the exact and distinct knowledge of the precedent state or disposition, unto which we do apply.'—[This is the process which the Novum Organum sets forth with so much care], 'for we cannot fit a garment, except we first take the measure of the body.'

So then THE FIRST ARTICLE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE is—what?—'to set down sound and true distributions and descriptions of THE SEVERAL CHARACTERS AND TEMPERS of MEN'S NATURES and DISPOSITIONS, specially having regard to those differences which are most radical, in being the fountains and causes of the rest, or most frequent in concurrence or commixture (not simple differences merely, but the most frequent conjunctions), wherein it is not the handling of a few of them, in passage, the better to describe the mediocrities of virtues, that can satisfy this intention'; and he proceeds to introduce a few points, casually, as it were, and by way of illustration, but the rule of interpretation for this digest of learning, in this press of method is, that such points are never casual, and usually of primal, and not secondary import; 'for if it deserve to be considered that there are minds which are proportioned to great matters, and others to small, which Aristotle handleth, or ought to have handled, by the name of magnanimity, doth it not deserve as well to be considered, that there are minds proportioned to intend many matters, and others to few?' So that some can divide themselves, others can perchance do exactly well, but it must be in few things at once; and so there cometh to be a narrowness of mind, as well as a PUSILLANIMITY. And again, 'that some minds are proportioned to that which may be despatched at once, or within a short return of time; others to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with length of pursuit.

Jam tum tenditque fovetque.

'So that there may be fitly said to be a longanimity, which is commonly also ascribed to God as a magnanimity.' Undoubtedly, he considers this one of those differences in the natures and dispositions of men, that it is most important to note, otherwise it would not be inserted here. 'So farther deserved it to be considered by Aristotle that there is a disposition in conversation, supposing it in things which do in no sort touch or concern a man's self, to soothe and please; and a disposition contrary to contradict and cross; and deserveth it not much better to be considered that there is a disposition, not in conversation, or talk, but in matter of more serious nature, and supposing it still in things merely indifferent, to take pleasure in the good of another, and a disposition contrariwise to take distaste at the good of another, which is that properly which we call good-nature, or ill-nature, benignity or malignity.' Is not this a field for science, then, with such differences as these lying on the surface of it,—does not it begin to open up with a somewhat inviting aspect? This so remarkable product of nature, with such extraordinary 'differences' in him as these, is he the only thing that is to go without a scientific history, all wild and unbooked, while our philosophers are weeping because 'there are no more worlds to conquer,' because every stone and shell and flower and bird and insect and animal has been dragged into the day and had its portrait taken, and all its history to its secretest points scientifically detected?

'And therefore,' says this organizer of the science of nature, who keeps an eye on practice, in his speculations, and recommends to his followers to observe his lead in that respect, at least, until the affairs of the world get a little straighter than they were in his time, and there is leisure for mere speculation,—'And, therefore,' he resumes, having noted these remarkable differences in the natural and original dispositions of men,—and certainly there is no more curious thing in science than the points noted, though the careful reader will observe that they are not curious merely, but that they slant in one direction very much, and towards a certain kind of practice. 'And, therefore,' he resumes, noticing that fact, 'I cannot sufficiently marvel, that this part of knowledge, touching the several characters of natures and dispositions should be omitted both in MORALITY and POLICY, considering that it is of so great ministry and suppeditation to them BOTH.' ['The several characters.' The range of difference is limited. They are comprehensible within a science, as the differences in other species are. No wonder, then, 'that he cannot sufficiently marvel that this part of knowledge should be omitted.'] But in neither of these two departments, which he here marks out, as the ultimate field of the naturalist, and his arts, in neither of them unfortunately, lies the practice of mankind, as yet so wholly recovered from that 'lameness,' which this critical observer remarked in it in his own time, that these observations have ceased to have a practical interest.

And having thus ventured to express his surprise at this deficiency, he proceeds to note what only indications he observes of any work at all in this field, and the very quarters he goes to for these little accidental hints and beginnings of such a science, show how utterly it was wanting in those grandiloquent schools of philosophic theory, and those magisterial chairs of direction, which the author found in possession of this department in his time.

'A man shall find in the traditions of ASTROLOGY, some pretty and apt divisions of men's natures,'—so in the discussions which occur on this same point in Lear, where this part of philosophy comes under a more particular consideration, and the great ministry which it would yield to morality and policy is suggested in a different form, this same reference to the astrological observations repeatedly occurs. The Poet, indeed, discards the astrological _theory _of these natural differences in the dispositions of men, but is evidently in favour of an observation, and inquiry of some sort, into the second causes of these 'sequent effects,' and an anatomy of the living subject is in one case suggested, by a person who is suffering much from the deficiencies of science in this field, as a means of throwing light on it. 'Then let Regan be anatomised.' For in the Play,—in the poetic impersonation, which has a scientific purpose for its object, the historical extremes of these natural differences are touched, and brought into the most vivid dramatic oppositions; so as to force from the lips of the by-standers the very inquiries and suggestions which are put down here; so as to wring from the broken hearts of men—tortured and broken on the wheel, which 'blind men' call fortune,—tortured and broken on the rack of an unlearned and barbaric human society,—or, from hearts that do not break with anything that such a world can do, the imperious direction of the new science.

'Then let Regan be anatomised, and see what it is that breeds about her heart.' He has asked already, 'What is the cause of thunder?' But 'his philosopher' must not stop there. 'Is there any cause—is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?'—

                       It is the stars!
  The stars above us govern our conditions,
  Else one self mate and mate could not beget
  Such different issues.

'A man shall find in the traditions of astrology some pretty and apt divisions of men's natures,' ('let them be anatomised,' he, too, says,) 'according to the predominance of the planets;' (this is the 'spherical predominance,' which Edmund does not believe in)—'lovers of quiet, lovers of action, lovers of victory, lovers of honour, lovers of pleasure, lovers of arts, lovers of change, and so forth.' And here, also, is another very singular quarter to go to for a science which is so radical in morality; here is a place, where men have empirically hit upon the fact that it has some relation to policy. 'A man shall find in the wisest sorts of these relations which the Italians make touching conclaves, the natures of the several Cardinals, handsomely and livelily painted forth';—and what he has already said in the general, of this department, he repeats here under this division of it, that the conversation of men in respect to it, is in advance of their books;—'a man shall meet with, in every day's conference, the denominations of sensitive, dry, formal, real, humorous, "huomo di prima impressione, huomo di ultima impressione, and the like": but this is no substitute for science in a matter so radical,'—'and yet, nevertheless, this observation, wandereth in words, but is not fixed in inquiry. For the distinctions are found, many of them, but we conclude no precepts upon them'; it is induction then that we want here, after all—here also—here as elsewhere: 'the distinctions are found, many of them, but we conclude no precepts upon them: wherein our fault is the greater, because both HISTORY, POESY, and DAILY EXPERIENCE, are as goodly fields where these observations grow; whereof we make a few poesies to hold in our hands, but no man bringeth them to the confectionery that receipts might be made of them for the use of life.'

How could he say that, when there was a man then alive, who was doing in all respects, the very thing which he puts down here, as the thing which is to be done, the thing which is of such radical consequence, which is the beginning of the new philosophy, which is the beginning of the new reformation; who is making this very point in that science to which the others are subordinate?—how could he say it, when there was a man then alive, who was ransacking the daily lives of men, and putting all history and poesy under contribution for these very observations, one, too, who was concluding precepts upon them, bringing them to the confectionery, and composing receipts of them for the use of life; a scholar who did not content himself with merely reporting a deficiency so radical as this, in the human life; a man who did not think, apparently, that he had fulfilled his duty to his kind, by composing a paragraph on this subject.

And how comes it—how comes it that he who is the first to discover this so fatal and radical defect in the human science, has himself failed to put upon record any of these so vital observations? How comes it that the one who is at last able to put his finger on the spot where the mischief, where all the boundless mischief, is at work here,—where the cure must begin, should content himself with observations and collections in physical history only? How comes it that the man who finds that all the old philosophy has failed to become operative for the lack of this historical basis, who finds it so 'exceeding strange, so incredible,' who 'cannot sufficiently marvel,' that these observations should have been omitted in this science, heretofore,—the man who is so sharp upon Aristotle and others, on account of this incomprehensible oversight in their ethics,—is himself guilty of this very thing? And how will this defect in his work, compare with that same defect which he is at so much pains to note and describe in the works of others—others who did not know the value of this history? And how can he answer it to his kind, that with the views he has dared to put on record here, of the relation, the essential relation, of this knowledge to human advancement and relief, he himself has done nothing at all to constitute it, except to write this paragraph.

And yet, by his own showing, the discoverer of this field was himself the man to make collections in it; for he tells us that accidental observations are not the kind that are wanted here, and that the truth of direction must precede the severity of observation. Is this so? Whose note book is it then, that has come into our hands, with the rules and plummet of the new science running through it, where all the observation takes, spontaneously, the direction of this new doctrine of nature, and brings home all its collections, in all the lustre of their originality, in all their multiplicity, and variety, and comprehension, in all the novelty and scientific rigour of their exactness, into the channels of these defects of learning? And who was he, who thought there were more things in heaven and earth, than were dreamt of in old philosophies, who kept his tables always by him for open questions? and whose tablets—whose many-leaved tablets, are they then, that are tumbled out upon us here, glowing with 'all saws, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there.' And if aphorisms are made out of the pith and heart of sciences, if 'no man can write good aphorisms who is not sound and grounded,' what Wittenberg, what University was he bred in?

Till now there has been no man to claim this new and magnificent collection in natural science: it is a legacy that came to us without a donor;—this new and vast collection in natural history, which is put down here, all along, as that which is wanting—as that which is wanting to the science of man, to the science of his advancement to his place in nature, and to the perfection of his form,—as that which is wanting to the science of the larger wholes, and the art of their conservation. There was no man to claim it, for the boast, the very boast made on behalf of the thing for whom it was claimed—was— he did not know it was worth preserving!—he did not know that this mass of new and profoundly scientific observation—this so new and subtle observation, so artistically digested, with all the precepts concluded on it, strewn, crowded everywhere with those aphorisms, those axioms of practice, that are made out of the pith and heart of sciences—he did not know it was of any value! That is his history. That is the sum of it, and surely it is enough. Who, that is himself at all above the condition of an oyster, will undertake to say, deliberately and upon reflection, that it is not? So long as we have that one fact in our possession, it is absurd, it is simply disgraceful, to complain of any deficiency in this person's biography. There is enough of it and to spare. With that fact in our possession, we ought to have been able to dispense long ago with some, at least, of those details that we have of it. The only fault to be found with the biography of this individual as it stands at present is, that there is too much of it, and the public mind is labouring under a plethora of information.

If that fact be not enough, it is our own fault and not the author's. He was perfectly willing to lie by, till it was. He would not take the trouble to come out for a time that had not studied his philosophy enough to find it, and to put the books of it together.

Many years afterwards, the author of this work on the Advancement of Learning, saw occasion to recast it, and put it in another language. But though he has had so long a time to think about it, and though he does not appear to have taken a single step in the interval, towards the supplying of this radical deficiency in human science; we do not find that his views of its importance are at all altered. It is still the first point with him in the scientific culture of human nature,—the first point in that Art of Human Life, which is the end and term of Natural Philosophy, as he understands the limits of it. We still find the first Article of the Culture of the Mind put down, 'THE DIFFERENT NATURES OR DISPOSITIONS OF MEN,' not the vulgar propensities to VIRTUES and VICES—note it—'or perturbations and passions, but of such as are more internal and radical, which are generally neglected.' 'This is a study,' he says, which 'might afford GREAT LIGHT TO THE SCIENCES.' And again he refers us to the existing supply, such as it is, and repeats with some amplification, his previous suggestions. 'In astrological traditions, the natures and dispositions of men, are tolerably distinguished according to the influence of the planets, where some are said to be by nature formed for contemplation, others for war, others for politics.' Apparently it would be 'great ministry to policy,' if one could get the occult sources of such differences as these, so as to be able to command them at all, in the culture of men, or in the fitting of men to their places. 'But' he proceeds, 'so likewise among the poets of all kinds, we everywhere find characters of nature, though commonly drawn with excess and exceeding the limits of nature.'

Here, too, the philosopher refers us again to the common discourse of men, as containing wiser observations on this subject, than their books. 'But much the best matter of all,' he says, 'for such a treatise, may be derived from the more prudent historians, and not so well from eulogies or panegyrics, which are usually written soon after the death of an illustrious person, but much rather from a whole body of history, as often as such a person appears, for such an inwoven account gives a better description than panegyrics…. But we do not mean that such characters should be received in ethics, as perfect civil images.' They are to be subjected to an artistic process, which will bring out the radical principles in the dispositions and tempers of men in general, as the material of inexhaustible varieties of combination. He will have these historic portraits merely 'for outlines and first draughts of the images themselves, which, being variously compounded and mixed, afford all kinds of portraits, so that an artificial and accurate dissection may be made of MEN'S MINDS AND NATURES, and the secret disposition of each particular man laid open, that from the knowledge of the whole, the PRECEPTS concerning the ERRORS of THE MIND may be MORE RIGHTLY FORMED.' Who did that very thing? Who was it that stood on the spot and put that design into execution?

But this is not all; this is only the beginning of the observation and study of differences. For he would have also included in it, 'those impressions of nature which are otherwise imposed upon by the mind, by the SEX, AGE, COUNTRY, STATE OF HEALTH, MAKE OF BODY, as of beauty and deformity, and THE LIKE, which are inherent and not external:' and more, he will have included in it—in these practical Ethics he will have included—'POINTS OF FORTUNE,' and the differences that they make; he will have all the differences that this creature exhibits, under any conditions, put down; he will have his whole nature, so far as his history is able to show it, on his table; and not as it is exhibited accidentally, or spontaneously merely, but under the test of a studious inquiry, and essay; he will apply to it the trials and vexations of Art, and wring out its last confession. This is the practical doctrine of this species; this is what the author we have here in hand, calls the science of it, or the beginning of its science. This is one of the parts of science which he says is wanting. Let us follow his running glimpse of the points here, then, and see whether it is extant here, too, and whether there is anything to justify all this preparation in bringing it in, and all this exceeding marvelling at the want of it.

'And again those differences which proceed from FORTUNE, as SOVEREIGNTY, NOBILITY, OBSCURE BIRTH, RICHES, WANT, MAGISTRACY, PRIVATENESS, PROSPERITY, ADVERSITY, constant fortune, variable fortune, rising per saltum, per gradus, and the like.' These are articles that he puts down for points in his table of natural history, points for the collection of instances; this is the tabular preparation for induction here; for he does not conclude his precepts on the popular, miscellaneous, accidental history. That will do well enough for books. It won't do to get out axioms of practice from such loose material. They have to ring with the proof of another kind of condensation. All his history is artificial, prepared history more select and subtle and fit than the other kind, he says,—prepared on purpose; perhaps we shall come across his tables, some day, with these very points on them, filled in with the observations of one, so qualified by the truth of direction to make them 'severe'. It would not be strange, for he gives us to understand that he is not altogether idle in this part of his Instauration, and that he does not think it enough to lay out work for others, without giving an occasional specimen of his own, of the thing which he notes as deficient, and proposes to have done, so that there may be no mistake about it as to what it really is; for he appears to think there is some danger of that. Even here, he produces a few illustrations of his meaning, that it may appear the better what is, and whether it be extant.

'And therefore we see, that Plautus maketh it a wonder to see an OLD man beneficent. St. Paul concludeth that severity of discipline was to be used to the Cretans, ("increpa eos dure"), upon the disposition of THEIR COUNTRY. "Cretenses semper mendaces, malæ bestize, ventres pigri." Sallust noteth that it is usual with KINGS to desire contradictories; "Sed plerumque, regiæ voluntates, ut vehementes sunt sic mobiles saepeque ipsæ sibi adversæ." Tacitus observeth how rarely THE RAISING OF THE FORTUNE mendeth the disposition. "Solus Vespasianus mutatus in melius." Pindar maketh an observation that great and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth men. So the Psalm showeth it more easy to keep a measure in the enjoying of fortune, than in the increase of fortune; "Divitiæ si affluant nolite cor apponere."' 'These observations, and the like,'—what book is it that has so many of 'the like'?—'I deny not but are touched a little by Aristotle as in passage in his Rhetorics, and are handled in some scattered discourses.' One would think it was another philosopher, with pretensions not at all inferior, but professedly very much, and altogether superior to those of Aristotle, whose short-comings were under criticism here; 'but they (these observations) were never INCORPORATED into moral philosophy, to which they do ESSENTIALLY appertain, as THE KNOWLEDGE of THE DIVERSITY of GROUND and MOULDS doth to agriculture, and the knowledge of the DIVERSITY of COMPLEXIONS and CONSTITUTIONS doth to the physician; except'—note it—'except we mean to follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the same medicines to all patients.'

Truly this does appear to give us some vistas of a science, and a 'pretty one,' for these particulars and illustrations are here, that we may see the better what it is, and whether it be extant. That is the question. And it happens singularly enough, to be a question just as pertinent now, as it was when the philosopher put it on his paper, two hundred and fifty years ago.

There is the first point, then, in the table of this scientific history, with its subdivisions and articulations; and here is the second, not less essential. 'Another article of this knowledge is the inquiry touching THE AFFECTIONS; for, as in medicining the body,'—and it is a practical science we are on here; it is the cure of the mind, and not a word for show,—'as in medicining the body, it is in order, first, to know the divers complexions and constitutions; secondly, the diseases; and, lastly, the cures; so in medicining of the mind,—after knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures, it followeth, in order, to know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections.' And we shall find, under the head of the medicining of the body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which could be better said there than here, because the wrath of professional dignitaries,—the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others. For though 'the Doctors' in that department, did manage, in the dark ages, to possess themselves of certain weapons of their own, which are said to have proved, on the whole, sufficiently formidable, they were not, as it happened, armed by the State as the others then were; and it was usually discretionary with the patient to avail himself, or not, of their drugs, and receipts, and surgeries; whereas, in the diseased and suffering soul, no such discretion was tolerated. The drugs were indeed compounded by the State in person, and the executive stood by, axe in hand, to see that they were taken, accompanying them with such other remedies as the case might seem to require; the most serious operations being constantly performed without ever taking 'the sense' of the patient.

So we must not be surprised to find that this author who writes under such liabilities ventures to bring out the pith of his trunk of sciences,—that which sciences have in common,—the doctrine of the nature of things,—what he calls 'prima philosophia,' when his learned sock is on—a little more strongly and fully in that branch of it, with a glance this way, with a distinct intimation that it is common to the two, and applies here as well. There, too, he complains of the ignorance of anatomy, which is just the complaint he has been making here, and that, for want of it, 'they quarrel many times with the humours which are not in fault, the fault being in the very frame and mechanic of the part, which cannot be removed by medicine alterative, but must be accommodated and palliated by diet and medicines familiar.' There, too, he reports the lack of medicinal history, and gives directions for supplying it, just such directions as he gives here, but that which makes the astounding difference in the reading of these reports to-day, is, that the one has been accepted, and the other has not; nay, that the one has been read, and the other has not: for how else can we account for the fact, that men of learning, in our time, come out and tell us deliberately, not merely that this man's place in history, is the place of one who devoted his genius to the promotion of the personal convenience and bodily welfare of men, but, that it is the place of one who gave up the nobler nature, deliberately, on principle, and after examination and reflection, as a thing past help from science, as a thing lying out of the range of philosophy? How else comes it, that the critic to-day tells us, dares to tell us, that this leader's word to the new ages of advancement is, that there is no scientific advancement to be looked for here?—how else could he tell us, with such vivid detail of illustration, that this innovator and proposer of advancement, never intended his Novum Organum to be applied to the cure of the moral diseases, to the subduing of the WILL and the AFFECTIONS,—but thought, because the old philosophy had failed, there was no use in trying the new;—because the philosophy of words, and preconceptions, had failed, the philosophy of observation and application, the philosophy of ideas as they are in nature, and not as they are in the mind of man merely, the philosophy of laws, must fail also;—because ARGUMENT had failed, ART was hopeless;—because syllogisms, based on popular, unscientific notions were of no effect, practical axioms based on the scientific knowledge of natural causes, and on their specific developments, were going to be of none effect also? If the passages which are now under consideration, had been so much as read, how could a learned man, in our time, tell us that the author of the 'Advancement of Learning' had come with any such despairful word as that to us,—to tell us that the new science he was introducing upon this Globe theatre, the science of laws in nature, offered to Divinity and Morality no aid,—no ministry, no service in the cure of the mind? And the reason why they have not been read, the reason why this part of the 'Advancement of Learning,' which is the principal part of it in the intention of its author, has been overlooked hitherto is, that the Art of Tradition, which is described, here—the art of the Tradition, and delivery of knowledges which are foreign from opinions received, was in the hand of its inventor, and able to fulfil his pleasure.

After the knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures then, the next article of this inquiry is the DISEASES and INFIRMITIES of the MIND, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of THE AFFECTIONS. For as the ancient politicians in popular estates were wont to compare the people to the sea, and the orators to the winds, because the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds did not move and trouble it; so the people would be peaceable and tractable, if the seditious orators did not set them in working and agitation; so it may be fitly said, that the mind, in the nature thereof, would be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did not put it into tumult and perturbation. And here, again, I find, strange as before, that Aristotle should have written divers volumes of Ethics, and never handled THE AFFECTIONS, which is the principal subject thereof; and yet, in his Rhetorics, where they are considered but collaterally, and in a second degree, as they may be moved by speech, he findeth place for them, and handleth them well for the quantity, but where their true place is, he permitteth them. (Very much the method of procedure adopted by the philosopher who composes that criticism; who also finds a place for the affections in passing, where they are considered collaterally, and in a second degree, and for the quantity, he handleth them well, and who knows how to bring his Rhetorics to bear on them, as well as the politicians in popular estates did of old, though for a different end; but where their true place is, he, too, permitteth them; and, in his Novum Organum, he keeps so clear of them, and permits them so fully, that the critics tell us he never meant it should touch them.) 'For it is not his disputations about pleasure and pain that can satisfy this inquiry, no more than he that should generally handle the nature of light can be said to handle the nature of colours; for pleasure and pain are to the particular affections as light is to the particular colours.' Is not this a man for particulars, then? And when he comes to the practical doctrine,—to the art—to the knowledge, which is power,—will he not have particulars here, as well as in those other arts which are based on them? Will he not have particulars here, as well as in chemistry and natural philosophy, and botany and mineralogy; or, when it comes to practice here, will he be content, after all, with the old line of argument, and elegant disquisition, with the old generalities and subtleties of definition, which required no collection of particulars, which were independent of observation, or for which the popular accidental observation sufficed? 'Better travels, I suppose, had the Stoics taken in this argument, as far as I can gather by that which we have at secondhand. But yet it is like it was after their manner, rather in subtlety of definitions, which, in a subject of this nature, are but curiosities, than in ACTIVE and AMPLE DESCRIPTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS. So, likewise, I find some particular writings of an elegant nature, touching some of the affections; as of anger, of comfort upon adverse accidents, of tenderness of countenance, and others.' And such writings were not confined to the ancients. Some of us have seen elegant writings of this nature, published under the name of the philosopher who composes this criticism, and suggests the possibility of essays of a more lively and experimental kind, and who seems to think that the treatment should be ample, as well as active.

'But the POETS and WRITERS of HISTORY are the best Doctors of this knowledge, where we may find, painted forth with great life, how affections are kindled and incited, and how pacified and refrained;'—certainly, that is the kind of learning we want here:—'and how, again, contained from act and further degree'—very useful knowledge, one would say, and it is a pity it should not be 'diffused,' but it is not every poet who can be said to have it;—'how they disclose themselves—how they work—how they vary;'—this is the science of them clearly, whoever has it;—'how they gather and fortify—how they are enwrapped one within another;'—yes, there is one Poet, one Doctor of this science, in whom we can find that also;—'and how they do fight and encounter one with another, and other like particularities.' We all know what Poet it is, to whose lively and ample descriptions of the affections and passions—to whose particularities—that description best applies, and in what age of the world he lived; but no one, who has not first studied them as scientific exhibitions, can begin to perceive the force—the exclusive force—of the reference. 'Amongst the which, this last is of special use in MORAL and CIVIL matters: how, I say, to set affection against affection, and to master one by another, even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird, which otherwise, percase, we could not so easily recover.' The Poet has not only exhibited this with very voluminous and lively details, but he, too, has concluded his precept;—

  'One fire burns out another's burning'—
  'One desperate grief cures with another's languish'—
  'Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
  And the rank poison of the old will die.'
                     Romeo and Juliet.

  'As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity;
  And pity to the general wrong of Rome
  Hath, done this deed _on Cæsar.'
                                Julius Cæsar.

for it is the larger form, which is the worthier, in that new department of mixed mathematics which this philosopher was cultivating.

  'One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail:
  Rights by rights fouler, strength by strengths do fail.'
                                        Coriolanus.

And for history of cases, see the same author in Hamlet and other plays. [This philosopher's prose not unfrequently contains the key of the poetic paraphrase; and the true reading of the line, which has occasioned so much perplexity to the critics, may, perhaps, be suggested by this connection—'to set affection against affection, and to master one by another, even as we hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird.']

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.—ALTERATION.

          Hast thou not learn'd me how
  To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so,
  That our great king himself doth woo me oft
  For my confections? Having thus far proceeded,
  (Unless thou think'st me devilish,) is't not meet
  That I did amplify my judgment in
  Other conclusions? Cymbeline.

Thus far, it is the science of Man, as he is, that is propounded. It is a scientific history of the Mind and its diseases, built up from particulars, as other scientific histories are; and having disposed, in this general manner, of that which must be dealt with by way of application, those points of nature and fortune, which he puts down as the basis and conditions to which all our WORK is limited and tied, we come now to that which IS within our power—to those points which we can deal with by way of ALTERATION, and not of application merely; and yet points which are operating perpetually on the human character, changing the will and appetite, and altering the conduct, by laws not less sure than those which operate in the occult processes of nature, and determine differences behind the scene, or out of the range of our volition.

And if after having duly weighed the hints we have already received of the importance of the subject, we do not any longer suffer ourselves to be put off the track, or bewildered by the first rhetorical effect of the sentence in which these agencies are introduced to our attention,—if we look at that rapid series of words, as something else than the points of a period, if we stop long enough to recover from the confusion which a mere string of names, a catalogue or table of contents, crowded into single sentence, will, of necessity, create,—if we stop long enough to see that each one of these words is a point in the table of a new science, we shall perceive at once, that after having made all this large allowance, this new allowance for that which is without our power, there is still a very, very large margin of operation, and discovery, and experiment left; that there is still a large scope of alteration left—alteration in man as he is. For we shall find that these forces which are within our power, are the very ones which are making, and always have been making, man what he is. Running our eye along this table of forces and supplies, with that understanding of its uses, we shall perceive at once, that we have the most ample material here, if it were but scientifically handled; untried, inexhaustible means and appliances for raising man to the height of his pattern and original, to the stature of a perfect man.

It is not the material of this regimen of growth and advancement, it is not the Materia Medica that is wanting,—it is the science of it. It is the natural history of these forces, with the precepts scientifically concluded on them, that is wanting. The appliances are here; the scientific application of them remains to be made, and until these have been tried, it is too early to pronounce on the case; until these have been tried, just as other precepts of the new science have been, it is too soon to say that that science of nature,—that knowledge of laws—that foreknowledge of effects, which operates so remedially in all other departments of the human life, is without application, is of no efficiency here; until these have been tried it is too soon to say that the science of nature is not what the man who brought it in on this Globe theatre declared it to be, the handmaid of Divinity, the intelligent handmaid and minister of religion, to whose discretion in the economy of Providence, much, much has evidently been left.

And it was no assumption in this man to claim, as he did claim, a divine and providential authority for this procedure. And those who intelligently fulfil their parts in this great enterprise for man's relief, and the Creator's glory, have just as clear a right to say, as those of old who fulfilled with such means and lights, and inspirations as their time gave them, their part in the plan of the human advancement, 'it is God who worketh in us.'

'Now come we to those points which are within our command, and have force and operation upon the mind, to affect the will and appetite, and to alter manners: wherein they ought to have handled CUSTOM, EXERCISE, HABIT, EDUCATION, EXAMPLE, IMITATION, EMULATION, COMPANY, FRIENDS, PRAISE, REPROOF, EXHORTATION, FAME, LAWS, BOOKS, STUDIES: these, as they have determinate use in moralities, from these the mind SUFFERETH; and of these are such receipts and regiments compounded and described, as may serve to recover or preserve the health and good estate of the mind, as far as pertaineth to human medicine; of which number we will insist upon some one or two, as an example of the rest, because it were too long to prosecute all.' But the careful reader perceives in that which follows, that the treatment of this so vital subject, though all that the author has to say upon it here, is condensed into these brief paragraphs, is not by any means so miscellaneous, as this introduction and 'the first cogitation' on it, might, perhaps, have prepared him to find it.

To be permitted to handle these forces openly, in the form of literary report, and recommendation, would, no doubt, have seemed to this inventor of sciences, in his day no small privilege. But there was another kind of experiment in them which he aspired to. He wished to take these forces in hand more directly, and compound recipes, with them, and other 'regiments' and cures. For by nature and carefullest study he was a Doctor in this degree and kind—and a man thus fitted, inevitably seeks his sphere. Very unlearned in this science of human nature which he has left us,—much wanting in analysis must he be, who can find in the persistent determination of such a man to possess himself of places of trust and authority, only the vulgar desire for courtly distinction, and eagerness for the paraphernalia of office. This man was not wanting in any of the common natural sentiments; the private and particular nature was large in him, and that good to which he gives the preference in his comparison of those exclusive aims and enjoyments, is 'the good which is active, and not that which is passive'; both as it tends to secure that individual perpetuity which is the especial craving of men thus specially endowed, and on account of 'that affection for variety and proceeding' which is also common to men, and specially developed in such men,—an affection which the goods of the passive nature are not able to satisfy. 'But in enterprises, pursuits and purposes of life, there is much variety whereof men are sensible with pleasure in their inceptions, progressions, recoils, re-integration, approaches and attainings to their ends.' And he gives us a long insight into his own particular nature and history in that sentence. He is careful to distinguish this kind of good from the good of society, 'though in some cases it hath an incident to it. For that gigantine state of mind which possesseth the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite other in smaller model, who would have all men happy or unhappy, as they were their friends or enemies, and would give form to the world according to their own humours, which is the true theomachy, pretendeth and aspireth to active good though it recedeth farthest from that good of society, which we have determined to be the greater.'

In no troubler or benefactor of the world, on the largest scale, in no theomachist of any age, whether intelligent and benevolent, or demoniacal and evil, had this nature which he here defines so clearly, ever been more largely incorporated, or more effectively armed. But in him this tendency to personal aggrandisement was overlooked, and subordinated by the larger nature,—by the intelligence which includes the whole, and is able to weigh the part with it, and by the sentiments which enforce or anticipate intelligent decision.

Both these facts must be taken into the account, if we would read his history fairly. For he composed for himself a plan of living, in which this naturally intense desire for an individual perpetuity and renown, and this love of action and enterprise for its own sake, was sternly subordinated to the noblest ends of living, to the largest good of his kind, to the divine and eternal law of duty, to the relief of man's estate and the Creator's glory. And without making any claim on his behalf, which it would be unworthy to make for one to whom the truth was dearer than the opinions of men; it may be asserted, that whatever errors of judgment or passion, we may find, or think we find in him, these ends were with him predominant, and shaped his course.

He was not naturally a man of letters, but a man of action, intensely impelled to action, and it was because he was forbidden to fulfil his enterprise in person, because he had to write letters of direction to those to whom he was compelled to entrust it, because he had to write letters to the future, and leave himself and his will in letters, that letters became, in his hands, practical. He, too, knew what it was to be compelled 'to unpack his heart in words' when deeds should have expressed it.

But even words are forbidden him here. After all the pains he has taken to show us what the deficiency is which he is reporting here, and what the art and science which he is proposing, he can only put down a few paragraphs on the subject, casually, as it were, in passing. Of all these forces which have operation on the mind, and with which scientific appliances for the human mind should be compounded, he can only 'insist upon some one or two as an example of the rest.'

That was all that a writer, who was at the same time a public man, could venture on,—a writer who had once been under violent political suspicion, and was still eagerly watched, and especially by one class of public functionaries, who seemed to feel, that with all his deference to their claims, there was something there not quite friendly to them, this was all that he could undertake to insist upon 'in that place.' But a writer who had the advantage of being already defunct—a writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and who was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his place, could of course manage this part of the subject differently. He would not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps. And if he had at the same time the advantage of a foreign name and seignorie, he could come out in England at this very crisis with the freest exhibitions of the points which are here only indicated. He could even put them down openly in his table of contents, every one of them, and make them the titles of his chapters.

There was a work published in England, in that age, in which these forces, of which only the catalogue is inserted here, these forces which are in our power, which we can alter, forces from which the mind suffereth, which have operation upon the mind to affect the will and appetite, are directly dealt with in the most subtle and artistic manner, in the form of literary essay; and in the bolder chapters, the author's observations and criticisms are clearly put down; his scientific suggestions of alterations and new compounds, his scientific doctrine of careful alterations, his scientific doctrine of surgery, and adaptation of regimen, and cure to different ages, and differing social conditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the English public swallows it without any difficulty at all, and perceives nothing disagreeable or dangerous in it.

This work contains, also, some of those other parts of the new science which have just been reported as wanting, parts which are said by the inventor of this science, to have a great ministry to policy, as well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it is here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever to considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at the subject from any less earnest and practical—from any less elevated point of view.

Of course, it was perfectly competent for a Gascon whose gasconading was understood to be without any motive beyond that of vanity and egotism, and without any incidence to effects, to say, in the way of mere foolery, many things which an English statesman could not then so well endorse. And in case his personality were called in question, there was the mountain to retreat to, and the saint of the mount, in whose behalf the goose is annually sacrificed by the English people, the saint under whose shield and name the great English philosopher sleeps. In fact, this personage is not so limited in his quarters as the proper name might seem to imply. One does not have to go to the south of France to find him. But it is certainly remarkable, that a work in Natural History, composed by the inventors of the science of observation, and the first in the field, containing their observations in that part of the field too, in which the deficiency appeared to them most important, should have been able to pass so long under so thin a disguise, under this merest gauze of egotism, unchallenged.

These essaies, however, have not been without result. They have been operating incessantly, ever since, directly upon the leading minds, and indirectly upon the minds of men in general, (for many who had never read the book, have all their lives felt its influence), and tending gradually to the clearing up of the human intelligence in 'the practice part of life' in general, and to the development of a common sense on the topics here handled, much more creditable to the species than anything that the author could find stirring in his age. When the works which the propounders of the Great Instauration took pains to get composed by way of filling up their plan of it, a little, corn to be collected and bound, this one will have to find its place among them.

But here, at home, in his own historical name and figure, in his own person, instead of conducting his magnificent scientific experiments on that scale which the genius of his activity, and the largeness of his good will, would have prescribed to him, instead of founding his House of Solomon as he would have founded it, (as that proximity to the throne, when it was the throne of an absolute monarch might have enabled him to found it, if the monarch he found there had been, indeed, what he claimed to be, a lover of learning), instead of such large help and countenance as that of the king, to whom this great proposition was addressed, the philosopher of that time could not even venture on a literary essay in this field under that protection; it was as much as he could do, it was as much as his favor with the king was worth, to slip in here, in this conspicuous place, where it would be sure to be found, sooner or later, the index of his essaies.

'It would be too long,' he says, 'to inquire here into the operation of all these social forces that are making men, that are doing more to make them what they are, than nature herself is doing,' for, 'know thou,' the Poet of this Philosophy says, 'know thou MEN ARE as the TIME IS.' He has included here, in these points which he would have scientifically handled, that which makes times, that which can be altered, that which Advancements of Learning, however, set on foot at first, are sure in the end to alter. 'We will insist upon some one or two as an example of the rest.' And we find that the points he resumes to speak of here, are, indeed, points of primary consequence; social forces that do indeed need a scientific control, effects reported, and precepts concluded. Custom and Habit, Books and Studies, and then a kind of culture, which he says, 'seemeth to be more accurate and elaborate than the rest,' which we find, upon examination, to be a strictly religious culture, and lastly the method to which he gives the preference, as the most compendious and summary in its formative or reforming influence, 'the electing and propounding unto a man's self good and virtuous ends of his life, such as may be in a reasonable sort within his compass to attain.' He says enough under these heads to show the difficulty of writing on a subject where the science has been reported wanting, while the 'Art and Practice' is prescribed.

He lays much stress on CUSTOM and HABIT, and gives some few precepts for its management, 'made out of the pith and heart of sciences,' but he speaks briefly, and chiefly for the purpose of indicating the value he attaches to this point, for he concludes his precepts and observations on it, thus: 'Many other axioms there are, touching the managing of exercise and custom, which being so conducted,— scientifically conducted—do prove, indeed ANOTHER NATURE' ['almost, can change the stamp of nature,'—is Hamlet's word on this point]; 'but being governed by chance, doth commonly prove but AN APE of nature, and bringeth forth that which is lame and counterfeit.' For not less than that is the difference between the scientific administration of these things, from which the mind suffereth, and the blind, hap-hazard one.

But in proceeding to the next point on which he ventures to offer some suggestions, that of BOOKS and STUDIES, we shall do well to take with us that general doctrine of cure, founded upon the nature of things, which he produces under the head of the cure of the body, with a distinct allusion to its proper application here. And it is well to observe how exactly the tone of the criticism in this department, chimes in with that of the criticism already reported here. 'In the consideration of the cures of diseases, I find a deficiency in the receipts of propriety respecting the particular cures of diseases; for the physicians have frustrated the fruit of tradition, and experience, by their magistralities in adding and taking out, and changing quid pro quo in their receipts at their pleasure, COMMANDING SO OVER THE MEDICINE, as the medicine cannot command over the disease:' that is a piece of criticism which appears to belong to the general subject of cure; and here is one which he himself stops to apply to a different branch of it.

'But, lest I grow more particular than is agreeable, either to my intention or proportion, I will conclude this part with the note of one deficiency more, which seemeth to me of GREATEST consequence, which is, that the prescripts in use are too COMPENDIOUS TO ATTAIN THEIR END; for, to my understanding, it is a vain and flattering opinion to think any medicine can be so sovereign, or so happy, as that the receipt or use of it can work any great effect upon the body of man: it were a strange speech, which spoken, or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he were by nature subject; it is order, pursuit, sequence, and interchange of application WHICH IS MIGHTY IN NATURE,' (and it is power we are inquiring for here) 'which, although it requires more exact knowledge in prescribing, and more precise obedience in observing, yet it is recompensed with the magnitude of effects.'

Possessed now of his general theory of cure, we shall better understand his particular suggestions in regard to these medicines and alteratives of the mind and manners, which are here under consideration.

'So if we should handle BOOKS and STUDIES,' he continues, having handled custom and habit a little and their powers, in that profoundly suggestive manner, 'so if we should handle books and studies, and what influence and operation they have upon manners, are there not divers precepts of great caution and direction?' A question to be asked. And he goes on to make some further enquiries and suggestions which have considerably more in them than meets the ear. They appear to involve the intimation that many of our books on moral philosophy, come to us from the youthful and poetic ages of the world, ages in which sentiment and spontaneous conviction supplied the place of learning; for the accumulations of ages of experiment and conclusion, tend to maturity and sobriety of judgment in the race, as do the corresponding accumulations in the individual experience and memory. 'And the reason why books' (which are adapted to the popular belief in these early and unlearned ages) 'are of so little effect towards honesty of life, is that they are not read and revolved—revolved—as they should be, by men in mature years.' But unlearned people are always beginners. And it is dangerous to put them upon the task, or to leave them to the task of remodelling their beliefs and adapting them to the advancing stages of human development. He, too, thinks it is easier to overthrow the old opinions, than it is to discriminate that which is to be conserved in them. The hints here are of the most profoundly cautious kind—as they have need to be—but they point to the danger which attends the advancement of learning when rashly and unwisely conducted, and the danger of introducing opinions which are in advance of the popular culture; dangers of which the history of former times furnished eminent examples and warnings then; warnings which have since been repeated in modern instances. He proposes that books shall be tried by their effects on manners. If they fail to produce HONESTY OF LIFE, and if certain particular forms of truth which were once effective to that end, in the course of a popular advancement, or change of any kind, have lost that virtue, let them be examined; let the translation of them be scientifically accomplished, so that the main truth be not lost in the process, so that men be not compelled by fearful experience to retrace their steps in search of it, even, perhaps, to the resuming of the old, dead form again, with all its cumbrous inefficacies; for the lack of a leadership which should have been able to discriminate for them, and forestall this empirical procedure.

Speaking of books of Moral science in general, and their adaptation to different ages, he says—'Did not one of the fathers, in great indignation, call POESY "vinum demonum," because it increaseth temptations, perturbations, and vain opinions? Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, wherein he saith, "That young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy," because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience?' [And our Poet, we may remark in passing, seems to have been struck with that same observation; for by a happy coincidence, he appears to have it in his commonplace book too, and he has not only made a note of it, as this one has, but has taken the trouble to translate it into verse. He does, indeed, go a little out of his way in time, to introduce it; but he is a poet who is fond of an anachronism, when it happens to serve his purpose—

  'Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
  And on the cause and question now in hand
  Have glozed; but, superficially, not much
  Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
  Unfit to hear moral philosophy.']

The question is, then, as to the adaptations of forms, of moral instruction to different ages of the human development. For when a decided want of 'honesty of life' shows itself, in any very general manner, under the fullest operation of any given doctrine which is the received one, it is time for men of learning to begin to look about them a little; and it is a time when directions so cautious as these should not by any means be despised by those on whom the responsibility of direction, here, is in any way devolved.

'And doth it not hereof come, that those excellent books and discourses of the ancient writers, whereby they have persuaded unto virtue most effectually, by representing her in state and majesty, and popular opinions against virtue in their parasites' coats, fit to be scorned and derided, are of so little effect towards honesty of life—

[Polonius.—Honest, my lord? Hamlet.—Ay, honest.]

'—because they are not read and revolved by men, in their mature and settled years, but confined almost to boys and beginners? But is it not true, also, that much less young men are fit auditors of matters of policy till they have been thoroughly seasoned in religion and morality, lest their judgments be corrupted, and made apt to think that there are no true differences of things, but according to utility and fortune.'

By putting in here two or three of those 'elegant sentences' which the author has taken out from their connections in his discourses, and strung together, by way of making more perceptible points and stronger impressions with them, according to that theory of his in regard to aphorisms already quoted, we shall better understand this passage, for the connection in which it is introduced here tends somewhat to involve and obscure the meaning. 'In removing superstitions,' he tells us, then, in this so pointed manner, 'care should be had the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when the people is the physician.' 'Things will have their first or second agitation.' [Prima Philosophia—pith and heart of sciences: the author of this aphorism is sound and grounded.] 'If they be not tossed on the waves of counsel, they will be tossed on the waves of fortune.' That last 'tossing' requires a second cogitation. There might have been a more direct way of expressing it; but this author prefers similes in such cases, he tells us. But here is more on the same subject. 'It were good that men in their RENOVATIONS follow the example of time itself, which, indeed, innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived;' and 'Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.' These are the sentiments and opinions of that man of science, whose works we are now opening, not caring under what particular name or form we may find them. One or two of these observations do not sound at all like prescience now; but at the time when they were given out as precepts of direction, it required that acquaintance with the nature of things in general which is derived from a large and studious observation of particulars, to put them into a form so oracular.

But this general suggestion with regard to our books of moral philosophy, and their adaptation to the largest effect on the will and appetite under the given conditions of time—conditions which involve the instruction of masses of men, in whom affection predominates— men in whom judgment is not yet matured—men not attempered with the time and experience of ages, by means of those preservations of it which the traditions of learning make; beside this general suggestion in regard to these so potent instrumentalities in manners, he has another to make, one in which this general proposition to substitute learning for preconception in practical matters,—at least, as far as may be, comes out again in the form of criticism, and of a most specially significant kind. It is a point which he touches lightly here; but one which he touches again and again in other parts of this work, and one which he resumes at large in his practical ethics.

'Again, is there not a caution likewise to be given of the doctrines of moralities themselves, some kinds of them, lest they make men too precise, arrogant, incompatible, as Cicero saith of Cato, in Marco Catone: "Haec bona quae videmus divina et egregia ipsius scitote esse propria: quae nonnunquam requirimus, ea sunt omnia non a natura, sed a magistro?"'

And after glancing at the specific subject of remedial agencies which are within the scope of our revision and renovation, under some other heads, concluding with that which is of all others the most compendious and summary, and again the most noble and effectual to the reducing of the mind unto virtue and good estate, he concludes this whole part, this part in which the points and outlines of the new science—that radical human science which he has dared to report deficient, come out with such masterly grasp and precision,—he concludes this whole part in the words which follow,—words which it will take the author's own doctrine of interpretation to open. For this is one of those passages which he commends to the second cogitation of the reader, and he knew if 'the times that were nearer' were not able to read it, 'the times that were farther off' would find it clear enough.

'Therefore I do conclude this part of Moral Knowledge concerning the culture and regiment of the Mind; wherein if any man, considering the facts thereof which I have enumerated, do judge that my labour is to COLLECT INTO AN ART OR SCIENCE, that which hath been pretermitted by others, as matters of common sense and experience, he judgeth well.' The practised eye will detect on the surface here, some marks of that style which this author recommends in such cases: especially where such strong pre-occupations exist; already we perceive that this is one of those sentences which is addressed to the skill of the interpreter; in which, by means of a careful selection and collocation of words, two or more meanings are conveyed under one form of expression. And it may not be amiss to remember here, that this is a style, according to the author's own description of it elsewhere, in which the more involved and enigmatical passages sometimes admit of several readings, each having its own pertinence and value, according to the mental condition of the reader; and that it is a style in which even the delicate, collateral sounds, that are distinctly included in this art of tradition, must come in sometimes in the more critical places, in aid of the interpretation. 'But what if it be an harangue whereon his life depends?'

l.—If any man considering the parts thereof, which I have enumerated, do judge that MY LABOUR IS to collect into an ART or SCIENCE that which hath been PRETER-MITTED by others, he judgeth well.

2.—If any man do judge that my labour is to collect into an ART or SCIENCE that which hath been pretermitted by others AS MATTERS OF COMMON SENSE and EXPERIENCE, he judgeth well.

3.—If any man considering the PARTS THEREOF WHICH I HAVE ENUMERATED, do judge that my labor is to collect into an ART or SCIENCE, that which hath been pretermitted by OTHERS, as matters of common sense and experience, he judgeth well.

But if there be any doubt, about the more critical of these meanings, let us read on, and we shall find the criticism of this great and greatest proposition, the proposition to substitute learning for preconception, in the main department of human practice, brought out with all the emphasis and significance which becomes the close of so great a period in sciences, and not without a little flowering of that rhetoric, in which beauty is the incident, and discretion is more than eloquence.

'But as Philocrates sported with Demosthenes you may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and I drink wine. And like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep—

  Sunt geminae somni portae, quarum altera fertur
  Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris:
  Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
  Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes.

'So if we put on sobriety and attention we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the more pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams.'

METHOD OF CONVEYING THE WISDOM OF THE MODERNS

  It is a basilisk unto mine eyes,—
  Kills me to look on't,

  This fierce abridgment
  Hath to it circumstantial branches, which
  Distinction should be rich in.

Cymbeline.

This whole subject is introduced here in its natural and inevitable connection with that special form of Delivery and Tradition which it required. For we find that connection indicated here, where the matter of the tradition, and that part of it which specially requires this form is treated, and we find the form itself specified here incidentally, but not less unmistakeably, that it is in that part of the work where the Art of Tradition is the primary subject. In bestowing on 'the parts' of this science, which the propounder of it is here enumerating—that consideration which the concluding paragraph invites to them, we find, not only the fields clearly marked out, in which he is labouring to collect into an art and science, that which has hitherto been conducted without art or science, and left to common sense and experience, the fields in which these goodly observations grow, of which men have hitherto been content to gather a poesy to carry in their hands,—(observations which he will bring home to his confectionery, in such new and amazing prodigality and selection), but we find also the very form which these new collections, with the new precepts concluded on them, would naturally take, and that it is one in which these new parts of the new science and its art, which he is labouring to constitute, might very well come out, at such a time, without being recognised as philosophy at all,—might even be brought out by other men without science, as matters of common sense and experience; though the world would have to concede, and the longer the study went on, the more it would be inclined to concede, that the common sense and experience was upon the whole somewhat uncommon, and some who perceived its reaches, without finding that it was art or science, would even be inclined to call it preternatural.

And when he tells us, that the first step in the New Science is the dissection of character, and the production and exhibition of certain scientifically constructed portraits, by means of which this may be effected, portraits which shall represent in their type-form by means of 'illustrious instances,' the several characters and tempers of men's natures and dispositions 'that the secret disposition of each particular man may be laid open, and from a knowledge of the whole, the precepts concerning the cures of the mind may be more rightly concluded,'—surely here, to a man of learning, the form,—the form in which these artistically composed diagrams will be found, is not doubtfully indicated.

And when, at the next step, we come to the history of 'the affections,' and are told distinctly that here philosophy, the philosophy of practice, must needs descend from the abstraction, and generalities of the ancient morality, for those observations and experiments which it is the legitimate business of the poet to conduct, though the poet, in conducting these observations and experiments, has hitherto been wanting in the rigor which science requires, when we are told that philosophy must inevitably enter here, that department of learning, of which the true poet is 'the doctor,'—surely here at least, we know where we are. Certainly it is not the fault of the author of the Great Instauration if we do not know what department of learning the collections of the new learning which he claims to have made will be found in—if found at all, must be found in. It is not his fault if we do not know in what department to look for the applications of the Novum Organum to those 'noblest subjects' on which he preferred to try its powers, he tells us. Here at least—the Index to these missing books—is clear enough.

But in his treatment of Poetry, as one of the three grand departments of Human Learning, for not less noble than that is the place he openly assigns to it, though that open and primary treatment of it, is superficially brief, he contrives to insert in it, his deliberate, scientific preference of it, as a means of effective scientific exhibition, to either of the two graver parts, which he has associated with it—to history on the one hand, as corresponding to the faculty of memory, and to philosophy or mere abstract statement on the other, as corresponding to the faculty of Reason; for it is that great radical department of learning, which is referred to the Imagination, that constitutes in this distribution of learning the third grand division of it. He shows us here, in a few words, under different points and heads, what masterly facilities, what indispensable, incomparable powers it has for that purpose. There is a form of it, 'which is as A VISIBLE HISTORY, and is an image of actions as if they were present, as history is, of actions that are past.' There is a form of it which is applied only to express some special purpose or conceit, which was used of old by philosophers to express any point of reason more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and, nevertheless, now and at all times these allusive parabolical poems do retain much life and vigour because—note it,—note that because,—that two-fold because, because REASON CANNOT be so SENSIBLE, nor EXAMPLES SO FIT. And he adds, also, 'there remains another use of this poesy, opposite to the one just mentioned, for that use tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered; and this other to retire and obscure it: that is, when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy or philosophy are involved in fables and parables.'

But under the cover of introducing the 'Wisdom of the Ancients,' and the form in which that was conveyed, he explains more at large the conditions which this kind of exhibition best meets; he claims it as a proper form of learning, and tells us outright, that the New Science must be conveyed in it. He has left us here, all prepared to our hands, precisely the argument which the subject now under consideration requires.

'Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is, that a concealed instruction and allegory, was originally intended in many of the ancient fables; observing that some fables discover a great and evident similitude, relation, and connection with the things they signify, as well in the structure of the fable, as in the propriety of the names whereby the persons or actors are characterised, insomuch that no one could positively deny a sense and meaning to be from the first intended and purposely shadowed out in them'; and he mentions some instances of this kind; and the first is a very explanatory one, tending to throw light upon the proceedings of men whose rebellions, so far as political action is concerned, have been successfully repressed. And he takes occasion to introduce this particular fable repeatedly in similar connections. 'For who can hear that Fame, after the giants were destroyed, sprung up as their posthumous sister, and not apply it to the clamour of parties, and the seditious rumours which commonly fly about upon the quelling of insurrections. Or who, upon hearing that memorable expedition of the gods against the giants, when the braying of Silenus' ass greatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not clearly conceive that this directly points to the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects, which are frequently disappointed and frustrated by vain fears and empty rumours. Nor is it wonder if sometimes a piece of history or other things are introduced by way of ornament, or if the times of the action are confounded,' [the very likeliest thing in the world to happen; things are often 'forced in time' as he has given us to understand in complimenting a king's book where the person was absent but not the occasion], 'or if part of one fable be tacked to another, for all this must necessarily happen, as the fables were the invention of men who lived in different ages, and had different views, some of them being ancient, others more modern, some having an eye to natural philosophy, others to morality and civil policy.'

This appears to be just the kind of criticism we happen to be in need of in conducting our present inquiry, and the passage which follows is not less to the purpose.

For, having given some other reasons for this opinion he has expressed in regard to the concealed doctrine of the ancients, he concludes in this manner: 'But if any one shall, notwithstanding this, contend that allegories are always adventitious, and no way native or genuinely contained in them, we might here leave him undisturbed in the gravity of that judgment, though we cannot but think it somewhat dull and phlegmatic, and, if it were worth the trouble, proceed to another kind of argument.' And, apparently, the argument he proceeds to, is worth some trouble, since he takes pains to bring it out so cautiously, under so many different heads, with such iteration and fulness, taking care to insert it so many times in his work on the Advancement of Learning, and here producing it again in his Introduction to the Wisdom of the Ancients, accompanied with a distinct assurance that it is not the wisdom of the ancients he is concerning himself about, and their necessities and helps and instruments; though if any one persists in thinking that it is, he is not disposed to disturb him in the gravity of that judgment. He honestly thinks that they had indeed such intentions as those that he describes; but that is a question for the curious, and he has other work on hand; he happens to be one, whose views of learning and its uses, do not keep him long on questions of mere curiosity. It is with the Moderns, and not with the Ancients that he has to deal; it is the present and the future, and not the past that he 'breaks his sleeps' for. Whether the Ancients used those fables for purposes of innovation, and gradual encroachment on error or not, here is a Modern, he tells us, who for one, cannot dispense with them in his teaching.

For having disposed of his graver readers—those of the dull and phlegmatic kind—in the preceding paragraph, and not thinking it worth exactly that kind of trouble it would have cost then to make himself more explicit for the sake of reaching their apprehension, he proceeds to the following argument, which is not wanting in clearness for 'those who happen to be of his ear.'

'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of Parables, for parables serve as well to instruct and illustrate, as to wrap up and envelope:' [and what is more, they serve at once that double purpose] 'so that for the present we drop the concealed use, and suppose the ancient fables to be vague undeterminate things formed for amusement, still the other use must remain, and can never be given up. And every man of any learning must readily allow that THIS METHOD of INSTRUCTION is grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, IN ALL NEW DISCOVERIES that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common, were rare and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, allusions, which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtlety and speculation, and even impatient, and in a manner incapable of receiving such things as did not directly fall under and strike the senses.' [And those ages were not gone by, it seems, for these are the very men of whom Hamlet speaks, 'who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.'] 'For as hieroglyphics were in use before writings, so were parables in use before argument. And even to this day, if any man would let NEW LIGHT IN upon the human understanding, [who was it that proposed to do that?] and conquer prejudices without raising animosities, OPPOSITION, or DISTURBANCE—[who was it that proposed to do that precisely]—he must still—[note it]—he must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.' Where are they then? Search and see. Where are they?—The lost Fables of the New Philosophy? 'To conclude, the knowledge of the earlier ages was either great or happy; great, if by design they made use of tropes and figures; happy, if whilst they had other views they afforded matter and occasion to such noble contemplations. Let either be the case, our pains perhaps will not be misemployed, whether we illustrate ANTIQUITY or [hear] THINGS THEMSELVES.

But he complains of those who have attempted such interpretations hitherto, that 'being unskilled in nature, and their learning no more than that of common-place, they have applied the sense of the parables to certain general and vulgar matters, without reaching to their real purport, genuine interpretation and full depth;' certainly it would not be that kind of criticism, then, which would be able to bring out the subtleties of the new learning from those popular embodiments, which he tells us it will have to take, in order to make some impression, at least, on the common understanding. 'Settle that question, then, in regard to the old Fables as you will, our pains will not perhaps be misemployed, whether we illustrate antiquity or things themselves,' and to that he adds, 'for myself, therefore, I expect to appear NEW in THESE COMMON THINGS, because, leaving untouched such as are sufficiently plain and open, I shall drive only those that are either deep or rich.' 'For myself?'—I?—'I expect to appear new in these common things.' But elsewhere, where he lays out the argument of them, by the side of that 'resplendent and lustrous mass of matter,' those heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity, that others have got glory from, it is some Poet we are given to understand that is going to be found new in them. There, the argument is all—all—poetic, and it is a theme for one who, if he know how to handle it, need not be afraid to put in his modest claim, with those who sung of old, the wrath of heroes, and their arms.

Any one who does not perceive that the passages here quoted were designed to introduce more than 'the wisdom of the ancients', the reader who is disposed to conclude after a careful perusal of these reiterated statements, in regard to the form in which doctrines differing from received opinions must be delivered, taken in connexion, too, with that draught of the new science of the human culture and its parts and points, which has just been produced here,—the reader who concludes that this is, after all, a science that was able to dispense with this method of appeal to the senses and the imagination; that it was not obliged to have recourse to that path;—that the NEW LEARNING, 'the NEW DISCOVERY,' had here no fables, no particular topics, and methods of tradition; that it contented itself with abstractions and generalities, with 'the husks and shells of sciences,'—such an one ought, undoubtedly, to be left undisturbed in that opinion. He belongs precisely to that class of persons which this author himself deliberately proposed to leave to such conclusions. He is one whom this philosopher himself would not take any trouble at all to enlighten on such points. The other reading, with all its gravity, was designed for him. The time for such an one to adopt the reading here produced, will be, when 'those who are incapable of receiving such things as do not directly fall under and strike the senses,' have, at last, got hold of it; when 'the groundlings, who, for the most part are capable of nothing but dumb show and noise,' have had their ears split with it, it will be time enough for him.

This Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to whom the appeal is made, this new learning which the Wise Man and Innovator of the Modern Ages tells us must be clothed in fable, and adorned with verse, this learning that must be made to fall under and strike the senses; this dumb show of science, that is but show to him who cannot yet take the player's own version of what it means; this illustrated tradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of Human Nature,—where is it? This historical collection, this gallery that was to contain scientific draughts and portraitures of the human character, that should exhaust its varieties,—where is it? These new Georgics of the mind whose argument is here,—where are they? This new Virgil who might promise himself such glory,—such new glory in the singing of them,—where is he? Did he make so deep a summer in his verse, that the track of the precept was lost in it? Were the flowers, and the fruit, so thick, there; was the reed so sweet that the argument of that great husbandry could no point,—could leave no furrow in it?

  'Where souls do couch, on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
  And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:
  Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
  And all the haunt be ours.'

'The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing this great argument, this new argument, of the application of SCIENCE to the Culture and Cure of the Mind, 'the neglect of our times, wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the reformation of their lives, may make this part seem superfluous. As Seneca excellently saith, "De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo."' And is that, after all,—is that the trouble still? Is it, that that characteristic of Elizabeth's time—that same thing which Seneca complained of in Nero's,—is it that that is not yet obsolete? Is that the reason, this so magnificent part, this radical part of the new discovery of the Modern Ages, is still held 'superfluous?' 'De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.' 'Now that we have spoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it remaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto.' That is the scientific proposition which has waited now two hundred and fifty years, for a scientific audience. The health of the soul, the scientific promotion of it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the observations of its husbandry. 'And if it be said,' he continues, anticipating the first inconsiderate objection, 'if it be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards the mistress, and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress' will; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.'

For the times that were 'far off' when that proposition was made, it is brought out anew and reopened. Oh, people of the ages of arts and sciences that are called by this man's name, shall we have the fruits of his new doctrine of KNOWLEDGE, brought to our relief in all other fields, and reject it in this, which he himself laid out, and claimed as its only worthy field? Instructed now in the validity of its claims, by its 'magnitude of effects' in every department of the human practice to which it has yet been applied, shall we permit the department of it, on which his labour was expended, to escape that application? Shall we suffer that wild barbaric tract of the human life which the will and affections of man create,—that tract which he seized,—which it was his labour to collect into an art or science, to lie unreclaimed still?

Oh, Man of the new ages of science, will you have the new fore-knowledge, the magical command of effects, which the scientific inquiry into causes as they are actual in nature, puts into our hands, in every other practice, in every other culture and cure,—will you have the rule of this knowledge imposed upon your fields, and orchards, and gardens, to assist weak nature in her 'conservations' and 'advancements' in these,—to teach her to bring forth here the latent ideals, towards which she struggles and vainly yearns, and can only point to, and wait for, till science accepts her hints;—will you have the Georgics of this new Virgil to load your table with its magic clusters;—will you take the Novum Organum to pile your plate with its ideal advancements on spontaneous nature and her perfections;—will you have the rule of that Organum applied in its exactest rigors, to all the physical oppositions of your life, to minister to your physical safety, and comfort, and luxury, and never relax your exactions from it, till the last conceivable degree of these has been secured; and in this department of art and science,—this, in which the sum of our good and evil is contained,—in a mere oversight of it, in a disgraceful indifference and carelessness about it, be content to accept, without criticism, the machinery of the past—instrumentalities that the unlearned ages of the world have left to us,—arts whose precepts were concluded ages ere we knew that knowledge is power.

Shall we be content to accept as a science any longer, a science that leaves human life and its actualities and particulars, unsearched, uncollected, unreduced to scientific nomenclature and axiom? Shall we be content any longer with a knowledge that is power,—shall we boast ourselves any longer of a scientific art that leaves human nature,—that makes over human nature to the tampering of an unwatched, unchecked empiricism, that leaves our own souls it may be, and the souls in which ours are garnered up, all wild and hidden, and gnarled within with nature's crudities and spontaneities, or choked and bitter with artificial, but unscientific, unartistic repression?

Will you have of that divinely appointed and beautiful 'handmaid,' that was brought in on to this Globe Theatre, with that upward look,—with eyes turned to that celestial sovereignty for her direction, with the sum of good in her intention, with the universal doctrine of practice in her programme, with the relief 'of man's estate and the Creator's glory' put down in her role,—with her new song—with her song of man's nature and life as it is, on her lips—will you have of her, only the minister to your physical luxuries and baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth which is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction, in the name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-delivery and tradition, that will enable it to live again, 'though all the earth o'erwhelm it to men's eyes,' while this Book of the Advancemement of Learning stands, do not charge on this man henceforth, that election.

The times of that ignorance in which it could be thus accredited, are past; for the leader of this Advancement is already unfolding his tradition, and opening his books; and he bids us debase his name no longer, into a name for these sordid fatuities. The Leader of ages that are yet to be,—ages whose nobler advancements, whose rational and scientific advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human form, it was given to him and to his company to plan and initiate,—he declines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal, irrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of science, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it into the mere tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god in the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in the brick and the mortar. This 'broken science' that has no end of ends, this godless science, this railway learning that travels with restless, ever quickening speed, no whither,—these dead, rattling 'branches' and slivers of arts and sciences, these modern arts and sciences, hacked and cut away from that tree of sciences, from which they sprang, whereon they grew, are his no longer. He declines to be held any longer responsible for a materialism that shelters itself under the name of philosophy, and identifies his own name with it. Call it science, if you will, though science be the name for unity and comprehension, and the spirit of life, the spirit of the largest whole; call it philosophy if you will, if you think philosophy is capable of being severed from that common trunk, in which this philosopher found its pith and heart,—call it science,—call it philosophy,—but call it not, he says,—call it not henceforth 'Baconian.'

For his labor is to collect into an art or science the doctrine of human life. He, too, has propounded that problem,—he has translated into the modern speech, that problem, which the inspired Leader of men, of old propounded. 'What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?' He, too, has recognized that ideal type of human excellence, which the Great Teacher of old revealed and exemplified; he has found scientifically,—he has found in the universal law,—that divine dogma, which was taught of old by One who spake as having authority—One who also had looked on nature with a loving and observant eye, and found in its source, the Inspirer of his doctrine. In his study of that old book of divinity which he calls the book of God's Power this Modern Innovator has found the scientific version of that inspired command 'Be ye therefore perfect.' This new science of morality, which is 'moral knowledge,' is able to recognise the inspiration and divinity of that received platform and exemplar of good, and pours in on it the light of a universal illustration. And in his new scientific policy, in his scientific doctrine of success, in his doctrine of the particular and private good, when he brings out at last the rule which shall secure it from all the blows of fortune, what is it but that same old 'Primum quærite' which he produces,—clothing it with the authority and severe exaction of a scientific rule in art,—that same 'Primum quærite' which was published of old as a doctrine of faith only. 'But let men rather build,' he says, 'upon that foundation, which is as a corner-stone of divinity and philosophy, wherein they join close; namely, that same 'Primum quærite.' For divinity saith, 'Seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added to you'; and philosophy saith, 'Primum quærite bona animi cætera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt.'

And who will now undertake to say that it is, indeed, written in the Book of God,—in the Book of the Providential Design, and Creative Law, or that it is written in the Revelation of a divine good will to men; that those who cultivate and cure the soul—who have a divine appointment to the office of its cure—shall thereby be qualified to ignore its actual laws, or that they shall find in the scientific investigation of its actual history, or in this new—so new, this so wondrous and beautiful science, which is here laid out in all its parts and points on the basis of a universal science of practice,—no 'ministry' to their end? Who shall say that the Regimen of the mind, that its Education and healthful culture, as well as its cure, shall be able to accept of no instrumentalities from the advancement of learning? Who shall say that this department of the human life—this alone, is going to be held back to the past, with bonds and cramps of iron, while all else is advancing; that this is going to be held forever as a place where the old Aristotelian logic, which we have driven out of every other field, can keep its hold unchallenged still,—as a place for the metaphysics of the school-men, the empty conceits, the old exploded inanities of the Dark Ages, to breed and nestle in undisturbed?

Who shall claim that this department is the only one, which that gift, that is the last gift of Creation and Providence to man is forbidden to enter?

Surely it is the authorised doctrine of a supernatural aid, that it is never brought in to sanction indolence and the neglect of means and instruments already in our power; and in that book of these new ages in which the doctrine of a successful human practice was promulgated, is it not written that in no department of the human want, 'can those noble effects, which God hath set forth to be bought as the price of labour, be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful observances?'

And who that looks on the world as it is at this hour, with all our boasted aids and instrumentalities,—who that hears that cry of sorrow which goes up from it day and night,—who that looks at these masses of men as they are,—who that dares to look at all this vice and ignorance and suffering which no instrumentality, mighty to relieve, has yet reached, shall think to put back,—as if we had no need of it,—this great gift of light and healing,—this gift of power, which the scientific ages are bringing in; this gift which the ages of 'anticipation,' the ages of inspiration and spontaneous affirmation, could only divinely—diviningly—foresee and promise;—this gift which the knowledge of the creative laws, the historic laws, the laws of kind, as they are actual in the human nature and the human life, puts into our hands? Who shall think himself competent to oppose this benefaction? Alas for such an one! let us take up a lamentation for him. He has stayed too long. The constitution of things, the universal laws of being, and the Providence of this world are against him. The track of the advancing ages goes over him. He is at variance with that which was and shall be. The world's wheel goes over him. And whosoever falls on that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it falls it shall grind him to powder.

It is by means of the scientific Art of Delivery and Tradition, that this doctrine of the scientific Culture and Cure of the Mind, which is the doctrine of the scientific ages, has been made over to us in the abstract; and it is by means of the rule of interpretation, which this Art of Delivery prescribes, it is by means of the secret of an Illustrated Tradition, or Poetic Tradition of this science, that we are now enabled to unlock at last those magnificent collections in it—those inexhaustible treasures and mines of it—which the Discoverer, in spite of the time, has contrived to leave us, in that form of Fable and Parable in which the advancing truth has always been left,—in that form of Poesy in which the highest truth has, from of old, been uttered. For over all this ground lay extended, then, in watchful strength all safe and unespied, the basilisk of whom the Fable goes, if he sees you first, you die for it,—but if YOU SEE HIM FIRST, HE DIES. And this is the Bishop who fought with a mace, because he would kill his enemy and not wound him.

ELIZABETHAN 'SECRETS OF MORALITY AND POLICY';

OR,

THE FABLES OF THE NEW LEARNING.

Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit. Advancement of Learning.

INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESIGN.

The object of this Volume is merely to open as a study, and a study of primary consequence, those great Works of the Modern Learning which have passed among us hitherto, for lack of the historical and scientific key to them, as Works of Amusement, merely.

But even in that superficial acquaintance which we have had with them in that relation, they have, all the time, been subtly operating upon the minds in contact with them, and perpetually fulfilling the first intention of their Inventor.

'For,' says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages,—the author of the Novum Organum, and of the Advancement of Learning,—in claiming this department of Letters as the necessary and proper instrumentality of a new science,—of a science at least, 'foreign to opinions received,'—as he claims elsewhere that it is, under all conditions, the inevitable essential form of this science in particular. 'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of parables, for they serve as well to instruct and illustrate as to wrap up and envelope, so that, though for the present, we drop the concealed use, and suppose them to be vague undeterminate things, formed for AMUSEMENT merely, still the other use remains. 'And every man of any learning must readily concede,' he says, 'the value of that use of them as a method of popular instruction, grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understandings in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion. They were used of old by philosophers to express any point of reason more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and nevertheless now, and at all times, these allusive parabolical forms retain much life and vigor, because reason cannot be so sensible nor examples so fit.' That philosophic use of them was to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtilty and speculation, and even impatient and in a manner incapable of receiving anything that did not directly fall under and strike the senses. 'And, even to this day, if any man would let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudices without raising animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go in the same path and have recourse to the like method.'

That is the use which the History and Fables of the New Philosophy have already had with us. We have been feeding without knowing it, on the 'principal and supreme sciences'—the 'Prima Philosophia' and its noblest branches. We have been taking the application of the Inductive Philosophy to the principal concerns of our human life, and to the phenomena of of the human nature itself, as mere sport and pastime; though the precepts concluded, the practical axioms inclosed with it have already forced their way into our learning, for all our learning is, even now, inlaid and glittering with those 'dispersed directions.'

