“his owne writings. But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by
death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends the
office” of collection, etc. This is followed by a statement, probably
half jest, half irony, that the Author uttered his thoughts with such
“easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot on his
papers.” That Heminge and Condell had no hand in either _Dedication_ or
_Address_ is sufficiently proved by turns and phrases characteristically
Jonsonian. They, I suppose, had given Jonson _carte blanche_, and he
made use of the gift, in the interest of literature which might
otherwise have suffered irreparable loss. In this way the fiction of
Shakespeare’s identity with Shakspere was so plausibly documented, that
Jonson might have spared himself any further trouble on that score. But
either to make assurance doubly sure, or to show his dexterity, he set
about the writing of his Ode as if the fiction had not been planted
already. Some of the Ode’s features need no further comment than they
have received. But the “small Latin” and “Swan of Avon” allusions
deserve a word or two more. Both passages point at Shakspere and away
from Shakespeare. What was their _raison d’être_? They were
exceptionally significant touches to an elaborate system of camouflage,
by which posterity, including ourselves, was to be deluded.
Hitherto the accent has been too much on the unessentials of the Ode,
and far too little on its beauties. No nobler contemporary appreciation
of Shakespeare has reached our ears, and that is a cogent reason for
gratitude to its author. Before taking leave of him, I venture to make
free with one of his apostrophes. The lines would then run thus:
Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Bacon rise!
In order to correct misapprehensions which may have arisen through my
having slipped into positive statements, where _ex hypothesi_ or
conditional ones might have been desired, I wish expressly to disclaim
any intention to dogmatise. Scientific certainty is out of the
question. High probability we may reach, perhaps have reached. But that
is the limit. That Bacon was Shakespeare, the only Shakespeare that
matters, is merely a working hypothesis. Of other hypothetical
Shakespeares who have been put forward, a certain Earl of Rutland would
have deserved serious consideration, had he been as able a writer as was
his father-in-law, Sidney. The only formidable competing hypothesis
might seem to be that of a Great Unknown. But this essentially is a
confession of ignorance, and some of its supporters are sceptics who
amuse themselves by falling upon every hypothesis in turn.[60]
BACON AND “POESY”
Baconians hold that Francis Bacon concealed his identity under an
_alias_, and this perhaps is why they are sometimes accused of
slandering him, as if the use of a pen-name were a crime and not the
perfectly legitimate ruse it actually is. Calumniators of Bacon there
exist no doubt, and some of them are disposed to give Macaulay as an
instance. Such calumniation, however, is less likely to be found among
Baconians than among our orthodox opponents, whose creed effectually
bars the way to any true appreciation of the great man. As for Mr.
William Shakspere of Stratford, his character was, or should be, above
suspicion. The Burbages, exceptionally well-informed and credible
witnesses, testify that he was a “deserving” man, and Baconians accept
that valuation of the man all the more readily because there is no proof
that he himself ever laid claim to anything published or known as
Shakespeare’s.
The serious criticism that Baconians have to face may be considered
under three heads: (i) The testimony of Ben Jonson; (ii) The popular
notion that Bacon was essentially a man of science; (iii) The absence
of conspicuous and unmistakable evidence of identity between Bacon and
Shakespeare.
(i) In spite of the obvious inconsistency and perversity of Ben Jonson’s
various utterances on the subject, and the difficulty of believing that
his famous Ode of 1623 could refer except in part to a death which had
occurred in 1616, Ben Jonson is commonly regarded as an absolutely
conclusive witness against us. An article of mine entitled _Ben Jonson’s
Pious Fraud_, which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century and After_ of
November 1913, was an attempt at justification, and the attempt shall
not be repeated here. Some of my readers, however, may care to know that
in the December (1913) number of the same review an angry opponent
charged me with having libelled Ben Jonson, about the last thing of
which I, a lifelong admirer of Ben Jonson’s, could really be guilty.
