CONCLUSION.
'How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter, . . .
. . . . . and find a time
Both meet to hear and answer such high things.
_Till then_, my noble friend, _chew upon this_;
Brutus had rather he _a villager_,
Than _to repute himself_ a son of Rome,
Under these hard conditions _as this time_
_Is like to lay upon us_.
Inasmuch as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured
throughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view
of the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is
involved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning,
it presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly
opposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous
preconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most
notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts
sustained by unquestionable contemporary authority, and attested by
public documents,--facts which history has graven with her pen of iron
in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions of this man's
character, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly
responsible;--not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him
by authority,--not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious
name that was not his to blast,--that was the property of men of
learning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for
ever, at the bidding of power,--not that only, but the voluntary
exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged,--which he
has gone out of his way to leave to us,--memorials of them which he
has collected with his own hands, and sealed up, and sent down to
posterity 'this side up,' with the most urgent directions to have them
read, and examined, and considered deeply,--that posterity, too, to
which he commends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the
cure of his fame.
The demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must receive it.
Because our criticism or our learning is not equal to the task of
reconciling it with that which we know already, or with that which we
_believed_, and thought we _knew_, we must not on that account reject
it. That is to hurt ourselves. That is to destroy the principle of
integrity at its source. We must take our facts and reconcile them, if
we can; and let them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is
greater than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of
us, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts, for
the sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never so
plausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did require of
any mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be dispensed with, or
shorn, on either side to make it tenable, is not going to stand, let
it come in what name, or with what authority it will; because the
truth of history is, in its least particular, of a universal quality,
and is much more potent than anything that the opinion and will of man
can oppose to it.
To the mind which is able to receive under all conditions the
demonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight,--to the mind to
which truth is religion, this book is dedicated. The facts which it
contains are able to assert themselves,--will be, at least, hereafter.
They will not be dependent ultimately upon the mode of their
exhibition here. For they have the large quality, they have the
solidity and dimensions of historical truth, and are accessible on
more sides than one.
But to those to whom they are already able to commend themselves in
the form in which they are here set forth, the author begs leave to
say, in conclusion, though it must stand for the present in the form
of a simple statement, but a statement which challenges investigation,
that so far from coming into any real collision with the evidence
which we have on this subject from other sources, those very facts,
and those very historical materials on which our views on this subject
have been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the complete
development of the views contained here.
It is the true history of these great events in which the hidden great
men of this age played so deep a part; it is the true history of that
great crisis in which the life-long plots of these hidden actors began
to show themselves on the historic surface in scenic grandeur,--in
those large tableaux which history takes and keeps,--which history
waits for,--it is the very evidence which has supplied the principal
basis of the received views on this subject,--it is the history of the
initiation of that great popular movement,--that movement of new ages,
with which the chief of popular development, and the leader of these
ages, has been hitherto so painfully connected in our impressions; it
is that very evidence,--that blasting evidence which the Learning of
the Modern Ages has always carried in its stricken heart,--it is
_that_ which is wanting here. That also is a part of the story which
has begun to be related here.
And those very letters which have furnished 'confirmations strong as
proofs of holy writ' of the impressions which the other historical
evidence, as it stands at present, inevitably creates,--those very
letters which have been collected by the party whose character was
concerned in them, and preserved with so much diligence and
caution,--which we have been asked with so much emphasis to read and
ponder,--which have been recommended to our attention as the very best
means, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic
relations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete
understanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance with his
character and aims,--with his _natural dispositions_, as well as his
deliberate scientific _aims_,--these letters, long as we have turned
from them,--often as we have turned from them,--chilled, confounded,
sick at heart,--unable, in spite of those recommendations, to find in
them any gleam of the soul of these proceedings,--these very letters
will have to be read, after all, and with that very diligence which
the directions enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to
take just that place in the development of this plot which the author,
who always knows what he is about when he is giving directions,
designed them to take. There is one very obvious reason why they
should be studied--why they would have to be studied in the end. They
have on the face of them a claim to the attention of the learned.
There is nothing like them in the history of mankind. For, however
mean and disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to
words,--that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the
identity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in the
most private conferences,--there is usually an attempt to clothe the
forlorn and shrinking actuality with the common human dignity, or to
make it, at least, passably respectable, if the claim to the heroic is
dispensed with,--even in oral speech. But in writing, in letters,
destined to never so brief and limited an existence, who puts on paper
for the eye of another, for the review of that criticism which in the
lowest, basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared
to detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on the
least failure, or shadow of failure in the best--who puts in
writing,--what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it comes to
that, a deliberate display of meanness,--what convicted felon, but
will undertake in that case to give some sort of heroic colour to his
proceedings--some air of suffering virtue to his durance?