We have profited by this use of them. It has not been pastime merely with us. We have not spent our time in vain on this first stage of an Advancing Learning, a learning that will not cease to advance until it has invaded all our empiricisms, and conquered all our practice; a learning that will recompence the diligence, the exactitude, the severity of observance which it will require here also (when it comes to put in its claim here, as Learning and not Amusement merely), with that same magnitude of effects that, in other departments, has already justified the name which its Inventor gave it—a Learning which will give us here, also, in return for the severity of observance it will require, what no ceremonial, however exacting can give us, that control of effects, with which, even in its humblest departments, it has already fulfilled, in the eyes of all the world, the prophecy which its Inventors uttered when they called it the NEW MAGIC.

That first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern Learning, we have had already; and it is not yet exhausted. But in that rapid development of a common intelligence, to which the new science of practice has itself so largely contributed, even in its lower and limited developments, we come now to that other and so important use of these Fables, which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for the time, in his argument—that use of them, in which they serve 'to wrap up and conceal' for the time, or to limit to the few, who are able to receive them, those new discoveries which are as yet too far in advance of the common beliefs and opinions of men, and too far above the mental habits and capacities of the masses of men, to be safely or profitably communicated to the many in the abstract.

But in order to arrive at this second and nobler use of them, it will be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any that we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so long as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially while that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them, which the received history of the works themselves created, was still operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we usually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to have a moral or politic intention,—truths which we are understood to be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only designed to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the will that would not take them from the reason, by means of the senses or the imagination. It is not that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge, or those conventional opinions, those unanalysed popular beliefs, which we usually expect to find without any trouble at all, on the very surface of any work that has morality for its object, it is not any such coarse, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble ourselves to look for here. This higher intention in these works 'their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth,' has not yet been found, because the science which is wrapped in them, though it is the principal science in the plan of the Advancement of Learning, has hitherto escaped our notice, and because of the exceeding subtlety of it,—because the truths thus conveyed or concealed are new, and recondite, and out of the way of any casual observation,—because in this scientific collection of the phenomena of the human life, designed to serve as the basis of new social arts and rules of practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the vague, popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for purposes of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which are actual and historical, those simple radical forms and differences on which the doctrine of power and practice must be based.

It is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the most profoundly earnest to which these works now invite us. Let those who will, stay in the playground still, and make such sport and pastime of it there, as they may; and let those who feel the need of inductive rules here also,—here on the ground which this pastime covers—let those who perceive that we have as yet, set our feet only on the threshold of the Great Instauration, find here with diligent research, the ascent to the axioms of practice,—that ascent which the author of the science of practice in general, made it his labour to hew out here, for he undertook 'to collect here into an art or science, that which had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense and experience.'

It does not consist with the design of the present work to track that draught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an inductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of the Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its compartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections, which the Fables of the Modern Learning,—which these magnificent Parabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.

This work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to remove that primary obstacle to the diligent study of these works, which the present theory of them contains; since that concealment of their true intention and history, which was inevitable at the time, no longer serves the author's purpose, and now that the times are ripe for the learning which they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the illustrations which are here produced, are produced with reference to that object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those 'secrets of policy,' which are the necessary introduction to that which follows.

THE MISSING BOOKS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION; OR, PHILOSOPHY ITSELF.

Did it never occur to the student of the Novum Organum that the constant application of that 'New Machine' by the inventor of it himself, to one particular class of subjects, so constant as to produce on the mind of the careless reader the common impression, that it was intended to be applied to that class only, and that the relief of the human estate, in that one department of the human want, constituted its whole design: did it never occur to the curious inquirer, or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning, that this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications in the hands of its author is—under all the circumstances—a thing worthy of being inquired into? Considering who the author of it is, and that it is on the face of it, a new method of dealing with facts in general, a new method of obtaining axioms of practice from history in general, and not a specific method of obtaining them from that particular department of history from which his instances are taken; and, considering, too, that the author was himself aware of the whole sweep of its applications, and that he has taken pains to include in his description of its powers, the assertion,—the distinct, deliberate assertion—that it is capable of being applied as efficiently, to those nobler departments of the human need, which are marked out for it in the Great Instauration—those very departments in which he was known himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been all his life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it never occur to the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it, then, himself to those very subjects, instead of keeping so stedfastly to the physical forces in his illustration of its powers? And has any one ever read the plan of this man's works? Has any one seen the scheme of that great enterprise, for which he was the responsible person in his own time—that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these published acknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce in his own name, to show what parts of his 'labor,'—what part of chief consequence was not thus produced? Has any one seen that plan of a new system of Universal Science, which was published in the reign of James the First, under the patronage of that monarch? And if it has been seen, what is the reason there has been no enquiry made for those works, in which the author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to these very subjects; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us, in reference to that undertaking, that he is not a vain promiser.

There is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history, which the new method of discovery and invention requires as the first step towards its conclusions, which is put down as the THIRD PART of the Instauration, though the natural history which is produced for that purpose is very far from fulfilling the description and promise of that division. But where is the FOURTH part of the Great Instauration? Has anybody seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for which all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is subsidiary? Where is that part which consists of EXAMPLES, that are nothing but a particular application of the SECOND; that is, the Novum Organum,—'and to subjects of the noblest kind?' Where is 'that part of our work which enters upon PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead of dealing any longer, or professing to deal, with THE METHOD merely of finding that which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting that method any longer in the abstract? Where are the works in which he undertakes to show it in operation, with its new 'grappling hooks' on the matter of the human life—applied by the inventor himself to 'the noblest subjects?' Surely that would be a sight to see. What is the reason that our editors do not produce these so important works in their editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include them in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars do not quote them? Instead of stopping with that mere report of the condition of learning and its deficiences, and that outline of what is to be done, which makes the FIRST PART or Introduction to this work; or stopping with the description of the new method, or the Novum Organum, which makes the SECOND; why don't they go on to the 'new philosophy itself,' and show us that as well,—the very object of all this preparation? When he describes in the SECOND part his method of finding true terms, or rather the method of his school, when he describes this new method of finding 'ideas,' ideas as they are in nature, powers, causes, the elements of history, or forms, as he more commonly calls them, when he describes this new method of deducing axioms, axioms that are ready for practice, he does, indeed, give us instances; but it so happens, that the instances are all of one kind there. They are the physical powers that supply his examples in that part.

In describing this method merely, he produces what he calls his Tables of Invention, or Tables of REVIEW OF INSTANCES; but where is that part in which he tells us we shall find these same tables again, with 'the nobler subjects' on them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his second part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He shews them up very industriously, and is very particular to direct the admiring attention of the reader to their adaptation as means to an end. But certainly there is nothing in that specimen of what can be done with them which he contents himself with there, that would lead any one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made on any one's mind by that book, that there is any other kind of invention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this method? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new terminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author indulges—a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to construct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms, and his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of expression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is indeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared to grapple formally with those 'nobler subjects' to which allusion is made in another place. King James was a man of some erudition himself; but he declared frankly that for his part he could not understand this book; and it was not strange that he could not, for the author did not intend that he should. The philosopher drops a hint in passing, however, that all which is essential in this method, might perhaps be retained without quite so much formality and fuss in the use of it, and that the proposed result might be arrived at by means of these same tables, without any use of technical language at all, under other circumstances.

The results which have since been obtained by the use of this method in that department of philosophy to which it is specially applied in the Novum Organum, give to the inquirer into the causes of the physical phenomena now, some advantages which no invention could supply them. That was what the founders of this philosophy expected and predicted. They left this department to their school. The author of the Novum Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis of the induction in this department is as yet wanting; and the collections and experiments here require combinations of skill and labour which they cannot at once command. They will do what they can here too, in their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance.

But the man who has studiously created for himself a social position which enables him to assume openly, and even ostentatiously, the position of an innovator—an innovator in the world of letters, an advancer of—learning—is compelled to introduce his innovation with the complaint that he finds the mind of the world so stupified, so bewildered with evil, and so under the influence of dogmas, that the first thing to be done is to get so much as a thought admitted of the possibility of a better state of things. 'The present system of philosophy,' he says, 'cherishes in its bosom certain positions or dogmas which it will be found, are calculated to produce a full conviction that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on nature ought to be anticipated, through the means of art.' And, therefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world as he finds it, reporting as well as he can,—though he can find no words, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in regard to it—the deficiencies in its learning, he devotes a considerable portion of the description of his new method to the grounds of 'hope' which he derives from this philosophic survey, and that that hope is not a hope of a better state of things in respect to the physical wants of man merely, that it is not a hope of a renovation in the arts which minister to those wants exclusively, any very careful reader of the first book of the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer. But the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another place for particulars.

'Let us then speak of hope' he says, 'especially as we are not vain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judgments; but would rather lead them willingly forward. And although we shall employ the most cogent means of enforcing hope when we bring them TO PARTICULARS, and especially those which are digested and arranged in our Tables of Invention, the subject partly of the SECOND, but—principally—mark it, principally of the FOURTH part of the Instauration, which are, indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes than hope itself.' Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection, that he is not a vain promiser, when no such PART as that to which he refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings—when this principal part of his promise remains unfulfilled. 'The FOURTH part of the Instauration,' he says again in his formal description of it, 'enters upon philosophy itself, furnishing examples of inquiry and investigation, according to our own method, in certain subjects of the noblest kind, but greatly differing from each other, that a specimen may be had of every sort. By these examples, we mean not illustrations of rules and precepts,' [He will show the facts in such order, in such scientific, select, methodical arrangements, that rules and precepts will be forced from them; for he will show them, on the tables of invention, and rules and precepts are the vintage that flows from the illustrious instances—the prerogative instances—the ripe, large, cleared, selected clusters of facts, the subtle prepared history which the tables of invention collect. The definition of the simple original elements of history, the pure definition is the first vintage from these; but 'that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule' and the axiom of practice, ready for use, is the final result.] 'but perfect models, which will exemplify the SECOND PART of this work, and represent, as it were, to the eye the whole progress of the mind, and the continued structure and order of invention in THE MORE CHOSEN SUBJECTS'—note it, in the more chosen subjects; but this is not at all—'after the same manner as globes and machines facilitate the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics.' But in another place he tells us, that the poetic form of demonstration is the form to which it is necessary to have recourse on these subjects, especially when we come to these more abstruse and subtle demonstrations, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion; and that at the time he was writing out this plan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the human understanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising animosity, opposition, or disturbance, had no choice—must go in that same path, or none. Where are those diagrams? And what does he mean, when he tells us in this connection that he is not a vain promiser? Where are those particular cases, in which this method of investigation is applied to the noblest subjects? Where are the diagrams, in which the order of the investigation is represented, as it were, to the eye, which serve the same purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all acquainted with one poem, at least, published about that time, in which some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in progress, not without the use of diagrams, and very lively ones too; but one in which the intention of the poet appears to be to the last degree 'enigmatical,' inasmuch as it has engaged the attention of the most philosophical minds ever since, and inasmuch as the most able critics have never been able to comprehend that intention fully in their criticism. And it is bound up with many others, in which the subjects are not less carefully chosen, and in which the method of inquiry is the same; in which that same method that is exhibited in the 'Novum Organum' in the abstract, or in its application to the investigation of the physical phenomena, is everywhere illustrated in the most chosen subjects—in subjects of the noblest kind. This volume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the THIRD and FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether this man who describes them here, and who forgot, it would seem, to fulfil his promise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.

That is the part of the Great Instauration that we want now, and we are fairly entitled to it, because these are not 'the next ages,' or 'the times which were nearer,' and which this author seldom speaks of without betraying his clear foresight of the political and social convulsions that were then at hand. These are the times, which were farther off, to which he appeals from those nearer ages, and to which he expressly dedicates the opening of his designs.

Now, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is missing out of this philosophy? Nothing less than the 'principal' part of it. All that is good for anything in it, according to the author's own estimate. The rest serves merely 'to pass the time,' or it is good as it serves to prepare the way for this. What is it that we have to look for? The 'Novum Organum,' that severe, rigorous method of scientific inquiry, applied to the more chosen subjects in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that Logic which is brought out in the doctrine of the PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its encounter with fact in general, brought down to particulars, and applied to the noblest subjects, and to every sort of subject which the philosophic mind of that age chose to apply it to. That is what we want to find.

'The prerogative instances' in 'the more chosen subjects.' The whole field which that philosophy chose for its field, and called the noblest, the principal, the chosen, the more chosen one. Every part of it reduced to scientific inquiry, put under the rule of the 'Novum Organum'; that is what we want to find. We know that no such thing could possibly be found in the acknowledged writings of this author. Nothing answering to that description, composed by a statesman and a philosopher, with an avowed intention in his writing—an intention to effect changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn practice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by any means have been got through the press then. No one who studies the subject will think of looking for that FOURTH PART of the Instauration among the author's acknowledged writings. Does he give us any hint as to where we are to look for it? Is there any intimation as to the particular form of writing in which we are to find it? for find it we must and shall, because he is not a vain promiser. The subject itself determines the form, he says; and the fact that the whole ground of the discovery is ground already necessarily comprehended in the preconceptions of the many—that it is ground covered all over with the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact, also, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation. Who that knows what the so-called Baconian method of learning really is, will need to be told that the principal books of it will be—books of INSTANCES and PARTICULARS, SPECIMENS—living ones, and that these will occupy the prominent place in the book; and that the conclusions and precepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly and on the spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use, 'knowing the way to particulars again?' Who would ever expect to find the principal books of this learning—the books in which it enters upon philosophy itself, and undertakes to leave a specimen of its own method in the noblest subjects in its own chosen field—who would ever expect to find these books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with instances or examples brought in, to illustrate or make them good? For this is not a point of method merely, but a point of substance, as he takes pains to tell us. And who that has ever once read his own account of the method in which he proposes to win the human mind from its preconceptions, instead of undertaking to overcome it with Logic and sharp disputations,—who that knows what place he gives to Rhetoric, what place he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of innovation, will expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic learning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms, under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold assurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is the only form in which the higher applications of his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly, 'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples which his scientific terminology includes in the department of Poesy?

All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and parable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the human understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.

He was an innovator; he was not an agitator. And he claims that mark of a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without noise or perturbation, in aura leni. Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it; it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden with new gifts for men, openly announces.

'Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open his ground of hope, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds them, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and institutes of the universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision with them; 'Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD and Father of LIGHT. Now, in all divine works, the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual matters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also found to be true in every great work of PROVIDENCE, so that everything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the matter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is commenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who innovateth greatly but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one is finished and in its place.

What is that we want to find? We want to find the new method of scientific inquiry applied to the questions in which men are most deeply interested—questions which were then imperiously and instantly urged on the thoughtful mind. We want to see it applied to POLITICS in the reign of James the First. We want to see it applied to the open questions of another department of inquiry,—certainly not any less important,—in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We want to see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of review, from which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, the legitimate sovereignty, is to be inducted, and the scientific axioms of government with it. We want to see the science of observation and experiment, the science of nature in general, applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign of James the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in which it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that, too, by the principal doctors in that profession,—men of the very largest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their work conscientiously, whether the patient objected or not. But are there any such books as these? Certainly. You have the author's own word for it. 'Some may raise this question,' he says, 'this question rather than objection'—[it is better that it should come in the form of a question, than in the form of an objection, as it would have come, if there had been no room to 'raise the question']—'whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy' [using the term here in its usual limited sense], 'whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy alone, according to our method, or, the other sciences—such as, ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' That is the question 'raised.' 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' That is the author's answer to it. 'And as common logic which regulates matters by syllogism, is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, so our inductive method likewise comprehends them ALL.' With such iteration will he think fit to give us this point. It is put in here for those 'who raise the question'—the question 'rather than objection.' The other sort are taken care of in other places. 'For,' he continues, 'we form a history and tables of invention, for anger, fear, shame, and the like; and also for examples in civil life' [that was to be the principal part of the science when he laid out the plan of it in the advancement of learning] 'and the mental operations of memory, composition, division, judgment, and the rest; as well as for heat and cold, light and vegetation, and the like.' That is the plan of the new science, as the author sketches it for the benefit of those who raise questions rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely, whenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satisfaction of this class of readers. But this is that same FOURTH PART to which he refers us in the other places for the application of his method to those nobler subjects, those more chosen subjects; and that is just the part of his science which appears to be wanting. How happens it? Did he get so occupied with the question of heat and cold, light and vegetation, and the like, that after all he forgot this part with its nobler applications? How could that be, when he tells us expressly, that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This part which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philosophy, unquestionably. These are the books of it which have been missing hitherto; but in that Providential order of events to which he refers himself, the time has come for them to be inquired for; and this inquiry is itself a part of that movement, in which the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some result. For, 'let us begin from God,' he says, 'and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of misery; the Father of LIGHT, and not of darkness.'

Of course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine of the human society, without coming at once in collision with that doctrine of the divinity of arbitrary power which the monarchs of England were then openly sustaining. Who needs to be told, that he who would handle that argument scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this inquirer would, must indeed 'pray in aid of similes.' And yet a very searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that institution, which the new philosophy found in possession of the human welfare, and asserting a divine right to it as a thing of private property and legitimate family inheritance,—such a criticism was, in fact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the principles of a human subjection which appeared to this philosopher to belong properly to the more chosen subjects of a scientific investigation.

And notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the extremely critical nature of the investigation, when it came to touch those particulars, with which the personal observations and experiments of the founders of this new school in philosophy had tended to enrich their collections in this department,—'and the aim is better,' says the principal spokesman of this school, who quietly proposes to introduce this method into politics, 'the aim is better when the mark is alive;' notwithstanding the difficulties which appeared to lie then in the way of such an investigation, the means of conducting it to the entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment of the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this was one of those 'secrets of policy,' which have always required the aid of fable, and the idea of dramatising the fable for the sake of reaching in some sort those who are incapable of receiving any thing 'which does not directly fall under, and strike the senses,' as the philosopher has it; those who are capable of nothing but 'dumb shows and noise,' as Hamlet has it; this idea, though certainly a very happy, was not with these men an original one. Men, whose relations to the state were not so different as the difference in the forms of government would perhaps lead us to suppose,—men of the gravest learning and enriched with the choicest accomplishments of their time, had adopted that same method of influencing public opinion, some two thousand years earlier, and even as long before as that, there were 'secrets of morality and policy,' to which this form of writing appeared to offer the most fitting veil.

Whether 'the new' philosopher,—whether 'the new magician' of this time, was, in fact, in possession of any art which enabled him to handle without diffidence or scruple the great political question which was then already the question of the time; whether 'THE CROWN'—that double crown of military conquest and priestly usurpation, which was the one estate of the realm at that crisis in English history, did, among other things in some way, come under the edges of that new analysis which was severing all here then, and get divided clearly with 'the mind, that divine fire,'—whether any such thing as that occurred here then, the reader of the following pages will be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they contain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which made its appearance about those days, will certainly have no difficulty at all in deciding that question. For, first of all, it is necessary to find that political key to the Elizabethan art of delivery, which unlocks the great works of the Elizabethan philosophy, and that is the necessity which determines the selection of the Plays that are produced in this volume. They are brought in to illustrate the fact already stated, and already demonstrated, the fact which is the subject of this volume, the fact that the new practical philosophy of the modern ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the plan of its founders, to 'natural philosophy' and 'the part operative' of that,—the fact that it comprehended, as its principal department, the department in which its 'noblest subjects' lay, and in which its most vital innovations were included, a field of enquiry which could not then be entered without the aid of fable and parable, and one which required not then only, 'but now, and at all times,' the aid of a vivid poetic illustration; they are brought in to illustrate the fact already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the new philosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work under such conditions, able to work, if not for the times that were nearer, for the times that were further off; men who thought it little so they could fulfil and perfect their work and make their account of it to the Work-master, to robe another with their glory; men who could relinquish the noblest works of the human genius, that they might save them from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they might make them over unharmed in their boundless freedom, in their unstained perfection, to the farthest ages of the advancement of learning,—that they might 'teach them how to live and look fresh' still,

'When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent.'

That is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book is to demonstrate.

LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER

                           'Thou'dst shun a bear;
  But if thy way lay towards the raging sea,
  Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'

CHAPTER I.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE.

  'I think the king is but a man, as I am.'—King Henry.
  'They told me I was everything.'—Lear.

OF course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly dealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed, scientifically examined, in the very presence of royalty itself, except by persons endowed with extraordinary privileges and immunities, persons, indeed, of quite irresponsible authority, whose right to do and say what they pleased, Elizabeth herself, though they should enter upon a critical analysis of the divine rights of kings to her face, and deliberately lay bare the defects in that title which she was then attempting to maintain, must needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.

And such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the retinue of that sovereignty which was working in disguise here then, and laying the foundations of that throne in the thoughts of men, which would replace old principalities and powers, and not political dominions merely. To the creative genius which waited on the philosophic mind of that age, making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of its exterior conditions, such persons,—persons of any amount or variety of capacity which the necessary question of its play might require, were not wanting:—'came with a thought.'

Of course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his ill-got crown, and passing a sleepless night in spite of its supposed exemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with all his royal means and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea boy in the storm enjoys,—and the poet appears, to have had some experience of this mortal ill, which inclines him to put it down among those which ought to be excluded from a state of supreme earthly felicity,—the poor guilty disgusted usurper, discovering that this so blessed 'invention' was not included in the prerogative he had seized, under the exasperation of the circumstances, might surely be allowed to mutter to himself, in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general reflections on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to any extent, without expecting to be called to an account for it, by any future son or daughter of his usurping lineage. That extraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite incontestable fact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still, refused to recognize this artificial difference in men, but still went on her way in all things, as if 'the golden standard' were not there, classing the monarch with his 'poorest subject;'—the fact that this charmed 'round of sovereignty,' did not after all secure the least exemption from the common individual human frailty, and helplessness,—this would, of course, strike the usurper who had purchased the crown at such an expense, as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if it were only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed to embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the moral was proper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and ready to be produced, in case any serious inquiry should be made for it; though the poet might seem, perhaps, to a severely critical mind, disposed to pursue his philosophical inquiry a little too curiously into the awful secrets of majesty, retired within itself, and pondering its own position;—openly searching what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the Scriptures pronounce to be inscrutable, namely, the hearts of kings, and audaciously laying bare those private passages, those confessions, and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and reverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play, indeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance which, of course, was expected to modify the impression.

So, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the trick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come only as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty of nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the brave and gentle hero of Agincourt.

'Though I speak it to you,' he says, talking in the disguise of a 'private,' 'I think the King is but a man as I am, the violet smells to him as it doth to me; all his senses, have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness, he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are'; and in the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and soliloquises on the same delicate question.

'And what have kings that "privates" have not, too, save ceremony,—save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?—What is thy soul of adoration?'

A grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind, in those times: let us see how a Poet can answer it.

  'Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
  Creating awe and fear in other men?
  Wherein, thou art less happy, being feared,
  Than they in fearing?

[Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he cherished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king; and those who know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had authorised, and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and preparing the way for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on that account; but this is what he means. He thinks that wretched victim of that most irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose head the crown of an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its responsibilities, in his infinite unfitness for them, is, in fact, the one whose case most of all requires relief. He is the one, in this theory, who suffers from this unnatural state of things, not less, but more, than his meanest subject. 'Thou art less happy being feared, than they in fearing.']

  What drink'st thou oft instead of homage sweet
  But poison'd flattery? O! be sick, great greatness,
  And bid thy ceremony give thee cure.
  Thinkest thou the fiery fever will go out
  With titles blown from adulation?
  Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

Interesting physiological questions! And though the author, for reasons of his own, has seen fit to put them in blank verse here, it is not because he does not understand, as we shall see elsewhere, that they are questions of a truly scientific character, which require to be put in prose in his time—questions of vital consequence to all men. The effect of 'poisoned flattery,' and 'titles blown from adulation' on the minds, of those to whose single will and caprice the whole welfare of the state, and all the gravest questions for this life and the next, were then entrusted, naturally appeared to the philosophical mind, perseveringly addicted to inquiries, in which the practical interests of men were involved, a question of gravest moment.

But here it is the physical difference which accompanies this so immense human distinction, which he appears to be in quest of; it is the control over nature with which these 'farcical titles' invest their possessor, that he appears to be now pertinaciously bent upon ascertaining. For we shall find, as we pursue the subject, that this is not an accidental point here, a casual incident of the character, or of the plot, a thing which belongs to the play, and not to the author; but that this is a poet who is somehow perpetually haunted with the impression that those who assume a divine right to control, and dispose of their fellow-men, ought to exhibit some sign of their authority; some superior abilities; some magical control; some light and power that other men have not. How he came by any such notions, the critic of his works is, of course, not bound to show; but that which meets him at the first reading is the fact, the incontestable fact, that the Poet of Shakspere's stage, be he who he may, is a poet whose mind is in some way deeply occupied with this question; that it is a poet who is infected, and, indeed, perfectly possessed, with the idea, that the true human leadership ought to consist in the ability to extend the empire of man over nature,—in the ability to unite and control men, and lead them in battalions against those common evils which infest the human conditions,—not fevers only but 'worser' evils, and harder to be cured, and to the conquest of those supernal blessings which the human race have always been vainly crying for. 'I am a king that find thee,' he says.

And having this inveterate notion of a true human regality to begin with, he is naturally the more curious and prying in regard to the claims of the one which he finds in possession; and when by the mystery of his profession and art, he contrives to get the cloak of that factitious royalty about him, he asks questions under its cover which another man would not think of putting.

'Canst thou,' he continues, walking up and down the stage in King Hal's mantle, inquiring narrowly into its virtues and taking advantage of that occasion to ascertain the limits of the prerogative—that very dubious question then,—

'Canst thou when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it?'—

No? what mockery of power is it then? But, this in connection with the preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of titles on the progress of a fever, or the amenability of its paroxysm, to flexure and low bending, might have seemed perhaps in the mouth of a subject to savour somewhat of irony; it might have sounded too much like a taunt upon the royal helplessness under cover of a serious philosophical inquiry, or it might have betrayed in such an one a disposition to pursue scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps expedient. But thus it is, that THE KING can dare to pursue the subject, answering his own questions.

'No, thou proud dream That playst so subtly with a king's repose; I am a king that find thee; and I know 'Tis not the THE BALM, THE SCEPTRE, and THE BALL, THE SWORD, THE MACE, THE CROWN IMPERIAL, The inter-tissued ROBE of gold and pearl, The FARCED TITLE—

What is that?—Mark it:—the farced TITLE!—A bold word, one would say, even with a king to authorise it.

  'The farced TITLE running 'fore the king,
  THE THRONE he sits on, nor the tide of POMP
  That beats upon the high shore of this world,
  No, not all these, thrice gorgeous CEREMONY,
  Not all these laid in BED MAJESTICAL,
  Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
  Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,
  Gets him to rest crammed with distressful bread,
  Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
  But like a lackey from the rise to set
  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus; and all night
  Sleeps in Elysium.

Yes, there we have him, at last. There he is exactly. That is the scientific picture of him, 'poor man,' as this poet calls him elsewhere. What malice could a philosophic poet bear him? That is the monarchy that men were 'sanctifying themselves with,' and 'turning up the white of the eye to,' then. That is the figure that it makes when it comes to be laid in its state-bed, upon the scientific table of review, not in the formal manner of 'the second part' of this philosophy, but in that other manner which the author of the Novum Organum, speaks of so frequently, as the one to be used in applying it to subjects of this nature. That is the anatomy of him, which 'our method of inquiry and investigation,' brings out without much trouble 'when we come to particulars.' 'Truly we were in good hands,' as the other one says, who finds it more convenient, for his part, to discourse on these points, from a distance.

That is the figure the usurping monarch's pretensions make at the first blush, in the collections from which 'the vintage' of the true sovereignty, and the scientific principles of governments are to be expressed, when the true monarchy, the legitimate, 'one only man power,' is the thing inquired for. This one goes to 'the negative' side apparently. A wretched fellow that cannot so much as 'sleep o' nights,' that lies there on the stage in the play of Henry the Fourth, in the sight of all the people, with THE CROWN on his very pillow, by way 'facilitating the demonstration,' pining for the 'Elysium' at his meanest subject,—that the poor slave, 'crammed with distressful bread,' commands; crying for the luxury that the wet seaboy, on his high and giddy couch enjoys;—and from whose note-book came that image, dashed with the ocean spray,—who saw that seaboy sleeping in that storm?

But, as for this KING, it is the king which the scientific history brings out; whereas, in the other sort of history that was in use then, lie is hardly distinguishable at all from those Mexican kings who undertook to keep the heavenly bodies in their places, and, at the same time, to cause all things to be borne by the earth which were requisite for the comfort and convenience of man; a peculiarity of those sovereigns, of which the Man on the Mountains, whose study is so well situated for observations of that sort, makes such a pleasant note.

But whatever other view we may take of it, this, it must be conceded, is a tolerably comprehensive exhibition, in the general, of the mere pageant of royalty, and a pretty free mode of handling it; but it is at the same time a privileged and entirely safe one. For the liberty of this great Prince to repeat to himself, in the course of a solitary stroll through his own camp at midnight, when nobody is supposed to be within hearing, certain philosophical conclusions which he was understood to have arrived at in the course of his own regal experience, could hardly be called in question. And as to that most extraordinary conversation in which, by means of his disguise on this occasion, he becomes a participator, if the Prince himself were too generous to avail himself of it to the harm of the speakers, it would ill become any one else to take exceptions at it.

And yet it is a conversation in which a party of common soldiers are permitted to 'speak their minds freely' for once, though 'the blank verse has to halt for it,' on questions which would be considered at present questions of 'gravity.' It is a dialogue in which these men are allowed to discuss one of the most important institutions of their time from an ethical point of view, in a tone as free as the president of a Peace Society could use to-day in discussing the same topic, intermingling their remarks with criticisms on the government, and personal allusions to the king himself, which would seem to be more in accordance with the manners of the nineteenth century, than with those of the Poet's time.

But then these wicked and treasonous grumblings being fortunately encountered on the spot, and corrected by the king himself in his own august person, would only serve for edification in the end; if, indeed, that appeal to the national pride which would conclude the matter, and the glory of that great day which was even then breaking in the East, should leave room for any reflections upon it. For it was none other than the field of Agincourt that was subjected to this philosophic inquiry. It was the lustre of that immortal victory which was to England then, what Waterloo and the victories of Nelson are now, that was thus chemically treated beforehand. Under the cover of that renowned triumph, it was, that these soldiers could venture to search so deeply the question of war in general; it was in the person of its imperial hero, that the statesman could venture to touch so boldly, an institution which gave to one man, by his own confession no better or wiser than his neighbours, the power to involve nations in such horrors.

But let us join the king in his stroll, and hear for ourselves, what it is that these soldiers are discussing, by the camp-fires of Agincourt;—what it is that this first voice from the ranks has to say for itself. The king has just encountered by the way a poetical sentinel, who, not satisfied with the watchword—'a friend,'— requests the disguised prince 'to discuss to him, and answer, whether he is an officer, or base, common, and popular,' when the king lights on this little group, and the discussion which Pistol had solicited, apparently on his own behalf, actually takes place, for the benefit of the Poet's audience, and the answer to these inquiries comes out in due order.

Court. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?

  Bates. I think it be, but we have no great cause to desire the
  approach of day.

Will. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?

King Henry. A friend.

Will. Under what captain serve you?

King. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.

Will. A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman: I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?

King. Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide.

Bates. He hath not told his thought to the king?

King. No; nor it is not meet that he should; for though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man as I am.

And it is here that he proceeds to make that important disclosure above quoted, that all his senses have but human conditions, and that all his affections, though higher mounted, stoop with the like wing; and therefore no man should in reason possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, 'should dishearten his army.'

Bates. He may show what outward courage he will; but, I believe, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames, up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

King. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king. I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.

Bates. Then would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.

King. I dare say you love him not so ill as to wish him here alone; howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds; Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just, and his quarrel honorable.

Will. That's more than we know.

Bates. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects; if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.

Will. But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all—We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared that few die well, that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

King. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise, do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command, transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation.—But this is not so…. There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.

But the king pursues this question of the royal responsibility until he arrives at the conclusion that every subject's DUTY is THE KING'S, BUT EVERY SUBJECT'S SOUL IS HIS OWN, until he shows, indeed, that there is but one ultimate sovereignty; one to which the king and his subjects are alike amenable, which pursues them everywhere, with its demands and reckonings,—from whose violated laws there is no escape.

Will. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own head—[no unimportant point in the theology or ethics of that time]—THE KING is not to answer for it.

Bates. I do not desire the king should answer for me, and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

King. I, myself, heard the king say, he would not be ransomed.

Will. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne'er the wiser.

King. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

Will. Mass, you'll pay him then! That's a perilous shot out of an elder gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch. You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.

And, indeed, thus and not any less absurd and monstrous, appeared the idea of subjecting the king to any effect from the subject's displeasure, or the idea of calling him to account—this one, helpless, frail, private man, as he has just been conceded by the king himself to be, for any amount of fraud or dishonesty to the nation, for any breach of trust or honour. For his relation to the mass and the source of this fearful irresponsible power was not understood then. The soldier states it well. One might, indeed, as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.

  'You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues.
  'Come, 'tis a foolish saying.'

'Your reproof is something too round,' is the king's reply. It is indeed round. It is one of those round replies that this poet is so fond of, and the king himself becomes 'the private' of it, when once the centre of this play is found, and the sweep of its circumference is taken. For the sovereignty of law, the kingship of the universal law in whomsoever it speaks, awful with God's power, armed with his pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It is but the shot out of an 'elder gun;' he might as well 'go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.' 'I should be angry with you,' continues the king, after noticing the roundness of that reply, 'I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.'

But as to the poet who composes these dialogues, of course he does not know whether the time is convenient or not;—he has never reflected upon any of those grave questions which are here so seriously discussed. They are not questions in which he can be supposed to have taken any interest. Of course he does not know or care what it is that these men are talking about. It is only for the sake of an artistic effect, to pass away the night, and to deepen for his hero the gloom which was to serve as the foil and sullen ground of his great victory, that his interlocutors are permitted to go on in this manner.

It is easy to see, however, what extraordinary capabilities this particular form of writing offered to one who had any purpose, or to an author, who wished on any account, to 'infold' somewhat his meaning;—that was the term used then in reference to this style of writing. For certainly, many things dangerous in themselves could be shuffled in under cover of an artistic effect, which would not strike at the time, amid the agitations, and the skilful checks, and counteractions, of the scene, even the quick ear of despotism itself.

And thus King Lear—that impersonation of absolutism—the very embodiment of pure will and tyranny in their most frantic form, taken out all at once from that hot bath of flatteries to which he had been so long accustomed, that his whole self-consciousness had become saturated, tinctured in the grain with them, and he believed himself to be, within and without, indestructibly, essentially,—'ay, every inch A KING;' with speeches on his supremacy copied, well nigh verbatim, from those which Elizabeth's courtiers habitually addressed to her, still ringing in his ears, hurled out into a single-handed contest with the elements, stripped of all his 'social and artificial lendings,' the poor, bare, unaccommodated, individual man, this living subject of the poet's artistic treatment,—this 'ruined Majesty' anatomized alive, taken to pieces literally before our eyes, pursued, hunted down scientifically, and robbed in detail of all 'the additions of a king'—must, of course, be expected to evince in some way his sense of it; 'for soul and body,' this poet tells us, 'rive not more in parting than greatness going off.'

Once conceive the possibility of presenting the action, the dumb show, of this piece upon the stage at that time, (there have been times since when it could not be done), and the dialogue, with its illimitable freedoms, follows without any difficulty. For the surprise of the monarch at the discoveries which this new state of things forces upon him,—the speeches he makes, with all the levelling of their philosophy, with all the unsurpassable boldness of their political criticism, are too natural and proper to the circumstances, to excite any surprise or question.

Indeed, a king, who, nurtured in the flatteries of the palace, was unlearned enough in the nature of things, to suppose that the name of a king was anything but a shadow when the power which had sustained its prerogative was withdrawn,—a king who thought that he could still be a king, and maintain 'his state' and 'his hundred knights,' and their prerogatives, and all his old arbitrary, despotic humours, with their inevitable encroachment on the will and humours, and on the welfare of others, merely on grounds of respect and affection, or on grounds of duty, when not merely the care of 'the state,' but the revenues and power of it had been devolved on others—such a one appeared, indeed, to the poet, to be engaging in an experiment very similar to the one which he found in progress in his time, in that old, decayed, riotous form of military government, which had chosen the moment of its utter dependence on the popular will and respect, as the fitting one for its final suppression of the national liberties. It was an experiment which was, of course, modified in the play by some diverting and strongly pronounced differences, or it would not have been possible to produce it then; but it was still the experiment of the unarmed prerogative, that the old popular tale of the ancient king of Britain offered to the poet's hands, and that was an experiment which he was willing to see traced to its natural conclusion on paper at least; while in the subsequent development of the plot, the presence of an insulted trampled outcast majesty on the stage, furnishes a cover of which the poet is continually availing himself, for putting the case of that other outraged sovereignty, whose cause under one form or another, under all disguises, he is always pleading. And in the poet's hands, the debased and outcast king, becomes the impersonation of a debased and violated state, that had given all to its daughters,—the victim of a tyranny not less absolute, the victim, too, of a blindness and fatuity on its own part, not less monstrous, but not, not—that is the poet's word—not yet irretrievable.

  'Thou shalt find
  I will resume that shape, which thou dost think
  I have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.'
  'Do you mark that, my lord?'

But the question of that prerogative, which has consumed, in the poet's time, all the faculties of government constitutes only a subordinate part of the action of that great play, into which it is here incorporated; a play which comprehends in its new philosophical reaches, in its new and before-unimagined subtilties of analysis, the most radical questions of a practical human science; questions which the practical reason of these modern ages at the moment of its awakening, found itself already compelled to grapple with, and master.

UNACCOMMODATED MAN.

'Consider him well.—Three of us are sophisticated.'

For this is the grand SOCIAL tragedy. It is the tragedy of an unlearned human society; it is the tragedy of a civilization in which grammar, and the relations of sounds and abstract notions to each other have sufficed to absorb the attention of the learned,—a civilization in which the parts of speech, and their relations, have been deeply considered, but one in which the social elements, the parts of life, and their unions, and their prosody, have been left to spontaneity, and empiricism, and all kinds of rude, arbitrary, idiomatical conjunctions, and fortuitous rules; a civilization in which the learning of 'WORDS' is put down by the reporter—invented— and the learning of 'THINGS'—omitted.

And in a movement which was designed to bring the human reason to bear scientifically and artistically upon those questions in which the deepest human interests are involved, the wrong and misery of that social state to which the New Machine, with its new combination of sense and reason, must be applied, had to be fully and elaborately brought out and exhibited. And there was but one language in which the impersonated human misery and wrong,—the speaker for countless hearts, tortured and broken on the rude machinery of unlearned social customs, and lawless social forces, could speak; there was but one tongue in which it could tell its story. For this is the place where science becomes inevitably poetical. That same science which fills our cabinets and herbariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute stones and shells and plants and dead birds and insects—that same science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description—that same science that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic nicety,—in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that which had most need of science; and his 'illustrated book' of it, the book of his experiments in it, comes to us filled with his yet living, 'ever living' subjects, and resounding with the tragedy of their complainings.

It requires but a little reading of that book to find, that the author of it is a philosopher who is strongly disposed to ascertain the limits of that thing in nature, which men call fortune,—that is, in their week-day speech,—they have another name for it 'o' Sundays.' He is greatly of the opinion, that the combined and legitimate use of those faculties with which man is beneficently 'armed against diseases of the world,' would tend very much to limit those fortuities and accidents, those wild blows,—those vicissitudes, that men, in their ignorance and indolent despair, charge on Fate or ascribe to Providence, while at the same time it would furnish the art of accommodating the human mind to that which is inevitable. It is not fortune who is blind, but man, he says,—a creature endowed of nature for his place in nature, endowed of God with a godlike faculty, looking before and after—a creature who has eyes, eyes adapted to his special necessities, but one that will not use them.

Acquaintance with law, as it is actual in nature, and inventions of arts based on that acquaintance, appear to him to open a large field of relief to the human estate, a large field of encroachment on that human misery, which men have blindly and stupidly acquiesced in hitherto, as necessity. For this is the philosopher who borrows, on another page, an ancient fable to teach us that that is not the kind of submission which is pleasing to God—that that is not the kind of 'suffering' that will ever secure his favour. He, for one, is going to search this social misery to the root, with that same light which the ancient wise man tells us, 'is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searcheth the inwardness of all secrets.'

The weakness and ignorance and misery of the natural man,—the misery too of the artificial man as he is,—the misery of man in society, when that society is cemented with arbitrary customs, and unscientific social arts, and when the instinctive spontaneous demoniacal forces of nature, are at large in it; the dependence of the social Monad, the constitutional specific human dependence, on the specific human law,—the exquisite human liability to injury and wrong, which are but the natural indications of those higher arts and excellencies, those unborn pre-destined human arts and excellencies, which man must struggle through his misery to reach;—that is the scientific notion which lies at the bottom of this grand ideal representation. It is, in a word, the human social NEED, in all its circumference, clearly sketched, laid out, scientifically, as the basis of the human social ART. It is the negation of that which man's conditions, which the human conditions require;—it is the collection on the Table of Exclusion and Rejection, which must precede the practical affirmation.

King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?

Hamlet. None in the world. It's the image of a murder done in Vienna.

In the poetic representation of that state of things which was to be redressed, the central social figure must, of course, have its place. For it is the Poet, the Experimental Poet, unseen indeed, deep buried in his fable, his new movements all hidden under its old garb, and deeper hidden still, in the new splendours he puts on it—it is the Poet—invisible but not the less truly, he,—it is the Scientific Poet, who comes upon the monarch in his palace at noonday, and says, 'My business is with thee, O king.' It is he who comes upon the selfish arrogant old despot, drunk with Elizabethan flatteries, stuffed with 'titles blown from adulation,' unmindful of the true ends of government, reckless of the duties which that regal assumption of the common weal brings with it—it is the Poet who comes upon this Doctor of Laws in the palace and prescribes to him a course of treatment which the royal patient himself, when once it has taken effect, is ready to issure from the hovel's mouth, in the form of a general prescription and state ordinance.

  'Take physic, POMP;
  Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
  That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
  And show the heavens more just.
  Oh, I have taken too little care of This!'

It is that same Poet who has already told us, confidentially, under cover of King Hal's mantle, that 'the king himself is but a man' and that 'all his senses have but human conditions and that his affections, too, though higher mounted when they stoop, stoop with the like wing; that his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man';—it is that same Poet, and, in carrying out the purpose of this play, it has come in his way now to make good that statement. For it was necessary to his purpose here, to show that the State is composed throughout, down to its most loathsome unimaginable depths of neglect and misery, of individual men, social units, clothed of nature with the same faculties and essential human dignities and susceptibilities to good and evil, and crowned of nature with the common sovereignty of reason,—down-trodden, perhaps, and wrung and trampled out of them, but elected of nature to that dignity; it was necessary to show this, in order that the wisdom of the State which sacrifices to the senses of one individual man, and the judgment that is narrowed by the one man's senses, the weal of the whole,—in order that the wisdom of the State, which puts at the mercy of the arbitrary will and passions of the one, the weal of the many, might be mathematically exhibited,—might be set down in figures and diagrams. For this is that Poet who represents this method of inquiry and investigation, as it were, to the eye. This is that same Poet, too, who surprises elsewhere a queen in her swooning passion of grief, and bids her murmur to us her recovering confession.

  'No more, but e'en a woman; and commanded
  By such poor passion, as the maid that milks,
  And does the meanest chares.'

So busy is he, indeed, in laying by this king's 'ceremonies' for him, beginning with the first doubtful perception of a most faint neglect,—a falling off in the ceremonious affection due to majesty 'as well in the general dependents as in the duke himself and his daughter,'—so faint that the king dismisses it from his thought, and charges it on his own jealousy till he is reminded of it by another,—beginning with that faint beginning, and continuing the process not less delicately, through all its swift dramatic gradations,—the direct abatement of the regal dignities,—the knightly train diminishing,—nay, 'fifty of his followers at a clap' torn from him, his messenger put in the stocks,—and 'it is worse than murder,' the poor king cries in the anguish of his slaughtered dignity and affection, 'to do upon respect such violent outrage,'—so bent is the Poet upon this analytic process; so determined that this shaking out of a 'preconception,' shall be for once a thorough one, so absorbed with the dignity of the scientific experiment, that he seems bent at one moment on giving a literal finish to this process; but the fool's scruples interfere with the philosophical humour of the king, and the presence of Mad Tom in his blanket, with the king's exposition, suffices to complete the demonstration. For not less lively than this, is the preaching and illustration, from that new rostrum which this 'Doctor' has contrived to make himself master of. 'His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man,' says King Hal. 'Couldst thou save nothing?' says King Lear to the Bedlamite. 'Why thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.' 'Is man,'—it is the king who generalises, it is the king who introduces this levelling suggestion here in the abstract, while the Poet is content with the responsibility of the concrete exhibition—'Is man no wore than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the cat no perfume:—Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself. UNACCOMMODATED MAN is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal, as thou art. Off, off, you lendings.' But 'the fool' is of the opinion that this scientific process of unwrapping the artificial majesty, this philosophical undressing, has already gone far enough.

'Pry'thee, Nuncle, be contented,' he says, 'it is a naughty night to swim in.'

For it is the great heath wrapped in one of those storms of wind and rain and thunder and lightning, which this wizard only of all the children of men knows how to raise, that he chooses for his physiological exhibition of majesty, when the palace-door has been shut upon it, and the last 'additions of a king' have been subtracted. It is a night—

  'Wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
  The lion, and the belly-pinched wolf
  Keep their fur dry'—

into which he turns his royal patient 'unbonneted.'

For the tyranny of wild nature in her elemental uproar must be added to the tyranny of the human wildness, the cruelty of the elements must conspire, like pernicious ministers, with the cruelty of arbitrary HUMAN will and passions, the irrational, INHUMAN social forces must be joined by those other forces that make war upon us, before the real purpose of this exhibition and the full depth and scientific comprehension of it can begin to appear. It is in the tempest that Lear finds occasion to give out the Poet's text. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Unaccommodated man in his struggle with nature. Man without social combinations, man without arts to aid him in his battle with the elements, or with arts that fence in his body, and robe it, it may be, in delicate and gorgeous apparelling, arts that roof his head with a princely dome it may be, and add to his native dignity and forces, the means and appliances of a material civilization, but leave his nobler nature with its more living susceptibility to injury, unsheathed, at the mercy of the brute forces that unscientific civilizations, with their coarse laws, with their cobwebs of WORDY learning, with their science of abstractions, unmatched with the subtilty of THINGS, are compelled to leave at large, uncaught, unentangled.

Yes, it is man in his relation to nature, man in his dependence on artificial aid, man in his two-fold dependence on art, that this tempest, this double tempest wakes and brings out, for us to 'consider,'—to 'consider well';—'the naked creature,' that were better in his grave than to answer with his uncovered body that extremity of the skies, and by his side, with his soul uncovered to a fiercer blast, his royal brother with 'the tempest in his mind, that doth from his senses take all feeling else, save what beats there.'

It is the personal weakness, the moral and intellectual as well as the bodily frailty and limitation of faculty, and liability to suffering and outrage, the liability to wrong from treachery, as well as violence, which are 'the common' specific human conditions, common to the King in his palace, and Tom o'Bedlam in his hovel; it is this exquisite human frailty and susceptibility, still unprovided for, that fills the play throughout, and stands forth in these two, impersonated; it is that which fills all the play with the outcry of its anguish.

And thus it is, that this poor king must needs be brought out into this wild uproar of nature, and stripped of his last adventitious aid, reduced to the authority and forces that nature gave him, invaded to the skin, and ready in his frenzy to second the poet's intent, by yielding up the last thread of his adventitious and artistic defences. All his artificial, social personality already dissolved, or yet in the agony of its dissolution, all his natural social ties torn and bleeding within him, there is yet another kind of trial for him, as the elected and royal representative of the human conditions. For the perpetual, the universal interest of this experiment arises from the fact, that it is not as the king merely, dissolving like 'a mockery king of snow' that this illustrious form stands here, to undergo this fierce analysis, but as the representative, 'the conspicuous instance,' of that social name and figure, which all men carry about with them, and take to be a part of themselves, that outward life, in which men go beyond themselves, by means of their affections, and extend their identity, incorporating into their very personality, that floating, contingent material which the wills and humours and opinions, the prejudices and passions of others, and the variable tide of this world's fortunes make—that social Name and Figure in which men may die many times, ere the physical life is required of them, in which all men must needs live if they will live in it at all, at the mercy of these uncontrolled social eventualities.

The tragedy is complicated, but it is only that same complication which the tragedy it stands for, is always exhibiting. The fact that this blow to his state is dealt to him by those to whom nature herself had so dearly and tenderly bound him, nay, with whom she had so hopelessly identified him, is that which overwhelms the sufferer. It is that which he seeks to understand in vain. He wishes to reason upon it, but his mind cannot master it; under that it is that his brain gives way,—the first mental confusion begins there. The blow to his state is a subordinate thing with him. It only serves to measure the wrong that deals it. The poet takes pains to clear this complication in the experiment. It is the wound in the affections which untunes the jarring senses of 'this child-changed father.' It is that which invades his identity.

'Are you our daughter? Does anyone here know me?' That is the word with which he breaks the silence of that dumb amazement, that paralysis of frozen wonder which Goneril's first rude assault brings on him. 'Why, this is not Lear; Ha! sure it is not so. Does any one here know me? Who is it that can tell me who I am?'

But with all her cruelty, he cannot shake her off. He curses her; but his curses do not sever the tie.

  'But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter.
  Or rather, a disease that's in my flesh
  Which I must needs call mine.
  Filial ingratitude!
  Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
  For lifting food to it?'

For that is the poet's conception of the extent of this social life and outgoing—that is the interior of that social whole, in which the dissolution he represents here is proceeding,—and that is the kind of new phenomenon which the science of man, when it takes him as he is, not the abstract man of the schools, not the logical man that the Realists and the Nominalists went to blows for, but 'the thing itself,' exhibits. As to that other 'man,'—the man of the old philosophy,—he was not 'worth the whistle,' this one thinks. 'His bones were marrowless, his blood was cold, he had no speculation in those eyes that he did glare with.' The New Philosopher will have no such skeletons in his system. He is getting his general man out of particular cases, building him up solid, from a basis of natural history, and, as far as he goes, there will be no question, no two words about it, as to whether he is or is not. 'For I do take,' says the Advancer of Learning, 'the consideration in general, and at large, of Human Nature, to be fit to be emancipated and made a knowledge by itself.' No wonder if some new aspects of these ordinary phenomena, these 'common things,' as he calls them, should come out, when they too come to be subjected to a scientific inquiry, and when the Poet of this Advancement, this so subtle Poet of it, begins to explore them.

And as to this particular point which he puts down with so much care, this point which poor Lear is illustrating here, viz. 'that our affections carry themselves beyond us,' as the sage of the 'Mountain' expresses it, this is the view the same Poet gives of it, in accounting for Ophelia's madness.

  'Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,
  It sends some precious instance of itself,
  After the thing it loves.'

'Your old kind father,' continues Lear, searching to the quick the secrets of this 'broken-heartedness,' as people are content to call it, this ill to which the human species is notoriously liable, though philosophy had not thought it worth while before 'to find it out;'

  'Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,—
  O that way madness lies; let me shun that,
  No more of that.'

And it is while he is still undergoing the last extreme of the suffering which the human wrong is capable of inflicting on the affections, that he comes in the Poet's hands to exhibit also the unexplored depth of that wrong,—that monstrous, inhuman social error, that perpetual outrage on nature in her human law, which leaves the helpless human outcast to the rough discipline of nature, which casts him out from the family of man, from its common love and shelter, and leaves him in his vices, and helplessness, and ignorance, to contend alone with great nature and her unrelenting consequences.

                         'To wilful men
  The injuries that they themselves procure,
  Must be their school-masters,'—

is the point which the philosophic Regan makes, as she bids them shut the door in her father's face; but it is the common human relationship that the Poet is intent on clearing, while he notes the special relationship also; he does not limit his humanities to the ties of blood, or household sympathies, or social gradations.

But Regan's views on this point are seconded and sustained, and there seems to be but one opinion on the subject among those who happen to have that castle in possession; at least the timid owner of it does not feel himself in a position to make any forcible resistance to the orders which his illustrious guests, who have 'taken from him the use of his own house,' have seen fit to issue in it. 'Shut up your doors, (says Cornwall),

'Shut up your doors, my lord: 'tis a wild night. My REGAN COUNSELS well; COME OUT O' THE STORM.'

And it is because this representation is artistic and dramatic, and not simply historical, and the Poet must seek to condense, and sum and exhibit in dramatic appreciable figures, the unreckonable, undefinable historical suffering of years, aad lifetimes of this vain human struggle,—because, too, the wildest threats which nature in her terrors makes to man, had to be incorporated in this great philosophic piece; and because, lastly, the Poet would have the madness of the human will and passion, presented in its true scientific relations, that this storm collects into itself such ideal sublimities, and borrows from the human passion so many images of cruelty.

In all the mad anguish of that ruined greatness, and wronged natural affection, the Poet, relentless as fortune herself in her sternest moods, intent on his experiment only, will bring out his great victim, and consign him to the wind and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, and bid his senses undergo their 'horrible pleasure.'

For the senses, scorned as they had been in philosophy hitherto, the senses in this philosophy, have their report also,—their full, honest report, to make to us. And the design of this piece, as already stated in the general, required in its execution, not only that these two kinds of suffering, these two grand departments of human need, should be included and distinguished in it, but that they should be brought together in this one man's experience, so that a deliberate comparison can be instituted between them; and the Poet will bid the philosophic king, the living 'subject' himself, report the experiment, and tell us plainly, once for all, whether the science of the physical Arts only, is the science which is wanting to man; or whether arts—scientific arts—that take hold of the moral nature, also, and deal with that not less effectively, can be dispensed with; whether, indeed, man is in any condition to dispense with the Science and the Art which puts him into intelligent and harmonious relations with nature in general.

It was necessary to the purpose of the play to exhibit man's dependence on art, by means of his senses and his sensibilities, and his intellectual conditions, and all his frailties and liabilities,— his dependence on art, based on the knowledge of natural laws, universal laws,—constitutions, which include the human. It was necessary to exhibit the whole misery, the last extreme of that social evil, to which a creature so naturally frail and ignorant is liable, under those coarse, fortuitous, inartistic, unscientific social conglomerations, which ignorant and barbarous ages build, and under the tyranny of those wild, barbaric social evils, which our fine social institutions, notwithstanding the universality of their terms, and the transcendant nature of the forces which they are understood to have at their disposal, for some fatal reason or other, do not yet succeed in reducing.

It is, indeed, the whole ground of the Scientific Human Art, which is revealed here by the light of this great passion, and that, in this Poet's opinion, is none other than the ground of the human want, and is as large and various as that. And the careful reader of this play,—the patient searcher of its subtle lore,—the diligent collector of its thick-crowding philosophic points and flashing condensations of discovery, will find that the need of arts, is that which is set forth in it, with all the power of its magnificent poetic embodiment, and in the abstract as well,—the need of arts infinitely more noble and effective, more nearly matched with the subtlety of nature, and better able to entangle and subdue its oppositions, than any of which mankind have yet been able to possess themselves, or ever the true intention of nature in the human form can be realized, or anything like a truly Human Constitution, or Common-Weal, is possible.

But let us return to the comparison, and collect the results of this experiment.—For a time, indeed, raised by that storm of grief and indignation into a companionship with the wind and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, the king 'strives in his little world of man,'—for that is the phrasing of the poetic report, to out-scorn these elements. Nay, we ourselves hear, as the curtain rises on that ideal representative form of human suffering, the wild intonation of that human defiance—mounting and singing above the thunder, and drowning all the elemental crash with its articulation; for this is an experiment which the philosopher will try in the presence of his audience, and not report it merely. With that anguish in his heart, the crushed majesty, the stricken old man, the child-wounded father, laughs at the pains of the senses; the physical distress is welcome to him, he is glad of it. He does not care for anything that the unconscious, soulless elements can do to him, he calls to them from their heights, and bids them do their worst. Or it is only as they conspire with that wilful human wrong, and serve to bring home to him anew the depth of it, by these tangible, sensuous effects,—it is only by that means that they are able to wound him.

'Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters,'

that is the argument.

'I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness.'

Surely that is logical; that is a distinction not without a difference, and appreciable to the human mind, as it is constituted,—surely that is a point worth putting in the arts and sciences.

  'I never gave you kingdoms, called you children;
  You owe me no subscription; why, then, let fall
  Your horrible pleasure? Here I stand your slave,
  A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man;
  But yet, I call you servile ministers,
  That have with two pernicious daughters joined
  Your high, engendered battles 'gainst a head
  So old and white as this. O, O, 'tis foul.'

And in his calmer mood, when the storm has done its work upon him, and all the strength of his great passion is exhausted,—when his bodily powers are fast sinking under it, and like the subtle Hamlet's 'potent poison,' it begins at last to 'o'er-crow his spirit'—when he is faint with struggling with its fury, wet to the skin with it, and comfortless and shivering, he still maintains through his chattering teeth the argument; he will still defend his first position—

  'Thou thinkst 'tis much that this contentious storm
  Invades us to the skin; so 'tis to thee,
  But where the greater malady is fixed,
  The lesser is scarce felt.'

  'The tempest in my mind
  Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
  Save what beats there.'

  'In such a night
  To shut me out! Pour on, I will endure.
  In such a night as this.'

And when the shelter he is at last forced to seek is found, at the door his courage fails him; and he shrinks back into the storm again, because 'it will not give him leave to think on that which hurts him more.'

So nicely does the Poet balance these ills, and report the swaying movement. But it is a poet who does not take common-place opinions on this, or on any other such subject. He is one whose poetic work does not consist in illustrating these received opinions, or in finding some novel and fine expression for them. He is observing nature, and undertaking to report it, as it is, not as it should be according to these preconceptions, or according to the established poetic notions of the heroic requisitions.

But there is no stage that can exhibit his experiment here in its real significance, excepting that one which he himself builds for us; for it is the vast lonely heath, and the Man, the pigmy man, on it—and the KING, the pigmy king, on it;—it is all the wild roar of elemental nature, and the tempest in that 'little world of man,' that have to measure their forces, that have to be brought into continuous and persevering contest. It is not Gloster only, who sees in that storm what 'makes him think that a man is but a worm.'

Doubtless, it would have been more in accordance with the old poetic notions, if this poor king had maintained his ground without any misgiving at all; but it is a poet of a new order, and not the old heroic one, who has the conducting of this experiment; and though his verse is not without certain sublimities of its own, they have to consist with the report of the fact as it is, to its most honest and unpoetic, unheroic detail.

And notwithstanding all the poetry of that passionate defiance, it is the physical storm that triumphs in the end. The contest between that little world of man and the great outdoor world of nature was too unequal. Compelled at last to succumb, yielding to 'the tyranny of the open night, that is too rough for nature to endure—the night that frightens the very wanderers of the dark, and makes them keep their caves, while it reaches, with its poetic combination of horrors, that border line of the human conception which great Nature's pencil, in this Poet's hand, is always reaching and completing,—

'Man's nature cannot carry The affliction nor the fear.'

—Unable to contend any longer with 'the fretful element'—unable to 'outscorn' any longer 'the to and fro conflicting wind and rain'—weary of struggling with 'the impetuous blasts,' that in their 'eyeless rage' and 'fury' care no more for age and reverence than his daughters do—that seize his white hairs, and make nothing of them—'exposed to feel what wretches feel'—he finds at last, with surprise, that art—the wretch's art—that can make vile things precious. No longer clamoring for 'the additions of a king,' but thankful for the basest means of shelter from the elements, glad to avail himself of the rudest structure with which art 'accommodates' man to nature, (for that is the word of this philosophy, where it is first proposed)—glad to divide with his meanest subject that shelter which the outcast seeks on such a night—ready to creep with him, under it, side by side—'fain to hovel with swine and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw'—surely we have reached a point at last where the action of the piece itself—the mere 'dumb show' of it—becomes luminous, and hardly needs the player's eloquence to tell us what it means.

Surely this is a little like 'the language' of Periander's message, when he bid the messenger observe and report what he saw him do. It is very important to note that ideas may be conveyed in this way as well as by words, the author of the Advancement of Learning remarks, in speaking of the tradition of the principal and supreme sciences. He takes pains to notice, also, that a representation, by means of these 'transient hieroglyphics,' is much more moving to the sensibilities, and leaves a more vivid and durable impression on the memory, than the most eloquent statement in mere words. 'What is sensible always strikes the memory more strongly, and sooner impresses itself, than what is intellectual. Thus the memory of brutes is excited by sensible, but not by intellectual things;' and thus, also, he proposes to impress that class which Coriolanus speaks of, 'whose eyes are more learned than their ears,' to whom 'action is eloquence.' Here we have the advantage of the combination, for there is no part of the dumb show, but has its word of scientific comment and interpretation.

  'Art cold [to the Fool]?
  I am cold myself. Where is this STRAW, my fellow?
  The art of our necessities is strange,
  That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
  Come, bring us to this hovel.'

For this is what that wild tragic poetic resistance and defiance comes to—this is what the 'unaccommodated man' comes to, though it is the highest person in the state, stripped of his ceremonies and artificial appliances, on whom the experiment is tried.

  'Where is this straw, my fellow? Art cold? I am cold myself.
  Come, your hovel. Come, bring us to this hovel.'

When that royal edict is obeyed,—when the wonders of the magician's art are put in requisition to fulfil it,—when the road from the palace to the hovel is laid open,—when the hovel, where Tom o' Bedlam is nestling in the straw, is produced on the stage, and THE KING—THE KING—stoops, before all men's eyes, to creep into its mouth,—surely we do not need 'a chorus to interpret for us'—we do not need to wait for the Poet's own deferred exposition to seize the more obvious meanings. Surely, one catches enough in passing, in the dialogues and tableaux here, to perceive that there is something going on in this play which is not all play,—something that will be earnest, perhaps, ere all is done,—something which 'the groundlings' were not expected to get, perhaps, in 'their sixe-penn'orth' of it at the first performance,—something which that witty and splendid company, who made up the Christmas party at Whitehall, on the occasion of its first exhibition there, who sat there 'rustling in silk,' breathing perfumes, glittering in wealth that the alchemy of the storm had not tried, were not, perhaps, all informed of; though there might have been one among them, 'a gentleman of blood and breeding,' who could have told them what it meant.

'We construct,' says the person who describes this method of philosophic instruction, speaking of the subtle prepared history which forces the inductions—'we construct tables and combinations of instances, upon such a plan, and in such order, that the understanding may be enabled to act upon them.'

'They told me I was everything.'

They told me I was everything,' says the poor king himself, long afterwards, when the storm has had its ultimate effect upon him.

'To say ay and no to everything that I said!—[To say] ay and no too WAS NO GOOD DIVINITY. They told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men of their words: they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie; I am not ague-proof.'

'I think the king is but a man, as I am' [says King Hal], 'All his senses have the like conditions; and his affections, though higher mounted, when they stoop, stoop with the like wing.'

But at the door of that rude hut the ruined majesty pauses. In vain his loving attendants, whom, for love's sake, this Poet will still have with him, entreat him to enter. Storm-battered, and wet, and shivering as he is, he shrinks back from the shelter he has bid them bring him to. He will not 'in.' Why? Is it because 'the tempest will not give him leave to ponder on things would hurt him more.' That is his excuse at first; but another blast strikes him, and he yields to 'the to and fro conflicting wind and rain,' and says—

'But I'll go in.'

Yet still he pauses. Why? Because he has not told us why he is there;—because he is in the hands of the Poet of the Human Kind, the poet of 'those common things that our ordinary life consisteth of,' who will have of them an argument that shall shame that 'resplendent and lustrous mass of matter' that old philosophers and poets have chosen for theirs;—because the rare accident—the wild, poetic, unheard-of accident—which has brought a man, old in luxuries, clothed in soft raiment, nurtured in king's houses, into this rude, unaided collision with nature;—the poetic impossibility, which has brought the one man from the apex of the social structure down this giddy depth, to this lowest social level;—the accident which has given the 'one man,' who has the divine disposal of the common weal, this little casual experimental taste of the weal which his wisdom has been able to provide for the many—of the weal which a government so divinely ordered, from its pinnacle of personal ease and luxury, thinks sufficient and divine enough for the many,—this accident—this grand poetic accident—with all its exquisite poetic effects, is, in this poet's hands, the means, not the end. This poor king's great tragedy, the loss of his social position, his broken-heartedness, his outcast suffering, with all the aggravations of this poetic descent, and the force of its vivid contrasts—with all the luxurious impressions on the sensibilities which the ideal wonders of the rude old fable yield so easily in this Poet's hands,—this rare accident, and moving marvel of poetic calamity,—this 'one man's' tragedy is not the tragedy that this Poet's soul is big with. It is the tragedy of the Many, and not the One,—it is the tragedy that is the rule, and not the exception,—it is the tragedy that is common, and not that which is singular, whose argument this Poet has undertaken to manage.

'Come, bring us to your hovel.'

The royal command is obeyed; and the house of that estate, which has no need to borrow its title of plurality to establish the grandeur of its claim, springs up at the New Magician's word, and stands before us on the scientific stage in its colossal, portentous, scientific grandeur; and the king—the king—is at the door of it: the Monarch is at the door of the Many. For the scientific Poet has had his eye on that structure, and he will make of it a thing of wonder, that shall rival old poets' fancy pieces, and drive our entomologists and conchologists to despair, and drive them off the stage with their curiosities and marvels. There is no need of a Poet's going to the supernatural for 'machinery,' this Poet thinks, while there's such machinery as this ready to his hands unemployed. 'There's something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.' There's no need of going to the antique for his models; for he is inventing the arts that will make of this an antiquity.

The Monarch has found his meanest subject's shelter, but at the door of it he is arrested—nailed with a nail fastened by the Master of Assemblies. He has come down from that dizzy height, on the Poet's errand. He is there to speak the Poet's word,—to illustrate that grave abstract learning which the Poet has put on another page, with a note that, as it stands there, notwithstanding the learned airs it has, it is not learning, but 'the husk and shell' of it. For this is the philosopher who puts it down as a primary Article of Science, that governments should be based on a scientific acquaintance with 'the natures, dispositions, necessities and discontents of the people'; and though in his book of the Advancement of Learning, he suggests that these points 'ought to be,' considering the means of ascertaining them at the disposal of the government, 'considering the variety of its intelligences, the wisdom of its observations, and the height of the station where it keeps sentinel, transparent as crystal,'—here he puts the case of a government that had not availed itself of those extraordinary means of ascertaining the truth at a distance, and was therefore in the way of discovering much that was new, in the course of an accidental personal descent into the lower and more inaccessible regions of the Common Weal it had ordered. This is the crystal which proves after all the most transparent for him. This is the help for weak eyes which becomes necessary sometimes, in the absence of the scientific crystal, which is its equivalent.

The Monarch is at the hovel's door, but he cannot enter. Why? Because he is in that school into which his own wise REGAN, that 'counsels' so 'well'—that Regan who sat at his own council-table so long, has turned him; and it is a school in which the lessons must be learned 'by heart,' and there is no shelter for him from its pitiless beating in this Poet's economy, till that lesson he was sent there to learn has been learned; and it was a Monarch's lesson, and at the Hovel's door he must recite it. He will not enter. Why? Because the great lesson of state has entered his soul: with the sharpness of its illustration it has pierced him: his spirit is dilated, and moved and kindling with its grandeur: he is thinking of 'the Many,' he has forgotten 'the One,'—the many, all whose senses have like conditions, whose affections stoop with the like wing. He will not enter, because he thinks it unregal, inhuman, mean, selfish to engross the luxury of the hovel's shelter, and the warmth of the 'precious' straw, while he knows that he has subjects still abroad with senses like his own, capable of the like misery, still exposed to its merciless cruelties. It was the tenant of the castle, it was the man in the house who said, 'Come, let's be snug and cheery here. Shut up the door. Let's have a fire, and a feast, and a song,—or a psalm, or a prayer, as the case may be; only let it be within—no matter which it is':

'Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night,— My Regan counsels well; come out o' the storm.'

But here it is the houseless man, who is thinking of his kindred,—his royal family, for whom God has made him responsible, out in this same storm unbonneted; and in the tenderness of that sympathy, in the searching delicacy of that feeling with which he scrutinizes now their case, they seem to him less able than himself to resist its elemental 'tyranny.' For in that ideal revolution—in that exact turn of the wheel of fortune—in that experimental 'change of places,' which the Poet recommends to those who occupy the upper ones in, the social structure, as a means of a more particular and practical acquaintance with the conditions of those for whom they legislate, new views of the common natural human relations; new views of the ends of social combinations are perpetually flashing on him; for it is the fallen monarch himself, the late owner and disposer of the Common Weal, it is this strangely philosophic, mysteriously philosophic, king—philosophic as that Alfred who was going to succeed him—it is the king who is chosen by the Poet as the chief commentator and expounder of that new political and social doctrine which the action of this play is itself suggesting.

In that school of the tempest; in that one night's personal experience of the misery that underlies the pompous social structure, with all its stately splendours and divine pretensions; in that New School of the Experimental Science, the king has been taking lessons in the art of majesty. The alchemy of it has robbed him of the external adjuncts and 'additions of a king,' but the sovereignty of MERCY, the divine right of PITY, the majesty of the HUMAN KINDNESS, the grandeur of the COMMON WEAL, 'breathes through his lips' from the Poet's heart 'like man new made.'

Kent. Good, my lord, enter here.

  Lear. Prythee, go in thyself. Seek thine own ease.
   . . . . But, I'll go in.
  In, boy,—go first—[To the Fool.]
  You, houseless poverty'—

He knows the meaning of that phrase now.

'Nay get thee in. I'll PRAY, and then I'll sleep.'

[Fool goes in.]

  'Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
  That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,'—

There are no empty phrases in this prayer, the critic of it may perceive: it is a learned prayer; the petitioner knows the meaning of each word in it: the tempest is the book in which he studied it.