(ii) The second criticism we have to meet is founded on the assumption
that Science--Natural Science--set her mark upon Bacon almost as soon as
he entered his teens. The main business of this section will be to set
forth arguments tending to show that the mark which Bacon actually bore
from early youth to mature age, was the sign manual of Poetry. In the
nineties of the 16th century, Bacon had serious thoughts of abandoning
the legal profession into which he had been thrust, and devoting himself
to literature in some form or other. Towards the close of his life, when
reviewing his life’s work, he regretfully confesses to having wronged
his “genius” in not devoting himself to letters for which he was “born.”
In another letter of about the same date, he expresses the same
conviction: that in deserting literature for civil affairs, he had done
“scant justice” to his “genius.” These are not the words, nor this the
attitude of a man who thought and felt that he was born for Natural
Science. Possibly so, says an opponent, but if Bacon were really born
for literature, how came it that his literary output, until he had
passed the mature age of 40, was so small? If you, Baconians, were not
blinded by prejudice, you would recognise in Bacon’s literary inactivity
during youth and early manhood, something very like proof of a
preoccupation with Science. In replying to this argument, I should begin
by pointing out that the words “literary inactivity” beg the important
question of concealment of identity. Waiving this point for the moment,
the presumption of an early preoccupation with Science will be seen at a
glance to be incompatible with what we know of Bacon’s attainments in
that direction. A speech of his about 1592 in praise of “Knowledge”--a
word which covered everything knowable--contains some of his finest and
most characteristic thoughts. The praise of knowledge, he declares, is
the praise of mind, since “knowledge is mind.... The minde itself is but
an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is a double of that which is.
The truth of being and the truth of knowing is all one.” Then comes a
rhetorical question reminiscent of Lucretius’s _suave mari_, i.e.: “Is
there any such happiness as for a man’s mind to be raised above ... the
clowdes of error that turn into stormes of perturbations.... Where he
may have a respect of the order of Nature”? “Knowledge,” the speaker
continues, should enable us “to produce effects and endow the life of
man with infinite commodities.” At this point he interrupts himself with
the reflection that he “is putting the garland on the wrong head,” and
then proceeds to inveigh against the “knowledge that is now in use: All
the philosophie of nature now receaved is eyther the philosophie of the
Gretians or of the Alchemist.” Aristotle’s admiration of the
changelessness of the heavens is derided on the naïve assumption that
there is a “like invariableness in the boweles of the earth, much
spiritt in the upper part of the earth which cannot be brought into
masse, and much massie body in the lower part of the heavens which
cannot be refined into spiritt.”[61] Ancient astronomers are next taken
to task for failing to see “how evident it is that what they call a
contrarie mocion is but an abatement of mocion. The fixed starres
overgoe Saturne and Saturne leaveth behind him Jupiter, and so in them
and the rest all is one mocion, and the nearer the earth the slower.” As
for modern astronomers, Copernicus for instance, and Galileo, he
dismisses them with contumely as “new men who drive the earth about.”
Then he chides himself for having forgotten that “knowledge itself is
more beautiful than any apparel of wordes that can be put upon it”--a
romantic sentiment reminiscent of Biron’s “angel knowledge” in _Love’s
Labour’s Lost_; and a subsequent passage is reminiscent of Montaigne.
The conclusion of the Speech is too fine to be abridged and must be
given in full:
“But indeede facilitie to beleeve, impatience to doubte, temeritie
to assever, glorie to knowe, end to gaine, sloth to search, resting
in a part of nature, these and the like have been the things which
have forbidden the happy match between the minde of man and the
nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vaine
nocions and blynde experiments. And what the posteritie of so
honorable a match may be it is not hard to consider.[62] Therefore
no doubte the sovereigntie of man lieth hid in knowledge, wherein
many things are reserved which Kings with their treasures cannot
buy, nor with their force command: their spies and intelligencies
can give no news of them: their seamen and discoverers cannot saile
where they grow. Now we governe nature in opinions but are thrall
to her in necessities, but if we would be led by her in invention
we should command her in action.”
These are not the views nor is this the accent of one who has been
devoting himself to natural science. The utterance is that of a genius
for letters whose preoccupation has been the apparelling of beautiful
thoughts in beautiful words.
