The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 17

We have profited by this use of them. It has not been pastime merely with us. We have not spent our time in vain on this first stage of an Advancing Learning, a learning that will not cease to advance until it has invaded all our empiricisms, and conquered all our practice; a learning that will recompence the diligence, the exact.i.tude, the severity of observance which it will require here also (when it comes to put in its claim here, as Learning and not Amus.e.m.e.nt merely), with that same magnitude of effects that, in other departments, has already justified the name which its Inventor gave it--a Learning which will give us here, also, in return for the severity of observance it will require, what no ceremonial, however exacting can give us, that control of effects, with which, even in its humblest departments, it has already fulfilled, in the eyes of all the world, the prophecy which its Inventors uttered when they called it the NEW MAGIC.

That first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern Learning, we have had already; and it is not yet exhausted. But in that rapid development of a common intelligence, to which the new science of practice has itself so largely contributed, even in its lower and limited developments, we come now to that other and so important use of these Fables, which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for the time, in his argument--that use of them, in which they serve 'to wrap up and conceal' for the time, or to limit to the few, who are able to receive them, those new discoveries which are as yet too far in advance of the common beliefs and opinions of men, and too far above the mental habits and capacities of the ma.s.ses of men, to be safely or profitably communicated to the many in the abstract.

But in order to arrive at this second and n.o.bler use of them, it will be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any that we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so long as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially while that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them, which the received history of the works themselves created, was still operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we usually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to have a moral or politic intention,--truths which we are understood to be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only designed to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the will that would not take them from the reason, by means of the senses or the imagination. It is not that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge, or those conventional opinions, those una.n.a.lysed popular beliefs, which we usually expect to find without any trouble at all, on the very surface of any work that has morality for its object, it is not any such coa.r.s.e, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble ourselves to look for here. This higher intention in these works 'their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth,' has not yet been found, _because_ the science which is wrapped in them, though it is the princ.i.p.al science in the plan of the Advancement of Learning, has. .h.i.therto escaped our notice, and _because_ of the exceeding subtlety of it,--because the truths thus conveyed or concealed are new, and recondite, and out of the way of any casual observation,--because in this scientific collection of the phenomena of the human life, designed to serve as the basis of new social arts and rules of practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the vague, popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for purposes of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which are actual and historical, those simple radical forms and differences on which the doctrine of power and practice must be based.

It is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the most profoundly earnest to which these works now invite us. Let those who will, stay in the playground still, and make such sport and pastime of it there, as they may; and let those who feel the need of inductive rules here also,--here on the ground which this pastime covers--let those who perceive that we have as yet, set our feet only on the threshold of the Great Instauration, find here with diligent research, the ascent to the axioms of practice,--that ascent which the author of the science of practice in general, made it _his labour_ to hew out _here_, for _he_ undertook 'to collect here into an art or science, that which had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense and experience.'

It does not consist with the design of the present work to track that draught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an inductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of the Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its compartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections, which the Fables of the Modern Learning,--which these magnificent Parabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.

This work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to remove that primary obstacle to the diligent study of these works, which the present theory of them contains; since that concealment of their true intention and history, which was inevitable at the time, no longer serves the author's purpose, and now that the times are ripe for the learning which they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the ill.u.s.trations which are here produced, are produced with reference to that object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those '_secrets of policy_,' which are the necessary introduction to that which follows.

CHAPTER II.

THE MISSING BOOKS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION; OR, PHILOSOPHY ITSELF.

Did it never occur to the student of the _Novum Organum_ that the constant application of that '_New Machine_' by the inventor of it himself, to one particular cla.s.s of subjects, so constant as to produce on the mind of the careless reader the common impression, that it was intended to be applied to that cla.s.s only, and that the relief of the human estate, in that one department of the human want, const.i.tuted its whole design: did it never occur to the curious inquirer, or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning, that this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications in the hands of its author is--under all the circ.u.mstances--a thing worthy of being inquired into? Considering who the author of it is, and that it is on the face of it, a new method of dealing with facts in general, a new method of obtaining axioms of practice from history in general, and not a specific method of obtaining them from that particular department of history from which his instances are taken; and, considering, too, that the author was himself aware of the whole sweep of its applications, and that he has taken pains to include in his description of its powers, the a.s.sertion,--the distinct, deliberate a.s.sertion--that it is capable of being applied as _efficiently_, to those n.o.bler departments of the human need, which are marked out for it in the Great Instauration--those very departments in which he was known himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been all his life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it never occur to the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it, then, himself to those very subjects, instead of keeping so stedfastly to the physical forces in his ill.u.s.tration of its powers? And has any one ever read the plan of this man's works? Has any one seen the scheme of that great enterprise, for which he was the responsible person in his own time--that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these published acknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce in his own name, to show what parts of his '_labor_,'--what part of chief consequence was _not_ thus produced? Has any one seen that plan of a new system of Universal Science, which was published in the reign of James the First, under the patronage of that monarch? And if it has been seen, what is the reason there has been no enquiry made for those works, in which the author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to these very subjects; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us, in reference to that undertaking, that he is _not_ a vain promiser.