'How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have taken Too little care of THIS. [Hear, hear]. Take physic, POMP; [Hear.] Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayest shake the superflux to them, And show the HEAVENS more just.'

That is his prayer. To minds accustomed to the ceremonial a religious worship, 'with court holy water in a dry house' only, or to those who have never undertaken to compose a prayer for the king and all the royal family at the hovel's mouth, and in such immediate proximity to animals of a different species, it will not perhaps seem a very pious one. But considering that it was understood to have been composed during the heathen ages of this realm, and before Christianity had got itself so comfortably established as a principle of government and social regulations, perhaps it was as good a prayer for a penitent king to go to sleep on, as could well be invented. Certainly the spirit of Christianity, as it appeared in the life of its Founder, at least, seems to be, by a poetic anachronism incorporated in it.

But it is never the custom of this author to leave the diligent student of his performances in any doubt whatever as to his meaning. It is a rule, that everything in the play shall speak and reverberate his purpose. He prolongs and repeats his burthens, till the whole action echoes with them, till 'the groves, the fountains, every region near, seem all one mutual cry.' He has indeed the Teacher's trick of repetition, but then he is 'so rare a wondered teacher,' so rich in magical resources, that he does not often find it necessary to weary the sense with sameness. He is prodigal in variety. It is a Proteus repetition. But his charge to his Ariel in getting up his Masques, always is,—

                  'Bring a corollary,
  Rather than want a spirit.'

Nay, it would be dangerous, not wearisome merely, to make the text of this living commentary continuous, or to bring too near together 'those short and pithy sentences' wherein the action unwinds and fashions into its immortal groups. And the curtain must fall and rise again, ere the outcast duke,—his eyes gouged out by tyranny, turned forth to smell his way to Dover,—can dare to echo, word by word, the thoughts of the outcast king.

Led by one whose qualification for leadership is, that he is 'Madman and Beggar, too,'—for as Gloster explains it to us, explaining also at the same time much else that the scenic language of the play, the dumb show, the transitory hieroglyphic of it presents, and all the criticism of it,

''T IS THE TIME'S PLAGUE WHEN MADMEN LEAD THE BLIND'—

groping with such leadership his way to Dover—'smelling it out'—thus it is that his secret understanding with the king, in that mad and wondrous philosophical humour of his, betrays itself.

  Gloster. Here, take this purse [to Tom o'Bedlam], thou whom the
  heaven's plagues
  Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
  Makes thee the happier:—Heavens, deal so still!
  Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
  That slaves your ordinance, that will not SEE
  Because he doth not FEEL, feel your power quickly;
  So distribution should undo excess,
  And each man have enough.

Lear. O I have taken Too little care of this. Take physic, Pomp; Expose thyself to FEEL what wretches FEEL, That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, And show the Heavens more just.

Truly, these men would seem to have been taking lessons in the same school. But it is very seldom that two men in real life, of equal learning on any topic, coincide so exactly in their trains of thought, and in the niceties of their expression in discussing it. The emphasis is deep, indeed, when this author graves his meaning with such a repetition. But Regan's stern school-master is abroad in this play, enforcing the philosophic subtleties, bringing home to the senses the neglected lessons of nature; full of errands to 'wilful men,' charged with coarse lessons to those who will learn through the senses only great Nature's lore—that 'slave Heaven's ordinance—that will not SEE, because they do not FEEL.'

THE KING AND THE BEGGAR.

Armado. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

Moth. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since: but, I think, now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing, nor for the tune.

  Armado. I will have the subject newly writ over, that I
  may example my digression
  by some mighty precedent.
             Love's Labour's Lost.

But the king's philosophical studies are not yet completed; for he is in the hands of one who does not rely on general statements for his effects; one who is pertinaciously bent on exploring those subterranean social depths, that the king's prayer has just glanced at—who is determined to lay bare to the utmost, to carry the torch of his new science into the lowest recess of that wild, nameless mass of human neglect and misery, which the regal sympathy has embraced for him in the general; though not, indeed, without some niceties of detail, which shew that the eye of a true human pity has collected the terms in which he expresses it.

That vast, immeasurable mass of social misery, which has no learned speech, no tragic dialect—no, or 'it would bear such an emphasis,' that 'its phrase of sorrow might conjure the wandering stars, and bid them stand like wonder-wounded hearers'—that misery which must get a king's robe about it, ere, in the Poet's time, it could have an audience, must needs be produced here, ere all this play was played, in its own native and proper shape and costume, daring as the attempt might seem.

The author is not satisfied with the picturesque details of that misery which he has already given us, with its 'looped and windowed raggedness,' its 'houseless head,' its 'unfed sides'; it must be yet more palpably presented. It must be embodied and dramatically developed; it must be exhibited with its proper moral and intellectual accompaniments, too, before the philosophic requisitions of this design can be fulfilled.

To the lowest deeps of the lowest depths of the unfathomed social misery of that time, the new philosopher, the Poet of the Advancement of Learning, will himself descend; and drag up to the eye of day,—undeterred by any scruple of poetic sensibility,—in his own unborrowed habiliments, with all the badges of his position in the state upon him, the creature he has selected as one of the representatives of the social state as he finds it;—the creature he has selected as the representative of those loathsome, unpenetrated masses of human life, which the unscientific social state must needs generate.

For the design of this play, in its exhibition of the true human need, in its new and large exhibition of the ground which the Arts of a true and rational human civilization must cover, could not but include the defects of that, which passed for civilization then. It involved necessarily, indeed, the most searching and relentless criticisms of the existing institutions of that time. That cry of social misery which pervades it, in which the natural, and social, and artificial evils are still discriminated through all the most tragic bursts of passion—in which the true social need, in all its comprehension, is uttered—that wild cry of human anguish, prolonged, and repeated, and reverberated as it is—is all one outcry upon the social wisdom of the Poet's time. It constitutes one continuous dramatic expression and embodiment of that so deeply-rooted opinion which the New Philosopher is known to have entertained, in regard to the practical knowledge of mankind as he found it; his opinion of the real advances towards the true human ends which had been made in his time; an opinion which he has, indeed, taken occasion to express elsewhere with some distinctness, considering the conditions which hampered the expression of his philosophical conclusions; but it is one which could hardly have been produced from the philosophic chair in his time, or from the bench, or at the council-table, in such terms as we find him launching out into here, without any fear or scruple.

For those who persuade themselves that it was any part of this player's intention to bring out, for the amusement of his audiences, an historical exhibition of the Life and Times of that ancient Celtic king of Britain, whose legendary name and chronicle he has appropriated so effectively, will be prevented by that view of the subject from ever attaining the least inkling of the matter here. For this Magician has quite other work in hand. He does not put his girdles round the earth, and enforce and harass with toil his delicate spirits,—he does not get out his book and staff, and put on his Enchanter's robe, for any such kind of effect as that. For this is not any antiquary at all, but the true Prospero; and when a little more light has been brought into his cell, his garments will be found to be, like the disguised Edgar's—'Persian.'

It is not enough, then, in the wild revolutionary sweep of this play, to bring out the monarch from his palace, and set him down at the hovel's door. It is not enough to open it, and shew us, by the light of Cordelia's pity—that sunshine and rain at once—the 'swine' in that human dwelling, and 'the short and musty-straw' there. For the poet himself will enter it, and drag out its living human tenant into the day of his immortal verse. He will set him up for all ages, on his great stage, side by side with his great brother. He will put the feet of these two men on one platform, and measure their stature—for all their senses have the like conditions, as we have heard already; and he will make the king himself own the KINDRED, and interpret for him. For this group must needs be completed 'to the eye'; these two extremes in the social scale must meet and literally embrace each other, before this Teacher's doctrine of 'MAN'—'man as distinguished from other species'—can be artistically exhibited. For it is this picture of the unaccommodated man—'unaccommodated' still, with all his empiric arts, with all his wordy philosophy—it is this picture of man 'as he is,' in the misery of his IGNORANCE, in his blind struggle with his law of KIND, which is his law of 'BEING,'— unreconciled to his place in the universal order, where he must live or have no life—for the beast, obedient to his law, rejects from his kinds the degenerate man—it is this vivid, condensed, scientific exhibition, this scientific collection of the fact of man as he is, in his empiric struggle with the law which universal nature enforces, and will enforce on him with all her pains and penalties till he learns it—it is this 'negation' which brings out the true doctrine of man and human society in this method of inquiry. For the scientific method begins with negations and exclusions, and concludes only after every species of rejection; the other, the common method, which begins with 'AFFIRMATION,' is the one that has failed in practice, the one which has brought about just this state of things which science is undertaking to reform.

But this levelling, which the man of the new science, with his new apparatus, with his 'globe and his machines,' contrives to exhibit here with so much 'facility,' is a scientific one, designed to answer a scientific purpose merely. The experimenter, in this case, is one who looks with scientific forebodings, and not with hope only, on those storms of violent political revolution that were hanging then on the world's horizon, and threatening to repeat this process, threatening to overwhelm in their wild crash, all the ancient social structures—threatening 'to lay all flat'! That is not the kind of change he meditates. His is the subtle, all-penetrating Radicalism of the New Science, which imitates the noiseless processes of Nature in its change and Re-formation.

There is a wild gibberish heard in the straw. The fool shrieks, 'Nuncle, come not in here,' and out rushes 'Tom o Bedlam'—the naked creature, as Gloster calls him—with his 'elf locks,' his 'blanketed loins,' his 'begrimed face,' with his shattered wits, his madness, real or assumed—there he stands.

We know, indeed, in this instance, that there is gentle, nay, noble blood, there, under that horrid guise. It is the heir of a dukedom, we are told, but an out-cast one, who has found himself compelled, for the sake of prolonging life, to assume that shape, as other wretches were in the Poet's time for that same purpose,—men who had lost their dukedoms, too, as it would seem, such as they were, in some way, and their human relationships, too. But notwithstanding this alleviating circumstance which enables the audience to endure the exhibition in this instance, it serves not the less effectually in the Poet's hand, as 'THE CONSPICUOUS INSTANCE' of that lowest human condition which this grand Social Tragedy must needs include in its delineations.

Here are some of the prose English descriptions of this creature, which we find already included in the commentaries on this tragedy; and which shew that the Poet has not exaggerated his portrait, and that it is not by way of celebrating any Anglo-Saxon or Norman triumph over the barbarisms of the joint reigns of REGAN and GONERIL, that he is produced here.

'I remember, before the civil wars, Tom o' Bedlams went about begging,' Aubrey says. Randle Holme, in his 'Academy of Arms and Blazon,' includes them in his descriptions, as a class of vagabonds 'feigning themselves mad.' 'The Bedlam is in the same garb, with a long staff,' etc., 'but his cloathing is more fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all over with rubans, feathers, cuttings of cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman, when he is no other than a dissembling knave.'

In the Bellman of London, 1640, there is another description of him—'He sweares he hath been in Bedlam, and will talk frantickely of purpose; you see pinnes stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, especially in his armes, which paine he gladly puts himselfe to; calls himself by the name of Poore Tom; and coming near anybody, cries out, 'Poor Tom's a cold.' Of these Abraham men, some be exceeding merry, and doe nothing but sing songs, fashioned out of their own braines; some will dance; others will doe nothing but either laugh or weepe; others are dogged, and so sullen, both in looke and speech, that spying but a small company in a house, they bluntly and boldly enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to them what they demand.'

This seems very wicked, very depraved, on the part of these persons, especially the sticking of pins in their bare arms; but even our young dukeling Edgar says—

                           'While I may scape,
  I will preserve myself: and am bethought
  To take the basest and most poorest shape,
  That ever penury, in contempt of MAN,
  Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;
  Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots;
  And with presented nakedness outface
  The winds, and persecutions of the sky.
  The country gives me PROOF and PRECEDENT
  Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
  Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms,
  Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
  And with this horrible object, from low farms,
  Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills,
  Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
  Enforce their charity.—'Poor Turlygood!' 'poor Tom!'
  Thats something yet, Edgar I nothing am.

But the poet is not contented with the minuteness of this description. This character appears to have taken his eye as completely as it takes King Lear's, the moment that he gets a glimpse of him; and the poet betrays throughout that same philosophical interest in the study, which the monarch expresses so boldly; for beside the dramatic exhibition, and the philosophical review of him, which King Lear institutes, here is an autographical sketch of him, and of his mode of living—

'What are you there? Your names?'

cries Gloster, when he comes to the heath, with his torch, to seek out the king and his party; whereupon Tom, thinking that an occasion has now arrived for defining his social outline, takes it upon him to answer, for his part—

'Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt, and the water-[newt]; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tything to tything' [this is an Anglo-Saxon institution one sees]; 'and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back' [fallen fortunes here, too] 'six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear.'

The Jesuits had been, then, recently and notoriously at work in England, endeavouring professedly to cast out 'the fiend' from many possessed persons; and it appeared, to this great practical philosopher, that this creature he has fetched up here from the subterranean social abysses of his time, presented a very fitting subject for the operations of practitioners professing any miraculous or superior influence over the demons that infest human nature, or those that have power over human fortunes. He has brought him out here thus distinctly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is any exorcism which can meet his case, or that of the great human multitude, that no man can number, of whose penury and vice he stands here as the elected, pre-eminent, royal representative. In that survey and report of human affairs, which this author felt himself called upon to make, the case of this poor creature had attracted his attention, and appeared to him to require looking to; and, accordingly, he has made a note of it.

He is admirably seconded in his views on this subject, by the king himself, who, in that fine philosophic humour which his madness and his misery have served to develop in him, stands ready to lend himself to the boldest and most delicate philosophical inquiries. For the point to be noted here,—and it is one of no ordinary importance,—is, that this mad humour for philosophical investigation, which has seized so strangely the royal mind, does not appear to be at all in the vein of that old-fashioned philosophy, which had been rattling its abstractions in the face of the collective human misery for so many ages. For the helplessness of the human creature in his struggle with the elements, and those conditions of his nature which put him so hopelessly at the mercy of his own kind and kindred, seem to suggest to the royal sufferer, who has the advantage of a fresh experience to stimulate his apprehension, that there ought to be some relief for the human condition from this source, that is, from PHILOSOPHY; and his inquiries and discoveries are all stamped with the unmistakeable impress of that fire new philosophy, which was not yet out of the mint elsewhere—which was yet undergoing the formative process in the mind of its great inventor;—that philosophy, which we are told elsewhere 'has for its principal object, to make nature subservient to the wants and state of Man';—and which concerns itself for that purpose with ideas as they exist in nature, as causes, and not as they exist in the mind of man as words merely.

If there had been, indeed, any intention of paying a marked compliment to the philosophy which still held all the mind of the world in its grasp, at that great moment in history, in which Tom o' Bedlam makes his first appearance on any stage, it is not likely that that sage would have been just the person appointed to hold the office of Philosopher in Chief, and Councillor extraordinary to his Majesty.

The selection is indeed made on the part of the king, in perfect good faith, whatever the Poet's intent may be; for from the moment that this creature makes his appearance, he has no eyes or ears for anything else. And he will not be parted from him. For this startling juxtaposition was not intended by the Poet to fulfil its effect as a mere passing tableau vivant. The relation must be dramatically developed; that astounding juxtaposition must be prolonged, in spite of the horror of the spectators, and the disgust and rude displeasure of the king's attendants. They seek in vain to part these two men. The king refuses to stir without him. 'He will still keep with his philosopher.' He has a vague idea that his regal administration stands in need of some assistance, and that philosophy ought to be able to give it, and that the Bedlamite is in some way connected with the subject, but confused as the association is, it is a pertinacious one; and, in spite of their disgust the king's friends are obliged to take this wretch with them. For Gloster does not know, after all, it is 'his own flesh and blood' he sees there. He cannot even recognize the common kindred in that guise, as the king does, when he philosophises on his condition. And the rough aristocratic contempt and indifference which is manifested by the king's party, as a matter of course, for this poor human victim of wrong and misfortune, is made to contrast with their boundless sympathy and tenderness for the king, while the poet aiming at broader relationships, finds the mantle of his humanity wide enough for them, both.

As for the king,—startled in the midst of those new views of human wretchedness which his own sufferings have occasioned, and while those desires to remedy it, with which his penitence is accompanied, are still on his lip, by this wild apparition and embodiment of his thought, in that new accession of his mental disorder, which the presence of this object seems to occasion, that confounding of proximate conceptions, which leads him to regard this man as a source of new light on human affairs, is one of those exquisite physiological exhibitions of which only this scientific artist is capable.

And, in fact, it must be confessed, that this 'learned Theban' himself, notwithstanding the unexpected dignity of his promotion, does not appear to be altogether wanting in a taste, at least, for that new kind of philosophical investigation, which seems to be looked for at his hands. The king's inquiries appear to fall in remarkably with the previous train of his pursuits. In the course of his experiments, he seems himself to have struck upon that new philosophic proceeding, which has been called 'putting philosophy upon the right road again.'

Only the philosophic domain which that new road in philosophy leads to, appears to be very considerably broader, as 'Tom' takes it, than that very vivid, but narrow limitation of its fields, which Mr. Macaulay has set down in our time, would make it. Indeed, this 'philosopher,' that Lear so much inclines to, appears to have included in his investigations the two extremes of the new science of practice. He has sounded it apparently 'from its lowest note to the top of its key.'

'What is your study?' says the king to him, eyeing him curiously, and apparently struck with the practical result—anxious to have a word with him in private, but obliged to conduct the examination on the stage.

'How to prevent THE FIEND,' is Tom's reply. 'How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.'

This is the Poet who says elsewhere, 'that without good nature, men are themselves but a nobler kind of vermin.'

One cannot but observe, however, that Poor Tom's researches in this quite new field of a practical philosophy, do not appear to have been followed up since his time with any very marked success. One of these departments of 'his study' has indeed been seized, and is now occupied by whole troops of modern philosophers; but their inquiries, though very interesting and doubtlessly useful, do not appear to exhibit that direct and palpable bearing on practice, to which Tom's programme so severely inclines. For he is one who would make 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to his theoric.' And as to that other mysterious object of his inquiries, Mr. Macaulay is not the only person who appears to think, that that does not come within the range of anything human. Many of our scholars are still of the opinion that, 'court holy water' is the best application in the world for him; and the fact that he does not appear to get 'prevented' with it; it is a fact which of course has nothing to do with the logical result. For our philosophers are still determined to reason it 'thus and thus,' without taking into account the circumstance, that 'the sequent effect' with which 'nature finds itself scourged,' is not touched by their reasons.

King Lear's own inquiries seem also to include with great distinctness, the two great branches of the new philosophical inquiry. His mind is indeed very eagerly bent on the pursuit of causes. And though in the paroxysms of his mental disorder, he is apt to confound them occasionally, this very confusion, as it is managed, only serves to develop the breadth of the philosophic conception beneath it.

'He hath no daughters, Sir.' 'Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature to such a lowness, but—his UNKIND daughters.' It is, of course, his own new and terrible experience which points the inquiry, and though the physical causes are not omitted in it, it is not strange that the moral should predominate, and that his mind should seem to be very curiously occupied in tracking the ethical phenomena to their sources 'in nature.'

In the midst of the uproar of the Tempest, he does indeed begin with the physical investigation. He puts to his 'learned Theban' the question, which no learned Theban had then ever suspected of lying within the range of the scholar's investigations—that question which has been put to some purpose since—'What is the cause of thunder?' But his philosophic inquiry does not stop there,—where all the new philosophy has stopped ever since, and where some of our scholars declare it was meant to stop, notwithstanding the plainest declarations of its inventor to the contrary—with the investigation of physical causes.

For, after all, it is 'the tempest in his mind' that most concerns him. His philosopher, his practical philosopher, must be able to explore the conditions of that, and find the conductors for its lightnings. 'For where the greater malady is fixed, the lesser is scarce felt.' 'Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are his daughters.' After all, it is Regan's heart that appears to him to be the trouble—it is that which must first be laid on the table; and as soon as he decides to have a philosopher among 'his hundred,' he gives orders to that effect.

'Then let them anatomise Regan; see what breeds about her heart: Is there any CAUSE IN NATURE that makes these hard hearts?'

A very fair subject for philosophical inquiry, one would say; and, on the whole, as profitable and interesting a one, perhaps, as some of those that engage the attention of our men of learning so profoundly at present. In these days of enlightened scientific procedure, one would hardly undertake the smallest practical affair with the aid of any such vague general notions or traditional accounts of the properties to be dealt with, as those which our learned Thebans appear to find all-sufficient for their practices, in that particular department which Lear seems inclined to open here as a field for scientific exploration.

And it is perfectly clear that the author, whoever he may be, is very much of Lear's mind on this point, for he does not depend upon Lear alone to suggest his views upon it. There is never a person of this drama that does not do it.

THE USE OF EYES.

'All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but—blind men.'

The Play is all strewn throughout, and tinctured in the grain, with the finest natural philosophy, of that new and very subtle and peculiar kind, which belongs to the earlier stages of the physical inquiry, and while it was still in the hands of its original inventors. Even in physics, there are views here which have not been developed any further since this author's time. It is not merely in the direct discourse on questions of physical science, as in the physician's report of the resources of his art, or in Cordelia's invocation to 'all the blessed secrets—the unpublished virtues of the earth,' that the track of the new physiological science, which this work embodies, may be seen. It runs through it all; it betrays itself at every turn. But the subtle and occult relations of the moral and physical are noted here, as we do not find them noted elsewhere, in less practical theories of nature.

That there is something in the design of this play which requires an elaborate and systematic exhibition of the 'special' human relationships, natural and artificial, political, social, and domestic, almost any reading of it would show. And that this design involves, also, a systematic exhibition of the social consequences arising from the violation of the natural laws or duties of these relationships, and that this violation is everywhere systematically aggravated,—carried to its last conceivable extreme, so that all the play is filled with the uproar of one continued outrage on humanity; this is not less evident for the Poet is not content with the material which his chronicle offered him, already invented to his hands for this purpose, but he has deliberately tacked to it, and intricately connected with it throughout, another plot, bearing on the surface of it, and in the most prominent statements, the author's intention in this respect; which tends not only in the most unequivocal manner to repeat and corroborate the impressions which the story of Lear produces, but to widen the dramatic exhibition, so as to make it capable of conveying the whole breadth of the philosophic conception. For it is the scientific doctrine of MAN that is taught here; and that is, that man must be human in all his relations, or 'cease to be.' It is the violation of the ESSENTIAL humanity. It is a DEGENERACY which is exhibited here, and the 'SEQUENT EFFECTS' which belong naturally to the violation of a law that has the force of the universe to sustain it. And it is not by accident that the story of the illegitimate Edmund begins the piece; it is not for nothing that we are compelled to stop to hear that, before even Lear and his daughters can make their entrance. The whole story of the base and base-born one, who makes what he calls nature—the rude, brutal, spontaneous nature—his goddess and his law, and ignores the human distinction; this part was needed in order to supply the deficiences in the social diagrams which the original plot presented; and, indeed, the whole story of the Duke of Gloster, which is from first to last a clear Elizabethan invention, and of which this of Edmund is but a part, was not less essential for the same purpose.

Neither does one need to go very far beneath the surface, to perceive a new and extraordinary treatment of the ethical principle in this play throughout; one which the new, artistic, practical 'stand-point' here taken naturally suggested, but one which could have proceeded only from the inmost heart of the new philosophy. It is just the kind of treatment which the proposal to introduce the Inductive method of inquiry into this department of the human practice inevitably involved. A disposition to go behind the ethical phenomena, to pursue the investigation to its scientific conclusion, a refusal to accept the facts which, to the unscientific observation, appear to be the ultimate ones—a refusal to accept the coarse, vague, spontaneous notions of the dark ages, as the solution of these so essential phenomena, is everywhere betraying and declaring itself. Cordelia's agonised invocation and summons to the unpublished forces of nature, to be aidant and remediate to the good man's distress, is continually echoed by the poet, but with a broader application. It is not the bodily malady and infirmity only—it is not that kind of madness, only with which the poor king is afflicted in the later stages of the play, which appears to him to need scientific treatment—it is not for the cure of these alone that he would open his Prospero book, 'nature's infinite book of secresy,' as he calls it in Mark Antony—'the true magic,' as he calls it elsewhere—the book of the unpublished laws—the scientific book of 'KINDS'—the book of 'the historic laws'—'the book of God's power.'

All the interior phenomena which attend the violation of duty are strictly omitted here. That psychological exhibition of it belongs to other plays; and the Poet has left us, as we all know, no room to suspect the tenderness of his moral sensibility, or the depth of his acquaintance with these subjective phenomena. The social consequences of the violation of duty in all the human relationships, the consequence to others, and the social reaction, limits the exhibition here. The object on which our sympathies are chiefly concentrated is, as he himself is made to inform us—

  'One more sinned against, than sinning.'
  'Oh, these eclipses do portend these divisions,'

says the base-born Edmund, sneeringly. 'Fa sol la mi,' he continues, producing that particular conjunction of sounds which was forbidden by the ancient musicians, on account of its unnatural discord. The monkish writers on music call it diabolical. It is at the conclusion of a very long and elaborate discussion on this question, that he treats us to this prohibited piece of harmony; and a discussion in which Gloster refers to the influence of the planets, this unnaturalness in all the human relations—this universal jangle—'this ruinous disorder, that hunts men disquietly to their graves.' But the 'base' Edmund is disposed to acquit the celestial influences of the evil charged on them. He does not believe in men being—

'Fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves and thieves, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that they are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.'

He has another method of accounting for what he himself is. He does not think it necessary to go quite so far, to find the origin of his own base, lawless, inhuman, unconscionable dispositions. But the inquiries, which are handled so boldly in the soliloquies of Edmund, are started again and again elsewhere; and the recurrence is too emphatic, to leave any room to doubt that the author's intention in the play is concerned in it; and that this question of 'the several dispositions and characters of men,' and the inquiry as to whether there be 'any causes in nature' of these degenerate tendencies, which he is at such pains to exhibit, is, for some reason or other, a very important point with him. That which in contemplative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule, the founder of it tells us. But the play cannot be studied effectually without taking into account the fact, that the author avails himself of the date of his chronicle to represent that stage of human development in which the mysterious forces of nature were still blindly deified; and, therefore, the religious invocations with which the play abounds, are not, in the modern sense of the term, prayers, but only vague, poetic appeals to the unknown, unexplored powers in nature, which we call second causes. And when, as yet, there was no room for science in the narrow premature theories which men found imposed on them—when the new movement of human thought was still hampered by the narrowness of 'preconceived opinions,' the poet was glad to take shelter under the date of his legend now and then, here, as in Macbeth and other poems, for the sake of a little more freedom in this respect. He is very far from condemning 'presuppositions' and 'anticipations' but only wishes them kept in their proper places, because to bring them into the region of fact and induction, and so to falsify the actual condition of things—to undertake to face down the powers of nature with them, is a merely mistaken mode of proceeding; because these powers are powers which do not yield to the human beliefs, and the practical doctrine must have respect to them. The great battle of that age—the battle of the second causes, which the new philosophers were compelled to fight in behalf of humanity at the peril of their lives—the battle which they fought in the open field with Aristotle and Plato—fills all this magnificent poetry with its reverberations.

It must be confessed, that those terrible appeals to the heavens, into which King Lear launches out in his anguish now and then, are anything but pious; but the boldness which shocks our modern sensibilities becomes less offensive, if we take into account the fact that they are not made to the object of our present religious worship, but are mere vague appeals, and questioning addresses to the unknown, unexplored causes in nature—the powers which lie behind the historical phenomena.

For that divine Ideal of Human Nature to which 'our large temples, crowded with the shows of peace,' are built now, had not yet appeared at the date of this history, in that form in which we now worship it, with its triumphant assurance that it came forth from the heart of God, and declared Him. Paul had not yet preached his sermon at Athens, in the age of this supposed King of Britain; and though the author was indeed painting his own age, and not that, it so happened that there was such a heathenish and inhuman, and, as he intimates, indeed, quite 'fiendish' and diabolical state of things to represent here then, that this discrepancy was not so shocking as it might have been if he had found a divine religion in full operation here.

'If it be you,' says Lear, falling back upon the theory, which Edmund has already discarded, of a divine thrusting on—

  'If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
  Against their father, fool me not so much
  To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger.'

And here is an echo of the 'spherical predominance' which Gloster goes into so elaborately in the outset, confessing, much to the amusement of his graceless offspring, that he is disposed to think, after all, there may be something in it. 'For,' he says, 'though the wisdom of nature [the spontaneous wisdom] can REASON IT thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by THE SEQUENT EFFECT;' and he is talking under the dictation of a philosopher who, though he ridicules the pretensions of astrology in the next breath, lays it down as a principle in the scientific Art, as a chief point in the science of Practice and Relief, that the sequent effects, with which nature finds itself scourged, are a better guide to the causes which the practical remedy must comprehend, than anything which the wisdom of nature can undertake to reason out beforehand, without any respect to the sequent effect—'thus, and—thus.' But here is the confirmation of Gloster's view of the subject, which the sound-minded Kent, who is not at all metaphysical, finds himself provoked to utter; and though this is in the Fourth Act, and Gloster's opinions are advanced in the First, the passages do, notwithstanding, 'look towards each other.'

                'It is the stars.
  The stars above us govern our conditions,
  Else one self mate and mate could not beget
  Such different issues.'

Of course, it is not the astrological theory of the constitutional original differences in the human dispositions which the honest Kent is made to advocate here, literally and in earnest. It is rather the absence of any known cause, and the necessity of supposing one in a case where this difference is so obtrusive and violent, which he expresses; the stars being the natural resort of men in such circumstances, and when other solutions fail; though Poor Tom appears to be in possession of a much more orthodox theory for the peculiar disorders in his moral constitution: but, at the same time, it must be conceded that it is one which does not appear to have led, in his case, to any such felicitous practical results as the supposed origin of it might have seemed to promise.

For, indeed, this point of natural differences in the human dispositions, though, of course, quite overlooked in the moral regimen which is based on a priori knowledge, and is able to dispense with science, and ride over the actual laws; this point of difference— not in the dispositions of individuals only, but the differences which manifest themselves under the varying conditions of age and bodily health, of climate, or other physical differences in the same individual, as well as under the varying moral conditions of differing social and political positions and relations; this so essential point, overlooked as it is in the ordinary practice, has seized the clear eye of this great scientific practitioner, this Master of Arts, and he is making a radical point of it in his new speculation; he is making collections on it, and he will make a main point of it in 'the part operative' of his New Science, when he comes to make out the outline of it elsewhere, referring us distinctly to this place for his collections in it, for his collections on this point, as well as on others not less radical.

Lear himself, in his madness, appears, as we have seen already, much disposed to speculate upon this same particular question, which Gloster and Edmund and Kent have already indicated as 'a necessary question of the play'; namely, the question as to 'the causes in nature' of the phenomena which the social condition of man exhibits; that is, the causes of that degeneracy, that violation of the essential human law to which all the evil is tracked here; and it is the scientific doctrine, that the nature of a thing cannot be successfully studied in itself alone. It is not in water or in air only, or in any other single substance, that we find the nature of oxygen, or hydrogen, or any other of those principles in nature, which the application of this method to another department evolves from things which present themselves to the unscientific experience as most dissimilar. 'It is the greatest proof of want of skill to investigate the nature of any object in itself alone; for the same nature which seems concealed and hidden in some instances, is manifest and almost palpable in others; and, in general, those very things which are considered as secret, are manifest and common in other objects, but will never be clearly seen if the experiments and conclusions of men be directed to themselves alone': for it is a part of this doctrine, that man is not omitted in the order of nature—that the term HUMAN NATURE is not a misnomer. The doctrine of this Play is, that those same powers which are at work in man's life, are at work without it also; that they are powers which belong, in their highest form, to the nature of things in general; and that man himself, with all his special distinctions, is under the law of that universal constitution. The scientific remedy for the state of things which this play exhibits is the knowledge of 'causes in nature,' which must be found here, as in the other case, by scientific investigation—the spontaneous method leading to no better result here than in the other case. Under cover of the excitements of this play, this inquiry is boldly opened, and the track of the new science is clearly marked in it.

Poor Lear is, indeed, compelled to leave the practical improvement of his hints for another; and when it comes to the open question of the remedy for this state of things, which is the term of the inquiry, when he undertakes to put his absolute power in motion for the avowed purpose of effecting an improvement here, he appears indeed disposed to treat the subject in the most savage and despairing manner—that is, on his own account; but the vein of the scientific inquiry still runs unbroken through all this burst of passion. For in his scorn for that failure in human nature and human life of which society, as he finds it, stands convicted—that failure to establish the distinctive law of the human kind—that failure from which he is suffering so deeply—and in his struggle to express that disgust, he proposes, as an improvement on the state of things he finds, a law which shall obliterate that human distinction; though certainly that is anything but the Poet's remedy; and the poor king himself does not appear to be in earnest, for the moral disgust in which the distinctive sentiment of the nobler nature, and the knowledge of human good and evil betrays itself, breaks forth in floods of passion that overflow all the bounds of articulation before he can make an end of it.

But the radical nature of this question of natural causes, which the practical theory of the social arts must comprehend, is already indicated in this play, in the very beginning of the action.

This author is everywhere bent on graving the scientific distinction between those instinctive affections in which men degenerate, and tend to the rank of lower natures, and the noble natural, distinctively human affections; and when, in the first scene, the king betrays the selfishness of that fond preference for his younger daughter,—tender, and paternal, and deep as it was,—and the depth of those hopes he was resting on her kind care and nursery, by the very height of that frenzied paroxysm of rage and disappointment, which her unflattering and, as it seems to him, her unloving reply, creates;—when that 'small fault, which showed,' he tells us, 'so ugly' in her whom 'he loved most'—which turned, in a moment, all the sweetness of his love for her 'to gall, and like an engine, wrenched his nature from its firm place';—these are the terms in which he undertakes to annul the natural tie, and disown her—

Lear. So young, and so untender?

Cordelia. So young, my lord, and true.

  Lear. Let it be so.—Thy truth then be thy dower:
  For, by the sacred radiance of the sun;
  The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
  By all the operations of the orbs,
  From whom we do exist, and cease to be,
  Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
  Propinquity and property of blood,
  And as a stranger to my heart and me
  Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
  Or he that makes his generation messes
  To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
  Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved,
  As thou, my sometime daughter.

And when

  'This even-handed justice
  Commends the ingredients of his poisoned chalice
  To his own lips'—

when his 'dog-hearted daughters' have returned to his own bosom the cruel edge of that unnatural wrong which he has impiously dared to summon nature herself—violated nature—to witness, this is the greeting which the unnatural Goneril receives, on her return to her husband, when she complains to him of her welcome—

Goneril. I have been worth the whistle.

  Albany. O Goneril!
  You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
  Blows in your face.—I fear your disposition:
  That nature, which contemns ITS ORIGIN,
  CANNOT BE BORDERED CERTAIN IN ITSELF;
  She that herself will sliver and disbranch
  From her MATERIAL SAP, PERFORCE MUST WITHER,
  And come to deadly use.

[Prima Philosophia. Axioms which are not limited to the particular parts of sciences, but 'such as are more common, and of a higher stage.']

Goneril. No more; the text is foolish. Albany. Tigers, not daughters,—

[You have practised on yourself—you have destroyed in yourself the nobler, fairer nature which the law of human kind—the law of human duty and affection—would have given you. Not DAUGHTERS,—Tigers.]

  'A father, and a gracious aged man,
  Whose reverence the head-lugged bear would lick,
  Most barbarous, most DEGENERATE!'—

[degenerate—that is the point—most degenerate]—

      'have you madded.
  If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
  Send quickly down, to tame these vile offences
  'Twill come,
  HUMANITY must perforce prey on itself,
 Like monsters of the deep.'

[the land refuses a parallel.]

And it is the scientific distinction between man and the brute creation—it is the law of nature in the human kind, which the Poet is getting out scientifically here, in the face of that terrific failure and degeneration in the kind—which he paints so vividly, for the purpose of inquiring whether there is not, perhaps, after all, some more potent provisioning and arming of man for his place in nature, than this state of things would lead one to suppose—whether there are not, perhaps, some more efficacious 'humanities' than those mild ones which appear to operate so lamely on this barbaric, degenerate thing. 'Milk-liver'd man!' replies Goneril, speaking not on her own behalf only, for the words have a double significance; and the Poet glances through them at that sufferance with which the state of things he has just noted was endured—

  'Milk-livered man,
  That bear'st a cheek for blows, a HEAD for WRONGS;
  Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
  Thine honour from thy sufferance; that not know'st,
  FOOLS do those villains pity, who are punished
  Before they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
  France spreads his banners in our noiseless land;
  With plumed helm thy slayer begins threats;
  Whilst thou, a Moral Fool, sit'st still, and cry'st,
  Alack! why does he so?'

This is found to be an appeal of the Poet's own when all is done, and one that goes far into the necessary questions of the play.

But Albany, in his rejoinder, returns to the idea of the lost, degenerate, dissolute Humanity again. He has talked of tigers, and head-lugged bears (and it was necessary to combine the proverbial sensitiveness of that animal to that particular mode of treatment, with the natural amiability of his disposition in general, in order to do justice to the Poet's conception here);—he has called upon 'the monsters of the deep,' and quoted the laws of their societies, in illustration of the state of things to which the unscientific human combination appears to him to be visibly tending. But this human degeneracy and deformity, which the action of the play exhibits in diagrams—the descent to the lower nature from the higher; the voluntary descent; the voluntary blindness and narrowness; the rejection of the distinctive human law—of VIRTUE and DUTY, as reason and conscience interpret it—appears to the scientific mind to require yet other terms and comparisons. These conceits and comparisons, drawn from the habits of innocent, though not to man agreeable, animals, who have no law but blind instinct, do not suffice to convey the Poet's idea of this human failing; and, accordingly, he instructs this gentle and noble man, whom this criticism best becomes, to complete this view of the subject, in his attempt to express the disgust with which this inhuman, this more than brutal conduct, in his high-born, and gorgeously-robed, and delicately-featured spouse, inspires him—

'See thyself, devil!'—

nay, he corrects himself—

Proper deformity [DE-FORMITY] seems not in the fiend So horrid, as in woman.

Goneril. O vain fool!

  Albany. Thou changed and self-covered thing. For shame,
  Be-monster not thy feature. Were it my FITNESS'—

for here it is the human, and not the instinctive element—not 'the blood' element that rules—

  'Were it my FITNESS
  To let these hands obey my blood,
  They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
  Thy flesh and bones,'

Rather tiger-like impulses for so mild a gentleman to own to; but the process which he confesses his hands are already inclined to undertake, is not half so cruel as the one which this woman has practised on herself while she was meditating only wrong to another, and pursuing her 'horrible pleasure' at the expense of madness and death to another; not half so cruel and injurious, for in that act she has trampled down, and torn, and dislocated, she has slaughtered in cold blood, the divine, angelic form of womanhood—that form of worth and celestial aspiration which great nature stamped upon her, and gave to her for her law in nature, her type, her essence, her ORIGINAL. She has desecrated, not that common form of humanity only which the common human sentiment of reason, which the human sentiment of duty is everywhere struggling to fulfil, but that lovelier soul of humanity—that softer, subtler, more gracious, more celestial, more commanding spirit of it, which the form of womanhood in its integrity must carry with it—which the form of womanhood will carry with it, if it be not counterfeit or degenerate, gone down into a lower range, 'be-monstered'—'a changed and self-covered thing.' That is the Poet's reading.

'Howe'er,' the Duke of Albany concludes, after that struggle with his hands he speaks of—chivalrously refusing to let them obey that impulse of 'blood,' as a gentleman in such circumstances, under any amount of provocation, should—true to himself, true to his manliness and to his gentle breeding, though his wife is false to hers, and 'false to her nature'—

  'Howe'er thou art a, _fiend,
  A woman's shape doth shield thee.

Goneril_. Marry! YOUR MANHOOD NOW.'

This is indeed a discourse in which the reader must have 'the text,' or ever he can begin to catch the meaning of those philosophic points with which this orator, who talks so 'pressly,' studs his lines.

For the passage which Goneril dismisses with such scorn is indeed the text, or it will be, when the word which her commentary on it contains has been added to it: for it is 'the foolishness' of struggling with great Nature, and her LAW of KINDS—it is the folly of ignorance, the stupidity of living without respect to nature and its sequent effects, as well as its preformed decree—

('Perforce must wither, And come to deadly use'—)

which this discourse is intended to illustrate. And one who has once tracked the dramatic development of this text, through all this moving exhibition of human society, and its violated rule in nature, will be at no loss to conjecture out of what 'New' book it comes, if indeed that book has ever been opened to him.

The whole subject is treated here scientifically—that is, from without. The generalizations of the higher stages of philosophy—the axioms of a universal philosophy—with all the force of their universality, must be brought to bear upon it, through all its developments. The universal historical laws, in that modification of them which the speciality of the human kind creates, must be impartially set forth here. The law of DUTY, as the NATURAL LAW of human society; the law of humanity, as the law, nay, THE FORM, of the HUMAN kind, stamped on it with the Creator's stamp, that order from the universal law of kinds that gives to all life its SPECIAL bounds, its 'border in itself'—that form so essential, that there is no humanity or kind-ness where that is not—that law which we hear so much of, in its narrower aspects, under various names, in all men's speech, is produced here, in its broader relations, as the necessary basis of a scientific social art. And it is this author's deliberate opinion as a Naturalist, it is the opinion of this School in Natural Science, from which this work proceeds, that those who undertake to compose human societies, large or small, whether in families, or states, or empires, without recognising this principle—those who undertake to compose UNIONS, human unions and societies, on any other principle—will have a diabolical jangle of it when all is done. For this law of unity, which is written on the soul of man, this law of CONSCIENCE within, is written without also; and to erase it within is to get the lesson from without in that universal and downright speech and language which the axioms of nature are taught in—it is to get it in that fearful school in which nature repeats the doctrine of her violated law, for those who are not able to solve and comprehend the science of it as it is written—written beforehand—in the natural law and constitutions of the human soul.

  'That nature which, contemns its ORIGIN
  Cannot be bordered certain in itself.'

[These are the mysteries of day and night, that Lear, in his ignorance, vainly invokes, the operations of the orbs from whom we do exist and cease to be.]

  'She that herself will sliver and disbranch
  From her material sap, perforce must wither,
  And come to deadly use.'
                         'The text is—FOOLISH.'

The teacher who takes it upon himself to get out this text from the text-book of Universal Laws, for the purpose of conducting it to its practical application in human affairs, for the purpose of suggesting the true remedy for those great human wants which he exhibits here, is not one of those 'Milk-livered men,' those Moral Fools, that Goneril delicately alludes to, who bear a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs; who have not in their brows an eye discerning their honour from their sufferance; who think it enough to sit still under the murderous blows of what they call misfortune, fate, Providence, when it is their own im-providence; who think it is enough to sit still, and cry, Alack! without inquiring what it is that makes that lack; without ever putting the question in earnest, 'Why does he so?' His Play is all full of the practical application of the text, the application of it which Gloster sums up in a word—

''T is the Time's plague when MADMEN lead THE BLIND.'

  'I will preach to thee. Mark me: [says Lear]
  When we are born, we cry that we are come
  To this great stage of FOOLS. [Mark me!']

The whole Play is one magnificent intimation, on the part of the Poet, that eyes are made to see with; and that there is no so natural and legitimate use of them as that which human affairs were crying for, through all their lengths and breadths, in his time. It is that eye which is one of the distinctive features of the human kind; that eye which looks before and after, which extends human vision so far beyond individual sensuous experience, which is able to converge the light of universal truth upon particular experience, which is able to bring the infallible guidance of universal axioms into all the particulars of human conduct—that is the eye which he finds wanting in human affairs. The play is pointing everywhere with the Poet's scorn of 'Blind Men,' 'who will not see because they do not feel,'—who wait for the blows of 'fortune,' to teach them the lesson of Nature's laws—who wait to be scourged, or dashed to pieces with 'the sequent effect,' instead of making use of their faculty of reason to ascend to causes, and so 'to trammel up the consequence.'

It is that same combination of human faculties, that same combination of sense and reason, which the Novum Organum provides for; it is that same scorn of abstract wordy speculation, on the one hand, and blind experimental groping, on the other, that is everywhere suggested here. But with the aid of the persons of the Drama, and their suggestions, the new philosophy is carried into departments which it would have cost the Author of the Novum Organum and the Advancement of Learning his head to look into. He might as well have proposed to impeach the Government in Parliament outright, as to offer to advance his Novum Organum into these fields; fields which it enters safely enough under the cover of a spontaneous, inspired, dramatic philosophy, though it is a philosophy which overflows continually with those practical axioms, those aphorisms, which the Author of the Advancement of Learning assures us 'are made of the pith and heart of sciences'; and that 'no man can write who is not sound and grounded.' But then, if they are only written in 'with a goose-pen,' they pass well enough for unconscious, unmeaning, spontaneous felicities.

'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his face?' says the Fool, in the First Act, by way of entertaining his master, when the poor king's want of foresight and 'prudence' begins to tell on his affairs a little. 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his face?' 'No.' 'Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what a man cannot smell out he may spy into.'

Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?'

Lear. No.

Fool. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.

Lear. Why?

Fool. Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.

Lear. … Be my horses ready?

Fool. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.

Lear. Because they are not eight?

Fool. Yes, indeed: Thou wouldest make a good—fool.

He cannot tell how an oyster makes his shell, but the nose has not stood in the middle of his face for nothing. There has been some prying on either side of it, apparently; and he has pried to such good purpose, that some of the prime secrets of the new philosophy appear to have turned up in his researches. 'To take it again perforce,' mutters the king. 'If thou wert my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being OLD before thy time.' [This is a wit 'of the self-same colour' with that one who discovered that the times from which the world's practical wisdom was inherited, were the times when the world was young. 'They told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there!'] 'I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.'—'How's that?'—'Thou shouldst not have been OLD before thou hadst been WISE.'

And it is in the Second Act that poor Kent, in his misfortunes, furnishes occasion for another avowal on the part of this same learned critic, of a preference for a practical philosophy, though borrowed from the lower species. He comes upon the object of his criticism as he sits in the stocks, because he could not adopt the style of his time with sufficient earnestness, though he does make an attempt 'to go out of his dialect,' but was not more happy in it than some other men of his politics were, in the Poet's time.

  'Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,
  Under the allowance of your grand aspect,
  Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
  On flickering Phebus' front—

Cornwall. 'What mean'st by this?'

Kent. 'To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much.

[Halting in his blank verse for the explanation]:—It is from that seat, to which the plainness of this man, with the official dignities of his time, has conducted him, that he puts the inquiry to that keen observer, whose observations in natural history have just been quoted,—

Kent. How chances that the king comes with so small a train?

Fool. An thou had'st been set in the stocks for that question, thou, had'st well deserved it.

Kent. Why, fool?

Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there is no labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but—BLIND MEN.

Kent. Where learned'st thou that, fool?

Fool. Not in the stocks, fool.

[Not from being punished with the sequent effect; not in consequence of an improvidence, that an ant might have taught me to avoid.]

'I have no way, and therefore want no eyes,' says another duke, who is also the victim of that 'absolute' authority which is abroad in this play. 'I stumbled when I saw,' and this is his prayer.

  Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
  That slaves your ordinance; that will not SEE
  Because he doth not FEEL, feel your power quickly.

'Thou seest how this world goes,' says the outcast king, meeting this poor outcast duke, just after his eyes had been taken out of his head, by the persons then occupying the chief offices in the state. 'Thou seest how this world goes.' 'I SEE it FEELINGLY,' is the duke's reply.

Lear. What! art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears.

And his account of how it goes is—as we shall see—one that requires to be looked at with ears, for it contains, what one calls elsewhere in this play,—ear-kissing arguments.—'Get thee glass eyes,' he says, in conclusion, 'and like a scurvy politician pretend to SEE, the things thou dost not.' And that was not the kind of politician, and that was not the kind of political eye-sight, to which this statesman, and seer, proposed to leave the times, that his legacy should fall on, whatever he might be compelled to tolerate in his own.

  'Upon the crown o' the cliff. What thing was that
  Which parted from you?'

'A poor unfortunate beggar.' [Softly.] 'As I stood here BELOW, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses. Horns welked and waved, like the enridged sea.'

'Now, Sir, what are you?' says the poor outcast duke to his true son, when in disguise he offers to attend him. 'A most poor man,' is the reply, 'made lame by fortune's blows; who, by the ART of KNOWN AND FEELING SORROWS, am pregnant to good PITY. Give me your hand, I'll lead you to some BIDING. Bear free and patient thoughts,' is his whisper to him.

Surely this is a poet that has got an inkling, in some way, of the new idea of an experimental philosophy,—of a combination of the human faculties of sense and reason in some organum; one, too, whose eye passes lightly over the architectonic gifts of univalves and bivalves, and entomological developments of skill and forethought, intent on that great chrysalis, which has never been able to publish yet its Creator's glory. Here is a naturalist who would not think it enough to combine reason with experiment, in wind, and rain, and fire, and thunder, who would not think it enough to bring all the unpublished virtues of the earth, to the relief of the bodily human maladies. It is the Poet, who says elsewhere, 'Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased? No? Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.' It is the poet who says, 'Nor wind, rain, fire, thunder, are my daughters.' 'Nothing could have brought him to such a lowness in nature, but his un-kind daughters.' It is the naturalist who says, 'Then let Regan's heart be anatomized, and see what it is that breeds about it. Is there any cause in NATURE that makes these hard hearts?'

In short, this play is from the hand of one who thinks that the human affairs are of a kind to require scientific investigation, scientific foresight and conduct. He is much of Lear's opinion on many points, and evidently judges that there would be no harm in getting a philosopher enrolled among the king's hundred. Not a logician, not a metaphysician, according to the common acceptance of these terms; not merely a natural philosopher, in the low and limited sense of that term, in which we use it; but a man of science—one who is able, by some method or other, to ascend to the actual principles of things, and so to base his remedies for the social evils, on the forms which are forms, which have efficacy in nature as such, instead of basing them on certain chimeras, or so-called logical conclusions of the human mind—conclusions which the logic of nature contradicts— conclusions to which the universal consent of things is wanting.

Nature, in the sense in which Edmund uses that term, is not this poet's goddess, or his LAW; though he regards 'the plague of CUSTOM' and 'the curiosity of nations,' and all their fantastic and arbitrary sway in human affairs, with an eye quite as critical—though he looks at 'that old Antic, the law,' as he expresses it elsewhere, with an eye quite as severe, on the world's behalf, as that which Edmund turns on it, on his own; he is very far from contending for the freedom of that savage, selfish, unreclaimed, spontaneous nature,—that lawless nature, to which the natural son of Gloster claims 'his services are due.' The poet teaches that the true and successful Social Art is, and must be scientific. That it must be based on the science of nature in general, and on the science of human nature in particular, on a science that recognizes the double nature in man, that takes in, its heights as well as its depths, and its depths as well as its heights, that sounds it 'from its lowest note to the top of its key;' but it is one thing to quarrel with the unscientific, imperfect social arts, and it is another to prefer nature in man without arts. The picture of 'the Unaccommodated Man,' which forms so prominent a part of the representation here,—'the thing itself,' stripped of its social lendings, or setting at nought the social restraints, is not by any means an attractive one, as this philosopher does it for us. The scientific artist is no better pleased, than the king is with this kind of 'nature.' It is the imperfection of the civilization which still generates, or leaves unchecked these savage evils, that he exposes.

But it is impossible, that the true social arts should be smelt out, or stumbled on, by accident, or arrived at by any kind of empirical groping; just as impossible as it is, on the other hand, that 'the wisdom of nature,' by throwing itself on its own internal resources, and reasoning it 'thus and thus,' without taking into account the actual forces, should be able to invent them. Those forces which enter into all the plot of our human life, unworthy of philosophic note as they had seemed hitherto, those terrific, unmeasured strengths, against which the human kind are continually dashing themselves in their blind experiments,—those engines on which the human heart is racked, 'and stretched out so long,'—those rocky structures on which its choicest treasures are so wildly wrecked, these natural forces,—no matter what artificial combinations of them may have been accomplished,—'the causes in nature,' of the phenomena of human life, appeared to this philosopher a very fitting subject for philosophy, and one quite too important in its relation to human well-being and the Arts that promote it, to be left to mere blundering experiment; quite too subtle to be reached by any kind of empirical groping, quite too subtle to be entangled with the conclusions of the philosophy which he found in vogue in his time, whose social efficacies and gifts in exorcisms, he has taken leave to connect in some way, with the appearance of Tom o' Bedlam in his history; a philosophy which had built up its system in defiant scorn of the nature of things; as if 'by reasoning it thus and thus,' without any respect to the actual conditions, it could undertake to bridle the might of nature, and put a hook in the nose of her oppositions.

It did not seem to this philosopher well, that men who have eyes—eyes that are great nature's gift to them,—her gift to them in chief,—eyes that were meant to see with, should go on in this groping, star-gazing, fatally-stumbling fashion any longer.

Lear. [To the Bedlamite.] I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say that they are—Persian:—but let them be ALTERED.

THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK—AND THE PLAY.

Brutus. How I have thought of this, and of these times, I shall recount hereafter.

Hamlet. The Play's the thing.

Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca. Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it.

Posthumus. 'Shall's have a Play of this.—

The fact that the design of this play, whatever it may be, is one deep enough to go down to that place in the social system which Tom o' Bedlam was then peacefully occupying,—thinking of anything else in the world but a social revolution on his behalf—to bring him up for observation; and that it is high enough to go up to that apex of the social structure on which the crown was then fastened, to fetch down the impersonated state itself, for an examination not less curious and critical; the fact, too, that it was subtle enough to penetrate the retirement of the domestic life, and bring out its innermost passages for scientific criticism;—the fact that the relation of the Parent to the Child, and that of the Child to the Parent, the relation of Husband and Wife, and Sister and Brother, and Master and Servant, of Peasant and Lord, nay, the transient relation of Guest and Host, have each their place and part here, and the question of their duty marked not less clearly, than that prominent relation of the King and his Subjects;—the fact that these relations come in from the first, along with the political, and demand a hearing, and divide throughout the stage with them; the fact of the mere range of this social criticism, as it appears on the surface of the play, in these so prominent points,—is enough to show already, that it is a Radical of no ordinary kind, who is at work behind this drop-scene.

It was evident, at a glance, that this so extensive bill of grievances was not one which any immediate or violent political revolution, or any social reformation which was then in contemplation, would be able to meet; and that very circumstance gave to the whole essay its profoundly quiet, conservative air. It passed only for one of those common outcries on the ills of human life, which men in general are expected, or permitted to make, according to their several abilities; one of those 'Alacks!'—'why does he so'? which, by relieving the mind of the complainant, tend to keep things quiet on the whole. This Poet, whoever he was, was making rather more ado about it than usual, apparently: but Poets are useful for that very purpose; they express other men's emotions for them, in a higher key than they could manage it themselves.

It was the breadth then,—the philosophic comprehension of this great philosophic design, which made it possible for the Poet to introduce into it, and exhibit in it, so glaringly, those evils of his time that were crying out to Heaven then, for redress, and could not wait for philosophic revolutions and reformations.

Tom o' Bedlam, strictly speaking, does appear, indeed, to have been one of those Elizabethan institutions which were modified or annulled, in the course of the political changes that so soon followed this exhibition of his case. 'Tom' himself, in his own proper person, appears to have been left—by accident or otherwise—on the other side of the Revolutionary gulf. 'I remember,' says Aubrey, 'before the civil wars, Tom o' Bedlams went about begging,' etc.—but one cannot help remarking that a very numerous family connection of the collateral branches of his house—bearing, on the whole, a sufficiently striking family resemblance to this illustrious subject of the Poet's pencil,—appear to have got safely over all the political and social gulfs that intervene between our time and that. And, as to some of those other social evils which are exhibited here in their ideal proportions, they are not, perhaps, so entirely among the former things which have passed away with our reformations, that we should have to go to Aubrey's note book to find out what the Poet means. As to some of these, at least, it will not be necessary to hunt up an antiquary, who can remember whether any such thing ever was really in existence here, 'before the civil wars.' And, notwithstanding all our advancements in Natural Science, and in the Arts which attend these advancements; notwithstanding the strong recommendations of the inventors of this Science,—Regan's heart, and that which breeds about it, appear, by a singular oversight, to have escaped, hitherto, any truly scientific inquiry; and the arts for improving it do not appear, after all, to have been very materially advanced since the time when this order was issued.

But notwithstanding that the subject of this piece appears to be so general,—notwithstanding the fact, that the social evils which are here represented include, apparently, the universal human conditions, and include evils which are still understood to be inherent in the nature of man, and, irreclaimable, or not, at least a subject for Art,—and notwithstanding the fact that this exhibition professes to borrow all its local hues and exaggerations from the barbaric times of the Ancient Britons—it is not very difficult to perceive that it does, in fact, involve a local exhibition of a different kind; and that, under the cover of that great revolution in the human estate, which the philosophic mind was then meditating,—so broad, that none could perceive its project,—another revolution,—that revolution which was then so near at hand, was clearly outlined; and that this revolution, too, is, after all, one towards which this Poet appears to 'incline,' in a manner which would not have seemed, perhaps, altogether consistent with his position and assumptions elsewhere, if these could have been produced here against him; and in a manner, perhaps, somewhat more decided than the general philosophic tone, and the spirit of those large and peaceful designs to which he was chiefly devoted, might have led us to anticipate. This Play was evidently written at a time when the conviction that the state of things which it represents could not endure much longer, had taken deep hold of the Poet's mind; at a time when those evils had attained a height so unendurable—when that evil which lay at the heart of the commonweal, poisoning all the social relations with its infection, had grown so fearful, that it might well seem, even to the scientific mind, to require the fierce 'drug' of the political revolution,—so fearful as to make, even to such a mind, the rude surgery of the civil wars at last welcome.

For, indeed, it cannot be denied that the state of things which this Play represents, is that with which the author's own experience was conversant; and that all the terrible tragic satire of it, points—not to that age in the history of Britain in which the Druids were still responsible for the national culture,—not to that time when the Celtic Triads, clothed with the sanctities of an unknown past, still made the standard works and authorities in learning, beyond which there was no going,—not to the time when the national morality was still mystically produced at Stonehenge, in those national colleges, from whose mysterious rites the awful sanctities of the oak and the mistletoe drove back in confusion the sacrilegious inquirer,—not to that time, but to the Elizabethan.

That instinctive groping and stumbling in all human affairs, that pursuit of human ends without any science of the natures to be superinduced, and without any science of the natures that were to be subjected,—those eyes of moonshine speculation, those glass eyes with which the scurvy politician affects to see the things he does not—those thousand noses that serve for eyes, and horns welked and waved like the enridged sea, and all the wild misery of that unlearned fortuitous human living, that waits to be scourged with the sequent effect, and knows not how to ascend to the cause—colossally exaggerated as it seems here—heightened everywhere, as if the Poet had put forth his whole power, and strained his imagination, and availed himself of his utmost poetic license, to give it, through all its details, its last conceivable hue of violence, its pure ideal shape, is, after all, but a copy an historical sketch. The ignorance, the stupidity, 'the blindness,' that this author paints, was his own 'Time's plague'; 'the madness' that 'led it,' was the madness of which he was himself a mute and manacled spectator.

By some singular oversight or caprice of tyranny, or on account of some fastidious scruple of the imagination perhaps, it does not appear, indeed, to have been the fashion, either in the reigns of the Tudors or the Stuarts, to pluck out the living human eye as Gloster's eyes were plucked out; and that of itself would have furnished a reason why this poor duke should have been compelled to submit to that particular operation, instead of presenting himself to have his ears cut off in a sober, decent, civilized, Christian manner; or to have them grubbed out, if it happened that the operation had been once performed already; or to have his hand cut off, or his head, with his eyes in it; or to be roasted alive some noon-day in the public square, eyes and all, as many an honest gentleman was expected to present himself in those times, without making any particular demur or fuss about it. These were operations that Englishmen of every rank and profession, soldiers, scholars, poets, philosophers, lawyers, physicians, and grave and reverend divines, were called on to undergo in those times, and for that identical offence of which the Duke of Gloster stood convicted, opposition to the will of a lawless usurping tyranny,—to its merest caprice of vanity or humour, perhaps,—or on grounds slighter still, on bare suspicion of a disposition to oppose it.

But then that, of course, was a thing of custom; so much so, that the victims themselves often took it in good part, and submitted to it as a divine institution, part of a sacred legacy, handed down to them, as it was understood, from their more enlightened ancestors.

Now, if the Poet, in pursuance of his more general philosophic intention, which involved a moving representation of the helplessness of the Social Monad—that bodily as well as moral susceptibility and fragility, which leaves him open to all kinds of personal injury, not from the elements and from animals of other species merely or chiefly, but chiefly from his own kind,—if the Poet, in the course of this exhibition, had caused poor Gloster to be held down in his chair on the stage, for the purpose of having his ears pared off, what kind of sensation could he hope to produce with that on the sensibility of an audience, who might have understood without a commentator an allusion to 'the tribulation of Tower Hill'—spectators accustomed to witness performances so much more thrilling, and on a stage where the Play was in earnest. And as to that second operation before referred to, which might have answered the poetic purpose, perhaps; who knows whether that may not have been a refinement in civilization peculiar to the reign of that amiable and handsome Christian Prince, who was still a minor when this Play was first brought out at Whitehall? for it was in his reign that that memorable instance of it occurred, which the subsequent events connected with it chanced to make so notorious. It was a learned and very conscientious lawyer, in the reign of Charles the First, whose criticism upon some of the fashionable amusements of the day, which certain members of the royal family were known to be fond of, occasioned the suggestion of this mode of satisfying the outraged Majesty of the State, when the prying eye of Government discovered, or thought it did, remains enough of those previously-condemned appendages on this author's person, to furnish material for a second operation. 'Methinks Mr. Prynne hath ears!' does not, after all, sound so very different from—'going to pluck out Gloster's other eye,' as that the governments under which these two speeches are reported, need to be distinguished, on that account only, by any such essential difference as that which is supposed to exist between the human and divine. Both these operations appear, indeed to the unprejudiced human mind, to savour somewhat of the diabolical—or of the Dark Ages, rather, and of the Prince of Darkness. And, indeed, that 'fiend' which haunts the Play—which the monster, with his moonshine eyes, appeared to have a vague idea of—seems to have been as busy here, in this department, as he was in bringing about poor Tom's distresses.

But in that steady persevering exhibition of the liabilities of individual human nature, the COMMON liabilities which throw it upon the COMMON, the distinctive law of humanity for its WEAL—in that continuous picture of the suffering and ignominy, and mutilation to which it is liable, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, where that law of humanity is not yet scientifically developed and scientifically sustained—the Poet does not always go quite so far to find his details. It is not from the Celtic Regan's time that he brings out those ancient implements of state authority into which the feet of the poor Duke of Kent, travelling on the king's errands, are ignominiously thrust; while the Poet, under cover of the Fool's jests, shows prettily their relation to the human dignity.

But then it is a Duke on whom this indignity is practised; for it is to be remarked, in passing, that though this Poet is evidently bent on making his exhibition a thorough one, though he is determined not to leave out anything of importance in his diagrams, he does not appear inclined to soil his fingers by meddling with the lower orders, or to countenance any innovation in his art in that respect. Whenever he has occasion to introduce persons of this class into his pieces, they come in and go out, and perform their part in his scene, very much as they do elsewhere in his time. Even when his Players come in, they do not speak many words on their own behalf. They stand civilly, and answer questions, and take their orders, and fulfil them. That is all that is looked for at their hands. For this is not a Poet who has ever given any one occasion in his own time, to distinguish him as the Poet of the People. It is always from the highest social point of observation that he takes those views of the lower ranks, which he has occasion to introduce into his Plays, from the mobs of 'greasy citizens' to the details of the sheep-shearing feast; and even in Eastcheap he keeps it still.

There never was a more aristocratic poet apparently, and though the very basest form of outcast misery 'that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast,' though the basest and most ignoble and pitiful human liabilities, are every where included in his plan; he will have nothing but the rich blood of dukes and kings to take him through with it—he will have nothing lower and less illustrious than these to play his parts for him.

It is a king to whom 'the Farm House,' where both fire and food are waiting, becomes a royal luxury on his return from the Hovel's door, brought in chattering out of the tempest, in that pitiful stage of human want, which had made him ready to share with Tom o' Bedlam, nay, with the swine, their rude comforts. 'Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow. Your hovel:—come bring us to your hovel.'

It is a king who gets an ague in the storm, who finds the tyranny of the night too rough for nature to endure; it is a king on whose desolate outcast head, destitution and social wrongs accumulate their results, till his wits begin to turn, till his mind is shattered, and he comes on to the stage at last, a poor bedlamite.

Nay, 'Tom' himself, is a duke's son, we are told; though that circumstance does not hinder him from giving, with much frankness and scientific accuracy, the particulars of those personal pursuits, and tastes, and habits, incidental to that particular station in life to which it has pleased Providence to call him.

And so by means of that poetic order, which is the Providence of this piece, and that design which 'tunes the harmony of it,' it is a duke on whom that low correction, 'such as basest and most contemned wretches are punished with,' is exhibited, in spite of his indignant protest.

  Kent. Call not your stocks for me. I serve the king,
  On whose employment I was sent to you.
  You shall do small respect, show too bold malice
  Against the grace and person of my master,
  Stocking his messenger.

  Cornwall. Fetch forth the stocks.
  As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.'

Regan. Till noon,—till night my lord, and all night too.

[In vain the prudent and loyal Gloster remonstrates]

      —The king must take it ill
  That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,
  Should have him thus restrained.

Cornwall. I'll answer that.

Regan. Put in his legs.

But then it must be confessed that the poet was not without some kind of precedent for this bold dramatic proceeding. He had, indeed, by means of the culture and diligent use of that gift of forethought, with which nature had so largely endowed him, been enabled thus far to keep his own person free from any such tangible encumbrance, though the 'lameness' with which fortune had afflicted him personally, is always his personal grievance; but he had seen in his own time, ancient men and reverend,—men who claimed to be the ministers of heaven, and travelling on its errands, arrested, and subjected to this ludicrous indignity: he had seen this open stop, this palpable, corporeal, unfigurative arrest put upon the activity of scholars and thinkers in his time, conscientious men, between whose master and the state, there was a growing quarrel then, a quarrel that these proceedings were not likely to pacify. From noon till night, they, too, had sat thus, and all night too, they had endured that shameful lodging.

'When a man is over lusty at legs,' says the Fool, who arrives in time to put in an observation or two on this topic, and who seems disposed to look at it from a critical point of view, concluding with the practical improvement of the subject, already quoted—'When a man is over lusty at legs'—(when his will, or his higher intelligence, perhaps, is allowed to govern them too freely,) 'he wears wooden nether stocks,' or 'cruel garters,' as he calls them again, by way of bestowing on this institution of his ancestors as much variety of poetic imagery as the subject will admit of. 'Horses are tied by the head, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs'; and having ransacked his memory to such good purpose, and produced such a pile of learned precedents, he appears disposed to rest the case with these; for it is a part of the play to get man into his place in the scale of nature, and to draw the line between him and the brutes, if there be any such thing possible; and the Fool seems to be particularly inclined to assist the author in this process, though when we last heard of him he was, indeed, proposing to send the principal man of his time 'to school to an ant,' to improve his sagacity; intimating, also, that another department of natural science, even conchology itself, might furnish him with some rather more prudent and fortunate suggestions than those which his own brain had appeared to generate; and it is to be remarked, that in his views on this point, as on some others of importance, he has the happiness to agree remarkably with that illustrious yoke-fellow of his in philosophy, who was just then turning his attention to the 'practic part of life' and its 'theoric,' and who indulges himself in some satires on this point not any less severe, though his pleasantries are somewhat more covert. But the philosopher on this occasion, having produced such a variety of precedents from natural history, appears to be satisfied with the propriety and justice of the proceeding, inasmuch as beasts and men seem to be treated with impartial consideration in it; and though a certain distinction of form appears to obtain according to the species, the main fact is throughout identical.

'Then comes the time,' he says, in winding up that knotted skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives before his time,' as he takes that opportunity to tell us—

  'Then comes the time, who lives to see't,
  That going shall be used with feet.'

Yes, it is a duke who is put in the stocks; it is a duke's son plays the bedlamite; it is a king who finds the hovel's shelter 'precious'; and it is a queen—it is a king's wife, and a daughter of kings—who is hanged; nay more, it is Cordelia—it is Cordelia, and none other, whom this inexorable Poet, primed with mischief, bent on outrage, determined to turn out the heart of his time, and show, in the selectest form, the inmost lining of its lurking humanities—it is Cordelia whom he will hang—And we forgive him still, and bear with him in all these assaults on our taste—in all these thick-coming blows on our outraged sensibilities; we forgive him when at last the poetic design flashes on us,—when we come to understand the providence of this piece, at least,—when we come to see at last that there is a meaning in it all, a meaning deep to justify even this procedure.

'We are not the first who, with the best meaning, have incurred the worst,' says the captive queen herself; nor was she the last of that good company, as the Poet himself might have testified;—

Upon such sacrifices the gods themselves throw incense.

We forgive the Poet here, as we forgive him in all these other pitiful and revolting exhibitions, because we know that he who would undertake the time's cure—he who would undertake the relief of the human estate in any age, must probe its evil—must reach, no matter what it costs, its deadliest hollow.

And in that age, there was no voice which could afford to lack 'the courtier's glib and oily art.' 'Hanging was the word' then, for the qualities of which this princess was the impersonation, or almost the impersonation, so predominant were they in her poetic constitution. There was no voice, gentle and low enough, to speak outright such truth as hers; and 'banishment' and 'the stocks' would have been only too mild a remedy for 'the plainness' to which Kent declares, even to the teeth of majesty, 'honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly.'

The kind, considerate Gloster, with all his loyalty to the powers which are able to show the divine right of possession, and with all his disposition to conform to the times, is greatly distressed and perplexed with the outrages which are perpetrated, as it were, under his own immediate sanction and authority. He has a hard struggle to reconcile his duty as the subject of a state which he is not prepared to overthrow, with his humane impulses and designs. He goes pattering about for a time, remonstrating, and apologizing, and trying 'to smooth down,' and 'hush up,' and mollify, and keep peace between the offending parties. He stands between the blunt, straightforward manliness of the honest Kent on the one hand, and the sycophantic servility and self-abnegation, which knows no will but the master's, as represented by the Steward, on the other.