* * * * *
The above Speech, which is part of an entertainment called a Conference
of Pleasure, expresses intuitions that come from the very soul of the
poet-speaker. Ample confirmation of this is to be found in the
_Advancement of Learning_--Learning here being the synonym of Knowledge
in the Speech--published in 1605. That work aimed at promoting “natural
science” with a view above all to scientific discovery and the increase
of man’s power over nature. It teems with practical allusions to and
quotations from the classical poets, particularly Ovid and Vergil. It
was dedicated to James the First, a prince--to quote the words of its
author--“invested with the learning and universality[63] of a
philosopher.” In a passage dealing with the art of medicine the author
deems it very much “to the purpose” to note that poets were wont “to
conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of medicine is
but to tune this curious harp of man’s body and reduce it to harmony.”
Another passage asserts that the wild fancies of quacks or empirics were
anticipated and discredited by the poets in the fable of Ixion. What we
call endowment of research, he, student of _belles lettres_ that he is,
regards as provision for the making of experiments appertaining to
Vulcan and Dædalus. Students of Natural Science will search the book in
vain for evidence of direct familiarity with any branch of the subject.
In the opinion of its author, natural history--the natural history of
1605--left little to be desired so far as normal phenomena were
concerned. He ruled that the “opinion of Copernicus touching the
rotation of the earth” was repugnant to “natural philosophy.” The notion
that air had or could have weight is dismissed as preposterous. Among
his observations on history there is no suggestion of the circulation of
the blood. He sums up Gilbert in terms of contempt, his own contribution
to the subject of magnetism being: “There is formed in everything 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 or more
general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moveth to
the loadstone, but yet if it exceed a certain quantity, it forsaketh the
affection to the loadstone and like a good patriot moveth to the earth
which is the region or country of massy bodies.”
One of the most telling arguments against the presumption that Bacon had
interested himself in natural science to the exclusion of almost
everything else, is the staggering value he put upon “poesy” as compared
with “philosophy” or science at large. Fascinated by the wonderful
discoveries of explorers in the material globe, he pictures knowledge,
all knowledge, as an intellectual globe, which he then divides into
three great parts or continents, History, Poesy, and Philosophy. Only a
poet could have made such a distribution as that. For the continent
allotted to Philosophy, as he understands it, embraced not only all the
natural sciences, but also ethics, politics, mathematics, metaphysics,
and many another subject besides. It would be easy, out of the
_Advancement_ alone, to multiply refutations of the theory that Bacon’s
early and middle life were devoted to natural science. The only
difficulty is to select.
Before changing the subject it may be well to give the substance of a
foot-note to the present writer’s _Shakespeare-Bacon_, 1899 (Swan
Sonnenschein): “When Bacon came to review his early estimate of the
importance of poetry to science or knowledge, he was evidently
dissatisfied. In the _Advancement_ (1605) he had claimed that ‘for the
expressing of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are
beholding to poets more than to philosophers.’ In the corresponding
place of the revised edition (1623) he drops this claim. In the
_Advancement_ again Poesy is stated to be one of the three ‘goodly
fields’[64] (history and experience being the other two), ‘where grow
observations concerning the several characters and tempers of men’s
natures and dispositions.’” In the corresponding place of the revised
version this commendation is materially lowered, on the ground that
poets are so apt to exceed the truth. The revised version, in short,
goes so far towards cheapening Poesy and Imagination as to suggest that
if the author had not been hampered by his earlier utterances, he would
have deposed both from the high places they still were permitted to
occupy in his system.
That Bacon’s relations with “Poesy” were extremely intimate and at the
same time anxiously concealed from the public, his letters afford
convincing evidence. Writing to the Earl of Essex in 1594-5, when his
affairs were in evil plight, he assures that generous friend that “the
waters of Parnassus” are the best of consolation. In a letter to Lord H.
Howard he writes: “We both have tasted of the best waters to knit minds
together”--the allusion being of course to the same Parnassian waters.