There is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history, which the new method of discovery and invention requires as the first step towards its conclusions, which is put down as the THIRD PART of the Instauration, though the natural history which is produced for that purpose is very far from fulfilling the description and promise of that division. But where is the FOURTH part of the Great Instauration?

Has anybody seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for which all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is subsidiary? Where is that part which consists of EXAMPLES, that are nothing but a _particular_ application of the SECOND; that is, the Novum Organum,--'and to _subjects of the n.o.blest kind_?' Where is 'that part of our work which enters upon PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead of dealing any longer, or professing to deal, with THE METHOD merely of finding that which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting that method any longer _in the abstract_? Where are the works in which he undertakes to show it in operation, with its new 'grappling hooks'

on the matter of the human life--applied by the inventor himself to 'the n.o.blest subjects?' Surely that would be a sight to see. What is the reason that our editors do not produce these so important works in their editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include them in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars do not quote them? Instead of stopping with that mere report of the condition of learning and its deficiences, and that outline of what is to be done, which makes the FIRST PART or Introduction to this work; or stopping with the description of the new method, or the Novum Organum, which makes the SECOND; why don't they go on to the 'new philosophy itself,' and show us that as well,--the very object of all this preparation? When he describes in the SECOND part his _method_ of finding true terms, or rather the method of his school, when he describes this new method of finding '_ideas_,' ideas as they are in nature, powers, causes, the elements of history, or _forms_, as he more commonly calls them, when he describes this new method of deducing axioms, axioms that are ready for practice, he does, indeed, give us _instances_; but it so happens, that the instances are all of _one kind_ there. They are the physical powers that supply his examples in that part.

In describing this method merely, he produces what he calls his Tables of Invention, or Tables of REVIEW OF INSTANCES; but where is that part in which he tells us we shall find these same tables again, with 'the n.o.bler subjects' on them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his second part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He shews them up very industriously, and is very particular to direct the admiring attention of the reader to their adaptation as means to an end. But certainly there is nothing in that specimen of what can be done with them which he contents himself with there, that would lead any one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made on any one's mind by that book, that there is any other kind of invention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this method? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new terminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author indulges--a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to construct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms, and his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of expression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is indeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared to grapple formally with those 'n.o.bler subjects' to which allusion is made in another place. King James was a man of some erudition himself; but he declared frankly that for his part he could not understand this book; and it was not strange that he could not, for the author did not intend that he should. The philosopher drops a hint in pa.s.sing, however, that all which is essential in this method, might perhaps be retained without quite so much formality and fuss in the use of it, and that the proposed result might be arrived at by means of these same tables, without any use of technical language at all, under other circ.u.mstances.

The results which have since been obtained by the use of this method in that department of philosophy to which it is specially applied in the Novum Organum, give to the inquirer into the causes of the physical phenomena now, some advantages which no invention could supply them. That was what the founders of this philosophy expected and predicted. They left this department to their school. The author of the Novum Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis of the induction in this department is as yet wanting; and the collections and experiments here require combinations of skill and labour which they cannot at once command. They will do what they can here too, in their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance.

But the man who has studiously created for himself a social position which enables him to a.s.sume openly, and even ostentatiously, the position of an innovator--an innovator _in the world of letters_, an advancer of--_learning_--is compelled to introduce his innovation with the complaint that he finds the mind of the world so stupified, so bewildered with evil, and so under the influence of dogmas, that the first thing to be done is to get so much as a thought admitted of the possibility of a better state of things. 'The present system of philosophy,' he says, 'cherishes in its bosom certain positions or dogmas which it will be found, are calculated to produce a full conviction that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on nature _ought_ to be antic.i.p.ated, through the means of art.' And, therefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world as he finds it, reporting as well as he can,--though he can find no words, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in regard to it--_the deficiencies_ in its learning, he devotes a considerable portion of the description of his new method to the grounds of 'hope'

which he derives from this philosophic survey, and that that hope is not a hope of a better state of things in respect to the physical wants of man merely, that it is not a hope of a renovation in the arts which minister to those wants exclusively, any very careful reader of the first book of the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer.