'I am sorry for thee,' he says to Kent, after having sought in vain to prevent this outrage from being perpetrated in his own court—

  'I am sorry for thee, friend: tis the duke's pleasure,
  Whose disposition all the world well knows,
  Will not be rubbed or stopped'—

as he found to his cost, poor man, when he came to have his own eyes gouged out by it. He 'saw it feelingly' then, as he remarked himself.

'I'll entreat for thee,' he continues, in his conversation with the disguised duke in the stocks. 'The duke's to blame in this. 'Twill be ill taken.'

And when the king, on his arrival, kept waiting in the court, in his agony of indignation and grief, is told that Regan and Cornwall are 'sick,' 'they are weary,' 'they have travelled hard to-night,' denounces these subterfuges, and bids Gloster fetch him a better answer, this is the worthy man's reply to him—

                        'My dear lord,
  You know the fiery quality of the duke,
  How unremovable and fixed he is
  In his own course.'

But Lear, who has never had any but a subjective acquaintance hitherto with reasons of that kind, does not appear able to understand them from this point of view—

Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion! Fiery?—what quality? Why Gloster, Gloster, I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.

Gloster. Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.

Lear. Informed them? Dost thou understand me?

Gloster. Ay, my good lord.

But though Gloster is not yet ready to break with tyranny, it is not difficult to see which way he secretly inclines; and though he still manages his impulses cautiously, and contrives to succour the oppressed king by stealth, his courage rises with the emergency, and grows bold with provocation. For he is himself one of the finer and finest proofs of the times which the Poet represents; one, however, which he keeps back a little, for the study of those who look at his work most carefully. This man stands here in the general, indeed, as the representative of a class of men who do not belong exclusively to this particular time—men who do not stand ready, as Kent and his class do, to fly in the face of tyranny at the first provocation; they are not the kind of men who 'make mouths,' as Hamlet says, 'at the invisible event;'—they are the kind who know beforehand that to break with the powers that are, single-handed, is to sit on the stage and have your eyes gouged out, or to undergo some process of mutilation and disfigurement, not the less painful and oppressive, by this Poet's own showing, because it does not happen, perhaps, to be a physical one, and not the less calculated, on that account, to impair one's usefulness to one's species, it may be.

But besides that more general bearing of the representation, the part and disposition of Gloster afford us from time to time, glimpses of persons and things which connect the representation more directly with the particular point here noted. Men who found themselves compelled to occupy a not less equivocal position in the state, look through it a little now and then; and here, as in other parts of the play, it only wants the right key to bring out suppressed historical passages, and a finer history generally, than the chronicles of the times were able to take up.

'Alack, alack, Edmund,' says Gloster to his natural son, making him the confidant of his nobler nature, putting what was then the perilous secret of his humanity, into the dangerous keeping of the base-born one—for this is the Poet's own interpretation of his plot; though Lear is allowed to intimate on his behalf, that the loves and relations which are recognised and good in courts of justice, are not always secured by that sanction from similar misfortune; that they are not secured by that from those penalties which great Nature herself awards in those courts in which her institutes are vindicated.

'Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not THIS UNNATURAL DEALING! When I desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, and charged me on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor in any way to sustain him.'

Edmund. Most savage and unnatural.

Gloster. Go to, say you nothing.

[And say you nothing, my contemporary reader, if you perceive that this is one of those passages I have spoken of elsewhere, which carries with it another application besides that which I put it to].

'There is division between the dukes—and a worse matter than that: I have received a letter this night,—'tis dangerous to be spoken;—I have locked the letter in my closet: these injuries the king now bears, will be revenged at home' [softly—say you nothing]. 'There is part of a power already footed: we must incline to the king. I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I die for it,—as no less is threatened me,—the king, my old master—MUST BE RELIEVED. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund. Pray you be careful.'

Even Edmund himself professes to be not altogether without some experience of the perplexity which the claims of apparently clashing duties, and relations in such a time creates, though he seems to have found an easy method of disposing of these questions. Nature is his goddess and his law (that is, as he uses the term, the baser nature, the degenerate, which is not nature for man, which is unnatural for the human kind), and in his own 'rat'-like fashion, 'he bites the holy cords atwain.'

'How, my lord,' he says, in the act of betraying his father's secret to the Duke of Cornwall, in the hope of 'drawing to himself what his father loses'—'how I may be censured that NATURE, thus gives way to LOYALTY, something fears me to think of.' And again, 'I will persevere in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.'

'Know thou this,' he says afterwards, to the officer whom he employs to hang Cordelia, 'THAT MEN ARE AS THE TIME IS. Thy great employment will not bear question. About it, I say, instantly, and carry it so as I have set it down.' 'I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats,' is the officer's reply, who appears to be also in the poet's secret, and ready to aid his intention of carrying out the distinction between the human kind and the brute, 'I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;—if it be MAN'S WORK I will do it.'

But it is the steward's part, as deliberately explained by Kent himself, which furnishes in detail the ideal antagonism of that which Kent sustains in the piece; for beside those active demonstrations of his disgust, which the poetic order tolerates in him, though some of the powers within appear to take such violent offence at it, besides these tangible demonstrations, and that elaborate criticism, which the poet puts into his mouth, in which the steward is openly treated as the representative of a class, who seem to the poet apparently, to require some treatment in his time, Kent himself is made to notice distinctly this literally striking opposition.

'No contraries hold more antipathy than I, and such a knave,' he says to Cornwall, by way of explaining his apparently gratuitous attack upon the steward.

No one, indeed, who reads the play with any care, can doubt the poet's intention to incorporate into it, for some reason or other, and to bring out by the strongest conceivable contrasts, his study of loyalty and service, and especially of regal counsel, and his criticism of it, as it stood in his time in its most approved patterns. 'Such smiling rouges as these' ('that bite the holy cords atwain').

    'Smooth every passion
  That in the nature of their lord rebels;
  Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;
  Revenge, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
  With every gale and vary of their masters,
  As knowing nought like dogs but—following.'

Such ruses as this would not, of course, be wanting in such a time as that in which this piece was planned, if Edmund's word was, indeed, the true one. 'Know thou this, men are as the time is.'

And even amidst the excitement and rough outrage of that scene—in which Gloster's trial is so summarily conducted, even in that so rude scene—the relation between the guest and his host, and the relation of the slave to his owner, is delicately and studiously touched, and the human claim in both is boldly advanced, in the face of an absolute authority, and age and personal dignity put in their claims also, and demand, even at such a moment, their full rights of reverence.

[Re-enter servants with GLOSTER.]

Regan. Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.

Cornwall. Bind fast his corky arms.

Gloster. What mean your graces?—Good my friends, consider. You are my guests: do me no foul play, friends.

Cornwall. Bind him, I say.

Regan. Hard, hard:—O filthy traitor!

Gloster. Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.

Cornwall. To this chair bind him:—Villain, thou shalt find—[REGAN plucks his beard].

Gloster. By the KIND gods [for these are the gods, whose 'Commission' is sitting here]'tis most ignobly done, To pluck me by the beard.

Regan. So white, and such a traitor!

Gloster. Naughty lady, These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin, Will quicken and accuse thee. I am your host: With robber hands, my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus.

Tied to the stake, questioned and cross-questioned, and insulted, finally, beyond even his faculty of endurance, he breaks forth, at last, in strains of indignation that overleap all arbitrary and conventional bounds, that are only the more terrible for having been so long suppressed. Kent himself, when he 'came between the dragon and his wrath,' was not so fierce.

Cornwall. Where hast thou sent the king?

Gloster. To Dover.

Regan. Wherefore To Dover, was't thou not charged at peril?—

Cornwall. Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.

Regan. Wherefore to Dover?

Gloster. Because I would not see thy cruel nails Pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.

…

Regan. One side will mock another; the other too.

Cornwall. If you 'see vengeance.'

Servant. Hold your hand, my lord: I have served you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you, Than now to bid you hold.

Regan. How now, you dog?

  Servant. If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
  I'd shake it on this quarrel: What do you mean?

[Arbitrary power called to an account, requested to explain itself.]

Cornwall. My villain!

Regan. A PEASANT stand up thus?

Thus too, indeed, in that rude scene above referred to, in which the king finds his messenger in the stocks, and Regan's door, too, shut against him, the same ground of criticism had already been revealed, the same delicacy and rigour in the exactions had already betrayed the depth of the poetic design, and the real comprehension of that law, whose violations are depicted here, the scientific law, the scientific sovereignty, the law of universal nature; commanding, in the human, that specific human excellence, for the degenerate movement is in violation of nature, that is not nature but her profanation and undoing.

This is one of those passages, however, which admit, as the modern reader will more easily observe than the contemporary of the Poet was likely to of a second reading.

Goneril. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance From those that she calls servants, or from mine?

* * * * *

What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, To follow in a house, where twice so many Have a command to tend you?

Regan. What need one?

Lear. O reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest things superfluous.

[Poor Tom must have his 'rubans.']

  Allow not NATURE more than NATURE needs,
  MAN'S LIFE were cheap as BEASTS [and that's not nature]
  Thou art a lady;
  If only to go warm were gorgeous,
  Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
  Which scarcely keeps thee warm.—But, for TRUE NEED,
  You heavens, give me THAT patience.—Patience I need.

It is, indeed, the doctrine of the 'true need' that is lurking here, and all that puts man into his true place and relations in the creative order, whether of submission or control is included in it. It is the doctrine of the natural human need, and the natural ground and limits of the arts, for which nature has endowed man beforehand, with a faculty and a sentiment corresponding in grandeur to his need,—large as he is little, noble as he is mean, powerful as he is helpless, felicitous as he is wretched; the faculty and the sentiment whereby the want of man becomes the measure of his wealth and grandeur,—whereby his conscious lowness becomes the means of his ascent to his ideal type in nature, and to the scientific perfection of his form.

And this whole social picture,—rude, savage as it is,—savage as it shews when its sharp outline falls on that fair ideal ground of criticism which the doctrine of a scientific civilization creates,—is but the Poet's report of the progress of human development as it stood in his time, and of the gain that it had made on savage instinct then. It is his report of the social institutions of his time, as he found them on his map of human advancement. It is his report of the wild social misery that was crying underneath them, with its burthen of new advancements. It is the Poet's Apology for his new doctrine of human living, which he is going to publish, and leave on the earth, for 'the times that are far off.' It is the negative, which is the first step towards that affirmation, which he is going to establish on the earth for ever, or so long as the species, whose law he has found, endures on it. Down to its most revolting, most atrocious detail, it is still the Elizabethan civility that is painted here. Even Goneril's unscrupulous mode of disposing of her rival sister, though that was the kind of murder which was then regarded with the profoundest disgust and horror—(the queen in Cymbeline expresses that vivid sentiment, when she says: 'If Pisanio have given his mistress that confection which I gave him for a cordial, she is served as I would serve a rat')—even as to that we all know what a king's favourite felt himself competent to undertake then; and, if the clearest intimations of such men as Bacon, and Coke, and Raleigh, on such a question, are of any worth, the household of James the First was not without a parallel even for that performance, if not when this play was written, when it was published.

It is all one picture of social ignorance, and misery, and frantic misrule. It is a faithful exhibition of the degree of personal security which a man of honourable sentiments, and humane and noble intentions, could promise himself in such a time. It shows what chance there was of any man being permitted to sustain an honourable and intelligent part in the world, in an age in which all the radical social arts were yet wanting, in which the rude institutions of an ignorant past spontaneously built up, without any science of the natural laws, were vainly seeking to curb and quench the Incarnate soul of new ages,—the spirit of a scientific human advancement; and, when all the common welfare was still openly intrusted to the unchecked caprice and passion of one selfish, pitiful, narrow, low-minded man.

To appreciate fully the incidental and immediate political application of the piece, however, it is necessary to observe that notwithstanding that studious exhibition of lawless and outrageous power, which it involves, it is, after all, we are given to understand, by a quiet intimation here and there, a limited monarchy which is put upon the stage here. It is a constitutional government, very much in the Elizabethan stage of development, as it would seem, which these arbitrary rulers affect to be administering. It is a government which professes to be one of law, under which the atrocities of this piece are sheltered.

And one may even note, in passing, that that high Judicial Court, in which poor Lear undertakes to get his cause tried, appears to have, somehow, an extremely modern air, considering what age of the British history it was, in which it was supposed to be constituted, and considering that one of the wigs appointed to that Bench had to leave his speech behind him for Merlin to make, in consequence of living before his time: at all events it is already tinctured with some of the more notorious Elizabethan vices—vices which our Poet, not content with this exposition, contrived to get exposed in another manner, and to some purpose, ere all was done.

Lear. It shall be done, I will arraign them straight! Come, sit thou here, most learned Justice.

[To the BEDLAMITE_.]

Thou, sapient Sir, sit here. [To the FOOL.]

And again,—

  I'll see their trial first. Bring in the evidence.
  Thou robed MAN of JUSTICE take thy place.

[To TOM O'BEDLAM.]

And thou, his yoke fellow of EQUITY bench by his side.

[To the FOOL.]

You are of 'the Commission'—sit you too.

[To KENT.]

Truly it was a bold wit that could undertake to constitute that bench on the stage, and fill it with those speaking forms,—speaking to the eye the unmistakeable significance, for these judges, two of them, happened to be on the spot in full costume,—and as to the third, he was of 'the commission.' 'Sit you, too.' Truly it was a bold instructor that could undertake 'to facilitate' the demonstration of 'the more chosen subjects,' with the aid of diagrams of this kind.

Arms! Arms! Sword, fire! CORRUPTION IN THE PLACE! False justicer, why hast thou let her scape?

The tongues of these ancient sovereigns of Britain, 'tang' throughout with Elizabethan 'arguments of state,' and even Goneril, in her somewhat severe proceedings against her father, justifies her course in a very grave and excellent speech, enriched with the choicest phrases of that particular order of state eloquence, in which majesty stoops graciously to a recognition of the subject nation;—a speech from which we gather that the 'tender of a wholesome weal' is, on the whole, the thing which she has at heart most deeply, and though the proceeding in question is a painful one to her feelings, a state necessity appears to prescribe it, or at least, render it 'discreet.'

Even in Gloster's case, though the process to which he is subjected, is, confessedly, an extemporaneous one, it appears from the Duke of Cornwall's statement, that it was only the form which was wanting to make it legal. Thus he apologizes for it.—

  Though well we may not pass upon his life
  Without the form of justice, yet our power
  Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men
  May blame, but not control.

Goneril, however, grows bolder at the last, and says outright, 'Say if I do, the laws are mine NOT THINE.' But it is the law which is thine and mine, it is the law which is for Tom o' Bedlam and for thee, that great nature speaking at last through her interpreter, and explaining all this wild scene, will have vindicated.

Most MONSTROUS, exclaims her illustrious consort; but at the close of the play, where so much of the meaning sometimes comes out in a word, he himself concedes that the government which has just devolved upon him is an absolute monarchy.

'For us,' he says, 'WE WILL RESIGN, during the life of this old
Majesty, OUR ABSOLUTE POWER.'

So that there seems to have been, in fact,—in the minds, too, of persons who ought, one would say, to have been best informed on this subject,—just that vague, uncertain, contradictory view of this important question, which appears to have obtained in the English state, during the period in which the material of this poetic criticism was getting slowly accumulated. But of course this play, so full of the consequences of arbitrary power, so full of Elizabethan politics, with its 'ear-kissing arguments,' could not well end, till that word, too, had been spoken outright; and, in the Duke of Albany's resignation, it slips in at last so quietly, so properly, that no one perceives that it is not there by accident.

This, then, is what the play contains; but those that follow the story and the superficial plot only, must, of course, lose track of the interior identities. It does not occur to these that the Poet is occupied with principles, and that the change of persons does not, in the least, confound his pursuit of them.

The fact that tyranny is in one act, or in one scene, represented by Lear, and in the next by his daughters;—the fact that the king and the father is in one act the tyrant, and in another, the victim of tyranny, is quite enough to confound the criticism to which a work of mere amusement is subjected; for it serves to disguise the philosophic purport, by dividing it on the surface: and the dangerous passages are all opposed and neutralised, for those who look at it only as a piece of dramatized, poetic history.

For this is a philosopher who prefers to handle his principles in their natural, historical combinations, in those modified unions of opposites, those complex wholes, which nature so stedfastly inclines to, instead of exhibiting them scientifically bottled up and labelled, in a state of fierce chemical abstraction.

His characters are not like the characters in the old 'Moralities,' which he found on the stage when he first began to turn his attention to it, mere impersonations of certain vague, loose, popular notions. Those sickly, meagre forms would not answer his purpose. It was necessary that the actors in the New Moralities he was getting up so quietly, should have some speculation in their eyes, some blood in their veins, a kind of blood that had never got manufactured in the Poet's laboratory till then. His characters, no matter how strong the predominating trait, though 'the conspicuous instance' of it be selected, have all the rich quality, the tempered and subtle power of nature's own compositions. The expectation, the interest, the surprise of life and history, waits, with its charm on all their speech and doing.

The whole play tells, indeed, its own story, and scarcely needs interpreting, when once the spectator has gained the true dramatic stand-point; when once he understands that there is a teacher here,—a new one,—one who will not undertake to work with the instrumentalities that his time offered to him, who begins by rejecting the abstractions which lie at the foundation of all the learning of his time, which are not scientific, but vague, loose, popular notions, that have been collected without art, or scientific rule of rejection, and are, therefore, inefficacious in nature, and unavailable for 'the art and practic part of life;' a teacher who will build up his philosophy anew, from the beginning, a teacher who will begin with history and particulars, who will abstract his definitions from nature, and have powers of them, and not words only, and make them the basis of his science and the material and instrument of his reform. 'I will teach you differences,' says Kent to the steward, alluding on the part of his author, for he does not profess to be metaphysical himself to another kind of distinction, than that which obtained in the schools; and accompanying the remark, on his own part, with some practical demonstrations, which did not appear to be taken in good part at all by the person he was at such pains to instruct in his doctrine of distinctions.

The reader who has once gained this clue, the clue which the question of design and authorship involves, will find this play, as he will find, indeed, all this author's plays, overflowing every where with the scientific statement,—the finest abstract statement of that which the action, with its moving, storming, laughing, weeping, praying diagrams, sets forth in the concrete.

But he who has not yet gained this point,—the critic who looks at it from the point of observation which the traditionary theory of its origin and intent creates, is not in a position to notice the philosophic expositions of its purport, with which the action is all inwoven. No,—though the whole structure of the piece should manifestly hang on them, though the whole flow of the dialogue should make one tissue of them, though every interstice of the play should be filled with them, though the fool's jest, and the Bedlamite's gibberish, should point and flash with them at every turn;—though the wildest incoherence of madness, real or assumed, to its most dubious hummings,—its snatches of old ballads, and inarticulate mockings of the blast, should be strung and woven with them; though the storm itself, with its wild accompaniment, and demoniacal frenzies, should articulate its response to them;—keeping open tune without, to that human uproar; and howling symphonies, to the unconquered demoniacal forces of human life,—for it is the Poet who writes in 'the storm continues,'—'the storm continues,'—'the storm continues;'—though even Edmund's diabolical 'fa, sol, lah, mi,' should dissolve into harmony with them, while Tom's five fiends echo it from afar, and 'mop and mow' their responses, down to the one that 'since possesses chambermaids;' nobody that takes the play theory, and makes a matter of faith of it merely; nobody that is willing to shut his eyes and open his mouth, and swallow the whole upon trust, as a miracle simply, is going to see anything in all this, or take any exceptions at it.

Certainly, at the time when it was written, it was not the kind of learning and the kind of philosophy that the world was used to. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. The memory of man could not go far enough to produce any parallel to it in letters. It was manifest that this was nature, the living nature, the thing itself. None could perceive the tint of the school on its robust creations; no eye could detect in its sturdy compositions the stuff that books were made of; and it required no effort of faith, therefore, to believe that it was not that. It was easy enough to believe, and men were glad, on the whole, to believe that it was not that—that it was not learning or philosophy—but something just as far from that, as completely its opposite, as could well be conceived of.

How could men suspect, as yet, that this was the new scholasticism, the New Philosophy? Was it strange that they should mistake it for rude nature herself, in her unschooled, spontaneous strength, when it had not yet publicly transpired that something had come at last upon the stage of human development, which was stooping to nature and learning of her, and stealing her secret, and unwinding the clue to the heart of her mystery? How could men know that this was the subtlest philosophy, the ripest scholasticism, the last proof of all human learning, when it was still a secret that the school of nature and her laws, that the school of natural history and natural philosophy, too, through all its lengths and breadths and depths, was open; and that 'the schools'—the schools of old chimeras and notions—the schools where the jangle of the monkish abstractions and the 'fifes and the trumpets of the Greeks' were sounding—were going to get shut up with it.

How should they know that the teacher of the New Philosophy was Poet also—must be, by that same anointing, a singer, mighty as the sons of song who brought their harmonies of old into the savage earth—a singer able to sing down antiquities with his new gift, able to sing in new eras?

But these have no clue as yet to track him with: they cannot collect or thread his thick-showered meanings. He does not care through how many mouths he draws the lines of his philosophic purpose. He does not care from what long distances his meanings look towards each other. But these interpreters are not aware of that. They have not been informed of that particular. On the contrary, they have been put wholly off their guard. Their heads have been turned, deliberately, in just the opposite direction. They have no faintest hint beforehand of the depths in which the philosophic unities of the piece are hidden: it is not strange, therefore, that these unities should escape their notice, and that they should take it for granted that there are none in it. It is not the mere play-reader who is ever going to see them. It will take the philosophic student, with all his clues, to master them. It will take the student of the New School and the New Ages, with the torch of Natural Science in his hand, to track them to their centre.

Here, too, as elsewhere, it is the king himself on whom the bolder political expositions are thrust. But it is not his royalty only that has need to be put in requisition here, to bring out successfully all that was working then in this Poet's mind and heart, and which had to come out in some way. It was something more than royalty that was required to protect this philosopher in those astounding freedoms of speech in which he indulges himself here, without any apparent scruple or misgiving. The combination of distresses, indeed, which the old ballad accumulates on the poor king's head, offers from the first a large poetic license, of which the man of art—or 'prudence,' as he calls it—avails himself somewhat liberally.

With those daughters in the foreground always, and the parental grief so wild and loud—with that deeper, deadlier, infinitely more cruel private social wrong interwoven with all the political representation, and overpowering it everywhere, as if that inner social evil were, after all, foremost in the Poet's thought—as if that were the thing which seemed crying to him for redress more than all the rest—if, indeed, any thought of 'giving losses their remedies' could cross a Player's dream, when, in the way of his profession, 'the enormous state' came in to fill his scene, and open its subterranean depths, and let out its secrets, and drown the stage with its elemental horror;—with his daughters in the foreground, and all that magnificent accompaniment of the elemental war without—with all nature in that terrific uproar, and the Fool and the Madman to create a diversion, and his friends all about him to hush up and make the best of everything—with that great storm of pathos that the Magician is bringing down for him—with the stage all in tears, by their own confession, and the audience sobbing their responses—what the poor king might say between his chattering teeth was not going to be very critically treated; and the Poet knew it. It was the king, in such circumstances, who could undertake the philosophical expositions of the action; and in his wildest bursts of grief he has to manage them, in his wildest bursts of grief he has to keep to them.

But it is not until long afterwards, when the storm, and all the misery of that night, has had its ultimate effect—its chronic effect—upon him, that the Poet ventures to produce, under cover of the sensation which the presence of a mad king on the stage creates, precisely that exposition of the scene which has been, here, insisted on.

'They flattered me like a dog; they told me I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. To say Ay and No to everything I said!—Ay and No too was no good DIVINITY. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind made me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding,—there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men of their words. They told me I was everything: 'tis a lie. I am not ague-proof.'

Gloster. The trick of that voice I do well remember:

Is't not THE KING?

Lear. Ay, every inch a King:

When I do stare, see, how the subject quakes.

But it is a subject he has conjured up from his brain that is quaking under his regal stare. And it is the impersonation of God's authority, it is the divine right to rule men at its pleasure, with or without laws, as it sees fit, that stands there, tricked out like Tom o'Bedlam, with A CROWN of noisome weeds on its head, arguing the question of the day, taking up for the divine right, defining its own position:—

Is't not the king?

Ay every inch a king:

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.

See; yes, see. For that is what he stands there for, or that you may see what it is at whose stare the subject quakes. He is there to 'represent to the eye,' because impressions on the senses are more effective than abstract statements, the divine right and sovereignty, the majesty of the COMMON-weal, the rule that protects each helpless individual member of it with the strength of all, the rule awful with great nature's sanction, enforced with her dire pains and penalties. He is there that you may see whether that is it, or not; that one poor wretch, that thing of pity, which has no power to protect itself, in whom the law itself, the sovereignty of reason, is dethroned. That was, what all men thought it was, when this play was written; for the madness of arbitrary power, the impersonated will and passion, was the state then. That is the spontaneous affirmation of rude ages, on this noblest subject,—this chosen subject of the new philosophy,—which stands there now to facilitate the demonstration, 'as globes and machines do the more subtle demonstrations in mathematics.' It is the 'affirmation' which the Poet finds pre-occupying this question; but this is the table of review that he stands on, and this 'Instance' has been subjected to the philosophical tests, and that is the reason that all those dazzling externals of majesty, which make that 'IDOL CEREMONY' are wanting here; that is the reason that his crown has turned to weeds. This is the popular affirmative the Poet is dealing with; but it stands on the scientific 'Table of Review,' and the result of this inquiry is, that it goes to 'the table of NEGATIONS.' And the negative table of science in these questions is Tragedy, the World's Tragedy. 'Is't not the king?' 'Ay, every inch—a King. When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.' But the voice within overpowers him, and the axioms that are the vintage of science, the inductions which are the result of that experiment, are forced from his lips. 'To say ay and no to everything that I—that I—said! To say ay and no too, was no GOOD DIVINITY. They told me that I was everything. 'T IS A LIE. I am not ague proof.' 'T is A LIE'—that is, what is called in other places a 'negative.'

In this systematic exposure of 'the particular and private nature' in the human kind, and those SPECIAL susceptibilities and liabilities which qualify its relationships; in this scientific exhibition of its special liability to suffering from the violation of the higher law of those relationships—its special liability to injury, moral, mental, and physical—a liability from which the very one who usurps the place of that law has himself no exemption in this exhibition,— which requires that the king himself should represent that liability in chief—it was not to be expected that this particular ill, this ill in which the human wrong in its extreme capes is so wont to exhibit its consummations, should be omitted. In this exhibition, which was designed to be scientifically inclusive, it would have been a fault to omit it. But that the Poet should have dared to think of exhibiting it dramatically in this instance, and that, too, in its most hopeless form—that he should have dared to think of exhibiting the personality which was then 'the state' to the eye of 'the subject' labouring under that personal disability, in the very act, too, of boasting of its kingly terrors—this only goes to show what large prerogatives, what boundless freedoms and immunities, the resources of this particular department of art could be made to yield, when it fell into the hands of the new Masters of Arts, when it came to be selected by the Art-king himself as his instrument.

But we are prepared for this spectacle, and with the Poet's wonted skill; for it is Cordelia, her heart bursting with its stormy passion of filial love and grief, that, REBEL-LIKE, seeks to be QUEEN o'er her, though she queens it still, and 'the smiles on her ripe lips seem not to know what tears are in her eyes,' for she has had her hour with her subject grief, and 'dealt with it alone,'—it is this child of truth and duty, this true Queen, this impersonated sovereignty, whom her Poet crowns with his choicest graces, on whom he devolves the task of prefacing this so critical, and, one might think, perhaps, perilous exhibition. But her description does not disguise the matter, or palliate its extremity.

  'Why, he was met even now,
  Mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud;'

Crowned—.

  'Crowned with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,
  With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckow flowers,
  Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
  In our sustaining corn.'

That is the crown; and a very extraordinary symbol of sovereignty it is, one cannot help thinking, for the divine right to get on its head by any accident just then. Surely that symbol of power is getting somewhat rudely handled here, in the course of the movements which the 'necessary questions of this Play' involve, as the critical mind might begin to think. In the botanical analysis of that then so dazzling, and potent, and compelling instrument in human affairs, a very careful observer might perhaps take notice that the decidedly hurtful and noxious influences in nature appear to have a prominent place; and, for the rest, that the qualities of wildness and idleness, and encroaching good-for-nothingness, appear to be the common and predominating elements. It is when the Tragedy reaches its height that this crown comes out.

A hundred men are sent out to pursue this majesty; not now to wait on him in idle ceremony, and to give him the 'addition of a king'; but—to catch him—to search every acre in the high-grown field, and bring him in. He has evaded his pursuers: he comes on to the stage full of self-congratulation and royal glee, chuckling over his prerogative:—

'No; they cannot touch me for COINING. I am the king himself.'

'O thou side-piercing sight!' [Collateral meaning.]

'Nature's above Art in that respect.' ['So o'er that art which you say adds to nature, is an art that Nature makes.'] 'There's your press money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a clothier's yard.—Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do't.—There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it on a giant_.'

But the messengers, who were sent out for him, are on his track.

Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants.

Gent. O here he is, lay hand upon him. Sir, Your most dear daughter—

Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even The natural fool of fortune! Use me well; You shall have ransom. Let me have a surgeon, I am cut to the brains.

Gent. You shall have anything.

Lear. No seconds? All myself?

Gent. Good Sir,—

Lear. I will die bravely, like a bridegroom: What? I will be jovial. Come, come; I am a king, My masters; know you that?

Gent. You are, a royal one, and we obey you.

Lear. Then there's life in it. Nay, an you get it, you shall get it by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa. [Exit, running; Attendants FOLLOW.] ['Transient hieroglyphic.']

Gent. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch; Past speaking of, in A KING!

[not past exhibiting, it seems, however.]

But, of course, there was nothing that a king, whose mind was in such a state, could not be permitted to say with impunity; and it is in this very scene that the Poet puts into his mouth the boldest of those philosophical suggestions which the first attempt to find a theory for the art and practical part of life, gave birth to: he skilfully reserves for this scene some of the most startling of those social criticisms which the action this play is everywhere throwing out.

For it is in this scene, that the outcast king encounters the victim of tyranny, whose eyes have been plucked out, and who has been turned out to beggary, as the penalty of having come athwart that disposition in 'the duke,' that 'all the world well knows will not be rubbed or stopped';—it is in this scene that Lear finds him smelling his way to Dover, for that is the name in the play—the play name—for the place towards which men's hopes appear to be turning; and that conversation as to how the world goes, to which allusion has been already made, comes off, without appearing to suggest to any mind, that it is other than accidental on the part of the Poet, or that the action of the play might possibly be connected with it! For notwithstanding this great stress, which he lays everywhere on forethought and a deliberative rational intelligent procedure, as the distinctive human mark,—the characteristic feature of a man,—the poor poet himself, does not appear to have gained much credit hitherto for the possession of this human quality.—

Lear. Thou seest how this world goes?

Gloster. I see it feelingly.

Lear. What, art mad?—

[have you not the use of your reason, then? Can you not see with that? That is the kind of sight we talk of here. It's the want of that which makes these falls. We have eyes with which to foresee effects,—eyes which outgo all the senses with their range of observation, with their range of certainty and foresight.]

'What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine—ears: see how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, and which is THE THIEF?' [Searching social questions, as before. 'Thou robed man of justice (to the Bedlamite), take thy place; and thou, his yoke-fellow of equity (to the Fool), bench by his side. Thou, sapient sir, sit here.']

So that it would seem, perhaps, as if wisdom, as well as honesty, might be wanting there—the searching subtle wisdom, that is matched in subtlety, with nature's forces, that sees true differences, and effects true reformations. 'Change places. Hark, in thine ear.' Truly this is a player who knows how to suit the word to the action, and the action to the word; for there has been a revolution going on in this play which has made as complete a social overturning—which has shaken kings, and dukes, and lordlings out of their 'places,' as completely as some later revolutions have done. 'Change places!' With one duke in the stocks, and another wandering blind in the streets—with a dukeling, in the form of mad Tom, to lead him, with a king in a hovel, calling for the straw, and a queen hung by the neck till she is dead—with mad Tom on the bench, and the Fool, with his cap and bells, at his side—with Tom at the council-table, and occupying the position of chief favourite and adviser to the king, and a distinct proposal now that the thief and the justice shall change places on the spot—with the inquiry as to which is the justice, and which is the thief, openly started—one would almost fancy that the subject had been exhausted here, or would be, if these indications should be followed up. What is it in the way of social alterations which the player's imagination could conceive of, which his scruples have prevented him from suggesting here?

But the mad king goes on with those new and unheard-of political and social suggestions, which his madness appears to have had the effect of inspiring in him—

Lear. Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

Gloster. Ay, sir.

  Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There might'st thou
  behold the great image of AUTHORITY: a dog's obeyed in office.
  Through tattered robes small vices do appear;
  Robes, and furred gowns, hide all.
    [Robes,—robes, and furred gowns!]
                               Plate sin with gold,
  And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
  Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.

But that was before Tom got his seat on the bench—that was before Tom got his place at the council-table.

'None does offend,—none—'

[unless you will begin your reform at the beginning, and hunt down the great rogues as well as the little ones; or, rather, unless you will go to the source of the evil, and take away the evils, of which these crimes, that you are awarding penalties to, are the result, let it all alone, I say. Let's have no more legislation, and no more of this JUSTICE, this EQUITY, that takes the vices which come through the tattered robes, and leaves the great thief in his purple untouched. Let us have no more of this mockery. Let us be impartial in our justice, at least.] 'None does offend. I say none. I'll able 'em.' [I'll show you the way. Soft. Hark, in thine ear.] 'Take that of me, my friend, who have the power TO SEAL THE ACCUSER'S LIPS.' [Soft, in thine ear.]—

                  'Get thee glass eyes,
  And like a scurvy politician, seem
  To see the things thou dost not.—Now, now, now, NOW.
       * * * * *
  I know thee well enough. Thy name is—Gloster.
  Thou must be patient; we came crying hither.
  Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air
  We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee; mark me.

Gloster. Alack, alack, the day!

  Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come
  To this great stage of—Fools.
  [Mark me, for I preach to thee—of Fools.
  I am even the natural fool of fortune.]
  —'O matter and impertinency, mixed
  Reason in madness.'—

—is the Poet's concluding comment on this regal boldness, a safe and saving explanation; 'for to define true madness,' as Polonius says, 'what is it but to be nothing else but mad.' If the 'all licensed fool,' as Goneril peevishly calls him, under cover of his assumed imbecility, could carry his traditional privilege to such dangerous extremes, and carp and philosophize, and fling his bitter jests about at his pleasure, surely downright madness might claim to be invested with a privilege as large. But madness, when conjoined with royalty, makes a double privilege, one which this Poet finds, however, at times, none too large for his purposes.

Thus, Hamlet, when his mind is once in a questionable state, can be permitted to make, with impunity, profane suggestions as to certain possible royal progresses, and the changes to which the dust of a Cæsar might be liable, without being reminded out of the play, that to follow out these suggestions 'would be' indeed, 'to consider too curiously,' and that most extraordinary humour of his enables him also to relieve his mind of many other suggestions, 'which reason and sanity,' in his time, could not have been 'so prosperously delivered of.'

For what is it that men can set up as a test of sanity in any age, but their own common beliefs and sentiments. And what surer proof of the king's madness,—what more pathetic indication of its midsummer height could be given, than those startling propositions which the poet here puts into his mouth, so opposed to the opinions and sentiments, not of kings only, but of the world at large; what madder thing could a poet think of than those political axioms which he introduces under cover of these suggestions,—which would lay the axe at the root of the common beliefs and sentiments on which the social structure then rested. How could he better show that this poor king's wits had, indeed, 'turned;' how could he better prove that he was, indeed, past praying for, than by putting into his mouth those bitter satires on the state, those satires on the 'one only man' power itself,—those wild revolutionary proposals, 'hark! in thine ear,—change places. Softly, in thine ear,— which is the JUSTICE, and which is THE THIEF?' 'Take that of me who have the power to seal the accuser's lips. None does offend. I say none. I'll able 'em. Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.' These laws have failed, you see. They shelter the most frightful depths of wrong. That Bench has failed, you see; and that Chair, with all its adjunct divinity. Come here and look down with me from this pinnacle, into these abysses. Look at that wretch there, in the form of man. Fetch him up in his blanket, and set him at the Council Table with his elf locks and begrimed visage and inhuman gibberish. Perhaps, he will be able to make some suggestion there; and those five fiends that are talking in him at once, would like, perhaps, to have a hearing there. Make him 'one of your hundred.' You are of 'the commission,' let him bench with you. Nay, change places, let him try your cause, and tell us which is the justice, which is the thief, which is the sapient Sir, and which is the Bedlamite. Surely, the man who authorizes these suggestions must be, indeed, 'far gone,' whether he be 'a king or a yeoman.' And mad indeed he is. Writhing under the insufficiency and incompetency of these pretentious, but, in fact, ignorant and usurping institutions, his heart of hearts racked and crushed with their failure, the victim of this social empiricism, cries out in his anguish, under that safe disguise of the Robes that hide all: 'Take these away at least,—that will be something gained. Let us have no more of this mockery. None does offend—none—I say none.' Let us go back to the innocent instinctive brutish state, and have done with this vain disastrous struggle of nature after the human form, and its dignity, and perfection. Let us talk no more of law and justice and humanity and DIVINITY forsooth, divinity and the celestial graces, that divinity which is the end and perfection of the human form.—Is not womanhood itself, and the Angel of it fallen—degenerate?—That is the humour of it.—That is the meaning of the savage edicts, in which this human victim of the inhuman state, the subject of a social state which has failed in some way of the human end, undertakes to utter through the king's lips, his sense of the failure. For the Poet at whose command he speaks, is the true scientific historian of nature and art, and the rude and struggling advances of the human nature towards its ideal type, though they fall never so short, are none of them omitted in his note-book. He knows better than any other, what gain the imperfect civilization he searches and satirizes and lays bare here, has made, with all its imperfections, on the spontaneities and aids of the individual, unaccommodated man: he knows all the value of the accumulations of ages; he is the very philosopher who has put forth all his wisdom to guard the state from the shock of those convulsions, that to his prescient eye, were threatening then to lay all flat.

'O let him pass!' is the Poet's word, when the loving friends seek to detain a little longer, the soul on whom this cruel time has done its work,—its elected sufferer.

  'O let him pass! he hates him
  That would upon the rack of this tough world,
  Stretch him out longer.'
  [Tired with all these, he cries in his own behalf.]
  'Tired with all these, for restful death I cry.
  Thou seest how this world goes. I see it feelingly.'

Albany. The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak WHAT WE FEEL, not what we ought to say, The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

It needs but a point, a point which the Poet could not well put in,—one of those points which he speaks of elsewhere so significantly, to make the unmeaning line with which this great social Tragedy concludes, a sufficiently fitting conclusion to it; considering, at least, the pressure under which it was written; and the author has himself called our attention to that, as we see, even in this little jingle of rhymes, put in apparently, only for professional purposes, and merely to get the curtain down decently. It is a point, which it takes the key of the play—Lord Bacon's key, of 'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that Merlin was to make.

  'The oldest hath borne most, we that are young
  Shall never see so much, nor live so long.'

There were boys 'in England then a-bed;' nay, some of them might have been present that day, for aught we know, on which one of the Managers of the Surrey Theatre, the owner of the wardrobe and stage-properties, and himself an actor, brought out with appropriate decorations and dresses, for the benefit of his audience on the Bankside, this little ebullition of his genius;—there were boys present then, perhaps, whose names would become immortal with the fulfilment of that prophecy;—there was one at Whitehall, when it was brought out there, whose name would be for ever linked with it. 'We that are young,—the oldest hath borne most. We that are young shall never see so much' [I see it feelingly],

'Shall never see so much, nor live so long.'

So.

But there were evils included in that tragic picture, which those who were young then, would not outlive; evils which the times that were near with their coarse, fierce remedies, would not heal; evils which the Seer and Leader of the Times that were far off, would himself make over to their cure;—evils in whose cure the Discoverer of the science of Nature, and the inventor of the New Magic which is the part operative of it, expected to be called upon for an opinion, when the time for that extension of his science, 'crushed together and infolded within itself in these books of Nature's learning,' should fully come.

Nothing almost sees MIRACLES but MISERY, says poor Kent, in the stocks, waiting for the 'beacon' of the morning, by whose comfortable beams, he might peruse his letter. 'I know,' he says,

  ''Tis from Cordelia,
  Who hath most fortunately been informed
  Of my obscured course, and shall find time
  From this enormous state—seeking—TO GIVE
  LOSSES THEIR REMEDIES.'

There is no attempt to demonstrate that the work here proposed as a study, worthy the attention of the philosophical student, is not, notwithstanding a Poem, and a Poet's gift, not to his contemporaries only, but to his kind. What is claimed is, indeed, that it is a Poem which, with all its overpowering theatrical effects, does, in fact, reserve its true poetic wealth, for those who will find the springs of its inmost philosophic purport. There is no attempt to show that this play belongs to the category of scientific works, according to our present limitation of the term, or that there could be found any niche for it, on those lower platforms and compartments of the new science of nature, which our modern works of natural science occupy.

It was inevitably a Poem. There was the essence of all Tragedy in the purely scientific exhibition, which the purpose of it required. The intention of the Poet to exhibit the radical idea of his plot impressively, so as to reach the popular mind through its appeal to the sensibilities, involved, of course, the finest series of conjunctions of artistic effects, the most exquisite characterization, the boldest grouping, the most startling and determined contrasts, which the whole range of his art could furnish.

But that which is only the incident of a genuine poetic inspiration, the effect upon the senses, which its higher appeals are sure to involve, becomes with those delighting in, and capable of appreciating, that sensuous effect merely, its sufficient and only end, and even a doctrine of criticism based on this inversion will not be wanting. But the difficulty of unlocking the great Elizabethan poems with any such theory of Art, arises from the fact that it is not the theory of Art, which the great Elizabethan Poets adopted, and whether we approve of theirs or not, we must take it, such as it was, for our torch in this exploration. As to that spontaneity, that seizure, that Platonic divination, that poetic 'fury,' which our prose philosopher scans in so many places so curiously, which he defines so carefully and strictly, so broadly too, as the poetic condition that thing which he appears to admire so much, as having something a little demoniacal in it withal, that same 'fine' thing which the Poet himself speaks of by a term not any less questionable,—as to this poetic inspiration, it is not necessary to claim that it is a thing with which this Poet, the Poet of a new era, the Poet, the deliverer of an Inductive Learning, has had himself, personally, no acquaintance. He knows what it is. But it is a Poet who is, first of all, a man, and he takes his humanity with him into all things. The essential human principle is that which he takes to be the law and limit of the human constitution. He is perfectly satisfied with 'the measure of a man,' and he gives the preference deliberately, and on principle to the sober and rational state in the human mind. All the elements which enter into the human composition, all the states, normal or otherwise, to which it is liable, have passed under his review, and this is his conclusion; and none born of woman, ever had a better chance to look at them, for all is alike heightened in him,—heightened to the ideal boundary of nature, in the human form; but that which seems to be heightened, most of all, that in which he stands preeminent and singular in the natural history of man, would seem to be the proportion of this heightening. It is what we have all recognized it to be, Nature's largest, most prodigal demonstration of her capacities in the human form, but it is, at the same time, her most excellent and exquisite balance of composition—her most subdued and tempered work. And the reason is, that he is not a particular and private man, and the deficiencies and personalities of those from whom he is abstracted, are studiously, and by method, kept out of him. For this is the 'Will' not of one man only; it is the scientific abstract of a philosophic union. It is a will that has a rule in art as well as nature.

Certainly he is the very coolest Poet; and the fullest of this common earth and its affairs, of any sage that has ever showed his head upon it, in prose or metre. The sturdiness with which he makes good his position, as an inhabitant, for the time being, of this terrestrial ball, and, by the ordinance of God, subject to its laws, and liable to its pains and penalties, is a thing which appears, to the careful reviewer of it, on the whole, the most novel and striking feature of this demonstration. He objects, on principle, to seizures and possessions of all kinds. He refuses to be taken off his feet by any kind of solicitation. He is a man who is never ashamed to have a reason,—one that he can produce, and make intelligible to common people, for his most exquisite proceedings; that is, if he chooses: but, 'if reasons were plentiful as blackberries,' he is not the man to give them on 'compulsion.' His ideas of the common mind, his notion of the common human intelligence, or capacity for intelligence, appears to be somewhat different from that of the other philosophers. The common sense—the common form—is that which he is always seeking and identifying under all the differences. It is that which he is bringing out and clothing with the 'inter-tissued robe' and all the glories which he has stripped from the extant majesty. 'Robes and furred gowns hide all' no longer.

He is not a bard who is careful at all about keeping his singing robes about him. He can doff them and work like a 'navvy' when he sees reason. He is very fond of coming out with good, sober, solid prose, in the heart of his poetry. He can rave upon occasion as well as another. Spontaneities of all kinds have scope and verge enough in his plot; but he always keeps an eye out, and they speak no more than is set down for them. His Pythoness foams at the mouth too, sometimes, and appears to have it all her own way, perhaps; but he knows what she is about, and there is never a word in the oracle that has not undergone his revision. He knows that Plato tells us 'it is in vain for a sober man to knock at the floor of the Muses'; but he is one who has discovered, scientifically, the human law; and he is ready to make it good, on all sides, against all comers. And, though the Muses knocked at his door, as they never had at any other, they could never carry him away with them. They found, for once, a sober man within, one who is not afraid to tell them, to their teeth, 'Judgment holds in me, always, a magisterial seat;'—and, with all their celestial graces and pretensions, he fetters them, and drags them up to that tribunal. He superintends all his inspirations.

There never was a Poet in whom the poetic spontaneities were so absolutely under control and mastery; and there never was one in whose nature all the spontaneous force and faculty of genius showed itself in such tumultuous fulness, ready to issue, at a word, in such inexhaustible varieties of creative energy.

Of all the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts there is none to match this so delicate and gorgeous Ariel of his,—this creature that he keeps to put his girdles round the earth for him, that comes at a thought, and brings in such dainty banquets, such brave pageants in the earth or in the air; there is none other that knows so well the spells 'to make this place Paradise.' But, for all that, he is the merest tool,—the veriest drudge and slave. The magician's collar is always on his neck; in his airiest sweeps he takes his chain with him. Caliban himself is not more sternly watched and tutored; and all the gorgeous masque has its predetermined order, its severe economy of grace; through all the slightest minutiæ of its detail, runs the inflexible purpose, the rational human purpose, the common human sense, the common human aim.

Yes, it is a Play; but it is the play of a mind sobered with all human learning. Yes, it is spontaneous; but it is the spontaneity of a heart laden with human sorrow, oppressed with the burthen of the common weal. Yes, indeed, it is a Poet's work; but it is the work of one who consciously and deliberately recognizes, in all the variety of his gifts, in all his natural and acquired power, under all the disabilities of his position, the one, paramount, human law, and essential obligation. Of 'Art,' as anything whatever, but an instrumentality, thoroughly subdued, and subordinated to that end, of Art as anything in itself, with an independent tribunal, and law with an ethic and ritual of its own, this inventor of the one Art, that has for its end the relief of the human estate and the Creator's glory, knows nothing. Of any such idolatry and magnifying of the creature, of any such worship of the gold of the temple to the desecration of that which sanctifieth the gold, this Art-King in all his purple, this priest and High Pontiff of its inner mysteries knows—will know—nothing.

Yes, it is play; but it is not child's play, nor an idiot's play, nor the play of a 'jigging' Bacchanal, who comes out on this grave, human scene, to insult our sober, human sense, with his mad humour, making a Belshazzar's feast or an Antonian revel of it; a creature who shows himself to our common human sense without any human aim or purpose, ransacking all the life of man, exploring all worlds, pursuing the human thought to its last verge, and questioning, as with the cry of all the race, the infinities beyond, diving to the lowest depths of human life and human nature, and bringing up and publishing, the before unspoken depths of human wrong and sorrow, wringing from the hearts of those that died and made no sign, their death-buried secrets, articulating everywhere that which before had no word—and all for an artistic effect, for an hour's entertainment, for the luxury of a harmonized impression, or for the mere ostentation of his frolic, to feed his gamesome humour, to make us stare at his unconsciousness, to show what gems he can crush in his idle cup for a draught of pleasure, or in pure caprice and wantonness, confounding all our notions of sense, and manliness, and human duty and respect, with the boundless wealth and waste of his gigantic fooleries.

It is play, but let us thank God it is no such play as that; let our common human nature rejoice that it has not been thus outraged in its chief and chosen one, that it has not been thus disgraced with the boundless human worthlessness of the creature on whom its choicest gifts were lavished. It is play, indeed; but it is no such Monster, with his idiotic stare of unconsciousness, that the opening of it will reveal to us. Let us all thank God, and take heart again, and try to revive those notions of human dignity and common human sense which this story sets at nought, and see if we cannot heal that great jar in our abused natures which this chimera of the nineteenth century makes in it—this night-mare of modern criticism which lies with its dead weight on all our higher art and learning—this creature that came in on us unawares, when the interpretation of the Plays had outgrown the Play-tradition, when 'the Play' had outgrown 'the Player.'

It is a play in which the manliest of human voices is heard sounding throughout the order of it; it is a play stuffed to its fool's gibe, with the soberest, deepest, maturest human sense; and 'the tears of it,' as we who have tested it know, 'the tears of it are wet.' It is a play where the choicest seats, the seats in which those who see it all must sit, are 'reserved;' and there is a price to be paid for these: 'children and fools' will continue to have theirs for nothing. For after so many generations of players had come and gone, there had come at last on this human stage—on 'this great stage of fools,' as the Poet calls it—this stage filled with 'the natural fools of fortune,' having eyes, but seeing not—there had come to it at last a MAN, one who was—take him for all in all—that; one who thought it—for a man, enough to be truly that—one who thought he was fulfilling his part in the universal order, in seeking to be modestly and truly that; one, too, who thought it was time that the human part on the stage of this Globe Theatre should begin to be reverently studied by man himself, and scientifically and religiously ordered and determined through all its detail.

For it is the movement of the new time that makes this Play, and all these Plays: it is the spirit of the newly-beginning ages of human advancement which makes the inspiration of them; the beginning ages of a rational, instructed—and not blind, or instinctive, or demoniacal—human conduct.

It is such play and pastime as the prophetic spirit and leadership of those new ages could find time and heart to make and leave to them, on that height of vision which it was given to it to occupy. For an age in human advancement was at last reached, on whose utmost summits men could begin to perceive that tradition, and eyes of moonshine speculation, and a thousand noses, and horns welked and waved like the enridged sea, when they came to be jumbled together in one 'monster,' did not appear to answer the purpose of human combination, or the purpose of human life on earth; appeared, indeed to be still far, 'far wide' of the end which human society is everywhere blindly pushing and groping for, en masse.

There was a point of observation from which this fortuitous social conjunction did not appear to the critical eye or ear to be making just that kind of play and music which human nature—singularly enough, considering what kind of conditions it lights on—is constitutionally inclined to expect and demand; not that, or indeed any perceptible approximation to a paradisaical state of things. There was, indeed, a point of view—one which commanded not the political mysteries of the time only, but the household secrets of it, and the deeper secrets of the solitary heart of man, one which commanded alike the palace and the hovel, to their blackest recesses—there was a point of view from which these social agencies appeared to be making then, in fact, whether one looked with eyes or ears, a mere diabolical jangle, and 'fa, sol, la, mi', of it, a demoniacal storm music; and from that height of observation all ruinous disorders could be seen coming out, and driving men to vice and despair, urging them to self-destruction even, and hunting them disquietly to their graves. 'Nothing almost sees miracles but misery;' and this was the Age in which the New Magic was invented.

It was the age in which that grand discovery was made, which the Fool undertakes to palm off here as the fruit of his own single invention; and, indeed, it was found that the application of it to certain departments of human affairs was more successfully managed by this gentleman in his motley, than by some of his brother philosophers who attempted it. It was the age in which the questions which are inserted here so safely in the Fool's catechism, began to be started secretly in the philosophic chamber. It was the age in which the identical answers which the cap and bells are made responsible for here, were written down, but with other applications, in graver authorities. It is the philosophical discovery of the time, which the Fool is undertaking to translate into the vernacular, when he puts the question, 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his face?' And we have all the Novum Organum in what he calls, in another place, 'the boorish,' when he answers it; and all the choicest gems of 'the part operative' of the new learning have been rattling from his rattle in everybody's path, ever since he published his digests of that doctrine: 'Canst thou tell why one's nose stands in the middle of his face?' 'No.' 'Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot smell out he may spy into.' And 'all that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but—blind men.' And 'the reason why the seven stars are seven, is because they are not eight;' and the king who makes that answer 'would have made a good—fool,' for it's 'a very pretty reason.' And neither times nor men should be 'old before their time'; neither times nor men should be revered, or clothed with authority or command in human affairs, 'till they are wise.' ['Thou sapient sir, sit here.'] And it is a mistake for a leader of men to think that he 'has white hairs in his beard, before the black ones are there.' And 'ants,' and 'snails,' and 'oysters,' are wiser than men in their arts, and practices, and pursuits of ends. It was the age in which it was perceived that 'to say ay and no to everything' that a madman says, 'is no good divinity,' and that it is 'the time's plague when Madmen lead the Blind;' and that, instead of good men sitting still, like 'moral fools,' and crying out on wrong and mischief, 'Alack, why does it so?' it would be wiser, and more pious, too, to make use of the faculty of learning, with which the Creator has armed Man, 'against diseases of the world,' to ascend to the cause, and punish that—punish that, 'ere it has done its mischief.' It was the age in which it was discovered that 'the sequent effect, with which nature finds itself scourged,' is not in the least touched by any kind of reasoning 'thus and thus,' except that kind which proceeds first by negatives, that kind which proceeds by a method so severe that it contrives to exclude everything but the 'the cause in nature' from its affirmation, which 'in practical philosophy becomes the rule'—that is, the critical method,—which is for men, as distinguished from the spontaneous affirmation, which is for gods.

It is the beginning of these yet beginning Modern Ages, the ages of a practical learning, and scientific relief to the human estate, which this Pastime marks with its blazoned, illuminated initial. It is the opening of the era in which a common human sense is developed, and directed to the common-weal, which this Pastime celebrates; the opening of the ages in which, ere all is done, the politicians who expect mankind to entrust to them their destinies, will have to find something better than 'glass eyes' to guide them with; in which it will be no longer competent for those to whom mankind entrusts its dearest interests to go on in their old stupid, conceited, heady courses, their old, blind, ignorant courses,—stumbling, and staggering, and groping about, and smelling their way with their own narrow and selfish instincts, when it is the common-weal they have taken on their shoulders;—running foul of the nature of things—quarrelling with eternal necessities, and crying out, when the wreck is made, 'Alack! why does it so?'

This Play, and all these plays, were meant to be pastime for ages in which state reasons must needs be something else than 'the pleasure' of certain individuals, 'whose disposition, all the world well knows, will not be rubbed or stopped;' or 'the quality,' 'fiery' or otherwise, of this or that person, no matter 'how unremoveable and fixed' he may be 'in his own course.'

It was to the 'far off times;' and not to the 'near,' it was to the advanced ages of the Advancement of Learning, that this Play was dedicated by its Author. For it was the spirit of the modern ages that inspired it. It was the new Prometheus who planned it; the more aspiring Titan, who would bring down in his New Organum a new and more radiant gift; it was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance the rude kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial summits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevitable advancements of that new era of scientific 'prudence' and forethought which it was given to him to initiate, when all this sober historic exhibition, with its fearful historic earnest, would read, indeed, like some old fable of the rude barbaric past—some Player's play, bent on a feast of horrors—some Poet's impossibility. And that—was the Play,—that was the Plot. He knew that there would come a time when all this tragic mirth—sporting with the edged tools of tyranny—playing around the edge of the great axe itself—would be indeed safe play; when his Fool could open his budget, and unroll his bitter jests—crushed together and infolded within themselves so long—and have a world to smile with him, and not the few who could unfold them only. And that—that was 'the humour of it.'

Yes, with all their philosophy, these plays are Plays and Poems still. There's no spoiling the 'tragical mirth' in them. But we are told, on the most excellent contemporaneous authority—on the authority of one who was in the inmost heart of all this Poet's secrets—that 'as we often judge of the greater by the less, so the very pastimes of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of THE SOURCE FROM WHICH THEY SPRING.'

JULIUS CAESAR;

OR,

THE EMPIRICAL TREATMENT IN DISEASES OF THE COMMON-WEAL EXPLAINED.

Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it happened with Caesar's killers, who brought the republic to such a pass that they had reason to repent their meddling with it…. It must be examined in what condition THE ASSAILANT is.—Michael de Montaigne.

Citizen. I fear there will a worse one come in his place. Cassius. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

CHAPTER I.

THE DEATH OF TYRANNY; OR, THE QUESTION OF THE PREROGATIVE.

  Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?
  Cassius. Let it be WHO IT is, for Romans now
     Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.

     We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar.
                                       Julius Caesar.

Yes, when that Royal Injunction, which rested alike upon the Play-house, the Press, the Pulpit, and Parliament itself, was still throttling everywhere the free voice of the nation—when a single individual could still assume to himself, or to herself, the exclusive privilege of deliberating on all those questions which men are most concerned in—questions which involve all their welfare, for this life and the life to come, certainly 'the Play, the Play was the thing.' It was a vehicle of expression which offered incalculable facilities for evading these restrictions. It was the only one then invented which offered then any facilities whatever for the discussion of that question in particular—which was already for that age the question. And to the genius of that age, with its new historical, experimental, practical, determination—with its transcendant poetic power, nothing could be easier than to get possession of this instrument, and to exhaust its capabilities.

For instance, if a Roman Play were to be brought out at all,—and with that mania for classical subjects which then prevailed, what could be more natural?—how could one object to that which, by the supposition, was involved in it? And what but the most boundless freedoms and audacities, on this very question, could one look for here? What, by the supposition, could it be but one mine of poetic treason? If Brutus and Cassius were to be allowed to come upon the stage, and discuss their views of government, deliberately and confidentially, in the presence of an English audience, certainly no one could ask to hear from their lips the political doctrine then predominant in England. It would have been a flat anachronism, to request them to keep an eye upon the Tower in their remarks, inasmuch as all the world knew that the corner-stone of that ancient and venerable institution had only then just been laid by the same distinguished individual whom these patriots were about to call to an account for his military usurpation of a constitutional government at home.

And yet, one less versed than the author in the mystery of theatrical effects, and their combinations—one who did not know fully what kind of criticism a mere Play, composed by a professional play-wright, in the way of his profession, for the entertainment of the spectators, and for the sake of the pecuniary result, was likely to meet with;—or one who did not know what kind of criticism a work, addressed so strongly to the imagination and the feelings in any form, is likely to meet with, might have fancied beforehand that the author was venturing upon a somewhat delicate experiment, in producing a play like this upon the English stage at such a crisis. One would have said beforehand, that 'there were things in this comedy of Julius Caesar that would never please.' It is difficult, indeed, to understand how such a Play as this could ever have been produced in the presence of either of those two monarchs who occupied the English throne at that crisis in its history, already secretly conscious that its foundations were moving, and ferociously on guard over their prerogative.

And, indeed, unless a little of that same sagacity, which was employed so successfully in reducing the play of Pyramus and Thisbe to the tragical capacities of Duke Theseus' court, had been put in requisition here, instead of that dead historical silence, which the world complains of so much, we might have been treated to some very lively historical details in this case, corresponding to other details which the literary history of the time exhibits, in the case of authors who came out in an evil hour in their own names, with precisely the same doctrines, which are taught here word for word, with impunity; and the question as to whether this Literary Shadow, this Name, this Veiled Prophet in the World of Letters, ever had any flesh and blood belonging to him anywhere, (and from the tenor of his works, one might almost fancy sometimes that that might have been the case), this question would have come down to us experimentally and historically settled. For most unmistakeably, the claws of the young British lion are here, under these old Roman togas; and it became the 'masters' to consider with themselves, for there is, indeed, 'no more fearful wild fowl living' than your lion in such circumstances; and if he should happen to forget his part in any case, and 'roar too loud,' it would to a dead certainty 'hang them all.'

But it was only the faint-hearted tailor who proposed to 'leave out the killing part.' Pyramus sets aside this cowardly proposition. He has named the obstacles to be encountered only for the sake of magnifying the fertility of his invention in overcoming them. He has a device to make all even. 'Write me a prologue,' he says, 'and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords; and for the more assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom, the Weaver; that will put them out of fear.' And as to the lion, there must not only be 'another prologue, to tell that he is not a lion,' but 'you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect, Ladies, or fair ladies, my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life.'

To such devices, in good earnest, were those compelled to resort who ventured upon the ticklish experiment of presenting heroic entertainments for king's palaces, where 'hanging was the word' in case of a fright; but, with a genius like this behind the scenes, so fertile in invention, so various in gifts, who could aggravate his voice so effectually, giving you one moment the pitch of 'the sucking dove,' or 'roaring you like any nightingale,' and the next, 'the Hercle's vein,'—with a genius who knew how to play, not 'the tyrant's part only,' but 'the lover's, which is more condoling,' and whose suggestion that the audience should look to their eyes in that case, was by no means a superfluous one; with a genius who had all passions at his command, who could drown, at his pleasure, the sharp critic's eye, or blind it with showers of pity, or 'make it water with the merriest tears, that the passion of loud laughter ever shed,' with such resources, prince's edicts could be laughed to scorn. It was vain to forbid such an one, to meddle with anything that was, or had been, or could be.

But does any one say—'To what purpose,' if the end were concealed so effectually? And does any one suppose, because no faintest suspicion of the true purpose of this play, and of all these plays, has from that hour to this, apparently ever crossed the English mind, at home or abroad, though no suspicion of the existence of any purpose in them beyond that of putting the author in easy circumstances, appears as yet to have occurred to any one,—does any one suppose that this play, and all these plays, have on that account, failed of their purpose; and that they have not been all this time, steadily accomplishing it? Who will undertake to estimate, for instance, the philosophical, educational influence of this single Play, on every boy who has spouted extracts from it, from the author's time to ours, from the palaces of England, to the log school-house in the back-woods of America?

But suppose now, instead of being the aimless, spontaneous, miraculous product of a stupid, 'rude mechanical' bent on producing something which should please the eye, and flatter the prejudices of royalty, and perfectly ignorant of the nature of that which he had produced;—suppose that instead of appearing as the work of Starveling, and Snout, and Nick Bottom, the Weaver, or any person of that grade and calibre, that this play had appeared at the time, as the work of an English scholar, as most assuredly it was, profoundly versed in the history of states in general, as well as in the history of the English state in particular, profoundly versed in the history of nature in general, as well as in the history of human nature in particular. Suppose, for instance, it had appeared as the work of an English statesman, already suspected of liberal opinions, but stedfastly bent for some reason or other, on advancement at court, with his eye still intently fixed, however secretly, on those insidious changes that were then in progress in the state, who knew perfectly well what crisis that ship of state was steering for; query, whether some of the passages here quoted would have tended to that 'advancement' he 'lacked.' Suppose that instead of Julius Caesar, 'looking through the lion's neck,' and gracefully rejecting the offered prostrations, it had been the English courtier, condemned to these degrading personal submissions, who 'roared you out,' on his own account, after this fashion. Imagine a good sturdy English audience returning the sentiment, thundering their applause at this and other passages here quoted, in the presence of a Tudor or a Stuart.

One might safely conclude, even if the date had not been otherwise settled, that anything so offensive as this never was produced in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. King James might be flattered into swallowing even such treasonable stuff as this; but in her time, the poor lion was compelled to aggravate his voice after another fashion. Nothing much above the sucking-dove pitch, could be ventured on when her quick ears were present. He 'roared you' indeed, all through her part of the Elizabethan time; but it was like any nightingale. The clash and clang of these Roman Plays were for the less sensitive and more learned Stuart.

  Metellus Cimber. Most high, most mighty,
  And most puissant Caesar;
  Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat
  An humble heart:—[Kneeling.]

  Caesar. I must prevent thee, Cimber.
  These couchings and these lowly courtesies:
  Might fire the blood of ordinary men;
  AND TURN PRE-ORDINANCE, and FIRST DECREE,
  INTO THE LAW OF CHILDREN.
  Be not fond
  To think that CAESAR bears such REBEL blood,
  That will be thawed from the true quality,
  With that which melteth FOOLS. (?) I mean, sweet words,
  Low, crooked curtsies, and base spaniel fawning.
  Thy brother by decree is banished;
  If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
  I spurn thee like a cur, out of my way.
  Know CAESAR DOTH NOT WRONG.

To appreciate this, one must recall not merely the humiliating personal prostrations which the ceremonial of the English Court required then, but that base prostration of truth and duty and honour, under the feet of vanity and will and passion, which they symbolized.

Thus far Caesar, but the subject's views on this point, as here set forth, are scarcely less explicit, but then it is a Roman subject who speaks, and the Roman costume and features, look savingly through the lion's neck.

One of the radical technicalities of that new philosophy of the human nature which permeates all this historical exhibition, comes in here, however; and it is one which must be mastered before any of these plays can be really read. The radical point in the new philosophy, as it applies to the human nature in particular, is the pivot on which all turns here,—here as elsewhere in the writings of this school,—the distinction of 'the double self,' the distinction between the particular and private nature, with its unenlightened instincts of passion, humour, will, caprice,—that self which is changeful, at war with itself, self-inconsistent, and, therefore, truly, no SELF,—since the true self is the principle of identity and immutability,—the distinction between that 'private' nature when it is developed instinctively as 'selfishness,' and that rational immutable self which is constitutionally present though latent, in all men, and one in them all; that noble special human form which embraces and reconciles in its intention, the private good with the good of that worthier whole whereof we are individually parts and members; 'this is the distinction on which all turns here.' For this philosophy refuses, on philosophical grounds, to accept this low, instinctive private nature, in any dressing up of accidental power as the god of its idolatry, in place of that 'divine or angelical nature, which is the perfection of the human form,' and the true sovereignty. Obedience to that nature,—'the approach to, or assumption of,' that makes, in this philosophy, the end of the human endeavour, 'and the error and false imitation of that good, is that which is the tempest of the human life.'

But let us hear the passionate Cassius, who is full of individualities himself, and ready to tyrannize with them, but somehow, as it would seem, not fond of submitting to the 'single self' in others.

  'Well, honour is the subject of my story.—
  I can not tell what you, and other men,
  Think of this life; but for my single self,
  I had as lief not BE, as live to be
  In awe of such a thing as I myself.
  I was born free as Caesar; so were you.
  We both have fed as well: and we can both
  Endure the winter's cold as well as he.'—

And the proof of this personal equality is then given; and it is precisely the one which Lear produces, 'When the wind made me chatter, there I found them,—there I smelt them out.'—

  'For once upon a raw and gusty day,
  The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, etc.
       * * * * *
  —Caesar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink.
  —And this man
  Is now become a god, and Cassius is
  A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
  If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
  He had a fever when he was in Spain,
  And when the fit was on him—I did mark
  How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake.'

[This was a pretty fellow to have about a king's privacy taking notes of this sort on his tablets. Among 'those saw and forms and pressures past, which youth and observatior copied there,' all that part reserved for Caesar and his history, appears to have escaped the sponge in some way.

  'They told me I was every thing, 'tis a lie! I am not ague
  proof.'—Lear.

  His coward lips did from their colour fly.
  'And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world,
  Did lose his lustre!—Julius Caesar.

'—When I do stare see how the subject quakes.—'Lear.]

                        I did hear him groan:
  Aye, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans
  Mark him, and write his speeches in their books.
  Alas! it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'
  As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
  A man of such a feeble temper should
  So get the start of the majestic world,
  And bear the palm alone.

  Brutus. Another general shout!
  I do believe that these applauses are
  For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.

  Cassius. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world,
  Like a Colossus: and we petty men
  Walk under his huge legs; and peep about
  To find ourselves DISHONOURABLE GRAVES.
  Men, at some time, are masters of their fates,
  The fault, dear Brutus, IS NOT in our STARS,
  But in ourselves that we are underlings.
  Brutus and Caesar: What should be in that Caesar?
       * * * * *
  Now in the names of all the gods at once,
  Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
  That he is grown so great? AGE, thou art shamed:
  Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
  When went there by an age, since the great flood,
  But it was famed with more than with One man?
  When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
  That her wide walls encompass'd but One man?
  Now is it Home indeed, and room enough,
  When there is in it but one only man.
  [When there is in it (truly) but One only,—MAN].
  O! you and I have heard our fathers say,
  There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd
  The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome,
  As easily as a king.

  Brutus. What you have said,
  I will consider;—what you have to say
  I will with patience hear: and find a time
  Both meet to hear, and answer such high things.
  Till then, my noble friend, CHEW UPON THIS;—
  Brutus had rather be a villager,
  Than to repute himself a SON of ROME.
  Under these hard conditions, as this time
  Is like to lay upon us. [Chew upon this].

  Cassius. I am glad that my weak words
  Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.
      [Re-enter Caesar and his train.]

Brutus. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.

Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve; And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you What hath proceeded worthy note to-day.

Brutus. I will do so:—But look you, Cassius, The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow. And all the rest look like a chidden train: Calphurnia's cheek is pale; and Cicero Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes, As we have seen him in the Capitol, Being crossed in conference by some senators.

Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is.

Caesar. Antonius.

Antony. Caesar.

Caesar. Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

  Antony. Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous:
  He is a noble Roman, and well given.

  Caesar. Would he were fatter:—But I fear him not;
  Yet if my name were liable to fear,
  I do not know the man I should avoid
  So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much:
  He is a great observer, and he looks
  Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
  As thou dost Antony; he hears no music:
  Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort,
  As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit
  That could be moved to smile at any thing.
  Such men as he are never at heart's ease,
  Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
  And therefore are they very dangerous,
  I rather tell thee what is to be feared,
  Than what I fear, FOR ALWAYS I AM CAESAR.
  Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
  And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

[Exeunt Caesar and his train. Casca stays behind.]

Casca. You pulled me by the cloak: would you speak with me?

Brutus. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced to-day, That Caesar looks so sad.

Casca. Why you were with him. Were you not?

Brutus. I should not then ask Casca what hath chanced.

Casca. Why there was a crown offered him: and, being offered, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a shouting.

Brutus. What was the second noise for?

Casca. Why for that too.

Brutus. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?

Casca. Why for that too.

Brutus. Was the crown offered him thrice?

