find that Bacon has much to say concerning experiments in the
colouration and variation of these gillyflowers. In the _Natural
History_ (Cent. VI, 506), he writes: “Amongst curiosities I shall place
coloration, though it be somewhat better: for beauty in flowers is their
pre-eminence. It is observed by some that gillyflowers ... that are
coloured, if they be neglected, and neither watered, nor new molded, nor
transplanted, will turn white.” Subsequently (510) we read: “Take
gillyflower seed, of one kind of gillyflower, as of the clove
gillyflower, which is the most common, and sow it, and there will come
up gillyflowers some of one colour and some of another,” etc. Then, in
513, we come to the application of “art” to these flowers: “It is a
curiosity also to make flowers double, which is effected by often
removing them into new earth.... Inquire also whether _inoculating_ of
flowers, as stock-gillyflowers ... doth not make them double.”
At any rate it must, I think, be admitted that we have here some very
remarkable resemblances between Bacon and Shakespeare. First we have, as
mentioned in the opening of this chapter, an almost complete verbal
agreement, “lillies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one,” and
“flower-de-luces and lillies of all natures”; then we have two very
similar lists of flowers according to the seasons, whether of the year,
or of human life; then we have a complete and, I think extraordinary
agreement, as to the philosophy of “nature” and “art”--to wit, that the
two are essentially one, since art is but part of nature. Moreover it
seems that both writers, if two there were, were writing these things
just about the same time. And finally we find that both writers are much
concerned with the colours and varieties of “streaked gillyvors” or
“stock-gillyvors.”[83]
What does Professor Dowden say to this? He quotes William Harrison’s
_Description of England_: “How art also helpeth nature in the dailie
colouring, dubling, and enlarging the proportion of our floures, it is
incredible, to report,” etc. But Harrison does not say, as Shakespeare
and Bacon say, that the art is part of nature (“The art itself is
nature”). He merely speaks of art as an _additamentum quoddam naturæ_,
which is just the proposition that Bacon (and Shakespeare, by
implication) condemns as fallacious. Professor Dowden then tells us that
this thought as to art and nature was prominent in the teaching of
Paracelsus whom Bacon refuses to honour. But whether or not Bacon
refuses to honour Paracelsus he was, at any rate, familiar with him, and
makes frequent mention of him. So again as to Pliny, whom the Professor
appeals to in this matter. Bacon cites him in the very passage of the
_De Augmentis_ (Lib. II, Cap. ii), part of which I have quoted. It seems
rather remarkable that the authors to whom the Professor makes his
appeal should be, so frequently, writers such as Pliny, and Paracelsus,
and Scaliger who certainly were well known to Bacon. I doubt if the
Stratford player had included these in his (assumed) omnivorous reading;
nor do I think “the common knowledge and common error of the time”
explain these coincidences of thought and expression in an altogether
satisfactory way. The lines,
... this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature,
really do seem to bear the Baconian stamp on the face of them. However
those who think it sufficient to find that something similar (though
certainly not the same) was said by somebody else somewhere about the
same time will doubtless be satisfied with Professor Dowden’s hypothesis
of a common origin in common knowledge, or error; and those who are
“convinced against their will,” will, as usual, be “of the same opinion
still.” They should note, however, that Mr. Spedding candidly admits
that if the _Essay on Gardens_ had been published before 1616, he would
have suspected that it had been read by Shakespeare!
It is interesting to note that Shakespeare speaks of plants as
distinguished by sex difference. An old friend of mine, now, alas, gone
to that bourne whence no traveller returns, who, like many others, used
to maintain that “everything can be found in Shakespeare” (a proposition
which if confined within reasonable limits I should be the last to
dispute) was so struck by this fact that, in an article contributed by
him to the _Saturday Review_, he expressed the opinion that “it can only
be explained as a flash of genius hitting on an obscure truth by a great
observer, as Shakespeare undoubtedly was.” And in a note to this
article, when published with others in book form, he says: “I claim the
discovery in the case of flowers for Shakespeare.”[84] But the
conception of sex-difference in plants originated long before the days
of Shakespeare. It is, if I remember rightly, to be found in Herodotus.