In an open letter (1604) to the Earl of Devonshire, he confesses to
having written a sonnet addressed to the Queen herself on a memorable
occasion, and then, by way of proving his generosity when the welfare of
Essex was at stake, directs special attention to the fact that this
sonnet (affair) involved a publishing and declaring of himself--in other
words a dropping of the mask that screened him as poet from the eyes of
the public. That such was his meaning is explained by a confidential
letter to a poetical friend in which he ranks himself among “concealed”
poets. Moreover, this was evidently only one of several letters in which
Bacon confessed himself a concealed poet, for John Aubrey tells us that
Bacon “was a good poet, but concealed as appears by his _letters_.”
Whether any of these other letters still exist is to be doubted, for the
piety of Sir Tobie Mathew, Sir Thomas Meautys, and other devoted friends
of the concealed poet, would naturally destroy all they could lay hands
on.
The external evidence that Bacon was essentially a poet is a theme so
large that only a portion of it can be given here. In 1626, the year of
Bacon’s death, John Haviland printed for Sir William Rawley thirty-two
_monumenta insignia_ expressive of adoration and grief for the great man
who had just passed away.[65] Rawley, the editor, would take care that
no published offering to the _Manes Verulamiani_ should impart his
Master’s secret to persons who were not in it already; and this may help
to explain why all the thirty-two offerings are in Latin, not in the
vulgar tongue. In his preface to the collection, Rawley informs his
readers that the _monumenta_ were a selection merely from the numbers
which had been entrusted to him--“very many, and those of the very best
having been kept back by him” (_plurimos, enim, eosque optimos versus
apud me contineo_). How tantalising! He does not even hint at his reason
for such wholesale suppression of masterpieces. One of the thirty
mourners declares that Bacon was a Muse more choice than any of the
famous Nine. Another considers him “the hinge of the literary world.”
Another bids the fountain of Hippocrene weep black mud, and warns the
Muses that their bay-trees would go out of cultivation now that the
laurel-crowned Verulam had left this planet. Others call upon Apollo and
the Muses to weep for the loss of the great Bacon. Another laments the
disaster that has befallen “us nurselings of the Muses,” and calls Bacon
“the Apollo of our choir.” Another exclaims that “the morning-star of
the Muses, the favourite of Apollo, has fallen,” and supposes that
Melpomene in particular is inconsolable for the loss of him. Another
declares that Bacon had placed all the Muses under obligations
impossible to estimate. Another laments him as “the Tenth Muse ...
ornament of the choir,” and imagines that Apollo can never have been so
unhappy before. Another regards Bacon as the _delicium_ of his country.
Another calls him the choir leader of the Pierides. Another, No. 24,
will have it that Ovid, had he lived, would have been better qualified
than any other poet to lay an acceptable offering on the tomb of Bacon.
Why Ovid should have been pitched upon is not obvious. Perhaps the
opinion of Francis Meres, that “the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in
mellifluous and honytongued Shakespeare, witness his _Venus and Adonis_,
his _Lucrece_, his _Sugred Sonnets_, among his private friends,” may
have determined his choice. Here it should be mentioned that a previous
contributor had hinted not obscurely at Bacon’s authorship of “some
elegant love pieces or poems”--_quicquid venerum politiorum_.[66]
Another contributor exclaims: “Couldst thou thyself, O Bacon, suffer
death, thou who wert able to confer immortality on the Muses
themselves?” The last of the thirty-two selected contributors is Thomas
Randolph, a notable member of the group of wits known as _the tribe of
Ben_. After having expatiated on the grief of himself and his
fellow-poets for the irreparable loss they had just sustained, and borne
his testimony to Bacon’s intimacy with the melodious goddesses (Camænæ),
Randolph in the manner affected by contemporary poets and men of
letters, proceeds to eulogise Bacon as the inventor of new scientific
methods, of keys to Nature’s labyrinth, etc., and finishes: “But we
poets can add nothing to thy fame. Thou thyself art a singer, and
therefore singest thine own praises.” (_At nostræ tibi nulla ferent
encomia musæ, Ipse canis, laudes et canis inde tuas_).