Casca. Ay marry was't. And he put it by thrice, every time gentler than the other; and at every putting by, mine honest neighbours shouted.

Cassius. Who offered him the crown?

Casca. Why, Antony.

Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet 't was not a crown;—neither 't was one of these coronets;—and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very both to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by; and still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swooned and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

Cassius. But soft, I pray you: WHAT? DID CAESAR SWOON?

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

Brutus. 'Tis very like; he hath the falling sickness.

Cassius. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I, And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

Casca. I know not what you mean by that: but I am sure, Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the Players in the theatre, I am no true man.

Brutus. What said he, when he came unto himself.

Casca. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad when he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet, and offered them his throat to cut.—An I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word; I would I might go to hell among the rogues: and so he fell. When he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!'—and forgave him with all their hearts: But there's no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.

Brutus. And after that, he came thus sad away?

Casca. Ay.

Cassius. Did Cicero say anything?

Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.

Cassius. To what effect?

Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face again. But those that understood him, smiled at one another, and shook their heads: but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news, too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Caesar's images, are put to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.

Brutus says of Casca, when he is gone, 'He was quick mettle when he went to school'; and Cassius replies, 'So he is now—however he puts on this tardy form. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words with better appetite.' 'And so it is,' Brutus returns;—and so it is, indeed, as any one may perceive, who will take the pains to bestow upon these passages the attention which the author's own criticism bespeaks for them.

To the ear of such an one, the roar of the blank verse of Cassius is still here, subdued, indeed, but continued, through all the humour of this comic prose.

But it is Brutus who must lend to the Poet the sanction of his name and popularity, when he would strike home at last to the heart of his subject. Brutus, however, is not yet fully won: and, in order to secure him, Cassius will this night throw in at his window, 'in several hands—as if they came from several citizens—writings, in which, OBSCURELY, CAESAR'S AMBITION SHALL BE GLANCED AT.' And, 'After this,' he says,—

                     'Let Caesar seat him sure,
   For we will shake him, or worse days endure.'

But in the interval, that night of wild tragic splendour must come, with its thunder-bolts and showers of fire, and unnatural horror. For these elements have a true part to perform here, as in Lear and other plays; they come in, not merely as subsidiary to the 'artistic effect'—not merely because their wild Titanic play forms an imposing harmonious accompaniment to the play of the human passions and their 'wildness'—but as a grand scientific exhibition of the element which the Poet is pursuing under all its Protean forms—as a most palpable and effective exhibition to the sense of that identical thing against which he has raised his eternal standard of revolt, refusing to own, under any name, its mastery.

But one can hear, in that wild lurid night, in the streets of Rome, amid the cross blue lightnings, what could not have been whispered in the streets of England then, or spoken in the ear in closets.

  Cicero. [Encountering Casca in the street, with his sword drawn.]
  Good-even, Casca; brought you Caesar home?
  Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

  Casca. Are you not moved, when all the sway of earth
  Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
  I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
  Have rived the knotty oaks; and I have seen
  The ambitious ocean swell, and rage and foam,
  To be exalted with the threatening clouds;
  But never till to-night, never till now,
  Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
  Either there is a civil strife in heaven;
  Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
  Incenses them to send destruction.

But the night has had other spectacles, it seems, which, to his eye, appeared to have some relation to the coming struggle; in answer to Cicero's 'Why, saw you anything more wonderful?' Thus he describes them.

'A common slave,—you know him, well by sight, Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches join'd. Against the Capitol I met a lion, Who glared upon me, and went surly by.'

[And he had seen, 'drawn on a head,']

  'A hundred ghastly women,
  Transformed with their fears; who swore they saw
  Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
  And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
  Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
  Hooting, and shrieking.'

An ominous circumstance,—that last. A portent sure as fate. When such things begin to appear, 'men need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes.'

Cicero concedes that 'it is indeed a strange disposed time?' and inserts the statement that 'men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.' But this is too disturbed a sky for him to walk in, so exit Cicero, and enter one of another kind of mettle, who thinks 'the night a very pleasant one to honest men;' who boasts that he has been walking about the streets 'unbraced, baring his bosom to the thunder stone,' and playing with 'the cross blue lightning;' and when Casca reproves him for this temerity, he replies,

  'You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
  That should be in a Roman, you do want,
  Or else you use not.'

For as to these extraordinary phenomena in nature, he says, 'If you would consider the true cause

  Why all these things change, from their ordinance,
  Their natures and fore-formed faculties,
  To monstrous quality; why, you shall find,
  That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
  To make them instruments of fear, and warning,
  Unto some MONSTROUS STATE.
  Now could I, Casca,
  Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
  As doth the lion in the Capitol:
  A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
  In personal action; yet prodigious grown,
  And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?

  Cassius. LET IT BE WHO IT is: for Romans now
  Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors;
  But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
  And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;
  Our yoke and sufferance shows us womanish.

  Casca. Indeed, they say, the senators to-morrow
  Mean to establish Caesar as a king.
  And he shall wear his crown by sea, and land,
  In every place, save here in Italy.

  Cassius. I know where I will wear this dagger then;
  Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:
  Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
  Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
  Nor STONY TOWER, nor walls of beaten brass,
  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
  Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.
  If I know this, know all the world besides,
  That part of tyranny, that I do bear,
  I can shake off at pleasure.

  Casca. So can I;
  So every bondman in his own hand bears
  The power to cancel his captivity.

  Cassius. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
  Poor man! I know, he would not be a wolf,
  But that he sees the Romans are but sheep
  He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
  Those that with haste will make a mighty fire,
  Begin it with weak straws: What trash is Rome,
  What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
  for the base matter to illuminate
  So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief!
  Where hast thou led me? I perhaps, speak this
  BEFORE A WILLING BONDMAN: But I am arm'd
  And dangers are to me indifferent.

Casca. You speak to Casca; and to such a man, That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold my hand: Be factious for redress of all these griefs: And I will set this foot of mine as far, As who goes farthest.

Cassius. There's a bargain made.

This is sufficiently explicit, an unprejudiced listener would be inclined to say—indeed, it is difficult to conceive how any more positively instructive exhibition of the subject, could well have been made. Certainly no one can deny that this fact of the personal helplessness, the physical weakness of those in whom this arbitrary power over the liberties and lives of others is vested, seems for some reason or other to have taken strong possession of the Poet's imagination. For how else, otherwise should he reproduce it so often, so elaborately under such a variety of forms?—with such a stedfastness and pertinacity of purpose?

The fact that the power which makes these personalities so 'prodigious,' so 'monstrous,' overshadowing the world, 'shaming the Age' with their 'colossal' individualities, no matter what new light, what new gifts of healing for its ills, that age has been endowed with, levelling all to their will, contracting all to the limit of their stinted nature, making of all its glories but 'rubbish, offal to illuminate their vileness,'—the fact that the power which enables creatures like these, to convulse nations with their whims, and deluge them with blood, at their pleasure,—which puts the lives and liberties of the noblest, always most obnoxious to them, under their heel—the fact that this power resides after all, not in these persons themselves,—that they are utterly helpless, pitiful, contemptible, in themselves; but that it exists in the 'thewes and limbs' of those who are content to be absorbed in their personality, who are content to make muscles for them, in those who are content to he mere machines for the 'only one man's' will and passion to operate with,—the fact that this so fearful power lies all in the consent of those who suffer from it, is the fact which this Poet wishes to be permitted to communicate, and which he will communicate in one form or another, to those whom it concerns to know it.

It is a fact, which he is not content merely to state, however, in so many words, and so have done with it. He will impress it on the imagination with all kinds of vivid representation. He will exhaust the splendours of his Art in uttering it. He will leave a statement on this subject, profoundly philosophical, but one that all the world will be able to comprehend eventually, one that the world will never be able to unlearn.

The single individual helplessness of the man whom the multitude, in this case, were ready to arm with unlimited power over their own welfare—that physical weakness, already so strenuously insisted on by Cassius, at last attains its climax in the representation, when, in the midst of his haughtiest display of will and personal authority, stricken by the hands of the men he scorned, by the hand of one 'he had just spurned like a cur out of his path,' he falls at the foot of Pompey's statue—or, rather, 'when at the base of Pompey's statue he lies along'—amid all the noise, and tumult, and rushing action of the scene that follows—through all its protracted arrangements, its speeches, and ceremonials—not unmarked, indeed,—the centre of all eyes,—but, mute, motionless, a thing of pity, 'A PIECE OF BLEEDING EARTH.'

That helpless cry in the Tiber, 'Save me, Cassius, or I sink!'—that feeble cry from the sick man's bed in Spain, 'Give me some drink, Titinius!'—and all that pitiful display of weakness, moral and physical, at the would-be coronation, which Casca's report conveys so unsparingly—the falling down in the street speechless, which Cassius emphasises with his scornful 'What? did CAESAR SWOON?'—all this makes but a part of the exhibition, which the lamentations of Mark Antony complete:—

  'O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?
  Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
  Shrunk to this little measure?'

This? and 'the eye' of the spectator, more learned than 'his ear,' follows the speaker's eye, and measures it.

                            'Fare thee well.
  But yesterday the word of Caesar might
  Have stood against the world: now lies he there.
  And none so poor, to do him reverence.'

The Poet's tone breaks through Mark Antony's; the Poet's finger points, 'now lies he there'—there!

That form which 'lies there,' with its mute eloquence speaking this Poet's word, is what he calls 'a Transient Hieroglyphic,' which makes, he says, 'a deeper impression on minds of a certain order, than the language of arbitrary signs;' and his 'delivery' on the most important questions will be found, upon examination, to derive its principal emphasis from a running text in this hand. 'For, in such business,' he says, 'action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'

Or, as he puts it in another place: 'What is sensible always strikes the memory more strongly, and sooner impresses itself, than what is intellectual. Thus the memory of brutes is excited by sensible, but not by intellectual things. And therefore it is easier to retain the image of a sportsman hunting, than of the corresponding notion of invention—of an apothecary ranging his boxes, than of the corresponding notion of disposition—of an orator making a speech, than of the term Eloquence—or a boy repeating verses, than the term Memory—or of A PLAYER acting his part, than the corresponding notion of—ACTION.'

So, also, 'Tom o' Bedlam' was a better word for 'houseless misery,' than all the king's prayer, good as it was, about 'houseless heads, and unfed sides,' in general, and 'looped, and windowed raggedness.'

'We construct,' says this author, in another place—rejecting the ordinary history as not suitable for scientific purposes, because it is 'varied, and diffusive, and confounds and disturbs the understanding, unless it be fixed and exhibited in due order'—we construct 'tables and combinations of instances, upon such a plan and in such order, that the understanding be enabled to act upon them.'

CAESAR'S SPIRIT.

I'll meet thee at Phillippi.

In Julius Caesar, the most splendid and magnanimous representative of arbitrary power is selected—'the foremost man of all the world,'—even by the concession of those who condemn him to death; so that here it is the mere abstract question as to the expediency and propriety of permitting any one man to impose his individual will on the nation. Whatever personalities are involved in the question here—with Brutus, at least—tend to bias the decision in his favour. For so he tells us, as with agitated step he walks his orchard on that wild night which succeeds his conference with Cassius, revolving his part, and reading, by the light of the exhalations whizzing in the air, the papers that have been found thrown in at his study window.

  'It must be by his death: and, for my part,
  I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
  BUT FOR THE GENERAL. He would be crown'd:—
  How that might change his nature, there's the question.
  It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
  And that craves wary walking. Crown him? That;—
  And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
  That at his will he may do danger with.
  The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
  Remorse from power: And, to speak truth of Caesar,
  I have not known when his affections sway'd
  More than his reason. But 't is a common proof,
  That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
  Whereto the climber upward turns his face:
  But when he once attains the utmost round,
  He then unto the ladder turns his back,
  Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
  By which he did ascend: So Caesar may;
  Then, lest he may, PREVENT. And, since the quarrel,
  Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
  Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
  Would run to these, and these extremities:
  And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
  Which, hatch'd, would, AS HIS KIND, grow mischievous;
  AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'

Pretty sentiments these, to set before a king already engaged in so critical a contest with his subjects; pleasant entertainment, one would say, for the representative of a monarchy that had contrived to wake the sleeping Brutus in its dominions,—that was preparing, even then, for its own death-struggle on this very question, which this Brutus searches to its core so untenderly.

'Have you heard the argument?' says the 'bloat king' in Hamlet. 'Is there no offence in it?'

Now, let the reader suppose, for one instant, that this work had been produced from the outset openly, for what any reader of common sense will perceive it to be, with all its fire, an elaborate, scholarly composition, the product of the profoundest philosophic invention, the fruit of the ripest scholarship of the age;—let him suppose, for argument's sake, that it had been produced for what it is, the work of a scholar, and a statesman, and a courtier,—a statesman already jealously watched, or already, perhaps, in deadly collision with this very power he is defining here so largely, and tracking to its ultimate scientific comprehensions;—and then let the reader imagine, if he can, Elizabeth or James, but especially Elizabeth, listening entranced to such passages as the one last quoted, with an audience disposed to make points of some of the 'choice Italian' lines in it.

Does not all the world know that scholars, men of reverence, men of world-wide renown, men of every accomplishment, were tortured, and mutilated, and hung, and beheaded, in both these two reigns, for writings wherein Caesar's ambition was infinitely more obscurely hinted at—writings unspeakably less offensive to majesty than this?

But, then, a Play was a Play, and old Romans would be Romans; there was, notoriously, no royal way of managing them; and if kings would have tragical mirth out of them, they must take their treason in good part, and make themselves as merry with it as they could. The poor Poet was, of course, no more responsible for these men than Chaucer was for his pilgrims. He but reported them.

And besides, in that broad, many-sided view of the subject which the author's evolution of it from the root involves,—in that pursuit of tyranny in essence through all its disguises,—other exhibitions of it were involved, which might seem, to the careless eye, purposely designed to counteract the effect of the views above quoted.

The fact that mere arbitrary will, that the individual humour and bias, is incapable of furnishing a rule of action anywhere,—the fact that mere will, or blind passion, whether in the One, or the Few, or the Many, should have no part, above all, in the business of the STATE,—should lend no colour or bias to its administration,—the fact that 'the general good,' 'the common weal,' which is justice, and reason, and humanity,—the 'ONE ONLY MAN,'—should, in some way, under some form or other, get to the head of that and rule, this is all which the Poet will contend for.

But, alas, HOW? The unspeakable difficulties in the way of the solution of this problem,—the difficulties which the radical bias in the individual human nature, even under its noblest forms, creates,—the difficulties which the ignorance, and stupidity, and passion of the multitude created then, and still create, appear here without any mitigation. They are studiously brought out in their boldest colours. There's no attempt to shade them down. They make, indeed, the TRAGEDY.

And it is this general impartial treatment of his subjects which makes this author's writings, with all their boldness, generally, so safe; for it seems to leave him without any bias for any person or any party—without any opinion on any topic; for his truth embraces and resolves all partial views, and is as broad as nature's own.

And how could he better neutralise the effect of these patriotic speeches, and prove his loyalty in the face of them, than to show as he does, most vigorously and effectively, that these patriots themselves, so rebellious to tyranny, so opposed to the one-man power in others, so determined to die, rather than submit to the imposition of the humours of any man, instead of law and justice,—were themselves but men, and were as full of will and humours, and as ready to tyrannise with them, too, upon occasion, as Caesar himself; and were no more fit to be trusted with absolute power than he was, nor, in fact, half so fit.

Caesar does, indeed, send word to the senate—'The cause is in MY WILL, I will not come; (That is enough,' he says, 'to satisfy the senate.') And while the conspirators are exchanging glances, and the daggers are stealing from their sheaths, he offers the strength of his decree, the immutability 'of his absolute shall,' to the suppliant for his brother's pardon.

But then Portia gives us to understand, that she, too, has her private troubles;—that even that excellent man, Brutus, is not without his moods in his domestic administrations,—for on one occasion, when he treats her to 'ungentle looks,' and 'stamps his foot,' and angrily gesticulates her out of his presence, she makes good her retreat, thinking 'it was but the effect of humour, which,' she says, 'sometime hath his hour with every man'; and, good and patriotic as Brutus truly is, Cassius perceives, upon experiment, that after all he too is but a man, and, with a particular and private nature, as well as a larger one 'which is the worthier,' and not unassailable through that 'single I myself': he, too, may be 'thawed from the true quality with that which melteth fools,'—with words that flatter 'his particular.' In his conference with him, Cassius addresses himself skilfully to this weakness;—he poises the name of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at the last, he clinches his patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his personal sentiment, of baffled, mortified emulation; for those writings, thrown in at his window, purporting to come from several citizens, 'all tended to the great opinion that Rome held of his name;' and, alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not unconsciously wake, in that pure mind, the feather's-weight that was perhaps needed to turn the scale.

And the very children know, by heart, what a time there was between these two men afterwards, these men that had 'struck the foremost man of all the world,' and had congratulated themselves that it was not murder, and that they were not villains, because it was for justice. Precious disclosures we have in this scene. It is this very Cassius, this patriot, who had as lief not BE as submit to injustice; who brings his avaricious humour, 'his itching palm,' into the state, and 'sells and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers.' Brutus does indeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of patriotic indignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy of honest disgust at wrong in the abstract, in spite of the partiality of friendship; but, when Cassius charges him, afterwards, with exaggerating his friend's infirmities, he says, frankly, 'I did not, till you practised them on ME.' And we find, as the dialogue proceeds, that it is indeed a personal matter with him: Cassius has refused him gold to pay his legions with.

And see, now, what kind of taunt it is, that Brutus throws in this same patriot's face after it had been proclaimed, by his order, through the streets of Rome, that Tyranny 'is dead': after Cassius had shouted through his own lungs.

'Some to the common pulpits, and cry out LIBERTY, FREEDOM,
ENFRANCHISEMENT.' (Enfranchisement?)

It would have been strange, indeed, if in so general and philosophical a view of the question, that sacred, domestic institution, which, through all this sublime frenzy for equal rights, maintained itself so peacefully under the patriot's roof, had escaped without a touch.

Brutus says:—

  'Hear me, for I will speak.
  Must I give way and room to your rash choler?
  Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?'

'Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.'

This sounds, already, as if Tyranny were not quite dead.

'Cassius. O ye gods, ye gods, must I endure all this!

Brutus. All this? ay more: Fret till your proud heart break; Go, show YOUR SLAVES how choleric you are, And bid YOUR BONDMEN tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen Though it do split you.'

So it was a mistake, then, it seems; and, notwithstanding that shout of triumph, and that bloody flourishing of knives, Tyranny was not dead.

But one cannot help thinking that that shout must have sounded rather strangely in an English theatre just then, and that it was a somewhat delicate experiment to give Brutus his pulpit on the stage, to harangue the people from. But the author knew what he was doing. That cold, stilted harangue, that logical chopping on the side of freedom, was not going to set fire to any one's blood; and was not there Mark Antony that plain, blunt man, coming directly after Brutus,—'with his eyes as red as fire with weeping,' with 'the mantle,' of the military hero, the popular favourite, in his hand, with his glowing oratory, with his sweet words, and his skilful appeal to the passions of the people, under his plain, blunt professions,—to wipe out every trace of Brutus's reasons, and lead them whither he would; and would not the moral of it all be, that with such A PEOPLE,—with such a power as that, behind the state, there was no use in killing Caesars—that Tyranny could not die.

'I fear there will a worse one come in his place.'

But this is Rome in her decline, that the artist touches here so boldly. But what now, if old Rome herself,—plebeian Rome, in the deadliest onset of her struggle against tyranny, Rome lashed into fury and conscious strength, rising from under the hard heel of her oppressors; what if Rome, in the act of creating her Tribunes; or, if Rome, with her Tribunes at her head, wresting from her oppressors a constitutional establishment of popular rights,—what if this could be exhibited, by permission; what bounds as to the freedom of the discussion would it be possible to establish afterwards? There had been no National Latin Tragedy, Frederic Schlegel suggests,—because no Latin Dramatist could venture to do this very thing; but of course Caesar or Coriolanus on the Tiber was one thing, and Caesar or Coriolanus on the Thames was another; and an English author might be allowed, then, to say of the one, with impunity, what it would certainly have cost him his good right hand, or his ears, or his head, to say of the other,—what it did cost the Founder of this school in philosophy his head, to be suspected of saying of the other.

Nevertheless, the great question between an arbitrary and a constitutional government, the principle of a government which vests the whole power of the state in the uncontrolled will of a single individual member of it; the whole history and philosophy of a military government, from its origin in the heroic ages,—from the crowning of the military hero on the battle field in the moment of victory, to the final consummation of its conquest of the liberty of the subject, could be as clearly set forth under the one form as the other; not without some startling specialities in the filling up, too, with a tone in the details now and then, to say the least, not exclusively antique, for this was a mode of treating classical subjects in that age, too common to attract attention.

And thus, whole plays could be written out and out, on this very subject. Take, for instance, but these two, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar,—plays in which, by a skilful distribution of the argument and the action, with a skilful interchange of parts now and then,—the boldest passages being put alternately into the mouths of the Tribunes and Patricians,—that great question, which was so soon to become the outspoken question of the nation and the age, could already be discussed in all its vexed and complicated relations, in all its aspects and bearings, as deliberately as it could be to-day; exactly as it was, in fact, discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English pamphlets, in harangues from English pulpits, in English parliaments and on English battle-fields,—exactly as it was discussed when that 'lofty Roman scene' came 'to be acted over' here, with the cold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English judicature.

THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;

OR,

THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.

              'Well, march we on
  To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:
  Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,
  And with him, pour we in our country's purge
  Each drop of us.
                     Or so much as it needs
  To dew the sovereign Flower, and drown the weeds'—Macbeth.

'Have you heard the argument?'

CHAPTER I.

THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM.

  'Mildly is the word.'
                  'In a better hour,
  Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
  And throw their power in the dust.'

It is the Military Chieftain of ancient Rome who pronounces here the words in which the argument of the Elizabethan revolutionist is so tersely comprehended.

It is the representative of an heroic aristocracy, not one of ancient privilege merely, not one armed with parchments only, claiming descent from heroes; but the yet living leaders of the rabble people to military conquest, and the only leaders who are understood to be able to marshal from their ranks an effective force for military defence.

But this is not all. The scope of the poetic design requires here, under the sheath which this dramatic exhibition of an ancient aristocracy offers it, the impersonation of another and more sovereign difference in men; and this poet has ends to serve, to which a mere historical accuracy in the reproduction of this ancient struggle of state-factions, in an extinct European common-wealth, is of little consequence; though he is not wanting in that either, or indifferent to it, when occasion serves.

From the speeches inserted here and there, we find that this is at the same time an aristocracy of learning which is put upon the stage here, that it is an aristocracy of statesmanship and civil ability, that it is composed of the select men of the state, and not its elect only; that it is the true and natural head of the healthful body politic, and not 'the horn of the monster' only. This is the aristocracy which appears to be in session in the background of this piece at least, and we are not without some occasional glimpses of their proceedings, and this is the element of the poetic combination which comes out in the dialogue, whenever the necessary question of the play requires it.

For it is the collision between the civil interests and the interests which the unlearned heroic ages enthrone, that is coming off here. It is the collision between the government which uneducated masses of men create and confirm, and recreate in any age, and the government which the enlightened man 'in a better hour' demands, which the common sense and sentiment of man, as distinguished from the brute, demands, whether in the one, or the few, or the many.—This is the struggle which is getting into form and order here,—here first. These are the parties to it, and in the reign of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts, they must be content to fight it out on any stage which their time can afford to lease to them for that performance, without being over scrupulous as to the names of the actors, or the historical correctness of the costumes, and other particulars; not minding a little shuffling in the parts, now and then, if it suits their poet's convenience, who has no conscience at all on such points, and who is of the opinion that this is the very stage which an action of such gravity ought to be exhibited on, in the first place; and that a very careful and critical rehearsal of it here, ought to precede the performance elsewhere; though a contrary opinion was not then without its advocates.

It is as the mouth-piece of this intellectual faction in the state, while it is as yet an aristocracy, contending with the physical force of it, struggling for the mastery of it with its numerical majority; it is the Man in the state, the new MAN struggling with the chief which a popular ignorance has endowed with dominion over him; it is the HERO who contends for the majesty of reason and the kingdom of the mind, it is the new speaker, the new, and now at last, commanding speaker for that law, which was old when this myth was named, which was not of yesterday when Antigone quoted it, who speaks now from this Roman's lips, these words of doom,—the reflection on the 'times deceased,' the prophecy of 'things not yet come to life,' the word of new ages.

                     'In A REBELLION,
  When what's not MEET, but what must be, was law,
  THEN WERE THEY CHOSEN: in a better hour
  Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
  And throw their power in the dust.'

Not in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome, not where the Roman market-place, joined the Capitoline hill and began to ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither, and began to obstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades of the primeval hill of palaces, were the terms of this proposal found. And not from the old logician's chair, was the sweep of their comprehension made; not in any ancient school of rhetoric or logic were they cast and locked in that conjunction. It was another kind of weapon that the old Roman Jove had to take in hand, when amid the din of the Roman forum, he awoke at last from his bronze and marble, to his empirical struggle, his unlearned, experimental struggle with the wolf and her nursling, with his own baptized, red-robed, usurping Mars. It was not with any such subtlety as this, that the struggle of state forces which, under one name or another, sooner or later, in the European states is sure to come, had hitherto been conducted.

And not from the lips of the haughty patrician chief, rising from the dust of ages at the spell of genius, to encounter his old plebeian vanquishers, and fight his long-lost battles o'er again, at a showman's bidding, for a showman's greed—to be stung anew into patrician scorn—to repeat those rattling volleys of the old martial Latin wrath, 'in states unborn' and 'accents then unknown,' for an hour's idle entertainment, for 'a six-pen'orth or shilling's worth' of gaping amusement to a playhouse throng, not—NOT from any such source came that utterance.

It came from the council-table of a sovereignty that was plotting here in secret then the empire that the sun shall not set on; whose beginning only, we have seen. It came from the secret chamber of a new union and society of men,—a union based on a new and, for the first time, scientific acquaintance with the nature that is in men, with the sovereignty that is in all men. It was the Poet of this society who put those words together—the Poet who has heard all its pros and cons, who reports them all, and gives to them all their exact weight in the new balance of his decisions.

Among other things, it was understood in this association, that the power, which was at that time supreme in England, was in fact, though not in name, a popular power,—a power, at least, sustained only by the popular will, though men had not, indeed, as yet, begun to perceive that momentous circumstance,—a power which, being 'but the horn and noise o' the monster,' was able to oppose its 'absolute shall' to the embodied wisdom of the state,—not to its ancient immemorial government only, but to 'its chartered liberties in the body of the weal,' and 'to a graver bench than ever frowned in Greece'; and the Poet has put on his record of debates on those 'questions of gravity,' that were agitating then this secret Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient leadership,—the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this mass of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and incapacity for rule,—this combination of mere instinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times constitutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and passivity, and in its passionate admiration of heroism and love of leadership, the ready material of tyranny, shall be annihilated, and cease to have any leadership or voice in the state; and this demand is put by the Poet into the mouth of one who cannot see from his point of observation—with his ineffable contempt for the people—what the Poet sees from his, that the demand, as he puts it, is simply 'the impossible.' For this is a question in the mixed mathematics, and 'the greater part carries it.'

That instinctive, unintelligent force in the state—that blind volcanic force—which foolish states dare to keep pent up within them, is that which the philosopher's eye is intent on also; he, too, has marked this as the primary source of mischief,—he, too, is at war with it,—he, too, would annihilate it; but he has his own mode of warfare for it; he thinks it must be done with Apollo's own darts, if it be done when 'tis done, and not with the military chieftain's weapon.

This work is one in which the question of heroism and nobility is scientifically treated, and in the most rigid manner, 'by line and level,' and through that representative form in which the historical pretence of it is tried,—through that scientific negation, with its merely instinctive, vulgar, unlearned ambition—with its monstrous 'outstretching' on the one hand, and its dwarfish limitations on the other,—through all that finely drawn, historic picture of that which claims the human subjection, the clear scientific lines of the true ideal type are visible,—the outline of the true nobility and government is visible,—towering above that detected insufficiency, into the perfection of the human form,—into the heaven of the true divineness,—into the chair of the perpetual dictatorship,—into the consulship whose year revolves not, whose year is the state.

Neither is this true affirmation here in the form of a scientific abstraction merely. It is not here in the general merely. 'The Instance,' the particular impersonation of nobility and heroism, which this play exhibits, is, indeed, the false heroism and nobility. It is the hitherto uncriticised, and, therefore, uncorrected, popular affirmation on this subject which is embodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece,—in the steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, approving itself 'to the Workmaster' only,—in this incessant design,—in this veiled, mysterious authorship,—an historical approximation to the true type of magnanimity and heroism is always present. But there is more in it than this.

It is the old popular notion of heroism which fills the foreground; but the Elizabethan heroism is always lurking behind it, watching its moment, ready to seize it; and under that cover, it contrives to advance and pronounce many words, which, in its own name and form, it could not then have been so prosperously delivered of. Under the disguise of that historical impersonation—under the mask of that old Roman hero, other, quite other, heroic forms—historic forms—not less illustrious, not less memorable, from time to time steal in; and ere we know it, the suppressed Elizabethan men are on the stage, and the Theatre is, indeed, the Globe; and it is shaking and flashing with the iron heel and the thunder of their leadership; and the thrones of oppression are downfalling; and the ages that seemed 'far off,' the ages that were nigh, are there—are there as they are here.

The historical position of the men who could entertain the views which this Play embodies, in the age in which it was written—the whole position of the men in whom this idea of nobility and government was already struggling to become historical—flashes out from that obscure back-ground into the most vivid historical representation, when once the light—'the great light' which 'the times give to true interpretations'—has been brought to bear upon it. And it does so happen, that that is the light which we are particularly directed to hold up to this particular play, and, what is more, to this particular point in it. 'So our virtues,' says the old Volscian captain, Tullus Aufidius, lamenting the limitations of his historical position, and apologizing for the figure he makes in history—

  'So our virtues
  Lie in the interpretation of THE TIMES.'

['THE TIMES, in many cases, give great light to true interpretations,' says the other, speaking of books, and the method of reading them; but this one applies that suggestion particularly to lives.]

  'And power, unto itself most commendable,
  Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair
  To extol what it hath done.'

The spirit of the Elizabethan heroism is indeed here, and under the cover of this old Roman story; and under cover of those so marked differences in the positions which suffice to detain the unstudious eye, through the medium of that which is common under those differences, the history of the Elizabethan heroism is here also. The spirit of it is here, not in that subtler nature only—that yet, perhaps, subtler, calmer, stronger nature, in which 'blood and judgment were so well co-mingled'—so well, in such new degree and proportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in history—not in that one only, the one in whom this new historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier and more unbending historic attitude, at least, of his great 'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed contest with the state and its whole physical strength, in his contest with that personal power in whose single arm, in whose miserable finger-joints, the state and all its force then lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial cloak,—under the safe disguise of martial tyranny in 'the few,'—whenever the business of the play requires it, whenever 'his cue comes,' he is there. Under that old, rusty Roman helmet, his smothered speech, his 'speech of fire,' his passionate speech, 'forbid so long,' drops thick and fast, drops unquenched at last, and glows for ever. It is the headless Banquo—'the blood-boltered Banquo'—that stalks through that shadowy background all unharmed; his Fleance lives, and in him 'Nature's copy is eterne.'

His house of kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their hands, with two-fold balls and sceptres in their hands—are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he 'smiles,' he smiles upon his baffled foe, 'and points at them for HIS.'

The whole difficulty of this great Elizabethan position, and the moral of it, is most carefully and elaborately exhibited here. No plea at the bar was ever more finely and eloquently laboured. It was for the bar of 'foreign nations and future ages' that this defence was prepared: the speaker who speaks so 'pressly,' is the lawyer; and there is nothing left unsaid at last. But it is not exhibited in words merely. It is acted. It is brought out dramatically. It is presented to the eye as well as to the ear. The impossibility of any other mode of proceeding under those conditions is not demonstrated in this instance by a diagram, drawn on a piece of paper, and handed about among the jury; it is not an exact drawing of the street, and the house, and the corner where the difficulty occurred, with the number of yards and feet put down in ink or pencil marks; it is something much more lively and tangible than that which we have here, under pardon of this old Roman myth.

For the story, as to this element of it, is indeed not new. The story of the struggle of the few with the many, of the one with the many, of the one with 'the many-headed,' is indeed an old one. Back into the days of demi-gods and gods it takes us. It is the story of the celestial Titan, with his benefactions for men, and force and strength, with art to aid them—reluctant art—compelled to serve their ends, enringing his limbs, and driving hard the stakes. Here, indeed, in the Fable, in the proper hero of it, it is the struggle of the 'partliness' of pride and selfish ambition, lifting itself up in the place of God, and arraying itself against the common-weal, as well as the common-will; but the physical relation of the one to the many, the position of the individual who differs from his time on radical questions, the relative strength of the parties to this war, and the weapons and the mode of warfare inevitably prescribed to the minority under such conditions—all this is carefully brought out from the speciality of this instance, and presented in its most general form; and the application of the result to the position of the man who contends for the common-weal, against the selfish will, and passion, and narrowness, and short-sightedness of the multitude, is distinctly made.

Yes, the Elizabethan part is here; that all-unappreciated and odious part, which the great men of the Elizabethan time found forced upon them; that most odious part of all, which, the greatest of his time found forced upon him as the condition of his greatness. It is here already, negatively defined, in this passionate defiance, which rings out at last in the Roman street, when the hero's pride bursts through his resolve, when he breaks down at last in his studied part, and all considerations of policy, all regard to that which was dearer to him than 'his single mould,' is given to the winds in the tempest of his wrath, and he stands at bay, and confronts alone 'the beast with many heads.'

It is thus that he measures the man he contends with, the antagonist who is but 'the horn and noise of the monster':—

                    'Thou injurious TRIBUNE!
  Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
  In thy hands clenched as many millions, in
  Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
  Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free
  As I do pray the gods.'

But there was a heroism of a finer strain than that at work in England then, imitating the graces of the gods to better purpose; a heroism which must fight a harder field than that, which must fight its own great battles through alone, without acclamations, without spectators; which must come off victorious, and never count its 'cicatrices,' or claim 'the war's garland.'

If we would know the secret of those struggles, those hard conflicts that were going on here then, in whose results all the future ages of mankind were concerned, we must penetrate with this Poet the secret of the Roman patrician's house; we must listen, through that thin poetic barrier, to the great chief himself, the chief of the unborn age of a new civilization—the leader, and hero, and conqueror of the ages of Peace—as he enters and paces his own hall, with the angry fire in his eyes, and utters there the words for which there is no utterance without—as he listens there anew to the argument of that for which he lives, and seeks to reconcile himself anew to that baseness which his time demands of him.

We must seek, here, not the part of him only who endured long and much, but was, at last, provoked into a premature boldness, and involved in a fatal collision with the state, but that of him who endured to the end, who played his life-long part without self-betrayal. We must seek, here, not the part of the great martial chieftain only, but the part of that heroic chief and leader of men and ages, who discovered, in the sixteenth century, when the chivalry of the sword was still exalting its standard of honour as supreme, when the law of the sword was still the world's law, that brute instinct was not the true valour, that there was a better part of it than instinct, though he knows and confesses,—though he is the first to discover, that instinct is a great matter. We must seek, here, the words, the very words of that part which we shall find acted elsewhere,—the part of the chief who was determined, for his part, 'to live and fight another day,' who was not willing to spend _him_self in such conflicts as those in which he saw his most illustrious contemporaries perish at his side, on his right hand and on his left, in the reign of the Tudor, and in the reign of the Stuart. And he has not been at all sparing of his hints on this subject over his own name, for those who have leisure to take them.

'The moral of this fable is,' he says, commenting in a certain place, on the wisdom of the Ancients, 'that men should not be confident of themselves, and imagine that a discovery of their excellences will always render them acceptable. For this can only succeed according to the nature and manners of the person they court or solicit, who, if he be a man not of the same gifts and endowments, but altogether of a haughty and insolent behaviour—(here represented by the person of Juno)—they must entirely drop the character that carries the least show of worth or gracefulness; if they proceed upon any other footing it is downright folly. Nor is it sufficient to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really change themselves, and become abject and contemptible in their persons.' This was a time when abject and contemptible persons could do what others could not do. Large enterprises, new developments of art and science, the most radical social innovations, were undertaken and managed, and very successfully, too, in that age, by persons of that description, though not without frequent glances on their part, at that little, apparently somewhat contradictory circumstance, in their history.

But the fables in which the wisdom of the Moderns, and the secrets of their sages are lodged, are the fables we are unlocking here. Let us listen to these 'secrets of policy' for ourselves, and not take them on trust any longer.

A room in Coriolanus's house.

[Enter Coriolanus and Patricians.]

Cor. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still Be thus to them.

[Under certain conditions that is heroism, no doubt.]

First Patrician. You do the nobler.

[For the question is of NOBILITY.]

Cor. I muse my mother Does not approve me further. I talk of you. [To Volumnia.] Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me False to my nature? Rather say I play The man I am.

  Vol. O sir, sir, sir,
  I would have had you put your power well on
  Before you had worn it out.
                               Lesser had been
  The thwarting of your dispositions, if
  You had not show'd them how you were disposed,
  Ere they lacked power to cross you.

* * * * *

[Enter Menenius and Senators.]

  Men. Come, come, you have been too rough
  Something too rough;
  You must return, and mend it.

  1 Sen. There's no remedy,
  Unless, by not so doing, our good city
  Cleave in the midst and perish.

Vol. Pray be counselled: I have a heart as little apt as yours But yet a brain [hear] that leads my use of anger To better vantage.

Men. Well said, noble woman; Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that The VIOLENT PIT O' THE TIME, craves it as PHYSIC For the WHOLE STATE, I would put mine armour on, Which I can scarcely bear.

[It is the diseased common-weal whose case this Doctor is undertaking. That is our subject.]

Cor. What must I do?

Men. Return to the Tribunes.

Cor. Well, What then? what then?

Men. Repent what you have spoke.

Cor. For them? I can not do it to the gods: Must I then do't to them?

Vol. You are too absolute; Though therein you can never be too noble But when extremities speak. I have heard you say, HONOR and POLICY [hear] like unsevered friends I' the war do grow together: Grant that, and tell me. In peace, what each of them by the other loses That they combine not there?

Cor. Tush; tush!

Men. A good demand.

Vol. If it be honor, in your wars, to seem The same you are not, (which FOR YOUR BEST ENDS You adopt your policy), how is it less, or worse That it shall hold companionship in peace With honor, as in war; since that to both It stands in like request?

Cor. Why force you this? [Truly.]

Vol. Because that now, IT LIES ON YOU to speak To the people, not by your own instruction, Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you to, But with such words that are but rated in Your tongue though but bastards and syllables Of no allowance, to your bosom's truth. Now this no more dishonors you at all, Than to take in a town with gentle words, Which else would put you to your fortune, and THE HAZARD of MUCH BLOOD.—[Hear.] I would dissemble with my nature, where My fortune and my friends at stake required I should do so in honor. I am in this; Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles, And you will rather show our general lowts How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them. For the inheritance of their loves, and safe-guard Of what that want might ruin [hear] NOBLE lady!

Come go with us. Speak fair: you may salve so,

[It is the diseased common-weal we talk of still.]

You may salve so,

  Not what is dangerous present, but the loss
  Of what is past.

  [That was this Doctor's method, who was a Doctor of Laws
  as well as Medicine, and very skilful in medicines 'palliative'
  as well as 'alterative.']

  Vol. I pry'thee now, my son,
  Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand,
  And thus far having stretched it (here be with them),
  Thy knee bussing the stones, for in such business
  Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
  More learned than the ears—waving thy head,
  Which often thus, correcting thy stout heart,
  Now humble as the ripest mulberry
  That will not hold the handling: or say to them:
  Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,
  Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess
  Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,
  In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame
  Thyself forsooth hereafter theirs, so far
  As thou hast power and person.

  Pry'thee now
  Go and be ruled: although I know thou hadst rather
  Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
  Than flatter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.

[Enter Cominius.]

  Com. I have been i' the market-place, and, sir, 'tis fit
  You make STRONG PARTY, or defend yourself
  By CALMNESS, or by ABSENCE. ALL's in anger.

  Men. Only fair speech.
  I think 'twill serve, if he
  Can thereto frame his spirit.

  Vol. He must, and will.
  Pry'thee now say you will and go about it.

  Cor. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce? Must I
  With my base tongue, give to my noble heart
  A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do't:
  Yet were there but this single plot to lose,
  This mould of Marcius, they, to dust should grind it,
  And throw it against the wind;—to the market-place;
  You have put me now to such a part, which never
  I shall discharge to the life.

Com. Come, come, we'll prompt you.

Vol. I pry'thee now, sweet son, as thou hast said, My praises made thee first a soldier [—Volumnia—], so To have my praise for this, perform a part Than hast not done before.

  Cor. Well, I must do't.
  Away my disposition, and possess me
  Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turned,
  Which quired with my drum into a pipe!
  Small as an eunuch's or the virgin voice
  That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves
  Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up
  The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue
  Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees
  Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his
  That hath received an alms. I will not do't,
  Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
  And by my body's action teach my mind
  A most inherent baseness.

  Vol. At thy choice, then;
  To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor
  Than thou of them. Come all to ruin; let
  Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear
  Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death
  With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list.
  Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
  But owe thy pride thyself.

Cor. Pray be content. Mother I am going to the market place, Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come back beloved Of all the trades in Rome.—[That he will—] Look I am going. Commend me to my wife. I'll return Consul [—That he will—] Or never trust to what my tongue can do, I' the way of flattery further.

Vol. Do your will. [Exit.]

  Com. Away, the tribunes do attend you: arm yourself
  To answer mildly; for they are prepared
  With accusations as I hear more strong
  Than are upon you yet.

  Cor. The word is mildly: Pray you let us go,
  Let them accuse me by invention, I
  Will answer in mine honor.

Men. Ay, but mildly.

Cor. Well, mildly be it then, mildly.

[The Forum. Enter Coriolanus and his party.]

Tribune. Well, here he comes.

Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.

  Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece
  Will bear the knave by the volume.
  The honoured gods
  Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of justice
  Supplied with WORTHY MEN; plant LOVE among us.
  Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the shows of PEACE,
  And NOT our STREETS with WAR.

Sen. AMEN! AMEN!

Men. A NOBLE wish.

Thus far the Poet: but the mask through which he speaks is wanted for other purposes, for these occasional auto-biographical glimpses are but the side play of the great historical exhibition which is in progress here, and are introduced in entire subordination to its requisitions.

It is, indeed, an old story into which all this Elizabethan history is crowded. That mimic scene in which the great historic instances in the science of human nature and human life were brought out with such scientific accuracy, and with such matchless artistic power and splendour, was, in fact, what the Poet himself, who ought to know, tells us it is; with so much emphasis,—not merely the mirror of nature in general, but the daguerreotype of the then yet living age, the plate which was able to give to the very body of it, its form and pressure. That is what it was. And what is more, it was the only Mirror, the only Spectator, the only Times, in which the times could get reflected and deliberated on then, with any degree of freedom and vivacity. And yet there were minds here in England then, as acute, as reflective, as able to lead the popular mind as those that compose our leaders and reviews today. There was a mind here then, reflecting not 'ages past' only, but one that had taken its knowledge of the past from the present, that found 'in all men's lives,' a history figuring the nature of the times deceased; prophetic also: and this was the mind of the one who writes 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.'

They had to take old stories,—these sly, ambitious aspirants to power, who were not disposed to give up their natural right to dictate, for the lack of an organ, or because they found the proper insignia of their office usurped: it was necessary that they should take old stories, or invent new ones, 'to make those slights upon the banks of Thames, that so did take' not 'Eliza and our James' only, but that people of whom 'Eliza and our James' were only 'the outstretched shadows,' 'the monster,' of whose 'noise' these sovereigns, as the author of this play took it, were 'but the horn.'

They had to take old stories of one kind and another, as they happened to find them, and vamp them up to suit their purposes; stories, old or new, they did not much care which.

Old and memorable ones, so memorable that the world herself with her great faculty of oblivion, could not forget them, but carried them in her mind from age to age,—stories so memorable that all men knew them by heart,—so the author could find one to his purpose,—were best for some things,—for many things; but for others new ones must be invented; and certainly there would be no difficulty as to that, for lack of gifts at least, in the mind whence these old ones were coming out so freshly, in the gloss of their new-coined immortality.

It is, indeed, an old story that we have here, a story of that ancient Rome, whose 'just, free and flourishing state,' the author of this new science of policy confesses himself,—under his universal name,—so childishly enamoured of, that he interests himself in it to a degree of passion, though he 'neither loves it in its birth or its decline,'—[under its kings or its emperors.]—It is a story of Republican Rome, and the difference, the radical difference, between the civil magistracy which represented the Roman people, and that unconstitutional popular power which the popular tyranny creates, is by no means omitted in the exposition. That difference, indeed, is that which makes the representation possible; it is brought out and insisted on, 'they choose their officers;' it is a difference which is made much of, for it contains one of the radical points in the poetic intention.

But without going into the argument, the large and comprehensive argument, of this most rich and grave and splendid composition, crowded from the first line of it to the last, with the results of a political learning which has no match in letters, which had none then, which has none now; no, or the world would be in another case than it is, for it is a political learning which has its roots in the new philosophy, it is grounded in the philosophy of the nature of things, it is radical as the Prima Philosophia,—without attempting to exhaust the meaning of a work embodying through all its unsurpassed vigor and vivacity of poetic representation, the new philosophic statesman's ripest lore, the patient fruits of 'observation strange,'—without going into his argument of the whole, the reader who merely wishes to see for himself, at a glance, in a word, as a matter of curiosity merely; whether the view here given of the political sagacity and prescience of the Elizabethan Man of Letters, is in the least chargeable with exaggeration, has only to look at the context of that revolutionary speech and proposal, that revolutionary burst of eloquence which has been here claimed as a proper historical issue of the age of Elizabeth. He will not have to read very far to satisfy himself as to that. It will be necessary, indeed, for that purpose, that he should have eyes in his head, eyes not purely idiotic, but with the ordinary amount of human speculation in them, and, moreover, it will be necessary that he should use them,—as eyes are ordinarily used in such cases,—nothing more. But unfortunately this is just the kind of scrutiny which nobody has been able to bestow on this work hitherto, on account of those historical obstructions with which, at the time it was written, it was found necessary to guard such discussions, discussions running into such delicate questions in a manner so essentially incomparably free.

For, in fact, there is no plainer piece of English extant, when one comes to look at it. All that has been claimed in the Historical part of this work, [not published in this volume] may be found here without any research, on the mere surface of the dialogue. Looking at it never so obliquely, with never so small a fraction of an eye, one cannot help seeing it.

The reader who would possess himself of the utmost meaning of these passages, one who would comprehend their farthest reaches, must indeed be content to wait until he can carry with him into all the parts that knowledge of the authors general intention in this work, which only a most thorough and careful study of it will yield.

It is, indeed, a work in which the whole question of government is seized at its source—one in which the whole difficulty of it is grappled with unflinching courage and veracity. It is a work in which that question of classes in the state, which lies on the surface of it, is treated in a general, and not exclusive manner; or, where the treatment is narrowed and pointed, as it is throughout in the running commentary, it is narrowed and pointed to the question of the then yet living age, and to those momentous developments of it which, 'in their weak beginnings,' the philosophic eye had detected, and not to a state of things which had to cease before the first Punic war could be begun.

The question of classes, and their respective claims in governments, is indeed incidentally treated here, but in this author's own distinctive manner, which is one that is sure to take out, always—even in his lightest, most sportive handling—the heart of his subject, so as to leave little else but gleanings to the author who follows in that track hereafter.

For this is one of those unsurpassably daring productions of the Elizabethan Muse, which, after long experiment, encouraged by that protracted immunity from suspicion, and stimulated by the hurrying on of the great crisis, it threw out at last in the face and eyes of tyranny, Things which are but intimated in the earlier plays— political allusions, which are brought out there amid crackling volleys of conceits, under cover of a battery of quips and jests— political doctrines, which lie there wrapped in thickest involutions of philosophic subtleties, are all unlocked and open here on the surface: he that runs may take them if he will.

CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT.

  'Would you proceed especially against Caius MARCIUS?'
  'Against him FIRST: He's a very dog to THE COMMONALTY.'

In this exhibition of the social orders to which human society instinctively tends, and that so-called state into which human combinations in barbaric ages rudely settles, the principle of the combination—the principle of gradation, and subjection, and permanence—is called in question, and exposed as a purely instinctive principle, as, in fact, only a principle of revolution disguised; and a higher one, the distinctively human element, the principle of KIND, is now, for the first time, demanded on scientific grounds, as the essential principle of any permanent human combination—as the natural principle, the only one which the science of nature can recognise as a principle of STATE.

It is the PEACE principle which this great scientific war-hater and captain of the ages of peace is in search of, with his new organum; though he is philosopher enough to know that, in diseased states, wars are nature's own rude remedies, her barbarous surgery, for evils yet more unendurable. He has found himself chosen a justice of the peace—the world's peace; and it is the principle of permanence, of law and subjection—in a word, it is the principle of state, as opposed to revolution and dissolution—which he is judging of in behalf of his kind. And he makes a business of it. He goes about in his own fashion. He gets up this great war-piece on purpose to find it.

He has got a state on his stage, which is ceasing to be a state at the moment in which he shows it to us; a state which has the war principle—the principle of conquest within no longer working in it insidiously as government, but developed as war; for it has just overstepped the endurable point in its mastery. It is a revolution that is coming off when the curtain rises. For the government has been gnawing the Roman common-weal at home, with those same teeth it ravened the Volscians with abroad, till it has reached the vitals at last, and the common-weal has betaken itself to the Volscian's weapons:—the people have risen. They are all out when the play begins on an armed hunt for their rat-like, gnawing, corn-consuming rulers. They are determined to 'kill them,' and have 'corn at their own price.' 'If the wars eat us not, they will,' is the word; 'and there's all THE LOVE they bear us.' 'Rome and her rats are at the point of battle,' cries the Poet. The one side shall have bale, is his prophecy. 'Without good nature,' he says elsewhere, using the term good in its scientific sense, 'men are only a NOBLER kind of VERMIN'; and he makes a most unsparing application of this principle in his criticisms. Many a splendid historical figure is made to show its teeth, and rat-like mien and propensities, through all the splendour of its disguises, merely by the application of his simple philosophical tests. For the question, as he puts it, is the question between animal instinct, between mere appetite, and reason; and the question incidentally arises in the course of the exhibition, whether the common-weal, when it comes to anything like common-sense, is going to stand being gnawed in this way, for the benefit of any individual, or clique, or party.

For the ground on which the classes or estates, and their respective claims to the government, are tried here, is the ground of the common-weal; and the question as to the fitness of any existing class in the state for an exclusive, unlimited control of the welfare of the whole, is more than suggested. That which stops short of the weal of the whole for its end, is that which is under criticism here; and whether it exist in 'the one,' or 'the few,' or 'the many,'—and these are the terms that are employed here,—whether it exist in the civil magistracy, sustained by a popular submission, or in the power of the victorious military chief, at the head of his still extant and resistless armament, it is necessarily rejected as a principle of sovereignty and permanence, in this purely scientific view of the human conditions of it. It is a question which this author handles with a thorough impartiality, in all his political treatises, let them come in what name and form they will, with more or less clearness, indeed, as the circumstances seem to dictate.

But nowhere is the whole history of the military government, collected from the obscurity of the past, and brought out with such inflexible design—with such vividness and strength of historic exhibition, as it is here. It is traced to its beginnings in the distinctions which nature herself creates,—those physical, and moral, and intellectual distinctions, with which she crowns, in her happier moods, the large resplendent brows of her born kings and masters. It is traced from its origin in the crowning of the victorious chief on the field of battle, to the moment in which the sword of military conquest is turned back on the conquerors by the chief into whose hands they gave it; and the sword of conquest abroad becomes, at home, the sword of state.

Nay, this Play goes farther, and embraces the contingency of a foreign rule—one, too, in which the conqueror takes his surname from the conquest; it brings home 'the enemy of the whole state,' as a king, in triumph to the capital, whose streets he has filled with mourning; and though the author does not tell us in this case, at he does in another, that the nation was awed 'with an offertory of standards' in the temple, and that 'orisons and Te Deums were again sung,'—the victor 'not meaning that the people should forget too soon that he came in by battle'—points, not much short of that, in the way of speciality, are not wanting. More than one conqueror, indeed, looks out from this old chieftain's Roman casque. 'There is a little touch of Harry in the scene'; and though the author goes out of his way to tell us that 'he must by no means say his hero is covetous,' it will not be the Elizabethan Philosopher's fault, if we do not know which Harry it is that says—

If you have writ your annals true,'tis there, That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli: Alone, I did it.

* * * * *

Auf. Read it, noble lords; But tell the traitor, in the highest degree He hath abused your powers.

Cor. Traitor!—How now?

Auf. Ay, traitor, Marcius.

Cor. Marcius!

Auf. AY, Marcius, Caius Marcius; Dost thou think I'll grace thee with THAT ROBBERY, thy STOLEN NAME CORIOLANUS in CORIOLI?'—[the conqueror in the conquest.]

Never, indeed, was 'the garland of war,' whether glistening freshly on the hero's brow on the fresh battle-field, or whether glittering, transmuted into civic gold and gems, on the brow of his hereditary successor, subjected to such a searching process before, as that with which the Poet, under cover of an aristocrat's pretensions, and especially under cover of his pretensions to an elective magistracy, can venture to test it.

This hero, who 'speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of their infirmity,' is on trial for that pretension from the first scene of this Play to the last. The author has, indeed, his own views of the fickle, ignorant, foolish multitude,—such views as any one, who had occasion to experiment on it personally, in the age of Elizabeth, would not lack the means of acquiring; and amidst those ebullitions of wrath, which he pours from his haughty hero's lips, one hears at times a tone that sounds a little like some other things from the same source, as if the author had himself, in some way, been brought to look at the subject from a point of observation, not altogether unlike that from which his hero speaks; or as if he might, at least, have known how to sympathise with the haughty and unbending nature, that had been brought into such deadly collision with it. But in the dramatic representation, though it is far from being a flattering one, we listen in vain for any echo of this sentiment. In its rich and kindly humour there is no sneer, no satire. It is the loving eye of nature's own great pupil—it is the kindly human eye, that comes near enough to point those jests, and paint so truly; there is a great human heart here in the scene embracing the lowly. It was the heart that was putting forth then its silent but resistless energies into the ages of the human advancement, to take up the despised and rejected masses of men from their misery, and make of them truly one kind and kindred.

And though he has had, indeed, his own private experiences with the multitude, and the passions are, as he intimates—at least as strong in him as in another, he has his own view, also, of the common pitifulness and weakness of the human conditions; and he has a view which is, in his time, all his own, of the instrumentalities that are needed to reach that level of human nature, and to lift men up from the mire of these conditions, from the wrong and wretchedness into which, in their unaided, unartistic, unlearned struggle with nature,—within and without,—the kind are fallen. And so strong in him is the sense of this pitifulness, that it predominates over the sharpness of his genius, and throws the divinest mists and veils of compassion over the harsh, scientific realities he is constrained to lay bare.

And, in fact, it takes this monstrous pretence, and claim to human leadership, which he finds passing unquestioned in his time, to bring him out on this point fairly. The statesmanship of the man who undertakes to make his own petty personality the measure of a world, who would make, not that reason which is in us all, and embraces the world, and which is not personal,—not that conscience which is the sensibility to reason, and is as broad and impartial as that—which goes with the reason, and embraces, like that, without bias, the common weal,—but that which is particular, and private, and limited to the individual,—his senses,—his passions, his private affections,—his mere caprice,—his mere will; the motive of the public action;—the statesmanship of the man who dares to offer these to an insulted world, as reasons of state; who claims a divine prerogative to make his single will good against reason; who claims a divine right to make his private interest outweigh the weal of the whole; who asks men to obliterate, in their judgment, its essential principle, that which makes them men, the eternal principle of the whole;—this is the phenomenon which provokes at last, in this author, the philosophic ire. The moment this thing shows itself on his stage, he puts his pity to sleep. He will show up, at last, without any mercy, in a purely scientific manner, as we see more clearly elsewhere, the common pitifulness of the human conditions, in the person of him who claims exemption from them,—who speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of their infirmity.

'There is formed in every thing a double nature';—this author, who is the philosopher of nature, tells us on another page,—'there is formed in every thing a double nature OF GOOD, the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moving to the loadstone; but yet, if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsakes the affection to the loadstone, and, like a good patriot, moves to the earth. This double nature of good is MUCH MORE (hear)—much more ENGRAVEN on MAN, if he _de_GENERATE not—(decline not from the law of his kind—for that more is SPECIAL) unto whom the conservation of DUTY to the PUBLIC ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being, according to that memorable speech of Pompey THE GREAT, [the truly great, for this is the question of greatness,] when BEING IN COMMISSION OF PURVEYANCE FOR A FAMINE AT ROME, and being dissuaded, with great vehemency and instance, by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, answered, 'Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam.'

But we happen to have set out here, in our play, at the very beginning of it, the specific case alluded to, in this general exhibition of the radical human law, viz., the case of a famine in Rome, which we shall find differently treated, in this instance, by the person who aspires to 'the helm o' the state.'

When the question is of the true nobility and greatness, of the true statesmanship, of the personal fitness of an individual to assume the care of the public welfare, the question, of course, as to this double nature, comes in. We wish to know—if any thing is going to depend upon his single will in the matter, we must know, which of these two natures is SOVEREIGN in himself,—which good he supremely affects,—that of his senses, passions, and private affections, that good which ends in his private and particular nature,—a good which has its due place in this system, and is not unnaturally mortified and depressed, as it is in less scientific ones,—or that good of the whole, which is each man's highest good;—whether he is, in fact, a man, or whether, in the absence of that perfection of the human form, which should be the end of science and government, he approximates at all,—or undertakes to approximate at all, to the true human type;—whether he be, indeed, a man, in the higher sense of that word, or whether he ranks in the scale of nature, as 'only a nobler kind of vermin,' a man, a noble man, a man with a divine ideal and ambition, degenerate into that.

When it is a candidate for the chief magistracy, a candidate for the supreme power in the state, who is on his trial, of course that question as to the balance between the public and private affections, which, those who know how to trace this author's hand, know he is so fond of trying elsewhere, is sure to come up. The question is, as to whether there is any affection in this claimant for power, so large and so noble, that it can embrace heartily the common weal, and take that to be its good. The trial will be a sharp one. The trial of human greatness which is magnanimity, must needs be. The question is, as to whether this is a nature capable of pursuing that end for its own sake, without respect to its pivate and merely selfish recompence; whether it is one which has any such means of egress from its particular self, any such means of coming out of its private and exclusive motivity, that it can persevere in its care of the Common Weal, through good and through ill report, through personal wrong and ingratitude,—abandoning its private claim, and ascending by that conquest to the divineness.

INSURRECTION'S ARGUING.

                      'What is granted them?'
  'Five Tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms.'

  'The rabble should have first unroofed the city,
   Ere so prevailed with me.'

The common people themselves have some inkling of this. This Roman who has established his claim to rule Romans at home, by killing Volscians abroad, appears to their simple apprehension, at the moment, at least, when they find themselves suffering the gnawings of hunger through his legislation, to have established but a questionable claim to their submission.

And before ever he shows his head on the stage, this question, which is the question of the play, is already started. For it is the people who are permitted to come on first of all and explain their wants, and discuss the military hero's qualifications for rule in that relation, and that, too, in a not altogether foolish manner. For though the author knows how to do justice to the simplicity of their politics, he knows how to do justice also to that practical determination and straightforwardness and largeness of sense, which even in the common sense of uneducated masses, is already struggling a little to declare itself.

They have one great piece of political learning which their lordly legislators lack, and for lack of sense and comprehension cannot have. They are learned in the doctrine of their own political and social want; they are full of the most accurate and vivid impressions on that subject. Their notions of it are altogether different from those vague general abstract conceptions of it, which the brains of their refined lordly rulers stoop to admit. The terms which that legislation deals with, are one thing in the patrician's vocabulary, and another and quite different thing in the plebeian's; hunger means one thing in the 'patrician's vocabulary,' and another and very different thing in the plebeian's. They know, too, 'that meat was made for mouths,' and 'that the gods sent not corn for the rich men only.' They are under the impression that there ought to be bread for them by some means or other, when the storehouses that their toil has filled are overflowing, and though they are not clear as to the process which should accomplish this result, they have come to the conclusion that there must be some error somewhere in the legislation of those learned few, to whom they have resigned the task of governing them. They are strongly of opinion that there must be some mistake in the calculations by which those venerable wise men and fathers, do so infallibly contrive to sweep the results of the poor man's toil and privation into their own garners,—calculations which enable the legislator to enjoy in lordly ease and splendour, the sight of the plebeian's misery, which enable him to lavish on his idlest whims, to give to his dogs that which would save lifetimes of unreckoned human misery. These are their views, and when the play begins, they have resolved themselves into a committee of the whole, and are out on a commission of inquiry and administrative reform, armed with bats and clubs and other weapons,—such as came first to hand, intending to make short work of it. This is their peace budget, and as to war, they have some rude notions on that subject, too;—some dim impression that nature intended them for some other ends than to be sold in the shambles, as the purchase of some lordly chieftain's title. There's an incipient statesmanship struggling there in that rude mass, though it does not as yet get fairly expressed. It will take the tribuneship and the refinements of the aristocratic leisure, to make the rude wisdom of want and toil eloquent. But it has found a tribune at last, who will be able to speak for it, through one mouth or another, scientifically and to the purpose too, ere all is done.

'Before we proceed any further, hear me speak,' he cries, through the Roman leader's lips; for his Rome, too, if it be not yet 'at the point of battle,' is drifting towards it rapidly, as he sees well enough when this speech begins.

But let us take the Play as we find it. Take the first scene of it. The stage is filled with the people,—not with their representatives, —but with the people themselves, in their own persons, in the act of taking the government into their own hands. They are hurrying sternly and silently through the city streets. There has been no practising of 'goose step,' to teach them that movement. They are armed with clubs, staves and other weapons, peace weapons, but there is an edge in them now, fine enough for their purpose. The word of the play is the word that arrests that movement. The voice of the leader rings out,—it is a HALT that is ordered.

'BEFORE WE PROCEED ANY FURTHER, HEAR ME SPEAK,' cries one from the mass.

'Speak! speak!' is the reply. They are ready to hear reason. They want a speaker. They want a voice, though never so rude, to put their stern inarticulate purpose 'into some frame.'

'You are all resolved rather TO DIE than TO FAMISH,' continues the first speaker. Yes, that is it precisely; he has spoken the word.

'RESOLVED! RESOLVED!' is the common response; for the revolutionary point is touched here.

'FIRST, you know, Caius Marcius is CHIEF ENEMY to the people'—a rude grasp at causes. This captain will establish a common intelligence in his company before they proceed any further; that their acting may be one, and to purpose. For there is no command but that here.

Cit. We know't, we know't.

First Cit. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict?

_Cit. No more talking on't. Let it bone done: away, away.

'One word, good citizens,' cries another, 'who thinks that the thing will bear, perhaps, a little further discussion. And this is the hint for the first speaker to produce his cause more fully. 'GOOD CITIZENS,' is the word he takes up. "We are accounted POOR CITIZENS; the patricians GOOD.' [That is the way the account stands, then.] 'What AUTHORITY surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear.' [They love us as we are too well. They want poor people to reflect their riches. It takes plebeians to make patricians; it takes our valleys to make their heights.]

'The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance. Our sufferance is a gain to them.—Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, and not in thirst for revenge.

Second Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?

First Cit. Against him first;—he's a very dog to the commonalty.

Second Cit. Consider you what services he has done for his country?

[That is one of the things which are about to be 'considered.']

First Cit. Very well, and could be content to give him good report for'it, but that he pays himself with being proud.

Second Cit. Nay, but speak not maliciously.

First Cit. I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for HIS COUNTRY, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.

Second Cit. What he cannot help IN HIS NATURE, you account a vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.

First Cit. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults with surplus to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts are these? The other side o' the city is risen. Why stay we prating here? To the Capitol!

Cit. Come, come.

First Cit. Soft; who comes here?

[Enter Menenius Agrippa.]

Second Cit. Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always loved the people.

First Cit. He's one honest enough [—honest—a great word in the Shakspere philosophy]; would all the rest were so.

[That is a good prayer when it comes to be understood.]

Men. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you, With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.

First Cit. Our business is not unknown to THE SENATE [Hear]; they have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we'll show 'em in deeds. They say, poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know we have strong arms, too.

Men. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours, Will you undo yourselves_?

First Cit. We cannot, sir; we are undone already. [Revolution.]

Men. I tell you, friends, most charitable care Have the patricians of you. For your WANTS,—Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the heavens with your staves, as lift them Against the Roman State, whose course will on The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs Of more strong link asunder, than can ever Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, The gods, not the patricians, make it; and Your knees to them, not arms, must help.

[This sounds very pious, but it is not the piety of the new school. The doctrine of submission and suffering is indeed taught in it, and scientifically reinforced; but then it is the patient suffering of the harm 'which is not within our power' which is commendable, according to its tenets, and 'a wise and industrious suffering' of it, too. It is a wise 'accommodating of the nature of man to those points of nature and fortune which we cannot control,' that is pleasing to God, according to this creed.]

  Alack!
  You are transported by calamity,
  Thither where more attends you; and you slander
  The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers,
  When you curse them as enemies.

First Cit. CARE FOR us! True, INDEED! They ne'er cared for us yet. SUFFER us TO FAMISH, and their store-houses CRAMMED WITH GRAIN! Make edicts for usury, to support usurers! Repeal daily any WHOLESOME ACT established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor! If the WARS eat us not up, THEY WILL; and there's all the love they bear us.

Menenius attempts to counteract these impressions; but his story and his arguments appear to have some applications which he is not aware of, and are much more to the purpose of the party in arms than they are to his own. For it is a story in which the natural subordination of the parts to the whole in the fabric of human society is illustrated by that natural instance and symbol of unity and organization which the single human form itself present; and that condition of the state which has just been exhibited—one in which the body at large is dying of inanition that a part of it may surfeit—is a condition which, in the light of this story, appears to need help of some kind, certainly.

But the platform is now ready. It is the hero's entrance for which we are preparing. It is on the ground of this sullen want that the author will exhibit him and his dazzling military virtues. It is as the doctor of this diseased common-weal that he brings him in with his sword;

'Enter CAIUS MARCIUS.'

and that idea—the idea of the diseased commonwealth, which Menenius has already set forth—that notion of parts and partiality, and dissonance and dissolution, which is a radical idea in the play, and runs into its minutest points of phraseology, breaks out at once in his rough speech.

Men. Hail, noble Marcius!

  Mar. Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
  That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
  Make yourselves scabs.

[It is the common-weal that must be made whole and comely.
OPINION! your opinion.]

First Cit. We have ever your good word.

  Mar. In that will give good words to thee, will flatter
  Beneath abhorring.—What would you have, you curs,
  That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you,
  The other makes you proud. He that trusts you,
  Where he should find you lions, finds you hares.
  Where foxes, geese! You are no surer, no
  Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
  Or hail-stone in the sun. Your virtue is,
  To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,
  And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
  Deserves your hate: and your affections are
  A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
  Which would increase his evil. He that depends
  Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,
  And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
  With every minute you do change a mind;

[This is not the principle of state, whether in the many or the one].

  And call him noble, that was now your hate,
  Him vile, that was your garland. What's the matter,
  That in these several places of the city
  You cry against the noble senate, who,
  Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
  Would feed on one another?—What's their seeking?

  Men. For corn at their own rates; whereof, they say,
  The city is well stor'd.

  Mar. HANG 'EM! THEY SAY?
  THEY'LL SIT BY THE FIRE, and PRESUME to KNOW
  WHAT'S DONE I' THE CAPITOL: who's like to rise,
  Who thrives, and who declines: side factions, and give out
  Conjectural marriages; making parties strong,
  And feebling such as stand not in their liking,
  Below their cobbled shoes. They say, there's grain enough?
  Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
  And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry
  With thousands of these quartered slaves, AS HIGH
  As I could prick my lance.

[The altitude of his virtue;—the measure of his greatness. That is the tableau of the first scene, in the first act of the play of the cure of the Common-weal and the Consulship.]

  Men. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;
  For though abundantly they lack discretion,
  Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you,
  What says the other troop?

Mar. They are dissolved: Hang 'em! [Footnote] They said, they were an hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs;— That hunger broke stone walls; that, dogs must eat; That meat was made for mouths; THAT THE GODS SENT NOT CORN FOR THE RICH MEN ONLY:—With these shreds They vented their complainings; which being answer'd, And a petition granted them, a strange one, (To break the heart of generosity, And make bold power look pale,) they threw their caps As they would hang them on the horns o'the moon, Shouting their emulation.

[Footnote: 'The History of Henry VII.,' produced in the Historical Part of this work, but omitted here, contains the key to these readings.]

Men. What is granted them.

  Mar. Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,
  Of their own choice: One's Junius Brutus,
  Sicinius Velutus, and I know not—'Sdeath!
  The rabble should have first unroof'd the city;
  Ere so prevail'd with me; it will in time
  Win upon POWER, and throw forth greater themes
  For INSURRECTION'S arguing.

[Yes, surely it will. It cannot fail of it.]

Men. This is strange. Mar. Go, get you home, you fragments! [fragments.]

[Enter a Messenger.]

Mes. Where's Caius Marcius? Mar. Here; What's the matter? Mes. The news is, Sir, the Volces are in arms. Mar. I am glad on't; then we shall have means to vent Our musty superfluity:—See, our best elders.

[The procession from the Capitol is entering with two of the new officers of the commonwealth, and the two chief men of the army, with other senators.]

  First Sen. Marcius, 'tis true, that you have lately told us;
  The Volsces are in arms.

  Mar. They have a leader,
  Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to't.
  I sin in envying his nobility:
  And were I anything but what I am,
  I would wish me only he.

Com. You have fought together.

  Mar. Were half to half the world by the ears, and he
  Upon my party, I'd revolt, to make
  Only my wars with him [Hear, hear].
  He is a lion.
  That I am proud to hunt.

  First Sen. Then, WORTHY Marcius,
  Attend upon Cominius to these wars.

