"His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, A commixture of studies as of law, nature, poetry, philosophy, may sometimes very curiously introduce similar ideas, illustrations, and language into very different writings of the same author, and that, too, perhaps all unconsciously to himself. In his dedication of his "Arguments of Law" to the Society of Gray's Inn, this idea of severing nature is introduced thus: "Nevertheless, thus much I may say with modesty, that these arguments which I have set forth (most of them) are upon subjects not vulgar, and therewithal, in regard of the commixture that the course of my life hath made of law with other studies, they may have the more variety and perhaps the more depth of reason: for the reasons of municipal laws severed from the grounds of nature, manners, and policy, are like wall-flowers, which, though they grow high upon the crests of states, yet they have no deep roots." Again, he lays it down as a rule in physics, "that the connexion of things should not be severed," as it "tends to preserve the fabric of the universe." And so Albany is made to say of the unnatural daughters of Lear: "That nature which contemns its origin And the same idea underlies these beautiful lines of the "Othello": "but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat, That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again; It needs must wither." Act V. Sc. 2. And Lear himself may very well be supposed to hold this colloquy with the designing Gloster and the good Edgar, without being considered positively mad, only mad in craft, "Lear. First, let me talk with this philosopher. — Kent. Good my lord, take his offer: go into th' house. What is your study? Edg. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. . . . Noble philosopher, your company. Edg. Tom's a-cold. Kent. Lear. ... O, cry you mercy, sir! This way, my lord. - Act III. Sc. 4. I will keep still with my philosopher." With him: The philosopher, in the age of Shakespeare, had to sail sometimes under a cloud as dark as the disguise of Edgar, or the madness of Lear, or the world might be as dangerous to him as was that awful night of cataracts and hurricanoes, "Sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts," to the singed white head of Lear. Nevertheless, would Francis Bacon, in his more private and secret studies, still keep company with his first and last love, the Noble Philosopher. And he says, in the Essay on Goodness and Goodness of Nature, “This of all virtues and dignities of the mind is the greatest; being the character of the Deity: and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin." And surely this must have been the same philosopher that founded the College of Universal Science, or Solomon's House, the very end of which was "the knowledge of Causes"; which question of the cause appears frequently in the plays, as again thus : "Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard hearts?". Act III. Sc. 6. Bacon had studied the works of Plato, which, as they had never been translated into English, must have been for the most part a sealed book to William Shakespeare. There are distinct traces of this study, in both the writings of Bacon and the plays, not merely in the idea and doctrine, but sometimes even in the expression. Plato relates a story of a learned philosopher of the ancient Thebes, who was consulted for his wisdom by the king of Egypt; and in the Phædo of Plato, the learned Simmias is addressed in the dialogue as "my Theban friend." It is, of course, not at all certain, but very easy to believe, that the writer of the play had this story in mind, when he put these words into the mouth of Lear: "I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban." For another instance, take this from Bacon: "Plato casteth his burden and saith, That he will revere him as a God, that can truly divide and define: which cannot be but by true forms and differences, wherein I join hands with him, confessing as much, as yet assuming to myself little." And thus it stands in the "Hamlet": "Osr. Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing. Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially, would dizzy the arithmetic of memory."- Act V. Sc. 2. And again says Bacon, in the same work: "But I found myself constructed more for the contemplations of truth than for aught else, as having a mind sufficiently mobile for recognizing (what is most of all) the similitude of things, and sufficiently fixed and intent for observing the subtleties of differences, and possessing love of investigation, patience in doubting, pleasure in meditating, delay in asserting, facility in returning to wisdom, and neither affecting novelty, nor admiring antiquity, and hating all imposture." Plato alludes to the "weaving a kind of Penelope's web the reverse way"; Bacon, several times, uses the same simile of "Penelope's web doing and undoing"; and in the second part of the "Henry VI." there is an allusion to 1 Int. of Nat., Works (Phil.), I. 90. this same untwining of "Parca's fatal web." Toss is a favorite word with Bacon and Shakespeare, and it is used by Plato in the same way. "And I often tossed myself upwards and downwards," says Plato; "the word, the bread of life, they toss up and down," says Bacon. Plato's "prop of a state," appears oftentimes in Bacon, and frequently again in the plays. Top, as "tops of judgment,” "tops of mountains," is a favorite metaphor in both writings; and Bacon quotes Pindar's "tops of all virtues." The simile of the mirror or glass, several times occurring in Plato, is a favorite one with Bacon, and it is often repeated in the plays. Plato speaks of "seeing nothing with the mind's eye"; Bacon, of "fixing the mind's eye steadily"; and Hamlet answers: "In my mind's eye, Horatio." In Plato's "Laws," we find this expression, "while begetting and rearing children, and handing in succession from some to others life, like a torch, and ever paying, according to law, worship to the gods"; to which Bacon probably alludes, when he calls his method of delivery to posterity "the Handing on of the Lamp." So, in the "Measure for Measure," it is said: "Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do, In the "Cratylus" of Plato, there is an allusion to the "Const. Thou wear a lion's hide! doff it for shame, And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs." In the " Banquet" of Plato, we have this passage: "Thus, Phædrus, Love appears to me to be, in the first place, himself the most beautiful and the best, in the next, to be the cause of such like beautiful things in other beings"; Bacon says of the tuning of instruments, that it is not pleasant to hear, "but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards"; and so, Falstaff: "I am not only witty in myself, but a cause that wit is in other men." Not much can be safely founded on resemblances of this kind, standing alone; but even straws may show which way the wind blows; and when these authors are read together and compared, in respect of their whole thought and manner, remembering that Bacon derived not a little of his deeper philosophy from the study of Plato, even these and the like similitudes may be admitted to have some significance. But he was himself one of those imperial thinkers that recognize no master but one; for he was accustomed, not merely "now and then to draw a bucket of water" out of "a deep well," as some others had done, but habitually to visit "the spring-head thereof." § 3. UNIVERSALS. There are many passages in the writings of Bacon, which indicate that his opinion was, that the primal cause or essence itself gives the form of things; and this can scarcely be conceived otherwise than as the essential power of thought, in creation, giving both the substance and the form to particular things, the active power being the only substance or matter, and being of itself by its own nature self-acting and self-directing cause: wherefore it had been laid down, that the first essence, or Cupid, was without parents. He then proceeds to the discussion of the "mode of this thing which is uncaused"; for, as he says in the Advancement, "one must seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype, or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man, and may be observed with sobriety, . . . . . not by the name of learning, but by that of wisdom or sapi.. for in God all knowledge is original." Lear, in his madness, supposed his philosopher, Edgar, to possess something of this sapience : ence, |