To sum up, the outstanding impression left on the mind by Randolph and
his friends is that they regarded Bacon, not merely as a poet, but as
the foremost poet of the age; and this impression is confirmed by the
reflection that few if any of the contributors knew enough of science to
be capable of appreciating the work of really scientific pioneers such
as Harriot, Gilbert, Harvey, and others whose names are conspicuously
absent from the roll of Bacon’s admirers.
(iii) The remaining difficulty--that of establishing a relation between
Bacon and Shakespeare--has now to be dealt with. It may be well to begin
by directing attention to the significant omission of the name of
Jonson, head of the _tribe of Ben_, from the collection of eulogies we
have just been considering. Adequate explanation of this conspicuous
omission is almost impossible without the aid of the Bacon hypothesis.
If any contribution of Jonson’s had appeared in the publication, the
secret would have been out. Even as it was, his executors almost
disclosed it when, in 1640-1, they sanctioned publication of those
tell-tale notebooks in which Jonson records that Bacon “had performed
that in our tongue which might be compared or preferred either to
insolent Greece or haughty Rome,” an appreciation almost identical with
that contained in his famous Ode to Shakespeare. It is well to remember
in this connection that Jonson on Bacon’s sixtieth birthday had
apostrophised him as an enchanter or “mystery” worker.
Among other arguments which tend to identify the names of Bacon and
Shakespeare, the following seem worthy of mention: (a) Poesy, as we
know, constituted one of the three continents into which Bacon in his
_Advancement of Learning_, mapped out the whole “globe” of the knowable.
To ignore dramatic poetry altogether would have given rise to
inconvenient curiosity. Compelled, therefore, to give it a name, Bacon
rejects the natural word “dramatic” and adopts instead the
out-of-the-way word “representative.” What he says, moreover, about
dramatic poetry--in the proper place for saying it--is apparently
intended to carry on the suggestion that he was almost a stranger to
dramatic performances, a suggestion contradicted by passages in other
sections of the same work. For instance, on handling what he calls the
“Georgics of the mind,” he describes dramatic poetry in terms so
appropriate to the best dramatic poetry of the period, that one is
almost forced to say to oneself: Here surely, Bacon must have been
thinking of Shakespeare! The passage will bear quoting at length. “In
poetry,” it runs, “no less than in history, we may find painted forth
with great life how affections are kindled and excited; how they work,
how they vary, how they gather and fortify, how they do fight and
encounter one with another ... how to set affection against affection,
and to master one by another, even as we use to hunt beast with beast.”
His leave-taking, it may be added, of the whole theme or subject of
poetry is effected by an ironical: “But it is not good to stay too long
in the theatre,” which could only be fully appreciated I suppose, by his
personal friends.
(b) Nowhere, I believe, in any extant writing of Bacon’s, whether
letter, essay, or notebook, is there any mention of Shakespeare, and a
like reticence is observed in the Rawley collection just cited. Assume
for the moment that Shakespeare was the proper name of the man of
Stratford, not the pseudonym of Bacon, or, to put it in another way,
that Shakespeare and Bacon were two separate persons, and what is the
result? We should have to concede that of two poets, both interested in
things dramatic, both supreme judges and keen observers of human nature,
its affections, passions, corruptions, and customs--that of two such
poets, one, and that one Bacon, must have forbidden the very mention of
the other, and this, too, for no discoverable reason.
(c) Bacon (in 1605) held that the chief function of poetry was “to give
some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein
the nature of things doth deny it.” He ranked poets among the very best
of ethical teachers in virtue of their insight into human character as
modifiable “by the sex, by the age, by the region, by health and
sickness, by beauty and deformity” and the like; and again ... “by
sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy,
privateness, prosperity, adversity, constant fortune, variable fortune,
rising _per saltum, per gradus_ and the like.” Here again many an
open-minded reader must have felt moved to reflect that he was on the
track, if not in the presence, of Shakespeare.
(d) It is clear that Bacon as he grew older, came to think less and less
highly of imaginative work. The mere fact that Shakespeare ultimately
abandoned his poetical offspring to chance, points, it surely would
seem, to a similar change of view.