It is the relation of the spirit of military conquest, the relation of the military hero, and his government, to the true human need, which is subjected to criticism here; a criticism which is necessarily an after-thought in the natural order of the human development.

The transition 'from the casque to the cushion,' that so easy step in the heroic ages, whether it be 'an entrance by conquest,' foreign or otherwise, or whether the chieftain's own followers bring him home in triumph, and the people, whose battle he has won, conduct him to their chair of state, in either case, that transition appears, to this author's eye, worth going back, and looking into a little, in an age so advanced in civilization, as the one in which he finds himself.

For though he is, as any one who will take any pains to inquire, may easily satisfy himself,—the master in chief of the new science of nature,—and the deepest in its secrets of any, his views on that subject appear to be somewhat broader, his aspirations altogether of another kind, from those, to which his school have since limited themselves. He does not content himself with pinning butterflies and hunting down beetles; his scientific curiosity is not satisfied with classifying ferns and lichens, and ascertaining the proper historical position of pudding-stone and sand-stone, and in settling the difference between them and their neighbours. Nature is always, in all her varieties wonderful, and all 'her infinite book of secrecy,' that book which all the world had overlooked till he came, was to his eye, from the first, a book of spells, of magic lore, a Prospero book of enchantments. He would get the key to her cipher, he would find the lost alphabet of her unknown tongue; there is no page of her composing in which he would scorn to seek it—none which he would scorn to read with it: but then he has, notwithstanding, some choice in his studies. He is of the opinion that some subjects are nobler than others, and that those which concern specially the human kind, have a special claim to their regard, and the secret of those combinations which result in the varieties of shell-fish, and other similar orders of being, do not exclusively, or chiefly, engage his attention.

There is another natural curiosity, which strikes the eye of the founder of the Science of Nature, as quite the most curious and wonderful thing going, so far, at least, as his observation has extended, though he is willing to make, as he takes pains to state, philosophical allowance for the partiality of species in determining this judgment, and is perfectly willing to concede, that if any particular species of shell-fish, for instance, were to undertake a science of things in general, that particular species would, no doubt, occupy the principal place in that system; especially if arts, tending to the improvement and elevation of it, were necessarily based on this larger specific knowledge.

Men, and their proceedings and organisms, men, and their habits and modes of combining, did appear to the eye of this scientific observer quite as well worth observing and noting, also, as bees and beavers, for instance, and their societies; and, accordingly, he made some observations himself, and notes, too, in this particular department of his general science. For, as he tells us elsewhere, he did not wish to map out the large fields of the science of observation in general, and exhibit to the world, in bare description, the method of it, without leaving some specimens of his own, of what might be done with it, in proper hands, under favourable circumstances, selecting for his experiments the principal and noblest subjects—those of the most immediate human concern. And he has not only very carefully laboured a few of these; but he has taken extraordinary pains to preserve them to us in their proper scientific form, with just as little of the ligature of the time on them as it was possible to leave.

It is no kind of beetle or butterfly, then, that this philosopher comes down upon here from the heights of his universal science—his science of the nature of things in general, but that great Spenserian monstrosity,—that diseased product of nature, which individual human nature, in spite of its natural pettiness and helplessness, under certain favourable conditions of absorption and accretion, may be made to yield. It is that dragon of lawless power which was overspreading, in his time, all the common human affairs, and infolding in its gaudy, baleful wings all the life of men,—it is that which takes from the first the speculative eye of this new speculator,—this founder of the science of things, and not of words instead of them. Here is a man of science, a born naturalist, who understands that this phenomenon lies in his department, and takes it to be his business, among other things, to examine it.

It was, indeed, a formidable phenomenon, as it presented itself to his apprehension; and his own words are always the best, when one knows how to read them—

'He sits in state, like a thing made for Alexander.' 'When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading.' 'He talks like a knell, his hum is a battery; what he bids be done, is finished at his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity, and a heaven to throne in.' 'Yes,' is the answer; 'yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'

'Is it possible that so short a time can alter the conditions of a man?' inquires the speculator upon this phenomenon, and then comes the reply—'There's a differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from MAN TO DRAGON; he has wings, he is more than a creeping thing.'

This is Coriolanus at the head of his army; but in Julius Caesar, it is nature in the wildness of the tempest—it is a night of unnatural horrors, that is brought in by the Poet to illustrate the enormity of the evil he deals with, and its unnatural character—'to serve as instrument of fear and warning unto some MONSTROUS STATE.'

        'Now could I, Casca,
  Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
  As doth the lion in the Capitol:
  A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
  In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
  And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Casca. Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?

[I paint him in character.]

Cassius. Let it be—WHO IT IS: For Romans now Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.'

POLITICAL RETROSPECT.

          'I think he'll be to Rome
  As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
  By sovereignty of nature.'

FLOWER OF WARRIORS

The poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his time. He finds it 'in the civil streets,' 'talking plain cannon', 'humming batteries' in the most unmistakeable manner, with no particular account of its origin to give, without, indeed, appearing to recollect exactly how it came there, retaining only a general impression, that a descent from the celestial regions had, in some way, been effected during some undated period of human history, under circumstances which the memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail, and a certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was understood to be included among its properties, though it does not appear to have been, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive as to render a little logical demonstration, on the part of royalty itself, superfluous.

It was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal servant of the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal memory on this delicate point; and, though the details of that historical representation, and the manner of it, are, of course, quite different from those of the Play, it will be found, upon careful examination, not so dissimilar in purport as the exterior would have seemed to imply. The philosopher does not feel called upon, in either case, to begin by contradicting flatly, in so many words, the theory which he finds the received one on that point. Even the poet, with all his freedom, is compelled to go to work after another fashion.

  'And thus do we, of wisdom, and of reach,
  With windlasses, and with ASSAYS of BIAS,
  By indirections find directions out.'

He has his own way of creating an historical retrospect. No one need know that it is a retrospect; no one will know it, perhaps, who has not taken the author's clue elsewhere. The crisis is already reached when the play begins. The collision between the civil want and the military government is at its height. It is a revolution on which the curtain rises. It is a city street filled with dark, angry swarms of men, who have come forth to seek out this government, in the person of its chief, who stop only to conduct their summary trial of it, and then hurry on to execute their verdict.

But the poet arrests this revolution. Before we proceed any further, 'Hear me speak,' he cries, through the lips of the plebeian leader. The man of science demands a hearing, before this movement proceed any further. He has a longer story to tell than that with which Menenius Agrippa appeases his Romans. There is a cry of war in the streets. The obscure background of that portentous scene opens, and the long vista of the heroic ages, with all its pomp and stormy splendours, scene upon scene, grows luminous behind it. The foreground is the same. The arrested mutineers stand there still, with the frown knit in their angry brows, with the weapons of their civil warfare in their hands; there is no stage direction for a change of costume, and none perceives that they have grown older as they stand, and that the shadow of the elder time is on them. But the manager of this stage is one who knows that the elder time of history is the childhood of his kind.

There is a cry of war in that ancient street. The enemy of the infant state is in arms. The people rush forth to conflict with the leader of armies at their head. But this time, for the first time in the history of literature, the philosopher goes with him. The philosopher, hitherto, has been otherwise occupied. He has been too busy with his fierce war of words; he has had too much to do with his abstract generals, his logical majors and minors, to get them in squadrons and right forms of war, to have any eye for such vulgar solidarities. 'All men are mortal. Peter and John are men. Therefore Peter and John are mortal,' he concludes; but that is his nearest and most vivacious approach to historical particulars, and his cell is broad enough to contain all that he needs for his processes and ends. He finds enough and to spare, ready prepared to his hands, in the casual, rude, unscientific observations and spontaneous distinctions of the vulgar. His generalizations are obtained from their hasty abstractions. It has never occurred to him, till now, that he must begin with criticising these terms; that he must begin by making a new and scientific terminology, which shall correspond to terms in nature, and not be air-lines merely;—that he must take pains to collect them himself, from severest scrutiny of particulars, before ever he can arrive at 'the notions of nature,' the universal notions, which differ from the spontaneous specific notions of men, and their chimeras; before ever he can put man into his true relations with nature, before ever he can teach him to speak the word which she responds to,—the words of her dictionary—the word which is power.

This is, in fact, the first time that the philosopher has undertaken to go abroad. It is the first time he has ever been in the army. Softly, invisibly, he goes. There is nothing to show that he is there. As modestly, as unnoticed, as the Times 'own correspondent,' amid all the clang and tumult, the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, he goes. But he is there notwithstanding. There is no breath of scholasticism, no perfume of the cell, that the most vigorous and robust can perceive, in his battle. The scene unwinds with all its fierce reality, undimmed by the pale cast of thought: the shout is as wild, the din as fearful, the martial fury rises, as if the old heroic poet had it still in hand.

But it is not the poet's voice that you hear, bursting forth into those rhythmical ecstasies of heroic passion,—unless that faint tone of exaggeration,—that slight prolonging of it, be his. That mad joy in human blood, that wolfish glare, that lights the hero's eye, gets no reflection in his: those fiendish boasts are not from his lips. Through all the frenzy of that demoniacal scene, he is still himself, with all his human sense about him. Through all the crowded incidents of that day of blood—into which he condenses, with dramatic license, the siege and assault of the city, the conquest and plunder of it, and the conflict in the open field,—he is keeping watch on his hero. He is eyeing him, and sketching him, as critically as if he were indeed an entomological or botanical specimen. He is making a specimen of him, for scientific purposes,—not 'a preservation,'—he does not think much of dried specimens in science. He proposes to dismiss the logical Peter and John, and the logical man himself, that abstract notion which the metaphysicians have been at loggerheads about so long. It is the true heroism,—it is the sovereign flower which he is in search of. This specimen that he is taking here will, indeed, go by the board. He is taking him on his negative table. But for that purpose,—in order to get him on his 'table of rejections,' it is necessary to take him alive. The question is of government, of supreme power, and universal suffrage, of the abnegation of reason, of the annihilation of judgment, in behalf of a superiority which has been understood, heretofore, to admit of no question. The question is of awe and reverence, and worship, and submission. The Poet has to put his sacrilegious hand through the dust that lies on antique time, through the sanctity of prescription and time-honoured usage, through 'mountainous error' 'too highly heaped for truth to overpeer,' in order to make this point in his scientific table. And he wishes to blazon it a little. He will pin up this old exploded hero—this legacy of barbaric ages, to the ages of human advancement—in all his actualities, in all the heroic splendours of his original, without 'diminishing one dowle that's in his plume.'

But this retrospect has not yet reached its limit. It is not enough to go back, in the unravelling of this business, to the full-grown hero on the field of victory. 'For that which, in speculative philosophy, corresponds to the cause in practical philosophy becomes the rule;' and it is the Cure of the Common Weal, which the poet is proposing, and having determined to proceed specially against Caius Marcius, or against him first, he undertakes now to 'delve him to the root.' We are already on the battle field; but before ever a stroke is struck there, before he will attempt to show us the instinct of the warrior in his game,—'he is a lion that I am proud to hunt,'—when all is ready and just as the hunt is going to begin, he steals softly back to Rome; he unlocks the hero's private dwelling, he lays open to us the secrets of that domestic hearth, the secrets of that nursery in which his hero had had his training; he shows us the breasts from which he drew that martial fire; he produces the woman alive who sent him to that field. [Act 1, Scene 3. An apartment in the martial chieftain's house; two women, 'on two low stools, sewing.' 'There is where your throne begins, whatever it be.'] In that exquisite relief which the natural graces of youth and womanhood provide for it, in the young, gentle, feminine wife, desolate in her husband's absence, starting at the rumour of news from the camp, and driving back from her appalled conception, the images which her mother-in-law's fearful speech suggests to her,—in that so beautiful relief, comes out the picture of the Roman matron, the woman in whom the martial instincts have been educated and the gentler ones repressed, by the common sentiments of her age and nation, the woman in whom the common standard of virtue, the conventional virtue of her time, has annihilated the wife and the mother.

Virgilia. Had he died in the business, madam, what then?

Volumnia. Then his good report should have been my son, I therein would have found issue.

It is the multiplied force of a common instinct in the nation, it is the pride of conquest in a whole people, erected into the place of virtue and usurping all its sanctity, which has entered this woman's nature and reformed its yielding principles. It is the Martial Spirit that has subdued her, for she is virtuous and religious. It is her people's god to whom she has borne her son, and in his temple she has reared him.

But the poet is not satisfied with all this. It is not enough to introduce us to the hero's mother and permit us to listen to her confidential account of his birth and training. He will produce the little Coriolanus himself—Coriolanus in germ—he will show us the rudiments of those instincts, which his unscientific education has stimulated into such monstrous 'o'ergrowth' (but not enlightened), so that the hero on the battle-field who is winning there the oaken crown, which he will transmit if he can to his posterity, is only, after all, a boy overgrown,—a boy with his boyishness unnaturally prolonged by his culture,—the impersonation of the childishness of a childish time,—the crowned impersonation of the instinct which is SOVEREIGN in an age of instinct. He shows us the drum and the sword in the nursery, and the boy who would rather look at the military parade than his schoolmaster;—he shows us the little viperous egg of a hero torturing and tearing the butterfly, with his 'confirmed countenance, in one of his father's moods.'

Surely we have reached 'the grub' at last, 'the creeping thing' that will have one day imperial armies in its wings. And we return from this little excursion to the field again, in time for the battle; and when we see the tiger in the man let loose there, and the boy's father comes out in one of his own moods, that we may note it the better; we begin to observe where we are in the human history, and what age of the Advancement of Learning it is that this poet is driving at so stedfastly, and trying to get dated; and whether it is indeed one from which the advancing ages of Learning can accept the bourne of the human wisdom, the limit of that advance.

'And to speak truly [and that after all is the best way of speaking] Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.'

'Those times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient and not those we account ancient by a computation backward from ourselves.'—Advancement of Learning. But that was put down in a book in which we have only general statements, very wise indeed, and both new and true, most exactly true, but not ready for practice, as the author stops to tell us, and it is practice he is aiming at. That is from a book in which we have only 'the husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out,' as the author informs us, 'by the torture and press of the method.' But it was a method which saved them, notwithstanding. This is the book that contains the 'nuts,' and this is the kernel that goes in that particular shell or a corner of it, 'Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.'

There, on the spot, he shows us the process by which a king,—an historic king,—is made. He detects and brings out and blazons, the moment in which the inequality of fortune begins, in the division of the spoils of victory. His hero is not, as he takes pains to tell us, covetous,—unless it be a sin to covet honour, if it be, he is the most offending soul alive;—it is because he is not mercenary, that his soldiers will enrich him. The poet shows us where the throne begins, and the machinery of that engine which the earth shrinks from when it moves. On his stage, it is the moment in which, the soldiers raise their victorious leader from his feet, and carry him in triumph above them. We are there at the ceremony, for this is selected, illuminated history; this, too, is what he calls 'visible history,' but amid all those martial acclamations and plaudits, the philosopher contrives to get in a word.

'He that has effected his good will, has o'ertaken my act.'

From the field he tracks his hero to the chair of state. First we have the news of the victory in the city, and its effect:—

                                        'I'll report it
  Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles;
  Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug;
  I' the end admire; where ladies shall be frighted,
  And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes,
  That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours,
  Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods
  Our Rome hath such a soldier.'

Then we have the hero's return—the conqueror's reception; first in the city whose battle he has won, and afterwards his reception in the city he has conquered. Here is the latter:—

  'Your native town you entered like a post,
  And had no welcomes home; but he returns,
  Splitting the air with noises.
  And patient fools,
  Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear
  WITH GIVING HIM GLORY.'

  'A goodly city is this Antium! City,
  'Tis I that made thy widows; many an heir
  Of these fair edifices, 'fore my wars
  Have I heard groan and droop. Then know me not,
  Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,
  In puny battle slay me.' [—know me not—lest—'
  'Let us kill him, and we will have corn, at our own price.']

But the Poet does not forget that it is the proof of the military virtue, as well as the history of the military power, that he has undertaken; 'the touch of its nobility,' as he himself words it. He is trying it by his own exact scientific standard; he is putting the test to it which the new philosophy, which is the philosophy of nature, authorises.

For, in truth, this philosopher, this civilian, is a little jealous of this simple virtue of valour, which he finds in his time, as in the barbaric ages, still in such esteem, as 'the chiefest virtue, and that which most dignifies the haver.' He is of opinion, that there may be some other profession, beside that of the sword, worth an honest man's attention; that, if the world were more enlightened, there would be another kind of glory, that would make 'the garland of war' shrivel. He thinks that Jupiter, and not Mars, should reign supreme: that there is another kind of distinction and leadership, better worth the public esteem, better deserving the popular gratitude and reverence.

And when he has once taken an analysis of this kind in hand, he is not going to permit any scruples of delicacy to impair the operation. He will invade that graceful modesty in the hero, who shrinks from hearing his exploits narrated. He will analyse that blush, and show us chemically what its hue is made of. He will bring out those retiring honours from the haze and mist which the vague, unanalytic, popular notions, have gathered about them. Tucked up in scarlet, braided with gold, under its forest of feathers, through all its pomp and blazonry, through all its drums; and trumpets, and clarions, undaunted by the popular cry, undaunted by that so potent word of 'patriotism' which guards it from invasion, he will search it out.

For this purpose he will go a little nearer to it than is the heroic poet's wont. When the city is wild with the news of this great victory, and the streets are swarming at the tidings of the hero's approach, he will take his stand with the family party, and beckon us to a place where we can listen to what is going on there, though the heroics and the blank verse must halt for it.

The glee and fluster might appear to a cool spectator a little undignified; but then we are understood to be, like Menenius, old friends of the family, and too much carried away with the excitement of the moment to be very critical.

Volumnia. Honourable Menenius, my boy, Marcius, approaches. For the love of Juno, let's go.

Men. Ha! Marcius coming home!

Vol. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

Men. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo! Marcius coming home?

Two Ladies. Nay, 't is true.

Vol. Look! Here's a letter from him; the state hath another, his wife another, and I think there's one at home for you.

Men. I will make my very house reel to night:—A letter for me?

The Wife. Yes, certainly, there a letter for you; I saw it.

Men. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician … Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

The Wife. Oh, no, no, no!

The Mother. Oh, he is wounded. I thank the gods for 't.

Men. So do I, too, if it be not too much:—Brings a victory in his pocket: The wounds become him.

Vol. On's brow, Menenius: he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.

Men…. Is the senate possessed of this?

Vol. Good ladies, let's go! Yes, yes, yes: the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war.

Valeria. In truth, there's wondrous things spoke of him.

Men. Wondrous, ay, I warrant you…

Vir. The gods grant them true!

Vol. True? Pow wow!

Men. True? I'll be sworn they are true. Where's he wounded? [To the Tribunes, who come forward.] Marcius is coming home: he has—more cause to be—PROUD.—Where is he wounded?

Vol. I' the shoulder, and i' the left arm: There will be large cicatrices to shew the people, when he shall stand FOR HIS PLACE. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i' the body.

Men. One in the neck, and two in the thigh,—there's nine that I know.

Vol. He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him.

Men. Now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave.

[Of course there is no satire intended here at all. This is a Poet who does not know what he is about.]

But now we come to the blank verse again; for at this moment the shout that announces the hero's entrance is heard; and, mingling with it, the martial tones of victory.

  shout and flourish.
  Hark! the trumpets!

  Vol. These are the ushers of Marcius: before him
  He carries noise; behind him he leaves tears.
  Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie;
  Which being advanced, declines, and then men die.

Then comes the imposing military pageant. A sennet. Trumpets sound, and enter the hero, 'crowned' with his oaken garland, sustained by the generals on either hand, with the victorious soldiers, and a herald proclaiming before him his victory.

  Herald. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
  Within Corioli's gates: where he hath won
  With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these
  In honour follows Coriolanus:
  Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

But while Rome is listening to this great story, and the people are shouting his name, the demi-god catches sight of his mother and of his wife; and full of private duty and affection, he forgets his state, his garland stoops, the conqueror is on his knee, in filial submission. The woman had said truly, 'my boy Marcius is coming home.' And when he greets the weeping Virgilia, who cannot speak but with her tears, these are the words with which he measures that private joy—

  Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home,
  That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
  Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,
  And mothers that lack sons.

No; these are the Poet's words, rather—'such eyes.'

Such eyes. It was the Poet who could look through the barriers—those hitherto impervious barriers of an enemy's town, and see in it, at that moment, eyes as beautiful—eyes that had been 'dove's eyes,' too, to those who had loved them, wet with other tears,—mothers that loved their sons, and 'lacked them'; it was the Poet to whose human sense those hard hostile walls dissolved and cleared away, till he could see the Volscian wives clasping their loves, as they 'came coffined home'; it was the Poet who dared to stain the joy and triumph of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of that triumphal entry, with those human thoughts; it was he who heard above the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and trumpets, and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's voice—the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of human sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the greetings of wives whose loves 'came coffined home.' And he does not mind aggravating the intense selfishness, and narrowness, and stolidity of these private passions and affections of the individual to a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity, by charging on poor Volumnia and Marcius his own reminiscences; as if they could have dared to heighten their joy at that moment by counting its cost—as if they could have looked in the face—as if they could have comprehended, in its actual dimensions, the theme of their vulgar, narrow, unlearned exultation. But this is a trick this author is much given to, we shall find, when we come to study him carefully. He is not scrupulous on such points. He has a tolerable sense of the fitness of things, too. His dramatic conscience is as nice as another man's; but he is always ready to sin against it, when he sees reason. He is much like his own Mr. Slender in one respect, 'he will do anything in reason'; and his theory of the Chief End of Man appears to differ essentially from the one which our modern Doctors of 'Art' propound incidentally in their criticisms. It is the mother who cries, when she catches the swell of the trumpets that announce her son's approach—'These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries noise.' It is the Poet who adds, sotto voce, 'behind him he leaves TEARS.'

'You are three,' says Menenius, after some further prolongation of these private demonstrations, addressing himself to the three victorious generals—

    You are three,
  That Rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men,
  We have some old crab-trees here at home, that will not
  Be grafted to your relish. Yet WELCOME, WARRIORS:
  We call a nettle but a nettle; and
  The faults of fools, but folly.

But the herald is driving on the crowd; and considering how very public the occasion is, and how very, very private and personal all this chat is, it does appear to have stopped the way long enough. Thus hurried, the hero gives hastily a hand 'to HIS WIFE and MOTHER' [stage direction], but stops to say a word or two more, which has the merit of being at least to the POET'S purpose, though the common-weal may appear to be lost sight of in the HERO'S a little; and that delicacy and reserve of manner, that modesty of nature, which is the characteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere, to disguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The careless eye will not track it in these finer touches. 'Where some stretched-mouth rascal' would have roared you out his prescribed moral, 'outscolding Termagant' with it, the Poet, who is the poet of truth, and who would have such fellows 'whipped' out of the sacred places of Art, with a large or small cord, as the case may be, is content to bring in his 'delicate burdens,' or to keep sight of them, at least, with some such reference to them as this—

  'Ere in our own house I do shade my head,
  The good patricians must be visited;
  From whom I have received not only greetings
  But with them change of honours'—[change.]

That is his visit to the state-house which he is speaking of. It is the Capitol which is put down in his plan of the city on his way to his own house. 'The state has a letter from him, and his wife another; and I think there is one for you, too.'

Volumnia understands that delicate intimation as to the change of honours, and in return, takes occasion to express to him, on the spot, her views about the consulship, and the use to which the new cicatrices are to be converted.

Coriolanus replies to this in words that admit, as this Poet's words often do, of a double construction; for the Poet is, indeed, lurking under all this. He is always present, and he often slips in a word for himself, when his characters are busy, and thinking of their own parts only. He is very apt to make use of occasions for emphasis, to put in one word for his speakers, and two for himself. It is irregular, but he does not stand much upon precedents; it was the only way he had of writing his life then—

'Know, good mother, I had rather be their servant in my way, Than sway with them in theirs. Cominius. On, to THE CAPITOL.' [Flourish Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes remain.]

And when the great pageant has moved on 'in state, as before'—when the shouts of the people, and the triumphal swell and din, have died away, this is the manner in which our two tribunes look at each other. They know their voices would not make so much as a ripple, at that moment, in the tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it is their business to sway,—the tide which is setting all one way then, in one of its monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing with it,—the tide which is taking the military hero 'On to THE CAPITOL.' But though they cannot then oppose it, they can note it. And it is thus that they register that popular confirmation at home, of the soldier's vote on the field.

It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its living outline, composed in that 'charactery' which lays the past and future open. It is a picture good for the Roman hero's entry; 'and were now the general of our gracious empress, as in good time he may, from Ireland coming, bringing rebellion broached on his sword'—would it, or would it not, suit him?

It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its main feature, for all the ages, at least of a brutish popular ignorance, of a merely instinctive human growth and formation; but it is a picture taken from the life,—caught,—detained with the secret of that palette, whose secret none has yet found, and the detail is all, not Roman, but, Elizabethan. Those 'variable complexions,' that one sees, 'smothering the stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and roofs, even to the 'ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are Elizabethan. It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some way, and it is worth noting if it were only for that. There goes 'the seld shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' here is a 'veiled dame' who lets us see that 'war of white and damask in her nicely gawded cheeks,' a moment;—look at that 'kitchen malkin,' peering over the wall there with 'her richest lockram' 'pinned on her reechy neck,' eyeing the hero as he passes; and look at this poor baby here, this Elizabethan baby, saved, conserved alive, crying himself 'into a rapture' while his 'prattling nurse' has ears and eyes for the hero only, as 'she chats him.' Look at them all, for every creature you see here, from 'the seld shown flamen' to the 'kitchen malkin,' belongs soul and body to 'our gracious Empress,' and Essex and Raleigh are still winning their garlands of the war,—that is when the scene is taken, but not when it was put in its place and framed in this composition; for their game was up ere then. England preferred old heroes and their claims to new ones. 'I fear there will a worse come in his place,' was the cautious instinct.

  Bru. All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
  Are spectacled to see him: Your prattling nurse
  Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
  While she chats him: the kitchin malkin pins
  Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.
  Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
  Are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed
  With variable complexions; all agreeing
  In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens
  Do press among the popular throng, and puff
  To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames
  Commit the war of white and damask, in
  Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil
  Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother,
  As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
  Were slyly crept into his human powers,
  And gave him graceful posture.

  Sic. On the sudden,
  I warrant him consul.

  Bru. Then our office may,
  During his power, go sleep.

  Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours
  …. but will
  Lose that he hath won.

Cru. In that there's comfort.

Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand,—

[While they resolve upon the measures to be taken, which we shall note elsewhere, a messenger enters.]

Bru. What's the matter?

  Mess. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought,
  That Marcius shall be consul: I have seen
  The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind
  To hear him speak: The matrons flung their gloves,
  Ladies and maids the scarfs and handkerchiefs,
  Upon him as he passed: the nobles bended,
  As to Jove's statue; and the commons made
  A shower, and thunder, with their caps, and shouts:
  I never saw the like.

Bru. Lets to the Capitol; And carry with us ears and eyes for THE TIME, But hearts for the EVENT.

[And let us to the Capitol also, and hear the civic claim of the oaken garland, the military claim to dispose of the common-weal, as set forth by one who is himself a general 'commander-in-chief' of Rome's armies, and see whether or no the Poet's own doubtful cheer on the battle-field has any echo in this place.]

Com. It is held, That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver: IF IT BE, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpois'd.

[If it be? And he goes on to tell a story which fits, in all its points, a great hero, a true chieftain, brave as heroes of old romance, who lived when this was written, concluding thus—]

  Com. He stopped the fliers;
  And, by his rare example, made the coward
  Turn terror into sport: as waves before
  A vessel under sail, SO MEN OBEY'D,
  And fell below his stem: his sword, (death's stamp.)
  Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
  He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
  Was timed with dying cries: alone he enter'd
  The mortal gate o'the city, which he painted
  With shunless destiny, aidless came off,
  And with a sudden re-enforcement struck
  Corioli, like a planet: now, ALL'S HIS:
  When by and by the din of war 'gan pierce
  His ready sense: then straight his doubled spirit
  Re-quicken'd what in flesh was fatigate,
  And to the battle came he; where he did
  Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if
  'Twere a perpetual spoil: and till we call'd
  Both field and city ours, he never stood
  To ease his breast with panting.

Men. WORTHY MAN!

First Sen. He cannot but with measure fit the honours Which we devise him.

[One more quality, however, his pleader insists on, as additional proof of this 'fitness' for though it is a negative one, its opposite had not been reckoned among the kingly virtues, and the poet takes some pains to bring that opposite quality into relief, throughout, by this negative.]

Com. Our spoils he kicked at; And look'd upon things precious, as they were The common muck o' the world.

Men. HE'S RIGHT NOBLE; Let him be call'd for.

First Sen. Call for Coriolanus.

Off. He doth appear.

At the opening of this scene, two officers appeared on the stage, 'laying cushions,' for this is one of those specimens of the new method of investigation applied to the noblest subjects, 'which represents, as it were, to the eye, the whole order of the invention,' and into the Capitol stalks now the casque, for this is that 'step from the casque to the cushion' which the Poet is considering in the abstract; but it does not suit his purpose to treat of it in these abstract terms merely, because 'reason cannot be so sensible.' This, too, is one of those grand historic moments which this new, select, prepared history must represent to the eye in all its momentous historic splendour, for this is the kind of popular instruction which reproduces the past, which represents the historic event, not in perspective, but as present. And this is the 'business,' and this is the play in which we are told 'action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'

The seats of state are prepared for him. 'Call Coriolanus,' is the senate's word. The conqueror's step is heard. 'He does appear.'

  Men. The senate, Coriolanus, are well pleased
  To make thee consul.

  Cor. I do owe them still
  My life, and services.

  Men. IT THEN REMAINS,
  THAT YOU DO SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE.

  Cor. I do beseech you,
  Let me overleap that custom.

  Sic. Sir, the people
  Must have their voices; neither will they bate
  One jot of their ceremony.

  Men. Put them not to't:—[his friendly adviser says.]
  Pray you, go fit you to the custom; and
  Take to you, as your predecessors have,
  Your honour, with your form.

  Cor. It is a part
  That I shall blush in acting, and might well
  Be taken from the people.

Bru. Mark you that!

  Cor. To brag unto them,—Thus I did, and thus;—
  Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
  As if I had received them for the hire
  Of their breath only.

THE POPULAR ELECTION.

  'The greater part carries it.
  If he would but incline to the people,
  There never was a worthier man.'

And yet, after all, that is what he wants for them, and must have or he is nothing; for as the Poet tells us elsewhere, 'our monarchs and our outstretched heroes are but the beggar's shadows.' The difficulty is, that he wishes to take his 'hire' in some more quiet way, without being rudely reminded of the nature of the transaction.

But the Poet's toils are about him. The man of science has caught the hero, the king in germ; the dragon wings are not yet spread. He wishes to exhibit the embryo monarch in this particular stage of his development, and the scientific process proceeds with as little regard to the victim's wishes, as if he were indeed that humble product of nature to which the Poet likens him. 'There's a differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub.' Just on that step between 'the casque and the cushion,' the philosopher arrests him.

For this history denotes, as we have seen, a foregone conclusion. The scholar has privately anatomized in his study the dragon's wings, and this theatrical synthesis is designed to be an instructive one. He wishes to show, in a palpable form, what is and what is not, essential to the mechanism of that greatness which, though it presents itself to the eye in the contemptible physique, and moral infirmity and pettiness of the human individual, is yet clothed with powers so monstrous, so real, so terrific, that all men are afflicted with them;—this thing in which 'the conditions of a man are so altered,' this thing which 'has grown from man to dragon, which is more than a creeping thing.' He will show that after all it is nothing in the world but the popular power itself, the power of the people instinctively, unscientifically and unartistically exercised.

The Poet has analysed that so potent name by which men call it, and he will show upon his stage, by that same method which his followers have made familiar to us, in other departments of investigation, the elements of its power. He will let us see how it was those despised 'mechanics,' those 'poor citizens,' with their strong arms and voices, who were throwing themselves,—in their enthusiasm,—en-masse into that engine, and only asking to be welded in it; that would have made of this citizen a thing so terrific. He will show how, after all, it was the despised commons who were making of that citizen a king, of that soldier a monarch,—who were changing with the alchemy of the 'shower and thunder they made with their caps and voices,' his oak leaves and acorns, into gold and jewels.

He will show it on the platform of a state, where that vote is formally and constitutionally given, and not in a state where it is only a virtual and tacit one. He will show it in detail. He will cause the multitude to be represented, and pass by twos and threes across his stage, and compel the haughty chief, the would be ruler, to beg of them, individually, their suffrages, and show them his claim,—such as it is, the 'unaching scars that he should hide.'

It is to this Poet's purpose to exhibit that despised element in the state, which the popular submission creates, that unnoticed element of the common suffrage which looks so smooth on its surface, which seems to the haughty chief so little worth his notice, when it goes his way and bears him on its crest. But the experimenter will undertake to show what it is by ruffling it, by instigating this chief to put himself in the madness of his private affections, in the frenzy of his pride, into open opposition with it. He will show us what it is by playing with it. He will wake it from its unvisited depths, and bid his hero strive with it.

He will show what that popular consent, or the consent of 'the commons' amounts to, in the king-making process, by omitting it or by withdrawing it, before it is too late to withdraw it;—according to the now well-known rules of that new art of scientific investigation, which was then getting worked out and cleared, from this author's own methods of investigation. For it was because this faculty was in him, so unlike what it was in others, that he was able to write that science of it, by which other men, stepping into his armour, have been able to achieve so much.

He will show how those dragon teeth and claws, that were just getting the steel into them, which would have armed that single will against the whole, and its weal, crumble for the lack of it; he will show us the new-fledged wings, with all their fresh gauds, collapsing and dissolving with that popular withdrawal. He will continue the process, till there is nothing left of all that gorgeous state pageant, which came in with the flourish of trumpets and the voice of the herald long and loud, and the echoing thunder of the commons, but a poor grub of a man, in his native conditions, a private citizen, denied even the common privilege of citizenship,—with only his wife and his mother and a friend or two, to cling to him,—turned out of the city gates, to seek his fortune.

But that is the moment in which the Poet ventures to bring out a little more fully, in the form of positive statement, that latent affirmation, that definition of the true nobility which underlies all the play and glistens through it in many a fine, but hitherto, unnoticed point; that affirmation which all these negatives conclude in, that latent idea of the true personal greatness and its essential relation to the common-weal and the state, which is the predominant idea of the play, which shapes all the criticism and points all the satire of it. It is there that the true hero speaks out for a moment from the lips of that old military heroism, of a greatness which does not cease when the wings of state drop off from it, of an honour that takes no stain though all the human voices join to sully it,—the dignity that rises and soars and gains the point of immutability, when all the world would have it under foot. But in that nobility men need training,—scientific training. The instinctive, unartistic human growth, or the empirical unscientific arts of culture, give but a vulgar counterfeit of it, or at best a poor, sickly, distorted, convulsive, unsatisfactory type of it, for 'being gentle, wounded,'—(and it is gentility and nobility and the true aristocracy that we speak of here,)—'craves a NOBLE CUNNING;' so the old military chieftain tells us. It is a cunning which his author does not put him upon practising personally. Practically he represents another school of heroes. It is the word of that higher heroism in which he was himself wanting, it is the criticism on his own part, it is the affirmation which all this grand historic negative is always pointing to, which the author borrows his lips to utter.

The result in this case, the overthrow of the military hero on his way to the chair of state, is occasioned by the premature arrogance to which his passionate nature impels him. For his fiery disposition refuses to obey the decision of his will, and overleaps in its passion, all the barriers of that policy which his calmer moments had prescribed. The result is occasioned by his open display of his contempt for the people, before he had as yet mastered the organizations which would make that display, in an unenlightened age, perhaps, a safe one.

This point of time is much insisted on, and emphasized.

'Let them pull all about mine ears,' cries the hero, as he enters his own house, after his first encounter with the multitude in their wrath.

'Let them pull all about mine ears, present me Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still— Be THUS to them.'

[For that is the sublime conclusion of these heroics.]

'You do the nobler,' responds the Coryphæus of that chorus of patricians who accompany him home, and who ought, of course, to be judges of nobility. But there is another approbation wanted. Volumnia is there; but she listens in silence. 'I muse,' he continues—

  'I muse my mother
  Does not approve me further—who was wont
  To call them woollen vassals, things created
  To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads
  In congregations, to YAWN, be STILL, AND WONDER,
  When one but of my ordinance stood up
  To speak of PEACE or WAR. I talk of you [to Volumnia.]
  Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me
  False to my nature? [Softly] Either say I play
  The man I am.

  Vol. O sir, sir, sir,
  I would have had you put your power well on,
  Ere you had worn it out.

Cor. Let go.

  Vol. Lesser had been
  The thwarting of your dispositions, IF
  You had not shown them how you were disposed
  Ere they lacked power to cross you.

Cor. Let them HANG!

Vol. Ay, and BURN too!

For that was the 'disposition' which these Commons, if they had waited but a little longer, might have 'lacked power to cross.' That was the disposition they had thwarted.

But then it is necessary to our purpose, as it was to the author's, to notice that the collision in this case is a forced one. It grows by plot. The people are put up to it. For there are men in that commonwealth who are competent to instruct the Commons in the doctrine of the common weal, and who are carefully and perseveringly applying themselves to that task; though they are men who know how to bide their time, and they will wait till the soaring insolence of the hero is brought into open collision with that enlightened popular will.

They will wait till the military hero's quarrel with the commonwealth breaks out anew. For they know that it lies in the nature of things, and cannot but occur. The éclat of his victory, and the military pride of the nation, films it over for a time; but the quarrel is a radical one, and cannot be healed.

For this chief of soldiers, and would-be head and ruler of the state knows no commonwealth. His soul is not large enough to admit of that conception. The walls of ignorance, that he shuts himself up in, darken and narrow his world to the sphere of his own microcosm,— and, therefore, there is a natural war between the world and him. The state of universal subjection, on the part of others, to his single exclusive passions and affections, the state in which the whole is sacrificed to the part, is the only state that will satisfy him. That is the peace he is disposed to conquer; that is the consummation with which he would stay; that is his notion of state. When that consummation is attained, or when such an approximation to it as he judges to be within his reach, is attained, then, and not till then, he is for conservation;—revolution then is sin; but, till then he will have change and overturning—he will fill the earth with rapine, and fire, and slaughter. But this is just the peace and war principle, which this man, who proposes a durable and solid peace, and the true state, a state constructed with reference to true definitions and axioms,—this is the peace and war principle which the man of science, on scientific grounds, objects to. 'He likes nor peace nor war' on those terms. The conclusions he has framed from those solid premises which he finds in the nature of things, makes him the leader of the opposition in both cases. In one way or another he will make war on that peace; he will kindle the revolutionary fires against that conservation. In one way or another, in one age or another, he will silence that war with all its pomp and circumstance, with all the din of its fifes, and drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the ignominy of ignorant and barbaric ages,—'for we call a nettle but a nettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, instinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute force, till men shall grow sick, at last, of the old, rusty, bygone trumpery of its insignia, and say, 'Take away those baubles.'

But the hero that we deal with here, is but the pure negation of that heroism which his author conceives of, aspires to, and will have, historical, which he defines as the pattern of man's nature in all men. This one knows no common-wealth; the wealth that is wealth in his eyes, is all his own; the weal that he conceives of, is the weal that is warm at his own heart only. At best he can go out of his particular only as far as the limits of his own hearthstone, or the limits of his clique or caste. And in his selfish passion, when that demands it, he will sacrifice the nearest to him. As to the Commons, they are 'but things to buy and sell with groats,' a herd, a mass, a machine, to be informed with his single will, to be subordinated to his single wishes; in peace enduring the gnawings of hunger, that the garners their toil has filled may overflow for him,—enduring the badges of a degradation which blots out the essential humanity in them, to feed his pride;—in war offered up in droves, to win the garland of the war for him. That is the old hero's commonwealth. His small brain, his brutish head, could conceive no other. The ages in which he ruled the world with his instincts, with his fox-like cunning, with his wolfish fury, with his dog-like ravening,—those brute ages could know no other.

But it is the sturdy European race that the hero has to deal with here; and though, in the moment of victory, it is ready always to chain itself to the conqueror's car, and, in the exultation of conquest, and love for the conqueror, fastens on itself, with joy, the fetters of ages, this quarrel is always breaking out in it anew: it does not like being governed with the edge of the sword;—it is not fond of martial law as a permanent institution.

Two very sagacious tribunes these old Romans happen to have on hand in this emergency: birds considerably too old to be caught with this chaff of victory and military virtue, which puts the populace into such a frenzy, and very learnedly they talk on this subject, with a slight tendency to anachronisms in their mode of expression, in language which sounds a little, at times, as if they might have had access to some more recent documents, than the archives of mythical Rome could just then furnish to them.

But the reader should judge for himself of the correctness of this criticism.

Refusing to join in the military procession on its way to the Capitol, and stopping in the street for a little conference on the subject, when it has gone by, after that vivid complaint of the universal prostration to the military hero already quoted, the conference proceeds thus:—

  Sic. On the sudden,
  I warrant him consul.

Bru. Then our office may, During his power, go sleep.

Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours From where he should begin, and end; but will Lose those that he hath won.

Bru. In that there's comfort.

  Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand.
  But they, upon their ancient malice, will
  Forget, with the least cause, these his new honours;
  Which that he'll give them, make as little question
  As he is proud to do't.

  Bru. I heard him swear,
  Were he to stand for consul, never would he
  Appear i'the market-place, nor on him put
  The napless vesture of humility;
  Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds
  To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

Sic. 'Tis right.

  Bru. It was his word: O, he would miss it, rather
  Than carry it, but by the suit o'the gentry to him,
  And the desire of the nobles.

  Sic. I wish no better,
  Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it
  In execution.

Bru. 'Tis most like he will.

  Sic. It shall be to him then, as our good wills
  A sure destruction.

  Bru. So it must fall out
  To him, or our authorities. For an end,
  We must suggest the people, in what hatred
  He still hath held them; that to his power he would
  Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders, and
  DISPROPERTIED THEIR FREEDOMS: [—note the expression—]
  holding them,
  IN HUMAN ACTION AND CAPACITY,
  Of no more soul nor fitness for THE WORLD
  Than CAMELS in their war; who have their provand
  Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows
  For sinking under them.

  Sic. This as you say, suggested
  At some time, when his soaring insolence
  Shall teach the people (which time shall not want)
  If he be put upon't; and that's as easy
  As to set dogs on sheep; will be HIS FIRE
  To KINDLE THEIR DRY STUBBLE; AND THEIR BLAZE
  SHALL DARKEN HIM FOR EVER.

  [There is a history in all men's lives,
  Figuring the nature of the times deceased,
  The which observed a man may prophesy,
  With a near aim of the main chance of things,
  As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
  And weak beginnings, lie intreasured:
  Such things become the hatch and brood of time.—Henry IV.]

Coriolanus, elected by the Senate to the consulship, proposes, in his arrogance, as we have already seen, to dispense with the usual form, which he understands to be a form merely, of asking the consent of the people, and exhibiting to them his claim to their suffrages. The tribunes have sternly withstood this proposition, and will hear of 'no jot' of encroachment upon the dignity and state of the Commons. After the flourish with which the election in the Senate Chamber concludes, and the withdrawal of the Senate, again they stop to discuss, confidentially, 'the situation.'

Bru. You see how he intends to use the people.

  Sic. May they perceive his intent; he will require them
  As if he did contemn what they requested
  Should be in their power to give.

  Bru. Come, we'll inform them
  Of our proceedings here: on the market-place
  I know they do attend us.

And to the market-place we go; for it is there that the people are collecting in throngs; no bats or clubs in their hands now, but still full of their passion of gratitude and admiration for the hero's patriotic achievements, against the common foe; and, under the influence of that sentiment, wrought to its highest pitch by that action and reaction which is the incident of the common sentiment in 'the greater congregations,' or 'extensive wholes,' eager to sanction with their 'approbation,' the appointment of the Senate, though the graver sort appear to be, even then, haunted with some unpleasant reminiscences, and not without an occasional misgiving as to the wisdom of the proceeding. There is a little tone of the former meeting lurking here still.

First Cit. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him.

Second Cit. We may, Sir, if we will.

Third Cit. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do. Ingratitude is monstrous: and for the multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude,—

[There are scientific points here. This term 'monstrosity' is one of the radical terms in the science of nature; but, like many others, it is used in the popular sense, while the sweep and exactitude of the scientific definition, or 'form' is introduced into it.]

—of the which, we, being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.

First Cit. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve: for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

Third Cit. We have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured: and truly I think, if ALL our wits were to issue out of ONE skull, they would fly east, west, north, south; and their consent of one direct way should be at once to ALL the points o'the compass.

[An enigma; but the sphinx could propound no better one. Truly this man has had good teaching. He knows how to translate the old priestly Etruscan into the vernacular.]

Second Cit. Think you so? Which way, do you judge, my wit would fly?

Third Cit. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's WILL, 'tis strongly wedged up in a block-head: but if it were at liberty …

Second Cit. You are never without your tricks:—…

Third Cit. Are you all resolved to give your voices? But that's no matter. The greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man.

[Enter Coriolanus and Menenius.]

Here he comes, and in the gown of humility; mark his behaviour. We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He's to make his requests by particulars: wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues: therefore FOLLOW ME, and I'LL DIRECT YOU HOW YOU SHALL GO BY HIM.

[The voice of the true leader is lurking here, and all through these scenes the 'double' meanings are thickly sown.]

All. Content, content!

  Men. O Sir, you are not right: have you not known
  The worthiest men have done it?

  Cor. What must I say?—
  I pray, Sir?—Plague upon't! I cannot bring
  My tongue to such a pace:—Look, Sir,—my wounds;—
  I got them in my country's service, when
  Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran
  From the noise of OUR OWN DRUMS.

  Men. O me, the gods!
  You must not speak of that; you must desire them
  To think upon you.

  Cor. Think upon me? Hang 'em!
  I would they would forget me, like the virtues
  Which our divines lose by them.

  Men. You'll mar all;
  I'll leave you: Pray you, speak to them, I pray you,
  In wholesome manner.

  [And now, instead of being thronged with a mob of
  citizens—instructed how they are to go by him with the honor of
  their single voices they enter 'by twos' and 'threes.']

[Enter two Citizens.]

  Cor. Bid them wash their faces,
  And keep their teeth clean._—So, here comes a brace,
  You know the cause, Sir, of my standing here.

First Cit. We do, Sir; tell us what hath brought you to't,

Cor. Mine own desert.—[The would-be consul answers.]

Second Cit. Your own desert?

Cor. Ay, not Mine own desire.

[His own desert has brought him to the consulship; his own desire would have omitted the conciliation of the people, and the deference to their will, that with all his desert somehow he seems to find expected from him.]

First Cit. How! not your own desire!

Cor. No, Sir. 'Twas never my desire yet, To trouble the poor with begging.

He desires what the poor have to give him however; but he desires to take it, without begging. But it is the heart of the true hero that speaks in earnest through that mockery, and the reference is to a state of things towards which the whole criticism of the play is steadfastly pointed, a state in which sovereigns were reluctantly compelled to beg from the poor, what they would rather have taken without their leave, or, at least, a state in which the form of this begging was still maintained, though there lacked but little to make it a form only, a state of things in which a country gentleman might be called on to sell 'his brass pans' without being supplied, on the part of the State, with what might appear, to him, any respectable reason for it, putting his life in peril, and coming off, with a hair's-breadth escape, of all his future usefulness, if he were bold enough to question the proceeding; a state of things in which a poor law-reader might feel himself called upon to buy a gown for a lady, whose gowns were none of the cheapest, at a time when the state of his finances might render it extremely inconvenient to do so.

But to return to the Roman citizen, for the play is written by one who knows that the human nature is what it is in all ages, or, at least, until it is improved with better arts of culture than the world has yet tried on it.

First Cit. You must think, if we give you anything, We hope to gain by you.

Cor. Well then, I pray, YOUR PRICE O'THE CONSULSHIP?

First Cit. The price is, Sir, to ask it kindly.

  Cor. Kindly?
  Sir, I pray let me ha't: I have wounds to show you,
  Which shall be yours in private.—Your good voice, Sir;
  What say you?

Second Cit. You shall have it, worthy Sir.

Cor. A match, Sir: There is in all two worthy voices begg'd:— I have your alms; adieu.

First Cit. But this is something odd.

Second Cit. An 'twere to give again,—But 'tis no matter.

[Exeunt two Citizens.]

[Enter two other Citizens.]

Cor. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices, that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.

Third Cit. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly.

Cor. Your enigma?

Third Cit. You have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a rod to her friends; you have not INDEED, loved the COMMON PEOPLE.

Cor. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been common in my love. I will, Sir, flatter my sworn brother the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account GENTLE: and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod, and be off to them most counterfeitly; that is, Sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man, and give it bountifully to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you, I may be consul.

Fourth Cit. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you our voices heartily.

Third Cit. You have received many wounds for your country.

Cor. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no further.

Both Cit. The gods give you joy, Sir, heartily! [Exeunt.]

Cor. Most sweet voices!— Better it is to die, better to starve, …Rather than fool it so, Let the high office and the honour go To one that would do thus.—I am half through; The one part suffer'd, the other will I do.

[Enter three other Citizens.]

Here come more voices,— Your Voices: for your voices I have fought: Watch'd for your voices; for your voices, bear Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six, I have seen and heard of; for your voices, Done many things, some less, some more: your voices: Indeed, I would be consul.

Fifth Cit. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's voice.

  Sixth Cit. Therefore let him be consul: The gods give him joy, and
  make him good friend to the people.

All. Amen, Amen.— God save thee, noble consul! [Exeunt Citizens.]

Cor. WORTHY VOICES!

[Re-enter Menenius, with the tribunes Brutus, and Sicinius.]

Men. You have stood your limitation; and the tribunes Endue you with the people's voice: Remains, That in the official marks invested, you Anon do meet the senate.

Cor. Is this done?

Sic. The custom of request you have discharged: The people do admit you; and are summon'd To meet anon, upon your approbation.

Cor. Where? At the senate-house?

Sic. There Coriolanus.

Cor. May I change these garments?

Sic. You may, Sir.

Cor. That I'll straight do, and knowing myself again, Repair to the senate house.

Men. I'll keep you company.—Will you along.

Bru. We stay here for the people.

Sic. Fare you well.

[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]

  He has it now; and by his looks, methinks,
  'Tis warm at his heart.

  Bru. With a proud heart he wore
  His humble weeds: Will you dismiss the people?

[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the review, the critical review, is that which must follow, for this is not the same people we had on the stage when the play began. They are the same in person, perhaps; but it is no longer a mob, armed with clubs, clamouring for bread, rushing forth to kill their chiefs, and have corn at their own price. It is a people conscious of their political power and dignity, an organised people; it is a people with a constituted head, capable of instructing them in the doctrine of political duties and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this review of the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned Tribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom, this great, popular veto, this deliberate 'rejection' of the popular affirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, 'a negative instance.']

[Re-enter Citizens.]

Sic. How now, my masters? HAVE YOU CHOSE THIS MAN?

First Cit. He has our voices, Sir.

Bru. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.

Second Cit. Amen, Sir: To my poor unworthy notice, He mocked us when he begg'd our voices.

  Third Cit. Certainly
  He flouted us downright.

First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.

Second Cit. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says, He used us scornfully: he should have show'd us His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.

Sic. Why, so he did, I am sure.

Cit. No; no man saw 'em. [Several speak.]

  Third Cit. He said he had wounds which he could show in private;
  And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,
  'I would be consul,' says he,' AGED CUSTOM,
  BUT BY YOUR VOICES, WILL NOT SO PERMIT ME;
  Your voices THEREFORE:' When we granted that,
  Here was,—'I thank you for your voices,—thank you,—
  Your most sweet voices:—now you have left your voices,
  I have no further with you:'—Was not this mockery?

  Sic. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't?
  Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness
  To yield your voices?

Bru. Could you not have told him As you were lesson'd—when he had no power, But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy; ever spake against Your LIBERTIES, and the CHARTERS that you bear I' THE BODY of the WEAL: and now arriving A place of potency, and sway o' the state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might Be CURSES to YOURSELVES.

Sic. Thus to have said As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit, And tried his inclination; from him plucked, Either his gracious promise, which you might, As cause had called you up, have HELD HIM TO; Or else it would have galled his surly nature, Which easily endures, not article Tying him to aught;—so putting him to rage, You should have ta'en advantage of his choler, And so left him unelected.

[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old Roman statesmen to give, and not so very unlike those which English Commons found occasion to put in execution not long after.]

Bru. Did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt, When he did need your loves; and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When, he hath power to crush? Why had your bodies No heart among you, or had you tongues To cry against THE RECTORSHIP of—judgment?

Sic. Have you Ere now, deny'd the asker, and now again, On him that did not ask, but mock, [with a pretence of asking,] bestow Your sued for tongues?

Third Cit. HE'S NOT CONFIRMED, we may deny him YET.

  Second Cit. And will deny him:
  I'll have five hundred voices of that sound.

First Cit. I, twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.

Bru. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends, They have chose a consul that will from them Take their liberties, MAKE THEM OF NO MORE VOICE THAN DOGS, that are as often BEAT for barking, As KEPT TO DO SO.

  Sic. Let them assemble,
  And on a safer judgment, ALL REVOKE
  Your IGNORANT ELECTION.

  Bru. Lay
  A fault on us, your tribunes; that WE LABOURED
  NO IMPEDIMENT BETWEEN, but that you must
  Cast your election on him.

  Sic. Say, you chose him
  More after our commandment, than as guided
  By your own true affections, and that your minds,
  Pre-occupied with what you rather must do,
  Than what you should, made you against the grain
  To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.

  Bru. Ay, SPARE us NOT. Say WE READ LECTURES TO YOU,
  How youngly he began to serve his country,
  How long continued, and what stock he springs of;
  The noble house o' the Marcians, from whence came,
  That Ancus Martius, Numa's daughter's son,
  Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:
  Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
  That our best water brought by conduits hither;
  And Censoriuus, darling of the people,
  And nobly named so, being censor twice,
  Was his great ancestor.

[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at all. His reading and writing comes by nature.]

Sic. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought, To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy, and REVOKE Your sudden approbation.

Bru.. Say you ne'er had done't,— Harp on that still,—but by our putting on, And presently when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol.

  Citizens. [Several speak.] We will so. Almost all
  Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens.]

  Bru. Let them go on.
  This mutiny were better put in hazard,
  Than stay, past doubt, for greater;
  If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
  With their refusal, both observe and answer
  The vantage of his anger.

  Sic. To the Capitol:
  Come, we'll be there before the stream o' the people,
  And this shall seem, as partly'tis, their own
  Which WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.

[See the Play of Henry the Seventh, Founder of the Elizabethan
Tyranny, by the same author.]

We have witnessed the popular election on the scientific boards: we have seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil confirmation of the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have seen it in the senate-chamber and in the market-place, and we saw it in 'the smothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and on 'the leads and ridges': we have seen and heard it, not in the shower and thunder that the commons made with their caps and voices only, but in the scarfs, and gloves, and handkerchiefs, which 'the ladies, and maids, and matrons threw.' We have seen each single contribution to this great public act put in by the Poet's selected representative of classes. 'The kitchen malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck, clambering the wall to eye him,' spake for hers; 'the seld-shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to record the vote of his; 'the veiled dame, exposing the war of white and damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of Phebus' burning kisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distribution of the tribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; 'the prattling nurse' who will give her baby that is 'crying itself into a rapture there, while she chats him' her reminiscence of this scene by and by, was there to give the nurses' approbation.

For this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up and count, when he comes to review at last, 'in a better hour,' these spontaneous public acts—these momentous acts that seal up the future, and bind the unborn generations of the advancing kind with the cramp of their fetters. Not less careful than this is the analysis when he undertakes to track to its historic source one of those practical axioms, one of those received beliefs, which he finds determining the human conduct, limiting the human history, moulding the characters of men, determining beforehand what they shall be. This is the process when he undertakes, to get one of these rude, instinctive, spontaneous affirmations—one of those idols of the market or of the Tribe—reviewed and criticised by the heads of the Tribe, at least, 'in a better hour,'—criticised and rejected. 'Proceeding by negatives and exclusion first': this is the form in which this Tribune puts on record his scientific veto of that 'ignorant election.'

And in this so carefully selected and condensed combination of historical spectacles—in this so new, this so magnificently illustrated political history—there is another historic moment to be brought out now; and in this same form of 'visible history,' one not less important than those already exhibited.

In the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement, the great historic spectacle of a people 'REVOKING THEIR IGNORANT ELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of those same remarkable leaders, whose voice had been wanting (as they are careful to inform us) till then in the business of the state; leaders who contrive at last to inform the people, in plain terms, that they 'are at point to lose their liberties,' that 'Marcius will have all from them,' and who apologise for their conduct afterwards by saying, that 'he affected one sole throne, without assistance'; for the time had come when the Tribune could repeat the Poet's whisper, 'The one side shall have bale.'

This so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited here in all its actual historical detail. It is produced by one who is able to include in his dramatic programme the whole sweep of its eventualities, the whole range of its particulars, because he has made himself acquainted with the forces, he has ascended, by scientifically inclusive definition, to the 'powers' that are to be 'operant' in it; and he who has that 'charactery' of nature, may indeed 'lay the future open.' We talk of prophecy; but there is nothing in literature to compare at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction. There is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars, in its comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.

But this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make before that revolutionary movement, which in its weak beginnings in his time lay intreasured, should proceed any further—this preliminary speech, with its so vivid political illustration, is not yet finished. The true doctrine of an instructed scientific election and government, that 'vintage' of politics—that vintage of scientific definitions and axioms which he is getting out of this new kind of history—that new vintage of the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted history, will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with the popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that it begins with affirmation—but that is the method for gods, and not men—men must begin with negations; they must have tables of review of instances, tables of negation, tables of rejection; and divide nature, not with fire, but with the mind, that divine fire. 'If the mind attempt this affirmation from the first,' he says, 'which it always will when left to itself there will spring up phantoms, mere theories, and ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring daily correction. These will be better or worse, according to the power and strength of the understanding which creates them. But it is only for God to recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of contemplation; men can only proceed first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection.' And though he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed with the nature of HEAT, at the moment in which he first produces these new scientific instruments, which he calls tables of review, and explains their 'facilities,' he tells us plainly, that they are adapted to other subjects, and that those affirmations which are most essential to the welfare of man, will in due time come off from them, practical axioms on matters of universal and incessant practical concern, that will not want daily correction, that will not want revolutionary correction, to fit them to the exigency.

The question here is not of 'heat,' but of SOVEREIGNTY; it is the question of the consulship, regarded from the ground of the tribuneship. It is not Coriolanus that this tribune is spending so much breath on. The instincts, which unanalytic, barbaric ages, enthrone and mistake for greatness and nobility, are tried and rejected here; and the business of the play is, to get them excluded from the chair of state. The philosopher will have those instincts which men, in their 'particular and private natures,' share with the lower orders of animals, searched out, and put in their place in human affairs, which is not, as he takes it, THE HEAD—the head of the COMMON-weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all against him—he is partial to him, rather; it is not Coriolanus but the instincts that are on trial here, and the man—the so-called man—of instinct, who has no principle of state and sovereignty, no principle of true _man_liness and nobility in his soul; and the trial is not yet completed. The author would be glad to have that revolution which he has inserted in the heart of this play deferred, if that were possible, though he knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a saving of trouble if it could be deferred until some true and scientifically prepared notions, some practical axioms, which would not need in their turn fierce historical correction—revolutionary correction—could be imparted to the common mind.

But we must follow him in this process of division and exclusion a little further, before we come in our plot to the revolution. That revolution which he foresees as imminent and inevitable, he has put on paper here: but there is another lurking within, for which we are not yet ripe. This locked-up tribune will have to get abroad; he will have to get his limits enlarged, and find his way into some new departments, before ever that can begin.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.

'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.'

Advancement of Learning.

'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'

Novum Organum.

As to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them—in an age, too, when Parliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for contumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state—in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on a day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew;—as to the method of the philosophical investigations which were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently specific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets. As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing in nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern Solomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not—that it was beyond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh, by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world, and promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make it illustrious in future ages.

There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its applications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did with it himself—that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as it happened.

So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and greatest innovation in its practice—so totally unaccustomed were men then to look for anything like power in the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding—so impossible was it for this single book to remove that previous impression—that the Author of the Novum Organum could even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent allusions to the comprehensive nature—the essentially comprehensive nature—of 'the Machine' whose application to these certain instances he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of it.

Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.

Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the human use—when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the NOVUM ORGANUM with the key of 'Times' does not need to be told—can see for himself—that in his description of the method he has already contrived to make the application, the universal practical application.

In his PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, the mind of man is brought out already from its SPECIFIC narrowness, from its own abstract logical conceits and arrogant prenotions, into that collision with fact—the broader fact, the universal fact—and subjected to that discipline from it which is the intention of this logic. It is a 'machine' which is meant to serve to Man as a 'New' Mind—the scientific mind, which is in harmony with nature—a mind informed and enlarged with the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments of his welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is a Machine in which the senses, those hitherto despised instruments in philosophy, by means of a scientific rule and oversight, and with the aid of scientific instruments, are made available for philosophic purposes. It is a Machine in which that organization whereby the universal nature impresses itself on us—reports itself to us—striking its incessant telegraphs on us, whether we read them or not, is for the first time brought to the philosopher's aid; and it is a Machine, also, by which speculation, that hitherto despised instrument in practice, is for the first time, brought to the aid of the man of practice. It is doubly 'New': it is a Machine in which speculation becomes practical—it is a Machine in which practice becomes scientific.

[Fool. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his face?

Lear. No.

Fool. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.]

In 'THE PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' the universal matter of fact is already taken up and disposed of in grand masses, under these headships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous, but scientific manner. The Nature of Things is all there; for this is a Logic which bows the mind of man to the law of the universal nature, and informs and enlarges it with that. It is not a Logic merely in the old sense of that term. The old Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew out of it, are the things which this Machine is going to puff away, with the mere whiff and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse for ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been limited, but a philosophy. A logic in which the general 'notions of nature' which are causes, powers, simple powers, elemental powers, true differences, are substituted for those spontaneous, rude, uncorrected, specific notions,—pre-notions of men, which have in that form, as they stand thus, no correlative in nature, and are therefore impotent—not true terms and forms, but air-words, air-lines, merely. It is a logic which includes the Mind of NATURE, and her laws; and not one which is limited to the mind of Man, and so fitted to its incapacity as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate him in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by rule, and set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.

The universal history, all of it that the mind of man is constituted to grasp, is here in the general, under these PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, in the luminous order of the Inventor of this science, blazing throughout with his genius, and the mind that has abolished its prenotions, and renounced its rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies, and has taken this scientific Organum instead; has armed itself with the Nature of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all specifications and particulars.

The author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic arrangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in this great work of his, the work in which he openly introduces HIS INNOVATION,—as that—will fall off by and by, when there is no longer any need of them. They are but the natural guards with which great Nature, working in the instinct of the philosophic genius, protects her choicest growth,—the husk of that grain which must have times, and a time to grow in,—the bark which the sap must stop to build, ere its delicate works within are safe. They are like the sheaths with which she hides through frost and wind and shower, until their hour has come, her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning, her struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial triumphs.

In the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this complicated network of superficial divisions, the man of humour, who is always not far off and ready to assist in the priestly ministrations as he sees occasion, gently directs our attention to those more simple and natural divisions of the subject, and those more immediately practical terms, which it might be possible to use, under certain circumstances, in speaking of the same subjects, into which, however, these are easily resolvable, as soon as the right point of observation is taken. Through all this haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the outline of those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly produced—under their scholastic names, indeed,—in his book of the Advancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly continue, in a work produced professedly, as a practical instrument fit for application to immediate use, and where the true application is constantly entering the vitals of subjects too delicate to be openly glanced at then.

But he gives us to understand, however, that he has made the application of this method to practice, in a much more specific, detailed manner, in another place, that he has brought it down from those more general forms of the Novum Organum, into 'the nobler' departments, 'the more chosen' departments of that universal field of human practice, which the Novum Organum takes up in its great outline, and boldly and clearly claims in the general, though when it comes to specific applications and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike, or appear to strike, into that one track of practice, which was the only one left open to it then,—which it keeps still as rigidly as if it had no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk of 'universality,' and carried it with his own hand into the minutest points and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres, those living articulations in which the grand natural divisions he indicates here, naturally terminate; the divisions which the philosopher who 'makes the Art and Practic part of life, the mistress to his Theoric,' must of course follow. He tells us that he has applied it to PARTICULAR ARTS, to those departments of the human experience and practice in which the need of a rule is most felt, and where things have been suffered to go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous manner, and that his axioms of practice in these departments have been so scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they will be apt to know their way to particulars again;—that their specifications are at the same time so comprehensive and so minute, that he considers them fit for immediate use, or at least so far forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process being, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his professedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly practical scientific work.

But these so important applications of his philosophy to practice, of which he issues so fair a prospectus, though he frequently refers to them, could not then be published. The time had not come, and personally, he was obliged to leave, before it came. He was careful, however, to make the best provision which could be made, under such circumstances, for the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a will. These works of practice could not then be published; and if they could have been, there was no public then ready for them. They could not be published; but there was nothing to hinder their being put under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in packing them up in a portable form, under lids and covers of one sort and another, so unexceptionable, that all the world could carry them about, for a century or two, and not perceive that there was any harm in them. Very curiously wrought covers they might be too, with some taste of the wonders of mine art pressing through, a little here and there. They might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in one case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another; but in such a manner as to command, in both cases, the admiration and wonder of men, so as to pique perpetually their curiosity and provoke inquiry, until the time had come and the key was found.

'Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes in the historical plural of his philosophic chair,—'this question, rather than objection,'—[it was much to be preferred in that form certainly]—'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone, according to our method, or the other sciences such as—ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' A pretty question to raise just then, truly, though this philosopher sees fit to take it so demurely. 'Whether we talk of perfecting politics with our method,' Elizabethan politics,—and not politics only, but whether we talk of perfecting 'ethics' with it also, and 'logic,—common logic,' which last is as much in need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of perfecting of that is the reform in the others. 'We certainly intend,'—the emphasis here is on the word 'certainly,' though the reader who has not the key of the times may not perceive it; 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' For this is the author whose words are most of them emphatic. We must read his sentences more than once to get all the emphasis. We certainly INTEND to comprehend them all. 'We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing that word in another place, and putting this intention into the shape of a promise.

And as common logic which regulates matters by syllogism is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, so our inductive method likewise, comprehends them all.—Again—[he thinks this bears repeating, repeating in this connection, for now he is measuring the claims of this new method, this new logic, with the claims of that which he finds in possession, regulating matters by syllogism, not producing a very logical result, however:] 'For we form a history, and tables of invention, for ANGER, FEAR, SHAME, and the like,' [that is—we form a history and tables of invention for the passions or affections,] 'and also for EXAMPLES IN CIVIL LIFE, and the MENTAL OPERATIONS … as well as for HEAT, COLD, LIGHT, VEGETATION and THE LIKE,' and he directs us to the Fourth Part of the Instauration, which he reserves for his noblest and more chosen subjects for the confirmation of this assertion.

'But since our method of interpretation, after preparing and arranging a history, does not content itself with examining the opinions and desires of THE MIND—[hear]—like common logic, but also inspects THE NATURE of THINGS, we so regulate the mind that it may be enabled to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to that nature.' Our examples in this part of the work, which is but a small and preparatory part of it, are limited, as you will observe, to heat, cold, light, vegetation, and the like; but this is the explanation of the general intention, which will enable you to disregard that circumstance in your reading of it.—Those examples will serve their purpose with the minds that they detain. They are preparatory, and greatly useful, if you read this new logic from the height of this explanation, you will have a mind, formed by that process, able to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to the subjects omitted here by name, but so clearly claimed, not as the proper subjects only, but as the actual subjects of the new investigation. But lest you should not understand this explanation, he continues—'On this account we deliver necessary and various precepts in our doctrine of interpretation, so that we may apply, in some measure, to the method of discovering the quality and condition of the subject matter of investigation.' And this is the apology for omitting here, or seeming to omit, such sciences as Ethics, Politics, and that science which is alluded to under the name of Common Logic.

This is, indeed, a very instructive paragraph, though it is a gratuitous one for the scholar who has found leisure to read this work with the aid of that doctrine of interpretation referred to, especially if he is already familiar with its particular applications to the noble subjects just specified.

Among the prerogative instances—'suggestive instances' are included—'such as suggest or point out that which is advantageous to mankind; for bare power and knowledge in themselves exalt, rather than enrich, human nature. We shall have a better opportunity of discovering these, when we treat of the application to practice. BESIDES, in the WORK of INTERPRETATION, we LEAVE ROOM ON EVERY SUBJECT for the human or optative part; FOR IT is A PART OF SCIENCE, to make JUDICIOUS INQUIRIES and WISHES.' 'The generally useful instances. They are such as relate to various points, and frequently occur, sparing by that means considerable labour and new trials. The proper place for speaking of instruments, and contrivances, will be that in which we speak of application to practice, and the method of EXPERIMENT. All that has hitherto been ascertained and made use of, WILL BE APPLIED in the PARTICULAR HISTORY of EACH ART.' [We certainly intend to include them ALL, such as Ethics, Politics, and Common Logic.]

