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.