But a great man, consciously great, who knows that his most trifling
letter is liable to publication; a great man, writing on subjects and
occasions which insure publicity to his writing; a man of fame,
writing letters expressly for publication, and dedicating them to the
far-off times; a man of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest
shades of moral differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur
of aims--aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering, under the
most difficult conditions, pursued to their successful issue; a man
whose aim in life it was to advance, and ennoble, and enrich his kind;
in whose life-success the race of men are made glad; such a one
sending down along with the works, in which the nobility and the
deliberate worth and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved,
memorials of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them,
by universal consent, the most odious character in history; this is
the phenomenon which our men of learning have found themselves called
upon to encounter here. To separate the man and the philosopher--to
fly out upon the _man_, to throw him overboard with every expression
of animosity and disgust, to make him out as bad as possible, to
collect diligently every scrap of evidence against him, and set it
forth with every conceivable aggravation--this has been the resource
of an indignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest
in some form; this has been the defence of learning, cast down from
its excellency, and debased in all men's eyes, as it seemed for ever,
in the person of its high-priest.
The objection to the work here presented to the public is, that it
does not go far enough. From the point of review that the research of
which it is the fruit has now attained, this is the criticism to which
it appears to be liable. From this point of view, the _complaint_ to
be made against it is, that at the place where it stops it leaves, for
want of that part of the evidence which contains it, the historical
grandeur of our great men unrevealed or still obscured. For we _have_
had them, in the sober day-light of our occidental learning, in the
actualities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past
only--monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man's divinity,
demi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples, stalking
through the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or in the twilight of
a national popular ignorance, embalmed in the traditions of those who
are always 'beginners.' We have had them; we need not look to a
foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own
stock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in
the searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them,
we have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and
ignorance confessed, with all their 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,'
with all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion and will in
man, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and wrong-doing,
assumed and acknowledged in their own persons, symbolically,
vicariously, assumed and confessed. 'I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put
them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.' We
have them, _our_ Interpreters, _our_ Poets, _our_ Reformers, who start
from the actualities--from the actualities of nature in general, and
of the human nature in particular--who make the most careful study of
man as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis of their
innovation, the beginning of their advancement to the ideal or divine.
We have them; and they, too, they also come to us, with that old
garland of glory on their brows, with that same 'crown' of victory,
which the world has given from of old to those who have taken her
affairs to be their business.
That the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an age, like
that age from which our modern philosophy proceeds, is of a kind to
require, for its unravelling, a different species of criticism from
that which suffices for the historical evidence which our own times
and institutions produce, is a fact which would hardly seem to require
any illustration in the present state of our historical knowledge, in
the present state of our knowledge in regard to the history of this
age in particular; when not the professed scholar only, but every
reader, knows what age in the constitutional history of England, at
least, that age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian
only, with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are _caviare_ to
the multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull prose
and scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back to the peoples
their own, to tell us what age this was. The inner history of this
time is indeed still wanting to us; and the reason is, that we have
not yet applied to the reading of its principal documents that key of
times which our contemporary historians have already put into our
hands--that key which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain
cases, indispensable to the true interpretation.
That the direct contemporary testimony on which history depends is, in
this case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and through all its
details--that the documents are all of them, on the face of them,
'suspicious,' and not fit to be received as historical evidence
without the severest scrutiny and re-examination--this is the fact
which remains to be taken into the account here. For this is a case in
which the witnesses come into court, making signs, seeking with mute
gesticulation to attract our attention, pointing significantly to the
difficulties of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting
a second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mortally
hate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could; intimating that if
their testimony should be re-examined in a higher court, and when the
Star Chamber and the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer
in session, it might perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different
reading. This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his
finger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another
_age_.
We all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and
dignities of a race--what age in the history of its recovered
liberties, rescued from oppression and recognised and confirmed by
statute, this was. We know it was an age in which the decisions of the
Bench were prescribed to it by a power that had 'the laws of England
at its commandment,' that it was an age in which Parliament, and the
press, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had
charge, diligent charge 'of amusements also, and of those who only
played at working.' That this was a time when the Play House
itself,--in that same year, too, in which these philosophical plays
began first to attract attention, and again and again, was warned off
by express ordinances from the whole ground of 'the forbidden
questions.' We know that this was an age in which not the books of the
learned only were subjected to 'the press and torture which expulsed'
from them all those 'particulars that point to action'--action, at
least, in which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it was
a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that same
censorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and
engines, which made then a regular part of the machinery of the press;
when the most secret cabinet of the Statesman and the Man of Letters
must be kept in order for that revision, when his most confidential
correspondence, his private note-book and diary must be composed under
these restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the
secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the
power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor
obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies
of sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to
be--which might or might not be--put down for private purposes
perhaps, and never intended to be preached--were produced by
Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and
cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke
of Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.