But however that may be, it was certainly well known to Bacon who writes
(_Nat. Hist._ Cent. VII, 608): “For the difference of sexes in plants
they are oftentimes by name distinguished, as male-piony, female-piony,
male-rosemary, female-rosemary, he-holly, she-holly,” etc. He goes on to
notice the case of the he-palm and the she-palm, which were said to fall
violently in love with one another, as to which further details may be
found in Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Bacon adds: “I am apt enough
to think that this same _binarium_ of a stronger and a weaker, like unto
masculine and feminine, doth hold in all living bodies.”[85]
To return for a moment to Professor Dowden. I should be the last to deny
that he states the case against Judge Webb, so far as regards these
Shakespeare-Bacon parallelisms, with great force and learning, and what
in an “orthodox” critic is, perhaps, best of all, with admirable temper.
And in some cases, I am free to admit that he seems to me to have the
best of the argument.
But let us take another example. Hamlet, in his letter to Ophelia,
writes:
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
Upon this Judge Webb comments that Bacon, notwithstanding the teaching
of Bruno, and of Galileo, maintained that “the celestial bodies, most of
them, are fires or flames as the Stoics held,” and that, notwithstanding
the teaching of Copernicus, he held the mediæval doctrine of “the
heavens turning about in a most rapid motion.” And he adds, with a touch
of sarcasm: “The marvel is that the omniscient Shakespeare with his
superhuman genius maintained these exploded errors as confidently as
Bacon.” Whereunto Professor Dowden replies that “it presses rather
hardly upon Hamlet’s distracted letter to deduce from his rhyme ‘a
theory of the celestial bodies,’” and he goes on to say that, “in fact
Shakespeare repeats the reference to the stars as fires many times,” and
that “references to the stars as fire and to the motion of the heavens
are scattered over the pages of Shakespeare’s contemporaries as thickly
as the stars themselves.”
Now all this about the stars might, as it seems to me, have been omitted
altogether. To assert that the fixed stars are “fire” is surely not to
be taken as a proof of scientific ignorance! The sun itself is but a
star, and all of us have read of the “mighty flames,” as Sir Robert Ball
calls them, that leap from the surface of the sun.[86] But to affirm
“that the sun doth move” as one of the certainties of human knowledge
was in Shakespeare’s time tantamount to a rejection of the heliocentric
teaching of Copernicus and Bruno in favour of the old Ptolemaic system,
or, at any rate, of a system in which the earth is supposed to be at
rest.[87] Now, that Bacon had failed to profit by the teaching of
Copernicus is certain, for in his _Descriptio Globi Intellectualis_ and
_Thema Cœli_ (1612) he condemns all the then existing systems of
Astronomy as unsatisfactory. His biographer, Dr. Abbott, who is very
far from being an indulgent critic, finds much excuse for him here in
the fact that Copernicus “himself advocated his own system merely as an
hypothesis,” and that it was inconsistent and incomplete until Newton
had discovered the Law of Gravitation. He adds: “It is creditable to
Bacon’s faith in the uniformity of nature, that he predicted that future
discoveries would rest ‘upon observation of the common passions and
desires of matter’--an anticipation of Newton’s law of attraction.”[88]
But granting that Bacon and Shakespeare were at one in their rejection
of the teaching of Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo, it seems to me that
no argument on behalf of the Baconian theory can be safely founded upon
that fact. For the “Stratfordian” answer is very simple, viz., that
William Shakspere, the Stratford player and supposed author, very
naturally was not abreast of the most advanced scientific teaching of
his day. He, of course, conceived that the sun moved round the earth as
Ptolemy taught, and not _vice versâ_. The argument therefore can only be
effective (if at all) as against those Shakespeariolaters who conceive
that player Shakspere was omniscient, or, at least, wrote, as it were,
by plenary inspiration.