'We have now, therefore, exhibited the species, or simple elements of the motions, tendencies, and active powers, which are most universal in nature; and no small portion of NATURAL, that is, UNIVERSAL SCIENCE, has been sketched out. We do not, however, deny that OTHER INSTANCES can, perhaps, be added' (he has confined himself chiefly to the physical agencies under this head, with a sidelong glance at others, now and then), 'and our divisions changed to some more natural order of things [hear], and also reduced to a less number [hear], in which respect we do not allude to any abstract classification, as if one were to say,'—and he quotes here, in this apparently disparaging manner, his own grand, new-coined classification, which he has drawn out with his new method from the heart of nature, and applied to the human,—which he had to go into the universal nature to find, that very classification which he has exhibited abstractly in his Advancement of Learning—abstractly, and, therefore, without coming into any dangerous contact with any one's preconceptions,—'as if one were to say, that bodies desire the preservation, exaltation, propagation, or fruition of their natures; or, that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the UNIVERSE, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection—those two universal motions and tendencies—or of EXTENSIVE WHOLES, as in the case of those of the greater congregation.' These are phrases which look innocent enough; there is no offensive approximation to particulars here, apparently; what harm can there be in the philosophy of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations'? Nobody can call that meddling with 'church and state.' Surely one may speak of the nature of things in general, under such general terms as these, without being suspected of an intention to innovate. 'Have you heard the argument?' says the king to Hamlet. 'Is there no offence in it?' 'None in the world.' But the philosopher goes on, and does come occasionally, even here, to words which begin to sound at little suspicious in such connexions, or would, if one did not know how general the intention must be in this application of them. They are abstract terms, and, of course, nobody need see that they are a different kind of abstraction from the old ones, that the grappling-hook on all particulars has been abstracted in them. Suppose one were to say, then, to resume, 'that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the universe, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection, or of extensive wholes, as in the case of the motions of the greater congregation— [what are these motions, then?]—REVOLUTION and ABHORRENCE of CHANGE, or of particular forms, as in the case of the others.' This looks a little like growing towards a point. We are apt to consider these motions in certain specific forms, as they appear in those extensive wholes and larger congregations, which it is not necessary to name more particularly in this connection, though they are terms of a 'suggestive' character, to borrow the author's own expression, and belong properly to subjects which this author has just included in his system.

But this is none other than his own philosophy which he seems to be criticising, and rating, and rejecting here so scornfully; but if we go on a little further, we shall find what the criticism amounts to, and that it is only the limitation of it to the general statement—that it is the abstract form of it, which he complains of. He wishes to direct our attention to the fact, that he does not consider it good for anything in that general form in which he has put it in his Book of Learning. This is the deficiency which he is always pointing out in that work, because this is the deficiency which it has been his chief labour to supply. Till that defect, that grand defect which his philosophy exhibits, as it stands in his books of abstract science, is supplied—that defect to which, even in these works themselves, he is always directing our attention—he cannot, without self-contradiction, propound his philosophy to the world as a practical one, good for human relief.

In order that it should accomplish the ends to which it is addressed, it is not enough, he tells us in so many words, to exhibit it in the abstract, in general terms, for these are but 'the husks and shells of sciences.' It must be brought down and applied to those artistic reformations which afflicted, oppressed human nature demands—to those artistic constructions to which human nature spontaneously, instinctively tends, and empirically struggles to achieve.

'For although,' he continues,'such remarks—those last quoted—be just, unless they terminate in MATTER AND CONSTRUCTION, according to the TRUE DEFINITIONS, they are SPECULATIVE, and of LITTLE USE.' But in the Novum Organum, those more natural divisions are reduced to a form in which it IS possible to commence practice with them at once, in certain departments, where there is no objection to innovation,—where the proposal for the relief of the human estate is met without opposition,—where the new scientific achievements in the conquest of nature are met with a universal, unanimous human plaudit and gratulation.

'In the meantime,' he continues, after condemning those abstract terms, and declaring, that unless they terminate in matter and construction, according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use—'In the meantime, our classification will suffice, and be of much use in the consideration of the PREDOMINANCE of POWERS, and examining the WRESTLING INSTANCES, which constitute our PRESENT SUBJECT.' [The subject that was present then. The question.]

So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular instances, which are not there instanced,—for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the scientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the higher departments of human want will constitute,—those wrestling instances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance of powers—the philosophy which includes in its programme the practical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence of change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes,' as well as the principles of motion in 'particular forms'—shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects. That is the philosophy which dismisses its technicalities, which finds such words as these when the question of the predominance of powers, and the question of revolution and abhorrence of change in the greater congregations and extensive wholes, comes to be practically handled. This is the way we philosophise 'when we come to particulars.'

                              'In a rebellion,
  When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
  Then were they chosen. In a better hour,
  Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
  And throw their power in the dust.'

That is what we should call, in a general way, 'the motion of revolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment in which it predominates over 'the abhorrence of change,' if not in the extensive whole—if not in the whole of the greater congregation, in that part of it for whom this one speaks; and this is the critical moment which the man of science makes so much of,—brings out so scientifically, so elaborately in this experiment. But this is a part of science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the minds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it.

               'But for my single self,
  I had as lief not be, as live to be
  In awe of such a thing as I myself.
  I was born free as Caesar; so were you.

* * * * *

Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we, petty men, Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Brutus and Caesar. What should be in that Caesar? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Conjure with them; Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. Now in the name of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our CAESAR feed, That he is grown so great? AGE, thou art shamed: Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods. When went there by an AGE, since the great flood, But it was famed with more than with ONE MAN? When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, That her wide walls encompassed but One Man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, When there is in it but One Only Man.

* * * * *

  What you would work me to, I have some aim;
  How I have thought of this, and of these times,
  I shall recount hereafter.
  Now could I, Casca,
  Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
  That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
  As doth the lion in the Capitol,
  A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
  In PERSONAL ACTION; yet prodigious grown,
  And fearful as these strange eruptions are.'
  ''T is Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?'
  'Let it be—WHO IT is: for Romans now
  Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.

* * * * *

Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, Begin it with—WEAK STRAWS. What trash is—Rome What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as—Caesar. But— I perhaps speak this Before a willing bondman.

And here is another case where the question of the predominance of powers arises. In this instance, it is the question of British freedom that comes up; and the tribute—not the tax—that a Caesar—the first Caesar himself, had exacted, is refused 'in a better hour,' by a people kindling with ancestral recollections, throwing themselves upon their ancient rights, and 'the natural bravery of their isle,' and ready to re-assert their ancient liberties.

The Ambassador of Augustus makes his master's complaint at the British Court. The answer of the State runs thus, king, queen and prince taking part in it, as the Poet's convenience seems to require.

'This tribute,' complains the Roman; 'by thee, lately, is left untendered.'

  Queen. And, to kill the marvel,
  Shall be so ever.

Prince Cloten. There be many Caesars, Ere such another Julius. Britain is A world by itself; and we will nothing pay, For wearing our own noses. [General principles.]

Queen. That opportunity Which then they had to take from us, to resume We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,

[It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]

  The kings your ancestors; together with
  The natural bravery of your isle; which stands
  As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
  With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;
  With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,
  But suck them up to the top-mast.

* * * * *

Cloten. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Caesars: other of them may have crooked noses; but, to owe such straight arms, none.

Cymbeline. Son, let your mother end.

Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.—Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

Cymbeline. You must know, Till the injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free: Caesar's ambition …. against all colour, here Did put the yoke upon us; which to shake off, Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be. We do say then to Caesar, Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which Ordained OUR LAWS, whose use THE SWORD OF CAESAR Hath too much mangled; whose REPAIR and FRANCHISE, Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed. Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of BRITAIN which did put His brows within a golden crown, and called Himself a KING.

That is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a people who have such an ancestor to refer to; no matter what costume he comes in. This is Caesar in Britain; and though Prince Cloten appears to incline naturally to prose, as the medium best adapted to the expression of his views, the blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus and Cassius, and seems to run in their vein very much.

It is in some such terms as these that we handle those universal motions on whose balance the welfare of the world depends—'the motions of resistance and connection,' as the Elizabethan philosopher, with a broader grasp than the Newtonian, calls them—when we come to the diagrams which represent particulars. This is the kind of language which this author adopts when he comes to the modifications of those motions which are incident to extensive wholes in the case of the greater congregations; that is, 'revolution' and 'abhorrence of change,' and to those which belong to particular forms also. For it is the science of life; and when the universal science touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious than this. It will have the particular of life here also. It will not have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have abstract butterflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the kind of 'loud' talk that one is apt to hear in this man's school; and the clash and clang that this very play now under review is full of, is just the noise that is sure to come out of his laboratory, whenever he gets upon one of these experiments in 'extensive wholes,' which he is so fond of trying. It is the noise that one always hears on his stage, whenever the question of 'particular forms' and predominance of powers comes to be put experimentally, at least, in this class of 'wrestling instances.'

For we have here a form of composition in which that more simple and natural order above referred to is adopted—where those clear scientific classifications, which this author himself plainly exhibits in another scientific work, though he disguises them in the Novum Organum, are again brought out, no longer in the abstract, but grappling the matter; where, instead of the scientific technicalities just quoted—instead of those abstract terms, such as 'extensive wholes,' 'greater congregation,' 'fruition of their natures,' and the like—we have terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but more living—words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific condensations—reddening with the glow, or whitening with the calm, of its ideal intensities—pursuing it everywhere—everywhere, to the last height of its poetic fervors and exaltations.

And it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue from this 'source'—it is because it proceeds from this scientific centre, on the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and refrangibilities of the universal beam—it is because all this inexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded with the fibre of the universal science—it is because all these thick-flowering imaginations, these 'mellow hangings,' are hung upon the stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the prima philosophia—it is because of this that men find it so prophetic, so inclusive, so magical; this is the reason they find all in it. 'I have either told, or designed to tell, all,' says the expositor of these plays. 'What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' For all the building of this genius is a building on that scientific ground-plan he has left us; and that is a plan which includes all the human field. It is the plan of the Great Instauration.

VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.

'My boy Marcius approaches.'

  'Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
  That find such cruel battle here within?
  Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
  Let him to field.'

Is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them, is to reduce them ad principia; a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration? [Again.] Was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of governments?'—['Questions to be asked.']—Advancement of Learning.

It is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom—no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.

He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is effecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice—that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility, the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the common-weal.

That martial virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the beginning of this action. It was shown from the first—from that ground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased common-weal made for it—in no favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.' It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that title for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that—eating the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone. It was brought out from the first—it came tramping on in the first act, in the first scene—with its sneer at the commons' distress, longing to make 'a quarry of the quartered slaves, as high' as the plumed hero of it 'could prick his lance'; and that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.' And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to know.

But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home, becomes with the change of circumstances—patriotism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian gates—this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the common enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of love, to say the least of it.

In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of his story offers him—this quality which the hostilities of nations deify—he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it—the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out to; while in the name of country it shows itself 'from face to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,' undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and nobility which he has already exhibited at home.

That sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the incident; it is the principle of acquisition, it is the natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of, that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with, too—at war with in the parts—one that she is forever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms—with her law of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation'; it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set bounds to in the human constitution—which gets branded with other names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured city—those matchless deeds of valor—the consummation for Coriolanus in Corioli, for 'the conqueror in the conquest,' is—'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is—'He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field and city—OURS.'

The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it—this love that stops so short with geographic limits,—that changes with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest pit.

But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified, 'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while his Coriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in his Corioli, gives orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally—the poor man at whose house he lay—shall be saved, when he is so weary with slaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak his poor friend's name.

He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply than ever—this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town. CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. Marcius, plain Caius Marcius, now no more. He will think it treason—even in the conquered city he will resent it—if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town—the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries—that, with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'—has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific opinion of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms, which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew—not here only—which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his particular more near'—with all its fresh, recent historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.

He is jealous,—this new Poet of his kind,—he is jealous of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons, under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even narrower than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and avaricious, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its hire on its brows.

Menenius. Brings a victory in his pocket. Volumnia. On's brows Menenius.

He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.' Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that he should hide, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his country, it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the original differences, the difference of things, the simplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them, two,—not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here, which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such mischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it—he is separating the martial virtue—from the true heroism, 'with the mind, that divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that cover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it makes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.

He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that principle which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own, that principle which enters into and constitutes each man's own noblest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which needs a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give it, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages—wanting in all the scientific arts—could not give it.

He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this point too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic, theatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires, and which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his 'transient hieroglyphics,' his tableaux vivants, his 'dumb-shows' to aid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators—this, too, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.

It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in his face which men love—authority.' 'As waves before a vessel under sail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have stripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the heroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He carries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so long as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and nobility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He will have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will forge himself a new and better name, for 'the patricians are called good citizens.' He will forget Corioli; Coriolanus now no more, he will conquer Rome, and incorporate that henceforth in his name. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true citizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private subjection to it,—not by emerging from his particular into the self that comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the whole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the part. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a new garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if they will not let him have it within. He will turn against that country, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian hearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have beheld me fighting,' he says. 'Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single wrong, or because the people would not let him have all from them, he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down, Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.

'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for ten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is only the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to make a quarry of thousands of the quartered slaves, as high as he could prick his lance! That was 'the altitude of his virtue' then. It is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.

So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work throughout—so completely has he filled the Roman story with his 'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which makes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the representation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own invention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the piece, when this hero, in his conflicting passions and instincts, gives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he would have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling inanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a shade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's scolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the gods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities, with all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the citizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this play was written.

'He was a kind of nothing, titleless,— Till he had forged himself a name i' the fire Of burning Rome.'

That is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to spare the city.

'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'

Surely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after all, in his surmise as to the principles of the heroic statesmanship and warfare, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The State banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army to make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel than his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had voted for. 'Let them hang,' ay—(ay) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the disposition' they had 'thwarted',—measuring 'the quarry of the quartered slaves,' which it would make, 'would the nobility but lay aside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance, the blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had thwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on pain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single impotence, and it came back 'armed;' for this was one of rude nature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.

Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its warfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and slain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both sides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the red-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a cost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city lies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is steel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to put down the conflict of changeful, warring selfs, to suppress the mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually annihilating selfish dictates.

In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single passion has its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the passion changes, and the purpose that is passionate must alter with it, unless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled dictate. For such purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells us—one who had had some dramatic experience in it,—

'is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, and poor validity, Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending doth the purpose lose.'

That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of his lines quietly into the court performance: that is his verbal account of it; but his action, too, speaks louder and more eloquently than his words.

The principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this so-called self-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace principle, the principle of state within and without.

'To thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man'

That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the passionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of conscientious thought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man who aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world, in whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.

He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, 'his eye red as 'twould burn Rome'—a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,' is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this superhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no man at all, but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, 'passion's slave,' 'a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please.' For that state,—that command—depends on that which 'changes,'— fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot engross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys—the single passion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come. You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds but that one which it was god of.

This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to interpret to us the thinker's inaction, the thinker's irresolution, for 'it is conscience that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man who is resolute enough. His will is not 'puzzled.' His thoughts, his scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. Here is THE UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the church.'

  'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
  Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.
  I dare damnation. To this point I stand
  That both the worlds I give to negligence,
  Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
  Most thoroughly for my father.' [Only.]

That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it was you, when it mastered you, and called itself by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many lips; but it is always one. That was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the identity which your visible form—which your human form, was made to promise,—a slave,—a pipe for fortune's finger. This is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and 'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections, 'after every species of rejection,'—the affirmation is, that there is but one principle that is human, and that is GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all—that is the self of reason and conscience, not passion.

But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'—this poor and private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its head, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'—this passion of the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly fangs—those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives—exposed in this great solar microscope, striking the common-weal,—as for this petty, usurping passion, there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.

Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had offended him,' that was his word,—which yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Rome it comes—towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course. To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in him,—he could think of them and doom them; but the impressions of the senses are more vivid, and the passions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a 'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,—much such a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.

But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection, and not reason—this man of private and particular motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it outweighs Rome and all her weal—'it is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land full'—it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.

His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its magnetic sphere.

For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians,—which crushes Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to have all. It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human; it is 'conservation with advancement' that he is blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that affection borrows from it.

And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,' scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its utterance—he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive, undrenched in humours and affections—for the motive of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and exclusive.

In vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and seeks to retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself describes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain he rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it be virtuous to be obstinate'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail, aged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts; but to him it is 'as if Olympus to a mole-hill stooped in supplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature speaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of the beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the Poet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach the 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is his young boy's father—he is his fair young wife's beloved.

'O a kiss, long as my exile, sweet as my revenge.'

There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy—his own mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons him; it is she that conquers him. It was 'her boy,' after all—it was her boy still, that was 'coming home.'

Well might Menenius say—

'This Volumnia is worth of consuls, senators, patricians, A city full; of tribunes such as you, A sea and land full.'

But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its connections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find anything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still 'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is under criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play already, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a play in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation was yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so that the principle of 'the election' need never again be called in question, so that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the principle of revolution.

  'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mould
  Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
  The grand-child to her blood. But, out, affection!
  All bond and privilege of nature, break!
  Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.—
  What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes,
  Which can make gods forsworn?

['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of infirmity.']

      'I melt, and am not
  Of STRONGER EARTH than others.—My mother bows;
  As if Olympus to a molehill should
  In supplication nod: and my young boy
  Hath an aspect of intercession, which
  Great Nature cries, 'Deny not!'—Let the Volsces
  Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll never
  Be such a GOSLING to obey INSTINCT; but stand,
  As if a MAN were author of himself,
  And knew no other kin.
  These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.

  Vir.
  The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,
  Makes you think so.

[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame of his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not provided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that fierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his part—the words he was to speak are wanting.]

  Cor. Like a dull actor now,
  I have forgot my part, and I am out,
  Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
  Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,
  For that, Forgive our Romans.—O, a kiss
  Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
  Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
  I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
  Hath virgin'd it e'er since.—You gods! I prate,
  And the most noble mother of the world
  Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [Kneels.]
  Of the deep duty more impression show
  Than that of common sons.

Vol. O, stand up bless'd! Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint, I kneel before thee; and unproperly Show duty, as mistaken—

[Note it—'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore, pray in aid of similes.]

                     —and improperly
  Show DUTY, as mistaken all the while
  Between the child and parent.

[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the rebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for pardon.]

Cor. What is this? Your knees to me? to your corrected son? Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun; Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, slight work.

Vol. Thou art my warrior; I holp to frame thee.

[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero—the Roman hero in germ—that she speaks—there is more than her Roman part here, when she adds—]

  Vol. This is a poor epitome of yours,
  Which by the interpretation of full time
  May show, like all, yourself.

[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering, fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever god who led him' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and fro, and darkening him for ever.]

  Cor. 'The god of soldiers
  With the consent of SUPREME JOVE,'—[the Capitolian, the
                                    god of state]—'inform
  Thy thoughts with NOBLENESS;'—[inform thy thoughts.]
                                  'that thou may'st prove
  The shame unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars
  Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
  And saving those that eye thee.'

[But this hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature is—]

  'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
  Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.
  I have sat too long.'

But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.

Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief summing up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is very potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her first literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether you take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which the emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the nurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the former of its nobility, who in-forms their thoughts with nobleness, such nobleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them for the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.

Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance of this figure among those which the dumb-show of this play exhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased common-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its CURE is the question of the Play—in that great crowd of forms, in that moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and tribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene—there are none more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on two low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother—the commanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'

'This Volumnia'—yes, let her school him, for it is from her school that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound of consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to God and man for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and patricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her, are powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of it, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is the Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and whether the assault be from within or without, this woman must undo her work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth without shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she trained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of him, but that craved a noble cunning; she was not instructed in it; she must pay the penalty of her ignorance—the penalty of her traditions—and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has made with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.

Woe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has reared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her! Woe for the common-weal, for her boy approaches! The land is groaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing of arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are blazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is coming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the son of her RELIGION, is coming home.

  'O mother, mother!
  What hast thou done?….
  O my mother, mother! O,
  You have won a happy victory to Rome,—
  But for your son—'

Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and his patrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made him great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's greatness and his, must needs contend together—that 'Rome's happy victory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!

Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness; and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he was, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have learned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic deeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-divine infirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's suppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!—of what? He is but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook the state! He is but A SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting on the purple. He is but 'a dog to the commonalty,' and he was sitting in the place of God.

Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular and private affections. When Coriolanus turns to him after that appeal from Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:—

  'Now, good Aufidius,
  Were you in my stead, say, would you have heard
  A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?'

He answers, guardedly, 'I was moved withal.' But the philosopher has his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's, covertly, 'I was moved with-all.' [It is the Play of the Common-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of exclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the whole? In his noblest conditions, what business has he in the state? and who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of Volscian armies, that he may say of Rome, all's mine, and give it to his wife or mother? Who shall follow in his train, to plough Rome and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's feet, and turns back at her word?

  Aufidius. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiously
  Has he betrayed your business, and given up
  For certain drops of salt, your city Rome—
  I say, your city—to his wife and mother:
  Breaking his oath and resolution like
  A twist of rotten silk; never admitting
  Counsel of the war, but at his nurse's tears
  He whined and roar'd away your victory,
  That pages blushed at him, and men of heart
  Looked wondering at each other.

  [There is a look which has come down to us. That is
  Elizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]

Cor. Hear'st thou, Mars?

Auf. Name not the god thou Boy of tears.

Cor. Ha!

Auf. No MORE. [You are no more.]

  Cor. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
  Too great for what contains it. Boy? O Slave!
  …. Boy? False hound!

[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial chiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they go.]

  'Boy? O slave!
  … Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']
  Alone I did it. BOY?

But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine passion she wishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his un_manly_, ungracious, ignoble purpose:—

'Speak to me, son.

  Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR,
  To imitate the graces of the gods;
  To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
  And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
  That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
  Think'st thou it honourable for a NOBLE MAN
  Still to remember wrongs?

For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other was, in scientific language, its 'anticipation.' He wants nothing of a god but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in a god already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'

NOBILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM, DIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here, vague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared, destined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally different things in the popular apprehension no more—when once this science is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was delivered—no more for ever.

There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal nobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false affirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show—and very much to his purpose to show, sometimes—what is not the true affirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the true definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all hands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce it; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he be indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to pronounce it; for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and pronounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle wounded craves a noble cunning,' is the word of the noble, who comes back with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand hieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that nobility.

But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly antagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo that popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at last, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who strikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this affectation of the graces of the gods,—this assumption of nobility, and manliness, and the fine strains of honour,—in one who is led only by the blind demon gods, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,'—in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of his own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of soul which forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in which those strictly human terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates all his glorious special human gifts on the pursuit of ends for which the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine strains of honour, and the graces of the gods. Look at that Volscian army there.

  'To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
  And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
  That should but rive an oak.
  Why dost not speak?'

He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bear review.

  'Why dost not speak?
  Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
  Still to remember wrongs?'

'Let it be virtuous to be obstinate,' let there be no better principle of that identity which we insist on in men, that firmness which we call manliness, and the cherished wrong is honour.

It is but an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is taken with it. It is a figure of speech and intensifies the affirmative with its irony.

'This a consul? No.'

  'No more, but e'en a woman, and COMMANDED
  By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
  And does the meanest chares.' [QUEEN.]

'Give me that man that is not passion's slave.

  Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
  And could of men distinguish her election,
  She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
  As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.

But the man who rates so highly 'this single mould of Marcius,' and the wounded name of it, that he will forge another for it 'i' the fire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world to ease the rankling of his single wrong, who will plough Rome and harrow Italy to cool the fever of his thirst for vengeance; this is not the man, this is not the hero, this is not THE GOD, that the scientific review accepts. Whoso has put him in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must 'revoke that ignorant election.' Whatever our 'perfect example in civil life' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly in the form of an historic 'composition' on this author's stage, whatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evidently is not it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the present from this Poet's boards. This curule chair that stands here empty yet, for aught that we can see, and this crown of 'olives of endless age,' is not for him.

  'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
  Against him first.

  'We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after every
  species of rejection.'

On the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of the Common-Weal, in its relation to the good that is private and particular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in proportion,—as the question of the whole against the part,—of the greater against the less,—nay, as the question of that which is against that which is not. For it is a treatment which throws in passing, the shadow of the old metaphysical suspicion and scepticism on that chaotic unaxiomatical condition of things which the scientific eye discovers here, for the new philosophy with all its new comprehension of the actual, with all its new convergency on practice, is careful to inform us that it observes, notwithstanding the old distinction between 'being and becoming.' This is an IDEAL philosophy also, though the notions of nature are more respected in it, than the spontaneous unconsidered notions of men.

It is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole and the faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and obligation to it, as the highest historic law,—the formal, the essential law of kind in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is the grandeur of duty which this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and ignoring of the whole, that forgetfulness of the world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the narrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against the will of the part, no matter where the limit of that partiality, or 'partliness,' as the 'poor citizen' calls it, is fixed whether it be the selfishness of the single self, or whether the household tie enlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or faction, or the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geographic limits, the question of the play, the question of the whole, of the worthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It is the conflict with axioms which is represented here, and not with wordy axioms only, not with abstractions good for the human mind only, in its abstract self-sustained speculations, but with historical axioms, axioms which the universal nature knows, laws which have had the consent of things since this nature began, laws which passed long ago the universal commons.

It is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with abstract speculation merely, but with the nature of things and the received logic of the universe, which this man of a practical science wishes to call attention to. It is the crowning and enthroning of that which is private and particular, it is the anointing of passion and instinct, it is the arming of the absolute—the demon—will; it is the putting into the hands of the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which strikes the scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by way of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey to others the impression which this state of things makes upon his own mind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those general intentions which determine his proceedings and the conditions which limit them, and he is by no means timid in availing himself of the capabilities of his story to that end. The true spectacle of the play,—the principal hieroglyphic of it,—the one in which this hieroglyphic criticism approaches the metaphysical intention most nearly, is one that requires interpretation. It does not report itself to the eye at once. The showman stops to tell us before he produces it, that it is a symbol,—that this is one of the places where he 'prays in aid of similes,'—that this is a specimen of what he calls elsewhere 'allusive' writing. The true spectacle of the play,—the grand hieroglyphic of it,—is that view of the city, and the woman in the foreground kneeling for it, 'to her son, her corrected son,' begging for pardon of her corrected rebel—hanging for life on the chance of his changeful moods and passions. It is Rome that lies stretched out there upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and claims to reverence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from which the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the flint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels 'to show'—as she tells us—to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition allow it to be exhibited, DUTY as mistaken,—'as mistaken,'—all the while between the child and parent.

It is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to the mole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law—the formal law in man—that is prostrate and suppliant in her person; and the Poet exhausts even his own powers of expression, and grows inarticulate at last, in seeking to convey his sense of this ineffable, impossible, historical pretension. It is as 'if Olympus to a mole-hill should in supplication nod; it is as if the pebbles on the hungry beach should fillip the stars; as if the mutinous winds should strike the proud cedars against the fiery sun, murdering impossibility, to make what can not be, slight work,'—what can not be.

That was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's spectacle when the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousandfold more wild and pitiful, and confounding to the intellect, and revolting to its sensibilities, was the spectacle that the State offered then to the philosophic eye. The Poet has all understated his great case. He has taken the pattern-man in the private affections, the noble man of mere instinct and passion, and put him in the chair of state;—the man whom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly graces.

  'As waves before a vessel under sail
  So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,'

  'If he would but incline to the people, there never was a
  worthier man.'

Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the nobility of human sense,—not to the loyalty of the husband,—not to the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe her weal—such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and action,—and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'

Crimes that the historic pen can only point to,—not record,—low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations—these were the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and their kindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To these,—men who meddled with affairs of State,—who took, even at such a time, the State to be their business,—must address themselves; for these were the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His veto could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then—the soul of him 'within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions, to whom this argument must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind a most inherent baseness,' these were the weapons,—the required weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the commonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the days when England's victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at each other.'

And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform it—she must produce first her doctrine of 'true forms,' her scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes necessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its finger' that which was unspeakable,—her scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect,—not their anticipation of her veto only, but her eternal affirmation,—the word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility,—the nobility of being,—being in the human,—the nobility of manliness,—the divinity of State, the true doctrine of it;—and, to speak truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi.'

METAPHYSICAL AID.

  'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they
  are Persian attire; but let them be changed.'—
      The King to Tom o' Bedlam.

  'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
  Against him first.'

It is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological order,—and not here only, but in that play of which this is a part,—of which this is the play within the Play,—in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.

He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is that which makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from them,' and get elected consul yet, with all their voices.

'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about these days. '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 are called in question; and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish the less troublesome, whilst we are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, "Friend," said he, "it is not now time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends". And yet—[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.'

That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at work already. 'What I say of physic generally, may serve AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says this same scribbler, under his scribbling cognomen. 'We certainly intend to comprehend them all,' says the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'

That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance, which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is the Aedile also, and while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.

It is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins with here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset, that this claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'

Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour—though all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in requisition to relieve their need—though the scientific discoveries and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself—though that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home—that good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional human end, that good, that formal and essential good, which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not necessarily be realised.

For that, and nothing short of that, the 'advancement' of the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping for—its form in nature, its ideal perfection—the advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of vermin—a state which involves another kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this philosophy.

The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered, threatened, convulsed, asking aid of art, is the subject; the cure of it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.

And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art of healing, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and profession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running on the structure of bodies, the means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he wishes 'to have a hand in everything.'

But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,' on the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human constitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that distinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual human frame in itself constitutes.

Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to the purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate of seven years' health, during which time I will make a lip at the physician.' A lip—a lip—and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when once you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with advancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to which all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are pointing; and thus he continues: 'The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and to this preservative of no better report than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try it—this preservative,—this conservation.

This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort, and be able to make prescriptions of them, instead of making them out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure a conceit also.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no mean, but she herself hath made that mean;'—

                     'So o'er that art
  Which you say adds to nature, is an art
  That nature makes…
                     …This is an art
  Which does mend nature, change it rather: but
  The art itself is nature.'

That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion. 'Man while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies, nature internally performs the rest.' Those who become practically versed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist, and the magician, but all, as matters now stand with faint efforts and meagre success.'… 'The syllogism forces assent and not things.'

'The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding. The syllogism consists of propositions, these of words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground; but they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced from things.'

There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further;' so this writer of them tells us.

With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of the quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He will not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of nature, that laboured fruit of time,—her most subtle and efficacious agent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art, —he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived interior adaptations,—with so much of nature's own work in it, —hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it without learning,—to undertake its cure with blind ignorant experiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure, with drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.' He will inquire beforehand the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle with, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will take him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in nature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a comparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the social unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will comprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his analysis of this complexity till he comes to that which precedes all combination, and survives it—the original simplicity of nature. He will come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will have all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his hands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have the doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, but in all the kinds;—those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship— such wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the primitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He will inquire of art,—the empiric art,—and rude accident, what latent efficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their organizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another court, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For the principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the human conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger treatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.

And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge his preference for 'good compositions'—who thinks so much of good _natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or betraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results, the luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself illustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great volume of examples in the Arts.

First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for all—that which is always the same in all the difference, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of 'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the alphabet are not many, the degrees and co-ordinations whereof make all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of their combinations,—the combinations which nature has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which are possible, which have not been accomplished,—those which the universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates now, demands,—divinely orders,—divinely instructs us in.

This, and nothing short of this,—this so radical knowledge, reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of nature,—to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,—to the indissoluble laws of being,—the laws of being in the species,—the law with which the specific law is convertible,—the law which cannot be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,—loss of being in the species,—this so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contribution for its results, this—this is the knowledge with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.

The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end,—openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.

It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,—the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his hands—with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her, and did not—with the gift of the new and nobler miracles of science as the witness of his anointing—with the reading of 'God's book of power'—with the alphabet of its mystery, as the proof of his ordaining—with the key of it, hid from the foundation of the world until now.

The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.

It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions—your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms—the practically convertible terms of the known—practically —that is the difference.

In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base—the science of Natural History—beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science—which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience—the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observation there would result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means. He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on that platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practice there. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and re-integrate the misapplied and abused name of natural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'

He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that field does yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics—an objective metaphysics—the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation for that. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are in all things; and he is going to build, on the basis of those inducted principles,—on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends 'all.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, it aspires to and attains, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.

He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning off—warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the gods, restored again,—the simple powers of nature, recovered from the Greek abstractions,—not 'the idols'—not the impersonated abstractions, the false images of the mind of man—not the logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic content—but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This is that summit of the prima philosophia where the axioms that command all are found—where the observations that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on these, grow. This is that height where the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or substances.

He does not care to tell us,—he could not well tell us, in popular language, what the true name of that height of learning is: he could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a scientific abstraction makes,—an abstraction that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,—a new and more intelligible reading of it,—a solution of it—that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it,—an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal history, that which accounts for all,—the equivalent,—the scientific equivalent of it.

But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the universal laws of God and nature,—laws that no dogma or conceit can alter,—all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air palace of the vain conceits of men;—it is going straight up, through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,—the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make for itself if it cannot find it, which it does make in ignorant ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic reality,—which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new learning also—but it is going to be henceforth the unity of knowledge—not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely,—knowledge, and not opinion, is power.

That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,—to show the absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which great nature has herself supplied us,—to correct the arrogance and specific bias of the human learning,—was the first attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble, indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us is human; but there are other dialects of the divine also,—there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy—the philosophy of science—the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that is one in them,—the metaphysics of history.

'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,—its investigation, discovery and development—are the foundation both of theory and practice; this law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'

That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first. The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'—that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.

'There exists nothing in nature except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual laws.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the expense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstract those laws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds with them. That correspondence is the point in the new metaphysics, and in the new logic;—that was what was wanting in the old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in every branch of learning, are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which corresponds to it, in the human mind, the parallel to it in the sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.

There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of man—the parallel to it in the sciences. When these exactly correspond, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are 'the idols' of the new—the false deceiving images—which must be destroyed ere that which is fixed and constant in nature can establish its own parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'—this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, unsuccessful groping in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues, concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of the subject, 'and so, turning his opinion upon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected with 'opinion,'—no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice. And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice. 'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields, in speculation and practice. The black intolerable wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon—that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation—has no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which the knowledge of true forms creates—this true ground of the understanding, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.' Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is the prima philosophia, where the universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the philosopher himself—openly speaking from this summit—will venture to intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to reduce them ad principia, a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration?' There is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that waits for the science of forms and constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not the Persian magic' [and that is the term which he proposes to restore for 'the part operative' of this knowledge of forms], 'was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architecture of nature to the rules and policy of governments?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry; but the student of the Zenda-vesta will be able to get, perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term magic is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground of science. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after extending these significant inquiries into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which all other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these only similitudes, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.'

'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first of any, by my universal being.' Michael de Montaigne.] 'sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universal in nature; and opens such broad paths to human power, as the thought of man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'

Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.

The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers us—this knowledge of what she is beforehand—the practical certainty which this interior acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to command—that comprehensive command of results which the knowledge of the true causes involves—the causes which are always present in all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all the difference—the 'power' of this knowledge, its power to relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that 'wonder'—that is, 'the seed of knowledge'—brought forth this plant, was not one to overlook or make light of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can appease—that love which leads it to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.

'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.' Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to its theoric;'—'let that mark out and limit the theoretical.'

That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning, as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to reduce it to certain empty and barren generalities, the mere husks and shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of them, by the torture and press of the method,—the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map is, to direct the way between London and York.'

The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing here now in this question of the consulship,—that so practical and immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out every other from the human consideration. If learning had anything to offer on that subject, which would not excite the scorn of practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.

We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play requires,—the practical question marks it out,—we have just as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark the expression:—'it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences'—the particular sciences,—the branches of science—from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division. We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a learned treatise,—a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,—the solid continuity—that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is continued:—that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth to scorn, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on the magic robes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,—not of fifties,—not of hundreds,—not of thousands—sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,—sitting down to this feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's question: This, so far as it goes at least, this is truth. And the rod of that enchantment was plucked here. It is but a branch from this same trunk—this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practice will scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.

Continued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops now this branch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,—time mellowed,—ready to fall unshaken. Built on that 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure, the doctrine of the state. That knowledge of nature in general, that interior knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly. It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter our—Persian. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is Nature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we are within, and the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude wind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and the poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our 'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract has laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is visible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked to the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time cleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced speech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart of nature, is not the ventriloquist's artifice, is not a poor showman's trick. It is great nature's voice—her own; and the magician who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the priest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart of her mystery—is 'the Interpreter.'

THE CURE—PLAN OF INNOVATION—NEW DEFINITIONS.

        'Swear by thy double self
  And that's an oath of credit.'

        'Having thus far proceeded
                 … Is it not meet
  That I did amplify my judgment in
  Other conclusions?'

It is the trunk of the prima philosophia then which puts forth these new and wondrous boughs, into all the fields of human speculation and practice, filling all our outdoor, penetrating all our indoor life, with their beauty and fragrance; overhanging every roof, stooping to every door, with their rich curtains and clusters of ornament and delight, with their ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of practice—brought down to particulars, ready for use—with their dispersed directions overhanging every path,—with their aphorisms made out of the pith and heart of sciences, 'representing a broken knowledge, and, therefore, inviting the men of speculation to inquire farther.'

It is from this trunk of a scientific universality, of a useful, practical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality, to which the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to their simple forms and 'causes in nature,' conducts the scientific experimenter,—it is from this primal living trunk and heart of sciences, to which the new method of learning conducts us, that this great branch of scientific practice comes, which this drama with its 'transitory shows' has brought safely down to us;—this two-fold branch of ethics and politics, which come to us—conjoined—as ethics and politics came in other systems then not scientific,—making in their junction, and through all their divergencies, 'the forbidden questions' of science.

The science of this essentially conjoined doctrine is that which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'The nature which is formed in everything,' and not in man only, and the faculty, in man, of comprehending that wider nature, is that which makes the higher ground, from which a science of his own specific nature, and the explanation of its phenomenon, is possible to man. Except from this height of a common nature, there is no such thing as a scientific explanation of these phenomena possible. And this explanation is what the specific nature in man, with its speculative grasp of a larger whole—with its speculative grasp of a universal whole,—with its instinctive moral reach and comprehension corresponding to that,—constitutionally demands and 'anticipates.'

And the knowledge of this nature which is formed in everything, and not in man only, is the beginning, not of a speculative science of the human nature merely,—it is the beginning,—it is the indispensable foundation of the arts in which a successful artistic advancement of that nature, or an artistic cure or culture of it is propounded. The fact that the 'human nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a 'nature,' the fact that the human species is a species,—the fact that the human kind is but a kind, neighboured with many others from which it is isolated by its native walls of ignorance,—neighboured with many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more or less kind-ly, more or less hostile,—species, kinds, whose dialects of the universal laws, man has not found,—the fact that the universal, historic principles are operant in all the specific modifications of human nature, and control and determine them, the fact that the human life admits of a scientific analysis, and that its phenomena require to be traced to their true forms,—this is the fact which is the key to the new philosophy,—the key which unlocks it,—the key to the part speculative, and the part operative of it.

And this is the secret of the difference between this philosophy and all other systems and theories of man's life on earth that had been before it, or that have come after it. For this new and so solid height of natural philosophy,—solid,—historical,—from its base in the divergency of natural history, to its utmost peak of unity,—this scientific height of a common nature, whose summit is 'prima philosophia,' with its new universal terms and axioms,—this height from which man, as a species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous notions and theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with which history itself is always flying in the face of them,—from which the specific bias in them is everywhere detected,—this new 'pyramid' of knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces the conflict of views, the clash of man's opinions shall not sound: this is the system which has had, and shall have, no rival.

And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human notions—specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce,—powers, true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal form.

To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Man as man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and dogmas.

From the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has gained—not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to the à priori sources of knowledge and belief in man,—which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply—with the torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries, stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are hid.

The radical universal fact—the radical universal distinction of the double nature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man only, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war in nature—the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the phenomena of his own nature to their causes,—who has no bridge from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it were;—this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is, a part or member of a greater body, whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more general form'—this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species, with a recommendation that it should be strongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally actual and active principles are tracked to their proper specific modifications in man, and not to their development in his actual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human kind—the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law—is brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affections,—this double nature of good, as it is developed in man, with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger whole than his particular and private nature can comprehend—with his large discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other—with that distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only—that nature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind only—that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to—that, on the one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and walled in,—these two universal natures of good, and all the passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their confusion,—this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its true specific human development, whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation, through all their characterization, through all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.

Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless those universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate in matter and construction according to the true definitions, they are speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter, and the new construction according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our eyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has the true definition in his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical phenomena are convertible,—the motives from which all movement proceeds, the true original simple powers,—the unknown, into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known into which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms 'which are always present when the particular nature is present, and universally attest that presence; which are always absent when the particular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence; which always increase as the particular nature increases; which always decrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of definitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform with; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from what height of genius they achieved their command; but that was two thousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of Europe; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found that the English notions at least, and the Greek notions of things in general differed very materially—essentially—when they came to be put on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to be perceptible at once, though the world has not yet begun to appreciate them. It was a difference that was expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in its 'effects.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new course. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of elevation situate upon a cliff, did descry that forms are the true object of knowledge,' that was his discovery,—'but lost the fruit of that opinion by'—shutting himself up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part is so humble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'

But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of the New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others,—which were not included in the 'idols.' He tells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things first. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:—'We do not, however, deny that other instances can perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins after the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the 'elementary motions,'—outlined, and enriched with such observations as he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of that beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded, decomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of predominance,'—'instances which point out the predominance and submission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in action,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in action,]—'which is the more energetic and superior, or more weak and inferior.'

'These "elementary notions" direct and are directed by each other, according to their strength,—quantity, excitement, concussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance, some magnets support iron sixty times their own weight; so far does the motion of lesser congregation predominate over the greater, but if the weight be increased it yields.'

[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions, tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which apply as widely; though he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this class of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given weight, and so far the notion of liberty predominates over that of the greater congregation; but if the weight be greater, the former motion yields. A piece of leather, stretched to a certain point, does not break, and so far the motion of continuity predominates' [for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that he is handling]—'so far the motion of continuity predominates over that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; and so of the rest.'

Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the 'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the predominance of powers, compared with each other, and which of them is the more energetic and SUPERIOR, or more weak and INFERIOR'; and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its illustration of another in this system of learning, where things are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is a class of instances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling instances, which show the predominance of powers, and in what manner and proportion they predominate and yield, must be searched for with active and industrious diligence.'

'The method and nature of this yielding' [of this yielding—SUBJECTION is the question] 'must also be diligently examined; as, for instance, whether the motions' ['of liberty'] 'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained; for in all bodies with which we are acquainted, there is no real, but an apparent rest, either in the whole, or in the parts. This apparent rest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the case of Hamlet, as well as in that of some others whose acts were suspended, and whose wills were arrested then, by considerations not less comprehensive than his]—'either by equilibrium, or by the absolute predominance of motions. By equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, which rest if the weight be equal. By predominance, as in perforated jars, in which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the predominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'

'It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before), how far the yielding motions exert themselves. For, if a man be held stretched out on the ground against his WILL, with arms and legs bound down, or otherwise confined'—[as the Duke of Kent's were, for instance]—'and yet strive with all his power to get up, the struggle is not the less, though ineffectual. The real state of the case' [namely, whether the yielding motion be, as it were, annihilated by the predominance, or there be rather a continued, though an invisible effort] 'will perhaps appear in the CONCURRENCE of MOTIONS, although it escape our notice in their conflict.' So delicately must philosophy needs be conveyed in a certain stage of a certain class of wrestling instances, where a combination of powers hostile to science produces an 'absolute predominance' of powers, and it is necessary that the yielding motion should at least appear to be 'as it were, annihilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the invisible effort at all. 'For on account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no difficulty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the axioms which these particular instances adduced here, and 'others which might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield. This is an instance of the freedom with which philosophical views on certain subjects are continually addressed in these times, to that immediate audience of the few 'who will perhaps see farther into them than the common reader,' and to those who shall hereafter apply to the philosophy issued under such conditions—the conditions above described, that key of 'Times,' which the author of it has taken pains to leave for that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which makes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated. There are more and less powerful motives concerned in this wrestling instance, as he goes on to demonstrate.

'THE RULES of such instances of predominance as occur should be collected, such as the following'—and the rule which he gives, by way of a specimen of these rules, is a very important one for a statesman to have, and it is one which the philosopher has himself 'collected' from such instances as occurred—'The more general the desired advantage is, the stronger will be the motive. The motion of connection, for instance, which relates to the intercourse of the parts of the universe, is more powerful than that of gravity, which relates to the intercourse of dense bodies. Again; the desire of a private good does not, in general, prevail against that of a public one, except where the quantities are small' [it is the general law he is propounding here; and the exception, the anomaly, is that which he has to note]; 'would that such were the case in civil matters.'

But that application to 'civil matters,' which the statesman, propounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge of the actual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source of relief to the human estate,—that application, which he could only make here in these side-long glances, is made in the Play without any difficulty at all. These instances, which he produces here in his professed work of science, are produced as illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he is going to bring to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his genius, on the powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human nature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it tends—those larger wholes and greater congregations, which parliaments, and pulpits, and play-houses, and books, were forbidden then, on pain of death and torture and ignominy, to meddle with. Here, he tells us, he finds it to the purpose to select 'suggestive instances, such as point out that which is advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'

These instances, which he produces here, are searching; but they are none too searching for his purpose. They do not come any nearer to nature than those others which he is prepared to add to them. The treatment is not any more radical and subtle here than it is in those instances in which 'he comes to particulars,' under the pretence of play and pastime, in other departments,—those in which the judicious inquiry into the laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules 'the most generally useful to mankind.'

This is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this Play,—this Play, in which the great question, not yet ready for the handling of the unlearned, but ripe already for scientific treatment,—the question of the wrestling forces,—the question of the subjection and predominance of powers,—the question of the combination and opposition of forces in those arrested motions which make states, is so boldly handled. Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not real—where the 'yielding' forces are only, as it were, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute predominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,' but predominators—not as states, but revolutions. The science 'that ends in matter and new constructions'—new construction, 'according to true definitions,' is what these citizens, whom this Poet has called up from their horizontal position by way of anticipation, are already, under his instructions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which these very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken into the account, are what these men, whom this Magician has set upon their feet here, whose lips he has opened and whose arms he has unbound with the magic of his art, are going to have before they lie down again, or, at least, before they make a comfortable state for any one to trample on, though they may, perhaps, for a time seem, 'as it were, annihilated.'

These true forms, these real definitions, this new kind of ideas, these new motions, new in philosophy, new in human speech, old in natures,—written in her book ere man was,—these universal, elementary, original motions, which he is exhibiting here in the philosophic treatise, under cover of a certain class of instances, are the very ones which he is tracking here in the Play, into all the business of the state. This is that same new thread which we saw there in the grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space filled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however, to show that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,—how. But here it is the more chosen substance; and every point of this illustrious web is made of its involutions,—is a point of 'illustration.'

Yes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised field of his labours,—that field of 'noblest subjects,' for the culture of which he will have all nature put under contribution; here he is at large, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from his chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' and their unions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious, unknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles together, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it ceases, or seems to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is vanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in 'water,' arrested 'in perforated jars,' or 'flowing through a chink,' or resisting gravity, if the chink be smaller, or in the balanced 'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of all nature,—the weaker enslaved, but there,—not annihilated; he who saw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those dense palpable masses, or in the lever, assisted by human hands, vanquishing its mighty opposite, things that old philosophies had not dreamt of,—reports of mysteries,—revelations for those who have the key,—words from that book of creative power, words from that living Word, which he must study who would have his vision of God fulfilled, who would make of his 'good news' something more than a Poet's prophecy. He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless sulphur, in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of fire and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the resisting ball,—not less real to his eye, because not apparent,—or in the villanous compound itself, while yet the spark is wanting,—'rules' for other 'wrestling instances,' for other combinations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome; requiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of forces, not less but more scientifically artistic,—rules for the enlargement of forces, waiting but their spark, then, to demonstrate, with more fearful explosions, their expansibility, threatening 'to lay all flat.'

For here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the unreported actualities, are working still, in obedience to their orders, which they had not from man, and taking no note of his. 'For man, as the interpreter of nature, does, and understands as much as his observations ON THE ORDER OF THINGS, or THE MIND, permits him, and neither knows nor is capable of more.' 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural bodies. NATURE INTERNALLY PERFORMS THE REST'; and 'the syllogism forces assent, but not things.'

Great things this Interpreter promises to man from these observations and interpretations, which he and his company are ordering; great things he promises from the application of this new method of learning to this department of man's want; because those vague popular notions—those spontaneous but deep-rooted beliefs in man—those confused, perplexed terms, with which he seeks to articulate them, and not those acts which make up his life only—are out of nature, and all resolvable into higher terms, and require to be returned into these before man can work with them to purpose.

Great news for man he brings; the powers which are working in the human life, and not those which are working without it only, are working in obedience to laws. Great things he promises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and waiting and watching for her coming.

Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole, which is the worthier—that law of the common-weal, which is the human law—that law which in man is reason and conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only—nay, not in man as yet, but prefigured only—his ideal; his true form—not in man, who 'IS' not, but 'becoming.'

But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of things in general into the human constitution—in tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of human life—the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields—the criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.'

This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man which we find on another page—that constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a common-weal—that constitution whereby his relation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his individual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with advancement—that constitution whereby the highest good of the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its intention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation to society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question of 'the government of every man over himself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in 'the little state of man'—the question as to which is 'nobler'—comes to be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.

'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;—we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature—or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs give the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,' and sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of 'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative philosophy at present is—

  'Why all these things change from their ordinance,
  Their natures, and pre-formed faculties,
  To monstrous quality.'

  —'There's something in this more than natural,
  —if philosophy could find it out!

And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.

The experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces assent, and not things.

The question here is not of divinity, as some might suppose. There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid,—its perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven and earth may pass, but not that.

The question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this most vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet—on both sides of it—going about with 'tickets of leave,' of one kind and another; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about them. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes;—they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The difficulty is just this;—here we have it in a nut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.

'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the signs of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then]—'if our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground. But [they are] they are, for the most part, improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are just two methods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from the very outset some abstract and useless generalities,—the other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most common in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist in the discovery of new effects, for the subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars, easily point out and define NEW PARTICULARS, and impart activity to the sciences.'

'We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to nature, THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that which is properly deduced from THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.'—(A radical distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine of the mind to establish). 'Anticipations are sufficiently powerful in producing unanimity; for if men were all to become even uniformly mad, they might agree tolerably well with each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that is the assent that is wanting).

'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, and not things.'

The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude theories of the nature of things,—the difference between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in which science begins.

And we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths with which science has already overpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in which its powers have been already tested.

These rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in their broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men, through all their range, from the a priori conceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful,—but, considering the time, none too fanciful,—designation of 'the Idols';—(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading),—'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason—scientific, as well as rhetorical reason,—for dividing and distinguishing them. But under that common designation of images, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all particulars—which is more universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments;—that universal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. That universal, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into the account,—that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all the learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.

We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nurture,—none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in the popular dialect here, any more than the chemist or the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men with their truer language in the fields they occupy. The new Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these same terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the sense in which he uses them.

Incorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under certain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake to teach.

When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have none of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and analyze them; and all,—all that is in them,—all, and more, will be in his; but scientifically cleared, 'divided with the mind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.

And it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief which the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth, fire, air, water,—terms which antiquity thought fine enough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without suspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.

It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,—so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,— so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence,—keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, —the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, —the word to which rude nature bows anew,—the word which is Power.

But while the world is resounding with those new relations to the powers of nature which the science of nature has established in other fields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the end and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that department of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given over to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera,—to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present.

We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite book of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent order there.

And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature which are included in the human nature,—the powers which in this specific form of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic—these powers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach them with another vocabulary.

The forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call them here, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation,—any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it by his name,—which was just as good as the name—and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it,—any more than it would have come, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his syllogism.

But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff of his genera and species,—when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and came. It came fast enough then. It was 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came. There was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new interpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or ceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.

But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system 'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly anticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if, peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.

And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds.

THE CURE—PLAN OF INNOVATION—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS.

'Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use.'—Novum Organum.

Difficult, then, as the problem of Civil Government appeared to the eye of the scientific philosopher, and threatening and appalling as were those immediate aspects of it which it presented at that moment, he does not despair of the State. Even on the verge of that momentous political and social crisis, 'though he does not need to go to heaven to predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' 'he thinks he sees ways to save us,' and he finds in his new science of Man the ultimate solution of that problem.

That particular and private nature which is in all men, let them re-name themselves by what names they will, that particular and private nature which intends always the individual and private good, has in itself 'an incident towards the good of society,' which it may use as means,—which it must use, if highly successful,—as means to its end. Even in this, when science has enlightened it, and it is impelled by blind and unsuccessful instinct no longer, the man of science finds a place where a pillar of the true state can be planted; even here the scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the human constitution, a foundation-stone,—a stone that does not crumble—a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand must rest on.

Even that 'active good,' which impels 'the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller model,'—that principle which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on other things,—on the state, on the world, if it can,—though it is its own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular powers for 'effecting its good will,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece represents,—this is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and selectest means.

But that is not all. The bettering of itself, the perfection of its own form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, a motive, an actual 'power in everything that moves.' This is one of the primal, universal, natural motions. It is in the universal creative stamp of things; and strong as that is, the rock on which here, too, the hope of science rests—strong as that is, the pillar of the state, which here, too, it will rear. For to man the highest 'passive good,' and this, too, is of the good which is 'private and particular,' is, constitutionally, that whereby 'the conscience of good intentions, however succeeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the provision—the most luxurious provision—which can be made for security and repose,—whereby the mere empirical experimenter in good will count it a higher felicity to fail in good and virtuous ends towards the public, than to attain the most envied success limited to his particular.

Thus, even in these decried 'private' motives, which actuate all men—these universal natural instincts, which impel men yet more intensely, by the concentration of the larger sensibility, and the faculty of the nobler nature of their species, to seek their own private good,—even in these forces, which, unenlightened and uncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and social dissolution, or 'monstrous' social combination,—even in these, the scientific eye perceives the basis of new structures, 'constructions according to true definitions,' in which all the ends that nature in man grasps and aspires to, shall be artistically comprehended and attained.

But this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's 'hope.' This is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance. This is the place on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the pile he will rear. There is an unborrowed foundation, there is an internal support for the state in man. For along with that particular and private nature of good, there is another in all men;—there is another motive, which respects and beholds the good of society, not mediately, but directly as its end,—which embraces in its intention 'the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, and not—not—our own proper, individual form'; and this is the good 'which is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation and advancement of a more general form.' And this, also, is an actual force in man, proceeding from the universal nature of things and original in that, not in him. This, also, is in the primeval creative stamp of things; and here, also, the science of the interpretation of nature finds in the constitution of man, and in the nature of things, the foundations of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all hewn and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand ere man was, the everlasting pillars of the common-weal.

But in man this law, also,—this law chiefly,—has its special, essentially special, development. 'It is much more impressed on man, if he de-generate not.' Great buildings have been reared on this foundation already; great buildings, old and time-honoured, stand on it. The history of human nature is glorious, even in its degeneracy, with the exhibition of this larger, nobler form of humanity asserting itself, triumphing over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It is a species in which the organic law transcends the individual, and embraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which those who seek the good of the kind, and subordinate the private nature to that, are noble, and chief. It is a species in which the law of the common-weal is for ever present to the private nature, as the law of its own being, requiring, under the pains and penalties of the universal laws of being, subjection.

Science cannot originate new forces in nature. 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural forces. Nature, internally, performs the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of 'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's word had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the parts and members of that body that science sought to frame, what word of creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of life could she find, what breath of God could she boast, that she should think to frame of such material the body politic, the organic whole, the living, free, harmonious, triumphant common-weal.

But here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving, moving in the dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature had provided reason, and required science and scientific art. That has not been tried. And that is why this question of the state, dark as it is, portentous, hopeless as its aspects are, if we limit the survey to our present aids and instrumentalities, is already, to the eye of science, kindling with the aurora of unimagined change, advancements to the heights of man's felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of poets' visions, that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams with its scientific reality.

There has been no help from science in this field hitherto. The proceeding of the world has been instinctive and empirical thus far, in the attainment of the ends which the complex nature of man requires him to seek. Men have been driven, and swayed hither and thither, by these different and apparently contradictory aims, without any science of the forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces will seek,—'it is their nature to,'—whether in man, or in any other form in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of declamation that is ever going to stop them. The power that is in everything that moves, the forces of universal nature are concerned in the acts that we deprecate and cry out upon. It is the original constitution of things, as it was settled in that House of Commons, to whose acts the memory of Man runneth not, that is concerned in these demonstrations; and philosophy requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by all means, coming into any collision with those statutes. 'We must so order it,' says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in this case from antiquity—'we must so order it, as by no means to contend with universal nature.' 'To attempt to kick against natural necessity,' he says in his own name, and in his own peculiar and more impressive method of philosophic instruction—'to attempt to kick against natural necessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to outkick his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing 'what is in our power, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of Learning, applying that universal rule of practice to our present subject.

Here, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive form, traced to the height of universal nature, and brought down to the specific nature in man—here, as they lie on the ground of the common nature in man, for the first time scientifically abstracted—are the powers which science has to begin with in this field. The varieties in the species, and the individual differences so remarkable in this kind, are not in this place under consideration. But here is the common nature in this kind, which must make the basis of any permanent universal social constitution for it. Different races will require that their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their social constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for the better, look for change. But this is the universal platform that science is clearing here. This is the WORLD that she is concerning herself with here, in the person of that High Priest of hers, who, also, took that to be his business.

Here are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is this universal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist, merely, and maintain his form—which is nature's first law, they tell us—but to 'better himself' in some way. As Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks advancement'; and advancement he will have, or strive to have, if not 'formal and essential,' then 'local.' He is instinctively impelled to it; and in his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature has prescribed to him, the 'tempest of human life' arises.

The scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these universal forces, and undertake to found society on their annihilation. Science will count that structure unsafe which is founded on the supposed annihilation of these forces in anything that moves. The man of science knows, that though by the predominance of powers, or by the equilibrium of them, they may be for a time, 'as it were, annihilated,' they are in every creature; and nature in the instincts, though blind, is cunning, and finds ways and means of overcoming barriers, and evading restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself when once she finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these forces, the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in the constitution of man, overlooking them from that height, will thankfully accept them, and make much of them. These are just the motive powers that science has need of; she could not compose her structure without them, which is only the perfecting of the structure which the great Creating Wisdom had already outlined and pre-ordered—not a machine, but a living organic whole.

Science takes this 'piece of work' as she finds him, ready, waiting for the hand of art—imperfect, unfinished, but with the proceeding of nature incorporated in him—with the creative, advancing, perfecting motion, incorporated in him as his essence and law;—imperfect, but with nature working within him for the rest, urging him to self-perfection. She takes him as she finds him, a creature of instinct, but with his large, rich, undeveloped, yet already active nature of reason, and conscience, and religion, already struggling for the mastery, counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check, with nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in man, because eyes were included in nature's definition of him, as it was written beforehand in her book, her universal book of types and orders—eyes, and not instinct only—'that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.' 'O'er that art, which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.' The want of this pre-ordered art is the want here still. The war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here still. That is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of investigation with which science has pursued and found out nature elsewhere—that same intense, indefatigable concentration of endeavour, which has been rewarded with such 'magnitude of effects' in other fields—that same, in a higher degree, in more powerful combinations, proportioned to the magnitude and common desirableness of the object, is what is wanting here. It is the instincts that are at fault here,—'the blind instincts, that seeing reason' should 'guide.'

That is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm begins, that 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder that the world is full of the uproar of this arrested work, this violated intent of nature. She will storm on till we hear her. Woe to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who think to violate her intent and prosper! 'The storm continues,' and it will continue, pronounce on it what incantations we may, so long as the elemental forces of all nature are meeting in our lives, and dashing in blind elemental strength against each other, and the brooding spirit of the social life, the composing spirit of the larger whole, cannot reconcile them, because the voices that are filling the air with the discord of their controversy, and out-toning the noise of this battle with theirs, are crying in one key, 'Let there be darkness here'; because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is held back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away; because the night of human ignorance still covers all this battle-ground, and hides the combatants.

Science is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages has spoken it, 'and now the times give it proof'; the times in which the methods of earlier ages, in the rapid advancement of learning in other fields, are losing their vitalities, and leaving us without those means of social combination, without those social bonds which the rudest ages of instinct and intuition, which the most barbaric peoples have been able to command. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific proof, when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their power to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving faith of earlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in its struggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its divine realities, because they have not been translated into their speech and language, and think there is no such thing; and under all the exterior splendours of a material civilization advanced by science, society tends to internal decay, and the primal war of atoms.

To meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it is not enough to call these powers that are actual in the human nature, but which are not yet reconciled and reduced to their true and natural order—it is not enough at this age of the world, at this stage of human advancement in other fields—to call these forces by some general names which include their oppositions, and to require for want of skill that a part of them shall be annihilated; it is not enough to express a strong disapprobation of the result as it is, and to require, in never-so-authoritative manner, that it shall be otherwise. No matter what names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter under what pains and penalties we require it, the result—whatever we may say to the contrary—the result does not follow. That is not the way. Those who try it, and who continue to try it in the face of no matter what failures, may think it is; but there is a voice mightier than theirs, drowning all their speech, telling us in thunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments that brutes might understand, telling us that it is not!

It is, indeed, no small gain in the rude ages of warring instincts and intuitions, when there is as yet no science to define them, and compare them, and pronounce from its calm height its eternal axioms here—when the world is a camp, and hostilities are deified, and mankind is in arms when all the moral terms are still wrapped in the confusion of the first outgoing of the perplexed, unanalysed human motivity—it is no small gain to get the word of the nobler intuitions outspoken, to get the word of the divine law of man's nature, his essential law pronounced—even in rudest ages overawing, commanding with its awful divinity the intenser motivity of the lesser nature—able to summon, in rudest ages, to its ideal heights, those colossal heroic forms, that cast their long shadows over the tracts of time, to tell us what type it is that humanity aspires to. It is no small gain to get these nobler intuitions outspoken in some voice that commands with its authority the world's ear, or illustrated in some exemplar that arrests the world's eye, and draws the human heart unto it.

It is no small advance in human history, to get the divine authority of those nobler intuitions, which, in man, anticipate speculation, and their right to command the particular motives, recognised in the common speech of men, incorporated in their speculative belief, incorporated in their books of learning, and embalmed in institutions that keep the divine exemplar of the human form for ever in our eyes. It is something. The warring nations war on. The world is in arms still. The rude instincts are not stayed in their intent. They pause, it may be; 'but a roused passion sets them new a-work.' The speckled demons, that the degenerate _angelic _nature breeds, put on the new livery, and go abroad in it rejoicing. New rivers of blood, new seas of carnage, are opened in the new name of peace; new engines of torture, of fiendish wrong, are invented in the new name of love. But it is some gain. There is a new rallying-place on the earth for those who seek truly the higher good; at the foot of the new symbol they recognise each other, they join hand in hand, and the bands of those who wait and watch amid the earth's darkness for the promise, cheer us with their songs. Truths out of the Eternal Book, truths that all hearts lean on in their need, are spoken. Words that shall never pass away, sweet with the immortal hope and perennial joy of life, are always in our ears.

The nations that have contributed to this result in any degree, whether primarily or secondarily, whether they be Syrians or Assyrians, Arabs or Egyptians, wandering or settled, wild or tame; whether they belong to the inferior unanalysing Semitic races, or whether they come of the more richly endowed, but yet youthful, Indo-European stock; whether they be Hebrews or Persians, Greeks or Romans, will always have the world's gratitude. Those to whose intenser conceptions and bolder affirmations, in the rude ages of instinct and spontaneous allegation, it was given to pronounce and put on everlasting record, these primal truths of inspiration,—truths whose divinity all true hearts respond to, may be indeed by their natural intellectual characteristics,—if Semitic must be—totally disqualified by ethnological laws,—hopelessly disqualified—so hopelessly that it is to lose all to put it on them—for the task of commanding, in detail, our modern civilization;—a civilization which has made, already, the rude ethics of these youthful races, when it comes to details, so palpably and grossly inapplicable, that it is an offence to modern sensibility to name—to so much as name—decisions which stand unreversed, without comment, in our books of learning. But that is no reason why we should not take, and thankfully appropriate as the gift of God, all that it was their part to contribute to the great plot of human advancement. We cannot afford to dispense with any such gain. The movement which respects the larger whole, the divine intent incorporates it all.

'Japhet shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' for they are world wide; but woe to him if, in his day, he refuse to build the temple which, in his day, his God will also require of him. Woe to him, if he think to put upon another age and race the tasks which his Task-Master will require of him,—which, with his many gifts, with his chief gifts, with his ten talents, will surely be required of him. More than his fathers' woe upon him—more than that old-world woe, which he, too, remembers, if he think to lean on Asia, the youthful Asia, when his own great world noon-day has come.

'There was violence on the earth in those days, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth.' 'Twill come,' says our own poet, prefacing his proposal for a scientific art in the attainment of the chief human ends, and giving his illustrated reasons for it,—

  'Twill come [at this rate]
  Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself,
  Like monsters of the deep.

But what are these?—these new orders,—these new species of nature, defying nature, that we are generating with our arts here now? What are these new varieties to which our kind is tending now? Look at this kind for instance. What are these? Define them. Destroyers, not of their own image in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their kind only,—sacred by natural universal laws,—but of the chosen image of it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the natural love of their kind was by the law of nature concentred,—the wife and the mother,— destroyed not as the wolf destroys its prey, but with ferocity, or with prolonged and studious harm, that it required the human brain to plan and perpetrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of their victims. We must look at it. It will never go by till we do. We shall have to look at it, and consider it well; it will lengthen, it will widen till we do:—ghastly, bruised, bleeding, trampled,— trampled it may be, with nailed, booted heel, mother and child together into one grave. But these are common drunkard's wives;—we are inured to this catastrophe, and do not think much of it. But who are these, whom the grave cannot hold; that by God's edict break its bonds and come back, making day hideous, to tell us what the earth could not, would not keep,—to tell us of that other band who died and made no sign? But this is nothing. Here are more. Here are others. What are these? These are not spectres. Their cheeks are red enough. What loathsome thing is this, that we are bringing forth here now with the human face upon it, in whom the heart of the universal nature has expired. These are murderers,—count them—they are all murderers, wholesale murderers, perhaps,—but of what? Of their own helpless, tender, loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of our time,—alone in wretchedness,—alone in the universe of nature,—who found, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw their learning 'to the dogs,' and come this way, and tell us what this means. Nay, let them bring their books with them, and example us with its meaning if they can. Let them tell us what 'depth' in which nature hides her failures, or yet unperfected hideous germinations,—what formation in which she buries the kinds she repents that she has made upon the earth, or what 'deep'—what ocean cave of 'monsters' we shall drag to find our kindred in these species. Let our wise men tell us whether there be, or whether there ever was, any such thing as this in nature before. If 'such things are,' or have been in any other kind, let them produce the instances, and keep us in countenance and console us for our own.

Let them look at that murderer too, and interpret him for us. For he too is waiting to be interpreted, and he will wait till we understand his signs. He is speaking mute nature's language to us; we must get her key. Look at him as he stands there in the dark, subordinating that faculty which comprehends the whole, which recognises the divinity of his neighbour's right, to his fiendish end: preparing with the judgment of a man his little piece of machinery, with which he will take, as he would take a salmon, or a rat, his fellow-man. Look at him as he stands there now, listening patiently for your steps, waiting to strangle you as you go by him unarmed to-night, confiding in your fellow-man; waiting to drag you down from all the hopes and joys of life, for the sake of the loose coin, gold or silver, which he thinks he may find about you,—perhaps. 'How to KILL vermin and how to PREVENT the fiend,' was Tom's study. How to dispatch in the most agreeable and successful manner, creatures whose notions of good are constitutionally and diametrically opposed to the good of the larger whole, who have no sensibility to that, and no faculty whereby they perceive it to be the worthier; that is no doubt one part of the problem. The scientific question is, whether this creature be really what it seems, a new and more horrid kind of beast—a demoralization and deterioration of the human species into that. If it be, let our naturalists come to our aid here also, and teach us how to hunt him down and despatch him, with as much respect to the natural decencies which the fact of the external human form would seem still to exact from us, as the circumstances will admit of. Is it the beast, or is it 'the fiend?'—that is the question. The fiend which tells us that the angelic or divine nature is there—there still—overborne, trampled on, 'as it were, annihilated,' but lighting that gleam of 'wickedness,'—making of it, not instinct, but crime. Ah! we need not ask which it is. This one has told his own story, if we could but read it. He has left—he is leaving all the time, contributions, richest contributions to our natural history of man,—that history which must make the basis of our arts of cure. He was a wolf when you took him; but in his cell you found something else in him—did you not?—something that troubled and appalled you, with its kindred and likeness, and its exaction on your sympathy. When you hung him as you would not hang a dog;—when you put him to a death which you would think it indecent and inhuman to award to a creature of another species, you did not find him that. The law of the nobler nature lay in him as it were annihilated; he thought there was no such thing; but when nature's great voice was heard without also, and those 'bloody instructions he had taught returned to him'; when that voice of the people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its doom the voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine appeals—'a rhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second that great argument,—the blind instincts were overpowered in him, the lesser usurping nature was dethroned,—the angelic nature arose, and had her hour, and shed parting gleams of glory on those fleeting days and nights; and he came forth, to die at last, not dragged like a beast—with a manly step—with heroic grandeur, vindicating the heroic type in nature, of that form he wore,—vindicating the violated law, accepting his doom, bowing to its ignominy, a man, a member of society,—a reconciled and accepted member of the commonweal.

How to prevent the fiend? is the question. Ah! what unlettered forces are these, unlearned still, with all our learning, that the dark, unaided wrestling hour 'in the little state of man,' leaves at the head of affairs there, seated in its chair of state, crowned, 'predominant,' to speak the word of doom for us all. 'He poisons him in the garden for his estate.' 'Lights, lights, lights!' is the word here. There is a cause in nature for these hard hearts, but it is not in the constitution of man. There is a cause; it is nature herself, crying out upon our learning, asking to be—interpreted.

Woe for the age whose universal learning is in forms that move and command no longer; that move and bind no longer with fear, or hope, or love, 'the common people.' Woe for the people who think that the everlasting truths of being—the eternal laws of science—are things for saints, and schoolmasters, and preachers only,—the people who carry about with them in secret, for week-day purposes, Edmund's creed, to whom nature is already 'their goddess, and their law,' ere they know her or her law—ere the appointed teacher has instructed them in it,—ere they know what divinity she, too, holds to,—ere the interpreter has translated into her speech, and evolved from her books, the old truths which shall not—though their old 'garments' should 'be changed'—which shall not pass away. Woe for the nations in whom that greater part that carries it, are godless, or whose vows are paid in secret to Edmund's goddess,—whose true faith is in appetite,—who have no secret laws imposed on that. 'Woe to the people who are in such a case,' no matter on which side of the ocean they may dwell, in the old world, or a new one; no matter under what political constitutions. No matter under what favourable external conditions, the national development that has that hollow in it, may proceed; no matter under what glorious and before unimagined conditions of a healthful, noble human development that development may proceed. Alas! for such a people. The rulers may cry 'Peace!' but there is none. And, alas! for the world in which such a power is growing up under new conditions, and waxing strong, and preparing for its leaps.