To the genius of a race in whose mature development speculation and
action were for the first time systematically united, in the
intensities of that great historical impersonation which signalises
its first entrance upon the stage of human affairs, stimulated into
preternatural activity by that very opposition which would have shut
it out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those
impossible, insufferable limits that the will of the one man
prescribed to it then,--to that many-sided genius, bent on playing
well its part even under those conditions, all the more determined on
it by that very opposition--kept in mind of its manliness all the time
by that all comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of
every act--irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by
the perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine
of the human nature and its nobility in the school of that sovereignty
which was keeping such a costly 'crib' here then; 'Let a beast be lord
of beasts,' says Hamlet, 'and your crib shall stand at the king's
mess;' 'Would you have me false to _my nature_? says another,
'_rather_ say I _play_ the _man_ I am'; to that so conscious man,
playing his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high;
knowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in, how
'_far_' those long-drawn aisles extended; what 'far-off' crowding ages
filled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was
acting 'even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to
the ending doom'; to such a one studying out his part beforehand under
such conditions, it was not one disguise only, it was not one secret
literary instrumentality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That
toy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends,
with all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this
speaker's speech, 'who came prepared to speak well,' and 'to give to
his speech a grace by action.'
Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself
to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other
forms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It
offered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain
plots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object,
were necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that
dramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, _not_
on the stage, but in these 'plots' in which the weal of the unborn
generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's
estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies,
then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and
private names, and a secret slang of their own.
The minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were
minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and
who thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary
communication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in
their day.
The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not
just as lawful for the moderns to 'invent new measures in verses,' at
least, as in 'dances,' and why it was not just as competent for him to
compose 'supposititious' letters for _his_ purposes, as it was for
Thucydides to compose speeches for _his_; and though eloquence was, in
this case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day
prosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and
business, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as
it happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a
comprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an
invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.
The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir
Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared
without much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that
kind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring
and less 'dangerous' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the
least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to
throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is
opened, was conducted in that gentleman's name, about those days.
But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of
this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and
sanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when
occasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing
letters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished
personages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request
for that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was
concerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he
stopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of
the Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that
he could compose 'a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision,
or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to
Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any
better than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department
of song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities
in general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of
poetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that
effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex
and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so
singular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have
no other object in living, but to promote their ends,--one whose vast
philosophic aims,--aims already propounded in all their extent and
grandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole
scheme of his life was to be--artistically--with the strong hand of
that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed
to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm
of devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to
be the sovereign's favourite; one whose great torch of genius and
learning was lighted, as it was understood,--lighted and fed, to light
them to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add
any thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man,
instructed by her instinct, that 'such men were dangerous,' was
willing, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of
this nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is,
that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another,
passed in consequence through this gentleman's hands in both these
reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional
endowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically
'active good,' for the dispatch of business in which large and distant
results were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these
illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast
reference to his ulterior aims,--if, in writing letters for them, he
wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part,--of his own
immortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of
brass were spent' running through them--if, in composing state papers
and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to
insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history
which contained their solution, who that knows _what_ those times
were, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was
dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.
All these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were
written for the future, but they were written in that same secret
method, in that same 'cipher' which he has to stop to describe before
he can introduce the subject of 'the principal and supreme sciences,'
with the distinct assurance that as 'matters stand then, it is an art
of great use,' though some may think he introduces it with its kindred
arts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the
sciences, and to _little_ other purpose, and that trivial as these may
seem in such a connexion, 'to those who have spent their labours and
studies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to 'those who are
skilful in them' to say whether he has not given, in what he has said
of them, 'though in few words,' a proof of his proficiency. This was
the method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences
only, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be
written then.
'Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.' Both these
kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The
reading of that which is '_in letters_,' the one in which letters are
secretly employed as 'symbols' of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is
reserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers
of this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the 'Book of
Sports and Riddles,' which this school published, and who happen to
have it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for
those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked _him_ to his last
lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who
have been in Prospero's Island, and 'untied his spell.' This point
gained,--the secret of the cipher '_in letters_,'--the secret of 'the
symbols,' and other 'devices' and 'conceits' which were employed in
this school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the
characters in which these men struck through the works they could not
own then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of
universality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human
kind, and with it--_in it_, their own particular 'marks' and private
signatures,--this mastered,--with the secret of _this_ in our hands,
the cipher '_in words_' presents no difficulties, When we come to read
the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid
of that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means,
when he says, that on 'account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the
hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes
carried in the weakest ciphers.'