Mr. Edwin Reed, however, makes another use of these lines. He points out
that in the Quarto of 1603 they do not run as above quoted, but as
follows:
Doubt that in earth is fire,
Doubt that the stars do move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But do not doubt I love,
and he refers to Bacon’s _Cogitationes de Natura Rerum_, assigned to the
latter part of 1603, or the early part of 1604, and quotes a passage
from his _De Principiis atque Originibus_, in order to show that at that
date Bacon had changed his mind in regard to the commonly accepted
belief in the existence of a mass of molten matter at the centre of the
earth, and maintained that, on the contrary, the terrestrial globe is
cold to the core. He goes on to suggest that the substitution of “the
sun” for “the stars,” giving us the line,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
in the 1604 edition, is indicative of a deliberate intention on the part
of the writer to retain “the doctrine that the earth is the centre of
the universe around which the sun and stars daily revolve.” So that, in
spite of Copernicus, and Bruno, and Kepler and Galileo, Bacon and the
author of the Plays “were agreed in holding to the cycles and epicycles
of Ptolemy, after all the rest of the scientific world had rejected
them, and they were also agreed in rejecting the Copernican theory after
all the rest of the scientific world had accepted it.” And the same
doctrine is, of course, retained in the Folio edition of _Hamlet_,
published in 1623, in which same year Bacon wrote, in the third book of
the _De Augmentis_, that the theory of the earth’s motion is absolutely
false!
All this is ingenious, but how far it is convincing must be left for the
reader’s consideration.
Let us take yet another example. Bacon in his _Natural History_ (s. 464)
tells us that “as terebration doth meliorate fruit, so upon the like
reason doth letting of plants blood,” the difference being that the
blood-letting is only to be effected “at some seasons” of the year. And
so also the gardener in Richard II says:
We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.
Here, as Professor Dowden admits, “the parallel is remarkably close,”
but in order to show the “common knowledge of the time,” which is to
account for it, he cites Holland’s _Pliny_ to the effect that trees
“have a certain moisture in their barkes which we must understand to be
their very blood,” and he further refers to Pliny (XVII. 24), to the
effect that a fir or pine tree must not have its bark “pulled” during
certain months, and adds that, “like Shakespeare, Pliny terms the bark
the ‘skin’ of the tree.” Once more, it is remarkable that the reference
should be to Pliny, an author with whom, as we know, Bacon was on very
familiar terms.[89] However, there is a further illustration from
Dekker, and a quotation as to “proudly-stirring” sap from Gervase
Markham.
Here again, the only question, as it seems to me, is whether this
“remarkably close parallelism,” considered as one among many, is
satisfactorily explained by the fact that other contemporary writers
spoke of wounding the bark of trees, and drawing blood. It would,
certainly, be more satisfactory, from a Baconian point of view, if we
could find in both Bacon and Shakespeare something which could only have
been known to those two writers, or to that one writer. But as that is
hardly possible we have to consider all the parallel passages together,
and ask ourselves whether or not, taken as a whole, they raise the
presumption of identity of authorship.
Judge Webb, while denying the allegation that “all that is proper to
Shakespeare and to Bacon was the common knowledge or common error of the
time,” writes as follows: “Whatever inferences may be deduced from the
fact, it surely is a fact that the poet, like the philosopher,
maintained the theory of pneumaticals, the theory of the transformation
of species, the theory that the sun is the efficient cause of storms,
the theory that flame is a fixed body, the theory that the stars are
fires, and the theory that the heavens revolve around the earth. That
the poet should have been as interested as the philosopher in scientific
matters is surely a fact worth noting; and even if they resorted to the
store of ‘the common knowledge or common error of the time,’ it surely
is remarkable that they not only resorted to the same storehouse, but
selected the same things, and incorporated the same things in their
respective writings, and, so far as either their knowledge or their
errors in matters of science were concerned, were in reality the same.”
And here, since I profess not to be compiling a new “brief for the
plaintiff” in the great case of _Bacon v. Shakespeare_, I am content to
leave this interesting controversy for further consideration.