As a principle of social or political organisation, there is no religion,—there never has been any,—so fatal as none. That is a truth of which all history is an illustration. It is one which has been illustrated in the history of modern states, not less vividly than in the history of antiquity. And it will continue to be illustrated, on the same grand scale, in those terrific evils which the dissolution, or the dissoluteness of the larger whole creates, whenever the appointed teachers of a nation, the inductors of it into its highest learning, lag behind the common mind in their interpretations, and leave it to the people to construct their own rude 'tables of rejections'; whenever the practical axioms, which are the inevitable vintage of these undiscriminating and fatally false rejections, are suffered to become history.

'Woe to the land when its king is a child'; but thrice woe to it, when its teacher is a child. Alas! for the world, when the pabulum of her youthful visions and anticipations of learning have become meat for men, the prescribed provision for that nature in which man must live, or 'cease to be,' amid the sober realities of western science.

'Thou shouldst not have been OLD before thy time.'

  'The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
  And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'

THE CURE—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS—THE INITIATIVE.

Pyramus.—'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords [spears]… and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'—Shake-spear.

'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.'

'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark. I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

'And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor inanity?'

  'But will thy manes such a gift bestow
  As to make violets from thy ashes grow?'
        Michael de Montaigne.

  Hamlet.—'To thine own self be true,
              And it doth follow as the night the day
              Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
             'To know a man well, were to know him-self.'

The complaint of the practical men against the philosophers who make such an outcry upon the uses and customs of the world as they find it, that they do not undertake to give us anything better in the place of them; or if they do, with their terrible experiments they leave us worse than they find us, does not apply in this case. Because this is science, and not philosophy in the sense which that word still conveys, when applied to subjects of this nature. We all know that the scientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most unspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and his arts to the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we have had in this field, with their rash anticipations,—with their unscientific pre-conceptions,—with a pre-conception, instead of a fore-knowledge of the power they deal with, commanding results which do not,—there is the point,—which do not follow.

Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves, without science. 'That is the way to lay all flat.'

He is not one of those, 'who to make clean, efface, and who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the question were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world already formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some important suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the greatest that was ever propounded,—total, absolute, but not sudden. It is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is propounding.

New constructions according to true definitions, scientific institutions,—institutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on the recognition of the actual human constitution and laws,—based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,—that is the proposition. 'It were a strange speech which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of culture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a solar-microscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where the particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come under observation here, and the whole nature of the passions also, and a science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought to bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with 'by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form we would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of human education.

But this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history of those forces which are within our power, which 'we can deal with by way of alteration,' forces 'from which the mind suffereth,' which have operation on it, so potent that 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,'—that they can make indeed, 'another nature,'—these are the engines,—this is the machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This is the machinery to 'prevent the fiend,' which the scientific statesman is propounding.

'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind good' says our Poet. 'O there were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds,—he was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a gaoler,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in it.'

(A preferment?)—That is the solution propounded by science, of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent appeals, its solution. 'I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. My wish hath a preferment in it.'

'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of a vice to which he is by nature subject,'—subject—by nature.—That is the Philosopher. 'What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the Poet's behalf for Coriolanus whose education, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that 'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding, and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs, habit, education in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation, praise, blame,' all the agencies 'from which the mind suffereth,'— which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but enforced,—these make the state machinery—these are the engines that are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the 'one mind,'— the one mind good, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,—'my wish hath a preferment in it,'—the one only man who will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but room enough for us all,—who will make when he is crowned such desolation of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific practitioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,—the gradual adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,— this end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,—find to be their own,—this is the plan;—this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot. This is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.

We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes; and we must find them according to the new method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life goes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of EFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of their natures; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of teaching us something of their powers; but we do not know them; they are within our own souls and lives, and we do not know them; not because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but because we will not apply to them the scientific method; because the old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true one.

The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social state, from the king on his throne to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society that entire and noble form of human nature which 'each man carries with him,' and whereby the individual man is naturally and constitutionally a member of the common-weal. Its proposition was to develop ultimately and educate—successfully educate—in each integer of the state, the integral principle—the principle whereby in man the true conservation and integrity of the part—the virtue, and felicity, and perfection, of the part, tend to the weal of the whole—tend to perfect and advance the whole.

  'To thine own self be true,
  And it doth follow as the night the day,
  Thou canst not then be false to any MAN.'
  'Know thy-SELF. Know thy-self.'

This enterprise was not the product of a single individual mind, and it is important that this fact should be fully and unmistakeably enunciated here; because the illustrious statesman, and man of letters, who assumed, in his own name and person, that part of it which could then be openly exhibited, the one on whom the great task of perfecting and openly propounding the new method of learning was devolved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been principally insisted on in this volume.

The history of this great philanthropic association—an association of genius, a combination of chief minds, from which the leadership and direction of the modern ages proceeds, the history of this 'society,' as it was called, when the term was still fresh in that special application; at least, when it was not yet qualified by its application to those very different kinds of voluntary individual combinations—'bodies of neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to which that movement has given rise; the history of this society,—this first 'Shake-spear Society'—much as it is to our purpose, and much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume, can only be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally prepared for publication in the HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Tradition which formed the FIRST BOOK of it, it was the part of that great Political and Military Chief, and not less illustrious Man of Letters, who was recognised, in his own time, as the beginner of this movement and the founder of English philosophy, which was chiefly developed.

And it is the history of that 'great unknown'—that great Elizabethan unknown, for whose designs there was needed then a veil of a closer texture—of a more cunning pattern than any which the exigencies of modern authorship tend to fabricate, which must make the key to this tradition;—it is the history of that great unknown, whose incognito was a closed vizor,—that it was death to open,—a vizor that did open once, and—the sequel is in our history, and will leave 'a brand' upon the page which that age makes in it,—'the age that did it, and suffered it, to the end of the world.' So says the Poet of that age, ('Age, thou are shamed.' 'And peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves'). It is the history of the Tacitus who could not wait for a better Caesar. It is the history of the man who was sent to the block, they tell us, who are able to give us those little secret historic motives that do not get woven always into the larger story; it is the history of the man who (if his family understood it) was sent to the block for the repetition, in his own name, of the words—the very words which he had written with his 'goose-pen,' as he calls it, years before—which he had written under cover of the 'spear' that was 'shaken' in sport, or that shook with fear,—under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each of which he seems to shake a lance as brandished in the eyes of Ignorance,' without suspicion—without challenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern Age that unlocks this tradition.

It is the secret friend and 'brother' of the author of the Novum Organum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall the friendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and build its 'eternal summer' in our common things? When shall a 'marriage of true minds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in the lives of men again? It is the friend and literary partner of our great recognised philosopher—his partner in his 'private and retired arts,' and in his cultivation of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' in whose history the key to this locked up learning is hidden.

It was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in that little company of wits, and poets, and philosophers, which was the first-fruit of the new development of the national genius, that followed the revival of the learning of antiquity in this island—the fruit which that old stock began manifestly to bud and blossom with, about the beginning of the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it was the old northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival of the learning of antiquity only, but of that accumulated influence which its previous revival on the Continent brought with it here; under the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which began so soon to colour and insulate English history;—'Britain is a world by itself,' says Prince Cloten, 'and we will nothing pay,' etc.—it was the old northern genius nurtured in the cradle of that 'bravery' which had written its page of fire in the Roman Caesar's story—which had arrested the old classic historian's pen, and fired it with a poet's prophecy, and taught him too how to pronounce from the old British hero's lip the burning speech of English freedom;—it was that which began to show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the 'Elizabethan.' It was that which could not fit its words to its mouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was glad to know that 'the audience was deferred.' That was the thing which found itself so much embarrassed by the presence of 'a man of prodigious fortune at the table,' who had leave 'to change its arguments with a magisterial authority.' It was that which was expected to produce its speech to 'serve as the base matter to illuminate'—not the Caesar—but the Tudor—the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts. 'AGE, thou art shamed.' It was the true indigenous product of the English nationality under that great stimulus, which made that age; and the practical determination of the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient English liberties, the recognition of the common dignity of that form of human nature which each man carries entire with him—the sentiment of a common human family and brotherhood, which this race had brought with it from the forests of the North, and which it had conserved through ages of oppression, went at once into the new speculation, and determined its practical bent, and shaped this enterprise.

It was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations an immediate influence upon the popular mind—the most direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound masses of men;—those masses which are, in all their ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, 'that greater part which carries it'—those wretched statesmen, under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions with which the new movement begins to attract attention—a universally favourable attention—towards its beneficent purposes, and to that new command of 'effects' which arms them. But this is only 'to show an abused people that they are not wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition of men, to 'accommodate' man to those exterior natural forces, of which he had been, till then, the 'slave,'—to minister to the need and add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and 'Tom' in his hovel,—this was the first scientific move. This was a movement which required no concealment. Its far-reaching consequences, its elevating power on the masses, its educational power, its revolutionary power, did not lie within the range of any observation which the impersonated state was able to bring to bear at that time upon the New Organum and its reaches.

But this was not the only scientifically educational agency which this great Educational Association was able to include, even then, in its scheme for the culture and instruction of the masses—for the culture and instruction of that common social unit, which makes the masses and determines political predominance. Quite the most powerful instrumentality which it is possible to conceive of, for purposes of direct effect in the way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that stage of a popular development, was then already in process of preparation here; the 'plant' of a wondrous and inestimable machinery of popular influence stood offering itself, at that very moment, to the politicians with whom this movement originated, urging itself on their notice, begging to be purchased, soliciting their monopoly, proposing itself to their designs.

A medium of direct communication between the philosophic mind, in its more chosen and noblest field of research, and the minds of those to whom the conventional signs of learning are not yet intelligible,—one in which the language of action and dumb show was, by the condition of the representation, predominant,—that language which is, as this philosophy observed, so much more powerful in its impression than words,—not on brutes only, but on those 'whose eyes are more learned than their ears,'—a medium of communication which was one tissue of that 'mute' language, whereby the direction, 'how to sustain a tyranny newly usurped,' was conveyed once, stood prepared to their hands, waiting the dictation of the message of these new Chiefs and Teachers, who had taken their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the arts of government, and who thought it well enough that the people should know how to preserve tyrannies newly usurped.

Those 'amusements,' with which governments that are founded and sustained, 'by cutting off and keeping low the grandees and nobility' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate and divert the popular mind,—those amusements which the peoples who sustain tyrannies are apt to be fond of—'he loves no plays as thou dost, Antony,'—that 'pulpit,' from which the orator of Caesar stole and swayed the hearts of the people with his sugared words; and his dumb show of the stabs in Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new conspirators, an engine which those old experimenters lacked,—an engine which the lean and wrinkled Cassius, with his much reading and 'observation strange' and dangerous, looking through of the thoughts of men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with his logic and his stilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts, afford to lack. It was this which supplied the means of that 'volubility of application' which those 'Sir Oracles,' those 'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing their well-graced forms of speech,' it is intimated, 'might easily want.'

By means of that 'first use of the parable,' whereby (while for the present we drop 'the argument') it serves to illustrate, and bring first under the notice of the senses, the abstruser truths of a new learning,—truths which are as yet too far out of the road of common opinion to be conveyed in other forms,—these amusements became, in the hands of the new Teachers and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of the Moderns had its beginning, the means of an insidious, but most 'grave and exceedingly useful,' popular instruction.

But the immediate influence on the common mind was not the influence to which this association trusted for the fulfilment of its great plan of social renovation and advancement. That so aspiring social position, and that not less commanding position in the world of letters, built up with so much labour, with such persistent purpose, with a pertinacity which accepted of no defeat,—built up expressly to this end,—that position from which a new method of learning could be openly propounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the Universities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning then, was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which this political association was compelled to include in the plot of its far-reaching enterprise.

That trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which summoned the scholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from the endless battles of the human dogmas and conceits, into the field of true knowledge,—that summons which recalled, and disciplined, and gave the word of command to the genius of the modern ages, that was already tumultuously rushing thither,—that call which was able to command the modern learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New Machine of Learning,—that Machine which, even in its employment in the humblest departments of observation, has already formed, ere we know it, the new mind, which has disciplined and trained the modern intelligence, and created insidiously new habits of judgment and belief,—created, too, a new stock of truths, which are accepted as a part of the world's creed, and from which the whole must needs be evolved in time,—this, in itself, was no small step towards securing the great ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly in a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till the nobler applications of this Method begin to be made. It has cost us something while we have waited for these. The letter to Sir Henry Savile, on 'the Helps to the Intellectual Powers,' which is referred to with so much more iteration and emphasis than anything which the surface of the letter exhibits would seem to bear, in its brief hints, points also this way, though the effect of mental exercises, by means of other instrumentalities, on the habits of a larger class, is also comprehended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. The perfection of the Human Science, then first propounded, the filling up of 'the Anticipations' of Learning, which the Philosophy of Science also included in its system,—not rash and premature, however, and not claiming the place of knowledge, but kept apart in a place by themselves,—put down as anticipations, not interpretations,—the filling up of this outline was what was expected as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department of speculative philosophy.

But in that great practical enterprise of a social and political renovation—that enterprise of 'constructions' according to true definitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and never ceases to contemplate—it was not the immediate effect on the popular mind, neither was it the gradual effect on the speculative habits of men of learning and men of intelligence in general, that was chiefly relied on. It was the secret tradition, the living tradition of that intention; it was the tradition whereby that association undertook to continue itself across whatever gulfs and chasms in social history 'the fortunes of our state' might make. It was that second use of the fable, which is 'to wrap up and conceal'; it was that 'enigmatic' method, which reserves the secrets of learning for those 'who by the aid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to pierce the veil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the power of that tradition, its generative power, its power to reproduce 'in a better hour' the mind and will of that 'company'—it was its power to develop and frame that identity which was the secret of this association, and its new principle of UNION—that identity of the 'one mind, and one mind good,' which is the human principle of union—that identity which made a common name, a common personality, for those who worked together for that end, and whose WILL in it was 'one.' A name, a personality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance we have basked so long—a name, a personality whose secret lies heavy on all our learning—whose secret of power, whose secret of inclusiveness and inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, has paralysed all our criticism, 'made marble'—as Milton himself confesses—'made marble with too much conceiving.' 'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say [in dumb action], we will do no harm with our swords.' 'They all flourish their swords.' 'There is but one mind in all these men, and that is bent against Caesar'—Julius Caesar.

                 'Even so the race
  Of SHAKE-SPEAR's mind and manners brightly shines,
  In his well turned and true filed—lines;
  In each of which he seems to SHAKE a LANCE,
  As brandished at the eyes of—Ignorance,'

[We will do no harm, with our—WORDS [it seems to say.]—Prologue.]

It was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that was relied on here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to reproduce this Institution, through whatever fatal eventualities the movement which these men were seeking then to anticipate, and organize, and control, might involve; and though the Parent Union should be overborne in those disastrous, not unforeseen, results—overborne and forgotten—and though other means employed for securing that end should fail.

It is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here. It is the Leonatus Posthumus who must fulfil this oracle.

  'Now with the drops of this most balmy time
  My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes;
  Since, spite of him, I'LL live in this poor rhyme,
  While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;
  And thou in this shall find thy monument,
  When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'

  'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [Elizabethan AGE.]
  Of Princes shall outlive this power-ful rhyme.'

[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his poems are worth printing, or that they are going to get printed—who does not know or care whether they are or not.]

  'But you shall shine more bright in these contents,
  Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
  When wasteful war shall statues overturn [iconoclasm],
  And broils [civil war] root out the work of masonry,
  Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
  The living record of your memory.'

[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on? Is it a manuscript? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he is celebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many lyrics? Here, for instance:—]

  'His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
  And they shall live, and he in them still green.'

And here—

                                             'O where, alack!
  Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
  Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
  Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
  O none, unless this miracle [this miracle] have might,
  that in black ink—'

Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,' scattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?

'O none, unless this miracle'—THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries—defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who 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. 'This miracle.' He knows what miracles are, for he has told us; but none other knew what miracle this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.

  'O none, unless this miracle have might,
  That in black ink my love may still shine bright.'

['My love,'—wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is that Eros who was enfranchised, emancipated.]

 'But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest [thou owes!],
  Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
  When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to—thee!

But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the aid of this collation:—

 'When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
  And broils root out the work of masonry;
  Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
  The living record of your memory.
  'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,
  Shall YOU pace forth. Your praise shall still find room,
  Even in the eyes [collateral sounds] of all posterity,
  That wear this world out to the ending doom.
  So, till the JUDGMENT that YOURSELF arise [till then],
  You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'

See the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if there be any doubt as to this reading.

'In lover's eyes.'

Leonatus Posthumus. Shall's have a Play of this? Thou scornful Page, There lie thy part. [To Imogen disguised as Fidele.]

The consideration which qualified, in the mind of the Author of the Advancement of Learning, the great difficulty which the question of civil government presented at that time, is the key to this 'plot.' For men, and not 'Romans' only, 'are like sheep;' and if you can but get some few to go right, the rest will follow. That was the plan. To create a better leadership of men,—to form a new order and union of men,—a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize the 'thoughts' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and 'inform them with nobleness,'—was the plan.

For these the inner school was opened; for these its ascending platforms were erected. For these that 'closet' and 'cabinet,' where the 'simples' of the Shake-spear philosophy are all locked and labelled, was built. For these that secret 'cabinet of the Muses,' where the Delphic motto is cut anew, throws out its secret lures,—its gay, many-coloured, deceiving lures,—its secret labyrinthine clues,—for all lines in this building meet in that centre. All clues here unwind to that. For these—for the minds on whom the continuation of this enterprise was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet—the historical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic mysteries, was carefully laboured and left,—pointed to—pointed to with immortal gesticulations, and left ('What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger'); the key to that 'Verulamian cabinet,' which we shall hear of when the fictitious correspondence in which the more secret history of this time was written, comes to be opened. That cabinet where the subtle argument that was inserted in the Poem or the Play, but buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is laid bare in prose as subtle ('I here scatter it up and down indifferently for verse'); where the new truth that was spoken in jest, as well as in parables, to those who were without, is unfolded,—that truth which moved unseen amid the gambols of the masque,—preferring to raise questions rather than objections,—which stalked in, without suspicion, in 'the hobby-horse' of the clown,—which the laugh of the groundlings was so often in requisition to cover,—that 'to beguile the time looked like the time,'—that 'looked like the flower, and was the serpent under it.'

For these that secret place of confidential communication was provided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is opened without respect to the 'offence in it,'—to its utmost reach of abstruseness and subtlety—in its utmost reach of departure from 'the road of common opinion,'—where the Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and Policy and Religion, which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are unrolled, at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that 'wrapped up' intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we resume that dropped argument,—dropped for that time, while Caesar still commanded his thirty legions; and when the question, 'How long to philosophise?' being started in the schools again, the answer returned still was, 'Until our armies cease to be commanded by fools.' This is that second use of the Fable where we find the moral of it at last,—that moral which our moralists have missed in it,—that moral which is not 'vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the road of common opinion,—that moral in which the Moral Science, which is the Wisdom of the Moderns, lurks.

It is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for we have him,—we do not wait for him), in the act of displaying a little, and folding up for the future, his plan of a Scientific Human Culture; it is to these that he speaks when he says, with a little of that obscurity which 'he mortally hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As Philocrates sported with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and I drink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep '… so if we put on sobriety and attention, we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams.' ['I,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of 'sobriety,' and critical upon excesses of all kinds, 'I have ever observed, that super-celestial theories and sub-terranean manners are in singular accordance.']

And in his general proposal to lay open 'those parts of learning which lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a plot, made and committed to memory, may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours,' he says, 'I do foresee that of those things which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and omissions, many will conceive and censure that some of them are already done, and extant, others to be but curiosities and things of no great use' [such as the question of style, for instance, and those 'particular' arts of tradition to which this remark is afterwards applied]—and others to be of too great difficulty—and almost impossibility—to be compassed and effected; but for the two first, I refer myself to particulars; for the last,—touching impossibility,—I take it those things are to be held possible, which may be done by some person, though not by every one; and which may be done by many, though not by any one; and which may be done in succession of ages, though not within the hour-glass of one man's life; and which may be done by public designation, though not by private endeavour.

That was 'the plot'—that was the plan of the Elizabethan Innovation.

THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.'

THE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP.

Here, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which scholars who write about these times, allude to the reserved parts of this philosophy, and to those 'richer and bolder meanings,' which could not then be inserted in the acknowledged writings of so great a person. This is a specimen of the manner in which a posthumous collection and reintegration of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it, is referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent somewhere about these days. Whether the date of the writing be a little earlier or a little later,—some fifty years or so,—it does not seem to make much difference as to the general intent and purport of it.

Here is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this planet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect the posthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose, he has established a literary intimacy, quite the most remarkable one on record—at least, between scholars of different and remote nationalities—between himself and two English gentlemen, a Mr. Smith, and the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes from the Hague but he appears to have acquired in some way a most extraordinary insight into this business.

'Though I thought that I had already sufficiently showed what veneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I shall take such care for the future, that it may not possibly be denied, that I endeavoured most zealously to make this thing known to the learned world. But neither shall this design of setting forth in one volume all the Lord Bacon's works, proceed without consulting you'—[This letter is addressed to the Rev. Dr. Rawley, and is dated a number of years after Lord Bacon's death]—'without consulting you, and without inviting you to cast in your symbol, worthy such an excellent edition: that so the appetite of the reader'—[It was a time when symbols of various kinds—large and small—were much in use in the learned world]—'that so the appetite of the reader, provoked already by his published works, may be further gratified by the pure novelty of so considerable an appendage.

'For the French interpreter, who patched together his things I know not whence, and tacked that motley piece to him; they shall not have place in this great collection. But yet I hope to obtain your leave to publish a-part, as an appendix to the Natural History,—that exotic work,—gathered together from this and the other place (of his lordship's writings), [that is the true account of it] and by me translated into—Latin.

'For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the reader, so stupidly write of you.

'My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words into Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish the fame of so eminent a person.

'If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes, I would fly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth in your Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the merchandise be yet denied to the public. At present I will support the wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one day, those (issues) which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time till they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.

'I wish, in the mean time, I could have a sight of the copy of the Epistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the Intellectual Powers: for I am persuaded, as to the other Latin remains, that I shall not obtain,for present use, the removal of them from the place in which they now are.'

Extract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the beginning of it:—

'TO THE REV. WM. RAWLEY, D.D.

'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.

'Reverend Sir,—It is not just to complain of the slowness of your answer, seeing that the difficulty of the passage, in the season in which you wrote, which was towards winter, might easily cause it to come no faster; seeing likewise there is so much to be found in it which may gratify desire, and perhaps so much the more, the longer it was ere it came to my hands. And although I had little to send back, besides my thanks for the little Index, yet that seemed to me of such moment that I would no longer suppress them: especially because I accounted it a crime to have suffered Mr. Smith to have been without an answer: Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose care, in my matters, I owe all regard and affection, yet without diminution of that (part and that no small one neither) in which Dr. Rawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so throughly agreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a triga.'

It is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims of the Rev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or even of Mr. Smith himself, who would no doubt be able to substantiate himself, in case a particular inquiry were made for him; and it would involve a serious departure from the method of invention usually employed in this association, which did not deal with shadows when contemporary instrumentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac Gruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The precautions of this secret, but so powerful league,—the skill with which its instrumentalities were selected and adapted to its ends, is characterised by that same matchless dramatic power, which betrays 'the source from which it springs' even when it 'only plays at working.'

But if any one is anxious to know who the third person of this triga really was, or is, a glance at the Directory would enable such a one to arrive at a truer conclusion than the first reading of this letter would naturally suggest. For this is none other than the person whom the principle of this triga, and its enlightened sentiment and bond of union, already symbolically comprehended, whom it was intended to comprehend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his historical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan for reducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and restoring him to the use of his one only mind. For though the name of this person is often spelt in three letters, and oftener in one, it takes all the names in the Directory to spell it in full. For this is none other than the person that 'Michael' refers to so often and with so much emphasis, glancing always at his own private name, and the singular largeness and comprehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' 'I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

But the name of Mr. Isaac Gruter was not less comprehensive, and could be made to represent the whole triga in an emergency, as well as 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'] though that does not hinder him from inviting Dr. Eawley to cast in his symbol, which was 'so considerable an appendage.' For though the very smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other than the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illustrated works of this school were first exhibited; the theatre which hung out for its sign on the outer wall, 'Hercules and his load too.' At a time when 'conceits' and 'devices in letters,' when anagrams and monograms, and charades, and all kinds of 'racking of orthography' were so much in use, not as curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of 'racking,' a cipher referred to in this philosophy as the 'wheel cipher,' which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a circle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some of these symbols. The first three letters of the alphabet representing the whole in the circle, formed a character or symbol which was often made to stand as a 'token' for a proper name, easily spelt in that way, when phonography and anagrams were in such lively and constant use,—while it made, at the same time, a symbolical representation of the radical doctrine of the new school in philosophy,—a school then so new, that its 'Doctors' were compelled to 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in affixing their names to their own works, in some cases. And that same letter which was capable of representing in this secret language either the microcosm, or 'the larger whole,' as the case required (either with, or without the eye or I in it, sending rays to the circumference) sufficed also to spell the name of the Grand Master of this lodge,—'who also was a man, take him for all in all,'—the man who took two hemispheres for 'his symbol.' That was the so considerable appendage which his friend alludes to,—though 'the natural gaiety of disposition,' of which we have so much experience in other places, and which the gravity of these pursuits happily does not cloud, suggests a glance in passing at another signification, which we find alluded to also in another place in Mrs. Quickly's 'Latin.' Mere frivolities as these conceits and private and retired arts seem now, the Author of the Advancement of Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring particularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write omnia per omnia, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his 'index' of 'the principal and supreme sciences,'—those sciences 'which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time when they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.'

New constructions, according to true definitions, was the plan,—this triga was the initiative.

THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED.—A WRESTLING INSTANCE.

'For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which, either being consuls, inclined to the people' ['If he would but incline to the people, there never was a worthier man'], 'or being tribunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which we handle now [doctrine of Cure], they be the best physicians which, being learned, incline to the traditions of experience; or, being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.' Advancement of Learning.

But while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast scientific changes—vast, but noiseless and beautiful as the movements of God in nature—there was another kind of revolution brewing. All that time there was a cloud on his political horizon—'a huge one, a black one'—slowly and steadfastly accumulating, and rolling up from it, which he had always an eye on. He knew there was that in it which no scientific apparatus that could be put in operation then, on so short a notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able to divert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-cloud would have to burst, and get overblown, before any chance for those peace operations, those operations of a solid and lasting peace, which he was bent on, could be had—before any space on the earth could be found broad enough for his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the central levers of it could begin to stir.

That revolution which 'was singing in the wind' then to his ear, was one which would have to come first in the chronological order; but it was easy enough to see that it was not going to be such a one, in all respects, as a man of his turn of genius would care to be out in with his works.

He knew well enough what there was in it. He had not been so long in such sharp daily collision with the elements of it—he had not been so long trying conclusions with them under such delicate conditions, conditions requiring so nice an observation—without arriving at some degree of assurance in regard to their main properties, without attaining, indeed, to what he calls knowledge on that subject—knowledge as distinguished from opinion—so as to be able to predict 'with a near aim' the results of the possible combinations. The conclusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary movements then at hand were not, on the whole, likely to be conducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.

The spectacle of a people violently 'revoking their ignorant election,' and empirically seeking to better their state under such leaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and that, too, when the old military government was still so strong in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state—of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation—that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a philosopher of a less rigidly inductive, turn of mind.

His canvas, with its magic draught of the coming event, includes already some contingencies which the programme of the theoretical speculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including then, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an historical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his rights,—a movement then already determined on,—would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences—the conviction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for the future.

But if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect—if one would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies, what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses, this science of stability, this science of the future STATE, is settled on,—such a one must explore this work yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it contains—that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and separating, one in which the historical solidities are already in solution, or struggling towards it—prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.

  'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
   Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
   Hang up philosophy'—

wrote this Poet's fire of old.

'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?'

it writes again. No?

'Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.'

'See now what learning is,' says the practical-minded nurse, quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence's genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not a Friar exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time—the idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious observation of nature in general,—and it is a very large and curious one which this Friar betrays,—upon any of those ordinary questions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private solution. And though this knowledge might seem to be 'so variable as it falleth not under precept,' the prose philosopher is of the opinion that 'a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' is available for the particular instances which occur in this department. And the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no end to the precepts which he inducts from this 'variable knowledge' when he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural history, in 'prerogative cases' and 'illustrious instances,' cases cleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts—ideal cases. And though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this particular instance; if we take into account the fact that 'the Tragedy was the thing,' and that nothing but a tragedy would serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on that effect; if we take into account the fact that this is a scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the applicability of learning to questions of this nature.

'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides 'reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the one that takes into account those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of 'men of good composition,' and who gives a recipe for composing them. 'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,' is Romeo's word. 'See now what learning is,' is the Nurse's commentary; for that same Friar, demure as he looks now under his hood, talking of 'simples' and great nature's latent virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse's hearts from them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With his new art of 'composition' he will compose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.

Let us see now, then, what it is,—this 'universal insight in the affairs of the world,' this 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered from cases of a like nature,' with an observation that includes all natures,—let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of disorder—shaken, convulsed— wrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.

'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'

  'If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
  The water of MY LAND, find her disease,
  And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
  I would applaud thee to the very echo,
  That should applaud again.'

  'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
  Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?'

  'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
  That chambers will be safe.'

Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men,—who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them,—who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is that is not 'words,' as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.

This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and strange,'—Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,' are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.

  'There is a history in all men's lives,
  Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
  The which observed, a man may prophesy,
  With a near aim, of the main chance of things
  As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds
  And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
  Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'

'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.'

This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare not unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether a kind, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which commands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to be besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment—this 'godlike' endowment—under culture.

There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and turmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth to draw 'the next ages' into the scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is bare. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without any disguise,—the man of the new learning, openly applying his 'universal insight,' and 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to this great question of 'Policy,' which was then hurrying on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.

He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this 'Magician,' when he 'brings the rabble to his place,' the reader who would know at last why it is that these old Roman graves 'have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art'; and why it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should read now—but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman's hands, deserves to be read—this great revolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption, now that the storm appears to be 'overblown,' may safely reserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the COMMON-WEAL.

The reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe that the Poet avails himself of the dialogue here, with even more than his usual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of the bolder passages, in the least objectionable manner,—interrupting the statement in critical points, and emphasizing it, by that interruption, to the careful reader 'of the argument,' but to the spectator, or to one who takes it as a dialogue merely, neutralizing it by that dramatic opposition. For the political criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by being merely broken, and put into the mouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion.

For the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and stupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their unfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true consulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the chair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely criticized by the true Tribune—the Tribune, whose Tribe is the Kind—on the other; and it was not necessary to produce, in any more prominent manner, just then, the fact, that both these offices and relations were combined in that tottering estate of the realm,—that 'old riotous form of military government,' which held then only by the virtual election of the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and which, this Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for its innovations in the government, and suppressions of the ancient estates of this realm,—for its suppression of the dignities and privileges of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered dignities and rights of the Commons.

Scene.—A Street. Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS with his two military friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars, and have but just returned from their campaign, COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS,—and with them the old civilian MENENIUS, who, patrician as he is, on account of his honesty,—a truly patrician virtue,—is in favour with the people. 'He's an honest one. Would they were all so.'

The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,—the foreign wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and reconciliation, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene.

Cor. Tullus Aufidius then had made NEW HEAD.

Lart. He had, my lord, and that it was, which caused Our swifter COMPOSITION.

  Cor. So then, the Volsces stand but as at first,
  Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road
  Upon us again.

Com. They [Volsces?] are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again.

* * * * *

[Enter Sicinius and Brutus.]

  Cor. Behold! these are the tribunes of the people,
  The tongues o' the common mouth. I do despise them;
  For they do prank them in authority,
  Against all noble sufferance.

Sic. Pass no further.

Cor. Ha! what is that?

Bru. It will be dangerous to Go on: No further.

Cor. What makes this CHANGE?

Men. The matter?

Com. Hath he not passed the NOBLES and the COMMONS?

Bru. Cominius.—No.

Cor. Have I had children's voices? [ Yes.]

Sen. Tribunes, give way:—he shall to the market-place.

Bru. The people are incensed against him.

Sic. Stop. Or all will fall in broil.

Cor. Are these your herd? Must these have voices that can yield them now, And straight disclaim their tongues? You, being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? Have you not set them on?

Men. Be calm, be calm.

Cor. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility:— Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Nor ever will be ruled.

Bru. Call't not a plot: The people cry you mocked them; and of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repined; Scandaled the suppliants for the people; called them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

Cor. Why, this was known before.

Bru. Not to them all.

Cor. Have you informed them since?

Bru. How! I inform them?

Cor. You are like to do such business.

Bru. Not unlike, Each way to better yours.

Cor. Why then should I be consul? By yon clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune.

  Sic. You show too much of that,
  For which the people stir: If you will pass
  To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,—
  Which you are out of,—with a gentler spirit;
  Or never be so noble as a consul,
  Nor yoke with him for tribune.

Men. Let's be calm.

  Com. The people are abused;—set on—this paltering
  Becomes not Rome: nor has Coriolanus
  Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely
  I' the plain way of his merit.

Cor. Tell me of corn: This was my speech, and I will speak't again.

Men. Not now, not now.

First Sen. Not in this heat, sir, now.

Cor. Now, as I live, I will.—My nobler friends I crave their pardons:— For the mutable, rank scented many, let them Regard me, as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves: I say again, In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate, The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered, By mingling them with us, the honoured number. Who lack not virtue, no,—nor power, but that Which they have given to—BEGGARS.

Men. Well, no more.

First Sen. No more words, we beseech you.

Cor. How, no more: As for my country, I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those meazels Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them.

Bru. You speak o' the people, As if you were a god to punish, not A man of their infirmity.

Sic. 'T were well We let the people know't.

Men. What, what? his choler.

  Cor. Choler!
  Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
  By Jove, 't would be my mind.

  Sic. It is a mind,
  That shall remain a poison where it is,
  Not poison any further.

  Cor. Shall remain!
  Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you
  His absolute SHALL?

  Com. 'Twas from the canon,
  O good, but most unwise patricians, why
  You grave, but reckless senators, have you thus
  Given Hydra here to choose AN OFFICER,
  That with his peremptory shall—being but
  The horn and noise o' the monster—wants not spirit
  To say, he'll turn your current in a ditch,
  And make your channel his? If he have power,
  Then veil your IGNORANCE:—[that let him have it.]
  —if none, awake
  Your dangerous LENITY.

[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it but a little, it is not the lost Roman weal and its danger that fires the passion of this speech. 'Look at this player whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in his eyes.' 'What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have.']

  —if none, awake
  Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
  Be not as common fools; if you are not—

What do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you from the commons? If you are not, there's no nobility. If you are not, what business have you in these chairs of state?

  —if you are not,
  Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
  If they be senators; and they are no less,
  When both your voices blended, the GREATEST TASTE
  Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate;
  And such a one as he, who puts his shall,—

[Mark it, his popular shall].

  His popular shall, against a graver bench
  Than ever frown'd in Greece! By Jove himself,
  It makes the consuls base: and my soul aches,
  To know, when two authorities are up,

[Neither able to rule].

Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter twixt the GAP of BOTH, and take The one by the other.

Com. Well,—on to the market place.

Cor. Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth The corn o' the store-house gratis, as 'twas used Sometime in Greece.

[It is not corn, but the property of the state, and its appropriation, we talk of here. Whether the absolute power be in the hands of the people or 'their officer.' There had been a speech made on that subject, which had not met with the approbation of the absolute power then conducting the affairs of this realm; and in its main principle, it is repeated here. 'That was my speech, and I will make it again.' 'Not now, not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.' 'Now, as I live, I will.']

Men. Well, well, no more of that,

Cor. Though there THE PEOPLE had more absolute power, I say they nourished disobedience, fed The ruin of the state.

Bru. Why shall the people give One that speaks thus their voice?

Cor. I'll give my reasons, More worthier than their voices. They know the corn Was not our RECOMPENSE; resting well assured They ne'er did service for it? . . . Well, what then? How shall this bosom multiplied, digest; The senate's courtesy? Let deeds express What's like to be their words. We did request it, WE are THE GREATER POLL, and in true fear They gave us our demands. Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our cares, fears: which will in time break ope The locks o' the senate, and bring in the crows To peck the eagles.

Mem. Come, enough.

Bru. Enough, with over measure.

  Cor. No, take more;
  What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
  Seal what I end withal! This double worship,—
  Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
  Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,
  Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no
  Of General Ignorance—it must omit
  Real necessities, and give way the while
  To unstable slightness. PURPOSE so barred it follows
  Nothing is done to purpose: Therefore beseech you,—

[Therefore beseech you].

  You that will be less fearful than discreet;
  That love the fundamental part of state,
  More than you doubt the change of't—

There was but one man in England then, able to balance this revolutionary proposition so nicely—so curiously; 'that love the fundamental part of state more than you doubt the change of it'; 'You that are less fearful than discreet'—not so fearful as discreet.

                        that prefer
  A noble life before a long, and wish
  To jump a body with a dangerous physic
  That's sure of death without it,—at once pluck out
  The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
  The sweet which is their poison; your dishonour
  MANGLES true JUDGMENT, and bereaves THE STATE
  Of that INTEGRITY which should become it:
  Not having the power to do the good it would,
  For the ill which doth control it.

Bru. He has said enough.

[One would think so].

Sic. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer As traitors do.

  Cor. Thou wretch! despite o'erwhelm thee!
  What should the people do with these bald tribunes?
  On whom depending, their obedience fails
  To the greater bench? In a rebellion,
  When what's not meet, but what must be was law
  Then were they chosen: in a better hour,
  Let what is meet, be said it must be meet,
  And throw their power i' the dust.

Bru. MANIFEST TREASON.

Sic. This a Consul? No.

Bru. The Aediles! ho! let him be apprehended.

  Sic. Go call the people; [Exit Brutus] in whose name, myself
  Attach thee [thee] as a traitorous INNOVATOR,
  A FOE to the PUBLIC WEAL. Obey, I charge thee,
  And follow to thine answer.

  Cor. Hence, old goat!
  Senators and Patricians. We'll surety him.

  Cor. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones
  Out of thy garments.

Sic. Help, ye citizens.

[Re-enter Brutus, with the Aediles, and a rabble of citizens.]

Men. On both sides, more respect.

Sic. There's HE that would Take from you all your power.

Bru. Seize him, Aediles.

Cit. Down with him. Down with him.

[Several speak.]

Second Sen. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!

[They all bustle about CORIOLANUS.]

  Tribunes, patricians:—citizens:—what ho:—
  Sicinius, Brutus:—Coriolanus:—citizens:—

Cit. Peace!—Peace!—Peace!—stay!—hold!—peace!

  Men. What is about to be? I am out of breath:
  Confusion's near! I cannot speak: you tribunes
  To the people.—Coriolanus, patience:—
  Speak, good Sicinius.

Sic. Hear me, people;—Peace.

Cit. Let's hear our tribune:—Peace,—Speak, speak, speak.

Sic. You are at point to lose your liberties, Marcius would have all from you; Marcius Whom late you have named for consul.

Men. Fye, fye, fye. That is the way to kindle, not to quench.

Sen. To unbuild the city and to lay all flat.

Sic. What is the city, but the people.

  Cit. TRUE,
  The people are the city.

  Bru. By the consent of ALL, we were established
  The people's magistrates.

Cit. You so remain.

Men. And so are like to do.

  Cor. That is the way to lay the city flat,
  To bring the roof to the foundation;
  And bury all which yet distinctly ranges,
  In heaps and piles of ruin.

Sic. This deserves death.

Bru. Or let us stand to our authority, Or let us lose it:—

Truly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing the history which is in all men's lives, 'Figuring the nature of the times deceased, a man may prophesy,' as it would seem, 'with a near aim,'—quite near—'of the main chance of things, as yet, not come to life, which in their weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time,' this Poet says; but art, it seems, anticipates that process. There appears to be more of the future here, than of the times deceased.

  Bru. We do here pronounce
  Upon the part of the people, in whose power
  We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy
  Of present death.

  Sic. Therefore, lay hold of him;
  Bear him to the rook Tarpeian, and from thence
  Into destruction cast him.

Bru. Ædiles, seize him.

Cit. Yield, Marcius, yield.

Men. Hear me, one word. Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.

Ædiles. Peace, peace.

  Men. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend,
  And temperately proceed to what you would
  Thus violently redress.

  Bru. Sir, those cold ways
  That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous.
  Where the disease is violent.—Lay hands upon him,
  And bear him to the rock.

  Cor. No: I'll die here. [Drawing his sword.]
  There's some among you have beheld me fighting;
  Come try upon yourselves, what you have seen me.

Men. DOWN with THAT SWORD; tribunes, withdraw awhile.

Bru. Lay hands upon him.

Men. Help, help, MARCIUS, help! You that be NOBLE, help him, young and old.

Cit. DOWN WITH HIM! DOWN WITH HIM!

'In this mutiny, the Tribunes, the Ædiles, and the People, are all BEAT IN,' so the stage direction informs us, which appears a little singular, considering there is but one sword drawn, and the victorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in numbers. It is, however, only a temporary success, as the victors seem to be aware.

Men. Go, get you to your houses, be gone away, All will be nought else.

Second Sen. Get you gone.

Cor. Stand fast, We have as many friends as enemies.

Men. Shall it be put to that?

Sen. The gods forbid! I pry'thee noble friend, home to thy house; Leave us to CURE THIS CAUSE.

Men. For 'tis a sore upon us, You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you.

Com. Come, Sir, along with us.

  Cor. I would they were barbarians (as they are,
  Though in Rome littered) not Romans, (as they are not,
  Though calved i' the porch o' the Capitol).

Men. Begone; Put not your worthy rage into your tongue; One time will owe another. [Hear.]

Cor. On fair ground, I could beat forty of them.

Men. I could myself Take up a brace of the best of them; yea, the two tribunes.

  Com. But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic:
  And MANHOOD is called FOOLERY, when it stands
  Against a falling fabric.—Will you hence,
  Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend
  Like interrupted waters, and o'erbear
  What they are used to bear. [Change of 'predominance.']

  Men. Pray you, begone:
  I'll try whether my old wit be in request
  With those that have but little; this must be patched
  With cloth of any colour.

Com. Nay, come away.

The features of that living impersonation of the heroic faults and virtues which 'the mirror,' that professed to give to 'the very body of the time, its form and pressure,' could not fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in 'this ancient piece,' and often shine out in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely the player's intention. For 'the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was not the only poet of this time, as it would seem, who found the scope of a double intention, in his poetic representation, not adequate to the comprehension of his design—who laid on another and another still, and found the complexity convenient. 'The sense is the best judge,' this Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining peremptorily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;—a rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, 'to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing,' he says, and 'he had as lief not be read at all, as be read by a careless reader.' So he thrusts in his meanings as thick as ever he likes, and those who don't choose to stay and pick them out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he laid them in for,—that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will have readers enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait. There's time enough.

First Pat. This man has marr'd his fortune.

Men. His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; And being angry, does forget that ever He heard the name of death.

[A noise within.]

Here's goodly work!

Second Pat. I would they were a-bed!

Men. I would they were in Tyber!—What, the vengeance, Could he not speak them fair?

[Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble.]

Sic. WHERE IS THIS VIPER, That would depopulate the city, and BE EVERY MAN HIMSELF?

Men. You worthy tribunes—

Sic. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands; he hath resisted LAW, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.

['When could they say till now that talked of Rome that her wide walls encompassed but one man?' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so vile a thing as Caesar.']

Than the severity of the PUBLIC POWER, Which he so sets at nought.

First Cit. He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people's mouths, And we their hands.

[Historical _principles throughout, with much of that kind of illustration in which his works are so prolific, an illustration which is not rhetorical, but scientific, based on the COMMON PRINCIPLES IN NATURE, which it is his 'primary' business to ascend to, and which it is his 'second' business to apply to each particular branch of art. 'Neither,' as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advancement, 'neither are these only similitudes as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters,' and the tracking of these historical principles to their ultimate forms, is that which he recommends for the disclosing of nature and the abridging of Art.]

Sic. He's a disease, that must be cut away.

Men. O he's a limb, that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy. What has he done to Rome, that's worthy death? Killing our enemies? The blood he hath lost, (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath, By many an ounce), he dropped it for his country. And what is left, to lose it by his country, Were to us all, that do't and suffer it, A brand to the end o' the world.

There's a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom he says in another scene, 'I cannot speak him home.'

  Bru. Merely awry: when he did love his country,
  It honour'd him.

Men. The service of the foot, Being once gangren'd, is not then respected For what before it was?

Bru. We'll hear no more:— Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence; Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further.

  Men. One word more, one word.
  This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find
  The harm of unscann'd swiftness, will, too late,
  Tie leaden pounds to his HEELS. [Mark it, for it is a
                                     prophecy]
  Lest PARTIES (as he is beloved) break out,
   And sack great Rome with Romans.

Bru. If it were so,—

Sic. What do ye talk? Have we not had a taste of his obedience? Our Ædiles smote? Ourselves resisted?—Come:—

Men. Consider this; he has been bred i' the wars, Since he could draw a sword,—

That has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their rule, hitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what schooling these statesmen have had, before you begin the enterprise of reforming them, and take your measures accordingly. They are not learned men, you see. How should they be? There has been no demand for learning. The law of the sword has prevailed hitherto. When what's not meet but what must be was law, then were they chosen. Proceed by process.

Consider this; he has been bred i' the WARS Since he could draw a sword, and is ill school'd In boulted language—

[That's the trouble; but there's been a little bolting going on in this play.]

  —Meal and bran, together
  He throws without distinction. Give me leave
  I'll go to him, and undertake to bring him
  Where he shall answer by a lawful form,
  (In peace) to his utmost peril.

  First Sen. Noble tribunes.
  It is the humane way: the other course
  Will prove too bloody; and—

[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].

—the END of it, Unknown to the beginning.

Sic. Noble Menenius; Be you then as the People's Officer: Masters,—[and they seem to be that, truly,]—lay down your weapons.

Bru. Go not home,

Sic. MEET on the MARKET-PLACE,—

[—that is where the 'idols of the market' are—]

  We'll attend you there:
  Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed
  In our first way.

  Men. I'll bring him to you.
  Let me desire your company [To the Senators] He must come,
  Or what is worse will follow.

Sen. Pray you, let's to him.

SCENE—THE FORUM. Enter Sicinius and Brutus.

  Bru. In this point charge him home, that he affects
  TYRANNICAL POWER: if he evade us there,
  Enforce him with his envy to the people;
  And that the spoil, got on the Antiates,
  Was ne'er distributed.—

  Enter an Ædile.
  What, will he come?

Æd. He's coming.

Bru. How accompanied?

Æd. With old Menenius, and those senators That always favour'd him.

Sic. Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured, Set down by THE POLL?

Æd. I have; 'tis ready.

Sic. Have you collected them BY TRIBES?

Æd. I have.

Sic. Assemble presently the people hither: And when they hear me say, it shall be so I the RIGHT and STRENGTH o' the COMMONS, be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them, If I say fine, cry fine; if death, cry death; Insisting on the OLD _prerogative, And power i' THE TRUTH, o' THE CAUSE.

[There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is the most immersed.—Advancement of LEARNING.]

Æd. I shall inform them.

  Bru. And when such time they have begun to cry,
  Let them not cease, but with a din confused
  Enforce the present execution
  Of what we chance to sentence.

Æd. Very well.

Sic. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint. When we shall hap to give't them.

Bru. Go about it.

[Exit Ædile.]

  Put him to choler straight. He hath been used
  Ever to conquer, and to have his worth
  Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot
  Be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks
  What's in his heart; and that is there, which looks
  With me to break his neck. [Prophecy—inductive.]
  Well, here he comes.

Enter CORIOLANUS, and his party.

Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.

Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour'd gods Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of JUSTICE Supplied with WORTHY MEN! plant LOVE among us. Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the shows of PEACE, And not our STREETS with WAR.

First Sen. Amen, Amen! [Hear, Hear!]

Men. A NOBLE wish.

Re-enter Ædile with Citizens.

Sic. Draw near, ye people.

Cor. First hear me speak.

Ædile. List to your tribunes. Audience: Peace, I say.

Both Tri. Well, say,—Peace, ho.

  Cor. Shall I be charged no further than this present?
  Must all determine here?

  Sic. I do demand,
  If you submit you to the people's voices,
  Allow their officers, and are content
  To suffer lawful censure for such faults
  As shall be proved upon you?

Cor. I am content.

Men. Lo, citizens, he says he is content—

  Cor. What is the matter,
  That being pass'd for consul, with full voice,
  I am so dishonour'd, that the very hour
  You take it off again?

Sic. Answer to us.

Cor. Say then,'tis true. I ought so.

  Sic. WE CHARGE YOU, that you have contrived to take
  From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind
  Yourself into a_ POWER TYRANNICAL;
  For which, you are A TRAITOR to the PEOPLE.

Cor. How! Traitor?

Men. Nay, temperately: Your promise.

Cor. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor!

Cit. To the rock, to the rock with him.

  Sic. Peace.
  We need not put new matter to his charge:
  What you have seen him do, and heard him speak,
  Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,
  Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying
  Those whose great power must try him; even THIS,
  So criminal, and in such CAPITAL kind,
  Deserves the extremest death….
                               For that he has,
  As much as in him lies, from time to time,
  Envied against the people; seeking means
  To pluck away their power: as now, at last,
  Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence
  Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers
  That do distribute it; in the name o' the people,
  And in the power of us, the tribunes, we,
  Even from this instant, banish him our city,
  In peril of precipitation
  From off the rock Tarpeian, never more
  To enter our Rome's gates. I' THE PEOPLE'S NAME
  I say it shall be so.

  Cit. It shall be so, it shall be so: let him away,
  He's banish'd, and it shall be so.

Com. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.

Sic. HE'S SENTENCED: no more hearing.

Com. Let me speak:—

Bru. THERE'S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED, As ENEMY to the PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY: IT SHALL BE SO.

Cit. IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.

And this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of 'that last king of England who was his ancestor' brought out; a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and distinguished—one who was taking so much pains to get the fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in by battle,' cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white and red from the old Norman should not prove sufficient— sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle- -by battle with the English people on those very questions; who had 'beaten them in' in their mutinies with his single sword, 'and taken all from them'; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties, and 'the charters that they bore in the body of the weal'— that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little—while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir which might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not unlike to break some one's neck.

'Bid them home,'

says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.

  'Bid them home:
  Say, their great enemy is gone, and THEY
  STAND in their ancient strength.'

But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way of 'striking an awe into them,' and removing any lurking opposition they might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his special qualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was not attended with those happy results which appear to have been expected in the other instance.

'If you have writ your annals true, 't is there, That like an EAGLE in a dove-cote, I Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli: Alone, I did it.' 'Why—

[The answer is, in this case,]

'Why, noble lords, Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune, Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart, 'Fore your own eyes and ears?

Cons. Let him die for't. [Several speak at once.]

Citizens [Speaking promiscuously]. Tear him to pieces; do it presently. He killed my son—my daughter;—he killed my cousin Marcus;—he killed my father…. O that I had him, With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe, To use my lawful sword. Insolent villain! …Traitor!—how now?…. Ay, TRAITOR, Marcius. Marcius? Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius. Dost thou think I'll grace thee with that ROBBERY—thy STOLEN NAME, Coriolanus, in CORIOLI?…. […. Honest, my lord? 'Ay, honest.']

Cons. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.' 'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius? Against him FIRST.'

Surely, if that 'Heir apparent' to whom the History of HENRY THE SEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of the 'rare accidents' in that reign to the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon this yet more 'ancient piece,' he might have found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that the poet's mode of handling the same historical question is much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely—a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to the received method—but a Show-man, also, an Historical Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician, who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, 'with a near aim,' an aim so near that it might well seem 'magical'; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, 'which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for acting—one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which is the Globe—one who had laid out all for his share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so 'patient—patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'—such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.

The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then 'Fame, who is the posthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.'

  'O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,
  But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.'

  'Henceforth guard thee well,
  For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;
  But by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
  I'll kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'

CONCLUSION.

'How I have thought of this, and of these times, I shall recount hereafter, . . . . . . . . and find a time Both meet to hear and answer such high things. Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this; Brutus had rather he a villager, Than to repute himself a son of Rome, Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us.

Inasmuch as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured throughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view of the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is involved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning, it presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly opposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous preconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts sustained by unquestionable contemporary authority, and attested by public documents,—facts which history has graven with her pen of iron in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions of this man's character, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly responsible;—not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him by authority,—not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious name that was not his to blast,—that was the property of men of learning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for ever, at the bidding of power,—not that only, but the voluntary exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged,—which he has gone out of his way to leave to us,—memorials of them which he has collected with his own hands, and sealed up, and sent down to posterity 'this side up,' with the most urgent directions to have them read, and examined, and considered deeply,—that posterity, too, to which he commends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the cure of his fame.

The demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must receive it. Because our criticism or our learning is not equal to the task of reconciling it with that which we know already, or with that which we believed, and thought we knew, we must not on that account reject it. That is to hurt ourselves. That is to destroy the principle of integrity at its source. We must take our facts and reconcile them, if we can; and let them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is greater than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of us, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts, for the sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never so plausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did require of any mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be dispensed with, or shorn, on either side to make it tenable, is not going to stand, let it come in what name, or with what authority it will; because the truth of history is, in its least particular, of a universal quality, and is much more potent than anything that the opinion and will of man can oppose to it.

To the mind which is able to receive under all conditions the demonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight,—to the mind to which truth is religion, this book is dedicated. The facts which it contains are able to assert themselves,—will be, at least, hereafter. They will not be dependent ultimately upon the mode of their exhibition here. For they have the large quality, they have the solidity and dimensions of historical truth, and are accessible on more sides than one.

But to those to whom they are already able to commend themselves in the form in which they are here set forth, the author begs leave to say, in conclusion, though it must stand for the present in the form of a simple statement, but a statement which challenges investigation, that so far from coming into any real collision with the evidence which we have on this subject from other sources, those very facts, and those very historical materials on which our views on this subject have been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the complete development of the views contained here.

It is the true history of these great events in which the hidden great men of this age played so deep a part; it is the true history of that great crisis in which the life-long plots of these hidden actors began to show themselves on the historic surface in scenic grandeur,—in those large tableaux which history takes and keeps,—which history waits for,—it is the very evidence which has supplied the principal basis of the received views on this subject,—it is the history of the initiation of that great popular movement,—that movement of new ages, with which the chief of popular development, and the leader of these ages, has been hitherto so painfully connected in our impressions; it is that very evidence,—that blasting evidence which the Learning of the Modern Ages has always carried in its stricken heart,—it is that which is wanting here. That also is a part of the story which has begun to be related here.

And those very letters which have furnished 'confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ' of the impressions which the other historical evidence, as it stands at present, inevitably creates,—those very letters which have been collected by the party whose character was concerned in them, and preserved with so much diligence and caution,—which we have been asked with so much emphasis to read and ponder,—which have been recommended to our attention as the very best means, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic relations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete understanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance with his character and aims,—with his natural dispositions, as well as his deliberate scientific aims,—these letters, long as we have turned from them,—often as we have turned from them,—chilled, confounded, sick at heart,—unable, in spite of those recommendations, to find in them any gleam of the soul of these proceedings,—these very letters will have to be read, after all, and with that very diligence which the directions enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to take just that place in the development of this plot which the author, who always knows what he is about when he is giving directions, designed them to take. There is one very obvious reason why they should be studied—why they would have to be studied in the end. They have on the face of them a claim to the attention of the learned. There is nothing like them in the history of mankind. For, however mean and disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to words,—that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the identity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in the most private conferences,—there is usually an attempt to clothe the forlorn and shrinking actuality with the common human dignity, or to make it, at least, passably respectable, if the claim to the heroic is dispensed with,—even in oral speech. But in writing, in letters, destined to never so brief and limited an existence, who puts on paper for the eye of another, for the review of that criticism which in the lowest, basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared to detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on the least failure, or shadow of failure in the best—who puts in writing,—what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it comes to that, a deliberate display of meanness,—what convicted felon, but will undertake in that case to give some sort of heroic colour to his proceedings—some air of suffering virtue to his durance?

But a great man, consciously great, who knows that his most trifling letter is liable to publication; a great man, writing on subjects and occasions which insure publicity to his writing; a man of fame, writing letters expressly for publication, and dedicating them to the far-off times; a man of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest shades of moral differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur of aims—aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering, under the most difficult conditions, pursued to their successful issue; a man whose aim in life it was to advance, and ennoble, and enrich his kind; in whose life-success the race of men are made glad; such a one sending down along with the works, in which the nobility and the deliberate worth and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved, memorials of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them, by universal consent, the most odious character in history; this is the phenomenon which our men of learning have found themselves called upon to encounter here. To separate the man and the philosopher—to fly out upon the man, to throw him overboard with every expression of animosity and disgust, to make him out as bad as possible, to collect diligently every scrap of evidence against him, and set it forth with every conceivable aggravation—this has been the resource of an indignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest in some form; this has been the defence of learning, cast down from its excellency, and debased in all men's eyes, as it seemed for ever, in the person of its high-priest.

The objection to the work here presented to the public is, that it does not go far enough. From the point of review that the research of which it is the fruit has now attained, this is the criticism to which it appears to be liable. From this point of view, the complaint to be made against it is, that at the place where it stops it leaves, for want of that part of the evidence which contains it, the historical grandeur of our great men unrevealed or still obscured. For we have had them, in the sober day-light of our occidental learning, in the actualities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past only—monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man's divinity, demi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples, stalking through the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or in the twilight of a national popular ignorance, embalmed in the traditions of those who are always 'beginners.' We have had them; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own stock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in the searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them, we have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and ignorance confessed, with all their 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,' with all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion and will in man, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and wrong-doing, assumed and acknowledged in their own persons, symbolically, vicariously, assumed and confessed. 'I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.' We have them, our Interpreters, our Poets, our Reformers, who start from the actualities—from the actualities of nature in general, and of the human nature in particular—who make the most careful study of man as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis of their innovation, the beginning of their advancement to the ideal or divine. We have them; and they, too, they also come to us, with that old garland of glory on their brows, with that same 'crown' of victory, which the world has given from of old to those who have taken her affairs to be their business.

That the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an age, like that age from which our modern philosophy proceeds, is of a kind to require, for its unravelling, a different species of criticism from that which suffices for the historical evidence which our own times and institutions produce, is a fact which would hardly seem to require any illustration in the present state of our historical knowledge, in the present state of our knowledge in regard to the history of this age in particular; when not the professed scholar only, but every reader, knows what age in the constitutional history of England, at least, that age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian only, with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are caviare to the multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull prose and scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back to the peoples their own, to tell us what age this was. The inner history of this time is indeed still wanting to us; and the reason is, that we have not yet applied to the reading of its principal documents that key of times which our contemporary historians have already put into our hands—that key which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain cases, indispensable to the true interpretation.

That the direct contemporary testimony on which history depends is, in this case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and through all its details—that the documents are all of them, on the face of them, 'suspicious,' and not fit to be received as historical evidence without the severest scrutiny and re-examination—this is the fact which remains to be taken into the account here. For this is a case in which the witnesses come into court, making signs, seeking with mute gesticulation to attract our attention, pointing significantly to the difficulties of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting a second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mortally hate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could; intimating that if their testimony should be re-examined in a higher court, and when the Star Chamber and the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer in session, it might perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different reading. This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his finger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another age.

We all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and dignities of a race—what age in the history of its recovered liberties, rescued from oppression and recognised and confirmed by statute, this was. We know it was an age in which the decisions of the Bench were prescribed to it by a power that had 'the laws of England at its commandment,' that it was an age in which Parliament, and the press, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had charge, diligent charge 'of amusements also, and of those who only played at working.' That this was a time when the Play House itself,—in that same year, too, in which these philosophical plays began first to attract attention, and again and again, was warned off by express ordinances from the whole ground of 'the forbidden questions.' We know that this was an age in which not the books of the learned only were subjected to 'the press and torture which expulsed' from them all those 'particulars that point to action'—action, at least, in which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it was a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that same censorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and engines, which made then a regular part of the machinery of the press; when the most secret cabinet of the Statesman and the Man of Letters must be kept in order for that revision, when his most confidential correspondence, his private note-book and diary must be composed under these restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies of sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be—which might or might not be—put down for private purposes perhaps, and never intended to be preached—were produced by Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.

To the genius of a race in whose mature development speculation and action were for the first time systematically united, in the intensities of that great historical impersonation which signalises its first entrance upon the stage of human affairs, stimulated into preternatural activity by that very opposition which would have shut it out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those impossible, insufferable limits that the will of the one man prescribed to it then,—to that many-sided genius, bent on playing well its part even under those conditions, all the more determined on it by that very opposition—kept in mind of its manliness all the time by that all comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of every act—irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by the perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine of the human nature and its nobility in the school of that sovereignty which was keeping such a costly 'crib' here then; 'Let a beast be lord of beasts,' says Hamlet, 'and your crib shall stand at the king's mess;' 'Would you have me false to my nature? says another, 'rather say I play the man I am'; to that so conscious man, playing his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high; knowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in, how 'far' those long-drawn aisles extended; what 'far-off' crowding ages filled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was acting 'even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to the ending doom'; to such a one studying out his part beforehand under such conditions, it was not one disguise only, it was not one secret literary instrumentality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That toy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends, with all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this speaker's speech, 'who came prepared to speak well,' and 'to give to his speech a grace by action.'

Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other forms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It offered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain plots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object, were necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that dramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, not on the stage, but in these 'plots' in which the weal of the unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and private names, and a secret slang of their own.

The minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and who thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary communication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in their day.

The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not just as lawful for the moderns to 'invent new measures in verses,' at least, as in 'dances,' and why it was not just as competent for him to compose 'supposititious' letters for his purposes, as it was for Thucydides to compose speeches for his; and though eloquence was, in this case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day prosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and business, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as it happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a comprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.

The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared without much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that kind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring and less 'dangerous' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is opened, was conducted in that gentleman's name, about those days.

But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and sanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when occasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing letters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished personages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request for that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was concerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he stopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of the Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that he could compose 'a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision, or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any better than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department of song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities in general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of poetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so singular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have no other object in living, but to promote their ends,—one whose vast philosophic aims,—aims already propounded in all their extent and grandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole scheme of his life was to be—artistically—with the strong hand of that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm of devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to be the sovereign's favourite; one whose great torch of genius and learning was lighted, as it was understood,—lighted and fed, to light them to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add any thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man, instructed by her instinct, that 'such men were dangerous,' was willing, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of this nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is, that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another, passed in consequence through this gentleman's hands in both these reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional endowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically 'active good,' for the dispatch of business in which large and distant results were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference to his ulterior aims,—if, in writing letters for them, he wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part,—of his own immortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass were spent' running through them—if, in composing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history which contained their solution, who that knows what those times were, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.

All these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were written for the future, but they were written in that same secret method, in that same 'cipher' which he has to stop to describe before he can introduce the subject of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' with the distinct assurance that as 'matters stand then, it is an art of great use,' though some may think he introduces it with its kindred arts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the sciences, and to little other purpose, and that trivial as these may seem in such a connexion, 'to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to 'those who are skilful in them' to say whether he has not given, in what he has said of them, 'though in few words,' a proof of his proficiency. This was the method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences only, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be written then.

'Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.' Both these kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The reading of that which is 'in letters,' the one in which letters are secretly employed as 'symbols' of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is reserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers of this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the 'Book of Sports and Riddles,' which this school published, and who happen to have it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked him to his last lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who have been in Prospero's Island, and 'untied his spell.' This point gained,—the secret of the cipher 'in letters,'—the secret of 'the symbols,' and other 'devices' and 'conceits' which were employed in this school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the characters in which these men struck through the works they could not own then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of universality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human kind, and with it—in it, their own particular 'marks' and private signatures,—this mastered,—with the secret of this in our hands, the cipher 'in words' presents no difficulties, When we come to read the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid of that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means, when he says, that on 'account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes carried in the weakest ciphers.'

It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival—the policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand points in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time, to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for power under those same conditions—men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.

It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important, were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the nation.

Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance—in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution—it was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and Madman,' too, so freely,—consoling the Monarch with the suggestion that Essex was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their heads up.

Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing ambitions—under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual hostility—it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests under such conditions,—it was easy for politicians trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them,—the over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.

While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show of a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o' the world' was to be subjected—a trial in which the decision was known beforehand—'though,' says our Poet—

  'Though well, we may not pass upon his life,
  Without the form of justice;'—

it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart—for the tool of a Stuart's favourite—to insert in such a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.

In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is 'supposititious,' to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose—supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious—is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,—which he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin, never meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his dry hand up and down.'

These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;—the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,—the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and whose 'natures and ends' are so 'differing and dissonant from the general state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary for them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be in the whole course of their lives close, retired, reserved, as we see in Tiberius, who was never seen at a play,' men who are compelled, as it were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The soundest disclosing,' he says, 'and expounding of MEN is by their NATURES and ENDS. The weaker sort of men are best interpreted by their natures, the wisest by their ends.' 'Princes are best interpreted by their natures, private persons by their ends, because princes being at the top of human desires, they have, for the most part, no particular ends whereto they aspire, by distance from which a man might take measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires' 'Distance from which,'—that is the key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and reasonable ends, and such as are within their power to attain.' As to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements which make the modern ages—the discoverers of its science of sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already received at their hands,—the benefits we have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us with the works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,—in which the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly pursued,—it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends are accomplished, to the times that have found in their experience what they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he made these sacrifices,—aims which he constantly propounded as the end of his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life which the surface of these documents exhibits,—between that historic form, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits,—and the nature which is revealed in this life-act,—the soul, the never-shaken soul of this proceeding.

  'The god of soldiers,
  With the consent of supreme Jove, inform
  Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove
  The shame UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war
  Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
  And saving those that eye thee.'

'I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of me, he judged, and lived so and so; I knew him better than any. Now, as much as decency permits, I here discover my inclinations and affections. If any observe, he will find that I have either told, or designed to tell all. What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' 'There was never greater circumspection and military prudence than is sometimes seen among us' ['Naturalists']. 'Can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves to the end of the game?'

'I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my name. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can he think to gain by showing himself to the world in a mask, and by concealing his true being from the people? If you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish: "Ay, but," said the other, "he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be." Socrates being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he; "there is nothing in me of what they say. I am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly."'—['The French Interpreter.']

This is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre, content to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to the true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends, propounding deliberately his duty as a man, his duty to his kind, his obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant end,—but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private nature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement,—at large in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great fruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all impediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over 'death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the consciousness of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the provision that can be made for security and repose,'—not reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own time,—his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with it,—always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always the 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I do,'—demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such conditions, a 'life sublime.'

  'All places that the eye of heaven visits
  Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'

There is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so irreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man in the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them;—this is the account, in the general, which will be found to be, upon investigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even by the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the truth of this statement will become apparent.

But though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded here, it cannot well close, without one word as to the points in this part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on us.

No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was possible for this scientific propounder of the law of human kind-ness to avert and protect him from—this anticipator and propounder of a human civilization. He was far in advance of our times in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of social experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a beetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which was great nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's pang. To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them first 'with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were, the motives on which such consequences might depend then—to forestall the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed. The men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination against tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its existence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and authority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the calumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue—the virtue of it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal slavery could be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and manliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of an 'underground railway' being suggested for the relief of its victims? 'I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the Duke that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes—[between the Dukes]—and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night. It is dangerous to be spoken. I have locked the letter in my closet. There is part of a power already FOOTED. We must incline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable.

Cassius. And let us awear our resolution.

  Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men,
  The sufferance of our souls, THE TIMES ABUSE,—
  If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
  And every man hence to his idle bed;
  So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
  Till each man drop by lottery. But if THESE,—
  As I am sure they do,—bear fire enough
  To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour
  The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,
  What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE
  To prick us to redress? what other bond
  Than secret Romans, that have spoken the word,
  And will not falter….
  Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,
  Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls
  That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear
  Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain
  The even virtue of our enterprise,
  Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,
  To think that, or our cause, or our performance,
  Did need an oath.'

[Doctrine of the 'secret Romans.']

As to the rest, it was this man—this man of a scientific 'prudence' with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought—it was this man who gave at last the signal for change; not for war. 'Proceed by process' was his word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have attained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he proposed—this was the move which he was willing, for his part, to initiate.—'We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see ways to save us.'—The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned him were studiously arranged beforehand by himself,—he wrote the programme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the greatest in history. [''Tis the indiligent reader that loses my subject, not I,' says the 'foreign interpreter' of this style of writing. 'There will always be found some word or other, in a corner, though it lie very close.' That is the rule for the reading of the evidence in this case. The word is there, though it lies very close, as it had need to, to be available.]

It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works, through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and courtier—all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest—all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a courtier still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled the king, for life and liberty; and careful still not to assert any independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be his ends; it was in this character that he brought out at last the Novum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect and republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character too that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history which comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical writings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred, a Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want of leaders and organization—overborne by the genius of a military chief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his contemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which was dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch's approval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of superintending its publication. It is the History of the Founding of the Tudor Dynasty: prepared,—as were the rest of these works,—under the patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary 'entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness,' and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their persons.'

  'I am in this (Volumnia)
  Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,
  And you will rather show our general lowts,
  How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
  For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard,
  Of what that want might ruin.

Away my disposition!

  When you do find him, or alive or dead,
  He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.

  'Yet country-men, O yet, hold up your heads.
  I will proclaim my name about the field.
  I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO!
  A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country's friend.

  'And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus I,
  Brutus, MY COUNTRY'S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.'

FINIS.