But the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another place _for particulars_.

'Let us then speak of _hope_' he says, '_especially_ as we are not vain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judgments; but would rather lead them _willingly_ forward. And although we shall employ the most cogent means of _enforcing hope when we bring them_ TO PARTICULARS, and _especially_ those which are digested and arranged in our Tables of Invention, the subject partly of the SECOND, but--_princ.i.p.ally_--mark it, _princ.i.p.ally_ of the FOURTH part of the Instauration, which are, indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes than hope itself.' Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection, that he is _not_ a vain promiser, when no such PART as that to which he refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings--when this _princ.i.p.al_ part of his promise remains unfulfilled. 'The FOURTH part of the Instauration,' he says again in his formal description of it, 'enters upon philosophy itself, furnishing _examples of inquiry and investigation_, according to our own method, _in certain subjects of the n.o.blest kind_, but greatly differing from each other, that a specimen may be had of _every sort_. By these examples, we mean _not ill.u.s.trations of rules and precepts_,' [He will show the facts in such order, in such scientific, select, methodical arrangements, that rules and precepts will be forced from them; for he will show them, on the tables of invention, and rules and precepts are the vintage that flows from the ill.u.s.trious instances--the prerogative instances--the ripe, large, cleared, selected cl.u.s.ters of facts, the subtle prepared history which the tables of invention collect. The definition of the simple original elements of history, the pure definition is the first vintage from these; but 'that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule'

and _the axiom of practice_, ready for use, is the final result.] 'but perfect models, which will exemplify the SECOND PART of this work, and represent, as it were, to _the eye_ the whole progress of the mind, and _the continued structure and order of invention_ in THE MORE CHOSEN SUBJECTS'--note it, in the _more_ chosen subjects; but this is not at all--'_after the same manner as globes and machines facilitate the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics_.' But in another place he tells us, that the poetic form of demonstration is the form to which it is necessary to have recourse on these subjects, _especially_ when we come to these more abstruse and subtle demonstrations, as it opens an easy and familiar pa.s.sage to the human understanding in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion; and that at the time he was writing out this plan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the human understanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising animosity, opposition, or disturbance, had no choice--_must go in that same path_, or none. Where are those diagrams? And what does he mean, when he tells us in this connection that he is not a vain promiser? Where are those particular cases, in which this method of investigation is applied to the n.o.blest subjects? Where are the diagrams, in which the order of the investigation is represented, as it were, to the eye, which serve the same purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all acquainted with one poem, at least, published about that time, in which some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in progress, _not_ without the use of diagrams, and very lively ones too; but one in which the intention of the poet appears to be to the last degree 'enigmatical,' inasmuch as it has engaged the attention of the most philosophical minds ever since, and inasmuch as the most able critics have never been able to comprehend that intention fully in their criticism. And it is bound up with many others, in which the subjects are not less carefully chosen, and in which the method of inquiry is the same; in which that same method that is exhibited in the 'Novum Organum' in the abstract, or in its application to the investigation of the physical phenomena, is everywhere ill.u.s.trated in the most chosen subjects--in subjects of the n.o.blest kind. This volume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the THIRD and FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether this man who describes them here, and who forgot, it would seem, to fulfil his promise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.

That is the part of the Great Instauration that we want now, and we are fairly ent.i.tled to it, because these are not 'the next ages,' or 'the times which were nearer,' and which this author seldom speaks of without betraying his clear foresight of the political and social convulsions that were then at hand. These are the times, which were farther off, to which he appeals from those nearer ages, and to which he expressly dedicates the opening of his designs.

Now, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is missing out of this philosophy? Nothing less than the 'princ.i.p.al' part of it. All that is good for anything in it, according to the author's own estimate. The rest serves merely 'to pa.s.s the time,' or it is good as it serves to prepare the way for this. What is it that we have to look for? The 'Novum Organum,' that severe, rigorous method of scientific inquiry, applied to _the more chosen subjects_ in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that Logic which is brought out in the doctrine of the PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its encounter with fact in general, brought down to particulars, and applied to the n.o.blest subjects, and to every sort of subject which the philosophic mind of that age _chose_ to apply it to. That is what we want to find.