RIGHT
G. G.
THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT
In the year 1867 there was discovered at old Northumberland House in the
Strand, in a box which had been for many years unopened, an Elizabethan
manuscript volume containing, amongst other things, the transcripts of
certain compositions admittedly the work of Francis Bacon. It commences
with four speeches written by Bacon in 1592 for Essex’s _Device_, viz.:
“The praise of the worthiest virtue”; “The praise of the worthiest
affection”; “The praise of the worthiest power”; “The praise of the
worthiest person.” These speeches were published in 1870 by Mr. James
Spedding, with an introductory notice of the manuscript, and a facsimile
of its much bescribbled outside page, or cover, of which more anon. The
speech in praise of knowledge professes to have been spoken in “A
conference of Pleasure,” and Mr. Spedding adopted this as the title of
his little work. The manuscript book is thus described by him: “It is a
folio volume of twenty-two sheets which have been laid one upon the
other, folded double (as in an ordinary quire of paper) and fastened by
a stitch through the centre. _But as the pages are not numbered and the
fastening is gone, it may once have contained more, and if we may judge
by what is still legible on the much bescribbled outside leaf which once
served for a table of contents, there is some reason to suspect that it
did._” In a note he adds: “One leaf, however--that which would have been
the tenth--is missing; and one, which is the fourth, appears to have
been glued or pasted in.” It is clear that he included this missing
“tenth” leaf in his “twenty-two sheets.”
Mr. Spedding, therefore, carefully examined the volume in the condition
in which it was when found at Northumberland House, and, as his accuracy
is well known, we may be content to rely upon his evidence in this
matter. At any rate it is the best that we can now get, for as Mr. Frank
Burgoyne, the Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries (who in 1904
edited and published a transcript and colotype facsimile of the whole of
the contents of the volume) informs us: “Since Mr. Spedding wrote, the
manuscript has been taken to pieces and each leaf carefully inlaid in
stout paper, and these have been bound up with a large paper copy of his
pamphlet entitled ‘A conference of Pleasure.’ The manuscript in its
present condition contains 45 leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to
have included the outside page in his enumeration. The pages are not
numbered, and there are no traces of stitching, or sewing; _it is
therefore quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of
sheets in the original volume_.”[90]
This statement will be found not unimportant when we come to consider
yet another work on these old manuscripts, also published in 1904, by
Mr. T. Le Marchant Dowse. Mr. Dowse is anxious to limit the original
volume to a quire of 24 sheets. Spedding, he says, “tells us it was a
quire of 22 sheets, [Spedding however, only says it was folded double
“as in an ordinary quire of paper”] but he omits to take into account
the outer sheet, which was of the same fold of paper and served as a
cover; this made 23 sheets. Moreover he tells us leaf 10 was missing
(the written matter, however runs on without a break); but as leaf 10
must have formed one half of a sheet, the other half, in the latter part
of the MS., should also have been missing, consequently the ‘quire’ was
originally a full and proper quire of 24 sheets.”
But as I have already pointed out, Spedding evidently includes the
missing leaf, which he numbers “the tenth,” in his twenty-two sheets,
equally with the leaf which, as he says, “appears to have been glued or
pasted in.” Mr. Dowse’s ingenious attempt to limit the volume to 24
sheets therefore fails, and, in the present condition of the
manuscripts, the only safe conclusion is that stated by Mr. Burgoyne,
viz., that “it is quite impossible even to conjecture what was the
number of sheets in the original volume.” But of this more presently.
On the outside page or cover, besides a number of very interesting
scribblings, we find a list which has been generally looked upon as a
table of contents of the volume as it originally existed. It runs as
follows:
(1) Mr. ffrancis Bacon.
Of tribute or giving what is dew. [With the four “praises” above
mentioned.]
(2) Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen.
(3) Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt.
(4) A speach for my lord of Sussex tilt.
(5) Leycester’s Common Wealth. Incerto autore.
(6) Orations at Graies Inne revells.
(7) ... Queenes Ma^{te} [Probably Letters to the Queen’s Majesty]. By
Mr. ffrancis Bacon.
(8) Essaies by the same author.
(9) Rychard the Second.
(10) Rychard the Third.
(11) Asmund and Cornelia.
(12) Ile of dogs frmnt [i.e. fragment] by Thomas Nashe.
But, as Mr. Spedding points out, just above the writing, “Earle of
Arundells letter to the Queen,” stand the words “Philipp against
Mounsieur,” a title which he says seems to have been inserted
afterwards, and is imperfectly legible.”[91] This evidently refers to
Sir Philip Sydney’s letter to the Queen dissuading her from marrying the
Duke of Anjou, which is part of the contents of the volume as it has
come down to us. The Gray’s Inn Revels are, no doubt, those of 1594-5 of
which the history is related in the _Gesta Grayorum_.
