A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery."— Act III. Sc. 3.

And the discourse winds up thus:

"For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the new comer." -Act III. Sc. 3.

And again, thus : —

What 's past, and what 's to come, is strew'd with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion." Act IV. Sc. 5.

The verdict of the Shakespeare Society upon the whole traditional biography of William Shakespeare is, that he was a jovial actor and manager, not much differing from other actors and managers. "I cannot marry this fact to his verse," says the learned critic and philosopher. No; nor anybody else. This marriage of mind to the universe, this deep river of Lethe, running as well above ground as below, this perpetual flux of remembrance and oblivion, in which all that appears is like the foam on the roaring waterfall, every instant born, and every instant dead, living only in the flow, these subtle riddles running underneath the two writings, will marry to nothing but the truth of Nature, or to the prose and verse of Francis Bacon:

-

"Take the instant way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast."

§ 10. MIRACLES AND IMMORTALITY.

With the skill of a god to conceal what it may be the glory of a king to find out, and with infinite art and beauty, the deep-seeing genius of Goethe endeavors to shadow forth the manner in which the myths of tradition have

grown into miracles of divine revelation; and, at the same time, by sounding through the latest depths of science, to exhibit all Nature as no less than miraculous. With the aid of science and the keys of Kant, more potent than the keys of St. Peter, he was able to unlock and explore the inner secrets of the universe, and to attain to that "wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff," where Plato, Bacon, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and the like of them, had stood more or less clearly before him, upon that "topmost summit" which affords " room only for a single person "1 in an age, and

"Where one but goes abreast."

In like manner, Bacon has much to say of this uppermost height and narrow strait:

"Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and the errours of men?"

And again he says: "Science rightly interpreted is a knowledge of things through their causes"; and that knowledge, he continues, "constantly expands and by gradual and successive concatenation rises, as it were, to the very loftiest parts of nature"; but "the man, who, in the very outset of his inquiries, lays firm hold of certain fixed principles in the science, and with immovable reliance upon them, disentangles (as he will with little effort) what he handles, if he advances steadily onward, not flinching out of excess either of self-confidence, or of self-distrust, from the object of his pursuit,” — if he has but courage and seeking faints not, may "mount gradually" and "climb by regular succession the height of things like so many tops of mountains." Lear's philosopher standing on the top of this same high cliff, and looking into the abysmal depths below, exclaims :

"How fearful,

And dizzy 't is to cast one's eyes so low."

1 Carlyle's Wilhelm Meister's Travels, ch. xiv.

And the blind Gloster, after the fearful leap had been taken, though "ten masts at each " made not "the altitude" which he "perpendicularly fell," was yet not clearly certain whether he had "fallen or no"; but one thing he did certainly know, the fiend was gone:

66 Therefore, thou happy father,

Think that the clearest gods, who make them honour.

Of men's impossibilities, have preserv'd thee."

And so he learned the lesson :

"I do remember now: henceforth I 'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself

'Enough, enough'! and die. That thing you speak of,
I took it for a man; often 't would say,

The fiend, the fiend: he led me to that place,"

Act IV. Sc. 6.

that height above the confusion of things, whence the fall is so deep, perpendicularly down, to him, who shall be too blind to see and keep his step, or be unable to distinguish a man from a visionary personification of evil; or who has no way, and therefore wants no eyes, having stumbled when he saw; but to the open eyes of the wise man and the seer, it is the clear safe sunshine of the empyrean, and the highest happiness of a human soul, wherein men's impossibilities become divine possibilities: that is to say, if he shall, with Bacon, deeply study and "intentively observe the appetences of matter and the most universal passions, which are in either globe exceeding potent, and transverberate the universal nature of things, he shall receive clear information concerning celestial matters from the things seen here with us";1 as when the veil of wildness was lifted from Prince Hal as he became more and more crescive in his faculty, and (as King Henry V.) became a true lover of the Holy Church,” and

66

"Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,

1 Works (Mont.), XVI., Note 22.

Leaving his body as a paradise

T'envelop and contain celestial spirits."

Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1.

And he must proceed upon those physical reasons "which make inquiry into the universal appetites and passions of matter, and the simple and genuine motions of bodies. For upon these wings we ascend most safely to these celestial material substances." 1 In short, he must be able not only to see through this globe, but even to penetrate "the globe above." 2 It was just so, in the "Lear":—

"Old Man. Alack, sir! you cannot see your way.

Glos. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:
I stumbled when I saw.8 Full oft 't is seen,

Our means secure us; and our mere defects

Prove our commodities.

.. Bless thee, master! Glos. Is that the naked fellow?

Old M.

Ay, my lord.

Glos. Then, pry'thee, get thee gone. If, for my sake,
Thou wilt o'ertake us, hence a mile or twain,

I' the way to Dover, do it for ancient love;
And bring some covering for this naked soul,
Whom I'll entreat to lead me.

Here, take this purse, thou whom the Heaven's plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched,

Makes thee the happier: - Heavens, deal so still!

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see

Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;

So distribution shall undo excess,

And each man have enough. - Dost thou know Dover?

Edg. Ay, master.

Glos. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head

Looks fearfully in the confined deep:

Bring me but to the very brim of it,

And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear,

With something rich about me: from that place

1 Works (Boston), VIII. 497.

Act IV. Sc. 1.

2 Speech, Works (Phil.), II. 274.

8 Soph. Antigone, 1341-3; Ed. Tyrannus, 1334-5.

This Gloster is on the road that conducts the traveller "to places precipitous and impassable"; but once arrived at the brink of the precipice, he will need no further leading from fiend or philosopher; for, at that point, a man shall rise, or fall, by his own weight in the universal scheme of things. And when he has ceased to swear by devil, or by demigod, he will be ready to exclaim, with Gloster:"O you mighty gods!

This world I do renounce." - Act IV. Sc. 6.

For, this height is "above tempests, always clear and calm; a hill of the goodliest discovery that man can have, being a prospect upon all the errours and wanderings of the present and former times. Yea, in some cliff, it leadeth the eye beyond the horizon of time, and giveth no obscure divination of times to come." Surely, this Lear was written by a man, who was, as Bacon says of Solomon, “truly one of those clearest burning lamps, whereof himself speaketh, in another place, when he saith, The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth all inwardness." Heming and Condell say, in the Preface to the Folio, speaking for the author, that they would "leave you to others of his friends, whom, if you need, can be your guides: if you need them not, you can lead yourselves and others." Doubtless the writer of this well knew, that there was a height of human culture, from which the reader would " ing need," — being himself one of those

"clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibilities."

no lead

And it is further not improbable that Gloster's idea of precipitating himself over the cliff of Dover was partly suggested by the story, which Bacon relates in his "Experment Solitary touching flying in the Air," thus: "It is reported that amongst the Leucadians, in ancient time, upon a superstition, they did use to precipitate a man from a high cliff into the sea; tying about him with strings, at