It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite
in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a
military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity
and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending
that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival--the
policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and
sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal
suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards
its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military
chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand
points in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time,
to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for
power under those same conditions--men whose position, inasmuch as the
immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future
ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of
the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.
It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New
Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of
woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose
claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important,
were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging
their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the
nation.
Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and
for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance--in exhibiting the
detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just
then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and
_their_ measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution--it
was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to
avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the
man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to
avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and
Madman,' too, so freely,--consoling _the Monarch_ with the suggestion
that _Essex_ was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much
sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers
who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their
heads up.
Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing
ambitions--under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual
hostility--it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in
politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the
state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most
sacred interests under such conditions,--it was easy for politicians
trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to
play into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league
they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which
it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them
openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with
certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a
scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with
state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be
complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to
direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable
practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all
know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been
in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might
have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are
no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated
expressions of them,--the over-doing sometimes points to another
meaning.
While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show
of a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o'
the world' was to be subjected--a trial in which the decision was
known beforehand--'though,' says our Poet--
'Though well, we may not pass upon _his life_,
Without _the form of justice_;'--
it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart--for
the tool of a Stuart's favourite--to insert in such a paper, if not
private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing
to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy
for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have
had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.
In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our
great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and
much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of
that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state
papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner
reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded
eventually with the key of that position. But along with this
authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that
is '_supposititious_,' to borrow a term which this writer found
particularly to his purpose--supposititious in the same sense in which
the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are
suppositious--is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious
correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's
life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which
he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,--which
he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good
deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found
whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on
both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but
under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin,
never meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read
which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his
dry hand up and down.'
These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name,
as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and
modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the
modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no
_such_ mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that
historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;--the
man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,--the man
whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his
rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the
interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and
whose '_natures_ and _ends_' are so 'differing and dissonant from the
general state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary
for them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be _in the whole
course_ of their lives _close, retired_, reserved, as we see in
Tiberius, _who was never seen at a play_,' men who are compelled, as
it were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The _soundest
disclosing_,' he says, 'and _expounding_ of MEN is by their NATURES
_and_ ENDS. The _weaker_ sort of men are best interpreted by their
_natures_, the _wisest_ by their _ends_.' 'Princes are best
_interpreted_ by their _natures_, private persons by their _ends_,
because princes being at the top of human desires, _they_ have, for
the most part, no particular ends _whereto they aspire, by distance
from which_ a man _might take measure and scale of the rest of their
actions and desires_' '_Distance_ from which,'--that is the key for
the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual
endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and
reasonable ends, and such as are within _their_ power to attain.' As
to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them
already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements
which make the modern ages--the discoverers of its science of
sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an
enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they
could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already
received at their hands,--the benefits we have yet to receive from
them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by
accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us _with_ the
works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,--in which
the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly
pursued,--it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends
are _accomplished_, to the times that have found in their experience
_what_ they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages
experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he
made these sacrifices,--aims which he constantly propounded as the end
of his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life
which the surface of these documents exhibits,--between that historic
form, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits,--and the
nature which is revealed in this life-act,--the soul, the never-shaken
soul of this proceeding.
'The god of soldiers,
With the consent of _supreme Jove_, inform
Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove
_The shame_ UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war
Like a _great sea-mark_, standing every flaw,
And saving those that _eye thee_.'
'I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say
of _me_, he _judged_, and _lived_ so and so; I knew him better than
any. Now, as much as decency permits, I _here_ discover my
inclinations and affections. If any _observe_, he will find that I
have either told, or _designed_ to tell all. What I cannot speak, I
point out with my finger.' 'There was never greater circumspection and
_military_ prudence than is sometimes seen among us' ['Naturalists'].
'_Can it be_ that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that
they reserve themselves to the end of the game?'
'I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my
_name_. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can _he_
think to gain by showing himself to the world in _a mask_, and by
concealing _his true being_ from the people? If you are a coward, and
men commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They
take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the
street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him
said he ought to punish: "Ay, _but_," said the other, "he did not
throw the water upon _me_, but upon _him_ whom he took me to be."
_Socrates_ being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him,
"Not at all," said he; "there is nothing _in me_ of what they say. _I_
am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be
reputed a wise man, in _such a sort of wisdom_ as I take to be
folly."'--['_The French Interpreter_.']