Now of this list, besides the four Discourses or “Praises,” only four
items are found in the volume as it at present exists, viz., the
“Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt”; the “Speach for my lord of
Sussex at the tilt”; “Leycester’s Common Wealth,” and Sir Philip
Sydney’s letter. The actual contents of the volume in its present
condition are as follows:[92]
(1) _Of Tribute, or giving what is due_. By Bacon (1592).
(2) Of Magnanimitie or heroicall vertue. By Bacon.
(3) An Advertisement touching private censure. By Bacon.
(4) An Advertisement touching the controversies of the church of
England. By Bacon (written 1589).
(5) A letter to a French gent: touching ye proceedings in Engl.: in
Ecclesiasticall causes translated out of French into English by W.
W. By Bacon.[93]
(6) _Speeches for my lord of Essex at the tylt_, viz., five
speeches spoken in a _Device_ presented by Essex, and performed
before Queen Elizabeth in 1595. By Bacon.
(7) _For the Earl of Sussex at the tilt_. By Bacon (1596).
(8) _Sir Philip Sydney’s letter to the Queen_, dissuading her from
marrying the Duke of Anjou. (1580).
(9) _Leycester’s Common Wealth_, imperfect both at beginning and
end (printed 1584).
On comparing these two lists we find also that four of the articles now
contained in the volume are not mentioned in the list on the outer page,
viz.:
No. 2. Of Magnanimitie.
No. 3. Advertisement touching private censure.
No. 4. Advertisement touching the controversies of the Church.
No. 5. Letter to a French gent, etc.
On the other hand if this list was really a list of the original
contents of the volume then eight articles have disappeared from the
book, besides the missing portions of _Leycester’s Commonwealth_, viz.:
(1) The Earle of Arundell’s letter to the Queen.
(2) The Orations at Gray’s Inn revels.
(3) An address or letter to the Queen, by Bacon.
(4) Essays by Bacon.
(5) and (6) Shakespeare’s plays of Richard II and Richard III.
(7) Asmund and Cornelia (of which nothing is known).
(8) The Ile of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe.
Now, on this state of things, Mr. Dowse vehemently contends that the
list on the outside cover is not, and never was meant to be a “table of
contents.” He asserts that all this matter could not have been either
accidentally lost, or (as seems much more probable) intentionally
abstracted from the volume. First, because he says the volume originally
consisted of a quire and no more; but as I have already said this is a
mere conjecture, which in the face of Mr. Spedding’s evidence, is quite
untenable. Secondly, because, “on the said assumption, the MS, as found,
should have shown a considerable bulge, from top to bottom, alongside
the fold,” and Spedding must have seen this “considerable bulge” if it
had been there, and must have mentioned it if he had seen it! Mr. Dowse
goes on to say that there is other “evidence on the point quite
sufficient to satisfy reasonable beings,” which is an expression
commonly used when a writer wishes to imply that those who do not accept
his conclusions are not endowed with the reasoning faculty. Mr. Dowse’s
idea of “evidence” is, as I shall show, somewhat peculiar, but in any
case, I do not think many of his readers will be much impressed with
the “considerable bulge,” or “the silence of Mr. Spedding” line of
argument, especially as Mr. Spedding, though not mentioning the “bulge,”
has definitely put on record his opinion that the volume may have
originally included much more matter than it now contains. It is almost
certain, for example, that it contained, with the other speeches written
by Bacon for Essex’s _Device_ in 1595, _The Squire’s speech in the
tilt-yard_, as well as the beginning and the end of _Leycester’s Common
Wealth_. But let us hear Mr. Spedding. After enumerating the speeches
written for this _Device_, which are now contained in the volume (viz.,
The Hermits fyrst speach: The Hermits second speach: The Soldier’s
speach: The Squire’s speach), he writes: “These are the speeches written
by Bacon for a _Device_ presented by the Earl of Essex on the Queen’s
day 1595, concerning which see _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, vol.
I. pp. 374-386. The principal difference between this copy and that at
Lambeth, from which the printed copy was taken, is that this does _not_
contain ‘The Squire’s speech in the tilt-yard,’ with which the other
begins, and _does_ contain a short speech from the Hermit--‘the
Hermitt’s fyrst speach’--which seems to be a reply to it. It is possible
that the beginning has been lost, _as any number of sheets may have
dropped out at this place, without leaving any evidence of the fact_.”