'The prerogative instances' in 'the _more_ chosen subjects.' The whole field which that philosophy chose for its field, and called the n.o.blest, the princ.i.p.al, the chosen, the more chosen one. Every part of it reduced to scientific inquiry, put under the rule of the 'Novum Organum'; that is what we want to find. We know that no such thing could possibly be found in the acknowledged writings of this author.

Nothing answering to that description, composed by a statesman and a philosopher, with an avowed intention in his writing--an intention to effect changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn practice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by any means have been got through the press then. No one who studies the subject will think of looking for that FOURTH PART of the Instauration among the author's acknowledged writings. Does he give us any hint as to where we are to look for it? Is there any intimation as to the particular form of writing in which we are to find it? for find it we must and shall, because he is _not_ a vain promiser. The _subject_ itself determines the form, he says; and the fact that the whole ground of the discovery is ground already necessarily comprehended in the preconceptions of the many--that it is ground covered all over with the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact, also, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation. Who that knows what the so-called Baconian method of learning really is, will need to be told that the princ.i.p.al books of it will be--books of INSTANCES and PARTICULARS, SPECIMENS--living ones, and that these will occupy the prominent place in the book; and that the conclusions and precepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly and on the spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use, 'knowing the way to particulars again?' Who would ever expect to find the princ.i.p.al books of this learning--the books in which it enters upon philosophy itself, and undertakes to leave a specimen of its own method in the n.o.blest subjects in its own chosen field--who would ever expect to find these books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with instances or examples brought in, to ill.u.s.trate or make them good? For this is not a point of method merely, but a point of substance, as he takes pains to tell us. And who that has ever once read his own account of the method in which he proposes to _win_ the human mind from its preconceptions, instead of undertaking to overcome it with Logic and sharp disputations,--who that knows what place he gives to Rhetoric, what place he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of innovation, will expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic learning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms, under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold a.s.surance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is the _only_ form in which the higher applications of his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly, 'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples which his scientific terminology includes in the department of _Poesy?_

All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and parable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the human understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.

He was an innovator; he was _not_ an agitator. And he claims that mark of a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without noise or perturbation, _in aura leni_. Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of G.o.d. It is the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it; it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden with new gifts for men, openly announces.

'Let us begin from G.o.d,' he says, when he begins to open his ground of _hope_, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds them, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and inst.i.tutes of the universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision with them; 'Let us begin from G.o.d, and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, _clearly_ proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD and Father of LIGHT. Now, _in all divine works_, the smallest beginnings lead a.s.suredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual matters, that the Kingdom of G.o.d cometh without observation, is also found to be true _in every great work of_ PROVIDENCE, so that everything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the matter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is commenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who innovateth _greatly_ but _quietly_, and by degrees scarce to be perceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one is finished and in its place.

What is that we want to find? We want to find the new method of scientific inquiry applied to the questions in which men are most deeply interested--questions which were then imperiously and instantly urged on the thoughtful mind. We want to see it applied to POLITICS in the reign of James the First. We want to see it applied to the open questions of another department of inquiry,--certainly not any less important,--in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We want to see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of review, from which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, the _legitimate_ sovereignty, is to be inducted, and the scientific axioms of government with it. We want to see the science of observation and experiment, the science of nature in general, applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign of James the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in which it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that, too, by the princ.i.p.al doctors in that profession,--men of the very largest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their work conscientiously, whether the patient _objected_ or not. But are there any such books as these? Certainly. You have the author's own word for it. 'Some may raise this question,' he says, 'this _question_ rather than _objection_'--[it is better that it should come in the form of a _question_, than in the form of _an objection_, as it would have come, if there had been no room to '_raise the question_']--'_whether we talk_ of perfecting _natural philosophy_' [using the term here in its usual limited sense], 'whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy _alone_, according to our method, or, _the other_ sciences--_such as_, ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' _That_ is the question 'raised.' 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' _That_ is _the author's_ answer to it. 'And as _common logic_ which _regulates matters by syllogism_, is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, _so_ our inductive method _likewise_ comprehends them ALL.' With such iteration will he think fit to give us this point. It is put in here for those 'who raise the question'--the question 'rather than objection.' The other sort are taken care of in other places. '_For_,' he continues, 'we form a history and tables of invention, for _anger, fear, shame,_ and _the like_; and _also for examples in civil life_' [that was to be the princ.i.p.al part of the science when he laid out the plan of it in the advancement of learning] 'and the _mental_ operations of _memory, composition, division, judgment_, and the rest; _as well_ as for _heat_ and _cold, light_ and _vegetation_, and _the like_.' That is the plan of the new science, as the author sketches it for the benefit of those who raise questions rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely, whenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satisfaction of this cla.s.s of readers. But this is that same FOURTH PART to which he refers us in the other places for the application of his method to those n.o.bler subjects, those more chosen subjects; and that is just the part of his science which appears to be wanting. How happens it?

