authorship. The Essays, the Wisdom of the Ancients, the Letters, the Advancement of Learning, the Henry VII., and the New Atlantis, especially, abound in parallel topics, similar peculiarities of idea, like diction, and identical expressions; and the same solidity, brevity, and beauty of style and manner, and a like power of imagination, pervades them all. It is scarcely possible to doubt, for instance, that the Essay on Masques and Triumphs came from the same mind as Hamlet's instructions to the players, nor that the "Winter's Tale" came from the same source as the Essay on Gardens. 99 The "New Atlantis was written as one of his feigned histories, or natural stories, or types and models, and with a main purpose of illustrating the new doctrines and methods, which the author was endeavoring to institute, and to present, as it were, a model of his idea of a College of the Universal Science. It is said to have given origin to the Royal Society of London, which is, however, an institution of somewhat different kind and scope. On a general comparison of this work with the "Tempest," the similitude of the one to the other, in many points of the story, the leading ideas, the scene and conception of the whole, is very evident; and some parts of it may be traced in the "Timon of Athens." Like the island of Atlantis, Prospero's isle is situated afar off in the midst of the ocean, somewhere near "the still vex'd Bermoothes," but hitherto remote from all visitation of civilized men. Prospero, in his "full poor cell," where all the mysteries of science and the secrets of Nature are unfolded to him, attended by his master-spirit, Ariel, the genius of knowledge, is but another Solomon, with "an aspect as if he pitied men," in his House or College of the Six Days Works, in the island of Atlantis. Prospero, like Democritus and Anaxagoras, seems to have believed that "the truth of nature lieth hid in certain deep mines and caves,"" 1 Adv. of Learning, Works (Mont.), II. 131. and his oracles, like those delivered to the Indian Prince in the Masque, came out of "one of the holiest vaults";1 as Polonius says, in the play : "If circumstances lead me, I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed Bacon frequently alludes to that "feigned supposition that Plato maketh of the cave." 2 Indeed, the cave, as we know, was a traditional source of the divinest wisdom with the ancient philosophers and poets. Plato takes his disciple into a dark cave, in order to bring to light some of the abstrusest doctrines and innermost secrets of his divine philosophy. Tasso's learned magician, Ubaldo, who was born a Pagan, but was regenerated by divine grace, also had his secret seat in a hidden cave, wherein he was yet not far from heaven; nor were his wonderful works done in virtue of infernal spirits, but of the study of Nature: "Ma spiando men vo da lor vestigi, Qual in se virtu celi o l'erba o 'l fonte: XLIII. Perocche no ognor lunge dal' cielo Giur. Lib. XIV. 42-3. In the conception of Caliban, the author clearly intends to shadow forth his views of the savage island races, ethnologically considered, and he discloses the idea, which was doubtless Bacon's opinion, as it was that of Plato, that these savages were indigenous to the soil on which they were found, and that the races of men, like the rest of the animal kingdom, were created in distinct centres, or had a separate development, on different continents, and on a graduated scale of ascending types of form, rising by degrees, 1 Masque; Spedding's Letters and Life, I. 388. 2 Adv. of Learning, Bk. II. in the course of "a length and infinity of time,"1 from apes to savages, and from savages to the higher types of civilized men; as the science of paleontology now more clearly demonstrates, according to the principles of zoology, and according to the Transcendental Architectonic of the Divine Idea; - of all which he had been able to obtain something more than a mere hint even from Plato. And so he writes down Caliban "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick.". Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1. The "Midsummer-Night's Dream" is a work somewhat like in character, in which the writer evidently means to exhibit, not merely the invisible spirit of Nature under various forms of fable, but also the first dawnings of a human intelligence, even in the lower animals, and the effect of Orpheus' music and "universal philosophy" upon them, when "they all stood about him gently and sociably, as in a theatre, listening only to the concords of his lyre," which could "draw the wild beasts and the woods"; - for "Orpheus himself, a man admirable and truly divine, who being master of all harmony, subdued and drew all things after him by sweet and gentle measures, by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified";' — and also the universal nature of love, after the accounts which Bacon says are "given by the poets of Cupid or Love," which "are not properly applicable to the same person," the ancient Cupid being different from the younger Cupid, the son of Venus; "yet the discrepancy is such that one may see where the confusion is and where the similitude, and reject the one and receive the other." And so Titania says to "Bottom with an ass' head,” 1 Plato. "I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee; 8 - And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, may pass 2 Wisd. of the Anc. (Orpheus), Works (Boston), XIII. 110. 8 Ibid. (Cupid), 122. And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, That thou shalt like an airy spirit go."—Act III. Sc. 1. And again: "Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, sweet love? Bot. I have a reasonably good ear in music: let us have the tongs and bones. O, how mine eyes do loath his visage now! Ober. Silence, a while. Robin, take off his head. Titania, music call; and strike more dead Than common sleep, of all these five, the sense. Tit. Music, ho! music! such as charmeth sleep." — Act IV. Sc. 1. "For," continues Bacon, "as the works of wisdom surpass 1 Wisd. of the Anc. (Orpheus), Works (Boston), XIII. 111. "Phil. There is a brief, how many sports are ripe; Make choice of which your highness will see first. [Giving a paper. Lys. [Reads.] 'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung Thes. We'll none of that: that have I told my love, Lys. The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.' Thes. That is an old device; and it was play'd When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. Lys. The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Thes. That is some satire, keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. Lys. A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, And his love Thisbe: very tragical mirth.' Thes. Merry and tragical! Tedious and brief! That is, hot ice, and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord?"-Act V. Sc. 1. How shall we discover" where the confusion is and where the similitude"! The younger Cupid, however, according to Bacon, "applied the appetite to an individual object. From Venus, therefore, comes the general disposition, from Cupid the more exact sympathy. Now the general disposition depends upon causes near at hand, the particular sympathy upon principles more deep and fatal, and as if derived from that ancient Cupid, who is the source of all exquisite sympathy."' And so, we have it in the play, thus : — "Lys. [Hermia], for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth; 1 Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 125. |