This is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre,
content to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to
the true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends,
propounding deliberately his _duty_ as a man, his duty to his kind,
his obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant
end,--but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private
nature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement,--at
large in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great
fruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all
impediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over
'death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the consciousness
of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the
provision that can be made for security and repose,'--not reconciled
to the part he was compelled to play in his own time,--his fine, keen
sensibilities perpetually at war with it,--always balancing and
reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always
the 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I
do,'--demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such
conditions, a 'life sublime.'
'All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'
There is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so
irreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man
in the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them;--this is the
account, in the general, which will be found to be, upon
investigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even
by the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the
truth of this statement will become apparent.
But though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded
here, it cannot well close, without one word as to _the points_ in
this part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on
us.
No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any
kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was
possible for this scientific propounder of the law of human
_kind_-ness to avert and protect him from--this anticipator and
propounder of a _human_ civilization. He was far in advance of our
times in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of
social experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a
beetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which
was great nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's
pang. To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them
first 'with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were, the
motives on which _such_ consequences might depend then--to forestall
the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed.
The men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination
against tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its
existence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and
authority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the
calumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue--the virtue
of it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal _slavery_
could be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and
manliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of
an 'underground railway' being suggested for the relief of its
victims? 'I will seek him and _privily_ relieve him. Go _you_ and
_maintain talk with the Duke_ that my charity be not of him
_perceived_. If he ask for _me_, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say
you nothing. There is division between the Dukes--[between the
Dukes]--and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this
night. It is _dangerous to be spoken_. I have _locked the letter_ in
my _closet_. There is _part_ of _a power already_ FOOTED. We must
incline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the
king, _my old master_, must be relieved.' _That_ when all is done will
be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities'
of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with
powers so indefinable.
_Cassius_. And let us awear our resolution.
_Brutus_. No, not an oath: If not _the face_ of _men,
The sufferance_ of _our souls_, THE TIMES ABUSE,--
If _these_ be motives weak, _break off betimes_,
And _every man_ hence to his _idle_ bed;
_So_ let high-sighted tyranny _range on_,
Till _each man_ drop _by_ lottery. But if THESE,--
_As I am sure they do_,--bear fire enough
To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour
The melting spirits of women, _then, countrymen_,
What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE
To prick us to redress? what other bond
Than _secret Romans_, that have spoken the word,
And will not falter....
Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,
Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear
Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain
The _even_ virtue of our enterprise,
_Nor_ the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,
To think that, or _our cause_, or our _performance_,
Did need an oath.'
[Doctrine of the '_secret Romans_.']
As to the rest, it was this man--this man of a scientific 'prudence'
with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger
whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought--it was this man who gave
at last _the signal_ for change; not for war. 'Proceed by process' was
his word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have
attained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he
proposed--this was the _move_ which he was willing, for his part, to
_initiate_.--'We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see
ways to save us.'--The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned
him were studiously arranged beforehand by himself,--he wrote the
programme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the
greatest in history. [''Tis the indiligent reader that loses my
subject, not I,' says the 'foreign interpreter' of this style of
writing. 'There will always be found some word or other, _in a
corner_, though it lie very close.' That is the rule for the reading
of the evidence in this case. The word is there, though _it lies very
close_, as it had need to, to be available.]
It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to
complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works,
through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the
face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and
courtier--all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to
rest--all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a
_courtier_ still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled
the king, for _life_ and _liberty_; and careful still not to assert
any independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be
his _ends_; it was in this character that he brought out at last the
Novum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect
and republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character
too that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history
which comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical
writings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred,
a Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want
of leaders and organization--overborne by the genius of a military
chief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his
contemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which
was dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by
James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch's
approval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of
superintending its publication. It is the History of _the Founding_ of
the Tudor Dynasty: prepared,--as were the rest of these works,--under
the patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary
'entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of
_truth or gracefulness_,' and under the patronage of a monarch with
whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and
endowments to _act_ the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they
really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their
persons.'
'_I_ am in this (_Volumnia_)
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,
And you will rather show our general lowts,
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
For the _inheritance_ of their loves, and _safeguard_,
Of what that want might ruin.
Away my _disposition_!
When you do find him, or alive or dead,
He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.
'Yet country-men, _O yet_, hold up your heads.
I will proclaim my name about the field.
I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO!
A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country's friend.
'And _I_ am Brutus, Marcus Brutus _I_,
Brutus, MY COUNTRY'S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.'
FINIS.