Did he get so occupied with the question of _heat_ and _cold_, _light_ and vegetation, and _the like_, that after all he forgot this part with its n.o.bler applications? How could that be, when he tells us expressly, that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This part which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philosophy, unquestionably. These are the books of it which have been missing hitherto; but in that Providential order of events to which he refers himself, the time has come for them to be inquired for; and this inquiry is itself a part of that movement, in which the smallest beginnings lead a.s.suredly to some result. For, 'let us begin from G.o.d,' he says, 'and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of misery; the Father of LIGHT, and not of darkness.'

Of course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine of the human society, without coming at once in collision with that doctrine of the divinity of arbitrary power which the monarchs of England were then openly sustaining. Who needs to be told, that he who would handle that argument scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this inquirer _would_, must indeed 'pray in aid of _similes_.' And yet a very searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that inst.i.tution, which the new philosophy found in possession of the human welfare, and a.s.serting a divine right to it as a thing of private property and legitimate family inheritance,--such a criticism was, in fact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the principles of a _human_ subjection which appeared to this philosopher to belong properly to the more chosen subjects of a scientific investigation.

And notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the extremely critical nature of the investigation, when it came to touch those particulars, with which the personal observations and experiments of the founders of this new school in philosophy had tended to enrich their collections in this department,--'and the aim is better,' says the princ.i.p.al spokesman of this school, who quietly proposes to introduce this method into _politics_, 'the aim is better _when the mark is alive_;' notwithstanding the difficulties which appeared to lie then in the way of such an investigation, the means of conducting it to the entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment of the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this was one of those 'secrets of policy,' which have always required the aid of fable, and the idea of _dramatising_ the fable for the sake of reaching in some sort those who are incapable of receiving any thing 'which does not directly fall under, and strike the senses,' as the philosopher has it; those who are capable of nothing but 'dumb shows and noise,' as Hamlet has it; this idea, though certainly a very happy, was not with these men an original one. Men, whose relations to the state were not so different as the difference in the forms of government would perhaps lead us to suppose,--men of the gravest learning and enriched with the choicest accomplishments of their time, had adopted that same method of influencing public opinion, some two thousand years earlier, and even as long before as that, there were 'secrets of morality and policy,' to which this form of writing appeared to offer the most fitting veil.

Whether 'the new' philosopher,--whether 'the new magician' of this time, was, in fact, in possession of any art which enabled him to handle without diffidence or scruple the great political question which was then already the question of the time; whether 'THE CROWN'--that double crown of military conquest and priestly usurpation, which was the one estate of the realm at that crisis in English history, did, among other things in some way, come under the edges of that new a.n.a.lysis which was severing _all_ here then, and get divided clearly with 'the mind, that divine fire,'--whether any such thing as that occurred here then, the reader of the following pages will be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they contain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which made its appearance about those days, will certainly have no difficulty at all in deciding that question. For, first of all, it is necessary to find that political key to the Elizabethan art of delivery, which unlocks the great works of the Elizabethan philosophy, and that is the necessity which determines the selection of the Plays that are produced in this volume. They are brought in to ill.u.s.trate the fact already stated, and already demonstrated, the fact which is the subject of this volume, the fact that the new practical philosophy of the modern ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the plan of its founders, to 'natural philosophy' and 'the part operative'

of that,--the fact that it comprehended, as its princ.i.p.al department, the department in which its 'n.o.blest subjects' lay, and in which its most vital innovations were included, a field of enquiry which could not then be entered without the aid of fable and parable, and one which required not then only, 'but now, and at all times,' the aid of a vivid poetic ill.u.s.tration; they are brought in to ill.u.s.trate the fact already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the new philosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work under such conditions, able to work, if not for the times that were nearer, for the times that were further off; men who thought it little so they could fulfil and perfect their work and make their account of it to the Work-master, to robe another with their glory; men who could relinquish the n.o.blest works of the human genius, that they might save them from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they might make them over unharmed in their boundless freedom, in their unstained perfection, to the farthest ages of the advancement of learning,--that they might 'teach them how to live and look fresh' still,

'When tyrants' crests, and tombs of bra.s.s are spent.'

That is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book is to demonstrate.

PART I.

LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER

'Thou'dst shun a bear; But if thy way lay towards the raging sea, Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'

CHAPTER I.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE.

'I think the king is but a man, as I am.'--_King Henry_.

'They told me I was everything.'--_Lear_.

OF course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly dealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed, scientifically examined, in the very presence of royalty itself, except by persons endowed with extraordinary privileges and immunities, persons, indeed, of quite irresponsible authority, whose right to do and say what they pleased, Elizabeth herself, though they should enter upon a critical a.n.a.lysis of the divine rights of kings to her face, and deliberately lay bare the defects in that t.i.tle which she was then attempting to maintain, must needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.

And such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the retinue of that sovereignty which was working in disguise here then, and laying the foundations of that throne in the thoughts of men, which would replace old princ.i.p.alities and powers, and not political dominions merely. To the creative genius which waited on the philosophic mind of that age, making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of its exterior conditions, such persons,--persons of any amount or variety of capacity which the necessary question of its play might require, were not wanting:--'came with a thought.'

Of course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his ill-got crown, and pa.s.sing a sleepless night in spite of its supposed exemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with all his royal means and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea boy in the storm enjoys,--and the poet appears, to have had some experience of this mortal ill, which inclines him to put it down among those which ought to be excluded from a state of supreme earthly felicity,--the poor guilty disgusted usurper, discovering that this so blessed 'invention'

was not included in the prerogative he had seized, under the exasperation of the circ.u.mstances, might surely be allowed to mutter to himself, in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general reflections on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to any extent, without expecting to be called to an account for it, by any future son or daughter of his usurping lineage. That extraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite incontestable fact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still, refused to recognize this artificial difference in men, but still went on her way in all things, as if 'the golden standard' were not there, cla.s.sing the monarch with his 'poorest subject;'--the fact that this charmed 'round of sovereignty,' did not after all secure the least exemption from the common _individual_ human frailty, and helplessness,--this would, of course, strike the usurper who had purchased the crown at such an expense, as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if it were only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed to embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the moral was proper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and ready to be produced, in case any serious inquiry should be made for it; though the poet might seem, perhaps, to a severely critical mind, disposed to pursue his philosophical inquiry a little too curiously into the awful secrets of majesty, retired within itself, and pondering its own position;--openly searching what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the Scriptures p.r.o.nounce to be inscrutable, namely, _the hearts_ of _kings_, and audaciously laying bare those private pa.s.sages, those confessions, and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and reverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play, indeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circ.u.mstance which, of course, was expected to modify the impression.

So, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going a.n.a.lysis of the trick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come only as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty of nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the brave and gentle hero of Agincourt.

'Though _I_ speak it to you,' he says, talking in the disguise of a 'private,' '_I think the King is but a man as I am_, the violet smells to him as it doth to me; all his senses, _have but human conditions_.

His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness, he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are'; and in the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and soliloquises on the same delicate question.

'And what have _kings_ that "_privates_" have not, too, save ceremony,--save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou _idol ceremony?_--_What is_ thy _soul_ of _adoration_?'

A grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind, in those times: let us see how a Poet can answer it.

'Art thou aught else but _place, degree_ and _form_, Creating awe and fear in _other men?_ Wherein, thou _art less happy, being feared_, _Than they in fearing_?

[Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he cherished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king; and those who know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had authorised, and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and preparing the way for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on that account; but this is what he means. He thinks that wretched victim of that most irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose head the crown of an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its responsibilities, in his infinite unfitness for them, is, in fact, the one whose case most of all requires relief. He is the one, in this theory, who suffers from this unnatural state of things, not less, but more, than his meanest subject. 'Thou art less happy being feared, than they in fearing.']

What drink'st thou oft _instead of homage sweet_ But _poison'd flattery_? O! be sick, great greatness, And bid thy _ceremony_ give thee _cure_.